Part 6 (1/2)
You should take care, too, that your wife does not neglect her duties. Make her fear you. Do not let her indulge in luxury. She should see as little as possible of her neighbours and other female friends; she should not entertain at home or go out to dinner, or waste time in walks. Do not let her sacrifice, or depute any one else to sacrifice, without the orders of her master or mistress; for it must be understood that the master sacrifices for all the household. She should be neat, and keep the house neat and swept, and every day, before she goes to bed, she should see that the hearth is clean and the ashes gathered on to the embers.
On days of festival, Kalends, Nones, or Ides, she should lay a garland on the hearth and during the same days offer up prayer to the Lar of the house for plenty. It is her business to see that food is cooked for you and everybody else, and to keep a good supply of poultry and eggs.
Cato, _De Re Rustica_, v. 1-5; cxliii. 1-2.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SHRINE OF THE LAR from a house in Pompeii]
This same just but hard and ungenerous spirit is seen in Cato's public life. As Censor he had the right to strike off the roll of senators men who were in any respect unworthy. In doing this Cato was fearless. He attacked the most popular men in Rome and did not yield an inch when there was a howl against him. Public money was to him as sacred as private, and ought, he held, to be husbanded in the same careful way.
Thus he attacked the brother of Scipio Africa.n.u.s, because, as he said, he had spent more than he ought on his campaigns. He admired Scipio greatly. Cato was far too intelligent not to appreciate his high qualities of mind and character: but he thought him a new and therefore dangerous kind of man.
Fifty years after the battle of Zama the Carthaginians, who were not allowed by the treaty to make war without the permission of Rome, sent an appeal for protection against Masannasa, the King of Numidia, who had gradually been encroaching on their territory. A Commission was sent out from Rome to inquire, with Cato at its head. Cato came back possessed by one idea, which never afterwards left him. 'Carthage must be destroyed.
Rome would not be safe until it was blotted out.' When it was pointed out to him that the city was in no sense dangerous to Rome, that it had practically no arms, absolutely no fleet, and had shown in fifty years no sort of desire to attack Rome, was indeed too weak even to defend itself against attack, Cato paid no heed. It did not stir him when Scipio urged that to attack a defeated and helpless city was mean and unworthy of Rome, that its greatness would not be increased by destroying a beaten foe. Cato paid no heed. Carthage was rich and flouris.h.i.+ng: it might one day be a danger again. It was taking trade that Rome might get, it possessed riches Rome might have. He was a powerful and effective speaker and his name stood high in Rome. What he said had a great influence because his character was deeply respected.
Though old, his red hair quite white, he had lost none of his vigour.
His dry humour could still make the Senate laugh, and his pa.s.sionate earnestness rouse them to anger. His grey eyes sparkled, his long white teeth flashed when, day in, day out, whatever the main subject of his speech, the inflexible old man always ended with the words, 'Carthage must be destroyed'.
Cato had his way in the end. The Romans carried out the destruction of Carthage (146). It was a mean and disgraceful act. The Carthaginians had already submitted, without terms, to the mercy of the Roman people. When the consuls arrived they first demanded that all arms should be collected and given up: then that all the inhabitants should depart and the city itself be removed. This was too much. The desperate people resolved to resist, and resist they did with terrible and extraordinary heroism.
Cato himself did not live through the siege: but he died knowing that his fierce will had its way. Carthage was to be destroyed. As a city it was to exist no longer.
VII
Caius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla
To understand the strange and in many ways sinister characters of Caius Marius and of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, we must have in our minds a picture of the dark times in which they lived. At a crisis in the life of the State Sulla showed courage, decision and will, and a stern devotion to his country which enabled him, in his own way, to save it.
In these things he showed that he was a Roman of the old breed. Until this crisis came Sulla appeared no better than the other aristocrats of his time: like them he was careless of everything save his own selfish pleasure; always he remained hard, cruel, indifferent to the lives, feelings, and happiness of others. Whereas both Tiberius and Caius Gracchus lived and died for an idea greater than themselves, Sulla's was a mind incapable of idealism. He and Caius Marius, his great rival, are alike in nothing except the harsh cruelty that belongs to times of revolutionary upheaval. In all other respects they are as unlike as any two men that ever lived. Marius was a son of the soil, a soldier with a soldier's merits--courage, rude good humour, careless generosity--and his faults--cruelty, coa.r.s.eness, indifference to everything but the rudest of pleasures. His one big work was the reconstruction of the army. Sulla was an aristocrat to the finger-tips: proud, cold-blooded, indifferent, highly educated, with a deep disbelief in everything and everybody. He had a remarkable intellect, and a physical beauty which attracted women without number. But it is doubtful whether he ever cared for a human creature. His extraordinary courage and his equally extraordinary indifference rested on a chilling belief in Fate. He was lucky: he called himself Sulla Felix; but nothing in the end was going to make any difference.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARISTOCRAT distributing largesse]
To see Marius and Sulla against the background of their time the events must be traced that followed on the death of Caius Gracchus.
Tiberius Gracchus, and far more clearly his brother Caius, had seen the growing dangers that threatened Rome, if no wise steps were taken in time to meet them. Both brothers gave their lives in the effort to save their country. Their sacrifice was vain. The men who had power in their hands were blind to the great change that was taking place. They tried to compel the stream to go on flowing in its old channels, although the weight of waters had grown too great for them to carry. The result was that suddenly the waters broke loose and flooded everything. Rome, all Italy, was torn by a b.l.o.o.d.y and terrible civil war.
At the time many people put these things down to the Gracchi. They had stirred up the lower orders and the Italians to discontent and bitterness. They had set strife between cla.s.ses in Rome: roused the middle cla.s.s against the senators and the mob against both. This was not a just statement. Caius Gracchus had thought out a great plan of reform that, if carried through, might have saved Rome and Italy from revolution and civil war. He had to win people to his side. In order to do so he pa.s.sed measures that were not good in themselves but only as means to his great end. Thus he made the knights, the new cla.s.s of wealthy men, judges instead of the senators; and gave doles of bread to the Roman populace in the hope that he would then be able to persuade them to give votes to the Italians and so make Italy really one.
The evil that men do lives after them: The good is oft interred with their bones.
It was so with Caius Gracchus.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FISHERMAN]
But the real cause of the civil war lay much deeper than the work of any single man or group of men. It was, in the main, the fact that while Rome had grown, and grown into a new world, the old system of government remained, and did not fit this new world. Rome was beginning to be a great trading empire. Yet wealth and power was jealously held by a small cla.s.s in Rome in their own hands. The men of this cla.s.s grew rich. They went out to the provinces, to Sicily, Greece, and Spain, as governors and made great fortunes. They came home with their riches and bought up the land that had once belonged to peasants and farmers, and worked this land with slaves. The condition of these slaves in the country was miserable, especially that of those who lived herded in camps. The greed of the agents of the tax-collecting companies made the Roman name hated in the provinces. In Italy, too, there was deep discontent. To keep the Roman poor quiet the ruling cla.s.ses gave them games and bread-doles; they altered the laws so that no Roman citizen could be condemned to death for any offence. This kept the Romans quiet, but it made the Italians, who had no share in it, increasingly restive.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RICH MATRON]
It had been clear to the far-seeing mind of Caius Gracchus that unless Rome could draw fresh blood and life and energy from Italy it must perish. The material wealth that was pouring into the city from all parts of the world, from Carthage and Corinth and the conquered kingdoms of the East, was doing more harm than good. Too many men, rich as well as poor, were beginning to care only for pleasure and for money as a means to pleasure. The luxury and extravagance of the rich made the poverty of the poor bitter, and these poor, uneducated, idle, accustomed to be kept in a good temper by splendid shows and presents of corn and wine, were ready at any moment to rise in disorder and destroy those who tried to help them. Most of them were not liable to military service--that was still confined to the old cla.s.ses of men who held land; but they had votes, while the Italians had none. The town mob was swollen by freedmen--slaves who had saved enough money to buy themselves off--they too had votes.
The Roman voters cared nothing for the wrongs of the Italians, or of the people of the provinces. Like the rich, who lived on the revenues of the tax-collecting companies, they thought the rest of the world was there merely to supply them with comfort and luxuries. But while in Rome itself people were more and more sharply divided between the 'have nots'
and the 'haves', all round them there was a growing dissatisfaction and discontent. The strife at home meant that enterprises abroad were badly managed. Many army commanders and provincial governors were incompetent and corrupt. There was no longer the old high Roman sense of duty and honesty. In its stead were pride, greed, and cruelty. The spirit that had shown itself in the savage destruction of Carthage and Corinth was shown again in the treatment of Jugurtha.