At this point, the high-water mark of Hannibal’s successes, we may pause to see how the Senate met the news of this most terrible disaster. At no moment in Roman history is the sterling quality of the Roman character and spirit so conspicuously shown. The Senate had to meet not only the immediate military crisis in Italy, but the problems of military and naval policy in Spain, in Sicily, and in the plain of the Po. At home, too, they had to deal with what we may call a religious panic; the people, and especially the women, were beginning to lose nerve, and to fancy that their gods had forsaken them. We can believe the Roman historian when he says that any other people would have been crushed by a catastrophe like this. But the wise men of the Senate simply sat down to repair it, never dreaming of giving in. The city was made safe, fresh legions were enrolled, and thanks were voted to the surviving consul “for not despairing of the republic.” They would not ransom the prisoners in Hannibal’s hands, nor receive the officer whom he sent for this purpose. They were not moved even by the news that southern Italy, the Bruttians, Lucanians,Apulians, and most of the Samnites, had joined the enemy, and that isolated towns farther north had deserted them. Capua, the second city of Italy, was betrayed to Hannibal, and he was thus enabled to advance his base from Apulia into the plain of Campania, without leaving an enemy in his rear: but the Senate did not despair. In due time the ranks of this Senate, sadly thinned since the war began, were filled up by a dictator with the best and most experienced citizens available. All possible means were adopted of keeping up the idea of “the peace of the gods”; an embassy was even sent to Delphi; the religious panic speedily quieted down. At the beginning of the next year provision was made as usual for the military commands in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, and also for a fleet which was being got together at Ostia, the port at the mouth of the Tiber. Within a few months after the battle all was going on in Rome as usual.
So the overwhelming defeat of Cannæ did but lead the Romans to victory—to a victory of all the nobler elements in their character over momentary doubt and despair. A people that could recover from that disaster,and go quietly about the work of repairing it, was not likely to be crushed out of existence even by a Hannibal; and though he was to remain as a standing menace for many years on Italian soil, it may fairly be said that henceforward he had no real chance of ultimate success. Two moments of grave anxiety were still to come, but Rome survived them both. One of these came three years later, when a desperate effort was being made to snatch Capua out of Hannibal’s grasp. To induce the Roman government to raise the siege, he made a sudden march on Rome, knowing that no covering army was between him and the capital. He encamped on the Anio, three miles above the city, and rode with an escort of cavalry right up to the gates. But it was all in vain; the Senate had gathered levies amply sufficient to hold the walls, and after plundering the Roman lands Hannibal fell away again, like a sea-wave spent and broken on a rocky shore.
The last moment of extreme peril came five years later, in 207B.C.The wise foresight of the Senate at the outset of the war had so far secured the Roman hold on Spain, and no reinforcements had reached Hannibalfrom that source. At last his loyal and able brother Hasdrubal eluded the Roman army there, and by taking a new route—that of Wellington in the Peninsular War—avoided all opposition from the Romans in northern Spain. Communications with Italy were now at last open, though not by sea, as they should have been had the government at Carthage thrown its whole strength into the work of building up its naval power afresh. Hasdrubal was forced to cross the Alps, and this he did with better knowledge and with less loss than his brother. He made his way through the Gallic territory and reached Ariminum (Rimini). Hannibal was in Apulia, where one consul was holding him in check and dealing with disaffected Italians; the other was waiting for the invader on the great coast road south of Ariminum. Hasdrubal sent dispatches to his brother informing him of his arrival and suggesting plans of co-operation; but there were Roman troops everywhere, and the messengers fell into the hands of the enemy. The consul in the south, Claudius Nero, discovering thus the danger, took a step, without orders from the Senate, which has made his name forever famous. He left sufficient force to hold Hannibal, and slipped away with 7000 picked men, without being discovered even by the most wily of commanders. He marched into the camp of Livius, the other consul, by night, after a march of some 200 miles, all the loyal people of central Italy feeding and blessing his army as he went. Two days later the most decisive battle of the war was fought on the banks of the little river Metaurus, which runs into the sea from the Apennines a few miles south of Ariminum. The Romans were this time completely victorious; the invading army was utterly destroyed, and Hasdrubal was killed fighting hard to the last. Nero went swiftly southwards to his original station, and flung the head of Hasdrubal—so it was said—into his brother’s camp. For the first time during the long weary years of the war Rome was mad with joy; and almost for the first time in her history we note a genuine outburst of gratitude to the gods for this their inestimable blessing. Gratitude, whether to god or man, was not a conspicuous trait in the Roman character; but now, in a moment of real religious emotion, the first thought is one ofthankfulness that “the peace of the gods” is fully restored. It was not only that the Senate ordered a public thanksgiving of three days, but that men and women alike took advantage of it to press in crowds to the temples, the mothers, in their finest robes, bringing their children with them.
The rest of the war-story is soon told. The man who had let Hasdrubal escape him in Spain was a young Scipio, son of a Scipio who had done good work and lost his life there earlier in the war. He himself was a young man of real ability, whose character has always been to some extent a mystery. He was a new type of Roman, one not wholly without imagination, and the long years that he spent in Spain without rivals to check him had perhaps made him cherish and develop his own individuality more than was possible for the staid Roman noble of the old type at home. He believed profoundly in himself, and had the gift of making others believe in him. Returning home the year after the Metaurus battle, he was elected consul, though not yet of the legal age, and had Sicily given him as his province, where after many vicissitudes the Romans were now supreme.He at once proposed to invade Africa, and so to force Hannibal to leave Italy; and the Senate, though they could not or would not risk a large force, gave him leave to make the attempt.
Scipio crossed to Africa in 204B.C., and ere long the Carthaginian government recalled Hannibal. The great general obeyed, sadly and unwillingly, and in 202 met Scipio in battle at Zama and was beaten; the undisciplined levies given him by the government were no match for Roman veterans. He himself now advised his people to make peace, and conducted the negotiations, thus doing what he could to make up for the irreparable damage done her in the war by his own implacable hatred of her rival. Carthage was no longer to be a naval power—that was definitely secured by the terms accorded her. She surrendered Spain to the victors, and agreed to pay a large war indemnity by instalments during fifty successive years. Her foreign policy was to be guided by Rome: she could no longer be called an independent State.
So ended this great trial of Roman endurance. No people has ever gone through aharder test and survived. The sense of duty and discipline never once failed them; Romans and Italians alike were ready to face death at any moment in defence of their country. But war, always mischievous, when prolonged can sow the seeds of much evil in the future; and we must confess with regret that we are to see but little more of the heroic qualities that had carried Rome through this great struggle.
“It was not merely that the disasters of the war had opened the eyes of public men to abuses which had grown up among them; it was not that they hastened to take measures by which such disasters might be prevented from occurring again. Not so much foresight as this was required. The question was at once simpler and more urgently pressing: it was how to prevent the cultivation of the country from falling into a condition of permanent decay.... Not only did it become necessary to inquire of political economy what means there were of increasing the wealth of a whole nation at once, but other reforms, less obviously adapted to the immediate need, were now eagerly carried into effect.”[7]
This passage does not refer to Italy and the Roman government after the great war,but to Prussia after she had succumbed to Napoleon and was forced to rest from sheer exhaustion. This rest, skilfully used by statesmen of genius, meant for Prussia recovery, and the opening of a great era of prosperity. If Rome in like manner could have given rest to a weary Italy, and brought all her practical skill to bear on the work of healing and mending, the next two centuries might have been far happier ones for her and for the world. But it is hard for young nations, as for young men, to realise the need of rest, and all the harder in ancient Italy, where fighting had hardly ceased to be looked on as “the natural industry of a vigorous State.” The Roman Senate was not ripe enough in knowledge of human nature to understand the mischief, moral as well as material, that a long war can cause, especially if the enemy has been in your country harrying and devouring, no one knowing when his turn will come to be ruined. And, indeed, we may doubt whether even if Rome’s leading men had been able to understand the nature of the mischief, they would have had the skill to discover and apply the necessary remedies.
This mischief and its results must be the subject of this chapter, for without getting some idea of it we cannot understand the perils to which civilisation was exposed in the next two hundred years by Roman degeneracy, or the way in which they were eventually overcome. But I must just glance, to start with, at the policy actually pursued by the Senate in the period following the war, which placed Rome in the position of arbiter of the whole Mediterranean world, and mistress of a territory many times as large as Italy.
The two recent invasions of Italy by formidable enemies must have taught the Senate the necessity of making it impossible that there should be another. But another might yet be looked for—so at least they believed—not from Spain or Africa, but from the great military power of Macedon. Philip of Macedon had been among Rome’s enemies since Cannæ; but not even Hannibal could persuade him to attack her with vigour, and he missed his chance. Roman diplomacy had stirred up the Greeks against him, and he had plenty to do at home. But no sooner was Carthage crushed than the Senate coaxed thetired and unwilling people into declaring war against him, and this led in the course of the next half-century to the overthrow of the Macedonian kingdom, and finally to its absorption into what we must now begin to call the Roman Empire. At the same time, Rome acquired a protectorate over the whole of Greece, at first honestly meant to defend her against Macedon, but destined to pass rapidly into dominion. The Greeks in their leagues and cities were never again really free. If they could have kept from quarrelling among themselves, they might have endured this protectorate with profit; but ere Rome had done with them they were to feel her heavy hand.
Thus the “peasants of the Tiber” became masters of the Balkan peninsula as well as of that of Italy. In the same period they completed the conquest of Italy up to the Alps, not without difficulties and defeats, and went on driving their roads and planting colonies in all parts. In the Spanish peninsula, from which the Carthaginians had been finally driven, they now established two permanent commands (provinciæ), one in the basin of the Ebro in the north-east, and the otherin the fertile valleys of the Guadiana and Guadalquivir, as the two great rivers of southern Spain are now called. From these they slowly but persistently, after their manner, and in spite of many defeats and even disgraces, pushed up into the high tablelands of central Spain, until they had brought the greater part of the peninsula under their sway. Here they had to deal with a people very different from the weary and exhausted Greeks and Macedonians; a people only half civilised, but lively, intelligent and capable of making excellent soldiers, as Hannibal had found. It is to the credit of the Romans that, in spite of much cruelty and misgovernment, they gave this peninsula a real civilisation, of which the traces are still abundant especially in the south, and a beautiful language, which descends directly from their own.
In order to maintain their communications with Spain by land as well as by sea, they also had to look to the coast between the western Alps and the Pyrenees. Here they made a lasting alliance with the ancient and flourishing Greek colony, Massilia (Marseille); and in defending Massilia from theattacks of mountain tribes they were gradually drawn into the acquisition of a permanent hold on the lower valley of the Rhone. This, again, in due time very naturally became the starting-point for fresh advance into the heart of modern France. No one who has seen the Rhone from Lyons to Marseilles can resist the conclusion that a power in possession of its lower reaches must inevitably advance along it northward.
There is yet a fourth peninsula in this land-locked sea, known for want of a better name as Asia Minor, which juts out from the Asiatic continent, and forms a meeting-place for Eastern and Western civilisations. This was in the last three centuriesB.C.the fighting-ground of the successors of Alexander the Great, kings of Macedon, Pergamum, Syria and Egypt, who wasted the vigour of humanity in wars that to us seem needless. The Romans were soon drawn into a war with the king of Syria, an ally of Philip of Macedon, and won a great victory in this peninsula in the year 190B.C.But they annexed no territory here until the last king of Pergamum left his kingdom to Rome by will some sixty years later. The Senate preferredto act as arbitrator, to make alliances, to reward friendly states, to use diplomacy rather than force; and on the whole they succeeded. Their policy was often tortuous, sometimes even mean, but in the long run it did more good than harm to humanity that a young and virile people should interfere among these monarchies.
Thus, whether we look west or east in the Mediterranean, we find the Roman power predominant everywhere within eighty years from the end of the war with Hannibal. It is not easy to explain in a few words what drove this power onwards. It was not simply the commercial motive, as with Carthage. It was not simply the desire to conquer and annex, for the Senate was slow to undertake new duties of government abroad if their object could be attained in some other way. But what was that object? Undoubtedly it was self-defence to begin with; but self-defence, once successful, only too easily slips into self-assertion. This self-assertion, as we see it in Roman policy, may perhaps be compared with that which governs German foreign policy now—the determination to have a voice in all matters within her“sphere of interest.” No Roman senator had a doubt that his people were the strongest and most competent to control the world, which is exactly what the patriotic German believes now. And the constant assertion of this proud conviction brought many suitors and suppliants to Rome, whose presence flattered Roman pride, and whose diplomacy sometimes involved the government in new wars, giving ambitious consuls their opportunity of increasing the fame and the wealth of themselves and their families. So in due time there arose a dominion of the following military commands or provinces: one in Sicily, one in Sardinia, two in Spain, one in southern Gaul, one in Macedonia with Greece attached to it, one in Asia Minor, and one in Africa, after the destruction of Carthage by her old enemy in 146B.C.Of the method of governing these provinces I will say something in another chapter. Now let us try to estimate some of the results of these continuous wars in distant parts, taken together with the long struggle with Carthage. We shall find a change in every department of the people’s life, and in almost all a change for the worse.
First, let us look at that family life which formed the essential fibre of the old body politic, and provided the most powerful factor in the Roman character. We have but to think of the immense numbers of citizens killed or captured in war, or carried off by the pestilences that always follow war, to see what paralysis of family life there must have been. Fathers and grown-up sons innumerable never came home at all; and long service far from home would, in any case, deprive the family of the natural influence and authority of its head. Mothers might do much to fill up the gap, and the tradition of the dignified and righteous Roman lady was not as yet wholly weakened; but there are signs that the women in this period were getting steadily more excitable, more self-asserting, more luxurious. It is in this age that divorce begins to make its appearance, a sure sign of the decay of the old family life. There were rumours, too, of the poisoning of husbands by their wives, and on one occasion two noble ladies were put to death for this crime by the verdict of a council of relations. In an extraordinary attempt to introduce into Italy the exciting orgies ofthe Greek religion of Dionysus, women were among the most prominent offenders. The changing position of women at this time is illustrated by a famous saying of Cato, that “all men rule over women, we Romans rule over all men, and our wives rule over us.”
With the decay of the old family life, the wholesome training of the children in manly conduct (virtus) and sense of duty (pietas) could not but suffer, too. Old-fashioned families would keep it up, but among the lower classes it was hard to do so owing to bad housing and crowding in the city; and in the noble families there was undoubtedly a change for the worse, though we know of one or two great men of this age who took pains with the moral as well as the intellectual training of their boys.[8]For a people controlling the Mediterranean world it was necessary to educate the mental faculties, and more especially to teach a boy to speak and read Greek, which was the language of half the civilised world, and the language of commerceeverywhere. Now Rome could not supply teachers for this kind of education; Romans were not competent, nor would they have condescended to such work. The Greeks were the one people who could undertake what we call the higher education, and they were now beginning to swarm in Rome. Some Greek teachers were free men, but the greater number were slaves captured in the wars; and thus the first requisite in a school-master, that he should be looked up to and willingly obeyed, was too often absent in this new education. It is men, not methods, that really tell in education. In his heart, as we know from many striking passages in Roman literature, the grown-up Roman despised the Greek, and we may be sure that the Roman boy did too. Greek literature and rhetoric, now fast becoming the staple of the higher education, could never make up for the lack of moral discipline. If we find a spirit of lawlessness in the coming age, and a want of self-restraint in dealing with enemies or opponents, we shall not be far wrong in ascribing it in great part to the loss of the wholesome home influence, and to the introduction of an education outside the home, which entirelyfailed to make up for the decay of the simple old training in duty and discipline.
The fact is that the Romans were now coming under the influence of a new idea of life, in which the individual played a more important part than ever before at Rome. The Roman of the past had grown up modelled on a type and fixed in a group, so that the individual had little chance of asserting himself; but now we find him asserting himself in every direction, and in every class of society. To think for oneself, even in matters of religion; to speak from personal motives in the senate or law-courts; to aim at one’s own advancement in position or wealth—all this seemed natural and inevitable to the men of that day. And so by degrees the individual became the mainspring of action instead of the State. There were some noble exceptions, but most of the leading men played their own game, and often won it at the expense of the State. Many a general hurried on operations towards the close of his command so as not to be superseded before he could earn a triumph, and pass in splendid procession up to the temple on the Capitol, with chained captives following his chariot.And the small men became more and more unwilling to serve as soldiers in distant lands, and more and more rebellious against discipline. In little more than half-a-century after Hannibal had left Italy the Roman armies were beginning to be incapable of their work.
Along with this too rapid growth of the individual, we have to take account of the sudden incoming of wealth and growth of capital. The old Roman family group had no capital except its land and stock. But now, as the result of plunder and extortion in the provinces, most men of the upper classes had some capital in money, and this was almost always invested in public works and State undertakings of all kinds,e.g.the raising of taxes and the fitting out of fleets and armies. These things were all done by contract, and the contracts were taken by companies, in which every man was a shareholder who had anything to invest. Thus the inflow of wealth brought with it the desire of making money, and the forum of Rome became a kind of stock-exchange in which the buying and selling of shares was always going on, and where every man was tryingto outwit his neighbour. Of a really productive use of capital in industry or commerce we hear very little; and it would seem that the Roman of that day had no idea of using his means or opportunities in ways likely to produce well-being in the world.
If we turn to rural Italy, the prospect is hardly less dreary. Incalculable damage had been done to agriculture in the great war, and agriculture, in the broad sense of the word, was almost the only Italian industry. Corn, wine, oil, wool and leather had formerly been produced in sufficient quantities to keep the inhabitants in food and clothing, each community growing what it needed, as in mediæval England. But this simple form of agricultural economy must have suffered a severe shock, not only from the ravages of armies, but from the decrease of the working population owing to war and pestilence.
In order to restore a decaying industry you must have the men to work it. Depopulation as the result mainly of war was a disease epidemic in the Mediterranean in this age; and in Italy we know for certain how rife it was, for we have the records of the census of the body of Roman citizens,which show a steady falling-off in this period, and we must suppose that the same causes were at work among the non-Roman population of the peninsula. There was, indeed, a remedy, but it was almost worse than the disease—I mean the vast numbers of slaves now available for labour. The unskilled slaves, captured or kidnapped in Spain, Gaul, Epirus, Thrace or Asia Minor, were cheap in the Roman market, and would do well enough to run a farm with, especially if that farm were chiefly a pastoral one, with flocks and herds needing no great experience or skill to look after. This cheapness, and the physical conditions of rural life in a mountainous country, made cattle-running and sheep-tending a profitable industry. Large districts of Italy, especially in the centre and south, became covered in this period with huge estates owned by capitalists, and worked by rough and often savage slaves, who were locked up at night in underground prisons and treated simply as “living tools.” No ray of hope ever broke in on these miserable beings; no free citizen gave a thought either to their condition or the economic danger of the system; philanthropy andpolitical economy were unknown in the Roman world, for imagination and reflection were alike foreign to the Roman mental habit
Even on the estates of moderate size which were not entirely pastoral, slave-labour was the rule. We know something of such a farm from the treatise on agriculture written by Cato at this time, which has come down to us entire; and it is plain from what he says that though free labour might be employed at certain seasons,e.g.at harvest, the economic basis of the business was slave-labour. There is no doubt that all over Italy the small farm and the free cultivator were fast disappearing, with the rapid growth of capital and the cheapness of slaves. In the city of Rome, now beginning to harbour a vast population of many races, the number of domestic slaves tended constantly to increase; they were employed in every capacity by men of wealth and business. Many of them were cultivated men, Greeks for example, who could act as clerks, secretaries or teachers, and these had a fair chance of earning their freedom in time; but great numbers were low and vicious beings, who had no moralstandard but that of obedience to a master, no moral sanction except punishment.
Thus, though the shrinkage of the free population was evil enough, the remedy for it was even worse. The slave, plucked up by the roots from the soil in which he had flourished in his native land, deprived of family, property, religion, must in the majority of cases become a demoralised and hopeless being. In the plays of Plautus, which date from this period, the slave is a liar and a thief, and apparently without a conscience. For the slave-owner, too, the moral results were bad enough, though not so obvious at first sight. A man who is served by scores of fellow-creatures who are absolutely at his mercy is liable to have his sense of duty gradually paralysed. Towards them he has no obligations, only rights; and thus his sense of duty towards his free fellow-citizens is apt to be paralysed too. A habit of mind acquired in dealing with one set of men naturally extends itself and affects all human relations. And so the Roman character, naturally hard enough, came in the later days of the Republic to be harder than ever. In our next two chapters we shall meetwith unmistakable proofs of this. Incredible cruelty, recklessness of human life, callousness in dealing with the vanquished and the subject peoples, meet us at every turn in that dark age of Mediterranean history. Under the baleful influence of slavery the hard Roman nature had become brutalised; and we have to wait for the Christian era before we find any sign of sympathy with that vast mass of suffering humanity with which the Roman dominion was populated.
We must glance in the last place at the change brought about by the wars in another department of Roman life, viz. in the working of the constitution. The reader will remember that in early Rome the salient feature in that constitution was theimperiumof the magistrate, just as in private life the salient feature was the discipline of the family under the rule of the head of the household. The man who held theimperiumwas irresistible so long as he held it, though a wise custom made it necessary for him to seek the advice of his council, the Senate, in all questions of grave importance. But now the long wars took the consul and hisimperiumaway from the city for long periods, and as the Empirebegan to grow up and include provinces beyond sea, those periods became longer and longer. There were, indeed, always two magistrates withimperiumin Rome, the prætors, who for long past had been elected yearly to help the consuls in judicial business; but the prestige of theirimperiumnever reached the level of that of the consuls. And even when a consul returned home, though the majesty of theimperiumwas present in his person as ever, it was not his hand that was really on the helm. The decision of great questions did not lie with him, but with his Council, whose knowledge of affairs and whose “courage never to submit or yield,” had carried Rome safely through a long series of unexampled trials.
In the period after the war with Hannibal, the Senate, not theimperium, is clearly the paramount power in the working of the constitutional machinery. To take a single instance: when the people declined to sanction the war with Philip of Macedon, the Senate directed the consul to convince them that they were wrong, and both consul and people bowed to its will. They had other agents in the tribunes of the people, if theconsuls failed them, and would now and then even coerce a consul by means of the power of the tribune. But what chiefly gave the Senate its power was the fact that it was the only permanent part of the government. A senator held office for life unless ejected by the Censor for immorality, while all the magistrates were elected for a year only. In the Senate there sat for life every man who had held high office and done the State good service, and as there were some three hundred of these, it was almost impossible for the yearly holders ofimperiumto resist their deliberate judgments. And for those judgments the Senate was responsible to no man.
Probably no assembly has ever comprised so much practical wisdom and experience as the Roman Senate of this period; but that wisdom and that experience was limited to the working of the constitution, the control of foreign affairs, and the direction and supply of armies. As has already been hinted, when it came to providing remedies for economic and moral evils such as I have been sketching, the Senators were useless; they had no training in the art of the State physician, and no desire to learn how to diagnose disease. Theywere almost all men of the same type, and with the same public and private interests. They belonged, in fact, to a few noble families, and new blood was seldom to be found in their ranks; for though they had all at one time or other been elected to office by the people, the choice of the people almost always fell upon members of the old tried families. The principle that the son of a family that has done good service to the State will be likely himself to do such service, seems to have taken firm hold of the mind of the Roman voter; and thus it came about that the Senate, in spite of its great capacity for business, gradually became anoligarchicalbody—the mouthpiece of one class of society. The principle is by no means a bad one in some stages of social growth, but it is sure in the long run to produce the vices as well as the virtues of oligarchy—the dislike of any kind of change, the narrow view of social life, the want of sympathy with other classes and of the desire to understand their needs. We shall see in the next two chapters how these oligarchical weaknesses brought the Senatorial government to an ignominious end. It had saved the State from its deadliest enemy;it had laid the foundations of the Roman Empire; but it failed utterly when called on to do the nobler work of justice and humanity.
This aptly brings us to our last point in this chapter. As the Roman oligarchy stood to the people, so Rome herself stood as an oligarchy to the populations of her Empire. The Roman citizen was the one most highly privileged person in the civilised world of that day. The great prize of his citizenship was not, as we might suppose it would be, the right to vote in the assemblies, to choose magistrates and pass or reject laws, nor the right to hold office if elected, for to that distinction very few could aspire; it was really the legal protection of his person and his property wherever he might be in the Empire. No one could maltreat his person with impunity; a fact well illustrated in the life of St. Paul (Acts xxii. 25 foll.). He could do business everywhere with the certainty that his sales, purchases, contracts, would be recognised and defended by Roman law, while the non-citizen had no such guarantees for his transactions. No other city in the Mediterranean had a citizenship to compare with this in practical value, for the Roman lawwas gradually becoming the only system of law with a real force behind it. To live a life of security and prosperity you must be a Roman citizen.
We, in these days of comparative enlightenment, might perhaps imagine that with a gift like this citizenship in their hands the Romans would have been quick to reward their faithful Italian allies, who had served in their armies all through these wars, by lifting them to their own level of social and political privilege. But if so, we should be ascribing to the human nature of Roman times a degree of generosity and sympathy which was, in fact, almost unknown. We might fancy that they would have grasped the fact that their old city-state had outgrown its cradle, that Italy and not the city of Rome now really supplied the force with which the world was ruled, and that they would put the Italians on the same level of advantage as themselves, at least as regards the protection of person and property. But after the war with Hannibal the tendency was rather in the other direction. All allied Italian cities continued to have to supply contingents to Roman armies and fleets; yetRome offered them no privileges to make up for these burdens, and her magistrates got more and more into the habit of treating them as inferiors. The Latins, too, that is the old cities of the Latin league, and the colonies with Latinright, as it was now called, who already had some of the privileges of citizenship, were carefully prevented from acquiring more, from becoming full citizens of Rome. In this exclusive policy, which seems to us mean and ungrateful, the Roman government undoubtedly lost a great chance, and had to pay dearly later on for her negligence.
The fact was that the imperial idea had taken hold of the governing Romans with a force to which that of our British “imperialism” cannot compare for a moment. They were so busy governing, negotiating, arbitrating and making money, that the condition and claims of their own city and country failed to attract the attention of any but a very few among the educated aristocracy. Depopulation, decline of agriculture, slavery and its accompanying evils, injustice to the Italian allies and the ever-growing discontent occasioned by it, misgovernment and plunderin the provinces, all these sources of mischief were now accumulating force, and were before long to bring the whole Roman system to the brink of ruin. But Rome on the brink of ruin meant civilisation in imminent danger; for no other power could any longer withstand the barbarians of northern Europe, who were even now beginning to press down into sunny southern lands. So it is that the story of the succeeding century, the last before the Christian era, is one of the most thrilling interest. How did Rome survive and overcome these dangers with renewed strength, and succeed in organising an Empire on the firm foundations of law and justice, destined to hold the barbarians at bay long enough to inspire them with profound respect for the civilisation they were attacking? This question we will try to answer in the remaining chapters of this book.
Enough was said in the last chapter to show that the age we are now coming to, the last century before Christ, was one full of great issues—not only for Rome, but for all western civilisation. The perils threatening, both internal and external, were so real as to call for statesmen and soldiers of the highest quality; and as we shall see, this call was answered. It was this century that produced most of the famous Romans whose names are familiar to us: the two Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cicero, Cæsar, and finally Augustus, all of whom helped in various ways to save Italy and the Empire from premature dissolution. It was, in fact, an age of great personalities, and one, too, in which personal character became as deeply interesting to the men of the time as it is even now to us. For as the disciplinary force of the State waned, the individual was left freer tomake his own force felt; and so great was that force at times, that we are tempted to fix our attention on the man, and to forget the complicated motives and interests of the world in which he was acting. Undoubtedly we should be wrong in doing so; for a very small acquaintance with the facts would show us these great men struggling incessantly with difficulties, and carried out of their own natural course by adverse currents. But none the less it is true that hardly any other period of history shows so much, for good and evil alike, depending on individual character. So as the last chapter dealt mainly with perils and problems, our next two will be occupied with the efforts of these famous men to meet the perils and solve the problems.
Depopulation and the decline of agriculture were the first of the perils to be considered seriously. This was done in the year 133B.C., not by the Senate, whose business it really was, but by a young and enthusiastic noble, in some ways one of the finest characters in Roman history. Tiberius Gracchus had the right instinct of the old Roman for duty, and for a Roman he had an unusually tender andgenerous nature; but he had not the experience and knowledge necessary for one who would take this difficult problem in hand, which in our day would be prepared for legislation by careful inquiry about facts, conducted by authorised experts. His education had been mainly Greek, and a study of hard facts did not form a part of it.
Still, he was able to enlist the help of some capable men, and produced and finally carried a bill which may be called a Small Holdings Act. No one was henceforward to hold more than 500jugera(about 300 acres) ofpublic land, or if he had sons, 250 more for each of two. Public land was land owned by the State, but occupied by private men who paid (or ought to have paid) rent for it in some form. Land owned as well as occupied by private men could not be touched; but there was abundance of the other, for the State had retained its hold on a large part of the land of Italy acquired by Rome. This land was now to be divided up in allotments, the State retaining its ownership and forbidding sale, a futile attempt to keep the settlers on the land, even against their will. This courageous plan for bringing the people back to theland was put in action at once, and we still have a few of the inscribed boundary stones set up by the commissioners chosen to carry it out. And there is reason to believe that it did some good in regard both to depopulation and agriculture. The Senate made no serious attempt to interfere with it when once it was passed, and it continued in force for many years.
But unluckily the Senate had done all it could to prevent the bill passing; they would have nothing to say to it, and they put up a tribune to veto it. The veto of the tribune of the plebs was an essential part of the constitution, and could not be disregarded; but Gracchus, also a tribune, had but one year of office, and if he could not get his bill through during that year, he must give up the attempt for a long while. Enthusiasm got the better of prudence; he deliberately broke with law and usage; he defied the Senate and its prerogative, and he carried a bill deposing the tribune who acted for the Senate. He also proposed to offer himself as a candidate for re-election, contrary to the custom if not the law of the constitution. With the highest motives he thus laid himself open to the charge ofmaking himself master of the State, by violating the custom of its forefathers (mos majorum). It had always been a maxim of Roman law that the man who aimed at tyranny might be slain by any one; and now that even the best aristocrats believed Gracchus guilty, this was the fate that overtook him. He was killed on the Capitol, and the cowardly rabble made no attempt to save him.
The story is perhaps the saddest in Roman history. A little more patience and practical wisdom, a little more of the spirit of compromise on either side, might have saved the situation. The old Roman discipline had avoided violence, and got over constitutional difficulties by consent; now Gracchus laid a violent hand on the constitution, and was repaid with violence by its unworthy defenders. Intending only reform, he ended with starting revolution.
There was another enemy within the gates beside depopulation, one not less to be feared, but less easy to realise as an enemy; I mean slave-labour. Gracchus may be pardoned for making no direct attempt to attack it, though just before his tribunate there had been arising of slaves in Sicily which showed the military as well as the economic danger of the situation. It is said that 200,000 slaves were in rebellion there at one time, and the war was only ended after a long struggle. These risings, more of which followed at intervals, and finally a most formidable one in Italy sixty years later, were symptoms of a disease calling for a very skilful physician; but no physician was to be found until Cæsar tried to make a beginning. As yet the Romans had not had time to realise this danger; living in an atmosphere of slave-labour, they believed that they throve on it. And as this was in one sense true, owing to the decrease of the free labouring population, the evil was too subtle for an uncritical people to discern. In spite of all these dangerous risings, there is no sign in the copious literature of this last century of the Republic of any consciousness of the poison at work.
Nine years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, his younger brother Gaius, elected tribune, took up his work and went far beyond his designs. In this most interesting and able man we come at last upon a Romanstatesman of the highest order; a practical man, no mere idealist of the new Greek school, and yet a man of genius and a born leader of men. We possess a picture of him, evidently drawn from the life by one who knew him, which shows these gifts at a glance.[9]When he was at the height of his activity, busy with a multitude of details, he seems to have given that eyewitness the impression that he was almost a monarch. But a close study of all we are told about him seems to prove that he was in reality one of those rare men, like Cæsar later on, who profoundly believe that they can do the work needed by the State better than any other man, and who are justified in that belief. He would see to the carrying out of his own measures with astonishing speed, sparing no pains, amazing even his enemies by the unflagging energy with which he worked, and by the way he contrived to get work out of others. Perhaps the secret was that he was a gentleman in the best and noblest sense of that word; for Plutarch says that in his dealings with men he wasalwaysdignified, yet always courteous, invariably giving to every man his due.
In fact, the personality of this man is the real explanation of his work. If it had been possible for him to retain that personal influence which Plutarch emphasises, and to keep his legislative power even for a few years, as a modern statesman may expect to keep it, it is quite possible that Rome might have escaped an era of danger and degeneracy. But that could not be. A triple-headed Cerberus was guarding the path that led to effectual reform: the forms of the old constitution, out of date many of them, and unsuited to the needs of a great empire: the narrow spirit of the oligarchical faction, opposed, for self-regarding reasons, to all change: and lastly, the mean and fickle temper of the mongrel city populace, whose power was sovereign in legislation and elections. In the effort to overcome this Cerberus Gracchus lost his precious personal influence, and found his original designs warped from their true bearing. He survived through two tribunates, in the course of which he did much valuable work, but in the third year he was brutally and needlessly slain by his political enemies. Already Romehad put to death two of the most valuable men she ever produced, and in the coming century she was to put to death many more.
He had begun his work by a noble effort so to mend the constitution that a reformer might be able to pass his laws without breaking it, as Tiberius had been tempted to do. He tried to increase the numbers of the Senate, so as to leaven that great council, which he rightly looked on as the working centre of the constitution, with new ideas and wider interests. And he sought, too, to solve the great problem of citizenship, by giving the Italians some effectual share in it, and so at least the chance of making their voice heard in Roman politics. But for such measures of real progress neither Senate nor people were ready: the Senate was the stronghold of old prejudices, and the people were not pleased to admit Italians to its privileges. Both these great projects, which show how far-reaching Gracchus’s views as a statesman were, proved complete failures.
To conciliate the Senate became more and more hopeless as Gracchus lost his personal influence, and he gave up the attempt. Instead, he dealt the senatorial oligarchy aheavy blow by depriving senators of the right to sit in judgment on ex-provincial governors accused of extortion (a crime now becoming only too common), and giving it to the class below, the Equites, or men of business. Thus he made a split between the two upper classes of society, which had very unfortunate results. Not less unhappy was another measure, meant to conciliate the hungry free population of the city, on which he must depend for the passing of his laws. There had long been a difficulty in feeding this population: for its number had increased beyond all expectation, the corn-supply was not properly organised, and the price of grain was constantly fluctuating. Recognising the fact that any legislator was in peril who could not make it impossible that the price should rise suddenly, he fixed a permanent price, more than half below the normal, to be maintained at State cost, whether or no the State were a loser. But here he went too far, and gave later and less scrupulous demagogues the chance of making still more serious mischief. No doubt he thought that the State need not be a loser, if production, transport, warehousing and finance were organised as hemeant to organise them; but there is also little doubt that he was mistaken, and that henceforward the “people” were really being fed largely at the expense of the State, and lapsing into a condition of semi-pauperism.
I have said enough to show how sad was the failure of the first real statesman produced by Rome. Yet Gracchus was able to do some useful work which survived. Under his auspices was passed a great law, of the text of which we still possess about one-third, for the trial of provincial governors accused of extortion: and we know of another, bearing his own name, which regulated the succession to these governorships with justice and wisdom. Also he took up his brother’s land bill, and carried it on with that practical persistency which is reflected, as we saw, in Plutarch’s life of him. But in spite of high aims and some successes, his story is a sad one; and the loss to Italy and the Empire at that moment of a man of righteous aims and practical genius was simply incalculable.
Whatever else the Gracchi did, or failed to do, they undoubtedly succeeded, both in their lives and in their deaths, in shaking the power and prestige of the senatorial government;and nothing had been put in its place, nor had it even been reformed. Henceforward for a long period there was no constitution that could claim an honest man’s loyalty or devotion; the idea of the State was growing dim, and the result was inefficiency in every department. The governing class was corrupt and the army undisciplined, and this at a time when there was coming upon Rome, and upon the civilised world, a period of extreme peril from foreign enemies. This corruption and inefficiency became obvious a few years after the death of the younger Gracchus in a long struggle with a Numidian chief in the province of Africa, who contrived to outwit and defy Roman envoys and Roman armies, by taking advantage of the corruptibility of the one and the indiscipline of the other. Luckily for Rome this war produced a great soldier in Gaius Marius, a “new man” of Italian birth, and another in L. Cornelius Sulla, a man of high patrician family; and these two, though destined to be the bitterest foes, brought the war to a successful end.
But a far greater peril was threatening Italy herself. As we look at the map of Italy, or better still (if we have the chance) as we lookup at the huge rampart of the Alps from the plain of the Po, we are tempted to think of this great barrier as impenetrable. But mountain ranges are always weak lines of defence, and history, ancient and modern alike, has abundantly proved that Italy is open to invasion from the north. Hannibal and his brother had pierced the western flank of the range, where later on there were regular thoroughfares between Rome and her western provinces; and at the eastern end, where the passes gradually lessen in height, access was easy into Italy from the north-east. Beyond this mountain barrier, at the time we have now reached, there was much disturbance going on: hungry masses of population were moving about in search of fertile land to settle in, themselves pressed on by other peoples in the same restless condition. In 113B.C.a great migrating host, apparently of Germans, but probably gathering other peoples as it advanced, seemed to threaten the weak point of the eastern Alps.
A consul with an army was in Illyria, and tried to stop them in the country now called Carinthia, but was badly beaten. If there had been a man of genius at their head, theenemy might have penetrated into Italy; as happened again just a century later, there was nothing to stop them between the Alps and Rome. But the great host was not tempted, and pursued its way westward. In 109 they suddenly appeared beyond the western Alps, where they destroyed another consular army, and yet another fell before the Gauls of that region. Then in 105, at Orange, in Roman territory, while trying to cover the road to Massilia and so into Italy, the Romans experienced a defeat almost as terrible as that of Cannæ and half the Empire lay open to the victors. But once again they left their prey untouched, and passed westwards in search of easier conquests.
Rome had a breathing-time of nearly three years, and she also had the right man to save her. Marius remodelled the army, revolutionising it in equipment, tactics, and discipline. For material he was driven hard, and had to find recruits as best he could, drawing them from all parts of the Empire: but he had time to drill them into fine soldiers, and to lay the foundation of a marvellously perfect human defence for Mediterranean civilisation. The result was one great victorynear Marseilles, and another at the eastern end of north Italy, into which the barbarians had at last penetrated: and Italy was once more secure.
Now we have to see how this peril, or rather the effort made to escape it, led to changes of the most far-reaching character in the Roman power and polity. Italy had not been saved by Roman armies or the Roman government, but by Marius and the army which he had created. For five successive years Marius was consul, contrary to all precedent, away from Rome; and the army he created looked to him, not to Rome, for pay, promotion, and discharge. We may call that host of his a Mediterranean army under the command of an Italian. It was far more like Hannibal’s army than like the old Roman citizen armies that had won the supremacy in Italy; it was a professional army devoted to its general, but with little thought of the Roman State whose servant he was. And henceforward, until Augustus restored the sense of duty to the State, the Roman armies, excellent now as fighting machines, and destined to secure effective frontiers for the Empire, were the men of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Cæsar, and aconstant source of anxiety and danger for the State whom they were supposed to serve.
This “long-service army” brought Rome face to face with another difficulty, and led indirectly to another great peril. When the soldiers returned home after many years of service in distant regions, what was to be done with them? Many, perhaps most of them, had no homes to go to. The veterans might naturally demand some permanent settlement, but the Senate showed no sign of appreciating the problem, and in this matter the general was helpless without the Senate. So it happened that many of them lapsed into the crowded city, to pick up a living we know not how, with the help of the distribution of cheap corn. Among them were beyond doubt numbers of non-citizens, who could not legally vote in elections or legislation, and were inadequately protected in regard to person and property, in spite of all the long service they had gone through. These men began to offer themselves as voters, and to exercise the rights of citizenship illegally; yet the confusion of the registers was such that they could not be detected. At last the adulteration ofthe Roman citizen body became so obvious that the consuls of 95B.C.passed a law with the object of making it clear who was a citizen and who was not, and of eliminating those who were not really privileged.
But it was now too late to take such a step. News of it spread over all Italy, and it was construed as a deliberate attempt to exclude Italians from the citizenship. Five years later another vain attempt was made by a noble tribune to do as Gracchus had wished to do, to extend the citizenship and to enlarge the Senate: but he was assassinated before his laws were passed, and then at last there followed the inevitable outbreak, perhaps long meditated. The social war, as it is called, in reality a civil war, was a crisis in the history of European development. When it was over, the ancient city-state of the Greeks and Italians had vanished in Italy, and in its place arose a new form of polity, for which there was then no name.
The sturdy peoples of central Italy entered on the desperate venture of setting up a rival power against Rome; a plan which, if successful, would have paralysed Rome’s work in the world whether for good or evil. Theychose the city of Corfinium, in the heart of the Apennines, some hundred miles east of Rome, gave it the new significant name Italica, and made it, as Washington is now, the city-centre of a federation, where deputies from the various members should meet and deliberate under the presidency of consuls. But now was seen the value of the strategical position of Rome. She could strike in any direction from inner lines, while safe from attack or blockade by sea; but Corfinium had no such natural strategic advantage, nor any unifying power. Yet the Italians were for some time successful in the field, and Rome was for a whole year in the utmost peril. At the end of that year (90B.C.) the Etruscans and Umbrians to north and east joined the confederates, and then for the first time Rome was likely to be put on the defensive, with enemies on her left flank, as well as on her right and in front. So a law was hastily passed giving the precious citizenship to all who had not taken up arms; and this was the beginning of a process by which, in some few years, the whole of Italy became Roman in the eye of the law, while, on the other hand, it might be said not untruly that Rome becameItalian. Henceforward we have to think of the whole peninsula as forming the material support of Mediterranean civilisation.
With this great change one might have expected that peace and harmony would return to Italy. But, on the contrary, she is now about to enter on the most terrible time that she has ever known; even her miserable feuds of the late Middle Ages never quite reached the horror of those of Marius and Sulla. It is hard to explain this; but looking back at what was said in the last chapter about the causes of demoralisation, it is possible to make a guess. We have to think of a vast slave State, worn out in the struggle with dangers within and without, enfeebled by constant warfare, and now given over into the hands of powerful military masters, with hosts of veterans at their beck and call. The State seemed to have lost its claim to loyalty, even to consideration: and in its place were rival generals, leaders also of political factions—in these years two, Marius the self-seeking champion of the Italians and the Roman plebs, and Sulla the self-seeking champion of the old aristocracy. All principles were lost on either side in the intensely bitter hatred ofthe parties and the personal rivalry of the leading men. It happened that a war was threatening in the East, of which we shall hear more in the next chapter; and the command in this war, the great prize of the moment, became a bone of contention outweighing all interest of the State.
The prize fell to Sulla; but no sooner was his back turned on Italy than the Marian faction fell on their political enemies and sought to destroy them by wholesale murder. Compromise was utterly forgotten; all the brutality of unbridled human nature was let loose. And when Sulla returned from the East, after driving the enemy out of Roman territory, the massacres were revenged by more massacres. The loss to Italy of many thousands of her best men, and among them scores who might have done good work in the world, was a calamity never to be repaired.
Where, one may ask, was the old Romangravitasandpietas, the self-restraint and sense of duty that had won an empire? It would seem as if the capacity for discipline were entirely lost, except in the long-service army.But the mere fact that in the army this survived is one not to be neglected, even if it were exercised less on behalf of the State than in the interest of the individual commander. For if there could be found a statesman-soldier who could identify himself with the true interest of the State, and so bring back not only the army, but the people to a right idea of Rome’s position and duty in the world, the Empire and civilisation might yet be saved. Without the army these could not be defended; and the one thing wanting was to make the army loyal to the State as well as to its general. Only the general himself could secure this loyalty, by making himself the true servant of the State.
But the man into whose hands Rome had now fallen was one who could not possibly identify himself with the best interests of the State, because an unsympathetic nature had denied him the power of discerning what those interests were. Sulla has been compared to Napoleon, and in one or two points the comparison holds good; but the two were utterly unlike in the main point, the power of sympathetic discernment. Napoleon, cruel and unscrupulous as he often was, showed plainly,when he organised the institutions of France, or Switzerland, or Egypt, that he understood the needs of those nations: he divined what would enable them to advance out of stagnation to some better form of life, social and political. But Sulla, though he saw that the call of the moment was for order at almost any price, for peace, strong government, and reform, went about his work in a way which proved that he did not delight in it, or care for the people for whom he was legislating. He did what was necessary for the moment, but did it with force ill concealed under constitutional forms. So no wise man rejoiced in his work, and the Roman people as a whole felt no loyalty towards him. He provided in many State departments an excellent machinery, but not the motive force to work it.
Nothing in history shows better how much in remedial legislation depends on the spirit in which it is undertaken. Sulla saw that the great council, the Senate, must be the central point and pivot of government, unless indeed there were a master at hand, like himself, to undertake it; that the popular assemblies, untrained in discussion and affairs, could notdo the work of administration. Though the theory of the constitution had always been that the people were sovereign, he contrived that the Senate, which had so long practically governed under an unwritten constitution, should now rule without let or hindrance on a basis of statute law; and here we see an unwritten constitution growing into a written one, as with us Britons at this moment. By a great law of treason, the first on the Roman statute book, he made it almost impossible to defy the Senate without the risk of political effacement.
This may be called reactionary, but under the circumstances it was not a reaction to be complained of. The pity was that this master legislator had really none to be grateful or loyal to him but his own army and followers. His constitutional legislation was for the most part swept away soon after his death, and there was no one to lament. On the other hand, all that he did that was not strictly political, and in particular his reorganisation of what we may call the civil service, and of the criminal law and procedure, was so obviously progressive and valuable that no one ever attempted to destroy it; andsome of his laws of this kind held good throughout Roman history.
Sulla attained his power in 81B.C., resigned it in 79, and died next year at his villa on the warm Campanian coast, where he had gone to enjoy himself in self-indulgence and literary dilettantism. Here he wrote that autobiography of which some few fragments have come down to us in Plutarch’sLifeof him—a life which will repay the reader, even in translation. One of these fragments has always seemed to me to throw real light on the man’s strange nature, and on the imperfection of his work. “All my most happy resolutions,” he wrote, “have been the result, not of reasoning, but of momentary inspiration.” In other words, Sulla did not believe in thinking over a problem, and herein he was a true Roman. He hoped to do the right thing on the spur of the moment. Thus it was that no one ever knew what he would do; no one could trust him nor believe in him. Like so many in that and succeeding ages he believed profoundly in Fortune: he called himself Sulla the Fortunate, and gave like names to his two children. What exactly he meant by Fortuna we cannot say; but we may besure that it was no such conception of a power ruling the world as might guide a statesman’s feet out of the path of self-seeking into a more bracing region of high endeavour.