The Primitive Monarchy and the Republic: From Prehistoric Times to 27 B. C (part 1)

Part II

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Chapter IV

Early Rome to the Fall of the Monarchy

I. The Latins

Latium and the Latins. The district to the south of the Tiber, extending along the coast to the promontory of Circeii and from the coast inland to the slopes of the Apennines, was called in antiquity Latium. Its inhabitants, at the opening of the historic period, were the Latins (Latini), a branch of the Italian stock, perhaps mingled with the remnants of an older population.

They were mainly an agricultural and pastoral people, who had settled on the land in pagi, or cantons, naturally or artificially defined rural districts. The pagus constituted a rude political and religious unit. Its population lived scattered in their homesteads. If some few of the homesteads happened to be grouped together, they constituted a vicus, which, however, had neither a political nor a religious organization.

At one or more points within the cantons there soon developed small towns (oppida), usually located on hilltops and fortified, at first with earthen, later with stone, walls. These towns served as market-places and as points of refuge in time of danger for the people of the pagus. There developed an artisan and mercantile element, and there the aristocratic element of the population early took up their abode, i. e., the wealthier landholders, who could leave to others the immediate oversight of their estates. And so these oppida became the centers of government for the surrounding pagi. It is very doubtful if the Latins as a whole were ever united in a single state. But even if that had once been the case, this loosely organized state must early have been broken up into a number of smaller units. These were the various populi; that is, the cantons with their oppida. The names of some sixty-five of these towns are known, but before the close of the sixth century many of the smaller of them had been merged with their more powerful neighbors.

The Latin League. The realization of the racial unity of the [pg 26]Latins was expressed in the annual festival of Jupiter Latiaris celebrated on the Alban Mount. For a long time also the Latin cities formed a league, of which there were thirty members according to tradition. Actually, about the middle of the fifth century there were only some eight cities participating in the association upon an independent footing. The central point of the league was the grove and temple of Diana at Aricia, and it was in the neighborhood of Aricia that the meetings of the assembly of the league were held. The league possessed a very loose organization, but we know of a common executive head—the Latin dictator.

II. The Origins of Rome

The site of Rome. Rome, the Latin Roma, is situated on the Tiber about fifteen miles from the sea. The Rome of the later Republic and the Empire, the City of the Seven Hills, included the three isolated eminences of the Capitoline, Palatine and Aventine, and the spurs of the adjoining plateau, called the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, and Caelian. Other ground, also on the left bank of the river, and likewise part of Mount Janiculum, across the Tiber, were included in the city. But this extent was only attained after a long period of growth, and early Rome was a town of much smaller area.

The growth of the city. Late Roman historians placed the founding of Rome about the year 753 B. C., and used this date as a basis for Roman chronology. However, it is absolutely impossible to assign anything like a definite date for the establishment of the city. Excavations have revealed that in the early Iron Age several distinct settlements were perched upon the Roman hills, separated from one another by low, marshy ground, flooded by the Tiber at high water. These were probably typical Latin walled villages (oppida).

At a very early date some of these villages formed a religious union commemorated in the festival of the Septimontium or Seven Mounts. These montes were crests of the Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian hills, perhaps each the site of a separate settlement.

But the earliest city to which we can with certainty give the name of Rome is of later date than the establishment of the Septimontium. It is the Rome of the Four Regions—the Palatina, Esquilina, Col[pg 27]lina and Sucusana (later Suburana)—which included the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian and Palatine hills, as well as the intervening low ground. Within the boundary of this city, but not included in the four regions, was the Capitoline, which had separate fortifications and served as the citadel (arx). It may be that the organization of this city of the Four Regions was effected by Etruscan conquerors, for the name Roma seems to be of Etruscan origin, and, for the Romans, an urbs, as they called Rome, was merely an oppidum of which the limits had been marked out according to Etruscan ritual. The consecrated boundary line drawn in this manner was called the pomerium.

The Aventine Hill, as well as the part of the plateau back of the Esquiline, was only brought within the city walls in the fourth century, and remained outside the pomerium until the time of Claudius.

The location of Rome, on the Tiber at a point where navigation for sea-going vessels terminated and where an island made easy the passage from bank to bank, marked it as a place of commercial importance. It was at the same time the gateway between Latium and Etruria and the natural outlet for the trade of the Tiber valley. Furthermore, its central position in the Italian peninsula gave it a strategic advantage in its wars for the conquest of Italy. But the greatness of Rome was not the result of its geographic advantages: it was the outgrowth of the energy and political capacity of its people, qualities which became a national heritage because of the character of the early struggles of the Roman state.

Although it is very probable that the historic population of Rome was the result of a fusion of several racial elements—Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and even pre-Italian, nevertheless the Romans were essentially a Latin people. In language, in religion, in political institutions, they were characteristically Latin, and their history is inseparably connected with that of the Latins as a whole.

III. The Early Monarchy

The tradition. The traditional story of the founding of Rome is mainly the work of Greek writers of the third century B. C., who desired to find a link between the new world-power Rome and the older centers of civilization: while the account of the reign of the [pg 28]Seven Kings is a reconstruction on the part of Roman annalists and antiquarians, intended to explain the origins of Roman political and religious institutions. And, in fact, owing to the absence of any even relatively contemporaneous records (a lack from which the Roman historians suffered as well as ourselves) it is impossible to attempt an historical account of the period of kingly rule. We can improve but little on the brief statement of Tacitus (i, 1 Ann.)—“At first kings ruled the city Rome.”

The kingship. The existence of the kingship itself is beyond dispute, owing to the strength of the Roman tradition on this point and the survival of the title rex or king in the priestly office of rex sacrorum. It seems certain, too, that the last of the Roman kings were Etruscans and belong to the period of Etruscan domination in Rome and Latium. As far as can be judged, the Roman monarchy was not purely hereditary but elective within the royal family, like that of the primitive Greek states, where the king was the head of one of a group of noble families, chosen by the nobles and approved by the people as a whole. About the end of the sixth century the kingship was deprived of its political functions, and remained at Rome solely as a lifelong priestly office. It is possible that there had been a gradual decline of the royal authority before the growing power of the nobles as had been the case at Athens, but it is very probable that the final step in this change coincided with the fall of an Etruscan dynasty and the passing of the control of the state into the hands of the Latin nobility (about 508 B. C.).

Institutions of the regal period. The royal power was not absolute, for the exercise thereof was tempered by custom, by the lack of any elaborate machinery of government, and by the practical necessity for the king to avoid alienating the good will of the community. The views of the aristocracy were voiced in the Senate (senatus) or Council of Elders, which developed into a council of nobles, a body whose functions were primarily advisory in character. From a very early date the Roman people were divided into thirty groups called curiae, and these curiae served as the units in the organization of the oldest popular assembly—the comitia curiata. Membership in the curiae was probably hereditary, and each curia had its special cult, which was maintained long after the curiae had lost their political importance. The primitive assembly of the curiae was convoked at the pleasure of the king to hear matters of interest [pg 29]to the whole community. It did not have legislative power, but such important steps as the declaration of war or the appointment of a new rex required its formal sanction.

Expansion under the kings. Under the kings Rome grew to be the chief city in Latium, having absorbed several smaller Latin communities in the immediate neighborhood, extended her territory on the left bank of the Tiber to the seacoast, where the seaport of Ostia was founded, and even conquered Alba Longa, the former religious center of the Latins. It is possible that by the end of the regal period Rome exercised a general suzerainty over the cities of the Latin plain. The period of Etruscan domination failed to alter the Latin character of the Roman people and left its traces chiefly in official paraphernalia, religious practices (such as the employment of haruspices), military organization, and in Etruscan influences in Roman art.

IV. Early Roman Society

The Populus Romanus. The oldest name of the Romans was Quirites, a name which long survived in official phraseology, but which was superseded by the name Romani, derived from that of the city itself. The whole body of those who were eligible to render military service, to participate in the public religious rites and to attend the meetings of the popular assembly, with their families, constituted the Roman state—the populus Romanus.

Patricians and Plebeians. At the close of the regal period the populus Romanus comprised two distinct social and political classes. These were the Patricians and the Plebeians. A very considerable element of the latter class was formed by the Clients. These class distinctions had grown up gradually under the economic and social influences of the early state; and, in antiquity, were not confined to Rome but appeared in many of the Greek communities also at a similar stage of their development.

The Patricians were the aristocracy. Their influence rested upon their wealth as great landholders, their superiority in military equipment and training, their clan organization, and the support of their clients. Their position in the community assured to them political control, and they had early monopolized the right to sit in the Senate. The members of the Senate were called collectively patres, whence the name patricii (patricians) was given to all the members of their [pg 30]class. The patricians formed a group of many gentes, or clans, each an association of households (familiae) who claimed descent from a common ancestor. Each member of a gens bore the gentile name and had a right to participate in its religious practices (sacra).

Patrons and clients. Apparently, the clients were tenants who tilled the estates of the patricians, to whom they stood for a long time in a condition of economic and political dependence. Each head of a patrician household was the patron of the clients who resided on his lands. The clients were obliged to follow their patrons to war and to the political arena, to render them respectful attention, and, on occasion, pecuniary support. The patron, in his turn, was obliged to protect the life and interests of his client. For either patron or client to fail in his obligations was held to be sacrilege. This relationship, called patronatus on the side of the patron, clientela on that of the client, was hereditary on both sides. The origin of this form of clientage is uncertain and it is impossible for us to form a very exact idea of position of the clients in the early Roman state, for the like-named institution of the historic republican period is by no means the one that prevailed at the end of the monarchy. The older, serf-like, conditions had disappeared; the relationship was voluntarily assumed, and its obligations, now of a much less serious nature, depended for their observance solely upon the interest of both parties.

The patrician aristocracy formed a social caste, the product of a long period of social development, and this caste was enlarged in early times by the recognition of new gentes as possessing the qualifications of the older clans (patres maiorum and minorum gentium). But eventually it became a closed order, jealous of its prerogatives and refusing to intermarry with the non-patrician element.

The Plebs. This latter constituted the plebeians or plebs. They were free citizens—the less wealthy landholders, tradesmen, craftsmen, and laborers—who lacked the right to sit in the Senate and so had no direct share in the administration. Beyond question, however, they were included in the curiae and had the right to vote in the comitia curiata. Nor is there any proof of a racial difference between plebeians and patricians. It is not easy to determine to what degree the clients participated in the political life of the community, yet, in the general use of the term, the plebs included the clients, who later, under the republic, shared in all the privileges won by the [pg 31]plebeians and who, consequently, must have had the status of plebeians in the eye of the state.

The sharp social and political distinction between nobles and commons, between patricians and plebeians, is the outstanding feature of early Roman society, and affords the clue to the political development of the early republican period.

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Chapter V

The Expansion of Rome to the Unification of the Italian Peninsula: c. 509–265 B. C.

I. To the Conquest of Veii—392 b. c.

The alliance of Rome and the Latin League, about 486 B. C. At the close of the regal period Rome appears as the chief city in Latium, controlling a territory of some 350 sq. miles to the south of the Tiber. But the fall of the monarchy somewhat weakened the position of Rome, for it brought on hostilities with the Etruscan prince Lars Porsena of Clusium, which resulted in a defeat for Rome and the forced acceptance of humiliating conditions.

This defeat naturally broke down whatever suzerainty Rome may have exercised over Latium and necessitated a readjustment of the relations between Rome and the Latin cities. A treaty attributed by tradition to Spurius Cassius was finally concluded between Rome on the one hand and the Latin league on the other, which fixed the relations of the two parties for nearly one hundred and fifty years. By this agreement the Romans and the Latin league formed an offensive and defensive military alliance, each party contributing equal contingents for joint military enterprises and dividing the spoils of war, while the Latins at Rome and the Romans in the Latin cities enjoyed the private rights of citizenship. The small people called the Hernici, situated to the east of Latium, were early included in this alliance. This union was cemented largely through the common dangers which threatened the dwellers in the Latin plain from the Etruscans on the north and the highland Italian peoples to the east and south. For Rome it was of importance that the Latin cities interposed a barrier between the territory of Rome and her most aggressive foes, the Aequi and the Volsci.

Wars with the Aequi and Volsci. Of the details of these early wars we know practically nothing. However, archæological evidence seems to show that about the beginning of the fifth century B. C. the [pg 34]Latins sought an outlet for their surplus population in the Volscian land to the south east. Here they founded the settlements of Signia, Norba and Satricum. But this expansion came to a halt, and about the middle of the fifth century the Volsci still held their own as far north as the vicinity of Antium, while the Aequi were in occupation of the Latin plain as far west as Tusculum and Mt. Algidus. Towards the end of the century, however, under Roman leadership the Latins resumed their expansion at the expense of both these peoples.

Veii. In addition to these frequent but not continuous wars, the Romans had to sustain a serious conflict with the powerful Etruscan city of Veii, situated about 12 miles to the north of Rome, across the Tiber. The causes of the struggle are uncertain, but war broke out in 402, shortly after the Romans had gained possession of Fidenae, a town which controlled a crossing of the Tiber above the city of Rome. According to tradition the Romans maintained a blockade of Veii for eleven years before it fell into their hands. It was in the course of this war that the Romans introduced the custom of paying their troops, a practice which enabled them to keep a force under arms throughout the entire year if necessary. Veii was destroyed, its population sold into slavery, and its territory incorporated in the public land of Rome. By this annexation the area of the Roman state was nearly doubled.

Recent excavations have shown that Veii was a place of importance from the tenth to the end of the fifth century B. C., that Etruscan influence became predominant there in the course of the eighth century, and that, at the time of its destruction, it was a flourishing town, which, like Rome itself, was in contact with the Greek cultural influences then so powerful throughout the Italian peninsula.

II. The Gallic Invasion

The Gauls in the Po Valley. But scarcely had the Romans emerged victorious from the contest with Veii when a sudden disaster overtook them from an unexpected quarter. Towards the close of the fifth century various Celtic tribes crossed the Alpine passes and swarmed down into the Po valley. These Gauls overcame and drove out the Etruscans, and occupied the land from the Ticinus and Lake Maggiore southeastwards to the Adriatic between the mouth of the Po and Ancona. This district was subsequently known as Gallia [pg 35]Cisalpina. The Gauls formed a group of eight tribes, which were often at enmity with one another. Each tribe was divided into many clans, and there was continual strife between the factions of the various chieftains. They were a barbarous people, living in rude villages and supporting themselves by cattle-raising and agriculture of a primitive sort. Drunkenness and love of strife were their characteristic vices: war and oratory their passions. In stature they were very tall; their eyes were blue and their hair blond. Brave to recklessness, they rushed naked into battle, and the ferocity of their first assault inspired terror even in the ranks of veteran armies. Their weapons were long, two-edged swords of soft iron, which frequently bent and were easily blunted, and small wicker shields. Their armies were undisciplined mobs, greedy for plunder, but disinclined to prolonged, strenuous effort, and utterly unskilled in siege operations. These weaknesses nullified the effects of their victories in the field and prevented their occupation of Italy south of the Apennines.

The sack of Rome. In 387 B. C., a horde of these marauders crossed the Apennines and besieged Clusium. Thence, angered, as was said, by the hostile actions of Roman ambassadors, they marched directly upon Rome. The Romans marched out with all their forces and met the Gauls near the Allia, a small tributary of the Tiber above Fidenae. The fierce onset of the Gauls drove the Roman army in disorder from the field. Many were slain in the rout and the majority of the survivors were forced to take refuge within the ruined fortifications of Veii. Deprived of their help and lacking confidence in the weak and ill-planned walls, the citizen body evacuated Rome itself and fled to the neighboring towns. The Capitol, however, with its separate fortifications, was left with a small garrison. The Gauls entered Rome and sacked the city, but failed to storm the citadel. Apparently they had no intention of settling in Latium and therefore, after a delay of seven months, upon information that the Veneti were attacking their new settlements in the Po valley, they accepted a ransom of 1000 pounds of gold (about $225,000) for the city and marched off home. The Romans at once reoccupied and rebuilt their city, and soon after provided it with more adequate defences in the new wall of stone later known as the Servian wall.

Later Gallic invasions. For some years the Gauls ceased their inroads, but in 368 another raid brought them as far as Alba in the land of the Aequi, and the Romans feared to attack the invaders. [pg 36]However, when a fresh horde appeared in 348 the Romans were prepared. They and their allies blocked the foe’s path, and the Gauls retreated, fearing to risk a battle. Rome thus became the successful champion of the Italian peoples, their bulwark against the barbarian invaders from the north. In 334 the Gauls and the Romans concluded peace and entered upon a period of friendly relations which lasted for the rest of the fourth century.

III. The Disruption of the Latin League and the Roman Alliance with the Campanians: 387–334 b. c.

Wars with the Aequi, Volsci, and Etruscans. The disaster that overtook Rome created a profound impression throughout the civilized world and was noted by contemporary Greek writers. But the blow left no permanent traces, for only the city, not the state, had been destroyed. It is true that, encouraged by their enemy’s defeat, the Aequi, Volsci and the Etruscan cities previously conquered by Rome took up arms, but each met defeat in turn. Rome retained and consolidated her conquests in southern Etruria. Part of the land was allotted to Romans for settlement and four tribal districts were organized there. On the remainder, two Latin colonies, Sutrium (383) and Nepete (372), were founded. The territory won from the Volsci was treated in like manner.

In 354 the Romans concluded an alliance with the Samnite peoples of the south central Apennines. Probably this agreement was reached in view of the common fear of Gallic invasions and because both parties were at war with the smaller peoples dwelling between Latium and Campania, so that a delimitation of their respective spheres of action was deemed advisable. At any rate, it was in the course of the next few years that Rome completely subdued the Volsci and Aurunci, while the Samnites overran the land of the Sidicini.

The Latin War, 338–336 B. C. Not long afterwards, the Latins, allied with the Campanians, were at war with Rome. Even before this, subsequent to the Gallic capture of Rome, the Romans had fought with individual Latin cities, but now practically all the cities of the Latin league were in arms against them. It is possible that both Latins and Campanians felt their independence threatened by the expansion and alliance of the Romans and the Samnites and that [pg 37]this was the underlying cause of hostilities. However that may be, within two years the Latins had been completely subdued. The Latin league ceased to exist. The individual cities, except Tibur and Praeneste, lost their independence and were incorporated in the Roman state. These two cities preserved their autonomy and concluded new treaties with Rome.

Alliance with the Campanians, about 334 B. C. At about the same time, the majority of the cities of Campania, including Capua, concluded an alliance with Rome upon the conditions of the Roman alliance with the old Latin league. These cities retained their independence, and extended and received the rights of commercium and connubium with Rome. This meant that the citizen of one city could transact any business in another that was party to this agreement with the assurance that his contract would be protected by the law of the second city, while if he married a woman of that city his children would be considered legitimate heirs to his property. By virtue of this close alliance, the military resources of Campania were arrayed on the side of Rome, and Rome and Campania presented a united front against their common foes. The Roman sphere of influence was thus extended as far south as the Bay of Naples.

After the Latin war, the territory previously won from the Volsci and Aurunci was largely occupied by settlements of Roman citizens or by Latin colonies, for even after the dissolution of the Latin league the Romans made use of this type of colony to secure their conquests, as well as to relieve the surplus population of Rome and Latium.

IV. Wars with the Samnites, Gauls and Etruscans: 325–280 b. c.

The conflict of Rome and the Samnites in Campania. The alliance of Rome and Campania brought the Romans into immediate contact with the Samnites and converted these former friends into enemies, since the Samnites regarded Campania as their legitimate field for expansion and refused to submit to its passing under the aegis of Rome. However, they had been unable to prevent the union of Rome with Capua and other cities, for at the time they were engaged with another enemy, the Tarentines, who were assisted by Alexander, king of the Molossians (334–331).

The Samnites formed a loose confederacy of kindred peoples, with [pg 38]no strong central authority. Therefore, although bold and skilful warriors, they were at a disadvantage in a long struggle where unity of control and continuity of policy became of decisive importance. Here Rome had the advantage, an advantage that was increased by the alliances Rome was able to form in the course of her wars against this enemy. For generations the excess population of the Samnite valleys had regularly overflowed into the lowland coast areas, and such migrations had given rise to the Lucanians, Bruttians, and a large part of the Campanians themselves. However, the danger of being submerged by fresh waves of Samnites caused the peoples whose territories bordered on Samnium to look to Rome for support, and so Rome found allies in the Central Italian peoples, and in the Apulians and the Lucanians.

The beginning of hostilities, 325–4. Hostilities broke out over the occupation of Naples by the Romans and its incorporation in the Roman alliance. This step was taken in the interests of the party in the city that sought Roman protection, and was accomplished in spite of Samnite opposition. The war was waged chiefly in Campania, in the valley of the upper Liris, and in Apulia. In 318, a Roman army attempting to penetrate from Campania into Samnium was cut off and compelled to surrender at the Caudine Pass. It is probable that as a result of this defeat the Romans gave up Fregellae (occupied in 328) and other territory on the Liris, and they may even have made a temporary truce. However, hostilities were soon resumed. Once again, in 314, the Samnites won a great victory, this time at Lautulae not far south of Circeii, and their party acquired control in Campania. But this temporary success was quickly counterbalanced by Roman victories in Campanian territory.

The war was prolonged by an Etruscan attack upon Roman territory that necessitated a division of the Roman forces. But in two campaigns (309–7 B. C.), in the course of which a Roman army advanced through Umbria and invaded northern Etruria, the cities which had taken up arms against Rome were forced to make peace.

The war against the Samnites could be energetically prosecuted again. By the construction of the Via Appia the Romans secured a military highway from Rome to Capua which greatly facilitated the conduct of operations in Campania. It is probable, too, that the reorganization of the Roman army, which dates from this period, was beginning to bear fruit. From both Campania and Apulia the [pg 39]Romans took the offensive, and several severe defeats forced the Samnites to seek peace in 304. They retained their independence, but the disputed territory on their borders fell to Rome.

It was about the close of this war that the Aequi, Marsi, Marrucini, Frentani, Paeligni, some of the Umbrians, and other of the peoples of Central Italy became federate allies of Rome. Apulia likewise passed under Roman control. New Latin colonies and new tribal districts marked the expansion of Roman territory.

Wars with the Samnites, Gauls and Etruscans, 298–80 B. C. In 298 war broke out again between the Romans and Samnites, apparently because the Lucanians had deserted the Roman alliance for the Samnites. Soon the Samnites allied themselves with the Etruscans and Gauls, and succeeded in uniting the forces of the three peoples in Umbria. But this host was annihilated by the Romans in the battle of Sentinum (295). With this victory all danger for Rome was over. By systematically ravaging the enemy’s country the Roman consuls in 290 B. C. forced the Samnites to sue for peace. They entered the Roman alliance, and a portion of their land was incorporated in the ager publicus of Rome. A similar fate overtook the Sabines and Picentes, who had taken sides with the Samnites.

The war with the Etruscans and the Gauls still dragged on. But in 285, after suffering a severe blow at the hands of the Gallic Senones, the Romans took vigorous action and drove this people from the land between Ancona and the Rubicon—the ager Gallicus. In the same year the tribe of the Boii, with Etruscan allies, penetrated as far as the Vadimonian Lake, where the Romans inflicted upon them a crushing defeat. Another Roman victory in the next year brought the Boii to terms, and soon the Etruscan cities one by one submitted to Rome, until by 280 all were Roman allies.

V. The Roman Conquest of South Italy: 281–270 b. c.

Italians and Greeks in South Italy. The only parts of the peninsula that had not yet acknowledged the Roman overlordship were the lands of the Lucanians and Bruttians and the few Greek cities in the south that still maintained their independence. Of these latter the chief was Tarentum, a city of considerable commercial importance. From the middle of the fourth century these cities had been engaged in continual warfare with the Lucanians and [pg 40]Messapians, and in the course of their struggles Tarentum had come to assume the rôle of protector of the Hellenes in Italy. But even this city had only been able to make head against its foes through assistance obtained from Greece. In 338, King Archidamus of Sparta, and in 331 Alexander, king of Epirus and uncle of Alexander the Great, fell fighting in the service of the Italian Greeks. In 303, Cleonymus of Sparta, more fortunate than his predecessors, compelled the Lucanians to conclude a peace, which probably included the Romans, at that moment their allies. A little later (c. 300 B. C.) Agathocles, king of Syracuse, assisted the Tarentines against the same foe, and incorporated in his own kingdom the Bruttians and the Greek cities in the southwest. But with his death in 289, his kingdom, like that of Dionysius I, fell apart and the Greeks in the west were left again without a protector. Consequently, when the Lucanians renewed their attacks upon Thurii, that city, being unable to find succor in Greece and distrusting Tarentum, appealed to Rome (282). Rome gave ear to the call, relieved and garrisoned Thurii. But this action brought Roman ships of war into the Gulf of Tarentum contrary to an agreement between the two cities (perhaps that of 303). Enraged, the Tarentines attacked the Roman fleet, sank some Roman triremes, and then occupied Thurii. The ensuing Roman demands for reparation were rejected, their ambassadors insulted, and war began (281).

The war with Pyrrhus and Tarentum. The Tarentines were able to unite against Rome the Messapians, Lucanians, Samnites and Bruttians, but Roman successes in the first campaign forced them to call in the aid of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Pyrrhus was probably the most skilful Greek general of the time, and he brought with him into Italy an army organized and equipped according to the Macedonian system of Alexander the Great, which had become the standard in the Greek world. His force comprised 20,000 heavy-armed infantry forming the phalanx, and 3,000 Thessalian cavalry. Besides, he had a number of war elephants; animals which had figured on Greek battlefields since Ipsus (301). The first engagement was fought near Heraclea (280) and after a severe struggle the Romans were driven from the field. The superior generalship of Pyrrhus, and the consternation caused by his war elephants, won the day, but his losses were very heavy, and he himself was wounded. As fighters the Romans had shown themselves the equal of the foe, and their [pg 41]tactical organization, perfected in the Samnite Wars, had proved its value in its first encounter with that developed by the military experts of Greece. As a result of his victory at Heraclea, Pyrrhus was able to advance as far north as Latium, but withdrew again without accomplishing anything of importance. The next year, he won another hard-fought battle near Ausculum in Apulia. Thereupon the Romans began negotiations which Pyrrhus welcomed, sending the orator Cineas to Rome to represent him. But, before an agreement was reached, the Carthaginians, who feared the intervention of Pyrrhus in Sicily, offered the Romans assistance. Their proffer was accepted; the negotiations with Pyrrhus ended; and Rome and Carthage bound themselves not to make a separate agreement with the common foe, while the Carthaginian fleet was to coöperate with the Romans.

Pyrrhus in Sicily, 278–5 B. C. Nevertheless, Pyrrhus determined to answer an appeal from the Sicilian Greeks and to leave Italy for Sicily. After the death of Agathocles, tyrant and king of Syracuse (317–289), who had played the rôle of another Dionysius I, the Greeks in Sicily had fallen upon evil days. The Carthaginians had renewed their attacks upon them, and a new foe had appeared in the Mamertini, Campanian mercenary soldiers who had seized Messana and made it their headquarters for raiding the territory of the Greek cities. Caught between these two enemies, the Greeks appealed to Pyrrhus who came to their aid, possibly with the hope of uniting Sicily under his own control. His success was immediate. The Carthaginians were forced to give up all their possessions except Lilybaeum, and Pyrrhus stood ready to carry the war into Africa. But, at this juncture, the exactions that he laid upon his Sicilian allies and their fear that his victory would make him their permanent master caused them to desert his cause and make peace with their foes. Deprived of their assistance, and seeing that his allies in Italy were hard pressed by the Romans, he abandoned his Sicilian venture.

The end of the war. Pyrrhus returned to Italy, with the loss of his fleet in a naval battle with the Carthaginians, reorganized his forces, and advanced into Lucania or Samnium to meet the Romans. While manœuvering for an attack, one of his divisions sustained a severe repulse at Beneventum (275), whereupon he abandoned the offensive and retired to Tarentum. Leaving a garrison in that city [pg 42]he withdrew the rest of his forces to Greece, with the intention of attacking Antigonus Gonatas in Macedonia. His initial successes in this enterprise led him to withdraw his garrison from Tarentum and abandon the Western Greeks to their fate. Thereupon the Romans soon reduced the Samnites and Lucanians, while Tarentum and the other Greek cities, one after another, were forced to submit and enter the Roman alliance. By 270 B. C., all South Italy had in this way been added to the Roman dominions.

By 265 B. C. after a few more brief struggles with revolting or still unsubdued communities in central and northern Italy, the Romans had completed the subjugation of the entire Italian peninsula.

VI. The Roman Confederacy

Roman foreign policy. By wars and alliances Rome had united Italy. But it is not to be supposed that this was a goal consistently pursued through many generations by Roman statesmen. Probably it was not until the end was nearly within sight that the Romans realized whither their policy was leading them. Indeed, it is certain that many of Rome’s wars were waged in defence of Rome’s territory or that of the Roman allies. This seems particularly true of the period prior to the Gallic inroad of 387. According to the ancient Roman formula employed in declaring war, that uttered by the Fetiales, war was looked upon as the last means to obtain reparation for wrongs that were suffered at the hands of the enemy. Yet, although the Roman attitude in such matters was doubtless at one time sincere, we may well question how long this sincerity continued, and whether the injuries complained of were not sometimes the result of Roman provocation. Such attempts to place the moral responsibility for a war upon the enemy are common to all ages and are not always convincing. However, if we may not convict the Romans of aggressive imperialism prior to 265, at any rate the methods which they pursued in their relations with the other peoples of Italy made their domination inevitable in view of the Roman national character and their political and military organization. These methods early became established maxims of Roman foreign policy. The Romans, whenever possible, waged even their defensive wars offensively, and rarely made peace save with a beaten foe. As a rule, the enemy was forced to conclude a treaty with Rome which [pg 43]placed his forces at the disposal of the Roman state. This treaty was regarded as perpetually binding, and any attempt to break off the relationship it established was regarded as a casus belli. Possibly, the Romans looked upon this as the only policy which would guarantee peace on their borders, but it inevitably led to further wars, for it resulted in the continuous extension of the frontiers defended by Rome and so continually brought Rome into contact and conflict with new peoples. Nor were the voluntary allies of Rome allowed to leave the Roman alliance: such action was treated as equivalent to a declaration of war and regularly punished with severity. This practice gradually transformed Rome’s independent into dependent allies. From the middle of the fourth century, it seems that Rome deliberately sought to prevent the development of a strong state in the southern part of Italy, and to this end gladly took under her protection weaker communities that felt themselves threatened by stronger neighbors, although such action inevitably led to war with the latter. Furthermore, a conquered state frequently lost a considerable part of its territory. Portions of this land were set aside for the foundation of fortress colonies to protect the Roman conquests and overawe the conquered. The rest was incorporated in the ager Romanus to the profit of both the rich proprietors and the landless citizens. Usually, the Roman soldiers shared directly in the distribution of the movable spoils of war; sometimes a huge booty, as after the subjugation of the Sabines and Picentes in 290. A long series of successful and profitable wars, for Rome was ultimately victorious in every struggle after 387, had engendered in the Roman people a self-confidence and a martial spirit which soon led them to conquests beyond the confines of Italy. During this period of expansion within Italy, Roman policy had been guided by the Senate, a body of unrecorded statesmen of wide outlook and great determination, who not only made Rome mistress of the peninsula but succeeded in laying enduring foundations for the Roman power.

Rome and Italy. But although Italy was united under the Roman hegemony it by no means formed a single state. Rather it was an agglomerate of many states and many peoples, speaking different tongues and having different political institutions. The largest single element, however, was formed by the Roman citizens. These were to be found not only in the city of Rome and its immediate neighborhood, but also settled in the rural tribal districts (35 in [pg 44]number after 241) organized on conquered territory throughout the peninsula. In addition, groups of 300 citizens had been settled in various harbor towns as a sort of resident garrison to protect Roman interests. In all, down to 183 B. C., 22 of these maritime colonies were established, whose members in view of their special duties were excused from active service with the Roman legions. All these were full Roman citizens, but there were others who, while enjoying the private rights of Roman citizenship, lacked the right to vote or to hold office (cives sine suffragio). Such were the inhabitants of most of the old Latin communities and some others which had been absorbed in the Roman state. Such communities were called municipia (municipalities). Some of these were permitted to retain their own magistrates and city organization: others lacked this privilege of local autonomy. Of the former class, Gabii, conquered during the monarchy, is said to have been the prototype. This municipal system had the advantage of providing for local administration and at the same time reconciling the conquered city to the loss of its freedom. It was a distinctly Roman institution, and shows the wisdom of the early Roman statesmen who thus marked out the way for the complete absorption of the vanquished into the Roman citizen body, which was thus strengthened to meet its continually increasing military burdens. By 265, the Roman territory in Italy had an area of about 10,000 square miles. It extended along the west coast from the neighborhood of Caere southwards to the southern border of Campania, and from the latitude of Rome it stretched northeastwards through the territory of the Sabini to the Adriatic coast, where the lands of the Picentes and the Senones had been incorporated in the ager Romanus.

The Latin colonies. Of the non-Romans in Italy the people most closely bound to Rome by ties of blood and common interests were the Latin allies. Outside the few old Latin cities, that had not been absorbed by Rome in 338, these were the inhabitants of the Latin colonies, of which thirty-five were founded on Italian soil. Prior to the destruction of the Latin League seven of these colonies had been established, whose settlers had been drawn half from the Latin cities and half from Rome. After 338, these colonies remained in alliance with Rome, and those subsequently founded received the same status. But for these the colonists were all supplied by Rome. These colonists had to surrender their Roman citizenship and become [pg 45]Latins, but if any one of them left a son of military age in his place he had the right to return to Rome. Each colony had its own administration, usually modelled upon that of Rome, and enjoyed the rights of commercium and connubium both with Rome and with the other Latin colonies. These settlements were towns of considerable size, having 2,500, 4,000 or 6,000 colonists, each of whom received a grant of 30 or 50 iugera (20 or 34 acres) of land. Founded at strategic points on conquered territory, they formed one of the strongest supports of the Roman authority: at the same time colonization of this character served to relieve over-population and satisfy land-hunger in Rome and Latium. In all their internal affairs the Latin cities were sovereign communities, possessing, in addition to their own laws and magistrates, the rights of coinage and census. Their inhabitants constituted the nomen Latinum, and, unlike the Roman cives sine suffragio, did not serve in the Roman legions but formed separate detachments of horse and foot.

The Italian allies. The rest of the peoples of Italy, Italian, Greek, Illyrian and Etruscan, formed the federate allies of Rome—the socii Italici. These constituted some 150 separate communities, city or tribal, each bound to Rome by a special treaty (foedus), whereby its specific relations to Rome were determined. In all these treaties, however, there was one common feature, namely, the obligation to lend military aid to Rome and to surrender to Rome the control over their diplomatic relations with other states. Their troops were not incorporated in the legions, but were organized as separate infantry and cavalry units (cohortes and alae), raised, equipped and officered by the communities themselves. However, they were under the orders of the Roman generals, and if several allied detachments were combined in one corps the whole was under a Roman officer. The allied troops, moreover, received their subsistence from Rome and shared equally with the Romans in the spoils of war. In the case of the seaboard towns, especially the Greek cities, this military obligation took the form of supplying ships and their crews, whence these towns were called naval allies (socii navales). All the federate allies had commercium, and the majority connubium also, with Rome. Apart from the foregoing obligations towards Rome, each of the allied communities was autonomous, having its own language, laws and political institutions.

However, a strong bond of sympathy existed between the local [pg 46]aristocracies of many of the Italian towns and the senatorial order at Rome. As we have seen, the foreign relations of Rome were directed by the Senate, which represented the views of the wealthier landed proprietors, and it was only natural that the senators should have sought to ally themselves with the corresponding social class in other states. This class represented the more conservative, and, from the Roman point of view, more dependable element, while the support of Rome assured to the local aristocracies the control within their own communities. Consequently there developed a community of interest between the Senate and the propertied classes among the Roman allies.

Thus Rome was at the head of a military and diplomatic alliance of many separate states, whose sole point of contact was that each was in alliance with Rome. As yet there was no such thing as an Italian nation. Still it was from the time that this unity was effected that the name Italia began to be applied to the whole of the peninsula and the term Italici was employed, at first by foreigners, but later by themselves, to designate its inhabitants.

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Chapter VI

The Constitutional Development of Rome to 287 B. C.

I. The Early Republic

While the Romans were engaged in acquiring political supremacy in Italy, the Roman state itself underwent a profound transformation as the result of severe internal struggles between the patrician and the plebeian elements.

The constitution of the early republic: the magistrates. Upon the overthrow of the monarchy, the Romans set up a republican form of government, where the chief executive office was filled by popular election. At the head of the state were two annually elected magistrates, or presidents, called at first praetors but later consuls. They possessed the auspicium or the right to consult the gods on behalf of the state, and the imperium, which gave them the right of military command, as well as administrative and judicial authority. Both enjoyed these powers in equal measure and, by his veto, the one could suspend the other’s action. Thus from the beginning of the Republic annuality and collegiality were the characteristics of the Roman magistracy. Nevertheless, the Romans recognized the advantage of an occasional concentration of all power in the state in the hands of a single magistrate and so, in times of emergency, the consuls, acting upon the advice of the senate, nominated a dictator, who superseded the consuls themselves for a maximum period of six months. The dictator, or magister populi, as he was called in early times, appointed as his assistant a master of the horse (magister equitum).

The Senate. At the side of the magistrates stood the Senate, a body of three hundred members, who acted in an advisory capacity to the officials, and possessed the power of sanctioning or vetoing laws passed by the Assembly of the People. The senators were nominated by the consuls from the patrician order and held office for life.

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The comitia curiata. During the early years of the Republic, the popular Assembly, which had the power of electing the consuls and passing or rejecting such measures as the latter brought before it, was probably the old comitia curiata. But, as we shall see, it was soon superseded in most of its functions by a new primary assembly.

The priesthoods. In Rome a special branch of the administration was that of public religion, which dealt with the official relations of the community towards its divine protectors. This sphere was under the direction of a college of priests, at whose head stood the pontifex maximus. Special priestly brotherhoods or guilds cared for the performance of particular religious ceremonies, while the use of divination in its political aspect was under the supervision of the college of augurs. With the exception of the pontifex maximus, who was elected by the people from an early date, the priesthoods were filled by nomination or coöptation. The Roman priesthood did not form a separate caste in the community but, since these priestly offices were held by the same men who, in another capacity, acted as magistrates and senators, the Roman official religion was subordinated to the interests of the state and tended more and more to assume a purely formal character.

The lines of constitutional development. Both the consulate and the priestly offices, like the senate, were open only to patricians, who thus enjoyed a complete monopoly of the administration. They had been responsible for the overthrow of the monarchy, and, consequently, at the beginning of the Republic they formed the controlling element in the Roman state.

From conditions such as these the constitutional development in Rome to 287 B. C. proceeded along two distinct lines. In the first place there was a gradual change in the magistracy by the creation of new offices with functions adapted to the needs of a progressive, expanding, community; and, secondly, there was a long struggle between the patricians and the plebeians, resulting from the desire of the latter to place themselves in a position of political, legal, and social equality with the former.

II. The Assembly of the Centuries and the Development of the Magistracy

The Assembly of the Centuries. At a time which cannot be [pg 49]determined with precision, but most probably early in the fifth century, the Assembly of the Curiae was superseded for elective and legislative purposes by a new assembly, called the Assembly of the Centuries (comitia centuriata), of which the organization was modelled upon the contemporary military organization of the state. The land-holding citizens were divided into five classes, according to the size of their properties, and to each class was allotted a number of voting groups, divided equally between the men under 46 years of age (juniores) and those who were 46 and over (seniores). The number of voting groups, called centuries, in each class was possibly in proportion to the total assessment of that class. Thus the first class had eighty centuries, the second, third, and fourth classes had twenty each, while the fifth class had thirty. Outside of the classes, at first six but later eighteen centuries were allotted to those eligible to serve as cavalry (equites) whose property qualification was at least that of the first class; four centuries were given to musicians and mechanics who performed special military service; and one century was assigned to the landless citizens (proletarii). Of the total of 193 centuries, the first class had eighty and the equestrians eighteen: together ninety-eight, or a majority of the voting units. As they had the privilege of voting before the other classes, they could, if unanimous, control the Assembly. The term century, it must be noted, which in its original military sense had been applied to a detachment of 100 men, in political usage was applied to a voting group of indefinite numbers. The organization of this Assembly probably was not completed until near the end of the fourth century, when the basis for enrollment in the five census classes was changed from landed estate to the total property assessment reckoned in terms of the copper as.

The old Assembly of the Curiae was not abolished, but lost all its political functions except the right to pass a law conferring the imperium upon the magistrates elected by the Assembly of the Centuries. In addition to electing these magistrates the Centuriate Assembly had the sole right of declaring war, voted upon measures presented to it by the consuls, and acted as a supreme court of appeal for citizens upon whom a magistrate had pronounced the death penalty. However, the measures which the Assembly approved had for a long time to receive subsequent ratification by the patrician senators (the patrum auctoritas) before they became laws binding on the community. Finally, the importance of this sanction was nullified [pg 50]by the requirement of the Publilian (339?) and Maenian Laws that it be given before the voting took place.

The magistracy: quaestors and aediles. It has been indicated already that the expansion of the Roman magistracy was effected through the creation of new offices, to which were assigned duties that had previously been performed by the consular pair or new functions required by the rise of new conditions in the Roman state.

The first change came in connection with the quaestorship. About the middle of the fifth century, the officials called quaestors, who had previously been appointed by the consuls to act as their assistants, were raised to the status of magistrates and elected by popular vote. Their number was originally two, but in 421 it was increased to four, two of whom acted as officers of the public treasury (quaestores aerarii), while two were assigned to assist the consuls when the latter took the field.

At approximately the same time that the quaestorship became an elective office, the two curators of the temple of Ceres, called aediles, likewise attained the position of public officials. They henceforth acted as police magistrates, market commissioners, and superintendents of public works. As we shall have occasion to note in another connection, these aediles were elected from among the plebeians.

The censors: 443, 435? The next new office to be created was that of censor. The censorship was a commission called into being at five-year intervals and exercised by two men for a period of eighteen months. The original duty of the censors was to take the census of the citizens and their property as a basis for registering the voters in the five classes, for compiling the roster of those eligible for military service, and for levying the property tax (tributum). Probably the reason for the establishment of this office is to be sought in the heavy demands that such duties made upon the services of the consuls and the inability of the latter to complete the census within any one consular year. The censors further had charge of the letting of public contracts, and, by the end of the fourth century had acquired the right to compile the list of the senators. As this latter duty involved an enquiry into the habits of life of the senators, there arose that aspect of the censors’ power which alone has survived in the modern conception of a censorship.

The military tribunes with consular power. During the period 436 to 362, on fifty-one occasions the consular college of [pg 51]two was displaced by a board of military tribunes with consular power (tribuni militum consulari potestate). The number of these military tribunes varied: there were never less than three, more often four or six, while two boards had eight and nine tribunes respectively. As their name indicates, these were essentially military officers, and this lends support to the tradition that they were elected because the military situation frequently demanded the presence in the state of more than two magistrates who could exercise the imperium.

The praetorship. However, by 362 this method of meeting the increased burdens of the magistracy was definitely abandoned. For the future two consuls were annually elected, and, in addition, a magistrate called the praetor, to whom was assigned the administration of the civil jurisdiction within the city. The praetor was regarded as a minor colleague of the consuls and held the imperium. Consequently, if need arose, he could take command in the field or exercise the other consular functions.

The curule aediles. In the same year there was established the curule aedileship. The two curule aediles were at first elected from the patricians only, and, although their duties seem to have been the same as those of the plebeian aediles, their office was considered more honorable than that of the latter.

Promagistrates. The Roman magistrates were elected for one year only, and after 342 reëlection to the same office could only be sought after an interval of ten years. This system entailed some inconveniences, especially in the conduct of military operations, for in the case of campaigns that lasted longer than one year the consul in command had to give place to his successor as soon as his own term of office had expired. Thus the state was unable to utilize for a longer period the services of men who had displayed special military capacity. The difficulty was eventually overcome by the prolongation, at the discretion of the Senate, of the command of a consul in the field for an indefinite period after the lapse of his consulship. The person whose term of office was thus extended was no longer a consul, but acted “in the place of a consul” (pro consule). This was the origin of the promagistracy. It first appeared in the campaign at Naples in 325, and, although for a time employed but rarely, its use eventually became very widespread.

Characteristics of the magistracy. Thus the Roman magistracy attained the form that it preserved until the end of the Republic. [pg 52]It consisted of a number of committees, each of which, with the exception of the quaestorship, had a separate sphere of action. But among these committees there was a regularly established order of rank, running, from lowest to highest, as follows: quaestors, aediles, censors, praetors, consuls. With the exception of the censorship that was regularly filled by ex-consuls, the magistracies were usually held in the above order. Magistrates of higher rank enjoyed greater authority than all those who ranked below them, and as a rule could forbid or annul the actions of the latter. A magistrate could also veto the action of his colleague in office. In this way the consuls were able to control the activities of all other regular magistrates. However, the extraordinary office of the dictatorship outranked the consulship and consequently the dictator could suspend the action of the consuls themselves. The unity that was thus given to the administration by this conception of maior potestas was increased by the presence of the Senate, a council whose influence over the magistracy grew in proportion as the consulate lost in power and independence through the creation of new offices.

III. The Plebeian Struggle for Political Equality

The causes of the struggle. Of greater moment in the early history of the republic than the development of the magistracy was the persistent effort made by the plebeians to secure for themselves admission to all the offices and privileges that at the beginning of the republic were monopolized by the patricians. Their demands were vigorously opposed by the latter, whose position was sustained by tradition, by their control of the organs of government, by individual and class prestige, and by the support of their numerous clients. But among the plebeians there was an ever increasing number whose fortunes ranked with those of the patricians and who refused to be excluded from the government. These furnished the leaders among the plebs. However, a factor of greater importance than the presence of this element in determining the final outcome of the struggle was the demand made upon the military resources of the state by the numerous foreign wars. The plebeian soldiers shared equally with the patricians in the dangers of the field, and equality of political rights could not long be withheld from them. As their services were essential to the state, the patrician senators were far[pg 53]sighted enough to make concessions to their demands whenever a refusal would have led to civil warfare. A great cause of discontent on the part of the plebs was the indebtedness of the poorer landholders, caused in great part by their enforced absence from their lands upon military service and the burden of the tributum or property tax levied for military purposes. Their condition was rendered the more intolerable because of the operation of the harsh debtor laws, which permitted the creditor to seize the person of the debtor and to sell him into slavery.

Evidence that discontent was rife at Rome may be found in the tradition of three unsuccessful attempts to set up a tyranny, that is, to seize power by unconstitutional means, made by Spurius Cassius (478), Spurius Maelius (431), and Marcus Manlius (376), patricians who figure in later tradition as popular champions.

The tribunes of the plebs (466 B. C.), and the assembly of the tribes. The first success won by the plebeians was in securing protection against unjust or oppressive acts on the part of the patrician magistrates. In 466, they forced the patricians to acquiesce in the appointment of four tribunes of the plebs, officers who had the right to extend protection to all who sought their aid, even against the magistrate in the exercise of his functions. The tribunes received power to make effective use of this right from an oath taken by the plebeians that they would treat as accursed and put to death without trial any person who disregarded the tribune’s veto or violated the sanctity of his person. The character of the tribunate and the basis of its power reveal it as the result of a revolutionary movement and as existing in defiance of the patricians. The tribunes were elected in an assembly in which the voting units were tribes, and the number of the tribunes (four) suggests that this assembly was at first composed of the citizens of the four city regions or tribes, and that it was the city plebs who were responsible for the establishment of the tribunate. In this assembly we have the origin of the comitia tributa or Assembly of the Tribes.

The origin of these tribes is uncertain, but by the middle of the fifth century the Roman state was divided into twenty or twenty-one districts, each of which with the citizens resident therein constituted a tribus. Four of these were located in the city: the remainder were [pg 54]rural. In the preceding chapter we have seen how the number of the tribes was increased with the incorporation of conquered territory within the Roman state and its occupation by Roman colonists. The tribes were artificial divisions of the community, and served as a basis for the raising of the levy and the tributum.

Plebeian aediles. Associated with the tribunes as officers of the plebs were two aediles (aediles plebi). It has been conjectured that they were originally the curators of the temple of Ceres (established 492?), which was in a special sense a plebeian shrine. As we have seen they later became magistrates of the whole people.

The codification of the law. About the middle of the fifth century the plebeians secured the codification and publication of the law. Hitherto the law, which consisted essentially of customs and precedents, and was largely sacral in character, had been known only to the magistrates and to the priests, that is to members of the patrician order. At this time, two commissions of ten men each, working in successive years (444–2?) drew up these customs into a code, which, with subsequent additions, formed what was later called the Law of the XII Tables. This code was in no sense a constitution, but embodied provisions of both civil and criminal law, with rules for legal procedure and police regulations. Notable is the provision which guaranteed the right of appeal to the Assembly of the Centuries in capital cases.

Development of the tribunate and the comitia tributa. The years which saw the publication of the code mark an important stage in the struggle of the orders. Serious trouble arose between the patricians and the plebs under the second college of law-givers, and the difference was only settled by a treaty which restored the tribunate, that had been suspended when the decemvirs were first elected. Henceforth the number of tribunes was ten instead of four and their position and powers received legal recognition from the patricians. From this time on, too, the comitia tributa, now embracing all the tribes, the rural as well as the urban, was a regular institution of the state. The Assembly of the Tribes was originally, and perhaps always remained in theory, restricted to the plebeians. And it is improbable that the patricians ever sought to participate in it. At any rate, there is no adequate reason for believing in the existence of two assemblies of this sort, the one composed of both patricians and plebeians and the other of plebeians only.

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The Assembly of the Tribes not only elected the plebeian tribunes and aediles, but soon chose the quaestors also. Furthermore, the patrician magistrates, finding this Assembly in many ways more convenient for the transaction of public business than the Assembly of the Centuries which met in the Campus Martius outside the pomerium and required more time to register its opinion because of the greater number of voting units, began to convene it to approve measures, which, if previously sanctioned by a decree of the Senate, became law. The tribunes likewise presented resolutions to the Assembly of the Tribes, and these, too, if sanctioned by the Senate, were binding on the whole community. Such laws were called plebiscites (plebi scita) in contrast with the leges passed by an assembly presided over by a magistrate with imperium. It became the ambition of the tribunes to obtain for their plebiscites the force of law without regard to the Senate’s approval.

The lex Canuleia. The social stigma which rested upon the plebeians because they could not effect a legal marriage with the patricians, a disability that had been maintained by the law of the XII Tables, was removed by the Canuleian Law in 437.

The plebs and the magistracy. The plebeians did not rest content with having spokesmen and defenders in the tribunes: they also demanded admission to the consulate and the Senate. In 421 plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship, and by that time the plebeian aediles could be looked upon as magistrates, but the patricians tenaciously maintained their monopoly of the imperium until, in 396, a plebeian was elected a military tribune with consular power.

Perhaps the appearance of plebeian military tribunes at this time may be explained on the ground that the vicissitudes of the war with Veii forced the patricians to accept as magistrates the ablest available men in the state even if of plebeian origin.

With the military tribunate the plebeians had held an office that conferred the right to the imperium. Consequently, when the consulship was definitely reëstablished in 362, they could not logically be excluded from it. In 362 the first plebeian consul was elected, but [pg 56]it was not until 340 that the practice became established that one consul must, and the other might, be a plebeian.

After their admission to the consulship the plebeians were eligible to all the other magistracies. They gained the dictatorship in 356, the censorship in 351, and the praetorship in 337. Eventually, the curule aedileship also was opened to them, and was held by patricians and plebeians in alternate years.

The plebs and the Senate. Since the custom was early established that ex-consuls, and later ex-praetors, should be enrolled in the Senate, with the opening of these offices to the plebs the latter began to have an ever-increasing representation in that body. As distinguished from the patres or patrician senators, the plebeians were called conscripti, “the enrolled,” and this distinction was preserved in the official formula patres conscripti used in addressing the Senate. In this fusion of the leading plebeians with the patricians in the Senate we have the origin of a new aristocracy in the Roman state: the so-called senatorial aristocracy or nobilitas. This consisted of a large group of influential patrician and plebeian families which, for some time at least, was continuously quickened and revivified by the accession of prominent plebeians who entered the Senate by way of the magistracies. Thus the Senate, by opening its ranks to the leaders of the plebs, contrived to emerge from the struggle with its prestige and influence increased rather than impaired.

Appius Claudius, censor, 310 B. C. An episode which illustrates the growing democratic tendencies of the time is the censorship of Appius Claudius, in 310, whose office is memorable for the construction of the Via Appia and the Aqua Appia, Rome’s first aqueduct. In his revision of the Senate, Appius ventured to include among the senators persons who were the sons of freedmen, and he permitted the landless population of the city to enroll themselves in whatever tribal district they pleased. This latter step was taken to increase the power of the city plebs, who had previously been confined to the four city tribes, but who might now spread their votes over the rural districts, of which there were now twenty-seven. However, the work of Appius was soon undone. The consuls refused to recognize the senatorial list prepared by him and his colleague, and the following censors again restricted the city plebs to the urban tribes.

The plebs and the priesthood. The last stronghold of patrician privilege was the priesthood which was opened to the plebeians by [pg 57]the Ogulnian Law of 300 B. C. The number of pontiffs and augurs was increased and the new positions were filled by plebeians. The patricians could no longer make use of religious law and practice to hamper the political activity of the plebs.

The Hortensian Law, 287 B. C. The end of the struggle between the orders came with the secession of 287 B. C. Apparently this crisis was produced by the demands of the farming population who had become heavily burdened with debt as a result of the economic strain put upon them by the long Samnite wars. Refusal to meet their demands led to a schism, and the plebeian soldiers under arms seceded to the Janiculum. A dictator, Quintus Hortensius, appointed for the purpose, settled the differences and passed a lex Hortensia, which provided that for the future all measures passed in the comitia tributa, even without the previous approval of the Senate, should become binding on the whole state. Thus the Assembly of the Tribes as a legislative body acquired greater independence than the Assembly of the Centuries.

The two assemblies of the people. Henceforth, the Assembly of the Tribes tended to become more and more the legislative assembly par excellence, while the Assembly of the Centuries remained the chief elective assembly. For legislative purposes the Assembly of the Tribes could be convened by a magistrate with imperium or by a tribune; for the election of the plebeian tribunes and aediles it had to be summoned by a tribune; while to elect the quaestors and curule aediles it must be called together by a magistrate. For all purposes the Assembly of the Centuries had to be convened and presided over by a magistrate. It elected the consuls, praetors, censors and, eventually, twenty-four military tribunes for the annual levy. It must be kept in mind that these were both primary assemblies, that each comprised the whole body of Roman citizens, but that they differed essentially in the organization of the voting groups. As we have seen the wealthier classes dominated the Assembly of the Centuries, but in the Assembly of the Tribes, which was the more democratic body, a simple majority determined the vote of each tribe.

The increased importance of the tribunate. The importance of the tribunes was greatly enhanced by the Hortensian Law, as well as by various privileges which they had already acquired by 287 or gained shortly after that date. The more important of these powers were the right to sit in the Senate, to address, and even to [pg 58]convene that body, and the right to prosecute any magistrate before the comitia tributa. The first of these powers was a development of the tribunician veto, whereby this was given to a proposal under discussion in the Senate rather than upon a magistrate’s attempt to execute it after it had taken the form of a law or a senatorial decree. To permit the tribunes to interpose their veto at this stage they had to be allowed to hear the debates in the Senate. At first they did so from their bench which they set at the door of the meeting-place, but finally they were permitted to enter the council hall itself. The power of prosecution made the tribunes the guardians of the interests of the state against any misconduct on the part of a magistrate. From this time on the tribunes have practically the status of magistrates of the Roman people.

The struggle of the orders left its mark on the Roman constitution in providing Rome with a double set of organs of government. The tribunate, plebeian aedileship, and comitia tributa arose as purely plebeian institutions, but they came to be incorporated in the governmental organization of the state along with the magistracies and the assemblies that had always been institutions of the whole Roman people.

IV. The Roman Military System

Upon the history of no people has the character of its military institutions exercised a more profound effect than upon that of Rome. The Roman military system rested upon the universal obligation of the male citizens to render military service, but the degree to which this obligation was enforced varied greatly at different periods. For the mobilization of the man power of the state was dependent upon the type of equipment, methods of fighting, and organization of tactical units in vogue at various times, as well as upon the ability of the state to equip its troops and the strength of the martial spirit of the people.

The army of the primitive state. In all probability the earliest Roman army was one of the Homeric type, where the nobles who went to the battlefield on horseback or in chariots were the decisive factor and the common folk counted for little.

The phalanx organization. However, at an early date, under Etruscan influences according to tradition, the Romans adopted the [pg 59]phalanx organization, making their tactical unit the long deep line of infantry armed with lance and shield. Those who were able to provide themselves with the armor necessary for taking their place in the phalanx formed the classis or “levy.” The rest were said to be infra classem, and were only called upon to act as light troops. But military necessities compelled the state to incorporate with the heavy-armed infantry increasingly large contingents of the less wealthy citizens, who could not provide themselves with the full equipment of those in the classis, but who could form the rear ranks of the phalanx. As a result of this step the citizens were ultimately divided into five orders or classes on the basis of their property, and probably in raising the levy the required number of soldiers of each class was drafted in equal proportions from the several tribes. The first three classes constituted the phalanx, while the fourth and fifth continued to serve as light troops (rorarii). Those who lacked the property qualification of the lowest class were only called into service in cases of great emergency. For such a system the taking of an accurate census was essential, and it is more than likely that the office of censor was instituted for this purpose. As we have seen, it was from this organization of the people for military purposes that there developed the Assembly of the Centuries.

The introduction of pay for the troops in the field at the time of the siege of Veii both lessened the economic burden which service entailed upon the poorer soldiers and enabled the Romans to undertake campaigns of longer duration, even such as involved winter operations.

The manipular legion. How long the phalanx organization was maintained we do not know: at any rate it did not survive the Samnite wars. In its place appeared the legionary formation, in which the largest unit was the legion of about four thousand infantry, divided into maniples of one hundred and twenty (or sixty) men, each capable of manœuvering independently. This arrangement admitted of increased flexibility of movement in broken country, and of the adoption of the pilum, or javelin, as a missile weapon. Both the pilum and the scutum, or oblong shield, were of Samnite origin. While reorganizing their infantry, the Romans strengthened the equites and developed them as a real cavalry force.

Apparently property qualifications no longer counted for much in the army organization, as the men were assigned to their places in [pg 60]the ranks on the basis of age and experience, and the state furnished the necessary weapons to those who did not provide their own. By the third century, all able-bodied men holding property valued at 4000 asses were regularly called upon for military service. The others were liable to naval service, but only in cases of great need were they enrolled in the legions. Ordinarily, the service required amounted to sixteen campaigns in the infantry and ten in the cavalry. The field army was raised from those between seventeen and forty-six years of age: those forty-six and over were liable only for garrison duty in the city. The regular annual levy consisted of four legions, besides 1800 cavalry. This number could be increased at need, and the Roman forces in the field were supplemented by at least an equal number in the contingents from the Italian allies.

The Roman army was thus a national levy: a militia. It was commanded by the consuls, the annually elected presidents of the state. Yet it avoided the characteristic weaknesses of militia troops, for the frequency of the Roman wars and the length of the period of liability for service assured the presence of a large quota of veterans in each levy and maintained a high standard of military efficiency. Furthermore, the consuls, if not always good generals, were generally experienced soldiers, for a record of ten campaigns was required of the candidate for public office. Likewise their subordinates, the military tribunes, were veterans, having seen some five and others ten years’ service. But the factor that contributed above all else to the success of the Roman armies was their iron discipline. The consular imperium gave its holder absolute power over the lives of the soldiers in the field, and death was the penalty for neglect of duty, disobedience, or cowardice. The most striking proof of the discipline of the Roman armies is that after every march they were required to construct a fortified camp, laid out according to fixed rules and protected by a ditch, a wall of earth, and a palisade for which they carried the stakes. No matter how strenuous their labors had been, they never neglected this task, in striking contrast to the Greek citizen armies which could not be induced to construct works of this kind. The fortified camp rendered the Romans safe from surprise attacks, allowed them to choose their own time for joining battle, and gave them a secure refuge after a defeat. It played a very large part in the operations of the Roman armies, especially such as were conducted in hostile territory.

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Chapter VII

Early Religion and Society

I. Early Roman Religion

Animism. The Roman religion of the historic republic was a composite of beliefs and ceremonies of various origins. The basic stratum of this system was the Roman element: religious ideas that the Romans probably held in common with the other Latin and Italian peoples. Although traces of a belief in magic; and of the worship of natural objects and animals, survived from earlier stages of religious development, it was “animism” that formed the basis of what we may call the characteristic Roman religious ideas. Animism is the belief that natural objects are the abode of spirits more powerful than man, and that all natural forces and processes are the expression of the activity of similar spirits. When such powers or numina were conceived as personalities with definite names they became ‘gods,’ dei. And because the primitive Roman gods were the spirits of an earlier age, for a long time the Romans worshipped them without images or temples. But each divinity was regarded as residing in a certain locality and only there could his worship be conducted. The true Roman gods lacked human attributes: their power was admitted but they inspired no personal devotion. Consequently, Roman theology consisted in the knowledge of these deities and their powers and of the ceremonial acts necessary to influence them.

The importance of ritual. The Romans, while recognizing their dependence upon divine powers, considered that their relation to them was of the nature of a contract. If man observed all proper ritual in his worship, the god was bound to act propitiously: if the god granted man’s desire he must be rewarded with an offering. If man failed in his duty, the god punished him: if the god refused to hearken, man was not bound to continue his worship. Thus Roman religion consisted essentially in the performance of ritual, wherein the correctness of the performance was the chief factor.

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But since the power of the gods could affect the community as well as the individual, it was necessary for the state to observe with the same scrupulous care as the latter its obligations towards them. The knowledge of these obligations and how they were to be performed constituted the sacred law of Rome, which became a very important part of the public law. This sacred law was guarded by the priesthood, and here we have the source of the power of the pontiffs in the Roman state. The pontiffs not only preserved the sacred traditions and customs but they also added to them by interpretation and the establishment of new precedents. The pontiffs themselves performed or supervised the performance of all public acts of a purely religious nature, and likewise prescribed the ritual to be observed by the magistrate in initiating public acts.

On the other hand the power of the augurs rested upon the belief that the gods issued their warnings to men through natural signs, and that it was possible to discover the attitude of the gods towards any contemplated human action by the observation of natural phenomena. For the augurs were the guardians of the science of the interpretation of such signs or auspices in so far as the state was concerned. The magistrate initiating any important public act had to take the auspices, and if the augurs declared any flaw therein or held that any unfavorable omen had occurred during the performance of the said act, they could suspend the magistrate’s action or render it invalid.

So we see that the Roman priests were not intermediaries between the individual Roman and his gods, but rather, as has been pointed out before, officers in charge of one branch of the public administration. They were responsible for the due observance of the public religious acts, just as the head of the household supervised the performance of the family cult.

The cult of the household. It is in the cult of the household that we can best see the true Roman religious ideas. The chief divinities of the household were: Janus, the spirit of the doorway; Vesta, the spirit of the fire on the hearth; the Penates, the guardian spirits of the store-chamber; the Lar Familiaris, which we may perhaps regard as the spirit of the cultivated land; and the Genius of the head of the house, originally, it is probable, the spirit of his generative powers, which became symbolic of the life of the family as a whole.

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The Romans, strictly speaking, did not practice ancestor-worship. But they believed that the spirits of the departed were affected by the ministrations of the living, and, in case these were omitted, might exercise a baneful influence upon the fortunes of their descendants. Hence came the obligation to remember the dead with offerings at stated times in the year.

The cult of the fields. As early Rome was essentially an agricultural community, most of its divinities and festivals had to do with the various phases of agricultural life. Festivals of the sowing, the harvest, the vineyard and the like, were annually celebrated in common, at fixed seasons, by the households of the various pagi.

The state cult. The public or state cult of Rome consisted mainly in the performance of certain of the rites of the household and of the pagi by or for the people as a whole. The state cult of Vesta and of the Penates, as well as the festival of the Ambarvalia, the annual solemn purification of the fields, are of this nature. But, in addition, the state religion included the worship of certain divinities whose personalities and powers were conceived with greater distinctness. At the beginning of the Republic the chief of these gods were the triad Juppiter, Juno, and Minerva. Juppiter Optimus Maximus, called also Capitolinus from his place of worship, was originally a god of the sky. But, adorned with various other attributes, he was finally worshipped as the chief protecting divinity of the Roman State. Juno was the female counterpart of Juppiter and was the great patron goddess of women. Another important deity was Mars, at one time an agricultural divinity, who in the state religion developed into the god of warlike, “martial,” activities.

Foreign influences. It was in connection with the state worship that foreign influences were first felt. Indeed, it is probable that the association of Juppiter with Juno and Minerva was due to contact with Etruria. It was from the Etruscans also that the Romans derived their knowledge of temple construction, the earliest example of which was probably the temple of Juppiter on the Capitoline said to have been dedicated in 508 B. C. The use of images was likewise due to Etruscan influences, although here as in other respects Greek ideas may have been at work. In general the Romans did not regard the gods of strange people with hostility, but rather admitted their power and sought to conciliate them. Thus they frequently transferred to Rome the gods of states that they had conquered [pg 64]or absorbed. Other foreign divinities, too, on various grounds were added to the circle of the divine protectors of the Roman state.

Religion and morality. From the foregoing sketch it will be seen that the Roman religion did not have profound moral and elevating influences. Its hold upon the Roman people was chiefly due to the fact that it symbolized the unity of the various groups whose members participated in the same worship; i. e. the unity of the family and the unity of the state. Nevertheless, the idea of obligation inherent in the Roman conception of the relation between gods and men and the stress laid upon the exact performance of ritual inevitably developed among the Romans a strong sense of duty, a moral factor of considerable value. Further, the power of precedent and tradition in their religion helped to develop and strengthen the conservatism so characteristic of the Roman people.

II. Early Roman Society

The household. The cornerstone of the Roman social structure was the household (familia). That is to say, the state was an association of households, and it was the individual’s position in a household that determined his status in the early community. The Roman household was a larger unit than our family. It comprised the father or head of the household (pater familias), his wife, his sons with their wives and children, if they had such, his unmarried daughters, and the household slaves.

The patria potestas. The pater familias possessed authority over all other members of the household. His power over the free members was called patria potestas, “paternal authority”; over the slaves it was dominium, “lordship.” This paternal authority was in theory unrestricted and gave the father the right to inflict the death penalty upon those under his power. But, in practice, the exercise of the patria potestas was limited by custom and by the habit of consulting the older male members of the household before any important action was taken.

The household estate (res familiaris) was administered by the head of the household. At the death of a pater familias his sons in turn became the head of familiae, dividing the estate. The mother and unmarried daughters, if surviving, now passed into the power of a son or the next nearest male relative of the deceased. Although [pg 65]the Roman women were thus continually in the position of wards, they nevertheless took a prominent part in the life of the household and did not live the restricted and secluded lives of the women of Athens and the Greek cities of Asia.

Membership in the household was reckoned only through male descent, for daughters when they married passed out of the manus or “power” of the head of their own household into that of the head of the household to which their husbands belonged.

Education. The training of the Roman youth at this time was mainly of a practical nature. There was as yet little interest in intellectual pursuits and no Roman literature had been developed. The art of writing, it is true, had long been known and was employed in the keeping of records and accounts. Such instruction as there was, was given by the father to his sons. It consisted probably of athletic exercises, of practical training in agricultural pursuits, in the traditions of the state and of the Roman heroes, and in the conduct of public business through attendance at places where this was transacted.

At the age of eighteen the young Roman entered upon a new footing in relation to the state. He was now liable to military service and qualified to attend the comitia. In these respects he was emancipated from the paternal authority. If he attained a magistracy, his father obeyed him like any other citizen.

The discipline and respect for authority which was acquired in the family life was carried with him by the Roman into his public relations, and this sense of duty was perhaps the strongest quality in the Roman character. It was supplemented by the characteristic Roman seriousness (gravitas), developed under the stress of the long struggles for existence waged by the early Roman state. In the Roman the highest virtue was piety (pietas), which meant the dutiful performance of all one’s obligations, to the gods, to one’s kinsmen, and to the state. The Romans were preëminently a practical people, and their practical virtues laid the foundation for their political greatness.

The mos maiorum. We have already referred to the conservatism of the Romans, and have seen how this characteristic was affected by their religious beliefs. It was further strengthened by the respect paid to parental authority and by the absence of intellectual training. In public affairs this conservatism was shown by the influence of [pg 66]ancestral custom—the mos maiorum. In the Roman government this became a very potent factor, since the Roman constitution was not a single comprehensive document but consisted of a number of separate enactments supplemented by custom and precedent and interpreted in the light thereof.

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Chapter VIII

Roman Domination in the Mediterranean; The First Phase—The Struggle with Carthage; 265–201 B. C.

I. The Mediterranean World in 265 b. c.

Rome a world power. With the unification of the Italian peninsula Rome entered upon a new era in her foreign relations. She was now one of the great powers of the Mediterranean world and was inevitably drawn into the vortex of world politics. She could no longer rest indifferent to what went on beyond the confines of Italy. She assumed new responsibilities, opened up new diplomatic relations, developed a new outlook and new ambitions. At this time the other first-class powers were, in the east, the three Hellenistic monarchies—Egypt, Syria, and Macedon,—which had emerged from the ruins of the empire of Alexander the Great, and, in the west, the city state of Carthage.

Egypt. The kingdom of Egypt, ruled by the dynasty of the Ptolemies, comprised the ancient kingdom of Egypt in the Nile valley, Cyrene, the coast of Syria, Cyprus, and a number of cities on the shores and islands of the Aegean Sea. In Egypt the Ptolemies ruled as foreigners over the subject native population. They maintained their authority by a small mercenary army recruited chiefly from Macedonians and Greeks, and by a strongly centralized administration, of which the offices were in Greek hands. As the ruler was the sole proprietor of the land of Egypt, the native Egyptians, the majority of whom were peasants who gained their livelihood by tilling the rich soil of the Nile valley, were for the most part tenants of the crown, and the restrictions and obligations to which they were subject rendered their status little better than that of serfs. A highly developed but oppressive system of taxation and government monopolies, largely an inheritance from previous dynasties, enabled the Ptolemies to wring from their subjects the revenues with which they maintained [pg 69]a brilliant court life at their capital, Alexandria, and financed their imperial policy.

The aim of this policy was to secure Egyptian domination in the Aegean, among the states of Southern Greece, and in Phoenicia, whose value lay in the forests of the Lebanon mountains. To carry it into effect the Ptolemies were obliged to support a navy which would give them the command of the sea in the eastern Mediterranean. However, the occupation of their outlying possessions brought Egypt into perpetual conflict with Macedon and Syria, whose rulers made continued efforts to oust the Ptolemies from the Aegean and from the Syrian coast.

Syria. Syria, the kingdom of the Seleucids, with its capital at Antioch on the Orontes, was by far the largest of the Hellenistic monarchies in extent and population, and in wealth it ranked next to Egypt. It stretched from the Aegean to the borders of India, and included the southern part of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, and northern Syria. But the very size of this kingdom was a source of weakness, because of the distances which separated its various provinces and the heterogeneous racial elements which it embraced. The power of the dynasty was upheld, as in Egypt, by a mercenary army, and also by the Greek cities which had been founded in large numbers by Alexander the Great and his successors. However, these islands of Greek culture did not succeed to any great extent in Hellenizing the native populations which remained in a state of subjection, indifferent or hostile to their conquerors. Furthermore the strength of the Seleucid empire was sapped by repeated revolts in its eastern provinces and dissensions between the members of the dynasty itself.

Macedon. The kingdom of Macedon, ruled by the house of the Antigonids, was the smallest of the three in extent, population and resources, but possessed an internal strength and solidarity lacking in the others. For in Macedon, the Antigonids, by preserving the traditional character of the patriarchal monarchy, kept alive the national spirit of the Macedonians and made them loyal to the dynasty. They also retained a military system which fostered the traditions of the times of Philip II and Alexander, and which, since the Macedonian people had not lost its martial character, furnished a small but efficient national army. Outside of Macedon, the Antigonids held sway over Thessaly and the eastern part of Greece as far south as the Isthmus of Corinth. Their attempts to dominate the whole [pg 70]peninsula were thwarted by the opposition of the Aetolian and Achaian Confederacies, who were supported in this by the Ptolemies.

The minor Greek states. In addition to these three great monarchies we should note as powers of minor importance the Confederacies mentioned before, the kingdom of Pergamon on the northwest coast of Asia Minor, the island republic of Rhodes, which was a naval power of considerable strength, and the kingdom of Syracuse in Sicily, the last of the independent Greek cities on that island.

Carthage. The fourth world power was Carthage, a city state situated on the northern coast of Africa, opposite the western end of the island of Sicily, which had created for itself an empire that controlled the western half of the Mediterranean. Carthage was founded as a colony of the Phoenician city of Tyre about 814 B. C. In the sixth century, with the passing of the cities of Phoenicia under the domination, first of Babylon, and later of the Persian Empire, their colonies in the western Mediterranean severed political ties with their mother land and had henceforth to maintain themselves by their own efforts.

The Carthaginian Empire. Their weakness was the opportunity of Carthage, which, in the sixth and following centuries, brought under her control the other Phoenician settlements, in addition to founding new colonies of her own. She also extended her sway over the native Libyan population in the vicinity of Carthage. These Libyans were henceforth tributary and under the obligation of rendering military service to the Carthaginians: similar obligations rested upon the dependent Phoenician allies. In the third century the Carthaginian empire included the northern coast of Africa from the Gulf of Syrtis westwards beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, the southern and eastern coasts of Spain as far north as Cape Nao, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, with the exception of Messana in the extreme northeast and the Kingdom of Syracuse in the southeastern part of the island. The smaller islands of the western Mediterranean were likewise under Carthaginian control.

The government of Carthage. At this time the government of Carthage itself was republican in form and strongly aristocratic in tone. There was a primary Assembly for all Carthaginian citizens who could satisfy certain age and property requirements. This body annually elected the two chief magistrates or suffetes, and likewise the generals. For the former qualifications of wealth and merit were [pg 71]prescribed. There was also a Senate, and a Council, whose organization and powers are uncertain. The Council, the smaller body, prepared the matters to be discussed in the Senate, which was consulted by the Suffetes on all matters and usually gave the final decision, although the Assembly was supposed to be consulted in case the Senate and Suffetes disagreed. The Suffetes exercised judicial, financial and religious functions, and presided over the council and senate. The Carthaginian aristocracy, like that of Venice, was a group of wealthy families whose fortunes, made in commercial ventures, were handed down for generations in the same houses. From this circle came the members of the council and senate, who directed the policy of the state. The aristocracy itself was split into factions, struggling to control the offices and through them the public policy, which they frequently subordinated to their own particular interests.

The commercial policy of Carthage. The prosperity of Carthage depended upon her empire and the maintenance of a commercial monopoly in the western Mediterranean. This policy of commercial exclusiveness had caused Carthage to oppose Greek colonial expansion in Spain, Sardinia and Sicily, and had led to treaties which placed definite limits upon the trading ventures of the Romans and their allies, and of the Greeks from Massalia and her colonies in France and northern Spain.

Carthaginian naval and military strength. Such a policy could only be maintained by a strong naval power, and, in fact, Carthage was the undisputed mistress of the seas west of the straits of Messana. Unlike Rome, however, Carthage had no organized national army but relied upon an army of mercenaries recruited from all quarters of the Mediterranean, among such warlike peoples as the Gauls, Spaniards, Libyans and Greeks. Although brave and skillful fighters, these, like all troops of the type, were liable to become dispirited and mutinous under continued reverses or when faced by shortage of pay and plunder.

Such was the state with which Rome was now brought face to face by the conquest of South Italy and which was the first power she was to challenge in a war for dominion beyond the peninsula. As we have seen, Rome had long ere this come into contact with this great maritime people. Two treaties, one perhaps dating from the close [pg 72]of the sixth century, and the other from 348 B. C., regulated commercial intercourse between the two states and their respective subjects and allies. A third, concluded in 279, had provided for military coöperation against Pyrrhus, but this alliance had ceased after the defeat of the latter, and with the removal of this common enemy a feeling of coolness or mutual suspicion seems to have arisen between the erstwhile allies.

II. The First Punic War: 264–241 b. c.

The origins of the war. The first war between Rome and Carthage arose out of the political situation in the island of Sicily. There the town of Messana was occupied by the Mamertini, a band of Campanian mercenaries, who had been in the service of Syracuse but who had deserted and seized this town about 284 B. C. Because of their perpetual acts of brigandage they were a menace to their neighbors, the Syracusans. The latter, now under an energetic ruler, Hiero, who had assumed the title of king, in 265 succeeded in blockading Messana and its ultimate capture seemed certain. In despair the Mamertini sought help from the Carthaginians who sent a garrison to Messana, for they looked with jealousy upon any extension of Syracusan territory. However, the majority of the Mamertini sought to be taken under the protection of Rome and appealed to the Roman Senate for aid. The senators on the one hand saw that to espouse the cause of the Mamertini would be to provoke a war with Carthage, an eventuality before which they shrank, but on the other hand they recognized that the Carthaginian occupation of Messana would give them the control of the Straits of Messana and constitute a perpetual threat against southern Italy. The strength of these conflicting considerations made them unwilling to assume responsibility for a decision and they referred the matter to the Assembly of the Centuries. Here the people, elated, apparently, by their recent victorious wars in Italy, and led on by hopes of pecuniary advantage to be derived from the war, decided to admit the Mamertini to the Roman alliance. One consul, Appius Claudius, was sent with a small force to relieve the town (264).

The Mamertini induced the Carthaginian garrison to withdraw, and then admitted the Roman force which crossed the straits with the aid of vessels furnished by their Greek allies in Italy. Thereupon the [pg 73]Carthaginians made an alliance with the Syracusans, but the Romans defeated each of them.

Alliance of Rome and Syracuse. In the next year the Romans sent a larger army into Sicily to attack Syracuse and met with such success that Hiero became alarmed, and, making peace upon easy terms, concluded an alliance with them for fifteen years. Aided by Hiero the Romans now began an attack upon Agrigentum, the Carthaginian stronghold which threatened Syracuse. When this was taken in 262, they determined to drive the Carthaginians from the whole island.

Rome builds a fleet. However, Roman operations in Sicily could only be conducted at considerable risk and the coasts of Italy remained exposed to continued raids as long as Carthage had undisputed control of the sea. Consequently the Romans decided to build a fleet that would put an end to the Carthaginian naval supremacy. They constructed 120 vessels, of which 100 were of the type called quinquiremes, the regular first class battleships of the day. The complement of each was three hundred rowers and one hundred and twenty fighting men. With this armament, and some vessels from the Roman allies, the consul, Gaius Duilius, put to sea in 260 B. C. and won a decisive battle off Mylae on the north coast of Sicily. As a result of this battle in the next year the Romans were able to occupy Corsica and attack Sardinia, and finding it impossible to force a decision in Sicily, they were in a position to attack Carthage in Africa itself.

The Roman invasion of Africa, 256 B. C. Another naval victory, off Ecnomus, on the south coast of Sicily, cleared the way for the successful landing of an army under the consul Marcus Atilius Regulus. He defeated the Carthaginians in battle and reduced them to such extremities that they sought to make peace. But the terms which Atilius proposed were so harsh that in desperation they resumed hostilities. At this juncture there arrived at Carthage, with other mercenaries, a Spartan soldier of fortune, Xantippus, who reorganized the Carthaginian army. By the skilful use of cavalry and war elephants he inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Romans and took Atilius prisoner. A Roman fleet rescued the remnants of the expedition, but was almost totally lost in a storm off the southern Sicilian coast (255).

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The war in Sicily, 254–241 B. C. The Romans again concentrated their efforts against the Carthaginian strongholds in Sicily, which they attacked from land and sea. In 254 they took the important city of Panormus, and the Carthaginians were soon confined to the western extremity of the island. There, however, they successfully maintained themselves in Drepana and Lilybaeum. Meantime the Romans encountered a series of disasters on the sea. In 253 they lost a number of ships on the voyage from Lilybaeum to Rome, in 250 the consul Publius Clodius suffered a severe defeat in a naval battle at Drepana, and in the next year a third fleet was destroyed by a storm off Phintias in Sicily.

In 247 a new Carthaginian general, Hamilcar Barca, took command in Sicily and infused new life into the Carthaginian forces. From the citadel of Hercte first, and later from Eryx, he continually harassed the Romans not only in Sicily but even on the coast of Italy. Finally, in 242 B. C., when their public treasury was too exhausted to build another fleet, the Romans by private subscription equipped 200 vessels, which undertook the blockade of Lilybaeum and Drepana. A Carthaginian relief expedition was destroyed off the Aegates Islands, and it was impossible for their forces, now completely cut off in Sicily, to prolong the struggle. Carthage was compelled to conclude peace in 241 B. C.

The terms of peace. Carthage surrendered to Rome her remaining possessions in Sicily, with the islands between Sicily and Italy, besides agreeing to pay an indemnity of 3200 talents (about $3,500,000) in twenty years. For the Romans the long struggle had been very costly. At sea alone they had lost in the neighborhood of 500 ships and 200,000 men. But again the Roman military system had proven its worth against a mercenary army, and the excellence of the Roman soldiery had more than compensated for the weakness in the custom of annually changing commanders. Moreover, the military federation which Rome had created in Italy had stood the test of a long and weary war, without any disloyalty being manifest among her allies. On the other hand, the losses of Carthage had been even more heavy, and, most serious of all, her sea power was broken and Rome controlled the western Mediterranean.

The revolt of the Carthaginian mercenaries. Weakened as she was after the contest with Rome, Carthage became immediately thereafter involved in a life and death struggle with her mercenary troops. [pg 75]These, upon their return from Sicily, made demands upon the state which the latter found hard to meet and consequently refused. Thereupon the mercenaries mutinied and, joining with the native Libyans and the inhabitants of the subject Phoenician cities (Libyphoenicians), entered upon a war for the destruction of Carthage. After a struggle of more than three years, in which the most shocking barbarities were practised on either side and in which they were brought face to face with utter ruin, the Carthaginians under the leadership of Hamilcar Barca stamped out the revolt (238 B. C.).

Rome acquires Sardinia. Up to this point Rome had looked on without interference, but now, when Carthage sought to recover Sardinia from the mutinous garrison there, she declared war. Carthage could not think of accepting the challenge and bought peace at the price of Sardinia and Corsica and 1200 talents ($1,500,000). This unjustifiable act of the Romans rankled sore in the memories of the Carthaginians.

III. The Illyrian and Gallic Wars: 229–219 b. c.

The first Illyrian war: 229–228 B. C. In assuming control of the relations of her allies with foreign states, Rome had assumed responsibility for protecting their interests, and it was the fulfillment of this obligation which brought the Roman arms to the eastern shores of the Adriatic.

Under a king named Agron an extensive but loosely organized state had been formed among the Illyrians, a semibarbarous people inhabiting the Adriatic coast to the north of Epirus. These Illyrians were allied with the kingdom of Macedonia and sided with the latter in its wars with Epirus and the Aetolian and Achaean Confederacies. In 231 Agron died and was succeeded by his queen Teuta, who continued his policy of attacking the cities on the west coast of Greece and practising piracy on a large scale in the Adriatic and Ionian seas. Among those who suffered thereby were the south Italian cities, which in 230 B. C. as the result of fresh and more serious outrages appealed to Rome for redress. Thereupon the Romans demanded satisfaction from Teuta and, upon their demands being contemptuously rejected, they declared war.

The Romans cross the Adriatic: 229 B. C. In the next spring, 229 B. C., the Romans sent against the Illyrians a fleet and an army [pg 76]of such strength that the latter could offer but little resistance and in the next year were forced to sue for peace. Teuta had to give up a large part of her territory, to bind herself not to send a fleet into the Ionian sea, and to pay tribute to Rome. Corcyra, Epidamnus, Apollonia, and other cities became Roman allies.

The fact that Rome first crossed the Adriatic to prosecute a war against the Illyrians placed her in hostility to their ally, Macedonia, the greatest of the Greek states. And although Macedonia had been unable to offer aid to the Illyrians because of dynastic troubles that had followed the death of King Demetrius (229 B. C.), the Macedonians regarded with jealous suspicion Rome’s success and the establishment of a Roman sphere of influence east of the Adriatic. Conversely, the war had established friendly relations and coöperation between Rome and the foes of Macedon, the Aetolian and Achaean Confederacies, which rejoiced in the accession of such a powerful friend. The way was thus paved for the participation of Rome, as a partizan of the anti-Macedonian faction, in the struggles which had so long divided the Greek world.

The second Illyrian war: 220–219 B. C. The revival of Macedonian influence led indirectly to Rome’s second Illyrian war. The alliance of Antigonus Doson with the Achaean Confederacy and his conquest of Sparta (222 B. C.) united almost the whole of Greece under Macedonian suzerainty. Thereupon Demetrius of Pharos, a despot whose rule Rome had established in Corcyra, went over to Macedonia, attacked the cities allied with Rome, and sent a piratical squadron into Greek waters (220 B. C.). Rome, now threatened with a second Carthaginian War, acted with energy. Macedonia, under Philip V, the successor of Antigonus Doson, was involved in a war with the Aetolians and their allies. Deprived of support from this quarter Demetrius was speedily driven to take refuge in flight. His subjects surrendered and Rome took possession of his chief fortresses, Pharos and Dimillos.

War with the Gauls in North Italy: 225–22 B. C. In the interval between these Illyrian Wars Rome became involved in a serious conflict with the Gallic tribes settled in the Po valley. For about half a century this people had lived at peace with Rome, ceasing their raids into the peninsula and becoming a prosperous agricultural and pastoral people. It is claimed that they became alarmed at the Roman assignment of the public land on their southern borders, called the Ager Gallicus, to individual colonists in 233 B. C., and that this [pg 77]caused them to take up arms. However, this territory had been Roman since 283 B. C. and its settlement could hardly have been interpreted as an hostile act. More probable is it that the cause of the new Gallic invasion was the coming of fresh swarms from across the Alps, which some of the Cisalpine Gauls, who had forgotten the defeats of the previous generation, perhaps invited, and certainly joined, for the sake of plunder. In 238 such a band of Transalpines crossed the Roman frontier and penetrated as far as Ariminum, but serious dissensions broke out within their own ranks and they had to withdraw. There was no further inroad attempted until 225 B. C.

The Gallic invasion of 225 B. C. In that year a formidable horde, called the Gasatae, crossed the Alps and, joined by the Boii and Insubres, prepared to invade Roman territory with a force of 50,000 foot and 20,000 mounted men. The Romans and Italians were seriously alarmed, for the memory of the fatal day of the Allia had never been effaced. Rome called for a military census of her whole federation. The lists showed 700,000 infantry and 70,000 cavalry. Expecting the Gauls to advance into Umbria the Romans stationed an army under one consul at Ariminum. The other consul was sent to Sardinia, possibly from fear of a Carthaginian attack, while the defence of Etruria was left to a force of Roman allies. Alliances were concluded with the Cenomani, a Gallic tribe to the north of the Po, and with the Veneti.

Avoiding the army at Ariminum the Gauls crossed the Apennines into Etruria, defeated the Roman allies and plundered the country. But the consul from Ariminum hastened to the rescue, the army in Sardinia was recalled, and the Gauls began to withdraw northwards to place their spoils in safety. The Romans followed and as the army from Sardinia landed to the north of the foe and cut off their retreat, the latter were surrounded and brought to bay at Telamon. They were annihilated in a bloody battle won by the superiority of the Roman tactics and generalship. One of the Roman consuls fell on the field of battle.

War against the Boii and Insubres: 224–222 B. C. Italy was saved, and now the Romans decided to expel the Boii and the Insubres from the Po valley as a penalty for their conduct and to prevent future invasions of this sort by occupying their territory. In three hard-fought campaigns the Romans, while they failed to exterminate or dispossess these peoples, reduced them to subjection, forcing them to surrender part of their territory and to pay tribute. But the [pg 78]Romans did not conquer without suffering heavy losses, and their ultimate success was to a considerable degree due to the coöperation of the Cenomani.

The Roman frontier reaches the Alps. Between 221 and 219 the Romans subdued the peoples of the Adriatic coast as far as the peninsula of Istria. Thus, with the exception of Liguria and the upper valley of the Po, all Italy to the south of the Alps was brought within the sphere of Roman influence. The Latin colonies Placentia and Cremona were founded in the territory taken from the Insubres to secure the Roman authority in this region, but Hannibal’s invasion of 217 B. C. found the Cisalpine Gauls ready to revolt against the Roman yoke.

IV. The Second Punic War: 218–202 b. c.

Carthaginian expansion in Spain. As we have seen, the Roman seizure of Sardinia and Corsica and the exaction of a fresh indemnity in 238 left a longing for revenge in the hearts of the dominant faction at Carthage. This faction was led by Hamilcar Barca, the victor of the mercenary war, who saw in Spain the opportunity for repairing the fortunes of his state, for compensating Carthage for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia, and for developing an army that would enable him to face the Romans on an equal footing. The Phoenician subjects of Carthage were hard pressed by the attacks of the native Iberian peoples when he secured for himself the command of the Carthaginian forces in the peninsula (238 B. C.). By skilful generalship and able diplomacy he extended the Carthaginian dominion over many of the Spanish tribes, and created a strong army, devoted to himself and his family.

Hasdrubal. Consequently, when Hamilcar died in battle in 229 B. C. he was succeeded in the command by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who carried on his predecessor’s policy. He it was who founded the town of New Carthage (Carthagena) to serve as the center of Carthaginian influence in Spain. The annual revenue of from 2000 to 3000 talents ($2,400,000 to $3,000,000) derived from the Spanish silver mines readily induced the Carthaginians to acquiesce in the almost regal position that the Barcidae enjoyed in Spain. Thus the latter could carry out their plans without interference from the home government.

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Hasdrubal’s treaty with Rome, 226 B. C. But the Carthaginian advance in Spain aroused the alarm of the Greeks of Massalia, and of her colonies, Emporiae and Rhodae, whose commercial interests and independence were thereby endangered. Now the Massaliots had long been in alliance with Rome,—they were said to have contributed to the ransom which the Romans paid to the Gauls in 387 B. C.,—and there seems little doubt that they secured the intervention of Rome on their behalf. In 226 B. C. the Romans concluded a treaty with Hasdrubal which bound him not to send an armed force north of the river Ebro. A few years later the Romans entered into a defensive alliance with the Spanish town of Saguntum, which lay to the south of the Ebro, but which was not subject to Carthage. The motive of the Romans in making this alliance is obscure, but it was probably in answer to a request from the Saguntines.

Hannibal. Upon the assassination of Hasdrubal in 221, Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, then in his twenty-sixth year, was appointed to the command in Spain. Thereupon, relying upon the army which his predecessors and he himself had built up in Spain and upon the resources of the Carthaginian dominions there, he resolved to take a step which would inevitably lead to war with Rome, namely, to attack Saguntum.

The siege of Saguntum: 219 B. C. Using as a pretext a dispute between the Saguntines and some of his Spanish allies, he laid siege to the town in 219 B. C. and captured it after a siege of eight months. A Roman embassy appeared at Carthage to demand the surrender of Hannibal and his staff as the price of averting war with Rome. But the anti-Roman party was in the majority and the Carthaginian senate accepted the responsibility for the act of their general, whatever its consequences might be. The Roman ambassador replied with the declaration of war.

The Roman plan of campaign. The most fateful result of the First Punic War had been the destruction of the maritime supremacy of Carthage. She never subsequently thought of contesting Rome’s dominion on the sea, and consequently, while extending her empire in Spain and Africa she had neglected to rebuild her navy. This fact was to be of decisive importance in the coming struggle. Rome, relying upon it, planned an offensive war. One army, under the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio, was to proceed to Spain, supported [pg 80]by the fleet of Massalia, and to detain Hannibal there, while a second army, under the other consul, Tiberius Sempronius, was assembled in Sicily to embark for Africa.

The plan of Hannibal. But the Romans had not taken into account the military genius of Hannibal, whose audacious plan of carrying the war into Italy upset their calculations. Realizing that he could not transport his army to Italy by sea, he was prepared to cross the Pyrenees, traverse southern Gaul and, crossing the Alps, descend upon Italy from the north. Among the Gauls of the Po valley he hoped to find recruits for his army, and expected that, once he was in Italy, the Roman allies would seize this opportunity of recovering their independence. Deprived of their support Rome would have to yield. His ultimate object was not the destruction of Rome, but the breaking up of the Roman federation in Italy, and the reduction of the Roman state to the limits attained in 340 B. C. This purpose is apparent from the plan of campaign which he followed after his arrival in Italy.

Hannibal’s march into Italy. Hannibal’s preparations were more advanced than those of the Romans and, early in the spring of 218 B. C., he set out from New Carthage for the Pyrenees. Forcing a passage there, he left the passes under guard and resumed his march with a picked army of Spaniards and Numidians. His brother Hasdrubal was left in Spain to collect reinforcements and follow with them. Hannibal arrived at the Rhone and crossed it by the time that Scipio reached Massalia on his way to Spain. The latter, failing to force Hannibal to give battle on the banks of the Rhone, returned in person to Italy, but decided to send his army, under the command of his brother, to Spain, a decision which had the most serious consequences for Carthage. Meanwhile Hannibal continued his march and, overcoming the opposition of the peoples whose territory he traversed, as well as the more serious obstacles of bad roads, dangerous passes, cold, and hunger, he crossed the Alps and descended into the plain of North Italy in the autumn of 218, after a march of five months. His army was reduced to 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. Practically all his elephants perished.

Hannibal at once found support and an opportunity to rest his [pg 81]weary troops among the Insubres and the Boii, the latter of whom had already taken up arms against the Romans. At the news of his arrival in Italy Sempronius was at once recalled from Sicily, but Scipio who had anticipated him ventured to attack Hannibal with the forces under his command. He was beaten in a skirmish at the river Ticinus, and Hannibal was able to cross the Po. Upon the arrival of Sempronius, both consuls attacked the Carthaginians at the Trebia, only to receive a crushing defeat (December, 218).

Hannibal invades the peninsula: 217 B. C. Hannibal wintered in north Italy and in the spring, with an army raised to 50,000 by the addition of Celtic recruits, prepared to invade the peninsula. The Romans divided their forces, stationing one consul at Ariminum and the other at Arretium in Etruria. Hannibal chose to cross the Apennines and the marshes of Etruria, where he surprised and annihilated the army of the consul Flaminius at the Trasimene Lake (217 B. C.). Flaminius himself was among the slain. This victory was soon followed by a second in which the cavalry of the army of the second consul was cut to pieces. Hannibal began his attempt to detach the Italians from the Roman alliance by releasing his Italian prisoners to carry word to their cities that he had come to set them free. Thereupon he marched into Samnium, ravaging the Roman territory as he went.

The Romans in great consternation chose a dictator, Quintus Fabius Maximus. Fabius recognized the superiority of Hannibal’s generalship and of the Carthaginian cavalry, and consequently refused to be drawn into a general engagement. But he followed the enemy closely and continually threatened an attack, so that Hannibal could not divide his forces for purposes of raiding and foraging. Still he was able to penetrate into Campania and thence to recross the mountains into Apulia, where he decided to establish winter quarters. The strategy of Fabius, which had not prevented the enemy from securing supplies and devastating wide areas, grew so irksome to the Romans that they violated all precedent in appointing Marcus Minucius, the master of the horse and an advocate of aggressive tactics, as a second dictator. But when the latter risked an engagement, he was badly beaten and only prompt assistance from Fabius saved his army from destruction.

Cannae: 216 B. C. Next spring found the Romans and Carthaginians facing each other in Apulia. The Romans were led by the [pg 82]new consuls, Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Gaius Terentius Varro. The over-confidence of Varro led to the battle of Cannae, one of the greatest battles of antiquity and the bloodiest of all Roman defeats. Of 50,000 Romans and allies, about 25,000 were slain and 10,000 captured by the numerically inferior Carthaginians. The consequences of the battle were serious. For the first time Rome’s allies showed serious signs of disloyalty. In Apulia and in Bruttium Hannibal found many adherents; ambassadors from Philip of Macedon appeared at his headquarters, the prelude to an alliance in the next year; Syracuse also, where Hiero the friend of Rome had just died, wavered and finally went over to Carthage; and, most serious of all, Capua opened its gates to Hannibal.

Still the courage of the Romans never wavered. They at once levied a new force to replace the army destroyed at Cannae. The central Italian allies, the Greek cities in the south, and the Latins, remained true to their allegiance, and the fortified towns of the latter proved to be the pillars of the Roman strength. For Hannibal, owing to the smallness of his army and the necessity of maintaining it in a hostile country, had to be continually on the march and could not undertake siege operations, for which he also lacked engines of war. Thus the Romans, avoiding pitched battles, were able to attempt the systematic reduction of the towns which had yielded to Hannibal and to hamper seriously the provisioning of his forces. At the same time they still held command of the sea, kept up their offensive in Spain, and held their ground against Carthaginian attacks in Sicily and Sardinia.

Rome recovers Syracuse and Capua: 212–11 B. C. In 213 the Romans were able to invest Syracuse. The Syracusans with the aid of engines of war designed by the physicist Archimedes resisted desperately, but Marcellus, the Roman general, pressed the siege vigorously, and treachery caused the city to fall (212 B. C.). Syracuse was sacked, its art treasures carried off to Rome, and for the future it was subject and tributary to Rome. And in Italy, although Hannibal defeated and killed the consul Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and was able to occupy the cities of Tarentum (although not its citadel), Heraclea and Thurii, he could not prevent the Romans from laying siege to Capua (212 B. C.). The next year he thought to force them to raise the blockade by a sudden incursion into Latium, where he appeared before the walls of Rome. But Rome was garrisoned, the [pg 83]army besieging Capua was not recalled, and Hannibal’s march was in vain. Capua was starved into submission, its nobility put to the sword, its territory confiscated, and its municipal organization dissolved.

Operations against Philip V. of Macedon. Upon concluding his alliance with Hannibal, Philip of Macedon hastened to attack the Roman possessions in Illyria. Here he met with some successes, but failed to take Corcyra or Apollonia which were saved by the Roman fleet. Furthermore, Rome’s command of the sea prevented his lending any effective aid to his ally in Italy. Before long the Romans were able to induce the Aetolians to make an alliance with them and attack Macedonia. Thereupon other enemies of Philip, among them Sparta and King Attalus of Pergamon, joined in the war on the side of Rome. The Achaean Confederacy, however, supported Philip. The coalition against the latter was so strong that he had to cease his attacks upon Roman territory and Rome could be content with supporting her Greek allies with a small fleet, while she devoted her energies to the other theatres of war.

The war in Spain: 218–207 B. C. The fall of Capua came at a moment most opportune for the Romans, since they had immediate need to send reinforcements to Spain. Thither, as we have seen, they had sent an army in 218 B. C. under Gnaeus Scipio, who obtained a foothold north of the Ebro. In the next year he was joined by his brother Publius Cornelius. Thereupon the Romans crossed the Ebro and invaded the Carthaginian dominions to the south. A revolt of the Numidians caused the recall of Hasdrubal to Africa, and the Romans were able to capture Saguntum and induce many Spanish tribes to desert the Carthaginian cause. However, upon the return of Hasdrubal and the arrival of reinforcements from Carthage, the Carthaginian commanders united their forces and crushed the two Roman armies one after the other (211 B. C.). Both the Scipios fell in battle and the Carthaginians recovered all their territory south of the Ebro.

Publius Cornelius Scipio sent to Spain: 210 B. C. Undismayed by these disasters the Romans determined to continue their efforts to conquer Spain because of its importance as a recruiting ground for the Carthaginian armies and because the continuance of the war there prevented reinforcements being sent to Hannibal in Italy. The fall of Capua and the fortunate turn of events in Sicily enabled [pg 84]them to release fresh troops for service in Spain, and in 210 B. C., being dissatisfied with the cautious strategy of the pro-praetor Nero, then commanding north of the Ebro, the Senate determined to send out a commander who would continue the aggressive tactics of the Scipios. As the most suitable person they fixed on Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of the like-named consul who had fallen in 211. However, he was only in his twenty-fourth year and having filled no magistracy except the aedileship, he was technically disqualified from exercising the imperium. Therefore, his appointment was made the subject of a special law in the Comitia, which nominated him to the command in Spain with the rank of a pro-consul. This is the first authentic instance of the conferment of the imperium upon a private citizen.

The capture of New Carthage: 209 B. C. Seeing that the armies of his opponents were divided and engaged in reconquering the Spanish tribes, Scipio resumed the offensive, crossed the Ebro, and by a daring stroke seized the chief Carthaginian base—New Carthage. Here he found vast stores of supplies and, more important still, the hostages from the Spanish peoples subject to Carthage. His liberation of these, and his generous treatment of the Spaniards in general was in such striking contrast with the oppressive measures of the Carthaginians, that he rapidly won over to his support both the enemies and the adherents of the former.

Hasdrubal’s march to Italy: 208 B. C. Meanwhile in Italy the Romans proceeded steadily with the reduction of the strongholds in the hands of Hannibal. Tarentum was recovered in 210, and although Hannibal defeated and slew the consuls Gnaeus Fulvius (210) and Marcus Marcellus (208), his forces were so diminished that his maintaining himself in Italy depended upon the arrival of strong reinforcements. Since his arrival he had received but insignificant additions to his army from Carthage, whose energies had been directed to the other theatres of war. Up to this time also the Roman activities in Spain had prevented any Carthaginian troops leaving that country. But after the fall of New Carthage and the subsequent successes of Scipio, Hasdrubal, despairing of the situation there, determined to march to the support of his brother by the same route which the latter had taken. Scipio endeavored to bar his path, but although Hasdrubal was defeated in battle he and 10,000 of his men cut their way through the Romans and crossed the Pyrenees (208 B. C.).

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The Metaurus: 207 B. C. The next spring he arrived among the Gauls to the south of the Alps. Reinforced by them he marched into the peninsula to join forces with Hannibal. For the Romans it was of supreme importance to prevent this. They therefore divided their forces; the consul Gaius Claudius faced Hannibal in Apulia, while Marcus Livius went to intercept Hasdrubal. Through the capture of messengers sent by the latter Claudius learned of his position and, leaving part of his army to detain Hannibal, he withdrew the rest without his enemy’s knowledge and joined his colleague Livius. Together they attacked Hasdrubal at the Metaurus; his army was cut to pieces and he himself was slain. With the battle the doom of Hannibal’s plans was sealed, and with them the doom of Carthage. Hannibal himself recognized that all was lost and withdrew into the mountains of Bruttium.

The conquest of Carthaginian Spain, and peace with Philip. For the first time in the war the Romans could breathe freely and look forward with confidence to the issue. In the two years (207–206 B. C.) following the departure of Hasdrubal Scipio completed the conquest of what remained to Carthage in Spain. In 205 he returned to Rome to enter upon the consulship, and thereupon went to Sicily to make preparations for the invasion of Africa, since the Romans were now able to carry out their plan of 218 B. C. which Hannibal had then interrupted. At this moment, too, the Romans found themselves free from any embarrassment from the side of Macedonia. In Greece the war had dragged on without any decided advantage for either side until 207, when the temporary withdrawal of the Roman fleet enabled Philip and the Achaean Confederacy to win such successes that their opponents listened to the intervention of the neutral states and made peace (206 B. C.). In the next year the Romans also came to terms with Philip.

The invasion of Africa: 204 B. C. In 204 B. C. Scipio transported his army to Africa. At first, however, he was able to do nothing before the combined forces of the Carthaginians and the Numidian chief, Syphax, who had renewed his alliance with them. But in the following year he routed both armies so decisively that he was able to capture and depose Syphax, and to set up in his place a rival chieftain, Masinissa, whose adherence to the Romans brought them a welcome superiority in cavalry. The Carthaginians now sought to make peace. An armistice was granted them; Hannibal [pg 86]and all Carthaginian forces were recalled from Italy, and the preliminary terms of peace drawn up (203 B. C.). Hannibal left Italy with the remnant of his veterans after a campaign which had established his reputation as one of the world’s greatest masters of the art of war. For nearly fifteen years he had maintained himself in the enemy’s country with greatly inferior forces, and now after inflicting many severe defeats and never losing a battle he was forced to withdraw because of lack of resources, not because of the superior generalship of his foes. Before leaving Italian soil he set up a record of his exploits in the temple of Hera Lacinia in Bruttium.

Zama: 202 B. C. An almost incredible feeling of over-confidence seems to have been aroused in Carthage by the arrival of Hannibal. The Carthaginians broke the armistice by attacking some Roman transports and refused to meet Scipio’s demand for an explanation. Hostilities were therefore resumed. At Zama the two greatest generals the war had developed met in its final battle. Hannibal’s tactics were worthy of his reputation but his army was crushed by the flight of the Carthaginian mercenaries at a critical moment, and by the Roman superiority in cavalry.

Peace: 201 B. C. For Carthage all hope of resistance was over and she had to accept the Roman terms. These were: the surrender of all territory except the city of Carthage and the surrounding country in Africa, an indemnity of 10,000 talents ($12,000,000), the surrender of all vessels of war except ten triremes, and of all war elephants, and the obligation to refrain from carrying on war outside of Africa, or even in Africa unless with Rome’s consent. The Numidians were united in a strong state on the Carthaginian borders, under the Roman ally Masinissa. Scipio returned to Rome to triumph “over the Carthaginians and Hannibal,” and to receive, from the scene of his victory, the name of Africanus.

V. The Effect of the Second Punic War upon Italy

The destruction of the Carthaginian empire left Rome mistress of the western Mediterranean and by far the greatest power of the time. But this victory had only been attained after a tremendous struggle, the greatest probably that the ancient world ever witnessed, a struggle [pg 87]which called forth in Rome the patriotic virtues of courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice to a degree that aroused the admiration of subsequent generations, which drained her resources of men and treasure and which left ineffaceable scars upon the soil of Italy.

One of the main factors in deciding the issue was the Roman command of the sea which Carthage never felt able to challenge seriously. Another was the larger citizen body of Rome, and the friendly relations between herself and her federate allies. This, with the system of universal military service, gave her a citizen soldiery which in morale and numbers was superior to the armies of Carthage. As long as Hannibal was in Italy Rome kept from year to year upwards of 100,000 men in the field. Once only, after the battle of Cannae, was she unable to replace her losses by the regular system of recruiting and had to arm 8000 slaves who were promised freedom as a reward for faithful service. On the other hand, Carthage had to raise her forces from mercenaries or from subject allies. As her resources dwindled the former became ever more difficult to obtain, while the demands made upon the latter caused revolts that cost much effort to subdue. It required the personality of a Hannibal to develop an esprit de corps and discipline such as characterized his army in Italy. A third factor was the absence in the Roman commanders of the personal rivalries and lack of coöperation which so greatly hampered the Carthaginians in Spain and in Sicily. Still one must not be led into the error of supposing that the Carthaginians did not display tenacity and patriotism to a very high degree. The senatorial class especially distinguished itself by courage and ability, and there are no evidences of factional strife hampering the conduct of the war. The Romans overcame the disadvantage of the annual change of commanders-in-chief by the use of the proconsulship and pro-praetorship often long prorogued, whereby officers of ability retained year after year the command of the same armies. This system enabled them to develop such able generals as Metellus and the Scipios.

The cost of maintaining her fleet and her armies taxed the financial resources of Rome to the utmost. The government had to make use of a reserve fund which had been accumulating in the treasury for thirty years from the returns of the 5% tax on the value of manumitted slaves, and the armies in Spain could only be kept in the field by the generosity and patriotism of several companies of contractors who furnished supplies at their own expense until the end [pg 88]of the war. An additional burden was the increased cost of the necessities of life and the danger of a grain famine, caused by the disturbed conditions in Italy and Sicily and the withdrawal of so many men from agricultural occupations. In 210 the situation was only relieved by an urgent appeal to Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt, from whom grain had to be purchased at three times the usual price. However, this crisis passed with the pacification of Sicily in the next year.

Furthermore, a heavy tribute had been levied upon the man power of the Roman state. The census list of citizens eligible for military service fell from about 280,000 at the beginning of the war to 237,000 in 209; and the federate allies must have suffered at least as heavily. The greatest losses fell upon the southern part of the peninsula. There, year after year, the fields had been laid waste and the villages devastated by the opposing armies, until the rural population had almost entirely disappeared, the land had become a wilderness, and the more prosperous cities had fallen into decay. From the effects of these ravages southern Italy never recovered.

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Chapter IX

Roman Domination in the Mediterranean

The Second Phase: Rome and the Greek East, 200–167 B. C.

I. The Second Macedonian War: 200–196 b. c.

The eastern crisis: 202 B. C. The Roman senate had been eager to conclude a satisfactory peace with Carthage as soon as possible in order to devote its undivided attention to a crisis which had arisen in the eastern Mediterranean. There Ptolemy IV of Egypt had died in 203 B. C., leaving the kingdom to an infant son who was in the hands of corrupt and dissolute advisors. Egypt had lost her command of the eastern Mediterranean at the time of Rome’s First Carthaginian War, and later (217 B. C.) had only saved herself in a war against Syria by calling to arms a portion of the native population. This step had led to internal racial difficulties which weakened the position of the dynasty. At this juncture Philip V of Macedon, who had emerged with credit from his recent struggle with Rome and his foes in Greece, and Antiochus III of Syria, who had just returned from a series of successful campaigns (212–204 B. C.) which had recovered for his kingdom its eastern provinces as far as the Indus and had won for him the surname of “the Great,” judged the moment favorable for the realization of long-cherished ambitions at the expense of their rival, Egypt. They formed an alliance for the conquest of the outlying possessions of the Ptolemies, whereby Philip was to occupy those in the Aegean, while Antiochus was to seize Phoenicia and Palestine. In 202 B. C. they opened hostilities.

The appeal for Roman intervention: 201 B. C. But the operations of the forces of Philip in the Aegean brought him into war with Rhodes and with Attalus, King of Pergamon, while in Greece a quarrel, which developed between some of his allies and the Athenians, involved him in hostilities with the latter. From these three states [pg 90]and from Egypt, which, having been unable to prevent Antiochus from occupying her Syrian possessions, was now threatened with invasion, envoys were sent to Rome, to request Roman intervention on their behalf, on the ground that they were friends (amici) of Rome.

The status of amicitia. The Romans had adopted the idea of international friendship (amicitia, philia) from the Greeks in the course of the third century. Previously, their only conception of friendly relations between states was that of alliance (societas) based upon a perpetual treaty (foedus), which bound each party to render military assistance to the other and which neither could terminate at discretion. However, under the influence of ideas current among the Hellenic states they began to form friendships, i. e. to open up diplomatic relations with states and rulers. These amici (friends) could remain neutral in case Rome engaged in war, or they could render Rome support, which was, however, voluntary and not obligatory. And Rome enjoyed a similar freedom of action with regard to them.

Rome intervenes: 200 B. C. The Roman Senate, influenced by mixed motives—sympathy for the Hellenes and their culture, ambition to appear as arbiters of the fate of the Greek world, a desire for revenge upon Philip for his partial successes in the late war, and fear of seeing him develop into a more powerful enemy—was anxious to intervene. But, although the Roman fetials, the members of the priestly college which was the guardian of the Roman traditions in international relations, decided that Attalus and the other Roman amici might be regarded as allies (socii) and so be defended legitimately, the Roman people as a whole shrank from embarking upon another war. The Comitia once voted against the proposal, and at a second meeting was only induced to sanction it, when it was represented to them that they would have to face another invasion of Italy if they did not anticipate Philip’s action.

The Roman ultimatum. The Senate next sent ambassadors to the East to present an ultimatum to Philip, and at the same time to negotiate with Antiochus for the cessation of his attacks upon Egypt, for the Romans did not wish to have his forces added to those of the Macedonian king. When Philip was engaged in the siege of Abydos on the Hellespont he received the Roman terms, which were that he should abstain from attacking any cities of the Greeks or the possessions of Ptolemy, and should submit to arbitration his disputes with [pg 91]Attalus and the Rhodians. Upon his rejection of these proposals the war opened.

The Romans cross the Adriatic. Late in 200 B. C. a Roman army under the consul Sulpicius crossed into Illyricum and endeavored to penetrate into Macedonia. However, both in this and in the succeeding year, the Romans, although aided by the forces of the Aetolian Confederacy, Pergamon, Rhodes and Athens, were unable to inflict any decisive defeat upon Philip or to invade his kingdom.

However, with the arrival of the consul of 198, Titus Flamininus, the situation speedily changed. The Achaean Confederacy was won over to the side of Rome, and Flamininus succeeded in forcing Philip to evacuate his position in Epirus and to withdraw into Thessaly. In the following winter negotiations for peace were opened, but these led to nothing, for the Romans demanded the evacuation of Corinth, Chalcis and Demetrias, three fortresses known as “the fetters of Greece,” and Philip refused to make this concession.

Cynoscephalae: 197 B. C. The next year military operations were resumed with both armies in Thessaly. Early in the summer a battle was fought on a ridge of hills called Cynoscephalae (the Dog’s Heads) where the Romans won a complete victory. Although the Aetolians tendered valuable assistance in this engagement, the Macedonian defeat was due to the superior flexibility of the Roman legionary formation over the phalanx. Philip fled to Macedonia and sued for peace. The Aetolians and his enemies in Greece sought his utter destruction, but Flamininus realized the importance of Macedonia to the Greek world as a bulwark against the Celtic peoples of the lower Danube and would not support their demands. The terms fixed by the Roman Senate were: the autonomy of the Hellenes, the evacuation of the Macedonian possessions in Greece, in the Aegean, and in Illyricum, and an indemnity of 1000 talents ($1,200,000). The conditions Philip was obliged to accept (196 B. C.).

The proclamation of Flamininus: 196 B. C. At the Isthmian games of the same year Flamininus proclaimed the complete autonomy of the peoples who had been subject to Macedonia. The announcement provoked a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm. After spending some time in carrying this proclamation into effect and in settling the claims of various states, Flamininus returned to Italy in 194, leaving the Greeks to make what use they could of their freedom.

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II. The War with Antiochus the Great and the Aetolians: 192–189 b. c.

Antiochus in Asia Minor and Thrace. Even before Flamininus and his army had withdrawn from Greece the activities of Antiochus had awakened the mistrust of the Roman Senate and threatened to lead to hostilities. The Syrian king had completed the conquest of Lower Syria in 198, and then, profiting by the difficulties in which Philip of Macedon was involved, he turned his attention towards Asia Minor and Thrace with the hope of recovering the possessions once held by his ancestor, Seleucus I, in these quarters. The Romans were at the time too much occupied to oppose him, and, outwardly, he professed to be the friend of Rome and to be limiting his activities to the reëstablishing of his empire to its former extent. Eventually, in 195 B. C., he crossed over into Europe and proceeded to establish himself in Thrace. Negotiations with the Roman Senate seemed likely to lead to an agreement that the king should limit his expansion to Asia and recognize a sort of Roman suzerainty in Europe, when the action of the Aetolians precipitated a conflict.

The Aetolians and Rome. The Aetolians, who had been Rome’s allies in the war just concluded and who greatly exaggerated the importance of their services, were disgruntled because the kingdom of Macedonia had not been entirely dismembered and they had been restrained from enlarging the territory of the Confederacy at the expense of their neighbors. In short, they wished to take the place formerly held by Macedonia among the Greek states. Accustomed to regard war as a legitimate source of revenue, they did not easily reconcile themselves to Rome’s preservation of peace in Hellas. Ever since the battle of Cynoscephalae they had striven to undermine Roman influence among the Greeks, and now they sought to draw Antiochus into conflict with Rome.

Antiochus invades Greece: 192 B. C. In 192 B. C. they elected Antiochus as commander-in-chief of the forces of their confederacy and seized the fortress of Chalcis. This they offered to the king, to whom they also made an unauthorized promise of aid from Macedonia. Thereupon, trusting in the support promised by the Aetolians, Antiochus sailed to Greece with a small force of 10,000 men. It so happened that Hannibal, who in 196 B. C. had been forced to flee [pg 93]his native city owing to the machinations of his enemies and the Romans, was then at the court of Antiochus, where he had taken refuge. He advised his protector to invade the Italian peninsula, but Antiochus rejected the advice, probably with wisdom, for such a course would have required him to win the control of the sea, which was a task beyond his resources. But when, throughout his whole campaign, he neglected to make use of the services of the greatest commander of the age, he committed a most serious blunder. Had Hannibal led the forces of Antiochus the task of the Romans would not have been so simple.

Antiochus driven from Greece: 191 B. C. In 191 a Roman army under the consul Acilius Glabrio appeared in Greece and attacked and defeated the forces of Antiochus at Thermopylae. The king fled to Asia. Contrary to his hopes he had found but little support in Greece. Philip of Macedon and the Achaean Confederacy adhered to the Romans, and the Aetolians were rendered helpless by an invasion of their own country. Furthermore, the Rhodians and Eumenes, the new King of Pergamon, joined their navies to the Roman fleet.

The Romans cross over to Asia Minor: 190 B. C. As Antiochus would not hearken to the terms of peace laid down by the Romans, the latter resolved upon the invasion of Asia Minor. Two naval battles, won by the aid of Rhodes and Pergamon, secured the control of the Aegean and in 190 B. C. a Roman force crossed the Hellespont. For its commander the Senate had wished to designate Scipio Africanus, the greatest of the Roman generals. However, as he had recently been consul he was now ineligible for that office. The obstacle of the law was accordingly circumvented by the election of his brother Lucius to the consulate and his assignment to this command, and by the appointment of Publius to accompany him as extraordinary proconsul, with power equal to his own.

Magnesia: 190 B. C. One decisive victory over Antiochus at Magnesia in the autumn of 190 B. C. brought him to terms. He agreed to surrender all territory to the north of the Taurus mountains and west of Pamphylia, to give up his war elephants, to surrender all but ten of his ships of war, to pay an indemnity of 15,000 talents ($18,000,000) in twelve annual instalments, and to abstain from attacking the allies of Rome. Still, unlike Carthage, he was at liberty to defend himself if attacked. The Romans then proceeded to estab[pg 94]lish order in Asia Minor. The territories of their friends, Rhodes and Pergamon, were materially increased, while the enemies of the latter, the Celts of Galatia were defeated and forced to pay a heavy indemnity. Rome retained no territory in Asia, but left the country divided among a number of small states whose mutual jealousies rendered impossible the rise of a strong power which could venture to set aside the Roman arrangements.

The subjugation of the Aetolians: 189 B. C. The Roman campaign of 191 against the Aetolians had caused the latter, who were also attacked by Philip of Macedon, to seek terms. However, as the Romans demanded an unconditional surrender, the Aetolians decided to continue the struggle. In the next year no energetic measures were taken against them, but in 189 the consul Fulvius Nobilior pressed the war vigorously and besieged their chief city, Ambracia. But since the obstinate resistance of its defenders defied all his efforts, and since the Athenians were trying to act as mediators in bringing the war to a close, the Romans abandoned their demand for an unconditional surrender and peace was made on the following conditions. The Aetolian Confederacy gave up all territory captured by its enemies during the war and entered into a permanent alliance with Rome, whereby it was bound to send contingents to the Roman armies. Ambracia was surrendered and destroyed, and the Romans occupied the pirate nest of Cephallenia.

III. The Third Macedonian War: 171–167 b. c.

Rome and the Greek states. Although by her alliance with the Aetolians Rome had planted herself permanently on Greek soil, and in the war with Antiochus had claimed to exercise a sort of protectorate over the Greek world, still the Senate as yet gave no indication of reversing the policy of Flamininus, and the Greek states remained as the friends of Rome in the enjoyment of political independence. However, it was not long before these friendly relations became seriously strained and Rome was induced to embark upon a policy of interference in Greek affairs which ultimately put an end to the apparent freedom of Hellas. The fundamental cause of this change was that while Rome interpreted Greek freedom to mean liberty of action provided that the wishes and arrangements of Rome were respected, the Greeks understood it to mean the perfect freedom [pg 95]of sovereign communities, and resented bitterly any infringement of their rights. Keeping in mind these conflicting points of view, it is easy to see how difficulties were bound to arise which would inevitably be settled according to the wishes of the stronger power.

Rome and the Achaeans. The chief specific causes for the change in the Roman policy are to be found in the troubles of the Achaean Confederacy and the reviving ambitions of Macedonia. The Confederacy included many city-states which had been compelled to join it and which sought to regain their independence. This the Confederacy was determined to prevent. One such community was Sparta, and the policy of the Achaeans towards it in the matter of the restoration of Spartan exiles led to the Spartans appealing to Rome. The Roman decision wounded the susceptibilities of the Confederacy without settling the problem, and the tendency of the Achaeans to stand upon their rights provoked the anger of the Romans. Within the Confederacy there developed a pro-Roman party ready to submit to Roman dictatorship, and a national party determined to assert their right to freedom of action. From 180 B. C. the Romans deliberately fostered the aristocratic factions throughout the cities of Greece, feeling that they were the more stable element and more in harmony with the policy of the Senate. As a consequence the democratic factions began to look for outside support and cast their eyes towards Macedonia.

Rome and Macedonia. Philip V of Macedon considered that the assistance which he had furnished to Rome in the Syrian War was proof of his loyalty and warranted the annexation of the territory he had overrun in that conflict. But the Senate was not inclined to allow the power of Macedonia to attain dangerous proportions, and he was forced to forego his claims. Henceforth he was the bitter foe of the Romans. He devoted himself to the development of the military resources of his kingdom with the ultimate view of again challenging Rome’s authority in Greece. At his death in 179 B. C. he left an army of from 30,000 to 40,000 men and a treasure of 6,000 talents ($7,200,000). His son and successor Perseus inherited his father’s anti-Roman policy and entered into relations with the foes of Rome everywhere in Greece.

The Third Macedonian War: 171–167 B. C. But the Senate was kept well aware of his schemes by his enemies in Greece, especially Eumenes of Pergamon. Therefore they determined to forestall [pg 96]the completion of his plans and force him into war. In 172, a Roman commission visited Perseus and required of him concessions which meant the extinction of his independence. Upon his refusal to comply with the demands they returned home and Rome declared war. Now, when success depended upon energetic action, Perseus sought to avoid the issue and tried to placate the Romans, but in vain. In 171 a Roman force landed in Greece and made its way to Thessaly. But in the campaigns of this and the following year the Roman commanders were too incapable and their troops too undisciplined to make any headway. Nor did Perseus show ability to take advantage of his opportunities. Furthermore, by his parsimony he lost the chance to win valuable aid from the Dardanians, Gesatae, and Celts on his borders. Finally, in 168, the Romans found an able general in the consul Aemilius Paulus, who restored the morale of the Roman soldiers and won a complete victory over Perseus in the battle of Pydna. The Macedonian kingdom was at an end; its territory was divided into four autonomous republics, which were forbidden mutual privileges of commercium and connubium; a yearly tribute of fifty talents was imposed upon them; and the royal mines and domains became the property of the Roman state.

The aftermath of the war. Having disposed of Macedon the Romans turned their attention to the other Greek states with the intention of rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies. Everywhere death or exile awaited the leaders of the anti-Roman party, many of whose names became known from the seizure of the papers of Perseus. Although the Achaeans had given no positive proof of disloyalty 1000 of their leading men, among them the historian Polybius, were carried off to Italy nominally to be given the chance of clearing themselves before the Senate but really to be kept as hostages in Italy for the future conduct of the Confederacy.

The Rhodians, because they had endeavored to secure a peaceful settlement between Rome and Perseus, were forced to surrender their possessions in Asia Minor, and a ruinous blow was dealt to their commercial prosperity by the establishment of a free port at the island of Delos. Eumenes of Pergamon, whose actions had aroused suspicions, had to recognize the independence of the Galatians whom he had subdued. Far worse was the fate of Epirus. There seventy towns were sacked and their inhabitants to the number of 150,000 carried off into slavery.

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Henceforth it was clear that Rome was the real sovereign in the eastern Mediterranean and that her friends and allies only enjoyed local autonomy, while they were expected to be obedient to the orders of Rome. This is well illustrated by the anecdote of the circle of Popilius. During the Third Macedonian War, Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, King of Syria, had invaded Egypt. After the battle of Pydna a Roman ambassador, Popilius by name, was sent to make him withdraw. Popilius met Antiochus before Alexandria and delivered the Senate’s message. The king asked for time for consideration, but the Roman, drawing a circle around him in the sand, bade him answer before he left the spot. Antiochus yielded and evacuated Egypt.

The spoils of this war with Macedonia brought an enormous booty into the Roman treasury, and from this time the war tax on property—the tributum civium Romanorum—ceased to be levied. The income of the empire enabled the government to relieve Roman citizens of all direct taxation.

IV. Campaigns in Italy and Spain

During the Macedonian and Syrian Wars the Romans were busy strengthening and extending their hold upon northern Italy and Spain.

Cisalpine Gaul. Cisalpine Gaul, which had been largely lost to the Romans since Hannibal’s invasion, was recovered by wars with the Insubres and Boii between 198 and 191 B. C. A new military highway, the via Flaminia, was built from Rome to Ariminum in 187, and later extended under the name of the via Aemilia to Placentia; another, the via Cassia (171 B. C.), linked Rome and the Po valley by way of Etruria. New fortresses were established; Bononia (189) and Aquileia (181) as Latin colonies; Parma and Mutina (183) as colonies of Roman citizens. In this way Roman authority was firmly established and the way prepared for the rapid Latinization of the land between the Apennines and the Alps.

The Ligurians. In the same period falls the subjugation of the Ligurians. In successive campaigns, lasting until 172 B. C., the Romans gradually extended their sway over the various Ligurian tribes until they reached the territory of Massalia in southern Gaul. Roman colonies were founded at Pisa (180) and Luna (177).

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Spain. The territory acquired from Carthage in Spain was organized into two provinces, called Hither and Farther Spain, in 197 B. C. But the allied and subject Spanish tribes were not yet reconciled to the presence of the Romans and serious revolts broke out. One of these was subdued by Marcus Porcius Cato in 196, another by Lucius Aemilius Paulus between 191 and 189, and a third by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus in 179 and 178 B. C. The settlement effected by Gracchus secured peace for many years. In Spain were founded Rome’s first colonies beyond the borders of Italy. Italica, near Seville, was settled in 206, and Carteia in 171; both as Latin colonies.

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Chapter X

Territorial Expansion in Three Continents: 167–133 B. C.

Roman foreign policy. The foreign relations of Rome from 167 to 133 B. C. fall into two distinct periods. In the earlier, Roman foreign policy is directed towards securing Roman domination throughout the Mediterranean by diplomatic means. War and annexation of territory are avoided as causing too great a drain upon the resources of the state and creating difficult administrative problems. In the later period this policy is abandoned for one more aggressively imperialistic, which does not hesitate to appeal to armed force and aims at the incorporation of conquered territory within the empire. This change of policy was largely due to the influence of that group in the senate which was eager for foreign commands, the honors of a triumph, and the spoils of war, as well as that of the non-senatorial financial interests which sought to open up new fields for exploitation. It was also felt that the prestige of Rome had suffered by the disregard of some of her diplomatic representations.

This policy of expansion resulted in prolonged wars in Spain, the annexation of Carthage and Macedon, the establishment of direct control over Greece, and the acquisition of territory in Asia Minor. The new tendencies become apparent shortly before 150 B. C.

I. The Spanish Wars: 154–133 b. c.

The revolts of the Celtiberians and the Lusitanians: 154–139 B. C. In 154 B. C. revolts broke out in both Hither and Farther Spain. A series of long and bloody campaigns ensued, which were prolonged by the incapacity, cruelty and faithlessness of the Roman commanders, and caused a heavy drain upon the military resources of Italy. The chief opponents of the Romans were the Celtiberians of Hither, and the Lusitanians of Farther Spain. The desperate character of these wars made service in Spain very unpopular, and [pg 100]levies for the campaign of 151 were raised with difficulty. The tribunes interceded to protect certain persons, and when their intercession was disregarded by the consuls they cast the latter into prison. In 150 B. C. the pro-consul Galba treacherously massacred thousands of Lusitanians with whom he had made a treaty. For this he was brought to trial by Cato, but was acquitted.

The massacre led to a renewed outbreak under Viriathus, an able guerilla leader who defied the power of Rome for about eight years (147–139 B. C.). Forced eventually to yield, he was assassinated during an armistice by traitors suborned by the Roman commander. The complete subjugation of the Lusitanians soon followed.

The war with Numantia: 143–133 B. C. Meantime, after an interval of some years, in 143 the war had broken out afresh in the nearer province where the struggle centered about the town of Numantia. In 140 the Roman general Pompeius made peace upon easy terms with the Numantines, but later repudiated it, and the Senate ignored his arrangements. Again in 138 the tribunes interfered with the levy, so great was the popular aversion to service in Spain. The next year witnessed the disgraceful surrender of the consul Mancinus and his army, comprising 20,000 Romans, to the Numantines. By concluding a treaty he saved the lives of his army. But the Roman Senate perfidiously rejected the sworn agreement of the consul, made him the scapegoat and delivered him bound to the Numantines, who would have none of him.

At length, weary of defeats, the Romans re-elected to the consulship for 134 B. C. their tried general Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Carthage, and appointed him as commander in Spain. His first task was to restore the discipline in his army. Then he opened the blockade of Numantia. After a siege of fifteen months the city was starved into submission and completely destroyed. A commission of ten senators reorganized the country and Spain entered upon a long era of peace.

II. The Destruction of Carthage: 149–146 b. c.

The Third Punic War: 149–146 B. C. Its causes. The treaty which ended the Second Punic War had forbidden the Carthaginians the right to make war outside of Africa, or within it without the consent of Rome. At the same time their enemy Masinissa had been [pg 101]established as a powerful prince on their borders. In such a situation future Roman intervention was inevitable. But for a generation Carthage was left in peace. A pro-Roman party was in control there and bent all its energies to the peaceful revival of Carthaginian commerce. And the Romans, after a period of suspicion which ended with the exile of Hannibal in 196, regarded Carthaginian prosperity without enmity. However, this prosperity in the end led to the ruin of the city, for it awakened the envy of the Senate and the financial interests of Rome, which became only too ready to seize upon any excuse for the destruction of their ancient rival.

Cato and Carthage. The opportunity came through the action of Masinissa. This chieftain, knowing the restrictions imposed upon Carthage by her treaty with Rome, and sensing the change in the Roman attitude towards that city after 167 B. C., revived old claims to Carthaginian territory. Carthage could only appeal to Rome for protection, but in 161 and 157 the Roman commissions sent to adjust the disputes decided in favor of Masinissa. A member of the commission of 157 was the old Marcus Porcius Cato, who was still obsessed with the fear which Carthage had inspired in his youth, and who returned from his mission filled with alarm at the wealth of the city and henceforth devoted all his energies to accomplish its overthrow. In the following years he concluded all his speeches in the Senate with the words, “Carthage must be destroyed.”

The Roman ultimatum: 149 B. C. A fresh attack by Masinissa occurred in 151 B. C. Enraged, the Carthaginians took the field against him, but suffered defeat. The Romans at once prepared for war. Conscious of having overstepped their rights and fearful of Roman vengeance, the Carthaginians offered unconditional submission in the hope of obtaining pardon. The Senate assured them of their lives, property and constitution, but required hostages and bade them execute the commands of the consuls who crossed over to Africa with an army and ordered the Carthaginians to surrender their arms and engines of war. The Carthaginians, desirous of appeasing the Romans at all costs, complied. Then came the ultimatum. They must abandon their city and settle at least ten miles from the sea coast. This was practically a death sentence to the ancient mercantile city. Seized with the fury of despair the Carthaginians improvised weapons and, manning their walls, bade defiance to the Romans.

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The siege of Carthage: 149–146 B. C. For two years the Romans, owing to the incapacity of their commanders, accomplished little. Then disappointment and apprehension led the Roman people to demand as consul Scipio Aemilianus, who had already distinguished himself as a military tribune. He was only a candidate for the aedileship and legally ineligible for the consulate. But the restrictions upon his candidature were suspended, and he was elected consul for 147 B. C. A special law entrusted him with the conduct of the war in Africa. He restored discipline in the Roman army, defeated the Carthaginians in the field and energetically pressed the siege of the city. The Carthaginians suffered frightfully from hunger and their forces were greatly reduced. In the spring of 146 B. C. the Romans forced their way into the city and captured it after desperate fighting in the streets and houses. The handful of survivors were sold into slavery, their city levelled to the ground and its site declared accursed. Out of the Carthaginian territory the Romans created a new province, called Africa. The last act in the dramatic struggle between the two cities was ended.

III. War with Macedonia and the Achaean Confederacy: 149–146 b. c.

The Fourth Macedonian War: 149–148 B. C. The mutual rivalries among the Greek states, which frequently evoked senatorial intervention, and the ill-will occasioned by the harshness of the Romans towards the anti-Roman party everywhere, caused a large faction among the Hellenes to be ready to seize the first favorable opportunity for freeing Greece from Roman suzerainty.

Relying upon this antagonism to Rome, a certain Andriscus, who claimed to be a son of Perseus, appeared in Macedonia in 149 and claimed the throne. He made himself master of the country and defeated the first Roman forces sent against him. However, he was crushed in the following year at Pydna by the praetor Metellus, and Macedonia was recovered. The four republics were not restored but the whole country was organized as a Roman province (148 B. C.).

The Achaeans assert their independence. The Achaean Confederacy was one of the states where the feeling against Rome ran especially high. There the irksomeness of the Roman protectorate was heightened by the return of the survivors of the political exiles [pg 103]of 167, 300 in number. The anti-Roman party, supported by the extreme democratic elements in the cities, was in control of the Confederacy when border difficulties with Sparta broke out afresh in 149 B. C. The matter was referred to the Senate for settlement, but the Achaeans did not await its decision. They attacked and defeated Sparta, confident that the hands of the Romans were tied by the wars in Spain, Africa and Macedonia.

The dissolution of the Confederacy: 146 B. C. The Roman Senate determined to punish the Confederacy by detaching certain important cities from its membership. But in 147 the Achaean assembly tempestuously refused to carry out the orders of the Roman ambassadors, in spite of the fact that the Macedonian revolt had been crushed. Their leaders, expecting no mercy from Rome, prepared for war and they were joined by the Boeotians and other peoples of central Greece. The next year they resolved to attack Sparta, whereupon the Romans sent a fleet and an army against them under the consul Lucius Mummius. Metellus, the conqueror of Macedonia, subdued central Greece and Mummius routed the forces of the Confederacy at Leucopetra on the Isthmus (146 B. C.). Corinth was sacked and burnt; its treasures were carried off to Rome; and its inhabitants sold into slavery. Its land, like that of Carthage, was added to the Roman public domain. Like Alexander’s destruction of Thebes this was a warning which the other cities of Greece could not misinterpret. A senatorial commission dissolved the Achaean Confederacy as well as the similar political combinations of the Boeotians and Phocians, The cities of Greece entered into individual relations with Rome. Those which had stood on the side of Rome, as Athens and Sparta, retained their previous status as Roman allies; the rest were made subject and tributary. Greece was not organized as a province, but was put under the supervision of the governor of Macedonia.

IV. The Acquisition of Asia

The province of Asia. In 133 B. C. died Attalus III, King of Pergamon, the last of his line. In his will he made the Roman people the heir to his kingdom, probably with the feeling that otherwise disputes over the succession would end in Roman interference and conquest. The Romans accepted the inheritance but before they took [pg 104]possession a claimant appeared in the person of an illegitimate son of Eumenes II, one Aristonicus. He occupied part of the kingdom, defeated and killed the consul Crassus in 131, but was himself beaten and captured by the latter’s successor Perpena in 129.

Out of the kingdom of Pergamon there was then formed the Roman province of Asia (129 B. C.). The occupation of this country made Rome mistress of both shores of the Aegean and gave her a convenient bridgehead for an advance further eastward. The question of the financial administration of Asia and its relation to Roman politics will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.

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Chapter XI

The Roman State and the Empire: 265–133 B. C.

The conquest of the hegemony of the Mediterranean world entailed the most serious consequences for the Roman state itself. Indeed, the wars which form the subject of the preceding chapters were the ultimate cause of the crisis that led to the fall of the Roman Republic. In the present chapter it will be our task to trace the changes and indicate the problems that had their origin in these wars and the ensuing conquests. Such a survey is best begun by considering the character of the Roman government during the epoch in question.

I. The Rule of the Senatorial Aristocracy

The Senate’s control over the magistrates, tribunate, and assemblies. From the passing of the Hortensian Law in 287 B. C. to the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B. C. the Senate exercised a practically unchallenged control over the policy of the Roman state. For the Senate was able to guide or nullify the actions of the magistrates, the tribunate, and the assemblies; a condition made possible by the composition of the Senate, which, in addition to the ex-magistrates, included all those above the rank of quaestor actually in office, and by the peculiar organization and limitations of the Roman popular assemblies.

The higher magistrates were simply committees of senators elected by the assemblies. Their interests were those of the Senate as a whole, and constitutional practice required them to seek its advice upon all matters of importance. The Senate assigned to the consuls and praetors their spheres of duty, appointed pro-magistrates and allotted them their commands, and no contracts let by the censors were valid unless approved by the Senate. Except when the consuls were in the city, the Senate controlled all expenditures from the public treasury.

The chief weapon of the tribunes, their right of veto, which had [pg 106]been instituted as a check upon the power of the Senate and the magistrates, became an instrument whereby the Senate bridled the tribunate itself. For, since after 287 the plebeians speedily came to constitute a majority in the senate chamber, it was not difficult for this body to secure the veto of the tribunes upon any measures of which it disapproved, whether they originated with a consul or a tribune.

And, because the popular assemblies could only vote upon such measures or for such candidates as were submitted to them by the presiding magistrates, the Senate through its influence over magistrates and tribunes controlled both the legislative and elective activities of the comitia.

The Senate and the public policy. Since the Senate was a permanent body, easily assembled and regularly summoned by the consuls to discuss all matters of public concern, it was natural that the foreign policy of the state should be entirely in its hands—subject, of course, to the right of the Assembly of the Centuries to sanction the making of war or peace—and hence the organization and government of Rome’s foreign possessions became a senatorial prerogative. And, likewise, it fell to the Senate to deal with all sudden crises which constituted a menace to the welfare of the state, like the spread of the Bacchanalian associations which was ended by the Senatus Consultum of 186 B. C. And, finally, the Senate claimed the right to proclaim a state of martial law by passing the so-called Senatus Consultum ultimum, a decree which authorized the magistrates to use any means whatsoever to preserve the state.

Polybius and the Roman Constitution. Thus in spite of the fact that the Greek historian and statesman, Polybius, who was an intimate of the governing circles in Rome about the middle of the second century B. C., in looking at the form of the Roman constitution could call it a nice balance between monarchy, represented by the consuls, aristocracy, represented by the Senate, and democracy, represented by the tribunate and assemblies, in actual practice the state was governed by the Senate. It is true that the Senate was not always absolute master of the situation. Between 233 and 217 B. C., the popular leader Caius Flaminius, as tribune, consul and censor, was able to carry out a democratic policy at variance with the Senate’s wishes, but with his death the control of the Senate became firmer than ever. From what has been said it will readily be seen that the Senate’s power rested mainly upon custom and precedent and upon the [pg 107]prestige and influence of itself as a whole and its individual members, not upon powers guaranteed by law. The Roman republic never was a true democracy, but was strongly aristocratic in character.

The aristocracy of office. The Senate was representative of a narrow circle of wealthy patrician and plebeian families, which constituted the new nobility that came into being with the cessation of the patricio-plebeian struggle and which was in truth an office-holding aristocracy. For, after the initial widening of the circle of families enobled by admission to the Senate, the third century saw these create for themselves a real, if not legal, monopoly of the magistracies and thus of the regular gateway to the senate chamber. This they could do because the expense involved in holding public offices, which were without salary, and in conducting the election campaigns, which became increasingly costly as time went on, deterred all but persons of considerable fortune from seeking office, and because the exercise of personal influence and the right of the officer conducting an election to reject the candidature of a person of whom he disapproved, made it possible to prevent in most cases the election of any one not persona grata to the majority of the senators. It was only individuals of exceptional force and ability, like Cato the Elder, and in later times Marius and Cicero, who could penetrate the barriers thus established. Such a person was signalled as a novus homo, a “new-comer.”

The goal of office. While Rome was hard-pressed by her enemies and while the issue of the struggle for world empire was still in doubt, the Senate displayed to a remarkable degree the qualities of self-sacrifice and steadfastness which so largely contributed to Rome’s ultimate triumph, as well as great political adroitness in the foreign relations of the state. But with the passing of all external dangers, personal ambition and class interest became more and more evident to the detriment of its patriotism and prestige. Office-holding, with the opportunities it offered for ruling over subject peoples and of commanding in profitable wars, became a ready means for securing for oneself and one’s friends the wealth which was needed to maintain the new standard of luxurious living now affected by the ruling class of the imperial city. The higher magistracies were rendered still more valuable in the eyes of the senators when the latter were prohibited from participating directly in commercial ventures outside of Italy by a law passed in 219 B. C., which forbade senators to own ships of seagoing capacity, with the object probably of preventing the foreign [pg 108]policy of the state from being directed by commercial interests. As a consequence the rivalry for office became extremely keen, and the customary canvassing for votes tended to degenerate into bribery both of individuals and of the voting masses. In the latter case it took the form of entertaining the public by the elaborate exhibition of lavish spectacles in the theatre and the arena.

Attempts to restrain abuses. However, the sense of responsibility was still strong enough in the Senate as a whole to secure the passing of legislation designed to check this evil. The Villian law (lex Villia annalis) of 180 B. C. established a regular sequence for the holding of the magistracies. Henceforth the quaestorship had to be held before the praetorship, and the latter before the consulate. The aedileship was not made imperative, but was regularly sought after the quaestorship, because it involved the supervision of the public games and festivals, and in this way gave a good opportunity for ingratiating oneself with the populace. The tribunate was not considered as one of the regular magistracies, and the censorship, according to the custom previously established, followed the consulship. The minimum age of twenty-eight years was set for the holding of the quaestorship, and an interval of two years was required between successive magistracies. Somewhat later, about 151 B. C., re-elections to the same office were forbidden. In the years 181 and 159 B. C. laws were passed which established severe penalties for the bribery of electors. Another attempt to check the same abuse was the introduction of the secret ballot for voting in the assemblies. The Gabinian Law of 139 provided for the use of the ballot in elections; two years later the Cassian Law extended its use to trials in the comitia, and in 131 it was finally employed in the legislative assemblies.

But these laws accomplished no great results, as they dealt merely with the symptoms, and not with the cause of the disorder. And the Roman Senate, deteriorating in capacity and morale, was facing administrative, military, and social problems, which might well have been beyond its power to solve even in the days of its greatness. As we have indicated the Senate’s power rested largely upon its successful foreign policy, but its initial failures in the last wars with Macedonia and Carthage, and the long and bloody struggles in Spain, had weakened its reputation and its claim to control the public policy was challenged, from the middle of the second century B. C., by the new commercial and capitalist class.

[pg 109]

The Roman Constitution from 265 to 133 B. C. During the period in question there were few changes of importance in the political organization of the Roman state. The dictatorship had been discarded, although not abolished, before the close of the Hannibalic War, a step which was in harmony with the policy of the Senate which sought to prevent any official from attaining too independent a position. In 242 B. C. a second praetorship, the office of the praetor peregrinus or alien praetor was established. The duty of this officer was to preside over the trial of disputes arising between Roman citizens and foreigners. Two additional praetorships were added in 227, and two more in 197 B. C., to provide provincial governors of praetorian rank. In 241 B. C. the last two rural tribal districts were created, making thirty-five tribes in all. Hereafter when new settlements of Roman colonists were undertaken, or new peoples admitted to citizenship, they were assigned to one or other of the old tribes, and membership therein became hereditary, irrespective of change of residence.

The reform of the centuries. At some time subsequent to the creation of these last two tribes, very probably in the censorship of Flaminius in 220 B. C., a change was made in the organization of the centuriate assembly. The centuries were organized on the basis of the tribes, an equal number of centuries of juniors and seniors of each class being assigned to each tribe. The reform was evidently democratic in its nature, as it diminished the relative importance of the first class, deprived the equestrian centuries of the right of casting the first votes—a right now exercised by a century chosen by lot for each meeting—and placed in control of the Assembly of the Centuries the same elements as controlled the Assembly of the Tribes.

The comitia an antiquated institution. But by the second century B. C. the Roman primary assemblies had become antiquated as a vehicle for the expression of the wishes of the majority of the Roman citizens, because with the spread of the Roman citizen body throughout Italy it was impossible for more than a small percentage to attend the meetings of the Comitia, and this situation became much worse [pg 110]with the settlement of Romans in their foreign dependencies. It was the failure of the Romans to devise some adequate substitute for this institution of a primitive city-state, which was largely responsible for the people’s loss of its sovereign powers. As it was, the assemblies came to be dominated by the urban proletariat, a class absolutely unfitted to represent the Roman citizens as a whole.

The allies of Rome in Italy. The Latin and Italian allies, with the exception of such as were punished for their defection in the war with Hannibal, remained in their previous federate relationship with Rome. However, the Romans were no longer careful to adhere strictly to their treaty rights, and began to trespass upon the local independence of their allies. Roman magistrates did not hesitate to issue orders to the magistrates of federate communities, and to punish them for failure to obey or for lack of respect. The spoils of war, furthermore, were no longer divided in equal proportions between the Roman and allied troops. Added to these aggravations came the fact that the allies were after all dependents and had no share in the government or the financial administration of the lands they had helped to conquer. But their most serious grievance was their obligation to military service, which was exacted without relaxation, and which, owing to reasons which we shall discuss later, had become much more burdensome than when originally imposed. It is not surprising, then, to find that by 133 B. C. the federate allies were demanding to be admitted to Roman citizenship.

However, it was not in Rome or in Italy, but in Rome’s foreign possessions that the important administrative development of the third and second centuries occurred.

II. The Administration of the Provinces

The status of the conquered peoples. The acquisition of Sicily in 241, and of Sardinia and Corsica in 238 B. C. raised the question whether Rome should extend to her non-Italian conquests the same treatment accorded to the Italian peoples and include them within her military federation. This question was answered in the negative and the status of federate allies was only accorded to such communities as had previously attained this relationship or merited it by zeal in the cause of Rome. All the rest were treated as subjects, not as allies, enjoying only such rights as the conquerors chose to leave them. [pg 111]The distinguishing mark of their condition was their obligation to pay a tax or tribute to Rome. Except on special occasions they were not called upon to render military service.

The provinces. At first the Romans tried to conduct the administration of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica through the regular city magistrates, but finding this unsatisfactory in 227 B. C. they created two separate administrative districts—Sicily forming one, and the other two islands the second—called provinces from the word provincia, which meant the sphere of duty assigned to a particular official. And in fact special magistrates were assigned to them, two additional praetors being annually elected for this purpose. In like manner the Romans in 197 organized the provinces of Hither and Farther Spain, in 148 the province of Macedonia, in 146 that of Africa, and in 129 Asia. Subsequent conquests were treated in the same way. For the Spanish provinces new praetorships were created, “with consular authority” because of the military importance of their posts. But for those afterwards organized no new magistracies were added, and the practice was established of appointing as governor an ex-consul or ex-praetor with the title of pro-consul or pro-praetor. This method of appointing provincial governors became, as we shall see, the rule for all provinces under the republican régime.

The provincial charter. Although each province had its own peculiar features, in general all were organized and administered in the following way. A provincial charter (lex provinciae) drawn up on the ground by a commission of ten senators and ratified by the Senate fixed the rights and obligations of the provincials. Each province was an aggregate of communities (civitates), enjoying city or tribal organization, which had no political bond of unity except in the representative of the Roman authority. There were three classes of these communities: the free and federate, the free and non-tributary, and the tributary (civitates liberae et foederatae, liberae et immunes, stipendiariae). The first were few in number and although within the borders of a province did not really belong to it, as they were free allies of Rome whose status was assured by a permanent treaty with the Roman state. The second class, likewise not very numerous, enjoyed exemption from taxation by virtue of the provincial charter, and this privilege the Senate could revoke at will. The third group was by far the most numerous and furnished the tribute laid upon the province. As a rule each of the communities enjoyed its [pg 112]former constitution and laws, subject to the supervision of the Roman authorities.

The Roman governor. Over this aggregate of communities stood the Roman governor and his staff. We have already seen how the governor was appointed and what was his rank among the Roman magistrates. His term of office was regularly for one year, except in the Spanish provinces where a term of two years was usual. His duties were of a threefold nature: military, administrative, and judicial. He was in command of the Roman troops stationed in the province for the maintenance of order and the protection of the frontiers; he supervised the relations between the communities of his province and their internal administration, as well as the collection of the tribute; he presided over the trial of the more serious cases arising among provincials, over all cases between provincials and Romans, or between Roman citizens. Upon entering his province the governor published an edict, usually modelled upon that of his predecessors or the praetor’s edict at Rome, stating what legal principles he would enforce during his term of office. The province was divided into judicial circuits (conventus), and cases arising in each of these were tried in designated places at fixed times.

The governor’s staff. The governor was accompanied by a quaestor, who acted as his treasurer and received the provincial revenue from the tax collectors. His staff also comprised three legati or lieutenants, senators appointed by the senate, but usually nominated by himself, whose function it was to assist him with their counsel and act as his deputies when necessary. He also took with him a number of companions (comites), usually young men from the families of his friends, who were given this opportunity of gaining a knowledge of provincial government and who could be used in any official capacity. In addition, the governor brought his own retinue, comprising clerks and household servants.

The provincial taxes. The taxes levied upon the provinces were at first designed to pay the expenses of occupation and defence. Hence they bore the name stipendium, or soldiers’ pay. At a later date the provinces were looked upon as the estates of the Roman people and the taxes as a form of rental. The term tributum (tribute), used of the property tax imposed on Roman citizens did not come into general use for the provincial revenues until a later epoch. As a rule the Romans accepted the tax system already in vogue in [pg 113]each district before their occupancy, and exacted either a fixed annual sum from the province as in Spain, Africa and Macedonia or one tenth (decuma) of the annual produce of the soil, as in Sicily and Asia. The tribute imposed by the Romans was not higher, but usually lower than what had been exacted by the previous rulers. The public lands, mines, and forests, of the conquered state were incorporated in the Roman public domain, and the right to occupy or exploit them was leased to individuals or companies of contractors. Customs dues (portoria) were also collected in the harbors and on the frontiers of the provinces.

The tax collectors. Following the custom established in Italy, the Roman state did not collect its taxes in the provinces through public officials but leased for a period of five years the right to collect each particular tax to the private corporation of tax collectors (publicani) which made the highest bid for the privilege. These corporations were joint stock companies, with a central office at Rome and agencies in the provinces in which they were interested. It was this system which was responsible for the greatest evils of Roman provincial administration. For the publicani were usually corporations of Romans, bent on making a profit from their speculation, and practised under the guise of raising the revenue, all manner of extortion upon the provincials. It was the duty of the governor to check their rapacity, but from want of sympathy with the oppressed and unwillingness to offend the Roman business interests this duty was rarely performed. Hand in hand with tax collecting went the business of money lending, for the Romans found a state of chronic bankruptcy prevailing in the Greek world and made loans everywhere at exorbitant rates of interest. To collect overdue payments the Roman bankers appealed to the governor, who usually quartered troops upon delinquent communities until they satisfied their creditors.

The rapacity of the governors. A further source of misgovernment lay in the greed of the governor and his staff. The temptations of unrestricted power proved too great for the morality of the average Roman. It is true that there were not wanting Roman governors who maintained the highest traditions of Roman integrity in public office, but there were also only too many who abused their power to enrich themselves. While the shortness of his term of office prevented a good governor from thoroughly understanding the conditions of his province, it served to augment the criminal zeal with which an ava[pg 114]ricious proconsul, often heavily indebted from the expenses of his election campaigns, sought to wring a fortune from the hapless provincials. Bribes, presents, illegal exactions, and open confiscations were the chief means of amassing wealth. In this the almost sovereign position of the governor and his freedom from immediate senatorial control guaranteed him a free hand.

The quaestio rerum repetundarum: 149 B. C. The mischief became so serious that in 149 B. C. the public conscience awoke to the wrong and ruin inflicted upon the provinces, and by a Calpurnian Law a standing court was instituted for the trial of officials accused of extortion in the provinces. This court was composed of fifty jurors drawn from the Senate and was presided over by a praetor. From its judgment there was no appeal. Its establishment marks an important innovation in Roman legal procedure in criminal cases. It is possible also that the Senate was encouraged to undertake the organization of new provinces shortly after 149 because it believed that this court would serve as an adequate means of controlling the provincial governors. But it was useless to expect very much from such a tribunal. The cost of a long trial at Rome, the difficulty of securing testimony, the inadequacy of the penalty provided, which was limited to restitution of the damage inflicted, as well as the fear of vengeance from future governors, would deter the majority of sufferers from seeking reparation. Nor could an impartial verdict be expected from a jury of senators trying one of their own number for an offense which many of them regarded as their prerogative. And so till the end of the republic the provincials suffered from the oppression of their governors, as well as from that of the tax-collectors.

III. Social and Economic Development

Outstanding characteristics of the period. The epoch of foreign expansion which we are considering was marked by a complete revolution in the social and economic life of Rome and Italy. It witnessed the spread of the slave plantations, the decline of the free Italian peasantry, the growth of the city mob of Rome, the great increase in the power of the commercial and capitalist class, and the introduction of a new standard of living among the well-to-do.

The slave plantations. The introduction of the plantation system, that is, of the cultivation of large estates (latifundia) by slave [pg 115]labor, was the result of several causes: the Roman system of administering the public domain, the devastation of the rural districts of South Italy in the Hannibalic War, the abundant supply of cheap slaves taken as prisoners of war, and the inability of the small proprietors to maintain themselves in the face of the demands of military service abroad and the competition of imported grain as well as that of the latifundia themselves.

The public domain that was not required for purposes of colonization had always been open for pasturage or cultivation to persons paying a nominal rental to the state. Those who profited most from this system were the wealthier landholders who could occupy and cultivate very considerable areas. This fact explains the senatorial opposition to the division and settlement of the ager Gallicus proposed and carried by the tribune Flaminius in 233 B. C. The dangers of the practice to the smaller proprietors caused the passing of laws, probably late in the third century, which limited the amount of public land to be occupied by any individual and his family. But these laws were disregarded, for the Senate administered the public domain and the senators were the wealthy landholders. After several generations the public lands occupied in this way came to be regarded as private property. The havoc wrought by Hannibal in South Italy, where he destroyed four hundred communities, caused the disappearance of the country population and opened the way for the acquisition of large estates there, and the law which restricted the commercial activities of senators and forbade their engaging in tax collecting or undertaking similar state contracts encouraged them to invest their capital in Italian land and stimulated the growth of their holdings.

The change in agrarian conditions in Italy was also advantageous to large estates. The cheapness of Sicilian grain rendered it more profitable in Italy to cultivate vineyards and olive orchards, and to raise cattle and sheep on a large scale. For the latter wide acreages were needed: a summer pasturage in the mountains and a winter one in the lowlands of the coast. Abundant capital and cheap labor were other requisites. And slaves were to be had in such numbers that their labor was exploited without regard for their lives. Cato the Elder, who exemplified the vices as well as the virtues of the old Roman character, treated his slaves like cattle and recommended that they be disposed of when no longer fit for work. Often the [pg 116]slaves worked in irons, and were housed in underground prisons (ergastula). The dangers of the presence of such masses of slaves so brutally treated came to light in the Sicilian Slave War which broke out in 136 B. C., when over 200,000 of them rebelled and defied the Roman arms for a period of four years.

The decline of the free peasantry. Partly a cause and partly a result of the spread of the latifundia was the decline of the free Italian peasantry. As we have seen, the competition of the slave plantations proved ruinous to those who tilled their own land. But another very potent cause contributing to this result was the burden imposed by Rome’s foreign wars. Since only those who had a property assessment of at least 4000 asses were liable to military service, and since the majority of Roman citizens were engaged in agricultural occupations, the Roman armies were chiefly recruited from the country population. And no longer for a part of each year only, but for a number of consecutive years, was the peasant soldier kept from his home to the inevitable detriment of his fields and his finances. Furthermore, a long period of military service with the chances of gaining temporary riches from the spoils of war unfitted men for the steady, laborious life of the farm. And so many discharged soldiers, returning to find that their lands had been mortgaged in their absence for the support of their families, and being unable or unwilling to gain a livelihood on their small estates, let these pass into the hands of their wealthier neighbors and flocked to Rome to swell the mob of idlers there. Then came the heavy losses of the Second Punic and the Spanish Wars. Although the census list of Roman citizens eligible for military service shows an increase in the first half of the second century B. C., between 164 and 136 it sank from 337,000 to 317,000. Yet the levies had to be raised, even if, as we have seen, they were unpopular enough to induce the tribunes to intercede against them. The Latin and Italian allies felt the same drain as the Roman citizens, but had no recourse to the tribunician intercession. The Senate was consequently brought face to face with a very serious military problem. The provinces, once occupied, had to be kept in subjection and defended. Since the Roman government would not, or dare not, raise armies in the provinces, it had to meet increasing military obligations with declining resources.

The urban proletariat. Another difficulty was destined to arise from the growth of a turbulent mob in Rome itself. This was in [pg 117]large measure due to Rome’s position as the political and commercial center of the Mediterranean world. By the end of this period of expansion the city had a population of at least half a million, rivalling Alexandria and Antioch, the great Hellenistic capitals. Although not a manufacturing city, Rome had always been important as a market, and now her streets were thronged with traders from all lands, and with persons who could cater in any way to the wants and the appetites of an imperial city. There was a large proportion of slaves belonging to the mansions of the wealthy, and of freedmen engaged in business for themselves or for their patrons. Hither flocked also the peasants who for various reasons had abandoned their agricultural pursuits to pick up a precarious living in the city or to depend upon the bounty of the patron to whom they attached themselves. Owing to the slowness of transportation by land and its uncertainties by sea, the congestion of population in Rome made the problem of supplying the city with food one of great difficulty, since a rise in the price of grain, or a delay in the arrival of the Sicilian wheat convoy would bring the proletariat to the verge of starvation. And upon the popular assemblies the presence of this unstable element had an unwholesome effect. Dominated as these assemblies were by those who resided in the city, their actions were bound to be determined by the particular interests and passions of this portion of the citizen body. Furthermore, in the contiones or mass meetings for political purposes, non-citizens as well as citizens could attend, and this afforded a ready means for evoking the mob spirit in the hope of overawing the Comitia. This danger would not have been present if the Roman constitution had provided adequate means for policing the city. As it was, however, beyond the magistrates and their personal attendants, there were no persons authorized to maintain order in the city. And since the consuls lacked military authority within the pomerium, there were no armed forces at their disposal.

The equestrian order. The Roman custom of depending as much as possible upon individual initiative for the conduct of public business, as in the construction of roads, aqueducts and other public works, the operation of mines, and the collection of taxes of all kinds, had given rise to a class of professional public contractors—the publicani. Their operations, with the allied occupations of banking and money-lending, had been greatly enlarged by the period of war and conquest which followed 265 B. C. through the opportunities [pg 118]it brought for the exploitation of subject peoples. Roman commerce, too, had spread with the extension of Roman political influence. The exclusion of senators from direct participation in these ventures led to the rise of a numerous, wealthy and influential class whose interests differed from and often ran counter to those of the senatorial order. In general they supported an aggressive foreign policy, with the ruthless exploitation of conquered peoples, and they were powerful enough to influence the destruction of Carthage and Corinth. In the course of the second century this class developed into a distinct order in the state—the equestrians. Since the Roman cavalry had practically ceased to serve in the field, the term equites came to be applied to all those whose property would have permitted their serving as cavalry at their own expense. The majority of these was formed by the business class, although under the name of equestrians were still included such members of the senatorial families as had not yet held office.

The new scale of living. In the course of their campaigns in Sicily, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, the Romans came into close contact with a civilization older and higher than their own, where the art of living was practised with a refinement and elegance unknown in Latium. In this respect the conquerors showed themselves only too ready to learn from the conquered, and all the luxurious externals of culture were transplanted to Rome. But the old Periclean motto, “refinement without extravagance,” did not appeal to the Romans who, like typical nouveaux riches vied with one another in the extravagant display of their wealth. The simple Roman house with its one large atrium, serving at once as kitchen, living room, and bed chamber, was completely transformed. The atrium became a pillared reception hall, special rooms were added for the various phases of domestic life; in the rear of the atrium arose a Greek peristyle courtyard, and the house was filled with costly sculptures and other works of art, plundered or purchased in the cities of Hellas. Banquets were served on silver plate and exhibited the rarest and costliest dishes. The homes of the wealthy were thronged with retinues of slaves, each specially trained for some particular task; the looms of the East supplied garments of delicate texture. A wide gulf yawned between the life of the rich and the life of the poor.

Sumptuary legislation. But the change did not come about without vigorous opposition from the champions of the old Roman simplicity of life who saw in the new refinement and luxury a danger to [pg 119]Roman vigor and morality. The spokesman of the reactionaries was Cato the Elder, who in his censorship in 184 B. C. assessed articles of luxury and expensive slaves at ten times their market value and made them liable to taxation at an exceptionally high rate, in case the property tax should be levied. But such action was contrary to the spirit of the age; the next censors let his regulations fall into abeyance. Attempts to check the growth of luxury by legislation were equally futile. The Oppian Law, passed under stress of the need for conservation in 215 B. C., restricting female extravagance in dress and ornaments, was repealed in 195, and subsequent attempts at sumptuary legislation in 181, 161, and 143, were equally in vain.

To resume: in 133 B. C. the Roman state was faced with a bitter contest between the Senate and the equestrians for the control of the government, the Comitia was dominated by an unstable urban proletariat, the provisioning of Rome was a source of anxiety, dissatisfaction was rife among the Latin and Italian allies, the military resources of the state were weakening, while its military burdens were greater than ever, and the ruling circles had begun to display unmistakable signs of a declining public morality. With a constitution adapted to a city-state Rome was now forced to grapple with all the problems of imperial government.

IV. Cultural Progress

Greek influences. In addition to creating new administrative problems and transforming the economic life of Italy, the expansion of Rome gave a tremendous impulse to its cultural development. The chief stimulus thereto was the close contact with Hellenic civilization. We have previously mentioned that Rome had been subject to Greek influences both indirectly through Etruria and directly from the Greek cities of South Italy, but with the conquest of the latter, and the occupation of Sicily, Greece, and part of Asia Minor, these influences became infinitely more immediate and powerful. They were intensified by the number of Greeks who flocked to Rome as ambassadors, teachers, physicians, merchants and artists, and by the multitude of educated Greek slaves employed in Roman households. And as the Hellenic civilization was more ancient and had reached a higher stage than the Latin, it was inevitable that the latter should borrow largely from the former and consciously or unconsciously imitate it [pg 120]in many respects. In fact the intellectual life of Rome never attained the freedom and richness of that of Greece upon which it was always dependent. In this domain, as Horace phrased it, “Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror.”

New tendencies in Roman education. A knowledge of Greek now became part of the equipment of every educated man, the training of the sons of the well-to-do was placed in the hands of Greek tutors, who were chiefly domestic slaves, and the study of the masterpieces of Greek literature created the genuine admiration for Greek achievements and the respect that men like Flamininus showed towards their Greek contemporaries—a respect which the political ineptitude of the latter soon changed to contempt. These tendencies were vigorously opposed by the conservative Cato, who regarded Greek influences as demoralizing. Following the old Roman custom he personally trained his sons, and had no sympathy with a philhellenic foreign policy. But even Cato in the end yielded so far as to learn Greek. The chief patrons of Hellenism were men of the type of Scipio Africanus the Elder; notably Titus Flamininus, Aemilius Paulus and Scipio Aemilianus, at whose house gathered the leading intellectuals of the day. Intimate associates there were the Achaean historian Polybius and the Stoic philosopher Panaetius of Rhodes.

Roman literature: I. Poetry. More than anything else Greek influences contributed to the rise of Roman literature. Prior to the war with Hannibal the Romans had no literature, although Latin prose had attained a certain development in the formulation of laws and treaties and a rude Latin verse had appeared.

Not unnaturally Roman literature began with translations from the Greek, and here poetry preceded prose. In the latter half of the third century B. C., Livius Andronicus, a Greek freedman, translated the Odyssey into Latin Saturnian verse, as a text-book for school use. He also translated Greek comedies and tragedies. At about the same time Cnaeus Naevius wrote comedies and tragedies having Roman as well as Greek subjects. He also composed an epic poem on the First Punic War, still using the native Saturnian.

Dramatic literature developed rapidly under the demand for plays to be presented at the public festivals. In the second century appeared the great comic poet Plautus, who drew his subjects from the Greek New Comedy, but whose metre and language were strictly [pg 121]Latin. He was followed by Terence, a man of lesser genius, who depended largely upon Greek originals, but who was distinguished for the purity and elegance of his Latin. A later dramatist of note was Lucius Accius, who brought Roman tragedy to its height. In both comedy and tragedy Greek plots and characters were gradually abandoned for those of native origin, but tragedy failed to appeal to the Roman public which was in general too uneducated to appreciate its worth and preferred the comedy, mime or gladiatorial combat. A notable figure is Ennius, a Messapian, who began to write at the close of the third century B. C. He created the Latin hexameter verse in which he wrote a great epic portraying the history of Rome from the migration of Aeneas. Another famous member of the Scipionic circle was Gaius Lucilius, a Roman of equestrian rank, who originated the one specifically Roman contribution to literary types, the satire. His poems were a criticism of life in all its aspects, public and private. He called them “talks” (sermones), but they received the popular name of satires because their colloquial language and the variety of their subjects recalled the native Italian medley of prose and verse, narrative and drama, known as the satura.

II. Prose. Latin prose developed more slowly. The earliest Roman historical works by Fabius Pictor (after 201 B. C.), Cincius Alimentus, and others, were written in Greek, for in that language alone could they find suitable models. It remained for Cato, here as elsewhere the foe of Hellenism, to create Latin historical prose in his Origins, an account of the beginnings of Rome and the Italian peoples written about 168 B. C. His earlier work on agriculture was the first book in Latin prose. The work of the Carthaginian Mago on the same subject was translated into Latin by a commission appointed by the Senate.

Oratory. The demands of public life in Rome had already created a native oratory. A speech delivered by Appius Claudius in 279 B. C. had been written down and published, as were several funeral orations from the close of the third century. But it was Cato who first published a collection of his speeches, about one hundred and fifty in number, which enjoyed a great reputation. A new impulse to this branch of literature was given by the introduction of the systematic study of rhetoric under the influence of Greek orators and teachers.

Juristic writings. In the field of jurisprudence the Romans at this period, were but little subject to Greek influences. The codifica[pg 122]tion of the law in the fifth century B. C. had been followed by the introduction of new principles and forms of action, chiefly through the praetor’s edict. The necessity arose of harmonizing the old law and the new, and of systematizing the various forms of legal procedure. Roman juristic literature begins with Sextus Aelius Paetus (consul in 198 B. C.), surnamed Catus “the shrewd,” who compiled a work which later generations regarded as “the cradle of the law.” It was in three parts; the first contained an interpretation of the XII Tables, the second the development of the law by the jurists, and the third new methods of legal procedure. A knowledge of the law had always been highly esteemed at Rome and the position of a jurist consult, that is, one who was consulted on difficult legal problems, was one of especial honor. Consequently the study of the law, together with that of oratory, formed the regular preparation for the Roman who aimed at a public career.

Religion. Greek religion, like Greek literature, had attained a more advanced stage than that of Rome, and possessed a rich mythology when the Romans had barely begun to ascribe distinct personalities to their gods. Hence there came about a ready identification between Greek and Roman divinities to whom similar powers were ascribed and the wholesale adoption of Greek mythological lore. By the close of the third century B. C. there was formally recognized in Rome a group of twelve greater divinities who were identical with the twelve Olympic gods of Greece. There ensued also a rapid neglect of the minor Latin divinities whose place was taken by those of Greek origin. The old impersonal Roman deities had given place to anthropomorphic Hellenic conceptions. This is reflected in the acceptance of Greek types for the plastic representations of the gods, a strong demand for which arose with the acquaintance of the works of art carried off from Syracuse and other Greek cities. An important factor in this hellenization of the Roman religion was the influence of the Sibylline Books, a collection of Greek oracles imported from Cumae in the days of the Roman kings and consulted in times of national danger.

The decree of the Senate against Bacchanalian societies: 186 B. C. But Greek influence in the sphere of religion went deeper than the identification of Greek and Roman divinities, for the emotional cult of Bacchus with its mystic ceremonies and doctrines made its way into Italy where religious associations for its celebration were [pg 123]formed even in Rome itself. The demoralizing effects of this worship called forth a senatorial investigation which resulted, as we have seen, in the suppression of these associations. A similar action was taken with regard to the Chaldean astrologers, banished from Italy in 139 B. C.

The worship of the Great Mother. Of a different character was the cult of the Great Mother officially introduced into Rome in the year 204 B. C. This was in essence a native nature worship of Asia Minor, disguised with a veneer of Hellenism. It was the first of the so-called Oriental cults to obtain a footing in the Roman world.

Skepticism and Stoicism. Although the formalities of religion in so far as they concerned public life were still scrupulously observed, there was an ever increasing skepticism with regard to the existence and power of the gods of the Graeco-Roman mythology. This was especially true of the educated classes, who were influenced to a certain extent by the rationalism of Euhemerus, whose work on the origin of the gods had been translated by Ennius, but much more by the pantheism of the Stoic philosophy. The Stoic doctrines, with their practical ethical prescriptions, made a strong appeal to the Roman character and found an able expositor in Panaetius of Rhodes who taught under the patronage of Scipio Aemilianus.

Public festivals. Of great importance in the life of the city were the annual public festivals or games, of which six came to be regularly celebrated by the middle of the second century, each lasting for several days. Five of these were celebrated by the aediles, one by the city praetor. A fixed sum was allotted by the state to defray the expenses of these exhibits, but custom required that this must be largely supplemented from the private purse of the person in charge. In this way the aedileship afforded an excellent opportunity to win public favor by an exhibition of generosity. To the original horse and chariot races there came to be added scenic productions, wild beast hunts, and gladiatorial combats, in imitation of those exhibited by private persons. The first private exhibition of gladiators was given at a funeral in 264 B. C., and the first wild beast hunt in 186 B. C. These types of exhibitions soon became the most popular of all and exercised a brutalizing effect upon the spectators.

The city Rome. The growth of Rome in population and wealth brought about a corresponding change in the appearance of the city. Tenement houses of several stories and high rentals reflected the [pg 124]influx into the capital. Public buildings began to be erected on a large scale. The Circus Flaminius dates from the end of the third century, and several basilicas or large public halls, suitable as places for transacting business or conducting judicial hearings, were erected by 169 B. C. A new stone bridge was built across the Tiber, a quay to facilitate the unloading of ships was constructed on the bank of the river, a third aqueduct brought into the city, and stone paving laid on many streets. Many temples were erected, adorned with votive offerings, mainly spoils of war from Greek cities. But no native art or architecture arose that was worthy of the imperial position of Rome.

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Chapter XII

The Struggle of the Optimates and the Populares: 133–78 B. C.

Civil war and imperial expansion. The century which began with the year 133 B. C. is characterized by a condition of perpetual factional strife within the Roman state; strife which frequently blazed forth into civil war and which culminated in the fall of the republican system of government.

The question at issue was the right of the Senate to direct the policy of Rome, and this right was challenged by the tribunate and the Assembly of Tribes, by the equestrian order, and by the great military leaders who appeared in the course of civil and foreign wars.

For in spite of these unceasing internal disorders this century marks an imperial expansion which rivalled that of the era of the Punic and Macedonian Wars. In Gaul the Roman sway was extended to the Rhine and the Ocean; in the east practically the whole peninsula of Asia Minor, as well as Syria and Egypt, was incorporated in the Empire. With the exception of Mauretania (i. e. modern Morocco, which was really a Roman dependency) the Roman provinces completely encircled the Mediterranean.

At the same time a new Italian nation was created by the admission to Roman citizenship of all the peoples dwelling in Italy south of the Alps.

The period 133 to 78 B. C. covers the first stage in the struggle which brought the Republic to an end, and closes with the Senate in full possession of its old prerogatives, while the powers of the tribunate and Assembly have been seriously curtailed. In this struggle the Roman citizen body was aligned in two groups. The one, which supported the claims of the Senate, was called the party of the “Optimates” or aristocrats; the other, which challenged these claims, was known as the people’s party or the “Populares.”

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I. The Agrarian Laws of Tiberius Gracchus: 133 b. c.

Tiberius Gracchus, tribune, 133 B. C. The opening of the struggle was brought on by the agrarian legislation proposed by Tiberius Gracchus, a tribune for the year 133 B. C. Gracchus, then thirty years of age, was one of the most prominent young Romans of his time, being the son of the consul whose name he bore and of Cornelia, daughter of the great Scipio Africanus. Under his mother’s supervision, he had received a careful education, which included rhetoric and Greek Stoic philosophy. As quaestor in Spain in 136 he had distinguished himself for courage and honesty in dealing with the native population and had acquainted himself with the military needs of Rome. He saw in the decline of the free peasantry of Italy the chief menace to the state, and when elected to the tribunate proposed legislation which aimed to re-establish the class of free Roman farmers, and thus provide new strength for the Roman armies.

The land law. His proposed land law took the form of a re-enactment of a previous agrarian measure dating, probably, from the end of the third century B. C. This law had restricted the amount of public land which any person might occupy to five hundred iugera (about three hundred and ten acres), an amount which Gracchus augmented by two hundred and fifty iugera for each of two grown sons. All land held in excess of this limit was to be surrendered to the state, further occupation of public land was forbidden, and what was within the legal limit was to be declared private property. Compensation for improvements on surrendered lands was offered to the late occupants, and a commission of three men was to be annually elected with judicial powers to decide upon the rights of possessors (III vir agris iudicandis assignandis). The land thus resumed by the state was to be assigned by the commissioners to landless Roman citizens in small allotments, incapable of alienation, and subject to a nominal rental to the state.

Deposition of the tribune Octavius. This proposal aroused widespread consternation among the Senators, who saw their holdings threatened. In many cases it had doubtless become impossible for them to distinguish between their private properties and the public lands occupied by their families for several generations. The Senate resorted to its customary procedure in protecting its prerogatives and induced a tribune named Octavius to veto the measure. But Grac[pg 127]chus was terribly in earnest with his project of reform and took the unprecedented step of appealing to the Assembly of the Tribes to depose Octavius, on the ground that he was thwarting the will of the people. The Assembly voiced their approval of Tiberius by depriving his opponent of his office. The land bill was thereupon presented to the Assembly and passed. The first commissioners elected to carry it into effect were Tiberius himself, his younger brother Caius, and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius.

Death of Tiberius Gracchus. To equip the allotments made to poor settlers, Tiberius proposed the appropriation of the treasure of King Attalus III of Pergamon, to which the Roman state had lately fallen heir. Here was a direct attack upon the Senate’s customary control of such matters. But before this proposal could be presented to the Comitia, the elections to the tribunate for 132 fell due. Tiberius determined to present himself for re-election in order to ensure the carrying out of his land law and to protect himself from prosecution on the ground of the unconstitutionality of some of his actions. Such a procedure was unusual, if not illegal, and the Senate determined to prevent it at any cost. The elections culminated in a riot in which Gracchus and three hundred adherents were massacred by the armed slaves and clients of the senators. Their bodies were thrown into the Tiber. A judicial commission appointed by the Senate sought out and punished the leading supporters of the murdered tribune.

The fate of the land commission. However, the land law remained in force and the commission set to work. But in 129 B. C. the commissioners were deprived of their judicial powers, and, since they could no longer expropriate land, their activity practically ceased.

Still, the Senate’s opponents were not utterly crushed. In 131 an attempt was made to legalize re-election to the tribunate, and although the proposal failed at first, a law to that effect was passed some time prior to 123 B. C. In the year 129 died Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia, the foremost Roman of the day. Upon returning from Spain in 132 he had energetically taken sides with the Senate and had caused the land commissioners to lose their right of jurisdiction. Thereby he had become exceedingly unpopular with the Gracchan party, and when he died suddenly in his fifty-sixth year, there were not wanting those who accused his wife Sem[pg 128]pronia, sister of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, and others of their family, of being responsible for his decease.

II. The Tribunate of Caius Gracchus: 124–121 b. c.

Caius Gracchus, tribune, 123 B. C. The return of Caius Gracchus from his quaestorship in Sardinia in 124 B. C. and his immediate election to the tribunate for the ensuing year heralded the opening of a new phase in the conflict between the Optimates and the Populares. Caius was a passionate orator, and a man of greater energy and more violent temperament than his brother. He entered office pledged to support the agrarian policy of Tiberius, but likewise determined to avenge the latter’s death and to wrest from the Senate its control of the government.

The legislation of Caius Gracchus, 123 B. C. Upon assuming office Caius developed an extensive legislative program. Extraordinary judicial commissions established by the Senate were declared illegal and the ex-consul Popilius who had been the leader in the prosecution of the followers of Tiberius, was forced into exile. A law was passed which provided for a monthly distribution of grain to the city populace at one half the current market price. In this way an expedient which had occasionally been resorted to in times of distress was laid as a permanent obligation upon the government. It has been pointed out above that the lower classes in the city lived in perpetual danger of famine, and Caius probably hoped to relieve the state of the perpetual menace of a hungry proletariat at the capital by improving the arrangements for the city’s grain supply and lowering the cost of grain to the poor. But in the end this measure had the evil results of putting a severe drain upon the treasury and a premium upon idleness. For the moment, however, it made the city mob devoted adherents of Caius and strengthened his control of the Assembly. The land law of 133 B. C. was re-enacted and the land commissioners reclothed with judicial authority. In connection therewith there was undertaken the extension and improvement of the road system of Italy. Caius then assured himself of the support of the financial interests by a law which provided that the whole revenue from the new province of Asia should be auctioned off at Rome in a lump to Roman contractors. A rich field was thus opened up to the Roman bankers.

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Caius re-elected tribune for 122 B. C. The activity of Caius in supervising the execution of his legislation made him the leading figure in the government, and he was re-elected to the tribunate for 122 B. C. It seemed as though a sort of Periclean democracy had been established in Rome, where the statesman who commanded a majority in the popular assembly by securing his continuous re-election to the tribunate might supplant the Senate in directing the public policy.

The Judiciary Law, 123 B. C. Gracchus continued his legislative activity. One of his most important laws was that which deprived senators of the right to act as judges in the courts, including the permanent quaestiones, and transferred this prerogative to the equestrians. This was probably done by defining the qualifications of jurors in such a way as to exclude both senators and those not potentially able to maintain the equipment of a cavalryman at their own expense, i. e. those assessed at less than 400,000 sesterces ($20,000). By the Acilian Law of 123, which reorganized the quaestio for the recovery of damages, the relatives of senators, who were still eligible to the eighteen equestrian centuries, were specifically excluded from serving as jurors. In this way the equestrian order in its widest sense was defined and, being given specific public duties, was rendered more conscious of its power and special interests. In consequence the permanent tribunal for trying officials charged with extortion in the provinces was manned by equites instead of senators. But the change brought no relief to the subjects of Rome for this court was now composed of men who were interested in the financial exploitation of the provincials and who thus were in a position to intimidate a governor who endeavored to restrain the rapacity of tax collectors and money-lenders. The control of the law courts became a standing bone of contention between the Senate and the equestrian order. Another law, which further restricted the powers of the Senate, dealt with the allotment of the consular provinces. Previously these had been assigned by the Senate after the election of the consuls, so that the activities of one distrusted by the senators could be considerably restricted. For the future the consular provinces had to be designated prior to the elections and then assigned to the successful candidates. The Senate’s control over the consuls was thereby considerably weakened.

Schemes for colonization and extension of Roman citizenship. Caius also secured the passage of an extensive scheme of colonization, [pg 130]which provided for the establishment of Roman colonies at Capua and Tarentum, and, what was an innovation, for a colony outside of Italy on the site of Carthage. He further championed the cause of the Latin and Italian allies, for whom he sought to secure Roman citizenship. The Senatorial party thereupon endeavored to undermine his influence with the people by proposing through the tribune Livius Drusus a more extensive scheme of colonization, with exemption from rentals for colonists, and opposing the extension of the franchise to the allied communities, a measure unpopular with the masses who were jealous of sharing their privileges with numbers of new citizens.

The overthrow of Caius Gracchus: 121 B. C. Caius personally undertook the foundation of the colony, named Junonia, which was located at Carthage, and his absence of seventy days on this mission gave the opposition time to organize their forces. His enemies accused him of aiming at a tyranny, his proposal for extension of the franchise was quashed by the veto of Drusus, and he himself failed to secure his election as tribune for 121. With the opening of that year the Senate initiated an attack upon some of his measures, especially the founding of Junonia. The senators were determined to impeach or kill Gracchus, while he and his friends organized themselves for defence. A riot in which one of the senatorial faction was killed gave the Senate the pretext to proclaim a state of martial law and authorize the consul Opimius to take any steps to safeguard the state. The followers of Gracchus assembled on the Aventine, their overtures were rejected and upon the refusal of Caius and his chief adherent Flaccus to appear before the Senate, Opimius attacked them at the head of the Senators, armed slaves and Cretan archers. The Gracchans were routed; Caius had himself killed by a faithful slave, and a judicial commission condemned three thousand of his followers.

The consequences of the Gracchan disorders. The memory of the Gracchi retained a lasting hold upon the affections of the Roman plebs. But although both were earnest patriots, who made a sincere attempt to reform existing abuses in the state, one cannot but feel that the success of their political aims would have brought about no permanent improvement. To substitute for the Senate the fickle Assembly as the governing force in the state was no true democratic measure owing to the fact that the Assembly did not properly represent the mass of the citizen body, and as the future years were to show, would merely have shifted the reins of power from one incompetent body [pg 131]to another more incompetent still. As it was, the Senate, although victorious, emerged from the contest weakened in authority and prestige, and having left a feeling of bitter resentment in the hearts of its opponents. It owed its success to violence and not to legal measures and thus offered a precedent which others might follow against itself. The alliance between the equestrians and the urban proletariat while it lasted had proven stronger than the Senate, and this lesson, too, was not lost upon future statesmen. Besides the loss of some of its prerogatives, the Senate was weakened by the consolidation of the business interests as a political party, with which it was brought into sharp opposition over the question of provincial government. Well might Caius Gracchus declare that by his judiciary law he had “thrust a dagger into the side of the Senate.” For the provincials, the result of this law was to usher in an era of increased oppression and misgovernment. The refusal of the Romans to grant the franchise to the allies served to estrange them still further from Rome. On the whole we may say that conditions in Rome, Italy and the provinces were worse after the time of the Gracchi than before.

Fate of the agrarian legislation. It is impossible to estimate how many Romans received allotments of land under the Gracchan laws. Although the census list rose from 317,000 in 136 to 394,000 in 125, we cannot ascribe this increase altogether to an increase in the number of small proprietors. The admission of freedmen to citizenship doubtless accounts for many. Still there was beyond question a decided addition made to the free peasantry. The colony of Junonia was abandoned, but the settlers in Africa were left undisturbed on their lands. By 120 the restrictions on the sale of allotments in Italy were withdrawn; in 118 assignments ceased; and in 111 rentals to the state were abolished and all lands then held in possession were declared private property; an enactment which benefited greatly the wealthy proprietors.

III. The War with Jugurtha and the Rise of Marius

Foreign wars of the Gracchan Age. While the Senate and the Gracchi were struggling for the mastery in Rome, the Roman state engaged in continual frontier struggles, particularly on the northern borders of Italy and Macedonia. Most of these wars were of slight importance, but one resulted in the occupation of the Balearic Islands, [pg 132]in 123–122, which gave Rome full command of the sea route to Spain. Another, still more important, was that waged between 125 and 123 in answer to an appeal from Massalia against the Ligurian Salyes to the north of that city. Their subjugation gave the Romans the command of the route across the Maritime Alps from Italy to Gaul. The fortress of Aquae Sextiae was established to guard this passage.

The Roman advance in Transalpine Gaul. It now became the object of the Romans to secure the land route to Spain. But beyond the territory of their ally Massalia the way was blocked by powerful coalitions of Gallic tribes. Chief among these were the Allobroges to the east of the Rhone, the Arverni the greatest of all, whose territory lay west of that river, from the Loire to the Pyrenees, and the Aedui, to the north of the Arverni. The Romans made an alliance with the latter people who were at enmity with the other two, and attacked the Allobroges because they had received fugitives from the Salyes. The Arverni were drawn into the conflict on the side of the Allobroges.

The province of Narbonese Gaul. In 121 B. C. both these peoples were decisively beaten in a great battle near the junction of the Isère and the Rhone by the consul Fabius Maximus and the proconsul Domitius. The Romans were now masters of all southern Gaul, except Massalia, and organized it as a province. In 118 B. C. a Roman colony was established at Narbo, which was with the exception of the abandoned settlement of Junonia, the first colony of Roman citizens sent beyond the Italian peninsula, although colonies with Latin rights had been founded in Spain long before. To link Italy with Spain there was constructed the via Domitia, a military road traversing the new province.

The Jugurthine War. It was not long before Rome became involved in a much more serious conflict that was destined to reveal to the world the rottenness and incapacity of its ruling class, and to reawaken internal political strife. In 118 B. C. occurred the death of Micipsa, who had succeeded Masinissa as king of Numidia. Micipsa left his kingdom to be ruled jointly by his two sons, Adherbal and Hiempsal, and a nephew, Jugurtha. The latter was an able, energetic, but ambitious and unscrupulous prince, who had gained a good knowledge of Roman society through serving in the Roman army before Numantia. However, the three soon quarreled and divided the [pg 133]kingdom. It was not long before Jugurtha caused Hiempsal to be assassinated and drove Adherbal from the country. The latter fled to Rome to appeal for aid, on the basis of the alliance with Rome which he had inherited from his ancestors. Thereupon Jugurtha sent his agents, with well filled purses, to plead his case before the Senate. So successful was he that a Roman commission appointed to divide Numidia between himself and Adherbal gave him the western or richest part of the kingdom. But Jugurtha’s aim was to rule over the whole of Numidia, and so he provoked Adherbal to war. In 113 B. C. he succeeded in besieging him in his capital, Cirta, which was defended chiefly by Italians who had settled there for commercial reasons. Two Roman commissions sent to investigate the situation succumbed to Jugurtha’s diplomacy, and Cirta was forced to surrender. Adherbal and all its defenders were put to death.

Rome declares war. The slaughter of so many Italians raised a storm in Rome, where the business elements and populace forced the Senate, which was inclined to wink at Jugurtha’s disregard of its African settlement, to declare war. In 111 a Roman army under the consul Bestia invaded Numidia. Again Jugurtha resorted to bribes and secured terms of peace from the consul after a sham submission. However, the opponents of the Senate saw through the trick and forced an investigation. Jugurtha was summoned to come to Rome under safe conduct to give evidence as to his relations with the Roman officials in Numidia. He came and contrived to buy the intervention of two tribunes who prevented his testimony from being taken. But, relying too much upon his ability to buy immunity for any action, he ventured to procure the assassination in Rome itself of a rival claimant to the Numidian throne (110 B. C.). His friends in the Senate dared protect him no longer and he had to leave Italy.

A Roman defeat, 109 B. C. The war reopened but the first operations ended in the early part of 109 B. C. with the defeat and capitulation of a Roman army, which was forced to pass under the yoke, to be released when its commander consented to a recognition of Jugurtha’s position and an alliance between him and Rome. In this shameful episode bribery and treachery had played their part. The terms were rejected at Rome, and a tribunician proposal to try those guilty of misconduct with Jugurtha was ratified by the Assem[pg 134]bly. In the same year the consul Metellus took command in Africa. One of his officers was Caius Marius. Marius was born of an equestrian family at Arpinum; he served in the cavalry under Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine War; engaged with success in the handling of state contracts; became tribune in 119, praetor in 116, and propraetor in Spain in 115 B. C. He was able and ambitious and chafed under the disdain with which he as a “new man” was treated by the senatorial aristocrats.

Marius, consul: 107 B. C. Metellus, in contrast to the former commanders against Jugurtha, was both energetic and honorable. He began a methodical devastation of Numidia, and forced Jugurtha to abandon the field and resort to guerilla warfare. He also tried to stir up disloyalty among the king’s followers. But he failed to kill or capture the latter, which alone would terminate the war. Hence when he scornfully refused the request of Marius to be allowed to return and stand for the consulship in 108, Marius intrigued to get the command transferred to himself, alleging that Metellus was purposely prolonging the campaign. Finally, Metellus saw fit to let him go and he was elected consul for the following year. However, the Senate, wishing to keep Metellus in command, had not designated Numidia as a consular province. And so the popular party passed a law in the Assembly of the Tribes which conferred the command against Jugurtha upon Marius. The Senate yielded to this encroachment upon its prerogatives and Marius superseded Metellus in 107. His quaestor was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, scion of a decayed patrician family, who was destined to become the bitter rival of his chief.

The end of the war: 107–105 B. C. Marius continued the methodical subjugation of Numidia, but Jugurtha was strengthened by an alliance with his father-in-law Bocchus, king of Mauretania. However, Marius won several hard fought battles over the forces of both kings, and finally, through the agency of Sulla, detached Bocchus from the cause of Jugurtha. Bocchus treacherously seized his son-in-law and handed him over to the Romans. This brought the war to an end. Numidia was divided among princes friendly to Rome, and Marius returned to triumph in Rome, and to find himself elected consul for the year 104 in defiance of precedent, owing to the fear of a barbarian invasion of Italy from the north and the popular confidence in him engendered by his African successes. Jugurtha, after gracing his victor’s triumph, perished in a Roman dungeon.

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Consequences of the war. The corruptibility and incapacity, combined with an utter lack of public responsibility, displayed by the senators in this war contributed to further weaken the already diminished prestige of their order. Besides it had again been demonstrated that a coalition of the equestrians and the city populace could control the public policy, and in the person of Marius, the war had produced a leader upon whom they could unite.

IV. The Invasion of the Cimbri and Teutons

The movements of the Cimbri and Teutons. The fear of a barbarian invasion of Italy which caused Marius to be elected to his second consulship was occasioned by the wanderings of a group of Germanic and Celtic peoples, chief of which were the Cimbri and the Teutons. In 113 B. C. the former, a Germanic tribe, invaded the country of the Taurisci, allies of Rome, who dwelt north of the Alps. A Roman army sent to the rescue was defeated. The Cimbri then moved westwards to the Rhine, where they were joined by the Teutons (Toygeni), who were probably a branch of the Celtic Helvetii, by the Tigurini, another division of the same people, and by the Ambrones, a tribe of uncertain origin. In 111, the united peoples crossed the Rhine into Gaul and came into conflict with the Romans in the new province. Two years later the consul Julius Silanus was defeated by the Cimbri, who demanded lands for settlement within Roman territory. Their demand was refused and hostilities continued. In 107 another consul, Lucius Cassius, was defeated and slain by the Tigurini. In 106 Quintus Servilius Caepio recovered the town of Tolosa, which had deserted the Roman cause, and carried off its immense temple treasures. Three years later he was tried and condemned for defrauding the state of this booty. In 105, two Roman armies were destroyed by the united tribes in a battle at Arausio (Orange), in which 60,000 Romans were said to have fallen. This disaster, the greatest suffered by Rome since Cannae, was largely brought about by friction between the two Roman commanders. The way to Italy lay open but the barbarians failed to take advantage of their opportunity. The Cimbri invaded Spain and the rest remained in Gaul.

The army reforms of Marius. In this crisis Marius was appointed to the command against the Cimbri and their allies, and at [pg 136]once set to work to create an army for the defence of Italy. The increasing luxury and refinements of civilization in Italy had begun to undermine the military spirit among the Romans, especially the propertied classes, and this had led to a decline of discipline and efficiency in the Roman armies. Furthermore, the universal obligation to military service was no longer rigidly enforced, partly because of the residence abroad of so many citizens. Appeals to volunteers became more and more frequent. No longer were recruits enrolled for one year only, but took the oath of service for sixteen years. In building up his new army Marius recognized these new tendencies. He relied mainly upon voluntary enlistments, admitting to the ranks, as he had done already in the Jugurthine War, those whose lack of property had previously disqualified them for service in the legions. The soldiers now became recognized professionals, who upon their discharge looked to their commanders to provide for their future. Among the troops loyalty to the state was supplanted by devotion to a successful general, and the latter could rely upon his veterans to support him in his political career. Marius also introduced changes in the arms and equipment of the soldiers, and he is also credited, although with less certainty, with the increase in the size of the legion to 6000 men and its division into ten cohorts as tactical units.

Marius in Gaul. During the years 104 and 103 Marius kept his army in Gaul guarding the passage to Italy, while he completed the training of his troops and dug a new channel at the mouth of the Rhone to facilitate the passage of his transports into the river. He was re-elected to the consulship for 103 and again for 102 since the danger from the barbarians was not over. In 102 the Cimbri returned from Spain and, joining the other tribes, prepared to invade Italy. The Teutons and Ambrones followed the direct route from southern Gaul, while the Cimbri and Tigurini moved to the north of the Alps to enter Italy by the eastern Alpine passes. Marius permitted the Teutons and Ambrones to march by him, then he overtook and annihilated them at Aquae Sextiae. In the meantime, the Cimbri had forced the other consul, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, to abandon the defence of the eastern passes and had crossed the Adige into the Po Valley, where they wintered. Marius returned to Italy to join his colleague and face the new peril. In the next year, while consul for the fifth time, he met and destroyed the Cimbri on the Raudine plains near Vercellae. Thus Italy was saved from a repetition of [pg 137]the Gallic invasion of the fourth century B. C.

The vitality of the Roman state was by no means exhausted as the defeat of the barbarians shows, and men of energy and ability were not lacking, but under the existing régime it required a crisis to bring them to the front.

The Second Sicilian Slave War, 104–101 B. C. While the barbarians were knocking at the gates of Italy, Rome was called upon to suppress a series of disorders in other parts of her empire, some of which were only quelled after considerable effort. In 104 B. C. occurred a serious rebellion of the slaves in Sicily, headed by two leaders Salvius and Anthenion, the former of whom took the title of King Typhon. The rebels became masters of the open country, defeated the forces sent against them, reduced the Sicilian cities to the verge of starvation, and were only subdued by a consular army under Manius Aquillius in 101 B. C.

War with the Pirates. Before the slave war in Sicily had been brought to a close the Romans were forced to make an effort to suppress piracy in the Mediterranean. Piracy had been on the increase ever since the decline of the Rhodian sea power, following the Second Macedonian War, for as there were no longer any rival maritime powers Rome had neglected to maintain a navy adequate even for policing the seas. The pirates were at the same time slave traders, who made a business of kidnapping all over the Mediterranean but particularly in the east to supply the slave mart at Delos. In 104 B. C. the king of Bithynia complained to the Senate that one-half of his ablebodied men had been carried into slavery. This traffic was winked at by the Romans, since they needed slaves in great numbers for their plantations, and their business interests profited by the trade. However the depredations of the pirates at length became too serious to be ignored, and in 102 B. C. the praetor Marcus Antonius was given a special command against them. They had their chief strongholds on the Cilician coast and the island of Crete, and Antonius proceeded to Cilicia, where he destroyed several of their towns and annexed some territory, which became the province of Cilicia.

Besides these troubles the Romans had to face revolts in Spain which broke out spasmodically down to 95 B. C., as well as continual inroads of barbarians from Thrace into the provinces of Macedonia and Illyricum.

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V. Saturninus and Glaucia

Popular triumphs in Rome. The successes of their champion, Marius, emboldened the populares to undertake the prosecution of the corrupt and incapable generals of the optimates, a number of whom were brought to trial and convicted. Another popular victory was won in 104 B. C. when the lex Domitia transferred the election of new members of the colleges of augurs and pontiffs from the colleges themselves to a Comitia of seventeen tribes chosen by lot.

The sixth consulship of Marius, 100 B. C. Upon Marius himself his present prestige had an unwholesome effect. In spite of the fact that he had violated the constitution by his five consulships, four of which were held in succession, he determined to seek a sixth term, although there was now no military danger to excuse his ambition. He leagued himself with the leaders of the populares, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, who as tribune had supported Marius in 103, and Caius Servilius Glaucia. Both were ambitious demagogues, who sought to imitate the rôle of the Gracchi by introducing a legislative program catering to the popular party. For the moment they were successful. Marius secured his sixth consulship for 100 B. C., Saturninus became tribune a second time, and Glaucia praetor. But violence had to be resorted to in order to carry the elections. Saturninus then introduced bills for the distribution of grain to the city proletariat at much less than half the market price, for the allotment of the lands in north Italy which had been ravaged by the Cimbri, and for the founding of colonies in the provinces. His corn law failed, but the others were forced through by the aid of the disbanded Marian soldiers. However, this appeal to mob violence caused the equestrians to desert the popular leaders, who also lost the sympathy of Marius. Saturninus then sought the consulship for the next year, and, when it seemed that he would be defeated, caused one of his most influential rivals to be killed. The Senate thereupon proclaimed a state of martial law and called upon Marius to restore order. Saturninus, Glaucia, and their followers occupied the Capitol, where they were attacked and forced to surrender upon promise that their lives would be spared. But Marius was unable to protect them from the ven[pg 139]geance of their foes who massacred all the captives. Again the Senate had conquered by a resort to force, but this time their opponents had first appealed to the same means. For the time Marius suffered a political eclipse; he had shown no political capacity and had been unable to control or protect his own party which was now divided and discredited.

VI. The Tribunate of Marcus Livius Drusus, 91 b. c.

The trial of Rutilius Rufus: 93 B. C. The senators and the equestrians had combined for the moment against the terrorism instituted by the popular demagogues but the coalition was not lasting. As Caius Gracchus had foreseen the control of the law courts proved a standing bone of contention between the two orders. Especially aggravating to the senators was the use of the court established for the trial of cases of extortion to force the provincial governors to administer the provinces in the interest of the Roman financiers. A scandalous instance of this abuse was the case of Rutilius Rufus in 93 B. C. He had been quaestor under Mucius Scaevola, in 98 B. C. governor of Asia, where both had sternly checked any unjust exactions by the agents of the publicani. A trumped-up charge of extortion was now brought against Rutilius, and he was tried and adjudged guilty. His fate was to serve as a warning to officers who took their provincial obligations seriously. Rutilius retired to Asia and lived in great esteem among the people whom he was condemned for having oppressed.

The legislative program of Livius Drusus: 91 B. C. Two years later Marcus Livius Drusus, a tribune, of a prominent senatorial house, brought forward a proposal for the reform of the juries. He proposed to increase the number of the Senate to six hundred by the inclusion of three hundred prominent equestrians, and to have the juries chosen half from the new Senate and half from the remaining equestrians. Equestrian jurors were to be made liable to prosecution for accepting bribes. To secure support for his judiciary law, Drusus introduced a bill to found new colonies and another to provide cheaper grain for the city populace.

However, when he encountered serious opposition to his judicial [pg 140]reform in the Senate as well as among the equites, Drusus combined this and his other reforms with a law for the enfranchisement of the Italian allies. He contrived to carry his measures through the Assembly, which was probably coerced by the presence of large numbers of Italians in the city, but since he had included several distinct proposals in one bill, which was unconstitutional, the Senate declared his law invalid. Drusus yielded but prepared to introduce the franchise bill to be voted on a second time. Before this could be done he was mysteriously assassinated, doubtless by an agent of his political opponents. Thus died the last civilian reformer of Roman history. Later reforms were carried by the power of the sword.

VII. The Italian or Marsic War, 90–88 b. c.

The Italian Confederacy. The death of Drusus was the signal for a revolt of the Italian allies. They had been in close alliance with him, and had taken steps for concerted action in arms if his bill should fail to pass. A confederacy was organized, the government of which was vested in a Senate of five hundred members with absolute powers, having as executive officers two annual consuls and twelve praetors. The capital of the confederacy was at Corfinium, in the territory of the Paeligni, which was renamed Italia. A federal coinage was issued. Before opening hostilities the Italians made a formal demand for Roman citizenship, which the Senate definitely refused. Thereupon they declared their independence.

The resources of the rivals. The Italian Confederacy embraced practically all the warlike peoples of central and southern Italy. Of particular importance were the Marsi who gave their name to the war. In numbers the Italians were a match for the Romans, and they had acquired Roman military tactics, organization and discipline through long service in the Roman armies. They also could count on leaders of approved ability. But the Latin colonies and the Greek cities in the south remained true to their allegiance, and thus the Italians were cut off from the coast. Furthermore Umbria and Etruria, although disaffected, did not at once take up arms. Rome’s control of the sea enabled her to draw upon the resources of the provinces in men, money, and supplies, and [pg 141]consequently she was in a much better position to sustain a prolonged struggle.

The first year of the war: 90 B. C. Hostilities opened in 90 B. C. with the Italian forces attempting to reach Etruria in the north and occupy Campania in the south and the Romans trying to forestall them by invading the territory of the allies. In the south the year’s campaign resulted in numerous Roman disasters. Much of Campania was won by the allies who succeeded in penetrating to the coast. In the north the Romans also suffered defeats, but were able to maintain themselves and win several successes. Here Marius, in the capacity of a legatus, rendered valuable service.

Before the close of the year the revolt began to spread to Etruria and Umbria. Thereupon the Romans, with the object of securing the support of their still faithful allies and of weakening the ranks of the rebels, passed the Julian Law which granted Roman citizenship to all who had not joined the revolt and all who should at once lay down their arms. In this way the Umbrians and Etrurians were quieted, the Latins and the Greek allies rewarded, and many communities, which sought Roman citizenship but not independence, induced to surrender.

The second year of the war. In the following year the fortune of war changed. The Romans were everywhere successful. The consul Pompeius practically pacified the north, and the legatus Sulla broke the power of the allies in south Italy. A second franchise law, the lex Plautia Papiria, helped thin the ranks of the allies by offering Roman citizenship to all citizens of Italian federate communities who would claim it within sixty days. A third, the Pompeian Law, gave the franchise to all non-Romans in Gaul south of the Po, and Latin rights to those north of the Po river. The Senate was now anxious to bring the war to a close because affairs in the East had assumed a threatening aspect.

The end of the war and its significance. In the course of the year 88 B. C. organized resistance among the rebels died out. The new citizens were not to be enrolled in all of the thirty-five Roman tribes, a step which might make them dominate the Assemblies, but they were to vote in certain tribes only, so that their influence could be restricted. Naturally, they were dissatisfied with this arrange[pg 142]ment and their enrollment became a burning question of Roman politics. Henceforth all Italians were Romans and in the course of the next generation the various racial elements of Italy were gradually welded into a Latin nation. As it was impossible for the magistrates of Rome to oversee the administration throughout so wide an area, the Romans organized the Italian towns into locally self-governing municipalities of the type previously established on Roman territory. At first these municipalities retained many of their ancestral laws, customs and institutions, but in time they conformed to a uniform type, the government of which was modelled upon that of the capital city Rome. The municipalities were powerful agents in the Latinization of the peninsula.

VIII. The First Mithradatic War

Mithradates VI., Eupator, King of Pontus. The danger which in 89 B. C. directed the attention of the Senate to the eastern Mediterranean was the result of the establishment of the Kingdom of Pontus under an able and ambitious ruler, Mithradates Eupator, who challenged the supremacy of Rome in Asia Minor. In 121 B. C. Mithradates had succeeded to the throne of northern Cappadocia, a small kingdom on the south shore of the Black Sea, whose Asiatic population was imbued with Hellenistic culture and whose rulers claimed descent from the ancient royal house of Persia and from Seleucus, the founder of the Macedonian kingdom of Syria. For seven years Mithradates shared the throne with his brother, under his mother’s regency, but in 114 when eighteen years of age, he seized the reins of government for himself. Subsequently he extended his power over the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea as far west as the Danube and thus built up the kingdom of Pontus, i. e. the coast land of the Black Sea, a name which later was applied to his native state of north Cappadocia.

His conflict with Rome. However, Mithradates also sought to extend his sway in Asia Minor, where Greater Cappadocia became the object of his ambitions. This brought him into conflict with Rome, whose policy was to prevent the rise of any dangerous neighbor in the East and who refused to suffer her settlement of Asia Minor to be disturbed. No less than five times did Mithradates, between 112 and 92 B. C., attempt to bring this district under his [pg 143]control, but upon each occasion he was forced by Roman interference to forego the fruits of his victories, since he was not yet prepared for war with Rome. In 91 B. C. he occupied the kingdom of Bithynia, which lay between Pontus and the Roman province of Asia, but again he yielded to Rome’s demands and withdrew. However, when Roman agents encouraged the King of Bithynia to raid his territory and refused him satisfaction he decided to challenge the Roman arms, seeing that Rome was now involved in the war with her Italian allies. War began late in 89 B. C.

The conquests of Mithradates in Asia, 89–88 B. C. Mithradates was well prepared; he had a trained army and a fleet of three hundred ships. He experienced no difficulty in defeating the local levies raised by the Roman governor of Asia, and speedily overran Bithynia and most of the Roman province. Meanwhile his fleet swept the Aegean Sea. The Roman provincials who had been unmercifully exploited by tax gatherers and money-lenders greeted Mithradates as a deliverer. At his order on a set date in 88 B. C. they massacred the Romans and Italians resident in Asia, said to have numbered 80,000, a step which bound them firmly to the cause of the king.

Athens and Delos. In the same year, 88 B. C. the populace of Athens, in the hope of overthrowing the oligarchic government which had been set up in the city with the support of Rome, seized control of the state and threw themselves into the hands of Mithradates. One of the king’s generals, Archelaus, while on his way to Athens, exterminated the Italian colony at Delos, the center of the Roman commercial and banking interests in the East. From this blow the island port never fully recovered. Archelaus soon won over most of southern Greece to his master’s cause, while Mithradates sent a large army to enter Hellas by the northerly route through Thrace and Macedonia.

Disorders in Rome. This situation produced a crisis in Rome. Sulla, who had been elected consul for 88 B. C., was allotted the command in the East upon the outbreak of hostilities. However, he had been unable to leave Italy where he was conducting the siege of Nola in Campania. Marius, although in his sixty-eighth year, was as ambitious as ever and schemed to secure the command against Mithradates for himself. In this he was supported by the equestrians, who knew Sulla to be a firm upholder of the Senate. Accord[pg 144]ingly the Marians joined forces with the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus, who had brought forward a bill to enroll the new citizens and freedmen equally in each of the thirty-five tribes. Sulpicius organized a body-guard of equestrians and instituted a reign of terror. He passed his law by force in spite of the opposition of the consuls. When Sulla had left the city to join his army, a law was passed in the Assembly transferring his command in the East to Marius. But Sulla refused to admit the legality of the act, and, relying upon the support of his troops, marched on Rome. Having taken the city by surprise, he caused Sulpicius, Marius, and others of their party to be outlawed. Sulpicius was slain; but Marius made good his escape to Mauretania. The Sulpician Laws were abrogated, and Sulla introduced a number of reforms, with the object of strengthening the position of the Senate. The most significant of these reforms was the revival of the Senatorial veto over laws proposed in the Assembly of the Tribes. This done, upon the conclusion of his consulate, Sulla embarked with his army for Greece early in 87 B. C.

Siege of Athens and Piraeus, 87–86 B. C. Driving the forces of Archelaus and the Athenians from the open country, Sulla began the siege of Athens and of its harbor town Piraeus in the autumn of 87. Athens was completely invested, but in spite of hunger the resistance was prolonged until March, 86, when Sulla’s troops penetrated an unguarded spot on the walls and the city was sacked. A large number of the inhabitants were massacred but the public buildings were spared. Soon after Piraeus was taken by storm at terrific cost to the victors, but its citadel Munychia held out until evacuated by Archelaus.

Chaeronea and Orchomenus. From Athens Sulla hastened to meet the army of Mithradates which had penetrated as far as Boeotia. At Chaeronea the numerically inferior but better disciplined Romans won a complete victory. At this juncture there arrived in Greece the consul Flaccus at the head of another army, with orders to supersede Sulla. The latter, however, was not disposed to give up his command and as Flaccus feared to force the issue they came to an agreement whereby each pursued a separate campaign. This left Sulla free to meet a new Mithradatic army which had crossed the Aegean. At Orchomenus he attacked and annihilated it. But Mithradates still controlled the Aegean, and Sulla, being unable to cross into Asia, was forced to winter in Greece.

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Peace with Mithradates, 85 B. C. In 85 B. C. Lucius Lucullus, Sulla’s quaestor, appeared in the Aegean with a fleet that he had gathered among Rome’s allies in the East. He defeated the fleet of Mithradates and secured Sulla’s passage to Asia. The king’s position was now precarious. His exactions had alienated the sympathies of the Greek cities which now began to desert his cause. Furthermore Flaccus, after recovering Macedonia and Thrace, had crossed the Bosphorus into Bithynia. There he was killed in a mutiny of his soldiers and was succeeded by his legate Fimbria, who was popular with the troops because he gratified their desire for plunder. But Fimbria was energetic; he defeated Mithradates and recovered the coast district as far south as Pergamon (86 B. C.). Mithradates was ready for peace and Sulla was anxious to have his hands free to return to Italy, where the Marians were again in power. Negotiations were opened by Mithradates with Sulla and after some delay peace was concluded in 85 B. C. on the following terms: The king was to surrender Cappadocia, Bithynia, the Roman province of Asia and his other conquests in Asia Minor, to pay an indemnity of 3000 talents, and give up a part of his fleet. His kingdom of Pontus remained intact.

Sulla’s treatment of Asia and Greece, 85–83 B. C. Sulla spent the following winter in Asia, readjusting affairs in the province. The rebellious communities were punished by the quartering of troops upon them, and by being forced to contribute to Sulla the huge sum of 20,000 talents, or $24,000,000. To raise this amount they were forced to borrow from Roman bankers and incur a crushing burden of debt. In 84 B. C. Sulla crossed to Greece, there to complete his preparations for a return to Italy. The Greek states had suffered heavily in the recent campaigns on her soil. Sulla had carried off the temple treasures of Olympia, Delphi and Epidaurus, Attica and Boeotia had been ravaged and depopulated, and the coasts had been raided by the Mithradatic fleet. From the devastations of the Mithradatic war Hellas never recovered.

IX. Sulla’s Dictatorship

The Marian party in Rome 87–84 B. C. While Sulla had been conducting his successful campaign in Greece, in Italy the Marian party had again won the upper hand. Scarcely had Sulla left Italy [pg 146]with his army when the consul Cinna re-enacted the Sulpician Laws. His colleague Gnaeus Octavius and the senatorial faction drove him from the city and had him deposed from office. But Cinna received the support of the army in Campania, recalled Marius, and made peace with the Samnites still under arms by granting them Roman citizenship. Marius landed in Etruria, raised an army there, and he and Cinna advanced on Rome. They forced the capitulation of their opponents, had Cinna reinstated as consul, and had the banishment of Marius revoked; Sulla’s laws were repealed, and his property confiscated. Then ensued a massacre of the leading senators, including Octavius the consul. On 1 January, 86, Marius entered upon his seventh consulship and died a few days later. His successor, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, was sent to supersede Sulla, a mission which cost him his life, as related before. In 85 B. C., the war with Mithradates was at an end and the Marians had to face the prospect of the return of Sulla at the head of a victorious army. The consuls Cinna and Carbo proceeded to raise troops to oppose him. They illegally prolonged their office for the next year (84) and made preparations to cross the Adriatic and meet Sulla in Macedonia. But the army gathered for this purpose at Brundisium mutinied and murdered Cinna. Carbo prevented the election of a successor and held office as sole consul. The Senate had previously begun negotiations with Sulla in an effort to prevent further civil war. He now demanded the restitution of property and honors both for himself and all those who had taken refuge with him. The Senate was inclined to yield, but was prevented by Carbo.

In the spring of 83 B. C. Sulla landed at Brundisium, with an army of 40,000 veterans from whom he exacted an oath of allegiance to himself. He made known his intentions of respecting all privileges granted to the Italians, to prevent their joining his enemies. Still the bulk of the new citizens, particularly in Samnium and Etruria, supported the Marian party. Sulla was joined at once by the young Cnaeus Pompey, who had raised an army on his own authority in Picenum, and by other men of influence. In the operations which followed the leaders of the Marians showed themselves lacking in coöperation and military skill. Sulla penetrated into Campania, where he defeated one consul Norbanus, at Mount Tifata. The other consul Scipio Asiaticus, entered into negotiations with him, and was deserted by his army which went over to Sulla.

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In the following year Sulla advanced into Latium and won a hard fought victory over the younger Marius, now consul, at Sacriportus. Rome fell into his hands and Marius took refuge in Praeneste. Sulla then turned against the second consul, Carbo, in Etruria, and, after several victories forced him to flee to Africa. In a final effort the Marians, united with the Samnites, tried to relieve Praeneste; failing to accomplish this they made a dash upon Rome. But Sulla appeared in time to save the city and utterly defeat his enemies in a bloody contest at the Colline Gate. Praeneste fell soon after; Marius committed suicide, and except at a few isolated points all resistance in Italy was over.

Sulla’s aims. Sulla was absolute master of the situation and at once proceeded to punish his enemies and reward his friends. In cold-blooded cruelty, without any legal condemnation, his leading opponents were marked out for vengeance; their names were posted in lists in the forum to indicate that they might be slain with impunity and that their goods were confiscated. Rewards were offered to informers who brought about the death of such victims, and many were included in the lists to gratify the personal enmities of Sulla’s friends. The goods of the proscribed were auctioned off publicly under Sulla’s direction, and their children and grandchildren declared ineligible for public office. From these proscriptions the equestrians suffered particularly; 2600 of them are said to have perished, together with ninety senators. The Italian municipalities also felt Sulla’s avenging hand. Widespread confiscations of land, especially in Samnium and Etruria, enabled him to provide for 150,000 of his veterans, whose settlement did much to hasten the latinization of these districts. Ten thousand slaves of the proscribed were set free by Sulla and took the name of Cornelii from their patron. These arrangements were given the sanction of legality by a decree of the Senate and a law which confirmed all his acts as consul and proconsul and gave him full power for the future.

Sulla dictator: 82–79 B. C. But Sulla’s aims went further than the destruction of the Marian party. He sought to recreate a stable government in the state. For this he required more constitutional powers than the right of might. Therefore, since both consuls were dead, he caused the appointment of an interrex who by virtue of a special law appointed him a dictator for an unlimited term to enact legislation and reorganize the commonwealth (dictator legibus scri[pg 148]bundis et rei publicae constituendae). Sulla’s appointment occurred late in 82 B. C. The scope of his powers and their unlimited duration gave him monarchical or rather tyrannical authority.

Sulla’s reforms. The general aim of Sulla’s legislation was to restore the Senate to the position which it had held prior to 133 B. C. and to guarantee the perpetuation of this condition. His reforms fall into two classes; firstly, those directed to securing the rule of the optimates, which were not long-lived; secondly, those seeking to increase the efficiency of the administration, which being of a non-partizan character enjoyed greater permanency than the preceding. Those of the former sort constituted a renewal and extension of his reforms of 88 B. C. The senatorial veto over legislation in the Assembly of Tribes was renewed, and the tribunes’ intercession restricted to interference with the exercise of the magistrate’s imperium. To deter able and ambitious men from seeking the tribunate, it was made a bar to further political office. The senators were once more made eligible for the juries, while the equestrians were disqualified. The Domitian Law of 104 B. C. was abrogated and the practise of co-opting the members of the priestly college was revived. Most important of Sulla’s administrative reforms was that which concerned the magistracy. The established order of offices in the cursus honorum was maintained, an age limit set for eligibility to each office, and an interval of ten years required between successive tenures of the same post. The number of quaestors was increased to twenty, that of the praetors raised from six to eight. In connection therewith the method of appointing provincial governors was regulated. By the organization of the province of Cisalpine Gaul, the number of provinces was raised to ten, and the two consuls and eight praetors, upon the completion of their year of office in Rome, were to be appointed to the provinces as pro-consuls and propraetors for one year. The pro-magistrates thus lost their original extraordinary character and this change marks the first step in the creation of an imperial civil service.

As before, the Senate designated the consular provinces before the election of the consuls who would be their proconsular governors. The consuls were not deprived of the right of military command, but, as before, regularly assumed control of military operations in Italy. The consular imperium remained senior to that of the provincial governors, and might be exercised beyond the frontiers of Italy. However, in practise the consuls were not regularly employed for overseas [pg 149]campaigns, since the Senate now arrogated to itself what had previously been a prerogative of the Assembly, namely, the right of selecting any person whatever to exercise military imperium in any sphere determined by itself. A new field for the activity of the praetors arose from the establishment of special jury courts for the trial of cases of bribery, treason, fraud, peculation, assassination and assault with violence. These were modelled on the court for damage suits brought against provincial officers, and superseded the old procedure with its appeal from the verdict of the magistrate to the Comitia. To provide a sufficient number of jurors for these tribunals the membership of the Senate was increased from three hundred to six hundred by enrolling equestrians who had supported Sulla. This increased number was maintained by the annual admission of the twenty ex-quaestors, whereby censors were rendered unnecessary for enrolling the Senators. The administration, especially in its imperial aspects, was more than ever concentrated in the Senate’s hands.

Pompey “the Great,” 79 B. C. While Sulla was effecting his settlement of affairs in Rome and Italy, the Marians in Sicily and Africa were crushed by his lieutenant Cnaeus Pompey. Their leader Carbo was taken and executed. In 82 B. C. Sulla had caused the Senate to confer upon Pompey the command in this campaign with the imperium of a propraetor, although he had not yet held any public office. Having finished his task Pompey demanded a triumph, an honor which previously had only been granted to regular magistrates. Sulla at first opposed his wishes, but as Pompey was insistent and defiant, he yielded to avoid a quarrel, and even accorded him the name of Magnus or the Great. Pompey celebrated his triumph 12 March, 79 B. C.

Sulla’s retirement and death, 78 B. C. Sulla did not seek political power for its own sake, and, after carrying his reforms into effect, he resigned his dictatorship in 79 B. C. He retired to enjoy a life of ease and pleasure on his Campanian estate, relying for his personal security and that of his measures upon his veterans and the Cornelian freedmen. In the following year he died at the age of sixty. Sulla’s genius was rather military than political. Fond though he was of sensual pleasures, he was possessed of great ambition which led him to such a position of prominence that he was forced to adopt the cause of one of the two political factions in the state. From that point he must crush his enemies or be crushed by them; and in this lies the [pg 150]explanation of his attempt to extirpate the Marian party. As a statesman he displayed little imagination or constructive ability. He could think of nothing better than to restore the Senate to a position which it had shown itself unable to maintain; and his persecutions of his political opponents had not crushed out opposition to the Senate, but left a legacy of hatred endangering the permanence of his reforms.

The epoch between the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and the death of Sulla revealed the incapacity of either the Senate or the tribunes and the Assembly to give a peaceful and stable government to the Roman state. Sulla’s career, anticipating those of Caesar and Augustus, pointed the way to the ultimate solution.

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Chapter XIII

The Rise of Pompey the Great: 78–60 B. C.

The extraordinary commands. For the period following the death of Sulla in 78 B. C. Roman history centers around the lives of a small group of eminent men, whose ambitions and rivalries are the determining factors in the political life of the state. This is due to the fact that neither the Senate nor the Assembly have the power to control the men to whom the needs of the empire compel them to give military authority. The generation of Marius and Sulla had seen the rise of the professional army which revealed itself as the true power in the state, and the disturbances of the Italian and Civil Wars supplied an abundance of needy recruits who sought service with a popular and successful general for the sake of the rewards which it lay in his power to bestow. As military achievements were the sole sure foundation for political success, able men made it the goal of their ambition to be entrusted with an important military command. The dangers of civil and foreign wars at first compelled the Senate to confer military power upon the few available men of recognized ability even when it distrusted their ulterior motives, and later such appointments were made by the Assembly through the coalition of the general and the tribunate. In this way arose the so-called extraordinary commands, that is, such as involved a military imperium which in some way exceeded that of the regular constitutional officers and required to be created or defined by a special enactment of the Senate or Comitia.

The man who first realized the value of the extraordinary command as a path to power was Pompey the Great.

I. Pompey’s Command against Sertorius in Spain: 77–71 b. c.

The revolt of Lepidus. It was not to be expected that Sulla’s measures would long remain unassailed. Those dispossessed of their [pg 152]property, those disqualified for office, and the equestrians who sought to regain control of the courts, were all anxious to undo part of his work. They found a leader in Lepidus, who as consul in 78 B. C., the very year of Sulla’s death, sought to renew the distribution of cheap grain to the masses in Rome, which Sulla had suppressed, to restore the Marian exiles, and reinstate those who had lost their lands. For the time he failed to carry his proposals, but in the next year, as proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul, he raised an army and marched on Rome to seize the consulate for a second term, since disorders had prevented the election of consuls for that year. However he was defeated by his former colleague, the proconsul Catulus, and Pompey, whom the Senate had appointed to a subordinate command in view of his military expedience. Lepidus crossed over to Sardinia where he died shortly after, and the bulk of his forces under Marcus Perperna withdrew to Spain, to join the Marians who were in revolt there.

Sertorius in Spain, 83–78 B. C. The rebellion in Spain was headed by Quintus Sertorius, who had been appointed governor of Hither Spain by Cinna in 83 B. C. Two years later he was driven out by Sulla’s representative, but, after various adventures, returned in 80 B. C. to head a revolt of the Lusitanians. His ability as a guerrilla leader, and the confidence which he aroused among the native Spaniards soon created alarm in Rome. Sertorius professed to take the field not against Rome but against the Senate. He regarded himself as the legitimate governor of Spain, employed members of the Marian party as his military and civil subordinates and organized a Senate among the Romans of his following. To crush the revolt Sulla sent out to Farther Spain Metellus, the consul of 80 B. C., but he failed to make any headway, and Sertorius was able to overrun Hither Spain also. In 79 B. C. the praetor of that province was killed in battle, and the same fate befell the proconsul of Narbonese Gaul who came to the help of Metellus (78 B. C.).

Pompey sent to Spain, 78 B. C. It was imperative to send a new commander and a new army to Spain. As the consuls were unwilling to go, Pompey, who had refused to disband his army at the orders of Catulus, sought the command. The Senate could not help itself and, in spite of considerable opposition, passed a decree conferring upon him proconsular imperium and entrusting him with the conduct of the war in Hither Spain. Even after the arrival of Pom[pg 153]pey with an army of 40,000 men Sertorius was more than able to hold his own against his foes in 76 and 75 B. C. At the end of the latter year Pompey was forced to recross the Pyrenees and appeal to the Senate for reinforcements. At the same time Sertorius, through the agency of the pirates, entered into alliance with Mithradates, King of Pontus, who was again on the point of war with Rome.

The arrival of the desired reinforcements enabled Pompey in 74 and 73 B. C. to turn the tide against Sertorius. To prevent desertions the latter resorted to severe punishments which alienated the Spaniards, who were already estranged by the acts of his subordinates. He was further hampered by dissensions in the ranks of his Roman supporters. The center of disaffection was Perpenna, who treacherously assassinated Sertorius in 72 B. C. and assumed command of his forces. However he was defeated by Pompey, taken captive and executed. The revolt was broken and pacification of Spain speedily accomplished. Pompey was able to return to Rome in 71 B. C.

II. The Command of Lucullus against Mithradates: 74–66 b. c.

The situation in the Near East. After concluding peace with Sulla in 85 B. C., Mithradates Eupator directed his energies to consolidating his kingdom and reorganizing his forces in expectation of a renewal of the struggle with Rome. He recognised that Sulla had been ready to make peace only because of the situation in Italy and the fact that he had been unable to secure written confirmation of the terms of the treaty warned him that the Romans still contemplated his complete overthrow. Indeed he had been attacked in the years 83 and 82 B. C. by Lucius Murena, the proconsul of Asia, but had been able to defend himself and Sulla had once more brought about a cessation of hostilities. Meantime, Tigranes of Armenia, the ally of Mithradates, had enlarged his dominions by the annexation of Syria (83 B. C.), where he terminated the rule of the house of Seleucus, and of Greater Cappadocia.

The command of Lucullus and Cotta, 74 B. C. In 75 B. C. occurred the death of Nicomedes III, King of Bithynia, who left his kingdom to the Roman people. The Senate accepted the inheritance and made Bithynia a province, but Mithradates championed the claims of a son of Nicomedes and determined to dispute the posses[pg 154]sion of Bithynia with the Romans. He had raised an efficient army and navy, was leagued with the pirates, and in alliance with Sertorius, who supplied him with officers and recognized his claims to Bithynia and other districts in Asia Minor. Rome was threatened with another serious war. One of the senatorial faction, the consul Lucius Lucullus, contrived to have assigned to himself by a senatorial decree the provinces of Cilicia and Asia with command of the main operations against Mithradates, while his colleague Cotta received Bithynia and a fleet to guard the Hellespont. At the same time a praetor, Marcus Antonius, was given an extraordinary command against the pirates with an unlimited imperium over the Mediterranean Sea and its coast. However, he proved utterly incompetent, was defeated in an attack upon Crete, and died there.

Siege of Cyzicus, 74–3 B. C. Early in 74 B. C., Mithradates invaded Bithynia. There he was encountered by Cotta, whom he defeated and blockaded in Chalcedon. Thereupon he invaded Asia and laid siege to Cyzicus. But Lucullus cut off his communications and in the ensuing winter he was forced to raise the siege and retire with heavy losses into Bithynia. The following year a fleet which Lucullus had raised defeated that of Mithradates. This enabled the Romans to recover Bithynia and invade Pontus. In 72 B. C. Lucullus defeated Mithradates and forced him to take refuge in Armenia. In the course of this and the two following years he completed the subjugation of Pontus by the systematic reduction of its fortified cities. Cotta undertook the siege of Heraclea in Bithynia and upon its fall in 71 B. C. returned to Rome. The winter of 71–70 B. C. Lucullus spent in Asia reorganizing the financial situation. There the cities were laboring under a frightful burden of indebtedness to Roman bankers and taxgatherers which had its origin in the exactions of Sulla. Lucullus interfered on behalf of the provincials and by reducing the accumulated interest on their debts enabled them to pay off their obligations within four years. This care for the provincials won for himself the bitter enmity of the Roman financial interests which sought to deprive him of his command.

Invasion of Armenia, 69 B. C. As the war could not be regarded as terminated so long as Mithradates was at large, Lucullus demanded his surrender from Tigranes. When the latter refused Lucullus invaded Armenia, defeated him and took his capital, Tigranocerta, 69 B. C. In the following year Lucullus attempted to [pg 155]complete the subjugation of Armenia but was prevented by the mutinous conduct of his troops. He was unpopular with his men because he maintained discipline and protected the subject peoples from the excesses of the soldiers. Also some of his legions had come to the East with Fimbria in 86 B. C. and clamored for the discharge to which they were entitled. In 67 B. C. Mithradates reappeared in Pontus and Lucullus had to return from Armenia to face him, whereupon Tigranes began to recover lost ground. Because of the mutiny in his army Lucullus was forced to remain inactive. He had already been superseded in the command of Asia, Cilicia and Bithynia, which had come under his control with the return of Cotta, and his enemies in Rome deprived him of the remnants of his authority in 66 B. C.

III. The Revolt of the Gladiators: 73–71 b. c.

Spartacus. While Pompey was fighting Sertorius in Spain and Lucullus was pursuing Mithradates in Bithynia a serious slave war arose in Italy. It began in 73 B. C. with the revolt of a band of gladiators from a training school in Capua under the leadership of the Thracian Spartacus and the Gauls, Crixus and Onemaus. Taking refuge on the slopes of Vesuvius they rapidly recruited large numbers of runaway slaves. They defeated the armies of two Roman praetors and overran Campania, Lucania, and all southern Italy. By the end of the year 73 B. C. their number had grown to 70,000.

In the next year they divided their forces; the Gauls and Germans followed Crixus, the Thracians Spartacus. The two consuls took the field against them; Crixus and his horde were defeated in Apulia. Spartacus marched north, intending to make his way through the Alps to Thrace. The consuls pursued him, and he defeated them one after the other. Thereupon his followers refused to leave Italy and turned southwards, plundering as they went. Again Spartacus defeated the consuls but dared not attack Rome and retired to South Italy.