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+Project Gutenberg's Young Folks' History of Rome, by Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Young Folks' History of Rome
+
+Author: Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2005 [EBook #16667]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY
+
+OF
+
+ROME.
+
+BY
+
+CHARLOTTE M. YONGE,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE," "BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS," "YOUNG FOLKS'
+HISTORY OF FRANCE," &c.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON:
+
+ESTES & LAURIAT,
+
+301 WASHINGTON STREET.
+
+COPYRIGHT BY
+
+D. LOTHROP & CO. and ESTES & LAURIAT.
+
+1880.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This sketch of the History of Rome covers the period till the reign of
+Charles the Great as head of the new Western Empire. The history has
+been given as briefly as could be done consistently with such details as
+can alone make it interesting to all classes of readers.
+
+CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAP.                                                      PAGE.
+
+1.--Italy                                                             13
+
+2.--The Wanderings of �neas                                           21
+
+3.--The Founding of Rome. B.C. 753-713                                31
+
+4.--Numa and Tullus. B.C. 713-618                                     39
+
+5.--The Driving Out of the Tarquins. B.C. 578-309                     47
+
+6.--The War with Porsena                                              55
+
+7.--The Roman Government                                              66
+
+8.--Menenius Agrippa's Fable. B.C. 494                                74
+
+9.--Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. B.C. 458                              84
+
+10.--The Decemvirs. B.C. 450                                          92
+
+11.--Camillus' Banishment                                            101
+
+12.--The Sack of Rome. B.C. 390                                      110
+
+13.--The Plebeian Consulate. B.C. 367                                119
+
+14.--The Devotion of Decius. B.C. 357                                127
+
+15.--The Samnite Wars                                                135
+
+16.--The War with Pyrrhus. 280-271                                   144
+
+17.--The First Punic War. 264-240                                    151
+
+18.--Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 240-219                             163
+
+19.--The Second Punic War. 219                                       172
+
+20. The First Eastern War. 215-183                                   181
+
+21.--The Conquest of Greece, Corinth, and Carthage. 179-145          188
+
+22.--The Gracchi. 137-122                                            195
+
+23.--The Wars of Marius. 106-98                                      203
+
+24.--The Adventures of Marius. 93-84                                 212
+
+25.--Sulla's Proscription. 88-71                                     220
+
+26.--The Career of Pompeius. 70-63                                   229
+
+27.--Pompeius and C�sar. 61-48                                       242
+
+28.--Julius C�sar. 48-44                                             252
+
+29.--The Second Triumvirate. 44-33                                   263
+
+30.--C�sar Augustus. B.C. 33 A.D. 14                                 273
+
+31.--Tiberius and Caligula. A.D. 14-41                               285
+
+32.--Claudius and Nero. A.D. 41-68                                   297
+
+33.--The Flavian Family. 62-96                                       305
+
+34.--The Age of the Antonines. 96-194                                317
+
+35.--The Pr�torian Influence. 197-284                                326
+
+36.--The Division of the Empire. 284-312                             337
+
+37.--Constantine the Great. 312-337                                  345
+
+38.--Constantius. 337-364                                            355
+
+39.--Valentinian and his Family. 364-392                             364
+
+40.--Theodosius the Great. 392-395                                   374
+
+41.--Alaric the Goth. 395-410                                        383
+
+42.--The Vandals. 403                                                394
+
+43.--Attila the Hun. 435-457                                         404
+
+44.--Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 457-561                                416
+
+45.--Belisarius. 533-563                                             425
+
+46.--Pope Gregory the Great. 563-800                                 434
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+The Pope's Doortender. (_Frontispiece._)            PAGE.
+
+The Tiber                                                             14
+
+Curious Pottery                                                       15
+
+Jupiter                                                               17
+
+The Coast                                                             23
+
+Mount Etna                                                            25
+
+Carthage                                                              28
+
+Roman Soldier                                                         30
+
+Gladiatorial Shows at a Banquet                                       34
+
+The Forum                                                             37
+
+Janus                                                                 41
+
+Actors                                                                45
+
+Sybil's Cave                                                          50
+
+Brutus condemning his sons                                            57
+
+Roman Ensigns, Standards, Trumpets etc.                               63
+
+Head of Jupiter                                                       68
+
+Female Costumes                                                       70
+
+Female Costumes                                                       71
+
+Senatorial Palace                                                     79
+
+View of a Roman Harbor                                                81
+
+Roman Camp                                                            87
+
+Ploughing                                                             89
+
+Death of Virginia                                                     95
+
+Chariot Races                                                         98
+
+Arrow Machine                                                        102
+
+Siege Machine                                                        105
+
+Ruins of the Forum at Rome                                           111
+
+Entry of the Forum Romanum by the Via Sacra                          117
+
+Costumes                                                             120
+
+Costume                                                              121
+
+Curtius leaping into the Gulf                                        125
+
+The Apennines                                                        129
+
+Combat between a Mirmillo and a Samnite                              137
+
+Combat between a light armed Gladiator and a Samnite                 137
+
+Ancient Rome                                                         141
+
+Pyrrhus                                                              145
+
+Roman Orator                                                         147
+
+Roman Ship                                                           153
+
+Roman Order of Battle                                                159
+
+The wounded Gaul                                                     165
+
+Hannibal's Vow                                                       168
+
+In the Pyrenees                                                      170
+
+Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama                               173
+
+Archimedes                                                           178
+
+Hannibal                                                             184
+
+Corinth                                                              190
+
+Cornelia and her Sons                                                196
+
+Roman Centurion                                                      201
+
+Marius                                                               205
+
+One of the Trophies, called of Marius,
+at the Capitol at Rome                                               207
+
+The Catapult                                                         215
+
+Island on the Coast                                                  217
+
+Palazzo Vecchio, Florence                                            223
+
+Cornelius Sulla                                                      225
+
+Coast of Tyre                                                        231
+
+Mountains of Armenia                                                 235
+
+Cicero                                                               238
+
+Colossal Statue of Pompeius of the
+Palazzo Spada of Rome                                                239
+
+Pompeius                                                             243
+
+Amphitheatre                                                         246
+
+The Arena                                                            247
+
+Julius C�sar                                                         253
+
+Cato                                                                 254
+
+Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium of
+the House of Julius C�sar at the
+Porta Capena in Rome                                                 255
+
+Marcus Antonius                                                      265
+
+Marcus Brutus                                                        268
+
+Alexandria                                                           270
+
+Caius Octavius                                                       272
+
+Statue of Augustus at the Vatican                                    275
+
+Paintings in the House of Livia                                      281
+
+Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius                                     287
+
+Agrippina                                                            290
+
+Rome in the time of Augustus C�sar                                   293
+
+Claudius                                                             298
+
+Nero                                                                 301
+
+Arch of Titus                                                        308
+
+Vesuvius previous to the Eruption of A.D. 63                         311
+
+Persecution of the Christians                                        314
+
+Coin of Nero                                                         316
+
+Temple of Antoninus and Faustina                                     319
+
+Marcus Aurelius                                                      325
+
+Septimus Severus                                                     327
+
+Antioch                                                              328
+
+Alexander Severus                                                    329
+
+Temple of the Sun at Palmyra                                         332
+
+The Catacombs at Rome                                                333
+
+Coin of Severus                                                      336
+
+Diocletian                                                           338
+
+Diocletian in Retirement                                             341
+
+Constantine the Great                                                343
+
+Constantinople                                                       347
+
+Council of Nicea                                                     349
+
+Catacombs                                                            352
+
+Julian                                                               357
+
+Arch of Constantine                                                  361
+
+Alexandria                                                           365
+
+Goths                                                                367
+
+Convent on the Hills                                                 372
+
+Julian Alps                                                          375
+
+Roman Hall of Justice                                                377
+
+Colonnades of St. Peter at Rome                                      385
+
+Alaric's Burial                                                      391
+
+Roman Clock                                                          396
+
+Spanish Coast                                                        398
+
+Vandals plundering                                                   401
+
+Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt                                           403
+
+Hunnish Camp                                                         405
+
+St. Mark's, Venice                                                   409
+
+The Pope's House                                                     413
+
+Romulus Augustus resigns the Crown                                   419
+
+Illustration                                                         423
+
+Naples                                                               427
+
+Constantinople                                                       429
+
+Pope Gregory the Great                                               435
+
+The Pope's Pulpit                                                    437
+
+Battle of Tours                                                      441
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ITALY.
+
+
+I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world.
+Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into the
+Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out of
+the Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land,
+shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy.
+
+Round the streams that flowed down from these hills, valleys of fertile
+soil formed themselves, and a great many different tribes and people
+took up their abode there, before there was any history to explain their
+coming. Putting together what can be proved about them, it is plain,
+however, that most of them came of that old stock from which the Greeks
+descended, and to which we belong ourselves, and they spoke a language
+which had the same root as ours and as the Greek. From one of these
+nations the best known form of this, as it was polished in later times,
+was called Latin, from the tribe who spoke it.
+
+[Illustration: THE TIBER.]
+
+About the middle of the peninsula there runs down, westward from the
+Apennines, a river called the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven low
+hills, which recede as it approaches the sea. One, in especial, called
+the Palatine Hill, rose separately, with a flat top and steep sides,
+about four hundred yards from the river, and girdled in by the other
+six. This was the place where the great Roman power grew up from
+beginnings, the truth of which cannot now be discovered.
+
+[Illustration: CURIOUS POTTERY.]
+
+There were several nations living round these hills--the Etruscans,
+Sabines, and Latins being the chief. The homes of these nations seem to
+have been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines, where they
+had farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill which
+they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refuge
+if their enemies attacked them. The Etruscans built very mighty walls,
+and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well. Many of
+their works remain to this day, and, in especial, their monuments have
+been opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned with
+figures of himself, half lying, half sitting; also curious pottery in
+red and black, from which something of their lives and ways is to be
+made out. They spoke a different language from what has become Latin,
+and they had a different religion, believing in one great Soul of the
+World, and also thinking much of rewards and punishments after death.
+But we know hardly anything about them, except that their chiefs were
+called Lucumos, and that they once had a wide power which they had lost
+before the time of history. The Romans called them Tusci, and Tuscany
+still keeps its name.
+
+The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like the
+Greeks. There were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southern
+parts of Italy, and they learnt something from them. They had a great
+many gods. Every house had its own guardian. These were called Lares, or
+Penates, and were generally represented as little figures of dogs lying
+by the hearth, or as brass bars with dogs' heads. This is the reason
+that the bars which close in an open hearth are still called dogs.
+Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by pouring out
+wine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he kept
+figures; for these natives thought much of their families, and all one
+family had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius,
+the daughters only changing it by making it end in _a_ instead of
+_us_, and the men having separate names standing first, such as
+Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish
+them.
+
+[Illustration: JUPITER]
+
+Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood its
+faun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were
+dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of
+fruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops were
+solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the old
+legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there
+was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own
+handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time
+every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were
+all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild
+sports and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn
+was mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring,
+and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's
+scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened into
+Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek times
+was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with the
+Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and,
+in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greek
+tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only
+afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their
+gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and
+fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the
+Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer,
+more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever,
+thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now call
+sterling stuff in them.
+
+At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language,
+and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is
+said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of
+little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in
+the forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for
+his worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, the
+god of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were
+the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the C�lian, and the Quirinal.
+The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen,
+when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their
+neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing
+all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from
+houses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.
+
+The history of these people was not written till long after they had
+grown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up many
+Greek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards, and
+worked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and customs
+they found among them, and the tales they told were formed into a great
+history by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these stories which
+every one used to believe to be really history; so we will tell them
+first, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WANDERINGS OF �NEAS.
+
+
+You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how Priam and
+all his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a prince called
+�neas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother was
+said to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the city was lost, he
+rushed back to his house, and took his old father Anchises on his back,
+giving him his Penates, or little images of household gods, to take care
+of, and led by the hand his little son Iulus, or Ascanius, while his
+wife Creusa followed close behind, and all the Trojans who could get
+their arms together joined him, so that they escaped in a body to Mount
+Ida; but just as they were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, and
+though he rushed back and searched for her everywhere, he never could
+find her. For the sake of his care for his gods, and for his old father,
+he is always known as the pious �neas.
+
+In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough to set forth with all
+his followers in quest of the new home which his mother, the goddess
+Venus, gave him hopes of. He had adventures rather like those of Ulysses
+as he sailed about the Mediterranean. Once in the Strophades, some
+clusters belonging to the Ionian Islands, when he and his troops had
+landed to get food, and were eating the flesh of the numerous goats
+which they found climbing about the rocks, down on them came the
+harpies, horrible birds with women's faces and hooked hands, with which
+they snatched away the food and spoiled what they could not eat. The
+Trojans shot at them, but the arrows glanced off their feathers and did
+not hurt them. However, they all flew off except one, who sat on a high
+rock, and croaked out that the Trojans would be punished for thus
+molesting the harpies by being tossed about till they should reach
+Italy, but there they should not build their city till they should have
+been so hungry as to eat their very trenchers.
+
+[Illustration: THE COAST.]
+
+They sailed away from this dismal prophetess, and touched on the coast
+of Epirus, where �neas found his cousin Helenus, son to old Priam,
+reigning over a little new Troy, and married to Andromache, Hector's
+wife, whom he had gained after Pyrrhus had been killed. Helenus was a
+prophet, and gave �neas much advice. In especial he said that when the
+Trojans should come to Italy, they would find, under the holly-trees by
+the river side, a large white old sow lying on the ground, with a litter
+of thirty little pigs round her, and this should be a sign to them
+where they were to build their city.
+
+By his advice the Trojans coasted round the south of Sicily, instead of
+trying to pass the strait between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, and
+just below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came running down to the beach
+begging to be taken in. He was a Greek, who had been left behind when
+Ulysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had made his way to the
+forests, where he had lived ever since. They had just taken him in when
+they saw Cyclops coming down, with a pine tree for a staff, to wash the
+burning hollow of his lost eye in the sea, and they rowed off in great
+terror.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT ETNA.]
+
+Poor old Anchises died shortly after, and while his son was still
+sorrowing for him, Juno, who hated every Trojan, stirred up a terrible
+tempest, which drove the ships to the south, until, just as the sea
+began to calm down, they came into a beautiful bay, enclosed by tall
+cliffs with woods overhanging them. Here the tired wanderers landed,
+and, lighting a fire, �neas went in quest of food. Coming out of the
+forest, they looked down from a hill, and beheld a multitude of people
+building a city, raising walls, houses, towers, and temples. Into one of
+these temples �neas entered, and to his amazement he found the walls
+sculptured with all the story of the siege of Troy, and all his friends
+so perfectly represented, that he burst into tears at the sight.
+
+Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whole troop of nymphs, came
+into the temple. This lady was Dido; her husband, Sich�us, had been king
+of Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant to
+have married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyrians
+and all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast of
+Africa. There she begged of the chief of the country as much land as
+could be enclosed by a bullock's hide. He granted this readily; and
+Dido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed to
+measure off with it ground enough to build the splendid city which she
+had named Carthage. She received �neas most kindly, and took all his men
+into her city, hoping to keep them there for ever, and make him her
+husband. �neas himself was so happy there, that he forgot all his plans
+and the prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him
+to fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call; and Dido was so wretched at
+his departure that she caused a great funeral pile to be built, laid
+herself on the top, and stabbed herself with �neas' sword; the pile was
+burnt, and the Trojans saw the flame from their ships without knowing
+the cause.
+
+[Illustration: CARTHAGE.]
+
+By-and-by �neas landed at a place in Italy named Cum�. There dwelt one
+of the Sybils. These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had endowed with
+deep wisdom; and when �neas went to consult the Cum�an Sybil, she told
+him that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to learn his fate.
+First, however, he had to go into a forest, and find there and gather a
+golden bough, which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. Long
+he sought it, until two doves, his mother's birds, came flying before
+him to show him the tree where gold gleamed through the boughs, and he
+found the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe grows on the thorn.
+
+Guarded with this, and guided by the Sybil, after a great sacrifice,
+�neas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round
+which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and
+whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sybil, however,
+made him take �neas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a
+human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sybil threw him a
+cake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while �neas passed
+on and found in myrtle groves all who had died for love, among them, to
+his surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the home
+of the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. He
+passed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysian
+fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spirit
+of his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of all
+their descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of their
+name. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote to
+whom we owe all the tale of the wanderings of �neas, namely, Virgil, who
+wrote the _�neid_, whence all these stories are taken. He further tells
+us that �neas landed in Italy just as his old nurse Cai�ta died, at the
+place which is still called Ga�ta. After they had buried her, they found
+a grove, where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large round
+cakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating up
+the cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, "We are eating our very tables;"
+and �neas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings were
+over.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN SOLDIER.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE FOUNDING OF ROME.
+
+B.C. 753--713.
+
+
+Virgil goes on to tell at much length how the king of the country,
+Latinus, at first made friends with �neas, and promised him his daughter
+Lavinia in marriage; but Turnus, an Italian chief who had before been a
+suitor to Lavinia, stirred up a great war, and was only captured and
+killed after much hard fighting. However, the white sow was found in the
+right place with all her little pigs, and on the spot was founded the
+city of Alba Longa, where �neas and Lavinia reigned until he died, and
+his descendants, through his two sons, Ascanius or Iulus, and �neas
+Silvius, reigned after him for fifteen generations.
+
+The last of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from his
+brother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin.
+In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men,
+but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with great
+honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there was
+great anger when Rhea Silvia became the mother of twin boys, and,
+moreover, said that her husband was the god Mars. But Mars did not save
+her from being buried alive, while the two babes were put in a trough on
+the waters of the river Tiber, there to perish. The river had overflowed
+its banks, and left the children on dry ground, where, however, they
+were found by a she-wolf, who fondled and fed them like her own
+offspring, until a shepherd met with them and took them home to his
+wife. She called them Romulus and Remus, and bred them up as shepherds.
+
+When the twin brothers were growing into manhood, there was a fight
+between the shepherds of Numitor and Amulius, in which Romulus and Remus
+did such brave feats that they were led before Numitor. He enquired into
+their birth, and their foster-father told the story of his finding them,
+showing the trough in which they had been laid; and thus it became plain
+that they were the grandsons of Numitor. On finding this out, they
+collected an army, with which they drove away Amulius, and brought their
+grandfather back to Alba Longa.
+
+They then resolved to build a new city for themselves on one of the
+seven low hills beneath which ran the yellow river Tiber; but they were
+not agreed on which hill to build, Remus wanting to build on the
+Aventine Hill, and Romulus on the Palatine. Their grandfather advised
+them to watch for omens from the gods, so each stood on his hill and
+watched for birds. Remus was the first to see six vultures flying, but
+Romulus saw twelve, and therefore the Palatine Hill was made the
+beginning of the city, and Romulus was chosen king. Remus was affronted,
+and when the mud wall was being raised around the space intended for the
+city, he leapt over it and laughed, whereupon Romulus struck him dead,
+crying out, "So perish all who leap over the walls of my city."
+
+[Illustration: GLADIATORIAL SHOWS AT A BANQUET]
+
+Romulus traced out the form of the city with the plough, and made it
+almost a square. He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midst
+of it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fifty
+families of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws and
+runaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him. The date of
+the building of Rome was supposed to be A.D. 753; and the
+Romans counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from the
+Olympiads, marking the date A.U.C., _anno urbis condit�_, the
+year of the city being built. The youths who joined Romulus could not
+marry, as no one of the neighboring nations would give his daughter to
+one of these robbers, as they were esteemed. The nearest neighbors to
+Rome were the Sabines, and the Romans cast their eyes in vain on the
+Sabine ladies, till old Numitor advised Romulus to proclaim a great
+feast in honor of Neptune, with games and dances. All the people in the
+country round came to it, and when the revelry was at its height each of
+the unwedded Romans seized on a Sabine maiden and carried her away to
+his own house. Six hundred and eighty-three girls were thus seized, and
+the next day Romulus married them all after the fashion ever after
+observed in Rome. There was a great sacrifice, then each damsel was
+told, "Partake of your husband's fire and water;" he gave her a ring,
+and carried her over his threshold, where a sheepskin was spread, to
+show that her duty would be to spin wool for him, and she became his
+wife.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORUM.]
+
+Romulus himself won his own wife, Hersilia, among the Sabines on this
+occasion; but the nation of course took up arms, under their king
+Tatius, to recover their daughters. Romulus drew out his troops into
+Campus Martius, or field of Mars, just beneath the Capitol, or great
+fort on the Saturnian Hill, and marched against the Sabines; but while
+he was absent, Tarpeia, the daughter of the governor of the little fort
+he had left on the Saturnian Hill, promised to let the Sabines in on
+condition they would give her what they wore on their left arms, meaning
+their bracelets; but they hated her treason even while they took
+advantage of it, and no sooner were they within the gate than they
+pelted her with their heavy shields, which they wore on their left arms,
+and killed her. The cliff on the top of which she died is still called
+the Tarpeian rock, and criminals were executed by being thrown from the
+top of it. Romulus tried to regain the Capitol, but the Sabines rolled
+down stones on the Romans, and he was stunned by one that struck him on
+the head; and though he quickly recovered and rallied his men, the
+battle was going against him, when all the Sabine women, who had been
+nearly two years Roman wives, came rushing out, with their little
+children in their arms and their hair flying, begging their fathers and
+husbands not to kill one another. This led to the making of a peace, and
+it was agreed that the Sabines and Romans should make but one nation,
+and that Romulus and Tatius should reign together at Rome. Romulus lived
+on the Palatine Hill, Tatius on the Tarpeian, and the valley between was
+called the Forum, and was the market-place, and also the spot where all
+public assemblies were held. All the chief arrangements for war and
+government were believed by the Romans to have been laws of Romulus.
+However, after five years, Tatius was murdered at a place called
+Lavinium, in the middle of a sacrifice, and Romulus reigned alone till
+in the middle of a great assembly of his soldiers outside the city, a
+storm of thunder and lightning came on, and every one hurried home, but
+the king was nowhere to be found; for, as some say, his father Mars had
+come down in the tempest and carried him away to reign with the gods,
+while others declared that he was murdered by persons, each of whom
+carried home a fragment of his body that it might never be found. It
+matters less which way we tell it, since the story of Romulus was quite
+as much a fable as that of �neas; only it must be remembered as the
+Romans themselves believed it. They worshipped Romulus under the name of
+Quirinus, and called their chief families Quirites, both words coming
+from _ger_ (a spear); and the she-wolf and twins were the favorite
+badge of the empire. The Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, and the Forum all
+still bear the same names.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+NUMA AND TULLUS.
+
+B.C.It was understood between the Romans and the Sabines that they should
+have by turns a king from each nation, and, on the disappearance of
+Romulus, a Sabine was chosen, named Numa Pompilius, who had been married
+to Tatia, the daughter of the Sabine king Tatius, but she was dead, and
+had left one daughter. Numa had, ever since her death, been going about
+from one grove or fountain sacred to the gods to another offering up
+sacrifices, and he was much beloved for his gentleness and wisdom. There
+was a grove near Rome, in a valley, where a fountain gushed forth from
+the rock; and here Egeria, the nymph of the stream, in the shade of the
+trees, counselled Numa on his government, which was so wise that he
+lived at peace with all his neighbors. When the Romans doubted whether
+it was really a goddess who inspired him, Egeria convinced them, for the
+next time he had any guests in his house, the earthenware plates with
+homely fare on them were changed before their eyes into golden dishes
+with dainty food. Moreover, there was brought from heaven a bronze
+shield, which was to be carefully kept, since Rome would never fall
+while it was safe. Numa had eleven other shields like it made and hung
+in the temple of Mars, and, yearly, a set of men dedicated to the office
+bore them through the city with songs and dances. Just as all warlike
+customs were said to have been invented by Romulus, all peaceful and
+religious ones were held to have sprung from Numa and his Egeria. He was
+said to have fixed the calendar and invented the names of the months,
+and to have built an altar to Good Faith to teach the Romans to keep
+their word to one another and to all nations, and to have dedicated the
+bounds of each estate to the Dii Termini, or Landmark Gods, in whose
+honor there was a feast yearly. He also was said to have had such power
+with Jupiter as to have persuaded him to be content without receiving
+sacrifices of men and women. In short, all the better things in the
+Roman system were supposed to be due to the gentle Numa.
+
+At the gate called Janiculum stood a temple to the watchman god Janus,
+whose figure had two faces, and held the keys, and after whom was named
+the month January. His temple was always open in time of war, and closed
+in time of peace. Numa's reign was counted as the first out of only
+three times in Roman history that it was shut.
+
+[Illustration: JANUS.]
+
+Numa was said to have reigned thirty-eight years, and then he gradually
+faded away, and was buried in a stone coffin outside the Janicular gate,
+all the books he had written being, by his desire, buried with him.
+Egeria wept till she became a fountain in her own valley; and so ended
+what in Roman faith answered to the golden age of Greece.
+
+The next king was of Roman birth, and was named Tullus Hostilius. He was
+a great warrior, and had a war with the Albans until it was agreed that
+the two cities should join together in one, as the Romans and Sabines
+had done before; but there was a dispute which should be the greater
+city in the league and it was determined to settle it by a combat. In
+each city there was a family where three sons had been born at a birth,
+and their mothers were sisters. Both sets were of the same age--fine
+young men, skilled in weapons; and it was agreed that the six should
+fight together, the three whose family name was Horatius on the Roman
+side, the three called Curiatius on the Alban side, and whichever set
+gained the mastery was to give it to his city.
+
+They fought in the plain between the camps, and very hard was the strife
+until two of the Horatii were killed and all the three Curiatii were
+wounded, but the last Horatius was entirely untouched. He began to run,
+and his cousins pursued him, but at different distances, as one was less
+hindered by his wound than the others. As soon as the first came up.
+Horatius slew him, and so the second and the third: as he cut down this
+last he cried out, "To the glory of Rome I sacrifice thee." As the Alban
+king saw his champion fall, he turned to Tullus Hostilius and asked what
+his commands were. "Only to have the Alban youth ready when I need
+them," said Tullus.
+
+A wreath was set on the victor's head, and, loaded with the spoil of the
+Curiatii, he was led into the city in triumph. His sister came hurrying
+to meet him; she was betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and was in agony
+to know his fate; and when she saw the garment she had spun for him
+hanging blood-stained over her brother's shoulders, she burst into loud
+lamentations. Horatius, still hot with fury, struck her dead on the
+spot, crying, "So perish every Roman who mourns the death of an enemy of
+his country." Even her father approved the cruel deed, and would not
+bury her in his family tomb--so stern were Roman feelings, putting the
+honor of the country above everything. However, Horatius was brought
+before the king for the murder, and was sentenced to die; but the people
+entreated that their champion might be spared, and he was only made to
+pass under what was called the yoke, namely, spears set up like a
+doorway.
+
+Tullus Hostilius gained several victories over his neighbors, but he was
+harsh and presuming, and offended the gods, and, when he was using some
+spell such as good Numa had used to hold converse with Jupiter, the
+angry god sent lightning and burnt up him and his family. The people
+then chose Ancus Martins, the son of Numa's daughter, who is said to
+have ruled in his grandfather's spirit, though he could not avoid wars
+with the Latins. The first bridge over the Tiber, named the Sublician,
+was said to have been built by him. In his time there came to Rome a
+family called Tarquin. Their father was a Corinthian, who had settled in
+an Etruscan town named Tarquinii, whence came the family name. He was
+said to have first taught writing in Italy, and, indeed, the Roman
+letters which we still use are Greek letters made simpler. His eldest
+son, finding that because of his foreign blood he could rise to no
+honors in Etruria, set off with his wife Tanaquil, and their little son
+Lucius Tarquinius, to settle in Rome. Just as they came in sight of
+Rome, an eagle swooped down from the sky, snatched off little Tarquin's
+cap, and flew up with it, but the next moment came down again and put it
+back on his head. On this Tanaquil foretold that her son would be a
+great king, and he became so famous a warrior when he grew up, that, as
+the children of Ancus were too young to reign at their father's death,
+he was chosen king. He is said to have been the first Roman king who
+wore a purple robe and golden crown, and in the valley between the
+Palatine and Aventine Hills he made a circus, where games could be held
+like those of the Greeks; also he placed stone benches and stalls for
+shops round the Forum, and built a stone wall instead of a mud one round
+the city. He is commonly called Tarquinus Priscus, or the elder.
+
+[Illustration: ACTORS]
+
+There was a fair slave girl in his house, who was offering cakes to Lar,
+the household spirit, when he appeared to her in bodily form. When she
+told the king's mother, Tanaquil, she said it was a token that he wanted
+to marry her, and arrayed her as a bride for him. Of this marriage
+there sprang a boy called Servius Tullus. When this child lay asleep,
+bright flames played about his head, and Tanaquil knew he would be
+great, so she caused her son Tarquin to give him his daughter in
+marriage when he grew up. This greatly offended the two sons of Ancus
+Martius, and they hired two young men to come before him as
+wood-cutters, with axes over their shoulders, pretending to have a
+quarrel about some goats, and while he was listening to their cause they
+cut him down and mortally wounded him. He had lost his sons, and had
+only two baby grandsons, Aruns and Tarquin, who could not reign as yet;
+but while he was dying, Tanaquil stood at the window and declared that
+he was only stunned and would soon be well. This, as she intended, so
+frightened the sons of Ancus that they fled from Rome; and Servius
+Tullus, coming forth in the royal robes, was at once hailed as king by
+all the people of Rome, being thus made king that he might protect his
+wife's two young nephews, the two little Tarquins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DRIVING OUT OF THE TARQUINS.
+
+B.C. 578--309.
+
+
+Servius Tullus was looked on by the Romans as having begun making their
+laws, as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, and Numa had
+settled their religion. The Romans were all in great clans or families,
+all with one name, and these were classed in tribes. The nobler ones,
+who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, or Sabine families, were
+called Patricians--from _pater_, a father--because they were fathers of
+the people; and the other families were called Plebeian, from _plebs_,
+the people. The patricians formed the Senate or Council of Government,
+and rode on horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot. They
+had spears, round shields, and short pointed swords, which cut on each
+side of the blade. Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of each
+tribe should be called out to war. He also walled in the city again with
+a wall five miles round; and he made many fixed laws, one being that
+when a man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he himself might
+not be made a slave. He was the great friend of the plebeians, and first
+established the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be made
+without the consent of the Comitia, or whole free people.
+
+The Sabines and Romans were still striving for the mastery, and a
+husbandman among the Sabines had a wonderfully beautiful cow. An oracle
+declared that the man who sacrificed this cow to Diana upon the Aventine
+Hill would secure the chief power to his nation. The Sabine drove the
+cow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a crafty Roman priest told
+him that he must first wash his hands in the Tiber, and while he was
+gone sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick secured the rule to
+Rome. The great horns of the cow were long after shown in the temple of
+Diana on the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines, and Latins every year
+joined in a great sacrifice.
+
+The two daughters of Servius were married to their cousins, the two
+young Tarquins. In each pair there was a fierce and a gentle one. The
+fierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tarquin; the gentle Tulla
+had married the proud Lucius Tarquin. Aruns' wife tried to persuade her
+husband to seize the throne that had belonged to his father, and when he
+would not listen to her, she agreed with his brother Lucius that, while
+he murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that they
+should marry. The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius, seeing
+what a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to consider with
+the Senate whether it would not be better to have two consuls or
+magistrates chosen every year than a king. This made Lucius Tarquin the
+more furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians hated the
+king as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and was
+beginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of their
+greatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of the
+doorway, ordered him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old man and
+hurled him backward, so that the fall killed him, and his body was left
+in the street. The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her husband had
+sped, came out in her chariot on that road. The horses gave back before
+the corpse. She asked what was in their way; the slave who drove her
+told her it was the king's body. "Drive on," she said. The horrid deed
+caused the street to be known ever after as "Sceleratus," or the wicked.
+But it was the plebeians who mourned for Servius; the patricians in
+their anger made Tarquin king, but found him a very hard and cruel
+master, so that he is generally called Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin
+the proud. In his time the Sybil of Cum�, the same wondrous maiden of
+deep wisdom who had guided �neas to the realms of Pluto, came, bringing
+nine books of prophecies of the history of Rome, and offered them to him
+at a price which he thought too high, and refused. She went away,
+destroyed three, and brought back the other six, asking for them double
+the price of the whole. He refused. She burnt three more, and brought
+him the last three with the price again doubled, because the fewer they
+were, the more precious. He bought them at last, and placed them in the
+Capitol, whence they were now and then taken to be consulted as oracles.
+
+[Illustration: SYBIL'S CAVE.]
+
+Rome was at war with the city of Gabii, and as the city was not to be
+subdued by force, Tarquin tried treachery. His eldest son, Sextus
+Tarquinius, fled to Gabii, complaining of ill-usage of his father, and
+showing marks of a severe scourging. The Gabians believed him, and he
+was soon so much trusted by them as to have the whole command of the
+army and manage everything in the city. Then he sent a messenger to his
+father to ask what he was to do next. Tarquin was walking through a
+cornfield. He made no answer in words, but with a switch cut off the
+heads of all the poppies and taller stalks of corn, and bade the
+messenger tell Sextus what he had seen. Sextus understood, and
+contrived to get all the chief men of Gabii exiled or put to death, and
+without them the city fell an easy prey to the Romans.
+
+Tarquin sent his two younger sons and their cousin to consult the oracle
+at Delphi, and with them went Lucius Junius, who was called Brutus
+because he was supposed to be foolish, that being the meaning of the
+word; but his folly was only put on, because he feared the jealousy of
+his cousins. After doing their father's errand, the two Tarquins asked
+who should rule Rome after their father. "He," said the priestess, "who
+shall first kiss his mother on his return." The two brothers agreed that
+they would keep this a secret from their elder brother Sextus, and, as
+soon as they reached home, both of them rushed into the women's rooms,
+racing each to be the first to embrace their mother Tullia; but at the
+very entrance of Rome Brutus pretended to slip, threw himself on the
+ground and kissed his Mother Earth, having thus guessed the right
+meaning of the answer.
+
+He waited patiently, however, and still was thought a fool when the army
+went out to besiege the city of Ardea; and while the troops were
+encamped round it, some of the young patricians began to dispute which
+had the best wife. They agreed to put it to the test by galloping late
+in the evening to look in at their homes and see what their wives were
+about. Some were idling, some were visiting, some were scolding, some
+were dressing, some were asleep; but at Collatia, the farm of another of
+the Tarquin family, thence called Collatinus, they found his beautiful
+wife Lucretia among her maidens spinning the wool of the flocks. All
+agreed that she was the best of wives; but the wicked Sextus Tarquin
+only wanted to steal her from her husband, and going by night to
+Collatia, tried to make her desert her lord, and when she would not
+listen to him he ill-treated her cruelly, and told her that he should
+accuse her to her husband. She was so overwhelmed with grief and shame
+that in the morning she sent for her father and husband, told them all
+that that happened, and saying that she could not bear life after being
+so put to shame, she drew out a dagger and stabbed herself before their
+eyes--thinking, as all these heathen Romans did, that it was better to
+die by one's own hand than to live in disgrace.
+
+Lucius Brutus had gone to Collatia with his cousin, and while Collatinus
+and his father-in-law stood horror-struck, he called to them to revenge
+this crime. Snatching the dagger from Lucretia's breast, he galloped to
+Rome, called the people together in the Forum, and, holding up the
+bloody weapon in his hand, he made them a speech, asking whether they
+would any longer endure such a family of tyrants. They all rose as one
+man, and choosing Brutus himself and Collatinus to be their leaders, as
+the consuls whom Servius Tullus had thought of making, they shut the
+gates of Rome, and would not open them when Tarquin and his sons would
+have returned. So ended the kingdom of Rome.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE WAR WITH PORSENA.
+
+
+From the time of the flight of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by two
+consuls, who wore all the tokens of royalty except the crown. Tarquin
+fled into Etruria, whence his grandfather had come, and thence tried to
+obtain admission into Rome. The two young sons of Brutus and the nephews
+of Collatinus were drawn into a plot for bringing them back again, and
+on its discovery were brought before the two consuls. Their guilt was
+proved, and their father sternly asked what they had to say in their
+defence. They only wept, and so did Collatinus and many of the senators,
+crying out, "Banish them, banish them." Brutus, however, as if unmoved,
+bade the executioners do their office. The whole Senate shrieked to hear
+a father thus condemn his own children, but he was resolute, and
+actually looked on while the young men were first scourged and then
+beheaded.
+
+Collatinus put off the further judgment in hopes to save his nephews,
+and Brutus told them that he had put them to death by his own power as a
+father, but that he left the rest to the voice of the people, and they
+were sent into banishment. Even Collatinus was thought to have acted
+weakly, and was sent into exile--so determined were the Romans to have
+no one among them who would not uphold their decrees to the utmost.
+Tarquin advanced to the walls and cut down all the growing corn around
+the Campus Martius and threw it into the Tiber; there it formed a heap
+round which an island was afterwards formed. Brutus himself and his
+cousin Aruns Tarquin soon after killed one another in single combat in a
+battle outside the walls, and all the women of Rome mourned for him as
+for a father.
+
+Tarquin found a friend in the Etruscan king called Lars Porsena, who
+brought an army to besiege Rome and restore him to the throne. He
+advanced towards the gate called Janiculum upon the Tiber, and drove the
+Romans out of the fort on the other side the river. The Romans then
+retreated across the bridge, placing three men to guard it until all
+should be gone over and it could be broken down.
+
+[Illustration: BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS.]
+
+There stood the brave three--Horatius, Lartius, and Herminius--guarding
+the bridge while their fellow-citizens were fleeing across it, three men
+against a whole army. At last the weapons of Lartius and Herminius were
+broken down, and Horatius bade them hasten over the bridge while it
+could still bear their weight. He himself fought on till he was wounded
+in the thigh, and the last timbers of the bridge were falling into the
+stream. Then spreading out his arms, he called upon Father Tiber to
+receive him, leapt into the river and swam across amid a shower of
+arrows, one of which put out his eye, and he was lame for life. A statue
+of him "halting on his thigh" was set up in the temple of Vulcan, and he
+was rewarded with as much land as one yoke of oxen could plough in a
+day, and the 300,000 citizens of Rome each gave him a day's provision of
+corn.
+
+Porsena then blockaded the city, and when the Romans were nearly
+starving he sent them word that he would give them food if they would
+receive their old masters; but they made answer that hunger was better
+than slavery, and still held out. In the midst of their distress, a
+young man named Caius Mucius came and begged leave of the consuls to
+cross the Tiber and go to attempt something to deliver his country. They
+gave leave, and creeping through the Etruscan camp he came into the
+king's tent just as Porsena was watching his troops pass by in full
+order. One of his counsellors was sitting beside him so richly dressed
+that Mucius did not know which was king, and leaping towards them, he
+stabbed the counsellor to the heart. He was seized at once and dragged
+before the king, who fiercely asked who he was, and what he meant by
+such a crime.
+
+The young man answered that his name was Caius Mucius, and that he was
+ready to do and dare anything for Rome. In answer to threats of torture,
+he quietly stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flame
+that burnt in a brazier close by, holding it there without a sign of
+pain, while he bade Porsena see what a Roman thought of suffering.
+
+Porsena was so struck that he at once gave the daring man his life, his
+freedom, and even his dagger; and Mucius then told him that three
+hundred youths like himself had sworn to have his life unless he left
+Rome to her liberty. This was false, but both the lie and the murder
+were for Rome's sake; they were both admired by the Romans, who held
+that the welfare of their city was their very first duty. Mucius could
+never use his right hand again, and was always called Sc�vola, or the
+Left-handed, a name that went on to his family.
+
+Porsena believed the story, and began to make peace. A truce was agreed
+on, and ten Roman youths and as many girls were given up to the
+Etruscans as hostages. While the conferences were going on, one of the
+Roman girls named Clelia forgot her duty so much as to swim home across
+the river with all her companions; but Valeria, the consul's daughter,
+was received with all the anger that breach of trust deserved, and her
+father mounted his horse at once to take the party back again. Just as
+they reached the Etruscan camp, the Tarquin father and brothers, and a
+whole troop of the enemy, fell on them. While the consul was fighting
+against a terrible force, Valeria dashed on into the camp and called out
+Porsena and his son. They, much grieved that the truce should have been
+broken, drove back their own men, and were so angry with the Tarquins as
+to give up their cause. He asked which of the girls had contrived the
+escape, and when Clelia confessed it was herself, he made her a present
+of a fine horse and its trappings, which she little deserved.
+
+This Valerius was called Publicola, or the people's friend. He died a
+year or two later, after so many victories that the Romans honored him
+among their greatest heroes. Tarquin still continued to seek support
+among the different Italian nations, and again attacked the Romans with
+the help of the Latins. The chief battle was fought close to Lake
+Regillus; Aulus Posthumius was the commander, but Marcus Valerius,
+brother to Publicola, was general of the horse. He had vowed to build a
+temple to Castor and Pollux if the Romans gained the victory; and in the
+beginning of the fight, two glorious youths of god-like stature appeared
+on horseback at the head of the Roman horse and fought for them. It was
+a very hard-fought battle. Valerius was killed, but so was Titus
+Tarquin, and the Latin force was entirely broken and routed. That same
+evening the two youths rode into the Forum, their horses dripping with
+sweat and their weapons bloody. They drew up and washed themselves at a
+fountain near the temple of Vesta, and as the people crowded round they
+told of the great victory, and while one man named Domitius doubted of
+it, since the Lake Regillus was too far off for tidings to have come so
+fast, one of them laid his hand on the doubter's beard and changed it
+in a moment from black to copper color, so that he came to be called
+Domitius Ahenobarbus, or Brazen-beard. Then they disappeared, and the
+next morning Posthumius' messenger brought the news. The Romans had no
+doubt that these were indeed the glorious twins, and built their temple,
+as Valerius had vowed.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN ENSIGNS, STANDARDS, TRUMPETS ETC.]
+
+Tarquin had lost all his sons, and died in wretched exile at Cum�. And
+here ends what is looked on as the legendary history of Rome, for though
+most of these stories have dates, and some sound possible, there is so
+much that is plainly untrue mixed up with them, that they can only be
+looked on as the old stories which were handed down to account for the
+Roman customs and copied by their historians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+So far as true history can guess, the Romans really did have kings and
+drove them out, but there are signs that, though Porsena was a real
+king, the war was not so honorable to the Romans as they said, for he
+took the city and made them give up all their weapons to him, leaving
+them nothing but their tools for husbandry. But they liked to forget
+their misfortunes.
+
+The older Roman families were called patricians, or fathers, and thought
+all rights to govern belonged to them. Settlers who came in later were
+called plebeians, or the people, and at first had no rights at all, for
+all the land belonged to the patricians, and the only way for the
+plebeians to get anything done for them was to become hangers-on--or, as
+they called it, clients--of some patrician who took care of their
+interests. There was a council of patricians called the Senate, chosen
+among themselves, and also containing by right all who had been chief
+magistrates. The whole assembly of the patricians was called the
+Comitia. They, as has been said before, fought on horseback, while the
+plebeians fought on foot; but out of the rich plebeians a body was
+formed called the knights, who also used horses, and wore gold rings
+like the patricians.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF JUPITER.]
+
+But the plebeians were always trying not to be left out of everything.
+By and by, they said under Servius Tullius, the city was divided into
+six quarters, and all the families living in them into six tribes, each
+of which had a tribune to watch over it, bring up the number of its men,
+and lead them to battle. Another division of the citizens, both
+patrician and plebeian, was made every five years. They were all counted
+and numbered and divided off into centuries according to their wealth.
+Then these centuries, or hundreds, had votes, by the persons they chose,
+when it was a question of peace or war. Their meeting was called the
+Comitia; but as there were more patrician centuries than plebeian ones,
+the patricians still had much more power. Besides, the Senate and all
+the magistrates were in those days always patricians. These magistrates
+were chosen every year. There were two consuls, who were like kings for
+the time, only that they wore no crowns; they had purple robes, and sat
+in chairs ornamented with ivory, and they were always attended by
+lictors, who carried bundles of rods tied round an axe--the first for
+scourging, the second for beheading. There were under them two pr�tors,
+or judges, who tried offences; two qu�stors, who attended to the public
+buildings; and two censors, who had to look after the numbering and
+registering of the people in their tribes and centuries. The consuls in
+general commanded the army, but sometimes, when there was a great need,
+one single leader was chosen and was called dictator. Sometimes a
+dictator was chosen merely to fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into the
+head of the great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides these, all
+the priests had to be patricians; the chief of all was called Pontifex
+Maximus. Some say this was because he was the _fax_ (maker) of
+_pontes_ (bridges), as he blessed them and decided by omens where
+they should be; but others think the word was Pompifex, and that he was
+the maker of pomps or ceremonies. There were many priests as well as
+augurs, who had to draw omens from the flight of birds or the appearance
+of sacrifices, and who kept the account of the calendar of lucky and
+unlucky days, and of festivals.
+
+[Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES.]
+
+The Romans were a grave religious people in those days, and did not
+count their lives or their affections dear in comparison with their
+duties to their altars and their hearths, though their notions of duty
+do not always agree with ours. Their dress in the city was a white
+woollen garment edged with purple--it must have been more like in shape
+to a Scottish plaid than anything else--and was wrapped round so as to
+leave one arm free: sometimes a fold was drawn over the head. No one
+might wear it but a free-born Roman, and he never went out on public
+business without it, even when more convenient fashions had been copied
+from Greece. Those who were asking votes for a public office wore it
+white (_candidus_), and therefore were called candidates. The consuls
+had it on great days entirely purple and embroidered, and all senators
+and ex-magistrates had broader borders of purple. The ladies wore a long
+graceful wrapping-gown; the boys a short tunic, and round their necks
+was hung a hollow golden ball called a _bulla_, or bubble. When a boy
+was seventeen, there was a great family sacrifice to the Lares and the
+forefathers, his bulla was taken off, the toga was put on, and he was
+enrolled by his own pr�nomen, Caius or Lucius, or whatever it might be,
+for there was only a choice of fifteen. After this he was liable to be
+called out to fight. A certain number of men were chosen from each tribe
+by the tribune. It was divided into centuries, each led by a centurion;
+and the whole body together was called a legion, from _lego_, to
+choose. In later times the proper number for a legion was 6000 men. Each
+legion had a standard, a bar across the top of the spear, with the
+letters on it S P Q R--_Senatus, Populus Que Romanus_--meaning the Roman
+Senate and People, a purple flag below and a figure above, such as an
+eagle, or the wolf and twins, or some emblem dear to the Romans. The
+legions were on foot, but the troops of patricians and knights on
+horseback were attached to them and had to protect them.
+
+[Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES.]
+
+The Romans had in those days very small riches, they held in general
+small farms in the country, which they worked themselves with the help
+of their sons and slaves. The plebeians were often the richest. They too
+held farms leased to them by the state, and had often small shops in
+Rome. The whole territory was so small that it was easy to come into
+Rome to worship, attend the Senate, or vote, and many had no houses in
+the city. Each man was married with a ring and sacrifice, and the lady
+was then carried over the threshold, on which a sheepskin was spread,
+and made mistress of the house by being bidden to be Caia to Caius. The
+Roman matrons were good and noble women in those days, and the highest
+praise of them was held to be _Domum mansit, lanam fecit_--she stayed
+at home and spun wool. Each man was absolute master in his own house,
+and had full power over his grown-up sons, even for life or death, and
+they almost always submitted entirely. For what made the Romans so great
+was that they were not only brave, but they were perfectly obedient, and
+obeyed as perfectly as they could their fathers, their officers, their
+magistrates, and, as they thought, their gods.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MENENIUS AGRIPPA'S FABLE.
+
+B.C. 494.
+
+
+A great deal of the history of Rome consists of struggles between the
+patricians and plebeians. In those early days the plebeians were often
+poor, and when they wanted to improve their lands they had to borrow
+money from the patricians, who not only had larger lands, but, as they
+were the officers in war, got a larger share of the spoil. The Roman law
+was hard on a man in debt. His lands might be seized, he might be thrown
+into prison or sold into slavery with his wife and children, or, if the
+creditors liked, be cut to pieces so that each might take his share.
+
+One of these debtors, a man who was famous for bravery as a centurion,
+broke out of his prison and ran into the Forum, all in rags and with
+chains still hanging to his hands and feet, showing them to his
+fellow-citizens, and asking if this was just usage of a man who had done
+no crime. They were very angry, and the more because one of the consuls,
+Appius Claudius, was known to be very harsh, proud and cruel, as indeed
+were all his family. The Volscians, a tribe often at war with them,
+broke into their land at the same time, and the Romans were called to
+arms, but the plebeians refused to march until their wrongs were
+redressed. On this the other consul, Servilius, promised that a law
+should be made against keeping citizens in prison for debt or making
+slaves of their children; and thereupon the army assembled, marched
+against the enemy, and defeated them, giving up all the spoil to his
+troops. But the senate, when the danger was over, would not keep its
+promises, and even appointed a Dictator to put the plebeians down.
+Thereupon they assembled outside the walls in a strong force, and were
+going to attack the patricians, when the wise old Menenius Agrippa was
+sent out to try to pacify them. He told them a fable, namely, that once
+upon a time all the limbs of a man's body became disgusted with the
+service they had to render to the belly. The feet and legs carried it
+about, the hands worked for it and carried food to it, the mouth ate
+for it, and so on. They thought it hard thus all to toil for it, and
+agreed to do nothing for it--neither to carry it about, clothe it, nor
+feed it. But soon all found themselves growing weak and starved, and
+were obliged to own that all would perish together unless they went on
+waiting on this seemingly useless belly. So Agrippa told them that all
+ranks and states depended on one another, and unless all worked together
+all must be confusion and go to decay. The fable seems to have convinced
+both rich and poor; the debtors were set free and the debts forgiven.
+And though the laws about debts do not seem to have been changed,
+another law was made which gave the plebeians tribunes in peace as well
+as war. These tribunes were always to be plebeians, chosen by their own
+fellows. No one was allowed to hurt them during their year of office, on
+pain of being declared accursed and losing his property; and they had
+the power of stopping any decision of the senate by saying solemnly,
+_Veto_, I forbid. They were called tribunes of the people, while the
+officers in war were called military tribunes; and as it was on the Mons
+Sacer, or Sacred Mount, that this was settled, these laws were called
+the _Leges Sacrari�_. An altar to the Thundering Jupiter was built to
+consecrate them: and, in gratitude for his management, Menenius Agrippa
+was highly honored all his life, and at his death had a public funeral.
+
+But the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians were not by
+any means over. The Roman land--Agri (acre), it was called--had at first
+been divided in equal shares--at least so it was said--but as belonging
+to the state all the time, and only held by the occupier. As time went
+on, some persons of course gathered more into their own hands, and
+others of spendthrift or unfortunate families became destitute. Then
+there was an outcry that, as the lands belonged to the whole state, it
+ought to take them all back and divide them again more equally: but the
+patricians naturally regarded themselves as the owners, and would not
+hear of this scheme, which we shall hear of again and again by the name
+of the Agrarian Law. One of the patricians, who had thrice been consul,
+by name Spurius Cassius, did all he could to bring it about, but though
+the law was passed he could not succeed in getting it carried out. The
+patricians hated him, and a report got abroad that he was only gaining
+favor with the people in order to get himself made king. This made even
+the plebeians turn against him as a traitor; he was condemned by the
+whole assembly of the people, and beheaded, after being scourged by the
+lictors. The people soon mourned for their friend, and felt that they
+had been deceived in giving him up to their enemies. The senate would
+not execute his law, and the plebeians would not enlist in the next war,
+though the senate threatened to cut down the fruit trees and destroy the
+crops of every man who refused to join the army. When they were
+absolutely driven into the ranks, they even refused to draw their swords
+in face of the enemy, and would not gain a victory lest their consul
+should have the honor of it.
+
+[Illustration: SENATORIAL PALACE.]
+
+This consul's name was K�so Fabius. He belonged to a very clever, wary
+family, whose name it was said was originally _Foveus_ (ditch), because
+they had first devised a plan of snaring wolves in pits or ditches. They
+were thought such excellent defenders of the claims of the patricians
+that for seven years following one or other of the Fabii was chosen
+consul. But by-and-by they began either to see that the plebeians had
+rights, or that they should do best by siding with them, for they went
+over to them; and when K�so next was consul he did all he could to get
+the laws of Cassius carried out, but the senate were furious with
+him, and he found it was not safe to stay in Rome when his consulate was
+over. So he resolved at any rate to do good to his country. The
+Etruscans often came over the border and ravaged the country; but there
+was a watch-tower on the banks of the little river Cremera, which flows
+into the Tiber, and Fabius offered, with all the men of his name--306 in
+number, and 4000 clients--to keep guard there against the enemy. For
+some time they prospered there, and gained much spoil from the
+Etruscans; but at last the whole Etruscan army came against them,
+showing only a small number at first to tempt them out to fight, then
+falling on them with the whole force and killing the whole of them, so
+that of the whole name there remained only one boy of fourteen who had
+been left behind at Rome. And what was worse, the consul, Titus
+Menenius, was so near the army that he could have saved the Fabii, but
+for the hatred the patricians bore them as deserters from their cause.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF A ROMAN HARBOR.]
+
+However, the tribune Publilius gained for the plebeians that there
+should be five tribunes instead of two, and made a change in the manner
+of electing them which prevented the patricians from interfering. Also
+it was decreed that to interrupt a tribune in a public speech deserved
+death. But whenever an Appius Claudius was consul he took his revenge,
+and was cruelly severe, especially in the camp, where the consul as
+general had much more power than in Rome. Again the angry plebeians
+would not fight, but threw down their arms in sight of the enemy.
+Claudius scourged and beheaded; they endured grimly and silently,
+knowing that when he returned to Rome and his consulate was over their
+tribunes would call him to account. And so they did, and before all the
+tribes of Rome summoned him to answer for his savage treatment of free
+Roman citizens. He made a violent answer, but he saw how it would go
+with him, and put himself to death to avoid the sentence. So were the
+Romans proving again and again the truth of Agrippa's parable, that
+nothing can go well with body or members unless each will be ready to
+serve the other.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORIOLANUS AND CINCINNATUS.
+
+B.C. 458.
+
+
+All the time these struggles were going on between the patricians and
+the plebeians at home, there were wars with the neighboring tribes, the
+Volscians, the Veians, the Latins, and the Etruscans. Every spring the
+fighting men went out, attacked their neighbors, drove off their cattle,
+and tried to take some town; then fought a battle, and went home to reap
+the harvest, gather the grapes and olives in the autumn, and attend to
+public business and vote for the magistrates in the winter. They were
+small wars, but famous men fought in them. In a war against the
+Volscians, when Cominius was consul, he was besieging a city called
+Corioli, when news came that the men of Antium were marching against
+him, and in their first attack on the walls the Romans were beaten off,
+but a gallant young patrician, descended from the king Ancus Marcius,
+Caius Marcius by name, rallied them and led them back with such spirit
+that the place was taken before the hostile army came up; then he fought
+among the foremost and gained the victory. When he was brought to the
+consul's tent covered with wounds, Cominius did all he could to show his
+gratitude--set on the young man's head the crown of victory, gave him
+the surname of Coriolanus in honor of his exploits, and granted him the
+tenth part of the spoil of ten prisoners. Of them, however, Coriolanus
+only accepted one, an old friend of the family, whom he set at liberty
+at once. Afterwards, when there was a great famine in Rome, Coriolanus
+led an expedition to Antium, and brought away quantities of corn and
+cattle, which he distributed freely, keeping none for himself.
+
+But though he was so free of hand, Coriolanus was a proud, shy man, who
+would not make friends with the plebeians, and whom the tribunes hated
+as much as he despised them. He was elected consul, and the tribunes
+refused to permit him to become one; and when a shipload of wheat
+arrived from Sicily, there was a fierce quarrel as to how it should be
+distributed. The tribunes impeached him before the people for
+withholding it from them, and by the vote of a large number of citizens
+he was banished from Roman lands. His anger was great, but quiet. He
+went without a word away from the Forum to his house, where he took
+leave of his mother Veturia, his wife Volumnia, and his little children,
+and then went and placed himself by the hearth of Tullus the Volscian
+chief, in whose army he meant to fight to revenge himself upon his
+countrymen.
+
+Together they advanced upon the Roman territory, and after ravaging the
+country threatened to besiege Rome. Men of rank came out and entreated
+him to give up this wicked and cruel vengeance, and to have pity on his
+friends and native city; but he answered that the Volscians were now his
+nation, and nothing would move him. At last, however, all the women of
+Rome came forth, headed by his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia,
+each with a little child, and Veturia entreated and commanded her son in
+the most touching manner to change his purpose and cease to ruin his
+country, begging him, if he meant to destroy Rome, to begin by slaying
+her. She threw herself at his feet as she spoke, and his hard spirit
+gave way.
+
+"Ah! mother, what is it you do?" he cried as he lifted her up. "Thou
+hast saved Rome, but lost thy son."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN CAMP]
+
+And so it proved, for when he had broken up his camp and returned to the
+Volscian territory till the senate should recall him as they proceeded,
+Tullus, angry and disappointed, stirred up a tumult, and he was killed
+by the people before he could be sent for to Rome. A temple to "Women's
+Good Speed" was raised on the spot where Veturia knelt to him.
+
+Another very proud patrician family was the Quinctian. The father,
+Lucius Quinctius, was called Cincinnatus, from his long flowing curls of
+hair. He was the ablest man among the Romans, but stern and grave, and
+his eldest son K�so was charged by the tribunes with a murder and fled
+the country. Soon after there was a great inroad of the �qui and
+Volscians, and the Romans found themselves in great danger. They saw no
+one could save them but Cincinnatus, so they met in haste and chose him
+Dictator, though he was not present. Messengers were sent to his little
+farm on the Tiber, and there they found him holding the stilts of the
+plough. When they told their errand, he turned to his wife, who was
+helping him, and said, "Racilia, fetch me my toga;" then he washed his
+face and hands, and was saluted as Dictator. A boat was ready to take
+him to Rome, and as he landed, he was met by the four-and-twenty lictors
+belonging to the two consuls and escorted to his dwelling. In the
+morning he named as general of the cavalry Lucius Tarquitius, a brave
+old patrician who had become too poor even to keep a horse. Marching out
+at the head of all the men who could bear arms, he thoroughly routed the
+�qui, and then resigned his dictatorship at the end of sixteen days. Nor
+would he accept any of the spoil, but went back to his plough, his only
+reward being that his son was forgiven and recalled from banishment.
+
+[Illustration: PLOUGHING]
+
+These are the grand old stories that came down from old time, but how
+much is true no one can tell, and there is reason to think that, though
+the leaders like Cincinnatus and Coriolanus might be brave, the Romans
+were really pressed hard by the Volscians and �qui, and lost a good deal
+of ground, though they were too proud to own it. No wonder, while the
+two orders of the state were always pulling different ways. However, the
+tribune Icilius succeeded in the year 454 in getting the Aventine Hill
+granted to the plebeians; and they had another champion called Lucius
+Sicinius Dentatus, who was so brave that he was called the Roman
+Achilles. He had received no less than forty-five wounds in different
+fights before he was fifty-eight years old, and had had fourteen civic
+crowns. For the Romans gave an oak-leaf wreath, which they called a
+civic crown, to a man who saved the life of a fellow-citizen, and a
+mural crown to him who first scaled the walls of a besieged city. And
+when a consul had gained a great victory, he had what was called a
+triumph. He was drawn in his chariot into the city, his victorious
+troops marching before him with their spears waving with laurel boughs,
+a wreath of laurel was on his head, his little children sat with him in
+the chariot, and the spoil of the enemy was carried along. All the
+people decked their houses and came forth rejoicing in holiday array,
+while he proceeded to the Capitol to sacrifice an ox to Jupiter there.
+His chief prisoners walked behind his car in chains, and at the moment
+of his sacrifice they were taken to a cell below the Capitol and there
+put to death, for the Roman was cruel in his joy. Nothing was more
+desired than such a triumph; but such was often the hatred between the
+plebeians and the patricians, that sometimes the plebeian army would
+stop short in the middle of a victorious campaign to hinder their consul
+from having a triumph. Even Sicinius is said once to have acted thus,
+and it began to be plain that Rome must fall if it continued to be thus
+divided against itself.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE DECEMVIRS.
+
+B.C. 450.
+
+
+The Romans began to see what mischiefs their quarrels did, and they
+agreed to send three of their best and wisest men to Greece to study the
+laws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any of them could be put in
+force at Rome.
+
+To get the new code of laws which they brought home put into working
+order, it was agreed for the time to have no consuls, pr�tors, nor
+tribunes, but ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine Athenian
+archons. They were called Decemvirs (_decem_, ten; _vir_, a man),
+and at their head was Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who had
+killed himself to avoid being condemned for his harshness. At first they
+governed well, and a very good set of laws was drawn up, which the
+Romans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but Appius soon began to give
+way to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a war
+with the �qui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatus
+said it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundred
+and twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudius
+sent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army that
+he might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when he
+advised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and
+sent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretches
+instructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass
+they set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock and
+fought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come near
+him, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down on
+his head. Then they went back with a story that they had been attacked
+by the enemy, which was believed, till a party went out to bury the
+dead, and found there were only Roman corpses all lying round the
+crushed body of Sicinius, and that none were stripped of their armor or
+clothes. Then the true history was found out, but the Decemvirs
+sheltered the commanders, and would believe nothing against them.
+
+Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all honest men even more
+than this treachery to the brave old soldier. The Forum was not only the
+place of public assembly for state affairs, but the regular
+market-place, where there were stalls and booths for all the wares that
+Romans dealt in--meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold in
+earthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even booths where reading and
+writing was taught to boys and girls, who would learn by tracing letters
+in the sand, and then by writing them with an iron pen on a waxen table
+in a frame, or with a reed upon parchment. The children of each family
+came escorted by a slave--the girls by their nurse, the boys by one
+called a pedagogue.
+
+[Illustration: DEATH OF VIRGINIA.]
+
+Appius, when going to his judgment-seat across the Forum, saw at one of
+these schools a girl of fifteen reading her lesson. She was so lovely
+that he asked her nurse who she was, and heard that her name was
+Virginia, and that she was the daughter of an honorable plebeian and
+brave centurion named Virginius, who was absent with the army fighting
+with the �qui, and that she was to marry a young man named Icilius as
+soon as the campaign was over. Appius would gladly have married her
+himself, but there was a patrician law against wedding plebeians, and he
+wickedly determined that if he could not have her for his wife he would
+have her for his slave.
+
+There was one of his clients named Marcus Claudius, whom he paid to get
+up a story that Virginius' wife Numitoria, who was dead, had never had
+any child at all, but had bought a baby of one of his slaves and had
+deceived her husband with it, and thus that poor Virginia was really his
+slave. As the maiden was reading at her school, this wretch and a band
+of fellows like him seized upon her, declaring that she was his
+property, and that he would carry her off. There was a great uproar, and
+she was dragged as far as Appius' judgment-seat; but by that time her
+faithful nurse had called the poor girl's uncle Numitorius, who could
+answer for it that she was really his sister's child. But Appius would
+not listen to him, and all that he could gain was that judgment should
+not be given in the matter until Virginius should have been fetched from
+the camp.
+
+[Illustration: CHARIOT RACES.]
+
+Virginius had set out from the camp with Icilius before the messengers
+of Appius had reached the general with orders to stop him, and he came
+to the Forum leading his daughter by the hand, weeping, and attended by
+a great many ladies. Claudius brought his slave, who made false oath
+that she had sold her child to Numitoria; while, on the other hand, all
+the kindred of Virginius and his wife gave such proof of the contrary as
+any honest judge would have thought sufficient, but Appius chose to
+declare that the truth was with his client. There was a great murmur of
+all the people, but he frowned at them, and told them he knew of their
+meetings, and that there were soldiers in the Capitol ready to punish
+them, so they must stand back and not hinder a master from recovering
+his slave.
+
+Virginius took his poor daughter in his arms as if to give her a last
+embrace, and drew her close to the stall of a butcher where lay a great
+knife. He wiped her tears, kissed her, and saying, "My own dear little
+girl, there is no way but this," he snatched up the knife and plunged it
+into her heart, then drawing it out he cried, "By this blood, Appius, I
+devote thy blood to the infernal gods."
+
+He could not reach Appius, but the lictors could not seize him, and he
+mounted his horse and galloped back to the army, four hundred men
+following him, and he arrived still holding the knife. Every soldier who
+heard the story resolved no longer to bear with the Decemvirs, but to
+march back to the city at once and insist on the old government being
+restored. The Decemvir generals tried to stop them, but they only
+answered, "We are men with swords in our hands." At the same time there
+was such a tumult in the city, that Appius was forced to hide himself in
+his own house while Virginia's corpse was carried on a bier through the
+streets, and every one laid garlands, scarfs, and wreaths of their own
+hair upon it. When the troops arrived, they and the people joined in
+demanding that the Decemvirs should be given up to them to be burnt
+alive, and that the old magistrates should be restored. However, two
+patricians, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, were able so to arrange
+matters that the nine comparatively innocent Decemvirs were allowed to
+depose themselves, and Appius only was sent to prison, where he killed
+himself rather than face the trial that awaited him. The new code of
+laws, however, remained, but consuls, pr�tors, tribunes, and all the
+rest of the magistrates were restored, and in the year 445 a law was
+passed which enabled patricians and plebeians to intermarry.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CAMILLUS' BANISHMENT.
+
+B.C. 390.
+
+
+The wars with the Etruscans went on, and chiefly with the city of Veii,
+which stood on a hill twelve miles from Rome, and was altogether thirty
+years at war with it. At last the Romans made up their minds that,
+instead of going home every harvest-time to gather in their crops, they
+must watch the city constantly till they could take it, and thus, as the
+besiegers were unable to do their own work, pay was raised for them to
+enable them to get it done, and this was the beginning of paying armies.
+
+[Illustration: ARROW MACHINE.]
+
+The siege of Veii lasted ten years, and during the last the Alban lake
+filled to an unusual height, although the summer was very dry. One of
+the Veian soldiers cried out to the Romans half in jest, "You will
+never take Veii till the Alban lake is dry." It turned out that there
+was an old tradition that Veii should fall when the lake was drained. On
+this the senate sent orders to have canals dug to carry the waters to
+the sea, and these still remain. Still Veii held out, and to finish the
+war a dictator was appointed, Marcus Furius Camillus, who chose for his
+second in command a man of one of the most virtuous families in Rome, as
+their surname testified, Publius Cornelius, called Scipio, or the Staff,
+because either he or one of his forefathers had been the staff of his
+father's old age. Camillus took the city by assault, with an immense
+quantity of spoil, which was divided among the soldiers.
+
+Camillus in his pride took to himself at his triumph honors that had
+hitherto only been paid to the gods. He had his face painted with
+vermilion and his car drawn by milk-white horses. This shocked the
+people, and he gave greater offence by declaring that he had vowed a
+tenth part of the spoil to Apollo, but had forgotten it in the division
+of the plunder, and now must take it again. The soldiers would not
+consent, but lest the god should be angry with them, it was resolved to
+send a gold vase to his oracle at Delphi. All the women of Rome brought
+their jewels, and the senate rewarded them by a decree that funeral
+speeches might be made over their graves as over those of men, and
+likewise that they might be driven in chariots to the public games.
+
+Camillus commanded in another war with the Falisci, also an Etruscan
+race, and laid siege to their city. The sons of almost all the chief
+families were in charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who taught them both
+reading and all kinds of exercises. One day this man, pretending to take
+the boys out walking, led them all into the enemy's camp, to the tent of
+Camillus, where he told that he brought them all, and with them the
+place, since the Romans had only to threaten their lives to make their
+fathers deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so shocked at such
+perfidy, that he immediately bade the lictors strip the fellow
+instantly, and give the boys rods with which to scourge him back into
+the town. Their fathers were so grateful that they made peace at once,
+and about the same time the �qui were also conquered; and the commons
+and open lands belonging to Veii being divided, so that each Roman
+freeman had six acres, the plebeians were contented for the time.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The truth seems to have been that these Etruscan nations were weakened
+by a great new nation coming on them from the North. They were what the
+Romans called Galli or Gauls, one of the great races of the old stock
+which has always been finding its way westward into Europe, and they had
+their home north of the Alps, but they were always pressing on and on,
+and had long since made settlements in northern Italy. They were in
+clans, each obedient to one chief as a father, and joining together in
+one brotherhood. They had lands to which whole families had a common
+right, and when their numbers outgrew what the land could maintain, the
+bolder ones would set off with their wives, children, and cattle to
+find new homes. The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun first in the
+same way, and their tribes, and the claims of all to the common land,
+were the remains of the old way; but they had been settled in cities so
+long that this had been forgotten, and they were very different people
+from the wild men who spoke what we call Welsh, and wore checked tartan
+trews and plaids, with gold collars round their necks, round shields,
+huge broadswords, and their red or black hair long and shaggy. The
+Romans knew little or nothing about what passed beyond their own
+Apennines, and went on with their own quarrels. Camillus was accused of
+having taken more than his proper share of the spoil of Veii, in
+especial a brass door from a temple. His friends offered to pay any fine
+that might be laid on him, but he was too proud to stand his trial, and
+chose rather to leave Rome. As he passed the gates, he turned round and
+called upon the gods to bring Rome to speedy repentance for having
+driven him away.
+
+Even then the Gauls were in the midst of a war with Clusium, the city of
+Porsena, and the inhabitants sent to beg the help of the Romans, and the
+senate sent three young brothers of the Fabian family to try to arrange
+matters. They met the Gaulish Bran or chief, whom Latin authors call
+Brennus, and asked him what was his quarrel with Clusium or his right to
+any part of Etruria. Brennus answered that his right was his sword, and
+that all things belonged to the brave, and that his quarrel with the men
+of Clusium was, that though they had more land than they could till,
+they would not yield him any. As to the Romans, they had robbed their
+neighbors already, and had no right to find fault.
+
+This put the Fabian brothers in a rage, and they forgot the caution of
+their family, as well as those rules of all nations which forbid an
+ambassador to fight, and also forbid his person to be touched by the
+enemy; and when the men of Clusium made an attack on the Gauls they
+joined in the attack, and Quintus, the eldest brother, slew one of the
+chiefs. Brennus, wild as he was, knew these laws of nations, and in
+great anger broke up his siege of Clusium, and, marching towards Rome,
+demanded that the Fabii should be given up to him. Instead of this, the
+Romans made them all three military tribunes, and as the Gauls came
+nearer the whole army marched out to meet them in such haste that they
+did not wait to sacrifice to the gods nor consult the omens. The
+tribunes were all young and hot-headed, and they despised the Gauls; so
+out they went to attack them on the banks of the Allia, only seven and
+a-half miles from Rome. A most terrible defeat they had; many fell in
+the field, many were killed in the flight, others were drowned in trying
+to swim the Tiber, others scattered to Veii and the other cities, and a
+few, horror-stricken and wet through, rushed into Rome with the sad
+tidings. There were not men enough left to defend the walls! The enemy
+would instantly be upon them! The only place strong enough to keep them
+out was the Capitol, and that would only hold a few people within it! So
+there was nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shut
+themselves up in the Capitol; all the rest, with the women and children,
+put their most precious goods into carts and left the city. The Vestal
+Virgins carried the sacred fire, and were plodding along in the heat,
+when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state, helped them into his
+cart, and took them to the city of Cum�, where they found shelter in a
+temple. And so Rome was left to the enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE SACK OF ROME.
+
+B.C. 390.
+
+
+Rome was left to the enemy, except for the small garrison in the Capitol
+and for eighty of the senators, men too old to flee, who devoted
+themselves to the gods to save the rest, and, arraying themselves in
+their robes--some as former consuls, some as priests, some as
+generals--sat down with their ivory staves in their hands, in their
+chairs of state in the Forum, to await the enemy.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF THE FORUM AT ROME.]
+
+In burst the savage Gauls, roaming all over the city till they came to
+the Forum, where they stood amazed and awe-struck at the sight of the
+eighty grand old men motionless in their chairs. At first they looked at
+the strange, calm figures as if they were the gods of the place, until
+one Gaul, as if desirous of knowing whether they were flesh and blood
+or not, stroked the beard of the nearest. The senator, esteeming this an
+insult, struck the man on the face with his staff, and this was the
+sign for the slaughter of them all.
+
+Then the Gauls began to plunder every house, dragging out and killing
+the few inhabitants they found there; feasting, revelling, and piling up
+riches to carry away; burning and overthrowing the houses. Day after day
+the little garrison in the Capitol saw the sight, and wondered if their
+stock of food would hold out till the Gauls should go away or till their
+friends should come to their relief. Yet when the day came round for the
+sacrifice to the ancestor of one of these beleaguered men, he boldly
+went forth to the altar of his own ruined house on the Quirinal Hill,
+and made his offering to his forefathers, nor did one Gaul venture to
+touch him, seeing that he was performing a religious rite.
+
+The escaped Romans had rested at Ardea, where they found Camillus, and
+were by him formed into an army, but he would not take the generalship
+without authority from what was left of the Senate, and that was shut up
+in the Capitol in the midst of the Gauls. A brave man, however, named
+Pontius Cominius, declared that he could make his way through the Gauls
+by night, and climb up the Capitol and down again by a precipice which
+they did not watch because they thought no one could mount it, and that
+he would bring back the orders of the Senate. He swam the Tiber by the
+help of corks, landed at night in ruined Rome among the sleeping enemy,
+and climbed up the rock, bringing hope at last to the worn-out and
+nearly starving garrison. Quickly they met, recalled the sentence of
+banishment against Camillus, and named him Dictator. Pontius, having
+rested in the meantime, slid down the rock and made his way back to
+Ardea safely; but the broken twigs and torn ivy on the rock showed the
+Gauls that it had been scaled, and they resolved that where man had gone
+man could go. So Brennus told off the most surefooted mountaineers he
+could find, and at night, two and two, they crept up the crag, so
+silently that no alarm was given, till just as they came to the top,
+some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and for that reason had
+been spared in spite of the scarcity, began to scream and cackle, and
+thus brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus Manlius, who
+found two Gauls in the act of setting foot on the level ground on the
+top. With a sweep of his sword he struck off the hand of one, and with
+his buckler smote the other on the head, tumbling them both headlong
+down, knocking down their fellows in their flight, and the Capitol was
+saved.
+
+By way of reward every Roman soldier brought Manlius a few grains of the
+corn he received from the common stock and a few drops of wine, while
+the tribune who was on guard that night was thrown from the rock.
+
+Foiled thus, and with great numbers of his men dying from the fever that
+always prevailed in Rome in summer, Brennus thought of retreating, and
+offered to leave Rome if the garrison in the Capitol would pay him a
+thousand pounds' weight of gold. There was treasure enough in the
+temples to do this, and as they could not tell what Camillus was about,
+nor if Pontius had reached him safely, and they were on the point of
+being starved, they consented. The gold was brought to the place
+appointed by the Gauls, and when the weights proved not to be equal to
+the amount that the Romans had with them, Brennus resolved to have all,
+put his sword into the other scale, saying, "V� victis"--"Woe to the
+conquered." But at that moment there was a noise outside--Camillus was
+come. The Gauls were cut down and slain among the ruins, those who fled
+were killed by the people in the country as they wandered in the fields,
+and not one returned to tell the tale. So the ransom of the Capitol was
+rescued, and was laid up by Camillus in the vaults as a reserve for
+future danger.
+
+This was the Roman story, but their best historians say that it is made
+better for Rome than is quite the truth, for that the Capitol was really
+conquered, and the Gauls helped themselves to whatever they chose and
+went off with it, though sickness and weariness made them afterwards
+disperse, so that they were mostly cut off by the country people.
+
+Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so that, before this,
+Roman history can only be hearsay, derived from what the survivors
+recollected; and the whole of the buildings, temples, senate-house, and
+dwellings lay in ruins. Some of the citizens wished to change the site
+of the city to Veii; but Camillus, who was Dictator, was resolved to
+hold fast by the hearths of their fathers, and while the debate was
+going on in the ruins of the senate-house a troop of soldiers were
+marching in, and the centurion was heard calling out, "Plant your ensign
+here; this is a good place to stay in." "A happy omen," cried one of the
+senators; "I adore the gods who gave it." So it was settled to rebuild
+the city, and in digging among the ruins there were found the golden
+rod of Romulus, the brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve Tables
+were engraved, and other brasses with records of treaties with other
+nations. Fabius was accused of having done all the harm by having broken
+the law of nations, but he was spared at the entreaty of his friends.
+Manlius was surnamed Capitolinus, and had a house granted him on the
+Capitol; and Camillus when he laid down his dictatorship, was saluted as
+like Romulus--another founder of Rome.
+
+The new buildings were larger and more ornamented than the old ones; but
+the lines of the old underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscan
+fashion by the elder Tarquin as it was said, were not followed, and this
+tended to render Rome more unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizens
+lived there in summer or autumn, but went out to country houses on the
+hills.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRY OF THE FORUM ROMANUM BY THE VIA SACRA]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE PLEBEIAN CONSULATE.
+
+B.C. 367.
+
+
+All the old enemies of Rome attacked her again when she was weak and
+rising out of her ruins, but Camillus had wisely persuaded the Romans to
+add the people of Veii, Capena, and Falerii to the number of their
+citizens, making four more tribes; and this addition to their numbers
+helped them beat off their foes.
+
+But this enlarged the number of the plebeians, and enabled them to make
+their claims more heard. Moreover, the old quarrel between poor and
+rich, debtor and creditor, broke out again. Those who had saved their
+treasure in the time of the sack had made loans to those who had lost to
+enable them to build their houses and stock their farms again, and
+after a time they called loudly for payment, and when it was not
+forthcoming had the debtors seized to be sold as slaves. Camillus
+himself was one of the hardest creditors of all, and the barracks where
+slaves were placed to be sold were full of citizens.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUMES.]
+
+Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was full of pity, and raised money to redeem
+four hundred of them, trying with all his might to get the law changed
+and to save the rest; but the rich men and the patricians thought he
+acted only out of jealousy of Camillus, and to get up a party for
+himself. They said he was raising a sedition, and Publius Cornelius
+Cossus was named Dictator to put it down. Manlius was seized and put
+into chains, but released again. At last the rich men bought over two of
+the tribunes to accuse him of wanting to make himself a king, and this
+hated title turned all the people against their friend, so that the
+general cry sentenced him to be cast down from the top of the Tarpeian
+rock; his house on the Capitol was overthrown, and his family declared
+that no son of their house should ever again bear the name of Manlius.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME.]
+
+Yet the plebeians were making their way, and at last succeeded in
+gaining the plebeian magistracies and equal honors with the patricians.
+A curious story is told of the cause of the last effort which gained the
+day. A patrician named Fabius Ambustus had two daughters, one of whom he
+gave in marriage to Servius Sulpicius, a patrician and military tribune,
+the other to Licinius Stolo. One day, when Stolo's wife was visiting her
+sister, there was a great noise and thundering at the gates which
+frightened her, until the other Fabii said it was only her husband
+coming home from the Forum attended by his lictors and clients, laughing
+at her ignorance and alarm, until a whole troop of the clients came in
+to pay their court to the tribune's wife.
+
+Stolo's wife went home angry and vexed, and reproached her husband and
+her father for not having made her equal with her sister, and so wrought
+on them that they put themselves at the head of the movement in favor of
+the plebeians; and Licinius and another young plebeian named Lucius
+Sextius, being elected year after year tribunes of the people, went on
+every time saying _Veto_ to whatever was proposed by anybody, and giving
+out that they should go on doing so till three measures were
+carried--viz., that interest on debt should not be demanded; that no
+citizen should possess more than three hundred and twenty acres of the
+public land, or feed more than a certain quantity of cattle on the
+public pastures; and, lastly, that one of the two consuls should always
+be a plebeian.
+
+They went on for eight years, always elected by the people and always
+stopping everything. At last there was another inroad of the Gauls
+expected, and Camillus, though eighty years old, was for the fifth time
+chosen Dictator, and gained a great victory upon the banks of the Anio.
+The Senate begged him to continue Dictator till he could set their
+affairs to rights, and he vowed to build a temple to Concord if he could
+succeed. He saw indeed that it was time to yield, and persuaded the
+Senate to think so; so that at last, in the year 367, Sextius was
+elected consul, together with a patrician, �milius. Even then the Senate
+would not receive Sextius till he was introduced by Camillus. From this
+time the patricians and plebeians were on an equal footing as far as
+regarded the magistracies, but the priesthood could belong only to the
+patricians. Camillus lived to a great age, and was honored as having
+three times saved his country. He died at last of a terrible pestilence
+which raged in Rome in the year 365.
+
+The priests recommended that they should invite the players from Etruria
+to perform a drama in honor of the feats of the gods, and this was the
+beginning of play-acting in Rome.
+
+Not long after there yawned a terrible chasm in the Forum, most likely
+from an earthquake, but nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priests
+and augurs consulted their oracles about it. These made answer that it
+would only close on receiving of what was most precious. Gold and
+jewels were thrown in, but it still seemed bottomless, and at last the
+augurs declared that it was courage that was the most precious thing in
+Rome. Thereupon a patrician youth named Marcus Curtius decked himself in
+his choicest robes, put on his armor, took his shield, sword, and spear,
+mounted his horse, and leapt headlong into the gulf, thus giving it the
+most precious of all things, courage and self-devotion. After this one
+story says it closed of itself, another that it became easy to fill it
+up with earth.
+
+The Romans thought that such a sacrifice must please the gods and bring
+them success in their battles; but in the war with the Hernici that was
+now being waged the plebeian consul was killed, and no doubt there was
+much difficulty in getting the patricians to obey a plebeian properly,
+for in the course of the next twenty years it was necessary fourteen
+times to appoint a Dictator for the defence of the state, so that it is
+plain there must have been many alarms and much difficulty in enforcing
+discipline; but, on the whole, success was with Rome, and the
+neighboring tribes grew weaker.
+
+[Illustration: CURTIUS LEAPING INTO THE GULF. (_From a Bas-Relief_.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE DEVOTION OF DECIUS.
+
+B.C. 357
+
+
+Other tribes of the Gauls did not fail to come again and make fresh
+inroads on the valleys of the Tiber and Anio. Whenever they came,
+instead of choosing men from the tribes to form an army, as in a war
+with their neighbors, all the fighting men of the nation turned out to
+oppose them, generally under a Dictator.
+
+In one of these wars the Gauls came within three miles of Rome, and the
+two hosts were encamped on the banks of the Anio, with a bridge between
+them. Along this bridge strutted an enormous Gallic chief, much taller
+than any of the Romans, boasting himself, and calling on any one of them
+to come out and fight with him. Again it was a Manlius who
+distinguished himself. Titus, a young man of that family, begged the
+Dictator's permission to accept the challenge, and, having gained it, he
+changed his round knight's shield for the square one of the foot
+soldiers, and with his short sword came forward on the bridge. The Gaul
+made a sweep at him with his broadsword, but, slipping within the guard,
+Manlius stabbed the giant in two places, and as he fell cut off his
+head, and took the torc, or broad twisted gold collar that was the mark
+of all Gallic chieftains. Thence the brave youth was called Titus
+Manlius Torquatus--a surname to make up for that of Capitolinus, which
+had never been used again.
+
+[Illustration: THE APENNINES.]
+
+The next time the Gauls came, Marcus Valerius, a descendant of the old
+hero Publicola, was consul, and gained a great victory. It was said that
+in the midst of the fight a monstrous raven appeared flying over his
+head, resting now and then on his helmet, but generally pecking at the
+eyes of the Gauls and flapping its wings in their faces, so that they
+fled discomfited. Thence he was called Corvus or Corvinus. The Gauls
+never again came in such force, but a new enemy came against them,
+namely, the Samnites, a people who dwelt to the south of them. They were
+of Italian blood, mountaineers of the Southern Apennines, not unlike
+the Romans in habits, language, and training, and the staunchest enemies
+they had yet encountered. The war began from an entreaty from the people
+of Campania to the Romans to defend them from the attacks of the
+Samnites. For the Campanians, living in the rich plains, whose name is
+still unchanged, were an idle, languid people, whom the stout men of
+Samnium could easily overcome. The Romans took their part, and Valerius
+Corvus gained a victory at Mount Gaurus; but the other consul, Cornelius
+Cossus, fell into danger, having marched foolishly into a forest, shut
+in by mountains, and with only one way out through a deep valley, which
+was guarded by the Samnites. In this almost hopeless danger one of the
+military tribunes, Publius Decius Mus, discovered a little hill above
+the enemy's camp, and asked leave to lead a small body of men to seize
+it, since he would be likely thus to draw off the Samnites, and while
+they were destroying him, as he fully expected, the Romans could get out
+of the valley. Hidden by the wood, he gained the hill, and there the
+Samnites saw him, to their great amazement; and while they were
+considering whether to attack him, the other Romans were able to march
+out of the valley. Finding he was not attacked, Decius set guards, and,
+when night came on, marched down again as quietly as possible to join
+the army, who were now on the other side of the Samnite camp. Through
+the midst of this he and his little camp went without alarm, until,
+about half-way across, one Roman struck his foot against a shield. The
+noise awoke the Samnites, but Decius caused his men to give a great
+shout, and this, in the darkness, so confused the enemy that they missed
+the little body of Romans, who safely gained their own camp. Decius cut
+short the thanks and joy of the consul by advising him to fall at once
+on the Samnite camp in its dismay, and this was done; the Samnites were
+entirely routed, 30,000 killed, and their camp taken. Decius received
+for his reward a hundred oxen, a white bull with gilded horns, and three
+crowns--one of gold for courage, one of oak for having saved the lives
+of his fellow-citizens, and one of grass for having taken the enemy's
+camp--while all his men were for life to receive a double allowance of
+corn. Decius offered up the white bull in sacrifice to Mars, and gave
+the oxen to the companions of his glory.
+
+Afterwards Valerius routed the Samnites again, and his troops brought in
+120 standards and 40,000 shields which they had picked up, having been
+thrown away by the enemy in their flight.
+
+Peace was made for the time; but the Latins, now in alliance with Rome,
+began to make war on the Samnites. They complained, and the Romans
+feeling bound to take their part, a great Latin war began. Manlius
+Torquatus and Decius Mus, the two greatest heroes of Rome, were consuls.
+As the Latins and Romans were alike in dress, arms, and language, in
+order to prevent taking friend for foe, strict orders were given that no
+one should attack a Latin without orders, or go out of his rank, on pain
+of death. A Latin champion came out boasting, as the two armies lay
+beneath Mount Vesuvius, then a fair vine-clad hill showing no flame.
+Young Manlius remembering his father's fame, darted out, fought hand to
+hand with the Latin, slew him, and brought home his spoils to his
+father's feet. He had forgotten that his father had only fought after
+permission was given. The elder Manlius received him with stern grief.
+He had broken the law of discipline, and he must die. His head was
+struck off amid the grief and anger of the army. The battle was bravely
+fought, but it went against the Romans at first. Then Decius,
+recollecting a vision which had declared that a consul must devote
+himself for his country, called on Valerius, the Pontifex Maximus, to
+dedicate him. He took off his armor, put on his purple toga, covered his
+head with a veil, and standing on a spear, repeated the words of
+consecration after Valerius, then mounted his horse and rode in among
+the Latins. They at first made way, but presently closed in and
+overpowered him with a shower of darts; and thus he gave for his country
+the life he had once offered for it.
+
+The victory was won, and was so followed up that the Latins were forced
+to yield to Rome. Some of the cities retained their own laws and
+magistrates, but others had Romans with their families settled in them,
+and were called colonies, while the Latin people themselves became Roman
+citizens in everything but the power of becoming magistrates or voting
+for them, being, in fact, very much what the earliest plebeians had been
+before they acquired any rights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE SAMNITE WARS.
+
+
+In the year 332, just when Alexander the Great was making his conquests
+in the East, his uncle Alexander, king of Epirus, brother to his mother
+Olympius, came to Italy, where there were so many Grecian citizens south
+of the Samnites that the foot of Italy was called Magna Gr�cia, or
+Greater Greece. He attacked the Samnites, and the Romans were not sorry
+to see them weakened, and made an alliance with him. He stayed in Italy
+about six years, and was then killed.
+
+To overthrow the Samnites was the great object of Rome at this time, and
+for this purpose they offered their protection and alliance to all the
+cities that stood in dread of that people. One of the cities was founded
+by men from the isle of Euboea, who called it Neapolis, or the New
+City, to distinguish it from the old town near at hand, which they
+called Pal�opolis, or the Old City. The elder city held out against the
+Romans, but was easily overpowered, while the new one submitted to Rome;
+but these southern people were very shallow and fickle, and little to be
+depended on, as they often changed sides between the Romans and
+Samnites. In the midst of the siege of Pal�opolis, the year of the
+consulate came to an end, but the Senate, while causing two consuls as
+usual to be elected, at home, would not recall Publilius Philo from the
+siege, and therefore appointed him proconsul there. This was in 326, and
+was the beginning of the custom of sending the ex-consul as proconsul to
+command the armies or govern the provinces at a distance from home.
+
+[Illustration: COMBAT BETWEEN A MIRMILLO AND A SAMNITE.]
+
+[Illustration: COMBAT BETWEEN A LIGHT-ARMED GLADIATOR AND A SAMNITE.]
+
+In 320, the consul falling sick, a dictator was appointed, Lucius
+Papirius Cursor, one of the most stern and severe men in Rome. He was
+obliged by some religious ceremony to return to Rome for a time, and he
+forbade his lieutenant, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, to venture a battle in
+his absence. But so good an opportunity offered that Fabius attacked the
+enemy, beat them, and killed 20,000 men. Then selfishly unwilling to
+have the spoils he had won carried in the dictator's triumph, he
+burnt them all. Papirius arrived in great anger, and sentenced him to
+death for his disobedience; but while the lictors were stripping him, he
+contrived to escape from their hands among the soldiers, who closed on
+him, so that he was able to get to Rome, where his father called the
+Senate together, and they showed themselves so resolved to save his life
+that Papirius was forced to pardon him, though not without reproaching
+the Romans for having fallen from the stern justice of Brutus and
+Manlius.
+
+Two years later the two consuls, Titus Veturius and Spurius Posthumius,
+were marching into Campania, when the Samnite commander, Pontius
+Herennius, sent forth people disguised as shepherds to entice them into
+a narrow mountain pass near the city of Candium, shut in by thick woods,
+leading into a hollow curved valley, with thick brushwood on all sides,
+and only one way out, which the Samnites blocked up with trunks of
+trees. As soon as the Romans were within this place the other end was
+blocked in the same way, and thus they were all closed up at the mercy
+of their enemies.
+
+What was to be done with them? asked the Samnites; and they went to
+consult old Herennius, the father of Pontius, the wisest man in the
+nation. "Open the way and let them all go free," he said.
+
+"What! without gaining any advantage?"
+
+"Then kill them all."
+
+He was asked to explain such extraordinary advice. He said that to
+release them generously would be to make them friends and allies for
+ever; but if the war was to go on, the best thing for Samnium would be
+to destroy such a number of enemies at a blow. But the Samnites could
+not resolve upon either plan; so they took a middle course, the worst of
+all, since it only made the Romans furious without weakening them. They
+were made to take off all their armor and lay down their weapons, and
+thus to pass out under the yoke, namely, three spears set up like a
+doorway. The consuls, after agreeing to a disgraceful peace, had to go
+first, wearing only their undermost garment, then all the rest, two and
+two, and if any one of them gave an angry look, he was immediately
+knocked down and killed. They went on in silence into Campania, where,
+when night came on, they all threw themselves, half-naked, silent, and
+hungry upon the grass. The people of Capua came out to help them, and
+brought them food and clothing, trying to do them all honor and comfort
+them, but they would neither look up nor speak. And thus they went on
+to Rome, where everybody had put on mourning, and all the ladies went
+without their jewels, and the shops in the Forum were closed. The
+unhappy men stole into their houses at night one by one, and the consuls
+would not resume their office, but two were appointed to serve instead
+for the rest of the year.
+
+[Illustration: ANCIENT ROME.]
+
+Revenge was all that was thought of, but the difficulty was the peace
+to which the consuls had sworn. Posthumius said that if it was disavowed
+by the Senate, he, who had been driven to make it, must be given back to
+the Samnites. So, with his hands tied, he was taken back to the Samnite
+camp by a herald and delivered over; but at that moment Posthumius gave
+the herald a kick, crying out, "I am now a Samnite, and have insulted
+you, a Roman herald. This is a just cause of war." Pontius and the
+Samnites were very angry, and they said it was an unworthy trick; but
+they did not prevent Posthumius from going safely back to the Romans,
+who considered him to have quite retrieved his honor.
+
+A battle was fought, in which Pontius and 7000 men were forced to lay
+down their arms and pass under the yoke in their turn. The struggle
+between these two fierce nations lasted altogether seventy years, and
+the Romans had many defeats. They had other wars at the same time. They
+never subdued Etruria, and in the battle of Sentinum, fought with the
+Gauls, the consul Decius Mus, devoted himself exactly as his father had
+done at Vesuvius, and by his death won the victory.
+
+The Samnite wars may be considered as ending in 290, when the chief
+general of Samnium, Pontius Telesimus, was made prisoner and put to
+death at Rome. The lands in the open country were quite subdued, but
+many Samnites still lived in the fastnesses of the Apennines in the
+south, which have ever since been the haunt of wild untamed men.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS.
+
+B.C. 280-271.
+
+
+In the Grecian History you remember that Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the
+townsman of Alexander the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This was
+the way it came about. The city of Tarentum was a Spartan colony at the
+head of the gulf that bears its name. It was as proud as its parent, but
+had lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as idle and fickle
+as the other places in that languid climate. The Tarentines first
+maltreated some Roman ships which put into their gulf, and then insulted
+the ambassador who was sent to complain. Then when the terrible Romans
+were found to be really coming to revenge their honor, the Tarentines
+took fright, and sent to beg Pyrrhus to come to their aid.
+
+He readily accepted the invitation, and coming to Italy with 28,000 men
+and twenty elephants, hoped to conquer the whole country; but he found
+the Tarentines not to be trusted, and soon weary of entertaining him,
+while they could not keep their promises of aid from the other Greeks of
+Italy.
+
+[Illustration: PYRRHUS.]
+
+The Romans marched against him, and there was a great battle on the
+banks of the river Siris, where the fighting was very hard, but when the
+elephants charged the Romans broke and fled, and were only saved by
+nightfall from being entirely destroyed. So great, however, had been
+Pyrrhus' loss that he said, "Such another victory, and I shall have to
+go back alone to Epirus."
+
+He thought he had better treat with the Romans, and sent his favorite
+counsellor Kineas to offer to make peace, provided the Romans would
+promise safety to his Italian allies, and presents were sent to the
+senators and their wives to induce them to listen favorably. People in
+ancient Greece expected such gifts to back a suit; but Kineas found that
+nobody in Rome would hear of being bribed, though many were not
+unwilling to make peace. Blind old Appius Claudius, who had often been
+consul, caused himself to be led into the Senate to oppose it, for it
+was hard to his pride to make peace as defeated men. Kineas was much
+struck with Rome, where he found a state of things like the best days of
+Greece, and, going back to his master, told him that the senate-house
+was like a temple, and those who sat there like an assembly of kings,
+and that he feared they were fighting with the Hydra of Lerna, for as
+soon as they had destroyed one Roman army another had sprung up in its
+place.
+
+However, the Romans wanted to treat about the prisoners Pyrrhus had
+taken, and they sent Caius Fabricius to the Greek camp for the purpose.
+Kineas reported him to be a man of no wealth, but esteemed as a good
+soldier and an honest man. Pyrrhus tried to make him take large
+presents, but nothing would Fabricius touch; and then, in the hope of
+alarming him, in the middle of a conversation the hangings of one side
+of the tent suddenly fell, and disclosed the biggest of all the
+elephants, who waved his trunk over Fabricius and trumpeted
+frightfully. The Roman quietly turned round and smiled as he said to the
+king, "I am no more moved by your gold than by your great beast."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN ORATOR.]
+
+At supper there was a conversation on Greek philosophy, of which the
+Romans as yet knew nothing. When the doctrine of Epicurus was mentioned,
+that man's life was given to be spent in the pursuit of joy, Fabricius
+greatly amused the company by crying out, "O Hercules! grant that the
+Greeks may be heartily of this mind so long as we have to fight with
+them."
+
+Pyrrhus even tried to persuade Fabricius to enter his service, but the
+answer was, "Sir. I advise you not; for if your people once tasted of my
+rule, they would all desire me to govern them instead of you." Pyrrhus
+consented to let the prisoners go home, but, if no peace were made, they
+were to return again as soon as the Saturnalia were over; and this was
+faithfully done. Fabricius was consul the next year, and thus received a
+letter from Pyrrhus' physician, offering for a reward to rid the Romans
+of his master by poison. The two consuls sent it to the king with the
+following letter:--"Caius Fabricius and Quintus �milius, consuls, to
+Pyrrhus, king, greeting. You choose your friends and foes badly. This
+letter will show that you make war with honest men and trust rogues and
+knaves. We tell you, not to win your favor, but lest your ruin might
+bring on the reproach of ending the war by treachery instead of force."
+
+Pyrrhus made enquiry, put the physician to death, and by way of
+acknowledgment released the captives, trying again to make peace; but
+the Romans would accept no terms save that he should give up the
+Tarentines and go back in the same ships. A battle was fought in the
+wood of Asculum. Decius Mus declared he would devote himself like his
+father and grandfather; but Pyrrhus heard of this, and sent word that he
+had given orders that Decius should not be killed, but taken alive and
+scourged; and this prevented him. The Romans were again forced back by
+the might of the elephants, but not till night fell on them. Pyrrhus had
+been wounded, and hosts of Greeks had fallen, among them many of
+Pyrrhus' chief friends.
+
+He then went to Sicily, on an invitation from the Greeks settled there,
+to defend them from the Carthaginians; but finding them as little
+satisfactory as the Italian Greeks, he suddenly came back to Tarentum.
+This time one of the consuls was Marcus Curius--called Dentatus, because
+he had been born with teeth in his mouth--a stout, plain old Roman, very
+stern, for when he levied troops against Pyrrhus, the first man who
+refused to serve was punished by having his property seized and sold. He
+then marched southward, and at Beneventum at length entirely defeated
+Pyrrhus, and took four of his elephants. Pyrrhus was obliged to return
+to Epirus, and the Roman steadiness had won the day after nine years.
+
+Dentatus had the grandest triumph that had ever been known at Rome,
+with the elephants walking in the procession, the first that the Romans
+had ever seen. All the spoil was given up to the commonwealth; and when,
+some time after, it was asserted that he had taken some for himself, it
+turned out that he had only kept one old wooden vessel, which he used in
+sacrificing to the gods.
+
+The Greeks of Southern Italy had behaved very ill to Pyrrhus and turned
+against him. The Romans found them so fickle and troublesome that they
+were all reduced in one little war after another. The Tarentines had to
+surrender and lose their walls and their fleet, and so had the people of
+Sybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, for they were so lazy
+that they were said to have killed all their crowing-birds for waking
+them too early in the morning. All the peninsula of Italy now belonged
+to Rome, and great roads were made of paved stones connecting them with
+it, many of which remain to this day, even the first of all, called the
+Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, which was made under the direction of
+the censor Appius Claudius, during the Samnite war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.
+
+264-240.
+
+
+We are now come to the time when Rome became mixed up in wars with
+nations beyond Italy. There was a great settlement of the Phoenicians,
+the merchants of the old world, at Carthage, on the northern coast of
+Africa, the same place at which Virgil afterwards described �neas as
+spending so much time. Dido, the queen who was said to have founded
+Carthage when fleeing from her wicked brother-in-law at Tyre, is thought
+to have been an old goddess, and the religion and manners of the
+Carthaginians were thoroughly Phoenician, or, as the Romans called them,
+Punic. They had no king, but a Senate, and therewith rulers called by
+the name that is translated as judges in the Bible; and they did not
+love war, only trade, and spread out their settlements for this purpose
+all over the coast of the Mediterranean, from Spain to the Black Sea,
+wherever a country had mines, wool, dyes, spices, or men to trade with;
+and their sailors were the boldest to be found anywhere, and were the
+only ones who had passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, namely, the
+Straits of Gibraltar, in the Atlantic Ocean. They built handsome cities,
+and country houses with farms and gardens round them, and had all tokens
+of wealth and luxury--ivory, jewels, and spices from India, pearls from
+the Persian Gulf, gold from Spain, silver from the Balearic Isles, tin
+from the Scilly Isles, amber from the Baltic; and they had forts to
+protect their settlements. They generally hired the men of the
+countries, where they settled, to fight their battles, sometimes under
+hired Greek captains, but often under generals of their own.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN SHIP.]
+
+The first place where they did not have everything their own way was
+Sicily. The old inhabitants of the island were called Sicels, a rough
+people; but besides these there were a great number of Greek
+settlements, also of Carthaginian ones, and these two hated one another.
+The Carthaginians tried to overthrow the Greeks, and Pyrrhus, by
+coming to help his countrymen, only made them more bitter against one
+another. When he went away he exclaimed, "What an arena we leave for the
+Romans and Carthaginians to contend upon!" so sure was he that these two
+great nations must soon fight out the struggle for power.
+
+The beginning of the struggle was, however, brought on by another cause.
+Messina, the place founded long ago by the brave exiles of Messene, when
+the Spartans had conquered their state, had been seized by a troop of
+Mamertines, fierce Italians from Mamertum; and these, on being
+threatened by Xiero, king of Syracuse, sent to offer to become subjects
+to the Romans, thus giving them the command of the port which secured
+the entrance of the island. The Senate had great scruples about
+accepting the offer, and supporting a set of mere robbers; but the two
+consuls and all the people could not withstand the temptation, and it
+was resolved to assist the Mamertines. Thus began what was called the
+First Punic War. The difficulty was, however, want of ships. The Romans
+had none of their own, and though they collected a few from their Greek
+allies in Italy, it was not in time to prevent some of the Mamertines
+from surrendering the citadel to Xanno, the Carthaginian general, who
+thought himself secure, and came down to treat with the Roman tribune
+Claudius, haughtily bidding the Romans no more to try to meddle with the
+sea, for they should not be allowed so much as to wash their hands in
+it. Claudius, angered at this, treacherously laid hands on Xanno, and he
+agreed to give up the castle on being set free; but he had better have
+remained a prisoner, for the Carthaginians punished him with
+crucifixion, and besieged Messina, but in vain.
+
+The Romans felt that a fleet was necessary, and set to work to build war
+galleys on the pattern of a Carthaginian one which had been wrecked upon
+their coast. While a hundred ships were building, oarsmen were trained
+to row on dry land, and in two months the fleet put to sea. Knowing that
+there was no chance of being able to fight according to the regular
+rules of running the beaks of their galleys into the sides of those of
+their enemies, they devised new plans of letting heavy weights descend
+on the ships of the opposite fleet, and then of letting drawbridges down
+by which to board them. The Carthaginians, surprised and dismayed, when
+thus attacked off Myl� by the consul Duilius, were beaten and chased to
+Sardinia, where their unhappy commander was nailed to a cross by his own
+soldiers; while Duilius not only received in Rome a grand triumph for
+his first naval victory, but it was decreed that he should never go out
+into the city at night without a procession of torch-bearers.
+
+The Romans now made up their minds to send an expedition to attack the
+Carthaginian power not only in Sicily but in Africa, and this was placed
+under the command of a sturdy plebeian consul, Marcus Attilius Regulus.
+He fought a great battle with the Carthaginian fleet on his way, and he
+had even more difficulty with his troops, who greatly dreaded the
+landing in Africa as a place of unknown terror. He landed, however, at
+some distance from the city, and did not at once advance on it. When he
+did, according to the story current at Rome, he encountered on the banks
+of the River Bagrada an enormous serpent, whose poisonous breath killed
+all who approached it, and on whose scales darts had no effect. At last
+the machines for throwing huge stones against city walls were used
+against it; its backbone was broken, and it was at last killed, and its
+skin sent to Rome.
+
+The Romans met other enemies, whom they defeated, and gained much
+plunder. The Senate, understanding that the Carthaginians were cooped up
+within their walls, recalled half the army. Regulus wished much to
+return, as the slave who tilled his little farm had run away with his
+plough, and his wife was in distress; but he was so valuable that he
+could not be recalled, and he remained and soon took Tunis. The
+Carthaginians tried to win their gods' favor back by offering horrid
+human sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and then hired a Spartan general
+named Xanthippus, who defeated the Romans, chiefly by means of the
+elephants, and made Regulus prisoner. The Romans, who hated the
+Carthaginians so much as to believe them capable of any wickedness,
+declared that in their jealousy of Xanthippus' victory, they sent him
+home to Greece in a vessel so arranged as to founder at sea.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN ORDER OF BATTLE.]
+
+However, the Romans, after several disasters in Sicily, gained a great
+victory near Panormus, capturing one hundred elephants, which were
+brought to Rome to be hunted by the people that they might lose their
+fear of them. The Carthaginians were weakened enough to desire peace,
+and they sent Regulus to propose it, making him swear to return if he
+did not succeed. He came to the outskirts of the city, but would not
+enter. He said he was no Roman proconsul, but the slave of Carthage.
+However, the Senate came out to hear him, and he gave the message, but
+added that the Romans ought not to accept these terms, but to stand
+out for much better ones, giving such reasons that the whole people was
+persuaded. He was entreated to remain and not meet the angry men of
+Carthage; but nothing would persuade him to break his word, and he went
+back. The Romans told dreadful stories of the treatment he met with--how
+his eyelids were cut off and he was put in the sunshine, and at last he
+was nailed up in a barrel lined with spikes and rolled down hill. Some
+say that this was mere report, and that Carthaginian prisoners at Rome
+were as savagely treated; but at any rate the constancy of Regulus has
+always been a proverb.
+
+The war went on, and one of the proud Claudius family was in command at
+Trepanum, in Sicily, when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before a
+battle the Romans always consulted the sacred fowls that were carried
+with the army. Claudius was told that their augury was against a
+battle--they would not eat. "Then let them drink," he cried, and threw
+them into the sea. His impiety, as all felt it, was punished by an utter
+defeat, and he killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war went on by
+land and sea all over and around Sicily, till at the end of twenty-four
+years peace was made, just after another great sea-fight, in which Rome
+had the victory. She made the Carthaginians give up all they held in
+Sicily, restore their prisoners, make a large payment, and altogether
+humble their claims; thus beginning a most bitter hatred towards the
+conquerors, who as greatly hated and despised them. Thus ended the First
+Punic War.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GAUL.
+
+240-219.
+
+
+After the end of the Punic war, Carthage fell into trouble with her
+hired soldiers, and did not interfere with the Romans for a long time,
+while they went on to arrange the government of Sicily into what they
+called a province, which was ruled by a propr�tor for a year after his
+magistracy at home. The Greek kingdom of Syracuse indeed still remained
+as an ally of Rome, and Messina and a few other cities were allowed to
+choose their own magistrates and govern themselves.
+
+Soon after, Sardinia and Corsica were given up to the Romans by the
+hired armies of the Carthaginians, and as the natives fought hard
+against Rome, when they were conquered they were for the most part sold
+as slaves. These two islands likewise had a propr�tor.
+
+The Romans now had all the peninsula south of themselves, and as far
+north as Ariminim (now shortened into Rimini), but all beyond belonged
+to the Gauls--the Cisalpine Gauls, or Gauls on this side the Alps, as
+the Romans called them; while those on the other side were called
+Transalpine Gauls, or Gauls across the Alps. These northern Gauls were
+gathering again for an inroad on the south, and in the midst of the
+rumors of this danger there was a great thunderstorm at Rome, and the
+Capitol was struck by lightning. The Sybilline books were searched into
+to see what this might mean, and a warning was found, "Beware of the
+Gauls." Moreover, there was a saying that the Greeks and Gauls should
+one day enjoy the Forum; but the Romans fancied they could satisfy this
+prophecy by burying a man and woman of each nation, slaves, in the
+middle of the Forum, and then they prepared to attack the Gauls in their
+own country before the inroad could be made. There was a great deal of
+hard fighting, lasting for years; and in the course of it the consul,
+Caius Flaminius, began the great road which has since been called after
+him the Flaminian Way, and was the great northern road from Rome, as
+the Appian Way was the southern.
+
+[Illustration: THE WOUNDED GAUL.]
+
+The great hero of the war was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had already
+made himself known for his dauntless courage. As consul, he fought a
+desperate battle on the banks of the Po with the Gauls of both sides the
+Alps, and himself killed their king or chief, Viridomar. He brought the
+spoils to Rome, and hung them in the Temple of Jupiter. It was only the
+third time in the history of Rome that such a thing had been done.
+Cisalpine Gaul was thus subdued, and another road was made to secure
+it; while in the short peace that followed the gates of the Temple of
+Janus were shut, having stood open ever since the reign of Numa.
+
+The Romans were beginning to make their worship the same with that of
+the Greeks. They sent offerings to Greek temples, said that their old
+gods were the same as those of the Greeks, only under different names,
+and sent an embassy to Epidaurus to ask for a statue of Esculapius, the
+god of medicine and son of Phoebus Apollo. The emblem of Esculapius was
+a serpent, and tame serpents were kept about his temple at Epidaurus.
+One of these glided into the Roman galley that had come for the statue,
+and it was treated with great respect by all the crew until they sailed
+up the Tiber, when it made its way out of the vessel and swam to the
+island which had been formed by the settling of the mud round the heap
+of corn that had been thrown into the river when Porsena wasted the
+country. This was supposed to mean that the god himself took possession
+of the place, and a splendid temple there rose in his honor.
+
+Another imitation of the Greeks which came into fashion at this time had
+a sad effect on the Romans. The old funerals in Greek poems had ended
+by games and struggles between swordsmen. Two brothers of the Brutus
+family first showed off such a game at their father's funeral, and it
+became a regular custom, not only at funerals, but whenever there was
+need to entertain the people, to show off fights of swordsmen. The
+soldier captives from conquered nations were used in this way; and some
+persons kept schools of slaves, who were trained for these fights and
+called gladiators. The battle was a real one, with sharp weapons, for
+life or death; and when a man was struck down, he was allowed to live or
+sentenced to death according as the spectators turned down or turned up
+their thumbs. The Romans fancied that the sight trained them to be
+brave, and to despise death and wounds; but the truth was that it only
+made them hard-hearted, and taught them to despise other people's
+pain--a very different thing from despising their own.
+
+Another thing that did great harm was the making it lawful for a man to
+put away a wife who had no children. This ended by making the Romans
+much less careful to have one good wife, and the Roman ladies became
+much less noble and excellent than they had been in the good old days.
+
+[Illustration: HANNIBAL'S VOW.]
+
+In the meantime, the Carthaginians, having lost the three islands,
+began to spread their settlements further in Spain, where their chief
+colony was New Carthage, or, as we call it, Carthagena. The mountains
+were full of gold mines, and the Iberians, the nation who held them,
+were brave and warlike, so that there was much fighting to train up
+fresh armies. Hamilcar, the chief general in command there, had four
+sons, whom he said were lion whelps being bred up against Rome. He took
+them with him to Spain, and at a great sacrifice for the success of his
+arms the youngest and most promising, Hannibal, a boy of nine years old,
+was made to lay his hand on the altar of Baal and take an oath that he
+would always be the enemy of the Romans. Hamilcar was killed in battle,
+but Hannibal grew up to be all that he had hoped, and at twenty-six was
+in command of the army. He threatened the Iberians of Saguntum, who sent
+to ask help from Rome. A message was sent to him to forbid him to
+disturb the ally of Rome; but he had made up his mind for war, and never
+even asked the Senate of Carthage what was to be done, but went on with
+the siege of Saguntum. Rome was busy with a war in Illyria, and could
+send no help, and the Saguntines held out with the greatest bravery and
+constancy, month after month, till they were all on the point of
+starvation, then kindled a great fire, slew all their wives and
+children, and let Hannibal win nothing but a pile of smoking ruins.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE PYRENEES.]
+
+Again the Romans sent to Carthage to complain, but the Senate there had
+made up their minds that war there must be, and that it was a good time
+when Rome had a war in Illyria on her hands, and Cisalpine Gaul hardly
+subdued; and they had such a general as Hannibal, though they did not
+know what a wonderful scheme he had in his mind, namely, to make his
+way by land from Spain to Italy, gaining the help of the Gauls, and
+stirring up all those nations of Italy who had fought so long against
+Rome. His march, which marks the beginning of the Second Punic War,
+started from the banks of the Ebro in the beginning of the summer of
+219. His army was 20,000 foot and 12,000 horse, partly Carthaginian,
+partly Gaul and Iberian. The horsemen were Moorish, and he had
+thirty-seven elephants. He left his brother Hasdrubal with 10,000 men at
+the foot of the Pyrenees and pushed on, but he could not reach the Alps
+before the late autumn, and his passage is one of the greatest wonders
+of history. Roads there were none, and he had to force his way up the
+passes of the Little St. Bernard through snow and ice, terrible to the
+men and animals of Africa, and fighting all the way, so that men and
+horses perished in great numbers, and only seven of the elephants were
+left when he at length descended into the plains of Northern Italy,
+where he hoped the Cisalpine Gauls would welcome him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.
+
+219.
+
+
+When the Romans heard that Hannibal had passed the Pyrenees, they had
+two armies on foot, one under Publius Cornelius Scipio, which was to go
+to Spain, and the other under Tiberius Sempronius Longus, to attack
+Africa. They changed their plan, and kept Sempronius to defend Italy,
+while Scipio went by sea to Marsala, a Greek colony in Gaul, to try to
+stop Hannibal at the Rhone; but he was too late, and therefore, sending
+on most of his army to Spain, he came back himself with his choicest
+troops. With these he tried to stop the enemy from crossing the river
+Ticinus, but he was defeated and so badly wounded that his life was only
+saved by the bravery of his son, who led him out of the battle.
+
+[Illustration: MEETING OF HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO AT ZAMA.]
+
+Before he was able to join the army again, Sempronius had fought
+another battle with Hannibal on the banks of the Trebia and suffered a
+terrible defeat. But winter now came on, and the Carthaginians found it
+very hard to bear in the marshes of the Arno. Hannibal himself was so
+ill that he only owed his life to the last of his elephants, which
+carried him safely through when he was almost blind, and in the end he
+lost an eye. In the spring he went on ravaging the country in hopes to
+make the two new consuls, Flaminius and Servilius, fight with him, but
+they were too cautious, until at last Flaminius attacked him in a heavy
+fog on the shore of Lake Trasimenus. It is said that an earthquake shook
+the ground, and that the eager warriors never perceived it; but again
+the Romans lost, Flaminius was killed, and there was a dreadful
+slaughter, for Hannibal had sworn to give no quarter to a Roman. The
+only thing that was hopeful for Rome was that neither Gauls, Etruscans,
+nor Italians showed any desire to rise in favor of Hannibal; and though
+he was now very near Rome, he durst not besiege it without the help of
+the people around to bring him supplies, so he only marched southwards,
+hoping to gain the support of the Greek colonies. A dictator was
+appointed, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who saw that, by strengthening all
+the garrisons in the towns and cutting off all provisions, he should
+wear the enemy out at last. As he always put off a battle, he was called
+Cunctator, or the Delayer; but at last he had the Carthaginians enclosed
+as in a trap in the valley of the river Vulturnus, and hoped to cut them
+off, posting men in ambush to fall on them on their morning's march.
+Hannibal guessed that this must be the plan; and at night he had the
+cattle in the camp collected, fastened torches to their horns, and drove
+them up the hills. The Romans, fancying themselves surrounded by the
+enemy, came out of their hiding-places to fall back on the camp, and
+Hannibal and his army safely escaped. This mischance made the Romans
+weary of the Delayer's policy, and when the year was out, and two
+consuls came in, though one of them, Lucius �milius Paulus, would have
+gone on in the same cautious plan of starving Hannibal out without a
+battle, the other, Caius Terentius Varro, who commanded on alternate
+days with him, was determined on a battle. Hannibal so contrived that it
+was fought on the plain of Cann�, where there was plenty of space to use
+his Moorish horse. It was Varro's day of command, and he dashed at the
+centre of the enemy; Hannibal opened a space for him, then closed in on
+both sides with his terrible horse, and made a regular slaughter of the
+Romans. The last time that the consul �milius was seen was by a tribune
+named Lentulus, who found him sitting on a stone faint and bleeding, and
+would have given him his own horse to escape, but �milius answered that
+he had no mind to have to accuse his comrade of rashness, and had rather
+die. A troop of enemies coming up, Lentulus rode off, and looking back,
+saw his consul fall, pierced with darts. So many Romans had been killed,
+that Hannibal sent to Carthage a basket containing 10,000 of the gold
+rings worn by the knights.
+
+[Illustration: ARCHIMEDES.]
+
+Hannibal was only five days' march beyond Rome, and his officers wanted
+him to turn back and attack it in the first shock of the defeat, but he
+could not expect to succeed without more aid from home, and he wanted to
+win over the Greek cities of the south; so he wintered in Campania,
+waiting for the fresh troops he expected from Africa or from Spain,
+where his brother Mago was preparing an army. But the Carthaginians did
+not care about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, and sent no help; and
+Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, with a Roman army in Spain,
+were watching Mago and preventing him from marching, until at last he
+gave them battle and defeated and killed them both. But he was not
+allowed to go to Italy to his brother, who, in the meantime, found his
+army so unstrung and ill-disciplined in the delightful but languid
+Campania, that the Romans declared the luxuries of Capua were their best
+allies. He stayed in the south, however, trying to gain the alliance of
+the king of Macedon, and stirring up Syracuse to revolt. Marcellus, who
+was consul for the third time, was sent to reduce the city, which made a
+famous defence, for it contained Archimedes, the greatest mathematician
+of his time, who devised wonderful machines for crushing the besiegers
+in unexpected ways; but at last Marcellus found a weak part of the walls
+and surprised the citizens. He had given orders that Archimedes should
+be saved, but a soldier broke into the philosopher's room without
+knowing him, and found him so intent on his study that he had never
+heard the storming of the city. The man brandished his sword. "Only
+wait," muttered Archimedes, "till I have found out my problem;" but the
+man, not understanding him, killed him.
+
+Hannibal remained in Italy, maintaining himself there with wonderful
+skill, though with none of the hopes with which he had set out. His
+brother Hasdrubal did succeed in leaving Spain with an army to help him,
+but was met on the river Metaurus by Tiberius Claudius Nero, beaten, and
+slain. His head was cut off by Nero's order, and thrown into Hannibal's
+camp to give tidings of his fate.
+
+Young Scipio, meantime, had been sent to Spain, where he gained great
+advantages, winning the friendship of the Iberians, and gaining town
+after town till Mago had little left but Gades and the extreme south.
+Scipio was one of the noblest of the Romans, brave, pious, and what was
+more unusual, of such sweet and winning temper, that it was said of him
+that wherever he went he might have been a king.
+
+On returning to Rome, he showed the Senate that the best way to get
+Hannibal out of Italy was to attack Africa. Cautious old Fabius doubted,
+but Scipio was sent to Sicily, where he made an alliance with
+Massinissa, the Moorish king in Africa; and, obtaining leave to carry
+out his plan, he was sent thither, and so alarmed Carthage, that
+Hannibal was recalled to defend his own country, where he had not been
+since he was a child. A great battle took place at Zama between him and
+Hannibal, in which Scipio was the conqueror, and the loss of Carthage
+was so terrible that the Romans were ready to have marched in on her and
+made her their subject, but Scipio persuaded them to be forbearing.
+Carthage was to pay an immense tribute, and swear never to make war on
+any ally of Rome. And thus ended the Second Punic War, in the year 201.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE FIRST EASTERN WAR.
+
+215-183.
+
+
+Scipio remained in Africa till he had arranged matters and won such a
+claim to Massinissa's gratitude that this king of Numidia was sure to
+watch over the interests of Rome. Scipio then returned home, and entered
+Rome with a grand triumph, all the nobler for himself that he did not
+lead Hannibal in his chains. He had been too generous to demand that so
+brave an enemy should be delivered up to him. He received the surname of
+Africanus, and was one of the most respected and beloved of Romans. He
+was the first who began to take up Greek learning and culture, and to
+exchange the old Roman ruggedness for the graces of philosophy and
+poetry. Indeed the Romans were beginning to have much to do with the
+Greeks, and the war they entered upon now was the first for the sake of
+spreading their own power. All the former ones had been in self-defence,
+and the new one did in fact spring out of the Punic war, for the
+Carthaginians had tried to persuade Philip, king of Macedon, to follow
+in the track of Pyrrhus, and come and help Hannibal in Southern Italy.
+The Romans had kept him off by stirring up the robber �tolians against
+him; and when he began to punish these wild neighbors, the Romans
+leagued themselves with the old Greek cities which Macedon oppressed,
+and a great war took place.
+
+Titus Quinctius Flaminius commanded in Greece for four years, first as
+consul and then as proconsul. His crowning victory was at Cynocephal�,
+or the Dogshead Rocks, where he so broke the strength of Macedon that at
+the Isthmian games he proclaimed the deliverance of Greece, and in their
+joy the people crowded round him with crowns and garlands, and shouted
+so loud that birds in the air were said to have dropped down at the
+sound.
+
+Macedon had cities in Asia Minor, and the king of Syria's enemy,
+Antiochus the Great, hoped to master them, and even to conquer Greece by
+the help of Hannibal, who had found himself unable to live in Carthage
+after his defeat, and was wandering about to give his services to any
+one who was a foe of Rome.
+
+As Rome took the part of Philip, as her subject and ally, there was soon
+full scope for his efforts; but the Syrians were such wretched troops
+that even Hannibal could do nothing with them, and the king himself
+would not attend to his advice, but wasted his time in pleasure in the
+isle of Euboea. So the consul Acilius first beat them at Thermopyl�, and
+then, on Lucius Cornelius Scipio being sent to conduct the war, his
+great brother Africanus volunteered to go with him as his lieutenant,
+and together they followed Antiochus into Asia Minor, and gained such
+advantages that the Syrian was obliged to sue for peace. The Romans
+replied by requiring of him to give up all Asia Minor as far as Mount
+Tarsus, and in despair he risked a battle in Magnesia, and met with a
+total defeat; 80,000 Greeks and Syrians being overthrown by 50,000
+Romans. Neither Africanus nor Hannibal were present in this battle,
+since the first was ill, and the second was besieged in a city in
+Pamphylia; but while terms of peace were being made, the two are said
+have met on friendly terms, and Scipio asked Hannibal whom he thought
+the greatest of generals. "Alexander," was the answer. "Whom the next
+greatest?" "Pyrrhus." "Whom do you rank as the third?" "Myself," said
+Hannibal. "But if you had beaten me?" asked Scipio. "Then I would have
+placed myself before Alexander."
+
+[Illustration: HANNIBAL]
+
+The Romans insisted that Hannibal should be dismissed by Antiochus,
+though Scipio declared that this was ungenerous; but they dreaded his
+never-ceasing enmity; and when he took refuge with the king of Bothnia,
+they still required that he should be given up or driven a way. On this,
+Hannibal, worn-out and disappointed, put an end to his own life by
+poison, saying he would rid the Romans of their fear of an old man.
+
+The provinces taken from Antiochus were given to Eumenes, king of
+Pergamus, who was to reign over them as tributary to the Romans. Lucius
+Scipio received the surname of Asiaticus, and the two brothers returned
+to Rome; but they had been too generous and merciful to the conquered to
+suit the grasping spirit that had begun to prevail at Rome, and directly
+after his triumph Lucius was accused of having taken to himself an undue
+share of the spoil. His brother was too indignant at the shameful
+accusation to think of letting him justify himself, but tore up his
+accounts in the face of the people. The tribune, N�vius, thereupon
+spitefully called upon him to give an account of the spoil of Carthage
+taken twenty years before. The only reply he gave was to exclaim, "This
+is the day of the victory of Zama. Let us give thanks to the gods for
+it;" and he led all that was noble and good in Rome with him to the
+temple of Jupiter and offered the anniversary sacrifice. No one durst
+say another word against him or his brother; but he did not choose to
+remain among the citizens who had thus insulted him, but went away to
+his estate at Liternum, and when he died, desired to be buried there,
+saying that he would not even leave his bones to his ungrateful country.
+The Cornelian family was the only one among the higher Romans who buried
+instead of burning their dead. He left no son, only a daughter, who was
+married to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a brave officer who was among
+those who were sent to finish reducing Spain. It was a long, terrible
+war, fought city by city, inch by inch; but Gracchus is said to have
+taken no less than three hundred fortresses. But he was a milder
+conqueror than some of the Romans, and tried to tame and civilize the
+wild races instead of treating them with the terrible severity shown by
+Marcus Porcius Cato, the sternest of all old Romans. However, by the
+year 178 Spain had been reduced to obedience, and the cities and the
+coast were in good order, though the mountains harbored fierce tribes
+always ready for revolt.
+
+Gracchus died early, and Cornelia, his widow, devoted herself to the
+cause of his three children, refusing to be married again, which was
+very uncommon in a Roman lady. When a lady asked her to show her her
+ornaments, she called her two boys, Tiberius and Caius, and their sister
+Sempronia, and said, "These are my jewels;" and when she was
+complimented on being the daughter of Africanus, she said that the
+honor she should care more for was the being called "the mother of the
+Gracchi."
+
+It was not, however, one of her sons that was chosen to carry on their
+grandfather's name and the sacrifices of the Cornelian family. Probably
+Caius was not born when Scipio died, for his choice had been the second
+son of his sister and of Lucius �milius Paulus (son of him who died at
+Cann�.) This child being adopted by his uncle, was called Publius
+Cornelius Scipio �milianus, and when he grew up was to marry his cousin
+Sempronia.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE CONQUEST OF GREECE, CORINTH, AND CARTHAGE.
+
+179--145.
+
+
+It was a great change when Rome, which to the Greeks of Pyrrhus' time
+had seemed so rude and simple, was thought such a school of policy that
+Greek and half-Greek kings sent their sons to be educated there, partly
+as hostages for their own peaceableness, and partly to learn the spirit
+of Roman rule. The first king who did this was Philip of Macedon, who
+sent his son Demetrius to be brought up at Rome; but when he came back,
+his father and brother were jealous of him, and he was soon put to
+death.
+
+When his brother Perseus came to the throne, there was hatred between
+him and the Romans, and ere long he was accused of making war on their
+allies. He offered to make peace, but they replied that they would hear
+nothing till he had laid down his arms, and this he would not do, so
+that Lucius �milius Paulus (the brother-in-law of Scipio) was sent to
+reduce him. As �milius came into his own house after receiving the
+appointment, he met his little daughter crying, and when he asked her
+what was the matter, she answered, "Oh, father, Perseus is dead!" She
+meant her little dog, but he kissed her and thanked her for the good
+omen. He overran Macedon, and gained the great battle of Pydna, after
+which Perseus was obliged to give himself up into the hands of the
+Romans, begging, however, not to be made to walk in �milius' triumph.
+The general answered that he might obtain that favor from himself,
+meaning that he could die by his own hand; but Perseus did not take the
+hint, which seems to us far more shocking than it did to a Roman; he did
+walk in the triumph, and died a few years after in Italy. �milius' two
+sons were with him throughout this campaign, though still boys under
+Polybius, their Achaian tutor. Macedon was divided into four provinces,
+and became entirely subject to Rome.
+
+[Illustration: CORINTH.]
+
+The Greeks of the Achaian League began to have quarrels among
+themselves, and when the Romans interfered a fierce spirit broke out,
+and they wanted to have their old freedom, forgetting how entirely
+unable they were to stand against the power of the Romans. Caius
+C�cilius Metellus, a man of one of the best and most gracious Roman
+families, was patient with them and did his best to pacify them, being
+most unwilling to ruin the noble old historical cities; but these
+foolish Greeks fancied that his kindness showed weakness, and forced on
+the war, sending a troop to guard the pass of Thermopyl�, but they were
+swept away. Unfortunately, Metellus had to go out of office, and Lucius
+Mummius, a fierce, rude, and ignorant soldier, came in his stead to
+complete the conquest. Corinth was taken, utterly ruined and plundered
+throughout, and a huge amount of treasure was sent to Rome, as well as
+pictures and statues famed all over the world. Mummius was very much
+laughed at for having been told they must be carried in his triumph; and
+yet, not understanding their beauty, he told the sailors to whose charge
+they were given, that if they were lost, new ones must be supplied.
+However, he was an honest man, who did not help himself out of the
+plunder, as far too many were doing. After that, Achaia was made a Roman
+province.
+
+At this time the third and last Punic war was going on. The old Moorish
+king, Massinissa, had been continually tormenting Carthage ever since
+she had been weak, and declaring that Phoenician strangers had no
+business in Africa. The Carthaginians, who had no means of defending
+themselves, complained; but the Romans would not listen, hoping,
+perhaps, that they would be goaded at last into attacking the Moor, and
+thus giving a pretext for a war. Old Marcus Porcius Cato, who was sent
+on a message to Carthage, came back declaring that it was not safe to
+let so mighty a city of enemies stand so near. He brought back a branch
+of figs fresh and good, which he showed the Senate in proof of how near
+she was, and ended each sentence with saying, "_Delenda est Carthago_"
+(Carthage is to be wiped out). He died that same year at ninety years
+old, having spent most of his life in making a staunch resistance to the
+easy and luxurious fashions that were coming in with wealth and
+refinement. One of his sayings always deserves to be remembered. When he
+was opposing a law giving permission to the ladies to wear gold and
+purple, he said they would all be vying with one another, and that the
+poor would be ashamed of not making as good an appearance as the rich.
+"And," said he, "she who blushes for doing what she ought, will soon
+cease to blush for doing what she ought not."
+
+One wonders he did not see that to have no enemy near at hand to guard
+against was the very worst thing for the hardy, plain old ways he was so
+anxious to keep up. However, Carthage was to be wiped out, and Scipio
+�milianus was sent to do the terrible work. He defeated Hasdrubal, the
+last of the Carthaginian generals, and took the citadel of Byrsa; but
+though all hope was over, the city held out in utter desperation.
+Weapons were forged out of household implements, even out of gold and
+silver, and the women twisted their long hair into bow-strings; and when
+the walls were stormed, they fought from street to street and house to
+house, so that the Romans gained little but ruins and dead bodies.
+Carthage and Corinth fell on the same day of the year 179.
+
+Part of Spain still had to be subdued, and Scipio �milianus was sent
+thither. The city of Numantia, with only 5000 inhabitants, endured one
+of those long, hopeless sieges for which Spanish cities have in all
+times been remarkable, and was only taken at last when almost every
+citizen had perished.
+
+At the same time, Attalus, king of Pergamus in Asia Minor, being the
+last of his race, bequeathed his dominions to the Romans, and thus gave
+them their first solid footing there.
+
+All this was altering Roman manners much. Weak as the Greeks were, their
+old doings of every kind were still the admiration of every one, and the
+Romans, who had always been rough, straightforward doers, began to wish
+to learn of them to think. All the wealthier families had Greeks for
+tutors for their sons, and expected them to talk and write the language,
+and study the philosophy and poetry till they should be as familiar with
+it as if they were Greeks themselves. Unluckily, the Greeks themselves
+had fallen from their earnestness and greatness, so that there was not
+much to be learnt of them now but vain deceit and bad taste.
+
+Rich Romans, too, began to get most absurdly luxurious. They had
+splendid villas on the Italian hill-sides, where they went to spend the
+summer when Rome was unhealthy, and where they had beautiful gardens,
+with courts paved with mosaic, and fish-ponds for the pet fish for which
+many had a passion. One man was laughed at for having shed tears when
+his favorite fish died, and he retorted by saying that it was more than
+his accuser had done for his wife.
+
+Their feasts were as luxurious as they could make them, in spite of laws
+to keep them within bounds. Dishes of nightingales' tongues, of fatted
+dormice, and even of snails, were among their food: and sometimes a
+stream was made to flow along the table, containing the living companion
+of the mullet which served as part of the meal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE GRACCHI.
+
+137-122.
+
+
+Young Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the eldest of Cornelia's jewels, was
+sent in the year 137 to join the Roman army in Spain. As he went through
+Etruria, which, as every one knew, had been a thickly peopled, fertile
+country in old times, he was shocked to see its dreariness and
+desolation. Instead of farms and vineyards, there were great bare spaces
+of land, where sheep, kids, or goats were feeding. These vast tracts
+belonged to Romans, who kept slaves to attend to the flocks; while all
+the corn that was used in Rome came from Sicily or Africa, and the
+poorer Romans lived in the city itself--idle men, chiefly trusting to
+distributions of corn, and unable to work for themselves because they
+had no ground to till; and as to trades and handicrafts, the rich men
+had everything they wanted made in their own houses by their slaves.
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIA AND HER SONS.]
+
+No wonder the Romans were losing their old character. This was the very
+thing that the Licinian law had been intended to prevent, by forbidding
+any citizen to have more than a certain quantity of land, and giving the
+state the power of resuming it. The law was still there, but it had
+been disused and forgotten; estates had been gathered into the hands of
+families and handed down, till now, though there were 400,000 citizens,
+only 2,000 were men of property.
+
+While Tiberius was serving in Spain, he decided on his plan. As his
+family was plebeian, he could be a tribune of the people, and as soon as
+he came home he stood and was elected. Then he proposed reviving the
+Licinian law, that nobody should have more than 500 acres, and that the
+rest should be divided among those who had nothing, leaving, however, a
+larger portion to those who had many children.
+
+There was, of course, a terrible uproar; the populace clamoring for
+their rights, and the rich trying to stop the measure. They bribed one
+of the other tribunes to forbid it; but there was a fight, in which
+Tiberius prevailed, and he and his young brother Caius, and his
+father-in-law Appius Claudius, were appointed as triumvers to see the
+law carried out. Then the rich men followed their old plan of spreading
+reports among the people that Tiberius wanted to make himself a king,
+and had accepted a crown and purple robe from some foreign envoy. When
+his year of office was coming to an end, he sought to be elected tribune
+again, but the patricians said it was against the law. There was a
+great tumult, in the course of which he put his hand to his head, either
+to guard it from a blow or to beckon his friends. "He demands the
+diadem," shouted his enemies, and there was a great struggle, in which
+three hundred people were killed. Tiberius tried to take refuge in the
+Temple of Jupiter, but the doors were closed against him; he stumbled,
+was knocked down with a club, and killed.
+
+However, the Sempronian law had been made, and the people wanted, of
+course, to have it carried out, while the nobles wanted it to be a dead
+letter. Scipio �milianus, the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, had been in
+Spain all this time, but he had so much disapproved of Tiberius' doings
+that he was said to have exclaimed, on hearing of his death, "So perish
+all who do the like." But when he came home, he did so much to calm and
+quiet matters, that there was a cry to make him Dictator, and let him
+settle the whole matter. Young Caius Gracchus, who thought the cause
+would thus be lost, tried to prevent the choice by fixing on him the
+name of tyrant. To which Scipio calmly replied, "Rome's enemies may well
+wish me dead, for they know that while I live Rome cannot perish."
+
+When he went home, he shut himself into his room to prepare his
+discourse for the next day, but in the morning he was found dead,
+without a wound, though his slaves declared he had been murdered. Some
+suspected his wife Sempronia, others even her mother Cornelia, but the
+Senate would not have the matter enquired into. He left no child, and
+the Africanus line of Cornelius ended with him.
+
+Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than his brother, and was elected
+tribune as soon as he was old enough. He was full of still greater
+schemes than his brother. His mother besought him to be warned by his
+brother's fate, but he was bent on his objects, and carried some of them
+out. He had the Sempronian law reaffirmed, though he could not act on
+it; but in the meantime he began a regular custom of having corn served
+out to the poorer citizens, and found work for them upon roads and
+bridges; also he caused the state to clothe the soldiers, instead of
+their doing it at their own expense. Another scheme which he first
+proposed was to make the Italians of the countries now one with Roman
+territory into citizens, with votes like the Romans themselves; but this
+again angered the patricians, who saw they should be swamped by numbers
+and lose their power.
+
+He also wanted to found a colony of plebeians on the ruins of Carthage,
+and when his tribuneship was over he went to Africa to see about it; but
+when he came home the patricians had arranged an attack on him, and he
+was insulted by the lictor of the consul Opimius. The patricians
+collected on one side, the poorer sort around Caius on the Aventine
+Hill; but the nobles were the strongest, the plebeians fled, and Caius
+withdrew with one slave into a sacred grove, whence he hoped to reach
+the Tiber; but the wood was surrounded, his retreat was cut off, and he
+commanded the slave to kill him that he might not fall alive into the
+hands of his enemies, after which the poor faithful fellow killed
+himself, unable to bear the loss of his master. The weight of Caius'
+head in gold had been promised by the Senate, and the man who found the
+body was said to have taken out the brains and filled it up with lead
+that his reward might be larger. Three thousand men were killed in this
+riot, ten times as many as at Tiberius' death.
+
+Opimius was so proud of having overthrown Caius, that he had a medal
+struck with Hercules slaying the monsters. Cornelia, broken-hearted,
+retired to a country-house; but in a few years the feeling turned,
+great love was shown to the memory of the two brothers, statues were set
+up in their honor, and when Cornelia herself died, her statue was
+inscribed with the title she had coveted, "The mother of the Gracchi."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN CENTURION.]
+
+Things were indeed growing worse and worse. The Romans were as brave as
+ever in the field, and were sure in the end to conquer any nation they
+came in contact with; but at home, the city was full of overgrown rich
+men, with huge hosts of slaves, and of turbulent poor men, who only
+cared for their citizenship for the sake of the corn they gained by it,
+and the games exhibited by those who stood for a magistracy. Immense
+sums were spent in hiring gladiators and bringing wild animals to be
+baited for their amusement; and afterwards, when sent out to govern the
+provinces, the expenses were repaid by cruel grinding and robbing the
+people of the conquered states.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE WARS OF MARIUS.
+
+106-98.
+
+
+After the death of Massinissa, king of Numidia, the ally of the Romans,
+there were disputes among his grandsons, and Jugurtha, whom they held to
+have the least right, obtained the kingdom. The commander of the army
+sent against him was Caius Marius, who had risen from being a free Roman
+peasant in the village of Arpinum, but serving under Scipio �milianus,
+had shown such ability, that when some one was wondering where they
+would find the equal of Scipio when he was gone, that general touched
+the shoulder of his young officer and said, "Possibly here."
+
+Rough soldier as he always was, he married Julia, of the high family of
+the C�sars, who were said to be descended from �neas; and though he was
+much disliked by the Senate, he always carried the people with him. When
+he received the province of Numidia, instead of, as every one had done
+before, forming his army only of Roman citizens, he offered to enlist
+whoever would, and thus filled his ranks with all sorts of wild and
+desperate men, whom he could indeed train to fight, but who had none of
+the old feeling for honor or the state, and this in the end made a great
+change in Rome.
+
+Jugurtha maintained a wild war in the deserts of Africa with Marius, but
+at last he was betrayed to the Romans by his friend Bocchus, another
+Moorish king, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marius' lieutenant, was sent
+to receive him--a transaction which Sulla commemorated on a signet ring
+which he always wore. Poor Jugurtha was kept two years to appear at the
+triumph, where he walked in chains, and then was thrown alive into the
+dungeon under the Capitol, where he took six days to die of cold and
+hunger.
+
+Marius was elected consul for the second time even before he had quite
+come home from Africa, for it was a time of great danger. Two fierce and
+terrible tribes, whom the Romans called Cimbri and Teutones, and who
+were but the vanguard of the swarms who would overwhelm them six
+centuries later, had come down through Germany to the settled countries
+belonging to Rome, especially the lands round the old Greek settlements
+in Gaul, which had fallen of course into the hands of the Romans, and
+were full of beautiful rich cities, with houses and gardens round them.
+The Province, as the Romans called it, would have been grand plundering
+ground for these savages, and Marius established himself in a camp on
+the banks of the Rhone to protect it, cutting a canal to bring his
+provisions from the sea, which still remains. While he was thus engaged,
+he was a fourth time elected consul.
+
+[Illustration: MARIUS.]
+
+The enemy began to move. The Cimbri meant to march eastward round the
+Alps, and pour through the Tyrol into Italy; the Teutones to go by the
+West, fighting Marius on the way. But he would not come out of his camp
+on the Rhone, though the Teutones, as they passed, shouted to ask the
+Roman soldiers what messages they had to send to their wives in Italy.
+
+When they had all passed, he came out of his camp and followed them as
+far as Aqu� Sexti�, now called Aix, where one of the most terrible
+battles the world ever saw was fought. These people were a whole
+tribe--wives, children, and everything they had with them--and to be
+defeated was utter and absolute ruin. A great enclosure was made with
+their carts and wagons, whence the women threw arrows and darts to help
+the men; and when, after three days of hard fighting, all hope was over,
+they set fire to the enclosure and killed their children and themselves.
+The whole swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and no one was left
+to bury the dead, so that the spot was called the Putrid Fields, and is
+still known as Les Pourrieres.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE TROPHIES, CALLED OF MARIUS, AT THE CAPITOL AT
+ROME.]
+
+While Marius was offering up the spoil, tidings came that he was a fifth
+time chosen consul; but he had to hasten into Italy, for the other
+consul, Catulus, could not stand before the Cimbri, and Marius met him
+on the Po retreating from them. The Cimbri demanded lands in Italy for
+themselves and their allies the Teutones. "The Teutones have all the
+ground they will ever want, on the other side the Alps," said Marius;
+and a terrible battle followed, in which the Cimbri were as entirely cut
+off as their allies had been.
+
+Marius was made consul a sixth time. As a reward to the brave soldiers
+who had fought under him, he made one thousand of them, who came from
+the city of Camerinum, Roman citizens, and this the patricians disliked
+greatly. His excuse was, "The din of arms drowned the voice of the law;"
+but the new citizens were provided for by lands in the Province, which
+the Romans said the Gauls had lost to the Teutones and they had
+reconquered. It was very hard on the Gauls, but that was the last thing
+a Roman cared about.
+
+The Italians, however, were all crying out for the rights of Romans, and
+the more far-sighted among the Romans would, like Caius Gracchus, have
+granted them. Marcus Livius Drusus did his best for them; he was a good
+man, wise and frank-hearted. When he was having a house built, and the
+plan was shown him which would make it impossible for any one to see
+into it, he said, "Rather build one where my fellow-countrymen may see
+all I do." He was very much loved, and when he was ill, prayers were
+offered at the temples for his recovery; but no sooner did he take up
+the cause of the Italians than all the patricians hated him bitterly.
+"Rome for the Romans," was their watchword. Drusus was one day
+entertaining an Italian gentleman, when his little nephew, Marcus
+Porcius Cato, a descendant of the old censor, and bred in stern
+patrician views, was playing about the room. The Italian merrily asked
+him to favor his cause. "No," said the boy. He was offered toys and
+cakes if he would change his mind, but he still refused; he was
+threatened, and at last he was held by one leg out of the window--all
+without shaking his resolution for a moment; and this constancy he
+carried with him through life.
+
+People's minds grew embittered, and Drusus was murdered in the street,
+crying as he fell, "When will Rome find so good a citizen!" After this,
+the Italians took up arms, and what was called the Social War began.
+Marius had no high command, being probably too much connected with the
+enemy. Some of the Italian tribes held with Rome, and these were
+rewarded with the citizenship; and after all, though the consul Lucius
+Julius C�sar, brother-in-law to Marius, gained some victories, the
+revolt was so widespread, that the Senate felt it wisest, on the first
+sign of peace, to offer citizenship to such Italians as would come
+within sixty days to claim it. Citizenship brought a man under Roman
+law, freed him from taxation, and gave him many advantages and openings
+to a rise in life. But he could only give his vote at Rome, and only
+there receive the distribution of corn, and he further became liable to
+be called out to serve in a legion, so that the benefit was not so great
+as at first appeared, and no very large numbers of Italians came to
+apply for it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF MARIUS.
+
+93--84.
+
+
+The chief foe of Marius was almost always his second in command, Publius
+Cornelius Sulla, one of the men of highest family in Rome. He had all
+the high culture and elegant learning that the rough soldier Marius
+despised, spoke and wrote Greek as easily as Latin, and was as well read
+in Greek poetry and philosophy as any Athenian could be; but he was
+given up to all the excesses of luxury in which the wealthy Romans
+indulged, and his way of life had made him frightful to look at. His
+face was said to be like a mulberry sprinkled with salt, with a terrible
+pair of blue eyes glaring out of it.
+
+In 93 he was sent to command against Mithridates, king of Pontus, one
+of the little kingdoms in Asia Minor that had sprung up out of the
+break-up of Alexander's empire. Under this king, Mithridates, it had
+grown very powerful. He was of Persian birth, had all the learning and
+science both of Greece and the far East, and was said in especial to be
+wonderfully learned in all plants and their virtues, so as to have made
+himself proof against all kinds of poison, and he could speak
+twenty-five languages.
+
+He had great power in Asia Minor, and took upon himself to appoint a
+king of Cappadocia, thus leading to a quarrel with the Romans. In the
+midst of the Social War, when he thought they had their hands full in
+Italy, Mithridates caused all the native inhabitants of Asia Minor to
+rise upon the Romans among them in one night and murder them all, so
+that 80,000 are said to have perished. Sulla was ordered to take the
+command of the army which was to avenge their death; but, while he was
+raising his forces, Marius, angry that the patricians had hindered the
+plebeians and Italians from gaining more by the Social War, raised up a
+great tumult, meaning to overpower the patricians' resistance. He would
+have done more wisely had he waited until Sulla was quite gone, for that
+general came back to the rescue of his friends with six newly-raised
+legions, and Marius could only just contrive to escape from Rome, where
+he was proclaimed a traitor and a price set on his head. He was now
+seventy years old, but full of spirit. First he escaped to his own farm,
+whence he hoped to reach Ostia, where a ship was waiting for him; but a
+party of horsemen were seen coming, and he was hidden in a cart full of
+beans and driven down the coast, where he embarked, meaning to go to
+Africa; but adverse winds and want of food forced him to land at
+Circ�um, whence, with a few friends, he made his way along the coast,
+through woods and rocks, keeping up the spirits of his companions by
+telling them that, when a little boy, he robbed an eyrie of seven
+eaglets, and that a soothsayer had then foretold that he would be seven
+times consul. At last a troop of horse was seen coming towards them, and
+at the same time two ships near the coast. The only hope was in swimming
+out to the nearest ship, and Marius was so heavy and old that this was
+done with great difficulty. Even then the ships were so near the shore
+that the pursuers could command the crew to throw Marius out, but this
+they refused to do, though they only waited till the soldiers were gone,
+to put him on shore again. Here he was in a marshy, boggy place, where
+an old man let him rest in his cottage, and then hid him in a cave under
+a heap of rushes. Again, however, the troops appeared, and threatened
+the old man for hiding an enemy of the Romans. It was in Marius'
+hearing, and fearing to be betrayed, he rushed out into a pool, where he
+stood up to his neck in water till a soldier saw him, and he was dragged
+out and taken to the city of Minturn�.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATAPULT.]
+
+There the council decided on his death, and sent a soldier to kill him,
+but the fierce old man stood glaring at him, and said. "Darest thou
+kill Caius Marius?" The man was so frightened that he ran away, crying
+out, "I cannot kill Caius Marius." The Senate of Minturn� took this as
+an omen, and remembered besides that he had been a good friend to the
+Italians, so they conducted him through a sacred grove to the sea, and
+sent him off to Africa. On landing, he sent his son to ask shelter from
+one of the Numidian princes, and, while waiting for an answer, he was
+harassed by a messenger from a Roman officer of low rank, forbidding his
+presence in Africa. He made no reply till the messenger pressed to know
+what to say to his master. Then the old man looked up, and sternly
+answered. "Say that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in the ruins of
+Carthage"--a grand rebuke for the insult to fallen greatness. But the
+Numidian could not receive him, and he could only find shelter in a
+little island on the coast.
+
+There he soon heard that no sooner had Sulla embarked for the East than
+Rome had fallen into dire confusion. The consuls, Caius Octavius and
+Publius Cornelius Cinna, were of opposite parties, and had a furious
+fight, in which Cinna was driven out of Rome, and at the same time the
+Italians had begun a new Social War. Marius saw that his time was come.
+He hurried to Etruria, where he was joined by a party of his friends and
+five hundred runaway slaves. The discontented Romans formed another army
+under Quintus Sertorius, and the Samnites, who had begun the war,
+overpowered the troops sent against them, and marched to Rome, declaring
+they would have no peace till they had destroyed the wolf's lair. Cinna
+and an army were advancing on another side, and, as he was really
+consul, the Senate in their distress admitted him, hoping that he would
+stop the rest; but when he marched in and seated himself again in the
+chair of office, he had by his side old Marius clothed in rags.
+
+[Illustration: ISLAND ON THE COAST.]
+
+They were bent on revenge, and terrible it was, beginning with the
+consul, Caius Octavius, who had disdained to flee, and whose head was
+severed from his body and displayed in the Forum, with many other
+senators of the noblest blood in Rome, who had offended either Marius or
+Cinna or any of their fierce followers. Marius walked along in gloomy
+silence, answering no one; but his followers were bidden to spare only
+those to whom he gave his hand to be kissed. The slaves pillaged the
+houses, murdered many on their own account, and everything was in the
+wildest uproar, till the two chiefs called in Sertorius with a legion to
+restore order.
+
+Then they named themselves consuls, without even asking for an election,
+and thus Marius was seven times consul. He wanted to go out to the East
+and take the command from Sulla, but his health was too much broken, and
+before the year of his consulate was over he died. The last time he had
+left the house, he had said to some friends that no man ought to trust
+again to such a doubtful fortune as his had been; and then he took to
+his bed for seven days without any known illness, and there was found
+dead, so that he was thought to have starved himself to death.
+
+Cinna put in another consul named Valerius Flaccus, and invited all the
+Italians to enroll themselves as Roman citizens. Then Flaccus went out
+to the East, meaning to take away the command from Sulla, who was
+hunting Mithridates out of Greece, which he had seized and held for a
+short time. But Flaccus' own army rose against him and killed him, and
+Sulla, after beating Mithridates, driving him back to Pontus, and making
+peace with him, was now to come home.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+SULLA'S PROSCRIPTION.
+
+88-71.
+
+
+There was great fear at Rome, among the friends of Cinna and Marius, at
+the prospect of Sulla's return. A fire broke out in the Capitol, and
+this added to their terror, for the Books of the Sybil were burnt, and
+all her prophecies were lost. Cinna tried to oppose Sulla's landing, but
+was killed by his own soldiers at Brundusium.
+
+Sulla, with his victorious army, could not be stopped. Sertorius fled to
+Spain, but Marius' son tried, with the help of the Samnites, to resist,
+and held out Pr�neste, but the Samnites were beaten in a terrible battle
+outside the walls, and when the people of the city saw the heads of the
+leaders carried on spear points, they insisted on giving up. Young
+Marius and a Samnite noble hid themselves in a cave, and as they had no
+hope, resolved to die; so they fought, hoping to kill each other, and
+when Marius was left alive, he caused himself to be slain by a slave.
+
+Sulla marched on towards Rome, furious at the resistance he met with,
+and determined on a terrible vengeance. He could not enter the city till
+he was ready to dismiss his army and have his triumph, so the Senate
+came out to meet him in the temple of Bellona. As they took their seats,
+they heard dreadful shrieks and cries. "No matter," said Sulla; "it is
+only some wretches being punished." The wretches were the 8000 Samnite
+prisoners he had taken at the battle of Pr�neste, and brought to be
+killed in the Campus Martius; and with these shocking sounds to mark
+that he was in earnest, the purple-faced general told the trembling
+Senate that if they submitted to him he would be good to them, but that
+he would spare none of his enemies, great or small.
+
+And his men were already in the city and country, slaughtering not only
+the party of Marius, but every one against whom any one of them had a
+spite, or whose property he coveted. Marius' body, which had been buried
+and not burnt, was taken from the grave and thrown into the Tiber; and
+such horrible deeds were done that Sulla was asked in the Senate where
+the execution was to stop. He showed a list of eighty more who had yet
+to die; and the next day and the next he brought other lists of two
+hundred and thirty each. These dreadful lists were called proscriptions,
+and any one who tried to shelter the victims was treated in the same
+manner. The property of all who were slain was seized, and their
+children declared incapable of holding any public office.
+
+Among those who were in danger was the nephew of Marius' wife, Caius
+Julius C�sar, but, as he was of a high patrician family, Sulla only
+required of him to divorce his wife and marry a stepdaughter of his own.
+C�sar refused, and fled to the Sabine hills, where pursuers were sent
+after him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome,
+especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying,
+however, "Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius." C�sar
+went to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off the
+idle life of pleasure he had been leading in Rome.
+
+[Illustration: PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE.]
+
+The country people were even more cruelly punished than the citizens:
+whole cities were destroyed and districts laid waste; the whole of
+Etruria was ravaged, the old race entirely swept away, and the towns
+ruined beyond revival, while the new city of Florence was built with
+their remains, and all we know of them is from the tombs which have of
+late years been opened.
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS SULLA.]
+
+Both the consuls had perished, and Sulla caused himself to be named
+Dictator. He had really a purpose in all the horrors he had perpetrated,
+namely, to clear the way for restoring the old government at Rome, which
+Marius and his Italians had been overthrowing. He did not see that the
+rule which had worked tolerably well while Rome was only a little city
+with a small country round it, would not serve when it was the head of
+numerous distant countries, where the governors, like himself and
+Marius, grew rich, and trained armies under them able to overpower the
+whole state at home. So he set to work to put matters as much as
+possible in the old order. So many of the Senate had been killed, that
+he had to make up the numbers by putting in three hundred knights; and,
+to supply the lack of other citizens, after the hosts who had perished,
+he allowed the Italians to go on coming in to be enrolled as citizens;
+and ten thousand slaves, who had belonged to his victims, were not only
+set free, but made citizens as his own clients, thus taking the name of
+Cornelius. He also much lessened the power of the tribunes of the
+people, and made a law that when a man had once been a tribune he should
+never be chosen for any of the higher offices of the state. By these
+means he sought to keep up the old patrician power, on which he believed
+the greatness of Rome depended; though, after all, the grand old
+patrician families had mostly died off, and half the Senate were only
+knights made noble.
+
+After this Sulla resigned the dictatorship, for he was growing old, and
+had worn out his health by his riot and luxury. He spent his time in a
+villa near Rome, talking philosophy with his friends, and dictating the
+history of his own life in Greek. When he died, he bade them burn his
+body, contrary to the practice of the Cornelii, no doubt fearing it
+would be treated like that of Marius.
+
+The most promising of the men of his party who were growing up and
+coming forward was Cn�us Pompeius, a brave and worthy man, who had while
+quite young, gained such a victory over a Numidian prince that Sulla
+himself gave him the title of Magnus, or the Great. He was afterwards
+sent to Spain, where Sertorius held out for eight years against the
+Roman power with the help of the native chiefs, but at last was put to
+death by his own followers. Things were altogether in a bad state. There
+were great struggles in Rome at every election, for the officers of the
+state were now chiefly esteemed for the sake of the three or five years'
+government in the provinces to which they led. No expense was thought
+too great in shows of beasts and gladiators by which to win the votes of
+the people; for, after the year of office, the candidate meant amply to
+repay himself by what he could squeeze out of the unhappy province under
+his charge, and nobody cared for cruelty or injustice to any one but a
+Roman citizen.
+
+Numbers of gladiators were kept and trained to fight in these shows; and
+while the Spanish war was going on, a whole school of them--seventy-eight
+in number--who were kept at Capua, broke out, armed themselves with the
+spits, hooks, and axes in a butcher's shop, and took refuge in the crater
+of Mount Vesuvius, which at that time showed no signs of being an active
+volcano. There, under their leader Spartacus, they gathered together every
+gladiator slave or who could run away to them, and Spartacus wanted them
+to march northward, force their way through Italy, climb the Alps, and
+reach their homes in Thrace and Gaul; but the plunder of Italy tempted
+them, and they would not go, till an army was sent against them under
+Marcus Licinius Crassus--called Dives, or the Rich, from the spoil he had
+gained during the proscription. Then Spartacus hoped to escape in a fleet
+of pirate ships from Cilicia, and to hold out in the passes of Mount
+Taurus; but the Cilician pirates deceived him, sailed away with his money,
+and left him to his fate, and he and his gladiators were all slain by
+Crassus and Pompeius, who had been called home from Spain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE CAREER OF POMPEIUS.
+
+70-63.
+
+
+Cn�us Pompeius Magnus and Lucius Licinius Crassus Dives were consuls
+together in the year 70; but Crassus, though he feasted the people at
+10,000 tables, was envied and disliked, and would never have been
+elected but for Pompeius, who was a great favorite with the people, and
+so much trusted, both by them and the nobles, that it seems to have
+filled him with pride, for he gave himself great airs, and did not treat
+his fellow-consul as an equal.
+
+When his term of office was over, the most pressing thing to be done was
+to put down the Cilician pirates. In the angle formed between Asia Minor
+and Syria, with plenty of harbors formed by the spurs of Mount Taurus,
+there had dwelt for ages past a horde of sea robbers, whose swift
+galleys darted on the merchant ships of Tyre and Alexandria; and now,
+after the ruin of the Syrian kingdom, they had grown so rich that their
+state galleys had silken sails, oars inlaid with ivory and silver, and
+bronze prows. They robbed the old Greek temples and the Eastern shrines,
+and even made descents on the Italian cities, besides stopping the ships
+which brought wheat from Sicily and Alexandria to feed the Romans.
+
+To enable Pompeius to crush them, authority was given him for three
+years over all the Mediterranean and fifty miles inland all round, which
+was nearly the same thing as the whole empire. He divided the sea into
+thirteen commands, and sent a party to fight the pirates in each; and
+this was done so effectually, that in forty days they were all hunted
+out of the west end of the gulf, whither he pursued them with his whole
+force, beat them in a sea-fight, and then besieged them; but, as he was
+known to be a just and merciful man, they came to terms with him, and he
+scattered them about in small colonies in distant cities, so that they
+might cease to be mischievous.
+
+[Illustration: COAST OF TYRE.]
+
+In the meantime, the war with Mithridates had broken out again, and
+Lucius Lucullus, who had been consul after Pompeius, was fighting with
+him in the East; but Lucullus did not please the Romans, though he met
+with good success, and had pushed Mithridates so hard that there was
+nothing left for Pompeius but to complete the conquest, and he drove the
+old king beyond Caucasus, and then marched into Syria, where he
+overthrew the last of the Seleucian kings, Antiochus, and gave him the
+little kingdom of Commagene to spend the remainder of his life in, while
+Syria and Phoenicia were made into a great Roman province.
+
+Under the Maccabees, Palestine had struggled into being independent of
+Syria, but only by the help of the Romans, who, as usual, tried to ally
+themselves with small states in order to make an excuse for making war
+on large ones. There was now a great quarrel between two brothers of the
+Maccabean family, and one of them, Hyrcanus, came to ask the aid of
+Pompeius. The Roman army marched into the Holy Land, and, after seizing
+the whole country, was three months besieging Jerusalem, which, after
+all, it only took by an attack when the Jews were resting on the Sabbath
+day. Pompeius insisted on forcing his way into the Holy of Holies, and
+was very much disappointed to find it empty and dark. He did not
+plunder the treasury of the Temple, but the Jews remarked that, from the
+time of this daring entrance, his prosperity seemed to fail him. Before
+he left the East, however, old Mithridates, who had taken refuge in the
+Crimea, had been attacked by his own favorite son, and, finding that his
+power was gone, had taken poison; but, as his constitution was so
+fortified by antidotes that it took no effect, he caused one of his
+slaves to kill him.
+
+The son submitted to the Romans, and was allowed to reign on the
+Bosphorus; but Pompeius had extended the Roman Empire as far as the
+Euphrates; for though a few small kings still remained, it was only by
+suffrance from the Romans, who had gained thirty-nine great cities.
+Egypt, the Parthian kingdom on the Tigris, and Armenia in the mountains,
+alone remained free.
+
+While all this was going on in the East, there was a very dangerous plot
+contrived at Rome by a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and seven
+other good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, even the slaves and
+gladiators, overthrowing the government, seizing all the offices of
+state, and murdering all their opponents, after the example first set by
+Marius and Cinna.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNTAINS OF ARMENIA.]
+
+Happily such secrets are seldom kept; one of the plotters told the
+woman he was in love with, and she told one of the consuls, Marcus
+Tullius Cicero. Cicero was one of the wisest and best men in Rome, and
+the one whom we really know the best, for he left a great number of
+letters to his friends, which show us the real mind of the man. He was
+of the order of the knights, and had been bred up to be a lawyer and
+orator, and his speeches came to be the great models of Roman eloquence.
+He was a man of real conscience, and he most deeply loved Rome and her
+honor; and though he was both vain and timid, he could put these
+weaknesses aside for the public good. Before all the Senate he impeached
+Catilina, showing how fully he knew all that he intended. Nothing could
+be done to him by law till he had actually committed his crime, and
+Cicero wanted to show him that all was known, so as to cause him to flee
+and join his friends outside. Catilina tried to face it out, but all the
+senators began to cry out against him, and he dashed away in terror, and
+left the city at night. Cicero announced it the next day in a famous
+speech, beginning, "He is gone; he has rushed away; he has burst forth."
+Some of his followers in guilt were left at Rome, and just then some
+letters were brought to Cicero by some of a tribe of Gauls whom they
+had invited to help them in the ruin of the Senate. This was positive
+proof, and Cicero caused the nine worst to be seized, and, having proved
+their guilt, there was a consultation in the Senate as to their fate.
+Julius C�sar wanted to keep them prisoners for life, which he said was
+worse than death, as that, he believed, would end everything; but all
+the rest of the Senate were for their death, and they were all
+strangled, without giving them a chance of defending themselves or
+appealing to the people. Cicero beheld the execution himself, and then
+went forth to the crowd, merely saying, "They have lived."
+
+[Illustration: CICERO.]
+
+Catilina, meantime, had collected 20,000 men in Italy, but they were not
+half-armed, and the newly-returned proconsul, Metellus, made head
+against him; while the other consul, Caius Antonius, was recalled from
+Macedonia with his army. As he was a friend of Catilina, he did not
+choose to fight with him, and gave up the command to his lieutenant, by
+whom the wretch was defeated and slain. His head was cut off and sent to
+Rome.
+
+[Illustration: COLOSSAL STATUE OF POMPEIUS OF THE PALAZZO SPADA AT
+ROME.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+POMPEIUS AND C�SAR.
+
+61-48.
+
+
+Pompeius was coming home for his triumph, every one had hopes from him,
+for things were in a very bad state. There had been a great disturbance
+at Julius C�sar's house. Every year there was a festival in honor of
+Cybele, the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, to which none but women were
+admitted, and where it was sacrilege for a man to be seen. In the midst
+of this feast in C�sar's house, a slave girl told his mother Aurelia
+that there was a man among the ladies. Aurelia shut the doors, took a
+torch and ran through the house, looking in every one's face for the
+offender, who was found to be Publius Clodius, a worthless young man,
+who had been in Catilina's conspiracy, but had given evidence against
+him. He escaped, but was brought to trial, and then borrowed money
+enough of Crassus the rich, to bribe the judges and avoid the punishment
+he deserved. C�sar's wife, the sister of Pompeius was free of blame in
+the matter, but he divorced her, saying that C�sar's wife must be free
+from all suspicion; and this, of course, did not bring her brother home
+in a friendly spirit to C�sar.
+
+[Illustration: POMPEIUS.]
+
+Pompeius' triumph was the most magnificent that had ever yet been seen.
+It lasted two days, and the banners that were carried in the procession,
+bore the names of nine hundred cities and one thousand fortresses which
+he had conquered. All the treasures of Mithridates--statues, jewels, and
+splendid ornaments of gold and silver worked with precious stones--were
+carried along; and it was reckoned that he had brought home 20,000
+talents--equal to �5,000,000--for the treasury. He was admired, too, for
+refusing any surname taken from his conquests, and only wearing the
+laurel wreath of a victor in the Senate.
+
+Pompeius and C�sar were the great rival names at this time. Pompeius'
+desire was to keep the old framework, and play the part of Sulla as its
+protector, only without its violence and bloodshed. C�sar saw that it
+was impossible that things should go on as they were, and had made up
+his mind to take the lead and mould them afresh; but this he could not
+do while Pompeius was looked up to as the last great conqueror. So C�sar
+meant to serve his consulate, take some government where he could grow
+famous and form an army, and then come home and mould everything anew.
+After a year's service in Spain as propr�tor, C�sar came back and made
+friends with Pompeius and Crassus, giving his daughter Julia in marriage
+to Pompeius, and forming what was called a triumvirate, or union of
+three men. Thus he easily obtained the consulship, and showed himself
+the friend of the people by bringing in an Agrarian Law for dividing the
+public lands in Campania among the poorer citizens, not forgetting
+Pompeius' old soldiers; also taking other measures which might make the
+Senate recollect that Sulla had foretold that he would be another Marius
+and more.
+
+After this, he took Gaul as his province, and spent seven years in
+subduing it bit by bit, and in making two visits to Britain. He might
+pretty well trust the rotten state of Rome to be ready for his
+interference when he came back. Clodius had actually dared to bring
+Cicero to a trial for having put to death the friends of Catilina
+without allowing them to plead their own cause. Pompeius would not help
+him, and the people banished him four hundred miles from Rome, when he
+went to Sicily, where he was very miserable; but his exile only lasted
+two years, and then better counsels prevailed, and he was brought home
+by a general vote, and welcomed almost as if it had been a triumph.
+
+Marcus Porcius Cato was as honest and true a man as Cicero, but very
+rough and stern, so that he was feared and hated; and there were often
+fierce quarrels in the Senate and Forum, and in one of these Pompeius'
+robe was sprinkled with blood. On his return home, his young wife Julia
+thought he had been hurt, and the shock brought on an illness of which
+she died; thus breaking the link between her husband and father.
+
+[Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE.]
+
+Pompeius did all he could to please the Romans when he was consul
+together with Crassus. He had been for some time building a most
+splendid theatre in the Campus Martius, after the Greek fashion, open to
+the sky, and with tiers of galleries circling round an arena; but the
+Greeks had never used their theatres for the savage sports for which
+this was intended. When it was opened, five hundred lions, eighteen
+elephants, and a multitude of gladiators were provided to fight in
+different fashions with one another before thirty thousand spectators,
+the whole being crowned by a temple to Conquering Venus. After his
+consulate, Pompeius took Spain as his province, but did not go there,
+managing it by deputy; while Crassus had Syria, and there went to war
+with the wild Parthians on the Eastern border. In the battle of Carrh�,
+the army of Crassus was entirely routed by the Parthians; he was killed,
+his head was cut off, and his mouth filled up with molten gold in scorn
+of his riches. At Rome, there was such distress that no one thought much
+even of such a disaster. Bribes were given to secure elections, and
+there was nothing but tumult and uproar, in which good men like Cicero
+and Cato could do nothing. Clodius was killed in one of these frays, and
+the mob grew so furious that the Senate chose Pompeius to be sole consul
+to put them down; and this he did for a short time, but all fell into
+confusion again while he was very ill of a fever at Naples, and even
+when he recovered there was a feeling that C�sar was wanted. But C�sar's
+friends said he must not be called upon to give up his army unless
+Pompeius gave up his command of the army in Spain, and neither of them
+would resign.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARENA.]
+
+C�sar advanced with all his forces as far as Ravenna, which was still
+part of Cisalpine Gaul, and then the consul, Marcus Marcellus, begged
+Pompeius to protect the commonwealth, and he took up arms. Two of C�sars
+great friends, Marcus Antonius and Caius Cassius, who were tribunes,
+forbade this; and when they were not heeded, they fled to C�sar's camp
+asking his protection.
+
+So he advanced. It was not lawful for an imperator, or general in
+command of an army, to come within the Roman territory with his troops
+except for his triumph, and the little river Rubicon was the boundary of
+Cisalpine Gaul. So when C�sar crossed it, he took the first step in
+breaking through old Roman rules, and thus the saying arose that one has
+passed the Rubicon when one has gone so far in a matter that there is no
+turning back. Though C�sar's army was but small, his fame was such that
+everybody seemed struck with dismay, even Pompeius himself, and instead
+of fighting, he carried off all the senators of his party to the South,
+even to the extreme point of Italy at Brundusium. C�sar marched after
+them thither, having met with no resistance, and having, indeed, won all
+Italy in sixty days. As he advanced on Brundusium, Pompeius embarked on
+board a ship in the harbor and sailed away, meaning, no doubt, to raise
+an army in the provinces and return--some feared like Sulla--to take
+vengeance.
+
+C�sar was appointed Dictator, and after crushing Pompeius' friends in
+Spain, he pursued him into Macedonia, where Pompeius had been collecting
+all the friends of the old commonwealth. There was a great battle fought
+at Pharsalia, a battle which nearly put an end to the old government of
+Rome, for C�sar gained a great victory; and Pompeius fled to the coast,
+where he found a vessel and sailed for Egypt. He sent a message to ask
+shelter at Alexandria, and the advisers of the young king pretended to
+welcome him, but they really intended to make friends with the victor;
+and as Pompeius stepped ashore he was stabbed in the back, his body
+thrown into the surf, and his head cut off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JULIUS C�SAR.
+
+48--44.
+
+
+With Pompeius fell the hopes of those who were faithful to the old
+government, such as Cicero and Cato. They had only to wait and see what
+C�sar would do, and with the memory of Marius in their minds.
+
+[Illustration: JULIUS C�SAR.]
+
+C�sar did not come at once to Rome; he had first to reduce the East to
+obedience. Egypt was under the last descendants of Alexander's general
+Ptolemy, and was an ally of Rome, that is, only remaining a kingdom by
+her permission. The king was a wretched weak lad; his sister Cleopatra,
+who was joined with him in the throne, was one of the most beautiful and
+winning women who ever lived. C�sar, who needed money, demanded some
+that was owing to the state. The young king's advisers refused, and
+C�sar, who had but a small force with him, was shut up in a quarter of
+Alexandria where he could get no fresh water but from pits which his men
+dug in the sand. He burnt the Egyptian fleet that it might not stop the
+succors that were coming from Syria, and he tried to take the Isle of
+Pharos, with the lighthouse on it, but his ship was sunk, and he was
+obliged to save himself by swimming, holding his journals in one hand
+above the water. However, the forces from Syria were soon brought to
+him, and he was able to fight a battle in which the young king was
+drowned; and Egypt was at his mercy. Cleopatra was determined to have an
+interview with him, and had herself carried into his rooms in a roll of
+carpet, and when there, she charmed him so much that he set her up as
+queen of Egypt. He remained three months longer in Egypt collecting
+money; and hearing that Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, had attacked
+the Roman settlements in Asia Minor, he sailed for Tarsus, marched
+against Pharnaces, routed and killed him in battle. The success was
+announced to the Senate in the following brief words, "_Veni, vidi,
+vici_"--"I came, I saw, I conquered."
+
+[Illustration: CATO.]
+
+He was a second time appointed Dictator, and came home to arrange
+affairs; but there were no proscriptions, though he took away the
+estates of those who opposed him. There was still a party of the
+senators and their supporters who had followed Pompeius in Africa, with
+Cato and Cn�us Pompeius, the eldest son of the great leader, and C�sar
+had to follow them thither. He gave them a great defeat at Thapsus, and
+the remnant took refuge in the city of Utica, whither C�sar followed
+them. They would have stood a siege, but the townspeople would not
+consent, and Cato sent off all his party by sea, and remained alone with
+his son and a few of his friends, not to face the conqueror, but to die
+by his own sword ere he came, as the Romans had learned from Stoic
+philosophy to think the nobler part.
+
+[Illustration: FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES IN THE COLUMBARIUM (lit. _Pigeon-house_)
+OF THE HOUSE OF JULIUS C�SAR AT THE PORTA CAPENA IN ROME.
+
+(The rows of niches for the cinerary urns in a Roman sepulchre were
+called by this name from their resemblance to a dovecot.)]
+
+Such of the Senate as had not joined Pompeius were ready to fall down
+and worship C�sar when he came home. So rejoiced was Rome to fear no
+proscription, that temples were dedicated to C�sar's clemency, and his
+image was to be carried in procession with those of the gods. He was
+named Dictator for ten years, and was received with four triumphs--over
+the Gauls, over the Egyptians, over Pharnaces, and over Juba, an African
+king who had aided Cato. Foremost of the Gaulish prisoners was the brave
+Vercingetorix, and among the Egyptians, Arsino�, the sister of
+Cleopatra. A banquet was given at his cost to the whole Roman people,
+and the shows of gladiators and beasts surpassed all that had ever been
+seen. The Julii were said to be descended from �neas and to Venus, as
+his ancestress, C�sar dedicated a breastplate of pearls from the river
+mussels of Britain. Still, however, he had to go to Spain to reduce the
+sons of Pompeius. They were defeated in battle, the elder was killed,
+but Cn�us, the younger, held out in the mountains and hid himself among
+the natives.
+
+After this, C�sar returned to Rome to carry out his plans. He was
+dictator for ten years and consul for five, and was also imperator or
+commander of an army he was not made to disband, so that he nearly was
+as powerful as any king; and, as he saw that such an enormous domain as
+Rome now possessed could never be governed by two magistrates changing
+every year, he prepared matters for there being one ruler. The influence
+of the Senate, too, he weakened very much by naming a great many persons
+to it of no rank or distinction, till there were nine hundred members,
+and nobody thought much of being a senator. He also made an immense
+number of new citizens, and he caused a great survey to be begun by
+Roman officers in preparation for properly arranging the provinces,
+governments, and tribute; and he began to have the laws drawn up in
+regular order. In fact, he was one of the greatest men the world has
+ever produced, not only as a conqueror, but a statesman and ruler; and
+though his power over Rome was not according to the laws, and had been
+gained by a rebellion, he was using it for her good.
+
+He was learned in all philosophy and science, and his history of his
+wars in Gaul has come down to our times. As a high patrician by birth,
+he was Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, and thus had to fix all the
+festival days in each year. Now the year had been supposed to be only
+three hundred and fifty-five days long, and the Pontifex put in another
+month or several days whenever he pleased, so that there was great
+confusion, and the feast days for the harvest and vintage came,
+according to the calendar, three months before there was any corn or
+grapes.
+
+To set this to rights, since it was now understood that the length of
+the year was three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours, C�sar and
+the scientific men who assisted him devised the fresh arrangement that
+we call leap year, adding a day to the three hundred and sixty-five once
+in four years. He also changed the name of one of the summer months
+from Sextile to July, in honor of himself. Another work of his was
+restoring Corinth and Carthage, which had both been ruined the same
+year, and now were both refounded the same year.
+
+He was busy about the glory of the state, but there was much to shock
+old Roman feelings in his conduct. Cleopatra had followed him to Rome,
+and he was thinking of putting away his wife Calphurnia to marry her.
+But his keeping the dictatorship was the real grievance, and the remains
+of the old party in the Senate could not bear that the patrician freedom
+of Rome should be lost. Every now and then his flatterers offered him a
+royal crown and hailed him as king, though he always refused it, and
+this title still stirred up bitter hatred. He was preparing an army,
+intending to march into the further East, avenge Crassus' defeat on the
+Parthians, and march where no one but Alexander had made his way; and if
+he came back victorious from thence, nothing would be able to stand
+against him.
+
+The plotters then resolved to strike before he set out. Caius Cassius, a
+tall, lean man, who had lately been made pr�tor, was the chief
+conspirator, and with him was Marcus Junius Brutus, a descendant of him
+who overthrew the Tarquins, and husband to Porcia, Cato's daughter, also
+another Brutus named Decimus, hitherto a friend of C�sar, and newly
+appointed to the government of Cisalpine Gaul. These and twelve more
+agreed to murder C�sar on the 15th of March, called in the Roman
+calendar the Ides of March, when he went to the senate-house.
+
+Rumors got abroad and warnings came to him about that special day. His
+wife dreamt so terrible a dream that he had almost yielded to her
+entreaties to stay at home, when Decimus Brutus came in and laughed him
+out of it. As he was carried to the senate-house in a litter, a man gave
+him a writing and begged him to read it instantly; but he kept it rolled
+in his hand without looking. As he went up the steps he said to the
+augur Spurius, "The Ides of March are come." "Yes, C�sar," was the
+answer; "but they are not passed." A few steps further on, one of the
+conspirators met him with a petition, and the others joined in it,
+clinging to his robe and his neck, till another caught his toga and
+pulled it over his arms, and then the first blow was struck with a
+dagger. C�sar struggled at first as all fifteen tried to strike at him,
+but, when he saw the hand uplifted of his treacherous friend Decimus,
+he exclaimed, "_Et tu Brute_"--"Thou, too, Brutus"--drew his toga over
+his head, and fell dead at the foot of the statue of Pompeius.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.
+
+44--33.
+
+
+The murderers of C�sar had expected the Romans to hail them as
+deliverers from a tyrant, but his great friend Marcus Antonius, who was,
+together with him, consul for that year, made a speech over his body as
+it lay on a couch of gold and ivory in the Forum ready for the funeral.
+Antonius read aloud C�sar's will, and showed what benefits he had
+intended for his fellow-citizens, and how he loved them, so that love
+for him and wrath against his enemies filled every hearer. The army, of
+course, were furious against the murderers; the Senate was terrified,
+and granted everything Antonius chose to ask, provided he would protect
+them, whereupon he begged for a guard for himself that he might be
+saved from C�sar's fate, and this they gave him; while the fifteen
+murderers fled secretly, mostly to Cisalpine Gaul, of which Decimus
+Brutus was governor.
+
+C�sar had no child but the Julia who had been wife to Pompeius, and his
+heir was his young cousin Caius Octavius, who changed his name to Caius
+Julius C�sar Octavianus, and, coming to Rome, demanded his inheritance,
+which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; but
+Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairness
+that many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, who
+had always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thing
+to be done was to put down the murderers--Decimus Brutus was in Gaul,
+Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had also
+raised an army in Spain.
+
+Good men in the Senate dreaded no one so much as Antonius, and put their
+hope in young Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches against
+Antonius, which are called Philippics, because they denounce him as
+Demosthenes used to denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, they
+were the last flashes of spirit in a sinking state; and Cicero, in
+those days, was the foremost and best man who was trying at his own risk
+to save the old institutions of his country. But it was all in vain;
+they were too rotten to last, and there were not enough of honest men to
+make a stand against a violent unscrupulous schemer like Antonius, above
+all now that the clever young Octavianus saw it was for his interest to
+make common cause with him, and with a third friend of C�sar, rich but
+dull, named Marcus �milius Lepidus. They called on Decimus Brutus to
+surrender his forces to them, and marched against him. Then his troops
+deserted him, and he tried to escape into the Alps, but was delivered up
+to Antonius and put to death.
+
+[Illustration: MARCUS ANTONIUS.]
+
+Soon after, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus all met on a little island
+in the river Rhenus and agreed to form a triumvirate for five years for
+setting things to rights once more, all three enjoying consular power
+together; and, as they had the command of all the armies, there was no
+one to stop them. Lepidus was to stay and govern Rome, while the other
+two hunted down the murderers of C�sar in the East. But first, there was
+a deadly vengeance to be taken in the city upon all who could be
+supposed to have favored the murder of C�sar, or who could be enemies to
+their schemes. So these three sat down with a list of the citizens
+before them to make a proscription, each letting a kinsman or friend of
+his own be marked for death, provided he might slay one related to
+another of the three. The dreadful list was set up in the Forum, and a
+price paid for the heads of the people in it, so that soldiers,
+ruffians, and slaves brought them in; but it does not seem that--as in
+the other two proscriptions--there was random murder, and many bribed
+their assassins and escaped from Italy. Octavianus had marked the fewest
+and tried to save Cicero, but Antonius insisted on his death. On hearing
+that he was in the fatal roll, Cicero had left Rome with his brother,
+and slowly travelled towards the coast from one country house to another
+till he came to Antium, whence he meant to sail for Greece; but there he
+was overtaken. His brother was killed at once, but he was put into a
+boat by his slaves, and went down the coast to Formi�, where he landed
+again, and, going to a house near, said he would rather die in his own
+country which he had so often saved. However, when the pursuers knocked
+at the gate, his slaves placed him in a litter and hurried him out at
+another door. He was, however, again overtaken, and he forbade his
+slaves to fight for him, but stretched out his throat for the sword,
+with his eyes full upon it. His head was carried to Antonius, whose wife
+Fulvia actually pierced the tongue with her bodkin in revenge for the
+speeches it had made against her husband.
+
+After this dreadful work, Antonius and Octavianus went across to Greece,
+where Marcus Brutus had collected the remains of the army that had
+fought under Pompeius. He had been made much of at Athens, where his
+statue had been set up beside that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the
+slayers of Pisistratus. Cassius had plundered Asia Minor, and the two
+met at Sardis. It is said that the night before they were to pass into
+Macedonia, Brutus was sitting alone in his tent, when he saw the figure
+of a man before him. "Who art thou?" he asked, and the answer was, "I am
+thine evil genius, Brutus; I will meet thee again at Philippi."
+
+[Illustration: MARCUS BRUTUS.]
+
+And it was at Philippi that Brutus and Cassius found themselves face to
+face with Antonius and Octavianus. Each army was divided into two, and
+Brutus, who fought against Octavianus, put his army to flight, but
+Cassius was driven back by Antonius; and seeing a troop of horsemen
+coming towards him, he thought all was lost, and threw himself upon a
+sword. Brutus gathered the troops together, and after twenty days
+renewed the fight, when he was routed, fled, and hid himself, but after
+some hours put himself to death, as did his wife Porcia when she heard
+of his end.
+
+After this, Octavianus went back to Italy, while Antonius stayed to
+pacify the East. When he was at Tarsus, the lovely queen of Egypt came,
+resolved to win him over. She sailed up the Cydnus in a beautiful
+galley, carved, gilded, and inlaid with ivory, with sails of purple silk
+and silvered oars, moving to the sound of flutes, while she lay on the
+deck under a star-spangled canopy arrayed as Venus, with her ladies as
+nymphs, and little boys as Cupids fanning her. Antonius was perfectly
+fascinated, and she took him back to Alexandria with her, heeding
+nothing but her and the delights with which she entertained him, though
+his wife Fulvia and his brother were struggling to keep up his power at
+Rome. He did come home, but only to make a fresh agreement with
+Octavianus, by which Fulvia was given up and he married Octavia, the
+widow of Marcellus and sister of Octavianus. But he could not bear to
+stay long away from Cleopatra, and, deserting Octavia, he returned to
+Egypt, where the most wonderful revelries were kept up. Stories are told
+of eight wild boars being roasted in one day, each being begun a little
+later than the last, that one might be in perfection when Antonius
+should call for his dinner. Cleopatra vowed once that she would drink
+the most costly of draughts, and, taking off an earring of inestimable
+price, dissolved it in vinegar and swallowed it.
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDRIA.]
+
+In the meantime, Octavianus and Lepidus together had put down Decimus,
+and Lepidus had then tried to overcome Octavianus, but was himself
+conquered and banished; for Octavianus, was a kindly man, who never shed
+blood if he could help it, and, now that he was alone at Rome, won every
+one's heart by his gracious ways, while Antonius' riots in Egypt were a
+scandal to all who loved virtue and nobleness. So far was the Roman
+fallen that he even promised Cleopatra to conquer Italy and make
+Alexandria the capital of the world. Octavia tried to win him back, but
+she was a grave, virtuous Roman matron, and coarse, dissipated Antonius
+did not care for her compared with the enticing Egyptian queen. It was
+needful at last for Octavianus to destroy this dangerous power, and he
+mustered a fleet and army, while Antonius and Cleopatra sailed out of
+Alexandria with their ships and gave battle off the Cape of Actium. In
+the midst, either fright or treachery made Cleopatra sail away, and all
+the Egyptian ships with her, so that Antonius turned at once and fled
+with her. They tried to raise the East in their favor, but all their
+allies deserted them, and their soldiers went over to Alexandria, where
+Octavianus followed them. Then Cleopatra betrayed her lover, and put
+into the hands of Octavianus the ships in which he might have fled. He
+killed himself, and Cleopatra surrendered, hoping to charm young
+Octavianus as she had done Julius and Antonius, but when she saw him
+grave and unmoved, and found he meant to exhibit her in his triumph, she
+went to the tomb of Antonius and crowned it with flowers. The next day
+she was found on her couch, in her royal robes, dead, and her two maids
+dying too. "Is this well?" asked the man who found her. "It is well for
+the daughter of kings," said her maid with her last breath. Cleopatra
+had long made experiments on easy ways of death, and it was believed
+that an asp was brought to her in a basket of figs as the means of her
+death.
+
+
+[Illustration: CAIUS OCTAVIUS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+C�SAR AUGUSTUS.
+
+B.C. 33--A.D. 14.
+
+
+The death of Antonius ended the fierce struggles which had torn Rome so
+long. Octavianus was left alone; all the men who had striven for the old
+government were dead, and those who were left were worn out and only
+longed for rest. They had found that he was kind and friendly, and
+trusted to him thankfully, nay, were ready to treat him as a kind of
+god. The old frame of constitution went on as usual; there was still a
+Senate, still consuls, and all the other magistrates, but C�sar
+Octavianus had the power belonging to each gathered in one. He was
+prince of the Senate, which gave him rule in the city; pr�tor, which
+made him judge, and gave him a special guard of soldiers called the
+Pr�torian Guard to execute justice; and tribune of the people, which
+made him their voice; and even after his triumph he was still imperator,
+or general of the army. This word becomes in English, emperor, but it
+meant at this time merely commander-in-chief. He was also Pontifex
+Maximus, as Julius C�sar had been; and there was a general feeling that
+he was something sacred and set apart as the ruler and peace-maker; and,
+as he shared this feeling himself, he took the name of Augustus, which
+is the one by which he is always known.
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF AUGUSTUS AT THE VATICAN.]
+
+He did not, however, take to himself any great show or state. He lived
+in his family abode, and dressed and walked about the streets like any
+other Roman gentleman of consular rank, and no special respect was paid
+to him in speech, for, warned by the fate of Julius, he was determined
+to prevent the Romans from being put in mind of kings and crowns. He was
+a wise and deep-thinking man, and he tried to carry out the plans of
+Julius for the benefit of the nation and of the whole Roman world. He
+had the survey finished of all the countries of the empire, which now
+formed a complete border round the Mediterranean Sea, reaching as far
+north as the British Channel, the Alps, and the Black Sea; as far
+south as the African desert, as far west as the Atlantic, and east as
+the borders of the Euphrates; and he also had a universal census made of
+the whole of the inhabitants. It was the first time such a thing had
+been possible, for all the world was at last at peace, so that the
+Temple of Janus was closed for the third and last time in Roman history.
+There was a feeling all over the world that a great Deliverer and
+peaceful Prince was to be expected at this time. One of the Sybils was
+believed to have so sung, and the Romans, in their relief at the good
+rule of Augustus, thought he was the promised one; but they little knew
+why God had brought about this great stillness from all wars, or why He
+moved the heart of Augustus to make the decree that all the world should
+be taxed--namely, that the true Prince of Peace, the real Deliverer,
+might be born in the home of His forefathers, Bethlehem, the city of
+David.
+
+The purpose of Augustus' taxing was to make a regular division of the
+empire into provinces for the proconsuls to govern, with lesser
+divisions for the propr�tors, while many cities, especially Greek ones,
+were allowed their own magistrates, and some small tributary kingdoms
+still remained till the old royal family should either die out or
+offend the Romans. In these lands the people were governed by their own
+laws, unless they were made Roman citizens; and this freedom was more
+and more granted, and saved them from paying the tribute all the rest
+had to pay, and which went to support the armies and other public
+institutions at Rome, and to provide the corn which was regularly
+distributed to such citizens as claimed it at Rome. A Roman colony was a
+settlement, generally of old soldiers who had had lands granted to them,
+and kept their citizenship; and it was like another little Rome managing
+its own affairs, though subject to the mother city. There were many of
+these colonies, especially in Gaul on the north coast, to defend it from
+the Germans. Cologne was one, and still keeps its name. The tribute was
+carefully fixed, and Augustus did his best to prevent the governors from
+preying on the people.
+
+He tried to bring back better ways to Rome, which was in a sad state,
+full of vice and riot, and with little of the old, noble, hardy ways of
+the former times. The educated men had studied Greek philosophy till
+they had no faith in their own gods, and, indeed, had so mixed up their
+mythology with the Greek that they really did not know who their own
+were, and could not tell who were the greater gods whom Decius Mus
+invoked before he rushed on the enemy; and yet they kept up their
+worship, because their feasts were so connected with the State that
+everything depended on them; but they made them no real judges or
+helpers. The best men of the time were those who had taken up the Stoic
+philosophy, which held that virtue was above all things, whether it was
+rewarded or not; the worst were often the Epicureans, who held that we
+had better enjoy all we can in this life, being sure of nothing else.
+
+Learning was much esteemed in the time of Augustus. He and his two great
+friends, Caius Cilnius M�cenas and Vipsanius Agrippa, both had a great
+esteem for scholarship and poetry, and in especial the house of M�cenas
+was always open to literary men. The two chief poets of Rome, Publius
+Virgilius Maro and Quintus Horatius Flaccus, were warm friends of his.
+Virgil wrote poems on husbandry, and short dialogue poems called
+eclogues, in one of which he spoke of the time of Augustus in words that
+would almost serve as a prophecy of the kingdom of Him who was just born
+at Bethlehem. By desire of Augustus, he also wrote the _�neid_, a poem
+on the war-doings of �neas and his settlement in Italy.
+
+Horace wrote odes and letters in verse and satires, which show the
+habits and ways of thinking of his time in a very curious manner; and
+there were many other writers whose works have not come down to us; but
+the Latin of this time is the model of the language, and an Augustan age
+has ever since been a term for one in which literature flourishes.
+
+All the early part of Augustus' reign was prosperous, but he had no son,
+only a daughter named Julia. He meant to marry her to Marcellus, the son
+of his sister Antonia, but Marcellus died young, and was lamented in
+Virgil's _�neid_; so Julia was given to Agrippa's son. Augustus' second
+wife was Livia, who had been married to Tiberius Claudius Nero, and had
+two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, whom Augustus adopted as his own and
+intended for his heirs; and when Julia lost her husband Agrippa and her
+two young sons, he forced Tiberius to divorce the young wife he really
+loved to marry her. It was a great grief to Tiberius, and seems to have
+quite changed his character into being grave, silent, and morose. Julia,
+though carefully brought up, was one of the most wicked and depraved
+of women, and almost broke her father's heart. He banished her to an
+island near Rhegium, and when she died there, would allow no funeral
+honors to be paid to her.
+
+[Illustration: PAINTINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LIVIA.]
+
+The peace was beginning to be broken by wars with the Germans; and young
+Drusus was commanding the army against them, and gaining such honor that
+he was called Germanicus, when he fell from his horse and died of his
+injuries, leaving one young son. He was buried at Rome, and his brother
+Tiberius walked all the way beside the bier, with his long flaxen hair
+flowing on his shoulders. Tiberius then went back to command the armies
+on the Rhine. Some half-conquered country lay beyond, and the Germans in
+the forests were at this time under a brave leader called Arminius. They
+were attacked by the proconsul Quinctilius Varus, and near the river
+Ems, in the Herycimian forest, Arminius turned on him and routed him
+completely, cutting off the whole army, so that only a few fled back to
+Tiberius to tell the tale, and he had to fall back and defend the Rhine.
+
+The news of this disaster was a terrible shock to the Emperor. He sat
+grieving over it, and at times he dashed his head against the wall,
+crying, "Varus, Varus! give me back my legions." His friends were dead,
+he was an old man now, and sadness was around him. He was soon, however,
+grave and composed again; and, as his health began to fail, he sent for
+Tiberius and put his affairs into his hands. When his dying day came, he
+met it calmly. He asked if there was any fear of a tumult on his death,
+and was told there was none; then he called for a mirror, and saw that
+his grey hair and beard were in order, and, asking his friends whether
+he had played his part well, he uttered a verse from a play bidding them
+applaud his exit, bade Livia remember him, and so died in his
+seventy-seventh year, having ruled fifty-eight years--ten as a triumvir,
+forty-eight alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+TIBERIUS AND CALIGULA.
+
+A.D. 14--41.
+
+
+No difficulty was made about giving all the powers Augustus had held to
+his stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who had also a right to the names
+of Julius C�sar Augustus, and was in his own time generally called
+C�sar. The Senate had grown too helpless to think for themselves, and
+all the choice they ever made of the consuls was that the Emperor gave
+out four names, among which they chose two.
+
+Tiberius had been a grave, morose man ever since he was deprived of the
+wife he loved, and had lost his brother; and he greatly despised the
+mean, cringing ways round him, and kept to himself; but his nephew,
+called Germanicus, after his father, was the person whom every one
+loved and trusted. He had married Agrippina, Julia's daughter, who was
+also a very good and noble person; and when he was sent against the
+Germans, she went with him, and her little boys ran about among the
+soldiers, and were petted by them. One of them, Caius, was called by the
+soldiers Caligula, or the Little Shoe, because he wore a caliga or shoe
+like theirs; and he never lost the nickname.
+
+Germanicus earned his surname over again by driving Arminius back; but
+he was more enterprising than would have been approved by Augustus, who
+thought it wiser to guard what he had than to make wider conquests; and
+Tiberius was not only one of the same mind, but was jealous of the great
+love that all the army were showing for his nephew, and this distrust
+was increased when the soldiers in the East begged for Germanicus to
+lead them against the Parthians. He set out, visiting all the famous
+places in Greece by the way, and going to see the wonders of Egypt, but
+while in Syria he fell ill of a wasting sickness and died, so that many
+suspected the spy, Cn�us Piso, whom Tiberius had sent with him, of
+having poisoned him. When his wife Agrippina came home, bringing his
+corpse to be burnt and his ashes placed in the burying-place of the
+C�sars, there was universal love and pity for her. Piso seized on all
+the offices that Germanicus had held, but was called back to Rome, and
+was just going to be put upon his trial when he cut his own throat.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACES OF TIBERIUS.]
+
+All this tended to make Tiberius more gloomy and distrustful, and when
+his mother Livia died he had no one to keep him in check, but fell under
+the influence of a man named Sejanus, who managed all his affairs for
+him, while he lived in a villa in the island of Capre� in the Bay of
+Naples, seeing hardly any but a few intimates, given up to all sorts of
+evil luxuries and self-indulgences, and hating and dreading every one.
+Agrippina was so much loved and respected that he dreaded and disliked
+her beyond all others; and Sejanus contrived to get up an accusation of
+plotting against the state, upon which she and her eldest son were
+banished to two small rocky isles in the Mediterranean Sea. The other
+two sons, Drusus and Caius, were kept by Tiberius at Capre�, till
+Tiberius grew suspicious of Drusus and threw him into prison. Sejanus,
+who had encouraged all his dislike to his own kinsmen, and was managing
+all Rome, then began to hope to gain the full power; but his plans were
+guessed by Tiberius, and he caused his former favorite to be set upon
+in the senate-house and put to death.
+
+[Illustration: AGRIPPINA.]
+
+It is strange to remember that, while such dark deeds were being done at
+Rome, came the three years when the true Light was shining in the
+darkness. It was in the time of Tiberius C�sar, when Pontius Pilatus was
+propr�tor of Palestine, that our Lord Jesus Christ spent three years in
+teaching and working miracles; then was crucified and slain by wicked
+hands, that the sin of mankind might be redeemed. Then He rose again
+from the dead and ascended into Heaven, leaving His Apostles to make
+known what he had done in all the world.
+
+To the East, where our Lord dwelt, nay, to all the rest of the empire,
+the reign of Tiberius was a quiet time, with the good government
+arranged by Augustus working on. It was only his own family, and the
+senators and people of rank at Rome, who had much to fear from his
+strange, harsh, and jealous temper. The Claudian family had in all times
+been shy, proud, and stern, and to have such power as belonged to
+Augustus C�sar was more than their heads could bear. Tiberius hated and
+suspected everybody, and yet he did not like putting people to death, so
+he let Drusus be starved to death in his prison, and Agrippina chose the
+same way of dying in her island, while some of the chief senators
+received such messages that they put themselves to death. He led a
+wretched life, watching for treason and fearing everybody, and trying to
+drown the thought of danger in the banquets of Capre�, where the remains
+of his villa may still be seen. Once he set out, intending to visit
+Rome, but no sooner had he landed in Campania than the sight of hundreds
+of country people shouting welcome so disturbed him that he hastened on
+board ship again, and thus entered the Tiber; but at the very sight of
+the hills of Rome his terror returned, and he had his galley turned
+about and went back to his island, which he never again quitted.
+
+Only two males of his family were left now--a great-nephew and a nephew,
+Caius, that son of the second Germanicus who had been nicknamed
+Caligula, a youth of a strange, exciteable, feverish nature, but who
+from his fright at Tiberius had managed to keep the peace with him, and
+had only once been for a short time in disgrace; and his uncle, the
+youngest son of the first Germanicus, commonly called Claudius, a very
+dull, heavy man, fond of books, but so slow and shy that he was
+considered to be wanting in brains, and thus had never fallen under
+suspicion.
+
+At length Tiberius fell ill, and when he was known to be dying, he was
+smothered with pillows as he began to recover from a fainting fit, lest
+he should take vengeance on those who had for a moment thought him dead.
+He died A.D.. 37, and the power went to Caligula, properly
+called Caius, who was only twenty-five, and who began in a kindly,
+generous spirit, which pleased the people and gave them hope; but to
+have so much power was too much for his brain, and he can only be
+thought of as mad, especially after he had a severe illness, which made
+the people so anxious that he was puffed up with the notion of his
+own importance.
+
+[Illustration: ROME IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS C�SAR.]
+
+He put to death all who offended him, and, inheriting some of Tiberius'
+distrust and hatred of the people, he cried out, when they did not
+admire one of his shows as much as he expected, "Would that the people
+of Rome had but one neck, so that I might behead them all at once." He
+planned great public buildings, but had not steadiness to carry them
+out; and he became so greedy of the fame which, poor wretch, he could
+not earn, that he was jealous even of the dead. He burned the books of
+Livy and Virgil out of the libraries, and deprived the statues of the
+great men of old of the marks by which they were known--Cincinnatus of
+his curls, and Torquatus of his collar, and he forbade the last of the
+Pompeii to be called Magnus.
+
+He made an expedition into Gaul, and talked of conquering Britain, but
+he got no further than the shore of the channel, where, instead of
+setting sail, he bade the soldiers gather up shells, which he sent home
+to the Senate to be placed among the treasures of the Capitol, calling
+them the spoils of the conquered ocean. Then he collected the German
+slaves and the tallest Gauls he could find, commanded the latter to dye
+their hair and beards to a light color, and brought them home to walk
+in his triumph. The Senate, however, were slow to understand that he
+could really expect a triumph, and this affronted him so much that, when
+they offered him one, he would not have it, and went on insulting them.
+He made his horse a consul, though only for a day, and showed it with
+golden oats before it in a golden manger. Once, when the two consuls
+were sitting by him, he burst out laughing, to think, he said, how with
+one word he could make both their heads roll on the floor.
+
+The provinces were not so ill off, but the state of Rome was unbearable.
+Everybody was in danger, and at last a plot was formed for his death;
+and as he was on his way from his house to the circus, and stopped to
+look at some singers who were going to perform, a party of men set upon
+him and killed him with many wounds, after he had reigned only five
+years, and when he was but thirty years old.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+CLAUDIUS AND NERO.
+
+A.D. 41-68.
+
+
+Poor dull Claudius heard an uproar and hid himself, thinking he was
+going to be murdered like his nephew, but still worse was going to
+befall him. They were looking for him to make him Emperor, for he was
+the last of his family. He was clumsy in figure, though his face was
+good, and he was a kind-hearted man, who made large promises, and tried
+to do well; but he was slow and timid, and let himself be led by wicked
+men and women, so that his rule ended no better than that of the former
+C�sars.
+
+He began in a spirited way, by sending troops who conquered the southern
+part of Britain, and making an expedition thither himself. His wife
+chose to share his triumph, which was not, as usual, a drive in a
+chariot, but a sitting in armor on their thrones, with the eagles and
+standards over their heads, and the prisoners led up before them. Among
+them came the great British chief Caractacus, who is said to have
+declared that he could not think why those who had such palaces as there
+were at Rome should want the huts of the Britons.
+
+Claudius was kind to the people in the distant provinces. He gave the
+Jews a king again, Herod Agrippa, the grandson of the first Herod, who
+was much loved by them, but died suddenly after a few years at C�sarea,
+after the meeting with the Tyrians, when he let them greet him as a god.
+There were a great many Jews living at Rome, but those from Jerusalem
+quarrelled with those from Alexandria; and one year, when there was a
+great scarcity of corn, Claudius banished them all from Rome.
+
+[Illustration: CLAUDIUS.]
+
+Claudius was very unhappy in his wives. Two he divorced, and then
+married a third named Messalina, who was given up to all kinds of
+wickedness which he never guessed at, while she used all manner of arts
+to keep up her beauty and to deceive him. At last she actually married a
+young man while Claudius was absent from Rome; but when this came to his
+knowledge, he had her put to death. His last wife was, however, the
+worst of all. She was the daughter of the good Germanicus, and bore her
+mother's name of Agrippina. She had been previously married to Lucius
+Domitius �nobarbus, by whom she had a son, whom Claudius adopted when he
+married her, though he had a child of his own called Britannicus, son to
+Messalina. Romans had never married their nieces before, but the power
+of the Emperors was leading them to trample down all law and custom, and
+it was for the misfortune of Claudius that he did so in this case, for
+Agrippina's purpose was to put every one out of the way of her own son,
+who, taking all the Claudian and Julian names in addition to his own, is
+commonly known as Nero. She married him to Claudius' daughter Octavia,
+and then, after much tormenting the Emperor, she poisoned him with a
+dish of mushrooms, and bribed his physician to take care that he did not
+recover. He died A.D. 54, and, honest and true-hearted as he
+had been, the Romans were glad to be rid of him, and told mocking
+stories of him. Indeed, they were very bad in all ways themselves, and
+many of the ladies were poisoners like Agrippina, so that the city
+almost deserved the tyrant who came after Claudius. Nero, the son of
+Agrippina by her first marriage, and Britannicus, the son of Claudius
+and Messalina, were to reign together; but Nero was the elder, and as
+soon as his poor young cousin came to manhood, Agrippina had a dose of
+poison ready for him.
+
+Nero, however, began well. He had been well brought up by Seneca, an
+excellent student of the Stoic philosophy, who, with Burrhus, the
+commander of the Pr�torian Guard, guided the young Emperor with good
+advice through the first five years of his reign; and though his wicked
+mother called herself Augusta, and had equal honors paid her with her
+son, not much harm was done to the government till Nero fell in love
+with a wicked woman, Popp�a Sabina, who was a proverb for vanity, and
+was said to keep five hundred she-asses that she might bathe in their
+milk to preserve her complexion. Nero wanted to marry this lady, and as
+his mother befriended his neglected wife Octavia, he ordered that when
+she went to her favorite villa at Bai� her galley should be wrecked,
+and if she was not drowned, she should be stabbed. Octavia was divorced,
+sent to an island, and put to death there; and after Nero married
+Popp�a, he quickly grew more violent and savage.
+
+Burrhus died about the same time, and Seneca alone could not restrain
+the Emperor from his foolish vanity. He would descend into the arena of
+the great amphitheatre and sing to the lyre his own compositions; and he
+showed off his charioteering in the circus before the whole assembled
+city, letting no one go away till the performance was over. It very much
+shocked the patricians, but the mob were delighted, and he chiefly cared
+for their praises. He was building a huge palace, called the Golden
+House because of its splendid decorations; and, needing money, he caused
+accusations to be got up against all the richer men that he might have
+their hoards.
+
+[Illustration: NERO.]
+
+A terrible fire broke out in Rome, which raged for six days, and
+entirely destroyed fourteen quarters of the city. While it was burning,
+Nero, full of excitement, stood watching it, and sang to his lyre the
+description of the burning of Troy. A report therefore arose that he had
+actually caused the fire for the amusement of watching it; and to put
+this out of men's minds he accused the Christians. The Christian faith
+had begun to be known in Rome during the last reign, and it was to Nero,
+as C�sar, that St. Paul had appealed. He had spent two years in a hired
+house of his own at Rome, and thus had been in the guard-room of the
+Pr�torians, but he was released after being tried at "C�sar's
+judgment-seat," and remained at large until this sudden outburst which
+caused the first persecution. Then he was taken at Nicopolis, and St.
+Peter at Rome, and they were thrown into the Mamertine dungeon. Rome
+counts St. Peter as her first bishop. On the 29th of June,
+A.D. 66, both suffered; St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, being
+beheaded with the sword; St. Peter crucified, with his head, by his own
+desire, downwards. Many others suffered at the same time, some being
+thrown to the beasts, while others were wrapped in cloths covered with
+pitch, and slowly burnt to light the games in the Emperor's gardens. At
+last the people were shocked, and cried out for these horrors to end.
+And Nero, who cared for the people, turned his hatred and cruelty
+against men of higher class whose fate they heeded less. So common was
+it to have a message advising a man to put himself to death rather than
+be sentenced, that every one had studied easy ways of dying. Nero's old
+tutor, Seneca, felt his tyranny unbearable, and had joined in a plot for
+overthrowing him, but it was found out, and Seneca had to die by his own
+hand. The way he chose, and his wife too for his sake, was to open their
+veins, get into a warm bath, and bleed to death.
+
+Nero made a journey to Greece, and showed off at Olympus and the
+Isthmus, at the same time robbing the Greek cities of numbers of their
+best statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House; for the Romans had
+no original art--they could only imitate the Greeks and employ Greek
+artists. But danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor could be
+endured no longer, and the generals of the armies in the provinces began
+to threaten him, they not being smitten dumb and helpless as every one
+at Rome seemed to be.
+
+The Spanish army, under an officer named Galba, who was seventy-two
+years old, but to whom Augustus had said when he was a little boy, "You
+too shall share my taste of empire," began to move homewards to attack
+the tyrant, and the army from Gaul advanced to join it. Nero went nearly
+wild with fright, sometimes raging, sometimes tearing his hair and
+clothes; and the people began to turn against him in anger at a dearth
+of corn, saying he spent everything on his own pleasures. As Galba came
+nearer, the nobles and knights hoped for deliverance, and the Pr�torian
+Guard showed that they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and would
+not fight for him. The wretched Emperor found himself alone, and vainly
+called for some one to kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself.
+He fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the woods till he
+heard that, if he was caught, he would be put to death in the "ancient
+fashion," which he was told was being fixed with his neck in a forked
+stick and beaten to death. Then, hearing the hoofs of the horses of his
+pursuers, he set a sword against his breast and made a slave drive it
+home, and was groaning his last when the horsemen came up. He was but 30
+years old, and was the last Emperor who could trace any connection, even
+by adoption, with Augustus. He perished A.D. 68.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE FLAVIAN FAMILY.
+
+62-96.
+
+
+The ablest of all Nero's officers was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, a
+stern, rigid old soldier, who, with his son of the same name, was in the
+East, preparing to put down a great rising of the Jews. He waited to see
+what was going to happen, and in a very few weeks old Galba had offended
+the soldiers by his saving ways; there was a rising against him, and
+another soldier named Otho became Emperor; but the legions from Gaul
+marched up under Vitellius to dethrone him, and he killed himself to
+prevent other bloodshed.
+
+When the Eastern army heard of these changes, they declared they would
+make an Emperor like the soldiers of the West, and hailed Vespasian as
+Emperor. He left his son Titus to subdue Judea, and set out himself for
+Italy, where Vitellius had given himself up to riot and feasting. There
+was a terrible fight and fire in the streets of Rome itself, and the
+Gauls, who chiefly made up Vitellius' army, did even more mischief than
+the Gauls of old under Brennus; but at last Vespasian triumphed.
+Vitellius was taken, and, after being goaded along with the point of a
+lance, was put to death. There had been eighteen months of confusion,
+and Vespasian began his reign in the year 70.
+
+It was just then that his son Titus, having taken all the strongholds in
+Galilee, though they were desperately defended by the Jews, had advanced
+to besiege Jerusalem. All the Christians had heeded the warning that our
+blessed Lord had left them, and were safe at a city in the hills called
+Pella; but the Jews who were left within were fiercely quarrelling among
+themselves, and fought with one another as savagely as they fought with
+the enemy. Titus threw trenches round and blockaded the city; and the
+famine within grew to be most horrible. Some died in their houses, but
+the fierce lawless zealots rushed up and down the streets, breaking into
+the houses where they thought food was to be found. When they smelt
+roasting in one grand dwelling belonging to a lady, they rushed in and
+asked for the meat, but even they turned away in horror when she
+uncovered the remains of her own little child, whom she had been eating.
+At last the Roman engines broke down the walls of the lower city, and
+with desperate struggling the Romans entered, and found every house full
+of dead women and children. Still they had the Temple to take, and the
+Jews had gathered there, fancying that, at the worst, the Messiah would
+appear and save them. Alas! they had rejected Him long ago, and this was
+the time of judgment. The Romans fought their way in, up the marble
+steps, slippery with blood and choked with dead bodies; and fire raged
+round them. Titus would have saved the Holy Place as a wonder of the
+world, but a soldier threw a torch through a golden latticed window, and
+the flame spread rapidly. Titus had just time to look round on all the
+rich gilding and marbles before it sank into ruins. He took a terrible
+vengeance on the Jews. Great numbers were crucified, and the rest were
+either taken to the amphitheatres all over the empire to fight with wild
+beasts, or were sold as slaves, in such numbers that, cheap as they
+were, no one would buy them. And yet this wonderful nation has lived on
+in its dispersion ever since. The city was utterly overthrown and sown
+with salt, and such treasures as could be saved from the fire were
+carried in the triumph of Titus--namely, the shew-bread table, the
+seven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets--and laid up as
+usual among the spoils dedicated to Jupiter. Their figures are to be
+seen sculptured on the triumphal arch built in honor of Titus, which
+still stands at Rome.
+
+[Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS.]
+
+These Flavian C�sars were great builders. Much had to be restored at
+Rome after the two great fires, and they built a new Capitol and new
+Forum, besides pulling down Nero's Golden House, and setting up on part
+of the site the magnificent baths known as the Baths of Titus. Going to
+the bath, to be steamed, rubbed, anointed, and perfumed by the slaves,
+was the great amusement of an idle Roman's day, for in the waiting-rooms
+he met all his friends and heard the news; and these rooms were splendid
+halls, inlaid with marble, and adorned with the statues and pictures
+Nero had brought from Greece. On part of the gardens was begun what was
+then called the Flavian Amphitheatre, but is now known as the Colosseum,
+from the colossal statue that stood at its door--a wonderful place, with
+a succession of galleries on stone vaults round the area, on which every
+rank and station, from the Emperor and Vestal Virgins down to the
+slaves, had their places, whence to see gladiators and beasts struggle
+and perish, on sands mixed with scarlet grains to hide the stain, and
+perfumed showers to overcome the scent of blood, and under silken
+embroidered awnings to keep off the sun.
+
+Vespasian was an upright man, and though he was stern and unrelenting,
+his reign was a great relief after the capricious tyranny of the last
+Claudii. He and his eldest son Titus were plain and simple in their
+habits, and tried to put down the horrid riot and excess that were
+ruining the Romans, and they were feared and loved. They had great
+successes too. Britain was subdued and settled as far as the northern
+hills, and a great rising in Eastern Gaul subdued. Vespasian was accused
+of being avaricious, but Nero had left the treasury in such a state that
+he could hardly have governed without being careful. He died in the year
+79, at seventy years old. When he found himself almost gone, he desired
+to be lifted to his feet, saying that an Emperor should die standing.
+
+[Illustration: VESUVIUS PREVIOUS TO THE ERUPTION OF A.D. 63.]
+
+He left two sons, Titus and Domitian. Titus was more of a scholar than
+his father, and was gentle and kindly in manner, so that he was much
+beloved. He used to say, "I have lost a day," when one went by without
+his finding some kind act to do. He was called the delight of mankind,
+and his reign would have been happy but for another great fire in Rome,
+which burnt what Nero's fire had left. In his time, too, Mount Vesuvius
+suddenly woke from its rest, and by a dreadful eruption destroyed the
+two cities at its foot, Herculaneum and Pompeii. The philosopher
+Plinius, who wrote on geography and natural history, was stifled by the
+sulphurous air while fleeing from the showers of stones and ashes
+cast up by the mountain. His nephew, called Pliny the younger, has left
+a full account of the disaster, and the cloud like a pine tree that hung
+over the mountain, the noises, the earthquake, and the fall at last of
+the ashes and lava. Drusilla, the wife of Felix, the governor before
+whom St. Paul pleaded, also perished. Herculaneum was covered with solid
+lava, so that very little could be recovered from it; but Pompeii, being
+overwhelmed with dust or ashes, was only choked, and in modern days has
+been discovered, showing perfectly what an old Roman town was
+like--amphitheatre, shops, bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons have
+been found: a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, a priest
+crushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded into a vault, a sentry at
+his post; and in other cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impression
+of the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into them the forms
+of the victims have been recovered, especially two women, elder and
+younger, just as they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden in
+her mother's robe.
+
+[Illustration: PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.]
+
+Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law Tacitus, who wrote the
+history of those reigns, laid the blame on his brother Domitian, who was
+as cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does seem to have been shocked
+at the wickedness of the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grown
+shameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patrician families in Rome
+well brought up enough to become one. The blame was laid on forsaking
+the old religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising," which meant
+Christianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the
+Emperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was this
+which led to St. John, the last of the Apostles, being brought to Rome
+and placed in a cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate; but a
+miracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did him no hurt, upon
+which he was banished to the Isle of Patmos.
+
+The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, and the shows of
+gladiators, fights with beasts, and even sea-fights, when the arena was
+flooded, exceeded all that had gone before. There were fights between
+women and women, dwarfs and cranes. There is an inscription at Rome
+which has made some believe that the architect of the Colosseum was one
+Gandentius, who afterwards perished there as a Christian.
+
+Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a gold crown with little
+figures of the gods on it. He did strange things. Once he called
+together all his council in the middle of the night on urgent business,
+and while they expected to hear of some foreign enemy on the borders, a
+monstrous turbot was brought in, and they were consulted whether it was
+to be cut in pieces or have a dish made on purpose for it. Another time
+he invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a black
+marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a column
+like a tomb, a feast laid as at a funeral, and black boys to wait on
+them! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many people
+to death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, and
+he had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in a
+glass if any one approached him from behind. But this did not save him.
+His wife found that he meant to put her to death, and contrived that a
+party of servants should murder him, A.D. 96.
+
+[Illustration: COIN OF NERO.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES.
+
+96--194.
+
+
+Domitian is called the last of the twelve C�sars, though all who came
+after him called themselves C�sar. He had no son, and a highly esteemed
+old senator named Cocceius Nerva became Emperor. He was an upright man,
+who tried to restore the old Roman spirit; and as he thought
+Christianity was only a superstition which spoiled the ancient temper,
+he enacted that all should die who would not offer incense to the gods,
+and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who had been bred
+up among the Apostles. He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St.
+Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one of a set of
+letters which remain to this day. He was then thrown to the lions in the
+Colosseum.
+
+It seems strange that the good Emperors were often worse persecutors
+than the bad ones, but the fact was that the bad ones let the people do
+as they pleased, as long as they did not offend them; while the good
+ones were trying to bring back what they read of in Livy's history, of
+plain living and high thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more of
+the Christians than that they were people who did not worship the gods.
+Moreover, Julius Trajanus, whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reign
+after him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there were laws in
+force against the Christians. When Pliny the younger was propr�tor of
+the province of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Emperor what
+to do about the Christians, telling him what he had been able to find
+out about them from two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, that
+they were wont to meet together at night or early morning, to sing
+together, and eat what he called a harmless social meal. Trajan answered
+that he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if they were brought
+before him, the law must take its course. In Rome, the chief refuge of
+the Christians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, from which the
+city was chiefly built, and which were hollowed out in long galleries.
+Slaves and convicts worked them, and they were thus made known to the
+Christians, who buried their dead in places hollowed at the sides, used
+the galleries for their churches, and often hid there when there was
+search made for them.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA.]
+
+Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title of Optimus, the Best,
+as no one else has ever done. He was a great captain too, and conquered
+Dacia, the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, and Pruth, and the
+Carpathian Hills; and he also defeated the Parthians, and said if he
+had been a younger man he would have gone as far as Alexander. As it
+was, the empire was at its very largest in his reign, and he was a very
+great builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him a
+wall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls and
+bridges and roads--some of which still remain, as does his tall column
+at Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from top
+to bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died at
+Cilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius �tius
+Hadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but found he could not
+keep Dacia, and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He came to
+Britain, where the Roman settlements were tormented by the Picts. There
+he built the famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them out. He was
+wonderfully active, and hastened from one end of the empire to the other
+wherever his presence was needed. There was a revolt of the Jews in the
+far East, under a man who pretended to be the Messiah, and called
+himself the Son of a Star. This was put down most severely, and no Jew
+was allowed to come near Jerusalem, over which a new city was built, and
+called after the Emperor's second name, �lia Capitolina; and, to drive
+the Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter was built where the Temple
+had been, and one to Venus on Mount Calvary.
+
+But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened kindly to an explanation of
+the faith which was shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christian
+philosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand towerlike monument,
+surrounded by stages of columns and arches, which was to be called the
+Mole of Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its ornaments.
+Before his death, in 138, he had chosen his successor, Titus Aurelius
+Antoninus, a good upright man, a philosopher, and 52 years old; for it
+had been found that youths who became Emperors had their heads turned by
+such unbounded power, while elder men cared for the work and duty.
+Antoninus was so earnest for his people's welfare that they called him
+Pius. He avoided wars, only defended the empire; but he was a great
+builder, for he raised another rampart in Britain, much further north,
+and set up another column at Rome, and in Gaul built a great
+amphitheatre at Nismes, and raised the wonderful aqueduct which is still
+standing, and is called the Pont du Gard.
+
+His son-in-law, whom he adopted and who succeeded him, is commonly
+called Marcus Aurelius, as a choice among his many names. He was a deep
+student and Stoic philosopher, with an earnest longing for truth and
+virtue, though he knew not how to seek them where alone they could be
+found; and when earthquake, pestilence and war fell on his empire, and
+the people thought the gods were offended, he let them persecute the
+Christians, whose faith he despised, because the hope of Resurrection
+and of Heaven seemed weak and foolish to him beside his stern, proud,
+hopeless Stoicism. So the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, the last
+pupil of the Apostles themselves, was sentenced to be burnt in the
+theatre of his own city, though, as the fire curled round him in a
+curtain of flame without touching him, he was actually slain with the
+sword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there was a fearful
+persecution which fell on women of all ranks, and where Blandina the
+slave, under the most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for her
+brave patience.
+
+Aurelius was fighting hard with the German tribes on the Danube, who
+gave him no rest, and threatened to break into the empire. While
+pursuing them, he and his army were shut into a strong place where they
+could get no water, and were perishing with thirst, when a whole
+legion, all Christian soldiers, knelt down and prayed. A cloud came up,
+a welcome shower of rain descended, and was the saving of the thirsty
+host. It was said that the name of the Thundering Legion was given to
+this division in consequence, though on the column reared by Aurelius it
+is Jupiter who is shown sending rain on the thirsty host, who are
+catching it in their shields. After this there was less persecution, but
+every sort of trouble--plague, earthquake, famine, and war--beset the
+empire on all sides, and the Emperor toiled in vain against these
+troubles, writing, meantime, meditations that show how sad and sick at
+heart he was, and how little comfort philosophy gave him, while his eyes
+were blind to the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while still in
+the prime of life, in the year 180, and with him ended the period of
+good Emperors, which the Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aurelius
+was indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but he was a foolish
+good-for-nothing youth, who would not bear the fatigues and toils of
+real war, though he had no shame in showing off in the arena, and is
+said to have fought there seven hundred and fifty times, besides killing
+wild beasts. He boasted of having slain one hundred lions with one
+hundred arrows, and a whole row of ostriches with half-moon shaped
+arrows which cut off their heads, the poor things being fastened where
+he could not miss them, and the Romans applauding as if for some noble
+deed. They let him reign sixteen years before he was murdered, and then
+a good old soldier named Pertinax began to reign; but the Pr�torian
+Guard had in those sixteen years grown disorderly, and the moment they
+felt the pressure of a firm hand they attacked the palace, killed the
+Emperor, cut off his head, and ran with it to the senate-house, asking
+who would be Emperor. An old senator was foolish enough to offer them a
+large sum if they would choose him, and this put it into their heads to
+rush out to the ramparts and proclaim that they would sell the empire to
+the highest bidder.
+
+A vain, old, rich senator, named Didius Julianus, was at supper with his
+family when he heard that the Pr�torians were selling the empire by
+auction, and out he ran, and actually bought it at the rate of about
+�200 to each man. The Emperor being really the commander-in-chief, with
+other offices attached to the dignity, the soldiers had a sort of right
+to the choice; but the other armies at a distance, who were really
+fighting and guarding the empire, had no notion of letting the matter
+be settled by the Pr�torians, mere guardsmen, who stayed at home and
+tried to rule the rest; so each army chose its own general and marched
+on Rome, and it was the general on the Danube, Septimius Severus, who
+got there first; whereupon the Pr�torians killed their foolish Emperor
+and joined him.
+
+[Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+THE PR�TORIAN INFLUENCE.
+
+197--284.
+
+
+Septimus Severus was an able Emperor, and reigned a long time. He was
+stern and harsh, as was needed by the wickedness of the time; and he was
+very active, seldom at Rome, but flashing as it were from one end of the
+empire to the other, wherever he was needed, and keeping excellent
+order. There was no regular persecution of the Christians in his time;
+but at Lyons, where the townspeople were in great numbers Christians,
+the country-folk by some sudden impulse broke in and made a horrible
+massacre of them, in which the bishop, St. Iren�us, was killed. So few
+country people were at this time converts, that Paganus, a peasant, came
+to be used as a term for a heathen.
+
+Severus was, like Trajan and Hadrian, a great builder and road-maker.
+The whole empire was connected by a network of paved roads made by the
+soldiery, cutting through hills, bridging valleys, straight, smooth, and
+so solid that they remain to this day. This made communication so
+rapid that government was possible to an active man like him. He gave
+the Parthians a check; and, when an old man, came to Britain and marched
+far north, but he saw it was impossible to guard Antonius' wall between
+the Forth and Clyde, and only strengthened the rampart of Hadrian from
+the Tweed to the Solway. He died at York, in 211, on his return, and his
+last watchword was "Labor!" His wife was named Julia Domna, and he left
+two sons, usually called Caracalla and Geta, who divided the empire; but
+Geta was soon stabbed by his brother's own hand, and then Caracalla
+showed himself even worse than Commodus, till he in his turn was
+murdered in 217.
+
+[Illustration: SEPTIMUS SEVERUS.]
+
+[Illustration: ANTIOCH.]
+
+His mother, Julia Domna, had a sister called Julia S�mias, who lived at
+Antioch, and had two daughters, S�mias and Mamm�a, who each had a son,
+Elagabalus--so called after the idol supposed to represent the sun,
+whose priest at Emesa he was--and Alexander Severus. The Pr�torian
+Guard, in their difficulty whom to chose Emperor, chose Elagabalus, a
+lad of nineteen, who showed himself a poor, miserable, foolish wretch,
+who did the most absurd things. His feasts were a proverb for excess,
+and even his lions were fed on parrots and pheasants. Sometimes he would
+get together a festival party of all fat men, or all thin, all tall, or
+short, all bald, or gouty; and at others he would keep the wedding of
+his namesake god and Pallas, making matches between the gods and
+goddesses all over Italy; and he carried on his service to his god with
+the same barbaric dances in a strange costume as at Emesa, to the great
+disgust of the Romans. His grandmother persuaded him to adopt his cousin
+Alexander, a youth of much more promise, who took the name of Severus.
+The soldiers were charmed with him; Elagabalus became jealous, and was
+going to strip him of his honors; but this angered the Pr�torians, so
+that they put the elder Emperor to death in 222.
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDER SEVERUS.]
+
+Alexander Severus was a good and just prince, whose mother is believed
+to have been a Christian, and he had certainly learned enough of the
+Divine Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He loved
+virtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon our
+Blessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue with
+that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers of
+mankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level.
+He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of good
+and firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the Pr�torians in 235.
+
+These guards had all the power, and set up and put down Emperors so
+rapidly that there are hardly any names worth remembering. In the
+unsettled state of the empire no one had time to persecute the
+Christians, and their numbers grew and prospered; in many places they
+had churches, with worship going on openly, and their Bishops were known
+and respected. The Emperor Philip, called the Arabian, who was actually
+a Christian, though he would not own it openly, when he was at Antioch,
+joined in the service at Easter, and presented himself to receive the
+Holy Communion; but Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should have
+done open penance for the crimes by which he had come to the purple,
+and renounced all remains of heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but put
+off his repentance; and the next year celebrated the games called the
+Secul�, because they took place every Seculum or hundredth year, with
+all their heathen ceremonies, and with tenfold splendor, in honor of
+this being Rome's thousandth birthday.
+
+Soon after, another general named Decius was chosen by the army on the
+German frontier, and Philip was killed in battle with him. Decius wanted
+to be an old-fashioned Roman; he believed in the gods, and thought the
+troubles of the empire came of forsaking them; and as the Parthians
+molested the East, and the Goths and Germans the North, and the soldiers
+seemed more ready to kill their Emperors than the enemy, he thought to
+win back prosperity by causing all to return to the old worship, and
+begun the worst persecution the Church had yet known. Rome, Antioch,
+Carthage, Alexandria, and all the chief cities were searched for
+Christians. If they would not throw a handful of incense on the idol's
+altar or disown Christ, they were given over to all the horrid torments
+cruel ingenuity could invent, in the hope of subduing their constancy.
+Some fell, but the greater number were firm, and witnessed a glorious
+confession before, in 251, Decius and his son were both slain in battle
+in M�sia.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE SUN AT PALMYRA.]
+
+The next Emperor whose name is worth remembering was Valerian, who had
+to make war against the Persians. The old stock of Persian kings,
+professing to be descended from Cyrus, and, like him, adoring fire, had
+overcome the Parthians, and were spreading the Persian power in the
+East, under their king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and on the
+banks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian in a terrible battle at
+Edessa. Valerian was made prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, who
+was forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up by his back when
+mounting on horseback; and when he died, his skin was dyed purple,
+stuffed, and hung up in a temple.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATACOMBS AT ROME.]
+
+The best resistance made to Sapor was by Odenatus, a Syrian chief, and
+his beautiful Arabian wife Zenobia, who held out the city of Palmyra, on
+an oasis in the desert between Palestine and Assyria, till Sapor
+retreated. Finding that no notice was taken of them by Rome, they called
+themselves Emperor and Empress. The city was very beautifully adorned
+with splendid buildings in the later Greek style; and Zenobia, who
+reigned with her young sons after her husband's death, was well read in
+Greek classics and philosophy, and was a pupil of the philosopher
+Longinus. Aurelian, becoming Emperor of Rome, came against this strange
+little kingdom, and was bravely resisted by Zenobia; but he defeated
+her, made her prisoner, and caused her to march in his triumph to Rome.
+She afterwards lived with her children in Italy.
+
+Aurelian saw perils closing in on all sides of the empire, and thought
+it time to fortify the city of Rome itself, which had long spread beyond
+the old walls of Servius Tullus. He traced a new circuit, and built the
+wall, the lines of which are the same that still enclose Rome, though
+the wall itself has been several times thrown down and rebuilt. He also
+built the city in Gaul which still bears his name, slightly altered into
+Orleans. He was one of those stern, brave Emperors, who vainly tried to
+bring back old Roman manners, and fancied it was Christianity that
+corrupted them; and he was just preparing for a great persecution when
+he was murdered in his tent, and there were three or four more Emperors
+set up and then killed almost as soon as their reign was well begun. The
+last thirty of them are sometimes called the Thirty Tyrants. This power
+of the Pr�torian Guard, of setting up and pulling down their Emperor as
+being primarily their general, lasted altogether fully a hundred years.
+
+[Illustration: COIN OF SEVERUS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+284-312.
+
+
+A Dalmatian soldier named Diocles had been told by a witch that he
+should become Emperor by the slaughter of a boar. He became a great
+hunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed to bring him nearer to
+the purple, till, when the army was fighting on the Tigris, the Emperor
+Numerianus died, and an officer named Aper offered himself as his
+successor. Aper is the Latin for a boar, and Diocles, perceiving the
+scope of the prophecy, thrust his sword into his rival's breast, and was
+hailed Emperor by the legions. He lengthened his name out to
+Diocletianus, to sound more imperial, and began a dominion unlike that
+of any who had gone before. They had only been, as it were, overgrown
+generals, chosen by the Pr�torians or some part of the army, and at the
+same time taking the tribuneship and other offices for life. Diocletian,
+though called Emperor, reigned like the kings of the East. He broke the
+strength of the Pr�torians, so that they could never again kill one
+Emperor and elect another as before; and he never would visit Rome lest
+he should be obliged to acknowledge the authority of the Senate, whose
+power he contrived so entirely to take away, that thenceforward Senator
+became only a complimentary title, of which people in the subdued
+countries were very proud.
+
+[Illustration: DIOCLETIAN.]
+
+He divided the empire into two parts, feeling that it was beyond the
+management of any one man, and chose an able soldier of low birth but
+much courage, named Maximian, to rule the West from Trier as his
+capital, while he himself ruled the East from Nicomedia. Each of the two
+Emperors chose a future successor, who was to rule in part of his
+dominions under the title of C�sar, and to reign after him. Diocletian
+chose his son-in-law Galerius, and sent him to fight on the Danube; and
+Maximian chose, as C�sar, Constantius Chlorus, who commanded in Britain,
+Gaul, and Spain; and thus everything was done to secure that a strong
+hand should be ready everywhere to keep the legions from setting up
+Emperors at their own will.
+
+Diocletian was esteemed the most just and kind of the Emperors;
+Maximian, the fiercest and most savage. He had a bitter hatred of the
+Christian name, which was shared by Galerius; but, on the other hand,
+the wife of Diocletian was believed to be a Christian, and Helena, the
+wife of Constantius, was certainly one. However, Maximian and Galerius
+were determined to put down the faith. Maximian is said to have had a
+whole legion of Christians in his army, called the Theban, from the
+Egyptian Thebes. These he commanded to sacrifice, and on their refusal
+had them decimated--that is, every tenth man was slain. They were called
+on again to sacrifice, but still were staunch, and after a last summons
+were, every man of them, slain as they stood with their tribune Maurice,
+whose name is still held in high honor in the Engadine. Diocletian was
+slow to become a persecutor, until a fire broke out in his palace at
+Nicomedia, which did much mischief in the city, but spared the chief
+Christian church. The enemies of the Christians accused them of having
+caused it, and Diocletian required every one in his household to clear
+themselves by offering sacrifice to Jupiter. His wife and daughter
+yielded, but most of his officers and slaves held out, and died in cruel
+torments. One slave was scourged till the flesh parted from his bones,
+and then the wounds were rubbed with salt and vinegar; others were
+racked till their bones were out of joint, and others hung up by their
+hands to hooks, with weights fastened to their feet. A city in Phrygia
+was surrounded by soldiers and every person in it slaughtered; and the
+Christians were hunted down like wild beasts from one end of the empire
+to the other, everywhere save in Britain, where, under Constantius, only
+one martyrdom is reported to have taken place, namely, that of the
+soldier at Verulam, St. Alban. It was the worst of all the persecutions,
+and lasted the longest.
+
+[Illustration: DIOCLETIAN IN RETIREMENT.]
+
+The two Emperors were good soldiers, and kept the enemies back, so that
+Diocletian celebrated a triumph at Nicomedia; but he had an illness just
+after, and, as he was fifty-nine years old, he decided that it would be
+better to resign the empire while he was still in his full strength,
+and he persuaded Maximian to do the same, in 305, making Constantius and
+Galerius Emperors in their stead. Constantius stopped the persecution in
+the West, but it raged as much as ever in the East under Galerius and
+the C�sar he had appointed, whose name was Daza, but who called himself
+Maximin. Constantius fought bravely, both in Britain and Gaul, with the
+enemies who tried to break into the empire. The Franks, one of the
+Teuton nations, were constantly breaking in on the eastern frontier of
+Gaul, and the Caledonians on the northern border of the settlement of
+Britain. He opposed them gallantly, and was much loved, but he died at
+York, 305, and Galerius passed over his son Constantine, and appointed a
+favorite of his own named Licinius. Constantine was so much beloved by
+the army and people of Gaul that they proclaimed him Emperor, and he
+held the province of Britain and Gaul securely against all enemies.
+
+Old Maximian, who had only retired on the command of Diocletian, now
+came out from his retreat, and called on his colleague to do the same;
+but Diocletian was far too happy on his little farm at Salona to leave
+it, and answered the messenger who urged him again to take upon him the
+purple with--"Come and look at the cabbages I have planted." However,
+Maximian was accepted as the true Emperor by the Senate, and made his
+son Maxentius, C�sar, while he allied himself with Constantine, to whom
+he gave his daughter Fausta in marriage. Maxentius turned out a rebel,
+and drove the old man away to Marseilles, where Constantine gave him a
+home on condition of his not interfering with government; but he could
+not rest, and raised the troops in the south against his son-in-law.
+Constantine's army marched eagerly against him and made him prisoner,
+but even then he was pardoned; yet he still plotted, and tried to
+persuade his daughter Fausta to murder her husband. Upon this
+Constantine was obliged to have him put to death.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.]
+
+Galerius died soon after of a horrible disease, during which he was
+filled with remorse for his cruelties to the Christians, sent to entreat
+their prayers, and stopped the persecution. On his death, Licinius
+seized part of his dominions, and there were four men calling themselves
+Emperors--Licinius in Asia, Daza Maximin in Egypt, Maxentius at Rome,
+and Constantine in Gaul.
+
+There was sure soon to be a terrible struggle. It began between
+Maxentius and Constantine. This last marched out of Gaul and entered
+Italy. He had hitherto seemed doubtful between Christianity and
+paganism, but a wonder was seen in the heavens before his whole army,
+namely, a bright cross of light in the noon-tide sky with the words
+plainly to be traced round it, _In hoc signo vinces_--"In this sign thou
+shalt conquer." This sight decided his mind; he proclaimed himself a
+Christian, and from Milan issued forth an edict promising the Christians
+his favor and protection. Great victories were gained by him at Turin,
+Verona, and on the banks of the Tiber, where, at the battle of the
+Milvian Bridge in 312, Maxentius was defeated, and was drowned in
+crossing the river. Constantine entered Rome, and was owned by the
+Senate as Emperor of the West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
+
+312-337.
+
+
+Constantine entered Rome as a Christian, and from his time forward
+Christianity prevailed. He reigned only over the West at first, but
+Licinius overthrew Daza, treating him and his family with great
+barbarity, and then Constantine, becoming alarmed at his power, marched
+against him, beat him in Thrace, and ten years later made another attack
+on him. In the battle of Adrianople, Licinius was defeated, and soon
+after made prisoner and put to death. Thus, in 323, Constantine became
+the only Emperor.
+
+He was a Christian in faith, though not as yet baptized. He did not
+destroy heathen temples nor forbid heathen rites, but he did everything
+to favor the Christians and make Christian laws. Churches were rebuilt
+and ornamented; Sunday was kept as the day of the Lord, and on it no
+business might be transacted except the setting free of a slave;
+soldiers might go to church, and all that had made it difficult and
+dangerous to confess the faith was taken away. Constantine longed to see
+his whole empire Christian; but at Rome, heathen ceremonies were so
+bound up with every action of the state or of a man's life that it was
+very hard for the Emperor to avoid them, and he therefore spent as
+little time as he could there, but was generally at the newer cities of
+Arles and Trier; and at last he decided on founding a fresh capital, to
+be a Christian city from the first.
+
+The place he chose was the shore of the Bosphorus, where Asia and Europe
+are only divided by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek city of
+Byzantium already stood. From hence he hoped to be able to rule the East
+and the West. He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made a
+palace there for himself, and called it after his own name--Constantinople,
+or New Rome, neither of which names has it ever lost. He carried many of
+the ornaments of Old Rome thither, but consecrated them as far as
+possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother
+Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our
+blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The
+churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity
+at Bethlehem have been kept up even to this day.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+There was now no danger in being a Christian, and thus worldly and even
+wicked men and women owned themselves as belonging to the Church. So
+much evil prevailed that many good men fled from the sight of it,
+thinking to do more good by praying in lonely places free from
+temptation than by living in the midst of it. These were called hermits,
+and the first and most noted of them was St. Anthony. The Thebaid, or
+hilly country above Thebes in Egypt, was full of these hermits. When
+they banded together in brotherhoods they were called monks, and the
+women who did the like were called nuns.
+
+At this time there arose in Egypt a priest named Arius, who fell away
+from the true faith respecting our blessed Lord, and taught that he was
+not from the beginning, and was not equal with God the Father. The
+Patriarch of Alexandria tried to silence him, but he led away an immense
+number of followers, who did not like to stretch their souls to confess
+that Jesus Christ is God. At last Constantine resolved to call together
+a council of the Bishops and the wisest priests of the whole Church, to
+declare what was the truth that had been always held from the beginning.
+The place he appointed for the meeting was Nicea, in Asia Minor, and he
+paid for the journeys of all the Bishops, three hundred and eighteen in
+number, who came from all parts of the empire, east and west, so as to
+form the first Oecumenical or General Council of the Church. Many of
+them still bore the marks of the persecutions they had borne in
+Diocletian's time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off;
+some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard labor
+in the mines. The Emperor, in purple and gold, took a seat in the
+council as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet baptized; and
+the person who used the most powerful arguments was a young deacon of
+Alexandria named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared that the
+doctrine of Arius was contrary to what the Church had held from the
+first, and the confession of faith was drawn up which we call the Nicene
+Creed. Three hundred Bishops at once set their seals to it, and of those
+who at first refused all but two were won over, and these were banished.
+It was then that the faith of the Church began to be called Catholic or
+universal, and orthodox or straight teaching; while those who attacked
+it were called heretics, and their doctrine heresy, from a Greek word
+meaning to choose.
+
+[Illustration: COUNCIL OF NICEA.]
+
+The troubles were not at an end with the Council and Creed of Nicea.
+Arius had pretended to submit, but he went on with his false teaching,
+and the courtly Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had the ear of the
+Emperor, protected him. Athanasius had been made Patriarch, or
+Father-Bishop, of Alexandria, and with all his might argued against the
+false doctrine, and cut off those who followed it from the Church. But
+Eusebius so talked that Constantine fancied quiet was better than truth,
+and sent orders to Athanasius that no one was to be shut out. This the
+Patriarch could not obey, and the Emperor therefore banished him to
+Gaul. Arius then went to Constantinople to ask the Emperor to insist on
+his being received back to communion. He declared that he believed that
+which he held in his hand, showing the Creed of Nicea, but keeping
+hidden under it a statement of his own heresy.
+
+[Illustration: CATACOMBS.]
+
+"Go," said Constantine; "if your faith agree with your oath, you are
+blameless; if not, God be your judge;" and he commanded that Arius
+should be received to communion the next day, which was Sunday. But on
+his way to church, among a great number of his friends, Arius was struck
+with sudden illness, and died in a few minutes. The Emperor, as well as
+the Catholics, took this as a clear token of the hand of God, and
+Constantine was cured of any leaning to the Arians, though he still
+believed the men who called Athanasius factious and troublesome, and
+therefore would not recall him from exile.
+
+The great grief of Constantine's life was, that he put his eldest son
+Crispus to death on a wicked accusation of his stepmother Fausta. On
+learning the truth, he caused a silver statue to be raised, bearing the
+inscription, "My son, whom I unjustly condemned;" and when other crimes
+of Fausta came to light, he caused her to be suffocated.
+
+Baptism was often in those days put off to the end of life, that there
+might be no more sin after it, and Constantine was not baptized till his
+last illness had begun, when he was sixty-four years old, and he sent
+for Sylvester, Pope or Bishop of Rome, where he then was, and received
+from him baptism, absolution, and Holy Communion. After this,
+Constantine never put on purple robes again, but wore white till the day
+of his death in 337.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+CONSTANTIUS.
+
+337-364.
+
+
+Constantine the Great left three sons, who shared the empire between
+them; but two were slain early in life, and only Constantius, the second
+and worst of the brothers, remained Emperor. He was an Arian, and under
+him Athanasius, who had returned to Alexandria, was banished again, and
+took refuge with the Pope Liberius at Rome. Pope--papa in Latin--is the
+name for father, just as patriarch is; and the Pope had become more
+important since the removal of the court from Rome; but Constantius
+tried to overcome Liberius, banished him to Thrace, and placed an Arian
+named Felix in his room. The whole people of Rome rose in indignation,
+and Constantius tried to appease them by declaring that Liberius and
+Felix should rule the Church together; but the Romans would not submit
+to such a decree. "Shall we have the circus factions in the Church?"
+they said. "No! one God, one Christ, one Bishop!" In the end Felix was
+forced to fly, and Liberius kept his seat. Athanasius found his safest
+refuge in the deserts among the hermits of the Thebaid in Egypt.
+
+Meantime Sapor, king of Persia, was attacking Nisibis, the most Eastern
+city of the Roman empire, where a brave Catholic named James was Bishop,
+and encouraged the people to a most brave resistance, so that they held
+out for four months; and Sapor, thinking the city was under some divine
+protection, and finding that his army sickened in the hot marshes around
+it, gave up the siege at last.
+
+[Illustration: JULIAN.]
+
+Constantius was a little, mean-looking man, but he dressed himself up to
+do his part as Emperor. He had swarms of attendants like any Eastern
+prince, most of them slaves, who waited on him as if he was perfectly
+helpless. He had his face painted, and was covered with gold embroidery
+and jewels on all state occasions, and he used to stand like a statue to
+be looked at, never winking an eyelid, nor moving his hand, nor doing
+anything to remind people that he was a man like themselves. He was
+timid and jealous, and above all others, he dreaded his young cousin
+Julian, the only relation he had. Julian had studied at Athens, and what
+he there heard and fancied of the old Greek philosophy seemed to him far
+grander than the Christianity that showed itself in the lives of
+Constantius and his courtiers. He was full of spirit and ability, and
+Constantius thought it best to keep him at a distance by sending him to
+fight the Germans on the borders of Gaul. There he was so successful,
+and was such a favorite with the soldiers, that Constantius sent to
+recall him. This only made the army proclaim him Emperor, and he set out
+with them across the Danubian country towards Constantinople, but on the
+way met the tidings that Constantius was dead.
+
+This was in 361, and without going to Rome Julian hastened on to
+Constantinople, where he was received as Emperor. He no longer pretended
+to be a Christian, but had all the old heathen temples opened again, and
+the sacrifices performed as in old times, though it was not easy to find
+any one who recollected how they were carried on. He said that all forms
+of religion should be free to every one, but he himself tried to live
+like an ancient philosopher, getting rid of all the pomp of jewels,
+robes, courtiers, and slaves who had attended Constantius, wearing
+simply the old purple garb of a Roman general, sleeping on a lion's
+skin, and living on the plainest food. Meantime, he tried to put down
+the Christian faith by laughing at it, and trying to get people to
+despise it as something low and mean. When this did not succeed, he
+forbade Christians to be schoolmasters or teachers; and as they declared
+that the ruin of the Temple of Jerusalem proved our Lord to have been a
+true Prophet, he commanded that it should be rebuilt. As soon as the
+foundations were dug, there was an outburst of fiery smoke and balls of
+flame which forced the workmen to leave off. Such things sometimes
+happen when long-buried ruins are opened, from the gases that have
+formed there; but it was no doubt the work of God's providence, and the
+Christians held it as a miracle.
+
+Julian hated the Catholic Christians worse than the Arians, because he
+found them more staunch against him. Athanasius had come back to
+Alexandria, but the Arians got up an accusation against him that he had
+been guilty of a murder, and brought forward a hand in a box to prove
+the crime; and though Athanasius showed the man said to have been
+murdered alive, and with both his hands in their places, he was still
+hunted out of Alexandria, and had to hide among the hermits of the
+Thebaid again. When any search was threatened of the spot where he was,
+the horn was sounded which called the hermits together to church, and he
+was taken to another hiding-place. Sometimes he visited his flock at
+Alexandria in secret, and once, when he was returning down the Nile, he
+learned that a boat-load of soldiers was pursuing him. Turning back, his
+boat met them. They called out to know if Athanasius had been seen. "He
+was going down the Nile a little while ago," the Bishop answered. His
+enemies hurried on, and he was safe.
+
+Julian was angered by finding it impossible to waken paganism. At one
+grand temple in Asia, whither hundreds of oxen used to be brought to
+sacrifice, all his encouragement only caused one goose to be offered,
+which the priest of the temple received as a grand gift. Julian
+expected, too, that pagans would worship their old gods and yet live the
+virtuous lives of Christians; and he was disappointed and grieved to
+find that no works of goodness or mercy sprang from those who followed
+his belief. He was a kind man by nature, but he began to grow bitter
+with disappointment, and to threaten when he found it was of no use to
+persuade; and the Christians expected that there would be a great
+persecution when he should return from an expedition into the East
+against the king of Persia.
+
+[Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.]
+
+He went with a fine army in ships down the Euphrates, and thence marched
+into Persia, where King Sapor was wise enough to avoid a battle, and
+only retreat before him. The Romans were half starved, and obliged to
+turn back. Then Sapor attacked their rear, and cut off their stragglers.
+Julian shared all the sufferings of his troops, and was always
+wherever there was danger. At last a javelin pierced him under the arm.
+It is said that he caught some of his blood in his other hand, cast it
+up towards heaven, and cried, "Galilean, Thou hast conquered." He died
+in a few hours, in 363, and the Romans could only choose the best leader
+they knew to get them out of the sad plight they were in--almost that of
+the ten thousand Greeks, except that they knew the roads and had
+friendly lands much nearer. Their choice fell on a plain, honest
+Christian soldier named Jovian, who did his best by making a treaty with
+Sapor, giving up all claim to any lands beyond the Tigris, and
+surrendering the brave city of Nisibis which had held out so
+gallantly--a great grief to the Eastern Christians. The first thing
+Jovian did was to have Athanasius recalled, but his reign did not last a
+year, and he died on the way to Constantinople.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+VALENTINIAN AND HIS FAMILY.
+
+364-392.
+
+
+When Jovian died, the army chose another soldier named Valentinian, a
+stout, brave, rough man, with little education, rude and passionate, but
+a Catholic Christian. As soon as he reached Constantinople, he divided
+the empire with his brother Valens, whom he left to rule the East, while
+he himself went to govern the West, chiefly from Milan, for the Emperors
+were not fond of living at Rome, partly because the remains of the
+Senate interfered with their full grandeur, and partly because there
+were old customs that were inconvenient to a Christian Emperor. He was
+in general just and honest in his dealings, but when he was angry he
+could be cruel, and it is said he had two bears to whom criminals were
+thrown. His brother Valens was a weaker and less able man, and was an
+Arian, who banished Athanasius once more for the fifth time; but the
+Church of Alexandria prevailed, and he was allowed to remain and die in
+peace. The Creed that bears his name is not thought to be of his
+writing, but to convey what he taught. There was great talk at this time
+all over the cities about the questions between the Catholics and
+Arians, and good men were shocked by hearing the holiest mysteries of
+the faith gossiped about by the idlers in baths and market-places.
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDRIA.]
+
+At this time Damasus, the Pope, desired a very learned deacon of his
+church, named Jerome, to make a good translation of the whole of the
+Scriptures into Latin, comparing the best versions, and giving an
+account of the books. For this purpose Jerome went to the Holy Land, and
+lived in a cell at Bethlehem, happy to be out of the way of the quarrels
+at Rome and Constantinople. There, too, was made the first translation
+of the Gospels into one of the Teutonic languages, namely, the Gothic.
+The Goths were a great people, of the same Teutonic race as the Germans,
+Franks, and Saxons--tall, fair, brave, strong, and handsome--and were at
+this time living on the north bank of the Danube. Many of their young
+men hired themselves to fight as soldiers in the Roman army; and they
+were learning Christianity, but only as Arians. It was for them that
+their Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels into Gothic, and invented an
+alphabet to write them in. A copy of this translation is still to be
+seen at Upsal in Sweden, written on purple vellum in silver letters.
+
+[Illustration: GOTHS.]
+
+Another great and holy man of this time was Ambrose, the Archbishop
+of Milan, who was the guide and teacher of Gratian, Valentinian's eldest
+son, a good and promising youth so far as he went, but who, after the
+habit of the time, was waiting to be baptized till he should be further
+on in life. Valentinian's second wife was named Justina; and when he
+died, as it is said, from breaking a blood-vessel in a fit of rage, in
+375, the Western Empire was shared between her little son Valentinian
+and Gratian.
+
+Justina was an Arian, and wanted to have a church in Milan where she
+could worship without ascribing full honor and glory to God the Son; but
+Ambrose felt that the churches were his Master's, not his own to be
+given away, and filled the Church with Christians, who watched there
+chanting Psalms day and night, while the soldiers Justina sent to turn
+them out joined them, and sang and prayed with them.
+
+Gratian did not choose to be called Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest of
+all the Roman idols, as all the Emperors had been; and this offended
+many persons. A general named Maximus rose and reigned as Emperor in
+Britain, and Gratian had too much on his hands in the north to put him
+down.
+
+In the meantime, a terrible wild tribe called Huns were coming from the
+West and driving the Goths before them, so that they asked leave from
+Valens to come across the Danube and settle themselves in Thrace. The
+reply was so ill managed by Valens' counsellors that the Goths were
+offended, and came over the river as foes when they might have come as
+friends; and Valens was killed in battle with them at Adrianople in 378.
+
+Gratian felt that he alone could not cope with the dangers that beset
+the empire, and his brother was still a child, so he gave the Eastern
+Empire to a brave and noble Spanish general named Theodosius, who was a
+Catholic Christian and baptized, and who made peace with the Goths, gave
+them settlements, and took their young men into his armies. In the
+meantime, Maximus was growing more powerful in Britain, and Gratian, who
+chiefly lived in Gaul, was disliked by the soldiers especially for
+making friends with the young Gothic chief Alaric, whom he joined in
+hunting in the forests of Gaul in a way they thought unworthy of an
+Emperor. Finding that he was thus disliked, Maximus crossed the Channel
+to attack him. His soldiers would not march against the British legions,
+and he was taken and put to death, bitterly lamenting that he had so
+long deferred his baptism till now it was denied to him.
+
+Young Valentinian went on reigning at Milan, and Maximus in Gaul. This
+last had become a Christian and a Catholic in name, but without laying
+aside his fierceness and cruelty, so that, when some heretics were
+brought before him, he had them put to death, entirely against the
+advice of the great Saint and Bishop then working in Gaul, Martin of
+Tours, and likewise of St. Ambrose, who had been sent by Valentinian to
+make peace with the Gallic tyrant.
+
+It was a time of great men in the Church. In Africa a very great man had
+risen up, St. Augustine, who, after doubting long and living a life of
+sin, was drawn to the truth by the prayers of his good mother Monica,
+and, when studying in Italy, listened to St. Ambrose, and became a
+hearty believer and maintainer of all that was good. He became Bishop of
+Hippo in Africa.
+
+[Illustration: CONVENT ON THE HILLS.]
+
+But with the good there was much of evil. All the old cities, and
+especially Rome, were full of a strange mixture of Christian show and
+heathen vice. There was such idleness and luxury in the towns that
+hardly any Romans had hardihood enough to go out to fight their own
+battles, but hired Goths, Germans, Gauls, and Moors; and these learned
+their ways of warfare, and used them in their turn against the Romans
+themselves. Nothing was so much run after as the games in the
+amphitheatres. People rushed there to watch the chariot races, and went
+perfectly wild with eagerness about the drivers whose colors they wore;
+and even the gladiator games were not done away with by Christianity,
+although these sports were continually preached against by the clergy,
+and no really devout person would go to the theatres. Much time was
+idled away at the baths, which were the place for talk and gossip, and
+where there was a soft steamy air which was enough to take away all
+manhood and resolution. The ladies' dresses were exceedingly expensive
+and absurd, and the whole way of living quite as sumptuous and helpless
+as in the times of heathenism. Good people tried to live apart. More
+than ever became monks and hermits; and a number of ladies, who had been
+much struck with St. Jerome's teaching, made up a sort of society at
+Rome which busied itself in good works and devotion. Two of the ladies,
+a mother and daughter, followed him to the Holy Land, and dwelt in a
+convent at Bethlehem.
+
+Maximus after a time advanced into Italy, and Valentinian fled to ask
+the help of Theodosius, who came with an army, defeated and slew
+Maximus, and restored Valentinian, but only for a short time, for the
+poor youth was soon murdered by a Frank chief in his own service named
+Arbogastes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.
+
+392-395.
+
+
+The Frank, Arbogastes, who had killed Valentinian did not make himself
+Emperor, but set up a heathen philosopher called Eugenius, who for a
+little while restored all the heathen pomp and splendor, and opened the
+temples again, threatening even to take away the churches and turn the
+chief one at Milan into a stable. They knew that Theodosius would soon
+come to attack them, so they prepared for a great resistance in the
+passes of the Julian Alps, and the image of the Thundering Jupiter was
+placed to guard them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Theodosius had collected his troops and marched under the Labarum--that
+is to say, the Cross of Constantine, which had been the ensign of the
+imperial army ever since the battle of the Milvian Bridge. It was the
+cross combined with the two first Greek letters of the name Christ,
+[Symbol: Greek chi & rho combined], and was carried, as the eagles had
+been, above a purple silk banner. The men of Eugenius bore before them a
+figure of Hercules, and in the first battle they gained the advantage,
+for the more ignorant Eastern soldiers, though Christians, could not get
+rid of the notion that there was some sort of power in a heathen god,
+and thought Jupiter and Hercules were too strong for them.
+
+But Theodosius rallied them and led them back, so that they gained a
+great victory, and a terrible storm and whirlwind which fell at the same
+time upon the host of Eugenius made the Christian army feel the more
+sure that God fought on their side. Eugenius was taken and put to death,
+and Arbogastes fell on his own sword.
+
+Theodosius thus united the empires of the East and West once more. He
+was a brave and gallant soldier, and a good and conscientious man, and
+was much loved and honored; but he could be stern and passionate, and he
+was likewise greatly feared. At Antioch, the people had been much
+offended at a tax which Theodosius had laid on them; they rose in
+rebellion, overthrew his statues and those of his family, and dragged
+them about in the mud. No sooner was this done than they began to be
+shocked and terrified, especially because of the insult to the statue of
+the Empress, who was lately dead after a most kind and charitable life.
+The citizens in haste sent off messengers, with the Bishop at their
+head, to declare their grief and sorrow, and entreat the Emperor's
+pardon. All the time they were gone the city gave itself up to prayer
+and fasting, listening to sermons from the priest, John--called from his
+eloquence Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth--who preached repentance for all
+the most frequent sins, such as love of pleasure, irreverence at church,
+etc. The Bishop on his way met the Emperor's deputies who were charged
+to enquire into the crime and punish the people; and he redoubled his
+speed in reaching Constantinople, where he so pleaded the cause of the
+people that Theodosius freely forgave them, and sent him home to keep a
+happy Easter with them. This was while he was still Emperor only of the
+East.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN HALL OF JUSTICE.]
+
+But when he was in Italy with Valentinian, three years later, there was
+another great sedition at Thessalonica. The people there were as mad as
+were most of the citizens of the larger towns upon the sports of the
+amphitheatre, and were vehemently fond of the charioteers whom they
+admired on either side. Just before some races that were expected, one
+of the favorite drivers committed a crime for which he was imprisoned.
+The people, wild with fury, rose and called for his release; and when
+this was denied to them, they fell on the magistrates with stones, and
+killed the chief of them, Botheric, the commander of the forces. The
+news was taken to Milan, where the Emperor then was, and his wrath was
+so great and terrible that he commanded that the whole city should
+suffer. The soldiers, who were glad both to revenge their captain and to
+gain plunder, hastened to put his command into execution; the unhappy
+people were collected in the circus, and slaughtered so rapidly and
+suddenly, that when Theodosius began to recover from his passion, and
+sent to stay the hands of the slayers, they found the city burning and
+the streets full of corpses.
+
+St. Ambrose felt it his duty to speak forth in the name of the Church
+against such fury and cruelty; and when Theodosius presented himself at
+the church door to come to the Holy Communion, Ambrose met him there,
+and turned him back as a blood-stained sinner unfit to partake of the
+heavenly feast, and bidding him not add sacrilege to murder.
+
+Theodosius pleaded that David had sinned even more deeply, and yet had
+been forgiven. "If you have sinned like him, repent like him," said
+Ambrose; and the Emperor went back weeping to his palace, there to
+remain as a penitent. Easter was the usual time for receiving penitents
+back to the Church, but at Christmas the Emperor presented himself
+again, hoping to win the Bishop's consent to his return at once; but
+Ambrose was firm, and again met him at the gate, rebuking him for trying
+to break the rules of the Church.
+
+"No," said Theodosius; "I am not come to break the laws, but to entreat
+you to imitate the mercy of God whom we serve, who opens the gates of
+mercy to contrite sinners."
+
+On seeing how deep was his repentance, Ambrose allowed him to enter the
+Church, though it was not for some time that he was admitted to the Holy
+Communion, and all that time he fasted and never put on his imperial
+robes. He also made a law that no sentence of death should be carried
+out till thirty days after it was given, so as to give time to see
+whether it were hasty or just.
+
+During this reign another heresy sprang up, denying the Godhead of God
+the Holy Ghost, and, in consequence, Theodosius called together another
+Council of the Church, at which was added to the Nicene Creed those
+latter sentences which follow the words, "I believe in the Holy Ghost."
+In this reign, too, began to be sung the _Te Deum_, which is generally
+known as the hymn of St. Ambrose. It was first used at Milan, but
+whether he wrote it or not is uncertain, though there is a story that he
+had it sung for the first time at the baptism of St. Augustine.
+
+Theodosius only lived six months after his defeat of Eugenius, dying at
+Milan in 395, when only fifty years old. He was the last who really
+deserved the name of a Roman Emperor, though the title was kept up, and
+Rome had still much to undergo. He left two young sons named Arcadius
+and Honorius, between whom the empire was divided.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ALARIC THE GOTH.
+
+395-410.
+
+
+The sons of the great Theodosius were, like almost all the children of
+the Roman Emperors, vain and weak, spoiled by growing up as princes.
+Arcadius, who was eighteen, had the East, and was under the charge of a
+Roman officer called Rufinus; Honorius who was only eleven, reigned at
+Rome under the care of Stilicho, who was by birth a Vandal, that is to
+say, of one of those Teutonic nations who were living all round the
+northern bounds of the empire, and whose sons came to serve in the Roman
+armies and learn Roman habits. Stilicho was brave and faithful, and
+almost belonged to the imperial family, for his wife Serena was niece to
+Theodosius, and his daughter Maria was betrothed to the young Honorius.
+
+Stilicho was a very active, spirited man, who found troops to check the
+enemies of Rome on all sides of the Western Empire. Rufinus was not so
+faithful, and did great harm in the East by quarrelling with Arcadius'
+other ministers, and then, as all believed, inviting the Goths to come
+out of their settlements on the Danube and invade Greece, under Alaric,
+the same Gothic chief who had been a friend and companion of Gratian,
+and had fought under Theodosius.
+
+They passed the Danube, overran Macedon, and spread all over Greece,
+where, being Arian Christians, they destroyed with all their might all
+the remaining statues and temples of the old pagans; although, as they
+did not attack Athens, the pagans, who were numerous there, fancied that
+they were prevented by a vision of Apollo and Pallas Athene. Arcadius
+sent to his brother for aid, and Stilicho marched through Thrace;
+Rufinus was murdered through his contrivance, and then, marching on into
+the Peloponnesus, he defeated Alaric in battle, and drove him out from
+thence, but no further than Epirus, where the Goths took up their
+station to wait for another opportunity; but by this time Arcadius
+had grown afraid of Stilicho, sent him back to Italy with many gifts and
+promises, and engaged Alaric to be the guardian of his empire, not only
+against the wild tribes, but against his brother and his minister.
+
+[Illustration: COLONNADES OF SAINT PETER AT ROME.]
+
+This was a fine chance for Alaric, who had all the temper of a great
+conqueror, and to the wild bravery of a Goth had added the knowledge and
+skill of a Roman general. He led his forces through the Alps into Italy,
+and showed himself before the gates of Milan. The poor weak boy Honorius
+was carried off for safety to Ravenna, while Stilicho gathered all the
+troops from Gaul, and left Britain unguarded by Roman soldiers, to
+protect the heart of the empire. With these he attacked Alaric, and
+gained a great victory at Pollentia; the Goths retreated; he followed
+and beat them again at Verona, driving them out of Italy.
+
+It was the last Roman victory, and it was celebrated by the last Roman
+triumph. There had been three hundred triumphs of Roman generals, but it
+was Honorius who entered Rome in the car of victory and was taken to the
+Capitol, and afterwards there were games in the amphitheatre as usual,
+and fights of gladiators. In the midst of the horrid battle a voice was
+heard bidding it to cease in the name of Christ, and between the swords
+there was seen standing a monk in his dark brown dress, holding up his
+hand and keeping back the blows. There was a shout of rage, and he was
+cut down and killed in a moment; but then in horror the games were
+stopped. It was found that he was an Egyptian monk named Telemachus,
+freshly come to Rome. No one knew any more about him, but this noble
+death of his put an end to shows of gladiators. Chariot races and games
+went on, though the good and thoughtful disapproved of the wild
+excitement they caused; but the horrid sports of death and blood were
+ended for ever.
+
+Alaric was driven back for a time, but there were swarms of Germans who
+were breaking in where the line of boundary had been left undefended by
+the soldiers being called away to fight the Goths. A fierce heathen
+chief named Radegaisus advanced with at least 200,000 men as far as
+Florence, but was there beaten by the brave Stilicho, and was put to
+death, while the other prisoners were sold into slavery. But Stilicho,
+brave as he was, was neither loved nor trusted by the Emperor or the
+people. Some abused him for not bringing back the old gods under whom,
+they said, Rome had prospered; others said that he was no honest
+Christian, and all believed that he meant to make his son Emperor. When
+he married this son to a daughter of Arcadius, people made sure that
+this was his purpose. Honorius listened to the accusation, and his
+favorite Olympius persuaded the army to give up Stilicho. He fled to a
+church, but was persuaded to come out of it, and was then put to death.
+
+And at that very time Alaric was crossing the Alps. There was no one to
+make any resistance. Honorius was at Ravenna, safe behind walls and
+marshes, and cared for nothing but his favorite poultry. Alaric encamped
+outside the walls of Rome, but he did not attempt to break in, waiting
+till the Romans should be starved out. When they had come to terrible
+distress, they offered to ransom their city. He asked a monstrous sum,
+which they refused, telling him what hosts there were of them, and that
+he might yet find them dangerous. "The thicker the hay, the easier to
+mow," said the Goth. "What will you leave us then?" they asked. "Your
+lives," was the answer.
+
+The ransom the wretched Romans agreed to pay was 5000 pounds' weight of
+gold and 30,000 of silver, 4000 silk robes, 3000 pieces of scarlet
+cloth, and 3000 pounds of pepper. They stripped the roof of the temple
+in the Capitol, and melted down the images of the old gods to raise the
+sum, and Alaric drew off his men; but he came again the next year,
+blocked up Ostia, and starved them faster. This time he brought a man
+named Attalus, whom he ordered them to admit as Emperor, and they did
+so; but as the governor of Africa would send no corn while this man
+reigned, the people rose and drove him out, and thus for the third time
+brought Alaric down on them. The gates were opened to him at night, and
+he entered Rome on the 24th of August, 410, exactly eight hundred years
+after the sack of Rome by Brennus.
+
+[Illustration: ALARIC'S BURIAL.]
+
+Alaric did not wish to ruin and destroy the grand old city, nor to
+massacre the inhabitants; but his Goths were thirsty for the spoil he
+had kept them from so long, and he gave them leave to plunder for six
+days, but not to kill, nor to do any harm to the churches. A set of
+wild, furious men could not, of course, be kept in by these orders, and
+terrible misfortunes befell many unhappy families; but the mischief done
+was much less than could have been expected, and the great churches of
+St. Peter and St. Paul were unhurt. One old lady named Marcella, a
+friend of St. Jerome, was beaten to make her show where her treasures
+were; but when at last her tormentors came to believe that she had spent
+her all on charity, they led her to the shelter of the church with her
+friends, soon to die of what she had undergone. After twelve days,
+however, Alaric drew off his forces, leaving Rome to shift for itself.
+Bishop Innocent was at Ravenna, where he had gone to ask help from the
+Emperor; but Honorius knew and cared so little that when he was told
+Rome was lost, he only thought of his favorite hen whose name was Rome,
+and said, "That cannot be, for I have just fed her."
+
+Alaric marched southward, the Goths plundering the villas of the Roman
+nobles on their way. At Cosenza, in the extreme south, he fell ill of a
+fever and died. His warriors turned the stream of the river Bionzo out
+of its course, caused his grave to be dug in the bed of the torrent, and
+when his corpse had been laid there, they slew all the slaves who had
+done the work, so that none might be able to tell where lay the great
+Goth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+THE VANDALS.
+
+403.
+
+
+One good thing came of the Gothic conquest--the pagans were put to
+silence for ever. The temples had been razed, the idols broken, and no
+one set them up again; but the whole people of Rome were Christian, at
+least in name, from that time forth; and the temples and halls of
+justice began to be turned into churches.
+
+Honorius still lived his idle life at Ravenna, and the Bishop--or, as
+the Romans called him, Papa, father, or Pope--came back and helped them
+to put matters into order again. Alaric had left no son, but his wife's
+brother Ataulf became leader of the Goths. At Rome he had made prisoner
+Theodosius' daughter Placidia, and he married her; but he did not choose
+to rule at Rome, because, as he said, his Goths would never bear a quiet
+life in a city. So he promised to protect the empire for Honorius, and
+led his tribe away from Italy to Spain, which they conquered, and began
+a kingdom there. They were therefore known as the Visigoths, or Western
+Goths.
+
+Arcadius, in the meantime, reigned quietly at Constantinople, where St.
+John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch, was made
+Patriarch, or father-bishop. The games and races in the circus at
+Constantinople were as madly run after as they had ever been at Rome or
+Thessalonica; there were not indeed shows of gladiators, but people set
+themselves with foolish vehemence to back up one driver against another,
+wearing their colors and calling themselves by their names, and the two
+factions of the Greens and the Blues were ready to tear each other to
+pieces. The Empress Eudoxia, Arcadius' wife, was one of the most
+vehement of all, and was, besides, a vain, silly woman, who encouraged
+all kinds of pomp and expense. St. Chrysostom preached against all the
+mischiefs that thus arose, so that she was offended, and contrived to
+raise up an accusation against him and have him driven out of the city.
+The people of Constantinople still showed so much love for him that she
+insisted on his being sent further off to the bleak shores of the Black
+Sea, and on the journey he died, his last words being, "Glory be to God
+in all things."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN CLOCK.]
+
+Arcadius died in 408, leaving a young son, called Theodosius II., in
+the care of his elder sister Pulcheria, under whom the Eastern Empire
+lay at peace, while the miseries of the Western went on increasing. New
+Emperors were set up by the legions in the distant provinces, but were
+soon overthrown, while Honorius only remained at Ravenna by the support
+of the kings of the Teuton tribes; and as he never trusted them or kept
+faith with them, he was always offending them and being punished by
+fresh attacks on some part of his empire, for which he did not greatly
+care so long as they let him alone.
+
+Ataulf died in Spain, and Placidia came back to Ravenna, where Honorius
+gave her in marriage to a Roman general named Constantius, and she had a
+son named Valentinian, who, when his uncle died after thirty-seven years
+of a wretched reign, became Emperor in his stead, under his mother's
+guardianship, in 423.
+
+Two great generals who were really able men were her chief
+supporters--Boniface, Count or Commander of Africa; and A�tius, who is
+sometimes called the last of the Romans, though he was not by birth a
+Roman at all, but a Scythian. He gained the ear of the Empress Placidia,
+and persuaded her that Boniface wanted to set himself up in Africa as
+Emperor, so that she sent to recall him, and evil friends assured him
+that she meant to put him to death as soon as he arrived. He was very
+much enraged, and though St. Augustine, now an old man, who had long
+been Bishop of Hippo, advised him to restrain his anger, he called on
+Genseric, the chief of the Vandals, to come and help him to defend his
+province.
+
+[Illustration: SPANISH COAST.]
+
+The Vandals were another tribe of Teutons--tall, strong, fair-haired,
+and much like the Goths, and, like them, they were Arians. They had
+marauded in Italy, and then had followed the Goths to Spain, where they
+had established themselves in the South, in the country called from them
+Vandalusia, or Andalusia. Their chief was only too glad to obey the
+summons of Boniface, but before he came the Roman had found out his
+mistake; Placidia had apologized to him, and all was right between them.
+But it was now too late; Genseric and his Vandals were on the way, and
+there was nothing for it but to fight his best against them.
+
+He could not save Carthage, and, though he made the bravest defence in
+his power, he was driven into Hippo, which was so strongly fortified
+that he was able to hold it out a whole year, during which time St.
+Augustine died, after a long illness. He had caused the seven
+penitential Psalms to be written out on the walls of his room, and was
+constantly musing on them. He died, and was buried in peace before the
+city was taken. Boniface held out for five years altogether before
+Africa was entirely taken by the Vandals, and a miserable time began for
+the Church, for Genseric was an Arian, and set himself to crush out the
+Catholic Church by taking away her buildings and grievously persecuting
+her faithful bishops.
+
+Valentinian III, made a treaty with him, and even yielded up to him all
+right to the old Roman province of Africa; but Genseric had a strong
+fleet of ships, and went on attacking and plundering Sicily, Corsica,
+Sardinia, Italy and the coasts of Greece.
+
+Britain, at the same time, was being so tormented by the attacks of the
+Saxons by sea, and the Caledonians from the north, that her chiefs sent
+a piteous letter to A�tius in Gaul, beginning with "The groans of the
+Britons;" but A�tius could send no help, and Gaul itself was being
+overrun by the Goths in the south, the Burgundians in the middle, and
+the Franks in the north, so that scarcely more than Italy itself
+remained to Valentinian.
+
+[Illustration: VANDALS PLUNDERING]
+
+The Eastern half of the Empire was better off, though it was tormented
+by the Persians in the East, on the northern border by the Eastern Goths
+or Ostrogoths, who had stayed on the banks of the Danube instead of
+coming to Italy, and to the south by the Vandals from Africa. But
+Pulcheria was so wise and good that, when her young brother Theodosius
+II. died without children, the people begged her to choose a husband who
+might be an Emperor for them. She chose a wise old senator named
+Marcian, and when he died, she again chose another good and wise man
+named Zeno; and thus the Eastern Empire stood while the West was fast
+crumbling away. The nobles were almost all vain, weak cowards, who only
+thought of themselves, and left strangers to fight their battles; and
+every one was cowed with fear, for a more terrible foe than any was now
+coming on them.
+
+[Illustration: PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX IN EGYPT.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+ATTILA THE HUN
+
+435-457.
+
+
+The terrible enemy who was coming against the unhappy Roman Empire was
+the nation of Huns, a wild, savage race, who were of the same stock as
+the Tartars, and dwelt as they do in the northern parts of Asia, keeping
+huge herds of horses, spending their life on horseback, and using mares'
+milk as food. They were an ugly, small, but active race, and used to cut
+their children's faces that the scars might make them look more terrible
+to their enemies. Just at this time a great spirit of conquest had come
+upon them, and they had, as said before, driven the Goths over the
+Danube fifty years ago, and seized the lands we still call Hungary. A
+most mighty and warlike chief called Attila had become their head,
+and wherever he went his track was marked by blood and flame, so that he
+was called "The Scourge of God." His home was on the banks of the
+Theiss, in a camp enclosed with trunks of trees, for he did not care to
+dwell in cities or establish a kingdom, though the wild tribes of Huns
+from the furthest parts of Asia followed his standard--a sword fastened
+to a pole, which was said to be also his idol.
+
+[Illustration: HUNNISH CAMP.]
+
+He threatened to fall upon the two empires, and an embassy was sent to
+him at his camp. The Huns would not dismount, and thus the Romans were
+forced to address them on horseback. The only condition upon which he
+would abstain from invading the empire was the paying of an enormous
+tribute, beyond what almost any power of theirs could attempt to raise.
+However, he did not then attack Italy, but turned upon Gaul. So much was
+he hated and dreaded by the Teutonic nations, that all Goths, Franks,
+and Burgundians flocked to join the Roman forces under A�tius to drive
+him back. They came just in time to save the city of Orleans from being
+ravaged by him, and defeated him in the battle of Chalons with a great
+slaughter; but he made good his retreat from Gaul with an immense
+number of captives, whom he killed in revenge.
+
+The next year he demanded that Valentinian's sister, Honoria, should be
+given to him, and when she was refused, he led his host into Italy and
+destroyed all the beautiful cities of the north. A great many of the
+inhabitants fled into the islands among the salt marshes and pools at
+the head of the Adriatic Sea, between the mouths of the rivers Po and
+Adige, where no enemy could reach them; and there they built houses and
+made a town, which in time became the great city of Venice, the queen of
+the Adriatic.
+
+[Illustration: ST. MARK'S, VENICE.]
+
+A�tius was still in Gaul, the wretched Valentinian at Ravenna was
+helpless and useless, and Attila proceeded towards Rome. It was well for
+Rome that she had a brave and devoted Pope in Leo. I., who went out at
+the head of his clergy to meet the barbarian in his tent, and threaten
+him with the wrath of Heaven if he should let loose his cruel followers
+upon the city. Attila was struck with his calm greatness, and,
+remembering that Alaric had died soon after plundering Rome, became
+afraid. He consented to accept of Honoria's dowry instead of herself,
+and to be content with a great ransom for the city of Rome. He then
+turned to his camp on the Danube with all his horde, and soon after
+his arrival he married a young girl whom he had made prisoner. The next
+morning he was found dead on his bed in a pool of his own blood, and she
+was gone; but as there was no wound about him, it was thought that he
+had broken a blood-vessel in the drunken fit in which he fell asleep,
+and that she had fled in terror. His warriors tore their cheeks with
+their daggers, saying that he ought to be mourned only with tears of
+blood; but as they had no chief as able and daring as he, they gradually
+fell back again to their north-eastern settlements, and troubled Europe
+no more.
+
+Valentinian thought the danger over, and when A�tius came back to
+Ravenna, he grew jealous of his glory and stabbed him with his own hand.
+Soon after he offended a senator named Maximus, who killed him in
+revenge, became Emperor, and married his widow, Eudoxia, the daughter of
+Theodosius II. of Constantinople, telling her that it was for love of
+her that her husband was slain. Eudoxia sent a message to invite the
+dreadful Genseric, king of the Vandals, to come and deliver her from a
+rebel who had slain the lawful Emperor. Genseric's ships were ready, and
+sailed into the Tiber; while the Romans, mad with terror, stoned
+Maximus in their streets. Nobody had any courage or resolution but the
+Pope Leo, who went forth again to meet the barbarian and plead for his
+city; but Genseric being an Arian, had not the same awe of him as the
+wild Huns, hated the Catholics, and was eager for the prey. He would
+accept no ransom instead of the plunder, but promised that the lives of
+the Romans should be spared. This was the most dreadful calamity that
+Rome, once the queen of cities, had undergone. The pillage lasted
+fourteen days, and the Vandals stripped churches, houses, and all alike,
+putting their booty on board their ships; but much was lost in a storm
+between Italy and Africa. The golden candlestick and shew-bread table
+belonging to the Temple at Jerusalem were carried off to Carthage with
+the spoil, and no less than sixty thousand captives, among them the
+Empress Eudoxia, who had been the means of bringing in Genseric, with
+her two daughters. The Empress was given back to her friends at
+Constantinople, but one of her daughters was kept by the Vandals, and
+was married to the son of Genseric. After plundering all the south of
+Italy, Genseric went back to Africa without trying to keep Rome or set
+up a kingdom; and when he was gone, the Romans elected as Emperor a
+senator named Avitus, a Gaul by birth, a peaceful and good man.
+
+[Illustration: THE POPE'S HOUSE.]
+
+His daughter had married a most excellent Gaulish gentleman named
+Sidonius Apollinaris, who wrote such good poetry that the Romans placed
+his bust crowned with laurel in the Capitol. He wrote many letters, too,
+which are preserved to this time, and show that, in the midst of all
+this crumbling power of Rome, people in Southern Gaul managed to have
+many peaceful days of pleasant country life. But Sidonius' quiet days
+came to an end when, layman and lawyer as he was, the people of Clermont
+begged him to be their Bishop. The Church stood, whatever fell, and
+people trusted more to their Bishop than to any one else, and wanted him
+to be the ablest man they could find. So Sidonius took the charge of
+them, and helped them to hold out their mountain city of Clermont for a
+whole year against the Goths, and gained good terms for them at last,
+though he himself had to suffer imprisonment and exile from these Arian
+Goths because of his Catholic faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+THEODORIC THE OSTROGOTH.
+
+457--561.
+
+
+Avitus was a good man, but the Romans grew weary of him, and in the year
+457 they engaged Ricimer, a chief of the Teutonic tribe called Suevi, to
+drive him out, when he went back to Gaul, where he had a beautiful
+palace and garden. After ten months Ricimer chose another Sueve to be
+Emperor. He had been a captain under A�tius, and had the Roman name of
+Majorian. He showed himself brave and spirited; led an army into Spain
+and attacked Genseric; but he was beaten, and came back disappointed.
+Ricimer was, however, jealous of him, forced him to resign, and soon
+after poisoned him.
+
+After this, Ricimer really ruled Italy, but he seemed to have a sort of
+awe of the title of C�sar Augustus, the Emperor, for he forbore to use
+it himself, and gave it to one poor weak wretch after another until his
+death in 472. His nephew went on in the same course; but at last a
+soldier named Orestes, of Roman birth, gained the chief power, and set
+up as Emperor his own little son, whose Christian name was Romulus
+Augustus, making him wear the purple and the crown, and calling him by
+all the titles; but the Romans made his name into Augustulus, or Little
+Augustus. At the end of a year, a Teutonic chief named Odoacer crossed
+the Alps at the head of a great mixture of different German tribes, and
+Orestes could make no stand against him, but was taken and put to death.
+His little boy was spared, and was placed at Sorrento; but Odoacer sent
+the crown and robes of the West to Zeno, the Eastern Emperor, saying
+that one Emperor was enough. So fell the Roman power in 476, exactly
+twelve centuries after the date of the founding of Rome. It was thought
+that this was meant by the twelve vultures seen by Romulus, and that the
+seven which Remus saw denoted the seven centuries that the Republic
+stood. It was curious, too, that it should be with the two names of
+Romulus and Augustus that Rome and her empire fell.
+
+Odoacer called himself king, and, indeed, the Western Empire had been
+nearly all seized by different kings--the Vandal kings in Africa, the
+Gothic kings in Spain and Southern Gaul, the Burgundian kings and Frank
+kings in Northern Gaul, the Saxon kings in Britain. The Ostro or Eastern
+Goths, who had since the time of Valens dwelt on the banks of the
+Danube, had been subdued by Attila, but recovered their freedom after
+his death. One of their young chiefs, named Theodoric, was sent as a
+hostage to Constantinople, and there learned much. He became king of the
+Eastern Goths in 470, and showed himself such a dangerous neighbor to
+the Eastern Empire that, to be rid of him the Emperor Zeno advised him
+to go and attack Odoacer in Italy. The Ostrogoths marched seven hundred
+miles, and came over the Alps into the plains of Northern Italy, where
+Odoacer fought with them bravely, but was beaten. They besieged him even
+in Ravenna, till after three years he was obliged to surrender and was
+put to death.
+
+[Illustration: ROMULUS AUGUSTUS RESIGNS THE CROWN.]
+
+Rome could make no defence, and fell into Theodoric's hands with the
+rest of Italy; but he was by far the best of the conquerors--he did not
+hurt or misuse them, and only wished his Goths to learn of them and
+become peaceful farmers. He gave them the lands which had lost their
+owners; about thirty or forty thousand families were settled there by
+him on the waste lands, and the Romans who were left took courage and
+worked too. He did not live at Rome, though he came thither and was
+complimented by the Senate, and he set a sum by every year for repairing
+the old buildings; but he chiefly lived at Verona, where he reigned over
+both the Eastern and Western Goths in Gaul and Italy.
+
+He was an Arian, but he did not persecute the Catholics, and to such
+persons as changed their profession of faith to please him he showed no
+more favor, saying that those who were not faithful to their God would
+never be faithful to their earthly master. He reigned thirty-three
+years, but did not end as well as he began, for he grew irritable and
+distrustful with age; and the Romans, on the other hand, forgot that
+they were not the free, prosperous nation of old, and displeased him.
+Two of their very best men, Bo�thius and Symmachus, were by him kept for
+a long time prisoners at Rome and then put to death. While Bo�thius was
+in prison at Pavia, he wrote a book called _The Consolations of
+Philosophy_, so beautiful that the English king Alfred translated it
+into Saxon four centuries later. Theodoric kept up a correspondence with
+the other Gothic kings wherever a tribe of his people dwelt, even as far
+as Sweden and Denmark; but as even he could not write, and only had a
+seal with the letters [Greek: THEOD] with which to make his signature,
+the whole was conducted in Latin by Roman slaves on either side, who
+interpreted to their masters. An immense number of letters from
+Theodoric's secretary are preserved, and show what an able man his
+master was, and how well he deserved his name of "The Great." He died in
+526, leaving only two daughters. Their two sons, Amalric and Athalaric,
+divided the Eastern and Western Goths between them again.
+
+Seven Gothic kings reigned over Northern Italy after Theodoric. They
+were fierce and restless, but had nothing like his strength and spirit,
+and they chiefly lived in the more northern cities--Milan, Verona, and
+Ravenna, leaving Rome to be a tributary city to them, where there still
+remained the old names of Senate and Consuls, but the person who was
+generally most looked up to and trusted was the Pope. All this time Rome
+was leavening the nations who had conquered her. When they tried to
+learn civilized ways, it was from her; they learned to speak her tongue,
+never wrote but in Latin, and worshipped with Latin prayers and
+services. Far above all, these conquerors learned Christianity from the
+Romans. When everything else was ruined, the Bishop and clergy remained,
+and became the chief counsellors and advisers of many of these kings.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was just at this time that there was living at Monte Casino, in the
+South of Italy, St. Benedict, an Italian hermit, who was there joined by
+a number of others who, like him, longed to pray for the sinful world
+apart rather than fight and struggle with bad men. He formed them into a
+great band of monks, all wearing a plain dark dress with a hood, and
+following a strict rule of plain living, hard work, and prayers at seven
+regular hours in the course of the day and night. His rule was called
+the Benedictine, and houses of monks arose in many places, and were safe
+shelters in these fierce times.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+BELISARIUS.
+
+533-563.
+
+
+The Teutonic nations soon lost their spirit when they had settled in the
+luxurious Roman cities, and as they were as fierce as ever, their kings
+tore one another to pieces. A very able Emperor, named Justinian, had
+come to the throne in the East, and in his armies there had grown up a
+Thracian who was one of the greatest and best generals the world has
+ever seen. His name was Belisarius, and strange to say, both he and the
+Emperor had married the daughters of two charioteers in the circus
+races. The Empress was named Theodora, the general's wife Antonina, and
+their acquaintance first made Belisarius known to Justinian, who, by his
+means, ended by winning back great part of the Western Empire.
+
+He began with Africa, where Genseric's grandson was reigning over the
+Vandals, and paying so little heed to his defences that Belisarius
+landed without any warning, and called all the multitudes of old Roman
+inhabitants to join him, which they joyfully did. He defeated the
+Vandals in battle, entered Carthage, and restored the power of the
+empire. He brought away the golden candlestick and treasures of the
+Temple, and the cross believed to be the true one, and carried them to
+Constantinople, whence the Emperor sent them back to the Church of the
+Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
+
+Just as Belisarius had returned to Constantinople, a piteous entreaty
+came to Justinian from Amalosontha, the daughter of Theodoric, who had
+been made prisoner by Theodotus, the husband she had chosen. It seemed
+to be opening a way for getting back Italy, and Justinian sent off
+Belisarius; but before he had sailed, the poor Gothic queen had been
+strangled in her bath. Belisarius, however, with 4500 horse and 3000
+foot soldiers, landed in Sicily and soon conquered the whole island, all
+the people rejoicing in his coming. He then crossed to Rhegium, and laid
+siege to Naples. As usual, the inhabitants were his friends, and one of
+them showed him the way to enter the city through an old aqueduct which
+opened into an old woman's garden.
+
+[Illustration: NAPLES.]
+
+Theodotus was a coward as well as a murderer, and fled away, while a
+brave warrior named Vitiges was proclaimed king by the Goths at Rome.
+But with the broken walls and all the Roman citizens against him,
+Vitiges thought it best not to try to hold out against Belisarius, and
+retreated to Ravenna, while Rome welcomed the Eastern army as
+deliverers. But Vitiges was collecting an army at Ravenna, and in three
+months was besieging Rome again. Never had there been greater bravery
+and patience than Vitiges showed outside the walls of Rome, and
+Belisarius inside, during the summer of 536. There was a terrible famine
+within; all kinds of strange food were used in scanty measure, and the
+Romans were so impatient of suffering, that Belisarius was forced to
+watch them day and night to prevent them betraying him to the enemy.
+Indeed, while the siege lasted a whole year, nearly all the people of
+Rome died of hunger and wretchedness; and the Goths, in the unhealthy
+Campagna around, died of fevers and agues, until they, too, had all
+perished except a small band, which Vitiges led back to Ravenna, whither
+Belisarius followed him, besieged him, made him prisoner, and carried
+him to Constantinople. Justinian gave him an estate where he could live
+in peace.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+The Moors in Africa revolted, and Belisarius next went to subdue them.
+While he was there, the Goths in Italy began to recover from the blow he
+had given them, and chose a brave young man named Totila to be their
+king. In a very short time he had won back almost all Italy, for there
+really were hardly any men left, and even Justinian had only two small
+armies to dispose of, and those made up of Thracians and Isaurians from
+the shores of the Black Sea. One of these was sent with Belisarius to
+attack the Goths, but was not strong enough to do more than just hold
+Totila in check, and Justinian would not even send him all the help
+possible, because he dreaded the love the army bore to him. After four
+years of fighting with Totila he was recalled, and a slave named Narces,
+who had always lived in the women's apartment in the palace, was sent to
+take the command. He was really able and skilled, and being better
+supported, he gained a great victory near Rome, in which Totila was
+killed, and another near Naples, which quite overcame the Ostrogoths, so
+that they never became a power again. Italy was restored to the Empire,
+and was governed by an officer from Constantinople, who lived at
+Ravenna, and was called the Exarch.
+
+Belisarius, in the meantime, was sent to fight with the king of Persia,
+Chosro�s, a very warlike prince, who had overrun Syria and carried off
+many prisoners from Antioch. Belisarius gained victory after victory
+over him, and had just driven him back over the rivers, when again came
+a recall, and Narses was sent out to finish the war. Theodora, the
+Empress, wanted to reign after her husband, and had heard that, on a
+report coming to the army of his death, Belisarius had said that he
+should give his vote for Justin, the right heir. So she worked on the
+fears all Emperors had--that their troops might proclaim a successful
+general as Emperor, and again Belisarius was ordered home, while Narses
+was sent to finish what he had begun.
+
+There was one more war for this great man when the wild Bulgarians
+invaded Thrace, and though his soldiers were little better than timid
+peasants, he drove them back and saved the country. But Justinian grew
+more and more jealous of him, and, fancying untruly that he was in a
+plot for placing Justin on the throne, caused him to be thrown into
+prison, and sent him out from thence stripped of everything, and with
+his eyes torn out. He found a little child to lead him to a church door,
+where he used to sit with a wooden dish before him for alms. When it was
+known who the blind beggar was, there was such an uproar among the
+people that Justinian was obliged to give him back his palace and some
+of his riches; but he did not live much longer.
+
+Though Justinian behaved so unjustly and ungratefully to this great man
+and faithful servant, he is noted for better things, namely, for making
+the Church of St. Sophia, or the Holy Wisdom, which Constantine had
+built at Constantinople, the most splendid of all buildings, and for
+having the whole body of Roman laws thoroughly overlooked and put into
+order. Many even of the old heathen laws were very good ones, but there
+were others connected with idolatry that needed to be done away with;
+and in the course of years so many laws and alterations had been made,
+that it was the study of a lifetime even to know what they were, or how
+to act on them. Justinian set his best lawyers to put them all in order,
+so that it might be more easy to work by them. The Roman citizens in
+Greece, Italy, and all the lands overrun by the Teutonic nations were
+still judged by their own laws, so that this was a very useful work; and
+it was so well done that the conquerors took them up in time, and the
+Roman law was the great model studied everywhere by those who wished to
+understand the rules of jurisprudence, that is, of law and justice. Thus
+in another way Rome conquered her conquerors.
+
+Justinian died in 563, and was succeeded by his nephew Justin, whose
+wife Sophia behaved almost as ill to Narses as Theodora had done to
+Belisarius, for while he was doing his best to defend Italy from the
+savage tribes who were ready at any moment to come over the Alps, she
+sent him a distaff, and ordered him back to his old slavery in the
+palace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+POPE GREGORY THE GREAT.
+
+563--800.
+
+
+No sooner was Narses called home than another terrible nation of
+Teutones, who had hitherto dwelt in the North, began to come over the
+Alps. These were the Longbeards, or Lombards, as they were more commonly
+called; fierce and still heathen. Their king, Alboin, had carried off
+Rosamond, the daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, another Teutonic
+tribe. There was a most terrible war, in which Kunimund was killed and
+all his tribe broken up and joined with the Lombards. With the two
+united, Alboin invaded Italy and conquered all the North. Ravenna,
+Verona, Milan, and all the large towns held out bravely against them,
+but were taken at last, except Venice, which still owned the Emperor at
+Constantinople. Alboin had kept the skull of Kunimund as a trophy, and
+had had it set in gold for a drinking-cup, as his wild faith made him
+believe that the reward of the brave in the other world would be to
+drink mead from the skulls of their fallen enemies. In a drunken fit at
+Verona, he sent for Rosamond and made her pledge him in this horrible
+cup. She had always hated him, and this made her revenge her father's
+death by stabbing him to the heart in the year 573. The Lombard power
+did not, however, fall with him; his nephew succeeded him, and ruled
+over the country we still call Lombardy. Rome was not taken by them, but
+was still in name belonging to the Emperor, though he had little power
+there, and the Senate governed it in name, with all the old magistrates.
+The Pr�tor at the time the Lombards arrived was a man of one of the old
+noble families, Anicius Gregorius, or, as we have learned to call him,
+Gregory. He had always been a good and pious man, and while he took
+great care to fulfil all the duties of his office, his mind was more and
+more drawn away from the world, till at last he became a monk of St.
+Benedict, gave all his vast wealth to build and endow monasteries and
+hospitals, and lived himself in an hospital for beggars, nursing them,
+studying the Holy Scriptures, and living only on pulse, which his mother
+sent him every day in a silver dish--the only remnant of his
+wealth--till one day, having nothing else to give a shipwrecked sailor
+who asked alms, he bestowed it on him.
+
+[Illustration: POPE GREGORY THE GREAT.]
+
+He was made one of the seven deacons who were called Cardinal Deacons,
+because they had charge of the poor of the principal parishes of
+Rome; and it was when going about on some errand of kindness that he saw
+the English slave children in the market, and planned the conversion of
+their country; but the people would not let him leave Rome, and in 590,
+the Senate, the clergy, and the people chose him Pope. It was just then
+that a terrible pestilence fell on Rome, and he made the people form
+seven great processions--of clergy, of monks, of nuns, of children, of
+men, of wives, and of widows--all singing litanies to entreat that the
+plague might be turned away. Then it was that he beheld an angel
+standing on the tomb of Hadrian, and the plague ceased. Ever after, the
+great old tomb has been called the Castle of St. Angelo.
+
+[Illustration: THE POPE'S PULPIT.]
+
+It was a troublous time, but Gregory was so much respected that he was
+able to keep Rome orderly and safe, and to make peace between the
+Emperor Maurice and the Lombards' king, Agilulf, who had an excellent
+wife, Theodolinda. She was a great friend of the Pope, wrote a letter to
+him, and did all she could to support him. The Eastern Empire was still
+owned at Rome, but when there was an attempt to make out that the
+Patriarch of Constantinople was superior to the Pope, Gregory upheld the
+principle that no Patriarch had any right to be above the rest, nor to
+be called Universal Bishop. Gregory was a very great man, and the
+justice and wisdom of his management did much to make the Romans look to
+their Pope as the head of affairs even after his death in 604.
+
+[Illustration: BATTLE OF TOURS.]
+
+The Greek Empire sent an officer to govern the extreme South of Italy,
+which, like Rome and Venice, still owned the Emperor; but all the troops
+that could be hired were soon wanted to fight with the Arabs, whose
+false prophet Mahommed had taught them to spread religion with the
+sword. There was no one capable of making head against the Lombards, and
+the Popes only kept them off by treaties and good management; and at
+last, in 741, Pope Gregory III. put himself under the protection of
+Charles Martel, the great Frank captain who had beaten the Mahometans at
+the battle of Tours. Charles Martel was rewarded by being made a Roman
+senator, so was his son Pippin, who was also king of the Franks, and his
+grandson Charles the Great, who had to come often to Italy to protect
+Rome, and at last broke up the Lombard kingdom, was chosen Roman Emperor
+as of old, and crowned by Pope Leo III. in the year 800. From that time
+there was again the Western Empire, commonly called the Holy Roman
+Empire, the Emperor, or C�sar--Kaisar, as the Germans still call
+him--being generally also king of Germany and king of Lombardy. Rome was
+all this time chiefly under the power of the Popes, who grew in course
+of years to be more and more of princes, and at the same time to claim
+more power over the Church, calling themselves Universal Bishops
+contrary to the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. All this, however,
+belongs to the history of Europe in modern times, and will be found in
+the history of Germany, since there were many struggles between the
+Popes and Emperors. For Rome has really had _two_ histories, and those
+who visit Rome and study the wonderful buildings there may dwell on the
+old or the new, the pagan or the Christian, as their minds lead them, or
+else on that strange middle time when idolatry and Christianity were
+struggling together.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Young Folks' History of Rome
+by Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+    "text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Young Folks' History, by Charlotte M. Yonge.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Young Folks' History of Rome, by Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Young Folks' History of Rome
+
+Author: Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2005 [EBook #16667]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<center><img src="images/cover01.jpg" alt="cover"></center><br>
+<br><br><br>
+<p><a name="illus001"></a>
+<center><img src="images/illus001.png" alt="Pope's Doortender"></center>
+<h6>THE POPE'S DOORTENDER</h6>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY</h1>
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h2>ROME.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>CHARLOTTE M. YONGE,</h2>
+
+<p>AUTHOR OF &quot;THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE,&quot; &quot;BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS,&quot; &quot;YOUNG FOLKS'
+HISTORY OF FRANCE,&quot; &amp;c.</p>
+
+
+<center><img src="images/illus002.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+<p>BOSTON:</p>
+
+<p>ESTES &amp; LAURIAT,</p>
+
+<p>301 WASHINGTON STREET.</p>
+
+<p>COPYRIGHT BY</p>
+
+<p>D. LOTHROP &amp; CO. and ESTES &amp; LAURIAT.</p>
+
+<p>1880.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="PREFACE"></a><h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>This sketch of the History of Rome covers the period till the reign of
+Charles the Great as head of the new Western Empire. The history has
+been given as briefly as could be done consistently with such details as
+can alone make it interesting to all classes of readers.</p>
+
+<p>CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>1.&mdash;Italy</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>2.&mdash;The Wanderings of &AElig;neas</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>3.&mdash;The Founding of Rome. <small>B.C.</small> 753-713</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>4.&mdash;Numa and Tullus. <small>B.C.</small> 713-618.</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>5.&mdash;The Driving Out of the Tarquins. <small>B.C.</small> 578-309</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>6.&mdash;The War with Porsena </b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>7.&mdash;The Roman Government</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>8.&mdash;Menenius Agrippa's Fable. <small>B.C.</small> 494</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>9.&mdash;Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. <small>B.C.</small> 458 </b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>10.&mdash;The Decemvirs. <small>B.C.</small> 450</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>11.&mdash;Camillus' Banishment</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>12.&mdash;The Sack of Rome. <small>B.C.</small> 390</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>13.&mdash;The Plebeian Consulate. <small>B.C.</small> 367</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>14.&mdash;The Devotion of Decius. <small>B.C.</small> 357</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>15.&mdash;The Samnite Wars</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>16.&mdash;The War with Pyrrhus. 280-271</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>17.&mdash;The First Punic War. 264-240</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>18.&mdash;Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 240-219</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>19.&mdash;The Second Punic War. 219</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>20.&mdash;The First Eastern War. 215-183</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>21.&mdash;The Conquest of Greece, Corinth, and Carthage. 179-145</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>22.&mdash;The Gracchi. 137-122</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>23.&mdash;The Wars of Marius. 106-98</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>24.&mdash;The Adventures of Marius. 93-84</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXV"><b>25.&mdash;Sulla's Proscription. 88-71</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI"><b>26.&mdash;The Career of Pompeius. 70-63</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"><b>27.&mdash;Pompeius and C&aelig;sar. 61-48</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII"><b>28.&mdash;Julius C&aelig;sar. 48-44</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX"><b>29.&mdash;The Second Triumvirate. 44-33</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXX"><b>30.&mdash;C&aelig;sar Augustus. <small>B.C.</small> 33-<small>A.D.</small> 14</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI"><b>31.&mdash;Tiberius and Caligula. <small>A.D.</small> 14-41</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII"><b>32.&mdash;Claudius and Nero. <small>A.D.</small> 41-68</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII"><b>33.&mdash;The Flavian Family. 62-96</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV"><b>34.&mdash;The Age of the Antonines. 96-194</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV"><b>35.&mdash;The Pr&aelig;torian Influence. 197-284 </b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI"><b>36.&mdash;The Division of the Empire. 284-312</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII"><b>37.&mdash;Constantine the Great. 312-337</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII"><b>38.&mdash;Constantius. 337-364</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX"><b>39.&mdash;Valentinian and his Family. 364-392</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XL"><b>40.&mdash;Theodosius the Great. 392-395</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XLI"><b>41.&mdash;Alaric the Goth. 395-410</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XLII"><b>42.&mdash;The Vandals. 403</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII"><b>43.&mdash;Attila the Hun. 435-457</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV"><b>44.&mdash;Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 457-561</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XLV"><b>45.&mdash;Belisarius. 533-563 </b></a><br>
+ <br>
+ <a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI"><b>46.&mdash;Pope Gregory the Great. 563-800</b></a><br>
+ <br>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<center><img src="images/illus008.png" alt="illus"></center
+
+
+
+
+
+><hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a><h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+<a href="#illus001">The Pope's Doortender.  (<i>Frontispiece.</i>)</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#RiverTiber">The Tiber</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus016">Curious Pottery</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus018">Jupiter</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus024">The Coast</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus026">Mount Etna</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus030">Carthage</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus032">Roman Soldier</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus035">Gladiatorial Shows at a Banquet</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus038">The Forum</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus042">Janus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus046">Actors</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus051">Sybil's Cave</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus058">Brutus condemning his sons</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus064">Roman Ensigns, Standards, Trumpets etc.</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus069">Head of Jupiter</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus071">Female Costumes</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus072">Female Costumes</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus080">Senatorial Palace</a>  <br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus082">View of a Roman Harbor</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus088">Roman Camp</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus090">Ploughing</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus096">Death of Virginia</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus099">Chariot Races</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus103">Arrow Machine</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus106">Siege Machine</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus112">Ruins of the Forum at Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus118">Entry of the Forum Romanum by the Via Sacra</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus121">Costumes</a> <br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus122">Costume</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus126">Curtius leaping into the Gulf</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus130">The Apennines</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus138a">Combat between a Mirmillo and a Samnite</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus138b">Combat between a light armed Gladiator and a Samnite</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus142">Ancient Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus146">Pyrrhus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus148">Roman Orator</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus154">Roman Ship</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus160">Roman Order of Battle</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus166">The wounded Gaul</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus169">Hannibal's Vow</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus171">In the Pyrenees,</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus174">Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus179">Archimedes</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus185">Hannibal</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus191">Corinth</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus197">Cornelia and her Sons</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus202">Roman Centurion</a> <br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus206">Marius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus208">One of the Trophies, called of Marius, at the Capitol at Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus216">The Catapult</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus218">Island on the Coast</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus224">Palazzo Vecchio, Florence</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus226">Cornelius Sulla</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus232">Coast of Tyre</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus236">Mountains of Armenia</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus239">Cicero</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus240">Colossal Statue of Pompeius of the Palazzo Spada of Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus244">Pompeius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus247">Amphitheatre</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus248">The Arena</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus254">Julius C&aelig;sar</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus255">Cato</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus256">Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium of the House of Julius C&aelig;sar at<br>
+the Porta Capena in Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus266">Marcus Antonius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus269">Marcus Brutus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus271">Alexandria</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus273">Caius Octavius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus276">Statue of Augustus at the Vatican</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus282">Paintings in the House of Livia</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus288">Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus291">Agrippina</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus294">Rome in the time of Augustus C&aelig;sar</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus299">Claudius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus302">Nero</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus309">Arch of Titus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus312">Vesuvius previous to the Eruption of A.D. 63</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus315">Persecution of the Christians</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus317">Coin of Nero</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus320">Temple of Antoninus and Faustina</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus326">Marcus Aurelius</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus328">Septimus Severus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus329">Antioch</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus330">Alexander Severus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus333">Temple of the Sun at Palmyra</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus334">The Catacombs at Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus337">Coin of Severus</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus339">Diocletian</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus342">Diocletian in Retirement</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus344">Constantine the Great</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus348">Constantinople</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus350">Council of Nicea</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus353">Catacombs</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus358">Julian</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus362">Arch of Constantine</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus366">Alexandria</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus368">Goths</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus373">Convent on the Hills</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus376">Julian Alps</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus378">Roman Hall of Justice</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus386">Colonnades of St. Peter at Rome</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus392">Alaric's Burial</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus397">Roman Clock</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus399">Spanish Coast</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus402">Vandals plundering</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus404">Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus406">Hunnish Camp</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus410">St. Mark's, Venice</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus414">The Pope's House</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus420">Romulus Augustus resigns the Crown</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus424">illustration</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus428">Naples</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus430">Constantinople</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus436">Pope Gregory the Great</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus438">The Pope's Pulpit</a><br>
+<br>
+<a href="#illus442">Battle of Tours</a><br>
+<br>
+
+<center><img src="images/illus014.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+<h2>YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>ITALY.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world.
+Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into the
+Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out of
+the Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land,
+shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Round the streams that flowed down from these hills, valleys of fertile
+soil formed themselves, and a great many different tribes and people
+took up their abode there, before there was any history to explain their
+coming. Putting together what can be proved about them, it is plain,
+however, that most of them came of that old stock from which the Greeks
+descended, and to which we belong ourselves, and they spoke a language
+which had the same root as ours and as the Greek. From one of these
+nations the best known form of this, as it was polished in later times,
+was called Latin, from the tribe who spoke it.</p>
+
+<a name="RiverTiber"></a><center><img src="images/illus015.png" alt="River Tiber"></center>
+<h6>THE TIBER</h6>
+
+<p>About the middle of the peninsula there runs down, westward from the
+Apennines, a river called the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven low
+hills, which recede as it approaches the sea. One, in especial, called
+the Palatine Hill, rose separately, with a flat top and steep sides,
+about four hundred yards from the river, and girdled in by the other
+six. This was the place where the great Roman power grew up from
+beginnings, the truth of which cannot now be discovered.</p>
+
+<a name="illus016"></a><center><img src="images/illus016.png" alt="Pottery"></center>
+<h6>CURIOUS POTTERY.</h6>
+
+<p>There were several nations living round these hills&mdash;the Etruscans,
+Sabines, and Latins being the chief. The homes of these nations seem to
+have been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines, where they
+had farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill which
+they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refuge
+if their enemies attacked them. The Etruscans built very mighty walls,
+and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well. Many of
+their works remain to this day, and, in especial, their monuments have
+been opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned with
+figures of himself, half lying, half sitting; also curious pottery in
+red and black, from which something of their lives and ways is to be
+made out. They spoke a different language from what has become Latin,
+and they had a different religion, believing in one great Soul of the
+World, and also thinking much of rewards and punishments after death.
+But we know hardly anything about them, except that their chiefs were
+called Lucumos, and that they once had a wide power which they had lost
+before the time of history. The Romans called them Tusci, and Tuscany
+still keeps its name.</p>
+
+<p>The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like the
+Greeks. There were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southern
+parts of Italy, and they learnt something from them. They had a great
+many gods. Every house had its own guardian. These were called Lares, or
+Penates, and were generally represented as little figures of dogs lying
+by the hearth, or as brass bars with dogs' heads. This is the reason
+that the bars which close in an open hearth are still called dogs.
+Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by pouring out
+wine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he kept
+figures; for these natives thought much of their families, and all one
+family had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius,
+the daughters only changing it by making it end in <i>a</i> instead of
+<i>us</i>, and the men having separate names standing first, such as
+Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish
+them.</p>
+
+<a name="illus018"></a><center><img src="images/illus018.png" alt="Jupiter"></center>
+<h6>JUPITER</h6>
+
+<p>Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood its
+faun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were
+dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of
+fruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops were
+solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the old
+legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there
+was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own
+handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time
+every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were
+all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild
+sports and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn
+was mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring,
+and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's
+scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened into
+Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek times
+was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with the
+Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and,
+in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greek
+tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only
+afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their
+gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and
+fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the
+Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer,
+more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever,
+thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now call
+sterling stuff in them.</p>
+
+<p>At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language,
+and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is
+said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of
+little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in
+the forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for
+his worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, the
+god of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were
+the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the C&aelig;lian, and the Quirinal.
+The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen,
+when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their
+neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing
+all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from
+houses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.</p>
+
+<p>The history of these people was not written till long after they had
+grown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up many
+Greek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards, and
+worked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and customs
+they found among them, and the tales they told were formed into a great
+history by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these stories which
+every one used to believe to be really history; so we will tell them
+first, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WANDERINGS OF &AElig;NEAS.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how Priam and
+all his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a prince called
+&AElig;neas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother was
+said to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the city was lost, he
+rushed back to his house, and took his old father Anchises on his back,
+giving him his Penates, or little images of household gods, to take care
+of, and led by the hand his little son Iulus, or Ascanius, while his
+wife Creusa followed close behind, and all the Trojans who could get
+their arms together joined him, so that they escaped in a body to Mount
+Ida; but just as they were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, and
+though he rushed back and searched for her everywhere, he never could
+find her. For the sake of his care for his gods, and for his old father,
+he is always known as the pious &AElig;neas.</p>
+
+<p>In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough to set forth with all
+his followers in quest of the new home which his mother, the goddess
+Venus, gave him hopes of. He had adventures rather like those of Ulysses
+as he sailed about the Mediterranean. Once in the Strophades, some
+clusters belonging to the Ionian Islands, when he and his troops had
+landed to get food, and were eating the flesh of the numerous goats
+which they found climbing about the rocks, down on them came the
+harpies, horrible birds with women's faces and hooked hands, with which
+they snatched away the food and spoiled what they could not eat. The
+Trojans shot at them, but the arrows glanced off their feathers and did
+not hurt them. However, they all flew off except one, who sat on a high
+rock, and croaked out that the Trojans would be punished for thus
+molesting the harpies by being tossed about till they should reach
+Italy, but there they should not build their city till they should have
+been so hungry as to eat their very trenchers.</p>
+
+<a name="illus024"></a><center><img src="images/illus024.png" alt="Coast"></center>
+<h6> THE COAST.</h6>
+
+<p>They sailed away from this dismal prophetess, and touched on the coast
+of Epirus, where &AElig;neas found his cousin Helenus, son to old Priam,
+reigning over a little new Troy, and married to Andromache, Hector's
+wife, whom he had gained after Pyrrhus had been killed. Helenus was a
+prophet, and gave &AElig;neas much advice. In especial he said that when the
+Trojans should come to Italy, they would find, under the holly-trees by
+the river side, a large white old sow lying on the ground, with a litter
+of thirty little pigs round her, and this should be a sign to them
+where they were to build their city.</p>
+
+<p>By his advice the Trojans coasted round the south of Sicily, instead of
+trying to pass the strait between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, and
+just below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came running down to the beach
+begging to be taken in. He was a Greek, who had been left behind when
+Ulysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had made his way to the
+forests, where he had lived ever since. They had just taken him in when
+they saw Cyclops coming down, with a pine tree for a staff, to wash the
+burning hollow of his lost eye in the sea, and they rowed off in great
+terror.</p>
+
+<a name="illus026"></a><center><img src="images/illus026.png" alt="Etna"></center>
+<h6>MOUNT ETNA.</h6>
+
+<p>Poor old Anchises died shortly after, and while his son was still
+sorrowing for him, Juno, who hated every Trojan, stirred up a terrible
+tempest, which drove the ships to the south, until, just as the sea
+began to calm down, they came into a beautiful bay, enclosed by tall
+cliffs with woods overhanging them. Here the tired wanderers landed,
+and, lighting a fire, &AElig;neas went in quest of food. Coming out of the
+forest, they looked down from a hill, and beheld a multitude of people
+building a city, raising walls, houses, towers, and temples. Into one of
+these temples &AElig;neas entered, and to his amazement he found the walls
+sculptured with all the story of the siege of Troy, and all his friends
+so perfectly represented, that he burst into tears at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whole troop of nymphs, came
+into the temple. This lady was Dido; her husband, Sich&aelig;us, had been king
+of Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant to
+have married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyrians
+and all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast of
+Africa. There she begged of the chief of the country as much land as
+could be enclosed by a bullock's hide. He granted this readily; and
+Dido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed to
+measure off with it ground enough to build the splendid city which she
+had named Carthage. She received &AElig;neas most kindly, and took all his men
+into her city, hoping to keep them there for ever, and make him her
+husband. &AElig;neas himself was so happy there, that he forgot all his plans
+and the prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him
+to fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call; and Dido was so wretched at
+his departure that she caused a great funeral pile to be built, laid
+herself on the top, and stabbed herself with &AElig;neas' sword; the pile was
+burnt, and the Trojans saw the flame from their ships without knowing
+the cause.</p>
+
+<a name="illus030"></a><center><img src="images/illus030.png" alt="Carthage"></center>
+<h6>CARTHAGE.</h6>
+
+<p>By-and-by &AElig;neas landed at a place in Italy named Cum&aelig;. There dwelt one
+of the Sybils. These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had endowed with
+deep wisdom; and when &AElig;neas went to consult the Cum&aelig;an Sybil, she told
+him that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to learn his fate.
+First, however, he had to go into a forest, and find there and gather a
+golden bough, which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. Long
+he sought it, until two doves, his mother's birds, came flying before
+him to show him the tree where gold gleamed through the boughs, and he
+found the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe grows on the thorn.</p>
+
+<p>Guarded with this, and guided by the Sybil, after a great sacrifice,
+&AElig;neas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round
+which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and
+whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sybil, however,
+made him take &AElig;neas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a
+human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sybil threw him a
+cake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while &AElig;neas passed
+on and found in myrtle groves all who had died for love, among them, to
+his surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the home
+of the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. He
+passed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysian
+fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spirit
+of his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of all
+their descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of their
+name. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote to
+whom we owe all the tale of the wanderings of &AElig;neas, namely, Virgil, who
+wrote the <i>&AElig;neid</i>, whence all these stories are taken. He further tells
+us that &AElig;neas landed in Italy just as his old nurse Cai&euml;ta died, at the
+place which is still called Ga&euml;ta. After they had buried her, they found
+a grove, where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large round
+cakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating up
+the cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, &quot;We are eating our very tables;&quot;
+and &AElig;neas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings were
+over.</p>
+
+<a name="illus032"></a><center><img src="images/illus032.png" alt="Soldier"></center>
+<h6> ROMAN SOLDIER.</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FOUNDING OF ROME.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 753&mdash;713.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Virgil goes on to tell at much length how the king of the country,
+Latinus, at first made friends with &AElig;neas, and promised him his daughter
+Lavinia in marriage; but Turnus, an Italian chief who had before been a
+suitor to Lavinia, stirred up a great war, and was only captured and
+killed after much hard fighting. However, the white sow was found in the
+right place with all her little pigs, and on the spot was founded the
+city of Alba Longa, where &AElig;neas and Lavinia reigned until he died, and
+his descendants, through his two sons, Ascanius or Iulus, and &AElig;neas
+Silvius, reigned after him for fifteen generations.</p>
+
+<p>The last of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from his
+brother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin.
+In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men,
+but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with great
+honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there was
+great anger when Rhea Silvia became the mother of twin boys, and,
+moreover, said that her husband was the god Mars. But Mars did not save
+her from being buried alive, while the two babes were put in a trough on
+the waters of the river Tiber, there to perish. The river had overflowed
+its banks, and left the children on dry ground, where, however, they
+were found by a she-wolf, who fondled and fed them like her own
+offspring, until a shepherd met with them and took them home to his
+wife. She called them Romulus and Remus, and bred them up as shepherds.</p>
+
+<p>When the twin brothers were growing into manhood, there was a fight
+between the shepherds of Numitor and Amulius, in which Romulus and Remus
+did such brave feats that they were led before Numitor. He enquired into
+their birth, and their foster-father told the story of his finding them,
+showing the trough in which they had been laid; and thus it became plain
+that they were the grandsons of Numitor. On finding this out, they
+collected an army, with which they drove away Amulius, and brought their
+grandfather back to Alba Longa.</p>
+
+<p>They then resolved to build a new city for themselves on one of the
+seven low hills beneath which ran the yellow river Tiber; but they were
+not agreed on which hill to build, Remus wanting to build on the
+Aventine Hill, and Romulus on the Palatine. Their grandfather advised
+them to watch for omens from the gods, so each stood on his hill and
+watched for birds. Remus was the first to see six vultures flying, but
+Romulus saw twelve, and therefore the Palatine Hill was made the
+beginning of the city, and Romulus was chosen king. Remus was affronted,
+and when the mud wall was being raised around the space intended for the
+city, he leapt over it and laughed, whereupon Romulus struck him dead,
+crying out, &quot;So perish all who leap over the walls of my city.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus035"></a><center><img src="images/illus035.png" alt="Banquet"></center>
+<h6>GLADIATORIAL SHOWS AT A BANQUET</h6>
+
+<p>Romulus traced out the form of the city with the plough, and made it
+almost a square. He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midst
+of it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fifty
+families of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws and
+runaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him. The date of
+the building of Rome was supposed to be <small>A.D.</small> 753; and the
+Romans counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from the
+Olympiads, marking the date <small>A.U.C.</small>, <i>anno urbis condit&aelig;</i>, the
+year of the city being built. The youths who joined Romulus could not
+marry, as no one of the neighboring nations would give his daughter to
+one of these robbers, as they were esteemed. The nearest neighbors to
+Rome were the Sabines, and the Romans cast their eyes in vain on the
+Sabine ladies, till old Numitor advised Romulus to proclaim a great
+feast in honor of Neptune, with games and dances. All the people in the
+country round came to it, and when the revelry was at its height each of
+the unwedded Romans seized on a Sabine maiden and carried her away to
+his own house. Six hundred and eighty-three girls were thus seized, and
+the next day Romulus married them all after the fashion ever after
+observed in Rome. There was a great sacrifice, then each damsel was
+told, &quot;Partake of your husband's fire and water;&quot; he gave her a ring,
+and carried her over his threshold, where a sheepskin was spread, to
+show that her duty would be to spin wool for him, and she became his
+wife.</p>
+
+<a name="illus038"></a><center><img src="images/illus038.png" alt="Forum"></center>
+<h6>THE FORUM.</h6>
+
+<p>Romulus himself won his own wife, Hersilia, among the Sabines on this
+occasion; but the nation of course took up arms, under their king
+Tatius, to recover their daughters. Romulus drew out his troops into
+Campus Martius, or field of Mars, just beneath the Capitol, or great
+fort on the Saturnian Hill, and marched against the Sabines; but while
+he was absent, Tarpeia, the daughter of the governor of the little fort
+he had left on the Saturnian Hill, promised to let the Sabines in on
+condition they would give her what they wore on their left arms, meaning
+their bracelets; but they hated her treason even while they took
+advantage of it, and no sooner were they within the gate than they
+pelted her with their heavy shields, which they wore on their left arms,
+and killed her. The cliff on the top of which she died is still called
+the Tarpeian rock, and criminals were executed by being thrown from the
+top of it. Romulus tried to regain the Capitol, but the Sabines rolled
+down stones on the Romans, and he was stunned by one that struck him on
+the head; and though he quickly recovered and rallied his men, the
+battle was going against him, when all the Sabine women, who had been
+nearly two years Roman wives, came rushing out, with their little
+children in their arms and their hair flying, begging their fathers and
+husbands not to kill one another. This led to the making of a peace, and
+it was agreed that the Sabines and Romans should make but one nation,
+and that Romulus and Tatius should reign together at Rome. Romulus lived
+on the Palatine Hill, Tatius on the Tarpeian, and the valley between was
+called the Forum, and was the market-place, and also the spot where all
+public assemblies were held. All the chief arrangements for war and
+government were believed by the Romans to have been laws of Romulus.
+However, after five years, Tatius was murdered at a place called
+Lavinium, in the middle of a sacrifice, and Romulus reigned alone till
+in the middle of a great assembly of his soldiers outside the city, a
+storm of thunder and lightning came on, and every one hurried home, but
+the king was nowhere to be found; for, as some say, his father Mars had
+come down in the tempest and carried him away to reign with the gods,
+while others declared that he was murdered by persons, each of whom
+carried home a fragment of his body that it might never be found. It
+matters less which way we tell it, since the story of Romulus was quite
+as much a fable as that of &AElig;neas; only it must be remembered as the
+Romans themselves believed it. They worshipped Romulus under the name of
+Quirinus, and called their chief families Quirites, both words coming
+from <i>ger</i> (a spear); and the she-wolf and twins were the favorite
+badge of the empire. The Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, and the Forum all
+still bear the same names.</p>
+
+<a name="illus039"></a><center><img src="images/illus039.png" alt="illustration"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>NUMA AND TULLUS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 713&mdash;618.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was understood between the Romans and the Sabines that they should
+have by turns a king from each nation, and, on the disappearance of
+Romulus, a Sabine was chosen, named Numa Pompilius, who had been married
+to Tatia, the daughter of the Sabine king Tatius, but she was dead, and
+had left one daughter. Numa had, ever since her death, been going about
+from one grove or fountain sacred to the gods to another offering up
+sacrifices, and he was much beloved for his gentleness and wisdom. There
+was a grove near Rome, in a valley, where a fountain gushed forth from
+the rock; and here Egeria, the nymph of the stream, in the shade of the
+trees, counselled Numa on his government, which was so wise that he
+lived at peace with all his neighbors. When the Romans doubted whether
+it was really a goddess who inspired him, Egeria convinced them, for the
+next time he had any guests in his house, the earthenware plates with
+homely fare on them were changed before their eyes into golden dishes
+with dainty food. Moreover, there was brought from heaven a bronze
+shield, which was to be carefully kept, since Rome would never fall
+while it was safe. Numa had eleven other shields like it made and hung
+in the temple of Mars, and, yearly, a set of men dedicated to the office
+bore them through the city with songs and dances. Just as all warlike
+customs were said to have been invented by Romulus, all peaceful and
+religious ones were held to have sprung from Numa and his Egeria. He was
+said to have fixed the calendar and invented the names of the months,
+and to have built an altar to Good Faith to teach the Romans to keep
+their word to one another and to all nations, and to have dedicated the
+bounds of each estate to the Dii Termini, or Landmark Gods, in whose
+honor there was a feast yearly. He also was said to have had such power
+with Jupiter as to have persuaded him to be content without receiving
+sacrifices of men and women. In short, all the better things in the
+Roman system were supposed to be due to the gentle Numa.</p>
+
+<p>At the gate called Janiculum stood a temple to the watchman god Janus,
+whose figure had two faces, and held the keys, and after whom was named
+the month January. His temple was always open in time of war, and closed
+in time of peace. Numa's reign was counted as the first out of only
+three times in Roman history that it was shut.</p>
+
+<a name="illus042"></a><center><img src="images/illus042.png" alt="Janus"></center>
+<h6>JANUS.</h6>
+
+<p>Numa was said to have reigned thirty-eight years, and then he gradually
+faded away, and was buried in a stone coffin outside the Janicular gate,
+all the books he had written being, by his desire, buried with him.
+Egeria wept till she became a fountain in her own valley; and so ended
+what in Roman faith answered to the golden age of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>The next king was of Roman birth, and was named Tullus Hostilius. He was
+a great warrior, and had a war with the Albans until it was agreed that
+the two cities should join together in one, as the Romans and Sabines
+had done before; but there was a dispute which should be the greater
+city in the league and it was determined to settle it by a combat. In
+each city there was a family where three sons had been born at a birth,
+and their mothers were sisters. Both sets were of the same age&mdash;fine
+young men, skilled in weapons; and it was agreed that the six should
+fight together, the three whose family name was Horatius on the Roman
+side, the three called Curiatius on the Alban side, and whichever set
+gained the mastery was to give it to his city.</p>
+
+<p>They fought in the plain between the camps, and very hard was the strife
+until two of the Horatii were killed and all the three Curiatii were
+wounded, but the last Horatius was entirely untouched. He began to run,
+and his cousins pursued him, but at different distances, as one was less
+hindered by his wound than the others. As soon as the first came up.
+Horatius slew him, and so the second and the third: as he cut down this
+last he cried out, &quot;To the glory of Rome I sacrifice thee.&quot; As the Alban
+king saw his champion fall, he turned to Tullus Hostilius and asked what
+his commands were. &quot;Only to have the Alban youth ready when I need
+them,&quot; said Tullus.</p>
+
+<p>A wreath was set on the victor's head, and, loaded with the spoil of the
+Curiatii, he was led into the city in triumph. His sister came hurrying
+to meet him; she was betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and was in agony
+to know his fate; and when she saw the garment she had spun for him
+hanging blood-stained over her brother's shoulders, she burst into loud
+lamentations. Horatius, still hot with fury, struck her dead on the
+spot, crying, &quot;So perish every Roman who mourns the death of an enemy of
+his country.&quot; Even her father approved the cruel deed, and would not
+bury her in his family tomb&mdash;so stern were Roman feelings, putting the
+honor of the country above everything. However, Horatius was brought
+before the king for the murder, and was sentenced to die; but the people
+entreated that their champion might be spared, and he was only made to
+pass under what was called the yoke, namely, spears set up like a
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Tullus Hostilius gained several victories over his neighbors, but he was
+harsh and presuming, and offended the gods, and, when he was using some
+spell such as good Numa had used to hold converse with Jupiter, the
+angry god sent lightning and burnt up him and his family. The people
+then chose Ancus Martins, the son of Numa's daughter, who is said to
+have ruled in his grandfather's spirit, though he could not avoid wars
+with the Latins. The first bridge over the Tiber, named the Sublician,
+was said to have been built by him. In his time there came to Rome a
+family called Tarquin. Their father was a Corinthian, who had settled in
+an Etruscan town named Tarquinii, whence came the family name. He was
+said to have first taught writing in Italy, and, indeed, the Roman
+letters which we still use are Greek letters made simpler. His eldest
+son, finding that because of his foreign blood he could rise to no
+honors in Etruria, set off with his wife Tanaquil, and their little son
+Lucius Tarquinius, to settle in Rome. Just as they came in sight of
+Rome, an eagle swooped down from the sky, snatched off little Tarquin's
+cap, and flew up with it, but the next moment came down again and put it
+back on his head. On this Tanaquil foretold that her son would be a
+great king, and he became so famous a warrior when he grew up, that, as
+the children of Ancus were too young to reign at their father's death,
+he was chosen king. He is said to have been the first Roman king who
+wore a purple robe and golden crown, and in the valley between the
+Palatine and Aventine Hills he made a circus, where games could be held
+like those of the Greeks; also he placed stone benches and stalls for
+shops round the Forum, and built a stone wall instead of a mud one round
+the city. He is commonly called Tarquinus Priscus, or the elder.</p>
+
+<a name="illus046"></a><center><img src="images/illus046.png" alt="Actors"></center>
+<h6>ACTORS</h6>
+
+<p>There was a fair slave girl in his house, who was offering cakes to Lar,
+the household spirit, when he appeared to her in bodily form. When she
+told the king's mother, Tanaquil, she said it was a token that he wanted
+to marry her, and arrayed her as a bride for him. Of this marriage
+there sprang a boy called Servius Tullus. When this child lay asleep,
+bright flames played about his head, and Tanaquil knew he would be
+great, so she caused her son Tarquin to give him his daughter in
+marriage when he grew up. This greatly offended the two sons of Ancus
+Martius, and they hired two young men to come before him as
+wood-cutters, with axes over their shoulders, pretending to have a
+quarrel about some goats, and while he was listening to their cause they
+cut him down and mortally wounded him. He had lost his sons, and had
+only two baby grandsons, Aruns and Tarquin, who could not reign as yet;
+but while he was dying, Tanaquil stood at the window and declared that
+he was only stunned and would soon be well. This, as she intended, so
+frightened the sons of Ancus that they fled from Rome; and Servius
+Tullus, coming forth in the royal robes, was at once hailed as king by
+all the people of Rome, being thus made king that he might protect his
+wife's two young nephews, the two little Tarquins.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DRIVING OUT OF THE TARQUINS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 578&mdash;309.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Servius Tullus was looked on by the Romans as having begun making their
+laws, as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, and Numa had
+settled their religion. The Romans were all in great clans or families,
+all with one name, and these were classed in tribes. The nobler ones,
+who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, or Sabine families, were
+called Patricians&mdash;from <i>pater</i>, a father&mdash;because they were fathers of
+the people; and the other families were called Plebeian, from <i>plebs</i>,
+the people. The patricians formed the Senate or Council of Government,
+and rode on horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot. They
+had spears, round shields, and short pointed swords, which cut on each
+side of the blade. Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of each
+tribe should be called out to war. He also walled in the city again with
+a wall five miles round; and he made many fixed laws, one being that
+when a man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he himself might
+not be made a slave. He was the great friend of the plebeians, and first
+established the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be made
+without the consent of the Comitia, or whole free people.</p>
+
+<p>The Sabines and Romans were still striving for the mastery, and a
+husbandman among the Sabines had a wonderfully beautiful cow. An oracle
+declared that the man who sacrificed this cow to Diana upon the Aventine
+Hill would secure the chief power to his nation. The Sabine drove the
+cow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a crafty Roman priest told
+him that he must first wash his hands in the Tiber, and while he was
+gone sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick secured the rule to
+Rome. The great horns of the cow were long after shown in the temple of
+Diana on the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines, and Latins every year
+joined in a great sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>The two daughters of Servius were married to their cousins, the two
+young Tarquins. In each pair there was a fierce and a gentle one. The
+fierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tarquin; the gentle Tulla
+had married the proud Lucius Tarquin. Aruns' wife tried to persuade her
+husband to seize the throne that had belonged to his father, and when he
+would not listen to her, she agreed with his brother Lucius that, while
+he murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that they
+should marry. The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius, seeing
+what a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to consider with
+the Senate whether it would not be better to have two consuls or
+magistrates chosen every year than a king. This made Lucius Tarquin the
+more furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians hated the
+king as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and was
+beginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of their
+greatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of the
+doorway, ordered him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old man and
+hurled him backward, so that the fall killed him, and his body was left
+in the street. The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her husband had
+sped, came out in her chariot on that road. The horses gave back before
+the corpse. She asked what was in their way; the slave who drove her
+told her it was the king's body. &quot;Drive on,&quot; she said. The horrid deed
+caused the street to be known ever after as &quot;Sceleratus,&quot; or the wicked.
+But it was the plebeians who mourned for Servius; the patricians in
+their anger made Tarquin king, but found him a very hard and cruel
+master, so that he is generally called Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin
+the proud. In his time the Sybil of Cum&aelig;, the same wondrous maiden of
+deep wisdom who had guided &AElig;neas to the realms of Pluto, came, bringing
+nine books of prophecies of the history of Rome, and offered them to him
+at a price which he thought too high, and refused. She went away,
+destroyed three, and brought back the other six, asking for them double
+the price of the whole. He refused. She burnt three more, and brought
+him the last three with the price again doubled, because the fewer they
+were, the more precious. He bought them at last, and placed them in the
+Capitol, whence they were now and then taken to be consulted as oracles.</p>
+
+<a name="illus051"></a><center><img src="images/illus051.png" alt="Cave"></center>
+<h6>SYBIL'S CAVE.</h6>
+
+<p>Rome was at war with the city of Gabii, and as the city was not to be
+subdued by force, Tarquin tried treachery. His eldest son, Sextus
+Tarquinius, fled to Gabii, complaining of ill-usage of his father, and
+showing marks of a severe scourging. The Gabians believed him, and he
+was soon so much trusted by them as to have the whole command of the
+army and manage everything in the city. Then he sent a messenger to his
+father to ask what he was to do next. Tarquin was walking through a
+cornfield. He made no answer in words, but with a switch cut off the
+heads of all the poppies and taller stalks of corn, and bade the
+messenger tell Sextus what he had seen. Sextus understood, and
+contrived to get all the chief men of Gabii exiled or put to death, and
+without them the city fell an easy prey to the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Tarquin sent his two younger sons and their cousin to consult the oracle
+at Delphi, and with them went Lucius Junius, who was called Brutus
+because he was supposed to be foolish, that being the meaning of the
+word; but his folly was only put on, because he feared the jealousy of
+his cousins. After doing their father's errand, the two Tarquins asked
+who should rule Rome after their father. &quot;He,&quot; said the priestess, &quot;who
+shall first kiss his mother on his return.&quot; The two brothers agreed that
+they would keep this a secret from their elder brother Sextus, and, as
+soon as they reached home, both of them rushed into the women's rooms,
+racing each to be the first to embrace their mother Tullia; but at the
+very entrance of Rome Brutus pretended to slip, threw himself on the
+ground and kissed his Mother Earth, having thus guessed the right
+meaning of the answer.</p>
+
+<p>He waited patiently, however, and still was thought a fool when the army
+went out to besiege the city of Ardea; and while the troops were
+encamped round it, some of the young patricians began to dispute which
+had the best wife. They agreed to put it to the test by galloping late
+in the evening to look in at their homes and see what their wives were
+about. Some were idling, some were visiting, some were scolding, some
+were dressing, some were asleep; but at Collatia, the farm of another of
+the Tarquin family, thence called Collatinus, they found his beautiful
+wife Lucretia among her maidens spinning the wool of the flocks. All
+agreed that she was the best of wives; but the wicked Sextus Tarquin
+only wanted to steal her from her husband, and going by night to
+Collatia, tried to make her desert her lord, and when she would not
+listen to him he ill-treated her cruelly, and told her that he should
+accuse her to her husband. She was so overwhelmed with grief and shame
+that in the morning she sent for her father and husband, told them all
+that that happened, and saying that she could not bear life after being
+so put to shame, she drew out a dagger and stabbed herself before their
+eyes&mdash;thinking, as all these heathen Romans did, that it was better to
+die by one's own hand than to live in disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>Lucius Brutus had gone to Collatia with his cousin, and while Collatinus
+and his father-in-law stood horror-struck, he called to them to revenge
+this crime. Snatching the dagger from Lucretia's breast, he galloped to
+Rome, called the people together in the Forum, and, holding up the
+bloody weapon in his hand, he made them a speech, asking whether they
+would any longer endure such a family of tyrants. They all rose as one
+man, and choosing Brutus himself and Collatinus to be their leaders, as
+the consuls whom Servius Tullus had thought of making, they shut the
+gates of Rome, and would not open them when Tarquin and his sons would
+have returned. So ended the kingdom of Rome.</p>
+
+<a name="illus055"></a><center><img src="images/illus055.png" alt="illustration"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WAR WITH PORSENA.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>From the time of the flight of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by two
+consuls, who wore all the tokens of royalty except the crown. Tarquin
+fled into Etruria, whence his grandfather had come, and thence tried to
+obtain admission into Rome. The two young sons of Brutus and the nephews
+of Collatinus were drawn into a plot for bringing them back again, and
+on its discovery were brought before the two consuls. Their guilt was
+proved, and their father sternly asked what they had to say in their
+defence. They only wept, and so did Collatinus and many of the senators,
+crying out, &quot;Banish them, banish them.&quot; Brutus, however, as if unmoved,
+bade the executioners do their office. The whole Senate shrieked to hear
+a father thus condemn his own children, but he was resolute, and
+actually looked on while the young men were first scourged and then
+beheaded.</p>
+
+<p>Collatinus put off the further judgment in hopes to save his nephews,
+and Brutus told them that he had put them to death by his own power as a
+father, but that he left the rest to the voice of the people, and they
+were sent into banishment. Even Collatinus was thought to have acted
+weakly, and was sent into exile&mdash;so determined were the Romans to have
+no one among them who would not uphold their decrees to the utmost.
+Tarquin advanced to the walls and cut down all the growing corn around
+the Campus Martius and threw it into the Tiber; there it formed a heap
+round which an island was afterwards formed. Brutus himself and his
+cousin Aruns Tarquin soon after killed one another in single combat in a
+battle outside the walls, and all the women of Rome mourned for him as
+for a father.</p>
+
+<p>Tarquin found a friend in the Etruscan king called Lars Porsena, who
+brought an army to besiege Rome and restore him to the throne. He
+advanced towards the gate called Janiculum upon the Tiber, and drove the
+Romans out of the fort on the other side the river. The Romans then
+retreated across the bridge, placing three men to guard it until all
+should be gone over and it could be broken down.</p>
+
+<a name="illus058"></a><center><img src="images/illus058.png" alt="Brutus"></center>
+<h6>BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS.</h6>
+
+<p>There stood the brave three&mdash;Horatius, Lartius, and Herminius&mdash;guarding
+the bridge while their fellow-citizens were fleeing across it, three men
+against a whole army. At last the weapons of Lartius and Herminius were
+broken down, and Horatius bade them hasten over the bridge while it
+could still bear their weight. He himself fought on till he was wounded
+in the thigh, and the last timbers of the bridge were falling into the
+stream. Then spreading out his arms, he called upon Father Tiber to
+receive him, leapt into the river and swam across amid a shower of
+arrows, one of which put out his eye, and he was lame for life. A statue
+of him &quot;halting on his thigh&quot; was set up in the temple of Vulcan, and he
+was rewarded with as much land as one yoke of oxen could plough in a
+day, and the 300,000 citizens of Rome each gave him a day's provision of
+corn.</p>
+
+<p>Porsena then blockaded the city, and when the Romans were nearly
+starving he sent them word that he would give them food if they would
+receive their old masters; but they made answer that hunger was better
+than slavery, and still held out. In the midst of their distress, a
+young man named Caius Mucius came and begged leave of the consuls to
+cross the Tiber and go to attempt something to deliver his country. They
+gave leave, and creeping through the Etruscan camp he came into the
+king's tent just as Porsena was watching his troops pass by in full
+order. One of his counsellors was sitting beside him so richly dressed
+that Mucius did not know which was king, and leaping towards them, he
+stabbed the counsellor to the heart. He was seized at once and dragged
+before the king, who fiercely asked who he was, and what he meant by
+such a crime.</p>
+
+<p>The young man answered that his name was Caius Mucius, and that he was
+ready to do and dare anything for Rome. In answer to threats of torture,
+he quietly stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flame
+that burnt in a brazier close by, holding it there without a sign of
+pain, while he bade Porsena see what a Roman thought of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>Porsena was so struck that he at once gave the daring man his life, his
+freedom, and even his dagger; and Mucius then told him that three
+hundred youths like himself had sworn to have his life unless he left
+Rome to her liberty. This was false, but both the lie and the murder
+were for Rome's sake; they were both admired by the Romans, who held
+that the welfare of their city was their very first duty. Mucius could
+never use his right hand again, and was always called Sc&aelig;vola, or the
+Left-handed, a name that went on to his family.</p>
+
+<p>Porsena believed the story, and began to make peace. A truce was agreed
+on, and ten Roman youths and as many girls were given up to the
+Etruscans as hostages. While the conferences were going on, one of the
+Roman girls named Clelia forgot her duty so much as to swim home across
+the river with all her companions; but Valeria, the consul's daughter,
+was received with all the anger that breach of trust deserved, and her
+father mounted his horse at once to take the party back again. Just as
+they reached the Etruscan camp, the Tarquin father and brothers, and a
+whole troop of the enemy, fell on them. While the consul was fighting
+against a terrible force, Valeria dashed on into the camp and called out
+Porsena and his son. They, much grieved that the truce should have been
+broken, drove back their own men, and were so angry with the Tarquins as
+to give up their cause. He asked which of the girls had contrived the
+escape, and when Clelia confessed it was herself, he made her a present
+of a fine horse and its trappings, which she little deserved.</p>
+
+<p>This Valerius was called Publicola, or the people's friend. He died a
+year or two later, after so many victories that the Romans honored him
+among their greatest heroes. Tarquin still continued to seek support
+among the different Italian nations, and again attacked the Romans with
+the help of the Latins. The chief battle was fought close to Lake
+Regillus; Aulus Posthumius was the commander, but Marcus Valerius,
+brother to Publicola, was general of the horse. He had vowed to build a
+temple to Castor and Pollux if the Romans gained the victory; and in the
+beginning of the fight, two glorious youths of god-like stature appeared
+on horseback at the head of the Roman horse and fought for them. It was
+a very hard-fought battle. Valerius was killed, but so was Titus
+Tarquin, and the Latin force was entirely broken and routed. That same
+evening the two youths rode into the Forum, their horses dripping with
+sweat and their weapons bloody. They drew up and washed themselves at a
+fountain near the temple of Vesta, and as the people crowded round they
+told of the great victory, and while one man named Domitius doubted of
+it, since the Lake Regillus was too far off for tidings to have come so
+fast, one of them laid his hand on the doubter's beard and changed it
+in a moment from black to copper color, so that he came to be called
+Domitius Ahenobarbus, or Brazen-beard. Then they disappeared, and the
+next morning Posthumius' messenger brought the news. The Romans had no
+doubt that these were indeed the glorious twins, and built their temple,
+as Valerius had vowed.</p>
+
+<a name="illus064"></a><center><img src="images/illus064.png" alt="Ensigns"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN ENSIGNS, STANDARDS, TRUMPETS ETC.</h6>
+
+<p>Tarquin had lost all his sons, and died in wretched exile at Cum&aelig;. And
+here ends what is looked on as the legendary history of Rome, for though
+most of these stories have dates, and some sound possible, there is so
+much that is plainly untrue mixed up with them, that they can only be
+looked on as the old stories which were handed down to account for the
+Roman customs and copied by their historians.</p>
+
+<a name="illus066"></a><center><img src="images/illus066.png" alt="illustration"></center>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>So far as true history can guess, the Romans really did have kings and
+drove them out, but there are signs that, though Porsena was a real
+king, the war was not so honorable to the Romans as they said, for he
+took the city and made them give up all their weapons to him, leaving
+them nothing but their tools for husbandry. But they liked to forget
+their misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>The older Roman families were called patricians, or fathers, and thought
+all rights to govern belonged to them. Settlers who came in later were
+called plebeians, or the people, and at first had no rights at all, for
+all the land belonged to the patricians, and the only way for the
+plebeians to get anything done for them was to become hangers-on&mdash;or, as
+they called it, clients&mdash;of some patrician who took care of their
+interests. There was a council of patricians called the Senate, chosen
+among themselves, and also containing by right all who had been chief
+magistrates. The whole assembly of the patricians was called the
+Comitia. They, as has been said before, fought on horseback, while the
+plebeians fought on foot; but out of the rich plebeians a body was
+formed called the knights, who also used horses, and wore gold rings
+like the patricians.</p>
+
+<a name="illus069"></a><center><img src="images/illus069.png" alt="Jupiter"></center>
+<h6>HEAD OF JUPITER.</h6>
+
+<p>But the plebeians were always trying not to be left out of everything.
+By and by, they said under Servius Tullius, the city was divided into
+six quarters, and all the families living in them into six tribes, each
+of which had a tribune to watch over it, bring up the number of its men,
+and lead them to battle. Another division of the citizens, both
+patrician and plebeian, was made every five years. They were all counted
+and numbered and divided off into centuries according to their wealth.
+Then these centuries, or hundreds, had votes, by the persons they chose,
+when it was a question of peace or war. Their meeting was called the
+Comitia; but as there were more patrician centuries than plebeian ones,
+the patricians still had much more power. Besides, the Senate and all
+the magistrates were in those days always patricians. These magistrates
+were chosen every year. There were two consuls, who were like kings for
+the time, only that they wore no crowns; they had purple robes, and sat
+in chairs ornamented with ivory, and they were always attended by
+lictors, who carried bundles of rods tied round an axe&mdash;the first for
+scourging, the second for beheading. There were under them two pr&aelig;tors,
+or judges, who tried offences; two qu&aelig;stors, who attended to the public
+buildings; and two censors, who had to look after the numbering and
+registering of the people in their tribes and centuries. The consuls in
+general commanded the army, but sometimes, when there was a great need,
+one single leader was chosen and was called dictator. Sometimes a
+dictator was chosen merely to fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into the
+head of the great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides these, all
+the priests had to be patricians; the chief of all was called Pontifex
+Maximus. Some say this was because he was the <i>fax</i> (maker) of
+<i>pontes</i> (bridges), as he blessed them and decided by omens where
+they should be; but others think the word was Pompifex, and that he was
+the maker of pomps or ceremonies. There were many priests as well as
+augurs, who had to draw omens from the flight of birds or the appearance
+of sacrifices, and who kept the account of the calendar of lucky and
+unlucky days, and of festivals.</p>
+
+<a name="illus071"></a><center><img src="images/illus071.png" alt="Costumes"></center>
+<h6>FEMALE COSTUMES.</h6>
+
+<p>The Romans were a grave religious people in those days, and did not
+count their lives or their affections dear in comparison with their
+duties to their altars and their hearths, though their notions of duty
+do not always agree with ours. Their dress in the city was a white
+woollen garment edged with purple&mdash;it must have been more like in shape
+to a Scottish plaid than anything else&mdash;and was wrapped round so as to
+leave one arm free: sometimes a fold was drawn over the head. No one
+might wear it but a free-born Roman, and he never went out on public
+business without it, even when more convenient fashions had been copied
+from Greece. Those who were asking votes for a public office wore it
+white (<i>candidus</i>), and therefore were called candidates. The consuls
+had it on great days entirely purple and embroidered, and all senators
+and ex-magistrates had broader borders of purple. The ladies wore a long
+graceful wrapping-gown; the boys a short tunic, and round their necks
+was hung a hollow golden ball called a <i>bulla</i>, or bubble. When a boy
+was seventeen, there was a great family sacrifice to the Lares and the
+forefathers, his bulla was taken off, the toga was put on, and he was
+enrolled by his own pr&aelig;nomen, Caius or Lucius, or whatever it might be,
+for there was only a choice of fifteen. After this he was liable to be
+called out to fight. A certain number of men were chosen from each tribe
+by the tribune. It was divided into centuries, each led by a centurion;
+and the whole body together was called a legion, from <i>lego</i>, to
+choose. In later times the proper number for a legion was 6000 men. Each
+legion had a standard, a bar across the top of the spear, with the
+letters on it S P Q R&mdash;<i>Senatus, Populus Que Romanus</i>&mdash;meaning the Roman
+Senate and People, a purple flag below and a figure above, such as an
+eagle, or the wolf and twins, or some emblem dear to the Romans. The
+legions were on foot, but the troops of patricians and knights on
+horseback were attached to them and had to protect them.</p>
+
+<a name="illus072"></a><center><img src="images/illus072.png" alt="Costumes"></center>
+<h6>FEMALE COSTUMES.</h6>
+
+<p>The Romans had in those days very small riches, they held in general
+small farms in the country, which they worked themselves with the help
+of their sons and slaves. The plebeians were often the richest. They too
+held farms leased to them by the state, and had often small shops in
+Rome. The whole territory was so small that it was easy to come into
+Rome to worship, attend the Senate, or vote, and many had no houses in
+the city. Each man was married with a ring and sacrifice, and the lady
+was then carried over the threshold, on which a sheepskin was spread,
+and made mistress of the house by being bidden to be Caia to Caius. The
+Roman matrons were good and noble women in those days, and the highest
+praise of them was held to be <i>Domum mansit, lanam fecit</i>&mdash;she stayed
+at home and spun wool. Each man was absolute master in his own house,
+and had full power over his grown-up sons, even for life or death, and
+they almost always submitted entirely. For what made the Romans so great
+was that they were not only brave, but they were perfectly obedient, and
+obeyed as perfectly as they could their fathers, their officers, their
+magistrates, and, as they thought, their gods.</p>
+
+<a name="illus074"></a><center><img src="images/illus074.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MENENIUS AGRIPPA'S FABLE.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 494.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>A great deal of the history of Rome consists of struggles between the
+patricians and plebeians. In those early days the plebeians were often
+poor, and when they wanted to improve their lands they had to borrow
+money from the patricians, who not only had larger lands, but, as they
+were the officers in war, got a larger share of the spoil. The Roman law
+was hard on a man in debt. His lands might be seized, he might be thrown
+into prison or sold into slavery with his wife and children, or, if the
+creditors liked, be cut to pieces so that each might take his share.</p>
+
+<p>One of these debtors, a man who was famous for bravery as a centurion,
+broke out of his prison and ran into the Forum, all in rags and with
+chains still hanging to his hands and feet, showing them to his
+fellow-citizens, and asking if this was just usage of a man who had done
+no crime. They were very angry, and the more because one of the consuls,
+Appius Claudius, was known to be very harsh, proud and cruel, as indeed
+were all his family. The Volscians, a tribe often at war with them,
+broke into their land at the same time, and the Romans were called to
+arms, but the plebeians refused to march until their wrongs were
+redressed. On this the other consul, Servilius, promised that a law
+should be made against keeping citizens in prison for debt or making
+slaves of their children; and thereupon the army assembled, marched
+against the enemy, and defeated them, giving up all the spoil to his
+troops. But the senate, when the danger was over, would not keep its
+promises, and even appointed a Dictator to put the plebeians down.
+Thereupon they assembled outside the walls in a strong force, and were
+going to attack the patricians, when the wise old Menenius Agrippa was
+sent out to try to pacify them. He told them a fable, namely, that once
+upon a time all the limbs of a man's body became disgusted with the
+service they had to render to the belly. The feet and legs carried it
+about, the hands worked for it and carried food to it, the mouth ate
+for it, and so on. They thought it hard thus all to toil for it, and
+agreed to do nothing for it&mdash;neither to carry it about, clothe it, nor
+feed it. But soon all found themselves growing weak and starved, and
+were obliged to own that all would perish together unless they went on
+waiting on this seemingly useless belly. So Agrippa told them that all
+ranks and states depended on one another, and unless all worked together
+all must be confusion and go to decay. The fable seems to have convinced
+both rich and poor; the debtors were set free and the debts forgiven.
+And though the laws about debts do not seem to have been changed,
+another law was made which gave the plebeians tribunes in peace as well
+as war. These tribunes were always to be plebeians, chosen by their own
+fellows. No one was allowed to hurt them during their year of office, on
+pain of being declared accursed and losing his property; and they had
+the power of stopping any decision of the senate by saying solemnly,
+<i>Veto</i>, I forbid. They were called tribunes of the people, while the
+officers in war were called military tribunes; and as it was on the Mons
+Sacer, or Sacred Mount, that this was settled, these laws were called
+the <i>Leges Sacrari&aelig;</i>. An altar to the Thundering Jupiter was built to
+consecrate them: and, in gratitude for his management, Menenius Agrippa
+was highly honored all his life, and at his death had a public funeral.</p>
+
+<p>But the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians were not by
+any means over. The Roman land&mdash;Agri (acre), it was called&mdash;had at first
+been divided in equal shares&mdash;at least so it was said&mdash;but as belonging
+to the state all the time, and only held by the occupier. As time went
+on, some persons of course gathered more into their own hands, and
+others of spendthrift or unfortunate families became destitute. Then
+there was an outcry that, as the lands belonged to the whole state, it
+ought to take them all back and divide them again more equally: but the
+patricians naturally regarded themselves as the owners, and would not
+hear of this scheme, which we shall hear of again and again by the name
+of the Agrarian Law. One of the patricians, who had thrice been consul,
+by name Spurius Cassius, did all he could to bring it about, but though
+the law was passed he could not succeed in getting it carried out. The
+patricians hated him, and a report got abroad that he was only gaining
+favor with the people in order to get himself made king. This made even
+the plebeians turn against him as a traitor; he was condemned by the
+whole assembly of the people, and beheaded, after being scourged by the
+lictors. The people soon mourned for their friend, and felt that they
+had been deceived in giving him up to their enemies. The senate would
+not execute his law, and the plebeians would not enlist in the next war,
+though the senate threatened to cut down the fruit trees and destroy the
+crops of every man who refused to join the army. When they were
+absolutely driven into the ranks, they even refused to draw their swords
+in face of the enemy, and would not gain a victory lest their consul
+should have the honor of it.</p>
+
+<a name="illus080"></a><center><img src="images/illus080.png" alt="Palace"></center>
+<h6>SENATORIAL PALACE.</h6>
+
+<p>This consul's name was K&aelig;so Fabius. He belonged to a very clever, wary
+family, whose name it was said was originally <i>Foveus</i> (ditch), because
+they had first devised a plan of snaring wolves in pits or ditches. They
+were thought such excellent defenders of the claims of the patricians
+that for seven years following one or other of the Fabii was chosen
+consul. But by-and-by they began either to see that the plebeians had
+rights, or that they should do best by siding with them, for they went
+over to them; and when K&aelig;so next was consul he did all he could to get
+the laws of Cassius carried out, but the senate were furious with
+him, and he found it was not safe to stay in Rome when his consulate was
+over. So he resolved at any rate to do good to his country. The
+Etruscans often came over the border and ravaged the country; but there
+was a watch-tower on the banks of the little river Cremera, which flows
+into the Tiber, and Fabius offered, with all the men of his name&mdash;306 in
+number, and 4000 clients&mdash;to keep guard there against the enemy. For
+some time they prospered there, and gained much spoil from the
+Etruscans; but at last the whole Etruscan army came against them,
+showing only a small number at first to tempt them out to fight, then
+falling on them with the whole force and killing the whole of them, so
+that of the whole name there remained only one boy of fourteen who had
+been left behind at Rome. And what was worse, the consul, Titus
+Menenius, was so near the army that he could have saved the Fabii, but
+for the hatred the patricians bore them as deserters from their cause.</p>
+
+<a name="illus082"></a><center><img src="images/illus082.png" alt="Harbor"></center>
+<h6>VIEW OF A ROMAN HARBOR.</h6>
+
+<p>However, the tribune Publilius gained for the plebeians that there
+should be five tribunes instead of two, and made a change in the manner
+of electing them which prevented the patricians from interfering. Also
+it was decreed that to interrupt a tribune in a public speech deserved
+death. But whenever an Appius Claudius was consul he took his revenge,
+and was cruelly severe, especially in the camp, where the consul as
+general had much more power than in Rome. Again the angry plebeians
+would not fight, but threw down their arms in sight of the enemy.
+Claudius scourged and beheaded; they endured grimly and silently,
+knowing that when he returned to Rome and his consulate was over their
+tribunes would call him to account. And so they did, and before all the
+tribes of Rome summoned him to answer for his savage treatment of free
+Roman citizens. He made a violent answer, but he saw how it would go
+with him, and put himself to death to avoid the sentence. So were the
+Romans proving again and again the truth of Agrippa's parable, that
+nothing can go well with body or members unless each will be ready to
+serve the other.</p>
+
+<a name="illus084"></a><center><img src="images/illus084.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a><h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>CORIOLANUS AND CINCINNATUS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 458.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>All the time these struggles were going on between the patricians and
+the plebeians at home, there were wars with the neighboring tribes, the
+Volscians, the Veians, the Latins, and the Etruscans. Every spring the
+fighting men went out, attacked their neighbors, drove off their cattle,
+and tried to take some town; then fought a battle, and went home to reap
+the harvest, gather the grapes and olives in the autumn, and attend to
+public business and vote for the magistrates in the winter. They were
+small wars, but famous men fought in them. In a war against the
+Volscians, when Cominius was consul, he was besieging a city called
+Corioli, when news came that the men of Antium were marching against
+him, and in their first attack on the walls the Romans were beaten off,
+but a gallant young patrician, descended from the king Ancus Marcius,
+Caius Marcius by name, rallied them and led them back with such spirit
+that the place was taken before the hostile army came up; then he fought
+among the foremost and gained the victory. When he was brought to the
+consul's tent covered with wounds, Cominius did all he could to show his
+gratitude&mdash;set on the young man's head the crown of victory, gave him
+the surname of Coriolanus in honor of his exploits, and granted him the
+tenth part of the spoil of ten prisoners. Of them, however, Coriolanus
+only accepted one, an old friend of the family, whom he set at liberty
+at once. Afterwards, when there was a great famine in Rome, Coriolanus
+led an expedition to Antium, and brought away quantities of corn and
+cattle, which he distributed freely, keeping none for himself.</p>
+
+<p>But though he was so free of hand, Coriolanus was a proud, shy man, who
+would not make friends with the plebeians, and whom the tribunes hated
+as much as he despised them. He was elected consul, and the tribunes
+refused to permit him to become one; and when a shipload of wheat
+arrived from Sicily, there was a fierce quarrel as to how it should be
+distributed. The tribunes impeached him before the people for
+withholding it from them, and by the vote of a large number of citizens
+he was banished from Roman lands. His anger was great, but quiet. He
+went without a word away from the Forum to his house, where he took
+leave of his mother Veturia, his wife Volumnia, and his little children,
+and then went and placed himself by the hearth of Tullus the Volscian
+chief, in whose army he meant to fight to revenge himself upon his
+countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>Together they advanced upon the Roman territory, and after ravaging the
+country threatened to besiege Rome. Men of rank came out and entreated
+him to give up this wicked and cruel vengeance, and to have pity on his
+friends and native city; but he answered that the Volscians were now his
+nation, and nothing would move him. At last, however, all the women of
+Rome came forth, headed by his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia,
+each with a little child, and Veturia entreated and commanded her son in
+the most touching manner to change his purpose and cease to ruin his
+country, begging him, if he meant to destroy Rome, to begin by slaying
+her. She threw herself at his feet as she spoke, and his hard spirit
+gave way.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! mother, what is it you do?&quot; he cried as he lifted her up. &quot;Thou
+hast saved Rome, but lost thy son.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus088"></a><center><img src="images/illus088.png" alt="Camp"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN CAMP</h6>
+
+<p>And so it proved, for when he had broken up his camp and returned to the
+Volscian territory till the senate should recall him as they proceeded,
+Tullus, angry and disappointed, stirred up a tumult, and he was killed
+by the people before he could be sent for to Rome. A temple to &quot;Women's
+Good Speed&quot; was raised on the spot where Veturia knelt to him.</p>
+
+<p>Another very proud patrician family was the Quinctian. The father,
+Lucius Quinctius, was called Cincinnatus, from his long flowing curls of
+hair. He was the ablest man among the Romans, but stern and grave, and
+his eldest son K&aelig;so was charged by the tribunes with a murder and fled
+the country. Soon after there was a great inroad of the &AElig;qui and
+Volscians, and the Romans found themselves in great danger. They saw no
+one could save them but Cincinnatus, so they met in haste and chose him
+Dictator, though he was not present. Messengers were sent to his little
+farm on the Tiber, and there they found him holding the stilts of the
+plough. When they told their errand, he turned to his wife, who was
+helping him, and said, &quot;Racilia, fetch me my toga;&quot; then he washed his
+face and hands, and was saluted as Dictator. A boat was ready to take
+him to Rome, and as he landed, he was met by the four-and-twenty lictors
+belonging to the two consuls and escorted to his dwelling. In the
+morning he named as general of the cavalry Lucius Tarquitius, a brave
+old patrician who had become too poor even to keep a horse. Marching out
+at the head of all the men who could bear arms, he thoroughly routed the
+&AElig;qui, and then resigned his dictatorship at the end of sixteen days. Nor
+would he accept any of the spoil, but went back to his plough, his only
+reward being that his son was forgiven and recalled from banishment.</p>
+
+<a name="illus090"></a><center><img src="images/illus090.png" alt="Ploughing"></center>
+<h6>PLOUGHING</h6>
+
+<p>These are the grand old stories that came down from old time, but how
+much is true no one can tell, and there is reason to think that, though
+the leaders like Cincinnatus and Coriolanus might be brave, the Romans
+were really pressed hard by the Volscians and &AElig;qui, and lost a good deal
+of ground, though they were too proud to own it. No wonder, while the
+two orders of the state were always pulling different ways. However, the
+tribune Icilius succeeded in the year 454 in getting the Aventine Hill
+granted to the plebeians; and they had another champion called Lucius
+Sicinius Dentatus, who was so brave that he was called the Roman
+Achilles. He had received no less than forty-five wounds in different
+fights before he was fifty-eight years old, and had had fourteen civic
+crowns. For the Romans gave an oak-leaf wreath, which they called a
+civic crown, to a man who saved the life of a fellow-citizen, and a
+mural crown to him who first scaled the walls of a besieged city. And
+when a consul had gained a great victory, he had what was called a
+triumph. He was drawn in his chariot into the city, his victorious
+troops marching before him with their spears waving with laurel boughs,
+a wreath of laurel was on his head, his little children sat with him in
+the chariot, and the spoil of the enemy was carried along. All the
+people decked their houses and came forth rejoicing in holiday array,
+while he proceeded to the Capitol to sacrifice an ox to Jupiter there.
+His chief prisoners walked behind his car in chains, and at the moment
+of his sacrifice they were taken to a cell below the Capitol and there
+put to death, for the Roman was cruel in his joy. Nothing was more
+desired than such a triumph; but such was often the hatred between the
+plebeians and the patricians, that sometimes the plebeian army would
+stop short in the middle of a victorious campaign to hinder their consul
+from having a triumph. Even Sicinius is said once to have acted thus,
+and it began to be plain that Rome must fall if it continued to be thus
+divided against itself.</p>
+
+<a name="illus092"></a><center><img src="images/illus092.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a><h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DECEMVIRS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 450.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The Romans began to see what mischiefs their quarrels did, and they
+agreed to send three of their best and wisest men to Greece to study the
+laws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any of them could be put in
+force at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>To get the new code of laws which they brought home put into working
+order, it was agreed for the time to have no consuls, pr&aelig;tors, nor
+tribunes, but ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine Athenian
+archons. They were called Decemvirs (<i>decem</i>, ten; <i>vir</i>, a man),
+and at their head was Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who had
+killed himself to avoid being condemned for his harshness. At first they
+governed well, and a very good set of laws was drawn up, which the
+Romans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but Appius soon began to give
+way to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a war
+with the &AElig;qui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatus
+said it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundred
+and twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudius
+sent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army that
+he might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when he
+advised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and
+sent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretches
+instructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass
+they set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock and
+fought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come near
+him, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down on
+his head. Then they went back with a story that they had been attacked
+by the enemy, which was believed, till a party went out to bury the
+dead, and found there were only Roman corpses all lying round the
+crushed body of Sicinius, and that none were stripped of their armor or
+clothes. Then the true history was found out, but the Decemvirs
+sheltered the commanders, and would believe nothing against them.</p>
+
+<p>Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all honest men even more
+than this treachery to the brave old soldier. The Forum was not only the
+place of public assembly for state affairs, but the regular
+market-place, where there were stalls and booths for all the wares that
+Romans dealt in&mdash;meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold in
+earthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even booths where reading and
+writing was taught to boys and girls, who would learn by tracing letters
+in the sand, and then by writing them with an iron pen on a waxen table
+in a frame, or with a reed upon parchment. The children of each family
+came escorted by a slave&mdash;the girls by their nurse, the boys by one
+called a pedagogue.</p>
+
+<a name="illus096"></a><center><img src="images/illus096.png" alt="Virginia"></center>
+<h6>DEATH OF VIRGINIA.</h6>
+
+<p>Appius, when going to his judgment-seat across the Forum, saw at one of
+these schools a girl of fifteen reading her lesson. She was so lovely
+that he asked her nurse who she was, and heard that her name was
+Virginia, and that she was the daughter of an honorable plebeian and
+brave centurion named Virginius, who was absent with the army fighting
+with the &AElig;qui, and that she was to marry a young man named Icilius as
+soon as the campaign was over. Appius would gladly have married her
+himself, but there was a patrician law against wedding plebeians, and he
+wickedly determined that if he could not have her for his wife he would
+have her for his slave.</p>
+
+<p>There was one of his clients named Marcus Claudius, whom he paid to get
+up a story that Virginius' wife Numitoria, who was dead, had never had
+any child at all, but had bought a baby of one of his slaves and had
+deceived her husband with it, and thus that poor Virginia was really his
+slave. As the maiden was reading at her school, this wretch and a band
+of fellows like him seized upon her, declaring that she was his
+property, and that he would carry her off. There was a great uproar, and
+she was dragged as far as Appius' judgment-seat; but by that time her
+faithful nurse had called the poor girl's uncle Numitorius, who could
+answer for it that she was really his sister's child. But Appius would
+not listen to him, and all that he could gain was that judgment should
+not be given in the matter until Virginius should have been fetched from
+the camp.</p>
+
+<a name="illus099"></a><center><img src="images/illus099.png" alt="Races"></center>
+<h6>CHARIOT RACES.</h6>
+
+<p>Virginius had set out from the camp with Icilius before the messengers
+of Appius had reached the general with orders to stop him, and he came
+to the Forum leading his daughter by the hand, weeping, and attended by
+a great many ladies. Claudius brought his slave, who made false oath
+that she had sold her child to Numitoria; while, on the other hand, all
+the kindred of Virginius and his wife gave such proof of the contrary as
+any honest judge would have thought sufficient, but Appius chose to
+declare that the truth was with his client. There was a great murmur of
+all the people, but he frowned at them, and told them he knew of their
+meetings, and that there were soldiers in the Capitol ready to punish
+them, so they must stand back and not hinder a master from recovering
+his slave.</p>
+
+<p>Virginius took his poor daughter in his arms as if to give her a last
+embrace, and drew her close to the stall of a butcher where lay a great
+knife. He wiped her tears, kissed her, and saying, &quot;My own dear little
+girl, there is no way but this,&quot; he snatched up the knife and plunged it
+into her heart, then drawing it out he cried, &quot;By this blood, Appius, I
+devote thy blood to the infernal gods.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He could not reach Appius, but the lictors could not seize him, and he
+mounted his horse and galloped back to the army, four hundred men
+following him, and he arrived still holding the knife. Every soldier who
+heard the story resolved no longer to bear with the Decemvirs, but to
+march back to the city at once and insist on the old government being
+restored. The Decemvir generals tried to stop them, but they only
+answered, &quot;We are men with swords in our hands.&quot; At the same time there
+was such a tumult in the city, that Appius was forced to hide himself in
+his own house while Virginia's corpse was carried on a bier through the
+streets, and every one laid garlands, scarfs, and wreaths of their own
+hair upon it. When the troops arrived, they and the people joined in
+demanding that the Decemvirs should be given up to them to be burnt
+alive, and that the old magistrates should be restored. However, two
+patricians, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, were able so to arrange
+matters that the nine comparatively innocent Decemvirs were allowed to
+depose themselves, and Appius only was sent to prison, where he killed
+himself rather than face the trial that awaited him. The new code of
+laws, however, remained, but consuls, pr&aelig;tors, tribunes, and all the
+rest of the magistrates were restored, and in the year 445 a law was
+passed which enabled patricians and plebeians to intermarry.</p>
+
+<a name="illus101"></a><center><img src="images/illus101.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>CAMILLUS' BANISHMENT.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 390.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The wars with the Etruscans went on, and chiefly with the city of Veii,
+which stood on a hill twelve miles from Rome, and was altogether thirty
+years at war with it. At last the Romans made up their minds that,
+instead of going home every harvest-time to gather in their crops, they
+must watch the city constantly till they could take it, and thus, as the
+besiegers were unable to do their own work, pay was raised for them to
+enable them to get it done, and this was the beginning of paying armies.</p>
+
+<a name="illus103"></a><center><img src="images/illus103.png" alt="Machine"></center>
+<h6>ARROW MACHINE.</h6>
+
+<p>The siege of Veii lasted ten years, and during the last the Alban lake
+filled to an unusual height, although the summer was very dry. One of
+the Veian soldiers cried out to the Romans half in jest, &quot;You will
+never take Veii till the Alban lake is dry.&quot; It turned out that there
+was an old tradition that Veii should fall when the lake was drained. On
+this the senate sent orders to have canals dug to carry the waters to
+the sea, and these still remain. Still Veii held out, and to finish the
+war a dictator was appointed, Marcus Furius Camillus, who chose for his
+second in command a man of one of the most virtuous families in Rome, as
+their surname testified, Publius Cornelius, called Scipio, or the Staff,
+because either he or one of his forefathers had been the staff of his
+father's old age. Camillus took the city by assault, with an immense
+quantity of spoil, which was divided among the soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>Camillus in his pride took to himself at his triumph honors that had
+hitherto only been paid to the gods. He had his face painted with
+vermilion and his car drawn by milk-white horses. This shocked the
+people, and he gave greater offence by declaring that he had vowed a
+tenth part of the spoil to Apollo, but had forgotten it in the division
+of the plunder, and now must take it again. The soldiers would not
+consent, but lest the god should be angry with them, it was resolved to
+send a gold vase to his oracle at Delphi. All the women of Rome brought
+their jewels, and the senate rewarded them by a decree that funeral
+speeches might be made over their graves as over those of men, and
+likewise that they might be driven in chariots to the public games.</p>
+
+<p>Camillus commanded in another war with the Falisci, also an Etruscan
+race, and laid siege to their city. The sons of almost all the chief
+families were in charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who taught them both
+reading and all kinds of exercises. One day this man, pretending to take
+the boys out walking, led them all into the enemy's camp, to the tent of
+Camillus, where he told that he brought them all, and with them the
+place, since the Romans had only to threaten their lives to make their
+fathers deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so shocked at such
+perfidy, that he immediately bade the lictors strip the fellow
+instantly, and give the boys rods with which to scourge him back into
+the town. Their fathers were so grateful that they made peace at once,
+and about the same time the &AElig;qui were also conquered; and the commons
+and open lands belonging to Veii being divided, so that each Roman
+freeman had six acres, the plebeians were contented for the time.</p>
+
+<a name="illus106"></a><center><img src="images/illus106.png" alt="machine"></center>
+<h6>SIEGE MACHINE</h6>
+
+<p>The truth seems to have been that these Etruscan nations were weakened
+by a great new nation coming on them from the North. They were what the
+Romans called Galli or Gauls, one of the great races of the old stock
+which has always been finding its way westward into Europe, and they had
+their home north of the Alps, but they were always pressing on and on,
+and had long since made settlements in northern Italy. They were in
+clans, each obedient to one chief as a father, and joining together in
+one brotherhood. They had lands to which whole families had a common
+right, and when their numbers outgrew what the land could maintain, the
+bolder ones would set off with their wives, children, and cattle to
+find new homes. The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun first in the
+same way, and their tribes, and the claims of all to the common land,
+were the remains of the old way; but they had been settled in cities so
+long that this had been forgotten, and they were very different people
+from the wild men who spoke what we call Welsh, and wore checked tartan
+trews and plaids, with gold collars round their necks, round shields,
+huge broadswords, and their red or black hair long and shaggy. The
+Romans knew little or nothing about what passed beyond their own
+Apennines, and went on with their own quarrels. Camillus was accused of
+having taken more than his proper share of the spoil of Veii, in
+especial a brass door from a temple. His friends offered to pay any fine
+that might be laid on him, but he was too proud to stand his trial, and
+chose rather to leave Rome. As he passed the gates, he turned round and
+called upon the gods to bring Rome to speedy repentance for having
+driven him away.</p>
+
+<p>Even then the Gauls were in the midst of a war with Clusium, the city of
+Porsena, and the inhabitants sent to beg the help of the Romans, and the
+senate sent three young brothers of the Fabian family to try to arrange
+matters. They met the Gaulish Bran or chief, whom Latin authors call
+Brennus, and asked him what was his quarrel with Clusium or his right to
+any part of Etruria. Brennus answered that his right was his sword, and
+that all things belonged to the brave, and that his quarrel with the men
+of Clusium was, that though they had more land than they could till,
+they would not yield him any. As to the Romans, they had robbed their
+neighbors already, and had no right to find fault.</p>
+
+<p>This put the Fabian brothers in a rage, and they forgot the caution of
+their family, as well as those rules of all nations which forbid an
+ambassador to fight, and also forbid his person to be touched by the
+enemy; and when the men of Clusium made an attack on the Gauls they
+joined in the attack, and Quintus, the eldest brother, slew one of the
+chiefs. Brennus, wild as he was, knew these laws of nations, and in
+great anger broke up his siege of Clusium, and, marching towards Rome,
+demanded that the Fabii should be given up to him. Instead of this, the
+Romans made them all three military tribunes, and as the Gauls came
+nearer the whole army marched out to meet them in such haste that they
+did not wait to sacrifice to the gods nor consult the omens. The
+tribunes were all young and hot-headed, and they despised the Gauls; so
+out they went to attack them on the banks of the Allia, only seven and
+a-half miles from Rome. A most terrible defeat they had; many fell in
+the field, many were killed in the flight, others were drowned in trying
+to swim the Tiber, others scattered to Veii and the other cities, and a
+few, horror-stricken and wet through, rushed into Rome with the sad
+tidings. There were not men enough left to defend the walls! The enemy
+would instantly be upon them! The only place strong enough to keep them
+out was the Capitol, and that would only hold a few people within it! So
+there was nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shut
+themselves up in the Capitol; all the rest, with the women and children,
+put their most precious goods into carts and left the city. The Vestal
+Virgins carried the sacred fire, and were plodding along in the heat,
+when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state, helped them into his
+cart, and took them to the city of Cum&aelig;, where they found shelter in a
+temple. And so Rome was left to the enemy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SACK OF ROME.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 390.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Rome was left to the enemy, except for the small garrison in the Capitol
+and for eighty of the senators, men too old to flee, who devoted
+themselves to the gods to save the rest, and, arraying themselves in
+their robes&mdash;some as former consuls, some as priests, some as
+generals&mdash;sat down with their ivory staves in their hands, in their
+chairs of state in the Forum, to await the enemy.</p>
+
+<a name="illus112"></a><center><img src="images/illus112.png" alt="Forum"></center>
+<h6>RUINS OF THE FORUM AT ROME.</h6>
+
+<p>In burst the savage Gauls, roaming all over the city till they came to
+the Forum, where they stood amazed and awe-struck at the sight of the
+eighty grand old men motionless in their chairs. At first they looked at
+the strange, calm figures as if they were the gods of the place, until
+one Gaul, as if desirous of knowing whether they were flesh and blood
+or not, stroked the beard of the nearest. The senator, esteeming this an
+insult, struck the man on the face with his staff, and this was the
+sign for the slaughter of them all.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Gauls began to plunder every house, dragging out and killing
+the few inhabitants they found there; feasting, revelling, and piling up
+riches to carry away; burning and overthrowing the houses. Day after day
+the little garrison in the Capitol saw the sight, and wondered if their
+stock of food would hold out till the Gauls should go away or till their
+friends should come to their relief. Yet when the day came round for the
+sacrifice to the ancestor of one of these beleaguered men, he boldly
+went forth to the altar of his own ruined house on the Quirinal Hill,
+and made his offering to his forefathers, nor did one Gaul venture to
+touch him, seeing that he was performing a religious rite.</p>
+
+<p>The escaped Romans had rested at Ardea, where they found Camillus, and
+were by him formed into an army, but he would not take the generalship
+without authority from what was left of the Senate, and that was shut up
+in the Capitol in the midst of the Gauls. A brave man, however, named
+Pontius Cominius, declared that he could make his way through the Gauls
+by night, and climb up the Capitol and down again by a precipice which
+they did not watch because they thought no one could mount it, and that
+he would bring back the orders of the Senate. He swam the Tiber by the
+help of corks, landed at night in ruined Rome among the sleeping enemy,
+and climbed up the rock, bringing hope at last to the worn-out and
+nearly starving garrison. Quickly they met, recalled the sentence of
+banishment against Camillus, and named him Dictator. Pontius, having
+rested in the meantime, slid down the rock and made his way back to
+Ardea safely; but the broken twigs and torn ivy on the rock showed the
+Gauls that it had been scaled, and they resolved that where man had gone
+man could go. So Brennus told off the most surefooted mountaineers he
+could find, and at night, two and two, they crept up the crag, so
+silently that no alarm was given, till just as they came to the top,
+some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and for that reason had
+been spared in spite of the scarcity, began to scream and cackle, and
+thus brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus Manlius, who
+found two Gauls in the act of setting foot on the level ground on the
+top. With a sweep of his sword he struck off the hand of one, and with
+his buckler smote the other on the head, tumbling them both headlong
+down, knocking down their fellows in their flight, and the Capitol was
+saved.</p>
+
+<p>By way of reward every Roman soldier brought Manlius a few grains of the
+corn he received from the common stock and a few drops of wine, while
+the tribune who was on guard that night was thrown from the rock.</p>
+
+<p>Foiled thus, and with great numbers of his men dying from the fever that
+always prevailed in Rome in summer, Brennus thought of retreating, and
+offered to leave Rome if the garrison in the Capitol would pay him a
+thousand pounds' weight of gold. There was treasure enough in the
+temples to do this, and as they could not tell what Camillus was about,
+nor if Pontius had reached him safely, and they were on the point of
+being starved, they consented. The gold was brought to the place
+appointed by the Gauls, and when the weights proved not to be equal to
+the amount that the Romans had with them, Brennus resolved to have all,
+put his sword into the other scale, saying, &quot;V&aelig; victis&quot;&mdash;&quot;Woe to the
+conquered.&quot; But at that moment there was a noise outside&mdash;Camillus was
+come. The Gauls were cut down and slain among the ruins, those who fled
+were killed by the people in the country as they wandered in the fields,
+and not one returned to tell the tale. So the ransom of the Capitol was
+rescued, and was laid up by Camillus in the vaults as a reserve for
+future danger.</p>
+
+<p>This was the Roman story, but their best historians say that it is made
+better for Rome than is quite the truth, for that the Capitol was really
+conquered, and the Gauls helped themselves to whatever they chose and
+went off with it, though sickness and weariness made them afterwards
+disperse, so that they were mostly cut off by the country people.</p>
+
+<p>Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so that, before this,
+Roman history can only be hearsay, derived from what the survivors
+recollected; and the whole of the buildings, temples, senate-house, and
+dwellings lay in ruins. Some of the citizens wished to change the site
+of the city to Veii; but Camillus, who was Dictator, was resolved to
+hold fast by the hearths of their fathers, and while the debate was
+going on in the ruins of the senate-house a troop of soldiers were
+marching in, and the centurion was heard calling out, &quot;Plant your ensign
+here; this is a good place to stay in.&quot; &quot;A happy omen,&quot; cried one of the
+senators; &quot;I adore the gods who gave it.&quot; So it was settled to rebuild
+the city, and in digging among the ruins there were found the golden
+rod of Romulus, the brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve Tables
+were engraved, and other brasses with records of treaties with other
+nations. Fabius was accused of having done all the harm by having broken
+the law of nations, but he was spared at the entreaty of his friends.
+Manlius was surnamed Capitolinus, and had a house granted him on the
+Capitol; and Camillus when he laid down his dictatorship, was saluted as
+like Romulus&mdash;another founder of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The new buildings were larger and more ornamented than the old ones; but
+the lines of the old underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscan
+fashion by the elder Tarquin as it was said, were not followed, and this
+tended to render Rome more unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizens
+lived there in summer or autumn, but went out to country houses on the
+hills.</p>
+
+<a name="illus118"></a><center><img src="images/illus118.png" alt="forum"></center>
+<h6>ENTRY OF THE FORUM ROMANUM BY THE VIA SACRA</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PLEBEIAN CONSULATE.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 367.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>All the old enemies of Rome attacked her again when she was weak and
+rising out of her ruins, but Camillus had wisely persuaded the Romans to
+add the people of Veii, Capena, and Falerii to the number of their
+citizens, making four more tribes; and this addition to their numbers
+helped them beat off their foes.</p>
+
+<p>But this enlarged the number of the plebeians, and enabled them to make
+their claims more heard. Moreover, the old quarrel between poor and
+rich, debtor and creditor, broke out again. Those who had saved their
+treasure in the time of the sack had made loans to those who had lost to
+enable them to build their houses and stock their farms again, and
+after a time they called loudly for payment, and when it was not
+forthcoming had the debtors seized to be sold as slaves. Camillus
+himself was one of the hardest creditors of all, and the barracks where
+slaves were placed to be sold were full of citizens.</p>
+
+<a name="illus121"></a><center><img src="images/illus121.png" alt="costumes"></center>
+<h6>COSTUMES.</h6>
+
+<p>Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was full of pity, and raised money to redeem
+four hundred of them, trying with all his might to get the law changed
+and to save the rest; but the rich men and the patricians thought he
+acted only out of jealousy of Camillus, and to get up a party for
+himself. They said he was raising a sedition, and Publius Cornelius
+Cossus was named Dictator to put it down. Manlius was seized and put
+into chains, but released again. At last the rich men bought over two of
+the tribunes to accuse him of wanting to make himself a king, and this
+hated title turned all the people against their friend, so that the
+general cry sentenced him to be cast down from the top of the Tarpeian
+rock; his house on the Capitol was overthrown, and his family declared
+that no son of their house should ever again bear the name of Manlius.</p>
+
+<a name="illus122"></a><center><img src="images/illus122.png" alt="costume"></center>
+<h6>COSTUME.</h6>
+
+<p>Yet the plebeians were making their way, and at last succeeded in
+gaining the plebeian magistracies and equal honors with the patricians.
+A curious story is told of the cause of the last effort which gained the
+day. A patrician named Fabius Ambustus had two daughters, one of whom he
+gave in marriage to Servius Sulpicius, a patrician and military tribune,
+the other to Licinius Stolo. One day, when Stolo's wife was visiting her
+sister, there was a great noise and thundering at the gates which
+frightened her, until the other Fabii said it was only her husband
+coming home from the Forum attended by his lictors and clients, laughing
+at her ignorance and alarm, until a whole troop of the clients came in
+to pay their court to the tribune's wife.</p>
+
+<p>Stolo's wife went home angry and vexed, and reproached her husband and
+her father for not having made her equal with her sister, and so wrought
+on them that they put themselves at the head of the movement in favor of
+the plebeians; and Licinius and another young plebeian named Lucius
+Sextius, being elected year after year tribunes of the people, went on
+every time saying <i>Veto</i> to whatever was proposed by anybody, and giving
+out that they should go on doing so till three measures were
+carried&mdash;viz., that interest on debt should not be demanded; that no
+citizen should possess more than three hundred and twenty acres of the
+public land, or feed more than a certain quantity of cattle on the
+public pastures; and, lastly, that one of the two consuls should always
+be a plebeian.</p>
+
+<p>They went on for eight years, always elected by the people and always
+stopping everything. At last there was another inroad of the Gauls
+expected, and Camillus, though eighty years old, was for the fifth time
+chosen Dictator, and gained a great victory upon the banks of the Anio.
+The Senate begged him to continue Dictator till he could set their
+affairs to rights, and he vowed to build a temple to Concord if he could
+succeed. He saw indeed that it was time to yield, and persuaded the
+Senate to think so; so that at last, in the year 367, Sextius was
+elected consul, together with a patrician, &AElig;milius. Even then the Senate
+would not receive Sextius till he was introduced by Camillus. From this
+time the patricians and plebeians were on an equal footing as far as
+regarded the magistracies, but the priesthood could belong only to the
+patricians. Camillus lived to a great age, and was honored as having
+three times saved his country. He died at last of a terrible pestilence
+which raged in Rome in the year 365.</p>
+
+<p>The priests recommended that they should invite the players from Etruria
+to perform a drama in honor of the feats of the gods, and this was the
+beginning of play-acting in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Not long after there yawned a terrible chasm in the Forum, most likely
+from an earthquake, but nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priests
+and augurs consulted their oracles about it. These made answer that it
+would only close on receiving of what was most precious. Gold and
+jewels were thrown in, but it still seemed bottomless, and at last the
+augurs declared that it was courage that was the most precious thing in
+Rome. Thereupon a patrician youth named Marcus Curtius decked himself in
+his choicest robes, put on his armor, took his shield, sword, and spear,
+mounted his horse, and leapt headlong into the gulf, thus giving it the
+most precious of all things, courage and self-devotion. After this one
+story says it closed of itself, another that it became easy to fill it
+up with earth.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans thought that such a sacrifice must please the gods and bring
+them success in their battles; but in the war with the Hernici that was
+now being waged the plebeian consul was killed, and no doubt there was
+much difficulty in getting the patricians to obey a plebeian properly,
+for in the course of the next twenty years it was necessary fourteen
+times to appoint a Dictator for the defence of the state, so that it is
+plain there must have been many alarms and much difficulty in enforcing
+discipline; but, on the whole, success was with Rome, and the
+neighboring tribes grew weaker.</p>
+
+<a name="illus126"></a><center><img src="images/illus126.png" alt="curtius"></center>
+<h6>CURTIUS LEAPING INTO THE GULF. (<i>From a Bas-Relief</i>.)</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEVOTION OF DECIUS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 357</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Other tribes of the Gauls did not fail to come again and make fresh
+inroads on the valleys of the Tiber and Anio. Whenever they came,
+instead of choosing men from the tribes to form an army, as in a war
+with their neighbors, all the fighting men of the nation turned out to
+oppose them, generally under a Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>In one of these wars the Gauls came within three miles of Rome, and the
+two hosts were encamped on the banks of the Anio, with a bridge between
+them. Along this bridge strutted an enormous Gallic chief, much taller
+than any of the Romans, boasting himself, and calling on any one of them
+to come out and fight with him. Again it was a Manlius who
+distinguished himself. Titus, a young man of that family, begged the
+Dictator's permission to accept the challenge, and, having gained it, he
+changed his round knight's shield for the square one of the foot
+soldiers, and with his short sword came forward on the bridge. The Gaul
+made a sweep at him with his broadsword, but, slipping within the guard,
+Manlius stabbed the giant in two places, and as he fell cut off his
+head, and took the torc, or broad twisted gold collar that was the mark
+of all Gallic chieftains. Thence the brave youth was called Titus
+Manlius Torquatus&mdash;a surname to make up for that of Capitolinus, which
+had never been used again.</p>
+
+<a name="illus130"></a><center><img src="images/illus130.png" alt="appenines"></center>
+<h6>THE APENNINES.</h6>
+
+<p>The next time the Gauls came, Marcus Valerius, a descendant of the old
+hero Publicola, was consul, and gained a great victory. It was said that
+in the midst of the fight a monstrous raven appeared flying over his
+head, resting now and then on his helmet, but generally pecking at the
+eyes of the Gauls and flapping its wings in their faces, so that they
+fled discomfited. Thence he was called Corvus or Corvinus. The Gauls
+never again came in such force, but a new enemy came against them,
+namely, the Samnites, a people who dwelt to the south of them. They were
+of Italian blood, mountaineers of the Southern Apennines, not unlike
+the Romans in habits, language, and training, and the staunchest enemies
+they had yet encountered. The war began from an entreaty from the people
+of Campania to the Romans to defend them from the attacks of the
+Samnites. For the Campanians, living in the rich plains, whose name is
+still unchanged, were an idle, languid people, whom the stout men of
+Samnium could easily overcome. The Romans took their part, and Valerius
+Corvus gained a victory at Mount Gaurus; but the other consul, Cornelius
+Cossus, fell into danger, having marched foolishly into a forest, shut
+in by mountains, and with only one way out through a deep valley, which
+was guarded by the Samnites. In this almost hopeless danger one of the
+military tribunes, Publius Decius Mus, discovered a little hill above
+the enemy's camp, and asked leave to lead a small body of men to seize
+it, since he would be likely thus to draw off the Samnites, and while
+they were destroying him, as he fully expected, the Romans could get out
+of the valley. Hidden by the wood, he gained the hill, and there the
+Samnites saw him, to their great amazement; and while they were
+considering whether to attack him, the other Romans were able to march
+out of the valley. Finding he was not attacked, Decius set guards, and,
+when night came on, marched down again as quietly as possible to join
+the army, who were now on the other side of the Samnite camp. Through
+the midst of this he and his little camp went without alarm, until,
+about half-way across, one Roman struck his foot against a shield. The
+noise awoke the Samnites, but Decius caused his men to give a great
+shout, and this, in the darkness, so confused the enemy that they missed
+the little body of Romans, who safely gained their own camp. Decius cut
+short the thanks and joy of the consul by advising him to fall at once
+on the Samnite camp in its dismay, and this was done; the Samnites were
+entirely routed, 30,000 killed, and their camp taken. Decius received
+for his reward a hundred oxen, a white bull with gilded horns, and three
+crowns&mdash;one of gold for courage, one of oak for having saved the lives
+of his fellow-citizens, and one of grass for having taken the enemy's
+camp&mdash;while all his men were for life to receive a double allowance of
+corn. Decius offered up the white bull in sacrifice to Mars, and gave
+the oxen to the companions of his glory.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards Valerius routed the Samnites again, and his troops brought in
+120 standards and 40,000 shields which they had picked up, having been
+thrown away by the enemy in their flight.</p>
+
+<p>Peace was made for the time; but the Latins, now in alliance with Rome,
+began to make war on the Samnites. They complained, and the Romans
+feeling bound to take their part, a great Latin war began. Manlius
+Torquatus and Decius Mus, the two greatest heroes of Rome, were consuls.
+As the Latins and Romans were alike in dress, arms, and language, in
+order to prevent taking friend for foe, strict orders were given that no
+one should attack a Latin without orders, or go out of his rank, on pain
+of death. A Latin champion came out boasting, as the two armies lay
+beneath Mount Vesuvius, then a fair vine-clad hill showing no flame.
+Young Manlius remembering his father's fame, darted out, fought hand to
+hand with the Latin, slew him, and brought home his spoils to his
+father's feet. He had forgotten that his father had only fought after
+permission was given. The elder Manlius received him with stern grief.
+He had broken the law of discipline, and he must die. His head was
+struck off amid the grief and anger of the army. The battle was bravely
+fought, but it went against the Romans at first. Then Decius,
+recollecting a vision which had declared that a consul must devote
+himself for his country, called on Valerius, the Pontifex Maximus, to
+dedicate him. He took off his armor, put on his purple toga, covered his
+head with a veil, and standing on a spear, repeated the words of
+consecration after Valerius, then mounted his horse and rode in among
+the Latins. They at first made way, but presently closed in and
+overpowered him with a shower of darts; and thus he gave for his country
+the life he had once offered for it.</p>
+
+<p>The victory was won, and was so followed up that the Latins were forced
+to yield to Rome. Some of the cities retained their own laws and
+magistrates, but others had Romans with their families settled in them,
+and were called colonies, while the Latin people themselves became Roman
+citizens in everything but the power of becoming magistrates or voting
+for them, being, in fact, very much what the earliest plebeians had been
+before they acquired any rights.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SAMNITE WARS.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>In the year 332, just when Alexander the Great was making his conquests
+in the East, his uncle Alexander, king of Epirus, brother to his mother
+Olympius, came to Italy, where there were so many Grecian citizens south
+of the Samnites that the foot of Italy was called Magna Gr&aelig;cia, or
+Greater Greece. He attacked the Samnites, and the Romans were not sorry
+to see them weakened, and made an alliance with him. He stayed in Italy
+about six years, and was then killed.</p>
+
+<p>To overthrow the Samnites was the great object of Rome at this time, and
+for this purpose they offered their protection and alliance to all the
+cities that stood in dread of that people. One of the cities was founded
+by men from the isle of Euboea, who called it Neapolis, or the New
+City, to distinguish it from the old town near at hand, which they
+called Pal&aelig;opolis, or the Old City. The elder city held out against the
+Romans, but was easily overpowered, while the new one submitted to Rome;
+but these southern people were very shallow and fickle, and little to be
+depended on, as they often changed sides between the Romans and
+Samnites. In the midst of the siege of Pal&aelig;opolis, the year of the
+consulate came to an end, but the Senate, while causing two consuls as
+usual to be elected, at home, would not recall Publilius Philo from the
+siege, and therefore appointed him proconsul there. This was in 326, and
+was the beginning of the custom of sending the ex-consul as proconsul to
+command the armies or govern the provinces at a distance from home.</p>
+
+<a name="illus138a"></a><center><img src="images/illus138a.png" alt="samnites"></center>
+<h6>COMBAT BETWEEN A MIRMILLO AND A SAMNITE.</h6>
+
+<a name="illus138b"></a><center><img src="images/illus138b.png" alt="samnite"></center>
+<h6>COMBAT BETWEEN A LIGHT-ARMED GLADIATOR AND A SAMNITE.</h6>
+
+<p>In 320, the consul falling sick, a dictator was appointed, Lucius
+Papirius Cursor, one of the most stern and severe men in Rome. He was
+obliged by some religious ceremony to return to Rome for a time, and he
+forbade his lieutenant, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, to venture a battle in
+his absence. But so good an opportunity offered that Fabius attacked the
+enemy, beat them, and killed 20,000 men. Then selfishly unwilling to
+have the spoils he had won carried in the dictator's triumph, he
+burnt them all. Papirius arrived in great anger, and sentenced him to
+death for his disobedience; but while the lictors were stripping him, he
+contrived to escape from their hands among the soldiers, who closed on
+him, so that he was able to get to Rome, where his father called the
+Senate together, and they showed themselves so resolved to save his life
+that Papirius was forced to pardon him, though not without reproaching
+the Romans for having fallen from the stern justice of Brutus and
+Manlius.</p>
+
+<p>Two years later the two consuls, Titus Veturius and Spurius Posthumius,
+were marching into Campania, when the Samnite commander, Pontius
+Herennius, sent forth people disguised as shepherds to entice them into
+a narrow mountain pass near the city of Candium, shut in by thick woods,
+leading into a hollow curved valley, with thick brushwood on all sides,
+and only one way out, which the Samnites blocked up with trunks of
+trees. As soon as the Romans were within this place the other end was
+blocked in the same way, and thus they were all closed up at the mercy
+of their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>What was to be done with them? asked the Samnites; and they went to
+consult old Herennius, the father of Pontius, the wisest man in the
+nation. &quot;Open the way and let them all go free,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! without gaining any advantage?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then kill them all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was asked to explain such extraordinary advice. He said that to
+release them generously would be to make them friends and allies for
+ever; but if the war was to go on, the best thing for Samnium would be
+to destroy such a number of enemies at a blow. But the Samnites could
+not resolve upon either plan; so they took a middle course, the worst of
+all, since it only made the Romans furious without weakening them. They
+were made to take off all their armor and lay down their weapons, and
+thus to pass out under the yoke, namely, three spears set up like a
+doorway. The consuls, after agreeing to a disgraceful peace, had to go
+first, wearing only their undermost garment, then all the rest, two and
+two, and if any one of them gave an angry look, he was immediately
+knocked down and killed. They went on in silence into Campania, where,
+when night came on, they all threw themselves, half-naked, silent, and
+hungry upon the grass. The people of Capua came out to help them, and
+brought them food and clothing, trying to do them all honor and comfort
+them, but they would neither look up nor speak. And thus they went on
+to Rome, where everybody had put on mourning, and all the ladies went
+without their jewels, and the shops in the Forum were closed. The
+unhappy men stole into their houses at night one by one, and the consuls
+would not resume their office, but two were appointed to serve instead
+for the rest of the year.</p>
+
+<a name="illus142"></a><center><img src="images/illus142.png" alt="rome"></center>
+<h6>ANCIENT ROME.</h6>
+
+<p>Revenge was all that was thought of, but the difficulty was the peace
+to which the consuls had sworn. Posthumius said that if it was disavowed
+by the Senate, he, who had been driven to make it, must be given back to
+the Samnites. So, with his hands tied, he was taken back to the Samnite
+camp by a herald and delivered over; but at that moment Posthumius gave
+the herald a kick, crying out, &quot;I am now a Samnite, and have insulted
+you, a Roman herald. This is a just cause of war.&quot; Pontius and the
+Samnites were very angry, and they said it was an unworthy trick; but
+they did not prevent Posthumius from going safely back to the Romans,
+who considered him to have quite retrieved his honor.</p>
+
+<p>A battle was fought, in which Pontius and 7000 men were forced to lay
+down their arms and pass under the yoke in their turn. The struggle
+between these two fierce nations lasted altogether seventy years, and
+the Romans had many defeats. They had other wars at the same time. They
+never subdued Etruria, and in the battle of Sentinum, fought with the
+Gauls, the consul Decius Mus, devoted himself exactly as his father had
+done at Vesuvius, and by his death won the victory.</p>
+
+<p>The Samnite wars may be considered as ending in 290, when the chief
+general of Samnium, Pontius Telesimus, was made prisoner and put to
+death at Rome. The lands in the open country were quite subdued, but
+many Samnites still lived in the fastnesses of the Apennines in the
+south, which have ever since been the haunt of wild untamed men.</p>
+
+<a name="illus144"></a><center><img src="images/illus144.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 280-271.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>In the Grecian History you remember that Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the
+townsman of Alexander the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This was
+the way it came about. The city of Tarentum was a Spartan colony at the
+head of the gulf that bears its name. It was as proud as its parent, but
+had lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as idle and fickle
+as the other places in that languid climate. The Tarentines first
+maltreated some Roman ships which put into their gulf, and then insulted
+the ambassador who was sent to complain. Then when the terrible Romans
+were found to be really coming to revenge their honor, the Tarentines
+took fright, and sent to beg Pyrrhus to come to their aid.</p>
+
+<p>He readily accepted the invitation, and coming to Italy with 28,000 men
+and twenty elephants, hoped to conquer the whole country; but he found
+the Tarentines not to be trusted, and soon weary of entertaining him,
+while they could not keep their promises of aid from the other Greeks of
+Italy.</p>
+
+<a name="illus146"></a><center><img src="images/illus146.png" alt="pyrrhus"></center>
+<h6>PYRRHUS.</h6>
+
+<p>The Romans marched against him, and there was a great battle on the
+banks of the river Siris, where the fighting was very hard, but when the
+elephants charged the Romans broke and fled, and were only saved by
+nightfall from being entirely destroyed. So great, however, had been
+Pyrrhus' loss that he said, &quot;Such another victory, and I shall have to
+go back alone to Epirus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He thought he had better treat with the Romans, and sent his favorite
+counsellor Kineas to offer to make peace, provided the Romans would
+promise safety to his Italian allies, and presents were sent to the
+senators and their wives to induce them to listen favorably. People in
+ancient Greece expected such gifts to back a suit; but Kineas found that
+nobody in Rome would hear of being bribed, though many were not
+unwilling to make peace. Blind old Appius Claudius, who had often been
+consul, caused himself to be led into the Senate to oppose it, for it
+was hard to his pride to make peace as defeated men. Kineas was much
+struck with Rome, where he found a state of things like the best days of
+Greece, and, going back to his master, told him that the senate-house
+was like a temple, and those who sat there like an assembly of kings,
+and that he feared they were fighting with the Hydra of Lerna, for as
+soon as they had destroyed one Roman army another had sprung up in its
+place.</p>
+
+<p>However, the Romans wanted to treat about the prisoners Pyrrhus had
+taken, and they sent Caius Fabricius to the Greek camp for the purpose.
+Kineas reported him to be a man of no wealth, but esteemed as a good
+soldier and an honest man. Pyrrhus tried to make him take large
+presents, but nothing would Fabricius touch; and then, in the hope of
+alarming him, in the middle of a conversation the hangings of one side
+of the tent suddenly fell, and disclosed the biggest of all the
+elephants, who waved his trunk over Fabricius and trumpeted
+frightfully. The Roman quietly turned round and smiled as he said to the
+king, &quot;I am no more moved by your gold than by your great beast.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus148"></a><center><img src="images/illus148.png" alt="orator"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN ORATOR.</h6>
+
+<p>At supper there was a conversation on Greek philosophy, of which the
+Romans as yet knew nothing. When the doctrine of Epicurus was mentioned,
+that man's life was given to be spent in the pursuit of joy, Fabricius
+greatly amused the company by crying out, &quot;O Hercules! grant that the
+Greeks may be heartily of this mind so long as we have to fight with
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pyrrhus even tried to persuade Fabricius to enter his service, but the
+answer was, &quot;Sir. I advise you not; for if your people once tasted of my
+rule, they would all desire me to govern them instead of you.&quot; Pyrrhus
+consented to let the prisoners go home, but, if no peace were made, they
+were to return again as soon as the Saturnalia were over; and this was
+faithfully done. Fabricius was consul the next year, and thus received a
+letter from Pyrrhus' physician, offering for a reward to rid the Romans
+of his master by poison. The two consuls sent it to the king with the
+following letter:&mdash;&quot;Caius Fabricius and Quintus &AElig;milius, consuls, to
+Pyrrhus, king, greeting. You choose your friends and foes badly. This
+letter will show that you make war with honest men and trust rogues and
+knaves. We tell you, not to win your favor, but lest your ruin might
+bring on the reproach of ending the war by treachery instead of force.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Pyrrhus made enquiry, put the physician to death, and by way of
+acknowledgment released the captives, trying again to make peace; but
+the Romans would accept no terms save that he should give up the
+Tarentines and go back in the same ships. A battle was fought in the
+wood of Asculum. Decius Mus declared he would devote himself like his
+father and grandfather; but Pyrrhus heard of this, and sent word that he
+had given orders that Decius should not be killed, but taken alive and
+scourged; and this prevented him. The Romans were again forced back by
+the might of the elephants, but not till night fell on them. Pyrrhus had
+been wounded, and hosts of Greeks had fallen, among them many of
+Pyrrhus' chief friends.</p>
+
+<p>He then went to Sicily, on an invitation from the Greeks settled there,
+to defend them from the Carthaginians; but finding them as little
+satisfactory as the Italian Greeks, he suddenly came back to Tarentum.
+This time one of the consuls was Marcus Curius&mdash;called Dentatus, because
+he had been born with teeth in his mouth&mdash;a stout, plain old Roman, very
+stern, for when he levied troops against Pyrrhus, the first man who
+refused to serve was punished by having his property seized and sold. He
+then marched southward, and at Beneventum at length entirely defeated
+Pyrrhus, and took four of his elephants. Pyrrhus was obliged to return
+to Epirus, and the Roman steadiness had won the day after nine years.</p>
+
+<p>Dentatus had the grandest triumph that had ever been known at Rome,
+with the elephants walking in the procession, the first that the Romans
+had ever seen. All the spoil was given up to the commonwealth; and when,
+some time after, it was asserted that he had taken some for himself, it
+turned out that he had only kept one old wooden vessel, which he used in
+sacrificing to the gods.</p>
+
+<p>The Greeks of Southern Italy had behaved very ill to Pyrrhus and turned
+against him. The Romans found them so fickle and troublesome that they
+were all reduced in one little war after another. The Tarentines had to
+surrender and lose their walls and their fleet, and so had the people of
+Sybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, for they were so lazy
+that they were said to have killed all their crowing-birds for waking
+them too early in the morning. All the peninsula of Italy now belonged
+to Rome, and great roads were made of paved stones connecting them with
+it, many of which remain to this day, even the first of all, called the
+Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, which was made under the direction of
+the censor Appius Claudius, during the Samnite war.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.</h3>
+
+<h2>264-240.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>We are now come to the time when Rome became mixed up in wars with
+nations beyond Italy. There was a great settlement of the Phoenicians,
+the merchants of the old world, at Carthage, on the northern coast of
+Africa, the same place at which Virgil afterwards described &AElig;neas as
+spending so much time. Dido, the queen who was said to have founded
+Carthage when fleeing from her wicked brother-in-law at Tyre, is thought
+to have been an old goddess, and the religion and manners of the
+Carthaginians were thoroughly Phoenician, or, as the Romans called them,
+Punic. They had no king, but a Senate, and therewith rulers called by
+the name that is translated as judges in the Bible; and they did not
+love war, only trade, and spread out their settlements for this purpose
+all over the coast of the Mediterranean, from Spain to the Black Sea,
+wherever a country had mines, wool, dyes, spices, or men to trade with;
+and their sailors were the boldest to be found anywhere, and were the
+only ones who had passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, namely, the
+Straits of Gibraltar, in the Atlantic Ocean. They built handsome cities,
+and country houses with farms and gardens round them, and had all tokens
+of wealth and luxury&mdash;ivory, jewels, and spices from India, pearls from
+the Persian Gulf, gold from Spain, silver from the Balearic Isles, tin
+from the Scilly Isles, amber from the Baltic; and they had forts to
+protect their settlements. They generally hired the men of the
+countries, where they settled, to fight their battles, sometimes under
+hired Greek captains, but often under generals of their own.</p>
+
+<a name="illus154"></a><center><img src="images/illus154.png" alt="ship"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN SHIP.</h6>
+
+<p>The first place where they did not have everything their own way was
+Sicily. The old inhabitants of the island were called Sicels, a rough
+people; but besides these there were a great number of Greek
+settlements, also of Carthaginian ones, and these two hated one another.
+The Carthaginians tried to overthrow the Greeks, and Pyrrhus, by
+coming to help his countrymen, only made them more bitter against one
+another. When he went away he exclaimed, &quot;What an arena we leave for the
+Romans and Carthaginians to contend upon!&quot; so sure was he that these two
+great nations must soon fight out the struggle for power.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of the struggle was, however, brought on by another cause.
+Messina, the place founded long ago by the brave exiles of Messene, when
+the Spartans had conquered their state, had been seized by a troop of
+Mamertines, fierce Italians from Mamertum; and these, on being
+threatened by Xiero, king of Syracuse, sent to offer to become subjects
+to the Romans, thus giving them the command of the port which secured
+the entrance of the island. The Senate had great scruples about
+accepting the offer, and supporting a set of mere robbers; but the two
+consuls and all the people could not withstand the temptation, and it
+was resolved to assist the Mamertines. Thus began what was called the
+First Punic War. The difficulty was, however, want of ships. The Romans
+had none of their own, and though they collected a few from their Greek
+allies in Italy, it was not in time to prevent some of the Mamertines
+from surrendering the citadel to Xanno, the Carthaginian general, who
+thought himself secure, and came down to treat with the Roman tribune
+Claudius, haughtily bidding the Romans no more to try to meddle with the
+sea, for they should not be allowed so much as to wash their hands in
+it. Claudius, angered at this, treacherously laid hands on Xanno, and he
+agreed to give up the castle on being set free; but he had better have
+remained a prisoner, for the Carthaginians punished him with
+crucifixion, and besieged Messina, but in vain.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans felt that a fleet was necessary, and set to work to build war
+galleys on the pattern of a Carthaginian one which had been wrecked upon
+their coast. While a hundred ships were building, oarsmen were trained
+to row on dry land, and in two months the fleet put to sea. Knowing that
+there was no chance of being able to fight according to the regular
+rules of running the beaks of their galleys into the sides of those of
+their enemies, they devised new plans of letting heavy weights descend
+on the ships of the opposite fleet, and then of letting drawbridges down
+by which to board them. The Carthaginians, surprised and dismayed, when
+thus attacked off Myl&aelig; by the consul Duilius, were beaten and chased to
+Sardinia, where their unhappy commander was nailed to a cross by his own
+soldiers; while Duilius not only received in Rome a grand triumph for
+his first naval victory, but it was decreed that he should never go out
+into the city at night without a procession of torch-bearers.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans now made up their minds to send an expedition to attack the
+Carthaginian power not only in Sicily but in Africa, and this was placed
+under the command of a sturdy plebeian consul, Marcus Attilius Regulus.
+He fought a great battle with the Carthaginian fleet on his way, and he
+had even more difficulty with his troops, who greatly dreaded the
+landing in Africa as a place of unknown terror. He landed, however, at
+some distance from the city, and did not at once advance on it. When he
+did, according to the story current at Rome, he encountered on the banks
+of the River Bagrada an enormous serpent, whose poisonous breath killed
+all who approached it, and on whose scales darts had no effect. At last
+the machines for throwing huge stones against city walls were used
+against it; its backbone was broken, and it was at last killed, and its
+skin sent to Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans met other enemies, whom they defeated, and gained much
+plunder. The Senate, understanding that the Carthaginians were cooped up
+within their walls, recalled half the army. Regulus wished much to
+return, as the slave who tilled his little farm had run away with his
+plough, and his wife was in distress; but he was so valuable that he
+could not be recalled, and he remained and soon took Tunis. The
+Carthaginians tried to win their gods' favor back by offering horrid
+human sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and then hired a Spartan general
+named Xanthippus, who defeated the Romans, chiefly by means of the
+elephants, and made Regulus prisoner. The Romans, who hated the
+Carthaginians so much as to believe them capable of any wickedness,
+declared that in their jealousy of Xanthippus' victory, they sent him
+home to Greece in a vessel so arranged as to founder at sea.</p>
+
+<a name="illus160"></a><center><img src="images/illus160.png" alt="battle"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN ORDER OF BATTLE.</h6>
+
+<p>However, the Romans, after several disasters in Sicily, gained a great
+victory near Panormus, capturing one hundred elephants, which were
+brought to Rome to be hunted by the people that they might lose their
+fear of them. The Carthaginians were weakened enough to desire peace,
+and they sent Regulus to propose it, making him swear to return if he
+did not succeed. He came to the outskirts of the city, but would not
+enter. He said he was no Roman proconsul, but the slave of Carthage.
+However, the Senate came out to hear him, and he gave the message, but
+added that the Romans ought not to accept these terms, but to stand
+out for much better ones, giving such reasons that the whole people was
+persuaded. He was entreated to remain and not meet the angry men of
+Carthage; but nothing would persuade him to break his word, and he went
+back. The Romans told dreadful stories of the treatment he met with&mdash;how
+his eyelids were cut off and he was put in the sunshine, and at last he
+was nailed up in a barrel lined with spikes and rolled down hill. Some
+say that this was mere report, and that Carthaginian prisoners at Rome
+were as savagely treated; but at any rate the constancy of Regulus has
+always been a proverb.</p>
+
+<p>The war went on, and one of the proud Claudius family was in command at
+Trepanum, in Sicily, when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before a
+battle the Romans always consulted the sacred fowls that were carried
+with the army. Claudius was told that their augury was against a
+battle&mdash;they would not eat. &quot;Then let them drink,&quot; he cried, and threw
+them into the sea. His impiety, as all felt it, was punished by an utter
+defeat, and he killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war went on by
+land and sea all over and around Sicily, till at the end of twenty-four
+years peace was made, just after another great sea-fight, in which Rome
+had the victory. She made the Carthaginians give up all they held in
+Sicily, restore their prisoners, make a large payment, and altogether
+humble their claims; thus beginning a most bitter hatred towards the
+conquerors, who as greatly hated and despised them. Thus ended the First
+Punic War.</p>
+
+<a name="illus163"></a><center><img src="images/illus163.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GAUL.</h3>
+
+<h2>240-219.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>After the end of the Punic war, Carthage fell into trouble with her
+hired soldiers, and did not interfere with the Romans for a long time,
+while they went on to arrange the government of Sicily into what they
+called a province, which was ruled by a propr&aelig;tor for a year after his
+magistracy at home. The Greek kingdom of Syracuse indeed still remained
+as an ally of Rome, and Messina and a few other cities were allowed to
+choose their own magistrates and govern themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, Sardinia and Corsica were given up to the Romans by the
+hired armies of the Carthaginians, and as the natives fought hard
+against Rome, when they were conquered they were for the most part sold
+as slaves. These two islands likewise had a propr&aelig;tor.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans now had all the peninsula south of themselves, and as far
+north as Ariminim (now shortened into Rimini), but all beyond belonged
+to the Gauls&mdash;the Cisalpine Gauls, or Gauls on this side the Alps, as
+the Romans called them; while those on the other side were called
+Transalpine Gauls, or Gauls across the Alps. These northern Gauls were
+gathering again for an inroad on the south, and in the midst of the
+rumors of this danger there was a great thunderstorm at Rome, and the
+Capitol was struck by lightning. The Sybilline books were searched into
+to see what this might mean, and a warning was found, &quot;Beware of the
+Gauls.&quot; Moreover, there was a saying that the Greeks and Gauls should
+one day enjoy the Forum; but the Romans fancied they could satisfy this
+prophecy by burying a man and woman of each nation, slaves, in the
+middle of the Forum, and then they prepared to attack the Gauls in their
+own country before the inroad could be made. There was a great deal of
+hard fighting, lasting for years; and in the course of it the consul,
+Caius Flaminius, began the great road which has since been called after
+him the Flaminian Way, and was the great northern road from Rome, as
+the Appian Way was the southern.</p>
+
+<a name="illus166"></a><center><img src="images/illus166.png" alt="gaul"></center>
+<h6>THE WOUNDED GAUL.</h6>
+
+<p>The great hero of the war was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had already
+made himself known for his dauntless courage. As consul, he fought a
+desperate battle on the banks of the Po with the Gauls of both sides the
+Alps, and himself killed their king or chief, Viridomar. He brought the
+spoils to Rome, and hung them in the Temple of Jupiter. It was only the
+third time in the history of Rome that such a thing had been done.
+Cisalpine Gaul was thus subdued, and another road was made to secure
+it; while in the short peace that followed the gates of the Temple of
+Janus were shut, having stood open ever since the reign of Numa.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans were beginning to make their worship the same with that of
+the Greeks. They sent offerings to Greek temples, said that their old
+gods were the same as those of the Greeks, only under different names,
+and sent an embassy to Epidaurus to ask for a statue of Esculapius, the
+god of medicine and son of Phoebus Apollo. The emblem of Esculapius was
+a serpent, and tame serpents were kept about his temple at Epidaurus.
+One of these glided into the Roman galley that had come for the statue,
+and it was treated with great respect by all the crew until they sailed
+up the Tiber, when it made its way out of the vessel and swam to the
+island which had been formed by the settling of the mud round the heap
+of corn that had been thrown into the river when Porsena wasted the
+country. This was supposed to mean that the god himself took possession
+of the place, and a splendid temple there rose in his honor.</p>
+
+<p>Another imitation of the Greeks which came into fashion at this time had
+a sad effect on the Romans. The old funerals in Greek poems had ended
+by games and struggles between swordsmen. Two brothers of the Brutus
+family first showed off such a game at their father's funeral, and it
+became a regular custom, not only at funerals, but whenever there was
+need to entertain the people, to show off fights of swordsmen. The
+soldier captives from conquered nations were used in this way; and some
+persons kept schools of slaves, who were trained for these fights and
+called gladiators. The battle was a real one, with sharp weapons, for
+life or death; and when a man was struck down, he was allowed to live or
+sentenced to death according as the spectators turned down or turned up
+their thumbs. The Romans fancied that the sight trained them to be
+brave, and to despise death and wounds; but the truth was that it only
+made them hard-hearted, and taught them to despise other people's
+pain&mdash;a very different thing from despising their own.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing that did great harm was the making it lawful for a man to
+put away a wife who had no children. This ended by making the Romans
+much less careful to have one good wife, and the Roman ladies became
+much less noble and excellent than they had been in the good old days.</p>
+
+<a name="illus169"></a><center><img src="images/illus169.png" alt="hannibal"></center>
+<h6>HANNIBAL'S VOW.</h6>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the Carthaginians, having lost the three islands,
+began to spread their settlements further in Spain, where their chief
+colony was New Carthage, or, as we call it, Carthagena. The mountains
+were full of gold mines, and the Iberians, the nation who held them,
+were brave and warlike, so that there was much fighting to train up
+fresh armies. Hamilcar, the chief general in command there, had four
+sons, whom he said were lion whelps being bred up against Rome. He took
+them with him to Spain, and at a great sacrifice for the success of his
+arms the youngest and most promising, Hannibal, a boy of nine years old,
+was made to lay his hand on the altar of Baal and take an oath that he
+would always be the enemy of the Romans. Hamilcar was killed in battle,
+but Hannibal grew up to be all that he had hoped, and at twenty-six was
+in command of the army. He threatened the Iberians of Saguntum, who sent
+to ask help from Rome. A message was sent to him to forbid him to
+disturb the ally of Rome; but he had made up his mind for war, and never
+even asked the Senate of Carthage what was to be done, but went on with
+the siege of Saguntum. Rome was busy with a war in Illyria, and could
+send no help, and the Saguntines held out with the greatest bravery and
+constancy, month after month, till they were all on the point of
+starvation, then kindled a great fire, slew all their wives and
+children, and let Hannibal win nothing but a pile of smoking ruins.</p>
+
+<a name="illus171"></a><center><img src="images/illus171.png" alt="pyrnees"></center>
+<h6>IN THE PYRENEES.</h6>
+
+<p>Again the Romans sent to Carthage to complain, but the Senate there had
+made up their minds that war there must be, and that it was a good time
+when Rome had a war in Illyria on her hands, and Cisalpine Gaul hardly
+subdued; and they had such a general as Hannibal, though they did not
+know what a wonderful scheme he had in his mind, namely, to make his
+way by land from Spain to Italy, gaining the help of the Gauls, and
+stirring up all those nations of Italy who had fought so long against
+Rome. His march, which marks the beginning of the Second Punic War,
+started from the banks of the Ebro in the beginning of the summer of
+219. His army was 20,000 foot and 12,000 horse, partly Carthaginian,
+partly Gaul and Iberian. The horsemen were Moorish, and he had
+thirty-seven elephants. He left his brother Hasdrubal with 10,000 men at
+the foot of the Pyrenees and pushed on, but he could not reach the Alps
+before the late autumn, and his passage is one of the greatest wonders
+of history. Roads there were none, and he had to force his way up the
+passes of the Little St. Bernard through snow and ice, terrible to the
+men and animals of Africa, and fighting all the way, so that men and
+horses perished in great numbers, and only seven of the elephants were
+left when he at length descended into the plains of Northern Italy,
+where he hoped the Cisalpine Gauls would welcome him.</p>
+
+<a name="illus172"></a><center><img src="images/illus172.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.</h3>
+
+<h2>219.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>When the Romans heard that Hannibal had passed the Pyrenees, they had
+two armies on foot, one under Publius Cornelius Scipio, which was to go
+to Spain, and the other under Tiberius Sempronius Longus, to attack
+Africa. They changed their plan, and kept Sempronius to defend Italy,
+while Scipio went by sea to Marsala, a Greek colony in Gaul, to try to
+stop Hannibal at the Rhone; but he was too late, and therefore, sending
+on most of his army to Spain, he came back himself with his choicest
+troops. With these he tried to stop the enemy from crossing the river
+Ticinus, but he was defeated and so badly wounded that his life was only
+saved by the bravery of his son, who led him out of the battle.</p>
+
+<a name="illus174"></a><center><img src="images/illus174.png" alt="hannibal"></center>
+<h6>MEETING OF HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO AT ZAMA.</h6>
+
+<p>Before he was able to join the army again, Sempronius had fought
+another battle with Hannibal on the banks of the Trebia and suffered a
+terrible defeat. But winter now came on, and the Carthaginians found it
+very hard to bear in the marshes of the Arno. Hannibal himself was so
+ill that he only owed his life to the last of his elephants, which
+carried him safely through when he was almost blind, and in the end he
+lost an eye. In the spring he went on ravaging the country in hopes to
+make the two new consuls, Flaminius and Servilius, fight with him, but
+they were too cautious, until at last Flaminius attacked him in a heavy
+fog on the shore of Lake Trasimenus. It is said that an earthquake shook
+the ground, and that the eager warriors never perceived it; but again
+the Romans lost, Flaminius was killed, and there was a dreadful
+slaughter, for Hannibal had sworn to give no quarter to a Roman. The
+only thing that was hopeful for Rome was that neither Gauls, Etruscans,
+nor Italians showed any desire to rise in favor of Hannibal; and though
+he was now very near Rome, he durst not besiege it without the help of
+the people around to bring him supplies, so he only marched southwards,
+hoping to gain the support of the Greek colonies. A dictator was
+appointed, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who saw that, by strengthening all
+the garrisons in the towns and cutting off all provisions, he should
+wear the enemy out at last. As he always put off a battle, he was called
+Cunctator, or the Delayer; but at last he had the Carthaginians enclosed
+as in a trap in the valley of the river Vulturnus, and hoped to cut them
+off, posting men in ambush to fall on them on their morning's march.
+Hannibal guessed that this must be the plan; and at night he had the
+cattle in the camp collected, fastened torches to their horns, and drove
+them up the hills. The Romans, fancying themselves surrounded by the
+enemy, came out of their hiding-places to fall back on the camp, and
+Hannibal and his army safely escaped. This mischance made the Romans
+weary of the Delayer's policy, and when the year was out, and two
+consuls came in, though one of them, Lucius &AElig;milius Paulus, would have
+gone on in the same cautious plan of starving Hannibal out without a
+battle, the other, Caius Terentius Varro, who commanded on alternate
+days with him, was determined on a battle. Hannibal so contrived that it
+was fought on the plain of Cann&aelig;, where there was plenty of space to use
+his Moorish horse. It was Varro's day of command, and he dashed at the
+centre of the enemy; Hannibal opened a space for him, then closed in on
+both sides with his terrible horse, and made a regular slaughter of the
+Romans. The last time that the consul &AElig;milius was seen was by a tribune
+named Lentulus, who found him sitting on a stone faint and bleeding, and
+would have given him his own horse to escape, but &AElig;milius answered that
+he had no mind to have to accuse his comrade of rashness, and had rather
+die. A troop of enemies coming up, Lentulus rode off, and looking back,
+saw his consul fall, pierced with darts. So many Romans had been killed,
+that Hannibal sent to Carthage a basket containing 10,000 of the gold
+rings worn by the knights.</p>
+
+<a name="illus179"></a><center><img src="images/illus179.png" alt="archimedes"></center>
+<h6>ARCHIMEDES.</h6>
+
+<p>Hannibal was only five days' march beyond Rome, and his officers wanted
+him to turn back and attack it in the first shock of the defeat, but he
+could not expect to succeed without more aid from home, and he wanted to
+win over the Greek cities of the south; so he wintered in Campania,
+waiting for the fresh troops he expected from Africa or from Spain,
+where his brother Mago was preparing an army. But the Carthaginians did
+not care about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, and sent no help; and
+Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, with a Roman army in Spain,
+were watching Mago and preventing him from marching, until at last he
+gave them battle and defeated and killed them both. But he was not
+allowed to go to Italy to his brother, who, in the meantime, found his
+army so unstrung and ill-disciplined in the delightful but languid
+Campania, that the Romans declared the luxuries of Capua were their best
+allies. He stayed in the south, however, trying to gain the alliance of
+the king of Macedon, and stirring up Syracuse to revolt. Marcellus, who
+was consul for the third time, was sent to reduce the city, which made a
+famous defence, for it contained Archimedes, the greatest mathematician
+of his time, who devised wonderful machines for crushing the besiegers
+in unexpected ways; but at last Marcellus found a weak part of the walls
+and surprised the citizens. He had given orders that Archimedes should
+be saved, but a soldier broke into the philosopher's room without
+knowing him, and found him so intent on his study that he had never
+heard the storming of the city. The man brandished his sword. &quot;Only
+wait,&quot; muttered Archimedes, &quot;till I have found out my problem;&quot; but the
+man, not understanding him, killed him.</p>
+
+<p>Hannibal remained in Italy, maintaining himself there with wonderful
+skill, though with none of the hopes with which he had set out. His
+brother Hasdrubal did succeed in leaving Spain with an army to help him,
+but was met on the river Metaurus by Tiberius Claudius Nero, beaten, and
+slain. His head was cut off by Nero's order, and thrown into Hannibal's
+camp to give tidings of his fate.</p>
+
+<p>Young Scipio, meantime, had been sent to Spain, where he gained great
+advantages, winning the friendship of the Iberians, and gaining town
+after town till Mago had little left but Gades and the extreme south.
+Scipio was one of the noblest of the Romans, brave, pious, and what was
+more unusual, of such sweet and winning temper, that it was said of him
+that wherever he went he might have been a king.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to Rome, he showed the Senate that the best way to get
+Hannibal out of Italy was to attack Africa. Cautious old Fabius doubted,
+but Scipio was sent to Sicily, where he made an alliance with
+Massinissa, the Moorish king in Africa; and, obtaining leave to carry
+out his plan, he was sent thither, and so alarmed Carthage, that
+Hannibal was recalled to defend his own country, where he had not been
+since he was a child. A great battle took place at Zama between him and
+Hannibal, in which Scipio was the conqueror, and the loss of Carthage
+was so terrible that the Romans were ready to have marched in on her and
+made her their subject, but Scipio persuaded them to be forbearing.
+Carthage was to pay an immense tribute, and swear never to make war on
+any ally of Rome. And thus ended the Second Punic War, in the year 201.</p>
+
+<a name="illus181"></a><center><img src="images/illus181.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FIRST EASTERN WAR.</h3>
+
+<h2>215-183.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Scipio remained in Africa till he had arranged matters and won such a
+claim to Massinissa's gratitude that this king of Numidia was sure to
+watch over the interests of Rome. Scipio then returned home, and entered
+Rome with a grand triumph, all the nobler for himself that he did not
+lead Hannibal in his chains. He had been too generous to demand that so
+brave an enemy should be delivered up to him. He received the surname of
+Africanus, and was one of the most respected and beloved of Romans. He
+was the first who began to take up Greek learning and culture, and to
+exchange the old Roman ruggedness for the graces of philosophy and
+poetry. Indeed the Romans were beginning to have much to do with the
+Greeks, and the war they entered upon now was the first for the sake of
+spreading their own power. All the former ones had been in self-defence,
+and the new one did in fact spring out of the Punic war, for the
+Carthaginians had tried to persuade Philip, king of Macedon, to follow
+in the track of Pyrrhus, and come and help Hannibal in Southern Italy.
+The Romans had kept him off by stirring up the robber &AElig;tolians against
+him; and when he began to punish these wild neighbors, the Romans
+leagued themselves with the old Greek cities which Macedon oppressed,
+and a great war took place.</p>
+
+<p>Titus Quinctius Flaminius commanded in Greece for four years, first as
+consul and then as proconsul. His crowning victory was at Cynocephal&aelig;,
+or the Dogshead Rocks, where he so broke the strength of Macedon that at
+the Isthmian games he proclaimed the deliverance of Greece, and in their
+joy the people crowded round him with crowns and garlands, and shouted
+so loud that birds in the air were said to have dropped down at the
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>Macedon had cities in Asia Minor, and the king of Syria's enemy,
+Antiochus the Great, hoped to master them, and even to conquer Greece by
+the help of Hannibal, who had found himself unable to live in Carthage
+after his defeat, and was wandering about to give his services to any
+one who was a foe of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>As Rome took the part of Philip, as her subject and ally, there was soon
+full scope for his efforts; but the Syrians were such wretched troops
+that even Hannibal could do nothing with them, and the king himself
+would not attend to his advice, but wasted his time in pleasure in the
+isle of Euboea. So the consul Acilius first beat them at Thermopyl&aelig;, and
+then, on Lucius Cornelius Scipio being sent to conduct the war, his
+great brother Africanus volunteered to go with him as his lieutenant,
+and together they followed Antiochus into Asia Minor, and gained such
+advantages that the Syrian was obliged to sue for peace. The Romans
+replied by requiring of him to give up all Asia Minor as far as Mount
+Tarsus, and in despair he risked a battle in Magnesia, and met with a
+total defeat; 80,000 Greeks and Syrians being overthrown by 50,000
+Romans. Neither Africanus nor Hannibal were present in this battle,
+since the first was ill, and the second was besieged in a city in
+Pamphylia; but while terms of peace were being made, the two are said
+have met on friendly terms, and Scipio asked Hannibal whom he thought
+the greatest of generals. &quot;Alexander,&quot; was the answer. &quot;Whom the next
+greatest?&quot; &quot;Pyrrhus.&quot; &quot;Whom do you rank as the third?&quot; &quot;Myself,&quot; said
+Hannibal. &quot;But if you had beaten me?&quot; asked Scipio. &quot;Then I would have
+placed myself before Alexander.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus185"></a><center><img src="images/illus185.png" alt="hannibal"></center>
+<h6>HANNIBAL</h6>
+
+<p>The Romans insisted that Hannibal should be dismissed by Antiochus,
+though Scipio declared that this was ungenerous; but they dreaded his
+never-ceasing enmity; and when he took refuge with the king of Bothnia,
+they still required that he should be given up or driven a way. On this,
+Hannibal, worn-out and disappointed, put an end to his own life by
+poison, saying he would rid the Romans of their fear of an old man.</p>
+
+<p>The provinces taken from Antiochus were given to Eumenes, king of
+Pergamus, who was to reign over them as tributary to the Romans. Lucius
+Scipio received the surname of Asiaticus, and the two brothers returned
+to Rome; but they had been too generous and merciful to the conquered to
+suit the grasping spirit that had begun to prevail at Rome, and directly
+after his triumph Lucius was accused of having taken to himself an undue
+share of the spoil. His brother was too indignant at the shameful
+accusation to think of letting him justify himself, but tore up his
+accounts in the face of the people. The tribune, N&aelig;vius, thereupon
+spitefully called upon him to give an account of the spoil of Carthage
+taken twenty years before. The only reply he gave was to exclaim, &quot;This
+is the day of the victory of Zama. Let us give thanks to the gods for
+it;&quot; and he led all that was noble and good in Rome with him to the
+temple of Jupiter and offered the anniversary sacrifice. No one durst
+say another word against him or his brother; but he did not choose to
+remain among the citizens who had thus insulted him, but went away to
+his estate at Liternum, and when he died, desired to be buried there,
+saying that he would not even leave his bones to his ungrateful country.
+The Cornelian family was the only one among the higher Romans who buried
+instead of burning their dead. He left no son, only a daughter, who was
+married to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a brave officer who was among
+those who were sent to finish reducing Spain. It was a long, terrible
+war, fought city by city, inch by inch; but Gracchus is said to have
+taken no less than three hundred fortresses. But he was a milder
+conqueror than some of the Romans, and tried to tame and civilize the
+wild races instead of treating them with the terrible severity shown by
+Marcus Porcius Cato, the sternest of all old Romans. However, by the
+year 178 Spain had been reduced to obedience, and the cities and the
+coast were in good order, though the mountains harbored fierce tribes
+always ready for revolt.</p>
+
+<p>Gracchus died early, and Cornelia, his widow, devoted herself to the
+cause of his three children, refusing to be married again, which was
+very uncommon in a Roman lady. When a lady asked her to show her her
+ornaments, she called her two boys, Tiberius and Caius, and their sister
+Sempronia, and said, &quot;These are my jewels;&quot; and when she was
+complimented on being the daughter of Africanus, she said that the
+honor she should care more for was the being called &quot;the mother of the
+Gracchi.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, one of her sons that was chosen to carry on their
+grandfather's name and the sacrifices of the Cornelian family. Probably
+Caius was not born when Scipio died, for his choice had been the second
+son of his sister and of Lucius &AElig;milius Paulus (son of him who died at
+Cann&aelig;.) This child being adopted by his uncle, was called Publius
+Cornelius Scipio &AElig;milianus, and when he grew up was to marry his cousin
+Sempronia.</p>
+
+<a name="illus188"></a><center><img src="images/illus188.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CONQUEST OF GREECE, CORINTH, AND CARTHAGE.</h3>
+
+<h2>179&mdash;145.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was a great change when Rome, which to the Greeks of Pyrrhus' time
+had seemed so rude and simple, was thought such a school of policy that
+Greek and half-Greek kings sent their sons to be educated there, partly
+as hostages for their own peaceableness, and partly to learn the spirit
+of Roman rule. The first king who did this was Philip of Macedon, who
+sent his son Demetrius to be brought up at Rome; but when he came back,
+his father and brother were jealous of him, and he was soon put to
+death.</p>
+
+<p>When his brother Perseus came to the throne, there was hatred between
+him and the Romans, and ere long he was accused of making war on their
+allies. He offered to make peace, but they replied that they would hear
+nothing till he had laid down his arms, and this he would not do, so
+that Lucius &AElig;milius Paulus (the brother-in-law of Scipio) was sent to
+reduce him. As &AElig;milius came into his own house after receiving the
+appointment, he met his little daughter crying, and when he asked her
+what was the matter, she answered, &quot;Oh, father, Perseus is dead!&quot; She
+meant her little dog, but he kissed her and thanked her for the good
+omen. He overran Macedon, and gained the great battle of Pydna, after
+which Perseus was obliged to give himself up into the hands of the
+Romans, begging, however, not to be made to walk in &AElig;milius' triumph.
+The general answered that he might obtain that favor from himself,
+meaning that he could die by his own hand; but Perseus did not take the
+hint, which seems to us far more shocking than it did to a Roman; he did
+walk in the triumph, and died a few years after in Italy. &AElig;milius' two
+sons were with him throughout this campaign, though still boys under
+Polybius, their Achaian tutor. Macedon was divided into four provinces,
+and became entirely subject to Rome.</p>
+
+<a name="illus191"></a><center><img src="images/illus191.png" alt="corinth"></center>
+<h6>CORINTH.</h6>
+
+<p>The Greeks of the Achaian League began to have quarrels among
+themselves, and when the Romans interfered a fierce spirit broke out,
+and they wanted to have their old freedom, forgetting how entirely
+unable they were to stand against the power of the Romans. Caius
+C&aelig;cilius Metellus, a man of one of the best and most gracious Roman
+families, was patient with them and did his best to pacify them, being
+most unwilling to ruin the noble old historical cities; but these
+foolish Greeks fancied that his kindness showed weakness, and forced on
+the war, sending a troop to guard the pass of Thermopyl&aelig;, but they were
+swept away. Unfortunately, Metellus had to go out of office, and Lucius
+Mummius, a fierce, rude, and ignorant soldier, came in his stead to
+complete the conquest. Corinth was taken, utterly ruined and plundered
+throughout, and a huge amount of treasure was sent to Rome, as well as
+pictures and statues famed all over the world. Mummius was very much
+laughed at for having been told they must be carried in his triumph; and
+yet, not understanding their beauty, he told the sailors to whose charge
+they were given, that if they were lost, new ones must be supplied.
+However, he was an honest man, who did not help himself out of the
+plunder, as far too many were doing. After that, Achaia was made a Roman
+province.</p>
+
+<p>At this time the third and last Punic war was going on. The old Moorish
+king, Massinissa, had been continually tormenting Carthage ever since
+she had been weak, and declaring that Phoenician strangers had no
+business in Africa. The Carthaginians, who had no means of defending
+themselves, complained; but the Romans would not listen, hoping,
+perhaps, that they would be goaded at last into attacking the Moor, and
+thus giving a pretext for a war. Old Marcus Porcius Cato, who was sent
+on a message to Carthage, came back declaring that it was not safe to
+let so mighty a city of enemies stand so near. He brought back a branch
+of figs fresh and good, which he showed the Senate in proof of how near
+she was, and ended each sentence with saying, &quot;<i>Delenda est Carthago</i>&quot;
+(Carthage is to be wiped out). He died that same year at ninety years
+old, having spent most of his life in making a staunch resistance to the
+easy and luxurious fashions that were coming in with wealth and
+refinement. One of his sayings always deserves to be remembered. When he
+was opposing a law giving permission to the ladies to wear gold and
+purple, he said they would all be vying with one another, and that the
+poor would be ashamed of not making as good an appearance as the rich.
+&quot;And,&quot; said he, &quot;she who blushes for doing what she ought, will soon
+cease to blush for doing what she ought not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One wonders he did not see that to have no enemy near at hand to guard
+against was the very worst thing for the hardy, plain old ways he was so
+anxious to keep up. However, Carthage was to be wiped out, and Scipio
+&AElig;milianus was sent to do the terrible work. He defeated Hasdrubal, the
+last of the Carthaginian generals, and took the citadel of Byrsa; but
+though all hope was over, the city held out in utter desperation.
+Weapons were forged out of household implements, even out of gold and
+silver, and the women twisted their long hair into bow-strings; and when
+the walls were stormed, they fought from street to street and house to
+house, so that the Romans gained little but ruins and dead bodies.
+Carthage and Corinth fell on the same day of the year 179.</p>
+
+<p>Part of Spain still had to be subdued, and Scipio &AElig;milianus was sent
+thither. The city of Numantia, with only 5000 inhabitants, endured one
+of those long, hopeless sieges for which Spanish cities have in all
+times been remarkable, and was only taken at last when almost every
+citizen had perished.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, Attalus, king of Pergamus in Asia Minor, being the
+last of his race, bequeathed his dominions to the Romans, and thus gave
+them their first solid footing there.</p>
+
+<p>All this was altering Roman manners much. Weak as the Greeks were, their
+old doings of every kind were still the admiration of every one, and the
+Romans, who had always been rough, straightforward doers, began to wish
+to learn of them to think. All the wealthier families had Greeks for
+tutors for their sons, and expected them to talk and write the language,
+and study the philosophy and poetry till they should be as familiar with
+it as if they were Greeks themselves. Unluckily, the Greeks themselves
+had fallen from their earnestness and greatness, so that there was not
+much to be learnt of them now but vain deceit and bad taste.</p>
+
+<p>Rich Romans, too, began to get most absurdly luxurious. They had
+splendid villas on the Italian hill-sides, where they went to spend the
+summer when Rome was unhealthy, and where they had beautiful gardens,
+with courts paved with mosaic, and fish-ponds for the pet fish for which
+many had a passion. One man was laughed at for having shed tears when
+his favorite fish died, and he retorted by saying that it was more than
+his accuser had done for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Their feasts were as luxurious as they could make them, in spite of laws
+to keep them within bounds. Dishes of nightingales' tongues, of fatted
+dormice, and even of snails, were among their food: and sometimes a
+stream was made to flow along the table, containing the living companion
+of the mullet which served as part of the meal.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GRACCHI.</h3>
+
+<h2>137-122.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Young Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the eldest of Cornelia's jewels, was
+sent in the year 137 to join the Roman army in Spain. As he went through
+Etruria, which, as every one knew, had been a thickly peopled, fertile
+country in old times, he was shocked to see its dreariness and
+desolation. Instead of farms and vineyards, there were great bare spaces
+of land, where sheep, kids, or goats were feeding. These vast tracts
+belonged to Romans, who kept slaves to attend to the flocks; while all
+the corn that was used in Rome came from Sicily or Africa, and the
+poorer Romans lived in the city itself&mdash;idle men, chiefly trusting to
+distributions of corn, and unable to work for themselves because they
+had no ground to till; and as to trades and handicrafts, the rich men
+had everything they wanted made in their own houses by their slaves.</p>
+
+<a name="illus197"></a><center><img src="images/illus197.png" alt="cornelia"></center>
+<h6>CORNELIA AND HER SONS.</h6>
+
+<p>No wonder the Romans were losing their old character. This was the very
+thing that the Licinian law had been intended to prevent, by forbidding
+any citizen to have more than a certain quantity of land, and giving the
+state the power of resuming it. The law was still there, but it had
+been disused and forgotten; estates had been gathered into the hands of
+families and handed down, till now, though there were 400,000 citizens,
+only 2,000 were men of property.</p>
+
+<p>While Tiberius was serving in Spain, he decided on his plan. As his
+family was plebeian, he could be a tribune of the people, and as soon as
+he came home he stood and was elected. Then he proposed reviving the
+Licinian law, that nobody should have more than 500 acres, and that the
+rest should be divided among those who had nothing, leaving, however, a
+larger portion to those who had many children.</p>
+
+<p>There was, of course, a terrible uproar; the populace clamoring for
+their rights, and the rich trying to stop the measure. They bribed one
+of the other tribunes to forbid it; but there was a fight, in which
+Tiberius prevailed, and he and his young brother Caius, and his
+father-in-law Appius Claudius, were appointed as triumvers to see the
+law carried out. Then the rich men followed their old plan of spreading
+reports among the people that Tiberius wanted to make himself a king,
+and had accepted a crown and purple robe from some foreign envoy. When
+his year of office was coming to an end, he sought to be elected tribune
+again, but the patricians said it was against the law. There was a
+great tumult, in the course of which he put his hand to his head, either
+to guard it from a blow or to beckon his friends. &quot;He demands the
+diadem,&quot; shouted his enemies, and there was a great struggle, in which
+three hundred people were killed. Tiberius tried to take refuge in the
+Temple of Jupiter, but the doors were closed against him; he stumbled,
+was knocked down with a club, and killed.</p>
+
+<p>However, the Sempronian law had been made, and the people wanted, of
+course, to have it carried out, while the nobles wanted it to be a dead
+letter. Scipio &AElig;milianus, the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, had been in
+Spain all this time, but he had so much disapproved of Tiberius' doings
+that he was said to have exclaimed, on hearing of his death, &quot;So perish
+all who do the like.&quot; But when he came home, he did so much to calm and
+quiet matters, that there was a cry to make him Dictator, and let him
+settle the whole matter. Young Caius Gracchus, who thought the cause
+would thus be lost, tried to prevent the choice by fixing on him the
+name of tyrant. To which Scipio calmly replied, &quot;Rome's enemies may well
+wish me dead, for they know that while I live Rome cannot perish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When he went home, he shut himself into his room to prepare his
+discourse for the next day, but in the morning he was found dead,
+without a wound, though his slaves declared he had been murdered. Some
+suspected his wife Sempronia, others even her mother Cornelia, but the
+Senate would not have the matter enquired into. He left no child, and
+the Africanus line of Cornelius ended with him.</p>
+
+<p>Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than his brother, and was elected
+tribune as soon as he was old enough. He was full of still greater
+schemes than his brother. His mother besought him to be warned by his
+brother's fate, but he was bent on his objects, and carried some of them
+out. He had the Sempronian law reaffirmed, though he could not act on
+it; but in the meantime he began a regular custom of having corn served
+out to the poorer citizens, and found work for them upon roads and
+bridges; also he caused the state to clothe the soldiers, instead of
+their doing it at their own expense. Another scheme which he first
+proposed was to make the Italians of the countries now one with Roman
+territory into citizens, with votes like the Romans themselves; but this
+again angered the patricians, who saw they should be swamped by numbers
+and lose their power.</p>
+
+<p>He also wanted to found a colony of plebeians on the ruins of Carthage,
+and when his tribuneship was over he went to Africa to see about it; but
+when he came home the patricians had arranged an attack on him, and he
+was insulted by the lictor of the consul Opimius. The patricians
+collected on one side, the poorer sort around Caius on the Aventine
+Hill; but the nobles were the strongest, the plebeians fled, and Caius
+withdrew with one slave into a sacred grove, whence he hoped to reach
+the Tiber; but the wood was surrounded, his retreat was cut off, and he
+commanded the slave to kill him that he might not fall alive into the
+hands of his enemies, after which the poor faithful fellow killed
+himself, unable to bear the loss of his master. The weight of Caius'
+head in gold had been promised by the Senate, and the man who found the
+body was said to have taken out the brains and filled it up with lead
+that his reward might be larger. Three thousand men were killed in this
+riot, ten times as many as at Tiberius' death.</p>
+
+<p>Opimius was so proud of having overthrown Caius, that he had a medal
+struck with Hercules slaying the monsters. Cornelia, broken-hearted,
+retired to a country-house; but in a few years the feeling turned,
+great love was shown to the memory of the two brothers, statues were set
+up in their honor, and when Cornelia herself died, her statue was
+inscribed with the title she had coveted, &quot;The mother of the Gracchi.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus202"></a><center><img src="images/illus202.png" alt="centurion"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN CENTURION.</h6>
+
+<p>Things were indeed growing worse and worse. The Romans were as brave as
+ever in the field, and were sure in the end to conquer any nation they
+came in contact with; but at home, the city was full of overgrown rich
+men, with huge hosts of slaves, and of turbulent poor men, who only
+cared for their citizenship for the sake of the corn they gained by it,
+and the games exhibited by those who stood for a magistracy. Immense
+sums were spent in hiring gladiators and bringing wild animals to be
+baited for their amusement; and afterwards, when sent out to govern the
+provinces, the expenses were repaid by cruel grinding and robbing the
+people of the conquered states.</p>
+
+<center><img src="images/illus203.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WARS OF MARIUS.</h3>
+
+<h2>106-98.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>After the death of Massinissa, king of Numidia, the ally of the Romans,
+there were disputes among his grandsons, and Jugurtha, whom they held to
+have the least right, obtained the kingdom. The commander of the army
+sent against him was Caius Marius, who had risen from being a free Roman
+peasant in the village of Arpinum, but serving under Scipio &AElig;milianus,
+had shown such ability, that when some one was wondering where they
+would find the equal of Scipio when he was gone, that general touched
+the shoulder of his young officer and said, &quot;Possibly here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Rough soldier as he always was, he married Julia, of the high family of
+the C&aelig;sars, who were said to be descended from &AElig;neas; and though he was
+much disliked by the Senate, he always carried the people with him. When
+he received the province of Numidia, instead of, as every one had done
+before, forming his army only of Roman citizens, he offered to enlist
+whoever would, and thus filled his ranks with all sorts of wild and
+desperate men, whom he could indeed train to fight, but who had none of
+the old feeling for honor or the state, and this in the end made a great
+change in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Jugurtha maintained a wild war in the deserts of Africa with Marius, but
+at last he was betrayed to the Romans by his friend Bocchus, another
+Moorish king, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marius' lieutenant, was sent
+to receive him&mdash;a transaction which Sulla commemorated on a signet ring
+which he always wore. Poor Jugurtha was kept two years to appear at the
+triumph, where he walked in chains, and then was thrown alive into the
+dungeon under the Capitol, where he took six days to die of cold and
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Marius was elected consul for the second time even before he had quite
+come home from Africa, for it was a time of great danger. Two fierce and
+terrible tribes, whom the Romans called Cimbri and Teutones, and who
+were but the vanguard of the swarms who would overwhelm them six
+centuries later, had come down through Germany to the settled countries
+belonging to Rome, especially the lands round the old Greek settlements
+in Gaul, which had fallen of course into the hands of the Romans, and
+were full of beautiful rich cities, with houses and gardens round them.
+The Province, as the Romans called it, would have been grand plundering
+ground for these savages, and Marius established himself in a camp on
+the banks of the Rhone to protect it, cutting a canal to bring his
+provisions from the sea, which still remains. While he was thus engaged,
+he was a fourth time elected consul.</p>
+
+<a name="illus206"></a><center><img src="images/illus206.png" alt="marius"></center>
+<h6>MARIUS.</h6>
+
+<p>The enemy began to move. The Cimbri meant to march eastward round the
+Alps, and pour through the Tyrol into Italy; the Teutones to go by the
+West, fighting Marius on the way. But he would not come out of his camp
+on the Rhone, though the Teutones, as they passed, shouted to ask the
+Roman soldiers what messages they had to send to their wives in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>When they had all passed, he came out of his camp and followed them as
+far as Aqu&aelig; Sexti&aelig;, now called Aix, where one of the most terrible
+battles the world ever saw was fought. These people were a whole
+tribe&mdash;wives, children, and everything they had with them&mdash;and to be
+defeated was utter and absolute ruin. A great enclosure was made with
+their carts and wagons, whence the women threw arrows and darts to help
+the men; and when, after three days of hard fighting, all hope was over,
+they set fire to the enclosure and killed their children and themselves.
+The whole swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and no one was left
+to bury the dead, so that the spot was called the Putrid Fields, and is
+still known as Les Pourrieres.</p>
+
+<a name="illus208"></a><center><img src="images/illus208.png" alt="trophies"></center>
+<h6>ONE OF THE TROPHIES, CALLED OF MARIUS, AT THE CAPITOL AT ROME.</h6>
+
+<p>While Marius was offering up the spoil, tidings came that he was a fifth
+time chosen consul; but he had to hasten into Italy, for the other
+consul, Catulus, could not stand before the Cimbri, and Marius met him
+on the Po retreating from them. The Cimbri demanded lands in Italy for
+themselves and their allies the Teutones. &quot;The Teutones have all the
+ground they will ever want, on the other side the Alps,&quot; said Marius;
+and a terrible battle followed, in which the Cimbri were as entirely cut
+off as their allies had been.</p>
+
+<p>Marius was made consul a sixth time. As a reward to the brave soldiers
+who had fought under him, he made one thousand of them, who came from
+the city of Camerinum, Roman citizens, and this the patricians disliked
+greatly. His excuse was, &quot;The din of arms drowned the voice of the law;&quot;
+but the new citizens were provided for by lands in the Province, which
+the Romans said the Gauls had lost to the Teutones and they had
+reconquered. It was very hard on the Gauls, but that was the last thing
+a Roman cared about.</p>
+
+<p>The Italians, however, were all crying out for the rights of Romans, and
+the more far-sighted among the Romans would, like Caius Gracchus, have
+granted them. Marcus Livius Drusus did his best for them; he was a good
+man, wise and frank-hearted. When he was having a house built, and the
+plan was shown him which would make it impossible for any one to see
+into it, he said, &quot;Rather build one where my fellow-countrymen may see
+all I do.&quot; He was very much loved, and when he was ill, prayers were
+offered at the temples for his recovery; but no sooner did he take up
+the cause of the Italians than all the patricians hated him bitterly.
+&quot;Rome for the Romans,&quot; was their watchword. Drusus was one day
+entertaining an Italian gentleman, when his little nephew, Marcus
+Porcius Cato, a descendant of the old censor, and bred in stern
+patrician views, was playing about the room. The Italian merrily asked
+him to favor his cause. &quot;No,&quot; said the boy. He was offered toys and
+cakes if he would change his mind, but he still refused; he was
+threatened, and at last he was held by one leg out of the window&mdash;all
+without shaking his resolution for a moment; and this constancy he
+carried with him through life.</p>
+
+<p>People's minds grew embittered, and Drusus was murdered in the street,
+crying as he fell, &quot;When will Rome find so good a citizen!&quot; After this,
+the Italians took up arms, and what was called the Social War began.
+Marius had no high command, being probably too much connected with the
+enemy. Some of the Italian tribes held with Rome, and these were
+rewarded with the citizenship; and after all, though the consul Lucius
+Julius C&aelig;sar, brother-in-law to Marius, gained some victories, the
+revolt was so widespread, that the Senate felt it wisest, on the first
+sign of peace, to offer citizenship to such Italians as would come
+within sixty days to claim it. Citizenship brought a man under Roman
+law, freed him from taxation, and gave him many advantages and openings
+to a rise in life. But he could only give his vote at Rome, and only
+there receive the distribution of corn, and he further became liable to
+be called out to serve in a legion, so that the benefit was not so great
+as at first appeared, and no very large numbers of Italians came to
+apply for it.</p>
+
+<a name="illus212"></a><center><img src="images/illus212.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ADVENTURES OF MARIUS.</h3>
+
+<h2>93&mdash;84.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The chief foe of Marius was almost always his second in command, Publius
+Cornelius Sulla, one of the men of highest family in Rome. He had all
+the high culture and elegant learning that the rough soldier Marius
+despised, spoke and wrote Greek as easily as Latin, and was as well read
+in Greek poetry and philosophy as any Athenian could be; but he was
+given up to all the excesses of luxury in which the wealthy Romans
+indulged, and his way of life had made him frightful to look at. His
+face was said to be like a mulberry sprinkled with salt, with a terrible
+pair of blue eyes glaring out of it.</p>
+
+<p>In 93 he was sent to command against Mithridates, king of Pontus, one
+of the little kingdoms in Asia Minor that had sprung up out of the
+break-up of Alexander's empire. Under this king, Mithridates, it had
+grown very powerful. He was of Persian birth, had all the learning and
+science both of Greece and the far East, and was said in especial to be
+wonderfully learned in all plants and their virtues, so as to have made
+himself proof against all kinds of poison, and he could speak
+twenty-five languages.</p>
+
+<p>He had great power in Asia Minor, and took upon himself to appoint a
+king of Cappadocia, thus leading to a quarrel with the Romans. In the
+midst of the Social War, when he thought they had their hands full in
+Italy, Mithridates caused all the native inhabitants of Asia Minor to
+rise upon the Romans among them in one night and murder them all, so
+that 80,000 are said to have perished. Sulla was ordered to take the
+command of the army which was to avenge their death; but, while he was
+raising his forces, Marius, angry that the patricians had hindered the
+plebeians and Italians from gaining more by the Social War, raised up a
+great tumult, meaning to overpower the patricians' resistance. He would
+have done more wisely had he waited until Sulla was quite gone, for that
+general came back to the rescue of his friends with six newly-raised
+legions, and Marius could only just contrive to escape from Rome, where
+he was proclaimed a traitor and a price set on his head. He was now
+seventy years old, but full of spirit. First he escaped to his own farm,
+whence he hoped to reach Ostia, where a ship was waiting for him; but a
+party of horsemen were seen coming, and he was hidden in a cart full of
+beans and driven down the coast, where he embarked, meaning to go to
+Africa; but adverse winds and want of food forced him to land at
+Circ&aelig;um, whence, with a few friends, he made his way along the coast,
+through woods and rocks, keeping up the spirits of his companions by
+telling them that, when a little boy, he robbed an eyrie of seven
+eaglets, and that a soothsayer had then foretold that he would be seven
+times consul. At last a troop of horse was seen coming towards them, and
+at the same time two ships near the coast. The only hope was in swimming
+out to the nearest ship, and Marius was so heavy and old that this was
+done with great difficulty. Even then the ships were so near the shore
+that the pursuers could command the crew to throw Marius out, but this
+they refused to do, though they only waited till the soldiers were gone,
+to put him on shore again. Here he was in a marshy, boggy place, where
+an old man let him rest in his cottage, and then hid him in a cave under
+a heap of rushes. Again, however, the troops appeared, and threatened
+the old man for hiding an enemy of the Romans. It was in Marius'
+hearing, and fearing to be betrayed, he rushed out into a pool, where he
+stood up to his neck in water till a soldier saw him, and he was dragged
+out and taken to the city of Minturn&aelig;.</p>
+
+<a name="illus216"></a><center><img src="images/illus216.png" alt="catapult"></center>
+<h6>THE CATAPULT.</h6>
+
+<p>There the council decided on his death, and sent a soldier to kill him,
+but the fierce old man stood glaring at him, and said. &quot;Darest thou
+kill Caius Marius?&quot; The man was so frightened that he ran away, crying
+out, &quot;I cannot kill Caius Marius.&quot; The Senate of Minturn&aelig; took this as
+an omen, and remembered besides that he had been a good friend to the
+Italians, so they conducted him through a sacred grove to the sea, and
+sent him off to Africa. On landing, he sent his son to ask shelter from
+one of the Numidian princes, and, while waiting for an answer, he was
+harassed by a messenger from a Roman officer of low rank, forbidding his
+presence in Africa. He made no reply till the messenger pressed to know
+what to say to his master. Then the old man looked up, and sternly
+answered. &quot;Say that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in the ruins of
+Carthage&quot;&mdash;a grand rebuke for the insult to fallen greatness. But the
+Numidian could not receive him, and he could only find shelter in a
+little island on the coast.</p>
+
+<p>There he soon heard that no sooner had Sulla embarked for the East than
+Rome had fallen into dire confusion. The consuls, Caius Octavius and
+Publius Cornelius Cinna, were of opposite parties, and had a furious
+fight, in which Cinna was driven out of Rome, and at the same time the
+Italians had begun a new Social War. Marius saw that his time was come.
+He hurried to Etruria, where he was joined by a party of his friends and
+five hundred runaway slaves. The discontented Romans formed another army
+under Quintus Sertorius, and the Samnites, who had begun the war,
+overpowered the troops sent against them, and marched to Rome, declaring
+they would have no peace till they had destroyed the wolf's lair. Cinna
+and an army were advancing on another side, and, as he was really
+consul, the Senate in their distress admitted him, hoping that he would
+stop the rest; but when he marched in and seated himself again in the
+chair of office, he had by his side old Marius clothed in rags.</p>
+
+<a name="illus218"></a><center><img src="images/illus218.png" alt="island"></center>
+<h6>ISLAND ON THE COAST.</h6>
+
+<p>They were bent on revenge, and terrible it was, beginning with the
+consul, Caius Octavius, who had disdained to flee, and whose head was
+severed from his body and displayed in the Forum, with many other
+senators of the noblest blood in Rome, who had offended either Marius or
+Cinna or any of their fierce followers. Marius walked along in gloomy
+silence, answering no one; but his followers were bidden to spare only
+those to whom he gave his hand to be kissed. The slaves pillaged the
+houses, murdered many on their own account, and everything was in the
+wildest uproar, till the two chiefs called in Sertorius with a legion to
+restore order.</p>
+
+<p>Then they named themselves consuls, without even asking for an election,
+and thus Marius was seven times consul. He wanted to go out to the East
+and take the command from Sulla, but his health was too much broken, and
+before the year of his consulate was over he died. The last time he had
+left the house, he had said to some friends that no man ought to trust
+again to such a doubtful fortune as his had been; and then he took to
+his bed for seven days without any known illness, and there was found
+dead, so that he was thought to have starved himself to death.</p>
+
+<p>Cinna put in another consul named Valerius Flaccus, and invited all the
+Italians to enroll themselves as Roman citizens. Then Flaccus went out
+to the East, meaning to take away the command from Sulla, who was
+hunting Mithridates out of Greece, which he had seized and held for a
+short time. But Flaccus' own army rose against him and killed him, and
+Sulla, after beating Mithridates, driving him back to Pontus, and making
+peace with him, was now to come home.</p>
+
+<a name="illus220"></a><center><img src="images/illus220.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>SULLA'S PROSCRIPTION.</h3>
+
+<h2>88-71.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>There was great fear at Rome, among the friends of Cinna and Marius, at
+the prospect of Sulla's return. A fire broke out in the Capitol, and
+this added to their terror, for the Books of the Sybil were burnt, and
+all her prophecies were lost. Cinna tried to oppose Sulla's landing, but
+was killed by his own soldiers at Brundusium.</p>
+
+<p>Sulla, with his victorious army, could not be stopped. Sertorius fled to
+Spain, but Marius' son tried, with the help of the Samnites, to resist,
+and held out Pr&aelig;neste, but the Samnites were beaten in a terrible battle
+outside the walls, and when the people of the city saw the heads of the
+leaders carried on spear points, they insisted on giving up. Young
+Marius and a Samnite noble hid themselves in a cave, and as they had no
+hope, resolved to die; so they fought, hoping to kill each other, and
+when Marius was left alive, he caused himself to be slain by a slave.</p>
+
+<p>Sulla marched on towards Rome, furious at the resistance he met with,
+and determined on a terrible vengeance. He could not enter the city till
+he was ready to dismiss his army and have his triumph, so the Senate
+came out to meet him in the temple of Bellona. As they took their seats,
+they heard dreadful shrieks and cries. &quot;No matter,&quot; said Sulla; &quot;it is
+only some wretches being punished.&quot; The wretches were the 8000 Samnite
+prisoners he had taken at the battle of Pr&aelig;neste, and brought to be
+killed in the Campus Martius; and with these shocking sounds to mark
+that he was in earnest, the purple-faced general told the trembling
+Senate that if they submitted to him he would be good to them, but that
+he would spare none of his enemies, great or small.</p>
+
+<p>And his men were already in the city and country, slaughtering not only
+the party of Marius, but every one against whom any one of them had a
+spite, or whose property he coveted. Marius' body, which had been buried
+and not burnt, was taken from the grave and thrown into the Tiber; and
+such horrible deeds were done that Sulla was asked in the Senate where
+the execution was to stop. He showed a list of eighty more who had yet
+to die; and the next day and the next he brought other lists of two
+hundred and thirty each. These dreadful lists were called proscriptions,
+and any one who tried to shelter the victims was treated in the same
+manner. The property of all who were slain was seized, and their
+children declared incapable of holding any public office.</p>
+
+<p>Among those who were in danger was the nephew of Marius' wife, Caius
+Julius C&aelig;sar, but, as he was of a high patrician family, Sulla only
+required of him to divorce his wife and marry a stepdaughter of his own.
+C&aelig;sar refused, and fled to the Sabine hills, where pursuers were sent
+after him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome,
+especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying,
+however, &quot;Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius.&quot; C&aelig;sar
+went to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off the
+idle life of pleasure he had been leading in Rome.</p>
+
+<a name="illus224"></a><center><img src="images/illus224.png" alt="palazzo"></center>
+<h6>PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE.</h6>
+
+<p>The country people were even more cruelly punished than the citizens:
+whole cities were destroyed and districts laid waste; the whole of
+Etruria was ravaged, the old race entirely swept away, and the towns
+ruined beyond revival, while the new city of Florence was built with
+their remains, and all we know of them is from the tombs which have of
+late years been opened.</p>
+
+<a name="illus226"></a><center><img src="images/illus226.png" alt="sulla"></center>
+<h6> CORNELIUS SULLA.</h6>
+
+<p>Both the consuls had perished, and Sulla caused himself to be named
+Dictator. He had really a purpose in all the horrors he had perpetrated,
+namely, to clear the way for restoring the old government at Rome, which
+Marius and his Italians had been overthrowing. He did not see that the
+rule which had worked tolerably well while Rome was only a little city
+with a small country round it, would not serve when it was the head of
+numerous distant countries, where the governors, like himself and
+Marius, grew rich, and trained armies under them able to overpower the
+whole state at home. So he set to work to put matters as much as
+possible in the old order. So many of the Senate had been killed, that
+he had to make up the numbers by putting in three hundred knights; and,
+to supply the lack of other citizens, after the hosts who had perished,
+he allowed the Italians to go on coming in to be enrolled as citizens;
+and ten thousand slaves, who had belonged to his victims, were not only
+set free, but made citizens as his own clients, thus taking the name of
+Cornelius. He also much lessened the power of the tribunes of the
+people, and made a law that when a man had once been a tribune he should
+never be chosen for any of the higher offices of the state. By these
+means he sought to keep up the old patrician power, on which he believed
+the greatness of Rome depended; though, after all, the grand old
+patrician families had mostly died off, and half the Senate were only
+knights made noble.</p>
+
+<p>After this Sulla resigned the dictatorship, for he was growing old, and
+had worn out his health by his riot and luxury. He spent his time in a
+villa near Rome, talking philosophy with his friends, and dictating the
+history of his own life in Greek. When he died, he bade them burn his
+body, contrary to the practice of the Cornelii, no doubt fearing it
+would be treated like that of Marius.</p>
+
+<p>The most promising of the men of his party who were growing up and
+coming forward was Cn&aelig;us Pompeius, a brave and worthy man, who had while
+quite young, gained such a victory over a Numidian prince that Sulla
+himself gave him the title of Magnus, or the Great. He was afterwards
+sent to Spain, where Sertorius held out for eight years against the
+Roman power with the help of the native chiefs, but at last was put to
+death by his own followers. Things were altogether in a bad state. There
+were great struggles in Rome at every election, for the officers of the
+state were now chiefly esteemed for the sake of the three or five years'
+government in the provinces to which they led. No expense was thought
+too great in shows of beasts and gladiators by which to win the votes of
+the people; for, after the year of office, the candidate meant amply to
+repay himself by what he could squeeze out of the unhappy province under
+his charge, and nobody cared for cruelty or injustice to any one but a
+Roman citizen.</p>
+
+<p>Numbers of gladiators were kept and trained to fight in these shows; and
+while the Spanish war was going on, a whole school of them&mdash;seventy-eight
+in number&mdash;who were kept at Capua, broke out, armed themselves with the
+spits, hooks, and axes in a butcher's shop, and took refuge in the crater
+of Mount Vesuvius, which at that time showed no signs of being an active
+volcano. There, under their leader Spartacus, they gathered together every
+gladiator slave or who could run away to them, and Spartacus wanted them
+to march northward, force their way through Italy, climb the Alps, and
+reach their homes in Thrace and Gaul; but the plunder of Italy tempted
+them, and they would not go, till an army was sent against them under
+Marcus Licinius Crassus&mdash;called Dives, or the Rich, from the spoil he had
+gained during the proscription. Then Spartacus hoped to escape in a fleet
+of pirate ships from Cilicia, and to hold out in the passes of Mount
+Taurus; but the Cilician pirates deceived him, sailed away with his money,
+and left him to his fate, and he and his gladiators were all slain by
+Crassus and Pompeius, who had been called home from Spain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CAREER OF POMPEIUS.</h3>
+
+<h2>70-63.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Cn&aelig;us Pompeius Magnus and Lucius Licinius Crassus Dives were consuls
+together in the year 70; but Crassus, though he feasted the people at
+10,000 tables, was envied and disliked, and would never have been
+elected but for Pompeius, who was a great favorite with the people, and
+so much trusted, both by them and the nobles, that it seems to have
+filled him with pride, for he gave himself great airs, and did not treat
+his fellow-consul as an equal.</p>
+
+<p>When his term of office was over, the most pressing thing to be done was
+to put down the Cilician pirates. In the angle formed between Asia Minor
+and Syria, with plenty of harbors formed by the spurs of Mount Taurus,
+there had dwelt for ages past a horde of sea robbers, whose swift
+galleys darted on the merchant ships of Tyre and Alexandria; and now,
+after the ruin of the Syrian kingdom, they had grown so rich that their
+state galleys had silken sails, oars inlaid with ivory and silver, and
+bronze prows. They robbed the old Greek temples and the Eastern shrines,
+and even made descents on the Italian cities, besides stopping the ships
+which brought wheat from Sicily and Alexandria to feed the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>To enable Pompeius to crush them, authority was given him for three
+years over all the Mediterranean and fifty miles inland all round, which
+was nearly the same thing as the whole empire. He divided the sea into
+thirteen commands, and sent a party to fight the pirates in each; and
+this was done so effectually, that in forty days they were all hunted
+out of the west end of the gulf, whither he pursued them with his whole
+force, beat them in a sea-fight, and then besieged them; but, as he was
+known to be a just and merciful man, they came to terms with him, and he
+scattered them about in small colonies in distant cities, so that they
+might cease to be mischievous.</p>
+
+<a name="illus232"></a><center><img src="images/illus232.png" alt="tyre"></center>
+<h6> COAST OF TYRE.</h6>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the war with Mithridates had broken out again, and
+Lucius Lucullus, who had been consul after Pompeius, was fighting with
+him in the East; but Lucullus did not please the Romans, though he met
+with good success, and had pushed Mithridates so hard that there was
+nothing left for Pompeius but to complete the conquest, and he drove the
+old king beyond Caucasus, and then marched into Syria, where he
+overthrew the last of the Seleucian kings, Antiochus, and gave him the
+little kingdom of Commagene to spend the remainder of his life in, while
+Syria and Phoenicia were made into a great Roman province.</p>
+
+<p>Under the Maccabees, Palestine had struggled into being independent of
+Syria, but only by the help of the Romans, who, as usual, tried to ally
+themselves with small states in order to make an excuse for making war
+on large ones. There was now a great quarrel between two brothers of the
+Maccabean family, and one of them, Hyrcanus, came to ask the aid of
+Pompeius. The Roman army marched into the Holy Land, and, after seizing
+the whole country, was three months besieging Jerusalem, which, after
+all, it only took by an attack when the Jews were resting on the Sabbath
+day. Pompeius insisted on forcing his way into the Holy of Holies, and
+was very much disappointed to find it empty and dark. He did not
+plunder the treasury of the Temple, but the Jews remarked that, from the
+time of this daring entrance, his prosperity seemed to fail him. Before
+he left the East, however, old Mithridates, who had taken refuge in the
+Crimea, had been attacked by his own favorite son, and, finding that his
+power was gone, had taken poison; but, as his constitution was so
+fortified by antidotes that it took no effect, he caused one of his
+slaves to kill him.</p>
+
+<p>The son submitted to the Romans, and was allowed to reign on the
+Bosphorus; but Pompeius had extended the Roman Empire as far as the
+Euphrates; for though a few small kings still remained, it was only by
+suffrance from the Romans, who had gained thirty-nine great cities.
+Egypt, the Parthian kingdom on the Tigris, and Armenia in the mountains,
+alone remained free.</p>
+
+<p>While all this was going on in the East, there was a very dangerous plot
+contrived at Rome by a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and seven
+other good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, even the slaves and
+gladiators, overthrowing the government, seizing all the offices of
+state, and murdering all their opponents, after the example first set by
+Marius and Cinna.</p>
+
+<a name="illus236"></a><center><img src="images/illus236.png" alt="armenia"></center>
+<h6> MOUNTAINS OF ARMENIA.</h6>
+
+<p>Happily such secrets are seldom kept; one of the plotters told the
+woman he was in love with, and she told one of the consuls, Marcus
+Tullius Cicero. Cicero was one of the wisest and best men in Rome, and
+the one whom we really know the best, for he left a great number of
+letters to his friends, which show us the real mind of the man. He was
+of the order of the knights, and had been bred up to be a lawyer and
+orator, and his speeches came to be the great models of Roman eloquence.
+He was a man of real conscience, and he most deeply loved Rome and her
+honor; and though he was both vain and timid, he could put these
+weaknesses aside for the public good. Before all the Senate he impeached
+Catilina, showing how fully he knew all that he intended. Nothing could
+be done to him by law till he had actually committed his crime, and
+Cicero wanted to show him that all was known, so as to cause him to flee
+and join his friends outside. Catilina tried to face it out, but all the
+senators began to cry out against him, and he dashed away in terror, and
+left the city at night. Cicero announced it the next day in a famous
+speech, beginning, &quot;He is gone; he has rushed away; he has burst forth.&quot;
+Some of his followers in guilt were left at Rome, and just then some
+letters were brought to Cicero by some of a tribe of Gauls whom they
+had invited to help them in the ruin of the Senate. This was positive
+proof, and Cicero caused the nine worst to be seized, and, having proved
+their guilt, there was a consultation in the Senate as to their fate.
+Julius C&aelig;sar wanted to keep them prisoners for life, which he said was
+worse than death, as that, he believed, would end everything; but all
+the rest of the Senate were for their death, and they were all
+strangled, without giving them a chance of defending themselves or
+appealing to the people. Cicero beheld the execution himself, and then
+went forth to the crowd, merely saying, &quot;They have lived.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus239"></a><center><img src="images/illus239.png" alt="cicero"></center>
+<h6> CICERO.</h6>
+
+<p>Catilina, meantime, had collected 20,000 men in Italy, but they were not
+half-armed, and the newly-returned proconsul, Metellus, made head
+against him; while the other consul, Caius Antonius, was recalled from
+Macedonia with his army. As he was a friend of Catilina, he did not
+choose to fight with him, and gave up the command to his lieutenant, by
+whom the wretch was defeated and slain. His head was cut off and sent to
+Rome.</p>
+
+<a name="illus240"></a><center><img src="images/illus240.png" alt="pompeius"></center>
+<h6> COLOSSAL STATUE OF POMPEIUS OF THE PALAZZO SPADA AT ROME.</h6>
+
+<center><img src="images/illus242.png" alt ="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>POMPEIUS AND C&AElig;SAR.</h3>
+
+<h2>61-48.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Pompeius was coming home for his triumph, every one had hopes from him,
+for things were in a very bad state. There had been a great disturbance
+at Julius C&aelig;sar's house. Every year there was a festival in honor of
+Cybele, the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, to which none but women were
+admitted, and where it was sacrilege for a man to be seen. In the midst
+of this feast in C&aelig;sar's house, a slave girl told his mother Aurelia
+that there was a man among the ladies. Aurelia shut the doors, took a
+torch and ran through the house, looking in every one's face for the
+offender, who was found to be Publius Clodius, a worthless young man,
+who had been in Catilina's conspiracy, but had given evidence against
+him. He escaped, but was brought to trial, and then borrowed money
+enough of Crassus the rich, to bribe the judges and avoid the punishment
+he deserved. C&aelig;sar's wife, the sister of Pompeius was free of blame in
+the matter, but he divorced her, saying that C&aelig;sar's wife must be free
+from all suspicion; and this, of course, did not bring her brother home
+in a friendly spirit to C&aelig;sar.</p>
+
+<a name="illus244"></a><center><img src="images/illus244.png" alt="pompeius"></center>
+<h6> POMPEIUS.</h6>
+
+<p>Pompeius' triumph was the most magnificent that had ever yet been seen.
+It lasted two days, and the banners that were carried in the procession,
+bore the names of nine hundred cities and one thousand fortresses which
+he had conquered. All the treasures of Mithridates&mdash;statues, jewels, and
+splendid ornaments of gold and silver worked with precious stones&mdash;were
+carried along; and it was reckoned that he had brought home 20,000
+talents&mdash;equal to &pound;5,000,000&mdash;for the treasury. He was admired, too, for
+refusing any surname taken from his conquests, and only wearing the
+laurel wreath of a victor in the Senate.</p>
+
+<p>Pompeius and C&aelig;sar were the great rival names at this time. Pompeius'
+desire was to keep the old framework, and play the part of Sulla as its
+protector, only without its violence and bloodshed. C&aelig;sar saw that it
+was impossible that things should go on as they were, and had made up
+his mind to take the lead and mould them afresh; but this he could not
+do while Pompeius was looked up to as the last great conqueror. So C&aelig;sar
+meant to serve his consulate, take some government where he could grow
+famous and form an army, and then come home and mould everything anew.
+After a year's service in Spain as propr&aelig;tor, C&aelig;sar came back and made
+friends with Pompeius and Crassus, giving his daughter Julia in marriage
+to Pompeius, and forming what was called a triumvirate, or union of
+three men. Thus he easily obtained the consulship, and showed himself
+the friend of the people by bringing in an Agrarian Law for dividing the
+public lands in Campania among the poorer citizens, not forgetting
+Pompeius' old soldiers; also taking other measures which might make the
+Senate recollect that Sulla had foretold that he would be another Marius
+and more.</p>
+
+<p>After this, he took Gaul as his province, and spent seven years in
+subduing it bit by bit, and in making two visits to Britain. He might
+pretty well trust the rotten state of Rome to be ready for his
+interference when he came back. Clodius had actually dared to bring
+Cicero to a trial for having put to death the friends of Catilina
+without allowing them to plead their own cause. Pompeius would not help
+him, and the people banished him four hundred miles from Rome, when he
+went to Sicily, where he was very miserable; but his exile only lasted
+two years, and then better counsels prevailed, and he was brought home
+by a general vote, and welcomed almost as if it had been a triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Marcus Porcius Cato was as honest and true a man as Cicero, but very
+rough and stern, so that he was feared and hated; and there were often
+fierce quarrels in the Senate and Forum, and in one of these Pompeius'
+robe was sprinkled with blood. On his return home, his young wife Julia
+thought he had been hurt, and the shock brought on an illness of which
+she died; thus breaking the link between her husband and father.</p>
+
+<a name="illus247"></a><center><img src="images/illus247.png" alt="amphitheatre"></center>
+<h6>AMPHITHEATRE.</h6>
+
+<p>Pompeius did all he could to please the Romans when he was consul
+together with Crassus. He had been for some time building a most
+splendid theatre in the Campus Martius, after the Greek fashion, open to
+the sky, and with tiers of galleries circling round an arena; but the
+Greeks had never used their theatres for the savage sports for which
+this was intended. When it was opened, five hundred lions, eighteen
+elephants, and a multitude of gladiators were provided to fight in
+different fashions with one another before thirty thousand spectators,
+the whole being crowned by a temple to Conquering Venus. After his
+consulate, Pompeius took Spain as his province, but did not go there,
+managing it by deputy; while Crassus had Syria, and there went to war
+with the wild Parthians on the Eastern border. In the battle of Carrh&aelig;,
+the army of Crassus was entirely routed by the Parthians; he was killed,
+his head was cut off, and his mouth filled up with molten gold in scorn
+of his riches. At Rome, there was such distress that no one thought much
+even of such a disaster. Bribes were given to secure elections, and
+there was nothing but tumult and uproar, in which good men like Cicero
+and Cato could do nothing. Clodius was killed in one of these frays, and
+the mob grew so furious that the Senate chose Pompeius to be sole consul
+to put them down; and this he did for a short time, but all fell into
+confusion again while he was very ill of a fever at Naples, and even
+when he recovered there was a feeling that C&aelig;sar was wanted. But C&aelig;sar's
+friends said he must not be called upon to give up his army unless
+Pompeius gave up his command of the army in Spain, and neither of them
+would resign.</p>
+
+<a name="illus248"></a><center><img src="images/illus248.png" alt="arena"></center>
+<h6>THE ARENA.</h6>
+
+<p>C&aelig;sar advanced with all his forces as far as Ravenna, which was still
+part of Cisalpine Gaul, and then the consul, Marcus Marcellus, begged
+Pompeius to protect the commonwealth, and he took up arms. Two of C&aelig;sars
+great friends, Marcus Antonius and Caius Cassius, who were tribunes,
+forbade this; and when they were not heeded, they fled to C&aelig;sar's camp
+asking his protection.</p>
+
+<p>So he advanced. It was not lawful for an imperator, or general in
+command of an army, to come within the Roman territory with his troops
+except for his triumph, and the little river Rubicon was the boundary of
+Cisalpine Gaul. So when C&aelig;sar crossed it, he took the first step in
+breaking through old Roman rules, and thus the saying arose that one has
+passed the Rubicon when one has gone so far in a matter that there is no
+turning back. Though C&aelig;sar's army was but small, his fame was such that
+everybody seemed struck with dismay, even Pompeius himself, and instead
+of fighting, he carried off all the senators of his party to the South,
+even to the extreme point of Italy at Brundusium. C&aelig;sar marched after
+them thither, having met with no resistance, and having, indeed, won all
+Italy in sixty days. As he advanced on Brundusium, Pompeius embarked on
+board a ship in the harbor and sailed away, meaning, no doubt, to raise
+an army in the provinces and return&mdash;some feared like Sulla&mdash;to take
+vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>C&aelig;sar was appointed Dictator, and after crushing Pompeius' friends in
+Spain, he pursued him into Macedonia, where Pompeius had been collecting
+all the friends of the old commonwealth. There was a great battle fought
+at Pharsalia, a battle which nearly put an end to the old government of
+Rome, for C&aelig;sar gained a great victory; and Pompeius fled to the coast,
+where he found a vessel and sailed for Egypt. He sent a message to ask
+shelter at Alexandria, and the advisers of the young king pretended to
+welcome him, but they really intended to make friends with the victor;
+and as Pompeius stepped ashore he was stabbed in the back, his body
+thrown into the surf, and his head cut off.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>JULIUS C&AElig;SAR.</h3>
+
+<h2>48&mdash;44.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>With Pompeius fell the hopes of those who were faithful to the old
+government, such as Cicero and Cato. They had only to wait and see what
+C&aelig;sar would do, and with the memory of Marius in their minds.</p>
+
+<a name="illus254"></a><center><img src="images/illus254.png" alt="caesar"></center>
+<h6> JULIUS C&AElig;SAR.</h6>
+
+<p>C&aelig;sar did not come at once to Rome; he had first to reduce the East to
+obedience. Egypt was under the last descendants of Alexander's general
+Ptolemy, and was an ally of Rome, that is, only remaining a kingdom by
+her permission. The king was a wretched weak lad; his sister Cleopatra,
+who was joined with him in the throne, was one of the most beautiful and
+winning women who ever lived. C&aelig;sar, who needed money, demanded some
+that was owing to the state. The young king's advisers refused, and
+C&aelig;sar, who had but a small force with him, was shut up in a quarter of
+Alexandria where he could get no fresh water but from pits which his men
+dug in the sand. He burnt the Egyptian fleet that it might not stop the
+succors that were coming from Syria, and he tried to take the Isle of
+Pharos, with the lighthouse on it, but his ship was sunk, and he was
+obliged to save himself by swimming, holding his journals in one hand
+above the water. However, the forces from Syria were soon brought to
+him, and he was able to fight a battle in which the young king was
+drowned; and Egypt was at his mercy. Cleopatra was determined to have an
+interview with him, and had herself carried into his rooms in a roll of
+carpet, and when there, she charmed him so much that he set her up as
+queen of Egypt. He remained three months longer in Egypt collecting
+money; and hearing that Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, had attacked
+the Roman settlements in Asia Minor, he sailed for Tarsus, marched
+against Pharnaces, routed and killed him in battle. The success was
+announced to the Senate in the following brief words, &quot;<i>Veni, vidi,
+vici</i>&quot;&mdash;&quot;I came, I saw, I conquered.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus255"></a><center><img src="images/illus255.png" alt="cato"></center>
+<h6>CATO.</h6>
+
+<p>He was a second time appointed Dictator, and came home to arrange
+affairs; but there were no proscriptions, though he took away the
+estates of those who opposed him. There was still a party of the
+senators and their supporters who had followed Pompeius in Africa, with
+Cato and Cn&aelig;us Pompeius, the eldest son of the great leader, and C&aelig;sar
+had to follow them thither. He gave them a great defeat at Thapsus, and
+the remnant took refuge in the city of Utica, whither C&aelig;sar followed
+them. They would have stood a siege, but the townspeople would not
+consent, and Cato sent off all his party by sea, and remained alone with
+his son and a few of his friends, not to face the conqueror, but to die
+by his own sword ere he came, as the Romans had learned from Stoic
+philosophy to think the nobler part.</p>
+
+<a name="illus256"></a><center><img src="images/illus256.png" alt="funeral"></center>
+<h6> FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES IN THE COLUMBARIUM (lit. <i>Pigeon-house</i>)
+OF THE HOUSE OF JULIUS C&AElig;SAR AT THE PORTA CAPENA IN ROME.<br>
+
+(The rows of niches for the cinerary urns in a Roman sepulchre were
+called by this name from their resemblance to a dovecot.)</h6>
+
+<p>Such of the Senate as had not joined Pompeius were ready to fall down
+and worship C&aelig;sar when he came home. So rejoiced was Rome to fear no
+proscription, that temples were dedicated to C&aelig;sar's clemency, and his
+image was to be carried in procession with those of the gods. He was
+named Dictator for ten years, and was received with four triumphs&mdash;over
+the Gauls, over the Egyptians, over Pharnaces, and over Juba, an African
+king who had aided Cato. Foremost of the Gaulish prisoners was the brave
+Vercingetorix, and among the Egyptians, Arsino&euml;, the sister of
+Cleopatra. A banquet was given at his cost to the whole Roman people,
+and the shows of gladiators and beasts surpassed all that had ever been
+seen. The Julii were said to be descended from &AElig;neas and to Venus, as
+his ancestress, C&aelig;sar dedicated a breastplate of pearls from the river
+mussels of Britain. Still, however, he had to go to Spain to reduce the
+sons of Pompeius. They were defeated in battle, the elder was killed,
+but Cn&aelig;us, the younger, held out in the mountains and hid himself among
+the natives.</p>
+
+<p>After this, C&aelig;sar returned to Rome to carry out his plans. He was
+dictator for ten years and consul for five, and was also imperator or
+commander of an army he was not made to disband, so that he nearly was
+as powerful as any king; and, as he saw that such an enormous domain as
+Rome now possessed could never be governed by two magistrates changing
+every year, he prepared matters for there being one ruler. The influence
+of the Senate, too, he weakened very much by naming a great many persons
+to it of no rank or distinction, till there were nine hundred members,
+and nobody thought much of being a senator. He also made an immense
+number of new citizens, and he caused a great survey to be begun by
+Roman officers in preparation for properly arranging the provinces,
+governments, and tribute; and he began to have the laws drawn up in
+regular order. In fact, he was one of the greatest men the world has
+ever produced, not only as a conqueror, but a statesman and ruler; and
+though his power over Rome was not according to the laws, and had been
+gained by a rebellion, he was using it for her good.</p>
+
+<p>He was learned in all philosophy and science, and his history of his
+wars in Gaul has come down to our times. As a high patrician by birth,
+he was Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, and thus had to fix all the
+festival days in each year. Now the year had been supposed to be only
+three hundred and fifty-five days long, and the Pontifex put in another
+month or several days whenever he pleased, so that there was great
+confusion, and the feast days for the harvest and vintage came,
+according to the calendar, three months before there was any corn or
+grapes.</p>
+
+<p>To set this to rights, since it was now understood that the length of
+the year was three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours, C&aelig;sar and
+the scientific men who assisted him devised the fresh arrangement that
+we call leap year, adding a day to the three hundred and sixty-five once
+in four years. He also changed the name of one of the summer months
+from Sextile to July, in honor of himself. Another work of his was
+restoring Corinth and Carthage, which had both been ruined the same
+year, and now were both refounded the same year.</p>
+
+<p>He was busy about the glory of the state, but there was much to shock
+old Roman feelings in his conduct. Cleopatra had followed him to Rome,
+and he was thinking of putting away his wife Calphurnia to marry her.
+But his keeping the dictatorship was the real grievance, and the remains
+of the old party in the Senate could not bear that the patrician freedom
+of Rome should be lost. Every now and then his flatterers offered him a
+royal crown and hailed him as king, though he always refused it, and
+this title still stirred up bitter hatred. He was preparing an army,
+intending to march into the further East, avenge Crassus' defeat on the
+Parthians, and march where no one but Alexander had made his way; and if
+he came back victorious from thence, nothing would be able to stand
+against him.</p>
+
+<p>The plotters then resolved to strike before he set out. Caius Cassius, a
+tall, lean man, who had lately been made pr&aelig;tor, was the chief
+conspirator, and with him was Marcus Junius Brutus, a descendant of him
+who overthrew the Tarquins, and husband to Porcia, Cato's daughter, also
+another Brutus named Decimus, hitherto a friend of C&aelig;sar, and newly
+appointed to the government of Cisalpine Gaul. These and twelve more
+agreed to murder C&aelig;sar on the 15th of March, called in the Roman
+calendar the Ides of March, when he went to the senate-house.</p>
+
+<p>Rumors got abroad and warnings came to him about that special day. His
+wife dreamt so terrible a dream that he had almost yielded to her
+entreaties to stay at home, when Decimus Brutus came in and laughed him
+out of it. As he was carried to the senate-house in a litter, a man gave
+him a writing and begged him to read it instantly; but he kept it rolled
+in his hand without looking. As he went up the steps he said to the
+augur Spurius, &quot;The Ides of March are come.&quot; &quot;Yes, C&aelig;sar,&quot; was the
+answer; &quot;but they are not passed.&quot; A few steps further on, one of the
+conspirators met him with a petition, and the others joined in it,
+clinging to his robe and his neck, till another caught his toga and
+pulled it over his arms, and then the first blow was struck with a
+dagger. C&aelig;sar struggled at first as all fifteen tried to strike at him,
+but, when he saw the hand uplifted of his treacherous friend Decimus,
+he exclaimed, &quot;<i>Et tu Brute</i>&quot;&mdash;&quot;Thou, too, Brutus&quot;&mdash;drew his toga over
+his head, and fell dead at the foot of the statue of Pompeius.</p>
+
+<a name="illus263"></a><center><img src="images/illus263.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.</h3>
+
+<h2>44&mdash;33.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The murderers of C&aelig;sar had expected the Romans to hail them as
+deliverers from a tyrant, but his great friend Marcus Antonius, who was,
+together with him, consul for that year, made a speech over his body as
+it lay on a couch of gold and ivory in the Forum ready for the funeral.
+Antonius read aloud C&aelig;sar's will, and showed what benefits he had
+intended for his fellow-citizens, and how he loved them, so that love
+for him and wrath against his enemies filled every hearer. The army, of
+course, were furious against the murderers; the Senate was terrified,
+and granted everything Antonius chose to ask, provided he would protect
+them, whereupon he begged for a guard for himself that he might be
+saved from C&aelig;sar's fate, and this they gave him; while the fifteen
+murderers fled secretly, mostly to Cisalpine Gaul, of which Decimus
+Brutus was governor.</p>
+
+<p>C&aelig;sar had no child but the Julia who had been wife to Pompeius, and his
+heir was his young cousin Caius Octavius, who changed his name to Caius
+Julius C&aelig;sar Octavianus, and, coming to Rome, demanded his inheritance,
+which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; but
+Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairness
+that many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, who
+had always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thing
+to be done was to put down the murderers&mdash;Decimus Brutus was in Gaul,
+Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had also
+raised an army in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Good men in the Senate dreaded no one so much as Antonius, and put their
+hope in young Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches against
+Antonius, which are called Philippics, because they denounce him as
+Demosthenes used to denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, they
+were the last flashes of spirit in a sinking state; and Cicero, in
+those days, was the foremost and best man who was trying at his own risk
+to save the old institutions of his country. But it was all in vain;
+they were too rotten to last, and there were not enough of honest men to
+make a stand against a violent unscrupulous schemer like Antonius, above
+all now that the clever young Octavianus saw it was for his interest to
+make common cause with him, and with a third friend of C&aelig;sar, rich but
+dull, named Marcus &AElig;milius Lepidus. They called on Decimus Brutus to
+surrender his forces to them, and marched against him. Then his troops
+deserted him, and he tried to escape into the Alps, but was delivered up
+to Antonius and put to death.</p>
+
+<a name="illus266"></a><center><img src="images/illus266.png" alt="marcus"></center>
+<h6> MARCUS ANTONIUS.</h6>
+
+<p>Soon after, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus all met on a little island
+in the river Rhenus and agreed to form a triumvirate for five years for
+setting things to rights once more, all three enjoying consular power
+together; and, as they had the command of all the armies, there was no
+one to stop them. Lepidus was to stay and govern Rome, while the other
+two hunted down the murderers of C&aelig;sar in the East. But first, there was
+a deadly vengeance to be taken in the city upon all who could be
+supposed to have favored the murder of C&aelig;sar, or who could be enemies to
+their schemes. So these three sat down with a list of the citizens
+before them to make a proscription, each letting a kinsman or friend of
+his own be marked for death, provided he might slay one related to
+another of the three. The dreadful list was set up in the Forum, and a
+price paid for the heads of the people in it, so that soldiers,
+ruffians, and slaves brought them in; but it does not seem that&mdash;as in
+the other two proscriptions&mdash;there was random murder, and many bribed
+their assassins and escaped from Italy. Octavianus had marked the fewest
+and tried to save Cicero, but Antonius insisted on his death. On hearing
+that he was in the fatal roll, Cicero had left Rome with his brother,
+and slowly travelled towards the coast from one country house to another
+till he came to Antium, whence he meant to sail for Greece; but there he
+was overtaken. His brother was killed at once, but he was put into a
+boat by his slaves, and went down the coast to Formi&aelig;, where he landed
+again, and, going to a house near, said he would rather die in his own
+country which he had so often saved. However, when the pursuers knocked
+at the gate, his slaves placed him in a litter and hurried him out at
+another door. He was, however, again overtaken, and he forbade his
+slaves to fight for him, but stretched out his throat for the sword,
+with his eyes full upon it. His head was carried to Antonius, whose wife
+Fulvia actually pierced the tongue with her bodkin in revenge for the
+speeches it had made against her husband.</p>
+
+<p>After this dreadful work, Antonius and Octavianus went across to Greece,
+where Marcus Brutus had collected the remains of the army that had
+fought under Pompeius. He had been made much of at Athens, where his
+statue had been set up beside that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the
+slayers of Pisistratus. Cassius had plundered Asia Minor, and the two
+met at Sardis. It is said that the night before they were to pass into
+Macedonia, Brutus was sitting alone in his tent, when he saw the figure
+of a man before him. &quot;Who art thou?&quot; he asked, and the answer was, &quot;I am
+thine evil genius, Brutus; I will meet thee again at Philippi.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus269"></a><center><img src="images/illus269.png" alt="brutus"></center>
+<h6> MARCUS BRUTUS.</h6>
+
+<p>And it was at Philippi that Brutus and Cassius found themselves face to
+face with Antonius and Octavianus. Each army was divided into two, and
+Brutus, who fought against Octavianus, put his army to flight, but
+Cassius was driven back by Antonius; and seeing a troop of horsemen
+coming towards him, he thought all was lost, and threw himself upon a
+sword. Brutus gathered the troops together, and after twenty days
+renewed the fight, when he was routed, fled, and hid himself, but after
+some hours put himself to death, as did his wife Porcia when she heard
+of his end.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Octavianus went back to Italy, while Antonius stayed to
+pacify the East. When he was at Tarsus, the lovely queen of Egypt came,
+resolved to win him over. She sailed up the Cydnus in a beautiful
+galley, carved, gilded, and inlaid with ivory, with sails of purple silk
+and silvered oars, moving to the sound of flutes, while she lay on the
+deck under a star-spangled canopy arrayed as Venus, with her ladies as
+nymphs, and little boys as Cupids fanning her. Antonius was perfectly
+fascinated, and she took him back to Alexandria with her, heeding
+nothing but her and the delights with which she entertained him, though
+his wife Fulvia and his brother were struggling to keep up his power at
+Rome. He did come home, but only to make a fresh agreement with
+Octavianus, by which Fulvia was given up and he married Octavia, the
+widow of Marcellus and sister of Octavianus. But he could not bear to
+stay long away from Cleopatra, and, deserting Octavia, he returned to
+Egypt, where the most wonderful revelries were kept up. Stories are told
+of eight wild boars being roasted in one day, each being begun a little
+later than the last, that one might be in perfection when Antonius
+should call for his dinner. Cleopatra vowed once that she would drink
+the most costly of draughts, and, taking off an earring of inestimable
+price, dissolved it in vinegar and swallowed it.</p>
+
+<a name="illus271"></a><center><img src="images/illus271.png" alt="alexandria"></center>
+<h6> ALEXANDRIA.</h6>
+
+<p>In the meantime, Octavianus and Lepidus together had put down Decimus,
+and Lepidus had then tried to overcome Octavianus, but was himself
+conquered and banished; for Octavianus, was a kindly man, who never shed
+blood if he could help it, and, now that he was alone at Rome, won every
+one's heart by his gracious ways, while Antonius' riots in Egypt were a
+scandal to all who loved virtue and nobleness. So far was the Roman
+fallen that he even promised Cleopatra to conquer Italy and make
+Alexandria the capital of the world. Octavia tried to win him back, but
+she was a grave, virtuous Roman matron, and coarse, dissipated Antonius
+did not care for her compared with the enticing Egyptian queen. It was
+needful at last for Octavianus to destroy this dangerous power, and he
+mustered a fleet and army, while Antonius and Cleopatra sailed out of
+Alexandria with their ships and gave battle off the Cape of Actium. In
+the midst, either fright or treachery made Cleopatra sail away, and all
+the Egyptian ships with her, so that Antonius turned at once and fled
+with her. They tried to raise the East in their favor, but all their
+allies deserted them, and their soldiers went over to Alexandria, where
+Octavianus followed them. Then Cleopatra betrayed her lover, and put
+into the hands of Octavianus the ships in which he might have fled. He
+killed himself, and Cleopatra surrendered, hoping to charm young
+Octavianus as she had done Julius and Antonius, but when she saw him
+grave and unmoved, and found he meant to exhibit her in his triumph, she
+went to the tomb of Antonius and crowned it with flowers. The next day
+she was found on her couch, in her royal robes, dead, and her two maids
+dying too. &quot;Is this well?&quot; asked the man who found her. &quot;It is well for
+the daughter of kings,&quot; said her maid with her last breath. Cleopatra
+had long made experiments on easy ways of death, and it was believed
+that an asp was brought to her in a basket of figs as the means of her
+death.</p>
+<br>
+
+<a name="illus273"></a><center><img src="images/illus273.png" alt="octavius"></center>
+<h6>CAIUS OCTAVIUS.</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>C&AElig;SAR AUGUSTUS.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>B.C.</small> 33&mdash;<small>A.D.</small> 14.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The death of Antonius ended the fierce struggles which had torn Rome so
+long. Octavianus was left alone; all the men who had striven for the old
+government were dead, and those who were left were worn out and only
+longed for rest. They had found that he was kind and friendly, and
+trusted to him thankfully, nay, were ready to treat him as a kind of
+god. The old frame of constitution went on as usual; there was still a
+Senate, still consuls, and all the other magistrates, but C&aelig;sar
+Octavianus had the power belonging to each gathered in one. He was
+prince of the Senate, which gave him rule in the city; pr&aelig;tor, which
+made him judge, and gave him a special guard of soldiers called the
+Pr&aelig;torian Guard to execute justice; and tribune of the people, which
+made him their voice; and even after his triumph he was still imperator,
+or general of the army. This word becomes in English, emperor, but it
+meant at this time merely commander-in-chief. He was also Pontifex
+Maximus, as Julius C&aelig;sar had been; and there was a general feeling that
+he was something sacred and set apart as the ruler and peace-maker; and,
+as he shared this feeling himself, he took the name of Augustus, which
+is the one by which he is always known.</p>
+
+<a name="illus276"></a><center><img src="images/illus276.png" alt="augustus"></center>
+<h6>STATUE OF AUGUSTUS AT THE VATICAN.</h6>
+
+<p>He did not, however, take to himself any great show or state. He lived
+in his family abode, and dressed and walked about the streets like any
+other Roman gentleman of consular rank, and no special respect was paid
+to him in speech, for, warned by the fate of Julius, he was determined
+to prevent the Romans from being put in mind of kings and crowns. He was
+a wise and deep-thinking man, and he tried to carry out the plans of
+Julius for the benefit of the nation and of the whole Roman world. He
+had the survey finished of all the countries of the empire, which now
+formed a complete border round the Mediterranean Sea, reaching as far
+north as the British Channel, the Alps, and the Black Sea; as far
+south as the African desert, as far west as the Atlantic, and east as
+the borders of the Euphrates; and he also had a universal census made of
+the whole of the inhabitants. It was the first time such a thing had
+been possible, for all the world was at last at peace, so that the
+Temple of Janus was closed for the third and last time in Roman history.
+There was a feeling all over the world that a great Deliverer and
+peaceful Prince was to be expected at this time. One of the Sybils was
+believed to have so sung, and the Romans, in their relief at the good
+rule of Augustus, thought he was the promised one; but they little knew
+why God had brought about this great stillness from all wars, or why He
+moved the heart of Augustus to make the decree that all the world should
+be taxed&mdash;namely, that the true Prince of Peace, the real Deliverer,
+might be born in the home of His forefathers, Bethlehem, the city of
+David.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of Augustus' taxing was to make a regular division of the
+empire into provinces for the proconsuls to govern, with lesser
+divisions for the propr&aelig;tors, while many cities, especially Greek ones,
+were allowed their own magistrates, and some small tributary kingdoms
+still remained till the old royal family should either die out or
+offend the Romans. In these lands the people were governed by their own
+laws, unless they were made Roman citizens; and this freedom was more
+and more granted, and saved them from paying the tribute all the rest
+had to pay, and which went to support the armies and other public
+institutions at Rome, and to provide the corn which was regularly
+distributed to such citizens as claimed it at Rome. A Roman colony was a
+settlement, generally of old soldiers who had had lands granted to them,
+and kept their citizenship; and it was like another little Rome managing
+its own affairs, though subject to the mother city. There were many of
+these colonies, especially in Gaul on the north coast, to defend it from
+the Germans. Cologne was one, and still keeps its name. The tribute was
+carefully fixed, and Augustus did his best to prevent the governors from
+preying on the people.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to bring back better ways to Rome, which was in a sad state,
+full of vice and riot, and with little of the old, noble, hardy ways of
+the former times. The educated men had studied Greek philosophy till
+they had no faith in their own gods, and, indeed, had so mixed up their
+mythology with the Greek that they really did not know who their own
+were, and could not tell who were the greater gods whom Decius Mus
+invoked before he rushed on the enemy; and yet they kept up their
+worship, because their feasts were so connected with the State that
+everything depended on them; but they made them no real judges or
+helpers. The best men of the time were those who had taken up the Stoic
+philosophy, which held that virtue was above all things, whether it was
+rewarded or not; the worst were often the Epicureans, who held that we
+had better enjoy all we can in this life, being sure of nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>Learning was much esteemed in the time of Augustus. He and his two great
+friends, Caius Cilnius M&aelig;cenas and Vipsanius Agrippa, both had a great
+esteem for scholarship and poetry, and in especial the house of M&aelig;cenas
+was always open to literary men. The two chief poets of Rome, Publius
+Virgilius Maro and Quintus Horatius Flaccus, were warm friends of his.
+Virgil wrote poems on husbandry, and short dialogue poems called
+eclogues, in one of which he spoke of the time of Augustus in words that
+would almost serve as a prophecy of the kingdom of Him who was just born
+at Bethlehem. By desire of Augustus, he also wrote the <i>&AElig;neid</i>, a poem
+on the war-doings of &AElig;neas and his settlement in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Horace wrote odes and letters in verse and satires, which show the
+habits and ways of thinking of his time in a very curious manner; and
+there were many other writers whose works have not come down to us; but
+the Latin of this time is the model of the language, and an Augustan age
+has ever since been a term for one in which literature flourishes.</p>
+
+<p>All the early part of Augustus' reign was prosperous, but he had no son,
+only a daughter named Julia. He meant to marry her to Marcellus, the son
+of his sister Antonia, but Marcellus died young, and was lamented in
+Virgil's <i>&AElig;neid</i>; so Julia was given to Agrippa's son. Augustus' second
+wife was Livia, who had been married to Tiberius Claudius Nero, and had
+two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, whom Augustus adopted as his own and
+intended for his heirs; and when Julia lost her husband Agrippa and her
+two young sons, he forced Tiberius to divorce the young wife he really
+loved to marry her. It was a great grief to Tiberius, and seems to have
+quite changed his character into being grave, silent, and morose. Julia,
+though carefully brought up, was one of the most wicked and depraved
+of women, and almost broke her father's heart. He banished her to an
+island near Rhegium, and when she died there, would allow no funeral
+honors to be paid to her.</p>
+
+<a name="illus282"></a><center><img src="images/illus282.png" alt="livia"></center>
+<h6> PAINTINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LIVIA.</h6>
+
+<p>The peace was beginning to be broken by wars with the Germans; and young
+Drusus was commanding the army against them, and gaining such honor that
+he was called Germanicus, when he fell from his horse and died of his
+injuries, leaving one young son. He was buried at Rome, and his brother
+Tiberius walked all the way beside the bier, with his long flaxen hair
+flowing on his shoulders. Tiberius then went back to command the armies
+on the Rhine. Some half-conquered country lay beyond, and the Germans in
+the forests were at this time under a brave leader called Arminius. They
+were attacked by the proconsul Quinctilius Varus, and near the river
+Ems, in the Herycimian forest, Arminius turned on him and routed him
+completely, cutting off the whole army, so that only a few fled back to
+Tiberius to tell the tale, and he had to fall back and defend the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>The news of this disaster was a terrible shock to the Emperor. He sat
+grieving over it, and at times he dashed his head against the wall,
+crying, &quot;Varus, Varus! give me back my legions.&quot; His friends were dead,
+he was an old man now, and sadness was around him. He was soon, however,
+grave and composed again; and, as his health began to fail, he sent for
+Tiberius and put his affairs into his hands. When his dying day came, he
+met it calmly. He asked if there was any fear of a tumult on his death,
+and was told there was none; then he called for a mirror, and saw that
+his grey hair and beard were in order, and, asking his friends whether
+he had played his part well, he uttered a verse from a play bidding them
+applaud his exit, bade Livia remember him, and so died in his
+seventy-seventh year, having ruled fifty-eight years&mdash;ten as a triumvir,
+forty-eight alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>TIBERIUS AND CALIGULA.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>A.D.</small> 14&mdash;41.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>No difficulty was made about giving all the powers Augustus had held to
+his stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who had also a right to the names
+of Julius C&aelig;sar Augustus, and was in his own time generally called
+C&aelig;sar. The Senate had grown too helpless to think for themselves, and
+all the choice they ever made of the consuls was that the Emperor gave
+out four names, among which they chose two.</p>
+
+<p>Tiberius had been a grave, morose man ever since he was deprived of the
+wife he loved, and had lost his brother; and he greatly despised the
+mean, cringing ways round him, and kept to himself; but his nephew,
+called Germanicus, after his father, was the person whom every one
+loved and trusted. He had married Agrippina, Julia's daughter, who was
+also a very good and noble person; and when he was sent against the
+Germans, she went with him, and her little boys ran about among the
+soldiers, and were petted by them. One of them, Caius, was called by the
+soldiers Caligula, or the Little Shoe, because he wore a caliga or shoe
+like theirs; and he never lost the nickname.</p>
+
+<p>Germanicus earned his surname over again by driving Arminius back; but
+he was more enterprising than would have been approved by Augustus, who
+thought it wiser to guard what he had than to make wider conquests; and
+Tiberius was not only one of the same mind, but was jealous of the great
+love that all the army were showing for his nephew, and this distrust
+was increased when the soldiers in the East begged for Germanicus to
+lead them against the Parthians. He set out, visiting all the famous
+places in Greece by the way, and going to see the wonders of Egypt, but
+while in Syria he fell ill of a wasting sickness and died, so that many
+suspected the spy, Cn&aelig;us Piso, whom Tiberius had sent with him, of
+having poisoned him. When his wife Agrippina came home, bringing his
+corpse to be burnt and his ashes placed in the burying-place of the
+C&aelig;sars, there was universal love and pity for her. Piso seized on all
+the offices that Germanicus had held, but was called back to Rome, and
+was just going to be put upon his trial when he cut his own throat.</p>
+
+<a name="illus288"></a><center><img src="images/illus288.png" alt="tiberius"></center>
+<h6> RUINS OF THE PALACES OF TIBERIUS.</h6>
+
+<p>All this tended to make Tiberius more gloomy and distrustful, and when
+his mother Livia died he had no one to keep him in check, but fell under
+the influence of a man named Sejanus, who managed all his affairs for
+him, while he lived in a villa in the island of Capre&aelig; in the Bay of
+Naples, seeing hardly any but a few intimates, given up to all sorts of
+evil luxuries and self-indulgences, and hating and dreading every one.
+Agrippina was so much loved and respected that he dreaded and disliked
+her beyond all others; and Sejanus contrived to get up an accusation of
+plotting against the state, upon which she and her eldest son were
+banished to two small rocky isles in the Mediterranean Sea. The other
+two sons, Drusus and Caius, were kept by Tiberius at Capre&aelig;, till
+Tiberius grew suspicious of Drusus and threw him into prison. Sejanus,
+who had encouraged all his dislike to his own kinsmen, and was managing
+all Rome, then began to hope to gain the full power; but his plans were
+guessed by Tiberius, and he caused his former favorite to be set upon
+in the senate-house and put to death.</p>
+
+<a name="illus291"></a><center><img src="images/illus291.png" alt="agrippina"></center>
+<h6>AGRIPPINA.</h6>
+
+<p>It is strange to remember that, while such dark deeds were being done at
+Rome, came the three years when the true Light was shining in the
+darkness. It was in the time of Tiberius C&aelig;sar, when Pontius Pilatus was
+propr&aelig;tor of Palestine, that our Lord Jesus Christ spent three years in
+teaching and working miracles; then was crucified and slain by wicked
+hands, that the sin of mankind might be redeemed. Then He rose again
+from the dead and ascended into Heaven, leaving His Apostles to make
+known what he had done in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>To the East, where our Lord dwelt, nay, to all the rest of the empire,
+the reign of Tiberius was a quiet time, with the good government
+arranged by Augustus working on. It was only his own family, and the
+senators and people of rank at Rome, who had much to fear from his
+strange, harsh, and jealous temper. The Claudian family had in all times
+been shy, proud, and stern, and to have such power as belonged to
+Augustus C&aelig;sar was more than their heads could bear. Tiberius hated and
+suspected everybody, and yet he did not like putting people to death, so
+he let Drusus be starved to death in his prison, and Agrippina chose the
+same way of dying in her island, while some of the chief senators
+received such messages that they put themselves to death. He led a
+wretched life, watching for treason and fearing everybody, and trying to
+drown the thought of danger in the banquets of Capre&aelig;, where the remains
+of his villa may still be seen. Once he set out, intending to visit
+Rome, but no sooner had he landed in Campania than the sight of hundreds
+of country people shouting welcome so disturbed him that he hastened on
+board ship again, and thus entered the Tiber; but at the very sight of
+the hills of Rome his terror returned, and he had his galley turned
+about and went back to his island, which he never again quitted.</p>
+
+<p>Only two males of his family were left now&mdash;a great-nephew and a nephew,
+Caius, that son of the second Germanicus who had been nicknamed
+Caligula, a youth of a strange, exciteable, feverish nature, but who
+from his fright at Tiberius had managed to keep the peace with him, and
+had only once been for a short time in disgrace; and his uncle, the
+youngest son of the first Germanicus, commonly called Claudius, a very
+dull, heavy man, fond of books, but so slow and shy that he was
+considered to be wanting in brains, and thus had never fallen under
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>At length Tiberius fell ill, and when he was known to be dying, he was
+smothered with pillows as he began to recover from a fainting fit, lest
+he should take vengeance on those who had for a moment thought him dead.
+He died <small>A.D.</small> 37, and the power went to Caligula, properly
+called Caius, who was only twenty-five, and who began in a kindly,
+generous spirit, which pleased the people and gave them hope; but to
+have so much power was too much for his brain, and he can only be
+thought of as mad, especially after he had a severe illness, which made
+the people so anxious that he was puffed up with the notion of his
+own importance.</p>
+
+<a name="illus294"></a><center><img src="images/illus294.png" alt="rome"></center>
+<h6>ROME IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS C&AElig;SAR.</h6>
+
+<p>He put to death all who offended him, and, inheriting some of Tiberius'
+distrust and hatred of the people, he cried out, when they did not
+admire one of his shows as much as he expected, &quot;Would that the people
+of Rome had but one neck, so that I might behead them all at once.&quot; He
+planned great public buildings, but had not steadiness to carry them
+out; and he became so greedy of the fame which, poor wretch, he could
+not earn, that he was jealous even of the dead. He burned the books of
+Livy and Virgil out of the libraries, and deprived the statues of the
+great men of old of the marks by which they were known&mdash;Cincinnatus of
+his curls, and Torquatus of his collar, and he forbade the last of the
+Pompeii to be called Magnus.</p>
+
+<p>He made an expedition into Gaul, and talked of conquering Britain, but
+he got no further than the shore of the channel, where, instead of
+setting sail, he bade the soldiers gather up shells, which he sent home
+to the Senate to be placed among the treasures of the Capitol, calling
+them the spoils of the conquered ocean. Then he collected the German
+slaves and the tallest Gauls he could find, commanded the latter to dye
+their hair and beards to a light color, and brought them home to walk
+in his triumph. The Senate, however, were slow to understand that he
+could really expect a triumph, and this affronted him so much that, when
+they offered him one, he would not have it, and went on insulting them.
+He made his horse a consul, though only for a day, and showed it with
+golden oats before it in a golden manger. Once, when the two consuls
+were sitting by him, he burst out laughing, to think, he said, how with
+one word he could make both their heads roll on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The provinces were not so ill off, but the state of Rome was unbearable.
+Everybody was in danger, and at last a plot was formed for his death;
+and as he was on his way from his house to the circus, and stopped to
+look at some singers who were going to perform, a party of men set upon
+him and killed him with many wounds, after he had reigned only five
+years, and when he was but thirty years old.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CLAUDIUS AND NERO.</h3>
+
+<h2><small>A.D.</small> 41-68.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Poor dull Claudius heard an uproar and hid himself, thinking he was
+going to be murdered like his nephew, but still worse was going to
+befall him. They were looking for him to make him Emperor, for he was
+the last of his family. He was clumsy in figure, though his face was
+good, and he was a kind-hearted man, who made large promises, and tried
+to do well; but he was slow and timid, and let himself be led by wicked
+men and women, so that his rule ended no better than that of the former
+C&aelig;sars.</p>
+
+<p>He began in a spirited way, by sending troops who conquered the southern
+part of Britain, and making an expedition thither himself. His wife
+chose to share his triumph, which was not, as usual, a drive in a
+chariot, but a sitting in armor on their thrones, with the eagles and
+standards over their heads, and the prisoners led up before them. Among
+them came the great British chief Caractacus, who is said to have
+declared that he could not think why those who had such palaces as there
+were at Rome should want the huts of the Britons.</p>
+
+<p>Claudius was kind to the people in the distant provinces. He gave the
+Jews a king again, Herod Agrippa, the grandson of the first Herod, who
+was much loved by them, but died suddenly after a few years at C&aelig;sarea,
+after the meeting with the Tyrians, when he let them greet him as a god.
+There were a great many Jews living at Rome, but those from Jerusalem
+quarrelled with those from Alexandria; and one year, when there was a
+great scarcity of corn, Claudius banished them all from Rome.</p>
+
+<a name="illus299"></a><center><img src="images/illus299.png" alt="claudius"></center>
+<h6>CLAUDIUS.</h6>
+
+<p>Claudius was very unhappy in his wives. Two he divorced, and then
+married a third named Messalina, who was given up to all kinds of
+wickedness which he never guessed at, while she used all manner of arts
+to keep up her beauty and to deceive him. At last she actually married a
+young man while Claudius was absent from Rome; but when this came to his
+knowledge, he had her put to death. His last wife was, however, the
+worst of all. She was the daughter of the good Germanicus, and bore her
+mother's name of Agrippina. She had been previously married to Lucius
+Domitius &AElig;nobarbus, by whom she had a son, whom Claudius adopted when he
+married her, though he had a child of his own called Britannicus, son to
+Messalina. Romans had never married their nieces before, but the power
+of the Emperors was leading them to trample down all law and custom, and
+it was for the misfortune of Claudius that he did so in this case, for
+Agrippina's purpose was to put every one out of the way of her own son,
+who, taking all the Claudian and Julian names in addition to his own, is
+commonly known as Nero. She married him to Claudius' daughter Octavia,
+and then, after much tormenting the Emperor, she poisoned him with a
+dish of mushrooms, and bribed his physician to take care that he did not
+recover. He died <small>A.D.</small> 54, and, honest and true-hearted as he
+had been, the Romans were glad to be rid of him, and told mocking
+stories of him. Indeed, they were very bad in all ways themselves, and
+many of the ladies were poisoners like Agrippina, so that the city
+almost deserved the tyrant who came after Claudius. Nero, the son of
+Agrippina by her first marriage, and Britannicus, the son of Claudius
+and Messalina, were to reign together; but Nero was the elder, and as
+soon as his poor young cousin came to manhood, Agrippina had a dose of
+poison ready for him.</p>
+
+<p>Nero, however, began well. He had been well brought up by Seneca, an
+excellent student of the Stoic philosophy, who, with Burrhus, the
+commander of the Pr&aelig;torian Guard, guided the young Emperor with good
+advice through the first five years of his reign; and though his wicked
+mother called herself Augusta, and had equal honors paid her with her
+son, not much harm was done to the government till Nero fell in love
+with a wicked woman, Popp&aelig;a Sabina, who was a proverb for vanity, and
+was said to keep five hundred she-asses that she might bathe in their
+milk to preserve her complexion. Nero wanted to marry this lady, and as
+his mother befriended his neglected wife Octavia, he ordered that when
+she went to her favorite villa at Bai&aelig; her galley should be wrecked,
+and if she was not drowned, she should be stabbed. Octavia was divorced,
+sent to an island, and put to death there; and after Nero married
+Popp&aelig;a, he quickly grew more violent and savage.</p>
+
+<p>Burrhus died about the same time, and Seneca alone could not restrain
+the Emperor from his foolish vanity. He would descend into the arena of
+the great amphitheatre and sing to the lyre his own compositions; and he
+showed off his charioteering in the circus before the whole assembled
+city, letting no one go away till the performance was over. It very much
+shocked the patricians, but the mob were delighted, and he chiefly cared
+for their praises. He was building a huge palace, called the Golden
+House because of its splendid decorations; and, needing money, he caused
+accusations to be got up against all the richer men that he might have
+their hoards.</p>
+
+<a name="illus302"></a><center><img src="images/illus302.png" alt="nero"></center>
+<h6>NERO.</h6>
+
+<p>A terrible fire broke out in Rome, which raged for six days, and
+entirely destroyed fourteen quarters of the city. While it was burning,
+Nero, full of excitement, stood watching it, and sang to his lyre the
+description of the burning of Troy. A report therefore arose that he had
+actually caused the fire for the amusement of watching it; and to put
+this out of men's minds he accused the Christians. The Christian faith
+had begun to be known in Rome during the last reign, and it was to Nero,
+as C&aelig;sar, that St. Paul had appealed. He had spent two years in a hired
+house of his own at Rome, and thus had been in the guard-room of the
+Pr&aelig;torians, but he was released after being tried at &quot;C&aelig;sar's
+judgment-seat,&quot; and remained at large until this sudden outburst which
+caused the first persecution. Then he was taken at Nicopolis, and St.
+Peter at Rome, and they were thrown into the Mamertine dungeon. Rome
+counts St. Peter as her first bishop. On the 29th of June,
+<small>A.D.</small> 66, both suffered; St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, being
+beheaded with the sword; St. Peter crucified, with his head, by his own
+desire, downwards. Many others suffered at the same time, some being
+thrown to the beasts, while others were wrapped in cloths covered with
+pitch, and slowly burnt to light the games in the Emperor's gardens. At
+last the people were shocked, and cried out for these horrors to end.
+And Nero, who cared for the people, turned his hatred and cruelty
+against men of higher class whose fate they heeded less. So common was
+it to have a message advising a man to put himself to death rather than
+be sentenced, that every one had studied easy ways of dying. Nero's old
+tutor, Seneca, felt his tyranny unbearable, and had joined in a plot for
+overthrowing him, but it was found out, and Seneca had to die by his own
+hand. The way he chose, and his wife too for his sake, was to open their
+veins, get into a warm bath, and bleed to death.</p>
+
+<p>Nero made a journey to Greece, and showed off at Olympus and the
+Isthmus, at the same time robbing the Greek cities of numbers of their
+best statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House; for the Romans had
+no original art&mdash;they could only imitate the Greeks and employ Greek
+artists. But danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor could be
+endured no longer, and the generals of the armies in the provinces began
+to threaten him, they not being smitten dumb and helpless as every one
+at Rome seemed to be.</p>
+
+<p>The Spanish army, under an officer named Galba, who was seventy-two
+years old, but to whom Augustus had said when he was a little boy, &quot;You
+too shall share my taste of empire,&quot; began to move homewards to attack
+the tyrant, and the army from Gaul advanced to join it. Nero went nearly
+wild with fright, sometimes raging, sometimes tearing his hair and
+clothes; and the people began to turn against him in anger at a dearth
+of corn, saying he spent everything on his own pleasures. As Galba came
+nearer, the nobles and knights hoped for deliverance, and the Pr&aelig;torian
+Guard showed that they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and would
+not fight for him. The wretched Emperor found himself alone, and vainly
+called for some one to kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself.
+He fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the woods till he
+heard that, if he was caught, he would be put to death in the &quot;ancient
+fashion,&quot; which he was told was being fixed with his neck in a forked
+stick and beaten to death. Then, hearing the hoofs of the horses of his
+pursuers, he set a sword against his breast and made a slave drive it
+home, and was groaning his last when the horsemen came up. He was but 30
+years old, and was the last Emperor who could trace any connection, even
+by adoption, with Augustus. He perished <small>A.D.</small> 68.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FLAVIAN FAMILY.</h3>
+
+<h2>62-96.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The ablest of all Nero's officers was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, a
+stern, rigid old soldier, who, with his son of the same name, was in the
+East, preparing to put down a great rising of the Jews. He waited to see
+what was going to happen, and in a very few weeks old Galba had offended
+the soldiers by his saving ways; there was a rising against him, and
+another soldier named Otho became Emperor; but the legions from Gaul
+marched up under Vitellius to dethrone him, and he killed himself to
+prevent other bloodshed.</p>
+
+<p>When the Eastern army heard of these changes, they declared they would
+make an Emperor like the soldiers of the West, and hailed Vespasian as
+Emperor. He left his son Titus to subdue Judea, and set out himself for
+Italy, where Vitellius had given himself up to riot and feasting. There
+was a terrible fight and fire in the streets of Rome itself, and the
+Gauls, who chiefly made up Vitellius' army, did even more mischief than
+the Gauls of old under Brennus; but at last Vespasian triumphed.
+Vitellius was taken, and, after being goaded along with the point of a
+lance, was put to death. There had been eighteen months of confusion,
+and Vespasian began his reign in the year 70.</p>
+
+<p>It was just then that his son Titus, having taken all the strongholds in
+Galilee, though they were desperately defended by the Jews, had advanced
+to besiege Jerusalem. All the Christians had heeded the warning that our
+blessed Lord had left them, and were safe at a city in the hills called
+Pella; but the Jews who were left within were fiercely quarrelling among
+themselves, and fought with one another as savagely as they fought with
+the enemy. Titus threw trenches round and blockaded the city; and the
+famine within grew to be most horrible. Some died in their houses, but
+the fierce lawless zealots rushed up and down the streets, breaking into
+the houses where they thought food was to be found. When they smelt
+roasting in one grand dwelling belonging to a lady, they rushed in and
+asked for the meat, but even they turned away in horror when she
+uncovered the remains of her own little child, whom she had been eating.
+At last the Roman engines broke down the walls of the lower city, and
+with desperate struggling the Romans entered, and found every house full
+of dead women and children. Still they had the Temple to take, and the
+Jews had gathered there, fancying that, at the worst, the Messiah would
+appear and save them. Alas! they had rejected Him long ago, and this was
+the time of judgment. The Romans fought their way in, up the marble
+steps, slippery with blood and choked with dead bodies; and fire raged
+round them. Titus would have saved the Holy Place as a wonder of the
+world, but a soldier threw a torch through a golden latticed window, and
+the flame spread rapidly. Titus had just time to look round on all the
+rich gilding and marbles before it sank into ruins. He took a terrible
+vengeance on the Jews. Great numbers were crucified, and the rest were
+either taken to the amphitheatres all over the empire to fight with wild
+beasts, or were sold as slaves, in such numbers that, cheap as they
+were, no one would buy them. And yet this wonderful nation has lived on
+in its dispersion ever since. The city was utterly overthrown and sown
+with salt, and such treasures as could be saved from the fire were
+carried in the triumph of Titus&mdash;namely, the shew-bread table, the
+seven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets&mdash;and laid up as
+usual among the spoils dedicated to Jupiter. Their figures are to be
+seen sculptured on the triumphal arch built in honor of Titus, which
+still stands at Rome.</p>
+
+<a name="illus309"></a><center><img src="images/illus309.png" alt="titus"></center>
+<h6> ARCH OF TITUS.</h6>
+
+<p>These Flavian C&aelig;sars were great builders. Much had to be restored at
+Rome after the two great fires, and they built a new Capitol and new
+Forum, besides pulling down Nero's Golden House, and setting up on part
+of the site the magnificent baths known as the Baths of Titus. Going to
+the bath, to be steamed, rubbed, anointed, and perfumed by the slaves,
+was the great amusement of an idle Roman's day, for in the waiting-rooms
+he met all his friends and heard the news; and these rooms were splendid
+halls, inlaid with marble, and adorned with the statues and pictures
+Nero had brought from Greece. On part of the gardens was begun what was
+then called the Flavian Amphitheatre, but is now known as the Colosseum,
+from the colossal statue that stood at its door&mdash;a wonderful place, with
+a succession of galleries on stone vaults round the area, on which every
+rank and station, from the Emperor and Vestal Virgins down to the
+slaves, had their places, whence to see gladiators and beasts struggle
+and perish, on sands mixed with scarlet grains to hide the stain, and
+perfumed showers to overcome the scent of blood, and under silken
+embroidered awnings to keep off the sun.</p>
+
+<p>Vespasian was an upright man, and though he was stern and unrelenting,
+his reign was a great relief after the capricious tyranny of the last
+Claudii. He and his eldest son Titus were plain and simple in their
+habits, and tried to put down the horrid riot and excess that were
+ruining the Romans, and they were feared and loved. They had great
+successes too. Britain was subdued and settled as far as the northern
+hills, and a great rising in Eastern Gaul subdued. Vespasian was accused
+of being avaricious, but Nero had left the treasury in such a state that
+he could hardly have governed without being careful. He died in the year
+79, at seventy years old. When he found himself almost gone, he desired
+to be lifted to his feet, saying that an Emperor should die standing.</p>
+
+<a name="illus312"></a><center><img src="images/illus312.png" alt="vesuvius"></center>
+<h6>VESUVIUS PREVIOUS TO THE ERUPTION OF A.D. 63.</h6>
+
+<p>He left two sons, Titus and Domitian. Titus was more of a scholar than
+his father, and was gentle and kindly in manner, so that he was much
+beloved. He used to say, &quot;I have lost a day,&quot; when one went by without
+his finding some kind act to do. He was called the delight of mankind,
+and his reign would have been happy but for another great fire in Rome,
+which burnt what Nero's fire had left. In his time, too, Mount Vesuvius
+suddenly woke from its rest, and by a dreadful eruption destroyed the
+two cities at its foot, Herculaneum and Pompeii. The philosopher
+Plinius, who wrote on geography and natural history, was stifled by the
+sulphurous air while fleeing from the showers of stones and ashes
+cast up by the mountain. His nephew, called Pliny the younger, has left
+a full account of the disaster, and the cloud like a pine tree that hung
+over the mountain, the noises, the earthquake, and the fall at last of
+the ashes and lava. Drusilla, the wife of Felix, the governor before
+whom St. Paul pleaded, also perished. Herculaneum was covered with solid
+lava, so that very little could be recovered from it; but Pompeii, being
+overwhelmed with dust or ashes, was only choked, and in modern days has
+been discovered, showing perfectly what an old Roman town was
+like&mdash;amphitheatre, shops, bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons have
+been found: a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, a priest
+crushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded into a vault, a sentry at
+his post; and in other cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impression
+of the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into them the forms
+of the victims have been recovered, especially two women, elder and
+younger, just as they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden in
+her mother's robe.</p>
+
+<a name="illus315"></a><center><img src="images/illus315.png" alt="christians"></center>
+<h6> PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.</h6>
+
+<p>Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law Tacitus, who wrote the
+history of those reigns, laid the blame on his brother Domitian, who was
+as cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does seem to have been shocked
+at the wickedness of the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grown
+shameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patrician families in Rome
+well brought up enough to become one. The blame was laid on forsaking
+the old religion, and what the Romans called &quot;Judaising,&quot; which meant
+Christianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the
+Emperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was this
+which led to St. John, the last of the Apostles, being brought to Rome
+and placed in a cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate; but a
+miracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did him no hurt, upon
+which he was banished to the Isle of Patmos.</p>
+
+<p>The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, and the shows of
+gladiators, fights with beasts, and even sea-fights, when the arena was
+flooded, exceeded all that had gone before. There were fights between
+women and women, dwarfs and cranes. There is an inscription at Rome
+which has made some believe that the architect of the Colosseum was one
+Gandentius, who afterwards perished there as a Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a gold crown with little
+figures of the gods on it. He did strange things. Once he called
+together all his council in the middle of the night on urgent business,
+and while they expected to hear of some foreign enemy on the borders, a
+monstrous turbot was brought in, and they were consulted whether it was
+to be cut in pieces or have a dish made on purpose for it. Another time
+he invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a black
+marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a column
+like a tomb, a feast laid as at a funeral, and black boys to wait on
+them! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many people
+to death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, and
+he had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in a
+glass if any one approached him from behind. But this did not save him.
+His wife found that he meant to put her to death, and contrived that a
+party of servants should murder him, <small>A.D.</small> 96.</p>
+
+<a name="illus317"></a><center><img src="images/illus317.png" alt="coin"></center>
+<h6>COIN OF NERO.</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES.</h3>
+
+<h2>96&mdash;194.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Domitian is called the last of the twelve C&aelig;sars, though all who came
+after him called themselves C&aelig;sar. He had no son, and a highly esteemed
+old senator named Cocceius Nerva became Emperor. He was an upright man,
+who tried to restore the old Roman spirit; and as he thought
+Christianity was only a superstition which spoiled the ancient temper,
+he enacted that all should die who would not offer incense to the gods,
+and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who had been bred
+up among the Apostles. He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St.
+Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one of a set of
+letters which remain to this day. He was then thrown to the lions in the
+Colosseum.</p>
+
+<p>It seems strange that the good Emperors were often worse persecutors
+than the bad ones, but the fact was that the bad ones let the people do
+as they pleased, as long as they did not offend them; while the good
+ones were trying to bring back what they read of in Livy's history, of
+plain living and high thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more of
+the Christians than that they were people who did not worship the gods.
+Moreover, Julius Trajanus, whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reign
+after him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there were laws in
+force against the Christians. When Pliny the younger was propr&aelig;tor of
+the province of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Emperor what
+to do about the Christians, telling him what he had been able to find
+out about them from two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, that
+they were wont to meet together at night or early morning, to sing
+together, and eat what he called a harmless social meal. Trajan answered
+that he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if they were brought
+before him, the law must take its course. In Rome, the chief refuge of
+the Christians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, from which the
+city was chiefly built, and which were hollowed out in long galleries.
+Slaves and convicts worked them, and they were thus made known to the
+Christians, who buried their dead in places hollowed at the sides, used
+the galleries for their churches, and often hid there when there was
+search made for them.</p>
+
+<a name="illus320"></a><center><img src="images/illus320.png" alt="temple"></center>
+<h6> TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA.</h6>
+
+<p>Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title of Optimus, the Best,
+as no one else has ever done. He was a great captain too, and conquered
+Dacia, the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, and Pruth, and the
+Carpathian Hills; and he also defeated the Parthians, and said if he
+had been a younger man he would have gone as far as Alexander. As it
+was, the empire was at its very largest in his reign, and he was a very
+great builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him a
+wall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls and
+bridges and roads&mdash;some of which still remain, as does his tall column
+at Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from top
+to bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died at
+Cilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius &AElig;tius
+Hadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but found he could not
+keep Dacia, and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He came to
+Britain, where the Roman settlements were tormented by the Picts. There
+he built the famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them out. He was
+wonderfully active, and hastened from one end of the empire to the other
+wherever his presence was needed. There was a revolt of the Jews in the
+far East, under a man who pretended to be the Messiah, and called
+himself the Son of a Star. This was put down most severely, and no Jew
+was allowed to come near Jerusalem, over which a new city was built, and
+called after the Emperor's second name, &AElig;lia Capitolina; and, to drive
+the Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter was built where the Temple
+had been, and one to Venus on Mount Calvary.</p>
+
+<p>But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened kindly to an explanation of
+the faith which was shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christian
+philosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand towerlike monument,
+surrounded by stages of columns and arches, which was to be called the
+Mole of Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its ornaments.
+Before his death, in 138, he had chosen his successor, Titus Aurelius
+Antoninus, a good upright man, a philosopher, and 52 years old; for it
+had been found that youths who became Emperors had their heads turned by
+such unbounded power, while elder men cared for the work and duty.
+Antoninus was so earnest for his people's welfare that they called him
+Pius. He avoided wars, only defended the empire; but he was a great
+builder, for he raised another rampart in Britain, much further north,
+and set up another column at Rome, and in Gaul built a great
+amphitheatre at Nismes, and raised the wonderful aqueduct which is still
+standing, and is called the Pont du Gard.</p>
+
+<p>His son-in-law, whom he adopted and who succeeded him, is commonly
+called Marcus Aurelius, as a choice among his many names. He was a deep
+student and Stoic philosopher, with an earnest longing for truth and
+virtue, though he knew not how to seek them where alone they could be
+found; and when earthquake, pestilence and war fell on his empire, and
+the people thought the gods were offended, he let them persecute the
+Christians, whose faith he despised, because the hope of Resurrection
+and of Heaven seemed weak and foolish to him beside his stern, proud,
+hopeless Stoicism. So the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, the last
+pupil of the Apostles themselves, was sentenced to be burnt in the
+theatre of his own city, though, as the fire curled round him in a
+curtain of flame without touching him, he was actually slain with the
+sword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there was a fearful
+persecution which fell on women of all ranks, and where Blandina the
+slave, under the most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for her
+brave patience.</p>
+
+<p>Aurelius was fighting hard with the German tribes on the Danube, who
+gave him no rest, and threatened to break into the empire. While
+pursuing them, he and his army were shut into a strong place where they
+could get no water, and were perishing with thirst, when a whole
+legion, all Christian soldiers, knelt down and prayed. A cloud came up,
+a welcome shower of rain descended, and was the saving of the thirsty
+host. It was said that the name of the Thundering Legion was given to
+this division in consequence, though on the column reared by Aurelius it
+is Jupiter who is shown sending rain on the thirsty host, who are
+catching it in their shields. After this there was less persecution, but
+every sort of trouble&mdash;plague, earthquake, famine, and war&mdash;beset the
+empire on all sides, and the Emperor toiled in vain against these
+troubles, writing, meantime, meditations that show how sad and sick at
+heart he was, and how little comfort philosophy gave him, while his eyes
+were blind to the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while still in
+the prime of life, in the year 180, and with him ended the period of
+good Emperors, which the Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aurelius
+was indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but he was a foolish
+good-for-nothing youth, who would not bear the fatigues and toils of
+real war, though he had no shame in showing off in the arena, and is
+said to have fought there seven hundred and fifty times, besides killing
+wild beasts. He boasted of having slain one hundred lions with one
+hundred arrows, and a whole row of ostriches with half-moon shaped
+arrows which cut off their heads, the poor things being fastened where
+he could not miss them, and the Romans applauding as if for some noble
+deed. They let him reign sixteen years before he was murdered, and then
+a good old soldier named Pertinax began to reign; but the Pr&aelig;torian
+Guard had in those sixteen years grown disorderly, and the moment they
+felt the pressure of a firm hand they attacked the palace, killed the
+Emperor, cut off his head, and ran with it to the senate-house, asking
+who would be Emperor. An old senator was foolish enough to offer them a
+large sum if they would choose him, and this put it into their heads to
+rush out to the ramparts and proclaim that they would sell the empire to
+the highest bidder.</p>
+
+<p>A vain, old, rich senator, named Didius Julianus, was at supper with his
+family when he heard that the Pr&aelig;torians were selling the empire by
+auction, and out he ran, and actually bought it at the rate of about
+&pound;200 to each man. The Emperor being really the commander-in-chief, with
+other offices attached to the dignity, the soldiers had a sort of right
+to the choice; but the other armies at a distance, who were really
+fighting and guarding the empire, had no notion of letting the matter
+be settled by the Pr&aelig;torians, mere guardsmen, who stayed at home and
+tried to rule the rest; so each army chose its own general and marched
+on Rome, and it was the general on the Danube, Septimius Severus, who
+got there first; whereupon the Pr&aelig;torians killed their foolish Emperor
+and joined him.</p>
+
+<a name="illus326"></a><center><img src="images/illus326.png" alt="aurelius"></center>
+<h6>MARCUS AURELIUS.</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PR&AElig;TORIAN INFLUENCE.</h3>
+
+<h2>197&mdash;284.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Septimus Severus was an able Emperor, and reigned a long time. He was
+stern and harsh, as was needed by the wickedness of the time; and he was
+very active, seldom at Rome, but flashing as it were from one end of the
+empire to the other, wherever he was needed, and keeping excellent
+order. There was no regular persecution of the Christians in his time;
+but at Lyons, where the townspeople were in great numbers Christians,
+the country-folk by some sudden impulse broke in and made a horrible
+massacre of them, in which the bishop, St. Iren&aelig;us, was killed. So few
+country people were at this time converts, that Paganus, a peasant, came
+to be used as a term for a heathen.</p>
+
+<p>Severus was, like Trajan and Hadrian, a great builder and road-maker.
+The whole empire was connected by a network of paved roads made by the
+soldiery, cutting through hills, bridging valleys, straight, smooth, and
+so solid that they remain to this day. This made communication so
+rapid that government was possible to an active man like him. He gave
+the Parthians a check; and, when an old man, came to Britain and marched
+far north, but he saw it was impossible to guard Antonius' wall between
+the Forth and Clyde, and only strengthened the rampart of Hadrian from
+the Tweed to the Solway. He died at York, in 211, on his return, and his
+last watchword was &quot;Labor!&quot; His wife was named Julia Domna, and he left
+two sons, usually called Caracalla and Geta, who divided the empire; but
+Geta was soon stabbed by his brother's own hand, and then Caracalla
+showed himself even worse than Commodus, till he in his turn was
+murdered in 217.</p>
+
+<a name="illus328"></a><center><img src="images/illus328.png" alt="severus"></center>
+<h6>SEPTIMUS SEVERUS.</h6>
+
+<a name="illus329"></a><center><img src="images/illus329.png" alt="antioch"></center>
+<h6>ANTIOCH.</h6>
+
+<p>His mother, Julia Domna, had a sister called Julia S&aelig;mias, who lived at
+Antioch, and had two daughters, S&aelig;mias and Mamm&aelig;a, who each had a son,
+Elagabalus&mdash;so called after the idol supposed to represent the sun,
+whose priest at Emesa he was&mdash;and Alexander Severus. The Pr&aelig;torian
+Guard, in their difficulty whom to chose Emperor, chose Elagabalus, a
+lad of nineteen, who showed himself a poor, miserable, foolish wretch,
+who did the most absurd things. His feasts were a proverb for excess,
+and even his lions were fed on parrots and pheasants. Sometimes he would
+get together a festival party of all fat men, or all thin, all tall, or
+short, all bald, or gouty; and at others he would keep the wedding of
+his namesake god and Pallas, making matches between the gods and
+goddesses all over Italy; and he carried on his service to his god with
+the same barbaric dances in a strange costume as at Emesa, to the great
+disgust of the Romans. His grandmother persuaded him to adopt his cousin
+Alexander, a youth of much more promise, who took the name of Severus.
+The soldiers were charmed with him; Elagabalus became jealous, and was
+going to strip him of his honors; but this angered the Pr&aelig;torians, so
+that they put the elder Emperor to death in 222.</p>
+
+<a name="illus330"></a><center><img src="images/illus330.png" alt="severus"></center>
+<h6>ALEXANDER SEVERUS.</h6>
+
+<p>Alexander Severus was a good and just prince, whose mother is believed
+to have been a Christian, and he had certainly learned enough of the
+Divine Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He loved
+virtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon our
+Blessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue with
+that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers of
+mankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level.
+He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of good
+and firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the Pr&aelig;torians in 235.</p>
+
+<p>These guards had all the power, and set up and put down Emperors so
+rapidly that there are hardly any names worth remembering. In the
+unsettled state of the empire no one had time to persecute the
+Christians, and their numbers grew and prospered; in many places they
+had churches, with worship going on openly, and their Bishops were known
+and respected. The Emperor Philip, called the Arabian, who was actually
+a Christian, though he would not own it openly, when he was at Antioch,
+joined in the service at Easter, and presented himself to receive the
+Holy Communion; but Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should have
+done open penance for the crimes by which he had come to the purple,
+and renounced all remains of heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but put
+off his repentance; and the next year celebrated the games called the
+Secul&aelig;, because they took place every Seculum or hundredth year, with
+all their heathen ceremonies, and with tenfold splendor, in honor of
+this being Rome's thousandth birthday.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, another general named Decius was chosen by the army on the
+German frontier, and Philip was killed in battle with him. Decius wanted
+to be an old-fashioned Roman; he believed in the gods, and thought the
+troubles of the empire came of forsaking them; and as the Parthians
+molested the East, and the Goths and Germans the North, and the soldiers
+seemed more ready to kill their Emperors than the enemy, he thought to
+win back prosperity by causing all to return to the old worship, and
+begun the worst persecution the Church had yet known. Rome, Antioch,
+Carthage, Alexandria, and all the chief cities were searched for
+Christians. If they would not throw a handful of incense on the idol's
+altar or disown Christ, they were given over to all the horrid torments
+cruel ingenuity could invent, in the hope of subduing their constancy.
+Some fell, but the greater number were firm, and witnessed a glorious
+confession before, in 251, Decius and his son were both slain in battle
+in M&aelig;sia.</p>
+
+<a name="illus333"></a><center><img src="images/illus333.png" alt="temple"></center>
+<h6>TEMPLE OF THE SUN AT PALMYRA.</h6>
+
+<p>The next Emperor whose name is worth remembering was Valerian, who had
+to make war against the Persians. The old stock of Persian kings,
+professing to be descended from Cyrus, and, like him, adoring fire, had
+overcome the Parthians, and were spreading the Persian power in the
+East, under their king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and on the
+banks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian in a terrible battle at
+Edessa. Valerian was made prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, who
+was forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up by his back when
+mounting on horseback; and when he died, his skin was dyed purple,
+stuffed, and hung up in a temple.</p>
+
+<a name="illus334"></a><center><img src="images/illus334.png" alt="catacombs"></center>
+<h6> THE CATACOMBS AT ROME.</h6>
+
+<p>The best resistance made to Sapor was by Odenatus, a Syrian chief, and
+his beautiful Arabian wife Zenobia, who held out the city of Palmyra, on
+an oasis in the desert between Palestine and Assyria, till Sapor
+retreated. Finding that no notice was taken of them by Rome, they called
+themselves Emperor and Empress. The city was very beautifully adorned
+with splendid buildings in the later Greek style; and Zenobia, who
+reigned with her young sons after her husband's death, was well read in
+Greek classics and philosophy, and was a pupil of the philosopher
+Longinus. Aurelian, becoming Emperor of Rome, came against this strange
+little kingdom, and was bravely resisted by Zenobia; but he defeated
+her, made her prisoner, and caused her to march in his triumph to Rome.
+She afterwards lived with her children in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Aurelian saw perils closing in on all sides of the empire, and thought
+it time to fortify the city of Rome itself, which had long spread beyond
+the old walls of Servius Tullus. He traced a new circuit, and built the
+wall, the lines of which are the same that still enclose Rome, though
+the wall itself has been several times thrown down and rebuilt. He also
+built the city in Gaul which still bears his name, slightly altered into
+Orleans. He was one of those stern, brave Emperors, who vainly tried to
+bring back old Roman manners, and fancied it was Christianity that
+corrupted them; and he was just preparing for a great persecution when
+he was murdered in his tent, and there were three or four more Emperors
+set up and then killed almost as soon as their reign was well begun. The
+last thirty of them are sometimes called the Thirty Tyrants. This power
+of the Pr&aelig;torian Guard, of setting up and pulling down their Emperor as
+being primarily their general, lasted altogether fully a hundred years.</p>
+
+<a name="illus337"></a><center><img src="images/illus337.png" alt="coin"></center>
+<h6>COIN OF SEVERUS</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.</h3>
+
+<h2>284-312.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>A Dalmatian soldier named Diocles had been told by a witch that he
+should become Emperor by the slaughter of a boar. He became a great
+hunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed to bring him nearer to
+the purple, till, when the army was fighting on the Tigris, the Emperor
+Numerianus died, and an officer named Aper offered himself as his
+successor. Aper is the Latin for a boar, and Diocles, perceiving the
+scope of the prophecy, thrust his sword into his rival's breast, and was
+hailed Emperor by the legions. He lengthened his name out to
+Diocletianus, to sound more imperial, and began a dominion unlike that
+of any who had gone before. They had only been, as it were, overgrown
+generals, chosen by the Pr&aelig;torians or some part of the army, and at the
+same time taking the tribuneship and other offices for life. Diocletian,
+though called Emperor, reigned like the kings of the East. He broke the
+strength of the Pr&aelig;torians, so that they could never again kill one
+Emperor and elect another as before; and he never would visit Rome lest
+he should be obliged to acknowledge the authority of the Senate, whose
+power he contrived so entirely to take away, that thenceforward Senator
+became only a complimentary title, of which people in the subdued
+countries were very proud.</p>
+
+<a name="illus339"></a><center><img src="images/illus339.png" alt="diocletian"></center>
+<h6>DIOCLETIAN.</h6>
+
+<p>He divided the empire into two parts, feeling that it was beyond the
+management of any one man, and chose an able soldier of low birth but
+much courage, named Maximian, to rule the West from Trier as his
+capital, while he himself ruled the East from Nicomedia. Each of the two
+Emperors chose a future successor, who was to rule in part of his
+dominions under the title of C&aelig;sar, and to reign after him. Diocletian
+chose his son-in-law Galerius, and sent him to fight on the Danube; and
+Maximian chose, as C&aelig;sar, Constantius Chlorus, who commanded in Britain,
+Gaul, and Spain; and thus everything was done to secure that a strong
+hand should be ready everywhere to keep the legions from setting up
+Emperors at their own will.</p>
+
+<p>Diocletian was esteemed the most just and kind of the Emperors;
+Maximian, the fiercest and most savage. He had a bitter hatred of the
+Christian name, which was shared by Galerius; but, on the other hand,
+the wife of Diocletian was believed to be a Christian, and Helena, the
+wife of Constantius, was certainly one. However, Maximian and Galerius
+were determined to put down the faith. Maximian is said to have had a
+whole legion of Christians in his army, called the Theban, from the
+Egyptian Thebes. These he commanded to sacrifice, and on their refusal
+had them decimated&mdash;that is, every tenth man was slain. They were called
+on again to sacrifice, but still were staunch, and after a last summons
+were, every man of them, slain as they stood with their tribune Maurice,
+whose name is still held in high honor in the Engadine. Diocletian was
+slow to become a persecutor, until a fire broke out in his palace at
+Nicomedia, which did much mischief in the city, but spared the chief
+Christian church. The enemies of the Christians accused them of having
+caused it, and Diocletian required every one in his household to clear
+themselves by offering sacrifice to Jupiter. His wife and daughter
+yielded, but most of his officers and slaves held out, and died in cruel
+torments. One slave was scourged till the flesh parted from his bones,
+and then the wounds were rubbed with salt and vinegar; others were
+racked till their bones were out of joint, and others hung up by their
+hands to hooks, with weights fastened to their feet. A city in Phrygia
+was surrounded by soldiers and every person in it slaughtered; and the
+Christians were hunted down like wild beasts from one end of the empire
+to the other, everywhere save in Britain, where, under Constantius, only
+one martyrdom is reported to have taken place, namely, that of the
+soldier at Verulam, St. Alban. It was the worst of all the persecutions,
+and lasted the longest.</p>
+
+<a name="illus342"></a><center><img src="images/illus342.png" alt="diocletian"></center>
+<h6>DIOCLETIAN IN RETIREMENT.</h6>
+
+<p>The two Emperors were good soldiers, and kept the enemies back, so that
+Diocletian celebrated a triumph at Nicomedia; but he had an illness just
+after, and, as he was fifty-nine years old, he decided that it would be
+better to resign the empire while he was still in his full strength,
+and he persuaded Maximian to do the same, in 305, making Constantius and
+Galerius Emperors in their stead. Constantius stopped the persecution in
+the West, but it raged as much as ever in the East under Galerius and
+the C&aelig;sar he had appointed, whose name was Daza, but who called himself
+Maximin. Constantius fought bravely, both in Britain and Gaul, with the
+enemies who tried to break into the empire. The Franks, one of the
+Teuton nations, were constantly breaking in on the eastern frontier of
+Gaul, and the Caledonians on the northern border of the settlement of
+Britain. He opposed them gallantly, and was much loved, but he died at
+York, 305, and Galerius passed over his son Constantine, and appointed a
+favorite of his own named Licinius. Constantine was so much beloved by
+the army and people of Gaul that they proclaimed him Emperor, and he
+held the province of Britain and Gaul securely against all enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Old Maximian, who had only retired on the command of Diocletian, now
+came out from his retreat, and called on his colleague to do the same;
+but Diocletian was far too happy on his little farm at Salona to leave
+it, and answered the messenger who urged him again to take upon him the
+purple with&mdash;&quot;Come and look at the cabbages I have planted.&quot; However,
+Maximian was accepted as the true Emperor by the Senate, and made his
+son Maxentius, C&aelig;sar, while he allied himself with Constantine, to whom
+he gave his daughter Fausta in marriage. Maxentius turned out a rebel,
+and drove the old man away to Marseilles, where Constantine gave him a
+home on condition of his not interfering with government; but he could
+not rest, and raised the troops in the south against his son-in-law.
+Constantine's army marched eagerly against him and made him prisoner,
+but even then he was pardoned; yet he still plotted, and tried to
+persuade his daughter Fausta to murder her husband. Upon this
+Constantine was obliged to have him put to death.</p>
+
+<a name="illus344"></a><center><img src="images/illus344.png" alt="constantine"></center>
+<h6> CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.</h6>
+
+<p>Galerius died soon after of a horrible disease, during which he was
+filled with remorse for his cruelties to the Christians, sent to entreat
+their prayers, and stopped the persecution. On his death, Licinius
+seized part of his dominions, and there were four men calling themselves
+Emperors&mdash;Licinius in Asia, Daza Maximin in Egypt, Maxentius at Rome,
+and Constantine in Gaul.</p>
+
+<p>There was sure soon to be a terrible struggle. It began between
+Maxentius and Constantine. This last marched out of Gaul and entered
+Italy. He had hitherto seemed doubtful between Christianity and
+paganism, but a wonder was seen in the heavens before his whole army,
+namely, a bright cross of light in the noon-tide sky with the words
+plainly to be traced round it, <i>In hoc signo vinces</i>&mdash;&quot;In this sign thou
+shalt conquer.&quot; This sight decided his mind; he proclaimed himself a
+Christian, and from Milan issued forth an edict promising the Christians
+his favor and protection. Great victories were gained by him at Turin,
+Verona, and on the banks of the Tiber, where, at the battle of the
+Milvian Bridge in 312, Maxentius was defeated, and was drowned in
+crossing the river. Constantine entered Rome, and was owned by the
+Senate as Emperor of the West.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.</h3>
+
+<h2>312-337.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Constantine entered Rome as a Christian, and from his time forward
+Christianity prevailed. He reigned only over the West at first, but
+Licinius overthrew Daza, treating him and his family with great
+barbarity, and then Constantine, becoming alarmed at his power, marched
+against him, beat him in Thrace, and ten years later made another attack
+on him. In the battle of Adrianople, Licinius was defeated, and soon
+after made prisoner and put to death. Thus, in 323, Constantine became
+the only Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>He was a Christian in faith, though not as yet baptized. He did not
+destroy heathen temples nor forbid heathen rites, but he did everything
+to favor the Christians and make Christian laws. Churches were rebuilt
+and ornamented; Sunday was kept as the day of the Lord, and on it no
+business might be transacted except the setting free of a slave;
+soldiers might go to church, and all that had made it difficult and
+dangerous to confess the faith was taken away. Constantine longed to see
+his whole empire Christian; but at Rome, heathen ceremonies were so
+bound up with every action of the state or of a man's life that it was
+very hard for the Emperor to avoid them, and he therefore spent as
+little time as he could there, but was generally at the newer cities of
+Arles and Trier; and at last he decided on founding a fresh capital, to
+be a Christian city from the first.</p>
+
+<p>The place he chose was the shore of the Bosphorus, where Asia and Europe
+are only divided by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek city of
+Byzantium already stood. From hence he hoped to be able to rule the East
+and the West. He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made a
+palace there for himself, and called it after his own name&mdash;Constantinople,
+or New Rome, neither of which names has it ever lost. He carried many of
+the ornaments of Old Rome thither, but consecrated them as far as
+possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother
+Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our
+blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The
+churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity
+at Bethlehem have been kept up even to this day.</p>
+
+<a name="illus348"></a><center><img src="images/illus348.png" alt="constantinople"></center>
+<h6>CONSTANTINOPLE.</h6>
+
+<p>There was now no danger in being a Christian, and thus worldly and even
+wicked men and women owned themselves as belonging to the Church. So
+much evil prevailed that many good men fled from the sight of it,
+thinking to do more good by praying in lonely places free from
+temptation than by living in the midst of it. These were called hermits,
+and the first and most noted of them was St. Anthony. The Thebaid, or
+hilly country above Thebes in Egypt, was full of these hermits. When
+they banded together in brotherhoods they were called monks, and the
+women who did the like were called nuns.</p>
+
+<p>At this time there arose in Egypt a priest named Arius, who fell away
+from the true faith respecting our blessed Lord, and taught that he was
+not from the beginning, and was not equal with God the Father. The
+Patriarch of Alexandria tried to silence him, but he led away an immense
+number of followers, who did not like to stretch their souls to confess
+that Jesus Christ is God. At last Constantine resolved to call together
+a council of the Bishops and the wisest priests of the whole Church, to
+declare what was the truth that had been always held from the beginning.
+The place he appointed for the meeting was Nicea, in Asia Minor, and he
+paid for the journeys of all the Bishops, three hundred and eighteen in
+number, who came from all parts of the empire, east and west, so as to
+form the first Oecumenical or General Council of the Church. Many of
+them still bore the marks of the persecutions they had borne in
+Diocletian's time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off;
+some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard labor
+in the mines. The Emperor, in purple and gold, took a seat in the
+council as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet baptized; and
+the person who used the most powerful arguments was a young deacon of
+Alexandria named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared that the
+doctrine of Arius was contrary to what the Church had held from the
+first, and the confession of faith was drawn up which we call the Nicene
+Creed. Three hundred Bishops at once set their seals to it, and of those
+who at first refused all but two were won over, and these were banished.
+It was then that the faith of the Church began to be called Catholic or
+universal, and orthodox or straight teaching; while those who attacked
+it were called heretics, and their doctrine heresy, from a Greek word
+meaning to choose.</p>
+
+<a name="illus350"></a><center><img src="images/illus350.png" alt="nicea"></center>
+<h6> COUNCIL OF NICEA.</h6>
+
+<p>The troubles were not at an end with the Council and Creed of Nicea.
+Arius had pretended to submit, but he went on with his false teaching,
+and the courtly Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had the ear of the
+Emperor, protected him. Athanasius had been made Patriarch, or
+Father-Bishop, of Alexandria, and with all his might argued against the
+false doctrine, and cut off those who followed it from the Church. But
+Eusebius so talked that Constantine fancied quiet was better than truth,
+and sent orders to Athanasius that no one was to be shut out. This the
+Patriarch could not obey, and the Emperor therefore banished him to
+Gaul. Arius then went to Constantinople to ask the Emperor to insist on
+his being received back to communion. He declared that he believed that
+which he held in his hand, showing the Creed of Nicea, but keeping
+hidden under it a statement of his own heresy.</p>
+
+<a name="illus353"></a><center><img src="images/illus353.png" alt="catacombs"></center>
+<h6>CATACOMBS.</h6>
+
+<p>&quot;Go,&quot; said Constantine; &quot;if your faith agree with your oath, you are
+blameless; if not, God be your judge;&quot; and he commanded that Arius
+should be received to communion the next day, which was Sunday. But on
+his way to church, among a great number of his friends, Arius was struck
+with sudden illness, and died in a few minutes. The Emperor, as well as
+the Catholics, took this as a clear token of the hand of God, and
+Constantine was cured of any leaning to the Arians, though he still
+believed the men who called Athanasius factious and troublesome, and
+therefore would not recall him from exile.</p>
+
+<p>The great grief of Constantine's life was, that he put his eldest son
+Crispus to death on a wicked accusation of his stepmother Fausta. On
+learning the truth, he caused a silver statue to be raised, bearing the
+inscription, &quot;My son, whom I unjustly condemned;&quot; and when other crimes
+of Fausta came to light, he caused her to be suffocated.</p>
+
+<p>Baptism was often in those days put off to the end of life, that there
+might be no more sin after it, and Constantine was not baptized till his
+last illness had begun, when he was sixty-four years old, and he sent
+for Sylvester, Pope or Bishop of Rome, where he then was, and received
+from him baptism, absolution, and Holy Communion. After this,
+Constantine never put on purple robes again, but wore white till the day
+of his death in 337.</p>
+
+<a name="illus355"></a><center><img src="images/illus355.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CONSTANTIUS.</h3>
+
+<h2>337-364.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Constantine the Great left three sons, who shared the empire between
+them; but two were slain early in life, and only Constantius, the second
+and worst of the brothers, remained Emperor. He was an Arian, and under
+him Athanasius, who had returned to Alexandria, was banished again, and
+took refuge with the Pope Liberius at Rome. Pope&mdash;papa in Latin&mdash;is the
+name for father, just as patriarch is; and the Pope had become more
+important since the removal of the court from Rome; but Constantius
+tried to overcome Liberius, banished him to Thrace, and placed an Arian
+named Felix in his room. The whole people of Rome rose in indignation,
+and Constantius tried to appease them by declaring that Liberius and
+Felix should rule the Church together; but the Romans would not submit
+to such a decree. &quot;Shall we have the circus factions in the Church?&quot;
+they said. &quot;No! one God, one Christ, one Bishop!&quot; In the end Felix was
+forced to fly, and Liberius kept his seat. Athanasius found his safest
+refuge in the deserts among the hermits of the Thebaid in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Sapor, king of Persia, was attacking Nisibis, the most Eastern
+city of the Roman empire, where a brave Catholic named James was Bishop,
+and encouraged the people to a most brave resistance, so that they held
+out for four months; and Sapor, thinking the city was under some divine
+protection, and finding that his army sickened in the hot marshes around
+it, gave up the siege at last.</p>
+
+<a name="illus358"></a><center><img src="images/illus358.png" alt="julian"></center>
+<h6>JULIAN.</h6>
+
+<p>Constantius was a little, mean-looking man, but he dressed himself up to
+do his part as Emperor. He had swarms of attendants like any Eastern
+prince, most of them slaves, who waited on him as if he was perfectly
+helpless. He had his face painted, and was covered with gold embroidery
+and jewels on all state occasions, and he used to stand like a statue to
+be looked at, never winking an eyelid, nor moving his hand, nor doing
+anything to remind people that he was a man like themselves. He was
+timid and jealous, and above all others, he dreaded his young cousin
+Julian, the only relation he had. Julian had studied at Athens, and what
+he there heard and fancied of the old Greek philosophy seemed to him far
+grander than the Christianity that showed itself in the lives of
+Constantius and his courtiers. He was full of spirit and ability, and
+Constantius thought it best to keep him at a distance by sending him to
+fight the Germans on the borders of Gaul. There he was so successful,
+and was such a favorite with the soldiers, that Constantius sent to
+recall him. This only made the army proclaim him Emperor, and he set out
+with them across the Danubian country towards Constantinople, but on the
+way met the tidings that Constantius was dead.</p>
+
+<p>This was in 361, and without going to Rome Julian hastened on to
+Constantinople, where he was received as Emperor. He no longer pretended
+to be a Christian, but had all the old heathen temples opened again, and
+the sacrifices performed as in old times, though it was not easy to find
+any one who recollected how they were carried on. He said that all forms
+of religion should be free to every one, but he himself tried to live
+like an ancient philosopher, getting rid of all the pomp of jewels,
+robes, courtiers, and slaves who had attended Constantius, wearing
+simply the old purple garb of a Roman general, sleeping on a lion's
+skin, and living on the plainest food. Meantime, he tried to put down
+the Christian faith by laughing at it, and trying to get people to
+despise it as something low and mean. When this did not succeed, he
+forbade Christians to be schoolmasters or teachers; and as they declared
+that the ruin of the Temple of Jerusalem proved our Lord to have been a
+true Prophet, he commanded that it should be rebuilt. As soon as the
+foundations were dug, there was an outburst of fiery smoke and balls of
+flame which forced the workmen to leave off. Such things sometimes
+happen when long-buried ruins are opened, from the gases that have
+formed there; but it was no doubt the work of God's providence, and the
+Christians held it as a miracle.</p>
+
+<p>Julian hated the Catholic Christians worse than the Arians, because he
+found them more staunch against him. Athanasius had come back to
+Alexandria, but the Arians got up an accusation against him that he had
+been guilty of a murder, and brought forward a hand in a box to prove
+the crime; and though Athanasius showed the man said to have been
+murdered alive, and with both his hands in their places, he was still
+hunted out of Alexandria, and had to hide among the hermits of the
+Thebaid again. When any search was threatened of the spot where he was,
+the horn was sounded which called the hermits together to church, and he
+was taken to another hiding-place. Sometimes he visited his flock at
+Alexandria in secret, and once, when he was returning down the Nile, he
+learned that a boat-load of soldiers was pursuing him. Turning back, his
+boat met them. They called out to know if Athanasius had been seen. &quot;He
+was going down the Nile a little while ago,&quot; the Bishop answered. His
+enemies hurried on, and he was safe.</p>
+
+<p>Julian was angered by finding it impossible to waken paganism. At one
+grand temple in Asia, whither hundreds of oxen used to be brought to
+sacrifice, all his encouragement only caused one goose to be offered,
+which the priest of the temple received as a grand gift. Julian
+expected, too, that pagans would worship their old gods and yet live the
+virtuous lives of Christians; and he was disappointed and grieved to
+find that no works of goodness or mercy sprang from those who followed
+his belief. He was a kind man by nature, but he began to grow bitter
+with disappointment, and to threaten when he found it was of no use to
+persuade; and the Christians expected that there would be a great
+persecution when he should return from an expedition into the East
+against the king of Persia.</p>
+
+<a name="illus362"></a><center><img src="images/illus362.png" alt="arch"></center>
+<h6>ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.</h6>
+
+<p>He went with a fine army in ships down the Euphrates, and thence marched
+into Persia, where King Sapor was wise enough to avoid a battle, and
+only retreat before him. The Romans were half starved, and obliged to
+turn back. Then Sapor attacked their rear, and cut off their stragglers.
+Julian shared all the sufferings of his troops, and was always
+wherever there was danger. At last a javelin pierced him under the arm.
+It is said that he caught some of his blood in his other hand, cast it
+up towards heaven, and cried, &quot;Galilean, Thou hast conquered.&quot; He died
+in a few hours, in 363, and the Romans could only choose the best leader
+they knew to get them out of the sad plight they were in&mdash;almost that of
+the ten thousand Greeks, except that they knew the roads and had
+friendly lands much nearer. Their choice fell on a plain, honest
+Christian soldier named Jovian, who did his best by making a treaty with
+Sapor, giving up all claim to any lands beyond the Tigris, and
+surrendering the brave city of Nisibis which had held out so
+gallantly&mdash;a great grief to the Eastern Christians. The first thing
+Jovian did was to have Athanasius recalled, but his reign did not last a
+year, and he died on the way to Constantinople.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>VALENTINIAN AND HIS FAMILY.</h3>
+
+<h2>364-392.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>When Jovian died, the army chose another soldier named Valentinian, a
+stout, brave, rough man, with little education, rude and passionate, but
+a Catholic Christian. As soon as he reached Constantinople, he divided
+the empire with his brother Valens, whom he left to rule the East, while
+he himself went to govern the West, chiefly from Milan, for the Emperors
+were not fond of living at Rome, partly because the remains of the
+Senate interfered with their full grandeur, and partly because there
+were old customs that were inconvenient to a Christian Emperor. He was
+in general just and honest in his dealings, but when he was angry he
+could be cruel, and it is said he had two bears to whom criminals were
+thrown. His brother Valens was a weaker and less able man, and was an
+Arian, who banished Athanasius once more for the fifth time; but the
+Church of Alexandria prevailed, and he was allowed to remain and die in
+peace. The Creed that bears his name is not thought to be of his
+writing, but to convey what he taught. There was great talk at this time
+all over the cities about the questions between the Catholics and
+Arians, and good men were shocked by hearing the holiest mysteries of
+the faith gossiped about by the idlers in baths and market-places.</p>
+
+<a name="illus366"></a><center><img src="images/illus366.png" alt="alexandria"></center>
+<h6>ALEXANDRIA.</h6>
+
+<p>At this time Damasus, the Pope, desired a very learned deacon of his
+church, named Jerome, to make a good translation of the whole of the
+Scriptures into Latin, comparing the best versions, and giving an
+account of the books. For this purpose Jerome went to the Holy Land, and
+lived in a cell at Bethlehem, happy to be out of the way of the quarrels
+at Rome and Constantinople. There, too, was made the first translation
+of the Gospels into one of the Teutonic languages, namely, the Gothic.
+The Goths were a great people, of the same Teutonic race as the Germans,
+Franks, and Saxons&mdash;tall, fair, brave, strong, and handsome&mdash;and were at
+this time living on the north bank of the Danube. Many of their young
+men hired themselves to fight as soldiers in the Roman army; and they
+were learning Christianity, but only as Arians. It was for them that
+their Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels into Gothic, and invented an
+alphabet to write them in. A copy of this translation is still to be
+seen at Upsal in Sweden, written on purple vellum in silver letters.</p>
+
+<a name="illus368"></a><center><img src="images/illus368.png" alt="goths"></center>
+<h6>GOTHS.</h6>
+
+<p>Another great and holy man of this time was Ambrose, the Archbishop
+of Milan, who was the guide and teacher of Gratian, Valentinian's eldest
+son, a good and promising youth so far as he went, but who, after the
+habit of the time, was waiting to be baptized till he should be further
+on in life. Valentinian's second wife was named Justina; and when he
+died, as it is said, from breaking a blood-vessel in a fit of rage, in
+375, the Western Empire was shared between her little son Valentinian
+and Gratian.</p>
+
+<p>Justina was an Arian, and wanted to have a church in Milan where she
+could worship without ascribing full honor and glory to God the Son; but
+Ambrose felt that the churches were his Master's, not his own to be
+given away, and filled the Church with Christians, who watched there
+chanting Psalms day and night, while the soldiers Justina sent to turn
+them out joined them, and sang and prayed with them.</p>
+
+<p>Gratian did not choose to be called Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest of
+all the Roman idols, as all the Emperors had been; and this offended
+many persons. A general named Maximus rose and reigned as Emperor in
+Britain, and Gratian had too much on his hands in the north to put him
+down.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, a terrible wild tribe called Huns were coming from the
+West and driving the Goths before them, so that they asked leave from
+Valens to come across the Danube and settle themselves in Thrace. The
+reply was so ill managed by Valens' counsellors that the Goths were
+offended, and came over the river as foes when they might have come as
+friends; and Valens was killed in battle with them at Adrianople in 378.</p>
+
+<p>Gratian felt that he alone could not cope with the dangers that beset
+the empire, and his brother was still a child, so he gave the Eastern
+Empire to a brave and noble Spanish general named Theodosius, who was a
+Catholic Christian and baptized, and who made peace with the Goths, gave
+them settlements, and took their young men into his armies. In the
+meantime, Maximus was growing more powerful in Britain, and Gratian, who
+chiefly lived in Gaul, was disliked by the soldiers especially for
+making friends with the young Gothic chief Alaric, whom he joined in
+hunting in the forests of Gaul in a way they thought unworthy of an
+Emperor. Finding that he was thus disliked, Maximus crossed the Channel
+to attack him. His soldiers would not march against the British legions,
+and he was taken and put to death, bitterly lamenting that he had so
+long deferred his baptism till now it was denied to him.</p>
+
+<p>Young Valentinian went on reigning at Milan, and Maximus in Gaul. This
+last had become a Christian and a Catholic in name, but without laying
+aside his fierceness and cruelty, so that, when some heretics were
+brought before him, he had them put to death, entirely against the
+advice of the great Saint and Bishop then working in Gaul, Martin of
+Tours, and likewise of St. Ambrose, who had been sent by Valentinian to
+make peace with the Gallic tyrant.</p>
+
+<p>It was a time of great men in the Church. In Africa a very great man had
+risen up, St. Augustine, who, after doubting long and living a life of
+sin, was drawn to the truth by the prayers of his good mother Monica,
+and, when studying in Italy, listened to St. Ambrose, and became a
+hearty believer and maintainer of all that was good. He became Bishop of
+Hippo in Africa.</p>
+
+<a name="illus373"></a><center><img src="images/illus373.png" alt="convent"></center>
+<h6>CONVENT ON THE HILLS.</h6>
+
+<p>But with the good there was much of evil. All the old cities, and
+especially Rome, were full of a strange mixture of Christian show and
+heathen vice. There was such idleness and luxury in the towns that
+hardly any Romans had hardihood enough to go out to fight their own
+battles, but hired Goths, Germans, Gauls, and Moors; and these learned
+their ways of warfare, and used them in their turn against the Romans
+themselves. Nothing was so much run after as the games in the
+amphitheatres. People rushed there to watch the chariot races, and went
+perfectly wild with eagerness about the drivers whose colors they wore;
+and even the gladiator games were not done away with by Christianity,
+although these sports were continually preached against by the clergy,
+and no really devout person would go to the theatres. Much time was
+idled away at the baths, which were the place for talk and gossip, and
+where there was a soft steamy air which was enough to take away all
+manhood and resolution. The ladies' dresses were exceedingly expensive
+and absurd, and the whole way of living quite as sumptuous and helpless
+as in the times of heathenism. Good people tried to live apart. More
+than ever became monks and hermits; and a number of ladies, who had been
+much struck with St. Jerome's teaching, made up a sort of society at
+Rome which busied itself in good works and devotion. Two of the ladies,
+a mother and daughter, followed him to the Holy Land, and dwelt in a
+convent at Bethlehem.</p>
+
+<p>Maximus after a time advanced into Italy, and Valentinian fled to ask
+the help of Theodosius, who came with an army, defeated and slew
+Maximus, and restored Valentinian, but only for a short time, for the
+poor youth was soon murdered by a Frank chief in his own service named
+Arbogastes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XL"></a><h2>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+<h3>THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.</h3>
+
+<h2>392-395.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The Frank, Arbogastes, who had killed Valentinian did not make himself
+Emperor, but set up a heathen philosopher called Eugenius, who for a
+little while restored all the heathen pomp and splendor, and opened the
+temples again, threatening even to take away the churches and turn the
+chief one at Milan into a stable. They knew that Theodosius would soon
+come to attack them, so they prepared for a great resistance in the
+passes of the Julian Alps, and the image of the Thundering Jupiter was
+placed to guard them.</p>
+
+<a name="illus376"></a><center><img src="images/illus376.png" alt="ALPS"></center>
+<h6>JULIAN ALPS</h6>
+
+<p>Theodosius had collected his troops and marched under the Labarum&mdash;that
+is to say, the Cross of Constantine, which had been the ensign of the
+imperial army ever since the battle of the Milvian Bridge. It was the
+cross combined with the two first Greek letters of the name Christ,
+[Symbol: Greek chi &amp; rho combined], and was carried, as the eagles had
+been, above a purple silk banner. The men of Eugenius bore before them a
+figure of Hercules, and in the first battle they gained the advantage,
+for the more ignorant Eastern soldiers, though Christians, could not get
+rid of the notion that there was some sort of power in a heathen god,
+and thought Jupiter and Hercules were too strong for them.</p>
+
+<p>But Theodosius rallied them and led them back, so that they gained a
+great victory, and a terrible storm and whirlwind which fell at the same
+time upon the host of Eugenius made the Christian army feel the more
+sure that God fought on their side. Eugenius was taken and put to death,
+and Arbogastes fell on his own sword.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosius thus united the empires of the East and West once more. He
+was a brave and gallant soldier, and a good and conscientious man, and
+was much loved and honored; but he could be stern and passionate, and he
+was likewise greatly feared. At Antioch, the people had been much
+offended at a tax which Theodosius had laid on them; they rose in
+rebellion, overthrew his statues and those of his family, and dragged
+them about in the mud. No sooner was this done than they began to be
+shocked and terrified, especially because of the insult to the statue of
+the Empress, who was lately dead after a most kind and charitable life.
+The citizens in haste sent off messengers, with the Bishop at their
+head, to declare their grief and sorrow, and entreat the Emperor's
+pardon. All the time they were gone the city gave itself up to prayer
+and fasting, listening to sermons from the priest, John&mdash;called from his
+eloquence Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth&mdash;who preached repentance for all
+the most frequent sins, such as love of pleasure, irreverence at church,
+etc. The Bishop on his way met the Emperor's deputies who were charged
+to enquire into the crime and punish the people; and he redoubled his
+speed in reaching Constantinople, where he so pleaded the cause of the
+people that Theodosius freely forgave them, and sent him home to keep a
+happy Easter with them. This was while he was still Emperor only of the
+East.</p>
+
+<a name="illus378"></a><center><img src="images/illus378.png" alt="hall"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN HALL OF JUSTICE.</h6>
+
+<p>But when he was in Italy with Valentinian, three years later, there was
+another great sedition at Thessalonica. The people there were as mad as
+were most of the citizens of the larger towns upon the sports of the
+amphitheatre, and were vehemently fond of the charioteers whom they
+admired on either side. Just before some races that were expected, one
+of the favorite drivers committed a crime for which he was imprisoned.
+The people, wild with fury, rose and called for his release; and when
+this was denied to them, they fell on the magistrates with stones, and
+killed the chief of them, Botheric, the commander of the forces. The
+news was taken to Milan, where the Emperor then was, and his wrath was
+so great and terrible that he commanded that the whole city should
+suffer. The soldiers, who were glad both to revenge their captain and to
+gain plunder, hastened to put his command into execution; the unhappy
+people were collected in the circus, and slaughtered so rapidly and
+suddenly, that when Theodosius began to recover from his passion, and
+sent to stay the hands of the slayers, they found the city burning and
+the streets full of corpses.</p>
+
+<p>St. Ambrose felt it his duty to speak forth in the name of the Church
+against such fury and cruelty; and when Theodosius presented himself at
+the church door to come to the Holy Communion, Ambrose met him there,
+and turned him back as a blood-stained sinner unfit to partake of the
+heavenly feast, and bidding him not add sacrilege to murder.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosius pleaded that David had sinned even more deeply, and yet had
+been forgiven. &quot;If you have sinned like him, repent like him,&quot; said
+Ambrose; and the Emperor went back weeping to his palace, there to
+remain as a penitent. Easter was the usual time for receiving penitents
+back to the Church, but at Christmas the Emperor presented himself
+again, hoping to win the Bishop's consent to his return at once; but
+Ambrose was firm, and again met him at the gate, rebuking him for trying
+to break the rules of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said Theodosius; &quot;I am not come to break the laws, but to entreat
+you to imitate the mercy of God whom we serve, who opens the gates of
+mercy to contrite sinners.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On seeing how deep was his repentance, Ambrose allowed him to enter the
+Church, though it was not for some time that he was admitted to the Holy
+Communion, and all that time he fasted and never put on his imperial
+robes. He also made a law that no sentence of death should be carried
+out till thirty days after it was given, so as to give time to see
+whether it were hasty or just.</p>
+
+<p>During this reign another heresy sprang up, denying the Godhead of God
+the Holy Ghost, and, in consequence, Theodosius called together another
+Council of the Church, at which was added to the Nicene Creed those
+latter sentences which follow the words, &quot;I believe in the Holy Ghost.&quot;
+In this reign, too, began to be sung the <i>Te Deum</i>, which is generally
+known as the hymn of St. Ambrose. It was first used at Milan, but
+whether he wrote it or not is uncertain, though there is a story that he
+had it sung for the first time at the baptism of St. Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>Theodosius only lived six months after his defeat of Eugenius, dying at
+Milan in 395, when only fifty years old. He was the last who really
+deserved the name of a Roman Emperor, though the title was kept up, and
+Rome had still much to undergo. He left two young sons named Arcadius
+and Honorius, between whom the empire was divided.</p>
+
+<a name="illus383"></a><center><img src="images/illus383.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+<h3>ALARIC THE GOTH.</h3>
+
+<h2>395-410.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The sons of the great Theodosius were, like almost all the children of
+the Roman Emperors, vain and weak, spoiled by growing up as princes.
+Arcadius, who was eighteen, had the East, and was under the charge of a
+Roman officer called Rufinus; Honorius who was only eleven, reigned at
+Rome under the care of Stilicho, who was by birth a Vandal, that is to
+say, of one of those Teutonic nations who were living all round the
+northern bounds of the empire, and whose sons came to serve in the Roman
+armies and learn Roman habits. Stilicho was brave and faithful, and
+almost belonged to the imperial family, for his wife Serena was niece to
+Theodosius, and his daughter Maria was betrothed to the young Honorius.</p>
+
+<p>Stilicho was a very active, spirited man, who found troops to check the
+enemies of Rome on all sides of the Western Empire. Rufinus was not so
+faithful, and did great harm in the East by quarrelling with Arcadius'
+other ministers, and then, as all believed, inviting the Goths to come
+out of their settlements on the Danube and invade Greece, under Alaric,
+the same Gothic chief who had been a friend and companion of Gratian,
+and had fought under Theodosius.</p>
+
+<p>They passed the Danube, overran Macedon, and spread all over Greece,
+where, being Arian Christians, they destroyed with all their might all
+the remaining statues and temples of the old pagans; although, as they
+did not attack Athens, the pagans, who were numerous there, fancied that
+they were prevented by a vision of Apollo and Pallas Athene. Arcadius
+sent to his brother for aid, and Stilicho marched through Thrace;
+Rufinus was murdered through his contrivance, and then, marching on into
+the Peloponnesus, he defeated Alaric in battle, and drove him out from
+thence, but no further than Epirus, where the Goths took up their
+station to wait for another opportunity; but by this time Arcadius
+had grown afraid of Stilicho, sent him back to Italy with many gifts and
+promises, and engaged Alaric to be the guardian of his empire, not only
+against the wild tribes, but against his brother and his minister.</p>
+
+<a name="illus386"></a><center><img src="images/illus386.png" alt="colonnades"></center>
+<h6>COLONNADES OF SAINT PETER AT ROME.</h6>
+
+<p>This was a fine chance for Alaric, who had all the temper of a great
+conqueror, and to the wild bravery of a Goth had added the knowledge and
+skill of a Roman general. He led his forces through the Alps into Italy,
+and showed himself before the gates of Milan. The poor weak boy Honorius
+was carried off for safety to Ravenna, while Stilicho gathered all the
+troops from Gaul, and left Britain unguarded by Roman soldiers, to
+protect the heart of the empire. With these he attacked Alaric, and
+gained a great victory at Pollentia; the Goths retreated; he followed
+and beat them again at Verona, driving them out of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>It was the last Roman victory, and it was celebrated by the last Roman
+triumph. There had been three hundred triumphs of Roman generals, but it
+was Honorius who entered Rome in the car of victory and was taken to the
+Capitol, and afterwards there were games in the amphitheatre as usual,
+and fights of gladiators. In the midst of the horrid battle a voice was
+heard bidding it to cease in the name of Christ, and between the swords
+there was seen standing a monk in his dark brown dress, holding up his
+hand and keeping back the blows. There was a shout of rage, and he was
+cut down and killed in a moment; but then in horror the games were
+stopped. It was found that he was an Egyptian monk named Telemachus,
+freshly come to Rome. No one knew any more about him, but this noble
+death of his put an end to shows of gladiators. Chariot races and games
+went on, though the good and thoughtful disapproved of the wild
+excitement they caused; but the horrid sports of death and blood were
+ended for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Alaric was driven back for a time, but there were swarms of Germans who
+were breaking in where the line of boundary had been left undefended by
+the soldiers being called away to fight the Goths. A fierce heathen
+chief named Radegaisus advanced with at least 200,000 men as far as
+Florence, but was there beaten by the brave Stilicho, and was put to
+death, while the other prisoners were sold into slavery. But Stilicho,
+brave as he was, was neither loved nor trusted by the Emperor or the
+people. Some abused him for not bringing back the old gods under whom,
+they said, Rome had prospered; others said that he was no honest
+Christian, and all believed that he meant to make his son Emperor. When
+he married this son to a daughter of Arcadius, people made sure that
+this was his purpose. Honorius listened to the accusation, and his
+favorite Olympius persuaded the army to give up Stilicho. He fled to a
+church, but was persuaded to come out of it, and was then put to death.</p>
+
+<p>And at that very time Alaric was crossing the Alps. There was no one to
+make any resistance. Honorius was at Ravenna, safe behind walls and
+marshes, and cared for nothing but his favorite poultry. Alaric encamped
+outside the walls of Rome, but he did not attempt to break in, waiting
+till the Romans should be starved out. When they had come to terrible
+distress, they offered to ransom their city. He asked a monstrous sum,
+which they refused, telling him what hosts there were of them, and that
+he might yet find them dangerous. &quot;The thicker the hay, the easier to
+mow,&quot; said the Goth. &quot;What will you leave us then?&quot; they asked. &quot;Your
+lives,&quot; was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>The ransom the wretched Romans agreed to pay was 5000 pounds' weight of
+gold and 30,000 of silver, 4000 silk robes, 3000 pieces of scarlet
+cloth, and 3000 pounds of pepper. They stripped the roof of the temple
+in the Capitol, and melted down the images of the old gods to raise the
+sum, and Alaric drew off his men; but he came again the next year,
+blocked up Ostia, and starved them faster. This time he brought a man
+named Attalus, whom he ordered them to admit as Emperor, and they did
+so; but as the governor of Africa would send no corn while this man
+reigned, the people rose and drove him out, and thus for the third time
+brought Alaric down on them. The gates were opened to him at night, and
+he entered Rome on the 24th of August, 410, exactly eight hundred years
+after the sack of Rome by Brennus.</p>
+
+<a name="illus392"></a><center><img src="images/illus392.png" alt="alaric"></center>
+<h6>ALARIC'S BURIAL.</h6>
+
+<p>Alaric did not wish to ruin and destroy the grand old city, nor to
+massacre the inhabitants; but his Goths were thirsty for the spoil he
+had kept them from so long, and he gave them leave to plunder for six
+days, but not to kill, nor to do any harm to the churches. A set of
+wild, furious men could not, of course, be kept in by these orders, and
+terrible misfortunes befell many unhappy families; but the mischief done
+was much less than could have been expected, and the great churches of
+St. Peter and St. Paul were unhurt. One old lady named Marcella, a
+friend of St. Jerome, was beaten to make her show where her treasures
+were; but when at last her tormentors came to believe that she had spent
+her all on charity, they led her to the shelter of the church with her
+friends, soon to die of what she had undergone. After twelve days,
+however, Alaric drew off his forces, leaving Rome to shift for itself.
+Bishop Innocent was at Ravenna, where he had gone to ask help from the
+Emperor; but Honorius knew and cared so little that when he was told
+Rome was lost, he only thought of his favorite hen whose name was Rome,
+and said, &quot;That cannot be, for I have just fed her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Alaric marched southward, the Goths plundering the villas of the Roman
+nobles on their way. At Cosenza, in the extreme south, he fell ill of a
+fever and died. His warriors turned the stream of the river Bionzo out
+of its course, caused his grave to be dug in the bed of the torrent, and
+when his corpse had been laid there, they slew all the slaves who had
+done the work, so that none might be able to tell where lay the great
+Goth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VANDALS.</h3>
+
+<h2>403.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>One good thing came of the Gothic conquest&mdash;the pagans were put to
+silence for ever. The temples had been razed, the idols broken, and no
+one set them up again; but the whole people of Rome were Christian, at
+least in name, from that time forth; and the temples and halls of
+justice began to be turned into churches.</p>
+
+<p>Honorius still lived his idle life at Ravenna, and the Bishop&mdash;or, as
+the Romans called him, Papa, father, or Pope&mdash;came back and helped them
+to put matters into order again. Alaric had left no son, but his wife's
+brother Ataulf became leader of the Goths. At Rome he had made prisoner
+Theodosius' daughter Placidia, and he married her; but he did not choose
+to rule at Rome, because, as he said, his Goths would never bear a quiet
+life in a city. So he promised to protect the empire for Honorius, and
+led his tribe away from Italy to Spain, which they conquered, and began
+a kingdom there. They were therefore known as the Visigoths, or Western
+Goths.</p>
+
+<p>Arcadius, in the meantime, reigned quietly at Constantinople, where St.
+John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch, was made
+Patriarch, or father-bishop. The games and races in the circus at
+Constantinople were as madly run after as they had ever been at Rome or
+Thessalonica; there were not indeed shows of gladiators, but people set
+themselves with foolish vehemence to back up one driver against another,
+wearing their colors and calling themselves by their names, and the two
+factions of the Greens and the Blues were ready to tear each other to
+pieces. The Empress Eudoxia, Arcadius' wife, was one of the most
+vehement of all, and was, besides, a vain, silly woman, who encouraged
+all kinds of pomp and expense. St. Chrysostom preached against all the
+mischiefs that thus arose, so that she was offended, and contrived to
+raise up an accusation against him and have him driven out of the city.
+The people of Constantinople still showed so much love for him that she
+insisted on his being sent further off to the bleak shores of the Black
+Sea, and on the journey he died, his last words being, &quot;Glory be to God
+in all things.&quot;</p>
+
+<a name="illus397"></a><center><img src="images/illus397.png" alt="clock"></center>
+<h6>ROMAN CLOCK.</h6>
+
+<p>Arcadius died in 408, leaving a young son, called Theodosius II., in
+the care of his elder sister Pulcheria, under whom the Eastern Empire
+lay at peace, while the miseries of the Western went on increasing. New
+Emperors were set up by the legions in the distant provinces, but were
+soon overthrown, while Honorius only remained at Ravenna by the support
+of the kings of the Teuton tribes; and as he never trusted them or kept
+faith with them, he was always offending them and being punished by
+fresh attacks on some part of his empire, for which he did not greatly
+care so long as they let him alone.</p>
+
+<p>Ataulf died in Spain, and Placidia came back to Ravenna, where Honorius
+gave her in marriage to a Roman general named Constantius, and she had a
+son named Valentinian, who, when his uncle died after thirty-seven years
+of a wretched reign, became Emperor in his stead, under his mother's
+guardianship, in 423.</p>
+
+<p>Two great generals who were really able men were her chief
+supporters&mdash;Boniface, Count or Commander of Africa; and A&euml;tius, who is
+sometimes called the last of the Romans, though he was not by birth a
+Roman at all, but a Scythian. He gained the ear of the Empress Placidia,
+and persuaded her that Boniface wanted to set himself up in Africa as
+Emperor, so that she sent to recall him, and evil friends assured him
+that she meant to put him to death as soon as he arrived. He was very
+much enraged, and though St. Augustine, now an old man, who had long
+been Bishop of Hippo, advised him to restrain his anger, he called on
+Genseric, the chief of the Vandals, to come and help him to defend his
+province.</p>
+
+<a name="illus399"></a><center><img src="images/illus399.png" alt="coast"></center>
+<h6>SPANISH COAST.</h6>
+
+<p>The Vandals were another tribe of Teutons&mdash;tall, strong, fair-haired,
+and much like the Goths, and, like them, they were Arians. They had
+marauded in Italy, and then had followed the Goths to Spain, where they
+had established themselves in the South, in the country called from them
+Vandalusia, or Andalusia. Their chief was only too glad to obey the
+summons of Boniface, but before he came the Roman had found out his
+mistake; Placidia had apologized to him, and all was right between them.
+But it was now too late; Genseric and his Vandals were on the way, and
+there was nothing for it but to fight his best against them.</p>
+
+<p>He could not save Carthage, and, though he made the bravest defence in
+his power, he was driven into Hippo, which was so strongly fortified
+that he was able to hold it out a whole year, during which time St.
+Augustine died, after a long illness. He had caused the seven
+penitential Psalms to be written out on the walls of his room, and was
+constantly musing on them. He died, and was buried in peace before the
+city was taken. Boniface held out for five years altogether before
+Africa was entirely taken by the Vandals, and a miserable time began for
+the Church, for Genseric was an Arian, and set himself to crush out the
+Catholic Church by taking away her buildings and grievously persecuting
+her faithful bishops.</p>
+
+<p>Valentinian III, made a treaty with him, and even yielded up to him all
+right to the old Roman province of Africa; but Genseric had a strong
+fleet of ships, and went on attacking and plundering Sicily, Corsica,
+Sardinia, Italy and the coasts of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>Britain, at the same time, was being so tormented by the attacks of the
+Saxons by sea, and the Caledonians from the north, that her chiefs sent
+a piteous letter to A&euml;tius in Gaul, beginning with &quot;The groans of the
+Britons;&quot; but A&euml;tius could send no help, and Gaul itself was being
+overrun by the Goths in the south, the Burgundians in the middle, and
+the Franks in the north, so that scarcely more than Italy itself
+remained to Valentinian.</p>
+
+<a name="illus402"></a><center><img src="images/illus402.png" alt="vandals"></center>
+<h6>VANDALS PLUNDERING</h6>
+
+<p>The Eastern half of the Empire was better off, though it was tormented
+by the Persians in the East, on the northern border by the Eastern Goths
+or Ostrogoths, who had stayed on the banks of the Danube instead of
+coming to Italy, and to the south by the Vandals from Africa. But
+Pulcheria was so wise and good that, when her young brother Theodosius
+II. died without children, the people begged her to choose a husband who
+might be an Emperor for them. She chose a wise old senator named
+Marcian, and when he died, she again chose another good and wise man
+named Zeno; and thus the Eastern Empire stood while the West was fast
+crumbling away. The nobles were almost all vain, weak cowards, who only
+thought of themselves, and left strangers to fight their battles; and
+every one was cowed with fear, for a more terrible foe than any was now
+coming on them.</p>
+
+<a name="illus404"></a><center><img src="images/illus404.png" alt="sphinx"></center>
+<h6> PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX IN EGYPT.</h6>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ATTILA THE HUN</h3>
+
+<h2>435-457.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The terrible enemy who was coming against the unhappy Roman Empire was
+the nation of Huns, a wild, savage race, who were of the same stock as
+the Tartars, and dwelt as they do in the northern parts of Asia, keeping
+huge herds of horses, spending their life on horseback, and using mares'
+milk as food. They were an ugly, small, but active race, and used to cut
+their children's faces that the scars might make them look more terrible
+to their enemies. Just at this time a great spirit of conquest had come
+upon them, and they had, as said before, driven the Goths over the
+Danube fifty years ago, and seized the lands we still call Hungary. A
+most mighty and warlike chief called Attila had become their head,
+and wherever he went his track was marked by blood and flame, so that he
+was called &quot;The Scourge of God.&quot; His home was on the banks of the
+Theiss, in a camp enclosed with trunks of trees, for he did not care to
+dwell in cities or establish a kingdom, though the wild tribes of Huns
+from the furthest parts of Asia followed his standard&mdash;a sword fastened
+to a pole, which was said to be also his idol.</p>
+
+<a name="illus406"></a><center><img src="images/illus406.png" alt="camp"></center>
+<h6>HUNNISH CAMP.</h6>
+
+<p>He threatened to fall upon the two empires, and an embassy was sent to
+him at his camp. The Huns would not dismount, and thus the Romans were
+forced to address them on horseback. The only condition upon which he
+would abstain from invading the empire was the paying of an enormous
+tribute, beyond what almost any power of theirs could attempt to raise.
+However, he did not then attack Italy, but turned upon Gaul. So much was
+he hated and dreaded by the Teutonic nations, that all Goths, Franks,
+and Burgundians flocked to join the Roman forces under A&euml;tius to drive
+him back. They came just in time to save the city of Orleans from being
+ravaged by him, and defeated him in the battle of Chalons with a great
+slaughter; but he made good his retreat from Gaul with an immense
+number of captives, whom he killed in revenge.</p>
+
+<p>The next year he demanded that Valentinian's sister, Honoria, should be
+given to him, and when she was refused, he led his host into Italy and
+destroyed all the beautiful cities of the north. A great many of the
+inhabitants fled into the islands among the salt marshes and pools at
+the head of the Adriatic Sea, between the mouths of the rivers Po and
+Adige, where no enemy could reach them; and there they built houses and
+made a town, which in time became the great city of Venice, the queen of
+the Adriatic.</p>
+
+<a name="illus410"></a><center><img src="images/illus410.png" alt="venice"></center>
+<h6>ST. MARK'S, VENICE.</h6>
+
+<p>A&euml;tius was still in Gaul, the wretched Valentinian at Ravenna was
+helpless and useless, and Attila proceeded towards Rome. It was well for
+Rome that she had a brave and devoted Pope in Leo. I., who went out at
+the head of his clergy to meet the barbarian in his tent, and threaten
+him with the wrath of Heaven if he should let loose his cruel followers
+upon the city. Attila was struck with his calm greatness, and,
+remembering that Alaric had died soon after plundering Rome, became
+afraid. He consented to accept of Honoria's dowry instead of herself,
+and to be content with a great ransom for the city of Rome. He then
+turned to his camp on the Danube with all his horde, and soon after
+his arrival he married a young girl whom he had made prisoner. The next
+morning he was found dead on his bed in a pool of his own blood, and she
+was gone; but as there was no wound about him, it was thought that he
+had broken a blood-vessel in the drunken fit in which he fell asleep,
+and that she had fled in terror. His warriors tore their cheeks with
+their daggers, saying that he ought to be mourned only with tears of
+blood; but as they had no chief as able and daring as he, they gradually
+fell back again to their north-eastern settlements, and troubled Europe
+no more.</p>
+
+<p>Valentinian thought the danger over, and when A&euml;tius came back to
+Ravenna, he grew jealous of his glory and stabbed him with his own hand.
+Soon after he offended a senator named Maximus, who killed him in
+revenge, became Emperor, and married his widow, Eudoxia, the daughter of
+Theodosius II. of Constantinople, telling her that it was for love of
+her that her husband was slain. Eudoxia sent a message to invite the
+dreadful Genseric, king of the Vandals, to come and deliver her from a
+rebel who had slain the lawful Emperor. Genseric's ships were ready, and
+sailed into the Tiber; while the Romans, mad with terror, stoned
+Maximus in their streets. Nobody had any courage or resolution but the
+Pope Leo, who went forth again to meet the barbarian and plead for his
+city; but Genseric being an Arian, had not the same awe of him as the
+wild Huns, hated the Catholics, and was eager for the prey. He would
+accept no ransom instead of the plunder, but promised that the lives of
+the Romans should be spared. This was the most dreadful calamity that
+Rome, once the queen of cities, had undergone. The pillage lasted
+fourteen days, and the Vandals stripped churches, houses, and all alike,
+putting their booty on board their ships; but much was lost in a storm
+between Italy and Africa. The golden candlestick and shew-bread table
+belonging to the Temple at Jerusalem were carried off to Carthage with
+the spoil, and no less than sixty thousand captives, among them the
+Empress Eudoxia, who had been the means of bringing in Genseric, with
+her two daughters. The Empress was given back to her friends at
+Constantinople, but one of her daughters was kept by the Vandals, and
+was married to the son of Genseric. After plundering all the south of
+Italy, Genseric went back to Africa without trying to keep Rome or set
+up a kingdom; and when he was gone, the Romans elected as Emperor a
+senator named Avitus, a Gaul by birth, a peaceful and good man.</p>
+
+<a name="illus414"></a><center><img src="images/illus414.png" alt="house"></center>
+<h6>THE POPE'S HOUSE.</h6>
+
+<p>His daughter had married a most excellent Gaulish gentleman named
+Sidonius Apollinaris, who wrote such good poetry that the Romans placed
+his bust crowned with laurel in the Capitol. He wrote many letters, too,
+which are preserved to this time, and show that, in the midst of all
+this crumbling power of Rome, people in Southern Gaul managed to have
+many peaceful days of pleasant country life. But Sidonius' quiet days
+came to an end when, layman and lawyer as he was, the people of Clermont
+begged him to be their Bishop. The Church stood, whatever fell, and
+people trusted more to their Bishop than to any one else, and wanted him
+to be the ablest man they could find. So Sidonius took the charge of
+them, and helped them to hold out their mountain city of Clermont for a
+whole year against the Goths, and gained good terms for them at last,
+though he himself had to suffer imprisonment and exile from these Arian
+Goths because of his Catholic faith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THEODORIC THE OSTROGOTH.</h3>
+
+<h2>457&mdash;561.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>Avitus was a good man, but the Romans grew weary of him, and in the year
+457 they engaged Ricimer, a chief of the Teutonic tribe called Suevi, to
+drive him out, when he went back to Gaul, where he had a beautiful
+palace and garden. After ten months Ricimer chose another Sueve to be
+Emperor. He had been a captain under A&euml;tius, and had the Roman name of
+Majorian. He showed himself brave and spirited; led an army into Spain
+and attacked Genseric; but he was beaten, and came back disappointed.
+Ricimer was, however, jealous of him, forced him to resign, and soon
+after poisoned him.</p>
+
+<p>After this, Ricimer really ruled Italy, but he seemed to have a sort of
+awe of the title of C&aelig;sar Augustus, the Emperor, for he forbore to use
+it himself, and gave it to one poor weak wretch after another until his
+death in 472. His nephew went on in the same course; but at last a
+soldier named Orestes, of Roman birth, gained the chief power, and set
+up as Emperor his own little son, whose Christian name was Romulus
+Augustus, making him wear the purple and the crown, and calling him by
+all the titles; but the Romans made his name into Augustulus, or Little
+Augustus. At the end of a year, a Teutonic chief named Odoacer crossed
+the Alps at the head of a great mixture of different German tribes, and
+Orestes could make no stand against him, but was taken and put to death.
+His little boy was spared, and was placed at Sorrento; but Odoacer sent
+the crown and robes of the West to Zeno, the Eastern Emperor, saying
+that one Emperor was enough. So fell the Roman power in 476, exactly
+twelve centuries after the date of the founding of Rome. It was thought
+that this was meant by the twelve vultures seen by Romulus, and that the
+seven which Remus saw denoted the seven centuries that the Republic
+stood. It was curious, too, that it should be with the two names of
+Romulus and Augustus that Rome and her empire fell.</p>
+
+<p>Odoacer called himself king, and, indeed, the Western Empire had been
+nearly all seized by different kings&mdash;the Vandal kings in Africa, the
+Gothic kings in Spain and Southern Gaul, the Burgundian kings and Frank
+kings in Northern Gaul, the Saxon kings in Britain. The Ostro or Eastern
+Goths, who had since the time of Valens dwelt on the banks of the
+Danube, had been subdued by Attila, but recovered their freedom after
+his death. One of their young chiefs, named Theodoric, was sent as a
+hostage to Constantinople, and there learned much. He became king of the
+Eastern Goths in 470, and showed himself such a dangerous neighbor to
+the Eastern Empire that, to be rid of him the Emperor Zeno advised him
+to go and attack Odoacer in Italy. The Ostrogoths marched seven hundred
+miles, and came over the Alps into the plains of Northern Italy, where
+Odoacer fought with them bravely, but was beaten. They besieged him even
+in Ravenna, till after three years he was obliged to surrender and was
+put to death.</p>
+
+<a name="illus420"></a><center><img src="images/illus420.png" alt="crown"></center>
+<h6>ROMULUS AUGUSTUS RESIGNS THE CROWN.</h6>
+
+<p>Rome could make no defence, and fell into Theodoric's hands with the
+rest of Italy; but he was by far the best of the conquerors&mdash;he did not
+hurt or misuse them, and only wished his Goths to learn of them and
+become peaceful farmers. He gave them the lands which had lost their
+owners; about thirty or forty thousand families were settled there by
+him on the waste lands, and the Romans who were left took courage and
+worked too. He did not live at Rome, though he came thither and was
+complimented by the Senate, and he set a sum by every year for repairing
+the old buildings; but he chiefly lived at Verona, where he reigned over
+both the Eastern and Western Goths in Gaul and Italy.</p>
+
+<p>He was an Arian, but he did not persecute the Catholics, and to such
+persons as changed their profession of faith to please him he showed no
+more favor, saying that those who were not faithful to their God would
+never be faithful to their earthly master. He reigned thirty-three
+years, but did not end as well as he began, for he grew irritable and
+distrustful with age; and the Romans, on the other hand, forgot that
+they were not the free, prosperous nation of old, and displeased him.
+Two of their very best men, Bo&euml;thius and Symmachus, were by him kept for
+a long time prisoners at Rome and then put to death. While Bo&euml;thius was
+in prison at Pavia, he wrote a book called <i>The Consolations of
+Philosophy</i>, so beautiful that the English king Alfred translated it
+into Saxon four centuries later. Theodoric kept up a correspondence with
+the other Gothic kings wherever a tribe of his people dwelt, even as far
+as Sweden and Denmark; but as even he could not write, and only had a
+seal with the letters [Greek: THEOD] with which to make his signature,
+the whole was conducted in Latin by Roman slaves on either side, who
+interpreted to their masters. An immense number of letters from
+Theodoric's secretary are preserved, and show what an able man his
+master was, and how well he deserved his name of &quot;The Great.&quot; He died in
+526, leaving only two daughters. Their two sons, Amalric and Athalaric,
+divided the Eastern and Western Goths between them again.</p>
+
+<p>Seven Gothic kings reigned over Northern Italy after Theodoric. They
+were fierce and restless, but had nothing like his strength and spirit,
+and they chiefly lived in the more northern cities&mdash;Milan, Verona, and
+Ravenna, leaving Rome to be a tributary city to them, where there still
+remained the old names of Senate and Consuls, but the person who was
+generally most looked up to and trusted was the Pope. All this time Rome
+was leavening the nations who had conquered her. When they tried to
+learn civilized ways, it was from her; they learned to speak her tongue,
+never wrote but in Latin, and worshipped with Latin prayers and
+services. Far above all, these conquerors learned Christianity from the
+Romans. When everything else was ruined, the Bishop and clergy remained,
+and became the chief counsellors and advisers of many of these kings.</p>
+
+<a name="illus424"></a><center><img src="images/illus424.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+<p>It was just at this time that there was living at Monte Casino, in the
+South of Italy, St. Benedict, an Italian hermit, who was there joined by
+a number of others who, like him, longed to pray for the sinful world
+apart rather than fight and struggle with bad men. He formed them into a
+great band of monks, all wearing a plain dark dress with a hood, and
+following a strict rule of plain living, hard work, and prayers at seven
+regular hours in the course of the day and night. His rule was called
+the Benedictine, and houses of monks arose in many places, and were safe
+shelters in these fierce times.</p>
+
+<a name="illus425"></a><center><img src="images/illus425.png" alt="illus"></center>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLV.</h2>
+
+<h3>BELISARIUS.</h3>
+
+<h2>533-563.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>The Teutonic nations soon lost their spirit when they had settled in the
+luxurious Roman cities, and as they were as fierce as ever, their kings
+tore one another to pieces. A very able Emperor, named Justinian, had
+come to the throne in the East, and in his armies there had grown up a
+Thracian who was one of the greatest and best generals the world has
+ever seen. His name was Belisarius, and strange to say, both he and the
+Emperor had married the daughters of two charioteers in the circus
+races. The Empress was named Theodora, the general's wife Antonina, and
+their acquaintance first made Belisarius known to Justinian, who, by his
+means, ended by winning back great part of the Western Empire.</p>
+
+<p>He began with Africa, where Genseric's grandson was reigning over the
+Vandals, and paying so little heed to his defences that Belisarius
+landed without any warning, and called all the multitudes of old Roman
+inhabitants to join him, which they joyfully did. He defeated the
+Vandals in battle, entered Carthage, and restored the power of the
+empire. He brought away the golden candlestick and treasures of the
+Temple, and the cross believed to be the true one, and carried them to
+Constantinople, whence the Emperor sent them back to the Church of the
+Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>Just as Belisarius had returned to Constantinople, a piteous entreaty
+came to Justinian from Amalosontha, the daughter of Theodoric, who had
+been made prisoner by Theodotus, the husband she had chosen. It seemed
+to be opening a way for getting back Italy, and Justinian sent off
+Belisarius; but before he had sailed, the poor Gothic queen had been
+strangled in her bath. Belisarius, however, with 4500 horse and 3000
+foot soldiers, landed in Sicily and soon conquered the whole island, all
+the people rejoicing in his coming. He then crossed to Rhegium, and laid
+siege to Naples. As usual, the inhabitants were his friends, and one of
+them showed him the way to enter the city through an old aqueduct which
+opened into an old woman's garden.</p>
+
+<a name="illus428"></a><center><img src="images/illus428.png" alt="naples"></center>
+<h6>NAPLES.</h6>
+
+<p>Theodotus was a coward as well as a murderer, and fled away, while a
+brave warrior named Vitiges was proclaimed king by the Goths at Rome.
+But with the broken walls and all the Roman citizens against him,
+Vitiges thought it best not to try to hold out against Belisarius, and
+retreated to Ravenna, while Rome welcomed the Eastern army as
+deliverers. But Vitiges was collecting an army at Ravenna, and in three
+months was besieging Rome again. Never had there been greater bravery
+and patience than Vitiges showed outside the walls of Rome, and
+Belisarius inside, during the summer of 536. There was a terrible famine
+within; all kinds of strange food were used in scanty measure, and the
+Romans were so impatient of suffering, that Belisarius was forced to
+watch them day and night to prevent them betraying him to the enemy.
+Indeed, while the siege lasted a whole year, nearly all the people of
+Rome died of hunger and wretchedness; and the Goths, in the unhealthy
+Campagna around, died of fevers and agues, until they, too, had all
+perished except a small band, which Vitiges led back to Ravenna, whither
+Belisarius followed him, besieged him, made him prisoner, and carried
+him to Constantinople. Justinian gave him an estate where he could live
+in peace.</p>
+
+<a name="illus430"></a><center><img src="images/illus430.png" alt="constantinople"></center>
+<h6>CONSTANTINOPLE.</h6>
+
+<p>The Moors in Africa revolted, and Belisarius next went to subdue them.
+While he was there, the Goths in Italy began to recover from the blow he
+had given them, and chose a brave young man named Totila to be their
+king. In a very short time he had won back almost all Italy, for there
+really were hardly any men left, and even Justinian had only two small
+armies to dispose of, and those made up of Thracians and Isaurians from
+the shores of the Black Sea. One of these was sent with Belisarius to
+attack the Goths, but was not strong enough to do more than just hold
+Totila in check, and Justinian would not even send him all the help
+possible, because he dreaded the love the army bore to him. After four
+years of fighting with Totila he was recalled, and a slave named Narces,
+who had always lived in the women's apartment in the palace, was sent to
+take the command. He was really able and skilled, and being better
+supported, he gained a great victory near Rome, in which Totila was
+killed, and another near Naples, which quite overcame the Ostrogoths, so
+that they never became a power again. Italy was restored to the Empire,
+and was governed by an officer from Constantinople, who lived at
+Ravenna, and was called the Exarch.</p>
+
+<p>Belisarius, in the meantime, was sent to fight with the king of Persia,
+Chosro&euml;s, a very warlike prince, who had overrun Syria and carried off
+many prisoners from Antioch. Belisarius gained victory after victory
+over him, and had just driven him back over the rivers, when again came
+a recall, and Narses was sent out to finish the war. Theodora, the
+Empress, wanted to reign after her husband, and had heard that, on a
+report coming to the army of his death, Belisarius had said that he
+should give his vote for Justin, the right heir. So she worked on the
+fears all Emperors had&mdash;that their troops might proclaim a successful
+general as Emperor, and again Belisarius was ordered home, while Narses
+was sent to finish what he had begun.</p>
+
+<p>There was one more war for this great man when the wild Bulgarians
+invaded Thrace, and though his soldiers were little better than timid
+peasants, he drove them back and saved the country. But Justinian grew
+more and more jealous of him, and, fancying untruly that he was in a
+plot for placing Justin on the throne, caused him to be thrown into
+prison, and sent him out from thence stripped of everything, and with
+his eyes torn out. He found a little child to lead him to a church door,
+where he used to sit with a wooden dish before him for alms. When it was
+known who the blind beggar was, there was such an uproar among the
+people that Justinian was obliged to give him back his palace and some
+of his riches; but he did not live much longer.</p>
+
+<p>Though Justinian behaved so unjustly and ungratefully to this great man
+and faithful servant, he is noted for better things, namely, for making
+the Church of St. Sophia, or the Holy Wisdom, which Constantine had
+built at Constantinople, the most splendid of all buildings, and for
+having the whole body of Roman laws thoroughly overlooked and put into
+order. Many even of the old heathen laws were very good ones, but there
+were others connected with idolatry that needed to be done away with;
+and in the course of years so many laws and alterations had been made,
+that it was the study of a lifetime even to know what they were, or how
+to act on them. Justinian set his best lawyers to put them all in order,
+so that it might be more easy to work by them. The Roman citizens in
+Greece, Italy, and all the lands overrun by the Teutonic nations were
+still judged by their own laws, so that this was a very useful work; and
+it was so well done that the conquerors took them up in time, and the
+Roman law was the great model studied everywhere by those who wished to
+understand the rules of jurisprudence, that is, of law and justice. Thus
+in another way Rome conquered her conquerors.</p>
+
+<p>Justinian died in 563, and was succeeded by his nephew Justin, whose
+wife Sophia behaved almost as ill to Narses as Theodora had done to
+Belisarius, for while he was doing his best to defend Italy from the
+savage tribes who were ready at any moment to come over the Alps, she
+sent him a distaff, and ordered him back to his old slavery in the
+palace.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>POPE GREGORY THE GREAT.</h3>
+
+<h2>563&mdash;800.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p>No sooner was Narses called home than another terrible nation of
+Teutones, who had hitherto dwelt in the North, began to come over the
+Alps. These were the Longbeards, or Lombards, as they were more commonly
+called; fierce and still heathen. Their king, Alboin, had carried off
+Rosamond, the daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, another Teutonic
+tribe. There was a most terrible war, in which Kunimund was killed and
+all his tribe broken up and joined with the Lombards. With the two
+united, Alboin invaded Italy and conquered all the North. Ravenna,
+Verona, Milan, and all the large towns held out bravely against them,
+but were taken at last, except Venice, which still owned the Emperor at
+Constantinople. Alboin had kept the skull of Kunimund as a trophy, and
+had had it set in gold for a drinking-cup, as his wild faith made him
+believe that the reward of the brave in the other world would be to
+drink mead from the skulls of their fallen enemies. In a drunken fit at
+Verona, he sent for Rosamond and made her pledge him in this horrible
+cup. She had always hated him, and this made her revenge her father's
+death by stabbing him to the heart in the year 573. The Lombard power
+did not, however, fall with him; his nephew succeeded him, and ruled
+over the country we still call Lombardy. Rome was not taken by them, but
+was still in name belonging to the Emperor, though he had little power
+there, and the Senate governed it in name, with all the old magistrates.
+The Pr&aelig;tor at the time the Lombards arrived was a man of one of the old
+noble families, Anicius Gregorius, or, as we have learned to call him,
+Gregory. He had always been a good and pious man, and while he took
+great care to fulfil all the duties of his office, his mind was more and
+more drawn away from the world, till at last he became a monk of St.
+Benedict, gave all his vast wealth to build and endow monasteries and
+hospitals, and lived himself in an hospital for beggars, nursing them,
+studying the Holy Scriptures, and living only on pulse, which his mother
+sent him every day in a silver dish&mdash;the only remnant of his
+wealth&mdash;till one day, having nothing else to give a shipwrecked sailor
+who asked alms, he bestowed it on him.</p>
+
+<a name="illus436"></a><center><img src="images/illus436.png" alt="pope"></center>
+<h6> POPE GREGORY THE GREAT.</h6>
+
+<p>He was made one of the seven deacons who were called Cardinal Deacons,
+because they had charge of the poor of the principal parishes of
+Rome; and it was when going about on some errand of kindness that he saw
+the English slave children in the market, and planned the conversion of
+their country; but the people would not let him leave Rome, and in 590,
+the Senate, the clergy, and the people chose him Pope. It was just then
+that a terrible pestilence fell on Rome, and he made the people form
+seven great processions&mdash;of clergy, of monks, of nuns, of children, of
+men, of wives, and of widows&mdash;all singing litanies to entreat that the
+plague might be turned away. Then it was that he beheld an angel
+standing on the tomb of Hadrian, and the plague ceased. Ever after, the
+great old tomb has been called the Castle of St. Angelo.</p>
+
+<a name="illus438"></a><center><img src="images/illus438.png" alt="pulpit"></center>
+<h6>THE POPE'S PULPIT.</h6>
+
+<p>It was a troublous time, but Gregory was so much respected that he was
+able to keep Rome orderly and safe, and to make peace between the
+Emperor Maurice and the Lombards' king, Agilulf, who had an excellent
+wife, Theodolinda. She was a great friend of the Pope, wrote a letter to
+him, and did all she could to support him. The Eastern Empire was still
+owned at Rome, but when there was an attempt to make out that the
+Patriarch of Constantinople was superior to the Pope, Gregory upheld the
+principle that no Patriarch had any right to be above the rest, nor to
+be called Universal Bishop. Gregory was a very great man, and the
+justice and wisdom of his management did much to make the Romans look to
+their Pope as the head of affairs even after his death in 604.</p>
+
+<a name="illus442"></a><center><img src="images/illus442.png" alt="battle"></center>
+<h6>BATTLE OF TOURS.</h6>
+
+<p>The Greek Empire sent an officer to govern the extreme South of Italy,
+which, like Rome and Venice, still owned the Emperor; but all the troops
+that could be hired were soon wanted to fight with the Arabs, whose
+false prophet Mahommed had taught them to spread religion with the
+sword. There was no one capable of making head against the Lombards, and
+the Popes only kept them off by treaties and good management; and at
+last, in 741, Pope Gregory III. put himself under the protection of
+Charles Martel, the great Frank captain who had beaten the Mahometans at
+the battle of Tours. Charles Martel was rewarded by being made a Roman
+senator, so was his son Pippin, who was also king of the Franks, and his
+grandson Charles the Great, who had to come often to Italy to protect
+Rome, and at last broke up the Lombard kingdom, was chosen Roman Emperor
+as of old, and crowned by Pope Leo III. in the year 800. From that time
+there was again the Western Empire, commonly called the Holy Roman
+Empire, the Emperor, or C&aelig;sar&mdash;Kaisar, as the Germans still call
+him&mdash;being generally also king of Germany and king of Lombardy. Rome was
+all this time chiefly under the power of the Popes, who grew in course
+of years to be more and more of princes, and at the same time to claim
+more power over the Church, calling themselves Universal Bishops
+contrary to the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. All this, however,
+belongs to the history of Europe in modern times, and will be found in
+the history of Germany, since there were many struggles between the
+Popes and Emperors. For Rome has really had <i>two</i> histories, and those
+who visit Rome and study the wonderful buildings there may dwell on the
+old or the new, the pagan or the Christian, as their minds lead them, or
+else on that strange middle time when idolatry and Christianity were
+struggling together.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Young Folks' History of Rome
+by Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME ***
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@@ -0,0 +1,6905 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Young Folks' History of Rome, by Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Young Folks' History of Rome
+
+Author: Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2005 [EBook #16667]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Graeme Mackreth and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY
+
+OF
+
+ROME.
+
+BY
+
+CHARLOTTE M. YONGE,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE," "BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS," "YOUNG FOLKS'
+HISTORY OF FRANCE," &c.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON:
+
+ESTES & LAURIAT,
+
+301 WASHINGTON STREET.
+
+COPYRIGHT BY
+
+D. LOTHROP & CO. and ESTES & LAURIAT.
+
+1880.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This sketch of the History of Rome covers the period till the reign of
+Charles the Great as head of the new Western Empire. The history has
+been given as briefly as could be done consistently with such details as
+can alone make it interesting to all classes of readers.
+
+CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAP.                                                      PAGE.
+
+1.--Italy                                                             13
+
+2.--The Wanderings of AEneas                                           21
+
+3.--The Founding of Rome. B.C. 753-713                                31
+
+4.--Numa and Tullus. B.C. 713-618                                     39
+
+5.--The Driving Out of the Tarquins. B.C. 578-309                     47
+
+6.--The War with Porsena                                              55
+
+7.--The Roman Government                                              66
+
+8.--Menenius Agrippa's Fable. B.C. 494                                74
+
+9.--Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. B.C. 458                              84
+
+10.--The Decemvirs. B.C. 450                                          92
+
+11.--Camillus' Banishment                                            101
+
+12.--The Sack of Rome. B.C. 390                                      110
+
+13.--The Plebeian Consulate. B.C. 367                                119
+
+14.--The Devotion of Decius. B.C. 357                                127
+
+15.--The Samnite Wars                                                135
+
+16.--The War with Pyrrhus. 280-271                                   144
+
+17.--The First Punic War. 264-240                                    151
+
+18.--Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 240-219                             163
+
+19.--The Second Punic War. 219                                       172
+
+20. The First Eastern War. 215-183                                   181
+
+21.--The Conquest of Greece, Corinth, and Carthage. 179-145          188
+
+22.--The Gracchi. 137-122                                            195
+
+23.--The Wars of Marius. 106-98                                      203
+
+24.--The Adventures of Marius. 93-84                                 212
+
+25.--Sulla's Proscription. 88-71                                     220
+
+26.--The Career of Pompeius. 70-63                                   229
+
+27.--Pompeius and Caesar. 61-48                                       242
+
+28.--Julius Caesar. 48-44                                             252
+
+29.--The Second Triumvirate. 44-33                                   263
+
+30.--Caesar Augustus. B.C. 33 A.D. 14                                 273
+
+31.--Tiberius and Caligula. A.D. 14-41                               285
+
+32.--Claudius and Nero. A.D. 41-68                                   297
+
+33.--The Flavian Family. 62-96                                       305
+
+34.--The Age of the Antonines. 96-194                                317
+
+35.--The Praetorian Influence. 197-284                                326
+
+36.--The Division of the Empire. 284-312                             337
+
+37.--Constantine the Great. 312-337                                  345
+
+38.--Constantius. 337-364                                            355
+
+39.--Valentinian and his Family. 364-392                             364
+
+40.--Theodosius the Great. 392-395                                   374
+
+41.--Alaric the Goth. 395-410                                        383
+
+42.--The Vandals. 403                                                394
+
+43.--Attila the Hun. 435-457                                         404
+
+44.--Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 457-561                                416
+
+45.--Belisarius. 533-563                                             425
+
+46.--Pope Gregory the Great. 563-800                                 434
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+The Pope's Doortender. (_Frontispiece._)            PAGE.
+
+The Tiber                                                             14
+
+Curious Pottery                                                       15
+
+Jupiter                                                               17
+
+The Coast                                                             23
+
+Mount Etna                                                            25
+
+Carthage                                                              28
+
+Roman Soldier                                                         30
+
+Gladiatorial Shows at a Banquet                                       34
+
+The Forum                                                             37
+
+Janus                                                                 41
+
+Actors                                                                45
+
+Sybil's Cave                                                          50
+
+Brutus condemning his sons                                            57
+
+Roman Ensigns, Standards, Trumpets etc.                               63
+
+Head of Jupiter                                                       68
+
+Female Costumes                                                       70
+
+Female Costumes                                                       71
+
+Senatorial Palace                                                     79
+
+View of a Roman Harbor                                                81
+
+Roman Camp                                                            87
+
+Ploughing                                                             89
+
+Death of Virginia                                                     95
+
+Chariot Races                                                         98
+
+Arrow Machine                                                        102
+
+Siege Machine                                                        105
+
+Ruins of the Forum at Rome                                           111
+
+Entry of the Forum Romanum by the Via Sacra                          117
+
+Costumes                                                             120
+
+Costume                                                              121
+
+Curtius leaping into the Gulf                                        125
+
+The Apennines                                                        129
+
+Combat between a Mirmillo and a Samnite                              137
+
+Combat between a light armed Gladiator and a Samnite                 137
+
+Ancient Rome                                                         141
+
+Pyrrhus                                                              145
+
+Roman Orator                                                         147
+
+Roman Ship                                                           153
+
+Roman Order of Battle                                                159
+
+The wounded Gaul                                                     165
+
+Hannibal's Vow                                                       168
+
+In the Pyrenees                                                      170
+
+Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama                               173
+
+Archimedes                                                           178
+
+Hannibal                                                             184
+
+Corinth                                                              190
+
+Cornelia and her Sons                                                196
+
+Roman Centurion                                                      201
+
+Marius                                                               205
+
+One of the Trophies, called of Marius,
+at the Capitol at Rome                                               207
+
+The Catapult                                                         215
+
+Island on the Coast                                                  217
+
+Palazzo Vecchio, Florence                                            223
+
+Cornelius Sulla                                                      225
+
+Coast of Tyre                                                        231
+
+Mountains of Armenia                                                 235
+
+Cicero                                                               238
+
+Colossal Statue of Pompeius of the
+Palazzo Spada of Rome                                                239
+
+Pompeius                                                             243
+
+Amphitheatre                                                         246
+
+The Arena                                                            247
+
+Julius Caesar                                                         253
+
+Cato                                                                 254
+
+Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium of
+the House of Julius Caesar at the
+Porta Capena in Rome                                                 255
+
+Marcus Antonius                                                      265
+
+Marcus Brutus                                                        268
+
+Alexandria                                                           270
+
+Caius Octavius                                                       272
+
+Statue of Augustus at the Vatican                                    275
+
+Paintings in the House of Livia                                      281
+
+Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius                                     287
+
+Agrippina                                                            290
+
+Rome in the time of Augustus Caesar                                   293
+
+Claudius                                                             298
+
+Nero                                                                 301
+
+Arch of Titus                                                        308
+
+Vesuvius previous to the Eruption of A.D. 63                         311
+
+Persecution of the Christians                                        314
+
+Coin of Nero                                                         316
+
+Temple of Antoninus and Faustina                                     319
+
+Marcus Aurelius                                                      325
+
+Septimus Severus                                                     327
+
+Antioch                                                              328
+
+Alexander Severus                                                    329
+
+Temple of the Sun at Palmyra                                         332
+
+The Catacombs at Rome                                                333
+
+Coin of Severus                                                      336
+
+Diocletian                                                           338
+
+Diocletian in Retirement                                             341
+
+Constantine the Great                                                343
+
+Constantinople                                                       347
+
+Council of Nicea                                                     349
+
+Catacombs                                                            352
+
+Julian                                                               357
+
+Arch of Constantine                                                  361
+
+Alexandria                                                           365
+
+Goths                                                                367
+
+Convent on the Hills                                                 372
+
+Julian Alps                                                          375
+
+Roman Hall of Justice                                                377
+
+Colonnades of St. Peter at Rome                                      385
+
+Alaric's Burial                                                      391
+
+Roman Clock                                                          396
+
+Spanish Coast                                                        398
+
+Vandals plundering                                                   401
+
+Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt                                           403
+
+Hunnish Camp                                                         405
+
+St. Mark's, Venice                                                   409
+
+The Pope's House                                                     413
+
+Romulus Augustus resigns the Crown                                   419
+
+Illustration                                                         423
+
+Naples                                                               427
+
+Constantinople                                                       429
+
+Pope Gregory the Great                                               435
+
+The Pope's Pulpit                                                    437
+
+Battle of Tours                                                      441
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ITALY.
+
+
+I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world.
+Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into the
+Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out of
+the Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land,
+shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy.
+
+Round the streams that flowed down from these hills, valleys of fertile
+soil formed themselves, and a great many different tribes and people
+took up their abode there, before there was any history to explain their
+coming. Putting together what can be proved about them, it is plain,
+however, that most of them came of that old stock from which the Greeks
+descended, and to which we belong ourselves, and they spoke a language
+which had the same root as ours and as the Greek. From one of these
+nations the best known form of this, as it was polished in later times,
+was called Latin, from the tribe who spoke it.
+
+[Illustration: THE TIBER.]
+
+About the middle of the peninsula there runs down, westward from the
+Apennines, a river called the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven low
+hills, which recede as it approaches the sea. One, in especial, called
+the Palatine Hill, rose separately, with a flat top and steep sides,
+about four hundred yards from the river, and girdled in by the other
+six. This was the place where the great Roman power grew up from
+beginnings, the truth of which cannot now be discovered.
+
+[Illustration: CURIOUS POTTERY.]
+
+There were several nations living round these hills--the Etruscans,
+Sabines, and Latins being the chief. The homes of these nations seem to
+have been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines, where they
+had farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill which
+they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refuge
+if their enemies attacked them. The Etruscans built very mighty walls,
+and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well. Many of
+their works remain to this day, and, in especial, their monuments have
+been opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned with
+figures of himself, half lying, half sitting; also curious pottery in
+red and black, from which something of their lives and ways is to be
+made out. They spoke a different language from what has become Latin,
+and they had a different religion, believing in one great Soul of the
+World, and also thinking much of rewards and punishments after death.
+But we know hardly anything about them, except that their chiefs were
+called Lucumos, and that they once had a wide power which they had lost
+before the time of history. The Romans called them Tusci, and Tuscany
+still keeps its name.
+
+The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like the
+Greeks. There were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southern
+parts of Italy, and they learnt something from them. They had a great
+many gods. Every house had its own guardian. These were called Lares, or
+Penates, and were generally represented as little figures of dogs lying
+by the hearth, or as brass bars with dogs' heads. This is the reason
+that the bars which close in an open hearth are still called dogs.
+Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by pouring out
+wine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he kept
+figures; for these natives thought much of their families, and all one
+family had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius,
+the daughters only changing it by making it end in _a_ instead of
+_us_, and the men having separate names standing first, such as
+Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish
+them.
+
+[Illustration: JUPITER]
+
+Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood its
+faun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were
+dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of
+fruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops were
+solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the old
+legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there
+was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own
+handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time
+every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were
+all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild
+sports and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn
+was mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring,
+and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's
+scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened into
+Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek times
+was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with the
+Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and,
+in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greek
+tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only
+afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their
+gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and
+fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the
+Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer,
+more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever,
+thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now call
+sterling stuff in them.
+
+At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language,
+and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is
+said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of
+little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in
+the forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for
+his worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, the
+god of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were
+the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the Caelian, and the Quirinal.
+The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen,
+when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their
+neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing
+all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from
+houses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.
+
+The history of these people was not written till long after they had
+grown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up many
+Greek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards, and
+worked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and customs
+they found among them, and the tales they told were formed into a great
+history by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these stories which
+every one used to believe to be really history; so we will tell them
+first, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WANDERINGS OF AENEAS.
+
+
+You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how Priam and
+all his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a prince called
+AEneas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother was
+said to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the city was lost, he
+rushed back to his house, and took his old father Anchises on his back,
+giving him his Penates, or little images of household gods, to take care
+of, and led by the hand his little son Iulus, or Ascanius, while his
+wife Creusa followed close behind, and all the Trojans who could get
+their arms together joined him, so that they escaped in a body to Mount
+Ida; but just as they were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, and
+though he rushed back and searched for her everywhere, he never could
+find her. For the sake of his care for his gods, and for his old father,
+he is always known as the pious AEneas.
+
+In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough to set forth with all
+his followers in quest of the new home which his mother, the goddess
+Venus, gave him hopes of. He had adventures rather like those of Ulysses
+as he sailed about the Mediterranean. Once in the Strophades, some
+clusters belonging to the Ionian Islands, when he and his troops had
+landed to get food, and were eating the flesh of the numerous goats
+which they found climbing about the rocks, down on them came the
+harpies, horrible birds with women's faces and hooked hands, with which
+they snatched away the food and spoiled what they could not eat. The
+Trojans shot at them, but the arrows glanced off their feathers and did
+not hurt them. However, they all flew off except one, who sat on a high
+rock, and croaked out that the Trojans would be punished for thus
+molesting the harpies by being tossed about till they should reach
+Italy, but there they should not build their city till they should have
+been so hungry as to eat their very trenchers.
+
+[Illustration: THE COAST.]
+
+They sailed away from this dismal prophetess, and touched on the coast
+of Epirus, where AEneas found his cousin Helenus, son to old Priam,
+reigning over a little new Troy, and married to Andromache, Hector's
+wife, whom he had gained after Pyrrhus had been killed. Helenus was a
+prophet, and gave AEneas much advice. In especial he said that when the
+Trojans should come to Italy, they would find, under the holly-trees by
+the river side, a large white old sow lying on the ground, with a litter
+of thirty little pigs round her, and this should be a sign to them
+where they were to build their city.
+
+By his advice the Trojans coasted round the south of Sicily, instead of
+trying to pass the strait between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, and
+just below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came running down to the beach
+begging to be taken in. He was a Greek, who had been left behind when
+Ulysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had made his way to the
+forests, where he had lived ever since. They had just taken him in when
+they saw Cyclops coming down, with a pine tree for a staff, to wash the
+burning hollow of his lost eye in the sea, and they rowed off in great
+terror.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNT ETNA.]
+
+Poor old Anchises died shortly after, and while his son was still
+sorrowing for him, Juno, who hated every Trojan, stirred up a terrible
+tempest, which drove the ships to the south, until, just as the sea
+began to calm down, they came into a beautiful bay, enclosed by tall
+cliffs with woods overhanging them. Here the tired wanderers landed,
+and, lighting a fire, AEneas went in quest of food. Coming out of the
+forest, they looked down from a hill, and beheld a multitude of people
+building a city, raising walls, houses, towers, and temples. Into one of
+these temples AEneas entered, and to his amazement he found the walls
+sculptured with all the story of the siege of Troy, and all his friends
+so perfectly represented, that he burst into tears at the sight.
+
+Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whole troop of nymphs, came
+into the temple. This lady was Dido; her husband, Sichaeus, had been king
+of Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant to
+have married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyrians
+and all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast of
+Africa. There she begged of the chief of the country as much land as
+could be enclosed by a bullock's hide. He granted this readily; and
+Dido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed to
+measure off with it ground enough to build the splendid city which she
+had named Carthage. She received AEneas most kindly, and took all his men
+into her city, hoping to keep them there for ever, and make him her
+husband. AEneas himself was so happy there, that he forgot all his plans
+and the prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him
+to fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call; and Dido was so wretched at
+his departure that she caused a great funeral pile to be built, laid
+herself on the top, and stabbed herself with AEneas' sword; the pile was
+burnt, and the Trojans saw the flame from their ships without knowing
+the cause.
+
+[Illustration: CARTHAGE.]
+
+By-and-by AEneas landed at a place in Italy named Cumae. There dwelt one
+of the Sybils. These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had endowed with
+deep wisdom; and when AEneas went to consult the Cumaean Sybil, she told
+him that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to learn his fate.
+First, however, he had to go into a forest, and find there and gather a
+golden bough, which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. Long
+he sought it, until two doves, his mother's birds, came flying before
+him to show him the tree where gold gleamed through the boughs, and he
+found the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe grows on the thorn.
+
+Guarded with this, and guided by the Sybil, after a great sacrifice,
+AEneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round
+which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and
+whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sybil, however,
+made him take AEneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a
+human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sybil threw him a
+cake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while AEneas passed
+on and found in myrtle groves all who had died for love, among them, to
+his surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the home
+of the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. He
+passed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysian
+fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spirit
+of his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of all
+their descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of their
+name. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote to
+whom we owe all the tale of the wanderings of AEneas, namely, Virgil, who
+wrote the _AEneid_, whence all these stories are taken. He further tells
+us that AEneas landed in Italy just as his old nurse Caieta died, at the
+place which is still called Gaeta. After they had buried her, they found
+a grove, where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large round
+cakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating up
+the cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, "We are eating our very tables;"
+and AEneas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings were
+over.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN SOLDIER.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE FOUNDING OF ROME.
+
+B.C. 753--713.
+
+
+Virgil goes on to tell at much length how the king of the country,
+Latinus, at first made friends with AEneas, and promised him his daughter
+Lavinia in marriage; but Turnus, an Italian chief who had before been a
+suitor to Lavinia, stirred up a great war, and was only captured and
+killed after much hard fighting. However, the white sow was found in the
+right place with all her little pigs, and on the spot was founded the
+city of Alba Longa, where AEneas and Lavinia reigned until he died, and
+his descendants, through his two sons, Ascanius or Iulus, and AEneas
+Silvius, reigned after him for fifteen generations.
+
+The last of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from his
+brother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin.
+In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men,
+but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with great
+honor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there was
+great anger when Rhea Silvia became the mother of twin boys, and,
+moreover, said that her husband was the god Mars. But Mars did not save
+her from being buried alive, while the two babes were put in a trough on
+the waters of the river Tiber, there to perish. The river had overflowed
+its banks, and left the children on dry ground, where, however, they
+were found by a she-wolf, who fondled and fed them like her own
+offspring, until a shepherd met with them and took them home to his
+wife. She called them Romulus and Remus, and bred them up as shepherds.
+
+When the twin brothers were growing into manhood, there was a fight
+between the shepherds of Numitor and Amulius, in which Romulus and Remus
+did such brave feats that they were led before Numitor. He enquired into
+their birth, and their foster-father told the story of his finding them,
+showing the trough in which they had been laid; and thus it became plain
+that they were the grandsons of Numitor. On finding this out, they
+collected an army, with which they drove away Amulius, and brought their
+grandfather back to Alba Longa.
+
+They then resolved to build a new city for themselves on one of the
+seven low hills beneath which ran the yellow river Tiber; but they were
+not agreed on which hill to build, Remus wanting to build on the
+Aventine Hill, and Romulus on the Palatine. Their grandfather advised
+them to watch for omens from the gods, so each stood on his hill and
+watched for birds. Remus was the first to see six vultures flying, but
+Romulus saw twelve, and therefore the Palatine Hill was made the
+beginning of the city, and Romulus was chosen king. Remus was affronted,
+and when the mud wall was being raised around the space intended for the
+city, he leapt over it and laughed, whereupon Romulus struck him dead,
+crying out, "So perish all who leap over the walls of my city."
+
+[Illustration: GLADIATORIAL SHOWS AT A BANQUET]
+
+Romulus traced out the form of the city with the plough, and made it
+almost a square. He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midst
+of it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fifty
+families of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws and
+runaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him. The date of
+the building of Rome was supposed to be A.D. 753; and the
+Romans counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from the
+Olympiads, marking the date A.U.C., _anno urbis conditae_, the
+year of the city being built. The youths who joined Romulus could not
+marry, as no one of the neighboring nations would give his daughter to
+one of these robbers, as they were esteemed. The nearest neighbors to
+Rome were the Sabines, and the Romans cast their eyes in vain on the
+Sabine ladies, till old Numitor advised Romulus to proclaim a great
+feast in honor of Neptune, with games and dances. All the people in the
+country round came to it, and when the revelry was at its height each of
+the unwedded Romans seized on a Sabine maiden and carried her away to
+his own house. Six hundred and eighty-three girls were thus seized, and
+the next day Romulus married them all after the fashion ever after
+observed in Rome. There was a great sacrifice, then each damsel was
+told, "Partake of your husband's fire and water;" he gave her a ring,
+and carried her over his threshold, where a sheepskin was spread, to
+show that her duty would be to spin wool for him, and she became his
+wife.
+
+[Illustration: THE FORUM.]
+
+Romulus himself won his own wife, Hersilia, among the Sabines on this
+occasion; but the nation of course took up arms, under their king
+Tatius, to recover their daughters. Romulus drew out his troops into
+Campus Martius, or field of Mars, just beneath the Capitol, or great
+fort on the Saturnian Hill, and marched against the Sabines; but while
+he was absent, Tarpeia, the daughter of the governor of the little fort
+he had left on the Saturnian Hill, promised to let the Sabines in on
+condition they would give her what they wore on their left arms, meaning
+their bracelets; but they hated her treason even while they took
+advantage of it, and no sooner were they within the gate than they
+pelted her with their heavy shields, which they wore on their left arms,
+and killed her. The cliff on the top of which she died is still called
+the Tarpeian rock, and criminals were executed by being thrown from the
+top of it. Romulus tried to regain the Capitol, but the Sabines rolled
+down stones on the Romans, and he was stunned by one that struck him on
+the head; and though he quickly recovered and rallied his men, the
+battle was going against him, when all the Sabine women, who had been
+nearly two years Roman wives, came rushing out, with their little
+children in their arms and their hair flying, begging their fathers and
+husbands not to kill one another. This led to the making of a peace, and
+it was agreed that the Sabines and Romans should make but one nation,
+and that Romulus and Tatius should reign together at Rome. Romulus lived
+on the Palatine Hill, Tatius on the Tarpeian, and the valley between was
+called the Forum, and was the market-place, and also the spot where all
+public assemblies were held. All the chief arrangements for war and
+government were believed by the Romans to have been laws of Romulus.
+However, after five years, Tatius was murdered at a place called
+Lavinium, in the middle of a sacrifice, and Romulus reigned alone till
+in the middle of a great assembly of his soldiers outside the city, a
+storm of thunder and lightning came on, and every one hurried home, but
+the king was nowhere to be found; for, as some say, his father Mars had
+come down in the tempest and carried him away to reign with the gods,
+while others declared that he was murdered by persons, each of whom
+carried home a fragment of his body that it might never be found. It
+matters less which way we tell it, since the story of Romulus was quite
+as much a fable as that of AEneas; only it must be remembered as the
+Romans themselves believed it. They worshipped Romulus under the name of
+Quirinus, and called their chief families Quirites, both words coming
+from _ger_ (a spear); and the she-wolf and twins were the favorite
+badge of the empire. The Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, and the Forum all
+still bear the same names.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+NUMA AND TULLUS.
+
+B.C.It was understood between the Romans and the Sabines that they should
+have by turns a king from each nation, and, on the disappearance of
+Romulus, a Sabine was chosen, named Numa Pompilius, who had been married
+to Tatia, the daughter of the Sabine king Tatius, but she was dead, and
+had left one daughter. Numa had, ever since her death, been going about
+from one grove or fountain sacred to the gods to another offering up
+sacrifices, and he was much beloved for his gentleness and wisdom. There
+was a grove near Rome, in a valley, where a fountain gushed forth from
+the rock; and here Egeria, the nymph of the stream, in the shade of the
+trees, counselled Numa on his government, which was so wise that he
+lived at peace with all his neighbors. When the Romans doubted whether
+it was really a goddess who inspired him, Egeria convinced them, for the
+next time he had any guests in his house, the earthenware plates with
+homely fare on them were changed before their eyes into golden dishes
+with dainty food. Moreover, there was brought from heaven a bronze
+shield, which was to be carefully kept, since Rome would never fall
+while it was safe. Numa had eleven other shields like it made and hung
+in the temple of Mars, and, yearly, a set of men dedicated to the office
+bore them through the city with songs and dances. Just as all warlike
+customs were said to have been invented by Romulus, all peaceful and
+religious ones were held to have sprung from Numa and his Egeria. He was
+said to have fixed the calendar and invented the names of the months,
+and to have built an altar to Good Faith to teach the Romans to keep
+their word to one another and to all nations, and to have dedicated the
+bounds of each estate to the Dii Termini, or Landmark Gods, in whose
+honor there was a feast yearly. He also was said to have had such power
+with Jupiter as to have persuaded him to be content without receiving
+sacrifices of men and women. In short, all the better things in the
+Roman system were supposed to be due to the gentle Numa.
+
+At the gate called Janiculum stood a temple to the watchman god Janus,
+whose figure had two faces, and held the keys, and after whom was named
+the month January. His temple was always open in time of war, and closed
+in time of peace. Numa's reign was counted as the first out of only
+three times in Roman history that it was shut.
+
+[Illustration: JANUS.]
+
+Numa was said to have reigned thirty-eight years, and then he gradually
+faded away, and was buried in a stone coffin outside the Janicular gate,
+all the books he had written being, by his desire, buried with him.
+Egeria wept till she became a fountain in her own valley; and so ended
+what in Roman faith answered to the golden age of Greece.
+
+The next king was of Roman birth, and was named Tullus Hostilius. He was
+a great warrior, and had a war with the Albans until it was agreed that
+the two cities should join together in one, as the Romans and Sabines
+had done before; but there was a dispute which should be the greater
+city in the league and it was determined to settle it by a combat. In
+each city there was a family where three sons had been born at a birth,
+and their mothers were sisters. Both sets were of the same age--fine
+young men, skilled in weapons; and it was agreed that the six should
+fight together, the three whose family name was Horatius on the Roman
+side, the three called Curiatius on the Alban side, and whichever set
+gained the mastery was to give it to his city.
+
+They fought in the plain between the camps, and very hard was the strife
+until two of the Horatii were killed and all the three Curiatii were
+wounded, but the last Horatius was entirely untouched. He began to run,
+and his cousins pursued him, but at different distances, as one was less
+hindered by his wound than the others. As soon as the first came up.
+Horatius slew him, and so the second and the third: as he cut down this
+last he cried out, "To the glory of Rome I sacrifice thee." As the Alban
+king saw his champion fall, he turned to Tullus Hostilius and asked what
+his commands were. "Only to have the Alban youth ready when I need
+them," said Tullus.
+
+A wreath was set on the victor's head, and, loaded with the spoil of the
+Curiatii, he was led into the city in triumph. His sister came hurrying
+to meet him; she was betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and was in agony
+to know his fate; and when she saw the garment she had spun for him
+hanging blood-stained over her brother's shoulders, she burst into loud
+lamentations. Horatius, still hot with fury, struck her dead on the
+spot, crying, "So perish every Roman who mourns the death of an enemy of
+his country." Even her father approved the cruel deed, and would not
+bury her in his family tomb--so stern were Roman feelings, putting the
+honor of the country above everything. However, Horatius was brought
+before the king for the murder, and was sentenced to die; but the people
+entreated that their champion might be spared, and he was only made to
+pass under what was called the yoke, namely, spears set up like a
+doorway.
+
+Tullus Hostilius gained several victories over his neighbors, but he was
+harsh and presuming, and offended the gods, and, when he was using some
+spell such as good Numa had used to hold converse with Jupiter, the
+angry god sent lightning and burnt up him and his family. The people
+then chose Ancus Martins, the son of Numa's daughter, who is said to
+have ruled in his grandfather's spirit, though he could not avoid wars
+with the Latins. The first bridge over the Tiber, named the Sublician,
+was said to have been built by him. In his time there came to Rome a
+family called Tarquin. Their father was a Corinthian, who had settled in
+an Etruscan town named Tarquinii, whence came the family name. He was
+said to have first taught writing in Italy, and, indeed, the Roman
+letters which we still use are Greek letters made simpler. His eldest
+son, finding that because of his foreign blood he could rise to no
+honors in Etruria, set off with his wife Tanaquil, and their little son
+Lucius Tarquinius, to settle in Rome. Just as they came in sight of
+Rome, an eagle swooped down from the sky, snatched off little Tarquin's
+cap, and flew up with it, but the next moment came down again and put it
+back on his head. On this Tanaquil foretold that her son would be a
+great king, and he became so famous a warrior when he grew up, that, as
+the children of Ancus were too young to reign at their father's death,
+he was chosen king. He is said to have been the first Roman king who
+wore a purple robe and golden crown, and in the valley between the
+Palatine and Aventine Hills he made a circus, where games could be held
+like those of the Greeks; also he placed stone benches and stalls for
+shops round the Forum, and built a stone wall instead of a mud one round
+the city. He is commonly called Tarquinus Priscus, or the elder.
+
+[Illustration: ACTORS]
+
+There was a fair slave girl in his house, who was offering cakes to Lar,
+the household spirit, when he appeared to her in bodily form. When she
+told the king's mother, Tanaquil, she said it was a token that he wanted
+to marry her, and arrayed her as a bride for him. Of this marriage
+there sprang a boy called Servius Tullus. When this child lay asleep,
+bright flames played about his head, and Tanaquil knew he would be
+great, so she caused her son Tarquin to give him his daughter in
+marriage when he grew up. This greatly offended the two sons of Ancus
+Martius, and they hired two young men to come before him as
+wood-cutters, with axes over their shoulders, pretending to have a
+quarrel about some goats, and while he was listening to their cause they
+cut him down and mortally wounded him. He had lost his sons, and had
+only two baby grandsons, Aruns and Tarquin, who could not reign as yet;
+but while he was dying, Tanaquil stood at the window and declared that
+he was only stunned and would soon be well. This, as she intended, so
+frightened the sons of Ancus that they fled from Rome; and Servius
+Tullus, coming forth in the royal robes, was at once hailed as king by
+all the people of Rome, being thus made king that he might protect his
+wife's two young nephews, the two little Tarquins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DRIVING OUT OF THE TARQUINS.
+
+B.C. 578--309.
+
+
+Servius Tullus was looked on by the Romans as having begun making their
+laws, as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, and Numa had
+settled their religion. The Romans were all in great clans or families,
+all with one name, and these were classed in tribes. The nobler ones,
+who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, or Sabine families, were
+called Patricians--from _pater_, a father--because they were fathers of
+the people; and the other families were called Plebeian, from _plebs_,
+the people. The patricians formed the Senate or Council of Government,
+and rode on horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot. They
+had spears, round shields, and short pointed swords, which cut on each
+side of the blade. Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of each
+tribe should be called out to war. He also walled in the city again with
+a wall five miles round; and he made many fixed laws, one being that
+when a man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he himself might
+not be made a slave. He was the great friend of the plebeians, and first
+established the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be made
+without the consent of the Comitia, or whole free people.
+
+The Sabines and Romans were still striving for the mastery, and a
+husbandman among the Sabines had a wonderfully beautiful cow. An oracle
+declared that the man who sacrificed this cow to Diana upon the Aventine
+Hill would secure the chief power to his nation. The Sabine drove the
+cow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a crafty Roman priest told
+him that he must first wash his hands in the Tiber, and while he was
+gone sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick secured the rule to
+Rome. The great horns of the cow were long after shown in the temple of
+Diana on the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines, and Latins every year
+joined in a great sacrifice.
+
+The two daughters of Servius were married to their cousins, the two
+young Tarquins. In each pair there was a fierce and a gentle one. The
+fierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tarquin; the gentle Tulla
+had married the proud Lucius Tarquin. Aruns' wife tried to persuade her
+husband to seize the throne that had belonged to his father, and when he
+would not listen to her, she agreed with his brother Lucius that, while
+he murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that they
+should marry. The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius, seeing
+what a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to consider with
+the Senate whether it would not be better to have two consuls or
+magistrates chosen every year than a king. This made Lucius Tarquin the
+more furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians hated the
+king as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and was
+beginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of their
+greatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of the
+doorway, ordered him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old man and
+hurled him backward, so that the fall killed him, and his body was left
+in the street. The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her husband had
+sped, came out in her chariot on that road. The horses gave back before
+the corpse. She asked what was in their way; the slave who drove her
+told her it was the king's body. "Drive on," she said. The horrid deed
+caused the street to be known ever after as "Sceleratus," or the wicked.
+But it was the plebeians who mourned for Servius; the patricians in
+their anger made Tarquin king, but found him a very hard and cruel
+master, so that he is generally called Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin
+the proud. In his time the Sybil of Cumae, the same wondrous maiden of
+deep wisdom who had guided AEneas to the realms of Pluto, came, bringing
+nine books of prophecies of the history of Rome, and offered them to him
+at a price which he thought too high, and refused. She went away,
+destroyed three, and brought back the other six, asking for them double
+the price of the whole. He refused. She burnt three more, and brought
+him the last three with the price again doubled, because the fewer they
+were, the more precious. He bought them at last, and placed them in the
+Capitol, whence they were now and then taken to be consulted as oracles.
+
+[Illustration: SYBIL'S CAVE.]
+
+Rome was at war with the city of Gabii, and as the city was not to be
+subdued by force, Tarquin tried treachery. His eldest son, Sextus
+Tarquinius, fled to Gabii, complaining of ill-usage of his father, and
+showing marks of a severe scourging. The Gabians believed him, and he
+was soon so much trusted by them as to have the whole command of the
+army and manage everything in the city. Then he sent a messenger to his
+father to ask what he was to do next. Tarquin was walking through a
+cornfield. He made no answer in words, but with a switch cut off the
+heads of all the poppies and taller stalks of corn, and bade the
+messenger tell Sextus what he had seen. Sextus understood, and
+contrived to get all the chief men of Gabii exiled or put to death, and
+without them the city fell an easy prey to the Romans.
+
+Tarquin sent his two younger sons and their cousin to consult the oracle
+at Delphi, and with them went Lucius Junius, who was called Brutus
+because he was supposed to be foolish, that being the meaning of the
+word; but his folly was only put on, because he feared the jealousy of
+his cousins. After doing their father's errand, the two Tarquins asked
+who should rule Rome after their father. "He," said the priestess, "who
+shall first kiss his mother on his return." The two brothers agreed that
+they would keep this a secret from their elder brother Sextus, and, as
+soon as they reached home, both of them rushed into the women's rooms,
+racing each to be the first to embrace their mother Tullia; but at the
+very entrance of Rome Brutus pretended to slip, threw himself on the
+ground and kissed his Mother Earth, having thus guessed the right
+meaning of the answer.
+
+He waited patiently, however, and still was thought a fool when the army
+went out to besiege the city of Ardea; and while the troops were
+encamped round it, some of the young patricians began to dispute which
+had the best wife. They agreed to put it to the test by galloping late
+in the evening to look in at their homes and see what their wives were
+about. Some were idling, some were visiting, some were scolding, some
+were dressing, some were asleep; but at Collatia, the farm of another of
+the Tarquin family, thence called Collatinus, they found his beautiful
+wife Lucretia among her maidens spinning the wool of the flocks. All
+agreed that she was the best of wives; but the wicked Sextus Tarquin
+only wanted to steal her from her husband, and going by night to
+Collatia, tried to make her desert her lord, and when she would not
+listen to him he ill-treated her cruelly, and told her that he should
+accuse her to her husband. She was so overwhelmed with grief and shame
+that in the morning she sent for her father and husband, told them all
+that that happened, and saying that she could not bear life after being
+so put to shame, she drew out a dagger and stabbed herself before their
+eyes--thinking, as all these heathen Romans did, that it was better to
+die by one's own hand than to live in disgrace.
+
+Lucius Brutus had gone to Collatia with his cousin, and while Collatinus
+and his father-in-law stood horror-struck, he called to them to revenge
+this crime. Snatching the dagger from Lucretia's breast, he galloped to
+Rome, called the people together in the Forum, and, holding up the
+bloody weapon in his hand, he made them a speech, asking whether they
+would any longer endure such a family of tyrants. They all rose as one
+man, and choosing Brutus himself and Collatinus to be their leaders, as
+the consuls whom Servius Tullus had thought of making, they shut the
+gates of Rome, and would not open them when Tarquin and his sons would
+have returned. So ended the kingdom of Rome.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE WAR WITH PORSENA.
+
+
+From the time of the flight of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by two
+consuls, who wore all the tokens of royalty except the crown. Tarquin
+fled into Etruria, whence his grandfather had come, and thence tried to
+obtain admission into Rome. The two young sons of Brutus and the nephews
+of Collatinus were drawn into a plot for bringing them back again, and
+on its discovery were brought before the two consuls. Their guilt was
+proved, and their father sternly asked what they had to say in their
+defence. They only wept, and so did Collatinus and many of the senators,
+crying out, "Banish them, banish them." Brutus, however, as if unmoved,
+bade the executioners do their office. The whole Senate shrieked to hear
+a father thus condemn his own children, but he was resolute, and
+actually looked on while the young men were first scourged and then
+beheaded.
+
+Collatinus put off the further judgment in hopes to save his nephews,
+and Brutus told them that he had put them to death by his own power as a
+father, but that he left the rest to the voice of the people, and they
+were sent into banishment. Even Collatinus was thought to have acted
+weakly, and was sent into exile--so determined were the Romans to have
+no one among them who would not uphold their decrees to the utmost.
+Tarquin advanced to the walls and cut down all the growing corn around
+the Campus Martius and threw it into the Tiber; there it formed a heap
+round which an island was afterwards formed. Brutus himself and his
+cousin Aruns Tarquin soon after killed one another in single combat in a
+battle outside the walls, and all the women of Rome mourned for him as
+for a father.
+
+Tarquin found a friend in the Etruscan king called Lars Porsena, who
+brought an army to besiege Rome and restore him to the throne. He
+advanced towards the gate called Janiculum upon the Tiber, and drove the
+Romans out of the fort on the other side the river. The Romans then
+retreated across the bridge, placing three men to guard it until all
+should be gone over and it could be broken down.
+
+[Illustration: BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS.]
+
+There stood the brave three--Horatius, Lartius, and Herminius--guarding
+the bridge while their fellow-citizens were fleeing across it, three men
+against a whole army. At last the weapons of Lartius and Herminius were
+broken down, and Horatius bade them hasten over the bridge while it
+could still bear their weight. He himself fought on till he was wounded
+in the thigh, and the last timbers of the bridge were falling into the
+stream. Then spreading out his arms, he called upon Father Tiber to
+receive him, leapt into the river and swam across amid a shower of
+arrows, one of which put out his eye, and he was lame for life. A statue
+of him "halting on his thigh" was set up in the temple of Vulcan, and he
+was rewarded with as much land as one yoke of oxen could plough in a
+day, and the 300,000 citizens of Rome each gave him a day's provision of
+corn.
+
+Porsena then blockaded the city, and when the Romans were nearly
+starving he sent them word that he would give them food if they would
+receive their old masters; but they made answer that hunger was better
+than slavery, and still held out. In the midst of their distress, a
+young man named Caius Mucius came and begged leave of the consuls to
+cross the Tiber and go to attempt something to deliver his country. They
+gave leave, and creeping through the Etruscan camp he came into the
+king's tent just as Porsena was watching his troops pass by in full
+order. One of his counsellors was sitting beside him so richly dressed
+that Mucius did not know which was king, and leaping towards them, he
+stabbed the counsellor to the heart. He was seized at once and dragged
+before the king, who fiercely asked who he was, and what he meant by
+such a crime.
+
+The young man answered that his name was Caius Mucius, and that he was
+ready to do and dare anything for Rome. In answer to threats of torture,
+he quietly stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flame
+that burnt in a brazier close by, holding it there without a sign of
+pain, while he bade Porsena see what a Roman thought of suffering.
+
+Porsena was so struck that he at once gave the daring man his life, his
+freedom, and even his dagger; and Mucius then told him that three
+hundred youths like himself had sworn to have his life unless he left
+Rome to her liberty. This was false, but both the lie and the murder
+were for Rome's sake; they were both admired by the Romans, who held
+that the welfare of their city was their very first duty. Mucius could
+never use his right hand again, and was always called Scaevola, or the
+Left-handed, a name that went on to his family.
+
+Porsena believed the story, and began to make peace. A truce was agreed
+on, and ten Roman youths and as many girls were given up to the
+Etruscans as hostages. While the conferences were going on, one of the
+Roman girls named Clelia forgot her duty so much as to swim home across
+the river with all her companions; but Valeria, the consul's daughter,
+was received with all the anger that breach of trust deserved, and her
+father mounted his horse at once to take the party back again. Just as
+they reached the Etruscan camp, the Tarquin father and brothers, and a
+whole troop of the enemy, fell on them. While the consul was fighting
+against a terrible force, Valeria dashed on into the camp and called out
+Porsena and his son. They, much grieved that the truce should have been
+broken, drove back their own men, and were so angry with the Tarquins as
+to give up their cause. He asked which of the girls had contrived the
+escape, and when Clelia confessed it was herself, he made her a present
+of a fine horse and its trappings, which she little deserved.
+
+This Valerius was called Publicola, or the people's friend. He died a
+year or two later, after so many victories that the Romans honored him
+among their greatest heroes. Tarquin still continued to seek support
+among the different Italian nations, and again attacked the Romans with
+the help of the Latins. The chief battle was fought close to Lake
+Regillus; Aulus Posthumius was the commander, but Marcus Valerius,
+brother to Publicola, was general of the horse. He had vowed to build a
+temple to Castor and Pollux if the Romans gained the victory; and in the
+beginning of the fight, two glorious youths of god-like stature appeared
+on horseback at the head of the Roman horse and fought for them. It was
+a very hard-fought battle. Valerius was killed, but so was Titus
+Tarquin, and the Latin force was entirely broken and routed. That same
+evening the two youths rode into the Forum, their horses dripping with
+sweat and their weapons bloody. They drew up and washed themselves at a
+fountain near the temple of Vesta, and as the people crowded round they
+told of the great victory, and while one man named Domitius doubted of
+it, since the Lake Regillus was too far off for tidings to have come so
+fast, one of them laid his hand on the doubter's beard and changed it
+in a moment from black to copper color, so that he came to be called
+Domitius Ahenobarbus, or Brazen-beard. Then they disappeared, and the
+next morning Posthumius' messenger brought the news. The Romans had no
+doubt that these were indeed the glorious twins, and built their temple,
+as Valerius had vowed.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN ENSIGNS, STANDARDS, TRUMPETS ETC.]
+
+Tarquin had lost all his sons, and died in wretched exile at Cumae. And
+here ends what is looked on as the legendary history of Rome, for though
+most of these stories have dates, and some sound possible, there is so
+much that is plainly untrue mixed up with them, that they can only be
+looked on as the old stories which were handed down to account for the
+Roman customs and copied by their historians.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+So far as true history can guess, the Romans really did have kings and
+drove them out, but there are signs that, though Porsena was a real
+king, the war was not so honorable to the Romans as they said, for he
+took the city and made them give up all their weapons to him, leaving
+them nothing but their tools for husbandry. But they liked to forget
+their misfortunes.
+
+The older Roman families were called patricians, or fathers, and thought
+all rights to govern belonged to them. Settlers who came in later were
+called plebeians, or the people, and at first had no rights at all, for
+all the land belonged to the patricians, and the only way for the
+plebeians to get anything done for them was to become hangers-on--or, as
+they called it, clients--of some patrician who took care of their
+interests. There was a council of patricians called the Senate, chosen
+among themselves, and also containing by right all who had been chief
+magistrates. The whole assembly of the patricians was called the
+Comitia. They, as has been said before, fought on horseback, while the
+plebeians fought on foot; but out of the rich plebeians a body was
+formed called the knights, who also used horses, and wore gold rings
+like the patricians.
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF JUPITER.]
+
+But the plebeians were always trying not to be left out of everything.
+By and by, they said under Servius Tullius, the city was divided into
+six quarters, and all the families living in them into six tribes, each
+of which had a tribune to watch over it, bring up the number of its men,
+and lead them to battle. Another division of the citizens, both
+patrician and plebeian, was made every five years. They were all counted
+and numbered and divided off into centuries according to their wealth.
+Then these centuries, or hundreds, had votes, by the persons they chose,
+when it was a question of peace or war. Their meeting was called the
+Comitia; but as there were more patrician centuries than plebeian ones,
+the patricians still had much more power. Besides, the Senate and all
+the magistrates were in those days always patricians. These magistrates
+were chosen every year. There were two consuls, who were like kings for
+the time, only that they wore no crowns; they had purple robes, and sat
+in chairs ornamented with ivory, and they were always attended by
+lictors, who carried bundles of rods tied round an axe--the first for
+scourging, the second for beheading. There were under them two praetors,
+or judges, who tried offences; two quaestors, who attended to the public
+buildings; and two censors, who had to look after the numbering and
+registering of the people in their tribes and centuries. The consuls in
+general commanded the army, but sometimes, when there was a great need,
+one single leader was chosen and was called dictator. Sometimes a
+dictator was chosen merely to fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into the
+head of the great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides these, all
+the priests had to be patricians; the chief of all was called Pontifex
+Maximus. Some say this was because he was the _fax_ (maker) of
+_pontes_ (bridges), as he blessed them and decided by omens where
+they should be; but others think the word was Pompifex, and that he was
+the maker of pomps or ceremonies. There were many priests as well as
+augurs, who had to draw omens from the flight of birds or the appearance
+of sacrifices, and who kept the account of the calendar of lucky and
+unlucky days, and of festivals.
+
+[Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES.]
+
+The Romans were a grave religious people in those days, and did not
+count their lives or their affections dear in comparison with their
+duties to their altars and their hearths, though their notions of duty
+do not always agree with ours. Their dress in the city was a white
+woollen garment edged with purple--it must have been more like in shape
+to a Scottish plaid than anything else--and was wrapped round so as to
+leave one arm free: sometimes a fold was drawn over the head. No one
+might wear it but a free-born Roman, and he never went out on public
+business without it, even when more convenient fashions had been copied
+from Greece. Those who were asking votes for a public office wore it
+white (_candidus_), and therefore were called candidates. The consuls
+had it on great days entirely purple and embroidered, and all senators
+and ex-magistrates had broader borders of purple. The ladies wore a long
+graceful wrapping-gown; the boys a short tunic, and round their necks
+was hung a hollow golden ball called a _bulla_, or bubble. When a boy
+was seventeen, there was a great family sacrifice to the Lares and the
+forefathers, his bulla was taken off, the toga was put on, and he was
+enrolled by his own praenomen, Caius or Lucius, or whatever it might be,
+for there was only a choice of fifteen. After this he was liable to be
+called out to fight. A certain number of men were chosen from each tribe
+by the tribune. It was divided into centuries, each led by a centurion;
+and the whole body together was called a legion, from _lego_, to
+choose. In later times the proper number for a legion was 6000 men. Each
+legion had a standard, a bar across the top of the spear, with the
+letters on it S P Q R--_Senatus, Populus Que Romanus_--meaning the Roman
+Senate and People, a purple flag below and a figure above, such as an
+eagle, or the wolf and twins, or some emblem dear to the Romans. The
+legions were on foot, but the troops of patricians and knights on
+horseback were attached to them and had to protect them.
+
+[Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES.]
+
+The Romans had in those days very small riches, they held in general
+small farms in the country, which they worked themselves with the help
+of their sons and slaves. The plebeians were often the richest. They too
+held farms leased to them by the state, and had often small shops in
+Rome. The whole territory was so small that it was easy to come into
+Rome to worship, attend the Senate, or vote, and many had no houses in
+the city. Each man was married with a ring and sacrifice, and the lady
+was then carried over the threshold, on which a sheepskin was spread,
+and made mistress of the house by being bidden to be Caia to Caius. The
+Roman matrons were good and noble women in those days, and the highest
+praise of them was held to be _Domum mansit, lanam fecit_--she stayed
+at home and spun wool. Each man was absolute master in his own house,
+and had full power over his grown-up sons, even for life or death, and
+they almost always submitted entirely. For what made the Romans so great
+was that they were not only brave, but they were perfectly obedient, and
+obeyed as perfectly as they could their fathers, their officers, their
+magistrates, and, as they thought, their gods.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MENENIUS AGRIPPA'S FABLE.
+
+B.C. 494.
+
+
+A great deal of the history of Rome consists of struggles between the
+patricians and plebeians. In those early days the plebeians were often
+poor, and when they wanted to improve their lands they had to borrow
+money from the patricians, who not only had larger lands, but, as they
+were the officers in war, got a larger share of the spoil. The Roman law
+was hard on a man in debt. His lands might be seized, he might be thrown
+into prison or sold into slavery with his wife and children, or, if the
+creditors liked, be cut to pieces so that each might take his share.
+
+One of these debtors, a man who was famous for bravery as a centurion,
+broke out of his prison and ran into the Forum, all in rags and with
+chains still hanging to his hands and feet, showing them to his
+fellow-citizens, and asking if this was just usage of a man who had done
+no crime. They were very angry, and the more because one of the consuls,
+Appius Claudius, was known to be very harsh, proud and cruel, as indeed
+were all his family. The Volscians, a tribe often at war with them,
+broke into their land at the same time, and the Romans were called to
+arms, but the plebeians refused to march until their wrongs were
+redressed. On this the other consul, Servilius, promised that a law
+should be made against keeping citizens in prison for debt or making
+slaves of their children; and thereupon the army assembled, marched
+against the enemy, and defeated them, giving up all the spoil to his
+troops. But the senate, when the danger was over, would not keep its
+promises, and even appointed a Dictator to put the plebeians down.
+Thereupon they assembled outside the walls in a strong force, and were
+going to attack the patricians, when the wise old Menenius Agrippa was
+sent out to try to pacify them. He told them a fable, namely, that once
+upon a time all the limbs of a man's body became disgusted with the
+service they had to render to the belly. The feet and legs carried it
+about, the hands worked for it and carried food to it, the mouth ate
+for it, and so on. They thought it hard thus all to toil for it, and
+agreed to do nothing for it--neither to carry it about, clothe it, nor
+feed it. But soon all found themselves growing weak and starved, and
+were obliged to own that all would perish together unless they went on
+waiting on this seemingly useless belly. So Agrippa told them that all
+ranks and states depended on one another, and unless all worked together
+all must be confusion and go to decay. The fable seems to have convinced
+both rich and poor; the debtors were set free and the debts forgiven.
+And though the laws about debts do not seem to have been changed,
+another law was made which gave the plebeians tribunes in peace as well
+as war. These tribunes were always to be plebeians, chosen by their own
+fellows. No one was allowed to hurt them during their year of office, on
+pain of being declared accursed and losing his property; and they had
+the power of stopping any decision of the senate by saying solemnly,
+_Veto_, I forbid. They were called tribunes of the people, while the
+officers in war were called military tribunes; and as it was on the Mons
+Sacer, or Sacred Mount, that this was settled, these laws were called
+the _Leges Sacrariae_. An altar to the Thundering Jupiter was built to
+consecrate them: and, in gratitude for his management, Menenius Agrippa
+was highly honored all his life, and at his death had a public funeral.
+
+But the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians were not by
+any means over. The Roman land--Agri (acre), it was called--had at first
+been divided in equal shares--at least so it was said--but as belonging
+to the state all the time, and only held by the occupier. As time went
+on, some persons of course gathered more into their own hands, and
+others of spendthrift or unfortunate families became destitute. Then
+there was an outcry that, as the lands belonged to the whole state, it
+ought to take them all back and divide them again more equally: but the
+patricians naturally regarded themselves as the owners, and would not
+hear of this scheme, which we shall hear of again and again by the name
+of the Agrarian Law. One of the patricians, who had thrice been consul,
+by name Spurius Cassius, did all he could to bring it about, but though
+the law was passed he could not succeed in getting it carried out. The
+patricians hated him, and a report got abroad that he was only gaining
+favor with the people in order to get himself made king. This made even
+the plebeians turn against him as a traitor; he was condemned by the
+whole assembly of the people, and beheaded, after being scourged by the
+lictors. The people soon mourned for their friend, and felt that they
+had been deceived in giving him up to their enemies. The senate would
+not execute his law, and the plebeians would not enlist in the next war,
+though the senate threatened to cut down the fruit trees and destroy the
+crops of every man who refused to join the army. When they were
+absolutely driven into the ranks, they even refused to draw their swords
+in face of the enemy, and would not gain a victory lest their consul
+should have the honor of it.
+
+[Illustration: SENATORIAL PALACE.]
+
+This consul's name was Kaeso Fabius. He belonged to a very clever, wary
+family, whose name it was said was originally _Foveus_ (ditch), because
+they had first devised a plan of snaring wolves in pits or ditches. They
+were thought such excellent defenders of the claims of the patricians
+that for seven years following one or other of the Fabii was chosen
+consul. But by-and-by they began either to see that the plebeians had
+rights, or that they should do best by siding with them, for they went
+over to them; and when Kaeso next was consul he did all he could to get
+the laws of Cassius carried out, but the senate were furious with
+him, and he found it was not safe to stay in Rome when his consulate was
+over. So he resolved at any rate to do good to his country. The
+Etruscans often came over the border and ravaged the country; but there
+was a watch-tower on the banks of the little river Cremera, which flows
+into the Tiber, and Fabius offered, with all the men of his name--306 in
+number, and 4000 clients--to keep guard there against the enemy. For
+some time they prospered there, and gained much spoil from the
+Etruscans; but at last the whole Etruscan army came against them,
+showing only a small number at first to tempt them out to fight, then
+falling on them with the whole force and killing the whole of them, so
+that of the whole name there remained only one boy of fourteen who had
+been left behind at Rome. And what was worse, the consul, Titus
+Menenius, was so near the army that he could have saved the Fabii, but
+for the hatred the patricians bore them as deserters from their cause.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF A ROMAN HARBOR.]
+
+However, the tribune Publilius gained for the plebeians that there
+should be five tribunes instead of two, and made a change in the manner
+of electing them which prevented the patricians from interfering. Also
+it was decreed that to interrupt a tribune in a public speech deserved
+death. But whenever an Appius Claudius was consul he took his revenge,
+and was cruelly severe, especially in the camp, where the consul as
+general had much more power than in Rome. Again the angry plebeians
+would not fight, but threw down their arms in sight of the enemy.
+Claudius scourged and beheaded; they endured grimly and silently,
+knowing that when he returned to Rome and his consulate was over their
+tribunes would call him to account. And so they did, and before all the
+tribes of Rome summoned him to answer for his savage treatment of free
+Roman citizens. He made a violent answer, but he saw how it would go
+with him, and put himself to death to avoid the sentence. So were the
+Romans proving again and again the truth of Agrippa's parable, that
+nothing can go well with body or members unless each will be ready to
+serve the other.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORIOLANUS AND CINCINNATUS.
+
+B.C. 458.
+
+
+All the time these struggles were going on between the patricians and
+the plebeians at home, there were wars with the neighboring tribes, the
+Volscians, the Veians, the Latins, and the Etruscans. Every spring the
+fighting men went out, attacked their neighbors, drove off their cattle,
+and tried to take some town; then fought a battle, and went home to reap
+the harvest, gather the grapes and olives in the autumn, and attend to
+public business and vote for the magistrates in the winter. They were
+small wars, but famous men fought in them. In a war against the
+Volscians, when Cominius was consul, he was besieging a city called
+Corioli, when news came that the men of Antium were marching against
+him, and in their first attack on the walls the Romans were beaten off,
+but a gallant young patrician, descended from the king Ancus Marcius,
+Caius Marcius by name, rallied them and led them back with such spirit
+that the place was taken before the hostile army came up; then he fought
+among the foremost and gained the victory. When he was brought to the
+consul's tent covered with wounds, Cominius did all he could to show his
+gratitude--set on the young man's head the crown of victory, gave him
+the surname of Coriolanus in honor of his exploits, and granted him the
+tenth part of the spoil of ten prisoners. Of them, however, Coriolanus
+only accepted one, an old friend of the family, whom he set at liberty
+at once. Afterwards, when there was a great famine in Rome, Coriolanus
+led an expedition to Antium, and brought away quantities of corn and
+cattle, which he distributed freely, keeping none for himself.
+
+But though he was so free of hand, Coriolanus was a proud, shy man, who
+would not make friends with the plebeians, and whom the tribunes hated
+as much as he despised them. He was elected consul, and the tribunes
+refused to permit him to become one; and when a shipload of wheat
+arrived from Sicily, there was a fierce quarrel as to how it should be
+distributed. The tribunes impeached him before the people for
+withholding it from them, and by the vote of a large number of citizens
+he was banished from Roman lands. His anger was great, but quiet. He
+went without a word away from the Forum to his house, where he took
+leave of his mother Veturia, his wife Volumnia, and his little children,
+and then went and placed himself by the hearth of Tullus the Volscian
+chief, in whose army he meant to fight to revenge himself upon his
+countrymen.
+
+Together they advanced upon the Roman territory, and after ravaging the
+country threatened to besiege Rome. Men of rank came out and entreated
+him to give up this wicked and cruel vengeance, and to have pity on his
+friends and native city; but he answered that the Volscians were now his
+nation, and nothing would move him. At last, however, all the women of
+Rome came forth, headed by his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia,
+each with a little child, and Veturia entreated and commanded her son in
+the most touching manner to change his purpose and cease to ruin his
+country, begging him, if he meant to destroy Rome, to begin by slaying
+her. She threw herself at his feet as she spoke, and his hard spirit
+gave way.
+
+"Ah! mother, what is it you do?" he cried as he lifted her up. "Thou
+hast saved Rome, but lost thy son."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN CAMP]
+
+And so it proved, for when he had broken up his camp and returned to the
+Volscian territory till the senate should recall him as they proceeded,
+Tullus, angry and disappointed, stirred up a tumult, and he was killed
+by the people before he could be sent for to Rome. A temple to "Women's
+Good Speed" was raised on the spot where Veturia knelt to him.
+
+Another very proud patrician family was the Quinctian. The father,
+Lucius Quinctius, was called Cincinnatus, from his long flowing curls of
+hair. He was the ablest man among the Romans, but stern and grave, and
+his eldest son Kaeso was charged by the tribunes with a murder and fled
+the country. Soon after there was a great inroad of the AEqui and
+Volscians, and the Romans found themselves in great danger. They saw no
+one could save them but Cincinnatus, so they met in haste and chose him
+Dictator, though he was not present. Messengers were sent to his little
+farm on the Tiber, and there they found him holding the stilts of the
+plough. When they told their errand, he turned to his wife, who was
+helping him, and said, "Racilia, fetch me my toga;" then he washed his
+face and hands, and was saluted as Dictator. A boat was ready to take
+him to Rome, and as he landed, he was met by the four-and-twenty lictors
+belonging to the two consuls and escorted to his dwelling. In the
+morning he named as general of the cavalry Lucius Tarquitius, a brave
+old patrician who had become too poor even to keep a horse. Marching out
+at the head of all the men who could bear arms, he thoroughly routed the
+AEqui, and then resigned his dictatorship at the end of sixteen days. Nor
+would he accept any of the spoil, but went back to his plough, his only
+reward being that his son was forgiven and recalled from banishment.
+
+[Illustration: PLOUGHING]
+
+These are the grand old stories that came down from old time, but how
+much is true no one can tell, and there is reason to think that, though
+the leaders like Cincinnatus and Coriolanus might be brave, the Romans
+were really pressed hard by the Volscians and AEqui, and lost a good deal
+of ground, though they were too proud to own it. No wonder, while the
+two orders of the state were always pulling different ways. However, the
+tribune Icilius succeeded in the year 454 in getting the Aventine Hill
+granted to the plebeians; and they had another champion called Lucius
+Sicinius Dentatus, who was so brave that he was called the Roman
+Achilles. He had received no less than forty-five wounds in different
+fights before he was fifty-eight years old, and had had fourteen civic
+crowns. For the Romans gave an oak-leaf wreath, which they called a
+civic crown, to a man who saved the life of a fellow-citizen, and a
+mural crown to him who first scaled the walls of a besieged city. And
+when a consul had gained a great victory, he had what was called a
+triumph. He was drawn in his chariot into the city, his victorious
+troops marching before him with their spears waving with laurel boughs,
+a wreath of laurel was on his head, his little children sat with him in
+the chariot, and the spoil of the enemy was carried along. All the
+people decked their houses and came forth rejoicing in holiday array,
+while he proceeded to the Capitol to sacrifice an ox to Jupiter there.
+His chief prisoners walked behind his car in chains, and at the moment
+of his sacrifice they were taken to a cell below the Capitol and there
+put to death, for the Roman was cruel in his joy. Nothing was more
+desired than such a triumph; but such was often the hatred between the
+plebeians and the patricians, that sometimes the plebeian army would
+stop short in the middle of a victorious campaign to hinder their consul
+from having a triumph. Even Sicinius is said once to have acted thus,
+and it began to be plain that Rome must fall if it continued to be thus
+divided against itself.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE DECEMVIRS.
+
+B.C. 450.
+
+
+The Romans began to see what mischiefs their quarrels did, and they
+agreed to send three of their best and wisest men to Greece to study the
+laws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any of them could be put in
+force at Rome.
+
+To get the new code of laws which they brought home put into working
+order, it was agreed for the time to have no consuls, praetors, nor
+tribunes, but ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine Athenian
+archons. They were called Decemvirs (_decem_, ten; _vir_, a man),
+and at their head was Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who had
+killed himself to avoid being condemned for his harshness. At first they
+governed well, and a very good set of laws was drawn up, which the
+Romans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but Appius soon began to give
+way to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a war
+with the AEqui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatus
+said it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundred
+and twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudius
+sent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army that
+he might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when he
+advised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and
+sent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretches
+instructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass
+they set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock and
+fought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come near
+him, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down on
+his head. Then they went back with a story that they had been attacked
+by the enemy, which was believed, till a party went out to bury the
+dead, and found there were only Roman corpses all lying round the
+crushed body of Sicinius, and that none were stripped of their armor or
+clothes. Then the true history was found out, but the Decemvirs
+sheltered the commanders, and would believe nothing against them.
+
+Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all honest men even more
+than this treachery to the brave old soldier. The Forum was not only the
+place of public assembly for state affairs, but the regular
+market-place, where there were stalls and booths for all the wares that
+Romans dealt in--meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold in
+earthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even booths where reading and
+writing was taught to boys and girls, who would learn by tracing letters
+in the sand, and then by writing them with an iron pen on a waxen table
+in a frame, or with a reed upon parchment. The children of each family
+came escorted by a slave--the girls by their nurse, the boys by one
+called a pedagogue.
+
+[Illustration: DEATH OF VIRGINIA.]
+
+Appius, when going to his judgment-seat across the Forum, saw at one of
+these schools a girl of fifteen reading her lesson. She was so lovely
+that he asked her nurse who she was, and heard that her name was
+Virginia, and that she was the daughter of an honorable plebeian and
+brave centurion named Virginius, who was absent with the army fighting
+with the AEqui, and that she was to marry a young man named Icilius as
+soon as the campaign was over. Appius would gladly have married her
+himself, but there was a patrician law against wedding plebeians, and he
+wickedly determined that if he could not have her for his wife he would
+have her for his slave.
+
+There was one of his clients named Marcus Claudius, whom he paid to get
+up a story that Virginius' wife Numitoria, who was dead, had never had
+any child at all, but had bought a baby of one of his slaves and had
+deceived her husband with it, and thus that poor Virginia was really his
+slave. As the maiden was reading at her school, this wretch and a band
+of fellows like him seized upon her, declaring that she was his
+property, and that he would carry her off. There was a great uproar, and
+she was dragged as far as Appius' judgment-seat; but by that time her
+faithful nurse had called the poor girl's uncle Numitorius, who could
+answer for it that she was really his sister's child. But Appius would
+not listen to him, and all that he could gain was that judgment should
+not be given in the matter until Virginius should have been fetched from
+the camp.
+
+[Illustration: CHARIOT RACES.]
+
+Virginius had set out from the camp with Icilius before the messengers
+of Appius had reached the general with orders to stop him, and he came
+to the Forum leading his daughter by the hand, weeping, and attended by
+a great many ladies. Claudius brought his slave, who made false oath
+that she had sold her child to Numitoria; while, on the other hand, all
+the kindred of Virginius and his wife gave such proof of the contrary as
+any honest judge would have thought sufficient, but Appius chose to
+declare that the truth was with his client. There was a great murmur of
+all the people, but he frowned at them, and told them he knew of their
+meetings, and that there were soldiers in the Capitol ready to punish
+them, so they must stand back and not hinder a master from recovering
+his slave.
+
+Virginius took his poor daughter in his arms as if to give her a last
+embrace, and drew her close to the stall of a butcher where lay a great
+knife. He wiped her tears, kissed her, and saying, "My own dear little
+girl, there is no way but this," he snatched up the knife and plunged it
+into her heart, then drawing it out he cried, "By this blood, Appius, I
+devote thy blood to the infernal gods."
+
+He could not reach Appius, but the lictors could not seize him, and he
+mounted his horse and galloped back to the army, four hundred men
+following him, and he arrived still holding the knife. Every soldier who
+heard the story resolved no longer to bear with the Decemvirs, but to
+march back to the city at once and insist on the old government being
+restored. The Decemvir generals tried to stop them, but they only
+answered, "We are men with swords in our hands." At the same time there
+was such a tumult in the city, that Appius was forced to hide himself in
+his own house while Virginia's corpse was carried on a bier through the
+streets, and every one laid garlands, scarfs, and wreaths of their own
+hair upon it. When the troops arrived, they and the people joined in
+demanding that the Decemvirs should be given up to them to be burnt
+alive, and that the old magistrates should be restored. However, two
+patricians, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, were able so to arrange
+matters that the nine comparatively innocent Decemvirs were allowed to
+depose themselves, and Appius only was sent to prison, where he killed
+himself rather than face the trial that awaited him. The new code of
+laws, however, remained, but consuls, praetors, tribunes, and all the
+rest of the magistrates were restored, and in the year 445 a law was
+passed which enabled patricians and plebeians to intermarry.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CAMILLUS' BANISHMENT.
+
+B.C. 390.
+
+
+The wars with the Etruscans went on, and chiefly with the city of Veii,
+which stood on a hill twelve miles from Rome, and was altogether thirty
+years at war with it. At last the Romans made up their minds that,
+instead of going home every harvest-time to gather in their crops, they
+must watch the city constantly till they could take it, and thus, as the
+besiegers were unable to do their own work, pay was raised for them to
+enable them to get it done, and this was the beginning of paying armies.
+
+[Illustration: ARROW MACHINE.]
+
+The siege of Veii lasted ten years, and during the last the Alban lake
+filled to an unusual height, although the summer was very dry. One of
+the Veian soldiers cried out to the Romans half in jest, "You will
+never take Veii till the Alban lake is dry." It turned out that there
+was an old tradition that Veii should fall when the lake was drained. On
+this the senate sent orders to have canals dug to carry the waters to
+the sea, and these still remain. Still Veii held out, and to finish the
+war a dictator was appointed, Marcus Furius Camillus, who chose for his
+second in command a man of one of the most virtuous families in Rome, as
+their surname testified, Publius Cornelius, called Scipio, or the Staff,
+because either he or one of his forefathers had been the staff of his
+father's old age. Camillus took the city by assault, with an immense
+quantity of spoil, which was divided among the soldiers.
+
+Camillus in his pride took to himself at his triumph honors that had
+hitherto only been paid to the gods. He had his face painted with
+vermilion and his car drawn by milk-white horses. This shocked the
+people, and he gave greater offence by declaring that he had vowed a
+tenth part of the spoil to Apollo, but had forgotten it in the division
+of the plunder, and now must take it again. The soldiers would not
+consent, but lest the god should be angry with them, it was resolved to
+send a gold vase to his oracle at Delphi. All the women of Rome brought
+their jewels, and the senate rewarded them by a decree that funeral
+speeches might be made over their graves as over those of men, and
+likewise that they might be driven in chariots to the public games.
+
+Camillus commanded in another war with the Falisci, also an Etruscan
+race, and laid siege to their city. The sons of almost all the chief
+families were in charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who taught them both
+reading and all kinds of exercises. One day this man, pretending to take
+the boys out walking, led them all into the enemy's camp, to the tent of
+Camillus, where he told that he brought them all, and with them the
+place, since the Romans had only to threaten their lives to make their
+fathers deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so shocked at such
+perfidy, that he immediately bade the lictors strip the fellow
+instantly, and give the boys rods with which to scourge him back into
+the town. Their fathers were so grateful that they made peace at once,
+and about the same time the AEqui were also conquered; and the commons
+and open lands belonging to Veii being divided, so that each Roman
+freeman had six acres, the plebeians were contented for the time.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The truth seems to have been that these Etruscan nations were weakened
+by a great new nation coming on them from the North. They were what the
+Romans called Galli or Gauls, one of the great races of the old stock
+which has always been finding its way westward into Europe, and they had
+their home north of the Alps, but they were always pressing on and on,
+and had long since made settlements in northern Italy. They were in
+clans, each obedient to one chief as a father, and joining together in
+one brotherhood. They had lands to which whole families had a common
+right, and when their numbers outgrew what the land could maintain, the
+bolder ones would set off with their wives, children, and cattle to
+find new homes. The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun first in the
+same way, and their tribes, and the claims of all to the common land,
+were the remains of the old way; but they had been settled in cities so
+long that this had been forgotten, and they were very different people
+from the wild men who spoke what we call Welsh, and wore checked tartan
+trews and plaids, with gold collars round their necks, round shields,
+huge broadswords, and their red or black hair long and shaggy. The
+Romans knew little or nothing about what passed beyond their own
+Apennines, and went on with their own quarrels. Camillus was accused of
+having taken more than his proper share of the spoil of Veii, in
+especial a brass door from a temple. His friends offered to pay any fine
+that might be laid on him, but he was too proud to stand his trial, and
+chose rather to leave Rome. As he passed the gates, he turned round and
+called upon the gods to bring Rome to speedy repentance for having
+driven him away.
+
+Even then the Gauls were in the midst of a war with Clusium, the city of
+Porsena, and the inhabitants sent to beg the help of the Romans, and the
+senate sent three young brothers of the Fabian family to try to arrange
+matters. They met the Gaulish Bran or chief, whom Latin authors call
+Brennus, and asked him what was his quarrel with Clusium or his right to
+any part of Etruria. Brennus answered that his right was his sword, and
+that all things belonged to the brave, and that his quarrel with the men
+of Clusium was, that though they had more land than they could till,
+they would not yield him any. As to the Romans, they had robbed their
+neighbors already, and had no right to find fault.
+
+This put the Fabian brothers in a rage, and they forgot the caution of
+their family, as well as those rules of all nations which forbid an
+ambassador to fight, and also forbid his person to be touched by the
+enemy; and when the men of Clusium made an attack on the Gauls they
+joined in the attack, and Quintus, the eldest brother, slew one of the
+chiefs. Brennus, wild as he was, knew these laws of nations, and in
+great anger broke up his siege of Clusium, and, marching towards Rome,
+demanded that the Fabii should be given up to him. Instead of this, the
+Romans made them all three military tribunes, and as the Gauls came
+nearer the whole army marched out to meet them in such haste that they
+did not wait to sacrifice to the gods nor consult the omens. The
+tribunes were all young and hot-headed, and they despised the Gauls; so
+out they went to attack them on the banks of the Allia, only seven and
+a-half miles from Rome. A most terrible defeat they had; many fell in
+the field, many were killed in the flight, others were drowned in trying
+to swim the Tiber, others scattered to Veii and the other cities, and a
+few, horror-stricken and wet through, rushed into Rome with the sad
+tidings. There were not men enough left to defend the walls! The enemy
+would instantly be upon them! The only place strong enough to keep them
+out was the Capitol, and that would only hold a few people within it! So
+there was nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shut
+themselves up in the Capitol; all the rest, with the women and children,
+put their most precious goods into carts and left the city. The Vestal
+Virgins carried the sacred fire, and were plodding along in the heat,
+when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state, helped them into his
+cart, and took them to the city of Cumae, where they found shelter in a
+temple. And so Rome was left to the enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE SACK OF ROME.
+
+B.C. 390.
+
+
+Rome was left to the enemy, except for the small garrison in the Capitol
+and for eighty of the senators, men too old to flee, who devoted
+themselves to the gods to save the rest, and, arraying themselves in
+their robes--some as former consuls, some as priests, some as
+generals--sat down with their ivory staves in their hands, in their
+chairs of state in the Forum, to await the enemy.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF THE FORUM AT ROME.]
+
+In burst the savage Gauls, roaming all over the city till they came to
+the Forum, where they stood amazed and awe-struck at the sight of the
+eighty grand old men motionless in their chairs. At first they looked at
+the strange, calm figures as if they were the gods of the place, until
+one Gaul, as if desirous of knowing whether they were flesh and blood
+or not, stroked the beard of the nearest. The senator, esteeming this an
+insult, struck the man on the face with his staff, and this was the
+sign for the slaughter of them all.
+
+Then the Gauls began to plunder every house, dragging out and killing
+the few inhabitants they found there; feasting, revelling, and piling up
+riches to carry away; burning and overthrowing the houses. Day after day
+the little garrison in the Capitol saw the sight, and wondered if their
+stock of food would hold out till the Gauls should go away or till their
+friends should come to their relief. Yet when the day came round for the
+sacrifice to the ancestor of one of these beleaguered men, he boldly
+went forth to the altar of his own ruined house on the Quirinal Hill,
+and made his offering to his forefathers, nor did one Gaul venture to
+touch him, seeing that he was performing a religious rite.
+
+The escaped Romans had rested at Ardea, where they found Camillus, and
+were by him formed into an army, but he would not take the generalship
+without authority from what was left of the Senate, and that was shut up
+in the Capitol in the midst of the Gauls. A brave man, however, named
+Pontius Cominius, declared that he could make his way through the Gauls
+by night, and climb up the Capitol and down again by a precipice which
+they did not watch because they thought no one could mount it, and that
+he would bring back the orders of the Senate. He swam the Tiber by the
+help of corks, landed at night in ruined Rome among the sleeping enemy,
+and climbed up the rock, bringing hope at last to the worn-out and
+nearly starving garrison. Quickly they met, recalled the sentence of
+banishment against Camillus, and named him Dictator. Pontius, having
+rested in the meantime, slid down the rock and made his way back to
+Ardea safely; but the broken twigs and torn ivy on the rock showed the
+Gauls that it had been scaled, and they resolved that where man had gone
+man could go. So Brennus told off the most surefooted mountaineers he
+could find, and at night, two and two, they crept up the crag, so
+silently that no alarm was given, till just as they came to the top,
+some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and for that reason had
+been spared in spite of the scarcity, began to scream and cackle, and
+thus brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus Manlius, who
+found two Gauls in the act of setting foot on the level ground on the
+top. With a sweep of his sword he struck off the hand of one, and with
+his buckler smote the other on the head, tumbling them both headlong
+down, knocking down their fellows in their flight, and the Capitol was
+saved.
+
+By way of reward every Roman soldier brought Manlius a few grains of the
+corn he received from the common stock and a few drops of wine, while
+the tribune who was on guard that night was thrown from the rock.
+
+Foiled thus, and with great numbers of his men dying from the fever that
+always prevailed in Rome in summer, Brennus thought of retreating, and
+offered to leave Rome if the garrison in the Capitol would pay him a
+thousand pounds' weight of gold. There was treasure enough in the
+temples to do this, and as they could not tell what Camillus was about,
+nor if Pontius had reached him safely, and they were on the point of
+being starved, they consented. The gold was brought to the place
+appointed by the Gauls, and when the weights proved not to be equal to
+the amount that the Romans had with them, Brennus resolved to have all,
+put his sword into the other scale, saying, "Vae victis"--"Woe to the
+conquered." But at that moment there was a noise outside--Camillus was
+come. The Gauls were cut down and slain among the ruins, those who fled
+were killed by the people in the country as they wandered in the fields,
+and not one returned to tell the tale. So the ransom of the Capitol was
+rescued, and was laid up by Camillus in the vaults as a reserve for
+future danger.
+
+This was the Roman story, but their best historians say that it is made
+better for Rome than is quite the truth, for that the Capitol was really
+conquered, and the Gauls helped themselves to whatever they chose and
+went off with it, though sickness and weariness made them afterwards
+disperse, so that they were mostly cut off by the country people.
+
+Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so that, before this,
+Roman history can only be hearsay, derived from what the survivors
+recollected; and the whole of the buildings, temples, senate-house, and
+dwellings lay in ruins. Some of the citizens wished to change the site
+of the city to Veii; but Camillus, who was Dictator, was resolved to
+hold fast by the hearths of their fathers, and while the debate was
+going on in the ruins of the senate-house a troop of soldiers were
+marching in, and the centurion was heard calling out, "Plant your ensign
+here; this is a good place to stay in." "A happy omen," cried one of the
+senators; "I adore the gods who gave it." So it was settled to rebuild
+the city, and in digging among the ruins there were found the golden
+rod of Romulus, the brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve Tables
+were engraved, and other brasses with records of treaties with other
+nations. Fabius was accused of having done all the harm by having broken
+the law of nations, but he was spared at the entreaty of his friends.
+Manlius was surnamed Capitolinus, and had a house granted him on the
+Capitol; and Camillus when he laid down his dictatorship, was saluted as
+like Romulus--another founder of Rome.
+
+The new buildings were larger and more ornamented than the old ones; but
+the lines of the old underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscan
+fashion by the elder Tarquin as it was said, were not followed, and this
+tended to render Rome more unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizens
+lived there in summer or autumn, but went out to country houses on the
+hills.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRY OF THE FORUM ROMANUM BY THE VIA SACRA]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE PLEBEIAN CONSULATE.
+
+B.C. 367.
+
+
+All the old enemies of Rome attacked her again when she was weak and
+rising out of her ruins, but Camillus had wisely persuaded the Romans to
+add the people of Veii, Capena, and Falerii to the number of their
+citizens, making four more tribes; and this addition to their numbers
+helped them beat off their foes.
+
+But this enlarged the number of the plebeians, and enabled them to make
+their claims more heard. Moreover, the old quarrel between poor and
+rich, debtor and creditor, broke out again. Those who had saved their
+treasure in the time of the sack had made loans to those who had lost to
+enable them to build their houses and stock their farms again, and
+after a time they called loudly for payment, and when it was not
+forthcoming had the debtors seized to be sold as slaves. Camillus
+himself was one of the hardest creditors of all, and the barracks where
+slaves were placed to be sold were full of citizens.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUMES.]
+
+Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was full of pity, and raised money to redeem
+four hundred of them, trying with all his might to get the law changed
+and to save the rest; but the rich men and the patricians thought he
+acted only out of jealousy of Camillus, and to get up a party for
+himself. They said he was raising a sedition, and Publius Cornelius
+Cossus was named Dictator to put it down. Manlius was seized and put
+into chains, but released again. At last the rich men bought over two of
+the tribunes to accuse him of wanting to make himself a king, and this
+hated title turned all the people against their friend, so that the
+general cry sentenced him to be cast down from the top of the Tarpeian
+rock; his house on the Capitol was overthrown, and his family declared
+that no son of their house should ever again bear the name of Manlius.
+
+[Illustration: COSTUME.]
+
+Yet the plebeians were making their way, and at last succeeded in
+gaining the plebeian magistracies and equal honors with the patricians.
+A curious story is told of the cause of the last effort which gained the
+day. A patrician named Fabius Ambustus had two daughters, one of whom he
+gave in marriage to Servius Sulpicius, a patrician and military tribune,
+the other to Licinius Stolo. One day, when Stolo's wife was visiting her
+sister, there was a great noise and thundering at the gates which
+frightened her, until the other Fabii said it was only her husband
+coming home from the Forum attended by his lictors and clients, laughing
+at her ignorance and alarm, until a whole troop of the clients came in
+to pay their court to the tribune's wife.
+
+Stolo's wife went home angry and vexed, and reproached her husband and
+her father for not having made her equal with her sister, and so wrought
+on them that they put themselves at the head of the movement in favor of
+the plebeians; and Licinius and another young plebeian named Lucius
+Sextius, being elected year after year tribunes of the people, went on
+every time saying _Veto_ to whatever was proposed by anybody, and giving
+out that they should go on doing so till three measures were
+carried--viz., that interest on debt should not be demanded; that no
+citizen should possess more than three hundred and twenty acres of the
+public land, or feed more than a certain quantity of cattle on the
+public pastures; and, lastly, that one of the two consuls should always
+be a plebeian.
+
+They went on for eight years, always elected by the people and always
+stopping everything. At last there was another inroad of the Gauls
+expected, and Camillus, though eighty years old, was for the fifth time
+chosen Dictator, and gained a great victory upon the banks of the Anio.
+The Senate begged him to continue Dictator till he could set their
+affairs to rights, and he vowed to build a temple to Concord if he could
+succeed. He saw indeed that it was time to yield, and persuaded the
+Senate to think so; so that at last, in the year 367, Sextius was
+elected consul, together with a patrician, AEmilius. Even then the Senate
+would not receive Sextius till he was introduced by Camillus. From this
+time the patricians and plebeians were on an equal footing as far as
+regarded the magistracies, but the priesthood could belong only to the
+patricians. Camillus lived to a great age, and was honored as having
+three times saved his country. He died at last of a terrible pestilence
+which raged in Rome in the year 365.
+
+The priests recommended that they should invite the players from Etruria
+to perform a drama in honor of the feats of the gods, and this was the
+beginning of play-acting in Rome.
+
+Not long after there yawned a terrible chasm in the Forum, most likely
+from an earthquake, but nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priests
+and augurs consulted their oracles about it. These made answer that it
+would only close on receiving of what was most precious. Gold and
+jewels were thrown in, but it still seemed bottomless, and at last the
+augurs declared that it was courage that was the most precious thing in
+Rome. Thereupon a patrician youth named Marcus Curtius decked himself in
+his choicest robes, put on his armor, took his shield, sword, and spear,
+mounted his horse, and leapt headlong into the gulf, thus giving it the
+most precious of all things, courage and self-devotion. After this one
+story says it closed of itself, another that it became easy to fill it
+up with earth.
+
+The Romans thought that such a sacrifice must please the gods and bring
+them success in their battles; but in the war with the Hernici that was
+now being waged the plebeian consul was killed, and no doubt there was
+much difficulty in getting the patricians to obey a plebeian properly,
+for in the course of the next twenty years it was necessary fourteen
+times to appoint a Dictator for the defence of the state, so that it is
+plain there must have been many alarms and much difficulty in enforcing
+discipline; but, on the whole, success was with Rome, and the
+neighboring tribes grew weaker.
+
+[Illustration: CURTIUS LEAPING INTO THE GULF. (_From a Bas-Relief_.)]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE DEVOTION OF DECIUS.
+
+B.C. 357
+
+
+Other tribes of the Gauls did not fail to come again and make fresh
+inroads on the valleys of the Tiber and Anio. Whenever they came,
+instead of choosing men from the tribes to form an army, as in a war
+with their neighbors, all the fighting men of the nation turned out to
+oppose them, generally under a Dictator.
+
+In one of these wars the Gauls came within three miles of Rome, and the
+two hosts were encamped on the banks of the Anio, with a bridge between
+them. Along this bridge strutted an enormous Gallic chief, much taller
+than any of the Romans, boasting himself, and calling on any one of them
+to come out and fight with him. Again it was a Manlius who
+distinguished himself. Titus, a young man of that family, begged the
+Dictator's permission to accept the challenge, and, having gained it, he
+changed his round knight's shield for the square one of the foot
+soldiers, and with his short sword came forward on the bridge. The Gaul
+made a sweep at him with his broadsword, but, slipping within the guard,
+Manlius stabbed the giant in two places, and as he fell cut off his
+head, and took the torc, or broad twisted gold collar that was the mark
+of all Gallic chieftains. Thence the brave youth was called Titus
+Manlius Torquatus--a surname to make up for that of Capitolinus, which
+had never been used again.
+
+[Illustration: THE APENNINES.]
+
+The next time the Gauls came, Marcus Valerius, a descendant of the old
+hero Publicola, was consul, and gained a great victory. It was said that
+in the midst of the fight a monstrous raven appeared flying over his
+head, resting now and then on his helmet, but generally pecking at the
+eyes of the Gauls and flapping its wings in their faces, so that they
+fled discomfited. Thence he was called Corvus or Corvinus. The Gauls
+never again came in such force, but a new enemy came against them,
+namely, the Samnites, a people who dwelt to the south of them. They were
+of Italian blood, mountaineers of the Southern Apennines, not unlike
+the Romans in habits, language, and training, and the staunchest enemies
+they had yet encountered. The war began from an entreaty from the people
+of Campania to the Romans to defend them from the attacks of the
+Samnites. For the Campanians, living in the rich plains, whose name is
+still unchanged, were an idle, languid people, whom the stout men of
+Samnium could easily overcome. The Romans took their part, and Valerius
+Corvus gained a victory at Mount Gaurus; but the other consul, Cornelius
+Cossus, fell into danger, having marched foolishly into a forest, shut
+in by mountains, and with only one way out through a deep valley, which
+was guarded by the Samnites. In this almost hopeless danger one of the
+military tribunes, Publius Decius Mus, discovered a little hill above
+the enemy's camp, and asked leave to lead a small body of men to seize
+it, since he would be likely thus to draw off the Samnites, and while
+they were destroying him, as he fully expected, the Romans could get out
+of the valley. Hidden by the wood, he gained the hill, and there the
+Samnites saw him, to their great amazement; and while they were
+considering whether to attack him, the other Romans were able to march
+out of the valley. Finding he was not attacked, Decius set guards, and,
+when night came on, marched down again as quietly as possible to join
+the army, who were now on the other side of the Samnite camp. Through
+the midst of this he and his little camp went without alarm, until,
+about half-way across, one Roman struck his foot against a shield. The
+noise awoke the Samnites, but Decius caused his men to give a great
+shout, and this, in the darkness, so confused the enemy that they missed
+the little body of Romans, who safely gained their own camp. Decius cut
+short the thanks and joy of the consul by advising him to fall at once
+on the Samnite camp in its dismay, and this was done; the Samnites were
+entirely routed, 30,000 killed, and their camp taken. Decius received
+for his reward a hundred oxen, a white bull with gilded horns, and three
+crowns--one of gold for courage, one of oak for having saved the lives
+of his fellow-citizens, and one of grass for having taken the enemy's
+camp--while all his men were for life to receive a double allowance of
+corn. Decius offered up the white bull in sacrifice to Mars, and gave
+the oxen to the companions of his glory.
+
+Afterwards Valerius routed the Samnites again, and his troops brought in
+120 standards and 40,000 shields which they had picked up, having been
+thrown away by the enemy in their flight.
+
+Peace was made for the time; but the Latins, now in alliance with Rome,
+began to make war on the Samnites. They complained, and the Romans
+feeling bound to take their part, a great Latin war began. Manlius
+Torquatus and Decius Mus, the two greatest heroes of Rome, were consuls.
+As the Latins and Romans were alike in dress, arms, and language, in
+order to prevent taking friend for foe, strict orders were given that no
+one should attack a Latin without orders, or go out of his rank, on pain
+of death. A Latin champion came out boasting, as the two armies lay
+beneath Mount Vesuvius, then a fair vine-clad hill showing no flame.
+Young Manlius remembering his father's fame, darted out, fought hand to
+hand with the Latin, slew him, and brought home his spoils to his
+father's feet. He had forgotten that his father had only fought after
+permission was given. The elder Manlius received him with stern grief.
+He had broken the law of discipline, and he must die. His head was
+struck off amid the grief and anger of the army. The battle was bravely
+fought, but it went against the Romans at first. Then Decius,
+recollecting a vision which had declared that a consul must devote
+himself for his country, called on Valerius, the Pontifex Maximus, to
+dedicate him. He took off his armor, put on his purple toga, covered his
+head with a veil, and standing on a spear, repeated the words of
+consecration after Valerius, then mounted his horse and rode in among
+the Latins. They at first made way, but presently closed in and
+overpowered him with a shower of darts; and thus he gave for his country
+the life he had once offered for it.
+
+The victory was won, and was so followed up that the Latins were forced
+to yield to Rome. Some of the cities retained their own laws and
+magistrates, but others had Romans with their families settled in them,
+and were called colonies, while the Latin people themselves became Roman
+citizens in everything but the power of becoming magistrates or voting
+for them, being, in fact, very much what the earliest plebeians had been
+before they acquired any rights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE SAMNITE WARS.
+
+
+In the year 332, just when Alexander the Great was making his conquests
+in the East, his uncle Alexander, king of Epirus, brother to his mother
+Olympius, came to Italy, where there were so many Grecian citizens south
+of the Samnites that the foot of Italy was called Magna Graecia, or
+Greater Greece. He attacked the Samnites, and the Romans were not sorry
+to see them weakened, and made an alliance with him. He stayed in Italy
+about six years, and was then killed.
+
+To overthrow the Samnites was the great object of Rome at this time, and
+for this purpose they offered their protection and alliance to all the
+cities that stood in dread of that people. One of the cities was founded
+by men from the isle of Euboea, who called it Neapolis, or the New
+City, to distinguish it from the old town near at hand, which they
+called Palaeopolis, or the Old City. The elder city held out against the
+Romans, but was easily overpowered, while the new one submitted to Rome;
+but these southern people were very shallow and fickle, and little to be
+depended on, as they often changed sides between the Romans and
+Samnites. In the midst of the siege of Palaeopolis, the year of the
+consulate came to an end, but the Senate, while causing two consuls as
+usual to be elected, at home, would not recall Publilius Philo from the
+siege, and therefore appointed him proconsul there. This was in 326, and
+was the beginning of the custom of sending the ex-consul as proconsul to
+command the armies or govern the provinces at a distance from home.
+
+[Illustration: COMBAT BETWEEN A MIRMILLO AND A SAMNITE.]
+
+[Illustration: COMBAT BETWEEN A LIGHT-ARMED GLADIATOR AND A SAMNITE.]
+
+In 320, the consul falling sick, a dictator was appointed, Lucius
+Papirius Cursor, one of the most stern and severe men in Rome. He was
+obliged by some religious ceremony to return to Rome for a time, and he
+forbade his lieutenant, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, to venture a battle in
+his absence. But so good an opportunity offered that Fabius attacked the
+enemy, beat them, and killed 20,000 men. Then selfishly unwilling to
+have the spoils he had won carried in the dictator's triumph, he
+burnt them all. Papirius arrived in great anger, and sentenced him to
+death for his disobedience; but while the lictors were stripping him, he
+contrived to escape from their hands among the soldiers, who closed on
+him, so that he was able to get to Rome, where his father called the
+Senate together, and they showed themselves so resolved to save his life
+that Papirius was forced to pardon him, though not without reproaching
+the Romans for having fallen from the stern justice of Brutus and
+Manlius.
+
+Two years later the two consuls, Titus Veturius and Spurius Posthumius,
+were marching into Campania, when the Samnite commander, Pontius
+Herennius, sent forth people disguised as shepherds to entice them into
+a narrow mountain pass near the city of Candium, shut in by thick woods,
+leading into a hollow curved valley, with thick brushwood on all sides,
+and only one way out, which the Samnites blocked up with trunks of
+trees. As soon as the Romans were within this place the other end was
+blocked in the same way, and thus they were all closed up at the mercy
+of their enemies.
+
+What was to be done with them? asked the Samnites; and they went to
+consult old Herennius, the father of Pontius, the wisest man in the
+nation. "Open the way and let them all go free," he said.
+
+"What! without gaining any advantage?"
+
+"Then kill them all."
+
+He was asked to explain such extraordinary advice. He said that to
+release them generously would be to make them friends and allies for
+ever; but if the war was to go on, the best thing for Samnium would be
+to destroy such a number of enemies at a blow. But the Samnites could
+not resolve upon either plan; so they took a middle course, the worst of
+all, since it only made the Romans furious without weakening them. They
+were made to take off all their armor and lay down their weapons, and
+thus to pass out under the yoke, namely, three spears set up like a
+doorway. The consuls, after agreeing to a disgraceful peace, had to go
+first, wearing only their undermost garment, then all the rest, two and
+two, and if any one of them gave an angry look, he was immediately
+knocked down and killed. They went on in silence into Campania, where,
+when night came on, they all threw themselves, half-naked, silent, and
+hungry upon the grass. The people of Capua came out to help them, and
+brought them food and clothing, trying to do them all honor and comfort
+them, but they would neither look up nor speak. And thus they went on
+to Rome, where everybody had put on mourning, and all the ladies went
+without their jewels, and the shops in the Forum were closed. The
+unhappy men stole into their houses at night one by one, and the consuls
+would not resume their office, but two were appointed to serve instead
+for the rest of the year.
+
+[Illustration: ANCIENT ROME.]
+
+Revenge was all that was thought of, but the difficulty was the peace
+to which the consuls had sworn. Posthumius said that if it was disavowed
+by the Senate, he, who had been driven to make it, must be given back to
+the Samnites. So, with his hands tied, he was taken back to the Samnite
+camp by a herald and delivered over; but at that moment Posthumius gave
+the herald a kick, crying out, "I am now a Samnite, and have insulted
+you, a Roman herald. This is a just cause of war." Pontius and the
+Samnites were very angry, and they said it was an unworthy trick; but
+they did not prevent Posthumius from going safely back to the Romans,
+who considered him to have quite retrieved his honor.
+
+A battle was fought, in which Pontius and 7000 men were forced to lay
+down their arms and pass under the yoke in their turn. The struggle
+between these two fierce nations lasted altogether seventy years, and
+the Romans had many defeats. They had other wars at the same time. They
+never subdued Etruria, and in the battle of Sentinum, fought with the
+Gauls, the consul Decius Mus, devoted himself exactly as his father had
+done at Vesuvius, and by his death won the victory.
+
+The Samnite wars may be considered as ending in 290, when the chief
+general of Samnium, Pontius Telesimus, was made prisoner and put to
+death at Rome. The lands in the open country were quite subdued, but
+many Samnites still lived in the fastnesses of the Apennines in the
+south, which have ever since been the haunt of wild untamed men.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS.
+
+B.C. 280-271.
+
+
+In the Grecian History you remember that Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the
+townsman of Alexander the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This was
+the way it came about. The city of Tarentum was a Spartan colony at the
+head of the gulf that bears its name. It was as proud as its parent, but
+had lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as idle and fickle
+as the other places in that languid climate. The Tarentines first
+maltreated some Roman ships which put into their gulf, and then insulted
+the ambassador who was sent to complain. Then when the terrible Romans
+were found to be really coming to revenge their honor, the Tarentines
+took fright, and sent to beg Pyrrhus to come to their aid.
+
+He readily accepted the invitation, and coming to Italy with 28,000 men
+and twenty elephants, hoped to conquer the whole country; but he found
+the Tarentines not to be trusted, and soon weary of entertaining him,
+while they could not keep their promises of aid from the other Greeks of
+Italy.
+
+[Illustration: PYRRHUS.]
+
+The Romans marched against him, and there was a great battle on the
+banks of the river Siris, where the fighting was very hard, but when the
+elephants charged the Romans broke and fled, and were only saved by
+nightfall from being entirely destroyed. So great, however, had been
+Pyrrhus' loss that he said, "Such another victory, and I shall have to
+go back alone to Epirus."
+
+He thought he had better treat with the Romans, and sent his favorite
+counsellor Kineas to offer to make peace, provided the Romans would
+promise safety to his Italian allies, and presents were sent to the
+senators and their wives to induce them to listen favorably. People in
+ancient Greece expected such gifts to back a suit; but Kineas found that
+nobody in Rome would hear of being bribed, though many were not
+unwilling to make peace. Blind old Appius Claudius, who had often been
+consul, caused himself to be led into the Senate to oppose it, for it
+was hard to his pride to make peace as defeated men. Kineas was much
+struck with Rome, where he found a state of things like the best days of
+Greece, and, going back to his master, told him that the senate-house
+was like a temple, and those who sat there like an assembly of kings,
+and that he feared they were fighting with the Hydra of Lerna, for as
+soon as they had destroyed one Roman army another had sprung up in its
+place.
+
+However, the Romans wanted to treat about the prisoners Pyrrhus had
+taken, and they sent Caius Fabricius to the Greek camp for the purpose.
+Kineas reported him to be a man of no wealth, but esteemed as a good
+soldier and an honest man. Pyrrhus tried to make him take large
+presents, but nothing would Fabricius touch; and then, in the hope of
+alarming him, in the middle of a conversation the hangings of one side
+of the tent suddenly fell, and disclosed the biggest of all the
+elephants, who waved his trunk over Fabricius and trumpeted
+frightfully. The Roman quietly turned round and smiled as he said to the
+king, "I am no more moved by your gold than by your great beast."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN ORATOR.]
+
+At supper there was a conversation on Greek philosophy, of which the
+Romans as yet knew nothing. When the doctrine of Epicurus was mentioned,
+that man's life was given to be spent in the pursuit of joy, Fabricius
+greatly amused the company by crying out, "O Hercules! grant that the
+Greeks may be heartily of this mind so long as we have to fight with
+them."
+
+Pyrrhus even tried to persuade Fabricius to enter his service, but the
+answer was, "Sir. I advise you not; for if your people once tasted of my
+rule, they would all desire me to govern them instead of you." Pyrrhus
+consented to let the prisoners go home, but, if no peace were made, they
+were to return again as soon as the Saturnalia were over; and this was
+faithfully done. Fabricius was consul the next year, and thus received a
+letter from Pyrrhus' physician, offering for a reward to rid the Romans
+of his master by poison. The two consuls sent it to the king with the
+following letter:--"Caius Fabricius and Quintus AEmilius, consuls, to
+Pyrrhus, king, greeting. You choose your friends and foes badly. This
+letter will show that you make war with honest men and trust rogues and
+knaves. We tell you, not to win your favor, but lest your ruin might
+bring on the reproach of ending the war by treachery instead of force."
+
+Pyrrhus made enquiry, put the physician to death, and by way of
+acknowledgment released the captives, trying again to make peace; but
+the Romans would accept no terms save that he should give up the
+Tarentines and go back in the same ships. A battle was fought in the
+wood of Asculum. Decius Mus declared he would devote himself like his
+father and grandfather; but Pyrrhus heard of this, and sent word that he
+had given orders that Decius should not be killed, but taken alive and
+scourged; and this prevented him. The Romans were again forced back by
+the might of the elephants, but not till night fell on them. Pyrrhus had
+been wounded, and hosts of Greeks had fallen, among them many of
+Pyrrhus' chief friends.
+
+He then went to Sicily, on an invitation from the Greeks settled there,
+to defend them from the Carthaginians; but finding them as little
+satisfactory as the Italian Greeks, he suddenly came back to Tarentum.
+This time one of the consuls was Marcus Curius--called Dentatus, because
+he had been born with teeth in his mouth--a stout, plain old Roman, very
+stern, for when he levied troops against Pyrrhus, the first man who
+refused to serve was punished by having his property seized and sold. He
+then marched southward, and at Beneventum at length entirely defeated
+Pyrrhus, and took four of his elephants. Pyrrhus was obliged to return
+to Epirus, and the Roman steadiness had won the day after nine years.
+
+Dentatus had the grandest triumph that had ever been known at Rome,
+with the elephants walking in the procession, the first that the Romans
+had ever seen. All the spoil was given up to the commonwealth; and when,
+some time after, it was asserted that he had taken some for himself, it
+turned out that he had only kept one old wooden vessel, which he used in
+sacrificing to the gods.
+
+The Greeks of Southern Italy had behaved very ill to Pyrrhus and turned
+against him. The Romans found them so fickle and troublesome that they
+were all reduced in one little war after another. The Tarentines had to
+surrender and lose their walls and their fleet, and so had the people of
+Sybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, for they were so lazy
+that they were said to have killed all their crowing-birds for waking
+them too early in the morning. All the peninsula of Italy now belonged
+to Rome, and great roads were made of paved stones connecting them with
+it, many of which remain to this day, even the first of all, called the
+Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, which was made under the direction of
+the censor Appius Claudius, during the Samnite war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.
+
+264-240.
+
+
+We are now come to the time when Rome became mixed up in wars with
+nations beyond Italy. There was a great settlement of the Phoenicians,
+the merchants of the old world, at Carthage, on the northern coast of
+Africa, the same place at which Virgil afterwards described AEneas as
+spending so much time. Dido, the queen who was said to have founded
+Carthage when fleeing from her wicked brother-in-law at Tyre, is thought
+to have been an old goddess, and the religion and manners of the
+Carthaginians were thoroughly Phoenician, or, as the Romans called them,
+Punic. They had no king, but a Senate, and therewith rulers called by
+the name that is translated as judges in the Bible; and they did not
+love war, only trade, and spread out their settlements for this purpose
+all over the coast of the Mediterranean, from Spain to the Black Sea,
+wherever a country had mines, wool, dyes, spices, or men to trade with;
+and their sailors were the boldest to be found anywhere, and were the
+only ones who had passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, namely, the
+Straits of Gibraltar, in the Atlantic Ocean. They built handsome cities,
+and country houses with farms and gardens round them, and had all tokens
+of wealth and luxury--ivory, jewels, and spices from India, pearls from
+the Persian Gulf, gold from Spain, silver from the Balearic Isles, tin
+from the Scilly Isles, amber from the Baltic; and they had forts to
+protect their settlements. They generally hired the men of the
+countries, where they settled, to fight their battles, sometimes under
+hired Greek captains, but often under generals of their own.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN SHIP.]
+
+The first place where they did not have everything their own way was
+Sicily. The old inhabitants of the island were called Sicels, a rough
+people; but besides these there were a great number of Greek
+settlements, also of Carthaginian ones, and these two hated one another.
+The Carthaginians tried to overthrow the Greeks, and Pyrrhus, by
+coming to help his countrymen, only made them more bitter against one
+another. When he went away he exclaimed, "What an arena we leave for the
+Romans and Carthaginians to contend upon!" so sure was he that these two
+great nations must soon fight out the struggle for power.
+
+The beginning of the struggle was, however, brought on by another cause.
+Messina, the place founded long ago by the brave exiles of Messene, when
+the Spartans had conquered their state, had been seized by a troop of
+Mamertines, fierce Italians from Mamertum; and these, on being
+threatened by Xiero, king of Syracuse, sent to offer to become subjects
+to the Romans, thus giving them the command of the port which secured
+the entrance of the island. The Senate had great scruples about
+accepting the offer, and supporting a set of mere robbers; but the two
+consuls and all the people could not withstand the temptation, and it
+was resolved to assist the Mamertines. Thus began what was called the
+First Punic War. The difficulty was, however, want of ships. The Romans
+had none of their own, and though they collected a few from their Greek
+allies in Italy, it was not in time to prevent some of the Mamertines
+from surrendering the citadel to Xanno, the Carthaginian general, who
+thought himself secure, and came down to treat with the Roman tribune
+Claudius, haughtily bidding the Romans no more to try to meddle with the
+sea, for they should not be allowed so much as to wash their hands in
+it. Claudius, angered at this, treacherously laid hands on Xanno, and he
+agreed to give up the castle on being set free; but he had better have
+remained a prisoner, for the Carthaginians punished him with
+crucifixion, and besieged Messina, but in vain.
+
+The Romans felt that a fleet was necessary, and set to work to build war
+galleys on the pattern of a Carthaginian one which had been wrecked upon
+their coast. While a hundred ships were building, oarsmen were trained
+to row on dry land, and in two months the fleet put to sea. Knowing that
+there was no chance of being able to fight according to the regular
+rules of running the beaks of their galleys into the sides of those of
+their enemies, they devised new plans of letting heavy weights descend
+on the ships of the opposite fleet, and then of letting drawbridges down
+by which to board them. The Carthaginians, surprised and dismayed, when
+thus attacked off Mylae by the consul Duilius, were beaten and chased to
+Sardinia, where their unhappy commander was nailed to a cross by his own
+soldiers; while Duilius not only received in Rome a grand triumph for
+his first naval victory, but it was decreed that he should never go out
+into the city at night without a procession of torch-bearers.
+
+The Romans now made up their minds to send an expedition to attack the
+Carthaginian power not only in Sicily but in Africa, and this was placed
+under the command of a sturdy plebeian consul, Marcus Attilius Regulus.
+He fought a great battle with the Carthaginian fleet on his way, and he
+had even more difficulty with his troops, who greatly dreaded the
+landing in Africa as a place of unknown terror. He landed, however, at
+some distance from the city, and did not at once advance on it. When he
+did, according to the story current at Rome, he encountered on the banks
+of the River Bagrada an enormous serpent, whose poisonous breath killed
+all who approached it, and on whose scales darts had no effect. At last
+the machines for throwing huge stones against city walls were used
+against it; its backbone was broken, and it was at last killed, and its
+skin sent to Rome.
+
+The Romans met other enemies, whom they defeated, and gained much
+plunder. The Senate, understanding that the Carthaginians were cooped up
+within their walls, recalled half the army. Regulus wished much to
+return, as the slave who tilled his little farm had run away with his
+plough, and his wife was in distress; but he was so valuable that he
+could not be recalled, and he remained and soon took Tunis. The
+Carthaginians tried to win their gods' favor back by offering horrid
+human sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and then hired a Spartan general
+named Xanthippus, who defeated the Romans, chiefly by means of the
+elephants, and made Regulus prisoner. The Romans, who hated the
+Carthaginians so much as to believe them capable of any wickedness,
+declared that in their jealousy of Xanthippus' victory, they sent him
+home to Greece in a vessel so arranged as to founder at sea.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN ORDER OF BATTLE.]
+
+However, the Romans, after several disasters in Sicily, gained a great
+victory near Panormus, capturing one hundred elephants, which were
+brought to Rome to be hunted by the people that they might lose their
+fear of them. The Carthaginians were weakened enough to desire peace,
+and they sent Regulus to propose it, making him swear to return if he
+did not succeed. He came to the outskirts of the city, but would not
+enter. He said he was no Roman proconsul, but the slave of Carthage.
+However, the Senate came out to hear him, and he gave the message, but
+added that the Romans ought not to accept these terms, but to stand
+out for much better ones, giving such reasons that the whole people was
+persuaded. He was entreated to remain and not meet the angry men of
+Carthage; but nothing would persuade him to break his word, and he went
+back. The Romans told dreadful stories of the treatment he met with--how
+his eyelids were cut off and he was put in the sunshine, and at last he
+was nailed up in a barrel lined with spikes and rolled down hill. Some
+say that this was mere report, and that Carthaginian prisoners at Rome
+were as savagely treated; but at any rate the constancy of Regulus has
+always been a proverb.
+
+The war went on, and one of the proud Claudius family was in command at
+Trepanum, in Sicily, when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before a
+battle the Romans always consulted the sacred fowls that were carried
+with the army. Claudius was told that their augury was against a
+battle--they would not eat. "Then let them drink," he cried, and threw
+them into the sea. His impiety, as all felt it, was punished by an utter
+defeat, and he killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war went on by
+land and sea all over and around Sicily, till at the end of twenty-four
+years peace was made, just after another great sea-fight, in which Rome
+had the victory. She made the Carthaginians give up all they held in
+Sicily, restore their prisoners, make a large payment, and altogether
+humble their claims; thus beginning a most bitter hatred towards the
+conquerors, who as greatly hated and despised them. Thus ended the First
+Punic War.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GAUL.
+
+240-219.
+
+
+After the end of the Punic war, Carthage fell into trouble with her
+hired soldiers, and did not interfere with the Romans for a long time,
+while they went on to arrange the government of Sicily into what they
+called a province, which was ruled by a propraetor for a year after his
+magistracy at home. The Greek kingdom of Syracuse indeed still remained
+as an ally of Rome, and Messina and a few other cities were allowed to
+choose their own magistrates and govern themselves.
+
+Soon after, Sardinia and Corsica were given up to the Romans by the
+hired armies of the Carthaginians, and as the natives fought hard
+against Rome, when they were conquered they were for the most part sold
+as slaves. These two islands likewise had a propraetor.
+
+The Romans now had all the peninsula south of themselves, and as far
+north as Ariminim (now shortened into Rimini), but all beyond belonged
+to the Gauls--the Cisalpine Gauls, or Gauls on this side the Alps, as
+the Romans called them; while those on the other side were called
+Transalpine Gauls, or Gauls across the Alps. These northern Gauls were
+gathering again for an inroad on the south, and in the midst of the
+rumors of this danger there was a great thunderstorm at Rome, and the
+Capitol was struck by lightning. The Sybilline books were searched into
+to see what this might mean, and a warning was found, "Beware of the
+Gauls." Moreover, there was a saying that the Greeks and Gauls should
+one day enjoy the Forum; but the Romans fancied they could satisfy this
+prophecy by burying a man and woman of each nation, slaves, in the
+middle of the Forum, and then they prepared to attack the Gauls in their
+own country before the inroad could be made. There was a great deal of
+hard fighting, lasting for years; and in the course of it the consul,
+Caius Flaminius, began the great road which has since been called after
+him the Flaminian Way, and was the great northern road from Rome, as
+the Appian Way was the southern.
+
+[Illustration: THE WOUNDED GAUL.]
+
+The great hero of the war was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had already
+made himself known for his dauntless courage. As consul, he fought a
+desperate battle on the banks of the Po with the Gauls of both sides the
+Alps, and himself killed their king or chief, Viridomar. He brought the
+spoils to Rome, and hung them in the Temple of Jupiter. It was only the
+third time in the history of Rome that such a thing had been done.
+Cisalpine Gaul was thus subdued, and another road was made to secure
+it; while in the short peace that followed the gates of the Temple of
+Janus were shut, having stood open ever since the reign of Numa.
+
+The Romans were beginning to make their worship the same with that of
+the Greeks. They sent offerings to Greek temples, said that their old
+gods were the same as those of the Greeks, only under different names,
+and sent an embassy to Epidaurus to ask for a statue of Esculapius, the
+god of medicine and son of Phoebus Apollo. The emblem of Esculapius was
+a serpent, and tame serpents were kept about his temple at Epidaurus.
+One of these glided into the Roman galley that had come for the statue,
+and it was treated with great respect by all the crew until they sailed
+up the Tiber, when it made its way out of the vessel and swam to the
+island which had been formed by the settling of the mud round the heap
+of corn that had been thrown into the river when Porsena wasted the
+country. This was supposed to mean that the god himself took possession
+of the place, and a splendid temple there rose in his honor.
+
+Another imitation of the Greeks which came into fashion at this time had
+a sad effect on the Romans. The old funerals in Greek poems had ended
+by games and struggles between swordsmen. Two brothers of the Brutus
+family first showed off such a game at their father's funeral, and it
+became a regular custom, not only at funerals, but whenever there was
+need to entertain the people, to show off fights of swordsmen. The
+soldier captives from conquered nations were used in this way; and some
+persons kept schools of slaves, who were trained for these fights and
+called gladiators. The battle was a real one, with sharp weapons, for
+life or death; and when a man was struck down, he was allowed to live or
+sentenced to death according as the spectators turned down or turned up
+their thumbs. The Romans fancied that the sight trained them to be
+brave, and to despise death and wounds; but the truth was that it only
+made them hard-hearted, and taught them to despise other people's
+pain--a very different thing from despising their own.
+
+Another thing that did great harm was the making it lawful for a man to
+put away a wife who had no children. This ended by making the Romans
+much less careful to have one good wife, and the Roman ladies became
+much less noble and excellent than they had been in the good old days.
+
+[Illustration: HANNIBAL'S VOW.]
+
+In the meantime, the Carthaginians, having lost the three islands,
+began to spread their settlements further in Spain, where their chief
+colony was New Carthage, or, as we call it, Carthagena. The mountains
+were full of gold mines, and the Iberians, the nation who held them,
+were brave and warlike, so that there was much fighting to train up
+fresh armies. Hamilcar, the chief general in command there, had four
+sons, whom he said were lion whelps being bred up against Rome. He took
+them with him to Spain, and at a great sacrifice for the success of his
+arms the youngest and most promising, Hannibal, a boy of nine years old,
+was made to lay his hand on the altar of Baal and take an oath that he
+would always be the enemy of the Romans. Hamilcar was killed in battle,
+but Hannibal grew up to be all that he had hoped, and at twenty-six was
+in command of the army. He threatened the Iberians of Saguntum, who sent
+to ask help from Rome. A message was sent to him to forbid him to
+disturb the ally of Rome; but he had made up his mind for war, and never
+even asked the Senate of Carthage what was to be done, but went on with
+the siege of Saguntum. Rome was busy with a war in Illyria, and could
+send no help, and the Saguntines held out with the greatest bravery and
+constancy, month after month, till they were all on the point of
+starvation, then kindled a great fire, slew all their wives and
+children, and let Hannibal win nothing but a pile of smoking ruins.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE PYRENEES.]
+
+Again the Romans sent to Carthage to complain, but the Senate there had
+made up their minds that war there must be, and that it was a good time
+when Rome had a war in Illyria on her hands, and Cisalpine Gaul hardly
+subdued; and they had such a general as Hannibal, though they did not
+know what a wonderful scheme he had in his mind, namely, to make his
+way by land from Spain to Italy, gaining the help of the Gauls, and
+stirring up all those nations of Italy who had fought so long against
+Rome. His march, which marks the beginning of the Second Punic War,
+started from the banks of the Ebro in the beginning of the summer of
+219. His army was 20,000 foot and 12,000 horse, partly Carthaginian,
+partly Gaul and Iberian. The horsemen were Moorish, and he had
+thirty-seven elephants. He left his brother Hasdrubal with 10,000 men at
+the foot of the Pyrenees and pushed on, but he could not reach the Alps
+before the late autumn, and his passage is one of the greatest wonders
+of history. Roads there were none, and he had to force his way up the
+passes of the Little St. Bernard through snow and ice, terrible to the
+men and animals of Africa, and fighting all the way, so that men and
+horses perished in great numbers, and only seven of the elephants were
+left when he at length descended into the plains of Northern Italy,
+where he hoped the Cisalpine Gauls would welcome him.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.
+
+219.
+
+
+When the Romans heard that Hannibal had passed the Pyrenees, they had
+two armies on foot, one under Publius Cornelius Scipio, which was to go
+to Spain, and the other under Tiberius Sempronius Longus, to attack
+Africa. They changed their plan, and kept Sempronius to defend Italy,
+while Scipio went by sea to Marsala, a Greek colony in Gaul, to try to
+stop Hannibal at the Rhone; but he was too late, and therefore, sending
+on most of his army to Spain, he came back himself with his choicest
+troops. With these he tried to stop the enemy from crossing the river
+Ticinus, but he was defeated and so badly wounded that his life was only
+saved by the bravery of his son, who led him out of the battle.
+
+[Illustration: MEETING OF HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO AT ZAMA.]
+
+Before he was able to join the army again, Sempronius had fought
+another battle with Hannibal on the banks of the Trebia and suffered a
+terrible defeat. But winter now came on, and the Carthaginians found it
+very hard to bear in the marshes of the Arno. Hannibal himself was so
+ill that he only owed his life to the last of his elephants, which
+carried him safely through when he was almost blind, and in the end he
+lost an eye. In the spring he went on ravaging the country in hopes to
+make the two new consuls, Flaminius and Servilius, fight with him, but
+they were too cautious, until at last Flaminius attacked him in a heavy
+fog on the shore of Lake Trasimenus. It is said that an earthquake shook
+the ground, and that the eager warriors never perceived it; but again
+the Romans lost, Flaminius was killed, and there was a dreadful
+slaughter, for Hannibal had sworn to give no quarter to a Roman. The
+only thing that was hopeful for Rome was that neither Gauls, Etruscans,
+nor Italians showed any desire to rise in favor of Hannibal; and though
+he was now very near Rome, he durst not besiege it without the help of
+the people around to bring him supplies, so he only marched southwards,
+hoping to gain the support of the Greek colonies. A dictator was
+appointed, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who saw that, by strengthening all
+the garrisons in the towns and cutting off all provisions, he should
+wear the enemy out at last. As he always put off a battle, he was called
+Cunctator, or the Delayer; but at last he had the Carthaginians enclosed
+as in a trap in the valley of the river Vulturnus, and hoped to cut them
+off, posting men in ambush to fall on them on their morning's march.
+Hannibal guessed that this must be the plan; and at night he had the
+cattle in the camp collected, fastened torches to their horns, and drove
+them up the hills. The Romans, fancying themselves surrounded by the
+enemy, came out of their hiding-places to fall back on the camp, and
+Hannibal and his army safely escaped. This mischance made the Romans
+weary of the Delayer's policy, and when the year was out, and two
+consuls came in, though one of them, Lucius AEmilius Paulus, would have
+gone on in the same cautious plan of starving Hannibal out without a
+battle, the other, Caius Terentius Varro, who commanded on alternate
+days with him, was determined on a battle. Hannibal so contrived that it
+was fought on the plain of Cannae, where there was plenty of space to use
+his Moorish horse. It was Varro's day of command, and he dashed at the
+centre of the enemy; Hannibal opened a space for him, then closed in on
+both sides with his terrible horse, and made a regular slaughter of the
+Romans. The last time that the consul AEmilius was seen was by a tribune
+named Lentulus, who found him sitting on a stone faint and bleeding, and
+would have given him his own horse to escape, but AEmilius answered that
+he had no mind to have to accuse his comrade of rashness, and had rather
+die. A troop of enemies coming up, Lentulus rode off, and looking back,
+saw his consul fall, pierced with darts. So many Romans had been killed,
+that Hannibal sent to Carthage a basket containing 10,000 of the gold
+rings worn by the knights.
+
+[Illustration: ARCHIMEDES.]
+
+Hannibal was only five days' march beyond Rome, and his officers wanted
+him to turn back and attack it in the first shock of the defeat, but he
+could not expect to succeed without more aid from home, and he wanted to
+win over the Greek cities of the south; so he wintered in Campania,
+waiting for the fresh troops he expected from Africa or from Spain,
+where his brother Mago was preparing an army. But the Carthaginians did
+not care about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, and sent no help; and
+Publius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, with a Roman army in Spain,
+were watching Mago and preventing him from marching, until at last he
+gave them battle and defeated and killed them both. But he was not
+allowed to go to Italy to his brother, who, in the meantime, found his
+army so unstrung and ill-disciplined in the delightful but languid
+Campania, that the Romans declared the luxuries of Capua were their best
+allies. He stayed in the south, however, trying to gain the alliance of
+the king of Macedon, and stirring up Syracuse to revolt. Marcellus, who
+was consul for the third time, was sent to reduce the city, which made a
+famous defence, for it contained Archimedes, the greatest mathematician
+of his time, who devised wonderful machines for crushing the besiegers
+in unexpected ways; but at last Marcellus found a weak part of the walls
+and surprised the citizens. He had given orders that Archimedes should
+be saved, but a soldier broke into the philosopher's room without
+knowing him, and found him so intent on his study that he had never
+heard the storming of the city. The man brandished his sword. "Only
+wait," muttered Archimedes, "till I have found out my problem;" but the
+man, not understanding him, killed him.
+
+Hannibal remained in Italy, maintaining himself there with wonderful
+skill, though with none of the hopes with which he had set out. His
+brother Hasdrubal did succeed in leaving Spain with an army to help him,
+but was met on the river Metaurus by Tiberius Claudius Nero, beaten, and
+slain. His head was cut off by Nero's order, and thrown into Hannibal's
+camp to give tidings of his fate.
+
+Young Scipio, meantime, had been sent to Spain, where he gained great
+advantages, winning the friendship of the Iberians, and gaining town
+after town till Mago had little left but Gades and the extreme south.
+Scipio was one of the noblest of the Romans, brave, pious, and what was
+more unusual, of such sweet and winning temper, that it was said of him
+that wherever he went he might have been a king.
+
+On returning to Rome, he showed the Senate that the best way to get
+Hannibal out of Italy was to attack Africa. Cautious old Fabius doubted,
+but Scipio was sent to Sicily, where he made an alliance with
+Massinissa, the Moorish king in Africa; and, obtaining leave to carry
+out his plan, he was sent thither, and so alarmed Carthage, that
+Hannibal was recalled to defend his own country, where he had not been
+since he was a child. A great battle took place at Zama between him and
+Hannibal, in which Scipio was the conqueror, and the loss of Carthage
+was so terrible that the Romans were ready to have marched in on her and
+made her their subject, but Scipio persuaded them to be forbearing.
+Carthage was to pay an immense tribute, and swear never to make war on
+any ally of Rome. And thus ended the Second Punic War, in the year 201.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE FIRST EASTERN WAR.
+
+215-183.
+
+
+Scipio remained in Africa till he had arranged matters and won such a
+claim to Massinissa's gratitude that this king of Numidia was sure to
+watch over the interests of Rome. Scipio then returned home, and entered
+Rome with a grand triumph, all the nobler for himself that he did not
+lead Hannibal in his chains. He had been too generous to demand that so
+brave an enemy should be delivered up to him. He received the surname of
+Africanus, and was one of the most respected and beloved of Romans. He
+was the first who began to take up Greek learning and culture, and to
+exchange the old Roman ruggedness for the graces of philosophy and
+poetry. Indeed the Romans were beginning to have much to do with the
+Greeks, and the war they entered upon now was the first for the sake of
+spreading their own power. All the former ones had been in self-defence,
+and the new one did in fact spring out of the Punic war, for the
+Carthaginians had tried to persuade Philip, king of Macedon, to follow
+in the track of Pyrrhus, and come and help Hannibal in Southern Italy.
+The Romans had kept him off by stirring up the robber AEtolians against
+him; and when he began to punish these wild neighbors, the Romans
+leagued themselves with the old Greek cities which Macedon oppressed,
+and a great war took place.
+
+Titus Quinctius Flaminius commanded in Greece for four years, first as
+consul and then as proconsul. His crowning victory was at Cynocephalae,
+or the Dogshead Rocks, where he so broke the strength of Macedon that at
+the Isthmian games he proclaimed the deliverance of Greece, and in their
+joy the people crowded round him with crowns and garlands, and shouted
+so loud that birds in the air were said to have dropped down at the
+sound.
+
+Macedon had cities in Asia Minor, and the king of Syria's enemy,
+Antiochus the Great, hoped to master them, and even to conquer Greece by
+the help of Hannibal, who had found himself unable to live in Carthage
+after his defeat, and was wandering about to give his services to any
+one who was a foe of Rome.
+
+As Rome took the part of Philip, as her subject and ally, there was soon
+full scope for his efforts; but the Syrians were such wretched troops
+that even Hannibal could do nothing with them, and the king himself
+would not attend to his advice, but wasted his time in pleasure in the
+isle of Euboea. So the consul Acilius first beat them at Thermopylae, and
+then, on Lucius Cornelius Scipio being sent to conduct the war, his
+great brother Africanus volunteered to go with him as his lieutenant,
+and together they followed Antiochus into Asia Minor, and gained such
+advantages that the Syrian was obliged to sue for peace. The Romans
+replied by requiring of him to give up all Asia Minor as far as Mount
+Tarsus, and in despair he risked a battle in Magnesia, and met with a
+total defeat; 80,000 Greeks and Syrians being overthrown by 50,000
+Romans. Neither Africanus nor Hannibal were present in this battle,
+since the first was ill, and the second was besieged in a city in
+Pamphylia; but while terms of peace were being made, the two are said
+have met on friendly terms, and Scipio asked Hannibal whom he thought
+the greatest of generals. "Alexander," was the answer. "Whom the next
+greatest?" "Pyrrhus." "Whom do you rank as the third?" "Myself," said
+Hannibal. "But if you had beaten me?" asked Scipio. "Then I would have
+placed myself before Alexander."
+
+[Illustration: HANNIBAL]
+
+The Romans insisted that Hannibal should be dismissed by Antiochus,
+though Scipio declared that this was ungenerous; but they dreaded his
+never-ceasing enmity; and when he took refuge with the king of Bothnia,
+they still required that he should be given up or driven a way. On this,
+Hannibal, worn-out and disappointed, put an end to his own life by
+poison, saying he would rid the Romans of their fear of an old man.
+
+The provinces taken from Antiochus were given to Eumenes, king of
+Pergamus, who was to reign over them as tributary to the Romans. Lucius
+Scipio received the surname of Asiaticus, and the two brothers returned
+to Rome; but they had been too generous and merciful to the conquered to
+suit the grasping spirit that had begun to prevail at Rome, and directly
+after his triumph Lucius was accused of having taken to himself an undue
+share of the spoil. His brother was too indignant at the shameful
+accusation to think of letting him justify himself, but tore up his
+accounts in the face of the people. The tribune, Naevius, thereupon
+spitefully called upon him to give an account of the spoil of Carthage
+taken twenty years before. The only reply he gave was to exclaim, "This
+is the day of the victory of Zama. Let us give thanks to the gods for
+it;" and he led all that was noble and good in Rome with him to the
+temple of Jupiter and offered the anniversary sacrifice. No one durst
+say another word against him or his brother; but he did not choose to
+remain among the citizens who had thus insulted him, but went away to
+his estate at Liternum, and when he died, desired to be buried there,
+saying that he would not even leave his bones to his ungrateful country.
+The Cornelian family was the only one among the higher Romans who buried
+instead of burning their dead. He left no son, only a daughter, who was
+married to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a brave officer who was among
+those who were sent to finish reducing Spain. It was a long, terrible
+war, fought city by city, inch by inch; but Gracchus is said to have
+taken no less than three hundred fortresses. But he was a milder
+conqueror than some of the Romans, and tried to tame and civilize the
+wild races instead of treating them with the terrible severity shown by
+Marcus Porcius Cato, the sternest of all old Romans. However, by the
+year 178 Spain had been reduced to obedience, and the cities and the
+coast were in good order, though the mountains harbored fierce tribes
+always ready for revolt.
+
+Gracchus died early, and Cornelia, his widow, devoted herself to the
+cause of his three children, refusing to be married again, which was
+very uncommon in a Roman lady. When a lady asked her to show her her
+ornaments, she called her two boys, Tiberius and Caius, and their sister
+Sempronia, and said, "These are my jewels;" and when she was
+complimented on being the daughter of Africanus, she said that the
+honor she should care more for was the being called "the mother of the
+Gracchi."
+
+It was not, however, one of her sons that was chosen to carry on their
+grandfather's name and the sacrifices of the Cornelian family. Probably
+Caius was not born when Scipio died, for his choice had been the second
+son of his sister and of Lucius AEmilius Paulus (son of him who died at
+Cannae.) This child being adopted by his uncle, was called Publius
+Cornelius Scipio AEmilianus, and when he grew up was to marry his cousin
+Sempronia.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE CONQUEST OF GREECE, CORINTH, AND CARTHAGE.
+
+179--145.
+
+
+It was a great change when Rome, which to the Greeks of Pyrrhus' time
+had seemed so rude and simple, was thought such a school of policy that
+Greek and half-Greek kings sent their sons to be educated there, partly
+as hostages for their own peaceableness, and partly to learn the spirit
+of Roman rule. The first king who did this was Philip of Macedon, who
+sent his son Demetrius to be brought up at Rome; but when he came back,
+his father and brother were jealous of him, and he was soon put to
+death.
+
+When his brother Perseus came to the throne, there was hatred between
+him and the Romans, and ere long he was accused of making war on their
+allies. He offered to make peace, but they replied that they would hear
+nothing till he had laid down his arms, and this he would not do, so
+that Lucius AEmilius Paulus (the brother-in-law of Scipio) was sent to
+reduce him. As AEmilius came into his own house after receiving the
+appointment, he met his little daughter crying, and when he asked her
+what was the matter, she answered, "Oh, father, Perseus is dead!" She
+meant her little dog, but he kissed her and thanked her for the good
+omen. He overran Macedon, and gained the great battle of Pydna, after
+which Perseus was obliged to give himself up into the hands of the
+Romans, begging, however, not to be made to walk in AEmilius' triumph.
+The general answered that he might obtain that favor from himself,
+meaning that he could die by his own hand; but Perseus did not take the
+hint, which seems to us far more shocking than it did to a Roman; he did
+walk in the triumph, and died a few years after in Italy. AEmilius' two
+sons were with him throughout this campaign, though still boys under
+Polybius, their Achaian tutor. Macedon was divided into four provinces,
+and became entirely subject to Rome.
+
+[Illustration: CORINTH.]
+
+The Greeks of the Achaian League began to have quarrels among
+themselves, and when the Romans interfered a fierce spirit broke out,
+and they wanted to have their old freedom, forgetting how entirely
+unable they were to stand against the power of the Romans. Caius
+Caecilius Metellus, a man of one of the best and most gracious Roman
+families, was patient with them and did his best to pacify them, being
+most unwilling to ruin the noble old historical cities; but these
+foolish Greeks fancied that his kindness showed weakness, and forced on
+the war, sending a troop to guard the pass of Thermopylae, but they were
+swept away. Unfortunately, Metellus had to go out of office, and Lucius
+Mummius, a fierce, rude, and ignorant soldier, came in his stead to
+complete the conquest. Corinth was taken, utterly ruined and plundered
+throughout, and a huge amount of treasure was sent to Rome, as well as
+pictures and statues famed all over the world. Mummius was very much
+laughed at for having been told they must be carried in his triumph; and
+yet, not understanding their beauty, he told the sailors to whose charge
+they were given, that if they were lost, new ones must be supplied.
+However, he was an honest man, who did not help himself out of the
+plunder, as far too many were doing. After that, Achaia was made a Roman
+province.
+
+At this time the third and last Punic war was going on. The old Moorish
+king, Massinissa, had been continually tormenting Carthage ever since
+she had been weak, and declaring that Phoenician strangers had no
+business in Africa. The Carthaginians, who had no means of defending
+themselves, complained; but the Romans would not listen, hoping,
+perhaps, that they would be goaded at last into attacking the Moor, and
+thus giving a pretext for a war. Old Marcus Porcius Cato, who was sent
+on a message to Carthage, came back declaring that it was not safe to
+let so mighty a city of enemies stand so near. He brought back a branch
+of figs fresh and good, which he showed the Senate in proof of how near
+she was, and ended each sentence with saying, "_Delenda est Carthago_"
+(Carthage is to be wiped out). He died that same year at ninety years
+old, having spent most of his life in making a staunch resistance to the
+easy and luxurious fashions that were coming in with wealth and
+refinement. One of his sayings always deserves to be remembered. When he
+was opposing a law giving permission to the ladies to wear gold and
+purple, he said they would all be vying with one another, and that the
+poor would be ashamed of not making as good an appearance as the rich.
+"And," said he, "she who blushes for doing what she ought, will soon
+cease to blush for doing what she ought not."
+
+One wonders he did not see that to have no enemy near at hand to guard
+against was the very worst thing for the hardy, plain old ways he was so
+anxious to keep up. However, Carthage was to be wiped out, and Scipio
+AEmilianus was sent to do the terrible work. He defeated Hasdrubal, the
+last of the Carthaginian generals, and took the citadel of Byrsa; but
+though all hope was over, the city held out in utter desperation.
+Weapons were forged out of household implements, even out of gold and
+silver, and the women twisted their long hair into bow-strings; and when
+the walls were stormed, they fought from street to street and house to
+house, so that the Romans gained little but ruins and dead bodies.
+Carthage and Corinth fell on the same day of the year 179.
+
+Part of Spain still had to be subdued, and Scipio AEmilianus was sent
+thither. The city of Numantia, with only 5000 inhabitants, endured one
+of those long, hopeless sieges for which Spanish cities have in all
+times been remarkable, and was only taken at last when almost every
+citizen had perished.
+
+At the same time, Attalus, king of Pergamus in Asia Minor, being the
+last of his race, bequeathed his dominions to the Romans, and thus gave
+them their first solid footing there.
+
+All this was altering Roman manners much. Weak as the Greeks were, their
+old doings of every kind were still the admiration of every one, and the
+Romans, who had always been rough, straightforward doers, began to wish
+to learn of them to think. All the wealthier families had Greeks for
+tutors for their sons, and expected them to talk and write the language,
+and study the philosophy and poetry till they should be as familiar with
+it as if they were Greeks themselves. Unluckily, the Greeks themselves
+had fallen from their earnestness and greatness, so that there was not
+much to be learnt of them now but vain deceit and bad taste.
+
+Rich Romans, too, began to get most absurdly luxurious. They had
+splendid villas on the Italian hill-sides, where they went to spend the
+summer when Rome was unhealthy, and where they had beautiful gardens,
+with courts paved with mosaic, and fish-ponds for the pet fish for which
+many had a passion. One man was laughed at for having shed tears when
+his favorite fish died, and he retorted by saying that it was more than
+his accuser had done for his wife.
+
+Their feasts were as luxurious as they could make them, in spite of laws
+to keep them within bounds. Dishes of nightingales' tongues, of fatted
+dormice, and even of snails, were among their food: and sometimes a
+stream was made to flow along the table, containing the living companion
+of the mullet which served as part of the meal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE GRACCHI.
+
+137-122.
+
+
+Young Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the eldest of Cornelia's jewels, was
+sent in the year 137 to join the Roman army in Spain. As he went through
+Etruria, which, as every one knew, had been a thickly peopled, fertile
+country in old times, he was shocked to see its dreariness and
+desolation. Instead of farms and vineyards, there were great bare spaces
+of land, where sheep, kids, or goats were feeding. These vast tracts
+belonged to Romans, who kept slaves to attend to the flocks; while all
+the corn that was used in Rome came from Sicily or Africa, and the
+poorer Romans lived in the city itself--idle men, chiefly trusting to
+distributions of corn, and unable to work for themselves because they
+had no ground to till; and as to trades and handicrafts, the rich men
+had everything they wanted made in their own houses by their slaves.
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIA AND HER SONS.]
+
+No wonder the Romans were losing their old character. This was the very
+thing that the Licinian law had been intended to prevent, by forbidding
+any citizen to have more than a certain quantity of land, and giving the
+state the power of resuming it. The law was still there, but it had
+been disused and forgotten; estates had been gathered into the hands of
+families and handed down, till now, though there were 400,000 citizens,
+only 2,000 were men of property.
+
+While Tiberius was serving in Spain, he decided on his plan. As his
+family was plebeian, he could be a tribune of the people, and as soon as
+he came home he stood and was elected. Then he proposed reviving the
+Licinian law, that nobody should have more than 500 acres, and that the
+rest should be divided among those who had nothing, leaving, however, a
+larger portion to those who had many children.
+
+There was, of course, a terrible uproar; the populace clamoring for
+their rights, and the rich trying to stop the measure. They bribed one
+of the other tribunes to forbid it; but there was a fight, in which
+Tiberius prevailed, and he and his young brother Caius, and his
+father-in-law Appius Claudius, were appointed as triumvers to see the
+law carried out. Then the rich men followed their old plan of spreading
+reports among the people that Tiberius wanted to make himself a king,
+and had accepted a crown and purple robe from some foreign envoy. When
+his year of office was coming to an end, he sought to be elected tribune
+again, but the patricians said it was against the law. There was a
+great tumult, in the course of which he put his hand to his head, either
+to guard it from a blow or to beckon his friends. "He demands the
+diadem," shouted his enemies, and there was a great struggle, in which
+three hundred people were killed. Tiberius tried to take refuge in the
+Temple of Jupiter, but the doors were closed against him; he stumbled,
+was knocked down with a club, and killed.
+
+However, the Sempronian law had been made, and the people wanted, of
+course, to have it carried out, while the nobles wanted it to be a dead
+letter. Scipio AEmilianus, the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, had been in
+Spain all this time, but he had so much disapproved of Tiberius' doings
+that he was said to have exclaimed, on hearing of his death, "So perish
+all who do the like." But when he came home, he did so much to calm and
+quiet matters, that there was a cry to make him Dictator, and let him
+settle the whole matter. Young Caius Gracchus, who thought the cause
+would thus be lost, tried to prevent the choice by fixing on him the
+name of tyrant. To which Scipio calmly replied, "Rome's enemies may well
+wish me dead, for they know that while I live Rome cannot perish."
+
+When he went home, he shut himself into his room to prepare his
+discourse for the next day, but in the morning he was found dead,
+without a wound, though his slaves declared he had been murdered. Some
+suspected his wife Sempronia, others even her mother Cornelia, but the
+Senate would not have the matter enquired into. He left no child, and
+the Africanus line of Cornelius ended with him.
+
+Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than his brother, and was elected
+tribune as soon as he was old enough. He was full of still greater
+schemes than his brother. His mother besought him to be warned by his
+brother's fate, but he was bent on his objects, and carried some of them
+out. He had the Sempronian law reaffirmed, though he could not act on
+it; but in the meantime he began a regular custom of having corn served
+out to the poorer citizens, and found work for them upon roads and
+bridges; also he caused the state to clothe the soldiers, instead of
+their doing it at their own expense. Another scheme which he first
+proposed was to make the Italians of the countries now one with Roman
+territory into citizens, with votes like the Romans themselves; but this
+again angered the patricians, who saw they should be swamped by numbers
+and lose their power.
+
+He also wanted to found a colony of plebeians on the ruins of Carthage,
+and when his tribuneship was over he went to Africa to see about it; but
+when he came home the patricians had arranged an attack on him, and he
+was insulted by the lictor of the consul Opimius. The patricians
+collected on one side, the poorer sort around Caius on the Aventine
+Hill; but the nobles were the strongest, the plebeians fled, and Caius
+withdrew with one slave into a sacred grove, whence he hoped to reach
+the Tiber; but the wood was surrounded, his retreat was cut off, and he
+commanded the slave to kill him that he might not fall alive into the
+hands of his enemies, after which the poor faithful fellow killed
+himself, unable to bear the loss of his master. The weight of Caius'
+head in gold had been promised by the Senate, and the man who found the
+body was said to have taken out the brains and filled it up with lead
+that his reward might be larger. Three thousand men were killed in this
+riot, ten times as many as at Tiberius' death.
+
+Opimius was so proud of having overthrown Caius, that he had a medal
+struck with Hercules slaying the monsters. Cornelia, broken-hearted,
+retired to a country-house; but in a few years the feeling turned,
+great love was shown to the memory of the two brothers, statues were set
+up in their honor, and when Cornelia herself died, her statue was
+inscribed with the title she had coveted, "The mother of the Gracchi."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN CENTURION.]
+
+Things were indeed growing worse and worse. The Romans were as brave as
+ever in the field, and were sure in the end to conquer any nation they
+came in contact with; but at home, the city was full of overgrown rich
+men, with huge hosts of slaves, and of turbulent poor men, who only
+cared for their citizenship for the sake of the corn they gained by it,
+and the games exhibited by those who stood for a magistracy. Immense
+sums were spent in hiring gladiators and bringing wild animals to be
+baited for their amusement; and afterwards, when sent out to govern the
+provinces, the expenses were repaid by cruel grinding and robbing the
+people of the conquered states.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE WARS OF MARIUS.
+
+106-98.
+
+
+After the death of Massinissa, king of Numidia, the ally of the Romans,
+there were disputes among his grandsons, and Jugurtha, whom they held to
+have the least right, obtained the kingdom. The commander of the army
+sent against him was Caius Marius, who had risen from being a free Roman
+peasant in the village of Arpinum, but serving under Scipio AEmilianus,
+had shown such ability, that when some one was wondering where they
+would find the equal of Scipio when he was gone, that general touched
+the shoulder of his young officer and said, "Possibly here."
+
+Rough soldier as he always was, he married Julia, of the high family of
+the Caesars, who were said to be descended from AEneas; and though he was
+much disliked by the Senate, he always carried the people with him. When
+he received the province of Numidia, instead of, as every one had done
+before, forming his army only of Roman citizens, he offered to enlist
+whoever would, and thus filled his ranks with all sorts of wild and
+desperate men, whom he could indeed train to fight, but who had none of
+the old feeling for honor or the state, and this in the end made a great
+change in Rome.
+
+Jugurtha maintained a wild war in the deserts of Africa with Marius, but
+at last he was betrayed to the Romans by his friend Bocchus, another
+Moorish king, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marius' lieutenant, was sent
+to receive him--a transaction which Sulla commemorated on a signet ring
+which he always wore. Poor Jugurtha was kept two years to appear at the
+triumph, where he walked in chains, and then was thrown alive into the
+dungeon under the Capitol, where he took six days to die of cold and
+hunger.
+
+Marius was elected consul for the second time even before he had quite
+come home from Africa, for it was a time of great danger. Two fierce and
+terrible tribes, whom the Romans called Cimbri and Teutones, and who
+were but the vanguard of the swarms who would overwhelm them six
+centuries later, had come down through Germany to the settled countries
+belonging to Rome, especially the lands round the old Greek settlements
+in Gaul, which had fallen of course into the hands of the Romans, and
+were full of beautiful rich cities, with houses and gardens round them.
+The Province, as the Romans called it, would have been grand plundering
+ground for these savages, and Marius established himself in a camp on
+the banks of the Rhone to protect it, cutting a canal to bring his
+provisions from the sea, which still remains. While he was thus engaged,
+he was a fourth time elected consul.
+
+[Illustration: MARIUS.]
+
+The enemy began to move. The Cimbri meant to march eastward round the
+Alps, and pour through the Tyrol into Italy; the Teutones to go by the
+West, fighting Marius on the way. But he would not come out of his camp
+on the Rhone, though the Teutones, as they passed, shouted to ask the
+Roman soldiers what messages they had to send to their wives in Italy.
+
+When they had all passed, he came out of his camp and followed them as
+far as Aquae Sextiae, now called Aix, where one of the most terrible
+battles the world ever saw was fought. These people were a whole
+tribe--wives, children, and everything they had with them--and to be
+defeated was utter and absolute ruin. A great enclosure was made with
+their carts and wagons, whence the women threw arrows and darts to help
+the men; and when, after three days of hard fighting, all hope was over,
+they set fire to the enclosure and killed their children and themselves.
+The whole swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and no one was left
+to bury the dead, so that the spot was called the Putrid Fields, and is
+still known as Les Pourrieres.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE TROPHIES, CALLED OF MARIUS, AT THE CAPITOL AT
+ROME.]
+
+While Marius was offering up the spoil, tidings came that he was a fifth
+time chosen consul; but he had to hasten into Italy, for the other
+consul, Catulus, could not stand before the Cimbri, and Marius met him
+on the Po retreating from them. The Cimbri demanded lands in Italy for
+themselves and their allies the Teutones. "The Teutones have all the
+ground they will ever want, on the other side the Alps," said Marius;
+and a terrible battle followed, in which the Cimbri were as entirely cut
+off as their allies had been.
+
+Marius was made consul a sixth time. As a reward to the brave soldiers
+who had fought under him, he made one thousand of them, who came from
+the city of Camerinum, Roman citizens, and this the patricians disliked
+greatly. His excuse was, "The din of arms drowned the voice of the law;"
+but the new citizens were provided for by lands in the Province, which
+the Romans said the Gauls had lost to the Teutones and they had
+reconquered. It was very hard on the Gauls, but that was the last thing
+a Roman cared about.
+
+The Italians, however, were all crying out for the rights of Romans, and
+the more far-sighted among the Romans would, like Caius Gracchus, have
+granted them. Marcus Livius Drusus did his best for them; he was a good
+man, wise and frank-hearted. When he was having a house built, and the
+plan was shown him which would make it impossible for any one to see
+into it, he said, "Rather build one where my fellow-countrymen may see
+all I do." He was very much loved, and when he was ill, prayers were
+offered at the temples for his recovery; but no sooner did he take up
+the cause of the Italians than all the patricians hated him bitterly.
+"Rome for the Romans," was their watchword. Drusus was one day
+entertaining an Italian gentleman, when his little nephew, Marcus
+Porcius Cato, a descendant of the old censor, and bred in stern
+patrician views, was playing about the room. The Italian merrily asked
+him to favor his cause. "No," said the boy. He was offered toys and
+cakes if he would change his mind, but he still refused; he was
+threatened, and at last he was held by one leg out of the window--all
+without shaking his resolution for a moment; and this constancy he
+carried with him through life.
+
+People's minds grew embittered, and Drusus was murdered in the street,
+crying as he fell, "When will Rome find so good a citizen!" After this,
+the Italians took up arms, and what was called the Social War began.
+Marius had no high command, being probably too much connected with the
+enemy. Some of the Italian tribes held with Rome, and these were
+rewarded with the citizenship; and after all, though the consul Lucius
+Julius Caesar, brother-in-law to Marius, gained some victories, the
+revolt was so widespread, that the Senate felt it wisest, on the first
+sign of peace, to offer citizenship to such Italians as would come
+within sixty days to claim it. Citizenship brought a man under Roman
+law, freed him from taxation, and gave him many advantages and openings
+to a rise in life. But he could only give his vote at Rome, and only
+there receive the distribution of corn, and he further became liable to
+be called out to serve in a legion, so that the benefit was not so great
+as at first appeared, and no very large numbers of Italians came to
+apply for it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF MARIUS.
+
+93--84.
+
+
+The chief foe of Marius was almost always his second in command, Publius
+Cornelius Sulla, one of the men of highest family in Rome. He had all
+the high culture and elegant learning that the rough soldier Marius
+despised, spoke and wrote Greek as easily as Latin, and was as well read
+in Greek poetry and philosophy as any Athenian could be; but he was
+given up to all the excesses of luxury in which the wealthy Romans
+indulged, and his way of life had made him frightful to look at. His
+face was said to be like a mulberry sprinkled with salt, with a terrible
+pair of blue eyes glaring out of it.
+
+In 93 he was sent to command against Mithridates, king of Pontus, one
+of the little kingdoms in Asia Minor that had sprung up out of the
+break-up of Alexander's empire. Under this king, Mithridates, it had
+grown very powerful. He was of Persian birth, had all the learning and
+science both of Greece and the far East, and was said in especial to be
+wonderfully learned in all plants and their virtues, so as to have made
+himself proof against all kinds of poison, and he could speak
+twenty-five languages.
+
+He had great power in Asia Minor, and took upon himself to appoint a
+king of Cappadocia, thus leading to a quarrel with the Romans. In the
+midst of the Social War, when he thought they had their hands full in
+Italy, Mithridates caused all the native inhabitants of Asia Minor to
+rise upon the Romans among them in one night and murder them all, so
+that 80,000 are said to have perished. Sulla was ordered to take the
+command of the army which was to avenge their death; but, while he was
+raising his forces, Marius, angry that the patricians had hindered the
+plebeians and Italians from gaining more by the Social War, raised up a
+great tumult, meaning to overpower the patricians' resistance. He would
+have done more wisely had he waited until Sulla was quite gone, for that
+general came back to the rescue of his friends with six newly-raised
+legions, and Marius could only just contrive to escape from Rome, where
+he was proclaimed a traitor and a price set on his head. He was now
+seventy years old, but full of spirit. First he escaped to his own farm,
+whence he hoped to reach Ostia, where a ship was waiting for him; but a
+party of horsemen were seen coming, and he was hidden in a cart full of
+beans and driven down the coast, where he embarked, meaning to go to
+Africa; but adverse winds and want of food forced him to land at
+Circaeum, whence, with a few friends, he made his way along the coast,
+through woods and rocks, keeping up the spirits of his companions by
+telling them that, when a little boy, he robbed an eyrie of seven
+eaglets, and that a soothsayer had then foretold that he would be seven
+times consul. At last a troop of horse was seen coming towards them, and
+at the same time two ships near the coast. The only hope was in swimming
+out to the nearest ship, and Marius was so heavy and old that this was
+done with great difficulty. Even then the ships were so near the shore
+that the pursuers could command the crew to throw Marius out, but this
+they refused to do, though they only waited till the soldiers were gone,
+to put him on shore again. Here he was in a marshy, boggy place, where
+an old man let him rest in his cottage, and then hid him in a cave under
+a heap of rushes. Again, however, the troops appeared, and threatened
+the old man for hiding an enemy of the Romans. It was in Marius'
+hearing, and fearing to be betrayed, he rushed out into a pool, where he
+stood up to his neck in water till a soldier saw him, and he was dragged
+out and taken to the city of Minturnae.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATAPULT.]
+
+There the council decided on his death, and sent a soldier to kill him,
+but the fierce old man stood glaring at him, and said. "Darest thou
+kill Caius Marius?" The man was so frightened that he ran away, crying
+out, "I cannot kill Caius Marius." The Senate of Minturnae took this as
+an omen, and remembered besides that he had been a good friend to the
+Italians, so they conducted him through a sacred grove to the sea, and
+sent him off to Africa. On landing, he sent his son to ask shelter from
+one of the Numidian princes, and, while waiting for an answer, he was
+harassed by a messenger from a Roman officer of low rank, forbidding his
+presence in Africa. He made no reply till the messenger pressed to know
+what to say to his master. Then the old man looked up, and sternly
+answered. "Say that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in the ruins of
+Carthage"--a grand rebuke for the insult to fallen greatness. But the
+Numidian could not receive him, and he could only find shelter in a
+little island on the coast.
+
+There he soon heard that no sooner had Sulla embarked for the East than
+Rome had fallen into dire confusion. The consuls, Caius Octavius and
+Publius Cornelius Cinna, were of opposite parties, and had a furious
+fight, in which Cinna was driven out of Rome, and at the same time the
+Italians had begun a new Social War. Marius saw that his time was come.
+He hurried to Etruria, where he was joined by a party of his friends and
+five hundred runaway slaves. The discontented Romans formed another army
+under Quintus Sertorius, and the Samnites, who had begun the war,
+overpowered the troops sent against them, and marched to Rome, declaring
+they would have no peace till they had destroyed the wolf's lair. Cinna
+and an army were advancing on another side, and, as he was really
+consul, the Senate in their distress admitted him, hoping that he would
+stop the rest; but when he marched in and seated himself again in the
+chair of office, he had by his side old Marius clothed in rags.
+
+[Illustration: ISLAND ON THE COAST.]
+
+They were bent on revenge, and terrible it was, beginning with the
+consul, Caius Octavius, who had disdained to flee, and whose head was
+severed from his body and displayed in the Forum, with many other
+senators of the noblest blood in Rome, who had offended either Marius or
+Cinna or any of their fierce followers. Marius walked along in gloomy
+silence, answering no one; but his followers were bidden to spare only
+those to whom he gave his hand to be kissed. The slaves pillaged the
+houses, murdered many on their own account, and everything was in the
+wildest uproar, till the two chiefs called in Sertorius with a legion to
+restore order.
+
+Then they named themselves consuls, without even asking for an election,
+and thus Marius was seven times consul. He wanted to go out to the East
+and take the command from Sulla, but his health was too much broken, and
+before the year of his consulate was over he died. The last time he had
+left the house, he had said to some friends that no man ought to trust
+again to such a doubtful fortune as his had been; and then he took to
+his bed for seven days without any known illness, and there was found
+dead, so that he was thought to have starved himself to death.
+
+Cinna put in another consul named Valerius Flaccus, and invited all the
+Italians to enroll themselves as Roman citizens. Then Flaccus went out
+to the East, meaning to take away the command from Sulla, who was
+hunting Mithridates out of Greece, which he had seized and held for a
+short time. But Flaccus' own army rose against him and killed him, and
+Sulla, after beating Mithridates, driving him back to Pontus, and making
+peace with him, was now to come home.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+SULLA'S PROSCRIPTION.
+
+88-71.
+
+
+There was great fear at Rome, among the friends of Cinna and Marius, at
+the prospect of Sulla's return. A fire broke out in the Capitol, and
+this added to their terror, for the Books of the Sybil were burnt, and
+all her prophecies were lost. Cinna tried to oppose Sulla's landing, but
+was killed by his own soldiers at Brundusium.
+
+Sulla, with his victorious army, could not be stopped. Sertorius fled to
+Spain, but Marius' son tried, with the help of the Samnites, to resist,
+and held out Praeneste, but the Samnites were beaten in a terrible battle
+outside the walls, and when the people of the city saw the heads of the
+leaders carried on spear points, they insisted on giving up. Young
+Marius and a Samnite noble hid themselves in a cave, and as they had no
+hope, resolved to die; so they fought, hoping to kill each other, and
+when Marius was left alive, he caused himself to be slain by a slave.
+
+Sulla marched on towards Rome, furious at the resistance he met with,
+and determined on a terrible vengeance. He could not enter the city till
+he was ready to dismiss his army and have his triumph, so the Senate
+came out to meet him in the temple of Bellona. As they took their seats,
+they heard dreadful shrieks and cries. "No matter," said Sulla; "it is
+only some wretches being punished." The wretches were the 8000 Samnite
+prisoners he had taken at the battle of Praeneste, and brought to be
+killed in the Campus Martius; and with these shocking sounds to mark
+that he was in earnest, the purple-faced general told the trembling
+Senate that if they submitted to him he would be good to them, but that
+he would spare none of his enemies, great or small.
+
+And his men were already in the city and country, slaughtering not only
+the party of Marius, but every one against whom any one of them had a
+spite, or whose property he coveted. Marius' body, which had been buried
+and not burnt, was taken from the grave and thrown into the Tiber; and
+such horrible deeds were done that Sulla was asked in the Senate where
+the execution was to stop. He showed a list of eighty more who had yet
+to die; and the next day and the next he brought other lists of two
+hundred and thirty each. These dreadful lists were called proscriptions,
+and any one who tried to shelter the victims was treated in the same
+manner. The property of all who were slain was seized, and their
+children declared incapable of holding any public office.
+
+Among those who were in danger was the nephew of Marius' wife, Caius
+Julius Caesar, but, as he was of a high patrician family, Sulla only
+required of him to divorce his wife and marry a stepdaughter of his own.
+Caesar refused, and fled to the Sabine hills, where pursuers were sent
+after him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome,
+especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying,
+however, "Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius." Caesar
+went to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off the
+idle life of pleasure he had been leading in Rome.
+
+[Illustration: PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE.]
+
+The country people were even more cruelly punished than the citizens:
+whole cities were destroyed and districts laid waste; the whole of
+Etruria was ravaged, the old race entirely swept away, and the towns
+ruined beyond revival, while the new city of Florence was built with
+their remains, and all we know of them is from the tombs which have of
+late years been opened.
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS SULLA.]
+
+Both the consuls had perished, and Sulla caused himself to be named
+Dictator. He had really a purpose in all the horrors he had perpetrated,
+namely, to clear the way for restoring the old government at Rome, which
+Marius and his Italians had been overthrowing. He did not see that the
+rule which had worked tolerably well while Rome was only a little city
+with a small country round it, would not serve when it was the head of
+numerous distant countries, where the governors, like himself and
+Marius, grew rich, and trained armies under them able to overpower the
+whole state at home. So he set to work to put matters as much as
+possible in the old order. So many of the Senate had been killed, that
+he had to make up the numbers by putting in three hundred knights; and,
+to supply the lack of other citizens, after the hosts who had perished,
+he allowed the Italians to go on coming in to be enrolled as citizens;
+and ten thousand slaves, who had belonged to his victims, were not only
+set free, but made citizens as his own clients, thus taking the name of
+Cornelius. He also much lessened the power of the tribunes of the
+people, and made a law that when a man had once been a tribune he should
+never be chosen for any of the higher offices of the state. By these
+means he sought to keep up the old patrician power, on which he believed
+the greatness of Rome depended; though, after all, the grand old
+patrician families had mostly died off, and half the Senate were only
+knights made noble.
+
+After this Sulla resigned the dictatorship, for he was growing old, and
+had worn out his health by his riot and luxury. He spent his time in a
+villa near Rome, talking philosophy with his friends, and dictating the
+history of his own life in Greek. When he died, he bade them burn his
+body, contrary to the practice of the Cornelii, no doubt fearing it
+would be treated like that of Marius.
+
+The most promising of the men of his party who were growing up and
+coming forward was Cnaeus Pompeius, a brave and worthy man, who had while
+quite young, gained such a victory over a Numidian prince that Sulla
+himself gave him the title of Magnus, or the Great. He was afterwards
+sent to Spain, where Sertorius held out for eight years against the
+Roman power with the help of the native chiefs, but at last was put to
+death by his own followers. Things were altogether in a bad state. There
+were great struggles in Rome at every election, for the officers of the
+state were now chiefly esteemed for the sake of the three or five years'
+government in the provinces to which they led. No expense was thought
+too great in shows of beasts and gladiators by which to win the votes of
+the people; for, after the year of office, the candidate meant amply to
+repay himself by what he could squeeze out of the unhappy province under
+his charge, and nobody cared for cruelty or injustice to any one but a
+Roman citizen.
+
+Numbers of gladiators were kept and trained to fight in these shows; and
+while the Spanish war was going on, a whole school of them--seventy-eight
+in number--who were kept at Capua, broke out, armed themselves with the
+spits, hooks, and axes in a butcher's shop, and took refuge in the crater
+of Mount Vesuvius, which at that time showed no signs of being an active
+volcano. There, under their leader Spartacus, they gathered together every
+gladiator slave or who could run away to them, and Spartacus wanted them
+to march northward, force their way through Italy, climb the Alps, and
+reach their homes in Thrace and Gaul; but the plunder of Italy tempted
+them, and they would not go, till an army was sent against them under
+Marcus Licinius Crassus--called Dives, or the Rich, from the spoil he had
+gained during the proscription. Then Spartacus hoped to escape in a fleet
+of pirate ships from Cilicia, and to hold out in the passes of Mount
+Taurus; but the Cilician pirates deceived him, sailed away with his money,
+and left him to his fate, and he and his gladiators were all slain by
+Crassus and Pompeius, who had been called home from Spain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE CAREER OF POMPEIUS.
+
+70-63.
+
+
+Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Lucius Licinius Crassus Dives were consuls
+together in the year 70; but Crassus, though he feasted the people at
+10,000 tables, was envied and disliked, and would never have been
+elected but for Pompeius, who was a great favorite with the people, and
+so much trusted, both by them and the nobles, that it seems to have
+filled him with pride, for he gave himself great airs, and did not treat
+his fellow-consul as an equal.
+
+When his term of office was over, the most pressing thing to be done was
+to put down the Cilician pirates. In the angle formed between Asia Minor
+and Syria, with plenty of harbors formed by the spurs of Mount Taurus,
+there had dwelt for ages past a horde of sea robbers, whose swift
+galleys darted on the merchant ships of Tyre and Alexandria; and now,
+after the ruin of the Syrian kingdom, they had grown so rich that their
+state galleys had silken sails, oars inlaid with ivory and silver, and
+bronze prows. They robbed the old Greek temples and the Eastern shrines,
+and even made descents on the Italian cities, besides stopping the ships
+which brought wheat from Sicily and Alexandria to feed the Romans.
+
+To enable Pompeius to crush them, authority was given him for three
+years over all the Mediterranean and fifty miles inland all round, which
+was nearly the same thing as the whole empire. He divided the sea into
+thirteen commands, and sent a party to fight the pirates in each; and
+this was done so effectually, that in forty days they were all hunted
+out of the west end of the gulf, whither he pursued them with his whole
+force, beat them in a sea-fight, and then besieged them; but, as he was
+known to be a just and merciful man, they came to terms with him, and he
+scattered them about in small colonies in distant cities, so that they
+might cease to be mischievous.
+
+[Illustration: COAST OF TYRE.]
+
+In the meantime, the war with Mithridates had broken out again, and
+Lucius Lucullus, who had been consul after Pompeius, was fighting with
+him in the East; but Lucullus did not please the Romans, though he met
+with good success, and had pushed Mithridates so hard that there was
+nothing left for Pompeius but to complete the conquest, and he drove the
+old king beyond Caucasus, and then marched into Syria, where he
+overthrew the last of the Seleucian kings, Antiochus, and gave him the
+little kingdom of Commagene to spend the remainder of his life in, while
+Syria and Phoenicia were made into a great Roman province.
+
+Under the Maccabees, Palestine had struggled into being independent of
+Syria, but only by the help of the Romans, who, as usual, tried to ally
+themselves with small states in order to make an excuse for making war
+on large ones. There was now a great quarrel between two brothers of the
+Maccabean family, and one of them, Hyrcanus, came to ask the aid of
+Pompeius. The Roman army marched into the Holy Land, and, after seizing
+the whole country, was three months besieging Jerusalem, which, after
+all, it only took by an attack when the Jews were resting on the Sabbath
+day. Pompeius insisted on forcing his way into the Holy of Holies, and
+was very much disappointed to find it empty and dark. He did not
+plunder the treasury of the Temple, but the Jews remarked that, from the
+time of this daring entrance, his prosperity seemed to fail him. Before
+he left the East, however, old Mithridates, who had taken refuge in the
+Crimea, had been attacked by his own favorite son, and, finding that his
+power was gone, had taken poison; but, as his constitution was so
+fortified by antidotes that it took no effect, he caused one of his
+slaves to kill him.
+
+The son submitted to the Romans, and was allowed to reign on the
+Bosphorus; but Pompeius had extended the Roman Empire as far as the
+Euphrates; for though a few small kings still remained, it was only by
+suffrance from the Romans, who had gained thirty-nine great cities.
+Egypt, the Parthian kingdom on the Tigris, and Armenia in the mountains,
+alone remained free.
+
+While all this was going on in the East, there was a very dangerous plot
+contrived at Rome by a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and seven
+other good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, even the slaves and
+gladiators, overthrowing the government, seizing all the offices of
+state, and murdering all their opponents, after the example first set by
+Marius and Cinna.
+
+[Illustration: MOUNTAINS OF ARMENIA.]
+
+Happily such secrets are seldom kept; one of the plotters told the
+woman he was in love with, and she told one of the consuls, Marcus
+Tullius Cicero. Cicero was one of the wisest and best men in Rome, and
+the one whom we really know the best, for he left a great number of
+letters to his friends, which show us the real mind of the man. He was
+of the order of the knights, and had been bred up to be a lawyer and
+orator, and his speeches came to be the great models of Roman eloquence.
+He was a man of real conscience, and he most deeply loved Rome and her
+honor; and though he was both vain and timid, he could put these
+weaknesses aside for the public good. Before all the Senate he impeached
+Catilina, showing how fully he knew all that he intended. Nothing could
+be done to him by law till he had actually committed his crime, and
+Cicero wanted to show him that all was known, so as to cause him to flee
+and join his friends outside. Catilina tried to face it out, but all the
+senators began to cry out against him, and he dashed away in terror, and
+left the city at night. Cicero announced it the next day in a famous
+speech, beginning, "He is gone; he has rushed away; he has burst forth."
+Some of his followers in guilt were left at Rome, and just then some
+letters were brought to Cicero by some of a tribe of Gauls whom they
+had invited to help them in the ruin of the Senate. This was positive
+proof, and Cicero caused the nine worst to be seized, and, having proved
+their guilt, there was a consultation in the Senate as to their fate.
+Julius Caesar wanted to keep them prisoners for life, which he said was
+worse than death, as that, he believed, would end everything; but all
+the rest of the Senate were for their death, and they were all
+strangled, without giving them a chance of defending themselves or
+appealing to the people. Cicero beheld the execution himself, and then
+went forth to the crowd, merely saying, "They have lived."
+
+[Illustration: CICERO.]
+
+Catilina, meantime, had collected 20,000 men in Italy, but they were not
+half-armed, and the newly-returned proconsul, Metellus, made head
+against him; while the other consul, Caius Antonius, was recalled from
+Macedonia with his army. As he was a friend of Catilina, he did not
+choose to fight with him, and gave up the command to his lieutenant, by
+whom the wretch was defeated and slain. His head was cut off and sent to
+Rome.
+
+[Illustration: COLOSSAL STATUE OF POMPEIUS OF THE PALAZZO SPADA AT
+ROME.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+POMPEIUS AND CAESAR.
+
+61-48.
+
+
+Pompeius was coming home for his triumph, every one had hopes from him,
+for things were in a very bad state. There had been a great disturbance
+at Julius Caesar's house. Every year there was a festival in honor of
+Cybele, the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, to which none but women were
+admitted, and where it was sacrilege for a man to be seen. In the midst
+of this feast in Caesar's house, a slave girl told his mother Aurelia
+that there was a man among the ladies. Aurelia shut the doors, took a
+torch and ran through the house, looking in every one's face for the
+offender, who was found to be Publius Clodius, a worthless young man,
+who had been in Catilina's conspiracy, but had given evidence against
+him. He escaped, but was brought to trial, and then borrowed money
+enough of Crassus the rich, to bribe the judges and avoid the punishment
+he deserved. Caesar's wife, the sister of Pompeius was free of blame in
+the matter, but he divorced her, saying that Caesar's wife must be free
+from all suspicion; and this, of course, did not bring her brother home
+in a friendly spirit to Caesar.
+
+[Illustration: POMPEIUS.]
+
+Pompeius' triumph was the most magnificent that had ever yet been seen.
+It lasted two days, and the banners that were carried in the procession,
+bore the names of nine hundred cities and one thousand fortresses which
+he had conquered. All the treasures of Mithridates--statues, jewels, and
+splendid ornaments of gold and silver worked with precious stones--were
+carried along; and it was reckoned that he had brought home 20,000
+talents--equal to L5,000,000--for the treasury. He was admired, too, for
+refusing any surname taken from his conquests, and only wearing the
+laurel wreath of a victor in the Senate.
+
+Pompeius and Caesar were the great rival names at this time. Pompeius'
+desire was to keep the old framework, and play the part of Sulla as its
+protector, only without its violence and bloodshed. Caesar saw that it
+was impossible that things should go on as they were, and had made up
+his mind to take the lead and mould them afresh; but this he could not
+do while Pompeius was looked up to as the last great conqueror. So Caesar
+meant to serve his consulate, take some government where he could grow
+famous and form an army, and then come home and mould everything anew.
+After a year's service in Spain as propraetor, Caesar came back and made
+friends with Pompeius and Crassus, giving his daughter Julia in marriage
+to Pompeius, and forming what was called a triumvirate, or union of
+three men. Thus he easily obtained the consulship, and showed himself
+the friend of the people by bringing in an Agrarian Law for dividing the
+public lands in Campania among the poorer citizens, not forgetting
+Pompeius' old soldiers; also taking other measures which might make the
+Senate recollect that Sulla had foretold that he would be another Marius
+and more.
+
+After this, he took Gaul as his province, and spent seven years in
+subduing it bit by bit, and in making two visits to Britain. He might
+pretty well trust the rotten state of Rome to be ready for his
+interference when he came back. Clodius had actually dared to bring
+Cicero to a trial for having put to death the friends of Catilina
+without allowing them to plead their own cause. Pompeius would not help
+him, and the people banished him four hundred miles from Rome, when he
+went to Sicily, where he was very miserable; but his exile only lasted
+two years, and then better counsels prevailed, and he was brought home
+by a general vote, and welcomed almost as if it had been a triumph.
+
+Marcus Porcius Cato was as honest and true a man as Cicero, but very
+rough and stern, so that he was feared and hated; and there were often
+fierce quarrels in the Senate and Forum, and in one of these Pompeius'
+robe was sprinkled with blood. On his return home, his young wife Julia
+thought he had been hurt, and the shock brought on an illness of which
+she died; thus breaking the link between her husband and father.
+
+[Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE.]
+
+Pompeius did all he could to please the Romans when he was consul
+together with Crassus. He had been for some time building a most
+splendid theatre in the Campus Martius, after the Greek fashion, open to
+the sky, and with tiers of galleries circling round an arena; but the
+Greeks had never used their theatres for the savage sports for which
+this was intended. When it was opened, five hundred lions, eighteen
+elephants, and a multitude of gladiators were provided to fight in
+different fashions with one another before thirty thousand spectators,
+the whole being crowned by a temple to Conquering Venus. After his
+consulate, Pompeius took Spain as his province, but did not go there,
+managing it by deputy; while Crassus had Syria, and there went to war
+with the wild Parthians on the Eastern border. In the battle of Carrhae,
+the army of Crassus was entirely routed by the Parthians; he was killed,
+his head was cut off, and his mouth filled up with molten gold in scorn
+of his riches. At Rome, there was such distress that no one thought much
+even of such a disaster. Bribes were given to secure elections, and
+there was nothing but tumult and uproar, in which good men like Cicero
+and Cato could do nothing. Clodius was killed in one of these frays, and
+the mob grew so furious that the Senate chose Pompeius to be sole consul
+to put them down; and this he did for a short time, but all fell into
+confusion again while he was very ill of a fever at Naples, and even
+when he recovered there was a feeling that Caesar was wanted. But Caesar's
+friends said he must not be called upon to give up his army unless
+Pompeius gave up his command of the army in Spain, and neither of them
+would resign.
+
+[Illustration: THE ARENA.]
+
+Caesar advanced with all his forces as far as Ravenna, which was still
+part of Cisalpine Gaul, and then the consul, Marcus Marcellus, begged
+Pompeius to protect the commonwealth, and he took up arms. Two of Caesars
+great friends, Marcus Antonius and Caius Cassius, who were tribunes,
+forbade this; and when they were not heeded, they fled to Caesar's camp
+asking his protection.
+
+So he advanced. It was not lawful for an imperator, or general in
+command of an army, to come within the Roman territory with his troops
+except for his triumph, and the little river Rubicon was the boundary of
+Cisalpine Gaul. So when Caesar crossed it, he took the first step in
+breaking through old Roman rules, and thus the saying arose that one has
+passed the Rubicon when one has gone so far in a matter that there is no
+turning back. Though Caesar's army was but small, his fame was such that
+everybody seemed struck with dismay, even Pompeius himself, and instead
+of fighting, he carried off all the senators of his party to the South,
+even to the extreme point of Italy at Brundusium. Caesar marched after
+them thither, having met with no resistance, and having, indeed, won all
+Italy in sixty days. As he advanced on Brundusium, Pompeius embarked on
+board a ship in the harbor and sailed away, meaning, no doubt, to raise
+an army in the provinces and return--some feared like Sulla--to take
+vengeance.
+
+Caesar was appointed Dictator, and after crushing Pompeius' friends in
+Spain, he pursued him into Macedonia, where Pompeius had been collecting
+all the friends of the old commonwealth. There was a great battle fought
+at Pharsalia, a battle which nearly put an end to the old government of
+Rome, for Caesar gained a great victory; and Pompeius fled to the coast,
+where he found a vessel and sailed for Egypt. He sent a message to ask
+shelter at Alexandria, and the advisers of the young king pretended to
+welcome him, but they really intended to make friends with the victor;
+and as Pompeius stepped ashore he was stabbed in the back, his body
+thrown into the surf, and his head cut off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JULIUS CAESAR.
+
+48--44.
+
+
+With Pompeius fell the hopes of those who were faithful to the old
+government, such as Cicero and Cato. They had only to wait and see what
+Caesar would do, and with the memory of Marius in their minds.
+
+[Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR.]
+
+Caesar did not come at once to Rome; he had first to reduce the East to
+obedience. Egypt was under the last descendants of Alexander's general
+Ptolemy, and was an ally of Rome, that is, only remaining a kingdom by
+her permission. The king was a wretched weak lad; his sister Cleopatra,
+who was joined with him in the throne, was one of the most beautiful and
+winning women who ever lived. Caesar, who needed money, demanded some
+that was owing to the state. The young king's advisers refused, and
+Caesar, who had but a small force with him, was shut up in a quarter of
+Alexandria where he could get no fresh water but from pits which his men
+dug in the sand. He burnt the Egyptian fleet that it might not stop the
+succors that were coming from Syria, and he tried to take the Isle of
+Pharos, with the lighthouse on it, but his ship was sunk, and he was
+obliged to save himself by swimming, holding his journals in one hand
+above the water. However, the forces from Syria were soon brought to
+him, and he was able to fight a battle in which the young king was
+drowned; and Egypt was at his mercy. Cleopatra was determined to have an
+interview with him, and had herself carried into his rooms in a roll of
+carpet, and when there, she charmed him so much that he set her up as
+queen of Egypt. He remained three months longer in Egypt collecting
+money; and hearing that Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, had attacked
+the Roman settlements in Asia Minor, he sailed for Tarsus, marched
+against Pharnaces, routed and killed him in battle. The success was
+announced to the Senate in the following brief words, "_Veni, vidi,
+vici_"--"I came, I saw, I conquered."
+
+[Illustration: CATO.]
+
+He was a second time appointed Dictator, and came home to arrange
+affairs; but there were no proscriptions, though he took away the
+estates of those who opposed him. There was still a party of the
+senators and their supporters who had followed Pompeius in Africa, with
+Cato and Cnaeus Pompeius, the eldest son of the great leader, and Caesar
+had to follow them thither. He gave them a great defeat at Thapsus, and
+the remnant took refuge in the city of Utica, whither Caesar followed
+them. They would have stood a siege, but the townspeople would not
+consent, and Cato sent off all his party by sea, and remained alone with
+his son and a few of his friends, not to face the conqueror, but to die
+by his own sword ere he came, as the Romans had learned from Stoic
+philosophy to think the nobler part.
+
+[Illustration: FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES IN THE COLUMBARIUM (lit. _Pigeon-house_)
+OF THE HOUSE OF JULIUS CAESAR AT THE PORTA CAPENA IN ROME.
+
+(The rows of niches for the cinerary urns in a Roman sepulchre were
+called by this name from their resemblance to a dovecot.)]
+
+Such of the Senate as had not joined Pompeius were ready to fall down
+and worship Caesar when he came home. So rejoiced was Rome to fear no
+proscription, that temples were dedicated to Caesar's clemency, and his
+image was to be carried in procession with those of the gods. He was
+named Dictator for ten years, and was received with four triumphs--over
+the Gauls, over the Egyptians, over Pharnaces, and over Juba, an African
+king who had aided Cato. Foremost of the Gaulish prisoners was the brave
+Vercingetorix, and among the Egyptians, Arsinoe, the sister of
+Cleopatra. A banquet was given at his cost to the whole Roman people,
+and the shows of gladiators and beasts surpassed all that had ever been
+seen. The Julii were said to be descended from AEneas and to Venus, as
+his ancestress, Caesar dedicated a breastplate of pearls from the river
+mussels of Britain. Still, however, he had to go to Spain to reduce the
+sons of Pompeius. They were defeated in battle, the elder was killed,
+but Cnaeus, the younger, held out in the mountains and hid himself among
+the natives.
+
+After this, Caesar returned to Rome to carry out his plans. He was
+dictator for ten years and consul for five, and was also imperator or
+commander of an army he was not made to disband, so that he nearly was
+as powerful as any king; and, as he saw that such an enormous domain as
+Rome now possessed could never be governed by two magistrates changing
+every year, he prepared matters for there being one ruler. The influence
+of the Senate, too, he weakened very much by naming a great many persons
+to it of no rank or distinction, till there were nine hundred members,
+and nobody thought much of being a senator. He also made an immense
+number of new citizens, and he caused a great survey to be begun by
+Roman officers in preparation for properly arranging the provinces,
+governments, and tribute; and he began to have the laws drawn up in
+regular order. In fact, he was one of the greatest men the world has
+ever produced, not only as a conqueror, but a statesman and ruler; and
+though his power over Rome was not according to the laws, and had been
+gained by a rebellion, he was using it for her good.
+
+He was learned in all philosophy and science, and his history of his
+wars in Gaul has come down to our times. As a high patrician by birth,
+he was Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, and thus had to fix all the
+festival days in each year. Now the year had been supposed to be only
+three hundred and fifty-five days long, and the Pontifex put in another
+month or several days whenever he pleased, so that there was great
+confusion, and the feast days for the harvest and vintage came,
+according to the calendar, three months before there was any corn or
+grapes.
+
+To set this to rights, since it was now understood that the length of
+the year was three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours, Caesar and
+the scientific men who assisted him devised the fresh arrangement that
+we call leap year, adding a day to the three hundred and sixty-five once
+in four years. He also changed the name of one of the summer months
+from Sextile to July, in honor of himself. Another work of his was
+restoring Corinth and Carthage, which had both been ruined the same
+year, and now were both refounded the same year.
+
+He was busy about the glory of the state, but there was much to shock
+old Roman feelings in his conduct. Cleopatra had followed him to Rome,
+and he was thinking of putting away his wife Calphurnia to marry her.
+But his keeping the dictatorship was the real grievance, and the remains
+of the old party in the Senate could not bear that the patrician freedom
+of Rome should be lost. Every now and then his flatterers offered him a
+royal crown and hailed him as king, though he always refused it, and
+this title still stirred up bitter hatred. He was preparing an army,
+intending to march into the further East, avenge Crassus' defeat on the
+Parthians, and march where no one but Alexander had made his way; and if
+he came back victorious from thence, nothing would be able to stand
+against him.
+
+The plotters then resolved to strike before he set out. Caius Cassius, a
+tall, lean man, who had lately been made praetor, was the chief
+conspirator, and with him was Marcus Junius Brutus, a descendant of him
+who overthrew the Tarquins, and husband to Porcia, Cato's daughter, also
+another Brutus named Decimus, hitherto a friend of Caesar, and newly
+appointed to the government of Cisalpine Gaul. These and twelve more
+agreed to murder Caesar on the 15th of March, called in the Roman
+calendar the Ides of March, when he went to the senate-house.
+
+Rumors got abroad and warnings came to him about that special day. His
+wife dreamt so terrible a dream that he had almost yielded to her
+entreaties to stay at home, when Decimus Brutus came in and laughed him
+out of it. As he was carried to the senate-house in a litter, a man gave
+him a writing and begged him to read it instantly; but he kept it rolled
+in his hand without looking. As he went up the steps he said to the
+augur Spurius, "The Ides of March are come." "Yes, Caesar," was the
+answer; "but they are not passed." A few steps further on, one of the
+conspirators met him with a petition, and the others joined in it,
+clinging to his robe and his neck, till another caught his toga and
+pulled it over his arms, and then the first blow was struck with a
+dagger. Caesar struggled at first as all fifteen tried to strike at him,
+but, when he saw the hand uplifted of his treacherous friend Decimus,
+he exclaimed, "_Et tu Brute_"--"Thou, too, Brutus"--drew his toga over
+his head, and fell dead at the foot of the statue of Pompeius.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.
+
+44--33.
+
+
+The murderers of Caesar had expected the Romans to hail them as
+deliverers from a tyrant, but his great friend Marcus Antonius, who was,
+together with him, consul for that year, made a speech over his body as
+it lay on a couch of gold and ivory in the Forum ready for the funeral.
+Antonius read aloud Caesar's will, and showed what benefits he had
+intended for his fellow-citizens, and how he loved them, so that love
+for him and wrath against his enemies filled every hearer. The army, of
+course, were furious against the murderers; the Senate was terrified,
+and granted everything Antonius chose to ask, provided he would protect
+them, whereupon he begged for a guard for himself that he might be
+saved from Caesar's fate, and this they gave him; while the fifteen
+murderers fled secretly, mostly to Cisalpine Gaul, of which Decimus
+Brutus was governor.
+
+Caesar had no child but the Julia who had been wife to Pompeius, and his
+heir was his young cousin Caius Octavius, who changed his name to Caius
+Julius Caesar Octavianus, and, coming to Rome, demanded his inheritance,
+which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; but
+Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairness
+that many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, who
+had always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thing
+to be done was to put down the murderers--Decimus Brutus was in Gaul,
+Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had also
+raised an army in Spain.
+
+Good men in the Senate dreaded no one so much as Antonius, and put their
+hope in young Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches against
+Antonius, which are called Philippics, because they denounce him as
+Demosthenes used to denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, they
+were the last flashes of spirit in a sinking state; and Cicero, in
+those days, was the foremost and best man who was trying at his own risk
+to save the old institutions of his country. But it was all in vain;
+they were too rotten to last, and there were not enough of honest men to
+make a stand against a violent unscrupulous schemer like Antonius, above
+all now that the clever young Octavianus saw it was for his interest to
+make common cause with him, and with a third friend of Caesar, rich but
+dull, named Marcus AEmilius Lepidus. They called on Decimus Brutus to
+surrender his forces to them, and marched against him. Then his troops
+deserted him, and he tried to escape into the Alps, but was delivered up
+to Antonius and put to death.
+
+[Illustration: MARCUS ANTONIUS.]
+
+Soon after, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus all met on a little island
+in the river Rhenus and agreed to form a triumvirate for five years for
+setting things to rights once more, all three enjoying consular power
+together; and, as they had the command of all the armies, there was no
+one to stop them. Lepidus was to stay and govern Rome, while the other
+two hunted down the murderers of Caesar in the East. But first, there was
+a deadly vengeance to be taken in the city upon all who could be
+supposed to have favored the murder of Caesar, or who could be enemies to
+their schemes. So these three sat down with a list of the citizens
+before them to make a proscription, each letting a kinsman or friend of
+his own be marked for death, provided he might slay one related to
+another of the three. The dreadful list was set up in the Forum, and a
+price paid for the heads of the people in it, so that soldiers,
+ruffians, and slaves brought them in; but it does not seem that--as in
+the other two proscriptions--there was random murder, and many bribed
+their assassins and escaped from Italy. Octavianus had marked the fewest
+and tried to save Cicero, but Antonius insisted on his death. On hearing
+that he was in the fatal roll, Cicero had left Rome with his brother,
+and slowly travelled towards the coast from one country house to another
+till he came to Antium, whence he meant to sail for Greece; but there he
+was overtaken. His brother was killed at once, but he was put into a
+boat by his slaves, and went down the coast to Formiae, where he landed
+again, and, going to a house near, said he would rather die in his own
+country which he had so often saved. However, when the pursuers knocked
+at the gate, his slaves placed him in a litter and hurried him out at
+another door. He was, however, again overtaken, and he forbade his
+slaves to fight for him, but stretched out his throat for the sword,
+with his eyes full upon it. His head was carried to Antonius, whose wife
+Fulvia actually pierced the tongue with her bodkin in revenge for the
+speeches it had made against her husband.
+
+After this dreadful work, Antonius and Octavianus went across to Greece,
+where Marcus Brutus had collected the remains of the army that had
+fought under Pompeius. He had been made much of at Athens, where his
+statue had been set up beside that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the
+slayers of Pisistratus. Cassius had plundered Asia Minor, and the two
+met at Sardis. It is said that the night before they were to pass into
+Macedonia, Brutus was sitting alone in his tent, when he saw the figure
+of a man before him. "Who art thou?" he asked, and the answer was, "I am
+thine evil genius, Brutus; I will meet thee again at Philippi."
+
+[Illustration: MARCUS BRUTUS.]
+
+And it was at Philippi that Brutus and Cassius found themselves face to
+face with Antonius and Octavianus. Each army was divided into two, and
+Brutus, who fought against Octavianus, put his army to flight, but
+Cassius was driven back by Antonius; and seeing a troop of horsemen
+coming towards him, he thought all was lost, and threw himself upon a
+sword. Brutus gathered the troops together, and after twenty days
+renewed the fight, when he was routed, fled, and hid himself, but after
+some hours put himself to death, as did his wife Porcia when she heard
+of his end.
+
+After this, Octavianus went back to Italy, while Antonius stayed to
+pacify the East. When he was at Tarsus, the lovely queen of Egypt came,
+resolved to win him over. She sailed up the Cydnus in a beautiful
+galley, carved, gilded, and inlaid with ivory, with sails of purple silk
+and silvered oars, moving to the sound of flutes, while she lay on the
+deck under a star-spangled canopy arrayed as Venus, with her ladies as
+nymphs, and little boys as Cupids fanning her. Antonius was perfectly
+fascinated, and she took him back to Alexandria with her, heeding
+nothing but her and the delights with which she entertained him, though
+his wife Fulvia and his brother were struggling to keep up his power at
+Rome. He did come home, but only to make a fresh agreement with
+Octavianus, by which Fulvia was given up and he married Octavia, the
+widow of Marcellus and sister of Octavianus. But he could not bear to
+stay long away from Cleopatra, and, deserting Octavia, he returned to
+Egypt, where the most wonderful revelries were kept up. Stories are told
+of eight wild boars being roasted in one day, each being begun a little
+later than the last, that one might be in perfection when Antonius
+should call for his dinner. Cleopatra vowed once that she would drink
+the most costly of draughts, and, taking off an earring of inestimable
+price, dissolved it in vinegar and swallowed it.
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDRIA.]
+
+In the meantime, Octavianus and Lepidus together had put down Decimus,
+and Lepidus had then tried to overcome Octavianus, but was himself
+conquered and banished; for Octavianus, was a kindly man, who never shed
+blood if he could help it, and, now that he was alone at Rome, won every
+one's heart by his gracious ways, while Antonius' riots in Egypt were a
+scandal to all who loved virtue and nobleness. So far was the Roman
+fallen that he even promised Cleopatra to conquer Italy and make
+Alexandria the capital of the world. Octavia tried to win him back, but
+she was a grave, virtuous Roman matron, and coarse, dissipated Antonius
+did not care for her compared with the enticing Egyptian queen. It was
+needful at last for Octavianus to destroy this dangerous power, and he
+mustered a fleet and army, while Antonius and Cleopatra sailed out of
+Alexandria with their ships and gave battle off the Cape of Actium. In
+the midst, either fright or treachery made Cleopatra sail away, and all
+the Egyptian ships with her, so that Antonius turned at once and fled
+with her. They tried to raise the East in their favor, but all their
+allies deserted them, and their soldiers went over to Alexandria, where
+Octavianus followed them. Then Cleopatra betrayed her lover, and put
+into the hands of Octavianus the ships in which he might have fled. He
+killed himself, and Cleopatra surrendered, hoping to charm young
+Octavianus as she had done Julius and Antonius, but when she saw him
+grave and unmoved, and found he meant to exhibit her in his triumph, she
+went to the tomb of Antonius and crowned it with flowers. The next day
+she was found on her couch, in her royal robes, dead, and her two maids
+dying too. "Is this well?" asked the man who found her. "It is well for
+the daughter of kings," said her maid with her last breath. Cleopatra
+had long made experiments on easy ways of death, and it was believed
+that an asp was brought to her in a basket of figs as the means of her
+death.
+
+
+[Illustration: CAIUS OCTAVIUS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+CAESAR AUGUSTUS.
+
+B.C. 33--A.D. 14.
+
+
+The death of Antonius ended the fierce struggles which had torn Rome so
+long. Octavianus was left alone; all the men who had striven for the old
+government were dead, and those who were left were worn out and only
+longed for rest. They had found that he was kind and friendly, and
+trusted to him thankfully, nay, were ready to treat him as a kind of
+god. The old frame of constitution went on as usual; there was still a
+Senate, still consuls, and all the other magistrates, but Caesar
+Octavianus had the power belonging to each gathered in one. He was
+prince of the Senate, which gave him rule in the city; praetor, which
+made him judge, and gave him a special guard of soldiers called the
+Praetorian Guard to execute justice; and tribune of the people, which
+made him their voice; and even after his triumph he was still imperator,
+or general of the army. This word becomes in English, emperor, but it
+meant at this time merely commander-in-chief. He was also Pontifex
+Maximus, as Julius Caesar had been; and there was a general feeling that
+he was something sacred and set apart as the ruler and peace-maker; and,
+as he shared this feeling himself, he took the name of Augustus, which
+is the one by which he is always known.
+
+[Illustration: STATUE OF AUGUSTUS AT THE VATICAN.]
+
+He did not, however, take to himself any great show or state. He lived
+in his family abode, and dressed and walked about the streets like any
+other Roman gentleman of consular rank, and no special respect was paid
+to him in speech, for, warned by the fate of Julius, he was determined
+to prevent the Romans from being put in mind of kings and crowns. He was
+a wise and deep-thinking man, and he tried to carry out the plans of
+Julius for the benefit of the nation and of the whole Roman world. He
+had the survey finished of all the countries of the empire, which now
+formed a complete border round the Mediterranean Sea, reaching as far
+north as the British Channel, the Alps, and the Black Sea; as far
+south as the African desert, as far west as the Atlantic, and east as
+the borders of the Euphrates; and he also had a universal census made of
+the whole of the inhabitants. It was the first time such a thing had
+been possible, for all the world was at last at peace, so that the
+Temple of Janus was closed for the third and last time in Roman history.
+There was a feeling all over the world that a great Deliverer and
+peaceful Prince was to be expected at this time. One of the Sybils was
+believed to have so sung, and the Romans, in their relief at the good
+rule of Augustus, thought he was the promised one; but they little knew
+why God had brought about this great stillness from all wars, or why He
+moved the heart of Augustus to make the decree that all the world should
+be taxed--namely, that the true Prince of Peace, the real Deliverer,
+might be born in the home of His forefathers, Bethlehem, the city of
+David.
+
+The purpose of Augustus' taxing was to make a regular division of the
+empire into provinces for the proconsuls to govern, with lesser
+divisions for the propraetors, while many cities, especially Greek ones,
+were allowed their own magistrates, and some small tributary kingdoms
+still remained till the old royal family should either die out or
+offend the Romans. In these lands the people were governed by their own
+laws, unless they were made Roman citizens; and this freedom was more
+and more granted, and saved them from paying the tribute all the rest
+had to pay, and which went to support the armies and other public
+institutions at Rome, and to provide the corn which was regularly
+distributed to such citizens as claimed it at Rome. A Roman colony was a
+settlement, generally of old soldiers who had had lands granted to them,
+and kept their citizenship; and it was like another little Rome managing
+its own affairs, though subject to the mother city. There were many of
+these colonies, especially in Gaul on the north coast, to defend it from
+the Germans. Cologne was one, and still keeps its name. The tribute was
+carefully fixed, and Augustus did his best to prevent the governors from
+preying on the people.
+
+He tried to bring back better ways to Rome, which was in a sad state,
+full of vice and riot, and with little of the old, noble, hardy ways of
+the former times. The educated men had studied Greek philosophy till
+they had no faith in their own gods, and, indeed, had so mixed up their
+mythology with the Greek that they really did not know who their own
+were, and could not tell who were the greater gods whom Decius Mus
+invoked before he rushed on the enemy; and yet they kept up their
+worship, because their feasts were so connected with the State that
+everything depended on them; but they made them no real judges or
+helpers. The best men of the time were those who had taken up the Stoic
+philosophy, which held that virtue was above all things, whether it was
+rewarded or not; the worst were often the Epicureans, who held that we
+had better enjoy all we can in this life, being sure of nothing else.
+
+Learning was much esteemed in the time of Augustus. He and his two great
+friends, Caius Cilnius Maecenas and Vipsanius Agrippa, both had a great
+esteem for scholarship and poetry, and in especial the house of Maecenas
+was always open to literary men. The two chief poets of Rome, Publius
+Virgilius Maro and Quintus Horatius Flaccus, were warm friends of his.
+Virgil wrote poems on husbandry, and short dialogue poems called
+eclogues, in one of which he spoke of the time of Augustus in words that
+would almost serve as a prophecy of the kingdom of Him who was just born
+at Bethlehem. By desire of Augustus, he also wrote the _AEneid_, a poem
+on the war-doings of AEneas and his settlement in Italy.
+
+Horace wrote odes and letters in verse and satires, which show the
+habits and ways of thinking of his time in a very curious manner; and
+there were many other writers whose works have not come down to us; but
+the Latin of this time is the model of the language, and an Augustan age
+has ever since been a term for one in which literature flourishes.
+
+All the early part of Augustus' reign was prosperous, but he had no son,
+only a daughter named Julia. He meant to marry her to Marcellus, the son
+of his sister Antonia, but Marcellus died young, and was lamented in
+Virgil's _AEneid_; so Julia was given to Agrippa's son. Augustus' second
+wife was Livia, who had been married to Tiberius Claudius Nero, and had
+two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, whom Augustus adopted as his own and
+intended for his heirs; and when Julia lost her husband Agrippa and her
+two young sons, he forced Tiberius to divorce the young wife he really
+loved to marry her. It was a great grief to Tiberius, and seems to have
+quite changed his character into being grave, silent, and morose. Julia,
+though carefully brought up, was one of the most wicked and depraved
+of women, and almost broke her father's heart. He banished her to an
+island near Rhegium, and when she died there, would allow no funeral
+honors to be paid to her.
+
+[Illustration: PAINTINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LIVIA.]
+
+The peace was beginning to be broken by wars with the Germans; and young
+Drusus was commanding the army against them, and gaining such honor that
+he was called Germanicus, when he fell from his horse and died of his
+injuries, leaving one young son. He was buried at Rome, and his brother
+Tiberius walked all the way beside the bier, with his long flaxen hair
+flowing on his shoulders. Tiberius then went back to command the armies
+on the Rhine. Some half-conquered country lay beyond, and the Germans in
+the forests were at this time under a brave leader called Arminius. They
+were attacked by the proconsul Quinctilius Varus, and near the river
+Ems, in the Herycimian forest, Arminius turned on him and routed him
+completely, cutting off the whole army, so that only a few fled back to
+Tiberius to tell the tale, and he had to fall back and defend the Rhine.
+
+The news of this disaster was a terrible shock to the Emperor. He sat
+grieving over it, and at times he dashed his head against the wall,
+crying, "Varus, Varus! give me back my legions." His friends were dead,
+he was an old man now, and sadness was around him. He was soon, however,
+grave and composed again; and, as his health began to fail, he sent for
+Tiberius and put his affairs into his hands. When his dying day came, he
+met it calmly. He asked if there was any fear of a tumult on his death,
+and was told there was none; then he called for a mirror, and saw that
+his grey hair and beard were in order, and, asking his friends whether
+he had played his part well, he uttered a verse from a play bidding them
+applaud his exit, bade Livia remember him, and so died in his
+seventy-seventh year, having ruled fifty-eight years--ten as a triumvir,
+forty-eight alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+TIBERIUS AND CALIGULA.
+
+A.D. 14--41.
+
+
+No difficulty was made about giving all the powers Augustus had held to
+his stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who had also a right to the names
+of Julius Caesar Augustus, and was in his own time generally called
+Caesar. The Senate had grown too helpless to think for themselves, and
+all the choice they ever made of the consuls was that the Emperor gave
+out four names, among which they chose two.
+
+Tiberius had been a grave, morose man ever since he was deprived of the
+wife he loved, and had lost his brother; and he greatly despised the
+mean, cringing ways round him, and kept to himself; but his nephew,
+called Germanicus, after his father, was the person whom every one
+loved and trusted. He had married Agrippina, Julia's daughter, who was
+also a very good and noble person; and when he was sent against the
+Germans, she went with him, and her little boys ran about among the
+soldiers, and were petted by them. One of them, Caius, was called by the
+soldiers Caligula, or the Little Shoe, because he wore a caliga or shoe
+like theirs; and he never lost the nickname.
+
+Germanicus earned his surname over again by driving Arminius back; but
+he was more enterprising than would have been approved by Augustus, who
+thought it wiser to guard what he had than to make wider conquests; and
+Tiberius was not only one of the same mind, but was jealous of the great
+love that all the army were showing for his nephew, and this distrust
+was increased when the soldiers in the East begged for Germanicus to
+lead them against the Parthians. He set out, visiting all the famous
+places in Greece by the way, and going to see the wonders of Egypt, but
+while in Syria he fell ill of a wasting sickness and died, so that many
+suspected the spy, Cnaeus Piso, whom Tiberius had sent with him, of
+having poisoned him. When his wife Agrippina came home, bringing his
+corpse to be burnt and his ashes placed in the burying-place of the
+Caesars, there was universal love and pity for her. Piso seized on all
+the offices that Germanicus had held, but was called back to Rome, and
+was just going to be put upon his trial when he cut his own throat.
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACES OF TIBERIUS.]
+
+All this tended to make Tiberius more gloomy and distrustful, and when
+his mother Livia died he had no one to keep him in check, but fell under
+the influence of a man named Sejanus, who managed all his affairs for
+him, while he lived in a villa in the island of Capreae in the Bay of
+Naples, seeing hardly any but a few intimates, given up to all sorts of
+evil luxuries and self-indulgences, and hating and dreading every one.
+Agrippina was so much loved and respected that he dreaded and disliked
+her beyond all others; and Sejanus contrived to get up an accusation of
+plotting against the state, upon which she and her eldest son were
+banished to two small rocky isles in the Mediterranean Sea. The other
+two sons, Drusus and Caius, were kept by Tiberius at Capreae, till
+Tiberius grew suspicious of Drusus and threw him into prison. Sejanus,
+who had encouraged all his dislike to his own kinsmen, and was managing
+all Rome, then began to hope to gain the full power; but his plans were
+guessed by Tiberius, and he caused his former favorite to be set upon
+in the senate-house and put to death.
+
+[Illustration: AGRIPPINA.]
+
+It is strange to remember that, while such dark deeds were being done at
+Rome, came the three years when the true Light was shining in the
+darkness. It was in the time of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilatus was
+propraetor of Palestine, that our Lord Jesus Christ spent three years in
+teaching and working miracles; then was crucified and slain by wicked
+hands, that the sin of mankind might be redeemed. Then He rose again
+from the dead and ascended into Heaven, leaving His Apostles to make
+known what he had done in all the world.
+
+To the East, where our Lord dwelt, nay, to all the rest of the empire,
+the reign of Tiberius was a quiet time, with the good government
+arranged by Augustus working on. It was only his own family, and the
+senators and people of rank at Rome, who had much to fear from his
+strange, harsh, and jealous temper. The Claudian family had in all times
+been shy, proud, and stern, and to have such power as belonged to
+Augustus Caesar was more than their heads could bear. Tiberius hated and
+suspected everybody, and yet he did not like putting people to death, so
+he let Drusus be starved to death in his prison, and Agrippina chose the
+same way of dying in her island, while some of the chief senators
+received such messages that they put themselves to death. He led a
+wretched life, watching for treason and fearing everybody, and trying to
+drown the thought of danger in the banquets of Capreae, where the remains
+of his villa may still be seen. Once he set out, intending to visit
+Rome, but no sooner had he landed in Campania than the sight of hundreds
+of country people shouting welcome so disturbed him that he hastened on
+board ship again, and thus entered the Tiber; but at the very sight of
+the hills of Rome his terror returned, and he had his galley turned
+about and went back to his island, which he never again quitted.
+
+Only two males of his family were left now--a great-nephew and a nephew,
+Caius, that son of the second Germanicus who had been nicknamed
+Caligula, a youth of a strange, exciteable, feverish nature, but who
+from his fright at Tiberius had managed to keep the peace with him, and
+had only once been for a short time in disgrace; and his uncle, the
+youngest son of the first Germanicus, commonly called Claudius, a very
+dull, heavy man, fond of books, but so slow and shy that he was
+considered to be wanting in brains, and thus had never fallen under
+suspicion.
+
+At length Tiberius fell ill, and when he was known to be dying, he was
+smothered with pillows as he began to recover from a fainting fit, lest
+he should take vengeance on those who had for a moment thought him dead.
+He died A.D.. 37, and the power went to Caligula, properly
+called Caius, who was only twenty-five, and who began in a kindly,
+generous spirit, which pleased the people and gave them hope; but to
+have so much power was too much for his brain, and he can only be
+thought of as mad, especially after he had a severe illness, which made
+the people so anxious that he was puffed up with the notion of his
+own importance.
+
+[Illustration: ROME IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS CAESAR.]
+
+He put to death all who offended him, and, inheriting some of Tiberius'
+distrust and hatred of the people, he cried out, when they did not
+admire one of his shows as much as he expected, "Would that the people
+of Rome had but one neck, so that I might behead them all at once." He
+planned great public buildings, but had not steadiness to carry them
+out; and he became so greedy of the fame which, poor wretch, he could
+not earn, that he was jealous even of the dead. He burned the books of
+Livy and Virgil out of the libraries, and deprived the statues of the
+great men of old of the marks by which they were known--Cincinnatus of
+his curls, and Torquatus of his collar, and he forbade the last of the
+Pompeii to be called Magnus.
+
+He made an expedition into Gaul, and talked of conquering Britain, but
+he got no further than the shore of the channel, where, instead of
+setting sail, he bade the soldiers gather up shells, which he sent home
+to the Senate to be placed among the treasures of the Capitol, calling
+them the spoils of the conquered ocean. Then he collected the German
+slaves and the tallest Gauls he could find, commanded the latter to dye
+their hair and beards to a light color, and brought them home to walk
+in his triumph. The Senate, however, were slow to understand that he
+could really expect a triumph, and this affronted him so much that, when
+they offered him one, he would not have it, and went on insulting them.
+He made his horse a consul, though only for a day, and showed it with
+golden oats before it in a golden manger. Once, when the two consuls
+were sitting by him, he burst out laughing, to think, he said, how with
+one word he could make both their heads roll on the floor.
+
+The provinces were not so ill off, but the state of Rome was unbearable.
+Everybody was in danger, and at last a plot was formed for his death;
+and as he was on his way from his house to the circus, and stopped to
+look at some singers who were going to perform, a party of men set upon
+him and killed him with many wounds, after he had reigned only five
+years, and when he was but thirty years old.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+CLAUDIUS AND NERO.
+
+A.D. 41-68.
+
+
+Poor dull Claudius heard an uproar and hid himself, thinking he was
+going to be murdered like his nephew, but still worse was going to
+befall him. They were looking for him to make him Emperor, for he was
+the last of his family. He was clumsy in figure, though his face was
+good, and he was a kind-hearted man, who made large promises, and tried
+to do well; but he was slow and timid, and let himself be led by wicked
+men and women, so that his rule ended no better than that of the former
+Caesars.
+
+He began in a spirited way, by sending troops who conquered the southern
+part of Britain, and making an expedition thither himself. His wife
+chose to share his triumph, which was not, as usual, a drive in a
+chariot, but a sitting in armor on their thrones, with the eagles and
+standards over their heads, and the prisoners led up before them. Among
+them came the great British chief Caractacus, who is said to have
+declared that he could not think why those who had such palaces as there
+were at Rome should want the huts of the Britons.
+
+Claudius was kind to the people in the distant provinces. He gave the
+Jews a king again, Herod Agrippa, the grandson of the first Herod, who
+was much loved by them, but died suddenly after a few years at Caesarea,
+after the meeting with the Tyrians, when he let them greet him as a god.
+There were a great many Jews living at Rome, but those from Jerusalem
+quarrelled with those from Alexandria; and one year, when there was a
+great scarcity of corn, Claudius banished them all from Rome.
+
+[Illustration: CLAUDIUS.]
+
+Claudius was very unhappy in his wives. Two he divorced, and then
+married a third named Messalina, who was given up to all kinds of
+wickedness which he never guessed at, while she used all manner of arts
+to keep up her beauty and to deceive him. At last she actually married a
+young man while Claudius was absent from Rome; but when this came to his
+knowledge, he had her put to death. His last wife was, however, the
+worst of all. She was the daughter of the good Germanicus, and bore her
+mother's name of Agrippina. She had been previously married to Lucius
+Domitius AEnobarbus, by whom she had a son, whom Claudius adopted when he
+married her, though he had a child of his own called Britannicus, son to
+Messalina. Romans had never married their nieces before, but the power
+of the Emperors was leading them to trample down all law and custom, and
+it was for the misfortune of Claudius that he did so in this case, for
+Agrippina's purpose was to put every one out of the way of her own son,
+who, taking all the Claudian and Julian names in addition to his own, is
+commonly known as Nero. She married him to Claudius' daughter Octavia,
+and then, after much tormenting the Emperor, she poisoned him with a
+dish of mushrooms, and bribed his physician to take care that he did not
+recover. He died A.D. 54, and, honest and true-hearted as he
+had been, the Romans were glad to be rid of him, and told mocking
+stories of him. Indeed, they were very bad in all ways themselves, and
+many of the ladies were poisoners like Agrippina, so that the city
+almost deserved the tyrant who came after Claudius. Nero, the son of
+Agrippina by her first marriage, and Britannicus, the son of Claudius
+and Messalina, were to reign together; but Nero was the elder, and as
+soon as his poor young cousin came to manhood, Agrippina had a dose of
+poison ready for him.
+
+Nero, however, began well. He had been well brought up by Seneca, an
+excellent student of the Stoic philosophy, who, with Burrhus, the
+commander of the Praetorian Guard, guided the young Emperor with good
+advice through the first five years of his reign; and though his wicked
+mother called herself Augusta, and had equal honors paid her with her
+son, not much harm was done to the government till Nero fell in love
+with a wicked woman, Poppaea Sabina, who was a proverb for vanity, and
+was said to keep five hundred she-asses that she might bathe in their
+milk to preserve her complexion. Nero wanted to marry this lady, and as
+his mother befriended his neglected wife Octavia, he ordered that when
+she went to her favorite villa at Baiae her galley should be wrecked,
+and if she was not drowned, she should be stabbed. Octavia was divorced,
+sent to an island, and put to death there; and after Nero married
+Poppaea, he quickly grew more violent and savage.
+
+Burrhus died about the same time, and Seneca alone could not restrain
+the Emperor from his foolish vanity. He would descend into the arena of
+the great amphitheatre and sing to the lyre his own compositions; and he
+showed off his charioteering in the circus before the whole assembled
+city, letting no one go away till the performance was over. It very much
+shocked the patricians, but the mob were delighted, and he chiefly cared
+for their praises. He was building a huge palace, called the Golden
+House because of its splendid decorations; and, needing money, he caused
+accusations to be got up against all the richer men that he might have
+their hoards.
+
+[Illustration: NERO.]
+
+A terrible fire broke out in Rome, which raged for six days, and
+entirely destroyed fourteen quarters of the city. While it was burning,
+Nero, full of excitement, stood watching it, and sang to his lyre the
+description of the burning of Troy. A report therefore arose that he had
+actually caused the fire for the amusement of watching it; and to put
+this out of men's minds he accused the Christians. The Christian faith
+had begun to be known in Rome during the last reign, and it was to Nero,
+as Caesar, that St. Paul had appealed. He had spent two years in a hired
+house of his own at Rome, and thus had been in the guard-room of the
+Praetorians, but he was released after being tried at "Caesar's
+judgment-seat," and remained at large until this sudden outburst which
+caused the first persecution. Then he was taken at Nicopolis, and St.
+Peter at Rome, and they were thrown into the Mamertine dungeon. Rome
+counts St. Peter as her first bishop. On the 29th of June,
+A.D. 66, both suffered; St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, being
+beheaded with the sword; St. Peter crucified, with his head, by his own
+desire, downwards. Many others suffered at the same time, some being
+thrown to the beasts, while others were wrapped in cloths covered with
+pitch, and slowly burnt to light the games in the Emperor's gardens. At
+last the people were shocked, and cried out for these horrors to end.
+And Nero, who cared for the people, turned his hatred and cruelty
+against men of higher class whose fate they heeded less. So common was
+it to have a message advising a man to put himself to death rather than
+be sentenced, that every one had studied easy ways of dying. Nero's old
+tutor, Seneca, felt his tyranny unbearable, and had joined in a plot for
+overthrowing him, but it was found out, and Seneca had to die by his own
+hand. The way he chose, and his wife too for his sake, was to open their
+veins, get into a warm bath, and bleed to death.
+
+Nero made a journey to Greece, and showed off at Olympus and the
+Isthmus, at the same time robbing the Greek cities of numbers of their
+best statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House; for the Romans had
+no original art--they could only imitate the Greeks and employ Greek
+artists. But danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor could be
+endured no longer, and the generals of the armies in the provinces began
+to threaten him, they not being smitten dumb and helpless as every one
+at Rome seemed to be.
+
+The Spanish army, under an officer named Galba, who was seventy-two
+years old, but to whom Augustus had said when he was a little boy, "You
+too shall share my taste of empire," began to move homewards to attack
+the tyrant, and the army from Gaul advanced to join it. Nero went nearly
+wild with fright, sometimes raging, sometimes tearing his hair and
+clothes; and the people began to turn against him in anger at a dearth
+of corn, saying he spent everything on his own pleasures. As Galba came
+nearer, the nobles and knights hoped for deliverance, and the Praetorian
+Guard showed that they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and would
+not fight for him. The wretched Emperor found himself alone, and vainly
+called for some one to kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself.
+He fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the woods till he
+heard that, if he was caught, he would be put to death in the "ancient
+fashion," which he was told was being fixed with his neck in a forked
+stick and beaten to death. Then, hearing the hoofs of the horses of his
+pursuers, he set a sword against his breast and made a slave drive it
+home, and was groaning his last when the horsemen came up. He was but 30
+years old, and was the last Emperor who could trace any connection, even
+by adoption, with Augustus. He perished A.D. 68.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE FLAVIAN FAMILY.
+
+62-96.
+
+
+The ablest of all Nero's officers was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, a
+stern, rigid old soldier, who, with his son of the same name, was in the
+East, preparing to put down a great rising of the Jews. He waited to see
+what was going to happen, and in a very few weeks old Galba had offended
+the soldiers by his saving ways; there was a rising against him, and
+another soldier named Otho became Emperor; but the legions from Gaul
+marched up under Vitellius to dethrone him, and he killed himself to
+prevent other bloodshed.
+
+When the Eastern army heard of these changes, they declared they would
+make an Emperor like the soldiers of the West, and hailed Vespasian as
+Emperor. He left his son Titus to subdue Judea, and set out himself for
+Italy, where Vitellius had given himself up to riot and feasting. There
+was a terrible fight and fire in the streets of Rome itself, and the
+Gauls, who chiefly made up Vitellius' army, did even more mischief than
+the Gauls of old under Brennus; but at last Vespasian triumphed.
+Vitellius was taken, and, after being goaded along with the point of a
+lance, was put to death. There had been eighteen months of confusion,
+and Vespasian began his reign in the year 70.
+
+It was just then that his son Titus, having taken all the strongholds in
+Galilee, though they were desperately defended by the Jews, had advanced
+to besiege Jerusalem. All the Christians had heeded the warning that our
+blessed Lord had left them, and were safe at a city in the hills called
+Pella; but the Jews who were left within were fiercely quarrelling among
+themselves, and fought with one another as savagely as they fought with
+the enemy. Titus threw trenches round and blockaded the city; and the
+famine within grew to be most horrible. Some died in their houses, but
+the fierce lawless zealots rushed up and down the streets, breaking into
+the houses where they thought food was to be found. When they smelt
+roasting in one grand dwelling belonging to a lady, they rushed in and
+asked for the meat, but even they turned away in horror when she
+uncovered the remains of her own little child, whom she had been eating.
+At last the Roman engines broke down the walls of the lower city, and
+with desperate struggling the Romans entered, and found every house full
+of dead women and children. Still they had the Temple to take, and the
+Jews had gathered there, fancying that, at the worst, the Messiah would
+appear and save them. Alas! they had rejected Him long ago, and this was
+the time of judgment. The Romans fought their way in, up the marble
+steps, slippery with blood and choked with dead bodies; and fire raged
+round them. Titus would have saved the Holy Place as a wonder of the
+world, but a soldier threw a torch through a golden latticed window, and
+the flame spread rapidly. Titus had just time to look round on all the
+rich gilding and marbles before it sank into ruins. He took a terrible
+vengeance on the Jews. Great numbers were crucified, and the rest were
+either taken to the amphitheatres all over the empire to fight with wild
+beasts, or were sold as slaves, in such numbers that, cheap as they
+were, no one would buy them. And yet this wonderful nation has lived on
+in its dispersion ever since. The city was utterly overthrown and sown
+with salt, and such treasures as could be saved from the fire were
+carried in the triumph of Titus--namely, the shew-bread table, the
+seven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets--and laid up as
+usual among the spoils dedicated to Jupiter. Their figures are to be
+seen sculptured on the triumphal arch built in honor of Titus, which
+still stands at Rome.
+
+[Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS.]
+
+These Flavian Caesars were great builders. Much had to be restored at
+Rome after the two great fires, and they built a new Capitol and new
+Forum, besides pulling down Nero's Golden House, and setting up on part
+of the site the magnificent baths known as the Baths of Titus. Going to
+the bath, to be steamed, rubbed, anointed, and perfumed by the slaves,
+was the great amusement of an idle Roman's day, for in the waiting-rooms
+he met all his friends and heard the news; and these rooms were splendid
+halls, inlaid with marble, and adorned with the statues and pictures
+Nero had brought from Greece. On part of the gardens was begun what was
+then called the Flavian Amphitheatre, but is now known as the Colosseum,
+from the colossal statue that stood at its door--a wonderful place, with
+a succession of galleries on stone vaults round the area, on which every
+rank and station, from the Emperor and Vestal Virgins down to the
+slaves, had their places, whence to see gladiators and beasts struggle
+and perish, on sands mixed with scarlet grains to hide the stain, and
+perfumed showers to overcome the scent of blood, and under silken
+embroidered awnings to keep off the sun.
+
+Vespasian was an upright man, and though he was stern and unrelenting,
+his reign was a great relief after the capricious tyranny of the last
+Claudii. He and his eldest son Titus were plain and simple in their
+habits, and tried to put down the horrid riot and excess that were
+ruining the Romans, and they were feared and loved. They had great
+successes too. Britain was subdued and settled as far as the northern
+hills, and a great rising in Eastern Gaul subdued. Vespasian was accused
+of being avaricious, but Nero had left the treasury in such a state that
+he could hardly have governed without being careful. He died in the year
+79, at seventy years old. When he found himself almost gone, he desired
+to be lifted to his feet, saying that an Emperor should die standing.
+
+[Illustration: VESUVIUS PREVIOUS TO THE ERUPTION OF A.D. 63.]
+
+He left two sons, Titus and Domitian. Titus was more of a scholar than
+his father, and was gentle and kindly in manner, so that he was much
+beloved. He used to say, "I have lost a day," when one went by without
+his finding some kind act to do. He was called the delight of mankind,
+and his reign would have been happy but for another great fire in Rome,
+which burnt what Nero's fire had left. In his time, too, Mount Vesuvius
+suddenly woke from its rest, and by a dreadful eruption destroyed the
+two cities at its foot, Herculaneum and Pompeii. The philosopher
+Plinius, who wrote on geography and natural history, was stifled by the
+sulphurous air while fleeing from the showers of stones and ashes
+cast up by the mountain. His nephew, called Pliny the younger, has left
+a full account of the disaster, and the cloud like a pine tree that hung
+over the mountain, the noises, the earthquake, and the fall at last of
+the ashes and lava. Drusilla, the wife of Felix, the governor before
+whom St. Paul pleaded, also perished. Herculaneum was covered with solid
+lava, so that very little could be recovered from it; but Pompeii, being
+overwhelmed with dust or ashes, was only choked, and in modern days has
+been discovered, showing perfectly what an old Roman town was
+like--amphitheatre, shops, bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons have
+been found: a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, a priest
+crushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded into a vault, a sentry at
+his post; and in other cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impression
+of the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into them the forms
+of the victims have been recovered, especially two women, elder and
+younger, just as they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden in
+her mother's robe.
+
+[Illustration: PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.]
+
+Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law Tacitus, who wrote the
+history of those reigns, laid the blame on his brother Domitian, who was
+as cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does seem to have been shocked
+at the wickedness of the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grown
+shameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patrician families in Rome
+well brought up enough to become one. The blame was laid on forsaking
+the old religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising," which meant
+Christianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the
+Emperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was this
+which led to St. John, the last of the Apostles, being brought to Rome
+and placed in a cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate; but a
+miracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did him no hurt, upon
+which he was banished to the Isle of Patmos.
+
+The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, and the shows of
+gladiators, fights with beasts, and even sea-fights, when the arena was
+flooded, exceeded all that had gone before. There were fights between
+women and women, dwarfs and cranes. There is an inscription at Rome
+which has made some believe that the architect of the Colosseum was one
+Gandentius, who afterwards perished there as a Christian.
+
+Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a gold crown with little
+figures of the gods on it. He did strange things. Once he called
+together all his council in the middle of the night on urgent business,
+and while they expected to hear of some foreign enemy on the borders, a
+monstrous turbot was brought in, and they were consulted whether it was
+to be cut in pieces or have a dish made on purpose for it. Another time
+he invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a black
+marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a column
+like a tomb, a feast laid as at a funeral, and black boys to wait on
+them! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many people
+to death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, and
+he had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in a
+glass if any one approached him from behind. But this did not save him.
+His wife found that he meant to put her to death, and contrived that a
+party of servants should murder him, A.D. 96.
+
+[Illustration: COIN OF NERO.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES.
+
+96--194.
+
+
+Domitian is called the last of the twelve Caesars, though all who came
+after him called themselves Caesar. He had no son, and a highly esteemed
+old senator named Cocceius Nerva became Emperor. He was an upright man,
+who tried to restore the old Roman spirit; and as he thought
+Christianity was only a superstition which spoiled the ancient temper,
+he enacted that all should die who would not offer incense to the gods,
+and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who had been bred
+up among the Apostles. He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St.
+Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one of a set of
+letters which remain to this day. He was then thrown to the lions in the
+Colosseum.
+
+It seems strange that the good Emperors were often worse persecutors
+than the bad ones, but the fact was that the bad ones let the people do
+as they pleased, as long as they did not offend them; while the good
+ones were trying to bring back what they read of in Livy's history, of
+plain living and high thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more of
+the Christians than that they were people who did not worship the gods.
+Moreover, Julius Trajanus, whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reign
+after him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there were laws in
+force against the Christians. When Pliny the younger was propraetor of
+the province of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Emperor what
+to do about the Christians, telling him what he had been able to find
+out about them from two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, that
+they were wont to meet together at night or early morning, to sing
+together, and eat what he called a harmless social meal. Trajan answered
+that he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if they were brought
+before him, the law must take its course. In Rome, the chief refuge of
+the Christians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, from which the
+city was chiefly built, and which were hollowed out in long galleries.
+Slaves and convicts worked them, and they were thus made known to the
+Christians, who buried their dead in places hollowed at the sides, used
+the galleries for their churches, and often hid there when there was
+search made for them.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA.]
+
+Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title of Optimus, the Best,
+as no one else has ever done. He was a great captain too, and conquered
+Dacia, the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, and Pruth, and the
+Carpathian Hills; and he also defeated the Parthians, and said if he
+had been a younger man he would have gone as far as Alexander. As it
+was, the empire was at its very largest in his reign, and he was a very
+great builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him a
+wall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls and
+bridges and roads--some of which still remain, as does his tall column
+at Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from top
+to bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died at
+Cilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius AEtius
+Hadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but found he could not
+keep Dacia, and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He came to
+Britain, where the Roman settlements were tormented by the Picts. There
+he built the famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them out. He was
+wonderfully active, and hastened from one end of the empire to the other
+wherever his presence was needed. There was a revolt of the Jews in the
+far East, under a man who pretended to be the Messiah, and called
+himself the Son of a Star. This was put down most severely, and no Jew
+was allowed to come near Jerusalem, over which a new city was built, and
+called after the Emperor's second name, AElia Capitolina; and, to drive
+the Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter was built where the Temple
+had been, and one to Venus on Mount Calvary.
+
+But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened kindly to an explanation of
+the faith which was shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christian
+philosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand towerlike monument,
+surrounded by stages of columns and arches, which was to be called the
+Mole of Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its ornaments.
+Before his death, in 138, he had chosen his successor, Titus Aurelius
+Antoninus, a good upright man, a philosopher, and 52 years old; for it
+had been found that youths who became Emperors had their heads turned by
+such unbounded power, while elder men cared for the work and duty.
+Antoninus was so earnest for his people's welfare that they called him
+Pius. He avoided wars, only defended the empire; but he was a great
+builder, for he raised another rampart in Britain, much further north,
+and set up another column at Rome, and in Gaul built a great
+amphitheatre at Nismes, and raised the wonderful aqueduct which is still
+standing, and is called the Pont du Gard.
+
+His son-in-law, whom he adopted and who succeeded him, is commonly
+called Marcus Aurelius, as a choice among his many names. He was a deep
+student and Stoic philosopher, with an earnest longing for truth and
+virtue, though he knew not how to seek them where alone they could be
+found; and when earthquake, pestilence and war fell on his empire, and
+the people thought the gods were offended, he let them persecute the
+Christians, whose faith he despised, because the hope of Resurrection
+and of Heaven seemed weak and foolish to him beside his stern, proud,
+hopeless Stoicism. So the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, the last
+pupil of the Apostles themselves, was sentenced to be burnt in the
+theatre of his own city, though, as the fire curled round him in a
+curtain of flame without touching him, he was actually slain with the
+sword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there was a fearful
+persecution which fell on women of all ranks, and where Blandina the
+slave, under the most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for her
+brave patience.
+
+Aurelius was fighting hard with the German tribes on the Danube, who
+gave him no rest, and threatened to break into the empire. While
+pursuing them, he and his army were shut into a strong place where they
+could get no water, and were perishing with thirst, when a whole
+legion, all Christian soldiers, knelt down and prayed. A cloud came up,
+a welcome shower of rain descended, and was the saving of the thirsty
+host. It was said that the name of the Thundering Legion was given to
+this division in consequence, though on the column reared by Aurelius it
+is Jupiter who is shown sending rain on the thirsty host, who are
+catching it in their shields. After this there was less persecution, but
+every sort of trouble--plague, earthquake, famine, and war--beset the
+empire on all sides, and the Emperor toiled in vain against these
+troubles, writing, meantime, meditations that show how sad and sick at
+heart he was, and how little comfort philosophy gave him, while his eyes
+were blind to the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while still in
+the prime of life, in the year 180, and with him ended the period of
+good Emperors, which the Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aurelius
+was indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but he was a foolish
+good-for-nothing youth, who would not bear the fatigues and toils of
+real war, though he had no shame in showing off in the arena, and is
+said to have fought there seven hundred and fifty times, besides killing
+wild beasts. He boasted of having slain one hundred lions with one
+hundred arrows, and a whole row of ostriches with half-moon shaped
+arrows which cut off their heads, the poor things being fastened where
+he could not miss them, and the Romans applauding as if for some noble
+deed. They let him reign sixteen years before he was murdered, and then
+a good old soldier named Pertinax began to reign; but the Praetorian
+Guard had in those sixteen years grown disorderly, and the moment they
+felt the pressure of a firm hand they attacked the palace, killed the
+Emperor, cut off his head, and ran with it to the senate-house, asking
+who would be Emperor. An old senator was foolish enough to offer them a
+large sum if they would choose him, and this put it into their heads to
+rush out to the ramparts and proclaim that they would sell the empire to
+the highest bidder.
+
+A vain, old, rich senator, named Didius Julianus, was at supper with his
+family when he heard that the Praetorians were selling the empire by
+auction, and out he ran, and actually bought it at the rate of about
+L200 to each man. The Emperor being really the commander-in-chief, with
+other offices attached to the dignity, the soldiers had a sort of right
+to the choice; but the other armies at a distance, who were really
+fighting and guarding the empire, had no notion of letting the matter
+be settled by the Praetorians, mere guardsmen, who stayed at home and
+tried to rule the rest; so each army chose its own general and marched
+on Rome, and it was the general on the Danube, Septimius Severus, who
+got there first; whereupon the Praetorians killed their foolish Emperor
+and joined him.
+
+[Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+THE PRAETORIAN INFLUENCE.
+
+197--284.
+
+
+Septimus Severus was an able Emperor, and reigned a long time. He was
+stern and harsh, as was needed by the wickedness of the time; and he was
+very active, seldom at Rome, but flashing as it were from one end of the
+empire to the other, wherever he was needed, and keeping excellent
+order. There was no regular persecution of the Christians in his time;
+but at Lyons, where the townspeople were in great numbers Christians,
+the country-folk by some sudden impulse broke in and made a horrible
+massacre of them, in which the bishop, St. Irenaeus, was killed. So few
+country people were at this time converts, that Paganus, a peasant, came
+to be used as a term for a heathen.
+
+Severus was, like Trajan and Hadrian, a great builder and road-maker.
+The whole empire was connected by a network of paved roads made by the
+soldiery, cutting through hills, bridging valleys, straight, smooth, and
+so solid that they remain to this day. This made communication so
+rapid that government was possible to an active man like him. He gave
+the Parthians a check; and, when an old man, came to Britain and marched
+far north, but he saw it was impossible to guard Antonius' wall between
+the Forth and Clyde, and only strengthened the rampart of Hadrian from
+the Tweed to the Solway. He died at York, in 211, on his return, and his
+last watchword was "Labor!" His wife was named Julia Domna, and he left
+two sons, usually called Caracalla and Geta, who divided the empire; but
+Geta was soon stabbed by his brother's own hand, and then Caracalla
+showed himself even worse than Commodus, till he in his turn was
+murdered in 217.
+
+[Illustration: SEPTIMUS SEVERUS.]
+
+[Illustration: ANTIOCH.]
+
+His mother, Julia Domna, had a sister called Julia Saemias, who lived at
+Antioch, and had two daughters, Saemias and Mammaea, who each had a son,
+Elagabalus--so called after the idol supposed to represent the sun,
+whose priest at Emesa he was--and Alexander Severus. The Praetorian
+Guard, in their difficulty whom to chose Emperor, chose Elagabalus, a
+lad of nineteen, who showed himself a poor, miserable, foolish wretch,
+who did the most absurd things. His feasts were a proverb for excess,
+and even his lions were fed on parrots and pheasants. Sometimes he would
+get together a festival party of all fat men, or all thin, all tall, or
+short, all bald, or gouty; and at others he would keep the wedding of
+his namesake god and Pallas, making matches between the gods and
+goddesses all over Italy; and he carried on his service to his god with
+the same barbaric dances in a strange costume as at Emesa, to the great
+disgust of the Romans. His grandmother persuaded him to adopt his cousin
+Alexander, a youth of much more promise, who took the name of Severus.
+The soldiers were charmed with him; Elagabalus became jealous, and was
+going to strip him of his honors; but this angered the Praetorians, so
+that they put the elder Emperor to death in 222.
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDER SEVERUS.]
+
+Alexander Severus was a good and just prince, whose mother is believed
+to have been a Christian, and he had certainly learned enough of the
+Divine Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He loved
+virtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon our
+Blessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue with
+that of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers of
+mankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level.
+He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of good
+and firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the Praetorians in 235.
+
+These guards had all the power, and set up and put down Emperors so
+rapidly that there are hardly any names worth remembering. In the
+unsettled state of the empire no one had time to persecute the
+Christians, and their numbers grew and prospered; in many places they
+had churches, with worship going on openly, and their Bishops were known
+and respected. The Emperor Philip, called the Arabian, who was actually
+a Christian, though he would not own it openly, when he was at Antioch,
+joined in the service at Easter, and presented himself to receive the
+Holy Communion; but Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should have
+done open penance for the crimes by which he had come to the purple,
+and renounced all remains of heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but put
+off his repentance; and the next year celebrated the games called the
+Seculae, because they took place every Seculum or hundredth year, with
+all their heathen ceremonies, and with tenfold splendor, in honor of
+this being Rome's thousandth birthday.
+
+Soon after, another general named Decius was chosen by the army on the
+German frontier, and Philip was killed in battle with him. Decius wanted
+to be an old-fashioned Roman; he believed in the gods, and thought the
+troubles of the empire came of forsaking them; and as the Parthians
+molested the East, and the Goths and Germans the North, and the soldiers
+seemed more ready to kill their Emperors than the enemy, he thought to
+win back prosperity by causing all to return to the old worship, and
+begun the worst persecution the Church had yet known. Rome, Antioch,
+Carthage, Alexandria, and all the chief cities were searched for
+Christians. If they would not throw a handful of incense on the idol's
+altar or disown Christ, they were given over to all the horrid torments
+cruel ingenuity could invent, in the hope of subduing their constancy.
+Some fell, but the greater number were firm, and witnessed a glorious
+confession before, in 251, Decius and his son were both slain in battle
+in Maesia.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE SUN AT PALMYRA.]
+
+The next Emperor whose name is worth remembering was Valerian, who had
+to make war against the Persians. The old stock of Persian kings,
+professing to be descended from Cyrus, and, like him, adoring fire, had
+overcome the Parthians, and were spreading the Persian power in the
+East, under their king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and on the
+banks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian in a terrible battle at
+Edessa. Valerian was made prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, who
+was forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up by his back when
+mounting on horseback; and when he died, his skin was dyed purple,
+stuffed, and hung up in a temple.
+
+[Illustration: THE CATACOMBS AT ROME.]
+
+The best resistance made to Sapor was by Odenatus, a Syrian chief, and
+his beautiful Arabian wife Zenobia, who held out the city of Palmyra, on
+an oasis in the desert between Palestine and Assyria, till Sapor
+retreated. Finding that no notice was taken of them by Rome, they called
+themselves Emperor and Empress. The city was very beautifully adorned
+with splendid buildings in the later Greek style; and Zenobia, who
+reigned with her young sons after her husband's death, was well read in
+Greek classics and philosophy, and was a pupil of the philosopher
+Longinus. Aurelian, becoming Emperor of Rome, came against this strange
+little kingdom, and was bravely resisted by Zenobia; but he defeated
+her, made her prisoner, and caused her to march in his triumph to Rome.
+She afterwards lived with her children in Italy.
+
+Aurelian saw perils closing in on all sides of the empire, and thought
+it time to fortify the city of Rome itself, which had long spread beyond
+the old walls of Servius Tullus. He traced a new circuit, and built the
+wall, the lines of which are the same that still enclose Rome, though
+the wall itself has been several times thrown down and rebuilt. He also
+built the city in Gaul which still bears his name, slightly altered into
+Orleans. He was one of those stern, brave Emperors, who vainly tried to
+bring back old Roman manners, and fancied it was Christianity that
+corrupted them; and he was just preparing for a great persecution when
+he was murdered in his tent, and there were three or four more Emperors
+set up and then killed almost as soon as their reign was well begun. The
+last thirty of them are sometimes called the Thirty Tyrants. This power
+of the Praetorian Guard, of setting up and pulling down their Emperor as
+being primarily their general, lasted altogether fully a hundred years.
+
+[Illustration: COIN OF SEVERUS]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+284-312.
+
+
+A Dalmatian soldier named Diocles had been told by a witch that he
+should become Emperor by the slaughter of a boar. He became a great
+hunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed to bring him nearer to
+the purple, till, when the army was fighting on the Tigris, the Emperor
+Numerianus died, and an officer named Aper offered himself as his
+successor. Aper is the Latin for a boar, and Diocles, perceiving the
+scope of the prophecy, thrust his sword into his rival's breast, and was
+hailed Emperor by the legions. He lengthened his name out to
+Diocletianus, to sound more imperial, and began a dominion unlike that
+of any who had gone before. They had only been, as it were, overgrown
+generals, chosen by the Praetorians or some part of the army, and at the
+same time taking the tribuneship and other offices for life. Diocletian,
+though called Emperor, reigned like the kings of the East. He broke the
+strength of the Praetorians, so that they could never again kill one
+Emperor and elect another as before; and he never would visit Rome lest
+he should be obliged to acknowledge the authority of the Senate, whose
+power he contrived so entirely to take away, that thenceforward Senator
+became only a complimentary title, of which people in the subdued
+countries were very proud.
+
+[Illustration: DIOCLETIAN.]
+
+He divided the empire into two parts, feeling that it was beyond the
+management of any one man, and chose an able soldier of low birth but
+much courage, named Maximian, to rule the West from Trier as his
+capital, while he himself ruled the East from Nicomedia. Each of the two
+Emperors chose a future successor, who was to rule in part of his
+dominions under the title of Caesar, and to reign after him. Diocletian
+chose his son-in-law Galerius, and sent him to fight on the Danube; and
+Maximian chose, as Caesar, Constantius Chlorus, who commanded in Britain,
+Gaul, and Spain; and thus everything was done to secure that a strong
+hand should be ready everywhere to keep the legions from setting up
+Emperors at their own will.
+
+Diocletian was esteemed the most just and kind of the Emperors;
+Maximian, the fiercest and most savage. He had a bitter hatred of the
+Christian name, which was shared by Galerius; but, on the other hand,
+the wife of Diocletian was believed to be a Christian, and Helena, the
+wife of Constantius, was certainly one. However, Maximian and Galerius
+were determined to put down the faith. Maximian is said to have had a
+whole legion of Christians in his army, called the Theban, from the
+Egyptian Thebes. These he commanded to sacrifice, and on their refusal
+had them decimated--that is, every tenth man was slain. They were called
+on again to sacrifice, but still were staunch, and after a last summons
+were, every man of them, slain as they stood with their tribune Maurice,
+whose name is still held in high honor in the Engadine. Diocletian was
+slow to become a persecutor, until a fire broke out in his palace at
+Nicomedia, which did much mischief in the city, but spared the chief
+Christian church. The enemies of the Christians accused them of having
+caused it, and Diocletian required every one in his household to clear
+themselves by offering sacrifice to Jupiter. His wife and daughter
+yielded, but most of his officers and slaves held out, and died in cruel
+torments. One slave was scourged till the flesh parted from his bones,
+and then the wounds were rubbed with salt and vinegar; others were
+racked till their bones were out of joint, and others hung up by their
+hands to hooks, with weights fastened to their feet. A city in Phrygia
+was surrounded by soldiers and every person in it slaughtered; and the
+Christians were hunted down like wild beasts from one end of the empire
+to the other, everywhere save in Britain, where, under Constantius, only
+one martyrdom is reported to have taken place, namely, that of the
+soldier at Verulam, St. Alban. It was the worst of all the persecutions,
+and lasted the longest.
+
+[Illustration: DIOCLETIAN IN RETIREMENT.]
+
+The two Emperors were good soldiers, and kept the enemies back, so that
+Diocletian celebrated a triumph at Nicomedia; but he had an illness just
+after, and, as he was fifty-nine years old, he decided that it would be
+better to resign the empire while he was still in his full strength,
+and he persuaded Maximian to do the same, in 305, making Constantius and
+Galerius Emperors in their stead. Constantius stopped the persecution in
+the West, but it raged as much as ever in the East under Galerius and
+the Caesar he had appointed, whose name was Daza, but who called himself
+Maximin. Constantius fought bravely, both in Britain and Gaul, with the
+enemies who tried to break into the empire. The Franks, one of the
+Teuton nations, were constantly breaking in on the eastern frontier of
+Gaul, and the Caledonians on the northern border of the settlement of
+Britain. He opposed them gallantly, and was much loved, but he died at
+York, 305, and Galerius passed over his son Constantine, and appointed a
+favorite of his own named Licinius. Constantine was so much beloved by
+the army and people of Gaul that they proclaimed him Emperor, and he
+held the province of Britain and Gaul securely against all enemies.
+
+Old Maximian, who had only retired on the command of Diocletian, now
+came out from his retreat, and called on his colleague to do the same;
+but Diocletian was far too happy on his little farm at Salona to leave
+it, and answered the messenger who urged him again to take upon him the
+purple with--"Come and look at the cabbages I have planted." However,
+Maximian was accepted as the true Emperor by the Senate, and made his
+son Maxentius, Caesar, while he allied himself with Constantine, to whom
+he gave his daughter Fausta in marriage. Maxentius turned out a rebel,
+and drove the old man away to Marseilles, where Constantine gave him a
+home on condition of his not interfering with government; but he could
+not rest, and raised the troops in the south against his son-in-law.
+Constantine's army marched eagerly against him and made him prisoner,
+but even then he was pardoned; yet he still plotted, and tried to
+persuade his daughter Fausta to murder her husband. Upon this
+Constantine was obliged to have him put to death.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.]
+
+Galerius died soon after of a horrible disease, during which he was
+filled with remorse for his cruelties to the Christians, sent to entreat
+their prayers, and stopped the persecution. On his death, Licinius
+seized part of his dominions, and there were four men calling themselves
+Emperors--Licinius in Asia, Daza Maximin in Egypt, Maxentius at Rome,
+and Constantine in Gaul.
+
+There was sure soon to be a terrible struggle. It began between
+Maxentius and Constantine. This last marched out of Gaul and entered
+Italy. He had hitherto seemed doubtful between Christianity and
+paganism, but a wonder was seen in the heavens before his whole army,
+namely, a bright cross of light in the noon-tide sky with the words
+plainly to be traced round it, _In hoc signo vinces_--"In this sign thou
+shalt conquer." This sight decided his mind; he proclaimed himself a
+Christian, and from Milan issued forth an edict promising the Christians
+his favor and protection. Great victories were gained by him at Turin,
+Verona, and on the banks of the Tiber, where, at the battle of the
+Milvian Bridge in 312, Maxentius was defeated, and was drowned in
+crossing the river. Constantine entered Rome, and was owned by the
+Senate as Emperor of the West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
+
+312-337.
+
+
+Constantine entered Rome as a Christian, and from his time forward
+Christianity prevailed. He reigned only over the West at first, but
+Licinius overthrew Daza, treating him and his family with great
+barbarity, and then Constantine, becoming alarmed at his power, marched
+against him, beat him in Thrace, and ten years later made another attack
+on him. In the battle of Adrianople, Licinius was defeated, and soon
+after made prisoner and put to death. Thus, in 323, Constantine became
+the only Emperor.
+
+He was a Christian in faith, though not as yet baptized. He did not
+destroy heathen temples nor forbid heathen rites, but he did everything
+to favor the Christians and make Christian laws. Churches were rebuilt
+and ornamented; Sunday was kept as the day of the Lord, and on it no
+business might be transacted except the setting free of a slave;
+soldiers might go to church, and all that had made it difficult and
+dangerous to confess the faith was taken away. Constantine longed to see
+his whole empire Christian; but at Rome, heathen ceremonies were so
+bound up with every action of the state or of a man's life that it was
+very hard for the Emperor to avoid them, and he therefore spent as
+little time as he could there, but was generally at the newer cities of
+Arles and Trier; and at last he decided on founding a fresh capital, to
+be a Christian city from the first.
+
+The place he chose was the shore of the Bosphorus, where Asia and Europe
+are only divided by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek city of
+Byzantium already stood. From hence he hoped to be able to rule the East
+and the West. He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made a
+palace there for himself, and called it after his own name--Constantinople,
+or New Rome, neither of which names has it ever lost. He carried many of
+the ornaments of Old Rome thither, but consecrated them as far as
+possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother
+Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our
+blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The
+churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity
+at Bethlehem have been kept up even to this day.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+There was now no danger in being a Christian, and thus worldly and even
+wicked men and women owned themselves as belonging to the Church. So
+much evil prevailed that many good men fled from the sight of it,
+thinking to do more good by praying in lonely places free from
+temptation than by living in the midst of it. These were called hermits,
+and the first and most noted of them was St. Anthony. The Thebaid, or
+hilly country above Thebes in Egypt, was full of these hermits. When
+they banded together in brotherhoods they were called monks, and the
+women who did the like were called nuns.
+
+At this time there arose in Egypt a priest named Arius, who fell away
+from the true faith respecting our blessed Lord, and taught that he was
+not from the beginning, and was not equal with God the Father. The
+Patriarch of Alexandria tried to silence him, but he led away an immense
+number of followers, who did not like to stretch their souls to confess
+that Jesus Christ is God. At last Constantine resolved to call together
+a council of the Bishops and the wisest priests of the whole Church, to
+declare what was the truth that had been always held from the beginning.
+The place he appointed for the meeting was Nicea, in Asia Minor, and he
+paid for the journeys of all the Bishops, three hundred and eighteen in
+number, who came from all parts of the empire, east and west, so as to
+form the first Oecumenical or General Council of the Church. Many of
+them still bore the marks of the persecutions they had borne in
+Diocletian's time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off;
+some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard labor
+in the mines. The Emperor, in purple and gold, took a seat in the
+council as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet baptized; and
+the person who used the most powerful arguments was a young deacon of
+Alexandria named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared that the
+doctrine of Arius was contrary to what the Church had held from the
+first, and the confession of faith was drawn up which we call the Nicene
+Creed. Three hundred Bishops at once set their seals to it, and of those
+who at first refused all but two were won over, and these were banished.
+It was then that the faith of the Church began to be called Catholic or
+universal, and orthodox or straight teaching; while those who attacked
+it were called heretics, and their doctrine heresy, from a Greek word
+meaning to choose.
+
+[Illustration: COUNCIL OF NICEA.]
+
+The troubles were not at an end with the Council and Creed of Nicea.
+Arius had pretended to submit, but he went on with his false teaching,
+and the courtly Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had the ear of the
+Emperor, protected him. Athanasius had been made Patriarch, or
+Father-Bishop, of Alexandria, and with all his might argued against the
+false doctrine, and cut off those who followed it from the Church. But
+Eusebius so talked that Constantine fancied quiet was better than truth,
+and sent orders to Athanasius that no one was to be shut out. This the
+Patriarch could not obey, and the Emperor therefore banished him to
+Gaul. Arius then went to Constantinople to ask the Emperor to insist on
+his being received back to communion. He declared that he believed that
+which he held in his hand, showing the Creed of Nicea, but keeping
+hidden under it a statement of his own heresy.
+
+[Illustration: CATACOMBS.]
+
+"Go," said Constantine; "if your faith agree with your oath, you are
+blameless; if not, God be your judge;" and he commanded that Arius
+should be received to communion the next day, which was Sunday. But on
+his way to church, among a great number of his friends, Arius was struck
+with sudden illness, and died in a few minutes. The Emperor, as well as
+the Catholics, took this as a clear token of the hand of God, and
+Constantine was cured of any leaning to the Arians, though he still
+believed the men who called Athanasius factious and troublesome, and
+therefore would not recall him from exile.
+
+The great grief of Constantine's life was, that he put his eldest son
+Crispus to death on a wicked accusation of his stepmother Fausta. On
+learning the truth, he caused a silver statue to be raised, bearing the
+inscription, "My son, whom I unjustly condemned;" and when other crimes
+of Fausta came to light, he caused her to be suffocated.
+
+Baptism was often in those days put off to the end of life, that there
+might be no more sin after it, and Constantine was not baptized till his
+last illness had begun, when he was sixty-four years old, and he sent
+for Sylvester, Pope or Bishop of Rome, where he then was, and received
+from him baptism, absolution, and Holy Communion. After this,
+Constantine never put on purple robes again, but wore white till the day
+of his death in 337.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+CONSTANTIUS.
+
+337-364.
+
+
+Constantine the Great left three sons, who shared the empire between
+them; but two were slain early in life, and only Constantius, the second
+and worst of the brothers, remained Emperor. He was an Arian, and under
+him Athanasius, who had returned to Alexandria, was banished again, and
+took refuge with the Pope Liberius at Rome. Pope--papa in Latin--is the
+name for father, just as patriarch is; and the Pope had become more
+important since the removal of the court from Rome; but Constantius
+tried to overcome Liberius, banished him to Thrace, and placed an Arian
+named Felix in his room. The whole people of Rome rose in indignation,
+and Constantius tried to appease them by declaring that Liberius and
+Felix should rule the Church together; but the Romans would not submit
+to such a decree. "Shall we have the circus factions in the Church?"
+they said. "No! one God, one Christ, one Bishop!" In the end Felix was
+forced to fly, and Liberius kept his seat. Athanasius found his safest
+refuge in the deserts among the hermits of the Thebaid in Egypt.
+
+Meantime Sapor, king of Persia, was attacking Nisibis, the most Eastern
+city of the Roman empire, where a brave Catholic named James was Bishop,
+and encouraged the people to a most brave resistance, so that they held
+out for four months; and Sapor, thinking the city was under some divine
+protection, and finding that his army sickened in the hot marshes around
+it, gave up the siege at last.
+
+[Illustration: JULIAN.]
+
+Constantius was a little, mean-looking man, but he dressed himself up to
+do his part as Emperor. He had swarms of attendants like any Eastern
+prince, most of them slaves, who waited on him as if he was perfectly
+helpless. He had his face painted, and was covered with gold embroidery
+and jewels on all state occasions, and he used to stand like a statue to
+be looked at, never winking an eyelid, nor moving his hand, nor doing
+anything to remind people that he was a man like themselves. He was
+timid and jealous, and above all others, he dreaded his young cousin
+Julian, the only relation he had. Julian had studied at Athens, and what
+he there heard and fancied of the old Greek philosophy seemed to him far
+grander than the Christianity that showed itself in the lives of
+Constantius and his courtiers. He was full of spirit and ability, and
+Constantius thought it best to keep him at a distance by sending him to
+fight the Germans on the borders of Gaul. There he was so successful,
+and was such a favorite with the soldiers, that Constantius sent to
+recall him. This only made the army proclaim him Emperor, and he set out
+with them across the Danubian country towards Constantinople, but on the
+way met the tidings that Constantius was dead.
+
+This was in 361, and without going to Rome Julian hastened on to
+Constantinople, where he was received as Emperor. He no longer pretended
+to be a Christian, but had all the old heathen temples opened again, and
+the sacrifices performed as in old times, though it was not easy to find
+any one who recollected how they were carried on. He said that all forms
+of religion should be free to every one, but he himself tried to live
+like an ancient philosopher, getting rid of all the pomp of jewels,
+robes, courtiers, and slaves who had attended Constantius, wearing
+simply the old purple garb of a Roman general, sleeping on a lion's
+skin, and living on the plainest food. Meantime, he tried to put down
+the Christian faith by laughing at it, and trying to get people to
+despise it as something low and mean. When this did not succeed, he
+forbade Christians to be schoolmasters or teachers; and as they declared
+that the ruin of the Temple of Jerusalem proved our Lord to have been a
+true Prophet, he commanded that it should be rebuilt. As soon as the
+foundations were dug, there was an outburst of fiery smoke and balls of
+flame which forced the workmen to leave off. Such things sometimes
+happen when long-buried ruins are opened, from the gases that have
+formed there; but it was no doubt the work of God's providence, and the
+Christians held it as a miracle.
+
+Julian hated the Catholic Christians worse than the Arians, because he
+found them more staunch against him. Athanasius had come back to
+Alexandria, but the Arians got up an accusation against him that he had
+been guilty of a murder, and brought forward a hand in a box to prove
+the crime; and though Athanasius showed the man said to have been
+murdered alive, and with both his hands in their places, he was still
+hunted out of Alexandria, and had to hide among the hermits of the
+Thebaid again. When any search was threatened of the spot where he was,
+the horn was sounded which called the hermits together to church, and he
+was taken to another hiding-place. Sometimes he visited his flock at
+Alexandria in secret, and once, when he was returning down the Nile, he
+learned that a boat-load of soldiers was pursuing him. Turning back, his
+boat met them. They called out to know if Athanasius had been seen. "He
+was going down the Nile a little while ago," the Bishop answered. His
+enemies hurried on, and he was safe.
+
+Julian was angered by finding it impossible to waken paganism. At one
+grand temple in Asia, whither hundreds of oxen used to be brought to
+sacrifice, all his encouragement only caused one goose to be offered,
+which the priest of the temple received as a grand gift. Julian
+expected, too, that pagans would worship their old gods and yet live the
+virtuous lives of Christians; and he was disappointed and grieved to
+find that no works of goodness or mercy sprang from those who followed
+his belief. He was a kind man by nature, but he began to grow bitter
+with disappointment, and to threaten when he found it was of no use to
+persuade; and the Christians expected that there would be a great
+persecution when he should return from an expedition into the East
+against the king of Persia.
+
+[Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.]
+
+He went with a fine army in ships down the Euphrates, and thence marched
+into Persia, where King Sapor was wise enough to avoid a battle, and
+only retreat before him. The Romans were half starved, and obliged to
+turn back. Then Sapor attacked their rear, and cut off their stragglers.
+Julian shared all the sufferings of his troops, and was always
+wherever there was danger. At last a javelin pierced him under the arm.
+It is said that he caught some of his blood in his other hand, cast it
+up towards heaven, and cried, "Galilean, Thou hast conquered." He died
+in a few hours, in 363, and the Romans could only choose the best leader
+they knew to get them out of the sad plight they were in--almost that of
+the ten thousand Greeks, except that they knew the roads and had
+friendly lands much nearer. Their choice fell on a plain, honest
+Christian soldier named Jovian, who did his best by making a treaty with
+Sapor, giving up all claim to any lands beyond the Tigris, and
+surrendering the brave city of Nisibis which had held out so
+gallantly--a great grief to the Eastern Christians. The first thing
+Jovian did was to have Athanasius recalled, but his reign did not last a
+year, and he died on the way to Constantinople.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+VALENTINIAN AND HIS FAMILY.
+
+364-392.
+
+
+When Jovian died, the army chose another soldier named Valentinian, a
+stout, brave, rough man, with little education, rude and passionate, but
+a Catholic Christian. As soon as he reached Constantinople, he divided
+the empire with his brother Valens, whom he left to rule the East, while
+he himself went to govern the West, chiefly from Milan, for the Emperors
+were not fond of living at Rome, partly because the remains of the
+Senate interfered with their full grandeur, and partly because there
+were old customs that were inconvenient to a Christian Emperor. He was
+in general just and honest in his dealings, but when he was angry he
+could be cruel, and it is said he had two bears to whom criminals were
+thrown. His brother Valens was a weaker and less able man, and was an
+Arian, who banished Athanasius once more for the fifth time; but the
+Church of Alexandria prevailed, and he was allowed to remain and die in
+peace. The Creed that bears his name is not thought to be of his
+writing, but to convey what he taught. There was great talk at this time
+all over the cities about the questions between the Catholics and
+Arians, and good men were shocked by hearing the holiest mysteries of
+the faith gossiped about by the idlers in baths and market-places.
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDRIA.]
+
+At this time Damasus, the Pope, desired a very learned deacon of his
+church, named Jerome, to make a good translation of the whole of the
+Scriptures into Latin, comparing the best versions, and giving an
+account of the books. For this purpose Jerome went to the Holy Land, and
+lived in a cell at Bethlehem, happy to be out of the way of the quarrels
+at Rome and Constantinople. There, too, was made the first translation
+of the Gospels into one of the Teutonic languages, namely, the Gothic.
+The Goths were a great people, of the same Teutonic race as the Germans,
+Franks, and Saxons--tall, fair, brave, strong, and handsome--and were at
+this time living on the north bank of the Danube. Many of their young
+men hired themselves to fight as soldiers in the Roman army; and they
+were learning Christianity, but only as Arians. It was for them that
+their Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels into Gothic, and invented an
+alphabet to write them in. A copy of this translation is still to be
+seen at Upsal in Sweden, written on purple vellum in silver letters.
+
+[Illustration: GOTHS.]
+
+Another great and holy man of this time was Ambrose, the Archbishop
+of Milan, who was the guide and teacher of Gratian, Valentinian's eldest
+son, a good and promising youth so far as he went, but who, after the
+habit of the time, was waiting to be baptized till he should be further
+on in life. Valentinian's second wife was named Justina; and when he
+died, as it is said, from breaking a blood-vessel in a fit of rage, in
+375, the Western Empire was shared between her little son Valentinian
+and Gratian.
+
+Justina was an Arian, and wanted to have a church in Milan where she
+could worship without ascribing full honor and glory to God the Son; but
+Ambrose felt that the churches were his Master's, not his own to be
+given away, and filled the Church with Christians, who watched there
+chanting Psalms day and night, while the soldiers Justina sent to turn
+them out joined them, and sang and prayed with them.
+
+Gratian did not choose to be called Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest of
+all the Roman idols, as all the Emperors had been; and this offended
+many persons. A general named Maximus rose and reigned as Emperor in
+Britain, and Gratian had too much on his hands in the north to put him
+down.
+
+In the meantime, a terrible wild tribe called Huns were coming from the
+West and driving the Goths before them, so that they asked leave from
+Valens to come across the Danube and settle themselves in Thrace. The
+reply was so ill managed by Valens' counsellors that the Goths were
+offended, and came over the river as foes when they might have come as
+friends; and Valens was killed in battle with them at Adrianople in 378.
+
+Gratian felt that he alone could not cope with the dangers that beset
+the empire, and his brother was still a child, so he gave the Eastern
+Empire to a brave and noble Spanish general named Theodosius, who was a
+Catholic Christian and baptized, and who made peace with the Goths, gave
+them settlements, and took their young men into his armies. In the
+meantime, Maximus was growing more powerful in Britain, and Gratian, who
+chiefly lived in Gaul, was disliked by the soldiers especially for
+making friends with the young Gothic chief Alaric, whom he joined in
+hunting in the forests of Gaul in a way they thought unworthy of an
+Emperor. Finding that he was thus disliked, Maximus crossed the Channel
+to attack him. His soldiers would not march against the British legions,
+and he was taken and put to death, bitterly lamenting that he had so
+long deferred his baptism till now it was denied to him.
+
+Young Valentinian went on reigning at Milan, and Maximus in Gaul. This
+last had become a Christian and a Catholic in name, but without laying
+aside his fierceness and cruelty, so that, when some heretics were
+brought before him, he had them put to death, entirely against the
+advice of the great Saint and Bishop then working in Gaul, Martin of
+Tours, and likewise of St. Ambrose, who had been sent by Valentinian to
+make peace with the Gallic tyrant.
+
+It was a time of great men in the Church. In Africa a very great man had
+risen up, St. Augustine, who, after doubting long and living a life of
+sin, was drawn to the truth by the prayers of his good mother Monica,
+and, when studying in Italy, listened to St. Ambrose, and became a
+hearty believer and maintainer of all that was good. He became Bishop of
+Hippo in Africa.
+
+[Illustration: CONVENT ON THE HILLS.]
+
+But with the good there was much of evil. All the old cities, and
+especially Rome, were full of a strange mixture of Christian show and
+heathen vice. There was such idleness and luxury in the towns that
+hardly any Romans had hardihood enough to go out to fight their own
+battles, but hired Goths, Germans, Gauls, and Moors; and these learned
+their ways of warfare, and used them in their turn against the Romans
+themselves. Nothing was so much run after as the games in the
+amphitheatres. People rushed there to watch the chariot races, and went
+perfectly wild with eagerness about the drivers whose colors they wore;
+and even the gladiator games were not done away with by Christianity,
+although these sports were continually preached against by the clergy,
+and no really devout person would go to the theatres. Much time was
+idled away at the baths, which were the place for talk and gossip, and
+where there was a soft steamy air which was enough to take away all
+manhood and resolution. The ladies' dresses were exceedingly expensive
+and absurd, and the whole way of living quite as sumptuous and helpless
+as in the times of heathenism. Good people tried to live apart. More
+than ever became monks and hermits; and a number of ladies, who had been
+much struck with St. Jerome's teaching, made up a sort of society at
+Rome which busied itself in good works and devotion. Two of the ladies,
+a mother and daughter, followed him to the Holy Land, and dwelt in a
+convent at Bethlehem.
+
+Maximus after a time advanced into Italy, and Valentinian fled to ask
+the help of Theodosius, who came with an army, defeated and slew
+Maximus, and restored Valentinian, but only for a short time, for the
+poor youth was soon murdered by a Frank chief in his own service named
+Arbogastes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THEODOSIUS THE GREAT.
+
+392-395.
+
+
+The Frank, Arbogastes, who had killed Valentinian did not make himself
+Emperor, but set up a heathen philosopher called Eugenius, who for a
+little while restored all the heathen pomp and splendor, and opened the
+temples again, threatening even to take away the churches and turn the
+chief one at Milan into a stable. They knew that Theodosius would soon
+come to attack them, so they prepared for a great resistance in the
+passes of the Julian Alps, and the image of the Thundering Jupiter was
+placed to guard them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Theodosius had collected his troops and marched under the Labarum--that
+is to say, the Cross of Constantine, which had been the ensign of the
+imperial army ever since the battle of the Milvian Bridge. It was the
+cross combined with the two first Greek letters of the name Christ,
+[Symbol: Greek chi & rho combined], and was carried, as the eagles had
+been, above a purple silk banner. The men of Eugenius bore before them a
+figure of Hercules, and in the first battle they gained the advantage,
+for the more ignorant Eastern soldiers, though Christians, could not get
+rid of the notion that there was some sort of power in a heathen god,
+and thought Jupiter and Hercules were too strong for them.
+
+But Theodosius rallied them and led them back, so that they gained a
+great victory, and a terrible storm and whirlwind which fell at the same
+time upon the host of Eugenius made the Christian army feel the more
+sure that God fought on their side. Eugenius was taken and put to death,
+and Arbogastes fell on his own sword.
+
+Theodosius thus united the empires of the East and West once more. He
+was a brave and gallant soldier, and a good and conscientious man, and
+was much loved and honored; but he could be stern and passionate, and he
+was likewise greatly feared. At Antioch, the people had been much
+offended at a tax which Theodosius had laid on them; they rose in
+rebellion, overthrew his statues and those of his family, and dragged
+them about in the mud. No sooner was this done than they began to be
+shocked and terrified, especially because of the insult to the statue of
+the Empress, who was lately dead after a most kind and charitable life.
+The citizens in haste sent off messengers, with the Bishop at their
+head, to declare their grief and sorrow, and entreat the Emperor's
+pardon. All the time they were gone the city gave itself up to prayer
+and fasting, listening to sermons from the priest, John--called from his
+eloquence Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth--who preached repentance for all
+the most frequent sins, such as love of pleasure, irreverence at church,
+etc. The Bishop on his way met the Emperor's deputies who were charged
+to enquire into the crime and punish the people; and he redoubled his
+speed in reaching Constantinople, where he so pleaded the cause of the
+people that Theodosius freely forgave them, and sent him home to keep a
+happy Easter with them. This was while he was still Emperor only of the
+East.
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN HALL OF JUSTICE.]
+
+But when he was in Italy with Valentinian, three years later, there was
+another great sedition at Thessalonica. The people there were as mad as
+were most of the citizens of the larger towns upon the sports of the
+amphitheatre, and were vehemently fond of the charioteers whom they
+admired on either side. Just before some races that were expected, one
+of the favorite drivers committed a crime for which he was imprisoned.
+The people, wild with fury, rose and called for his release; and when
+this was denied to them, they fell on the magistrates with stones, and
+killed the chief of them, Botheric, the commander of the forces. The
+news was taken to Milan, where the Emperor then was, and his wrath was
+so great and terrible that he commanded that the whole city should
+suffer. The soldiers, who were glad both to revenge their captain and to
+gain plunder, hastened to put his command into execution; the unhappy
+people were collected in the circus, and slaughtered so rapidly and
+suddenly, that when Theodosius began to recover from his passion, and
+sent to stay the hands of the slayers, they found the city burning and
+the streets full of corpses.
+
+St. Ambrose felt it his duty to speak forth in the name of the Church
+against such fury and cruelty; and when Theodosius presented himself at
+the church door to come to the Holy Communion, Ambrose met him there,
+and turned him back as a blood-stained sinner unfit to partake of the
+heavenly feast, and bidding him not add sacrilege to murder.
+
+Theodosius pleaded that David had sinned even more deeply, and yet had
+been forgiven. "If you have sinned like him, repent like him," said
+Ambrose; and the Emperor went back weeping to his palace, there to
+remain as a penitent. Easter was the usual time for receiving penitents
+back to the Church, but at Christmas the Emperor presented himself
+again, hoping to win the Bishop's consent to his return at once; but
+Ambrose was firm, and again met him at the gate, rebuking him for trying
+to break the rules of the Church.
+
+"No," said Theodosius; "I am not come to break the laws, but to entreat
+you to imitate the mercy of God whom we serve, who opens the gates of
+mercy to contrite sinners."
+
+On seeing how deep was his repentance, Ambrose allowed him to enter the
+Church, though it was not for some time that he was admitted to the Holy
+Communion, and all that time he fasted and never put on his imperial
+robes. He also made a law that no sentence of death should be carried
+out till thirty days after it was given, so as to give time to see
+whether it were hasty or just.
+
+During this reign another heresy sprang up, denying the Godhead of God
+the Holy Ghost, and, in consequence, Theodosius called together another
+Council of the Church, at which was added to the Nicene Creed those
+latter sentences which follow the words, "I believe in the Holy Ghost."
+In this reign, too, began to be sung the _Te Deum_, which is generally
+known as the hymn of St. Ambrose. It was first used at Milan, but
+whether he wrote it or not is uncertain, though there is a story that he
+had it sung for the first time at the baptism of St. Augustine.
+
+Theodosius only lived six months after his defeat of Eugenius, dying at
+Milan in 395, when only fifty years old. He was the last who really
+deserved the name of a Roman Emperor, though the title was kept up, and
+Rome had still much to undergo. He left two young sons named Arcadius
+and Honorius, between whom the empire was divided.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ALARIC THE GOTH.
+
+395-410.
+
+
+The sons of the great Theodosius were, like almost all the children of
+the Roman Emperors, vain and weak, spoiled by growing up as princes.
+Arcadius, who was eighteen, had the East, and was under the charge of a
+Roman officer called Rufinus; Honorius who was only eleven, reigned at
+Rome under the care of Stilicho, who was by birth a Vandal, that is to
+say, of one of those Teutonic nations who were living all round the
+northern bounds of the empire, and whose sons came to serve in the Roman
+armies and learn Roman habits. Stilicho was brave and faithful, and
+almost belonged to the imperial family, for his wife Serena was niece to
+Theodosius, and his daughter Maria was betrothed to the young Honorius.
+
+Stilicho was a very active, spirited man, who found troops to check the
+enemies of Rome on all sides of the Western Empire. Rufinus was not so
+faithful, and did great harm in the East by quarrelling with Arcadius'
+other ministers, and then, as all believed, inviting the Goths to come
+out of their settlements on the Danube and invade Greece, under Alaric,
+the same Gothic chief who had been a friend and companion of Gratian,
+and had fought under Theodosius.
+
+They passed the Danube, overran Macedon, and spread all over Greece,
+where, being Arian Christians, they destroyed with all their might all
+the remaining statues and temples of the old pagans; although, as they
+did not attack Athens, the pagans, who were numerous there, fancied that
+they were prevented by a vision of Apollo and Pallas Athene. Arcadius
+sent to his brother for aid, and Stilicho marched through Thrace;
+Rufinus was murdered through his contrivance, and then, marching on into
+the Peloponnesus, he defeated Alaric in battle, and drove him out from
+thence, but no further than Epirus, where the Goths took up their
+station to wait for another opportunity; but by this time Arcadius
+had grown afraid of Stilicho, sent him back to Italy with many gifts and
+promises, and engaged Alaric to be the guardian of his empire, not only
+against the wild tribes, but against his brother and his minister.
+
+[Illustration: COLONNADES OF SAINT PETER AT ROME.]
+
+This was a fine chance for Alaric, who had all the temper of a great
+conqueror, and to the wild bravery of a Goth had added the knowledge and
+skill of a Roman general. He led his forces through the Alps into Italy,
+and showed himself before the gates of Milan. The poor weak boy Honorius
+was carried off for safety to Ravenna, while Stilicho gathered all the
+troops from Gaul, and left Britain unguarded by Roman soldiers, to
+protect the heart of the empire. With these he attacked Alaric, and
+gained a great victory at Pollentia; the Goths retreated; he followed
+and beat them again at Verona, driving them out of Italy.
+
+It was the last Roman victory, and it was celebrated by the last Roman
+triumph. There had been three hundred triumphs of Roman generals, but it
+was Honorius who entered Rome in the car of victory and was taken to the
+Capitol, and afterwards there were games in the amphitheatre as usual,
+and fights of gladiators. In the midst of the horrid battle a voice was
+heard bidding it to cease in the name of Christ, and between the swords
+there was seen standing a monk in his dark brown dress, holding up his
+hand and keeping back the blows. There was a shout of rage, and he was
+cut down and killed in a moment; but then in horror the games were
+stopped. It was found that he was an Egyptian monk named Telemachus,
+freshly come to Rome. No one knew any more about him, but this noble
+death of his put an end to shows of gladiators. Chariot races and games
+went on, though the good and thoughtful disapproved of the wild
+excitement they caused; but the horrid sports of death and blood were
+ended for ever.
+
+Alaric was driven back for a time, but there were swarms of Germans who
+were breaking in where the line of boundary had been left undefended by
+the soldiers being called away to fight the Goths. A fierce heathen
+chief named Radegaisus advanced with at least 200,000 men as far as
+Florence, but was there beaten by the brave Stilicho, and was put to
+death, while the other prisoners were sold into slavery. But Stilicho,
+brave as he was, was neither loved nor trusted by the Emperor or the
+people. Some abused him for not bringing back the old gods under whom,
+they said, Rome had prospered; others said that he was no honest
+Christian, and all believed that he meant to make his son Emperor. When
+he married this son to a daughter of Arcadius, people made sure that
+this was his purpose. Honorius listened to the accusation, and his
+favorite Olympius persuaded the army to give up Stilicho. He fled to a
+church, but was persuaded to come out of it, and was then put to death.
+
+And at that very time Alaric was crossing the Alps. There was no one to
+make any resistance. Honorius was at Ravenna, safe behind walls and
+marshes, and cared for nothing but his favorite poultry. Alaric encamped
+outside the walls of Rome, but he did not attempt to break in, waiting
+till the Romans should be starved out. When they had come to terrible
+distress, they offered to ransom their city. He asked a monstrous sum,
+which they refused, telling him what hosts there were of them, and that
+he might yet find them dangerous. "The thicker the hay, the easier to
+mow," said the Goth. "What will you leave us then?" they asked. "Your
+lives," was the answer.
+
+The ransom the wretched Romans agreed to pay was 5000 pounds' weight of
+gold and 30,000 of silver, 4000 silk robes, 3000 pieces of scarlet
+cloth, and 3000 pounds of pepper. They stripped the roof of the temple
+in the Capitol, and melted down the images of the old gods to raise the
+sum, and Alaric drew off his men; but he came again the next year,
+blocked up Ostia, and starved them faster. This time he brought a man
+named Attalus, whom he ordered them to admit as Emperor, and they did
+so; but as the governor of Africa would send no corn while this man
+reigned, the people rose and drove him out, and thus for the third time
+brought Alaric down on them. The gates were opened to him at night, and
+he entered Rome on the 24th of August, 410, exactly eight hundred years
+after the sack of Rome by Brennus.
+
+[Illustration: ALARIC'S BURIAL.]
+
+Alaric did not wish to ruin and destroy the grand old city, nor to
+massacre the inhabitants; but his Goths were thirsty for the spoil he
+had kept them from so long, and he gave them leave to plunder for six
+days, but not to kill, nor to do any harm to the churches. A set of
+wild, furious men could not, of course, be kept in by these orders, and
+terrible misfortunes befell many unhappy families; but the mischief done
+was much less than could have been expected, and the great churches of
+St. Peter and St. Paul were unhurt. One old lady named Marcella, a
+friend of St. Jerome, was beaten to make her show where her treasures
+were; but when at last her tormentors came to believe that she had spent
+her all on charity, they led her to the shelter of the church with her
+friends, soon to die of what she had undergone. After twelve days,
+however, Alaric drew off his forces, leaving Rome to shift for itself.
+Bishop Innocent was at Ravenna, where he had gone to ask help from the
+Emperor; but Honorius knew and cared so little that when he was told
+Rome was lost, he only thought of his favorite hen whose name was Rome,
+and said, "That cannot be, for I have just fed her."
+
+Alaric marched southward, the Goths plundering the villas of the Roman
+nobles on their way. At Cosenza, in the extreme south, he fell ill of a
+fever and died. His warriors turned the stream of the river Bionzo out
+of its course, caused his grave to be dug in the bed of the torrent, and
+when his corpse had been laid there, they slew all the slaves who had
+done the work, so that none might be able to tell where lay the great
+Goth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+THE VANDALS.
+
+403.
+
+
+One good thing came of the Gothic conquest--the pagans were put to
+silence for ever. The temples had been razed, the idols broken, and no
+one set them up again; but the whole people of Rome were Christian, at
+least in name, from that time forth; and the temples and halls of
+justice began to be turned into churches.
+
+Honorius still lived his idle life at Ravenna, and the Bishop--or, as
+the Romans called him, Papa, father, or Pope--came back and helped them
+to put matters into order again. Alaric had left no son, but his wife's
+brother Ataulf became leader of the Goths. At Rome he had made prisoner
+Theodosius' daughter Placidia, and he married her; but he did not choose
+to rule at Rome, because, as he said, his Goths would never bear a quiet
+life in a city. So he promised to protect the empire for Honorius, and
+led his tribe away from Italy to Spain, which they conquered, and began
+a kingdom there. They were therefore known as the Visigoths, or Western
+Goths.
+
+Arcadius, in the meantime, reigned quietly at Constantinople, where St.
+John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch, was made
+Patriarch, or father-bishop. The games and races in the circus at
+Constantinople were as madly run after as they had ever been at Rome or
+Thessalonica; there were not indeed shows of gladiators, but people set
+themselves with foolish vehemence to back up one driver against another,
+wearing their colors and calling themselves by their names, and the two
+factions of the Greens and the Blues were ready to tear each other to
+pieces. The Empress Eudoxia, Arcadius' wife, was one of the most
+vehement of all, and was, besides, a vain, silly woman, who encouraged
+all kinds of pomp and expense. St. Chrysostom preached against all the
+mischiefs that thus arose, so that she was offended, and contrived to
+raise up an accusation against him and have him driven out of the city.
+The people of Constantinople still showed so much love for him that she
+insisted on his being sent further off to the bleak shores of the Black
+Sea, and on the journey he died, his last words being, "Glory be to God
+in all things."
+
+[Illustration: ROMAN CLOCK.]
+
+Arcadius died in 408, leaving a young son, called Theodosius II., in
+the care of his elder sister Pulcheria, under whom the Eastern Empire
+lay at peace, while the miseries of the Western went on increasing. New
+Emperors were set up by the legions in the distant provinces, but were
+soon overthrown, while Honorius only remained at Ravenna by the support
+of the kings of the Teuton tribes; and as he never trusted them or kept
+faith with them, he was always offending them and being punished by
+fresh attacks on some part of his empire, for which he did not greatly
+care so long as they let him alone.
+
+Ataulf died in Spain, and Placidia came back to Ravenna, where Honorius
+gave her in marriage to a Roman general named Constantius, and she had a
+son named Valentinian, who, when his uncle died after thirty-seven years
+of a wretched reign, became Emperor in his stead, under his mother's
+guardianship, in 423.
+
+Two great generals who were really able men were her chief
+supporters--Boniface, Count or Commander of Africa; and Aetius, who is
+sometimes called the last of the Romans, though he was not by birth a
+Roman at all, but a Scythian. He gained the ear of the Empress Placidia,
+and persuaded her that Boniface wanted to set himself up in Africa as
+Emperor, so that she sent to recall him, and evil friends assured him
+that she meant to put him to death as soon as he arrived. He was very
+much enraged, and though St. Augustine, now an old man, who had long
+been Bishop of Hippo, advised him to restrain his anger, he called on
+Genseric, the chief of the Vandals, to come and help him to defend his
+province.
+
+[Illustration: SPANISH COAST.]
+
+The Vandals were another tribe of Teutons--tall, strong, fair-haired,
+and much like the Goths, and, like them, they were Arians. They had
+marauded in Italy, and then had followed the Goths to Spain, where they
+had established themselves in the South, in the country called from them
+Vandalusia, or Andalusia. Their chief was only too glad to obey the
+summons of Boniface, but before he came the Roman had found out his
+mistake; Placidia had apologized to him, and all was right between them.
+But it was now too late; Genseric and his Vandals were on the way, and
+there was nothing for it but to fight his best against them.
+
+He could not save Carthage, and, though he made the bravest defence in
+his power, he was driven into Hippo, which was so strongly fortified
+that he was able to hold it out a whole year, during which time St.
+Augustine died, after a long illness. He had caused the seven
+penitential Psalms to be written out on the walls of his room, and was
+constantly musing on them. He died, and was buried in peace before the
+city was taken. Boniface held out for five years altogether before
+Africa was entirely taken by the Vandals, and a miserable time began for
+the Church, for Genseric was an Arian, and set himself to crush out the
+Catholic Church by taking away her buildings and grievously persecuting
+her faithful bishops.
+
+Valentinian III, made a treaty with him, and even yielded up to him all
+right to the old Roman province of Africa; but Genseric had a strong
+fleet of ships, and went on attacking and plundering Sicily, Corsica,
+Sardinia, Italy and the coasts of Greece.
+
+Britain, at the same time, was being so tormented by the attacks of the
+Saxons by sea, and the Caledonians from the north, that her chiefs sent
+a piteous letter to Aetius in Gaul, beginning with "The groans of the
+Britons;" but Aetius could send no help, and Gaul itself was being
+overrun by the Goths in the south, the Burgundians in the middle, and
+the Franks in the north, so that scarcely more than Italy itself
+remained to Valentinian.
+
+[Illustration: VANDALS PLUNDERING]
+
+The Eastern half of the Empire was better off, though it was tormented
+by the Persians in the East, on the northern border by the Eastern Goths
+or Ostrogoths, who had stayed on the banks of the Danube instead of
+coming to Italy, and to the south by the Vandals from Africa. But
+Pulcheria was so wise and good that, when her young brother Theodosius
+II. died without children, the people begged her to choose a husband who
+might be an Emperor for them. She chose a wise old senator named
+Marcian, and when he died, she again chose another good and wise man
+named Zeno; and thus the Eastern Empire stood while the West was fast
+crumbling away. The nobles were almost all vain, weak cowards, who only
+thought of themselves, and left strangers to fight their battles; and
+every one was cowed with fear, for a more terrible foe than any was now
+coming on them.
+
+[Illustration: PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX IN EGYPT.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+ATTILA THE HUN
+
+435-457.
+
+
+The terrible enemy who was coming against the unhappy Roman Empire was
+the nation of Huns, a wild, savage race, who were of the same stock as
+the Tartars, and dwelt as they do in the northern parts of Asia, keeping
+huge herds of horses, spending their life on horseback, and using mares'
+milk as food. They were an ugly, small, but active race, and used to cut
+their children's faces that the scars might make them look more terrible
+to their enemies. Just at this time a great spirit of conquest had come
+upon them, and they had, as said before, driven the Goths over the
+Danube fifty years ago, and seized the lands we still call Hungary. A
+most mighty and warlike chief called Attila had become their head,
+and wherever he went his track was marked by blood and flame, so that he
+was called "The Scourge of God." His home was on the banks of the
+Theiss, in a camp enclosed with trunks of trees, for he did not care to
+dwell in cities or establish a kingdom, though the wild tribes of Huns
+from the furthest parts of Asia followed his standard--a sword fastened
+to a pole, which was said to be also his idol.
+
+[Illustration: HUNNISH CAMP.]
+
+He threatened to fall upon the two empires, and an embassy was sent to
+him at his camp. The Huns would not dismount, and thus the Romans were
+forced to address them on horseback. The only condition upon which he
+would abstain from invading the empire was the paying of an enormous
+tribute, beyond what almost any power of theirs could attempt to raise.
+However, he did not then attack Italy, but turned upon Gaul. So much was
+he hated and dreaded by the Teutonic nations, that all Goths, Franks,
+and Burgundians flocked to join the Roman forces under Aetius to drive
+him back. They came just in time to save the city of Orleans from being
+ravaged by him, and defeated him in the battle of Chalons with a great
+slaughter; but he made good his retreat from Gaul with an immense
+number of captives, whom he killed in revenge.
+
+The next year he demanded that Valentinian's sister, Honoria, should be
+given to him, and when she was refused, he led his host into Italy and
+destroyed all the beautiful cities of the north. A great many of the
+inhabitants fled into the islands among the salt marshes and pools at
+the head of the Adriatic Sea, between the mouths of the rivers Po and
+Adige, where no enemy could reach them; and there they built houses and
+made a town, which in time became the great city of Venice, the queen of
+the Adriatic.
+
+[Illustration: ST. MARK'S, VENICE.]
+
+Aetius was still in Gaul, the wretched Valentinian at Ravenna was
+helpless and useless, and Attila proceeded towards Rome. It was well for
+Rome that she had a brave and devoted Pope in Leo. I., who went out at
+the head of his clergy to meet the barbarian in his tent, and threaten
+him with the wrath of Heaven if he should let loose his cruel followers
+upon the city. Attila was struck with his calm greatness, and,
+remembering that Alaric had died soon after plundering Rome, became
+afraid. He consented to accept of Honoria's dowry instead of herself,
+and to be content with a great ransom for the city of Rome. He then
+turned to his camp on the Danube with all his horde, and soon after
+his arrival he married a young girl whom he had made prisoner. The next
+morning he was found dead on his bed in a pool of his own blood, and she
+was gone; but as there was no wound about him, it was thought that he
+had broken a blood-vessel in the drunken fit in which he fell asleep,
+and that she had fled in terror. His warriors tore their cheeks with
+their daggers, saying that he ought to be mourned only with tears of
+blood; but as they had no chief as able and daring as he, they gradually
+fell back again to their north-eastern settlements, and troubled Europe
+no more.
+
+Valentinian thought the danger over, and when Aetius came back to
+Ravenna, he grew jealous of his glory and stabbed him with his own hand.
+Soon after he offended a senator named Maximus, who killed him in
+revenge, became Emperor, and married his widow, Eudoxia, the daughter of
+Theodosius II. of Constantinople, telling her that it was for love of
+her that her husband was slain. Eudoxia sent a message to invite the
+dreadful Genseric, king of the Vandals, to come and deliver her from a
+rebel who had slain the lawful Emperor. Genseric's ships were ready, and
+sailed into the Tiber; while the Romans, mad with terror, stoned
+Maximus in their streets. Nobody had any courage or resolution but the
+Pope Leo, who went forth again to meet the barbarian and plead for his
+city; but Genseric being an Arian, had not the same awe of him as the
+wild Huns, hated the Catholics, and was eager for the prey. He would
+accept no ransom instead of the plunder, but promised that the lives of
+the Romans should be spared. This was the most dreadful calamity that
+Rome, once the queen of cities, had undergone. The pillage lasted
+fourteen days, and the Vandals stripped churches, houses, and all alike,
+putting their booty on board their ships; but much was lost in a storm
+between Italy and Africa. The golden candlestick and shew-bread table
+belonging to the Temple at Jerusalem were carried off to Carthage with
+the spoil, and no less than sixty thousand captives, among them the
+Empress Eudoxia, who had been the means of bringing in Genseric, with
+her two daughters. The Empress was given back to her friends at
+Constantinople, but one of her daughters was kept by the Vandals, and
+was married to the son of Genseric. After plundering all the south of
+Italy, Genseric went back to Africa without trying to keep Rome or set
+up a kingdom; and when he was gone, the Romans elected as Emperor a
+senator named Avitus, a Gaul by birth, a peaceful and good man.
+
+[Illustration: THE POPE'S HOUSE.]
+
+His daughter had married a most excellent Gaulish gentleman named
+Sidonius Apollinaris, who wrote such good poetry that the Romans placed
+his bust crowned with laurel in the Capitol. He wrote many letters, too,
+which are preserved to this time, and show that, in the midst of all
+this crumbling power of Rome, people in Southern Gaul managed to have
+many peaceful days of pleasant country life. But Sidonius' quiet days
+came to an end when, layman and lawyer as he was, the people of Clermont
+begged him to be their Bishop. The Church stood, whatever fell, and
+people trusted more to their Bishop than to any one else, and wanted him
+to be the ablest man they could find. So Sidonius took the charge of
+them, and helped them to hold out their mountain city of Clermont for a
+whole year against the Goths, and gained good terms for them at last,
+though he himself had to suffer imprisonment and exile from these Arian
+Goths because of his Catholic faith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+THEODORIC THE OSTROGOTH.
+
+457--561.
+
+
+Avitus was a good man, but the Romans grew weary of him, and in the year
+457 they engaged Ricimer, a chief of the Teutonic tribe called Suevi, to
+drive him out, when he went back to Gaul, where he had a beautiful
+palace and garden. After ten months Ricimer chose another Sueve to be
+Emperor. He had been a captain under Aetius, and had the Roman name of
+Majorian. He showed himself brave and spirited; led an army into Spain
+and attacked Genseric; but he was beaten, and came back disappointed.
+Ricimer was, however, jealous of him, forced him to resign, and soon
+after poisoned him.
+
+After this, Ricimer really ruled Italy, but he seemed to have a sort of
+awe of the title of Caesar Augustus, the Emperor, for he forbore to use
+it himself, and gave it to one poor weak wretch after another until his
+death in 472. His nephew went on in the same course; but at last a
+soldier named Orestes, of Roman birth, gained the chief power, and set
+up as Emperor his own little son, whose Christian name was Romulus
+Augustus, making him wear the purple and the crown, and calling him by
+all the titles; but the Romans made his name into Augustulus, or Little
+Augustus. At the end of a year, a Teutonic chief named Odoacer crossed
+the Alps at the head of a great mixture of different German tribes, and
+Orestes could make no stand against him, but was taken and put to death.
+His little boy was spared, and was placed at Sorrento; but Odoacer sent
+the crown and robes of the West to Zeno, the Eastern Emperor, saying
+that one Emperor was enough. So fell the Roman power in 476, exactly
+twelve centuries after the date of the founding of Rome. It was thought
+that this was meant by the twelve vultures seen by Romulus, and that the
+seven which Remus saw denoted the seven centuries that the Republic
+stood. It was curious, too, that it should be with the two names of
+Romulus and Augustus that Rome and her empire fell.
+
+Odoacer called himself king, and, indeed, the Western Empire had been
+nearly all seized by different kings--the Vandal kings in Africa, the
+Gothic kings in Spain and Southern Gaul, the Burgundian kings and Frank
+kings in Northern Gaul, the Saxon kings in Britain. The Ostro or Eastern
+Goths, who had since the time of Valens dwelt on the banks of the
+Danube, had been subdued by Attila, but recovered their freedom after
+his death. One of their young chiefs, named Theodoric, was sent as a
+hostage to Constantinople, and there learned much. He became king of the
+Eastern Goths in 470, and showed himself such a dangerous neighbor to
+the Eastern Empire that, to be rid of him the Emperor Zeno advised him
+to go and attack Odoacer in Italy. The Ostrogoths marched seven hundred
+miles, and came over the Alps into the plains of Northern Italy, where
+Odoacer fought with them bravely, but was beaten. They besieged him even
+in Ravenna, till after three years he was obliged to surrender and was
+put to death.
+
+[Illustration: ROMULUS AUGUSTUS RESIGNS THE CROWN.]
+
+Rome could make no defence, and fell into Theodoric's hands with the
+rest of Italy; but he was by far the best of the conquerors--he did not
+hurt or misuse them, and only wished his Goths to learn of them and
+become peaceful farmers. He gave them the lands which had lost their
+owners; about thirty or forty thousand families were settled there by
+him on the waste lands, and the Romans who were left took courage and
+worked too. He did not live at Rome, though he came thither and was
+complimented by the Senate, and he set a sum by every year for repairing
+the old buildings; but he chiefly lived at Verona, where he reigned over
+both the Eastern and Western Goths in Gaul and Italy.
+
+He was an Arian, but he did not persecute the Catholics, and to such
+persons as changed their profession of faith to please him he showed no
+more favor, saying that those who were not faithful to their God would
+never be faithful to their earthly master. He reigned thirty-three
+years, but did not end as well as he began, for he grew irritable and
+distrustful with age; and the Romans, on the other hand, forgot that
+they were not the free, prosperous nation of old, and displeased him.
+Two of their very best men, Boethius and Symmachus, were by him kept for
+a long time prisoners at Rome and then put to death. While Boethius was
+in prison at Pavia, he wrote a book called _The Consolations of
+Philosophy_, so beautiful that the English king Alfred translated it
+into Saxon four centuries later. Theodoric kept up a correspondence with
+the other Gothic kings wherever a tribe of his people dwelt, even as far
+as Sweden and Denmark; but as even he could not write, and only had a
+seal with the letters [Greek: THEOD] with which to make his signature,
+the whole was conducted in Latin by Roman slaves on either side, who
+interpreted to their masters. An immense number of letters from
+Theodoric's secretary are preserved, and show what an able man his
+master was, and how well he deserved his name of "The Great." He died in
+526, leaving only two daughters. Their two sons, Amalric and Athalaric,
+divided the Eastern and Western Goths between them again.
+
+Seven Gothic kings reigned over Northern Italy after Theodoric. They
+were fierce and restless, but had nothing like his strength and spirit,
+and they chiefly lived in the more northern cities--Milan, Verona, and
+Ravenna, leaving Rome to be a tributary city to them, where there still
+remained the old names of Senate and Consuls, but the person who was
+generally most looked up to and trusted was the Pope. All this time Rome
+was leavening the nations who had conquered her. When they tried to
+learn civilized ways, it was from her; they learned to speak her tongue,
+never wrote but in Latin, and worshipped with Latin prayers and
+services. Far above all, these conquerors learned Christianity from the
+Romans. When everything else was ruined, the Bishop and clergy remained,
+and became the chief counsellors and advisers of many of these kings.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It was just at this time that there was living at Monte Casino, in the
+South of Italy, St. Benedict, an Italian hermit, who was there joined by
+a number of others who, like him, longed to pray for the sinful world
+apart rather than fight and struggle with bad men. He formed them into a
+great band of monks, all wearing a plain dark dress with a hood, and
+following a strict rule of plain living, hard work, and prayers at seven
+regular hours in the course of the day and night. His rule was called
+the Benedictine, and houses of monks arose in many places, and were safe
+shelters in these fierce times.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+BELISARIUS.
+
+533-563.
+
+
+The Teutonic nations soon lost their spirit when they had settled in the
+luxurious Roman cities, and as they were as fierce as ever, their kings
+tore one another to pieces. A very able Emperor, named Justinian, had
+come to the throne in the East, and in his armies there had grown up a
+Thracian who was one of the greatest and best generals the world has
+ever seen. His name was Belisarius, and strange to say, both he and the
+Emperor had married the daughters of two charioteers in the circus
+races. The Empress was named Theodora, the general's wife Antonina, and
+their acquaintance first made Belisarius known to Justinian, who, by his
+means, ended by winning back great part of the Western Empire.
+
+He began with Africa, where Genseric's grandson was reigning over the
+Vandals, and paying so little heed to his defences that Belisarius
+landed without any warning, and called all the multitudes of old Roman
+inhabitants to join him, which they joyfully did. He defeated the
+Vandals in battle, entered Carthage, and restored the power of the
+empire. He brought away the golden candlestick and treasures of the
+Temple, and the cross believed to be the true one, and carried them to
+Constantinople, whence the Emperor sent them back to the Church of the
+Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
+
+Just as Belisarius had returned to Constantinople, a piteous entreaty
+came to Justinian from Amalosontha, the daughter of Theodoric, who had
+been made prisoner by Theodotus, the husband she had chosen. It seemed
+to be opening a way for getting back Italy, and Justinian sent off
+Belisarius; but before he had sailed, the poor Gothic queen had been
+strangled in her bath. Belisarius, however, with 4500 horse and 3000
+foot soldiers, landed in Sicily and soon conquered the whole island, all
+the people rejoicing in his coming. He then crossed to Rhegium, and laid
+siege to Naples. As usual, the inhabitants were his friends, and one of
+them showed him the way to enter the city through an old aqueduct which
+opened into an old woman's garden.
+
+[Illustration: NAPLES.]
+
+Theodotus was a coward as well as a murderer, and fled away, while a
+brave warrior named Vitiges was proclaimed king by the Goths at Rome.
+But with the broken walls and all the Roman citizens against him,
+Vitiges thought it best not to try to hold out against Belisarius, and
+retreated to Ravenna, while Rome welcomed the Eastern army as
+deliverers. But Vitiges was collecting an army at Ravenna, and in three
+months was besieging Rome again. Never had there been greater bravery
+and patience than Vitiges showed outside the walls of Rome, and
+Belisarius inside, during the summer of 536. There was a terrible famine
+within; all kinds of strange food were used in scanty measure, and the
+Romans were so impatient of suffering, that Belisarius was forced to
+watch them day and night to prevent them betraying him to the enemy.
+Indeed, while the siege lasted a whole year, nearly all the people of
+Rome died of hunger and wretchedness; and the Goths, in the unhealthy
+Campagna around, died of fevers and agues, until they, too, had all
+perished except a small band, which Vitiges led back to Ravenna, whither
+Belisarius followed him, besieged him, made him prisoner, and carried
+him to Constantinople. Justinian gave him an estate where he could live
+in peace.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE.]
+
+The Moors in Africa revolted, and Belisarius next went to subdue them.
+While he was there, the Goths in Italy began to recover from the blow he
+had given them, and chose a brave young man named Totila to be their
+king. In a very short time he had won back almost all Italy, for there
+really were hardly any men left, and even Justinian had only two small
+armies to dispose of, and those made up of Thracians and Isaurians from
+the shores of the Black Sea. One of these was sent with Belisarius to
+attack the Goths, but was not strong enough to do more than just hold
+Totila in check, and Justinian would not even send him all the help
+possible, because he dreaded the love the army bore to him. After four
+years of fighting with Totila he was recalled, and a slave named Narces,
+who had always lived in the women's apartment in the palace, was sent to
+take the command. He was really able and skilled, and being better
+supported, he gained a great victory near Rome, in which Totila was
+killed, and another near Naples, which quite overcame the Ostrogoths, so
+that they never became a power again. Italy was restored to the Empire,
+and was governed by an officer from Constantinople, who lived at
+Ravenna, and was called the Exarch.
+
+Belisarius, in the meantime, was sent to fight with the king of Persia,
+Chosroes, a very warlike prince, who had overrun Syria and carried off
+many prisoners from Antioch. Belisarius gained victory after victory
+over him, and had just driven him back over the rivers, when again came
+a recall, and Narses was sent out to finish the war. Theodora, the
+Empress, wanted to reign after her husband, and had heard that, on a
+report coming to the army of his death, Belisarius had said that he
+should give his vote for Justin, the right heir. So she worked on the
+fears all Emperors had--that their troops might proclaim a successful
+general as Emperor, and again Belisarius was ordered home, while Narses
+was sent to finish what he had begun.
+
+There was one more war for this great man when the wild Bulgarians
+invaded Thrace, and though his soldiers were little better than timid
+peasants, he drove them back and saved the country. But Justinian grew
+more and more jealous of him, and, fancying untruly that he was in a
+plot for placing Justin on the throne, caused him to be thrown into
+prison, and sent him out from thence stripped of everything, and with
+his eyes torn out. He found a little child to lead him to a church door,
+where he used to sit with a wooden dish before him for alms. When it was
+known who the blind beggar was, there was such an uproar among the
+people that Justinian was obliged to give him back his palace and some
+of his riches; but he did not live much longer.
+
+Though Justinian behaved so unjustly and ungratefully to this great man
+and faithful servant, he is noted for better things, namely, for making
+the Church of St. Sophia, or the Holy Wisdom, which Constantine had
+built at Constantinople, the most splendid of all buildings, and for
+having the whole body of Roman laws thoroughly overlooked and put into
+order. Many even of the old heathen laws were very good ones, but there
+were others connected with idolatry that needed to be done away with;
+and in the course of years so many laws and alterations had been made,
+that it was the study of a lifetime even to know what they were, or how
+to act on them. Justinian set his best lawyers to put them all in order,
+so that it might be more easy to work by them. The Roman citizens in
+Greece, Italy, and all the lands overrun by the Teutonic nations were
+still judged by their own laws, so that this was a very useful work; and
+it was so well done that the conquerors took them up in time, and the
+Roman law was the great model studied everywhere by those who wished to
+understand the rules of jurisprudence, that is, of law and justice. Thus
+in another way Rome conquered her conquerors.
+
+Justinian died in 563, and was succeeded by his nephew Justin, whose
+wife Sophia behaved almost as ill to Narses as Theodora had done to
+Belisarius, for while he was doing his best to defend Italy from the
+savage tribes who were ready at any moment to come over the Alps, she
+sent him a distaff, and ordered him back to his old slavery in the
+palace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+POPE GREGORY THE GREAT.
+
+563--800.
+
+
+No sooner was Narses called home than another terrible nation of
+Teutones, who had hitherto dwelt in the North, began to come over the
+Alps. These were the Longbeards, or Lombards, as they were more commonly
+called; fierce and still heathen. Their king, Alboin, had carried off
+Rosamond, the daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, another Teutonic
+tribe. There was a most terrible war, in which Kunimund was killed and
+all his tribe broken up and joined with the Lombards. With the two
+united, Alboin invaded Italy and conquered all the North. Ravenna,
+Verona, Milan, and all the large towns held out bravely against them,
+but were taken at last, except Venice, which still owned the Emperor at
+Constantinople. Alboin had kept the skull of Kunimund as a trophy, and
+had had it set in gold for a drinking-cup, as his wild faith made him
+believe that the reward of the brave in the other world would be to
+drink mead from the skulls of their fallen enemies. In a drunken fit at
+Verona, he sent for Rosamond and made her pledge him in this horrible
+cup. She had always hated him, and this made her revenge her father's
+death by stabbing him to the heart in the year 573. The Lombard power
+did not, however, fall with him; his nephew succeeded him, and ruled
+over the country we still call Lombardy. Rome was not taken by them, but
+was still in name belonging to the Emperor, though he had little power
+there, and the Senate governed it in name, with all the old magistrates.
+The Praetor at the time the Lombards arrived was a man of one of the old
+noble families, Anicius Gregorius, or, as we have learned to call him,
+Gregory. He had always been a good and pious man, and while he took
+great care to fulfil all the duties of his office, his mind was more and
+more drawn away from the world, till at last he became a monk of St.
+Benedict, gave all his vast wealth to build and endow monasteries and
+hospitals, and lived himself in an hospital for beggars, nursing them,
+studying the Holy Scriptures, and living only on pulse, which his mother
+sent him every day in a silver dish--the only remnant of his
+wealth--till one day, having nothing else to give a shipwrecked sailor
+who asked alms, he bestowed it on him.
+
+[Illustration: POPE GREGORY THE GREAT.]
+
+He was made one of the seven deacons who were called Cardinal Deacons,
+because they had charge of the poor of the principal parishes of
+Rome; and it was when going about on some errand of kindness that he saw
+the English slave children in the market, and planned the conversion of
+their country; but the people would not let him leave Rome, and in 590,
+the Senate, the clergy, and the people chose him Pope. It was just then
+that a terrible pestilence fell on Rome, and he made the people form
+seven great processions--of clergy, of monks, of nuns, of children, of
+men, of wives, and of widows--all singing litanies to entreat that the
+plague might be turned away. Then it was that he beheld an angel
+standing on the tomb of Hadrian, and the plague ceased. Ever after, the
+great old tomb has been called the Castle of St. Angelo.
+
+[Illustration: THE POPE'S PULPIT.]
+
+It was a troublous time, but Gregory was so much respected that he was
+able to keep Rome orderly and safe, and to make peace between the
+Emperor Maurice and the Lombards' king, Agilulf, who had an excellent
+wife, Theodolinda. She was a great friend of the Pope, wrote a letter to
+him, and did all she could to support him. The Eastern Empire was still
+owned at Rome, but when there was an attempt to make out that the
+Patriarch of Constantinople was superior to the Pope, Gregory upheld the
+principle that no Patriarch had any right to be above the rest, nor to
+be called Universal Bishop. Gregory was a very great man, and the
+justice and wisdom of his management did much to make the Romans look to
+their Pope as the head of affairs even after his death in 604.
+
+[Illustration: BATTLE OF TOURS.]
+
+The Greek Empire sent an officer to govern the extreme South of Italy,
+which, like Rome and Venice, still owned the Emperor; but all the troops
+that could be hired were soon wanted to fight with the Arabs, whose
+false prophet Mahommed had taught them to spread religion with the
+sword. There was no one capable of making head against the Lombards, and
+the Popes only kept them off by treaties and good management; and at
+last, in 741, Pope Gregory III. put himself under the protection of
+Charles Martel, the great Frank captain who had beaten the Mahometans at
+the battle of Tours. Charles Martel was rewarded by being made a Roman
+senator, so was his son Pippin, who was also king of the Franks, and his
+grandson Charles the Great, who had to come often to Italy to protect
+Rome, and at last broke up the Lombard kingdom, was chosen Roman Emperor
+as of old, and crowned by Pope Leo III. in the year 800. From that time
+there was again the Western Empire, commonly called the Holy Roman
+Empire, the Emperor, or Caesar--Kaisar, as the Germans still call
+him--being generally also king of Germany and king of Lombardy. Rome was
+all this time chiefly under the power of the Popes, who grew in course
+of years to be more and more of princes, and at the same time to claim
+more power over the Church, calling themselves Universal Bishops
+contrary to the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. All this, however,
+belongs to the history of Europe in modern times, and will be found in
+the history of Germany, since there were many struggles between the
+Popes and Emperors. For Rome has really had _two_ histories, and those
+who visit Rome and study the wonderful buildings there may dwell on the
+old or the new, the pagan or the Christian, as their minds lead them, or
+else on that strange middle time when idolatry and Christianity were
+struggling together.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Young Folks' History of Rome
+by Charlotte Mary Yonge
+
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