The Comic History of Rome

Early in the year of the city 498, Regulus, having the field to himself, went into it with great confidence. He laid siege to the town of Adis, which the Carthaginians tried to relieve; but getting among the mountains with their elephants, they were unable to turn round, and found themselves encumbered by the trunks as well as the bodies of these ponderous animals. Regulus took Tunis, and several other places, though in the course of the campaign he is said to have encountered an unexpected enemy in the form of a snake in the grass – a species of serpent one hundred and twenty feet long, which swallowed up his soldiers by hundreds – swords and all – though the reptile ran the risk of cutting its own throat by such extreme voracity.43

The Carthaginians were anxious for peace, and sent ambassadors to the Roman camp to negotiate, but Regulus, in his proposal of terms, exceeded all reasonable limits. He pretended to act on the principle of give and take, but the giving was to be all on one side, and the taking all on the other. The Carthaginians returned no answer to these insolent demands; but it is probable their silence must soon have been construed into consent, had it not been for the valour of a Spartan of the name of Xanthippus. This individual was a mere mercenary, who put other people to death for his own living; but he was, at all events, a working man, and infused his own spirit of energy into the Carthaginian army. He personally superintended the training, not only of the men, but of the elephants, and taught the soldiers how to wield as a power those hitherto unwieldy animals. Taking a hundred under his immediate tuition, he brought them into such a state of docility, that when turned out for exercise, they formed a stud worthy of the zoologist's attentive study.

With these sagacious brutes, and a large number of troops, he went forth against Regulus, whose army amounted to 30,000 men; but the soldiers of Xanthippus fought with the courage of lions, which, backed up as it was by the firmness of the elephants, gave them a decisive victory. More than 30,000 Romans perished, if the accounts handed down to us are to be believed, and 500 were taken prisoners, though, if the same accounts are to be believed, the Roman army was only 30,000 strong; so that the 500 captives must have been supplied from some of those exclusive sources which are open to none but the historian. 2000 more are alleged to have escaped, but we must leave the reader to solve the difficulty as he can; for as two into one will not go, so 33,500 out of 30,000 will not come by any process we are acquainted with. Xanthippus, the mercenary, had made it worth his while, for he was highly paid, and received rich presents, with which, as he dreaded the envy of the nobles, he thought he had better make himself absent as speedily as possible. He returned, therefore, to Sparta, to astonish the natives of his own city with the wealth he had acquired.

The Consuls of the year, Ser. Fulvius and M. Aemilius, were now despatched with the whole of the Roman fleet, amounting to about 300 ships, to Africa, where, after destroying the whole of the Carthaginian fleet, it went ashore on the southern coast; and this fleet of 300 ships lost, according to the authorities,44 340 vessels. The Carthaginians, whose army on land amounted to about 18,000, managed to lose about 30,000 at sea; but an abundant population was still left for the historian to deal, or rather to cut and shuffle, with. We must confess ourselves wholly incompetent to grapple with the arithmetical problems that continually present themselves to us in the course of our researches, and we therefore postpone all attempt at a solution of the difficulty until the universal solvent shall be discovered.

The Romans and Carthaginians, instead of being overwhelmed by their own misfortunes, were in high spirits at the disasters of each other, and both parties proceeded to repair the damage done to themselves, in order to qualify them for doing further injury. At Rome the Senate ordered a new fleet to be built, which took several Carthaginian towns, and Carthage ordered a fresh army to be levied, which took nearly all the Roman vessels.

Shortly afterwards another naval force was despatched under the Consuls, Cn. Serulius Cæpio and C. Sempronius Blaesus, who had got together 260 ships, with which sundry ravages had been committed on the African coast, when the sea, with its insatiable appetite, swallowed up at a few gulps the greater part of the squadron.

Rome was now thoroughly sea-sick, and determined to have nothing more to do with the water, but to wash her hands of it. She was, however, still powerful by land, and encountered the Carthaginians at Panormus, where the pro-consul, L. C. Metellus, gained a decisive victory, by turning the elephants against their owners, and fighting the latter as it were with their own weapons. This defeat led to a desire on the part of Carthage for peace, and an embassy was sent to Rome, accompanied by Regulus, who had been a prisoner five years, and who agreed to consider himself morally in pawn, pledging himself to return, if the terms proposed by Carthage should not be acceded to by his countrymen. The conduct of Regulus seems to have been dictated by a strong love of histrionic display, for he appears to have been acting a part in which he sought to make as many effective points as possible. In the first act we find him at the gates of Rome, refusing to come in, although he had left Carthage for the purpose of doing so. His wife and two children having gone to meet him, he looked at them as strangers; but this piece of dramatic effect may be accounted for as springing from various other motives than those affecting the patriot.

Having been invited to take his seat in the Senate, he at first refused, but he yielded after a considerable amount of pressing; a proof that his refusal was founded on no fixed principle. When asked for his opinion on the Carthaginian question, he spoke against the arrangement he had been sent home to further, and the noble Romans strongly urged him to stay behind, though he had pledged his honour to return, and the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the religion of the nation, devised a dodge by which Regulus might have evaded his promise. It must, however, be stated, to his credit, that he kept his word to the Carthaginians, and returned among them; but instead of being hailed as a hero, he was denounced as an impostor, and put to death in the most cruel manner. The stories told of his being corked up in a cask filled with nails and serpents, are altogether false; for, after carefully looking into the matter, we are glad to be enabled to knock the cask to pieces by the gentlest tap possible.

Rome, having refused to make peace, was compelled, in self-defence, to go to war, and ordered 200 new ships with the recklessness of the spend-thrift who, calling on his coachmaker, desired that "some more gigs" should be immediately sent home to him. The Carthaginian fleet was in the harbour of Drepana, when P. Claudius Pulcher – son of Appius the blind, and who seems to have wilfully shut his eyes to the danger he ought to have seen – determined to surprise the enemy. Every attempt to dissuade him from his rash purpose was vain, and he persevered in spite of the auspices, which were declared to be unfavourable; for the sacred chickens were completely off their feed – a fact he set at defiance, by observing that, if the birds would not eat, he would at least make them drink; and he threw them all neck and crop into the water. The fate of the chickens went to the hearts of the Roman soldiers, who became thoroughly chicken-hearted, and fought so languidly, that they allowed themselves to fall by hundreds into the hands of the enemy. The Senate recalled Claudius to Rome, where a charge of high treason was preferred against him; but a thunder-storm interrupted the proceedings, which were never resumed, for the thunder seems to have cleared the air of all the clouds impending over him. As he must have ultimately died in some way or other, and as there are no records of his having been put to death, history has returned an open verdict, which is equally adapted to the suspicion that he came to his death by his own hands, or that it was brought to him by the hands of his fellow countrymen.

The reverses of Rome by sea were a second time the cause of her giving up her naval establishments, and she sold her marine equipments to the dealers in marine stores, at a ruinous sacrifice. Carthage, therefore, became mistress of the seas; but the mistress being unable to pay the wages she owed, began borrowing money of her neighbours. Ptolemy of Egypt was applied to, but he civilly laid his hand on his heart, declaring he had nothing to lend, and kept his money – if he had any – in his pocket. In this dilemma, the command of the Carthaginians fell upon Hamilcar, surnamed Barca, or the lightning, from his being one of the fastest men of the day; and though any general, equal to the general run, might head a force with plenty of money to pay the troops, a genius was required to keep an army going, or rather to keep up a standing army, with empty pockets. He found the mercenaries in a state of insubordination for want of their customary emolument; but, having no money of his own, he made Bruttium and Locri his bankers, and gave his soldiers a general authority to draw, with their swords, for whatever they required. Taking his position on Mount Hercte, now the Monte Pelegrino, he maintained himself and his army for three years, enabling his troops to carry out the principle of spending half-a-crown out of sixpence a day – the sixpence being their own, and the half-crown being anybody else's, from whom it could be most conveniently taken. After remaining three years at Hercte, he removed to the town of Eryx, intending to tire the Romans out; but like many others who attempt to exhaust the patience of others, he found his own stock rapidly diminishing. He was drawn into an engagement, in which he lost so many of his soldiers, that he was obliged to ask for a truce to bury the dead; but the Roman general would give him no undertaking not to proceed during the funerals. A short time afterwards, when the fortune of war had changed, Hamilcar was asked to give a similar permission, and, by allowing the burials to proceed, he has raised a monument to his own magnanimity.

The Romans, who were as fickle on the subject of a fleet as the element to which it was destined, resolved a third time to have a naval force; but ships were out of the question, when raising the wind was quite impossible. The state being without funds, appealed to the merchants, who consented to sink a large sum in an entirely new navy, with the understanding that if the tide of fortune should turn in their favour, they were to receive their money back again. The Romans had by this time become better sailors than before, while the Carthaginian tars had greatly deteriorated for want of practice. The ships of the latter were so heavily laden with corn that they could not proceed like chaff before the wind; and the sailors, encumbered by the cargo, found themselves going continually against the grain in attempting to work the vessels. The Romans obtained an easy victory, but it could not have been so easy to dispose of its results; for, after killing 14,000 men, they found themselves still saddled with 34,000 prisoners. A peace was concluded; one of the conditions being, that Carthage should pay to Rome 200 talents by instalments extending over twenty years – an arrangement equivalent to the discharge of a liability at the rate of one shilling per annum in the pound, and the extinction of the whole debt by simply paying the interest.

The first Punic War was now at an end, and it was high time it should be, for the losses sustained on both sides were enough to have exhausted the Roman as well as the Carthaginian population; and our history would then have come to an abrupt termination, like the tragedy of the youth, who was obliged to drop his curtain in the second act, in consequence of his having killed all his characters. It is fortunate, therefore, that the classical authorities, after "cutting to pieces" their thousands and drowning their hundreds, in a day, should have paused in their career of devastation just in time to leave something to go on with, to the conscientious historian.

While, however, war killed everything else, it kept itself alive in the most extraordinary manner; for though brought to a temporary pause by having swallowed up all its usual articles of consumption, fresh food was speedily found, and the jaws of destruction were again on active service.

The Romans having subdued Sicily, proceeded to prepare a constitution, or, in other words, having rendered the place subservient to themselves, they took measures for supplying a livery. Being tired of the old pattern, they devised something new, and produced an article of the following fashion: – They made Sicily a province; but those whose province it is to say what a province was, have left us in some doubt as to its precise meaning. The best definition is that which derives the word from Providentia, a duty, or a thing that ought to be done, and the provinces of the Romans were sometimes done indeed, though in a sense more modern and familiar than classical. A province, instead of becoming a part of Rome, retained its national existence, though such existence was scarcely worth having, for it was accompanied by a loss of sovereignty, – a condition that may be compared to that of a body living after its head was off.

A governor was sent annually from Rome with a long train of officials, and the appointment being only for a year, leaves no doubt that the holder for the time being made the most he could of it. His staff included two Quæstors or tax-collectors, and a number of Præcones or auctioneers, who were always ready to sell off, in the event of a seizure. Sicily was, in fact, in a state of complete servitude to Rome, the only anomaly in the relationship consisting in the fact that the master, or rather the mistress, received the wages, instead of paying them. The amount was fixed at one-tenth of the wine, the oil, the olives, and other products of the soil; so that much of the fat of the land became the perquisite of the mistress of Sicily. These tenths were called decimæ, and so ruinous was their effect on the place whence they were drawn, that the words decimation and destruction have become nearly synonymous.

The constitution of Rome had remained much the same during the period to which the present chapter refers, though the aristocracy of birth was beginning to give way to the far more objectionable aristocracy of money. Such was the influence of wealth, that the Quæstors or tax-collectors became members of the Senate as vacancies occurred, and the enormous riches of these persons proved how much of the public money, of which they had the entire handling, stuck to their fingers.

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS WARS OF ROME

Prostrate greatness always offers an inviting mark to upstart littleness; and the story of the Lion couchant kicked by the Jackass rampant, is as old, at least, as the days when Rome, exhausted by her wars with Carthage, was attacked by the imbecile inhabitants of the feeble city of Falerii.

Had the Faliscans dashed their heads deliberately against a brick wall, they could not more effectually have shown how few brains they possessed; and, to carry out the figure of the Lion and the Ass, a switch of the former's tail soon told the latter's story. A few days sufficed to lay the Faliscans in the dust they had so foolishly kicked up, and in the clouds of which we very rapidly lose sight of them.

The Carthaginians had been compelled to evacuate Sicily, and the mercenaries were of course to be paid off in one way or the other. On a former occasion, some of the hired soldiers who had demanded their money were taken to a bank – which proved to be a sand-bank in the sea – where, at the rising of the tide, they, instead of their claims, were subjected to immediate liquidation.45 The army from Sicily took, however, a firmer stand, and proceeded to Carthage with a determination to do business in the city. It contained, as they knew, the spices and luxuries of India on which they loved to live; the purple of Tyre, which taught them how to dye; and the ebony and ivory which proclaim in black and white the wealth of Ethiopia. The persons who poured into the place formed an assemblage less pleasing than picturesque, for the group comprised all sorts – except the right sort – of characters. Among the mass might be seen the almost naked Gaul, who was outstripped in barbarity by some of the other tribes; the light cavalry of dark Numidians, and men who had their arms in slings; for such were the weapons of the Balearic slingers. The mercenaries, immediately on their arrival in Carthage, proceeded to the Treasury, where they found nobody but Hanno, who in an appropriately hollow speech, announced the emptiness of the public coffers. He regretted the necessity for appearing before them in the character of an apologist; but while admitting how much Carthage owed to the troops, he announced the impossibility of paying them. The State, he said, was heavily taxed, and, he added, with a feeble attempt to be facetious, that he must lay a small tax upon their patience, by getting them to wait for their money. The speaker was at once assailed with imprecations in ten different languages; but he stood firm under the polyglot uproar. The cry of "Down with him!" reached his ears in nearly a dozen different tongues; and when he tried to remonstrate, through the medium of interpreters, the worst interpretation was put on all that was said, and a good understanding seemed quite impossible.

An attempt was then made to stop the mouths of the mercenaries with food; and provisions were sent in abundance; but the only reply was, an unprovisional demand for the money owing. At length the pay had been got together, and was about to be distributed, when an Italian slave, named Spendius, who had probably spent by anticipation all he had to receive, advised his companions to decline the offer, on the ground that if they refused what was due, their policy might obtain for them a large additional bonus. The suggestion was popular with the mercenaries, who held a meeting to discuss the point, and who, to save the time of the meeting, overwhelmed with a shower of stones anybody who rose to speak on either side. The resolution was soon carried; but it was by the aid of what may be termed the casting votes of those who sent up, in the impressive form of a plumper, the first missile they could lay their hands upon. For three years these intestine disturbances raged in Africa, and reduced it to the lowest point of exhaustion, till at length the malady wore itself out, though Hamilcar Barca, by intercepting the supplies of the rebels, assisted greatly in depriving treachery of the food it lived upon.

The pecuniary panic of Carthage spread in nearly every direction, and the mercenaries at Sardinia, affected by the tightness of money, called upon the African colonists to pay with their lives the debt they could not discharge with their pockets. While the Sardinians and Carthaginians were reducing each other to a state of such weakness that neither could make any further effort, Rome stepped in, and like the lawyer between the exhausted litigants, carried off the whole of what they had been fighting for. Sardinia became a Roman province; when Carthage, whose bad faith has passed into a proverb, complained bitterly of the treachery of Rome: for we find the story of the kettle accused of blackness by the pot, is as old as the earliest pothooks employed in the writing of history. Hamilcar, who was the patriotic mouthpiece of the day, declared that he would raise his country; and it must be admitted, to his honour, that he did not take the means employed by self-styled patriots, who pretend to raise a country by stirring it up from the lowest dregs, but he tried to elevate it by all the honourable means in his power.

Rome had at this time her hands tolerably full, and found employment for her arms in all directions; when, to add to her embarrassment, the Cisalpine Gauls were set in a flame by one of the many irons that she had in the fire. An Agrarian law, proposed by the tribune, C. Flaminius – whose name savours of the firebrand – was the cause of the outbreak. The measure enacted, that the land taken from the Gauls should be distributed among the Romans; and accordingly some settlers were sent out, who unsettled everything. The Cisalpines commenced negotiations with their Transalpine allies; but though the negotiations were carried a very long way, they eventually came to nothing.

Rome was so occupied with foes, that she had scarcely time to turn round; but when she did turn round, she discovered that some very objectionable proceedings were being carried on behind her back by a set of people called the Illyrians. These persons picked up a dishonest living as pirates, and had plundered, among others, some Italian merchants who supplied the Italian warehouses of Rome and its neighbourhood. The Illyrians were ruled over by a woman, named Teuta, who, when applied to for reparation, observed that she was sorry for what had occurred, but that piracy was what her subjects got their living by, and she did not see how she could interfere with the manners and customs of her people. The Roman ambassadors answered, that the custom of their country was to protect the injured; but on this occasion, at least, the country failed in its Protectionist principles, for the ambassadors were slain before they could get home again. When their death was known at Rome, every exertion was made to afford them that protection which came too late to be of any use, and a large army was sent into the country of the Illyrians. The Roman arms were perfectly successful, and Teuta was glad to obtain peace by promising to put down piracy, and by actually putting down a very large sum of money by way of tribute. Rome had done considerable service to the Isles of Greece by checking the disreputable trade of piracy; and as the Romans took evident pride in being noticed by the Greeks, the latter paid the former for their military aid, by some of those civil attentions which cost nothing. At Athens, as well as at Corinth, Roman embassies were received; and though the ambassadors might be considered rather too venerable for sport, they were allowed to take part in the Isthmian Games, as well as in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The Isthmian Games were the same as those at Olympia, of which we furnish a brief outline for the information of those who feel an interest in the sporting annals of antiquity.

During the first thirteen Olympiads, the only game was the foot-race, of which the spectators and the competitors, but especially the latter, if they selected it as their walk of life, must have been at last thoroughly tired. Wrestling was next introduced under the name of πάλη, or Lucta; and though wrestlers have for centuries been endeavouring to throw each other, they have not yet fallen to the ground, for they still maintain a footing in the sports and pastimes of our own people. Next came the Pentathlon, a sort of five-in-one, which comprised, in addition to the foot-race and wrestling, the practice of leaping, in which much vaulting ambition was displayed; and throwing of the discus, as well as of the spear – an exercise that required the utmost pitch of strength and dexterity. Subsequently boxing was introduced, under the name of Pugilatus, and it seems to have resembled pretty closely our own pugilistic encounters; for in ancient works of art we find the boxers represented with faces whose indentures witness their apprenticeship to the degrading trade they followed. The physicians of the period are said to have recommended boxing as a remedy for headache;46 but this application of the theory of counter irritation is not adopted in modern practice. Another feature of the Olympian and Isthmian Games was the Pancratium, a contest calling for all the powers of the combatant. In this exercise biting and scratching were allowed – a disgraceful license which leaves us in no doubt as to the classical source whence the vulgar phrase of "going at it tooth and nail" is derivable. Horse and chariot races were also introduced, as well as contests of trumpeters, who dealt out blows of the most harmless description against each other.