The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 05

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CHAPTER XIII. THE MACEDONIAN AND SYRIAC WARS AND THE THIRD PUNIC WAR (200-131 B.C.)

From the time of Pyrrhus, Macedonia, and all Greece as well, had abundant causes to look with jealousy upon the growing power of Rome. For the most part Greece was in too shattered a condition—though doubtless most contemporary citizens did not realise the fact—to enter into active dispute with the new Mistress of the West. There were times, however, when Macedonia, not yet able to forget the brief period of her recent supremacy, strove to become a factor in the contest that was going on between Rome and Carthage.

And so it happened that Philip V of Macedon, an unworthy successor of his great namesake, made an alliance with Hannibal, and even promised to send troops to the active assistance of the Carthaginian general. The promise was never kept, thanks to the indecisive nature of Philip. But the intention brought upon Philip the wrath of Rome, and led, among other causes, to a series of contests between Macedonia and Rome, in which the latter always had the advantage; and in which, finally, all Greece was involved, partly on one side and partly on the other—with that suicidal lack of unity which was always the bane of the Greek character. The ultimate result was that all Greece, including Macedonia, became at last a Roman province. The destruction of Corinth followed close upon the destruction of Carthage, and for some generations after these events there was no maritime city left to dispute in any sense the position of Rome as mistress both by sea and land. The commonwealth of Rome thus stood at the apex of its power, little knowing that even in the day of its prime the period of decline was being ushered in.[a]

THE MACEDONIAN WAR; WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS III

[200-192 B.C.]

The victory of Zama gave the Romans the dominion of the west; the ambitious senate then aspired to that of the east, and the king of Macedonia was selected as the first object of attack. The people, wearied out with service and contributions, were with some difficulty induced to give their consent; and war was declared against Philip under the pretext of his having injured the allies of Rome, namely, the Athenians, and the kings of Egypt and Pergamus.

Philip after the late peace had been assiduous in augmenting his fleet and army; but instead of joining Hannibal when he was in Italy, he employed himself, in conjunction with Antiochus, king of Syria, in seizing the islands and the towns on the coast of the Ægean, which were under the protection of Egypt, whose king was now a minor. This engaged him in hostilities with the king of Pergamus and the Rhodians. A Roman army, under the consul P. Sulpicius, passed over to Greece (200); the Ætolians declared against Philip, and gradually the Bœotians and Achæans were induced to follow their example.

Philip, thus threatened, made a gallant resistance against this formidable confederacy; but the consul T. Quinctius Flamininus gave him at length (197) a complete defeat at Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly, and he was forced to sue for peace, which, however, he obtained on much easier terms than might have been expected, as the Romans were on the eve of a war with the king of Syria. The peace with Philip was followed by the celebrated proclamation at the Isthmian games of the independence of those states of Greece which had been under the Macedonian dominion; for the Romans well knew that this was the infallible way to establish their own supremacy, as the Greeks would be sure never to unite for the common good of their country.

After an interval of a few years, the long-expected war with Antiochus the Great of Syria broke out. The immediate occasion of it was the discontent of the Ætolians, who, being mortally offended with the Romans, sent to invite him into Greece. He had been for three years making preparations for the war, and he had now at his service the greatest general of the age, if he had known how to make use of him. For Hannibal having been appointed one of the suffets at Carthage, and finding the power of the judges enormous in consequence of their holding their office for life, had a law passed reducing it to one year. This naturally raised him a host of enemies, whose number was augmented by his financial reforms; for discovering that the public revenues had been diverted into the coffers of the magistrates and persons of influence, while the people were directly taxed to pay the tribute to the Romans, he instituted an inquiry, and proved that the ordinary revenues of the state were abundantly sufficient for all purposes. Those who felt their incomes thus reduced sought to rouse the enmity of the Romans against Hannibal, whom they charged with a secret correspondence with Antiochus; and though Scipio strongly urged the indignity of the Roman senate becoming the instrument of a faction in Carthage, hatred of Hannibal prevailed, and three senators were sent to Carthage, ostensibly to settle some disputes between the Carthaginians and Masinissa. Hannibal, who knew their real object, left the city secretly in the night, and getting on board a ship sailed to Tyre. He thence went to Antioch, and finding that Antiochus was at Ephesus he proceeded to that city, where he met with a most flattering reception from the monarch (195).

[192-191 B.C.]

Hannibal, true to his maxim that the Romans were only to be conquered in Italy, proposed to the king to let him have a good fleet and ten thousand men, with which he would sail over to Africa, when he hoped to be able to induce the Carthaginians to take arms again; and if he did not succeed he would land somewhere in Italy. He would have the king meanwhile to pass with a large army into Greece, and to remain there ready to invade Italy, if necessary. Antiochus at first assented to this plan of the war; but he afterwards lent an ear to the suggestions of Thoas the Ætolian, who was jealous of the great Carthaginian, and gave it up. He himself at length (192) passed over to Greece with a small army of ten thousand men; but instead of acting immediately with vigour, he loitered in Eubœa, where he espoused a beautiful maiden, wasted his time in petty negotiations in Thessaly and the adjoining country, by which he highly offended King Philip, whom it was his first duty to conciliate, and thus gave the consul M. Acilius Glabrio time to land his army and enter Thessaly. Antiochus hastened from Eubœa to defend the pass of Thermopylæ against him; but he was totally defeated, and forced to fly to Asia (191).

[191-189 B.C.]

Antiochus flattered himself at first that the Romans would not follow him into Asia; but Hannibal soon proved to him that such an expectation was a vain one, and that he must prepare for war. At Rome the invasion of Asia was at once resolved on. The two new consuls, C. Lælius and L. Scipio (190), were both equally anxious to have the conducting of this war; the senate were mostly in favour of Lælius, an officer of skill and experience, while L. Scipio was a man of very moderate abilities. But Scipio Africanus offering, if his brother was appointed, to go as his legate, Greece was assigned to him as his province without any further hesitation. The Scipios then, having raised what troops were requisite, among which five thousand of those who had served under Africanus came as volunteers, passed over to Epirus with a force of about thirteen thousand men. In Thessaly Acilius delivered up to them two legions which he had under his command, and being supplied with provisions and everything else they required they marched through Macedonia and Thrace for the Hellespont. A Roman fleet was in the Ægean, which, united with those of Eumenes of Pergamus and the Rhodians, proved an overmatch for that of Antiochus, even though commanded by Hannibal. When the Scipios reached the Hellespont they found everything prepared for the passage by Eumenes. They crossed without any opposition; and as this was the time for moving the Ancilia at Rome, P. Scipio, who was one of the salii, caused the army to make a halt of a few days on that account.

While they remained there an envoy came from Antiochus proposing peace, on condition of his giving up all claim to the Grecian cities in Asia and paying one-half of the expenses of the war. The Scipios insisted on his paying all the expenses of the war, as he had been the cause of it, and evacuating Asia on this side of Mount Taurus. The envoy then applied privately to P. Scipio, telling him that the king would release without ransom his son, who had lately fallen into his hands, and give him a large quantity of gold and every honour he could bestow, if through his means he could obtain more equitable terms. Scipio expressed his gratitude, as a private person, to the king for the offer to release his son; and, as a friend, advised him to accept any terms he could get, as his case was hopeless. The envoy retired; the Romans advanced to Ilium, where the consul ascended and offered sacrifice to Minerva, to the great joy of the Ilienses, who asserted themselves to be the progenitors of the Romans. They thence advanced to the head of the river Caicus. Antiochus, who was at Thyatira, hearing that P. Scipio was lying sick at Elæa, sent his son to him, and received in return his thanks, and his advice not to engage till he had rejoined the army. As in case of defeat his only hopes lay in P. Scipio, he took his counsel, and retiring to the foot of Mount Sipylus formed a strong camp near Magnesia.

The consul advanced, and encamped about four miles off; and as the king seemed not inclined to fight, and the Roman soldiers were full of contempt for the enemy, and clamorous for action, it was resolved, if he did not accept the proffer of battle, to storm his camp. But Antiochus, fearing that the spirit of his men would sink if he declined fighting, led them out when he saw the Romans in array.

The Roman army, consisting of four legions, each of fifty-four hundred men, was drawn up in the usual manner, its left resting on a river; three thousand Achæan and Pergamenian foot were placed on the right, and beyond them the horse, about three thousand in number; sixteen African elephants were stationed in the rear. The army of Antiochus consisted of sixty-two thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and fifty-four elephants. His phalanx of sixteen thousand men was drawn up in ten divisions, each of fifty men in rank and thirty-two in file, with two elephants in each of the intervals. On the left and right of the phalanx were placed the cavalry, the light troops and the remainder of the elephants, the scythed chariots, and Arab archers, mounted on dromedaries.

When the armies were arrayed, there came on a fog, with a slight kind of rain, which relaxed the bowstrings, slings, and dart thongs of the numerous light troops of the king, and the darkness caused confusion in his long and various line. Eumenes, also, by a proper use of the light troops, frightened the horses of the scythed chariots, and drove them off the field. The Roman horse then charged that of the enemy and put it to flight; the confusion of the left wing extended to the phalangites, who, by their own men rushing from the left among them, were prevented from using their long sarissæ (or spears), and were easily broken and slaughtered by the Romans, who now also knew from experience how to deal with the elephants. Antiochus, who commanded in person on the right, drove the four turms or troops of horse opposed to him, and a part of the foot, back to their camp; but M. Æmilius, who commanded there, rallied them. Eumenes’ brother, Attalus, came from the right with some horse; the king turned and fled; the rout became general; the slaughter, as usual, was enormous; the camp was taken and pillaged. The loss of the Syrians is stated at fifty-three thousand slain and fourteen hundred taken; that of the Romans and their ally Eumenes at only three hundred and fifty men (190).

All the cities of the coast sent in their submission to the consul, who advanced to Sardis. Antiochus was at this time at Apamea; and when he learned that P. Scipio, who had not been in the battle, was arrived, he sent envoys to treat of peace on any terms. The Romans had already arranged the conditions of peace, and P. Scipio announced them as follows: Antiochus should abstain from Europe, and give up all Asia this side of Taurus; pay fifteen thousand Euboic talents for the expenses of the war, five hundred down, fifteen hundred when the senate and people ratified the peace, the remainder in twelve years, at one thousand talents a year; give Eumenes four hundred talents and a quantity of corn; give twenty hostages; and, above all, deliver up Hannibal, Thoas the Ætolian, and three other Greeks. The king’s envoys went direct to Rome, whither also went Eumenes in person, and embassies from Rhodes and other places; the consul put his troops into winter quarters at Magnesia, Tralles, and Ephesus.

At Rome the peace was confirmed with Antiochus. The greater part of the ceded territory was granted to Eumenes, Lycia and a part of Caria to the Rhodians (whose usually prudent aristocracy committed a great error in seeking this aggrandisement of their dominion), and such towns as had taken part with the Romans were freed from tribute. L. Scipio triumphed on his return to Rome, and assumed the surname of Asiaticus, to be in this respect on an equality with his illustrious brother.

[189-183 B.C.]

Cn. Manlius Vulso succeeded Scipio in Asia (189), and as the Roman consuls now began to regard it as discreditable and unprofitable to pass their year without a war, he looked round him for an enemy from whom he might derive fame and wealth. He fixed on the Gallo-Grecians, as the descendants of those Gauls were called who had passed over into Asia in the time of Pyrrhus, and won a territory for themselves, named from them in after-times Galatia. He stormed their fortified camp on Mount Olympus in Mysia, gave them a great defeat on the plains of Ancyra, and forced them to sue for peace. The booty gained, the produce of their plunder for many years, was immense. Manlius then led his army back to the coast for the winter. The next year (188) ten commissioners came out to ratify the peace with Antiochus; they added some more conditions, such as the surrender of his elephants; the peace was then sworn to, and the Romans evacuated Asia.

Roman Battering Ram

Hannibal, when he found that the Romans demanded him, retired to Crete; not thinking himself, however, safe in that island, he left it soon after and repaired to the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, who felt flattered by the presence of so great a man. But the vengeance of Rome did not sleep, and no less a person than T. Flamininus was sent (183) to demand his death or his surrender. The mean-spirited Prusias, immediately after a conference with the Roman envoy, sent soldiers to seize his illustrious guest.[c] Cornelius Nepos thus describes the tragic result:

Hannibal constantly confined himself to one place, being a castle with which the king had presented him as a reward for his services, which he so contrived, that he had sallies on all sides through which he might escape if he should have occasion; for he always suspected that that would befall him, which at last did really happen. The Roman ambassadors, accompanied with a great number of men, having at length surrounded this castle on all parts, his servant perceiving them from the gate, runs to his master and acquaints him that there appeared a more than usual company of armed men; upon which he commanded him to go round all the doors of the house and speedily bring him word whether there was any way to escape. When the boy had immediately acquainted him how the case stood, and had farther assured him that all the passages were stopped, he was soon satisfied that this could not happen by accident, but that they came to seize his person; and that consequently he could not long enjoy his life, which he was resolved should not be in another man’s disposal: upon which he immediately swallowed a dose of poison, which he was always accustomed to carry with him. Thus, this our most valiant hero, harassed with numerous and various labours, reposed himself in death.[h]

It is said that Scipio Africanus died in the same year with his illustrious rival, an instance also of the mutability of fortune, for the conqueror of Carthage breathed his last in exile. In the year 193 he had had a specimen of the instability of popular favour; for while at the consular elections he and all the Cornelian gens exerted their influence in favour of his cousin P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of Cneius who had been killed in Spain,—and who was himself of so exemplary a character that, when the statue of the Idæan mother Cybele was, by the direction of the Sibylline books, brought to Rome from Pergamus, it was committed to his charge, as being the best man in the city—they were forced to yield to that of the vainglorious T. Quinctius Flamininus, who sued for his brother, the profligate L. Quinctius. But, as the historian observes, the glory of Flamininus was fresher; he had triumphed that very year; whereas Africanus had been now ten years in the public view, and since his victory over Hannibal he had been consul a second time, and censor—very sufficient reasons for the decline of his favour with the unstable people.

[187-183 B.C.]

The year after the conclusion of the peace with Antiochus (187) the Q. Petillii, tribunes of the people, at the instigation it is said of M. Porcius Cato, cited Scipio Africanus before the tribes, to answer various charges on old and new grounds, of which the chief was that of having taken bribes from Antiochus, and not having accounted for the spoil. Scipio was attended to the Forum by an immense concourse of people; he disdained to notice the charges against him; in a long speech he enumerated the various actions he had performed, and taking a book from his bosom, “In this,” said he, “is an account of all you want to know.” “Read it,” said the tribunes, “and let it then be deposited in the treasury.” “No,” said Scipio, “I will not offer myself such an insult”; and he tore up the book before their faces.

The night came on; the cause was deferred till the next day: at dawn the tribunes took their seat on the rostra; the accused, on being cited, came before it, attended by a crowd of his friends and clients. “This day, ye tribunes and quirites,” said he, “I defeated Hannibal in Africa. As, therefore, it should be free from strife and litigation, I will go to the Capitol and give thanks to Jupiter and the other gods who inspired me on this and other days to do good service to the state. Let whoso will, come with me and pray to the gods that ye may always have leaders like unto me.” He ascended the Capitol; all followed him, and the tribunes were left sitting alone. He then went round to all the other temples, still followed by the people; and this last day of his glory nearly equalled that of his triumph for conquered Africa. His cause was put off for some days longer; but in the interval, disgusted with the prospect of contests with the tribunes which his proud spirit could ill brook, he retired to Liternum in Campania. On his not appearing, the tribunes spoke of sending and dragging him before the tribunal; but their colleagues interposed, especially Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, from whom it was least expected, as he was at enmity with the Scipios. The senate thanked Gracchus for his noble conduct,[57] the matter dropped, and Scipio spent the remainder of his days at Liternum. He was buried there, it is said, at his own desire, that his ungrateful country might not even possess his ashes.

The actions of the two great men who were now removed from the scene sufficiently declare their characters. As a general Hannibal is almost without an equal; not a single military error can be charged to him, and the address with which he managed to keep an army composed of such discordant elements as his in obedience, even when obliged to act on the defensive, is astonishing. The charges of perfidy, cruelty, and such like, made against him by the Roman writers, are quite unfounded, and are belied by facts. Nowhere does Hannibal’s character appear so great as when, after the defeat of Zama, he, with unbroken spirit, applied the powers of his mighty mind to the reform of political abuses and the restoration of the finances, in the hopes of once more raising his country to independence. Here he shone the true patriot.

The character of his rival has come down to us under the garb of panegyric; but even after making all due deductions, much remains to be admired. His military talents were doubtless considerable; of his civil virtues we hear but little, and we cannot therefore judge of him accurately as a statesman. Though a high aristocrat, we have, however, seen that he would not hesitate to lower the authority of the senate by appealing to the people in the gratification of his ambition; and we certainly cannot approve of the conduct of the public man who disdained to produce his accounts when demanded. Of his vaunted magnanimity and generosity we have already had occasion to speak, and not in very exalted terms. Still Rome has but one name in her annals to place in comparison with that of Africanus; that name, Julius Cæsar, is a greater than his—perhaps than any other.

[201-171 B.C.]

To return to our narrative. In the period which had elapsed since the peace with Carthage, there had been annual occupation for the Roman arms in Cisalpine Gaul, Liguria, and Spain. The Gauls, whose inaction all the time Hannibal was in Italy seems hard to account for, resumed arms in the year 201, at the instigation of one Hasdrubal, who had remained behind from the army of Mago; they took the colony of Placentia, and met several consular and prætorian armies in the field, and, after sustaining many great defeats, were completely reduced; the Ligurians, owing to their mountains, made a longer resistance, but they also were brought under the yoke of Rome. In Spain the various portions of its warlike population, ill brooking the dominion of strangers, rose continually in arms, but failed before the discipline of the Roman legions and the skill of their commanders. The celebrated M. Porcius Cato when consul (195) acquired great fame by his conduct in that country.

Philip of Macedonia, who with all his vices was an able prince, had long been making preparations for a renewed war with Rome, which he saw to be inevitable. He died however (179) before matters came to an extremity. His son and successor Perseus was a man of a very different character; for while he was free from his father’s love of wine and women, he did not possess his redeeming qualities, and was deeply infected by a mean spirit of avarice. It was reserved for him to make the final trial of strength with the Romans. Eumenes of Pergamus went himself to Rome, to represent how formidable he was become, and the necessity of crushing him; the envoys of Perseus tried in vain to justify him in the eyes of the jealous senate; war was declared (172) against him on the usual pretext of his injuring the allies of Rome, and the conduct of it was committed to P. Licinius Crassus, one of the consuls for the ensuing year.

[171-168 B.C.]

The Macedonian army amounted to thirty-nine thousand foot, one-half of whom were phalangites, and four thousand horse, the largest that Macedonia had sent to the field since the time of Alexander the Great. Perseus advanced into Thessaly at the head of this army (171), and at the same time the Roman legions entered it from Epirus. An engagement of cavalry took place not far from the river Peneus, in which the advantage was decidedly on the side of the king. In another encounter success was on that of the Romans; after which Perseus led his troops home for the winter and Licinius quartered his in Thessaly and Bœotia.

Nothing deserving of note occurred in the following year. In the spring of 169 the consul Q. Marcius Philippus led his army over the Cambunian mountains into Macedonia, and Perseus, instead of occupying the passes in the rear and cutting off his supplies from Thessaly, cravenly retired before him, and allowed him to ravage all the south of Macedonia. Marcius returned to Thessaly for the winter, and in the ensuing spring (168) the new consul, L. Æmilius Paulus (son of the consul who fell at Cannæ), a man of high consideration, of great talent, and who had in a former consulate gained much fame in Spain, came out to take the command.

Meantime the wretched avarice of Perseus was putting an end to every chance he had of success. Eumenes had offered, for the sum of fifteen hundred talents, to abstain from taking part in the war, and to endeavour to negotiate a peace for him: Perseus gladly embraced the offer, and was ready enough to arrange about the hostages which Eumenes agreed to give; but he hesitated to part with the money before he had had the value for it, and he proposed that it should be deposited in the temple at Samothrace till the war was ended. As Samothrace belonged to Perseus, Eumenes saw that he was not to be trusted, and he broke off the negotiation. Again, a body of Gauls, with ten thousand horse and an equal number of foot, from beyond the Ister, to whom he had promised large pay, were now at hand; Perseus sought to circumvent them and save his money, and the offended barbarians ravaged Thrace and returned home. It is the opinion of the historian, that if he had kept his word with these Gauls, and sent them into Thessaly, the situation of the Roman army, placed thus between two armies, might have been very perilous. Lastly, he agreed to give Gentius, king of Illyricum, three hundred talents if he went to war with the Romans: he sent ten of them at once, and directed those who bore the remainder to go very slowly; meantime his ambassador kept urging Gentius, who, to please him, seized two Roman envoys who arrived just then, and imprisoned them. Perseus, thinking him fully committed with the Romans by this act, sent to recall the rest of his money.

Paulus led his army without delay into Macedonia, and in the neighbourhood of Pydna he forced the crafty Perseus to come to an engagement. The victory was speedy and decisive on the side of the Romans; the Macedonian horse fled, the king setting the example, and the phalanx thus left exposed was cut to pieces. Perseus fled with his treasures to Amphipolis, and thence to the sacred isle of Samothrace. All Macedonia submitted to the consul, who then advanced to Amphipolis after Perseus, who in vain sent letters suing for favour (168).

Meantime the prætor Cn. Octavius was come with his fleet to Samothrace. He sought ineffectually to induce Perseus to surrender, and then so wrought on the people of the island, that the unhappy prince, considering himself no longer safe, resolved to try to escape to Cotys, king of Thrace, his only remaining ally. A Cretan ship-master undertook to convey him away secretly; provisions, and as much money as could be carried thither unobserved, were put on board his bark in the evening, and at midnight the king left the temple secretly and proceeded to the appointed spot. But no bark was there; the Cretan, false as any of his countrymen, had set sail for Crete as soon as it was dark. Perseus having wandered about the shore till near daylight, slunk back and concealed himself in a corner of the temple. He was soon obliged to surrender to Octavius, by whom he was conveyed to the consul. Macedonia was, by the direction of the senate, divided into four republics, between which there was to be neither intermarriage nor purchase of immovable property (connubium or commercium); each was to defray the expenses of its own government, and pay to Rome one-half of the tribute it had paid to the kings; the silver and gold mines were not to be wrought, no ship-timber was to be felled, no troops to be kept except on the frontiers; all who had held any office, civil or military, under Perseus were ordered to quit Macedonia and go and live in Italy, lest if they remained at home they should raise disturbances. In Greece the lovers of their country were put to death or removed to Italy, under pretext of their having favoured the cause of Perseus, and the administration of affairs was placed in the hands of the tools of Rome.

Paulus on his return to Rome celebrated his triumph with great magnificence. His soldiers—because he had maintained rigid discipline and had given them less of the booty than they had expected—instigated by Ser. Sulpicius Galba, one of their tribunes, a personal enemy to the consul, had tried to prevent it; but the eloquence of M. Servilius and others prevailed. Perseus and his children, examples of the mutability of fortune, preceded the car of the victor. After the triumph, Perseus was confined at Alba in the Marsian land,[58] where he died a few years after.

Octavius was allowed to celebrate a naval triumph; and the prætor L. Anicius Gallus, who had in thirty days reduced Illyricum and made Gentius and all his family captives, also triumphed for that country.

AFFAIRS OF CARTHAGE[59]

[201-149 B.C.]

After the conclusion of the Hannibalian War, the Carthaginians seemed disposed to remain at peace; but the ambition of their neighbour Masinissa, whose life, to their misfortune, was extended to beyond ninety years, would not allow them to rest. He was continually encroaching on their territory and seizing their subject towns. The Roman senate, when appealed to as the common superior, sent out commissioners, who almost invariably decided in favour of Masinissa, and he gradually extended his dominion from the ocean inlands to the Syrtes.

On one of these occasions M. Porcius Cato was one of those sent out; and when he saw the fertility of the Carthaginian territory and its high state of culture, and the strength, wealth, and population of the city, he became apprehensive of its yet endangering the power of Rome; his vanity also, of which he had a large share, was wounded, because the Carthaginians, who were manifestly in the right, would not acquiesce at once in the decision of himself and his colleagues; and he returned to Rome full of bitterness against them. Henceforth he concluded all his speeches in the senate with these words, “I also think that Carthage should be destroyed.” On the other side, P. Scipio Nasica, either from a regard to justice, or, as it is said, persuaded that the only mode of saving Rome from the corruption to which she was tending was to keep up a formidable rival to her, strenuously opposed this course. The majority, however, inclined to the opinion of Cato; it was resolved to lay hold on the first plausible pretext for declaring war, and to those who were so disposed a pretext was not long wanting.

At Carthage there were three parties; the Roman, the Numidian, and the popular party. This last, which, with all its faults, alone was patriotic, drove out of the city about forty of the principal of the Numidian party, and made the people swear never to re-admit them nor listen to any proposals for their return. The exiles repaired to Masinissa, who sent his sons Micipsa and Gulussa to Carthage on their behalf. But Carthalo, a leader of the popular party, shut the gates against them, and Hamilcar, the other popular leader, fell on Gulussa as he was coming again, and killed some of those who attended him. This gave occasion to a war; a battle was fought between Masinissa and the Punic troops led by Hasdrubal, which lasted from morning to night without being completely decided. But Masinissa having enclosed the Punic army on a hill, starved them into a surrender; and Gulussa, as they were departing unarmed, fell on and slaughtered them all. The Carthaginians lost no time in sending to Rome to justify themselves, having previously passed sentence of death on Hasdrubal, Carthalo, and the other authors of the war. The senate, however, would accept of no excuse; and after various efforts on the part of the Carthaginians to avert it, war was proclaimed against them (149), and the conduct of it committed to the consuls L. Marcius Censorinus and M’. Manilius Nepos, with secret orders not to desist till Carthage was destroyed. Their army is said to have consisted of eighty thousand foot and four thousand horse, which had been previously prepared for this war.

OUTBREAK OF THE THIRD PUNIC WAR

[149 B.C.]

The Carthaginians were informed almost at the same moment of the declaration of war and of the sailing of the Roman army. They saw themselves without ships (for they had been prohibited to build any), without an ally (even Utica, not eight miles from their city, having joined the Romans), without mercenaries, or even supplies of corn, and the flower of their youth had been lately cut off by Masinissa. They again sent an embassy to Rome, to make a formal surrender of their city. The senate replied that if within thirty days they sent three hundred children of the noblest families as hostages to the consuls in Sicily, and did whatever the consuls commanded them, they should be allowed to be free and governed by their own laws, and to retain all the territory they possessed in Africa. At the same time secret orders were sent to the consuls to abide by their original instructions.

The Carthaginians became somewhat suspicious at no mention of their city having been made by the senate. They however resolved to obey, and leave no pretext for attacking them; the hostages accordingly were sent to Lilybæum, amidst the tears and lamentations of their parents and relatives. The consuls straightway transmitted them to Rome, and then told the Carthaginians that they would settle the remaining matters at Utica, to which place they lost no time in passing over, and when the Punic envoys came to learn their will, they said that as the Carthaginians had declared their wish and resolution to live at peace they could have no need for arms and weapons; they therefore required them to deliver up all that they had. This mandate also was obeyed; two hundred thousand sets of armour, with weapons of all kinds in proportion, were brought on wagons into the Roman camp, accompanied by the priests, the senators, and the chief persons of the city. Censorinus then, having praised their diligence and ready obedience, announced to them the further will of the senate, which was that they should quit Carthage, which the Romans intended to level, and build another town in any part of the territory they pleased, but not within less than ten miles of the sea. The moment they heard this ruthless command they abandoned themselves to every extravagance of grief and despair; they rolled themselves on the ground, they tore their garments and their hair, they beat their breasts and faces, they called on the gods, they abused the Romans for their treachery and deceit. When they recovered from their paroxysm they spoke again, requesting to be allowed to send an embassy to Rome. The consul said this would be to no purpose, for the will of the senate must be carried into effect. They then departed, with melancholy forebodings of the reception they might meet with at home, and some of them ran away on the road, fearing to face the enraged populace. Censorinus forthwith sent twenty ships to cast anchor before Carthage.

Car for carrying a Battering Ram

The people, who were anxiously waiting their return, when they saw their downcast melancholy looks, abandoned themselves to despair and lamented aloud. The envoys passed on in silence to the senate house, and there made known the inexorable resolve of Rome. When the senators heard it they groaned and wept; the people without joined in their lamentations; then giving way to rage, they rushed in and tore to pieces the principal advisers of the delivery of the hostages and arms; they stoned the ambassadors and dragged them about the city; and then fell on and abused in various ways such Italians as happened to be still there. The senate that very day resolved on war; they proclaimed liberty to the slaves, they chose Hasdrubal—whom they had condemned to death, and who was at a place called Nepheris at the head of a force of twenty thousand men—general for the exterior, and another Hasdrubal, the grandson of Masinissa, for the city; and having again applied in vain to the consuls for a truce that they might send envoys to Rome, they prepared vigorously for defence, resolved to endure the last rather than abandon their city. The temples and other sacred places were turned into workshops, men and women laboured day and night in the manufacture of arms, and the women cut off their long hair that it might be twisted into bowstrings. The consuls meantime, though urged by Masinissa, did not advance against the city, either through dislike of the unpleasant task, or because they thought that they could take it whenever they pleased. At length they led their troops to the attack of the town.

The city of Carthage lay on a peninsula at the bottom of a large bay; at its neck, which was nearly three miles in width, stood the citadel, Byrsa, on a rock whose summit was occupied by the temple of Esmun or Æsculapius; from the neck on the east ran a narrow belt or tongue of land between the lake of Tunis and the sea; at a little distance inlands extended a rocky ridge, through which narrow passes had been hewn. The harbour was on the east side of the peninsula; it was double, consisting of an outer and an inner one, and its mouth, which was seventy feet wide, was secured with iron chains; the outer harbour was surrounded by a quay for the landing of goods. The inner one, named the Cothon, was for the ships of war; its only entrance was through the outer one, and it was defended by a double wall; in its centre was an elevated island, on which stood the admiral’s house, whence there was a view out over the open sea. The Cothon was able to contain 220 ships, and was provided with all the requisite magazines. A single wall environed the whole city; that of Byrsa was triple, each wall being thirty ells high exclusive of the battlements, and at intervals of two hundred feet were towers four stories high. A double row of vaults ran round each wall, the lower one containing stalls for three hundred elephants and four thousand horses, with granaries for their fodder; the upper barracks, for twenty thousand foot and four thousand horse. Three streets led from Byrsa to the market, which was near the Cothon, which harbour gave name to this quarter of the town. That part of the town which lay to the west and north was named Megara; it was more thinly inhabited, and full of gardens divided by walls and hedges. The city was in compass twenty-three miles, and is said to have contained at this time seven hundred thousand inhabitants.

The consuls divided their forces; Censorinus attacked from his ships the wall where it was weakest, at the angle of the isthmus, while Manilius attempted to fill the ditch and carry the outer works of the great wall. They reckoned on no resistance; but their expectations were deceived, and they were forced to retire. Censorinus then constructed two large battering-rams, with which he threw down a part of the wall near the belt; the Carthaginians partly rebuilt it during the night, and next day they drove out with loss such of the Romans as had entered by the breach. They had also in the night made a sally and burned the engines of the besiegers. It being now the dog days, Censorinus finding the situation of his camp, close to a lake of standing water, unwholesome, removed to the sea-shore. The Carthaginians then, watching when the wind blew strong from the sea on the Roman station, used to fill small vessels with combustibles, to which they set fire, and spreading their sails let the wind drive them on the Roman ships, many of which were thus destroyed.

Censorinus having gone to Rome for the elections, the Carthaginians became more daring, and they ventured a nocturnal attack on the camp of Manilius, in which they would have succeeded but for the presence of mind of Scipio, one of the tribunes, who led out the horse at the rear of the camp and fell on them unexpectedly. A second nocturnal attack was frustrated by the same Scipio, who was now the life and soul of the army. Manilius then, contrary to the advice of Scipio, led his troops to Nepheris against Hasdrubal; but he was forced to retire with loss, and four entire cohorts would have been cut off had it not been for the valour and the skill of Scipio. Shortly after, when commissioners came out from Rome to inquire into the causes of the want of success, Manilius and his officers, laying aside all jealousy, bore testimony to the merits of Scipio; the affection of the army for him was also manifest; of all which the commissioners informed the senate and people on their return.

[149-147 B.C.]

Masinissa dying at this time, left the regulation of his kingdom to Scipio, who divided the regal office among the three legitimate sons of the deceased monarch; giving the capital and the chief dignity to Micipsa, the eldest, the management of the foreign relations to Gulussa, and the administration of justice to Mastanabal. Scipio also induced Himilco Phamæas, a Punic commander, who had hitherto done the Romans much mischief, to desert to them, bringing over with him twenty-two hundred horses.

In the spring (148) the new consul L. Calpurnius Piso came out to take the command of the army, and the prætor L. Hostilius Mancinus to take that of the fleet. They attacked the town of Clupea by sea and land, but were repulsed; and Calpurnius then spent the whole summer to no purpose in the siege of a strong town named Hippagreta. The Carthaginians, elevated by their unexpected good fortune, were now masters of the country; they insulted the Romans, and endeavoured to detach the Numidians. Hasdrubal, proud of his successes over Manilius, aspired to the command in the city; he accused the other Hasdrubal of having intelligence with his uncle Gulussa, who was in the Roman camp; and when this last, on being charged with it in the senate, hesitated from surprise, the senators fell on and killed him with the seats; and his rival thus gained his object.

The elections now came on at Rome; Scipio was there as a candidate for the ædileship; all eyes were turned on him, his friends doubtless were not idle, and the letters from the soldiers in Africa represented him as the only man able to take Carthage. The tribes therefore resolved to make him consul, though he was not of the proper age.[60] The presiding consul opposed in vain; he was elected, and the people further assumed the power of assigning him Africa for his province.

This celebrated man was son to Æmilius Paulus, the conqueror of Macedonia. He had been adopted by Scipio the son of Africanus; the Greek historian Polybius and the philosopher Panætius were his instructors and friends; and he had already distinguished himself as a soldier both in Spain and Africa.

[147 B.C.]

The very evening that Scipio arrived at Utica (147) he had again an opportunity of saving a part of the Roman army; for Mancinus, a vain rash man, having brought the fleet close to Carthage, and observing a part of the wall over the cliffs left unguarded, landed some of his men, who mounted to the wall. The Carthaginians opened a gate and came to attack them; the Romans drove them back and entered the town. Mancinus landed more men, and as it was now evening he sent off to Utica, requiring provisions and a reinforcement to be forwarded without delay, or else they would never be able to keep their position. Scipio, who arrived that evening, received about midnight the letters of Mancinus; he ordered the soldiers he had brought with him and the serviceable Uticans to get on board at once, and he set forth in the last watch, directing his men to stand erect on the decks and let themselves be seen; he also released a prisoner, and sent him to tell at Carthage that Scipio was coming. Mancinus meantime was hard pressed by the enemies, who attacked him at dawn; he placed five hundred men with armour around the remainder (three thousand men), who had none; but this availed them not; they were on the point of being forced down the cliffs when Scipio appeared. The Carthaginians, who expected him, fell back a little, and he lost no time in taking off Mancinus and his companions in peril.

Scipio, on taking the command, finding extreme laxity of discipline and disorder in the army, in consequence of the negligence of Piso, called an assembly, and having upbraided the soldiers with their conduct, declared his resolution of maintaining strict discipline; he then ordered all sutlers, camp-followers, and other useless and pernicious people to quit the camp, which he now moved to within a little distance of Carthage. The Carthaginians also formed a camp about half a mile from their walls, which Hasdrubal entered at the head of six thousand foot and one thousand horse,—all seasoned troops.

A Roman Standard

When Scipio thought the discipline of his men sufficiently revived, he resolved to attempt a night attack on the Megara; but being perceived by the defenders, the Romans could not scale the walls. Scipio then observing a turret (probably a garden one) which belonged to some private person, and was close to the wall, and of the same height with it, made some of his men ascend it. These drove down with their missiles those on the walls opposite them, and then laying planks and boards across got on the wall, and jumping down opened a gate to admit Scipio, who entered with four thousand men. The Punic soldiers fled to the Byrsa, thinking that the rest of the town was taken, and those in the camp hearing the tumult ran thither also; but Scipio, finding the Megara full of gardens with trees and hedges and ditches filled with water, and therefore unsafe for an invader, withdrew his men and went back to his camp. In the morning Hasdrubal, to satiate his rage, took what Roman prisoners he had, and placing them on the walls in sight of the Roman camp, mutilated them in a most horrible manner, and then flung them down from the lofty battlements. When the senators blamed him, he put some of them to death, and he made himself in effect the tyrant of the city.

Scipio having taken and burned the deserted camp of the enemy, formed a camp within a dart’s cast of their wall, running from sea to sea across the isthmus, and strongly fortified on all sides. By this means he cut them off from the land; and as the only way in which provisions could now be brought into the city was by sea, when vessels, taking advantage of winds that drove off the Roman ships, ran into the harbour, he resolved to stop up its mouth by a mole. He commenced from the belt, forming the mole of great breadth and with huge stones. The besieged at first mocked at the efforts of the Romans; but when they saw how rapidly the work advanced they became alarmed, and instantly set about digging another passage out of the port into the open sea; they at the same time built ships out of the old materials; and they wrought so constantly and so secretly, that the Romans at length saw all their plans frustrated, a new entrance opened to the harbour, and a fleet of fifty ships of war and a great number of smaller vessels issue from it. Had their evil destiny now allowed the Carthaginians to take advantage of the consternation of the Romans, and fall at once on their fleet, which was utterly unprepared, they might have destroyed it; but they contented themselves with a bravado and then returned to port. On the third day the two fleets engaged from morn till eve with various success. The small vessels of the enemy annoyed the Romans very much in the action; but in the retreat they got ahead of their own ships, and blocking up the mouth of the harbour, obliged them to range themselves along a quay which had been made without the walls for the landing of goods, whither the Roman ships followed them and did them much mischief. During the night they got into port, but in the morning Scipio resolved to try to effect a lodgment on the quay which was so close to the harbour. He assailed the works that were on it with rams, and threw down a part of them; but in the night the Carthaginians came, some swimming, some wading through the water, having combustibles with them, to which they set fire when near the machines, and thus burned them. They then repaired the works; but Scipio finally succeeded in fixing a corps of four thousand men on the quay.

During the winter Scipio took by storm the Punic camp before Nepheris, and that town surrendered after a siege of twenty-two days. As it was from Nepheris that Carthage received almost the whole of its supplies, they now failed, and famine was severely felt.[c]

APPIAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE

[146 B.C.]

As soon as spring came on, Scipio assaulted the citadel called Byrsa and the gate called Cothon at the same time, which caused Hasdrubal to set on fire that part of the gate which was square; but whilst he expected Scipio should make a new attempt on that side, and stood firm with the inhabitants, Lælius mounted privately by the other side of the gate which was of a round figure, and making himself master of it, the shouts of those that were already got up so dismayed the enemies that the other soldiers now contemning the besieged, and having filled all the places difficult to pass with beams, engines, and planks, they leaped in on all sides in spite of all the resistance of the guards oppressed with hunger and lost to all courage; Scipio thus possessed of the wall that encompassed the gate called Cothon, got thence into the great place of the city which was nigh unto it, where night coming on, and not suffering him to go farther, he kept there in arms with those soldiers he had with him, and as soon as day broke, caused four thousand fresh men to come thither, who being got into Apollo’s temple, plundered his statue which was all of gold, and all the inside of the temple, which was covered with plates of gold of a thousand talents’ weight. They cut in pieces the plates with their swords, do what their captains could to hinder them, till such time as having got what they could they pursued their enterprise.

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

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

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

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

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

The Oration of Hasdrubal’s Wife; Scipio’s Moralising

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

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

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

“Priam’s and Troy’s time come, they Fates obey,

And must to fire and sword be made a prey.”

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

Plundering the City

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

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

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

Sacrifices and the Triumph

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

THE ACHÆAN WAR

[151-147 B.C.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[147-146 B.C.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPANISH WARS: FALL OF NUMANTIA

[150-141 B.C.]

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

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

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

[141-140 B.C.]

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

Juno

(From a statue in the Vatican)

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

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

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

[140-138 B.C.]

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

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

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

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

[138-133 B.C.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FLORUS ON THE FALL OF NUMANTIA

[133 B.C.]

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

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

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

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

FIRST SLAVE WAR IN SICILY

[134-133 B.C.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Æsculapius

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

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

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

THE WAR AGAINST THE SLAVES

[133 B.C.]

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

[133-131 B.C.]

Thus was crushed for a time this perilous insurrection, the result of the slave system established by Roman conquest. The well-being of Sicily had even now been so seriously impaired that extraordinary measures were deemed necessary for restoring order. The Sibylline books were consulted. The oracular page ordered the propitiation of “Ceres the most ancient”; and a solemn deputation of priests proceeded to the august temple of the goddess in the city of Enna. This circumstance, seemingly unimportant, becomes significant, when it is considered that the war really originated in the neglect of agricultural labours, and was at its height during the notable year in which Ti. Gracchus was bringing to all men’s knowledge the reduced condition of the farmers of Italy.

Ten commissioners were sent to assist Rupilius in drawing up laws for the better regulation of the agricultural districts. The code formerly established by Hiero at Syracuse was taken as the basis of their legislation, a measure which gave great satisfaction to all the Greek communities. The whole land was required to pay a tithe of its produce to the Romans except the five free cities and some others which were allowed to pay a fixed annual sum. The collection of these tithes was to be let to Roman contractors. But to prevent extortion, courts of appeal were provided. All disputes between citizens of the same town were left to be decided in the town courts; those between citizens of different towns, by judges drawn by lot under the eye of the prætor; those between a town community and an individual, by the senate of some other city; those between a Roman citizen and a Sicilian, by a judge belonging to the same nation as the defendant. There can be no doubt that the general condition of the Sicilian landholders was considerably improved by this system; and agriculture again flourished in Sicily as it had done in former times.[b]