HISTORY OF ROME. 
 
 WILLIAM FRANCIS COLLIER, LL.D., 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN ; 
 
 Author of " School History of the British Empire," " English History for Junior Classes, 
 The Great Events of History," " History of English Literature," &c. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW; 
 
 EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK. 
 
 MDCtCLXVlI.
 
 Annex 
 
 DR. COLLIER'S HISTORIES OF GREECE AND ROME. 
 
 (Each to be had separately.) 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 THESE volumes aim at giving a clear outline of the chief 
 events in Grecian and Roman History. 
 
 The personal or biographical element, upon which so much 
 of the living interest of History mainly depends, has been 
 kept prominently in view throughout. 
 
 The same plan has been followed as that adopted in the 
 author's " Great Events of History ;" and among other feat- 
 ures of similarity to that work, these volumes contain Lists, 
 which will enable a pupil to become acquainted with the 
 leading names in Greek and Roman Literature. 
 
 June, 1866.

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE SEVEN KINGS OP ROME. 
 
 PM 
 
 Building of Rome Romulus and Nnma Horatii and Curlatii Tarquin 
 the Elder Elevation of the Plebs Death of Servius Tarqnin the 
 Proud Story of Lucretia 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE TARQTJINS IN EXILB. 
 
 The New Government Brutus and his Sons Death of Brutus Horatius 
 and the Bridge Mucius Scsevola The Swimming Girls The First 
 Dictator Battle of Lake Regillus. 8 
 
 CHAPTER III. TBIBUNES OP THE PLEBS. 
 
 State of the Plebs A Piteous Tale The First Secession Menenius' Story 
 
 Tribunes Appointed Their Powers v 12 
 
 CHAPTER IV. PATRICIAN HEROES. 
 
 Corlolanus: the Fabii Patrician Legends Coriolanus The Agrarian 
 
 Law Cincinnatus The Camp at Cremera The Valley of Algidus.... 15 
 
 CHAPTER V. THB DECEMVIRS. 
 
 The New Code The Ten Appointed First Year Second Tear Story of 
 
 Dentatus Story of Virginia 18 
 
 CHAPTER VI. OAMILLU8 AND THE GAULS. 
 
 The Struggle continued Siege of Veil Battle of the Alia Gauls in the 
 Forum Geese Save the Capitol The Weighing of the Gold The 
 Tore and the Crow. 23 
 
 CHAPTER VII. THE LICINIAN ROGATIONS. 
 
 The City RebuiltFate of Manlins Licinian Rogations Details of the 
 Strife Victory of the Plebs Temple of Concord Steps gained by 
 Plebs. , 27
 
 Vi CONTENTS. 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. THE 8AMKITB AND LATIN WARS. 
 
 PKM 
 Curtius The Samnltes First War Latin War Second War Caudlne 
 
 Forks Third War Battle of Sentlnum 30 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE CAMPAIONS OP PTRRHUS. 
 
 Tarentum Battle of Heraclea Clneas Battle of Asculnm Pyrrhus In 
 
 Sicily Defeated at Beneventum 35 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR. 
 
 Cause of the War First Roman Fleet Mylse and Ecnomns Invasion of 
 
 Africa Regulus Siege of Lilybieum Battle of JSgusa Peace 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE SECOND OR GREAT PUNIC WAR. 
 
 niyrian and Gallic Wars Hannibal Siege of Sagantnm Hannibal's 
 March Ticino : Trebia: Trasimene Fabius Cunctator Battle of 
 Cannae Sieges of Syracuse and Capua Scipio in Spain Hasdrutal's 
 March The Metaurus Scipio in Africa Battle of Zama Peace. 45 
 
 CHAPTER V. THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. 
 
 Cato the Censor His Triumph over Scipio Major Death of Hannibal 
 Delenda est Carthago Two Useless Years Scipio in Command Fall 
 of Carthage Cl 
 
 CHAPTER VI. WARS IN SPAIN AND SICILY. 
 
 Treaty of Gracchus Massacre of Galba Viriathns Celtiberian War 
 
 Numantia Roman Slaves Servile War in Sicily 66 
 
 CHAPTER VII. THE GRACCHI. 
 
 Tiberius Gracchus His Agrarian Law Slain in the Capitol Death of 
 Scipio Minor Caius Gracchus Sempronian Laws Death of Caius 
 Cornelia x 70 
 
 Oreat Xamcs of Roman Literature, <tc. 76 
 
 THIRD PEEIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. MARIUS AND SULLA. 
 
 Jngurthine War Teutones and Cirnbri Saturninus and Drnsus Social 
 War First Mithridatic War Flight of Marius Marios in Rome 
 His Death Return of Sulla The Colline Gate Proscriptions 
 Puteoli. , 77
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 CHAPTER II. POMPEY AND C.SSAR. 
 
 PS 
 
 Sertorian War Spartacus The Cilician Pirates Third Mithridatic War- 
 Catiline and Cicero First Triumvirate Caesar in Gaol The Rubicon 
 Pharsalia Murder of Porapey Thapsus and Munda Murder of 
 Csesar - 89 
 
 Great Kama o/tte First Century B.C. 108 
 
 CHAPTEK III. MARK AHTOSY. 
 
 The Funeral Speech Battle of Mutina Second Triumvirate Death of 
 Cicero Battle of Philippi Cleopatra's Galley Defeat of Sextus 
 Pompey Sloth of Antony Battle of Actium Death of Antony and 
 Cleopatra 110 
 
 CHAPTER IT. THE REIGN OF AUGUSTUS. 
 
 Called Augustus His Ministers Works of Peace The Praetorian Guards 
 Wars of Augustus The Legions of Varus Domestic Life Death 
 of Augustus 120 
 
 &reat Name* tfthe First Century A.D. 124 
 
 CHAPTER V. THE UNWORTHY C.&SARS. 
 
 Germanicus Sejanus Island of Capreas Freaks of Caligula Claudius 
 Invades Britain Caractacus Cruelties of Nero Boadicea The 
 Great Fire A wretched Coward.... 126 
 
 CHAPTER VI. TO THE FALL OF ROME. 
 
 Jerusalem Destroyed Agricola in Britain Trajan The Antonines 
 Purple for Sale Aurelian and Zenobia Diocletian Constantino the 
 Great Julian and Theodosius Goths, Vandals, Hans Fall of Rome 132 
 
 Later Latin Writer!. 140 
 
 ROMAN CHBOHOLOGY........ HI
 
 HISTORY OF ROME, 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 TEE SEVEN KINGS OF ROME. 
 
 Building of Rome. 
 Romulus and Numa, 
 Horatii and Curiatii. 
 Tarquin the Elder. 
 
 Elevation of the Plebs. 
 Death of Servlus. 
 Tarquin the Proud. 
 Story of Lncretia. 
 
 THE early annals of Rome, especially the story of her Seven 
 Kings and of the events 'which led to the establishment 
 of a republic, are so largely mixed with legend that it is 
 impossible to dignify the narrative with the name of 
 History. But it is necessary for my purpose to tell the 
 story in its commonly accepted form. 
 
 The city of Rome grew up gradually on seven hills lying 
 by the Tiber, about fourteen miles from its mouth. It was 
 a favourite delusion among the Romans that they were 
 descended from the gods; and their poets and historians 
 dwelt lovingly on the story of ^Eneas the Trojan, a son of 
 Venus, who left the ashes of his native city, and wandered 
 long, until he found a refuge in Latium, where his son 
 Ascanius built on the ridge of a hill a long white city (Alba 
 Longa). There his descendants reigned through many 
 generations. 
 
 A certain royal Vestal, having given birth to twin sons, of 
 whom the god Mars was said to be the father, was buried
 
 2 ROMULUS BUILES ROME. 
 
 alive ; and the infants were thrown into the Tiber, then in 
 flood. The retreating water left them stranded by a wild fig- 
 tree, where, a wolf suckled them, till a passing herdsman found 
 them and brought them home to his wife. In his cottage 
 the boys grew up under the names of Romulus and Remus. 
 Restored to their position as princes, when they reached 
 manhood, they formed the design of building a new city ; 
 but they differed in opinion as to the site. Romulus took his 
 stand on the Palatine ; Remus on the Aventine Hill, to 
 watch the flight of birds, by which omen it was customary to 
 decide disputes. Remus saw six vultures ; and a little later 
 Romulus saw twelve : one saw the birds sooner ; the other 
 saw a greater number. They could not agree ; Remus said 
 or did something contemptuous ; and Romulus slew him on 
 the spot. 
 
 Romulus then marked out the site of a square city on 
 
 the Palatine ; and this was the nucleus of ancient Rome. 
 
 It was as yet a city without people. But Romulus 
 
 753 invited all the criminals and fugitives of the sur- 
 
 B.O. rounding districts to take refuge with him ; and, 
 when the city was thus tolerably well filled with 
 men, he got up games, to which the neighbouring citizens 
 were invited with their wives and daughters. At the height 
 of the festivity the young Romans seized the Sabine women 
 and kept them in the city. 
 
 This brought on a war with the Sabines, which ended in 
 a union of the Roman and Sabine nations, and the elevation 
 of Titus Tatius, the Sabine chief, to an equality with 
 Romulus in the government. The facts that Romulus took 
 the name of Quirinus and the Romans that of Quirites, both 
 Sabine titles, seem to show that the Sabines had to some 
 extent the upperhand. Titus was soon killed; and after 
 many years Romulus disappeared one day during a review 
 in the Campus Martius borne off in a whirlwind by his 
 father Mars, says one legend rent to pieces by the Sabines 
 and carried off in bloody fragments beneath their gowns, 
 says another and a later fiction. 
 
 Romulus is said to have organized the citizens both 
 socially and politically. They consisted of three tribes, 
 which were subdivided into curlce and gentes. The Ramnes
 
 THE HOKATII AND CURIATII. 3 
 
 were the original Romans the Tities were the Sabines the 
 Luceres appear to have been Etruscans. 
 
 After an interregnum, during which the Senate ruled, 
 Nuina Pompilius, a Sabine, was chosen King. To his 
 gentle and pious reign were poetically ascribed the various 
 religious institutions of the Romans, among which may be 
 mentioned the Salii or dancing priests of Mars, who took 
 charge of the Sacred Shields the Pontiffs the Flamens 
 Augurs and the Vestal Virgins. 
 
 The reign of Tullus Hostilius, third King of Rome, was a 
 time of war, chiefly with the Albans. It was during this 
 war that the famous combat between the Horatii and the 
 Curiatii took place, a legend embodying the historical fact 
 that Alba was overthrown by and absorbed into Rome. 
 
 When the armies, Roman and Alban, stood face to face, 
 it was resolved to leave the decision of the strife to the 
 result of a triple duel to be fought between three Roman 
 brothers called Horatii on the one hand, and three Alban 
 brothers called Curiatii on the other. So between the lines 
 of seated soldiers the combatants fought, until two of the 
 Horatii lay dead ; and all the Curiatii were bleeding with 
 severe wounds. Horatius, still without a scratch, separated 
 his opponents by pretending to run away. The least weak 
 of the three Albans was foremost in the race of pursuit ; 
 the one whose wounds were sorest toiled along rearmost. 
 Then, turning upon them, Horatius slew the three in 
 succession ; and, as a sign of victory, stripped them of their 
 spoils. When he came nigh the city gate, his sister, seeing 
 her lover's arms and dress (for she was betrothed to one of 
 the Curiatii) carried before her exulting brother, broke into a 
 passion of tears, which so enraged the victor that he stabbed 
 her to death. For this he would have been hanged by a 
 decree of the judges, had not the people interfered to save 
 one to whose sword Rome owed so much. 
 
 When Tullus was struck dead by lightning, Ancus 
 Martius, a Sabine, was chosen King after an interregnum. 
 His works were rather works of peace than of war, although 
 he subdued some of the Latin cities. He wrote the laws of 
 Numa on a white board in the Forum formed a rock 
 prison in the Saturnian Hill and built a wooden bridge
 
 4 ELEVATION OP THE PLEBS. 
 
 over the Tiber. The foundation of Ostia, at the mouth of 
 the river, is also ascribed to him. 
 
 The most interesting legends about Tarquinius Priscus, 
 the fifth King of Home, are those which narrate his 
 elevation to the throne and the manner of his death. 
 
 He -was an Etruscan stranger, born at Tarquinii, whence 
 he removed with his wife to Rome. As he was approaching 
 the city, an eagle came circling round his path, took off his 
 cap, and laid it gently on his head again. This omen his 
 wife interpreted into a sign of coming honour. His wealth 
 and tact raised him to the favour of Ancus, who, when dying, 
 left him guardian of his children. But Tarquin betrayed 
 his trust, by securing his own elevation to the vacant throne. 
 
 The manner of his death was this : When the ousted 
 sons of Ancus saw that his favourite Servius Tullius, said 
 by some to have been the son of a female Latin slave, was 
 likely to succeed him, they sent two peasants, who came 
 before the King under the pretence of having a dispute to 
 decide ; and, while Tarquin was listening to the one who 
 stated the case, the other struck him down with an axe. 
 The Queen however defeated the scheme by giving out that 
 Tarquin was not dead, and sending Servius to administer 
 iustice in his name. By the time that the truth became 
 known, the cause of Servius was secure: and he became 
 King of Rome. 
 
 The architectural works of Tarquinius Priscus, chief 
 among which were the Great Sewer (Cloaca Maxima) and 
 the Great Race-course (Circus Maximus), were more im- 
 portant than either his wars or his political institutions. 
 
 The great work of Servius Tullius was the elevation of 
 the Plebs to the rights of citizenship. At the beginning a 
 distinction had been drawn by Romulus between Patrons 
 and Clients ; but gradually the Aventine Hill had come to 
 be covered with the huts of a multitude, drafted from time 
 to time into the city, especially during the Latin wars of 
 Ancus, but not placed upon a level with the earlier inha- 
 bitants. Dividing the Roman territory into about twenty 
 sections or tribes, Servius permitted the Plebeians to meet 
 for discussion in public assemblies called Comitia Tributa, 
 just as the Patricians were used to meet in the Comitia
 
 DEATH OF SERVIUS TDLLIUS. 5 
 
 Curiata. And to a great national assembly, called Comitia 
 Centuriata, and composed of both Patricians and Plebeians, 
 were gradually assigned nearly all the great political privi- 
 leges, which had once been monopolized by the Curice. 
 
 Servius married his two daughters to the two sons of 
 Tarquinius Priscus, in the hope that such an arrangement 
 would please all and prevent disputes about the succession. 
 And, to make matters still more secure, he mated them by 
 opposites, giving a fierce wife to a gentle husband and vice 
 versa. But the fierce ones were not content; and they 
 murdered their gentle consorts. So Lucius Tarquinius 
 Superbus became the husband of the wicked Tullia. This 
 was but one step in their nefarious plot. The next was 
 directed towards the throne. Seconded by the Patricians, 
 who were angry at the elevation of the Plebs, Lucius went 
 and seated himself on the throne at the door of the Senate- 
 house ; and, when King Servius came and asked him, how 
 durst he assume that seat, he replied that it was his 
 father's throne, and gave the old .man a push which flung him 
 down the steps. While Servius, stunned and bleeding, was 
 striving to stagger home, some of the adherents of Lucius ran 
 after him, killed him, and left his body lying in the street. 
 Tullia, who knew what was going on, drove in her car to 
 the Senate-house to salute her husband as King. But he 
 sent her home at once. At the foot of the Esquiline the 
 driver of the car saw a prostrate figure in the way, and on a 
 nearer approach perceived that it was the King, lying dead. 
 Reining in his horses, he was about to turn aside, when the 
 unnatural daughter, with curses and hard names, perhaps 
 with blows, bade him drive on, nor heed the body. And so 
 over the figure of the slain King jolted the heavy wheels, 
 and then, blotched with bloody stains, went rolling on, 
 staining the stones of the Wicked Street for ever with a 
 horrid memory and name. 
 
 The general character of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, 
 seventh and last King of Rome, was oppressively tyrannical, 
 not only in his treatment of the Plebeians but also in that of 
 the Patricians by whose aid he had gained the crown. In 
 his wars and foreign policy he was successful; but his 
 efforts to obtain absolute despotism made for him many
 
 6 THE CKIME OF SEXTUS TARQUIN. 
 
 foes, and prepared the way for the great revolution, by which 
 his reign and the Roman monarchy were brought to an end. 
 
 He had a son Sextus, by whose means the Latin town of 
 Gabii was taken. Pretending to have quarrelled with his 
 father, the prince fled for refuge to this town, where he was 
 welcomed and made commander of the army. By getting 
 the better of old Tarquin in some skirmishes he secured the 
 confidence of the Gabians. And then he sent a private 
 messenger home to ask for advice. The King said nothing, 
 but walked up and down the garden, switching off the heads 
 of the tallest poppies with a stick. Sextus, reading the 
 hidden meaning, cut off by death or exile the chief men in 
 Gabii ; and the undefended city fell an easy prey to Rome. 
 
 It was owing to the wickedness of this same Sextus that 
 the Tarquins were banished from Rome. During the tedious 
 siege of Ardea the princes were wont to meet at night to 
 drink wine and talk together ; and one evening a dispute 
 arose as to the comparative worth of their wives. " Let us 
 go and see how they are now employed," said Collatinus, a 
 cousin of the Tarquins. So they took horse and rode through 
 the darkness, first to Rome, where they found the princesses 
 in the tumult and glare of banquet-rooms; and then to 
 Collatia, where sat Lucretia, wife of Collatinus, calmly and 
 cheerfully busied among her maidens with the distaff and 
 the carding-comb. To her the princes gave the palm. But 
 Sextus gazed at her with unholy eyes. And, some days 
 later, he intruded himself upon her household as a guest, 
 and despite the welcome he received, made this pure matron 
 the victim of his lust. Lucretia then sent in haste for her 
 father and her husband ; and in their presence, having told 
 the tale of shame, slew herself with a knife, crying with her 
 last words for revenge on Sextus. 
 
 There was present Junius Brutus, a member of the 
 Tarquin family, who had long been feigning imbecility as a 
 safeguard against the King's jealousy, and who indeed had 
 got his surname from this circumstance. But, as the legend 
 tells us, there was a substratum of tact and talent below 
 his apparent dullness. Having been, a short time before, 
 sent with two of his cousins to consult the oracle at Delphi, 
 he heard a response that the chief power in Rome was to
 
 ABOLITION OF MONARCHY. 7 
 
 be his, who should first kiss his mother. So, upon the 
 Italian shore, having just left the ship, he managed to have 
 a lucky stumble, and kissed mother Earth, by which he got 
 the advantage of his companions. 
 
 This man, drawing the red knife from Lucretia's breast, 
 swore revenge upon the Tarquin family, and the bloody 
 blade passed from hand to hand, as the words of the oath 
 from lip to lip. In the market-place of Collatia the body of 
 Lucretia was placed, to rouse the anger of the townsmen by 
 the "poor dumb mouth" of its wound. And, hurrying to 
 Rome, Brutus, who was Tribune of the Celeres, or com- 
 mander of the cavalry, called an assembly of the people, 
 who, upon hearing the story, agreed to banish the wicked 
 Tarquins. Old Tarquin, when the tidings reached 
 him, rode to Rome, but found the gates closed 509 
 against him. Meanwhile Brutus had reached the B.C. 
 camp at Ardea, and had won over the army there. 
 The -deposed King took refuge at Caere in Etruria, while 
 Sextus sought safety at Gabii.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE TAEQUINS IN EXILE. , 
 
 The New Government 
 Brutus and his Sons. 
 Death of Brutus. 
 Horatius and the Bridge. 
 
 Mucius Sccevola. 
 The Swimming Girls. 
 The First Dictator. 
 Battle of Lake Regillus. 
 
 MONARCHY being overthrown, a Republic was then estab- 
 lished in Rome. Instead of a King, ruling for life, two magis- 
 trates, elected every year, and bearing the simple name of 
 Consuls or Colleagues, were to govern the State. The 
 first Consuls were Brutus and Collatinus; but the latter, 
 being a Tarquin, was soon obliged to retire in favour of 
 Valerius. The emblems of consular dignity and power 
 were three the toga with a purple hem, an ivory throne 
 called the curule chair, and the fasces, or twelve bundles 
 of rods with axes inside, which were carried by guards 
 called lictors. 
 
 The first attempt to restore the Tarquin was set on foot 
 by his envoys, who came to Rome to ask the restitution of 
 his private property. The two sons of Brutus were involved in 
 the plot, which was discovered by a slave who overheard the 
 talk of the conspirators. Among the earliest public acts of 
 Brutus was therefore the dreadful duty of condemning his 
 own sons to death. Crushing down in his heart the natural 
 affection of a father, he bade the lictors slay those who 
 would betray their country, and winced not to see his own 
 blood flowing under the axe. 
 
 Before long he had followed his sons to the grave. The 
 people of Tarquinii and Veii having taken up arms for the 
 exiled King, a Roman force, commanded by the Consuls, 
 advanced to meet them. Before the battle there was a fatal 
 dueL Aruns Tarquin, seeing Brutus at the head of the 
 horse, rode at him with lance in rest, much as Bohun rode 
 in a later field at Bruce; and Brutus, better horsed than
 
 HORATIUS AND SCJEVOLA. 9 
 
 Robert of Scotland was to be, couched his spear, and gal- 
 loped to meet the advancing foe. So fierce was the onset 
 and so true the aim of both, that each drove his spear 
 through the heart of the other; and both sank dead upon 
 their steeds. In the battle that followed there was no 
 decisive success on either side ; but a voice at night adjudged 
 the victory to Rome, and the enemy retreated. 
 
 Thus baffled a second time, Tarquin had recourse to Lars 
 Porsenna of Clusium, lord of the twelve Etruscan cities, 
 who raised a great army and marched to Rome. The wooden 
 bridge that spanned the Tiber was almost gained, and within 
 the city all was terror and confusion, when a brave man 
 named Horatius Codes, with two others, Lartius and Her- 
 minius, faced the whole Etruscan host at the entrance of the 
 narrow bridge, and slew all who dared to cross swords with 
 them, while, behind, the axes of the Roman were hewing at 
 the beams. When the structure was tottering to the fall, 
 the companions of Horatius escaped across its shaking 
 planks; but it fell with a mighty crash into the flooded 
 stream, before Horatius could follow. In that moment of 
 terror every eye was fixed upon the hero, who stood amid 
 the corpses of the slain, alone in front of many thousand 
 foes. He stayed only to utter a short prayer to the river- 
 god, and then plunged into the yellow flood, which foamed 
 over his helmet, and at first seemed likely to whirl him after 
 the broken spars to the sea. But he struggled through in 
 spite of wounds and weariness, and was received on the safer 
 side with shouts and applause. 
 
 Before Porsenna left the Janiculum, a hill overlooking 
 Rome from the Etrurian side of the Tiber, two other in- 
 stances of Roman hardihood and daring had occurred. 
 
 A young Roman of rank, named Mucius, having made a 
 resolve to kill Porsenna, went across the river, and saw a man 
 of noble presence and rich dress paying the Etruscan soldiers. 
 Believing this to be the King, Mucius struck a dagger into 
 his breast. But it proved to be only an officer deputed by Por- 
 senna to pay the men. Dragged before the angry chieftain, 
 the Roman was menaced with death by fire, if he would not 
 confess. " See," cried he, thrusting his left hand into the 
 flame, which wavered on an altar close by, " how weak the 
 
 (124) 2
 
 10 BATTLE OF LAKE KEGILLT7S. 
 
 torture of flame is to wring a secret from a Roman." And 
 when, in admiration of his bravery, the Etruscan spared his 
 life, Mucius announced that three hundred Romans had 
 sworn to make the attempt in which he had failed. Ulti- 
 mately Porsenna subdued Rome, and ten girls and ten youths 
 of the noblest in the city were given as hostages to him. 
 One of the maidens, Clcelia by name, plunging into the 
 Tiber and calling on her companions to follow, led the way 
 through the waters back to Rome. The Romans sent her 
 back ; but Porsenna, not to be outdone in generosity, gave 
 her freedom, and permitted her to choose the youngest 
 boys to return with her to Rome. Porsenna then went 
 home. 
 
 The fourth and last effort to restore the Tarquins was the 
 most formidable of all, for the thirty Latin cities united 
 under a Dictator. 
 
 The Romans also appointed a Dictator, who acted as 
 
 general-in-chief during six months, and, unlike the 
 
 499 Consuls, was not required to give an account at the 
 
 B.C. end of his term of power. Lartius was the first 
 Dictator of Rome. 
 
 Two years later, under another Dictator, named Aulus 
 Postumius, the Romans met a Latin army beside Lake Re- 
 gillus in the territory of Tusculum. The battle consisted, 
 like all these old fights, mainly of a series of single combats. 
 First, old Tarquin, clad in complete armour, engaged the 
 ^Ionian Dictator, but was wounded in the side. There was 
 then a duel between the Latin Dictator and the Roman 
 Master of the Horse. On the whole, the Romans had the 
 worst of the struggle, until Postumius promised a temple 
 to the great twins Castor and Pollux, if they would give 
 him aid. He had scarcely spoken, when two giants of 
 exceeding beauty were seen on his right hand, riding upon 
 snow-white horses. Then the tide of battle turned. Titus 
 Tarquin was slain ; the Latins broke ; and their camp was 
 carried by storm. But no trace was seen of the giant horse- 
 men, except the print of a single hoof on a rock That same 
 day the loungers in the Roman Forum saw two young men 
 on white horses, both riders and steeds all stained with 
 bloody dust and the sweat of toil, ride up to a well by the
 
 DEATH OF TAEQUIN THE PKOUD. 1 1 
 
 Temple of Vesta ; and from these strange visitors, as they 
 washed the traces of war away in the pure cold spring, the 
 people heard how a victory had been won at the Lake Ke- 
 gillus over the Latin host. 
 
 Tarquin's hopes were now over, and he had lost all his 
 sons, for Sextus was slain at Gabii. Retiring to Cumre on 
 the Bay of Naples, he died there a short time after this 
 defeat.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 TRIBUNES OF THE PLEBS. 
 
 State of the Plebs. 
 A piteous Tale. 
 The First Secession. 
 
 Menenius' Story. 
 Tribunes appointed. 
 Their Powers. 
 
 THE next five chapters will contain an outline of the struggle, 
 which continued for nearly a century and a half, between 
 the Patricians and the Plebeians of Borne, resulting in the 
 admission of the latter to the chief offices in the State. 
 
 The first great step in the strife was the movement, by 
 which the Plebeians secured for themselves special magis- 
 trates, called Tribunes of the Plebs. 
 
 It must not be imagined that the Plebeians at this time 
 were the mob or rabble of Rome. They were chiefly yeo- 
 men, who cultivated small patches of land in the Campagna 
 or fertile plain by the city. They were too proud to engage 
 in trade or handicraft of any kind. During the Tarquinian 
 Wars they were forced to take the field every summer ; and, 
 being unable like the Patricians to obtain substitutes, or to 
 have their lands tilled by dependents, their fields were 
 neglected, or, if they managed by neighbours' aid to raise a 
 crop, it was often burned or cut down by the enemy during 
 their necessary absence. Thus many of them fell into 
 poverty and debt, borrowing money at heavy usury from 
 the rich Patricians. This opened the door for much op- 
 pression ; for the Roman law of debt was very severe, 
 permitting creditors, in case of default, to imprison, sell into 
 slavery, or even kill a wretched debtor, and cut his body to 
 pieces. 
 
 One market-day the buyers and sellers in the Forum 
 were startled to see in their midst an old man, wretchedly 
 thin, with tangled hair and beard, and covered only with 
 a scanty patchwork of rags. As the chains clanked on 
 his wasted limbs, he told how he had been flung into
 
 THE FIRST SECESSION. 13 
 
 prison for debt by a Patrician creditor, and had borne the 
 scars of the whip in his dungeon. He was recognized as a 
 brave old soldier, and the popular wrath rose high, as he re- 
 counted his losses in the late war, when the foe had burned 
 his house and wasted his fields. So fierce was the outbreak 
 of Plebeian rage, that the leader of the Patricians, Appius 
 Claudius, was forced to hide himself. 
 
 About that time a Volscian War began. But the Plebeians 
 refused to take the field in obedience to the call of the Consuls ; 
 nor would they take the military oath, until Servilius, the 
 head of the moderate party in the Senate, proclaimed that im- 
 prisonment for debt should be suspended for a time, and that, 
 when the war was over, he would try to have the law changed. 
 Trusting to this, they took the field, and defeated the Vol- 
 scians. When this had happened twice, without 
 any improvement of their condition, the Plebeians 494 
 took a decided step ; and, choosing two leaders from B.C. 
 among themselves, marched with their weapons to 
 a hill, two miles off, where the Anio joined the Tiber. 
 This eminence, from the events that followed, came to be 
 commemorated in Roman history as the Sacred Mount. 
 
 The more sensible Patricians sent a deputation to speak 
 to the seceders, who had expressed their resolve to found 
 a new city, where they had encamped ; and old Menenius 
 Agrippa, adopting the parable form of address, amused the 
 Plebeians with a short story, telling them how, once upon a 
 time, the different parts of the Body, growing indignant with 
 the laziness of the Belly, which they had to carry about and 
 supply with food, resolved to strike work. The legs stood 
 still ; the hands refused to hold or work ; the teeth would not 
 chew ; and all the other organs joined in the revolt. But 
 the rebels soon found their mistake ; for, receiving no nutri- 
 ment from the Belly, they grew weak, and only too late 
 perceived how much they depended on that great centre of 
 sustenance. 
 
 Struck with the point of this parable, as applying to the 
 Case between the Patricians and themselves, the Plebeians 
 proposed an arrangement, which was in the main ultimately 
 agreed to. Those debtors, who could not pay, were to be 
 relieved from all liability. Those, who had been reduced to
 
 14 TRIBUNES OF THE PLEBS. 
 
 slavery, were to be set free. But a more important feature 
 in the transaction was the appointment of two officials 
 called Tribunes of the Plebs, who were to be chosen from 
 the Plebeians, and whose great duty was the protection of 
 their order against oppression. 
 
 The number of the Tribunes of the Plebs was afterwards 
 increased to five, and at length to ten. At first elected by 
 the Comitia of the Centuries, that is, by the Patricians and 
 Plebeians together, they came to be elected by the Plebeians 
 alone, in their own assembly called Comitia Tributa. During 
 their year of office the persons of the Tribunes were held 
 sacred ; and the most potent weapon they wielded in oppos- 
 ing the Patricians was their right of saying Veto (I forbid it) 
 to certain laws or decrees of the Senate, which did not please 
 them. This little word, which could be uttered without 
 assigning any reasons for its use, was almost in itself enough 
 to paralyze the hand which had smitten the Plebs so sorely. 
 Besides the Tribunes, two other Plebeian officials, called 
 jEdiles, whose chief duty was to inspect the houses and the 
 streets, were appointed at this time.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PATKICIAN HEROES. 
 
 Cor iol anus the Fabii. 
 
 Patrician Legends. 
 
 Coriolanus. 
 
 The Agrarian Law. 
 
 Cincinnatus. 
 
 The Camp at Cremera. 
 
 The Valley of Algidus. 
 
 IN the legends of the wars, which intermingle with the 
 story of intestine struggle in Rome, the names of certain 
 heroes who distinguished themselves are very prominent. 
 That these legends were the composition of Patrician 
 minstrels is evident from the fact, that the men commemo- 
 rated are of the upper class. 
 
 A certain haughty young Patrician, who by valour at the 
 storming of Corioli had added Coriolanus to his name of 
 Caius Marcius, proposed, when famine was pinching the 
 poorer classes, and corn-ships had come from Sicily, that 
 the Plebeians should be forced to give up their Tribunes, if 
 they got a supply of food. So great was their rage at this 
 that they summoned him before the Comitia, but he chose 
 to leave Rome rather than take his trial. Attus Tullius, a 
 Volscian of Antium, finding this celebrated foe of his race 
 seated by the hearth in the posture of a suppliant, received 
 him hospitably, and with him planned a war against Rome. 
 But the Volscians were unwilling to break the existing 
 treaty. Tullius therefore, upon the occasion of the Great 
 Games at Rome, gave false information to the Consuls that 
 the Volscians, who had crowded into the city, meant to 
 make a sudden attack. The Senate, acting upon this, 
 ordered every Volscian out of Rome before sunset. When 
 Tullius met the throngs of his countrymen, smarting under 
 this ignominious dismissal, he found no difficulty in fanning 
 their rage into intentions of actual war. 
 
 Coriolanus was appointed one of the generals of the 
 Volscian army. His old grudge was manifested by the fact
 
 16 THE FIRST AGRARIAN LAW. 
 
 that, as the army advanced towards Rome, the fields of the 
 Plebeians alone were ravaged. The foe had come close to 
 the city, when the terrified Senate sent a deputation of five 
 Patricians to beg for peace. Coriolanus sternly told them 
 that he was now a Volscian, not a Roman, and demanded 
 concessions so great as the price of peace that the deputies 
 were obliged to return unsuccessful A procession of priests, 
 clad in their sacerdotal robes and armed with all the 
 sanctity of their office, availed as little to turn away his 
 sword. But another effort was successful. A train of 
 weeping women, accompanied by the mother of the exile, 
 his wife, and his two boys, approached his throne ; and the 
 lofty remonstrances of his aged parent, seconded by the 
 tears and clinging caresses of the others, melted his resolu- 
 tion. " my mother," cried he, " thou hast saved Rome, 
 but lost thy son ;" and in a short time the order to retreat 
 was given. 
 
 This step is said to have cost him, first his popularity, 
 and then his life : for Tullius excited the Volscians against 
 him, and he was killed by the angry people. 
 
 In the year 486 B.C. a Patrician named Spurius Cassius 
 proposed what is known as an Agrai*ian Law ; 
 
 486 that is, a law to divide those public lands, which 
 
 B.C. had been the domain of the Kings before their 
 expulsion, among the Plebeians. The Patricians 
 did not decidedly reject the law; their policy, successful 
 for many a day, was to baffle the execution of it. Spurius 
 Cassius, who deserved well of his country for many things, 
 especially for the Leagues he formed with the Latins and 
 the Hernicans, was brought to trial and beheaded; even 
 his very house was levelled to the ground. Foremost in the 
 persecution of Cassius were the great gens of the Fabii, by 
 one of whom, Kaeso, the accusation had been made. But 
 the Fabii afterwards supported the Agrarian Law, and 
 desired that it should come into effect ; and, when the 
 Patricians still refused to allow this, they all, to the number 
 of three hundred and six, not including their clients, emi- 
 grated to a camp on the brook Cremera, lying between Rome 
 and her old foe Veil For more than a year they did good 
 service by withstanding the hostile attacks of the Veientines,
 
 LEGEND OF CINCINNATUS. 17 
 
 who however watched their opportunity and cut them off 
 by a surprise, when they were going to sacrifice on the 
 Quirinal Hill at Rome on a sacred day in February. 
 
 The legend of Cincinnatus is another story framed for the 
 praise of the Patrician order. 
 
 One day five horsemen came spurring into Rome from 
 Mount Algidus to tell how the Consul Minucius was be- 
 leaguered in a narrow valley by a host of the _<Equians. It 
 was an emergency requiring a Dictator, and none seemed 
 fit for that great post but Lucius Quinctius of the curling 
 locks, as the added name of Cincinnatus signified. Living 
 quietly on a little farm across the Tiber, he saw the Senators, 
 who had been deputed to offer him the chief command, ap- 
 proaching one day as he was labouring in his field, dressed 
 only in his tunic. It took some little time to wash himself 
 and put on his toga. When he heard of the pressing need 
 for action, he went at once to Rome, and, ordering all busness 
 to cease, summoned every man of military age to the Campus 
 Martius before sunset, enjoining each to bring twelve strong 
 stakes and food for five days. Starting before dusk, the army 
 reached the critical spot about midnight ; and at once, by 
 order of the Dictator, set to work at surrounding the enemy, 
 having first announced their arrival to their hemmed-in 
 countrymen by a loud shout. Hearing the hopeful cheer, 
 the army of Minucius made an attack upon the -<Equians, 
 and so engaged their attention that the other Roman force 
 worked away all night at trench-digging and palisading 
 without interruption. When day broke, the ^Equians find- 
 ing themselves in a trap between two Roman armies, were 
 obliged to surrender, and to acknowledge their subjection 
 by passing under the yoke, which consisted of a skeleton 
 gateway, made with three spears. Cincinnatus, having ac- 
 complished this speedy deliverance of his country, carried 
 the golden crown, with which his countrymen rewarded his 
 skill and valour, back to his rustic home, and settled down 
 again to the humble toils of a rural life.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE DECEMVIRS. 
 
 The New Code. 
 The Ten Appointed. 
 First Year. 
 
 Second Year. 
 Story of Dentatus." 
 Story of Virginia. 
 
 A TRIBUNE, named Terentilius Arsa, proposed in the year 
 462 B.C. that a code of written laws should be drawn up 
 for the settlement of the troubles in ^the State. It was a 
 Plebeian movement ; and during the ten years it took to 
 carry the measure the Patricians endeavoured to turn the 
 Commons from their purpose by various concessions of a 
 less important kind. They increased the number of Tribunes 
 from five to ten. and parcelled out the Aventine among the 
 poorer classes for building-ground. But the Plebeians, by 
 always for many years returning the same men as Tribunes, 
 showed their resolution to succeed. In 454 B>C. the Patri- 
 cians gave way so far as to permit three men to travel 
 through Greece for the purpose of collecting the laws of 
 Solon and other legislators as a basis for the new Roman 
 Code. 
 
 When these men returned to Rome, by the consent of all 
 parties the Consular government was set aside for 
 
 451 a little; and Ten Men (Decemvirf were chosen 
 
 B.C. from the Patrician order to arrange and frame the 
 laws. This was done in peace ; and before the 
 year of the Decem viral office had come to an end, ten great 
 plates of copper, engraven with the Roman laws, were set 
 up in the Forum opposite to the Senate-house ; and the 
 national assembly of the Centuries sanctioned the enact- 
 ments of these Ten Tables. 
 
 The work of legislation not being yet complete, however, 
 it seemed necessary to continue the Decemvirate for another 
 year. Appius Claudius, the leading man of the Ten, con- 
 trived that he alone of the original Decemvirs should be
 
 LAWS OF THE TWELVE TABLES. 19 
 
 re-elected ; and obtained for his colleagues a number of in- 
 significant persons, among whom were some Plebeians. He 
 then commenced a career of oppression, of which his con- 
 duct in the previous year had shown no indications. Two 
 additional Tables, making the complete number twelve, 
 were added during this second term of the Decemviral 
 office ; but these consisted mainly of laws favourable to 
 Patrician sway, and were added by an edict of the Ten. 
 
 By the Code of the Twelve Tables the tribes, that is, the 
 Plebeians, lost jurisdiction in capital causes ; but to make 
 up for this " it was enacted that in future every magistrate 
 (and therefore the Dictator among the rest) should be 
 bound on his nomination to allow the right of appeal : if 
 any one should nominate a magistrate on any other terms, he 
 was to expiate the offence with his life." It was now that 
 the Tribunes obtained in full that right of intercession or 
 veto, to which allusion has been already made. A seat for 
 them" was placed at the door of the Senate-house, so that 
 they could hear the debates without being actually in the 
 house. 
 
 The Decemvirs did not, as was expected, lay down their 
 office at the conclusion of the second year. The State 
 was then beset by two hostile forces the Sabines and 
 the ^Equians in the course of war with whom occurred 
 events, which overthrew the oppression of these magis- 
 trates. 
 
 In the Roman army despatched to fight the Sabines, . 
 there was a veteran centurion, named Siccius Dentatus, who 
 had received an extraordinary number of honours and re- 
 wards for his bravery. He was the hero of one hundred 
 and twenty fights, and of his forty-five wounds not one was 
 in the back. Having acted as Tribune of the Plebs, he had 
 incurred the anger of the Decemvirs, who, as the legend 
 states, perhaps with truth, took advantage of the war to 
 have him slain. Appointed to command a reconnoitreing 
 party, he found himself assailed in a glen by the soldiers he 
 was leading. The old lion stood at bay with rock behind 
 him ; and his sword drank the blood of many of the mur- 
 derous crew, before a heavy stone, hurled from above by a 
 coward who had crawled up the crag, crushed him to the
 
 20 STORY OF VIRGINIA. 
 
 earth. The uproar in the camp, when the truth became 
 known, could be appeased only by a splendid funeral. 
 
 A yet more tragic interest hangs round the story of the 
 young Virginia, whose piteous fate Macaulay depicts in one 
 of his noble Lays. This lovely girl was the daughter of a 
 brave centurion, Virginius, then serving in the army against 
 the JSquians ; and was betrothed to Icilius, a Tribune of 
 the Plebs, who had taken a leading part in the strife between 
 the orders. The tyrant Appius Claudius, smitten with an un- 
 holy passion for this maiden, gave secret instructions to one 
 of his clients, who seized her one morning on her 
 
 449 way to school, and claimed her as his slave. Thus 
 
 B.c. Appius thought, with a two-edged blow, to gratify 
 his evil desires, and take a bitter revenge upon 
 Icilius. But the device recoiled upon himself. Claudius 
 the client clamoured loudly to have the claim brought be- 
 fore Appius the Decemvir : and in the absence of Virginius 
 with the army, Icilius and the girl's uncle appeared to plead 
 her cause. That afternoon two messengers sped to the 
 camp on Algidus, twenty miles off; one to Virginius from 
 Icilius, telling the tale and urging him to come to Borne ; 
 the other from Appius to the Decemvirs in command, desir- 
 ing them to refuse leave of absence to Virginius, in which 
 case Virginia, now out on bail, would have been delivered 
 to him who called himself her owner. The message to 
 Virginius reached the camp first, and he hurried to Rome. 
 
 Next morning the case came on in the Forum. Virginius 
 and his daughter, in mourning dress, appeared in the centre 
 of a sympathizing crowd. Claudius stood almost alone, 
 except for the lictors, who surrounded the tribunal. In 
 spite of her father's presence, Appius adjudged Virginia to 
 be the property of Claudius, and commanded the lictors to 
 aid him in taking possession of her. Then in his heart 
 Virginius formed a desperate resolve. Begging permission 
 to say a few words to her in private, he took her to that side 
 of the Forum where a butcher kept his stall ; and, snatch- 
 ing a knife from the block, struck it into her heart. Then, 
 with the red blade in his hand, he rushed through the 
 crowd, which opened to let him pass ; and, reaching the 
 gate safely, rode off to the camp with the dreadful news.
 
 FALL OF THE DECEMVIRS. 21 
 
 The army followed him to a man ; the other army joined in 
 the revolt ; and the Commons in the city, having pelted and 
 hustled Appius from the Forum, flocked to the Aventine, 
 where the Plebeian soldiers had erected their banners. 
 
 But it seemed fit to the Plebeians, who made Duilius 
 their leader, to withdraw to the Sacred Mount, the scene of 
 the former secession. And there they received a deputation 
 from the Senate, to acquaint them with the fact that the 
 Decemvirs had been forced to resign, and to receive the 
 terms on which they proposed to negotiate. The principal 
 condition the Plebeians insisted on was the restoration of 
 the Tribuneship with a complete right of appeal against the 
 power of the supreme magistrate. As to the "Wicked 
 Ten," Appius and Oppius, being thrown into prison, com- 
 mitted suicide, while the others went into exile.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 CAMILLUS AND THE GAULS. 
 
 The Struggle continued. 
 Siege of Veil. 
 Battle of the Alia. 
 Gauls in the Forum. 
 
 Geese Save the Capitol. 
 The Weighing of the Gold. 
 The Tore and the Crow. 
 
 THE interval between the fall of the Decemvirs and the 
 siege of Veii, at which the great Camillas distinguished 
 himself, is filled with the narrative of successive steps in 
 the Patricio-plebeian struggle, each resulting in favour of 
 the latter order. First, in 445 B.C. was passed the Canuleian 
 Law : by it was enacted, that " marriage between a Patrician 
 and a Plebeian should be valid as a true Koman marriage, 
 and that the children of such a union should follow the rank 
 of the father." The same year witnessed the passing of an 
 Act, which ordained that sometimes instead of Consuls there 
 should be elected, from Plebeians as well as Patricians, six 
 Military Tribunes with consular powers. When the Patri- 
 cian order saw this successful assault on the supreme power, 
 they broke it up in order to prevent the Plebeians from ever 
 enjoying it all. The chief step taken towards this end 
 was the appointment of two Censors, nominated from among 
 the nobles for a term of eighteen months. These officers, 
 besides certain duties connected with taxation and public 
 works, exercised a power over all classes, and could depose 
 for immorality persons of the highest rank. 
 
 How vindictively the struggle was carried on, may be 
 judged from the treatment of Spurius Ma3lius, a rich Pie-- 
 beian, who during the famine of 440 B.c. sold corn at a 
 cheap rate to the starving people. He was accused of 
 aspiring to be King ; and old Cincinnatus was called forth 
 in the departing twilight of his life to act as Dictator in 
 crushing this formidable man. Summoned before the Dic- 
 tator's tribunal, Mselius refused to obey ; upon which
 
 SIEGE OF VEIL 23 
 
 Aliala, the Master of the Horse, slew him in the Forum in 
 open day. His house was razed ; and his stores of 
 grain were distributed for nothing among the people, 439 
 perhaps for the purpose of appeasing that wrath, B.C. 
 which must have boiled within them, when they saw 
 the blood of their benefactor reddening the dust of the Forum. 
 The sharpest struggle, which Rome had with any of the 
 neighbouring cities, was that with Veii, lasting ten years (406- 
 396 B.C.) This town, situated about twelve miles off, engaged 
 in a war with Eome for the defence of Fidense, which how- 
 ever was taken and destroyed. Veii was then invested by a 
 Roman force; but the Roman soldiers, unused to siege- 
 work, let summer after summer pass away without making 
 any impression on the defences. The need of keeping the 
 field during the whole year caused an arrangement to be 
 made, by which now for the first time the Roman soldiers 
 received pay from the public chest. At last, in the seventh 
 year, a strange omen happened. The Alban Lake swelled up 
 so as to overflow the brim of its basin, and pour down upon 
 the lower ground : and, as the oracle and the soothsayers had 
 declared, that Veii should not fall until its waters sought 
 the sea, the Romans cut a tunnel through hard rock to the 
 Anio, and thus fulfilled the prophecy. Furius Camillus had 
 in the meantime been appointed Dictator at Rome. While 
 the beleaguered Veientines saw no change in the blockade, 
 which still surrounded their city, the Roman engineers, 
 under the direction of Camillus, were secretly cutting a 
 passage under the walls towards the foundation of the 
 citadel So close, it is said by the legend, did the miners 
 come at last to the surface that they distinctly heard the 
 voice of a Veientine soothsayer tell the King, who stood 
 ready by the altar, that whoever completed the sacrifice 
 should be victorious in the struggle. The earth trembled, 
 and broke ; and out of the chasm leapt Camillus and his 
 men, who rushed to the shrine and slew the victim. 
 The massacre of the citizens and the fall of the 396 
 city followed; and white-robed youths bore with B.C. 
 bloodless hands to Rome the statue of the great 
 goddess Juno. So fell Veii, the Troy of Roman legend, 
 after a ten years' siege.
 
 24 BATTLE OF THE ALIA. 
 
 The Patricians permitted an Agrarian Law to pass, by 
 which the lands of Veil were distributed. Camillus how- 
 ever, partly by his Patrician pride, and partly by an inju- 
 dicious proposal he made to take a tenth of each man's 
 plunder 'for an offering to Apollo, incurred the bitter wrath 
 of the Plebeians. Charged with appropriating the bronze 
 gates of the city that had fallen before his prowess, he was 
 obliged to leave Rome, and took refuge in the Latin town of 
 Ardea. 
 
 But retribution was at hand. Hordes of yellow-haired 
 giants, with fierce blue eyes and skin liker to northern 
 snow than the dusky olive of the south, had poured over 
 the Alps, and were even now climbing the Apennines to 
 descend upon the Tiber basin. These were the Senones, a 
 tribe of the wide-spread race called Celts or Gauls. 
 
 When the invaders appeared before the Etruscan city of 
 Clusium, the affrighted inhabitants sought aid from their 
 ancient foes in Rome. Three ambassadors of the Fabian 
 Gens were sent to warn the northern tribes that an assault 
 upon Clusium would draw down upon them the vengeance 
 of Rome. Little caring, the barbarians engaged in a 
 battle, during which one of the envoys was seen stripping 
 a Gallic chief whom he had slain. This enraged the Gallic 
 leader Brennus so much, that he marched at once towards 
 Rome. 
 
 On the banks of the brook Alia, a tributary of the Tiber 
 
 from the Sabine Hills, the barbarian host was stopped for a 
 
 time by a Roman army in battle array. Brennus 
 
 390 succeeded in forcing the position by turning the 
 
 B.C. right flank; and the Tiber grew thick with Roman 
 dead, either drowned in flight or slain with Gallic 
 spears. When news of this disaster reached Rome, there 
 was hurry but no panic. The Patricians of military age 
 retired to the rocky Capitol ; the Plebeians and the women 
 went chiefly to Veii, now luckily lying empty for their re- 
 ception ; while the priests with the sacred images and 
 vessels betook themselves to Caere. But a nobler band than 
 all those grey-haired men who had served in the Senate 
 and had borne the Consular and Censorial dignity feeling 
 that their unstrung arms could not avail any longer to de-
 
 SIEGE OF THE CAPITOL. 25 
 
 fend their country, resolved to await the coming of the foe. 
 And, when the barbarians, pouring tumultuously but not 
 without caution and suspicion through the open gates of 
 Borne, came to the Forum, their voices grew hushed in awe, 
 for there in the centre of the meeting-place before the temple 
 of the gods, on ivory chairs, whose adornments were half hid 
 by flowing robes of white and purple, sat men reverend 
 with snowy beards and furrowed brows. Memories of their 
 own Druids, pontiffs of the oak-forest, must have grown 
 thick under the shaggy thatch of the Gallic heads, when 
 the unexpected scene disclosed itself ; and one of the fore- 
 most approached a seated figure, and put forward a fearful 
 hand to stroke the white cataract of beard. The seeming 
 statue raised an ivory truncheon, and struck the savage to 
 the ground. This broke the spell of awe. The figures 
 were of men, not gods : and the Forum was soon strewed 
 with silver-haired dead. 
 
 The siege of the Capitol then began, and went on for 
 seven months, at first during scorching days, which thinned 
 the Gallic ranks with plague and fever. Once, says the 
 legend, the rock was in imminent danger of being scaled. 
 A venturesome youth, bearing a message from Veii, had 
 climbed the steep rock, where it descended towards the 
 river ; and the Gauls, not unused to mountaineering, traced 
 out his hazardous path by rocky shelves and little jutting 
 shrubs. By night in single file a band ef them tried the 
 same way of ascent ; and the foremost had actually swung 
 himself almost to the highest ledge, without attracting the 
 ear of the sleeping sentinels, when some geese in the Temple 
 of Juno, which even pinching famine had not induced the 
 beleaguered Eomans to kill, began to cackle and flap so 
 violently, that a Roman named Manlius awoke, just in time 
 to see the danger, and hurl the Gaul down the rock. 
 
 Tired of the siege, the Gauls agreed to go, if they got one 
 thousand pounds' weight of gold. This was collected ; and 
 they hurried away to repel an invasion of their territory 
 in Northern Italy by the Venetians. The inventor of the 
 legend, in order to gloss over the fact that Rome did really 
 pay a tribute to the Gauls, made up a pretty story to the 
 effect that deliverance came just at the critical moment, 
 
 (124) 3
 
 26 TORQUATUS AND CORVUS. 
 
 when the gold was in the scales, and Brennus had flung his 
 sword in among the weights in order to increase the amount 
 of the tribute, and insult the submitting Romans. Camillus, 
 it is related, came from Veii at the head of an army, desired 
 the gold to be taken back to the Roman chests, for not gold 
 (he said) but iron should redeem the city. And then, fall- 
 ing on the astonished Gauls, he drove them from the place 
 and slew them to a man. 
 
 The Gauls came back in smaller numbers on at least two 
 subsequent occasions, which are celebrated in the legends 
 of Torquatus and Corvus. In a duel fought at the Anio 
 Bridge in 361 Manlius slew a Gallic giant, and took from 
 his neck the tore or twisted collar of gold, which indicated 
 royal or princely rank. And in 349, when, on the Vol- 
 scian plains, a tall Celt was vapouring before the armies, and 
 daring any Roman to single combat, Valerius accepted the 
 challenge and advanced to fight. Just then a crow lighted 
 on the head of the Gaul, and, clinging to his hair, with 
 claws perhaps entangled in the uncombed mass, flapped its 
 wings and pecked at his eyes so fiercely as to make the vic- 
 tory of the Roman easy. Hence these champions were 
 named the one Manlius Torquatus the other Valerius 
 Corvus.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE IICINIAN BOGATIONS. 
 
 The City Rebuilt. 
 Fate of Manlius. 
 Licinian Rogations. 
 Details of the Strife. 
 
 Victory of the Plebs. 
 Temple of Concord. 
 Steps gained by Plebs. 
 
 THE seven months spent by the Gauls before the Capitol, 
 reduced the city of Eome to a mass of ruins. There was 
 accordingly much talk about removing to Veii, where the 
 Plebeians had already been established for some time. But 
 the chance words of a centurion, directing his banner to be 
 fixed in the Forum, were accepted as an omen ; and, bring- 
 ing materials from Veii, the Romans began to raise a new 
 city amid the mounds of rubbish that represented their old 
 homes. A patched-up and very crooked city it was, which 
 grew out of these heaps : and there was neither good drain- 
 age, good ventilation, nor much beauty in the Roman streets 
 for centuries afterwards. 
 
 The need of building new houses, and the stoppage of all 
 farming operations plunged the Plebeians into new debts, 
 and the old evils were beginning to appear, when Manlius, 
 the defender of the Capitol, stood forth as the champion of 
 the lower orders, selling his land to pay the debts of those 
 who were about to be imprisoned. This of course exposed 
 him to the charge of aiming at regal power ; and there arose 
 a struggle between him and the Patricians, whom he ac- 
 cused of embezzling some of the gold raised for the Gauls. 
 Not being able to prove this, he was imprisoned, and then 
 brought to trial before the Centuries. In the Campus 
 Martius, surrounded by those whose debts he had paid, he 
 exhibited the spoils of his sword, the scars on his breast, 
 and pointed to the rocky Capitol, where he had saved Rome. 
 Seeing that the vote would be in his favour on that spot, 
 his enemies dissolved the assembly ; and by a meeting, held
 
 28 THE LTCINIAN ROGATIONS. 
 
 where the Capitol could not be seen, he was condemned to 
 death. He was flung from the Tarpeian Rock (384 B.C.). 
 
 Eight years later began that movement, which resulted 
 in the complete victory of the Plebeians. 
 
 Two Tribunes of the Plebs, Licinius and Sextius by name, 
 brought forward three Bills, which with a fourth 
 
 376 afterwards added are known in Roman history as 
 
 B.C. the Licinian Rogations. They were 
 
 I. That of all debts, on which interest had been 
 paid, the sum of the interest paid should be deducted from 
 the principal, and the remainder paid off in three successive 
 years. 
 
 II. That no citizen should hold more than five hundred 
 jugera (about three hundred and twenty acres) of the Public 
 Land, and should not feed on the public pastures more than 
 a limited number of cattle under penalty of fine. 
 
 III. (And most important.) That henceforth Consuls, 
 not Consular Tribunes, should be elected : and that one of 
 the two Consuls must be a Plebeian. 
 
 IV. (Added five years afterwards.) That instead of two 
 Patricians (the Duumvirs) being chosen to keep the Sibyl- 
 line books, there should be ten men, taken from both 
 orders. 
 
 Sensible that the critical struggle had now arrived, the 
 Patricians bent all their energies to defeat these demands. 
 And their hands were strengthened by the fact that the 
 richer Plebeians had strong objections to the first two laws, 
 which would entail heavy losses on them. Licinius and 
 Sextius, driven to desperate measures by certain of their 
 own colleagues, who opposed them, put their veto on the 
 proceedings of the great National Assembly, so that the 
 State was left without her chief magistrates for five years. 
 In vain the Senate appointed Dictators : they could do 
 nothing. Then compromise was tried. The Patricians 
 allowed the fourth Rogation to pass, and promised to pass 
 the first two, if the third were struck out. To this the 
 nof Tribunes would not listen: and the struggle con- 
 tinned five years longer, when the Patricians gave 
 way ; and the Rogations became law, after a con- 
 test of nearly ten years.
 
 END OF THE STRUGGLE. 29 
 
 In the following year (366 B.C.) L. Sextius was chosen the 
 first Plebeian Consul. The Patricians at first refused to con- 
 fer the sovereign power, which could be conferred only by 
 their special assembly. But by the advice of Camillus, now 
 made Dictator for the fifth time, they yielded this point, on 
 condition that the judicial power should be taken from the 
 Consuls and put into the hands of a Patrician magistrate 
 called Praetor Urbanus (Praetor of the City). They also 
 further divided the Consular power by creating a new office, 
 called the Curule JZdileship. 
 
 Though the strife was now really over, and a Temple of 
 Concord, vowed by Camillus but not dedicated by him, for 
 death intervened, arose in the Forum an emblem in stone 
 of the equalization of the orders, and the hoped-for union 
 of the nation yet for a while there continued to be Patrician 
 struggles and impediments, gradually however weakening 
 and melting. Step by step the victorious Plebeians won suc- 
 cessive places in the government of the State gaining the 
 Dictatorship in 356 the Censorship in 351 the Prsetorsljip 
 in 337 and last of all, in 300, that admission to religious 
 office, so jealously guarded as to be last won, the right to 
 hold the sacred stations of Pontiff and Augur.
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SAMNITE AND LATIN WAES. 
 
 Curtlus. 
 
 The SHmnitcs. 
 
 First War. 
 
 Latin War. 
 Second War. 
 Caudine Forks. 
 
 Third War. 
 Battle of Sentinum. 
 
 ROME was now, from the abatement of violent intestine 
 conflicts, able to look abroad and prepare for the reduction 
 of all Italy. She passed through an ordeal of plague, of 
 which Camillus died, and underwent other misfortunes from 
 floods and earthquakes, A great chasm having opened in 
 the Forum, the Augurs said that it would not close, until 
 the most precious things in Rome were cast into it ; upon 
 which Curtius, dressing himself in full armour, spurred his 
 horse to the brink, and leapt in, crying as he did so that 
 Rome's riches lay in brave men. They say the gulf closed, 
 and swallowed what may be regarded as almost the last of 
 the Roman legends. 
 
 Among the mountain valleys lying north of Campania, 
 dwelt a nation akin to the Sabines, and bearing the name of 
 Samnites. After the manner of Italian mountaineers they 
 led their flocks higher and lower, as the season changed : 
 and from their rocky nests among the Apennines they sent 
 out frequent swarms of settlers, who occupied the seaward 
 plains. It so happened that most of these became Greek in 
 their habits, and were sometimes at war with their old 
 mountain home. Chief of these emigrant bands were the 
 Campanians, who took Capua and Cuinse, which they made 
 centres of their power. In fact, under various names the 
 Samnites at this period had spread themselves over all
 
 FIRST SAMNITE WAR. 31 
 
 Southern Italy, but their centres were loosely connected, 
 and independent. Greek cities lay scattered here and there 
 in their dominions. Rome had a great advantage in her 
 compact territory. 
 
 The First Samnite War lasted two years from 343 B.C. 
 to 341 B.C. 
 
 It arose out of an attack which the mountain Samnites 
 had made upon the Campanians in consequence of the latter 
 aiding an Oscan tribe. Capua sought the aid of Rome ; and 
 in order to appease the Roman scruples against making war 
 with allies, as the Samnites were, the inhabitants agreed to 
 surrender their city to Rome. 
 
 Valerius Corvus and Cornelius Cossus were the Consuls of 
 the year. The former defeated the Samnites at Mount 
 Gaurus, near the watering-place Baise : the latter and his 
 legions were saved from destruction by the valour of a Ple- 
 beian, Decius Mus, who got possession of a hillock and ex- 
 tricated his countrymen from a perilous pass. The second 
 year was unnoted for any great event in the war, which was 
 brought to a close in consequence of difficulties between the 
 Patricians and Plebeians, and a hostile spirit which was 
 springing up between the Romans and Latins. This feeling 
 ultimately developed into a Latin War (340 B.C. 338 B.C.) 
 
 The cities of Latium proposed a union with Rome, which 
 was to continue the centre of government. The conditions 
 favourable to themselves asked by the Latins were, that one 
 Consul should always be a Latin, and that three hundred 
 Latin members should be added to the Senate. Manlius 
 Torquatus swore that he would slay the first -Latin who 
 crossed the threshold of the Senate-house ; and a Latin en- 
 voy, who spoke irreverently of the great Roman god. fell 
 down the temple steps and was killed. The Romans re- 
 jected with contempt the proposal of union. 
 
 Manlius and Decius Mus led the Roman armies to the 
 war, of which the chief event was the battle of Mount 
 Vesuvius. Two incidents related of this conflict are most 
 characteristic of Romans in that age. The one concerned 
 the son of Manlius, who, leaving his post to fight and slay 
 an insolent Latin, in spite of his father's strict orders that 
 none should stir from the ranks, was put to death for dis-
 
 32 SECOND SAMNITE WAR. 
 
 obedience by command of that stern disciplinarian and hard- 
 hearted parent. The other was the self-sacrifice of Decius. 
 Some dreams having troubled the Consuls, they agreed that 
 he whose division gave way should offer himself to the 
 infernal deities. The troops of Decius were beaten back in 
 the battle, upon which their leader prepared to die in due 
 religious form. Wrapped in a toga (which was the garb of 
 peace, not war) he stood upon a spear, and in a loud voice 
 doomed himself and the foe to death. Then at the full speed 
 of his horse he pierced the enemy's line, and quickly met the 
 death he sought. The Latins, frightened by the deed which 
 seemed to secure godlike aid to their foes, broke and were 
 defeated : all the more readily, when the fresh troops of 
 Manlius, kept in reserve by a stratagem, which made them 
 think they had already fought the third battalion, poured 
 upon their wavering ranks. The Latins took the field no 
 more ; but held out in their cities for two years longer. 
 
 Thus Home acquired dominion over Campania and 
 Latium. 
 
 A peace of twelve years led to the Second Samnite War 
 (326 B.C. 304 B.C.) The Roman aggressions on the River 
 Liris had long been exciting a bitter feeling among the 
 Samnites ; but the immediate occasion of the war was the 
 siege of Palaeopolis on the Bay of Naples, which the Romans 
 undertook, because the city refused to give satisfaction for 
 injuries inflicted on Roman subjects. Samnium gave aid to 
 Palaeopolis : and so the war began. It lasted twenty-two 
 years: during six of which (321 315) the fate of Rome 
 seemed to be certain disaster and destruction. But her star 
 rose again brighter than ever. 
 
 The glorious disobedience of Fabius, the Master of the 
 Horse, whom the Dictator, Papirius Cursor, when recalled 
 to Rome, had left in command with strict orders not to 
 fight, but who did nevertheless fight and win a splendid 
 success, is the most striking feature of the earlier war. 
 Vainly Papirius, who was only a rough and ignorant man, 
 notable chiefly for his physical qualities of swiftness and 
 hardiness, strove to punish the victorious Patrician. The 
 temper of the army and of the citizens generally would not 
 permit Fabius to suffer.
 
 THE CAUDINE FORKS. 33 
 
 The Samnites were soon so humbled as to sue for peace : 
 but the terms offered by the Senate were too severe : and 
 the war continued. 
 
 But a great captain now appeared among the Samnites 
 to change the aspect of affairs, in the famous Pontius, dis- 
 tinguished not only as a soldier but also as a scholar. 
 
 As the Eoman Consuls were marching through the Apen- 
 nines towards Apulia, they were caught in a trap at the 
 Caudine Forks. Passing through a narrow defile 
 they reached a little plateau, of which another pass 321 
 formed the outlet. Pontius held the latter, and, B.C. 
 when the Romans tried to retrace their steps, they 
 found a second Samnite force in possession of the entrance. 
 In vain they strove to cut a passage through : the loss of 
 one half of their officers compelled them to seek for terms. 
 Pontius agreed to let the whole army go, upon acknowledg- 
 ment of submission' and surrender of their officers and 
 their arms, if the Roman leaders would consent to secure 
 a favourable treaty. This being agreed to, the Roman 
 soldiers, stripped of their upper clothing, walked sullenly in 
 single file beneath the yoke. And great gloom fell upon 
 all Ronre in consequence of this ineffable disgrace. But by 
 refusing to sanction the treaty, even after the Consuls had 
 signed it, the Romans contrived to continue the war. 
 
 A defeat at Lautulse seemed to augur ill for the Romans ; 
 but their losses were soon retrieved by a victory, which 
 prevented the Samnites from taking the field, until the ad- 
 hesion of the Etruscans gave them new strength. Then 
 they put forth mighty efforts. But the Roman sword was 
 too heavy. A Samnite army, gorgeously equipped with gilt 
 and silvered shields, was defeated by Papirius Cursor, the 
 Roman Dictator ; and they were so exhausted by their un- 
 availing struggles, that they did not engage in battle again 
 during this war. Piercing the thick Ciminian woods, Fabius 
 invaded Etruria, and defeated the Vulsinians utterly near 
 Perusia. These events induced the Samnites to sue for 
 peace, which was granted. 
 
 The Third Samnite War lasted from 299 B.C. to 290 B.C. 
 
 After a devastating invasion of Samnium and a counter- 
 rush by Gellius, a brave Samnite, into the valley of the
 
 34 BATTLE OF SENTINUM. 
 
 Tiber, the great battle of Sentinum in Umbria was fought. 
 There was arrayed a vast allied host of Samnites, Umbrians, 
 and Gauls, collected for a last vigorous effort to crush the 
 
 threatening pride of the city by the Tiber. A 
 295 Roman force of sixty thousand men confronted 
 B.c. them, under Fabius Maximus, and Decius Mus, 
 
 son of the other hero of that name. Ever on the 
 look-out for omens, the two armies, before the battle began, 
 watched a wolf that chased a hind between the lines. The 
 hind ran among the Gauls, who slew it : the wolf passed 
 unharmed through the Roman ranks, who saw in the pres- 
 ence of a beast like that which suckled Romulus a sign 
 of good fortune. Then the battle began. The wooden cars 
 of the Gauls were new to the Romans, and for a time threw 
 them into confusion, upon which young Decius devoted 
 himself exactly as his father had done, and with the same 
 effect. Fabius, having routed the Samnites, came up in 
 time to aid the Roman division of Decius in defeating the 
 Gauls. This was the decisive battle. There were others 
 during the five years of lingering war that followed : and 
 at last Pontius was taken prisoner. The submission of 
 Samnium followed. But the Romans sullied their victory 
 by beheading the brave and wise old man, who had treated 
 their soldiers with such noble generosity at the Caudine 
 Forks.
 
 r 
 
 ckAPTEIMI. 
 THE CAMPAIGNS OP PYERHUS. 
 
 Tarentura. 
 
 Battle of Heraclea. 
 
 Cineas. 
 
 Battle of Asculum. 
 Pyrrhus in Sicily. 
 Defeated at Beueventum. 
 
 THE success of Rome in these Saranite wars excited the 
 jealousy and fear of the Greek cities in Southern Italy, one 
 of the chief among which was the great Lacedaemonian set- 
 tlement of Tarentuin. A neighbouring city named Thurii, 
 being attacked by the Lucanians, obtained aid from Rome ; 
 and in the course of their operations ten Roman galleys, in 
 spite of a treaty with Tarentum, sailed into the gulf on 
 which that city stood. The Tareutines, collected at noonday 
 in the theatre, looked from their seats and saw the venturous 
 squadron. At once they rushed to the shore, launched their 
 ships, and sank four of the* Roman vessels. This hostile 
 act was followed by a march to Thurii, and the sack of that 
 town. 
 
 Well aware that Tarentum was the secret soul of a vast 
 Anti-Roman league, which embraced Samnites, Lucanians, 
 Etruscans, and other Italian nations, and somewhat tired of 
 war, the Romans at first sent envoys to Tarentum to ask 
 quietly for explanations. They arrived during a feast of 
 Bacchus, when the populace were full of wine. When the 
 leader of the embassy, Postuinius by name, began to speak 
 in Greek, the mob roared with laughter at his strange accent 
 and his blunders in grammar. This he did not care for : but, 
 when a low fellow threw filth upon his toga of pure white 
 wool, he lifted the stain in sight of all the people, and in a 
 voice of thunder warned them that it would take their best 
 blood to wash the insult out. A war then began : and the 
 democrats of Tarentum invited Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 
 to come over and help them.
 
 36 BATTLE OF HERACLEA. 
 
 "When Pyrrhus arrived with an array of about twenty-five 
 thousand men, he began at once to turn the lux- 
 
 281 urious Tarentines into soldiers by shutting their 
 
 B.C. theatres and baths, and subjecting them to con- 
 stant drill. In spite of their murmurs they were 
 obliged to yield to this unpleasant change. 
 
 In the plain of Heraclea on the banks of the River Siris 
 Pyrrhus met a Roman army for the first time. It was mem- 
 orable as the first meeting of the Phalanx with the Legion. 
 A Greek army was then arranged in one or two solid masses, 
 many men deep, and forming a complete hedge of bristling 
 pike-points : while the Romans fought in three lines, called 
 Principes, Hastati, and Triarii, which made their attack 
 in succession. In vain the triple wave of Roman valour 
 flowed on the rocks of Grecian steel Neither javelin nor 
 sword availed to gap the serried fronts. The Roman horse 
 gained a trifling advantage over the Thessalian squadrons ; 
 but, when Pyrrhus brought up his twenty elephants, with 
 dark trunks curling and snorting, and ponderous feet shak- 
 ing the earth in a swift but clumsy trot, the Romans fairly 
 turned their backs and fled, appalled at the new kind of 
 oxen, which Pyrrhus had discovered in Lucania. Recover- 
 ing their order, they then fell tfack upon Venusia. 
 
 When he had walked over the field of fleraclea, and had 
 viewed the Roman dead with wounds all in front, Pyrrhus 
 felt that it would be wellnigh impossible to conquer men 
 who fought so well He therefore resolved to send the 
 eloquent Cineas to Rome to offer peace. This great orator 
 appeared before the Senate, and spoke skilfully for his 
 master ; but the blind old Censor Appius Claudius, being led 
 down to the House, convinced the wavering Fathers that 
 there was only one condition on which Rome could treat, and 
 that was the immediate departure of Pyrrhus from Italy. 
 
 When Cineas returned and told Pyrrhus how he had 
 failed, the fiery soldier rushed through Campania and La- 
 tium, and never stopped until within eighteen miles of 
 Rome. But the Latins did not join him. It was during 
 this winter that the Roman Fabricius, whom gold could not 
 tempt, came to Pyrrhus concerning an exchange of prisoners. 
 The Greek, having failed in bribery, tried to play "Upon the
 
 PYRRHUS DRIVEN FROM ITALY. 37 
 
 envoy's fears by suddenly withdrawing a curtain and dis- 
 closing a huge elephant, which waved its trunk over the 
 head of Fabricius. But the Roman never winced. 
 
 The second campaign of Pyrrhus was signalized by a de- 
 feat of the Romans at Asculum under circumstances similar 
 to those of Heraclea. Convinced that victories over Roman 
 soldiers were too dearly bought, and startled by the news 
 that Rome had concluded an alliance with Carthage, Pyrrhus 
 sought an opportunity of making peace. An instance of 
 Roman generosity afforded this chance. A physician sent 
 secretly to the Roman Consuls, offering to poison the Grecian 
 King. They rejected the base proposal; and sent the in- 
 tended victim word, for which he was so grateful that he 
 set free all the Roman prisoners without ransom. And then 
 he crossed into Sicily (278 B.C.) to make war against the 
 Mamertines and the Carthaginians. 
 
 He remained in Sicily nearly three years, during the first 
 portion of which he was brilliantly successful : but reverses 
 came. -Cineas died. A failure in the siege of Lilybseum 
 followed ; and he evacuated the island. ' 
 
 Misfortunes then began to thicken. The Carthaginians de- 
 stroyed part of his fleet as he was sailing to Tarentum. And, 
 after having taken Locri, he laid violent hands on the trea- 
 sures in the Temple of Proserpine, to whose wrath superstition 
 ascribed the loss in a storm of the ships that carried the booty. 
 
 The final battle of the Pyrrhic War was fought at Beneven- 
 tum in Samnium, where Curius Dentatus commanded the 
 Roman forces. Pyrrhus made a night- march in the hope of 
 surprising the enemy; but his soldiers lost their way; and 
 the wearied battalions were assailed in the morning by the 
 Romans, who were fresh and vigorous. The dread 
 of the elephants had also worn off, and the Romans 275 
 baffled the monsters by shooting at them arrows B.C. 
 headed with blazing tow which drove them back 
 furious with pain. The defeat of Pyrrhus was complete : 
 he departed from Tarentum, where however he left a gar- 
 rison under an officer named Milo. 
 
 This soldier of fortune died ignobly about two years after- 
 wards at Argos, struck by a tile which a woman flung from 
 a house-top.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE FIRST PUNIC WAK. 
 
 Cause of the War. 
 First Roman Fleet. 
 Mylso and Ecnomus. 
 Invasion of Africa. 
 
 Regulus. 
 
 Siege of Lilybaeum. 
 
 Battle of jEgusa. 
 
 Pence. 
 
 ROME thus became mistress of Southern Italy. There was 
 indeed what was called a Fourth Samnite War in 268 B.C.; 
 but it lasted only a year. 
 
 As Pyrrhus was leaving Italy, he uttered words prophetic 
 of a struggle between Rome and Carthage, a great maritime 
 colony of Tyre, which had existed for many centuries on 
 that angle of the African coast which runs nearest to Sicily. 
 In fact the Romans and the Carthaginians had already be- 
 come slightly embroiled during the Tarentine war : but now 
 a more decided occasion of hostilities arose out of the 
 troubled affairs of Sicily. 
 
 Carthage had long been spreading her dominion over the 
 neighbouring islands and coasts. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica 
 partly, even the Balearic group, and the shores of Spain had 
 been seized by her far-stretching grasp. But in Sicily she took 
 a special interest, it being nearer and richer than the rest. Of 
 the Greek cities there, Syracuse was her most formidable op- 
 ponent : but in spite of resistance the Carthaginians made 
 good their footing in the triangular island. It so happened 
 that a Syracusan tyrant brought over to help him in his wars 
 a band of Campanian mercenaries : and after his death these 
 Mamertiues or " men of Mars," as they called themselves, 
 seized the town of Messana, whose position made it the key 
 of Sicily. The Syracusans attacked Messana, one portion 
 of whose garrison invited over Roman aid, while the other 
 admitted Carthaginian soldiers. The Romans came, drove 
 back the Syracusans, expelled the Carthaginians, and found 
 themselves engaged in a war, which lasted three-and-twenty
 
 THE ROMANS BUILD A FLEET. 39 
 
 years (263 B.C. 241 B.C.). This contest is known as the 
 First Punic War, from the name Poeni (adjective Puniciis), 
 by which the Romans styled the Phoenician colonists who 
 occupied Carthage. 
 
 When the two Roman Consuls appeared in Sicily at the head 
 of a splendid army of fifty thousand men, it seemed good to 
 Hiero of Syracuse to make peace with Rome ; and he con- 
 tinued to be her faithful ally for nearly half a century. The 
 Romans invested the strong city of Agrigentum in 262. For 
 seven months the siege continued, the besiegers being them- 
 selves surrounded by a hostile force. But the Romans were 
 ultimately victorious. The Carthaginian leader fled by 
 night, and the garrison were butchered. 
 
 But Carthage could not be conquered on land alone. The 
 Romans had ships ; which however were not large enough 
 to cope with the Punic five-deckers or quinqueremes. It 
 was therefore necessary to build a fleet and train a number 
 of sailors. The former the Romans did by copying the lines 
 of a Carthaginian ship, stranded upon the Brutian coast ; 
 the latter was accomplished by erecting scaffolds on the 
 shore, and drilling the rowers to pull to the measured sound 
 of flutes, as if they were actually sweeping the sea with 
 their oar-blades. Sensible however that they could not vie 
 with the trained Carthaginian mariners in such manoeuvreing 
 as was necessary to drive the iron-spiked prow with fatal 
 accuracy into an enemy's side, the Romans had at the prow 
 of their ships drawbridges with hooked ends, which they 
 lowered at close quarters. Pouring in their marines, they 
 thus turned the action into a species of- land-battle. 
 
 The efficacy of this expedient was soon proved. The 
 Consul Duilius with his new ships met a Punic fleet off the 
 headland of Mylse, north-west of Messana, and by dropping 
 the gangways on each as it came up, contrived to o//\ 
 secure or destroy about fifty vessels. In honour 
 of this signal success a column, bristling with the 
 beaks of the Carthaginian ships, was set up in the Roman 
 Forum. 
 
 The moral effect of this victory was great ; and most of 
 the Sicilian towns, except a few great centres, soon after- 
 wards yielded to Rome.
 
 40 INVASION OF AFRICA. 
 
 The Senate then resolved to carry the war into Africa. 
 Under Eegulus and Volso, the former of whom bears a 
 distinguished name in Roman history, a fleet of three 
 hundred and thirty sail left the southern coast of Sicily, 
 having on board, between sailors and soldiers, fully one 
 hundred and forty thousand men. A Carthaginian fleet of 
 greater size, and at least as fully manned, rode the waves at 
 Ecnomus in a single line. The Roman ships, 
 
 256 placed in the form of a wedge, broke the line at 
 
 B.C. once; and the crows, as the bridges were called, 
 did the rest. Though beaten, the Carthaginian 
 fleet fell back in tolerable order towards the African 
 coast. 
 
 The Roman army then landed unhindered in the Bay of 
 Clupea, on whose shore they formed an intrenched camp. 
 Victory seemed certain; for wealthy towns submitted on 
 all sides; and the Numidians rose in revolt against Car- 
 thage. By a most short-sighted policy the Senate withdrew 
 the greater portion of their army, leaving not twenty 
 thousand men under the command of Regulus. With 
 these he advanced towards Carthage, whose energies seemed 
 to have undergone sudden palsy, and formed his camp for 
 the winter at Tunis, only twenty miles distant from the 
 great Punic capital. 
 
 So humbled were the Carthaginians that they sued for 
 peace; but Regulus asked for Sicily and all their island- 
 possessions in the Western Mediterranean, and proposed 
 such humiliating terms as to their navy that their crushed 
 spirit rose ; and they resolved to renew the war rather than 
 submit to his degrading demands. The winter brought 
 them aid of various kinds, among which were the services 
 and advice of Xanthippus, a Spartan captain of mercenaries, 
 who had found his way to Africa. 
 
 Regulus meanwhile seemed to have lost his wits. He 
 neglected to secure a line of communication with his camp at 
 Clupea. He despised the aid of a light cavalry force, though 
 he might easily have collected such among the Numidians, 
 who were proverbial for their horses and their horsemanship. 
 He trusted entirely to Roman discipline and Roman steel 
 admirable things when used at fair odds and with com-
 
 BATTLES OF TUNIS AND PANORMUS. 41 
 
 mon precautions. In a plain near Tunis was fought the 
 battle, which ended at a blow this Roman inva- 
 sion of Africa. The first charge of Carthaginian 255 
 horse, under the direction of the Spartan, scattered B.C. 
 the handfuls of Roman cavalry, which hung like 
 tiny cloudlets on the two wings ; and at once the Roman 
 army was outflanked. The Legions on the left pressed 
 forward victoriously ; but the right and centre, with horse 
 behind and elephants in front, were obliged to throw 
 themselves into the form of a square. The waves were too 
 many and too fierce for the rock. It shook tottered 
 broke melted. The dead heaped the plain; a poor two 
 thousand reached Clupea ; and Reguhis was carried a 
 prisoner to Carthage. 
 
 The Roman fleet, defeating the Carthaginians off the 
 Hermaean headland, rescued the remnant of the army at 
 Clupea ; but on its way to Syracuse there fell on it a storm, 
 so sudden and fierce, that the sea was strewed with .dead 
 and driftwood. The Romans had now no fleet. 
 
 Three months however repaired the loss ; and with three 
 hundred sail they attacked Panormus on the Sicilian coast, 
 and took possession of the place. Disaster still hung over 
 their navy. A second storm burst, and swept away the 
 greater portion of the new fleet, filling the minds of the 
 Senate with such gloom that they resolved to keep only 
 sixty ships at sea henceforth. 
 
 For two years there was a lull in warfare, until the 
 Carthaginian general Hasdrubal marched against Panormus, 
 within which lay the Roman Proconsul Csecilius Metellus. 
 The Punic army was strong in elephants; and 
 against these the Roman bowmen and slingers 250 
 directed their missiles. Some of the wounded B.C. 
 beasts fell into the moat ; others, wild with pain, 
 went trampling furiously back upon their own ranks. All 
 was confusion, amid which the Proconsul made a decisive 
 attack, driving the foe to the margin of the sea. The 
 Carthaginians lost one hundred and twenty elephants ; and 
 soon found themselves reduced to the possession of only 
 two Sicilian towns Drepana and Lilybseum. 
 
 It was then, according to a romantic tale, upon which 
 
 (124) 4
 
 42 THE EMBASSY OF KEGULUS. 
 
 sober history casts some doubt, that an embassy proceeded 
 from Carthage to Eome, accompanied by Eegulus, who had 
 given his solemn promise to return to his prison, if peace 
 were not obtained. The captive general, smarting under 
 a sense of his degradation, refused to enter the gates of 
 Rome, or take his seat in the Senate. When some of 
 the Fathers came out to ask his opinion as to the granting 
 of the peace, he boldly declared his voice to be for the 
 continuance of the war, until Carthage was destroyed. And 
 he then went back to a horrible death. He was thrust into 
 a barrel studded inside with sharp nails. His eyelids being 
 cut off, the bloody and unprotected orbs were exposed to 
 the copper glare of the mid-day sun ; and so he was left to 
 perish, without a drop of water to cool his black dry tongue. 
 But his name is written in the bright roll of patriot-martyrs; 
 and the greatest pens of his country took delight in re- 
 counting the noble serenity with which he turned away 
 from the tranquil joys of home to face the unknown terrors 
 of his African dungeon. 
 
 Having built a third fleet, the Romans undertook the 
 siege of Lilybseum, investing the place by land, and blockad- 
 ing its port by sea. In spite of all the Roman 
 249 vigilance, however, the Carthaginians managed to 
 B.C. throw supplies of both food and men into the 
 beleaguered city. This year was disastrous to the 
 Romans. The Patrician Consul, an arrogant Claudius, 
 made a foolish attempt to surprise the Carthaginian fleet in 
 the harbour of Drepana ; but succeeded only in so huddling 
 his own ships together in a confined space that they were 
 easily destroyed. So careless was he of the spirit of his 
 men, that when word was brought to him before starting 
 that the holy pullets would not feed, he answered flippantly, 
 " Not feed ! then let them drink ! " and tossed the coop 
 overboard. We may smile at the incident ; but in days 
 when men trusted much to omens, the effect of such con- 
 duct was very dispiriting. To make matters worse, a storm 
 completely shattered the rest of the Roman fleet and a large 
 squadron of food-ships and transports, as they were trying 
 to find shelter on the coasts of -Gela and Camarina. Thus 
 perished another the third Roman navy.
 
 DECISIVE BATTLE OF .EGUSA. 43 
 
 During several years the Romans remained without ships, 
 and the war degenerated into skirmishing in Sicily. It was 
 conducted on the side of Carthage by a young general, 
 famous on his own account, but yet more famous for the 
 son he gave to history in the person of the great 
 Hannibal. Hamilcar, who bore the surname of Barca, 
 signifying lightning, took possession of two mountains, 
 Hercte overlooking Panormus and Eryx near Drepana, 
 whence he harassed the Komans, kept up communication 
 with the sea, and drew in supplies from the surrounding 
 country. Being defeated in one of the slight encounters, 
 that were constantly occurring, Hamilcar asked the Roman 
 Consul to make a short truce that he might bury his dead. 
 The Consul rudely replied that he ought to mind the living 
 rather than the dead. Some time later, the Romans were 
 obliged to make a similar request, which Hamilcar granted 
 at once, adding the gracious words " that he warred not with 
 the dead, but with the living." 
 
 At last the Roman spirit rose not in the Senate, where 
 feeble counsels still prevailed, but among the rich citizens, 
 who saw Roman privateers successful on the seas, while 
 Rome had no national navy to fight her battles. By means 
 of subscription a splendid fleet of two hundred ships, 
 including the corsairs and their trained crews, was equipped, 
 and presented to the State by a patriotic band. And with 
 this Lutatius Catulus went to sea. 
 
 His first movement was upon Drepana, which he 
 blockaded, and where he received a wound. The Cartha- 
 ginians were unable to send ships to the relief of the place 
 until the following spring ; and then they sent rather a cluster 
 of transports than an organized fleet of war-vessels. 
 The Roman officer, who acted for the wounded 241 
 Consul, intercepted the Carthaginian ships near a B.c. 
 little island called JEgusa (now Favignano), and, 
 forcing them to fight, won a decisive victory, sinking fifty 
 and capturing seventy of the enemy's galleys. 
 
 The battle of JSgusa brought peace, which the Cartha- 
 ginians, and especially the merchants among them, had 
 been longing for. After crucifying the admiral who lost the 
 battle, the Punic authorities desired Hamilcar to accept
 
 44 TREATY OF PEACE. 
 
 terms. The Consul at first demanded the arms of the 
 submitting force and the surrender of all Roman deserters ; 
 but Hamilcar refused to yield these points. Sensibly 
 drawing back from this demand, Catulus then laid down 
 the basis of a negotiation, which, when fully framed and 
 amended by a Roman commission of ten, contained the 
 following leading items : 
 
 1. The surrender to Rome of Sicily and the small islands adjacent. 
 
 2. The restoration of all Roman prisoners without ransom. 
 
 3. The payment by Carthage for the costs of the war of 3200 talents 
 (790,000), one-third down, and the remainder in ten annual instal- 
 ments. 
 
 There was then a pause of three-and-twenty years.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE SECOND OE GEEAT PUNIC WAR. 
 
 Illyrian and Gallic Wars. 
 Hannibal. 
 Siege of Saguntum. 
 Hannibal's March. 
 Ticino Trebia Trasi- 
 mene. 
 
 Fabius Cunctator. 
 Battle of Cannae. 
 Sieges of Syracuse and 
 Capua. 
 Scipio in Spain. 
 
 Hasdrubal's March. 
 The Metaurus. 
 Scipio in Africa. 
 Battle of Zama. 
 Peace. 
 
 DURING the interval between the First and the Second 
 Punic Wars, Rome was engaged in subduing the Illyrian 
 pirates, who under the spirited Queen Teuta had pushed 
 their power even to the conquest of Corcyra. The treachery 
 of her governor Demetrius, whom the Romans rewarded 
 with part of her dominions, obliged her to submit. But the 
 Gallic Wars of this time were far more momentous. The 
 Gauls, whom their defeats at Sentinum and Vadimo 
 had quieted for a time, rose in arms, when a law was 
 passed in Rome to parcel out among the Plebeians some 
 of the lands wrested from them. The Boii, aided by the 
 Insubres, a warlike tribe from Milan, invaded the valley of 
 the Arno ; but the great battle of Telamon (225 B.C.) cost 
 them fifty thousand men ; while other victories, won upon 
 the banks of the Po, placed all Northern Italy to the very 
 foot of the Alps in the hands of Rome. Strongholds Placen- 
 tia (Piacenza}, Cremona, Mutina (Modena), began to spring 
 up for the purpose of securing the conquered territory. 
 
 Turning to Carthage, we find her, immediately on the 
 cessation of the First Punic War, involved in a deadly 
 struggle with her own mercenary troops. Not until 238 
 did Hamilcar succeed in crushing the mutiny. Rome took 
 no advantage of this trouble ; but, when something similar 
 happened in Sardinia, she aided the insurgents, and forced 
 Carthage to give up both that island and Corsica. 
 
 Hamilcar, who hated Rome with a perfect hatred, and
 
 46 CHARACTER OF HANNIBAL. 
 
 who was eyed jealously by a faction at home, now formed 
 the project of founding a Carthaginian dominion in Spain. 
 Crossing in 235 B.C. the strait we call Gibraltar, he estab- 
 lished in the south of Spain a sort of kingdom, which 
 flourished and grew great. But in battle with the natives, 
 who were fierce in fight, he met his death. 
 
 It is about the time of Hamilcar's emigration that we 
 catch the first glimpse in history of his illustrious son 
 Hannibal The little boy of nine pleaded so hard with his 
 father to be taken to Spain, that Hamilcar yielded, but first 
 led him to an altar and obliged him to swear an oath of 
 changeless hatred and hostility towards Rome. We can 
 well fancy how the dread scene would impress the childish 
 memory, and colour all the aspirations of the growing 
 youth ! 
 
 Hannibal not being yet old enough to take the lead in 
 Spain, it devolved, when Hamilcar fell, upon Hasdrubal, 
 his son-in-law. This chieftain founded Carthagena, and 
 made a treaty with Rome, by which the Ebro was marked 
 out as the northern limit of the Carthaginian territory in 
 Spain. In the seventh year of his rule he was assassinated. 
 
 Hannibal, then in his twenty-ninth year, was elected by 
 the officers to the chief command. He had under- 
 
 220 gone a special training for his great career. From 
 
 B.C. earliest childhood his mind had been familiar with 
 the chances of war with Rome his oath we have 
 already heard of few men could beat him in running, box- 
 ing, or riding and neither want of sleep nor want of food 
 seemed to weaken his iron frame. To such physical advan- 
 tages he added the important one of possessing a well culti- 
 vated mind ; and, after becoming a general, devoted himself 
 so steadily to Greek that he became able to write that 
 master-language. His genius as a tactician will speak for 
 itself. In inventive craft in suddenness of action, pouncing 
 on the enemy when least expected, having advanced by 
 some unusual route in the quick knowledge of men and 
 movements, which he contrived to obtain, not only by his 
 own keen penetration, but by a far-reaching system of detec- 
 tives and spies in his extraordinary power of attracting 
 to his standard men of many minds and various speech
 
 SIEGE OF SAGUNTUM. 47 
 
 he resembled beyond all others the Corsican soldier of our 
 own age. 
 
 Soon overrunning Castile, Hannibal made the Punic 
 power in Spain actually extend to the banks of the Ebro 
 with the exception of one spot, the city of 
 Saguntum (Mwviedro). The siege of this city was 219 
 the immediate occasion of the Second Punic War. B.C. 
 When Hannibal commenced this enterprise, which 
 cost him eight months, Roman ambassadors came into his 
 camp to intercede for the city, which was an ally of Rome. 
 But he refused to grant their request. 
 
 When tidings came to Rome that Saguntum had fallen, 
 an embassy proceeded to Carthage to demand that Hannibal 
 should be given up, as one who had violated the law of 
 nations. The Carthaginians refused to make any such sac- 
 rifice, upon which a Roman, with that fondness for dramatic 
 effect characteristic of Southerns, held up a double fold of 
 his toga, crying, " In this fold I carry peace and war : choose 
 ye." " Which you will," was the bold reply. " Then war 
 be it," said he, shaking the drapery out. 
 
 The welcome news soon reached Hannibal, in whose busy 
 brain a daring project took shape. He resolved to invade 
 Italy from the North. Between Carthagena, his head- 
 quarters, and the basin of the Po, lay four great natural 
 obstacles two great rivers and two mighty mountain- 
 ranges. But this was not all. Fierce and unknown tribes 
 occupied the ground ; and the perils, which had seemed 
 comparatively insignificant to a handful of scouts, sent out 
 to survey the proposed route, were magnified a thousand- 
 fold, when the transport of an army with all its needful 
 appendages came to be provided for. 
 
 In the spring of 218 B.C. the memorable march began. 
 With ninety thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and fifty 
 elephants he moved to the Ebro, where the natives 
 resisted his approach. These were easily brushed 218 
 aside ; and in a little while the great granite peaks B.C. 
 of the Pyrenees pushed their points into the sky, 
 while his army paused under their shadow. Symptoms of 
 discontent had already begun to show themselves on account 
 of the unknown regions, into which the general was now
 
 48 PASSAGE OF THE RHONE. 
 
 evidently leading his men : but Hannibal met this difficulty 
 by simply disclosing his project in all its grandeur, and* 
 permitting those who did not wish to proceed, to go home. 
 About eight thousand left him there. 
 
 He did not climb the Pyrenees, but turned the eastern 
 point of the chain ; and so passed on towards the Ehone by 
 way of Narbonne and Nimes, marching through regions 
 either friendly or afraid. 
 
 The current of the Ehone presented the first serious ob- 
 stacle. The Roman general Scipio, who had been at Pisa, 
 preparing to embark for Spain, heard of Hannibal's march 
 and directed his course to Massilia (Marseilles), for the 
 purpose of disputing the passage of the river. But he 
 did not calculate on the rapidity of the march ; and lingered 
 by the sea, while Hannibal was floating his men across at 
 Avignon. Though the Komans were not there, a hostile 
 force of Gauls lined the further bank. The two days neces- 
 sary to collect boats and make rafts were, however, also 
 sufficient to carry a cavalry force up the river to a safe 
 place for crossing. And, when Hannibal saw a thick smoke 
 rising behind the Gauls, he knew that his horsemen were 
 there. Seizing this moment, he commenced to carry his 
 army over. For a short time the Gauls resisted ; but soon 
 the sight of their tents on fire, and the foe behind, turned 
 them from the river. They were easily beaten then. The 
 elephants were decoyed, it is said, upon rafts strewn with 
 earth and leaves, and were thus towed across in safety. 
 Hannibal then marched up the" valley of the Rhone to the 
 Island of the Allobroges, north of the Isere. Scipio did not 
 follow, fearing the unknown country ; but, sending his 
 brother and the troops to Spain, he returned to Pisa. 
 
 In the Island of the Allobroges, a region between the 
 Rhone and the Isere, Hannibal rendered some service to a 
 Celtic chief, who repaid him with supplies. The army then 
 met the first mountain-wall of the Alps, dividing the upper 
 from the lower Isere. Unfriendly Celts beset the pass, which 
 Hannibal was forced to seize in the night : but the descent 
 was not accomplished without much slipping of mules and 
 horses, and ceaseless attacks of the mountaineers. The 
 valley of Chambery afforded a wider and pleasanter scene for
 
 HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS. 49 
 
 the march. In the narrowing defile the tribe Ceutrones ad- 
 vanced to meet Hannibal with branches and garlands and 
 kine. He accepted but distrusted their offered kindness ; 
 and accordingly, when he entered the rugged gorge leading 
 upward to the St. Bernard, he took the precaution of send- 
 ing his baggage forward with the horse, while he kept the 
 foot behind to cover the march. It was well he did so. 
 For suddenly every rock to right and left appeared alive 
 with foes, who mustered also in great force behind ; and 
 from the sloping sides of the pass the Ceutrones sent 
 great stones rolling down upon the climbing threads of 
 men. At the White Rock, a mass of snowy chalk, which 
 sprang from the very root of the St. Bernard, the Cartha- 
 ginian general halted his infantry and faced the foe, while 
 the horses and the baggage-mules toiled up the pass. Resting 
 by a little lake upon the watershed, he then began to descend, 
 slightly troubled by human foes, it is true, but obliged to face 
 perils of various kinds. Here, a sheet of sloping ice powdered 
 with new snow and ending in the edge of a crevasse, from 
 whose intensely blue depths no skill could extricate there, a 
 precipice, whose side sank in a wall sheer down for thou- 
 sands of feet. A cry or the cracking of a whip would bring 
 an avalanche tumbling on the road, blocking up or tearing 
 away the precarious shelf, on whose perilous zig-zag they 
 crawled down the face of the mountain. Then the intense 
 cold the ceaseless toils the sinking hearts all combined 
 to render the march one of misery. But their troubles were 
 now almost over. Following the course of the Doria, which 
 sprang from the lake by which they had rested, they found 
 the path growing every day easier, the valley wider and more 
 fertile. The cold blue glare of ice the deadly still whiteness 
 of the spreading snow and the dark gloomy fringe of firs 
 changed by pleasant gradations into the soft foliage of 
 olive and chestnut and the glowing gold of the Italian 
 plains. The last fortnight of September, spent in thorough 
 rest at the village of Ivrea, restrung the worn warriors, and 
 prepared them for the toils of battle. 
 
 Thus was the greatest march of ancient times accom- ' 
 plished. Let us count the cost. The review at Roussillon 
 had displayed a force of fifty thousand foot and nine thou-
 
 50 BATTLE OF THE TREBIA. 
 
 sand horse : among the hamlets of Ivrea were scattered 
 scarcely twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse, but 
 many of the latter horseless. And the elephants were sadly 
 thinned, as well in number as in size. 
 
 The passage of the Alps had taken fifteen days the whole 
 march from Carthagena to Ivrea, somewhat less than four 
 months. 
 
 At this time the two Roman armies were both far away 
 the one in Spain, the other in Sicily. There was but a 
 small force in the basin of the Padus (Po\ and these had 
 enough to do in curbing the restless Gauls. Hannibal's 
 first achievement was the capture of Turin, the capital of 
 the Taurini. Scipio advanced with all the men that could 
 be hurriedly mustered to check his advance down the river. 
 The first collision was a skirmish chiefly of cavalry, between 
 the Ticino and the Sesia, in which Hannibal's Numidian 
 horse gained 'the day. Scipio was severely wounded in the 
 action ; and here his son, most illustrious of the name, starts 
 nobly to life on the historic page, as we behold him, a boy 
 of seventeen, rushing amid the hostile squadrons that he 
 might turn their weapons on himself and so save his father. 
 
 By recrossing the river and then breaking down the bridge 
 Scipio gained time to take up a strong position near Placentia, 
 covered in front by the Trebia, which, though a shallow 
 stream in summer, was now brawling with winter rain. 
 Hannibal crossed the Po by a bridge of boats, but mean- 
 while the second Roman army had arrived, and the northern 
 force now mustered nearly forty thousand men. It was the 
 policy of Sempronius, the Consul in command, to wait ; that 
 of Hannibal, to fight ' and the latter gained his object by a 
 stratagem. Early one December morning he sent 
 
 218 his Ntfmidian cavalry across the river to skirmish 
 
 B.C. with the Roman light troops. Meanwhile he nid 
 a body of two thousand men in a ravine thick with 
 underwood and reeds, and commanded all his troops to take 
 a good breakfast and rub themselves with oil, as a defence 
 against the cold. The Carthaginian horse, feigning flight, 
 dashed through the icy stream ; the Romans pursued, 
 wading breast-deep through the torrent, and half blinded by 
 the piercing sleet that blew in their faces. The main body
 
 BATTLE OF LAKE TRASIMENE. 51 
 
 followed, when they saw the danger of their comrades ; and, 
 with hands benumbed, shivering limbs, and empty stomachs, 
 were obliged to face the fresh, but not fasting, lines of 
 Hannibal. The Roman infantry did wonders of valour; 
 but, when Mago, Hannibal's brother, led his men from the 
 reedy hiding-place upon their rear, the Legions broke and 
 fled. The first division, numbering ten thousand, forced a 
 way obliquely through the enemy to Placentia ; but numbers 
 perished in the Trebia and on its banks. The victory, how- 
 ever, cost Hannibal all his elephants but one ; and many of 
 his soldiers caught diseases of lung or limb from exposure, 
 which brought them to their graves. 
 
 Thus Hannibal became master of Northern Italy. When 
 the winter had passed, he penetrated the Apennines, and 
 came down upon the basin of the Arno. The floods were 
 out upon the marshes, and the army was forced to march 
 for four days through snow-water. The horses' hoofs rotted 
 off them with disease ; the soldiers died in numbers ; and 
 Hannibal himself, riding on his solitary elephant, lost an 
 eye from acute inflammation. 
 
 But consolation awaited him. The Roman Consul, a 
 popular but self-conceited Plebeian, named Flaminius, lay at 
 Arretium, intending, when the waters fell, to blockade the 
 Apennine gorges. Hannibal passed him by, moving towards 
 Perusia. The Consul followed hastily, and fell blindly into 
 a trap. Beside the Lake Trasimene there is a defile with 
 two steep walls, along which Hannibal disposed 
 his men. A thick mist from the reedy lake over- 217 
 hung all the low grounds, as Flaminius led his B.C. 
 army into the pass. The vanguard suddenly heard 
 the noise of conflict behind, but could see nothing. " There 
 was no battle ; it was a mere rout." Fully fifteen thousand 
 Romans fell on the field. So fierce was the struggle that 
 the shocks of a great earthquake attracted no notice amid 
 the clang and excitement of battle. 
 
 Terror prevailed in Rome. But Hannibal did not approach 
 the city. Drawing his army off through the Apennines into 
 Picenum, he spent the heat of summer there ; and in the 
 cooler season marched into Apulia, where his cavalry revelled 
 so freely in wine as sometimes, it is said, to bathe their
 
 52 STRATAGEM OF HANNIBAL. 
 
 horses in grape-juice. He then pushed westward through 
 the Apennines by way of Beneventum, and directed his march 
 towards Capua. Meanwhile an eagle eye watched him 
 coolly from the heights ; and, ever as he moved a Roman 
 army, keeping well out of reach, followed him, cutting off 
 his supplies and troubling him by petty attacks. This was 
 the plan adopted by Fabius, the newly appointed Dictator, 
 whose tactics earned for him the surname of Cunctator (The 
 Lingerer). As Hannibal descended the Vulturnus, withering 
 by his ravages the rich vineyards that produced the amber 
 Falernian, this cautious general closed the passes in his rear 
 and waited. When Hannibal, finding that the Capuans 
 would not revolt, desired to return to Apulia, he 
 217 was obliged to resort to stratagem in order to 
 
 B.C. obtain an open road. Finding a Roman force 
 blocking the way, he collected a great herd of 
 oxen, and, tying lighted torches to their horns, drove them 
 in the dark over the heights that walled the road. The 
 Romans, mistaking these for the Carthaginian army climb- 
 ing the hills by torchlight, left the pass, through which 
 Hannibal quickly pushed his men. He soon afterwards 
 formed his winter camp at Geronium near Luceria, a flat 
 district of northern Apulia, rich in grain and grass. 
 
 The Romans were much dissatisfied with the slow caution 
 of Fabius, although events that followed proved its wisdom. 
 Hannibal, too, with all his victories, was disappointed, for 
 the Italians were making no effort to rise in his favour, a 
 thing he had calculated on from the beginning. 
 
 The new Consuls, from whose energy Rome looked for 
 great results, were JEmilius Paullus, the hero of the Illyrian 
 war, and Terentius Varro, a butcher's son, very popular and 
 very full of belief in himself. Well had Fabius gauged his 
 worth, when he cautioned Paullus, saying, " You will have 
 to contend not only with Hannibal, but with Varro." 
 
 In the early part of 216 B.C., Hannibal having seized the 
 Roman magazine at Canna3, the Consuls proceeded to that 
 place with an army of eighty thousand foot and six thousand 
 horse. Paullus saw that the ground was too favourable for 
 cavalry, and wished to move into a more broken country ; 
 but Varro was for an immediate fight. They had sole
 
 BATTLE OF CANBLE. 53 
 
 command on alternate days ; and, when Varro's second turn 
 came, he hoisted the red flag on his tent. Well pleased to 
 see this signal for action glittering in the morning light, the 
 Roman soldiers fell into their ranks. They were formed in 
 close order, more like the Greek Phalanx than their ordinary 
 array. Hannibal, quick to perceive an advantage, drew up 
 his allies in a long thin convex crescent, tipped at each horn 
 with a massive column of African veterans. In the opening 
 cavalry skirmish the Carthaginian cavalry were successful. 
 As Hannibal expected, or rather intended, the Roman 
 Legions pushed in his weak centre, and followed up their 
 success. This movement placed them, worn by their con- 
 test, between the dense wing-columns, which closed 
 in upon their flanks. The valour of Paullus, dis- Aug. 2, 
 played in spite of a sling-wound, went far to restore 216 
 the Roman array ; but when Hasdrubal, with his B.C. 
 heavy horse from Spain and Gaul, came thundering 
 upon the rear of the legionaries, the confusion of the Romans 
 became irretrievable. There was then a frightful slaughter ; 
 the flower of the Roman army lay mangled on the field, 
 from which a bushel of gold rings the ornament of a Roman 
 knight was taken by the victors. Paullus died ; Varro 
 fled. The pale Tribune, who came riding into Rome with 
 the fatal news, told how the former, sitting wounded on a 
 stone, and refusing all means of escape, had sent a dying 
 message to Fabius, telling him to defend the city. 
 
 But Hannibal again avoided a march to Rome, perhaps 
 because he was not prepared for a tedious siege. The people 
 of Southern Italy declared on his side. Some cities indeed 
 held out, such as Neapolis and Cumae; and at Nola 
 Hannibal met his first reverse. Claudius Marcellus, a 
 veteran general, who had won the spolia opima in the 
 Gallic War by striking the King Virdumarus from his horse 
 and slaying him, made a sudden march, threw himself into 
 the city, and repulsed Hannibal in a successful sally. This 
 slight repulse marks the turning of the tide. 
 
 But Hannibal was welcomed at Capua, the second of 
 Italian cities, where he took up his winter-quarters. That 
 winter of luxury seems to have disorganized his army, and 
 enervated his hardy troops. Besides, his army was nearly
 
 54 SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. 
 
 worn out ; and, when he sent his brother Mago to Carthage 
 asking for aid, an ungrateful faction gave but a chilling 
 reception to the request, and only very slight assistance was 
 accorded to him four thousand horse, forty elephants, and 
 a little money. 
 
 Meanwhile the Romans, sensible that a worse than 
 Pyrrhus had come, put forth all their energies to prepare 
 for the next campaign. 
 
 The war in Italy in 215 B.C. produced no event of conse- 
 quence. The three Eoman leaders, Marcellus, Fabius, and 
 Sempronius Gracchus, occupied intrenched camps and made 
 successful raids, while Hannibal hovered between Campania 
 and Apulia, in the latter of which, at Arpi, he took up his 
 winter-quarters. 
 
 Next spring (214) the Romans began their efforts to invest 
 Capua, which Hannibal partially prevented. But they 
 renewed their attempts pertinaciously. 
 
 A war with Macedonia, newly allied by treaty to Carthage, 
 here begins to interweave itself with the story of the Second 
 Punic War ; but, as it has been already adverted to in 
 Grecian history, it is unnecessary to repeat the narrative 
 here. (See page 122, Grecian History.) 
 
 Another episode was the siege of Syracuse, which lasted 
 two years (214-212). Upon the death of Hiero in 216, his 
 grandson, a boy dazzled by Hannibal's glory, succeeded. 
 But he was murdered, as were also his relatives ; and two 
 usurpers, mere agents of Hannibal, rising to the surface of 
 the revolution, turned the Syracusans completely against 
 Rome. Marcellus came to besiege the city. For eight 
 months he tried every means of attack ; but within the 
 walls the great engineering genius of old Archimedes, the 
 mathematician, directed the defence. Wondrous stories, 
 some true, some fictitious, were related of iron hands, which 
 stooped from the battlements to grasp and overturn a ship 
 of monster burning-glasses, which shrivelled sails and 
 masts like so much brushwood of machines that hurled 
 not merely stones but massive rocks heavy enough to sink 
 a galley at a blow. Archimedes obliged the Romans at last 
 to begin a blockade. A Carthaginian army came to the 
 rescue of the place ; but the Romans, climbing a part of the
 
 THE WAE IN SPAIN. , 55 
 
 wall left unguarded during a feast, took the Upper City ; and 
 swamp-fever slew the Punic and Syracusan soldiers, who 
 were camping in the marsh of the Anapus. A Carthaginian 
 fleet, from which aid was expected, turned its prows away. 
 And at last the city was surrendered to Marcellus (212 B.C). 
 
 Hannibal's capture of Tarentum in 212 did not compensate 
 for the loss of Capua, which was wrested from him 
 in the following year by Fulvius Flaccus. When 211 
 the Carthaginian leader saw the fall of Capua B.C. 
 imminent, he tried to frighten the Romans into 
 raising the siege by making a dash towards Rome. Pressing 
 along the Valerian Way, past Tibur, to the Anio bridge, he 
 halted within five miles of the walls. But the destruction 
 of a few villas and farm-steadings formed all his achieve- 
 ment ; and he turned away, baffled in his hopes that the 
 Romans would desert Capua to defend Rome. Fulvius 
 treated the Capuans with terrible cruelty. 
 
 Hannibal took refuge in the land of the Brutii, the toe of the 
 Italian boot. In 209 B.C. Quintus Fabius crowned his career by 
 retaking Tarentum a severe blow to the Carthaginian cause. 
 
 The interest of the war now shifts to Spain, whither 
 Hannibal looked eagerly for aid, which he expected his 
 brother Hasdrubal to bring. Under the two elder Scipios the 
 Roman arms were at first most successful in Spain. They 
 pushed their conquests almost to the southern rock we call 
 Gibraltar, and retook Saguntum from the Carthaginians. 
 Their skilful policy also drew to their side an African 
 prince named Syphax, who ruled the coast of Algiers. So 
 much importance was attached to this alliance that Hasdru- 
 bal was obliged to leave Spain for the purpose of putting 
 down this turbulent chieftain; a task which he accomplished 
 with the aid of Masinissa, the son of Gela, a neighbour and 
 rival of Syphax. 
 
 When Hasdrubal returned to Spain in 211, Masinissa 
 joined his standard. The Scipios, taking twenty thousand 
 Celtiberians into their ranks, were incautious enough to 
 divide their forces. It was easy to bribe the Spanish gueril- 
 las : and partly thus, and partly by cutting off the Roman 
 armies from each other, the Carthaginians defeated them in 
 detail, and the Scipios were slain. The Roman authority in
 
 56 CAPTURE OF NEW CARTHAGE. 
 
 Spain was thus contracted to the Ebro ; nor was it without 
 difficulty that Caius Marcius held that line unbroken. 
 
 There was difficulty in getting a Koman to take the com- 
 mand in Spain. After much delay a young Military Tribune 
 of twenty-seven, of refined manners, graceful speech, and 
 handsome person, with .long hair waving on his shoulders, 
 and modesty crimsoning his cheeks, came forward to entreat 
 the Centuries to send him out to avenge his father's death 
 and save the Roman cause in Spain. Those who looked 
 upon the young soldier, whose gentle mien concealed the 
 courage of a hero, remembered how by the Ticino, while 
 yet a mere child, he had risked his young life to save his 
 father's : and with one accord the voice of the Centuries 
 elected Publius Scipio Proconsul for Spain, 211 B.C. 
 
 Finding the three Carthaginian armies of Spain scattered 
 two on the Tagus and the other at the Pillars of Her- 
 cules Scipio resolved to make a sudden attack on New 
 Carthage, the Punic capital. In this he succeeded 
 
 209 marvellously. The town stood upon a tongue of 
 
 B.C. land connected by a narrow neck with the main 
 shore. By this isthmus Scipio began his attack, 
 and column after column assailed the wall till noon. In 
 vain. But, while the exhausted garrison were taking their 
 siesta, a fresh attack was made. They ran to repel it ; and 
 in their haste did not notice a small band of men with 
 ladders wading the lagoon below the harbour-wall, which 
 was quite unguarded. Thus Scipio took the town, in which 
 were vast stores and treasures. 
 
 Next year Scipio invaded Andalusia, where he defeated 
 Hasdrubal at Bsecula (208 B.C.). But the wily Carthaginian 
 suffered loss here that he might carry out his cherished plan 
 of tracking the steps of his giant brother into Italy. Dis- 
 engaging himself, he pressed northward over the Tagus to 
 the shores of Biscay, and penetrated into Gaul by the 
 western gates of the Pyrenees. Scipio knew of his design, 
 and fell back upon the Ebro to dispute the passage ; but he 
 was too late. Hasdrubal was then marching towards the 
 Alps. Spain was quickly conquered ; Mago sailed to Italy; 
 Gades (Cadiz) fell into the hands of the Romans; and 
 the thirteen years' struggle was over. Spain was now a
 
 BATTLE OF THE METAURUS. 57 
 
 Roman province, but by no means a peaceful possession 
 (206 B.C.) 
 
 Hasdrubal spent the winter of 208-7 in GauL Then, 
 pushing through Auvergne, he crossed the Ehone at its 
 junction with the Isere, and passed over the Alps by the very 
 route which Hannibal had taken, but, owing to the season, 
 with little or no hindrance. He stopped his march to assail 
 the Roman colony of Placentia, and send notice of his 
 arrival in Italy to his brother Hannibal. Nero and Hanni- 
 bal were then moving their armies through the southern 
 peninsulas of Italy, like wary chess-players full of caution 
 but prompt to take instant advantage of a false move. It 
 so happened that the messengers of Hasdrubal, missing the 
 way to Hannibal's camp, were seized by the sentinels of 
 Nero. With the aid of an interpreter he learned from the 
 intercepted despatches that Hasdrubal meant to advance 
 from Ariminum by the Flaminian Road to Narnia in Um- 
 bria, where he requested Hannibal to meet him. Nero, 
 acting on his own authority in the emergency, took a quick 
 resolve, and as quickly put it into action. Choosing seven 
 thousand men, he set out at dusk, as if for a secret raid into 
 Lucania ; but he pressed on and on, until at Sena Gallica 
 he reached the camp of Livius, into which he stole at night, 
 the watch-fires of Hasdrubal twinkling only half a mile 
 away. The surprise of the Carthaginian was great, when 
 he heard two trumpets sounding the signal in the Roman 
 camp, and saw the greater strength of the lines as they 
 drew out to offer battle. He declined it, and retreated with 
 his troops. The Romans pursued them to the river Me- 
 taurus, whose flooded current their ignorance of 
 the fords prevented them from crossing. In the 207 
 battle that ensued two circumstances decided the B.C. 
 victory in favour of the Romans. One was the 
 confusion caused by the wounded elephants ; the other was 
 a stratagem of Nero. While his men were actively en- 
 gaged with the Gauls on Hasdrubal's left wing, he made a 
 detour with a chosen band behind his own .troops, and 
 attacked the Spaniards on the right in flank. With a 
 swollen stream behind, the destruction of the army was 
 complete. Hasdrubal died as became one of " the lion's 
 
 (121) 5
 
 58 INVASION OF AFRICA. 
 
 brood." Thus ended the battle' of Sena or the Me- 
 taurus. 
 
 Secretly returning to his camp at Canusium, Nero carried 
 with him a ghastly proof of his success the bloody head of 
 Hasdrubal, which he caused to be flung one morning into 
 Hannibal's lines. This was the first hint of Hasdrubal's 
 arrival that Hannibal had received. It was enough. He 
 retired with his army to the wild and rugged land of the 
 Brutii ; while the white horses of a Triumph a sight long 
 unseen by Roman eyes stepped proudly over the flowers 
 that strewed the Sacred Way. 
 
 It had long been Scipio's design to make Africa the 
 
 theatre of war ; and in spite of factious opposition he carried 
 
 his point. Sailing from Lilybseum, he landed with a small 
 
 but well-chosen army at the Fair Promontory 
 
 204 near Utica. Masinissa joined him with a few 
 
 B.C. horse. The blockade of Utica was his first under- 
 taking; but the approach of a vast force under 
 Syphax compelled him to spend the winter in a naval camp 
 upon a neighbouring headland. He averted attack by 
 entering into pretended negotiations with Syphax; and, 
 when the spring came, got rid of his foes in one night by a 
 sudden movement, which set in flames the reedy cabins and 
 timber huts in which they were quartered. 
 
 A reinforcement from Spain enabled Syphax and Has- 
 drubal to continue the contest. Scipio defeated the allied 
 army on the Great Plains, about seventy miles from Car- 
 thage. The capture of Syphax added to the disasters of the 
 Africans. Scipio, advancing to Tunis, waited for Carthage 
 to yield. 
 
 The city of Dido then sent an embassy to Rome, and at 
 the same time an urgent summons to Mago and Hannibal 
 to hasten to Africa. Mago died of a wound during his 
 voyage ; Hannibal came to try, if he could save the thank- 
 less country he had not seen for six and thirty years. For 
 sixteen of these he had kept an army together in a hostile 
 land with scarcely any aid from home. No news ever 
 pleased the Romans better than that which told 'them of 
 the departure of their mighty foe. They rejected the pro- 
 posals of the Carthaginian ambassadors.
 
 BATTLE OF ZAMA. 59 
 
 Landing at Leptis, Hannibal took up a position on the 
 plain of Zama, probably near Sicca. It was felt on both 
 sides that a crisis had come. Hannibal tried by a 
 personal interview with Scipio to gain better terms 202 
 than those offered : but in vain. Then the battle B.C. 
 began. In the arrangement of his lines Scipio left 
 spaces here and there between the bands of his infantry, 
 so that the elephants, of which Hannibal had eighty, might 
 pass through without disordering the army. Hannibal's 
 third line, formed of his Italian veterans, was his chief 
 hope. Retreating before the elephants, the Roman light 
 troops ran down the lanes left in the army ; and the beasts, 
 following, were tortured to fury by the pricking of pikes 
 from each side. Some of them ran right through to the 
 rear of the Roman army; others fell back with deadly 
 trampling on their own ranks. The brunt of the battle was 
 borne by the centres. The first lines remained long locked 
 into a terrible strife, till they retired in exhaustion. Then 
 the second divisions engaged ; but there was so much un- 
 steadiness among the Carthaginian militia that the mer- 
 cenaries turned their swords upon them, and a suicidal 
 combat strewed the ground with dead. Then Hannibal 
 brought up the " Old Guard," upon whom he most depended. 
 Scipio made a fragmentary array to face them, and the 
 most intense struggle of the day began. The veterans never 
 flinched in the face of superior numbers, until Masinissa 
 and Laelius came galloping up with the victorious horse. 
 This decided the day, and annihilated the Carthaginian army. 
 
 Scipio then granted peace to Carthage. The principal 
 terms of the Treaty were : 
 
 1. The Carthaginians were to be left independent within their own 
 territories. 
 
 2. They were to surrender all ' prisoners and deserters, all their 
 elephants, and all their ships but ten triremes. 
 
 3. They were not to make war at all beyond the limits of Africa, 
 nor in Africa without the consent of Home. 
 
 4. Masinissa was to be acknowledged King of Numidia. 
 
 5. They were to pay to Home for fifty years an annual tribute of 
 two hundred talents (48,800). 
 
 Scipio then went home to enjoy the splendours of a Tri-
 
 60 TRIUMPH OF SCIPIO. 
 
 umph, and to wear henceforth the proud name Africanus. 
 The conclusion of Hannibal's story is contained 
 201 in the narrative of the Syrian Wars. 
 B.c. Home rested from the struggle of seventeen 
 years, with a diminished population and almost 
 exhausted resources, but with the proud consciousness of 
 having established her dominion firmly over all the shores 
 of the Western Mediterranean, by humbling the only foe 
 potent enough to contest that dominion with her.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE THIED PUNIC WAE. 
 
 Cato the Censor. 
 His Triumph over Scipio Major. 
 Death of Hannibal. 
 Delenda est Carthago. 
 
 Two Useless Years. 
 Scipio in Command. 
 Fall of Carthage. 
 
 BETWEEN the close of the Second and the beginning of the 
 Third Punic War a period of fifty-two years elapsed. 
 During this interval were waged the Second Macedonian 
 War, in which Philip was defeated at Cynoscephalse ; the 
 Syrian War, closing with the defeat of Antiochus at Mag- 
 nesia ; and the Third Macedonian War, in which Perseus 
 lost the Macedonian crown on the field of Pydna. An 
 account of these wars has been given in the last of the 
 chapters upon Grecian history. 
 
 At home the historical interest of this time centres chiefly 
 in the person of Marcus Porcius Cato, commonly called Cato 
 the Censor. This man was a native of Tusculum, where he 
 was born in 234 B.C. The model, after whom he shaped his 
 style of life, was Curias Dentatus, who, although the con- 
 queror of Pyrrhus and the Samnites, lived frugally on less 
 than seven acres of land, which he laboured with his own 
 hands. Cato, whose grey eyes, red hair, and projecting teeth 
 were not attractive, wore a coarse robe, and prided himself 
 upon disdaining every luxury. This attracted the notice of 
 Valerius Flaccus, a noble neighbour, who induced the rough- 
 spun soldier to devote his energies to the affairs of State. 
 Cato's valour contributed mainly to the victory over Anti- 
 ochus at Thermopylae in 191 B.C. 
 
 He came into violent collision with Scipio Africanus. at 
 whom he aimed by requiring the brother of the great con- 
 queror, surnamed Asiaticus in honour of his victory over 
 Antiochus, to account for the money spent in the Eastern 
 War. Africanus, tearing the books to pieces in the face of
 
 62 CATO GAINS THE CENSORSHIP. 
 
 the Senators, expressed his scorn at the petty insinuation 
 of the demand. This contempt of the Senate resulted in an 
 accusation against Africanus, who appeared, richly dressed, 
 on the anniversary of Zama, and by a skilful reference to 
 his great achievement, drew almost all hearts in Rome to his 
 side. But the attack was nevertheless successful. His 
 brother was all but arrested, being saved from that dis- 
 grace by the interference of Tiberius Gracchus, who feared 
 a civil war. Africanus then retired to a villa at Liternum, 
 where he died in 183 B.C. 
 
 The same year witnessed also the death of Hannibal, who, 
 being expelled from the court of Antiochus after the battle 
 of Magnesia, took refuge with Prusias, King of Bithynia, 
 who sheltered him for some years. But the rage of Borne 
 pursued him thither, demanding his surrender. Prusias 
 was too weak to refuse, so that the hunted lion had no re- 
 source but to die. A hollow ring, filled with poison, which 
 he always wore in expectation of such an emergency, afforded 
 him the means of escape from his relentless foes. 
 
 After Scipio's retirement, Cato, in spite of senatorial op- 
 position, was elected to the Censorship in 184 B.C. the 
 crowning honour a political life could receive. In this 
 powerful office, which enabled him to degrade senators and 
 knights for vice, and to inspect the private income and 
 expenses of the citizens, Cato distinguished himself as the 
 unflinching foe of luxury in every shape. Jewels, carriages, 
 rich furniture, costly dress, all fell under his ban. In his 
 stern efforts for the restoration of primitive simplicity and 
 hardihood, he interfered even with sanitary measures, and 
 destroyed the pipes by which private persons conveyed 
 water into their houses from the public fountains. By such 
 conduct he incurred the odium of the rich, but pleased the 
 common people. Against Greek learning he inveighed bit- 
 terly ; but so far altered his views in his later days as to 
 devote himself to the study of the Grecian literature. 
 
 Secretly urged by the Roman Senate, Masinissa mean- 
 while had been losing no opportunity of plundering the 
 Carthaginian territories. In vain the Carthaginians sought 
 reparation at Rome : they were at last goaded into making 
 reprisals.
 
 OPENING OF THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. 63 
 
 Cato, in extreme old age but with vigour unimpaired, 
 went to Africa as one of a Commission to inquire into 
 the state of affairs between Carthage and Numidia. The 
 sight of a rich and powerful city filled him with jealous 
 alarm. On his return home he represented strongly to the 
 Senate the danger of permitting such a rival to exist. 
 Shaking some Libyan figs, large and bursting with sweet- 
 ness, from the fold of his toga, he cried to the bystanders, 
 who picked up the fruit with admiring looks, " The place 
 these grew in is only three days' sail from Rome." And 
 every speech he made henceforward ended with the words, 
 " Delenda est Carthago." Scipio Nasica (i.e., Scipio of the 
 sharp nose) opposed him ; but Cato's words prevailed. And 
 the Third Punic War soon began. 
 
 Rival factions divided and weakened the city of Hannibal. 
 The wealthy merchants advocated submission to Rome ; the 
 popular party cried out for war. When the former gained 
 the upper hand, they sent a humble embassy to Rome. 
 But the levies had already begun. Nevertheless the Roman 
 Senate agreed to spare Carthage, if three hundred of her 
 young nobles were sent across the sea as hostages. This 
 was done, yet the fleet of Rome anchored at Utica, and the 
 Legions encamped on the African soil. Another embassy 
 from Carthage was met with a demand for all arms and 
 engines of war. These were yielded up. But, when the 
 Consuls declared that Carthage must be razed, and a new 
 city built at a distance from the sea, the Carthaginian 
 people broke into a roar of fury, and prepared for war. A 
 member of the war-party, bearing the famous name of 
 Hasdrubal, was elected to the command of the Punic forces. 
 So resolute was the spirit of defence that the Carthaginian 
 ladies cut off their long hair to supply material for twisted 
 bow-strings. 
 
 The Consuls expected an easy triumph ; but they sat with 
 their Legions for a whole campaign before the walls 
 of Carthage without making any impression on the 149 
 place. Nor were the Consuls of the succeeding year B.C. 
 more successful. It was not until the command 
 of the Legions was given to young Scipio, the adopted son 
 of Africanus, who was made Consul at the unusually early
 
 64 SIEGE OF CARTHAGE. 
 
 age of thirty-eight, that any gleam of success began to gild 
 the eagles. 
 
 The first care of this young general, who had been serving 
 
 already under the unsuccessful Consuls, was to enforce rigid 
 
 discipline among the Legions, and to clear the camp of a 
 
 mob, that encouraged vice and luxury among the 
 
 147 troops. This done, he assaulted and took Me- 
 
 B.C. gara, the southern suburb of the city, a place of 
 pleasant gardens. Hasdrubal was foolish and brutal 
 enough to kill his prisoners in sight of the besiegers as 
 a reprisal. 
 
 Scipio then drew lines across the isthmus (Carthage stood 
 on a peninsula, shaped like the head of a hammer,) so as to 
 cut off communication with the land. He also blockaded 
 the harbour with his fleet, so that the besieged could get no 
 supplies, except when a strong wind from the sea enabled 
 quick light skiffs to run into the haven, before the heavy 
 Roman vessels could beat out to prevent them. To prevent 
 this method of conveying food to the famished inhabitants, 
 Scipio commenced to make an embankment across the 
 mouth of the harbour. While he was engaged in this diffi- 
 cult and tedious undertaking, the besieged were secretly 
 cutting a new channel to the sea and building a new fleet 
 of fifty ships. The Romans were greatly vexed, when they 
 saw this fleet sailing out of the newly-cut passage ; but in a 
 few days they managed to drive the Carthaginian ships 
 back into the outlet and destroy them nearly all iu the 
 confusion. 
 
 Early in the following year Scipio made a feint upon one 
 portion of the wall, while Laelius assailed another. 
 
 146 The latter was successful in forcing his way into the 
 
 B.C. market-place. But the Citadel and the Temple of 
 JEsculapius crowned the highest ground, and to 
 reach these through barricaded streets of flat-roofed houses, 
 six stories high, cost many days of close and deadly fighting. 
 At last the garrison of the Citadel surrendered. Hasdrubal, 
 with a body of deserters, who could hope for no quarter, 
 shut themselves into the Temple, to sell their lives dearly. 
 But the chief stole out and sought pardon from Scipio. His 
 wife, chiding him as a coward, flung her children and then
 
 FALL OP CARTHAGE. 65 
 
 plunged herself, into the flames, which were now roaring up 
 towards the golden roof of the fane. 
 
 As Scipio looked upon the funeral-blaze of so much glory, 
 his heart smote him with a misgiving that Rome's day of 
 ruin would also come at last. 
 
 The curse pronounced by Scipio on the site of Carthage 
 rested on the desolated soil until the times of the Caesars, 
 when a prosperous Roman colony began to flourish on the 
 peninsula. The greater part of the Carthaginian dominions 
 were formed into the Roman province of Libya ; while the 
 victor, in imitation of his great predecessor and namesake, 
 took the title of Africanus.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 WARS IN SPAIN AND SICILY. 
 
 Treaty of Gracchus. 
 Massacre of Galba. 
 Viriathus. 
 Celtiberian War. 
 
 Numantia. 
 Koman Slaves. 
 Servile War in Sicily. 
 
 THE Spain, conquered by Scipio during the Second Punic 
 War, consisted merely of the eastern shore, with part of the 
 basins of the Ebro and the Guadalquivir. Cato the Censor 
 reduced the inhabitants to present submission, much as 
 Oliver Cromwell reduced Ireland, by pitiless cruelty. But, 
 irritated by the taxes they had to pay, and the loss of their 
 mines of gold and silver, the Spaniards continued to struggle 
 again and again under the Eoman yoke. Most formidable 
 of the peninsular tribes were the Lusitanians, a race of war- 
 like shepherds, who occupied the sierras of Southern Por- 
 tugal, and the Celtiberians, hardy dwellers on the plateau 
 of Castile, even then studded, as its modern name suggests, 
 with strong towers and castles for defence. 
 
 A gentler but more successful hand than Cato's soothed 
 the turbulent Spaniards in 179 B.C. by a Treaty, which ex- 
 acted from the people nothing except an obligation not to 
 fortify their cities without the consent of the Romans. The 
 author of this measure, by which Spain enjoyed an interval 
 of rest, was Sempronius Gracchus, father of the famous 
 revolutionists. 
 
 Peace was broken in the north of Spain by the people of 
 Segeda beginning to rebuild their walls; in the south by 
 the incursions of the Lusitanian shepherds. It is right to 
 say, however, that the extortion of the Romans provoked 
 the high-spirited natives to these breaches of the Treaty of 
 Gracchus. 
 
 The treachery of a Roman Praetor, Sergius Galba, who 
 induced the Lusitanians to divide into three bodies for the
 
 SIEGE OP NUMANTIA. 67 
 
 purpose of receiving allotments of land and then fell on 
 them with the sword, inflicted an incurable wound upon 
 the haughty spirit of the mountaineers. A few escaped from 
 the massacre ; among them a young shepherd named Viriathus. 
 Becoming a guerilla chief, this daring man warred success- 
 fully for many years against the Romans in Spain, on one 
 occasion reducing the Proconsul Servilianus to such straits 
 in a mountain gorge that there was no resource but in 
 acceptance of the terms offered by the gallant Lusitanian, 
 who thus became the acknowledged ally of Rome. But 
 Csepio, the successor of Servilianus, broke the treaty, made 
 war on Viriathus with the consent of the Senate, and, pro- 
 fessing friendly intentions, bribed some friends of the chief- 
 tain to assassinate him in his tent, 140 B.C. This was the 
 real end of the Lusitanian War, although the spirited moun- 
 taineers did not submit for a time. 
 
 Meanwhile the Celtiberians had begun a war. The 
 strongest city in that region was Numantia, perched upon 
 a lofty crag near the source of the Douro. From this strong- 
 hold harassing war had been often waged upon the Romans ; 
 and the chief operation undertaken by the Consuls was its 
 siege. The story is that of Carthage repeated with slight 
 variations : failure and disaster for years, until Scipio 
 came to the rescue of the Roman name. Mancinus was the 
 most egregious of the Roman blunderers. Retreating from 
 before Numantia, he allowed himself to be cooped up in an 
 old camp so effectually that he had to beg for the lives of 
 his men. There was a young man in his army serving as 
 Quaestor, whose name was dear to the Spaniards, and they 
 refused to agree to any arrangement which had not attached 
 to it the signature of Tiberius Gracchus. 
 
 When Mancinus was twitted at Rome with this shameful 
 treaty, concluded without the due authority of Senate and 
 people, he offered to give himself up to the Numantians as 
 an expiation, while the Senate were to hold the treaty null 
 and void. The Numantians wisely refused to receive the 
 scape-goat of Roman treachery ; and the war continued. 
 
 It was reserved, as has been said, for Scipio Africanus the 
 Younger to bring this contest to an end. When he reached 
 the scene of action, he found the camp in a state of utter
 
 68 FALL OF NUMANTIA. 
 
 disorganization, and set himself at once to remedy this evil. 
 As he had done before Carthage, he drove out all persons that 
 ministered to the vices of the army; and insisted on the use 
 of nothing to wear or lie on except what was rigidly neces- 
 sary. He set an example himself by sleeping upon straw. 
 The season was so far spent, when rigorous drill had pre- 
 pared the Roman army for action, that the general deemed 
 it more prudent at once to form his winter camps. Ere 
 this he had been joined by Jugurtha with a body of Numi- 
 dian horse and some elephants. 
 
 Next spring he drew so close a line round the devoted 
 city that no effort of the besieged within or their 
 
 133 friends without could avail to break the fatal en- 
 
 B.C. claspment. Famine wasted the wretched garrison, 
 
 until all the sodden hides on which they fed were 
 
 gone, and they were fain to fall with wolfish madness on 
 
 the bodies of their slain comrades. The neighbouring town 
 
 of Lubia tried to make a diversion in their favour; but 
 
 Scipio forced the authorities there to surrender the friends 
 
 of Numantia to him, and hewed off their right hands. 
 
 The Numantians soon submitted, gnawed to the very 
 bones with dreadful hunger. Some committed suicide 
 rather than yield ; and indeed -the men, who tottered from 
 the opened gates, were more like spectres than living 
 beings. 
 
 North-western Spain had been previously traversed by 
 Decius Brutus, who penetrated to the Biscay shore, and 
 received the homage of the wild tribes dwelling in the 
 wooded clefts of the Asturias. 
 
 An insurrection of the slaves in Sicily filled Rome at this 
 time with great alarm. Owing to the vast conquests of the 
 century, the market was glutted with captives ; and the hill- 
 sides of every pastoral district were covered with gaunt and 
 shaggy-locked men, who had once worn swords but were 
 now doomed to carry the ignoble goad. Their food was 
 scanty and of the coarsest kind their clothing often what 
 they could strip from the passing traveller their lodging a 
 great bare gloomy jail, lighted with a few narrow loopholes. 
 It is little wonder that the slaves of Southern Italy became 
 brigands at the first opportunity of escape they had.
 
 SEEVILE WAR IN SICILY. 69 
 
 At Enna, the centre of a grazing district in Sicily, the 
 First Servile War broke out. Taking as their chief a Syrian 
 slave named Eunus, who, by pretending to breathe fire and 
 to tell fortunes, had acquired the reputation of a wizard, a 
 mob of infuriated men in sheepskin, armed with sickles, 
 spits, and burned stakes, rushed into the city of Enna, took 
 speedy vengeance on the cruel master and mistress, who had 
 so aggravated the wretchedness of their lot, and broke open 
 all the slave prisons, whose inmates swelled their ranks. 
 
 Eunus, finding himself at the head of ten thousand men, 
 assumed the name of Antiochus. He was soon joined by 
 a reinforcement of revolted slaves from Agrigentum under 
 Cleon. 
 
 The Praetors and Consuls were in turn defeated, until 
 Rupilius reduced Tauromenium by famine, and then ad- 
 vanced upon Enna, which had hitherto resisted assault. 
 The reduction of this stronghold put an end to the insurrec- 
 tion of the slaves. Eunus, who fled like a coward, was 
 taken in a cave, and perished miserably in a dungeon at 
 Murgantia. 
 
 After the conclusion of the war a code of regulations was 
 framed to improve the condition of the agricultural districts ; 
 a change under which Sicily began once more to wear the 
 aspect, which had caused it to be styled The Garden of Italy. 
 131 B.C.
 
 Tiberius Gracchus. 
 His Agrarian Law. 
 Slain in the Capitol. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE GEACCHI. 
 
 Death of Sclpio Minor. I Death of Cains 
 Caius Gracchus. Cornelia. 
 
 Setnpronian Laws. 
 
 THE Servile War was a symptom of the corruption and 
 decay, which had begun to weaken the great Roman Repub- 
 lic. The public elections, at which votes began to be bought 
 and sold, afforded evidence of the same. The State was 
 internally convulsed by the struggles of the Optimates or 
 new nobility, consisting of wealthy Plebeians as well as 
 Patricians, and the Populares, who represented the mass of 
 the people ; and it needed but a very slight fanning to kindle 
 the flame of a Revolution. 
 
 There was then, in Rome a man, aged almost forty, who 
 had long been looking with pitiful eyes upon the condition 
 of the yeomen and small farmers, and who had long cherished 
 the hope of effecting a reform in their favour. His name 
 was Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and he was the son of 
 that statesman of splendid tastes, who in 179 conferred the 
 boon of a judicious treaty upon Spain. But it was perhaps 
 rather from Cornelia, the daughter of the elder Africanus, 
 that Tiberius Gracchus inherited the greatness of his soul. 
 This lady, on becoming a widow, refused the proposals of 
 the King of Egypt, and devoted herself to the care of her 
 three children her daughter Sempronia, and her two sons 
 Tiberius, mild and grave Caius, hot and fiery. The pride 
 of Cornelia in her sons may be understood from her hopeful 
 boast that she sought to be remembered, not as the daughter 
 of Scipio, but as the mother of the Gracchi. 
 
 Tiberius served gallantly as a soldier both at Carthage 
 1 nq and in Spain. In 134 B.c. he was elected to the 
 Tribuneship, and entered with zeal upon his career 
 as a reformer. Before long he proposed an Agra- 
 rian Law, based upon that of Licinius, and levelled at the
 
 THE AGRARIAN WAR OF GRACCHUS. 71 
 
 rich landholders, who had monopolized the Public Lands 
 at merely nominal rents. 
 The chief clauses of this Bill were : 
 
 1. That no head of a family should hold more than 500 jugera of 
 the State lands. 
 
 2. That for every grown son 250 additional jugera were to be 
 allotted; but that the family estate should in no case exceed 1000 
 jugera. 
 
 3. That the surplus land was to be divided in lots of 30 jugera, 
 partly among the needy burgesses, and partly among the Italian allies, 
 to be held in lease from the State, and used for agriculture. 
 
 4. That those giving up their land should receive compensation for 
 improvements. 
 
 5. That the distribution of the lands should be committed to three 
 men (Triumviri). 
 
 When Gracchus in the Forum, paved with brown ex- 
 pectant faces, bade the clerk read his law, Octavius the 
 Tribune, who had been gained over by the aristocracy, put 
 his veto on the proceeding. This prevented the voting for a 
 time. Meanwhile Gracchus sealed up the public treasure- 
 chest, and suspended the business of the Government. 
 Again the Assembly met, and again Octavius exercised his 
 power of forbidding the law to be read. At the entreaty of 
 a friend Gracchus referred the matter to the Senate; but 
 was greeted there with cries of anger. 
 
 He then took a step at variance with the spirit of the 
 Eoman Constitution. By the vote of the Tribes he caused 
 his opponent Octavius to be divested of his office as Tribune ; 
 and the lictors removed the deposed official from his bench. 
 The law was then passed; Tiberius, his brother, and his 
 wife's father being named as Triumvirs to allot the land. 
 
 Gracchus, who now went about the city with a body-guard 
 of some thousand friends, next proposed that the riches of 
 Attalus, King of Pergamus, which had been bequeathed to 
 the Roman people, should be given to those about to receive 
 the allotments, in order to enable them to stock their farms 
 and build dwellings. Other schemes of reform were pro- 
 pounded by him, in view of the approaching Comitia, at 
 which, contrary to Roman law, he intended to offer himself 
 for reelection to the Tribuneship.
 
 72 DEATH OP TIBERIUS GRA CCHUS. 
 
 The first divisions voted for his reelection ; then came a 
 veto, which stopped proceedings for the day. That evening 
 Gracchus, who well knew the effect of dramatic appeal on 
 the hot Italian temperament, walked into the Forum, clad in 
 black, and holding his little son by the hand. As if conscious 
 that his life was in danger, he committed his boy to the 
 care of the people. They raised an encouraging cheer, and 
 some of them guarded his house all night. 
 
 When Tiberius appeared at the Capitol next morning, he 
 was surrounded by a noisy and delighted crowd of ad- 
 herents, amid whose crush he perceived a Senator making 
 signs to him. From this friend he learned that the land- 
 holders, headed by Nasica, who had just made a violent 
 speech in the Senate sitting hard by in the Temple of 
 Fidelity, had resolved to kill him. Tiberius told those 
 nearest in the crowd of his danger, upon which they girt 
 their togas tightly round them, seized the halberds of the 
 sergeants, and broke the staves up into batons of convenient 
 size. Those on the outskirts of the crowd could not hear the 
 Tribune's voice, so that he was obliged to telegraph his 
 danger to them by touching his head with his hand. At 
 once his enemies raised a cry " He seeks a crown" ; and the 
 news flashed into the Senate. Nasica, furious at the Consul 
 for refusing to interfere, called on his supporters to follow 
 him, and, wrapping the skirt of his robe round his head, an 
 action which his followers imitated, made his way to the 
 Capitol. There with clubs and legs torn from the benches 
 the Patrician mob set upon the guards of Gracchus, knock- 
 ing them down on every side. Tiberius fled towards the 
 Temple of Jupiter ; but the doors were shut. In his hurry 
 he tripped over a dead body or a bench, and fell Just as 
 he was rising, a Tribune, one of his own colleagues, beat 
 him down again with the leg of a stool ; another baton fell 
 on his broken skull ; and he sank dead before the statues of 
 the Seven Kings. Three hundred of his partisans shared his 
 fate. Thus perished Tiberius Gracchus in the first sedition 
 that had stained Rome with civil blood. 
 
 Caius Gracchus begged his brother's body for the purpose 
 of burying it ; but it was thrown into the Tiber. 
 
 Scipio, who came home to celebrate his Nuniantian Tri-
 
 THE SUDDEN DEATH OF SC1PIO. 73 
 
 umph, was now the foremost man in Home. A demagogue 
 named Carbo, stirred up the question of the Public Lands 
 again ; and Scipio incurred suspicion of having betrayed 
 Roman interests to the Italians, whose wrongs at the hands 
 of the Triumvirs he had undertaken to make known. He 
 spoke in the Senate on this subject; and all Rome was pre- 
 paring next morning to hear a second oration from him in 
 the Forum, when the news spread that he had been found 
 dead in bed, with the heads of his speech etched on the wax- 
 coated tablet by his pillow, 129 B.C. It was suspected that 
 Carbo had caused him to be strangled. 
 
 Some quiet years succeeded, troubled only by the fears 
 of the Romans and the hopes of the Italians that the fran- 
 chise would be soon extended to the latter. Flaccus, Consul 
 for 125, brought in a Bill to this effect ; but it was laid aside, 
 to the dismay and anger of the Italian towns. Fregellse 
 took up arms in the rage of disappointment, but suffered 
 severely for its rashness. 
 
 Meanwhile Caius Gracchus had been serving as Qusestor 
 in Sardinia, where the Senate would gladly have kept him 
 a third year. But he chose to come home in 124 B.C. ; and, 
 when summoned before the Censors that he might be pub- 
 licly rebuked and expelled from the Senate, he silenced his 
 enemies by his bold words. 
 
 " I have served twelve campaigns," said he, " although I 
 needed to have served only ten. As Qusestor I attended my 
 general three years, though the law would have allowed me 
 to return home after one. The purse I carried with me 
 full has come back empty ; yet I know men, who carried 
 out barrels full of wine, and brought them back full of gold 
 and silver." 
 
 In 123 B.C. Caius Gracchus was fourth on the list at the 
 election of Tribunes of the people. So great was the throng 
 that flowed into the city to vote for him, that some were 
 forced to answer from the house-tops. He shone out now 
 in full lustre as an accomplished orator, so careful in the 
 modulation of his voice that a slave, standing behind him 
 with a flute, gave him the proper note on which to begin. 
 One subject filled and coloured all his speeches the death 
 of his brother Tiberius; and bitterly he reproached the 
 
 1124} 6
 
 74 THE SEMPRONIA.N LAWS. 
 
 Commons for permitting their champion to be slain and his 
 sacred office degraded. 
 
 A sketch like this cannot describe all the laws he brought 
 forward some aimed at those concerned in the murder of 
 his brother others (called the Sempronian Laws) intended 
 to improve the condition of the people or weaken the power 
 of the Senate. The distribution of the Public Lands and 
 the sale of corn at a low price to the poor were among the 
 objects he strove to attain. It was owing to his desire to 
 divide the aristocracy, that the order of Equites, principally 
 consisting of wealthy merchants and entitled to wear a gold 
 finger-ring as their badge, received distinct recognition. 
 
 Having caused the election of Fannius, an old friend of 
 Tiberius, as one of the Consuls, to the exclusion of the 
 Patrician Opimius, Gracchus was himself reflected to the 
 Tribuneship by the unanimous acclaim of the people. One 
 of his colleagues was Fulvius Flaccus, who without delay 
 brought forward his favourite scheme for the extension of the 
 franchise to the Latin and Italian allies. Drusus put a veto 
 on the law to the great delight of the Romans. 
 
 This young Tribune then quite eclipsed the scheme of 
 colouization at Capua and Tarentum, framed by Gracchus, 
 by proposing to form twelve new colonies, each of three 
 thousand families, who should receive land, but pay no rent. 
 
 Gracchus had already fixed on Carthage as the site for a 
 new colony, to be called Junouia. Going thither with 
 Flaccus to allot the land, he met with omens that seemed to 
 portend disaster. The new flag-staff was snapped by a 
 storm, which blew the sacrifices from the altars ; and wolves 
 tore down the boundary marks of the new city. On his 
 return, a man most hostile to him Opimius the Patrician 
 was elected Consul ; and the horizon seemed charged with 
 etorm. Neither Gracchus nor Flaccus had meanwhile been 
 recalled to the Tribunes' bench. 
 
 The policy of Opimius was to repeal the laws of Gracchus, 
 
 and so provoke him to some act which would justify 
 
 121 his destruction. It was accordingly proposed amongst 
 
 B.C. other things to annul the law for the colonization 
 of Carthage. 
 
 On the appointed day a lictor at the Capitol, pushing
 
 DEATH OF CAIUS GRACCHUS. 75 
 
 rudely past with the entrails of the sacrifices, cried out to 
 Gracchus, as he jostled him aside, " Make way for honest 
 men !" The ex-Tribune looked sternly at the insolent official, 
 and some rash hand struck a dagger into the man's breast. 
 A heavy rain dispersed the crowd ; but the body of the 
 dead lictor was carried publicly on a bier to the Senate- 
 house. Opimius, having received a senatorial decree, which 
 sanctioned the destruction of Gracchus as a public enemy, 
 summoned the Patricians and their slaves to arms. Flaccus 
 collected a band in his house, plied them all night with 
 wine, and next morning led them with Celtic weapons in 
 their hands to the Aventine. 
 
 Thither too went Gracchus, in spite of his wife's clinging 
 entreaties. He wore his toga, but had a little dagger below 
 its folds. After some attempts on the side of Gracchus at 
 reconciliation, the forces of Opimius advanced and discharged 
 a shower of arrows, which had the effect of dispersing the 
 rebels at once. Flaccus, caught hiding in a bath, was killed. 
 Gracchus went into the Temple of Diana to kill himself, but 
 a friend removed his dagger. He then crossed the Tiber by 
 the Sublician Bridge, at the head of which, to cover his 
 escape, two of his friends emulated the ancient heroism of 
 Horatius. In a grove sacred to the Furies, a little farther 
 on, the ex-Tribune was found dead, pierced at his own com- 
 mand by the sword of a faithful servant, who then slew 
 himself. Its weight in gold had been offered for his head: 
 a soldier named Septimuleius took out the brain, filled the 
 cavity with lead, and carried off a large sum as the reward 
 of his sorry trick. The body was thrown into the Tiber, 
 whose yellow current rolled also hundreds of his partisans 
 to the sea. 
 
 Cornelia survived her sons, of whose fate she was wont 
 to speak calmly and proudly to the learned men who fre- 
 quented her table at Misenum. Her early hope was fulfilled, 
 when on the pedestal of the bronze statue, which was raised 
 to her memory in the Forum, were carved the words, " Cor- 
 nelia, mother of the Gracchi."
 
 76 GREAT ROMAN NAMES. 
 
 GREAT NAMES OF ROMAN LITERATURE, &c. 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 LTVTUS ANDRONICUS, earliest Roman poet a Greek slave set free 
 wrote tragedies and comedies in Latin first play acted 240 B.C. 
 
 N2EVTTJS, poet born probably in Campania a champion of tbe 
 Plebeian cause exiled to Utica died there about 202 B.C. wrote 
 a poem on the First Punic War, besides plays. 
 
 PLAUTUS, comic poet born at Sarsina in Umbria about 254 B.C. at 
 first an actor's and a baker's drudge died 184 B.C. his Comedies 
 are founded on Greek originals. 
 
 ENNITTS, poet of Greek birth native of Rudise in Calabria born 
 239 B.C. friend of the Scipios author of an historical epic, the 
 Annates, of which there are fragments. 
 
 CATO, the Censor born atTusculum in 234 B.C. noted for his hatred 
 of luxury the great rival of Scipio Africanus the elder died 
 149 B.C. author of De Re Rustica, a household and rural mis- 
 cellany Letters to his son and an historical work, Origineaof 
 the two last we have only fragments. 
 
 TERENCE, comic poet born at Carthage 195 B.C. slave of a Roman 
 Senator, who set him free his chief patrons were Lselius and the 
 younger Scipio died in Greece about 159 B.C. six of his plays 
 remain he acquired fame by the Andria. 
 
 LUCILIUS, satirist born at Suessa of the Aurunci, 148 B.C. died at 
 Naples 103 B.C. friend of Scipio and Laelius earliest of the four 
 great writers of Latin Satire.
 
 THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 Jugurthine War. 
 Teutoncs and Cimbri. 
 Saturninus and Dmsus. 
 Social War. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 MARIUS AND SULLA. 
 
 First Mithridatic War. 
 Flight of Marius. 
 
 Return of Strife. 
 The Colline Gate 
 
 Marius in Rome. I Proscriptions. 
 
 His death. Puteoli. 
 
 IN 111 the Jugurthine War began. When Micipsa,the son 
 of Masinissa, died, he left his kingdom to his two sons, 
 Hierapsal and Adherbal, and their illegitimate cousin, 
 Jugurtha, whom he named Regent and guardian. Jugurtha 
 murdered Hiempsal, and made war on Adherbal, who fled 
 to Rome. Sowing gold broad-cast, Jugurtha then contrived 
 to induce the Roman Senate to divide the kingdom so as to 
 leave him the western and stronger half. He lost no time 
 in besieging Cirta, his cousin's capital; and, having got 
 possession of Adherbal, put him to death by torture. 
 
 The Romans then declared war against Jugurtha. By 
 his golden bribes, however, Jugurtha managed to render 
 the Roman generals very slack in their efforts ; but Mem- 
 mius the Tribune boldly exposed his wiles, and urged the 
 people to continue the war. The crafty African now ap- 
 peared in Rome as a suppliant ; but, when news came that 
 Massiva, grandson of Masinissa, had been murdered by his 
 means, he received orders to depart at once from the city. 
 
 After the war had lingered for two years, the conduct of 
 it was given to Quintus Metellus, who took with him as 
 one of his lieutenants Caius Marius, a man of rough un- 
 daunted bearing, then verging upon fifty years of age. 
 
 Marius was born near Arpinum in 157 B.C. the son of
 
 78 THE JUGUBTHINE WAR. 
 
 a Latin yeoman. At the siege of Numantia and elsewhere 
 he fought so bravely that when Scipio was asked one night 
 at supper where a great general would be found when he 
 was gone, he laid his hand on Marius' shoulder and said, 
 " Here, perhaps." Becoming Tribune of the Plebs in 119, 
 Marius displayed undaunted spirit in resisting the Patricians. 
 On one occasion he forced the Senate to pass a Bill against 
 illegal voting, by committing the Consul Metellus to prison. 
 Under the brother of that Consul, Marius, who meanwhile 
 had held the Praetorship and fought in Spain, went upon the 
 Jugurthine War. 
 
 The first care of Metellus was to organize and discipline 
 his army : this occupied the autumn of 109 B.C. 
 
 In the following year Jugurtha made a bold stand against 
 the Romans at the River Muthul, but was defeated with 
 the loss of many elephants. The siege of Zama then occu- 
 pied the Legions until the surprise of his camp by Jugurtha, 
 and the resistance of the place compelled Metellus to go into 
 winter quarters. 
 
 Negotiations were opened with Jugurtha, who had even 
 given up his elephants and deserters, and had promised to 
 pay 200,000 pounds of silver, when a demand for the sur- 
 render of the King himself suddenly destroyed all hopes 
 of peace. 
 
 In 107 the troops of Metellus marched inland across a 
 desert, carrying skins full of water, to take the town of 
 Thala, whither Jugurtha had retired with his children and 
 his money-bags. But the King escaped, and soon found a 
 refuge with his father-in-law, Bocchus, King of Mauretania. 
 
 Meanwhile Marius, whose constant saying in the camp 
 was, " Give me half the army, and I will soon have Jugurtha 
 in chains," had gone to Rome to stand for the Consulship. 
 Metellus, sneering at his pretensions, had delayed his leave 
 of absence as long as possible. But the people greeted him 
 with joy, and he was elected by a vast majority of votes 
 107 B.C. 
 
 The next step of Marius was to obtain a vote of the Tribes 
 transferring to himself the command of the Jugurthine army, 
 which the Senate had decreed to Metellus until the com- 
 pletion of the war. Then, having made vast levies, drawn
 
 THE FATE OF JUGURTHA. 79 
 
 even from the lowest class on the Censor's register, he went 
 over to Africa. 
 
 The war was virtually over, the only remaining task being 
 to secure the person of Jugurtha. Marius, however, took 
 Capsa in the desert, and wasted his energies on a fortress 
 by the Molochath, in returning from which a vast body of 
 African cavalry threatened his army with destruction, but 
 were scattered by a surprise. They hung menacingly on his 
 rear, until Sulla the Quaestor with his cavalry force completed 
 their dispersion. 
 
 Sulla, who was afterwards to come into such fatal rivalry 
 with Marius, was a bold blue-eyed guardsman of thirty-one, 
 whose pale and pimpled face told of deep drinking and a 
 dissolute life. He possessed the art of pleasing men, and in 
 cavalry fighting was the Murat of the ancient world. 
 
 The capture of Jugurtha was mainly due to the dar- 
 ing of Sulla, who went, on peril of his life, or at least his 
 liberty, into the camp of Bocchus to treat for the betrayal 
 of the Numidian King. The cool diplomacy of the young 
 Roman gained its end. Entrapped into an ambush by the 
 wiles of his wife's father, Jugurtha was seized in the midst 
 of the dead bodies of his guard. 
 
 Marius did not much relish the claims of Sulla to the sole 
 honour of this capture. The captive King walked in chains 
 before the chariot of the triumphant Consul. The mob rent 
 his clothes off, and twitched the jewels from his bleeding 
 ears. " What a bath of ice !" exclaimed the African, as they 
 thrust him into the old underground cell at the Capitol to 
 starve to death, 104 B.C. 
 
 Gauda, his puny and imbecile half-brother, was then made 
 King of Numidia^ which however was much diminished in 
 size by an addition to Mauretania. 
 
 Meanwhile a terrible cloud, growing blacker every year, 
 had been hanging over the northern frontier of the Roman 
 dominions. A vast multitude of barbarians, principally 
 consisting of the Cimbri and Teutones, tribes of the Ger- 
 manic race, came pouring from the north ; and one Roman 
 general after another had been learning by defeat to dread 
 the red glitter of their copper helmets, and the sweeping 
 whirl of their long swords. From 113 B.C., when the home-
 
 80 THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES. 
 
 less Cimbri first defeated Carbo in Carinthia, down to 105 
 B.C., when disaster culminated in the defeat of Maximus 
 and Caepio at Arausio (Orange) on the Rhone a defeat 
 which cost Rome eighty thousand soldiers blow after blow 
 fell upon the dismayed legionaries. In this crisis all eyes 
 turned to Marius. He was still in Africa with the army ; 
 but in his absence, in spite of the law against reelection to 
 the Consulship, be was made Consul for the second time, 
 and that distinction was afterwards conferred upon him for 
 five successive years (104-100). The expedition of the 
 Cimbri to Spain, where they met their match in the Celti- 
 berians, delayed their invasion of Italy for a while. But in 
 102 B.C. the movement, so much dreaded at Rome, began. 
 In two divisions the barbarians prepared to enter Italy. 
 The Teutones and Ambrones moved down the Rhone to 
 gain the sea-coast road. Marius lay in an intrenched camp 
 at the junction of the Isere and Rhone. In vain they flung 
 themselves upon his works. Giving up the useless enter- 
 prise, they marched past, jibing at the Romans as they 
 went. Marius followed. At the wells of Aqure Sextise (Aix) 
 the light troops of his army came into collision with the 
 Ambrones. A conflict ensued, closing with the defeat of the 
 
 latter. Next day a great battle took place. Till 
 102 noon the Romans and Teutones stood locked in 
 B.C. mortal struggle ; until the scorching sun wearied 
 
 the latter, and a stratagem, similar to that which 
 won Banuockburn the rush of some camp-followers from 
 an ambuscade decided the day for Rome. The grapes of 
 Aix were very plentiful and luscious for many an autumn 
 after that bloody day. 
 
 Meanwhile Catulus waited on the Adige for the Cimbri, 
 who were expected by the Tyrol. Early in 101 B.C. they 
 came, descending the glaciers of the Brenner Pass on their 
 shields. The Romans gave way for a time, but rallied on 
 the Po. Marius came to the aid of Catnlus, and the battle 
 took place on the Raudian Plain below Vercellse. 
 - - The front lines of the Cimbrian phalanx had a 
 
 chain passed through every belt to keep the array 
 
 unbroken. But the heat of an Italian sky and the 
 deadly rain of Roman javelins weakened and disordered
 
 THE SEDITION OF SATURNINUS. 81 
 
 the barbarians. They were driven back upon the waggons 
 that walled in their camp, where their wives stood shrieking 
 and hurling stones. The slaughter was dreadful ; many of 
 the savage women strangled themselves with their own 
 hair. All fear of the northern invasion was dissipated by 
 these two great victories. 
 
 Out of the necessities of this war grew a second insurrec- 
 tion of the slaves in Sicily, who rose in discontent because 
 the Roman Praetor suspended the action of a senatorial de- 
 cree giving freedom to those unduly kept in slavery. The 
 story is like that of the First Servile War. A soothsayer 
 named Salvius headed the insurrection in the east of Sicily. 
 He failed in the siege of Murgantia. A fortune-teller named 
 Athenio headed a rising in the west of the island, and failed 
 to take Lilybaeum. Salvius assumed regal state and the 
 name Tryphon. Athenio succeeded him as chieftain of the 
 slaves. The Consul Aquillius crushed the rebellion ; and a 
 number of the slaves, brought as gladiators to fight in the 
 arena, slew one another at the foot of the altars, until one 
 man, being left, fell upon his sword. The war lasted for 
 three years (103 B.C. 101 B.C.) 
 
 Rome was now troubled by the combination with Marius 
 of two demagogues, the impudent witty Glaucia and the 
 fiery Saturninus. The three secured their election in 100 
 B.C. Marius as Consul, Glaucia as Praetor, Saturninus as 
 Tribune of the Plebs. The last-named introduced an 
 Agrarian Law to divide the lands in Gaul, lately held by the 
 Cimbri, among the soldiers of Marius ; and, by the aid of the 
 veterans, forcibly carried the measure in spite of senatorial op- 
 position. Metellus, an opponent of this measure, was forced 
 into exile; Saturninus murdered his leading antagonists. 
 But the beating to death of Memmius, candidate against 
 Glaucia for the Consulship, roused a furious flame of rage 
 against Saturninus. Marius led a force against his late 
 accomplice, who fled to the Capitol with Glaucia and others. 
 The cutting of the water-pipes reduced the insurgents to the 
 necessity of surrender; and some young nobles, climbing 
 on the roof of the temporary prison, tore off the tiles, and 
 hurled them down with fatal aim on the wretches beneath 
 (100 B.C.).
 
 82 THE SOCIAL OR MARSIC WAR. 
 
 A Tribune named Livius Drusus, attempting a reform of 
 the State, proposed in 91 B.C. certain measures called the 
 Livian Laws. They related to the functions of jurymen, the 
 planting of colonies, the distribution of grain, and, most im- 
 portant of all, the extension of the franchise to the Italian 
 allies. After a sharp struggle with the Roman capitalists, 
 the laws were annulled, and their author was struck down 
 by the hand of an assassin one evening in the twilight at 
 his own door. His death, uprooting the hopes of the Italians, 
 caused the outbreak of a fierce and desolating struggle, 
 known in Roman history as the Social or Marsic War 
 (90-88 B.C.). 
 
 The war began by a massacre of Romans at Asculum in 
 Picenum. The warlike Marsians took the lead in the 
 hostile movement, which soon overspread all Central and 
 Southern Italy. 
 
 Corfinium in the Pelignian territory was selected to be 
 the capital of the new Italian Republic. Two Consuls were 
 elected, each with six Praetors. Coins were struck in silver 
 with legends, alternately in the Latin and the Samnite tongue, 
 some of them bearing an impression of the Sabellian oi 
 struggling with the Roman she-wolf. 
 
 The first campaign was decidedly unfavourable to Rome. 
 Campania was overrun by the revolted tribes; and the 
 Marsian Consul Silo signally defeated the Roman Consul 
 Lupus on the Tolenus. Marius, who was acting as Legate 
 under the Consul, saw dead bodies floating down the stream, 
 and came too late to the rescue. 
 
 At the beginning of the second year the Romans had the 
 wisdom to pass the Julian Law, extending the franchise to 
 such allies as had not appeared in arms or were now inclined 
 to lay them down. This had the effect of tranquillizing 
 Etruria and Umbria, then simmering into incipient re- 
 bellion ; but some of the allies it hardened into more 
 resolute defiance. Latin was now disused on the Con- 
 federate coinage, on which appeared only legends in the old 
 Oscan tongue. 
 
 But the second campaign turned the tide of war. By the 
 death of the Consul Cato his lieutenant Sulla received the 
 command in Campania, whence he drove the enemy. The
 
 CONTEST BETWEEN MARIUS AND SULLA. 83 
 
 Consul Pompeius took Corfinium, upon which the revolt 
 centred in Bovianum, a fortress of the Pentrian Samnites. 
 The betrayal of this place to Sulla, and the surrender of 
 Asculum brought the war to a close. The allies had been 
 well officered during the war. One of their generals Juda- 
 cilius committed suicide with much ceremony at Asculum 
 before its surreuder. After supping with his friends he 
 left the hall, drank a goblet of poisoned wine, and ascended 
 a pyre, to which his guests applied torches. 
 
 Arrangements were now made for admitting to the Latin 
 franchise even communities between the Po and the Alps ; 
 but this concession was qualified. The Samnites still 
 remained in arms ; although the Social War was over. 
 
 During the Social War the allies had sent an embassy 
 seeking aid from Mithridates VI., King of Pontus, and had 
 received a promise of help. This monarch, a learned and 
 clever man, being irritated at the loss of Phrygia, which the 
 Romans had given to his father but had lately taken back, 
 interfered in the affairs of Cappadocia and Bithynia, and 
 established himself in Pergamus as the deliverer of Asia 
 Minor from the Roman yoke. The Romans declared war 
 against him, and appointed Sulla to the command ; a pro- 
 ceeding which gave bitter offence to Marius, now growing 
 old and fat. 
 
 Aided by the Tribune Sulpicius, who caused the Italians 
 to be distributed among the tribes, and made all freedmen 
 who had served in the Italian Wars equal with the old 
 citizens, Marius managed to have the command transferred 
 from Sulla to himself. 
 
 Sulla, hurrying to Nola, found himself already ousted 
 from command, upon which he made a speech to his soldiers 
 that kindled them into furious action. They stoned the 
 officers of Marius, and demanded to be led to Rome. In 
 conjunction with the Consul Pompeius, Sulla advanced, and, 
 seizing the approaches to the city, entered it with two 
 legions. A furious conflict in the streets resulted in the 
 victory of Sulla and the flight of Marius, who with eleven 
 others was pronounced a traitor. Sulpicius, one of the eleven, 
 was arrested and killed. 
 
 The adventures of Marius were manifold. Sailing from
 
 84 THE ADVENTURES OP MARIUS. 
 
 Ostia, he was driven by a storm to land at Circeii. After 
 plodding along the shore for two weary days, and hiding in a 
 forest to escape the cavalry who were scouring the country, 
 he caught sight of two ships, and plunged into the sea to 
 swim out to one of them. The horsemen galloped down 
 to the beach, and shouted to the captain to yield up Marius, 
 who, wet and exhausted, pleaded with tears to be re- 
 tained. The captain kept him for the time, but soon, 
 lauding him at the Liris on pretence of having to wait for 
 the land wind, put out to sea, leaving him alone. A herds- 
 man hid him among the reeds ; but the approach of some 
 horsemen, who asked about him, frightened him so much that 
 he plunged into the river, whence he was dragged all wet 
 and muddy to the jail of Minturnse. After some hesitation 
 it was resolved by the town council to obey Sulla and kill 
 the great captive. A Celtic slave was sent, sword in hand, 
 into the dark cell to do the deed ; but the fiery eyes of the 
 old lion crouching in the corner, and the thunderous growl 
 of his question, " Barest thou slay Caius Marius ?" so 
 frightened or touched the man that he flung the weapon 
 down and fled. The magistrates then permitted Marius to 
 escape. He got on board a ship and landed near Carthage. 
 The Prsetor sent a messenger requiring him to leave the 
 province at once ; and, when the quailing officer, fixed by a 
 glare of the imperial eye, asked what answer he should 
 return, the veteran replied, " Tell him that you saw Caius 
 Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage." Marius and 
 his son afterwards obtained leave to remain in Africa. 
 
 Sulla went to Greece in 87 B.C. for the purpose of opposing 
 Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, who had occupied 
 Athens. After a tedious siege the Roman general made 
 himself master of Athens and the Piraeus (86 B.C.); but 
 sullied his laurels by committing to the flames the grand 
 old buildings and monuments of the historic city. He then 
 defeated the Pontic armies in the battles of Chaeronea and 
 Orchomenus.^ > 
 
 Meanwhile' at Rome the Old and the New Citizens con- 
 tinued their contentions. The Consul Cinna, heading the 
 latter faction, was stripped of his authority and expelled from 
 the city by the Senate. He went to Nola, where he managed
 
 THE MARIAN MASSACRE. 85 
 
 to secure in his favour not only a part of Sulla's army, dis- 
 contented at not being taken to the Eastern War, but also 
 the Samnite garrison of the place. Many of the Italian 
 cities also declared for him. He entered into correspondence 
 with Marius, who came to Etruria and accepted service 
 under his banner. The united armies, surrounding Rome, 
 forced the trembling Senate to invite them into the city, 
 which Marius entered with ragged unkempt beard and hair, 
 and an ominous frown upon his brow. 
 
 For many days Rome ran red with slaughter. Any man, 
 who passed Marius without a low obeisance, was slain on 
 the spot. The gory head of an orator, who had formerly 
 spoken against the general, was brought in a 
 charger to his supper-table. The dagger paid 87 
 many a grudge and cancelled many a debt during B.C. 
 that week of terror in Rome ; and the slaves ran 
 riot with the treasures of their murdered masters. It was 
 not until Sertorius, an officer of Cinna, began to slay the 
 butchers with the edge of the sword, that the wholesale 
 murdering abated. Sulla's house was thrown down ; and his 
 name branded as that of a traitor. 
 
 When the time came round, Marius without any election 
 assumed the Consulship in company with Cinna. It was 
 the seventh time for the peasant of Arpinum. Thirteen 
 days later, drunk with blood and wine, he laid down the life 
 he had latterly so terribly abused (86 B.C.). 
 
 Before the victory of Sulla at Orchomenus the Marian 
 party had sent Flaccus into Greece to supersede him in the 
 conduct of the Mithridatic War. This general, however, 
 was murdered near the Hellespont by his own Legate, 
 Fimbria, who then made war on Mithridates. Sulla now 
 saw the importance of concluding a peace with the Pontic 
 King, with whom he held a favourable conference in the 
 Troad. The terms agreed to were that Mithridates should 
 resume his old position, abandoning all his conquests, paying 
 the costs of the war, and giving up his ships (84 B.C.). Sulla 
 then blockaded Fimbria in Thyatira. The desertion of his 
 soldiers left the adventurer helpless ; he fled to Pergamus 
 and killed himself. 
 
 Sulla enriched his soldiers with wealth extorted from
 
 86 THE ENTERPRISE OF SULLA. 
 
 Asia Minor, before he sailed from Ephesus to Athens. 
 Thence he took the valuable library of Apellicon. Marching 
 overland to Patrse on the other side of Greece, he embarked 
 his troops there, and landed at Brundusium in Italy early 
 in 83 B.C. 
 
 Meanwhile the Consuls Carbo and Cinna had been making 
 great preparations to oppose him. A force of two hundred 
 thousand was gathered for the war; and some divisions 
 were shipped across to Dalmatia. But in a mutiny that 
 broke out at Ancona Cinna was killed by the blow of a 
 stone; and Carbo then gave up the idea of a contest in 
 Greece. 
 
 Sulla's army consisted at first of only forty thousand 
 men, but he was joined by several persons of 
 
 83 note, among whom were two young men named 
 
 B.C. Poinpey and Crassus. We shall hear of them 
 again. 
 
 Giving strict orders to his soldiers to injure the property 
 of the Italians in no way, Sulla marched over the Apennines 
 into Campania. There he defeated the Consul Norbanus 
 at Capua ; and at Teanum by bribery and soft words tricked 
 Scipio out of an army, which joined his banner in a mass. 
 Sertorius, the Legate, who had warned Scipio against the 
 foxy wiles of Sulla, escaped into Spain. Then came the 
 winter, during which both sides braced their strength for a 
 final struggle. 
 
 Carbo and young Marius were the new Consuls. The 
 latter, defying Sulla to fight, lost the battle of 
 
 82 Sacriportus by the desertion of some cohorts, and 
 
 B.C. was obliged to shut himself up in Prseneste, 
 leaving the way open to Rome. A secret message, 
 which he sent to the Prsetor of the city, caused the massacre 
 of Sulla's adherents in the Senate. 
 
 Leaving an officer to besiege Prseneste, Sulla then pro- 
 ceeded to Rome ; but almost immediately afterwards went 
 up the Clanis to attack the camp of Carbo in Etruria. 
 While engaged in this enterprise, he heard that an army of 
 Samnites and Lucanians under two brave princes was on 
 the march from the mountains to relieve Prseneste. Then 
 began a race, which Sulla won. When the mountaineers
 
 BATTLE OF THE COLLINE GATE. 87 
 
 reached the passes leading to the city of their destination, 
 they found the soldiers of Sulla guarding all the approaches 
 and covering Praeneste. And so for a while the armies 
 waited, like tigers crouched for a spring. 2^-^ 
 
 The success of Metellus at Placentianntne valley of the 
 Po, and other disasters so disheartened Carbo that he fled to 
 Africa. The fragments of his army effected a junction with 
 the Samnites and Lucanians, and the united forces marched 
 to Rome by the Latin Road, and came in the evening to the 
 Colline Gate. It was a night of terrible suspense in Rome. 
 Pontius at dawn assured his men that the Roman wolf had 
 now been tracked home to its lair, and would soon be 
 deprived of all power to harm. Then the allies assailed the 
 gate and walls. Before long the helmets of approaching 
 horsemen were seen glittering from a cloud of dust. It was 
 Sulla's vanguard. By noon his whole army had arrived, 
 and in spite of their weariness the conflict began at once. 
 Conspicuous on a white horse, Sulla, in person led the left 
 wing against the Samnites, while the right under Crassus 
 assailed Carbo's men. The victory of the latter was easy 
 and complete; Sulla held his own against the Samnites, 
 but when night fell he had been driven back against the 
 walL Joining Crassus in the darkness, he continued the 
 struggle next day, and won a decisive victory. Among the 
 fifty thousand slain was Pontius the Samnite chief. Sulla 
 met the assembled Senate in the Temple of Bellona, and, as 
 business was beginning, from the neighbouring Circus there 
 arose the rattle of armour and cries of pain. Some of the 
 Senate started up in dismay ; but Sulla coolly cried, " Sit 
 down. It is only a few wretches undergoing the punish- 
 ment they deserve." The few wretches numbered six 
 thousand of the Samnite race, who were butchered in cold 
 blood (82 B.C.). 
 
 Young Marius, seeing the surrender of Prsneste inevi- 
 table, attempted to escape by a subterranean passage in 
 company with the brother of Pontius. They found the en- 
 trance blocked up, and agreed to kill each other. Marius, 
 being only wounded at first, induced a slave to give him a 
 mortal stab. 
 The Second Mithridatic War forms a small episode of the
 
 88 PROSCRIPTIONS OF SULLA. 
 
 time (83-81 B.C.). The Pontic King refused to restore 
 Cappadocia, as agreed upon in the treaty. LIurena, the 
 Roman lieutenant, instigated by Archelaus, now a deserter, 
 invaded that kingdom, but was defeated by Mithridates at 
 Sinope. Peace was soon afterwards made. 
 
 The massacre of Marius was kind and gentle compared 
 with the Proscriptions of Sulla. Lists of doomed men were 
 published from day to day ; and two talents were paid to 
 the slayer of any one whose name was written therein. 
 Men, who wished another slain, had his name inserted. 
 Slaves slew their masters ; sons, their fathers ; wives got 
 their husbands proscribed. The porch of Sulla's house was 
 full of gory heads. Foremost among the human fiends of 
 this dreadful time was Catiline the Conspirator. In those 
 parts of Italy, which had taken up arms for Marius, the 
 same bloody business was done 
 
 Assuming for an indefinite time the title and state of 
 Dictator an office disused since the Second Punic War 
 Sulla proceeded to shape the Roman Constitution after his 
 own tastes. He rewarded the army to which he owed his 
 position by allotments in different parts of Italy, where 
 lands had been confiscated. To ten thousand slaves he gave 
 the Roman franchise, in order to surround himself with a 
 devoted body-guard. These called themselves the Cornelii. 
 Space will not permit us to detail his reforms, which aimed 
 at the restoration of the ancient Constitution. His Criminal 
 Code was a success ; his Political Reforms were for the most 
 part unavailing. 
 
 In 80 B.C. Sulla laid down the Dictatorship, and retired 
 to his villa at Puteoli. There, often floating over the 
 sapphire waters of the beautiful bay, hunting in the chest- 
 nut glades, or jesting and singing with a rose-garland on 
 his brow and a wine-cup in his hand, he spent the last two 
 years of his life in ease or sensuality. The task of compos- 
 ing Memorials of his Time in Greek, gave occupation to his 
 evenings ; and he was engaged on this work two days before 
 his death. The rupture of a blood-vessel carried him off in 
 his sixtieth year, (78 B.C.). ^ ^* w
 
 Scrtorian War. 
 
 Spavtacus. 
 
 The Cilician Pirates. 
 
 Third Mitliridatic War. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 POMPEY AND C.ESAR. 
 
 Catiline and Cicero. 
 First Triumvirate. 
 Caesar in Gaul 
 The Rubicon. 
 
 Pharsalia. 
 Murder of Pompey. 
 Tliapsus and Munda. 
 Murder of Csesar. 
 
 POMPEY, son of the avaricious Strabo, whose death by 
 lightning pleased everybody, was born in 106 B.C. We 
 have already seen him levying troops in Picenum and join- 
 ing the banner of Sulla, to whom he rendered the greatest 
 service. Before the death of the Dictator this gallant youth 
 was sent to Sicily, where Carbo was at the head of a frag- 
 ment of the Marian party. Pompey defeated and slew 
 Carbo, after which he received orders to carry the war into 
 Africa against Domitius Ahenobarbus (Brassbeard). He 
 had some difficulty in getting his troops away from Car- 
 thage, where they all began to dig for buried gold among the 
 ruins ; but in the short space of forty days he succeeded in 
 defeating Brassbeard, and got besides some noble sport 
 among the lions and elephants of the region. When Sulla 
 saw this young man of twenty-four the idol of his soldiers, 
 he prudently greeted him with the title of Magnus; and, 
 though unwilling at first to adopt so unusual a course, 
 allowed him to enjoy the honour of a Triumph, although he 
 had not reached senatorial rank. 
 
 After Sulla's death the Consul Lepidus, aiming at supreme 
 power, raised an army in Transalpine Gaul and marched to 
 Eome. His colleague Catulus, and his former supporter 
 Pompey defeated him at the Milvian Bridge ; but his 
 lieutenant Brutus held out long in Mutina (Modenci). Him 
 however Pompey afterwards subdued and put to death. 
 
 The brave Sertorius had meanwhile gallantly maintained 
 the Marian cause in Spain. His wisdom and kindness won 
 the favour of the Spaniards, whose superstitious feelings
 
 90 THE SERTORIAN WAR. 
 
 were also touched, when they saw a tame white doe always 
 at his heels. Organizing a Senate of three hundred, partly 
 Roman, partly Spanish, and establishing at Osca (Huesca) a 
 school in which Spanish boys were taught Greek and Latin, 
 he made his party so strong in Spain, that the new western 
 republic bore all the assaults of Metellus Pius the Roman 
 general Pompey sought and obtained from the Senate the. 
 command in Spain as Proconsul. The success of Sertorius 
 continued. He took Lauron : Pompey defeated his lieu- 
 tenants near Valencia. On the Sucro they came face to 
 face ; and it was the approach of Metellus that saved 
 Pompey. " Ah," cried sarcastic Sertorius, " what a whip- 
 ping I should have given the boy, if the old lady had not 
 come up !" The difficulty of meeting a guerilla force, which 
 melted before attack to reunite unexpectedly in a new place, 
 prolonged the war. Sertorius concluded a treaty with 
 Mithridates, in order that Rome might be assailed both on 
 the east and the west ; but his assassination in 72 B.C., at 
 Osca at the supper-table of Perperna, one of the lieutenants 
 of Lepidus who had joined him, changed the aspect of affairs. 
 Perperna, who took the chief command, was easily defeated, 
 and slain by Pompey.X 
 
 In 73 B.C. Spartacus, a Tliracian gladiator, making his 
 escape from the school of Capua, made a stand on Mount 
 Vesuvius, where he was joined by so many gladiators and 
 slaves that he was able to defeat the Roman Praetors. He 
 then went ravaging through Picenum into Cisalpine Gaul 
 and back to the very extremity of the southern peninsula; 
 where he besieged Rhegium in the hope of getting over to 
 Sicily, the nest of all Servile Wars. He paid some pirates 
 to ferry his army across, but they took the money and 
 sailed away. Crassus, to whom the war was intrusted, 
 drew a line across the upper part of Calabria, 
 71 for the purpose of confining Spartacus to the 
 B.C. foot of the Italian boot ; but the gladiator broke 
 through, and darted on Brundusium in the hope of 
 seizing ships. Baffled there by the presence of a Roman 
 force, he turned back to fight with Crassus, who was pur- 
 suing him. A terrible struggle ensued, in which Spartacus 
 was defeated and slain (71 B.C.). The victor strung up the
 
 POMPEY DEFEATS THE PIRATES. 91 
 
 bodies of his captives to the number of six thousand along 
 the road from Rome to Capua. Pompey, returning from 
 Spain, intercepted a body of fugitives in the north of Italy, 
 and put them all to the sword ; an achievement which led 
 him to claim the honour of having " cut up the war by the 
 roots." 
 
 Pompey and Crassus obtained the Consulship in the year 
 70 B.C., mainly owing to the trained armies they kept to- 
 gether. One of Pompey's principal achievements in politics 
 during the year was the restoration to the Tribunes of 
 that power which Sulla had taken from them. 
 
 The Mediterranean was at that time infested with swarms 
 of pirates, who, encouraged by Mithridates, the Pontic 
 King, made descents upon the Italian shores in galleys, often 
 gleaming with purple and gold. So daring had they become 
 that they descended even upon Ostia, and were wont to 
 plunder the villas and seize the wealthy Romans on the 
 roads not far from the Capitol. Roman commerce 
 was for the time paralyzed. In 67 B.C. Gabinius 67 
 proposed that the task of attacking these pirates B.C. 
 should be intrusted to a consular person. Pompey 
 was meant by this phrase ; and to him the command was 
 given. Dividing the Mediterranean into thirteen districts, 
 and spreading the fleet over these, he swept the sea as with 
 a net, driving the pirates before him towards their chief 
 nest in Cilicia, where they held the gorges of Taurus. In 
 forty days the western sea was clear. Then, brushing the 
 wasps out of every inlet in Greece and her islands, he col- 
 lected the whole swarm at Coracesium on the Cilician coast, 
 and crushed them at a blow. This complete success was 
 achieved in three months. A 
 
 The Third Mithridatic War, kindled partly by the em- 
 bassies of Sertorius, had meanwhile been raging since 
 74 B.C. The King of Bithynia having left his dominions 
 to the Romans by a will, the Pontic monarch interfered, 
 invaded, and took the country. Mithridates then laid siege 
 to Cyzicus. Lucullus, being appointed to an Asiatic com- 
 mand, so hemmed him in and straitened his supplies there, 
 that his army broke into pieces and fled towards Lampsacus. 
 Step by step Lucullus then drove Mithridates before him,
 
 92 POMPEY IN THE EAST. 
 
 until Sinope the Pontic capital fell ; and at the end of the 
 third campaign all Pontus was in the hands of the Romans, 
 and its King was a fugitive with his son-in-law, Tigranes, 
 in Armenia. Lucullus then proceeded to regulate the affairs 
 of Asia, a task which he performed mildly and with justice. 
 
 Upon the refusal of Tigranes in 69 B.C. to give up Mithri- 
 dates, the Roman general invaded Armenia ; and Tigranes, 
 pulling the crown from his head, was soon forced by a com- 
 plete defeat to abandon his capital. He was defeated again 
 in the following year. But mutiny among the Roman 
 troops, fomented by Clodius, afterwards the foe of Cicero, 
 paralyzed the efforts of Lucullus, upon which Mithridates 
 made a dash upon Pontus and defeated the Roman officer 
 in command there. 
 
 Affairs were in this state, when the Manilian Law, elo- 
 quently supported by Cicero, conferred on Pompey the 
 Asiatic command, with powers equal to those of a Dictator. 
 The meeting between Lucullus and his successor was stormy. 
 Pompey then defeated Mithridates near the Euphrates by 
 the light of a dim moon. Tigranes would give no more aid, 
 so that the Pontic King pushed towards the Caucasus and into 
 the Crimea, where he made his last stand, threatening to pass 
 through Scythia and descend on Italy from the north-east. 
 Meanwhile Pompey, having founded Nicopolis on the site of 
 his victory, marched towards the Caucasus. Swarms of 
 venomous serpents turned him from the Caspian. Gifts and 
 homage from the native princes came pouring in on all sides. 
 The revolt of his son having reduced Mithridates to utter 
 despair, he closed his career by a draught of poison 63 B.C. 
 
 Before this event Pompey went to Syria, which he made 
 a Roman province. The siege of Jerusalem, undertaken in 
 behoof of Hyrcanus, who disputed the Judean throne with 
 Aristobulus, cost him three months. After the capture of 
 the city he was irreverent enough to enter the Holy of 
 Holies in the Temple ; but there was nothing to gratify his 
 curiosity in the place ; and we can easily imagine the 
 puzzled face of the Pagan, or rather Infidel, as all educated 
 Romans in his day were, who held no clue to the spiritual 
 meaning of the Jewish worship. The news of Mithridates' 
 death recalled Pompey from Arabia to Sinope, where the
 
 THE TRIUMPHS OF POMPEY. 93 
 
 funeral rites were performed. The settlement of his con- 
 quests in Asia, a task which he accomplished without the 
 authority of the Senate, then occupied Pompey for some 
 time, after which he made his way slowly homeward, arriv- 
 ing in 01 B.C., after more than six years of absence. The 
 sums he brought to the Eoman treasury by his victories were 
 enormous ; and his two days' Triumph was of surpassing 
 splendour. It was the third he had enjoyed ; and he could 
 now boast of having triumphed over the whole world, as 
 then known, for his first had been over Africa, his second 
 for victories in Europe, while the last and greatest com- 
 memorated his achievements in Asia. 
 
 Two other great names had for some time been mingling 
 themselves prominently with Koman history .y^ 
 
 Caius Julius Ca3sar, a Patrician of the Juuan gens, was 
 born in 100 B.C. The marriage of his aunt to Marius con- 
 nected him closely with the party of that great soldier ; and 
 the connection was strengthened by his own union with 
 Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, the leader of the Marian party 
 after the death of its chief. The keen-eyed Sulla saw in 
 the youth, as he expressed it, " many Mariuses." Ca3sar 
 was a man of cultivated mind; his oratory, in which he 
 shone during the impeachment of Dolabella for extortion in 
 Macedonia, was moulded partly by the instructions of Apol- 
 lonius Molo, whose lectures he attended at Ehodes. In his 
 desire for popularity Caesar spent great sums of money, in 
 fact got deeply into debt ; but from this his Spanish cam- 
 paigns set him free. QuaBstor in 68, JSdile in 65, Pontifex 
 Maximus in 63, in all offices he displayed the same great 
 genius and lavish generosity. 
 
 Marcus Tullius Cicero was six years older, having been 
 born at Arpinum in 106 B.C. Archias of Antioch, Phaedrus, 
 Philo, and Molo were among the instructors who prepared 
 this great orator for his forensic triumphs. The earliest of his 
 speeches, now extant, was made in 81 B.C. After studying 
 at Athens for a time, and acting as Quaestor in Sicily, he 
 achieved a great success by conducting the impeachment of 
 Verres for oppression in that island. His speech in favour 
 of the Manilian Law has been already mentioned. In 63 
 B.C., although what the Romans called " a new man" (that
 
 94 THE PLOT OF CATILINE. 
 
 is, one whose ancestors had not been curule magistrates), he 
 obtained the Consulship ; and for his promptitude in crush- 
 ing the plot, noticed in the succeeding paragraphs, waa 
 honoured with the name, " Father of his Country." 
 
 In the bloody proscriptions of Sulla no adherent of that 
 name was more conspicuous than Lucius Sergius Catiline. 
 Profligate in his life, and deeply laden with debt, this poor 
 scion of a Patrician house saw, in the troubles of a revolution, 
 the only hope of holding his own or advancing to a higher 
 station. His frank manners enabled him to attract the young 
 nobles and restless veterans of Sulla's disbanded army. 
 Having been defeated as a candidate for the Consulship of 
 66, owing to an impeachment which Clodius brought against 
 liim for extortion in Africa, he formed a plot to murder the 
 two Consuls ; but he gave the signal too soon, and it failed. 
 His wicked brain then hatched a more extensive conspiracy, 
 
 which came to a head during the Consulship of 
 63 Cicero. The murder of Cicero, and the firing of 
 B.C. Rome in twelve places at once were parts of his 
 
 plan. But Fulvia, the mistress of one of the con- 
 spirators, informed Cicero of the plot, upon which he ob- 
 tained a senatorial decree investing the Consuls with the 
 powers of a Dictator. The Senate being convened in the 
 Temple of Jupiter Stator, Catiline had the hardihood to 
 enter the assembly; but every Senator shrank from him, 
 as from a plague-struck wretch. Cicero then thundered 
 forth an oration, at the close of which Catiline rose to 
 reply. But a roar of anger drove him from the Senate, and 
 in terror of his life he fled from Rome. 
 
 Lentulus, Praetor of the city, and Cethegus remained to 
 carry on the plot. A lucky chance threw evidence against 
 them into Cicero's hands. There were then in Rome certain 
 ambassadors of the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe between the 
 Rhone and the Isere, who had come to entreat the remission 
 of some debts. The coldness of their reception having made 
 them angry, Lentulus began to tamper with them. They 
 told their Roman patron Fabius, who told Cicero. The 
 Consul desired them to ask for letters signed by the chief 
 conspirators, which might satisfy their nation that the plot 
 was real; and, when they had got these, and were juat
 
 THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE. 95 
 
 leaving Rome, they were arrested with all their writings 
 and effects. This artful stroke extorted a confession from 
 the conspirators, who after some deliberation were strangled 
 in the dungeon called Tullianum. 
 
 Catiline had meanwhile collected two legions; but the 
 news of the executions at Rome caused many to desert. 
 With the rest he endeavoured to reach Cisalpine Gaul ; but 
 Metellus Celer had occupied the passes, and Antony, once a 
 friend of the arch-conspirator, was following fast. He stood 
 at bay at Pistoreia. Antony pretended to be sick, so that 
 Petreius led the army against him. A complete defeat of the 
 conspirators took place, and Catiline fell in the thickest of 
 the fight. No prisoners were made, for none would yield alive. 
 
 After Caesar came from Spain, he contrived to reconcile 
 Pompey and Crassus, and by their support obtained the 
 Consulship, having sacrificed his Triumph to attain that 
 object. The union of the three Pompey, Crassus, and Csesar 
 at this time is usually called the First Trium- 
 virate ; but the secrecy of the arrangement prevents 59 
 it from deserving that name. Cato the Stoic, B.C. 
 great grandson of the Censor, was the chief op- 
 ponent of the three. In spite of this rival Caesar carried 
 an Agrarian Law, for the purpose of rewarding Pompey's 
 veterans with land. 
 
 The Vatinian Law now appointed Csesar, with the rank 
 of Proconsul, to the government of Cisalpine Gaul and 
 Illyria for five years. The Senate with malicious kind- 
 ness added Transalpine Gaul to his provinces, hoping in 
 their hearts for his defeat. But he did not depart imme- 
 diately. Pompey's marriage to Julia, Caesar's daughter, 
 aided much to strengthen the union between the two men. 
 
 Clodius, whose mutiny had so thwarted Lucullus, had in- 
 curred public odium by entering Csesar's house in the disguise 
 of a singing girl during the mysteries of the Bona Dea. When 
 brought to trial, he tried to escape by proving an alibi; 
 but Cicero overturned his plea. In consequence of this 
 Clodius, when Csesar sought the removal of Cicero from 
 Rome, readily became the instrument. It required a law 
 to make Clodius a Plebeian that he might hold the Tribune- 
 ship ; and such a law was passed. Clodius then brought
 
 96 CJSSAK'S CAMPAIGNS IN GAUL. 
 
 in a Bill to the effect, that any magistrate, who had put 
 Roman citizens to death without trial, should be sent into 
 exile. This was levelled at Cicero's treatment of the con- 
 spirators who had been in league with Catiline. In vain the 
 great orator assumed mourning, canvassed the Senate, and 
 tried to touch Pompey's heart. A second Bill ordered him to 
 live at least four hundred miles from Rome, and commanded 
 the destruction of his villas. "With much sorrow he left 
 Rome, and went to Thessalonica. 
 
 The removal of Cato was managed in a different way, by 
 sending him as Praetor to Cyprus in order to annex that 
 island as a new province to the Roman Empire. Thus the 
 Senate was left leaderless ; and the unworthy Clodius did 
 almost as he pleased. 
 
 Caesar's first campaign in Gaul (58 B.C.) was signalized by 
 a great victory over the Helvetians near Bibracte" (Autun), 
 and a yet greater over Ariovistus and his brave Suevi in the 
 neighbourhood of Bale. In facing these huge barbarians 
 he was obliged to stimulate the flagging courage of his 
 men by declaring that, if they did not like to fight, he 
 would go out to battle with the Tenth Legion alone. 
 
 The chief operation of the second campaign (57 B.C.) was 
 directed against the Nervii, most powerful of the Belgie 
 tribes which had banded together to resist his march. 
 They dwelt in thick woods, and took advantage of their 
 knowledge of the country to fall upon him as he was in- 
 trenching his camp. Nothing but the energy of a Caesar 
 could have saved the Roman army, which was completely 
 hemmed in. Snatching a buckler from a private soldier 
 in the great crisis of the fight, he rushed alone on the 
 barbarians the gallant Tenth came to his rescue and the 
 tide of battle turned. This victory gave him the command 
 of all the country between the Rhine and the sea. 
 
 In Caesar's third campaign (56 B.C.) he subdued the shores 
 of Brittany by means of a fleet, and reduced the warlike tribes 
 between the Seine and the Rhine. During these distant ex- 
 peditions he did not cease his intrigues at Rome. Fixing his 
 winter residence at Lucca, he managed still to pull the 
 wires of metropolitan politics, receiving in his quarters 
 visits from senators and magistrates by the hundred.
 
 THE CONFERENCE OF LUCCA. 97 
 
 A quarrel between Poinpey and Clodius resulted in the 
 recall of Gicero. In vain Clodius, now no longer Tribune, 
 got his friends to veto the law : in vain he led a riotous inob 
 for three days through the streets of Rome, burning and 
 slaying as he went. A wild young noble named Milo col- 
 lected a band of gladiators, and with their aid put down the 
 sedition at the point of the sword. Cicero was borne 
 back through streets crowded with citizens in holiday dress; 
 and he was none the less welcome to the poorer classes for 
 the fall in the price of bread, which occurred just after his 
 return. The orator attempted to revenge himself by prose- 
 cuting Clodius for sedition; but Cato, now home from 
 Cyprus, interfered to defend the demagogue. 
 
 In the autumn of 56 B.C. Poinpey and Crassus went to 
 Lucca to hold a conference with Ca?sar. The results were 
 the assumption by the two former of the Consulship for the 
 ensuing year, and a new assignment of provinces among the 
 three. Pompey received Spain ; Crassus, Syria ; and Caesar 
 was confirmed in his government of Gaul for five years 
 more, after the expiration of his original term ; that is, from ' 
 53 B.c. to 49 B.C. 
 
 In 55 B.C. Csesar all but extirpated by wholesale slaughter 
 two German nations, which had crossed the Rhine to attack 
 him, and, making a bridge over the stream near Coblenz, 
 marched into Germany with sword and flame. On his 
 return he broke the bridge down. Taking advantage of the 
 fact that Caesar had been engaged in some negotiations with 
 the Germans, when the massacre took place, Cato proposed 
 in the Senate that this violator of faith should be delivered 
 over to the vengeance of the barbarians. In 55 B.C. the 
 great Roman soldier paid his first short visit to Britain, and 
 learned to respect the warriors of Kent. Next year occurred 
 his second and greater invasion of the island. 
 
 The news that his daughter Julia, Pompey's young wife, 
 was dead, reached him in Gaul. Henceforth these great 
 men, now severed by the parting of a family tie, drifted 
 fast asunder. 
 
 The death of Crassus in the far East completed the rupture 
 of the Triumvirate. Allured by the gold and jewels of Syria, 
 this man, whom no abundance of wealth could satisfy, went
 
 98 THE DEATH OF CRASSUS. 
 
 in person to his province. A great Parthian empire had 
 sprung up round its centre Seleucia on the Tigris ; and 
 against this his expedition was directed. The strength of 
 these Asiatics lay in their clouds of light-armed cavalry, 
 trained to scatter before a charge and shoot back showers of 
 arrows at the pursuers, before whom they seemed to flee. 
 Such a force surrounded the legions of Crassus on the scorch- 
 ing plains of Mesopotamia. He was defeated, but made 
 good his retreat to the foot of the mountains. There, enticed 
 to a conference, he was murdered ; and when his head was 
 sent to the Parthian court, King Orodes, in mockery of his 
 avarice, bade melted gold be poured between the cold lips. 
 The gallant son of Crassus, a brave assistant of Caesar in the 
 Gallic War, died in the battle. Cassius saved a division of 
 the broken army ; and for two years continued to repel the 
 Parthians. 
 
 During the winter of 54-53, while Caesar's army lay 
 scattered in winter-quarters, and the general himself was, as 
 usual, going to Northern Italy, a German chieftain, Ambiorix, 
 attacked one of the camps and cut off two legions. A move- 
 ment upon another camp was baffled by the rapid approach 
 of Caesar, who was so much afraid of a general rising that 
 he borrowed a legion from Pompey. Ambiorix was defeated 
 in the following year. But the Gallic War then broke out 
 into a much greater blaze. Under their chief, Vercingetorix, 
 the Arverni became the centre of a great league, resolved to 
 free Gaul from the invader ; and in the towns, all barricaded 
 and made strong, the patriotic savages made a gallant stand. 
 In vain. From one refuge to another the chieftain was 
 driven to Alesia, where he ultimately surrendered (52 B.C.). 
 Here Caesar lay in peril between a beleaguering host, and a 
 multitude within the town, against whom he had to draw 
 double lines of defence round his camp. But he defeated 
 the force outside, and then the town yielded. His campaigns 
 against the Belgse succeeded ; and about 50 B.C. his great 
 work of conquest was done. 
 
 Pompey did not go to Spain ; but, pretending that his 
 office as Keeper of the Corn-market required his presence at 
 Rome, he left the management of affairs there to his lieu- 
 tenants. The murder of Clodius, the popular leader, by
 
 CROSSES THE RUBICON. 99 
 
 Milo, a senatorial chief, who met him travelling on the 
 Appian Way, excited a dreadful riot at Rome. Pompey 
 was appointed to restore order. Cicero, the orator, had 
 written a speech in defence of Milo ; but the appearance of 
 Pompey's soldiers in the court frightened him into silence. 
 Milo, being condemned, fled to Marseilles, while Pompey re- 
 mained in sole command of Rome, though not dignified, as 
 he had hoped to be, with the title of Dictator. 
 
 Csesar, perhaps by means of Gallic gold, secured the aid 
 of Curio, one of the noble desperadoes of the age, who gained 
 the Tribuneship in 50 B.C. Another of his partisans was 
 the young Mark Antony, who had latterly been acting as 
 his Quaestor in Gaul, and who was elected a Tribune in 
 49 B.C. 
 
 All through the year 50 the storm-clouds grew darker. 
 Pompey, for the purpose of weakening his rival, suggested 
 that he should furnish a legion for the Parthian War, and 
 also demanded the return of the legion himself had lent. 
 Both of these legions were placed at Capua. Curio having 
 proposed that the two generals should disband their armies, 
 a letter came from Csesar to the Senate, offering to resign 
 his command, if Pompey would do the same. A hot debate 
 ensued, resulting in the outlawry of Caesar, and the passing 
 of a law to invest the Consuls with the powers of a Dictator. 
 Both Consuls were friends of Pompey. 
 
 The advantage seemed to be distinctly on Pompey's side. 
 Csesar, who was at Ravenna, had just one legion; while 
 Pompey, in addition to the three he had collected, believed, 
 as he boastfully expressed it, " that he had only to stamp 
 his foot, and soldiers would spring from the soil." 
 
 All readers of Roman history are acquainted with the 
 dramatic scene, which displays Csesar pausing on the banks 
 of the brook Rubicon, until a sudden impulse causes him to 
 plunge into the water, crying, " The die is cast." It is pretty 
 but unfounded, like many other attractive portions 
 of history. Leaving Ravenna at night, he reached 49 
 Ariminum (Rimini) at dawn, and was met there B.C. 
 by his devoted friend in the Tribunate, Antony, 
 who had fled from Rome on the night after the passing of 
 the decree.
 
 100 CJ5SAR IN SPAIN. 
 
 In a month Caesar was master of Umbria and Picenum. 
 Then strengthened by two legions from Gaul, he laid siege 
 to Corfinium in the Apennines, where Domitius Brassbeard 
 upheld Pompey's cause. Upon the surrender of the place 
 he treated its defenders with great mildness, and forbade all 
 plunder ; a policy which changed many of his opponents into 
 friends. 
 
 Meanwhile Pompey had gone to Brundusium, for the 
 purpose of crossing to Greece. Before Caesar's appearance 
 under the strong fortifications of this place the Consuls had 
 sailed for Dyrrhachium in Epirus ; and the baffled general, 
 unable to prevent the embarkation, soon saw the last of 
 Pompey's ships sink below the horizon. Csesar was thus 
 left master of Italy ; but the lack of ships hindered him 
 from pursuing his foe in the meantime. 
 
 He turned instead to Spain, where Afranius and Varro 
 maintained the cause of Pompey. Before the autumn he 
 had reduced both sections of the Peninsula. As he passed 
 along the shore of Gaul on his homeward way, he com- 
 pleted the reduction of Marseilles, before which one of his 
 officers had been lying for some time. 
 
 When he reached Rome, to act as Dictator for eleven days, 
 and then to receive the Consulship, he heard somewhat 
 discouraging news from other quarters. His lieutenants 
 had been beaten in Illyria ; and in Africa Curio, drawn by a 
 ruse from the old camp of Scipio, had been defeated and 
 slain. These events left Africa and the East in the hands 
 of the Pompeians, Caesar holding Italy, Gaul, and Spain. 
 
 Fixing his head-quarters at Thessalonica, Pompey had 
 meanwhile been preparing for a great struggle. His hopes 
 were high. Seven legions abundance of money, food, and 
 stores and a great fleet to sweep the Adriatic seemed to 
 augur well for success. 
 
 On the 5th of November Csesar crossed from Brundusium 
 to the shore of Epirus with a part of his army. Pompey 
 hurried to save Dyrrhachium ; and the two camps were 
 pitched on opposite banks of the Apsus, where they remained 
 during the winter. 
 
 The fleet of Pompey under Bibulus kept the sea so well, 
 that Antony could not carry over the rest of Caesar's force.
 
 BATTLE OF PHARSALIA. 101 
 
 So anxious was the Consul about its arrival, that in the 
 dress of a slave he braved the wintry sea in a small rowing- 
 boat, and fought all night in vain to make the passage. When 
 the oarsmen grew pale at the tumult of the waves, and re- 
 fused to pull, he encouraged them with the words, " You 
 carry Caesar and his fortunes." At last he gave up the 
 attempt to cross. When Antony sailed, a contrary wind 
 bore him past Pompey's camp in full view of the enemy, 
 who however could not prevent him, although they pursued, 
 from landing near the headland of Nymphseum, more than 
 fifty miles north of the Apsus. Csesar made a speedy march 
 to avert the danger resulting from the position of Pompey's 
 camp between Antony and himself. And Pompey, thus 
 outwitted, shifted his camp to a new position, north of 
 Dyrrhachium, and fortified it with a curving line of intrench- 
 ments, which faced the land side in a convex form. Cassar 
 inclosed this position with lines of still greater length, but 
 they were so weak and ill-manned that Pompey easily broke 
 through. 
 
 Upon the plain of Pharsalia in Thessaly the decisive 
 action took place. The numbers were unequal, for Pompey 
 had forty-four thousand, while Caesar's army was scarcely 
 half that number ; but Caesar's men were hardy veterans, 
 while Pompey's force consisted largely of raw recruits. The 
 arm on which Pompey placed most hope was his splendid 
 muster of cavalry. Caesar's soldiers advanced at a run ; but, 
 when they saw the enemy standing still, for Pompey 
 had given orders to wait until the javelins crossed, 48 
 they halted to take breath. And then both sides B.C. 
 closed in a deadly struggle. To make up for the 
 want of horse, Caesar had picked out some steady veterans 
 to fight between the cohorts ; and to them he is said to have 
 given the singular order to strike at the faces of the foe. 
 For, says Plutarch, " these young cavaliers, quite unused 
 to war or wounds, and prizing their beauty highly, would 
 avoid above all things a wound in that part." The order 
 gained its end. The Cavalry, dismayed by the efforts to 
 spoil their beauty, turned and fled. The famous Tenth, 
 hitherto kept in reserve, now came up to break the infantry 
 of Pompey, who retired stupid with despair to his tent. But
 
 102 DEATH OF POMPEY. 
 
 he was not safe even there ; for in a short time the soldiers 
 of Ctesar burst through the defences of his camp, and he 
 left it by one gate, while they were pouring through the 
 other. Caesar pardoned several of Pompey's followers, who 
 submitted after the battle ; and among them, Junius Brutus. 
 Neither he nor the victor who forgave him foresaw a bloody 
 Ides of March, that waited in the future, big with fate for 
 both. 
 
 At the mouth of the Peneus Pompey went on board a ship, 
 in which he sailed to Lesbos for his wife Cornelia and his 
 younger son Sextus. Thence he went to Cilicia and afterwards 
 to Cyprus, where he decided on seeking refuge in Egypt, for 
 the Senate had made him guardian of Ptolemy Dionysus 
 and the Princess Cleopatra, children of Ptolemy Auletes. 
 Alexandria was then in the hands of a revolutionary Trium- 
 virate, who had expelled Cleopatra and were governing the 
 country in the name of Ptolemy. The three resolved to kill 
 Pompey ; and one of them, Achillas, an Egyptian, went out in 
 a little fishing-boat to the ship, accompanied by two officers, 
 who had once served under Pompey. Desiring him to come 
 into the boat, because the water was too shallow for a galley 
 to row in to the shore, they pushed off, while his wife and son 
 hung over the side of the ship, gazing wistfully at the receding 
 boat. By this time several men in the dress of high officials 
 had come to the beach. Pompey, alarmed at the ominous 
 silence which prevailed, in the boat, addressed one of the 
 officers, saying, " I think we once served together in war." A 
 slight nod being the only response, he busied himself with his 
 tablets, on which he had written notes of a speech in Greek, 
 that he intended to make to Ptolemy. When the boat struck 
 the shore, he rose, and 'at once was run through the body 
 from behind. The shriek of Cornelia rang in his dying ears. 
 When life was extinct, the head was cut off, and the naked 
 body tossed on the sands. His faithful attendant, Philip, 
 having washed off the blood with salt water and wrapped 
 the trunk in his cloak, gathered wood from the wreck of a 
 fishing-boat to make a funeral pile. An old soldier of Pom- 
 pey came up to share in the mournful toil. 
 
 Caesar, passing across the Hellespont into Asia Minor, 
 reached Egypt soon after Pompey's death. The head and
 
 C^SAR IN EGYPT. 103 
 
 Bignet-ring of the dead man were carried on board his ship. 
 His eyes filled with tears at the ghastly sight, as he com- 
 manded the head to be burned. After he had entered 
 Alexandria, Cleopatra caused herself to be rolled in a bale 
 of carpets and carried secretly into his palace. Her charms 
 soon made the conqueror a willing captive ; but the mob of 
 Alexandria, incited by Achillas, who dreaded a reconciliation 
 between the brother and the sister, assailing the palace, 
 drove Caesar to take refuge in Pharos, where he was block- 
 aded. In one of the conflicts that ensued Caesar saved his 
 life and his fame as a man of letters by leaping from a sink- 
 ing skiff, and swimming to one of his galleys with a coat of 
 mail in his teeth, and his manuscripts held high over water 
 in one hand. 
 
 The arrival of reinforcements enabled Caesar to put an 
 end to this Egyptian War. Ptolemy, after a defeat, was 
 drowned in the Nile, upon which Cleopatra was made Queen 
 of Egypt. 
 
 Before Caesar, who delayed long in the seductive society 
 of Cleopatra, left the East, he humbled the pride of Phar- 
 naces, son of Mithridates, in the battle of Zela in Syria 
 (47 B.C.). It was upon this occasion that he sent home the 
 well-known laconic despatch, Veni : -vidi : vici. 
 
 As Dictator, Caesar found much to do at Rome ; but the 
 mutiny of the legions at Capua was the most perilous event 
 of the year. His cool courage and keen insight into char- 
 acter aided him in this crisis. To the lowering ranks that 
 looked upon themselves as necessary to his power and 
 tried on that ground to extort a gift of money, he cried 
 suddenly, " I discharge you." And in the silence that fol- 
 lowed he told them they should have the money, when he 
 came to lead his other troops in triumph. Still severer was 
 the sting of the word Quirites, with which, as if they were 
 now civilians, he next began, after dismissing them from his 
 service. After declaring that he must disband the Tenth 
 Legion at least, and thus playing with their fears and their 
 repentance, he tardily consented to overlook their faults and 
 receive their expressions of sorrow. 
 
 The Pompeian leaders Cnaeus the eldest son, Cato, 
 Cicero, Scipio, and others having assembled at Corey ra,
 
 104 THE SUICIDE OF CATO. 
 
 resolved to make a stand in Africa. Thither according!}' 
 
 went Scipio and Cato with a fleet and army. Cato became 
 
 governor of Utica. Csar crossed the sea in the 
 
 4 6 autumn of 47 ; but it was the following February 
 
 B.C. before the decisive conflict took place at Thapsus, 
 shattering the Pompeian party to pieces. The 
 leaders killed themselves. Juba, King of Numidia. and 
 Petreius, both keen partisans of Pompey, fought a duel after 
 a carouse, for the purpose of finding the death they coveted. 
 The Roman fell, and the African bared his breast to the 
 blade of a slave. But the suicide of Cato was most notable 
 of all. When he heard at Utica of the rout at Thapsus, he 
 resolved to die. Some friendly hand removed his sword 
 from its wonted place at the head of his bed. Sternly com- 
 manding it to be brought, he began to read a dialogue of 
 Plato the Phcedo but fell asleep over the scroll. When he 
 awoke, he stabbed himself, but not with a mortal wound. 
 His friends ran in, when they heard him groaning, and a 
 surgeon dressed the wound. But, when left alone, he took 
 off the bandage and tore open the gash, until his bowels 
 gushed out, and then in a short time he died. 
 
 Leaving as ruler of Numidia Sallust the historian, Caesar 
 returned to Rome to enjoy a four-fold Triumph over Gaul, 
 Egypt, Pontus, and Numidia. The arena grew red with the 
 blood of gladiators and wild beasts contending in mortal 
 strife; and on the benches of the amphitheatre clustered 
 men wild with all the joy, which the bestowal of a splendid gift 
 or the removal of a gnawing fear can produce. For amid 
 the showering gifts that rewarded his soldiers and partisans, 
 he gratified his foes with a general pardon. 
 
 Created ^Dictator for ten years this being the third time 
 he had received the great office and Censor for three, 
 Caesar devoted some time to the internal business of the 
 State. From this task he was called away to crush the 
 embers of the Pompeian party in Spain, where were assem- 
 bled Pompey's two sons along with Labienus and Varro. 
 
 ^ - Driving them from their position at Cordova, he 
 
 brought them to bay at Munda, a town not far 
 
 west of Malaga. The conflict was desperate, for 
 
 the Pompeians knew that it was their last chance. At length
 
 CESAR'S STATESMANSHIP. 105 
 
 Caesar won the battle, but not till thirty thousand of 
 his foes cumbered the field. Labienus and Varro were 
 slain. Cnseus Pompey, whose foot was cut instead of the 
 hawser, as he was trying to escape in a boat, was caught 
 among the hills, and put to death. His younger brother 
 Sextus got safely away to the north of the Peninsula. 
 Caesar then came home to celebrate his fifth Triumph. 
 
 His last winter was devoted to statesmanship. Then and 
 during the summer of 46 he passed a number of salutary 
 laws. He relieved the Treasury by revising the register of 
 those who received monthly supplies of grain, and striking 
 many names off the list. He extended the franchise to 
 many districts of Gaul and Spain. He increased the number 
 of the Senate to nine hundred, partly by placing on its 
 benches some of his old soldiers and some citizens of Cis- 
 alpine Gaul, who then, as some one sneeringly remarked, "ex- 
 changed the trews for the toga." Among his reforms was 
 a change in the Calendar, which brought the confused Roman 
 year of three hundred and fifty-five days, kept straight by 
 inserting months occasionally, up to three hundred and sixty- 
 five days, with the addition of another day every four years.* 
 He also meditated great plans of drainage, engineering, and 
 a Caesarian Code, all of which were rudely checked by the 
 assassin's dagger. 
 
 A growing and perhaps not unfounded fear that he 
 aimed at being King, took possession of the popular mind. 
 In various ways he tried to sound the citizens, who saw his 
 head stamped on every coin of the Republic that passed 
 through their hands. Crowns were found one morning on 
 his statues in the Forum, but the people shouted gladly 
 when two of theTribunes pulled off the emblems of monarchy. 
 A dramatic scene was acted at the Lupercalia or Festival of 
 Pan, when Antony twice offered him a diadem wreathed 
 with laurel, as he sat enthroned in a golden chair. The 
 scanty cheering, when the offer was made, was completely 
 drowned in the thunders of applause that greeted Cassar's 
 rejection of the toy. 
 
 * The slight error in the Julian Calendar (which made the year eleven minutes 
 longer than the solar year) was reduced nearly altogether by Pope Gregory la 
 1582 A.D. We adopted the Gregorian style in 1752. 
 (124) 8
 
 106 THE IDES OF MARCH. 
 
 Cleopatra's visit to Rome with her son Csesarion the 
 proposal of a senatorial decree permitting Julius to be styled 
 King in the provinces and the general discontent of those 
 who were, or conceived themselves to be, injured by his re- 
 forms concurred in leading to the formation of a plot against 
 the life of the Dictator. Marcus Junius Brutus was elected 
 as the fittest leader ; and scraps of mysterious writing, urging 
 him to action or taunting him with degeneracy, were 
 frequently found in his Praetorian chair, or affixed to the 
 statue of his great ancestor, who had expelled the Tarquins. 
 Cassius, Casca, Cimber, Decimus Brutus, Trebonius, Liga- 
 rius were the other chief conspirators. 
 
 The Ides (that is, the 1 5th) of March* was the appointed day 
 the Senate-house the scene chosen for the enactment of the 
 tragedy. Many hints and warnings preceded the event, but 
 they were all in vain. A soothsayer told Caesar to beware 
 of the Ides of March. His wife had dreams so ominous the 
 night before, that she begged him not to go to the 
 
 44 Senate-house that morning. But Decimus Brutus, 
 
 B.C. coming in, laughed off his scruples, and induced 
 him to go to the Senate, by assuring him that the 
 title of King everywhere out of Italy was to be conferred 
 on him that day. On his way to the House a slave tried in 
 vain to struggle through the crowd for the purpose of warn- 
 ing him. Artemidorus, a teacher of Greek, handed him a 
 scroll detailing the plot, but he was prevented from reading 
 it by the numerous petitioners who hung upon his steps. 
 Certain words dropped in the crowd alarmed the con- 
 spirators, whose fears grew intense, when they saw a Senator, 
 who seemed to know of the plot, whispering in Caesar's ear. 
 Cassius would have stabbed himself at this moment, had not 
 Brutus bid him watch the gestures of the talker, who was 
 evidently imploring Caesar to grant a request. 
 
 Then came the opportunity. Cimber knelt down to offer a 
 petition in favour of his banished brother, while the rest of the 
 conspirators crowded round. Caesar rose somewhat angrily 
 to rebuke them for their forwardness, when Cimber, holding 
 
 * The Romans called the 1st of every month the Kalends. The Nones fell on 
 the 5th of all months except March, May, July, and October, when they were on 
 the 7th. The Ides were the 15th of these four months, the 13th of all the rebt.
 
 THE IDES OF MARCH. 107 
 
 the skirt of his gown, plucked it from his neck, upon which 
 Casca's sword descended. Turning like a wounded tiger, the 
 Dictator saw a score of blades gleaming in his face. Swiftly 
 they stabbed and smote, while he, with a soldier's instinct, 
 held out his left arm all swathed in his gown, and struck 
 fiercely at his assailants with the sharp point of his iron 
 pen. But the sight of Brutus paralyzed his arm. When 
 the dagger of that befriended and trusted man pierced his 
 body, he rolled his mantle round his face, and sank at 
 the foot of Pompey's statue dying with three-and-twenty 
 wounds. So wildly did the murderers chop and hew at 
 their victim, that some of themselves were wounded by the 
 random strokes.
 
 108 GREAT ROMAN NAMES. 
 
 GREAT NAMES OF THE FIRST CENTURY B.C 
 
 VARRO, " most learned of the Romans" born 116 B.C. served under 
 Pompey till after Pharsalia forgiven then by Csesar great friend 
 of Cicero proscribed by Second Triumvirate, but escaped died in 
 28 B.C. among his very numerous writings may be named De 
 Re Rustica, an agricultural treatise, and his Antiquities, Human 
 and Divine, the latter being his chief work. 
 
 CICERO, M. Tullius (hence sometimes called Tully), greatest of Roman 
 Orators Lorn at Arpinum 106 B.C. for his history see pp. 93 to 
 113 his literary fame rests on his Speeches and Philosophical 
 Works his Poems were inferior. 
 
 CJESAR, historian born B.C. 100 for his history see pp. 93 to 107 
 chief work, the Commentaries, relating the story of the Gallic 
 War for seven years, and a part of the Civil War author also of 
 Orations, Epistles, a Jest-book, some Poems, &c. 
 
 LUCRETIUS didactic poet born 95 B.C. author of De Rerum 
 Natura in six books, expounding the doctrines of Epicurus- 
 committed suicide about 51 B.C. 
 
 CATULLUS, lyric and epigrammatic poet born at Verona in 87 B.C. 
 a man of fashion at Rome in the time of Julius Caesar died some 
 time later than 47 B.C. among the finest of his poems may be 
 named the Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis and the Atys, the lat- 
 ter being considered his masterpiece. 
 
 SALLUST, historian born at Amiternum in B.C. 86 of plebeian ex- 
 traction served as Tribune of the Plebs expelled from the 
 Senate by the Censors in 50 B.C. governor of Numidia under 
 Caesar died 34 B.C. author of the Catiline War, the Jugurthine 
 War, and other works. 
 
 VITRUVIUS, architectural writer birth-place uncertain served 
 under Julius Csesar in Africa as a military engineer superin- 
 tended public buildings under Augustus author of De Architcc- 
 tura in ten books. 
 
 VIRGIL, celebrated Latin poet born at Andes near Mantua in Cisalpine 
 Gaul, B.C. 70 expelled from his farm by one of the soldiers, to 
 whom Octavianus after Philippi assigned land but afterwards 
 restored became acquainted with Maecenas, to whom he intro- 
 , duced Horace died at Brundusium B.C. 19 great works, the 
 jEneid, an epic in twelve books ; the Georgia, an agricultural 
 poem ; the Eclogues or Bucolics, his earliest work. 
 
 HORACE, celebrated Latin poet born at Venusia in Apulia 65 B.C. 
 his father a collector of taxes or auction-fees. Educated at Rome 
 and Athens served as a Tribune under Brutus his estate con- 
 fiscated after Philippi served as a clerk in the Quaestor's office
 
 GREAT ROMAN NAMES. 109 
 
 received a Sabine farm from Maecenas died B.C. 8 his works 
 consist mainly of Odes, Satires, Epistles, &c. 
 
 LIVY, historian born at Patavium 59 B.C. flourished at the court 
 of Augustus died 17 A.D. author of Annales, a history of Rome 
 from the beginning to the death of Drusus B.C. 9 in 142 books 
 only 35 have descended to us, but we possess Epitomes from an 
 unknown pen of all the rest but two. 
 
 TIBULLUS, elegiac poet born probably 54 B.C. patronized by Mes- 
 sala, whose aide-de-camp he was in Gaul friend of Horace died 
 probably B.C. 18 of the Elegies only the first two books are un- 
 doubtedly from his pen. 
 
 PROPERTIUS, elegiac poet born in Umbria probably in 51 B.C. 
 lived a fashionable life at Rome, attached to the circle of Maecenas 
 time of death unknown. 
 
 OVID, celebrated Latin poet born at Sulmo, 43 B.C. held some magis- 
 tracies, and lived pleasantly at Rome until an edict of Augustus 
 banished him to Tomi on the Euxine, 8 A.D. the assigned rea- 
 son, to hide some weightier motive, was his publication of the Ars 
 A matoria he died there in 18 A.D. author of the Metamorphoses 
 and the Fasti, besides Epistles, Elegies, &c. 
 
 N.EPOS, biographer probably born at Verona died in the reign of 
 Augustus supposed author of Lives of Illustrious Men; but some 
 think the extant work of biographies is an abbreviation by Probus 
 of a larger work. 
 
 PHJEDRUS, a slave of Thrace or Macedonia lived at Rome under 
 Augustus, who set him free, and Tiberius author of Fables in 
 Latin iambics; the best of these are founded on those ascribed to
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 MARK ANTONY. 
 
 The Funeral Speech. 
 Hattle of Mul in,i. 
 Second Triumvirate. 
 Death of Cicero, 
 liattleof Philippi. 
 
 Cleopatia'e Galley. 
 
 Defeat of Sextus I'ompey. 
 
 Sloth of Antony. 
 
 liattle of Actium. 
 
 Deutli of Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 WHEN Caesar was dead, the conspirators went through tht 
 empty streets of Rome, holding up their bloody swords anil 
 crying out, " Liberty." Finding that the populace did not 
 join them, they then retired to the Capitol, to await the 
 movements of Antony and Lepidus, whom they feared. 
 Antony made himself master of Caesar's money and his 
 parchments. 
 
 The hopes of the conspirators rose, when Cicero came to 
 the Capitol to praise their deed, and Cinna the Praetof 
 followed. Coming to the Forum the next day, Brutus made 
 a, speech ; but, when Cinna following began to blacken 
 Caesar's name, the angry cries of the crowd made them 
 retire again to the Capitol. A meeting of the Senate then 
 took place, at which Antony moved and Cicero seconded a 
 general amnesty. The passing of this measure lightened 
 the hearts of the chief conspirators, who accepted dinner 
 invitations from Antony and Lepidus Cassias being the 
 guest of Antony, Brutus of Lepidus. 
 
 But the reading of Caesar's will, in which he named 
 Octavius his heir and bequeathed to every Roman citizen a 
 sum equal to more than 2 of our money, giving besides his 
 gardens beyond Tiber to be a public park, turned the mob 
 fiercely against the assassins. 
 
 The smouldering fire of their anger broke into furious 
 flame, when Mark Antony as Consul pronounced his famous 
 funeral speech over the ivory bier, on which the mangled 
 body was carried to the Forum. When he had sufficiently
 
 OCTAVIUS ON THE SCENE. Ill 
 
 wrought up the feelings of the crowd by dwelling on the 
 soldiership, the generosity, and the mournful fate of the 
 dead man, he showed them a waxen figure painted to 
 represent the ghastly wounds, and spread before their 
 horror-stricken eyes the very toga Caesar, had worn, all torn 
 and bloody with the rending of the daggers. Before matters 
 reached this crisis, the conspirators had fled; the furious 
 crowd, after burning the body in the Forum on a pile made 
 of broken benches and tables, rushed with torches to the 
 houses of the murderers. 
 
 Caesar's heir now appeared upon the scene. While study- 
 ing at Apollonia, this youth of nineteen, who was the son of 
 Caesar's niece Atia, heard of his grand-uncle's murder. He 
 met Antony with a demand for the money, but could get no 
 satisfaction. Raising money nevertheless, he contrived to 
 pay the legacies of the will, a step which pleased the people 
 greatly. Antony quickly perceived in the beardless stripling 
 a formidable foe ; and the feeling between them soon led to 
 open rupture. Brutus and Cassius meanwhile, after lingering 
 in Italy all the summer, had gone to Greece. 
 
 Cicero then began to hurl against Antony those tremendous 
 speeches .called Philippics, which uttered their thunders in 
 the Senate at intervals the whole winter through. His tam- 
 pering with Caesar's parchments all his forgeries and in- 
 terpolations were laid bare. Antony returned to Cisal- 
 pine Gaul, where he laid siege to Mutina ; and Octavius 
 Collected the veterans of Caesar in preparation for the ap- 
 proaching struggle. 
 
 When Antony heard that the Consuls of 43 B.C. were 
 marching northward in conjunction with Octavius, he made 
 a movement from his trenches and defeated Pansa, who 
 received a mortal wound; but the other Consul Hirtius 
 inflicted a signal defeat upon him some days later; and 
 nothing prevented the destruction of his army but the death 
 of Hirtius in the pursuit. 
 
 After this defeat at Mutina Antony crossed the Alps 
 into Narbonese Gaul. The sufferings of the march were 
 great roots, wild berries, even bark being eaten by the 
 famished troops. But these sufferings were atoned for, 
 when the junction of the army of Lepidus with his own
 
 112 DEATH OF CICERO. 
 
 placed Antony at the head of seventeen legions and ten 
 thousand horse. 
 
 Octavius, nettled by Cicero's sneer at him as a boy who 
 must be removed, opened secret negotiations with Pompey ; 
 and made a bold and successful stroke by appearing in the 
 Campus with his soldiers. The people cheered ; the leaders 
 of the Senate fled; and the young man not yet twenty 
 received the honours of the Consulship. By a law then 
 passed he assumed the full name to which he was entitled 
 as Ceesar's heir Julius Caesar Octavianus. 
 
 Before long Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus met on a little 
 
 island in the river near Bononia (Bologna); and formed 
 
 there the Second Triumvirate. The partition of 
 
 4 3 the Empire occupied them first the Gauls, except 
 
 B.C. Narbonese, being allotted to Antony Spain and 
 Narbonese Gaul to Lepidus Africa, Sicily, and 
 Sardinia to Octavian. The Consuls of the year (of whom 
 Lepidus was to be one) were to hold Italy. And, as to the 
 East, Antony and Octavian were to proceed at once to wrest 
 it from Brutus and Cassius, who had gone thither and were 
 in arras. 
 
 A List of Blood a second and worse Proscription was 
 'then drawn up, all ties of relationship and former intimacy 
 giving way before the lust of power. Cicero Antony's 
 uncle Caesar and Paullus the brother of Lepidus were 
 jotted down to die, amid more than two thousand others. 
 The Triumvirs then went to Rome to slay. 
 
 Fleeing from his villa at Tusculum in company with his 
 brother,- Cicero got to sea with the purpose of joining Brutus 
 in Macedon. His brother, who ventured back to Rome for 
 money, was slain. The aged orator could not help landing 
 to spend a night in his villa at Formise, whence his slaves 
 could scarcely induce him to move next day. As they were 
 bearing him in a litter through the shadowy woodlands to 
 the shore, a noise was heard behind ; and Antony's soldiers, 
 who had already ransacked the villa and were put on the 
 scent by one whom Cicero had educated, came running after 
 them. The old man bade the bearers set the litter down ; 
 and, as the pursuers came on, they beheld his tangled grey 
 hair and wasted cheek peering through the curtains, as,
 
 DEATH OF CICERO. 1 13 
 
 leaning his chin upon his hand, he gazed at them with a 
 steadfast eye. Stretching out his neck when they came up, 
 he received a fatal blow from the centurion's sword. Thus 
 died the greatest of Latin orators at the age of sixty-four. 
 By Antony's express desire his head, and the hands which 
 had written the Philippics, were cut off. These noble parts 
 of the dead body were brought to Rome, and nailed to the 
 Rostra. We learn how even the women of the time were 
 brutalized, when we read that Fulvia, formerly the wife of 
 Clodius and now the wife of Antony, drew out her golden 
 hair-pin, when she saw the gory head, and stuck it through 
 the tongue, once so eloquent. *\ 
 
 Brutus had meanwhile gone to his province of Macedonia, 
 and Cassius to that of Syria, where they maintained them- 
 selves in spite of Antony's efforts to expel them in favour of 
 his own partisans. They became masters of the East ; but 
 wasted much time in levying contributions forcibly among 
 the cities of Asia Minor. Meeting upon a certain occasion 
 at Sardis, they had a bitter quarrel, which Shakspere has 
 immortalized in that drama, which he should have called 
 Brutus after its real hero. While Brutus was on his way 
 back to Europe, he saw an apparition in the dead of night, 
 which, as he looked up quietly from his book and asked, 
 "Whence art thouT told him with a frown, "I am thy 
 evil genius. We shall meet at Philippi." The spectre must 
 have been the creation of a mind, stained with blood, acting 
 on a body, worn out with care and want of sleep. 
 
 When the Triumviral army approached Philippi, Brutus 
 and Cassius had mustered a force of one hundred thousand 
 men; but they lacked good officers. Among the students 
 at Athens they had recruited largely, one of their raw 
 tribunes being the young Horace afterwards so distinguished 
 as a poet. The Republicans occupied two hills by the sea ; 
 the Triumviral army, which soon began to feel the pinch of 
 famine, was posted in the swampy plain. 
 
 Antony having commenced works to cut Cassius off from 
 the sea, Brutus urged the need of an attack and gained his 
 point against the will of Cassius. Brutus, leading his men 
 successfully against the army of Octavian, who lay sick, 
 even broke into the camp ; but Cassius was driven back
 
 114 BATTLE OF PHILIPPI. 
 
 with loss by Antony. Anxious to know the fortune of his 
 
 colleague, Brutus sent a body of cavalry to ask Cassius how 
 
 he had fared ; but the dispirited leader, mistaking 
 
 42 them for foes, went into his tent, and, according to 
 
 B.C. the common account, got his freedman Pindarus to 
 kill him. Lost in sad thoughts Brutus stood over 
 his dead associate, and, turning away with a sigh, said, 
 " There lies the last of the Komans." 
 
 Twenty days later, Brutus, who had no talent as a general, 
 led his army out against the Triumvirs, although by declining 
 a battle he might easily have exhausted their strength by 
 famine. He was beaten by the superior numbers they had 
 collected. The next day his men refused to fight, upon 
 which he went into a wood accompanied by some friends, 
 whom he vainly besought to slay him. At last with much 
 difficulty he induced a Greek freedman to hold a sword, on 
 which he flung himself. His wife Portia, daughter of Cato, 
 afterwards killed herself by putting live charcoal into her 
 mouth. 
 
 The character of Brutus as depicted by Shakspere is not 
 historical. We must lay aside the pure patriotism and 
 noble self-devotion of that great creation, before we arrive 
 at a true estimate of the man, who plunged into Caesar's 
 body the worst of all the blades that shed his life. He was 
 very fond of books and was free from the deep profligacy of 
 the age ; this is nearly all the praise that history awards 
 him. 
 
 The victors of Philippi divided the Empire between them 
 Antony taking the East, Octavian the West as his share. 
 To Lepidus was left merely Africa. 
 
 Antony, making a progress through Asia Minor, arrived 
 at Tarsus. There he learned that Cleopatra, whom he had 
 summoned to appear before him on the charge of having 
 aided Cassius in the war, was approaching. She came 
 resolved to conquer. A barge, all shining with gold, 
 propelled by sails of purple silk and oars of silver, bore her 
 to the music of flutes and harps up the Cydnus. Dressed 
 as Venus and fanned by Cupids, she reclined with languish- 
 ing grace under an awning bright with gold, while beautiful 
 girls, in the guise of Nereids and Graces, hovered round,
 
 THE PEACE OF BRUNDUSIUM. 115 
 
 playing at the management of the galley, from whose deck 
 blue clouds of burning perfume rose with sweet dimness 
 through the air. This artful princess soon induced Antony 
 to accompany her to Alexandria, where he lived for a while 
 in a whirl of luxurious pleasure. 
 
 From this trance he was roused by news that his fiery 
 wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius, obliged by Agrippa the 
 lieutenant of Octavian to surrender Perusia, whither they 
 had fled, had left Italy, after a vain effort to withstand the 
 power of the young Triumvir. Further startled by tidings 
 from the East, where Labienus, fighting under the Parthian 
 banner, was overrunning Syria and Asia Minor victoriously, 
 he shook off the silken chains of Cleopatra for a time, and 
 after visiting Tyre went to Athens, where were met his wife, 
 his brother, and many Romans discontented with Octavian. 
 A new Civil War might have broken out, had not the death 
 of Fulvia removed an obstacle to peace. Antony and 
 Octavian met once more as friends, the union being cemented 
 by a marriage between Antony and Octavia, the sister of his 
 colleague. By this peace, named from Brundusium, the 
 boundary between East and West was fixed at Scodra in 
 Illyricum. 
 
 Sextus Pompey. younger son of the Triumvir, had ere 
 this established himself in Sicily, whence he made piratical 
 excursions. Before the peace of Brundusium Antony had 
 sought his aid ; but that compact decided that Octavian 
 should expel him from Sicily, while Antony was warring in 
 Parthia. Pompey in his anger cut off the supplies of corn 
 which the Romans usually drew from Sicily ; and bread-riots 
 became frequent in the capital. The Triumvirs were thus 
 forced to make terms with Sextus, on one of whose ships 
 they assembled at Misenum. The result of the conference 
 left him ruler of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and Achaia. 
 
 But the last portion of territory was soon refused by 
 Antony ; and a naval war with Sextus began (38 B.C.). He 
 had the best of the struggle, until Octavian committed its 
 conduct to Agrippa, a man of talent and energy. This 
 officer spent two years in making the Julian Port by con- 
 necting the Lakes Lucrinus and Avernus with the sea, and 
 in collecting a sufficient fleet. Three squadrons in the
 
 116 DEFEAT OF SEXTUS POMPEV. 
 
 summer of 36 B.C. prepared to descend on the three shores 
 of Sicily. That of Lepidus only effected a landing, storms 
 having driven back Octavian and Agrippa. At Mylae 
 Sextus and Agrippa met ; but the former, drawing off most 
 of his ships, darted upon Octavian and scattered his 
 squadron. Agrippa followed ; and inflicted so signal a de- 
 feat upon Sextus near the Straits of Messana, that the beaten 
 sailor was forced to flee to Lesbos. Crossing to Asia after- 
 wards, he was taken and slain by the officers of Antony. 
 
 The Parthian War had been meanwhile proceeding suc- 
 cessfully under Ventidius, an officer of merit who had 
 originally been a dealer in mules. In two campaigns this 
 general won several battles and slew both Labienus, the 
 Roman renegade, and Pacorus, son of the Parthian King. 
 When Antony came from Athens to supersede his lieutenant, 
 the siege of Samosata was in progress. The Triumvir took 
 the command, but met so fierce a resistance that he was 
 glad to take from the besieged prince a sum much smaller 
 than had beeu offered to his lieutenant. He then returned 
 to Athens ; while Ventidius went to Rome to enjoy a 
 Triumph. 
 
 After the defeat of Sextus Pompey Lepidus made a feeble 
 movement towards independence ; but Octavian's swift de- 
 scent upon his camp deprived him of his troops, and reduced 
 him to that obscurity, out of which he should never have 
 come. 
 
 Antony now flung the reins of self-control completely 
 aside, and suffered his passion for Cleopatra to drag him 
 swiftly to destruction. Inviting her to Syria, he bestowed 
 on her several provinces, embracing nearly all the eastern 
 coasts of the Levant. Before he sank quite into ignoble 
 indolence, he made an effort to curb the Parthians. March- 
 ing into the heart of Asia, he gained some trifling successes ; 
 but, owing to bad plans, severe sicknesses, and the error of 
 leaving part of his troops behind, only to be destroyed, he 
 became so entangled in perils, that he was forced to make a 
 costly retreat into Armenia. He cared little so that he got 
 back to Cleopatra. Next year he invaded Armenia, lately 
 in alliance with him, and carried back the King to decorate 
 an Alexandrian Triumph.
 
 DEGENERACY OF ANTONY. 117 
 
 For three years Antony loitered at the court of Cleopatra, 
 idling and feasting his time away. How silly he had 
 grown may be judged from a story related by Plutarch. 
 While fishing one day along with the Queen, he waited so 
 long for a bite and was so vexed at his want of success in 
 her presence, that he sent a diver down to put on his hook 
 a fish that he had caught before. She saw through the trick, 
 but pretended to wonder at his invariable success. As there 
 was another fishing-party next day, she collected a number 
 of her friends, avowedly to see Antony's marvellous success, 
 but in reality to have a good laugh at him. He let down 
 his line, and waited. There came a tug. Pulling quickly 
 up, he found on the hook a salted fish, which she had 
 ordered a diver of her choosing to place there. So much 
 for the folly of these days. Their reckless luxury may be 
 judged from her celebrated draught of vinegar, in which a 
 priceless pearl had been dissolved. But he did things more 
 irritating to the Romans at home than these absurdities. 
 He stamped Cleopatra's head with his own upon the coins 
 he issued. He placed a Herod on the throne of Judaea by 
 his own sole authority. He made Polemo, the illegitimate 
 offspring of his amour with Cleopatra, King of Armenia. 
 
 Octavian, meanwhile, in the West had been gaining 
 strength and reputation. By his victories over the Dal-' 
 matians and Pannonians he cleared the province of Illyricum, 
 and extended the Roman rule in that direction to the Save. 
 
 The two men, who divided the Roman world, had gradually 
 become estranged. Antony's treatment of Octavia was a 
 source of much anger on the part of her brother Octavian, 
 who lost no opportunity of dwelling in the Senate on his 
 colleague's assumption of Oriental splendour and compliance 
 with every whim of his Egyptian mistress, who really ruled 
 the East through her indolent paramour. Recrimination 
 widened the breach. Antony accused Octavian of having 
 seized Sicily and Africa without giving him a share. 
 Octavian replied that Antony had possessed himself of 
 Egypt and Armenia, and was wasting the resources of Rome 
 in the East upon a worthless woman. It is little wonder 
 that war grew out of these things. 
 
 In 32 B.C. the Roman Senate authorized Octavian to make
 
 118 BATTLE OF ACTIUM. 
 
 war upon Cleopatra, through whom they meant to strike at 
 Antony. Stirred at last to action, the voluptuary sent 
 Canidius with his legions into Epirus, and collected a fleet 
 with which, accompanied by Cleopatra, he sailed to Corcyra. 
 Agrippa, commanding Octavian's fleet, cruised about the 
 Ionian Sea, upon which Antony brought his ships to anchor 
 in the Ambracian Gulf, on the northern arm of which his 
 soldiers were encamped. After some consultation, in which, 
 as usual, Cleopatra's will prevailed, it was resolved to trust 
 to the fleet alone as a means of escape. High winds pre- 
 vented any movement for four days. But on the fifth 
 (Sept. 2) Antony's vessels, which were huge and heavy, like 
 those of the Armada in later history, began to move out ; 
 and Octavian's light ships, unable to bear the shock of an 
 encounter beak to beak with such enormous hulls, clustered 
 round the great wooden castles and plied them with missiles, 
 as in a land fight. At this crisis Cleopatra's 
 
 31 squadron of sixty ships broke the line, with all 
 
 B.C. sails set, and made for the south. Antony, long 
 used to follow whither this dark enchantress led, 
 fled after her in a swift quinquereme. The battle was over; 
 the remainder of the fleet was destroyed ; the army sur- 
 rendered. 
 
 When Antony went on board the galley, in which the 
 Egyptian Queen had fled, he refused at first to see her ; but 
 in a few days fell into his old habits of intimacy. Together 
 they fled to Africa, whither Octavian followed at his leisure. 
 In this crisis of fortune Cleopatra showed some spirit; Antony 
 had none. She had wild dreams of carrying her ships across 
 the sandy plain of Suez, and seeking some distant shore. 
 Upon the abandonment of this scheme she tried to cajole 
 Octavian, as she had cajoled Caesar and Antony ; but all her 
 wiles fell blunt and harmless. Antony shut himself up in a 
 small lodge in Pharos on the very margin of the sea. 
 
 When Octavian entered Alexandria (Aug. 1, 30 B.C.) he 
 received imploring messages from both his conquered foes. 
 Antony, who had no hope, heard a false rumour that Cleo- 
 patra, having shut herself in a tomb, was dead. Plunging a 
 dagger into his breast, he asked to be laid beside her. He 
 was drawn up with ropes ; and she lavished tears and ten-
 
 DEATH OF CLEOPATRA. 119 
 
 derness on him until he died. She then tried her arts and 
 blandishments once more upon Octavian ; but she saw 
 neither pity nor passion in the cold gaze he turned upon her. 
 She knew that he meant to drag her in chains through the 
 streets of Rome in order to gratify the people with a sight 
 f that faded beauty, whose charms had so besotted and 
 enslaved their greatest men. When the soldiers of Octavian, 
 alarmed by a letter she wrote, broke open her bolted door, 
 they found her in queenly dress lying dead upon a golden 
 couch, while one of her women, with dying hand, was 
 arranging the crown upon her brow. The common story is 
 that a peasant brought her an asp, hidden in a basket of 
 figs, and that she let it bite her breast or arm. She was in 
 her thirty-ninth year.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE REIGN OP AUGUSTUS. 
 
 Called Augustus. 
 His Ministers. 
 Works of Peace. 
 The Praetorian Guards. 
 
 Wars of Augustus. 
 The Legions of Varus. 
 Domestic Life. 
 Death of Augustus. 
 
 A TIME of peace, whether in the history of a nation or in 
 that of an individual, is a time barren in events. Such a 
 period in Roman history we have now reached. The storm 
 of the Civil Wars is over ; the calm of the Augustan Age has 
 begun. 
 
 Returning from Egypt, Octavian celebrated a Triumph of 
 three days. Some of his advisers counselled him to retire 
 from the cares of public life ; but, fortunately for Rome, 
 other counsels prevailed. Gradually under his administra- 
 tion, while the forms of the old Republic remained, all the 
 offices and powers centred in a single individual. Consul, 
 Tribune for life, Censor and Proconsul in all the provinces, 
 Pontifex Maximus, all these influential positions fell one by 
 one into the hands of the conqueror of Antony, who now 
 vanishes from the page of history as Octavian, for the title 
 of Augustus (meaning sacred or venerable) was conferred on 
 him in the year 27 B.C., and by this name he was henceforth 
 called. The military title of fmperatorvtas also conferred upon 
 him for ten years. The bestowal of these honourable names 
 is generally regarded as marking the opening of his reign. 
 
 Augustus owed much of the quiet splendour of his reign 
 to the ministers, by whom he was surrounded. Of these four 
 were chief Agrippa, Maecenas, Messala, and Pollio. Of 
 Agrippa we have heard already. Mascenas, the friend and 
 patron of Virgil and Horace, was a knight of Etrurian 
 descent. Messala, celebrated by Tibullus, and Pollio. dis- 
 tinguished as orator, poet, and historian, also contributed to 
 the glory of the time.
 
 WORKS OF AUGUSTUS. 121 
 
 The works of Augustus were chiefly works of peace. The 
 city was so much embellished by public buildings that this 
 first of the Emperors was accustomed towards the end of his 
 reign to boast that " he had found Rome built of brick, and 
 left it built of marble." The regulation of the police, the 
 repair of the great roads, the reduction of the Senate to six 
 hundred members, and the absorption of its functions into a 
 kind of Privy-council, which he controlled himself, occupied 
 his time. To him was due the institution of the Praetorian 
 Guards, a body of ten cohorts, each consisting of eight 
 hundred or one thousand men, horse and foot, set apart with 
 double pay and peculiar privileges for the protection of the 
 Emperor's person. Augustus kept only three cohorts in the 
 city, scattering the rest through Italy; but we shall find 
 Tiberius drawing them all to the centre, and establishing 
 them in a permanent camp near Rome. 
 
 In spite of the mildness with which Augustus ruled, 
 several plots were formed against his life ; so that his peace 
 of mind was clouded, like that of Cromwell in later days, 
 with fears of assassination, owing to which he wore a 
 breastplate under his robe, whenever he went to a meeting 
 of the Senate. 
 
 The wars of Augustus were chiefly in the remote European 
 provinces. He spent three years in Spain (27-24 B.C.), en- 
 gaged in subduing the wild tribes of the Asturias. The city 
 of Saragossa (a corruption of Caesar Augusta] was founded 
 as a monument of the war. The task of conquering Spain 
 was completed by Agrippa in 19 B.C. 
 
 Augustus dwelt for a couple of winters at Samos, during 
 one of which (in 20 B.C.) there were great rejoicings at the 
 restoration by the Parthians of the standards and prisoners 
 taken from Crassus and from Antony. 
 
 Throughout all the reign a war was raging among the 
 Alps and on the Rhine. Drusus, the stepson of the Emperor, 
 undertook the conquest of Germany in 12 B.C. ; and had 
 proceeded victoriously northward through the forests as far 
 as the Elbe, when want of provisions compelled him to 
 retreat. A fall from his horse caused his death in 9 B.C. 
 His brother Tiberius then took the command, and succeeded 
 in reducing the tribes between the Weser and the Rhine. 
 
 (124) 9
 
 122 THE LEGIONS OF VARUS. 
 
 A war in Pannonia and Dalmatia turned him from the 
 Rhine to the land between the Adriatic and the Danube. 
 
 During the occurrence of these things there happened at 
 Bethlehem, in Judaea, an event, before which all others in 
 
 history except one three and thirty years later, 
 
 3 sink into utter insignificance. Jesus Christ, " God 
 
 B.C. made manifest in the flesh," was born of the Virgin 
 
 Mary. The best chronology places this event 
 three years before the commencement of the Christian Era. 
 The greatest military event of the reign of Augustus was 
 the disastrous defeat of Varus in Germany. This avaricious 
 and arrogant governor was induced by Hermann (called 
 Arminius by the Romans), a chieftain of the Cheruscan 
 tribe, who had lived as a youth at Rome, and received a mili- 
 tary education there, to march against some tribes which 
 
 had risen in revolt between the Rhine and the Elbe. 
 
 9 The march proceeded through swamps that grew 
 
 A.D. deeper and forests that grew thicker every mile, 
 
 until in a dark and dense place, probably near the 
 sources of the Ems and the Lippe, a host of Germans, led by 
 Hermann, assailed the Legions on all sides at once, and after 
 having thinned their ranks by missiles for two days, made 
 a final and destructive charge upon the third. Scarcely a 
 Roman lived to tell the dreadful tale ; all the eagles were 
 taken ; and Varus in despair stabbed himself to death. Well 
 might Augustus wring his hands, when he heard the news, 
 and utter the vain and bitter cry," Give me back my Legions, 
 Varus, give me back my Legions." The kites of the Teutoburg 
 forest and the vermin of the marsh were feeding leagues 
 away upon their mangled limbs. 
 
 There was fear in Rome that the victorious Germans 
 would now descend upon the centre of the empire. But 
 there could be no permanent union among the roving swarms. 
 Tiberius and his nephew Germanicus found it impossible to 
 do more than guard the line of the River Rhine and keep 
 the Germans to their own side of the current. But this 
 sufficed to abate the fears at Rome. 
 
 Augustus was not happy in his domestic life. The deaths 
 of Maecenas, Horace, and Virgil, were severe blows to their 
 imperial friend. Still deeper were the wounds of his nephew
 
 DEATH OF AUGUSTUS. 123 
 
 Marcellus' death, and the premature decease of his two 
 grandsons, Caius and Lucius Caesar, all of whom his third 
 wife Livia was by some suspected of having removed by 
 poison. But he had to bear sorrows worse than those caused 
 by death. His daughter Julia, and her daughter, bearing 
 the same name, became so notorious in Eome for profligacy 
 that he was obliged to banish both at different times to 
 islands off the Italian coast. 
 
 Augustus died at Nola, 14 A.D. When he felt that death 
 was near, he asked those who stood around his 
 couch, if he had played his part in life well, ** 
 adding, " If you think so, give me your applause." A ' T>> 
 At the time of his decease he was seventy-seven years of 
 age.
 
 124 GREAT ROMAN NAMES. 
 
 GREAT NAMES OF THE FIRST CENTURY, A.O. 
 
 PLINY (the Elder), naturalist born 23 A.D. either at Como or Verona 
 served in Africa, Germany, and Spain stationed as Admiral of 
 the fleet at Misenum, when Vesuvius burst into its celebrated 
 eruption in 79 A.D. going ashore to examine the phenomenon ho 
 was suffocated by fumes of sulphur author of Ilistoria Naturalis 
 in thirty-seven books. 
 
 COLUMELLA, writer on rural affairs native of Cadiz lived early in 
 the first Christian century author of Treatises on Agriculture, 
 Trees, <kc. 
 
 SILIUS ITALICUS, Roman poet (about 25 A.D.-100 A.D.) distin- 
 guished as an advocate Consul in 68, and afterwards Proconsul 
 of Asia starved himself to death chief work Punica, an heroic 
 poem in seventeen books. 
 
 PERSIUS, satirist born 34 A.D. at Volaterrae in Etruria died 62 
 A.D. author of six extant Satires, in all only 650 lines. 
 
 MELA (Pomponius), geographer native of a town on the Bay cf 
 Algesiras in Spain flourished probably under Claudius author 
 of De Situ Orbis. 
 
 SENECA, Stoic philosopher born at Cordova a few years B.C. 
 banished to Corsica by Claudius tutor of Nero involved in Piso's 
 plot died by opening his veins 65 A.D. wrote on Anger, Conso- 
 lation, Tranquillity of Mind, &c. author also of Epistles to 
 Lucilius chief work, De Benejidis, in seven books. 
 
 PETBONIUS, a companion and officer of Nero killed himself by 
 opening his veins, when accused of treason supposed author of 
 Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, a comic romance of great indecency. 
 
 LUC AN, poet born at Cordova 39 A.D. engaged in the conspiracy of 
 Piso in reign of Nero killed himself by opening his veins only 
 extant work, Pharsalia, an heroic poem in ten books, beginning 
 with the passage of the Rubicon. 
 
 QUINTILIAN, rhetorician born about 40 A.D. at Calagurris in 
 Northern Spain great teacher of eloquence at Rome died 118 
 A.D. chief work, Institutes of Oratory, a system of Rhetoric in 
 twelve books. 
 
 MARTIAL, born at Bilbilis in Spain 43 A. D. lived thirty-five years 
 at Rome in the time of Titus and Domitian distinguished for 
 his witty Epigrams died about 104 A.D. 
 
 FLACCUS (Valerius), native of Padua flourished under Vespasian and 
 Titus author of Argonautiea, an unfinished heroic poem. 
 
 JUVENAL, poetical satirist little known of bis life flourished 
 towards close of first century Aquinum, perhaps his birthplace, 
 was his chosen residence author of sixteen Satires in heroic 
 hexameters.
 
 GREAT ROMAN NAMES. ] 25 
 
 TACITUS, historian time and place of birth unknown married 
 Agricola's daughter, A.D. 78 died at Rome later than 117 A.D. 
 friend of the younger Pliny chief works, Life of Agricola, His- 
 tories, extending from 68 A.D. to the death of Domitian, and 
 Annals, from the death of Augustus to the death of Nero wrote 
 also on the Germans and the Decline of Eloquence. 
 
 PLINY (the Younger), nephew of Pliny the Elder born about 61 
 A.D., probably at Como friend of Tacitus consul in 100 A.D. 
 author of Epistles and a Panegyric on Trajan. 
 
 SUETONIUS, biographer probably born soon after Nero's death, 68 
 A. P. acted as Secretary to Hadrian chief work, Lives of the 
 Ccrsars.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE UNWOKTHY C-ESARS. 
 
 Germanicus. 
 
 Sejanus. 
 
 Island of Caprese. 
 Freaks of Caligula. 
 Claudius invades Britain. 
 
 Caraotiirus. 
 
 Cruelties of Nero. 
 
 Boadicea. 
 
 The Great Fire. 
 
 A wretched Coward. 
 
 TWELVE Caesars are commonly spoken of, but only four of 
 the Emperors who followed Augustus belonged to the line 
 of Julius. These were Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and 
 Nero all in different ways unworthy of the great name. 
 
 TIBERIUS, the stepson of Augustus, owed his quiet accession 
 to the imperial throne to the schemes of his mother Livia, who 
 incurred the suspicion of having poisoned many to clear the 
 way for her favourite. Germanicus, his nephew and adopted 
 son, then in command of the legions in Germany, was urged 
 by his soldiers to assume the imperial purple. Instead of 
 doing so he devoted himself more earnestly to the German 
 War, in the hope of removing from the Roman arms the 
 stain caused by the defeat of Varus. He captured the wife 
 of Arminius, penetrated to the forest of Teutoburg, where 
 the Roman dead yet strewed the marshy ground, and in 
 16 A.D. inflicted a severe defeat on Arminius at Idistavisus 
 near the Weser. These victories pleased the Roman people, 
 but excited the jealousy of dark-souled Tiberius, who re- 
 called him from his command in Germany and sent him to 
 the East. A person named Piso was appointed governor of 
 Syria at the same time, in order that he and his wife might 
 undermine the glories of Germanicus, or perhaps cause his 
 death. Germanicus conquered in the East as he had con- 
 quered in the West. A journey to Egypt excited the wrath 
 of Tiberius, who complained that his leave had not been 
 obtained. Matters grew to an open quarrel between Ger- 
 manicus and Piso ; and, when in 19 A.D. the former died 
 near Antioch, there were few who doubted that the cause of
 
 DOWNFAL OF SEJANUS. 127 
 
 death was poison administered by Piso and his wife. Piso's 
 sudden death, when the matter began to be investigated, 
 was ascribed to the desire of Tiberius to be rid of the 
 instrument of a secret crime. 
 
 Eleven years of this reign (20-31 A.D.) are filled with the 
 atrocities of a Prefect of the Praetorian Guards named 
 Sejanus, who first induced the Emperor to collect all the 
 Praetorians within a fixed barrack at Rome, and then urged 
 his retirement from Rome to some secret place, where he 
 could practise his debaucheries and commit his 
 cruelties while wrapped in mysterious seclusion. 26 
 The beautiful island of Capreae, sleeping in the A.D. 
 purple sea, was the den chosen by this imperial 
 wild beast ; and there he lived, leaving no mark upon the 
 age he belonged to except in the vacant places of those he 
 slew and the maimed limbs of those he tortured. Sejanus 
 meanwhile was master of Rome ; and his statues surpassed 
 those of the Emperor in number. Poison, the stiletto, exile, 
 starvation, torture every weapon of tyranny came readily 
 to the hand of this monster, who spared neither age nor sex 
 among his foes. But one day from the secret island came 
 a letter to the Senate, accusing Sejanus of treason and 
 ordering his death. That night his mangled body was 
 floating in the Tiber; and his statues were lying in frag- 
 ments by their pedestals (31 A.D.). 
 
 A man quite as bad named Macro stepped into the vacant 
 place ; and the Emperor, as his bodily strength failed from 
 indolence and sensuality, grew more tigerish than before. 
 A young man, Caius, son of Germanicus, who had escaped 
 the slaughters of Sejanus, gained admission to the imperial 
 villa ; and when Tiberius, sunk in lethargic sleep, seemed 
 upon the point of death, caused himself to be proclaimed 
 Emperor with the assistance of Macro. But Tiberius rallied ; 
 upon which the guilty pair, to save their heads and secure 
 the throne, smothered the old tyrant with pillows. All 
 Rome rang with joy (37 A.D.). 
 
 REIGN OF CALIGULA. We have now for four years 
 (37-41 A.D.) to watch the freaks of a madman, who made 
 the name of Emperor contemptible. Caius, son of Ger- 
 uianicus, is always called Caligula in history from the
 
 128 CALIGULA AftD CLAUDIUS. 
 
 military boots (caligce) he wore when young. We shall not 
 waste words upon a Roman ruler, who raised his horse 
 Incilatus to the Consulship and (A.D. 40) led an army to the 
 northern coast of Gaul, and, setting them to gather shells in 
 their helmets, called it a conquest of Britain. But he was 
 worse than silly. He used to carry a box, from which he 
 offered a pinch to a senator or magistrate now and then. 
 Whoever accepted the offer, died, for the powder was poison; 
 whoever refused, was handed over to the headsman. This 
 official was trained to watch every nod and beck of the 
 Emperor ; and, when he saw a certain twist of the finger or 
 an emphatic nod towards any person, he seized his victim 
 at once. It was this Emperor who uttered the savage wish 
 that the whole Roman people had only one neck, that he 
 might slay them all at a blow. At the Palatine games of 
 41 A.D., after he had enjoyed the delight of watching his 
 subjects scramble for fruit which he flung to them, and 
 while he was going through a vaulted gallery of the palace 
 to the bath Chaerea, a Praetorian captain stabbed him with 
 a dagger, and other conspirators, closing round, completed 
 the murder. 
 
 REIGN OF CLAUDIUS. Claudius, uncle of Caligula, being 
 placed on the throne by the Praetorians, might have left a 
 fair reputation in history, had he not been married to the 
 depraved Messalina, who, combined with other evil coun- 
 sellors, made him commit cruel deeds. He was a man of 
 literary tastes, and had some skill -in architecture and 
 engineering, in spite of the weakness of mind ascribed to 
 him. Messalina at last overtaxed the patience, which her 
 worst immoralities had failed to break, by causing a young 
 Roman knight to be publicly married to her in 48 A.D. 
 Claudius killed her, and married his niece Agrippina, widow 
 of Domitius Brassbeard. This widow had a son Nero, 
 whom she induced Claudius to adopt as his heir and suc- 
 cessor. Seneca the philosopher and Burrus a newly 
 appointed Prefect of Praetorians were made tutors and 
 guardians of this young prince. 
 
 The most notable military events of the reign of Claudius 
 were connected with Britain, which was now beginning in 
 earnest to attract the Roman eagles. Sending his lieutenant
 
 THE REIGN OF NERO. 129 
 
 before him, Claudius in person crossed the strait we call 
 that of Dover. Camulodunum was taken ; and 
 the Emperor adopted the surname of Britannicus. 4 3 
 But the real work of this British War fell to Ves- A.I>. 
 pasian and his son Titus, who drove the noble 
 Celtic chief Caractacus into Wales, and subdued nearly all 
 the southern part of the island. For nine years Caractacus 
 bravely maintained the struggle, until a false kinswoman 
 betrayed him to the Romans. As he was led in chains 
 through Rome he broke into a bitter exclamation " How 
 could men who dwell in palaces like these envy me a 
 humble cottage in Britain 1 " Claudius was so struck by 
 his undaunted bearing in adversity that he spared his life 
 (51 A.D.). 
 
 Dreading from some words of Claudius that he intended 
 to alter his mind regarding Nero, Agrippina got the assistance 
 of a poisoner to prepare death for him in a dish of mushrooms. 
 The drug caused only a fit of retching, upon which his 
 physician brought his reign to an end by painting the inside 
 of his throat with a poisoned feather on pretence of curing 
 the attack (54 A.D.). 
 
 REIGN OF NERO. Tiberius was a morose tyrant Caligula 
 a fantastic tyrant Claudius a foolish tyrant Nero (worst 
 of the four) a dainty and artistic tyrant. By concealing the 
 death of Claudius until the Praetorians had been won over 
 with rich gifts, Agrippina secured the throne for her son of 
 seventeen. For five years he ruled with mildness ; but this 
 must be ascribed rather to the fact that his nature had not 
 yet ripened than to any early goodness in the man. 
 
 When old enough, he turned upon his mother, who wished 
 to rule through her son, and drew from her the angry threat 
 that she would shift her support to his rival Britannicus, 
 son of Claudius. Nero began his dreadful career by causing 
 this boy to be poisoned. His next step was to remove his 
 mother. Enticing her on board a boat, constructed so as to 
 come to pieces in the water, some of his dependents rowed 
 her out into the sea at Baise, and drew out the pegs. She 
 managed to swim ashore and get to her villa ; but assassins 
 went thither and slew her in her bed. 
 
 The exile and murder of his wife Octavia to make room
 
 130 CRUELTIES OF NERO. 
 
 for the profligate Poppsea, whom he afterwards kicked to 
 death, formed a natural sequel to these crimes. 
 
 The campaigns of Paulinus in Britain belong to Nero's 
 reign. Penetrating to Mona (Anglesea) he destroyed the 
 Druid superstition there, and returned to the eastern part 
 of the island just in time to check the rebellion kindled by 
 Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni. This Amazon of old British 
 history, seeing the Eoman legions victorious among the 
 marshes of Essex, ended her life by poison (61 A.D.). 
 
 A great fire, lasting for six days, consumed the greater 
 
 part of Rome in this reign. The common scandal of the 
 
 time ascribed the conflagration to Nero, who, it 
 
 64 was said, desired to see how Troy looked when 
 
 A.D. burning, and sang verses from Homer to the music 
 of his harp, as he gazed from a tower upon the 
 sweeping floods of flame and smoke. Nero himself charged 
 the fire upon the Christians, against whom accordingly he 
 set on foot a fearful persecution. In a place made vacant 
 by the flames he built a palace called the Golden House, 
 with tiles and wall-plating of gold, inlaid with gems and 
 mother-of-pearl. 
 
 This Emperor excited the contempt of the Roman aristocracy 
 by his desire to shine as a charioteer and a harper. He 
 performed upon the stage at Naples, and at a later period 
 passed over to Greece for the purpose of appearing at the 
 Olympic and Isthmian Games. It was not pleasant to 
 contend with him, as one singer found who suffered death, 
 because his voice was louder than Nero's. 
 
 The discovery of a conspiracy, headed by Piso, gave Nero 
 an opportunity of killing his old tutor Seneca, who with the 
 poet Lucan was involved in the plot. These celebrated 
 men were permitted as a favour to kill themselves by cut- 
 ting their veins and allowing themselves to bleed to death. 
 
 A general, named Galba, having assumed the purple in 
 Gaul, 68 A.D., was recognised by the Praetorians in opposition 
 to Nero. The tyrant, sitting at supper when he heard the 
 news, kicked down two crystal vases in his terror. He 
 called for Locusta to poison him. He called in vain for a 
 gladiator to stab him. He made a sudden rush to the 
 Tiber, but stopped in terror on the bank. As he was
 
 DEATH OF NERO. 131 
 
 riding, with a veil upon his face, to the villa of Phaon, 
 lightning flashed around him, and passing travellers filled 
 him with terror. He unsheathed two daggers, but could 
 not summon courage to plunge them into his breast. Nor 
 was it until the trampling hoofs of horsemen, approaching 
 to slay him, forced him to desperation, that the coward could 
 Biimmon courage to hold a dagger to his throat. Even then 
 the mortal thrust was given by a secretary, who pushed 
 his hand with force enough to drive in the point (A.D. 68).
 
 Jerusalem Destroyed. 
 
 Acricola in Britain. 
 
 Trajan. 
 
 The Antonines. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 TO THE FALL OF ROME. 
 
 Purple for Sale. 
 Autelian and Zenobia. 
 Diocletian. 
 Constantine the Great. 
 
 Jnlian and TheodoMua. 
 Goths, Vandals, Huns. 
 Fall of Rome. 
 
 WITHIN two years after Nero's miserable death, three 
 generals the aged and penurious Galba the effeminate 
 Otho the beastly Vitellius wore the purple, and stained 
 it with their blood. The imperial power had now fallen 
 into the hands of the soldiers, who in reality decided the 
 succession. 
 
 Vespasian, a general who had won glory in British wars, 
 and was in Palestine preparing to besiege Jerusalem, was 
 declared Emperor in 69 A.D. 
 
 The great event of his ten years' reign was the siege and 
 destruction of Jerusalem by his son Titus. A Jewish rebel- 
 lion had broken out in the reign of Nero ; and in the year 
 70 A.D. the Roman eagles gathered round their 
 70 prey. From April to August in that dreadful year 
 
 A.D. the wretched Jews underwent unutterable miseries, 
 
 until the flames of the burning Temple reddened 
 
 the sky, and the plough passed over the blackened heaps 
 
 of ruin. The Arch of Titus at Rome still commemorates his 
 
 victory. 
 
 During the reign of Vespasian, Julius Agricola the only 
 Roman who can be truly called a conqueror in Britain 
 entered upon the first of his seven campaigns, 78 A.D. 
 
 Titus, succeeding his brave and beneficent father in 79 
 A.D., held the imperial sceptre until 81 A.D. He was scarcely 
 settled on the throne, when Vesuvius broke into terrific 
 eruption, withering Herculaneum and Stabiae with streams 
 of molten lava, and showering a fatal rain of hot ashes on 
 Pompeii. Excavations at the base of Vesuvius still supply
 
 DOMITIAN, NERVA, AND TRAJAN. 133 
 
 us with our chief specimens of ancient art and industry, 
 dug from the ruins of those buried towns. The elder Pliny, 
 famed as a naturalist, lost his life by venturing among the 
 sulphureous fumes of the volcano. 
 
 Titus, dying of a fever, was succeeded by his frivolous and 
 cruel brother Domitian, one of whose chief pastimes was 
 the spearing of flies with a needle. He persecuted the 
 Christians. The only renown of this reign was 
 due to Agricola, who won the great battle of the 84 
 Grampians over Galgacus, a Caledonian chief; and A.D. 
 who also, by means of his fleet, established the 
 fact that Britain is an island. Domitian treated Agricola 
 as Tiberius had treated Germanicus, ordering him home in 
 a fit of jealous rage, and, as some assert, procuring his death 
 after a time. This Emperor, taking the field in person, was 
 defeated by both the Dacians and the Marcomanni. Yet 
 no reverse could humble him, nor did he shrink from adopt- 
 ing the name Dominus et Deus, and ordering worship to be 
 offered at his shrine. A conspiracy, set on foot partly by 
 his wife, led to his assassination in 96 A.D. 
 
 The people and soldiers then made quiet old Nerva 
 Emperor ; but in two years a fever prepared the way for 
 the accession of one of the very few great soldiers of the 
 later Empire, Trajan the Spaniard, who reigned from 98 to 
 117 A.D. 
 
 Under this distinguished man Rome enjoyed prosperity. 
 He beautified the city with buildings, erected bridges, and 
 cut roads throughout the provinces ; nor was he unmindful 
 of intellectual greatness, as he proved by the establishment 
 of the Ulpian Library. 
 
 Refusing to pay. the tribute wrested from craven Domi- 
 tian by the Dacian King, Trajan carried the 
 eagles victoriously across the Danube, over which 104 
 he cast a stone bridge. The King Decebalus, being A.D. 
 beaten at all points after four years' campaigning, 
 committed suicide ; and Dacia was made a Roman province. 
 Trajan's Column still commemorates the triumph of the 
 Spanish Emperor. About ten years later Trajan conquered 
 Parthia and Armenia. Having fallen ill in Arabia, he was 
 hurrying home ; but he died at Selinus in Cilicia 117 A.D.
 
 134 HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINE8. 
 
 A golden urn containing his ashes was placed under the base 
 of his triumphal column. 
 
 Hadrian, the next Emperor, was chiefly remarkable for 
 the incessant journeys he made from one limit of the empire 
 to another. During seventeen years he continued to tra- 
 verse the ancient world from the Tyne to the Nile, from the 
 Tagus to the Euphrates, examining carefully into the con- 
 dition of the provincial governments. In northern Britain 
 he left an enduring monument of his visit in the great 
 military wall of masonry he built from the Solway to the 
 Tyne. 
 
 The publication of Edictum Perpetuum, a code 
 " of laws prepared by Salvius Julianus, was among 
 ' the great events of Hadrian's reign. 
 
 A Jewish rebellion breaking out in Syria cost many years 
 and lives ; nor did it seem safe to the Emperor to allow the 
 nation to cluster again round the ruins of their fallen city. 
 They were accordingly scattered by an edict forbidding them 
 to live near Jerusalem. 
 
 When Hadrian died of dropsy in 138 A.D., his adopted 
 son, Antoninus Pius, began a calm and uneventful reign of 
 three-and-twenty years. He was succeeded in 161 A.D. by 
 Aurelius Antoninus the Philosopher. Mutterings of the 
 great storm of barbaric rage, which finally smote down 
 Pagan Rome, could even then be heard upon the frontiers 
 of the Empire. Aurelius, who had raised his adopted 
 brother Verus to a full share of his power, sent him to 
 fight the Parthians in the East. But a fiercer war arose 
 with two German tribes, the Marcomanni and the Quadi. 
 Placing his head-quarters in Pannonia, Aurelius directed all 
 his energies against these formidable foes. The greatest of 
 his victories was that won over the Quadi in 174 A.D. This 
 war was yet unfinished, when death seized Aurelius at 
 Vienna, 180 A.D. 
 
 The third and last of the Antonines was the wretched 
 Commodus, son of Aurelius. The debaucheries of Rome 
 proving irresistible to this youth, upon his father's death 
 he bought peace from the wild Germans, and hurried away 
 to the capital. The dress of a gladiator or a charioteer 
 would have suited him better than the purple he disgraced.
 
 THE EMPIRE SOLD BY AUCTION. 135 
 
 In cruelty and licentiousness he rivalled the worst of 
 Eastern despots. Patience at last reached its limit. A 
 dwarf came running one day to Marcia, mistress of Corn- 
 modus, with a list of death, containing her own and other 
 names. She mixed a cup of poison for the tyrant ; but it 
 seemed to work so slowly that she then called in the 
 strength of a wrestler named Narcissus, who strangled 
 the wretched man (192 A.D). 
 
 Could the purple be degraded to a lower depth ? Before 
 six months had expired, after Pertinax, once a poor charcoal- 
 burner, had been raised to the throne by the Praetorians, 
 only to be pierced soon by a Praetorian's lance, the imperial 
 power was sold by auction for a sum which allowed 
 each of the guards thirty sesterces. Long before 193 
 the year had reached its end, Didius Julianus, A.D. 
 the purchaser, who always walked abroad under a 
 storm of hisses and cursing, died under the axe of the 
 common headsman. 
 
 As we look down the long list of Emperors, who reigned 
 in Rome from Commodus to Augustulus, we see a few 
 and but a few worthy of notice and respect. When we 
 have selected Septimius Severus, Aurelian, Diocletian, Con- 
 stantino the Great, Julian the Apostate, and Theodosius, 
 the rest may, without loss to history, be swept from the 
 page. 
 
 SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, a general of Germany, was de- 
 clared Emperor by the Senate upon the death of Didius 
 Julianus. He had two rivals for the empire Niger in 
 Syria, and Albinus in Britain. The defeat of the one at 
 Issus and of the other at Lyons left him master of the field. 
 A successful war against the Parthians also raised his name 
 as a soldier. But his expedition into Britain forms the 
 most notable episode of his reign. 
 
 Passing into Britain in 208 A.D., he pushed his way north- 
 ward by the Roman streets of paved stone, so long as these 
 afforded him footing ; and he then committed his army and 
 himself to the wild Caledonian forests. Most harassing 
 attacks of the woodmen troubled the march. Out from the 
 forest glades would rush a horde of savages, brandishing dirks, 
 and shaking with horrid noise the brazen rattles that tipped
 
 136 AURELIAN AND ZENOBIA. 
 
 the handles of their spears. The hungry Koman soldiers 
 would sometimes find a sheep or an ox straying near the path, 
 and when they ran to seize the prize, would find claymores 
 whirling round their devoted heads. Through all these 
 perils Severus forced his way to the promontory between the 
 Cromarty and Moray Friths. The Romans, except for the 
 name of conquest, had decidedly the worst of the war. 
 Severus died at York in 211 A.D. 
 
 AURELIAN, whose father was a husbandman, raised him- 
 self by valour and strictness of discipline to the highest 
 military command. In 270 A.D. the Legions of the Danube 
 claimed the imperial purple for him. He conquered the 
 Germans and the Vandals ; but the chief interest of his 
 reign centres in his war with Zenobia, the celebrated Queen 
 of Palmyra. 
 
 This lady, the widow of Odenathus, held her warlike 
 court at Palmyra, a strong and beautiful city in the heart 
 of the Syrian Desert, where amid palm-trees crumbling 
 pillars of colossal size still attest its ancient greatness. 
 Bright black eyes, pearly teeth, a frank and pleasant 
 manner, ability to talk in Greek and in Egyptian, as well 
 as in her native Syriac, helped to account for her influ- 
 ence over the men she ruled. She rode on horseback 
 with a helmet on, and wore a skirt whose purple border 
 clanked with pendent jewels. Proceeding by way of the 
 Hellespont into Syria, Aurelian met and defeated the army 
 of Zenobia at Emesa. He then besieged Palmyra, which 
 the Queen defended fiercely with balistse and engines that 
 flung fire. She counted on aid from Persia, and on 
 
 273 the lack of food in the desert; but both hopes 
 
 A.D. failed. While trying to escape, she was seized. 
 The city, treated mildly at first, was afterwards 
 given up to massacre and pillage as a punishment for revolt. 
 The stately Queen, after decorating the Triumph of Aureliau, 
 retired to an estate near Rome, where she lived in rural 
 quiet. Among those slain at Palmyra was Longinus, 
 Greek tutor to the Queen, and author of a treatise On the 
 Sublime. 
 
 Aurelian was murdered by conspirators in 275 A.D. 
 
 DIOCLETIAN was raised to the throne by the soldiers,
 
 REIGN OF DIOCLETIAN. 137 
 
 when the dead body of Numerian, slain many days before, 
 was found in the litter, whose seclusion he had sought 
 owing to inflammation of the eyes. Diocletian ran his sword 
 through Aper the murderer, crying out, " See, I have killed 
 a boar." It had been foretold that to kill a boar would win 
 for him a throne : and thus he fulfilled the prophecy, 
 284 A.D. 
 
 His reign is remarkable for the division of the empire 
 first into two parts, when he appointed Maximian, origi- 
 nally a slave like himself, to share his power and later, 
 292 A.D., when each Augustus chose a Caesar to assist him. 
 Diocletian, whose centre of government was Nicomedia, 
 chose Galerius, once a herdsman ; Maximian, ruling chiefly 
 from Milan, took Constantius Chlorus (the Sallow). Dio- 
 cletian, keeping Asia and Egypt, assigned Thrace and 
 Illyria to his Caesar; while Maximian, holding Italy and 
 Africa, sent Constantius to Gaul and Spain. 
 
 Besides these important changes in the Government, we 
 have to note in this reign the insurrection of Carausius in Bri- 
 tain, and the infliction of the last and worst of the persecutions 
 that fell upon the Christians under the old Roman Empire. 
 
 Carausius, the Menapian, was captain of the Channel 
 Fleet in the British seas, when an order came from Rome 
 to put him to death, because he was suspected of enriching 
 himself by piratical incursions. He defied the edict, took to 
 Ids ships, and seized Gessoriacum, which we call Boulogne. 
 He ruled in Britain for seven years, until one of his officers 
 named Allectus murdered him, 297 A.D. Allectus held 
 sway for three years longer : but the island was then re- 
 covered for Diocletian by Constantius Chlorus. 
 
 In the year 303 the most terrible of the persecutions, to 
 which the Christians were subjected, broke out in Nicomedia, 
 a city of Bithynia. The church was razed to the ground, 
 and all copies of the Bible found were burned. 
 Galerius, the son-in-law of the Emperor, was the 303 
 author of these deeds, and of the dreadful edict A.D. 
 of persecution that commanded Christians to be 
 degraded in every part of the empire. A man who tore 
 down the placard was roasted to death ; and from the Alps 
 to Armenia the fires of death began to burn. 
 
 U) 10
 
 138 CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. 
 
 The persecution was still raging, when in 305 A.D. Dio- 
 cletian abdicated his imperial throne, obliging Maximian to 
 do the same at Milan ; nor did it spend its violence until 
 311, when Galerius, smitten with fear of coming death, 
 published an edict favourable to the Christians. 
 
 In the year 308 A.D. no fewer than six Emperors divided 
 
 among themselves the Roman world. Sixteen years of 
 
 warfare removed all but one, CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, who 
 
 took to himself the dominion of those he had over- 
 
 324 come. From 324 to 337 he continued to be Em- 
 
 A.D. peror of Rome. He is commonly regarded as the 
 first of the Christian Emperors ; and a strange 
 story is told of a Fiery Cross, which he saw hung in the sky, 
 with the motto below it, " In this conquer," while he was 
 preparing to contest the empire with his colleague Maxentius 
 at Saxa Rubra near Rome. But his tenderness to the Chris- 
 tians, exhibited chiefly in the famous edict of toleration 
 passed at Milan in 313 A.D., seems to have been rather a 
 matter of policy than of conviction. 
 
 The chief event of Constantine's reign was the adoption 
 as a new capital of that city on the Bosporus, which still 
 bears this Emperor's name. The position is one of striking 
 importance, for a city built upon that narrow strait com- 
 mands at once Europe and Asia, and controls the com- 
 munication between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. 
 The name New Rome was given at first to the beautiful city 
 of gold and marble, which Constantino made out of old 
 Byzantium. 
 
 Constantine adopted a new policy as well as a new 
 capital He vastly increased the titles of nobility and 
 invented swelling Asiatic names of grandeur. He gave to 
 the Curials the task of collecting the new and heavy direct 
 taxes laid upon the people. And, breaking up the famous 
 Legions into small bands, he placed the army, now separate 
 from the civil service, under eight Masters-General. 
 
 The death of Constantine in 337 A.D., left the purple to 
 be rent and stained by the conflicts of his three sons. 
 
 JULIAN THE APOSTATE derived his historical name from 
 his renunciation of Christianity, which took place about 
 351 A.D., ten years before his accession to the throne. He
 
 BARBARIC INVASIONS. 139 
 
 reigned for only two years (361-363), during which he tried 
 by writing, by building pagan fanes, by an attempted re- 
 storation of the Jewish Temple (in order to disprove pro- 
 phecy), by every means his philosophic mind could devise, to 
 force the Roman people to return to their old gods. But 
 all was in vain. He was slain by an arrow-wound in the 
 side, received while he was in the East, warring with the 
 Persians. 
 
 The distinct division of the Roman Empire into West and 
 East dates from the reign of Valentinian and Valens 
 364 A.D. 
 
 THEODOSIUS became Emperor of the East in 379 A.D. 
 Three years earlier, by permission of Valens, a host of 
 Goths, fleeing before the savage Huns, had established 
 themselves to the number of a million to the south of the 
 Danube, a great natural frontier of the Roman Empire. 
 Against their incursions Theodosius directed all his energies. 
 He dealt rigorously with Paganism, and endeavoured to root 
 out various heresies from the Christian Church. He died 
 at Milan in 395 A.D. 
 
 About eighty years now completed the fall of Rome. 
 Honorius, the unworthy son of Theodosius, fled to Ravenna 
 before the approach of Alaric the Visigoth, who seized and 
 plundered Rome in 410. Genseric overswept Africa with 
 his Vandals, while Attila the Hun soon afterwards invaded 
 Gaul. The last dying flicker of old Roman greatness was 
 displayed on the field of Chalons, where Aetius and 
 Theodoric turned the flood of savagery back by a decisive 
 defeat (451 A.D.). The Huns then moved southward, and 
 crossed the Alps into Italy. Attila threatened Rome, but 
 the intercession of Bishop Leo saved the capital for a time. 
 This prelate was less successful in his attempt to avert the 
 attack of the Vandals in 455 A.D. For a fortnight these 
 destroyers ran riot through the Forum and its surrounding 
 streets. 
 
 Ricimer, a soldier of fortune, who made and unmade Em- 
 perors, was master of the Eternal City for many years of her 
 latest existence. And with Romulus Augustulus, who at 
 Ravenna made abject submission to Odoacer, a Gothic 
 chieftain of the tribe Heruli. the long line of Roman Em-
 
 140 FALL OF ANCIENT ROME. 
 
 perors came to an end in 476 A.D. The Eastern or Byzantine 
 Empire, as it came to be called, survived for all but a thou- 
 sand years, and then yielded to the Ottomans only after a 
 series of fierce attacks, which, spreading over a century, 
 culminated in the great siege of Constantinople, 1453 A.D. 
 
 LATER LATIN WRITERS. 
 
 GELLIUS, born probably at Eome lived between 117 A.D. and 180 
 A.D. author of Nodes Atticce, a miscellany, written during the 
 winter nights in a country house near Athens. 
 
 APPULEIUS, native of Madura in Africa educated at Carthage and 
 Athens lived during the second century A.D. author of a 
 satirical romance called The Golden Ass, and other works. 
 
 CURTIUS, historian ascribed by Niebuhr to the age of Septimins 
 Severus, but this is mere conjecture author of a History of 
 Alexander the Great. 
 
 ULPIAN, great Latin jurist of a family originally from Tyre time 
 of birth unknown wrote in reign of Caracalla (211-217) chief 
 adviser of Alexander Severus slain by soldiers in the palace 
 228 A.D. chief work Ad Edictum, very largely used in compil- 
 ing Justinian's Digest. 
 
 EUTB.OPIUS, historian flourished under Constantine the Great and 
 Julian the Apostate author of a Compendium of Roman Hm- 
 tory, to the accession of Valens. 
 
 AMMIANTJS, historian native of Syrian Antioch flourished between 
 350 A.D. and 390 A.D. author of a Roman History, from Nerva to 
 Valens, inclusive. 
 
 CLAUDIAN, last of the Latin classic poets lived under Theodosius 
 and his sons native of Alexandria chief works his Panegyrics 
 author also of an unfinished epic, The Rape of Proserpine.
 
 ROMAN CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 THE MONARCHY. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 liuilding of Rome Accession of Romulus, ... ... ... 753 
 
 Accession of Numa, ... ... ... ... ... 715 
 
 Accession of Tullus Hostilius, ... ... ... ... 672 
 
 Accession of Ancus Marcius, ... ... ... ... 640 
 
 Accession of Tarquin the Elder, ... ... ... ... 616 
 
 Accession of Servius Tullius, ... ... ... ... 578 
 
 Accession of Tarquin the Haughty, ... ... ... 534 
 
 Expulsion of the Tarquins, and establishment of the Republic, 509 
 
 FIFTH CENTUEY, B.C. 
 THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Lartius appointed the first Dictator, ... ... ... 499 
 
 Battle of Lake Regillus, ... ... ... ... ... 496 
 
 First Secession of the Plebs, ... ... ... ... 494 
 
 Tribunes of the Plebs first appointed, ... ... ... 493 
 
 Coriolanus threatens Rome, ... ... ... ... 491 
 
 Spurius Cassius proposes an Agrarian Law, ... ... 486 
 
 Cincinnatus defeats the J5quians, ... ... - ... ... 458 
 
 Decemvirs chosen to frame a new Code of Laws, ... ... 451 
 
 The Twelve Tables set up, ... ... ... ... 450 
 
 Virginius kills his daughter Second Secession to Mons Sacer, 449 
 
 The Canuleian Law passed, ... ... ... ... 445 
 
 Military Tribunes appointed with consular power, ... ... 
 
 FOURTH CENTURY, B.C. 
 
 Ten years' siege of Veii closed, ... ... ... ... 396 
 
 Gauls victorious at the Alia, ... ... ... ... 390 
 
 Sack of Rome, ... ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 The Licinian Rogations passed, ... ... ... ... 367 
 
 Sextius the first Plebeian Consul, ... ... ... ... 3GS
 
 142 ROMAN CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 THE SAMNITE WARS. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 First Samnite War, ... ... ... ... 843-341 
 
 The Final Latin War, ... ... ... ... 340-338 
 
 Second Samnite War, ... ... ... ... 32G-304 
 
 Disgrace of the Romans at Caudine Forks, ... ... 821 
 
 Ogulnian Law, admitting Plebeians to the priesthood, ... 300 
 
 THIRD CENTUBY, B.C. 
 THE SAMNITE WARS CONTINUED. 
 
 Third Samnite War, 299-290 
 
 Roman victory at Sentinum over the Samnites and the Gauls, 295 
 
 Submission of Samnium, ... ... ... ... ... 290 
 
 Gauls defeated at Lake Vadimo, ... ... ... ... 283 
 
 EXPEDITION OF PYRRHUS. 
 
 Landing of Pyrrhus in Italy, ... ... ... ... 281 
 
 Defeat of the Romans at Heraclea, ... ... ... 280 
 
 Defeat of the Romans also at Asculum, ... ... ... 279 
 
 Pyrrhus defeated at Beneventum, ... ... ... ... 275 
 
 Rome, finally defeating the Samnites, is left mistress of Southern 
 
 Italy, 2G8 
 
 Rome aids the Mamertines in Messana, ... ... ... 264 
 
 THE FIRST PUNIC WAR. 
 
 The First Punic War, 263-241 
 
 Siege of Agrigentnm, ... ... ... ... ... 262 
 
 Dnilius defeats a Punic fleet at Mylae, ... ... ... 260 
 
 Another Punic fleet defeated at Ecnomus, ... ... ... 256 
 
 Defeat and capture of Regulus at Tunis, ... ... ... 255 
 
 Carthaginians defeated at Panormus, ... ... ... 250 
 
 The Romans besiege Lilybseum, ... ... ... ... 249 
 
 Roman victory at Jigusa, ... ... ... ... 241 
 
 Gauls defeated at Telamon, ... ... ... ... 225 
 
 Hannibal elected to the command in Spain, ... ... 220 
 
 Siege of Saguntura, ... ... ... ... ... 219 
 
 SECOND PUNIC WAR. 
 
 Second or Great Punic War, ... ... ... 218-202 
 
 Hannibal begins his march, ... ... ... May, 218
 
 ROMAN CHRONOLOGY. 143 
 
 B.C. 
 
 Hannibal reaches Italy, ... ... ... ... Sept., 218 
 
 Skirmish on the Ticinus, ... ... ... ... Dec., 
 
 Battle of the Trebia, ... ... ... ... Dec., 
 
 Battle of Lake Trasimene, ... ... ... ... 217 
 
 Battle of Cannae, ... ... ... ... ... Aug. 2, 216 
 
 Hannibal's first reverse (at Nola), ... ... ... 
 
 First Macedonian War, 215-205 
 
 Siege of Capua, ... ... ... ... ... 214-211 
 
 Siege of Syracuse by Marcellus, ... ... ... 214-212 
 
 Publius Scipio elected Proconsul for Spain, ... ... 211 
 
 Capture of New Carthage, ... ... ... . 209 
 
 Battle of Beecula, ... ... ... ... ... 208 
 
 Battle of the Metaurus, ... ... ... ... .- 207 
 
 Spain a Roman province, ... ... ... ... ... 206 
 
 P. Scipio lands in Africa, ... ... ... ... 204 
 
 Battle of Zama, ~ 202 
 
 Peace with Carthage, ... ... ... ... ... 201 
 
 Second Macedonian War, ... ... .... ... 200-197 
 
 SECOND CENTURY, B.C. 
 
 Battle of Cynoscephalse Philip of Macedon defeated, ... 197 
 
 The Syrian War, ... ... ... ... ... 192-190 
 
 Battle of Magnesia, ... ... .. ... ... 190 
 
 Cato elected to the Censorship, ... ... ... ... 184 
 
 Death of Hannibal and of Scipio Africanus, ... ... 183 
 
 Treaty of Gracchus pacifies Spain, ... ... ... ... 179 
 
 Third Macedonian War, 171-168 
 
 Battle of Pydna, ... ... ... ... ... ... 168 
 
 THIRD PUNIC WAR, 149-146 
 
 Fall of Carthage and of Corinth Greece and Libya become 
 
 Roman provinces, ... ... ... ... ... 146 
 
 Assassination of Viriathus the Lusitanian, ... ... 140 
 
 Nnmantia taken by Scipio Minor, .- ... ... 133 
 
 First Slave War, 133-131 
 
 Tribuneship and death of Tiberius Gracchus, ... ... 133 
 
 Supposed murder of Scipio Minor, ... ... ... 129 
 
 Cains Gracchus made Tribune, ... ... ... ... 123 
 
 Death of Caius Gracchus, ... ... ... ... ... 121 
 
 Jugurthine War, ... ... ... ... ... 111-105 
 
 Marius first elected Consul, ... ... ... ... 107 
 
 Second Slave War in Sicily, ... ..- ... 103-101 
 
 Teutones defeated at Aquas Sextiae (A ix), ... ... ... 102 
 
 Cimbri defeated on the Raudine Plain, ... ... ... 101
 
 144 ROMAN CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 FIEST CENTUEY, B.C. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 Sedition and death of Saturninus, ... ... ... ... 100 
 
 Attempted reform and murder of Drusus, ... ... ... 91 
 
 The Social or Marsic War, ... ... ... ... 90-88 
 
 First Mithridatic War, ... ... ... ... ... 88-84 
 
 Flight of Marius to Africa, ... ... ... ... 88 
 
 Rome occupied by Marius dreadful massacre, ... ... 87 
 
 Death of Marius, ... ... ... ... ... 86 
 
 Athens taken and burned by Sulla, ... ... ... 
 
 Landing of Sulla in Italy, ... ... ... ... 83 
 
 Second Mithridatic War, ... ... ... ... ... 83-81 
 
 Battle at the Colline Gate of Rome, ... ... ... 82 
 
 Proscriptions of Sulla deluge Rome with blood, ... ... 
 
 Sulla lays down the Dictatorship, ... ... ... ... 80 
 
 His death at Puteoli, ... ... ... ... ... 78 
 
 Third Mithridatic War, 74-63 
 
 Sertorius murdered in Spain, ... ... ... ... 72 
 
 The Gladiatorial War of Spartacus, ... ... ,.. 73-71 
 
 POMPEY AND C^SAR. 
 
 Consulship of Poinpey and Crassus, ... ... ... 70 
 
 Pompey clears the Mediterranean of pirates, ... ... 67 
 
 Supersedes Lucullus in Mithridatic War, ... ... ... 66 
 
 Suicide of Mithridates in the Crimea, ... ... ... 63 
 
 The conspiracy of Catiline, 
 
 Julius Csosar made Consul First Triumvirate, ... .. 59 
 
 P>anishinent of Cicero, ... ... ... ... ... 58 
 
 Caesar sets out for Gaul, ... 
 
 Partition of the provinces among the Triumvirs, ... ... 55 
 
 Caesar's first invasion of Britain, ... ... ... ... 
 
 Defeat and death of Crassus in Parthia, ... ... ... 53 
 
 Coesar conquers Vercingetorix in Gaul, ... ... ... 52 
 
 Caesar crosses the Rubicon, ... ... ... ... 49 
 
 Battle of Pharsalia Death of Pompey, ... ... ... 48 
 
 Pompeians in Africa defeated at Thapsus Suicide of Cato, ... 46 
 
 Pompeians in Spain defeated at Munda, ... ... ... 45 
 
 Murder of Caesar, ... ... ... ... 15th March, 44 
 
 Antony defeated at Mutina, ... ... .- ... 43 
 
 The Second Triumvirate Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus 
 
 Death of Cicero, ' ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 Defeat and death of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, ... 42 
 
 Naval war with Sextus Pompey, ... ... ... ... 38-36
 
 ROMAN CHRONOLOGY. 145 
 
 B.C. 
 Battle of Actium, ... ... ... ... ... 31 
 
 Death of Antony and Cleopatra, ... ... ... ... 80 
 
 Octavian called Augustus and Imperator, ... ... ... 27 
 
 BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST, ... ... ... ... ... 3 
 
 FIRST CENTURY OP THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 AD. 
 
 Army of Varus destroyed in Germany, ... ... ... 9 
 
 Death of Augustus, ... ... ... ... ... 14 
 
 Reign of Tiberius, ... ... ... ... ... 14-37 
 
 Germanicus defeats Arminius, ... ... ... ... 16 
 
 Death of Germanicus in Syria, ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 Praetorians collected at Rome, ... ... ... ... 23 
 
 Retirement of Tiberius to Capreae, ... ... ... 26 
 
 Death of Sejanus, ... ... ... ... ... 31 
 
 Murder of Tiberius, ... ... ... ... ... 37 
 
 Reign of Caligula, ... ... ... ... ... 37-41 
 
 Reign of Claudius, ... ... ... ... ... 41-54 
 
 Invasion of Britain, ... ... ... ... ... 43 
 
 Caractacus made prisoner, ... ... ... ... 51 
 
 Claudius poisoned, ... ... ... ... ... 54 
 
 Reign of Nero, ... ... ... ... ... ... 54-68 
 
 Defeat and death of Boadicea in Britain, ... ... ... 61 
 
 Great fire at Rome First Christian persecution, ... ... 64 
 
 Nero's death, ... ... ... ... ... ... 68 
 
 Galba murdered, ... ... ... ... ... 69 
 
 Otho kills himself, ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 Vitellius murdered, ... ... ... ... ... 
 
 Reign of Vespasian, ... ... ... ... ... 69-79 
 
 Destruction of Jerusalem, ... ... ... ... 70 
 
 Julius Agricola Propraetor of Britain, ... ... ... 78 
 
 Reign of Titus, ... ... ... ... ... ... 79-81 
 
 .Great eruption of Vesuvius, ... ... ... ... 79 
 
 Reign of Domitian, ... ... ... ... ... 81-96 
 
 Agricola's victory at the Grampians, ... ... ... 84 
 
 Reign of Nerva, ... ... ... ... ... ... 96-98 
 
 Reign of Trajan, ... ... ... ... ... 98-117 
 
 SECOND CENTURY, A.D. 
 
 Final conquest of Dacia, ... ... ... ... ... 104 
 
 Reign of Hadrian, ... ... ... ... 117-138 
 
 Erects a wall in Britain, ... ... ... ... ... 120 
 
 Publishes Edictum Perpetuum, ... ... ... ... 131 
 
 Reign of Antoninus Pius, ... ... ... 138-1G1
 
 146 ROMAN CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Reign of Aurelius, ... ... ... ... 161-180 
 
 Victory over the Quadi, ... ... ... ... ... 174 
 
 Reign of Commodus, ... 180-192 
 
 Praetorians sell the purple by auction, ... ... ... 193 
 
 Reign of Septimius Severus, ... ... ... 193-211 
 
 THIRD CENTURY, A.D. 
 
 Expedition of Severus to Britain, ... .. ... ... 208 
 
 Death of Severus at York, ... ... ... ... 211 
 
 Reign of Aurelian, ... ... ... ... 270-275 
 
 Siege of Palmyra Capture of Zeuobia, ... ... ... 273 
 
 Reign of Diocletian He divides the empire with Maximian, 284-305 
 
 Carausius assumes the purple in Britain, ... ... ... 289 
 
 Fourfold division of the Roman Empire, ... ... ... 292 
 
 Assassination of Carausius, ... ... ... ... 297 
 
 FOURTH CENTURY, A.D. 
 
 Christians persecuted by Diocletian and Galerius ... 303-311 
 
 Empire divided among six, ... ... ... ... 308 
 
 Edict of Toleration by Constantine, ... ... ... 313 
 
 Reign of Constantine, ... ... ... .. 324-337 
 
 Constantinople selected as a Capital, ... ... ... 330 
 
 Reign of Julian the Apostate, ... ... ... 361-363 
 
 Division of the empire by Valentinian and Valens, ... ... 364 
 
 Reign of Theodosius, 379-395 
 
 FIFTH CENTURY, A.D. 
 
 Alaric the Visigoth sacks Rome, ... ... ... ... 410 
 
 Genseric the Vandal takes Carthage, ... ... ... 439 
 
 Attila the Hun defeated at Chalons, ... ... ... 451 
 
 The Vandals pillage Rome, ... ... ... ... 455 
 
 Reign of Majorian, ... ... ... ... 457-461 
 
 Augustulus submits to Odoacer Fall of the Western Empire, 476
 
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