History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 1 of 2
by Emperor of the French Napoleon III · English · Gutenberg #45456 · 867,858 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: History of Julius Cæsar, Vol. 1 of 2
Author: Emperor of the French Napoleon III
Release date: April 22, 2014 [eBook #45456]
Language: English
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HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
VOL. I.
The Publishers hereby announce that all rights of translation and
reproduction abroad are reserved.
This volume was entered at the office of the Minister of the Interior
(_déposé au Ministère de l’Intérieur_) in March, 1865.
The only Editions and Translations sanctioned by the Author are the
following:
_French._--HENRI PLON, Printer and Publisher of the “_History of Julius
Cæsar_,” 8 Rue Garancière, Paris.
_English._--CASSELL, PETTER, and GALPIN, Publishers, La Belle Sauvage
Yard, Ludgate Hill, London, E.C.
_American._--HARPER and BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. (Authorized
by the English Publishers.)
_German._--CHARLES GEROLD, FILS, Printers and Publishers, Vienna.
_Italian._--LEMONNIER, Printer and Publisher, Florence.
_Portuguese._--V. AILLAUD, GUILLARD, and Co., Paris, Publishers, and
Agents for Portugal and Brazil.
_Russian._--B. M. WOLFF, Bookseller and Publisher, St. Petersburg.
_Danish_, _Norwegian_, _Swedish._--CARL B. LORCK, Consul General for
Denmark, Bookseller and Publisher, Leipsic.
_Hungarian._--MAURICE RATH, Bookseller and Publisher, Pesth.
[Illustration: CAIVS JVLIVS CÆSAR
New York: Harper & Brothers.]
HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1866.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
ROMAN HISTORY BEFORE CÆSAR.
CHAPTER I.
ROME UNDER THE KINGS.
PAGE
I. THE KINGS FOUND THE ROMAN INSTITUTIONS 1
II. SOCIAL ORGANISATION 3
III. POLITICAL ORGANISATION 6
IV. RELIGION 15
V. RESULTS OBTAINED BY ROYALTY 20
CHAPTER II.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULAR REPUBLIC (244-416).
I. ADVANTAGE OF THE REPUBLIC 25
II. INSTITUTIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 31
III. TRANSFORMATION OF THE ARISTOCRACY 36
IV. ELEMENTS OF DISSOLUTION 42
V. RÉSUMÉ 53
CHAPTER III.
CONQUEST OF ITALY (416-488).
I. DESCRIPTION OF ITALY 62
II. DISPOSITIONS OF THE PEOPLE OF ITALY IN REGARD TO ROME 65
III. TREATMENT OF THE VANQUISHED PEOPLES 68
IV. SUBMISSION OF LATIUM AFTER THE FIRST SAMNITE WAR 75
V. SECOND SAMNITE WAR 78
VI. THIRD SAMNITE WAR--COALITION OF SAMNITES, ETRUSCANS, UMBRIANS,
AND HERNICI (443-449) 82
VII. FOURTH SAMNITE WAR--SECOND COALITION OF THE SAMNITES,
ETRUSCANS, UMBRIANS, AND GAULS (456-464) 85
VIII. THIRD COALITION OF THE ETRUSCANS, GAULS, LUCANIANS, AND
TARENTUM (469-474) 88
IX. PYRRHUS IN ITALY--SUBMISSION OF TARENTUM (474-488) 89
X. PREPONDERANCE OF ROME 92
XI. STRENGTH OF THE INSTITUTIONS 97
CHAPTER IV.
PROSPERITY OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE THE PUNIC WARS.
I. COMMERCE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN 104
II. NORTHERN AFRICA 105
III. SPAIN 110
IV. SOUTHERN GAUL 114
V. LIGURIA, CISALPINE GAUL, VENETIA, AND ILLYRIA 115
VI. EPIRUS 118
VII. GREECE 119
VIII. MACEDONIA 124
IX. ASIA MINOR 126
X. KINGDOM OF PONTUS 127
XI. BITHYNIA 130
XII. CAPPADOCIA 131
XIII. KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS 132
XIV. CARIA, LYCIA, AND CILICIA 135
XV. SYRIA 137
XVI. EGYPT 143
XVII. CYRENAICA 146
XVIII. CYPRUS 147
XIX. CRETE 148
XX. RHODES 148
XXI. SARDINIA 151
XXII. CORSICA 152
XXIII. SICILY 152
CHAPTER V.
PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA (488-621).
I. COMPARISON BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE 155
II. FIRST PUNIC WAR (490-513) 158
III. WAR OF ILLYRIA (525) 165
IV. INVASION OF THE CISALPINES (528) 167
V. SECOND PUNIC WAR (536-552) 169
VI. RESULTS OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 182
VII. THE MACEDONIAN WAR (554) 189
VIII. WAR AGAINST ANTIOCHUS (563) 194
IX. THE WAR IN THE CISALPINE (558-579) 196
X. WAR AGAINST PERSIA (583) 199
XI. MODIFICATION OF ROMAN POLICY 204
XII. THIRD PUNIC WAR (605-608) 212
XIII. GREECE, MACEDONIA, NUMANTIA, AND PERGAMUS REDUCED TO PROVINCES 215
XIV. SUMMARY 219
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA (621-676).
I. STATE OF THE REPUBLIC 224
II. TIBERIUS GRACCHUS (621) 232
III. CAIUS GRACCHUS (631) 238
IV. WAR OF JUGURTHA (637) 246
V. MARIUS (647) 249
VI. WARS OF THE ALLIES 256
VII. SYLLA (666) 262
VIII. EFFECTS OF SYLLA’S DICTATORSHIP 278
* * * * *
BOOK II.
HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
CHAPTER I.
(654-684.)
I. FIRST YEARS OF CÆSAR 281
II. CÆSAR PERSECUTED BY SYLLA (672) 290
III. CÆSAR IN ASIA (673, 674) 293
IV. CÆSAR ON HIS RETURN TO ROME (676) 296
V. CÆSAR GOES TO RHODES (678-680) 299
VI. CÆSAR PONTIFF AND MILITARY TRIBUNE (680-684) 302
CHAPTER II.
(684-691.)
I. STATE OF THE REPUBLIC (684) 307
II. CONSULSHIP OF POMPEY AND CRASSUS 316
III. CÆSAR QUESTOR (686) 323
IV. THE GABINIAN LAW (687) 327
V. THE MANILIAN LAW (688) 330
VI. CÆSAR CURULE ÆDILE (689) 334
VII. CÆSAR _Judex Quæstionis_ (660) 339
VIII. CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE SENATE (690) 340
IX. THE DIFFICULTY OF CONSTITUTING A NEW PARTY 342
CHAPTER III.
(691-695.)
I. CICERO AND ANTONIUS CONSULS (691) 345
II. AGRARIAN LAW OF RULLUS 347
III. TRIAL OF RABIRIUS (691) 352
IV. CÆSAR GRAND PONTIFF (691) 354
V. CATILINE’S CONSPIRACY 357
VI. ERROR OF CICERO 379
VII. CÆSAR PRÆTOR (692) 381
VIII. ATTEMPT OF CLODIUS (692) 386
IX. POMPEY’S TRIUMPHAL RETURN (692) 388
X. DESTINY REGULATES EVENTS 397
CHAPTER IV.
(693-695.)
I. CÆSAR PROPRÆTOR IN SPAIN (693) 402
II. CÆSAR DEMANDS A TRIUMPH AND THE CONSULSHIP (694) 409
III. ALLIANCE OF CÆSAR, POMPEY, AND CRASSUS 413
IV. CÆSAR’S ELECTION 418
CHAPTER V.
CONSULSHIP OF CÆSAR AND BIBULUS (695).
I. ATTEMPTS AT CONCILIATION 421
II. AGRARIAN LAWS 424
III. CÆSAR’S VARIOUS LAWS 432
IV. CÆSAR RECEIVES THE GOVERNMENT OF THE GAULS 445
V. OPPOSITION OF THE PATRICIANS 448
VI. LAW OF CLODIUS--EXILE OF CICERO 456
VII. THE EXPLANATION OF CÆSAR’S CONDUCT 460
PREFACE.
Historic truth ought to be no less sacred than religion. If the precepts
of faith raise our soul above the interests of this world, the lessons
of history, in their turn, inspire us with the love of the beautiful and
the just, and the hatred of whatever presents an obstacle to the
progress of humanity. These lessons, to be profitable, require certain
conditions. It is necessary that the facts be produced with a rigorous
exactness, that the changes political or social be analysed
philosophically, that the exciting interest of the details of the lives
of public men should not divert attention from the political part they
played, or cause us to forget their providential mission.
Too often the writer represents the different phases of history as
spontaneous events, without seeking in preceding facts their true origin
and their natural deduction; like the painter who, in re-producing the
characteristics of Nature, only seizes their picturesque effect, without
being able, in his picture, to give their scientific demonstration. The
historian ought to be more than a painter; he ought, like the
geologist, who explains the phenomena of the globe, to unfold the
secret of the transformation of societies.
But, in writing history, by what means are we to arrive at truth? By
following the rules of logic. Let us first take for granted that a great
effect is always due to a great cause, never to a small one; in other
words, an accident, insignificant in appearance, never leads to
important results without a pre-existing cause, which has permitted this
slight accident to produce a great effect. The spark only lights up a
vast conflagration when it falls upon combustible matters previously
collected. Montesquieu thus confirms this idea: “It is not fortune,” he
says, “which rules the world.... There are general causes, whether moral
or physical, which act in every monarchy, raising, maintaining, or
overthrowing it; all accidents are subject to these causes, and if the
fortune of a battle--that is to say, a particular cause--has ruined a
state, there was a general cause which made it necessary that that state
should perish through a single battle: in a word, the principal cause
drags with it all the particular accidents.”[1]
If during nearly a thousand years the Romans always came triumphant out
of the severest trials and greatest perils, it is because there existed
a general cause which made them always superior to their enemies, and
which did not permit partial defeats and misfortunes to entail the fall
of the empire. If the Romans, after giving an example to the world of a
people constituting itself and growing great by liberty, seemed, after
Cæsar, to throw themselves blindly into slavery, it is because there
existed a general reason which by fatality prevented the Republic from
returning to the purity of its ancient institutions; it is because the
new wants and interests of a society in labour required other means to
satisfy them. Just as logic demonstrates that the reason of important
events is imperious, in like manner we must recognise in the long
duration of an institution the proof of its goodness, and in the
incontestable influence of a man upon his age the proof of his genius.
The task, then, consists in seeking the vital element which constituted
the strength of the institution, as the predominant idea which caused
man to act. In following this rule, we shall avoid the errors of those
historians who gather facts transmitted by preceding ages, without
properly arranging them according to their philosophical importance;
thus glorifying that which merits blame, and leaving in the shade that
which calls for the light. It is not a minute analysis of the Roman
organisation which will enable us to understand the duration of so great
an empire, but the profound examination of the spirit of its
institutions; no more is it the detailed recital of the most trivial
actions of a superior man which will reveal the secret of his
ascendency, but the attentive investigation of the elevated motives of
his conduct.
When extraordinary facts attest an eminent genius, what is more contrary
to good sense than to ascribe to him all the passions and sentiments of
mediocrity? What more erroneous than not to recognise the pre-eminence
of those privileged beings who appear in history from time to time like
luminous beacons, dissipating the darkness of their epoch, and throwing
light into the future? To deny this pre-eminence would, indeed, be to
insult humanity, by believing it capable of submitting, long and
voluntarily, to a domination which did not rest on true greatness and
incontestable utility. Let us be logical, and we shall be just.
Too many historians find it easier to lower men of genius, than, with a
generous inspiration, to raise them to their due height, by penetrating
their vast designs. Thus, as regards Cæsar, instead of showing us Rome,
torn to pieces by civil wars and corrupted by riches, trampling under
foot her ancient institutions, threatened by powerful peoples, such as
Gauls, Germans, and Parthians, incapable of sustaining herself without a
central power stronger, more stable, and more just; instead, I say, of
tracing this faithful picture, Cæsar is represented, from an early age,
as already aspiring to the supreme power. If he opposes Sylla, if he
disagrees with Cicero, if he allies himself with Pompey, it is the
result of that far-sighted astuteness which divined everything with a
view to bring everything under subjection. If he throws himself into
Gaul, it is to acquire riches by pillage[2] or soldiers devoted to his
projects; if he crosses the sea to carry the Roman eagles into an
unknown country, but the conquest of which will strengthen that of
Gaul,[3] it is to seek there pearls which were believed to exist in the
seas of Great Britain.[4] If, after having vanquished the formidable
enemies of Italy on the other side of the Alps, he meditates an
expedition against the Parthians, to avenge the defeat of Crassus, it
is, as certain historians say, because activity was a part of his
nature, and that his health was better when he was campaigning.[5] If he
accepts from the Senate with thankfulness a crown of laurel, and wears
it with pride, it is to conceal his bald head. If, lastly, he is
assassinated by those whom he had loaded with benefits, it is because he
sought to make himself king; as though he were to his contemporaries, as
well as for posterity, the greatest of all kings. Since Suetonius and
Plutarch, such are the paltry interpretations which it has pleased
people to give to the noblest actions. But by what sign are we to
recognise a man’s greatness? By the empire of his ideas, when his
principles and his system triumph in spite of his death or defeat. Is it
not, in fact, the peculiarity of genius to survive destruction, and to
extend its empire over future generations? Cæsar disappeared, and his
influence predominates still more than during his life. Cicero, his
adversary, is compelled to exclaim: “All the acts of Cæsar, his
writings, his words, his promises, his thoughts, have more force since
his death, than if he were still alive.”[6] For ages it was enough to
tell the world that such was the will of Cæsar, for the world to obey
it.
The preceding remarks sufficiently explain the aim I have in view in
writing this history. This aim is to prove that, when Providence raises
up such men as Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, it is to trace out to
peoples the path they ought to follow; to stamp with the seal of their
genius a new era; and to accomplish in a few years the labour of many
centuries. Happy the peoples who comprehend and follow them! woe to
those who misunderstand and combat them! They do as the Jews did, they
crucify their Messiah; they are blind and culpable: blind, for they do
not see the impotence of their efforts to suspend the definitive triumph
of good; culpable, for they only retard progress, by impeding its
prompt and fruitful application.
In fact, neither the murder of Cæsar, nor the captivity of St. Helena,
have been able to destroy irrevocably two popular causes overthrown by a
league which disguised itself under the mask of liberty. Brutus, by
slaying Cæsar, plunged Rome into the horrors of civil war; he did not
prevent the reign of Augustus, but he rendered possible those of Nero
and Caligula. The ostracism of Napoleon by confederated Europe has been
no more successful in preventing the Empire from being resuscitated;
and, nevertheless, how far are we from the great questions solved, the
passions calmed, and the legitimate satisfactions given to peoples by
the first Empire!
Thus every day since 1815 has verified the prophecy of the captive of
St. Helena:
“How many struggles, how much blood, how many years will it not require
to realise the good which I intended to do for mankind!”[7]
_Palace of the Tuileries, March 20th, 1862._
NAPOLEON.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ROMAN TERRITORY AND OF THE STATES SUBMITTED TO
ITS DOMINION OR IN ALLIANCE WITH IT AT THE TIME OF THE EXPULSION OF
TARQUINUS SUPERBUS 510 years before Christ the year 244 from the
foundation of Rome drawn by M^R. PIETRO ROSA.]
JULIUS CÆSAR.
BOOK I.
ROMAN HISTORY BEFORE CÆSAR.
CHAPTER I.
ROME UNDER THE KINGS.
[Sidenote: The Kings found the Roman Institutions.]
I. “In the birth of societies,” says Montesquieu, “it is the chiefs of
the republics who form the institution, and in the sequel it is the
institution which forms the chiefs of the republics.” And he adds, “One
of the causes of the prosperity of Rome was the fact that its kings were
all great men. We find nowhere else in history an uninterrupted series
of such statesmen and such military commanders.”[8]
The story, more or less fabulous, of the foundation of Rome does not
come within the limits of our design; and with no intention of clearing
up whatever degree of fiction these earliest ages of history may
contain, we purpose only to remind our readers that the kings laid the
foundations of those institutions to which Rome owed her greatness, and
so many extraordinary men who astonished the world by their virtues and
exploits.
The kingly power lasted a hundred and forty-four years, and at its fall
Rome had become the most powerful state in Latium. The town was of vast
extent, for, even at that epoch, the seven hills were nearly all
inclosed within a wall protected internally and externally by a
consecrated space called the _Pomœrium_.[9]
This line of inclosure remained long the same, although the increase of
the population had led to the establishment of immense suburbs, which
finally inclosed the Pomœrium itself.[10]
The Roman territory properly so called was circumscribed, but that of
the subjects and allies of Rome was already rather considerable. Some
colonies had been founded. The kings, by a skilful policy, had succeeded
in drawing into their dependence a great number of neighbouring states,
and, when Tarquinius Superbus assembled the Hernici, the Latins, and the
Volsci, for a ceremony destined to seal his alliance with them,
forty-seven different petty states took part in the inauguration of the
temple of Jupiter Latialis.[11]
The foundation of Ostia, by Ancus Martius, at the mouth of the Tiber,
shows that already the political and commercial importance of
facilitating communication with the sea was understood; while the treaty
of commerce concluded with Carthage at the time of the fall of the
kingly power, the details of which are preserved by Polybius, indicates
more extensive foreign relations than we might have supposed.[12]
[Sidenote: Social Organisation.]
II. The Roman social body, which originated probably in ancient
transformations of society, consisted, from the earliest ages, of a
certain number of aggregations, called _gentes_, formed of the families
of the conquerors, and bearing some resemblance to the clans of Scotland
or to the Arabian tribes. The heads of families (_patresfamilias_) and
their members (_patricii_) were united among themselves, not only by
kindred, but also by political and religious ties. Hence arose an
hereditary nobility having for distinctive marks family names, special
costume,[13] and waxen images of their ancestors (_jus imaginum_).
The plebeians, perhaps a race who had been conquered at an earlier
period, were, in regard to the dominant race, in a situation similar to
that of the Anglo-Saxons in regard to the Normans in the eleventh
century of our era, after the invasion of England. They were generally
agriculturists, excluded originally from all military and civil
office.[14]
The patrician families had gathered round them, under the name of
_clients_, either foreigners, or a great portion of the plebeians.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus even pretends that Romulus had required that
each of these last should choose himself a patron.[15] The clients
cultivated the fields and formed part of the family.[16] The relation of
patronage had created such reciprocal obligations as amounted almost to
the ties of kindred. For the patrons, they consisted in giving
assistance to their clients in affairs public and private; and for the
latter, in aiding constantly the patrons with their person and purse,
and in preserving towards them an inviolable fidelity: they could not
cite each other reciprocally in law, or bear witness one against the
other, and it would have been a scandal to see them take different sides
in a political question. It was a state of things which had some
analogy to feudalism; the great protected the little, and the little
paid for protection by rents and services; yet there was this essential
difference, that the clients were not serfs, but free men.
Slavery had long formed one of the constituent parts of society. The
slaves, taken among foreigners and captives,[17] and associated in all
the domestic labours of the family, often received their liberty as a
recompense for their conduct. They were then named _freedmen_, and were
received among the clients of the patron, without sharing in all the
rights of a citizen.[18]
The _gens_ thus consisted of the reunion of patrician families having a
common ancestor; around it was grouped a great number of clients,
freedmen, and slaves. To give an idea of the importance of the _gentes_
in the first ages of Rome, it is only necessary to remind the reader
that towards the year 251, a certain Attus Clausus, afterwards called
Appius Claudius, a Sabine of the town of Regillum, distinguished,
according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, no less for the splendour of
his birth than for his great wealth, took refuge among the Romans with
his kinsmen, his friends, and his clients, with all their families, to
the number of five thousand men capable of bearing arms.[19] When, in
275, the three hundred Fabii, forming the _gens Fabia_, offered alone
to fight the Veians, they were followed by four thousand clients.[20]
The high class often reckoned, by means of its numerous adherents, on
carrying measures by itself. In 286, the plebeians having refused to
take part in the consular comitia, the patricians, followed by their
clients, elected the consuls;[21] and in 296, a Claudius declared with
pride that the nobility had no need of the plebeians to carry on war
against the Volsci.[22] The families of ancient origin long formed the
state by themselves. To them exclusively the name of _populus_
applied,[23] as that of _plebs_ was given to the plebeians.[24] Indeed,
although in the sequel the word _populus_ took a more extensive
signification, Cicero says that it is to be understood as applying, not
to the universality of the inhabitants, but to a reunion of men
associated by a community of rights and interests.[25]
[Sidenote: Political Organisation.]
III. In a country where war was the principal occupation, the political
organisation must naturally depend on the military organisation. A
single chief had the superior direction, an assembly of men pre-eminent
in importance and age formed the council, while the political rights
belonged only to those who supported the fatigues of war.
The king, elected generally by the assembly of the _gentes_,[26]
commanded the army. Sovereign pontiff, legislator, and judge in all
sacred matters, he dispensed justice[27] in all criminal affairs which
concerned the Republic. He had for insignia a crown of gold and a purple
robe, and for escort twenty-four lictors,[28] some carrying axes
surrounded with rods, others merely rods.[29] At the death of the king,
a magistrate, called _interrex_, was appointed by the Senate to exercise
the royal authority during the five days which intervened before the
nomination of his successor. This office continued, with the same title,
under the Consular Republic, when the absence of the consuls prevented
the holding of the comitia.
The Senate, composed of the richest and most illustrious of the
patricians, to the number at first of a hundred, of two hundred after
the union with the Sabines, and of three hundred after the admission of
the _gentes minores_ under Tarquin, was the council of the ancients,
taking under its jurisdiction the interests of the town, in which were
then concentrated all the interests of the State.
The patricians occupied all offices, supported alone the burden of war,
and consequently had alone the right of voting in the assemblies.
The _gentes_ were themselves divided into three tribes. Each, commanded
by a tribune,[30] was obliged, under Romulus, to furnish a thousand
soldiers (indeed, _miles_ comes from _mille_) and a hundred horsemen
(_celeres_). The tribe was divided into ten curiæ; at the head of each
curia was a curion. The three tribes, furnishing three thousand foot
soldiers and three hundred horsemen, formed at first the legion. Their
number was soon doubled by the adjunction of new cities.[31]
The curia, into which a certain number of _gentes_ entered, was then the
basis of the political and military organisation, and hence originated
the name of _Quirites_ to signify the Roman people.
The members of the curia were constituted into religious associations,
having each its assemblies and solemn festivals which established bonds
of affiliation between them. When their assemblies had a political aim,
the votes were taken by head;[32] they decided the question of peace or
war; they nominated the magistrates of the town; and they confirmed or
abrogated the laws.[33]
The appeal to the people,[34] which might annul the judgments of the
magistrates, was nothing more than the appeal to the curia; and it was
by having recourse to it, after having been condemned by the decemvirs,
that the survivor of the three Horatii was saved.
The policy of the kings consisted in blending together the different
races and breaking down the barriers which separated the different
classes. To effect the first of these objects, they divided the lower
class of the people into corporations,[35] and augmented the number of
the tribes and changed their constitution;[36] but to effect the second,
they introduced, to the great discontent of the higher class, plebeians
among the patricians,[37] and raised the freedmen to the rank of
citizens.[38] In this manner, each curia became considerably increased
in numbers; but, as the votes were taken by head, the poor patricians
were numerically stronger than the rich.
Servius Tullius, though he preserved the curiæ, deprived them of their
military organisation, that is, he no longer made it the basis of his
system of recruiting. He instituted the centuries, with the double aim
of giving as a principle the right of suffrage to all the citizens, and
of creating an army which was more national, inasmuch as he introduced
the plebeians into it; his design was indeed to throw on the richest
citizens the burden of war,[39] which was just, each equipping and
maintaining himself at his own cost. The citizens were no longer
classified by castes, but according to their fortunes. Patricians and
plebeians were placed in the same rank if their income was equal. The
influence of the rich predominated, without doubt, but only in
proportion to the sacrifices required of them.
Servius Tullius ordered a general report of the population to be made,
in which every one was obliged to declare his age, his fortune, the name
of his tribe and that of his father, and the number of his children and
of his slaves. This operation was called _census_.[40] The report was
inscribed on tables,[41] and, once terminated, all the citizens were
called together in arms in the Campus Martius. This review was called
the _closing of the lustrum_, because it was accompanied with sacrifices
and purifications named _lustrations_. The term _lustrum_ was applied to
the interval of five years between two censuses.[42]
The citizens were divided into six classes,[43] and into a hundred and
ninety-three centuries, according to the fortune of each, beginning with
the richest and ending with the poorest. The first class comprised
ninety-eight centuries, eighteen of which were knights; the second and
fourth, twenty-two; the third, twenty; the fifth, thirty; and the sixth,
although the most numerous, forming only one.[44] The first class
contained a smaller number of citizens, yet, having a greater number of
centuries, it was obliged to pay more than half the tax, and furnish
more legionaries than any other class.
The votes continued to be taken by head, as in the curiæ, but the
majority of the votes in each century counted only for one suffrage.
Now, as the first class had ninety-eight centuries, while the others,
taken together, had only ninety-five, it is clear that the votes of the
first class were enough to carry the majority. The eighteen centuries of
knights first gave their votes, and then the eighty centuries of the
first class: if they were not agreed, appeal was made to the vote of the
second class, and so on in succession; but, says Livy, it hardly ever
happened that they were obliged to descend to the last.[45] Though,
according to its original signification, the century should represent a
hundred men, it already contained a considerably greater number. Each
century was divided into the active part, including all the men from
eighteen to forty-six years of age, and the sedentary part, charged
with the guard of the town, composed of men from forty-six to sixty
years old.[46]
With regard to those of the sixth class, omitted altogether by many
authors, they were exempt from all military service, or, at any rate,
they were enrolled only in case of extreme danger.[47] The centuries of
knights, who formed the cavalry, recruited among the richest citizens,
tended to introduce a separate order among the nobility,[48] which shows
the importance of the chief called to their command. In fact, the chief
of the _celeres_ was, after the king, the first magistrate of the city,
as, at a later period, under the Republic, the _magister equitum_ became
the lieutenant of the dictator.
The first census of Servius Tullius gave a force of eighty thousand men
in a condition to bear arms,[49] which is equivalent to two hundred and
ninety thousand persons of the two sexes, to whom may be added, from
conjectures, which, however, are rather vague, fifteen thousand
artisans, merchants, or indigent people, deprived of all rights of
citizenship, and fifteen thousand slaves.[50]
The comitia by centuries were charged with the election of the
magistrates, but the comitia by curiæ, being the primitive form of the
patrician assembly, continued to decree on the most important religious
and military affairs, and remained in possession of all which had not
been formally given to the centuries. Solon effected, about the same
epoch, in Athens, a similar revolution, so that, at the same time, the
two most famous towns of the ancient world no longer took birth as the
basis of the right of suffrage, but fortune.
Servius Tullius promulgated a great number of laws favourable to the
people; he established the principle that the property only of the
debtor, and not his person, should be responsible for his debt. He also
authorised the plebeians to become the patrons of their freedmen, which
allowed the richest of the former to create for themselves a _clientèle_
resembling that of the patricians.[51]
[Sidenote: Religion.]
IV. Religion, regulated in great part by Numa, was at Rome an instrument
of civilisation, but, above all, of government. By bringing into the
acts of public or private life the intervention of the Divinity,
everything was impressed with a character of sanctity. Thus the
inclosure of the town with its services,[52] the boundaries of estates,
the transactions between citizens, engagements, and even the important
facts of history entered in the sacred books, were placed under the
safeguard of the gods.[53] In the interior of the house, the gods Lares
protected the family; on the field of battle, the emblem placed on the
standard was the protecting god of the legion.[54] The national
sentiment and belief that Rome would become one day the mistress of
Italy was maintained by oracles or prodigies;[55] but if, on the one
hand, religion, with its very imperfections, contributed to soften
manners and to elevate minds,[56] on the other it wonderfully
facilitated the working of the institutions, and preserved the influence
of the higher classes.
Religion also accustomed the people of Latium to the Roman supremacy;
for Servius Tullius, in persuading them to contribute to the building of
the Temple of Diana,[57] made them, says Livy, acknowledge Rome for
their capital, a claim they had so often resisted by force of arms.
The supposed intervention of the Deity gave the power, in a multitude of
cases, of reversing any troublesome decision. Thus, by interpreting the
flight of birds,[58] the manner in which the sacred chickens ate, the
entrails of victims, the direction taken by lightning, they annulled the
elections, or eluded or retarded the deliberations either of the comitia
or of the Senate. No one could enter upon office, even the king could
not mount his throne, if the gods had not manifested their approval by
what were reputed certain signs of their will. There were auspicious and
inauspicious days; in the latter it was not permitted either to judges
to hold their audience, or to the people to assemble.[59] Finally, it
might be said with Camillus, that the town was founded on the faith of
auspices and auguries.[60]
The priests did not form an order apart, but all citizens had the power
to enrol themselves in particular colleges. At the head of the
sacerdotal hierarchy were the pontiffs, five in number,[61] of whom the
king was the chief.[62] They decided all questions which concerned the
liturgy and religious worship, watched over the sacrifices and
ceremonies that they should be performed in accordance with the
traditional rites,[63] acted as inspectors over the other minister of
religion, fixed the calendar,[64] and were responsible for their actions
neither to the Senate nor to the people.[65]
After the pontiffs, the first place belonged to the curions, charged in
each curia with the religious functions, and who had at their head a
grand curion; then came the flamens, the augurs,[66] the vestals charged
with the maintenance of the sacred fire; the twelve Salian priests,[67]
keepers of the sacred bucklers, named _ancilia_; and lastly, the
_feciales_, heralds at arms, to the number of twenty, whose charge it
was to draw up treaties and secure their execution, to declare war, and
to watch over the observance of all international relations.[68]
There were also religious fraternities (_sodalitates_), instituted for
the purpose of rendering a special worship to certain divinities. Such
was the college of the fratres Arvales, whose prayers and processions
called down the favour of Heaven upon the harvest; such also was the
association having for its mission to celebrate the festival of the
Lupercalia, founded in honour of the god Lupercus, the protector of
cattle and destroyer of wolves. The gods Lares, tutelar genii of towns
or families, had also their festival instituted by Tullus Hostilius, and
celebrated at certain epochs, during which the slaves were entirely
exempt from labour.[69]
The kings erected a great number of temples for the purpose of deifying,
some, glory,[70] others, the virtues,[71] others, utility,[72] and
others, gratitude to the gods.[73]
The Romans loved to represent everything by external signs: thus Numa,
to impress better the verity of a state of peace or war, raised a temple
to Janus, which was kept open during war and closed in time of peace;
and, strange to say, this temple was only closed three times in seven
hundred years.[74]
[Sidenote: Results obtained by Royalty.]
V. The facts which precede are sufficient to convince us that the Roman
Republic[75] had already acquired under the kings a strong
organisation.[76] Its spirit of conquest overflowed beyond its narrow
limits. The small states of Latium which surrounded it possessed,
perhaps, men as enlightened and citizens equally courageous, but there
certainly did not exist among them, to the same degree as at Rome, the
genius of war, the love of country, faith in high destinies, the
conviction of an incontestible superiority, powerful motives of
activity, instilled into them perseveringly by great men during two
hundred and forty-four years.
Roman society was founded upon respect for family, for religion, and for
property; the government, upon election; the policy, upon conquest. At
the head of the State is a powerful aristocracy, greedy of glory, but,
like all aristocracies, impatient of kingly power, and disdainful
towards the multitude. The kings strive to create a people side by side
with the privileged caste, and introduce plebeians into the Senate,
freedmen among the citizens, and the mass of citizens into the ranks of
the soldiery.
Family is strongly constituted; the father reigns in it absolute master,
sole judge[77] over his children, his wife, and his slaves, and that
during all their lives: yet the wife’s position is not degraded as among
the barbarians; she enjoys a community of goods with her husband;
mistress of her house, she has the right of acquiring property, and
shares equally with her brothers the paternal inheritance.[78]
The basis of taxation is the basis of recruiting and of political
rights; there are no soldiers but citizens; there are no citizens
without property. The richer a man is, the more he has of power and
dignities; but he has more charges to support, more duties to fulfil. In
fighting, as well as in voting, the Romans are divided into classes
according to their fortunes, and in the comitia, as on the field of
battle the richest are in the first ranks.
Initiated in the apparent practice of liberty, the people is held in
check by superstition and respect for the high classes. By appealing to
the intervention of the Divinity in every action of life, the most
vulgar things become idealised, and men are taught that above their
material interests there is a Providence which directs their actions.
The sentiment of right and justice enters into their conscience, the
oath is a sacred thing, and virtue, that highest expression of duty,
becomes the general rule of public and private life.[79] Law exercises
its entire empire, and, by the institution of the feciales,
international questions are discussed with a view to what is just,
before seeking a solution by force of arms. The policy of the State
consists in drawing by all means possible the peoples around under the
dependence of Rome; and, when their resistance renders it necessary to
conquer them,[80] they are, in different degrees, immediately associated
with the common fortune, and maintained in obedience by
colonies--advanced posts of future dominion.[81]
The arts, though as yet rude, find their way in with the Etruscan rites,
and come to soften manners, and lend their aid to religion; everywhere
temples arise, circuses are constructed,[82] great works of public
utility are erected, and Rome, by its institutions, paves the way for
its pre-eminence.
Almost all the magistrates are appointed by election; once chosen, they
possess an extensive power, and put in motion resolutely those two
powerful levers of human actions, punishment and reward. To all
citizens, for cowardice before the enemy or for an infraction of
discipline,[83] the rod or the axe of the lictor; to all, for noble
actions, crowns of honour;[84] to the generals, the ovation, the
triumph,[85] the best of the spoils;[86] to the great men, apotheosis.
To honour the dead, and for personal relaxation after their sanguinary
struggles, the citizens crowd to the games of the circus, where the
hierarchy gives his rank to each individual.[87]
Thus Rome, having reached the third century of her existence, finds her
constitution formed by the kings with all the germs of grandeur which
will develop themselves in the sequel. Man has created her institutions:
we shall see now how the institutions are going to form the men.
CHAPTER II
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULAR REPUBLIC.
(From 244 to 416.)
[Sidenote: Advantage of the Republic.]
1. The kings are expelled from Rome. They disappear because their
mission is accomplished. There exists, one would say, in moral as well
as physical order, a supreme law which assigns to institutions, as to
certain beings, a fated limit, marked by the term of their utility.
Until this providential term has arrived, no opposition prevails;
conspiracies, revolts, everything fails against the irresistible force
which maintains what people seek to overthrow; but if, on the contrary,
a state of things immovable in appearance ceases to be useful to the
progress of humanity, then neither the empire of traditions, nor
courage, nor the memory of a glorious past, can retard by a day the fall
which has been decided by destiny.
Civilisation appears to have been transported from Greece into Italy to
create there an immense focus from which it might spread itself over the
whole world. From that moment the genius of force and imagination must
necessarily preside over the first times of Rome. This is what happened
under the kings, and, so long as their task was not accomplished, it
triumphed over all obstacles. In vain the senators attempted to obtain
a share in the power by each exercising it for five days;[88] in vain
men’s passions rebelled against the authority of a single chief: all was
useless, and even the murder of the kings only added strength to
royalty. But the moment once arrived when kings cease to be
indispensable, the simplest accident hurls them down. A man outrages a
woman, the throne gives way, and, in falling, it divides itself into
two: the consuls succeed to all the prerogatives of the kings.[89]
Nothing is changed in the Republic, except that instead of one chief,
elective for life, there will be henceforward two chiefs, elected for a
year. This transformation is evidently the work of the aristocracy; the
senators will possess the government, and, by these annual elections,
each hopes to take in his turn his share in the sovereign power. Such is
the narrow calculation of man and his mean motive of action. Let us see
what superior impulse he obeyed without knowing it.
That corner of land, situated on the bank of the Tiber, and predestined
to hold the empire of the world, enclosed within itself, as we see,
fruitful germs which demanded a rapid expansion. This could only be
effected by the absolute independence of the most enlightened class,
seizing for its own profit all the prerogatives of royalty. The
aristocratic government has this advantage over monarchy, that it is
more immutable in its duration, more constant in its designs, more
faithful to traditions, and that it can dare everything, because where a
great number share the responsibility, no one is individually
responsible. Rome, with its narrow limits, had no longer need of the
concentration of authority in a single hand, but it was in need of a new
order of things, which should give to the great free access to the
supreme power, and should second, by the allurement of honours, the
development of the faculties of each. The grand object was to create a
race of men of choice, who, succeeding each other with the same
principles and the same virtues, should perpetuate, from generation to
generation, the system most calculated to assure the greatness of their
country. The fall of the kingly power was thus an event favourable to
the development of Rome.
The patricians monopolised during a long time the civil, military, and
religious employments, and, these employments being for the most part
annual, there was in the Senate hardly a member who had not filled them;
so that this assembly was composed of men formed to the combats of the
Forum as well as to those of the field of battle, schooled in the
difficulties of the administration, and indeed worthy, by an experience
laboriously acquired, to preside over the destinies of the Republic.
They were not classed, as men are in our modern society, in envious and
rival specialities; the warrior was not seen there despising the
civilian, the lawyer or orator standing apart from the man of action, or
the priest isolating himself from all the others. In order to raise
himself to State dignities, and merit the suffrages of his
fellow-citizens, the patrician was constrained, from his youngest age,
to undergo the most varied trials. He was required to possess dexterity
of body, eloquence, aptness for military exercises, the knowledge of
civil and religious laws, the talent of commanding an army or directing
a fleet, of administrating the town or commanding a province; and the
obligation of these different apprenticeships not only gave a full
flight to all capacities, but it united, in the eyes of the people, upon
the magistrate invested with different dignities, the consideration
attached to each of them. During a long time, he who was honoured with
the confidence of his fellow-citizens, besides nobility of birth,
enjoyed the triple prestige given by the function of judge, priest, and
warrior.
An independence almost absolute in the exercise of command contributed
further to the development of the faculties. At the present day, our
constitutional habits have raised distrust towards power into a
principle; at Rome, trust was the principle. In our modern societies,
the depositary of any authority whatever is always under the restraint
of powerful bonds; he obeys a precise law, a minutely detailed rule, a
superior. The Roman, on the contrary, abandoned to his own sole
responsibility, felt himself free from all shackles; he commanded as
master within the sphere of his attributes. The counterpoise of this
independence was the short duration of his office, and the right, given
to every man, of accusing each magistrate at the end of it.
The preponderance of the high class, then, rested upon a legitimate
superiority, and this class, besides, knew how to work to its advantage
the popular passions. They desired liberty only for themselves, but they
knew how to make the image glitter in the eyes of the multitude, and the
name of the people was always associated with the decrees of the Senate.
Proud of having contributed to the overthrow of the power of one
individual, they took care to cherish among the masses the imaginary
fear of the return of kingly power. In their hands the _hate of tyrants_
will become a weapon to be dreaded by all who shall seek to raise
themselves above their fellows, either by threatening their privileges,
or by acquiring too much popularity by their acts of benevolence. Thus,
under the pretext, renewed incessantly, of aspiring to kingly power,
fell the consul Spurius Cassius, in 269, because he had presented the
first agrarian law; Spurius Melius, in 315, because he excited the
jealousy of the patricians by distributing wheat to the people during a
famine;[90] in 369, Manlius, the saviour of Rome, because he had
expended his fortune in relieving insolvent debtors.[91] Thus will fall
victims to the same accusation the reformer Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus, and lastly, at a later period, the great Cæsar himself.
But if the pretended fear of the return of the ancient _régime_ was a
powerful means of government in the hands of the patricians, the real
fear of seeing their privileges attacked by the plebeians restrained
them within the bounds of moderation and justice.
In fact, if the numerous class, excluded from all office, had not
interfered by their clamours to set limits to the privileges of the
nobility, and thus compelled it to render itself worthy of power by its
virtues, and re-invigorated it, in some sort, by the infusion of new
blood, corruption and arbitrary spirit would, some ages earlier, have
dragged it to its ruin. A caste which is not renewed by foreign elements
is condemned to disappear; and absolute power, whether it belongs to one
man or to a class of individuals, finishes always by being equally
dangerous to him who exercises it. This concurrence of the plebeians
excited in the Republic a fortunate emulation which produced great men,
for, as Machiavelli says:[92] “The fear of losing gives birth in men’s
hearts to the same passions as the desire of acquiring.” Although the
aristocracy had long defended with obstinacy its privileges, it made
opportunely useful concessions. Skilful in repairing incessantly its
defeats, it took again, under another form, what it had been constrained
to abandon, losing often some of its attributes, but preserving its
prestige always untouched.
Thus, the characteristic fact of the Roman institutions was to form men
apt for all functions. As long as on a narrow theatre the ruling class
had the wisdom to limit its ambition to promoting the veritable
interests of their country, as the seduction of riches and unbounded
power did not come to exalt it beyond measure, the aristocratic system
maintained itself with all its advantages, and overruled the instability
of institutions. It alone, indeed, was capable of supporting long,
without succumbing, a _régime_ in which the direction of the State and
the command of the armies passed annually into different hands, and
depended upon elections the element of which is ever fickle. Besides,
the laws gave rise to antagonisms more calculated to cause anarchy than
to consolidate true liberty. Let us examine, in these last relations,
the constitution of the Republic.
[Sidenote: Institutions of the Republic.]
II. The two consuls were originally generals, judges, and
administrators; equal in powers, they were often in disagreement, either
in the Forum,[93] or on the field of battle.[94] Their dissensions were
repeated many times until the consulate of Cæsar and Bibulus; and they
were liable to become the more dangerous as the decision of one consul
was annulled by the opposition of his colleague. On the other hand, the
short duration of their magistracy constrained them either to hurry a
battle in order to rob their successor of the glory,[95] or to interrupt
a campaign in order to proceed to Rome to hold the comitia. The defeats
of the Trebia and Cannæ, with that of Servilius Cæpio by the Cimbri,[96]
were fatal examples of the want of unity in the direction of war.
In order to lessen the evil effects of a simultaneous exercise of their
prerogatives, the consuls agreed to take in campaign the command
alternately day by day, and at Rome each to have the fasces during a
month; but this innovation had also vexatious consequences.[97] It was
even thought necessary, nine years after the fall of the kings, to have
recourse to the dictatorship; and this absolute authority, limited to
six months, that is, to the longest duration of a campaign, only
remedied temporarily, and under extraordinary circumstances, the want of
power concentrated in a single individual.
This dualism and instability of the supreme authority were not,
therefore, an element of strength; the unity and fixity of direction
necessary among a people always at war had disappeared; but the evil
would have been more serious if the conformity of interests and views of
individuals belonging to the same caste had not been there to lessen it.
The man was worth more than the institutions which had formed him.
The creation of tribunes of the people, whose part became subsequently
so important, was, in 260, a new cause of discord; the plebeians, who
composed the greater part of the army, claimed to have their military
chiefs for magistrates;[98] the authority of the tribunes was at first
limited: we may convince ourselves of this by the following terms of the
law which established the office:[99]--
“Nobody shall constrain a tribune of the people, like a man of the
commonalty, to do anything against his will; it shall not be permitted
either to strike him, or to cause him to be maltreated by another, or to
slay him or cause him to be slain.”[100]
We may judge by this the degree of inferiority to which the plebeians
were reduced. The veto of the tribunes could nevertheless put a stop to
the proposal of a law, prevent the decisions of the consuls and Senate,
arrest the levies of troops, prorogue the convocation of the comitia,
and hinder the election of magistrates.[101] From the year 297, their
number was raised to ten, that is, two for each of the five classes
specially subject to the recruitment;[102] but the plebeians profited
little by this measure; the more the number of tribunes was augmented,
the easier it became for the aristocracy to find among them an
instrument for its designs. Gradually their influence increased; in 298,
they laid claim to the right of convoking the Senate, and yet it was
still a long time before they formed part of that body.[103]
As to the comitia, the people had there only a feeble influence. In the
assemblies by centuries, the vote of the first classes, composed of the
richest citizens, as we have seen, prevailed over all the others; in
the comitia by curiæ, the patricians were absolute masters; and when,
towards the end of the third century, the plebeians obtained the comitia
by tribes,[104] this concession did not add sensibly to their
prerogatives. It was confined to the power of assembling in the public
places where, divided according to tribes, they placed their votes in
urns for the election of their tribunes and ediles, previously elected
by the centuries;[105] their decisions concerned themselves only, and
entailed no obligations on the patricians; so that the same town then
offered the spectacle of two cities each having its own magistrates and
laws.[106] At first the patricians would not form part of the assembly
by tribes, but they soon saw the advantage of it, and, towards 305,
entered it with their clients.[107]
[Sidenote: Transformation of the Aristocracy.]
III. This political organisation, the reflex of a society composed of so
many different elements, could hardly have constituted a durable order
of things, if the ascendency of a privileged class had not controlled
the causes of dissensions. This ascendency itself would soon have
diminished if concessions, forced or voluntary, had not gradually
lowered the barriers between the two orders.
In fact, the arbitrary conduct of the consuls, who were, perhaps,
originally nominated by the Senate alone,[108] excited sharp
recriminations: “the consular authority,” cried the plebeians, “was, in
reality, almost as heavy as that of the kings. Instead of one master
they had two, invested with absolute and unlimited power, without rule
or bridle, who turned against the people all the threats of the laws,
and all their punishments.”[109] Although after the year 283 the
patricians and plebeians were subjected to the same judges,[110] the
want of fixed laws left the goods and lives of the citizens delivered
to the will either of the consuls or of the tribunes. It became,
therefore, indispensable to establish the legislation on a solid basis,
and in 303 ten magistrates called _decemvirs_ were chosen, invested with
the double power, consular and tribunitian, which gave them the right of
convoking equally the assemblies by centuries and by tribes. They were
charged with the compilation of a code of laws afterwards known as the
_Laws of the Twelve Tables_, which, engraved on brass, became the
foundation of the Roman public law. Yet they persisted in making illegal
the union contracted between persons of the two orders, and left the
debtor at the mercy of the creditor, contrary to the decision of Servius
Tullius.
The decemvirs abused their power, and, on their fall, the claims of the
plebeians increased; the tribuneship, abolished during three years, was
re-established; it was decided that an appeal to the people from the
decision of any magistrate should be permitted, and that the laws made
in the assemblies by tribes, as well as in the assemblies by centuries,
should be obligatory on all.[111] There were thus, then, three sorts of
comitia; the comitia by curiæ, which, conferring the _imperium_ on the
magistrates elected by the centuries, sanctioned in some sort the
election of the consuls;[112] the comitia by centuries, over which the
consuls presided; and the comitia by tribes, over which the tribunes
presided; the first named the consuls, the second the plebeian
magistrates, and both, composed of nearly the same citizens, had equally
the power of approving or rejecting the laws; but in the former, the
richest men and the nobility had all the influence, because they formed
the majority of the centuries and voted first; while in the latter, on
the contrary, the voters were confounded with that of the tribe to which
they belonged. “If,” says an ancient author, “the suffrages are taken by
_gentes_ (_ex generibus hominum_), the comitia are by _curiæ_; if
according to age and census, they are by _centuries_; finally, if the
vote be given according to territorial circumscription (_regionibus_),
they are by _tribes_.”[113] In spite of these concessions, antagonism in
matters of law reigned always between the powers, the assemblies, and
the different classes of society.
The plebeians laid claim to all the offices of state, and especially to
the consulship, refusing to enrol themselves until their demands had
been satisfied; and they went so far in their claims that they insisted
upon the plebeian origin of the kings. “Shall we, then,” cried the
tribune Canuleius, addressing himself to the people, “have consuls who
resemble the decemvirs, the vilest of mortals, all patricians, rather
than the best of our kings, all new men!” that is, men without
ancestors.[114]
The Senate resisted, because it had no intention of conferring upon
plebeians the right which formed an attribute of the consuls, for the
convocation of the comitia, of taking the great auspices, a privilege
altogether of a religious character, the exclusive apanage of the
nobility.[115]
In order to obviate this difficulty, the Senate, after suppressing the
legal obstacles in the way of marriages between the two orders, agreed
in 309 to the creation of six military tribunes invested with the
consular power; but, which was an essential point, it was the interrex
who convoked the comitia and took the auspices.[116] During
seventy-seven years the military tribunes were elected alternately with
the consuls, and the consulship was only re-established permanently in
387, when it was opened to the plebeians. This was the result of one of
the laws of Licinius Stolo. This tribune succeeded in obtaining the
adoption of several measures which appeared to open a new era which
would put an end to disputes. Still the patricians held with such
tenacity to the privilege of alone taking the auspices, that in 398, in
the absence of the patrician consul, an interrex was appointed charged
with presiding over the comitia, in order not to leave this care to the
dictator, and the other consul, who were both plebeians.[117]
But in permitting the popular class to arrive at the consulship, care
had been taken to withdraw from that dignity a great part of its
attributes, in order to confer them upon patrician magistrates. Thus
they had successively taken away from the consuls, by the creation of
two questors, in 307, the administration of the military chest;[118] by
the creation of the censors, in 311, the right of drawing up the list of
the census, the assessment of the revenue of the State, and of watching
over public morals; by the creation of the prætors, in 387, the
sovereign jurisdiction in civil affairs, under the pretext that the
nobility alone possessed the knowledge of the law of the Quirites; and
lastly, by the creation of the curule ediles, the presidency of the
games, the superintendence of buildings, the police and the provisioning
of the town, the maintenance of the public roads, and the inspection of
the markets.
The intention of the aristocracy had been to limit the compulsory
concessions; but after the adoption of the Licinian laws, it was no
longer possible to prevent the principle of the admission of plebeians
to all the magistracies. In 386 they had arrived at the important charge
of master of the knights (_magister equitum_) who was in a manner the
lieutenant of the dictator (_magister populi_);[119] in 387 access to
the religious functions had been laid open to them;[120] in 345 they
obtained the questorship; in 398, the dictatorship itself; in 403, the
censorship; and lastly, in 417, the prætorship.
In 391, the people arrogated the right of appointing a part of the
legionary tribunes, previously chosen by the consuls.[121]
In 415, the law of Q. Publilius Philo took from the Senate the power of
refusing the _auctoritas_ to the laws voted by the comitia, and obliged
it to declare in advance if the proposed law were in conformity with
public and religious law. Further, the obligation imposed by this law of
having always one censor taken from among the plebeians, opened the
doors of the Senate to the richest of them, since it was the business of
the censor to fix the rank of the citizens, and pronounce on the
admission or exclusion of the senators. The Publilian law thus tended to
raise the aristocracy of the two orders to the same rank, and to create
the nobility (_nobilitas_), composed of all the families rendered
illustrious by the offices they had filled.
[Sidenote: Elements of Dissolution.]
IV. At the beginning of the fifth century of Rome, the bringing nearer
together of the two orders had given a greater consistence to society;
but, just as we have seen under the kingly rule, the principles begin to
show themselves which were one day to make the greatness of Rome, so now
we see the first appearance of dangers which will be renewed
unceasingly. Electoral corruption, the law of perduellio, slavery, the
increase of the poor class, the agrarian laws, and the question of
debts, will come, under different circumstances, to threaten the
existence of the Republic. Let us summarily state that these questions,
so grave in the sequel, were raised at an early date.
ELECTORAL CORRUPTION.--Fraud found its way into the elections as soon as
the number of electors increased and rendered it necessary to collect
more suffrages to obtain public charges; as early as 396, indeed, a law
on solicitation, proposed by the tribune of the people, C. Pœtelius,
bears witness to the existence of electoral corruption.
LAW OF HIGH-TREASON.--As early as 305 and 369, the application of the
law of perduellio, or design against the Republic, furnished to
arbitrary power an arm of which, at a later period, under the emperors,
so deplorable a use was made under the name of the law of
high-treason.[122]
SLAVERY.--Slavery presented serious dangers for society, for, on the one
hand, it tended, by the lower price of manual labour, to substitute
itself for the labour of free men; while, on the other, discontented
with their lot, the slaves were always ready to shake off the yoke and
become the auxiliaries of all who were ambitious. In 253, 294, and 336,
partial insurrections announced the condition already to be feared of a
class disinherited of all the advantages, though intimately bound up
with all the wants, of ordinary life.[123] The number of slaves
increased rapidly. They replaced the free men torn by the continual
wars from the cultivation of the land. At a later period, when these
latter returned to their homes, the Senate was obliged to support them
by sending as far as Sicily to seek wheat to deliver to them either
gratis or at a reduced price.[124]
AGRARIAN LAWS.--As to the Agrarian laws and the question of debts, they
soon became an incessant cause of agitation.
The kings, with the conquered lands, had formed a domain of the State
(_ager publicus_), one of its principal resources,[125] and generously
distributed part of it to the poor citizens.[126] Generally, they took
from the conquered peoples two-thirds of their land.[127] Of these
two-thirds, “the cultivated part,” says Appian, “was always adjudged to
the new colonists, either as a gratuitous grant, or by sale, or by lease
paying rent. As to the uncultivated part, which, as a consequence of
war, was almost always the most considerable, it was not the custom to
distribute it, but the enjoyment of it was left to any one willing to
clear and cultivate it, with a reservation to the State of the tenth
part of the harvest and a fifth part of the fruits. A similar tax was
levied upon those who bred cattle, large or small (in order to prevent
the pasture land from increasing in extent to the detriment of the
arable land). This was done in view of the increase of the Italic
population, which was judged at Rome the most laborious, and to have
allies of their own race. But the measure produced a result contrary to
that which was expected from it. The rich appropriated to themselves the
greatest part of the undistributed lands, and reckoning that the long
duration of their occupation would permit nobody to expel them, they
bought when they found a seller, or took by force from their
neighbouring lesser proprietors their modest heritages, and thus formed
vast domains, instead of the mere fields which they had themselves
cultivated before.”[128]
The kings had always sought to put a curb on these usurpations,[129] and
perhaps it was a similar attempt which cost Servius Tullius his life.
But after the fall of the kingly power, the patricians, having become
more powerful, determined to preserve the lands which they had unjustly
seized.[130]
And it must be acknowledged, as they supported the greatest share of the
burthen of war and taxation, they had a better claim than the others to
the conquered lands; they thought, moreover, that the colonies were
sufficient to support an agricultural population, and they acted rather
as State farmers than as proprietors of the soil. According to the
public law, indeed, the _ager publicus_ was inalienable, and we read in
an ancient author:--“Lawyers deny that the soil which has once begun to
belong to the Roman people, can ever, by usage or possession, become
the property of anybody else in the world.”[131]
In spite of this principle, it would have been wisdom to give, to the
poor citizens who had fought, a part of the spoils of the vanquished;
for the demands were incessant, and after 268, renewed almost yearly by
the tribunes or by the consuls themselves. In 275, a patrician, Fabius
Cæso, taking the initiative in a partition of lands recently conquered,
exclaimed: “Is it not just that the territories taken from the enemy
should become the property of those who have paid for it with their
sweat and with their blood?”[132] The Senate was as inflexible for this
proposition as for those which were brought forward by Q. Considius and
T. Genucius in 278, by Cn. Genucius in 280, and by the tribunes of the
people, with the support of the consuls Valerius and Æmilius, in
284.[133]
Yet, after fifty years of struggles since the expulsion of the Tarquins,
the tribune Icilius, in 298, obtained the partition of the lands of
Mount Aventine, by indemnifying those who had usurped a certain portion
of them.[134] The application of the law Icilia to other parts of the
_ager publicus_[135] was vainly solicited in 298 and the following
years; but in 330, a new tax was imposed upon the possessors of the
lands for the pay of the troops. The perseverance of the tribunes was
unwearied, and, during the thirty-six years following, six different
propositions were unsuccessful, even that relating to the territory of
the Bolani, newly taken from the enemy.[136] In 361 only, a senatus
consultus granted to each father of a family and to each free man seven
acres of the territory which had just been conquered from the Veii.[137]
In 371, after a resistance of five years, the Senate, in order to secure
the concurrence of the people in the war against the Volsci, agreed to
the partition of the territory of the Pomptinum (the Pontine Marshes),
taken from that people by Camillus, and already given up to the
encroachments of the aristocracy.[138] But these partial concessions
were not enough to satisfy the plebeians or to repair past injustices;
in the Licinian law the claims of the people, which had been resisted
during a hundred and thirty-six years, triumphed;[139] it did not
entirely deprive the nobles of the enjoyment of the lands unjustly
usurped, but it limited the possession of them to five hundred _jugera_.
When this repartition was made, the land which remained was to be
distributed among the poor. The proprietors were obliged to maintain on
their lands a certain number of free men, in order to augment the class
from which the legions were recruited; lastly, the number of cattle on
each domain was fixed, in order to restrain the culture of the meadows,
in general the most lucrative, and augment that of the arable lands,
which relieved Italy from the necessity of having recourse to foreign
corn.
This law of Licinius Stolo secured happy results; it restrained the
encroachments of the rich and great, but only proceeded with moderation
in its retrospective effects; it put a stop to the alarming extension of
the private domains at the expense of the public domain, to the
absorption of the good of the many by the few, to the depopulation of
Italy, and consequently to the diminution of the strength of the
armies.[140]
The numerous condemnations for trespasses against the law Licinia prove
that it was carried into execution, and for the space of two hundred
years it contributed, with the establishment of new colonies,[141] to
maintain this class of agriculturists--the principal sinews of the
State. We see indeed that, from this moment, the Senate itself took the
initiative of new distributions of land to the people.[142]
DEBTS.--The question of debts and the diminution of the rate of interest
had long been the subject of strong prejudices and of passionate
debates.
As the citizens made war at their own expense, the less rich, while they
were under arms, could not take care of their fields or farms, but
borrowed money to provide for their wants and for those of their
families. The debt had, in this case, a noble origin, the service of
their country.[143] Public opinion must, therefore, be favourable to the
debtors and hostile to those who, speculating on the pecuniary
difficulties of the defenders of the State, extorted heavy interest for
the money they lent. The patricians also took advantage of their
position and their knowledge of legal forms to exact heavy sums from the
plebeians whose causes they defended.[144]
The kings, listening to the demands of the citizens who were overwhelmed
with debts, often showed their readiness to help them;[145] but, after
their expulsion, the rich classes, more independent, became more
untractable, and men, ruined on account of their military service, were
sold publicly, as slaves,[146] by their creditors. Thus, when war was
imminent, the poor often refused to serve,[147] crying out, “What use
will it be to us to conquer the enemies without, if our creditors put us
in bonds for the debts we have contracted? What advantage shall we have
in strengthening the empire of Rome, if we cannot preserve our personal
liberty?”[148] Yet the patricians, who contributed more than the others
to the costs of the war, demanded of their debtors, not without reason,
the payment of the money they had advanced; and hence arose perpetual
dissensions.[149]
In 305, the laws of the Twelve Tables decided that the rate of interest
should be reduced to ten per cent. a year; but a law of Licinius Stolo
alone resolved, in an equitable manner, this grave question. It enacted
that the interests previously paid should be deducted from the
principal, and that the principal should be repaid by equal portions
during an interval of three years. This measure was advantageous to all,
for, in the state of insolvency in which the debtors were involved, the
creditors could not obtain the interest of their money, and even risked
the loss of the principal; the new law guaranteed the debts; the debtors
in their turn, having become landed proprietors, found the means of
freeing themselves by means of the lands they had received and the delay
which had been given them. The agreement established in 387 was of
slight duration, and in the midst of disagreements more or less violent,
things were carried so far, in 412, that the entire abolition of debts
and the prohibition to exact any interest were decreed mere
revolutionary and transitory measures.
[Sidenote: Résumé.]
V. This rapid sketch of the evils already perceptible which tormented
Roman society leads us to this reflection: it is the lot of all
governments, whatever be their form, to contain within themselves germs
of life, which make their strength, and germs of dissolution, which must
some day lead to their ruin; and accordingly, as the Republic was in
progress or in decline, the first or the second became developed and
dominant in turn; that is, so long as the aristocracy preserved its
virtues and its patriotism, the elements of prosperity predominated; but
no sooner did it begin to degenerate, than the causes of disturbance
gained the upper hand, and shook the edifice which had been erected so
laboriously.
If the fall of the kingly power, in giving more vitality and
independence to the aristocracy, rendered the constitution of the State
more solid and durable, the democracy had at first no reason for
congratulation. Two hundred years passed away before the plebeians could
obtain, not equality of political rights, but even a share in the _ager
publicus_ and an act of lenity in favour of debtors, overwhelmed with
liabilities through incessant wars. About the same length of time was
required by the Republic to re-conquer the supremacy over the
neighbouring peoples which she had exercised under the last kings,[150]
so many years a country requires to recover from the shocks and
enfeebling influence of even the most legitimate revolutions.
Yet Roman society had been vigorously enough constituted to resist at
the same time external attacks and internal troubles. Neither the
invasions of Porsenna, nor those of the Gauls, nor the conspiracies of
the neighbouring peoples, were able to compromise its existence. Already
eminent men, such as Valerius Publicola, A. Postumius, Coriolanus,
Spurius Cassius, Cincinnatus, and Camillus, had distinguished themselves
as legislators and warriors, and Rome could put on foot ten legions, or
forty-five thousand men. At home, important advantages had been
obtained, and notable concessions had been made to effect a
reconciliation between the two orders; written laws had been adopted,
and the attributes of the different magistracies had been better
defined, but the constitution of society remained the same. The facility
granted to the plebeians of arriving at all the State employments only
increased the strength of the aristocracy, which recovered its vigour of
youth without modifying itself, diminished the number of its
adversaries, and increased that of its adherents. The rich and important
plebeian families soon began to mingle with the ancient patrician
families, to share their ideas, their interests, and even their
prejudices; and a learned German historian remarks with justice that
after the abolition of the kingly power there was, perhaps, a greater
number of plebeians in the Senate, but that personal merit, without
birth and fortune, experienced greater difficulty than ever in reaching
preferment.[151]
It is not indeed sufficient, for the application of the state of
society, to study thoroughly its laws, but we must also take into
consideration the influence exercised by the manners of the people. The
laws proclaimed equality and liberty, but the manners left the honours
and preponderance to the upper class. The admission to place was no
longer forbidden to the plebeians, but the election almost always kept
them from it. During fifty-nine years, two hundred and sixty-four
military tribunes replaced the consuls, and of this number only eighteen
were plebeians; although these latter might be candidates for the
consulship, the choice fell generally upon patricians.[152] Marriage
between the two orders had been long placed on a footing of equality,
and yet, in 456, the prejudices of caste were far from being destroyed,
as we learn from the history of the patrician Virginia, married to the
plebeian Volumnius, whom the matrons drove away from the temple of
_Pudicitia patricia_.[153]
The laws protected liberty, but they were rarely executed, as is shown
by the continual renewal of the same regulations. Thus it had been
decided in 305 that the plebiscita should have the force of law, yet in
spite of that it was found necessary to re-enact the same regulation by
the laws Hortensia, in 466, and Mænia, in 468. This last sanctioned also
anew the law Publilia of 415. It was the same with the law of Valerius
Publicola (of the year 246), which authorised an appeal to the people
from the judgments of the magistrates. It appears to have been restored
to vigour by Valerius and Horatius in 305, and again by Valerius Corvus
in 454. And, on this occasion, the great Roman historian exclaims, “I
can only explain this frequent renewal of the same law by supposing that
the power of some of the great ones always succeeded in triumphing over
the liberty of the people.”[154] The right of admission to the Senate
was acknowledged in principle, yet no one could enter it without having
obtained a decree of the censor, or exercised a curule
magistracy--favours almost always reserved to the aristocracy. The law
which required a plebeian among the censors remained almost always in
abeyance, and, to become censor, it was generally necessary to have been
consul.
All offices ought to be annual, and yet the tribunes, as well as the
consuls, obtained their re-election several times at short intervals--as
in the instance of Licinius Stolo, re-elected tribune during nine
consecutive years; of Sulpicius Peticus, five times consul (from 390 to
403); of Popilius Lænas and Marcius Rutilus, both four times, the first
from 395 to 406, the second from 397 to 412. The law of 412 came in vain
to require an interval of ten years before becoming again a candidate
for the same magistracy. Several personages were none the less
re-elected before the time required, such as Valerius Corvus, six times
consul (from 406 to 455), and consecutively during the last three years;
and Papirius Cursor, five times (from 421 to 441).
The lives of the citizens were protected by the laws, but public opinion
remained powerless at the assassination of those who had incurred the
hatred of the Senate; and, in spite of the law of the consul Valerius
Publicola, the violent death of the tribune Genucius, or of the rich
plebeian Spurius Melius, was a subject of applause.
The comitia were free, but the Senate had at its disposal either the
veto of the tribunes or the religious scruples of the people. A consul
could prevent the meeting of these assemblies, or cut short all their
deliberations, either by declaring that he was observing the sky, or
that a clap of thunder or some other celestial manifestation had
occurred;[155] and it depended upon the declaration of the augurs to
annul the elections. Moreover, the people in reality were satisfied with
naming the persons on whom they wished to confer the magisterial
offices, for, to enter upon their functions, the consuls and the
prætors had to submit their powers to the sanction of the curiæ (_lex
curiata de imperio_).[156] It was thus in the power of the nobility to
reverse the elections which displeased them, a fact which Cicero
explains in the following terms, while presenting this measure in a
light favourable to the people: “Your ancestors required the suffrages
twice for all magistracies, for, when a curiate law was proposed in
favour of the patrician magistrates, they voted in reality a second time
for the same persons, so that the people, if they repented of their
choice, had the power of abandoning it.”[157]
The dictatorship was also a lever left in the hands of the nobility to
overthrow oppositions and influence the comitia. The dictator was never
elected, but appointed by a consul.[158] In the space of only twenty-six
years, from 390 to 416, there were eighteen dictators.
The Senate remained, therefore, all powerful in spite of the victory of
the plebeians, for, independently of the means placed at its disposal,
it was in its power to elude the plebiscita, the execution of which was
entrusted to it. If the influence of a predominant class sobered the use
of political liberty, the laws presented a still greater curb on
individual liberty. Thus, not only all the members of the family were
subjected to the absolute authority of the head, but each citizen was
obliged further to obey a multitude of rigorous obligations.[159] The
censor watched over the purity of marriages, the education of children,
the treatment of slaves and clients, and the cultivation of the
lands.[160] “The Romans did not believe,” says Plutarch, “that each
individual ought to be allowed the liberty to marry, to have children,
to choose his walk in life, to give festivities, or even to follow his
desires and tastes, without undergoing a previous inspection and
judgment.”[161]
The condition of Rome then bore a great resemblance to that of England
before its electoral reform. For several centuries, the English
Constitution was vaunted as the palladium of liberty, although then, as
at Rome, birth and fortune were the unique source of honours and power.
In both countries the aristocracy, master of the elections by
solicitation, money, or _rotten boroughs_, caused, as the patricians at
Rome, the members of the nobility to be elected to parliament, and no
one was citizen in either of the two countries without the possession of
wealth. Nevertheless, if the people, in England, had no part in the
direction of affairs, they boasted justly, before 1789, a liberty which
shone brightly in the middle of the silentious atmosphere of the
Continental states. The disinterested observer does not examine if the
scene where grave political questions are discussed is more or less
vast, or if the actors are more or less numerous: he is only struck by
the grandeur of the spectacle. Thus, far be from us the intention of
blaming the nobility, any more in Rome than in England, for having
preserved its preponderance by all the means which laws and habits
placed at its disposal. The power was destined to remain with the
patricians as long as they showed themselves worthy of it; and, it
cannot but be acknowledged, without their perseverance in the same
policy, without that elevation of views, without that severe and
inflexible virtue, the distinguishing character of the aristocracy, the
work of Roman civilisation would not have been accomplished.
At the beginning of the fifth century, the Republic, consolidated, is
going to gather the fruit of the many efforts it has sustained. More
united henceforward, in the interior, the Romans will turn all their
energy towards the conquest of Italy, but it will require nearly a
century to realise it. Always stimulated by their institutions, always
restrained by an intelligent aristocracy, they will furnish the
astonishing example of a people preserving, in the name of liberty and
in the midst of agitation, the immobility of a system which will render
them masters of the world.
CHAPTER III.
CONQUEST OF ITALY.
(From 416 to 488.)
[Sidenote: Description of Italy.]
I. Ancient Italy did not comprise all the territory which has for its
natural limits the Alps and the sea. What is called the continental
part, or the great plain traversed by the Po, which extends between the
Alps, the Apennines, and the Adriatic, was separated from it. This
plain, and part of the mountains on the coasts of the Mediterranean,
formed Liguria, Cisalpine Gaul, and Venetia. The peninsula, or Italy
proper, was bounded, on the north, by the Rubicon, and, probably, by the
lower course of the Arno;[162] on the west, by the Mediterranean; on the
east, by the Adriatic; on the south, by the Ionian Sea. (See the Maps,
No. 1 and No. 2.)
[Illustration: GENERAL MAP OF ANCIENT ITALY.]
The Apennines traverse Italy in its whole length. They begin where the
Alps end, near Savona, and their chain proceeds, continually rising in
elevation, as far as the centre of the peninsula. Mount Velino is their
culminating point, and from thence the Apennines continue decreasing in
height, until they reach the extremity of the kingdom of Naples. In
the northern region they approach the Adriatic; but, in the centre,
they cut the peninsula into two parts nearly equal; then, at Mount
Caruso (_Vultur_), near the source of the Bradano (_Bradanus_), they
separate into two branches, one of which penetrates into Calabria, the
other into the Terra di Bari as far as Otranto.
The two slopes of the Apennines give birth to various streams which flow
some into the Adriatic and others into the Mediterranean. On the eastern
side the principal are--the Rubicon, the Pisaurus (_Foglia_), the
Metaurus (_Metauro_), the Æsis (_Esino_), the Truentus (_Tronto_), the
Aternus (_Pescara_), the Sangrus (_Sangro_), the Trinius (_Trigno_), the
Frento (_Fortore_), and the Aufidus (_Ofanto_), which follow generally a
direction perpendicular to the chain of mountains. On the western side,
the Arnus (_Arno_), the Ombrus (_Ombrone_), the Tiber, the Amasenus
(_Amaseno_), the Liris (_Garigliano_), the Vulturnus (_Volturno_), and
the Silarus (_Silaro_ or _Sile_), run parallel to the Apennines; but
towards their mouths they take a direction nearly perpendicular to the
coast. The Bradanus (_Bradano_), the Casuentus (_Basiento_), and the
Aciris (_Agri_), flow into the Gulf of Tarentum.
We may admit into ancient Italy the following great divisions and
subdivisions:--
To the north, the Senones, a people of Gallic origin, occupying the
shores of the Adriatic Sea, from the Rubicon to the neighbourhood of
Ancona; Umbria, situated between the Senones and the course of the
Tiber; Etruria, between the Tiber and the Mediterranean Sea.
In the centre the territory of Picenum, between Ancona and Hadria, in
the Abruzzo Ulteriore; Latium, in the part between the Apennines and the
Mediterranean, from the Tiber to the Liris; to the south of Latium, the
Volsci, and the Aurunci, the _débris_ of the ancient Ausones, retired
between the Liris and the Amasenus, and bordering upon another people of
the same race, the Sidicines, established between the Liris and the
Vulturnus; the country of the Sabines, between Picenum and Latium; to
the east of Latium, in the mountains, the Æqui; the Hernici, backed by
the populations of Sabellian stock, namely, the Marsi, the Peligni, the
Vestini, the Marrucini, and the Frentani, distributed in the valleys
through which run the rivers received by the Adriatic from the extremity
of Picenum to the River Fortore.
The territory of Samnium, answering to the great part of the Abruzzi and
the province of Molisa, advanced towards the west as far as the upper
arm of the Vulturnus, on the north to the banks of the Fortore, and to
the south to Mount Vultur. Beyond the Vulturnus extended Campania
(_Terra di Lavoro and part of the principality of Salerno_), from
Sinuessa to the Gulf of Pæstum.
Southern Italy, or Magna Græcia, comprised on the Adriatic: first,
Apulia (the _Capitanata_ and _Terra di Bari_) and Messapia (_Terra di
Otranto_); this last terminated in the Iapygian Promontory, and its
central part was occupied by the Salentini and divers other Messapian
populations, while there existed on the seaboard a great number of Greek
colonies; secondly, Lucania, which answered nearly to the modern
province of Basilicata, and was washed by the waters of the Gulf of
Tarentum; thirdly, Bruttium (now the _Calabrias_), forming the most
advanced point of Italy, and terminating in the Promontory of Hercules.
[Sidenote: Dispositions of the People of Italy in regard to Rome.]
II. In 416, Rome had finally subdued the Latins, and possessed part of
Campania. Her supremacy extended from the present territory of Viterbo
to the Gulf of Naples, from Antium (_Porto di Anzo_) to Sora.
The frontiers of the Republic were difficult to defend, her limits ill
determined, and her neighbours the most warlike people of the peninsula.
To the north only, the mountains of Viterbo, covered with a thick forest
(_silva Ciminia_), formed a rampart against Etruria. The southern part
of this country had been long half Roman; the Latin colonies of Sutrium
(_Sutri_) and Nepete (_Nepi_) served as posts of observation. But the
Etruscans, animated for ages with hostile feeling towards Rome,
attempted continually to recover the lost territory. The Gaulish
Senones, who, in 364, had taken and burnt Rome, and often renewed their
invasions, had come again to try their fortune. In spite of their
defeats in 404 and 405, they were always ready to join the Umbrians and
Etruscans in attacking the Republic.
The Sabines, though entertaining from time immemorial tolerably amicable
relations with the Romans, offered but a doubtful alliance. Picenum, a
fertile and populous country, was peaceful, and the greater part of the
mountain tribes of Sabellic race, in spite of their bravery and energy,
inspired as yet no fear. Nearer Rome, the Æqui and the Hernici had been
reduced to inaction; but the Senate kept in mind their hostilities and
nourished projects of vengeance.
On the southern coast, among the Greek towns devoted to commerce,
Tarentum passed for the most powerful; but these colonies, already in
decline, were obliged to have recourse to mercenary troops, to resist
the native inhabitants. They disputed with the Samnites and the Romans
the preponderance over the people of Magna Græcia. The Samnites, indeed,
a manly and independent race, aimed at seizing the whole of Southern
Italy; their cities formed a confederacy, redoubtable on account of its
close union in time of war. The mountain tribes gave themselves up to
brigandage, and it is worthy of attention that recent events show that
in our days manners have not much changed in that country. The Samnites
had amassed considerable riches; their arms displayed excessive
extravagance, and, if we believe Cæsar,[163] they served as models for
those of the Romans.
A jealous rivalry had long prevailed between the Romans and the
Samnites. The moment these two peoples found themselves in presence of
each other, it was evident that they would be at war; the struggle was
long and terrible, and, during the fifth century, it was round Samnium
that they disputed the empire of Italy. The position of the Samnites was
very advantageous. Entrenched in their mountains, they could, at their
will, either descend into the valley of the Liris, thence reach the
country of the Aurunci, always ready to revolt, and cut off the
communications of Rome with Campania; or follow the course of the upper
Liris into the country of the Marsi, raise these latter, and hold out
the hand to the Etruscans, turning Rome; or, lastly, penetrate into
Campania by the valley of the Vulturnus, and fall upon the Sidicini,
whose territory they coveted.
In the midst of so many hostile peoples, for a little state to succeed
in raising itself above the others, and in subjugating them, it must
have possessed peculiar elements of superiority. The peoples who
surrounded Rome, warlike and proud of their independence, had neither
the same unity, nor the same incentives to action, nor the same powerful
aristocratic organisation, nor the same blind confidence in their
destinies. They displayed more selfishness than ambition. When they
fought, it was much more to increase their riches by pillage than to
augment the number of their subjects. Rome triumphed, because alone, in
prospect of a future, she made war not to destroy, but to conserve, and,
after the material conquest, always set herself to accomplish the moral
conquest of the vanquished.
During four hundred years her institutions had formed a race animated
with the love of country and with the sentiment of duty; but, in their
turn, the men, incessantly re-tempered in intestine struggles, had
successively introduced manners and traditions stronger even than the
institutions themselves. During three centuries, in fact, Rome
presented, in spite of the annual renewal of powers, such a perseverance
in the same policy, such a practice of the same virtues, that it might
have been supposed that the government had but a single head, a single
thought, and one might have believed that all its generals were great
warriors, all its senators experienced statesmen, and all its citizens
valiant soldiers.
The geographical position of Rome contributed no less to the rapid
increase of its power. Situated in the middle of the only great fertile
plain of Latium, on the banks of the only important river of Central
Italy, which united it with the sea, it could be at the same time
agricultural and maritime, conditions then indispensable for the capital
of a new empire. The rich countries which bordered the coasts of the
Mediterranean were sure to fall easily under her dominion; and as for
the countries which surrounded her, it was possible to become mistress
of them by occupying gradually the openings from all the valleys. The
town of the seven hills, favoured by her natural situation as well as by
her political constitution, carried thus in herself the germs of her
future greatness.
[Sidenote: Treatment of the Vanquished Peoples.]
III. From the commencement of the fifth century Rome prepares with
energy to subject and assimilate to herself the peoples who dwelt from
the Rubicon to the Strait of Messina. Nothing will prevent her from
surmounting all obstacles, neither the coalition of her neighbours
conspiring against her, nor the new incursions of the Gauls, nor the
invasion of Pyrrhus. She will know how to raise herself from her partial
defeats, and establish the unity of Italy, not by subduing at once all
these peoples to the same laws and the same rule, but by causing them
to enter, by little and little and in different degrees, into the great
Roman family. “Of one city she makes her ally; on another she confers
the honour of living under the Quiritary law, to this one with the right
of suffrage, to that with the permission to retain its own government.
Municipia of different degrees, maritime colonies, Latin colonies, Roman
colonies, prefectures, allied towns, free towns, all isolated by the
difference of their condition, all united by their equal dependence on
the Senate, they will form, as it were, a vast network which will
entangle the Italian peoples, until the day when, without new struggles,
they will awake subjects of Rome.”[164]
Let us examine the conditions of these various categories:
The right of city, in its plenitude (_jus civitatis optimo jure_),
comprised the political privileges peculiar to the Romans, and assured
for civil life certain advantages, of which the concession might be made
separately and by degrees. First came the _commercium_, that is, the
right of possessing and transmitting according to the Roman law; next
the _connubium_, or the right of contracting marriage with the
advantages established by Roman legislation.[165] The _commercium_ and
_connubium_ united formed the Quiritary law (_jus quiritium_).
There were three sorts of municipia:[166] first, the municipia of which
the inhabitants, inscribed in the tribes, exercised all the rights and
were subjected to all the obligations of the Roman citizens; secondly,
the municipia _sine suffragio_, the inhabitants of which enjoyed in
totality or in part the Quiritary law, and might obtain the complete
right of Roman citizens on certain conditions;[167] it is what
constituted the _jus Latii_; these first two categories preserved their
autonomy and their magistrates; third, the towns which had lost all
independence in exchange for the civil laws of Rome, but without
enjoyment, for the inhabitants, of the most important political rights;
it was the law of the _Cærites_, because Cære was the first town which
had been thus treated.[168]
Below the municipia, which had their own magistrates, came, in this
social hierarchy, the prefectures,[169] so called because a prefect was
sent there every year to administer justice.
The _dediticii_ were still worse treated. Delivered by victory to the
discretion of the Senate, they had been obliged to surrender their arms
and give hostages, to throw down their walls or receive a garrison
within them, to pay a tax, and to furnish a determinate contingent. With
the exclusion of these last, the towns which had not obtained for their
inhabitants the complete rights of Roman citizens belonged to the class
of allies (_fœderati socii_). Their condition differed according to
the nature of their engagements. Simple treaties of friendship,[170] or
of commerce,[171] or of offensive alliance, or offensive and
defensive,[172] concluded on the footing of equality, were called
_fœdera æqua_. On the contrary, when one of the contracting parties
(and it was never the Romans) submitted to onerous obligations from
which the other was exempted, these treaties were called _fœdera non
æqua_. They consisted almost always in the cession of a part of the
territory of the vanquished, and in the obligation to undertake no war
of their own. A certain independence, it is true, was left to them; they
received the right of exchange and free establishment in the capital,
but they were bound to the interests of Rome by an alliance offensive
and defensive. The only clause establishing the preponderance of Rome
was conceived in these terms: _Majestatem populi Romani comiter
conservanto_;[173] that is, “They shall loyally acknowledge the
supremacy of the Roman people.” It is a remarkable circumstance that,
dating from the reign of Augustus, the freedmen were divided in
categories similar to those which existed for the inhabitants of
Italy.[174]
As to the colonies, they were established for the purpose of preserving
the possessions acquired, of securing the new frontiers, and of guarding
the important passes; and even for the sake of getting rid of the
turbulent class.[175] They were of two sorts: the Roman colonies and the
Latin colonies. The former differed little from the municipia of the
first degree, the others from the municipia of the second degree. The
first were formed of Roman citizens, taken with their families from the
classes subjected to military service, and even, in their origin, solely
among the patricians. The _coloni_ preserved the privileges attached to
the title of citizen,[176] and were bound by the same obligations, and
the interior administration of the colony was an image of that of
Rome.[177]
The Latin colonies differed from the others in having been founded by
the confederacy of the Latins on different points of Latium. Emanating
from a league of independent cities, they were not, like the Roman
colonies, tied by close bonds to the metropolis.[178] But the
confederacy once dissolved, these colonies were placed in the rank of
allied towns (_socii Latini_). The act (_formula_) which instituted them
was a sort of _treaty_ guaranteeing their franchise.[179]
Peopled at first by Latins, it was not long before these colonies
received Roman citizens who were induced by their poverty to exchange
their title and rights for the advantages assured to the colonists.
These did not figure on the lists of the censors. The _formula_ fixed
simply the tribute to pay and the number of soldiers to furnish. What
the colony lost in privileges it gained in independence.[180]
The isolation of the Latin colonies, placed in the middle of the enemy’s
territory, obliged them to remain faithful to Rome, and to keep watch on
the neighbouring peoples. Their military importance was at least equal
to that of the Roman colonies; they merited as well as these latter the
name of _propugnacula imperii_ and of _specula_,[181] that is, bulwarks
and watch-towers of the conquest. In a political point of view they
rendered services of a similar kind. If the Roman colonies announced to
the conquered people the majesty of the Roman name, their Latin sisters
gave an ever-increasing extension to the _nomen Latinum_,[182] that is,
to the language, manners, and whole civilisation of that race of which
Rome was but the first representative. The Latin colonies were
ordinarily founded to economise the colonies of Roman citizens, which
were charged principally with the defence of the coasts and the
maintenance of commercial relations with foreign people.
In making the privileges of the Roman citizen an advantage which every
one was happy and proud to acquire, the Senate held out a bait to all
ambitions; and this general desire, not to destroy the privilege, but to
gain a place among the privileged, is a characteristic trait of the
manners of antiquity. In the city not less than in the State, the
insurgents or discontented did not seek, as in our modern societies, to
overthrow, but to attain to. So every one, according to his position,
aspired to a legitimate object: the plebeians to enter into the
aristocracy, not to destroy it; the Italic peoples, to have a part in
the sovereignty of Rome, not to contest it; the Roman provinces to be
declared allies and friends of Rome, and not to recover their
independence.
The peoples could judge, according to their conduct, what lot was
reserved for them. The paltry interests of city were replaced by an
effectual protection, and by new rights often more precious, in the eyes
of the vanquished, than independence itself. This explains the facility
with which the Roman domination was established. In fact, that only is
destroyed entirely which may be replaced advantageously.
A rapid glance at the wars which effected the conquest of Italy will
show how the Senate made application of the principles stated above; how
it was skilful in profiting by the divisions of its adversaries, in
collecting its whole strength to overwhelm one of them; after the
victory in making it an ally; in using the aims and resources of that
ally to subjugate another people; in crushing the confederacies which
united the vanquished against it; in attaching them to Rome by new
bonds; in establishing military posts on all the points of strategic
importance; and, lastly, in spreading everywhere the Latin race by
distributing to Roman citizens a part of the lands taken from the enemy.
But, before entering upon the recital of events, we must cast a glance
upon the years which immediately preceded the pacification of Latium.
[Sidenote: Submission of Latium after the first Samnite War.]
IV. During a hundred and sixty-seven years, Rome had been satisfied with
struggling against her neighbours to re-conquer a supremacy lost since
the fall of her kings. She held herself almost always on the defensive;
but, with the fifth century, she took the offensive, and inaugurated the
system of conquests continued to the moment when she herself succumbed.
In 411, she had, in concert with the Latins, combated the Samnites for
the first time, and commenced against that redoubtable people a
struggle which lasted seventy-two years, and which brought twenty-four
triumphs to the Roman generals.[183] Proud of having contributed to the
two great victories of Mount Gaurus and Suessula, the Latins, with an
exaggerated belief in their own strength and a pretension to equality
with Rome, went so far as to require that one of the two consuls, and
half of the senators, should be chosen from their nation. War was
immediately declared. The Senate was willing enough to have allies and
subjects, but it could not suffer equals; it accepted without scruple
the services of those who had just been enemies, and the Romans, united
with the Samnites, the Hernici, and the Sabellian peoples, were seen in
the fields of the Veseris and Trifanum, fighting against the Latins and
Volsci. Latium once reduced, it remained to determine the lot of the
vanquished. Livy reports a speech of Camillus which explains clearly the
policy recommended by that great citizen. “Will you,” he exclaims,
addressing the members of the assembly, “use the utmost rigour of the
rights of victory? You are masters to destroy all Latium, and to make a
vast desert of it, after having often drawn from it powerful succours.
Will you, on the contrary, after the example of your fathers, augment
the resources of Rome? Admit the vanquished among the number of your
citizens; it is a fruitful means of increasing at the same time your
power and your glory.”[184] This last counsel prevailed.
The first step was to break the bonds which made of the Latin people a
sort of confederacy. All political communalty, all war on their own
account, all rights of _commercium_ and _connubium_, between the
different cities, were taken from them.[185]
The towns nearest Rome received the rights of city and suffrage.[186]
Others received the title of allies and the privilege of preserving
their own institutions, but they lost a part of their territory.[187] As
to the Latin colonies founded before in the old country of the Volsci,
they formed the nucleus of the Latin allies (_socii nominis Latini_).
Velitræ, alone, having already revolted several times, was treated with
great rigour; Antium was compelled to surrender its ships, and become a
maritime colony.
These severe, but equitable measures, had pacified Latium; applied to
the rest of Italy, and even to foreign countries, they will facilitate
everywhere the progress of Roman domination.
The momentary alliance with the Samnites had permitted Rome to reduce
the Latins; nevertheless the Senate, without hesitation, turned against
the former again as soon as the moment appeared convenient. It
concluded, in 422, a treaty with the Gauls and Alexander Molossus, who,
having landed near Pæstum, attacked the Lucanians and the Samnites. This
King of Epirus, the uncle of Alexander the Great, had been called into
Italy by the Tarentines; but his premature death disappointed the hopes
to which his co-operation had given rise, and the Samnites recommenced
their incursions on the lands of their neighbours. The intervention of
Rome put a stop to the war. All the forces of the Republic were employed
in reducing the revolt of the Volscian towns of Fundi and
Privernum.[188] In 425, Anxur (_Terracina_) was declared a Roman colony,
and, in 426, Fregellæ (_Ceprano?_), a Latin colony.
The establishment of these fortresses, and of those of Cales and Antium,
secured the communications with Campania; the Liris and the Vulturnus
became in that direction the principal lines of defence of the Romans.
The cities situated on the shores of that magnificent gulf called
_Crater_ by the ancients, and in our days the _Gulf of Naples_,
perceived then the dangers which threatened them. They turned their eyes
towards the population of the interior, who were no less alarmed for
their independence.
[Sidenote: Second Samnite War.]
V. The fertile countries which bordered the western shore of the
peninsula were destined to excite the covetousness of the Romans and the
Samnites, and become the prey of the conqueror. “Campania, indeed,” says
Florus,[189] “is the finest country of Italy, and even of the whole
world. There is nothing milder than its climate. Spring flourishes there
twice every year. There can be nothing more fertile than its soil. It is
called the garden of Ceres and Bacchus. There is not a more hospitable
sea than that which bathes its shores.” In 427, the two peoples
disputed the possession of it, as they had done in 411. The inhabitants
of Palæopolis having attacked the Roman colonists of the _ager
Campanus_, the consuls marched against that place, which soon received
succour from the Samnites and the inhabitants of Nola, while Rome formed
an alliance with the Apulians and the Lucanians. The siege dragged on,
and the necessity of continuing the campaign beyond the ordinary limit
led to the prolongation of the command of Publilius Philo with the title
of proconsul, which appeared for the first time in the military annals.
The Samnites were soon driven from Campania; the Palæopolitans
submitted; their town was demolished; but they formed close to it a new
establishment, at Naples (_Neapolis_), where a new treaty guaranteed
them an almost absolute independence, on the condition of furnishing a
certain number of vessels to Rome. After that, nearly all the Greek
towns, reduced one after another, obtained the same favourable
conditions, and formed the class of the _socii navales_.[190]
Yet the war was protracted in the mountains of the Apennine. Tarentum
united with the Samnites, the only people who were still to be
feared,[191] and the Lucanians abandoned the alliance of the Romans;
but, in 429, the two most celebrated captains of the time, Q. Fabius
Rullianus and Papirius Cursor, penetrated into the country of Samnium,
and compelled the enemy to pay an indemnity for the war and accept a
year’s truce.
At this epoch, an unforeseen event, which changed the destinies of the
world, came to demonstrate the difference between the rapid creation of
a man of genius and the patient work of an intelligent aristocracy.
Alexander the Great, after having shone like a meteor, and brought into
subjection the most powerful kingdoms of Asia, died at Babylon. His
fruitful and decisive influence, which carried the civilization of
Greece into the East, survived him, but at his death, the empire he
founded became in a few years dismembered (431); the Roman aristocracy,
on the contrary, perpetuating itself from age to age, pursued more
slowly, but without interruption, the system which, binding again the
peoples about a common centre, was destined by little and little to
secure her domination over Italy first, and then over the universe.
The defection of a part of the Apulians, in 431, encouraged the Samnites
to take arms again; defeated in the following years, they asked for the
restoration of friendly relations, but the haughty refusal of Rome led,
in 433, to the famous defeat of the Furcæ Caudinæ. The generosity of the
Samnite general, Pontus Herennius, who granted their lives to so many
thousands of prisoners on condition of restoring to force the old
treaties, had no effect upon the Senate. Four legions had passed under
the yoke--a circumstance in which the Senate only saw a new affront to
revenge. The treaty of Caudium was not ratified, and subterfuges little
excusable, although approved at a later period by Cicero,[192] gave to
the refusal an appearance of justice.
Meanwhile the Senate exerted itself vigorously to repair this check, and
soon Publilius Philo defeated the enemies in Samnium, and, in Apulia,
Papirius, in his turn, caused seven thousand Samnites to pass under the
yoke. The vanquished solicited peace, but in vain; they only obtained a
truce for two years (436), and it had hardly expired, when, penetrating
into the country of the Volsci, as far as the neighbourhood of
Terracina, and taking a position at Lautulæ, they defeated a Roman army
raised hastily and commanded by Q. Fabius (439). Capua deserted, and
Nola, Nuceria, the Aurunci, and the Volsci of the Liris took part openly
with the Samnites. The spirit of rebellion spread as far as Præneste.
Rome was in danger. The Senate required its utmost energy to restrain
populations whose fidelity was always doubtful. Fortune seconded its
efforts, and the allies, who had proved traitors, received a cruel
chastisement, explained by the terror they had inspired. In 440,[193]
not far from Caudium, a numerous army encountered the Samnites, who lost
30,000 men, and were driven back into the Apennine territory. The Roman
legions proceeded to encamp before their capital, Bovianum, and there
took up their winter quarters.
The year following (441), Rome, less occupied in fighting, profited by
this circumstance to seize upon advantageous positions, establishing in
Campania and Apulia colonies which surrounded the territory of Samnium.
At the same epoch, Appius Claudius transformed into a regular causeway
the road which has preserved his name.[194] The Romans turned their
attention to the defence of the coasts and communication by sea; a
colony was sent to the isle of Pontia,[195] opposite Tarracina, and the
armament of a fleet was commenced, which was placed under the command of
_duumviri navales_.[196] The war had lasted fifteen years, and, although
Rome had only succeeded in driving back the Samnites into their own
territory, she had conquered two provinces, Apulia and Campania.
[Sidenote: Third Samnite war. Coalition of Samnites, Etruscans,
Umbrians, and Hernici (443-449).]
VI. A struggle so desperate had produced its effect even in Etruria, and
the old league was formed again. Inured to war by their daily combats
with the Gauls, and emboldened by the reports of the defeat of Lautulæ,
the Etruscans believed that the moment had arrived for recovering their
ancient territory to the south of the Ciminian forest; they were further
encouraged by the attitude of the peoples of Central Italy, who were
weary of the continual passing of legions. From 443 to 449, the armies
of the Republic were obliged to face different enemies at the same time.
In Etruria, Fabius Rullianus relieved Sutrium, a rampart of Rome on the
north;[197] he passed through the Ciminian forest, and by the victories
of Lake Vadimo (445)[198] and Perusia compelled all the Etruscan towns
to ask for peace. At the same time, an army laid waste the country of
the Samnites; and a Roman fleet, composed of vessels furnished by the
maritime allies, took the offensive for the first time. Its attempt near
Nuceria Alfaterna (_Nocera_, a town of Campania) was unfortunate.
War next breaks out again in Apulia, Samnium, and Etruria, where the
aged Papirius Cursor, named dictator anew, gains a brilliant victory at
Langula (445). The year following Fabius penetrates again into Samnium,
and the other consul, Decius, maintains Etruria. Suddenly the Umbrians
conceive the project of seizing Rome by surprise. The consuls are
recalled for the defence of the town. Fabius meets the Etruscans at
Mevania (on the confines of Etruria and Umbria), and, the year
following, at Allifæ (447). Among the prisoners were some Æqui and
Hernici. Their towns, feeling themselves thus compromised, declared open
war against the Romans (448). The Samnites recovered courage; but the
prompt reduction of the Hernici allowed the Senate to concentrate its
forces. Two armies, penetrating into Samnium by way of Apulia and
Campania, re-established the old frontiers. Bovianum was taken for the
third time, and during six months the country was delivered up to
devastation. In vain Tarentum tried to raise new quarrels for the
Republic, and to force the Lucanians to embrace the cause of the
Samnites. The successes of the Roman arms led to the conclusion of
treaties of peace with all the peoples of Southern Italy, constrained
thenceforward to acknowledge the _majesty_ of the Roman people. The Æqui
remained alone exposed to the wrath of Rome; the Senate did not forget
that at Allifæ they had fought in the ranks of the enemy, and, once
freed from its more serious embarrassments, it inflicted on this people
a terrible chastisement: forty-one places were taken and burnt in fifty
days. This period of six years thus terminated with the submission of
the Hernici and Æqui.
Five years less agitated left Rome time to regulate the position of its
new subjects, and to establish colonies and ways of communication.
The Hernici were treated in the same manner as the Latins, in 416, and
deprived of _commercium_ and _connubium_. Prefects and the law of the
Cærites were imposed on Anagnia, Frusino, and other towns guilty of
desertion. The cities which had remained faithful preserved their
independence and the title of allies (448);[199] the Æqui lost a part of
their territory and received the right of city without suffrage (450).
The Samnites, sufficiently humiliated, obtained at last the renewal of
their ancient conventions (450).[200] _Fœdera non æqua_ were
concluded with the Marsi, the Peligni, the Marrucini, the Frentani
(450), the Vestini (452), and the Picentini (455).[201] Rome treated
with Tarentum on a footing of equality, and engaged not to let her fleet
pass the Lacinian Promontory to the south of the Gulf of Tarentum.[202]
Thus, on the one hand, the territories shared among the Roman citizens;
on the other, the number of the municipia were considerably augmented.
Further, the Republic had acquired new allies; she possessed at length
the passages of the Apennines and commanded both seas.[203] A girdle of
Latin fortresses protected Rome and broke the communications between the
north and south of Italy; among the Marsi and the Æqui, there were Alba
and Carseoli; Sora, towards the sources of the Liris; and Narnia, in
Umbria. Military roads connected the colonies with the metropolis.
[Sidenote: Fourth Samnite War. Second coalition of the Samnites,
Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls (456-464).]
VII. Peace could not last long: between Rome and the Samnites it was a
duel to death. In 456, these latter had already sufficiently recovered
from their disasters to attempt once more the fortune of arms.[204] Rome
sends to the succour of the Lucanians, suddenly attacked, two consular
armies. Vanquished at Tifernum by Fabius, at Maleventum by Decius, the
Samnites witness the devastation of their whole country. Still they do
not lose courage; their chief, Gellius Egnatius, conceives a plan which
places Rome in great danger. He divides the Samnite army into three
bodies: the first remains to defend the country; the second takes the
offensive in Campania; the third, which he commands in person, throws
itself into Etruria, and, increased by the junction of the Etruscans,
the Gauls, and the Umbrians, soon forms a numerous army.[205] The storm
roared on all sides, and, while the Roman generals were occupied some
in Samnium and others in Campania, despatches arrived from Appius,
placed at the head of the army of Etruria, announcing a terrible
coalition formed in silence by the peoples of the north, who were
concentrating all their forces in Umbria for the purpose of marching
upon Rome.
The terror was extreme, but the energy of the Romans was equal to the
danger. All able men, even to the freedmen, were enrolled, and ninety
thousand soldiers were raised. Under these grave circumstances (458),
Fabius and Decius were, once again, raised to the supreme magistracy,
and gained, under the walls of Sentinum, a brilliant victory, long
disputed. During the battle, Decius devoted himself, as his father had
done before. The coalition once dissolved, Fabius defeated another army
which had issued from Perusia, and then came to receive the honour of a
triumph in Rome. Etruria was subdued (460), and obtained a truce of
forty years.[206]
The Samnites still maintained an obstinate struggle of mingled successes
and reverses. In 461, after having taken an oath to conquer or die,
thirty thousand of them were left on the field of battle of Aquilonia. A
few months later, the celebrated Pontius, the hero of Furcæ Caudinæ,
re-appeared, at the end of twenty-nine years, at the head of his
fellow-citizens, and inflicted upon the son of Fabius a check, which the
latter soon retrieved with the assistance of his father.[207] Finally,
in 464, two Roman armies re-commenced, in Samnium, a war of
extermination, which led for the fourth time to the renewal of the
ancient treaties and the cession of a certain extent of territory. At
the same epoch, an insurrection which broke out in the Sabine territory
was put down by Curius Dentatus. Central Italy was conquered.
The peace with the Samnites lasted five years (464-469). Rome extended
her frontiers, and fortified those of the peoples placed under her
protectorate; and at the same time established new military forts.
The right of city without suffrage was accorded to the Sabines, and
prefects were given to some of the towns of the valley of the Vulturnus
(_Venafrum_ and _Allifæ_).[208] A Latin colony, of twenty thousand men,
was sent to Venusia to watch over Southern Italy.[209] It commanded at
the same time Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania. If, owing to the treaty
concluded with the Greek towns, the Roman supremacy extended over the
south of the peninsula, to the north the Etruscans could not be reckoned
as allies, since nothing more than truces had been concluded with them.
In Umbria, the small tribe of the Sarsinates remained independent, and
all the coast district from the Rubicon to the Æsis was in the power of
the Senones; on their southern frontier the Roman colony of Sena Gallica
(_Sinigaglia_) was founded; the coast of Picenum was watched by that of
Castrum Novum and by the Latin fortress of Hatria (465).[210]
[Sidenote: Third coalition of the Etruscans, Gauls, Lucanians, and
Tarentines (469-474).]
VIII. The power of Rome had increased considerably. The Samnites, who
hitherto had played the first part, were no longer in a condition to
plan further coalitions, and one people alone could hardly be rash
enough to provoke the Republic. Yet the Lucanians, always hesitating,
gave this time the signal for a general revolt.
The attack on Thurium, by the Lucanians and Bruttians, became the
occasion of a new league, into which entered successively the
Tarentines, the Samnites, the Etruscans, and even the Gauls. The north
was soon in flames, and Etruria again became the battle-field. A Roman
army, which had hastened to relieve Arretium, was put to rout by the
Etruscans united with Gaulish mercenaries. The Senones, to whom these
belonged, having massacred the Roman ambassadors sent to expostulate on
their violation of the treaty with the Republic, the Senate sent against
them two legions who drove them back beyond the Rubicon. The Gaulish
tribe of the Boians, alarmed by the fate of the Senones, descended
immediately into Umbria, and, rallying the Etruscans, prepared to march
to renew the sack of Rome; but their march was arrested, and two
successive victories, at Lake Vadimo, (471) and Populonia (472), enabled
the Senate to conclude a convention which drove back the Boians into
their old territory. Hostilities continued with the Etruscans during two
years, after which their submission completed the conquest of Northern
Italy.
[Sidenote: Pyrrhus in Italy. Submission of Tarentum (474-488).]
IX. Free to the north, the Romans turned their efforts against the
south of Italy; war was declared against Tarentum, the people of which
had attacked a Roman flotilla. While the consul Æmilius invested the
town, the first troops of Pyrrhus, called in by the Tarentines,
disembarked in the port (474).
This epoch marks a new phase in the destinies of Rome, who is going, for
the first time, to measure herself with Greece. Hitherto the legions
have never had to combat really regular armies, but they have become
disciplined in war by incessant struggles in the mountains of Samnium
and Etruria; henceforth they will have to face old soldiers disciplined
in skilful tactics and commanded by an experienced warrior. The King of
Epirus, after having already twice lost and recovered his kingdom, and
invaded and abandoned Macedonia, dreamt of conquering the West. On the
news of his arrival at the head of twenty-five thousand soldiers and
twenty elephants,[211] the Romans enrolled all citizens capable of
bearing arms, even the proletaries; but, admirable example of courage!
they rejected the support of the Carthaginian fleet with this proud
declaration: “The Republic only entertains wars which it can sustain
with its own forces.”[212] While fifty thousand men, under the orders of
the consul Lævinus, march against the King of Epirus, to prevent his
junction with the Samnites, another army enters Lucania. The consul
Tiberius Coruncanius holds Etruria, again in agitation. Lastly, an army
of reserve guards the capital.
Lævinus encountered the King of Epirus near Heraclea, a colony of
Tarentum (474). Seven times in succession the legions charged the
phalanx, which was on the point of giving way, when the elephants,
animals unknown to the Romans, decided the victory in favour of the
enemy. A single battle had delivered to Pyrrhus all the south of the
Peninsula, where the Greek towns received him with enthusiasm.
But, though victor, he had sustained considerable losses, and learned at
the same time the effeminacy of the Greeks of Italy, and the energy of a
people of soldiers. He offered peace, and asked of the Senate liberty
for the Samnites, the Lucanians, and especially for the Greek towns. Old
Appius Claudius declared it impossible so long as Pyrrhus occupied
Italian soil, and peace was refused. The king then resolved to march
upon Rome through Campania, where his troops made great booty.
Lævinus, made prudent by his defeat, satisfied himself with watching the
enemy’s army, and succeeded in covering Capua; whence he followed
Pyrrhus from place to place, looking out for a favourable opportunity.
This prince, advancing by the Latin Way, had reached Præneste without
obstacle,[213] when, surrounded by three Roman armies, he found himself
under the necessity of falling back and retiring into Lucania. Next
year, reckoning on finding new auxiliaries among the peoples of the
east, he attacked Apulia; but the fidelity of the allies in Central
Italy was not shaken. Victorious at Asculum (_Ascoli di Satriano_)
(475), but without a decisive success, and encountering always the same
resistance, he seized the first opportunity of quitting Italy to conquer
Sicily (476-78). During this time, the Senate re-established the Roman
domination in Southern Italy, and even seized upon some of the Greek
towns, among the rest Locri and Heraclea.[214] Samnium, Lucania, and
Bruttium were again given up to the power of the legions, and forced to
surrender lands and renew treaties of alliance; on the coast, Tarentum
and Rhegium alone remained independent. The Samnites still resisted, and
the Roman army encamped in their country in 478 and 479. Meanwhile
Pyrrhus returns to Italy, reckoning on arriving in time to deliver
Samnium; but he is defeated at Beneventum by Curius Dentatus, and
returns to his country. The invasion of Pyrrhus, cousin of Alexander the
Great; and one of his successors, appears as one of the last efforts of
Grecian civilisation expiring at the feet of the rising grandeur of
Roman civilisation.
The war against the King of Epirus produced two remarkable results: it
improved the Romans in military tactics, and introduced between the
combatants those mutual regards of civilised nations which teach men to
honour their adversaries, to spare the vanquished, and to lay aside
wrath when the struggle is ended. The King of Epirus treated his Roman
prisoners with great generosity. Cineas, sent to the Senate at Rome, and
Fabricius, envoy to Pyrrhus, carried back from their mission a profound
respect for those whom they had combated.
In the following years Rome took Tarentum (482),[215] finally pacified
Samnium, and took possession of Rhegium (483-485). Since the battle of
Mount Gaurus, seventy-two years had passed, and several generations had
succeeded each other, without seeing the end of this long and sanguinary
quarrel. The Samnites had been nearly exterminated, and yet the spirit
of independence and liberty remained deeply rooted in their mountains.
When, at the end of two centuries and a half, the war of the allies
shall come, it is there still that the cause of equality of rights will
find its strongest support.
The other peoples underwent quickly the laws of the conqueror. The
inhabitants of Picenum, as a punishment for their revolt, were despoiled
of a part of their territory, and a certain number among them received
new lands in the south of Campania, near the Gulf of Salernum
(_Picentini_)(486). In 487, the submission of the Salentines allowed the
Romans to seize Brundusium, the most important port of the
Adriatic.[216] The Sarsinates were reduced the years following.[217]
Finally, Volsinium, a town of Etruria, was again numbered among the
allies of the Republic. The Sabines received the right of suffrage.
Italy, become henceforth Roman, extended from the Rubicon to the Straits
of Messina.
[Sidenote: Preponderance of Rome.]
X. During this period, the conquest of the subjugated countries was
ensured by the foundation of colonies. Rome became thus encircled by a
girdle of fortresses commanding all the passages which led to Latium,
and closing the roads to Campania, Samnium, Etruria, and Gaul.[218]
At the opening of the struggle which ended in the conquest of Italy,
there were only twenty-seven tribes of Roman citizens; the creation of
eight new tribes (the two last in 513) raised finally the number to
thirty-five, of which twenty-one were reserved to the old Roman people
and fourteen to the new citizens. Of these the Etruscans had four; the
Latins, the Volsci, the Ausones, the Æqui, and the Sabines, each two;
but, these tribes being at a considerable distance from the capital, the
new citizens could hardly take part in the comitia, and the majority,
with its influence, remained with those who dwelt at Rome.[219] After
513, no more tribes were created; those who received the rights of
citizens were only placed in the previously existing tribes; so that the
members of one individual tribe were scattered in the provinces, and the
number of those inscribed went on increasing continually by individual
additions, and by the tendency more and more apparent to raise the
municipia of the second order to the rank of the first order. Thus,
towards the middle of the sixth century, the towns of the Æqui, the
Hernici, the Volsci, and a part of those of Campania, including the
ancient Samnite cities of Venafrum and Allifæ, obtained the right of
city with suffrage.
Rome, towards the end of the fifth century, thus ruled, though in
different degrees, the peoples of Italy proper. The Italian State, if we
may give it that name, was composed of a reigning class, the citizens;
of a class protected, or held in guardianship, the allies; and of a
third class, the subjects. Allies or subjects were all obliged to
furnish military contingents. The maritime Greek towns furnished sailors
to the fleet. Even the cities, which preserved their independence for
their interior affairs, obeyed, so far as the military administration
was concerned, special functionaries appointed by the metropolis.[220]
The consuls had the right of raising in the countries bordering on the
theatre of war all men capable of bearing arms. The equipment and pay of
the troops remained at the charge of the cities; Rome provided for their
maintenance during war. The auxiliary infantry was ordinarily equal in
number to that of the Romans, the cavalry double or triple.
In exchange for this military assistance, the allies had a right to a
part of the conquered territory, and, in return for an annual rent, to
the usufruct of the domains of the State. These domains, considerable in
the peninsula,[221] formed the sole source of income which the treasury
derived from the allies, free in other respects from tribute. Four
questors (_quæstores classici_) were established to watch over the
execution of the orders of the Senate, the equipment of the fleet, and
the collection of the farm-rents.
Rome reserved to herself exclusively the direction of the affairs of the
exterior, and presided alone over the destinies of the Republic. The
allies never interfered in the decisions of the Forum, and each town
kept within the narrow limits of its communal administration. The
Italian nationality was thus gradually constituted by means of this
political centralisation, without which the different peoples would have
mutually weakened each other by intestine wars, more ruinous than
foreign wars, and Italy would not have been in a condition to resist the
double pressure of the Gauls and the Carthaginians.
The form adopted by Rome to rule Italy was the best possible, but only
as a transition form. The object to be aimed at was, in fact, the
complete assimilation of all the inhabitants of the peninsula, and this
was evidently the aim of the wise policy of the Camilli and the Fabii.
When we consider that the colonies of citizens presented the faithful
image of Rome; that the Latin colonies had analogous institutions and
laws; and that a great number of Roman citizens and Latin allies were
dispersed, in the different countries of the peninsula, over the vast
territories ceded as the consequence of war, we may judge how rapid must
have been the diffusion of Roman manners and the Latin language.
If Rome, in later times, had not the wisdom to seize the favourable
moment in which assimilation, already effected in people’s minds, might
have passed into the domain of facts, the reason of it was the
abandonment of the principles of equity which had guided the Senate in
the first ages of the Republic, and, above all, the corruption of the
magnates, interested in maintaining the inferior condition of the
allies. The right of city extended to all the peoples of Italy, time
enough to be useful, would have given to the Republic a new force; but
an obstinate refusal became the cause of the revolution commenced by the
Gracchi, continued by Marius, extinguished for a moment by Sylla, and
completed by Cæsar.
[Sidenote: Strength of the Institutions.]
XI. At the epoch with which we are occupied, the Republic is in all its
splendour.
The institutions form remarkable men; the annual elections carry into
power those who are most worthy, and recall them to it after a short
interval. The sphere of action for the military chiefs does not extend
beyond the natural frontiers of the peninsula, and their ambition,
restrained in their duty by public opinion, does not exceed a legitimate
object, the union of all Italy under one dominion. The members of the
aristocracy seem to inherit the exploits as well as the virtues of their
ancestors, and neither poverty nor obscurity of birth prevent merit from
reaching it. Curius Dentatus, Fabricius, and Coruncanius, can show
neither riches nor the images of their ancestors, and yet they attain to
the highest dignities; in fact, the plebeian nobility walks on a footing
of equality with the patrician. Both, in separating from the multitude,
tend more and more to amalgamate together;[222] but they remain rivals
in patriotism and disinterestedness.
In spite of the taste for riches introduced by the war of the
Sabines,[223] the magistrates maintained their simplicity of manners,
and protected the public domain against the encroachments of the rich by
the rigorous execution of the law, which limited to five hundred acres
the property which an individual was allowed to possess.[224]
The first citizens presented the most remarkable examples of integrity
and self-denial. Marcus Valerius Corvus, after occupying twenty-one
curule offices, returns to his fields without fortune, though not
without glory (419). Fabius Rullianus, in the midst of his victories and
triumphs, forgets his resentment towards Papirius Cursor, and names him
dictator, sacrificing thus his private feelings to the interests of his
country (429). Marcus Curius Dentatus keeps for himself no part of the
rich spoils taken from the Sabines, and, after having vanquished
Pyrrhus, resumes the simplicity of country life (479).[225] Fabricius
rejects the money which the Samnites offer him for his generous
behaviour towards them, and disdains the presents of Pyrrhus (476).
Coruncanius furnishes an example of all the virtues.[226] Fabius Gurges,
Fabius Pictor, and Ogulnius, pour into the treasury the magnificent
gifts they had brought back from their embassy to Alexandria.[227] M.
Rutilius Censorinus, struck with the danger of entrusting twice in
succession the censorship in the same hands, refuses to be re-elected to
that office (488).
The names of many others might be cited, who, then and in later ages,
did honour to the Roman Republic; but let us add, that if the ruling
class knew how to call to it all the men of eminence, it forgot not to
recompense brilliantly those especially who favoured its interests:
Fabius Rullianus, for instance, the victor in so many battles, received
the name of “most great” (_Maximus_) only for having, at the time of his
censorship, annulled in the comitia the influence of the poor class,
composed of freedmen, whom he distributed among the urban tribes (454),
where their votes were lost in the multitude of others.[228]
The popular party, on its own side, ceased not to demand new
concessions, or to claim the revival of those which had fallen out of
use. Thus, it obtained, in 428, the re-establishment of the law of
Servius Tullius, which decided that the goods only of the debtor, and
not his body, should be responsible for his debt.[229] In 450, Flavius,
the son of a freedman, made public the calendar and the formulæ of
proceedings, which deprived the patricians of the exclusive knowledge of
civil and religious law.[230] But the lawyers found means of weakening
the effects of the measure of Flavius by inventing new formulæ, which
were almost unintelligible to the public.[231] The plebeians, in 454,
were admitted into the college of the pontiffs, and into that of the
augurs; the same year, it was found necessary to renew for the third
time the law Valeria, _de provocatione_.
In 468, the people again withdrew to the Janiculum, demanding the
remission of debts, and crying out against usury.[232] Concord was
restored only when they had obtained, first, by the law Hortensia, that
the plebiscita should be obligatory on all; and next, by the law Marcia,
that the orders obtained through Publilius Philo in 415 should be
restored to vigour. These orders, as we have seen above, obliged the
Senate to declare in advance whether or not the laws presented to the
comitia were contrary to public and religious law.[233]
The ambition of Rome seemed to be without bounds; yet all her wars had
for reason or pretext the defence of the weak and the protection of her
allies. Indeed, the cause of the wars against the Samnites was sometimes
the defence of the inhabitants of Capua, sometimes that of the
inhabitants of Palæopolis, sometimes that of the Lucanians. The war
against Pyrrhus had its origin in the assistance claimed by the
inhabitants of Thurium; and the support claimed by the Mamertines will
soon lead to the first Punic war.
The Senate, we have seen, put in practice the principles which found
empires and the virtues to which war gives birth. Thus, for all the
citizens, equality of rights; in face of danger to their country,
equality of duties and even suspension of liberty. To the most worthy,
honours and the command. No magisterial charge for him who has not
served in the ranks of the army. The example is furnished by the most
illustrious and richest families: at the battle of Lake Regillus (258),
the principal senators were mingled in the ranks of the legions;[234] at
the combat near the Cremera, the three hundred and six Fabii, who all,
according to Titus Livius, were capable of filling the highest offices,
perished fighting. Later, at Cannæ, eighty senators, who had enrolled
themselves as mere soldiers, fell on the field of battle.[235] The
triumph is accorded for victories which enlarged the territory, but not
for those which only recovered lost ground. No triumph in civil
wars:[236] in such case, success, be what it may, is always a subject
for public mourning. The consuls or proconsuls seek to be useful to
their country without false susceptibility; to-day in the first rank,
to-morrow in the second, they serve with the same devotion under the
orders of him whom they commanded the previous day. Servilius, consul in
281, becomes, the year following, the lieutenant of Valerius. Fabius,
after so many triumphs, consents to be only lieutenant to his son. At a
later period, Flamininus, who had vanquished the King of Macedonia,
descends again through patriotism, after the victory of Cynoscephalæ,
to the grade of tribune of the soldiers;[237] the great Scipio himself,
after the defeat of Hannibal, serves as lieutenant under his brother in
the war against Antiochus.
To sacrifice everything to patriotism is the first duty. By devoting
themselves to the gods of Hades, like Curtius and the two Decii, people
believed they bought, at the price of their lives, the safety of the
others or victory.[238] Discipline is enforced even to cruelty: Manlius
Torquatus, after the example of Postumius Tubertus, punishes with death
the disobedience of his son, though he had gained a victory. The
soldiers who have fled are decimated; those who abandon their ranks or
the field of battle are devoted, some to execution, others to dishonour;
and those who have allowed themselves to be made prisoners by the enemy
are disdained as unworthy of the price of freedom.[239]
Surrounded by warlike neighbours, Rome must either triumph or cease to
exist; hence her superiority in the art of war, for, as Montesquieu
says, in transient wars most of the examples are lost; peace brings
other ideas, and its faults and even its virtues are forgotten; hence
that contempt of treason and that disdain for the advantages it
promises: Camillus sends home to their parents the children of the first
families of Falerii, delivered up to him by their schoolmaster; the
Senate rejects with indignation the offer of the physician of Pyrrhus,
who proposes to poison that prince;--hence that religious observance of
oaths and that respect for engagements which have been contracted: the
Roman prisoners to whom Pyrrhus had given permission to repair to Rome
for the festival of Saturn, all return to him faithful to their word;
and Regulus leaves the most memorable example of faithfulness to his
oath!--hence that skilful and inflexible policy which refuses peace
after a defeat, or a treaty with the enemy so long as he is on the soil
of their country; which makes use of war to divert people from domestic
troubles;[240] gains the vanquished by benefits if they submit, and
admits them by degrees into the great Roman family; and, if they resist,
strikes them without pity and reduces them to slavery;[241]--hence that
anxious provision for multiplying upon the conquered territories the
race of agriculturists and soldiers;--hence, lastly, the improving
spectacle of a town which becomes a people, and of a people which
embraces the world.
CHAPTER IV.
PROSPERITY OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE THE PUNIC WARS.
[Sidenote: Commerce of the Mediterranean.]
I. Rome had required two hundred and forty-four years to form her
constitution under the kings, a hundred and seventy-two to establish and
consolidate the consular Republic, seventy-two to complete the conquest
of Italy, and now it will cost her nearly a century and a half to obtain
the domination of the world--that is, of Northern Africa, Spain, the
south of Gaul, Illyria, Epirus, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria,
and Egypt. Before undertaking the recital of these conquests, let us
halt an instant to consider the condition of the basin of the
Mediterranean at this period, of that sea round which were successively
unfolded all the great dramas of ancient history. In this examination we
shall see, not without a feeling of regret, vast countries where
formerly produce, monuments, riches, numerous armies and fleets--all,
indeed, revealed an advanced state of civilisation--now deserts or in a
state of barbarism.
The Mediterranean had seen grow and prosper in turn on its coasts Sidon,
and Tyre, and then Greece.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.]
Sidon, already a flourishing city before the time of Homer, is soon
eclipsed by the supremacy of Tyre; then Greece comes to carry on, in
competition with her, the commerce of the interior sea; an age of
pacific greatness and fruitful rivalries. To the Phœnicians
chiefly, the South, the East, Africa, Asia beyond Mount Taurus, the
Erythrean Sea (_the Red Sea_ and _the Persian Gulf_), the ocean, and the
distant voyages. To the Greeks, all the northern coasts, which they
covered with their thousand settlements. Phœnicia devotes herself to
adventurous enterprises and lucrative speculations. Greece, artistic
before becoming a trader, propagates by her colonies her mind and her
ideas.
This fortunate emulation soon disappears before the creation of two new
colonies sprung from their bosom. The splendour of Carthage replaces
that of Tyre. Alexandria is substituted for Greece. Thus a Western or
Spanish Phœnicia shares the commerce of the world with an Eastern and
Egyptian Greece, the fruit of the intellectual conquests of Alexander.
[Sidenote: Northern Africa.]
II. Rich in the spoils of twenty different peoples, Carthage was the
proud capital of a vast empire. Its ports, hollowed out by the hand of
man, were capable of containing a great number of ships.[242] Her
citadel, Byrsa, was two miles in circuit. On the land side the town was
defended by a triple enclosure twenty-five stadia in length, thirty
cubits high, and supported by towers of four storeys, capable of giving
shelter to 4,000 horse, 300 elephants, and 20,000 foot soldiers;[243] it
enclosed an immense population, since, in the last years of its
resistance, after a struggle of a century, it still counted 700,000
inhabitants.[244] Its monuments were worthy of its greatness: among its
remarkable buildings was the temple of the god Aschmoun, assimilated by
the Greeks to Æsculapius;[245] that of the sun, covered with plates of
gold valued at a thousand talents;[246] and the mantle or _peplum_,
destined for the image of their great goddess, which cost a hundred and
twenty.[247] The empire of Carthage extended from the frontiers of
Cyrenaica (the country of _Barca_, in the regency of Tripoli) into
Spain; she was the metropolis of all the north of Africa, and, in Libya
alone, possessed three hundred towns.[248] Nearly all the isles of the
Mediterranean, to the west and south of Italy, had received her
factories. Carthage had imposed her sovereignty upon all the ancient
Phœnician establishments in this part of the world, and had levied
upon them an annual contingent of soldiers and tribute. In the interior
of Africa, she sent caravans to seek elephants, ivory, gold, and black
slaves, which she afterwards exported[249] to the trading places on the
Mediterranean. In Sicily, she gathered oil and wine; in the isle of
Elba, she mined for iron; from Malta, she drew valuable tissues; from
Corsica, wax and honey; from Sardinia, corn, metals, and slaves; from
the Baleares, mules and fruits; from Spain, gold, silver, and lead; from
Mauritania, the hides of animals; she sent as far as the extremity of
Britain, to the Cassiterides (_the Scilly Islands_), ships to purchase
tin.[250] Within her walls industry flourished greatly, and tissues of
great celebrity were fabricated.[251]
No market of the ancient world could be compared with that of Carthage,
to which men of all nations crowded. Greeks, Gauls, Ligurians,
Spaniards, Libyans, came in multitudes to serve under her standard;[252]
the Numidians lent her a redoubtable cavalry.[253] Her fleet was
formidable; it amounted at this epoch to five hundred vessels. Carthage
possessed a considerable arsenal;[254] we may appreciate its importance
from the fact, that, after her conquest by Scipio, she delivered to him
two hundred thousand suits of armour, and three thousand machines of
war.[255] So many troops and stores imply immense revenues. Even after
the battle of Zama, Polybius could still call her the richest town in
the world. Yet she had already paid heavy contributions to the
Romans.[256] An excellent system of agriculture contributed no less than
her commerce to her prosperity. A great number of agricultural
colonies[257] had been established, which, in the time of Agathocles,
amounted to more than two hundred. They were ruined by the war (440 of
Rome).[258] Byzacena (_the southern part of the regency of Tunis_) was
the granary of Carthage.[259]
This province, surnamed _Emporia_, as being the trading country _par
excellence_, vaunted by the geographer Scylax[260] as the most
magnificent and fertile part of Libya. It had, in the time of Strabo,
numerous towns, so many magazines of the merchandise of the interior of
Africa. Polybius[261] speaks of its horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, as
forming innumerable herds, such as he had never seen elsewhere. The
small town of Leptis alone paid to the Carthaginians the enormous
contribution of a talent a day (5,821 francs [£232 16s.]).[262]
This fertility of Africa explains the importance of the towns on the
coast of the Syrtes, an importance, it is true, revealed by later
testimonies, because they date from the decline of Carthage, but which
must apply still more forcibly to the flourishing condition which
preceded it. In 537, the vast port of the isle Cercina (Kirkeni, in the
regency of Tunis, opposite Sfax) had paid ten talents to Servilius.[263]
More to the west, Hippo Regius (_Bona_) was still a considerable
maritime town in the time of Jugurtha.[264] Tingis (_Tangiers_), in
Mauritania, which boasted of a very ancient origin, carried on a great
trade with Bætica. Three African peoples in these countries lay under
the influence and often the sovereignty of Carthage: the Massylian
Numidians, who afterwards had Cirta (_Constantine_) for their capital;
the Massæsylian Numidians, who occupied the provinces of Algiers and
Oran; and the Mauri, or Moors, spread over Morocco. These nomadic
peoples maintained rich droves of cattle, and grew great quantities of
corn.
Hanno, a Carthaginian sea-captain, sent, towards 245, to explore the
extreme parts of the African coast beyond the Straits of Gades, had
founded a great number of settlements, no traces of which remained in
the time of Pliny.[265] These colonies introduced commerce among the
Mauritanian and Numidian tribes, the peoples of Morocco, and perhaps
even those of Senegal. But it was not only in Africa that the
possessions of the Carthaginians extended; they embraced Spain, Sicily,
and Sardinia.
[Sidenote: Spain.]
III. Iberia or Spain, with its six great rivers, navigable to the
ancients, its long chains of mountains, its dense woods, and the fertile
valleys of Bætica (_Andalusia_), appears to have nourished a population
numerous, warlike, rich by its mines, its harvests, and its commerce.
The centre of the peninsula was occupied by the Iberian and Celtiberian
races; on the coasts, the Carthaginians and the Greeks had settlements;
through contact with the Phœnician merchants, the populations of the
coast districts attained a certain degree of civilisation, and from the
mixture of the natives with the foreign colonists sprang a mongrel
population, which, while it preserved the Iberic character, had adopted
the mercantile habits of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians.
Once established in Spain, the Carthaginians and Greeks turned to useful
purpose the timber which covered the mountains. Gades (_Cadiz_), a sort
of factory founded at the extremity of Bætica by the Carthaginians,
became one of their principal maritime arsenals. It was there that the
ships were fitted out which ventured on the ocean in search of the
products of Armorica, or Britain, and even of the Canaries. Although
Gades had lost some of its importance by the foundation of Carthagena
(_New Carthage_), in 526, it had still, in the time of Strabo, so
numerous a population that it was in this respect inferior only to Rome.
The tables of the census showed five hundred citizens of the equestrian
order, a number equalled by none of the Italian cities, except Patavium
(_Padua_).[266] To Gades, celebrated for its temple of Hercules, flowed
the riches of all Spain. The sheep and horses of Bætica rivalled in
renown those of the Asturias. Corduba (_Cordova_), Hispalis (_Seville_),
where, at a later period, the Romans founded colonies, were already
great places of commerce, and had ports for the vessels which ascended
the Bætis (_Guadalquivir_).[267]
Spain was rich in precious metals; gold, silver, iron, were there the
object of industrial activity.[268] At Osca (_Huesca_), they worked
mines of silver; at Sisapo (_Almaden_), silver and mercury.[269] At
Cotinæ, copper was found along with gold. Among the Oretani, at Castulo
(_Cazlona_, on the Guadalimar), the silver mines, in the time of
Polybius, gave employment to 40,000 persons, and produced daily 25,000
drachmas.[270] In thirty-two years, the Roman generals carried home from
the peninsula considerable sums.[271] The abundance of metals in Spain
explains how so great a number of vessels of gold and silver was found
among many of the chiefs or petty kings of the Iberian nations. Polybius
compares one of them, for his luxury, with the king of the fabulous
Phæaces.[272]
To the north, and in the centre of the peninsula, agriculture and the
breeding of cattle were the principal sources of wealth. It was there
that were made the says (vests of flannel or goats’ hair), which were
exported in great numbers to Italy.[273] In the Tarraconese, the
cultivation of flax was very productive; the inhabitants had been the
first to weave those fine cloths called _carbasa_, which were objects
greatly prized as far as Greece.[274] Leather, honey, and salt were
brought by cargoes to the principal ports along the coast; at Emporiæ
(_Ampurias_), a settlement of the Phocæans in Catalonia; at
Saguntum,[275] founded by Greeks from the island of Zacynthus; at
Tarraco (_Tarragona_), one of the most ancient of the Phœnician
settlements in Spain; and at Malaca (_Malaga_), whence were exported all
sorts of salt fish.[276] Lusitania, neglected by the Phœnician or
Carthaginian ships, was less favoured. Yet we see, by the passage of
Polybius[277] which enumerates the mercantile exports of this province
with their prices, that its agricultural products were very
abundant.[278]
The prosperity of Spain appears also from the vast amount of its
population. According to some authors, Tiberius Gracchus took from the
Celtiberians three hundred _oppida_. In Turdetania (_part of
Andalusia_), according to Strabo, there were counted no less than two
hundred towns.[279] Appian, the historian of the Spanish wars, points
out the multitude of petty tribes which the Romans had to reduce,[280]
and during the campaign of Cn. Scipio, more than a hundred and twenty
submitted.[281]
Thus the Iberian peninsula was at that time reckoned among the most
populous and richest regions of Europe.
[Sidenote: Southern Gaul.]
IV. The part of Gaul which is bathed by the Mediterranean offers a
spectacle no less satisfactory. Numerous migrations, arriving from the
East, had pushed back the population of the Seine and the Loire towards
the mouths of the Rhône, and already, in the middle of the fourth
century before our era, the Gauls found themselves straitened in their
frontiers. More civilised than the Iberians, but not less energetic,
they combined gentle and hospitable manners with great activity, which
was further developed by their contact with the Greek colonies spread
from the maritime Alps to the Pyrenees. The cultivation of the fields
and the breeding of cattle furnished their principal wealth, and their
industry found support in the products of the soil and in its herds.
Their manufacture consisted of says, not less in repute than those of
the Celtiberians, and exported in great quantities to Italy. Good
sailors, the Gauls transported by water, on the Seine, the Rhine, the
Saône, the Rhône, and Loire, the merchandise and timber which, even from
the coasts of the Channel, were accumulated in the Phocæan trading
places on the Mediterranean.[282] Agde (_Agatha_), Antibes
(_Antipolis_), Nice (_Nicæa_), the isles of Hyères (_Stœchades_),
Monaco (_Portus Herculis Monœcei_), were so many naval stations which
maintained relations with Spain and Italy.[283]
Marseilles possessed but a very circumscribed territory, but its
influence reached far into the interior of Gaul. It is to this town we
owe the acclimatisation of the vine and the olive. Thousands of oxen
came every year to feed on the thyme in the neighbourhood of
Marseilles.[284] The Massilian merchants traversed Gaul in all
directions to sell their wines and the produce of their
manufactures.[285] Without rising to the rank of a great maritime power,
still the small Phocæan republic possessed sufficient resources to make
itself respected by Carthage; it formed an early alliance with the
Romans. Massilian houses had, as early as the fifth century of Rome,
established at Syracuse, as they did subsequently at Alexandria,
factories which show a great commercial activity.[286]
[Sidenote: Liguria, Cisalpine Gaul, Venetia, and Illyria.]
V. Alone in the Tyrrhene Sea, the Ligures had not yet risen out of that
almost savage life which the Iberians, sprung from the same stock, had
originally led. If some towns on the Ligurian coast, and especially
Genoa (_Genua_), carried on a maritime commerce, they supported
themselves by piracy[287] rather than by regular traffic.[288]
On the contrary, Cisalpine Gaul, properly so called, supported, as early
as the time of Polybius, a numerous population. We may form some idea of
it from the losses this province sustained during a period of
twenty-seven years, from 554 to 582; Livy gives a total of 257,400 men
killed, taken, or transported.[289] The Gaulish tribes settled in the
Cisalpine, though preserving their original manners, had, through their
contact with the Etruscans, arrived at a certain degree of civilisation.
The number of towns in this country was not very considerable, but it
contained a great abundance of villages.[290] Addicted to agriculture
like the other Gauls, the Cisalpines bred in their forests droves of
swine in such numbers, that they would have been sufficient, in the time
of Strabo, to provision all Rome.[291] The coins of pure gold, which in
recent times have been found in Cisalpine Gaul, especially between the
Po and the Adda, and which were struck by the Boii and some of the
Ligurian populations, furnish evidence of the abundance of that metal,
which was collected in the form of gold sand in the waters of the
rivers.[292] Moreover, certain towns of Etruscan origin, such as Mantua
(_Mantua_) and Padua (_Patavium_), preserved vestiges of the prosperity
they had reached at the time when the peoples of Tuscany extended their
dominion beyond the Po. At once a maritime town and a place of commerce,
Padua, at a remote epoch, possessed a vast territory, and could raise an
army of 120,000 men.[293] The transport of goods was facilitated by
means of canals crossing Venetia, partly dug by the Etruscans. Such
were those especially which united Ravenna with Altinum (_Altino_),
which became at a later period the grand store-house of the Cisalpine
territory.[294]
The commercial relations entertained by Venetia with Germany, Illyria,
and Rhætia, go back far beyond the Roman epoch, and, at a remote
antiquity, it was Venetia which received the amber from the shores of
the Baltic.[295] All the traffic which was afterwards concentrated at
Aquileia, founded by the Romans after the submission of the Veneti, had
then for its centre the towns of Venetia; and the numerous colonies
established by the Romans in this part of the peninsula are proofs of
its immense resources. Moreover, the Veneti, occupied in cultivating
their lands and breeding horses, had peaceful manners which facilitated
commercial relations, and contrasted with the piratical habits of the
populations spread over the north and north-eastern coasts of the
Adriatic.
The Istrians, the Liburni, and the Illyrians were the nations most
formidable, both by their corsairs and by their armies; their light and
rapid barques covered the Adriatic, and troubled the navigation between
Italy and Greece. In the year 524, the Illyrians sent to sea a hundred
_lembi_,[296] while their land army counted hardly more than 5,000
men.[297] Illyria was poor, and offered few resources to the Romans,
notwithstanding the fertility of its soil. Agriculture was neglected,
even in the time of Strabo. Istria contained a population much more
considerable, in proportion to its extent.[298] Yet she had, no more
than Dalmatia and the rest of Illyria, attained, at the epoch of which
we are speaking, that high degree of prosperity which she acquired
afterwards by the foundation of Tergeste (_Trieste_) and Pola. The Roman
conquest delivered the Adriatic from the pirates who infested it,[299]
and then only, the ports of Dyrrhachium and Apollonia obtained a
veritable importance.
[Sidenote: Epirus.]
VI. Epirus, a country of pastures and shepherds, intersected by
picturesque mountains, was a sort of Helvetia. Ambracia (now _Arta_),
which Pyrrhus had chosen for his residence, had become a very fine town,
and possessed two theatres. The palace of the king (_Pyrrheum_) formed a
veritable museum for it furnished for the triumph of M. Fulvius
Nobilior, in 565, two hundred and eighty-five statues in bronze, two
hundred and thirty in marble,[300] and paintings by Zeuxis, mentioned in
Pliny.[301] The town paid also, on this occasion, five hundred talents
(2,900,000 francs, [£116,000]), and offered the consul a crown of gold
weighing a hundred and fifty thousand talents (nearly 4,000
kilogrammes).[302] It appears that before the war of Paulus Æmilius,
this country contained a rather numerous population, and counted seventy
towns, most of them situated in the country of the Molossi.[303]. After
the battle of Pydna, the Roman general made so considerable a booty,
that, without reckoning the treasury’s share, each foot-soldier received
200 denarii (about 200 francs [£8]), and each horse-soldier 400; in
addition to which the sale of slaves arose to the enormous number of
150,000.
[Sidenote: Greece.]
VII. At the beginning of the first Punic War, Greece proper was divided
into four principal powers: Macedonia, Ætolia, Achaia, and Sparta. All
the continental part, which extends northward of the Gulf of Corinth as
far as the mountains of Pindus, was under the dependence of Philip; the
western part belonged to the Ætolians. The Peloponnesus was shared
between the Achæans, the tyrant of Sparta, and independent towns. Greece
had been declining during about a century, and seen her warlike spirit
weaken and her population diminish; and yet Plutarch, comprising under
this name the peoples of the Hellenic race, pretends that their country
furnished King Philip with the money, food, and provisions of his
army.[304] The Greek navy had almost disappeared. The Achæan league,
which comprised Argolis, Corinth, Sicyon, and the maritime cities of
Achæa, had few ships. On land the Hellenic forces were less
insignificant. The Ætolian league possessed an army of 10,000 men, and,
in the war against Philip, pretended to have contributed more than the
Romans to the victory of Cynoscephalæ. Greece was still rich in objects
of art of all descriptions. When, in 535, the King of Macedonia captured
the town of Thermæ, in Ætolia, he found in it more than two thousand
statues.[305]
Athens, in spite of the loss of her maritime supremacy, preserved the
remains of a civilization which had already attained the highest degree
of splendour,[306] and those incomparable buildings of the age of
Pericles, the mere name of which reminds us of all that the arts have
produced in greatest perfection. Among the most remarkable were the
Acropolis, with its Parthenon and its Propylæa, masterpieces of Phidias,
the statue of Minerva in gold and ivory, and another in bronze, the
casque and spear of which were seen afar off at sea.[307] The arsenal of
the Piræus, built by the architect Philo, was, according to Plutarch, an
admirable work.[308]
Sparta, although greatly fallen, was distinguished by its monuments and
by its manufactures; the famous portico of the Persians,[309] built
after the Median wars--the columns of which, in white marble,
represented the illustrious persons among the vanquished--was the
principal ornament of the market. Iron, obtained in abundance from Mount
Taygetus, was marvellously worked at Sparta, which was celebrated for
the manufacture of arms and agricultural instruments.[310] The coasts of
Laconia abounded in shells, from which was obtained the purple, most
valued after that of Phœnicia.[311] The port of Gytheum, very
populous, and very active in 559, still possessed great arsenals.[312]
In the centre of the peninsula, Arcadia, although its population was
composed of shepherds, had the same love for the arts as the rest of
Greece. It possessed two celebrated temples: that of Minerva at Tegæa,
built by the architect Scopas,[313] in which were united the three
orders of architecture, and that of Apollo, at Phigalea,[314] situated
at an elevation of 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and the
remains of which still excite the wonder of travellers.
Elis, protected by its neutrality, was devoted to the arts of peace.
There agriculture flourished; its fisheries were productive; it had
manufactories of tissues of _byssus_ which rivalled the muslins of Cos,
and were sold for their weight in gold.[315] The town of Elis possessed
the finest gymnasium in Greece; people came to it to prepare themselves
(sometimes a year in advance) for competition in the Olympic games.[316]
Olympia was the holy city, celebrated for its sanctuary and its
consecrated garden, where stood, among a multitude of masterpieces of
art, one of the wonders of the world, the statue of Jupiter, the work of
Phidias,[317] the majesty of which was such, that Paulus Æmilius, when
he first saw it, believed he was in the presence of the divinity
himself.
Argos, the country of several celebrated artists, possessed temples,
fountains, a gymnasium, and a theatre; and its public place had served
for a field of battle to the armies of Pyrrhus and Antigonus. It
remained, until the subjugation by the Romans, one of the finest cities
of Greece. Within its territory were the superb temple of Juno, the
ancient sanctuary of the Argives, with the statue of the goddess in gold
and silver--the work of Polycletus, and the vale of Nemæa, where one of
the four national festivals of Greece was celebrated.[318] Argolis also
possessed Epidaurus, with its hot springs; its temple of Æsculapius,
enriched with the offerings of those who came to be cured of their
diseases;[319] and its theatre, one of the largest in the country.[320]
Corinth, admirably situated upon the narrow isthmus which separates the
Ægean Sea from the gulf which has preserved its name,[321] with its
dye-houses, its celebrated manufactories of carpets and of bronze, bore
witness also to the ancient prosperity of the Hellenic race. Its
population must have been considerable, since there were reckoned in it
460,000 slaves;[322] marble palaces rose on all sides, adorned with
statues and valuable vases. Corinth had the reputation of being the
most voluptuous of towns. Among its numerous temples, that of Venus had
in its service more than a thousand courtezans.[323] In the sale of the
booty made by Mummius, a painting by Aristides, representing Bacchus,
was sold for 600,000 sestertii.[324] There was seen in the triumph of
Metellus surnamed Macedonicus, a group, the work of Lysippus,
representing Alexander the Great, twenty-five horsemen, and nine
foot-soldiers slain at the battle of the Granicus; this group, taken at
Corinth, came from Dium in Macedonia.[325]
Other towns of Greece were no less rich in works of art.[326] The Romans
carried away from the little town of Eretria, at the time of the
Macedonian war, a great number of paintings and precious statues.[327]
We know, from the traveller Pausanias, how prodigious was the quantity
of offerings brought from the most diverse countries into the sanctuary
of Delphi. This town, which, by its reputation for sanctity and its
solemn games, the Pythian, was the rival of Olympia, gathered in its
temple during ages immense treasures; and when it was plundered by the
Phocæans, they found in it gold and silver enough to coin ten thousand
talents of money (about 58 millions of francs [£2,320,000]). The ancient
opulence of the Greeks had, nevertheless, passed into their colonies;
and, from the extremity of the Black Sea to Cyrene, numerous
establishments arose remarkable for their sumptuousness.
[Sidenote: Macedonia.]
VIII. Macedonia drew to herself, since the time of Alexander, the riches
and resources of Asia. Dominant over a great part of Greece and Thrace,
occupying Thessaly, and extending her sovereignty over Epirus, this
kingdom concentrated in herself the vital strength of those cities
formerly independent, which, two centuries before, were her rivals in
power and courage. Under an economical administration, the public
revenues rising from the royal domains,[328] from the silver mines in
Mount Pangeum, and from the taxes, were sufficient for the wants of the
country.[329] In 527, Antigonus sent to Rhodes considerable succours,
which furnish the measure of the resources of Macedonia.[330]
Towards the year 563 of Rome, Philip had, by wise measures, raised again
the importance of Macedonia. He collected in his arsenals materials for
equipping three armies and provisions for ten years. Under Perseus,
Macedonia was no less flourishing. That prince gave Cotys, for a service
of six months with 1,000 cavalry, the large sum of 200 talents.[331] At
the battle of Pydna, which completed his ruin, nearly 20,000 men
remained on the field, and 11,000 were made prisoners.[332] In richness
of equipment, the Macedonian troops far surpassed other armies. The
Leucaspidan phalanx was dressed in scarlet, and carried gilt armour; the
Chalcaspidan phalanx had shields of the finest brass.[333] The
prodigious splendour of the court of Perseus and that of his favourites
reveal still more the degree of opulence at which Macedonia had arrived.
All exhibited in their dresses and in their feasts a pomp equal to that
of kings.[334] Among the booty made by Paulus Æmilius were paintings,
statues, rich tapestries, vases of gold, silver, bronze, and ivory,
which were so many masterpieces.[335] His triumph was unequalled by any
other.[336]
Valerius of Antium estimates at more than 120 millions of sestertii
(about 30 millions of francs [£1,200,000]) the gold and silver exhibited
on this occasion.[337] Macedonia, as we see, had absorbed the ancient
riches of Greece. Thrace, long barbarous, began also to rise out of the
condition of inferiority in which it had so long languished. Numerous
Greek colonies, founded on the shores of the Pontus Euxinus, introduced
there civilisation and prosperity; and among these colonies, Byzantium,
though often harassed by the neighbouring barbarians, had already an
importance and prosperity which presaged its future destinies.[338]
Foreigners, resorting to it from all parts, had introduced a degree of
licentiousness which became proverbial.[339] Its commerce was, above
all, nourished by the ships of Athens, which went there to fetch the
wheat of Tauris and the fish of the Euxine.[340] When Athens, in her
decline, became a prey to anarchy, Byzantium, where arts and letters
flourished, served as a refuge to her exiles.
[Sidenote: Asia Minor.]
IX. Asia Minor comprised a great number of provinces, of which several
became, after the dismemberment of the empire of Alexander, independent
states. Of these, the principal formed into four groups, composing so
many kingdoms, namely, Pontus, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pergamus. We
must except from them some Greek cities on the coast, which kept their
autonomy or were placed under the sovereignty of Rhodes. Their extent
and limits varied often until the time of the Roman conquest, and
several of them passed from one domination to another. All these
kingdoms participated in different degrees in the prosperity of
Macedonia.
“Asia,” says Cicero, “is so rich and fertile, that the fecundity of its
plains, the variety of its products, the extent of its pastures, the
multiplicity of the objects of commerce exported from it, give it an
incontestible superiority over all other countries of the earth.[341]”
The wealth of Asia Minor appears from the amount of impositions paid by
it to the different Roman generals. Without speaking of the spoils
carried away by Scipio, in his campaign against Antiochus, and by
Manlius Volso in 565, Sylla, and afterwards Lucullus and Pompey, each
drew from this country about 20,000 talents,[342] besides an equal sum
distributed by them to their soldiers: which gives the enormous total of
nearly seven hundred millions of francs [or twenty-eight millions
sterling], received in a period of twenty-five years.
[Sidenote: Kingdom of Pontus.]
X. The most northern of the four groups named above formed a great part
of the kingdom of Pontus. This province, the ancient Cappadocia Pontica,
formerly a Persian satrapy, reduced to subjection by Alexander and his
successor, recovered itself after the battle of Ipsus (453). Mithridates
III. enlarged his territory by adding to it Paphlagonia, and afterwards
Sinope and Galatia. Pontus soon extended from Colchis on the north-east
to Lesser Armenia on the south-east, and had Bithynia for its boundary
on the west. Thus, touching upon the Caucasus, and master of the Pontus
Euxinus, this kingdom, composed of divers peoples, presented, under
varied climates, a variety of different productions. It received wines
and oils from the Ægean Sea, and wheat from the Bosphorus; it exported
salt fish in great quantity,[343] dolphin oil,[344] and, as produce of
the interior, the wools of the Gadilonitis,[345] the fleeces of Ancyra,
the horses of Armenia, Media, and Paphlagonia,[346] the iron of the
Chalybes, a population of miners to the south of Trapezus, already
celebrated in the time of Homer, and mentioned by Xenophon.[347] There
also were found mines of silver, abandoned in the time of Strabo,[348]
but which have been re-opened in modern times. Important ports on the
Black Sea facilitated the exportation of these products. It was at
Sinope that Lucullus found a part of the treasures which he displayed at
his triumph, and which gives us a lofty idea of the kingdom of
Mithridates.[349] An object of admiration at Sinope was the statue of
Autolycus, one of the protecting heroes of the town, the work of the
statuary Sthenis.[350]
Trapezus (_Trebizonde_), which before the time of Mithridates the Great
preserved a sort of autonomy under the kings of Pontus, had an extensive
commerce; which was the case also with another Greek colony, Amisus
(_Samsoun_),[351] regarded in the time of Lucullus as one of the most
flourishing and richest towns in the country.[352] In the interior,
Amasia, which became afterwards one of the great fortresses of Asia
Minor, and the metropolis of Pontus, had already probably, at the time
of the Punic wars, a certain renown. Cabira, called afterwards
_Sebaste_, and then Neocæsarea, the central point of the resistance of
Mithridates the Great to Lucullus, owed its ancient celebrity to its
magnificent Temple of the Moon. From the country of Cabira, there was,
according to the statement of Lucullus,[353] only the distance of a few
days’ march into Armenia, a country the riches of which may be estimated
by the treasures gathered by Tigranes.[354]
We can hence understand how Mithridates the Great was able, two
centuries later, to oppose the Romans with considerable armies and
fleets. He possessed in the Black Sea 400 ships,[355] and his army
amounted to 250,000 men and 40,000 horse.[356] He received, it is true,
succours from Armenia and Scythia, from the Palus Mæotis, and even from
Thrace.
[Sidenote: Bithynia.]
XI. Bithynia, a province of Asia Minor, comprised between the Propontis,
the Sangarius, and Paphlagonia, formed a kingdom, which, at the
beginning of the sixth century of Rome, was adjacent to Pontus, and
comprised several parts of the provinces contiguous to Mysia and
Phrygia. In it were found several towns, the commerce of which rivalled
that of the maritime towns of Pontus, and especially Nicæa and
Nicomedia. This last, founded in 475 by Nicomedes I., took a rapid
extension.[357] Heraclea Pontica, a Milesian colony situated between the
Sangarius and the Parthenius, preserved its extensive commerce, and an
independence which Mithridates the Great himself could not entirely
destroy; it possessed a vast port, safe and skilfully disposed, which
sheltered a numerous fleet.[358] The power of the Bithynians was not
insignificant, since they sent into the field, in the war of Nicomedes
against Mithridates, 56,000 men.[359] If the traffic was considerable on
the coasts of Bithynia, thanks to the Greek colonies, the interior was
not less prosperous by its agriculture, and Bithynia was still, in the
time of Strabo, renowned for its herds.[360]
One of the provinces of Bithynia fell into the hands of the Gauls
(A.U.C. 478). Three peoples of Celtic origin shared it, and exercised in
it a sort of feudal dominion. It was called Galatia from the name of the
conquerors. Its places of commerce were: Ancyra, the point of arrival
of the caravans coming from Asia, and Pessinus, one of the chief seats
of the old Phrygian worship, where pilgrims repaired in great number to
adore Cybele.[361] The population of Galatia was certainly rather
considerable, since in the famous campaign of Cneius Manlius Volso,[362]
in 565, the Galatians lost 40,000 men. The two tribes united of the
Tectosagi and Trocmi raised at that period, in spite of many defeats, an
army of 50,000 foot and 10,000 horse.[363]
[Sidenote: Cappadocia.]
XII. To the east of Galatia, Cappadocia comprised between the Halys and
Armenia, distant from the sea, and crossed by numerous chains of
mountains, formed a kingdom which escaped the conquests of Alexander,
and which, a few years after his death, opposed Perdiccas with an army
of 30,000 footmen and 15,000 horsemen.[364] In the time of Strabo, wheat
and cattle formed the riches of this country.[365] In 566, King
Ariarathes paid 600 talents for the alliance of the Romans.[366] Mazaca
(afterwards _Cæsarea_), capital of Cappadocia, a town of an entirely
Asiatic origin, had been, from a very early period, renowned for its
pastures.[367]
[Sidenote: Kingdom of Pergamus.]
XIII. The western part of Asia Minor is better known. It had seen, after
the battle of Ipsus, the formation of the kingdom of Pergamus, which,
thanks to the interested liberality of the Romans towards Eumenes II.,
increased continually until the moment when it fell under their
sovereignty. To this kingdom belonged Mysia, the two Phrygias, Lycaonia,
and Lydia. This last province, crossed by the Pactolus, had for its
capital Ephesus, the metropolis of the Ionian confederation, at the same
time the mart of the commerce of Asia Minor and one of the localities
where the fine arts were cultivated with most distinction. This town had
two ports: one penetrated into the heart of the town, while the other
formed a basin in the very middle of the public market.[368] The theatre
of Ephesus, the largest ever built, was 660 feet in diameter, and was
capable of holding 60,000 spectators. The most celebrated artists,
Scopas, Praxiteles, etc., worked at Ephesus upon the great Temple of
Diana. This monument, the building of which lasted two hundred and
twenty years, was surrounded by 128 columns, each 60 feet high,
presented by so many kings. Pergamus, the capital of the kingdom, passed
for one of the finest cities in Asia, _longe clarissimum Asiæ Pergamum_,
says Pliny;[369] the port of Elæa contained maritime arsenals, and could
arm numerous vessels.[370] The acropolis of Pergamus, an inaccessible
citadel, defended by two torrents, was the residence of the Attalides;
these princes, zealous protectors of the sciences and arts, had founded
in their capital a library of 200,000 volumes.[371] Pergamus carried on
a vast traffic; its cereals were exported in great quantities to most
places in Greece.[372] Cyzicus, situated on an island of the Propontis,
with two closed ports forming a station for about two hundred
ships,[373] rivalled the richest cities of Asia. Like Adramyttium, it
carried on a great commerce in perfumery,[374] it worked the
inexhaustible marble-quarries of the island of Proconnesus,[375] and its
commercial relations were so extensive that its gold coins were current
in all the Asiatic factories.[376] The town of Abydos possessed gold
mines.[377] The wheat of Assus was reputed the best in the world, and
was reserved for the table of the kings of Persia.[378]
We may estimate the population and resources of this part of Asia from
the armies and fleets which the kings had at their command at the time
of the conquest of Greece by the Romans. In 555, Attalus II., and, ten
years later, Eumenes II., sent them numerous galleys of five ranks of
oars.[379] The land forces of the kings of Pergamus were much less
considerable.[380] Their direct authority did not extend over a great
territory, yet they had many tributary towns; hence their great wealth
and small army. The Romans drew from this country, now nearly barren and
unpeopled, immense contributions both in gold and wheat.[381] The
magnificence of the triumph of Manlius and the reflections of Livy,
compared with the testimony of Herodotus, reveal all the splendour of
the kingdom of Pergamus. It was after the war against Antiochus and the
expedition of Manlius that extravagance began to display itself at
Rome.[382] Soldiers and generals enriched themselves prodigiously in
Asia.[383]
The ancient colonies of Ionia and Æolis, such as Clazomenæ, Colophon,
and many others, which were dependent for the most part on the kingdom
of Pergamus, were fallen from their ancient grandeur. Smyrna, rebuilt by
Alexander, was still an object of admiration for the beauty of its
monuments. The exportation of wines, as celebrated on the coast of Ionia
as in the neighbouring islands, formed alone an important support of the
commerce of the ports of the Ægean Sea.
The treasures of the temple of Samothrace were so considerable, that we
are induced to mention here a circumstance relating to this little
island, though distant from Asia, and near the coast of Thrace: Sylla’s
soldiers took in the sanctuary the Cabiri, an ornament of the value of
1,000 talents (5,820,000 francs [£232,800]).[384]
[Sidenote: Caria, Lycia, and Cilicia.]
XIV. On the southern coast of Asia Minor, some towns still sustained the
rank they had attained one or two centuries before. The capital of Caria
was Halicarnassus, a very strong town, defended by two citadels,[385]
and celebrated for one of the finest works of Greek art, the
_Mausoleum_. In spite of the extraordinary fertility of the country, the
Carians were accustomed, like the people of Crete, to engage as
mercenaries in the Greek armies.[386] On their territory stood the
Ionian town of Miletus, with its four ports.[387] The Milesians alone
had civilised the shores of the Black Sea by the foundation of about
eighty colonies.[388]
In turn independent, or placed under foreign dominion, Lycia, a province
comprised between Caria and Cilicia, possessed some rich commercial
towns. One especially, renowned for its ancient oracle of Apollo, no
less celebrated than that of Delphi, was remarkable for its spacious
port;[389] this was Patara, which was large enough to contain the whole
fleet of Antiochus, burnt by Fabius in 565.[390] Xanthus, the largest
town of the province, to which place ships ascended, only lost its
importance after having been pillaged by Brutus.[391] Its riches had at
an earlier period drawn upon it the same fate from the Persians.[392]
Under the Roman dominion, Lycia beheld its population decline gradually;
and of the seventy towns which it had possessed, no more than thirty-six
remained in the eighth century of Rome.[393]
More to the east, the coasts of Cilicia were less favoured; subjugated
in turn by the Macedonians, Egyptians, and Syrians, they had become
receptacles of pirates, who were encouraged by the kings of Egypt in
their hostility to the Seleucidæ.[394] From the heights of the mountains
which cross a part of the province, robbers descended to plunder the
fertile plains situated on the eastern side (_Cilicia Campestris_).[395]
Still, the part watered by the Cydnus and the Pyramus was more
prosperous, owing to the manufacture of coarse linen and to the export
of saffron. There stood ancient Tarsus, formerly the residence of a
satrap, the commerce of which had sprung up along with that of
Tyre;[396] and Soli, on which Alexander levied an imposition of a
hundred talents as a punishment for its fidelity to the Persians,[397]
and which, by its maritime position, excited the envy of the
Rhodians.[398] These towns and other ports entered, after the battle of
Ipsus, into the great commercial movement of which the provinces of
Syria became the seat.
[Sidenote: Syria.]
XV. By the foundation of the empire of the Seleucidæ, Greek civilisation
was carried into the interior of Asia, where the immobility of Eastern
society was succeeded by the activity of Western life. Greek letters and
arts flourished from the Sea of Phœnicia to the banks of the
Euphrates. Numerous towns were built in Syria and Assyria, with all the
richness and elegance of the edifices of Greece;[399] some were almost
in ruins in the time of Pliny.[400] Seleucia, founded by Seleucus
Nicator, at the mouth of the Orontes, and which received, with five
other towns built by the same monarch, the name of the head of the
Græco-Syrian dynasty, became a greatly frequented port. Antioch, built
on the same river, rivalled the finest towns of Egypt and Greece by the
number of its edifices, the extent of its places, and the beauty of its
temples and statues.[401] Its walls, built by the architect Xenæos,
passed for a wonder, and in the Middle Ages their ruins excited the
admiration of travellers.[402] Antioch consisted of four quarters,
having each its own enclosure;[403] and the common enclosure which
surrounded them all appears to have embraced an extent of six leagues in
circumference. Not far from the town was the delightful abode of Daphne,
where the wood, consecrated to Apollo and Diana, was an object of public
veneration, and the place where sumptuous festivals were
celebrated.[404] Apamea was renowned for its pastures. Seleucus had
formed there a stud of 30,000 mares, 300 stallions, and 500
elephants.[405] The Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis (now _Baalbek_) was
the most colossal work of architecture that had ever existed.[406]
The power of the empire of the Seleucidæ went on increasing until the
time when the Romans seized upon it. Extending from the Mediterranean to
the Oxus and Caucasus, this empire was composed of nearly all the
provinces of the ancient kingdom of the Persians, and included peoples
of different origins.[407] Media was fertile, and its capital, Ecbatana,
which Polybius represents as excelling in riches and the incredible
luxury of its palaces the other cities of Asia, had not yet been
despoiled by Antiochus III.;[408] Babylonia, once the seat of a powerful
empire, and Phœnicia, long the most commercial country in the world,
made part of Syria, and touched upon the frontiers of the Parthians.
Caravans, following a route which has remained the same during many
centuries, placed Syria in communication with Arabia,[409] whence came
ebony, ivory, perfumes, resins, and spices; the Syrian ports were the
intermediate marts for the merchants who proceeded as far as India,
where Seleucus I. went to conclude a treaty with Sandrocottus. The
merchandise of this country ascended the Euphrates as far as Thapsacus,
and thence it was exported to all the provinces.[410] Communications so
distant and multiplied explain the prosperity of the empire of the
Seleucidæ. Babylonia competed with Phrygia in embroidered tissues;
purple and the tissues of Tyre, the glass, goldsmiths’ work, and dyes of
Sidon, were exported far. Commerce had penetrated to the extremities of
Asia. Silk stuffs were sent from the frontiers of China to Caspiæ Portæ,
and thence conveyed by caravans at once towards the Tyrian Sea,
Mesopotamia, and Pontus.[411] Subsequently, the invasion of the
Parthians, by intercepting the routes, prevented the Greeks from
penetrating into the heart of Asia. Hence Seleucus Nicator formed the
project of opening a way of direct communication between Greece and
Bactriana, by constructing a canal from the Black Sea to the Caspian
Sea.[412] Mines of precious metals were rather rare in Syria; but there
was abundance of gold and silver, introduced by the Phœnicians, or
imported from Arabia or Central Asia. We may judge of the abundance of
money possessed by Seleucia, on the Tigris, by the amount of the
contribution which was extorted from it by Antiochus III. (a thousand
talents).[413] The sums which the Syrian monarchs engaged to pay to the
Romans were immense.[414] The soil gave produce equal in importance with
that of industry.[415] Susiana, one of the provinces of Persia which had
fallen under the dominion of the Seleucidæ, had so great a reputation
for its corn, that Egypt alone could compete with it.[416] Cœle-Syria
was, like the north of Mesopotamia, in repute for its cattle.[417]
Palestine furnished abundance of wheat, oil, and wine. The condition of
Syria was still so prosperous in the seventh century of Rome, that the
philosopher Posidonius represents its inhabitants as indulging in
continual festivals, and dividing their time between the labours of the
field, banquets, and the exercises of the gymnasium.[418] The festivals
of Antiochus IV., in the town of Daphne,[419] give a notion of the
extravagance displayed by the grandees of that country.
The military forces assembled at different epochs by the kings of Syria
enable us to estimate the population of their empire. In 537, at the
battle of Raphia, Antiochus had under his command 68,000 men;[420] in
564, at Magnesia, 62,000 infantry, and more than 12,000 horsemen.[421]
These armies, it is true, comprised auxiliaries of different nations.
The Jews of the district of Carmel alone could raise 40,000 men.[422]
The fleet was no less imposing. Phœnicia counted numerous ports and
well-stored arsenals; such were Aradus (_Ruad_), Berytus (_Beyrout_),
Tyre (_Sour_). This latter town raised itself gradually from its
decline. It was the same with Sidon (_Saïde_), which Antiochus III., in
his war with Ptolemy, did not venture to attack on account of its
soldiers, its stores, and its population.[423] Moreover, the greater
part of the Phœnician towns enjoyed, under the Seleucidæ, a certain
autonomy favourable to their industry. In Syria, Seleucia, which
Antiochus the Great recovered from the Egyptians, had become the first
port in the kingdom on the Mediterranean.[424] Laodicea carried on an
active commerce with Alexandria.[425] Masters of the coasts of Cilicia
and Pamphylia, the kings of Syria obtained from them great quantities of
timber for ship-building, which was floated down the rivers from the
mountains.[426] Thus uniting their vessels with those of the
Phœnicians, the Seleucidæ launched upon the Mediterranean
considerable armies.[427]
Distant commerce also employed numerous merchant vessels; the
Mediterranean, like the Euphrates, was furrowed by barques which brought
or carried merchandise of every description. Vessels sailing on the
Erythræan Sea were in communication, by means of canals, with the shores
of the Mediterranean. The great trade of Phœnicia with Spain and the
West had ceased, but the navigation of the Euphrates and the Tigris
replaced it for the transport of products, whether foreign or
fabricated in Syria itself, and sent into Asia Minor, Greece, or Egypt.
The empire of the Seleucidæ offered the spectacle of the ancient
civilisation and luxury of Nineveh and Babylon, transformed by the
genius of Greece.
[Sidenote: Egypt.]
XVI. Egypt, which Herodotus calls a present from the Nile, did not equal
in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidæ, but it formed a
power much more compact. Its civilisation reached back more than three
thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when
Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The
fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population
to develop itself there to such a point, that under Amasis II.,
contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned
in it.[428] The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides
increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II.,
the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents (86,150,800 francs
[£3,446,032]), and a million and a half of artabi[429] of wheat.[430]
Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign
possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year.
Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, with the province of Samaria,
yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents (46 millions and a
half [£1,860,000]).[431] A single feast cost Philadelphia 2,240 talents
(more than 13 millions [more than half a million sterling]).[432] The
sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps
exaggerated, of 740,000 talents (about 4 milliards 300 millions of
francs [172 millions sterling]).[433] In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was
able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the
Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten
millions of measures of wheat.[434] The precious metals abounded in the
empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining
operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold
contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the
kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches
had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage,
towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first
commercial city in the world.[435] It was fifteen miles in
circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed
the largest ships to anchor along the quay.[436] There arrived the
merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa;
some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of
Cosseïr), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from
the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on
the Red Sea.[437] The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a
stop to the piracies of the Arabs,[438] and led to the establishment of
numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia,
gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, per
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