Napoleon III
History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2
Sent to Africa as arbiter to appease the struggle between Masinissa and Carthage, he only embittered it. Jealous at seeing this ancient rival still great and prosperous, he did not cease pronouncing against her that famous decree of death: Delenda est Carthago. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, opposed the destruction of Carthage, which he considered too weak to do injury, yet strong enough to keep up a salutary fear, which might prevent the people from casting themselves into all those excesses which are the inevitable consequences of the unbounded increase of empires.599 Unhappily, the opinion of Cato triumphed.
As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice, which is the error of the wicked.”
Cato, by persecuting with his accusations the principal citizens, and, among others, Scipio Africanus, taught the Romans to doubt virtue.600 By exaggeration in his attacks, and by delivering his judgments with passion, he caused his justice to be suspected.601 By condemning the vices from which he himself was not exempt, he deprived his remonstrances of all moral force.602 When he scourged the people as accuser and judge, without seeking to raise them by education and laws, he resembled, says a learned German, that Persian king who whipped the sea with rods to make the tempest cease.603 His influence, though powerless to arrest the movement of one civilisation taking the place of another, failed not to produce a fatal effect on the policy of that period.604 The Senate, renouncing the moderation and justice which hitherto had stamped all its deeds, adopted in their stead a crafty and arrogant line of action, and a system of extermination.
Towards the beginning of the seventh century, everything disappears before the Roman power. The independence of peoples, kingdoms, and republics ceases to exist. Carthage is destroyed, Greece gives up her arms, Macedonia loses her liberty, that of Spain perishes at Numantia, and shortly afterwards Pergamus undergoes the same fate.
Third Punic War (605-608).
XII. Notwithstanding her abasement, Carthage still existed, the eternal object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage, excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and expels the chief citizens.605 A fatal insurrection; for in moments of external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,606 as all political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene.607
In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct. They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their enterprise.608
The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting. Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered, with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population; but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then, after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames. A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does not fall ingloriously.
When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels, entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.
Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to Provinces.
XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened. Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.
Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman commissioners with insults.609 Before using severity, the Roman Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the new envoys were not listened to.
The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece, under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans (608).610
However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,611 showed as much moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.
About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia. During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.
Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners. Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently, another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its inhabitants, and sold the rest.612
So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius, left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by his soldiers.613 The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions penetrated to the ocean.
The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,614 where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When, in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus, his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of independence survived for a great number of years.
Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection. Attalus III., a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying, bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified, passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).
Summary.
XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the peninsula.615
The Roman provinces were nine in number: – 1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position, where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices closed against new men. From 535 to 621 – eighty-six years – nine families alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years (630-642.)616 Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when, addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or two orders.”617
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in.618 The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,619 and immediately abandoned, renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote, revived at three different epochs;620 now the measures against solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by turn, refused or granted to the people.621 By the Portian laws of 557 and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks.622 At the beginning of the seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent tribunals (quæstiones perpetuæ), established from 605, it was sought to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions, successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society. The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east, the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians, the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the Danube.623 Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles, Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms. But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA
(621-676.)
State of the Republic.
I. THE age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of a small number of good citizens,”624 and we may add that its decline began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi, acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited power.625
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When, freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it.”626
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues, in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,627 had felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true, superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit, and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a purchaser!”628
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions: for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified; the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly, the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire, without participating in the rights of Roman citizens.629 There were, as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation, followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand citizens,630 divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and Norba.631
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy.632 At a later time, when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received, either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only did the vast domains, latifundia, appertain to a small number, but the knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general (publicani), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,633 there were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of 619.634 In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been carried away for slaves by Roman collectors.635 In the great market of Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy.636
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause of weakness to the State;637 and there was the same inconvenience in regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore always the stigma of their origin.638 Confined to the urban tribes, they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a veritable disdain: “Silence!” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken.”639 When the people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all seductions, and to the most powerful of these – the money of the candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when, crowding the public place, as at the English hustings, they sought, by their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made them capable of filling all offices,640 so that it might be said that there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures – to give more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms, but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles.641
Tiberius Gracchus (621).
II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages as well as eloquence,642 he was son of the Gracchus who was twice consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus.643 At the age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the first to mount to the assault.644 Questor of the Consul Mancinus in Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the love of virtue,645 far from being dazzled by the splendour of the moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been entertained by Scipio Æmilianus646 to distribute the public domain among the poor.647 The people themselves demanded the concession with great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with inscriptions calling for it.648
