4. Such, e. g, was Chilo, the slave of Cato the Elder, who earned money en bis master's behalf as a teacher of children (Plutarch, Cato Mai. 20).

5. II. IX. Ballad-Singers

6. The later rule, by which the freedman necessarily bore the -praenomen- of his patron, was not yet applied in republican Rome.

7. II. VII. Capture of Tarentum

8. III. VI. Battle of Sena

9. One of the tragedies of Livius presented the line—

-Quem ego nefrendem alui Iacteam immulgens opem.-

The verses of Homer (Odyssey, xii. 16):

—oud ara Kirken ex Aideo elthontes elethomen, alla mal oka elth entunamene ama d amphipoloi pheron aute siton kai krea polla kai aithopa oinon eruthron.—

are thus interpreted:

-Topper citi ad aedis—venimus Circae Simul duona coram(?)—portant ad navis, Milia dlia in isdem—inserinuntur.-

The most remarkable feature is not so much the barbarism as the thoughtlessness of the translator, who, instead of sending Circe to Ulysses, sends Ulysses to Circe. Another still more ridiculous mistake is the translation of —aidoioisin edoka— (Odyss. xv. 373) by -lusi- (Festus, Ep. v. affatim, p. ii, Muller). Such traits are not in a historical point of view matters of difference; we recognize in them the stage of intellectual culture which irked these earliest Roman verse-making schoolmasters, and we at the same time perceive that, although Andronicus was born in Tarentum, Greek cannot have been properly his mother-tongue.

10. Such a building was, no doubt, constructed for the Apollinarian games in the Flaminian circus in 575 (Liv. xl. 51; Becker, Top. p. 605); but it was probably soon afterwards pulled down again (Tertull. de Spect. 10).

11. In 599 there were still no seats in the theatre (Ritschl, Parerg. i. p. xviii. xx. 214; comp. Ribbeck, Trag. p. 285); but, as not only the authors of the Plautine prologues, but Plautus himself on various occasions, make allusions to a sitting audience (Mil. Glor. 82, 83; Aulul. iv. 9, 6; Triicul. ap. fin.; Epid. ap. fin.), most of the spectators must have brought stools with them or have seated themselves on the ground.

12. III. XI. Separation of Orders in the Theatre

13. Women and children appear to have been at all times admitted to the Roman theatre (Val. Max. vi. 3, 12; Plutarch., Quaest. Rom. 14; Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12, 24; Vitruv. v. 3, i; Suetonius, Aug. 44,&c.); but slaves were -de jure- excluded (Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12, 26; Ritschl. Parerg. i. p. xix. 223), and the same must doubtless have been the case with foreigners, excepting of course the guests of the community, who took their places among or by the side of the senators (Varro, v. 155; Justin, xliii. 5. 10; Sueton. Aug. 44).

14. III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy

15. II. IX. Censure of Art

16. It is not necessary to infer from the prologues of Plautus (Cas. 17; Amph. 65) that there was a distribution of prizes (Ritschl, Parerg. i. 229); even the passage Trin. 706, may very well belong to the Greek original, not to the translator; and the total silence of the -didascaliae- and prologues, as well as of all tradition, on the point of prize tribunals and prizes is decisive.

17. The scanty use made of what is called the middle Attic comedy does not require notice in a historical point of view, since it was nothing but the Menandrian comedy in a less developed form. There is no trace of any employment of the older comedy. The Roman tragi-comedy—after the type of the -Amphitruo- of Plautus—was no doubt styled by the Roman literary historians -fabula Rhinthonica-; but the newer Attic comedians also composed such parodies, and it is difficult to see why the Ionians should have resorted for their translations to Rhinthon and the older writers rather than to those who were nearer to their own times.

18. III. VI In Italy

19. Bacch. 24; Trin. 609; True. iii. 2, 23. Naevius also, who in fact was generally less scrupulous, ridicules the Praenestines and Lanuvini (Com. 21, Ribb.). There are indications more than once of a certain variance between the Praenestines and Romans (Liv. xxiii. 20, xlii. i); and the executions in the time of Pyrrhus (ii. 18) as well as the catastrophe in that of Sulla, were certainly connected with this variance. —Innocent jokes, such as Capt. 160, 881, of course passed uncensured. —The compliment paid to Massilia in Cas. v. 4., i, deserves notice.

20. Thus the prologue of the -Cistellaria- concludes with the following words, which may have a place here as the only contemporary mention of the Hannibalic war in the literature that has come down to us:—

-Haec res sic gesta est. Bene valete, et vincite Virtute vera, quod fecistis antidhac; Servate vostros socios, veteres et novos; Augete auxilia vostris iustis legibus; Perdite perduelles: parite laudem et lauream Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.-

The fourth line (-augete auxilia vostris iustis Iegibus-) has reference to the supplementary payments imposed on the negligent Latin colonies in 550 (Liv. xxix. 15; see ii. 350).

21. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

22. For this reason we can hardly be too cautious in assuming allusions on the part of Plautus to the events of the times. Recent investigation has set aside many instances of mistaken acuteness of this sort; but might not even the reference to the Bacchanalia, which is found in Cas. v. 4, 11 (Ritschl, Parerg. 1. 192), have been expected to incur censure? We might even reverse the case and infer from the notices of the festival of Bacchus in the -Casina-, and some other pieces (Amph. 703; Aul. iii. i, 3; Bacch. 53, 371; Mil. Glor. 1016; and especially Men. 836), that these were written at a time when it was not yet dangerous to speak of the Bacchanalia.

23. The remarkable passage in the -Tarentilla- can have no other meaning:—

-Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus, Ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere: Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus!-

24. The ideas of the modern Hellas on the point of slavery are illustrated by the passage in Euripides (Ion, 854; comp. Helena, 728):—

—En gar ti tois douloisin alochunen pherei, Tounoma ta d' alla panta ton eleutheron Oudeis kakion doulos, ostis esthlos e.—

25. For instance, in the otherwise very graceful examination which in the -Stichus- of Plautus the father and his daughters institute into the qualities of a good wife, the irrelevant question—whether it is better to marry a virgin or a widow—is inserted, merely in order that it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women. But that is a trifle compared with the following specimen. In Menander's -Plocium- a husband bewails his troubles to his friend:—

—Echo d' epikleron Lamian ouk eireka soi Tout'; eit' ap' ouchi; kurian tes oikias Kai ton agron kai panton ant' ekeines Echoumen, Apollon, os chalepon chalepotaton Apasi d' argalea 'stin, ouk emoi mono, Tio polu mallon thugatri.—pragm' amachon legeis' Eu oida—

In the Latin edition of Caecilius, this conversation, so elegant in its simplicity, is converted into the following uncouth dialogue:—

-Sed tua morosane uxor quaeso est?—Ua! rogas?— Qui tandem?—Taedet rientionis, quae mihi Ubi domum adveni ac sedi, extemplo savium Dat jejuna anima.—Nil peccat de savio: Ut devomas volt, quod foris polaveris.-

26. Even when the Romans built stone theatres, these had not the sounding-apparatus by which the Greek architects supported the efforts of the actors (Vitruv. v. 5, 8).

27. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

28. The personal notices of Naevius are sadly confused. Seeing that he fought in the first Punic war, he cannot have been born later than 495. Dramas, probably the first, were exhibited by him in 519 (Gell. xii. 21. 45). That he had died as early as 550, as is usually stated, was doubted by Varro (ap. Cic. Brut. 15, 60), and certainly with reason; if it were true, he must have made his escape during the Hannibalic war to the soil of the enemy. The sarcastic verses on Scipio (p. 150) cannot have been written before the battle of Zama. We may place his life between 490 and 560, so that he was a contemporary of the two Scipios who fell in 543 (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10), ten years younger than Andronicus, and perhaps ten years older than Plautus. His Campanian origin is indicated by Gellius, and his Latin nationality, if proof of it were needed, by himself in his epitaph. The hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a burgess of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of explanation. At any rate he was not an actor, for he served in the army.

29. Compare, e. g., with the verse of Livius the fragment from Naevius' tragedy of -Lycurgus- :—

-Vos, qui regalis cordons custodias Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos, Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita-;

Or the famous words, which in the -Hector Profisciscens- Hector addresses to Priam:

-Laetus sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato viro;-

and the charming verse from the -Tarentilla-; —

-Alii adnutat, alii adnictat; alium amat, alium tenet.-

30. III. XIV. Political Neutrality

31. III. XIV. Political Neutrality

32. This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author, properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a similar uncertainty as to his literary property. In this respect, as in so many other external points, there exists the most remarkable analogy between Plautus and Shakespeare.

33. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome, III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Trans-Alpine Gauls

34. III. XIV. Roman Barbarism

35 -Togatus- denotes, in juristic and generally in technical language, the Italian in contradistinction not merely to the foreigner, but also to the Roman burgess. Thus especially -formula togatorum- (Corp. Inscr. Lat., I. n. 200, v. 21, 50) is the list of those Italians bound to render military serviee, who do not serve in the legions. The designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as -Gallia togata-, which first occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the ordinary -usus loquendi-, describes this region presumably according to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights. Virgil appears likewise in the -gens togata-, which he mentions along with the Romans (Aen. i. 282), to have thought of the Latin nation.

According to this view we shall have to recognize in the -fabula togata-the comedy which laid its plot in Latium, as the -fabula palliata- had its plot in Greece; the transference of the scene of action to a foreign land is common to both, and the comic writer is wholly forbidden to bring on the stage the city or the burgesses of Rome. That in reality the -togata- could only have its plot laid in the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their scene—Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium,—demonstrably had Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war. By the extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost this Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which -de jure- took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off for the dramatists of the capital, and so the -fabula togata- seems in fact to have disappeared. But the -de jure- suppressed communities of Italy, such as Capua and Atella, stepped into this gap (ii. 366, iii. 148), and so far the -fabula Atellana- was in some measure the continuation of the -togata-.

36. Respecting Titinius there is an utter want of literary information; except that, to judge from a fragment of Varro, he seems to have been older than Terence (558-595, Ritschl, Parerg. i. 194) for more indeed, cannot he inferred from that passage, and though, of the two groups there compared the second (Trabea, Atilius, Caecilius) is on the whole older than the first (Titinius, Terentius, Atta), it does not exactly follow that the oldest of the junior group is to be deemed younger than the youngest of the elder.

37. II. VII. First Steps toward the Latinizing of Italy

38. Of the fifteen comedies of Titinius, with which we are acquainted, six are named after male characters (-baratus-? -coecus-, -fullones-, -Hortensius-, -Quintus-, -varus-), and nine after female (-Gemina-, -iurisperita-, -prilia-? -privigna-, -psaltria- or -Ferentinatis-, -Setina-, -tibicina-, -Veliterna-, -Ulubrana?), two of which, the -iurisperita- and the -tibicina-, are evidently parodies of men's occupations. The feminine world preponderates also in the fragments.

39. III. XIV. Livius Andronicus

40. III. XIV. Audience

41. We subjoin, for comparison, the opening lines of the -Medea- in the original of Euripides and in the version of Ennius:—

—Eith' ophel' 'Apgous me diaptasthai skaphos Kolchon es aian kuaneas sumplegadas Med' en napaisi Pelion pesein pote Tmetheisa peuke, med' epetmosai cheras Andron arioton, oi to pagchruson deros Pelia metelthon ou gar an despoin Medeia purgous ges epleus Iolkias 'Eroti thumon ekplageis' 'Iasonos.—

-Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus Caesa accidisset abiegna ad terram trabes, Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum. Nam nunquam era errans mea domo efferret pedem Medea, animo aegra, amort saevo saucia.-

The variations of the translation from the original are instructive —not only its tautologies and periphrases, but also the omission or explanation of the less familiar mythological names, e. g. the Symplegades, the Iolcian land, the Argo. But the instances in which Ennius has really misunderstood the original are rare.

42. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

43. Beyond doubt the ancients were right in recognizing a sketch of the poet's own character in the passage in the seventh book of the Annals, where the consul calls to his side the confidant,

-quocum bene saepe libenter Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassus diei Partem fuisset de summis rebus regundis Consilio indu foro lato sanctoque senatu: Cui res audacter magnas parvasque iocumque Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret. Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque, Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet Ut faceret facinus lenis aut malus, doctus fidelis Suavis homo facundus suo contentus beatus Scitus secunda loquens in tempore commodus verbum Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem, Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque, Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.-

In the line before the last we should probably read -multarum leges divumque hominumque.-

44. Euripides (Iph. in Aul. 956) defines the soothsayer as a man,

—Os olig' alethe, polla de pseuon legei Tuchon, otan de me, tuche oioichetai—

This is turned by the Latin translator into the following diatribe against the casters of horoscopes:—

-Astrologorum signa in caelo quaesit, observat, Iovis Cum capra aut nepa aut exoritur lumen aliquod beluae. Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.-

45. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit

46. In the -Telephus- we find him saying—

-Palam mutire plebeio piaculum est.-

47. III. XIII. Luxury

48. The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the adaptation of the -Phoenix- of Euripides:—

-Sed virum virtute vera vivere animatum addecet, Fortiterque innoxium vocare adversum adversarios. Ea libertas est, qui pectus purum et firmum gestitat: Aliae res obnoxiosae nocte in obscura latent.-

In the -Scipio-, which was probably incorporated in the collection of miscellaneous poems, the graphic lines occurred:—

— — -mundus caeli vastus constitit silentio, Et Neptunus saevus undis asperis pausam dedit. Sol equis iter repressit ungulis volantibus; Constitere amnes perennes, arbores vento vacant.-

This last passage affords us a glimpse of the way in which the poet worked up his original poems. It is simply an expansion of the words which occur in the tragedy -Hectoris Lustra- (the original of which was probably by Sophocles) as spoken by a spectator of the combat between Hephaestus and the Scamander:—

-Constitit credo Scamander, arbores vento vacant,-

and the incident is derived from the Iliad (xxi. 381).

49. Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:—

— — -stultust, qui cupita cupiens cupienter cupit,-

and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances. He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).

50. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome

51. III. IX. Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians

52. Besides Cato, we find the names of two "consulars and poets" belonging to this period (Sueton. Vita Terent. 4)—Quintus Labeo, consul in 571, and Marcus Popillius, consul in 581. But it remains uncertain whether they published their poems. Even in the case of Cato this may be doubted.

53. II. IX. Roman Historical Composition

54. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit

55. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit

56. The following fragments will give some idea of its tone. Of Dido he says:

-Blande et docte percontat—Aeneas quo pacto Troiam urbem liquerit.-

Again of Amulius:

-Manusque susum ad caelum—sustulit suas rex Amulius; gratulatur—divis-.

Part of a speech where the indirect construction is remarkable:

-Sin illos deserant for—tissumos virorum Magnum stuprum populo—fieri per gentis-.

With reference to the landing at Malta in 498:

-Transit Melitam Romanus—insuiam integram Urit populatur vastat—rem hostium concinnat.-

Lastly, as to the peace which terminated the war concerning Sicily:

-Id quoque paciscunt moenia—sint Lutatium quae Reconcilient; captivos—plurimos idem Sicilienses paciscit—obsides ut reddant.-

57. That this oldest prose work on the history of Rome was composed in Greek, is established beyond a doubt by Dionys. i. 6, and Cicero, de Div. i. 21, 43. The Latin Annals quoted under the same name by Quintilian and later grammarians remain involved in mystery, and the difficulty is increased by the circumstance, that there is also quoted under the same name a very detailed exposition of the pontifical law in the Latin language. But the latter treatise will not be attributed by any one, who has traced the development of Roman literature in its connection, to an author of the age of the Hannibalic war; and even Latin annals from that age appear problematical, although it must remain a moot question whether there has been a confusion of the earlier with a later annalist, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus (consul in 612), or whether there existed an old Latin edition of the Greek Annals of Fabius as well as of those of Acilius and Albinus, or whether there were two annalists of the name of Fabius Pictor.

The historical work likewise written in Greek, ascribed to Lucius Cincius Alimentus a contemporary of Fabius, seems spurious and a compilation of the Augustan age.

58. Cato's whole literary activity belonged to the period of his old age (Cicero, Cat. ii, 38; Nepos, Cato, 3); the composition even of the earlier books of the "Origines" falls not before, and yet probably not long subsequent to, 586 (Plin. H. N. iii. 14, 114).

59. It is evidently by way of contrast with Fabius that Polybius (xl. 6, 4) calls attention to the fact, that Albinus, madly fond of everything Greek, had given himself the trouble of writing history systematically [—pragmatiken iotorian—].

60. II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome

61. III. XIV. Knowledge of Languages

62. For instance the history of the siege of Gabii is compiled from the anecdotes in Herodotus as to Zopyrus and the tyrant Thrasybulus, and one version of the story of the exposure of Romulus is framed on the model of the history of the youth of Cyrus as Herodotus relates it.

63. III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Transalpine Gauls

64. II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome

65. II. IX. Registers of Magistrates

66. Plautus (Mostell. 126) says of parents, that they teach their children -litteras-, -iura-, -leges-; and Plutarch (Cato Mai. 20) testifies to the same effect.

67. II. IX. Philology

68. Thus in his Epicharmian poems Jupiter is so called, -quod iuvat-; and Ceres, -quod gerit fruges.-

69. -Rem tene, verba sequentur.-

70. II. IX. Language

71. See the lines already quoted at III. II. The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia.

The formation of the name -poeta- from the vulgar Greek —poetes— instead of —poietes— —as —epoesen— was in use among the Attic potters—is characteristic. We may add that -poeta- technically denotes only the author of epic or recitative poems, not the composer for the stage, who at this time was styled -scriba- (III. XIV. Audience; Festus, s. v., p. 333 M.).

72. Even subordinate figures from the legends of Troy and of Herakles niake their appearance, e. g. Talthybius (Stich. 305), Autolycus (Bacch. 275), Parthaon (Men. 745). Moreover the most general outlines must have been known in the case of the Theban and the Argonautic legends, and of the stories of Bellerophon (Bacch. 810), Pentheus (Merc. 467), Procne and Philomela (Rud. 604). Sappho and Phaon (Mil. 1247).

73. "As to these Greeks," he says to his son Marcus, "I shall tell at the proper place, what I came to learn regarding them at Athens; and shall show that it is useful to look into their writings, but not to study them thoroughly. They are an utterly corrupt and ungovernable race—believe me, this is true as an oracle; if that people bring hither its culture, it will ruin everything, and most especially if it send hither its physicians. They have conspired to despatch all barbarians by their physicking, but they get themselves paid for it, that people may trust them and that they may the more easily bring us to ruin. They call us also barbarians, and indeed revile us by the still more vulgar name of Opicans. I interdict thee, therefore, from all dealings with the practitioners of the healing art."

Cato in his zeal was not aware that the name of Opicans, which had in Latin an obnoxious meaning, was in Greek quite unobjectionable, and that the Greeks had in the most innocent way come to designate the Italians by that term (I. X. Time of the Greek Immigration).

74. II. IX. Censure of Art

75. III. II. War between the Romans and Carthaginians and Syracusans

76. Plautius belongs to this or to the beginning of the following period, for the inscription on his pictures (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 10, 115), being hexametrical, cannot well be older than Ennius, and the bestowal of the citizenship of Ardea must have taken place before the Social War, through which Ardea lost its independence.



End of Book III



* * * * *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK IV

The Revolution



Preparer's Note

This work contains many literal citations of and references to words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek. This English language Gutenberg edition, constrained within the scope of 7-bit ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:

1) Words and phrases regarded as "foreign imports", italicized in the original text published in 1903; but which in the intervening century have become "naturalized" into English; words such as "de jure", "en masse", etc. are not given any special typographic distinction.

2) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.

3) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents, are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus, —xxxx—. Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compound form such as xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as —xxx-xxx—

4) Simple non-ideographic references to vocalic sounds, single letters, or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic references are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x, or -xxx.

5) The following refers particularly to the complex discussion of alphabetic evolution in Ch. XIV: Measuring And Writing). Ideographic references, meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather than to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for "ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a mental picture based on the "xxxx" following the colon. "xxxx" may represent a single symbol, a word, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters. E. g. —"id:GAMMA gamma"— indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form Followed by the form in lowercase. Some such exotic parsing as this is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages, or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different times. Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to another one of lowercase. Also, a construct such as —"id:E" indicates a symbol that in graphic form most closely resembles an ASCII uppercase "E", but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

6) The numerous subheading references, of the form "XX. XX. Topic" found in the appended section of endnotes are to be taken as "proximate" rather than topical indicators. That is, the information contained in the endnote indicates primarily the location in the main text of the closest indexing "handle", a subheading, which may or may not echo congruent subject matter.

The reason for this is that in the translation from an original paged manuscript to an unpaged "cyberscroll", page numbers are lost. In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles" of sub-chapter scale. Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages. Therefore, it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper by adopting a shortest path method to indicate the desired reference.

7) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.; that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753 B. C. To the end of each volume is appended a table of conversion between the two systems.



CONTENTS

BOOK IV: The Revolution

CHAPTER

I. The Subject Countries Down to the Times of the Gracchi

II. The Reform Movement and Tiberius Gracchus

III. The Revolution and Gaius Gracchus

IV. The Rule of the Restoration

V. The Peoples of the North

VI. The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt of Drusus at Reform

VII. The Revolt of the Italian Subjects, and the Sulpician Revolution

VIII. The East and King Mithradates

IX. Cinna and Sulla

X. The Sullan Constitution

XI. The Commonwealth and Its Economy

XII. Nationality, Religion, and Education

XIII. Literature and Art



BOOK FOURTH

The Revolution



"-Aber sie treiben's toll; Ich furcht', es breche." Nicht jeden Wochenschluss Macht Gott die Zeche-.

Goethe.



CHAPTER I

The Subject Countries Down to the Times of the Gracchi

The Subjects

With the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy the supremacy of Rome not only became an established fact from the Pillars of Hercules to the mouths of the Nile and the Orontes, but, as if it were the final decree of fate, it weighed on the nations with all the pressure of an inevitable necessity, and seemed to leave them merely the choice of perishing in hopeless resistance or in hopeless endurance. If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun the cheerless task of tracing the manifold and yet monotonous turns of this struggle between superior power and utter weakness, both in the Spanish provinces already annexed to the Roman empire and in the African, Hellenic, and Asiatic territories which were still treated as clients of Rome. But, however unimportant and subordinate the individual conflicts may appear, they have collectively a deep historical significance; and, in particular, the state of things in Italy at this period only becomes intelligible in the light of the reaction which the provinces exercised over the mother-country.

Spain

Except in the territories which may be regarded as natural appendages of Italy—in which, however, the natives were still far from being completely subdued, and, not greatly to the credit of Rome, Ligurians, Sardinians, and Corsicans were continually furnishing occasion for "village triumphs"—the formal sovereignty of Rome at the commencement of this period was established only in the two Spanish provinces, which embraced the larger eastern and southern portions of the peninsula beyond the Pyrenees. We have already(1) attempted to describe the state of matters in the peninsula. Iberians and Celts, Phoenicians, Hellenes, and Romans were there confusedly intermingled. The most diverse kinds and stages of civilization subsisted there simultaneously and at various points crossed each other, the ancient Iberian culture side by side with utter barbarism, the civilized relations of Phoenician and Greek mercantile cities side by side with an incipient process of Latinizing, which was especially promote by the numerous Italians employed in the silver mines and by the large standing garrison. In this respect the Roman township of Italica (near Seville) and the Latin colony of Carteia (on the bay Of Gibraltar) deserve mention—the latter being the first transmarine urban community of Latin tongue and Italian constitution. Italica was founded by the elder Scipio, before he left Spain (548), for his veterans who were inclined to remain in the peninsula—probably, however, not as a burgess-community, but merely as a market-place.(2) Carteia was founded in 583 and owed its existence to the multitude of camp-children—the offspring of Roman soldiers and Spanish slaves—who grew up as slaves de jure but as free Italians de facto, and were now manumitted on behalf of the state and constituted, along with the old inhabitants of Carteia, into a Latin colony. For nearly thirty years after the organizing of the province of the Ebro by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (575, 576)(3) the Spanish provinces, on the whole, enjoyed the blessings of peace undisturbed, although mention is made of one or two expeditions against the Celtiberians and Lusitanians.

Lusitanian War

But more serious events occurred in 600. The Lusitanians, under the leadership of a chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory, defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and slew a great number of their troops. The Vettones (between the Tagus and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced to make common cause with the Lusitanians; and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend their excursions as far as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even the territory of the Bastulo-Phoenicians not far from the Roman capital New Carthage (Cartagena). The Romans at home took the matter seriously enough to resolve on sending a consul to Spain, a step which had not been taken since 559; and, in order to accelerate the despatch of aid, they even made the new consuls enter on office two months and a half before the legal time. For this reason the day for the consuls entering on office was shifted from the 15th of March to the 1st of January; and thus was established the beginning of the year, which we still make use of at the present day. But, before the consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior with his army arrived, a very serious encounter took place on the right bank of the Tagus between the praetor Lucius Mummius, governor of Further Spain, and the Lusitanians, now led after the fall of Punicus by his successor Caesarus (601). Fortune was at first favourable to the Romans; the Lusitanian army was broken and their camp was taken. But the Romans, partly already fatigued by their march and partly broken up in the disorder of the pursuit, were at length completely beaten by their already vanquished antagonists, and lost their own camp in addition to that of the enemy, as well as 9000 dead.

Celtiberian War

The flame of war now blazed up far and wide. The Lusitanians on the left bank of the Tagus, led by Caucaenus, threw themselves on the Celtici subject to the Romans (in Alentejo), and took away their town Conistorgis. The Lusitanians sent the standards taken from Mummius to the Celtiberians at once as an announcement of victory and as a warning; and among these, too, there was no want of ferment. Two small Celtiberian tribes in the neighbourhood of the powerful Arevacae (about the sources of the Douro and Tagus), the Belli and the Titthi, had resolved to settle together in Segeda, one of their towns. While they were occupied in building the walls, the Romans ordered them to desist, because the Sempronian regulations prohibited the subject communities from founding towns at their own discretion; and they at the same time required the contribution of money and men which was due by treaty but for a considerable period had not been demanded. The Spaniards refused to obey either command, alleging that they were engaged merely in enlarging, not in founding, a city, and that the contribution had not been merely suspended, but remitted by the Romans. Thereupon Nobilior appeared in Hither Spain with an army of nearly 30,000 men, including some Numidian horsemen and ten elephants. The walls of the new town of Segeda still stood unfinished: most of the inhabitants submitted. But the most resolute men fled with their wives and children to the powerful Arevacae, and summoned these to make common cause with them against the Romans. The Arevacae, emboldened by the victory of the Lusitanians over Mummius, consented, and chose Carus, one of the Segedan refugees, as their general. On the third day after his election the valiant leader had fallen, but the Roman army was defeated and nearly 6000 Roman burgesses were slain; the 23rd day of August, the festival of the Volcanalia, was thenceforth held in sad remembrance by the Romans. The fall of their general, however, induced the Arevacae to retreat into their strongest town Numantia (Guarray, a Spanish league to the north of Soria on the Douro), whither Nobilior followed them. Under the walls of the town a second engagement took place, in which the Romans at first by means of their elephants drove the Spaniards back into the town; but while doing so they were thrown into confusion in consequence of one of the animals being wounded, and sustained a second defeat at the hands of the enemy again issuing from the walls. This and other misfortunes— such as the destruction of a corps of Roman cavalry despatched to call forth the contingents—imparted to the affairs of the Romans in the Hither province so unfavourable an aspect that the fortress of Ocilis, where the Romans had their chest and their stores, passed over to the enemy, and the Arevacae were in a position to think, although without success, of dictating peace to the Romans. These disadvantages, however, were in some measure counterbalanced by the successes which Mummius achieved in the southern province. Weakened though his army was by the disaster which it had suffered, he yet succeeded with it in defeating the Lusitanians who had imprudently dispersed themselves on the right bank of the Tagus; and passing over to the left bank, where the Lusitanians had overrun the whole Roman territory, and had even made a foray into Africa, he cleared the southern province of the enemy.

Marcellus

To the northern province in the following year (602) the senate sent considerable reinforcements and a new commander-in-chief in the place of the incapable Nobilior, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had already, when praetor in 586, distinguished himself in Spain, and had since that time given proof of his talents as a general in two consulships. His skilful leadership, and still more his clemency, speedily changed the position of affairs: Ocilis at once surrendered to him; and even the Arevacae, confirmed by Marcellus in the hope that peace would be granted to them on payment of a moderate fine, concluded an armistice and sent envoys to Rome. Marcellus could thus proceed to the southern province, where the Vettones and Lusitanians had professed submission to the praetor Marcus Atilius so long as he remained within their bounds, but after his departure had immediately revolted afresh and chastised the allies of Rome. The arrival of the consul restored tranquillity, and, while he spent the winter in Corduba, hostilities were suspended throughout the peninsula. Meanwhile the question of peace with the Arevacae was discussed at Rome. It is a significant indication of the relations subsisting among the Spaniards themselves, that the emissaries of the Roman party subsisting among the Arevacae were the chief occasion of the rejection of the proposals of peace at Rome, by representing that, if the Romans were not willing to sacrifice the Spaniards friendly to their interests, they had no alternative save either to send a consul with a corresponding army every year to the peninsula or to make an emphatic example now. In consequence of this, the ambassadors of the Arevacae were dismissed without a decisive answer, and it was resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. Marcellus accordingly found himself compelled in the following spring (603) to resume the war against the Arevacae. But—either, as was asserted, from his unwillingness to leave to his successor, who was to be expected soon, the glory of terminating the war, or, as is perhaps more probable, from his believing like Gracchus that a humane treatment of the Spaniards was the first thing requisite for a lasting peace—the Roman general after holding a secret conference with the most influential men of the Arevacae concluded a treaty under the walls of Numantia, by which the Arevacae surrendered to the Romans at discretion, but were reinstated in their former rights according to treaty on their undertaking to pay money and furnish hostages.

Lucullus

When the new commander-in-chief, the consul Lucius Lucullus, arrived at head-quarters, he found the war which he had come to conduct already terminated by a formally concluded peace, and his hopes of bringing home honour and more especially money from Spain were apparently frustrated. But there was a means of surmounting this difficulty. Lucullus of his own accord attacked the western neighbours of the Arevacae, the Vaccaei, a Celtiberian nation still independent which was living on the best understanding with the Romans. The question of the Spaniards as to what fault they had committed was answered by a sudden attack on the town of Cauca (Coca, eight Spanish leagues to the west of Segovia); and, while the terrified town believed that it had purchased a capitulation by heavy sacrifices of money, Roman troops marched in and enslaved or slaughtered the inhabitants without any pretext at all. After this heroic feat, which is said to have cost the lives of some 20,000 defenceless men, the army proceeded on its march. Far and wide the villages and townships were abandoned or, as in the case of the strong Intercatia and Pallantia (Palencia) the capital of the Vaccaei, closed their gates against the Roman army. Covetousness was caught in its own net; there was no community That would venture to conclude a capitulation with the perfidious commander, and the general flight of the inhabitants not only rendered booty scarce, but made it almost impossible for him to remain for any length of time in these inhospitable regions. In front of Intercatia, Scipio Aemilianus, an esteemed military tribune, the son of the victor of Pydna and the adopted grandson of the victor of Zama, succeeded, by pledging his word of honour when that of the general no longer availed, in inducing the inhabitants to conclude an agreement by virtue of which the Roman army departed on receiving a supply of cattle and clothing. But the siege of Pallantia had to be raised for want of provisions, and the Roman army in its retreat was pursued by the Vaccaei as far as the Douro. Lucullus thereupon proceeded to the southern province, where in the same year the praetor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, had allowed himself to be defeated by the Lusitanians. They spent the winter not far from each other— Lucullus in the territory of the Turdetani, Galba at Conistorgis— And in the following year (604) jointly attacked the Lusitanians. Lucullus gained some advantages over them near the straits of Gades. Galba performed a greater achievement, for he concluded a treaty with three Lusitanian tribes on the right bank of the Tagus and promised to transfer them to better settlements; whereupon the barbarians, who to the number of 7000 came to him for the sake of the expected lands, were separated into three divisions, disarmed, and partly carried off into slavery, partly massacred. War has hardly ever been waged with so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice as by these two generals; who yet by means of their criminally acquired treasures escaped the one from condemnation, and the other even from impeachment. The veteran Cato in his eighty-fifth year, a few months before his death, attempted to bring Galba to account before the burgesses; but the weeping children of the general, and the gold which he had brought home with him, proved to the Roman people his innocence.

Variathus

It was not so much the inglorious successes which Lucullus and Galba had attained in Spain, as the outbreak of the fourth Macedonian and of the third Carthaginian war in 605, which induced the Romans again to leave Spanish affairs in the first instance to the ordinary governors. Accordingly the Lusitanians, exasperated rather than humbled by the perfidy of Galba, immediately overran afresh the rich territory of the Turdetani. The Roman governor Gaius Vetilius (607-8?)(4) marched against them, and not only defeated them, but drove the whole host towards a hill where it seemed lost irretrievably. The capitulation was virtually concluded, when Viriathus—a man of humble origin, who formerly, when a youth, had bravely defended his flock from wild beasts and robbers and was now in more serious conflictsa dreaded guerilla chief, and who was one of the few that had accidentally escaped from the perfidious onslaught of Galba—warned his countrymen against relying on the Roman word of honour, and promised them deliverance if they would follow him. His language and his example produced a deep effect: the army entrusted him with the supreme command. Viriathus gave orders to the mass of his men to proceed in detached parties, by different routes, to the appointed rendezvous; he himself formed the best mounted and most trustworthy into a corps of 1000 horse, with which he covered the departure of his men. The Romans, who wanted light cavalry, did not venture to disperse for the pursuit under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen. After Viriathus and his band had for two whole days held in check the entire Roman army he suddenly disappeared during the night and hastened to the general rendezvous. The Roman general followed him, but fell into an adroitly-laid ambush, in which he lost the half of his army and was himself captured and slain; with difficulty the rest of the troops escaped to the colony of Carteia on the Straits. In all haste 5000 men of the Spanish militia were despatched from the Ebro to reinforce the defeated Romans; but Viriathus destroyed the corps while still on its march, and commanded so absolutely the whole interior of Carpetania that the Romans did not even venture to seek him there. Viriathus, now recognized as lord and king of all the Lusitanians, knew how to combine the full dignity of his princely position with the homely habits of a shepherd. No badge distinguished him from the common soldier: he rose from the richly adorned marriage- table of his father-in-law, the prince Astolpa in Roman Spain, without having touched the golden plate and the sumptuous fare, lifted his bride on horseback, and rode back with her to his mountains. He never took more of the spoil than the share which he allotted to each of his comrades. The soldier recognized the general simply by his tall figure, by his striking sallies of wit, and above all by the fact that he surpassed every one of his men in temperance as well as in toil, sleeping always in full armour and fighting in front of all in battle. It seemed as if in that thoroughly prosaic age one of the Homeric heroes had reappeared: the name of Viriathus resounded far and wide through Spain; and the brave nation conceived that in him it had at length found the man who was destined to break the fetters of alien domination.

His Successors

Extraordinary successes in northern and in southern Spain marked the next years of his generalship. After destroying the vanguard of the praetor Gaius Plautius (608-9), Viriathus had the skill to lure him over to the right bank of the Tagus, and there to defeat him so emphatically that the Roman general went into winter quarters in the middle of summer—on which account he was afterwards charged before the people with having disgraced the Roman community, and was compelled to live in exile. In like manner the army of the governor— apparently of the Hither province—Claudius Unimanus was destroyed, that of Gaius Negidius was vanquished, and the level country was pillaged far and wide. Trophies of victory, decorated with the insignia of the Roman governors and the arms of the legions, were erected on the Spanish mountains; people at Rome heard with shame and consternation of the victories of the barbarian king. The conduct of the Spanish war was now committed to a trustworthy officer, the consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the second son of the victor of Pydna (609). But the Romans no longer ventured to send the experienced veterans, who bad just returned from Macedonia and Asia, forth anew tothe detested Spanish war; the two legions, which Maximus brought with him, were new levies and scarcely more to be trusted than the old utterly demoralized Spanish army. After the first conflicts had again issued favourably for the Lusitanians, the prudent general kept together his troops for the remainder of the year in the camp at Urso (Osuna, south-east from Seville) without accepting the enemy's offer of battle, and only took the field afresh in the following year (610), after his troops had by petty warfare become qualified for fighting; he was then enabled to maintain the superiority, and after successful feats of arms went into winter quarters at Corduba. But when the cowardly and incapable praetor Quinctius took the command in room of Maximus, the Romans again suffered defeat after defeat, and their general in the middle of summer shut himself up in Corduba, while the bands of Viriathus overran the southern province (611).

His successor, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, the adopted brother of Maximus Aemilianus, sent to the peninsula with two fresh legions and ten elephants, endeavoured to penetrate into the Lusitanian country, but after a series of indecisive conflicts and an assault on the Roman camp, which was with difficulty repulsed, found himself compelled to retreat to the Roman territory. Viriathus followed him into the province, but as his troops after the wont of Spanish insurrectionary armies suddenly melted away, he was obliged to return to Lusitania (612). Next year (613) Servilianus resumed the offensive, traversed the districts on the Baetis and Anas, and then advancing into Lusitania occupied a number of townships. A large number of the insurgents fell into his hands; the leaders—of whom there were about 500—were executed; those who had gone over from Roman territory to the enemy had their hands cut off; the remaining mass were sold into slavery. But on this occasion also the Spanish war proved true to its fickle and capricious character. After all these successes the Roman army was attacked by Viriathus while it was besieging Erisane, defeated, and driven to a rock where it was wholly in the power of the enemy. Viriathus, however, was content, like the Samnite general formerly at the Caudine passes, to conclude a peace with Servilianus, in which the community of the Lusitanians was recognized as sovereign and Viriathus acknowledged as its king. The power of the Romans had not risen more than the national sense of honour had sunk; in the capital men were glad to be rid of the irksome war, and the senate and people ratified the treaty. But Quintus Servilius Caepio, the full brother of Servilianus and his successor in office, was far from satisfied with this complaisance; and the senate was weak enough at first to authorize the consul to undertake secret machinations against Viriathus, and then to view at least with indulgence the open breach of his pledged word for which there was no palliation. So Caepio invaded Lusitania, and traversed the land as far as the territories of the Vettones and Callaeci; Viriathus declined a conflict with the superior force, and by dexterous movements evaded his antagonist (614). But when in the ensuing year (615) Caepio renewed the attack, and in addition the army, which had in The meantime become available in the northern province, made its appearance under Marcus Popillius in Lusitania, Viriathus sued for peace on any terms. He was required to give up to the Romans all who had passed over to him from the Roman territory, amongst whom was his own father-in-law; he did so, and the Romans ordered them to be executed or to have their hands cut off. But this was not sufficient; the Romans were not in the habit of announcing to the vanquished all at once their destined fate.

His Death

One behest after another was issued to the Lusitanians, each successive demand more intolerable than its predecessors; and at length they were required even to surrender their arms. Then Viriathus recollected the fate of his countrymen whom Galba had caused to be disarmed, and grasped his sword afresh. But it was too late. His wavering had sown the seeds of treachery among those who were immediately around him; three of his confidants, Audas, Ditalco, and Minucius from Urso, despairing of the possibility of renewed victory, procured from the king permission once more to enter into negotiations for peace with Caepio, and employed it for the purpose of selling the life of the Lusitanian hero to the foreigners in return for the assurance of personal amnesty and further rewards. On their return to the camp they assured the king of the favourable issue of their negotiations, and in the following night stabbed him while asleep in his tent. The Lusitanians honoured the illustrious chief by an unparalleled funeral solemnity at which two hundred pairs of champions fought in the funeral games; and still more highly by the fact, that they did not renounce the struggle, but nominated Tautamus as their commander- in-chief in room of the fallen hero. The plan projected by the latter for wresting Saguntum from the Romans was sufficiently bold; but the new general possessed neither the wise moderation nor the military skill of his predecessor. The expedition utterly broke down, and the army on its return was attacked in crossing the Baetis and compelled to surrender unconditionally. Thus was Lusitania subdued, far more by treachery and assassination on the part of foreigners and natives than by honourable war.

Numantia

While the southern province was scourged by Viriathus and the Lusitanians, a second and not less serious war had, not without their help, broken out in the northern province among the Celtiberian nations. The brilliant successes of Viriathus induced the Arevacae likewise in 610 to rise against the Romans; and for this reason the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, who was sent to Spain to relieve Maximus Aemilianus, did hot proceed to the southern province, but turned against the Celtiberians. In the contest with them, and more especially during the siege of the town of Contrebia which was deemed impregnable, he showed the same ability which he had displayed in vanquishing the Macedonian pretender; after his two years' administration (611, 612) the northern province was reduced to obedience. The two towns of Termantia and Numantia alone had not yet opened their gates to the Romans; but in their case also a capitulation had been almost concluded, and the greater part of the conditions had been fulfilled by the Spaniards. When required, however, to deliver up their arms, they were restrained like Viriathus by their genuine Spanish pride in the possession of a well- wielded sword, and they resolved to continue the war under the daring Megaravicus. It seemed folly: the consular army, the command of which was taken up in 613 by the consul Quintus Pompeius, was four times as numerous as the whole population capable of bearing arms in Numantia. But the general, who was wholly unacquainted with war, sustained defeats so severe under the walls of the two cities (613, 614), that he preferred at length to procure by means of negotiations the peace which he could not compel. With Termantia a definitive agreement must have taken place. In the case of the Numantines the Roman general liberated their captives, and summoned the community under the secret promise of favourable treatment to surrender to him at discretion. The Numantines, weary of the war, consented, and the general actually limited his demands to the smallest possible measure. Prisoners of war, deserters, and hostages were delivered up, and the stipulated sum of money was mostly paid, when in 615 the new general Marcus Popillius Laenas arrived in the camp. As soon as Pompeius saw the burden of command devolve on other shoulders, he, with a view to escape from the reckoning that awaited him at Rome for a peace which was according to Roman ideas disgraceful, lighted on the expedient of not merely breaking, but of disowning his word; and when the Numantines came to make their last payment, in the presence of their officers and his own he flatly denied the conclusion of the agreement. The matter was referred for judicial decision to the senate at Rome. While it was discussed there, the war before Numantia was suspended, and Laenas occupied himself with an expedition to Lusitania where he helped to accelerate the catastrophe of Viriathus, and with a foray against the Lusones, neighbours of the Numantines. When at length the decision of the senate arrived, its purport was that the war should be continued—the state became thus a party to the knavery of Pompeius.

Mancinus

With unimpaired courage and increased resentment the Numantines resumed the struggle; Laenas fought against them unsuccessfully, nor was his successor Gaius Hostilius Mancinus more fortunate (617). But the catastrophe was brought about not so much by the arms of the Numantines, as by the lax and wretched military discipline of the Roman generals and by—what was its natural consequence—the annually- increasing dissoluteness, insubordination, and cowardice of the Roman soldiers. The mere rumour, which moreover was false, that the Cantabri and Vaccaei were advancing to the relief of Numantia, induced the Roman army to evacuate the camp by night without orders, and to seek shelter in the entrenchments constructed sixteen years before by Nobilior.(5) The Numantines, informed of their sudden departure, hotly pursued the fugitive army, and surrounded it: there remained to it no choice save to fight its way with sword in hand through the enemy, or to conclude peace on the terms laid down by the Numantines. Although the consul was personally a man of honour, he was weak and little known. Tiberius Gracchus, who served in the army as quaestor, had more influence with the Celtiberians from the hereditary respect in which he was held on account of his father who had so wisely organized the province of the Ebro, and induced the Numantines to be content with an equitable treaty of peace sworn to by all the staff-officers. But the senate not only recalled the general immediately, but after long deliberation caused a proposal to be submitted to the burgesses that the convention should be treated as they had formerly treated that of Caudium, in other words, that they should refuse to ratify it and should devolve the responsibility for it on those by whom it had been concluded. By right this category ought to have included all the officers who had sworn to the treaty; but Gracchus and the others were saved by their connections. Mancinus alone, who did not belong to the circles of the highest aristocracy, was destined to pay the penalty for his own and others' guilt. Stripped of his insignia, the Roman consular was conducted to the enemy's outposts, and, when the Numantines refused to receive him that they might not on their part acknowledge the treaty as null, the late commander-in-chief stood in his shirt and with his hands tied behind his back for a whole day before the gates of Numantia, a pitiful spectacle to friend and foe. Yet the bitter lesson seemed utterly lost on the successor of Mancinus, his colleague in the consulship, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. While the discussions as to the treaty with Mancinus were pending in Rome, he attacked the free people of the Vaccaei under frivolous pretexts just as Lucullus had done sixteen years before, and began in concert with the general of the Further province to besiege Pallantia (618). A decree of the senate enjoined him to desist from the war; nevertheless, under the pretext that the circumstances had meanwhile changed, he continued the siege. In doing so he showed himself as bad a soldier as he was a bad citizen. After lying so long before the large and strong city that his supplies in that rugged and hostile country failed, he was obliged to leave behind all the sick and wounded and to undertake a retreat, in which the pursuing Pallantines destroyed half of his soldiers, and, if they had not broken off the pursuit too early, would probably have utterly annihilated the Roman army, which was already in full course of dissolution. For this conduct a fine was imposed on the high-born general at his return. His successors Lucius Furius Philus (618) and Gaius Calpurnius Piso (619) had again to wage war against the Numantines; and, inasmuch as they did nothing at all, they fortunately came home without defeat.

Scipio Aemilianus

Even the Roman government began at length to perceive that matters could no longer continue on this footing; they resolved to entrust the subjugation of the small Spanish country-town, as an extraordinary measure, to the first general of Rome, Scipio Aemilianus. The pecuniary means for carrying on the war were indeed doled out to him with preposterous parsimony, and the permission to levy soldiers, which he asked, was even directly refused—a result towards which coterie- intrigues and the fear of being burdensome to the sovereign people may have co-operated. But a great number of friends and clients voluntarily accompanied him; among them was his brother Maximus Aemilianus, whosome years before had commanded with distinction against Viriathus. Supported by this trusty band, which was formed into a guard for the general, Scipio began to reorganize the deeply disordered army (620). First of all, the camp-followers had to take their departure—there were found as many as 2000 courtesans, and an endless number of soothsayers and priests of all sorts—and, if the soldier was not available for fighting, he had at least to work in the trenches and to march. During the first summer the general avoided any conflict with the Numantines; he contented himself with destroying the stores in the surrounding country, and with chastising the Vaccaei who sold corn to the Numantines, and compelling them to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. It was only towards winter that Scipio drew together his army round Numantia. Besides the Numidian contingent of horsemen, infantry, and twelve elephants led by the prince Jugurtha, and the numerous Spanish contingents, there were four legions, in all a force of 60,000 men investing a city whose citizens capable of bearing arms did not exceed 8000 at the most. Nevertheless the besieged frequently offered battle; but Scipio, perceiving clearly that the disorganization of many years was not to be repaired all at once, refused to accept it, and, when conflicts did occur in connection with the sallies of the besieged, the cowardly flight of the legionaries, checked with difficulty by the appearance of the general in person, justified such tactics only too forcibly. Never did a general treat his soldiers more contemptuously than Scipio treated the Numantine army; and he showed his opinion of it not only by bitter speeches, but above all by his course of action. For the first time the Romans waged war by means of mattock and spade, where it depended on themselves alone whether they should use the sword. Around the whole circuit of the city wall, which was nearly three miles in length, there was constructed a double line of circumvallation of twice that extent, provided with walls, towers, and ditches; and the river Douro, by which at first some supplies had reached the besieged through the efforts of bold boatmen and divers, was at length closed. Thus the town, which they did not venture to assault, could not well fail to be reduced through famine; the more so, as it had not been possible for the citizens to lay in provisions during the last summer. The Numantines soon suffered from want of everything. One of their boldest men, Retogenes, cut his way with a few companions through the lines of the enemy, and his touching entreaty that kinsmen should not be allowed to perish without help produced a great effect in Lutia at least, one of the towns of the Arevacae. But before the citizens of Lutia had come to a decision, Scipio, having received information from the partisans of Rome in the town, appeared with a superior force before its walls, and compelled the authorities to deliver up to him the leaders of the movement, 400 of the flower of the youth, whose hands were all cut off by order of the Roman general. The Numantines, thus deprived of their last hope, sent to Scipio to negotiate as to their submission and called on the brave man to spare the brave; but when the envoys on their return announced that Scipio required unconditional surrender, they were torn in pieces by the furious multitude, and a fresh term elapsed before famine and pestilence had completed their work. At length a second message was sent to the Roman headquarters, that the town was now ready to submit at discretion. When the citizens were accordingly instructed to appear on the following day before the gates, they asked for some days delay, to allow those of their number who had determined not to survive the loss of liberty time to die. It was granted, and not a few took advantage of it. At last the miserable remnant appeared before the gates. Scipio chose fifty of the most eminent to form part of his triumphal procession; the rest were sold into slavery, the city was levelled with the ground, and its territory was distributed among the neighbouring towns. This occurred in the autumn of 621, fifteen months after Scipio had assumed the chief command.

The fall of Numantia struck at the root of the opposition that was still here and there stirring against Rome; military demonstrations and the imposition of fines sufficed to secure the acknowledgment of the Roman supremacy in all Hither Spain.

The Callaeci Conquered New Organization of Spain

In Further Spain the Roman dominion was confirmed and extended by the subjugation of the Lusitanians. The consul Decimus Junius Brutus, who came in Caepio's room, settled the Lusitanian war-captives in the neighbourhood of Saguntum, and gave to their new town Valentia (Valencia), like Carteia, a Latin constitution (616); he moreover (616-618) traversed the Iberian west coast in various directions, and was the first of the Romans to reach the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The towns of the Lusitanians dwelling there, which were obstinately defended by their inhabitants, both men and women, were subdued by him; and the hitherto independent Callaeci were united with the Roman province after a great battle, in which 50,000 of them are said to have fallen. After the subjugation of the Vaccaei, Lusitanians, and Callaeci, the whole peninsula, with the exception of the north coast, was now at least nominally subject to the Romans.

A senatorial commission was sent to Spain in order to organize, in concert with Scipio, the newly-won provincial territory after the Roman method; and Scipio did what he could to obviate the effects of the infamous and stupid policy of his predecessors. The Caucani for instance, whose shameful maltreatment by Lucullus he had been obliged to witness nineteen years before when a military tribune, were invited by him to return to their town and to rebuild it. Spain began again to experience more tolerable times. The suppression of piracy, which found dangerous lurking-places in the Baleares, through the occupation of these islands by Quintus Caecilius Metellus in 631, was singularly conducive, to the prosperity of Spanish commerce; and in other respects also the fertile islands, inhabited by a dense population which was unsurpassed in the use of the sling, were a valuable possession. How numerous the Latin-speaking population in the peninsula was even then, is shown by the settlement of 3000 Spanish Latins in the towns of Palma and Pollentia (Pollenza) in the newly-acquired islands. In spite of various grave evils the Roman administration of Spain preserved on the whole the stamp which the Catonian period, and primarily Tiberius Gracchus, had impressed on it. It is true that the Roman frontier territory had not a little to suffer from the inroads of the tribes, but half subdued or not subdued at all, on the north and west. Among the Lusitanians in particular the poorer youths regularly congregated as banditti, and in large gangs levied contributions from their countrymen or their neighbours, for which reason, even at a much later period, the isolated homesteads in this region were constructed in the style of fortresses, and were, in case of need, capable of defence; nor did the Romans succeed in putting an end to these predatory habits in the inhospitable and almost inaccessible Lusitanian mountains. But what had previously been wars assumed more and more the character of brigandage, which every tolerably efficient governor was able to repress with his ordinary resources; and in spite of such inflictions on the border districts Spain was the most flourishing and best-organized country in all the Roman dominions; the system of tenths and the middlemen were there unknown; the population was numerous, and the country was rich in corn and cattle.

The Protected States

Far more insupportable was the condition—intermediate between formal sovereignty and actual subjection—of the African, Greek, and Asiatic states which were brought within the sphere of Roman hegemony through the wars of Rome with Carthage, Macedonia, and Syria, and their consequences. An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours. But these client states of Rome had neither independence nor peace. In Africa there practically subsisted a perpetual border-war between Carthage and Numidia. In Egypt Roman arbitration had settled the dispute as to the succession between the two brothers Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy the Fat; nevertheless the new rulers of Egypt and Cyrene waged war for the possession of Cyprus. In Asia not only were most of the kingdoms—Bithynia, Cappadocia, Syria—likewise torn by internal quarrels as to the succession and by the interventions of neighbouring states to which these quarrels gave rise, but various and severe wars were carried on between the Attalids and the Galatians, between the Attalids and the kings of Bithynia, and even between Rhodes and Crete. In Hellas proper, in like manner, the pigmy feuds which were customary there continued to smoulder; and even Macedonia, formerly so tranquil, consumed its strength in the intestine strife that arose out of its new democratic constitutions. It was the fault of the rulers as well as the ruled, that the last vital energies and the last prosperity of the nations were expended in these aimless feuds. The client states ought to have perceived that a state which cannot wage war against every one cannot wage war at all, and that, as the possessions and power enjoyed by all these states were practically under Roman guarantee, they had in the event of any difference no alternative but to settle the matter amicably with their neighbours or to call in the Romans as arbiters. When the Achaean diet was urged by the Rhodians and Cretans to grant them the aid of the league, and seriously deliberated as to sending it (601), it was simply a political farce; the principle which the leader of the party friendly to Rome then laid down—that the Achaeans were no longer at liberty to wage war without the permission of the Romans— expressed, doubtless with disagreeable precision, the simple truth that the sovereignty of the dependent states was merely a formal one, and that any attempt to give life to the shadow must necessarily lead to the destruction of the shadow itself. But the ruling community deserves a censure more severe than that directed against the ruled. It is no easy task for a man—any more than for a state—to own to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation. The Roman senate did neither. Invoked and importuned on all hands, the senate interfered incessantly in the course of African, Hellenic, Asiatic, and Egyptian affairs; but it did so after so inconstant and loose a fashion, that its attempts to settle matters usually only rendered the confusion worse. It was the epoch of commissions. Commissioners of the senate were constantly going to Carthage and Alexandria, to the Achaean diet, and to the courts of the rulers of western Asia; they investigated, inhibited, reported, and yet decisive steps were not unfrequently taken in the most important matters without the knowledge, or against the wishes, of the senate. It might happen that Cyprus, for instance, which the senate had assigned to the kingdom of Cyrene, was nevertheless retained by Egypt; that a Syrian prince ascended the throne of his ancestors under the pretext that he had obtained a promise of it from the Romans, while the senate had in fact expressly refused to give it to him, and he himself had only escaped from Rome by breaking their interdict; that even the open murder of a Roman commissioner, who under the orders of the senate administered as guardian the government of Syria, passed totally unpunished. The Asiatics were very well aware that they were not in a position to resist the Roman legions; but they were no less aware that the senate was but little inclined to give the burgesses orders to march for the Euphrates or the Nile. Thus the state of these remote countries resembled that of the schoolroom when the teacher is absent or lax; and the government of Rome deprived the nations at once of the blessings of freedom and of the blessings of order. For the Romans themselves, moreover, this state of matters was so far perilous that it to a certain extent left their northern and eastern frontier exposed. In these quarters kingdoms might be formed by the aid of the inland countries situated beyond the limits of the Roman hegemony and in antagonism to the weak states under Roman protection, without Rome being able directly or speedily to interfere, and might develop a power dangerous to, and entering sooner or later into rivalry with, Rome. No doubt the condition of the bordering nations—everywhere split into fragments and nowhere favourable to political development on a great scale— formed some sort of protection against this danger; yet we very clearly perceive in the history of the east, that at this period the Euphrates was no longer guarded by the phalanx of Seleucus and was not yet watched by the legions of Augustus. It was high time to put an end to this state of indecision. But the only possible way of ending it was by converting the client states into Roman provinces. This could be done all the more easily, that the Roman provincial constitution in substance only concentrated military power in the hands of the Roman governor, while administration and jurisdiction in the main were, or at any rate were intended to be, retained by the communities, so that as much of the old political independence as was at all capable of life might be preserved in the form of communal freedom. The necessity for this administrative reform could not well be mistaken; the only question was, whether the senate would delay and mar it, or whether it would have the courage and the power clearly to discern and energetically to execute what was needful.

Carthage and Numidia

Let us first glance at Africa. The order of things established by the Romans in Libya rested in substance on a balance of power between the Nomad kingdom of Massinissa and the city of Carthage. While the former was enlarged, confirmed, and civilized under the vigorous and sagacious government of Massinissa,(6) Carthage in consequence simply of a state of peace became once more, at least in wealth and population, what it had been at the height of its political power. The Romans saw with ill-concealed and envious fear the apparently indestructible prosperity of their old rival; while hitherto they had refused to grant to it any real protection against the constantly continued encroachments of Massinissa, they now began openly to interfere in favour of the neighbouring prince. The dispute which had been pending for more than thirty years between the city and the king as to the possession of the province of Emporia on the Lesser Syrtis, one of the most fertile in the Carthaginian territory, was at length (about 594) decided by Roman commissioners to the effect that the Carthaginians should evacuate those towns of Eniporia which still remained in their possession, and should pay 500 talents (120,000 pounds) to the king as compensation for the illegal enjoyment of the territory. The consequence was, that Massinissa immediately seized another Carthaginian district on the western frontier of their territory, the town of Tusca and the great plains near the Bagradas; no course was left to the Carthaginians but to commence another hopeless process at Rome. After long and, beyond doubt, intentional delay a second commission appeared in Africa (597); but, when the Carthaginians were unwilling to commit themselves unconditionally to a decision to be pronounced by it as arbiter without an exact preliminary investigation into the question of legal right, and insisted on a thorough discussion of the latter question, the commissioners without further ceremony returned to Rome.

The Destruction of Carthage Resolved on at Rome

The question of right between Carthage and Massinissa thus remained unsettled; but the mission gave rise to a more important decision. The head of this commission had been the old Marcus Cato, at that time perhaps the most influential man in the senate, and, as a veteran survivor from the Hannibalic war, still filled with thorough hatred and thorough dread of the Phoenicians. With surprise and jealousy Cato had seen with his own eyes the flourishing state of the hereditary foes of Rome, the luxuriant country and the crowded streets, the immense stores of arms in the magazines and the rich materials for a fleet; already he in spirit beheld a second Hannibal wielding all these resources against Rome. In his honest and manly, but thoroughly narrow-minded, fashion, he came to the conclusion that Rome could not be secure until Carthage had disappeared from the face of the earth, and immediately after his return set forth this view in the senate. Those of the aristocracy whose ideas were more enlarged, and especially Scipio Nasica, opposed this paltry policy with great earnestness; and showed how blind were the fears entertained regarding a mercantile city whose Phoenician inhabitants were becoming more and more disused to warlike arts and ideas, and how the existence of that rich commercial city was quite compatible with the political supremacy of Rome. Even the conversion of Carthage into a Roman provincial town would have been practicable, and indeed, compared with the present condition of the Phoenicians, perhaps even not unwelcome. Cato, however, desired not the submission, but the destruction of the hated city. His policy, as it would seem, found allies partly in the statesmen who were inclined to bring the transmarine territories into immediate dependence on Rome, partly and especially in the mighty influence of the Roman bankers and great capitalists on whom, after the destruction of the rich moneyed and mercantile city, its inheritance would necessarily devolve. The majority resolved at the first fitting opportunity—respect for public opinion required that they should wait for such—to bring about war with Carthage, or rather the destruction of the city.

War between Massinissa and Carthage

The desired occasion was soon found. The provoking violations of right on the part of Massinissa and the Romans brought to the helm in Carthage Hasdrubal and Carthalo, the leaders of the patriotic party, which was not indeed, like the Achaean, disposed to revolt against the Roman supremacy, but was at least resolved to defend, if necessary, by arms against Massinissa the rights belonging by treaty to the Carthaginians. The patriots ordered forty of the most decided partisans of Massinissa to be banished from the city, and made the people swear that they would on no account ever permit their return; at the same time, in order to repel the attacks that might be expected from Massinissa, they formed out of the free Numidians a numerous army under Arcobarzanes, the grandson of Syphax (about 600). Massinissa, however, was prudent enough not to take arms now, but to submit himself unconditionally to the decision of the Romans respecting the disputed territory on the Bagradas; and thus the Romans could assert with some plausibility that the Carthaginian preparations must have been directed against them, and could insist on the immediate dismissal of the army and destruction of the naval stores. The Carthaginian senate was disposed to consent, but the multitude prevented the execution of the decree, and the Roman envoys, who had brought this order to Carthage, were in peril of their lives. Massinissa sent his son Gulussa to Rome to report the continuance of the Carthaginian warlike preparations by land and sea, and to hasten the declaration of war. After a further embassy of ten men had confirmed the statement that Carthage was in reality arming (602), the senate rejected the demand of Cato for an absolute declaration of war, but resolved in a secret sitting that war should be declared if the Carthaginians would not consent to dismiss their army and to burn their materials for a fleet. Meanwhile the conflict had already begun in Africa. Massinissa had sent back the men whom the Carthaginians had banished, under the escort of his son Gulussa, to the city. When the Carthaginians closed their gates against them and killed also some of the Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer averted. Before the eyes of Scipio Aemilanus, who at that time a military tribune in the Spanish army, had been sent to Massinissa to bring over African elephants for his commander, and who on this occasion looked down on the conflict from a mountain "like Zeus from Ida," the Carthaginians and Numidians fought a great battle, in which the former, though reinforced by 6000 Numidian horsemen brought to them by discontented captains of Massinissa, and superior in number to the enemy, were worsted. After this defeat the Carthaginians offered to make cessions of territory and payments of money to Massinissa, and Scipio at their solicitation attempted to bring about an agreement; but the project of peace was frustrated by the refusal of the Carthaginian patriots to surrender the deserters. Hasdrubal, however, closely hemmed in by the troops of his antagonist, was compelled to grant to the latter all that he demanded—the surrender of the deserters, the return of the exiles, the delivery of arms, the marching off under the yoke, the payment of 100 talents (24,000 pounds) annually for the next fifty years. But even this agreement was not kept by the Numidians; on the contrary the disarmed remnant of the Carthaginian army was cut to pieces by them on the way home.

Declaration of War by Rome

The Romans, who had carefully abstained from preventing the war Itself by seasonable interposition, had now what they wished: namely, A serviceable pretext for war—for the Carthaginians had certainly Now transgressed the stipulations of the treaty, that they should not wage war against the allies of Rome or beyond their own bounds(7)— and an antagonist already beaten beforehand. The Italian contingents were already summoned to Rome, and the ships were assembled; the declaration of war might issue at any moment. The Carthaginians made every effort to avert the impending blow. Hasdrubal and Carthalo, the leaders of the patriot party, were condemned to death, and an embassy was sent to Rome to throw the responsibility on them. But at the same time envoys from Utica, the second city of the Libyan Phoenicians, arrived there with full powers to surrender their Community wholly to the Romans—compared with such obliging submissiveness, it seemed almost an insolence that the Carthaginians had rested content with ordering, unbidden, the execution of their most eminent men. The senate declared that the excuse of the Carthaginians was found insufficient; to the question, what in that case would suffice, the reply was given that the Carthaginians knew that themselves. They might, no doubt, have known what the Romans wished; but yet it seemed impossible to believe that the last hour of their loved native city had really come. Once more Carthaginian envoys—on this occasion thirty in number and with unlimited powers—were sent to Rome. When they arrived, war was already declared (beginning of 605), and the double consular army had embarked. Yet they even now attempted to dispel the storm by complete submission. The senate replied that Rome was ready to guarantee to the Carthaginian community its territory, its municipal freedom and its laws, its public and private property, provided that it would furnish to the consuls who had just departed for Sicily within the space of a month at Lilybaeum 300 hostages from the children of the leading families, and would fulfil the further orders which the consuls in conformity with their instructions should issue to them. The reply has been called ambiguous; but very erroneously, as even at the time clearsighted men among the Carthaginians themselves pointed out. The circumstance that everything which they could ask was guaranteed with the single exception of the city, and that nothing was said as to stopping the embarkation of the troops for Africa, showed very clearly what the Roman intentions were; the senate acted with fearful harshness, but it did not assume the semblance of concession. The Carthaginians, however, would not open their eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or to thorough resignation. When they heard at the same time of the horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe. The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in Africa. The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the provisions demanded were supplied. When the gerusia of Carthage appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the disarming of the city. To the question of the Carthaginians, who was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants— against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by flight—it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans. Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of private persons—to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of armour—and inquired whether anything more was desired. Then the consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council, that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose, provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.

Resistance of the Carthaginians

This fearful command aroused in the Phoenicians all the—shall we say magnanimous or frenzied?—enthusiasm, which was displayed previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the Jews against Vespasian. Unparalleled as was the patience with which this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as unparalleled was now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population, when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the beloved soil of their ancestral city and their venerated and dear home beside the sea. Hope and deliverance were out of the question; political discretion enjoined even now an unconditional submission. But the voice of the few who counselled the acceptance of what was inevitable was, like the call of the pilot during a hurricane, drowned amidst the furious yells of the multitude; which, in its frantic rage, laid hands on the magistrates of the city who had counselled the surrender of the hostages and arms, made such of the innocent bearers of the news as had ventured at all to return home expiate their terrible tidings, and tore in pieces the Italians who chanced to be sojourning in the city by way of avenging beforehand, at least on them, the destruction of its native home. No resolution was passed to defend themselves; unarmed as they were, this was a matter of course. The gates were closed; stones were carried to the battlements of the walls that had been stripped of the catapults; the chief command was entrusted to Hasdrubal, the grandson of Massinissa; the slaves in a body were declared free. The army of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal—which was in possession of the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz. Hadrumetum, Little Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and the city of Utica, and offered an invaluable support for the defence—was entreated not to refuse its aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency. At the same time, concealing in true Phoenician style the most unbounded resentment under the cloak of humility, they attempted to deceive the enemy. A message was sent to the consuls to request a thirty days' armistice for the despatch of an embassy to Rome. The Carthaginians were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this request, which had been refused once already; but the consuls were confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly postponed the attack. The precious interval was employed in preparing catapults and armour; day and night all, without distinction of age or sex, were occupied in constructing machines and forging arms; the public buildings were torn down to procure timber and metal; women cut off their hair to furnish the strings indispensable for the catapults; in an incredibly short time the walls and the men were once more armed. That all this could be done without the consuls, who were but a few miles off, learning anything of it, is not the least marvellous feature in this marvellous movement sustained by a truly enthusiastic, and in fact superhuman, national hatred. When at length the consuls, weary of waiting, broke up from their camp at Utica, and thought that they should be able to scale the bare walls with ladders, they found to their surprise and horror the battlements crowned anew with catapults, and the large populous city which they had hoped to occupy like an open village, able and ready to defend itself to the last man.

Situation of Carthage

Carthage was rendered very strong both by the nature of its situation(8) and by the art of its inhabitants, who had very often to depend on the protection of its walls. Into the broad gulf of Tunis, which is bounded on the west by Cape Farina and on the east by Cape Bon, there projects in a direction from west to east a promontory, which is encompassed on three sides by the sea and is connected with the mainland only towards the west. This promontory, at its narrowest part only about two miles broad and on the whole flat, again expands towards the gulf, and terminates there in the two heights of Jebel-Khawi and Sidi bu Said, between which extends the plain of El Mersa. On its southern portion which ends in the height of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage. The pretty steep declivity of that height towards the gulf and its numerous rocks and shallows gave natural strength to the side of the city next to the gulf, and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there. On the wall along the west or landward side, on the other hand, where nature afforded no protection, every appliance within the power of the art of fortification in those times was expended. It consisted, as its recently discovered remains exactly tallying with the description of Polybius have shown, of an outer wall 6 1/2 feet thick and immense casemates attached to it behind, probably along its whole extent; these were separated from the outer wall by a covered way 6 feet broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive of the front and back walls, each of which was fully 3 feet broad.(9) This enormous wall, composed throughout of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories, exclusive of the battlements and the huge towers four stories high, to a height of 45 feet,(10) and furnished in the lower range of the casemates stables and provender-stores for 300 elephants, in the upper range stalls for horses, magazines, and barracks.(11) The citadel-hill, the Byrsa (Syriac, birtha = citadel), a comparatively considerable rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a circumference of fully 2000 double paces,(12) was joined to this wall at its southern end, just as the rock-wall of the Capitol was joined to the city-wall of Rome. Its summit bore the huge temple of the God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps. The south side of the city was washed partly by the shallow lake of Tunes towards the south-west, which was separated almost wholly from the gulf by a narrow and low tongue of land running southwards from the Carthaginian peninsula,(13) partly by the open gulf towards the south-east. At this last spot was situated the double harbour of the city, a work of human hands; the outer or commercial harbour, a longish rectangle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from whose entrance, only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched along the water on both sides, and the inner circular war-harbour, the Cothon,(14) with the island containing the admiral's house in the middle, which was approached through the outer harbour. Between the two passed the city wall, which turning eastward from the Byrsa excluded the tongue of land and the outer harbour, but included the war-harbour, so that the entrance to the latter must be conceived as capable of being closed like a gate. Not far from the war-harbour lay the marketplace, which was connected by three narrow streets with the citadel open on the side towards the town. To the north of, and beyond, the city proper, the pretty considerable space of the modern El Mersa, even at that time occupied in great part by villas and well-watered gardens, and then called Magalia, had a circumvallation of its own joining on to the city wall. On the opposite point of the peninsula, the Jebel-Khawi near the modern village of Ghamart, lay the necropolis. These three—the old city, the suburb, and the necropolis—together filled the whole breadth of the promontory on its side next the gulf, and were only accessible by the two highways leading to Utica and Tunes along that narrow tongue of land, which, although not closed by a wall, yet afforded a most advantageous position for the armies taking their stand under the protection of the capital with the view of protecting it in return.

The difficult task of reducing so well fortified a city was rendered still more difficult by the fact, that the resources of the capital itself and of its territory which still included 800 townships and was mostly under the power of the emigrant party on the one hand, and the numerous tribes of the free or half-free Libyans hostile to Massinissa on the other, enabled the Carthaginians simultaneously with their defence of the city to keep a numerous army in the field— an army which, from the desperate temper of the emigrants and the serviceableness of the light Numidian cavalry, the besiegers could not afford to disregard.

The Siege

The consuls accordingly had by no means an easy task to perform, when they now found themselves compelled to commence a regular siege. Manius Manilius, who commanded the land army, pitched his camp opposite the wall of the citadel, while Lucius Censorinus stationed himself with the fleet on the lake and there began operations on the tongue of land. The Carthaginian army, under Hasdrubal, encamped on the other side of the lake near the fortress of Nepheris, whence it obstructed the labours of the Roman soldiers despatched to cut timber for constructing machines, and the able cavalry-leader in particular, Himilco Phameas, slew many of the Romans. Censorinus fitted up two large battering-rams on the tongue, and made a breach with them at this weakest place of the wall; but, as evening had set in, the assault had to be postponed. During the night the besieged succeeded in filling up a great part of the breach, and in so damaging the Roman machines by a sortie that they could not work next day. Nevertheless the Romans ventured on the assault; but they found the breach and the portions of the wall and houses in the neighbourhood so strongly occupied, and advanced with such imprudence, that they were repulsed with severe loss and would have suffered still greater damage, had not the military tribune Scipio Aemilianus, foreseeing the issue of the foolhardy attack, kept together his men in front of the walls and with them intercepted the fugitives. Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of the citadel. The siege thus lingered on. The diseases engendered in the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of ninety which ensued soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the offensive operations of the Romans. They had enough to do in protecting their ships against the Carthaginian incendiaries and their camp against nocturnal surprises, and in securing food for their men and horses by the construction of a harbour-fort and by forays in the neighbourhood. Two expeditions directed against Hasdrubal remained without success; and in fact the first, badly led over difficult ground, had almost terminated in a formal defeat. But, while the course of the war was inglorious for the general and the army, the military tribune Scipio achieved in it brilliant distinction. It was he who, on occasion of a nocturnal attack by the enemy on the Roman camp, starting with some squadrons of horse and taking the enemy in rear, compelled him to retreat. On the first expedition to Nepheris, when the passage of the river had taken place in opposition to his advice and had almost occasioned the destruction of the army, by a bold attack in flank he relieved the pressure on the retreating troops, and by his devoted and heroic courage rescued a division which had been given up as lost While the other officers, and the consul in particular, by their perfidy deterred the towns and party-leaders that were inclined to negotiate, Scipio succeeded in inducing one of the ablest of the latter, Himilco Phameas, to pass over to the Romans with 2200 cavalry. Lastly, after he had in fulfilment of the charge of the dying Massinissa divided his kingdom among his three sons, Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal, he brought to the Roman army in Gulussa a cavalry-leader worthy of his father, and thereby remedied the want, which had hitherto been seriously felt, of light cavalry. His refined and yet simple demeanour, which recalled rather his own father than him whose name he bore, overcame even envy, and in the camp as in the capital the name of Scipio was on the lips of all. Even Cato, who was not liberal with his praise, a few months before his death—he died at the end of 605 without having seen the wish of his life, the destruction of Carthage, accomplished—applied to the young officer and to his incapable comrades the Homeric line:—