6. The Romans were now the mightiest people in the civilized world. Their obstinate contests with the vigorous nations of the West had often perilled the existence of their state, and a people of ordinary stamina and persistence would not, at the best, have risen above the rank of the Etruscans and Samnites, nor have made Rome greater than Syracuse or Carthage. They, however, matured and grew into an invincible power, whose solid and stately grandeur struck the intelligent but unpractical Greeks with admiration, and all the old peoples of the East with awe.
The Romans were not without admiration for the ancient valor and the graceful culture of the Greeks. When, two hundred and fifty years before, the Romans revised their laws, under the Decemvirate, they sent to Athens to obtain models from that republic. Athens was now treated by them with much consideration, and finally became the University City of the Empire. When Roman influence became paramount after the battle of Cynocephalæ they did not at once proceed with brutal force against the land of Beauty and Art, but took it under their protection, and proclaimed the full liberty of the Grecian States. It filled the Greeks with transport, and for some time Rome played the noble and dignified part of a disinterested protector; but when the Achaians, under their excellent and talented leader Philopœmen, sought to realize the fact of liberty, the Romans abandoned that pretence and made Greece a Roman province. Thus the whole of Europe that was sufficiently civilized to maintain a settled government was ruled by the Roman Republic. The period of rude and restless valor among the Greeks was past. The stage of cultivation they had reached inclined them to the quiet and elegant refinements of the scholar, and they readily received the Roman rule which suppressed the turbulence of ambitious adventurers and suffered no oppression but their own. The Romans represented the strength of the male element in human nature, the Greeks the grace of the female. They now coalesced, were married, so to speak, and the product of their union was, in the course of ages, modern civilization, which, when mature, was to share the eminent qualities of both.
7. The broken fragments of Alexander’s immense empire in Western Asia and Egypt were all that now stood between Rome and the mastery of the world. The Roman people were too well convinced that it was their grand destiny to achieve universal dominion to hasten prematurely the conquest of the primitive home of civilization. They watchfully waited until the course of events should throw the dominions of the Seleucidæ and the Ptolemys into their hands, without offending the majesty of the republic by an undignified violence and haste.
190—Antiochus the Great, who now reigned over the empire of the Seleucidæ, with true Grecian imprudence, became ambitious of conquests in Europe. He invaded Greece 191—and was defeated at Thermopylæ by the Romans and driven into Asia. The younger Scipio, brother of the conqueror of Hannibal, followed and totally defeated 189—him at Magnesia, in Asia Minor. He purchased peace by the loss of all the fruits of his ambition, but was left in possession of the Syrian kingdom. The failure to destroy so powerful an enemy appears to have brought on the two Scipios the rebuke of the republic, the conqueror of Carthage having aided his brother in the war. They were condemned to a heavy fine, which Scipio Africanus refused to pay and went into 183—exile, where he died. His death occurred in the same year that Hannibal, pursued by the vengeance of the Romans for having aided Antiochus, committed suicide by taking poison to avoid falling into their hands; and in this year also Philopœmen, the last patriotic hero 170—of Greece, was slain by his enemies. Perses, king of Macedon, revolted, and, after some successes, was finally overthrown under the walls of Pydna and dethroned.
168—The Carthaginians could not altogether forget their ancient greatness, and having displeased the Romans by some independence of action, it was resolved to 148—destroy their city. With the courage of despair they set the Romans at defiance, and defended themselves with a resolute bravery that engaged the lively sympathies of all after times for their painful fate. For two years they maintained the combat against their pitiless foes, who could pardon everything but rivalry in their 146—sweeping ambition, and then perished in the ruins of their once glorious metropolis. A revolt of the Achaians was punished, in the same year, by the destruction of the splendid city of Corinth, in Greece.
140—The embers of independence in Spain broke forth in war, which was checked by the assassination of Viriathes, a patriotic chieftain of great ability, and 133—quenched in blood by the self-destruction of the citizens of Numantium. About the same time the republic acquired the kingdom of Pergamus, covering the richest parts of Asia Minor, by the will of Attalus, its king, who, on his death, bequeathed it to Rome. This led, in a few years, to contests with the neighboring Asiatic sovereigns, and resulted, in about half a century, in the conquest and reduction into the state of Roman provinces of all Western Asia.
SECTION VIII.
DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.
1. But while Rome was thus steadily advancing to universal dominion, great and unfortunate changes were taking place in its internal constitution. The spoils of Carthage and the east, rich in accumulations of the industry, commerce and art of two thousand years, flowed into Rome and was gathered into the hands of those in power; the equilibrium between the plebeans and the patricians was lost; the selling of captives taken in war filled Italy with slaves; and the inequality of conditions produced the most disastrous consequences.
133—The eldest son of a noble house, the Gracchi, undertook to stem the torrent that was sweeping away the ancient barriers of the constitution, and to raise the people from the misery into which the increase of patrician wealth and power and the innumerable multitudes of slaves had plunged them. In the year in which Numantia fell and Spain was thoroughly subdued, Tiberius Gracchus was slain in a tumult, produced by the patricians, who determined that his project should not succeed. He had attempted to revive the old agrarian law, by which the landed possessions of the republic were shared among the people as well as the patricians, which would have rescued the plebeans from poverty and oppression; but the patricians were too powerful and too violent. He was removed by assassination.