Volume I Part 21 (1/2)

[Sidenote: and invades Africa.]

[Sidenote: Results of the first Punic War.]

[Sidenote: Results of the second Punic War.]

[Sidenote: Rome invades Greece,]

[Sidenote: and compels the cession of all the European provinces of Antiochus.]

[Sidenote: Revolt of Perses.]

[Sidenote: Dreadful social effects on Rome.]

[Sidenote: Plunder of Greece and annexation of Spain.]

[Sidenote: Seizure of Asia Minor.]

[Sidenote: The Servile and Social wars.]

[Sidenote: Gradual convergence of power.]

[Sidenote: Caesar the master of the world.]

The geographical dominion of Rome was extended at first with infinite difficulty. Up to the time of the capture of the city by the Gauls a doubtful existence was maintained in perpetual struggles with the adjacent towns and chieftains. There is reason to believe that in the very infancy of the republic, in the contest that ensued upon the expulsion of the kings, the city was taken by Porsenna. The direction in which her influence first spread was toward the south of the peninsula.

Tarentum, one of the southern states, brought over to its a.s.sistance Pyrrhus the Epirot. He did little in the way of a.s.sisting his allies--he only saw Rome from the Acropolis of Praeneste; but from him the Romans learned the art of fortifying camps, and caught the idea of invading Sicily. Here the rising republic came in contact with the Carthaginians, and in the conflict that ensued discovered the military value of Spain and Gaul, from which the Carthaginians drew an immense supply of mercenaries and munitions of war. The advance to greatness which Rome now made was prodigious. She saw that everything turned on the possession of the sea, and with admirable energy built a navy. In this her expectations were more than realized. The a.s.sertion is quite true that she spent more time in acquiring a little earth in Italy than was necessary for subduing the world after she had once obtained possession of the Mediterranean. From the experience of Agathocles she learned that the true method of controlling Carthage was by invading Africa. The principles involved in the contest, and the position of Rome at its close, are shown by the terms of the treaty of the first Punic War--that Carthage should evacuate every island in the Mediterranean, and pay a war-fine of six hundred thousand pounds. In her devotion to the acquisition of wealth Carthage had become very rich; she had reached a high state of cultivation of art; yet her prosperity, or rather the mode by which she had attained it, had greatly weakened her, as also had the political anomaly under which she was living, for it is an anomaly that an Asiatic people should place itself under democratic forms. Her condition in this respect was evidently the consequence of her original subordinate position as a Tyrian trading station, her rich men having long been habituated to look to the mother city for distinction. As in other commercial states, her citizens became soldiers with reluctance, and hence she had often to rely on mercenary troops. From her the Romans received lessons of the utmost importance. She confirmed them in the estimate they had formed of the value of naval power; taught them how to build s.h.i.+ps properly and handle them; how to make military roads. The tribes of Northern Italy were hardly included in the circle of Roman dominion when a fleet was built in the Adriatic, and, under the pretence of putting down piracy, the sea power of the Illyrians was extinguished. From time immemorial the Mediterranean had been infested with pirates; man-stealing had been a profitable occupation, great gains being realized by ransoms of captives, or by selling them at Delos or other slave-markets. At this time it was clear that the final mastery of the Mediterranean turned on the possession of Spain, the great silver-producing country. The rivalry for Spain occasioned the second Punic War. It is needless to repeat the well-known story of Hannibal, how he brought Rome to the brink of ruin. The relations she maintained with surrounding communities had been such that she could not trust to them. Her enemy found allies in many of the Greek towns in the south of Italy. It is enough for us to look at the result of that conflict in the treaty that closed it. Carthage had to give up all her s.h.i.+ps of war except ten triremes, to bind herself to enter into no war without the consent of the Roman people, and to pay a war-fine of two millions of pounds. Rome now entered, on the great scale, on the policy of disorganizing states for the purpose of weakening them. Under pretext of an invitation from the Athenians to protect them from the King of Macedon, the ambitious republic secured a footing in Greece, the principle developed in the invasion of Africa of making war maintain war being again resorted to. There may have been truth in the Roman accusation that the intrigues of Hannibal with Antiochus, king of Syria, occasioned the conflict between Rome and that monarch. Its issue was a prodigious event in the material aggrandizement of Rome--it was the cession of all his possessions in Europe and those of Asia north of Mount Taurus, with a war-fine of three millions of pounds. Already were seen the effects of the wealth that was pouring into Italy in the embezzlement of the public money by the Scipios. The resistance of Perses, king of Macedon, could not restore independence to Greece; it ended in the annexation of that country, Epirus and Illyric.u.m. The results of this war were to the last degree pernicious to the victors and the vanquished; the moral greatness of the former is truly affirmed to have disappeared, and the social ruin of the latter was so complete that for long marriage was replaced by concubinage. The policy and practices of Rome now literally became infernal; she forced a quarrel upon her old antagonist Carthage, and the third Punic War resulted in the utter destruction of that city. Simultaneously her oppressions in Greece provoked revolt, which was ended by the sack and burning of Corinth, Thebes, Chalcis, and the transference of the plundered statues, paintings, and works of art to Italy. There was nothing now in the way of the conquest of Spain except the valour of its inhabitants. After the a.s.sa.s.sination of Viriatus, procured by the Consul Caepio, and the horrible siege of Numantia, that country was annexed as a province. Next we see the gigantic republic extending itself over the richest parts of Asia Minor, through the insane bequest of Attalus, king of Pergamus. The wealth of Africa, Spain, Greece, and Asia, was now concentrating in Italy, and the capital was becoming absolutely demoralized. In vain the Gracchi attempted to apply a remedy. The Roman aristocracy was intoxicated, insatiate, irresistible. The middle cla.s.s was gone; there was nothing but profligate n.o.bles and a diabolical populace. In the midst of inconceivable corruption, the Jugurthine War served only to postpone for a moment an explosion which was inevitable. The Servile rebellion in Sicily broke out; it was closed by the extermination of a million of those unhappy wretches: vast numbers of them were exposed, for the popular amus.e.m.e.nt, to the wild beasts in the arena. It was followed closely by the revolt of the Italian allies, known as the Social War--this ending, after the destruction of half a million of men, with a better result, in the extortion of the freedom of the city by several of the revolting states. Doubtless it was the intrigues connected with these transactions that brought the Cimbri and Teutons into Italy, and furnished an opening for the rivalries of Marius and Sylla, who, in turn, filled Rome with slaughter. The same spirit broke out under the gladiator Spartacus: it was only checked for a time by resorting to the most awful atrocities, such as the crucifixion of prisoners, to appear under another form in the conspiracy of Catiline.

And now it was plain that the contest for supreme power lay between a few leading men. It found an issue in the first triumvirate--a union of Pompey, Cra.s.sus, and Caesar, who usurped the whole power of the senate and people, and bound themselves by oath to permit nothing to be done without their unanimous consent. Affairs then pa.s.sed through their inevitable course. The death of Cra.s.sus and the battle of Pharsalia left Caesar the master of the world. At this moment nothing could have prevented the inevitable result. The dagger of Brutus merely removed a man, but it left the fact. The battle of Actium reaffirmed the destiny of Rome, and the death of the republic was ill.u.s.trated by the annexation of Egypt. The circle of conquest around the Mediterranean was complete; the function of the republic was discharged: it did not pa.s.s away prematurely.

[Sidenote: Ancient necessity for slave-wars.]

From this statement of the geographical career of Rome, we may turn to reflect on the political principles which inspired her. From a remote antiquity wars had been engaged in for the purpose of obtaining a supply of labour, the conqueror compelling those whom he had spared to cultivate his fields and serve him as slaves. Under a system of transitory military domination, it was more expedient to exhaust a people at once by the most unsparing plunder than to be content with a tribute periodically paid, but necessarily uncertain in the vicissitudes of years. These elementary principles of the policy of antiquity were included by the Romans in their system with modifications and improvements.

[Sidenote: Depopulation of countries after Roman conquest.]

[Sidenote: Atrocity of the Roman slave-laws.]

[Sidenote: Social effects of the Roman slave-system.]

The republic, during its whole career, ill.u.s.trates the observation that the system on which it was founded included no conception of the actual relations of man. It dealt with him as a thing, not as a being endowed with inalienable rights. Recognizing power as its only measure of value, it could never accept the principle of the equality of all men in the eye of the law. The subjugation of Sicily, Africa, Greece, was quickly followed by the depopulation of those countries, as Livy, Plutarch, Strabo, and Polybius testify. Can there be a more fearful instance than the conduct of Paulus aemilius, who, at the conquest of Epirus, murdered or carried into slavery 150,000 persons? At the taking of Thebes whole families were thus disposed of, and these not of the lower, but of the respectable kind, of whom it has been significantly said that they were transported into Italy to be melted down. In Italy itself the consumption of life was so great that there was no possibility of the slaves by birth meeting the requirement, and the supply of others by war became necessary. To these slaves the laws were atrociously unjust.

Tacitus has recorded that on the occasion of the murder of Pedanius, after a solemn debate in the senate, the particulars of which he furnishes, the ancient laws were enforced, and four hundred slaves of the deceased were put to death, when it was obvious to every one that scarcely any of them had known of the crime. The horrible maxim that not only the slaves within a house in which a master was murdered, but even those within a circle supposed to be measured by the reach of his voice, should be put to death, shows us the small value of the life of these unfortunates, and the facility with which they could be replaced. Their vast numbers necessarily made every citizen a soldier; the culture of the land and the manufacturing processes, the pursuits of labour and industry, were a.s.signed to them with contempt. The relation of the slave in such a social system is significantly shown by the fact that the courts estimated the amount of any injury he had received by the damage his master had thereby sustained. To such a degree had this system been developed, that slave labour was actually cheaper than animal labour, and, as a consequence, much of the work that we perform by cattle was then done by men. The cla.s.s of independent hirelings, which should have const.i.tuted the chief strength of the country, disappeared, labour itself becoming so ign.o.ble that the poor citizen could not be an artisan, but must remain a pauper--a st.u.r.dy beggar, expecting from the state bread and amus.e.m.e.nts. The personal uncleanness and s.h.i.+ftless condition of these lower cla.s.ses were the true causes of the prevalence of leprosy and other loathsome diseases. Attempts at sanitary improvement were repeatedly made, but they so imperfectly answered the purpose that epidemics, occurring from time to time, produced a dreadful mortality. Even under the Caesars, after all that had been done, there was no essential amendment. The a.s.sertion is true that the Old World never recovered from the great plague in the time of M. Antoninus, brought by the army from the Parthian War. In the reign of t.i.tus ten thousand persons died in one day in Rome.

The slave system bred that thorough contempt for trade which animated the Romans. They never grudged even the Carthaginians a market. It threw them into the occupation of the demagogue, making them spend their lives, when not engaged in war, in the intrigues of political factions, the turbulence of public elections, the excitement of lawsuits. They were the first to discover that the privilege of interpreting laws is nearly equal to that of making them; and to this has been rightly attributed their turn for jurisprudence, and the prosperity of advocates among them. The disappearance of the hireling cla.s.s was the immediate cause of the downfall of the republic and the inst.i.tution of the empire, for the aristocracy were left without any antagonist, and therefore without any restraint. They broke up into factions, involving the country in civil war by their struggles with each other for power.

[Sidenote: The war system.]

The political maxims of the republic, for the most part, rejected the ancient system of devastating a vanquished state by an instant, unsparing, and crus.h.i.+ng plunder, which may answer very well where the tenure is expected to be brief, but does not accord with the formula subdue, retain, advance. Yet depopulation was the necessary incident.

Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, Gaul, Germany, were full of people, but they greatly diminished under Roman occupation. Her maxims were capable of being realized with facility through her military organization, particularly that of the legion. In some nations colonies are founded for commercial purposes, in others for getting rid of an excess of population: the Roman colony implies the idea of a garrison and an active military intent. Each legion was, in fact, so constructed as to be a small but complete army. In whatever country it might be encamped, it was in quick communication with the head-quarters at Rome; and this not metaphorically, but materially, as was shown by the building of the necessary military roads. The idea of permanent occupation, which was thus implied, did not admit the expediency of devastating a country, but, on the contrary, led to the encouragement of provincial prosperity, because the greater the riches the greater the capacity for taxation.

Such principles were in harmony with the conditions of solidity and security of the Roman power, which proverbially had not risen in a single day--was not the creation of a single fortunate soldier, but represented the settled policy of many centuries. In the act of conquest Rome was inhuman; she tried to strike a blow that there would never be any occasion to repeat; no one was spared who by possibility might inconvenience her; but, the catastrophe once over, as a general thing, the vanquished had no occasion to complain of her rule. Of course, in the shadow of public justice, private wrong and oppression were often concealed. Through injustice and extortion, her officers acc.u.mulated enormous fortunes, which have never since been equalled in Europe.

Sometimes the like occurred in times of public violence; thus Brutus made Asia Minor pay five years' tribute at once, and shortly after Antony compelled it to do it again. The extent to which recognized and legitimate exactions were carried is shown by the fact that upon the inst.i.tution of the empire the annual revenues were about forty millions of pounds sterling.