The Freedmen.—The last of all the citizens are the freedmen, once slaves, or the sons of slaves. The taint of their origin remains on them; they are not admitted to service in the Roman army and they vote after all the rest.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC

The Comitia.—The government of Rome called itself a republic (Respublica), that is to say, a thing of the people. The body of citizens called the people was regarded as absolute master in the state. It is this body that elects the magistrates, votes on peace and war, and that makes the laws. "The law," say the jurisconsults, "is what the Roman people ordains." At Rome, as in Greece, the people do not appoint deputies, they pass on the business itself. Even after more than 500,000 men scattered over all Italy were admitted into the citizenship, the citizens had to go in person to Rome to exercise their rights. The people, therefore, meet at but one place; the assembly is called the Comitia.

A magistrate convokes the people and presides over the body. Sometimes the people are convoked by the blast of the trumpet and come to the parade-ground (the Campus Martius), ranging themselves by companies under their standards. This is the Comitia by centuries. Sometimes they assemble in the market-place (the forum) and separate themselves into thirty-five groups, called tribes. Each tribe in turn enters an enclosed space where it does its voting. This is the Comitia by tribes. The magistrate who convokes the assembly indicates the business on which the suffrages are to be taken, and when the assembly has voted, it dissolves. The people are sovereign, but accustomed to obey their chiefs.

The Magistrates.—Every year the people elect officials to govern them and to them they delegate absolute power. These are called magistrates (those who are masters). Lictors march before them bearing a bundle of rods and an axe, emblems of the magisterial powers of chastising and condemning to death. The magistrate has at once the functions of presiding over the popular assembly and the senate, of sitting in court, and of commanding the army; he is master everywhere. He convokes and dissolves the assembly at will, he alone renders judgment, he does with the soldiers as he pleases, putting them to death without even taking counsel with his officers. In a war against the Latins Manlius, the Roman general, had forbidden the soldiers leaving camp: his son, provoked by one of the enemy, went forth and killed him; Manlius had him arrested and executed him immediately.

According to the Roman expression, the magistrate has the power of a king; but this power is brief and divided. The magistrate is elected for but one year and he has a colleague who has the same power as himself. There are at once in Rome two consuls who govern the people and command the armies, and several praetors to serve as subordinate governors or commanders and to pronounce judgment. There are other magistrates, besides—two censors, four aediles to supervise the public ways and the markets, ten tribunes of the plebs, and quaestors to care for the state treasure.

The Censors.—The highest of all the magistrates are the censors. They are charged with taking the census every five years, that is to say, the enumeration of the Roman people. All the citizens appear before them to declare under oath their name, the number of their children and their slaves, the amount of their fortune; all this is inscribed on the registers. It is their duty, too, to draw up the list of the senators, of the knights, and of the citizens, assigning to each his proper rank in the city. They are charged as a result with making the lustrum, a great ceremony of purification which occurs every five years.[122]

On that day all the citizens are assembled on the Campus Martius arranged in order of battle; thrice there are led around the assembly three expiatory victims, a bull, a ram, and a swine; these are killed and their blood sprinkled on the people; the city is purified and reconciled with the gods.

The censors are the masters of the registration and they rank each as they please; they may degrade a senator by striking him from the senate-list, a knight by not registering him among the knights, and a citizen by not placing his name on the registers of the tribes. It is for them an easy means of punishing those whom they regard at fault and of reaching those whom the law does not condemn. They have been known to degrade citizens for poor tillage of the soil and for having too costly an equipage, a senator because he possessed ten pounds of silver, another for having repudiated his wife. It is this overweening power that the Romans call the supervision of morals. It makes the censors the masters of the city.

The Senate.—The Senate is composed of about 300 persons appointed by the censor. But the censor does not appoint at random; he chooses only rich citizens respected and of high family, the majority of them former magistrates. Almost always he appoints those who are already members of the Senate, so that ordinarily one remains a senator for life. The Senate is an assembly of the principal men of Rome, hence its authority. As soon as business is presented, one of the magistrates convokes the senators in a temple, lays the question before them, and then asks "what they think concerning this matter." The senators reply one by one, following the order of dignity. This is what they call "consulting the Senate," and the judgment of the majority is a senatus consultum (decree of the Senate). This conclusion is only advisory as the Senate has no power to make laws; but Rome obeys this advice as if it were a law. The people have confidence in the senators, knowing that they have more experience than themselves; the magistrates do not dare to resist an assembly composed of nobles who are their peers. And so the Senate regulates all public business: it declares war and determines the number of the armies; it receives ambassadors and makes peace; it fixes the revenues and the expenses. The people ratify these measures and the magistrates execute them. In 200 B.C. the Senate decided on war with the king of Macedon, but the people in terror refused to approve it: the Senate then ordered a magistrate to convoke the comitia anew and to adopt a more persuasive speech. This time the people voted for the war. In Rome it was the people who reigned, just as is the case with the king in England, but it was the Senate that governed.

The Offices.—Being magistrate or senator in Rome is not a profession. Magistrates or senators spend their time and their money without receiving any salary. A magistracy in Rome is before all an honor. Entrance to it is to nobles, at most to knights, but always to the rich; but these come to the highest magistracies only after they have occupied all the others. The man who aims one day to govern Rome must serve in the army during ten campaigns. Then he may be elected quaestor and he receives the administration of the state treasury. After this he becomes aedile, charged with the policing of the city and with the provision of the corn supply. Later he is elected praetor and gives judgment in the courts. Later yet, elected consul, he commands an army and presides over the assemblies. Then only may he aspire to the censorship. This is the highest round of the ladder and may be reached hardly before one's fiftieth year. The same man has therefore, been financier, administrator, judge, general, and governor before arriving at this original function of censor, the political distribution of the Roman people. This series of offices is what is called the "order of the honors." Each of these functions lasts but one year, and to rise to the one next higher a new election is necessary. In the year which precedes the voting one must show one's self continually in the streets, "circulate" as the Romans say (ambire: hence the word "ambition"), to solicit the suffrages of the people. For all this time it is the custom to wear a white toga, the very sense of the word "candidate" (white garment).

FOOTNOTES:

[117] Probably some of the plebeians originated in non-noble Roman families.—ED.

[118] We know the story of this contest only through Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; their very dramatic account has become celebrated, but it is only a legend frequently altered by falsifiers.

[119] The pontificate was opened to the plebeians by the Ogulnian Law of 300 B.C. The first plebeian pontifex maximus was in 254 B.C. Livy, Epitome, xviii.—ED.

[120] This qualification was set in the last century of the republic.—ED.

[121] He cites several of their old proverbs: "A bad farmer is one who buys what his land can raise." "It is bad economy to do in the day what can be done at night."

[122] After the completion of the census.—ED.



CHAPTER XX

ROMAN CONQUEST

THE ROMAN ARMY

Military Service.—To be admitted to service in the Roman army one must be a Roman citizen. It is necessary to have enough wealth to equip one's self at one's own expense, for the state furnishes no arms to its soldiers; down to 402 B.C. it did not even pay them. And so only those citizens are enrolled who are provided with at least a small fortune. The poor (called the proletariat) are exempt from service, or rather, they have no right to serve. Every citizen who is rich enough to be admitted to the army owes the state twenty campaigns; until these are completed the man remains at the disposition of the consul and this from the age of seventeen to forty-six. In Rome, as in the Greek cities, every man is at once citizen and soldier. The Romans are a people of small proprietors disciplined in war.

The Levy.—When there was need of soldiers, the consul ordered all the citizens qualified for service to assemble at the Capitol. There the officers elected by the people chose as many men as were necessary to form the army. This was the enrolment (the Romans called it the Choice); then came the military oath. The officers first took the oath, and then the rank and file; they swore to obey their general, to follow him wherever he led them and to remain under the standards until he released them from their oath. One man pronounced the formula and each in turn advanced and said, "I also." From this time the army was bound to the general by the bonds of religion.

Legions and Allies.—The Roman army was at first called the Legion (levy). When the people increased in number, instead of one legion, several were formed.

The legion was a body of 4,200 to 5,000 men, all Roman citizens. The smallest army had always at least one legion, every army commanded by a consul had at least two. But the legions constituted hardly a half of the Roman army. All the subject peoples in Italy were required to send troops, and these soldiers, who were called allies, were placed under the orders of Roman officers. In a Roman army the allies were always a little more numerous than the citizens of the legions. Ordinarily with four legions (16,800 men) there were enrolled 20,000 archers and 40,000 horse from the allies. In the Second Punic War, in 218 B.C., 26,000 citizens and 45,000 allies were drawn for service. Thus the Roman people, in making war, made use of its subjects as well as of its citizens.

Military Exercises.—Rome had no gymnasium; the future soldiers exercised themselves on the parade-ground, the Campus Martius, on the other side of the Tiber. There the young man marched, ran, leaped under the weight of his arms, fenced with his sword, hurled the javelin, wielded the mattock, and then, covered with dust and with perspiration, swam across the Tiber. Often the older men, sometimes even the generals, mingled with the young men, for the Roman never ceased to exercise. Even in the campaign the rule was not to allow the men to be unoccupied; once a day, at least, they were required to take exercise, and when there was neither enemy to fight nor intrenchment to erect, they were employed in building roads, bridges, and aqueducts.

The Camp.—The Roman soldier carried a heavy burden—his arms, his utensils, rations for seventeen days, and a stake, in all sixty Roman pounds. The army moved more rapidly as it was not encumbered with baggage. Every time that a Roman army halted for camp, a surveyor traced a square enclosure, and along its lines the soldiers dug a deep ditch; the earth which was excavated, thrown inside, formed a bank which they fortified with stakes. The camp was thus defended by a ditch and a palisade. In this improvised fortress the soldiers erected their tents, and in the middle was set the Praetorium, the tent of the general. Sentinels mounted guard throughout the night, and so prevented the army from being surprised.

The Order of Battle.—In the presence of the enemy the soldiers did not form in a solid mass, as did the Greeks. The legion was divided into small bodies of 120 men, called maniples because they had for standards bundles of hay.[123] The maniples were ranged in quincunx form in three lines, each separated from the neighboring maniple in such a way as to manoeuvre separately. The soldiers of the maniples of the first line hurled their javelins, grasped their swords, and began the battle. If they were repulsed, they withdrew to the rear through the vacant spaces. The second line of the maniples then in turn marched to the combat. If it was repulsed, it fell back on the third line. The third line was composed of the best men of the legion and was equipped with lances. They received the others into their ranks and threw themselves on the enemy. The army was no longer a single mass incapable of manoeuvring; the general could form his lines according to the nature of the ground. At Cynoscephalae, where for the first time the two most renowned armies of antiquity met, the Roman legion and the Macedonian phalanx, the ground was bristling with hills; on this rugged ground the 16,000 Macedonion hoplites could not remain in order, their ranks were opened, and the Roman platoons threw themselves into the gaps and demolished the phalanx.

Discipline.—The Roman army obeyed a rude discipline. The general had the right of life and death over all his men. The soldier who quitted his post or deserted in battle was condemned to death; the lictors bound him to a post, beat him with rods, and cut off his head; or the soldiers may have killed him with blows of their staves. When an entire body of troops mutinied, the general separated the guilty into groups of ten and drew by lot one from every group to be executed. This was called decimation (from decimus, the tenth). The others were placed on a diet of barley-bread and made to camp outside the lines, always in danger of surprise from the enemy. The Romans never admitted that their soldiers were conquered or taken prisoners: after the battle of Cannae the 3,000 soldiers who escaped the carnage were sent by the senate to serve in Sicily without pay and without honors until the enemy should be expelled from Italy; the 8,000 left in the camp were taken by Hannibal who offered to return them for a small ransom, but the senate refused to purchase them.

Colonies and Military Roads.—In the countries that were still only partially subject, Rome established a small garrison. This body of soldiers founded a town which served as a fortress, and around about it the lands were cut into small domains and distributed to the soldiers. This is what they called a Colony. The colonists continued to be Roman citizens and obeyed all commands from Rome. Quite different from a Greek colony which emancipated itself even to the point of making war on its mother city, the Roman colony remained a docile daughter. It was only a Roman garrison posted in the midst of the enemy. Almost all these military posts were in Italy, but there were others besides; Narbonne and Lyons were once Roman colonies.

To hold these places and to send their armies to a distance the Romans built military roads. These were causeways constructed in a straight line, of limestone, stone, and sand. The Romans covered their empire with them. In a land like France there is no part where one does not find traces of the Roman roads.

CHARACTER OF THE CONQUEST

War.—There was at Rome a temple consecrated to the god Janus whose gates remained open while the Roman people continued at war. For the five hundred years of the republic this temple was closed but once and that for only a few years. Rome, then, lived in a state of war. As it had the strongest army of the time, it finished by conquering all the other peoples and by overcoming the ancient world.

Conquest of Italy.—Rome began by subjecting her neighbors, the Latins, first, then the little peoples of the south, the Volscians, the AEquians, the Hernicans, later the Etruscans and the Samnites, and finally the Greek cities. This was the hardest and slowest of their conquests: beginning with the time of the kings, it did not terminate until 266, after four centuries of strife.[124]

The Romans had to fight against peoples of the same race as themselves, as vigorous and as brave as they. Some who were not content to obey they exterminated. The rich plains of the Volscians became a swampy wilderness, uninhabitable even to the present time, the gloomy region of the Pontine marshes.

In the land of the Samnites there were still recognizable, three hundred years after the war, the forty-five camps of Decius and the eighty-six of Fabius, less apparent by the traces of their intrenchments than by the solitude of the neighborhood.

The Punic Wars.—Come into Sicily, Rome antagonized Carthage. Then began the Punic wars (that is to say, against the Phoenicians). There were three of these wars. The first, from 264 to 241, was determined by naval battles; Rome became mistress of Sicily. It was related that Rome had never had any war-ships, that she took as a model a Carthaginian galley cast ashore by accident on her coast and began by exercising her oarsmen in rowing on the land. This legend is without foundation for the Roman navy had long endured. This is the Roman account of this war: the Roman consul Duillius had vanquished the Carthaginian fleet at Mylae (260); a Roman army had disembarked in Africa under the lead of Regulus, had been attacked and destroyed (255); Regulus was sent as a prisoner to Rome to conclude a peace, but persuading the Senate to reject it, he returned to Carthage where he perished by torture. The war was concentrated in Sicily where the Carthaginian fleet, at first victorious at Drepana, was defeated at the AEgates Islands; Hamilcar, besieged on Mount Eryx, signed the peace.

The second war (from 218 to 201) was the work of Hannibal.

The third war was a war of extermination: the Romans took Carthage by assault, razed it, and conquered Africa.

These wars had long made Rome tremble. Carthage had the better navy, but its warriors were armed adventurers fighting not for country but for pay, lawless, terrible under a general like Hannibal.

Hannibal.—Hannibal, who directed the whole of the second war and almost captured Rome, was of the powerful family of the Barcas. His father Hamilcar had commanded a Carthaginian army in the first Punic war and had afterwards been charged with the conquest of Spain. Hannibal was then but a child, but his father took him with him. The departure of an army was always accompanied by sacrifices to the gods of the country; it was said that Hamilcar after the sacrifice made his infant son swear eternal enmity to Rome.

Hannibal, brought up in the company of the soldiers, became the best horseman and the best archer of the army. War was his only aim in life; his only needs, therefore, were a horse and arms. He had made himself so popular that at the death of Hasdrubal who was in the command of the army, the soldiers elected him general without waiting for orders from the Carthaginian senate. Thus Hannibal found himself at the age of twenty-one at the head of an army which was obedient only to himself. He began war, regardless of the senate at Carthage, by advancing to the siege of Saguntum, a Greek colony allied with Rome; he took this and destroyed it.

The glory of Hannibal was that he did not wait for the Romans, but had the audacity to march into Italy to attack them. As he had no fleet, he resolved to advance by land, through the Pyrenees, crossing the Rhone and the Alps. He made sure of the alliance of the Gallic peoples and penetrated the Pyrenees with an army of 60,000 men, African and Spanish mercenaries, and with 37 war-elephants. A Gallic people wished to stop him at the Rhone, but he sent a detachment to pass the river some leagues farther up the stream and to attack the Gauls in the rear; the mass of the army crossed the river in boats, the elephants on great rafts.

He next ascended the valley of the Isere and arrived at the Alps at the end of October; he crossed them regardless of the snow and the attacks of the mountaineers; many men and horses rolled down the precipices. But nine days were consumed in attaining the summits of the Alps. The descent was very difficult; the pass by which he had to go was covered with ice and he was compelled to cut a road out of the rock. When he arrived in the plain, the army was reduced to half its former number.

Hannibal met three Roman armies in succession, first at the Ticinus, next on the banks of the Trebia, and last near Lake Trasimenus in Etruria. He routed all of them. As he advanced, his army increased in number; the warriors of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) joined him against the Romans. He took up position beyond Rome in Apulia, and it was here that the Roman army came to attack him. Hannibal had an army only half as large as theirs, but he had African cavalrymen mounted on swift horses; he formed his lines in the plain of Cannae so that the Romans had the sun in their face and the dust driven by the wind against them; the Roman army was surrounded and almost annihilated (216). It was thought that Hannibal would march on Rome, but he did not consider himself strong enough to do it. The Carthaginian senate sent him no reenforcements. Hannibal endeavored to take Naples and to have Rome attacked by the king of Macedon; he succeeded only in gaining some towns which Rome besieged and destroyed. Hannibal remained nine years in south Italy; at last his brother Hasdrubal started with the army of Spain to assist him, and made his way almost to central Italy. The two Carthaginian armies marched to unite their forces, each opposed by a Roman army under the command of a consul. Nero, facing Hannibal, had the audacity to traverse central Italy and to unite with his colleague who was intrenched against Hasdrubal. One morning Hasdrubal heard the trumpets sounding twice in the camp of the Romans, a sign that there were two consuls in the camp. He believed his brother was conquered and so retreated; the Romans pursued him, he was killed and his entire army massacred. Then Nero rejoined the army which he had left before Hannibal and threw the head of Hasdrubal into the Carthaginian camp (207). Hannibal, reduced to his own troops, remained in Calabria for five years longer. The descent of a Roman army on Africa compelled him to leave Italy; he massacred the Italian soldiers who refused to accompany him and embarked for Carthage (203). The battle of Zama (202) terminated the war. Hannibal had counted as usual on drawing the Romans within his lines and surrounding them; but Scipio, the Roman general, kept his troops in order and on a second attack threw the enemy's army into rout. Carthage was obliged to treat for peace; she relinquished everything she possessed outside of Africa, ceding Spain to the Romans. She bound herself further to surrender her navy and the elephants, to pay over $10,000,000 and to agree not to make war without the permission of Rome.

Hannibal reorganized Carthage for a new war. The Romans, disturbed at this, demanded that the Carthaginians put him to death. Hannibal fled to Antiochus, king of Syria, and proposed to him to incite a revolt in Italy against Rome; but Antiochus, following the counsel of his courtiers, distrusted Hannibal and invaded Greece, where his army was captured. Hannibal withdrew to the king of Bithynia. The Romans sent Flamininus thither to take him, but Hannibal, seeing his house surrounded, took the poison which he always had by him (183).

Conquests of the Orient.—The Greek kings, successors of the generals of Alexander, divided the Orient among themselves. The most powerful of these took up war against Rome; but they were defeated—Philip, the king of Macedon, in 197, his son Perseus in 168, Antiochus, the king of Syria, in 190. The Romans, having from this time a free field, conquered one by one all the lands which they found of use to them: Macedon (148), the kingdom of Pergamum (129), the rest of Asia (from 74 to 64) after the defeat of Mithradates, and Egypt (30).

With the exception of the Macedonians, the Orient opposed the Romans with mercenaries only or with undisciplined barbarians who fled at the first onset. In the great victory over Antiochus at Magnesia there were only 350 Romans killed. At Chaeronea, Sulla was victorious with the loss of but twelve men. The other kings, now terrified, obeyed the Senate without resistance.

Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, having conquered a part of Egypt, was bidden by Popilius acting under the command of the Senate to abandon his conquest. Antiochus hesitated; but Popilius, taking a rod in his hand, drew a circle about the king, and said, "Before you move from this circle, give answer to the Senate." Antiochus submitted, and surrendered Egypt. The king of Numidia desired of the Senate that it should regard his kingdom as the property of the Roman people. Prusias, the king of Bithynia, with shaved head and in the garb of a freedman, prostrated himself before the Senate. Mithradates alone, king of Pontus, endeavored to resist; but after thirty years of war he was driven from his states and compelled to take his life by poison.

Conquest of the Barbarian Lands.—The Romans found more difficult the subjection of the barbarous and warlike peoples of the west. A century was required to conquer Spain. The shepherd Viriathus made guerilla warfare on them in the mountains of Portugal (149-139), overwhelmed five armies, and compelled even a consul to treat for peace; the Senate got rid of him by assassination.

Against the single town of Numantia it was necessary to send Scipio, the best general of Rome.

The little and obscure peoples of Corsica, of Sardinia, and of the mountains of Genoa (the Ligurians) were always reviving the war with Rome.

But the most indomitable of all were the Gauls. Occupying the whole of the valley of the Po, they threw themselves on Italy to the south. One of their bands had taken Rome in 390. Their big white bodies, their long red mustaches, their blue eyes, their savage yells terrified the Roman soldiers. As soon as their approach was learned, consternation seized Rome, and the Senate proclaimed the levy of the whole army (they called this the "Gallic tumult"). These wars were the bloodiest but the shortest; the first (225-222) gave to the Romans all Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy); the second (120), the Rhone lands (Languedoc, Provence, Dauphine); the third (58-51), all the rest of Gaul.

ROMAN WARFARE

The Triumph.—When a general has won a great victory, the Senate permits him as a signal honor to celebrate the triumph. This is a religious procession to the temple of Jupiter. The magistrates and senators march at the head; then come the chariots filled with booty, the captives chained by the feet, and, at last, on a golden car drawn by four horses, the victorious general crowned with laurel. His soldiers follow him singing songs with the solemn refrain "Io, Triomphe."[125] The procession traverses the city in festal attire and ascends to the Capitol: there the victor lays down his laurel on the knees of Jupiter and thanks him for giving victory. After the ceremony the captives are imprisoned, or, as in the case of Vercingetorix, beheaded, or, like Jugurtha, cast into a dungeon to die of hunger. The triumph of AEmilius Paullus, conqueror of Macedon, lasted for three days. The first day witnessed a procession of 250 chariots bearing pictures and statues, the second the trophies of weapons and 25 casks of silver, the third the vases of gold and 120 sacrificial bulls. At the rear walked King Perseus, clad in black, surrounded by his followers in chains and his three young children who extended their hands to the people to implore their pity.

Booty.—In the wars of antiquity the victor took possession of everything that had belonged to the vanquished, not only of the arms and camp-baggage, but of the treasure, the movable property, beasts of the hostile people, the men, women, and children. At Rome the booty did not belong to the soldiers but to the people. The prisoners were enslaved, the property was sold and the profits of the sale turned into the public chest. And so every war was a lucrative enterprise. The kings of Asia had accumulated enormous treasure and this the Roman generals transported to Rome. The victor of Carthage deposited in the treasury more than 100,000 pounds of silver; the conqueror of Antiochus 140,000 pounds of silver and 1,000 pounds of gold without counting the coined metals; the victor over Persia remitted 120,000,000 sesterces.

The Allies of Rome.—The ancient world was divided among a great number of kings, little peoples, and cities that hated one another. They never united for resistance and so Rome absorbed them one by one.

Those whom she did not attack remained neutral and indifferent; often they even united with the Romans. In the majority of her wars Rome did not fight alone, but had the assistance of allies: against Carthage, the king of Numidia; against the king of Macedon, the AEtolians; against the king of Syria, the Rhodians. In the east many kings proudly assumed the title of "Ally of the Roman People." In the countries divided into small states, some peoples called in the Romans against their neighbors, receiving the Roman army, furnishing it with provisions, and guiding it to the frontiers of the hostile country. And so in Gaul it was Marseilles that introduced the Romans into the valley of the Rhone; it was the people of Autun (the AEdui) who permitted them to establish themselves in the heart of the land.

Motives of Conquest.—The Romans did not from the first have the purpose to conquer the world. Even after winning Italy and Carthage they waited a century before subjecting the Orient which really laid itself at their feet. They conquered, it appears, without predetermined plan, and because they all had interest in conquest. The magistrates who were leaders of the armies saw in conquest a means of securing the honors of the triumph and the surest instrument for making themselves popular. The most powerful statesmen in Rome, Papirius, Fabius, the two Scipios, Cato, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, were victorious generals. The nobles who composed the Senate gained by the increase of Roman subjects, and with these they allied themselves as governors to receive their homage and their presents. For the knights—that is to say, the bankers, the merchants, and the contractors—every new conquest was a new land to exploit. The people itself profited by the booty taken from the enemy. After the treasure of the king of Macedon was deposited in the public chest, taxes were finally abolished. As for the soldiers, as soon as war was carried into rich lands, they received immense sums from their general, to say nothing of what they took from the vanquished. The Romans conquered the world less for glory than for the profits of war.

EFFECTS OF ROMAN CONQUEST

The Empire of the Roman People.—Rome subjected all the lands around the Mediterranean from Spain to Asia Minor. These countries were not annexed, their inhabitants did not become citizens of Rome, nor their territory Roman territory. They remained aliens entering simply into the Roman empire, that is, under the domination of the Roman people. In just the same way today the Hindoos are not citizens but subjects of England; India is a part, not of England, but of the British Empire.

The Public Domain.—When a conquered people asked peace, this is the formula which its deputies were expected to pronounce: "We surrender to you the people, the town, the fields, the waters, the gods of the boundaries, and movable property; all things which belonged to the gods and to men we deliver to the power of the Roman people." By this act, the Roman people became the proprietor of everything that the vanquished possessed, even of their persons. Sometimes it sold the inhabitants into slavery: AEmilius Paullus sold 150,000 Epeirots who surrendered to him. Ordinarily Rome left to the conquered their liberty, but their territory was incorporated into the domain of the Roman people. Of this land three equal parts were made:

1. A part of their lands was returned to the people, but on condition that they pay a tribute in money or in grain, and Rome reserved the right of recalling the land at will.

2. The fields and pastures were farmed out to publicans.

3. Some of the uncultivated land was resigned to the first occupant, every Roman citizen having the right of settling there and of cultivating it.

Agrarian Laws.—The Agrarian Laws which deeply agitated Rome were concerned with this public domain. No Roman had leave to expel the possessors, for the boundaries of these domains were gods (Termini) and religious scruple prevented them from being disturbed. By the Agrarian Laws the people resumed the lands of the public domain which they distributed to citizens as property. Legally the people had the right to do this, since all the domain belonged to them. But for some centuries certain subjects or citizens had been permitted to enjoy these lands; at last they regarded them as their own property; they bequeathed them, bought and sold them. To take these from the occupants would suddenly ruin a multitude of people. In Italy especially, if this were done, all the people of a city would be expelled. Thus Augustus deprived the inhabitants of Mantua of the whole of their territory; Vergil was among the victims, but, thanks to his verse, he obtained the return of his domain, while the other proprietors who were not poets remained in exile. These lands thus recovered were sometimes distributed to poor citizens of Rome, but most frequently to old soldiers. Sulla bestowed lands on 120,000 veterans at the expense of the people of Etruria. The Agrarian Laws were a menace to all the subjects of Rome, and it was one of the benefits conferred by the emperors that they were abolished.

FOOTNOTES:

[123] Wisps or bundle of hay were twisted around poles.—ED.

[124] Regarding all these Italian wars the Romans had only a number of legends, most of them developed to glorify the heroism of some ancestor of a noble family—a Valerius, a Fabius, a Decius, or a Manlius.

[125] These songs were mingled with coarse ribaldry at the expense of the general.—ED.



CHAPTER XXI

THE CONQUERED PEOPLES

THE PROVINCIALS

The Provinces.—The inhabitants of conquered countries did not enter into Roman citizenship, but remained strangers (peregrini), while yet subjects of the Roman empire. They were to pay tribute—the tithe of their crops, a tax in silver, a capitation tax. They must obey Romans of every order. But as the Roman people could not itself administer the province, it sent a magistrate in its place with the mission of governing. The country subject to a governor was called province (which signifies mission).

At the end of the republic (in 46), there were seventeen provinces: ten in Europe, five in Asia, two in Africa—the majority of these very large. Thus the entire territory of Gaul constituted but four provinces, and Spain but two. "The provinces," said Cicero, "are the domains of the Roman people"—if it made all these peoples subjects, it was not for their advantage, but for its own. Its aim was not to administer, but to exploit them.

The Proconsuls.—For the administration of a province the Roman people always appointed a magistrate, consul or praetor, who was just finishing the term of his office, and whose prerogative it prolonged.[126] The proconsul, like the consul, had absolute power and he could exercise it to his fancy, for he was alone in his province;[127] there were no other magistrates to dispute the power with him, no tribunes of the people to veto his acts, no senate to watch him. He alone commanded the troops, led them to battle, and posted them where he wished. He sat in his tribunal (praetorium), condemning to fine, imprisonment, or death. He promulgated decrees which had the force of law. He was the sole authority over himself for he was in himself the incarnation of the Roman people.

Tyranny and Oppression of the Proconsuls.—This governor, whom no one resisted, was a true despot. He made arrests, cast into prison, beat with rods, or executed those who displeased him. The following is one of a thousand of these caprices of the governor as a Roman orator relates it: "At last the consul came to Termini, where his wife took a fancy to bathe in the men's bath. All the men who were bathing there were driven out The wife of the consul complained that it had not been done quickly enough and that the baths were not well prepared. The consul had a post set up in a public place, brought to it one of the most eminent men of the city, stripped him of his garments, and had him beaten with rods."

The proconsul drew from the province as much money as he wanted; thus he regarded it as his private property. Means were not wanting to exploit it. He plundered the treasuries of the cities, removed the statues and jewels stored in the temples, and made requisitions on the rich inhabitants for money or grain. As he was able to lodge troops where he pleased, the cities paid him money to be exempt from the presence of the soldiers. As he could condemn to death at will, individuals gave him security-money. If he demanded an object of art or even a sum of money, who would dare to refuse him? The men of his escort imitated his example, pillaging under his name, and even under his protection. The governor was in haste to accumulate his wealth as it was necessary that he make his fortune in one year. After he returned to Rome, another came who recommenced the whole process. There was, indeed, a law that prohibited every governor from accepting a gift, and a tribunal (since 149) expressly for the crime of extortion. But this tribunal was composed of nobles and Roman knights who would not condemn their compatriot, and the principal result of this system was, according to the remark of Cicero, to compel the governor to take yet more plunder from the province in order to purchase the judges of the tribunal.

It cannot surprise one that the term "proconsul" came to be a synonym for despot. Of these brigands by appointment the most notorious was Verres, propraetor of Sicily, since Cicero from political motives pronounced against him seven orations which have made him famous. But it is probable that many others were as bad as he.

The Publicans.—In every province the Roman people had considerable revenues—the customs, the mines, the imposts, the grain-lands, and the pastures. These were farmed out to companies of contractors who were called publicans. These men bought from the state the right of collecting the impost in a certain place, and the provincials had to obey them as the representatives of the Roman people. And so in every province there were many companies of publicans, each with a crowd of clerks and collectors. These people carried themselves as masters, extorted more than was due them, reduced the debtors to misery, sometimes selling them as slaves. In Asia they even exiled the inhabitants without any pretext. When Marius required the king of Bithynia to furnish him with soldiers, the king replied that, thanks to the publicans, he had remaining as citizens only women, children, and old people. The Romans were well informed of these excesses. Cicero wrote to his brother, then a governor, "If you find the means of satisfying the publicans without letting the provincials be destroyed, it is because you have the attributes of a god." But the publicans were judged in the tribunals and the proconsuls themselves obeyed them. Scaurus, the proconsul of Asia, a man of rigid probity,[128] wished to prevent them from pillaging his province; on his return to Rome they had him accused and condemned.

The publicans drove to extremities even the peaceable and submissive inhabitants of the Orient: in a single night, at the order of Mithradates, 100,000 Romans were massacred. A century later, in the time of Christ, the word "publican" was synonymous with thief.

The Bankers.—The Romans had heaped up at home the silver of the conquered countries. And so silver was very abundant in Rome and scarce in the provinces. At Rome one could borrow at four or five per cent.; in the provinces not less than twelve per cent. was charged. The bankers borrowed money in Rome and loaned it in the provinces, especially to kings or to cities. When the exhausted peoples could not return the principal and the interest, the bankers imitated the procedure of the publicans. In 84 the cities of Asia made a loan to pay an enormous war-levy; fourteen years later, the interest alone had made the debt amount to six times the original amount. The bankers compelled the cities to sell even their objects of art; parents sold even their children. Some years later one of the most highly esteemed Romans of his time, Brutus, the Stoic, loaned to the city of Salamis in Cyprus a sum of money at forty-eight per cent. interest (four per cent. a month). Scaptius, his business manager, demanded the sum with interest; the city could not pay; Scaptius then went in search of the proconsul Appius, secured a squadron of cavalry and came to Salamis to blockade the senate in its hall of assembly; five senators died of famine.

Defencelessness of the Provincials.—The provincials had no redress against all these tyrants. The governor sustained the publicans, and the Roman army and people sustained the governor. Admit that a Roman citizen could enter suit against the plunderers of the provinces: a governor was inviolable and could not be accused until he had given up his office; while he held his office there was nothing to do but to watch him plunder. If he were accused on his return to Rome, he appeared before a tribunal of nobles and of publicans who were more interested to support him than to render justice to the provincials. If, perchance, the tribunal condemned him, exile exempted him from all further penalty and he betook himself to a city of Italy to enjoy his plunder. This punishment was nothing to him and was not even a loss to him. And so the provincials preferred to appease their governor by submission. They treated him like a king, flattered him, sent presents, and raised statues to him. Often, indeed, in Asia they raised altars to him,[129] built temples to him, and adored him as a god.

SLAVERY

The Sale of Slaves.—Every prisoner of war, every inhabitant of a captured city belonged to the victor. If they were not killed, they were enslaved. Such was the ancient custom and the Romans exercised the right to the full. Captives were treated as a part of the booty and were therefore either sold to slave-merchants who followed the army or, if taken to Rome, were put up at auction.[130] After every war thousands of captives, men and women, were sold as slaves. Children born of slave mothers would themselves be slaves. Thus it was the conquered peoples who furnished the slave-supply for the Romans.

Condition of the Slave.—The slave belonged to a master, and so was regarded not as a person but as a piece of property. He had, then, no rights; he could not be a citizen or a proprietor; he could be neither husband nor father. "Slave marriages!" says a character in a Roman comedy;[131] "A slave takes a wife; it is contrary to the custom of every people." The master has full right over his slave; he sends him where he pleases, makes him work according to his will, even beyond his strength, ill feeds him, beats him, tortures him, kills him without accounting to anybody for it. The slave must submit to all the whims of his master; the Romans declare, even, that he is to have no conscience, his only duty is blind obedience. If he resists, if he flees, the state assists the master to subdue or recover him; the man who gives refuge to a fugitive slave renders himself liable to the charge of theft, as if he had taken an ox or a horse belonging to another.

Number of Slaves.—Slaves were far more numerous than free men. Rich citizens owned 10,000 to 20,000 of them,[132] some having enough of them to constitute a real army. We read of Caecilius Claudius Isidorius who had once been a slave and came to possess more than 4,000 slaves. Horace, who had seven slaves, speaks of his modest patrimony. Having but three was in Rome a mark of poverty.

Urban Slaves.—The Roman nobles, like the Orientals of our day, delighted in surrounding themselves with a crowd of servants. In a great Roman house lived hundreds of slaves, organized for different services. There were slaves to care for the furniture, for the silver plate, for the objects of art; slaves of the wardrobe, valets and chambermaids, the troop of cooks, the slaves of the bath, the master of the house and his aids, the slaves to escort the master and mistress on the street, the litter-carriers, coachmen and grooms, secretaries, readers, copyists, physicians, teachers, actors, musicians, artisans of every kind, for in every great house grain was ground, flax was spun, and garments were woven. Others, gathered in workshops, manufactured objects which the master sold to his profit. Others were hired out as masons or as sailors; Crassus had 500 carpenter-slaves. These classes of slaves were called "slaves of the city."

Rural Slaves.—Every great domain was tilled by a band of slaves. They were the laborers, the shepherds, the vine-dressers, the gardeners, the fishermen, grouped together in squads of ten. An overseer, himself a slave, superintended them. The proprietor made it a matter to produce everything on his lands: "He buys nothing; everything that he consumes he raises at home," this is the compliment paid to the rich. The Roman, therefore, kept a great number of country-slaves, as they were called. A Roman domain had a strong resemblance to a village; indeed it was called a "villa." The name has been preserved: what the French call "ville" since the Middle Ages is only the old Roman domain increased in size.

Treatment of Slaves.—The kind of treatment the slaves received depended entirely on the character of the master. Some enlightened and humane masters may be enumerated, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, who fed their slaves well, talked with them, sometimes had them sit at table with them, and permitted them to have families and small fortunes (the peculium).

But other masters are mentioned who treated their slaves as animals, punished them cruelly, and even had them put to death for a whim. Examples of these are not lacking. Vedius Pollio, a freedman of Augustus, used to keep some lampreys in his fish-pond: when one of his slaves carelessly broke a vase, he had him thrown into the fish-pond as food for the lampreys. The philosopher Seneca paints in the following words the violent cruelty of the masters: "If a slave coughs or sneezes during a meal, if he pursues the flies too slowly, if he lets a key fall noisily lo the floor, we fall into a great rage. If he replies with too much spirit, if his countenance shows ill humor, have we any right to have him flogged? Often we strike too hard and shatter a limb or break a tooth." The philosopher Epictetus, who was a slave, had had his ankle fractured in this way by his master. Women were no more humane. Ovid, in a compliment paid to a woman, says, "Many times she had her hair dressed in my presence, but never did she thrust her needle into the arm of the serving-woman."

Public opinion did not condemn these cruelties. Juvenal represents a woman angry at one of her slaves. "Crucify him," says she. "By what crime has the slave merited this punishment? Blockhead! Is a slave, then, a man? It may be that he has done nothing. I wish it, I order it, my will is reason enough."

The law was no milder than custom. As late as the first century after Christ, when a master was assassinated in his house, all the slaves were put to death. When some wished to abolish this law, Thraseas, one of the philosophers of high repute, rose to address the Senate to demand that the law be maintained.

The Ergastulum.—A subterranean prison, lighted by narrow windows so high that they could not be reached by the hand, was called the ergastulum. The slaves who had displeased their master spent the night there; during the day they were sent to work loaded with heavy chains of iron. Many were branded with a red-hot iron.

The Mill.—The ancients had no mills run by machinery; they had the grain ground by slaves with hand-mills. It was the most difficult kind of work and was usually inflicted as a punishment. The mill of antiquity was like a convict-prison. "There," says Plautus, "moan the wicked slaves who are fed on polenta; there resound the noise of whips and the clanking of chains." Three centuries later, in the second century, Apuleius the novelist, depicts the interior of a mill as follows: "Gods! what poor shrunken up men! with white skin striped with blows of the whip, ... they wear only the shreds of a tunic; bent forward, head shaved, the feet held in a chain, the body deformed by the heat of the fire, the eyelids eaten away by the fumes, everything covered with grain-dust."

Character of the Slaves.—Subjected to crushing labor or to enforced idleness, always under the threat of the whip or of torture, slaves became, according to their nature, either melancholy and savage, or lazy and subservient. The most energetic of them committed suicide; the others led a life that was merely mechanical. "The slave," said Cato the Elder, "ought always to work or to sleep." The majority of them lost all sense of honor. And so they used to call a mean act "servile," that is, like a slave.

Slave Revolts.—The slaves did not write and so we do not know from their own accounts what they thought of their masters. But the masters felt themselves surrounded by hate. Pliny the Younger, learning that a master was to be assassinated at the bath by his slaves, made this reflection, "This is the peril under which we all live." "More Romans," says another writer, "have fallen victims to the hate of their slaves than to that of tyrants."

At different times slave revolts flamed up (the servile wars), almost always in Sicily and south Italy where slaves were armed to guard the herds. The most noted of these wars was the one under Spartacus. A band of seventy gladiators, escaping from Capua, plundered a chariot loaded with arms, and set themselves to hold the country. The slaves escaped to them in crowds to unite their fortunes with theirs, and soon they became an army.

The slaves defeated three Roman armies sent in succession against them.

Their chief Spartacus wished to traverse the whole peninsula of Italy in order to return to Thrace, from which country he had been brought as a prisoner of war to serve as a gladiator. But at last these ill-disciplined bands were shattered by the army of Crassus. The revolutionists were all put to death. Rome now prohibited the slaves from carrying arms thereafter, and it is reported that a shepherd was once executed for having killed a boar with a spear.

Admission to Citizenship.—Rome treated its subjects and its slaves brutally, but it did not drive them out, as the Greek cities did.

The alien could become a Roman citizen by the will of the Roman people, and the people often accorded this favor, sometimes they even bestowed it upon a whole people at once. They created the Latins citizens at one stroke; in 89 it was the turn of the Italians; in 46 the people of Cisalpine Gaul entered the body of citizens. All the inhabitants of Italy thus became the equals of the Romans.

The slave could be manumitted by his master and soon became a citizen.

This is the reason why the Roman people, gradually exhausting themselves, were renewed by accessions from the subjects and the slaves. The number of the citizens was increased at every census; it rose from 250,000 to 700,000. The Roman city, far from emptying itself as did Sparta, replenished itself little by little from all those whom it had conquered.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] In the smallest provinces the title of the governor was propraetor.

[127] In the oriental countries Rome left certain little kings (like King Herod in Judaea), but they paid tribute and obeyed the governor.

[128] This estimate of the character of Scaurus is too favorable.—ED.

[129] Cicero speaks of the temples which were raised to him by the people of Cilicia, of which county he was governor.

[130] Every important town had its market for slaves as for cattle and horses. The slave to be sold was exhibited on a platform with a label about his neck indicating his age, his better qualities and his defects.

[131] In the Casina of Plautus.

[132] Athenaeus, who makes this statement, is probably guilty of exaggeration.—ED.



CHAPTER XXII

TRANSFORMATION OF LIFE IN ROME

Greek and Oriental Influence.—Conquest gave the Romans a clearer view of the Greeks and Orientals. Thousands of foreigners brought to Rome as slaves, or coming thither to make their fortune, established themselves in the city as physicians, professors, diviners, or actors. Generals, officers and soldiers lived in the midst of Asia, and thus the Romans came to know the customs and the new beliefs and gradually adopted them. This transformation had its beginning with the first Macedonian war (about 200 B.C.), and continued until the end of the empire.

CHANGES IN RELIGION

The Greek Gods.—The Roman gods bore but a slight resemblance to the Greek gods, even in name; yet in the majority of the divinities of Rome the Greeks recognized or believed they recognized their own. The Roman gods up to that time had neither precise form nor history; this rendered confusion all the easier. Every Roman god was represented under the form of a Greek god and a history was made of the adventures of this god.

The Latin Jupiter was confounded with the Greek Zeus; Juno with Hera; Minerva, the goddess of memory, with Pallas, goddess of wisdom; Diana, female counterpart of Janus, unites with Artemis, the brilliant huntress; Hercules, the god of the enclosure, was assimilated to Herakles, the victor over monsters. Thus Greek mythology insinuated itself under Latin names, and the gods of Rome found themselves transformed into Greek gods. The fusion was so complete that we have preserved the custom of designating the Greek gods by their Latin names; we still call Artemis Diana, and Pallas Minerva.

The Bacchanals.—The Greeks had adopted an oriental god, Bacchus, the god of the vintage, and the Romans began to adore him also. The worshippers of Bacchus celebrated his cult at night and in secret. Only the initiated were admitted to the mysteries of the Bacchanals, who swore not to reveal any of the ceremonies. A woman, however, dared to denounce to the Senate the Bacchanalian ceremonies that occurred in Rome in 186. The Senate made an inquiry, discovered 7,000 persons, men and women, who had participated in the mysteries, and had them put to death.

Oriental Superstitions.—Already in 220 there was in Rome a temple of the Egyptian god Serapis. The Senate ordered it to be demolished. As no workman dared to touch it, the consul himself had to come and beat down the doors with blows of an axe.

Some years after, in 205, during the war with Hannibal, it was the Senate itself that sent an ambassador to Asia Minor to seek the goddess Cybele. The Great Mother (as she was called) was represented by a black stone, and this the envoys of the Senate brought in great pomp and installed in Rome. Her priests followed her and paced the streets to the sound of fifes and cymbals, clad in oriental fashion, and begging from door to door.

Later, Italy was filled with Chaldean sorcerers. The mass of the people were not the only ones to believe in these diviners. When the Cimbri menaced Rome (104), Martha, a prophetess of Syria, came to the Senate to offer it victory over the barbarians; the Senate drove her out, but the Roman women brought her to the camp, and Marius, the general in chief, kept her by him and consulted her to the end of the war. Sulla, likewise, had seen in vision the goddess of Cappadocia and it was on her advice that he took his way to Italy.

Sceptics.—Not only priests and diviners came to Rome, but also philosophers who scoffed at the old religion. The best known of these, Carneades, the ambassador of the Athenians, spoke in Rome in public, and the youth of Rome came in crowds to hear him. The Senate bade him leave the city. But the philosophers continued to teach in the schools of Athens and Rhodes, and it was the fashion to send the Roman youth thither for instruction. About the third century before Christ Euhemerus, a Greek, had written a book to prove that there were no gods; the gods, he said, were only men of ancient times who had been deified; Jupiter himself had been a king of Crete. This book had a great success and was translated into Latin by the poet Ennius. The nobles of Rome were accustomed to mock at their gods, maintaining only the cult of the old religion. The higher Roman society was for a century at once superstitious and sceptical.

CHANGES IN MANNERS

The Old Customs.—The old Romans had for centuries been diligent and rude husbandmen, engaged in cultivating their fields, in fighting, and in fulfilling the ceremonies of their religion. Their ideal was the grave man. Cincinnatus, they said, was pushing his plough when the deputies of the Senate came to offer him the dictatorship. Fabricius had of plate only a cup and a salt-cellar of silver. Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of the Samnites, was sitting on a bench eating some beans in a wooden bowl when the envoys of the Samnites presented themselves before him to offer him a bribe.[133] "Go and tell the Samnites," said he, "that Curius prefers commanding those who have gold to having it himself." These are some of the anecdotes that they used to tell about the generals of the olden time. True or false, these legends exhibit the ideas that were current in Rome at a later time regarding the ancient Romans.

Cato the Elder.—At the time when manners were changing, one man made himself notable by his attachment to the "customs of the fathers." This was Cato. He was born in 232[134] in the little village of Tusculum and had spent his youth in manual labor. Entering the army, according to the usage of the time, at the age of seventeen, he fought in all the campaigns against Hannibal. He was not noble, but he made himself popular by his energy, his probity, and his austerity. He passed through the whole course of political honors—quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul, and censor. He showed himself everywhere, like the old Romans, rude, stern, and honest. As quaestor he remonstrated with the consul about his expenses; but the consul, who was Scipio, replied to him, "I have no need of so exact a quaestor." As praetor in Sardinia, he refused the money that was offered him by the province for the expenses of entertainment. As consul, he spoke with vigor for the Oppian law which prohibited Roman women from wearing costly attire; the women put it off, and the law was abrogated. Sent to command the army of Spain, Cato took 400 towns, securing immense treasure which he turned into the public chest; at the moment of embarking, he sold his horse to save the expenses of transportation. As censor, he erased from the senate-list many great persons on the ground of their extravagance; he farmed the taxes at a very high price and taxed at ten times their value the women's habits, jewels, and conveyances. Having obtained the honor of a triumph, he withdrew to the army in Macedonia as a simple officer.

All his life he fought with the nobles of the new type, extravagant and elegant. He "barked" especially at the Scipios, accusing them of embezzling state moneys. In turn he was forty-four times made defendant in court, but was always acquitted.

On his farm Cato labored with his slaves, ate with them, and when he had to correct them, beat them with his own hand. In his treatise on Agriculture, written for his son, he has recorded all the old axioms of the Roman peasantry.[135] He considered it to be a duty to become rich. "A widow," he said, "can lessen her property; a man ought to increase his. He is worthy of fame and inspired of the gods who gains more than he inherits." Finding that agriculture was not profitable enough, he invested in merchant ships; he united with fifty associates and all together constructed fifty ships of commerce, that each might have a part in the risks and the profits. A good laborer, a good soldier, a foe to luxury, greedy of gain, Cato was the type of the Roman of the old stock.

The New Manners.—Many Romans on the contrary, especially the nobles, admired and imitated the foreigners. At their head were the generals who had had a nearer view of Greece and the Orient—Scipio, conqueror of the king of Syria, Flamininus and AEmilius Paullus, victors over the kings of Macedon, later Lucullus, conqueror of the king of Armenia. They were disgusted with the mean and gross life of their ancestors, and adopted a more luxurious and agreeable mode of living. Little by little all the nobles, all the rich followed their example; one hundred and fifty years later in Italy all the great were living in Greek or oriental fashion.

Oriental Luxury.—In the East the Romans found models in the royal successors of Alexander, possessors of enormous wealth; for all the treasure that was not employed in paying mercenaries was squandered by the court. These oriental kings indulged their vanity by displaying gleaming robes, precious stones, furniture of silver, golden plate; by surrounding themselves with a multitude of useless servants, by casting money to the people who were assembled to admire them.[136]

The Romans, very vain and with artistic tastes but slightly developed, had a relish for this species of luxury. They had but little regard for beauty or for comfort, and had thought for nothing else than display. They had houses built with immense gardens adorned with statues, sumptuous villas projecting into the sea in the midst of enormous gardens. They surrounded themselves with troops of slaves. They and their wives substituted for linen garments those of gauze, silk, and gold. At their banquets they spread embroidered carpets, purple coverings, gold and silver plate. Sulla had one hundred and fifty dishes of silver; the plate of Marcus Drusus weighed 10,000 pounds. While the common people continued to sit at table in accordance with old Italian custom, the rich adopted the oriental usage of reclining on couches at their meals. At the same time was introduced the affected and costly cookery of the East—exotic fishes, brains of peacocks, and tongues of birds.

From the second century the extravagance was such that a consul who died in 152 could say in his will: "As true glory does not consist in vain pomp but in the merits of the dead and of one's ancestors, I bid my children not to spend on my funeral ceremonies more than a million as" ($10,000).

Greek Humanity.—In Greece the Romans saw the monuments, the statues, and the pictures which had crowded their cities for centuries; they came to know their learned people and the philosophers. Some of the Romans acquired a taste for the beautiful and for the life of the spirit. The Scipios surrounded themselves with cultivated Greeks. AEmilius Paullus asked from all the booty taken by him from Macedon only the library of King Perseus; he had his children taught by Greek preceptors. It was then the fashion in Rome to speak, and even to write in Greek.[137] The nobles desired to appear connoisseurs in painting and in sculpture; they imported statues by the thousand, the famous bronzes of Corinth, and they heaped these up in their houses. Thus Verres possessed a whole gallery of objects of art which he had stolen in Sicily. Gradually the Romans assumed a gloss of Greek art and literature. This new culture was called "humanity," as opposed to the "rusticity" of the old Roman peasants.

It was little else than gloss; the Romans had realized but slightly that beauty and truth were to be sought for their own sakes; art and science always remained objects of luxury and parade. Even in the time of Cicero the soldier, the peasant, the politician, the man of affairs, the advocate were alone regarded as truly occupied. Writing, composing, contributing to science, philosophy, or criticism—all this was called "being at leisure."[138] Artists and scholars were never regarded at Rome as the equals of the rich merchant. Lucian, a Greek writer, said, "If you would be a Pheidias, if you would make a thousand masterpieces, nobody will care to imitate you, for as skilful as you are, you will always pass for an artisan, a man who lives by the work of his hands."

Lucullus.—Lucullus, the type of the new Roman, was born in 145 of a noble and rich family; thus he entered without difficulty into the course of political honors. From his first campaigns he was notable for his magnanimity to the vanquished. Become consul, he was placed at the head of the army against Mithradates. He found the inhabitants of Asia exasperated by the brigandage and the cruelties of the publicans, and gave himself to checking these excesses; he forbade, too, his soldiers pillaging conquered towns. In this way he drew to him the useless affection of the Asiatics and the dangerous hate of the publicans and the soldiers. They intrigued to have him recalled; he had then defeated Mithradates and was pursuing him with his ally, the king of Armenia; he came with a small army of 20,000 men to put to rout an immense multitude of barbarians. His command was taken from him and given to Pompey, the favorite of the publicans.

Lucullus then retired to enjoy the riches that he had accumulated in Asia. He had in the neighborhood of Rome celebrated gardens, at Naples a villa constructed in part in the sea, and at Tusculum a summer palace with a whole museum of objects of art. He spent the beautiful season at Tusculum surrounded by his friends, by scholars and men of letters, reading Greek authors, and discussing literature and philosophy.

Many anecdotes are told of the luxury of Lucullus. One day, being alone at dinner, he found his table simpler than ordinary and reproached the cook, who excused himself by saying there was no guest present. "Do you not know," replied his master, "that Lucullus dines today with Lucullus?" Another day he invited Caesar and Cicero to dine, who accepted on condition that he would make no change from his ordinary arrangements. Lucullus simply said to a slave to have dinner prepared in the hall of Apollo. A magnificent feast was spread, the guests were astonished. Lucullus replied he had given no order, that the expense of his dinners was regulated by the hall where he gave them; those of the hall of Apollo were to cost not less than $10,000. A praetor who had to present a grand spectacle asked Lucullus if he would lend him one hundred purple robes; he replied by tendering two hundred.

Lucullus remained the representative of the new manners, as Cato of the old customs. For the ancients Cato was the virtuous Roman, Lucullus the degenerate Roman. Lucullus, in effect, discarded the manners of his ancestors, and so acquired a broader, more elevated, and more refined spirit, more humanity toward his slaves and his subjects.

The New Education.—At the time when Polybius lived in Rome (before 150) the old Romans taught their children nothing else than to read.[139] The new Romans provided Greek instructors for their children. Some Greeks opened in Rome schools of poesy, rhetoric, and music. The great families took sides between the old and new systems. But there always remained a prejudice against music and the dance; they were regarded as arts belonging to the stage, improper for a man of good birth. Scipio AEmilianus, the protector of the Greeks, speaks with indignation of a dancing-school to which children and young girls of free birth resorted: "When it was told me, I could not conceive that nobles would teach such things to their children. But when some one took me to the dancing-school, I saw there more than 500 boys and girls and, among the number a twelve-year-old child, a candidate's son, who danced to the sound of castanets." Sallust, speaking of a Roman woman of little reputation, says, "She played on the lyre and danced better than is proper for an honest woman."

The New Status of Women.—The Roman women gave themselves with energy to the religions and the luxury of the East. They flocked in crowds to the Bacchanals and the mysteries of Isis. Sumptuary laws were made against their fine garments, their litters, and their jewels, but these laws had to be abrogated and the women allowed to follow the example of the men. Noble women ceased to walk or to remain in their homes; they set out with great equipages, frequented the theatre, the circus, the baths, and the places of assembly. Idle and exceedingly ignorant, they quickly became corrupt. In the nobility, women of fine character became the exception. The old discipline of the family fell to the ground. The Roman law made the husband the master of his wife; but a new form of marriage was invented which left the woman under the authority of her father and gave no power to her husband. To make their daughter still more independent, her parents gave her a dower.

Divorce.—Sometimes the husband alone had the right to repudiate his wife, but the custom was that this right should be exercised only in the gravest circumstances. The woman gained the right of leaving her husband, and so it became very easy to break a marriage. There was no need of a judgment, or even of a motive. It was enough for the discontented husband or wife to say to the other, "Take what belongs to you, and return what is mine." After the divorce either could marry again.

In the aristocracy, marriage came to be regarded as a passing union; Sulla had five wives, Caesar four, Pompey five, and Antony four. The daughter of Cicero had three husbands. Hortensius divorced his wife to give her to a friend. "There are noble women," says Seneca, "who count their age not by the years of the consuls, but by the husbands they have had; they divorce to marry again, they marry to divorce again."

But this corruption affected hardly more than the nobles of Rome and the upstarts. In the families of Italy and the provinces the more serious manners of the old time still prevailed; but the discipline of the family gradually slackened and the woman slowly freed herself from the despotism of her husband.

FOOTNOTES:

[133] Another version is that he was sitting at the hearth roasting turnips.—ED.

[134] 232 and 234 are both given as the date of Cato's birth. The latter is the more probable.—ED.

[135] Nearly all Romans of Cato's time were husbandmen, tilling the soil with their own hands.—ED.

[136] This taste for useless magnificence is exhibited in the stories of the Thousand and One Nights.

[137] Cato the Elder had a horror of the Greeks. He said to his son: "I will tell what I have seen in Athens. This race is the most perverse and intractable. Listen to me as to an oracle: whenever this people teaches us its arts it will corrupt everything."

[138] "Schola," from which we derive "school," signified leisure.

[139] Also to write and reckon, as previously stated.—ED.



CHAPTER XXIII

FALL OF THE REPUBLIC

DECADENCE OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS

Destruction of the Peasantry.—The old Roman people consisted of small proprietors who cultivated their own land. These honest and robust peasants constituted at once the army and the assembly of the people. Though still numerous in 221 and during the Second Punic War, in 133 there were no more of them. Many without doubt had perished in the foreign wars; but the special reason for their disappearance was that it had become impossible for them to subsist.

The peasants lived by the culture of grain. When Rome received the grain of Sicily and Africa, the grain of Italy fell to so low a price that laborers could not raise enough to support their families and pay the military tax. They were compelled to sell their land and this was bought by a rich neighbor. Of many small fields he made a great domain; he laid the land down to grazing, and to protect his herds or to cultivate it he sent shepherds and slave laborers. On the soil of Italy at that time there were only great proprietors and troops of slaves. "Great domains," said Pliny the Elder, "are the ruin of Italy."

It was, in fact, the great domains that drove the free peasants from the country districts. The old proprietor who sold his land could no longer remain a farmer; he had to yield the place to slaves, and he himself wandered forth without work. "The majority of these heads of families," says Varro in his treatise on agriculture, "have slipped within our walls, leaving the scythe and the plough; they prefer clapping their hands at the circus to working in their fields and their vineyards." Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune of the plebs, exclaimed in a moment of indignation, "The wild beasts of Italy have at least their lairs, but the men who offer their blood for Italy have only the light and the air that they breathe; they wander about without shelter, without a dwelling, with their wives and their children. Those generals do but mock them who exhort them to fight for their tombs and their temples. Is there one of them who still possesses the sacred altar of his house and the tomb of his ancestors? They are called the masters of the world while they have not for themselves a single foot of earth."

The City Plebs.—While the farms were being drained, the city of Rome was being filled with a new population. They were the descendants of the ruined peasants whom misery had driven to the city; besides these, there were the freedmen and their children. They came from all the corners of the world—Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Asiatics, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls—torn from their homes, and sold as slaves; later freed by their masters and made citizens, they massed themselves in the city. It was an entirely new people that bore the name Roman. One day Scipio, the conqueror of Carthage and of Numantia, haranguing the people in the forum, was interrupted by the cries of the mob. "Silence! false sons of Italy," he cried; "do as you like; those whom I brought to Rome in chains will never frighten me even if they are no longer slaves." The populace preserved quiet, but these "false sons of Italy," the sons of the vanquished, had already taken the place of the old Romans.

This new plebeian order could not make a livelihood for itself, and so the state had to provide food for it. A beginning was made in 123 with furnishing corn at half price to all citizens, and this grain was imported from Sicily and Africa. Since the year 63[140] corn was distributed gratuitously and oil was also provided. There were registers and an administration expressly for these distributions, a special service for furnishing provisions (the Annona). In 46 Caesar found 320,000 citizens enrolled for these distributions.

Electoral Corruption.—This miserable and lazy populace filled the forum on election days and made the laws and the magistrates. The candidates sought to win its favors by giving shows and public feasts, and by dispensing provisions. They even bought votes. This sale took place on a large scale and in broad day; money was given to distributers who divided it among the voters. Once the Senate endeavored to stop this trade; but when Piso, the consul, proposed a law to prohibit the sale of suffrages, the distributers excited a riot and drove the consul from the forum. In the time of Cicero no magistrate could be elected without enormous expenditures.

Corruption of the Senate.—Poverty corrupted the populace who formed the assemblies; luxury tainted the men of the old families who composed the Senate. The nobles regarded the state as their property and so divided among themselves the functions of the state and intrigued to exclude the rest of the citizens from them. When Cicero was elected magistrate, he was for thirty years the first "new man" to enter the succession of offices.

Accustomed to exercise power, some of the senators believed themselves to be above the law. When Scipio was accused of embezzlement, he refused even to exonerate himself and said at the tribune, "Romans, it was on this day that I conquered Hannibal and the Carthaginians. Follow me to the Capitol to render thanks to the gods and to beseech them always to provide generals like myself."

To support their pretensions at home, the majority of the nobles required a large amount of money. Many used their power to get it for themselves: some sent as governors plundered the subjects of Rome; others compelled foreign or hostile kings to pay for the peace granted them, or even for letting their army be beaten. It was in this way that Jugurtha bribed a Roman general. Cited to Rome to answer for a murder, he escaped trial by buying up a tribune who forbade him to speak. It was related that in leaving Rome he had said, "O city for sale, if thou only couldst find a purchaser!"

Corruption of the Army.—The Roman army was composed of small proprietors who, when a war was finished, returned to the cultivation of their fields. In becoming soldiers they remained citizens and fought only for their country. Marius began to admit to the legions poor citizens who enrolled themselves for the purpose of making capital from their campaigns. Soon the whole army was full of adventurers who went to war, not to perform their service, but to enrich themselves from the vanquished. One was no longer a soldier from a sense of duty, but as a profession.

The soldiers enrolled themselves for twenty years; their time completed, they reengaged themselves at higher pay and became veterans. These people knew neither the Senate nor the laws; their obedience was only to their general. To attach them to himself, the general distributed to them the money taken from the vanquished. During the war against Mithradates Sulla lodged his men with the rich inhabitants of Asia; they lived as they chose, they and their friends, receiving each sixteen drachmas a day. These first generals, Marius and Sulla, were still Roman magistrates. But soon rich individuals like Pompey and Crassus drew the soldiers to their pay. In 78 at the death of Sulla there were four armies, levied entirely and commanded by simple citizens. From that time there was no further question of the legions of Rome, there were left only the legions of Pompey or Caesar.

THE REVOLUTION

Necessity of the Revolution.—The Roman people was no longer anything but an indigent and lazy multitude, the army only an aggregation of adventurers. Neither the assembly nor the legions obeyed the Senate, for the corrupt nobles had lost all moral authority, so that there was left but one real power—the army; there were no men of influence beside the generals, and the generals had no longer any desire to obey. The government by the Senate, now no longer practicable, gave place to the government of the general.

The Civil Wars.—The revolution was inevitable, but it did not come at one stroke; it required more than a hundred years to accomplish it. The Senate resisted, but too weak itself to govern, it was strong enough to prevent domination by another power. The generals fought among themselves to see who should remain master. For a century the Romans and their subjects lived in the midst of riot and civil war.

The Gracchi.—The first civil discord that blazed up in Rome was the contest of the Gracchi against the Senate. The two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, were of one of the noblest families of Rome, but both endeavored to take the government from the nobles who formed the Senate by making themselves tribunes of the plebs. There was at that time, either in Rome or in Italy, a crowd of citizens without means who desired a revolution; even among the rich the majority were of the class of the knights, who complained that they had no part in the government. Tiberius Gracchus had himself named tribune of the plebs and sought to gain control of the government. He proposed to the people an agrarian law. All the lands of the public domain occupied by individuals were to be resumed by the state (with the exception of 500 acres for each one); these lands taken by the state were to be distributed in small lots to poor citizens. The law was voted. It caused general confusion regarding property, for almost all of the lands of the empire constituted a part of the public domain, but they had been occupied for a long time and the possessors were accustomed to regard themselves as proprietors. Further, as the Romans had no registry of the lands, it was often very difficult to ascertain whether a domain were private or public property. To direct these operations, Tiberius had three commissioners named on whom the people conferred absolute authority; they were Tiberius, his brother, and his father-in-law, and it was uncertain whether Tiberius had acted in the interest of the people, or simply to have a pretext for having power placed in his hands. For a year he was master of Rome; but when he wished to be elected tribune of the plebs for the succeeding year, his enemies protested, as this was contrary to custom. A riot followed. Tiberius and his friends seized the Capitol; the partisans of the Senate and their slaves, armed with clubs and fragments of benches, pursued them and despatched them (133).

Ten years later Gaius, the younger of the Gracchi, elected tribune of the plebs (123), had the agrarian law voted anew, and established distributions[141] of corn to the poor citizens. Then, to destroy the power of the nobles, he secured a decree that the judges should be taken from among the knights. For two years Gaius dominated the government, but while he was absent from the city conducting a colony of Roman citizens to Carthage the people abandoned him. On his return he could not be reelected. The consul armed the partisans of the Senate and marched against Gaius and his friends who had fled to the Aventine Hill. Gaius had himself killed by a slave; his followers were massacred or executed in prison; their houses were razed and their property confiscated.

Marius and Sulla.—The contests of the Gracchi and the Senate had been no more than riots in the streets of Rome, terminating in a combat between bands hastily armed. The strife that followed was a succession of real wars between regular armies, wars in Italy, wars in all the provinces. From this time the party chiefs were no other than the generals.

The first to use his army to secure obedience in Rome was Marius. He was born in Arpinum, a little town in the mountains, and was not of noble descent. He had attained reputation as an officer in the army, and had been elected tribune of the plebs, then praetor, with the help of the nobles. He turned against them and was elected consul and commissioned with the war against Jugurtha, king of Numidia, who had already fought several Roman armies. It was then that Marius enrolled poor citizens for whom military service became a profession. With his army Marius conquered Jugurtha and the barbarians, the Cimbri and Teutones, who had invaded the empire. He then returned to Rome where he had himself elected consul for the sixth time and now exercised absolute power. Two parties now took form in Rome who called themselves the party of the people (the party of Marius), and the party of the nobles (that of the Senate).

The partisans of Marius committed so many acts of violence that they ended by making him unpopular. Sulla, a noble, of the great family of the Cornelii, profited by this circumstance to dispute the power of Marius; Sulla was also a general. When the Italians rose against Rome to secure the right of citizenship and levied great armies which marched almost to the gates of the city, it was Sulla who saved Rome by fighting the Italians.

He became consul and was charged with the war against Mithradates, king of Pontus, who had invaded Asia Minor and massacred all the Romans (88). Marius in jealousy excited a riot in the city; Sulla departed, joined his army which awaited him in south Italy, then returned to Rome. Roman religion prohibited soldiers entering the city under arms; the consul even before passing the gates had to lay aside his mantle of war and assume the toga. Sulla was the first general who dared to violate this restriction. Marius took flight.

But when Sulla had left for Asia, Marius came with an army of adventurers and entered Rome by force (87). Then commenced the proscriptions.

The principal partisans of Sulla were outlawed, and command was given to kill them anywhere they were met and to confiscate their goods. Marius died some months later; but his principal partisan, Cinna, continued to govern Rome and to put to death whomever he pleased.

During this time Sulla had conquered Mithradates and had assured the loyalty of his soldiers by giving them the free pillage of Asia. He returned with his army (83) to Italy. His enemies opposed him with five armies, but these were defeated or they deserted. Sulla entered Rome, massacred his prisoners and overthrew the partisans of Marius. After some days of slaughter he set himself to proceed regularly: he posted three lists of those whom he wished killed. "I have posted now all those whom I can recall; I have forgotten many, but their names will be posted as the names occur to me." Every proscribed man—that is to say, every man whose name was on the list, was marked for death; the murderer who brought his head was rewarded. The property of the proscribed was confiscated. Proscription was not the result of any trial but of the caprice of the general, and that too without any warning. Sulla thus massacred not only his enemies but the rich whose property he coveted. It is related that a citizen who was unaccustomed to politics glanced in passing at the list of proscriptions and saw his own name inscribed at the top of the list. "Alas!" he cried, "my Alban house has been the death of me!" Sulla is said to have proscribed 1800[142] knights.

After having removed his enemies, he endeavored to organize a government in which all power should be in the hands of the Senate. He had himself named Dictator, an old title once given to generals in moments of danger and which conferred absolute power. Sulla used the office to make laws which changed the entire constitution. From that time all the judges were to be taken from the Senate, no law could be discussed before it had been accepted by the Senate, the right of proposing laws was taken from the tribunes of the plebs.

After these reforms Sulla abdicated his functions and retired to private life (79). He knew he had nothing to fear, for he had established 100,000 of his soldiers in Italy.

Pompey and Caesar.—The Senate had recovered its power because Sulla saw fit to give it this, but it had not the strength to retain it if a general wished again to seize it. The government of the Senate endured, however, in appearance for more than thirty years; this was because there were several generals and each prevented a rival from gaining all power.

At the death of Sulla four armies took the field: two obeyed the generals who were partisans of the Senate, Crassus and Pompey; two followed generals who were adversaries of the Senate, Lepidus in Italy, and Sertorius in Spain. It is very remarkable that no one of these armies was regular, no one of the generals was a magistrate and therefore had the right to command troops; down to this time the generals had been consuls, but now they were individuals—private persons; their soldiers came to them not to serve the interests of the state, but to profit at the expense of the inhabitants.

The armies of the enemies of the Senate were destroyed, and Crassus and Pompey, left alone, joined issues to control affairs. They had themselves elected consuls and Pompey received the conduct of two wars. He went to Asia with a devoted army and was for several years the master of Rome; but as he was more the possessor of offices than of power, he changed nothing in the government. It was during this time that Caesar, a young noble, made himself popular. Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar united to divide the power between themselves. Crassus received the command of the army sent to Asia against the Parthians and was killed (53). Pompey remained at Rome. Caesar went to Gaul where he stayed eight years subjecting the country and making an army for himself.

Pompey and Caesar were now the only persons on the stage. Each wished to be master. Pompey had the advantage of being at Rome and of dominating the Senate; Caesar had on his side his army, disciplined by eight years of expeditions. Pompey secured a decree of the Senate that Caesar should abandon his army and return to Rome. Caesar decided then to cross the boundary of his province (the river Rubicon), and to march on Rome. Pompey had no army in Italy to defend himself, and so with the majority of the senators took flight to the other side of the Adriatic. He had several armies in Spain, in Greece, and in Africa. Caesar defeated them, one after another—that of Spain first (49), then that of Greece at Pharsalus (48), at last, that of Africa (46). Pompey, vanquished at Pharsalus, fled to Egypt where the king had him assassinated.

On his return to Rome Caesar was appointed dictator for ten years and exercised absolute power. The Senate paid him divine honors, and it is possible that Caesar desired the title of king. He was assassinated by certain of his favorites who aimed to reestablish the sovereignty of the Senate (44).

End of the Republic.—The people of Rome, who loved Caesar, compelled Brutus and Cassius, the chiefs of the assassins, to flee. They withdrew to the East where they raised a large army. The West remained in the hand of Antony, who with the support of the army of Caesar, governed Rome despotically.

Caesar in his will had adopted a young man of eighteen years, his sister's son,[143] Octavian, who according to Roman usage assumed the name of his adoptive father and called himself from that time Julius Caesar Octavianus. Octavian rallied to his side the soldiers of Caesar and was charged by the Senate with the war against Antony. But after conquering him he preferred to unite with him for a division of power; they associated Lepidus with them, and all three returned to Rome where they secured absolute power for five years under the title of triumvirs for organizing public affairs. They began by proscribing their adversaries and their personal enemies. Antony secured the death of Cicero (43). Then they left for the East to destroy the army of the conspirators. After they had divided the empire among themselves it was impossible to preserve harmony and war was undertaken in Italy. It was the soldiers who compelled them to make terms of peace. A new partition was made; Antony took the East and Octavian the West (39). For some years peace was preserved; Antony resigned himself to the life of an oriental sovereign in company with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt; Octavian found it necessary to fight a campaign against the sons of Pompey. The two leaders came at last to an open breach, and then flamed up the last of the civil wars. This was a war between the East and West. It was decided by the naval battle of Actium; Antony, abandoned by the fleet of Cleopatra, fled to Egypt and took his own life. Octavian, left alone, was absolute master of the empire. The government of the Senate was at an end.

Need of Peace.—Everybody had suffered by these wars. The inhabitants of the provinces were plundered, harassed, and massacred by the soldiers; each of the hostile generals forced them to take sides with him, and the victor punished them for supporting the vanquished. To reward the old soldiers the generals promised them lands, and then expelled all the inhabitants of a city to make room for the veterans.

Rich Romans risked their property and their life; when their party was overthrown, they found themselves at the mercy of the victor. Sulla had set the example for organized massacres (81). Forty years later (in 43) Octavian and Antony again drew up lists of proscription.

The populace suffered. The grain on which they lived came no longer to Rome with the former regularity, being intercepted either by pirates or by the fleet of an enemy.

After a century of this regime all the Romans and provincials, rich and poor, had but one desire—peace.

The Power of the Individual.—It was then that the heir of Caesar, his nephew[144] Octavian, one of the triumvirs, after having conquered his two colleagues presented himself to the people now wearied with civil discord. "He drew to himself all the powers of the people, of the Senate, and of the magistrates;" for twelve years he was emperor without having the title. No one dreamed of resisting him; he had closed the temple of Janus and given peace to the world, and this was what everybody wished. The government of the republic by the Senate represented only pillage and civil war. A master was needed strong enough to stop the wars and revolutions. Thus the Roman empire was founded.

FOOTNOTES:

[140] The Lex Clodia of 58 B.C. made these distributions legal.—ED.

[141] At a very low price.—ED.

[142] 1600, according to Mommsen, "History of Rome," Bk. IV, ch. x.—ED.

[143] Grandson.—ED.

[144] Grand-nephew.—ED.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT

THE TWELVE CAESARS

The Emperor.—In the new regime absolute authority was lodged in a single man; he was called the emperor (imperator—the commander). In himself alone he exercised all those functions which the ancient magistrates distributed among themselves: he presided over the Senate; he levied and commanded all the armies; he drew up the lists of senators, knights, and people; he levied taxes; he was supreme judge; he was pontifex maximus; he had the power of the tribunes. And to indicate that this authority made him a superhuman being, it was decreed that he should bear a religious surname: Augustus (the venerable).

The empire was not established by a radical revolution. The name of the republic was not suppressed and for more than three centuries the standards of the soldiers continued to bear the initials S.P.Q.R. (senate and people of Rome). The emperor's power was granted to him for life instead of for one year, as with the old magistrates. The emperor was the only and lifelong magistrate of the republic. In him the Roman people was incarnate; this is why he was absolute.