Chapter M: Livius Drusus, 340 (8)

In the year 562, L. Scipio and C. Lælius were consuls. They both of them wished for the command of the expedition to Asia, and the senate gave it to Scipio, who would not, however, have gotten it, had not his great brother offered to serve as a legate under him. For the latter could not be appointed consul, as the law by which ten years were to elapse between two consulships of the same individual, was now very strictly adhered to. P. Scipio had in the meantime been censor, and his influence was still almost unbounded, as was plainly shown on this occasion, when L. Scipio, a most insignificant being, was chosen merely for the sake of his brother; just as the great Fabius Maximus in former times had procured the consulship for his son, under whom he then acted as legate. The Roman fleet had scarcely appeared off the coast of Asia, the Scipios being still in Macedonia, when ambassadors arrived from Antiochus, to ask for the conditions of peace. He offered to give up the Chersonesus; to acknowledge the freedom of the Asiatic towns, Smyrna and Abydos, which had been taken by the Romans; and to bear half of the expenses of the war. These conditions, coming from one who owned himself vanquished, the Romans did not accept: Scipio declared that they would have been good enough before Antiochus had evacuated the Chersonesus, but that now the bridle was put upon Asia. They marched through Macedon and Thrace over very difficult roads, aided, however, by Philip, whom they rewarded by giving up to him the possession of the towns on the Thracian coast. When the Romans had now crossed the Hellespont, P. Scipio fell sick, a thing which often happened to him, and as he was not able to follow the army, he was obliged to stay behind at Elæa, an Æolian town. This put a stop to all the operations, and Antiochus took advantage of the delay to set on foot fresh negotiations, which, however, led to nothing. Scipio proposed very fair terms; but they offended the pride of Antiochus. A son of the great Scipio had in some way or other been taken prisoner in Asia, and was treated with the greatest distinction. The ambassadors first offered to set him free; then Antiochus sent him back without ransom, hoping that it would now be easier for him to obtain peace. Scipio wished that a decisive battle might be put off until his recovery; Antiochus, on the other hand, was in a hurry to have it fought. The armies encountered on the borders of Lydia, near Magnesia, at the foot of mount Sipylus, in a country of moderately high hills, which is one of the finest in the world, being, like all the lands along the coast of Asia Minor, quite a contrast to the inland regions which are barren and devastated by volcanic convulsions. The army of Antiochus consisted of eighty thousand men, its chief strength being the Macedonian phalanx, which in all likelihood was made up of men of all countries: there were likewise some Macedonians among these, the descendants of the troops of Alexander, who, however, were already mingled in blood with the Asiatic population. Besides these, he had peltasts armed in the Greek manner, and a host of Asiatics, concerning whose arms and equipments Livy and Appian tell us nothing. The Romans had only a consular army, as the other was still fighting against the Ætolians: besides two legions and the proportionate number of allies, there were a few thousand Achæans, and a small number of auxiliaries from Eumenes (who only ruled over Pergamus and some Ionian and Mysian towns), the whole being much less than thirty thousand men. They had been advancing against each other for three days; on the fourth, the battle came on. The large army of Antiochus outflanked the Romans: their left wing rested on a river, which, however, had no depth, and thus they were outflanked on the opposite bank. The Syrian army consisted of the phalanx, of a medley of troops attached to it, of cavalry, elephants, and war-chariots. The Romans also had elephants, but African ones, which they did not use because they were far weaker, and much more timid than those of India. The battle was decided at the very first onset, the victory being contested for a moment, only by the mass of the Macedonian phalanx, and on one single point: on another, Antiochus drove the Roman troops back as far as their own camp, whereupon, however, he was repulsed. A good general might with the aid of the phalanx have given the Romans a great deal of trouble, as was still done at Cynoscephalæ; but all was lost by the king’s wretched tactics. The phalanx at first was formed into a number of smaller bodies with intervals; and instead of their keeping that order, and acting together in masses, these gathered from fear into one huge cluster, which could have been of use only in a plain, and in extreme danger: but here, on uneven ground, there arose an immense confusion, in which the light troops of the Romans so harassed them with their javelins and slings, that they all broke and fled. Just as vain had been the attempt, in the beginning of the battle, to use the scythed chariots against the Romans, whose skirmishers put them to flight, as the horses were soon made to shy: this is an Asiatic invention, but it is also to be found among the Celts, especially in Britain. The overthrow was so complete, that it was impossible to bring together again the small remnants of the army. The king fled through Phrygia, and sent Xeuxis as his ambassador to Scipio to beg for peace, stooping at the same time to the meanest offers. Scipio was glad to come to terms. It is possible that L. Scipio received also some presents, which was the charge afterwards brought against him; yet there is no need for supposing this, as a Roman consul could not have wished for anything better than to make peace before the coming of his successor. The conditions were, as follows:--Antiochus was at once to pay down five hundred talents (675,000 dollars) for the truce;[35] the definitive peace was to be settled in Rome, and as soon as it was concluded, he was again to pay two thousand five hundred: this latter condition, very likely by accident, is never mentioned again. Then he was to pay twelve thousand talents (16,200,000 dollars) in yearly instalments of one thousand each, and to give twenty hostages, among whom was his own son. He was to place at the disposition of the Romans the whole of the country on this side of the Taurus which belonged to him, that is to say, Asia Minor with the exception of the two Cilicias north of the Taurus, the Halys was to be the boundary. Thus Antiochus was to yield up all that he possessed in Phrygia. It was afterwards a moot point, whether Pamphylia was also included therein: Livy and the fragments of Polybius throw no light upon it, and, on the whole, the geography of these countries is very obscure; as far, however, as I can understand Appian, Pamphylia did not remain under the rule of Antiochus, nor was it bestowed upon Eumenes, but it existed as an independent state between both. Moreover the king was not to meddle with the affairs of Europe without leave from Rome, nor to wage war with nations which were allies of the Romans, unless he were attacked; he was to give up his ships of war, even the triremes, all but ten; to keep no elephants; to enlist no mercenaries from countries which were subject to the Romans; to pay a specified sum to Eumenes; and also to deliver up Hannibal, and some others whom he had received at his court: (these last were added only for the sake of appearances, to give a good colouring to the demand for the surrender of Hannibal). But these made their escape. This happened in the year 562, the definitive peace being concluded somewhat later. A rashly undertaken war could have led by one battle to such a peace; but that a prince capable of making it should have been called the Great, is quite inconceivable: and yet he had still an immense empire, as large as Germany, France, and Spain put together.

In the following year, Cn. Manlius, the successor of L. Scipio, took the command, quite impatient to do something. This, and the hope of booty, led him in compliance with the wishes of the Asiatics to undertake a campaign against the Galatians or Gallo-Grecians in Phrygia. About the time of Pyrrhus, the Gauls overran Macedonia, and had forced their way as far as Delphi: then--whether moved, as the Greeks relate, by awful natural phenomena, or allured by the accounts which they had heard of the beautiful countries in Asia--they marched off out of Greece eastward to Thrace: there many of them remained, and established their rule in it; others, twenty thousand in number, crossed in two divisions, the one over the Hellespont, the other over the Bosporus, being favoured by the feuds of the Asiatic princes. Here they gained settlements in Ancyræan Phrygia, on the northern coast; just as in later times the Normans did in Neustria; and henceforth they lived in thirty free towns, in a land which is meant by nature to be the seat of the greatest wealth and happiness, but which now under the rule of barbarians has become a wilderness. There were three tribes of them, the Trocmi, Tolistoboii, and Tectosages, the two first of which seem to have been formed in the course of their migrations; for we do not meet with them elsewhere, as we certainly do with the third. They united themselves with the Bithynians, among whom two small kingdoms arose. The latter were Thracians, and they dwelt between Nicomedia and Heraclea: during the Persian domination, they were under their native princes; but after the breaking up of the Persian and the Macedonian empires, which had always been least consolidated in Asia Minor, they widened their sway, and became proportionally important. Nicomedes, who was then king, took the Gauls, among whom there were still but ten thousand armed men, into his pay; he defeated his rival, and founded the Bithynian state, which now became hellenized. From that time, the Gauls sold their aid to whosoever wanted it, and made the whole of western Asia tributary to themselves. This part of history is still very confused; but it may be disentangled, as we have many materials for it. They were defeated by Antiochus Soter, on which they withdrew into the mountains, and when circumstances had changed, they burst forth again: every one paid them tribute to escape their ravages. When the war broke out between Ptolemy Euergetes and Seleucus Callinicus, and afterwards between the former and Antiochus Hierax, they sold themselves, being thoroughly faithless, now to one now to the other, and they became the scourge of the whole of Asia, until to the astonishment of everybody, Attalus of Pergamus, refusing to pay them tribute any longer, attacked, and defeated them; which is only to be accounted for by the fact, that sloth had made them utterly effeminate and unwarlike; just like the Goths whom Belisarius encountered in Italy. From this blow they never quite recovered; yet they still retained considerable influence, as Asia was always divided, and although Antiochus was living in their neighbourhood, he was too busy notwithstanding to be able to protect that part of Phrygia which bordered on the country where they dwelt. They therefore went on raising tribute far and wide; and now, after the downfall of Antiochus, the Asiatic peoples were afraid that they should not be able to defend themselves: this gave Cn. Manlius an opportunity of taking the field as the defender of these against the Galatians. Those barbarians had answered his summons to yield, with a _stolida ferocia_. He marched through Phrygia, and attacked them in their mountains, without, however, exterminating them; they remained there, and retained the Celtic language for a remarkably long period, even down to the times of Augustus. By degrees they also hellenized themselves, and such we find them to have been in the days of St. Paul.[36] The war was most desirable for the inhabitants of Asia Minor; but thoroughly unjust on the side of the Romans. Cn. Manlius undertook it contrary to the expressed will of the _decem legati_ who followed him. It was ended in two campaigns, and brought the Romans no other fruits but the booty and the sum of money which may perhaps have been paid; for the countries between western Asia and the land of the Galatians, were not the subjects, but the allies of Rome. The Gauls suffered such severe defeats, that thenceforth they lived quietly, and in subjection to the Romans.

The Romans now divided their conquests. Eumenes, who until then had had quite a small dominion, very much like that of a petty German prince, now became a great king. Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia on the Hellespont and Great Phrygia (the two were afterwards made one under the name of the kingdom of Asia, and the inhabitants were called Asians), Ionia with the exception of Smyrna, Phocæa, Erythræ, and some other Greek towns, which retained their freedom, became his. It was a great, and an enviable empire, but for all that a feeble one, owing to Asiatic effeminacy. The Rhodians got Caria and Lycia, with the exception of Telmissus which, heaven knows why, fell to the share of Eumenes. This was for a little republic an immense windfall, as these were fine rich countries, from which they might draw millions of our money: the taxes among the ancients were very heavy, and mostly on land, being a third of the whole produce. Revenues like these made the Rhodians very rich, and they spent them partly in armaments, and partly on the embellishment of their city, which, even without this, was already so beautiful. The Rhodians are a thoroughly respectable people; the Romans themselves acknowledged that they had none of the _levitas Grœcorum_ about them, but were quite their equals as to _severitas disciplinæ_.

IMPEACHMENT OF L. SCIPIO. END OF P. SCIPIO AFRICANUS AND OF HANNIBAL. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. M. PORCIUS CATO.

The contradictions which, according to Livy, were everywhere rife with regard to P. Scipio’s end, are a remarkable instance of the way in which even impossible statements were got up; and we see from thence, that even at a time in which contemporary history was already written, when the work of Fabius was ended, and that of Acilius began, these accounts were very little substantiated. We do not know for certain the year in which Scipio died. What is quoted in Livy from the speech of Tib. Gracchus, must be deemed to be worth more than the stories of the annalists. There is no doubt that L. Scipio was once called upon in the senate by the Petillii to answer to the charge of having received sums of money from Antiochus, and of not having accounted to the republic for those which had been gained during the course of the war. This kind of impeachment is one of the earliest which we meet with among the Romans. The consuls might indeed freely dispose of the _manubia_; they might distribute them among the soldiers, or deposit them in the _ærarium_; but they were always to be ready to give account, as the Romans in money matters were very particular with regard to this point. L. Scipio sent for his books, and produced them in the senate; but his brother snatched them out of his hands and destroyed them, saying that it was a shame, when he and his brother had made the state so rich, to ask an account for such a trifle as a million of drachmæ. Thus 225,000 dollars were already then a trifle! Hereupon an impeachment was brought against P. Scipio; he spoke a few proud words, and then it was--which can hardly be otherwise than authentic--that he cried out, “This is the day that I conquered Hannibal at Zama, on which ye are always wont to offer sacrifice: let those who are well disposed, follow me.” The tribunes alone are said to have staid behind. This accusation may perhaps be made to agree with the fact that Gracchus himself had wanted to have L. Scipio arrested, and that on this, when the prætor Terentius Culleo was about to try the case, P. Scipio had in all haste come up from Etruria, and rescued his brother from the beadles. And therefore as P. Africanus _plus quam civiles animos gerebat_, he too was impeached. He either did not wait for this prosecution, and retired to Liternum, a Latin colony, or _colonia maritima_, between Cumæ and Minturnæ, or he had lived there already before. Thus much is certain, that the last years of his life he did not pass in Rome. That he lived at Liternum in exile, and not for his own pleasure, becomes probable from the circumstance, that before his death, some one else was _princeps senatus_. Such an exile was easy to bring about; for, if he settled at Liternum as a citizen, he had thereby renounced the right of Roman citizenship.

L. Scipio, with his quæstor and legate, was found guilty of having embezzled the sum with which he had been charged. He was not addicted; but his property was seized by the state, and it is said not to have been sufficient to cover the demand. To conclude from thence that he was innocent, would be quite absurd; for he might have been a spendthrift in the meanwhile.

After the first Punic war, the number of the tribes had been raised to five and thirty, as a great part of the Sabines had acquired the full right of citizenship, and had formed two new tribes, the Quirina and Velina. This was nearly sixty years after the last increase, and thus, there were considerable signs already of a state of political stagnation. At the same time, perhaps as early as before the first Punic war, many towns were made præfectures with Cærite rights. During the second Punic war, there were four prætors; and while it yet lasted, their number was increased to six. Like Sicily, Spain now became a province; or rather, it was divided into two provinces, _Citerior_ and _Ulterior_, to which two prætors were sent. Southern Italy had likewise taken the form of a province, owing to the war with Hannibal, and it continued as such for some time after: the prætor there was most likely in Tarentum or Bruttium. But Gaul was not yet reduced _in provinciæ formam_, and there was, of course, no prætor there. The greatest change, which reached deepest, and had the most lasting consequences, had been caused by the falling away of many peoples to Hannibal: they were punished, and the places which had belonged to them lost all the privileges of Italian allies; some were treated as conquered, their lands being either confiscated, or merely left to them on sufferance; others, who had submitted, had but met with forbearance. This was the fate of a great many places in Samnium and Apulia, which were severed from their communities. Those which had remained faithful, kept indeed their ancient constitution. As the Lucanians, in the war with Hannibal, had their own prætor whom they elected themselves, they may have still enjoyed this privilege; but all their subject towns which had revolted, were detached from them. The Bruttians, who had persisted the longest in their revolt, were altogether deprived of their constitution: they were mere _dediticii_, no more allies at all; they had some of them to become serfs, and the whole of their land was confiscated. It is uncertain, whether they had been formerly on the same footing with the Samnites and Lucanians: as being of Greek descent, they were most likely treated as foreigners, yet they had still held an honourable position, which was now gone. Tarentum lost all its rights, and lingered on forsaken within its own walls, until little by little it fell to nothing. This change among the allies, made it more difficult for those who remained to fulfil their engagements to Rome than before; and owing to the rebellion likewise, a bitter and long-lived hatred had grown up between Rome and many of the Italian peoples. And what had much exhausted the allies, was the drain upon their citizens, many of whom had taken advantage of the isopolity, to settle in Rome or in the colonies. Some of the Latin colonies, moreover, had neglected their duty, twelve out of thirty having furnished no contingent during the expedition of Hasdrubal; and now, when circumstances allowed of it, their rights were abridged. The traces of the war with Hannibal had never been done away: the Samnites, Apulians, and Lucanians had already been hardly dealt with before; Etruria alone found herself in a state of high prosperity. Many colonies were planted in the south of Italy, not so much for security’s sake, as thus to provide for the poorer Romans. The veterans of Scipio’s army were rewarded by a special grant of land in Apulia and Lucania, which is the first example known to us of a provision made for veterans on a large scale; if we had the second decade of Livy, we might perhaps discover some earlier instances, but indeed they can only have been single cases. The condition of Italy must have been one of extreme distress: the price of every thing was unnaturally high, and, owing to the heavy war-taxes, the middle classes must have been utterly impoverished. In the latter periods of the war, we meet with a public debt, which was repaid in three instalments; but the Macedonian war had so drained the exchequer, that the third instalment was made in public lands. The Roman people itself was affected in its very life’s blood. The war had cost an immense host of men; and if notwithstanding the census now gives a like number, we have only a proof that in the meanwhile a crowd of foreigners, especially freedmen, had been received as citizens, and that thus the body of the Roman commonalty had become quite a different thing from what it had been before: those who had stood the war, were for the most part grown wretchedly poor. All this misery is not to be detected in Livy’s narrative; but we know from other sources, that in Rome almost continual famine and epidemics were raging; many families had their estates in the Falernian country and in Campania, which districts were entirely laid waste; others which had possessed landed property in the revolted provinces, had lost their all; so that this struggle quite destroyed the wealth of the nation. The Greek towns, Croton and others, were never able to recover. Another consequence was, that the soldiers remained for years under arms; that the legions, which had been composed of men enlisted for a campaign, were converted into a standing army. This continued to be the case after the war; and the soldiers became accustomed to look upon themselves as a permanent order, which they had never been before, as the legions were disbanded every year, and newly raised the next. This condition of the preservation of republican freedom was now changed by the war with Hannibal, and thus were the seeds here sown of the later troubles. Owing to the great confiscations, immense landed estates had been gained, the possession of which was divided between the great men among the patricians and plebeians, as there was no one now to control them, and the Licinian law had become a dead letter.

At that time, not a soul actually thought of danger; yet the beginning of dissolution most decidedly existed already. It is said that, owing to the victories in Asia, luxury and its concomitant vices had spread; but this was an accidental symptom, the real cause lay deeper. After such long, savage, and destructive wars, in which so many deeds of outrage and ferocity had been wrought; in which the poor had become poorer and poorer, and the middle classes had gone down more and more, whilst the rich were crammed with wealth; many things must have changed for the worse. The same soldiers who formerly had earned glory under Scipio, and then as hungry plunderers went to Asia, enriched themselves immensely, and returned with ill-gotten treasures: they had no real wants, and did not know how to use their suddenly acquired riches. Even in the character of the great men, as in every thing else, we everywhere meet with a great alteration: the dismal spectacle of an utter degeneracy is already preparing itself. The generals appear like robbers; they carry on wars merely for the sake of pillage and booty, and the exceptions among them are few, and far between. The men of high rank are overbearing towards the allies: in former times a Roman magistrate, when travelling through Italy, would put up at the house of his own guest-friend, but it was now customary for such travellers to be everywhere received with pomp. The games were got up in a style and on a scale which required an immense fortune; in 580, there were at one funeral no less than a hundred and fifty gladiators: in the forum, banquets were given to the people. It was already the fashion to seek for choice specimens of art and luxury; the officers and the nobles filled their houses with furniture, tapestry, and plate of every description. A brutal expenditure of wealth got in vogue, a judicious and liberal use of riches being one of the most difficult things in the world. Thus, when several years ago, the inhabitants of Dittmarsch all at once made a great deal of money, it immediately gave rise to a sluttish wastefulness, until, before long, they were reduced again. The cooks, who hitherto had been the most despised of slaves at Rome, now became the most highly valued: in earlier times, the consul lived like the peasant; only the pontiffs, whose bills of fare we may still read in Macrobius,[37] were held to keep as good a table as the most dignified of canons. With the Athenians it was quite different. The Greek is naturally very temperate, and the Italian can be so too; but when the latter has an opportunity of feasting, he makes a beast of himself. Moreover, although the constitution was most democratical in appearance, yet we already see the overweening pride of the nobles on the increase: the rich were almost above punishment. L. Quinctius Flamininus, the brother of Titus, to amuse his catamite, caused a man who was either a convict, or a Gallic hostage, to be beheaded; for which Cato expelled him from the senate. And though fifty years afterwards, Polybius conscientiously places the Romans above the Greeks, peculation and extortions from the allies were notwithstanding very common, as we may see from an excellent fragment of Cato _de sumtu suo_, the gem of the collection of Fronto: it shows that towards the end of the sixth century, it was the general belief that the servants of the state seized upon every opportunity of feathering their own nests. All distinctions between the different orders had entirely ceased; the only thing looked to, was whether a man were noble or not, the patricians, as an order, having quite lost their importance. The last of their privileges, that one consul should always belong to one of the two orders, was done away with at the time of the war with Perseus, as the patrician houses were nearly extinct: for the ædiles only, this was still the rule, but in the case of the prætorship it was altogether abolished. It was, however, extremely difficult for a plebeian to rise, who was not of high rank: for only a few _novi homines_, like Cato, could make their way, and the whole of the nobility seem to have been in a league to check such intrusion.

On the other hand, the city was very much embellished. Stately buildings were erected, and instead of the courts of justice being held any longer with no other covering but heaven, as was done by our (German) forefathers, _basilicæ_ were built. This name was derived from the στοὰ βασιλική under which the βασιλεύς at Athens used to sit: it was a triple portico in which the judges assembled in the open air, though not under the open sky. Cato was the first who built a _basilica_ (Porcia) in the forum; by and by several others followed. They were afterwards enclosed with walls; and when the Christian religion was introduced into Rome, this form was deemed to be the one best suited to the Christian worship, as the different _stoæ_ might be assigned as separate places, the men and the matrons being in the aisles on each side, and the clergy in the middle; at the tribunal, was the high altar, and the throne of the bishop. Hence the name of _basilica_ was applied to all Christian churches, even when they were no longer in this form. The material of the buildings was still the old, simple one; the style, the ancient Doric or Tuscan: marble was not yet to be seen.

M. Porcius Cato is the most remarkable man of that age, he is quite a man of the old times: (the surname Priscus, however, merely indicates his Latin origin from Tusculum.) The account of him in Plutarch is excellent, as his life may be understood without any knowledge of the constitution, or deep insight into politics: nothing else was needed but a keen perception of individual character, which was Plutarch’s strong point. Perhaps Rome never again gave birth to so original a genius as his. Whilst all around him had their science and erudition from Greece, Cato had it from himself; he learned Greek only late in life; his language, his style, his knowledge, were altogether Roman. A more versatile mind than his, the world has never known: he was a great statesman,--his censorship was a distinguished one,--an excellent agriculturist, an active man in every business of life, gifted with remarkable eloquence, which was pure nature, and not at all formed after artificial rules; and he was also a very eminent scholar, indefatigable in research, an excellent prose-writer in his own way, although harsh and uncouth. Livy, who otherwise is fond of him, applies to him in jest the phrase, _qui vivo eo_ ALLATRARE _ejus (Scipionis) magnitudinem solitus erat_. His peculiarities were those of a man of low birth, who, being endowed with immense energy, had worked his way by dint of it through countless difficulties: all his life long, he kept up a feud with the nobles and the rich; he abhorred their manners from the bottom of his heart,--there was no affectation in it. The only one like him in feeling, was his colleague in the censorship and the tribunate, L. Valerius Flaccus. Cato was a fanatical Roman: he bore a hatred against every thing that was polished and elegant, his nationality therefore led him to dwell fondly on the past; he looked upon the men of his day as quite degenerate; his ideal dated a hundred years back, and with him the height of happiness was in simplicity, thriftiness, and stern morality. His constitution was of iron strength: in his eighty-sixth year, he still carried on a troublesome lawsuit; and even as late as in his ninetieth, he impeached Servius Sulpicius Galba. He stood up without flinching for Rome’s supremacy; but at the same time he had an extraordinary sense of justice: though he did not like the Greeks, he yet defended the Rhodians, as he likewise did the Lusitanians against the perjury and the extortions of Galba. On the whole, he is very like the great German characters of the sixteenth century, in whom what is called coarseness by no means deserves that name.

Whilst Cato was almost the only really great man, virtue was then on the wane, and genius becoming more and more rare. The moneyed interest also in those days was already of great importance. Since the acquisition of Sicily, there had been a wide field opened for employment of capital; people went into the provinces to make their fortunes. In Rome, as by canon law, it was forbidden to take interest; yet the prohibition was unavailing, as ways and means were sought out of evading it. As in the middle ages business was done through the Jews, so in Rome it was carried on by means of foreigners and freedmen; and it was still more easily managed in the provinces, where there were none of these checks. And when the property (_publicum_) of the Roman state had grown immensely great, it became the custom to lease it out in single lots, such as the mines of Spain, the tithes of Sicily or Illyricum, or the tunny-fisheries on the Sardinian coast; so that those who farmed them made enormous profits, and many suddenly found themselves rich, as people now do by stock-jobbing. If a war-contribution were laid on a state, there was immediately a _publicanus_ at hand, who advanced the money at twelve per cent. at the very lowest, but often at twenty-four, and even at thirty-six per cent.: the governors of the provinces then helped him to get paid. Thus a reckless circulation of money began, of which there had never been a trace before. The first signs of the class of the _publicani_ are to be met with in Livy as early as in the war with Hannibal, and there are rather more in the decade which follows; these men did not, however, gain their extraordinary influence until nearly a hundred years afterwards, when in the nature and extent of their wealth they form a counterpart to the fortunes of the eighteenth century.

P. Scipio and Hannibal, according to the common account, died in the year 569, the latter by his own hand, as the Romans had basely called upon Prusias, the king of Bithynia, to yield him up. It happened that the extensive and wealthy state of Eumenes, who was in a sort of thraldom to the Romans, was so unwarlike, that the small kingdom of Bithynia was formidable to him; and the latter had spread, and had wrested from him a great part of Phrygia on the Hellespont. In this war, Hannibal directed the undertakings of Prusias, and forthwith Roman ambassadors demanded his surrender. The king was loth to arrest him; but he ordered his house to be surrounded by soldiers, that he might secure him until he had made up his mind whether he should give him up. When Hannibal saw that every way of escape was shut out from him, he swallowed poison and died. This demand of the Romans is one of the infamies of that age. But even in their brightest times, they would not have been more generous to an enemy like Hannibal, as is shown by the case of C. Pontius in the Samnite war. Hannibal had been unaccountably overlooked by the Romans for some years. T. Quinctius Flamininus lent himself to the office of getting him to be delivered up.

LITERATURE OF THE ROMANS AT THIS PERIOD. ATELLANÆ, PRÆTEXTATÆ; LIVIUS ANDRONICUS; NÆVIUS; ENNIUS; PLAUTUS. ROMAN HISTORIANS IN GREEK.

We are by no means to fancy that the Romans, before they were acquainted with the Greeks, knew as little of Greek literature, as, for instance, our forefathers did at the time of the revival of learning, or that indeed they had had no literature whatever. The class of scholars and writers was then unknown; but the Romans, and all the Italian nations in general, were very well versed in Greek poetry. This is shown by their pictures and monuments of every kind, by the many representations of Greek fables on the vases of the Etruscans and other peoples, and by the idiomatic names of Grecian heroes which were current in Italy; for instance, Ulixes,[38] instead of Odysseus; Catamitus, instead of Ganymedes; Alumentus, instead of Laomedon, and so forth; which are proofs that they really were in the mouths of the people. The religion of the Romans was not mythological, but a regular theology; their deities were νοούμενα, the myths referring but to the gods of lesser rank: they were therefore wanting in that which gives so much life to the Greek poetry. This of course applies rather to the Sabine element in the Roman population; the Pelasgian one was evidently more akin to the Grecian. By the other element, as well as by the Sibylline books and by the oracle of Apollo, they were familiarized with the mythology, and, therefore, likewise with the poetry of the Greeks: that mythology, there can be no doubt, was perfectly intelligible to the Romans. In Rome, after the end of the first Punic war, Greek poetry became still more known through the medium of the Latin language: it is true, however, that it awakened less interest there than in other Italian towns. The theatre at Tusculum, which, if we may judge from the bases found in the orchestra, dates at latest from the war with Hannibal, presupposes the performance of native or Greek pieces.

The Atellan plays, which are mentioned even before the end of the fourth century, are to us a distinct sign of a national literature. The statement that they were extemporised, is surely correct. Thus, before the great change of manners in Italy, there was often some improvisation interwoven with the pantomimes. As in the Atellanæ they possessed a sort of comedy, so in the _prætextatæ_, they had not only a native, but also a most ancient national tragedy. I believe that there is no mistake in connecting with the _prætextatæ_, the solemn processions at funerals, in which the masks of deceased men, who had curule ancestors (_jus imaginum_), were represented in the dress of their rank by men of similar size; yet even without any reference to this, we may ascribe to them a very great antiquity. The first poet whom we know to have treated them according to the rules of art, was Attius: earlier _prætextatæ_ than his are not mentioned; yet this is no proof that they did not exist a long time before.

The translation of Greek poetry into the Latin tongue was a step of immense consequence. That Livius Andronicus had been taken prisoner at Tarentum, may be a mistake, as he is perhaps confounded with M. Livius Macatus; Livius Andronicus could at that time have been but a mere child. The accounts of him are very uncertain; in the earlier ages, little heed was bestowed upon the lives of the first poets, and their sayings and doings were only gathered afterwards: thus it still happened with Plautus and Terence. As far as we can judge from his fragments, he seems not even to have attained to the Greek form at all. The Odyssey, which, from its reference to the native country of the Romans, went indeed nearer home to their hearts, and had greater attraction for them than the Iliad,[39] he seems not to have translated at full length, but to have made an abridgment of it, which was also in the homely Italian measure. The great poem of Nævius was likewise in the saturnian rhythm. Besides the Odyssey, there are only tragedies mentioned of Livius, which, however, like the Atellanæ, were not acted in the theatre, but on a stage in the circus.

Nævius blended the history of the most recent times with Greek mythology; in his great historical poem, for instance, he brought in the myth of the giants. Besides this, he wrote tragedies as well as comedies, as we may see from the titles. That he was a good poet, we may indeed believe on Cicero’s word, who, on the whole, found the old writers very little to his taste.

When Nævius was an old man, Plautus, who was undoubtedly one of the greatest poetical geniuses of ancient times, was growing up by his side. This poet takes Greek plays and treats them with a finished irony, not making a mere version from the original, but displaying in his characters the peculiarities of Roman life, which is that of the lower orders, freedmen, strangers, and naturalized citizens. The scene is at Athens, or Epidamnus, or elsewhere; but he has also Greek characters (for instance, the parasite is thoroughly Greek), and then one is again reminded that one is in the midst of Romans. The cleverness with which he managed this, and with which, on the slippery path where he might so easily have stumbled, he always hits the right point, is quite miraculous. We see how wonderfully rich and refined his language was, a proof that even before his time it had been very much cultivated, otherwise it would not have been changed so quickly. For we have a _senatus consultum_ of the fifth century,[40] and the epitaph of Scipio Barbatus, with which we may compare his style, and we find a remarkable difference.

Livius was a foreign client; Nævius a moneyed man, a maniceps; being too bold for a foreigner, he was prosecuted because he had given offence to one of the Metelli.[41] Of Plautus, we do not even know whether he was a Roman citizen: he must have been poor; but the story of his having worked at a mill does not rest upon any trustworthy authority. The first who really was a Roman citizen, being somewhat younger than Nævius, but standing in quite a different position from his, was Ennius, a _gentleman_,[42] and certainly a member of the tribes: he lived with Scipio, Fulvius Nobilior, and the first men, and was treated with the highest distinction. It is he who gained for poetry and literature the respect and esteem of the Romans. Among his fragments, there are some very fair pieces; his poetry, however, was not directed to higher objects: in comedy he seems to have been weak, nor does he appear to have held it in particular regard; in epic poetry, on the other hand, he has decided merit. Some of his things were written in a purely Roman form,--this was probably the case with the _Sabinæ_,[43] and also with the _Saturæ_,--yet he followed out quite a different idea. Plautus’ metres are by no means thoroughly Greek, though they very often coincide with the latter: the scansion by long and short syllables is Greek, but the Romans were not so strict in their measures, not having the quick ear of the Greeks. A trochaic or iambic movement was of native use among the Romans, and was not measured in the same way as among the Greeks: so it is with anapæsts among the modern Greeks, and with all the metres among some of the Slavonic nations. The _senarius_ may be Greek, and as little peculiar to the Romans as to us (Germans). Even as Plautus introduced the latter, so did Ennius the hexameter, which was quite foreign; and this brought about just such revolution in metres as with us. His hexameters were still clumsy and full of faults, and without any _cæsura_, or with a false one, though not so bad as in Klopstock. Much as I like the old _numeri_, the verses of Ennius have something in them which is unpleasing to me. Besides the metres which are properly lyric, he has tried all the _rhythmi_; and indeed he has done it with much greater trueness than the older dramatists. The _senarius_ has already more of measured syllables, which gave it a firmer hold; but there is between the verses of Ennius and those of Virgil, as wide a gulf as between the first attempts of Klopstock and that height of perfection in metrical art, to which Count Platen has reached. A peculiarity of the old versification which as yet is far from being clearly made out, was the slurring of the short syllables (_ecthlipsis_): _ego_ was pronounced as one syllable, like the Italian _io_; _accipito_, as a dactyl.

Ennius was not an original genius; yet he surely does not deserve the contempt with which Horace speaks of him. He had had a Greek education in Calabria; Greek was his second mother tongue, while the Roman was for him only an acquired language: he therefore wished to help the Romans to a translated Greek literature. If we compare it with what the Greek literature then was, that of the Romans was very brilliant. The Alexandrine period was now already past. Callimachus was dead, when Livius Andronicus began; Antagoras[44] and Aratus were dead; Eratosthenes was a mere versifier. On the other hand, the Romans had a great deal of freshness, and there would have been still more, had not Ennius caused the foreign influence to get so much the upperhand.

Somewhat younger than Ennius was Pacuvius, his sister’s son, justly called the Deep. He scorned the pieces of Euripides, which Ennius had chosen, and only took those of Æschylus and Sophocles, thus putting himself altogether in opposition to the taste of the Greeks of that age.

Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentus then wrote the history of their own nation in Greek. Dionysius, who finds fault with Fabius as an historian, has never made any objection against his language; on the contrary, the fact that Dionysius wrote his own history only down to the beginning of the first Punic war, when Fabius was getting to be more diffuse, proves that the latter was very readable. Of the same standing was Acilius. The great Scipio wrote in the form of a letter to Philip the history of his own wars,[45] and so did his son-in-law Scipio Nasica that of the war with Perseus. Greek grammarians, statuaries, and painters were brought in already by Æmilius Paullus for the education of his children.

WAR WITH THE LIGURIANS; WITH THE CELTIBERIANS. THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR. PEACE WITH THE RHODIANS. FURTHER WARS IN SPAIN. STATE OF AFFAIRS AT HOME.

During these changes, when on all points a sudden and thorough revolution had taken place in the manners of the people, the Romans were not backward in widening their sway: whilst the state was falling to pieces, they did not know what to do, unless they were making conquests. The evil had become so deep-rooted, that it could hardly have been got rid of; but as it was, nothing was done to heal it, and the degeneracy quickly increased.

The war against the Ligurians is not only insignificant, when measured by the standard of other wars, but it is also obscure, owing to our very defective knowledge of the geography of the country. It has some resemblance to undertakings against the Caucasian tribes of which we now (1829) read; and although the Apennines are not such a high mountain-range as the Caucasus, they yet likewise give great advantages to the inhabitants. As is always the case when a powerful state has once determined upon subjugating a people, the Ligurians also were crushed. Their tribes in fact had their abodes as far as the Rhone; but the Romans, who were chiefly anxious to secure the Tuscan frontier, reduced only the Genoese territory. These wars did not reach beyond the borders of Provence; the hostilities against the Salyans in the neighbourhood of Marseilles belong to a later period.[46] These tribes fought for their freedom with such determination, that the Romans had no other course but to drive them out of their fastnesses,--booty there was none to be got there,--and the consuls Cornelius and Bæbius[47] led away fifty thousand Ligurians from their homes into Samnium where Frontinus,[48] as late as in the second century met with their descendants under the names of the Cornelian and Bæbian Ligurians. The war was ended before that of Perseus. For the especial purpose of commanding Gaul, the highway of Flaminius, which went as far as Ariminum, was now lengthened as the _via Æmilia_ to Placentia; and the whole country south of the Po was filled with colonies, so that the Celtic population disappeared.

All this time, the Romans were likewise establishing their rule in Spain, where they regularly kept troops. This beginning of standing armies had a decided influence, not only upon warfare, but also on all the relations of civil life. In former days, the real burthens of war had fallen upon all ranks alike: every one who was able to bear arms, had served for a time, and he became a citizen again, when the legion was disbanded at the end of the contest; which had this advantage, that the soldier was not separated from the citizen. But now the men remained for a long term of years in Spain, married Spanish women, and became estranged from Italy: many of them never returned. The Roman sway spread itself over Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia, as far as the Sierra Morena; for when they waged war with the Celtiberians, the latter had traversed the country of the neighbouring tribes. These wars were therefore not so much for acquisition as for consolidation. Their rule over the nations seems to have become somewhat slippery; but Cato, during his consulate in 557, gained them back by his uprightness. Roman generals who behaved in this way, always won the confidence of the Spaniards; and these would submit, until the injustice of the Romans again drove them to shake off the yoke: the people always appears in a very noble light. Cato, however, was also cunning, this being a feature in his character, as well as in that of the Romans as a nation. He strengthened the power of Rome by circulars which he sent to seventy or eighty Spanish towns, all of which were strongly fortified, and in case of rebellion hard to take, so that they were apt to combine with their neighbours. In these letters, which were all of them to be opened on one and the same day, as containing a secret of very high importance, was the command to pull down their walls forthwith under the threat of a siege and of bondage. The order was generally obeyed; and before they became aware that it was a stratagem, the work of demolition had already made considerable progress.

In the year 575, Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, a son of him who in the war with Hannibal had won a brilliant victory over Hanno and had nobly fallen, and also the father of the two ill-fated brothers, became consul, and went to Spain. (It was he who had deeply deplored that P. Scipio tried to set himself above the law, but who did not wish him to be punished like any other citizen; and Scipio had afterwards chosen him for his son-in-law.) At that time, the feeling of hostility had already been more widely kindled. The Celtiberians, who had spread from the sources of the Ebro to the threefold border of the Mancha, Andalusia, and Valencia, and chiefly dwelt in New Castile and Western Aragon, in the provinces of Soria and Cuença, had never been subject to the Carthaginians, but had furnished them with mercenaries, as they also did the Romans: they now got involved in war with the Romans, who endeavoured to reduce them. They were the bravest people in Spain. With them Gracchus concluded a peace, the conditions of which are unknown to us; but they were so fair, that these tribes, who in reality had no wish whatever for war, ever afterwards looked upon it as the greatest good which could befall them, if they were only allowed to have them. The whole family of the Gracchi is distinguished for an extraordinary mildness and kindness, which otherwise are quite foreign to the Roman character. Had his successors kept the peace, the Celtiberians would have become as true and as useful allies to the Romans as the Marsians and Pelignians. Other generals, however, extended the Roman rule in the west of Spain: the Vaccæans north of the Tagus and the Lusitanians must have been brought under subjection between 570 and 580; yet this was not for long, owing to the extortions of the generals.