A Smaller History of Rome Part 9

Meantime Antiochus had collected a vast army from all parts of his dominions, and, advancing northward from Ephesus, laid waste the kingdom of Pergamus. But upon the approach of the Roman army, which entered Asia by crossing the h.e.l.lespont, Antiochus retreated southward; and the decisive battle was fought near Magnesia, at the foot of Mount Sipylus.

The Romans obtained an easy and bloodless victory over the vast but disorderly rabble of the Syrian monarch. Only 400 Romans fell, while Antiochus lost 53,000 men. He at once gave up the contest in despair, and humbly sued for peace. The conditions were hard. He had to cede all his dominions west of Mount Taurus (that is, the whole of Asia Minor), to pay 15,000 Euboic talents within twelve years, to give up his elephants and ships of war, and to surrender to the Romans Hannibal and some others who had taken refuge at his court. Hannibal foresaw his danger, and made his escape to Crete, from whence he afterward repaired to the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia.

L. Scipio returned to Rome in the following year, bringing with him enormous treasures. In imitation of his brother, he a.s.sumed the surname of ASIATICUS.

The Romans were now at leisure to punish the aetolians, who had to make head against the Romans by themselves. The Consul M. Fulvius n.o.bilior (B.C. 189) took their chief town, Ambracia, after an obstinate resistance, and compelled them to sue for peace. This was granted, but on the most humiliating conditions. They were required to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, to renounce all the conquests they had recently made, to pay an indemnity of 500 talents, and to engage in future to aid the Romans in their wars. The power of the aetolian league was thus forever crushed, though it seems to have existed, in name at least, till a much later period.

The colleague of M. Fulvius n.o.bilior was Cn. Manlius Vulso, who had received Asia as his province, that he might conclude the peace which his predecessor, Scipio Asiaticus, had made with Antiochus, and arrange the affairs of Asia. But Manlius was not content with the subordinate part allotted to him; and being anxious for booty as much as for glory, he attacked the Galatians in Asia Minor, without waiting for any instructions from the Senate, and in direct opposition to the ten commissioners who had been sent to arrange conjointly with him the affairs of Asia. This was the first instance in which a Roman general had made war without the authority of the Senate or the People; a dangerous precedent, which was afterward only too faithfully followed.

The Galatians were, as has been already said, a body of Gauls, who, after laying waste a great part of Asia Minor, had settled in the north of Phrygia. They had fought in the army of Antiochus at Magnesia, and this supplied Manlius with a pretext for marching against them. He defeated them in two battles, and compelled them to sue for peace. The campaign greatly enriched Manlius and his legions, as the Gauls had acc.u.mulated enormous wealth by their many conquests in Asia.

Manlius remained another year (B.C. 188) in the East as Proconsul, and, in conjunction with the ten commissioners, formally concluded the peace with Antiochus, and settled the affairs of Asia. Eumenes, the king of Pergamus, received Mysia, Lydia, and part of Caria. The Rhodians obtained the remaining portion of Caria, together with Lycia and Pisidia. Manlius returned to Rome in B.C. 187, and his triumph, like that of Scipio Asiaticus, was most magnificent. But his soldiers, like that of Scipio, introduced into the city the luxuries of the East. These campaigns, as we shall presently see, exercised a most injurious influence upon the character of the Roman n.o.bles and people, teaching them to love war for the sake of acquiring wealth, and prompting them to acts of robbery and rapine.

[Footnote 36: See the "Smaller History of Greece," p. 214.]

[Footnote 37: See p. 79. (Eighth paragraph of Chapter XI.--Transcriber)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roman Soldiers. (From Column of Trajan.)]

CHAPTER XVI.

WARS IN THE WEST. THE GALLIC, LIGURIAN, AND SPANISH WARS. B.C. 200-175.

While the Roman legions in the East were acquiring wealth and winning easy conquests, their less fortunate comrades in the West were carrying on a severe struggle with the warlike Gauls, Ligurians, and Spaniards.

The Romans had hardly concluded the Second Punic War when they received intelligence that Hamilcar, a Carthaginian officer, had excited several tribes in Northern Italy to take up arms against Rome. These were the Gauls on both sides of the Po, and the Ligurians, a race of hardy mountaineers, inhabiting the upper Apennines and the Maritime Alps. They commenced the war in B.C. 200 by the capture and destruction of the Roman colony of Placentia, and by laying siege to that of Cremona, the two strong-holds of the Roman dominion in Northern Italy. The Romans now set themselves to work, with the characteristic stubbornness of their nation, to subdue thoroughly these tribes. The Insubres and the Cenomani, to the north of the Po, were the first to yield; but the Boii resisted for some years all the efforts of the Romans, and it was not till B.C. 191 that the Consul P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica received their final submission. He slaughtered the Boii without mercy, and made it one of the claims of his triumph that he had left only children and old men alive. This warlike people was now thoroughly subdued, and from henceforth Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province, and gradually adopted the language and customs of Rome. The submission of the people was secured by the foundation of new colonies and the formation of military roads. In B.C. 190 a colony was established at Bononia, now Bologna, in the country of the Boii, and six years afterward others were also founded at Mutina (Modena) and Parma. A military road made by M. aemilius Lepidus, Consul for B.C. 180, and called the Via aemilia, was a continuation of the Via Flaminia, and ran from Ariminum past Placentia, Mutina, and Parma to Placentia. The subjugation of the Ligurians was a longer and more difficult task. These hardy mountaineers continued the war, with intermissions, for a period of eighty years. The Romans, after penetrating into the heart of Liguria, were seldom able to effect more than to compel the enemy to disperse, and take refuge in their villages and castles, of which the latter were mountain fastnesses, in which they were generally able to defy their pursuers. But into the details of these long-protracted and inglorious hostilities it is unnecessary to enter.

The conquests of Scipio Africa.n.u.s had driven the Carthaginians out of Spain, and established the Roman supremacy in that country. Accordingly, soon after the end of the Second Punic War (about B.C. 198), the Romans proceeded to consolidate their dominion in Spain by dividing it into two provinces, each governed by a Praetor, which were called Hispania Citerior, or Hither Spain, and Hispania Ulterior, or Farther Spain, and divided from each other by the Iberus or the Ebro. But it was little more than the eastern part of the peninsula that was really subject to Rome. The powerful tribes of the Celtiberians in Central Spain, the Lusitanians in Portugal, and the Cantabrians and Gallaecians in the northwest, still maintained their independence. The division of the country into two provinces showed that the Romans intended to occupy it permanently, and occasioned a general insurrection.

The Consul M. Porcius Cato, of whom we shall speak more fully presently, was sent to put down this insurrection (B.C. 195). The whole country was in arms; but his military genius and indefatigable industry soon re-established the superiority of Rome. He gained several decisive victories, contrived to set tribe against tribe, and took native mercenaries into his pay. The details of his campaign are full of horrors. We read of the wholesale slaughter of men who had laid down their arms, of mult.i.tudes sold as slaves, and of many more who had put themselves to death to escape this fate. Cato was not the man to feel any compunctions of conscience in the performance of what he considered a rigorous public task. He boasted of having destroyed more towns in Spain than he had spent days in that country. When he had reduced the whole of Hither Spain to a hollow, sullen, and temporary submission, he returned to Rome, and was rewarded with a triumph.

The severe measures of Cato only exasperated the Spaniards. They again took up arms, and continued to resist the Roman Praetors for the next sixteen years, till Tib. Semp.r.o.nius Gracchus, the father of the celebrated tribunes, after gaining several brilliant victories over the Celtiberians, granted them an honorable peace. By his wise measures and conciliatory conduct he won the affections of the natives, and induced them to submit to the Roman supremacy (B.C. 179).

It remains to mention two other wars in the West. The Sardinians and Corsicans revolted, and held out for two years against the Conqueror of Spain (B.C. 177-175). But Gracchus effected their complete subjugation, and brought to Rome so large a number of captives for sale as to give rise to the proverb "Sardi venales" for any thing that was cheap and worthless.

The Istrians, near the head of the Adriatic Gulf, had been conquered by the Romans just before the Second Punic War. But their complete subjugation was now necessary, on account of their proximity to the newly-formed province of Cisalpine Gaul. Accordingly, the Consuls invaded Istria in B.C. 178, and in the following year the whole people was reduced to submission.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. (From a Coin.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lictors.]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ROMAN CONSt.i.tUTION AND ARMY.

The career of foreign conquest upon which the Republic had now entered continued with little or no interruption till the establishment of the Empire. We may here pause to take a brief survey of the form of government, as well as of the military organization by which these conquests were effected.

The earlier history of the Roman const.i.tution has been already related.

We have seen how, after a long struggle, the Plebeians acquired complete political equality with the Patricians. In the Second Punic War, the antagonism between the two orders had almost disappeared, and the only mark of separation between them in political matters was the regulation that, of the two Consuls and two Censors, one must be a Patrician and the other a Plebeian. Even this fell into disuse upon the rise of the new n.o.bility, of which we shall speak in the next chapter. The Patricians gradually dwindled away, and it became the custom to elect both Consuls and Censors from the Plebeians.[38]

I. THE MAGISTRATES.--Every Roman citizen who aspired to the consulship had to pa.s.s through a regular gradation of public offices, and the earliest age at which he could become a candidate for them was fixed by a law pa.s.sed in B.C. 179, and known by the name of the Lex Annalis. The earliest age for the Quaestorship, which was the first of these magistracies, was 27 years; for the aedileship, 37; for the Praetorship, 40; and for the Consulship, 43.

All magistrates at Rome were divided into _Curules_ and those who were not Curules. The Curule Magistrates were the Dictators, Censors, Consuls, Praetors, and Curule aediles, and were so called because they had the right of sitting upon the _Sella Curulis_, originally an emblem of kingly power, imported, along with other insignia of royalty, from Etruria.

1. The _Quaestors_ were the paymasters of the state. It was their duty to receive the revenues, and to make all the necessary payments for the military and civil services. There were originally only two Quaestors, but their number was constantly increased with the conquests of the Republic. Besides two Quaestors who always remained at Rome, every Consul or Praetor who conducted a war or governed a province was attended by one of these magistrates.

2. The _aedileship_ was originally a Plebeian office, inst.i.tuted at the same time as the Tribuneship of the Plebs.[39] To the two Plebeian aediles two Curule aediles were added in B.C. 365. The four aediles in common had the charge of the public buildings,[40] the care of the cleansing and draining of the city, and the superintendence of the police. They had also the regulation of the public festivals; and the celebration of the Ludi Magni, or Great Games, was their especial function. Originally they received a sum of money from the state to defray the expenses of these games, but the grant was withdrawn about the time of the First Punic War; a measure attended with important consequences, since the higher magistracies were thus confined to the wealthy, who alone could defray the charges of these costly entertainments. After the Macedonian and Syrian wars, the Curule aediles often incurred a prodigious expense, with the view of pleasing the people, and securing their votes in future elections.

3. The inst.i.tution of the _Praetorship_ in B.C. 366 has been already narrated. There was originally only one Praetor, subsequently called Praetor Urba.n.u.s, whose chief duty was the administration of justice. In B.C. 246 a second Praetor was added, who had to decide cases in which foreigners were concerned, and who was hence called Praetor Peregrinus.

When the territories of the state extended beyond Italy, new Praetors were created to govern the provinces. Two Praetors were appointed to take the administration of Sicily and Sardinia (B.C. 227), and two more were added when the two Spanish provinces were formed (B.C. 197). There were thus six Praetors, two of whom staid in the city and the other four went abroad. Each Praetor was attended by six Lictors.

4. The _Consuls_ were the highest ordinary magistrates at Rome, and were at the head both of the state and the army. They convoked the Senate and the a.s.sembly of the Centuries; they presided in each, and had to see that the resolutions of the Senate and the People were carried into effect. They had the supreme command of the armies in virtue of the Imperium conferred upon them by a special vote of the People. At the head of the army, they had full power of life and death over their soldiers. They were preceded by twelve lictors, but this outward sign of power was enjoyed by them month by month in turn.

The magistrates above-mentioned were elected annually, but it was the practice frequently to prolong the command of the Consuls or Praetors in the provinces under the t.i.tles of Proconsuls or Propraetors. In the later times of the Republic it was usual for both Consuls and several Praetors to remain at Rome during their year of office, and at its close to take the command of provinces, with the t.i.tles of Proconsuls or Propraetors.

5. The _Dictatorship_, which occurs so often in the early history of the Republic, disappears altogether after the Second Punic War. As the Republic became powerful, and had no longer to dread any enemies in Italy, there was no necessity for such an extraordinary magistracy as the Dictatorship, but whenever internal dangers seemed to require a stronger executive, the Senate invested the Consuls with dictatorial power.[41]

6. The _Censors_ were two in number, elected every five years, but they held their office for a year and a half. They were taken, as a general rule, from those who had been previously Consuls, and their office was regarded as the highest dignity in the state. Their duties, which were very extensive and very important, may be divided into three cla.s.ses, all of which, however, were closely connected.

(_a_). Their first and most important duty was to take the Census. This was not simply a list of the population, according to the modern use of the word, but a valuation of the property of every Roman citizen. This valuation was necessary, not only for the a.s.sessment of the property-tax, but also for determining the position of every citizen in the state, which was regulated, in accordance with the const.i.tution of Servius Tullius, by the amount of his property. Accordingly, the Censors had to draw up lists of the Cla.s.ses and Centuries. They also made out the lists of the Senators and Equites, striking out the names of all whom they deemed unworthy, and filling up all vacancies in the Senate.

(_b._) The Censors possessed a general control over the conduct and morals of the citizens. In the exercise of this important power they were not guided by any rules of law, but simply by their own sense of duty. They punished acts of private as well as public immorality, and visited with their censure not only offenses against the laws, but every thing opposed to the old Roman character and habits, such as living in celibacy, extravagance, luxury, etc. They had the power of degrading every citizen to a lower rank, of expelling Senators from the Senate, of depriving the Equites of their horses, and of removing ordinary citizens from their tribes, and thus excluding them from all political rights.

(_c._) The Censors also had the administration of the finances of the state, under the direction of the Senate. They let out the taxes to the highest bidders for the s.p.a.ce of a l.u.s.trum, or five years.[42] They likewise received from the Senate certain sums of money to keep the public buildings, roads, and aqueducts in repair,[43] and to construct new public works in Rome and other parts of Italy. Hence we find that many of the great public roads, such as the Via Appia and Via Flaminia, were made by Censors.

II. THE SENATE.--The Senate was in reality the executive government of Rome, and the Magistrates, of whom we have been speaking, were only its ministers. The Senate consisted of Three Hundred members, who held the dignity for life unless expelled by the Censors for reasons already mentioned, but they could not transmit the honor to their sons. All vacancies in the body were filled up by the Censors every five years from those who had held the Quaestorship or any higher magistracy. The Censors were thus confined in their selection to those who had already received the confidence of the people, and no one could therefore enter the Senate unless he had some experience in political affairs.

The power of the Senate was very great. It exercised a control over legislation, since no law could be proposed to the a.s.semblies of the People unless it had first received the approval of the Senate. In many cases "Senatus consulta"[44] were pa.s.sed, which had the force of laws without being submitted to the Popular a.s.semblies at all. This was especially the case in matters affecting religion, police, administration, the provinces, and all foreign relations.

In foreign affairs the authority of the Senate was absolute, with the exception of declaring war and making peace, which needed the sanction of the Centuries. The Senate a.s.signed the provinces into which the Consuls and Praetors were to be sent; they determined the manner in which a war was to be conducted, and the number of troops to be levied; they prolonged the command of a general or superseded him at their pleasure, and on his return they granted or refused him a triumph; they alone carried on negotiations with foreign states, and all emba.s.sadors to foreign powers were appointed by the Senate from their own body.

In home affairs they had the superintendence in all matters of religion.

They had also the entire administration of the finances. When the Republic was in danger the Senate had the power of suspending the laws by the appointment of a Dictator, or by investing the Consuls with dictatorial power, as already mentioned.

III. THE POPULAR a.s.sEMBLIES.--1. The _Comitia Curiata_, the Patrician a.s.sembly, had become a mere form as early as the First Punic War. The gradual decline of its power has been already traced. It continued to meet for the transaction of certain matters pertaining to the Patrician gentes, but was represented simply by 30 lictors.

2. The const.i.tution of the _Comitia Centuriata_, as established by Servius Tullius,[45] had undergone a great change between the time of the Licinian Rogations and the Punic Wars, but both the exact time and nature of this change are unknown. It appears, however, that its object was to give more power and influence to the popular element in the state. For this purpose the 35 tribes were taken as the basis of the new Const.i.tution of the Centuries. Each tribe was probably divided into five property Cla.s.ses, and each Cla.s.sis was subdivided into two Centuries, one of Seniores and the other of Juniores. Each tribe would thus contain 10 Centuries, and, consequently, the 35 tribes would have 350 Centuries, so that, with the 18 Centuries of the Knights, the total number of the Centuries would be 368.