Chapter XIII: The Macedonian and Syriac Wars and the Third Punic War (2)

Meanwhile Scipio’s chief design was against the place called Byrsa, for that was the strongest of all the city, and a world of people were retreated thither. The way from the great place thither was up hill through three streets, on each side of which there was a continuance of very high houses, whose upper stories, jetting somewhat over into the street, whole showers of darts flew from thence upon the Romans, who were constrained before they passed farther to force the first houses and there post themselves, that from thence they might drive out those that fought in the neighbouring houses, and after they had driven them out, they laid beams and planks from one side of the street to the other, on which, as on bridges, they passed across the streets; thus they maintained war in the chambers whilst as fast as they met they fought more cruelly below in the streets.

All places were filled with cries and groans, people dying a thousand different sorts of deaths, some at sword’s point, some thrown headlong down from the tops of the houses upon the pavement, others falling upon javelins, pikes, and swords presented against them, however none durst yet set fire because of those who maintained the fight in the lofts; but when Scipio had gained the foot of the fortress all the three streets were immediately in a flame, and the soldiers had charge to hinder the ruins of the houses caused by the fire from falling into the street, that the whole army might have the more convenient passage; and now were new spectacles of calamity to be seen, the fire devouring and overturning the houses, and the Roman soldiers all about so far from hindering it, that they endeavoured to involve the rest in the same ruin. The miserable Carthaginians in despair falling confusedly with the stones and bricks on the pavement, dead bodies, nay, people yet living, and especially old men, women, and children, who had hidden themselves in the most secret places of the houses, some laden with wounds, others half burnt, and all crying out in a deplorable manner, others tumbling headlong from the upper stories of the houses among the mass of stones and wood were in their falls torn in pieces.

Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the pioneers, who to make way for the soldiers, removed the rubbish out of the middle of the streets, tossed with their hooks and forks the bodies, as well of the dead as living, into the vaults, turning them with their iron instruments as if they had been pieces of wood or stones, so that there might be seen holes full of heaps of men, of which some having been headlong thrown in, yet breathed a long time and lay with their legs above ground, and others interred up to the neck were exposed to the cruelty of the masons and pioneers, who took pleasure to see their heads and brains crushed under the horses’ feet, for these sort of people placed not those wretches so by chance but of set purpose.

As for the men of war, their being engaged in the fight, with the hopes of approaching victory, the eagerness of the soldiers heightened by the sounds of the trumpets, the noise made by the majors and captains in giving their orders, made them even like furies and hindered them from amusing themselves at these spectacles. In this bloody toil they continued six days and six nights without respite, save only that the soldiers were from time to time relieved by other fresh ones, lest the continual watchings, labour, slaughter and horror should make their hearts fail them. Scipio only bore out all this time without sleeping; he was continually in action, continually running from one place to another, and taking no food but what offered itself by chance as he was passing, till such time as quite tired out he sat down in an eminent place, that he might see what passed. Meanwhile strange havoc was made on all sides and this calamity seemed likely to continue much longer, when on the seventh day they had recourse to his clemency, and came to him bringing in their hand the Vervein of Æsculapius whose temple is the most considerable in all the fortress, desiring no other composition but that he would please to give their lives to all that would come forth, which he granted to them, except only to the runaways. There came forth fifty thousand as well men as women, who he caused to pass out of the little gate towards the fields with a good guard.

The runaways, who were about nine hundred, seeing there was no mercy for them, withdrew into the temple with Hasdrubal, his wife and children, where, though they were a small number, they might defend themselves, because of the height of the place situated upon rocks, and to which in time of peace they ascended by sixty steps, but at length oppressed with famine, watchings, and fear, and seeing their destruction so nigh, impatience seized them, and quitting the lower part of the temple they fled to the highest story. Hasdrubal meanwhile privately withdrew himself and went to Scipio with a branch of olive in his hand; Scipio having commanded him to come up and prostrate himself at his feet, showed him to the runaways, who seeing him demanded silence, which being granted, after having vomited forth an infinite number of revilings and reproaches against Hasdrubal, they set fire to the temple, and buried themselves in the flame. It is said that whilst the fire was kindling, Hasdrubal’s wife, decking herself in the best manner she could, and placing herself in the sight of Scipio, spoke to him with a loud voice in this manner.

_The Oration of Hasdrubal’s Wife; Scipio’s Moralising_

“I wish nothing to thee, O Roman, but all prosperity, for thou dost act only according to the rights of war. But I beseech the gods of Carthage, and thou thyself to punish, as he deserves, that Hasdrubal, who has betrayed his country, his gods, his wife, and children,” and then addressing her speech to Hasdrubal: “Perfidious wretch,” said she, “thou most wicked of all mankind! This fire is about to devour me and my children; but thou, great captain of Carthage, for what triumph are not thou reserved, or what punishment will not he make thee suffer, at whose feet I now see thee.”[61]

After these reproaches she cut her children’s throats and cast them into the fire, and then threw herself headlong in; such, as is reported, was the end of this woman, but this death had certainly better become her husband.

As for Scipio, seeing that city which had flourished for seven hundred years since it was first built, comparable to any empire whatsoever for extent of dominion by sea and land, for its arms, for its fleets, for its elephants, for its riches, and preferable even to all nations on the earth for generosity and resolution, since after their arms and ships were taken away, they had supported themselves against famine and war for three years together,--seeing it, I say, now absolutely ruined, it is said that he shed tears and publicly deplored the hard fortune of his enemies. He considered that cities, peoples, and empires are subject to revolutions, as well as the conditions of private men, that the same disgrace had happened to Troy, that powerful city, and afterwards to the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, whose dominion extended so far, and lately to the Macedonians, whose empire was so great and flourishing, which was the reason that unawares, and as it were without thinking of it, that distich of Homer’s escaped him,--

“Priam’s and Troy’s time come, they Fates obey,
And must to fire and sword be made a prey.”

And Polybius who had been his tutor, demanding of him in familiar discourse what he meant by those words, he ingeniously answered, that the consideration of the vicissitude of human affairs had put him in mind of his country, whose fate he likewise feared; as the same Polybius reports in his histories.

_Plundering the City_

Carthage thus taken, Scipio gave the plunder to the soldiers for some days, except only the gold and silver, and offerings, which were found in the temple. After which he distributed several military recompenses to all his soldiers, except only those who had pillaged Apollo’s temple. And having caused a very light ship to be laden with the spoil of the enemy, he sent it to Rome to carry the news of victory, and caused it to be signified throughout all Sicily that those who would come and claim the offerings made to their temples, which had been carried away by the Carthaginians when they had made war in that island, should have them restored. Thus giving testimonies of his goodness in all that he could, he gained the good will of all the people. And, at last, having sold what remained of the spoil, he caused all the bucklers, engines, and useless ships to be piled together, and being girt after the manner of the Romans, set fire to them as a sacrifice to Mars and Minerva.

The ship that went from Carthage happened to arrive at Rome in an evening, where as soon as the news was known of the taking of that city, all the people flocked to the public places, and the night was spent in rejoicings and embracing each other, as if this victory (the greatest that ever the Romans had gained) had confirmed the public repose, which they before thought insecure. They knew well, that they and their predecessors had done great things against the Macedonians, the Spaniards, and lately against the great Antiochus, as likewise in Italy; but they confessed they never had a war so much to be feared as this, by reason of the generosity, prudence, and hardiness of their enemies; nor so perilous, by reason of their infidelity. They likewise remembered the miseries they had suffered by the Carthaginians in Sicily, in Spain, and likewise in Italy, for sixteen whole years together, during which Hannibal had sacked four hundred cities, and destroyed in divers encounters three hundred thousand men, and being several times come to the very gates of their city, had reduced them to the last extremities. These things considered, made them with difficulty believe what was told of the victory, and they often demanded of one another if it were certain that Carthage was destroyed.

Thus they passed the night in recounting one to another how, after having disarmed the Carthaginians, they had presently made themselves new arms beyond judgment of all the world. How having taken away their ships, they had built others of old stuff; and how having stopped the entrance of their port, they had in a few days dug a new one on the other side. They spoke likewise of the unmeasurable height of their walls, the vast stones they were built with, the fire which they had several times put to the engines. In short they represented to the eyes of the auditors the whole figure of this war; insomuch that giving life to their discourse by their gesture they seemed to see Scipio on the ladders, on the ships, in the gates, and in the streets, running from one side to the other.

_Sacrifices and the Triumph_

The people having thus spent the night, on the morrow solemn sacrifices were made to the gods, and public prayers, wherein every tribe assisted separately; after which plays and spectacles were exhibited to public view, and then the senate sent ten commissioners, of the number of the Fathers, to settle jointly with Scipio such orders as were most necessary for that province and for the Romans’ best advantage. As soon as they were arrived they ordered Scipio to demolish what remained of Carthage; henceforth forbidding any to inhabit there, with horrible imprecations against those who in prejudice of this interdict should attempt to rebuild anything, especially the fort called Byrsa, and the place called Megara, to the rest they defended no man’s entrance. They decreed likewise that all the cities which in that war had held on the enemy’s party should be razed, and gave their territories, conquered by the Roman arms, to the Roman allies, particularly gratifying those of Utica with all the country extending from Carthage to Hippone; they made all the rest of the province tributary, from which neither men or women were exempt, resolving that every year there should be a prætor sent from the city, and having given these orders they returned to Rome. Scipio having executed them, and beholding himself at the height of his wishes, made sacrifices, and set forth plays in honour of the gods, and after settling all things in a good condition returned to Rome, whither he entered in triumph. Never was anything beheld more glorious, for there was nothing to be seen but statues and rarities, and curious pieces of an inestimable price which the Carthaginians had for so long a time been bringing into Africa from all parts of the world, where they had gained an infinite of victories.[g]

THE ACHÆAN WAR

[Sidenote: [151-147 B.C.]]

In the same year in which Lucullus and Galba took command in Spain, the senate was induced to perform an act of tardy justice in the release of the Achæan captives. The abduction of the best men in every state of Greece gave free scope, as has been said, to the oppressions of the tyrants favoured by Rome. In the Achæan assembly alone there was still spirit enough to check Callicrates, who never ventured to assail the persons and property of his fellow-citizens. Meantime years rolled on; the captives still languished in Etruscan prisons; hope deferred and sickness were fast thinning their numbers; the assembly asked only that Polybius and Stratius might return, but the request was met by a peremptory negative. At last, when Scipio returned from Spain, he induced Cato to intercede for these unhappy men. The manner of the old censor’s intercession is characteristic.

The debate had lasted long and the issue was somewhat doubtful, when Cato rose, and, without a word about justice or humanity, simply said: “Have we really nothing to do but to sit here all day, debating whether a parcel of old Greeks are to have their coffins made here or at home?” The question was decided by this unfeeling argument, and the prisoners, who in sixteen years had dwindled from one thousand to three hundred, were set free. But when Polybius prayed that his comrades might be restored to their former rank and honours, the old senator smiled, and told him “he was acting like Ulysses, when he ventured back into the cave of the Cyclops to recover his cap and belt.”

The men released in this ungracious way had passed the best part of their lives in captivity. The elder and more experienced among them were dead. The survivors returned with feelings embittered against Rome; they were rash and ignorant, and, what was worse, they had lost all sense of honour and all principle, and were ready to expose their country to any danger in order to gratify their own passions. The chief name that has reached us is that of Diæus. Polybius did not return at first, and when he reached Greece he found his countrymen acting with such reckless violence that he gladly accepted Scipio’s invitation to accompany him to the siege of Carthage. Callicrates, by a strange reverse, was now the leader of the moderate party. Diæus advocated every violent and unprincipled measure. On an embassy to Rome the former died, and Diæus returned as chief of the Achæan League.

Not long after (in 148 B.C.) a pretender to the throne of Macedon appeared. He was a young man named Andriscus, a native of Adramyttium, who gave himself out as Philip, a younger son of that luckless monarch. The state of Macedonia, divided into four republics, each in a state of compulsory excommunication, was so distracted, that, in the year 151, the people sent an embassy to Rome, praying that Scipio might be sent to settle their affairs, and he had only been prevented from undertaking the task by the self-imposed duty of accompanying the army of Lucullus into Spain. The pretender, however, met with so little success in his first attempt that he fled to the court of Demetrius at Antioch, and this prince sent him to Rome. The war with Carthage was then at its height. The senate treated the matter lightly, and the adventurer was allowed to escape. Some Thracian chiefs received him, and with troops furnished by them he penetrated into Thessaly. The Roman prætor, Juventius Thalna, was defeated and slain by the pretender.

The temporary success of Pseudo-Philippus (as the Romans called him) encouraged Diæus to drive the Achæans into a rupture with Rome. The haughty republic, he said, was at war with Carthage and with Macedon; now was the time to break their bonds. Q. Metellus, who had just landed in Greece with a considerable army, gave the Achæans a friendly warning, but in vain.

Metellus soon finished the Macedonian War. At his approach the pretender hastily retired from Thessaly, and was given up to the Roman prætor by a Thracian chief whose protection he had sought.

Meanwhile, a commission had already arrived at Corinth, headed by M. Aurelius Orestes, who summoned the chiefs of the League to hear the sentence of the senate upon their recent conduct. He informed them that they must relinquish all claims of sovereignty over Corinth, Argos, and Lacedæmon--a doom which reduced the Achæan League nearly to the condition from which Aratus first raised it. The chiefs reported what they had heard to the assembly. A furious burst of passion rose, which Diæus did not attempt to restrain. Orestes and the Romans hardly escaped personal violence.

[Sidenote: [147-146 B.C.]]

Orestes instantly returned to Rome; and the senate, preferring diplomacy to force, sent a second commission headed by Sext. Julius Cæsar, with instructions to use gentle language, and merely to demand the surrender of those who had instigated the violent scenes lately enacted at Corinth. A contemptuous answer was returned, upon which Cæsar returned to Rome, and the senate, roused at the Grecian insolence, declared war against the Achæans (147).

Metellus hoped to win the glory of pacifying Greece, as well as of conquering Macedonia. He sent some of his chief officers to endeavour to bring the Achæans to their senses. But their leaders were too far committed; and at the beginning of 146 B.C. Critolaus, a friend of Diæus, who was general for the year, advanced into Thessaly, and was joined by the Thebans, always the inveterate enemies of Rome. Metellus had already heard that the Achæan War was to be conducted by L. Mummius, one of the new consuls; and, anxious to bring it to a close before he was superseded, he advanced rapidly with his army. On this the braggart chiefs of the Achæans retreated in all haste, not endeavouring to make a stand even at Thermopylæ. Their army dispersed almost without a blow. Metellus pushed on straight towards the isthmus. Thebes he found deserted by her inhabitants; misery and desolation appeared everywhere.

Diæus prepared to defend Corinth. But popular terror had succeeded to popular passion; few citizens would enlist under his banner: though he emancipated a number of slaves, he could not muster more than fifteen thousand men.

When Metellus was almost within sight of Corinth, Mummius landed on the isthmus with his legions, and assumed the command. The Romans treated the enemy with so much contempt that one of their outposts was surprised; and Diæus, flushed with this small success, drew out his forces before the city. Mummius eagerly accepted the challenge, and the battle began. The Achæan cavalry fled at the first onset; the infantry was soon broken, and Diæus fled into one gate of Corinth and out of another without attempting further resistance. The Romans might have entered the city that same day; but seeing the strength of the Acropolis, and suspecting treachery, Mummius held back, and twenty-four hours elapsed before he took possession of his unresisting prey. But the city was treated as if it had been taken by assault; the men were put to the sword, the women and children reserved to be sold by auction. All treasures, all pictures, all the works of the famous artists who had moulded Corinthian brass into effigies of living force and symmetry, were seized by the consul on behalf of the state; then, at a given signal, fire was applied, and Corinth was reduced to a heap of ashes.

Mummius, a new man, was distinguished by the rudeness rather than by the simplicity of an Italian boor. He was not greedy, for he reserved little for himself; and when he died, his daughter found not enough left for her dowry; but his abstinence seems to have proceeded from indifference rather than self-denial. He cared not for the works of Grecian art. He suffered his soldiers to use one of the choicest works of the painter Aristides as a draught-board; but when Attalus offered him a large sum for the painting, he imagined it must be a talisman, and ordered it to be sent to Rome. Every one knows his speech to the seamen who contracted to carry the statues and pictures of Corinth to Rome. “If they lost or damaged them,” he said, “they must replace them with others of equal value.”

In the autumn ten commissioners arrived, as usual, with draughts of decrees for settling the future condition of Macedon and Greece. Polybius, who had returned from witnessing the conflagration of Carthage just in time to behold that of Corinth, had the melancholy satisfaction of being called to their counsels--a favour which he owed to the influence of Scipio. A wretched sycophant proposed to the commissioners to destroy the statues of Aratus and Philopœmen; but Polybius prevented this dishonour by showing that these eminent men had always endeavoured to keep peace with Rome. At the same time he declined to accept any part of the confiscated property of Diæus. Politically he was able to render important services. All Greece south of Macedonia and Epirus was formed into a Roman province under the name of Achaia.[62] The old republican governments of the various communities were abolished, and the constitution of each assimilated to that of the municipal cities of Italy. Polybius was left in Greece to settle these new constitutions, and to adjust them to the circumstances and wants of each place. His grateful countrymen raised a statue to his honour by the side of their old heroes, and placed an inscription on the pedestal, which declared that, if Greece had followed his advice, she would not have fallen.

Such was the issue of the last struggle for Grecian liberty. It was conducted by unworthy men, and was unworthy of the name it bore. Polybius had always opposed attempts at useless and destructive insurrection. He considered it happy for Greece that one battle and the ruin of one city consummated her fall. Indeed it was a proverb of the day that “Greece was saved by her speedy fall.”

The ten commissioners passed northwards into Macedonia, and formed that country, in conjunction with Epirus, into another province. Illyricum was so constituted soon after Cæsar’s conquest of Gaul.

Metellus and Mummius both returned to Rome before the close of 146 B.C., and were honoured with triumphs not long after Scipio had carried the spoils of Carthage in procession to the Capitol. In memory of their respective services, Metellus was afterwards known by the name of Macedonicus, while Mummius, who appears to have had no third name of his own, was not ashamed to assume the title of Achaicus.

SPANISH WARS: FALL OF NUMANTIA

[Sidenote: [150-141 B.C.]]

While Rome was engaged in war with Carthage, the Lusitanians resumed their inroads under the conduct of the gallant Viriathus, who had escaped from the massacre of Galba. No Roman general could gain any positive advantage over this indefatigable enemy, and in the year 143 B.C. the war assumed a much more serious aspect. The brave Celtiberian tribes of Numantia and its adjacent districts again appeared in the field. For several years we find two Roman commanders engaged in Spain, as before the treaty of Gracchus: one opposed to the Numantians and their Celtiberian allies in the north, the other carrying on an irregular warfare against Viriathus and the Lusitanians in the south.

The conduct of the Celtiberian War was committed to Q. Metellus Macedonicus, who had been elected consul for the year 143. He remained in command for two years, and was so successful in his measures that by the close of the second campaign he had compelled the enemy to shut themselves up in their strong cities. But he was disappointed, as in Greece, by finding anticipated triumph snatched from his grasp by Q. Pompeius, consul for the year 141 B.C.

Pompeius and his successors could make no impression upon the Numantians. Nay, C. Hostilius Mancinus, consul for the year 137, suffered a memorable reverse. Mancinus set out for his province amid general alarm, excited by the unfavourable omens at his inaugural sacrifices. He was attended as quæstor by young Ti. Gracchus, who had already distinguished himself at the siege of Carthage. Mancinus found the army before Numantia in a state of complete disorganisation, and deemed it prudent to retreat from his position in front of that city. The Numantians pursued and pressed him so hard that he was obliged to entrench himself in an old camp, and sent a herald with offers to treat on condition that his army should be spared. The enemy consented, but only on the understanding that young Gracchus was to make himself responsible for the execution of the treaty. Articles of peace were accordingly signed by Mancinus himself, with Gracchus and all the chief officers of the army.

[Sidenote: [141-140 B.C.]]

Before we notice the sequel of the famous Treaty of Mancinus, it will be well to follow the Lusitanian War to its conclusion.

(From a statue in the Vatican)]

Here also the fortune of Rome was on the decline. Q. Fabius Servilianus was surprised by Viriathus in a narrow defile, and so shut up that escape was impossible. The Lusitanian captain offered liberal terms, which were gladly accepted by the proconsul. This peace was approved by the senate, and Viriathus was acknowledged as the ally of Rome.

But Q. Servilius Cæpio, brother by blood of Servilianus, was little satisfied by the prospect of an inactive command. By importunity he wrung from the senate permission to break the peace so lately concluded by his brother, and ratified by themselves--a permission basely given and more basely used. Cæpio assailed Viriathus, when he little expected an attack, with so much vigour that the chief was fain to seek refuge in Gallæcia, and sent envoys to ask Cæpio on what ground the late treaty was no longer observed. Cæpio sent back the messengers with fair words, but privily bribed them to assassinate their master. They were too successful in their purpose, and returned to claim their blood-money from the consul. But he, with double treachery, disowned the act, and referred them to the senate for their reward.

The death of Viriathus was the real end of the Lusitanian War. He was (as even the Roman writers allow) brave, generous, active, vigilant, patient, faithful to his word; and the manner in which he baffled all fair and open assault of the disciplined armies of Rome gives a high conception of his qualities as a guerilla chief. His countrymen, sensible of their loss, honoured him with a splendid military funeral. The senate, with a wise moderation which might have been adopted years before, assigned lands to a portion of the mountaineers within the province, thus at length making good the broken promises of Galba. Such was the discreditable termination of the Lusitanian War. We must now return to Mancinus and his treaty.

[Sidenote: [140-138 B.C.]]

He returned to defend his conduct before the senate. He pleaded that the army was so demoralised that no man could wield it with effect, and admitted that he had concluded a treaty with Numantia without the authority of the senate and the people; as that treaty was not approved, he declared himself ready to support a bill for delivering up the persons of himself and all who had signed it to the Numantians. Such a bill was accordingly brought before the tribes. But young Gracchus upheld the treaty, and Scipio, his brother-in-law, made an eloquent speech in his behalf. But the people, always jealous of defeat, voted for delivering up Mancinus alone as an expiatory offering. Accordingly a person, consecrated for this special purpose, carried him to Numantia. But the Spaniards, like the Samnites of old, refused to accept such a compensation; one man’s body, they said was no equivalent for the advantage they had lost. Mancinus, therefore, returned to Rome. But when he took his place in the senate, the tribune Rutilius ordered him to leave the curia, because, he said, one who had been delivered over to the enemy with religious ceremony was no longer a citizen of Rome, and could not recover his rights by simply returning to his country. A special law was introduced to restore Mancinus to his former position.

Dec. Junius Brutus, consul for 138, an able officer, was entrusted with the pacification of Lusitania; the town of Valentia owes its origin to a colony of this people planted there by him. After finishing this business, he carried his arms northward across the Tagus, the Douro, and the Minho, and received homage from the tribes of the western Pyrenees. He was the first Roman who reached the shores of the Bay of Biscay, and saw the sun set in the waters of the Atlantic; and he was not unjustly honoured with the name of Callaicus for his successes.

But Numantia still defied the arms of Rome. Men began to clamour for a consul fit to command; and all eyes fell upon Scipio. His qualities as a general had been tested by success at Carthage, and circumstances had since occurred which raised him to great popularity.

After his triumph in 146 B.C., Scipio had continued to lead the simple life in which he had been bred, and which not all the wealth he inherited from his adoptive father induced him to abandon. He affected an austerity of manners which almost emulated that of Cato, though he was free from the censorious dogmatism and rude eccentricities of that celebrated man. In 142 B.C. he was elected censor in conjunction with Mummius, who so thwarted all the efforts of his colleague to promote reforms that the latter publicly exclaimed, “I should have been able to do my duty, either with a colleague or without one.” Scipio had gained a clear conception of the unsound state of things, which long-continued wars and senatorial government had produced. In the prayer, which he offered on entering upon the censor’s office, he altered the usual form; and instead of asking that “the gods would increase and magnify the power of Rome,” he said, “I pray that they may preserve it; it is great enough already.”

[Sidenote: [138-133 B.C.]]

His frugal life carried with it a guarantee of honesty and devotion to public interests, which would alone have secured him public favour. But several acts gained him more direct popularity. The son of his kinsman Nasica, nicknamed Serapio, had joined the high oligarchical party. But the son of Æmilius Paulus, on the few occasions on which he appeared in public, took the popular side. In 137 the tribune Cassius proposed the first law for taking votes by secret ballot,[63] with the intention of neutralising the undue influence of the senators. Scipio came forward and addressed the people in favour of this law. As his popularity was increased, his favour with the senate proportionately fell. Six years before, when he was canvassing for the censorship, App. Claudius, seeing the motley crowd which followed him, exclaimed: “Ah, Æmilius, it would trouble thy spirit to see thy son followed by such a crew.”

Yet he courted not popularity; he seldom even visited the Forum, though he spoke with force and eloquence when he chose. When the same Appius boasted that he knew all who frequented the Forum by name, Scipio replied: “True, I do not know many of my fellow-citizens by name, but I have taken care that all should know me.” Popularity came unasked, and the people cast their eyes upon him to retrieve the dishonour of the Roman arms in Spain. Legally he could not hold the consulship, for a law had been lately passed forbidding a second election in any case. But Scipio received the votes of every century, though he was not a candidate.

He was now fifty-one years of age, and he proceeded to execute his commission with the same steady vigour which distinguished him on other occasions. He found the demoralisation of the army not less than it had been described, and he applied himself to correct it with the same severity that his father had used in Macedonia, and he himself had used before Carthage. All courtesans and hucksters, together with fortune-tellers who drove a lucrative trade in the dispirited army, he commanded to quit the camp. All carriages, horses, and mules he ordered to be sold, except those that were needed for actual service. No cooking utensils were allowed except a spit, a camp bottle, and a drinking-cup. Down beds were forbidden; the general himself slept upon a straw pallet.

After some time spent in training his army, he led it to Numantia by a difficult and circuitous route, in order to avoid a battle. As he approached the place he was joined by young Jugurtha, bastard son of Micipsa, who came from Numidia with twelve elephants and a large body of light cavalry. By this time the season for war was nearly over, and he ordered two strong camps to be formed for winter quarters. In one he fixed himself, the other he put under the command of his brother Fabius.

With the beginning of spring (133 B.C.) he began to draw lines of circumvallation round the city, and declined all attempts made by the Numantians to provoke a general action--a circumstance which is rather surprising, if it be true that the available troops of the Spanish city amounted to no more than eight thousand men.

Numantia lay on both sides of the Douro, not far from its source. The blockade was so strict, and the inhabitants were so ill provided, that in no long time they were reduced to feed on boiled leather, and at length (horrible to tell) on the bodies of the dead. In vain those who retained sufficient strength attempted sallies by day and night; Scipio had established so complete a system, that additional troops were always ready to strengthen any weak point which might be assailed. In vain did the young men of Lubia endeavour to relieve their brave neighbours. Scipio promptly marched to that place with a division of light troops, and, having compelled the government to surrender four hundred of the most active sympathisers, he cut off their right hands and returned. Such was the cruelty which the most enlightened men of Rome permitted themselves to use towards barbarians. Nor does any ancient historian whisper a word of reproach.

The wretched Numantians now inquired on what terms they might be admitted to surrender. The reply was, that on that very day they must lay down their arms, and on the next appear at a given place. They prayed for time to deliberate. In the interval a certain number of brave men, resolved not to submit on any terms, put themselves to death; the remnant came forth from the gates. Their matted hair, squalid apparel, and wasted forms made even the Romans turn away in horror from their own work. Scipio selected fifty to walk in his triumphal procession, and sold the rest. The town was so effectually destroyed that its very site cannot be discovered.[b] The Roman historian Florus gives a slightly different but very vivid account.

FLORUS ON THE FALL OF NUMANTIA

[Sidenote: [133 B.C.]]

But when famine pressed hard upon them, (as they were surrounded with a trench and breastwork, and camps,) they entreated of Scipio to be allowed the privilege of engaging with him, desiring that he would kill them as men, and, when this was not granted, they resolved upon making a sally. A battle being the consequence, great numbers of them were slain, and, as the famine was still sore upon them, the survivors lived for some time on their bodies. At last they determined to flee; but this their wives prevented, by cutting with great treachery, yet out of affection, the girths of their saddles. Despairing, therefore, of escape, and being driven to the utmost rage and fury, they resolved to die in the following manner. They first destroyed their captains, and then themselves and their native city, with sword and poison and a general conflagration. Peace be to the ashes of the most brave of all cities; a city, in my opinion, most happy in its very sufferings; a city which protected its allies with honour, and withstood, with its own force, and for so long a period, a people supported by the strength of the whole world. Being overpowered at length by the greatest of generals, it left no cause for the enemy to rejoice over it. Its plunder, as that of a poor people, was valueless; their arms they had themselves burnt; and the triumph of its conquerors was only over its name.

Hitherto the Roman people had been noble, honourable, pious, upright, and illustrious. Their subsequent actions in this age, as they were equally grand, so were they more turbulent and dishonourable, their vices increasing with the very greatness of their empire. So that if any one divides this third age, which was occupied in conquest beyond the sea, and which we have made to consist of two hundred years, into two equal parts, he will allow, with reason and justice, that the first hundred years, in which they subdued Africa, Macedonia, Sicily, and Spain, were (as the poets sing) golden years; and that the other hundred, which to the Jugurthine, Cimbrian, Mithridatic, and Parthian wars, as well as those of Gaul and Germany, (in which the glory of the Romans ascended to heaven,) united the murders of the Gracchi and Drusus, the Servile War and (that nothing might be wanting in their infamy) the war with the gladiators, were iron, blood-stained, and whatever more severe can be said of them. Turning at last upon themselves, the Romans, as if in a spirit of madness, and fury, and impiety, tore themselves in pieces by the dissensions of Marius and Sulla, and afterwards by those of Pompey and Cæsar.[e] Such was the destructive, but not glorious work, which earned for Scipio the name of Numantinus, as the ruin of Carthage had given him a better title than adoption to that of Africanus.

Commissioners were sent, according to custom, to reorganise the Spanish provinces. The conquests of Scipio and of Dec. Brutus were comprehended in the limits of the hither province, and for some years Spain remained in tranquillity.

There was no enemy now left on the coast lands of the Mediterranean to dispute the sovereignty of Rome. Nine provinces, each fit to be a kingdom, owned her sway, and poured yearly taxes into her revenue. The kings of Asia Minor, of Syria, of Egypt, were her obedient vassals.

FIRST SLAVE WAR IN SICILY

[Sidenote: [134-133 B.C.]]

While Numantia was yet defying the Roman generals, a war broke out near home of a more dreadful kind than any distant contest with foreigners could be--the insurrection of the slaves in Sicily. Some remarks have already been made on the rapid increase in the number of slaves which attended the career of Roman conquest; and it was observed that, while domestic slaves usually were well treated, the agricultural slaves were thrust down to a condition worse than that of the oxen which laboured on the land. The evils which such oppression might engender were now proved by terrible experience.

Every one knows that in the early times of Rome the work of the farm was the only kind of manual labour deemed worthy of a free citizen. This feeling long survived, as may be seen from the praise bestowed on agriculture by Cicero, whose enthusiasm was caught from one of his favourite heroes, old Cato the censor, whose _Treatise on Agriculture_ has been noticed. The taste for books on farming continued. Varro the antiquarian, a friend of Cicero, has left an excellent treatise on the subject. A little later came the famous _Georgics_ of Virgil, followed at no long interval by Pliny’s notices, and then by the elaborate _Dissertations_ of Columella, who refers to a great number of Roman writers on the same subject. It is manifest that the subject of agriculture possessed a strong and enduring charm for the Roman mind.

But, from the times of the Hannibalic War, agriculture lost ground in Italy. When Cato was asked what was the most profitable kind of farming, he said, “Good grazing.” What next? “Tolerable grazing.” What next? “Bad grazing.” What next? “Corn-growing.” Later writers, with one accord, deplore the diminished productiveness of land.

This result was due in part, no doubt, to war, but much more to other causes. Corn could be imported with facility from the southern lands of Sicily, from Egypt, and from Numidia, while a great part of Italy was little suited for the production of grain-crops. These causes found a powerful assistant in the growth of large estates, and the profitable employment of slaves as shepherds and herdsmen.

A few examples will show the prodigious number of slaves that must have been thrown into the market after the Second Punic War. To punish the Bruttians for the fidelity with which they adhered to the cause of Hannibal, the whole nation were made slaves; 150,000 Epirots were sold by Æmilius Paulus; fifty thousand captives were sent home from Carthage. These numbers are accidentally preserved; and if, according to this scale, we calculate the hosts of unhappy men sold into slavery during the Syrian, Macedonian, Illyrian, Grecian, and Spanish wars, we shall be prepared to hear that slaves fit only for unskilled labour were plentiful and cheap.

There was also a slave trade regularly carried on in the East. The barbarous tribes on the coasts of the Black Sea were always ready to sell their own flesh and blood; Thrace and Sarmatia were the Guinea Coast of the Romans. The _entrepôt_ of this trade was Delos, which had been made a free port by Rome after the conquest of Macedonia. Strabo tells us that in one day ten thousand slaves were sold there in open market. Such were the vile uses to which was put the Sacred Island, once the treasury of Greece, when her states were banded together to secure their freedom against the Persian.

It is evident that hosts of slaves, lately free men, and many of them soldiers, must become dangerous to the owners. Nor was their treatment such as to conciliate. They were turned out upon the hills, made responsible for the safety of the cattle put under their charge, and compelled to provide themselves with the common necessaries of life. A body of these wretched men asked their master for clothing: “What,” he asked, “are there no travellers with clothes on?” The atrocious hint was soon taken; the shepherd slaves of lower Italy became banditti, and to travel through Apulia without an armed retinue was a perilous adventure. From assailing travellers, the marauders began to plunder the smaller country houses; and all but the rich were obliged to desert the country and flock into the towns. So early as the year 185 B.C., seven thousand slaves in Apulia were condemned for brigandage by a prætor sent specially to restore order in that land of pasturage. When they were not employed upon the hills, they were shut up in large prison-like buildings (_ergastula_), where they could talk together of their wrongs, and form schemes of vengeance.

The Sicilian landowners emulated their Italian brethren; and it was their tyrannical conduct that led to the frightful insurrection which reveals to us somewhat of the real state of society which existed under the rule of Rome.

In Sicily, as in lower Italy, the herds are driven up into the mountain pastures during the summer months, and about October return towards the plains. The same causes which were at work in Italy were at work, on a smaller scale, in Sicily. The city of Enna, once famous for the worship of Demeter, had become the centre of a pastoral district; and of the neighbouring landowners, Damophilus was the wealthiest. He was famous for the multitude of his slave herdsmen, and for his cruel treatment of them, and his wife Megallis emulated her lord in the barbarities which she practised on the female slaves. At length the cup was full, and four hundred of his bondsmen, meeting at Enna, took counsels of vengeance against Damophilus.

At Enna there lived another rich proprietor, named Antigenes; and among his slaves was a Syrian, known by the Greek name of Eunus. This man was a kind of wizard, who pretended to have revelations of the future, and practised a mode of breathing fire, which passed for a supernatural power. At length he gave out that his Syrian gods had declared to him that he should be king hereafter. His master treated him as a jester, and at banquets used to call him in to make sport for his guests; and they, entering into his humour, used to beg him to remember them when he gained his sceptre. But to the confederate slaves of Damophilus, Eunus seemed in truth a prophet and a king sent to deliver them. They prayed him to become their leader, he accepted their offer; and the whole body entered the city of Enna, with Eunus at their head breathing fire.

The wretched city now felt the vengeance of men brutalised by oppression. Clad in skins, armed with stakes burned at the end, with reaping hooks, spits, or whatever arms rage supplied, they broke into the houses, and massacred all persons of free condition, from the old man and matron to the infant at the breast. Crowds of slaves joined them; every man’s foes were those of his own household. Damophilus was dragged to the theatre and slain. Megallis was given over to the female slaves, who first tortured her, and then cast her down the crag on which the city stands.

Eunus thus saw the wildest of his dreams fulfilled. He assumed the diadem, took the royal name of Antiochus, and called his followers Syrians. The ergastula were broken open, and numbers of slaves sallied out to join him. Soon he was at the head of ten thousand men. He showed no little discretion in the choice of officers. Achæus, a Greek, was made general of the army, and he exerted himself to preserve order and moderate excesses.

A few days after the massacre at Enna, Cleon, a Cilician slave, raised a similar insurrection near Agrigentum. He also was soon at the head of several thousand men.

The Romans in Sicily, who had looked on in blank dismay, now formed hopes that the two leaders might quarrel--hopes soon disappointed by the tidings that Cleon had acknowledged the sovereign authority of King Antiochus. There was no Roman magistrate present in Sicily when the insurrection broke out. The prætor of the last year had returned to Italy; and his successor now arrived, ignorant of all that was passing. He contrived to collect eight thousand men in the island, and took the field against the slaves, who by this time numbered twenty thousand. He was utterly defeated, and the insurrection spread over the whole island.

The consternation at Rome was great. No one could tell where the evil would stop. Movements broke out in various parts of the empire; but the magistrates were on the alert, and all attempts were crushed forcibly. At Rome itself 150 slaves, detected in organising an outbreak, were put to death without mercy.

The insurrection seemed to the senate so serious that they despatched the consul, C. Fulvius Flaccus, colleague of Scipio in the year 134 B.C., to crush it. But Flaccus obtained no advantage over the insurgents. In the next year L. Calpurnius Piso succeeded in wresting Messana from the enemy, and advanced to Enna, a place strongly defended by nature, which he was unable to take. His successor, P. Rupilius, a friend of Scipio, began his campaign with the siege of Tauromenium. The slaves offered a desperate resistance. Reduced to straits for want of food, they devoured the children, the women, and at length began to prey upon each other. Even then the place was only taken by treachery. All the slaves taken alive were put to the torture and thrown down a precipice. The consul now advanced to Enna, the last stronghold of Eunus. The fate of the insurgents was inevitable. Cleon of Agrigentum chose a soldier’s death, and, sallying forth with all who breathed the same spirit as himself, he died fighting valiantly. Of the end of Achæus we are not informed. Eunus, with a bodyguard of six hundred men, fled to the neighbouring hills; but, despairing of escape, the greater part of the wretched men slew one another. The mock king himself was taken in a cave, with his cook, baker, bathing-man, and jester. He showed a pusillanimity far unlike the desperate courage of the rest, and died eaten by vermin in a dungeon at Morgantium.[c]

To show how horrible the thought of fighting slaves was to the Roman mind, it may be well to quote Florus upon this first war, the quelling of which he credits to Perperna.[a]

THE WAR AGAINST THE SLAVES

[Sidenote: [133 B.C.]]

Though, in the preceding war, we fought with our allies (which was bad enough), yet we contended with free men, and men of good birth; but who can with patience hear of a war against slaves on the part of a people at the head of all nations! The first war with slaves occurred in the infancy of Rome, in the heart of the city, when Herdonius Sabinus was their leader, and when, while the state was distracted with the seditions of the tribunes, the Capitol was besieged and wrested by the consul from the servile multitude. But this was an insurrection rather than a war. At a subsequent period, when the forces of the empire were engaged in different parts of the world, who would believe that Sicily was much more cruelly devastated by a war with slaves than in that with the Carthaginians? This country, fruitful in corn, and, in a manner, a suburban province, was covered with large estates of many Roman citizens; and the numerous slave houses and fettered tillers of the ground supplied force enough for a war. A certain Syrian, by name Eunus (the greatness of our defeats from him makes us remember it), counterfeiting a fanatical inspiration, and tossing his hair in honour of the Syrian goddess, excited the slaves by command of heaven as it were, to claim their liberty and take up arms. And that he might prove this to be done by supernatural direction, he concealed a nut in his mouth, which he had filled with brimstone and fire, and, breathing gently, sent forth flame together with his words. This prodigy at first attracted two thousand of such as came in his way; but in a short time, by breaking open the slave houses, he collected a force of above sixty thousand; and, being adorned with ensigns of royalty, that nothing might be wanting to his audacity, he laid waste, with lamentable desolation, fortresses, towns, and villages. The camps even of prætors (the utmost disgrace of war) were taken by him; nor will I shrink from giving their names; they were the camps of Manilius, Lentulus, Piso, and Hypsæus. Thus those, who ought to have been dragged home by slave-takers, pursued prætorian generals routed in battle. At last vengeance was taken on them by our general, Perperna; for having conquered them, and at last besieged them in Enna, and reduced them with famine as with a pestilence, he threw the remainder of the marauders into chains, and then crucified them. But over such enemies he was content with an ovation, that he might not sully the dignity of a triumph with the name of slaves.[e]

[Sidenote: [133-131 B.C.]]