Full text of "Roman history"

See other formats

c/C^^iuK^tz^/i^^

%.,..^^%4L^

THB TEMPLE PRIMERS

ROMAN HISTORY

Translated from the German of

DR. JULIUS KOCH

LIONEL D. BARNETT, M.A.

CICERO

ROmAH
HISTORY

BY' DR JULIUS

siKocHii

1901 at 29&30B£in^O&DSTR£ET*IjaNI>OM

^(^

First Edition^ March 1900
Second Edition^ April 1901

HluMKY MOK£>i

o . erHEHa

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

■i*ROM THE Prehistoric Period of Rome and Italy —

§ I. The Sabine and Latin Settlements on the Tiber.
§ 2. Italy and its population at the time of Rome's founda-
tion.

Section i. The Romans down to the Conquest of
Italy (266 B.C.).

CHAPTER I

The Age of the Kings —

§ 3. The Seven Kings.

CHAPTER II

^ROM THE Beginnings of the Republic to the Codi-
fication OF the Laws of the Twelve Tables, 509-
450 B.C. —

§ 4. The Beginnings of the Republic and the Commence-
ment of the Struggles of the Orders.
§ 5. External Events of this Period.

CHAPTER III

From the Decemvirate to the Gallic Visitation,
450-387 B.C.— /"

§ 6. The Decemvirate' arid the'Laws of the Twelve Tables.
§ 7. Further Gains of the Plebeians.
§ 8. External Events of this Period.

515079 '

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV

From the Gallic Visitation to the Union of Rome

WITH THE CaMPANIANS, 387-338 B.C.

§ 9. The Continuation and Conclusion of the Struggle of
the Orders.
§ 10. Wars and Acquisitions from 387-338.

CHAPTER V

From the Conquest of Campania to the Reduction or
Italy, 338-266 b.c. —

§ II. The Samnite Wars, 326-290.

8 12. The War with Tarentum and Pyrrhus, 282-275.

§ 1 3! The Struggles of this Period with Etruria and the Gauls.

Section 2. From the Subjection of Italy to the Fall of the 1
Republic, 266-29 k.c.

CHAPTER VI

Establishment of Supremacy in the Countries of the
Mediterranean, 266-133 b.c. —

§ 14. The First Punic War, 264-241.
§ 15. The Gallic and Illyrian Wars, 238-219.
8 16. The Second Punic (Hannibalic) War, 218-201.
§ 17. The Immediate Results of the Hannibalic War.
S 18 The Wars with Macedon and Syria, 200-168.
I 19! The Completion of Roman Supremacy in the Meditei
ranean, 149-133.

\ . , .CHAPTER VII

From the AcquiremenV ot^-' the Supremacy in the
mpitmd^^F^^^'\TO THE.. Fall of the Republic
(Revolutionary Period), 133-^9 b-c-"

8 -^o Internal Development from the Conclusion of the
Struggle of the Orders to the Appearance ol the Gracchi.

CONTENTS vii

§ 21. The Attempts at Reform by the Gracchi (Beginning of

the Revolution), 133-122.
§ 22. External events to the Social War, 121-101.
§ 23. Marius and the Party of Revolution.
§ 24. Livius Drusus and the Social War, 91-88.
§ 25. The Sullan Disturbances and the First Mithradatic

War, 89-84.
§ 26. Sulla's Return, Change of the Constitution, and Death,

83-78.
§ 27. The Disturbances after Sulla's Death to the Fall of the

Sullan Oligarchy, 78-70.
§ 28. Events in the East and Pompeius, 74-64.
§ 29. Italian Events to the Triumvirate (Caesar and Cicero),

70-60.
§ 30. The First Triumvirate and Caesar's Conquest of Gaul,

60-49.
§ 31. The Rule of the Triumvirs to Caesar's Passage of the

Rubicon, 60-49.
§ 52. Caesar's Victory, Monarchy, and Death, 49-44.
§ 33. The Struggle for the Inheritance of Caesar, 44-29.

Section 3. The Age of the Emperors until Diocletian,

29 B.C.-285 A.D.

CHAPTER VIII
rHE Emperors of the Julian and Flavian Houses,

29 B.C.-96 A.D. —

§ 34. Augustus and the Construction of the Monarchy.
§ 35. Reign of Augustus, 29 B.C.-14 a.d.
§ 36. Tiberius, 14-37.

§ 37. Gains (37-41), Claudius (41-54), Nero (54-68).
§38. The Flavians — Vespasian (69-79), Titus (79-81),
Domitian (81-96).

CHAPTER IX

^he* Golden Age' of the Roman Empire, 96-180 a.d. —

§ 39. Nerva (96-98) and Trajan (98-117).
§40. Hadrian, 117-138.

§41. The Antonines — Antoninus Pius (138-161), Marcus
Aurelius (161-180).

CONTENTS

CHAPTER X

The Decay of the Empire under the Soldier-Emperors
(from Commodus to Diocletian), 180-285 a.d. —

§ 42. Commodus and the House of Septimius Severus

180-235.
§ 43. The Chief Emperors from Alexander Severus to

Diocletian, 235-285.

Section 4. From the Reorganisation of the Empire by
Diocletian and Constantine to the Fall of the Westerr
Throne (Age of Absolutism), 285-476 a.d.

CHAPTER XI

From Diocletian to the Death of Theodosius the
Great, 285-395 a.d. —

§ 44. Diocletian and his Age, 285-305.
§ 45. Constantine the Great, 306-337. _^
§ 46. From the Death of Constantine the Great to the Death
of Theodosius the Great, 337-395.

CHAPTER XH

From the Death of Theodosius the Ghieat to the Fall
of the Western Throne, 395-476 a.d. —

§ 47. The Severance of the Realm and Fall of the Empire of

the West.
§ 48. The last Emperors of the West. .

LITERATURE.—

I. Republic.

II. Age of the Emperors. '

III. Separate Accounts.

ROMAN HISTORY

INTRODUCTION

From the Prehistoric Period of Rome
and Italy

Sources. — The tradition as to the oldest period is almost without
exception very late, and consequently possesses but little claim to belief.
Historical composition in the true sense (for of the oldest Roman
Annals we know practically nothing) was first brought by the Greeks
to the sister race ; but here misunderstanding and distortion of fact to
adorn a tale, and often also to point a moral, have disguised the
historical kernel. This is the case with the great compilations of the
Augustan age, the ' Historical Library ' of Diodorus Siculus and the
' Roman Archaeology-HjfDionysius of Hallcif IlUbiyuy ; Ifor are things
any better with the monumental work of Roman historical composition,
Titus Livius' History, comprising 142 books, but only to a small extern
sufX^tving (Books i-io and 21-45), ^oi' Livius' historical sagacity was
dulled by his childishly worked out idea of the predestination of the
Roman people to the dominion of the world ; and moreover he had
at his disposal but scanty and distorted sources for the earliest period.
These comprehensive works, especially Livius, were the sources of
the later historians, as Florus (end of the second century), Eutropius
(second half of the fourth century), Aurelius Victor (about 350), Orosius
(early fifth century), and others, who are of importance particularly
where they drew upon the portions of their great predecessors now lost
to us. Similarly much passed over from the magnificently designed
but only fragmentarily preserved Roman History of Cassius Dio (early
third century, written in Greek) into the so-called ' Compilers.' Good
material for the oldest period of his people is furnished by Cicero,
especially in his work ' On the State ' ; for chronology, the learned
antiquarian of the age of Caesar, M. Terentius yarro, is of great
importance, and to him too is due much of our knowledge of the
history of ancient civilisation. Finally, we have to consider the careers
of famous men (as Romulus, Numa, and so on) described in the period
of the Flavian emperors by Plutarch of Chaeronea, the ' biographical
Shakespeare of world-history. ' P^or the history of the country of Italy

2 : F.OMAh'^ ' HISTORY

and th,e Itajliai^ races jefqr^gce ?hou1d be made to the fifth and sixti
book.^'cf l;h(j le-aFi^ed' A'\igi{st;an geggi-apher Strabo (a Greek).

What" is here briefly 'said tv'it'li reference!' to the sources of the oldesl
Roman history applies equally to a large part of the narrative of
Republican times.

§ I. The Latin and Sabine Settlements on the
Tiber, and their Coalition

Of the hills of the Tiber, the Mons Palatinus ^ was
inhabited by Latins and the opposite Mons Qulrinalis by
Sabines long before the foundation of Rome, which credulous
and often over- subtle historians ascribed to the middle of the
eighth century b.c. Allured from their inhospitable hill-
towns into the once so fruitful * Roman Campagna,' they
pressed onwards through it until the broad stream of the
Tiber summoned them to halt, and favourably situated uplands
vouchsafed securer settlements. From them arose ' Eternal
Rome.'

The attempt to derive from the name of the city of Rome
certain conclusions as to its origin has been unsuccessful ;
those who would connect the word Roma with the name of
the primitive river-god Rumon perhaps approach nearest to
the truth, for the navigable stream was naturally the most
important factor for the settlement on the Tiber, and old
Roman coins actually exhibit to us as stamp the stern of a
ship, which we therefore may regard as the city's first
escutcheon.

Like the meaning of the city's name, the time and fuller
history of its origin lie in obscurity. However, the old folk-
tale has certainly preserved for us the kernel of the truth
when it informs us of the mighty struggle between the Latins
of the Palatine and the Sabines of the Quirinal, of which we
must conceive the lowland between these two hills, the later
Forum Romanmiy to have been the scene. Though all the
individual features of the stories about the Rape of the Sabines

1 [On the topography of Rome see Lanciani's sketch, chap. i. of
Ramsay's Manual of Roman Antiquities, 15th edition, London, 1894.]

ITALY AND ITS POPULATION 3

*^nd its results may belong to the sphere of purest fable, so
much is certain, that the feud between the Latin and the
Sabine settlements ended with the extortion of conubium, i.e,
the right of legal intermarriage. Thus first is the union com-
pleted and Rome founded.

§ 2. Italy and its Population at the Time of
Rome's Foundation

Before we pursue the history of Rome and the Roman
Empire, it is needful to cast a glance at the country in general
which the city of the Tiber was destined to lead, and at its
population. We usually understand by < Italy ' the whole
Apennine peninsula ; but for the period of Rome's founda-
tion this is as incorrect as it is to assume a uniform population
in it. We cannot follow in detail the gradual extension of
the name Italia^ which originally was applied only to a small
part of the south-western projection of the peninsula ; it must
suffice to mention that the Upper Italy of to-day, the great
fertile plain between the Apennines and Alps, was not finally
incorporated in the Roman dominion until the last century
of the Republic. In the south, especially in the Calabrian
peninsula, the lapygians formed probably the last remnant of
the original Indo-Germanic population, which had entered from
the north. From the fact that this race easily and rapidly
merged in the Hellenism that later pressed in so vigorously
upon them, the inference has also been drawn that their
speech was allied to the Greek.

The remainder of the South and almost all Central Italy
were occupied by the Italici, that primal stock to which belong
Latins and Sabines, as well as numerous other peoples, and
whose individual dialects (as Oscan, Umbrian, and Sabellian),
still recognisable to some extent in tolerably numerous frag-
ments, were gradually swallowed up by the Latin as these
races themselves were incorporated in the imperium Romanum,
On the north-west their neighbours were the Etruscans,
also known as Tusci (whence the modern Toscana) or Tyrrheni

ROMAN HISTORY

(whence * Tyrrhenian Sea '), a race which hitherto it has ni
been possible to range among the other families, although
there exist numerous relics of their language and still more
numerous remnants of their art, and whose relation to the
Indo-Germanic stock is disputed by distinguished scholars.
On the Tiber they bordered on the Latins and Sabines,
which often enough led to weary wars waged with varying
success. Northwards the Etruscans had already in the oldest
period known to us a remarkable extension ; they spread far
over the Po into the valleys of the Raetian Alps.

Later they were pushed backwards by the Keltic Gauls,
who after surmounting the Alps established themselves in
Upper Italy [Gallia Cisalp'ina, 'Hither Gaul') and played
a great part in the history of the peninsula. Of their
different tribes may be mentioned as most important the
Insuhres with Mediolanum (Milan), the Cenomani with
Brixia (Brescia), the Boi't with Bononia (Bologna), and the
Senones with Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia). The east and west
of Upper Italy were occupied by two peoples of uncertain
origin, the Veneii in the modern province // Veneto, and
the Ltgures, formerly extending far beyond the Alps, in
modern Liguria.

Two nations however which cannot be termed in the
proper sense Italic peoples, since they never formed on this
soil a coherent national community, had a far greater influence
on the development of Italic history than many of the above-
mentioned groups. These are the Greeks and the Phoenician
Poeni (Carthaginians), both allured hither by the advantages
and riches of the land, and to someextent its first discoverers.

The Poeni indeed exerted their influence rather as traders
than as settlers ; they confined themselves, at least as regards
the mainland, to factories, though in the island of Sicily they
also possessed fixed settlements. The Greeks gained a vastly
greater influence ; of their colonies the most important are
Tarentum (Tarento), Rhegium (Reggio), and above all
Cumae on the Campanian coast, of which now but incon-
siderable ruins remain, and which became immortal alike by

ITALY AND ITS POPULATION 5

founding Neapolis (Naples) and by transmitting the alphabet
to the Italici. Through these colonies Greek culture was
spread abroad to such a degree that the whole of Lower
Italy could be termed * Great Greece' [Magna Graecia).
And to this day the breath of Greek genius is felt by one
who sees uprising in the loneliest corner of the Gulf of
Salerno the magnificently preserved temples of Paestum, the
Greek Po seldom a.

In Sicily the Greeks met with a more stubborn resistance
than in Italy from the Poeni, with whom they gradually
came to share the possession of the island. In this process
the native population, the Sicani and SicuH, were entirely
driven into the background. The Greek cities of Syracusae,
Messana (Messina), and Agrigentum (Girgenti) were the
centres of culture for the island.

The islands of Corsica and Sardinia, geographically a part
of Italy, did not play a prominent part in ancient history ;
their primitive population was early mingled with foreign
elements, such as Ligurians, Greeks, Poeni, and others.

SECTION I

The Romans down to the Conciuest
OF Italy {266 b.c.)

CHAPTER 1
The Age of the Kings

Credibility of Tradition

No one in these days feels a doubt that the whole of the information
supplied by the ancients as to the founders and foundation of the city
of Rome is undeserving of belief, and that moreover the whole Royal
Age lies in the obscurity of the realm of fable. Not only the deeds
ascribed to the individual kings but their very names are wholly with-
out authority — a fact however which does not exclude the possibility
of the stories approaching nearer to historic truth as they descend in
time.

6 ROMAN HISTORY

Even if the year-books [Annales) kept in the older times [by the
priests were already usual in the Royal Age, and were themselves less
curt and scanty than all appearances compel us to assume them to have
Ipeen, they nevertheless were lost to students of later ages through
the awful visitation of the Gauls, which befell Rome at the beginning of
the fourth century B.C. Hence when afterwards pride in the great-
ness of their native city aroused in the Romans, disinclined as they
were to all literary activity, the craving to study its past, full scope
was given to the boldest combinations and the purest imagination.
Greek history too, which early directed its interest to Italic matters,
suffered from the same lack of sources of positive information ; it too
contributed its share to the distortion of the picture by applying Greek
conceptions to the circumstances of Rome.

:5 3. The Seven Kings

1. Romulus and Remus, whom imagination later associated
with him as his twin brother, were scions of the royal race of
Alba Longa, the capital of Latium, and thus descendants of
Aeneas's son Ascanius or luUus (whence the gens lulia).
They founded upon the Palatine Hill by the Tiber a city on
the spot where they had been exposed as babes. In walling
round the city {^Roma Qiiadrata) Remus lost his life in a
quarrel with his elder brother. After the coalition of this
Latin settlement on the Palatine with that of the Sabines
on the Quirinal Romulus shared the government with the
Sabine Titus Tatius, but became again sole sovereign after
the death of the latter. He now figures as the founder of
the State organisation, < the prototype of magistracy and its
rights ' ; he brings in the Senate, divides the people accord-
ing to rank into the fully privileged patricians {^patres) and
the less privileged plebeians [plehs) ; he separates the patri-
cians again into thirty curiae and each curia into ten families
[gentes), while for military purposes parting them into three
knightly centuriae, the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres ; and by
the arrangement of the auspicia (observation of divine omens)
he subordinates the whole State to the guidance of the gods.
No wonder that after such services he himself was raised to
the gods, under the mysterious name of Quirinus.

2. Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, is a pure Prince of Peace,

THE SEVEN KINGS 7

and thus the antithesis of Romulus. His long reign was
exclusively devoted to the extension and reorganisation of
the State Church and the guardianship of internal order.
Under the inspiration of the nymph Egeria he founded new
cults and introduced new priestly colleges. He also divided
among the burghers the districts conquered under his pre-
decessor, and set up an altar to the god of boundaries,
Terminus, on the Capitoline Hill.

3. Tullus Hostilius, another Latin and like Romulus a
warlike prince, had to defend the youthful settlement against
the jealous neighbouring cities, especially against the Etruscan
Veii, which lay northwards and was bounded by the Tiber,
and against the old Latin capital Alba Longa. The latter,
after successful battles, was destroyed by him, and the
inhabitants were forced to immigrate to Rome. The
Romans now entered upon the heritage of their vanished
parent- city, and Rome became head of the League of the
Latin Cities.

4. Ancus Martius is a Sabine, and is accounted grandson
of Numa Pompilius. The peaceful course of his government,
which in the main was devoted to internally strengthening the
State, was interrupted by a revolt of the Latins, which
Ancus successfully repressed. The consequence of it was
the colonisation of the Mons Aventinus with subdued Latins.
To him too is ascribed the fortification of the Mons Janiculus,
occupied in the Etruscan wars, on the right bank of Tiber,
and the junction of the two banks by the first bridge over the
river [pons sub/ictus, * pile-bridge '), which probably led to
the Forum Boar'mm (< cattle market'), a space between the
slopes of the Aventine, Palatine, and Capitol. He also is
said to have founded the port of Ostia at the mouth of the
river.

5. Tarquinius Priscus marks a turning-point in the history
of the kings ; for he, as well as the two last kings, is of
Etruscan origin, and this striking phenomenon can hardly be
interpreted otherwise than as meaning that the Romans had
not always emerged so successfully from the wars with their

8 ROMAN HISTORY

mighty northern neighbours as the patriotically falsified tradiJ
tion reports.

The age of Tarquinius appears in tradition as one of
peculiar brilliance. After making additions to the Roman
community by decisive victories over the neighbouring
peoples, he devoted himself in a magnificent way to improv-
ing the condition of things in the city. The laying down of
the Cloaca Maxima, which to this day evokes the admiration
of posterity, to drain the unhealthy lowland between the
Palatine, Capitol, and Quirinal ; the conversion of the re-
claimed hollow between the Palatine and Aventine into a
ground for races and sports on the Etruscan model, the
Circus Maximus ; the construction of the most famous of all
Roman temples, that of Jupiter on the Capitol, which was
burnt down in the year 83 B.C., but was restored by Sulla with
still greater magnificence ^ — these are the great works of
Tarquinius. Even before the last construction was finished
the mighty king fell a victim to the vengeance of Ancus
Martius's sons, whom he had excluded from the succession.

6. Servius Tullius, from whose name (^servus, < slave')
the ancients fancifully inferred his origin from a slave- woman,
is the representative of one of the most important measures
of internal politics in ancient Rome, the so-called * Servian
Constitution,' the fundamental idea of which was to make
the political privileges of burghers correspond to their military
and financial obligations. The whole people was distributed
into five classes for taxation, of which each was subdivided
again into a certain number of Hundreds (in all 193 centuriae,
hence the name * centurial constitution ' ). Outside these, that
is, apart from those holding privileges and obligations in the
State, stood those whose incomes did not reach the amount
prescribed for the fifth class ; these were the < proletarians,'
literally, * those blessed with ofifspring.' Political rights
were determined according to tax-assessment, but in such a
way that the patricians, who in themselves already represented

1 Ruins of this temple of Jupiter (.'apitolinus are to be found in the
garden of the Palazzo Caffarelli.

THE SEVEN KINGS 9

the well-to-do portion of the population, still remained the
favoured and almost solely privileged class. Servius also
divided the whole Roman dominion into administrative
districts, the so-called tribes, of which four belonged to
the city, seventeen (later thirty-one) to the extra-mural
domain.

With the surrounding Latins Servius concluded an ever-
lasting league of friendship, to ratify which a common federal
sanctuary was raised to Diana on the Aventine. But there
is another construction which came to be of vastly greater
importance for the development of Rome ; its name will for
ever remain associated with that of Servius, although it can-
not have been built until at least a hundred years after the
date assigned for his reign. This is the so-called * Servian
Wall,' which for the first time included the seven hills of
Rome within the circuit of the city.^ Servius fell by the
hand of his son-in-law and successor, the son of Tarquinius
Priscus.

7. Tarquinius Superbus — probably the same as the older
king of that name, whose exploits are attributed to him
also — appears on the other hand as a caricature of mon-
archical excesses, falling before republican principles. His
violent seizure of the throne, his boundless oppression of
the people, and the outrage on Lucretia, wife of his cousin
Collatinus, characterise him as a tyrant of the worst sort,
like those who in this age were not rare in the Greek cities.
By the agency of his own relatives, especially Junius Brutus,
a revolt was stirred up against him which ended in the
banishment of the tyrant family.

P 1 Its course may be fairly accurately fixed, as still numerous remains
survive.

ROMAN HISTORY

CHAPTER II

From the Beginnings of the Republic to the
Codification of National Law in the Twelve
Tables (509-450 b.c.)

The delimitation of this period, like every division of the past into
definite epochs, is essentially arbitrary ; nevertheless the year of the
Decemvirate may be regarded as a culminating point and boundary
stone in the development of Rome. Internally," the codification of the
national law by the decemvirs marks a great gain in the struggle for
rights which the plebeians waged for t\\ o centuries with the patricians ;
externally, Rome thus strengthened begins about this time to proceed
offensively against the neighbouring peoples, against whom she had
hitherto been often barely able to defend herself.

§ 4. The Beginnings of the Republic and the Com-
mencement OF the Struggle of the Orders

Kingship and Republic, — The reasons which brought about
the fall of the kingship are not clearly discernible, for the
traditional account of them still belongs entirely to the domain
of fable. This much however may be laid down : unlike
most revolutions of modern times, this movement was not one
of democratic or anarchic principles assailing a dominant class,
but in it the whole body of the nation, patricians and plebeians
together, cast off the sovereignty of an individual, without
thereby materially altering the form of the constitution and
the distribution of privileges. The rule of the two Consuls
(originally styled praetores) was distinguished from that of
the kings above all by its twofold or coilegial form, and
further by its annual duration and the responsibility arising
after their resignation of office. One branch indeed of the
functions of the king, who had been supreme judge, supreme
general, and supreme priest, was now removed from the
power of the Consuls, namely the office of the Sacrificial
King (^rex_jsacrorum), which owing to religious scruples
could not besevered from the royal title, but by its subordina-

BEGINNINGS OF THE REPUBLIC ii

tion to the High-Priest i^pontifex maximus) came to be with-
out political significance.

Only in the event of supreme need and for a limited space
of time could the plenary powers of sovereignty be handed
over to an individual, namely when extreme stress of war
necessitated the Dictatorship, which we may compare with
our modern * state of siege.' The Dictator, nominated on
the direction of the Senate by a Consul, had unlimited powers,
but for not more than six months. His assistant was the
Master of the Knights {^magister eqtiitum), who was selected
by him and resigned with him.

In the further development of the republican constitution
an ever increasing number of official duties were severed from
the consulate and new offices or magistracies constituted,
which brought into existence a clearly defined official class.

Patricians and Plebeians, — The patricians alone were full
burghers, in the enjoyment of all constitutional privileges ;
they alone had to maintain relations with the State's gods,
only they sat in the Senate, and only from their midst could
the highest officers come. The honour of belonging to this
favoured order could only be won by birth and equal marriage,
while the offspring of a mixed marriage belonged to the
plebeian caste.

This condition of things was all the more intolerable to the
plebeians as they shared the burdens of military service and
tax-payment with the patricians, and thereby bore a dispro-
portionately greater load. So directly after the removal of
the two orders' common enemy, the royal power, the struggle
for rights began between plebeians and patricians, which was
waged on both sides with great bitterness and varying success.
The patricians in particular were often enough able to render
the concessions made to their opponents valueless by availing
themselves of the law, which was accessible and familiar to
them alone.

Already under the first Consuls, Junius Brutus and Tar-
quinius Collatinus (509 B.C.) it is said that plebeians were
granted seats in the Senate, though only in limited numbers.

12 ROMAN HISTORY

and the election of Consuls was committed to the centuriate
assemblies, which represented both orders, instead of to the
curiate assemblies of the patricians ; but these are measures
which hardly seem credible in the first period of the re-
public.

To the same year are attributed the important laws of
Valerius Publicola, the successor of the banished Collatinus,
of which one laid down that no person without a commission
from the people might exercise supreme power, while by the
second, the lex de provocaHone, the centuriate comitia were
made into a court of appeal against the severest penalties,
bodily chastisement and sentence of death, later also against
heavy fines in money.

The unprotected condition of the plebeians, who had no
representatives among the magistrates, was felt with especial
acuteness, as the prosperity of the plebeian population, on
whom military service pressed most sorely, was steadily sapped
by the continued feuds of this period, and debtors, like the
Attic peasantry in the age of Solon, suffered the most pitiless
oppression from their patrician creditors. At last the return
from a campaign gave occasion to an open revolt.

This was the so-called secessio plehis in Mont em Sacrum, that
is, the emigration of the commons to the 'Sacred Mount.' ^ The
consequence of this rising was theestablishment of the * Tribu-
nate of the Commons.' The plebeians were allowed to have two
(or five, later ten) officials, to be elected from their own
ranks, the Tribunes of the Commons i^tribunl plebis), whose
special task was to be the protection of the plebs against
patrician aggression. In order that they might exercise
without hindrance this peculiar office, which stood outside
and to a certain extent above the law, they were declared to
be inviolable [sacrosancti). Later the privileges of these
Tribunes of the Commons grew to such an extraordinary
plenitude of power that the emperors derived from this
magistracy one of the chief titles of their office. Tin

1 The hill lying north of Rome Ixjyond the Ponte Nonientano lias u'
historical claim to the title Monte Sacro.

EXTERNAL EVENTS 13

assistants of the JTdbunes were two Aediles i^aediles plebis)^ "4
likewise plebeian magistrates.

To this period too are ascribed the beginnings of a
movement which runs like a red thread through the history
of the republic, and often led to severe internal convulsions,
— the agrarian demands of the plebeians, who hitherto had
been excluded in the distribution of the State's landed
property won by wars (^ager puhlicus^. In the year 486, it M^
is said, the Consul Spurius Cassius brought out the first 1
agrarian bill ; he had however no success, and fell a victim
to the vengeance of the infuriated members of his order.

A new period in this struggle is marked by the law of
PubliHus Volero (471), which converted the comitia of the
Tribes, hitherto common to both orders, into a body solely
representative of the plebeians, and transferred to them the
election of the Tribunes of the Commons. The regulation
was further made that the decisions of the comitia of the
Tribes might be laid before the Senate, where of course they
had at first merely the value of petitions. Two further laws
also were made in the plebeian interest, the lex Icil'ia de
Aventino publkando, by which the Aventine was allowed
to the plebeians as a dwelling-place (456), and the lex
Tarpeia Aternia, which limited more sharply the Consul's
powers of punishment (454).

§ 5. The External Events of this Period

Dominance of Rome in Latium. — Two documents of
unque.stionable credibility reveal to us the position of Rome
in Latium better than the stories of successful battles with
which Roman legend decorated the history of the oldest
times. The one is a commercial treaty with Carthage,
ascribed to the very first pair of Consuls (509). In it the
Carthaginians have to pledge themselves not to attack the
Latin cities standing in friendly relations to Rome, while
they are permitted warfare with the cities not connected with
Rome ; and thus Rome comes forward as head of a Latin

14 ROMAN HISTORY

league. The other document is a list of the thirty cities
which in the year 493 concluded with Rome an official
alliance (the Latin Confederacy), which was also joined
a few years later by the Hernici, a race bordering in the
south-east on the Latins. But the youthful republic had
to wage many and not always successful wars before it
secured its position of authority.

Wars with the Etruscans, — As regards the Etruscan wars
which the last Tarquinius in his banishment is said to have
stirred up, and of which that conducted by Porsenna of
Clusium 1 seems to have been especially critical, tradition
in the main is able to supply nothing but heroic legends
(Horatius Codes, Mucius Scaevola, Cloelia) ; yet in spite
of all its distortion of truth to point its moral it has not
quite succeeded in glossing over the fact that the Romans
must have often suffered severe defeats in them and stooped
to surrender territory. Moreover the long war with the
city of Veii, Rome's old foe, lacks reliable authority and
is made none the more probable by the tale of the struggle
and fall of the 306 patricians of the Fabian race who
sought to establish on the Cremera a bulwark against the
Veientines (483-474).

Wars ivith the Volsci, Aequ'i^ and Sablnes. — The Volsci
dwelt south of Rome ; a vigorous race possessed of strong
cities, they were not disposed to join the Latin league. A
full account of these struggles cannot be given ; for the
story of Coriolanus, who on account of his assaults upon the
Tribunes had to leave Rome and in revenge led the Volsci
against his native city, must be relegated to the sphere of
folk-tale. Behind it, however, is certainly concealed a
defeat of the Romans.

The Romans too must have fared ill in the wars with the

jAequi, a race of highland freebooters dwelling to the east of

/Rome; for they found themselves forced to nominate a

^-"Dictator, which only occurred in cases of supreme need.

1 Chisium is the modern Chiusi, where numerous remains of Etruscan
buildings still exist.

THE DECEMVIRATE 15

Naturally the personality of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, who
was summoned from the plough to crush the Aequi, stands
on the same level as that of Coriolanus. Finally the old
Annals have also tales to tell in this age of Sabine wars. And
thus we see Rome at this period threatened on all sides,
in a struggle for existence that often, we may be sure, was
desperate. A change takes place in the second half of the
fifth century, as the Romans pass from the defensive to the
offensive, and by founding colonies gain a firm footing in
hostile territory.

CHAPTER III

rom the Decemvirate to the Visitation of the
Gauls (451-387 B.C.)

This period marks both internally and externally a steady advance ;
in the struggle for rights the plebeians extort really valuable privileges,
by which the political development of the republic inwardly is materi-
ally furthered ; outwardly Roman power is strengthened by successful
wars, foundation of colonies, and extension of the ager pud licus through
the conquered regions.

§ 6. The Decemvirate and the Laws of the
Twelve Tables

In the Tribunes of the Commons the plebeians had indeed
obtained officials drawn from their own order; but their
influence of needs remained a limited one so long as the know-
ledge of the law and jurisdiction remained, like a religious
secret, solely in the hands of the patricians. Already in the
year 462 the tribune Terentilius Arsa is said to have made
in the comitia of the Tribes the proposal to establish a
commission for publishing or codifying the authoritative
customary law. The patricians indeed strove for ten years
to put off the proposal of Terentilius ; but the Tribunes did
not yield, and finally in the year 451 the commission de-
manded was established, the decemviri legibus scrihundis. That
the Ten might devote themselves to their by no means light

i6 ROMAN HISTORY "

task without pressure and hindrance, the whole powers of
government were also put into their hands ; in other words,
the constitution was suspended during the decemvirate. The
commission was able at the end of the year to present ten
tables. The great work was not yet ended with this ; a new
election for the coming year was therefore needful. In this
a member of the previous decemviral board with plebeian
sympathies, Appius Claudius, carried through a proposal that
five plebeians should be elected upon the commission ; and
this is probably the reason why tradition, which almost with-
out exception favours the patricians in its painting, can give
only an unfavourable account of the second year and con-
clusion of the decemvirate. Thus the story of Appius
Claudius' development into a tyrant and his outrage upon
Virginia, which led to the fall of the decemvirs, deserves no
belief. It is however possible that the patrician decemvirs
after the completion of their activity delayed the restoration
of the old constitution in order to remove the hated tribunes ;
for the next Consuls who succeeded the decemvirs, among
other things, expressly guaranteed anew the inviolability of
the tribunes (449 B.C.).

The so-called Laws of the Twelve Tables were thus no
change in the constitution and had nothing to do with con-
stitutional law ; they were a publication of regulations of the
penal and civil law. The story that the decemvirs studied
Greek law and actually availed themselves of it in their
work is not incredible, especially as we know that after the
decemvirate the Greek measure was adopted by the Romans.^
The law of Gortyn in Crete also shows points of likeness.

§ 7. Further Gains of the Plebeians

The Leges Valeriae Horatiae, introduced by the first Consuls
after the decemvirate (449), reassert the inviolability of the
Tribunes of the Commons, bring again into force the lex

1 This measure was used in building the so-called Servian city wall,
which thus was not constructed until after the decemvirate.

GAINS OF THE PLEBEIANS 17

Valeria cle provocatione that had been passed in 509, and lay
down a new principle of deep significance, * what the plebs
shall determine in the comitia of the Tribes shall be binding
upon the whole people' (w/ quod tributim plebs iussisset
popidum teneret). So together with the importance of the
comitia of the Tribes grew the influence of the Tribunes, who
henceforth are to be regarded as lawful magistrates.

Two years later the quaestorship (447 b.c.) was separated
from the consulate, and the management of the State's pro-
perty was thus removed from the Consuls. The quaestors,
two in number, were necessarily patricians ; but their election
was made in the comitia of the Tribes.

A great gain for the plebs was marked by the lex Canu/eia, ft
which gave the plebeians community of marriage with patri- N
cians i^conubium) and opened the way to the consulate (445).
The importance of this law however was for the time lessened
by the patricians, in their unwillingness to see the first office
of the State desecrated by a plebeian, passing a regulation by
which it was allowable to elect in place of Consuls * Military
Tribunes with Consular Power ' {^tribuni mUiium consulari
potestate),'^ So great still was the influence of the privileged
class upon the course of elections in the centuriate comitia
that in the first forty years after this law, in which Military
Tribunes were elected nearly twenty times, not one plebeian
rose to this office.

That the patricians however already realised the possi-
bility of the election of a plebeian Consul is proved by the
establishment of the censorship i^censura), which took place
already in the next year (443). This was an office by
which the important duties of selecting senators and holding
the census in accordance with the so-called Servian Con-
stitution were severed from the consulate and transferred to
new patrician magistrates, the censors, who were to be elected
for five years.

In general the dominance of the patricians was for the

1 Their number varies between 3, 4 6, and 8.

i8 ROMAN HISTORY

present still unbroken. Nothing proves this better than the
murder of the rich plebeian Spurius Maelius, which is re-
corded in this age (439). On the occasion of a famine he
j is said to have distributed corn gratis to the poor ; hence he
^ came to be suspected by the patricians of aspiring to tyranny,
and was put out of the way by them without any legal pro-
ceeding. The case recalls the equally unhappy end which
fifty years earlier had befallen Spurius Cassius on account of
his popular agrarian law.

But the struggles of the plebeians for constitutional equality
with the patricians, now crowned with brilliant successes, went
on in an unceasing course. In the year 42 1 they were able
to gain access to the patrician office of the quaestorship, by
which they obtained a share in one of the most important
branches of the administration.

§ 8. The External Events of this Epoch

Foundation of Colonies, — In the second half of the fifth
century the Romans begin to gain a firm footing in the
domains of hostile neighbouring races. The colonies es-
tablished by them were not new foundations, but consisted
in the immigration of a number of Roman burghers into a
conquered town, which surrendered to them perforce a
corresponding part of its real estate. The oldest colonies
appear to be Ardea on the south-west by the Alban Hills,
which had the territory of the crushed Volscian city of
Corioli added to its domain (442), and Fidenae, originally
Latin, but constantly inclining to the Etruscans, though later,
when it sought to cast off the Roman yoke, it was wholly
destroyed and its land reverted to the Romans as ager
puhlicus (426). The continued wars with the Volsci and
Aequi also led to the foundation of colonies, as Labici (now
Colonna) and Bolae, both on the road to the country of
the friendly Hernici, Velitrae (Velletri), and Satricum (near
Conca?), and above all Anxur or Tarracina, founded in
406, and a power by sea.

EXTERNAL EVENTS 19

War ivith Ve'iu — The incorporation of the domain of
Fidenae in the ager piiblicus (see above), which brought the
Romans up to the borders of the Veientines, must have led
to new quarrels with the jealous mistress of Southern Etruria.
The contest, which is reputed to have broken out in 406
and to have lasted ten years, has been expanded by historical
imagination into a second Trojan War, the central point of
which is the personality of M. Furius Camillus. It ended ^
with the destruction of Veii, and brought to the Romans a
very considerable extension of territory, in which the con-
federated Latin States also shared.

From this war is derived a change in the organisation of the Roman
army which later had important poHtical results. On account of the
long duration of the war, which moreover demanded for the first time
winter campaigns, it was decided to introduce payvient. Hence there
arose from the well-to-do circles alike of patricians and plebeians who
rejected such support a new troop outside the military centuriae, a
volunteer cavalry, out of which in course of time developed a new civil
order, that of the Knights.

The advance of Roman power, in which we may mark
the annihilation of Veii as a culminating point, was rudely
interrupted by the visitation of the Gauls (387). Kelts,
styled by the Romans Gallic by the Greeks 'Galatai, had
forced their way from modern France into Upper Italy and
won more and more ground, especially from the Etruscans,
who formerly had extended even into the valleys of the
Raetian Alps.

The struggles for possession of the district of the Po may
have already been going on for many years before the
colHsion with the Romans occurred. The story is told
that when the Etruscan town of Clusium was beleaguered
a Roman embassy haughtily summoned the Gauls to an
immediate retreat and then again, in defiance of all inter-
national law, took a share in the contest. When the Roman
people refused satisfaction, the Gauls pressed onwards along
the Tiber and inflicted by the Allia such a defeat upon the
Roman army that but few are said to have escaped, and the
* day of the Allia,' dies y^IIiensis, was one of the Romans*

20 ROMAN HISTORY

most terrible memories. So great was the dismay at Rome
that they gave up the city for lost, bestowed the women and
children together with the removable objects of religion
into the neighbouring towns, and decided to defend the
Capitol only. Three days after the battle the Gauls
appeared, and Rome fell a prey to the flames. Only the
Capitol was maintained, and for seven months the barbarians,
unskilled in the arts of siege, strove in vain to force it to
surrender.^ Finally, we are told, the Romans induced them
to withdraw by the payment of looo pounds of gold.

It is a singular coincidence that this deep humiliation of
Rome occurred in the very year in which Athens too
received a deadly blow by the so-called Peace of Antal- .
cidas.2 While however the heyday of the Greek metro-
polis was already past and her dominance for ever lost, Rome
in the strength of youth recovered with surprising quickness
from her discomfiture.

CHAPTER IV

From the Visitation of the Gauls to the Alliance
of the Romans with the Campanians

(387-33S B-c.)

In this period the struggle of the orders is practically concluded, and
Rome develops from a dominant city of Latium into a Great Power
in Italy.

§ 9. The Continuation and Conclusion of the
Struggle of the Orders

The so-called Leges Liciniae Sextiae, — The plebeian tribunes
Lucius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius, we are told,

1 Here belongs the legend of Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, who
when awakened by the cackle of the geese saved the fortress.

2 [This peace was really a rescript from King Artaxerxes Mnemon,
which laid down that the Persians should hold the Greek cities of Asia,
and that all other Greek States should be independent, Athens retain-
ing nothing but Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros.]

THE STRUGGLE OF THE ORDERS 21

waged for ten years a struggle of intense bitterness against
the patricians in championship of the following three pro-
posals : ( I ) that, to diminish the burden of debt on the poor,
interest paid be deducted from the capital and the remainder
paid within three years; (2) that no burgher possess more
than 500 iugera'^ of public land; (3) that the Military Tri-
bunes be done away with, and one Consul be of necessity a
plebeian.

Clearly the first two regulations sprang from solicitude for
the poorest class of the population, who must have been also
especial sufferers from the devastations of the Kelts ; but it
is equally certain that the first, from the unintelligibility
of its matter, lacks historical authority, while the second
assuredly cannot have then been passed, since the small extent
of the State's possessions of itself precluded such an average size
of individual estates. The third law however, which restores
the consulship and divides it henceforth permanently between
patricians and plebeians, may be regarded as the conclusion of
the struggle between the two orders for equalisation of rights

^(366 B.C.).

I The Praetorship and the Curule Aediles, — The patricians
made another attempt to reserve for themselves a portion of
the highest official powers by transferring the chief jurisdiction
to a new patrician magistrate, the Praetor. In order not to
lose the influence on the people obtained by their organisation
of the national games, the Ludi Romania it was determined
that the management of these games should remain in the
hands of two patricians, the Curule Aediles. But these two
positions also were won in the course of the next thirty years
by the plebeians. To bring at once to an end our description
of the contest of the orders — down to the last years of this
century one office after the other fell into plebeian hands,
dictatorship, censorship, and finally too by the lex Ogulnta Jt!^
(300) all priestly posts of political value, so that now/'
nothing remained of the preserves of the patricians but the

^ [The iugerum contains 28,8ck> square feet, or 2523.3 square
metres.]

22 ROMAN HISTORY

private cults and the insignificant office of the Sacrificial King
(above, §4).

After the conclusion of the contest of the orders there
gradually arose a new grouping of parties, which bore in it
the germ of a fruitful development in state life. From
the prosperous and noble families of the two now reconciled
orders emerged a new nobility (nobilitas), the 'nobility of
office,' as it has been called, since henceforth the offices
of State were filled up from its circles. The patriciate
indeed lived on, but only as a private society united by race,
without political influence.

§ 10. The Wars and Con (quests from 387 to 338 b.c.

IVars as Results of the Gallic Invasion. — The old tradition
tells us of wars with the Aequi, Volsci, and Etruscans, which
began immediately after the retreat of the Gauls and were
prolonged for many years. The foundation of colonies and
organisation of new tribes which we see arising in this
period teach us better than any ahnalistic exaggerations that
finally the Romans had the advantage everywhere. On
Etrurian soil Sutrium and subsequently Nepete were founded,
thus keeping in check South Etruria, where in particular
the cities of Falerii and Tarquinii long resisted the Romans.
In the south the colonies of Satricum and Setia secured
Roman influence on Volscian territory. Stories too are
told of disturbances among the Latins; the strong hill-town
of Praeneste (the modern Palestrina) in particular figures
often in contests with the Romans. That no great reliance
was to be placed on the loyalty of the Latins is shown also
by the fact that in 358 the Latin Confederation had to be
renewed.

Romans and Samnites. — In the inhospitable heights of the
Apennines, south-east of Latium, dwelt the rude hill-folk
of the Samnites, who like the Latins were of Sabellian
origin and were subdivided into many families. Their
civilisation was slight, but their ability for war was all the

WARS AND CONQUESTS 23

greater ; they had attested it by the conquest of the south-
western part of the peninsula, while Rome was winning her
dominant position in Latium. Lucania, Bruttium, and, above
all, flourishing Campania had been occupied by this Sabellian
race. But the bond between these projected portions of the
Samnite nation and the parent stock was a loose one, and
indeed gradually broke off altogether, especially in Campania,
where the high civilisation of the country, due equally to
Etruscans and Greeks, turned the wild children of the
mountains almost into a new people. So it came about that
the Highland Samnites soon confronted the Campanians as
enemies and cast lustful eyes on their favoured land.

It may be that the Romans took notice of these warlike
neighbours of theirs in consequence of their too frequent
troubles with the Gauls ; it may be that the striving for
expansion which was common to both races aroused a
community of interest between them. However it was,
the Romans in this period entered into friendly relations
with the Samnites and in the year 354 concluded a formal
alliance. Protected by this, the Romans finished the sub-
jugation of the Volsci and the Aurunci, who dwelt south of
the latter, while the Samnites subdued the neighbours of
the Aurunci, the Sidicini.

Later, when fierce wars had been fought out between the
two peoples, a so-called * first Samnite war' was con-
structed out of this peaceful meeting. This ' war ' is
described to us in exact detail but it deserves no credit
because — to say nothing of other cogent arguments — we
find the Samnites acting as neutral spectators, perhaps in-
deed as alhes of Rome, in the great Latin war just at this
time breaking out.

The Latin War and Dissolution of the Latin League ( 3 40-
338). — Seemingly the confederate Latin cities, to whose
aid Rome owed her successes, felt themselves neglected and
claimed greater recompenses for the heavy demands upon
them. The Romans regarded the Latins' requests as a
declaration of war, and at once began military operations.

24 ROMAN HISTORY

which on this occasion did not consist of the rude straight
hitting hitherto usual, but imply a deliberate plan. They did
not directly advance southwards against the rebellious Latins,
but marched through the territory of the friendjy Hernici and
other small peoples into the valley of the Liris and thus
inserted themselves between the Latins and their allies the
Campanians. Here, on the border between Latium and
Campania, near to the little town of Sinuessa, were fought
two battles, in which Rome was victorious.

The Latin Confederation, that is, the union of the Latin
cities with one another, was dissolved ; each city entered on
its own account into a particular relation with Rome, which
for the most of them amounted to complete subjugation. A
number became * burgher corporations without suffrage ' (^iyi-
tates stne^uffragio), that is, they undertook the duties with-
out the rights of Roman burghers, and received a supreme
judge from Rome i^praefectus iuri dicundo^. Others were less
considerately treated ; either they wholly lost their communal
existence and were turned into a Roman tribe, or at least they
were forced to receive a Roman colony, usually of 300
burghers, to whom they had to assign the best part of their
real estate. At this time too the powerful sea-town and
old foe of Rome, Antium (Porto d'Anzio), became her
subject. Only two of the most important Latin towns, Tibur
(now Tivoli) and Praeneste, remained independent and con-
cluded a private alliance with Rome.

The Conquest of Campania. — An important result of these
victories was the conquest of Campania, which on the whole
was accomplished peacefully. The most powerful cities of
the land, Capua, Cumae, and Acerrae, entered into confederate
relations with Rome, which gave them community of law
and matrimony with the Romans, bound them to army
service, but left them their independent administration.
Henceforth the Roman name appears on Campanian coins.

THE SAMNITE WARS 25

CHAPTER V

From the Conquest of Campania to the
Subjugation of Italy (338/4-266 b.c.)

In this period internal politics are overshadowed by the mighty wars
which were a result of complications with the Samnites and for many
years raged through the whole peninsula. The final victory was on the
side of the Romans, who at the conclusion of this period may be
regarded as masters of Italy. In regard to culture also this age is one
of great significance, as the Romans come into the closest connection
with the Greek civilisation then at its zenith in Southern Italy, and
henceforth Hellenism pervades Roman life.

§ II. The Samnite Wars, 326-290 b.c.

J^he First (so-called ' Second') Samnite War (326-304).
— The Romans' intrusion into Campania naturally disturbed
the Samnites most sorely ; and when their important military
station on the Liris, Fregellae, was occupied by the Romans,
and moreover Neapolis, the most flourishing commercial
town in the country, followed the example of Cumae and
Capua by entering into the same confederate relations with
Rome, the Samnites took up arms. As regards this contest
too tradition is of little service. The fortunes of war long
vacillated. After a severe defeat, the confinement in the
Caudine Forks (passes leading from Capua to Beneventum)
in 321, the Romans lost among other places Fregellae ; and
although they succeeded later in forming a union with the
Apulians and Lucanians, their position in Campania was so
shaken as a result of a second defeat near Tarracina that Capua
fell away from the confederacy (315). But the desperate
exertions now made by the Romans met with better success.
In 314 Capua and in 313 Fregellae were recovered, and
they could even venture to found a new colony, Interamna,
still further south upon the mountain-road leading through
the valley of the Liris. Though forced to struggle in this
period against the Gauls and Etruscans and against many

26 ROMAN HISTORY

revolted allies as well, the Romans yet succeeded in the end
in maintaining their positions, and by the year 304 we may
regard the first Samnite War as at an end ; the Samnites were
bound down within the limits occupied by them and almost
wholly cut off from the sea.

The Second (so-called 'Third') Samnite War (298-290).
— The Romans at once proceeded to secure their new con-
quests by the foundation of fortified military colonies and of
roads. They completed too the Via Appia, the * queen of
roads', which had already been commenced during the first
war by the Censor Appius Claudius, and by means of two
new roads leading eastwards from Latium through the country
between Etruria and Samnium they made the Samnite territory
accessible to their armies from the north also.

Against these advances of the Romans the Samnites, prob-
ably in collusion with the Gauls and Etruscans, and with
the support of the races of Central Italy and the Lucanians,^
took up arms anew under the able leadership of Gellius
Egnatius. The Romans themselves regarded the contest as
so critical that they enrolled in the legions married men and
even freed men. But in the decisive battle near Sentinum, in
' Umbria (235), the fortune of war was on the side of their
leaders, Q. Fabius Rullianus and P. Decius Mus. The
• coalition was broken up, Umbria came into the hands of the
Romans, and in spite of many successes the Samnites by
themselves were unable permanently to stand against the
superior power of Rome. They kept their home in the
mountains ; but the subjection of Campania to the Romans
and their conquests in Lucania and Apulia were now finally
assured (290).

1 The successes in Lucania are associated with the name of L. Scipio
Barbatus, the oldest of the Scipios known to us, whose sarcophagus,
with an inscription referring to this war, was found in the family grave
on the Via Appia in the present century (now in the Vatican
Collection).

WAR WITH TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS 27

§ 12. The War with Tarentum and Pyrrhus,

282-275 B.C.

In these wars, which brought a large part of Lower Italy
also under the dominion of the Romans, no share had been
borne by the most powerful State of the south, the Greek
commercial city of Tarentum. It had been well content to
see its ever hostile neighbours the Lucanians in distress.
When however the Romans supplied a garrison to Thurii,
a city on the Tarcntine Gulf and now hard pressed by the
Lucanians (284), and a few more of the southern Greek
colonies fell to them, collision between them and the com-
mercial republic dominating in the Ionic waters was in-
evitable.

As regards the origin of the war, Roman history has
published an account which obviously is only intended to put
the opponent in the wrong. In reaHty, the appearance of
a Roman squadron in Tarentine waters, which by an old
treaty were closed to them, was a filibustering attempt,
which the Tarentines repelled by armed force (282).
For the Romans a serious war was now very inconvenient ;
but as the Tarentines raised it at once by the occupation of
Thurii and refused all mediation, the former had to make up
their minds for a new contest (281).

Into this war enters one of the most interesting person-
alities of that period, the tried soldier King Pyrrhus of
Epirus, whose lofty imagination pictured to him Alexander
the Great as a model and the estabHshment of a second
Hellenistic world-empire in the West as a goal. After the
manner of the later Italian condottieriy Pyrrhus put himself at
the service of the Tarentines, and appeared with 25,000
men and 20 war-elephants on Italian soil (280). In his
first conflict with the Romans at Heraclea, near the Lucanian
coast, he won a great victory, thanks to his elephants, which
were entirely strange to the Westerns. The Romans had
indeed to withdraw their garrisons from Lucania ; but in the

28 ROMAN HISTORY

next year they resumed the contest, and although once again
they were defeated in the severe battle near the ApuHan
Asculum,! they still maintained themselves in Apulia, and
Pyrrhus' successes were valueless (279). This induced
the restless man, weary of the fruitless war in Italy, to comply
with a call to Sicily to aid his father-in-law Agathocles of
Syracuse, who was hard pressed by the Carthaginians ; and
here he spent several years.

Meanwhile the Romans had struggled on with varying
luck in Southern Italy and were pressing most heavily on
the Samnites, when Pyrrhus after the total failure of his
Sicilian projects was able to resume the Italian war (275).
Near the capital of Samnium, Beneventum, was fought a third
great battle, in which the Romans were completely victorious.
Pyrrhus now gave up his Italian schemes as well, and having
left a garrison in Tarentum returned to his adventurous
operations in Greece. When during one of these he lost
his life (272), his general Milo evacuated Tarentum also
and left it to the Romans, who had long had a party of
sympathisers in the city. Thus the conquest of Southern
Italy is completed.

§ 13. The Contests with the Etruscans and Gauls

The military importance of Rome, so brilliantly demon-
strated in the obstinate wars with the Samnites and the South
Italian coalition, appears in a still brighter light when we
consider that throughout this period a portion, often indeed a
half, of her fighting strength had to be employed against the
northern peoples. The Gauls from time to time renewed
the attempt to penetrate into Central Italy, and in particular
found in certain cities of the Etruscans ever ready allies
against Rome. Thus the Romans were frequently com-
pelled to campaigns into these regions, as regards the course
of which we have on the whole but uncertain accounts

1 'Another such victory, and I am lost/ was Pyrrhus' reputed
saying ; hence the phrase ' Pyrrhic victory. '

CONTESTS WITH ETRUSCANS AND GAULS 29

preserved to us. In any case they succeeded in maintaining
the colonies of Sutrium and Nepete, which had been im-
perilled during the first Samnite war, and were a thorn in the
side of the Etruscans. These northern opponents became
more dangerous when in the second Samnite war they united
with the Samnites and the Italic races dwelling between
Etruriaand Samnium also joined them. At Sentinum (295)
the Romans would probably have failed to withstand the
united power of the allies, among whom the Gauls were
the most formidable, had not the Etruscans during the fight
withdrawn from the field. This victory allowed the Romans
to breathe for a time on the northern seat of war, and made
it indeed possible for them to found the strong fortress of
Hatria ^ in the district of the Piceni, near the coast of the
Adriatic Sea.

Ten years later (285) the disturbances began again to assume
a dangerous form ; for now the Sen ones annihilated a
Roman army at Arretium (Arezzo). Punishment how-
ever did not delay, and was sternly executed ; the Romans
pressed with strengthened forces into the territory of the
Senones, and crushed the whole race with such pitiless
severity that henceforth its name disappears from the roll of
Italic peoples. Their chief town Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia)
was made into a maritime colony of Rome. The treatment
of the Senones fired the Gauls and Etruscans again to a
common struggle for independence, the issue of which was
once more favourable to the Romans. After several battles
the coalition broke up, and by the occupation of Ariminum
(Rimini) on the Adriatic Sea the Romans extended their
sphere of dominion considerably further northwards.

Thus at the conclusion of this period the Roman power 1
stretches from Ariminum down to Tarentum ; in other )
words, Italy with the exception of Gaul is subjected to the'
Romans.

1 This Hatria is not to be confused with the port of Adria (Hatria)
between the mouths of the Po and Adige, which has given its name to
the Adriatic Sea.

30 ROMAN HISTORY

SECTION II

From the Subjection of Italy until the
Fall of the Republic^ 266-29 b.c. (Foun-
dation OF THE World-Empire)

CHAPTER VI

Estahlishment of Supremacy in the Countries
of the Mediterranean (266-133 b.c.)

Sources. — With this period the sources begin to be more abundant
and reliable. First mention now belongs to the famous contemporary
and friend of Scipio Africanus Minor, the Greek Polybius, who wrote
about 140 B.C. his forty books of ' Histories,' of which the first five are
preserved (264-221 B.C.). Among other sources, he drew upon the
Annals of Q. Fabius Pictor, the oldest Roman historian (though he
wrote too in Greek), who composed his work shortly after the Second
Punic War. For the period 218-167 Livius (Books 21-45) is preserved
to us ; he probably made more use of Polybius than can be now proved.
Third, and equally influenced by Polybius, is the Greek Appian, living
in the age of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, who gives us connected
narratives ; of his surviving books may be mentioned here the Iberian
(vi.), Hannibalic (vii.), Libyan (viii.), Macedonian (ix.), the partly
preserved Illyrian (x.), and the Syrian (xi.)

Important isolated pieces of information are fpund in the Biog-
raphies of Cornelius Nepos (a contemporary of Cicero), and of
Plutarch. Furthermore the surviving epitomes {periochae) of almost
all the 142 books of Livius are not without value, and much useful
matter is supplied by the excerpts and fragments from the great works
of Diodorus and Cassius Dio.

Social Changes. — Rome had now become a Great Power, and took
her place on terms of equality with the other civilised States of the
Mediterranean ; by means of the Romanised trade-emporia of the
Etruscans and above all of the South-Italian Greeks, the State of
farmer-burghers grew into the Commercial State. New life, generally-
touched with Greek influence, appears now in all domains. So Rome
in this age creates for the first time a coinage which can gain currency-
in the traffic of the world, converting into coin the lumps of copper it
had formerly dealt out by weight and beginning to stamp silver money
after the Attic standard. The extension of the sphere of power calls for
an increase of the official staff and the establishment of new offices \.
military roads, like the magnificent Via Appia, cross the new acquisi-
;ions. connect the fortresses and colonies founded to secure them, and

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 31

convey Roman life and Roman speech in all directions through Italy.
On the other hand, the influences of foreign culture also enter now with
potency into the land ; Greek, Greco-Campanian, and Etrurian art-
products find a sale among the Romans and arouse an industry of
their own ; and even in intellectual life the superiority of the Greek
genius gradually overcomes the rudeness of the stubborn Roman char-
acter. It must be confessed that the beginnings of Roman art and
poetry, which fall in this period, are still distinctly clumsy and merely
imitative.

§ 14. The First Punic War, 264-241 b.c.

Rome and Carthage until their Collision. — Itself originally
tributary to Libyan races, the African commercial requblic of
Carthage had in the fifth century made itself independent and
rapidly subjugated the region behind it ; but it was especially
through its possessions outside Africa, in Sicily, Sardinia,
Corsica, and Spain, that it had obtained its great wealth and
become a sea-power of the first rank. As by factories it
ruled also the commerce of the western coast of Italy, it was
certain to come into connexion with the Romans at latest
when the latter by founding Ostia, the port of the Tiber,
reached the coast. In view of the vast superiority of the
Carthaginians, this first meeting can only have been a friendly
one ; and the compacts concluded between the two powers,
of which tradition assigns the older to the first year of the
Republic, must imply the predominance of the Phoenician
Commercial State so long as the Romans did not and could
not raise any claim to rank as a sea-power. This relation
changed when Rome by subduing Italy brought under its
sovereignty important sea-towns in all quarters, and was
thereby summoned to play a part in the maritime trade of the
Mediterranean and thus in the commerce of the world.

The War, — After the death of Agathocles of Syracuse a
band of mercenaries summoned by him into the land, the so-
called Mamertini, had occupied Messana (Messina), but were
vigorously assailed by the new ruler of Syracuse, Hiero.
They turned for help towards Rome, which deemed itself
bound to grant protection to the < Italici ' (265). Hiero

32 ROMAN HISTORY

sought the mediation of the Carthaginians, who actually
succeeded in bringing about a union of the conflicting parties.
When the Romans heard this, they occupied by an au-
dacious stroke Rhegium and Messana, upon which the
/j Carthaginians declared war on them (264 b.c).

The Romans in the first two years of the war maintained
themselves in Messana and gained a brilliant victory under
M. Valerius Messalla (an honorific name derived from
Messana), Hiero now went over to them, and thus they
became masters of the east coast. Soon the chief basis of
Carthaginian power on the south coast, Agrigentum (the
Greek Akragas, now Girgenti) fell into their hands, and
the Carthaginians found themselves limited to their naval
fortresses in the western part of the island, Panormus
(Palermo) and Lilybaeum (Marsala), which were believed
to defy capture (262).

On the other hand the Carthaginians with their excellent
fleet inflicted the severest damage upon the Romans by con-
tinuous privateering and attacks upon the Italian coasts. At
last the Romans determined to equip a fleet, making indeed
heavy calls upon the sea-towns subject to them. This first
Roman fleet owed a victory ^ gained near the Lipari Islands
on the north-west coast of Sicily to a brilliant invention of
\ \ their leader M. Dui^ius, who by movable boarding-bridges
M converted the sea-fight into a land-battle (260). The
consequences of this were however insignificant. In the
following years the struggle went on with varying success in
Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. An expedition to Africa,
rendered possible by the issue of the great sea-fight at the
promontory of Ecnomus on the south coast (256), seemed to
lead up to the crisis. But owing to the want of foresight of
M. Atilius Regulus this undertaking failed, 2 and the war was

1 The new Capitoline Museum preserves an ancient copy of the
column raised in honour of this victory.

2 The well-known story of the martyi-dom of Regulus is ill attested ;
it is probably an invention of the sort usually promulgated by family
chronicles.

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR 33

shifted back to Sicily, where the Romans effected the valu-
able conquest of Panormus (254), but were hindered from
further advances by the brilliant ability of the new Cartha-
ginian general Hamilcar Barcas, the father of the great
Hannibal. By his occupation of Mount Heircte (Monte
Pellegrino near Palermo) he kept his foes for years in check
(248-3). It was the most inglorious period of the war
tor Rome, and brought her near to exhaustion. Then
wealthy private persons offered the State a new fleet of 200
ships, with which the consul C. Lutatius Catulus gained a
victory near the Aegatian islands on the west coast of Sicily,
which compelled the Carthaginians to abandon to the Romans
their last bases, Lilybaeum and Drepanum (241 ). With this L^
the war was at an end ; the Carthaginians paid an indemnity 'L^
and surrendered to the Romans the island of Sicily as far as it
was in their possession. Hamilcar Barcas obtained permission
to withdraw with his army.

Sicily, the jirst Roman * Province^ — With the occupation
of the island of Sicily, which with the exception of the
kingdom of Hiero of Syracuse fell to the Romans, a new
chapter begins not only in the history of Roman administra-
tion but in the tendency of Roman policy in general. It is
not the result of chance that just at the time when the First
Punic War ended the last of the Roman burgher-tribes was
established, and their number, now amounting to thirty-five,
was never exceeded. Therewith was completed the task of
the national union of Italy under the banner of Rome. In
this firm civic structure a transmarine possession could no
longer find a place, and thus by the acquisition of Sicily
Rome was diverted into a new path ; from a national Great
Power it became an international World-Power.

The administration of the new possession could no longer
be fitted into the framework of the tribal constitution, and
thus arose a new administrative department, which received
the name provincia. The first place in it was taken by a
praetor, who represented above everything the supreme juris-
diction ; by his side stood the quaestors, who managed the

34 ROMAN HISTORY

business of taxation and the treasury. The position of the
* provincials ' was at first not unfavourable, if we compare it
with that of the allies of the mainland. They are not bound
to military service, they preserve their real estate and their
own municipal administration ; but in return they have to
hand over as tribute from the fields a tithe of the harvest
and from the ports five per cent, on imported and exported
merchandise.

Further results of the First Punic War, — Directly after
the conclusion of peace a rebellion of her mercenaries and
subject peoples involved Carthage in a war of several years'
length ; and it was only with the utmost difficulty and solely
through the ability of Hamilcar Barcas that it ended to the
advantage of the Carthaginians (239). In its course the
island of Sardinia also revolted and offered itself to the
Romans, who occupied it at the moment when the Cartha-
ginians were preparing to chastise it, and kept it in their
hands by threatening the remonstrating Carthaginians with a
new war. Corsica too was soon afterwards successfully
attacked. On both islands however Roman domination
was limited to the coasts which the Carthaginians had held
before them. Thus in a few years after the conquest of
Sicily Corsica and Sardinia likewise are Roman provinces.

§ 15. The Gallic and Illyrian Wars,

239-219 B.C.

The War ivith the Gauls, — As fresh swarms of Kelts
pressed in, the North- Italian Kelts in the year 238 began
again to move southwards, and while the Romans were still
busy in Corsica and Sardinia a strong Gaulish host appeared
before Ariminum, the most northerly forepost of Roman
power. It broke up in consequence of an internal dissension.
When however the Romans a few years later (232) began
to allot the territory of Picenum, next to the Gauls, to
Roman burghers, the Gauls rose anew, burst with a force
of 50,000 men into the Roman domain, and by their forays

THE GALLIC AND ILLYRIAN WARS 35

caused severe damage. At last in the year 225 two
Roman armies, of which one was just returning from
Sardinia, united ; and thus it was found possible to surround
the Gauls in Etruria and inflict upon them a severe defeat
near the coast-town of Telamon.

The Romans now turned their advantage to good account,
determining to continue the war until they had definitively
incorporated the whole of Gaulish Upper Italy. In this
they quickly and finally succeeded, as the result of a second
decisive victory near Clastidium (now Casteggio, to the west
of Piacenza) and the consequent capture of Mediolanum
(Milan), the capital of the Insubres (222). Conquest was
followed closely by strategic occupation ; the great road
from Rome to Ariminum, the Via Flaminia, was built out
and extended from Ariminum in the direction of Mediolanum.
Here arose the fortresses of Mutina (Modena), Placentia,
(Piacenza), and Cremona.

The Illyrian Wars, — Maritime interests in the Adriatic Sea
caused the Romans to present a remonstrance against the
continued privateering of the bold pirate-race of the Illyrians
on the coasts of the modern Dalmatia before their queen
Teuta. Not only were they refused any satistactory answer,
but one of the envoys was actually assassinated on the return
journey. On this the Romans despatched a fleet of 200
ships against the kingdom of Teuta, destroyed her robbers'
nests, and made a portion of the Illyrians their tributaries.
Still more important was the fact that in gratitude for their
liberation from the troublesome sea-rovers the Greek cities
on the Adriatic coast, Apollonia and Epidamnus, as well as
the island of Cor cyra (Corfu), entered the Roman alliance.
Such was the first Illyrian war, 229 b.c.

By thus gaining a footing on Greek soil — an act of deep
significance for the future — the Romans were from the first
brought into sharp opposition to the leading power of
contemporary Greece, Macedon ; and hence arose later
pregnant complications. But soon afterwards the advance
of the Macedonian cause in consequence of the battle of

36 ROMAN HISTORY

Sellasia^ led the Romans, though only indirectly, to a new
Illyrian war, as their former protege the Iliyrian prince
Demetrius of Pharos (the modern Lesina) abandoned them
for Macedon and endeavoured to extend his sovereignty over
the whole of Illyria. The rising was soon repressed, the
kingdom of Demetrius absorbed, and the utmost possible
support given everywhere to the anti-Macedonian party in
Illyria. This was the second Illyrian war, 220-219 b.c.

§ 16. The Second Punic (Hannibalic) War,

218-201 B.C.

The Barcidae in Spain. — As leader of a national party which re-
garded preparation for a second conflict with the Romans as a duty of
self-defence, Hamilcar Barcas had obtained an appointment as general
without the announcement of any definite mission. To create for
himself a new army that should not be dependent on payment from
Carthage, he went to Spain and there made great conquests. As to
their course we have no detailed information ; at any rate he had such
brilliant success that he was able to establish on foreign soil as it were
a second Carthaginian empire.

After his death, which occurred in 229, the affairs of the Carthaginians
under the command of Hamilcar's son-in-law Hasdrubal continued
still further to prosper. By founding New Carthage [Carthago Nova,
the modern Cartagena) in Tarraconian Spain, where the silver mines
produced a rich output, and by conquering the particularly fertile
eastern coast up to the mouth of the Ebro, he not only opened up to
his native city magnificent new sources of strength, but also secured
for himself through his constant struggles with the Iberians and Kelts
a trained army.

In the year 226 the Romans, who regarded with distrust the
strengthening of the Carthaginian power, interfered in Spanish affairs
by taking under their protection the originally Greek coast-cities of the
east, Saguntum (Greek Zakynthos, north of Valencia) and Emporiae
(north of Gerona), and calling upon the Carthaginians not to cross the
Ebro. The request was granted.

When Hasdrubal in the year 221 had fallen by an assassin's hand,
Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar Barcas, took the lead in the Spanish
operations. The brilliantly gifted young man had been trained for
command under the eye of his great father and had already approved

1 [Antigonus Doson of Macedon had been summoned by the Achaean
League to aid them against Sparta, which under Cleomenes was
pressing them hard. He did so, and thus was gained the victory of
Sellasia, by which Sparta was crushed, 222 B.C.]

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 37

himself under his brother-in-law Hasdrubal ; filled with the deepest
hatred of Rome, he wished to begin the war at once, but received
contrary orders from his native city, where the peace party favourable
to Rome still had the upper hand.

The Outward Cause of War, — Hannibal could not rest
under the decision of the Senate at home. He had recog-
nised that now the hour had come for striking out, and
no regard for his position as an official of the State restrained
him from following the call of destiny. Under the pretext
that the Saguntines had interfered with Carthaginian subjects
he attacked their city, standing as it did under the protection
of Rome, and after a siege of eight months captured it (219).
Upon this success the Carthaginians, certainly not un-
moved by the rich booty sent to them by Hannibal,
decided to give a refusal to the Romans' demand that the
general should be surrendered to them and the friendly
State compensated. On this war was declared (218 b.c).

The Course of the War, — For the war excellent provision
had been made by the activity of the Barcidae in Spain.
Hannibal had further drafted a plan of campaign which
promised almost inevitable success if all the factors con-
cerned came into effective operation at the right time.
From Carthage a squadron was to threaten Sicily and
disturb by assaults the Italian coasts ; he himself intended
to unite in Upper Italy with the Gauls, who were already
won over to revolt, and then in Central Italy to hold out a
hand to Philip V. of Macedon, who since the second Illyrian
war (§17) had been a decided opponent of Rome.

The Romans ordered one Consul, Pubiius Cornelius Scipio,
to Spain and the other, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, to
Sicilian waters. But they did not succeed in reaching Han-
nibal in Spain and pinning him there ; for Scipio allowed
himself to be kept too long in the region of the Po by the
already revolted Gauls, and when at last he arrived at
Massilia (Marseilles) Hannibal had left the Pyrenees be-
hind him and could not even be checked from crossing the
Rhone. Scipio now sent the greater part of his army under

38 ROMAN HISTORY

his brother Gnaeus to Spain, while he himself returned to Upper
Italy to confront Hannibal there. The latter had executed
his world-famous march across the Alps^ with fearful loss —
of about 60,000 men something like 35,000 had fallen — and
after subduing the Taurini ^ had advanced up the Po valley,
when Scipio met him near the Ticinus (Tessin) but was
defeated. On this Hannibal crossed the Po, and by a
tributary of its right bank came again into collision with the
Roman army, which in the meantime had been reinforced by
the troops of the second Consul Sempronius, now recalled
from Sicily. By a stratagem Hannibal allured the Romans
out of their unassailable position and inflicted on them so
heavy a defeat that the campaign was ended for this year.
For it was no part of Hannibal's scheme to storm the
fortresses of Placentia and Cremona, whither the remnants
of the defeated army had retreated ; he longed above every-
thing to reach Central Italy with speed, so as to bring about
a revolt of the allies. The Consuls of the next year (217)
therefore garrisoned the two military roads leading south-
wards, Gaius Flaminius the Tuscan at Arretium and Gnaeus
Servilius the Adriatic at Ariminum ; but Hannibal crossed
the Apennines, in the region of the modern Florence, while
Flaminius on account of the heavy spring rains was not yet
expecting him, and marched past the unwitting Roman
army, which now pursued him along the road between
Arretium and Perusia, thus falling into the snare laid by
their wily enemy. In the defile between Cortona and the
Trasumene Lake (Lago di Perugia), which Hannibal had
completely surrounded, the army of Flaminius was almost
wholly annihilated. A few days later the reinforcement of
4000 horsemen sent in advance by the other Consul also fell
before the Carthaginians. Rome was seemingly in the utmost
jeopardy.

But Hannibal, probably knowing that he could not crush
Rome at a blow, refused the cheap glory of terrifying the

1 In all probability over the Little St. Bernard.

2 From these Turin gets its name.

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 39

city by a siege of prospective futility, and marched through
the district of Picenum, which he devastated, to Samnium
and Campania, where he had especial hopes of immedi-
ately winning the wealthy Capua for his cause. For the
moment indeed he found himself disappointed in this hope,
and the year passed in insignificant operations against the
prudent Roman Dictator Quintus Fabius Cunctator (*the
man of delay'), by whose side the dissatisfied Roman people
set for a short time his junior in command, M. Minucius, as
second Dictator — a case that stands unique in Roman history.
For the winter Hannibal established himself in prosperous
and fruitful Apulia, and in the leisure it brought him he
carried through a military reform of the utmost importance,
organising his army on the Roman model. The countless
weapons taken as spoil were here of service to him.

Thus he was excellently prepared to meet the decisive
blow planned by the Romans for the next year (216). They
had carried on conscriptions on the largest scale and were
able to bring eight legions into the field, so that some 50,000
Carthaginians were now confronted by about 86,000 Romans.
One of the Consuls, L. Aemilius Paullus, had approved him-
self in the lUyrian war ; the second however, C. Terentius
Varro, was certainly from a military point of view insig-
nificant, and on this account he alone was subsequently made
responsible for the ensuing disaster. For near the little
Apulian town of Cannae, on the lower course of the Aufidus
(Ofanto), was fought the most terrible battle of the whole
war ; 70,000 Romans, among them the Consul Aemilius, are
said to have strewn the field, which Hannibal maintained,
thanks to his admirable African cavalry. Hannibal apparently
had approached near to his goal ; the South Italian con-
federates, notably the wealthy Capua, now came over to
him, Philip of Macedon concluded an offensive alliance with
him, and Syracuse, where in the meantime Hiero, the friend
of Rome, had died, joined the Carthaginians. He passed
the winter in Capua.

But in the next year (215) the war came to a standstill.

40 ROMAN HISTORY

His untrustworthy new allies brought to Hannibal little
or no increase of his fighting power, while the Romans, who
under the leadership of M. Claudius Marcellus and the young
Publius Scipio had quickly rallied themselves for the utmost
exertions, laboured with success, particularly in Apulia, to
reconquer their confederates' territory. Abroad too the
Carthaginian cause did not attain the results hoped for ;
indeed the Romans gradually gained the upper hand every-
where.

The Struggles in Sicily, — Ever since the year 218, when
Tib. Sempronius had perforce been summoned from Lily-
baeum to support Scipio, Sicily had practically been denuded
of Roman troops ; and when likewise Syracuse, the most
powerful city of the island, revolted, from Rome the Cartha-
ginians might with very little effort have recovered Sicily.
But in Carthage a peddling spirit prevailed over national
duties ; they deemed it sufficient to allow Hannibal to go
his own way, and supported their own cause so feebly that
they did not even check the landing of the Romans in Sicily.
The same Marcellus who had imposed the first check on the
advance of Hannibal after the battle of Cannae landed in 2 1 4
before Syracuse and began to beleaguer the city. Supremely
favoured by art and nature in its fortification, it made a heroic
resistance 1 before it was captured (212). The consequence
of this was the reconquest of the whole island, which may
be regarded as completely pacified by 210.

The Struggles in Greece, — Philip of Macedon could not
collect himself for any vigorous action ; he operated on the
Adriatic coast, but did not venture to cross over to Italy, as
the two ports to be considered, Brundisium (Brindisi) and
Tarentum, were in Roman hands. When however Taren-
tum in 212 was captured by Hannibal, the Roman general
M. Valerius Laevinus at once crossed over from Brundisium
to Greece in order to transfer the war into the enemy's own

1 At this time lived in Syracuse the famous mathematician Archi-
medes, who put his science at the service of his native city by inventing
defensive machines.

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 41

land. He joined here the Aetolian League, and for six
years shared in the shameful war by which the Greeks since
many years had been tearing out one another's vitals. In
the year 206 a peace was brought about between Philip on
one side and Rome and the Aetolian League on the other,
in which the Romans procured the confirmation of the con-
quests made by them in the Illyrian wars (§ 17). This is
the first Macedonian war.

(The Struggles In Spain. — As the sources of strength which
permitted the Carthaginians to rise so rapidly and unex-
pectedly after the first war lay in Spain, it was a thoroughly
sound principle of Roman policy to choke them up for their
opponent, and to combat him in that peninsula. Hence
when his term of consular office had elapsed P. Scipio
was sent in the year 217 after his younger brother Gnaeus to
Spain, and the two brothers in the next six years displayed
brilliant generalship. After turning the city of Tarraco (now
Tarragona) into a Roman naval fortress and making it the
chief basis of Roman power in Spain, they advanced over the
Ebro southwards and extended their conquests as far as
Andalusia, in which they were aided by the disfavour which
most of the native races felt towards the Carthaginians. At
last the Carthaginians recognised the great importance of
Spain, decided to give stronger support to their general there,
Hasdrubal, a brother of Hannibal, and induced the Numidian
king Massinissa to repay them in Spain for the assistance
they recently had lent him against his neighbour and rival
Syphax. The Scipios succumbed to this united force, and
both met their death in desperate battles (211).

A peculiar chance brought it about that a third Scipio, the
young P. Cornelius Scipio, who had saved his father's life at
the Ticinus and had begun under Marcellus to attest his
genius for command, was summoned to avenge the cause of
his family and restore to credit Rome's position in Spain.
The favourite of the Roman people, he volunteered for the
perilous post of general in Spain and obtained the command,
although lacking the legal age for that rank (210). His

42 ROMAN HISTORY

operations were attended with success ; in 209 he captured
the enemy's most important fortress, New Carthage (Car-
tagena), and the glory won by him as he advanced from
conquest to conquest would have been without limitation if
he had also succeeded in preventing Hasdrubal from crossing
the Pyrenees and hastening to aid his brother Hannibal.
After two more years Scipio had so far broken Carthaginian
domination in Spain that Mago, the third son of the great
Hamilcar Barcas, was commissioned by his native city to
take ship with the remnant of the Spanish troops for Italy.
Through this Gades, the last basis of the Carthaginians, fell
into Scipio's hands, and he was able to return in triumph to
Rome (206 B.C.).

The Italian Seat of War from 215 to 205. — The bold
hopes which Hannibal was justified in building on the victory
of Cannae had not been fulfilled ; for the accession that he
hoped for and needed came to him from no quarter. It
remains all the more remarkable that in the following years,
the course of which is on the whole imperfectly known to
us, he not only maintained himself against the ever increasing
successes of the now rallying Romans, but actually made other
important conquests. Thus in 212 Tarentum, and in the
sequel several other Greek maritime colonies, fell into his
hands ; and besides this he had previously inflicted on the
Romans many severe blows in the open field. But the war
took a more favourable turn for the Romans through their
success in recapturing disloyal Capua in 211. By the famous
march on Rome, which he approached to within 4J miles,^
Hannibal had indeed attempted to draw off the beleaguering
army from Capua, but in vain ; Capua was forced to sur-
render, visited by the utmost horrors of vengeance, and
deprived of municipal existence. Hannibal now withdrew to
Apulia.

Two years of indecisive struggles followed ; but the first
success of any importance was again on the side of the

1 Hence the phrase Hanyiihal ad portas.

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 43

Romans, who in 209 recaptured Tarentum. Nevertheless
their cause once more fell on evil days. In the year 208 the
Latin communities, which hitherto had persisted in an
unswerving loyalty, were forced by their complete exhaustion
both to stop payment and to refuse conscription ; and above
all Hasdrubal appeared in the following year in Upper Italy.
This occasion was Hannibal's last hope ; if he succeeded in
uniting with his brother he could resume the war with the
fairest prospects. Bat a fatal accident ruined his design ;
the Consul Gaius Claudius Nero, who was confronting
Hannibal in Apulia while his colleague M. Livius was
leading the northern army, intercepted the message of
Hasdrubal which was to summon his brother to Umbria.
Deceiving Hannibal, who was waiting without suspicion for
news, by leaving behind him his camp with a small garrison,
he marched to the aid of his colleague with the flower of
his army. At Sena Gallica on the Adriatic Sea the Consuls
in union defeated the Carthaginian army of reinforcement,
whose general fell (207). It was not until his brother's head
was thrown into his camp that Hannibal learnt of the catas-
trophe, which caused him to withdraw into Bruttium. By
this battle the war in Italy was really decided ; Hannibal had
no longer sufficient forces to face the Romans in a pitched
battle, and confined himself to holding his ground in Brut-
tium, while the Romans continued with success the re-
conquest of the revolted districts.

The War in Africa, and the Peace, — The war first took a
new turn when Scipio in the year 206 returned from Spain,
was elected Consul for the next year, and during his consul-
ship brought about a transference of the war into Africa.
He caused himself to be appointed general-in- chief, and in
204 crossed over to Africa, where he landed unchecked at
Utica, northwards of Carthage, though he failed to capture
the town. In 203 he defeated in a pitched battle the
Carthaginians and their ally, the formerly friendly Numidian
prince Syphax, who had just deprived his rival Massinissa
of his country. The Carthaginians then recalled Hannibal

44 ROMAN HISTORY

and his youngest brother Mago, who had indeed landed in
Upper Italy but failed to make any progress. At the same
time they entered upon negotiations for peace with the
Romans. These however were broken off owing to
Hannibal's immediate resumption of hostilities ; Mago had
succumbed to his wounds during the journey home. Upon
this Scipio determined on a decisive battle. Near Zama, a
place whose site cannot be accurately fixed, the Romans i
gained so great a victory that the Carthaginians were forced
to resign themselves unconditionally to peace (20^)^ This/
was concluded in the year 201, with the following stipula-
tions : Carthage was to surrender Spain and the islands of
the Mediterranean, give up all but twenty of its ships of war,
pay for fifty years a war-tax, confirm Massinissa in the
possession of his kingdom which Syphax had disputed, and
bind itself to wage external wars under no conditions and
African wars only with the permission of the Romans.
More crushing conditions for a great State could not be
conceived.

§ 17. The Direct Consequences of the Hannibalic
War

Italy. — For European history the conclusion of the great struggle
between Rome and Carthage meant the victory of the Indo-Germanic
stock over the Semitic ; for Italy it brought with it final confirmation
of the dominion of the Latin element. The latter now expanded
boldly in all directions. New portions of the territory of revolted allies
came into the hands of Roman veterans or State tenants; great
colonies like Puteoli (Puzzuoli on the Gulf of Naples), Salernum
(Salerno), &c., extended Roman power. In this period was laid the
basis of that system of latifundia (gigantic estates) which became so
fateful for the social development of Italy, as it led especially to
a well-nigh complete destruction of husbandry and country life, which
had already suffered terribly from the long war, in which about 400
villages are said to have been ruined.

Gauls and Ligurians. — The Gauls of Upper Italy, who had been the
first to revolt to Hannibal, now sought to forestall Roman vengeance
by a universal rebellion, which began with the destruction of the
fortress of Cremona on the Po. But their internal dissensions came to
the aid of the Romans, permitting them not only to maintain their
supremacy but also to strengthen it by new fortresses, such as Bononia

WARS WITH MACEDON AND SYRIA 45

(Bologna), and by the extension of the network of roads (the P^ia
Aemilia, hence the name of the modern EmiHa). By the junction of
Bononia with Arretium in Etruria through a military road, the
Apennines ceased to be even outwardly the boundary between Italy
and Gaul. Aquileia, in the Gulf of Trieste, was intended to give
security against the inroads of northern barbarians and also against a
possible attempt at landing by Philip of Macedon, while the colony of
Luna on the Etrurian border, connected with Rome by the Via
Aurelia, was to guard against the restless and still far from pacified
bill-folk of the Ligurians (200-196 B.C.).

Africa. — Carthage was sorely imperilled by the Numidian prince
Massinissa and in consequence presented remonstrances at Rome,
though in vain. A change in its constitution was carried through by
Hannibal which once more brought the patriotic party into power
(195). This caused the Romans to claim the surrender of Hannibal, a
demand which he only avoided by hurried flight.

Spain was divided into two provinces. The warlike spirit of its
freedom-loving population rendered it a troublesome child among
Rome's foreign possessions ; yet she was forced to keep it at all costs
lest its abundant resources might again be exploited by enterprising
heroes like the Barcidae. In this period one of the commanders here
was M^Pgrcius Cato, who from his old-fashioned severity, especially
prominent in his administration of the censorship, got the nickname
Censor, and as a writer has the credit of having composed the first
Roman history in prose.

§ 18. The Wars with Macedon and Syria

The Second Macedonian War, — Of the Great Powers that
. arose on the dissolution of Alexander the Great's world-
monarchy, the most important were Egypt, Syria, and
Macedon. In the year 205 a child mounted the throne
of Egypt ; and Antiochus of Syria and Philip of Macedon
profited by this circumstance to divide between themselves the
possessions of Egypt outside Africa. In consequence the
Egyptian government entrusted the Roman Senate with the
guardianship of the royal child. The Romans, still incensed
against Philip for his interference in the Hannibalic war, and
summoned moreover by the friendly free State of Rhodes to
its aid, took at first the course of commanding Philip by
embassies to desist ; but when he actually threatened Athens
they officially declared war, 200 B.C.

The first years of the war passed without either of the

46 ROMAN HISTORY

opponents being able to register any success worth mention.
But with Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who assumed supreme
command in 198, began a more vigorous management of the
war on the side of the Romans, which culminated in the
following year in the brilliant victory of Cynoscephalae, a
chain of hills in Thessaly. The Roman legion here dis-
sipated the world-wide glory of the Macedonian phalanx.
Philip was confined to Macedon, and forced to surrender
his fleet of war and pay a heavy indemnity. To the Greek
cities however, which had long been vegetating in hopeless
disunion, Flamininus at the Isthmian Games of 196 pro-
claimed liberty. It required indeed enforcement at the
point of the sword (against for instance the tyrant Nabis of
Sparta), and the politically rotten Greek race could no longer
make anything out of it. When in 194 the Roman con-
queror left Greece, glances were already cast about in the
Aetolian League for a new master ; and Antiochus of Syria
seemed to present himself in this light.

The War with Antiochus of Syria, — During the Macedonian
war, in which Antiochus of Syria shamefully left his ally in
the lurch, the faithless Seleucid had extended his conquests
over the whole coast of Asia Minor and even gained a firm
footing on European soil at Lysimachia on the Thracian
Chersonnese (196). Disregarding Rome's remonstrance, he
continued unchecked his work of conquest, in which he was
well served by Hannibal, who had fled to him. True, the
latter's brilliant plan, which aimed at crushing Roman power
at a blow by risings in Macedon and Greece, an attack on
Italy itself, a new Punic war, and at the same time an
insurrection in Spain, was not carried out, mainly in con-
sequence of the feebleness of Antiochus and the irresolution
of the rest ; but when in 192 the King of Syria occupied the
island of Euboea and entered into relations with the Aetolian
League, the Romans found themselves compelled to order a
stop to his farther advance.

The Roman general Acilius Glabrio, who in 1 9 1 appeared in
Greece, had only to deal with one opponent, for the Greeks did

^ WARS WITH MACEDON AND SYRIA 47

not dare to strike. In the battle at the famous defile of Ther-
mopylae he gained such a decisive victory over Antiochus that
the latter at once abandoned the war in Europe (190). In
Asia too the feeble Syrian suffered defeat after defeat; a fleet of
Roman and Rhodian ships prevented Hannibal as he advanced
with a fleet from the south from uniting with Antiochus, and
the king himself, despite his far greater strength, was com-
pletely defeated at Magnesia (north-east of Smyrna) by the
Roman land-army commanded by Lucius Scipio and his
brother Publius, the victor of Zama. He called for peace
at any price, lost all his conquests in Asia Minor, paid a
heavy war indemnity, and had to limit his fleet to ten ships.
Syria, the kingdom of the Seleucidae, was thereby struck off
the roll of Great Powers (189 b.c).

The arrangement of Eastern affairs took up several years
more. In Asia Minor an increased number of independent
States were established and the loyal confederates, Eumenes
of Pergamon and the Rhodian State, rewarded by an incre-
ment of power. In Greece, where the feuds between the
Achaean and Aetolian Leagues continued, the Romans were
forced once again to take up arms. The Consul of the year
189, Fulvius Nobilior, forced the Aetolians by the conquest
of Ambracia into quiet, though only for a time.

Soon after (183) the Romans lost their most dreaded foe, Hannibal.
After the failure of the plan which he designed to execute with the help
of Antiochus, he had withdrawn to the court of a prince of Asia Minor,
Prusias of Bithynia, whom he tried fruitlessly to stir up against the
Romans, and in the first instance against Eumenes of Pergamon.
When he felt himself no longer secure with him he destroyed himself.
In the same year also died his great opponent Scipio — like Hannibal, in ■
banishment; he had been compelled to bow before the republican ,
bigotry of his fellow-citizens, who could indeed tolerate great deeds, f
but not great men.

The Third Macedonian War. — In consequence of the

continued injuries inflicted upon them with the undoubted

connivance of the Romans by their protege Eumenes of

Pergamon, Philip and his son Perseus, who succeeded to

^is throne in 179, found themselves compelled to use their

48 ROMAN HISTORY

country's still rich resources for quiet preparations. In these
they were strengthened by a reviving Panhellenic current in
Greece. On the continued pressure of Eumenes the Romans
in 172 declared war under a flimsy pretext, and in the
following year advanced into Greece. Perseus now showed
such incapacity and want of spirit that the Greeks did not
dare to take up arms. The war however was conducted
by the Romans also without particular vigour until L.
Aemilius Paulus, son of the Consul who fell at Cannae,
took command (168). At Pydna in Macedonia was fought
the decisive battle, by which the Romans gained a complete
victory, shortly afterwards capturing the king himself with
all his treasure.

The results of the war were ruinous to Macedonia. It was split up
into four leagues, which were forbidden all mutual combination and
had to pay a part of their revenues as tribute to Rome. The treatment
of the Greeks was also severe. The States with Macedonian sympathies
had already been conquered in the course of the war ; fugitives were
pursued with the utmost cruelty, and 1000 Achaeans were forced to
submit to being removed as hostages to Italy. 1 A regular war of
annihilation was conducted against the Epirote race of the Molossians,
who had sided with Perseus ; 150,000 are said to have been sold into
slavery.

With the battle of Pydna the last great stand of the inhabitants of
the Eastern Mediterranean against Rome's domination was broken ;
henceforth all these States are to be regarded merely as client-States of
Rome, whose behaviour was ruled and directed by the word of the
Senate. Rome had succeeded to the heritage of Alexander the Great.

§ 19. Completion of the Roman Supremacy in the
Mediterranean (149-133 b.c.)

The Third Punic War. — Owing to the activity and com-
mercial ability of its inhabitants, Carthage had from a
mercantile point of view risen anew to its former level, and
thereby excited in a high degree the jealousy of Rome,
where the demand for the destruction of the competitor was
raised more and more loudly. The representative of this

1 Among them was the historian Polybius, to whom we mainly owe
our knowledge of this period.

COMPLETION OF ROMAN SUPREMACY 49

war party in the Senate was old M. Porclus Cato.^ In the
want of scruple with which Rome was now wont to carry
on its foreign policy, a pretext for war was easily found.
The Carthaginians, irritated to the utmost by Massinissa's
appropriation of Emporiae, their most fertile district (151),
and again dismissed with their plaint by the Romans,
took up arms against the Numidian king. The Romans
regarded this as a direct declaration of war against them-
selves; for by the peace of 201 it had been forbidden to the
Carthaginians to wage war against allies of Rome. The
Carthaginians nevertheless wished to avoid war, and sent 300
hostages to Rome ; when in spite of this a Roman army
appeared in Africa (149), they even obeyed the harsh
command to surrender the whole of their materials of war
down to their last sword. But when the further demand
was made that they should demolish Carthage and found a
new city away from the sea, the struggle of despair for their
beloved native soil broke out, and with the stubbornness
peculiar to the Semitic race they prolonged it over two
years. At last the son of the victor of Pydna, young
Scipio Aemilianus, adopted by the family of theScipios and
appointed to the chief command in 147, succeeded in cutting
off all access to the beleaguered by blocking up their last
port — Carthage had several of them — and thus finally forcing
them into surrender. Carthage was levelled to the ground,
the surviving inhabitants transported to a spot far from the
coast, and the district of Carthage made into the Province of
Africa, with Utica as its capital (146). The chief profit
from this perfidious war fell to the great merchants of Rome,
whose party had brought it on ; the trade of her powerful
rival mainly passed over to Rome.

The Province of Macedonia, — A pretender to the throne,
the 'false Philip' [Pseudophilippus), who claimed to be the
son of Perseus, caused Macedon once again to embroil itself
in a struggle with Rome, which was quickly settled in favour

1 From him comes the well-known phrase, ceterum censeo Cartha-
ginem esse delendafn, the burden of his speeches in the Senate.

50 ROMAN HISTORY

of Rome by the Praetor C. Caecilius Metellus (148). Rome
now deprived Macedon of the last remnant of independence,
and turned it into a Roman province in connexion with
Epirus and Thessaly (146). By the road from Dyr-
rhachium (Durazzo) to Thessalonica (Saloniki) a junction
was effected between the western and eastern coasts of the
Balkan peninsula.

The Pro'vince of Achaia, — The restless Greek nation could
not keep the peace. The Achaean League, guided by Crito-
laus and Diaeus, sought again to subjugate the cities set free
by the Romans and thus caused the latter to interfere anew
in the welter of Greek politics. After the failure of
Metellus's efforts to repress the rising peaceably from Mace-
donia, the Consul L. Mummius appeared in 146 in Greece,
captured Corinth,^ the leading state of the Achaean League,
after a victory at the isthmus, and quickly restored quiet.
Greece was subordinated, under the title of * Province of
Achaea,' to the administrator of Macedon.

Spain and the Numantine War. — In Spain Roman dominiot
had the greatest difficulty in gaining a footing (§ 19). The
valiant race of the Lusitani in particular compelled the
Romans to repeated contests,^ and during the third Punic
war it had found a most skilful leader in Viriathus. But
even after his murder (139) the struggle continued, and
in particular the perfidious and shameful way in which the
Romans conducted the war inspired the valiant Spaniards
with ever fresh powers of resistance. It was not until the
conqueror of Africa, Scipio, was despatched in 134 as
Consul to Spain that fortune turned towards the Romans.
After a siege of fifteen months Numantia on the upper course
of the Duro, the chief town of the rebels, was reduced
and thereby peace restored for a considerable time (133).

1 Through the sack of Corinth countless treasures of art came to
Rome and Italy.

- On the occasion of these wars, in the year 153, the Romans altered
the date of the accession to the consulship from March 15 to January i,
in order to be able to despatch their Consul more speedily.

COMPLETION OF ROMAN SUPREMACY 51

The Province of Asia. — In the year 133 the last Attalid,
Attalus III., died at Pergamon. Having Hved continually
at strife with his subjects, he bequeathed his kingdom to the
Romans. As however an illegitimate son of Eumenes II.
contested its possession with them for years, they were unable
to enter upon their Pergamene legacy until the year 129, in
which it was incorporated in the Roman empire as the
' Province of Asia.'

CHAPTER VII

From the Completion of the Supremacy in the
Countries of the Mediterranean until the
Pall of the Republic {Revolutionary Period)

133-29 B.C.

Sources. — Of the gi-eat historical works of Livius and Diodorus only
fragments and excerpts remain for this age. Connected narratives
are furnished by Appian's five hooks of thfi '.^jviL.Wars,' Sallust's
'Catiline Conspiracy^"'' and 'Jugurthine War,' Caesar's ' ConiMerN
tafies of the GalTi'c War ' and" 'Civil War,' with the continuations by
his partisans on the African, Alexandrine, and Spanish wars. From the
year 68 onwards Dio Cassius is completely preserved (Book 36 ff. ). His
description of this age is most "valuably supplemented by the writings of
Cicero, whose political speeches and correspondence furnish an inesti-
m'Sbic-ind not yet completely exploited material for the period. Then
reference should be made to the biographies of Plutarch {-the two
Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, Cassar, &c.), wTKTttre^upon lost
but good sources. Some sHght gain is to be derived from the little
work of Velleius Paterculus, who in the reign of Tiberius related the
whole history of Rome up to the year 30 B.C. in a brief outline filling
only two books, with not uninteresting details on culture and literary
history. The compilationofTrogus Pompeius (age of Augustus) entitled
'Philippic Histories,' which comprises forty- four books, but excludes
specifically Roman history, contains valuable information as tothe events
in the East ; it is preserved in Justin's summary. Finally, a source
which furnishes us with the best and most important testimony from
ancient history begins from this time onwards to flow more abundantly ;
this is the inscriptions, both of private and of official origin, the number
of which, owing to fortunate finds, is still increasing daily, and the
study of which has called forth the independent and fruitful science of
epigraphy. They are collected in the Corpus Inscriptionum Lati-
narum.

52 ROMAN HISTORY

Home Politics. — The stirring period from the first war with Carthage
until the acquisition of Asia brings before us an almost unbroken
series of wars, which mainly aimed at conquest and ended in conquest.
The foreign wars in the next age, without entirely disappearing, never-
theless retire decidedly into the background, while internal political
questions are being fought out, questions which have become more and
more pressing through the previous development of affairs and now
advance to a violent solution. A new struggle of burghers against
burghers arises, like that once waged by the plebeians against the
patricians, but more dangerous, as it is no longer fought on the level of
legality, and more deadly, as it is no longer the burghers of a city but
those of a whole State who are concerned. The republic however
had no longer stability enough to resist permanently the pressure of
new political demands and conceptions. It gave way. The dominion
of one man, the Monarchy, first restores a condition' of order.

§ 20. Inner Development from the Conclusion of the
Contest of the Orders until the Appearance of
THE Gracchi

Officials, Nobility. — When the opposition betv\een patricians and
plebeians had disappeared as the struggle between the ordSrs ended,
a hew grtmping of parties soon came about. Formerly the patricians
had arrogated to themselves almost all the citizens' rights to public
distinction and thereby kept in their hands the administration of the
State ; now the important and wealthy families ot both orders attempt
to appropriate them, claiming for their members the exclusive privilege
of filling official posts, especially the Senate. The official nobility thus
growing up, the nobiiitas, may be regarded as the continuation of the
old patriciate.

The significance of the high offices of State, of which the most
important were the three ' curule ' ones, i.e. that of the curule aedile,
the praetorship, and the consulate, grew proportionately as the State
expanded in power. The administration of the provinces in particular
brought about a complete devolution in the position of the higher
officials. What was hitherto an honour and a distinction now became
an occasion for gratifying the basest greed. The old Roman morality,
which the censor M. Porcius Cato wished to revive by word and
writing, was not proof against the temptations entailed by the posses-
sion and government of so great a number of prosperous countries.
Even a Scipio did not escape the suspicion of having soiled his hands
by fraud. The depravity which overcame the caste-bound nobility
extended likewise to the jurisdiction lying in their hands and to the
Senate, which was recruited almost exclusively, in spite of the law,
from the highest officials. Thus the , advantages of the gigantic ex-
tension of the Roman empire were really felt by only one class of men ;
amidst the Commons dissatisfaction and an earnest wish for demo-
cratic changes of the constitution grew strong.

INNER DEVELOPMENT 53

The Land-Sy stein. — The weal of the State depended on the prosperity
of the agricultural population to a still more eminent degree in ancient
than in modern communities. Ignorance or heedlessness of this
on the part of those who guided Roman policy was not the least
important factor in the downfall of the empire ; and it was just in the
period now to be discussed that the doom of Roman agriculture was
sealed.

From the provinces, and particularly from Sicily, the ' granary of
Rome,' huge quantities of corn came to the Roman market, partly as
tribute, partly at the instance of wealthy persons who sought to win
over the people. This was sold at nominal prices ; often it was dis-
tributed to the people entirely gratis. Such largesses of corn came
gradually to be a part of the regular means of agitation used by those
who wished to play a part in politics ; and thus native agriculture,
unable to face any longer such a depression of prices, was injured to
the same extent as the commons were thereby corrupted. The con-
sequence was a steady decline in ihe cultivation of grain and in the
position of the agricultural population. To this was added a further
circumstance. The possession of landed property, which was no
longer profitable for the peasant working with small means, fell into
the hands of large owners, all the more as trade was forbidden to
senators and men of senatorial rank, w^ho in consequence found them-
selves compelled to invest their capital in real estate. But these owners
of the latifundia, who could scarcely measure their estates, abandoned
the more toilsome and expensive cultivation of grain for the more
convenient cattle-breeding, which inevitably debased the culture of the
land and substituted for a numerous and vigorous peasantry a feebler
and incapable class of herdsmen. The foundation of the troubles
which still afflict Italy was laid then.

Trdde. — With the acquisition of the Mediterranean provinces Rome
had. entered into the commerce of the world ; and the result of this was
a complete revolution of social conditions. The world-dominion of
Rome as it expanded and diverted to itself all the products and arts of
the East called into existence in this period a new order, that of the great
traders [negotiatores), who had indeed their centre in Rome, but spread
over all the provinces, partly to pursue trade on a great scale, partly
too to seek large revenues as government tax-farmers [publicani). The
more unscrupulously this order, following the tendency of the age,
carried on its business, the greater became the opposition between
capital and the proletariat; and in the splendour and wealth which
now inundated Italy lay already the germ of the terrible convulsions
which awaited the republic.

The Slave System. — The welfare of the commons had suffered heavily
through the ceaseless wars, especially through that with Hannibal,
which desolated Italy itself; and later it had had no support either
from a rise of agriculture or from the methods of commerce. Now it
received a still deeper injury from the enormously increasing slave-
system. The successful wars had thrown on the slave-market countless
thousands of human beings, so that both the possessors of latifundia
and the great traders could supply themselves with labour at ridiculously

le as tq^B

54 ROMAN HISTORY

low prices. Thus on the one hand native labour lost its value ;
free peasant in the country and the srtiall artisan in the town were
ousted ; and on the other hand these gigantic crowds of slaves con-
cealed in themselves a grave danger. The first warning in regard to
this came to the Romans through the §lay^War in Sicily, where the
system of laiifundia was most extensive and had caused especially acute
disorders (140-132). Under a brave leader Eunus, calling himself
King Antiochus, the Sicilian slaves offered for several years a successful
resistance to the Romans ; it was broken in 132 by the capture of their
strong towns Enna and Tauromenium (now Taormina). Signs of
similar slave-rebellions showed themselves at the same time in Rome,
in Attica, and above all in the island of Delos, which in this period rose
to be the chief slave-market of the Mediterranean regions.

The Allies [Italici). — The value of the right of Roman citizenship
constantly rose as Rome took rank as a World-Power ; and the allies
felt their exclusion from this privilege as a more and more rankling
injustice. They were all the more sensible of it from having had to
bear on their own shoulders the main burden of the wars that had
raised Rome to her present height, which only their loyalty had made
attainable at all. Thus ill-feeling grew among the Italici too to such a
degree that it actually led to an open revolt, for which of course the
Romans inflicted swift and severe punishment.

g 21. The Attempts at Reform of the Gracchi
(Beginning of the Revolution), 133-122 b.c.

The level reached by the corruption of the aristocratic official
world is indicated by the fact that the permanent Criminal
Courts introduced in the year 149 (the so-called quaestiones
perpetuae) had assigned to them as their first province by the
lex Calpurnia repetundarum the trial of offences of embezzle-
ment. Even in the circles of the Optimates, as the party of
the nobility were called in opposition to the democratic
Populares, the recognition gained ground that the just wishes
of the commons must be met. Thus the Consul for the year
i-j^^ C. Laelius, the well-known friend of Scipio, brought
forward a bill for the distribution of the occupied but not
legally alienated domain-land ; but it was in vain. In the
same circle of the Scipios, aristocratic but not averse to
liberal views, there had grown up under the guidance of two
eminent Greeks a youth who entered the lists for the cause
of the oppressed with all the fire of youthful enthusiasm.

ATTEMPTS AT REFORM 55

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus ( I ^ '^ ) , whose father had com- T
manded not without distinction in "Spain and whose mother was
the famous Cornelia, the daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus,
turned back to the much contested and scarcely ever executed
Agrarian Law of Licinius, and as Tribune of the Commons
brought forward the following proposal. No one should
possess more than 500 iugera of the State's lands {ager
publicus) ; for grown-up sons an extra 250 iugera apiece
might be claimed, though more than 1000 iugera were not
allowed to come into the hands of one family ; of the land
recovered by this measure, lots of 30 iugera each should be
given to burghers and allies on an inalienable tenure.

The opposition arising against the bill, which certainly fell
with great severity upon the nobility, was led by the Tribune
C. Octavius, on whose veto the plan of Gracchus necessarily
collapsed. Then Gracchus took the first step on the road of
revolution. He carried through the unconstitutional proposal
that a Tribune who acted contrary to the interests of the people
shojLild be deposed. Thus Octavius was removed from office.
The bill of Gracchus was then accepted and expanded by the
added clause that the legacy of Attalus should be applied to
cover the expenses, viz., compensation of dispossessed parties
and equipment of new colonists. A commission of three
men, the tresviri agris iudicandis adsignandis^ who at the
same time represented the highest jurisdiction for all legal
questions arising, were entrusted with the immediate execu-
tion of the law. The first members were Tiberius Gracchus
himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his younger
brother Gaiiis.

For the continuance of his work it was now all-important
for Tiberius to hold the tribunate for the next year as well.
But when he endeavoured to encompass this illegal re-election
the exTcited interposition of the Optimates led to a riot in
which Gracchus with 300 of his adherents lost their lives.
The revolution, with its lawlessness and Bloody Assizes,
had begun.

Nevertheless no one as yet dared after the removal of the

56 ROMAN HISTORY

bold democrat to suspend his work of reform. At last
however the complaints of the allies themselves at too
forcible dispossession led to a measure, proposed by Scipio
Aemilianus, a man not opposed to reform in itself, by which
jurisdiction was removed from the commission and transferred
to the Consuls (129). The board thus lost with its most
weighty function so much of its importance that the dis-
content of the Populares sought another solution. The
proposal was made to bestow on the allies the long-claimed
right of Roman citizenship. But this proposition did not
meet even with the approval of the plebs, which, in jealous
pride of its privileged position, was not minded to share it
with any one. I'hus dissatisfaction among the allies grew
strong, and found indeed a tangible expression in the revolt of
Fregellae,the chief of the Latin colonies ( 125), which however
soon yielded to Roman superiority and atoned for its conduct
by the loss of its walls and its right of civic existence.

At this time (124) the younger Gracchus, whose earliest
political activity had been closely bound up with that of his
brother, returned to Rome from his quaestorship in Sardinia
and was elected Tribune for the next year by the commons,
who built great hopes upon him (12^).

Galus Sempronius Gracchus,-^ true revolutionary gifted with
inspiring fervour and passionate eloquence, advanced with
clearer purpose than his brother towards a complete change of
the constitution. In the incomplete state of tradition we are in
doubt as to many weighty details of his legislation, but its
main features may be recognised in the following regulations.
In the first place he raised the importance of the Tribunate
of the Commons bjr legalising the possibility of re-election
for another year, which had been a stumbling-block to his
brother. Then he took up again his brother's agrarian law,
which he extended by founding new colonies of burghers in
the districts of Capua, Tarentum, and even of Carthage.
The population of the capital was by his Cgrn Law to have
its grain permanently provided at a minimum price, and by
a new arrangement of votes the lower classes were to be

ATTEMPTS AT REFORM 57

removed farther from the influence of the nobility in the
Centuriate Comitia. A great and permanent importance
accrued to his lex iujidama, which took away the right of
composing juries from the Senators and transferred it to the
order of knights. The ordo equester^ consisting of eighteen
centuriae ofkmghts, had come to Be the representative of
the class of great traders, as a result of the regulation that
every one must leave it who entered the Senatorial order ;
and it stood in a certain opposition to the nobility of office.
This opposition was now intensified as the provincial ad-
ministration of the nobility too came before the juries of
knights ; and thus the law of Gracchus created as it were
a new order midway between the mass of the people and
the nobility.

This legislation, to which were added a number of other
innovations — bestowal of citizenship upon the allies, allevia-
tion of military duties, disciplinary regulations for deposed
officials — evoked the most violent opposition from the hitherto
ruling party. During the absence of Gracchus in 1 22 while he
conducted in person the establishment of the new burgess-
colony of Junonia (Carthage), their intriguing policy suc-
ceeded in undermining his position with the commons, who
were already dissatisfied with the transmarine colony. A
colleague of Gracchus in the tribunate, Livius Drusus,
profited by this feeling of the people to detach them from
him by a proposal outbidding the Gracchan plans — in
Italy itself twelve colonies of burghers were to be founded,
with 30,000 lots apiece. The proposal was an empty one,
oimply for the reason that in Italy there was no longer any
disposable soil for such a colonial scheme. But the people
fell into the trap laid for them, and wnen Gracchus after
his return sought the tribunate for the third time he not
only failed to poll the needful number of votes but was even
forced to see a bill proposed for the suspension of the
African colony. This led to an open conflict, and the
younger Gracchus Hke his brother came to a violent end.
Thousands of his adherents fell, partly in civil war, partly

58 ROMAN HISTORY

as victims of the impeachments directed against the
party.

Despite this victory of the party of the Optimates, which
they owed to the wretched vacillation of the commons, the
most essential points in Gracchus' work of reform — the new
arrangement of the Law Courts and the distributions of land —
remained in operation ; as to the latter indeed the following
years brought some further extensions of it in the removal
firstly of the inalienability of the apportioned land, then
of the rent, and finally of the State's whole right of
possession.

§ 22. External Events until the Social War,

I2I-IOI B.C.

The Province of Gallia Narhonensis, — After Spanish affairs,
thanks to Scipio's vigorous interference, had assumed a
peaceful aspect, it was necessarily of importance to the
Romans to bring about a communication by land between
this province and Upper Italy. For this the way had been
paved by long petty wars against the Keltic races dwelling
west of the Alps, first the Allobroges in the valley of the
Isara (Isere), and then their neighbours, the powerful
Arverni. After a brilliant victory over the latter in the year
1 2 1 the Romans could venture to establish themselves in the
territory between the Pyrenees and Alps, which was com-
mercially under the rule of the friendly city of Massilia
(Marseilles), by founding Aquae Sextiae (Aix in Provence)
and colonising the old Keltic city of Narbo (Narbonne).
The two places east and west of the Rhone were to protect
the great military road from Spain to Italy. From the
colony of Narbo the transalpine province received the name
Gallia Narhonensis*

TheJugurthinelVar[ii2-io^). — Whilethecourseof events
on Gallic soil, so far as we can judge from the scanty tradition,
was by no means inglorious, we find elsewhere in this period
whithersoever we look the same depravity in the management

EXTERNAL EVENTS 59

of external politics that reveals itself so glaringly in internal
administration throughout this age. The corruption of the
ruling class appeared in the most revolting light in the African
complications which led to the so-called Jugurthine war.

Micipsa, son of Massinissa of Numidia, had died in the
year 1 1 8, and had bequeathed his kingdom to his two
insignificant sons and an illegitimate nephew Jugurtha. The
latter, a man of equal ability and unscrupulousness, sought to
bring the government entirely into his own hands. He first
caused one cousin to be put out of the way by assassination
soon after his father's death, and hoped to be quickly rid
of the second, Adherbal. The latter however put himself
under the protection of the Senate, as a client-prince of
Rome. Jugurtha, who had fought under the Roman
standards in the Numantine war and had learnt the views
prevalent among the nobiHty, effected through bribery a
division of the kingdom between himself and his cousin.
Then, disregarding the feeble remonstrance of the Senate, he
captured the hostile capital Cirta, in which perished not
only Adherbal with countless Numidians but likewise all
Italici resident there (112).

Now the Roman Senate, though still hesitating, found itself
forced to open war. But the general who was despatched
thither proved willing to conclude at once, without striking
a blow, a treaty which left the cunning African in possession
of his kingdom (m). At last men in Rome saw
through the whole intrigue ; the peace was cancelled and it
was demanded that Jugurtha should defend himself in person
before the Senate. He actually ventured to present himself
in Rome, relying of course on the means hitherto employed
with such success ; and once again he would have gained a
victory for his interests if he had not carried his depravity so
far as to encompass during his stay the murder of a rival
claimant to the Numidian throne, a descendant of Massinissa
(no). The war was now renewed, but again conducted on
the Roman side with carelessness, until in the year 109 the
Consul Q. Caecilius Metellus, a sturdy aristocrat of the old

6o ROMAN HISTORY

type, brought about a change. After restoring discipline in
the army he defeated Jugurtha at the river Muthul ( io8), and
finally forced him to seek refuge and help from his father-in-
law, King Bocchus of Mauretania. Even the skilful Me-
tellus however could not prevent the war, in consequence of
the peculiarity of the scene of war and of its inhabitants,
from degenerating at times into bootless desert raids ; and of
this circumstance the junior general, Gaius Marius — a man
of most insignificant origin, who had^earneSTfor himself
brilliant laurels at the river Muthul, but had since quarrelled
with his aristocratic general — made use, in order to advance
his own claims for the consulship and supreme command in
the next year by belittling and calumniating his superior ( io6).
But Marius too could only continue the guerilla warfare in
the desert ; and in this he once fell into such straits that
the Roman army was only saved by the prudent resolution
of his commandant of cavalry, young C. Cornelius Su]|a.
In the next year however ( 105 ) Sulla succeeded by negotiations
in persuading King Bocchus to surrender Jugurtha to him.
The war was thus ended, and Marius as chief in command
was able on the ist of January 104 to display the haughty
Numidian prince in his triumphal procession in Rome, and
then had him put out of the way in his dungeon. Affairs
in Africa were settled by one part of Numidia coming into
the Roman province, a second to Bocchus of Mauretania,
while the rest remained to the last descendant of Massinissa.
The Cimhri and Teutones, — The struggles which the Ro-
mans were forced almost without interruption to wage in
defence of their northern and eastern frontiers against the
Alpine tribes, especially the Illyrian races, assumed another
and more perilous appearance when for the flist time in the
year 113 that nation knocked at the doors of the Roman
empire which was destined one day to entirely overthrow it.
Germanic hordes called Cimbri had pressed from their
northern home into the district of the Middle Danube, then
inhabited by Kelts, and in the Eastern Alps defeated the
Roman Consul who first confronted them. They did not how-

EXTERNAL EVENTS 6i

ever follow up their victory by an irruption. Four years later
(109) they appeared on the frontier of Roman Gaul, where they
again inflicted a defeat on a Consul. But it was not until four
years afterwards ( 105 ) that they seem to have sought to pene-
trate into Roman territory, at first on Gallic soil. At Arausio
on the left bank of the Rhone (now Orange) was fought a
terrible battle, which owing to the disagreement of the two
generals proved so unfortunate for the Romans that 80,000
men are said to have fallen. A second Cannae seemed to
have fallen upon Rome ; but, like Hannibal formerly, the
Germans did not now undertake the dreaded advance. To
ward off this < Gallic Terror' — for the Cimbri were looked
upon as Kelts — no one seemed more fitted than .planus, who
had just ended the African war. To him the people, against
the law, assigned a second consulate for the year 104 and the
management of the Gallic war.

When Marius reached Transalpine Gaul, he at first failed
to find the enemy ; for the Cimbri in their random wander-
ings had turned to Spain. But he wisely employed the repose
allowed him in disciplining his army by service in the
trenches^ and other useful operations, and in preparing by
small battles for the great one. Meantime the Cimbri had
returned from Spain, in whose warrior population they had
found too stubborn an opponent, and marched northwards
through the whole of Gaul, on their journey lighting in
the district of the Sequana (Seine) upon another Ger-
manic race, the Teutones. The latter were in the same
position as the Cimbri and joined them in their further
progress, of which Roman territory was now to be the object.
For unknown reasons the gigantic horde of Germans divided
itself into two masses. One of them, mostly consisting of
Teutones, took the road along the Rhone into Transalpine
Gaul, while the other marched towards the Northern Alps.

At the mouth of the Isere Marius, who despite the law
was elected Consul year after year from 104 till 100, was
met by the Teutones in the year 102. After an indecisive
battle he marched after them and did not bring matters to a

62 ROMAN HISTORY

crisis until he was on favourable ground in the neighbourhood
of Aquae Sextiae. Here the lubberly sons of the North
succumbed as much to the heat of the southern sun as to
Roman legionary tactics. The king Teutobod was captured,
his army almost wholly wiped out.

Meanwhile the Cimbri had pressed on over the Brenner
into the valley of the Adige, driven before them the Roman
army which confronted them, and taken up their quarters for
the winter of 1 02-101 in the Po valley. In the following
year (lOi) they marched up the river, and at Vercelli in the
Raudian Plains met Marius as he was returning from Gaul.
The superiority still possessed by the Roman arms under
a capable general again won the day, and the race of the
Cimbri was annihilated like their kindred in the preceding
year at Aquae Sextiae. All that did not fall a prey to the
sword came upon the slave-market in Rome.

§23. Marius and the Party of Revolution

Gains Marius, the son of a peasant from the hamlet of
Arpinum, was naturally driven to the party of the democracy
by the disfavour of his aristocratic comrades, who regarded
all offices, both political and military, as the preserves of the
nobility and sought to thrust aside the brilliantly successful
upstart (homo novus). It was to this party alone that he
owed his first consulate with the chief command in the
Jugurthine war and the series of his unconstitutional con-
sulates from 104 to 100. His significance lies wholly in the
military department, into which he introduced changes that
were of the greatest importance for a later age. Marius'
reform of the army was based on the recpgnition that the
citizen body was no longer sufficient to recruit the legions
from ; he therefore took up into the army all elements,
freedmen and proletariat, so that it changed from a citizen-
militia into an army of mercenaries which became a pliant
instrument in the hand of the general of the day, looking to
him alone for gain and distinction. On democratic principles

THE PARTY OF REVOLUTION 63

he also abolished all differences based on property, altered the
division and arrangement of the army, and by a new system
of exercise based on the arts of the fencing-school increased
the army's efficiency to such a degree that we are able to
understand his extraordinary successes after the miserable
defeats of other generals.

Marius too, like every other really important man of this
age, was now dragged into the mounting waves of internal
politics ; but here the man of the sword was tried and found
wanting.

The Democracy ; Saturninus and Glaucia. — Since the fall
of the younger Gracchus the popular party had been driven
into the background, but was stirred into fresh activity
particularly through the impeachments connected with the
Jugurthine war, in which the depravity of the nobility was
unmasked. In Marius it deemed it had found its proper
champion. He was joined by its previous representatives,
L. Appuleius Saturninus and C. Servilius Glaucia, both
politicians of no importance, but desperate and reckless dema-
gogues. These three men divided between themselves the
supreme power for the year 100, Marius receiving the con-
sulate, Saturninus for the second time the tribunate, and
Glaucia the praetorship. The ultra- democratic tendency of ^
these popular leaders appears in their proposals ; by a Corn \'\
Law that almost lowerecljo^zero the price of the corn to be A
officially sold to the people, and by a Colonial JL^aw which
aimed in the especial interest of the ATarian veterans at
foreign colonisation on the grandest scale, they showed their
intention of regarding exclusively the claims of the lowest
masses. Thus the Equestrian Order, in which C. Gracchus
thought he had created a buttress of democracy, fell into the
arms of the Optimates, and to their alliance the rule of the
masses succumbed. Marius as Consul was even compelled
to personally defend public order against his two associates
when they proceeded at the elections for the next year to
murder and violence. Both met their death in a regular street-
battle. Their laws were at once cancelled, and impeachments

64 ROMAN HISTORY

removed a number of their adherents. Marius however, who
had aimlessly wavered between the two parties, sank into
universal contempt, and was forced on the expiration of his
consulship to withdraw sullenly into the obscurity of private
life.

§ 24. Livius Drusus and the Social War, *

91-88 B.C.

The Laivs of Marcus Livius Drusus, — The Tribune M.
Livius Drusus (91), himself a member of the nobility, but like
the Gracchi inspired with a lofty enthusiasm, came to the con-
viction that the Equestrian Order had by no means proved
itself worthy of the trust which the Gracchan legislation
had placed in it by transferring to it the juries, and that its
verdicts were inspired by a policy of self-interest which en-
dangered the State. By ousting this order he hoped to gain
for his popular measures the support of the Optimates, who
hitherto had opposed every reform ; and he actually succeeded
in carrying through the following plans — (i) restoration of
the juries to the Senate, which was to be increased by 300
members; (2) additional largesses of corn ; (3) conversion
of the still existing domain-land into citizen-colonies. But
this law was never carried out. The knights at first raised a
protest on account of a mistake of form in the voting ; but
chance presented them with a much more effectual means of
agitation for their ends. It had become known that Drusus
was in close connexion with the Italian allies and wished to
secure for them the Roman citizenship. This claim was still
equally odious to the nobility and to the commons. It
aroused such universal anger against the honourable Tribune
that not only was a proposal to cancel his law accepted but
Drusus himself, despite his quiet behaviour, was removed by
assassination. But the blindness which Roman policy dis-
played in this point was soon to be terribly chastised.

The Marsian or Social JVar (91-88). — The ferment which
1-ai long been noticeable among the allies [Italici) came to a

DRUSUS AND THE SOCIAL WAR 65

head when the man by whose championship they hoped to
attain their goal had fallen a victim to their oppoiients. How
far the reproach made against Drusus of having formed a secret
league with the Italici was justified need not be considered ;
certainly the organisation with which we see the allies enter-
ing upon the war suggests methodical preparation. The
revolt broke out in the little Picentine town of Asculum
(now Ascoli on the Tronto) ; the occasion was a threaten-
ing speech of the Roman Praetor, to which the people
responded by murdering him and many Roman citizens.
Among the first to revolt at this sign were the sturdy
mountain-folk of the Marsi, whence this war is also called
the * Marsian.' After the rebels, joined by the greater part
of Central and Lower Italy, had vainly demanded to be
granted the citizenship of Rome, they proceeded to found an
independent State ; the town of Corfinium, on the river
Pescara, was made its capital, under the name Italica. This
new * Anti-Rome' gave its citizenship to all revolted
Italici, and received a constitution modelled on that of its
former mistress (a Senate of 500, Consuls, Praetors, and
coinage).

The war that now flamed up (^Qo) was waged by both sides 1 1
with the exertion of their uttermost powers and with passionate '
bitterness. Despite some successes of Marius the Romans at
the end of the first year of the war found themselves forced
to make the concession of granting citizenship to the allies
who had not yet revolted [le^s^_jjjlia)» A second law, lex
PlautiaPapirta, soon followed (89), which extended this right V
to all allies south of the Po, though with the restriction that
the votes of the new burghers should not be distributed over all
the thirty-five tribes but should remain limited to eight (or
ten). As the war was thereby deprived of its proper ground,
more and more allies withdrew from it ; and when too the
new Anti-Rome, Corfinium, had fallen in the year 88, Sulla
ended the war by repeated victories over the stubborn Sam-
nites and Campanians. But while he was busied in be-
leaguering Nola, around which the last resistance gathered.

66 ROMAN HISTORY

a catastrophe burst upon Rome which shook the State to its
foundations and forced Sulla into interference all the more as
he himself was a fellow-sufferer.

§ 25. The Sullan Disorders and the (First)

MlTHRADATIC WaR, 89-84 B.C.

In judging this period of revolution it must not be forgotten that the
point at issue was not merely a question of power between aristocracy
and democracy ; it was the economic distress of the humble classes that
had aroused that cry for help from the State which had now been ring-
ing for half a century in the assemblies and streets of Rome. The
middle and lower orders of burghers had been brought close to ruin
firstly by the costly wars of the third and second century, and then
still more by their most disastrouf^sult the" iinOTistrously increasing
slave-system ; and'IhusTTad been created a proletariat which necessarily
formed the fittest soil for revolution. This distress was intensified by
the bloody war which now for the first time since the struggle with
Hannibal desolated the fatherland itself, and drove even the Italici,
whose position hitherto had been economically more favourable, into the
camp of the desperate. At this moment occurred an event which had
been threatening for a considerable time, and which made the present
dangerous position of Rome one of the most awful gravity. The oro-
vince of Asia, the richest of the Roman Empire, had been seized by the
Pontic prince Mithradates and the Romans there resident destroyed.
By this so large a number of the richest families were hurled into
banl<ruptcy that a general insolvency arose in Rome. This moment
of deepest distress seemed very suitable for the resumption of the work
of reform interrupted by the death of Livius Drusus.

P. Sulpiclus Rufus, a Tribune of the year 88, and like
Drusus a member of the nobility, was devoted to the cause
of the Commons, whom he had captivated by his brilliant
eloquence. His first demands — distribution of the new
citizens over all the thirty-five tribes and bestowal of citizen-
ship upon the freedmen — were intended to completely end
the still fermenting rebellion of the Italici and give their
rights to the freedmen who since Marias' reform of the army
had been called upon for service in war. He succeeded
indeed, though not without violent and bloody collisions with
the Optimates, in carrying through for the moment these and
some other popular proposals ; but his power lasted only a
short time. Among his opponents one of the most vehement

THE SULLAN DISORDERS 67

was L. Sulla, one of the Consuls for the year, who at the
time of voting had come to Rome and there only with diffi-
culty escaped death. In order now to render this dangerous
antagonist harmless Sulpicius brought forward the proposal
that the chief command in the imminent Asiatic war, which
had already been committed to Sulla, should be resigned to
Marius. Sulla marched with his army from Nola to Rome.
In a fierce street-battle he won the mastery, and drove out
the revolutionaries, on whose heads a ban was set. Sulpicius
himself lost his life, while old Marius succeeded in escaping
and finding after weary wanderings concealment in Africa.^

L, Cornelius Sulla^ who had already in the Jugurthine
war proved himself equally capable as an officer and skilful
as a diplomatist, and had just succeeded in stifling the Social
War, now held in Rome unlimited power with the help of
the army, which he had been the first to lead against his own
fellow- citizens. Military rule, that most fatal result of the
Marian reform of the army, succeeded to the rule of the
masses. With the weapon created by democracy Sulla, the
rigid aristocrat, showed to the decaying republic the road to
monarchy. After some temporary regulations aiming at a
change of constitution in the aristocratic interest, Sulla found
himself compelled to depart with his army to Asia, where
Mithradates had made vigorous advances. He had however
to leave Rome in a very uncertain state, especially as one of
the two Consuls for the year 87, L. Cornelius Cinna, openly
belonged to the democratic party.

Asia and the (Jirst) Mithradatic War (89-84). — The time
in which internal convulsions forced the Roman government to
turn its attention away from the observation of the provinces
had been used by an Asiatic prince. King Mithradates of
Paphlagonia (the south coast of the Black Sea), in order to
make conquests in alliance with his son-in-law Tigranes of
Armenia. Mithradates' ' Kingdom of the Bosporus ' soon
extended beyond the northern shore of the Black Sea, where

1 Hence the proverbial ' Marius in the ruins of Carthage. '

68 ROMAN HISTORY

it succeeded to the inheritance of the once prosperous Greek
colonies, now destroyed by the nomads. A war with Rome,
which Mithradates does not seem to have designed, first came
about through the Roman governor of the province of Asia,
Manius Aquillius, instigating in 90 the Bithynian King Nico-
medes, Mithradates' western neighbour, to assail the Bosporan
kingdom, and thus compelling Mithradates to take up arms
against the Roman allies (89).

But the Roman administrator had conjured up war too
lightly. After splendid preparations of a thoroughly Asiatic
sort, Mithradates stood in the heart of the Roman pro-
vince (88). Its inhabitants, exhausted by a conscienceless
system of taxation and by most brutal slave- hunts, not only
revolted from Rome, but also carried out with the utmost
diligence the terrible sentence of death which Mithradates
had issued from Ephesus on all bearing the Roman name.
Eighty thousand, according indeed to some accounts 1 50,000,
Romans of every age and sex are said then to have perished.
This massacre, to which Mithradates was led at once by the
Oriental thirst of blood and by greed (for he confiscated half
of the whole property of the victims), was the signal for a
great rising of the East against the West, which was at once
joined by the easily inflamed nation of the Greeks. Mith-
radates was accounted the saviour from the Roman yoke.

At last Sulla appeared with his army in Greece (87).
Without meeting with serious resistance he advanced as far as
Attica. Here Athens, in the remembrance of former great-
ness and under an unfortunate inspiration of patriotism, had
undertaken the duty of acting as the centre of the revolt.
The Athenians indeed succeeded in holding out against Sulla
for some months ; but in the spring of the next year (86) they
yielded to hunger, and only the harbour of Piraeus was able
to continue the resistance. Sulla's position however was now
for a moment serious. The siege of the well-fortified and
provisioned port made no progress ; he lacked a fleet in order
to assail his chief opponent in Asia ; and moreover an order
to resign office came to him from Rome, where now the

THE MITHRADATIC WAR 69

democratic party under Cinna was once again in power. It
was now Mithradates himself who saved his antagonist by
calling ofF the garrison of Piraeus to Boeotia, where he wished
to stand for a fight. Sulla most thoroughly destroyed
Piraeus,! and then defeated the enemy in Boeotia near
Chaeronea. Never again after this did fortune fail Sulla's
banners.^ When in Thessaly he came upon L. Flaccus,
who had been appointed his successor, the troops of the latter
passed over in such numbers to Sulla that Flaccus found it
more advisable to betake himself at once to Asia, in order to
gather there laurels of his own.

In the following year (85) Mithradates landed once more an
army in Greece ; but again it succumbed to Roman tactics
near the Boeotian Orchomenus. Sulla then cleared the rest
of Greece of the rebellious party, and in Thessaly, where he
held his winter- quarters, built ships for the Asiatic campaign.

Meanwhile the Roman army in Asia had killed Flaccus
and chosen as its general a certain Fimbria, who though a
demagogue of the worst sort was yet more capable as a soldier,
and by the conquest of Pergamon inflicted great injury on
Mithradates. The position of Mithradates moreover had
materially altered ; through the misgovernment of Oriental
despotism he had wholly lost the sympathies of the Asiatic
provincials, and when now after several successes Lucullus,
the general under Sulla, united the fleet he had brought up in
Cilician and Rhodian waters with that of Sulla, the Asiatic,
little capable of resistance, gave up the war and sued for peace
(84). This was concluded by Sulla himself after his crossing
into Asia. Apart from the usual indemnity, Mithradates was
restricted to the kingdom which he had possessed before the
war. The full vengeance of the Romans however fell upon
the revolted province. Sulla took over the troops of Fim-
bria, which deserted their leader and thus drove him to

1 From this event we may date the fall of Athens as the commercial
metropolis of the East.

■^ He calls himself by preference Felix, the 'fortunate one,' the son of
Fortune.

70 ROMAN HISTORY

suicide, and transferred them to Licinius Murena, the new
administrator of Asia ; and then he imposed on the utterly
exhausted province the enormous indemnity of 20,000 talents,
commissioning his subordinate Lucullus to enforce the col-
lection without mercy. Thus the once flourishing province
was again given over to the whole host of Roman vampires,
a blow from which it was never able to recover.

Cinna and Rome during the Mithradatic War, — We have
seen that Sulla after repressing the Sulpician revolution had
been unable to prevent a man of democratic tendencies from
obtaining the consulate for 87. This was Cornelius Cinna,
of whose personality little more is known than that he was
an able officer in the Social War. The craving to play a
political part in these agitated times seems to have driven him
into the camp of the Marians, who induced him to take up
again the Sulpician laws — bestowal of complete citizenship
on the allies and freedmen. This led to a new collision of
the parties, which ended in the victory of the Optimates and
the banning of Cinna and his adherents. But the democrats
found support from the allies, and at the same moment old
Marius too landed in Etruria. From all sides Italici, discon-
tented freedmen, even slaves crowded round him. Rome
found itself assailed from two quarters, and had to capitulate
to the deposed Consul. Marius, returning with Cmna to
Rome, now gratified in a terrible form his fanatical hatred of
the Optimates who had so often thrust him back. For five
days and nights raged the butchery to which he condemned
his old opponents, a slaughter in comparison with which the
awful deed of Mithradates may seem excusable. The old
man, drunk with vengeance, did not however long survive the
triumph of living to gain that seventh consulate which had
been prophesied in his youth; he died on the 13th day of
the new year (86) amid the merited curses of the nation which
he had twice saved from ruin. On the death of Marius the
revolutionary party itself was so disgusted with the rule of
blood that Sertorius, one of the most eminent among the new
heads of the party, could venture to have 4000 of Marius'

SULLA'S RETURN

ruffians cut to pieces. Cinna now began an unconstitutional
government which started by overthrowing again the Sullan
laws and by renewing and extending those of Sulpicius.
Sulla was also removed from his chief command ; but when
Cinna himself set out for Greece in order to free himself of
his rival his soldiers slew him in a meeting at Ariminum (in
the beginning of 84). In Rome men waited in nervous
anxiety for the return of Sulla, which despite his conciliatory
letters to the Senate threatened to bring with it a new reaction
and a new rule of terror. So the Consuls of the year 84
found it their chief task to hold in readiness a strong army in
Italy, and on the return of Sulla no fewer than 100,000 men
are said to have been in arms against him.

§ 26. SuLLA^s Return, Alteration of the Con-
stitution, AND Death, 83-78 b.c.

Sulla at War 'With Rome (83-79). — The incapable Consuls
of the year 83 had made their preparations so unskilfully that
Sulla with his four devoted legions could advance unchecked
through the western country to Campania, where a victory
at Mount Tifata near Capua made him master of the consular
armies. Many members of the Optimate party at once began
to turn to his cause ; among them was young Pompeius, who
had hitherto belonged to Cinna's party, but in consequence of
enmities now threw himself entirely into the arms of Sulla
and placed at his disposal his own very considerable resources.

The enemy however was still not to be despised (82).
Supported by the still unsettled Italici, especially the freedom-
loving Samnites, the Marians, whose chief leader was now the
young Consul Marius, had kindled the torch of war from
Campania and Samnium as far as the line of the Po. The
decisive blow was struck before the gates of Rome itself,
where on the ist of November Sulla after a fierce struggle
destroyed the enemy's army, consisting mainly of Samnite
irregulars, and thereby forced an entrance. A few days
afterwards he caused 4000 of the captives to be butchered

72 ROMAN HISTORY

under the eyes of the Senate, a clear proof that his basis of
settlement was the annihilation of the enemy. Everywhere
the same savagery was shown. There was a terrible slaughter
after the capture of Praeneste, the chief bulwark of the
Marians ; Samnium was then converted into the wilderness
which for the most part it has remained to this day. The
last throes of the struggle still continued for a long time, for
it extended into the provinces of Spain (under Sertorius),
Sicily, and Africa, all of which were held by revolutionary
governors. But everywhere the cause of Sulla was victori-
ous. His son-in-law Pompeius then won his first warlike
laurels and the title of ' The Great.'

Sulla s Dictatorship and Change of the Constitution, — The
unlimited power which Sulla actually possessed after the
capture of Rome found outward expression in the appoint-
ment which raised him to the long forgotten supreme republican
office of Dictator with the utmost conceivable powers ; his
official title was dictator legibus scribundis et rei puhlicae con-
stituendae. The restoration of internal order was not attended
with the moderation which Sulla had promised when in
Greece ; on the contrary he made a terrible clearance of his
opponents by the notorious 'proscriptions.' About 4000
men fell victims to them in Rome and Italy together, and
their execution, in the absence of any control, led to a revolt-
ing confusion of all legal and moral ideas.

Supported by a bodyguard of 10,000 freedmen, the
'Cornelians,' the Dictator began his legislation [leges Cor-
neliae), which on all points revealed the rigid aristocrat. In
the first instance he sought to reduce to deepest insignifi-
cance the Equestrian Order, the creation of the Gracchan
revolution ; he transferred the juries back to the Senate and
stopped up the chief source of income for the rich trading
classes by converting taxes into fixed payments. He had
already after the fall of Sulpicius materially lowered the
powers of the Tribunate of the Commons, which in the
revolutionary period had grown to be the most influential of
State offices, by ordaining that Tribunes should introduce

CHANGE OF THE CONSTITUTION ^z

only proposals previously approved by the Senate ; he now
caused past Tribunes to be excluded from the rest of the
official career, a measure which aimed at stifling the ambition
for this office in all able men. At the same time it was
further deprived of its essential significance by the fact that
the right of intercession no longer remained unrestricted, but
every act of intercession might become the object of a judicial
scrutiny to examine into its justification. The right of form-
ing the juries, which Sulla transferred again to the Senators,
was removed farther and farther from the commons by the
establishment of a number of new standing courts. The
Senate also, the number of whose members Sulla raised to
6co, underwent a complete reorganisation ; it was no longer
to receive its necessary augmentation, as it had done hitherto,
from the Censors, but was to be made up of past holders of
* curule offices.' To the latter was now joined as fourth the
quaestorship, the number of whose members was raised to
twenty. Thus the hitherto immensely influential office of
the censorship was also done away with ; for its second duty
too, the formation of the tax-lists, had become meaningless
owing to the abolition of the tax for Italy and the change
from a system of citizen-militia to a mercenary organisation.

Despite the thoroughly aristocratic tendency of his legisla-
tion, Sulla was compelled nevertheless to keep two very
important institutions of the revolution, the new system of
citizenship and the colonial policy. As regards the former
he was wise enough to leave alone the citizenship of the
Italici and so not to interfere with the result gained by the
great Italian war ; only the concessions to freedmen were
revoked. In the foundation of new colonies however he far
surpassed his predecessors, in order to satisfy his veterans ; he
is said to have disposed of 120,000 allotments in Italy.

By further laws relating to the official career (order of
succession, re-election), administration of provinces by past
Consuls and Praetors, and municipal constitution, Sulla ex-
tended his reforming activity over almost all departments of
the State's life, and much was created by him that was

74 ROMAN HISTORY

permanent. • In the main however his constitution, like
himself a child of a wild age, was soon swept away by
the swelling storms of the revolution.

Sulla s Retiremetit and Death, — Though Sulla clung to the
supreme power entrusted to him until the completion of his
legislation, he had nevertheless allowed the regular official
administration to enter into operation by its side, and in the
year 80 had himself filled the consulship. On the new
elections for the year 79 he surrendered it. And now the
unexpected happened. He voluntarily resigned his dicta-
torial power, and withdrew as a simple private man from
business of State. He lived to enjoy for a year the most
agreeable repose on the lovely Gulf of Puteoli (now
Puzzuoli), until a sudden sickness swiftly carried him

(78).

§ 27. The Disturbances from the Death of Sulla until
THE Fall of the Sullan Oligarchy (78-70 b.c.)

Sulla's restoration of order, energetically as it was carried out, yet
bore in itself the germ of death. On the one hand it had brought back
into power the party against which the revolution had already for fifty
years been directed ; on the other hand it was based on pure military
force, which might be made by its possessor into an instrument for any
new upheaval. The knights, the ' financiers' who had been deprived
of their privileges and in part of their sources of revenue — the freedmen
whose citizenship was declared forfeit — the masses of the capital, from
whom Sulla had withdrawn the largesses of corn — above all, the
numberless beggared proscripts and the Italici dispossessed by the
land-allotments — all formed a group of malcontents from whose midst
an assault upon the present constitution might every moment be
expected. Against these the ruling party, the oligarchy, lacked after
Sulla's death a man capable of entering into his inheritance. Pompeius,
the Dictator's son-in-law and most honoured general, was not at heart
devoted to the aristocracy, to which indeed as a former Cinnan he was
an object of suspicion ; and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the wealthiest
man of the age, did not deem the hour to have come in which he
designed to make use of his influence.

The Revolution of Lepidus{j%), — M. Aemilius Lepidus,one
of the Consuls of the year 78, made himself the representative
of those who were raising in ever louder tones the democratic

SERTORIUS IN SPAIN 75

demands — re-establishment of the tribunician power, restora-
tion of the banished and dispossessed to their old rights, and
renewal of the corn largesses. While this contest was still
going on in Rome open rebellion broke out in Etruria, the
ejected landholders of Faesulae (Fiesole near Florence)
recovering their property by armed force and with the
slaughter of Roman colonists. The Senate had now to act,
and it sent both Consuls to Etruria to enrol an army there and
punish the rising. Lepidus however waited in inaction until
his year of office (77) had run out. Then he marched against
Rome, to force the Senate into acceptance of the democratic
demands. He was however defeated on the Campus Martius
by his colleague of the past year, Catulus, while his second
in command, whom Pompeius captured at Mutina (Modena),
suffered the penalty of death. Soon afterwards Lepidus too
died in Sardinia, to which he sought to transplant the revolt,
and the remnant of his army under Perperna crossed over to
Spain.

Sertorius in Spain, — The Mario-Cinnan governor of Spain,
Sertorius, one of the most eminent leaders of his party and
perhaps the ablest man of this whole period, was still engaged
in a struggle with the Sullan administrator Caecilius Metellus.
Supported by the sympathies of native tribes, especially of the
valiant Lusitani, Sertorius came forward as a regular Roman
official ; and for a time his power was so strong that his
diplomatic connexions extended over Italy as far as Asia,
where he ventured to negotiate with Mithradates in the name
of Rome.

The settlement of the wearisome and costly Spanish war,
which despite his ability Metellus was unable to decide,
became an ever more pressing question ; and so it was not
difficult for Pompeius, who had risen still higher in popularity
through the overthrow of Lepidus, to cause the chief com-
mand in Spain to be assigned to himself, in defiance of the
legal regulations (77). For a long time the generalship of
Sertorius succeeded in preventing the junction of Pompeius
and Metellus; and even after this had been effected (75)

76 ROMAN HISTORY

the bold partisan kept his opponents for two years more in
check, until he fell a victim to a mutiny stirred up by Per-
perna (72). The native tribes now withdrew or surrendered ;
the rest of the insurgents were defeated with little trouble.
Perperna and many other subordinate generals came to their
death by the executioner's axe. In 71 Pompeius returned
to Italy.

The Slave- War (73-71). — A troop of slaves, led by the
bold Thracian Spartacus, had burst out of a gladiators' school
in Capua. After setting free considerable masses of slaves
they had taken up so strong a position on Vesuvius that two
Roman brigades had been forced to retreat with heavy loss.
Tke rising quickly spread over the whole of Italy, and the
bitterness on both sides expressed itself in a merciless warfare
which most horribly desolated the land. Even the able
M. Licinius Crassus, who was entrusted in the hour of
supreme need with the chief command, would not have
succeeded so swiftly in repressing the rising, which Spartacus
conducted with extreme skill, if a division of the slave-
hordes had not been brought about by an inner rift, arising
from the opposition of the Kelto-Germanic and the Helleno-
Syrian elements. Once sundered, the slaves yielded to the
better disciplined soldiers. Spartacus died a hero's death in
Apulia. Other troops were gradually wiped out ; a last
band, that sought to fight its way to the Alps, fell into the
hands of Pompeius as he returned from Spain (71). He
cut it to pieces, and for this credited himself with the sup-
pression of the slave-rising.

Fall of the Sullan Oligarchy, — It is one of fate's peculiar
ironies that Sulla's son-in-law and most eminent favourite
and the man who owed his immeasurable wealth to the
Sullan disturbances lent their hands to cancelling Sulla's
constitution. Pompeius and Crassus, both of them returning
from victorious campaigns, leagued themselves with the
democracy, which procured for them the consulate for the
year 70 ; and they restored the Gracchan constitution.
The Tribunate recovered its former extent of power ; the

EVENTS IN THE EAST ^n

Censorship revived ; the juries of knights were re-established ;
and in the interest of the equestrian order the administration
of provincial taxation was recast into the old system of
contract. The Gracchan corn-law had already come again
into force some years previously.

§ 28. Events in the East and Pompeius, 74-64 B.C.

To the east of the great Mediterranean region, where the power of
le Romans was not yet firmly estabhshed, it had been long endangered
^by three enemies in particular. The enterprising spirit of Mithradates
of Pontus had been by no means depressed with his defeat by Sulla ;
directly after Sulla's withdrawal warlike complications began anew
owing to frontier disputes, and took so unfavourable a course for the
Romans that the Senate thought it well to settle them by a not very
creditable peace. This was the second Mithradatic War (83-81).
About the same time a new enemy rose up against Rome in Tigranes
of Armenia, the son-in-law of Mithradates, with whom the Pontic
prince designed to share the dominion of Asia, and who had already
extended his conquests over a great part of the Parthian (Persian)
Mesopotamia and Syria up to the frontier of Egypt. The foundation
of this Grand Sultanate was all the more unwelcome to the Romans
as it directly collided with the sphere of their power ; for since the
death of the last legitimate Ptolemaeus in 81 Egypt had belonged to
the Roman people on the ground of a supposed will, although it had
been left for the time in the hands of two illegitimate princes.

But a still greater danger to the Roman power in the East lay in the
Pirates. Starting from their nests, CiHcia and Crete, they not only
harried the coasts of Asia and Greece, but extended their audacious
buccaneering as far as Sicily and even the Italian coasts, and threatened
to cripple the commerce of the whole Mediterranean.

The (^th'trd) Mithradatic and Armenian Wars until the
appearance of Pompeius (74-67). — When the acquisition of
Bithynia, which came to them by legacy, had made the
Romans neighbours of the Pontic kingdom, Mithradates
deemed the moment for the renewal of hostilities had arrived.
His connexion with Sertorius, who had even sent him
officers to improve the organisation of his army, an alliance
with the pirates, and the favourable Anti- Roman feeling in
the province of Asia as well as in Bithynia, seemingly gave
him an advantage. At first too fortune was on his side ;
but during the siege of Cyzicus the Roman general L. Li-

78 ROMAN HISTORY

cinius Lucullus completely surrounded him, and inflicted on
him heavy losses throughout a whole winter (74-73) ; and
it was but a small part of his army that he brought back out
of the Roman grip to his Pontic kingdom. In the next year
(72) he was defeated at Cabira. Deprived of all his power,
he fled to his son-in-law Tigranes. After the often stubborn
resistance of the great commercial cities of Greek origin had
been crushed, Pontus was constituted by Lucullus a Roman
province (72-70). Lucullus tried too to arrange the affairs
of the sorely tried province of Asia with gentleness, and
thereby drew upon himself the hatred of the Roman
capitalist party.

Tigranes, to whom his father-in-law's presence was very
inconvenient, nevertheless refused to surrender him. In
consequence he found himself suddenly attacked by Lucullus
(69) and forced to take flight into the heart of his kingdom.
Soon however he appeared with an army of tenfold superi-
ority before Tigranocerta, which he had founded as capital
of the new Grand Sultanate, and which was now beleaguered
by the Roman army ; but in one of the most important
battles of Roman military history he was completely defeated
by the brilliant tactics of Lucullus. Instigated however by
the desperate Mithradates, whose life was now at stake,
Tigranes would not consent to peace, but forced Lucullus to
follow him into the mountains of Armenia up to his old
capital, Artaxata on Ararat ( 68 ) . In the toilsome mountain-
campaign the soldiers, who for some time had been stirred
up by Lucullus' enemies, the capitalist party, refused obedi-
ence; and when in the next year (67) the news of the de-
position of their general arrived at the same time as his
successor, who out of jealousy reversed his operations, the
brilliant successes of Lucullus came to nothing. Mithradates
meanwhile had once more gained possession of his kingdom,
where he was again able to enkindle the hatred of the
Orientals towards Roman dominion, and Tigranes re-
entered undisturbed into the complete possession of his
empire.

EVENTS IN THE EAST 79

The Pirates and the Cretan War (68-67). — A special
expedition had been despatched in the year 68 against the
pirates, and under the leadership of Caecillus Metellus, called
Creticus^ the island of Crete, one of the robbers' chief nests,
had been cleared in spite of a valiant resistance ; but withal
the plague of piracy which had spread over the whole
Mediterranean was so far from being repressed that in the
year 67 a famine threatened to break out in Rome through
the failure of the transmarine corn supplies. The Senate
now decided, on the proposal of the Tribune Gabinius, to
create a command such as had never yet been placed in one
hand ; a supreme general was to be nominated for three
years against the buccaneers, with the power of disposing of
all State treasures, of raising levies everywhere, and of
appointing his own subordinate generals, as many as twenty-
five in number. This lex Gabinia signified the legal sur-lf^
render of the republic To military monarchy. The new'
command was entrusted to Pompeius, who most brilliantly
discharged the task imposed on him, clearing the whole
Mediterranean of the pirates in barely three months, destroy-
ing their dens and robber-castles, and endeavouring in lieu of
the cruel mode of punishment hitherto practised to make them
into useful members of the State by giving them fixed settle-
ments. The consequence of this magnificent success was
that Pompeius was also entrusted by the lex Majjilia, which
was zealously supported by Cicero, with the' continuance of
the now halting Asiatic war.

Pompeius in Asm : End of the Mithradatic and Armenian
Wars (66-62). — On Asiatic soil too Pompeius was not
deserted by his luck. Mithradates fled after losing a battle
into his Bosporan kingdom north of the Black Sea ; Tigranes
surrendered at the first assault, and had his possession con-
firmed by the Roman victor. Although the war was not
ended so long as Mithradates lived, the great difficulties with
which a passage of the Caucasus threatened the Roman army
led Pompeius to decline to follow his obstinate antagonist into
his Bosporan kingdom. He devoted the next years (65-63)

8o ROMAN HISTORY

to the settlement of Asiatic affairs. Meanwhile the destiny
of the aged Mithradates was fulfilled without the interference
of Pompeius. After striving in vain to collect once more
all the resources of his northern kingdom for a campaign of
vengeance against the Romans, he fell a victim to the family-
feuds so common in these Oriental despotisms, and killed
himself at Panticapaeum in the Crimea when successfully
attacked by his son Pharnaces (63). Such was the end of
the man who for thirty years had kept the Roman empire in
suspense, not so much through his remarkable abilities as
through the almost inexhaustible resources of his dominions,
and who appeared to his contemporaries as quite a second
Hannibal, although in reality he was as far below the latter
as the republic against which he struggled was below that
which the great Carthaginian had to confront.

After the last resistance in the west of Asia Minor had
been broken (64), Pompeius turned to Syria, where under
the weak rule of several Seleucid princes Beduin sheikhs and
bold adventurers had founded kingships of their own. Pom-
peius set to work vigorously. He deposed the incapable
Seleucids, and incorporated Syria in the Roman empire as a
province. He found himself also compelled to interfere in
Jewish affairs, and settled the feud between the Maccabaean
brothers Aristobulus and Hyrcanus by restoring the old
priestly rule of the Pharisees and joining Judaea to the
province of Asia.

A frontier dispute that had broken out between Tigranes
of Armenia and the Parthian king was decided by Pompeius
in favour of the former, according to the principles familiar to
Roman policy, of humbling the obedient ally the moment he
was no longer needed. The way was thus paved for the long
wars with the Parthians which the Romans had later to bear.
In other respects however Pompeius' method of arranging
Oriental affairs was shrewd and prudent. He was concerned
for the revival of the countries which had long groaned under !
the burden of the war. Countless cities were either settled
anew or founded for the first time by him, and out of these

EVENTS UNTIL THE TRIUMVIRATE 8i

* Pompeius-towns ' i^Pompe'wpoIeis) numerous Roman veterans
colonised and romanised the Orient.

From the reorganisation of the East arose the five pro-
vinces of Asia, Bithynia and Pontus, Ciiicia, Syria, and
Creta.

§ 29. Italian Events until the Triumvirate,

70-60 B.C.

Parties in Rome; Gaius Julius Caesar. — In an age in
which is prepared and matured a change from one form of
government to its opposite — in this case from the republican
to the monarchical — political parties usually lose their former
aspect and make way for new divisions. The aristo-
cracy exalted once more by Sulla (* nobility' or Optimate
party) still indeed lived on ; but its decrepit condition is
proved by the very fact that its most eminent representative
Was a man like M. Porcius Cato, an honest but narrow
republican aristocrat who copied the rigid morality and punc-
tiliousness of his forefather in the time of the third Punic war,
and like him became a political caricature. A party that clung
to past ideals was no longer capable of life in the rough
present of revolutionary times ; and so we have already seen
that Pompeius, accounted the heir of the Sullan Reaction,
had only attained his extraordinary position of power by ap-
proaching the democracy (the Populares). He and his asso-
ciate Crassus, who likewise owed his existence. to Sulla, were
looked on as the heads of the popular party. But it was no
longer these two parties that were the chief factors of political
life ; it was the several activities of individuals or of smaller
circles, pressing as they will in such times of ferment into the
foreground. These found their expression in more or less
secret societies, comparable to the Greek hetaireiai, which
began to rule public life. These clubs voiced their interests
either by gaining over able orators of the Bar and by every
kind of corruption, or still more often by their well-organised
armed gangs. It was the class of demagogues.

82 ROMAN HISTORY

Among those who were seeking to win a political station the man
now came to the front who was fated to turn into a new course the
destiny not only of his people but of the whole European world. Gains
Julius Caesar, a kinsman of Marius and son-in-law of Cinna, had used
the time of the Sullan reaction, in which it was advisable for him to be
quiet, for developing by study his brilliant gifts. Soon afterwards he
had aroused the notice of the public both by his activity as an orator
and by his bold opposition in the Marian interest, as well as by his
extravagant living, which moreover was supported wholly by debts.
His fixed purpose of playing a political part suggested to him the
advisability of seeking to attach himself to M. Crassus, who was not
only the leader of the democracy in Pompeius' absence, but through
his enormous wealth might always be useful to the insolvent beginner.
By games of prodigal magnificence which he brought out as aedile of
the year 65 Caesar also gained ground among the mass of the people.

The CatUinaria?! Conspiracy and Marcus Tullius Cicero. —
One necessary result of the demoralisation caused by the
Sullan proscriptions, with their outrageous enrichment of
broken-down characters, was the presence in Rome of a
number of men who after squandering their shamefully
acquired property longed to obtain new wealth in the same
way. The higher the rank of these men was, the more
lofty was the goal to which they aspired ; and of the clubs
which aimed at securing the highest offices in the State one
of the most active was apparently that which had at its
head two creatures of Sulla and members of the nobility,
L. Sergius Catilina and Cn. Calpurnius Piso. They had
once failed to secure the Consulate for two men of their
party ; now in the year 64, when the return of the victorious
Pompeius was close at hand, they set to work with greater
energy in order to effect the election of Catilina together
with that of the insignificant and easily manageable C.
Antonius. It is quite credible that Crassus and Caesar were
not sorry to see the intrigues of a party which was working
against the Optimates and could certainly never win for itself
any permanent success. But the reproach raised against
these men of having connived at or actually belonged to the
Catilinarian conspiracy will appear all the more frivolous if 1
we consider that this conspiracy was nothing but the effort of I
a political group to obtain power and influence ; and if at the

EVENTS UNTIL THE TRIUMVIRATE 83

same time arrangements were made to remove by force the
leading opponents and to set up a military power, no con-
stitutional change since Gracchus had been effected on other
lines. However, the Catilinarians failed this year also to
carry their two candidates; only C. Antonius was success-
ful, and his colleague was the famous barrister Cicero, to
whom the Optimate party had turned for help, although he
did not belong to them by birth and his political sentiments
were not clearly discernible.

Marcus Tullius Cicero sprang from an equestrian family in the
district of Arpinum. He had trained his inborn gift for oratory by
vigorous study at the best Greek schools of rhetoric with such success
that he is to be regarded as the most brilliant orator of all times and, for
the Romans, as founder of the lofty prose style. In this lies his undying
merit. In politics however his abilities did not keep step with his
ambition and vanity, and the dependence of his political position is
indicated clearly enough by the fact that after having championed the
Gabinian and Manilian laws, by which the democracy gave Pompeius
supreme power in the State, he now was entrusted with the Consulate
as the expected saviour of the Optimates.

Cicero now {^3) saw that his chief task lay in keeping
watch on the CMnftarian club, which was ceaselessly pur-
suing its designs and striving to gain a military power outside
Rome. By means of a traitor the Consul was kept con-
tinually informed of all their plans ; and so success attended
neither the designed outbreak of the revolution on the day of
the Consular elections for 62 nor an attempt on the life of
Cicero, whom Catilina would gladly have put out of the way
before his departure to the army in Etruria.^ Nevertheless
Cicero allowed the head of the party to withdraw unhindered
and waited another month before proceeding to arrest the
noblest members of the conspiracy remaining in Rome.
Upon these he caused the death-penalty to be pronounced
and immediately executed, contrary to the lex de provocatione. •
The degree of the Catilinarians' guilt we only know from
Cicero's overdrawn speeches for the prosecution, in which

1 On the occasion of this attempt Cicero delivered on the 8th Novem -
ber the first of his famous Catilinarian Orations, quo tisqiie tandem.

84 ROMAN HISTORY

he loved to paint himself as the saviour of the commonwealth
and as a second Romulus. In any case the energetic Consul
by his prompt action had suppressed a party which aimed at
appropriating power; Catilina himself was surrounded at
Pistoria (Pistoja) as he sought to force his way over the
Apennines into Upper Italy, and after a most valiant resist-
ance slain with the greater part of his army.

Return of Pcii:pjius, — Already in the autumn of 63 Pom-
peius had sent to Rome one of his subordinate generals,
Metellus Nepos, who was to get himself elected Tribune for
the next year and as such to pave the way for his master's
plans. Metellus at once after taking office (62) proposed
that Pompeius should receive the Consulate for 61 and be
allowed to keep his army in order to end the Catilinarian
war. Both propositions were rejected after stormy opposition
from the Optimates, especially from their champion Cato ;
open envy and short-sighted republicanism would not put
still greater powers into the hands of the glorified conqueror
of Asia. Pompeius, who in the autumn had landed at
Brundisium and there loyally disbanded his army, entered
Rome in the beginning of 61. He was greeted on all sides
with coolness ; even the leaders of the Populares, Caesar and
Crassus, had no interest in coming forward for him and giving
serious support to his wishes. It seemed as though the part
of Pompeius were played out.

§ 30. The First Triumvirate and Cjesar's Conquest
OF Gaul, 60-49 ^•^•

The First Triumvirate and its Results, — In the course ol
the year 61 Pompeius made vain efforts to become himself
popular by popular bills, for instance, abolition of taxes in
Italy. Meanwhile (60) Caesar, after having held the
Praetorship in 62, had been acting with great success as
pro-praetor in Spain, and Brought thence not only honour-
able laurels from a war with the Lusitani but also abundant
wealth, which was absolutely necessary to him for his

THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE 85

designs. The hour however had not yet come for him to
advance alone. He therefore concluded with Pompeius and
Crassus an alliance calculated to distribute the whole power of
the State between the three, the First Triumvirate. Caesar,
the most important of them, received the Consulate for 59J^ *
an extraordinary rank was assured to the two other Triumvirs. /
As Consul Caesar caused Pompeius' arrangements in Asia to
be ratified en bloc, and brought forward in the interest of the
veterans an agrarian law by which the State was to divide
the territory of Capua into lots for them and renounce all
claim to rent; this however was only for the poor fathers of
families, and thus a claim of the veterans for colonial settle-
ment was not in principle recognised. After a violent resist-
ance by the Optimates, which Caesar at last repressed by
removing his incapable colleague Bibulus and the blustering
Cato, the popular assembly agreed to the bill and appointed
Pompeius and Crassus to preside over a commission of twenty
who were to carry out the law. Thus his two fellows in the
Triumvirate were busied for years to come and for the moment
contented with a function provided with ample powers ; Pom-
peius too connected himself particularly closely with Caesar
by marriage with the latter' s daughter Julia.

In order however to secure his own position for a longer
time, Caesar caused a Tribune devoted to him to bring
forward the proposal to assign to him the province of
Gallia Cisalpina (Upper Italy) for five years, with the right
of raising levies and nominating his own generals. By this
he could not fail to become from a military point of view master
of Italy. The popular assembly approved the bill ; the
Senate, in order to show its complaisance towards the man
in power, added further the province of Gallia Narbonensis.
The Triumvirate had cowed the Optimates who had so
resolutely confronted Pompeius ; even the last moral resist-
ance offered by men like Cato and by Cicero, whom his
Consulate had cast wholly into the arms of the nobility, was
crushed by Cato being entrusted with the annexation of
the kingdom of Cyprus, while Cicero was banished for

86 ROMAN HISTORY

illegal execution of Roman citizens (the Catilinarians) in
AprilcS.^ Caesar now left for Gaul.

Caesar in Gaul (58-49). — Caesar had a twofold object
in view when he took over the governorship of Gaul — firstly
the raising of a competent and rehable army, which he needed
for the inevitable struggle for monarchy, and secondly the
romanisation of the Keltic country between the Rhine and
the Ocean, from which so long as it was unoccupied a peril
always lowered upon the flourishing province of Narbo (La
Provence) and the acquisition of which would necessarily solve
with more success than any transmarine possessions that vital
question of present Roman politics, colonial expansion.

Among the Keltic races of modern France, which were united only
by the bond of the same religion and for the rest were mostly tearing
one another to pieces in mutual feuds, there were three in particular
with whom the Romans had come into closer relations, the Arverni
north-west of the Cevennes, the Aedui between the Upper Loire [Li^er]
and the Saone (Arar), and the ^quani in the district of the Doubs
{Dubis). The last-named in thetT**Struggle with the Aedui, who
through the support of the Romans had gained the upper hand, had
summoned from over the Rhine German allies who had settled under
the war-king Ariovistus in Alsace and might any moment attract
further German invasions. From Switzerland too came swarms of
Keltic Helvetii, who owing to the overpopulation of their country
sought to acquire a new home in Gaul.

When Caesar arrived in Gaul, his first resolution was to
bar any further advance of foreign hordes into the territory
which he sought to win for the Roman empire. He there-
fore set out at once with the united legions of Cisalpine and
Narbonensian Gaul against the Helvetii, of whom from three
to four hundred thousand souls had meanwhile broken into the
land of the Sequani from the Lake of Geneva and were now
moving eastwards. He found them in the territory of the
Aedui, near whose capital Bibracte (Autun) he overpowered
the desperate struggles of the Keltic hosts. Part of them
were settled in the land of the Aedui ; the bulk were forced
back to Helvetia.

Caesar now turned against the German intruders in
Alsace. He bade them withdraw from the left bank of the

CAESAR'S CONQUEST OF GAUL S7

Rhine. Ariovistus proudly rejected the demand and pre-
ferred a settlement by arms, which took place on the < Oxen-
Field ' north-west of Miilhausen. It was with fear and
trembling that the Romans marched against the Germans,
whom they had dreaded ever since the invasion of the Cimbri
' and Teutones ; nevertheless Caesar at last gained the victory,
which was completed by the flight of Ariovistus over the
Rhine. The Germans were allowed to remain in the land
under Roman suzerainty, but had to pledge themselves to
forcibly repel any further immigrations to the left bank of the
Rhine.

In the next year (57) he was called upon to confront the
coalition of the especially warlike northern tribes of the
Belgae, who had collected a dangerous force in the neighbour-
hood of Soissons. Caesar avoided unequal battle, and waited
until the confederates disagreed and separated, a result on
which, with an accurate knowledge of Keltic nature, he counted
in advance. He then with little trouble subdued the tribes
severally and at last conquered even the stubborn resistance
of the Germanic Nervii, who dwelt in the region of the
Scheldt. As in the same year Caesar^s subordinate Publius
Crassus, son of the Triumvir, subjugated also the country
between the Loire and Seine (Aremorica), it seemed as
though already at the end of the second year of the war the
whole of Gaul between the Rhine, Jura, and Ocean had been
incorporated in the Roman Empire.

Now came the time for securing his conquests by the
repressi()n of risin|TS and repulse of inroads. Already in the
winter of 57-56 Roman dominion was imperilled by the
revolt of the maritime Kelts subdued by Crassus, under the
guidance of the Veneti. It was only after building a fleet
and making a twofold attack by sea and by land that Caesar
mastered the rising (56). He took stern and exemplary
vengeance for it, selling the whole tribe of the Veneti into
slavery. With equal success the Romans in the next year
(55) repelled an invasion set on foot by Germanic hordes,
Usipetes and Tencteri by name, on the Lower Rhine.

88 ROMAN HISTORY

This led to Caesar's lirst passage of the Rhine, between
Andernach and Coblenz, which however was only of the
nature of a demonstration and was not made with any
offensive purpose. This was followed by the first Roman
expedition against Britain, whose Keltic inhabitants were in
fairly close connexion with their kin on the mainland. It
was intended to intimidate them ; but Caesar crossed the
Channel with such feeble forces that he barely forced a
landing and had to deem himself fortunate in regaining the
Gallic coast before the entrance of the autumnal storms.

Better fortune attended a second expedition to Britain
which he undertook in the following year (54) after mag-
nificent naval preparations, and which carried him far beyond
the Thames. The submission which the British king Cassi-
velaunus had perforce promised remained indeed for the
present a purely nominal one ; but at any rate it was the
prelude to the later successful occupation of Britain.

While Caesar was thus busied in the west, the part of his
army left behind amid the restless and warlike northern tribes
was being hard pressed, and in the winter of 54-53 a large
division was completely destroyed by the Eburones on the
Meuse. The rising that followed this movement (53) was
repressed, Caesar taking in part a terrible vengeance and
acting with such decision that he deemed his presence in
Gaul for the coming winter needless and designed to keep
watch from Upper Italy on affairs in Rome, which were
assuming a more and more grave form.

Once again (52) revolt broke out, stirred up and led by
the chivalrous and heroic Arvernian Vercingetorix, who had
as his war-cry the removal of the foreign yoke and the
establishment at the same time of a national kingdom. But
before the insurgents suspected it Caesar was already in his
headquarters at Agedincum (Sens). After crossing the
Loire without hindrance he advanced against Avaricum
(Bourges), where lay the chief forces of Vercingetorix.
After a toilsome siege the town fell into the Romans' hands ;
but the army of the insurgents escaped into the Arvernian

CAESAR'S CONQUEST OF GAUL 89

fortress of Gergovia (Clermont ?), which Caesar did not
succeed in capturing. When the Aedui too joined in the
revolt he was compelled to withdraw to Agedincum, where
he united with Labienus, who meanwhile had been fighting
on the Seine. The rebels now concentrated all their forces
in Alesia (Alise near Flavigny), which was then completely
enclosed by Caesar. After many conflicts, of which the issue
was generally favourable to the Romans, it surrendered on
the advice of Vercingetorix himself, who presented himself
to the Romans. With the capture of their leader the con-
federates fell asunder, and the main resistance was broken ;
Caesar and his subordinates crushed in detail the still rebellious
tribes one after another, and in the following years (51-50)
he devoted himself to the peaceful task of organising his
conquests.

By the comparatively swift subjugation of so large a country and so
valiant a population Caesar had proved himself a soldier of the first
rank ; and now in the arrangement of the internal affairs of the new-
province he showed himself a master of statecraft. By not only using
the utmost possible consideration towards justifiable peculiarities (as
local chieftainship and druidism), but likewise by judiciously employing
and emphasising present distinctions, he was able to win over at once
a great and influential part of the population, and by a humane arrange-
ment of taxation to soften the harshness of the foreign yoke. Never
was a country so quickly romanised and so easily kept in its allegiance.
The Gallic conquest added to the aging body of the Roman State a
limb which contributed largely to the renewal of its youth ; for Caesar
himself it laid the foundation of his monarchical power, and in the
world's history it played a part of incomparable importance simply by
the fact that the current of the Germanic inundation into the Roman
Empire was thereby dammed at a time when the Germanic world could
indeed have shattered Roman and with it classical civilisation, but could
not have absorbed it.

>^ 31. The Domination of the Triumvirs to Caesar's
Passage of the Rubicon, 60-49 ^*^*

Pompe'ius to the Conference of Luca. — Caesar's position of
superiority in the Triumvirate had revealed itself in his Con-
sulate ; and Pompeius hoped to shake it during the absence
of his dreaded rival. For this however he lacked an attached

90 ROMAN HISTORY

party. The nobility had sullenly withdrawn from politics,
and the honest republicans hated Pompeius as the tyrant of the
hour ; the street-demagogues again, who in these times had
almost the sole control of politics, were devoted to Caesar.
Chief among them was Cl^digs, the Tribune of 58, who with
his armed gang of retainers put every possible difficulty in the
way of Pompeius, his personal foe. The latter in order to
gain for himself an influential part of the citizen body now
determined to recall Cicero from banishment (57)» But
although Cicero, whose return took the form of a triumphal
progress of all anti-monarchic elements, complaisantly put his
brilliant abilities at the service of the man in power, an
obstinate resistance met the proposal of Pompeius that he
should be made superintendent of the whole corn-supply in
the Roman Empire, with permission to dispose of the army,
the fleet, and all provincial treasuries. There was no inclina-
tion to again entrust Pompeius with a military imperium so
extraordinary as that which had arisen by the Manilian and
Gabinian Laws, and the office he desired, though created at
last, had decided restrictions. Pompeius however, who in
view of Caesar's rising importance was most concerned with
the military side of the power in question, then caused the
proposal to be brought forward that he should be entrusted
with the restoration of the exiled Egyptian king ; and here
he met with a frank refusal.

^ It is obvious that both Crassus, who owing to his pro-
verbial wealth had a great following, and above all Caesar, who
never took his eyes off events in Rome, were not uncon-
cerned in these failures of Pompeius. Nevertheless it was
just at this time (56) that their compact of the year 60 was
renewed. Caesar, foreseeing the necessity of prolonging his
Gallic command beyond the year 55, needed once more the
support of his colleagues in the Triumvirate, and therefore
summoned them to a conference at Luca (Lucca, north of
Pisa) which was to strengthen the now slackening bond. It
was decided that Pompeius and Crassus should hold the
Consulate in the year. 55 and then receive for five years the

DOMINATION OF THE TRIUMVIRS 91

provinces of Spain or Syria ; on the other hand Caesar was
allowed to keep his provinces for another five years, and his
legions, to the number of ten, were entered on the State
treasury.

Crassus in Syria (54-53). — Crassus on his arrival in
Syria found the war already in progress which Pompeius had
aroused by his decision in the frontier disputes between the
Parthians and Armenians. But nevertheless he allowed the
first year of his administration to pass without action, and
gave his sole attention to the enrichment of his treasury by
a regular plundering of the province. In the year 53 he
advanced with his army over the Euphrates into the Meso-
potamian desert, where the nature of the soil and the climate
caused the Romans terrible sufferings. When at last the
Parthians drew up for battle near the city of Carrhae, it
became patent that on this ground the light Parthian cavalry
and the mounted archers were far superior to the Roman
legionary tactics, and a crushing defeat brought the expedi-
tion of Crassus to a speedy end. The disgrace of Carrhae
equalled the days of the Allia and of Cannae; 10,000
Romans were led away into Parthian captivity and settled as
serfs in the east of the kingdom ; Roman standards as the
spoils of victory adorned the Parthian king's palace.^ On
the return, which Crassus began at once, he himself was
assassinated in a conference with the Parthians, and it was
only with great difficulty that his subordinate C. Cassius
brought the remnant of the army back to Syria. The
terrible ending of this campaign would almost have entailed
the loss of the province of Syria, had not Internal dissensions
led the Parthian king Pacorus to conclude a peace, and indeed
an alliance, with the Romans.

Tide Breach betiveen Pompeius and Caesar, — The gulf
between Caesar and Pompeius had been bridged over from

1 It was Augustus who at last compelled these standards to be
restored, to the enormous delight of the vain Roman people. There
is a representation of this scene on the cuirass of the famous statue of
Augustus from Primo Porta (now in the Vatican, Braccio Nuovo).

92 ROMAN HISTORY

mere motives of interest by the renewal of the Triumvirate at
Luca ; and after the death in 54 of the latter's wife, Caesar's
daughter, and still more after the fall of Crassus it became
more and more manifest. Through the intrigues of dema-
gogic agitators in the pay of both rivals Rome became the
scene of anarchical disturbances, such as the murder of
Clodius by Milo, which at last led to a league between the
Optimate party and Pompeius. The latter' s influence reached
its zenith when in the year 52 he received for some time
dictatorial power as consul sine collega ; and he employed it,
among other objects, for several legislative proposals aimed
against Caesar. The point at issue which led to the outbreak
of the civil war was this. Caesar, whose governorship expired
on the ist_March 49, needed the Consulate for the following
year m order to obtain the ratification of the arrangements
made by him in Gaul and to secure for his veterans their
well-earned and promised land-allotments. It was precisely
this that Pompeius and the senatorial party sought to prevent ;
and in order to be able to accuse Caesar as a private person and
thereby to exclude him from election they demanded that he
should disband his army and personally present himself in Rome
for the election, a condition the fulfilment or which would have
signified Caesar's political death For a long time Caesar
delayed the decision by means of the Tribunes who were
devoted to him, and by conciliatory offers did everything to
prevent the conflict from coming to a head. He even went
so far in his loyalty as to surrender at the order of the Senate
two of his legions for the imminent Parthian war ; Pompeius
retained them for himself in Italy. Towards the end of the
year 50, when Gaul was pacified, Caesar betook himself into
his Cisalpine province (Upper Italy) where from Ravenna
he watched affairs in Rome. In January 49 a blunt refusal
met his thoroughly justifiable demand that Pompeius too
should surrender his governorship of Spain, which he had
not entered at all in the five years of their compact, and
should dismiss his army ; and on the other hand a fixed
date was appointed for the disband ment of his army. Hesi-

CAESAR'S MONARCHY AND DEATH 93

tation was now at an end, iacta alea est, Caesar with his
army crossed the rivulet Rubicon which divided the GalHc
province from Italy proper, and thereby opened the Civil
War.

§ 32. Caesar's Victory, Monarchy, and Death,

49-44 B.C.

The Wars against Pompeius and the Pompeians, — The
boldness of Caesar, who dared to advance against Rome with
a single legion, so disarmed the hesitating Pompeius that he
with most of the Senators abandoned the State Treasury, left
the capital, and on the further news of Caesar's victorious
progress even sailed across from Brundisium to Greece.
From this base he hoped, after drawing to himself the legions
of the East, to fight his opponent with better success. Caesar
recognised that it was impossible in the total absence of a
fleet for him too to cross over to Greece, and decided to
attack first the chief base of the Pompeian power, Spain, with
his army that still lay in Further Gaul. After a short stay
in Rome, where he gained over many opponents by his
extraordinary clemency and restored order, he took command
himself of the Spanish war. It ended in forty days with the
reduction of the six Pompeian legions. Soon followed the
surrender of the important trading town of Massilia, which
ior several months had withstood Caesar's power. Mean-
while Pompeius had collected nine legions in Greece and
greatly strengthened his Adriatic fleet. Caesar was threatened
with a perilous contest. Once again he settled in Rome only
the most pressing business ; he resigned his allotted dictator-
ship after appointing himself Consul for 48^ and then hastily
made for Brundisium to join the army! " From here he
crossed into Greece with six legions under great difficulties
(June 48). At Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), which Pompeius
had occupied, the armies throughout the winter lay over
against one another, and the superior position of his antagonist
brought Caesar into great straits. At last by a bold move

94 ROMAN HISTORY

eastwards he made it necessary for the other to follow him,
and in the Thessalian plain near Pharsalus forced him to a
pitched battle, which secured final victory for Caesar's cause.
Pompeius fled to Egypt, whose king owed him a debt of
gratitude ; but at the command of the faithless Ptolemaeus,
who hoped thus to win Caesar's favour, he was murdered at
the moment of landing at Pelusium.

When Caesar arrived some time after in Egypt, he became
mixed up in the feuds between the king Ptolemaeus and his
sister Cleopatra ; and as he had brought with him but few
troops, he fell for a time into great peril until reinforcements
enabled him to defeat in the Nile delta the Anti-Roman
party, at whose head the young king had placed himself.
With this the resistance of Alexandria, the royal capital,
was broken. Cleopatra received the crown from the hands
of the Roman imperator ; living in close association with him,
she arranged Egyptian affairs to suit the Roman pleasure.
After a stay of nine months in Egypt Caesar found himself
compelled to undertake in person the war which had been
unsuccessfully conducted by one of his generals against Phar-
races, the son of Mithradates, in order to put an end to the
bold conquests of the Bosporan prince on the soil of Asia
Minor. A brilliant victory at Z el a in the kingdom of Pontus
( 47 ) ^:^-2l£!Jh J^^^^h-J^ifj — placed the destinies of Asia in
Caesar's han3s7Now at last he could think of return to
Rome, where his presence was urgently needed.

For in the West affairs were not too prosperous. The
partisans of Pompeius still possessed resources enough to keep
up the contest, which particularly in Dalmatia and Spain
imperilled for some time Caesar's superiority. Then the
main forces of the Pompeians, led by the sons of the mur-
dered imperator and the sturdy republican M. Porcius Cato,
concentrated in Africa, where the Numidian king Juba
warmly supported them. In Rome itself, moreover, the
serious financial crisis resulting from the Civil War had
produced an intolerable state of affairs, to which the arbitrary
and capricious M. Antonius, Caesar's magister equttum, did

CAESAR'S MONARCHY AND DEATH 95

not prove equal. To this was added the circumstance that
the legions lying ready in Campania for the African war
began to be troublesome, as they were still vainly waiting for
the high rewards promised to them. On Caesar's arrival the
condition of things speedily changed in his favour. By
judicious measures he lightened indebtedness, restored the
rule of law by holding the regular elections, and by his mere
personality forced the mutinous legions back into the most
joyful obedience. Thus at the end of this year he could
venture to cross over to Africa, where Cato as chief in
command had gathered round himself all Caesar's enemies.
As Caesar appeared with but a small force in Africa, he at
first fell into straits ; but later he gained the vict^ty in a
bloody battle before Thapsus ( April j.6), while at me same
time one of his generaTT^^ffished the power of the Numidian
prince Juba. Several of the most distinguished leaders of the
Pompeian party had fallen in the battle ; Cato, unwilling to
survive the end of the republic, destroyed himself in Utica,
the gates of which he opened to Caesar ; and only a small
part of the hostile forces, among them the two sons of
Pompeius, Gnaeus and Sextus, escaped into Spain. After
making Numidia into a province and pacifying Africa, Caesar
returned to Rome, where he celebrated with colossal splen-
dour a fourfold triumph over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and
Numidia.

Once again however he had to take the field against the
Pompeians. Gnaeus and Sextus Pompeius in Spain had not
only found a large following among the native peoples, inclined
as they always were for revolt, but had actually gained over
several Caesarian legions. Towards the end of the same year
Caesar arrived in Southern Spain ; but it was not until March
45[J:hat the decisive conflict was fought at Munda (between
Cordova and Malaga). Here the Caesarianslltera desperate
and all but lost battle gained at last the victory by turning to
account an accident. Thirty-three thousand Pompeians are
said to have fallen ; Gnaeus Pompeius lost his life in the
flif^ht, while his brother Sextus succeeded in finding con-

96 ROMAN HISTORY

cealment among friendly mountaineers. Caesar was now for
the first time actual monarch in the Roman empire.

Caesar s Monarchy (46-44). — If the Roman monarchy-
is not usually dated from the year 46, this is, generally speak-
ing, simply because Octavianus only won by arms the heritage
of Caesar after the latter's death, and moreover gained it only
with the aid of a Triumvirate, from which he again emerged
as monarch. In reality Caesar is the first monarch of Rome ;
and with the clear-eyed resoluteness of his character he never
sought to deny the fact. The title for the new kingship was in
the first instance supplied by the dictatorship, which Caesar,
after receiving it for several shorter periods, caused to be trans-
ferred tft him for life ; later however he seemingly preferred
the name of Imperator^ likewise bestowed on him as a standing
title, as it particularly implied the notion of the highest
official authority, that is, imperium. That he seriously
thought of renewing the old title of King must be doubted,
although his flatterers often suggested it to him.

Caesar beg:.n his infinitely difficult task of healing the
terribly disorganised conditions of society by a reconciliation
of parties, which he introduced by a sweeping amnesty. As
a genuine democrat he wished to make all useful members of
the State, without distinction of party colouring, serviceable
in the construction of the new administrative organism, at the
head of which the Imperator was to stand as voluntarily
recognised representative of the nation. Thus he not only
allowed all existing offices to stand, but even made consider-
able additions to some, in order to associate with the admin-
istration the greatest possible number of able men. The
mode of election also remained as before, except that the
right of proposing candidates was allowed to him, which
certainly amounted in reality to nomination. In every way
he strove to show respect to republican institutions, without
however obscuring thereby his position of supremacy, which
was directly patent in his outward presence, as well as in the
stamping of his portrait upon coins.

The demands of democracy, never silenced since the

CAESAR'S MONARCHY AND DEATH 97

Gracchi, were taken up by Caesar in a princely fashion :
colonisation extending over Italy and the provinces (^e,g,
of Carthage and Corinth), which especially benefited the
veterans, a new arrangement of corn-distributions to the
needy, regulations for the administration of the provinces,
laws dealing with the desperately involved conditions of debt
and tenancy, all aimed at the improvement of society in
general both in Italy and the provinces. The regulation of
indebtedness was to be subserved in particular by the im-
provement of the terribly disorganised calendar, an innovation
which under the name of the ' Julian Calendar ' has become
important in the world's history. Besides this legislative
activity the all-embracing creative genius of the Imperator
extended also to the promotion of outward prosperity,
which he sought to aid by foundations and constructions of
many kinds. Finally Caesar deemed it his duty to pay his
tribute to the military ambition of the Roman people ; he
decided on an expedition against the Parthians, as one of the
most popular cries was to take vengeance on them for the
defeat of Crassus and the loss of the Roman standards. But
a few days before starting for Asia the Imperator was over-
taken by his doom.

Caesar s Death. — Despite the wholesome government which
Caesar throughout dispensed, he could not be without enemies.
To these belonged in the first place all republicans by convic-
tion, who quite openly kept up a kind of saint- worship around
the figure of Cato ; and in the main these were the best
elements of the citizen-body. Less honourable on the other
hand were those Pompeians who basked in the sunshine of
the Imperator's grace and nevertheless did not cease to
intrigue for the now Utopian ideal of the republic. But
even among the real Caesarians there was no lack of men
who from discontent or other personal reasons had a spite
against the ruler and were inclined for conspiracies. Caesar
was not without knowledge of this cross-current, which often
manifested itself clearly in a vehement pamphlet-literature,
and even in conspiracies against his life ; but such was his

98 ROMAN HISTORY

confidence and so unswerving his course of action that he
disregarded them both. As indeed we can understand, it
was particularly in the Senate that the opposition took firmer
and firmer root ; for the Senate had been hurt by its liberal
admixture with democratic elements, partly of a lower class,
and by the depression of its political influence, and from its
bosom arose the conspiracy to which the Imperator fell a
victim. Its heads were C. Cassius Longinus, who after the
battle of Pharsalus had joined Caesar and now thought himself
neglected, and Decimus Brutus Albinus, Caesar's able assis-
tant in the conquest of Gaul ; among some sixty senators
whom they gained over for their purpose was also the nephew
and son-in-law of Cato, M. Junius Brutus, who was living in
close association of friendship and study with Cicero, and
who, in spite of a morbid republicanism nurtured by family
tradition and Stoic philosophy, had not spurned Caesar's for-
giving love after the battle of Pharsalus. On the i Cth of
March 44 (the Ides) the designed murder was accornplished
before tne commencement of a meeting of the Senate in the
theatre of Pompeius, by whose statue — a strange ordainment
of chance ! — Caesar gave up the ghost.

§ 33. The Struggles for Caesar's Inheritance (Victory of

OcTAVIANUS AND FaLL OF THE RePUBLIC) 44-29 B.C.

Pretenders until the Formation of the (^Second) Triumvirate
(44—43). — Nothing illustrates better the complete mis-
apprehension of actual conditions which was prevalent in the
circles of these ' restorers of liberty ' than the resolutions
framed two days after the murder at the first meeting of the
Senate, mainly at the instigation of Cicero, who now came
forward again. By the resolution sanctioning the will of the
deceased with all his other arrangements and translating him
to heaven, while at the same time giving a complete amnesty
to the murderers, the fatal opposition between Caesarians and
Anti-Caesarians was oflicially ratified. At first a universal

CAESAR'S INHERITANCE 99

helplessness and uncertainty prevailed, which was further
increased by the wily intrigues of the Consul M. Antonius,
the favourite and for many years the assistant of Caesar. But
the commons after the publication of the will, by which they
were generously endowed, began to side openly against the
murderers, and their attitude soon caused the heads of the
conspiracy to leave Rome, partly in order to go to the
provinces already allotted by Caesar to them, partly in the
exercise of specially devised commissions. Antonius, who
had obtained for his protection a bodyguard of 60c o men,
felt himself so thoroughly master of the situation that he
determined to forcibly deprive Decimus Brutus of Hither
Gaul, which the latter had already taken over. The impor-
tance of this particular province lay in the fact that from it
Italy and Rome could be most easily held in check. At
this moment Caesar's official heir, Gaius Octavius, appeared
on Italian soil.

Gaius Octavius, the grandson of Caesar's sister Julia (born 22nd
September 63) had been some years ago adopted by his great uncle
and brought up manifestly to be his successor. With a not very
powerful body, Octavius possessed remarkable powers of intelligence,
which had been quickened by a careful education, and now qualified
the youth of nineteen for a position which called for the shrewdest
politician and diplomatist. None but such a creature of intelligence,
endowed with an iron and dauntless pertinacity, was capable of raising
up on the existing walls of the republican State a new structure which
could stay the sinking Roman world for some centuries to come. In
Greece, where he was living for purposes of study, young Octavius
was met by the news of the death of his uncle and adoptive father.
He betook himself without delay to Italy, where he designed to enter
upon his heritage under the new name of C. Julius Caesar Octavianus.

Antonius withheld the inheritance of Caesar from Oc-
tavianus, in whom he saw a dangerous antagonist ; and the
latter in his poverty found himself compelled to seek admission
to the Senatorial party. The way into this was opened for
him by Cicero, whom the calculating young man entirely won
over. Octavianus placed himself with an army raised on
credit from Caesarian veterans at the service of the Senate,
which without regarding his lack of military experience

lOo ROMAN HISTORY

appointed him junior general to the Consuls now taking the
field against Antonius, Hirtius and Pansa. The task of this
army was to relieve Decimus Brutus, who was shut up by
Antonius in Mutina (hence the name bel/um Muiinense), and
to disarm Antonius, who was now unmasked by Cicero's
energetic agitation and famous ' Philippic ' orations. After
several successful contests, which indeed cost the lives of
both Consuls, but compelled Antonius to flee to M. Aemilius
Lepidus, the Caesarian governor of Gaul, Decimus Brutus
was entrusted by the Senate with the further management of
the war. And now Octavianus dropped the mask of sub-
mission, marched with his army to Rome, and extorted for
himself the Consulship, and for Antonius and Lepidus, with
whom he was acting in collusion, the repeal of the hostile
resolutions framed against them. Now the officers and army
of Brutus also passed over to Octavianus, and the Caesarians
became decidedly preponderant in Italy. Their three leaders,
Octavianus, Antonius, and Lepidus, founded on the occasion
of a conference at Bononia (Bologna) the Secotid Ttjiumviraie
(43—36). Politically it aimed at a division of the powers
of State between the three, elected for five years ; on the
military side it aimed at common operations against the
murderers of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius, who had attained
great power in the East. But for the realisation of their
plans two things were needful, the removal of the most
influential portion of their opponents and the control of great
resources. Both of these ends were to be served by the
proscriptions drawn up in Bologna, which have stamped this
Second Triumvirate with an indelible brand of infamy. Two
thousand knights and three hundred Senators are said to have
then perished, among the latter Cicero, whose head Octavianus
coolly surrendered to the vindictive Antonius. Thus Rome
and Italy were * pacified.'

Octavianus and Antonius now crossed over to Greece (42 ),
in order to begin the struggle with Brutus and Cassius. In
the two years following Caesar's murder these men had fought
with great success throughout the East against the Caesarian

CAESAR'S INHSiin-A^CE loi

officials, and now they advan.cpd with a con^xiderabje force to
the decisive struggle, whic-h to,oV .pia':e ^n^av 'tlie^ Thra-rian
village of Philip£i. Within a few weeks were fought two
great battles. In the first Antonius defeated Cassius, who
took his own life, while Octavianus was conquered by Brutus ;
in the second however Brutus succumbed to his united oppo-
nents and followed the example of his comrade. The army
and fleet for the most part joined the Triumvirs. Antonius
and Octavianus now parted, the former to rearrange Asiatic
affairs in the interest of the victors, the latter to attend to the
payment of the veterans, which necessitated land-allotments
on a grand scale.

The forcible ejections which Octavianus had perforce
decreed aroused a furious bitterness, which was still further
increased by the danger of imports being cut off from the
country by the fleet of S. Pompeius, who after Caesar's death
had ventured out of his Spanish hiding-place and had raised
during the general disturbances a not inconsiderable sea-
power. In collusion with M. Antonius, his ambitious wife
Fulvia and his brother Lucius, the Consul of the year 41,
sought to exploit this peculiarly difficult position of Octavi-
anus against him. A regular war broke out between him
and the Antonians (41-40), which ended with the capture
of Perusia, into which Lucius Antonius had thrown himself
(hence the name * Perusine War'). No intelligent man in-
deed could expect candid dealings between the two rulers
— Lepidus played always a subordinate part — and Antonius
ngw would have been all the less inclined to give way to his
youthfiil colleague as he deemed himself justified in the
utmost claims by his extraordinary position of power in the
East. For the moment however a breach was avoided ;
indeed an apparently complete reconciliation was effiscted at
a conference at Brundisium, and sealed by the marriage of
Antonius with Octavianus' step-sister Octavia (40). In this
peace S. Pompeius was also included, from reasons of pru-
dence. But already in the next year (39) hostilities began
anew between the aspiring and restless son of Pompeius and

I02 ROMAN -HISTORY

the Triumvirs ; it was only after a two years' war (38-36),
which' Va3 fcught'but in i'nd around Sicily and in which
Octavianus' general M. Vipsanius Agrippa ^ won well-earned
laurels, that the last Pompeian was rendered harmless. In con-
nexion with this war Octavianus threw overboard Lepidus,
long a burden to him, who claimed Sicily for himself as
reward for his assistance ; he compelled him to withdraw
from the Triumvirate and live out his life in self-chosen exile.
With this the Triumvirate was in reality dissolved and the
fate of the Roman empire exposed anew to the rivalry of
two pretenders.

Octavianus and Antonius at War for Supremacy (36—30). —
The opposition between the two rivals for the inheritance of
Caesar was naturally such a one that any attempt to bridge it
over was hopeless and indeed was never essayed in serious-
ness by the two parties. Nevertheless the strong character
and noble spirit of Octavia was able for several years longer
to prevent an open outbreak of hostilities. But after an
unsuccessful campaign against the Parthians, which cost him
his reputation as a general, Antonius for the second time
threw himself into Cleopatra's arms, and indeed officially
wedded her. The last bond between the potentates was now
broken. Urgent campaigns in the Eastern Alps and Illyria
(35-33) prevented Octavianus at first from beginning as yet
the struggle with Antonius, but supplied him with a mettled
army for it and gave him a valuable knowledge of generalship.
In the year 33 however expired the second period of five
years for which the Triumvirs had mutually guaranteed their
power ; and the two rivals appeared with countercharges
before the Senate. Antonius however had alienated all
sympathy in Rome by the unbounded capriciousness with
which he squandered Roman provinces and dependent states
on Cleopatra and her children qo less than by his objection-
able relations with her in general. Octavianus had no difficulty |
in causing the position of Antonius to be declared forfeit and i

1 The founder of Cologne [Colonia Agrippina) and builder of the |
Pantheon in Rome.

CAESAR'S INHERITANCE 103

war to be voted against Cleopatra (32). It was no trifling
contest that confronted Octavianus. Antonius had at his
disposal the whole resources of the East, and he waited on
the west coast of Greece with an army of about 100,000
men and a strong fleet for his opponent's attack (31).
Octavianus avoided battle as long as he could, and thus
brought Antonius into a difficult position. At length the
latter made up his mind to decide matters by a sea fight.
On the 2nd of September ^.-b.c. was fought at Actium
on the Ambracian Gulf (Gulrof Volo) the notable battle of
that name. Moved by the flight of Cleopatra, Antonius
most disgracefully and unreasonably gave up his cause for
lost. Both fled to Alexandria, whither Octavianus followed
them in the next year (30). The destiny of Antonius was
speedily consummated. Army and navy deserted to his
opponent ; and then, nerved by a false report of Cleopatra's
death, he took his life. Cleopatra also followed the same
course when she perceived the impossibility of winning any
influence over Octavianus.

Egypt thereby fell into the hands of tlje conqueror. After
putting out of the way two sons of Cleopatra by Caesar and
Antonius who had already been nominated kings, he took
possession of it as his private property. The enormous
wealth which he found in the royal treasury enabled him to
meet all his obligations towards both the veterans and the
persons injured by ejections ; but the golden rain of Egypt did
not in the least rouse to new life the moribund body of the
Roman State..' After Octavianus had passed the winter of
30-29 in Asia, where relations with the Parthians par-
ticularly needed regulation, he returned in the summer of 29
to Rome, where the celebration of victory and peace was
held from the J[3tb_tojth^i_5th of August amidst the bound-
less but justifiabTe delight of the people. Thus had the
monarchy founded by Caesar passed after fifteen years of civil
war to his heir.

i3 c o-^i

3
ho

^ = = «

2 tj

- a;

^Xl

•X3

-O

F-

S
«?

> 2

S So

«<

s §

— !I5

— w

•ji

II--

to j3
-rt 550

"zo

-5

^g3

— 5

.3 THE IMPERIAL AGE 105

^ SECTION III 6^

The Imperial Age until Diocletian (29 b.c-
1285 A.D.)

Sources. — It is only for the first century of the Imperial Age that the
sources are abundant enough for us to gain a relatively clear picture of
it. The biographies of the Emperors by C Suetonius Tranquillus^
which contain their careers from Caesar until Domitian, supply an
abundance of most interesting matter in spite of deficient arrangement,
manifest errors, and grave distortions. Of the two great works of|
Cornelius Tacitus^ stateljfiCLL of all Roman historians — the 'Annals,'
describing the period fronrAugustus_ to Nero (68), and the ' Histories,'
which reachTrorii the year 69 until Domitian's death — irfiportant pieces
are lost-^-ii^ isliowever thcffidst trustworthy witness of that great age,
although he has by no means attained his ideal of writing without
prejudice. In regard to contents these two histories stand far above
the so-called ' Historians of the Imperial Age ' {Scriptores Historiae
Atigtistae), a collection of biographies extending from Hadrian to
Numerianus and composed by various authors, which owe their position
in the foreground of our study of the second and third centuries solely
to the wretched condition of our sources for that age. Deliberate false-
hood for political reasons and misrepresentation from love of sensation
appear beside the authors' obvious lack of historical or critical intelli-
gence ; and the opinion that we must form of their lost main source, the
biographies of Marius Maximus (from Nero to Elagabalus), is neces-
sarily unfavourable. Of the work of Livius, which extended to 9 B.C.,
only scanty summaries for the age of Augustus survive. The last part
of the short sketch of Velleius Paterculus becomes somewhat fuller for
this period. Qllhe Roman History of Cassius Dio few remnants for
the Tmxiprinl Age, have been handed down to us. Of Plutarch's Lives
those of Otho and Galba are pi-eserved. Of the Roman historians
vvriting^ in Greek mention has yet to be made of Herodianus, whose
history from the end of Marcus Aureiius until Gordianus III. is in spite
of great failings valuable enough. In the employment of all these
historians it is more or less needful to observe that the discrepancy
u tween the Senatorial and Imperial colouring of the narratives has led
ti) great distortions of the truth, which has moreover suffered severely
from the overgrowth of the rhetorical style, 'a cancer of the historio-
graphy of these ages.

But outside history proper we have also to reckon among our sources

arge number of literary productions which reflect or directly treat

nts of the day, such as the works of many poets (Horace, Martial,

i ersius, &c.), collections of letters such as that of the younger Plinius,

occasional writings like the Panegyricus by the same author upon

Traian, or the so-called ' Germania ' of Tacitus. Most important too

io6 ROMAN HISTORY

is the testimony which coins and inscriptions have bequeathed to us ;
among these the most prominent place is occupied by the so-called
Monumentuvi Ancyranum, Augustus' grave-inscription, which was
destined for his mausoleum and contains a summary of his deeds.

CHAPTER VIII
The Bmperors of the Julian and Flavian Houses,

29 B.C.-96 A.D.

§ 34. Augustus and the Construction of the
Monarchy

The Nature of the Augustan Monarchy, — If we observe
how hesitatingly Augustus — a title of honour which was pre-
sented to Octavianus by the Senate in the year 27 — proceeded
to assume those rights which are characteristic of the monarch,
and how he strove to mask his singular position by leaning as
far as possible upon republican institutions, we cannot marvel
that up to the present day opinions vary as to what name is
to be applied to this creation of his. Even a contemporary
writer could describe the history of that age as far as the
reign of Tiberius in such a way that the transition from one
form of government to the other finds not a word of mention.
From our present standpoint we must designate the supremacy
of Augustus as a monarchy, a, sequel to Caesar's creation ;
Augustus understood his position as that o^ prlnceps or ' First '
[i.e. of the Senate and people), and hence arose the name of
* principate.'

In reality Augustus did not take the last logical step to
which the regeneration of the State necessarily led him ;
despite all the limitations imposed by him on the Senate, the
representative of the administrative organism of the Republic,
he did not venture to reduce it to such an insignificance as
excluded any doubt as to the true division of power. The
opposition between Senate and Emperor became the most
retarding factor in the further development of Roman state-

AUGUSTUS AND THE MONAP.CHY 107

life ; and when at last after three centuries it was removed
by Diocletian's change of the constitution, the aging body of
the State was so far advanced in decay that it could never
again revive to new life.

Augustus showed clearly how he conceived his relation to
the Senate when on the 13th of January 27 he resigned the
extraordinary plenary power possessed by him in the fifteen
years of his Trium viral office (43-28) into the hands of the
Senate, which thereupon voted him as a token of gratitude
the honorary title o^ Augustus, The Consulate, which the
new ruler had held from 22-23, could not satisfy his claims
simply because of the presence of colleagues implied in the
office ; the revolution which had been consummated in the
last century wholly rested on military power, and this beyond
a doubt would have to form the stay of the monarchy. So
together with the most important border provinces (Syria,
Gaul, Spain), in which a strong military force was per-
manently needed, Augustus procured for himself the imperium
froconsulare^ which gave him unlimited powers outside Italy.
Henceforth the division of the provinces into * imperial ' and
* senatorial ' remained. For the police of the capital again
Augustus, by a Sullan arrangement which had been already
permitted officially to the Triumvirs, kept a guard which bore
the title of Praetor tani and formed a band nine cohorts ^ strong,
blindly devoted to the Emperor and in return highly privi-
leged. In his supreme command over the whole army of the
State, which included the right of filling up all officers' posts
and military jurisdiction, the Emperor had arrived at that
goal towards which the whole development of army organisa-
tion since Marius and Sulla had tended ; possession of the
army gave possession of the monarchy.

It was far more difficult to find suitable forms for the relation
of the Principate towards the civil law. The starting-point

^ The title imperator he had iUready borne regularly from the year
40, without its being regarded then as an official title of the Emperor.
'J iberius did not bear it.

- The cohorts were of 1000 men each.

io8 ROMAN HISTORY

here was the 'Tribune's power' {^tribunicia potestas), which
Augustus caused to be assigned to him annually from the
year 23 onwards. The rights connected with this office,
such as the privilege of introducing laws and bringing forward
or checking resolutions of the Senate, the religious sanctilica-
tion which was associated with its inviolability [sacrosanc-
titas), were raised by Augustus to such an importance that
in the subsequent bestowal of the tribunicia potestas on one of
his ablest assistants, M. Vipsanius Agrippa, men could see an
appointment to a share in the monarchy. Tacitus regards
this office as the chief source of the Emperor's plenary
powers, and indeed the Emperors themselves dated by it the
years of their reign (^e.g, on coins).

The tribunician power secured for the Emperor a strong
influence over the Senate, which Augustus further extended
by procuring for himself as princeps senatus the right of
nominating a portion of the Senators (nominatio) and of pro-
posing the officials to be elected by the Senate (^commendatio).
In legislation the old state of affairs apparently remained ;
but the Emperor's dispensations [edkta) were silently accepted
as laws, and the Senate every year was sworn to them. In
jurisdiction an important change came in ; the Imperial Court
took a place by the side of the previously existing courts of
Senators and jurymen, all cases coming before its bar which re-
lated to officers, imperial procurators, members of the imperial
family, or affairs of imperial provinces. As the Emperor
was not able to pass judgment in person on all these matters,
they called for the assistance of officials educated in the law,
so that from this time the order of scientifically trained jurists
began to develop, and from its most distinguished represen-
tatives the Emperor did not scorn to take professional advice.
Finally Augustus added to the supreme military command
and the highest judgeship (of which the latter indeed was
only in a limited sense his) the supreme priesthood, causing
himself to be appointed pont'ifex maximus for life after the
death of Lepidus (12 b.c). Thus he now united in his
person the functions on which the old kingship had rested.

THE RULE OF AUGUSTUS 109

The creation of Augustus, though in many respects it was
so brilliant, and though in fact the Roman world owed to
it a partial recovery lasting some time, contained in itself a
twofold contradiction, the consequences of which asserted
themselves disastrously enough. The division of power
between Emperor and Senate created in reality a kind of
double rule or dyarchy, which worked contrary to the
monarchic principle ; and in the discrepancy between the
rank of the Emperor in Rome, where he sought to be the
first republican official, and in the provinces, where he was
Imperator without restriction, a certain incompleteness was
expressed which was the greatest weakness in Augustus'
work.

§ 35. The Rule of Augustus, 29 b.c. to 14 a.d.

Internal Administration, — The skill with which Augustus,
although the division of administrative power was unfavour-
able to centralisation, yet contrived to interfere with a
regulating and improving hand in nearly all branches of
government and public life calls for our admiration. To
his unwearied labours in this sphere the Empire, and above
all the hitherto so enslaved provinces, owed that revival
which was celebrated in something more than courtly flattery
by many contemporaries as the dawn of a golden age.

Closely connected with the military organisation of Augustus
was the financial administration. Payment of the veterans
from the civil wars had swallowed up enormous sums, which
for the most part had been defrayed from the spoils of Egypt ;
but the expenditure on the army kept on foot simply to guard
the frontiers, which on the death of Augustus numbered
twenty-five legions, and on the national fleet stationed at
Misenum and Ravenna demanded every year an outlay beyond
the means of the old treasury, the Aerarium Saturni adminis-
tered by the Senate. Augustus therefore established a new
military treasury, the Aerarium militare ; but as the Emperor
as supreme general had the greatest interest in the regular

no ROMAN HISTORY

collection of taxes, Augustus claimed a control over the
whole system of taxation, so that even the Senatorial pro-
vinces and the dependent States had to receive imperial
procurators. By a new scheme, in part based upon careful
assessments, Augustus endeavoured to give a firm basis to the
system of taxation, which hitherto had been open to the
utmost caprice, and guarded it by severe laws against possible
reprisals. The revenues moreover which accrued to the
Emperor personally from his provinces and the Imperial
territories like Egypt led to the foundation of an exclusively
Imperial treasury, the Fiscus,

The inability of the State treasury to meet the ever
increasing demands of such an Empire led Augustus to
transfer to the Imperial treasury a large number of costly
branches of administration, by which he naturally gained also
a constant addition of power. Thus the Emperor defrayed
and administered for Rome the corn-supply (^cura annonae)^
the system of fire-police [fraefectura vlgilum) managed by
the seven cohorts of vigiles, and the regulation of the Tiber
with its tendency to disastrous inundations (^cura Ttberls)^ for
Italy the cura viarum, i.e. the construction of the great net-
work of roads which spread over the land. In claiming the
right of coinage Augustus proceeded with the same respect
for tradition which marks his other measures ; in the pro-
vinces the governors preserved the right of coining, and in
Italy the Emperor shared with the Senate the coinage of
gold and silver, while the small change, the copper, was
wholly left to the Senate. Later indeed the name of the
official on the senatorial coins gave way entirely to the simple
stamp of the Senate (S.C. )

To his capital Augustus devoted the utmost interest, which
was manifested especially in a vigorous course of building.
By restoring fallen temples and raising new ones, by magni-
ficent Courts of Law, theatres, libraries, and by laying down
a new Forum (the old Forum Romanum had long been
insufficient for the needs of the capital of the world), Augustus
made his Rome that splendid city of brilliant marble whose

THE RULE OF AUGUSTUS iii

wonders still reveal themselves even in its wretched ruins to
the eye of the skilled antiquarian. Judicious measures of
police, to which we must add also the division of the city
into fourteen quarters (^regiones), held in order the internal
life of this gigantic centre of traffic, which in Augustus'
times is said to have reckoned two millions of inhabitants.
Less successful were the efforts of the Emperor in another
department of the public weal, to which nevertheless he
directed his keenest care ; they related to public morality,
which ever since the development of the Roman State into a
World-Power had been continually sinking, and in the times
of Augustus had reached that level of depravity which, apart
from abundant literary testimony, the legislation referring to '
it reveals to us. Slavery, whose most loathsome outgrowth
was represented by the gladiatorial games, the Hellenistic
frivolity dominating the stage, the collection of enormous
wealth in the hands of single families, the luxury and the
often highly offensive worships of the East — all these cir-
cumstances had led to a perilous corruption of the whole
national life. Supported by the propaganda of literature,
which was devoted to him (Horace, for instance), Augustus
sought vigorously to combat these evils. Significant witnesses
for this are the lex luTta de adulteri'is against adultery and
excesses, the lex de maritandis ord'inibus, which aimed at
making divorce more difficult and at placing the unwedded
and childless under political and legal disadvantages, and the
lex Papia Poppaea, which was to encourage by rewards the
establishment of households. Laws too against luxury of
every kind, against the immorality of the pubHc shows, &c.,
were designed to raise public morality, while a revival of
religion by the resuscitation of purely Roman worships or
by the introduction of seasonable new ones, such as that of
the Divus lulius and of the Genius Augustt, was to supplant
secret foreign rites. It must be confessed that in this depart-
ment but little success crowned the efforts of Augustus, how-
ever much honour they did to the « Father of the Fatherland,*
as he was entitled from the year 2 b.c.

112 ROMAN HISTORY

External Politics and Wars, — It was no part of Augustus'
plan to seek by conquests a further extension of the great
empire which he had come to rule ; his policy aimed rather
at spreading the blessings of peace over the whole Roman
world. This is brilliantly attested by the administration of
the provinces and subdued kingdoms, which Augustus with
untiring energy strove to incorporate in the Roman State.
He himself in the course of his reign visited in person nearly
all the provinces, in order to settle difficulties that had arisen
and to make certain of the way in which his ideas were being
realised. We learn the provincial administration best from
the history of Gaul, to which, owing to its great importance,
' Augustus directed his especial interest and which nobly paid
its debt of gratitude to Rome by thoroughly absorbing and
successfully developing Roman culture. Under Augustus
Lugudunum (Lyons) became the centre of the three Gallic
provinces ( Aquitania, Lugudunensis, Belgica) and the second
capital of the world-empire.

Not only Gaul but the whole northern frontier of the
empire were constantly disturbed by the movements of the
Germanic tribes, against whom, despite the peaceful ten-
dency of his reign, Augustus was forced to decree vigorous
military operations. The Germanic wars had two bases in
particular, the lines of the Danube and the Rhine. In the
sons of his third wife Livia, Tiberius Claudius Nero and
Nero Claudius Drusus, Augustus found two capable generals.

After the lands south of the Upper Danube, Raetia,
Noricum, and Pannonia, had been brought under the imperial
administration, Tiberius in the years 12-9 B.C. secured the
lower bed of the Danube against the people pressing in from
the north, Getae and Bastarnae, and created the new province
of Moesia out of the territory lying between the Danube on
one side and the northern frontier of Illyria, Macedonia, and
the dependent state of Thrace on the other. At the same
time his brother Drusus, by the famous campaigns between
the Rhine and Elbe to which among other places the fort of
Aliso on the Lippe and the Saalburg in the Taunus owe

THE RULE OF AUGUSTUS 113

their origin, extended Roman supremacy as far as the Elbe ;
and after his sudden death (9) Tiberius secured these con-
quests with the utmost skill, so that in this period the
Provincia Germania implied a real possession of the empire.
It was not until the governor P. Quinctilius Varus, who by
his blundering administration had provoked the rising of the
Germans under Arminius, had met with the crushing defeat
of the Teutoburger Wald ^ (9 a.d.) that the frontier had to be
drawn back to the line of the Rhine. The Rhine and Danube
now marked the northern border of the empire, which a series
of stately fortresses was to secure — Castra Vetera (Xanten),
Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), Moguntiacum (Mainz),
Augusta Rauracorum (Augst near Bale), Augusta Vindeli-
corum (Augsburg), Castra Batavorum (Passau), Vindobona
(Vienna), &c.

In the Orient, which Augustus repeatedly visited, aifairs
permitted of a more peaceful arrangement. From the
Parthians, who had been chastised for the defeat neither of
Crassus nor of Antonius, Augustus obtained in 20 r.c. through
diplomatic negotiations the restoration of the captured Roman
standards, an event that was celebrated by the vain Roman
people like a victory. He did not arrive at a real settlement
of the difficult Eastern frontier questions, in which a great
part was played by Armenia, the object of Parthian ambition ;
but the credit of the Roman name was preserved amidst all
the everlasting changes of tenancy in the Eastern territories,
and commercial relations were able to extend as far as India.
From Syria frequent interferences were made in the adminis-
tration of Judaea, which at last was wholly incorporated in
the Roman province ; and from Egypt the legions carried
the fame of the Roman name as far as Arabia and
Ethiopia.

Harder strife was needed to bring back to obedience the
restless Spanish tribes of the Cantabri and Astures, which
even threatened to interfere in Gaul. The skilful generalship

1 With regard to the locality of the battle no certain conclusions can

be drawn.

114 ROMAN HISTORY

of Agrippa (20-19 b.c.) at length succeeded in establishing
here complete peace and creating a field favourable to the
spread of Roman culture.

The Assistants and Family of Augustus — The Succession, —
Among the men who stood near to Augustus and supported
his government with a complete sacrifice of their own per-
sonality, two particularly deserve mention. In domestic
politics C. Cilnius Maecenas, a man of ancient Etruscan
nobility, stood by the Emperor's side as a kind of diplomatic
mediator in a position based solely on the bond of confidence.
Aristocratic courtier and wisest protector of all the arts of
peace, the great patron of Horace and Vergil, he may pass as
the representative of the monarchical culture of the Augustan
age. The military founder of the monarchy on the other
hand was M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the victor of Actium, who
has often been mentioned above. His thoroughly practical
character approved itself not only in generalship but also in
organising the national administration. His services were
so brilliant and so indispensable that Augustus by the assign-
ment of the tribunicia potestas made him his associate in the
government and even married him to his only daughter Julia,
intending that the issue of this union should be appointed to
succeed him.

But it was not vouchsafed to Augustus to bequeath the
rule of the world to a descendant of his blood. The hopes
placed on the wedlock of Julia and Agrippa were indeed so
far realised that two sons were born of it, Gaius and Lucius
Caesar, whom their grandfather adopted at once ; but both
princes died before him. The Emperor then resolved to
appoint as his associate in the government and successor his
little-loved stepson Tiberius, whom after the death of Agrippa
in the year 12 B.C. he had forced to break off his present
happy married life and wed Julia, with the condition that he
should pass over his own son Drusus and adopt Germanicus,
the son of his deceased brother Drusus.

When Augustus died on the 14th August 14 a.d. at Nola
in Campania, the position of things was so secure that Tiberius

TIBERIUS 115

could assume the supremacy without opposition. Augustus
left behind no hostile political groups ; the feeble attempts
at revolt against his monarchy which had now and again been
made he had always promptly and effectually suppressed.
The durability of his great life's work was now attested by
the unopposed bequeathment of the throne.

§ 36. Tiberius, 14-37 a.d.

Domestic Politics and Administration. — Tiberius Claudius
Nero, the elder son of Livia by her first marriage, entitled
himself as Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus. Endowed
by nature with an unpliant character tending to eccentricity
in all forms, and embittered by a long life of neglect — for on
his accession to the throne he already counted 55 years — the
second Emperor did not succeed in associating with his own
personality that enthusiasm for the new form of the State
which Augustus had contrived to awaken in the general
masses of the people, and especially in the provinces. Withal
his rule was no less meritorious than that of his great pre-
decessor.

In the development of the monarchy Tiberius went a step
further than Augustus by not causing his position, like the
former, to be guaranteed anew from time to time by the
Senate, but regarding it as an incontestable property, as
indeed it had proved itself by its bequeathment. Otherwise
Tiberius too showed himself most cautious and considerate in
his dealings with the Senate, and even raised its importance
by transferring to it all elections, which were taken away
from the meetings of the people, and by depriving the latter
in practice, though not in theory, of even ihe power of intro-
ducing laws. Emperor and Senate, the latter restricted by
the Emperor's right of nomination and commendation, are
now the only legislative factors. The sovereign will of the
ruler showed itself equally in an innovation strongly opposed
to republican feeling ; the whole bodyguard, which hitherto
had only been quartered to a very small extent in Rome, was

ii6 ROMAN HISTORY

now concentrated in the capital,^ and thus the position of the
Prefect of the Guard [praefectus praetorio) became more and
more influential at the expense of the Senate. This decision
was due to the man then holding this office, Aelius Seianus,
who was Tiberius' right hand. At the same time the Senate
had to surrender to the Emperor the command over the
* city cohorts ' intended for duties of police ; the City-Prefect
[praefectus urb'i)^ as their commander was entitled, became after
the Prefect of the Guard the most important Imperial officer.

The administration enjoyed continuous surveillance by
Tiberius, which found expression among other ways in the
numerous indictments of oppressive provincial officials i^rerum
repetundarum) , Like Augustus, he sought to bring an
improving and helpful influence to bear on all departments,
and his rule in every respect increased that happy condition
of the empire which his predecessor had founded. If never-
theless a strong opposition against him grew up in aristocratic
circles, it was his reserved and imperious character that was
to blame, no less than the unhappy^infl.uence of the ambitious
Prefect Seianus, the sole possessor of the Emperor's con-
fidence. The latter half of his reign swarmed with pro-
secutions and executions for misprision of treason (^maiesfas),
a juristic idea that arose under Tiberius ; and the outspoken
feeling of the capital induced him in the year 26 to entirely
leave Rome and to make his home partly in Campania and
partly on the island of Capri.

Foreign Politics and Wars, — The legions on the Rhine and
Danube had profited by the change of rulers to extort by
revolts an improvement in their condition, viz. a shortening
of the period of service from twenty-five to sixteen years and
an increase of pay. It was only with difficulty that this
dangerous rising was suppressed on the Danube by Seianus,
on the Rhine by the Emperor's nephew and adopted son
Germanicus. The latter, with his ambitious wife Agrippina,

1 The enclosing walls of the Castra Praetoriana are still preserved in
so far as they were included in the Aurelian city-wall ; they encircle the
Campo Militare between Porta Pia and Porta San Lorenzo.

TIBERIUS 117

the daughter of Julia and Agrippa, was in the habit of
crossing the Emperor's plans ; and now in entire opposition
to Tiberius' purposes he deemed it advisable to assail the
Germans anew. In the years 14 to 16 he undertook several
campaigns against the Marsi, Chatti, and Cherusci, and gained
some victories which stamped him in the eyes of the public
as a great general, but which brought no gain to the Roman
supremacy. Tiberius therefore, averse to any policy of
conquest, recalled him from his post, and after allowing him
to celebrate a brilliant triumph allotted him another mission,
in Asia (17). The position of commander-in-chief in
Germany was not filled up again ; two legates shared the
military and juridical administration of the province. The
waiting policy of Tiberius with regard to the Germans was
soon to prove its value. Their never ceasing internal quarrels
led to a great war between the Suabian kingdom founded
by Marbod, which Tiberius himself had combated from
Pannonia with general success, and the Saxon tribes led by
Arminius. The creation of Marbod was destroyed ; he him-
self sought the protection of Rome and died in Ravenna.
Arminius however, the * liberator of Germany,' fell a victim
to family discords (21).

In the East the affairs of Parthia and Armenia were again
such as to make a display of Roman power seem desirable.
The task that was here imposed on Germanicus was however
not clear ; and it was rendered much more difficult — as was
assuredly intended — by the fact that the proud prince was to
share the command with the governor of Syria, Cn. Calpur-
nius Piso, an ambitious man of the noblest origin. This led
to endless disputes as to official rights, which were further
envenomed by the wives of both men-; and when Germanicus
died in the year 19 Piso was accused of murder, and although
his innocence was proved in the trial he took his own life in
prison. The people however, who worshipped Germanicus
and his family, actually cast the blame for the death of their
darling on the Emperor, and from this time the hatred of
Tiberius grew.

ii8 ROMAN HISTORY

Family Relations and Succession, — Tiberius had from his
first marriage a son Drusus, whom he had been forced by
the command of Augustus to pass over in favour of his
nephew Germanicus. No children had issued from his
second marriage with JuHa, who on account of her scan-
dalous life had been banished by her own father. Thus
Tiberius could hope after the death of Germanicus to secure
the succession for the son of his body. Against this design
was spun at the court a mesh of the most odious intrigue,
which had a terrible effect on the Emperor, already inclined
as he was by nature to suspicion. Three parties sought to
win the first place. At the head of one stood the old
Empress Livia, to whom Augustus had devised a share in
the supremacy and who thought herself insufficiently regarded
by her son ; she died in 29. The second was represented
by the ambitious Agrippina, who wished to procure the
succession for her own and Germanicus' children. The
third was formed by the Prefect of the Guard Seianus, the
Emperor's trusted favourite, and the depraved wife of
Drusus, Livilla ; they removed Drusus by poison in 23
and aimed at supremacy for themselves. Seianus succeeded
in entangling Agrippina and her sons in charges of treason and
rendering them harmless ; but when he himself in the year
3 1 proceeded to conspiracy for the speedier attainment of his
purpose, Tiberius was warned at the last moment and was
able to forestall and crush his disloyal confidant. In the
whole imperial family there now survived only two princes
who were to be considered for the succession — Gaius the
youngest son of Germanicus, and Tiberius (Gemellus) a son
of Drusus and Livilla, who was however weighted with the
suspicion of illegitimacy owing to his mother's relations with
Seianus. Nevertheless Tiberius with his sense of justice
seems to have devised to him by his will an equal share with
Gaius. Such was the settlement of the succession, the sad
conclusion of a terrible domestic drama.

The old Emperor spent the last years of his life in his
solitude on Capri in an ever increasing horror of society and

GAIUS, CLAUDIUS, AND NERO 119

bitterness, as the result of which we must regard the count-
less impeachments for treason in that period. The people re-
sponded to the Emperor whom they had pitilessly driven away
and hated with a Chromque Scandaleuse of his course of life ;
from its loathsome details, as given to us by the gossiping
Suetonius, the reader turns away with disgust and unbelief.
The present age at length is beginning to pass a more correct
judgment on this ruler, who especially in his domestic policy
is to be reckoned among the greatest of all Roman Em-
perors. He died at the age of 78 on Capri, probably by a
natural death.

§ 37. The Emperors Gaius, Claudius, and Nero,
37-41 a.d.

Gains Caesar (nicknamed Caligula^ 'army-boot'), a young
man who had grown up in every enjoyment and vice, had
escaped the suspicion of Tiberius during the trial of his
mother Agrippina and his brothers only by his great skill in
deception. With the aid of this he also contrived to win great
popularity in the early part of his reign as long as he felt himself
still unsafe. His cousin and adoptive brother Tiberius Gemellus
he speedily caused to be put out .of the way. By accurately
defining the jurisdictions of Emperor and Senate in favour of
the latter, by restoring the comitial elections suppressed by
Tiberius, by abolishing unpopular taxes, tolerance of foreign
worships and the like, he won over Commons and Senate ; and
even in the provinces he enjoyed the same credit because he
was generous in bestowing the precious Roman citizenship.
But when the great savings which the wise financial adminis-
tration of Tiberius had stored up in the public treasury had
been dissipated in most extravagant and often quite sense-
less undertakings, the true character of the prince revealed
itself; he was heartless, capable of never a great thought,
morally rotten. The recently abolished impeachments for
treason were renewed, for they gave opportunities for great
confiscations; heavy taxes, such as the income tax of 12J

I20 ROMAN HISTORY

per cent., were introduced ; in every possible way money
was to be wrung out of the people. At the same time the
Emperor made his scandalous course of life more and more
public, seeking to gain from the halo of his apotheosis^ a
justification for all conceivable deeds, which now earned the
applause only of the rabble, which was stupefied by mon-
strous festive splendours.

An equally ridiculous and bootless expedition into Germany
and against Britain (39-40) was designed to blind the soldiers
to his unworthy sway of empire and procure for himself a
cheap triumph. But the patience of the Romans lasted no
longer; in January 41 he was murdered by a few high
officers during the Palatine Games.

The reign of jGaius, in which it is customary to recognise
the first type of ' Caesarian madness,' remained without the
least influence on the later development of Imperial history.
As a result of his murder a not uninteresting reaction in favour
of former conditions was displayed, the Senate for a moment
hoping to be able to restore the republic or at least to take
into its own hands the decision as to the succession. But
before the Senate proceeded to action the question as to the
tenancy of the throne was already settled.

Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, usually entitled simply
Claudius, brother of Germanicus and uncle of Gaius (41-54),
was raised to the throne by the praetorians, who were as
little desirous as the commons for a return to senatorial
rule ; the Senate perforce confirmed him. To no one can
this appointment have been more surprising than to the
Emperor himself. From youth he had been thrust into the
background by his family owing to his sickliness ; he had
spent his years in learned dilettantism, without ever rising to
the surface of political life. Nevertheless Claudius ruled
with ability, plainly following the principles of Tiberius.
To him belongs the credit, among other things, of incor-
porating Britain as a province in the empire (43) ; its posses-

1 It was this Emperor who demanded the erection of his statue in
the temple at Jerusalem, which was frustrated by a rising of the Jews.

GAIUS, CLAUDIUS, AND NERO 121

sion ever since Caesar had seemed desirable to the Romans in
view of the relations between the Kelts of the mainland and
the islands. Thrace also became a province in his reign, and
the prestige of the empire in the East (Syria, Palestine,
Parthia) was vigorously maintained sword in hand.

Internal government too was careful, and brought some
gratifying changes ; in particular the Emperor directed his
interest to the improvement of the legal administration, for
which he displayed a real passion. Agriculture was aided
most effectually by draining the Fucine Lake, and commerce,
especially the corn trade, profited by a magnificent extension
of the harbour of Ostia. The imperial attention was turned
to the provinces as well, notably to Gaul, whose citizens
received from Claudius the qualification to hold all Roman
offices (the ius honorum) and therewith access to the Senate ;
it was one of the most important steps towards romanising
the provinces.

How far the wise measures of Claudius are to be put to
the account of his advisers, the freedmen Narcissus and
Pallas, is beyond our knowledge ; on the other hand we
know that both exercised an often harmful influence on the
Emperor, who displayed far too great a weakness in dealing
with such cabals of favourites and still more with women.
The revolting vices of a Julia and Livilla were revived in the
ladies of the Claudian court ; the Emperor's first wife, the
infamous Valeria Messalina, whom Narcissus put out of the
way in 48, was followed by the younger Agrippina, who had
her mother's ambition and had ensnared the Emperor for the
sole purpose of obtaining the succession for her son by an
earlier marriage, L. Domitius Nero. With the aid of the
devoted Pallas she succeeded in inducing the Emperor to
pass over his own son Britannicus, adopt his stepson Nero,
and even wed him to his daughter Octavia (53). When
the Claudian party, headed by Narcissus, threatened to under-
mine Agrippina's influence, she caused her husband to be
poisoned and attained her object ; her son Nero could suc-
ceed without difficulty to the throne (54).

122 ROMAN HISTORY

Claudius fell a victim to his excessive weakness for the
female sex ; but in view of his administration of the empire
he did not deserve to figure in tradition as little better than
the ridiculous clown as which Seneca, Nero's witty tutor,,
sought to brand him by the malicious satire parodying his
* deification.' ^ In the case of Claudius, as of Tiberius, later
ages have admitted a juster estimate.

Nero Claudius Caesar (54-68) at first shared the govern-
ment with his mother Agrippina, who indeed appears by his
side on coins. The Senate, supported by the Prefect of the
Guard Burrus and the Emperor's influential tutor Seneca,
formed a counter-party ; they succeeded in gradually ousting
the ambitious Augusta and guiding the young prince for some
years in the ways of wise moderation. As in the early years
of Gaius, whom Nero greatly resembles, the empire in the
first third of his reign enjoyed a happy condition which was
only for a time imperilled in Britain (60-61). Here the
governor Suetonius Paullinus sought to extend the hold of
the empire and thereby brought on a revolt which was stirred
up by the national druidism, and in the course of which the
chief centres of Roman culture, Camalodunum (Colchester)
and Londinium (London), fell before the fury of the Kelts.
Suetonius however was at last victorious; after his recall,
which was due to his bad administration, peace was again
established (66-68). A determined rising of the Jews,
which T. Flavius Vespasianus was charged to suppress, Nero
did not live to see ended.

The dark sides of Nero's character, which the dissimula-
tion of years had cloaked, revealed themselves just when he
felt himself threatened in his position of supremacy. Seek-
ing to avenge herself for being supplanted, Agrippina
approached the ousted Britannicus, Claudius' own son,
perhaps to play him as a trump card against Nero. Nero
poisoned his adoptive brother and pursued his mother with a

1 This so-called Apocolocyntosis (' pumpkinification,' perhaps more
correctly Apotheosis) Caesa7'is of Seneca is one of the most amusing if
most biting pamphlets of antiquity.

GAIUS, CLAUDIUS, AND NERO 123

hate that was only appeased when at his orders she was
murdered (59). Henceforth no restraints existed for the
Emperor. Spurning the formerly privileged Senate and his
previous guides, he yielded himself entirely to his own
caprices and desires. The woman's rule that had already
so often brought disaster on the Julian house began anew,
and one of the most notorious ladies of the knightly aris-
tocracy, Poppaea Sabina, became the Imperial consort and
Augusta, after Nero's first wife Octavia, the sister of Britan-
nicus, had been repudiated and then murdered on one of the
most abominable impeachments of the whole Imperial age
(62). Owing to Nero's measureless extravagance a financial
crisis soon arose, and was further intensified by a crushing
calamity that befell the capital, the notorious fire of the year
64. This very reason excludes the possibility that the
Emperor himself caused the fire, which consumed nearly
half the city ; but he felt himself called upon to take
account of the gossip of the people which accused him of
it, and he therefore directed suspicion upon one of the
most despised religious sects that Rome of that day had to
shew, the Christians, whose name on this occasion appears
for the first time, and in bloody letters, in Roman tradition.
Nero interested himself with gratifying zeal in the rebuilding
of the city ; but here too he could not restrain his morbid
extravagance, as is proved by the construction ,of his magnifi-
cent palace, the Domus Aurea or * Golden House' (66-67).
The same want of moderation shewed itself in the journey
to Greece, whither the vain Emperor was called by his
dilettante interest In musical competitions, owing to which
he declared the province free, recompensing the Senate
for this loss by resigning the Island of Sardinia. To
remedy his financial straits Nero had recourse to one of
the most disastrous measures of statesmanship, ordaining the
first depreciation of the currency, which necessarily under-
mined all credit.

Under such circumstances discontent with the Neronlan
rule increased In all circles, and conspiracies followed by

124 ROMAN HISTORY ^

cruel impeachments (Seneca was a victim) were the order
of the day ; even the Guard was no longer to be trusted, as
the striking impeachment of Piso shewed. The decision
however came this time from the legions on the frontier of
the empire. The attempt of the Keltic governor of Gaul,
C. Julius Vindex, to make himself Emperor had been frus-
trated from jealousy by the governor of Upper Germany;
the Spanish legions now proclaimed as emperor their general,
P. Sulpicius Galba, in answer to the ban set upon him
by Nero. The Guard approved this step of the legions,
and the Senate at once declared Nero under ban. The
Emperor came to his end by his own hand in the villa of a
freedman, to whom he had fled (June 68). With him
the Julian House was extinguished.

§ 38. The Flavians, 69-96 a.d.

For a year it seemed as though the empire were now to fall under
the doom of owing its ruler to the will of the legions and praetorians.
Galba, appointed Emperor by the Spanish troops, could win no con-
fidence in Rome, and was removed by M. Salvius Otho (Jan. 69),
who however enjoyed the purple only for a quarter of a year ; when
the nominee of the German legions, A. Vitellius, gained a victory over
him at Cremona he slew himself (Apr. 69). To Vitellius however the
troops of the East opposed a claimant in their tried general Vespasi-
anus, and after prolonged struggles, which reached their conclusion
in Rome itself, Vitellius was slain and Vespasianus recognised by the
capital (Dec. 69).

Flavius Vespasianus (69-7^), already sixty years of age
on his ascension to the throne, addressed himself with the
utmost earnestness and skill to the difficult task of bringing
order into the disorganised affairs of the empire. He was
particularly mindful to restore the discipline of the legions
and praetorians, now sapped by the evenis of the * Year of
the Three Emperors,' and to strengthen the empire's sorely
enfeebled taxable powers. His thoroughly creditable frugality
however did not prevent him from spending great sums on
great ends ; he built a famous temple to the Goddess of Peace
{Templum Pacts) and the gigantic Amph'itheatrum Flavi-

THE FLAVIANS 125

anum, the modern Colosseum. To the Senate he left a wide
sphere of independence, though vigorously checking en-
croachments upon his rights by the aristocrats who would
not pay due regard to a Princeps sprung of a mere knightly
family, as e,g, in the impeachment of Helvidius Priscus.
Connected with this is the ejection of the philosophers, of
whom the representatives of the Stoic doctrine especially
cultivated in their adherents a sentimental opposition to
monarchy, based upon republican enthusiasm but withal
senseless. To the practice of the law Vespasian devoted
especial interest. By the SQ"Called^>\: refria Vesf>astnni an v'
advance was made in the development of monarchy, as hence-
forth the imperium for life was bestowed on the emperors on
their ascension.

The troubles of the year 69 had led on various points
of the wide frontier to military movements. Two wars are
particularly associated with the name of Vespasian, although
he personally ended neither. In 69 the Batavi, dwelling
north of the Lower Rhine, had risen under the leadership
of their countryman Julius Civilis against Vitellius and after
his death had kept up the struggle against the new govern-
ment also. The rising threatened to grow all the more
perilous as the Gauls too became entangled in it and the
Roman troops, consisting mainly of natives, joined in the
movement. Numerous forts of the Romans on the line of
the Rhine were destroyed before Petilius Cerialis after several
victories overpowered the rising (70). A peace which left
to the Batavi their position as socii of the Romans concluded
this war of independence. Far more toilsome was the
continuance of the Jewish war commenced by Vespasian,
with which the Emperor's elder son, the Caesar Titus, was
charged. After four months of siege (April- August 70), Y
Jerusalem was completely destroyed and Judaea sundereoas
a distinct province from Syria. The conflicts with the
Jewish people, who defended themselves with the valour of
desperation, had been throughout bloody, and had claimed
great sacrifices on either side ; equally terrible was the

126 ROMAN HISTORY

vengeance which the victor inflicted upon the conquered.
The last struggles were prolonged into the year 72 ; but
already in 71 Titus with his father celebrated a brilliant
triumph over the Jews (represented on the famous Arch of
Titus on the top of the Via Sacra). In June 79 Vespasian
died after a beneficent reign. He was followed by his elder
son

Titus (79-81), who already in the year 70 had received,
together with his brother Domitianus, the rank of a Caesar.
His brief reign figures in the senatorially coloured tradition
as one of peculiar happiness, a proof that he must have
displayed great forbearance towards the Senate. To this
circumstance he also owes the honourable title amor et deliciae
generis humant, ' darling and delight of the human race.'
Under Titus began the campaigns of Agricola in Britain
(see below). Two heavy calamities fell upon Italy during
his reign. On the 24th August 7Q the famous eruption of
Vesuvius ^ buried the flourishing towns of Pompeii, Hercula-
neum, and Stabiae, and a few months later a fire caused great
damage in Rome. In September 8 1 Titus suddenly died ;
he was followed by his brother

Domitianus (81-96), whom the Opposition of senate and
aristocracy that had arisen already under his father drove at
length into paths which gained for him the reputation of
a second Nero. At first Domitian took up his task of empire
with enthusiasm and personally interested himself in all
branches of the administration and practice of the law,
strictly regulating also the provincial oflRcials. Arts and
sciences enjoyed his favour. But the reproach of soldier-
kingship clung to the house of the Flavii, and the proud
Domitian scorned to meet it by flattery of the Senate and
aristocracy, as Titus certainly did. For this he was pur-
sued by them with a deadly hate, which found expression
even in literature ; and thus were aroused in the Emperor
distrust and suspicion, particularly towards real merit. On

1 Here perished the elder Plinius, the well-known author of the
Historia Naturalis.

THE FLAVIANS 127

this account jealousy led him to recall in the year 84 the
able commander Cn. Julius Agricola,! who since 77 had
been extending the dominion of Rome with the utmost
success, subduing the island of Mona (Anglesea) and Scot-
land up to the Firth of Tay. The Emperor himself fought
with less good fortune in the territory of the Rhine and
Lower Danube ; he notably failed to finally conquer De-
cebalus, who threatened the province of Moesia, and actually
bought peace by a yearly gift of money. He nevertheless
celebrated triumphs in Rome and secured for himself the
titles Germankus and Daclcus — an indication of the degree to
which his ambition was inflamed. In the last years of his
reign a kind of mania for prosecution seems to have de-
veloped in Domitian, from which at last his nearest associates
no longer felt safe. In September 96 he was murdered ;
the Senate pursued his memory with fury, striking it off
from all public monuments, while historians like Tacitus and
Suetonius and poets like Juvenal wrote in gall the description
of the last Flavian which they have transmitted to posterity.

CHAPTER IX

The ' Golden Age ' of the Roman Empire

(From Nerva until the Death of Marcus Aurelius,
96-180 A.D. )

The Senate who had made the hfe of the detested Domitian so hard
to bear came forward at once after his death with a candidate accept-
able to themselves, who promised to be a pliant tool in their hands
and later transmitted the heritage of empire agreeably to their wishes.
The next Emperors — Trajan, Hadrian, the Antonines — contrived to
leave to that actually impotent but still conceited corporation the
feeling of an imaginary importance, and in return the senatorially
coloured tradition has suiToimded their figures with the halo which
makes this period even now seem the happiest of the Roman Empire.

1 The father-in-law of Tacitus, to whom the famous historian has
raised a permanent monument in a biography.

128 ROMAN HISTORY

It did really produce able emperors ; and yet in it those weaknesses
already distinctly appear which were to undermine the proud structure
of imperialism. The impoverishment of a population burdened with a
monstrous load of taxation, the dislike to spend money in taking part
in public administration, the inability to meet the expenditure on the
army needed for the defence of the borders, and consequently the
impossibihty of sufficiently protecting the enormously long frontier
lines — these symptoms of decay display themselves more and more
often.

§ 39. Nerva and Trajan.

M, Coccetus Nerva (96-98), the man after the Senate's
own heart, was a senator sixty years of age of whom not
much more could be said than that he had a reputation for
remarkable juristic ability and very skilful political tactics in
relation to the different reigns of the last ten years. His
performances shew in many respects a reaction, due to his
connexion with the Senate, against the previous development
of monarchy. There was importance in the ' alimentations '
originated by him, a charity-fund endowed by the imperial
bounty which was to assist poor Roman citizens in acquiring
land or bringing up their children.

The consciousness of his own weakness, which was most
distinctly revealed in his behaviour towards the praetorians
when they demanded punishment for the murderers of Domi-
tian, led the Emperor to adopt the talented governor of
Upper Germany, M. Ulpius Traianus. A few months later
Nerva died.

Imperaior Caesar Nerva Traianus^ as the new Emperor
officially styled himself (98-1 1 7), was sprung of an old Roman
family, and born at Italica in Spain. By his father he had been
trained to be a good officer. To this he owed also his appoint-
ment to the command on the Rhine, which on account of
the continual danger from the Germans was reckoned one
of great responsibility. Trajan is said to be the founder of
the famous Itmes^ or frontier fortification, which has of late
been accurately traced, and which, running from the Taunus
to Altmlihl, was designed to defend against the irruptions
of the Germans the district taken already in Domitian's

NERVA AND TRAJAN 129

time from them to safeguard the Rhine frontier. It was
only after the settlement of German affairs that the new
Emperor returned to Rome (99). His virtues as a general,
which recalled Caesar, gained him the enthusiastic admiration
of the soldiers ; and he succeeded also in winning over the
Senate by respectful behaviour and the people by liberal
largesses and games. He did not however stay long in the
capital.

Next to the pacification of the Rhine frontier, it was
necessarily one of the most important military tasks of a
vigorous Emperor to chastise the Dacian king Decebalus,
who ever since Domitian's far from creditable peace had
assumed a more and more threatening attitude, and to put an
end to the annoyances from him. After two wars, waged
after most careful preparation with the utmost perseverance
(101-102 and 105-1.07), Trajan succeeded in breaking the
stubborn resistance of the Dacians and incorporating their
land in the empire as a new province (Roumania). Dece-
balus took his own life, and his chief stronghold Sarmizege-
thusa (now Varhely) was converted into the colony of
Ulpia Traiana. The Emperor received the title Dacicus?-
Two other provinces, both of them however without import-
ance for the future, were added in Trajan's reign to the
Roman imperlum. The governor of Syria conquered a part
of Arabia, which from the city of Petra was called Petraea
( 1 14-1 1 7); and Trajan himself in the Parthian war, of
which he did not live to see the conclusion, was able to
absorb as a province the much contested Armenia, which
however was surrendered again by his successor.

Of Trajan's domestic administration we know that it was
carried on with admirable care, and numerous magnificent
ruins within and without Rome still yield eloquent testi-
mony to his public-spirited energy in building ; such are the,
Forum Tralani in Rome with the Basilica of five naves,

1 Events of these Dacian campaigns are figured on the famous
' Trajan's Column ' in spirally rising high reliefs, in an apparently-
historic sequence of time and place.

130 ROMAN HISTORY

two libraries, and 'Trajan's Column.' Arts and sciences
flourished to a high degree ; literature can show men like
Tacitus, Juvenal, and the younger Plinius, with whom the
Emperor himself kept up an active correspondence.

During his Parthian campaign, which had brought him
down the Tigris as far as the Persian Gulf, Trajan died in
Cilicia (August 117); he was followed — though probably
not on the ground of a supposititious will — by his long
proved and constantly favoured kinsman P. Aelius Hadri-
anus, the husband of a grand-daughter of Trajan's sister, and
at the time commander of the Syrian legions.

§ 40. Hadrian, iij-i'^S a.d.

Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianiis learned in Antioch of
the death of Trajan and was at once greeted by his army as
Emperor, a proof that his right to the succession was open to
no doubt. In him one of the greatest of rulers mounted the
throne of the Caesars ; he is one of the few representatives in
antiquity of the modern principle that the prince is the first
servant of the State. It is lamentable that we are not better
informed as to this man's life ; his contemporaries certainly
did not know how to appreciate him.

External Politics, — Through his own eminent ability as a
soldier Hadrian clearly recognised the impossibility of con-
tinuing or even maintaining Trajan's conquests. He therefore
gave up all the provinces beyond the Euphrates as well as
Armenia, and on this basis concluded peace with the
Parthians. His entire efforts aimed at a strong defence of
the frontiers ; he is said to have completed the German limes
begun by Trajan. He constructed a quite similar frontier
fortification in Britain, where the conflicts with the valiant
inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands continually entailed
fieavy losses ; by the so-called ' Pictish Wall ' running from
the mouth of the Tyne to Sol way Firth the sphere of Roman
authority was delimited and secured against the inroads of the
northern tribes. Under Hadrian too there arose on a third

HADRIAN 131

endangered point of the imperial frontier, the Lower Danube,
a line of fortifications which stretched to the Black Sea and
were designed to keep back the restless hordes of the South
Russian steppes. While thus Hadrian decidedly approved
himself a prince of peace, he still recognised that a com-
petent army is the only practical security against war, and
therefore devoted to it particular interest ; his military refor-
mation, which aimed at improvement of the subaltern staft
and more serviceable battle-tactics, long remained of great
value.

Of the wars into which Kadrian found himself forced
only one need be mentioned, the Jewish War (132-134),
which certainly was due to the Emperor himself. In order
to put an end to the restless nation's political hopes of a
Messiah, still sturdily nourished by the rabbis, he founded in
132 a Roman soldier- colony, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins
of Jerusalem, in which a sanctuary of the Capitoline Jupiter
arose on the site of the ancient temple of God. This foun-
dation and the prohibition of circumcision aroused one of
those outbreaks of passionate fury which we have often come
upon in the history of this race. Under the guidance of a
certain Bar-Kochba, who claimed to be the Messiah, the
Jews revolted against the Roman supremacy ; but after two
bloody years of war, in which the Emperor himself appeared
in Palestine, they were crushed almost out of existence.
Judaea was practically stripped of population ; from this time
dates the complete dispersion of the Jews over the civilised
world. The colony Aelia Capitolina was closed to them ; a
heavy tax pressed upon those who remained in the Roman
empire. In view of Hadrian's great aversion to military
operations, the war against the Jews can only be explained
in the same way as the punishments inflicted upon Christians
by the same Emperor and to a greater extent by others after
him ; the monarchical principle, as well as the Imperial
sentiment, could hardly deal otherwise than violently with
subjects who on the ground of peculiar religious views dis-
regarded the laws of the State.

132 ROMAN HISTORY

Internal Administration, — By his first measure of domestic
politics, consisting in a tax-abatement of about ^95,000,000
and in the establishment of a new period of assessment (every
fifteen years), Hadrian showed that he here too recognised
the point from which an improvement of affairs must begin.
The finances of the municipalities were especially disordered ;
Hadrian therefore, continuing an idea of Trajan, sent to
them imperial auditors to inspect their financial management.
Although the self-administration of the municipalities was
thereby gradually undermined, this measure on the other
hand implies an advance towards that removal of the
distinction between fatherland and provinces which was
first completed by Caracalla. In his famous journeys through
the empire, which lasted several years (121-126 and 129—
134), Hadrian learned the needs of all the nations subject
to him and sought throughout to do them justice on the
broadest scale.

This Emperor also brought about an important change
in the sphere of the higher administration by creating a
special Civil Service staff to be chosen from the knightly
order, with definite divisions of salary and rank ; hitherto
all the administrative officers had come out from the
military service. In the department of law too Hadrian
was zealously active ; his edictum perpetuum, a collection
of important decisions by praetors, became the groundwork
of the later Corpus Juris,

Magnificent constructions throughout the empire (basilicas,
theatres, baths, bridges, roads, aqueducts) testify to the
public- spirited energy of the Emperor as a builder ; in
Rome the ruins of the mighty temple of Venus and Rome,
the Pons Ael'tus, and the Castello di Sant' Angelo [moles
Hadriani) recall his name to this day. He personally
practised many arts and sciences, and led the literature of
his age into peculiar new paths (an archaising tendency).
Despite his brilliant gifts as a ruler he did not succeed in
winning the confidence of the noble circles surrounding him;
his capriciousness, which tolerated no contradiction, repelled

THE ANTONINES 133

many from him. The Senate too did not think itself
sufficiently regarded, and when the Emperor had died in
July 138 of dropsy this meanly vindictive corporation would
have gladly executed the damnatio memoriae upon the dead
man if his successor had not prevented it.

§41. The Antonines, ij8-i8o a.d.

T, Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius, as Hadrian's adopted
son T. Aurelius Antoninus named himself (i 38-161),
had been led by his own childlessness to adopt already
in Hadrian's lifetime L. Verus and his nephew M. Annius
Verus (the later Emperor Marcus Aurelius). Thus the
succession appeared secure for some time.

The government of Antoninus Pius moved generally
on the hnes laid down by his adoptive father. He only
decided on military operations when they were urgently
demanded by the defence of the frontier or disturbances
among the subject peoples. Thus in his reign the wall laid
down by Hadrian in Britain was pushed up further to the
North, and now ran from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth.
On the eastern frontier of the Empire the Parthians once
more threatened to disturb the peace ; but by a personal
discussion with their king Volagases HI. Antoninus was
able to prevent an outbreak of hostilities. In his internal
government also the Emperor continued the efforts of
Hadrian, endowing public charities, promoting sciences
and arts, and caring for a good administration of the law.
He died in 161. The Senate honoured his memory by
consecrating the temple by the Forum, which had been
dedicated by him to his departed wife Faustina, to the
Divus Antoninus as well ; it is still partly preserved.

M. Aurelius Antoninus (161-180) and L, Verus, the
adopted sons of Antoninus Pius, carried on the government
in common until the death of Vltus (161-169), although
the foremost place was always taken by the stronger char-
acter of Marcus Aurelius, who had also become the son-in-

134 ROMAN HISTORY

law of the deceased Emperor. Contrary to his peaceful
sentiments, Marcus found himself driven into an almost
uninterrupted series of campaigns which on the whole pre-
served indeed the credit of the Roman name, but withal
revealed clearly the weakness of the defence of the frontiers.
The Parthian war (162-166), in which L. Verus proved
his own incapacity, was concluded in 166 with a triumph;
but it brought terrible injury upon the Roman people, for a
desolating pestilence followed in its train. Far more weari-
some was the Marcomannian war (167-180), to which both
Emperors set out after ending the Parthian campaign. Years
ago the German tribes of Marcomanni and Quadi had
begun to cross the Danube in forays which reached as far
as Upper Italy and formed a serious danger for the empire.
The struggles on the Danube, with an interruption of a
few years (175-177), in which Marcus was called by the
revolt of the Syrian governor to Asia, lasted on until the
death of the Emperor, which occurred in March 180 at
Vindobona (Vienna).

Marcus Aurelius, who from his practice of the Stoic
philosophy received the title of ' The Philosopher,' was a
man of the noblest spirit and simple kindly character.^ As
far as the wars waged against his own inclination permitted
it, he devoted himself in the spirit of Hadrian and his
predecessor to the duties of civic government, in which,
it must be confessed, he often proved himself unpractical.
His financial administration was bad ; like Nero, he brought
about a commercially most disastrous depreciation of the
currency. In legislation on the other hand he applied the
principle of humanity with success. To the Senate he was
very acceptable. His Marcomannian war is glorified by the
still preserved monument on the Piazza Colonna in Rome,
an imperfect imitation of Trajan's column.

1 This finds expression in his still preserved 'Addresses to Ilimsclf,'
a book of high ethical value.

COMMODUS 135

CHAPTER X

The Decline of the Empire under the Soldier-
Emperors

(From Commodus to Diocletian, 180-285 a.d.)

If Commodus is not to be reckoned among the Soldier- Emperors,
inasmuch as he succeeded to the throne as legitimate heir and son of
Marcus Aurelius, he nevertheless was the first after the Julii to concede
again a disastrous influence to the Guard and its Prefects. Hence-
forth the decline of army discipline takes a rapid course ; the constant
struggles along almost the whole frontier of the gigantic empire give
opportunity to bold usurpers with the aid of their troops to snatch at
the diadem ; every victorious, indeed every discontented legion deems
itself justified in acclaiming its general as Imperator. Often several
Emperors are ruling at the same time in different extremities of the
empire. Wars of usurpation henceforth belong to the regular order of
things.

Meanwhile the assault from without grows more and more menacing.
In the East the old Parthian state under the able dynasty of the Sassa-
nids develops into a vigorous New Persian Empire, which moves victori-
ously against the Roman sphere. The northern frontier on the Rhine
and Danube is even more sorely pressed by the Germans, who as
Goths, Franks, Saxons, and Alamanni become the terror of the neigh-
bouring Roman provinces.

Within there appears under these circumstances an increase of the
financial distress in particular, and of a general decay connected with
it. The constant wars lead to sad depopulation, and attempts are
often made to remedy this by settling German colonists on Roman soil.
Thus a new factor comes into the foreground in the life of the Roman
State — the German element.

§ 42. Commodus and the House of Septimius Severus,
180-235 A.D.

M, Aurelius Commodus Antoninus (180- 1 92), the de-
generate son of the imperial philosopher, carried on with
support of the praetorians, whose general was his confidant,
a misrule which recalls the worst times of Caligula and Nero.
After bringing the Marcomannian war bequeathed to him
by his father to an end by a far from honourable peace, he
abandoned himself in the capital to a discreditable life of

136 ROMAN HISTORY

monstrous extravagance. The interests of the empire were
in every respect neglected, and distress increased in all
departments. He was murdered (31st December 192) in
the night before 1st January 193, the day on which he
was to enter on his consulate as a gladiator ; for he was
a passionate admirer of these men of muscle. On the
resolution of the Senate his memory was dishonoured.

After the three months' reign of the honourable and well-
meaning Senator P. Helvidius Pertinax, whose vigorous
measures moved the praetorians to put him out of the way,
pretenders were set up not only by the latter but also and
at the same time by three different bodies of troops.

L, Septtmius Severus (193-2 1 1 ), who commanded in
Pannonia, first marched into Rome and by his energetic
personality won over the Senate. In the first four years
of his reign he had to struggle with his rivals for supremacy,
which after 197 was his without competition. He waged a
successful war of some length against the Parthians, who
had supported one of his opponents ; he restored the prestige
of the empire for a time in the East, and even won for it a
new province there, Mesopotamia. It was the last extension
of the Imperium. In the last years of his reign he was
forced to take the field against British tribes, but was
prevented from concluding the war by death (at Eboracum,
now York, February 211).

With the name of Septimius Severus, who was sprung
of a knightly family resident in Africa, several remarkable
innovations are associated. In order to establish a con-
nexion between his and the preceding dynasty, he invented
the fiction of declaring himself the legitimate heir of the
Antonines by subsequent adoption, a measure which later
found imitation. He did away with the peculiar position of
the praetorians and founded a new Guard, which was not like
the former made up of Italians but of the most trustworthy
elements of the frontier legions. - Supported by this body-
guard of 50,000 men, the Emperor thrust the Senate
decidedly into the background and bore the proconsular

CARACALLA 137

imperium for the first time in Italy itself. Under him the
famous jurist Papinianus held the office of Prefect of the ^.^^
Guard. There was great activity in building, especially \
on the Palatine.

M. Aurellus Antoninus Caracalla (211-217), who is said
to have earlier aimed at his father's life, soon removed his
brother and fellow-emperor Geta together with a great
number of his adherents, among them Papinianus, and carried
on a rule of cruelty and extravagance for which he procured
means by plundering his own subjects. His monstrous
magnificence as a builder is still eloquently attested by the
colossal ruins of his famous Thermae Antoninianae or * Baths
of Caracalla' in Rome. His politically most important
measure of administration, the bestowal of the Roman
citizenship on all municipalities of the empire, arose merely
from the need for filling the treasuries by the application of
new taxes. His wars on the frontiers of the Rhine and
Danube, as also those against the Parthians, are marked
by feeble and discreditable management. In the Parthian
campaign he was murdered by his Prefect of the Guard
Macrinus (April 217), who wore the diadem himself
for some months until the Syrian troops raised to the
throne a distant relative of Severus' house, the fourteen-
year old Varius Avitus Bassianus, as M, Aurelius Antoninus
[Elagabalus). His bye-name Elagabalus he got from the
Syrian sun-god of that name, whose high priest he was
in Emesa, and whose worship he brought to Rome. As
Caracalla had abandoned the cares of government to his
mother Julia Domna, so he made her sister, his grandmother
Julia Maesa, his associate in empire and Augusta. Brought
up in oriental excess, the lad disgraced the imperial throne
for wellnigh a year until the disgusted soldiers slew him
with his mother Soaemias, because he had tried to put
out of the way his cousin Alexander Severus, who at their
wish had been nominated as Caesar.

M. Aurelius Severus Alexander (222-235) "^^^ ^^^ ^^^
young to carry on alone the government, which at first

138 ROMAN HISTORY

remained in the hands of his grandmother JuHa Maesa, and
later was strongly influenced by his mother Mamaea. The
young Emperor was inspired by the best will, but was too
feeble of nature to help himself in such troublous times.
The committee of the Senate which he drew to his side as
Imperial Council did indeed number famous jurists, such as
Ulpian and Paulus, but no great statesmen ; and the undis-
ciplined soldiers hated the civil officials who issued decrees
from the chancellery, and indeed slew the particularly
unpopular Ulpian before the Emperor's eyes.

The wars of Alexander Severus brought no honour
to the Roman Empire. In Parthia there had grown up
under the Sassanid Ardashir Babekan the New Persian
Empire, the assaults of which upon Rome's Asiatic posses-
sions were fruitlessly combated by Alexander. Not more
successful was the course of his campaign against the
Germans, which he undertook from Mainz ; when in the
meanwhile a distinguished general, Maximinus Thrax, pre-
sented himself as rival Emperor (235), the soldiers deserted
Alexander and slew him together with his mother.

g 43. The Greatest Emperors from Alexander Severus
TO Diocletian, 235-285 a.d.

After the death of the last of the Severi, the decline of the
empire goes on apace. The imperial diadem becomes an
apple of discord between more or less able commanders, among
whom barbarians, like Maximinus Thrax (235-238), appear
more and more frequently. Of measures of imperial adminis-
tration we now hear but seldom ; struggles of pretenders and
wars against the ever more vigorous advances of neighbours
on the frontier form the history of the empire in this period.
Of the wellnigh countless number of Imperatores, many
of whom bore this name for scarce a month, it may suffice
to mention the most important or at least those who bore
rule for a somewhat longer span of time.

Gorrliamis IIL (238-244) was the victor among the

VALERIANUS 139

fliiany rivals of Maximinus. He undertook a successful cam-
paign against the Persians and forced them to give back
Mesopotamia, but was slain before the conclusion of the
war by his Prefect of the Guard Philippus, who had forced
himself on him as associate in the government. The best
known fact in the reign of M, lultus Philippus (244-249), 1.
entitled from his origin Arabs, is that in the year 248 the y\
thousandth anniversary of the existence of the Roman empire '
was celebrated with great pomp. Otherwise his rule marks
a continuous decline of Roman credit. Opposition was vainly
offered to the German tribe-leagues, especially the Goths,
who burst into the empire from the Black Sea. The Senator
Deems, sent by him against the Goths, was proclaimed Emperor
by his troops ; he waged continual warfare against the dan-
gerous invaders, who were already desolating Thrace and
Moesia (g 35), and fell in battle against them (249-251).

P. Licinius Valerianus (253-260) was unable to stay the
ruin assailing the empire on all sides ; in his reign the terri-
tory between the Limes and Rhine was lost. The Franks
and Alamanni roved through Gaul ; the Saxons plundered
the coasts ; the Goths pressed into Greece. Valerianus fell
into the hands of the Persians, who had defeated him, and
died in captivity. His son Gallienus (260-268), a prince
with good intentions but too little energy, maintained his
heritage only in a very limited part of the empire, while
countless rival Emperors (the 'Thirty Tyrants') rose up,
especially in the imperilled border provinces. The general
distress grew ; the irruptions of the Germans brought the
empire to the verge of ruin.

M, Aurelius Claudius II. (268—270) successfully encoun-
tered the Alamanni and Goths, hence his title Goticus ; but
he died too early to be able to do real service to the State.

L. Domlttus Aurelianus ( 270-275 ), a distinguished general,
was not only like his predecessor successful in repeUing the
Alamanni and Goths, but even restored for a short time the
unity of the empire (hence the title restitutor orbis), after \H^
destroying the Queen Zenobia's kingdom of Palmyra and

140 ROMAN HISTORY

subduing a Gallic usurper. At home too he governed
vigorously ; his circumvallation of Rome, still for the most
part preserved, is famous. While engaged in a campaign
against the Persians he was murdered near Byzantium (275).
M, Aurelius Probus (276-282), commander of the Syrian
troops and like Aurelianus of Illyrian descent, followed
with brilliant success in the footsteps of his predecessor in
driving back the Germans. He even restored the old frontier
of the Limes, and forced many thousands of Germans to a
fixed .settlement on Roman soil, encouraging them in tillage
and vine-growing (see below, § 44). He also took as many
Germans as possible into the army, thinking thus to refresh
and better it. The Senate he treated with consideration.
But at last Probus too shared the fate of his predecessor,
and was slain at Sirmium on the Save, the chief town of
Pannonia, by his soldiers, who were disgusted by his strict-
ness. From the struggles of the pretenders in the next fol-
lowing years the Illyrian C. Valerius Aurelius Diocletianus,
an able soldier, emerged as victor (Nov. 284). With him
begins a new period in the history of monarchy.

SECTION IV

From the Re-organisation of the Empire
BY Diocletian and Constantine to the
Fall of the Western Throne (Age of
Absolutism)^ 285-476 a.d.

Sources. — For this last period of the history of the Western Empire
the sources are more abundant than for the preceding, though we are
not on that account able to pass a more favourable verdict on their
merits. History too shared in the general decay of science and litera-
ture. Of connected narratives only two, one written in Latin and one
in Greek, are of eminent importance— that of Ammianus Marcellinus,
who continued Tacitus (unhappily only Books xiv. to xxxi. survive,
comprising the history of 353-378), and that of the Greek Zosimus, who
drew upon the now lost writings of the rhetorician Eunapius and of
Olympiodorus, and treated the period of 270-410. Very scanty are

SOURCES 141

^urelius Victor's Imperial Biographies from Augustus to Constantine,
Bside which still exist an epitome carried on until Theodosius I.
nd the outline of Eutropius, which extends from the foundation of
^Rome until 364. All these authors are pagans. But on the victory of
Christianity Christian writers also occupied themselves with writing
history ; and it must be confessed that historical truth has not been
a gainer thereby. On the contrary, the hatred against the former
oppressors found expression often in monstrous exaggerations and dis-
tortions. A speaking example of this is presented by the well-known
little work of Lactantius on the persecutions of the Christians, De
Mortibus Persecutorum-. This same tendency led again to equally
false panegyrics, such as those by which Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea
has utterly garbled the narrative of Constantine the Great's life. Hence
the now commencing church histories (of the above-mentioned Eus^ebius
to 324, of Socrates 306-349, of his plagiary Sozomenus 324-415,* &c.)
must be used with the utmost caution.

In this period appears a peculiar kind of historical tradition, the
' Chronicles,' which often begin with the creation of the world and
for the most part offer only scanty material. The oldest is that of
Eusebius, which the great church-father Jerome translated into Latin,
and carried on from 324 to 378. Further continuations are those by
Prosper Aquitanus to 455 and Marius of Aventicum to 581, the East
Roman annals of Marcellinus Comes to 566, &c. , &c.

Beside strictly historical works, we find valuable material for con-
temporary history in nearly all products of literature — for instance,
the extensive writings and above all the letters of the great church-
writers Ambrosius, Jerome, and Augustine, the collections of speeches
and letters of the Greek rhetoricians Themistius and Libanius, who
played a great role in the Eastern Empire, and the panegyrists and
poets who celebrate contemporary princes, and among whom Claudius
Claudianus, the court poet of Honorius, is the most important and
copious.

Extremely valuable material not only for legal and constitutional but
even for contemporary history is presented by the great collections
of laws which arose under the Emperors Theodosius II. and Justinian
[Codex Theodosiarms and Justinianus). For the knowledge of the
thorough reorganisation of the official orders under Diocletian and
Constantine, we possess in the Notitia Dignitatmn a contemporaneous
official document of the highest historical interest.

CHAPTER XI

From Diocletian to the Deatli of Tlieodosius the
Great, 285-395 a.d.

In this period, which comprises the fourth century, two powerful
rulers strive to rally again the last vital powers of the dying Empire ;
jbut in the very reorganisation which they give to it are contained the

142 ROMAN HISTORY

germs of death that helped to speed the dissolution of the world-mon-
archy. The division of the administration paved the w^ay for the com-
plete division of the empire.

The reconstruction of the empire was further influenced by two
factors with which a compromise was made in this period— Christianity
and Germanism. To both the principle of tolerance was applied after
opposition had proved more and more ineffectual; Christianity and
Germans were admitted in the body of the Roman State. That change
in the world's history which was accomplished in the fourth century
finds characteristic expression in a phenomenon which we observe at
its conclusion — a Roman Emperor submits to ecclesiastical punishment
by a Christian bishop, and rules with a Prime Minister of German
origin.

§ 44. Diocletian and his Age, 285-305 a.d.

The Reorganisation of Administration, — Although Diocle-
tian had attained to sole monarchy after the defeat and murder
of Carious (285), it was not his design to abide in it. He
took as his associate in government his friend and country-
man M, Aurelius Valerius Maximianus, creating him Caesar
and soon afterwards Augustus also. But after some years,
either because he deemed the burden of ruling over so gigantic
aa empire too great for even two supreme heads, or because
he thought to secure internal quiet more effectually against
usurpers' ambitions by a number of regents, Diocletian de-
cided (303) that each of the two Imperatores should select a
Caesar, to each of whom was promised, after a certain lapse
of time, promotion to the rank of Imperator, and the right of
selecting a new Caesar. He himself nominated as Caesar
C. Galerius Valerius Maximianus ; his fellow-emperor ap-
pointed M. Flavius Valerius Constantius (Chlorus).

The whole empire (including Italy, whose privileged
position of freedom from the ground-tax henceforth was at
an end) hereby underwent a new division, which split it up
into 10 1 provinces; several of these together formed again a
{/ioecesis, of which there were altogether twelve. Each of
the four rulers, whom we may term the two ' Senior Em-
perors' and the two * Junior Emperors,' received a part of
the empire, with a certain imperial capital, to be independ-
ently administered. These were the following four sections

DIOCLETIAN AND HIS AGE 143

— I, the East with the capital Nicomedia (Diocletian) ; 2,
Italy and Africa with the capital Milan (Maximianus) ; 3, I
Illyria and Greece with the capital Sirmium, now Mitrovitza,
on the Save (Galerius) ; 4, Gaul, Spain, and Britain with
the capitals Eboracum, now York, and Treves (Constantius
Chlorus). The civil service was organised afresh and en-
tirely sundered from the military ; at the head of the ad-
ministration in each section of the empire appeared a praefectus
praetorio. The Senate had now no place in this official order ;
it indeed remained in existence, but lost its importance, as did
Rome itself, which had to yield its rank as capital to the more
favourably situated Milan.

Thus the powers of government, which officially had
always hitherto been shared between Emperor and Senate,
had passed wholly into the hands of the ruler, and Diocletian
became by this reorganisation the founder of absolutism. This
found external expression in the introduction ofalTourt cere-
mony borrowed from oriental despotism, out of which have
developed the monarchical forms of intercourse still in use.
The Emperor is henceforth spoken of as dominus *lord,' the
subject is servus 'slave.'

Diocletian and Christianity, — The revival of the old State
religion was all the more a necessary part of the restoration of
Roman State life as the Emperor already in his lifetime
claimed divinity. It was thus a quite natural result that the
new State set its face against a religious community which
trained its members to take no share in public life and to
disregard the gods, and with them the Imperial divinity.
Christianity had indeed been already exposed on these political
grounds to occasional persecutions ; ^ but in the joyless times
of the third century, when all bonds of order seemed to break,
it had found with its doctrine of flight from the world an ever

1 The persecutions of Christians have naturally been painted by Chris-
tian tradition in extremely exaggerated colours. It is now beyond a
doubt that the number of victims butchered by Christian fanaticism in
the dark ages of religious discord is far greater than the death-roll in
the persecutions of Christians by heathens.

144 ROMAN HISTORY

wider extension and had spread over the whole Roman Em-
pire a net of communities with their bishops and fixed or-
ganisation. Diocletian hoped to completely crush by severe
edicts this religious society confronting the State, and moved
his three fellow- Emperors to hke measures, which only Con-
stantius sought to avoid (303). Their houses of assembly
were closed to the Christians, their communal property taken
from them, civil rights and honours denied them ; many died
a martyr's death. But the number of the adherents of Chris-
tianity was already far too great for these measures to have
the desired effect, even when they were rigorously carried out.
From persecution itself new power and support accrued to it,
and ten years after Diocletian's edict it extorted for itself
toleration.

The Rule of the Four Emperors to Diocletian s Resignation
(303-305). — The hostile movements on the border of the
huge empire never ceased. Already during their joint
reign Diocletian and Maximianus had been embroiled
almost without respite in frontier wars, which they shared
later with the junior Emperors. Thus Constantius recovered
Britain, which for several years had been in the hands of
usurpers, and continued the struggles of Maximianus against
the Germans while the latter was suppressing a rising in
Africa. Diocletian and Galerius protected the Danube
frontier, and in a successful war with the Persians won some
new territories on the Tigris. Against the Germans, of
whom especially the Alamanni, Burgundians, and Franks ^
became an ever increasing peril to Roman Gaul, Dio-
cletian's government continued the policy practised by earlier
Emperors of making them harmless by settlement on Roman
soil. The same thing was done with different tribes threat-
ening the line of the Lower Danube. These settlers, who
were under the obligation of a poll-tax and military service,
formed a pecuHar and important element in the Roman
population of the time, the so-called colonatus,

1 It was in this age that the Franks gained a firm footing in Gaul.

CONSTANTINE AND HIS AGE 145

In the beginning of the year 305 Diocletian, perhaps as a
result of severe sickness, deemed the time to have come for
enforcing the rule laid down by him for the change of
government. On May i of this year he resigned the diadem
in the capital of the East, Nicomedia, and made his fellow-
emperor Maximianus do the same. Galerius and Constantius
were promoted to the rank of Imperatores ; Severus was
appointed Caesar for the West, Maximinus Daia for the
East. The two old Emperors [seniores August!) withdrew
into private life ; Diocletian took a villa near Salona in
Dalmatia. The calm with which this change of government
was effected testifies to the powerful influence which Dio-
cletian exercised upon his associates, and indeed upon all
his contemporaries. But the weakness of this artificial system
of succession soon displayed itself; it was never again
employed.

§ 45. CONSTANTINE THE GrEAT AND HIS Age, 306-337 A.D-

The Wars of the Emperors to the Monarchy of Constantine
(306-323). — Diocletian's arrangement of the succession
had in principle excluded inheritance by heirs of the body,
because its creator saw in the latter no security for com-
petent rulers, and according to his design only the best and
strongest men were to be summoned to the throne. Thus
in filling up anew the posts of supremacy in the year 305
the sons of Maximianus and Constantius Chlorus had been
passed over. But when in the next year Constantius^ died
in Britain, the army proclaimed his eldest son Constantinus as
Caesar. Soon afterwards the Roman praetorians did the
same with the son of Maximianus, Maxentius ; and the
restless Maximianus himself, who had been forced solely by
Diocletian's superiority to withdraw, assumed again the
purple. Thus there were six Emperors claiming to rule.
The empire had thus become again an apple of discord for
pretenders ; internal wars began afresh. First fell Severus,
who was abandoned by his troops and then put out of the

146 ROMAN HISTORY

way by Maxentius; in his place the senior Emperor Galerius
nominated Licinianus Licinius as his associate. Maximianus
in a conference with Diocletian was induced again to retire ;
but when he nevertheless continued to place difficulties in
the way of his son-in-law Constantine, he was slain by the
latter in 310. In the following year Galerius died. Now
Constantine and Licinius leagued themselves against the two
other Emperors. The former defeated the armies of Maxen-
tius in various battles, and won supremacy over the old
capital and Italy by the conflict at the Mulvian Bridge
before Rome, now the Ponte Molle (313), in which
Maxentius perished. In the next year Licinius conquered
Maximinus Daia at Adrianople, upon which the latter's
share of the empire fell to him. In the same year Dio-
cletian too died. For ten years then Constantine and
Licinius y who married the former's sister Constantia, shared
the supremacy with their sons, who were appointed Caesars.
The peace however was often interrupted and always un-
certain, probably because the ambitious Constantine saw in
Licinius only a rival of whom he wished to rid himself.
As a result of offensive interferences by Constantine in his
fellpw-emperor's sovereign rights a decisive battle was fought
in 323, in which Licinius was defeated. He surrendered,
and was seemingly pardoned ; but in the following year he
was strangled in Thessalonica. Constantine had now reached
his goal ; he had become sole monarch (323-337).

Constantine and Christianity. — While in his internal policy
Constantine followed in the paths entered upon by Diocletian,
his behaviour towards the Christian Church was the opposite
of that of his predecessor. Already Galerius, who all his
life had been a stubborn persecutor of the Christians, had
given up Diocletian's policy shortly before his death and vouch-
safed to Christianity free exercise of its doctrines. Constan-
tine and Licinius now expanded this measure by the famous
edicts of Milan_an 4 Nicomedig, which declared the principle
oftfie equality of Christianity with the old State religion
(313). When later Licinius inclined again to the pagan

CONSTANTINE AND HIS AGE 147

party, Constantine for political reasons favoured Christianity
all the more warmly. The strong influence which in the
compact organisation of Christian communal life the heads
exercised upon the members offered to the Emperor a wel-
come opportunity for winning over the laity by means of
the clergy. He therefore favoured the clergy by lightening
their civil burdens, and even allowed to the bishops a certain
jurisdiction.

In the fierce contest as to the relation of Christ's person
to God which broke out in the Church soon after its
recognition Constantine took a share, in order to restore
peace and order. We may judge how indifferent the
question of dogma in itself was to him from the fact that
this very Emperor, under whose presidency and influence
the Athanasian doctrine found recognition at the Council of
Nicaea (325), banished Bishop Athanasius a few years later,
and at last was moved by the Arian bishop Eusebius to
accept Christianity himself in the Arian form. Christianity
under Constantine was in no sense raised to be the State
religion ; it received merely legal equality with paganism.
Constantine himself was never inwardly touched by the eleva-
tion of pure Christian doctrine ; it is only Christian gratitude
that has tried to turn his figure into that of a counterfeit saint. I

Constantine' s Reign as Sole Monarch (323-337). — The
reorganisation of the empire commenced by Diocletian was
continued by Constantine in the same spirit. He established
four in place of the former two prefectships, the holders of
which had to administer justice, police, and finance under the
old title praefectus praetorio^ and formed a bond of union
between the great and minutely organised host of officials and
the Emperor. The court posts in close touch with the
Emperor's person were arranged in strict gradation ; fixed
titles and terms of honour were introduced, as illustres, ' Most
Noble,' spectabiles, ' Honourable.' In the military sphere
too Constantine brought in important changes, entirely
abolishing the institution of the Guard and dividing the
army into two parts, troops in the field and garrisons.

148 ROMAN HISTORY

The capital of the Empue was removed to the East.
Byzantium on the Bosporus, on the border of Europe and
Asia, was selected for this purpose ; and the new foundation,
in establishing which magnificent splendour and oriental
luxury were displayed, received the name ConstantinopoUs,
This ' New Rome ' the Emperor sought in every way, even
by creating a second Senate, to raise to the level of the old,
and it quickly developed into the centre of the Greek culture
of the East.

Like Diocletian, Constantine in dealing with the Germans
followed the principle of welding them into the Roman
world by settlement on Roman soil and above all by employ-
ment in the army. Under him the Germans were specially
favoured, and appear even in the higher military posts. If
we regard his reign from the standpoint of that age we shall
be unable to deny it admiration ; the creation of Diocletian
was maintained by his organising genius and further de-
veloped. But the path by which Constantine arose to his
height ran red with blood. To reach his end he shrank
from no deed of horror, even against his nearest kin ; his
father-in-law Maximianus, his brother-in-law Licinius, and
the latter' s young son, fell before him in the struggle for the
monarchy, and then his own son by his first marriage, the
excellent Caesar Crispus, became through his great popularity
a victim to his father's jealousy. Measureless ambition and
oriental despotism stimulated these bloody deeds, from which
the praise of his Christian biographer Eusebius cannot wash
Constantine's memory clean. He died (22nd May 337)
during preparations for a Persian war in Nicomedia. yO=^

§ 46. From the Death of Constantine the Great to
THE Death of Theodosius the Great, 337-395 a.d.

The Sons of Constantine (337-361). — Already in his
lifetime Constantine had put aside Diocletian's system of
succession and appointed as Caesars his three sons by his
second marriage ; on his death the supremacy passed to them

THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE 149

in the following manner — Constantinus II. received the West,
Constantius Asia with Egypt, Constans Italy and Africa.
A ghastly slaughter of kinsmen ushered in the reign of these
first Christian Emperors. The harmony of the brothers did
not last long. Territorial disputes between Constantinus and
Constans led to a war in which the former was defeated at
Aquileia and perished ^Qj^S.) • Constans thereby attained
possession oFThe share of Constantinus and won predominance
in the empire, which was further strengthened by not dis-
creditable conflicts with the Germans. He made himself
however so disliked by his arbitrary rule that one of his
generals, Magnus Magnentius, a Frank by birth, was pro-
claimed Emperor by the Gallic troops (350). But Mag-
nentius also did not wear the purple long ; he was defeated
in the next year (35 1) on the Drave by Constantius, who had
stopped his Persian war, and being abandoned by all he slew
himself shortly after.

Constantius was now sole monarch (353-360). He had
already before leaving the East appointed his cousin Gallus
as Caesar and charged him to represent him ; but fearing
a usurpation by him he forestalled it by murdering him
{354). As however the presence of the Emperor in the
East was urgently needed, and on the other hand the inroads
of the Germans into Gaul called for a strong command in
the WevSt, Constantius sent as Caesar into Gaul the last
surviving member of his house, his cousin Julianus, the
brother of the murdered Gallus.

Julianus Apostata (Caesar 355-361, Augustus 361-363)
could boast of brilliant successes against the Alamanni (a
battle near Strassburg, 357) and Franks. For several years
he kept the tide of German invasion from Gaul. As Con-
stantius' struggles in the territory of the Danube against
Germans and Sarmatians as well as against the Persians were
less favoured by fortune, he grew jealous of Julian and
demanded a part of the Gallic troops for a coming Persian
war. The latter refused to leave Julian and proclaimed him
Emperor in Paris. Before Constantius could bring about a

I50 ROMAN HISTORY

settlement by arms he died in Cilicia (361). Julian was the
sole master in the empire.

The new Emperor began his reign with a restoration in
favour of the declining paganism. Brought up himself
against his will m Christianity, he had imbibed a deep
contempt for the religion which he saw zealously paraded
in the bloodstained house of Constantine, and whose furious
quarrels over doctrines unintelligible to the laity seemed to
the highly educated youth ridiculous. Distinguished pagan
teachers, such as the Athenian orator Libanius, had gained
great influence over him and brought him over to the Neo-
platonic philosophy, which by borrowing considerably from
fundamental Christian ideas sought to inspire paganism with
a new content. Julian with his lofty culture of mind and
heart was the last man to reopen the era of Christian persecu-
tions ; he hoped to carry out his ideal — an ennoblement of
the old forms of religion so as to suit modern needs —
by restrictions imposed on the Christians, especially as
teachers, and by the support which he lent in every way to
pagan worship. With his early death, which reached him
on a successfully commenced Persian campaign (June 363),
his efforts came to naught.

After the short reign of Joviatius, the nominee of the
Persian army (363-364), who after a shameful peace with
the Persians beat a retreat, but died as early as February 364,
Flavins Valentinianus was elected Emperor, and at the wish
of the army took his brother Flavius Valens to share his
throne.

The Valentinian Dynasty and Theodostus the Great (364-

395) The demand of the soldiers for a division of the

government is significant of the change which had gradually
been accomplished within the Roman empire. The Greek
East and the Latin West had lost the sense of unity, and
claimed their separate centres of administration in Constanti-
nople and Milan. To this was added the religious opposition
between the mainly Arian Orient and the Athanasian (ortho-
dox) Occident. Valentinianus (364-375) took these cir-

THE VALENTINIAN DYNASTY 151

cumstances into account in transferring the Eastern prefectship
to his Arian brother Valens (364-378). Valentinianus
fought not without success against the Alamanni and Sar-
matae, while his general Theodosius, father of the later
Emperor, held Britain and Africa for the empire. " When
Valentinianus died in 375 he was followed by his sons,
Gratianus (375-383) and Valentinianus IL (375-392),
the latter still a minor ; the former of them, influenced by
Ambrosius, the famous bishop of Milan, deprived the pagan
worship of the State support hitherto left to it.

From about the year 375 notice was called to that gigantic
movement of peoples in the East which we term the * wander-
ings of the nations,' and which was conjured up by the
irruption of the Mongolian tribe of the Huns into Europe.
By the impact of these mighty Asiatic swarms the West
Goths (Visigoths) dwelHng north of the Lower Danube in
the ancient Dacia had been pushed into Roman territory.
Here under Valens they had found a home as colonists ;
but, imagining themselves to be treacherously treated by the
oflEcials, they rose against Roman supremacy, and inflicted
on Valens in 378 a severe defeat near Adrianople. The
Emperor himself perished in the battle. Gratianus, arriving
too late for his aid, now nominated as Emperor of the East
Flavins Theodosius (379-395)> son of the able general of
Valentinianus I., who succeeded by degrees in pushing the
Goths out of Greece and Thrace and settling them in
Moesia as allies pledged to service in war.

This danger warded oflT, Theodosius interfered in the afl^airs
of the West (383-388), where a usurper Magnus Clemens
Maximus had put Gratianus out of the way and had even
found recognition as his successor by Valentinianus H. and
Theodosius. When however Maximus attempted also to oust
Valentinianus, Theodosius marched against him, defeated him
in several battles, and put him to death at Aquileia (388).
He then commissioned one of his ablest generals, the Ger-
man Arbog^t, to protect the empire of Valentinianus against
the Franks and Alamanni. The Emperor however failed

152 ROMAN HISTORY

to agree with Arbogast, and was killed by him in 392.
Arbogast proclaimed as Emperor Eiigenius, a noble Roman,
who found some support, but was not recognised by Theo-
dosius and in September 394 was defeated in the bloody
battle by the Frigidus, near Aquileia. Both he and Arbo-
gast put an end to their lives.

Thus did Theodosius once again unite the whole empire
in one hand. But it was for a very short time ; for he died
in Januar^395 at Milan. In him the Western Empire lost
its last great ruler^" Tri ecclesiastical affairs he had taken a
most zealous part and secured predominance in the East too
for the Athanasian doctrine. . I3ut despite all his devotion to
the Christian religion, which found expression in submission
to the ecclesiastical penance imposed on him by Ambrosius
for the butchery of Thessalonica and in severe measures
against pagan worship, he never in his relations to the Church
neglected policy ; the efforts of the Bishop of Rome to gain
supremacy over the East too always met with a rebuff from
him. The title of ' The Great ' was better deserved by
Theodosius than by Constantine.

CHAPTER XII

From the Death of Theodosius the Great to the
Fall of the Western Throne, 395-476 a.d.

§ 47. The Severance of the Realm and the Decay of
THE Western Empire

Sevet*ance of the Empire, — It is a common error to suppose
that Theodosius the Great so divided the realm between his
sons Arcadius and Honorius that it was henceforth to con-
tinue in two separate halves, as an East Roman and a West
Roman Empire, and that he thus is to be regarded as having
founded the division of the realm. Theodosius in reality
did nothing but what so many of his predecessors had done ;

SEVERANCE OF THE REALM 153

he bequeathed the realm to his sons, who had already in his
lifetime been nominated as Caesars, under the condition that
the elder Arcadius should administer the East, the younger
Honorius the West, both under ministers who possessed the
departed Emperor's fullest confidence. We even find the
unity of the imperial administration attested by the fact that
the numerous laws and dispensations preserved to us from
the age of the sons of Theodosius bear the subscriptions
of both Emperors, and thus had validity for the whole
empire.

In reality nevertheless that severance into two inde-
pendent empires towards which the development of internal
afi^airs had tended, especially after the reorganisation of
Diocletian and Constantine, was accomplished under the sons
of Theodosius. In the face of the profound diflPerence
between Orient and Occident in language, customs, and
religion, the principle of unity could no longer be maintained,
least of all by such weak emperors as those produced by the
fifth century. Moreover the antagonism between the two
real leaders of the halves of the empire after the death of
Theodosius, the Vandal Stilico in Milan and the Gaul
Rufinus in Constantinople, helped materially to accentuate
the opposition between East and West. That too the con-
sciousness of the completed division made itself felt very
soon after the death of Theodosius in the several sections of
the realm is proved by the fact that a usurper appearing in
Africa believed himself able to mask his defection by passing
over from the Western to the Eastern Empire. Thus at the
turn of the fourth and fifth centuries was consummated the
severance of the Romans' world - dominion into an East
Roman or Greek and a West Roman Empire.

Decay of the Western Empire ; the Germans, — The West-
ern Empire now moved rapidly to its fall, while the Greek
Empire endured for another thousand years ; and this is to
be explained by the great movement of Germanic tribes,
the * wanderings of the nations,' which in this period inun-
dated the Roman realm with irresistible force. The Eastern

154 ROMAN HISTORY

realm also felt the blows in which this advance of Asiatic
hordes against Europe manifested itself; the Goths burst '
over the Lower Danube, the Huns brought desolation over
the Caucasus into East Roman territory. But the con-
sequences of the movement starting from the East necessarily
made themselves felt most keenly in the West, where the
Rhine-frontier had long ceased to place a serious hindrance
in the way of the Germans.

The danger grew when theVisi^othic king^Jarich (395-
410), who had originally force3 his way from the Danube
into the Eastern Empire and for a time occupied Illyria as a
Roman vassal, led his countrymen against Italy, and Stilico,
the minister of the incapable Honorius, found himself com-
pelled to summon the legions from Britain and Gaul to the
defence of the fatherland. The greatest provinces of the
Western Empire were now left helpless before the flood of
German tribes ; Gaul, Britain, Spain, and even Africa in
the course of the fifth century were inundated by the
Germans, and newly created German states snatched from
the Roman realm these most important provinces of the
West. At last even Italy could no longer keep off from
itself this invasion. A German king took from the head of
a Roman weakling the imperial crown he could no longer
defend and so could no longer wear. The doom of the
Western Empire is thereby sealed (476).

J^ 48. The Last Western Emperors, 395-476 a.d.

Honorius, the younger son of Theodosius (395-423),
entered after his father's death upon the government in
Milan, while his elder brother Arcadius (395-408) ruled
the Eastern half from Constantinople. The guardianship
over the boy was held by the Vandal Stilico, the most
vigorous man of this age, in whom Theodosius had shown
his unreserved confidence by marrying to him his niece and
adopted daughter Serena, and to whom when dying he had
entrusted his son Honorius. The enmity between Stilico

THE LAST WESTERN EMPERORS 155

and the Eastern Praefectus Praetorio Rufinus proved par-
ticularly disastrous to the realm by profiting the Visigoth
King Alarich, who began to move in 395 against Greece.
Although in this very year Rufinus was murdered (certainly
not without the connivance of Stilico), the play of intrigue
between Milan and Constantinople still went on and displayed
itself notably in the manner in which Alarich was combated,
so that the latter could settle as an acknowledged vassal in
Illyria (397). When a few years later Alarich made ready
to conquer Italy, Stilico vigorously confronted him and by
the battles at Pollentia (402) and Verona (403) averted once
more the Gothic peril. Similarly by the victory at Faesulae
(Fiesole, near Florence) in 405 Stilico freed Italy from
a second German invasion which was carried on by undis-
ciplined masses of various German tribes under the leadership
of Radagais. But for the protection of the fatherland he
found himself compelled to withdraw the legions from Gaul
and Britain. And now the Germans streamed into these
lands ; Vandals, Alans, and Suebi swept through Gaul into
Spain, and rival Emperors arose in the deserted provinces.
At this moment the only man who could still have saved the
Empire of the West fell a victim to his enemies' intrigues
(408). A Roman national party succeeded in convincing
the feeble Honorius that Stilico aimed at acquiring for his
own son the Eastern half of the empire, in which Arcadius
had just died, and induced the Emperor to cause sentence of
death to be executed upon him.

After Stilico' s death (409) Alarich, whose demands for
the assignment of a fixed home had been rebuffed by Hono-
rius, began hostilities anew, set up a rival Emperor in Rome,
and twice conquered and sacked the old capital (409-410).
After his early death (410) in Southern Italy at Cosenza on
the Busento, his successor Athaulf made another plundering
march through Italy and turned to Southern Gaul, where he
occupied Narbo and married the sister of Honorius, Placidia,
who had been carried away as hostage. His successor
Wallia (415) c<^ntinued his conquests in Spain and then

156 ROMAN HISTORY

entered the service of Honorius (419), who in return
allowed him to found a Visigothic realm on Gallic soil, the
kingdom of Tolosa (Toulouse).

Honorius died childless in 423. With the aid of the
Eastern Emperor Theodostus II, (408-450) an infant son
of Placidia, who a few years before had married the usurper
Constantius, was raised to the throne.

This was the Emperor Valent'inianus III. (423-455).
His mother, who was appointed Augusta, was to hold rule
in his stead as guardian. At once a quarrel for dominant
influence at the court broke out between two vigorous
generals, Bonifacius the governor of Africa and Aetius.
During its course (428) the Vandals under Geiserich, sum-
moned to his aid by Bonifacius, crossed from Spain, where
they were hard pressed, into Africa, captured this province for
themselves, and set up in place of Old Carthage a Vandal
kingdom which after prolonged struggles was perforce
acknowledged by Valentinianus. Another important pro-
vince was lost to the Western realm during the reign of
Valentinianus. In Britain Saxon tribes under Hengist and
Horsa, who through their piracies had long been the terror of
those regions, established an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the power
of which gradually extended over the whole island (449).
It was only in Gaul that the energetic Aetius, who guided the
government, could maintain in some degree the credit of the
empire amid constant combats with Franks, Burgundians,
and Goths. To his generalship also it was due that a great
danger to the empire from the side of the Hunnish king Attila
was warded off. This mighty ruler, to whom all Slav and
German races from South Russia to the Alps were subject,
burst in the year 451 into Gaul; but by the battle on the
Catalaunian Plains between Chalons and Troyes, where
Aetius in league with German allied tribes valiantly opposed
him, he was checked from further advance. Aetius could
not indeed prevent Attila from making an irruption in the
next year into Upper Italy, in which Aquileia and great
stretches of the country were devastated. But the Hun

THE LAST WESTERN EMPERORS 157

king quickly withdrew again into his own realm, and his
death in 453, which had as its result the dissolution of the
Hunnish kingdom, freed the Western Empire from a danger-
ous enemy. The weakling Valentinianus gave ill thanks to
his saviour ; Aetius, the last support of the Western realm,
fell a victim to the envy of the Emperor and a clique
of courtiers (454). In the very next year a like fate befell
Valentinianus (455).

The Last Days of the Empire of the West (455—476). —
After the death of Valentinianus III., who left no son, the
imperial throne was seized by a succession of usurpers who
for the most part had short reigns and were spiritless tools
in the hands of German captains or of the more vigorous
court of the Eastern Empire. A decisive part like that of
Stilico and Aetius was played for some time by a German
general Ricimer (died 472), who bestowed the Imperial
dignity he himself despised upon several noble Romans.
Under these phantom Emperors the new German settle-
ments on Roman soil gained an ever firmer footing and
became more and more dangerous to the empire. Italy in
particular had to suffer heavily from the attacks of the
Vandal Geiserich, who with others subjected Rome in 455
to a terrible sack (hence the proverbial * Vandalism ').

The last of the Western Emperors, Romulus Augustulus,
a lad of seventeen, who by the irony of fate united in his
name that of the first king and that of the first emperor, was
dethroned by Odoacar, a German captain of mercenaries,
and a German kingdom on Italian soil took the place of the
Imperial government.

Conclusion.— To end ' Roman history' with the fall of the Imperial
throne of the West, as has become customary in modern historical
treatment, has no intrinsic justification. Roman history long lives on
in the Empire of the East ; even in the 6th century one of its greatest
rulers, the Emperor Justinian (527-565), combined in a united em-
pire large portions of the western half. But efforts of this kind had
no lasting effect, and the German states in the peninsula of the Apen-
nines made influence from the East more and more impracticable. In
this sense we may say that the dethronement of Romulus Augustulus
put an end to the history of the ' Roman Empire.' The history of the

)f Greqil

158 ROMAN HISTORY

Eastern Empire we may then regard as a continuation of
history, or we may characterise it separately as ' Byzantine history.'

The boundary between antiquity and the middle ages is not to be
fixed by any'particular event. The establishment of German states on
Roman soil brings in a new era, guided into new paths by Christianity,
which the Germans also quickly took up. The ancient culture gives
place to a new one based on Christian conceptions. Thus we may
regard Justinian's suppression in 529 of the pagan school of philosophy
in Athens as a landmark on the border of the old and the new age.

LITERATURE

I. Republic

Theodor Mommsen, Romische Geschichte^ 8th German ed.
[English translation by W. P. Dickson, new ed., London
1894]. — B. G. Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, vols. 1-3,
reaching to the end of the Punic War, a work that marks
the beginning of modern scientific study in this domain, but
not suitable for unprofessional readers [English translation by
J. C. Hare and C. Thirlwall, 2nd ed., Cambridge 1831-
1842]. — A. Schwegler, Romische Geschichte, 3 vols., extends
only to 366 B.C. (much under the influence of Niebuhr). —
W. Drumann, Geschichte Roms in seinem Uebergange 'van der
republikanischen %ur monarchischen Verfassung, 6 vols., 1834-
1844, a series of biographies of great men. — Carl Peter,
Romische Geschichte, 4 vols., 2nd ed., 1865-1869. — W.
Ihne, Romische Geschichte, 8 vols., 1 868-1 890 [English
translation London 1871]. Both the last-named works are
based on opposition to Mommsen and approach the stand-
point of Niebuhr. — B. Niese, Grundriss der romischen
Geschichte nebst Quellenhunde, in Iwan Miiller's Handbuch der
klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Bd. 3, Abteil. 5, a model
of compressed severely scientific exposition. — [H. F. Pelham,
Outlines of Roman History, London 1895. — C. Seignobos,
Histoire du Peuple Romain, Paris 1894].

LITERATURE 159

II. Age of the Emperors

Lenain de Tillemont, Histo'ire des empereurs^ 6 vols., Paris
1690 (2nd ed., Brussels 1707-1739, 16 vols.). — Gibbon,
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first
appeared 1 776 [latest and best edition by Prof. Bury, 1896/],
written in opposition to Tiliemont's one-sidedly Christian
and Catholic standpoint ; a work of vast importance, which
to this day is far from being antiquated. — H. Schiller,
Geschichte der romischen Kaiser%eit^ 2 vols., 1883— 1887,
reaching to the death of Theodosius the Great. — Hertzberg,
Geschichte des romischen Kaiser relchs (in One ken's Allgemelne
Geschichte in Einxeldarstellungen, 2 Hauptabt, 1 Teil. 1 880).
V. Duruy, Histoire des romains, Paris 1870-1885 [English
translation edited by J. P. MahafFy, London 1883, &c.], to
be recommended to unprofessional students from its thorough
treatment of matters of culture and numerous illustrations. —
[J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, London
1889.] — H. Richter, Das westromische Reich unter den
Kaisern Gratian, Valentiman II, und Maximus (375—388),
1865. — A. Giildenpenning, Geschichte des ostromischen Reichs
unter den Kaisern Arkadius und Theodosius II., 1885.

III. Separate Accounts

[W. Warde Fowler, Julius Casar, New York 1892. —
J. L. Strachan-Davidson, Cicero and the Fall of the Roman
Republic, New York 1894. — J. A. Froude, Casar, London
1886.] — V. Gardthausen, Augustus und seine Zeit, — H.
Schiller, Geschichte des romischen Kaiserreichs unter Nero,
1872. — F. v. Gregorovius, der Kaiser Hadrian, 3rd ed.,
1884 [English translation by M. E. Robinson, London
1898]. — J. Burckhardt, die Zeit Constantins des Grossen,
2nd ed., 1880. — Giildenpenning and Iffland, der Kaiser
Theodosius der Grosse, 1878. — [T. Hodgkin, Italy and her
Invaders, 2^6. ed., Oxford 1892.]

Histor.^ of Culture : L. Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der

i6o ROMAN HISTORY

Si(tengeschichte Roms in der Zett von Augustus bis %um
Zeitalter der Antonine, 6th ed., 1 888-1 890 ; a work brilliant
in every respect. — [S. Dill, Roman Society in the last Century
of the Western Empire^ London 1898. J

On the Sources of History : C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in
das Studium der alien Geschichte, 1895. — H. Peter, die
geschichtliche JLitteratur Uber die romische Kaiser %eit his
Theodosius L und ihre Quellen, 2 vols., 1897, a work that
not only finely characterises the writers of the Imperial age
but often shows the history of that age itself in a quite new
light.

Printed by Ballantynf, Hanson &* Co.
Edinburgh d-» London

31507,9

UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA

LIBRARY

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Roman history"

See other formats