EPAMINONDAS.By ERNST CURTIUS.

[A distinguished statesman, who built up and consolidated the power of Athens immediately after the Persian wars, born 495B.C., died 429. His career was contemporaneous with the highest glory of Athens in art, arms, literature, and oratory. As an orator Pericles was second only to Demosthenes, as a statesman second to none. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Bulwer’s “Athens.”]

Aspasiacame to Athens when everything new and extraordinary, everything which appeared to be an enlargement of ancient usage, a step forward and a new acquisition, was joyously welcomed. Nor was it long before it was recognized that she enchanted the souls of men by no mere arts of deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature with a perfect sense of all that is beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time the treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman surrounded by the graces of her womanhood—a phenomenon which all men looked on with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians—even such men as Socrates—sought her out in order to listen to her conversation.

But her real importance for Athens began on the day when she made the acquaintance of Pericles, and formed with him a connection of mutual love. It was a real marriage, which only lacked the civil sanction because she was a foreigner; it was an alliance of the truest and tenderest affection which death alone dissolved—the endless source of a domestic felicity which no man needed more than the statesman, who lived retired from all external recreations and was unceasingly engaged in the labors of his life.

Doubtless the possession of this woman was in many respects invaluable for Pericles. Not only were her accomplishments the delights of the leisure hours which he allowed himself and the recreation of his mind from its cares, but she also kept him in intercourse with the daily life around him. She possessed what he lacked—the power of being perfectly at ease in every kind of society; she kept herself informed of everything that took place in the city; nor can distant countries have escaped her attention, since she is said to have first acquainted Pericles with Sicilian oratory, which was at that time developing itself.

She was of use to him through her various connections at home and abroad as well as by the keen glance of her feminine sagacity and by her knowledge of men. Thus the foremost woman of her age lived in the society of the man whose superiority of mind had placed him at the head of the first city of the Hellenes, in loyal devotion to her friend and husband; and although the mocking spirits at Athens eagerly sought out every blemish which could be discovered in the life of Pericles, yet no calumny was ever able to vilify this rare union and to blacken its memory.

Pericles had no leisure for occupying himself with the management of his private property. He farmed out his lands and intrusted the money to his faithful slave Evangelus, who accurately knew the measure which his master deemed the right one, and managed the household accordingly; which, indeed, presented a striking contrast to those of the wealthy families of Athens, and ill corresponded to the tastes of Pericles’s sons as they grew up. For in it there was no overflow, no joyous and reckless expenditure, but so careful an economy that everything was calculated down to drachm and obolus.

Pericles was perfectly convinced that nothing short of a perfectly blameless integrity and the severest self-abnegation could render possible the permanency of his influence over his fellow-citizens and prevent the exposure of even thesmallest blot to his cavilers and enemies. After Themistocles had for the first time shown how a statesman and general might enrich himself, Pericles was in this respect the admirer and most faithful follower of Aristides, and in the matter of conscientiousness went even much further than Cimon, spurning on principle every opportunity offered by the office of general for a perfectly justifiable personal enrichment.

All attempts to bribe him remained useless. His lofty sentiments are evidenced by the remark which he addressed to Sophocles, who fell in love even in his old age: “Not only the hands, but the eyes also of a general should practice continence.” The more vivid the appreciation he felt for female charms the more highly must we esteem the equanimity to which he had attained by means of a self-command which had become a matter of habit with him; nor did anything make so powerful an impression upon the changeable Athenians as the immovable calm of this great man.

Pericles was neither a lengthy nor a frequent speaker. He avoided nothing more scrupulously than superfluous words, and therefore as often as he appeared before the people he prayed to Zeus to guard him from useless words. But the brief words which he actually spoke made a proportionately deep impression upon the citizens. His conception of his calling was too solemn and lofty to permit him to consent to talk as the multitude liked. He was not afraid when he found the citizens weak and irresolute to express to them bitter truths and serious blame.

His speeches always endeavored to place every case in connection with facts of a more general kind, so as to instruct and elevate the minds of the citizens; he never grew weary of pointing out how no individual happiness was conceivable from the welfare of the entire body; he proved to the citizens the claim which he had established upon their confidence; he clearly and concisely developed his politicalviews, endeavoring not to talk over his hearers, but to convince them; and when the feeling of his own superiority was about to tempt him to despise the multitude, he admonished himself to be patient and long suffering. “Take heed, Pericles,” he cried to himself, “those whom thou rulest are Hellenes, citizens of Athens.”

The principles of the statesmanship of Pericles were so simple that all citizens were perfectly capable of understanding them; and he attached a particular value to the idea that the Athenians instead of, like the Lacedæmonians, seeking their strength in an affectation of secrecy, were unwilling to overcome their enemies by deception and cunning stratagems. As the Persian war had seemed inevitable to Themistocles, so the struggle with Sparta loomed as certain before the eyes of Pericles. The term of peace allowed before its outbreak had accordingly to be employed by Athens in preparing herself for the struggle awaiting her forces. When at last the critical hour arrived Athens was to stand before her assailants firm and invincible, with her walls for a shield and her navy for a sword.

The long schooling through which Pericles had passed in the art of war and the rare combination of caution and energy which he had displayed in every command held by him had secured him the confidence of the citizens. Therefore they for a succession of years elected him general, and as such invested him with an extraordinary authority, which reduced the offices of the other nine generals to mere posts of honor which were filled by persons agreeable to him. During the period of his administration the whole centers of gravity of public life lay in this office.

Inasmuch as Pericles, besides the authority of a “strategy” prolonged to him in an extraordinary degree, also filled the office of superintendent of the finances; inasmuch as he was repeatedly and for long periods of years superintendent of public works; inasmuch as his personal influence was so great that he could in all important matters determine thecivic elections according to his wish; it is easy to understand how he ruled the state in time of war and peace, and how the power of both the council and of the whole civic body in all essentials passed into his hands.

He was the type of temperance and sobriety. He made it a rule never to assist at a festive banquet; and no Athenian could remember to have seen Pericles, since he stood at the head of the state, in the company of friends over the wine-cup. He was known to no man except as one serious and collected, full of grave thoughts and affairs. His whole life was devoted to the service of the state, and his power accompanied by so thorough a self-denial and so full a measure of labor that the multitude in its love of enjoyment could surely not regard the possession of that power as an enviable privilege. For him there existed only one road, which he was daily seen to take, the road leading from his house to the market-place and the council-hall, the seat of the government, where the current business of state was transacted.

[The greatest of the Theban generals and statesmen, and one of the greatest men of antiquity; born about 418B.C., killed on the battle-field of Mantinea in the hour of victory, 362. He raised Thebes from a subordinate place to the leadership of Greece by his genius in arms and wisdom in council. Eminent as soldier, statesman, and orator, Epaminondas was a model of virtue in his private life, and was not only devoted to his native republic, but in the largest sense a Greek patriot. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]

Itwould be difficult to find in the entire course of Greek history any two statesmen who, in spite of differences in character and outward conditions of life, resembled oneanother so greatly and were as men so truly the peers of one another as Pericles and Epaminondas. In the case of both these men the chief foundation of their authority was their lofty and varied mental culture; what secured to them their intellectual superiority was the love of knowledge which pervaded and ennobled the whole being of either. Epaminondas like Pericles directs his native city as the man in whom the civic community places supreme confidence, and whom it therefore re-elects from year to year as general. Like Pericles, Epaminondas left no successor behind him, and his death was also the close of an historical epoch.

Epaminondas stood alone from the first; and while Pericles with all his superiority yet stood essentially on the basis of Attic culture, Epaminondas, on the other hand, was, so to speak, a stranger in his native city. Nor was it ever his intention to be a Theban in the sense in which Pericles was an Athenian. The object of his life was rather to be a perfect Hellene, while his efforts as a statesman were likewise simply an endeavor to introduce his fellow-citizens to that true Hellenism which consisted in civic virtue and in love of wisdom.

In the very last hour of his life, when he was delighted by the preservation of his shield, he showed himself a genuine Hellene; thus again it was a genuinely Greek standpoint from which he viewed the war against Sparta and Athens as a competitive contest for the honor of the hegemony in Hellas, an honor which could only be justly won by mental and moral superiority. The conflict was inevitable; it had become a national duty, because the supremacy of Sparta had become a tyranny dishonorable to the Hellenic nation. After Epaminondas liberated the Greek cities from the Spartan yoke it became the object of his Bœotian patriotism to make his own native city worthy and capable of assuming the direction.

How far Epaminondas might have succeeded in securinga permanent hegemony[5]over Greek affairs to the Thebans who shall attempt to judge? He fell in the full vigor of his manhood on the battle-field where the states, which withstood his policy, had brought their last resources to bear. Of all statesmen, therefore, he is least to be judged by the actual results of his policy. His greatness lies in this—that from his childhood he incessantly endeavored to be to his fellow-citizens a model of Hellenic virtue. Chaste and unselfish he passed, ever true to himself, through a most active life, through all the temptations of the most unexampled success in war, through the whole series of trials and disasters.

Epaminondas was not merely the founder of a military organization. He equally proved the inventiveness of his mind in contriving to obtain for his country, which was wealthy neither by trade nor manufactures, pecuniary resources sufficient for maintaining a land-army and a war-navy commensurate with the needs of a great power. He made himself master of all the productive ideas of earlier state administrations; and in particular the Athenians naturally stood before his eyes as models and predecessors.

On the one hand, he turned to account for his native city the improvements made in arms and tactics, which were due to Xenophon, Chabrias, and Iphicrates; on the other, the example of the Athenians taught him that the question of the hegemony over Greece could only be settled by sea. Finally, Epaminondas, more than any other Greek statesman, followed in the footsteps of Periclean Athens in regarding the public fostering of art and science as a main duty of that state which desired to claim a position of primacy.

Personally he did his utmost to domesticate philosophy at Thebes, not only as intellectual discourse carried on inselect circles, but as the power of higher knowledge which elevates and purifies the people. Public oratory found a home at Thebes, together with the free constitution; and not only did Epaminondas personally prove himself fully the equal of the foremost orators in Athens—of Callistratus in particular—in power of speech and in felicitous readiness of mind, but, as the embassy at Susa shows, his friends too learned in a surprisingly short time to assert the interests of Thebes by the side of the other states, which had long kept up foreign relations with vigor, skill, and dignity.

In every department there were perceptible intellectual mobility and vigorously sustained effort. Of the fine arts painting received a specially successful development, distinguished by a thoughtful and clear treatment of intellectual ideas. Of the architecture of this period honorable evidence is to this day given by the well-preserved remains of the fortifications of Messene, constructed under the direction of Epaminondas—typical specimens of architecture constructed in the grandest style. Plastic art likewise found a home at Thebes. It was the endeavor of Epaminondas—although with prudent moderation—to transfer the splendor of Periclean Athens to Thebes.

Through Epaminondas Thebes was raised to an equality with the city of the Athenians, as a seat of a policy aiming at freedom and national greatness. It thus became possible for the two cities to join hands in the subsequent struggle for the independence of Greece. And, in this sense, Epaminondas worked beforehand for the objects of Demosthenes. If it is considered how, with his small resources, Epaminondas founded or helped to found Mantinea, Messene, and Megalopolis; how through him other places, such as Corone and Heraclea, likewise received Theban settlers—the honor will not be denied him of having been in the royal art of the foundation of cities the predecessor of Alexander and his successors.

But he was also their predecessor in another point. By spreading Greek manners and ways of life he enlarged the narrow boundaries of the land of the Greeks, and introduced the peoples of the North into the sphere of Greek history. In his own person he represented the ideas of a general Hellenic character, which, unconditioned by local accidents, was freely raised aloft above the distinction of states and tribes. Hitherto only great statesmen had appeared who were great Athenians or Spartans. In Epaminondas this local coloring is of quite inferior importance; he was a Hellene first, and a Theban only in the second place. Thus he prepared the standpoint from which to be a Hellene was regarded as an intellectual privilege, independent of the locality of birth; and this is the standpoint of Hellenism.

[Son of Philip, King of Macedon, born 356B.C., died 323. The greatest of the world’s conquerors in the extent and rapidity of his conquests, he began with the consolidation of his father’s conquests over the republics of Greece, overthrew the great Persian Empire, and carried his arms to farther India, within a period of thirteen years. At his death his dominions were divided among his principal generals. References: Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]

Thefirst growth and development of Macedonia during the twenty-two years preceding the battle of Chæronea, from an embarrassed secondary state into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment of contemporaries and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius; but the achievements of Alexander during the twelve years of his reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a

ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of human expectation, but almost of human belief. All antecedent human parallels—the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition—sunk into trifles compared with the overthrow of the towering Persian Colossus.

Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330B.C., more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet further. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian Empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force which had once made the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.

Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the crown and began his foreign conquests. His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and, what was still more important, his appetite for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete as it had beenwhen he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements with such increased means and experience were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and, if his life had been prolonged, he probably would have accomplished it.

The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans and Samnites, would have failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion can not be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same can not be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been a match for Alexander in military genius and combination; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose; nor, the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort.

Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage—sometimes, indeed, both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him—we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects.

Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity by the matchless development of allthat constitutes effective force—as an individual warrior and as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies, in which category, indeed, were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns amid tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defense, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains are alike pursued and slaughtered.

Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government and for intentions highly favorable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded till he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion—conceived not metaphorically but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time—was the master-passion of his soul.

“You are a man like all of us, Alexander, except that you abandon your home,” said the naked Indian to him, “like a medlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself and inflicting hardship on others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as no prince as has yet ever realized, could have been administered with any superior advantages to subjects, it would be difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining, of keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in subordination, of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant bymonths of march, would occupy the whole life of a world conquerer, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability—if we give him credit for such purposes in theory.

In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will, and exaction of reverence above the limits of humanity, have been recounted. To describe him as a son of Hellas, imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind is in my judgement an estimate of his character contrary to the evidence.

Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered so much after a few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all deference for Aristotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly. Instead of “Hellenizing” Asia, he was tending to “Asiatize” Macedonia and Hellas. His temper and character as modified by a few years of conquest rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle toward the Greeks—quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from personal criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited chief.

Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia. So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts or borrow from the list of foundations established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. The process of “Hellenizing” Asia, in as far as Asia was ever “Hellenized,” which has so often been ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the successors to his great dominion.

We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of eight hundred talents in money, placing under his direction several thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoölogical researches. These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the earlier part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation from esteem toward him personally rather than from interest in his discoveries.

The intellectual turn of Alexander was toward literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the “Iliad” especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Philistus.

[A Carthaginian statesman and soldier, one of the foremost generals of antiquity, born 247B.C., died 183. The series of Italian campaigns in which he imperiled the very existence of Rome are commented on by modern military critics as models of brilliancy and daring, combined with far-sighted prudence. Finally compelled to evacuate Italy, he was defeated and his army destroyed by Publius Cornelius Scipio, afterward surnamed Africanus, at the battle of Zama in Africa in 202. Exiled from Carthage, he spent the latter years of his life in fomenting war against Rome among the Eastern nations, and finally committed suicide to prevent being delivered overto the hands of Rome. References: Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]

WhenHamilcar departed to take command in Spain, he enjoined his son Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the Supreme God eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his younger sons, Hasdrubal and Mago—the “lion’s brood,” as he called them—in the camp, as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius, and of his hatred.

The man whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amid a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him not yet to have arrived, or whether, a statesman rather than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of 219B.C., he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar.

He was still a young man, born in 247B.C., and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year; but his life had already been fraught with varied experience. His first recollections picture to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he shared that unconquered father’s fortunes and sympathized with his feelings on the peace of Catulus, on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While still a boy he had followed his father to the camp, and he soon distinguished himself.

His light and firmly built frame made him an excellent runner and boxer and a fearless rider; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to want his food. Although his youth had been spent in

HANNIBAL.

the camp, he possessed such culture as was bestowed on the noble Phœnicians of the time; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his intimate friend Sasilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language.

As he grew up, he entered the army of his father to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye, and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister’s husband Hasdrubal and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him—their tried and youthful leader—to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had died.

He took possession of the inheritance, and was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of all sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. Nevertheless, though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents.

Laying aside wretched inventions which furnished their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants Hannibal Monomachus, and Mago the Samnite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified in the circumstances and by the international law of the times; and all agree in this—that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy.

He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness which forms one of the leading traits of the Phœnician character—he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and strategems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists withunprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage—he had regular spies even in Rome—he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair in order to procure information on some point or another.

Every page of history attests his genius as a general; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution and in the unparalleled influence which as an exiled strength he exercised in the cabinets of the Eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues—an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went he riveted the eyes of all.

Hannibal’s cautious and masterly execution of his plan of crossing the Alps into Italy, instead of transporting his army by sea, in its details, at all events, deserves our admiration, and, to whatever causes the result may have been due—whether it was due mainly to the favor of fortune or mainly to the skill of the general—the grand idea of Hamilcar, that of taking up the conflict with Rome in Italy, was now realized. It was his genius that projected the expedition; and the unerring tact of historical tradition has always dwelt on the last link in the great chain of preparatory steps, the passage of the Alps, with a greater admiration than on the battles of the Trasimene Lake and of the plain of Cannæ.

Hannibal knew Rome better, perhaps, than the Romans knew it themselves. It was clearly apparent that the Italian federation was in political solidity and in military resources far superior to an adversary who received only precarious and irregular support from home; and that the Phœnician foot-soldier was, notwithstanding all the pains taken by Hannibal, far inferior in point of tactics to the legionary, had been completely proved by the defensive movements ofScipio. From these convictions flowed two fundamental principles which determined Hannibal’s whole method of operations in Italy, viz., that the war should be carried on somewhat adventurously, with constant changes in the plan and in the theatre of operations; and that its favorable issue could only be looked for as the result of political and not of military successes—of the gradual loosening and breaking up of the Italian federation.

This aim was the aim dictated to him by right policy, because mighty conqueror though he was in battle, he saw very clearly that on each occasion he vanquished the generals but not the city, and that after each new battle, the Romans remained as superior to the Carthaginians as he was personally superior to the Roman commanders. That Hannibal, even at the height of his fortune, never deceived himself on this point is a fact more wonderful than his wonderful battles.

[Tiberius Sempronius and Caius Sempronius, sons of Tiberius Gracchus by Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal and Carthage. The first, born 168B.C., died in 133; the second, born about 159B.C., died in 121. The brothers, though on both sides of the highest patrician rank and descent, espoused the democratic cause. Both rose to the rank of tribune. Tiberius carried through an agrarian law dividing the surplus lands of the republic among the poor, and was killed in a popularemeute. Caius caused to be passed a poor-law giving monthly distributions of corn. He also transferred the judicial power largely to the equites or knights, and proposed to extend the Roman franchise to all Italy. He committed suicide to save himself from assassination. References: Arnold’s “History of Rome” and Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”]

Cornelia, taking upon herself the care of the household and the education of her children, approved herself sodiscreet a matron, so affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a woman, that Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing to die for such a woman, who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown and would have married her, refused it and chose rather to live a widow. In this state she continued and lost all her children, except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius.

These she brought up with such care, that though they were without dispute in natural endowments and disposition the first among the Romans of their day, yet they seemed to owe their virtues even more to their education than to their birth. And, as in the statues and pictures made of Castor and Pollux, though the brothers resemble one another, yet there is a difference to be perceived in their countenances between the one who delighted in the cestus, and the other that was famous in the course; so between these two youths, though there was a strong general likeness in their common love of fortitude and temperance, in their liberality, their eloquence, and their greatness of mind, yet in their actions and administrations of public affairs, a considerable variation showed itself.

Tiberius, in the form and expression of his countenance and in his gesture and motion, was gentle and composed; but Caius, earnest and vehement. And so in their public speeches to the people, the one spoke in a quiet, orderly manner, standing throughout on the same spot; the other would walk about on the hustings and in the heat of his orations pull his gown off his shoulders, and was the first of all the Romans to use such gestures. Caius’s oratory was impetuous and passionate, making everything tell to the utmost, whereas Tiberius was gentle and persuasive, awakening emotions of pity. His diction was pure and carefully correct, while that of Caius was rich and vehement.

So likewise in their way of living and at their tables; Tiberius was frugal and plain, Caius, compared with others,temperate and even austere, but contrasting with his brother in a fondness for new fashions and varieties. The same difference that appeared in their diction was observable also in their tempers. The one was mild and reasonable; the other rough and passionate, and to that degree that often in the midst of speaking he was so hurried away by his passion against his judgment that his voice lost its tone and he began to pass into mere abusive talking, spoiling his whole speech.

As a remedy to this excess he made use of an ingenious servant of his, one Licinius, who stood constantly behind him with a sort of pitch-pipe, or instrument to regulate the voice by, and whenever he perceived his master’s tone alter and break with anger, he struck a soft note with his pipe, on hearing which Caius immediately checked the vehemence of his passion and his voice grew quieter, and he allowed himself to be recalled to temper.

Such are the differences between the two brothers, but their valor in war against their country’s enemies, their justice in the government of its subjects, their care and industry in office, and their self-command in all that regarded their pleasures, were equally remarkable in both. Tiberius was the elder by nine years; owing to which their actions as public men were divided by the difference of the times in which those of the one and those of the other were performed. The power they would have exercised, had they both flourished together, could scarcely have failed to overcome all resistance.

Their greatest detractors and their worst enemies could not but allow that they had a genius to virtue beyond all other Romans, which was improved also by a generous education. Besides, the Gracchi, happening to live when Rome had her greatest repute for honor and virtuous actions, might justly have been ashamed if they had not also left to the next generation the whole inheritance of the virtues of their ancestors.

The integrity of the two Romans, and their superiority to money was chiefly remarkable in this—that in office and the administration of public affairs they kept themselves from the imputation of unjust gain. The chief things in general which they aimed at were the settlement of cities and mending the highways; and in particular the boldest design which Tiberius is famed for is the recovery of the public land; and Caius gained his greatest reputation by the addition, for the exercise of judicial powers, of three hundred of the order of knights to the same number of senators.

Tiberius was the first who attempted to scale the walls of Carthage, which was no mean exploit. We may add the peace which he concluded with the Numantines, by which he saved the lives of twenty thousand Romans, who otherwise had certainly been cut off. And Caius, not only at home, but in war in Sardinia, displayed distinguished courage. So that their early actions were no small argument that afterward they might have rivaled the best of the Roman commanders if they had not died so young.

Of the Gracchi, neither the one nor the other was the first to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens; and Caius is reported to have avoided all manner of resistance, even when his life was aimed at, showing himself always valiant against a foreign enemy, but wholly inactive in a sedition. This was the reason that he went from his own house unarmed, and withdrew when the battle began, and in all respects showed himself anxious rather not to do any harm to others than not suffer any himself. Even the very flight of the Gracchi must not be looked on as an argument of a mean spirit, but an honorable retreat from endangering others.

The greatest crime that can be laid to Tiberius’s charge was the disposing of his fellow-tribune, and seeking afterward a second tribuneship for himself. Tiberius and Caius by nature had an excessive desire for glory and honors. Beyond this, their enemies could find nothing to bringagainst them; but as soon as the contention began with their adversaries, their heat and passions would so far prevail beyond their natural temper that by them, as by ill-winds, they were driven afterward to all their rash undertakings. What would be more just and honorable than their first design, had not the power and faction of the rich, by endeavoring to abrogate that law, engaged them both in those fatal quarrels, the one for his own preservation, the other to avenge his brother’s death who was murdered without law or justice.

[An able Roman general and leader of the democratic faction, born 157B.C., died 86. The military skill of Marius finished the Jugurthine war and saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutons. Though of plebeian birth he married into an eminent patrician family, and became thereby the uncle of Julius Cæsar, who attached himself to the Marian party in the political wars which raged between the popular and patrician factions, the latter being led by Sylla. The worst stain on the memory of Marius is the massacre which he permitted at the beginning of his last consulate. References: Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Froude’s “Life of Cæsar,” Plutarch’s “Lives.”]

Mariuswas born at Arpinum, a Latin township, seventy miles from the capital. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plow. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by the punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha[6]was there, and made himself specially useful to Scipio;[7]he forced his way steadily upward by his mere soldier-like qualities to the rank of military tribune. Rome, too, had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the people the year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made man, he naturally belonged to the popular party. While in office he gave offense in some way to the men in power, and was called before the senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could make nothing of their charges against him.

He was not bidding, however, at this time for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and sense to oppose the largesses of corn, and he forfeited his popularity by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed into a system. He seemed as if made of a block of hard Roman oak, gnarled and knotted but sound in all its fibers. His professional merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he became prætor,[8]and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by the successful severity by which he cleared the provinces of banditti. He was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in the world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he had made himself respected and valued; for after his return from the peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of the patrician families.

Marius by this marriage became a person of social consequence. His father had been a client of the Metelli; and Cæcelius Metellus, who must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited him to go assecond in command in the African campaign.[9]The war dragged on, and Marius, perhaps ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general’s want of vigor, began to think he could make quicker work of it. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The patricians strained their resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm.

A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate house when the determination of the people was known. A successful general could not be disposed of as easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier and had a soldier’s way of thinking on government and the methods of it. His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the moment from their various occupations to return to them when the occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer men, better trained and disciplined, could be made more effective and be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident, and that there was a latent force in the Roman state which needed only organization to resume its ascendancy.

“He enlisted,” it was said, “the worst of the citizens”—men, that is to say, who had no occupation, and became soldiers by profession; and as persons without property could not have furnished themselves at their own cost, he must have carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and equipped them at the expense of the state. His discipline was of the sternest. The experiment was new; andmen of rank who had a taste for war in earnest, and did not wish that the popular party should have the whole benefit and credit of the improvements were willing to go with him; among them a dissipated young patrician, called Lucius Sylla, whose name was also destined to be memorable.

Marius had formed an army barely in time to save Italy from being totally overwhelmed. A vast migratory wave of population had been set in motion behind the Rhine and Danube. The hunting-grounds were too strait for the numbers crowded into them, and two enormous hordes were rolling westward and southward in search of some new abiding-place. The Teutons came from the Baltic down across the Rhine into Luxemburg. The Cimbri crossed the Danube near its sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and Cimbri were Germans, and both were making for Gaul by different routes. Each division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They traveled with their wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians and with the modern South African Dutch, being their homes. Two years had been consumed in these wanderings, and Marius was by this time ready for them.

Marius was continued in office, and was a fourth time consul. He had completed his military reforms, and the army was now a professional service with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were henceforth to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as well as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learned the use of tools as well as of arms. The Teutons were destroyed on the twentieth of July, 102B.C.In the year following the same fate overtook their comrades. The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history. The legions were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were themselves the state for which they fought. The legionaries were citizens still. They had votes and they used them; but they were professional soldiers with the modes of thought which belong tosoldiers, and besides the power of the hustings was now the power of the sword.

The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the savior of his country. He was made a consul a fifth time, and then a sixth. An indifferent politician, however, he stood aloof in the fierce faction contest between the aristocrats and the popular party. At last he had almost withdrawn from public life, as he had no heart for the quarrel, and did not care to exert his power. For eight years both he and his rival Sylla kept aloof from politics and were almost unheard of.

When Sylla came to the front, it was as leader of the aristocratic power in the state. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the senate and the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people, and as tribune demanded the deposition of Sylla. The latter replied by leading his legionaries to Rome. Sulpicius was killed; Marius, the savior of his country, had to fly for his life, pursued by assassins, with a price set upon his head.

While Sylla was absent in the East prosecuting that magnificent campaign against Mithridates, King of Pontus, which stamped him the first soldier of his time, the popular party again raised its head. Old Marius, who had been hunted through marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty in Africa, came back at the news that Italy had risen again. Marius and Cinna joined their forces, appeared together at the gates of the capital, and Rome capitulated. There was a bloody score to be wiped out. Marius bears the chief blame for the scenes which followed. A price had been set on his head, his house had been destroyed, his property had been confiscated, he, himself, had been chased like a wild beast, and he had not deserved such treatment. He had saved Italy, when but for him it would have been wasted by the swords of the Germans.

His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused it for party purposes. The senate had no reason to complain of him. His crime in their eyes had been his eminence. They had now shown themselves as cruel as they were worthless; and if public justice was disposed to make an end of them, he saw no cause to interfere. From retaliatory political vengeance the transition was easy to plunder and wholesale murder; and for many days the wretched city was made a prey to robbers and cut-throats.

So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the ensuing year and a witch’s prophecy was fulfilled that Marius should hold a seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun was already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a fortnight after his inauguration, and died in his bed at the age of seventy-one. “The mother of the Gracchi,” said Mirabeau, “cast the dust of her murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius.”

Back to Index Next