Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1
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Title: Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1
Editor: Charles F. Horne
Release date: August 27, 2008 [eBook #26421]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN. VOL. 1 ***
Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers and the Online
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file was produced from images generously made available
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[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
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[Illustration: Attila, "The Scourge of God".]
GREAT MEN AND FAMOUS WOMEN
_A Series of Pen and Pencil Sketches of_
THE LIVES OF MORE THAN 200 OF THE MOST PROMINENT PERSONAGES IN HISTORY
VOL. I.
Copyright, 1894, BY SELMAR HESS
edited by Charles F. Horne
[Illustration: Publisher's arm.]
New-York: Selmar Hess Publisher
Copyright, 1894, by SELMAR HESS.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
SUBJECT AUTHOR PAGE
ALARIC THE BOLD, _Archdeacon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S._, 56
ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 10
MARC ANTONY, 37
ATTILA, _Archdeacon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S._, 59
BELISARIUS, _Charlotte M. Yonge_, 64
GODFREY DE BOUILLON, _Henry G. Hewlett_, 97
JULIUS CAESAR, _E. Spencer Beesly, M.A._, 32
CHARLEMAGNE, _Sir J. Bernard Burke_, 75
CLOVIS THE FIRST, _Thomas Wyatt, A.M._, 61
GASPARD DE COLIGNI, _Professor Creasy_, 164
HERNANDO CORTES, _H. Rider Haggard_, 150
CYRUS THE GREAT, _Clarence Cook_, 5
DIOCLETIAN, 50
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, 176
EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND, _Thomas Davidson_, 109
EDWARD III. OF ENGLAND, 114
EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, _L. Drake_, 119
BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN, 127
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, _Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen_, 199
HANNIBAL, _Walter Whyte_, 14
HENRY IV. OF FRANCE, 171
HENRY V. OF ENGLAND, _G. P. R. James_, 129
HERMANN, 40
JOHN HUNIADES, _Professor A. Vambery_, 136
CAIUS MARIUS, _James Anthony Froude, LL.D._, 25
CHARLES MARTEL, _Henry G. Hewlett_, 69
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, _Clarence Cook_, 1
PEPIN THE SHORT, _Henry G. Hewlett_, 72
FRANCISCO PIZARRO, _J. T. Trowbridge_, 156
SIR WALTER RALEIGH, 182
SALADIN, _Walter Besant_, 106
SCIPIO AFRICANUS MAJOR, 18
MILES STANDISH, _Elbridge S. Brooks_, 189
TRAJAN, _J. S. Reid, Litt. D._, 42
OLAF TRYGGVESON, _Thomas Carlyle_, 83
ALBRECHT VON WALLENSTEIN, _Henry G. Hewlett_, 194
WARWICK, THE KING-MAKER, 146
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, _G. W. Prothero_, 92
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME I.
PHOTOGRAVURES
ILLUSTRATION ARTIST TO FACE PAGE
ATTILA, "THE SCOURGE OF GOD," _Ulpiano Checa_ _Frontispiece_
"AND HE WAS DRIVEN FROM MEN, AND DID
EAT GRASS AS OXEN," _Georges Rochegrosse_ 4
HANNIBAL CROSSING THE RHONE, _Henri-Paul Motte_ 14
HERMANN'S TRIUMPH OVER THE ROMANS, _Paul Thumann_ 40
ROME UNDER TRAJAN--A CHARIOT RACE, _Ulpiano Checa_ 48
THE VICTIMS OF GALERIUS, _E. K. Liska_ 54
ALARIC IN ATHENS, _Ludwig Thiersch_ 56
CHARLEMAGNE AT WITIKIND'S BAPTISM, _Paul Thumann_ 78
HENRY V. REJECTS FALSTAFF, _Eduard Gruetzner_ 132
THE ADMIRAL OF THE SPANISH ARMADA
SURRENDERS TO DRAKE, _Seymour Lucas_ 180
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF
LUTZEN, _Ludwig Braun_ 202
WOOD-ENGRAVINGS AND TYPOGRAVURES
ALEXANDER DISCOVERING THE BODY OF
DARIUS, _Gustave Dore_ 12
GENEROSITY OF SCIPIO, _Schopin_ 20
MARIUS ON THE RUINS OF CARTHAGE, _John Vanderlyn_ 32
THE IDES OF MARCH, _Carl Von Piloty_ 36
THE LAST GLADIATORIAL CONTEST, _J. Stallaert_ 58
CLOVIS PUNISHING A REBEL, _Alphonse De Neuville_ 62
BELISARIUS RECEIVING ALMS, _Jacques-Louis David_ 68
CHARLES MARTEL AT TOURS, _Charles Steuben_ 72
PEPIN AFTER THE MURDER OF DUKE WAIFRE, _Th. Lybaert_ 74
A NORSE RAID UNDER OLAF, _Hugo Vogel_ 84
WILLIAM AT HASTINGS, _P. J. De Loutherbourg_ 94
GODFREY DE BOUILLON ENTERING
JERUSALEM, _Carl Von Piloty_ 104
SALADIN, _Gustave Dore_ 108
EDWARD III. AND THE BURGHERS OF
CALAIS, _Berthelemy_ 118
BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN, _Alphonse De Neuville_ 128
HUNIADES AT BELGRADE, _Gustave Dore_ 146
YORK AND LANCASTER--THE RED AND WHITE
ROSES, 148
PIZARRO EXHORTING HIS BAND AT GALLO, _Lizcano_ 158
HENRY IV. OF FRANCE AT HOME, _J. D. Ingres_ 176
RALEIGH PARTING FROM HIS WIFE, _E. Leutze_ 188
DEPARTURE OF THE MAYFLOWER, _A. W. Bayes_ 192
WALLENSTEIN'S LAST BANQUET, _J. Scholz_ 198
SOLDIERS AND SAILORS
Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest.
The loving are the daring.
--BAYARD TAYLOR
NEBUCHADNEZZAR[1]
By CLARENCE COOK
(645-561 B.C.)
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Nebuchadnezzar.]
With the death of Sardanapalus, the great monarch of Assyria, and the
taking of Nineveh, the capital city, by the Medes, the kingdom of
Assyria came to an end, and the vast domain was parcelled out among
the conquerors. At the time of the catastrophe, the district of
Babylonia, with its capital city Babylon, was ruled as a dependent
satrapy of Assyria by Nabopolassar. Aided by the Medes, he now took
possession of the province and established himself as an independent
monarch, strengthening the alliance by a marriage between the Princess
Amuhia, the daughter of the Median king, and his son Nebuchadnezzar.
In the partition of Assyria, the region stretching from Egypt to the
upper Euphrates, including Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, had fallen
to the share of Nabopolassar. But the tribes that peopled it were not
disposed to accept the rule of the new claimant, and looked about for
an ally to support them in their resistance. Such an ally they thought
they had found in Egypt.
Egypt was the great rival of Babylon, as she had been of Assyria. Both
desired to control the highways of traffic connecting the
Mediterranean with the farther East. Egypt had the advantage, both
from her actual position on the Mediterranean and her nearer
neighborhood to the coveted territory, and she used her advantage with
audacity and skill. No sooner, however, did Nabopolassar feel himself
firm on his throne than he resolved to check the ambition of Egypt and
secure for himself the sovereignty of the lands in dispute.
The task was not an easy one. Pharaoh Necho had been for three years
in possession of the whole strip along the Mediterranean--Palestine,
Phoenicia, and part of Syria--and was pushing victoriously on to
Assyria, when he was met at the plain of Megiddo, commanding the
principal pass in the range of Mount Carmel, by the forces of the
petty kingdom of Judah, disputing his advance. He defeated them in a
bloody engagement, in which Josiah, King of Judah, was slain, and then
continued his march to Carchemish, a stronghold built to defend one of
the few fordable passes of the upper Euphrates. This important place
having been taken after a bloody battle, Necho was master of all the
strategic points north and west of Babylonia.
Nebuchadnezzar was now put in command of an army, to force Pharaoh to
give up his prey. Marching directly upon Carchemish, he attacked the
Egyptian and defeated him with great slaughter. Following up his
victory, he wrested from Pharaoh, in engagement after engagement, all
that he had gained in Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, and was in the
midst of fighting in Egypt itself, when the news came of the death of
his father; and he hastened home at once by forced marches to secure
his possession of the throne. In his train were captives of all the
nations he had conquered: Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, and Egyptians.
Among the Jewish prisoners was Daniel, the author of the book of the
Old Testament called by his name, and to whom we owe the little
personal knowledge we have of the great Babylonian monarch.
Of all the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar in this long struggle with
Egypt, that of the Jewish people is the most interesting to us. The
Jews had fought hard for independence, but if they must be conquered
and held in subjection, they preferred the rule of Egypt to that of
Babylon. Even the long slavery of their ancestors in that country and
the sufferings it had entailed, with the tragic memories of the exodus
and the wanderings in the desert, had not been potent to blot out the
traditions of the years passed in that pleasant land with its
delicious climate, its nourishing and abundant food. Alike in
prosperity and in evil days the hearts of the people of Israel yearned
after Egypt, and the denunciations of her prophets are never so bitter
as when uttered against those who turned from Jehovah to worship the
false gods of the Nile. Three times did the inhabitants of Jerusalem
rebel against the rule of Babylon, and three times did Nebuchadnezzar
come down upon them with a cruel and unrelenting vengeance, carrying
off their people into bondage, each time inflicting great damage upon
the city and leaving her less capable of resistance; yet each time her
rulers had turned to Egypt in the vain hope of finding in her a
defence against the oppressor, but in every instance Egypt had proved
a broken reed.
Of the three successive kings of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar had left to
rule the city as his servants, and who had all in turn rebelled
against him, one had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment in
Babylon; a second had been carried there in chains and probably
killed, while the third, captured in a vain attempt to escape after
the taking of the city, had first been made to see his sons killed
before his eyes, had then been cruelly blinded, and afterward carried
in chains to Babylon, and cast into prison. The last siege of the
city lasted eighteen months, and when it was finally taken by assault,
its ruin was complete. By previous deportations Jerusalem had been
deprived of her princes, her warriors, her craftsmen, and her smiths,
with all the treasure laid up in the palace of her kings, and all the
vessels of gold and silver consecrated to the worship of Jehovah.
Little then was left for her to suffer, when the punishment of her
latest rebellion came. Her walls were thrown down, her temple, her
chief glory, was destroyed, the greater part of the inhabitants who
had survived the prolonged siege were carried off to swell the crowd
of exiles already in Babylon, and only a few of the humbler sort of
folk, the vine-dressers and the small farmers, were left behind.
When Nebuchadnezzar rested after his conquests, secure in the
subjugation of his rivals, and in the possession of his vast kingdom,
he gave himself up to the material improvement of Babylon and the
surrounding country. The city as he left it, at the end of his reign
of forty-three years, was built on both sides of the Euphrates, and
covered a space of four hundred square miles, equal to five times the
size of London. It was surrounded by a triple wall of brick; the
innermost, over three hundred feet high, and eighty-five feet broad at
the top, with room for four chariots to drive abreast. The walls were
pierced by one hundred gate-ways framed in brass and with brazen
gates, and at the points where the Euphrates entered and left the city
the walls also turned and followed the course of the river, thus
dividing the city into two fortified parts. These two districts were
connected by a bridge of stone piers, guarded by portcullises, and
ferries also plied between the quays that lined the river-banks, to
which access was given by gates in the walls.
Nebuchadnezzar's palace was a splendid structure covering a large
space at one end of the bridge. In the central court were the Hanging
Gardens, the chief glory of the city, and reckoned one of the wonders
of the world. No clear idea can be formed of these gardens from any
description that has come down to us, but it would appear that arches
eighty feet high supported terraces of earth planted with all the
skill for which the gardeners of the East were famous. We are told
that they were built for the pleasure of Queen Amuhia, who, as a
Median princess, missed her native mountains, but a more commonplace
explanation is that they were carried so high to escape the mosquitoes
that swarmed on the lower level.
Various splendid edifices, chiefly religious, adorned the great
squares of the city: the temple of the god Bel, enriched by the spoils
of Tyre and Jerusalem, was the especial pride of Nebuchadnezzar. It
rose in a succession of eight lofty stages, and supported on the top a
golden statue of the god, forty feet high. Still another temple of Bel
was built in seven stages, each faced with enamelled brick of one of
the planetary colors; the topmost one of blue, the color dedicated to
Mercury or Nebo, the patron god of Nabopolassar.
But the most important of the civic undertakings of Nebuchadnezzar was
the extension of the great system of canalization by which the barren
wastes of the Babylonian plain were made to rival the valley of the
Nile in fertility, and become the granary of the East. The whole
territory was covered with a network of canals fed by the Tigris and
Euphrates, and used for both irrigation and navigation. One branch had
already connected Nineveh with Babylon, and another constructed by
Nebuchadnezzar united Babylon to the Persian Gulf, running a distance
of four hundred miles. This is still to be traced in a portion of its
length.
The fate of Nebuchadnezzar is one of the most tragic in the long list
of calamities that have overtaken the great and powerful of the earth.
According to Daniel, it was just after the king had spoken those words
of exulting pride as he walked in the palace of the Kingdom of
Babylon: "Is not this great Babylon that I have built," when he was
attacked by that dreadful form of madness, called by the Greeks,
lycanthropy (wolf-man), in which the victim fancies himself a beast:
in its fiercer manifestations a beast of the forest, or in milder
visitations a beast of the field. Nebuchadnezzar's madness became so
violent that for four years he was exiled from his throne and from the
company of men, and wandered in the fields, eating grass like oxen,
"and his body was wet with the dews of heaven, and his hairs were
grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws."
Although no mention is made of this strange malady in any writing but
the book of Daniel, yet it has a pathetic confirmation in one of the
rock-cut inscriptions that record the acts of Nebuchadnezzar's reign.
"For four years the seat of my kingdom did not rejoice my heart. In
all my dominions I built no high place of power, nor did I lay up the
precious treasure of my kingdom. In Babylon I erected no buildings for
myself nor for the glory of my empire. In the worship of Bel-Merodach,
my Lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon the city of his worship and
the seat of my empire, I did not sing his praise, nor did I furnish
his altar with victims"--and then, as if returning to the thing that
lay nearest him--"In four years I did not dig out the canals."
[Illustration: "And he was driven from men, and did eat grass as
oxen."]
In time, the black cloud of the king's madness passed away and health
and reason were restored to him. And if the words that Daniel puts
into the king's mouth on his recovery are really his, we must
recognize in this Eastern Despot a decided strain of religious
sensibility, a trait that appears beside in his almost passionate
expressions of affection for his god Merodach, and in his sympathy
with Daniel and the youths who were his companions, in their own
religious devotion. Although Daniel and the other youths whom the king
had caused to be called out from the mass of the Jewish captives for
his own particular service--boys distinguished from the rest by their
personal beauty, their intelligence and aptitude--were too earnest in
their religious convictions and too high-spirited to conform to the
Babylonian religion or to conceal their sentiments under the cloak of
policy, yet the king tolerated their adherence to their ritual and
yielded only in part to the persistence of the Jew-baiters, who saw
with angry eyes the promotion of the hated captives to places of power
and authority over the heads of their captors. In spite of his enemies
Daniel was allowed to exercise his own religion in peace; and the
persecutors of his companions, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were
themselves destroyed in the furnace they had heated for their innocent
victims, which the youths themselves were rescued from by the personal
interposition of the king, who pretended to see--or in his religious
exaltation did really see--the god himself standing guard over the
victims in the midst of the flames.
Of Nebuchadnezzar after the recovery of his reason we learn but
little. The chronicle of Daniel passes abruptly from Nebuchadnezzar to
Belshazzar, and the great king is not mentioned again. History, too,
is silent. It tells us only that he left the throne to a son, whose
name, Evil-Merodach, records the devotion of his father to the god of
his people.
[Signature of the author.]
CYRUS THE GREAT[2]
By CLARENCE COOK
(REIGNED 558-529 B.C.)
[Footnote 2: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Cyrus the Great.]
The early life of Cyrus the Persian, like that of many another famous
conqueror, is lost in a cloud of fable. According to Herodotus, to
whom we owe the earliest account, Astyages the King of Media was
warned in a dream that some danger threatened the kingdom from the
offspring of his daughter Mandane, who as yet was unmarried. In order
to remove the danger, whatever it might be, as far as possible from
his throne, Astyages married his daughter to a Persian named Cambyses,
who took her with him to his own country. But after his daughter's
marriage Astyages had another dream, which was interpreted by the
priests to mean that his daughter's child was destined to reign in his
stead. Alarmed by this prophecy he sent for his daughter, and when in
course of time she bore a son, he ordered his trusty lieutenant
Harpagus to carry the child to his own house and kill it. Harpagus
took the infant as he had been ordered to do, but moved by the
pleadings of his wife he determined to commit the rest of his bloody
instructions to other hands. He therefore called one of his herdsmen,
and ordered him to expose the child on the bleakest part of the
mountain and leave it to perish, threatening him with the most
terrible penalties in case of disobedience. But the herdsman and his
wife were no more proof against pity than Harpagus and his wife had
been, and while they stood swayed between their wish to save the child
and their fear of disobeying Harpagus, fortune happily provided an
escape for them. The wife of the herdsman brought forth a dead child,
and this they determined to substitute for the living infant, and to
bring up the grandson of Astyages as their own. The exchange was
accomplished, and after some days the servants of Harpagus, sent to
inquire if their master's commands had been obeyed, were shown by the
herdsman the body of a dead child exposed on the rocks and still
wearing the rich clothes and ornaments in which it had been brought to
his house. Harpagus was thus enabled to assure Astyages that he was
safe from the threatened danger, and might enjoy his throne in peace.
When the child of Mandane was ten years old an accident brought him to
the knowledge of the king, and restored him to his birthright. One day
he was playing with the children of his neighbors, and in a certain
game where it was necessary to make one of the players king, Cyrus was
chosen, and all the others, as his subjects, promised to obey his
commands. But one of the boys, the son of a rich noble of the court of
Astyages, refused to do as he was bid by Cyrus, and according to the
rule of the game, he had to submit to a beating at the hand of the
boy-king. Angry at this treatment, he complained to his father, who,
indignant in his turn, went to Astyages, and reproached him with the
blows his son had received at the hands of the son of one of the
king's slaves. Cyrus was brought before the king; but when he was
asked how he had dared to treat the son of a nobleman in such a way,
the boy, nothing daunted, answered that he had done only what was
right: the rules of the game were known to all who had joined in it:
the other boys had submitted to the penalties: the son of the nobleman
alone had refused, and he had been punished as he deserved. "If any
wrong has been done by me," he said, "I am ready to suffer for it."
Struck by the boldness of the lad, and by something in his looks,
Astyages dismissed him for a time, and promised the nobleman that he
should be satisfied for the insults offered to his son. He then sent
for the herdsman Mitridates and wrung from him a confession of what he
had done; and learning how Harpagus had deceived him he acquitted
Mitridates, and turned all his vengeance upon Harpagus as the chief
offender. How cruelly he punished him must not be told here, for pity,
but it was such a barbarous revenge as could never be forgiven; and
though Harpagus pretended to make light of it, yet it was only that by
keeping fair with the king he might bide his time, and repay cruelty
with cruelty.
But now, as Cyrus in our story has grown to man's estate, and is ready
to show the world of what stuff he is made, it will be well to explain
in a few words, what was the state of things in that part of the
world where he was to play his part.
The mighty Kingdom of Assyria in its greatest estate had stretched
from the Indus on the east, to the Mediterranean on the west. But when
Nineveh, the capital and chief city of the empire, had been destroyed
by the Medes--a subject people living on the north-eastern borders of
the kingdom, but who had risen in rebellion against their
rulers--Assyria was broken in pieces, and several minor kingdoms rose
on her ruins.
Of these the chief were Media and Babylonia in the east, and Lydia in
the west. Babylonia rose to a great height of power and splendor under
Nebuchadnezzar, as we have seen in our sketch of that king's life. The
Medes, a brave and warlike people, never attained to so high a degree
of civilization as the Babylonians, nor did they ever have a monarch
whose fame equalled that of Sardanapalus, the King of Assyria; of
Nebuchadnezzar; or of Croesus, King of Lydia; but under a succession
of astute and hardy warriors, who held the throne for something over
one hundred and fifty years, their dominion was gradually extended
until it stretched from the Indus to the centre of Asia Minor. Their
greatest achievement had been the destruction of Nineveh in B.C. 606.
Lydia, the remaining province, touched the Median kingdom on the east,
and on the west was only separated, in the beginning, from the
Mediterranean by the narrow strip of territory occupied by the Greek
colonies, which for a time acted as a bar to the encroachments of the
Lydian monarchs and their conquerors.
When Cyrus came to manhood, these kingdoms, the successors of the
Assyrian monarchy, were all flourishing in wealth and power. Media was
ruled by Astyages, his grandfather--to accept the legendary history as
it has come down to us; Babylonia the greatest of the three was
governed by Nebuchadnezzar, while Lydia was ruled by Croesus, a
monarch wise above his peers, whose name has long been a synonym for
unbounded wealth, and whose story, though not beyond the bounds of
credibility, reads more like a fable of romance than a tale of sober
fact.
Croesus was the brother-in-law of Astyages, and in close alliance not
only with the Medes, but with the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the
Greeks; and he was at the height of his power and was looking forward
to still greater increase of his dominions, when in an evil hour he
struck against the growing greatness of Cyrus, and was crushed in the
encounter. Had he been less arrogant, the doom he wrought for himself
might have been delayed, but it could not have been wholly averted.
Nothing could have long withstood the greed of Cyrus for universal
dominion.
We have seen what good cause Harpagus had to hate Astyages. But he
nursed his revenge with crafty wisdom, and knowing himself powerless
to act openly and alone, he tried what stratagem might do to bring
about his aim, which was no less than the overthrow of Astyages by
means of the tyrant's grandson, Cyrus. He did not take open measures
until he knew he had allies enough at his back, and could strike with
a sure aim. He worked with the great Median chiefs in private,
stirring them up against Astyages by appeals of all sorts: to their
ambition, their greed, their discontent, their private wrongs; and
when he had secured the consent of enough nobles to his plans, he
called upon Cyrus, as one who had chiefly suffered from the tyranny
and cruelty of the king, to lead the proposed revolt in person. He
knew that Cyrus had been gradually strengthening his own kingdom of
Persia in preparation for the ambitious schemes of conquest he was
nursing, but there was danger in correspondence with one who stood to
Astyages in the double relation of a feared and hated grandson, and
the chief of a rival people; and if we may believe Herodotus, Harpagus
had recourse to a strange expedient to communicate his design to
Cyrus. Disembowelling a dead hare, he inserted a letter in the cavity,
and sent the animal to Cyrus as a present. When the letter came to the
hands of Cyrus he eagerly accepted the offers it contained of
leadership in the proposed revolt, and joined his forces with those of
the disaffected Medes. Astyages was overthrown and his kingdom taken
possession of by Cyrus. Herodotus draws a striking picture of the
exultation of Harpagus over the success of his revengeful projects,
and of the disdain with which Astyages reproached him for having
called on another to do what, trusted and confided in as he was by his
monarch, he might have accomplished for himself, and reaped the
harvest which he had surrendered to another. Cyrus had the wisdom to
spare the life of Astyages, and to attach him to his person as
councillor and friend. Harpagus he made his lieutenant, and much of
his success was owing to this man's wisdom and bravery. After the
defeat of Astyages, Cyrus advanced against the lesser tribes that had
owed allegiance to the Median king, and having reduced them one by one
to submission, the power of the once mighty empire of the Medians
passed to the inheritance of the Persians in the year 559 B.C.
When Croesus heard of the overthrow of his brother-in-law by the hands
of Cyrus, and of the setting up a great new monarchy on the ruins of
the fallen kingdom, his own ambitious projects were blown into fresh
activity by the desire for private revenge. Misled by his own
interpretation of the oracle he consulted as to the likelihood of
success in an expedition against the Persians, he advanced to
withstand the conquering march of Cyrus; and his first success was
against the Syrians of Cappadocia, a people subject to Cyrus, as
having formed a part of the Median Kingdom. Cyrus, with a powerful
army, came at once to the assistance of his new subjects, and meeting
the forces of Croesus on the plain of Cappadocia, a fiercely fought,
but indecisive battle took place, which resulted in the retreat of
Croesus to his capital, Sardis, to seek the assistance of his allies
and prepare to meet Cyrus with a larger force. In overweening
confidence in his own success, he dismissed his mercenary troops, and
sent messengers to Babylon, to Egypt, and to Sparta, calling on them
to come with troops to his assistance within five months. No sooner
had he shut himself up in Sardis, and dismissed his mercenaries,
depending upon his own forces until assistance should come from his
allies, than Cyrus advanced against him so swiftly that there was no
escape from a battle. Croesus, believing in his fortune, and trusting
to the excellence of his cavalry, boldly took the field; but Cyrus,
using stratagem where perhaps courage would not have availed, put his
camels in front of his line, and massed his own horsemen behind them.
The horses of Croesus, maddened by the unaccustomed smell of the
camels, refused to advance; but the Lydians, dismounting, fought so
bravely on foot with their spears, that it was not until after a long
and fierce combat that they were forced to retreat and seek safety
within the walls of Sardis. The army of Cyrus invested the city, but
it was so strongly fortified on all sides but one as to be impregnable
by assault and the side left unprotected by art was supposed to be
amply protected by nature, since it abutted on the very edge of a
steep precipice. But, after the siege had lasted fourteen days, a
Persian sentinel saw one of the garrison descend the precipice to
recover his helmet that had rolled down; and no sooner had he thus
unwittingly showed the way, than the sentinel followed with a number
of his fellow-soldiers and, reaching the top of the cliff in safety,
attacked the guards, all unsuspicious, and gained an entrance to the
city. The gates were opened to the Persians, and Croesus with all his
vast store of treasure became the prey of the conqueror. The fall of
Sardis and the Lydian monarchy was followed by the subjection of the
Greek cities of Asia Minor, a task which Cyrus left to the hands of
Harpagus, while he himself turned eastward to pursue his conquests in
Upper Asia and in Assyria. His greatest achievement in this quarter
was the taking of Babylon. This he accomplished in the reign of
Belshazzar, one of the successors of Nebuchadnezzar, perhaps his son,
by turning the Euphrates, which ran through the middle of the city,
out of its course; and when its bed was dry he entered the city by
this road and captured it with little resistance.
Cyrus was now the sole master of the vast Assyrian Kingdom, once more
in his hands brought back to something like the unity it had before
the great Median revolt. But he was not content, nor was it perhaps
possible for him to rest in the enjoyment of power and possessions
extorted by force, and dependent on force to hold. The new empire,
like the old one, was destined to break in pieces by its own weight.
Cyrus was kept in constant activity by the necessity of resisting the
inroads on his empire of the tribes in the north and farther east; and
it was in endeavoring to repel invasion and to maintain order in the
regions he had already conquered, that he met his death. After a reign
of thirty years he was slain, in 529 B.C., in battle with the
Massagetae, a tribe of Central Asia. He left his kingdom to his son
Cambyses.
[Signature of the author.]
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
(356-323 B.C.)
[Illustration: Alexander.]
Alexander the Great, son of Philip of Macedon and Olympias, daughter
of Neoptolemus of Epirus, was born at Pella, 356 B.C. His mind was
formed chiefly by Aristotle, who instructed him in every branch of
human learning, especially in the art of government. Alexander was
sixteen years of age when his father marched against Byzantium, and
left the government in his hands during his absence. Two years
afterward, he displayed singular courage at the battle of Chaeronea
(338 B.C.), where he overthrew the Sacred Band of the Thebans. "My
son," said Philip, as he embraced him after the conflict, "seek for
thyself another kingdom, for that which I leave is too small for
thee." The father and son quarrelled, however, when the former
divorced Olympias. Alexander took part with his mother, and fled to
Epirus, to escape his father's vengeance; but receiving his pardon
soon afterward, he returned, and accompanied him in an expedition
against the Triballi, when he saved his life on the field. Philip,
being appointed generalissimo of the Greeks, was preparing for a war
with Persia, when he was assassinated (336 B.C.), and Alexander, not
yet twenty years of age, ascended the throne.
After punishing his father's murderers, he marched on Corinth, and in
a general assembly of the Greeks he caused himself to be appointed to
the command of the forces against Persia. On his return to Macedon, he
found the Illyrians and Triballi up in arms, whereupon he forced his
way through Thrace, and was everywhere victorious. But now the Thebans
had been induced, by a report of his death, to take up arms, and the
Athenians, stimulated by the eloquence of Demosthenes, were preparing
to join them. To prevent this coalition, Alexander rapidly marched
against Thebes, which, refusing to surrender, was conquered and razed
to the ground. Six thousand of the inhabitants were slain, and 30,000
sold into slavery; the house and descendants of the poet Pindar alone
being spared. This severity struck terror into all Greece. The
Athenians were treated with more leniency.
Alexander, having appointed Antipater his deputy in Europe, now
prepared to prosecute the war with Persia. He crossed the Hellespont
in the spring of 334 B.C. with 30,000 foot and 5,000 horse, attacked
the Persian satraps at the River Granicus, and gained a complete
victory, overthrowing the son-in-law of their king Darius with his own
lance. As a result of the battle, most of the cities of Asia Minor at
once opened their gates to the conqueror.
Alexander restored democracy in all the Greek cities; and as he passed
through Gordium, cut the Gordian-knot, which none should loose but the
ruler of Asia. During a dangerous illness at Tarsus, brought on by
bathing in the Cydnus, he received a letter insinuating that Philip,
his physician, had been bribed by Darius to poison him. Alexander
handed the letter to Philip, and at the same time swallowed the
draught which the latter had prepared. As soon as he recovered, he
advanced toward the defiles of Cilicia, in which Darius had stationed
himself with an army of 600,000 men.
He arrived in November, 333 B.C., in the neighborhood of Issus, where,
on the narrow plain between the mountains and the sea, the unwieldy
masses of the Persians were thrown into confusion by the charge of the
Macedonians, and fled in terror. On the left wing, 30,000 Greek
mercenaries held out longer, but they, too, were at length compelled
to yield. All the treasures as well as the family of Darius fell into
the hands of the conqueror, who treated them with the greatest
magnanimity. Overtures for peace, made by Darius on the basis of
surrendering to Alexander all Asia west of the Euphrates, were
rejected.
Alexander now turned toward Syria and Phoenicia. He occupied Damascus,
where he found princely treasures, and secured to himself all the
cities along the shores of the Mediterranean. Tyre, confident in its
strong position, resisted him, but was conquered and destroyed, after
seven months of incredible exertion (332 B.C.) Thence he marched
victoriously through Palestine, where all the cities submitted to him
except Gaza; it shared the same fate as Tyre. Egypt, weary of the
Persian yoke, welcomed him as a deliverer; and in order to strengthen
his dominion here, he restored all the old customs and religious
institutions of the country, and founded Alexandria in the beginning
of 331 B.C. Thence he marched through the Libyan Desert, in order to
consult the oracle of Ammon, whose priest saluted him as a son of
Zeus; and he returned with the conviction that he was indeed a god.
He then again set out to meet Darius; in October, 331 B.C., a great
battle was fought on the plain stretching eastward to Arbela.
Notwithstanding the immense superiority of his adversary, who had
collected a new army of more than a million men, Alexander was not for
a moment doubtful of victory. Heading the cavalry himself, he rushed
on the Persians, and put them to flight; then hastened to the
assistance of his left wing, which, in the meanwhile, had been sorely
pressed. He was anxious to make Darius a prisoner, but Darius escaped
on horseback, leaving his baggage and all his treasures a prey to the
conqueror. Babylon and Susa, the treasure-houses of the East, opened
their gates to Alexander, who next marched toward Persepolis, the
capital of Persia, which he entered in triumph.
The marvellous successes of Alexander now began to dazzle his judgment
and to inflame his passions. He became a slave to debauchery, and his
caprices were as cruel as they were ungrateful. In a fit of
drunkenness, and at the instigation of Thais, an Athenian courtesan,
he set fire to Persepolis, the wonder of the world, and reduced it to
a heap of ashes; then, ashamed of the deed, he set out with his
cavalry in pursuit of Darius. Learning that Bessus, the Bactrian
satrap, held him a prisoner, he hastened his march, in the hope of
saving him, but he found him mortally wounded (330 B.C.). He mourned
over his fallen enemy, and caused him to be buried with all the
customary honors, while he hunted down Bessus, who himself aspired to
the throne, chasing him over the Oxus to Sogdiana (Bokhara).
Having discovered a conspiracy in which the son of Parmenio was
implicated, he put both father and son to death, though Parmenio
himself was innocent of any knowledge of the affair. This cruel
injustice excited universal displeasure. In 329 he penetrated to the
farthest known limits of Northern Asia, and overthrew the Scythians on
the banks of the Jaxartes. In the following year he subdued the whole
of Sogdiana, and married Roxana, whom he had taken prisoner. She was
the daughter of Oxyartes, one of the enemy's captains, and was said to
be the fairest of all the virgins of Asia. The murder of his
foster-brother, Clitus, in a drunken brawl, was followed, in 327 B.C.,
by the discovery of a fresh conspiracy, in which Callisthenes, a
nephew of Aristotle, was falsely implicated. For challenging
Alexander's divinity, he was cruelly tortured and hanged.
In 327 B.C., proceeding to the conquest of India, hitherto known only
by name, Alexander crossed the Indus near to the modern Attock, and
pursued his way under the guidance of a native prince to the Hydaspes
(Jhelum). He there was opposed by Porus, another native prince, whom
he overthrew after a bloody contest, and there he lost his charger
Bucephalus; thence he marched as lord of the country, through the
Punjab, establishing Greek colonies. He then wished to advance to the
Ganges, but the general murmuring of his troops obliged him, at the
Hyphasis (modern Sutlej), to commence his retreat. On regaining the
Hydaspes, he built a fleet, and sent one division of his army in it
down the river, while the other followed along the banks, fighting its
way through successive Indian armies. At length, having reached the
ocean, he ordered Nearchus, the commander of the fleet, to sail thence
to the Persian Gulf, while he himself struck inland with one division
of his army, in order to return home through Gedrosia (Beluchistan).
During this march his forces suffered fearfully from want of food and
water. Of all the troops which had set out with Alexander, little more
than a fourth part arrived with him in Persia (325 B.C.).
[Illustration: Alexander discovering the Body of Darius.]
At Susa he married Stateira, the daughter of Darius, and he bestowed
presents on those Macedonians (some ten thousand in number) who had
married Persian women, his design being to unite the two nations. He
also distributed liberal rewards among his soldiers. Soon afterward he
was deprived, by death, of his favorite Hephestion. His grief was
unbounded, and he interred the dead man with kingly honors. As he was
returning from Ecbatana to Babylon, it is said that the Magi
foretold that the latter city would prove fatal to him; but he
despised their warnings. On the way, he was met by ambassadors from
all parts of the world--Libya, Italy, Carthage, Greece, the Scythians,
Celts, and Iberians.
At Babylon he was busy with gigantic plans for the future, both of
conquest and civilization, when he was suddenly taken ill after a
banquet, and died eleven days later, 323 B.C., in the thirty-second
year of his age, and the thirteenth of his reign. His body was
deposited in a golden coffin at Alexandria, by Ptolemaeus, and divine
honors were paid to him, not only in Egypt, but in other countries. He
had appointed no heir to his immense dominions; but to the question of
his friends, "Who should inherit them?" he replied, "The most worthy."
After many disturbances, his generals recognized as Kings the
weak-minded Aridaeus--a son of Philip by Philinna, the dancer--and
Alexander's posthumous son by Roxana, Alexander AEgus, while they
shared the provinces among themselves, assuming the title of satraps.
Perdiccas, to whom Alexander had, on his death-bed, delivered his
ring, became guardian of the kings during their minority. The empire
of Alexander soon broke up, and his dominions were divided among his
generals.
Alexander was more than a conqueror. He diffused the language and
civilization of Greece wherever victory led him, and planted Greek
kingdoms in Asia, which continued to exist for some centuries. At the
very time of his death, he was engaged in devising plans for the
drainage of the unhealthy marshes around Babylon, and a better
irrigation of the extensive plains. It is even supposed that the fever
which he caught there, rather than his famous drinking-bout, was the
real cause of his death. To Alexander, the ancient world owed a vast
increase of its knowledge in geography, natural history, etc. He
taught Europeans the road to India, and gave them the first glimpses
of that magnificence and splendor which has dazzled and captivated
their imagination for more than two thousand years. See Freeman's
"Historical Essays" (2d series, 1873), and Mahaffy's "Alexander's
Empire" (1887).
The wonderful element in the campaigns of Alexander, and his tragical
death at the height of his power, threw a rare romantic interest
around his figure. It is ever the fate of a great name to be enshrined
in fable, and Alexander soon became the hero of romantic story,
scarcely more wonderful than the actual, but growing from age to age
with the mythopoeic spirit which can work as freely in fact as
fiction. The earliest form of the story which we know is the great
romance connected with the name of Callisthenes, which, under the
influence of the living popular tradition, arose in Egypt about 200
A.D., and was carried through Latin translations to the West, through
Armenian and Syriac versions to the East. It became widely popular
during the middle ages, and was worked into poetic form by many
writers in French and German. Alberich of Besancon wrote in Middle
High German an epic on the subject in the first half of the twelfth
century, which was the basis of the German "Pfaffe" Lamprecht's
"Alexanderbuch," also of the twelfth century. The French poets Lambert
li Court and Alexandre de Bernay composed, between 1180 and 1190, a
romance of Alexander, the twelve-syllable metre of which gave rise to
the name _Alexandrines_. The German poem of Rudolf of Ems was based on
the Latin epic of Walter of Chatillon, about 1200, which became
henceforward the prevailing form of the story. In contrast with it is
the thirteenth century Old English epic of Alexander (in vol. i. of
Weber's "Metrical Romances," 1810), based on the Callisthenes version.
The story appears also in the East, worked up in conjunction with
myths of other nationalities, especially the Persian. It appears in
Firdusi, and among later writers, in Nizami. From the Persians both
the substance of the story and its form in poetical treatment have
extended to Turks and other Mohammedans, who have interpreted
Alexander as the _Dsulkarnein_ ('two horned') of the Koran, and to the
Hindus, which last had preserved no independent traditions of
Alexander.
HANNIBAL
By WALTER WHYTE
(247-183 B.C.)
[Illustration: Hannibal.]
Hannibal (the grace of Baal, the Hanniel of Scripture) was the son of
the great Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, and was born in 247
B.C. It is said that in his ninth year his father led him to an altar
and bade him swear eternal enmity to Rome. From the age of nine to
eighteen he was trained in war and diplomacy under Hamilcar in Spain;
and from his eighteenth to his twenty-fifth year he was the chief
agent in carrying out the plans by which his brother-in-law,
Hasdrubal, extended and consolidated the Carthaginian dominion in the
Peninsula. On the death of Hasdrubal, in 221 B.C., the soldiers with
one voice chose Hannibal, then in his twenty-sixth year, as their
general. Forthwith he crossed the Tagus, and in two years reduced all
Spain up to the Ebro, with the exception of the Greek colony of
Saguntum. That town, which claimed the protection of Rome, fell in 218
B.C., and the Second Punic War, or, as the Romans justly called it,
"the War of Hannibal," began. Garrisoning Libya with Spaniards, and
Spain with Libyans (a precaution against treachery), Hannibal set
out on his march for Rome. In the summer of 218 B.C. he left New
Carthage with 90,000 foot, 12,000 horse, and 37 elephants, crossed the
Pyrenees, and gained the Rhone, where his passage was barred by a host
of Gauls. The general thereupon sent part of his troops two days'
journey up-stream, with orders to cross the Rhone and fall on the rear
of the barbarians. His orders were executed by Hanno, and the passage
of the river was safely effected. He crossed the Alps in fifteen days,
in the face of obstacles which would have proved insuperable to almost
any other commander. His troops, reared under African and Spanish
suns, perished in thousands amid ice and snow. The native tribes
threatened the annihilation of his force, and were only dispersed by
his matchless courage and address. The beasts of burden fell over
precipices, or stuck fast and were frozen to death. In places, rocks
had to be shattered and roads constructed to enable the men to creep
round projecting crags. When he gained the valley of Aosta, Hannibal
had but 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse to attempt the conquest of a power
which had lately shown that she could put an army of 170,000
unrivalled soldiers into the field.
[Illustration: Hannibal crossing the Rhone.]
After allowing his men to recruit in the villages of the friendly
Insubres, he overcame the Taurini, besieging and taking Turin, and
forced the Ligurian and Celtic tribes on the Upper Po to serve in his
army. At the Ticinus, a stream which enters the Po near Pavia, he
encountered the Romans under Scipio, the father of Scipio Africanus.
The cavalry of both armies joined battle, Hannibal's Numidian horse
proved their superiority, and Scipio fell back beyond the Po. The
Carthaginians crossed the river, and the first great battle of the
campaign was fought in the plain of the Trebia. Placing Mago in ambush
with 2,000 men, Hannibal enticed the Romans across the stream. His
light troops retired before the legionaries, and as Scipio was
pressing on to fancied victory he was taken in flank by the terrible
Numidian horse, Mago came down in the rear, and the 40,000 men of the
consular army were either cut to pieces or scattered in flight.
Wintering in the valley of the Po, in the early spring Hannibal
crossed the Apennines and pushed through a region of lakes, flooded by
the melting of the snow, to Faesulae. The beasts of burden perished in
vast numbers amid the morasses; the Gauls, disheartened by the perils
of the journey, had to be driven forward by Mago's horsemen, and the
general lost an eye. Quitting Faesulae, Hannibal wasted Etruria with
fire and sword, and marched toward Rome, leaving behind him two
consular armies of 60,000 men. He awaited the consul Flaminius by the
Lake Trasimene, where the hills, retiring in a semicircle from the
shore, inclose a plain entered by two narrow passes. Concealing the
main body of his army amid the hills, he placed his Numidians in
ambush at the pass by which the Romans must enter; while he stationed
part of his infantry in a conspicuous position near the other defile.
The Romans pushed into the valley; the pass in their rear was secured
by the Carthaginians who had lain in ambush; Hannibal's men charged
from the heights, and the army of Flaminius was annihilated. Six
thousand infantry cut their way through the farther pass, but these
were overtaken by the horse under Maherbal and forced to yield on the
following day.
After recruiting his men in the champaign country of Picenum, where
the Numidian horses, we are told, were groomed with old Italian wine,
Hannibal marched through Apulia and ravaged Campania, dogged by the
dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus, whom he vainly endeavored to entice
into an engagement. He wintered at Gerontium, and in the spring took
up a position at Cannae, on the Aufidus. A Roman army of 80,000 men,
under the consuls L. AEmilius Paulus and P. Terentius Varro, marched
against him. Hannibal flung his troops (he had but 30,000) into a
space inclosed on the rear and wings by a loop of the river. He placed
his Spanish infantry in the centre, with the African foot on either
flank. His Numidian horse, now reduced to 2,000 men, he posted on the
right wing; while Hasdrubal, with 8,000 heavy cavalry, was opposed to
the Roman cavalry on the left. The legionaries pressed into the loop,
and Hannibal drew back his centre before them. Hasdrubal, on the left,
broke the Roman cavalry, swept round to the left wing of the Romans,
drove the second detachment of Roman horse into flight, and then came
thundering in the rear of the legionaries. The Libyans, who had by the
general's orders fallen back as the Romans pressed after the retiring
Spanish infantry, now closed on the enemy's flanks. Packed together so
closely that they could not use their weapons, assailed in front,
flank, and rear, the legionaries were hewn down through eight hours of
carnage, till 50,000 lay dead on the field. The battle became a
butchery. Nearly 20,000 men were taken prisoners. The consul Paulus,
the proconsul Servilius, the master of the horse Minucius, 21 military
tribunes, and 60 senators lay amid the slain. On his side Hannibal
lost but 5,700 men. "Send me on with the horse, general," said
Maherbal, "and in five days thou shalt sup in the Capitol."
But the general was wiser than the fiery captain of the horse. It has
been common to censure Hannibal for neglecting to march on Rome after
the battle of Cannae. But his dazzling triumph did not for a moment
unsettle his clear judgment. He knew that his forces were unequal to
the task of storming a walled city garrisoned by a population of
fighting men. An attack which he had made on Spoletium had proved the
inadequacy of the small Carthaginian army to carry a strongly
fortified town. Had he followed the advice of Maherbal, he would in
all likelihood have dashed his army to pieces against the walls of
Rome. His aim was to destroy the common oppressor by raising the
Italian allies against her; and the hope was partly justified by the
revolt of Lucania and Bruttium, Samnium and Apulia. The soundness of
judgment, the patience and self-control which he evinced in this hour
of intoxicating success, are hardly less marvellous than the genius by
which the success had been won. After the battle of Cannae the
character of the war changes. Hitherto Hannibal had swept everything
before him. Rivers and mountains and morasses had been powerless to
thwart his progress. Army after army, vastly superior in numbers and
composed of the best fighting men the ancient world ever saw, had come
against him to be broken, scattered, and destroyed. His career through
Italy had been, in the words of Horace, as the rush of the flames
through a forest of pines. But after Cannae the tide turned. His
niggardly, short-sighted countrymen denied him the support without
which success was impossible. As his veterans were lost to him he had
no means of filling their places, while the Romans could put army
after army into the field. But through the long years during which he
maintained a hopeless struggle in Italy he was never defeated. Nor did
one of his veterans desert him; never was there a murmur of
disaffection in his camp. It has been well said that his victories
over his motley followers were hardly less wonderful than his
victories over nature and over Rome.
Hannibal spent the winter of 216-215 B.C. at Capua, where his men are
said to have been demoralized by luxurious living. When he again took
the field the Romans wisely avoided a pitched battle, though the
Carthaginians overran Italy, capturing Locri, Thurii, Metapontum,
Tarentum, and other towns. In 211 B.C. he marched on Rome, rode up to
the Colline gate, and, it is said, flung his spear over the walls. But
the fall of Capua smote the Italian allies with dismay, and ruined his
hopes of recruiting his ever-diminishing forces from their ranks. In
210 B.C. he overcame the praetor Fulvius at Herdonea, and in the
following year gained two battles in Apulia. Thereafter, he fell upon
the consuls Crispinus and Marcellus, both of whom were slain and their
forces routed, while he almost annihilated the Roman army which was
besieging Locri. In 207 B.C. his brother Hasdrubal marched from Spain
to his aid, but was surprised, defeated, and slain at the Metaurus by
the consul Nero. By the barbarous commands of Nero, Hasdrubal's head
was flung into the camp of Hannibal, who had been till then in
ignorance of his brother's doom. The battle of the Metaurus sealed the
fate of "the lion's brood"--of the great house of Hamilcar. But for
four years Hannibal stood at bay in the hill-country of Bruttium,
defying with his thinned army every general who was sent against him,
till in 202 B.C., after an absence of fifteen years, he was recalled
to Africa to repel the Roman invasion. In the same year he met Scipio
at Zama; his raw levies fled, and in part went over to the enemy; his
veterans were cut to pieces where they stood, and Carthage was at the
mercy of Rome. So ended the Second Punic War--the war, as Arnold so
truly said, of a man with a nation, and the war which is perhaps the
most wonderful in all history. Three hundred thousand Italians had
fallen, and three hundred towns had been destroyed in the struggle.
Peace being made, Hannibal turned his genius to political toils. He
amended the constitution, cut down the power of the ignoble oligarchy,
checked corruption, and placed the city's finances on a sounder
footing. The enemies whom he made by his reforms denounced him to the
Romans, and the Romans demanded that he should be surrendered into
their hands. Setting out as a voluntary exile, Hannibal visited Tyre,
the mother-city of Carthage, and then betook himself to the court of
Antiochus, at Ephesus. He was well received by the king, who
nevertheless rejected his advice to carry the war with Rome into
Italy. On the conclusion of peace, to avoid being given up to the
Romans, he repaired to Prusias, king of Bithynia, for whom he gained a
naval victory over the king of Pergamus. The Romans again demanding
that he should be surrendered, he baffled his enemies by taking
poison, which, we are told, he carried about with him in a ring, and
died at Lybyssa about the year 183 B.C.
In judging of the character and achievements of Hannibal, it must
never be forgotten, that for all we know of him, we are indebted to
his implacable enemies. No Carthaginian record of that astounding
career has come down to us. The Romans did all that unscrupulous
malignity can, to blacken the fame and belittle the deeds of the most
terrible of their foes. Yet, though calumny has done its bitterest
against him, Hannibal not only dazzles the imagination, but takes
captive the heart. He stands out as the incarnation of magnanimity and
patriotism and self-sacrificing heroism, no less than of incomparable
military genius. Napoleon, the only general who could plausibly
challenge the Carthaginian's supremacy, had throughout the greater
part of his career an immense superiority to his adversaries in the
quality of the forces which he wielded. He had the enthusiasm of the
Revolution behind him, and he was unhampered by authorities at home.
Hannibal, on the contrary, saw his plans thwarted and finally wrecked
by the sordid merchant-nobles of the city he strove so hard to save.
He had not, like Alexander, to lead picked troops against effeminate
Asiatics. He had to mould his little army out of raw and barbarous
levies. He had no reinforcements to fall back on. With a motley army
of Libyans, Gauls, and Spaniards he had to encounter a nation in
arms--a nation of the stoutest and most highly trained warriors of
ancient times. There is not in all history so wonderful an example of
what a single man of genius may achieve against the most tremendous
odds, as the story of the Phoenician hero--the greatest captain that
the world has seen.
SCIPIO AFRICANUS MAJOR
(235-183 B.C.)
[Illustration: Scipio.]
P. Cornelius Scipio, Africanus Major, was the son of that P. Cornelius
Scipio who was defeated by Hannibal at the Ticinus. If it be true that
at the age of seventeen Scipio fought in this battle, and rescued his
wounded father, he must have been born in B.C. 235. He was in the
battle of Cannae (B.C. 216) as a tribune, and was among those who,
after the defeat, escaped to Canusium. Here the chief command of the
remaining troops was unanimously entrusted to him and another. On this
occasion it was owing to his presence of mind that the remnants of the
Roman army did not, in their despair, quit Italy.
In B.C. 212, Scipio was curule aedile, though he had not yet attained
the legitimate age. The tribunes of the people endeavored to prevent
his election, but they were obliged to give up their opposition, for
the people, who seem to have perceived the extraordinary abilities of
the young man, elected him almost unanimously. In B.C. 211 his father
and uncle fell in Spain, and the Carthaginians again took possession
of the country, which they had almost entirely lost. When Capua had
fallen again into their hands, and Italy no longer required their
exclusive attention, the Romans determined to act with more energy
against the Carthaginians in Spain. On the day of the election, no one
ventured to come forward to undertake the command in this war. Young
Scipio, then scarcely twenty-four years of age, at last offered to
take the command of the army in Spain. The people were struck with
admiration at the courage of the young man, and gave him command, with
proconsular power, which was afterward prolonged to him for several
years (B.C. 210-206).
The extraordinary power which young Scipio exercised over his
contemporaries was perhaps partly owing to superstition, for he was
believed to be a favorite of the gods. Ever since he had risen to
manhood, he went every morning into the Capitol, where he spent some
hours in solitude and meditation. Hence all he did was considered by
the people to be the result of his intercourse with the gods. Scipio
himself partook in this opinion, and cherished it; and the
extraordinary success of all his enterprises must have strengthened
his belief.
Toward the end of the summer, in B.C. 210, or, as Livy says, at the
beginning of spring, Scipio set out for Spain with an army of 11,000
men, landed at the mouth of the Iberus, and undertook the command of
the whole Roman forces in Spain. He was accompanied by his friend,
Laelius. His first object was to gain possession of New Carthage, where
the Carthaginians kept their Spanish hostages. Laelius made the attack
with the fleet from the seaside, while Scipio conducted the operations
on land. The town soon fell into the hands of the Romans, and the
generosity with which Scipio treated the Spanish hostages gained over
a great number of Spaniards. The hostages of those tribes who declared
themselves allies of the Romans were sent home without ransom. It is
also related that a very beautiful maiden having fallen to his special
lot in the division of the booty, Scipio finding her sad, inquired the
cause, and learning that she was betrothed to a neighboring chief,
sent for the lover, and personally restored the maid in all honor to
his arms. A short time after the conquest of this place Scipio went to
Tarraco, where he received embassies from various Spanish tribes, who
offered to become the allies of the Romans or to recognize their
supremacy.
Scipio is said not to have set out against Hasdrubal until the year
following, but it can scarcely be conceived why the Carthaginians
should have been so long inactive, and it is a probable supposition
that the battle with Hasdrubal, which Livy and Polybius assign to the
year B.C. 209, was fought very soon after the taking of New Carthage.
In this battle Scipio gained a great victory; 8,000 Carthaginians were
slain, and 22,000, with their camp, fell into the hands of the victor.
Many of the Spaniards now wished to proclaim Scipio their king, but he
refused the honor.
Hasdrubal fled with the remainder of his army toward the Tagus and the
Pyrenees. Scipio did not follow him, partly because he thought his
enemy too much weakened to be dangerous, and partly because he feared
lest he might expose himself to the combined attacks of the two other
Carthaginian generals, Mago, and Hasdrubal, son of Gisco. Hasdrubal
Barcas, the defeated general, however, had carried considerable wealth
with him in his flight, and with these means he raised an army in
Spain, to lead into Italy to the assistance of his brother Hannibal,
hoping thus to bring the war to an end in Italy. During these
preparations of Hasdrubal, Scipio was engaged against the two other
Carthaginian generals, one of whom (Mago) was defeated, in B.C. 208,
by the propraetor Silanus, in the country of the Celtiberians, and
Hanno, who came with an auxiliary army from Africa, was taken
prisoner. After this success of the propraetor, Scipio united his
forces with those of Silanus to attack Hasdrubal, son of Gisco. But as
this general had retired to the south of Spain, and had distributed
his army in the fortified places on the Baetis as far as Gades, Scipio
(through his brother Lucius) only took the important town of Oringis,
and then gradually returned across the Iberus. The power of the
Carthaginians in Spain was, however, already broken, and in the year
following (B.C. 207) Scipio gained possession of nearly all Spain by a
victory, the place of which is not clearly ascertained, some calling
it Silpia or Baecula, some Ilipa, and others Carmo.
Scipio, now in the almost undisputed possession of Spain, began to
turn his eyes to Africa, and, accompanied by his friend Laelius, he
ventured to pay a visit to King Syphax, with whom Laelius had already
commenced negotiations. Here Scipio is said to have met Hasdrubal, son
of Gisco, and to have made a very favorable impression on Syphax as
well as on Hasdrubal. After a short stay in Africa, Scipio returned to
Spain, where he first punished several towns for their faithlessness,
and subdued some of the Spanish chiefs who ventured to claim their
former independence. During these occupations Scipio was attacked by a
severe illness, from which, however, he recovered in time to quell an
insurrection of 8,000 Roman soldiers, who were discontented from not
having derived from their conquests those advantages which they had
expected, and who are said also to have been bribed by the
Carthaginians. Mago had in the meantime withdrawn to the Balearic
Islands, and thence to Liguria. Gades, the last place which the
Carthaginians possessed in Spain, was now taken from them, and thus
the war in Spain was at an end.
[Illustration: Generosity of Scipio.]
Toward the close of the year B.C. 206, Scipio surrendered the command
of the Roman forces in Spain to the proconsuls L. Lentulus and L.
Manlius Acidinus, and returned to Rome. He delivered to the aerarium
the immense treasures which he brought from Spain. He evidently
wished for a triumph, but the senate paid no attention to his wishes,
for no one had ever triumphed at Rome before he had held the
consulship. In the year B.C. 205, Scipio was made consul with P.
Licinius Crassus, who was at the same time pontifex maximus, and was
consequently not allowed to leave Italy. If, therefore, a war was to
be carried on abroad, the command necessarily devolved upon Scipio.
His wish was immediately to sail with an army to Africa, but the more
cautious senators, and especially Q. Fabius, were decidedly opposed to
his plan, partly because Hannibal, as long as he was in Italy,
appeared too formidable to be neglected, and partly because they were
influenced by jealousy.
All that Scipio could obtain was that Sicily should be assigned to him
as his province, with thirty vessels, and with permission to sail over
to Africa in case he should think it advantageous to the republic. But
he did not obtain from the Senate permission to levy an army, and he
therefore called upon the Italian allies to provide him with troops
and other things necessary for carrying on the war. As they were all
willing to support the conqueror of the Carthaginians in Spain, he was
soon enabled to sail to Sicily with nearly seven thousand volunteers
and thirty ships. Soon after his arrival in Sicily he sent his friend
Laelius with a part of his fleet to Africa, partly to keep up the
connection which he had formed there, on his visit from Spain, with
Syphax and Massinissa (for to the latter Scipio had sent back a nephew
who had been taken prisoner in the battle of Baecula), and partly to
show to his timid opponents at Rome how groundless their fears were.
He himself employed his time in Sicily most actively, in preparing and
disciplining his new army.
Massinissa, dissatisfied with the Carthaginians, was anxious for the
arrival of Scipio in Africa, but Syphax had altered his policy, and
again joined the Carthaginians. The enemies of Scipio at Rome at last
got an opportunity of attacking him, and they nearly succeeded in
depriving him of his post. Without being authorized by the Senate,
Scipio had taken part in the conquest of Locri, in Southern Italy, and
had left his legate, Q. Flaminius, as commander of the Roman garrison
in that place. The legate treated the Locrians with such severity and
cruelty that they sent an embassy to Rome to lay their complaints
before the Senate. As Scipio, although acquainted with the conduct of
Flaminius, had nevertheless left him in command, his enemies attacked
him on this and other grounds, and Fabius Maximus even proposed that
he should be recalled. A commission was sent out to inquire into the
state of affairs and to bring Scipio home, if the charges against him
were found true. Scipio proved that his army was in the best possible
condition; and the commissioners were so surprised at what they saw,
that instead of recalling the consul, they bade him sail to Africa as
soon as he might think it proper, and to adopt any measures that he
might think useful.
Scipio, in consequence of this, sailed in B.C. 204 as proconsul, with
a large army, from Lilybaeum to Africa, and landed in the neighborhood
of Utica. Here he made successful incursions into the neighboring
country, and Hasdrubal, who attempted to prevent them, suffered a
great defeat. But Scipio could not gain possession of Utica, which was
of the greater importance to him and his fleet as the winter was
approaching, and he was obliged to spend the season on a piece of land
extending into the sea, which he fortified as well as he could. Toward
the close of the winter the Carthaginians, united with Syphax,
intended to make a general attack on Scipio's army and fleet, but
being informed of their plans, he surprised the camps of Hasdrubal and
Syphax in the night, and only a small number of the enemy escaped.
Syphax withdrew into his own dominions, but was defeated by Massinissa
and Laelius, and taken prisoner with his wife and one of his sons.
Massinissa married Sophonisba, the wife of Syphax, who had formerly
been engaged to him, but had been given to Syphax for political
reasons. Scipio, fearing the influence she might have on Massinissa
(for she was a Carthaginian), claimed her as a prisoner belonging to
the Romans, and Massinissa poisoned her, to save her from the
humiliation of captivity.
The fears and apprehensions of the Carthaginians now increased to such
a degree that they thought it necessary to recall Hannibal from Italy,
and at the same time they sued for peace. The terms which Scipio
proposed would have concluded the war in a manner honorable to the
Romans. The Carthaginians, however, whose only object was to gain
time, made no objections to the conditions, but only concluded a truce
of forty-five days, during which an embassy was to be sent to Rome.
Before this truce was at an end, the Carthaginian populace plundered
some Roman vessels with provisions, which were wrecked off Carthage,
and even insulted the Roman envoys who came to demand reparation.
Scipio did not resent this conduct and allowed the Carthaginian
ambassadors, on their return from Rome, to pass on to Carthage
unmolested. About this time (it was the autumn of the year B.C. 203)
Hannibal arrived in Africa, and soon collected an army in numbers far
exceeding that of Scipio. He first made a successful campaign against
Massinissa. Scipio was at this time informed that the consul Tib.
Claudius Nero would come with an army to co-operate with him against
Hannibal.
Scipio, who wished to bring the war to a conclusion, and was unwilling
to share the glory with anyone else, determined to bring Hannibal to a
decisive battle. The Carthaginian at first avoided an engagement; but
when Scipio, in order to deceive the enemy, hastily retreated as if he
intended to take to flight, Hannibal followed him with his cavalry and
lost a battle in the neighborhood of Zama. A tribune of Scipio soon
afterward cut off a large convoy of provisions which was on its way to
the camp of Hannibal, and this suddenly threw him into such
difficulties that he began to negotiate with Scipio for peace. The
conditions, however, which Scipio now proposed were so humiliating,
that the Carthaginians would not accept them. Hannibal, therefore,
though he saw the impossibility of gaining any further advantages, was
compelled to decide the affair by a last and desperate effort. In a
personal interview between the two generals Scipio was inexorable as
to the conditions. Hannibal's army was in a bad condition; and in the
ensuing battle, to the west of Zama, the victory of Scipio was
complete. This defeat (in B.C. 202) was the death-blow to Carthage.
Scipio, on his return to Italy, was received with the greatest
enthusiasm; he entered Rome in triumph, and was henceforward
distinguished by the name of Africanus. He now for several years
continued to live at Rome, apparently without taking any part in
public affairs. In B.C. 199 he obtained the office of censor with P.
AElius Paetus, and in B.C. 194 he was made consul a second time with
Tib. Sempronius Longus, and princeps senatus, a distinction with which
he had already been honored in B.C. 196, and which was conferred upon
him for the third time in B.C. 190. In B.C. 193, during one of the
disputes between the Carthaginians and Massinissa, Scipio was sent
with two other commissioners to mediate between the parties; but
nothing was settled, though, as Livy observes, Scipio might easily
have put an end to the disputes. Scipio was the only Roman who thought
it unworthy of the republic to support those Carthaginians who
persecuted Hannibal; and there was a tradition that Scipio, in B.C.
193, was sent on an embassy to Antiochus, and that he met Hannibal in
his exile, who in the conversation which took place, declared Scipio
the greatest of all generals. Whether the story of the conversation be
true or not, the judgment ascribed to Hannibal is just; for Scipio as
a general was second to none but Hannibal himself.
In the year B.C. 190, some discussions arose in the Senate as to what
provinces should be assigned to the two consuls, Laelius and L.
Cornelius Scipio, brother of the great Africanus. Africanus, although
he was princeps senatus, offered to accompany his brother, as legate,
if the Senate would give him Greece as his province, for this province
conferred upon Lucius the command in the war against Antiochus. The
offer was accepted, and the two brothers set out for Greece, and
thence for Asia. Africanus took his son with him on this expedition,
but by some unlucky chance the boy was taken prisoner, and sent to
Antiochus. The king offered to restore him to freedom, and to give a
considerable sum of money, if the father would interpose his influence
to obtain favorable terms for the king. Africanus refused; but the
king, notwithstanding, soon after sent the boy back to his father, who
just then was suffering from illness, and was absent from the camp. To
show his gratitude, Africanus sent a message to Antiochus, advising
him not to engage in a battle until he himself had returned to the
Roman camp. After the great battle near Mount Sipylus, Antiochus again
applied to Scipio for peace, and the latter now used his influence
with his brother Lucius and the council of war, on behalf of the king.
The conditions of the peace were tolerably mild, but they were
afterward made much more severe when the peace was ratified at Rome.
The enemies of Africanus at Rome had now another charge against him.
The peace with Antiochus, and the conditions proposed by Africanus and
his brother Lucius, were regarded by the hostile party as the result
of bribes from Antiochus, and of the liberation of the son of
Africanus. A charge was therefore brought against the two brothers, on
their return to Rome, of having accepted bribes of the king, and of
having retained a part of the treasures which they ought to have
delivered up to the aerarium. At the same time they were called upon to
give an account of the sums of money they had taken from Antiochus.
Lucius was ready to obey; but his brother Africanus with indignation
snatched the accounts from the hands of his brother and tore them to
pieces before the Senate. The tribune of the people, C. Minucius
Augurinus, however, fined Lucius; and when he was going to be thrown
into prison until he should pay the heavy fine, Africanus dragged him
away; and the tribune Tib. Gracchus, though disapproving of the
violence of Africanus, liberated Lucius from imprisonment. Africanus
himself was now summoned before the people by the tribune M. Naevius;
but instead of answering the charges he reminded the people that it
was the anniversary of his victory at Zama, and bade them rather thank
the gods for such citizens as he.
After these troubles he withdrew to his villa near Liternum, and it
was owing to the interposition of Tib. Gracchus that he was not
compelled to obey another summons. The estates of his brother Lucius,
however, were confiscated (B.C. 187), but the sum produced by their
sale did not make up the amount of the fine. His friends and clients
not only offered to make up the sum, but their generosity would even
have made him richer than he had been before; but he refused to accept
anything beyond what was absolutely necessary for his support.
Africanus never returned from his voluntary exile, and he spent the
last years of his life in quiet retirement at his villa. He is said to
have wished to be buried on his estate; but there was, as Livy says, a
tradition that he died at Rome, and was buried in the tomb of his
family near the Porta Capena, where statues of him, his brother
Lucius, and their friend Q. Ennius, were erected. The year of his
death is not quite certain; for, according to Polybius, he died in the
same year with Hannibal and Philopoemen (B.C. 183); according to
others, two years earlier (B.C. 185).
In judging of Scipio Africanus as a general, we may adopt the judgment
ascribed to Hannibal; but as a Roman citizen he is very far from
deserving such praise. His pride and haughtiness were intolerable, and
the laws of the constitution were set at nought whenever they opposed
his own views and passions. As a statesman he scarcely did anything
worth mentioning. By his wife AEmilia, daughter of AEmilius Paullus, he
had two daughters, one of whom married P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica
Corculum, the other, the celebrated Cornelia, married Tib. Sempronius
Gracchus, and was the mother of the two Gracchi, the tribunes of the
people.
CAIUS MARIUS
Extracts from "Caesar, a Sketch," by JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, LL.D.
(157-86 B.C.)
[Illustration: Caius Marius.]
Caius Marius was at this time forty-eight years old.[3] Two-thirds of
his life were over, and a name which was to sound throughout the world
and be remembered through all ages, had as yet been scarcely heard of
beyond the army and the political clubs in Rome. He was born at
Arpinum, a Latin township, seventy miles from the capital, in the year
157 B.C. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the
plough. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his
punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness,
Marius was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as
he rose in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha[4] was there,
and made himself especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way
steadily upward, by his mere soldierlike qualities, to the rank of
military tribune. Rome, too, had learnt to know him, for he was chosen
tribune of the people the year after the murder of Caius Gracchus.
Being a self-made man, he belonged naturally to the popular party.
While in office he gave offence in some way to the men in power, and
was called before the Senate to answer for himself. But he had the
right on his side, it is likely, for they found him stubborn and
impertinent, and they could make nothing of their charges against him.
He was not bidding at this time, however, for the support of the mob.
He had the integrity and sense to oppose the largesses of corn; and he
forfeited his popularity by trying to close the public granaries
before the practice had passed into a system. He seemed as if made of
a block of hard Roman oak, gnarled and knotted, but sound in all its
fibres. His professional merit continued to recommend him. At the age
of forty he became praetor, and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark
again by the successful severity by which he cleared the province of
banditti. He was a man neither given himself to talking, nor much
talked about in the world; but he was sought for wherever work was to
be done, and he had made himself respected and valued in high circles,
for after his return from the Peninsula he had married into one of the
most distinguished of the patrician families.
[Footnote 3: B.C. 109.]
[Footnote 4: King of Numidia. He successfully withstood the
Romans during several years.]
Marius by this marriage became a person of social consideration. His
father had been a client of the Metelli; and Caecilius Metellus, who
must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited
him to go as second in command in the African campaign. He was
moderately successful. Towns were taken, battles were won: Metellus
was incorruptible, and the Numidians sued for peace. But Jugurtha
wanted terms, and the consul demanded unconditional surrender.
Jugurtha withdrew into the desert; the war dragged on; and Marius,
perhaps ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general's want of vigor,
began to think that he could make quicker work of it. The popular
party were stirring again in Rome, the Senate having so notoriously
disgraced itself. There was just irritation that a petty African
prince could defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and
though a democratic consul had been unheard of for a century, the name
of Marius began to be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius
consented to stand. The law required that he must be present in person
at the election, and he applied to his commander for leave of absence.
Metellus laughed at his pretensions, and bade him wait another twenty
years. Marius, however, persisted, and was allowed to go. The
patricians strained their resources to defeat him, but he was chosen
with enthusiasm. Metellus was recalled, and the conduct of the
Numidian war was assigned to the new hero of the "Populares."
A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the Senate house, when the
determination of the people was known. A successful general could not
be disposed of so easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately, Marius
was not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier,
and had a soldier's way of thinking on government and the methods of
it. His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman
legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the
moment from their various occupations, to return to them when the
occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer
men, better trained and disciplined, could be made more effective and
be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had
perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident,
and that there was a latent force in the Roman state, which needed
only organization to resume its ascendency. "He enlisted," it was
said, "the worst of the citizens," men, that is to say, who had no
occupation, and who became soldiers by profession; and as persons
without property could not have furnished themselves at their own
cost, he must have carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and
equipped them at the expense of the state. His discipline was of the
sternest. The experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for
war in earnest, and did not wish that the popular party should have
the whole benefit and credit of the improvements, were willing to go
with him; among them a dissipated young patrician, called Lucius
Sulla, whose name also was destined to be memorable.
By these methods, and out of these materials, an army was formed, such
as no Roman general had hitherto led. It performed extraordinary
marches, carried its water-supplies with it in skins, and followed the
enemy across sandy deserts hitherto found impassable. In less than two
years the war was over. The Moors, to whom Jugurtha had fled,
surrendered him to Sulla; and he was brought in chains to Rome, where
he finished his life in a dungeon.
Marius had formed an army barely in time to save Italy from being
totally overwhelmed. A vast migratory wave of population had been set
in motion behind the Rhine and the Danube. The German forests were
uncultivated. The hunting and pasture grounds were too straight for
the numbers crowded into them, and two enormous hordes were rolling
westward and southward in search of some new abiding-place. Each
division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They travelled, with
their wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians
and with the modern South African Dutch, being at once their
conveyance and their home. Gray-haired priestesses tramped along among
them, barefooted, in white linen dresses, the knife at their girdle;
northern Iphigenias, sacrificing prisoners as they were taken, to the
gods of Valhalla. On they swept, eating up the country, and the people
flying before them. In 113 B.C. the skirts of the Cimbri had
encountered a small Roman force near Trieste, and destroyed it. Four
years later another attempt was made to stop them, but the Roman army
was beaten and its camp taken. The Cimbrian host did not, however,
turn at that time upon Italy. Their aim was the south of France. They
made their way through the Alps into Switzerland, where the Helvetii
joined them and the united mass rolled over the Jura and down the bank
of the Rhone. Roused at last into the exertion, the Senate sent into
Gaul the largest force which the Romans had ever brought into the
field. They met the Cimbri at Orange, and were simply annihilated.
Eighty thousand Romans and forty thousand camp-followers were said to
have fallen. The numbers in such cases are generally exaggerated, but
the extravagance of the report is a witness to the greatness of the
overthrow. The Romans had received a worse blow than at Cannae. They
were brave enough, but they were commanded by persons whose
recommendations for command were birth or fortune; "preposterous men,"
as Marius termed them, who had waited for their appointment to open
the military manuals.
Had the Cimbri chosen at this moment to recross the Alps into Italy,
they had only to go and take possession, and Alaric would have been
antedated by five centuries. In great danger it was the Senate's
business to suspend the constitution. The constitution was set aside
now, but it was set aside by the people themselves, not by the Senate.
One man only could save the country, and that man was Marius. His
consulship was over, and custom forbade his re-election. The Senate
might have appointed him Dictator, but would not. The people, custom
or no custom, chose him consul a second time--a significant
acknowledgment that the Empire, which had been won by the sword, must
be held by the sword, and that the sword itself must be held by the
hand that was best fitted to use it. Marius first triumphed for his
African victory, and, as an intimation to the Senate that the power
for the moment was his and not theirs, he entered the Curia in his
triumphal dress. He then prepared for the barbarians who, to the
alarmed imagination of the city, were already knocking at its gates.
Time was the important element in the matter. Had the Cimbri come at
once after their victory at Orange, Italy had been theirs. But they
did not come. With the unguided movements of some wild force of
nature, they swerved away through Aquitaine to the Pyrenees. They
swept across the mountains into Spain. Thence, turning north, they
passed up the Atlantic coast and round to the Seine, the Gauls flying
before them; thence on to the Rhine, where the vast body of the
Teutons joined them, and fresh detachments of the Helvetii. It was as
if some vast tide-wave had surged over the country and rolled through
it, searching out the easiest passages. At length, in two divisions,
the invaders moved definitely toward Italy, the Cimbri following their
old tracks by the Eastern Alps toward Aquileia and the Adriatic, the
Teutons passing down through Provence, and making for the road along
the Mediterranean. Two years had been consumed in these wanderings,
and Marius was by this time ready for them. The Senate had dropped the
reins, and no longer governed or misgoverned; the popular party,
represented by the army, was supreme. Marius was continued in office,
and was a fourth time consul. He had completed his military reforms,
and the army was now a professional service, with regular pay. Trained
corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the
Romans were thenceforward to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as
much as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learnt the use of
tools as well as arms.
The effect of the change was like enchantment. The delay of the
Germans made it unnecessary to wait for them in Italy. Leaving
Catulus, his colleague in the consulship, to check the Cimbri in
Venetia, Marius went himself, taking Sulla with him, into the south of
France. As the barbarian host came on, he occupied a fortified camp
near Aix. He allowed the enormous procession to roll past him in their
wagons toward the Alps. Then, following cautiously, he watched his
opportunity to fall on them. The Teutons were brave, but they had no
longer mere legionaries to fight with, but a powerful machine, and the
entire mass of them, men, women, and children, in numbers which,
however uncertain, were rather those of a nation than an army, were
swept out of existence. The Teutons were destroyed on the 20th of
July, 102. In the year following, the same fate overtook their
comrades. The Cimbri had forced the passes through the mountains. They
had beaten the unscientific patrician Catulus, and had driven him back
on the Po. But Marius came to his rescue. The Cimbri were cut to
pieces near Mantua, in the summer of 101, and Italy was saved.
The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history.[5] The
legions were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were
themselves the state for which they fought. The legionaries were
citizens still. They had votes, and they used them; but they were
professional soldiers with the modes of thought which belong to
soldiers; and besides, the power of the hustings was now the power of
the sword. The constitution remained to appearance intact, and means
were devised sufficient to encounter, it might be supposed, the new
danger. Standing armies were prohibited in Italy. Victorious generals
returning from campaigns abroad were required to disband their legions
on entering the sacred soil. But the materials of these legions
remained a distinct order from the rest of the population, capable of
instant combination, and in combination, irresistible, save by
opposing combinations of the same kind.
[Footnote 5: He was ranked with Romulus and Camillus and
given the title of the third founder of Rome.]
The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy
broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the saviour of
his country. He was made consul a fifth time, and a sixth. The party
which had given him his command shared, of course, in his
pre-eminence. The elections could be no longer interfered with or the
voters intimidated. The public offices were filled with the most
violent agitators, who believed that the time had come to revenge the
Gracchi, and carry out the democratic revolution, to establish the
ideal Republic, and the direct rule of the citizen assembly. This,
too, was a chimera. If the Roman Senate could not govern, far less
could the Roman mob govern. Marius stood aside, and let the voices
rage. He could not be expected to support a system which had brought
the country so near to ruin. He had no belief in the visions of the
demagogues, but the time was not ripe to make an end of it all. Had he
tried, the army would not have gone with him; so he sat still, till
faction had done its work. The popular heroes of the hour were the
tribune Saturninus and the praetor Glaucia. They carried corn laws and
land laws--whatever laws they pleased to propose. The administration
remaining with the Senate, they carried a vote that every senator
should take an oath to execute their laws under penalty of fine and
expulsion. Marius did not like it, and even opposed it, but let it
pass at last.
Marius was an indifferent politician. He perceived as well as any one
that violence must not go on, but he hesitated to put it down. He knew
that the aristocracy feared and hated him. Between them and the
people's consul no alliance was possible. He did not care to alienate
his friends, and there may have been other difficulties which we do
not know, in his way. The army itself was perhaps divided. On the
popular side there were two parties: a moderate one, represented by
Memmius, who, as tribune, had impeached the senators for the
Jugurthine infamies; the other, the advanced radicals, led by Glaucia
and Saturninus. Memmius and Glaucia were both candidates for the
consulship; and as Memmius was likely to succeed, he was murdered.
Above the tumults of the factions in the Capitol a cry rising into
shrillness began to be heard from Italy. Caius Gracchus had wished to
extend the Roman franchise to the Italian states, and the suggestion
had cost him his popularity and his life. The Italian provinces had
furnished their share of the armies which had beaten Jugurtha, and had
destroyed the German invaders. They now demanded that they should have
the position which Gracchus designed for them: that they should be
allowed to legislate for themselves, and no longer lie at the mercy of
others, who neither understood their necessities, nor cared for their
interests. They had no friends in the city, save a few far-sighted
statesmen. Senate and mob had at least one point of agreement, that
the spoils of the Empire should be fought for among themselves; and at
the first mention of the invasion of their monopoly a law was passed
making the very agitation of the subject punishable by death.
The contrast of character between two classes of population, became at
once uncomfortably evident. The provincials had been the right arm of
the Empire. Rome, a city of rich men with families of slaves, and of a
crowd of impoverished freemen without employment to keep them in
health and strength, could no longer bring into the field a force
which could hold its ground against the gentry and peasants of
Samnium. The Senate enlisted Greeks, Numidians, any one whose services
they could purchase. They had to encounter soldiers who had been
trained and disciplined by Marius, and they were taught, by defeat
upon defeat, that they had a worse enemy before them than the Germans.
Marius himself had almost withdrawn from public life. He had no heart
for the quarrel, and did not care greatly to exert himself. At the
bottom, perhaps, he thought that the Italians were in the right. The
Senate discovered that they were helpless, and must come to terms if
they would escape destruction. They abandoned the original point of
difference, and they offered to open the franchise to every Italian
state south of the Po, which had not taken arms, or which returned
immediately to its allegiance. The war had broken out for a definite
cause. When the cause was removed no reason remained for its
continuance.
The panting Senate was thus able to breathe again. The war continued,
but under better auspices. Sound material could now be collected again
for the army. Marius being in the background, the chosen knight of the
aristocracy, Lucius Sulla, whose fame in the Cimbrian war had been
only second to that of his commander's, came at once to the front. Too
late the democratic leaders repented of their folly in encouraging the
Senate to refuse the franchise to the Italians. The Italians, they
began to perceive, would be their surest political allies. Caius
Gracchus had been right after all. The Roman democracy must make haste
to offer the Italians more than all which the Senate was ready to
concede to them. Together they could make an end of misrule, and place
Marius once more at their head.
Much of this was perhaps the scheming passion of revolution; much of
it was legitimate indignation, penitent for its errors and anxious to
atone for them. Marius had his personal grievances. The aristocrats
were stealing from him even his military reputation, and claiming for
Sulla the capture of Jugurtha. He was willing, perhaps anxious, to
take the Eastern command. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the
Senate and the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people
in the excitement. Rufus was chosen tribune, and at once proposed to
enfranchise the remainder of Italy.
But Sulla was not so easily got rid of. It was no time for nice
considerations. He had formed an army in Campania out of the legions
which had served against the Italians. He had made his soldiers
devoted to him. They were ready to go anywhere and do anything which
Sulla bade them. After so many murders, and so many commotions, the
constitution had lost its sacred character; a popular assembly was, of
all conceivable bodies, the least fit to govern an empire; and in
Sulla's eyes the Senate, whatever its deficiencies, was the only
possible sovereign of Rome. The people were a rabble, and their voices
the clamor of fools, who must be taught to know their masters. His
reply to Sulpicius and to the vote for his recall, was to march on the
city. He led his troops within the circle which no legionary in arms
was allowed to enter, and he lighted his watch-fires in the Forum
itself. The people resisted; Sulpicius was killed; Marius, the saviour
of his country, had to fly for his life, pursued by assassins, with a
price set upon his head.[6] Twelve of the prominent popular leaders
were immediately executed without trial; and in hot haste, swift,
decisive measures were taken, which permanently, as Sulla hoped, or if
not permanently, at least for the moment, would lame the limbs of the
democracy.
[Footnote 6: According to legend Marius took refuge among the
ruins of Carthage, comparing his own fallen greatness to that
of the city. His dignity in misfortune awed the soldiers who
came to seize him, and they left him in peace.]
He was no sooner out of Italy than the democratic party rose, with
Cinna at their head, to demand the restoration of the old
constitution. Cinna had been sworn to maintain Sulla's reforms, but no
oath could be held binding which was extorted at the sword's point. A
fresh Sulpicius was found in Carbo, a popular tribune. A more valuable
supporter was found in Quintus Sertorius, a soldier of fortune, but a
man of real gifts, and even of genius. Disregarding the new obligation
to obtain the previous consent of the Senate, Cinna called the
assembly together to repeal the acts which Sulla had forced on them.
The wounds of the social war were scarcely cicatrized, and the peace
had left the allies imperfectly satisfied. Their dispersed armies
gathered again about Cinna and Sertorius. Old Marius, who had been
hunted through marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty
in Africa, came back at the news that Italy had risen again; and six
thousand of his veterans flocked to him at the sound of his name. The
Senate issued proclamations. The limitations on the Italian franchise
left by Sulla were abandoned. Every privilege which had been asked for
was conceded. It was too late. Concessions made in fear might be
withdrawn on the return of safety. Marius and Cinna joined their
forces. The few troops in the pay of the Senate deserted to them. They
appeared together at the gates of the city, and Rome capitulated.
There was a bloody score to be wiped out. Marius bears the chief blame
for the scenes which followed. Undoubtedly he was in no pleasant
humor. A price had been set on his head, his house had been destroyed,
his property had been confiscated, he himself had been chased like a
wild beast, and he had not deserved such treatment. He had saved Italy
when but for him it would have been wasted by the swords of the
Germans. His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused
it for party purposes. The Senate had no reason to complain of him. He
had touched none of their privileges, incapable and dishonest as he
knew them to be. His crime in their eyes had been his eminence. They
had now shown themselves as cruel as they were worthless; and if
public justice was disposed to make an end of them, he saw no cause
for interference.
Thus the familiar story repeated itself: wrong was punished by wrong,
and another item was entered on the bloody account which was being
scored up year after year. The noble lords and their friends had
killed the people in the Forum. They were killed in turn by the
soldiers of Marius. Fifty senators perished, not those who were
specially guilty, but those who were most politically marked as
patrician leaders. With them fell a thousand equites, commoners of
fortune, who had thrown in their lot with the aristocracy. From
retaliatory political revenge the transition was easy to pillage and
wholesale murder; and for many days the wretched city was made a prey
to robbers and cut-throats.
So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city
had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the year
ensuing, and a witches' prophecy was fulfilled, that Marius should
have a seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun
was already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a
fortnight after his inauguration, and he died in his bed on the 13th
of January, at the age of seventy-one.
"The mother of the Gracchi," said Mirabeau, "cast the dust of her
murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius."
JULIUS CAESAR
By E. SPENCER BEESLY, M.A.
(100-44 B.C.)
[Illustration: Julius Caesar.]
Rome solved the great political problem of the ancient world in the
best practicable, if not in the best conceivable, way. To Caesar it
fell to put the crowning stroke to that work. The several states of
modern Europe have all contributed, though in different degrees, to
political progress, and therefore no one of them has the unique
importance and glory that belongs to Rome. For the same reason, no
modern statesman stands on a level with Caesar. He remains, in
Shakespeare's phrase, "the foremost man of all this world." It was the
high fortune of Rome that, in the principal crisis of her history, she
possessed a citizen so splendidly endowed in intellect, character, and
heart. Free to an extraordinary degree from the prejudices belonging
to his age and country, with piercing and far-sweeping vision, he saw
as from some superior height, the political situation of his own time
in its relation to the past and the future of the ancient world. If
Rome had till then carried out the work of conquest with considerable
method, and upon the whole, with steadiness, she had very inadequately
satisfied the need for incorporation. Her oligarchical constitution,
admirably adapted for the first task, could not easily reconcile
itself to the second. In its best days, and while Carthage and Macedon
were still formidable, the Senate had from time to time, prudently
though grudgingly, extended the privilege of citizenship to some of
the subject Italian states. But the great mass of Italians had only
extorted it by rebellion during the boyhood of Caesar, and outside
Italy, the conquered nations were still on the footing of subject
allies, trampled upon and fleeced for the benefit of Rome, or rather
of the Roman nobles and capitalists. If the great dominion was to be
maintained in some tolerable degree of well-being for all its members,
or even maintained at all, it was absolutely necessary that the
so-called Republican constitution, always oppressive for the
provinces, and now shamefully corrupt, should be replaced by personal
government. For a complete incorporation of the subject peoples was
not to be expected from the suffrages of a dominant people, to even
the poorest of whom, it would mean the cessation of highly prized
privileges and immunities. The provinces would from the earliest
moment of their subjection have welcomed such a change. The time was
more than ripe for it when the Roman world lay at the feet of Sulla.
Sulla had all the ability, self-reliance, prestige, and opportunity
that were needed. But his moral nature was below the task. He had
neither the insight, nor the sympathy, nor the noble ambition of
Caesar, and he preferred to re-establish the senatorial oligarchy.
[Illustration: Marius on the ruins of Carthage.]
When Sulla crushed the Marian party Caesar had just arrived at manhood.
Though of an old patrician house, he had yet a family connection with
the democratic party, Marius having married his aunt. He himself had
married a daughter of the democratic leader Cinna, and for refusing to
divorce her he was proscribed by Sulla, but managed to keep in hiding
till the storm was past. After the death of the great reactionist
(B.C. 78), he seized every opportunity of reviving the spirit of the
popular party; as, for instance, by publicly honoring the memory of
Marius, bringing to justice murderers of the proscription, and
courageously raising his single voice in the Senate against the
illegal execution of Catiline's partisans (B.C. 63). Clearly seeing
the necessity for personal government, at a time when his own services
and distinctions were not such as to entitle him to aspire to it,
Caesar did his best to secure it for Pompey, then far the foremost man
in Rome, by strenuously supporting measures which virtually placed the
empire at his absolute disposal for an indefinite period. A fairly
good soldier, but a most vain, unreliable, and incompetent statesman,
Pompey after five years let these powers slip through his hands.
[Illustration: Julius Caesar.]
Caesar was by this time thirty-eight (B.C. 62). He had steadily risen
in influence and official rank; and it was, no doubt, now that he
determined to take the great task into his own hands. He was the
recognized chief of the popular party, which aimed at concentrating
Republican government in the hands of a single person, as the only
means of bridling the oligarchy. But this was not to be accomplished
merely by popular votes, as many a democratic leader had found to his
cost. Caesar needed an army and a military reputation, and with rare
patience he set himself to acquire both. By a coalition with
Pompey--now obliged to treat him as an equal--he obtained the
consulship (B.C. 59), which on its expiration entitled him to a great
military command.
Roman generals had of late preferred to extend their conquests
eastward, and to win comparatively easy and lucrative triumphs in
Asia, over people who had possessed for long ages a type of
civilization suited to them, and who therefore could never thoroughly
assimilate Western manners and institutions. All this time Gaul, lying
at the gates of Italy, was neglected (only the district between the
Cevennes and the Alps having been reduced), because the people were
more warlike, and less booty was to be gained. Yet, till that conquest
should be effected, Rome's work of civilizing the world was standing
still; nay, it was always menaced by northern invasions. This field of
action, then, Caesar marked out for himself, in which he could prepare
the means for assuming power at home, and at the same time render the
highest service to his country and humanity. His ardent spirit, his
incredible energy in all circumstances of his life, astonished his
contemporaries. Time pressed, for he was no longer young. While he was
absent from Rome, what revolutions might not mar his plans! Yet, ten
continuous years did he devote to this great task, which, if he had
achieved nothing else, would make his name one of the greatest in
history. In those ten years he conquered Gaul, from the Pyrenees to
the Rhine and the British Channel; conquered her so thoroughly, and
treated her so sensibly, that when the fierce struggle was over, she
frankly and even proudly accepted her new position. The culture, the
institutions, even the language of the victors, were eagerly adopted.
The grandsons of the men who had fought so gallantly against Caesar,
won full citizenship, took their seats in the Senate, and commanded
Roman armies.
These ten years decided the future of the West, and therefore of
Humanity. It is not merely the central position and natural advantages
of France, nor yet the admirable qualities of her people, which have
made her throughout mediaeval and modern history, the foremost of
European states. It is even more the result of her rapid and thorough
acceptance of Roman civilization. This made her the heir of Rome. This
enabled her, long afterward, to Romanize Germany and England in some
degree, and as it were at second-hand, by the arms of Charlemagne and
William.
It had been arranged between Caesar and Pompey, that during the absence
of the former in Gaul, the latter should act with the popular party,
and keep the nobility in the condition of impotence to which it had
been reduced in the consulship of Caesar. Partly from jealousy of
Caesar, partly from sheer incapacity, Pompey, after much vacillation
and duplicity, finally allied himself with the nobles, thinking with
their aid to crush his rival and thereafter to be supreme. The nobles,
for their part, thought they would know how to deal with Pompey if
once Caesar was out of the way. In the negotiations which preceded the
civil war, Caesar showed a moderation and fairness in striking contrast
with the unscrupulous and headstrong violence of the nobles, who had
not even formal legality on their side. But when he was finally
summoned to hand over his province and army to a nominee of the
Senate, on pain of being declared a public enemy, and when the
tribunes who had reversed the resolution of the Senate were obliged to
fly for their lives to his camp, he suddenly crossed the river
Rubicon, the boundary of his province, and marched on Rome (B.C. 49).
He had but one legion with him; the bulk of his army was far away in
its Gallic cantonments. The forces of Pompey were overwhelmingly
superior in numbers. But the rapid and daring advance of Caesar
prevented their concentration. He came, not merely the adored general
of a veteran army, but the long-tried and consistent leader of the
liberal party, who had never swerved from his principles, never
betrayed his friends, never flinched from dangers. Fascinated by his
success and encouraged by his clemency, towns everywhere opened their
gates and Pompeian levies joined him, swelling his army at every stage
as he swept down Italy.
Pompey, for his part, was not sorry to have a pretext for moving
eastward toward the scene of his early triumphs, where his military
prestige and his personal influence would cause all the client states
to rally round him, and the sulky and suspicious nobles would find
themselves overshadowed. So he crossed the Adriatic, leaving the large
veteran army in Spain, which was under his orders, to take care of
itself. Thither Caesar proceeded as soon as he had secured Italy, bent
on making sure of the West before doing anything else. When the
Spanish legions were beaten, he lost no time in following Pompey, who
had found the respite all too short for drilling his large but raw
force of Romans, and organizing the masses of Asiatics whom he had
summoned to his standard. In the campaign that ensued, the conqueror
of the East fully maintained his old military reputation; but at
length, driven by the clamor of the nobles to risk a pitched battle,
he suffered a crushing defeat on the field of Pharsalia (B.C. 48).
Flying to Egypt, still an independent kingdom, he was assassinated by
order of the government.
The beaten party rallied again, first in Africa, then in Spain; and of
the three years and nine months of life that remained to Caesar, much
the greater portion was spent at the head of his army. He, therefore,
had not time to give any complete organization to his new government.
But his intentions are clearly discernible in outline. Supreme power,
legislative as well as executive, was to be vested in a single ruler,
governing not by divine right, but as the representative of the
community, and in its interest. This was indeed an ideal by no means
novel to Romans. Scipio had brooded over it. Caius Gracchus had for a
moment realized it. The oldest institutions and traditions told of it.
It was the power of the ancient kings theoretically continued to, and
in grave emergencies actually exercised by, the magistrates of the
Republic during its best days. It had been increasingly overshadowed
by the Senate. That body was now to be reduced to its original
consultative office. The functions of the executive had been gradually
divided among several magistrates. They were now to be re-concentrated.
Above all, annual election--the cherished institution of all
oligarchies, open or disguised--was to be replaced by life-tenure,
with power to name a successor. The subjects of Rome were to be
admitted to citizenship, wherever and whenever fit for it; and there
is reason to believe that Caesar intended to move much faster in this
direction than his successor did. Rome itself, from the mistress of
the Empire, was to become its capital and most dignified municipality.
All old parties--Caesar's own included--were to consider themselves at
an end. "To the victors the spoils!" was a cry rebuked from the first.
For the vanquished of Pharsalia there was not only amnesty, but
admission to the highest grades of the public service, if they would
bury their old grudge and recognize the government. Pauperism among
the lower class, and insolvency among the upper--ulcers not admitting
of a radical cure--were treated with judicious palliatives. Taxation
was reduced, expenditure was increased, and yet the balance in the
treasury at Caesar's death was tenfold what it had ever been before--a
proof of the frightful waste and corruption from which the Roman world
was rescued by the overthrow of the oligarchy.
Of the administrative work of Caesar it is impossible here to give any
adequate idea. A reform of the calendar, which served the West till
1582, and serves Russia still; a recasting of the whole provincial
administration; a codification of Roman law; a census of the Empire; a
uniform gold coinage; a public library; a metropolitan police;
building regulations; sanitary regulations; an alteration of the
course of the Tiber, which would have drained the marshes--all these
grand projects, and more, some carried to completion, some only
sketched out, teemed from the active brain of the great organizer, in
the brief moments he could spare from military cares in these last
months of his life--a devouring activity, an all-embracing capacity,
such as perhaps never shone forth in man before or since. What Roman
incorporation meant for the ancient world was at last revealed. The
war havoc of seven centuries had found its justification.
[Illustration: The Ides of March.]
In the midst of this glorious and beneficent career, at the age of
fifty-five (57?), Caesar, whose frank and fearless spirit disdained
suspicion or precaution, was assassinated by a knot of rancorous,
perfidious aristocrats, whom he had pardoned and promoted. Their
purblind spite was powerless to avert the inevitable advent of
monocracy. What they did effectually extinguish for more than a
century, was the possibility of amnesty, conciliation, and mutual
confidence. Careless as usual of historical truth, the great English
poet has glorified the murderers of Caesar. Dante, never forgetting the
moral responsibility of art, has reserved the lowest circle of hell
for Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot.
It imports little to the greatness of such a one as Caesar, to add that
in an age of oratory he stood in the first rank of orators; that his
historical writings are an unrivalled model of vigor, lucidity, and
elegance; that he carried his scientific culture to a point very
unusual among his countrymen; and that his personal prowess and feats
of endurance were the admiration of veteran soldiers. Women loved him,
and he loved them. Enjoying life thoroughly, he was temperate in all
things. To no man has it been given to approach more nearly to the
perfection of human nature--complete, evenly balanced, and
self-controlled.
MARC ANTONY
(83-30 B.C.)
[Illustration: Marc Antony.]
Marcus Antonius, or Marc Antony, grandson of Antonius the orator, and
son of Antonius Creticus, seems to have been born about 83 B.C. While
still a child he lost his father, whose example however, had he been
spared, would have done little for the improvement of his character.
Brought up under the influence of the disreputable Cornelius Lentulus
Sura, whom his mother had married, Antony spent his youth in
profligacy and extravagance. For a time he co-operated with the
reprobate Clodius in his political plans, chiefly, it is supposed,
through hostility to Cicero, who had caused Lentulus, his stepfather,
to be put to death as one of the Catiline conspirators; but he soon
withdrew from the connection, on account of a disagreement which,
appropriately enough, arose in regard to his relations to his
associate's wife, Flavia. Not long after, in 58 B.C., he fled to
Greece, to escape the importunity of his creditors; and at length,
after a short time spent in attendance on the philosophers at Athens,
found an occasion for displaying some of the better features of his
character, in the wars that were being carried on by Gabinius against
Aristobulus in Palestine, and in support of Ptolemy Auletes in Egypt.
A new chapter in his life was opened by the visit which he made to
Julius Caesar in Gaul (54 B.C.). Welcomed by the victorious general as
a valuable assistant in his ambitious designs, and raised by his
influence to the offices of quaestor, augur, and tribune of the plebes,
he displayed admirable boldness and activity in the maintenance of his
patron's cause, in opposition to the violence and intrigues of the
oligarchical party. At length his antagonists prevailed, and expelled
him from the curia; and the political contest became a civil war. The
Rubicon was crossed; Caesar was victorious, and Antony shared in his
triumph. Deputy-governor of Italy during Caesar's absence in Spain
(49), second in command in the decisive battle of Pharsalia (48), and
again deputy-governor of Italy while Caesar was in Africa (47), Antony
was now inferior in power only to the dictator himself, and eagerly
seized the opportunity of indulging in the most extravagant excesses
of luxurious licentiousness--excesses which Cicero depicted in the
"Philippics" with all the elaborate eloquence of political hatred. In
46 he seems to have taken offence at Caesar, because he insisted on
payment for the property of Pompey which Antony professedly had
purchased, but had merely appropriated. But the estrangement was not
of long continuance, for we find Antony meeting the dictator at Narbo
the following year, and rejecting the advances of Trebonius, who
endeavored to discover if there was any hope of getting Antony to join
in the conspiracy that was already on foot. In 44 he was consul along
with Caesar, and seconded his ambition by the famous offer of the crown
on the 15th of February, thus unconsciously preparing the way for the
tragedy on the 15th of March. To the sincerity of his adherence to
Caesar, the conspirators themselves bore witness on that memorable day,
by the care which they took to keep him engaged without, while the
daggers were doing their work within.
This was the second great epoch in Antony's life. A brighter prospect
than ever was then opened to his ambition. By his eloquence--a
hereditary gift--he managed to stir up the minds of the populace
against the assassins of Caesar, and drove them from the city. He made
peace with the remaining representatives of the senatorial party, and
seemed almost to have succeeded to the power and position of his
unfortunate patron. But the youthful Octavius, whom Caesar had adopted
as his son, arrived from Illyria, and claimed the inheritance of his
"father." Agreement was impossible, and war ensued. Octavius obtained
the support of the Senate and of Cicero; and the veteran troops of the
dictator flocked to his standard. Antony was denounced as a public
enemy; and the city gave its loudest applause to the tirades of his
most eloquent accuser. His cause gradually lost ground, and seemed to
be totally ruined when his army was defeated in the siege of Mutina
(43 B.C.). But escaping to Cisalpine Gaul, he formed a junction with
Lepidus, and they marched toward Rome with 17 legions and 10,000
cavalry.
The wily Octavius now betrayed his party, and entered into terms with
Antony and Lepidus. It was agreed that they three should adopt the
title--so beautifully ironical--of _Triumviri reipublicae
constituendae_, and share the power and the provinces among them. Gaul
was to be Antony's; Spain fell to the lot of Lepidus, and Africa,
Sardinia, and Sicily were to belong to Octavius. A conjunct
proscription followed, each of the partners in the villanous design
bartering the life of his friends, for the pleasure of destroying his
foes. The detested author of the "Philippics" was given up to Antony's
revenge; and, according to Appian, the number of the victims amounted
to 300 senators and 2,000 knights. In the following year Antony and
Octavius proceeded against the conspirators, Cassius and Brutus, who
still maintained themselves in Macedonia; and, in the battles of
Philippi, stamped out the last embers of republican Rome.
While Octavius returned to Italy, Antony proceeded to Greece, and
thence to Asia Minor, for the sake of recruiting his funds, completing
the subjugation of the Eastern provinces, and obtaining satisfaction
about the conduct of the Egyptian queen during the recent contest. On
his passage through Cilicia, in 41, he was visited by Cleopatra, who
came to answer the charges in person. She sailed up the Cydnus in a
gorgeous bark, with a fantastic and brilliant equipage, and brought
all her allurements to bear on the heart of the voluptuous Roman. Her
success was complete; and he who was to have been her judge, was led
captive to Alexandria as her slave. All was forgotten in the
fascination and delight of the passing hour; and feasting and revelry
found perpetual and ever-varying renewal.
At length Antony was aroused by the Parthian invasion of Syria, and
the report of an outbreak between Fulvia, his wife, and Lucius, his
brother, on the one hand, and Octavius on the other. On arriving in
Italy he found that the war was over, and Octavius the victor; and the
chief cause of disagreement being soon after removed by the death of
Fulvia, a reconciliation was speedily effected between the triumvirs,
and cemented by the marriage of Antony with Octavia, the sister of his
colleague. A new division of the Roman world was agreed on at
Brundusium, Lepidus receiving Africa, Octavius the West, and Antony
the East.
Returning to his province, Antony was for a time successful; his
general, Ventidius, beating the Parthians, and Socius capturing
Jerusalem and conquering Antigonus. But after another visit to Italy,
during which the triumvirate was prolonged for five years, Antony sent
away his wife, yielded himself completely to the evil influence of
Cleopatra, indulged not only in licentiousness, but in tyranny, and
allowed his affairs to be neglected or delayed. An expedition against
the Parthians was a failure; but for this, his success against
Artavasdes, the Armenian king, in some measure compensated. Octavius
at length determined to get rid of Antony, and had little need of
invention to bring charges sufficient against him. About two years
were spent in preparations and delays on both sides, and it was not
till the year 31 that the fate of Antony was decided by the battle of
Actium.
Defeated and deserted, he once more sought refuge and repose in the
society of Cleopatra, but was followed even there by his relentless
rival. At first he made a gallant effort to defend himself, and
partially succeeded. But convinced of the hopelessness of his
position, and assured of the suicide of his mistress, he followed the
example which he was falsely informed she had given (30 B.C.). Antony
had been married in succession to Fadia, Antonia, Fulvia, and Octavia,
and left behind him a number of children. A short but vivid sketch of
Antony is given by De Quincey in his "Essay on the Caesars."
HERMANN
(16 B.C.-21 A.D.)
[Illustration: Hermann.]
Hermann, the Arminius of the Roman historians, the son of Sigimer,
chief of the Cherusci, was born about B.C. 16 or 17. Being sent in
early youth as a hostage to Rome, probably in consequence of the
victories of Drusus, which had established the supremacy of Rome over
the Catti, Cherusci, and other tribes of North Germany, he obtained
the favor of Augustus, and was inscribed among the Roman knights. On
his return to his native country, he resolved to deliver it from the
Romans, whose oppression had become intolerable. Quintilius Varus, a
rapacious man, was then the Roman governor in Germany. He had held
office in Syria, where he had ruled with great harshness; and fancying
that he might act in the same way toward the fierce tribes of the
North, he roused among them a bitter hatred of the Romans.
[Illustration: Hermann's triumph over the Romans.]
They found in Hermann a leader of extraordinary bravery and resource.
He laid his plans with the chiefs of the Catti, Bructeri, and other
tribes that lived between the Rhine and the Albis (Elbe), some of
which broke out into insurrection. Hermann then offered Varus his
assistance in reducing them to subjection, and thus led him to advance
some distance from the Rhine into the interior. Varus began his march
with three legions, six cohorts, and a body of cavalry, and Hermann
served him as a guide through the wilds. The Romans were thus drawn
into an ambuscade in the Teutoburg forest, and found themselves all at
once surrounded by numerous bodies of Germans, who were directed by
Hermann himself. The Romans fought desperately; but being
unacquainted with the localities, and unable to form their ranks owing
to the thickness of the forests and the marshy nature of the ground,
they were defeated after a three days' battle, by the Germans, who
destroyed them in detail. At last, Varus, being wounded and seeing no
chance of escape, fell upon his sword, and the other chief officers
followed his example.
The legions were entirely destroyed, and the cavalry alone cut their
way through the enemy and regained the banks of the Rhine. By this
defeat the Romans lost all their conquests beyond that river; and
although Germanicus some years after again carried their arms to the
Weser, they never established anything like a solid dominion over
those regions. The defeat of Varus occurred, according to various
chronologists, in the year 763 of Rome (A.D. 9). The scene of the
defeat is conjectured to have been in the country of the Bructeri,
near the sources of the Ems and the Lippe. The news of this calamity,
the greatest that had befallen the Roman arms since the defeat of
Crassus, was received with universal amazement and terror. The
despairing cry of Augustus, "Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!"
testified to the consternation even at Rome, where it was expected
that the barbarians would take a terrible revenge for the wrongs they
had suffered.
The fears of invasion, however, were not realized. L. Asprena guarded
the banks of the Rhine, and the Germans were too little united among
themselves to attack the Empire. Augustus in the following year sent
Tiberius to the Rhine with a fresh army; but he does not seem to have
effected anything of importance. Hermann meantime quarrelled with
Segestes, chief of the Catti, whose daughter Tusnelda, he had carried
off and married against her father's consent. When Germanicus, after
the death of Augustus, marched into the interior of Germany to avenge
the defeat of Varus, he was assisted by Segestes, and also by the
Chauci and other tribes. In the first battle against Hermann, his wife
Tusnelda, was taken prisoner by the Romans, and she afterward figured
in the triumph of Germanicus. Germanicus, having reached the scene of
Varus's defeat, paid funeral honors to the remains of the legions; but
Hermann, who was hovering about his line of march, without coming to a
pitched battle, harassed him in his retreat, and occasioned a great
loss to Caecina, the lieutenant of Germanicus.
In the following year, Germanicus advanced again as far as the
Visurgis, or Weser, where he found Hermann encamped ready for battle.
A desperate fight took place, in which Hermann, after performing
prodigies of valor, was defeated, and escaped with difficulty. But the
victory was gained at such cost that Germanicus and his army had to
take refuge in their ships, nor did the Romans ever again attempt the
conquest of the fiercer German tribes.
When Tiberius recalled Germanicus, he observed that the Cherusci,
Bructeri, and other unsubdued tribes, might be left to their own
internal dissensions. He seems to have guessed right.
No sooner had the Romans been driven off, than Hermann had to protect
his people against an internal danger. Maroboduus, the chief of the
Marcomanni, a man of great ambition, had by treachery or by open
fighting, made himself master of several neighboring tribes. Hermann
began to fear his designs, and after the defeat of Varus, warned him
of his peril by sending him the Roman general's head. When Germanicus
finally left the country, Hermann declared war against Maroboduus,
and, being joined by the Semnones and Longobards, defeated him on the
borders of the Hercynian forest, broke up his kingdom, and drove him
from Germany. The fugitive applied to Rome for assistance. Tiberius
then sent his son Drusus into the Illyricum; but the Romans did not
advance beyond the Danube, and Hermann remained unmolested in Northern
Germany. Shortly after, however, Hermann was killed by his own
relatives, being accused, as it would seem, of aspiring to absolute
dominion. He died at the age of thirty-seven, in the twenty-first year
of our era, after being for twelve years the leader and champion of
Germany.
TRAJAN
By J. S. REID, Litt.D.
(53-117)
[Illustration: Trajan.]
The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Marcus Ulpius
Traianus, the fourteenth emperor. Of him it was said that he "built
the world over," and the Romans themselves regarded him as the best,
and perhaps the greatest of their emperors. He was a native of
Italica, in Spain. The family to which he belonged was probably
Italian, and not Iberian, by blood. His father began life as a common
legionary soldier, and fought his way up to the consulship and the
governorship of Asia. He was one of the hardest fighters in Judaea
under Vespasian and Titus; he served, too, against the Parthians, and
won the highest military distinction open to a subject, the grant of
the triumphal insignia. Thus he acquired a prominent place among the
brand new patricians created by the Flavians as substitutes for the
nobles of old descent who had succumbed to the cruelty and rapacity of
the emperors from Tiberius to Nero.
The younger Trajan was rigorously trained by his father, and deeply
imbued with the same principles and tastes. He was a soldier born and
bred. No better representative of the true old hardy Roman type,
little softened either by luxury or education, had come to the head
of affairs since the days of Marius. The date of his birth was
probably 53 A.D. His training was almost exclusively military, but his
experience as an officer gave him an acquaintance with almost every
important province of the empire, which was of priceless value to him
when he came to the throne. For ten years he held a commission as
military tribune, which took him to many lands far asunder; then he
filled important posts in Syria and Spain. How much actual warfare
Trajan saw in those days we can hardly tell; he certainly went through
some severe service under his father's command against the Parthians.
By the year 89 he had achieved a considerable reputation. At that time
L. Antonius Saturninus headed a rebellion in Germany, which threatened
seriously to bring Domitian's rule to an end. Trajan was ordered in
hot haste from Farther Spain to the Rhine. Although he carried his
troops over that long and arduous march with almost unexampled
rapidity, he only arrived after the insurrection had been put down.
But his promptitude raised him higher in the favor of Domitian, and he
was advanced to the consulship in 91. Of the next five years of his
life we know nothing positively. It is not unlikely that they were
spent at Rome or in Italy in the fulfilment of some official duties.
When the revolution of 96 came, and Nerva replaced the murdered
Domitian, Trajan had conferred upon him one of the most important
posts in the Empire, that of consular legate of Upper Germany. An
officer whose nature, as the event showed, was interpenetrated with
the spirit of legality, was a fitting servant of a revolution whose
aim it was to substitute legality for personal caprice, as the
dominant principle of affairs. The short reign of Nerva really did
start the Empire on a new career, which lasted more than
three-quarters of a century. But it also demonstrated how impossible
it was for any one to govern at all who had no claim, either personal
or inherited, to the respect of the legions. Nerva saw that if he
could not find an Augustus to control the army, the army would find
another Domitian to trample the Senate under foot. In his difficulties
he took counsel with L. Licinius Sura, a lifelong friend of Trajan,
and in October, 97, he ascended the Capitol, and with all due
solemnity proclaimed that he adopted Trajan as his son.
The Senate confirmed the choice, and acknowledged the emperor's
adopted son as his successor. In a letter which Nerva sent at once to
Trajan, he quoted most significantly a line from the beginning of the
"Iliad," where Chryses, insulted by Achilles, prays to Apollo: "May
thy shafts afford me vengeance on the Greeks for my tears." After a
little hesitation Trajan accepted the position, which was marked by
the titles of Imperator, Caesar, and Germanicus, and by the tribunician
authority. He immediately proceeded to Lower Germany, to assure
himself of the fidelity of the troops in that province, and while at
Cologne he received news of Nerva's death (January, 98).
The authority of the new emperor was recognized at once all the Empire
over. The novel fact that a master of the Romans should have been born
on Spanish soil seems to have passed with little remark, and this very
absence of notice is significant. Trajan's first care as emperor was
to write to the Senate an assurance like that which had been given by
Nerva, that he would neither kill nor degrade any senator. He ordered
the establishment of a temple and cult in honor of his adoptive
father, but he did not present himself at Rome for nearly two years
after his accession. Possibly he had taken measures before Nerva's
death to secure the revenge which Nerva craved, but probably did not
live to see. In his dealings with the mutinous praetorians the strength
of the new emperor's hand was shown at once. He ordered a portion of
the force to Germany. They did not venture to disobey, and were
distributed among the legions there. Those who remained at Rome were
easily overawed and reformed. It is still more surprising that the
soldiers should have quietly submitted to a reduction in the amount of
the donative or gift which it was customary for them to receive from a
new emperor, though the civil population of the capital were paid
their largess (_congiarium_) in full. By politic management Trajan was
able to represent the diminution as a sort of discount for immediate
payment, while the civilians had to wait a considerable time before
their full due was handed to them.
The secret of Trajan's power lay in his close personal relations with
the officers and men of the army, and in the soldierly qualities which
commanded their esteem. He possessed courage, justice, and frankness
to a high degree. Having a good title to military distinction himself,
he could afford, as the unwarlike emperors could not, to be generous
to his officers. The common soldiers, on the other hand, were
fascinated by his personal prowess and his somewhat ostentatious
_camaraderie_. His features were firm and clearly cut; his figure was
tall and soldierly, and exhibited the sinewy hard health of a veteran
campaigner. His hair was already gray before he came to the throne,
though he was not more than forty-four years old. The stoutness of the
emperor's arm had been proved in the face of his men in many a hard
fight. When on service he used the mean fare of the common private,
dining on salt pork, cheese, and sour wine. Nothing pleased him better
than to take part with the centurion, or the soldier in fencing or
other military exercise, and he would applaud any shrewd blow which
fell upon his own helmet. He loved to display his acquaintance with
the career of distinguished veterans, and to talk with them of their
battles and their wounds. Probably he lost nothing of his popularity
with the army by occasional free indulgence in sensual pleasures, with
which, as Bacon remarks, the soldier is apt to pay himself for the
perils he encounters. Yet every man felt and knew that no detail of
military duty, however minute, escaped the emperor's eye, and that any
relaxation of discipline would be rigidly punished, yet with
unwavering justice.
Trajan emphasized at once his personal control and the
constitutionality of his sway, by bearing on his campaigns the actual
title of "proconsul," which no other emperor had done. All things
considered, it is not surprising that he was able, without serious
opposition from the army, to remodel the whole military institutions
of the empire, and to bring them into a shape from which there was
comparatively little departure so long as the army lasted. In
disciplinary matters no emperor since Augustus had been able to keep
so strong a control over the troops. Pliny rightly praises Trajan as
the lawgiver and the founder of discipline, and Vegetius classes
Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian together as restorers of the _morale_ of
the army. The confidence which existed between Trajan and his army
finds expression in some of the coins of his reign.
For nearly two years after his election Trajan did not appear in Rome.
He had decided already what the great task of his reign should be--the
establishment of security upon the dangerous north-eastern frontier.
Before visiting the capital he determined to put affairs in train for
the attainment of this great object. He made a thorough inspection of
the great lines of defence between the Danube and the Rhine, and
framed, and partly carried out, a vast scheme for strengthening and
securing them. The policy of opposing uncivilized tribes by the
construction of the _limes_, a raised embankment of earth or other
material, intersected here and there by fortifications, was not his
invention, but it owed in great measure its development to him. This
grand work, which would have excited the envy of Augustus, is
traceable in its main extent at the present day. Among a people of
roadmakers, Trajan was one of the greatest, and we have definite
evidence from inscriptions that some of the military roads in this
region were constructed by him. The more secure control which the
Romans now maintained over the territory within the _limes_, tended to
its rapid civilization, and the Roman influence, if not the Roman
arms, soon began to affect powerfully the regions beyond.
After his careful survey of the Rhine end of the great defensive
barrier, Trajan proceeded to consider it and plan it from the Danube.
From the age of Tiberius onward, the Romans possessed the whole
southern bank of the river from its source to the Euxine. But the
precarious tenure of their possession, had been deeply impressed on
them by the disasters and humiliations they had undergone in these
districts during the reign of Domitian. A prince had arisen among the
Dacians, Decebalus by name, worthy to be placed at the head of all the
great barbarian antagonists of Rome. Like Maroboduus, he was able to
combine the forces of tribes commonly hostile to each other, and his
military ability almost went the length of genius. After he had swept
the province of Moesia bare, he was defeated by one of Domitian's
lieutenants, but the position of affairs on the Danubio-Rhenish border
was still so threatening, that the emperor was glad to conclude a
treaty which conferred extraordinary advantages on his foe. Not only
did the Romans stipulate to pay to Decebalus an annual subsidy, which
he must have regarded as a tribute, but they agreed to supply him with
engineers and craftsmen skilled in all kinds of construction, but
particularly in the erection of fortifications and defensive works.
During the nine or ten years which had elapsed since the conclusion of
this remarkable treaty, the Dacian prince had immensely strengthened
the approaches to his kingdom from the Roman side. He had also
equipped and drilled his formidable army after the Roman fashion. It
was impossible for a soldier like Trajan to endure the conditions
laid down by Domitian; but the conquest of Dacia had become one of the
most formidable tasks that had ever confronted the Empire. Trajan, no
doubt, planned a war before he left the Danube for Rome late in 99.
The arrival of the emperor had been awaited in the capital with an
impatience which is expressed by Pliny and by Martial. All that had
happened since Trajan's elevation to the throne had raised high at
Rome the hope of a prosperous and glorious reign. As he entered the
city and went on foot to the Capitol, the plaudits of the people were
unmistakably genuine. During his stay in the city he riveted more
firmly still the affections both of the Senate and of the people. The
reconciliation of the Empire with liberty, inaugurated, as Tacitus
says, by Nerva, seemed now to be securely achieved. Trajan was
absolutely open and simple, and lived with men at Rome as he had lived
with his soldiers while on service. He realized the Senate's ideal of
the citizen ruler. The assurance that no senator should suffer was
renewed by oath. All the old republican formalities were most
punctiliously observed--even those attendant on the emperor's election
to the consulate, so far as they did not involve a restoration of the
old order of voting at the comitia. The veneration for republican
tradition is curiously attested by the reproduction of many republican
types of coin struck by senatorial officers.
Trajan seized every opportunity for emphasizing his view that the
_princeps_ was merely the greatest of the magistrates, and so was not
above but under the laws. He was determined, he said, to be to his
subjects such a ruler as he had desired for himself when a subject.
There is a pretty story to the effect that he handed the commander of
the praetorians his sword, and said, "Use it for me if I do well, but
against me if I do ill." Martial, who had called Domitian his lord and
his god, now cried, "In him we have no lord, but an imperator!" Real
power and influence were accorded to the Senate, which had now, by the
incorporation of members whose origin was provincial, become in a
manner representative of the whole empire. Trajan associated with the
senators on equal terms, and enjoyed in their company every kind of
recreation. All pomp was distasteful to him, and discarded by him.
There was practically no court, and no intrigues of any kind were
possible. The approach to his house was free, and he loved to pass
through the city unattended, and to pay unexpected visits to his
friends. He thirsted for no senator's blood, and used severity against
the _delatores_ alone. There was but one insignificant conspiracy
against him during his whole reign.
Though not literary himself, Trajan conciliated the literary men, who
at all times had close relations with the Senate. His intimate, M.
Licinius, played an excellent Maecenas to his Augustus. In his efforts
to win the affections of Roman society, Trajan was excellently aided
by his wife Plotina, who was as simple as her husband, benevolent,
pure in character, and entirely unambitious. The hold which Trajan
acquired over the people was no less firm than that which he
maintained upon the army and the Senate. His largesses, his
distributions of food, his public works, and his spectacles were all
on a generous scale. The exhibitions in the arena were perhaps at
their zenith during his tenure of power. Though, for some unexplained
reason, he abolished the mimes, so beloved of the populace, at the
outset of his reign, he availed himself of the occasion of his first
triumph to restore them again. The people were delighted by the
removal of the imperial _exedra_ in the circus, whereby five thousand
additional places were provided. Taxation was in many directions
reduced, and the financial exactions of the imperial officers
controlled by the erection of a special court. Elaborate precautions
were taken to save Italy from famine; it is said that corn for seven
years' consumption at the capital was retained in the granaries.
Special encouragement was given to merchants to import articles of
food. The corporation of bakers was organized, and made more effective
for the service of the public. The internal trade of Italy was
powerfully stimulated by the careful maintenance and extension of the
different lines of road.
But the most striking evidence of Trajan's solicitude for his people's
welfare is found in his institution of the _alimenta_, whereby means
were provided for the rearing of poor and orphan children in Italy.
The method had been sketched out by Nerva, but its great development
was due to Trajan. The moneys allotted by the emperor were in many
cases supplemented by private benevolence. As a soldier, Trajan
realized the need of men for the maintenance of the Empire against the
outer barbarians, and he preferred that these men should be of Italian
birth. He was only carrying a step further the policy of Augustus, who
by a system of rewards and penalties had tried to encourage marriage
and the nurture of children. The annual effect of Trajan's regulations
is hard to measure; they were probably more effectual for their object
than those of Augustus. The foundations were confiscated by Pertinax,
after they had existed less than a century.
Toward the end of 100, or early in 101, Trajan left Rome for the
Danube. Pretexts for a Dacian war were not difficult to find. Although
there was no lack of hard fighting, victory in this war depended
largely on the work of the engineer. The great military road
connecting the posts in Upper Germany with those on the Danube, which
had been begun by Tiberius, was now extended along the right bank of
the river as far as the modern Orsova. The year 101 was spent mainly
in roadmaking and fortification. In the following campaign, after
desperate fighting to the north of the Danube in the mountainous
region of Transylvania, such as Caesar never encountered in all his
Gaulish wars, the capital of Decebalus was taken, and he was forced to
terms. He agreed to raze all fortresses, to surrender all weapons,
prisoners, and Roman deserters, and to become a dependent prince under
the suzerainty of Rome. Trajan came back to Italy with Dacian envoys,
who in ancient style begged the Senate to confirm the conditions
granted by the commander in the field. The emperor now enjoyed his
first Dacian triumph, and assumed the title of Dacicus. At the same
time he royally entertained the people, and no less royally rewarded
his brave officers.
But the Dacian chief could not school his high spirit to endure the
conditions of the treaty, and Trajan soon found it necessary to
prepare for another war. A massive stone bridge was built across the
Danube, near the modern Turn Severin, by Apollodorus, the gifted
architect who afterward designed the forum of Trajan. In 105 began the
new struggle, which on the side of Decebalus could now only lead to
victory or to destruction. The Dacians fought their ground inch by
inch, and their army as a whole may be said to have bled to death. The
prince put an end to his own life. His kingdom became an imperial
province; in it many colonies were founded, and peopled by settlers
drawn from different parts of the empire. The work done by Trajan in
the Danubian regions left a lasting mark upon their history. The
emperor returned to the capital in 106, laden with captured treasure.
His triumph outdid in splendor all those that went before it. Games
are said to have been held continuously for four months. The chariot
races were the grandest ever seen. Ten thousand gladiators contended
in the arena, and eleven thousand beasts were killed in the contests.
Congratulatory embassies came from all lands, even from India. The
grand and enduring monument of the Dacian wars is the noble pillar
which still stands on the site of Trajan's forum at Rome. The end of
the Dacian wars was followed by seven years of peace.
Many details in the administration of the law, and particularly of the
criminal law, were improved. To cure corruption in the Senate the
ballot was introduced at elections to magistracies. The finances of
the state were economically managed, and taxpayers were most carefully
guarded from oppression. Trajan never lacked money to expend on great
works of public utility; as a builder, he may fairly be compared with
Augustus. His forum and its numerous appendages were constructed on a
magnificent scale. Many regions of Italy and the provinces, besides
the city itself, benefited by the care and munificence which the
emperor bestowed on such public improvements. His attitude toward
religion was, like that of Augustus, moderate and conservative. The
famous letter to Pliny about the Christians is, according to Roman
ideas, merciful and considerate. It was impossible, however, for a
Roman magistrate of the time to rid himself of the idea that all forms
of religion must do homage to the civil power. Hence the conflict
which made Trajan appear in the eyes of Christians like Tertullian,
the most infamous of monsters. On the whole, Trajan's civil
administration was sound, careful, and sensible, rather than brilliant
or epoch-making.
[Illustration: Rome under Trajan--A chariot race.]
In 113 or 114 Trajan left Italy to make war in the East. The
never-ending Parthian problem confronted him, and with it were more or
less connected a number of minor difficulties. Already by 106 the
position of Rome in the East had been materially improved by the
peaceful annexation of districts bordering on the province of Syria.
The district of Damascus, hitherto a dependency, and the last
remaining fragment of the Jewish kingdom, were incorporated with
Syria; Bostra and Petra were permanently occupied, and a great portion
of the Nabathaean kingdom was constituted the Roman province of Arabia.
Rome thus obtained mastery of the most important positions lying on
the great trade-routes from East to West. These changes could not but
affect the relations of the Roman with the Parthian empire, and the
affairs of Armenia became, in 114, the occasion of war. Trajan's
campaigns in the East ended in complete though brilliant failure.
In the retreat from Ctesiphon (117), the old emperor tasted for almost
the first time the bitterness of defeat in the field. He attacked the
desert city of Hatra, westward of the Tigris, whose importance is
still attested by grand ruins. The want of water made it impossible to
maintain a large force near the city, and the brave Arabs routed the
Roman cavalry. Trajan, who narrowly escaped being killed, was forced
to withdraw.
A more alarming difficulty lay before him. Taking advantage of the
absence of the emperor in the far East, and possibly by an
understanding with the leaders of the rising in Armenia and the
annexed portions of Parthia, the Jews all over the East had taken up
arms at the same moment, and at a given signal. The massacres they
committed were portentous. In Cyprus 240,000 men are said to have been
put to death, and at Cyrene 220,000. At Alexandria, on the other hand,
many Jews were killed. The Romans punished massacre by massacre, and
the complete suppression of the insurrection was long delayed, but the
Jews made no great stand against disciplined troops. Trajan still
thought of returning to Mesopotamia, and of avenging his defeat at
Hatra, but he was stricken with sickness and compelled to take ship
for Italy. His illness increasing, he landed in Cilicia, and died at
Selinus in that country about the end of July, 117.
Trajan, who had no children, had continually delayed to settle the
succession to the throne, though Pliny, in the "Panegyric" had
pointedly drawn his attention to the matter, and it must have caused
the Senate much anxiety. Whether Hadrian, the cousin of Trajan, was
actually adopted by him or not, is impossible to determine; certainly
Hadrian had not been advanced to any great honors by Trajan. Even his
military service had not been distinguished. Plotina asserted the
adoption, and it was readily and most fortunately accepted, if not
believed, as a fact.
The Senate had decreed to Trajan as many triumphs as he chose to
celebrate. For the first time a dead general triumphed. When Trajan
was deified, he appropriately retained, alone among the emperors, a
title he had won for himself in the field, that of "Parthicus." He was
a patient organizer of victory rather than a strategic genius. He
laboriously perfected the military machine, which when once set in
motion went on to victory. Much of the work he did was great and
enduring, but the last year of his life forbade the Romans to
attribute to him that _felicitas_ which they regarded as an inborn
quality of the highest generals. Each succeeding emperor was saluted
with the wish that he might be "better than Trajan and more fortunate
than Augustus." Yet the breach made in Trajan's _felicitas_ by the
failure in the East was no greater than that made in the _felicitas_
of Augustus by his retirement from the right bank of the Rhine.
DIOCLETIAN
(245-313)
[Illustration: Circus scene. [TN]]
Caius Valerius Diocletianus, one of the most famous of the Roman
emperors, was, as De Quincey says, "doubtless that man of iron whom
the times demanded." He was born at Dioclea, in Dalmatia, some say at
Salona, about A.D. 245 according to some, but others make him ten
years older. His original name was Diocles, which he afterward changed
into Diocletianus. He is said by some to have been the son of a
notary, by others the freedman of a senator named Anulinus. He entered
the army at an early age, and rose gradually to rank; he served in
Gaul, in Moesia, under Probus, and was present at the campaign against
the Persians, in which Carus, then emperor, perished in a mysterious
manner. Diocletian commanded the household or imperial body-guards
when young Numerianus, the son of Carus, was secretly put to death by
Aper his father-in-law, while travelling in a close litter on account
of illness, on the return of the army from Persia. The death of
Numerianus being discovered after several days by the soldiers near
Calchedon, they arrested Aper and proclaimed Diocletian emperor, who
addressing the soldiers from his tribunal in the camp, protested his
innocence of the death of Numerianus, and then upbraiding Aper for the
crime, plunged his sword into the traitor's body.
The new emperor observed to a friend that "he had now killed the
boar," punning on the word Aper, which means a boar, and alluding to
the prediction of a soothsayer in Gaul, who had told him that he would
become emperor after having killed a boar (Vopiscus, in "Hist. Aug.").
Diocletian, self-composed and strong-minded in other respects, was all
his life an anxious believer in divination, which superstition led him
probably to inflict summary punishment upon Aper with his own hands.
He made his solemn entrance into Nicomedia in September, 284, which
town he afterward chose for his favorite residence.
Carinus, the other son of Carus, who had remained in Italy, having
collected a force to attack Diocletian, the two armies met at Margum,
in Moesia, where the soldiers of Carinus had the advantage at first,
but Carinus himself being killed during the battle by his officers,
who detested him for his cruelty and debauchery, both armies joined
in acknowledging Diocletian emperor in 285. Diocletian was generous
after his victory, and, contrary to the common practice, there were no
executions, proscriptions, or confiscations of property; he even
retained most of the officers of Carinus in their places.
Diocletian, on assuming the imperial power, found the Empire assailed
by enemies in various quarters--on the Persian frontiers, on the side
of Germany and of Illyricum, and in Britain; besides which a serious
revolt had broken out in Gaul among the rural population, under two
leaders who had assumed the title of emperor. To quell the disturbance
in Gaul, Diocletian sent his old friend Maximianus, a native of
Pannonia, and a brave but rude uncultivated soldier. Maximianus
defeated the Bagaudi, for such was the name the rustic insurgents had
assumed. In the year 286, Diocletian chose Maximianus as his colleague
in the Empire, under the name of Marcus Valerius Maximianus Augustus,
and it is to the credit of both that the latter continued ever after
faithful to Diocletian and willing to follow his advice. Maximianus
was stationed in Gaul and on the German frontier to repel invasion;
Diocletian resided chiefly in the East to watch the Persians, though
he appears to have visited Rome in the early part of his reign. About
287 the revolt of Carausius took place. In the following year
Maximianus defeated the Germans near Treviri, and Diocletian himself
marched against other tribes on the Rhaetian frontier; the year after
he defeated the Sarmatians on the lower Danube. In the same year, 289,
peace was made between Carausius and the two emperors, Carausius being
allowed to retain possession of Britain. In 290 Maximianus and
Diocletian met at Milan to confer together on the state of the Empire,
after which Diocletian returned to Nicomedia. The Persians soon after
again invaded Mesopotamia and threatened Syria; the Quinquegentiani, a
federation of tribes in the Mauritania Caesariensis, revolted; another
revolt under one Achillaeus broke out in Egypt; another in Italy under
a certain Julianus.
Diocletian thought it necessary to increase the number of his
colleagues in order to face the attacks in the various quarters. On
the 1st of March, 292, or 291, according to some chronologists, he
appointed Galerius as Caesar, and presented him to the troops at
Nicomedia. At the same time Maximianus adopted on his part Constantius
called Chlorus. The two Caesars repudiated their respective wives;
Galerius married Valeria, Diocletian's daughter, adding to his name
that of Valerianus; and Constantius married Theodora, daughter of
Maximianus. Galerius was a native of Dacia, and a good soldier, but
violent and cruel; he had been a herdsman in his youth, for which he
has been styled, in derision, Armentarius. The two Caesars remained
subordinate to the two Augusti, though each of the four was entrusted
with the administration of a part of the Empire. Diocletian kept to
himself Asia and Egypt; Maximianus had Italy and Africa; Galerius,
Thrace and Illyricum; and Constantius had Gaul and Spain. But it was
rather an administrative than a political division. At the head of the
edicts of each prince were put the names of all the four, beginning
with that of Diocletian.
Diocletian resorted to this arrangement probably as much for reasons
of internal as of external policy. For nearly a hundred years before,
ever since the death of Commodus, the soldiers had been in the habit
of giving or selling the imperial crown, to which any general might
aspire. Between thirty and forty emperors had been thus successively
made and unmade many of whom only reigned a few months. By fixing upon
four colleagues, one in each of the great divisions of the Empire,
each having his army, and all mutually checking one another,
Diocletian put a stop to military insolence and anarchy. The Empire
was no longer put up to sale, the immediate and intolerable evil was
effectually cured, though another danger remained, that of disputes
and wars between the various sharers of the imperial power; still it
was a smaller danger and one which did not manifest itself so long as
Diocletian remained at the helm. Writers have been very free of their
censure upon this emperor for parcelling, as they call it, the Empire;
but this was the only chance there was of preventing its crumbling to
pieces. Italy, and Rome in particular, lost by the change: they no
longer monopolized the wealth and power of the world, but the other
provinces gained. The Empire was much too large for one single man or
a single central administration, under the dwindled influence of the
Roman name, and amidst the numerous causes of local dissension and
discontent, private ambition, social corruption, and foreign
hostility, that had accumulated for three centuries, since the time of
Augustus.
[Illustration: Army on horse. [TN]]
The new Caesars justified Diocletian's expectations. Constantius
defeated the Franks and the Alemanni, and soon after reconquered
Britain. Galerius subjugated the Carpi, and transported the whole
tribe into Pannonia. In the year 296, the Persians, under their king
Narses, again invaded Mesopotamia and part of Syria. Galerius marched
against them, but being too confident was defeated by superior
numbers, and obliged to retire. On his meeting Diocletian, the emperor
showed his dissatisfaction by letting Galerius walk for a mile, clad
in purple as he was, by the side of his car. The following year
Galerius again attacked the Persians, and completely defeated them,
taking an immense booty. The wives and children of Narses, who were
among the prisoners, were treated by Galerius with humanity and
respect. Narses sued for peace, which was granted by Diocletian on
condition of the Persians giving up all the territory on the right or
western bank of the Tigris. This peace was concluded in 297, and
lasted forty years.
At the same time Diocletian marched into Egypt against Achillaeus, whom
he besieged in Alexandria, which he took after a siege of eight
months, when the usurper and his chief adherents were put to death.
Diocletian is said to have behaved on this occasion with unusual
sternness. Several towns of Egypt, among others Busiris and Coptos,
were destroyed. Constantine, the son of Constantius, who was educated
at Nicomedia, accompanied the emperor in this expedition. Diocletian
fixed the limits of the Empire on that side at the island of
Elephantina, where he built a castle, and made peace with the
neighboring tribes, called by some Nubae and by others Nabatae, to whom
he gave up the strip of territory which the Romans had conquered, of
seven days' march above the first cataract, on condition that they
should prevent the Blemmyes and Ethiopians from attacking Egypt.
Maximianus in the meantime was engaged in putting down the revolt in
Mauritania, which he effected with full success.
For several years after this the empire enjoyed peace, and Diocletian
and his colleagues were chiefly employed in framing laws and
administrative regulations, and in constructing forts on the
frontiers. Diocletian kept a splendid court at Nicomedia, which town
he embellished with numerous structures. He, or rather Maximianus by
his order, caused the magnificent Thermae at Rome to be built, the
remains of which still bear Diocletian's name, and which contained,
besides the baths, a library, a museum, public walks, and other
establishments.
In February, 303, Diocletian issued an edict against the Christians,
ordering their churches to be pulled down, their sacred books to be
burnt, and all Christians to be dismissed from offices civil or
military, with other penalties, exclusive however of death. Various
causes have been assigned for this measure. It is known that Galerius
had always been hostile to the Christians, while Diocletian had openly
favored them, had employed them in his armies and about his person;
and Eusebius speaks of the prosperity, security, and protection which
the Christians enjoyed under his reign. They had churches in most
towns, and one at Nicomedia in particular under the eye of the
emperor. Just before the edict was issued, Galerius had repaired to
Nicomedia to induce Diocletian to proscribe the Christians. He filled
the emperor's mind with reports of conspiracies and seditions. The
imperial palace took fire, Constantine ("Oratio ad Coetum Sanctorum")
says, from lightning, and Galerius suggested to the emperor that it
was a Christian plot.
The heathen priests on their part exerted themselves for the same
purpose. It happened that on the occasion of a solemn sacrifice in
presence of the emperor, while priests were consulting the entrails of
the victims, the Christian officers in the imperial retinue crossed
themselves; upon which the priests declared that the presence of
profane men prevented them from discovering the auspices. Diocletian,
who was very anxious to pry into futurity, became irritated, and
ordered all his Christian officers to sacrifice to the gods under pain
of flagellation and dismissal, which many of them underwent. Several
oracles which he consulted gave answers unfavorable to the Christians.
The church of Nicomedia was the first pulled down by order of the
emperor. The rashness of a Christian who publicly tore down the
imperial edict exasperated Diocletian still more: the culprit was put
to a cruel death. Then came a second edict, ordering all magistrates
to arrest the Christian bishops and presbyters, and compel them to
sacrifice to the gods. This was giving to their enemies power over
their lives, and it proved, in fact, the beginning of a cruel
persecution, whose ravages were the more extensive in proportion to
the great diffusion of Christianity during a long period of
toleration. This was the last persecution under the Roman Empire, and
it has been called by the name of Diocletian. But that emperor issued
the two edicts reluctantly and after long hesitation, according to
Lactantius's acknowledgment: he fell ill a few months after, and on
recovering from his long illness he abdicated. Galerius, who had
instigated the persecution, was the most zealous minister of it; the
persecution raged with most fury in the provinces subject to his rule,
and he continued it for several years after Diocletian's abdication,
so that it might with more propriety be called the Galerian
persecution. Legend says that he died of a horrible disease, filled
with remorse and imagining himself haunted by the martyred spirits.
The countries under the government of Constantius suffered the least
from it.
In November of that year (303) Diocletian repaired to Rome, where he
and Maximianus enjoyed the honor of a triumph, followed by festive
games. This was the last triumph that Rome saw. The populace of that
city complained of the economy of Diocletian on the occasion, who
replied that moderation and temperance were most required when the
censor was present. They vented their displeasure in jibes and
sarcasms, which so hurt Diocletian that he left Rome abruptly in the
month of December for Ravenna, in very cold weather. In this journey
he was seized by an illness which affected him the whole of the
following year, which he spent at Nicomedia. At one time he was
reported to be dead. He rallied, however, in the spring of 305, and
showed himself in public, but greatly altered in appearance. Galerius
soon after came to Nicomedia, and it is said that he persuaded
Diocletian to abdicate. Others say that Diocletian did it
spontaneously.
On the 1st of May he repaired with his guards to a spot three miles
out of Nicomedia, where he had thirteen years before proclaimed
Galerius as Caesar, and there addressing his officers and court, he
said that the infirmities of age warned him to retire from power, and
to deliver the administration of the state into stronger hands. He
then proclaimed Galerius as Augustus, and Maximinus Daza as the new
Caesar. Constantine, who has given an account of the ceremony, which is
quoted by Eusebius in his life of that prince, was present, and the
troops fully expected that he would be the new Caesar; when they heard
another mentioned, they asked each other whether Constantine had
changed his name. But Galerius did not leave them long in suspense; he
pushed forward Maximinus and showed him to the assembly, and
Diocletian clothed him with the purple vest, after which the old
emperor returned privately in his carriage to Nicomedia, and
immediately after set off for Salona in Dalmatia, near which he built
himself an extensive palace by the sea-shore, in which he lived for
the rest of his life, respected by the other emperors, without cares
and without regret.
[Illustration: The Victims of Galerius.]
Part of the external walls which inclosed the area belonging to his
palace and other buildings still remain, with three of the gates,
as well as a temple, which is now a church at Spalatro, or Spalato, in
Dalmatia, a comparatively modern town, grown out of the decay of the
ancient Salona, and built in great part within the walls of
Diocletian's residence, from the name of which, "Palatium," it is
believed that "Spalato" is derived.
At the same time that Diocletian abdicated at Nicomedia, Maximianus,
according to an agreement between them, performed a similar ceremony
at Milan, proclaiming Constantius as Augustus, and Severus as Caesar.
Both Severus and Maximinus Daza were inferior persons, and creatures
of Galerius, who insisted upon their nomination in preference to that
of Maxentius and Constantine, whom Diocletian had at first proposed.
Maximianus retired to his seat in Lucania, but not being endowed with
the firmness of Diocletian he tried some time after to recover his
former power, and wrote to his old colleague to induce him to do the
same. "Were you but to come to Salona," answered Diocletian, "and see
the vegetables which I grow in my garden with my own hands, you would
no longer talk to me of empire." In his retirement he used to observe
to his associates how difficult it is, even for the best-intentioned
man, to govern well, as he cannot see everything with his own eyes,
but must trust to others, who often deceive him.
Once only he left his retirement to meet Galerius in Pannonia for the
purpose of appointing a new Caesar, Licinius, in the place of Severus,
who had died. Licinius, however, did not prove grateful, for after the
death of Galerius, in 311, he ill-treated his widow, Valeria,
Diocletian's daughter, who then, with her mother, Prisca, took refuge
in the territories of Maximinus Daza. The latter offered to marry
Valeria, but on her refusal exiled both her and her mother into the
deserts of Syria, and put to death several of their attendants.
Diocletian remonstrated in favor of his wife and daughter, but to no
purpose, and his grief on this occasion probably hastened his death,
which took place at his residence near Salona in July, 313. In the
following year his wife and daughter were put to death by order of
Licinius.
Diocletian ranks among the most distinguished emperors of Rome; his
reign of twenty-one years was upon the whole prosperous for the
empire, and creditable to the Roman name. He was severe, but not
wantonly cruel, and we ought to remember that mercy was not a Roman
virtue. His conduct after his abdication shows that his was no common
mind. The chief charge against him is his haughtiness in introducing
the Oriental ceremonial of prostration into the Roman court. The
Christian writers, and especially Lactantius, have spoken unfavorably
of him; but Lactantius cannot be implicitly trusted. Of the regular
historians of his reign we have only the meagre narratives of
Eutropius and Aurelius Victor, the others being now lost; but notices
of Diocletian's life are scattered about in various authors, Libanius,
Vopiscus, Eusebius, Julian in his "Caesars," and the contemporary
panegyrists, Eumenes and Mamertinus. His laws or edicts are in the
"Code." Among other useful reforms, he abolished the _frumentarii_, or
licensed informers, who were stationed in every province to report
any attempt at mutiny or rebellion, and who basely enriched themselves
by working on the fears of the inhabitants. He also reformed and
reduced the number of the insolent Praetorians, who were afterward
totally disbanded by Constantine.
ALARIC THE BOLD
By ARCHDEACON FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.
(360-410)
[Illustration: Men on a river raft. [TN]]
Alaric, the "All-ruler," surnamed the Baltha, or Bold, was born, about
360, on an island in the delta of the Danube. As long as the great
Theodosius lived, the Goths continued in his pay; but when he died in
395, and Alaric was elevated on the shield as king of the Visigoths,
he determined to lead his nation to independent victory. In 395 and
396 he invaded Greece,[7] and Stilicho, the Vandal general of the
Western Emperor, advanced against him. The strategy of Stilicho was
masterly, and it would probably have gone hard with Alaric had not
Stilicho been suddenly bidden by the Eastern Emperor, Arcadius, to
withdraw his western troops. Again, in 396, Stilicho penned Alaric in
the Peloponnesus, but for some unknown reason allowed him to escape
into Illyricum. The Gothic chief had, however, struck deadly terror
into the Eastern Empire; and by way of pacifying him Arcadius made him
Master-General of Illyricum.
[Footnote 7: In this first invasion he overran all Greece,
and took Athens with little resistance. He spared her art
treasures, and acted with great moderation and humanity. Our
illustration "Alaric in Athens" represents him seated among
the inhabitants, who welcomed him as a conqueror, with every
demonstration of reverence.]
Alaric had already found the way to Italy when he accompanied
Theodosius in his campaign against the usurper Maximus in 394. In 400
he descended into Italy, not with an army only, but with the migration
of his entire people. He defeated the Romans under the walls of
Aquileia, and in 401 besieged Honorius in Milan. In 402 a vast army
under Stilicho met him at Pollentia; and when an old chieftain advised
him to retire, Alaric, with fierce indignation, silenced his timid
counsellor, and told him that he had been assured by a voice which
came from the grave and said to him, "_Thou shalt penetrate to the
City_" (_ad Urbem_). But the oracle on this occasion had "paltered"
with him in a double sense. He penetrated indeed _ad Urbem_, not
however "to the _City_" but to the little river _Urbis_ (or Borbo),
near Pollenzo. On Good Friday, April 4, 402, the Western army, under a
dwarfish Hun chieftain named Saulus, attacked and routed Alaric,
recovering the splendid spoils of Greece, freeing his captives, and
winning back the purple robes which the Emperor Valens had lost in the
battle of Adrianople. In that disastrous defeat even the wife of
Alaric, if we may believe the poet Claudian, was taken prisoner.
[Illustration: Alaric in Athens.]
Alaric retreated through Lombardy, and the feeble Emperor Honorius--"a
crowned nothingness"--celebrated at Rome, in 404, that triumph which
was signalized by the last display of the brutal gladiatorial games.
No sooner had the first blood been shed than the Eastern monk
Telemachus sprang down into the arena to part the combatants. His life
paid the price of his glorious temerity. He was hewn and stoned to
death. But that death was not in vain. The horrid massacres, at which
not only men but women gazed in demoniac pleasure and excitement, had
been condemned centuries before by the genius of Christianity. It was
monstrous that an emperor calling himself a Christian should preside
at such a spectacle. But the martyrdom of Telemachus at last touched
the callous and torpid consciences of nominal Christians. Thenceforth
the games of the amphitheatre were abolished. But it was too late for
repentance. Alike "the incomparable wickedness and the incomparable
splendor" of the Imperial City were doomed to destruction. Even the
blood of a Christian martyr voluntarily shed would not atone for the
blood of hundreds of brave barbarians who, in that huge Flavian
amphitheatre, had been
"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."
The day was near at hand when the Goths would arise and glut their
ire.
Alaric, though he had retreated, was still in a position to dictate
terms to Stilicho. He fixed his camp at AEmona, and was promised large
pay and the government of a Western province under nominal allegiance
to the Western Emperor. But the pledges made to him were broken, and
their fulfilment delayed. In 408 the promise of the oracle was
fulfilled, for he led his troops under the walls of Rome. The feeble
and timid Honorius had retired to Ravenna, where he was safe behind
the marshes, the pine-woods, and the stone walls against which Alaric
said that he did not fight. In 408 the wretched court filled to the
full the brimming cup of its iniquities--first by a massacre of
barbarian auxiliaries at Pavia, and then by the foul, ungrateful
murder of Stilicho himself, at the command of Honorius. No army barred
the path of Alaric, but an Italian hermit denounced on him the wrath
of heaven. This might have awoke the superstitious terrors of the
Gothic soldiers if Alaric had not assured them, with confidence, that
he was obeying a divine and irresistible command. The Goths encamped
under the walls which for six hundred and nineteen years had never
been threatened by a foreign enemy. The wealthy, effeminate, corrupted
nobles, and people of the Eternal City thought to terrify Alaric back
by boasts of their numbers. His scornful answer simply was, "The
thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed." He demanded all their gold,
silver, movables, and barbarian slaves. "What then, O King, will you
leave us?" He grimly said, "Your lives."
He was content, however, this time to accept a ransom, of which the
most curious element was three thousand pounds of pepper.
The folly, pride, and braggadocio of Honorius, or rather of his
miserable court, brought Alaric a second time to Rome in 409. The city
capitulated, and he raised Attalus to the purple as a rival to
Honorius. But Attalus proved utterly incompetent, and the next year
Alaric publicly and insultingly degraded him to a private position. In
410 a fresh insult and wrong inflicted on the Goths by Honorius
brought Alaric once more to Rome. He burst in by the Salarian gate,
and sacked the city, which was only saved from irretrievable
destruction by the respect of the Goths for the churches, which they
regarded as inviolable asylums. The pillage and conflagration of Rome,
and the resultant ruin and misery, came on the world like a shock of
earthquake; but the Pagans saw that the catastrophe would have been
yet more awful if the conquerors had not been Christians as well as
the conquered.
It seemed as if even the Imperial City could not fall without some
circumstance of irony and insult. Paganism may be said to have
perished in two bursts of laughter: one when in Alexandria the
Christian mob burst into merriment to see the rats scurry out of the
rotten head of the shattered statue of Serapis; and again when
Theodosius and his soldiers laughed at the golden thunderbolts torn
from the uplifted arms of the menacing statue of Jupiter. And Honorius
managed to invest even the fall of Rome with ludicrous associations.
He was a great fancier of fowls, and had a particularly large hen,
which, out of compliment, he called _Roma_. When the agitated eunuch
entered to tell him that "Rome had perished," "What!" cried the
Emperor, in a voice of deep concern, "why, she was feeding out of my
hand only an hour ago!" "It is the _city_ of Rome that has fallen,
sire!" "Oh, my friend," said the Emperor, with a sigh of relief, "but
I thought you meant that my _hen_ 'Roma' had died."
Laden with spoils of priceless value, the creaking wagons of the Gauls
went southward. Alaric meant to lead them to the conquest first of
Sicily, then of Africa. But death overtook him amid the schemes of his
ambition. He died after a short illness, and was buried in the bed of
the river which washes the walls of Cosentia. The captives who reared
the tomb were massacred, that none might know where the hero lay. The
Visigothic kingdom of Spain, founded by the warrior tribe which he
first led into the West, is one of the most permanent results of his
invasion.
[Illustration: The Last Gladiatorial Contest.]
ATTILA
By ARCHDEACON FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S.
(REIGNED 434-453)
[Illustration: Attila.]
The Goths were "improvable barbarians;" but the Huns whom Attila led
to ravage the fair peninsula were mere Tartar savages of the lowest
stamp.
All the other invaders of Italy were of Teutonic origin, but the Huns
were Mongols--of such perfect hideousness that Jornandes regarded them
as the offspring of witches and demons. Attila, son of Mundzuk, "the
scourge of God," resembled his soldiers in his flat, swarthy features,
deep-set, fierce, rolling black eyes, and stunted figure. The Huns
were uncivilizable savages, who might harry a continent, but neither
under Attila, nor Genghis, nor Timour, could ever found an organized
kingdom. This terrific and brutal little Kalmuck, with his bead-like
eyes, this skin-clad devourer of raw flesh, delighted to lay waste
whole empires with fire and sword, and to terrify the world. In 434 he
became king of the Huns with his brother Bleda. In 445 Bleda died,
possibly by murder; and in 445 Attila, now sole king of the Huns,
invaded the Eastern Empire, and ravaged it even to the gates of
Constantinople. He was only bought off from destroying it by an
enormous tribute. The infamous plot to assassinate him by the
treachery of Edecon, who was one of his counsellors, was discovered
and foiled, and Attila sent message after message filled with insults
to Theodosius II. In 451 his vast army moved westward, and devastated
Gaul. It was met in the Mauriac plain and defeated by AEtius in the
tremendous battle of Chalons, after a carnage among the most frightful
that the world has ever seen. The Huns were only saved from final
destruction by the heroic boldness of Attila. He had a vast hill of
saddles and other spoils erected, and declared his determination to
burn himself alive rather than be taken captive. He led back his
shattered host to Pannonia, and there in his wooden palace meditated
revenge. In the one authentic glimpse which we get of his mode of
life, we see him at a banquet, while his nobles and warriors caroused
and burst into peals of laughter at the buffooneries of an idiot and a
jester. But the Hunnish king sat grave and silent, caressing the
cheeks of the boy Ernak, his favorite son, whom the augur pointed out
as the heir of his destinies.
In 452 he once more put his myriads in motion and invaded Italy. Every
where the land was as the garden of Eden before him; behind him it
was a desolate wilderness. Encouraged by the omen of some storks
leaving their nest, he stormed and destroyed Aquileia, and, razing
city after city into heaps of blackened ruins, advanced to Milan,
boasting that "where his horses' hoofs trod the grass never grew."
Rome awaited with trembling a fate which seemed to threaten
unprecedented catastrophe. But in this awful crisis the Pope, Leo I.,
showed himself the true _Defensor civitatis_. He headed a splendid
embassy to the camp of Attila. Already Leo had helped to trace with
firm hand the deep lines of Christian orthodoxy which were accepted by
the Church at the fourth great OEcumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451
as her final utterance as to the true Godhead, the perfect Manhood,
the invisible yet distinct union of both Godhead and Manhood, in the
person of her Lord. Now Leo showed what miracle could be achieved by
the irresistible might of weakness. Attila's god was a naked iron
sword of gigantic size, which had been accidentally found by a
herdsman and presented to him, but which he palmed off on his nation
as the authentic sword of the Scythian war-god. Yet he was easily
overawed by the majesty of religion. He scorned the guilty, corrupt
courtiers of Constantinople, but he almost trembled before a holy man.
Already in 451 he had spared the defenceless city of Troyes at the
entreaty of its bishop, St. Lupus, and had asked the benefit of his
prayers. And when he gazed on the calm countenance, noble presence,
and dauntless demeanor of Pope Leo, an awful dread fell upon him.
Alaric had conquered Rome, but Alaric had died immediately afterward.
How if it would be so with Attila? He yielded, he retired; he said--or
perhaps he said--that he could conquer _men_, but that the wolf
(Lupus) and the lion (Leo) had learnt how to conquer him. The tide of
brutal and barbarous invasion was rolled back again, and the world and
the city saw that while the Emperor Valentinian had been ready to fly,
the Pope Leo was not afraid to advance, and that "when the successor
of Caesar had been proved useless, the successor of St. Peter had been
a very present help." Indirectly Attila was the strengthener of the
Papacy, and the founder of Venice. That stately and gorgeous city owes
its origin to the Italians who fled in terror before the brutal Huns
from ruined Padua to the islands and lagoons at the mouth of the
Piave.
In retiring, Attila had demanded once more the hand and dower of
Honoria, the disgraced sister of Theodosius II. But in 453 he added a
beautiful maiden, Ildico, to his innumerable wives. He retired from
the banquet after a deep carouse, and in the morning was found dead
amid a flood of gore by which he had been suffocated, while Ildico sat
weeping beneath her veil by the dead king's bedside. He died as a fool
dieth; and his warriors gashed their cheeks and wept tears of blood,
and gave him a splendid burial. And his name passed into legend as the
King Etzel of the Niebelungen Lied, and Alti of the Saga. But his
"loutish sons" quarrelled among themselves. The Teutons, Goths,
Gepidae, Alani, and Heruli reasserted their independence in the great
victory of Netad in Pannonia in 454; and though the Huns left their
name in Hungary, henceforth the empire of Attila became mere
"drift-wood, on its way to inevitable oblivion."
CLOVIS THE FIRST
By THOMAS WYATT, A.M.
(465-511)
[Illustration: Clovis on horse. [TN]]
The honor of having established the French monarchy and the French
nation, of having raised himself from his position as chief of a petty
and turbulent tribe to be the ruler of a powerful and permanent
kingdom, unquestionably belongs to Clovis the First, who was born in
the year 465. The multitude of petty kingdoms subsisting in Gaul at
this time, forms, says an illustrious historian, one of the greatest
difficulties in the ancient history of France. In a manuscript work,
still preserved in the King's library at Paris, it is imputed to the
disorders which prevailed after the expulsion of Childeric, father of
Clovis, when such as were sufficiently powerful took advantage of the
anarchy in which the nation was involved, to establish independent
monarchies of their own. Clovis ascended the throne at the age of
fifteen, and at the early age of twenty began to show his jealousy
toward those whom he considered usurpers of his territories. His
courtiers, ever ready to fan into a flame the spark they had
discovered in the breast of their master, incited him to challenge
Syagrius, a Roman who still had possession of Soissons and a part of
the adjacent country.
The challenge was accepted by this self-made prince, and a bloody
battle was the result. Syagrius saved himself by flight, taking refuge
among the Visigoths; but Alaric II., then king, fearing the threats of
Clovis delivered the refugee into his power, who caused him to be
beheaded.
The Frankish leader was now a man of note in the world; but he was
still nothing more than the leader of a band of warriors, often
retaining his authority only by brute force. At one time, his band
having stormed the Christian city of Rheims and carried off from its
church a vase "of marvellous size and beauty," the bishop sent word to
their leader entreating him to return it. "That will I," responded
Clovis to the envoy, "if when we divide our spoil the vase falls to my
lot." In his desire to gratify the bishop, who was an old friend, the
chieftain went a step beyond his promise and requested his companions
to give him the great vase as his share. Then cried one of their
number, striking the trophy angrily with his axe, "No, you shall draw
lots with the rest of us, and take what comes honestly to you." His
comrades, however, felt that this was going too far. The vase was
given to their leader, and by him returned to Rheims. A year passed,
and Clovis gave no sign that he remembered the affront. Then, having
called his band together for a review, he passed them one by one,
examining and approving their arms, till, last of all, he reached the
warrior who had opposed him; and he eyed this man sternly. "Your
weapons suit you poorly," he said, "none of them are fit for service."
And, snatching the man's axe from him he threw it to the ground. The
other stooped to recover it, when, whirling up his own axe, Clovis
crashed it through the rebel's skull. "'Twas so you struck my vase,"
he cried.
Such a leader, who could so long await a fitting opportunity, and then
so sternly avenge an insult to his power, was well calculated to wield
great authority among these stern and hardy warriors. He had enjoyed
several years of uninterrupted tranquillity, when Basinus, King of
Thuringia, made a sudden irruption into that part of the dominions of
Clovis situated beyond the Rhine. Clovis was no sooner informed of
this invasion, than he assembled his army, and entering the enemy's
country, laid it waste with fire and sword, and imposed a perpetual
tribute on the offending monarch.
Clovis now bent his thoughts on the formation of an alliance by
marriage with some of the neighboring princes. He accordingly
despatched his ambassadors to the King of Burgundy, asking for the
hand of the Princess Clotildis, his niece, the accounts of whose
extraordinary piety and beauty had made a deep impression on his
heart. The court of Burgundy, fearful of offending a young and
powerful prince, whose arms had hitherto been everywhere victorious,
complied with his request.
Great preparations were made for the departure of the queen elect, and
she began her journey in a kind of wagon, called _basterne_, drawn by
oxen, which was the most elegant vehicle then in use. The marriage was
celebrated at Soissons, amid the joyful acclamations of the people.
Heaven smiled on this propitious union; Clotildis became mother of a
prince, who received baptism with the king's consent, and was named
Ingomer. The subsequent death of this child, on whom Clovis had so
firmly set his affections, inspired him, notwithstanding the prayers
and remonstrances of his affectionate and pious princess, with an
aversion to the Christian religion. He was prevailed on, however, to
suffer his second son to undergo the ceremony of baptism. He also was
attacked by a severe indisposition, but the prayers of this pious
woman were heard and answered, the young prince restored to health,
and the anxiety of his father dispelled.
[Illustration: Clovis punishing a rebel.]
The conversion to Christianity of Clovis, soon after this, is thus
related by historians: The Germans had commenced preparing for
incursions into the dominions of Clovis; he, being apprised of their
intentions, hastened to impede their progress, and met them on the
plains of Tolbiac, not far from Cologne, where a bloody battle was
fought. Clovis, perceiving that the strength of his army was
diminishing, lifted up his eyes to Heaven, and exclaimed, "God of my
Queen Clotildis, grant me victory, and I here vow to worship none
other than you." He immediately rallied his yielding forces, again led
the charge, pierced with irresistible ardor the enemy's battalions,
and entirely put them to flight. He then followed them into Germany,
where he dispersed the remains of the vanquished army, reduced to
obedience a nation hitherto invincible, and compelled them to pay him
an annual tribute.
Faithful to his vow, he requested to be made acquainted with the
mysteries of the Christian religion; and on Christmas-day, 496,
received baptism at the church of St. Martin, in Paris, from Remigius,
Bishop of Rheims, a prelate equally distinguished for his birth and
piety. His sister Albofleda, and about three thousand of his subjects,
followed his example. An improbable legend prevails, that during the
ceremony of the baptism of Clovis, a dove descended from Heaven,
bringing a phial of balsam, with which he was consecrated. This is
what is now called _La Sainte Ampoule_, the Holy Phial; which was kept
with extreme care, and contained the oil used by the monarchs of
France at their coronation.
The conversion of Clovis had not repressed his warlike ambition.
Brabant, the country of Liege, and that part of Flanders which was
situated on the sea-coast, had not yet submitted to the new conqueror
of Gaul.
The most considerable of these small states was the Arborici, a
Christian nation, firmly attached to the Christian religion, and
thence maintaining an enmity against the French, who were pagans. But
the recent conversion to Christianity of Clovis and so many of his
subjects, diminished the aversion of the people of this peaceful
nation; they were induced to consent to an alliance with him,
acknowledge him for their sovereign, and became subjects of the French
kingdom. The Roman garrisons, following the example, capitulated and
gave up all the places that were still in their possession, toward the
ocean and on the banks of the Rhine.
Clovis did not as yet consider his victories complete; the conquest of
Brittany was soon followed by that of Alaric II., King of the
Visigoths. Before the French set out on this latter expedition, they
made a vow not to shave themselves till they had subdued their
enemies. Vows of this kind were very common at that period. It was the
custom of those times to draw an omen from the verse that was
chanting, when a person entered the church. The king's envoys, at
their entrance into the church of St. Martin, heard these words from
the Psalms: "Thou hast endued me with strength for the wars; thou hast
supplanted those that had risen up against me; and hast put mine
enemies to flight." This fortunate prognostic was confirmed on the
banks of the Vienne. The army was at a loss where to pass that river,
when a hind plunged into the stream in sight of the whole camp, and
showed them a ford which still retains the name of the Passage of the
Hind.
The two armies met in the plains of Vouille, near Poictiers. Soon
after the commencement of the battle, the monarchs of either nation
perceiving each other, rushed forward at the same instant, and
engaged in single combat, when the superior skill and strength of
Clovis decided the victory in his favor; he dismounted his adversary,
and slew him on the spot. Nothing now remained to impede the progress
of the conqueror, who extended his empire from the banks of the Loire
to the Pyrenean mountains. Clovis then withdrew to Paris, and fixed
his residence in a palace in the southern part of the capital, which
had formerly been inhabited by the emperors Julian and Valentinian the
First. Success had hitherto attended all the plans of Clovis, and
allowing for the ferocious and martial spirit which then prevailed, he
had preserved his fame from any material pollution.
The assembling of the Council of Orleans was the last remarkable event
of the reign of Clovis, who died the same year, A.D. 511, at the age
of forty-five, and was buried in the church of Saint Peter and Saint
Paul, which he had caused to be built. It has been a subject of
dispute with historians, whether the military or the political talents
of this prince were the most eminent. Gaul, subdued by his arms,
preserved by his prudence, affords a proof that he was equally
skillful in the cabinet and formidable in the field.
BELISARIUS[8]
By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
(505-565)
[Footnote 8: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
Few men have performed greater achievements than this general, to whom
it was given to be conqueror again and again over nations hitherto
invincible, and to arrest, during his own lifetime, the disintegration
of the Roman Empire. He lived in the early part of the sixth century
of the Christian era, though the date of his birth is not certainly
known, and he was in the prime of life about 530. He is believed to
have been the son of a peasant of Thrace, probably of Slavonian
descent, as his name, stripped of its classical form, would belong to
that language and would be Beli-than, or the White Prince. Apparently
he began life as a common soldier, and gradually rose by courage and
ability. His master, the Emperor Justinian, was an equally remarkable
personage, capable of conceiving and accomplishing magnificent
designs, yet withal of a mean, ungenerous, ungrateful character. The
codification under Christian conditions of the old Roman law, so as to
serve as the foundation of jurisprudence to all the European nations
except the English; the building of the church of St. Sophia, and the
rolling back for a time the flood that on all sides was overwhelming
the ancient Empire of Rome were all due to this prince.
For the l
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