The Comic History of Rome

Paulus Æmilius exercised the usual privilege of a conqueror, by robbing the vanquished of all they had possessed; and Macedonia was declared free, in the customary manner, by placing it entirely under the government of its foreign victors.

The triumph of Paulus Æmilius was one of the most magnificent shows that had ever been seen, and lasted three days, during which a perpetual fair was kept up; for, among the Romans, "None but the brave deserve the fair" was a maxim literally followed. On the first day there was a procession of pictures, showing the exploits of Æmilius in the brightest colours. The second day was devoted to the carrying of the trophies and the silver coin; but, on the third, which was the grandest day of all, the gold was paraded, followed by 120 bulls, which seem to be suggestive of nothing belonging to war but its butchery. After these came the unhappy Perseus, loaded with fetters, and having about him some other links of a far more affecting kind, in the shape of his three children.

The fame spread by the fate of Perseus was general among the kings of the earth, who flocked like sheep, or rather, crawled like curs, to do homage to the Roman Senate. Perseus arrived with his head shaved, as if to show that he owed not only his crown, but his hair and all, to Rome; and he wore the tattered garments of a freed slave, as if to prove that he had not a rag to his back, but what he held at the pleasure of his masters.

All who had shown any sympathy with the cause of Perseus were cruelly persecuted, and the unfortunate Rhodians were so terrified with the bare anticipation of their fate, that they began to anticipate it in reality, by making away with themselves and with one another. On the few who remained the hardest conditions were imposed, which made their own condition the more deplorable. Carthage and the Achaian League were the only two powers that seemed to stand in the way of Rome, and of these the latter was thought so contemptible, that some Achaians who had been detained in Italy were saved by a sarcasm of Cato on their feebleness and decrepitude. "We have only to decide," said he, "whether these poor creatures shall be buried by their own grave-diggers, or by ours;" a cruel pleasantry, which, however, had a humane result, for it was decided that they should be at liberty to go home and yield to their native undertakers the profit – or loss – attendant on their funerals.

The Carthaginians had been for some years at peace with Rome, but had been much harassed by some of her allies, and particularly by Massinissa, their neighbour, in Numidia. It was annoying enough to be subjected to attack, but it was still more provoking to be unable to return the blow, which was the case with Carthage, whose hands were tied by a bond prohibiting her from going to war without Rome's permission. An appeal was addressed to Rome, which sent ambassadors, who were instructed to hear the Carthaginians, but to decide in favour of Massinissa. Carthage at length grew tired of allowing Rome to hold the scales of justice; for, though the scales might have been true, a false weight was always attached to one side, which gave it a vast preponderance.

The Carthaginians, therefore, took up arms against Massinissa, who, though ninety years of age, fought with great determination; for he felt, probably, that he was too old to fly, and that his only chance was to make that determined stand so well adapted to a time of life when progress is somewhat difficult. The Carthaginians were worsted, but they were not yet quite at their worst, until Rome was seized with the idea of destroying their city. Cato was especially bent upon this design, or rather he pursued it with unbending obstinacy, for he finished every speech with the words "Delenda est Carthago," which may be freely rendered into "Carthage must be smashed." Whatever might have been the commencement of his oration, he always ended with the same words, and whether he spoke in the Senate, the market-place, or his own house, though the premises might be different, he always came to the same conclusion. He went about as a man with one idea, and his conduct was almost that of a monomaniac; for, if he met a friend in the street, and conversed on different or indifferent subjects, he would take his farewell with the accustomed words, "Valete; delenda est Carthago," – "Good-bye; we must smash Carthage." During a debate in the Senate he pulled some figs out of his pocket, which he exhibited to some of his brother members as being "remarkably fine." As the fruit was being examined, he observed, that he had "picked them up in Africa;" that "they were capital;" that "there were plenty more where those came from," and, in a word, he added, "Delenda est Carthago" – "We really must smash Carthage."

Rome agreed with Cato, more especially when he pointed out that the place was exceedingly rich; for the Romans, whenever there was anything to be got by robbery, were quite prepared for violence. The Consuls, M. Manilius and L. Marcius Censorinus, assembled with a large force in Sicily, where some ambassadors appeared from Carthage; but the only result of negotiation was an order that 300 members of the best Carthaginian families should be sent over by way of hostages. The Romans then passed over into Utica, where the Carthaginian ambassadors again tried to treat, but the treatment they experienced was a demand for the instant giving up of all their arms and ammunition. Commissioners were sent into the city to see the orders carried out, which comprised the carrying out of 200,000 suits of armour, and 3000 catapults.62 The Carthaginians appear to have lost the use of their heads when they so quietly resigned their arms; but when they were told that they must, in the next place, abandon Carthage, and build another city ten miles off, they began to feel – somewhat too late – that it was time to defend themselves.

The Carthaginian ambassadors proceeded to the usual expression of anguish by tearing their hair out by the roots, instead of trying to pluck up a little courage. Some, who were already bald, rolled themselves in the dust; and only a few went, like sensible men, to communicate to the Carthaginians the doom with which their city was threatened.

The receipt of the news seems to have deprived the Carthaginians of all their natural intelligence; for their first step was to maltreat the envoys. An effort was then made to save the city, by shutting the gates; and the citizens armed themselves with stones, having determined to set their lives upon the cast of these unwarlike missiles. It is impossible not to respect and admire the heroism displayed under the very trying circumstances; but, unfortunately, trying was of little use, for the chances were all against the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal, who had been living in exile, at the head of 20,000 men – a somewhat large party to remain in banishment – was sent for to take the command, and occupied a post outside the city. The inhabitants, having given up all their ordinary arms to the enemy, supplied fresh ammunition by devoting all their gold and silver to the furnace; and it was a melting sight to see their treasure sacrificed for this patriotic object. The women cut off their hair, to devote it to the making of crossbows, and the sex took a characteristic pride in furnishing as many strings to a bow as possible. They worked so energetically, that they are said to have fabricated as many as 500 javelins, 140 bucklers, and 300 swords each day; but this statement seems to involve so much of fabrication, that we find difficulty in believing it.

The resistance of Carthage was obstinate; and the confidence of Rome led to a sort of indolence on the part of the latter, which protracted the siege, until a new life was put into the affair, by the appointment of young P. C. Scipio, the son of Paulus Æmilius, to the Consulship. The Carthaginians also were urged to fresh exertion, and a party of 300 waded through the harbour, with torches in their hands, to burn some engines; but the water damped their efforts, which might be compared to an attempt to set the Thames on fire; and all who were not drowned were glad to make their way back again. The suggestion of the use of flame was an unfortunate one for Carthage, since it seemed to cause the breaking in of a new light upon the Romans, who had recourse to incendiarism in their turn for the accomplishment of their object. Having got within the walls, they ignited several houses, and, carrying fire from street to street, they invested their cause with a glare which is none the less hateful for having been the glare of victory.

After nearly everybody had been killed, 50,000 men and women came forth with olive branches to meet the conqueror; and 900 Roman deserters were still stowed away in the citadel. Hasdrubal yielded; but his wife, who was a strong-minded woman, reviled him in a speech from the ramparts, and, parading her poor helpless children up and down for a few minutes, she threw them before her, and ultimately flung herself into the burning ruins. Preceding historians have expressed their admiration of this frantic female, for the act of murder and suicide which we have described; but we must confess our total inability to appreciate the heroism of a piece of cruelty and cowardice, involving a large amount of brutal daring, but wholly destitute of moral fortitude.

Carthage was now utterly destroyed, and Scipio, who had been the main instrument of its having been set on fire, is said to have shed tears over its smouldering ashes; but we should be inclined to attribute the fact to the smoke having got into his eyes, rather than to any feeling of humanity. Even those who give him credit for sensibility, accuse him of selfishness, for they say that he alluded to the possibility that the same fate would befal his own country; and they add that, while thinking of his home, he quoted Homer, who had foretold the doom of Troy through the mouth of Hector.63 The Romans having possession of the place, razed to the ground every part that had escaped the flames; but they lowered themselves even still more completely than they levelled the city. Thus fell a place which had maintained a noble rivalry with Rome, and which, in many respects, surpassed her proud competitor.

The greatness of Carthage had been, undoubtedly, the cause of that littleness of feeling which had been manifested towards it by Cato, who could not bear the idea that there should exist a city rivalling in grandeur the place he inhabited. The walls, which were triple, were divided into two stories, the upper for men, and the lower for brutes; the former comprising barracks for soldiers, and the latter being fitted up as stables for elephants.

The chief glory of the place was, however, to be found in its aqueducts, which ran in a long line of seventy miles, and of which the people had more reason to be proud than of even a still longer line of ancestors. That a place surrounded almost by aqueducts should have been destroyed by fire, is an extraordinary fact, though it is possible that turncocks may have been neglectful, and if called upon to turn the water on, they may have turned it off in favour of some more agreeable engagement.

There were not so many spoils as had been expected, for everything was spoilt by the mischief that had been done, and though there had been plenty of gold, the fearful amount of violent change had so scattered the gold, that there was not so much remaining as there otherwise would have been. With a touch of that honour which the proverb says is to be found among thieves, Scipio called upon the places formerly plundered by Carthage to reclaim their goods; and the people of Agrigentum demanded a brazen Bull they had once used as an instrument of torture, though the invention was so discreditable to humanity, that its inventors ought to have been ashamed to ask for it back again. Among the prizes secured by the Romans, was a very small parcel of books, including a little work on agriculture, by Mago, which had taught the Carthaginians to till the earth, though not how to keep their ground, for they had lost every foot of it.

Carthage became a province of Rome, under the name of Africa, and Scipio, who subsequently styled himself Africanus, enjoyed one of those triumphs, which were in fact disgraces to the object they were designed to honour. Part of the "triumph" consisted in the barbarity of throwing as food to lions the fugitives that had fallen into his hands, and games were celebrated, in which death to the conquered was the chief sport to the conqueror.

Macedonia, which was groaning under the freedom forced upon it by Rome, was glad to become the slave of everybody who offered to ease it of the obnoxious burden. The Macedonians, therefore, became the dupes of three impostors in succession, who, with all their imposition, were less objectionable than the hardships imposed by Rome in her character of liberator to the world in general. The impostors – one of whom was a runaway gladiator – were in turn subdued, and Macedonia was swallowed up by Rome's insatiable appetite for conquest.

Of the three pretenders just alluded to, the only one who had been able to maintain his ground – though, by the way, the ground was never his to maintain – was a young man, who declared himself to be Philip, the son of Perseus. The youth was certainly very like his alleged father; and, upon the strength of the resemblance in features, he put upon his claim such a bold face, that the Macedonians favoured it. They put their crown upon his head, and the kingly name seemed to have invested the young adventurer with a tower of strength; for he was successful in an attack upon the Romans, under the consul Juventius. The impostor, however, soon lost control over himself, and there was at once an end to his influence over his new subjects. They threw him off, and he was compelled to take refuge in a Court inhabited by one Bysas, a petty Thracian prince, who gave up, or, more probably, sold, the fugitive, who had sought his hospitality. The pretender, who had led away so many others, was eventually led away himself, and made to march as a "frightful example" in the triumph of Metellus.

About this time the Achaians, who had entered into a league, began to quarrel among themselves; for Sparta, like a spoiled child, wanted to have its own way, and sulked, as it were, alone in a corner, apart from the rest of the confederacy. Rome was appealed to for advice, and Roman ambassadors came to Corinth; but they were so unpopular, that on a visit to the theatre, where they had gone, expecting fair play, they were insulted and pelted by the audience. This irritated the Romans, and an army was sent, under Mummius, to encounter the Greek general Diæus, who made so certain of victory, that he had seats erected for the women and children to see him win a battle. He had prepared everything in the neighbourhood of Corinth, and appropriating the privilege of the brave who are said to deserve the fair, he clustered a large bevy of female beauty round the spot of his intended achievement. The ladies were all expectation, and Diæus was all confidence, until Mummius made his appearance, and in a very few minutes sent Diæus flying towards Megalopolis. Here he entered his own abode, and setting fire to the premises, celebrated, with the most dismal of house-warmings, the defeat that took the place of his intended victory.

Mummius, thinking it idle to pursue the fugitive, preferred following up his advantage, and arrived at the gates of Corinth, which had been left wide open by the citizens. The place was deserted; and Mummius not only sacked its palaces, but ransacked its private houses, and, looking into its magazines, extracted from them some very valuable articles. So little, however, did he understand or appreciate art, that when sending valuable pictures or pieces of sculpture to Rome, he told the sailors, that if any damage was done on the voyage, he would make them execute objects precisely similar to those with which he entrusted them. Among the pictures was the celebrated "Bacchus" of Aristides, – which was so perfect as to be looked upon as one of the wonders of the world – and, when consigning it as part of a cargo of curiosities, he declared that, if any injury was done to it, the ship's painter should immediately paint another. Such was the barbarism of the destroyers of Corinth, that this picture was only rescued by Polybius from the hands of the soldiers, who were gambling on its face, and who, with every throw of the die, took off a portion of its colour.

The scenes enacted during the pillage of Corinth were barbarous in the extreme, and involved the total destruction of what may have been termed one of the chief pillars of civilisation – or, at all events, its Corinthian capital. Many of the Roman soldiers, intoxicated with success and something more, perished in the flames, to which the city was doomed by the barbarous order of Mummius. When the conflagration first commenced, it is said that a liquid metal was seen to flow through the streets, which induced the invaders to rush forward in the hope of profiting by such a strange metallic currency. Those, however, who laid their hands upon the tempting issue, as it ran from the banks on either side of the thoroughfare, found it a mass of floating fire, with which they terribly burned their fingers. On cooler examination the material proved to be a fusion of beautiful ores, to which the name of Corinthian brass has since been given.

Greece was now at the feet of Rome, which trampled not only on her fallen foe, but upon all the obligations of honour and morality. The population and wealth of Corinth were disposed of – the former by murder, and the latter by robbery. Greece was formed into a Roman province under the title of Achaia, and Mummius, glorying in, rather than being ashamed of, his share of the work, took the surname of Achaicus. We may instance as a redeeming feature of the period, the erection at Rome of a clock, which was in some degree at variance with the time; for the useful arts were neglected amid the pursuits of war and rapine. The clock consisted of a bottle with a narrow neck, filled with water, divided into twelve measures, to mark the hours; but it was only a minute observer that could ascertain the minutes. The only mode of telling the time at Rome, had been previously by means of the sun-dial, which was, of course, useless in the absence of sun, and those who were particular to a shade, could derive from it no assistance in their evening arrangements.

We dwell with some satisfaction on the introduction of the apparatus we have described; for the mere manifestation of a desire to note the progress of time is indicative of a wish to make an improved use of it. The application of the bottle to a wholesome purpose must also be a cheering symptom, when it is met with among those who had previously looked at the bottle as the means of killing time, rather than as an instrument for making its flight perceptible.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.

WARS IN SPAIN. VIRIATHUS. DESTRUCTION OF NUMANTIA. THE SERVILE WAR IN SICILY. APPROPRIATION OF PERGAMUS

War had become so familiar to the Romans, that they never felt at home unless they were fighting abroad, and the sword was the only thing they took in hand with real earnestness. The intoxication of success, like other habits of intoxication, cannot be easily got rid of, and the Romans sought to indulge their thirst for conquest in a manner wholly at variance with sober judgment. Their design was to conquer Spain, and in the execution of this design they cruelly executed large numbers of the Lusitanians, who had laid down their arms, in consequence of a promise that if they quitted the field of battle, they should be allowed quiet possession of the fields of peaceful industry. On this assurance, they divided themselves into three parts, and were then – as we are gravely assured by the chroniclers – treacherously cut into several thousand pieces. One of the few that escaped was Viriathus, who combined the qualities of the wolf and the lamb, for he had turned a desperate robber, after having been employed as a gentle shepherd. Abandoning the honest hook of a pastoral life, he had adopted the more crooked ways of the common thief; and he seems to have gradually stolen upon the confidence of his countrymen, until they made him a general. He had passed his early days among the mountains, and was prepared for the ups and downs of life, which he afterwards experienced. His predatory properties had taught him how to attack, and his practice as a robber – which rendered it necessary for him frequently to keep out of the way – had familiarised him with the art of avoiding an enemy. He would appear suddenly from the thick of a thicket, and after doing considerable mischief, he would find concealment in the hollow of some rock which his companions would never split upon. Though he had commenced his career as a poor country clown, he had trained himself to perform feats of activity worthy of the most experienced Harlequin. Life, which is a drama in the case of most men, was, in his case, a series of scenes in a pantomime. He was here, there, and everywhere, when he was not expected, and he was immediately nowhere when his opponents were in pursuit of him. His policy was first to scatter, and then to destroy; to divide an enemy en gros, and cut it to pieces en detail. He had encountered Vitellius, the Roman Prætor, near a place called Tribula, where the latter got into the utmost tribulation by being led through briers and bushes into an ambush, where he lost half his army. The other half lost him, for he was killed by the sword of some one who did not know him, though, had he been known, the acquaintance would, most probably, have been cut in the same barbarous manner.

Viriathus for some time baffled the enemy by cunning and address, or rather by having no address at all, for he had no fixed residence; and there was, consequently, much difficulty in finding him. At length he fought a battle, in which he was so far successful that a peace was concluded, in which he was acknowledged as the friend and ally of Rome; but having no one to save him from his friends, he was basely murdered in his sleep by some Lusitanian assassins that the Roman general had hired. The instigators of this barbarous act refused to pay when the sanguinary work was done; and the murderers, in making a demand on account of their crime, may be said to have, figuratively, cut their own throats, for they were threatened with punishment for the iniquity they confessed themselves guilty of. After the death of Viriathus, the Lusitanians having lost their head, were without the brains necessary to defend themselves, and fell an easy prey into the hands of Q. Pompeius. This individual was the son of a musician; but instead of following his father's profession, he had become the leader of a warlike band, and he found the soldiers willing instruments to play into his hands, or act in concert with him, for the gratification of his personal ambition. He attacked Numantia, though with so little success, that he was compelled to conclude a peace; but treacherously declaring that the conclusion of a peace meant the beginning of a war, he renewed hostilities at the first convenient opportunity. Subsequently, C. Hostilius Mancinus commenced an attack, but 10,000 of his men having been killed, and 20,000 more being blocked up in a ravine, he could not exactly see his way out of it without a surrender. The Numantines refused to treat with him, until young Tib. Sempronius Gracchus, whom they trusted, came forward to pledge his honour that Numantia should be fairly treated. The Senate, however, repudiated the arrangement, and the honour of young Tib. remains among the enormous stock of unredeemed pledges which history has handed down to us.

The Romans began to feel that none but the best man was likely to win, and they accordingly looked out for the best man, whom they found in Scipio Africanus, the destroyer of Carthage. He was sent against Numantia, which he surrounded by fortifications, in order that he might starve out the inhabitants by keeping them in, and he did his utmost to restore the discipline of the Roman army. He hardened the soldiers by making them carry loads of wood, a novel plan of providing them with a billet; he forced them to sleep on the ground, which they complained of as hard; and he allowed them no other cooking utensils than a saucepan, which caused the indignation of many to boil over.