Chapter XII: Section VII: Greece and Rome

1. We are now prepared to return to the year

500 B. C.—and follow events in chronological order, with a
fair appreciation of their import. Just before the close
of the last century, Darius Hystaspes, the king of Persia,
sent an army into Europe, to the north of Greece, to
chastise the Scythians, and it conquered Thrace. The Greek
colonies in Asia Minor, which had been recently added to
the Persian empire, became restive under foreign control,
and when the Persian army returned home,
500—organized a rebellion and took and burned the city of
Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia. They were assisted by
the European Greeks; but the vast resources of Persia soon
enabled Darius to take vengeance on them, and Miletus was
besieged and destroyed. Darius summoned the Grecian states
to offer their submission, but Athens and Sparta sent back
a defiance. Darius thereupon gathered a large armament and
prepared to invade
495—Greece, which he commenced by the conquest of Macedon. But
a tempest destroyed his ships and 20,000 men, and the
expedition returned to Persia. In the same year the
Roman plebeians obtained their first success against the
patricians, by which the debts of the poor plebeians to the
wealthy patricians were cancelled and Tribunes of the People
appointed.

490—This year the glory of Greece broke forth. Darius having
sent another and larger army into Greece, it advanced on
Athens and encamped at Marathon, within twenty-two miles of
the city. The Persian host was said to number from 100,000
to 200,000 men. The Athenians had but 10,000 citizens, but
armed 20,000 slaves, and the city of Platæa sent them 1,000
troops. Miltiades, the very able Athenian general, marched
out and, taking a good position, offered battle. It was
the 20th of September. The little army of the Greeks
obtained a complete victory and the Persians returned home in
confusion. The great services of Miltiades were rewarded with
imprisonment, on a frivolous charge, and he died there of his
wounds.

485—Darius Hystaspes, the Persian king, died while preparing
a still larger armament for the invasion of Greece.

484—An insurrection in Egypt completely subdued by the
Persians.

480—Xerxes, king of Persia, invaded Greece with a million
soldiers. The battle at the pass of Thermopylæ was fought
by a thousand Spartans under Leonidas, their king, and all
but one slain. The Persian fleet was beaten the same day by
Themistocles, the Athenian admiral. Xerxes soon advanced on
Athens, which was abandoned by its inhabitants and burned by
the Persians. Soon after, Themistocles fought the Persian
navy again at Salamis and totally destroyed it. Xerxes,
leaving a large army in Greece, returned to Asia.

479—The battle of Platæa ended the Persian invasion. The
allied Greek army numbered 70,000, under Pausanias, the
Spartan king; the Persians 300,000. The Persians are said
to have had 200,000 slain, and their army was totally
routed. Another victory was gained on the coast of Asia Minor
the same day, and the last remnants of the Persian fleet
destroyed.

478—Athens was rebuilt and surrounded with walls from the
treasures of the conquered Persians. This was the age
of great men in Greece. Phidias, her greatest sculptor,
flourished at this time. The Persians, at the time of their
first invasion, brought a piece of marble to commemorate
the victory of which they were confident. The Greeks caused
Phidias to produce out of it a statue of Nemesis, the goddess
of vengeance, and set it up on the field of Marathon.

478—Themistocles died in banishment about this time, and
Aristides of old age. Both were leading statesmen and
generals of Athens during the Persian war.

470—Socrates, the most eminent philosopher of all ancient
times, was born this year.

”—The death of Xerxes by assassination occurred this year.

466—Cimon, son of Miltiades, was now the great man of
Athens. He was soon superseded by Pericles. From 480 B. C.
to 430 was the golden period of Athens. She was pre-eminent
politically, conducting the war of the Grecian allies
against Persian supremacy on the western shores of Asia and
in the Mediterranean sea. Republican liberty was everywhere
predominant. The greatest writers, painters and sculptors
lived in this period or immediately after it. Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, philosophers; Æschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, tragic poets; Zeuxis and Apelles, painters; and
Phidias in sculpture, were a few among the many great names
which are found in or immediately following this period.

457—Cincinnatus was made dictator at Rome. During this
period the Romans laid the foundation of their dominion over
all Italy by waging successful war with the Etruscans and
Samnites, the most vigorous and powerful of their opponents.

450—The Decemvirate was appointed at Rome. They were ten
magistrates empowered to produce a more perfect code. It was
called the “Laws of the Twelve Tables.” The plebeians about
this time succeeded in wresting important privileges from the
patricians, which more equally balanced the different powers
of the state.

2. Athens was the centre of civilization, and Greek culture and ideas were penetrating all the nations in her vicinity. Rome was rapidly developing and Carthage was at the summit of her glory. She had control of much of the Spanish or Iberian peninsula. Persia, after absorbing all the old monarchies of the east, was declining. The “march of empire” was distinctly defining its “westward course.”

It was about the middle of this century that Herodotus, the “Father of History,” was rising to fame, and a few years later Xenophon, the Greek general and historian, was born. Thucydides, another historian, dates from this period. The great career of history now fairly commenced.

443—Herodotus emigrated from Halicarnassus, in Asia, to
Greece.

431—The Peloponnesian war, a bitter contest between Athens
and Sparta, commenced. It lasted twenty-three years, and was
again revived, ending in the conquest of Athens by Sparta.
This war was followed, after some time, by the rise of the
power of Thebes, under their famous general, Epaminondas, who
broke the power of Sparta. Thebes sunk into insignificance
after his death, and Philip of Macedon commenced the
subjugation of all Greece. He was followed by Alexander the
Great, who, in return for the loss of republican liberty,
rendered Greece illustrious by conquering the Persian empire,
and imbuing all the Eastern World with its philosophy and
arts. For all these great events one hundred years were
required.

429—The death of the illustrious Pericles occurred in this
year.

”—Plato, the disciple of Socrates, and, in some points,
superior to him in mental discipline, was born.

420—About this time Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles,
became prominent in Athenian affairs. He had brilliant
powers, but little principle.

406—The battle of Ægospotamos, gained by Lysander the
Spartan, broke the power of Athens.

404—Athens was taken by Lysander, its walls demolished, and
the government of the “Thirty Tyrants” established by the
Spartans. Alcibiades, banished from Athens, was assassinated
by the Persians, at the instigation of the Spartans.

401—Occurred the battle of Cunaxa, in Babylonia, between
Cyrus, the brother of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, and that
king. Cyrus, who had been governor, or satrap, in Asia Minor,
gathered a large army including more than 10,000 Greeks.
Cyrus was killed and his own army defeated, but the Greeks
repelled all assaults. Their generals having been decoyed
into the power of the Persians, on the plea of making terms
with them, were treacherously slain. The army appointed
other commanders, chief among whom was Xenophon, afterward
the celebrated historian, and they made good their return to
Greece. It was finely described by Xenophon, and known as the
“Retreat of the Ten Thousand.”

400—Socrates taught doctrines too pure and high-toned for his
countrymen to understand, and was condemned to drink poison,
as a dangerous man and despiser of the gods, in the 70th year
of his age. The Athenians soon repented it.

396—The capital of Veii, taken by the Romans, ended the
contest with the Etruscans.

389—Rome was conquered and, except the capitol, destroyed, by
the Gauls under Brennus. The barbarians soon retired and the
city was rebuilt.

384—Aristotle, the most learned of the Grecian philosophers,
was born at Stagira, in Macedon. He laid the foundation of
scientific study, and was the tutor of Alexander the Great.

371—Epaminondas defeated the Spartans at Leuctra, and

362—again at Mantinea, where he was killed.

360—Philip became king of Macedon, and soon began to
undermine the liberties of Greece in a very artful way.

357—The “Sacred War” against the Phocians, who had plundered
the temple of Apollo, at Delphi, commenced.

356—Birth of Alexander the Great. Rutilius, the first plebean
dictator at Rome.

349—Death of Plato, the brightest light of Grecian
philosophy. He systematized and enlarged the doctrines of
Socrates.

338—Occurred the battle of Chaeronea between Philip and
the allied Athenians and Thebans. The Greeks were totally
defeated and their liberty lost. Demosthenes, the most
celebrated orator of the Greeks, spent his whole life and
his magnificent eloquence in the effort to rouse the Greeks
against Philip; but Philip was too crafty and the Greeks too
little accustomed to act in concert. For nearly a hundred
years the states of Greece had been exhausted by wars among
themselves, and they were too weary of fighting to make
the necessary effort against so powerful and skillful an
adversary.

336—Philip was assassinated on the eve of an expedition
against Persia, as chief of the Grecian states. This popular
idea consoled them for the loss of liberty. Alexander
succeeded his father.

335—Thebes rebelled against Alexander, and he took and
destroyed that ancient city.

334—Alexander carried out the project of his father and
invaded the Persian empire. The battle of the Granicus, his
first great victory, took place this year.

333—Darius, the Persian king, was again thoroughly defeated
in the battle of Issus. Damascus, in Syria, was taken and
Tyre besieged by Alexander.

332—Tyre was taken and finally destroyed, and Alexandria, at
the mouth of the Nile, founded.

331—A final battle at Arbela, in Assyria, overthrew the
Persian Empire. Darius escaped, but was murdered by Bessus,
one of his officers. Four years were spent by the Greeks in
subduing the wild tribes on the eastern border of the Empire,
and settling the government of these vast conquests.

327—Alexander invaded India and was constantly triumphant
till his soldiers refused to go farther from home. They had
grown tired of conquering, and Alexander reluctantly returned
to Babylon to consolidate his government.

323—Alexander died of a fever, the result of excessive
drinking. He left no heir, and his generals divided his
empire.

322—The Samnites obtained a temporary success by surprising
a Roman army in a narrow defile of the mountains called
the Candine Forks, and subjected it to a humiliating
capitulation. The Romans never bowed before misfortune or
defeat. They prosecuted the war with invincible resolution
until the Samnite power was wholly broken, a contest, in all,
of about 50 years, which was soon followed by the complete
subjugation of the whole peninsula.

3. In this year died the two greatest Grecians, Demosthenes, the orator, by suicide; and Aristotle, by old age. On the death of Alexander, Demosthenes aroused the Athenians to make a stand for their liberties. Few of the Grecian states joined them and they were totally defeated by Antipater, the governor appointed by Alexander. Demosthenes avoided punishment by taking poison. The Achaian League, about forty years after, maintained the liberties of Greece for fifty years or more, which then fell before the invincible Romans. For many years all the eastern world was in confusion from the struggles of competitors for the Empire of Alexander. Ptolemy established himself soon and firmly in Egypt, and Seleucus, after various

312—Reverses, obtained full possession of the eastern parts
of the empire, Babylonia, Assyria and Persia. This year is
called the era of the Seleucidæ. Asia Minor and Greece were a
scene of the greatest confusion for seventy years, so far as
rulers were concerned. But nearly all these were Greeks, and
Greek culture and philosophy exerted a wide spread influence.
In the end it became fully evident that the want of genius in
the Greek mind to organize, and steadiness in Greek character
to sustain, settled institutions was absolute. They had,
at different times, men of the greatest ability, but when
they passed away their plans and institutions perished with
them. The acute and accomplished Greeks were ever children
in the science of government, and the advent of Rome alone,
whose special skill was in government, saved the world from
irretrievable anarchy or fatal despotism.

300—The Roman plebeans completed their struggle for
constitutional liberty by acquiring a share in the priestly
office, which was essential to the full value of their other
victories over the patricians, and the Roman constitution was
complete. It was maintained very fairly for more that one
hundred and fifty years, when the spoils of their conquests
corrupted the virtue of the citizens and produced the
internal disorder that, about a century later still brought
about the establishment of the Roman Empire. Yet the forms
of government, municipal and other regulations, and the
administration of justice, though often interfered with in
particular cases, were so well settled on sound principles,
and secured so uniformly the welfare of society, that they
were preserved longest from general ruin, and revived first
in more modern times. Greek thought and culture, and Roman
law remained indestructible.

290—The Samnites, Sabines and Gauls, being all defeated,
Rome was virtually mistress of Italy, although the Grecian
cities on the eastern coast remained to be subdued. They had
little strength in themselves against a power so warlike,
and invited Pyrrhus, the king of

281—Epirus, to their assistance. He twice defeated the Roman
consuls, but they inflicted on him so much loss that they
vainly offered him battle immediately after, and rejected all
his overtures to treat for peace. He was at length vanquished
and obliged to abandon Italy to the Republic.

4. The Romans soon subdued all opposition and began to look about for other lands to conquer.

264—The Carthaginians, on the opposite coast of Africa,
had become a colossal power, and sought to establish their
control over Sicily—not an easy task, since it had many
colonies of Greeks whose national spirit and bravery did
not desert them. In this year a call for assistance from a
plundering band who had captured a Greek city, a part of
whom had also invited Carthaginian aid, brought Rome and
Carthage in conflict. The Carthaginians were enraged at this
interference with an island which they had long intended to
make their own, and raised an immense army to drive out the
intruders. The Romans defeated the army and took Agrigentum,
one of the best strongholds of the Carthaginians on the
island.

260—The Carthaginians were masters of the sea, and the Romans
had little knowledge of naval affairs. Taking a Carthaginian
vessel which had been driven ashore for a model, they, in
a short time, created a fleet and worsted their enemies on
their own special element.

256—The Romans again defeated the Carthaginians in a sea
fight near the island of Lipara.

255—The Romans determined to carry the war into Africa,
and fitting out a large fleet, inflicted a still heavier
loss on the Carthaginian armaments, landed in Africa and
defeated an immense army. The Carthaginians sued for peace,
but the terms proposed by Regulus, the Roman general, were
so severe that they resolved to continue the war. A Grecian
general, Xanthippus, took command of their army and totally
defeated the Romans, taking Regulus prisoner, and destroying
or
248—capturing all his army but 2000. The Romans lost
three fleets by storms, but conquered once in a sea fight,
and defeated an army in Sicily. The Carthaginians again
sought peace, but the Romans would not abate their first
terms, and continued the war until the
240—Carthaginians, completely humbled, accepted the severe
alternative of submission or destruction. The temple of
Janus, the god of war, never shut but in time of absolute
peace, was now closed for the second time since the building
of the city.

The people, whose special occupation was war, soon grew
tired of peace, and carried on various conflicts with the
Gauls settled at the foot of the Alps in the
227—north of Italy. They invaded Illyria, on the east coast of
the Adriatic Sea, whose people were very troublesome pirates.
This war was again renewed with a more complete defeat of the
Illyrians. They had before this subdued Sardinia and Corsica.

219—The Carthaginians pursued their conquests in Spain, and
the celebrated Hannibal took Saguntum, which
218—brought on the second Punic war, as the war with Carthage
was termed.

217—Hannibal, with great celerity, crossed the Pyrenees and
the Alps—having first completed the conquest of Spain—and
defeated the Romans in the battle of Ticinus, and again at
Trebia.

217—The Achaian confederacy, now in the height of its glory
in maintaining the liberties of Greece, united all the Greeks
in a confederacy under the influence of Philip, king of
Macedon, with the hope of arresting the power and ambition of
Rome.

216—Hannibal inflicted a dreadful defeat on the Romans near
the Thrasymenean Lake. The Romans were greatly alarmed, and
made Fabius Maximus dictator, whose habit of refusing a
pitched battle, wearing out his adversary by skirmishes and
cutting off his supplies, is called “The Fabian Policy.” This
plan is, by maneuvering and delay, to wear out and destroy
an invader in detail without peril of defeat in battle. The
Romans kept armies in Spain to prevent the Carthaginians from
sending reinforcements to Hannibal.

215—At the close of this year Fabius resigned his
dictatorship and the consuls appointed to succeed him
abandoned his policy. They offered battle to Hannibal at
Cannæ and the army was annihilated. 40,000 Romans were slain
on the field. These defeats had destroyed the flower of
their fighting population, but Roman courage and resolution
always rose with defeat. They did not despair, but raised a
fresh army and put Fabius again at its head, against whom the
talents of Hannibal were vain. They fomented disturbances in
Greece to keep Philip, King of Macedon at home, and besieged
Syracuse in Sicily, which had joined the Carthaginians,

212—for three years, and then took it by stratagem. Archimedes,
a celebrated mathematician of Syracuse, who had protracted
the siege by his ingenious and powerful engines was killed in
the sack of the city. Soon
210—after the whole island was subdued and remained a Roman
province.

206—Asdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, general of the
Carthaginian forces in Spain, crossed the Pyrenees and the
Alps to reinforce Hannibal, but was defeated by the Romans
and slain before Hannibal knew of his march.

202—Scipio, who had conquered in Spain, led an army into
Africa, Hannibal being considered too formidable to attack,
though his forces were very small. Scipio put 40,000
Numidians, allies of Carthage, to the sword, besieged the
neighboring cities and defeated a large Carthaginian army.
Hannibal was now called home to defend the metropolis. He
fought a battle with raw
201—troops, at Zama, and was defeated—20,000 Carthaginians
being slain. The Carthaginians begged for peace, Hannibal
declaring that the war could not be protracted. The Roman
terms left them little but their city. Such was the fruit of
inflexible resolution.

5. The Romans are an example of a people, who, from first to last, had one clearly defined end, to which everything else was subservient. They formed their state for conquest, and that idea controlled the Kingdom, the Republic and the Empire. They were much wiser than the Spartans, for, devoting themselves to war, they meant to secure and enjoy all the fruits of conquest, and they did all that was possible to promote the prosperity of their people that they might produce warriors in abundance; but they relied mainly on actual war for discipline. They were constantly exercised in the art in the field and the orderly and sensible instinct of the race made discipline a matter of course. They were sometimes defeated when they encountered unfamiliar difficulties, or by the mistakes of their leaders, but never abandoned a purpose once adopted and never sued for peace.

Morally, the object they set before them was entirely unjustifiable, according to the standard of national rights accepted in our day. But such a conception never entered the minds of men in the ancient times. It is the fruit of modern civilization alone. The Romans, and many a nation after them, must work out the destructive consequences of that doctrine that “Might makes Right” before the universal sense of mankind would recoil from it. It was the accepted doctrine of the ancients, and has not yet disappeared from the world.

197—Sicily, Spain and Carthage were conquered, and Roman
valor looked around for opportunities of winning fresh
laurels. Philip of Macedon, an ambitious prince, threatened
the Athenians, who implored help from Rome. An army
immediately proceeded to Greece, penetrated into Macedonia,
and completely defeated Philip at Cynocephalæ.

6. The Romans were now the mightiest people in the civilized world. Their obstinate contests with the vigorous nations of the West had often perilled the existence of their state, and a people of ordinary stamina and persistence would not, at the best, have risen above the rank of the Etruscans and Samnites, nor have made Rome greater than Syracuse or Carthage. They, however, matured and grew into an invincible power, whose solid and stately grandeur struck the intelligent but unpractical Greeks with admiration, and all the old peoples of the East with awe.

The Romans were not without admiration for the ancient valor and the graceful culture of the Greeks. When, two hundred and fifty years before, the Romans revised their laws, under the Decemvirate, they sent to Athens to obtain models from that republic. Athens was now treated by them with much consideration, and finally became the University City of the Empire. When Roman influence became paramount after the battle of Cynocephalæ they did not at once proceed with brutal force against the land of Beauty and Art, but took it under their protection, and proclaimed the full liberty of the Grecian States. It filled the Greeks with transport, and for some time Rome played the noble and dignified part of a disinterested protector; but when the Achaians, under their excellent and talented leader Philopœmen, sought to realize the fact of liberty, the Romans abandoned that pretence and made Greece a Roman province. Thus the whole of Europe that was sufficiently civilized to maintain a settled government was ruled by the Roman Republic. The period of rude and restless valor among the Greeks was past. The stage of cultivation they had reached inclined them to the quiet and elegant refinements of the scholar, and they readily received the Roman rule which suppressed the turbulence of ambitious adventurers and suffered no oppression but their own. The Romans represented the strength of the male element in human nature, the Greeks the grace of the female. They now coalesced, were married, so to speak, and the product of their union was, in the course of ages, modern civilization, which, when mature, was to share the eminent qualities of both.

7. The broken fragments of Alexander’s immense empire in Western Asia and Egypt were all that now stood between Rome and the mastery of the world. The Roman people were too well convinced that it was their grand destiny to achieve universal dominion to hasten prematurely the conquest of the primitive home of civilization. They watchfully waited until the course of events should throw the dominions of the Seleucidæ and the Ptolemys into their hands, without offending the majesty of the republic by an undignified violence and haste.

190—Antiochus the Great, who now reigned over the empire of
the Seleucidæ, with true Grecian imprudence, became ambitious
of conquests in Europe. He invaded Greece
191—and was defeated at Thermopylæ by the Romans and driven
into Asia. The younger Scipio, brother of the conqueror of
Hannibal, followed and totally defeated
189—him at Magnesia, in Asia Minor. He purchased peace by
the loss of all the fruits of his ambition, but was left in
possession of the Syrian kingdom. The failure to destroy so
powerful an enemy appears to have brought on the two Scipios
the rebuke of the republic, the conqueror of Carthage having
aided his brother in the war. They were condemned to a heavy
fine, which Scipio Africanus refused to pay and went into
183—exile, where he died. His death occurred in the same year
that Hannibal, pursued by the vengeance of the Romans for
having aided Antiochus, committed suicide by taking poison
to avoid falling into their hands; and in this year also
Philopœmen, the last patriotic hero
170—of Greece, was slain by his enemies. Perses, king of
Macedon, revolted, and, after some successes, was finally
overthrown under the walls of Pydna and dethroned.

168—The Carthaginians could not altogether forget their
ancient greatness, and having displeased the Romans by some
independence of action, it was resolved to
148—destroy their city. With the courage of despair they
set the Romans at defiance, and defended themselves with
a resolute bravery that engaged the lively sympathies of
all after times for their painful fate. For two years they
maintained the combat against their pitiless foes, who could
pardon everything but rivalry in their
146—sweeping ambition, and then perished in the ruins of
their once glorious metropolis. A revolt of the Achaians
was punished, in the same year, by the destruction of the
splendid city of Corinth, in Greece.

140—The embers of independence in Spain broke forth in war,
which was checked by the assassination of Viriathes, a
patriotic chieftain of great ability, and
133—quenched in blood by the self-destruction of the citizens
of Numantium. About the same time the republic acquired the
kingdom of Pergamus, covering the richest parts of Asia
Minor, by the will of Attalus, its king, who, on his death,
bequeathed it to Rome. This led, in a few years, to contests
with the neighboring Asiatic sovereigns, and resulted, in
about half a century, in the conquest and reduction into the
state of Roman provinces of all Western Asia.