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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Rome, by Mary Agnes Hamilton
+
+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: Ancient Rome
+       The Lives of Great Men
+
+Author: Mary Agnes Hamilton
+
+Release Date: October 3, 2010 [EBook #34025]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ROME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Louise Hope, D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland,
+Håkon Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+
+  [Illustration: RUINS OF A ROMAN TOWN--POMPEII]
+
+
+  [Illustration: ROME AND THE TIBER]
+
+
+
+
+  ANCIENT ROME
+
+  _The Lives of Great Men_
+
+  told by
+
+  MARY AGNES HAMILTON
+
+  Brutus and Tarquin · Lucretia · Mucius · Cloelia · Regulus
+  Marcus Curtius · Coriolanus · Volumnia · Pyrrhus
+  Fabricius · Hamilcar · Hannibal · Flaminius · Fabius
+  Marcellus · The Scipios · The Gracchi · Cato · Marius
+  Drusus · Sulla · Mithridates · Lucullus · Pompeius
+  Crassus · Cicero · Caesar
+
+  OXFORD
+  AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
+
+  London   Edinburgh   Glasgow   Copenhagen
+  New York   Toronto   Melbourne   Cape Town
+  Bombay   Calcutta   Madras   Shanghai
+
+  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+  Humphrey Milford
+
+  1922
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS [added by transcriber]
+
+  I     INTRODUCTORY: The People and City of Rome
+  II    The Early Heroes
+  III   The Great Enemies of Rome
+  IV    The Scipios
+  V     The Gracchi
+  VI    Cato the Censor
+  VII   Caius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla
+  VIII  The New Rome
+  IX    Lucius Licinius Lucullus
+  X     Cnaeus Pompeius
+  XI    Marcus Licinius Crassus
+  XII   Marcus Tullius Cicero
+  XIII  Caius Julius Caesar
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                PAGE
+  Ruins of a Roman Town--Pompeii                                   1
+  Rome and the Tiber                                               2
+  The Hills round Horace’s Farm. From a drawing by E. Lear         5
+  Lar, or Household God                                            7
+  Etruscan Soldier. (British Museum)                              12
+  Roman Legionary. (British Museum)                               13
+  Lacus Curtius. Restored. (From C. Huelsen,
+      _Das Forum Romanum_. Maglioni and Strini, Rome)             17
+  Pyrrhus. (From a photograph by Richter & Co., Naples)           25
+  The Desolation of Carthage To-day. (From a photograph
+      by Prof. J. L. Myres)                                       30
+  Carthaginian Priestess. (From _The Carthage of
+      the Phoenicians_, by permission of Mr. W. Heinemann)        31
+  Pictures from Pompeii of a Mimic Naval Battle               32, 33
+  Great St. Bernard Pass. (From a photograph by F. J. Hall)       37
+  Trasimene. (From a photograph by Alinari)                       40
+  Helmet found on the Field of Cannae. (British Museum)           43
+  A Coin of Victory                                               47
+  Scipio Africanus                                                49
+  Tragic and Comic Masks                                          58
+  Costume. The Roman Toga. (British Museum)                       65
+  Elaborate Lamp. To show the luxury of later times               69
+  The Tomb of a Roman Family, to show simplicity of dress.
+      (From a photograph by Alinari)                              74
+  Ploughing. A Terra-cotta Group.
+      (_Journal of Hellenic Studies_)                             75
+  The Shrine of the Lar, from a House in Pompeii                  77
+  The Aristocrat distributing Largesse; The Fisherman;
+      The Rich Matron; The Shepherdess. (Capitoline Museum)     80-3
+  Trophy of Victory. (Capitoline Museum)                          84
+  Sulla, from a coin                                              89
+  Mithridates, from a coin                                        92
+  A Boar Hunt. (Capitoline Museum)                                96
+  Scene from a tragedy. Terra-cotta relief                        97
+  Cutler’s Forge and Cutler’s Shop. (From the gravestone
+      of L. Cornelius Atimetus, a Roman Cutler)               98, 99
+  Writing Materials. (British Museum)                            101
+  Pompeius                                                       109
+  A Vase in the shape of a Galley                                111
+  A Triumph, from a relief of the Empire.
+      (Capitoline Museum)                                        114
+  A Roman Villa on the Coast                                     116
+  A Thracian Gladiator                                           125
+  Orodes the Parthian                                            128
+  Cicero                                                         131
+  Arpinum, Cicero’s birthplace.
+      (From a photograph by Alinari)                             132
+  Julius Caesar. (From a gem in the British Museum)              142
+  Julius Caesar. (From a bust in the British Museum)             143
+  Submission of Tribes, from a relief. (Capitoline Museum)       150
+  Roman Legionary Helmet found in Britain. (British Museum)      151
+  The Heights of Alesia                                          152
+  Marcus Antonius, from a coin                                   153
+  Cleopatra, from a coin                                         156
+  A Roman Coin celebrating the Murder of Caesar                  157
+  A Cinerary Urn                                                 159
+  A Roman Water-carrier with his Water-skin on his Back          160
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE HILLS ROUND HORACE’S FARM
+  from a drawing by E. Lear]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+The People and City of Rome
+
+
+More than two thousand years ago, at a time when the people in the
+British Isles and in most parts of Western Europe were living the lives
+of savages, occupied in fighting, hunting, and fishing, dwelling in rude
+huts, clad in skins, ignorant of everything that we call civilization,
+Rome was the centre of a world in many ways as civilized as ours is now,
+over which the Roman people ruled. The men who dwelt in this one city,
+built on seven hills on the banks of the river Tiber, gradually
+conquered all Italy. Then they became masters of the lands round the
+Mediterranean Sea: of Northern Africa and of Spain, of Greece, Egypt,
+Asia Minor and the Near East, and of Western Europe. The greatness of
+Rome and of the Roman people does not lie, however, in their conquests.
+In the end their conquests ruined them. It lies in the character, mind,
+and will of the Romans themselves.
+
+In the history of the ancient world the Romans played the part that men
+of our race have played in the history of the modern world. They knew,
+as we claim to know, how to govern: how to govern themselves, and how to
+govern other people. To this day much in our laws and in our system of
+government bears a Roman stamp. They were great soldiers and could
+conquer: they could also hold and keep their conquests and impress the
+Roman stamp on all the peoples over whom they ruled. Their stamp is
+still upon us. Much that belongs to our common life to-day comes to us
+from them: in their day they lived a life not much unlike ours now. And
+in many respects the Roman character was like the British. We can see
+the faults of the Romans, if we cannot see our own; we can also see the
+virtues. We can see, too--looking back at them over the distance of
+time, judging them by their work and by what is left to us of their
+writings--how the mixture of faults in their virtues explains the fall
+as well as the rise of the great power of Rome.
+
+  [Illustration: LAR, or Household God]
+
+The Romans were men of action, not dreamers. They were more interested
+in doing things than in understanding them. They were men of strong will
+and cool mind, who looked out upon the world as they saw it and, for the
+most part, did not wonder much about how and why it came to be there. It
+was there for them to rule. That was what interested them. Ideas they
+mostly got from other people, especially from the Greeks. When they had
+got them they could use them and turn them to something of their own.
+But they were not distracted by puzzling over ideas. Their religion was
+that of a practical people. In the later days of Rome few educated men
+believed in the gods. But all the ceremonies and festivals were
+dedicated to them; and magnificent temples in their honour were erected
+in which their spirits were supposed to dwell. In the old days every
+Roman household had its particular images--the Lares and Penates which
+the head of the family tended and guarded. Connected with this office
+was the sacred authority of the head of the family--the paterfamilias.
+His word was law for the members of the household. And the City of Rome
+stood to its citizens in the place of the paterfamilias. The first laws
+of a Roman’s life were his duty to his father and to the State. They had
+an absolute claim on him for all that he could give. The Roman’s code of
+honour, like the Englishman’s, rested on this sense of duty. A man must
+be worthy of his ancestors and of Rome. His own life was short, and
+without honour nothing; the life of Rome went on.
+
+Courage, devotion to duty, strength of will, a great power of silence,
+a sense of justice rather than any sympathy in his dealings with other
+men: these were the characteristic Roman virtues. The Roman was proud:
+he had a high idea of what was due from himself. This was the groundwork
+out of which his other qualities grew, good and bad. Proud men are not
+apt to understand the weakness of other people or to appreciate virtues
+different from their own. The defects of the Romans were therefore
+hardness, sometimes amounting to cruelty both in action and in
+judgement; lack of imagination; a blindness to the things in life that
+cannot be seen or measured. They were just rather than generous. They
+trampled on the defeated and scorned what they could not understand.
+They worshipped success and cared little for human suffering. About
+this, however, they were honest. Sentimentalism was not a Roman vice,
+nor hypocrisy. When great wealth poured into the city, after the Eastern
+conquests of Lucullus and Pompeius, the simplicity of the old Roman life
+was destroyed and men began to care for nothing but luxury, show, and
+all the visible signs of power. They were quite open about it: they did
+not pretend that they really cared for other things, or talk about the
+‘burden of Empire’.
+
+The heroes of Roman history are men of action. As they pass before us,
+so far as we can see their faces, hear their voices, know their natures
+from the stories recorded by those who wrote them down at the time or
+later, these men stand out in many respects astonishingly like the men
+of our own day, good and bad. Centuries of dust lie over them. Their
+bones are crumbled to the dust. Yet in a sense they live still and move
+among us. Between them and us there lie not only centuries but the great
+tide of ruin that swept the ancient world away: destroyed it so that the
+men who came after had to build the house of civilization, stone by
+stone anew, from the foundation. The Roman world was blotted out by the
+barbarians. For hundreds of years the kind of life men had lived in Rome
+disappeared altogether and the very records of it seemed to be lost.
+Gradually, bit by bit, the story has been pieced together, and the men
+of two thousand years ago stand before us: we see them across the gulf.
+The faces of those belonging to the earliest story of Rome are rather
+dim. But they, too, help us to understand what the Romans were like. We
+learn to know a people from the men it chooses as its heroes; about whom
+fathers tell stories to their children. They show what are the deeds and
+qualities they admire: what kind of men they are trying to be.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The Early Heroes
+
+
+The oldest Roman stories give a description of the coming of the people
+who afterwards inhabited the city, from across the seas. They tell of
+the founding of the first township round the Seven Hills, and of the
+kings, especially of the last seven, who ruled over the people until,
+for their misdeeds, they were driven out and the very name of King
+became hateful in Roman ears. Then there are many tales of the wars
+between the people of Rome and the neighbours dwelling round them on the
+plains of Latium and among the hills of Etruria and Samnium; and the
+fierce battles fought against the Gauls who, from time to time, swept
+down on Italy from the mountains of the north.
+
+These stories do not tell us much that can be considered as actual
+history. But they do help us to understand what the Romans wished to be
+like, by showing us the sort of pictures they held up before themselves.
+
+In later times the Romans learned to admire intensely all that came from
+Greece. The Greeks had been a great ruling people when the Roman State
+hardly existed: and from them much in Roman life and thought was
+borrowed. They liked to think that the first settlers on the Tiber bank
+came from an older finer world than that of the other tribes dwelling in
+Italy. So they told how, after the great siege of Troy by the Greek
+heroes, Aeneas, one of the Trojan leaders, fled from his ruined city
+across the seas, bearing his father and his household gods upon his
+shoulders, and after many adventures, and some time passed in the great
+city of Carthage, on the African coast, came with a few trusty
+companions to the shores of Latium and there founded a new home.
+
+The descendants of Aeneas ruled over their people as kings. In later
+days, however, the Romans, who held that all citizens were free and
+equal, hated the name of King. Rome was a republic: its government was
+carried on by men elected by the citizens from among themselves, and by
+assemblies in which all citizens could take part. The first duty of
+every citizen was to the republic: its claim on him stood before all
+other claims.
+
+The story of the fall of the last king and of Lucius Junius Brutus, one
+of the first Consuls, as the chief magistrates of the new republic were
+called, shows clearly how far the idea of duty to the republic could go
+in the minds of Romans.
+
+
+Brutus and Tarquin
+
+The last King of Rome was Tarquin the Proud. His misrule, and the
+insolent heartlessness of his family, especially of his son Sextus,
+brought about their expulsion from Rome and the end of the kingship.
+Sextus had, by guile, got into the town of Gabii but was at a loss how
+to make himself master there. He managed to send out a messenger to his
+father. It was summer. In the garden where the King was walking,
+poppies--white and purple--were growing in long ranks. Tarquin said
+nothing to the messenger: only as he walked he struck off with his staff
+the heads of the tallest poppies, one after another, without saying a
+word. Sextus, when the messenger came back and described to him his
+father’s action, understood. Pitilessly he put the leading men of Gabii
+to the sword.
+
+It was the misdeeds of this Sextus that brought the proud house of
+Tarquin to the ground. He tried to force his brutal love on the fair
+Lucretia, the wife of his cousin Collatinus, and so shamed her that,
+after telling her husband how she had been wronged, Lucretia killed
+herself before his eyes and those of his friend Brutus. Stirred to
+deepest wrath, Collatinus and Brutus then swore a great oath to drive
+the house of Tarquin from Rome and henceforth allow no king to rule over
+the free people of the city. When they had told their fellow citizens
+how Sextus had wronged Lucretia, a daughter of one of the proudest
+families in the city, and reminded them of the oppression and injustice
+they had all suffered at the hands of his family, the leading men of
+Rome rose up and drove the Tarquins out. The city was proclaimed for
+ever a republic to be ruled not by any one man but by the will and for
+the good of all free men who dwelt in it. Some there were, however, who
+took the side of Tarquin and tried to bring him back. Among them were
+the two sons of Brutus. They were captured and brought up for judgement,
+and like the others condemned to death. Brutus was the judge. Though
+they were his sons and he loved them he condemned them unflinchingly.
+Without any sign of feeling he saw them go to their death. An action for
+which he would have sentenced another man seemed to him no less wrong
+when committed by his own children.
+
+
+  _The Death of Lucretia_
+
+  They tried to soothe her grief, laying the blame, not on the
+  unwilling victim, but on the perpetrator of the offence. ‘It is
+  the mind,’ they said, ‘not the body that sins. Where there is no
+  intention, there is no fault,’ ‘It is for you,’ she replied, ‘to
+  consider the punishment that is his due; I acquit myself of guilt,
+  but I do not free myself from the penalty; no woman who lives
+  after her honour is lost shall appeal to the example of Lucretia,’
+  Then she took a knife which she had hidden under her dress,
+  plunged it into her heart, and dropping down soon expired. Her
+  husband and father made the solemn invocation of the dead.
+
+  While the others were occupied in mourning, Brutus drew the knife
+  from the wound, held it still reeking before him, and exclaimed,
+  ‘I swear by this blood, pure and undefiled before the prince’s
+  outrage, and I call you, gods, to witness, that I will punish
+  Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, his impious wife, and all his children
+  with fire and sword to the utmost of my power, and that I will not
+  allow them or any other to rule in Rome.’ After this, he handed
+  the knife to Collatinus, next to Lucretius and Valerius, all
+  amazed at Brutus and perplexed to account for his new spirit of
+  authority. They took the oath as he directed and, changing wholly
+  from grief to anger, they obeyed his summons to follow him and
+  make an immediate end of the royal power.
+
+  The body of Lucretia was brought from her house and carried to the
+  Forum, the people thronging round, as was natural, in wonder at
+  this strange and cruel sight, and loud in condemning the crime of
+  Tarquinius. They were deeply moved by the father’s sorrow, and
+  still more by the words of Brutus, who rebuked their tears and
+  idle laments, urging them to act like men and Romans by taking up
+  arms against the common enemy.
+
+    Livy, i. 58. 9-59. 4.
+
+
+  [Illustration: ETRUSCAN SOLDIER
+  from a Brit. Mus. bronze]
+
+Mucius and Cloelia
+
+The same spirit was shown by Caius Mucius and the maiden Cloelia and
+many others in the long and bitter wars that followed. Tarquin found
+refuge with Lars Porsena, King of the Etruscans, who pretended to be
+eager to restore him while he really wanted to submit the Roman people
+to his own rule. Porsena laid siege to the city and the people were
+reduced to the hardest straits. A young man named Caius Mucius
+determined to kill Lars Porsena. He succeeded in passing through the
+enemy’s lines and made his way into their camp. There he saw a man clad
+in purple whom he took to be Lars Porsena. In his heart he plunged the
+dagger he had hidden under the folds of his toga. The man fell dead. But
+he was not the King. Mucius was carried before Lars and to him he said,
+‘I am a Roman, my name Caius Mucius. There are in Rome hundreds of young
+men resolved, as I was, to take your life or perish in the attempt. You
+may slay me but you cannot escape them all.’ Porsena demanded the names
+of the others: Mucius refused to speak. When Porsena said he would
+compel him to speak by torture Mucius merely smiled. On the altar a
+flame was burning. To prove to the ally of Tarquin of what stuff the
+young men of Rome were made, he thrust his right arm into the flame and
+held it so without flinching until the flesh was charred away. Such, his
+action showed the King, was the spirit of Rome.
+
+
+  [Illustration: ROMAN LEGIONARY
+  from a Brit. Mus. bronze]
+
+  _Mucius: The Spirit of Rome_
+
+  Mucius was escaping through the scared throng, that fell away
+  before his bloody dagger, when, summoned by the shouts, the King’s
+  guards seized him and dragged him back. Standing helpless before
+  the throne, but even in such desperate position more formidable
+  than afraid, he cried out, ‘I am a Roman citizen; my name is Caius
+  Mucius. My purpose was to kill an enemy of my country; I have as
+  much courage to die as I had to slay; a Roman should be ready for
+  great deeds and great suffering. Nor have I alone been emboldened
+  to strike this blow; behind me is a long line of comrades who seek
+  the same honour. Therefore, if you choose, prepare for a struggle
+  in which you will fight for your life every hour of the day and
+  have the sword of an enemy at your palace door. Such is the war
+  that we, the youth of Rome, proclaim against you. You need not
+  fear armies and battles; by yourself you will meet us one by one.’
+  When the King, enraged and terrified, was threatening to have him
+  thrown into the flames unless he explained the hints of
+  assassination thus vaguely uttered, he replied, ‘See how worthless
+  the body is to those whose gaze is fixed on glory.’ With these
+  words he laid his right hand on a brazier already lighted for the
+  sacrifice and let it burn, too resolute, as it seemed, to feel
+  pain. Then Porsena, astounded at the sight, ordered Mucius to be
+  removed from the altar and exclaimed, ‘Begone, your own desperate
+  enemy more than mine. I would wish well to your valour, if that
+  valour was on the side of my country. As it is, I send you hence
+  unharmed and free from the penalties of war.’
+
+    Livy, ii. 12. 8-14.
+
+Later in the same war the Romans were compelled to give hostages,
+twenty-four men and maidens. Cloelia, a highborn maiden sent among them,
+escaped at night and on horseback swam across the foaming Tiber to Rome.
+But since she had been given as a hostage and faith once given was
+sacred, the Roman leaders sent her back.
+
+
+  _Cloelia’s Heroism_
+
+  This reward granted to the heroism of Mucius inspired women also
+  with ambition to win honour from the people. The maiden Cloelia,
+  one of the hostages, escaped the sentries of the Etruscan camp,
+  which had been pitched near the Tiber, and amid a shower of
+  missiles swam across the river, leading a band of maidens whom she
+  brought back safe to their families in Rome. When Porsena heard of
+  it, he was at first enraged, and sent envoys to the city with a
+  demand for the return of his hostage Cloelia; he made no great
+  account of the others. Afterwards, his anger being changed to
+  admiration, he said that her exploit surpassed anything done by
+  Horatius or Mucius, and declared that he would consider the treaty
+  broken if the hostage was not surrendered, but that if she was, he
+  would send her back unharmed to her people. Faith was kept on both
+  sides; the Romans returned the guarantee of peace in accordance
+  with the terms of the treaty, and the King not only protected but
+  honoured the heroine, making her a present of half the hostages
+  and bidding her choose as she pleased. The story is that when they
+  were brought before her, she picked out the youngest, a choice at
+  once creditable to her modesty and approved by the unanimous wish
+  of the rest that those whose age made them most helpless should be
+  liberated first. After the restoration of peace the Romans
+  recognized this unexampled heroism in a woman with the honour,
+  also unexampled, of an equestrian statue. It was placed at the top
+  of the Sacred Way, a maiden sitting on a horse.
+
+    Livy, ii. 13. 6-11.
+
+This same high temper and unflinching sense of honour was shown two
+hundred years later in an even more splendid way by Atilius Regulus.
+
+
+Regulus
+
+In the first war against Carthage (255 B.C.) Regulus, a Roman general,
+was heavily defeated and taken prisoner with a large part of his army.
+Shortly afterwards the Roman fleet was destroyed by a terrible storm.
+Nevertheless, the events of the next year’s campaign went against the
+Carthaginians. They determined to offer peace and for this purpose
+sent an embassy to Rome. With this embassy Regulus was sent, on the
+understanding that if he failed to induce his countrymen to make peace
+and to agree to an exchange of prisoners he would return to Carthage,
+where, as he well knew, a terrible fate certainly awaited him.
+Nevertheless, despite the appeals of his wife and children, Regulus
+urged his countrymen not to make peace. His body might belong to the
+Carthaginians who had captured it, but his spirit was Roman and no Roman
+could urge his countrymen to accept defeat and give up fighting until
+they had won. True to his vow, he went back to Carthage and there he was
+put to dreadful tortures. His eyelids were cut off and he was then
+exposed to the full glare of the sun. But the story of his devotion
+remained strong in the minds of his countrymen, and Horace, one of their
+great poets, later put it into lines of imperishable verse.
+
+
+  _The Honour of Regulus_
+
+  Such a downfall had the prescient soul of Regulus feared, when he
+  refused assent to dishonourable terms and maintained that the
+  precedent would be fatal in time to come if the prisoners did not
+  die unpitied. ‘I have seen’, he said, ‘our eagles hanging on
+  Carthaginian shrines, and weapons of our soldiers surrendered
+  without bloodshed; I have seen arms bound behind the back of the
+  free, and gates thrown open in security, and lands tilled that our
+  armies had wasted. Think you that the soldier, ransomed with gold,
+  will return the braver? You do but add loss to disgrace. Wool,
+  tinctured by dye, never regains its old purity; nor does true
+  courage, if once it is lost, deign to be restored to the degraded.
+  If the stag fights after being freed from the meshes of the net,
+  he will be brave who has surrendered to a treacherous foe, and he
+  will crush the Carthaginians in a second fight who without
+  resentment has felt the thongs binding his arms, and has feared
+  death. Such a man, all ignorant of the way to win a soldier’s
+  life, has confused peace and war. Oh lost honour! Oh mighty
+  Carthage, exalted by the shameful downfall of Italy!’ It is said
+  that he put from him the lips of his virtuous wife and his little
+  children, a free citizen no longer, and with grim resolution
+  turned his eyes to the ground, till with the weight of advice
+  never given by any before him he strengthened the wavering purpose
+  of the Fathers, and amid the mourning of his friends hurried into
+  a noble exile. Yet, though he knew what the barbarian tormentor
+  had in store for him, he set aside opposing kinsmen and people
+  that would delay his return as quietly as if he were leaving the
+  business of some client’s suit at last decided, and were
+  journeying to his estate in Venefrum or to Tarentum that the
+  Spartan built.
+
+    Horace, _Od._ iii. 5. 13-56.
+
+
+Marcus Curtius
+
+What were Rome’s most precious possessions? To this question a splendid
+answer was given by Marcus Curtius. In the midst of the Forum--the
+market-place in the heart of the city where public business was
+transacted and men met daily to discuss politics and listen to
+speeches--the citizens found one morning that a yawning gulf had opened.
+This, so the priests declared, would not close until the most precious
+thing that Rome possessed had been thrown into it. Then the republic
+would be safe and everlasting. For a time men puzzled and pondered over
+the meaning of this dark saying. Marcus Curtius, a youth who had covered
+himself with honour in many battles, solved the riddle. Brave men, he
+said, had made Rome great: the city had nothing so precious. Clad in
+full armour and mounted on his war-horse he leaped into the gulf. It
+closed over him at once, nor ever opened again.
+
+
+  _The Devotion of Marcus Curtius_
+
+  During the same year, as the story goes, a cavern of measureless
+  depth was opened in the middle of the Forum, either from the shock
+  of an earthquake or from some other hidden force; and though all
+  did their best by throwing soil into it, the gulf could not be
+  filled up till, warned by the gods, the people began to inquire
+  what was Rome’s greatest treasure. For that treasure, so the
+  prophets declared, must be offered in it, if the Roman
+  commonwealth was to be safe and lasting. Whereupon Marcus Curtius,
+  a warrior renowned in war, rebuked them for doubting whether the
+  Romans had any greater blessing than arms and valour. Amid a
+  general silence he devoted himself, looking to the Capitol and the
+  temples of the immortal gods that overhang the Forum, and
+  stretching out his hands, at one time to the sky, at another to
+  the yawning chasm that reached to the world below. Then, fully
+  armed and seated on a horse splendidly caparisoned, he plunged
+  into its depths, while a crowd of men and women showered corn and
+  other offerings after him. Thus we may suppose that the Curtian
+  Lake got its name from him, and not from Curtius Mettus, in old
+  time the famous soldier of Titus Tatius.
+
+    Livy, vii. 6.
+
+  [Illustration: LACUS CURTIUS
+  Restored]
+
+In Mucius Scaevola, in Regulus, in Marcus Curtius, and many others the
+fine qualities of the old Roman temper, pride, courage, will, devotion,
+a love of their country that went beyond all other feelings, even unto
+death, stand out. One can see the main lines of the character that made
+the Romans what they afterwards became--the conquerors and law-givers
+first of a single city, Rome, then of the whole plain of Latium in which
+that city stood: then, after driving back barbarian invaders from the
+north and Greek invaders from the south, of all Italy: later of the
+known world.
+
+
+Coriolanus
+
+To understand this character better one may look at it from another
+angle, studying a man in whom these qualities were spoiled by the faults
+that belong to them. Courage may become cruelty: pride fall into
+arrogance: high contempt for others will grow to selfishness and
+hardness; even a high devotion to one’s country may be spoiled if it
+comes to mean a devotion to one’s own idea of what that country should
+be like and how it should treat oneself. It may then be mere
+selfishness. Many men love their country not as it is but as they think
+it ought to be. This may be a good and helpful feeling if what they
+think it ought to be depends not on their own private wishes and welfare
+only, but on that of the people as a whole. A love of country of this
+kind makes men strive incessantly to make it better. But some Romans
+forgot the welfare of the people as a whole. The men belonging to the
+old families, men who claimed to be descended from the early settlers,
+who called themselves ‘patricians’, that is, the fathers of the State,
+were apt to consider that what they thought must be so: that they alone
+knew what was right and good. The welfare of the State depended on them.
+They were the leaders in the army and in the government. They had no
+patience with those who said that they should not settle everything in
+Rome, that their idea of what was right and patriotic was not the end of
+the matter; men who said that Rome was not this class or that but the
+whole people. The city was growing fast; new settlers had come in, men
+not counted as citizens, but men whose happiness and comfort depended on
+the way the State treated them. These people, the ‘plebs’ as they were
+called, were despised by many patricians. They looked upon them not as
+Romans, but as creatures who could be made into soldiers when the city
+needed soldiers, but at other times should keep quiet.
+
+The faults and virtues of the patricians--and nearly all the heroes of
+Roman story belong to patrician families--are well shown in the life of
+Caius Marcius, called Coriolanus in honour of his victory outside the
+town of Corioli.
+
+
+  _The Capture of Corioli_
+
+  One of the leading men in the camp was C. Marcius, who afterwards
+  received the name of Coriolanus, a youth of equal vigour in
+  counsel and in action. The Roman army was besieging Corioli and,
+  occupied with its people shut up behind their walls, had no fear
+  of attack from without, when the Volscian troops from Antium swept
+  down upon it, and at the same time the enemy sallied out of the
+  town. Marcius happened to be on duty, and with some picked troops
+  not only repelled the sally, but fearlessly rushed in through the
+  open gate and, after slaughtering the enemy in the neighbourhood,
+  chanced to come across some lighted brands and flung them on to
+  the buildings that adjoined the wall. Then the cries of the
+  townsmen, mingled with the shrieks of women and children that
+  quickly arose, as usual, when the alarm was given, encouraged the
+  Romans and dismayed the Volscians, inasmuch as they found that the
+  city which they had come to help was in the hands of the enemy.
+  Thus the Volscians from Antium were routed and Corioli was taken.
+
+    Livy, ii. 33. 5-9.
+
+Caius Marcius belonged to one of the oldest and proudest families in the
+Republic. A member of this family had been one of the Seven Kings. His
+father died when Caius was but a boy and he was left in the charge of
+his mother Volumnia. Volumnia was a woman of noble character and fine
+mind. Her house was admirably ordered: everything in it was beautiful
+and yet simple. She brought up her son well: he excelled in all manly
+exercises, was of a courage that nothing could shake, scorned idleness,
+luxury, and wealth: believed that the one life for a Roman was a life of
+service to the death. But Volumnia did not succeed, as a father might
+have done, in curbing the faults of the lad’s character. Caius grew up
+headstrong, obstinate, and excessively proud. Personally highly gifted
+in mind and body, he was disposed to look down upon others less firm and
+resolute. He set, for himself, a high standard of uprightness and
+courage, and cared nothing for what other people thought of him. Among
+the youths with whom he grew up he was the natural leader: his will
+brooked no contradiction. Few dared to criticize or oppose him. Those
+less firm in mind, less brave in action, less indifferent to the opinion
+of others, he despised. Any one who failed in courage, endurance, or
+devotion he condemned without sympathy.
+
+When but a lad he won, for bravery in battle, the crown of oak leaves
+given to soldiers who saved the life of a comrade in action. In all the
+fighting of the hard years in which Rome was defending itself against
+the other Italian peoples, Marcius was ever to the fore. He shrank from
+no fatigue, no danger: he was always in the hottest of the fight: first
+as a simple soldier, then as a general. In the field his soldiers adored
+him because he shared all their hardships and always led them to
+victory. Always, too, he refused to take any reward in money or riches.
+But when these same soldiers got back to Rome Coriolanus had no sympathy
+with them. Fighting was life to him: he did not see why it should not
+satisfy every one or understand the hardships of the common man whose
+wife and children were left behind in wretched poverty. There were
+indeed many things Coriolanus did not see. His harsh mind condemned
+without understanding the complaints of the poor. To him it seemed that
+they thought of themselves, instead of thinking about Rome. He did not
+realize that their hard lot compelled them to do so. His wealth and
+birth made him free, but they were not free.
+
+All the land belonged to the patricians. Wars made them richer because
+the things their land produced fetched high prices, but the poor family
+starved while the father was away at the wars, unable to earn, and they
+had no money with which to purchase things. They had to pay taxes--and
+wars always mean heavy taxes. They fell into debt and, under the harsh
+Roman law, a debtor could be first imprisoned and then, unless some one
+helped him by paying off what he owed, sold as a slave. Even a man
+serving in the army might have his house and all the poor household
+goods he had left at home seized because he or his wife had got into
+debt. This harsh law finally produced a mutiny. The whole army marched
+out of Rome and, taking up a position on the Sacred Mount outside,
+stayed there until the Senate (this was the ruling body of the State, at
+the time composed only of patricians) agreed first to change the harsh
+laws about debt, and second to give to the poorer people a body of men
+to look after their interests. These were the Tribunes. The appointment
+of these tribunes angered many patricians, and especially Coriolanus.
+Not understanding the sufferings of the people--he had always been far
+removed himself from any such difficulties, belonging as he did to a
+family of wealth and dignity--he thought that their discontents were
+created by talk and idleness. And since there were men in Rome who got a
+cheap popularity by perpetually reminding the people of their wrongs, he
+sometimes seemed to be right. The tribunes he regarded as noxious
+busybodies, whose loose talk was dividing Rome into two parties. In fact
+there were two parties. Coriolanus could not see that the real cause of
+the division was not what the tribunes said but what the people
+suffered. He could see no right but his own, and all his powerful will
+was set to driving that right through. To yield seemed to him
+pusillanimous. There was bound to be a fierce struggle and it soon came.
+Coriolanus made bitter scornful speeches, which enraged the people. They
+smarted under his biting words and forgot all his great deeds. He became
+more and more unpopular. This unpopularity only made him despise the
+people, who judged men by words and not by deeds. At last the tribunes
+accused him of trying to prevent their receiving the corn that had been
+sent to them by the city of Syracuse and of aiming at making himself
+ruler in the city. Finally they demanded that he should be banished.
+Coriolanus scorned to defend himself. Instead of that he attacked the
+tribunes and abused the people in terms of cruel scorn and contempt.
+When the vote banishing him was carried he turned on them, declaring
+that they made him despise not only them but Rome. He banished them:
+there was a world elsewhere.
+
+But though Coriolanus had always declared that he cared more for Rome
+than for anything and desired not his own greatness but that of the city
+and now pretended to scorn the people and the sentence they had passed
+upon him, his actions showed how far his bitterness had eaten into his
+own soul. He turned his back on Rome and betook himself to the camp of
+Tullus Aufidius, the leader of the people of Antium, then engaged in war
+against the Republic, and prepared to assist him in order to punish the
+ungrateful Romans.
+
+From this dreadful action he was saved by his mother Volumnia. Her
+patriotism was truer and more unselfish than his. With his wife and his
+young children she came to the camp, clad in the garb of deepest
+mourning, dust scattered upon her grey hairs, and went on her knees to
+her son to implore him not to dishonour himself by fighting against his
+country. At last the true nobleness in the soul of Coriolanus made its
+way through the anger and bitterness that had darkened it: he acceded to
+Volumnia’s prayers, though he well knew what the price for himself would
+be. Rome was saved from a great danger, since the city had no general to
+equal Coriolanus. He himself, however, was assassinated by the orders of
+Aufidius, who soon afterwards was badly defeated in the field.
+Coriolanus said to his mother, when she at last persuaded him to yield,
+that she had won a noble victory for Rome, but one that was fatal to her
+son. He was right. His very words showed that in some part of his mind
+he realized how wrong and really unpatriotic his action had been; in
+joining with the enemies of Rome he had shown clearly that what he loved
+was not his country but his own pride. In the end, thanks to Volumnia,
+he bent his head. The lesson to the Romans was a clear one: and in the
+years that followed it was not forgotten. Coriolanus was remembered as a
+hero, but also as a warning. When real danger threatened Rome the people
+stood unshaken from without and from within. In the Roman camp there
+were never any traitors.
+
+
+  _The Mother’s Appeal_
+
+  Distracted by the sight of his mother, Coriolanus leapt wildly
+  from his seat and was advancing to embrace her when, turning from
+  supplication to anger, she exclaimed, ‘Before I allow your
+  embrace, let me know whether I have come to an enemy or a son,
+  whether I am a prisoner or a mother in your camp. Has a long life
+  and helpless old age brought me to such a pass that I see you,
+  first as an exile, and afterwards as an enemy? Could you bear to
+  devastate this land that bore and nurtured you? However hostile
+  and threatening the spirit in which you came, did not your anger
+  fail when you crossed its border? When Rome was in sight, did you
+  not reflect, “Inside those walls are my home and its gods, my
+  mother, wife, and children?” If I had not been a mother, as it
+  seems, Rome would not have been besieged; if I had not a son,
+  I should have died free in a free country. But as for me, I can no
+  longer suffer anything that will add to my wretchedness or to your
+  disgrace and, wretched though I am, it will not be for long. These
+  younger ones have the claim upon you, for, if you persist, you
+  will bring them to a premature death or to a life of slavery.’
+  Then his wife and children embraced him, and the wailing that
+  arose from all the throng of women, and lamentations for
+  themselves and their country, at length broke his resolution. He
+  embraced them and sent them away, and at once withdrew his forces
+  from the city.
+
+    Livy, ii. 40. 5-10.
+
+
+  _A Happy Victory_
+
+  _Coriolanus._                 O, mother, mother!
+  What have you done? Behold! the heavens do ope,
+  The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
+  They laugh at. O my mother! mother! O!
+  You have won a happy victory to Rome;
+  But, for your son, believe it, O! believe it,
+  Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d,
+  If not most mortal to him. But let it come.
+  Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars,
+  I’ll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius,
+  Were you in my stead, would you have heard
+  A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius?
+
+  _Auf._ I was mov’d withal.
+
+  _Cor._                I dare be sworn you were:
+  And, sir, it is no little thing to make
+  Mine eyes to sweat compassion. But, good sir,
+  What peace you’ll make, advise me: for my part,
+  I’ll not to Rome, I’ll back with you; and pray you,
+  Stand to me in this cause.
+
+    Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_, V. iii.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The Great Enemies of Rome
+
+
+The early history of Rome is a history of war. Its heroes are soldiers.
+When the city was founded and throughout its early life Italy was
+divided among different peoples, ruling over different parts of the
+country. With these peoples--the Latins, the Etruscans, the Volscians,
+the Samnites--the Romans fought. War with one or other of them was
+always going on. Its fortune varied, but in the end the Roman spirit and
+the Roman organization told. One by one the other Italian tribes
+submitted and accepted Roman overlordship. This was a long and slow
+business, extending over hundreds of years. While it was still going on
+the Romans had to meet another danger: the danger of invasion from
+without. Again and again the Gauls swept down upon Italy from the north.
+Once (390) they actually occupied parts of the city of Rome itself.
+After that they were finally driven out and defeated by Camillus. Later,
+though they came again across the northern hills, they were always
+beaten and driven back. When on the march, their armies were dangerous;
+but the Gauls had no plan of permanent conquest: after a defeat, they
+retired to their northern plains and hills.
+
+Within the space of a hundred years, in the third century before the
+birth of Christ, the Romans had to meet two invaders of a very different
+and far more dangerous kind: invaders with a settled plan of conquest,
+who came against them in order to subdue and rule Rome and Italy. These
+were Pyrrhus and Hannibal. Had either of them succeeded, the whole
+history of Rome and of the world might have been different. In a very
+real sense Pyrrhus and Hannibal are heroes in the story of Rome. They
+were the greatest enemies the Roman people ever had to meet. They were
+defeated because of qualities in the Roman people as a whole, rather
+than by the genius of any single general. No single Roman leader at the
+time was a first-rate commander like Pyrrhus, still less a genius like
+Hannibal, a much greater man than he. It is during their struggle with
+Pyrrhus, in the war with Carthage that followed Pyrrhus’s defeat, and in
+the long war with Hannibal that ended in his defeat and the destruction
+of Carthage as a great power that we can see the Roman character at its
+best. We can appreciate it and understand it only by understanding the
+enemies whom it met and broke.
+
+
+Pyrrhus
+
+At the time of his attack upon Italy Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was the
+most brilliant soldier of his day: and his ambition was to rule, like
+Alexander, over a world greater than that of his own Greek kingdom. From
+babyhood he breathed and grew up amid storm and adventure, all his life
+he was most at home in camps and on the battlefield. His father was
+killed in battle when Pyrrhus was but five years old: he himself was
+only saved from death by a faithful slave who carried him to the house
+of the King of the Illyrians and laid him at his feet. The baby Pyrrhus
+clasped the knees of the monarch who, looking into his face, could not
+resist the appeal of the child’s eyes, but kept him safe till he was
+twelve years old and then helped to put him on his father’s throne.
+Though only a boy, Pyrrhus held it for five years. He was driven out,
+but later he recovered his kingdom again. As he grew up he studied the
+art of war constantly and wrote a handbook on tactics. As Plutarch, who
+wrote his life, puts it, ‘he was persuaded that neither to annoy others
+nor be annoyed by them was a life insufferably languishing and tedious’.
+Pyrrhus’s appearance expressed the strong, generous simplicity and
+directness of his character and his singleness of aim. The most
+remarkable feature in his face was his mouth, for his front teeth were
+formed of a continuous piece of bone, marked only with small lines
+resembling the divisions of a row of teeth. Fear was absolutely unknown
+to him. His weakness was that he did not understand men: though a
+brilliant soldier he knew nothing about government. He was a soldier
+only. He could win battles but not rule men.
+
+  [Illustration: PYRRHUS]
+
+Pyrrhus came to Italy on the invitation of the people of Tarentum.
+Tarentum was a wealthy and flourishing city in the south. Originally a
+Greek settlement, its people were famous for the luxury and elegance of
+their houses and lives, and scorned the rude, hardy, and simple Romans
+as untutored barbarians. When some Roman ships appeared in their harbour
+they were sunk by the Tarentines, who thought that as the Romans were at
+that time busy--the Gauls had swept down from the north and they were
+engaged with a war against the Samnites--Tarentum was safe from them.
+But the Romans at once declared war (281). The Tarentines took fright:
+they had no mind for fighting themselves and looked about for some one
+who would do it for them. Thus they called to Pyrrhus to save the Greeks
+in Italy. Pyrrhus saw in their appeal his chance of realizing what for
+the great Alexander had remained a dream--an empire in the West. He took
+sail at once. He was indeed so eager that he started in mid-winter
+despite the storms, and lost part of his fleet on the way. Nevertheless
+he brought a great army with him: Macedonian foot soldiers, then
+considered the best in the world, horsemen, archers, and slingers; and
+elephants, never before seen in Italy. In Tarentum he found nothing
+ready. His first task was to make the idle, luxurious city into a camp.
+The inhabitants, who cared for nothing but feasting, drinking, and
+games, did not like this, but it was too late to be sorry. Pyrrhus had
+come, and since no other towns in Italy gave any sign of joining him, he
+had to make the most of Tarentum. The Tarentines, who had been used to
+having all their fighting done for them by slaves, now had to go into
+training themselves.
+
+In the spring the Roman army took the field and marched south against
+the invader. When Pyrrhus surveyed from a hill the Roman camp and line
+of battle he exclaimed in surprise: ‘These are no barbarians!’ In the
+end he won a victory at Heraclea (280), partly by reason of the panic
+caused among the Roman soldiers by the elephants--they had never seen
+such beasts before--but the victory was a very expensive one. Pyrrhus’s
+own losses were so heavy that he said, ‘One more victory like this and I
+shall be ruined.’ As he walked over the field at night and saw the Roman
+dead, all their wounds in front, lying where they had fallen in their
+own lines, he cried: ‘Had I been king of these people I should have
+conquered the world.’
+
+A deep impression was made on him by the envoy Fabricius. Plutarch tells
+the story:
+
+
+  _Pyrrhus and Fabricius_
+
+  Presently envoys came to negotiate about the fate of the
+  prisoners, and among them Gaius Fabricius, who was famed among the
+  Romans, as Cineas told the King, for uprightness and military
+  talent, and for extreme poverty as well. Therefore Pyrrhus
+  received him kindly, apart from the rest, and urged him to accept
+  a present, of course not corruptly, but as a so-called token of
+  friendship and intimacy. When Fabricius refused, the King did no
+  more for the moment, but next day, wishing to try his nerves as he
+  had never seen an elephant, he had the largest of these beasts put
+  behind a curtain close to them as they conversed. This was done,
+  and at a signal the curtain was drawn aside, and the beast
+  suddenly raised its trunk and held it over the head of Fabricius,
+  uttering a harsh and terrifying cry. Undisturbed, he turned round
+  and, smiling, said to Pyrrhus, ‘Yesterday your gold did not move
+  me, nor does your elephant to-day.’
+
+  At dinner all sorts of subjects were discussed, and as a great
+  deal was said about Greece and its philosophers, Cineas happened
+  to mention Epicurus and explained the doctrines of his disciples
+  about the gods and service to the state and the chief end of life.
+  This last, as he said, they identified with pleasure, while they
+  avoided service to the state as interrupting and marring their
+  happiness, and banished the gods far away from love and anger and
+  care for mankind to an untroubled life of ceaseless enjoyment.
+  Before he had finished, Fabricius interrupted him and said, ‘By
+  Hercules, I hope that Pyrrhus and the Samnites will hold these
+  doctrines as long as they are at war with us.’
+
+  This filled Pyrrhus with such admiration of his high spirit and
+  character that he was more anxious than before to be on terms of
+  friendship instead of hostility with the Romans, and he privately
+  urged Fabricius to arrange a peace and to take service with him
+  and live as the first of all his comrades and generals. It is said
+  that he quietly replied, ‘O king, you would gain nothing; for
+  these very men who now honour and admire you will prefer my rule
+  to yours if they once get to know me.’ Such were his words; and
+  Pyrrhus did not receive them with anger or in a spirit of offended
+  majesty, but he actually told his friends of the nobility of
+  Fabricius and gave him sole charge of the prisoners on the
+  understanding that, if the Senate refused the peace, they should
+  be sent back after greeting their friends and keeping the festival
+  of Saturn. As it happened, they were sent back after the festival,
+  the Senate ordaining the penalty of death for anyone who stayed
+  behind.
+
+    Plutarch, xxx. 20.
+
+He was yet more deeply impressed by the strength of the Roman character
+a little later. When he found that none of the Latins were going to join
+him Pyrrhus sent an ambassador to the Senate, offering terms of peace.
+This ambassador was loaded with costly presents for the leading Romans
+and their wives. All these gifts were refused. Then Pyrrhus’s envoy came
+before the Senate, to see whether eloquence could not do what bribes had
+failed to effect. He had been a pupil of the great Demosthenes, the most
+wonderful orator of Greece, and his golden words moved many of the
+senators; they thought it would be wise to make terms. But old Appius
+Claudius, one of the most distinguished men in Rome, the builder of the
+great military road known as the Appian way, had been carried into the
+Senate House by his sons and servants, for he was very old and nearly
+blind. He now rose to his feet and his speech made these senators
+ashamed of themselves. ‘Hitherto’, he cried, ‘I have regarded my
+blindness as a misfortune; but now, Romans, I wish I had been deaf as
+well as blind, for then I should not have heard these shameful counsels.
+Who is there who will not despise you and think you an easy conquest, if
+Pyrrhus not only escapes unconquered but gains Tarentum as a reward for
+insulting the Romans?’ His words stirred the senators deeply. They voted
+as one man to continue the war. Pyrrhus’s ambassador was told to tell
+his master that the Romans could not treat so long as there was an enemy
+on Italian soil. He told Pyrrhus that the Senate seemed to him an
+assembly of kings.
+
+The firm mind of the Romans did not change when Pyrrhus marched north.
+Though he got within forty miles of the city there was no panic: only a
+rush of men to join the armies standing outside the walls to guard it.
+He had to retire south again. Even after another victory in the next
+campaign--at Asculum (279)--Rome was not shaken: the Italians stood
+firm. Pyrrhus knew that to win battles was not enough; he could not
+conquer Rome unless he could shake the solid resistance of a whole
+people. This he could not do. Nor did he know how to appeal to the
+Italians and unite them against Rome. To the Italians Pyrrhus was a
+foreigner, called in by the Tarentine Greeks whom they rightly despised.
+Against him they rallied round Rome. And the Romans never wavered for an
+instant. At the darkest hour there had been no break in the will of the
+whole people. Pyrrhus saw this: he saw that the Romans would last him
+out. After Asculum he crossed to Sicily and defeated the Carthaginians,
+the allies of Rome who were gradually capturing the island from
+Agathocles the king. But though he soon overran a large part of this
+island, the Greeks in Sicily liked his iron rule no better than the
+Greeks of Tarentum had done. He returned to Italy, leaving the great
+fortress of Lilybaeum still in Carthaginian hands, crying as he sailed
+away, ‘What a battleground for Romans and Carthaginians I am leaving.’
+In Italy he fought one more big battle, at Beneventum (275); but it was
+a defeat. His hopes were ended. He had won glory for himself, but he
+had, and this he knew, helped to unite Italy under Rome; and, as he saw,
+to prepare the way for a great struggle between Rome and Carthage.
+Pyrrhus saw, sooner than any Roman, the great struggle coming in which
+the fate of Rome was to be decided. He had shown the Romans the way: had
+made their strength visible to them and turned their eyes beyond Italy,
+across the seas.
+
+
+Carthage
+
+The power of Carthage, to the men of the age of Pyrrhus, seemed
+infinitely greater than that of Rome. Rome at that time was but a single
+city whose rule did not extend even over the whole of Italy. Carthage
+was the head of an empire, built up on a trade which spread its name
+over the whole of the known world. The Punic or Phoenician people, as
+the ruling race in Carthage was called because of their dark skins, came
+from the East. Their earliest homes were in Arabia and Syria. It was
+from Tyre and Sidon, great and rich towns when Rome was hardly a
+village, that the traders came and settled in North Africa. Their ships,
+laden with woven stuffs in silk and cotton, dyed in rich colours, with
+perfumes and spices, ivory and gold, ornaments and implements in metal,
+sailed all the navigable seas, and brought home from distant places the
+goods and raw materials of different lands. At a time when the Romans
+had hardly begun to sail the seas at all, their vessels passed out of
+the Mediterranean, through the Straits and up to the little-known lands
+of the Atlantic. They brought home tin from distant Cornwall, silver
+from Spain, iron from Elba, copper from Cyprus. Carthage itself was a
+magnificent city and the richest in the world. Its citizens lived in
+wealth and idleness on the labour of others. Trade supplied them with
+riches: the hardy tribes of Africa, Numidians and Libyans, were their
+slaves, manned their fleets and armies. Their navy ruled the seas. They
+had settlements in Spain; Corsica and Sardinia were owned by Carthage;
+all the west of Sicily was in their hands.
+
+  [Illustration: THE DESOLATION OF CARTHAGE TO-DAY]
+
+In Sicily the Carthaginians and the Romans first met. The eastern part
+of the island was ruled by King Hiero of Syracuse; but raids on it were
+constantly made by the people of Messina. After one of these Hiero
+attacked Messina. His force was driven off by the Carthaginians who then
+occupied the citadel. The people of the town looked round for assistance
+and finally appealed to Rome (265).
+
+Messina was not a Roman city; but the Romans saw that if the
+Carthaginians were left in possession they would hold a bridge from
+which they could easily cross into Italy. That was the question that had
+to be faced when the Senate met to consider whether they should help the
+people of Messina. To do so meant war with Carthage at once. Not to do
+so might mean war with Carthage later on. The Senate called upon the
+people to decide. The people voted for war now.
+
+  [Illustration: CARTHAGINIAN PRIESTESS]
+
+No man could then have foreseen how long and severe the war was going to
+be. It lasted three and twenty years (264-241); and at the beginning all
+the advantage seemed to be on the Carthaginian side. In the first place
+Carthage had the strongest navy in the world. The Carthaginian army was
+much the larger, though it was composed of paid soldiers of foreign
+race. There was no outstanding leader on the Roman side equal to
+Hamilcar, who commanded the Carthaginians in its later stages.
+
+When the war began the Romans had no fleet. They had never had more than
+a few transport vessels: no fighting ships. They did not know how they
+were constructed. This did not daunt them, however. A Carthaginian
+man-of-war was driven ashore. Roman carpenters and shipwrights at once
+set to work, studying how it was put together, and thinking out devices
+by which it could be improved. While the shipwrights were busy the men
+practised rowing on dry land. The most famous improvement invented by
+the Romans was the ‘crow’. This was an attachment to the prow, worked by
+a pulley, consisting of a long pole with a sharp and strong curved iron
+spike at the end. As soon as an enemy ship came within range this pole
+was swung round so that the spike caught the vessel and held it in an
+iron grip. A bridge was fastened to the pole: the soldiers ran along and
+boarded, forcing a hand-to-hand fight. To this the Carthaginian sailors
+were not used. They were better navigators than the Romans, but not such
+good fighters. In hand-to-hand encounters the Romans got the best of it.
+But they did not know so much of wind and weather, and again and again
+the storms made havoc with them. Four great fleets were destroyed or
+captured in the first sixteen years of the war, which lasted for
+twenty-three. In the year 249 Claudius the Consul lost 93 vessels at a
+stroke in the disastrous battle of Drepana and killed himself rather
+than live on under the disgrace. Later in the same year another great
+fleet was dashed to pieces in a storm.
+
+  [Illustration: PICTURES FROM POMPEII--]
+
+The year ended with the Carthaginians masters of the seas and on land.
+Four Roman armies had been lost almost to a man. In five years one man
+in every six of the population of Rome had perished in battle or on the
+sea. After sixteen years’ hard fighting and extraordinary efforts the
+end of the war seemed further off than ever, unless the Romans were to
+admit defeat. But it was no part of their character to admit defeat. As
+Polybius, the great Greek historian who knew them well, said some years
+later, ‘The Romans are never so dangerous as when they seem to be
+reduced to desperation.’ So it proved. No one had any thought of giving
+in. Regulus, captured by the Carthaginians and sent by them to Rome to
+urge his countrymen to surrender, urged them to go on fighting, though
+he knew he must pay the penalty for such words with his life. Had the
+Carthaginians been made of the same metal they might have used the hour
+to strike the fatal blow; but they were not. On land they did not trust
+the one really great general whom they had--Hamilcar Barca. For six
+years nothing serious was done in Sicily. On sea they let the fleet fall
+into disrepair because they were confident that the Romans, after their
+tremendous losses, could do nothing much. They did not know the Roman
+temper. In the coffers of the State there was no money to build ships.
+But there were rich men in Rome who put their country’s needs before
+their own comfort. A number of them sold all they had and gave the money
+for shipbuilding. Shipwrights and carpenters worked night and day, and
+in a wonderfully short time a fleet of 250 vessels was constructed and
+given to the State. And this fleet ended the war. Every man in it was
+alive with enthusiasm, ready to die for Rome. The Consul Lutatius
+Catulus, who was put in command of it, utterly defeated the Carthaginian
+navy in a great battle off the Aegatian Islands (241). In Sicily
+Hamilcar could do nothing; no supplies could reach him. With bitterness
+in his heart he had to make a peace which gave Sicily to Rome. The real
+heroes are the Roman people who, whether in the armies or the navies or
+at home, never yielded or lost courage in spite of defeat and disaster
+but held on to the end. They won the victory. They defeated Hamilcar. In
+this, the first Punic War, the Carthaginian Government was glad to make
+peace; Hamilcar was not. He was determined that Carthage should defeat
+Rome yet: he made his young son Hannibal swear never to be friends with
+Rome.
+
+  [Illustration: --OF A MIMIC NAVAL BATTLE]
+
+
+Hannibal
+
+This son of Hamilcar was the most dangerous enemy the Romans ever had to
+face. He was not only, like Pyrrhus, a brilliant soldier and general: he
+was much more than this. He was a genius in all the arts of war, and in
+the leadership of men; great as Napoleon and Julius Caesar were great.
+He had the power to fill the hearts of his followers with a devotion
+that asked no questions; they were ready to die for him, to endure any
+and every hardship. No Roman general of the time was a match for him:
+few in any time. Yet he was defeated. The reason was simple. He was
+defeated not by this or that Roman general but by the Roman people. His
+genius broke against their steady endurance, grim patience, and devotion
+to Rome. Hannibal could and did win battles, but no victory brought him
+nearer to his great object, that of dividing Italy and breaking the
+dominance of Rome. Except for the southern tribes and Capua the Italians
+stood solid; in Rome there was never any talk of giving in. When Varro,
+after a rout, partly due to his own recklessness, which left the road to
+Rome open to Hannibal, brought his remnant back to the city, the
+senators came out to meet him, and instead of uttering reproaches or
+lamentations, thanked him because he had not despaired of the Republic.
+This spirit Hannibal could not break. Behind him there was nothing of
+this kind. He had his genius and the soldiers he had made; but the
+people of Carthage only gave him grudging support.
+
+Hannibal’s invasion of Italy failed: but it is one of the most wonderful
+stories in the whole history of war, and he is one of the great men of
+history.
+
+His father, Hamilcar Barca (‘Barca’ means ‘lightning’), was a brilliant
+general; that the Carthaginians lost their first war with Rome was their
+fault, not his. Of his three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago,
+Hannibal the eldest was the dearest to him and most like himself in
+strength of will, in the power to form a purpose and hold to it unshaken
+by all that happened to him or that other people said. Soon after the
+war with Rome was ended Hamilcar left Carthage, taking his sons with
+him. Before he left he made young Hannibal, then nine years old, swear
+on the altars never to be friends with Rome. They sailed for Spain.
+Spain, Hamilcar saw, could be worth more than Sicily, if the people were
+trained as soldiers and taught the arts of agriculture and mining. The
+country was rich in metals. His sons helped him, and he meantime taught
+them not only everything connected with war and the training and
+handling of men, but languages and all that was then known of history
+and of art, so that although their boyhood was spent in camps they were
+as well taught as the noblest Roman.
+
+At the age of six-and-twenty Hannibal was chosen by the army to command
+the Carthaginian forces in Spain. Although young in years Hannibal’s
+purpose in life had long been clear to him: since his father’s death he
+had lived and thought for nothing else. He had trained the army in Spain
+for this purpose; his captains knew and shared it; and they and the men
+were filled with a passionate love for and belief in their young
+commander. Hannibal could make himself feared. The discipline in his
+army was strict, though he never asked men to do or suffer what he would
+not do or suffer himself. It was not through fear, however, that he made
+men devoted to him. They followed him because they believed in him,
+believed that he had a clear plan and the will to carry it through, and
+because they loved him. He was the elder brother and companion of his
+soldiers, and never forgot that they were men.
+
+Three years after he had been made general in Spain Hannibal’s plans
+were complete. Everything was ready. He knew what he was going to do.
+Suddenly he laid siege to Saguntum (219), a town in Spain allied to
+Rome, and took it. This was a declaration of war on Rome. A few months
+later news came to Rome; news which at first could hardly be believed.
+Hannibal had left New Carthage, his great base in Spain, with a large
+army. He had defeated the northern Spaniards and was preparing to cross
+the Alps and descend on Italy. The Roman army sent to stop him on the
+Rhone arrived too late to do so. But to cross the Alps with troops and
+baggage when the winter snows were beginning to fall upon the mountain
+passes and the streams were freezing into ice was believed to be
+impossible: no army had ever done it. The paths were precipitous, at
+places there were no tracks at all. Wild fighting tribes of Gauls held
+the passes. There was no food: not even dry grass for the animals.
+Fierce storms of hail and snow swept the mountain tops.
+
+Nevertheless, before winter had fully set in Hannibal had brought his
+army over. The losses of men and animals had been severe; but a thing
+thought impossible had been done. The season was still early for
+fighting: Hannibal could let his suffering troops rest in the fertile
+North Italian plains. Livy describes the last stage of the journey:
+
+
+  _Hannibal’s March: the Sight of the Promised Land_
+
+  On the ninth day they reached the crest of the Alps, pushing on
+  over trackless steeps, and sometimes compelled to retrace their
+  steps owing to the treachery of the guides or, where they were not
+  trusted, to the random choice of some route through a valley. For
+  two days they encamped on the top, and the soldiers, exhausted by
+  marching and fighting, were allowed to rest. A number of baggage
+  animals, too, that had slipped on the rocks, reached the camp by
+  following the tracks of the army. Tired as the men were, and
+  wearied by so many hardships, a further dismay was caused by a
+  fall of snow, which the setting of the Pleiades brought with it.
+  They started again at dawn, and the army was slowly advancing
+  through ways blocked with snow, listlessness and despair visible
+  on the faces of all, when Hannibal hurried in front of his men and
+  ordered them to stop on a ridge commanding a wide and distant
+  view, from which he pointed out Italy and the plains of the Po
+  lying at the foot of the Alps. ‘Here’, he exclaimed, ‘you are
+  scaling the walls, not merely of Italy, but of Rome; the rest of
+  the way will be smooth and sloping; one or at most two battles
+  will make you masters of the fortress and capital of Italy.’
+
+    Livy, xxi. 35. 4-9.
+
+Just across the river Ticinus a Roman army came to meet him under
+Cornelius Scipio (218). It was defeated; a month later the other consul,
+Sempronius, was out-generalled and defeated on the river Trebia. These
+two victories meant that Italy north of the Po was in Hannibal’s hands.
+Moreover the Gauls had risen and joined him. Hannibal at once set to
+work training them, and filling the thinned ranks of his own army with
+fresh men. His hope was that not only the Gauls--poor allies, for they
+could never be trusted--but the Italians generally would rise and join
+him. He counted on their being eager to shake off the yoke of Rome.
+
+  [Illustration: GREAT ST. BERNARD PASS]
+
+In Rome men were anxious and excited, but not dismayed. There were two
+main parties among the people and among the soldiers, led by men of very
+differing type. On one side stood those who believed that the way to
+treat Hannibal was by a waiting game. If Rome stood fast they could wear
+him out as they had worn Pyrrhus out. He was far away from his base of
+supplies. His new troops could not be so good as his old. The Italians
+would not rise to help him in any great numbers. The centre of Italy was
+safe, anyhow. So long as he stayed in the north the south would not
+rise; if he moved south the Gauls would soon tire of fighting. The
+leader of this party was Quintus Fabius, a member of one of the proudest
+Roman families, and a man of what was already beginning to be called the
+old school. That the common people might suffer if the war dragged out
+for years did not disturb him much.
+
+On the other side stood men like Caius Flaminius and Terentius Varro,
+younger both in years and in mind, eager, impatient for action.
+
+Caius Flaminius had opposed Fabius before. He had been elected a tribune
+of the people--one of those magistrates appointed at the time of
+Coriolanus to speak for them. He was a man of great ability and warm
+enthusiasm, a man with more imagination than Fabius. He was as truly
+devoted to his country, but to his mind the greatness of Rome depended
+not only on conquest and fine laws and honesty and honour in its leading
+citizens. These were all good things. But there was another question to
+ask. Were the ordinary common people happy? Fifteen years before
+Hannibal’s invasion, Flaminius had brought in a Bill intended to help
+the poorer Romans by making land settlements for small cultivators in
+the north. Fabius and most of the old patricians were hot against this.
+Fabius said to give land to the poor people of Rome encouraged men who
+could find work in the city but did not take the trouble. They would not
+cultivate the land if they got it: they would sell it and come back for
+more. Flaminius denied this. There were men in numbers, he said, men who
+had served in the armies, who wanted to work but could not do it because
+they could not get land. To put more men on the land would enrich the
+whole country. His law was finally carried. Another work done by
+Flaminius stands to this day as a memorial of him. It, too, shows the
+imagination of the man. This is the Via Flaminia, a magnificent road
+that ran right across the Apennine Mountains from sea to sea. It took
+twenty years to build, but when built it stood for centuries, useful in
+time of war, even more useful in time of peace.
+
+Flaminius, already popular on account of these achievements, dreamed of
+doing yet more striking things as a soldier. This was his danger. In the
+year after the battle of the Trebia he was put in command of one of the
+two new Roman armies. He was all for a bold policy and believed that he
+could defeat Hannibal and thus add military glory to himself. He did not
+know Hannibal. Hannibal, however, had made it his business to know his
+enemies; he did know what Flaminius was like and used that knowledge for
+his undoing. Flaminius’s views and character are given by Livy.
+
+
+  _Flaminius before Trasimene_
+
+  Flaminius would not have refrained from action even if his enemy
+  had been inactive; but when the lands of the allies were harried
+  almost before his eyes, he thought it a personal disgrace that
+  Hannibal should range through the heart of Italy and advance
+  unopposed to attack the walls of Rome. In the council all the rest
+  urged a safe rather than an ambitious policy. ‘Wait for your
+  colleague,’ they exclaimed, ‘and then, joining the two armies,
+  carry on the war with a common spirit and purpose; meantime use
+  the cavalry and light-armed infantry to check the reckless
+  plundering of the enemy.’ In a rage he flung himself out of the
+  council and, bidding the trumpet give at once the signal for march
+  and battle, he cried, ‘Rather let us sit still before the walls of
+  Arretium, for here is our country and our home. Hannibal is to
+  slip away from our hands and devastate Italy and, plundering and
+  burning, to reach the walls of Rome, while we are not to move a
+  step till C. Flaminius is summoned by the Fathers from Arretium,
+  as Camillus of old was summoned from Veii.’ Amid these angry words
+  he ordered the standards to be pulled up with all speed and leapt
+  into the saddle, but the horse suddenly fell and threw the consul
+  over his head. While the bystanders were alarmed by this gloomy
+  omen for the beginning of a campaign, a further message arrived
+  that, in spite of all the standard-bearer’s exertions, the
+  standard could not be pulled up. Turning to the messenger, he
+  said, ‘Do you also bring a dispatch from the Senate forbidding me
+  to fight? Go, tell them to dig out the standard if their hands are
+  so numbed with fear that they cannot pull it up.’ Then the advance
+  began; the chief officers, apart from their previous disagreement,
+  were further alarmed by the double portent; the soldiers were
+  delighted with their high-spirited leader, as they thought more
+  about his confidence than any grounds on which it might rest.
+
+    Livy, xxii. 3. 7-14.
+
+  [Illustration: TRASIMENE]
+
+When Flaminius took the field he found that Hannibal, despite the
+melting snow that flooded the fields and made them into marshes and the
+rivers into torrents, had crossed the Apennines. It had been a terrible
+crossing: men, horses, and animals fell ill and died. Hannibal himself
+lost an eye. But he had crossed the mountains and marched right past
+Flaminius, who was not strong enough to attack him, on the road to Rome.
+This was done on purpose to lure Flaminius on; for Hannibal knew that he
+longed to fight before the other consul, Servilius, could join him with
+his army and share the glory. Hannibal had learned a great deal about
+the country and he succeeded in misleading Flaminius as to his
+movements, drawing him on into a deadly trap. Along the high hills
+standing round the shores of Lake Trasimene he posted his men one night
+on either side of the pass that closed the entrance. In the morning the
+heavy mists concealed them absolutely. Flaminius marched his army right
+in, unsuspecting. Hannibal’s soldiers swept down the slopes and closed
+the Romans in on every side. They were doomed. There was no escape: they
+were entrapped between the marshes and the lake; only the vanguard cut
+their way through, and they were surrounded later. Fifteen thousand men
+perished, among them Flaminius himself, who died fighting. As many were
+taken prisoners. Hannibal’s losses were far less. Livy comments:
+
+
+  _After Trasimene_
+
+  Such was the famous battle of Trasimene, one of the most memorable
+  disasters of the Roman people. Fifteen thousand men were slain on
+  the field; ten thousand, scattered in flight all over Etruria,
+  made for Rome by different ways. Two thousand five hundred of the
+  enemy fell in the battle; many afterwards died of wounds. Hannibal
+  released without ransom the prisoners who belonged to the Latin
+  allies, and threw the Romans into chains. He separated the bodies
+  of his own men from the heaps of the enemy’s dead and gave orders
+  for their burial. A long search was made for the body of
+  Flaminius, which he wished to honour with a funeral; but it could
+  not be found.
+
+    Livy, xxii. 7. 1-5.
+
+After this disaster old Fabius was called to the helm and he carried out
+his own totally different policy; a policy of endless waiting. During
+the whole of the rest of the year Hannibal could not force Fabius to
+give battle. Hannibal moved gradually south, along the western coast.
+But the Italians did not rise in any great numbers. Hannibal believed
+that a crushing defeat of Rome would make them do so, and prepared to
+that end. This is Livy’s account of Fabius’s plan of campaign, and of
+some of the difficulties he met with in carrying it out: difficulties
+not only from Hannibal but from his own captains. Thus Varro, his master
+of the horse, was constantly stirring up discontent.
+
+
+  _The Strategy of Fabius_
+
+  The dictator took over the consul’s army from his deputy, Fulvius
+  Fleccus, and marching through the Sabine land came to Tibur on the
+  day which he had fixed for the gathering of the new recruits. From
+  Tibur he moved to Praeneste, and by cross roads to the Latin way.
+  Thence, after very careful scouting, he led his army against the
+  enemy, determined not to risk an engagement anywhere if he could
+  avoid it. On the day that Fabius first encamped within view of the
+  enemy, not far from Arpi, Hannibal at once formed his army into
+  line and offered battle; but when he saw no movement of troops and
+  no stir in the camp, he retired exclaiming that the ancestral
+  spirit of the Romans was broken, that they were finally conquered,
+  and that they admitted their inferiority in valour and renown. But
+  an unspoken anxiety invaded his mind that he would now have to
+  deal with a general very unlike Flaminius and Sempronius, and that
+  the Romans, taught by their disasters, had at last sought out a
+  leader equal to himself.
+
+  Thus Hannibal at once saw reason to fear the wariness of the new
+  dictator, but as he had not yet put his determination to the
+  proof, he began to worry and harass him by constantly moving his
+  camp and pillaging the lands of the allies actually before his
+  eyes. Sometimes he would hurriedly march out of sight, sometimes
+  he would wait concealed beyond a bend of the road, in the hope
+  that he might catch him on the level. Fabius, however, led his
+  troops along the high ground, neither losing touch with his enemy
+  nor giving him battle. The soldiers were kept in the camp unless
+  some necessary service called them out. If fodder and wood were
+  wanted, they went in strong parties that did not scatter. A force
+  of cavalry and light-armed infantry, formed and posted to meet
+  sudden attacks, protected their own comrades and threatened the
+  scattered plunderers of the enemy. The safety of the army was
+  never staked on one pitched battle, while small successes in
+  trivial engagements, begun without risk and with a retreat at
+  hand, taught the soldiers, demoralized by previous disasters, to
+  think better of their own valour and the chances of victory. But
+  he did not find Hannibal such a formidable enemy of this sound
+  strategy as the master of the horse, who was only prevented by his
+  subordinate position from ruining the country, being headstrong
+  and rash in action and unrestrained in speech. First with a few
+  listeners, afterwards openly among the soldiers, he described the
+  deliberation of his commander as indolence and his caution as
+  cowardice, attributing to him faults that were akin to his
+  virtues, and tried to exalt himself by depreciation of his
+  superior, a detestable practice that has become common because it
+  has been too successful.
+
+    Livy, xxii. 12.
+
+In the following year, Varro, this same master of the horse, was made
+consul, sharing the command with Aemilius Paulus. Aemilius was an
+experienced soldier; but he was on the worst of terms with Varro, and
+Fabius did not mend matters by warning him that Varro’s rashness was
+likely to be more dangerous to Rome than Hannibal himself.
+
+The Roman army was the largest yet put in the field and especially
+strong in infantry. The Plain of Cannae, where Hannibal was encamped,
+was not favourable for infantry, Aemilius therefore wanted to put off
+battle. Varro was eager for it. They could not agree. In the end they
+decided to take command alternately. As soon as Varro’s day came the
+soldiers saw, to their delight, the red flag of battle flying from the
+general’s tent.
+
+  [Illustration: HELMET found on the field of CANNAE]
+
+The battle of Cannae (216) was Hannibal’s greatest victory and the most
+terrible defeat for Rome in all its history. The Roman charge drove
+right through the Carthaginian centre: too far, so that the
+Carthaginians turned and attacked on all sides. The slaughter was
+terrible. Of 76,000 Romans who fought in the battle the bodies of 70,000
+lay upon the field, among them Aemilius himself and the flower of the
+noblest families in Rome. It was said that a seventh of all the men of
+military age in Italy perished. Of the higher officers Varro was the
+only one who escaped; with him was a tiny handful of men, all that was
+left of the mighty army.
+
+The news of Cannae came to Rome and the city was plunged in mourning.
+Yet despite the hideous losses and the extreme danger no one gave way to
+weakness or despair. The strife of parties died down. Men and women
+turned from weeping for their dead to working for their country. Rome
+still stood and to every Roman the city’s life was more important than
+his own. Not a reproach was uttered against Varro, even by those who
+before had distrusted and blamed him. After the battle he had done well.
+With great courage and energy he collected together and inspired with
+new faith the scattered units that remained, and at their head he
+marched back to Rome. The Senate and people went in procession to the
+city gate to meet him and the scattered remnant of travel-worn,
+bloodstained men who had escaped with him from Cannae. Before them all
+Varro was thanked because he had not despaired of the Republic. Well
+might Hannibal feel that even after Cannae Rome was not conquered. It
+was not conquered because the spirit of its people was unbroken. Rome
+stood firm. The rich came forward giving or lending all they had to the
+State; men of all classes flocked to the new armies; heavy taxes were
+put on and no one complained. If the ordinary man was ready to give his
+life, the least the well-to-do could do was to give his money. The
+people of Central Italy stood by Rome. In the south rich cities like
+Capua opened their gates to Hannibal; some of the southern peoples
+joined him. But there was no big general rising. Nor did the help
+Hannibal needed come from home, Carthage, or from his other allies in
+Sicily and Macedonia. The people of Carthage were not like those of
+Rome. They were sluggish and a big party there was jealous of Hannibal
+and would do nothing to support him.
+
+Marcellus, the general who took the field after Cannae, was a fine
+soldier who believed with Fabius that the way to defeat Hannibal was to
+wear him down. In Marcellus Hannibal found an enemy he must respect.
+When Marcellus was killed at last and brought into the Carthaginian camp
+Hannibal stood for a long time silent, looking at his dead enemy’s face.
+Then he ordered the body to be clothed in splendid funeral garments and
+burned with all the honours of war. He had the ashes placed in a silver
+urn and sent to Marcellus’s son. He had in the same way buried Aemilius
+with all honourable ceremony.
+
+Time was on the Roman side. Yet for eleven years Hannibal, with a small
+army, kept the whole might of Rome at bay. He was driven further south,
+that was all. His great hope was that though the Carthaginians would not
+stir, his brothers Hasdrubal and Mago would send him help from Spain. In
+Spain after his own departure the Romans had reconquered most of the
+country, but four years after Cannae Publius Scipio (defeated on the
+Ticinus) and his brother Cneus were both defeated and killed, and during
+the next few years Hasdrubal won nearly the whole of Spain. In 208 he
+was able to move north. He crossed the Pyrenees; spent the winter in
+Gaul; and in the spring, as soon as the snows melted, crossed the Alps
+by an easier pass than that taken by his great brother. Before any one
+expected him he was in Italy. The danger, if he could join Hannibal, was
+extreme. So serious was it indeed that Fabius, now a very old man, went
+to the two consuls, Livius and Claudius Nero, and begged them to act
+together. They hated one another. Fabius had learned how dangerous such
+quarrels might be to the State, and what harm his own advice had done
+between Varro and Aemilius Paulus; he now used all his great influence
+to get the consuls to put an end to personal strife. They agreed and
+joined their armies. Together they were much stronger than Hasdrubal. On
+the river Metaurus he was defeated (207). There Hasdrubal himself,
+fighting like a lion, was killed with ten thousand of his men.
+
+Unhappily the victorious Nero showed in his treatment of his dead enemy
+a spirit very different from that of Hannibal. He threw the bloody head
+of Hasdrubal in front of Hannibal’s lines. It was the first news he had
+of the fate of his brother. He had lost not only a man dearer to him
+than any on earth but, with him, his last hope of success. He knew that
+all was over; the fortune of Carthage was at an end. For a moment he hid
+his face in his mantle. What deep bitterness and pain held his heart in
+that moment none may guess.
+
+Two later Roman writers, Livy and Horace, have described the battle of
+the Metaurus, which was, indeed, the turning-point of the war: for
+Hannibal a fatal turning.
+
+
+  _Metaurus, and After_
+
+  Hasdrubal had often shown himself a great leader, but never so
+  great as in this, his last battle. It was he who supported his men
+  in the fight by words of encouragement and by meeting danger at
+  their side; it was he who, with mingled entreaty and rebuke, fired
+  the spirit of his troops, weary and despairing of a hopeless
+  struggle; it was he who called back the fugitives and in many
+  places restored the broken ranks. At last, when fortune declared
+  itself in favour of the enemy, he would not survive the great host
+  that had followed him, but spurred his horse into the thickest of
+  the Roman legionaries. There he fell fighting, as became the son
+  of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal.
+
+  The consul, C. Claudius, on his return to the camp ordered the
+  head of Hasdrubal, which he had carefully brought with him, to be
+  thrown down in front of the enemy’s sentries, and he exhibited
+  African prisoners in chains. Two of them he freed and sent to
+  Hannibal to inform him of everything that had happened. Hannibal,
+  stricken with grief at such public and personal loss, exclaimed,
+  as we are told, ‘I recognize the doom of Carthage.’ Then he
+  withdrew to Bruttium in the southern corner of Italy, with the
+  intention of concentrating there all the allies, whom he could not
+  protect if they were scattered.
+
+    Livy, xxvii. 49, 51.
+
+
+  _Despair_
+
+  What thou owest, Rome, to the house of Nero, let the Metaurus be
+  our witness, and Hasdrubal’s overthrow, and that bright day that
+  scattered the gloom of Latium, the first to smile with cheering
+  victory since the dread African careered through the cities of
+  Italy, like fire through a pine forest or Eurus over Sicilian
+  waves. After this the manhood of Rome gained strength from
+  continued and successful effort, and temples desecrated by the
+  unhallowed violence of the Carthaginian saw their gods restored.
+  And the treacherous Hannibal at length exclaimed ‘Like stags, the
+  prey of ravening wolves, we essay to pursue those whom it is a
+  rare triumph to elude and escape.... No more shall I send
+  triumphant messages to Carthage; fallen, yea fallen, is all the
+  hope and greatness of our name with the loss of Hasdrubal. Naught
+  is there that the hands of the Claudii will fail to perform, for
+  Jupiter protects them with beneficent power, and prudent
+  forethought brings them safe through the perils of war.’
+
+    Horace, Od. iv. 4. 36-76.
+
+For four more years Hannibal stood at bay in South Italy. No Roman
+general drove him out, no Roman army could defeat him or the soldiers
+who stood by him with a matchless devotion only given to men who have,
+as Hannibal had, what we call the divine spark burning within them. When
+at last, after fourteen years in Italy, he sailed home, it was to try to
+save Carthage, the city which had betrayed him, and now called him to
+save them from the war the Romans had carried into their own country. He
+knew that he could not do it. The Carthaginians had signed their own
+doom when they failed to send him help. When they in their turn called
+to Hannibal the enemy was at their gates. In the great battle of Zama,
+outside Carthage, Scipio defeated Hannibal. This defeat was the end of
+Carthage as a great power. The Roman terms had to be accepted. The power
+and might of Carthage was over. The city still stood: but its empire was
+gone. All its overseas possessions were added to the Roman dominions.
+
+  [Illustration: A COIN OF VICTORY]
+
+Six years after Zama Hannibal was banished from Carthage at the bidding
+of Rome, although Scipio protested in the Senate, declaring it to be
+unworthy of Rome to fear one man in a ruined state. Hannibal took refuge
+in the East. There, some years later, he and Scipio met. Of the
+conversation between them many stories were told. Scipio asked Hannibal
+whom he thought the greatest general in the world. Hannibal replied that
+he put Alexander first, then Pyrrhus, then himself.
+
+‘And where would you have placed yourself had I not defeated you?’
+
+‘Oh, Scipio, then I should have placed myself not third but first.’
+
+In saying this Hannibal put his thought in words that might give
+pleasure to his listener but were not quite true. Scipio had defeated
+him at Zama; but no one knew better than the victor that the real
+triumph was not his. The forces that had defeated Hannibal were greater
+than those in the hand of any one man.
+
+Had Hannibal defeated the Romans, the whole course of the world’s
+history might have been changed. Looking back now it seems impossible
+that he could ever have thought he could do so. But part of the secret
+of a truly great man is that he believes nothing to be impossible on
+which he has set his will. The power to set the will firmly, clearly,
+with knowledge, on some action to be done, of whatever kind it be; to
+sacrifice, for that end, one’s own wishes; to crush down the desire
+every human being feels for rest, enjoyment, comfort at the moment, and
+go on when the chance of success seems far away; this power is the
+instrument by which extraordinary things are brought about. Because of
+this power behind him Hannibal was a real danger to Rome, and Rome knew
+it. If he could have made the people of Carthage feel as he did, he
+would have conquered. But he could not. His will was set on defeating
+Rome: the will of the Carthaginians was set, not on this, but on a life
+of ease and comfort for themselves. And because the Carthaginians were
+built thus, and not like Hannibal, and he could not, by his single
+force, make them like himself, it would have been a disaster for the
+world if Hannibal had won. The Romans defeated him because they, and not
+the Carthaginians, had in them something of the force that moved
+Hannibal: they, as Polybius said of them, ‘believed nothing impossible
+upon which their minds were set’.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Scipios
+
+
+Scipio, to whom after his defeat of Hannibal the name of Africanus was
+given by his countrymen, was a Roman of a new type. For him the interest
+and business of the world were not bounded by war. He read much and
+travelled widely in the course of his life and thought deeply on many
+things that had hardly begun to trouble the ordinary Roman of his time,
+though they were to trouble deeply the Romans who came after him. He
+loved Rome: but his love was not the simple unquestioning devotion of
+the old Romans, for whom it was enough that the city was there, and that
+their religion as well as their patriotism was bound up with it. He
+loved Rome because he believed it stood for something fine.
+
+Of Scipio’s domestic life we do not know much: but he was a man of many
+warm and devoted friendships and certainly showed deep attachment to his
+father, to his brother, and to Scipio Aemilianus, his grandson by
+adoption. When young he was distinguished by his slim height and extreme
+fairness of complexion; a skin that flushed easily and showed the
+feelings he afterwards learned to conceal.
+
+Something of his character may be seen in his bust, which shows, above
+the firm mouth and powerful chin of the man of action and resolute will,
+the questioning eyes and fine brow of the thinker. It is a stern, but
+not altogether a cold face; above all it is the face of a man to whom
+nothing was indifferent. Like most portraits of great men, it represents
+its subject well on in middle life, when the enthusiasms of youth have
+cooled and settled, but it is the face of a man capable of enthusiasm,
+if an enthusiasm controlled by judgement.
+
+  [Illustration: SCIPIO AFRICANUS]
+
+Scipio was capable of enthusiasm: but not of a kind that carried him
+away or made him do reckless things. The Romans of his time believed
+that he had been born under a lucky star, was in some sense a special
+favourite of the gods. Certainly the chances that destroy or make men
+seemed throughout his life always to turn out for good. He made
+mistakes, and they proved more successful than the wisest judgements
+could have been. But the real secret of his success was not luck but his
+sureness of himself. He never lost his head. He believed he could do
+anything he put his hand to. This belief not only inspired others with
+confidence; it carried him through the stages of difficulty and apparent
+failure in which all but the strongest are apt to give up an enterprise
+for lost. More than that, thanks to his belief in himself, Scipio was
+never disturbed by jealousy or by envy of other men’s success. Men’s
+praise did not excite him; his own opinion was what mattered and he knew
+what it was. At the same time Scipio had in his nature no tinge of what
+the Greeks called the ‘daemon’ in man and we the divine spark. The
+impossible did not beckon to him. His imagination and his desires moved
+among the things that could be done. He was incapable of a passion like
+Hannibal’s. He could never have set out to conquer the world, and held
+on year after year, beaten but not defeated, knowing that he could not
+win but refusing to give up. He was the natural leader of a successful
+people. Always he had Rome behind him. Hannibal had nothing behind him,
+in that sense. He had to create his instruments by the sheer force of
+his own fiery energy. Scipio could never have done this. It would have
+seemed to him foolish to try.
+
+Although Scipio cared for many things outside the business of war, it
+was as a soldier that he was admired and honoured by most of his
+countrymen. War was the only road to high place and distinction
+recognized in Rome. Scipio, like other young men of his class--he
+belonged to a very ancient and honourable family, that of the
+Cornelii--was trained as a soldier from his boyhood.
+
+At the battle of the Ticinus the life of the consul Publius Cornelius
+Scipio was saved by the gallantry of a lad of eighteen, serving his
+first campaign. This lad was his son, named like himself Publius
+Cornelius Scipio. He fought again at Cannae, and was, with the son of
+old Fabius Cunctator, among the very few young officers who escaped
+alive. As he made his way from the stricken field he came upon a group
+of men, one or two being officers, who in despair after the frightful
+day felt that Rome was lost. All that was left for them was to cross the
+seas and try, in a new country, to carve a career for themselves. Scipio
+and young Fabius, their swords drawn, compelled them to give up this
+idea and swear that they would not desert their country. These young men
+did yeoman service in helping Varro to collect the remnants of his
+scattered army; and Scipio was clearly marked out for high command in
+years to come.
+
+That it would come as soon as it actually did no one, however, could
+have foreseen. After the battles of Ticinus and Trebia, Scipio’s father
+and his uncle were sent to Spain to reconquer the lost provinces there
+and prevent any help coming to Hannibal. They also stirred up trouble in
+Africa. But their success was brief. When Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal
+returned to Spain the Spaniards who had enlisted in the Roman armies
+deserted. Finally, four years after Cannae, Publius Scipio was defeated
+and killed and Cnaeus, shut in by three armies, suffered the same fate.
+To allow the Carthaginians to hold Spain was a serious danger; to defeat
+them a big task. Long did the Roman Senate deliberate over who was to be
+sent. There did not seem to be any one capable who could be spared.
+Fabius was very old; Aemilius dead; Marcellus needed against Hannibal.
+The younger generals thought the Spanish command carried more risk than
+glory.
+
+At last Scipio came forward and offered himself. A vivid account of the
+impression he made on the men of his day is given by Livy.
+
+
+  _Africanus, the Young Proconsul_
+
+  At Rome, after the recovery of Capua, the Senate and people were
+  as anxious about the situation in Spain as in Italy, and it was
+  determined to strengthen the army there and to send a new
+  commander. There was, however, no agreement about the best man for
+  the post, though all felt that, as two great generals had fallen
+  in the course of thirty days, their successor ought to be chosen
+  with unusual care. After various names had been proposed, it was
+  finally arranged that the people should elect a proconsul for the
+  Spanish command, and the consuls gave notice of the day of
+  election. It had been assumed that any who thought themselves
+  equal to the responsibility would come forward as candidates, and
+  when this expectation was disappointed, there was renewed mourning
+  for the recent disasters and regret for the lost generals. Thus it
+  happened that on the day of the election the citizens went down to
+  the Plain despondent and without definite purpose. Turning to the
+  assembled magistrates, they scanned the features of the leaders,
+  who were looking helplessly from one to another, and murmured that
+  the blow had been so great and that the position was now so
+  hopeless that no one dared to accept the Spanish command. All at
+  once P. Scipio, the son of Publius who had fallen in Spain,
+  proposed himself as a candidate, though he was only twenty-four
+  years of age, and took his stand in a conspicuous place. Every eye
+  was fixed on him, and the shouts of applause that at once burst
+  forth predicted good luck and success to his mission. Then the
+  election proceeded, and P. Scipio received the votes, not only of
+  every century, but of every individual. However, when the business
+  was finished and impetuosity and enthusiasm had cooled, men began
+  to ask themselves amid the general silence what they had really
+  done, and whether favour had not carried the day against
+  judgement. There was a strong feeling that the proconsul was too
+  young, and some even found a bad omen in the misfortunes of his
+  family and in the very name of Scipio, as he was leaving two
+  households in mourning to go to provinces where he would have to
+  fight over the tombs of his father and of his uncle.
+
+  When Scipio saw the trouble and anxiety caused by this hasty
+  action, he invited the people to meet him, and spoke with such
+  pride and confidence of his youth and the duty entrusted to him
+  and the war which he was to conduct that he awakened and renewed
+  all the former enthusiasm, and filled his hearers with a more
+  sanguine hope than is usually suggested by trust in promises or by
+  inference from established facts. Scipio, indeed, did not merely
+  deserve admiration for his genuine qualities, but from his youth
+  upwards he had been endowed with a peculiar faculty for making the
+  most of them. When he gave counsel to the people, he founded it on
+  a vision of the night or an inspiration seemingly divine, either
+  because he was in some sort influenced by superstition, or because
+  he expected that his wishes and commands would be carried out
+  readily if they came with a kind of oracular sanction. In very
+  early life he began to create this impression, and as soon as he
+  was of age, he would do no business, public or private, till he
+  had gone to the Capitol and entered the temple, generally sitting
+  there for a time alone and apart. By this habit, which he
+  maintained all through his life, he gave support, either of set
+  purpose or by accident, to a belief held by some that he was of
+  divine parentage, and he thus revived a similar and equally
+  baseless story, once current about Alexander the Great, that he
+  was the son of a huge serpent, which had often been seen in the
+  house before his birth, but glided away at the approach of any one
+  and disappeared from sight. Scipio did nothing to discredit these
+  wonders; in fact, he indirectly confirmed them, for, if he
+  asserted nothing, he did not deny anything.
+
+    Livy, xxvi. 18-19.
+
+He was still very young, nevertheless he had already made people feel
+confidence in him. In Spain, although he began with a bad failure since
+he allowed Hasdrubal to cross the Pyrenees with his army and march to
+Italy to assist Hannibal, his Spanish campaign was ably carried out and
+his capture of New Carthage was a bold and brilliant exploit. When the
+time came to choose a general, after the Metaurus, to attack Hannibal at
+home, every one in Rome felt that Scipio was the man. He would finish
+the war. There was, indeed, no serious rival; the long struggle had worn
+the older generals out. Some of the old-fashioned senators distrusted
+Scipio. He was too cultivated; too much interested in Greek literature
+and too young. But he was the idol of the people, who adore success, and
+was nominated by acclamation.
+
+Soon the Carthaginians were so hard pressed that they sent frantic
+messages to Hannibal to come to their aid. They knew that the death
+struggle was upon them. Hannibal came. Even his genius could not, at
+this stage, change the fortunes of war. He had no time to train the raw
+Carthaginian levies. His veterans were invincible, but they were vastly
+outnumbered when on the plains of Zama, five days’ march from Carthage,
+he met Scipio in the final battle (202). It was a victory for Rome.
+Hannibal, who always saw things as they were, knew that the long
+struggle was over. Carthage must make what terms it could. These terms
+were severe. The city lost all its foreign possessions, had to pay a big
+indemnity, and hand over all but twenty men-of-war and all elephants; no
+military operations even within Africa could be undertaken save by
+permission of Rome. The city, however, was left free. Scipio set his
+face firmly against those who clamoured for the utter destruction of
+Carthage. In the same way he protested against the demand made six years
+later for the banishment of Hannibal.
+
+Scipio returned to Rome amid scenes of extraordinary enthusiasm and
+rejoicing. All the way from Rhegium, where he landed, to Rome itself the
+people came out and lined the roads, hailing him as the man who had
+saved his country. He entered the city in triumph, marching to the
+Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill to lay before the altar his
+wreaths of olive and laurel. Magnificent games were held, lasting for
+several days, in honour of his victory, and he himself was given the
+name Africanus.
+
+For the next few years Africanus lived in Rome the life of a private
+citizen, concerned with politics, giving his spare time to the study of
+Greek literature, to which he was devoted. This study he shared with
+many friends, among them Laelius, who had been his devoted lieutenant in
+the Spanish and African wars, Tiberius Gracchus the Elder, the husband
+of Scipio’s daughter Cornelia, herself a woman of high character and
+educated ability; and Aemilius Paulus, whose sister he married and whose
+nephew was afterwards adopted into the family of the Scipios by the son
+of Africanus and known as Scipio Aemilianus. As they read the plays,
+poetry, and philosophy of the Greeks, educated Romans learned that they
+were not alone in the world. Before them had lived a people who were
+skilled in all the arts of life at a time when they themselves were rude
+barbarians, like the Gauls whom they despised.
+
+The Greece of their day, however, was no longer the Greece of the
+glorious past. Alexander’s great empire, which had extended over half
+Asia, had fallen to pieces. In Greece itself the different peoples were
+quarrelling among themselves. Even after the Roman armies had freed the
+Greeks from Philip of Macedonia, Antiochus of Asia threatened them; at
+the Court of Antiochus was Hannibal. It was as an envoy from Rome to his
+Court that Scipio met and talked with Hannibal. Later he went out as
+assistant to his brother Lucius, when the latter was made commander in
+the war against Antiochus, and finally defeated him at the battle of
+Magnesia in Asia Minor.
+
+By no means all educated Romans shared Scipio’s feelings about Greece.
+On the contrary there were many who thought that the simplicity of the
+grand old Roman character was being destroyed, while the young men were
+falling into luxurious and effeminate ways. Marcus Porcius Cato, for
+example, a man of the utmost uprightness and courage, took this view. He
+was a hard man himself, and he wanted others to be hard. He could see no
+difference between a love of beauty and luxury. He saw nothing that was
+bad in the old order, nothing that was good in the new.
+
+The Scipios, Africanus and his brother, who now bore the name of
+Asiaticus, were Cato’s particular enemies. He had struggled in the
+Senate with Africanus over Carthage, for the old man wanted to see the
+city of Hannibal razed to the ground. He hated Scipio’s Greek ideas. He
+thought him too proud and self-willed to be a good servant of the State.
+After the Greek campaign Cato called upon Asiaticus to give an account
+of the money spent in the wars against Antiochus, suggesting that he had
+been extravagant. That such a charge should be brought against his
+brother roused Scipio Africanus to passionate anger. He refused to
+defend him; the character of a Scipio was its own defence. In the
+presence of the Senate he tore up the account books which Cato had
+called for. When Lucius was, nevertheless, condemned Scipio rescued him
+by force. Thereupon he himself was charged with treason by two tribunes.
+Even then his haughty spirit did not bend. Instead of pleading his cause
+he reminded the people that it was the anniversary of the day on which
+he had defeated Hannibal at Zama. Let them follow him to the Temple of
+Jupiter and pray for more citizens like himself. The crowd obeyed. No
+more was heard of the trial.
+
+Scipio’s pride, however, was deeply injured. He had been the idol of
+Rome in his youth. That he and his brother should be accused before the
+Roman people was to him an unbearable sign of ingratitude and baseness
+of mind. He left Rome, shaking its dust from his feet, and retired to
+the country. There a few years later he died at the age of fifty-three.
+In his will he ordered that his ashes should not be taken to Rome.
+
+In the same year (183) Hannibal also died. To the last the Romans feared
+him; Hannibal took poison when he heard that Nicomedes of Bithynia, at
+whose Court he was, had been ordered to hand him over to Rome.
+
+
+Scipio Aemilianus
+
+The young man left to carry on the great name of Scipio was the son of
+Aemilius Paulus and nephew by marriage of Africanus, whose son adopted
+him into the Cornelian family.
+
+Scipio Aemilianus, to give him the name by which he was always known
+after this adoption, saw, even more clearly than Africanus had done,
+both that Rome was changing and what was good and what was bad in the
+change. He shared in both good and bad. No one saw more clearly than he
+the baseness of the destruction of Carthage and the cruelty of the sack
+of Numantia; yet it was he who, as general, had to carry them out. He
+saw the dangers of the growing contrast between the increasing wealth of
+the few rich, as treasures poured from all parts of the world into their
+coffers, and the wretchedness of the poor in Rome; he saw the cruelty,
+indifference to human life, and love of pleasure that filled men’s minds
+after a series of successful wars; he saw the old simplicity of life and
+high devotion to country disappearing and a new selfishness and personal
+ambition growing up.
+
+Scipio was a man of action; an excellent soldier and general. Even old
+Cato, who hated the Scipios, had to admire Aemilianus. Speaking of him
+he quoted a famous line of Homer: ‘He is a real man: the rest are
+shadows.’ In a very profound sense this was true. The mind of Scipio
+Aemilianus saw below the surface of things to the reality. He could act,
+but like all really first-rate men of action--Napoleon, Hannibal,
+Caesar--he was a thinker. Round his table there gathered the most
+interesting men in Rome. They talked of all the questions that have
+puzzled and perplexed men’s minds since men began to think at all.
+Closest of his friends was Polybius, the great Greek historian who wrote
+the history of the wars with Carthage. He lived in his house and
+accompanied him in his wars in Spain and Africa. Polybius stood by
+Scipio’s side as he watched Carthage burning to the ground (146). Orders
+had come from Rome that the city was to be utterly destroyed;
+a ploughshare was to be drawn across the site and a solemn curse laid on
+any one who should ever rebuild there. ‘It is a wonderful sight,’ said
+Aemilianus as they watched walls toppling and buildings collapsing in
+the flames which rose up, a huge cloud of ruddy smoke darkening and
+thickening the noonday sky of Africa, ‘but I shudder to think that some
+one may some day give the same order--for Rome.’
+
+The following sketch of his character by Polybius shows some of his
+distinguishing traits:
+
+
+  _Scipio Aemilianus as a Sportsman_
+
+  After the war was decided, Paulus, in the belief that hunting was
+  the best training and recreation that a young man could have, put
+  the king’s huntsmen at the orders of Scipio, and gave him full
+  authority over everything connected with the chase. Scipio readily
+  accepted the charge and, regarding it almost as a royal office,
+  continued to occupy himself with it as long as the army remained
+  in Macedonia after the battle. His youth and natural disposition
+  qualified him for this pursuit, like a high-bred hound, and his
+  devotion to hunting became permanent, being continued when he came
+  to Rome and found Polybius as enthusiastic as himself.
+  Consequently, all the time that other young men spent in the
+  law-courts and with morning calls, waiting about in the Forum and
+  trying thus to make a favourable impression on the people, was
+  passed by Scipio in hunting; and as he was constantly performing
+  brilliant and notable exploits, he distinguished himself more than
+  all the rest. For they could not win credit except by injuring
+  others; such are the conditions of legal action; but Scipio,
+  without doing any harm to any one, gained a popular reputation for
+  courage, matching words with deeds. Therefore he soon excelled his
+  contemporaries more than any Roman of whom we have record, though
+  he followed a path to fame which, in view of Roman character and
+  prejudice, was the very opposite of that chosen by his rivals.
+
+    Polybius, xxxvi. 15. 5-12.
+
+From Carthage came another friend of Scipio’s--the poet Terence. Born in
+that city about the time of Hannibal’s death, the lad had come to Rome
+as a slave. His rare parts attracted the notice of his owner, who
+finally set him free. Terence was introduced to Scipio by another friend
+of his. This was Caecilius, the playwriter. His plays are unfortunately
+all lost, so that we have no means of judging what they were like. One
+day when Caecilius was at supper he was told that the managers of the
+games had sent a young man to read him a play which he had submitted to
+them, and of which they thought well. Caecilius called him in and bade
+him sit down on a stool on the other side of the table from that at
+which he and his friends were reclining on sofas, and begin to read to
+him. The young man had only read a few lines when the elder poet stopped
+him. The work was so good, he said, that he ought to sit at the author’s
+feet, not he at his; he called Terence up to the table. Afterwards
+Caecilius took the young man to see Scipio Aemilianus; and he soon
+became one of the intimate circle which Scipio had gathered round him.
+Scipio and Caecilius helped him with advice, and they all worked
+together at Scipio’s favourite task of improving and purifying the Latin
+language. A line in one of Terence’s plays expresses the point of view
+which Scipio Aemilianus and his friends tried to take. ‘I am human:
+nothing human is alien to me.’ These plays are among the earliest works
+of pure literature in Latin, and they show in every line the influence
+of Greece. The Greek spirit was one of questioning; and its influence on
+Roman thought was profound.
+
+  [Illustration: TRAGIC AND COMIC MASKS]
+
+Scipio Aemilianus questioned but looked on. He saw much in the present
+state of Rome to disturb and displease him; he dreaded what might come
+in the future, as the few grew richer and the many poorer; but he did
+not take any action. His was the mind of the philosopher; like his
+friends Polybius and Terence he wanted to understand. He did not believe
+that things could be changed. What was to happen would happen; to
+perturb and perplex oneself was useless and might be dangerous. The
+people who got excited and believed that great improvements could be
+brought about easily seemed to him stupid and dangerous. It was easy to
+breed disorder; to spoil the things that had made Rome great; very hard
+to make alterations. The men who really served the Republic were not the
+politicians clamouring in the market-place, orating in the Assembly, or
+the idle dirty mobs who listened to them and were ready to shout for
+this to-day and the other thing to-morrow. Them Scipio scorned. The real
+workers and builders he thought were the silent soldiers fighting and
+working in all the dreariness and discomfort of camps in foreign
+countries. In Scipio there was a good deal of the temper of that Lucius
+Junius Brutus who in the earliest days of the Republic had condemned his
+own sons to death for treason to the State. He judged his own friends
+and relations more, not less, severely than other people. Thus when
+Tiberius Gracchus, the kinsman and brother-in-law of Scipio (his own
+wife was Sempronia, the sister of Gracchus) brought in his Land Bill and
+came, over it, into conflict with the Senate, Scipio was against him.
+When disorders and rioting in the streets of Rome grew out of the
+struggle over the Land Bill and Tiberius was murdered, Scipio made a
+speech in the Senate in which he said that Tiberius had deserved his
+death. He quoted a line of Homer: ‘So perish all who do the like again.’
+When the people shouted him down in their anger he turned on them with
+cold contempt--fear of any kind was not in Scipio--and said, ‘Be silent,
+ye to whom Italy is only a step-mother.’ Speeches like that did not make
+him popular. Scipio was so much respected that men always listened when
+he spoke. There was something lofty and splendid about him and no
+soldier of his day could compare with him. But he stood aloof. Outside
+his own circle of close friends he was little known and less understood.
+
+His death was sudden and mysterious. One day after speaking in the
+Senate he returned home apparently well and in his ordinary calm frame
+of mind. Nothing had occurred to disturb him. He did not seem to be
+disturbed about anything. Next morning he was found dead in his bed.
+What had happened was never known. It was whispered about that he had
+been murdered.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Gracchi
+
+
+No account of the heroes of Roman History would be complete or truthful
+which left out the women. Although the Roman woman was not supposed to
+take any share in public affairs, although she was, until she married,
+subject to the authority of her father, and afterwards to that of her
+husband, there are innumerable stories which show how great was the real
+part played by women in Roman life, even in quite early times. They were
+often as well educated as the men, sometimes better.
+
+This was clearly the case with Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio
+Africanus, and wife of Tiberius Gracchus the elder. Left a widow when
+the eldest of her three children, named Tiberius after his father, was
+but a lad, she conducted their training herself. From her her sons and
+daughter learned to be simple and hardy in their habits, truthful and
+upright in their minds, and to care for things of the spirit rather than
+of the body, as she did herself. When her friends boasted to her of the
+rich furnishing of their houses, of their robes of silk, their ornaments
+and jewels, Cornelia would turn to her children and say, ‘These are my
+treasures.’ She taught Tiberius and Caius and their sister that what
+mattered was not what a man had but what he was. They were rich. They
+bore an honoured name. But these things would not give honour unless
+they had the soul of honour in themselves. They must strive not for
+their own pleasure or comfort or even for their own personal glory, but
+to live a life of true service to their fellow citizens. And that meant
+that they must see things as they were, and not be contented with the
+names people gave them. They wanted to see Rome great and to help it to
+grow greater. She taught them that a city, like a man, was great only
+when it strove for right and justice. Mere wealth and power did not make
+it so.
+
+These thoughts sank into the minds of the young Gracchi. As they grew up
+they cared for Greek learning, art, and literature, poetry, and all the
+things that make life beautiful, as Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius did;
+but it troubled them, as it had not troubled Scipio, that these good
+things reached only the few, while the great body of the people had no
+share in them at all. To them, as once to Caius Flaminius, it seemed
+wrong as well as dangerous that Rome should be made up, as they saw that
+it was, of two sorts of people, ever more and more separated from each
+other; the few who had everything and the many who had nothing. They
+could not feel, as Coriolanus had done, as Fabius had done, as Cato did,
+and as Scipio Aemilianus, it seemed to them, was doing more and more,
+that all good was to be found among the well-to-do and cultured few, and
+that what happened to the many did not matter. It seemed to them that it
+did matter if the many were poor, ignorant, stupid. It was not necessary
+that they should be so. They were ignorant and stupid because they were
+poor. If their lot were less hard they might be clever and good, or at
+any rate better than at present.
+
+So it seemed to Tiberius Gracchus and later to his younger brother
+Caius, as they looked at what they saw in the light of what Cornelia had
+taught them. They could not find life beautiful while so many people
+were wretched, or feel that Rome was the city of their dreams, however
+rich and powerful it might be, however many lands across the seas owned
+its sway, so long as the ordinary men who served as soldiers in Rome’s
+armies, the ordinary women who kept their homes and brought up their
+children, were miserable.
+
+The great wars which brought glory to generals and wealth and pride to
+Rome actually made the poor more miserable, for many reasons, and for
+two in particular. One was the growing number of slaves in the city.
+After every campaign thousands of prisoners were taken and these
+prisoners were not given back at the end of the war; they became the
+slaves of the conqueror. There were so many slaves in Rome after the
+wars with Sicily, Carthage, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, that it was by no
+means easy for the ordinary Roman to get work. The other reason was the
+difficulty of getting land. Once, before the long wars, Italy had been a
+country of small farmers and peasants who lived on a little piece of
+land, sometimes rented and sometimes their own, and cultivated it. There
+were very few of these happy farmers now. The men had been called away
+to the wars; many never came back. What happened was this. While the man
+was away at the wars, his wife, with children to look after, and less
+strong than he, could seldom cultivate the land fully. Even if she
+managed to keep the children fed, she had no money or produce over with
+which to pay the rent. Then the landlord would turn her out and take the
+plot and add it to his own estate. This was happening all over Italy. If
+the owner were not turned out, the land went to rack and ruin from
+neglect. Thus many a soldier, when he did come back, found his home
+gone. Others, weary, worn, and perhaps disabled after long years of the
+hardships of war, had neither the strength nor energy to set to the
+heavy work of digging and preparing land that had been neglected for
+years. At the same time the common lands, which were supposed to belong
+to the whole people, who might graze their cattle or cut wood on them,
+were taken in bit by bit by the big landlords in the war years. Thus men
+who wanted land could not get it. Big estates grew bigger, and they were
+run largely by slave-labour. The independent husbandman, who had been
+the backbone of the Roman army, was vanishing. A few people began, in
+Scipio’s day, to be worried about this question of the land, because
+they saw that if the peasants and farmers disappeared, the best soldiers
+would disappear also.
+
+All this was well known; it had been going on for long. People talked,
+but nothing was done. Sometimes, however, there comes a man who has the
+power to see and be moved to action by a thing which most people, out of
+habit or laziness, take as a matter of course. Tiberius Gracchus was
+such a man. In his young manhood he was quiet, rather shy, and very
+silent; he thought a great deal and said little about it. Some people
+regarded him as slow. His was the slowness of a mind that takes a long
+time to be sure of a thing but, once sure, never lets go. When he did
+speak, men observed that his remarks were just and well considered and
+went to the heart of the matter. His devotion to duty was obvious; as a
+soldier he won the respect and love of his men by his unvarying fairness
+of temper and the fact that he never asked them to take a risk or bear a
+hardship that he did not share himself. And he acquired, too,
+a reputation for integrity which was, as Plutarch tells us, of infinite
+value.
+
+
+  _Tiberius Gracchus. The Value of a Reputation for Integrity_
+
+  After the Libyan expedition Gracchus was elected quaestor, and it
+  was his lot to serve against the Numantines under the Consul Gaius
+  Mancinus, who had some good qualities, but was the most
+  unfortunate of Roman generals. Thus unexpected situations and
+  reverses in the field brought more clearly into light, not only
+  the ability and courage of Tiberius, but--what was more
+  remarkable--his respect and regard for his superior, who was so
+  crushed by disaster that he hardly knew whether he was in command
+  or not. After some decisive defeats Mancinus left his camp and
+  attempted to retire by night, but the Numantines, being aware of
+  his movements, at once occupied the camp, fell upon his troops as
+  they fled, made havoc of the rear, and drove the whole army on to
+  difficult ground, from which it was impossible to escape.
+  Whereupon, in despair of forcing a way into safety, he sent envoys
+  with proposals for a truce and conditions of peace. The enemy
+  replied that they trusted no one except Tiberius and insisted that
+  he should be sent to them. This attitude was partly due to their
+  high opinion of Tiberius, whose reputation was familiar to all,
+  partly to the memory of his father, who after fighting against the
+  Spanish tribes and subduing many of them settled terms of peace
+  with the Numantines and persuaded the Roman people strictly to
+  confirm and keep them. Thus it came about that Tiberius was sent;
+  and after some give and take in negotiations he made a treaty, and
+  beyond question saved twenty thousand Roman citizens, besides
+  attendants and camp followers.
+
+    Plutarch, liii. 5.
+
+As Tiberius travelled through Italy on his way to the wars in Spain he
+looked at the condition of the people of his own country, thought of the
+fortunes of his own soldiers, and was moved to indignation and distress
+by what he saw. On the banners carried into battle, above the public
+buildings, at the head of the laws and decrees issued by the Government,
+there stood the letters ‘S.P.Q.R.’--the Senate and People of Rome. The
+senators, he knew, were rich and growing richer. The name of Rome was
+carried far and wide. But what of the people? As Tiberius himself said,
+‘The wild beasts of Italy have their lairs and hiding places, but those
+who fight and die for Italy wander homeless with their wives and
+children and have nothing that they can call their own except the air
+and sunlight.’
+
+Tiberius saw and felt. But seeing and feeling were not enough. He
+determined to act. The land question, the homelessness and poverty of
+the people, and the army question were, as he saw it, really part of the
+same. He resolved to deal with them together.
+
+When he came back from his second term of service in Spain (134) he got
+himself elected as one of the tribunes of the people. Almost at once he
+introduced his Land Bill. The idea of this Bill was simple. All over
+Italy the State of Rome owned great estates. But for years back the
+estates had either been let to or occupied by the big landowners or
+wealthy men of Rome. They were in possession. But the lands did not
+belong to them. There was no reason in law or justice why the Republic
+should not take back and use what was its own. These lands, cut up into
+small holdings, would provide a means of livelihood to hundreds of
+thousands of peasant proprietors. The miserable poverty of Rome could be
+swept away. A new race would grow up.
+
+  [Illustration: COSTUME. THE ROMAN TOGA,
+  from a terra-cotta in the British Museum]
+
+The Bill was a reasonable one. It was received with enthusiasm by the
+poorer classes. Moderate men saw that it was a sincere effort to tackle
+a state of things they knew and deplored. It was necessary to do
+something for the poor, they knew; they were glad of any plan which
+promised to reduce the luxury and display of the rich. But the big
+landowners, whose estates were going to be divided, who were being
+called upon to give back what, after all, had never been their own, were
+furious. They were ready to go to any lengths to defeat the Bill. To
+them Tiberius was a dangerous man, a traitor to his own class. Since
+they were in a minority they knew that if the matter came to a vote they
+would be defeated. Feeling grew more excited as the voting day drew
+near. Tiberius had become the darling of the people; but he had to go
+about armed for fear of an attack from the landlords’ party. At last the
+latter hit on an ingenious device. The tribunes, the magistrates who
+represented the poor classes, or plebeians as they were called, were ten
+in number, one to represent each of the original ten tribes. If one of
+them chose he could stop anything the others wanted to do by saying
+‘Veto’--I forbid. This power was intended to be used sparingly and only
+in times of grave danger. Originally, indeed, the tribune could only say
+Veto on religious grounds; because having inspected the omens he saw
+something which showed that the gods were unfavourable. The landlords,
+however, now persuaded Octavius, one of the colleagues of Tiberius, to
+say Veto to his Land Bill. Tiberius understood what had happened. He
+tried to persuade Octavius to give way. In vain. Then, as happens with
+men who appear very quiet and hard to move, his anger, which had been
+slowly mounting, burst out. He went down to the assembly of the people
+and made a powerful attack upon Octavius. How could a man be said to
+represent the people, he asked, to be a tribune of the people, who was
+doing his best to prevent a measure which the people desired and which
+was altogether for their good? There was a scene of great excitement.
+Tiberius called upon Octavius to resign. Octavius refused. Then Tiberius
+called for the election of another tribune in Octavius’s place. This was
+against all rule and order. Nevertheless it was done. Octavius was
+removed. A new tribune was elected in his stead. Amid great rejoicing
+the Land Bill was passed.
+
+The landlords were full of a deep bitterness against Tiberius and
+accused him of all kinds of things. They said that he wanted to upset
+the State and tear up the laws because he had passed a Bill taking from
+them a portion of their lands which had never really belonged to them.
+He, however, went quietly on with his work. A committee was set up, on
+which were both Tiberius and his brilliant young brother Caius, to
+divide the common land and give it out in lots to the citizens who
+needed and could work it. This was a long task. At the end of the year
+Gracchus ceased to be tribune. His work was not finished. The Senate had
+refused to give the Land Commission any money for their expenses and was
+putting every kind of difficulty in the way of their getting on with
+their task. Moreover, in view of the hatred of the landlords Gracchus
+himself, as a private person, was hardly safe. Therefore, when the
+election time came he asked to be chosen as tribune again.
+
+A great many of the citizens who had come in from the country districts
+to vote for the Land Bill had gone back again; others had left Rome to
+prepare for or take up the new allotments. The charges made against
+Gracchus made timid people afraid; they were worried when it was said
+that a man could not legally be elected tribune for two years running.
+They were still further alarmed by Gracchus’s own speeches. Feeling ran
+very high on both sides, and it was plain that the election day would
+not go off without some disturbance.
+
+Rioting, indeed, broke out in the Capitol almost before the sun rose and
+fighting with sticks and stones between those who wanted Tiberius
+elected and those who did not. As always happens, many joined in who
+neither knew nor cared what the trouble was all about. When Tiberius
+himself appeared he raised his hand to summon his friends to gather
+round him. This was reported to the Senate by a man who cried, ‘Tiberius
+Gracchus has raised his hand to his head: he is asking the citizens to
+crown him.’ On this Nasica, a senator who hated Gracchus, demanded that
+he should be put to death as a traitor. When the consul refused Nasica
+rushed out with a body of senators and, charging the people who stood
+round Tiberius, broke through and killed him almost at once (133). In
+the panic many others were slain and trampled underfoot. The body of
+Gracchus was cast into the Tiber. Many of his supporters were
+imprisoned. Others had all their property taken away.
+
+The senators doubtless hoped that, Tiberius dead, his work would soon be
+forgotten. But the evils he had tried to remedy remained. And abroad
+serving in the army was his brother Caius, who did not forget. ‘Whither
+can I go?’ said Caius. ‘What place is there for me in Rome? The Capitol
+reeks with my brother’s blood. In my home my mother sits weeping and
+lamenting for her murdered son.’ His was a nature very different from
+his brother’s. Tiberius was quiet, gentle, kindly, naturally rather
+dreamy; a man who in happier times would have been content with the
+uneventful life of a gentleman. Caius was fiery and passionate, filled
+with an energy that must have found some outlet for itself in whatever
+circumstances he had lived. He loved his brother and his death filled
+his heart with glowing anger and a fixed determination that his work and
+life should not be wasted. He would carry out Tiberius’s ideals; and
+carry them farther than Tiberius had ever dreamed.
+
+Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than Tiberius and a man of more
+remarkable character and more brilliant gifts than his brother. The
+sense of a great wrong made Tiberius burn with indignation, and in his
+indignation he took to politics; Caius had a natural genius for
+politics. His mind ranged forward into the future; whereas Tiberius
+worked blindly, in the dark, Caius knew where he wanted to go. And he
+understood men as his brother had never done. Without any of the shy
+aloofness that at times gave Tiberius the appearance of more strength
+than he really possessed, Caius made people like him without moving away
+by so much as an inch from the purpose he had in mind. That purpose was
+a change far more revolutionary than Tiberius had dreamed of.
+
+Only twenty years of age at the time of his brother’s murder, Caius
+spent the next ten years in public service. Like Aemilianus he held it
+every man’s duty to work for the Republic. But while Aemilianus thought
+that for such work obedience, faithfulness, courage, temperance were all
+that were required of a man, Caius, who had these virtues in a high
+degree, had also an active questioning mind. It did not seem to him that
+the men who ruled the State were wise or just or generous enough to lay
+down, once for all, the lines on which it was to move for ever. The
+citizen had a duty to the Republic beyond that of loyal and obedient
+devotion. He must use not only his arm in its service but his mind also.
+He must help it to grow; make Rome worthy of the greatness about which
+people talked so lightly and easily. The greatness had been won at a
+fearful price. Hundreds of thousands of Roman soldiers had laid down
+their lives to make it; hundreds of thousands more had given their best
+years to its service, asking no reward but that the Republic should
+stand safe. It could, Caius thought, only be safe, only be great in so
+far as it became more and more the city of free men in fact as well as
+name.
+
+With such thoughts as these moving in his mind he turned in loathing
+from the life of the young Roman noble of his own age and class. He had
+no use for personal luxury; wine and fine clothes and a gorgeous house
+in which to live a life of ease and idleness--these things were nothing
+to him. While serving abroad in Spain, Sardinia, and elsewhere, he
+shared the hardships of his soldiers, and spent his own money in the
+effort to make their hard lot less severe. Such leisure as he had was
+occupied in reading. In this way he disciplined and fortified his mind.
+Moreover, Caius had before him a fixed purpose, a clearly determined
+work in life. For that he was preparing. One of his weapons was to be
+the art of speech. He studied, therefore, particularly the works of the
+great Greek orators. He wanted to learn, and he did learn, how to use
+words to persuade men and impel them to action. He made himself one of
+the greatest orators Rome knew. His speeches are lost, but accounts of
+them remain, and they tell how Caius could set his hearers on fire, stir
+them to tears or anger.
+
+  [Illustration: ELABORATE LAMP
+  to show the luxury of later times]
+
+When, nine years after Tiberius’s death, Caius Gracchus came back to
+Rome (124), he found that men were waiting eagerly for him. Tiberius had
+not been forgotten. The poor hoped, the rich feared that Caius had come
+as his avenger. When he stood for the tribuneship the party in the
+Senate that had thwarted and finally murdered Tiberius strained every
+nerve to prevent Caius’s election. They did not wait to hear what his
+plans were. They knew that he belonged to the men of the new generation
+who wanted far-reaching changes, and they believed that any change must
+be at their expense. They at once began attacking Caius. They accused
+him of coming home before his time of service abroad was up. They even
+declared that he, the most scrupulously honest and disinterested of men,
+had made more money than he ought to have done from the various posts he
+had held. Caius turned on them. He had already served twelve years in
+the army. As for making money: ‘I am the only man who went out with a
+full purse and returned with an empty one. Others took out casks of wine
+for themselves, and when they had emptied them brought the casks back
+filled with gold and silver.’ He lived not in the rich quarter of Rome
+among the high-born and wealthy, but among the poor near the Forum. He
+was elected tribune by an overwhelming majority and at once set to work.
+
+His main idea was a really great and original one; nothing less than the
+extension of Roman citizenship, in so far as voting rights went, to the
+people of Italy. The Italians were called to serve in Rome’s armies. The
+best soldiers, indeed, had always come from outside the capital. The
+Italians paid heavier taxes; they ought to share in the benefits of Rome
+and have a voice in its government. Caius Gracchus indeed dreamed of
+making the Government of Rome a real democracy. It was a magnificent
+dream; but the people were not ready for it. In fact it was only after a
+bitter war that the Italians won from the Romans the right to vote.
+Gracchus knew that his plan could not be carried through at once; but he
+had worked out a series of Bills which would, he believed, pave the way
+for it. Until they were through he said nothing of his great scheme.
+
+
+  _Caius Gracchus. The varied Activities of a popular Leader_
+
+  When the people had not only passed this law, but actually
+  commissioned Gracchus to appoint the judges from the Order of the
+  Knights, he became invested with a kind of royal authority, and
+  even the senators were ready to listen to his counsel. When he
+  gave it, he always proposed something to their credit, as, for
+  example, a most just and honourable decree about the corn which
+  the proconsul Fabius had sent from Spain. He persuaded the Senate
+  to sell the corn and return the money to the cities from which it
+  came, and furthermore to censure Fabius for making his rule
+  burdensome and unendurable to the inhabitants; and this brought
+  him great reputation and popularity in the provinces. He proposed,
+  too, to send out colonies and to make roads and to build
+  granaries, personally managing and controlling all these
+  undertakings, never failing in attention to a mass of details, but
+  with extraordinary quickness and application working out each task
+  as if it alone engaged his efforts, with the result that even
+  those who hated and feared him were astounded at his universal
+  thoroughness and efficiency. Most people on meeting him were
+  surprised to see him surrounded by contractors, craftsmen,
+  ambassadors, commanders, soldiers, and scholars. Treating them all
+  with an easy good nature, being at once kind and dignified, and
+  suiting himself to the character of the individual, he proved that
+  it was gross slander to call him dictatorial, or presumptuous, or
+  violent. Thus his gift for popular leadership was shown rather in
+  personal association and conduct than in public speeches.
+
+    Plutarch, liv. 6.
+
+He was a tremendous worker and all his plans were thought out to the
+smallest detail. They were not vague ideas on paper. He began on his
+land policy. If it were to have any chance of being carried he must, he
+saw, break the solid majority of the landowning classes and their
+friends. The most important of these friends were the class known as the
+Knights, or Equestrian Order. The Senate was composed of men selected
+from among those who had held one of the high offices of State. Senators
+might not take part in business, but they alone served as jurors to try
+the cases which concerned people who carried it on, and particularly
+those who carried on one important kind of business, that of
+tax-collecting in the provinces. This was largely in the hands of the
+knights. Their name went back to the days of the old constitution when
+men of a certain wealth served in the cavalry, and were given votes as
+so serving. The so-called Equestrian Order had greatly grown in number.
+They were the money-makers, financiers, capitalists of Rome. As against
+changes in the land system they might stand with the Senate, but when
+Caius Gracchus proposed that the juries which tried people for political
+offences should be drawn not from the Senate, but from the knights, he
+won their support against it. He then turned to win that of the people
+by a new Corn Law which arranged that the Government should buy corn
+wholesale and supply it to the Roman people at a fixed low price. From
+this he turned to other constructive measures. He revived his brother’s
+Land Laws; started a great road-building scheme; and worked out a plan
+for the reorganization of the army. Over the detailed working out of all
+these big plans he watched himself with the eye of a practical man whom
+nothing escaped. For Caius, though his ideas were large and
+far-reaching, and his mind grasped problems that the ordinary Roman
+politician did not begin to see, was no dreamer. He was an organizer of
+consummate ability and possessed a remarkable knowledge of facts and of
+men. His house became a sort of great Government office, buzzing with
+hard work from morning until night.
+
+In the following year he was re-elected and at once moved on to the next
+stage in his policy, a big scheme of land settlement and colonization,
+very much on the lines now worked by Canada and our other Colonies who
+assist intending settlers by giving them cheap passages out and plots of
+land in new territories. This done, he launched his plan of granting
+Roman citizenship to the Italians.
+
+Here, however, he came into collision with rich and poor at once. The
+ordinary Roman citizen was jealous of his rights and did not want to
+share them. Caius’s popularity began to fall off at once. The idea of
+Italy a nation was one for which the Romans were not ready. They had
+been angry when Tiberius wanted to give farms to the Italians; Caius’s
+plan of giving them votes and thereby a share in the games, cheap corn,
+and other joys of Roman life, made them far more angry. They despised
+the Italians and cared nothing for their grievances. Caius could not
+stir them to any sympathy.
+
+The leaders of the Senatorial party realized at once what had happened,
+and determined to strike. An outbreak of disorder at a meeting at which
+Caius was speaking gave them their chance. The consul declared that the
+State was in danger and proclaimed a state of siege in the city. Then he
+went out with armed bands and in the streets Caius himself and a number
+of his supporters were cut down and slain (121).
+
+Thus both Caius and Tiberius Gracchus perished. Cornelia their mother
+left Rome and went to live at Misenum. Of her sons she spoke as of two
+heroes who had given their lives for their country. Her pride in them
+remained untarnished, for they had died true to the things in which they
+believed. Indeed, many years had not passed before statues to the
+brothers were set up in the public places in Rome and offerings brought
+there by the people who realized, too late, how greatly both Tiberius
+and Caius had served them. Had their work been carried through, Rome
+might have been spared the terrible disasters that came upon the city in
+the next half-century. As it was, the senators breathed with relief that
+Caius had followed his brother to a bloody grave; they did not see that
+those who opposed reform were preparing the way for revolution and civil
+war.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Cato the Censor
+
+
+At any time there are always some people who look back and say, ‘Ah,
+things are not what they were. There are no such men nowadays as there
+used to be. The good old days are over. When I was young....’ and so on.
+Such men see in change nothing but evil. There is, to some minds,
+a danger in every change: but there may be greater danger in standing
+still.
+
+The evils that men like the Gracchi saw in their own time made them
+desire to see the life of Rome move forward to other and better ways.
+A new world had opened round them: new ideas, new forces were making
+themselves felt. Rome was no longer a small city, whose existence was
+closed in by its own walls; it was the centre of a great dominion, and
+touched the life of other peoples and nations at innumerable points. The
+ways of the old could not be those of the new Rome. They saw the
+difficulties and risks, but they saw too the promise of better things to
+be won.
+
+  [Illustration: THE TOMB OF A ROMAN FAMILY:
+  to show simplicity of dress]
+
+Very different was the outlook of a man like Marcus Porcius Cato. To him
+the ancient ways alone seemed right. He modelled his own life and
+actions so far as he could upon the heroes of the past, especially on
+those like Cincinnatus, who were noted for their simplicity and
+frugality. Cincinnatus, though he had held the highest offices in Rome,
+was found driving his own plough by those who came from Rome in an hour
+of peril to ask him to take over the highest power in the State. So Cato
+kept his dress, the furnishings of his house and table, and everything
+about him as plain as those he might have had in the days when every one
+was poor. In his own record of his life he reports that he never wore a
+garment that cost him more than a hundred drachmae; that even when
+praetor or consul he drank the same wine as his slaves; that a dinner
+never cost him from the market above thirty pence; and that he was thus
+frugal for the sake of his country, that he might be able to endure the
+harder service in war. He adds that having got, among some goods he was
+heir to, a piece of Babylonian tapestry, he sold it immediately; that
+the walls of his country houses were neither plastered nor white-washed;
+that he never gave more for a slave than fifteen hundred drachmae, as
+not requiring in his servants delicate shapes and fine faces but
+strength and ability to labour, that they might be fit to be employed in
+his stables, about his cattle or on such-like business; and that he
+thought proper to sell them again when they grew old, that he might have
+no useless persons to maintain. In a word he thought nothing cheap that
+was superfluous, that what a man has no need of is dear even at a penny;
+and that it is much better to have fields where the plough goes and
+cattle feed, than gardens and walks that require much watering and
+sweeping. This stern simplicity he carried throughout his life and in
+words of eloquence (he was one of the most powerful speakers in Rome) he
+tried to get others to imitate him.
+
+  [Illustration: PLOUGHING: a terra-cotta group]
+
+Cato’s own character was of remarkable firmness. He did not ask other
+people to do what he would not do himself. He served in war again and
+again, and distinguished himself as a soldier, though his harshness made
+him detested by the peoples he conquered, for instance in Spain. But he
+wanted every one to think and live in his way, and judged with cruel
+severity those who thought or acted otherwise. The key to his character,
+both its strength and its weakness, is given by Plutarch when he remarks
+that ‘Goodness moves in a larger sphere than justice.’ Cato was just:
+but his justice was often harsh, cruel, and ungenerous. Thus he left his
+war-horse behind him when he left Spain, to save the public purse the
+charge of his freight, just as he sold his slaves when they became too
+old to work. In this we see carefulness and indifference to comfort and
+luxury turning to parsimony and meanness. As Cato grew older he became
+more and more fond of having money though not of spending it. He himself
+had prospered in life and, as he grew older, became extremely rich both
+from his farms and from lending money, at high interest, to shipping and
+other companies. For those who did not succeed he had a very severe
+judgement and small pity, as for those who gave way to any of the faults
+from which he was free. He judged instead of understanding them. His
+judgement was just but not sympathetic. His own account of the duties of
+a bailiff and his wife gives an excellent idea of the man.
+
+
+  _The Duties of a Bailiff and his Wife_
+
+  These will be your duties as bailiff. Maintain strict discipline;
+  observe rest-days; do not lay hands on the property of another,
+  but keep a careful watch over your own. It is your business to
+  settle disputes in the household and to punish offences without
+  excessive severity. The household ought to be well cared for,
+  never suffering from cold or hunger, and should be sufficiently
+  employed; in which case it will be easier to stop unruliness and
+  dishonesty. If your conduct is good, your example will be
+  followed; if you are wronged, your master will inflict the
+  punishment. Reward merit, and thus encourage others to exert
+  themselves. Do not waste time in taking walks; always be sober,
+  and never go out to dinner. See that your master’s orders are
+  carried out, and do not suppose that you are wiser than he is. His
+  friends should be your friends, and you should obey those whom you
+  are bidden to obey. Do not sacrifice at the cross-ways and on the
+  hearth of the homestead except at the great festival of the
+  _Lares_. Do not make an advance without your master’s knowledge,
+  but exact all that is due to him. Never lend seed-corn,
+  provisions, meal, grain, wine, or oil to any one. There should be
+  two or three households to which you apply in times of need, and
+  which you similarly help; but no more. Be punctual in settling
+  accounts with your master. Special labour on the land, paid by the
+  day, should not be employed beyond the term agreed. Buy nothing
+  without your master’s knowledge, nor, indeed, keep any transaction
+  from him. Let no one sponge upon you; consult no soothsayer,
+  augur, prophet, or Chaldaean. Do not stint the sowing; for the
+  result will be a poor crop. Acquaint yourself thoroughly with all
+  the work on the farm, and often do some yourself, as long as it
+  does not overtire you. Thus you will understand the feelings of
+  the workers and they, knowing this, will be more contented, while
+  you will enjoy better health, have less taste for idle walks, and
+  be more ready for sleep. Be first to get up in the morning, and
+  last to go to bed at night, taking care that the house is locked
+  up, that everyone is at rest in his proper place, and that the
+  animals have got their fodder.
+
+  You should take care, too, that your wife does not neglect her
+  duties. Make her fear you. Do not let her indulge in luxury. She
+  should see as little as possible of her neighbours and other
+  female friends; she should not entertain at home or go out to
+  dinner, or waste time in walks. Do not let her sacrifice, or
+  depute any one else to sacrifice, without the orders of her master
+  or mistress; for it must be understood that the master sacrifices
+  for all the household. She should be neat, and keep the house neat
+  and swept, and every day, before she goes to bed, she should see
+  that the hearth is clean and the ashes gathered on to the embers.
+  On days of festival, Kalends, Nones, or Ides, she should lay a
+  garland on the hearth and during the same days offer up prayer to
+  the Lar of the house for plenty. It is her business to see that
+  food is cooked for you and everybody else, and to keep a good
+  supply of poultry and eggs.
+
+    Cato, _De Re Rustica_, v. 1-5; cxliii. 1-2.
+
+  [Illustration: THE SHRINE OF THE LAR
+  from a house in Pompeii]
+
+This same just but hard and ungenerous spirit is seen in Cato’s public
+life. As Censor he had the right to strike off the roll of senators men
+who were in any respect unworthy. In doing this Cato was fearless. He
+attacked the most popular men in Rome and did not yield an inch when
+there was a howl against him. Public money was to him as sacred as
+private, and ought, he held, to be husbanded in the same careful way.
+Thus he attacked the brother of Scipio Africanus, because, as he said,
+he had spent more than he ought on his campaigns. He admired Scipio
+greatly. Cato was far too intelligent not to appreciate his high
+qualities of mind and character: but he thought him a new and therefore
+dangerous kind of man.
+
+Fifty years after the battle of Zama the Carthaginians, who were not
+allowed by the treaty to make war without the permission of Rome, sent
+an appeal for protection against Masannasa, the King of Numidia, who had
+gradually been encroaching on their territory. A Commission was sent out
+from Rome to inquire, with Cato at its head. Cato came back possessed by
+one idea, which never afterwards left him. ‘Carthage must be destroyed.
+Rome would not be safe until it was blotted out.’ When it was pointed
+out to him that the city was in no sense dangerous to Rome, that it had
+practically no arms, absolutely no fleet, and had shown in fifty years
+no sort of desire to attack Rome, was indeed too weak even to defend
+itself against attack, Cato paid no heed. It did not stir him when
+Scipio urged that to attack a defeated and helpless city was mean and
+unworthy of Rome, that its greatness would not be increased by
+destroying a beaten foe. Cato paid no heed. Carthage was rich and
+flourishing: it might one day be a danger again. It was taking trade
+that Rome might get, it possessed riches Rome might have. He was a
+powerful and effective speaker and his name stood high in Rome. What he
+said had a great influence because his character was deeply respected.
+Though old, his red hair quite white, he had lost none of his vigour.
+His dry humour could still make the Senate laugh, and his passionate
+earnestness rouse them to anger. His grey eyes sparkled, his long white
+teeth flashed when, day in, day out, whatever the main subject of his
+speech, the inflexible old man always ended with the words, ‘Carthage
+must be destroyed’.
+
+Cato had his way in the end. The Romans carried out the destruction of
+Carthage (146). It was a mean and disgraceful act. The Carthaginians had
+already submitted, without terms, to the mercy of the Roman people. When
+the consuls arrived they first demanded that all arms should be
+collected and given up: then that all the inhabitants should depart and
+the city itself be removed. This was too much. The desperate people
+resolved to resist, and resist they did with terrible and extraordinary
+heroism.
+
+Cato himself did not live through the siege: but he died knowing that
+his fierce will had its way. Carthage was to be destroyed. As a city it
+was to exist no longer.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Caius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla
+
+
+To understand the strange and in many ways sinister characters of Caius
+Marius and of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, we must have in our minds a
+picture of the dark times in which they lived. At a crisis in the life
+of the State Sulla showed courage, decision and will, and a stern
+devotion to his country which enabled him, in his own way, to save it.
+In these things he showed that he was a Roman of the old breed. Until
+this crisis came Sulla appeared no better than the other aristocrats of
+his time: like them he was careless of everything save his own selfish
+pleasure; always he remained hard, cruel, indifferent to the lives,
+feelings, and happiness of others. Whereas both Tiberius and Caius
+Gracchus lived and died for an idea greater than themselves, Sulla’s was
+a mind incapable of idealism. He and Caius Marius, his great rival, are
+alike in nothing except the harsh cruelty that belongs to times of
+revolutionary upheaval. In all other respects they are as unlike as any
+two men that ever lived. Marius was a son of the soil, a soldier with a
+soldier’s merits--courage, rude good humour, careless generosity--and
+his faults--cruelty, coarseness, indifference to everything but the
+rudest of pleasures. His one big work was the reconstruction of the
+army. Sulla was an aristocrat to the finger-tips: proud, cold-blooded,
+indifferent, highly educated, with a deep disbelief in everything and
+everybody. He had a remarkable intellect, and a physical beauty which
+attracted women without number. But it is doubtful whether he ever cared
+for a human creature. His extraordinary courage and his equally
+extraordinary indifference rested on a chilling belief in Fate. He was
+lucky: he called himself Sulla Felix; but nothing in the end was going
+to make any difference.
+
+  [Illustration: THE ARISTOCRAT distributing largesse]
+
+To see Marius and Sulla against the background of their time the events
+must be traced that followed on the death of Caius Gracchus.
+
+Tiberius Gracchus, and far more clearly his brother Caius, had seen the
+growing dangers that threatened Rome, if no wise steps were taken in
+time to meet them. Both brothers gave their lives in the effort to save
+their country. Their sacrifice was vain. The men who had power in their
+hands were blind to the great change that was taking place. They tried
+to compel the stream to go on flowing in its old channels, although the
+weight of waters had grown too great for them to carry. The result was
+that suddenly the waters broke loose and flooded everything. Rome, all
+Italy, was torn by a bloody and terrible civil war.
+
+At the time many people put these things down to the Gracchi. They had
+stirred up the lower orders and the Italians to discontent and
+bitterness. They had set strife between classes in Rome: roused the
+middle class against the senators and the mob against both. This was not
+a just statement. Caius Gracchus had thought out a great plan of reform
+that, if carried through, might have saved Rome and Italy from
+revolution and civil war. He had to win people to his side. In order to
+do so he passed measures that were not good in themselves but only as
+means to his great end. Thus he made the knights, the new class of
+wealthy men, judges instead of the senators; and gave doles of bread to
+the Roman populace in the hope that he would then be able to persuade
+them to give votes to the Italians and so make Italy really one.
+
+  The evil that men do lives after them:
+  The good is oft interréd with their bones.
+
+It was so with Caius Gracchus.
+
+  [Illustration: THE FISHERMAN]
+
+But the real cause of the civil war lay much deeper than the work of any
+single man or group of men. It was, in the main, the fact that while
+Rome had grown, and grown into a new world, the old system of government
+remained, and did not fit this new world. Rome was beginning to be a
+great trading empire. Yet wealth and power was jealously held by a small
+class in Rome in their own hands. The men of this class grew rich. They
+went out to the provinces, to Sicily, Greece, and Spain, as governors
+and made great fortunes. They came home with their riches and bought up
+the land that had once belonged to peasants and farmers, and worked this
+land with slaves. The condition of these slaves in the country was
+miserable, especially that of those who lived herded in camps. The greed
+of the agents of the tax-collecting companies made the Roman name hated
+in the provinces. In Italy, too, there was deep discontent. To keep the
+Roman poor quiet the ruling classes gave them games and bread-doles;
+they altered the laws so that no Roman citizen could be condemned to
+death for any offence. This kept the Romans quiet, but it made the
+Italians, who had no share in it, increasingly restive.
+
+  [Illustration: THE RICH MATRON]
+
+It had been clear to the far-seeing mind of Caius Gracchus that unless
+Rome could draw fresh blood and life and energy from Italy it must
+perish. The material wealth that was pouring into the city from all
+parts of the world, from Carthage and Corinth and the conquered kingdoms
+of the East, was doing more harm than good. Too many men, rich as well
+as poor, were beginning to care only for pleasure and for money as a
+means to pleasure. The luxury and extravagance of the rich made the
+poverty of the poor bitter, and these poor, uneducated, idle, accustomed
+to be kept in a good temper by splendid shows and presents of corn and
+wine, were ready at any moment to rise in disorder and destroy those who
+tried to help them. Most of them were not liable to military
+service--that was still confined to the old classes of men who held
+land; but they had votes, while the Italians had none. The town mob was
+swollen by freedmen--slaves who had saved enough money to buy themselves
+off--they too had votes.
+
+The Roman voters cared nothing for the wrongs of the Italians, or of the
+people of the provinces. Like the rich, who lived on the revenues of the
+tax-collecting companies, they thought the rest of the world was there
+merely to supply them with comfort and luxuries. But while in Rome
+itself people were more and more sharply divided between the ‘have nots’
+and the ‘haves’, all round them there was a growing dissatisfaction and
+discontent. The strife at home meant that enterprises abroad were badly
+managed. Many army commanders and provincial governors were incompetent
+and corrupt. There was no longer the old high Roman sense of duty and
+honesty. In its stead were pride, greed, and cruelty. The spirit that
+had shown itself in the savage destruction of Carthage and Corinth was
+shown again in the treatment of Jugurtha.
+
+  [Illustration: THE SHEPHERDESS]
+
+Jugurtha, the King of Numidia, threw off the Roman yoke and defied every
+Roman general sent against him until Caius Marius was sent out (107).
+Marius, the son of humble parents, had been marked by Scipio Aemilianus,
+under whom he served in Africa, as a coming man: but though he had
+already shown great gifts as a leader the Senate did not want to give
+him the command against Jugurtha because of his low birth, rude manners,
+and the love in which he was held by the Roman mob. He was at last
+elected by a huge majority, and, thanks in part to the brilliant
+exploits of a cavalry officer, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, ended the
+campaign in triumph. Jugurtha was captured, marched in chains through
+the Roman streets and cast naked into an ice-cold dungeon to die of
+hunger and exposure.
+
+In Marius’s triumph there was a drop of bitterness. His glory was shared
+with Sulla. For it was Sulla who had actually captured Jugurtha. With a
+small body of men he had daringly entered the camp of Bocchus, King of
+Mauretania, with whom Jugurtha had taken refuge, and persuaded Bocchus
+to make friends with Rome by giving him up. He had a ring made with a
+picture of the scene, which annoyed Marius every time he saw it.
+
+  [Illustration: TROPHY OF VICTORY
+  Capitoline Museum]
+
+But no one at the moment thought that Sulla could be a real rival to
+Marius. There was no question of naming any one else as general when the
+strife of parties in Rome was suddenly interrupted by terrible news--the
+Northern barbarians were on the march. This danger, from the Cimbri and
+the Teutones, had actually been threatening for a long time. In 113 a
+consular army had been routed by the Cimbri. For the next eight years,
+joined by other tribes, they remained on the North Italian frontier,
+a perpetual menace, defeating, one after another, the armies sent
+against them. In 105, when Marius was still in Africa, two Roman armies
+were annihilated at Arausio on the Rhone (105). More than 80,000 men
+perished in a single battle. Only a handful escaped to bring the
+terrible news home. Such a disaster had not happened since Cannae. The
+way to Rome stood open: there was no army to stop the victors had they
+marched on to Italy. They did not. They turned to Spain. Marius, who was
+called home, given chief command, and made consul in three successive
+years, had time to create a new army.
+
+In doing this he tackled one of the most pressing problems of the time.
+Gracchus had seen how great a danger the falling-off of the supply of
+men from the land might be: but no one had really grasped and dealt with
+the question from the army point of view until Marius took it in hand.
+This was indeed his greatest and most lasting work. First he changed the
+whole basis of service. Every one was liable to be called on, not only
+the shrinking class of holders of land. He took soldiers from the towns
+as well as from the country, from among freedmen and paupers as well as
+from among citizens. Second, he paid to every soldier a small daily
+wage. This was an immense change. It at once created a new class: the
+professional soldier. Formerly men had done their time in the army and
+then returned to ordinary civil life. Now the soldier was a soldier for
+life. Next Marius reorganized the army from within, sweeping away the
+differences between the Roman legions and those made up of Italians and
+allies. He improved the equipment of all ranks. This done he set himself
+to training his new men, encamped in Transalpine Gaul, in readiness to
+meet the foe.
+
+A soothsayer, in whose prophecy he placed great faith, had told Marius
+he should be consul seven times. As consul for the fourth time he
+finally attacked the Teutones with his new armies. At Aquae Sextiae
+(to the north of Marseilles) 100,000 barbarians were slain (102). It was
+a terrible slaughter. For centuries after the fields were covered with
+blackening bones, and the people of Massilia used them to make fences
+for their vineyards. Next year Marius, consul for the fifth time, met
+the Cimbri, who had crossed the Alps and descended into the plains of
+Lombardy, at Vercellae (101). Before the battle messengers came from the
+Cimbri, demanding land for themselves and the Teutones. They had not
+heard of the rout of Aquae Sextiae. Marius smiled grimly. ‘Do not
+trouble yourselves about your brothers,’ he replied. ‘They have land
+enough which we have given them to keep for ever.’ When battle was
+joined next day it was the height of summer; the blazing heat exhausted
+the Northerners. Boiorix, the Cimbrian king, the tallest and strongest
+man in the army, perished; round him there lay, at the day’s end,
+100,000 of his countrymen.
+
+Marius returned home to be hailed as the saviour of his country, the
+peer of Camillus and Fabius. He was made consul for the sixth time.
+
+Marius had won great victories; but the rejoicings in Rome over the
+terrible dangers that had been averted by his generalship were brief.
+Men’s minds were profoundly disturbed: many felt dimly that great and
+terrible events were coming without seeing what they were or how to deal
+with or prevent them. Marius certainly was not the man who had either
+the insight or the power to do this; he was a man of camps with no
+knowledge or understanding of politics. His victories and the great
+shows that followed them made him the idol of the mob: but the idol of
+the mob was the last man to deal wisely with the difficulties of Rome.
+The men of wealth and birth detested him as a dangerous, rude,
+unlettered boor, who knew nothing of government or public business.
+Marius could not even keep order. There were constant riots. People were
+set upon and murdered in the open streets. Alarming reports came from
+the provinces, especially from the East. But any one who had the courage
+to demand justice for the provincials was certain to be detested in
+Rome. Thus the honest Rutilius Rufus, who tried to defend the people of
+Asia against the greed of the Roman tax-collectors, was driven into
+exile. Nor did the Roman mob care a fig for the grievances of the
+Italians--or the senators either.
+
+
+Drusus
+
+There were, however, men in Rome who felt that dishonour was coming upon
+the Republic from these things as well as danger. These men--aristocrats
+of the old stamp--were, however, mostly rather inclined to turn aside
+from politics, which filled them with disgust. Their feelings were not
+keen enough to make them take action. But they saw that things were
+going from bad to worse; and when at last one of their order came
+forward who cared enough to take risks, they rallied round him. This was
+M. Livius Drusus, a young man of lofty family, who thought the men of
+his own order were partly to blame for what was happening. They held
+aloof and let vulgar and ignorant men like Marius and his associates,
+Glaucia and Saturninus (men of very low character who led the crowd by
+promises and bribes), drag the good name of Rome down. Two things
+stirred Drusus to action: one the shocking unfairness of the law courts,
+the other the fact that the people of Italy were shut out of all share
+in their own government. Everything was settled in Rome: the Italians
+had no voice. The consuls and other magistrates who made and
+administered the laws were chosen by Roman votes only. Yet the Italians
+had to send men to the army and pay taxes.
+
+Drusus got his Bill for the reform of the law courts through (91) in
+spite of the moneyed men, since he proposed that the judges should be
+partly chosen from the Senate, and a strong body of senators backed this
+up. But when his Bill giving votes to the Italians came up things were
+different. There he could count on very little support. It did not help
+him in Rome that, when he fell ill, prayers for his recovery were put up
+in every town in Italy. This was indeed used against him by his enemies
+in Rome, who said there was a conspiracy going on. The rich Italians,
+too, made common cause with the rich men in Rome. Some of the
+aristocrats stood by Drusus, but the majority in Rome was against him.
+
+Throughout Italy the struggle round his Bill raised an intense and deep
+excitement. Then one night Drusus was murdered in the street as he was
+going home. The murderer vanished. No inquiry was made. Drusus’s Bill
+was dropped; his party was crushed. His enemies at once rushed through a
+measure setting up a court before which every one suspected of
+sympathizing with votes for Italians was to be charged.
+
+But the hopes of the Italians could not be crushed thus. The news of
+Drusus’s murder ran like an earthquake shock through Italy. Feeling was
+at fever pitch. Rome refused to recognize Italian rights: the Italians
+would compel it to do so by the sword. All over the peninsula feverish
+preparations went on. A few months after Drusus’s death fighting broke
+out at Asculum in the south and spread like lightning all over the north
+and centre.
+
+This Social War, as it was called, was waged with dreadful bitterness on
+both sides, and the misery and ruin it brought on the country was
+terrible. In the first year (90) things went against Rome, though all
+their best generals, including Marius and his hated rival Sulla, took
+the field. In the second year (89) Marius did little or nothing, but in
+the south Sulla carried everything before him. But while the Romans were
+winning they were also beginning to see that the war need never have
+taken place: it was time to let the Italians take their share and make
+them Romans. A Bill giving them voting rights was drafted and passed
+into law. This did more than anything in the actual campaign to bring
+the fighting to an end.
+
+The war was still raging when news came that the East was ablaze.
+Mithridates, King of Pontus, the richest king in Asia Minor, and far the
+ablest, had taken the field and was preparing to overrun the Roman
+provinces. Hard on the heels of this came worse. Mithridates had
+defeated a Roman general, destroyed his army, captured his fleet and was
+invading Asia. He came, he said, to free the people from the Roman
+tax-collectors who sucked their blood away. Slaves and prisoners were
+set free, those who killed Italians pardoned. On a certain day of the
+year 88 there was a massacre of no less than 80,000 Italians in Asia.
+The rebellion against Rome, thus begun, spread to Greece. Athens threw
+off the Roman yoke; Mithridates, who dreamed of ruling over the whole
+East, sent his general to help overthrow the Roman garrisons in Greece.
+
+Thus while Romans were fighting one another the lands beyond the seas of
+which they were so proud, and which were the source of most of their
+wealth, were in rebellion. Men of their own race had been massacred by
+Asiatics. Each day the news grew worse. In Rome there were riots in the
+streets. Sulla had been named commander against Mithridates. Marius
+could not bear this. He got his friends to bring in a Bill transferring
+the command to him. It was carried, but amid such disorder that senators
+and consuls fled from the city. Sulla had left the riots and disorders
+of Rome to go to his army at Nola. There he received the order to hand
+over the command to Marius. If Marius expected him to obey he had
+misread the character of the man he hated. Sulla’s answer was to march
+upon Rome at the head of his legions. There he was welcomed by the
+remnant of the Senate as the restorer of law and order. Marius fled.
+
+  [Illustration: SULLA from a coin]
+
+Of the sudden rise of Sulla, Plutarch gives the following account:
+
+
+  _Sulla Felix_
+
+  In the long Social War, with all its vicissitudes and disasters,
+  and dangers that threatened the safety of Rome, Marius could
+  achieve nothing great, and merely proved that military excellence
+  demands physical strength and vigour, while Sulla by many notable
+  victories gained the reputation of a great general with the
+  people, of the greatest of generals with his friends, and of the
+  most fortunate with his enemies. Yet he was not sensitive about
+  this last judgement as Timotheus the son of Conon was; for when
+  his enemies attributed all his successes to fortune, and painted
+  pictures in which he was represented asleep with Fortune casting a
+  net over the cities, Timotheus was rude to them and angry, feeling
+  that they deprived him of the credit due to his deeds. Sulla, on
+  the other hand, not only accepted without annoyance the ‘felicity’
+  thus assigned to him, but even magnifying it and recognizing it as
+  divine, he made fortune responsible for his exploits, either in a
+  spirit of ostentation or from a genuine belief in providential
+  guidance. For example, he has written in his memoirs that of all
+  his decisions which were justified by results the happiest were
+  not reached by deliberation, but adopted in the hurry of the
+  moment. Moreover, when he says that he was born for fortune rather
+  than for war, he seems to have more respect for fortune than for
+  merit and to accept the control of an unseen power; insomuch that
+  he makes a divine good luck the cause of his harmony with
+  Metellus, his kinsman and colleague in the consulship; for he
+  expected to have much trouble with him, but found him a most
+  agreeable partner in office. Again, in the memoirs, which he has
+  dedicated to Lucullus, he bids him place most reliance on any
+  warning given him by a vision in the night. He tells us, too, that
+  when he was leaving the city with an army to fight in the Social
+  War, the earth opened near Laverna and a great fire gushed out,
+  shooting up a bright flame to the sky. The prophets interpreted
+  this to mean that a man of genius, who was of unusual and
+  remarkable appearance, would take the command and free the country
+  from its present disorders. Sulla declares that he was the man;
+  for his golden hair was the peculiarity in his appearance, and he
+  felt no diffidence in ascribing genius to himself after his great
+  achievements.
+
+    Plutarch, xxxiii. 6. 2-7.
+
+In many respects Lucius Cornelius Sulla is the most extraordinary figure
+in Roman history. Belonging to a very old family, the same as that of
+the Scipios, he grew up in genteel poverty, living in one of the large
+blocks of flats that had been built near the centre of the town. He was
+extremely handsome, with every grace of form and feature, tall, well
+built, with a face of classic outline, marred in later life by a hot and
+somewhat mottled complexion, but distinguished by eyes of a brilliant
+blue: eyes that could upon occasion flash fire. They did not often do
+so, for Sulla was a person of ice-cold reserve, seldom carried away by
+his feelings. Highly educated and gifted with unusual powers of mind, he
+looked out upon the world and despised most people in it. His was a mind
+incapable of feeling any sort of religious appeal. Most of the things
+people strove after seemed to him stupid, because there was no pleasure
+in them. He was what is called a cynic.
+
+Until he was nearly fifty Sulla took no important part in public
+affairs. He served with great distinction in Africa. His unshakable
+courage and complete self-control, combined as they were with rare
+powers of making men do what he wanted and an absolute belief in
+himself, made him a successful commander. But for military glory in
+itself he did not care, or for any other kind of glory. To him these
+things were illusions. Nor was he stirred by patriotism in the ordinary
+sense. He saw the Rome of his time very much as it was and did not
+consider it worth the sacrifice of a pleasure. The aristocrats seemed to
+him selfish and stupid: the popular party vulgar and stupid. He saw what
+was going to happen but had none of the belief that inspires idealists
+that he could change the course of events. ‘Things are what they are;
+the consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we seek to
+be deceived?’ This, said two thousand years later, was a true
+description of Sulla’s point of view. He looked on, coldly scornful; and
+amused himself, like other well-to-do men of his class, with the arts in
+their lower as well as their higher forms. But, when occasion called, he
+could act. When the Social War broke out, and all hands in Rome were, as
+it were, called to the pumps, Sulla was ready. He proved more
+successful, if also more ruthless, than any other commander in the
+field; he understood, better than any one else, the supreme danger in
+which Rome stood. It was this, and not personal ambition in the ordinary
+sense, that made him take the command against Mithridates, and march on
+Rome when the Marius faction showed that they were incapable of keeping
+order there.
+
+Sulla could spend no time in Rome. The danger in the East was too
+pressing. He sailed for Greece. Marius might return: if he did Sulla
+knew that his own life might be in danger, but he could not trouble
+about that. Roman rule in the East was threatened: it was his business
+to save it. He saw, as Marius did not or could not see, that at this
+terrible moment the fate of Rome trembled in the balance. Italy lay torn
+and exhausted by civil war. Agriculture had been ruined, thousands
+slain, and business of all kinds was at a standstill. The war in the
+East shook the very life of the Republic to its foundations. Rome lived,
+as London lives, on trade and supplies from overseas. They were stopped.
+There was a money panic. The danger was the greater that the revolt
+against Rome, both in Italy and in Asia, Greece, and elsewhere, had
+right on its side. The Roman Government, in the years that had passed
+since the defeat of Hannibal, had been bad: cruel, extortionate, and
+unjust. In Rome itself there was bitter disunion.
+
+When Sulla set sail he knew all this, knew how tremendous a task was
+before him, and, believing as he did in his star, knew that he would
+accomplish it. But only he of Romans then living could have done it.
+Marius, hot-headed always and now old and weakened in will and mind by
+drink, could not have succeeded. It needed all Sulla’s extraordinary
+coolness, all his iron will.
+
+Though he saw that trouble would break out again in Rome as soon as his
+back was turned, he also saw that the danger from the revolt of Greece
+and from Mithridates was even more immediate and pressing. The whole
+basis on which the Roman world rested would drop from under it if
+Mithridates succeeded. The danger was, in its way, as great as that
+which had threatened Rome when Hannibal crossed the Alps.
+
+  [Illustration: MITHRIDATES from a coin]
+
+For Mithridates was an exceedingly able prince. His strength did not lie
+in the huge hordes of soldiers he had behind him. Eastern soldiers were
+a poor match for Roman legionaries, even when they far outnumbered them.
+Nor did it lie in the vast wealth of the kingdoms over which he ruled:
+though in both men and resources he outclassed the small army Rome could
+send against him. His real strength was first his own ability, second,
+the general and widespread revolt against Rome. The Roman State, as he
+knew, was torn with revolution at home. There was a general sense of
+panic and uncertainty. The Government had neither men, money, nor
+supplies for the war against Mithridates.
+
+Now, instead of closing ranks, as after Cannae, rich Romans fled, some
+even joining Mithridates. Marius and his party saw in the dangers Sulla
+went out to face nothing but their chance to come back to power in Rome.
+Marius himself was old now and had taken to drink. Almost as soon as
+Sulla sailed revolution broke out again in Rome. The streets ran with
+blood; the town was heaped with the bodies of the slain. Cinna, one of
+the consuls, proposed to recall Marius (who had fled to the ruins of
+Carthage) and brought up first slaves and then armed Italians against
+the Senate. He was defeated and declared a public enemy. With Sertorius,
+a most able officer but a personal enemy of Sulla, Cinna then organized
+the Samnites. Marius returned from Africa, and he, Cinna, Sertorius, and
+Carbo marched on Rome (87). When they at last entered the city at the
+head of their troops a terrible massacre took place. Marius, who was
+almost mad with fury, struck down any one who had ever thwarted or
+criticized him, among them some of the noblest men in Rome. Antonius,
+first of living orators, Publius Crassus, a fine soldier, Catulus who
+had shared with Marius the toils and honours of the wars against
+Teutones and Cimbri, Merula the consul, shared the fate of hundreds of
+less note. No one was safe. Marius walked about like a raging lion,
+thirsting for blood. The heads of the dead stood in rows round the Forum
+and above Marius’s own house. For five days the massacre went on until
+at last Sertorius, who had looked on with horror, stopped it by cutting
+Marius’s bodyguard of murderers to pieces. The old man was elected
+consul for the seventh time (86): a few days later he died. Sulla
+meantime was declared a public enemy, banished, and removed from his
+command. His house was demolished, all his goods were sold, his wife and
+family were driven into exile.
+
+Such was the news that came to Sulla as he was besieging Athens and in
+the greatest danger. The city appeared impregnable. His small army was
+reduced by wounds, disease, and the shortage of supplies: the danger
+that Mithridates would land and cut them off was immediate. They would
+then be between the devil and the deep sea. But Sulla’s iron will did
+not quail. The man whom Rome regarded as a creature of pleasure shared
+every hardship of the soldiers and encouraged them day and night by his
+personal courage and calm. He showed marvellous ingenuity and resource
+in collecting supplies and a complete disregard of everything but the
+purpose in hand. He was a Greek scholar with a real admiration of Greek
+literature and art: yet he ransacked the temples and melted down the
+ornaments and treasures of centuries to make money; cut down the trees
+of the Sacred Grove of the Academy where Plato had walked with Socrates
+to make trench props. His ablest officer, Lucius Lucullus, was sent off
+to collect a fleet, somehow or other.
+
+All through the winter and the whole of the next year Athens held out.
+The next winter came before Mithridates’ fleet sailed: it could do
+nothing till the spring. But with this news came that of a new danger.
+The Roman Government of Cinna was sending out an army against Sulla. He
+was between two fires. But his nerve did not fail. Athens fell to a
+supreme assault on the 1st March (86) before the new Roman army left
+Italy. Moving south Sulla then met Mithridates’ army on the Boeotian
+plain and at Chaeronea gained a victory that rang through the world. The
+spell of Mithridates’ name was broken: Rome was still invincible. The
+revolted cities of the East began to come back. In the same year Sulla
+gained another great victory. At first the Roman line broke,
+panic-struck. Sulla, leaping from his horse, snatched a standard and
+rushing into the hottest of the fight shouted to his men, ‘Soldiers! If
+you are asked where you abandoned your general, say it was at
+Orchomenus.’ Stung by this reproach and the supreme courage of their
+general, the men recovered. The day was won. Flaccus, the Roman general,
+made an agreement with Sulla: to him, whatever the orders of the Home
+Government, it seemed impossible that Roman armies should fight against
+one another when there was a common enemy to face. But a captain in the
+ranks, Fimbria by name, stirred up a mutiny, Flaccus was murdered, and
+Fimbria prepared to march on Sulla.
+
+Sulla was now in a dilemma. His life was in danger unless he made peace
+with Mithridates. To do so was not magnificent: it was not even highly
+honourable. But Sulla was not a man to be stayed by such ideas. His own
+life was at the moment more important than anything else. If he were
+killed there would not be much left of the honour of Rome. He therefore
+made a treaty with Mithridates. He made the treaty on his own terms,
+however. Earlier, at a time when he was in extreme danger, Mithridates
+had offered him an alliance. This he had utterly rejected. Now he
+insisted that Mithridates should altogether abandon his plans and claims
+against Rome. By the treaty of Dardanus (84) the king had to give up all
+his conquests in Greece and Asia and hand over ships of war and a great
+sum of money to Sulla. In return the man who had arranged the
+cold-blooded murder of 80,000 Italians was made ‘friend and ally’ of
+Rome. Sulla knew that Mithridates would sooner or later give trouble
+again: but for the time being the danger was over. Rome’s power and name
+in the East had been saved, at a price. The treaty could not stand, but
+for the moment it was necessary. Sulla could turn to saving Rome at
+home. Fimbria’s army began to desert to him. Fimbria in despair killed
+himself. Sulla spent the next year in preparations for his own return in
+Rome. Carbo, who had succeeded Cinna, was as bitter against him as Cinna
+had been.
+
+After a year in Asia collecting the taxes, not paid for the last four
+years, Sulla landed at Brundisium (83) with a well-filled treasury and a
+devoted army. On every soldier he imposed an oath: they were to treat
+the Italians as friends and fellow citizens, not as enemies. But to the
+Marian party in Rome he determined to show no mercy. The State must be
+cleared of these people: there must be no more riot and revolution. As
+Sulla marched north he defeated the forces sent against him: many of the
+soldiers deserted to him: many cities opened their gates. The Government
+of Marius, Cinna, and Carbo was thoroughly unpopular: and Sulla kept his
+word, doing no harm to the country through which he passed. Only the
+Samnites resisted strongly: them Sulla, who had been joined by young
+Crassus and by Cnaeus Pompeius, defeated in a great battle lasting from
+noon to the following mid-day outside the Colline Gate (82).
+
+Rome and all Italy were now in Sulla’s power. He entered the city and
+assembled the Senate in the Temple of Bellona. As he explained his plans
+for restoring order--he was to have the powers of a dictator till that
+was done--a frightful sound was heard. Sulla gave his grim smile. ‘Some
+criminals being punished’, he said. Six thousand Samnite prisoners were
+being cut to pieces. In this spirit he proceeded to stamp out what had
+been the party of Marius. Marius had been mad with rage: Sulla was quite
+calm, but not a whit more merciful. The tomb of Marius was broken open,
+his ashes scattered in the road. Samnium, which had resisted the
+conqueror, was laid desert. The land was broken into allotments for
+Sulla’s soldiers.
+
+The proscriptions followed. Lists of public enemies were posted and a
+reward paid to any one who killed the men whose names appeared. Their
+property was confiscated. Men put the names of private enemies on the
+list before or sometimes after they had killed them. Catiline, for
+instance, did this to his own brother. Sulla did not care. The State
+must be cleared of dangerous men and it must get revenues from
+somewhere. On the 1st June 81 the lists were closed: the executions and
+confiscations ended. Nearly five thousand persons had perished. Their
+property and that of those who had fled or been banished fell to the
+State, which got four million pounds in this way.
+
+By murder and robbery the State treasury was filled. Sulla’s hard mind
+did not shrink from these ugly words. He did the things and made no
+pretences. In the same way he never pretended to believe in the rights
+of the people. He despised them, thought them stupid, ignorant, and
+lazy. What they needed was police. The Government he built up was of
+this kind. He made the Senate much larger and stronger, for men of birth
+and wealth, though no better than the others, could at least, he
+thought, be trusted to keep things orderly and as they were. No one was
+to be consul till he had passed through the lower offices, and then
+consul only once. As consul he was to stay in Italy without an army; at
+the end of his year he might be sent abroad, with an army, as a
+pro-consul. In Italy there were to be no troops: no soldiers were to
+cross the Rubicon. The law courts were reformed, the juries again drawn
+from the Senate.
+
+  [Illustration: A BOAR HUNT
+  from a sculpture in the Capitoline Museum]
+
+When he had finished his work of reorganization and built up the power
+of the Senate--i.e. of the older men of birth and property--as strongly
+as he could, Sulla laid down all his extraordinary powers and retired to
+private life. He had built himself a lovely villa, full of the art
+treasures he had brought from Greece and from the East, in the midst of
+exquisite gardens. There he lived, writing his memoirs, and enjoying the
+pleasures of hunting and fishing, banqueting and revelling, surrounded
+by the most amusing people he could find. Many of these were writers,
+artists, and actors. Actors were looked down upon in Rome, but Roscius
+the tragedian was a great friend of Sulla’s, for he scorned all such
+notions as unreal. Always Sulla had provoked the Romans by his power of
+casting off serious cares when he sat down at table and by what they
+thought his ill-timed jests. They did not understand his view of life.
+To him it was all a play, not a very good play: out of which, if one
+were lucky, one might get some entertainment. He had been lucky: chance
+was his goddess and he believed in nothing higher. Before he died, at
+the age of sixty, he wrote his own epitaph, which was inscribed on the
+great monument set up to him in the Campus Martius: ‘No friend ever did
+me so much good or enemy so much harm but I repaid him with interest.’
+
+  [Illustration: SCENE FROM A TRAGEDY
+  Terra-cotta relief]
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: CUTLER’S FORGE]
+
+VIII
+
+The New Rome
+
+
+With the death of Sulla a new period of Roman history begins, a brief
+and in many ways brilliant half-century, about which we know far more
+than we do of any earlier time, since we possess the works, in writing,
+architecture, sculpture, of the men, or of some of them, who helped to
+make it. Roman life in these fifty years is, in many respects,
+startlingly like that of our own day. True, the great discoveries of
+science had not been achieved; there were no motors, telephones or
+lifts, no railways, no electric light or power, no illustrated
+papers--indeed the first newspaper of any kind was a small sheet issued
+by Caesar. But in the things they did and said and thought about, and in
+the way they acted and spoke and thought about them, the Romans who
+lived in the sixty odd years before the birth of Christ were very much
+like the Englishmen of our own day. The comfort of the lives of the
+well-to-do, with their elegant town houses and charming country villas,
+furnished with beautiful things brought from all parts of the world,
+depended on the labour of innumerable slaves. In many ways, however,
+these slaves were not worse off than the poor factory workers of our
+great towns; in some they were more fortunate. The lot of those who were
+being trained to fight in the games was certainly dreadful; but those
+owned by private persons were for the most part kindly treated and could
+and often did buy their freedom. The class of freedmen was a large and
+growing one in Rome.
+
+  [Illustration: CUTLER’S SHOP]
+
+The revolutionary wars had brought ruin to many. Large tracts of Italy
+had been laid waste. But though the wounds that had been dealt at the
+life of the country bled for long, prosperity returned surprisingly
+quickly. If some families had lost everything, others had profited by
+their losses. And from abroad wealth poured into Italy in
+ever-increasing streams. A new class of rich men grew up, whose wealth
+came from business of all sorts--tax-farming in the provinces, house
+building, ship construction, agriculture on a large scale. Side by side
+with them were the lawyers, an increasingly important body. As to-day,
+a great many young men, when they had completed their education by
+spending some time abroad, in Greece by preference, became barristers.
+Success in the courts, the power of public speaking, opened the way to
+success in politics, though it was long before any one could go far
+along that road who had not won distinction as a soldier.
+
+Very slowly and gradually, the sharp line between the new men and the
+old patrician families began to soften. There were few so proud that
+they would not go and eat a sumptuous dinner at the house of a man
+because his parent had not worn the purple stripe on his toga that
+marked the senator. Education spread. Sulla brought back with him from
+Greece innumerable treasures, among them the works of Aristotle, which
+became the educated young Roman’s bible.
+
+All over Italy wealth spread, as the fields blossomed with vine and
+olive. Great roads made travel easier and swifter; aqueducts brought
+water where it was needed; the marshes were drained; everywhere lovely
+villas were built, their exquisite gardens adorned with beautiful
+statues. Thither the tired Roman went for a few days’ refreshment,
+accompanied by his friends and escorted by trains of slaves. Slaves
+wrote his letters for him, and carried them swiftly to his friends in
+other parts of Italy or across the seas. They copied the verses and
+prose sketches which the young Roman of fashion liked to have written,
+so that the vellum roll circulated almost as quickly and freely, among
+the well-to-do, as does the volume to-day. Life became more elegant and
+refined. Music, dancing, games of all sorts provided distraction;
+gambling became a passion with many; eating and drinking were as
+luxurious as now. When we think of the Romans of the period after the
+civil wars we must think of men intelligent, cultivated, educated,
+polished by contact with a wide and various world of affairs, their
+minds opened by foreign travel and the study of Greek language and
+literature.
+
+  [Illustration: WRITING MATERIALS
+  Pens, Ink, Tablet, and Potsherd
+  Brit. Mus.]
+
+War, however, remained the high road to popularity and fame. Since all
+the provinces were held by military governors (pro-consuls or quaestors)
+any one who aspired to high place in the State must have gone through
+some sort of military training. The successful general was still the
+favourite candidate. But military prowess alone was no longer enough.
+The day was gone by when a boor like Marius could ride rough-shod over
+the Republic. The hero of the new Rome was to be something more than a
+soldier, though he must be a soldier too.
+
+Within Italy the struggle between Romans and Italians was over. Italy
+was one, as it had never been before. Having acquired the vote, though
+not on terms of full equality with the Roman citizen, the Italian middle
+class settled down to money-making and did not, as a rule, trouble much
+about the stormy course of politics in the capital. More and more, it
+was from Italy that the army came; the Roman populace liked the shows
+given at the close of campaigns, but did not care much for the dangers
+and hardship of service.
+
+But although this struggle was over, another remained, sharper and more
+bitter than before. The return of Sulla had meant the triumph of the
+Senatorial Party, of the Conservatives, the men of old family and fixed
+ideas. Sulla’s proscriptions, the murder and banishment of innumerable
+families and the seizure of their goods and estates, to be divided among
+their enemies, left behind them a deep hatred between those who had
+triumphed and those who had been defeated. After Sulla’s death the sons
+and grandsons of the proscribed began to come back, and what had once
+been the Popular Party, led by Marius and Cinna, built itself up again.
+At first it had no leaders. The men who were to be its leaders were
+still too young. Gradually, however, in spite of the unpopularity that
+had become attached to its very name, it gathered strength. The new rich
+and the struggling lawyers joined its ranks, since there was more chance
+there than in those of the Conservatives for fresh talent and new ideas.
+A new kind of political organization was built up through the clubs and
+workmen’s associations.
+
+The main source of the growing strength of this new Popular Party was
+the weakness and inefficiency of the Government. Sulla had erected a
+remarkable machine, intended to prevent all change and keep the power of
+the State in the hands of a small ruling class, the patricians. But the
+machine would not work when his strong directing hand was removed. It
+was too stiff and rigid to cope with the growing tasks of administering
+the great empire over which Rome had to rule. Bit by bit Sulla’s system
+broke down; his rules were swept aside. In the years between his death
+and that of Caesar the rule of Rome extended enormously; each extension
+made the need of a strong and efficient Government more pressing. The
+actual government of Rome through the Senate was neither strong nor
+efficient. Nothing was well managed. This growing mismanagement
+compelled men of active minds to look around and ask themselves what was
+wrong. They found different answers. But the need of change was clear.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Lucius Licinius Lucullus
+
+
+If great men are those whose action brings about great changes, Lucius
+Licinius Lucullus was one of the greatest men of his time. His campaign
+in Asia Minor started an altogether new policy. Hitherto Rome had
+acquired provinces in an accidental way; there had been no purpose of
+conquest. In Spain and Africa the influence of Carthage had to be wiped
+out; in Greece Rome was nominally a protector only, called in to help
+against outside dangers. In Asia Minor it was more or less the same. As
+regards Asia Minor no one in Rome was satisfied with the treaty Sulla
+had made with Mithridates. It was felt to be a disgrace to Rome that the
+man who had caused the murder of hundreds of thousands of Italians in
+cold blood was recognized as the ‘friend and ally’ of Rome and left in
+undisturbed possession. Mithridates had got to be punished. When
+Lucullus went to the East it was for this purpose. But he did far more.
+He discovered that these great Asiatic monarchies, with their myriad
+armies, looked strong but were really weak; they could not maintain
+themselves, if attacked. He did not merely make Rome safe against their
+attack; he marched through kingdom after kingdom, conquering and
+subduing them to Rome. Thus, in fact, if not yet in name, he made Rome
+an empire.
+
+The work he thus began Lucullus did not complete. The idea was his; it
+was his hard fighting, the courage with which he overrode instructions
+and disregarded the Senate’s order to return, which paved the way for
+conquest. Pompeius, whose slow mind and cautious temper could never have
+started such a policy, saw from Rome what Lucullus’s fighting was
+leading up to. He saw the golden prize at the end of his efforts and
+determined to snatch it from him. In this he succeeded. But the credit
+or blame of making Rome an imperial power, a power that rules by force
+over alien races, belongs not to him but to Lucullus. This was not
+understood at the time. Lucullus, disappointed and embittered, came back
+to Rome and was known to his contemporaries not as the man who laid the
+foundations of the empire, but as the giver of the most luxurious and
+extraordinary banquets ever eaten. The proverb associated with his
+name--‘Dining with Lucullus’--shows this. His feasts were famous; the
+rarest foods from every part of the known world were on his table. His
+gardens too were wonderful, and his house glowed with all the treasures
+of the distant East. Among the treasures he brought back was one little
+noticed in his day--the cherry-tree. This soon grew all over Italy, but
+that Lucullus had brought it was forgotten. Like everything else that he
+did, it failed to bring him fame.
+
+The family of L. Licinius Lucullus was one of the oldest in Rome and one
+of those not too numerous ones which maintained not only the pride of
+ancient race but the idea that good birth carried duties with it. He was
+poor but excessively proud, and belonged to that small Conservative
+group from which Rutilius Rufus and Livius Drusus came. His mind was
+clear and highly educated, cultivated in the full sense. As a soldier he
+was extremely able. The way in which the ordinary politician made money
+and bought votes disgusted him. In the main he stood sternly aloof from
+the scramble for office and wealth.
+
+After Sulla’s death--he had been one of Sulla’s most capable
+officers--he retired to private life and watched with cold scorn the way
+in which the affairs of the State were mismanaged both at home and
+abroad; the long struggle with Sertorius, the rise of Pompeius, by good
+luck rather than, he thought, by merit. He had strong feelings and a
+good deal of the ambition that moves in almost every mind that is aware
+of its own powers, but he detested intrigue and had no aptitude for it.
+He was unpopular, because of his habit of saying what he thought, both
+in public and in private, about the corrupt politicians and vulgar
+scrambling money-makers whom other politicians abused in private but
+dared not offend in public. He had no party. Until he was fifty he had
+held no command or office of the first rank.
+
+But when the question of the campaign against Mithridates came up
+Lucullus felt that he had a claim to it and was prepared, despite his
+ordinary aloofness, to push that claim through. Nicomedes, the old King
+of Bithynia, had just died (74) and left his rich territory--a buffer
+state between the Roman provinces in Asia Minor and Mithridates’ kingdom
+of Pontus--to the Roman people. This the able and wily King of Pontus
+was not going to allow. He declared war, made an alliance with
+Sertorius, and marched into Bithynia. This was a serious menace. When
+Mithridates invaded Cilicia (73) people remembered the massacre of
+fifteen years ago and trembled. Pompeius wanted the command, but he was
+still busy in Spain; in the end Lucullus was appointed.
+
+The difficulties of the campaign were at first overwhelming. Lucullus
+was not in sole control and his colleagues were refractory. But the
+defeat of Cotta, the other consul, at last left him a free hand. Many of
+his captains were dismayed by the reduction of the Roman army. Lucullus
+remained calm. Mithridates had attacked the port of Cyzicus, far from
+his own base, with an army so large that to provision it was extremely
+difficult. Lucullus took up a position from which he could cut off his
+supplies and so close him in a trap between the town and his own army.
+With his smaller army Lucullus refused battle, and when Mithridates
+endeavoured to make his way out by dividing his forces Lucullus attacked
+the two parts in turn, though it was the dead of winter, and defeated
+them disastrously. A vast army perished in the snow. Lucullus was able
+to overrun Bithynia and force Mithridates to retreat into Pontus.
+
+It was now that Lucullus took the step which makes his career profoundly
+important in the history of Rome. Instead of waiting for instructions
+from the Home Government--instructions which he knew would probably have
+ordered his recall and certainly a halt in his operations--he resolved
+to act boldly on a plan of his own. That plan was no less than the
+invasion of Mithridates’ kingdom. Nearly all his generals opposed him,
+but Lucullus’s mind was clear. He burned to wipe out the treaty of
+Dardanus and had come to the conclusion that Eastern monarchies were not
+so strong as they looked: that their loose organization could not stand
+against the disciplined force of Rome. Mithridates himself had something
+of genius; but Mithridates was old.
+
+The progress of the campaign showed that Lucullus was right. Entering
+Pontus in the late autumn, he overran the rich country without meeting
+with any serious opposition; Mithridates’ armies had been scattered at
+Cyzicus; he had not yet collected fresh ones. Immense plunder--slaves
+and cattle, gold and silver, ivory and precious stones, rare stuffs and
+wondrous embroideries--were sent home to Rome. In the following spring
+when Mithridates did advance with his new army Lucullus defeated it
+decisively. Cabira was taken and Lucullus spent the winter with the
+royal palace as his head-quarters, training his army for the work before
+it. Here the defects of his character came into play. Proud and
+passionate, Lucullus had an inordinate sense of his own dignity and of
+the greatness of his own purpose; he forgot that the greatest general is
+only the leader of other men, on whom his triumphs depend. To Lucullus
+his soldiers were mere instruments, not human beings; the army a
+machine. Great generals like Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, Alexander and,
+in his degree, Sertorius, owe their lasting success to the power they
+have to make each man in the army feel that he is a man, whose devotion
+matters, on whom in the last resort everything depends. When soldiers
+feel this, when they feel that they and their general are part of one
+living thing, they can perform miracles. Lucullus had no such power. He
+was harsh, tyrannical, and inhuman in his attitude and, overwhelmed by a
+mass of work, never found time to relax. The sternness of discipline
+never unbent. He seemed to grudge the soldiers any share in the vast
+booty sent to Rome. He had no kindly word or look for individuals. It
+was this growing feeling of bitterness that the discontented officers in
+his army, and especially his brother-in-law Clodius, who was secretly
+working for Pompeius against him, used to sow the seeds of mutiny.
+
+Lucullus, absorbed in the mighty design he had conceived, did not
+realize what was happening, even when after the capture of Amisus his
+men paid no heed to his orders that the city should be spared, but
+sacked and looted it. By the autumn all Pontus was in Roman hands.
+Lucullus, again refusing to await orders from Rome, pushed on into
+Armenia and attacked Tigranes, with whom Mithridates had taken refuge.
+This campaign was brilliantly carried out. With his small army, hardly
+20,000 in all, Lucullus inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the
+Armenian forces. Armenia was under his feet. He had shown all the
+qualities of a great commander: clearness and steadiness of purpose,
+complete confidence, the boldness and unresting energy of genius. As he
+rested in winter quarters in South Armenia planning the conquest of
+Persia and Parthia, he might well compare himself with Alexander.
+
+Next year Tigranes had gathered a fresh army and Lucullus determined to
+smash him by taking Artaxata, the capital of Armenia. But here he
+failed. The campaign was dreadful: the ground was covered with snow; the
+rivers icy. At last mutiny broke out, his men refused to go on. News
+came from Rome that Lucullus had been superseded. The plotters at Rome
+had got their way.
+
+The fruits of victory had been snatched from Lucullus and left for
+Pompeius to garner. His soul might well be filled with bitterness as he
+came back to Rome. No one there realized what he had done; he had no
+party. The political struggle disgusted him more than ever. His
+solitariness had been increased by years of absolute power in the East.
+He withdrew into silent isolation, and the banquets which were the talk
+of Rome. Men gaped, but did not understand either the man or his work.
+
+
+  _After Strenuous Years_
+
+  In the life of Lucullus, as in Old Comedy, we find at the
+  beginning the acts of a soldier and a statesman, but towards the
+  end eating and drinking, and little else but revels and
+  illuminations, and mere frivolity. For I count as frivolous his
+  costly houses, with their porticoes and baths, and still more the
+  pictures and statues and his pains in collecting such works of art
+  at great expense, lavishing the magnificent fortune amassed during
+  his campaigns on the site where even now, though luxury has
+  increased so much, the gardens of Lucullus are counted among the
+  noblest belonging to the Emperor. At Naples, too, and on the
+  neighbouring coast he pierced hills with great tunnels, surrounded
+  his house with ponds and channels of salt water for breeding fish,
+  and even built out into the sea, so that Tubero, the Stoic
+  philosopher, at the sight of this magnificence called him ‘Xerxes
+  in a toga’. Besides all this, he had country seats near Tusculum,
+  with gazebos and rooms and porticoes open to the air, where
+  Pompeius came on a visit, and blamed him for lodging himself
+  excellently in summer, but making a house that was uninhabitable
+  in winter. Lucullus merely smiled and said, ‘Do you think that I
+  have less sense than the cranes and storks, and do not change my
+  home according to the season?’ At another time, when a Praetor was
+  anxious to make his spectacle magnificent, and begged for a loan
+  of some purple cloaks to dress the performers, Lucullus replied
+  that he would give him some if he found that he had any. Next day
+  he asked how many were wanted, and hearing that a hundred would be
+  enough, he offered two hundred. Horace is thinking of this when he
+  remarks that he considers a house poor when the valuables hidden
+  and overlooked are not more than those known to the master.
+
+    Plutarch, xxxvi. 39.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Cnaeus Pompeius
+
+
+At the time of Sulla’s death the unanimous opinion of Rome would have
+fixed upon Cnaeus Pompeius as the one young man then alive who was
+likely to follow in his footsteps and rule the Roman world by his own
+will. And if there had been in Pompeius’s character the qualities which
+his rapid success seemed to promise, they would have been right. But the
+life of Pompeius shows how much circumstances--chance, opportunity, the
+good opinion of others, birth and wealth--can do for a man; and what
+they cannot do, unless he has within himself the qualities of mind and
+will which mark off the first-rate from the best second-rate. Greatness
+was, as it were, thrust upon him; but since he was not great in himself
+he could not achieve it. It is this that makes him so interesting a
+failure. His failure was due to the fact that at a supreme crisis he was
+called upon to do just the things he could not do. It was no accident
+that enabled Julius Caesar to succeed where he failed. For Caesar
+possessed in supreme degree the power to act with decision, which, when
+combined with clear judgement, makes the great man of action. At the
+crucial moment the judgement of Pompeius wavered: his will was
+uncertain. In ordinary peaceful times his weaknesses might never have
+been seen; but his life fell within an era of storm and stress when the
+stuff of which men are made is tested and shown.
+
+Tall, strongly built, with curly hair and large eyes that though
+prominently set and wide open had a rather sleepy expression, Pompeius
+when young was often likened to Alexander the Great. He had his regular
+features and brilliant colouring, but in his eyes there was none of the
+fire or mystery that made Alexander seem to his contemporaries as
+beautiful as a god. His manners were grave and dignified. He gave all
+who saw him an impression of his importance. Pompeius had a very strong
+sense of his own importance. The thing he was most afraid of was of
+being laughed at. When he suspected that any one was doing this, he lost
+his temper.
+
+  [Illustration: POMPEIUS]
+
+Pompeius belonged to a family old and honourable enough, though
+plebeian, to make the senators at last accept him as one of themselves,
+the more readily that he had acquired immense wealth in the
+proscriptions. At the time of the civil war he was on the side of
+Marius, and closely associated with him, while Marius and Cinna were in
+power in Rome. His first wife Antistia was the daughter of a friend of
+Cinna’s. When Sulla landed, however, Pompeius soon saw which way things
+were going. He collected an army and marched to join Sulla. Although he
+was only twenty-three at the time, Sulla hailed him as one of the most
+important of his supporters. He suggested to him that he should put away
+his young wife Antistia and marry his own daughter-in-law. To this
+Pompeius agreed, although Antistia loved him and was in the deepest
+distress, since her father had been killed in the proscriptions;
+moreover, her mother, when she heard how Pompeius intended to treat her
+daughter, laid violent hands upon herself. In the proscriptions Pompeius
+acquired so much wealth that within a few years he was one of the
+richest men in Rome. His popularity was great and he could afford to
+keep it up by giving splendid shows and presents to the people.
+
+His wealth, his quick success, his great popularity filled the senators
+with awe. They had a constant fear that he was to be the next Sulla.
+They listened with respect to all that Pompeius said, though he was a
+dull speaker; and regarded him as the first general of the day, though
+he had really done nothing to deserve that title. But he was always
+lucky in his campaigns, and again and again had the good fortune to be
+made commander just at the stage when the fruits of a long struggle,
+carried on by others, were ready to be gathered. In the means by which
+he achieved success Pompeius was not over scrupulous. His want of
+feeling in the matter of Antistia was only one sign of this. The same
+kind of callousness was shown in the way he secured the final defeat of
+Sertorius, not by action in the field but by a plot. After three years
+of unsuccessful fighting Sertorius, much the ablest of Marius’s
+followers, who had raised the standard of revolt in Spain, was still as
+far from being conquered as ever. Pompeius was tired of the war; so were
+his troops. At last by the treachery of Perpenna and some other Romans
+in his army, on whose minds secret emissaries from Rome had worked,
+Sertorius was murdered. Pompeius then suppressed the revolt in Spain
+with horrible cruelty and returned to Rome crowned with success.
+
+He was made consul (70) although he had never held any of the junior
+offices of State; but his consulship was marked by nothing more
+important than his constant disagreements with his colleague Crassus,
+who, though of patrician birth, inclined to the so-called Popular,
+anti-Senatorial party. For the next two years he was little to the fore
+until called upon, as the first general of the day, to deal with a
+difficulty which represented a most serious danger to Rome. Rome
+depended to a large extent on foreign corn. Yet this overseas corn
+supply was almost suspended by the pirates of the Mediterranean.
+Commander after commander failed to suppress them. Food prices in Rome
+rose to famine heights. At last the tribune Gabinius proposed that a
+special commander should be appointed, with unexampled power, both as
+regards men and money; and that Pompeius should be the man. Caesar and
+Cicero supported the plan. It was hotly opposed by those who thought
+such powers dangerous; but in the end Pompeius was appointed. He showed
+conspicuous energy and within forty days the seas were cleared.
+
+  [Illustration: A VASE in the shape of a galley]
+
+A vivid account of Pompeius’s operations against the pirates was given
+by Cicero in the great speech he made in support of the proposal of
+Manilius to give him the command in the East, in the place of Lucullus.
+
+
+  _Pompeius in his Prime_
+
+  You know well enough how quickly these operations against the
+  Pirates were conducted, but I must not on that account omit all
+  mention of them. What man ever existed that, either in the course
+  of business or in the pursuit of gain, was able to visit so many
+  places and to travel such long distances in so short a time as
+  this great blast of war, directed by Cn. Pompeius, swept over the
+  seas? Even when it was yet too early for a distant voyage, he
+  visited Sicily, explored the coast of Africa, thence crossed to
+  Sardinia, and protected these three great granaries of the
+  Republic with strong garrisons and fleets. Next, after returning
+  to Italy, he provided in the same way for the safety of the two
+  Spains and Transalpine Gaul, and sending ships to the Illyrian
+  coast, to Achaia, and all Greece besides, he established large
+  forces, military and naval, in the two seas of Italy. On the
+  forty-ninth day after he left Brundisium he brought the whole of
+  Cilicia under the dominion of the Roman people, and all the
+  Pirates, wherever they might be, either were captured and put to
+  death, or surrendered to his sole authority and command. Finally,
+  when the Cretans had followed him even into Pamphylia with envoys
+  begging for clemency, he did not disdain their offer of submission
+  and was content to demand hostages. The result was that this great
+  war, that lasted so long and reached so far, a war that harassed
+  every country and every people, was taken in hand by Pompeius at
+  the end of the winter, was begun in the early days of the spring,
+  and was finished by the middle of the summer.
+
+    Cicero, _De Lege Manilia_, §§ 34-5.
+
+Pompeius used the renown won by this success to secure for himself the
+fruits of the Asiatic victories won by Lucullus. On the one hand, he
+worked in Rome against Lucullus so that he got the command transferred
+to himself; on the other, by bribery and the arts of Clodius, Lucullus’s
+brother-in-law and aide-de-camp, he worked up a mutiny among his troops.
+Then he went out to Asia and in a series of spectacular campaigns laid
+the East at his feet. His progress through Asia was a parade; it was no
+wonder that the Romans were dazzled by the news of the way in which he
+overran kingdoms and conquered vast territories of enormous wealth.
+Pompeius seemed to them a general of the rank of Hannibal or Alexander.
+
+The Senate grew alarmed. They had not forgotten how Sulla had returned
+from the East in 83 and set himself up as Dictator, master of Rome. If
+Pompeius in 62 wanted to do the same there was nothing to prevent him.
+He had a great army, devoted to him and ready to follow him in any
+adventure. He was extremely popular with the people of Rome. He had
+never shown any particular respect for the laws and customs of the State
+when he wanted anything for himself. He had broken the rules Sulla had
+laid down, by which no one could hold high command until he had passed
+through all the lower offices. Now, while still in Asia, he demanded to
+be allowed to stand as consul, in his absence, although he had never
+been tribune or praetor. The Senate put difficulties in his way. Indeed
+they did everything they could to irritate Pompeius and give him the
+excuse for taking the strong line they dreaded. Only Julius Caesar, the
+young and rapidly rising leader of the Popular party, backed him. The
+Senate refused to allow Pompeius to stand for the consulship. Nepos, his
+emissary, would actually have been killed in the streets if Caesar had
+not saved him. Caesar pleased him by proposing that he should finish
+rebuilding the Capitol.
+
+The Senate’s fears were groundless, as Caesar knew. Pompeius was not
+like Sulla. Sulla always knew what he wanted. Pompeius had no clear aim.
+Opportunities lay open before him which he did not desire or know how to
+use. He wanted to be important, a big man of whom people spoke well, to
+whom they looked up; but his timid mind shrank from responsibility. He
+had never been fired by any great idea; he had no purpose that he wanted
+to impress upon the world. He had not even got that harsh and cold
+contempt for the mass of mankind that caused Sulla to feel a sort of
+bitter pleasure in imposing his will upon them. Of Caesar’s fire he had
+nothing. Politically he had never taken a firm line. If no one in Rome
+quite knew where he stood, Pompeius was in the same doubt himself. His
+was a respectable nature with a natural inclination towards safety. But
+in the Rome of his day things were in a state of uneasy movement; there
+was no safety or quiet for any one who wanted at the same time to be a
+big figure. Pompeius was later forced to take action. This action was
+weak and irresolute because his mind had never been clear. Most people
+are like Pompeius: they do not know what they want; or they want
+something vague, like happiness or the good opinion of others; or they
+want a number of things which cannot be had together. The mark of those
+men who stand out in history is that they conceived clearly something
+they wanted to have or do; and by force of will drove through to it.
+Even when they failed, as Hannibal, for instance, failed, their failure
+has in it something more magnificent than ordinary success. But this
+power to will implies a readiness to make sacrifices. If you want one
+thing you must be prepared to do without others. If you want to please
+yourself you must be ready to displease other people. You cannot have
+your own way and at the same time have the good opinion of everybody.
+This Pompeius never saw.
+
+  [Illustration: A TRIUMPH
+  from a relief of the Empire]
+
+When he returned from his great campaigns in the East in the year 62
+Pompeius landed at Brundisium and dismissed his soldiers to their homes.
+The senators heaved a vast sigh of relief. He was not going to be
+dangerous. When Pompeius arrived in Rome without his army he found that
+nobody much wanted him. People were more interested in the struggles
+that had been going on at home--Catiline’s conspiracy, Cicero’s strong
+line in putting the conspirators to death, the question whether Caesar
+had been implicated, the friendship between Caesar and Crassus--than in
+what Pompeius had been doing in the East. Without his army nobody was
+afraid of Pompeius. He found Lucullus, in the Senate and political
+circles generally, doing everything he could to thwart him, supported by
+Cato the Younger, who thought that imperialism, Eastern conquests, and
+new wealth were bad things, likely to ruin Rome. Pompeius celebrated a
+stupendous triumph which made him the idol of the mob; but the Senate
+would not hear of his being made consul or make grants of lands to his
+soldiers. The Conservative party had thwarted Pompeius at every turn; he
+was deeply hurt, and in his most sensitive part, his vanity. This hurt
+finally drove him into an alliance with Caesar and Crassus, the leaders
+of the Popular party, and his own most dangerous rivals. He disliked
+Crassus and feared Caesar. At the moment his support was invaluable to
+the Popular party; therefore Caesar set himself to overcome Pompeius’s
+distrust of himself and Crassus’s deep detestation of Pompeius. He had
+good arguments for each of them; and behind them a charm of manner that
+few people could resist.
+
+Three years after Pompeius returned from the East the three strongest
+men in Rome were bound together. This first Triumvirate (60), as it was
+afterwards called, was a private arrangement. People only learned of its
+existence when they saw it at work. Pompeius married Caesar’s daughter,
+Julia, who, so long as she lived, kept him friendly with her father.
+Caesar was made consul and at once confirmed all that Pompeius had done
+in the East and made grants of lands to his soldiers. A big programme of
+land reform was passed through. The corn distribution was reorganized.
+People who criticized the Triumvirate too openly, like Cato, were
+banished. Cicero also was exiled, since Clodius had sworn vengeance on
+him. Caesar would have saved him by taking him with him to Gaul, as well
+as his brother Quintus, who was one of his adjutants; but Cicero
+refused. Caesar went off to Gaul the year after his consulship (58);
+Pompeius and Crassus were left masters in Rome.
+
+There were at the time incessant disorders in the city. The strife of
+parties waxed bitter and furious. Fights between different political
+clubs were of nightly occurrence. The ingenious Clodius had reorganized
+the old associations of the workers into guilds of a more or less
+political kind, and thus built up a machinery in every quarter of the
+city which he handled with great adroitness at election times. Moreover,
+he organized something like a voters’ army of slaves and freedmen, which
+turned out on his instructions, and lived on the free corn given out by
+the State. Pompeius did nothing to cope with this state of things. He
+fell, in fact, into a strange condition of indolence, and took hardly
+any part in public affairs. The news of Caesar’s victories in Gaul did
+not rouse him, though Caesar’s popularity increased daily and his own
+declined.
+
+Pompeius’s sloth at this period is sometimes put down to his extreme
+domestic happiness. Julia, his new wife, was but half his age, three and
+twenty. She possessed a full measure of the irresistible charm of her
+father; so long as she lived the bond between the Triumvirs was
+unshakeable. But her husband’s apparent indifference to public affairs
+was due, in the main, to another reason; the one which explains so much
+in Pompeius’s action and inaction both at this time and later. He stood
+aloof because he did not know what to do. The political tangle had
+become a knot that must be cut. Pompeius was not the man to cut knots.
+He let things slide.
+
+  [Illustration: A ROMAN VILLA ON THE COAST
+  Notice the roof garden]
+
+Disorder grew and nothing was done to stop it. The Senate, alarmed by
+Caesar’s growing popularity--a fifteen days’ festival was held in honour
+of his victories in Gaul--began to attack his new land and other laws.
+Pompeius did not trouble to defend them. Cicero had come back from
+banishment and made alarmist speeches declaring that Caesar was aiming
+at bringing the Republic to an end. Pompeius and Crassus quarrelled
+again. Yet when Caesar called his friends to meet him at Lucca, where he
+had gone into winter quarters (56), hardly any one in Rome refused to
+go. Pompeius, despite his growing jealousy and uneasiness, was
+reconciled to Crassus and the Triumvirate renewed. But as soon as he got
+back to Rome again, away from Caesar’s charm, he fell back into his old
+moody indolence. In the course of the next few years he became openly
+hostile to Caesar. Little heed was paid in Rome to what he was doing in
+Gaul. The death and defeat of Crassus at Carrhae (53), produced no deep
+stir. The disturbances in the city, which had been occasional, grew
+constant. More interest was felt by the ordinary citizen and even the
+ordinary senator in the brawls between Clodius and Milo than in anything
+happening outside Rome.
+
+The Government was quite helpless. Things were plainly going from bad to
+worse. There was one strong man in the Roman world who might save the
+State; but the price of his doing it was one that made the Conservatives
+determined to have civil war rather. The clearer Caesar’s outstanding
+position became the more resentful were Pompeius’s feelings against him.
+Since his early youth he had been regarded by other people, and had come
+to regard himself, as the great man. Now, however, when there was a real
+opportunity for showing greatness he did not know how to do it; and saw,
+too, another likely to carry off the prize.
+
+Julia’s death, two years after the meeting at Lucca, removed the one
+human being who might have prevented an open breach between Pompeius and
+Caesar, and left Pompeius’s jealousy to rule unchecked in his mind.
+Caesar, far from Rome, saw with clear eyes the meaning of what was
+happening there; Pompeius, though on the spot, did not or would not
+understand. He would never take action. For this very reason the
+senators looked upon him as a safe man and gave him powers far greater
+than any Caesar had or had ever asked for. He was made sole consul (52)
+and head of a special court which was to try all cases of disorder.
+Disorder had indeed been getting more and more serious; Clodius and Milo
+were rival candidates for the consulship. There were open fights, day
+and night, between their followers. At last Clodius was actually
+murdered by Milo’s ruffians on the Appian Way.
+
+Pompeius did nothing, though in Rome he was all-powerful. Crassus was
+dead; Caesar far away in Gaul and hard pressed there. When Pompeius fell
+ill about this time prayers for his recovery were put up all over Italy;
+and when the news came that he was better great public services of
+thanksgiving took place. But as Plutarch says, this demonstration proved
+to be one of the causes of the civil war which followed. ‘For the joy
+Pompeius conceived on this occasion, added to the high opinion he had of
+his achievements, intoxicated him so far that, bidding adieu to the
+caution and prudence which had put his good fortune and the glory of his
+actions upon a sure footing, he gave in to the most extravagant
+presumption and even contempt of Caesar; insomuch that he declared, “He
+had not need of arms nor any extraordinary preparations against him,
+since he could pull him down with much more ease than he had set him
+up”.’ When people like Cicero expressed their fear that Caesar might
+march upon Rome with his army he said, ‘In Italy, if I do but stamp upon
+the ground an army will appear.’ Filled with such notions, he proceeded
+recklessly to drive Caesar to desperation. He refused to disband his own
+troops (two legions which he had lent to Caesar, and Caesar, on his
+demand, had returned to him loaded with presents); instead of backing
+Caesar’s candidature for the consulship for the year in which he was due
+to return from Gaul he opposed him in every way. Finally, he made it
+quite clear that if Caesar came to Rome without his army he would be in
+serious danger; and at the same time insisted that he should do so.
+
+What this must lead to was plain enough to people in Rome. When they
+heard that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon (49) at the head of his troops
+(regardless of Sulla’s law) they fell into a panic. The Senate was
+terrified of Caesar and not much less afraid of Pompeius. But disunited
+as the Conservatives were among themselves, he was the only man who
+could hold them together at all, and their only general. If Pompeius had
+acted firmly at the crisis, whether with Caesar or against him, he might
+have prevented the civil war. But at a time when every day was vital he
+did nothing at all for several days, remained in his own house without
+giving any lead or staying in any way the gathering tumult and
+excitement. Refugees began to pour into Rome. For some reason or other
+every one took it for granted that Caesar was going to march on the
+city, though as a matter of fact he had made no move. At last Pompeius
+declared that the country was in danger and that every one should leave
+Rome. He himself left the city to muster the great bodies of soldiers in
+Italy into an army. Very soon afterwards the consuls fled, in such a
+hurry that they left the State treasures behind them, and with most of
+the senators joined Pompeius at Brundisium, whence they intended to sail
+for Greece.
+
+Perhaps only a poet could interpret what was happening, in this time, in
+the mind of Pompeius. Lucan thus describes it:
+
+
+  _The Last Phase: the ‘Shadow of a Mighty Name’_
+
+  You fear, Magnus, lest new exploits throw past triumphs into the
+  shade, and victory over the Pirates be eclipsed by the conquest of
+  Gaul; your rival is spurred on by the habit of continuous
+  enterprise and a success too proud to take the second place; for
+  Caesar will no longer endure a greater nor Pompeius an equal.
+  Which of them appealed more righteously to civil war, we are not
+  permitted to know. Each has the support of a mighty judge; the
+  gods approved the cause of the conqueror, Cato of the conquered.
+  They were not, indeed, equally matched. Pompeius was of an age
+  already failing in decay, and during the long repose of peace and
+  civil life had forgotten the practice of command; eager to be on
+  the lips of all, lavish in his gifts to the mob, swayed by the
+  breath of the people’s will, and flattered by applause in the
+  theatre that he built. Careless, too, of gaining fresh stores of
+  strength, and relying over much on earlier success, he stands the
+  shadow of a mighty name; like an oak that, towering in some
+  fertile field, bears spoils offered by the people of old and
+  votive gifts of their leaders; no longer cleaving to the earth by
+  stout roots, it is kept upright by its own mere weight, and
+  thrusting leafless branches through the air, gives no shade save
+  from the naked trunk. Yet, though it rocks and soon will fall
+  before the first blast from the east, though around it so many
+  forest trees raise their stems unshaken, it is worshipped alone.
+
+    Lucan, _Pharsalia_, i. 121-43.
+
+First in leaving Rome and then in leaving Italy Pompeius made fatal
+mistakes. Caesar was soon master of Italy, almost without bloodshed.
+Within the year he had reduced Spain and Sicily, the Roman granaries,
+after severe fighting; built a fleet and sailed for Greece. There he
+tried to induce Pompeius to meet him and so come to a settlement.
+Pompeius refused.
+
+He believed that his army was stronger than Caesar’s. He and all his
+friends were full of bitterness, and quite sure of victory. They had,
+indeed, every advantage on their side, in numbers and supplies, and
+could afford to wear Caesar down by a waiting policy. This was
+Pompeius’s own plan, and it was sound. But he allowed himself to be
+overruled largely because of the gibes of his followers. He moved from
+Dyrrachium, where he had held a very strong position, to the plains of
+the Enipeus river. At Pharsalia a great battle took place (48). Pompeius
+was defeated. His defeat was largely his own fault. He had 43,000 men to
+Caesar’s 21,000 and was especially strong in cavalry. By a skilful
+stratagem Caesar defeated the cavalry; when Pompeius saw this he
+believed the day was lost; left the field and hid himself in despair in
+his tent. Deserted by their general his lines broke; the defeat became a
+rout. His army was wiped out. Pompeius himself fled to Egypt with a
+handful of attendants. There he was murdered by the Egyptians, under the
+eyes of his wife and son.
+
+Caesar, it is said, wept when Pompeius’s seal-ring was handed to him,
+and he knew that his great rival had perished. He set the statue of
+Pompeius up again in Rome; and might, thereby, have seemed to rebuke,
+almost in the words Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Marullus, the
+fickle people of Rome who so soon forgot him who was once their idol.
+
+
+  _A Broken Idol_
+
+  _Marullus._ Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
+  What tributaries follow him to Rome
+  To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?
+  You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
+  O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
+  Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
+  Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements,
+  To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
+  Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
+  The livelong day, with patient expectation,
+  To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:
+  And when you saw his chariot but appear,
+  Have you not made a universal shout,
+  That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
+  To hear the replication of your sounds
+  Made in her concave shores?
+  And do you now put on your best attire?
+  And do you now cull out a holiday?
+  And do you now strew flowers in his way,
+  That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?
+  Be gone!
+  Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,
+  Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
+  That needs must light on this ingratitude.
+
+    Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, I. i.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Marcus Licinius Crassus
+
+
+Of all the wealthy men in Rome, whether like Lucullus or Sulla they had
+brought their riches back from foreign conquests, or extracted it from
+the people of the overseas provinces as governors, or made it in
+business, the wealthiest was Marcus Licinius Crassus. His riches became
+a standard by which other men’s were measured. Crassus belonged to an
+old but comparatively poor family which suffered much in the wars of
+Marius and Sulla. He himself as a very young man was, like Pompeius, one
+of Sulla’s lieutenants. Like Pompeius again he had founded his fortune
+at the time of Sulla’s proscriptions. But the extraordinary and constant
+increase in his wealth was due to his own unresting energy and extreme
+ingenuity, helped by the fact that he was not in the least scrupulous.
+
+The houses in which the ordinary Roman lived were chiefly built of wood:
+only very rich men had stone or marble houses at this time. The streets
+were extremely narrow, and many of them very steep and crooked, and the
+dwellings, whether single houses or great tenements, were crowded
+closely together. As the buildings grew old they were apt to fall down,
+especially the high flats, which became top-heavy. Serious fires were
+also very common. Crassus observed this. He therefore collected a great
+body of slaves, skilled as carpenters and masons. He also equipped
+others as a fire brigade. When a fire broke out anywhere he would make
+an offer to the owner to buy the house very cheaply. Were his offer
+accepted he would put out the conflagration and rebuild. Were it refused
+he would let it burn. At the same time he bought up at cheap rates
+houses in bad repair and likely to collapse, which he therefore got at
+low prices. In this way he became owner of a great part of Rome, and, as
+more and more people were constantly crowding into the city to live, and
+the supply of houses was less than the demand for them, he could and did
+charge high rents. People who refused to live in his houses could find
+nowhere else to go.
+
+This was one of the means by which Crassus acquired his riches. But he
+was incessantly alert and active to spy out opportunities in this
+direction or in that for making money. His energy never relaxed: he was
+always busy. He never fell into idle ways or the kind of stupid
+amusement in which so many Romans, young and old, frittered away most of
+their time. At a time when he owned half the houses in Rome, and so many
+members of the Senate were in debt to him that they dared not vote
+against his wishes, he built for himself only one house, and that of
+moderate size. He enjoyed money-making as men enjoy any pursuit of which
+they are master. After a time, however, he grew so rich that a new
+ambition seized him. He began to thirst after direct political
+power--not merely the indirect power which his money gave him. Crassus
+was no fool. In financial affairs of all kinds he had courage, resource,
+ingenuity, determination, and persistence, with that touch of
+imagination which belongs to any kind of genius. It was not only by
+accident that everything he touched turned to gold. But his imagination
+was of a narrowly limited kind. He understood all the lower motives that
+move men but none of the higher ones, for he understood only what he
+found within himself, and within himself there was no room for the power
+of any kind of idea.
+
+With most Romans of his time religion had become a dead thing. They kept
+the sacred images in their houses and performed all the official and
+recognized ceremonies. But this was matter of custom and manners, like
+the rules of dress. There was no reality or feeling in it. The reality
+of Roman religion had been men’s devotion to their country and the
+belief in the city as a great thing whose life went on after their own
+ended. In its service they had been prepared to spend themselves, for it
+to die. This kind of devotion had been profoundly shaken. The average
+Roman of Crassus’s time believed in nothing but his own pleasure, and in
+power and glory for himself.
+
+In this Crassus was exactly like them. He was the richest man in Rome,
+but riches after a time ceased to satisfy him. They did not give him
+popularity. This it is true was partly his own fault, for Crassus, like
+many very wealthy men, combined reckless occasional expenditure with
+steady meanness. He gave the most gorgeous shows; but he hardly ever let
+off a debtor. His hardness in collecting small sums was a byword. He
+would spend thousands one day and haggle about a shilling the next. Of
+course it was this careful looking after the pence that had made and
+kept Crassus so rich; but it did not make him beloved. Nor, though he
+was a very capable soldier, could he compete in this respect with
+Pompeius, who always seemed to manage to get the showy things to do
+while other people only got the hard work. When Crassus boasted of his
+exploits in the campaign against Spartacus, people shrugged their
+shoulders. Yet the Slave War had been a most serious danger, the more so
+that it broke out at a moment when difficulties were dark on every side.
+
+More than once in the last few years Rome had suffered severely from a
+shortage in the supply of wheat that meant actual famine for the poorer
+people. In Italy the fields which used to grow corn had been
+increasingly planted with vine and olive--more profitable crops. The
+corn grown in the countryside was not much more than sufficient for the
+needs of the people living there. Rome depended in the main on supplies
+from across the seas. Although the Sicilian towns were legally bound to
+send a certain proportion of their crop to Rome they did not always do
+so, and the Government was extremely slack in keeping them up to the
+mark. A serious famine occurred in the year of Mithridates’ invasion of
+Bithynia, which looked dangerous enough. At the same time came the news
+that the commander who had been sent out against the pirates who were
+devastating the Cilician coast had been seriously defeated by them and,
+worst of all, that a great rising of the slaves had broken out
+throughout Italy (73).
+
+This Slave War proved more serious even than at first appeared. The
+slaves had not merely risen in great bodies: they had found a leader who
+proved a real military genius in Spartacus. Spartacus was a Thracian,
+and like most of his fellow slaves had been a prisoner of war.
+
+These slaves were not the ordinary household slaves, many of whom were
+treated kindly enough, or those employed in crafts and industries. They
+were for the most part men kept in compounds under training for the
+games. All over Italy there were training schools, belonging to rich
+men, where picked slaves, chosen among prisoners of war because they
+were tall, strong, and handsome, were kept and taught to fight as
+gladiators. The conditions of these schools were very bad and the
+unfortunate men in them had nothing better before them than the chance
+of death in the arena. The taste of the Roman people was growing brutal;
+the part of the shows given them by successful generals or politicians
+who wanted popularity that they liked the best were the gladiatorial
+fights: fights between men armed in different ways that went on till one
+or other of the combatants was killed. A favourite combat was that
+between a man armed with a trident and another provided with a net.
+Sometimes these fights took place between bodies of men. Like the
+Spanish bull fights, these shows excited the people of Rome beyond
+anything. Good swordsmen fetched high prices and won fame for their
+owners.
+
+These unhappy men were for the most part prisoners of war; many of them
+had been chiefs and leaders in their own country, and were men not only
+of strength and courage but of intelligence. In the big training school
+at Capua there was such a man among the slaves: Spartacus, a Thracian
+chief. His mind rebelled against the hopelessness of his lot and he
+stirred up his fellows. Eighty of them broke out from captivity and made
+their escape to the slopes of Vesuvius. There they built a strong camp,
+and, as the news spread of what they had done, slaves from all over
+Italy joined them: some breaking out of the schools and prisons as
+they had done, others running away from their masters and places of
+employment. A small force was sent against them. They drove it back
+in disorder and captured its weapons. This success encouraged further
+risings. Spartacus was soon at the head of a considerable force. In the
+next year (72) he defeated a consular army. His own numbers rose to over
+40,000. The war was fought with horrible cruelty and bitterness on both
+sides. Neither gave nor expected any mercy. All captured slaves were put
+to death. Spartacus compelled three hundred Roman prisoners to fight as
+gladiators at the funeral games held for a fallen slave captain. Farms
+and country houses were plundered and burned.
+
+  [Illustration: A THRACIAN GLADIATOR]
+
+The growing success of the slaves filled people with terror: they
+dreaded a general massacre of the rich. Yet it seemed impossible to
+crush them. Spartacus showed rare qualities as a general and organizer;
+and after he had defeated both consuls, in the following year, and began
+to move northwards, there was something like a panic in Rome. No one was
+willing to undertake command against him. At last Crassus came forward.
+Here, he thought, was his chance to win glory equal to that which
+Pompeius was gaining in Spain. His quick eye saw that the Roman armies
+were falling to pieces through bad discipline: his first task was to
+restore the strictness of military law.
+
+In the beginning Spartacus seemed too strong and skilful for him, but
+Crassus knew that in the end jealousies were sure to break out in his
+ranks, since the slaves were men of different nationalities, only held
+together by the will and skill of their commander. At last, after long
+months in which success seemed hopeless, so hopeless that the Senate
+recalled Pompeius from Spain to Crassus’s infinite rage, he compelled
+Spartacus to fight a battle. He was killed and with him 12,000 of his
+followers. They fought heroically, their wounds were all in front.
+Pompeius as he crossed the Alps met only the bands of desperate
+fugitives fleeing from the conqueror. He put them to the sword and
+afterwards, to the disgust of Crassus, claimed a share in the victory.
+‘Though Crassus’s men defeated the gladiators in battle, I plucked the
+war up by the roots’, he told the Senate.
+
+Next year (70) Crassus and Pompeius were elected consuls together. This
+did not make them friends. Crassus disliked Pompeius and was exceedingly
+jealous of his great position and influence. He did not see why he
+should not be recognized as as big a man as Pompeius. Pompeius was cold,
+lazy, self-satisfied; good fortune rained its golden shower upon him and
+he stood and gathered it up in his hands. Crassus, tingling with energy,
+alert in every nerve, was exasperated when he thought of Pompeius.
+
+But he was intelligent enough soon to realize that he would not rise to
+the position and power in the State he wanted by his own unaided
+efforts. Nor had he to look far to find the person who could give him
+what he had not himself got. Pompeius’s success filled him with anger
+and bitter envy because he disliked Pompeius. His self-satisfied and
+slow temper annoyed him. For the powers of Julius Caesar, on the other
+hand, Crassus felt nothing but lively admiration, wonder, and even
+devotion. He realized his extraordinary qualities at a time when Caesar
+was unpopular and unsuccessful. Moreover, he was conquered immediately
+by Caesar’s personal charm, and never ceased to feel it. Caesar was
+loaded with debt: his want of money was his main personal difficulty.
+His main political difficulty was the fact that the Democratic or
+Popular party had become stamped, at the time of Marius and Cinna, as
+the party of revolution and disorder. To Caesar, therefore, Crassus was
+invaluable: a firm bond was sealed between them.
+
+Some years later Caesar actually succeeded in reconciling Crassus to
+Pompeius by persuading them that as long as they levelled their
+artillery against one another they raised people like Cicero and Cato
+the Younger to importance. These men would be nothing and could do
+nothing if Crassus, Pompeius, and himself were friends and acted
+together. He soon proved to be right. The Triumvirate were irresistible.
+First Caesar was consul (59): then, four years later (55), Crassus and
+Pompeius.
+
+Crassus’s thirst for glory made him eager to have, in the year after his
+consulship, a great and important provincial command. To his delight,
+while Pompeius took Spain and Caesar remained in Gaul, he was given
+Syria. Although he was by now sixty the most fantastic visions of
+triumph and conquest immediately floated before his eyes: he saw himself
+performing feats in the East which should altogether outshine those of
+Lucullus and Pompeius. There was no war going on in that part of the
+world, but Crassus at once made up his mind that there should be war
+since it was the straight path to honour and renown. He would attack
+Parthia and conquer a new and rich country for Rome. This he planned
+regardless of the fact that the Parthians were actually allies of Rome.
+The ideas sown by Lucullus were bearing fruit.
+
+Crassus was elderly. It was long since he had directed a campaign, and
+campaigning in the East was new to him. Neither he nor his son Publius,
+who after serving with Caesar in Gaul came with him as his aide-de-camp,
+or any other member of his staff, knew anything of the geography of
+Parthia. After gaining quick successes in Mesopotamia he returned to
+Syria for the winter instead of going forward and making, as he could
+have done, allies in the cities of Babylon and Seleucia, cities always
+at enmity with the Parthians. As it was, while he was busy inquiring
+into the revenues of the cities of Syria and weighing the treasures in
+the temples, the Parthians, warned of his intentions, were making
+preparations against him. Accounts of the scale of these preparations
+were brought in which alarmed the Roman soldiers. They had imagined that
+the Parthians, a most warlike people, were tame folk such as Lucullus
+had found the Armenians and Cappadocians. A series of terrific
+thunderstorms seemed to them to herald disaster.
+
+  [Illustration: ORODES THE PARTHIAN]
+
+Crassus, however, paid no heed to the murmurs of his officers and men.
+He had no lack of courage or energy, and did not at all realize his
+danger. Moreover, he was deceived by spies into a false security. Thus
+he marched too far into a country about which he knew nothing. Suddenly
+his scouts brought in news that a great army was advancing. Very soon
+the Romans were upon this army. They found that its advance guard was
+composed of a kind of warrior never met by the Romans--bowmen on
+horseback, and bowmen of most deadly skill, whose arrows could pierce a
+steel cuirass, whose aim was sure and whose rapid movements made it
+almost impossible to stay them. Indeed, within a very short space of
+time the Roman army was hemmed in and surrounded. Crassus showed great
+intrepidity, but his men could not withstand the superior numbers and
+dreadful skill of the Parthians. With great difficulty he succeeded in
+extricating a portion of his men; but the day closed in defeat and the
+survivors were in the darkest spirits.
+
+Next morning the enemy advanced again with loud shouts and songs of
+victory and a fearsome noise of drums. And in the front of their line
+was a man carrying on a high spear the head of young Publius Crassus,
+the son of the Roman commander. This sight sent a thrill of horror
+through the army. Crassus alone showed greatness of mind. Plutarch gives
+the following account of his behaviour:
+
+
+  _Carrhae_
+
+  Crassus was in this condition. He had ordered his son to charge
+  the Parthians, and as a messenger had come with the news that
+  there was a great rout, and that the enemy were being hotly
+  pursued, and as, besides this, he saw that the force opposed to
+  him was not pressing so hard (for in truth the larger part had
+  moved off to meet Publius), he regained courage somewhat, and,
+  concentrating his force, posted it in a strong position on some
+  slopes, in the expectation that his son would soon come back from
+  the pursuit. It proved, however, that the first messengers sent to
+  him by Publius when he realized his danger had been intercepted by
+  the barbarians and slain, while others, getting through with
+  difficulty, reported that Publius was lost if he was not supported
+  strongly and at once. Then Crassus became the prey of contrary
+  impulses and no longer able to take a reasoned view of anything,
+  being distracted between the desire to help his son and the fear
+  of risking the safety of his force as a whole. At length he
+  determined to advance.
+
+  Meantime the enemy were hurrying to the attack, more terrible than
+  ever, with yells and shouts of triumph, and the kettledrums
+  thundered again round the Roman ranks, as they stood expecting
+  another battle to begin. Some of the Parthians, who were carrying
+  the head of Publius stuck on the end of a spear, rode close up and
+  displayed it, insolently asking about his parents and family, for
+  it was monstrous, they said, that a noble youth of such brilliant
+  courage should be the son of a coward like Crassus. This sight,
+  more than all else, crushed and broke the spirit of the Romans,
+  for they were not strengthened, as they should have been, by a
+  resolution to defend themselves, but were seized, one and all,
+  with fright and panic.
+
+  Yet it is said that Crassus never showed himself so great as in
+  this disaster. Passing along the ranks, he shouted, ‘This grief
+  touches me, and none besides, but by your success alone can the
+  honour and glory of Rome be preserved inviolate and unconquered.
+  If you pity me for the loss of a gallant son, prove it by your
+  fury against the enemy. Take from them their triumph, punish their
+  ferocity, do not be cast down by our loss. Great aims are never
+  realized without some suffering. Lucullus did not overthrow
+  Tigranes without bloodshed, nor Scipio Antiochus; our ancestors
+  lost a thousand ships off the coast of Sicily, and in Italy many
+  dictators and generals; but never did these defeats prevent them
+  from crushing the conquerors. It is not by good luck, but by
+  endurance and courage in the face of peril, that Rome has risen to
+  its height of power.’
+
+    Plutarch, xxxix. 26.
+
+Faulty generalship had brought the Roman army into a position whence no
+courage could save it. In the second day’s battle a terrible defeat was
+sustained: no less than thirty thousand Romans perished in the disaster
+of Carrhae (53). Crassus himself was killed in a parley afterwards.
+
+It is said that a few days after the battle, before the news of it had
+reached him, the Parthian king was witnessing a performance of the
+Bacchae of Euripides in which there is a scene where one of the dancers
+comes in bearing a bleeding head. The actor who took this part carried
+the head of Crassus, which he cast, amid shouts of joy, at the king’s
+feet.
+
+Such was the tragic end of the millionaire Crassus. The news of his
+death and defeat came to Rome but caused no excitement there. The city
+was more interested in the street brawls of Clodius and Milo. The
+politicians were watching the growing conflict between Caesar and
+Pompeius. Crassus had dropped out of the Triumvirate. The stage was
+cleared for the great duel.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Marcus Tullius Cicero
+
+
+Of none of the men of his own time do we know so much as of Marcus
+Tullius Cicero. His contemporaries we know from the accounts given and
+judgements passed by others: Cicero we know from his own. He was the
+first speaker of his age, and his speeches deal largely with the
+politics and people of his time, as he defended or attacked the men and
+their acts. Cicero was anything but impartial; yet it is from what he
+says that much of our picture of Caesar and Crassus, Pompeius, Antonius,
+Catiline, Clodius, Cato, Brutus and a host of others are drawn. In all
+the long gallery of portraits he has painted none is so sharp and vivid
+as his own. It comes to us not only through his speeches but through all
+his writings--and he wrote admirably on many philosophical and
+semi-philosophical subjects--and above all through his letters. These
+letters are addressed for the most part to his intimate friend the
+banker Pomponius Atticus, but also to others including most of the
+prominent men of his time, and to his daughter Tullia, to whom he was
+devotedly attached. They give a day-to-day picture of the life of Rome
+and also of the man who wrote them. Cicero was immersed, like most men
+of his time, in politics. He rose, to his own ineffable delight
+(a delight which he expresses again and again with childlike
+complacency), to be consul. But the explanation of a character that at
+times amused and at times exasperated his contemporaries, and has caused
+the same mixture of feelings to much later admirers, is that he was, in
+his essence, an artist. He wanted, as do many artists, to be and do
+other things. He was more vain of his dubious success in politics than
+of the splendour of his oratory or the beauty of his writing. In action
+he was timid, uncertain, and quite unable to cope with the great
+currents of his time, snobbish and constantly mistaken in his judgements
+of people, and alternately elated and despairing in his view of public
+events. When he takes up his pen he is a master.
+
+  [Illustration: CICERO]
+
+Cicero was in some ways typical of the new men in Rome. He was born at
+Arpinum, where his family belonged to the Italian middle class. His
+parents were sufficiently well-to-do for the young man to receive an
+excellent education, completed, like that of other well-bred young men
+of the time, by attending lectures in Athens on literature and
+philosophy. His father’s death brought him a fortune that though not
+large was sufficient, together with a small estate at Arpinum and a
+house in Rome.
+
+  [Illustration: ARPINUM.
+  Cicero’s birthplace]
+
+But Cicero had no mind for a life of fashionable idleness. For a
+middle-class provincial there was little chance in politics, so long as
+Sulla’s laws stood. He therefore turned to the law courts. There he soon
+made himself a great name, the more distinguished since he kept up the
+old custom of refusing fees. A wealthy marriage increased his
+consequence. His honesty and ability made him respected by all sorts of
+people. Cicero used his gifts in the most honourable way by defending
+the people of the provinces, who before his time had hardly ever got a
+hearing, against the rapacity of some of the Roman tax collectors.
+A case which made his name known throughout the Roman world was the
+prosecution of Caius Verres which he undertook on behalf of the people
+of Sicily. Verres, once an officer in Marius’s army, was a man of
+notoriously bad character. Like other praetors he looked on his
+governorship simply as an opportunity to make money for himself and his
+friends; it was freely said, even in Rome, that his misrule was ruining
+Sicily. And Sicily was one of the chief granaries of Rome. The greatest
+excitement was aroused over the case because the Democratic party took
+it up as a means of discrediting the Government; and at the same time
+brought in a Bill for the reform of the law courts by making the jurors
+not senators only, but, as before Sulla’s time, men belonging to the
+Equestrian Order. This frightened the Conservatives: they saw that much
+hung on the case of Verres. Quintus Hortensius, the most famous advocate
+of his time, agreed to defend him.
+
+Cicero went to Sicily to collect evidence. He was quick to feel, in all
+his sensitive nerves, the tense atmosphere of excitement gathering round
+the case. It was to make or mar him. His genius rose delighted to the
+great occasion. He understood, as the Conservatives did not, the
+feelings that were dumbly stirring the mind of the ordinary decent
+Roman, and could give them voice. As the evidence he had collected was
+unrolled the story of the greed of Verres and the suffering of the
+people of Sicily was laid bare step by step. Excitement and anger
+against the class in power who did and defended such things grew and
+grew. Each day an enormous crowd thronged the Forum and at times its
+feelings made it positively dangerous. One witness told how a Roman
+citizen had been crucified: his appeal, ‘Civis Romanus sum--I am a Roman
+citizen’, had fallen on deaf ears. At this the hearers were stirred to
+such rage that Verres was only saved from being torn to pieces by the
+adjournment of the hearing. After fourteen days the defendants realized
+that their case was lost; no judge dared acquit Verres. He fled the city
+and was never heard of again. Cicero was the hero of the hour.
+
+The man who appears and feels himself a hero when addressing a great
+crowd, who can work their feelings and his own into tempestuous
+enthusiasm, is often a weak reed, swayed by every impulse and incapable
+of the long slow effort required to carry a purpose into action. This
+was the case with Cicero. When speaking he was carried away by his own
+passion. Then he appeared to know exactly what he thought. Alone,
+however, he was moody, a prey to fearful doubt and depression, one day
+full of enthusiasm, the next despairing. He was at once vain and timid;
+uncertain of himself and turned this way and that by the praise or blame
+of others. His great desire was to be admired by every one. His
+comparatively humble origin made him feel any attention from the nobles
+far more flattering than it was.
+
+In a good sense as well as in a bad he was a Conservative. His study of
+history made him feel full of respect for any institution that had
+lasted a long time, and for men belonging to ancient families. He felt
+this even at a time when his writings and speeches were making him known
+throughout Italy and admired by men whose praise was worth having. The
+rich men and many of the aristocrats were far inferior to Cicero in
+brains and character; yet he longed and strove to get into ‘society’.
+Society at the time was extravagant, frivolous, vicious, and
+hard-hearted. Cicero was modest and frugal in his personal habits,
+serious in the bent of his mind, a man of high moral principle and
+tender domestic affections. Yet nothing pleased him more than an
+invitation to one of the houses of the smart set; nothing vexed him more
+than to be thought old-fashioned or middle-class in his ideas.
+
+All these feelings made him regard his own election to the consulship,
+and the support he received as candidate from the noble Conservatives,
+as the most wonderful affair. Yet the real reason why the Conservatives
+supported him was not that they loved Cicero but that they loathed
+Catiline, the third strong candidate, and were prepared to go to great
+lengths to keep him out. Antonius, who was elected as Cicero’s
+colleague, though a friend of Crassus, was considered to be harmless.
+
+This consulship was the turning point in Cicero’s life. He had always
+wanted to stand well with all parties. Now he was compelled to take his
+place definitely on the Conservative side. More than that, it finally
+caused him to lose his sense of balance altogether and to think of
+himself as a statesman: a part for which he was ill fitted. He was so
+much impressed with his own importance that he bought a vast house on
+the Palatine. To do so he had to borrow money and thus got into debt.
+Before he had been free, after his consulship he became entangled and
+embarrassed.
+
+This was the case with many of the leading politicians and men of all
+parties, and hampered their actions in countless ways. In order to win
+popular favour they spent huge sums on shows and gave feasts and
+presents to the populace. They lived altogether in a way expensive and
+showy beyond their means. To do this they had to borrow money at
+exorbitant terms, and were thus helplessly in the power of the rich men
+who lent to them. Caesar at this time was fearfully in debt and
+constantly in difficulties on this account. So were innumerable
+fashionable young aristocrats. The Roman laws of debt were still
+extremely harsh and all acted against the unfortunate debtor. Prices
+were steadily rising: the vast wealth of the few made the lot of the
+many increasingly hard. While Lucullus was in the East there had been a
+serious financial crisis in Rome, and the effects of this lasted for a
+long time.
+
+As a consequence of this state of things a vast number of people of all
+classes were stirred to wild excitement and enthusiasm when Catiline,
+who was determined to be consul and by no means inclined to sit down
+under one rebuff, set out a programme of which the chief item was a
+wiping off of a large part of all outstanding debts. The poorer people
+were on his side in this almost to a man. So were a great many needy
+aristocrats, especially among the younger men. The rich, on the other
+hand, especially the class of Knights, to which most of the big
+financiers and trading houses belonged, were furious. They were ready to
+throw all their influence and the great power of the purse on to the
+side of the Conservatives, who cried that Catiline’s programme meant
+revolution. On both sides the wildest excitement and the most extreme
+bitterness of feeling was stirred up.
+
+Catiline was a man of low character, and of very bad record, quite
+reckless. But he was by no means without ability. There was something to
+be said for his programme if nothing for the man who proposed it.
+Certainly the law of debt needed to be reformed. The rich did not argue
+against it: they fell into a panic. They saw that popular feeling and
+popular votes would be on Catiline’s side. But they had money and could
+bribe. They did bribe so effectively that when it came to the election
+he was beaten again.
+
+The alarm of the propertied classes did not, however, die down, or the
+excitement of the disappointed. People had talked of revolution and
+civil war so loud and long during the elections that they began to
+believe in it. Cicero had been going about for days with a cuirass under
+his toga. He really believed that grave plots were on foot. He spent his
+time listening to spies and informers. One day he came down to the
+Senate with a very long face declaring that he ‘knew all’. He produced
+no proofs, but most people were too much excited to ask for proofs. The
+word plot was enough. A state of siege was proclaimed in the city.
+
+Soon afterwards news came that a follower of Catiline had actually got
+some soldiers together in Etruria. Catiline, however, was still in Rome.
+He attended a meeting of the Senate. On his bench he sat alone, shunned
+by all the other senators, who applauded loudly while Cicero thundered
+against him. At last Catiline, unable to bear it any longer, got up,
+marched out of the Senate House, and left Rome. Cicero did not dare to
+have him arrested. There were as yet no solid proofs against him. A few
+days later proofs came. Catiline’s supporters in Rome lost their heads
+without him. They were foolish enough to ask some ambassadors of the
+Allobroges--a tribe of Gauls, then in the city with a petition to the
+Senate--whether their people would send soldiers to assist a rising.
+
+Cicero now seemed to have the Catilinarians in his hand. They were
+ready, some of them, to bring the Gauls into Italy! That was enough.
+There was a wild outburst of feeling. All sorts of prominent people,
+including Caesar, were said to be implicated. Catiline had escaped, but
+all his close associates were arrested and brought up for trial by the
+Senate. Cicero hurried on the proceedings. He was terrified by the wild
+passion that swept all classes, the senators no less than the howling
+mobs outside. After two days’ debate the question of what should be done
+to the conspirators was put to the vote. The first senator voted for
+death. All the others who followed voted for death until it came to
+Caesar. Caesar knew of the rumours going about and the risk of his own
+position as leader of the party to which Catiline had belonged.
+Nevertheless with great courage he voted against the death penalty.
+Every Roman citizen, he urged, had the right to appeal to his fellows.
+To put men to death without trial was illegal. Cato, however, made a
+powerful plea on the other side. Death was decreed. As Caesar left the
+Senate House a group of knights threatened him with swords.
+
+Next day Cicero, accompanied by a solemn procession of senators, saw the
+executions carried out. Caesar was not in the procession. A huge crowd
+escorted Cicero back to his home. They declared, and he proudly
+believed, that he had saved the country. Plutarch thus describes
+
+
+  _Cicero’s Day of Triumph_
+
+  Cicero passed through the Forum and, reaching the prison, handed
+  over Lentulus to the officer with orders to put him to death; then
+  he brought down Cethegus and the rest separately for execution.
+  And when he saw many of the conspirators still standing together
+  in the Forum, ignorant of what had happened and waiting for
+  darkness in the belief that the men were alive and could be
+  rescued, he cried to them with a loud voice, ‘They lived,’ Thus
+  Romans signify death if they wish to avoid words of ill omen.
+
+  Evening had already come when he returned through the Forum to his
+  house on the Palatine, no longer attended by the citizens with
+  silence or even with restraint, but received everywhere with
+  shouts and clapping of hands, and saluted as saviour and founder
+  of his country. The streets were bright with the gleam of all the
+  torches and links that were placed at the doors, and the women
+  displayed lights from the roofs that they might see the hero and
+  do him honour, as he made his stately progress escorted by the
+  noblest in Rome; most of whom had conducted great wars and entered
+  the city in triumphal processions and added whole tracts of sea
+  and land to the empire, and who now agreed as they marched along
+  that the Roman people was indebted to many leaders and generals of
+  their day for wealth and spoil and power, but to Cicero alone for
+  safety and life, because he had freed it from so vast and terrible
+  a danger. For it was not thought so wonderful that he had crushed
+  the conspiracy and punished the conspirators, but that he had
+  quenched the most serious insurrection ever known with very little
+  suffering, and without domestic strife and disturbance.
+
+    Plutarch, lvii. 22. §§ 2-5.
+
+The circumstances of Cicero’s exile and return are described by Plutarch
+in passages that give a lively picture of the life of the time:
+
+  Cicero, convinced that he must go into exile or leave the question
+  to be decided by armed conflict with Clodius, determined to ask
+  Pompeius for help; but he had purposely gone away and was now
+  staying at his villa in the Alban hills. Accordingly, Cicero first
+  sent Piso, his son-in-law, to make an appeal, and afterwards went
+  himself. When Pompeius knew that he had come, he did not wait to
+  see him (for he was terribly ashamed to face the man who had
+  engaged in hard struggles on his behalf and often shaped his
+  policy to please him), but at the request of Caesar, whose
+  daughter he had married, he was false to those obsolete services,
+  and, slipping out by a back door, managed to evade the interview.
+
+  Thus betrayed by Pompeius and left without support, Cicero put
+  himself in the hands of the consuls. Gabinius was harsh and
+  unrelenting, but Piso spoke more gently to him, bidding him
+  withdraw and let Clodius have his day, endure the changed times,
+  and become once more the saviour of his country, which his enemy
+  had filled with strife and suffering. After this answer Cicero
+  consulted his friends, and Lucullus urged him to remain in the
+  assurance that he would prevail, but others advised him to go into
+  exile; for the people would feel his loss when it had enough of
+  the mad recklessness of Clodius. He accepted this council, and
+  taking to the Capitol the image of Minerva, a prized possession
+  which had long stood in his house, he dedicated it with the
+  inscription, ‘To Minerva, guardian of Rome,’ Then, having got an
+  escort from his friends, he left the city secretly at night, and
+  journeyed by land through Lucania, wishing to reach Sicily.
+
+    31. §§ 2-5.
+
+As a matter of fact the immediate danger from Catiline had been
+exaggerated. People came to see this in a very few months. Catiline
+raised a few hundred men and was killed fighting. The real danger lay
+not in him but in the economic and political condition of Rome and
+Italy. Its causes were the mismanagement, corruption, and feebleness of
+the Government; the flaunting vulgarity and profiteering of the rich;
+the misery of the poor. Cicero had done nothing to meet these evils: he
+had no plan for doing so; he hardly realized that they were there. Men
+had called him ‘Father of his country’. That great day was ever in his
+mind. As he thought of it his vanity swelled and swelled until the year
+of his consulship seemed to him the greatest in the annals of Rome. He
+bored every one by talking incessantly of it on all occasions. He
+dreamed of this and saw nothing of the dark tides rising round. He
+watched helplessly the growing power of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar,
+and did not understand what Rome was coming to. Caesar was always
+friendly and gracious to him, for he had a mind which could appreciate
+Cicero’s genius as a writer: but Cicero distrusted Caesar.
+
+He had meantime made a deadly enemy of Clodius who, by playing on
+disorder, was making himself more and more dangerous in Rome. Clodius
+was charged with sacrilege. He defended himself by saying that on the
+day on which he was said to have been present, in female clothes, at the
+Women’s Festival being celebrated in the house of Caesar’s wife, he was
+in fact not in the city. Cicero swore that he had seen him. Thanks to
+bribery Clodius was acquitted. He never forgave Cicero. Soon after this,
+in the first year of the Triumvirate (59), he secured his banishment
+from the city for a year.
+
+Cicero, after a visit to Greece, retired to his villa at Tusculum. He
+would have been wiser had he settled down there and devoted himself to
+the writing of which he was a consummate master. But after sixteen
+months in the country he returned to Rome.
+
+
+  _The Return_
+
+  It is said that the people never passed a measure with such
+  unanimity, and the Senate rivalled it by proposing a vote of
+  thanks to those cities that had given help to Cicero in exile, and
+  by restoring at the public expense his house, with the villa and
+  buildings, which Clodius had destroyed. Thus Cicero returned in
+  the sixteenth month after his banishment, and so great was the
+  rejoicing in cities and the general enthusiasm in greeting him
+  that he fell short of the truth when he declared afterwards that
+  he was brought to Rome on the shoulders of Italy. Crassus, too,
+  who had been his enemy before his exile, was glad to meet him and
+  make proposals for reconciliation, saying that he did it to please
+  his son Publius, who was an admirer of Cicero.
+
+    33. §§ 4-5.
+
+When Clodius was murdered in the streets by Milo, Cicero undertook the
+latter’s defence in a very famous speech, which we still possess. Milo,
+however, was condemned. In the province of Cilicia to which he was soon
+afterwards appointed governor, Cicero showed himself an honest and
+upright administrator. When he returned to Rome, however, his conduct
+showed a helpless weakness. Between Pompeius and Caesar he for long did
+not know how to choose. Both seemed to him in a measure wrong. In his
+own letters he said to one of his friends at this time, ‘Whither shall I
+turn? Pompeius has the more honourable cause, but Caesar manages his
+affairs with the greatest address and is most able to save himself and
+his friends. In short, I know whom to avoid but not whom to seek.’ In
+the end, since he thought that Caesar failed, when he entered Rome, to
+treat him with proper distinction and courtesy, he joined Pompeius at
+Dyrrachium.
+
+There, however, he made himself very unpopular by criticism of
+everything done or left undone. He took no part in the battle of
+Pharsalia, being in poor health: after it, instead of joining Cato, who
+was carrying on the war in Africa, he sailed to Brundisium. When Caesar
+returned from Egypt he set out to join him. Caesar hailed him with the
+greatest kindness and respect. Cicero, however, soon withdrew to
+Tusculum, where he busied himself with writing. His private affairs
+vexed him, however. He divorced his wife Terentia and married a rich
+young woman whose fortune paid off some of his debts. But his days were
+clouded by a heavy grief: his beloved daughter Tullia died.
+
+After Caesar’s murder Octavius treated him graciously. Marcus Antonius,
+however, who divided the power of the State with Octavius, was detested
+by Cicero, who did all in his power to increase the growing dissensions
+between the two. Against Antonius he wrote a series of most envenomed
+speeches which he called Philippics in imitation of those of Demosthenes
+against Philip of Macedon. In this, however, he paved the way to his own
+doom. Antonius and Octavius patched up their quarrels, formed the Second
+Triumvirate with Lepidus, and carried through a terrible proscription.
+Cicero’s was one of the names on Antonius’s list, placed there mainly by
+the wish of his wife Fulvia, who hated the man who had spoken evil of
+her husband. Cicero was killed in his own villa at the age of
+sixty-four, and his head set up in Rome above the rostrum from which he
+had so often delivered passionate speeches.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Caius Julius Caesar
+
+
+So long as the world lasts men will discuss, without settling, the
+question, What constitutes greatness? Some people will give one answer,
+some another. There are those who hold that no man ought properly to be
+called great who is not also good. Thus a French historian said that
+Napoleon was as great as a man could be without virtue. Even here,
+however, there is room for difference and discussion. What is meant by
+virtue? Is the good man he who does good, who makes people better and
+happier, or the man who is good in himself, who tries always to put the
+welfare of others before his own, whether he succeeds or not? If the
+first be true, poets, painters, and sculptors must rank highest in the
+order of goodness as of greatness. If the second, most of the really
+good are forgotten, since they tried and failed. Is success the test? It
+is the only test that history accepts. The men who appear to us as great
+in the story of the past are those who made some mark, whether for good
+or evil, on their time. The others are forgotten. What we know of most
+of the men, great or small, of the past, is not what they were, but what
+they did. We know what they did. We can only guess why they did it.
+Often, too, it happens that good men--men kindly, affectionate, and
+unselfish--do harm to others without knowing it: bad men do good.
+
+  [Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR
+  The Brit. Mus. gem]
+
+All these puzzling questions, and many more, are set to us by the
+character of Caius Julius Caesar. He puzzled the men who lived in his
+own time, and has gone on puzzling historians ever since. Brutus, who
+loved him, finally killed him because he thought he was doing more harm
+than good. Marcus Antonius, who also loved him, thought him, to the end,
+the noblest man that ever lived. One great historian regards him as one
+of the few really wise and far-seeing statesmen in the world’s story;
+a man who with extraordinary genius saw what the world needed and with
+extraordinary will carried it out. Another sees him as no more than a
+clever, selfish, and ambitious time-server: a man without fixed ideas or
+principles, whose sole object was power. Both admit his genius: but
+where one sees it directed steadily to great ends, the other sees
+nothing fixed in his character but the determination to succeed.
+
+Caesar’s speeches (and he was a great speaker) are lost. We have two
+volumes of his writings: his account of the conquest and settlement of
+Gaul, and his account of the Civil War. These two volumes of
+_Commentaries_ are so admirably written, in so pure and firm and lucid a
+style, with such mastery of narrative and of order, that their author
+would stand high among Roman writers had he been distinguished in no
+other way. Only a remarkable man could have written an account of his
+own doings in just this style. For there is no word of comment: the
+whole thing is, as Caesar himself says, bare, simple, and plain, with
+every kind of ornament cast aside. The language is simple, exact,
+concise. Every word tells. There is never a word too much. The dryness
+with which amazing feats of generalship, of endurance, of courage, are
+set down only makes them, in the end, more impressive. No mere talker,
+no one shifted this way and that by chance and by the opinion of others,
+could have written these books. They are the record of one who could
+both see and act.
+
+In so far as we can judge a man from his face, the busts tell the same
+story. They show us Caesar in middle age, when firmly set to serious
+purposes, the idle impulses of youth left behind. The power to think,
+the power to act--these are the characteristics of the familiar bust.
+Yet Caesar, if we can believe the stories of him, retained to beyond
+middle life a rare personal charm, and always had much of the quick,
+passionate responsiveness of the artist. There was room in his mind for
+all sorts of things beside the business of making men do what he wanted.
+Whether the almost tragic nobility of the sculptured face, which is in
+this respect like that of Napoleon, means that Caesar was led on by
+something higher than personal ambition, the desire to engrave his own
+will upon the stuff of life, it is impossible to say. He made history;
+he was, in that sense, a man of destiny, but did he know what he was
+doing? did he care for a good beyond his own?
+
+  [Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR
+  The Brit. Mus. bust]
+
+The first incident we know of Caesar is highly characteristic. Pompeius
+at the time of the proscriptions had put away his wife at Sulla’s
+behest. Caesar, a little younger, like him a rising young soldier, was
+descended from one of the most illustrious of patrician families. But
+his uncle had married Marius’s sister. Not only was he the nephew of
+Marius; he was allied to the beaten party in the Revolution by his
+marriage to Cornelia the daughter of Cinna. Sulla commanded him to
+divorce her. Caesar refused. He loved his wife dearly. Neither then
+(he was hardly out of his teens) nor at any other time was he ready to
+take orders from other men. Therefore his property and the dowry of his
+young wife were confiscated. His own life was in danger and he had to
+leave Rome. But his will did not bend. Sulla realized something of the
+stuff of which, youthful and unknown as he was, Caesar was made. ‘In
+that young man’, he said, ‘there are many Mariuses.’
+
+At the time, and for long after, however, no sign of this was perceived
+by most people. At an age when Pompeius, the darling of fortune, had
+celebrated a triumph and was, despite his youth, a leading man in Rome,
+looked up to by every one, rather feared by the Senate, wealthy,
+prosperous, and important, Caesar was poor and quite unknown, attached
+by his relationship to Marius and Cinna to a defeated faction and a
+broken and discredited party. Yet Sulla was right. Caesar had a genius,
+a patience, and a power of will such as Marius never possessed. Of his
+military talents no one, not even Caesar himself, had any suspicion till
+long after. His rise was slow and difficult. Until his alliance with
+Crassus he was perpetually hampered by poverty and debts, both in fact
+and in the opinion of Rome.
+
+When he escaped from Rome (81) Caesar went abroad first to the Greek
+islands, where he served his first campaign, and afterward to Bithynia;
+he also raised an expeditionary force against the Rhodian pirates. After
+Sulla’s death he returned to Rome. His eloquence soon won him a position
+in the Popular party. No one, however, regarded him as a serious rival
+to Pompeius, who was at this time regarded as inclining more or less to
+the Popular side. The enormous debts which were to be such a burden to
+Caesar were mainly contracted while Pompeius was in the East. He carried
+through magnificent building schemes, and gave superb games to the
+people--such being the road to popularity. Wider plans were forming in
+his mind, however: plans on the lines of Gracchus.
+
+The great difficulty in Caesar’s way, over and above his own debts, was
+the character of the Popular party. It stood, to the majority of
+Conservatives and men of wealth and standing, for nothing but disorder
+and insecurity, with revolution in the background. These Conservatives
+did not see that they were helping to bring about all the things they
+dreaded by their opposition to change and their effort to keep all power
+in the hands of their own order, and their fear, distrust, and jealousy
+of any man of real ability. They drove young able men into the Popular
+party; and the Popular party to them was always the party of Marius and
+Cinna. There were in fact too many men in it of low character and
+reckless ways of life; men like Catiline and his friend Cethegus, like
+Clodius and Milo. The more clearly Caesar was marked out as the leader
+of this party the more did the Conservatives dread and hate him. Not
+without reason did he often think his very life was in danger. It was
+always possible that riots might break out. If they did the Popular
+party would be held responsible, and he would suffer for them all. His
+debts increased this danger. They made him at once reckless and
+powerless.
+
+Yet Caesar’s popularity in Rome was real. At the time when his
+difficulties were thickest upon him he stood for election, against some
+of the most honoured and important senators, as Pontifex Maximus, the
+chief of the State religion. He was under forty; it was a post generally
+held by an old man; his religious views were known to be extremely
+‘advanced’. Moreover, many people whispered that he had been privy to
+Catiline’s conspiracy, since Catiline was a member of his party. One of
+the other candidates offered to pay his debts if he would retire. To
+retire was not Caesar’s way; he regarded the proposal as an insult. As
+he left home on the day of election he told his mother, to whom he was
+devoted, that he would return Pontifex or an exile. He was elected.
+
+The same immovable courage was shown by Caesar at the time of the
+Catilinarian conspiracy. The whole machinery of the trial of the
+conspirators was contrary to the law; the Senate was not a proper Court
+which could condemn men to death. Caesar knew that he was suspected by
+many of being involved in the conspiracy and that many would be only too
+delighted if they could see him in the dock for any reason. Yet he was
+the one man who dared to point out the illegality and injustice of what
+was being done and to vote against the death sentence. Caesar’s life was
+threatened at the time; but afterwards when the excitement died down and
+people could consider the affair more calmly they saw that he had been
+right; that he had kept his sense of justice when panic had made the
+other senators lose theirs altogether.
+
+Caesar was soon after this made governor of Spain (61-60). But his
+creditors were so pressing that he would have actually been unable to
+start had he not come to an understanding with Crassus. Crassus settled
+the most urgent of his debts and he set out. Two stories are told of him
+at this time which show a good deal of his mind. In crossing the Alps he
+came upon a town so small that one of his friends remarked to him that
+in a place so tiny there could be none of the struggle for place and
+power such as there were in Rome, nothing worth having or being. Caesar,
+however, said, ‘I assure you I had rather be the first man here than the
+second man in Rome.’ When in Spain he spent his leisure in reading.
+Among other books he studied the Life of Alexander the Great. The
+followers of Pompeius who had just come back from the East were freely
+comparing him to Alexander. Caesar was so much moved by what he read
+that he sat thoughtful for a long time and at last, to the surprise of
+his companions, burst into tears. They could not understand the reason
+till he said, ‘Do you not think I have sufficient cause for concern,
+when Alexander at my age ruled over so many conquered countries and I
+have not one glorious achievement to boast?’
+
+In his government of Spain Caesar showed firmness, energy, and wisdom.
+He carried out successful expeditions to distant parts of the peninsula
+and brought the whole country into such good order that he enriched it
+as well as the Roman State, himself, and his own soldiers. And all the
+time that he was in Spain his mind was at work. From a distance he saw
+the meaning of events in Rome with clearness and formed his own plans.
+
+As soon as he returned he set to work to bring about that understanding
+between himself, Crassus, and Pompeius that was known afterwards (at the
+time it was a private bond) as the First Triumvirate (60). To bring this
+about was by no means easy. Pompeius was jealous and apt to ride the
+high horse. Crassus, though attached to Caesar, hated Pompeius. But
+Caesar persuaded them both. The world might see how things stood when he
+walked between them to the place of election for the consulship.
+
+During his consulship (59) Caesar, despite the feeble opposition of his
+colleague, carried through a big programme of reforms. In addition he
+got a decree passed making him governor and military commander of Gaul
+for five years. In Transalpine Gaul very dangerous movements were said
+to be going on among the tribes. The Senate was not sorry to think of
+getting Caesar out of the way and into a dangerous place: he himself
+desired to win a glory equal to that of Pompeius and the command of an
+army devoted to himself. In Gaul he meant to find both. And he did.
+
+Plutarch, who wrote the lives of many distinguished Romans, was no lover
+of Caesar. Pompeius is his hero. Yet Plutarch says that Caesar’s
+campaigns in Gaul (58-51) show him ‘not in the least inferior to the
+greatest and most admired commanders the world ever produced’. ‘In
+Gaul’, he says, ‘we begin a new life, as it were, and have to follow him
+in quite another track.’ In the nine years he spent there Caesar showed
+astonishing genius as a soldier and won the utter devotion of his men.
+But what he did in the field is surpassed by the statesmanship shown in
+his settlement of the country and plan for its government.
+
+In Gaul Caesar’s great ideas found scope; but they were not born in
+Gaul. If Caesar at work in Gaul appears to be a different man from
+Caesar playing at politics in Rome, the reason is not that he suddenly
+changed but that the picture of him in Rome is based on the accounts
+given by his enemies, by men who feared and disliked without
+understanding him. They have drawn a picture of a wild, extravagant, and
+dissipated young man. Caesar was that, but behind it there was a mind
+more powerful, a personality more strong, than in any of his
+contemporaries: that mind and personality which old Sulla had perceived.
+When in Rome Caesar worked incessantly even while he pretended to idle.
+He was one of the busiest men in the city, though some of his busy-ness
+was of a foolish kind. In Gaul his immense energies were turned to
+constructive work. His health, which had been fragile--he suffered from
+epilepsy or what was called ‘the falling sickness’ and from violent
+headaches--and never became extraordinarily robust, was strengthened by
+the hardships of a military life, by long marches, exposure, and spartan
+food. And his energy, always extraordinary, seemed to grow by what it
+fed on. He never rested. When on horseback on the march he kept
+secretaries by him to write, at his dictation, letters, orders,
+memoranda, draft laws, and his own history. He reduced his hours of
+sleep to the fewest and at all times shared, like Hannibal, every
+hardship of his men. They adored him, not only because of this and
+because he never forgot that they were men like himself, but because of
+something magnetic in his personality, that charm which is the hardest
+thing in the world to describe or define. Caesar made his men believe in
+him: trust him when he asked them to do things that appeared impossible:
+face the most terrific odds and the severest trials in perfect belief in
+him. They believed, as he did, in his star. But their devotion was not
+only due to his genius. It was given to him, as a man, because of his
+charm.
+
+For nine years Caesar was in Gaul. For nine years Rome saw nothing of
+him, though he spent winters at Ravenna and Lucca, and all the time
+never lost touch with what was going on in the capital, or hold over men
+there. He had left one or two faithful friends, among them Marcus
+Antonius and Curio, to look after his interests. But his whole mind and
+energy were devoted to his work in Gaul. It was a great work. Caesar not
+only fought battles and conquered territories, as Pompeius and Lucullus
+had done in the East. He did what they had never even tried to do: he
+romanized the country. Understanding, with rare quickness and sympathy,
+the nature of the people with whom he had to deal, he did not try to
+alter their deep-rooted habits. But he started the work, completed under
+the Empire, of spreading Roman law and order, coins and ways of trading,
+in a word Roman civilization, over Central Europe. Caesar’s mark
+remained upon it all. There were disturbances in various parts of the
+country after he left it. What the Romans called Gaul was a vast region
+inhabited by numerous tribes who hated and warred against one another,
+and had not learnt how to live in peace side by side. When Caesar took
+up his command, the wild hordes of the north were ready to swoop down
+upon Rome as they had done in the time of Brennus and again later when
+Marius defeated them at Vercellae and the Raudine Fields. As the result
+of Caesar’s work they were held back for more than four hundred years.
+And since Caesar was a statesman as well as a soldier his work was never
+wholly undone: the stamp of his genius and of Rome was set once and for
+all on North-western Europe.
+
+As a soldier Caesar ranks among the greatest in the world. When he first
+went to Gaul his army was small--but four legions in all. The rest of
+his army he created, enlisting and training it on the spot. With his
+small forces he had to meet not Orientals, driven into battle by fear,
+but sturdy and fiercely warlike men with whom fighting was a natural
+passion. Among the Gaulish chieftains too there were leaders of great
+military gifts--Ariovistus, the chief of the Teutons, and Vercingetorix
+of the Arverni.
+
+Some idea of the means by which Caesar stirred and inspired his men, and
+checked the danger of insubordination in his own ranks, which rose at
+times when they were called upon to fight forces far greater in numbers,
+is given by a passage in his own story. It begins with a speech he made
+to his men.
+
+
+  [Illustration: SUBMISSION OF TRIBES
+  from a relief of the Empire]
+
+  _How Caesar dealt with threats of insubordination provoked by fear
+  of meeting the Germans_
+
+  ‘If any of you are alarmed by the defeat and flight of the Gauls,
+  you will find on inquiry that they were tired out by the length of
+  the war, and that Ariovistus, who for many months had been
+  encamped behind the shelter of the swamps and made it impossible
+  to engage him, suddenly fell on them when they were scattered
+  without any thought of fighting, and conquered them rather by
+  stratagem than by valour. Such a policy might well succeed against
+  untrained barbarians, but even Ariovistus does not expect that
+  Roman armies can be ensnared by it. Again, if any disguise their
+  fears by a pretended anxiety about supplies or by imaginary
+  difficulties in the route, they are acting presumptuously; for, as
+  it seems, either they are hopeless about the commander’s
+  performance of his duty or they are dictating to him what that
+  duty is. These matters are for my decision; corn is being supplied
+  by the Sequani, Leuci and Lingones, and the crops are already
+  ripe. As for the difficulties of the route, you will soon have an
+  opportunity of judging them. When I am told that the soldiers will
+  disobey me and refuse to march, I am not at all troubled, for I
+  know that, if an army has been disobedient, either its commander
+  has been defeated through incompetence or some overt act has
+  convicted him of extortion; but the whole course of my life bears
+  witness to my integrity, and my success is proved by my campaign
+  against the Helvetii. Accordingly I shall do at once what I had
+  intended to do later and shall march to-night at the fourth watch,
+  so that I may know without delay whether your fears are stronger
+  than the claims of honour and duty. If no one else follows me,
+  I shall start with the tenth legion, whose devotion is beyond
+  question, and I intend to make it my bodyguard.’ Caesar had shown
+  special favour to this legion and had an absolute trust in its
+  valour.
+
+  This speech made an extraordinary impression upon all and inspired
+  very great enthusiasm and eagerness to advance. The tenth legion
+  set the example, thanking Caesar through its tribunes for his
+  generous confidence, and declaring that it was ready in every way
+  to fight. Then the rest of the legions commissioned their tribunes
+  and chief centurions to apologize to Caesar; they had never
+  hesitated or feared, and had never thought that they should meddle
+  with their commander in the control of operations. Caesar accepted
+  their apology and started at the fourth watch, as he had warned
+  them.
+
+    Caesar, _De Bello Gallico_, i. 40. 8-41. 4.
+
+  [Illustration: A ROMAN LEGIONARY HELMET
+  found in Britain]
+
+There was a moment when it looked as though all Caesar’s work was to be
+swept away. He spent part of the year 54 in Britain. While he was away
+plans for a great rising were conceived. Soon after he returned all Gaul
+rose in a blaze. The first rising was put down. In 52 another and more
+serious movement took place with Vercingetorix at its head. The danger
+was greater than ever. It was the more serious that Caesar knew that in
+Rome his enemies were working against him. So great was it indeed that
+Caesar’s officers were in despair and begged him to retreat to some safe
+spot until reinforcements could be sent. But to wait for reinforcements
+would make things worse instead of better. The rebellion would gather
+force. It was by no means certain that Pompeius, now hand in glove with
+the Conservatives, would send him more troops. Pompeius would be glad to
+see his rival fail. Caesar was not going to give him that pleasure. And
+retreat in face of danger was never Caesar’s way. Always he went to meet
+it. So now. He delivered a blow at the very heart of the enemy’s
+position. Caesar’s capture of Alesia, the stronghold of Vercingetorix,
+and his defeat of the second great Gallic army that closed him in while
+he was blockading the town are among the great feats in the history of
+war. The odds were heavy against him. His army was in a position from
+which no luck, only the most brilliant generalship, could save it.
+Caesar not only saved it: he absolutely crushed the foe. Vercingetorix
+surrendered. The rebellion collapsed. By the end of the next year Gaul
+was under Caesar’s feet again. It was possible for him to turn his eyes
+and mind to Rome (50).
+
+  [Illustration: THE HEIGHTS OF ALESIA
+  The stronghold of Vercingetorix]
+
+He did not want to quarrel with Pompeius. He had indeed from the first
+done everything in his power to prevent such a quarrel. But he saw that
+the old order of things in Rome was crumbling into ruin. If Pompeius and
+he could not rule together, one of them must rule alone. In the years of
+his absence Pompeius had moved more and more to the Conservative point
+of view. His jealousy of Caesar had grown. The long struggle came to a
+head when Caesar’s time in Gaul drew to an end.
+
+  [Illustration: MARCUS ANTONIUS from a coin]
+
+Caesar from his winter quarters at Ravenna declared that he was ready to
+disband his army and return to Rome as a private citizen as soon as
+Pompeius demobilized his troops. Pompeius actually had a larger force of
+men under arms than Caesar, including two legions which Caesar had
+borrowed and sent back to him. In the Senate Curio proposed that both
+generals should lay down their commands. This was agreed to. Pompeius
+refused. A few months later the question came up again. Curio, who had
+been to Ravenna, where Caesar was, read a letter from him. In this he
+said he would disarm, if Pompeius did the same. The Senate declared the
+letter was dangerous, and the man who wrote it dangerous. A friend of
+Pompeius then proposed that by a certain day Caesar, if not disarmed,
+should be regarded as a traitor. When Marcus Antonius and Cassius,
+another tribune, vetoed this, they were expelled from the Senate and
+threatened with swords by Pompeius’s adherents. Caesar could no longer
+have any doubt as to what awaited him in Rome. He explained how things
+stood to his soldiers: they cried to him to march on (49).
+
+By Sulla’s law the Rubicon was the military boundary of Italy. No one
+might cross it under arms. Caesar paused for a moment on the bank; then
+suddenly crying, ‘The die is cast’, he crossed the river at the head of
+his men and marching with great speed entered Ariminum.
+
+The poet Lucan, writing long afterwards, tried to penetrate the secrets
+of his mind, and guess what passed in it at this moment.
+
+
+  _The Approach to the Rubicon: a Poet’s Phantasy_
+
+  Caesar had already hurried across the frozen Alps, pondering in
+  his heart vast schemes of war to come; but when he reached the
+  narrow waters of the Rubicon, the vision of his distracted country
+  rose awful to his gaze, with saddened features clear seen through
+  the gloom and white locks flowing from beneath her crown of
+  towers. All dishevelled and bare-armed she stood before him,
+  uttering words broken by sighs: ‘Whither do ye press on? Whither
+  do ye bear these my standards? If ye come as loyal citizens, thus
+  far and no further.’ Then Caesar shuddered in every limb, his hair
+  stiffened, and faintness of heart, checking his steps, stayed him
+  at the very brink. Soon he cried: ‘Oh Lord of thunder, that from
+  the Tarpeian rock dost survey all our city, and gods that followed
+  the race of Iulus from Troy, and mysteries of Quirinus lost to our
+  sight, and Jupiter enthroned over Latium on Alba’s mount, and
+  hearth of Vesta’s fire, and thou, Rome, worshipped as divine, be
+  gracious to my cause. I bear against thee no frenzied arms. Lo!
+  here am I, Caesar, conqueror by sea and land, still everywhere thy
+  soldier if none forbid. On him, on him shall rest the guilt who
+  makes me thy enemy!’ Then without delay be gave the signal for
+  advance and quickly led his men through the swollen stream.
+
+    Lucan, _Pharsalia_, i. 183-203.
+
+There was no resistance. It was not Caesar’s intention to use any
+violence. In Rome, however, when the news came that he was moving south,
+people fell into a panic. Pompeius lost his head. Although the forces at
+his command were greater than Caesar’s, he left the city, leaving
+everything, including the State Treasury, behind him. Most of the
+senators and people of consequence did the same.
+
+Within sixty days from his crossing the Rubicon Caesar entered Rome and
+made himself master of it and of all Northern Italy without bloodshed.
+People who had trembled and believed that a reign of terror and
+proscriptions of the kind carried out by Marius and Sulla would follow,
+breathed again. Caesar showed no bitterness. There were no executions.
+The property of those who had fled with Pompeius was untouched. Even to
+Labienus, the one officer of his own who deserted him and joined the
+other side, Caesar was generous. He sent his goods after him.
+
+Caesar summoned those members of the Senate who had remained in Rome and
+addressed them in a mild and gracious speech. He had no desire for war:
+he urged them to send deputies to Pompeius. But no one would do this.
+Pompeius meantime was embarking for Greece. Caesar did not follow him.
+He was master in Rome: but Rome was utterly dependent for all its
+supplies, the means by which it lived, on the world outside. Of that
+world Pompeius seemed master. Caesar’s first task was, therefore, not to
+defeat Pompeius but to secure the food supply of the capital. For this
+purpose he himself set out for Spain, where there was a strong Pompeian
+army, leaving Marcus Antonius in charge in Italy and sending Curio to
+Sicily. The Spanish campaign was severe, but after the Battle of Ilerda
+the Pompeian armies were shattered. A considerable force surrendered.
+Caesar pardoned the men and many of them joined his legions. When he
+returned home, capturing Massilia on the way, he heard that Curio had
+done excellently in Sicily: Cato had been defeated and fled to Pompeius.
+
+The West was safe. From Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia corn flowed into
+Rome. Caesar could sail for Dyrrachium to meet Pompeius. Pompeius
+rejected all his proposals for peace. He was in a strong position: his
+army far outnumbered Caesar’s, and his companions were blindly certain
+of victory. They indeed spent their time quarrelling among themselves as
+to who should hold the great offices in Rome when they got back there:
+who should be Pontifex Maximus for instance, when Caesar had been
+killed. They were so sure of victory that when Caesar was compelled to
+shift his camp, since his men were dying of starvation, they insisted on
+following him and giving battle, though Pompeius saw that this was
+playing Caesar’s game: whereas to delay would have worn him down. At the
+battle of Pharsalia (48) Caesar’s much smaller army won a complete
+victory, thanks to his superior generalship. The princes of the East
+sent in their submission to the conqueror. The senators and men of rank
+who survived Pharsalia hastened to make their peace with Caesar, all
+except Cato, who had not shaved or cut his hair since Caesar crossed the
+Rubicon, and now sailed to Africa to resist to the last.
+
+Pompeius fled to Egypt. Thither Caesar followed him only to learn the
+news of his death. When the bloody head of his chief enemy and sometime
+friend was handed to him Caesar turned away, tears in his eyes.
+
+Years before Caesar had planned to bring Egypt under the Roman rule: but
+this plan had been defeated. Now he found everything in confusion there.
+The old king, dying two years earlier, had left his kingdom to his
+children, Cleopatra, then sixteen, and a baby boy. By Cleopatra, who
+even as a young girl had those extraordinary powers of mind and charm
+that have made her famous through the ages, Caesar was fascinated. Her
+wit and gaiety, her beauty and changefulness, held him entranced: and
+week after week he stayed on in Alexandria, while a dangerous
+insurrection was being planned by the ex-vizier of the old king.
+Suddenly it broke out. Caesar had but a handful of troops: to save his
+fleet from being used against him he had to set fire to it with his own
+hands. From the dock the flames spread to the palace and destroyed the
+great Alexandrine library, the most wonderful in the world. Caesar
+himself only just escaped: he had to swim across the harbour, holding
+his papers in one hand.
+
+  [Illustration: CLEOPATRA from a coin]
+
+The danger was serious but brief. Reinforcements arrived from Cilicia:
+the Egyptian rebels were defeated: the ex-vizier put to death: Cleopatra
+and her brother made rulers over Egypt under the protection of Rome.
+Caesar in the spring crossed to Asia Minor, where he came, saw, and
+conquered, as he himself said. In September he was in Athens: in October
+in Rome: in December in Africa. There, at the battle of Thapsus, he
+crushed out the last spark of opposition. Cato, who had fled to Utica,
+killed himself, much to Caesar’s distress. He admired the sturdy
+independence of the old man and would have spared him. His daughter
+Portia was married to Marcus Junius Brutus, a Pompeian whom Caesar had
+pardoned and loved as a son.
+
+The secret of Caesar’s clemency, which astonished his contemporaries,
+lay partly in his own nature, partly in his clear purpose to
+re-establish life in Rome on a firm and lasting foundation. His mind had
+no bitterness. Bitterness arises out of some inner uncertainty; Caesar
+had a rare certainty as to what he wanted to do and as to his being able
+to do it. He was not afraid of other people or of their judgements. He
+had no need to compare himself uneasily with them. He could stand on
+what he did, irrespective of what they thought about it. He had come to
+build, not to destroy. He had seen the failure of Marius and of Sulla.
+Sulla had tried to restart Rome on a false basis--the rule of one party
+in the State, standing on the bleeding bodies and broken fortunes of the
+other. He had failed. His system had crumbled, and in its ruin it had
+brought the whole State to the ground. Moreover, Sulla’s system had left
+no room for growth. Rome’s task in the world had grown enormously and
+the old machine was quite incapable of fulfilling it. Caesar wanted to
+create a new machine that could govern not a city but a world.
+
+  [Illustration: A ROMAN COIN
+  celebrating the murder of Caesar]
+
+Caesar worked with the energy and power of a giant at his colossal task.
+Every part of the State was in disorder--the army, the navy, the
+treasury, the laws, trade, the whole business of government. He had to
+reconstruct the whole, and in the space of little more than a year he
+did much towards this. And besides these great tasks there were lesser
+ones--the reform of the calendar, of the system of weights and measures,
+of the language. Reforms are never popular. The change from bad to good
+is slow and gradual. Caesar’s followers were not made as rich as they
+had hoped. His measures were directed to filling, not private pockets,
+but the coffers of the State.
+
+The people loved him. Their lot was vastly improved. But a growing body
+began to say that he was behaving as a tyrant and that things were no
+better than they had been under the old government. Some of these people
+were sincere republicans who were afraid that Caesar was trying to make
+himself king. Among them was Marcus Junius Brutus.
+
+Brutus had married Cato’s daughter and shared many of Cato’s ideas.
+Round him there gathered a knot of men, among whom the ablest was Caius
+Cassius, who determined to free the city of the tyrant. To the minds of
+Brutus and Cassius it seemed that Caesar was destroying the seeds of
+greatness in all other men, to make himself supreme. Shakespeare makes
+Cassius argue thus:
+
+
+  _The Penalty of Greatness_
+
+  _Cassius._ Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
+  Like a Colossus; and we petty men
+  Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
+  To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
+  Men at some time are masters of their fates:
+  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
+  But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
+  Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar’?
+  Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
+  Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
+  Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
+  Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,
+  ‘Brutus’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘Caesar’.
+  Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
+  Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
+  That he is grown so great? Age, thou art sham’d!
+  Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
+  When went there by an age, since the great flood,
+  But it was fam’d with more than with one man?
+  When could they say, till now, that talk’d of Rome,
+  That her wide walls encompassed but one man?
+  Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
+  When there is in it but one only man.
+  O! you and I have heard our fathers say,
+  There was a Brutus once that would have brook’d
+  The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
+  As easily as a king.
+
+    Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, I. ii.
+
+Caesar was warned of the conspiracy but took little heed. He had always
+taken his life in his hand. He knew that he walked in constant danger.
+When a soothsayer warned him to beware the Ides of March he only
+laughed; and when the Ides (March 15) came and his wife implored him to
+stay indoors, he paid no attention but set out for a meeting of the
+Senate as usual to transact his daily business, hearing petitions and
+so on.
+
+It was the day chosen by the conspirators. One of them detained Marcus
+Antonius, who generally watched over his chief’s safety: the others
+gathered round Caesar. At a sudden signal, they fell upon him with their
+daggers. Caesar was unarmed. At the foot of the statue of Pompeius,
+which he had himself caused to be set up in a place of honour, he fell.
+Pierced by six and thirty wounds he died. Marcus Brutus raised his
+dagger, dyed with Caesar’s blood, and holding it aloft declared that he
+had freed Rome from a tyrant.
+
+So Caesar fell (44). Years of bitter civil war followed. Then at last
+Caesar’s nephew and adopted son, Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, did
+that which Brutus had slain Caesar to prevent--changed the Roman
+Republic into the Roman Empire. All the Emperors bore the name of
+Caesar. Throughout the vast world over which the Roman eagles flew,
+Julius Caesar was worshipped almost as a god.
+
+  [Illustration: A CINERARY URN]
+
+  [Illustration: A ROMAN WATER-CARRIER
+  with his water-skin on his back]
+
+
+Printed in England at the Oxford University Press
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+           *       *       *       *
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Errata:
+
+The word “invisible” means that there is an appropriately sized blank
+space, but no printed character. The repeated words in “From her her
+sons and daughter learned” and “be recognized as as big a man as
+Pompeius” are not errors.
+
+  the long and bitter wars that followed.  [_final . invisible_]
+  CHAPTER III  [_anomalous title format unchanged_]
+  He was an organizer of consummate ability  [comsummate]
+  Rome has risen to its height of power.’  [_close quote missing_]
+  the Roman people was indebted to many leaders
+    [_text unchanged: expected “were”_]
+  [Illustration: JULIUS CAESAR The Brit. Mus. gem]  [Brit. Mus gem]
+  which rose at times when they were called upon  [at time]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Rome, by Mary Agnes Hamilton
+
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