History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

War against Antiochus (563).

VIII. The policy of the Senate had been to make Macedonia a rampart against the Thracians, and Greece herself a rampart against Macedonia. But, though the Romans had freed the Achæan league, they did not intend to create a formidable power or confederation. Then, as formerly, the Athenians, the Spartans, the Bœotians, the Ætolians, and, finally, the Achæans, each endeavoured to constitute an Hellenic league for their own advantage; and each aspiring to dominate over the others, turned alternately to those from whom it hoped the most efficient support at the time. In the Hellenic peninsula, properly so called, the Ætolians, to whose territory the Senate had promised to join Phocis and Locris, coveted the cities of Thessaly, which the Romans obstinately refused them.

Thus, although reinstated in the possession of their independence, neither the Ætolians, the Achæans, nor yet the Spartans, were satisfied: they all dreamt of aggrandisement. The Ætolians, more impatient, made, in 562, three simultaneous attempts against Thessaly, the island of Eubœa, and Peloponnesus. Having only succeeded in seizing Demetrias, they called Antiochus III. to Greece, that they might place him at the head of the hegemony, which they sought in vain to obtain from the Romans.

The better part of the immense heritage left by Alexander the Great had fallen to this prince. Already, some years before, Flamininus had given him notice that it belonged to the honour of the Republic not to abandon Greece, of which the Roman people had loudly proclaimed itself the liberator; and that after having delivered it from the yoke of Philip, the Senate now wished to free from the dominion of Antiochus all the Asian cities of Hellenic origin.566 Hannibal, who had taken refuge with the King of Syria, encouraged him to resist, by engaging him to carry the struggle into Italy, as he himself had done. War was then declared by the Romans. To maintain the independence of Greece against an Asiatic prince was at once to fulfil treaties and undertake the defence of civilisation against barbarism. Thus, in proclaiming the most generous ideas, the Republic justified its ambition.

The services rendered by Rome were already forgotten.567 Antiochus thus found numerous allies in Greece, secret or declared. He organised a formidable confederacy, into which entered the Ætolians, the Athamanes, the Elians, and the Bœotians, and, having landed at Chalcis, conquered Eubœa and Thessaly. The Romans opposed to him the King of Macedonia and the Achæans. Beaten at Thermopylæ, in 563, by the consul Acilius Glabrio, aided by Philip, the King of Syria withdrew to Asia, and the Ætolians, left to themselves, demanded peace, which was granted them in 563.

It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L. Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace, and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and pay 15,000 talents – a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a province, exacted only just and moderate conditions.568 All the Greek towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman army. Eumenes II., the successor of Attalus I., saw his kingdom increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred talents.569

The War in the Cisalpine (558-579).

IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.

Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561, fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus, brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.

As to the Ligures, they maintained a war of desperation to the end of the century. Their resistance was such that Rome was obliged to meet it with measures of excessive rigour; and in 574, more than 47,000 Ligures were transported into a part of Samnium which had been left almost without inhabitants since the war with Hannibal. In 581, lands beyond the Po were distributed to other Ligures.570 Every year the frontiers receded more towards the north, and military roads,571 the foundation of important colonies, secured the march of the armies – a system which had been interrupted during the second Punic war, but was afterwards adopted, and especially applied to the south of Italy and the Cisalpine.572

In achieving the submission of this last province, Rome had put an end to other less important wars. In 577 she reduced the Istrians; in 579, the Sardinians and the Corsicans; finally, from 569 to 573, she extended her conquests into Spain, where she met the same enemies as Carthage had encountered.

War against Persia (583).

X. For twenty-six years had peace been maintained with Philip, the Ætolians vanquished, the peoples of Asia subdued, and the greater part of Greece restored to liberty. Profiting by its co-operation with the Romans against Antiochus, the Achæan league had largely increased, and Philopœmen had brought into it Sparta, Messene, and the island of Zacynthus; but these countries, impatient of the Achæan rule, soon sought to free themselves from it. Thus was realised the prediction of Philip, who told the Thessalian envoys, after the battle of Cynoscephalæ, that the Romans would soon repent of having given liberty to peoples incapable of enjoying it, and whose dissensions and jealousies would always keep up a dangerous agitation.573 In fact, Sparta and Messene rebelled, and sued for help from Rome. Philopœmen, after having cruelly punished the first of these cities, perished in his struggle with the second. Thessaly and Ætolia were torn by anarchy and civil war.

Whilst the Republic was occupied in restoring tranquillity to these countries, a new adversary came to imprudently attract its wrath. One would say that Fortune, while raising up so many enemies against Rome, took pleasure in delivering them, one after the other, into her hands. The old legend of Horatius killing the three Curiatii in succession was a lesson which the Senate had never forgotten.

Perseus, heir to his father’s crown and enmities, had taken advantage of the peace to increase his army and his resources, to make allies, and to rouse up the kings and peoples of the East against Rome. Besides the warlike population of his own country, he had at his beck barbarous peoples like the Illyrians, the Thracians, and the Bastarnæ, dwelling not far from the Danube. Notwithstanding the treaty, which forbad Macedonia to make war without the consent of the Senate, Perseus had silently aggrandised himself on the side of Thrace; he had placed garrisons in the maritime cities of Oenoe and Maronia, excited the Dardanians574 to war, brought under subjection the Dolopes, and advanced as far as Delphi.575 He endeavored to draw the Achæans into an alliance, and skilfully obtained the good-will of the Greeks. Eumenes II., king of Pergamus, who, like his father Attalus I., feared the encroachments of Macedonia, denounced at Rome this infraction of the old treaties. The fear with which a powerful prince inspired him, and the gratitude which he owed to the Republic for the aggrandisement of his kingdom after the Asian war, obliged him to cultivate the friendship of the Roman people. In 582 he came to Rome, and, honourably received by the Senate, forgot nothing which might excite it against Perseus, whom he accused of ambitious designs hostile to the Republic. This denunciation raised violent enmities against Eumenes. On his way back to his kingdom, he was attacked by assassins, and dangerously wounded. Suspicion fell on the Macedonian monarch, not without show of reason, and was taken by the Republic as sufficient ground for declaring war on a prince whose power began to offend it.

Bold in planning, Perseus displayed cowardice when it was necessary to act. After having from the first haughtily rejected the Roman claims, he waited in Thessaly for their army, which, ill-commanded and ill-organised, was beaten by his lieutenants and repulsed into mountain gorges, where it might have been easily destroyed. He then offered peace to P. Licinius Crassus; but, notwithstanding his check, the consul replied, with all the firmness of the Roman character, that peace was only possible if Perseus would abandon his person and his kingdom to the discretion of the Senate.576 Struck by so much assurance, the king recalled his troops, and suffered the enemy to effect his retreat undisturbed. The incapacity of the Roman generals, however, their violences, and the want of discipline among the soldiers, had alienated the Greeks, who naturally preferred a prince of their own race to a foreign captain; moreover, they did not see the Macedonians get the better of the Romans without a certain satisfaction. In their eyes, it was the Hellenic civilisation overthrowing the presumption of the Western barbarians.

The campaigns of 584 and 585 were not more fortunate for the Roman arms. A consul had the rash idea of invading Macedonia by the passes of Callipeuce, where his army would have been annihilated if the king had had the courage to defend himself. At the approach of the legions he took to flight, and the Romans escaped from their perilous position without loss.577 At length, the people, feeling the necessity of having an eminent man at the head of the army, nominated Paulus Æmilius consul, who had given many proofs of his military talents in the Cisalpine. Already the greater part of the Gallo-græci were in treaty with Perseus. The Illyrians and the people of the Danube offered to second him. The Rhodians, and the King of Pergamus himself, persuaded that Fortune was going to declare herself for the King of Macedonia, made him offers of alliance; he chaffered with them with the most inexplicable levity. In the mean time, the Roman army, ably conducted, advanced by forced marches. One single combat terminated the war; and the battle of Pydna, in 586, once more proved the superiority of the Roman legion over the phalanx. This, however, did not yield ingloriously; and, though abandoned by their king, who fled, the Macedonian hoplites died at their post.

When they heard of this defeat, Eumenes and the Rhodians hastened to wipe out the remembrance of their ever having doubted the fortune of Rome578 by the swiftness of their repentance. At the same time, L. Anicius conquered Illyria and seized the person of Gentius. Macedonia was divided into four states called free, that is to say, presided over by magistrates chosen by themselves, but under the protectorate of the Republic. By the law imposed on these new provinces, all marriages, and all exchange of immovable property, were interdicted between the citizens of different states,579 and the imports reduced one-half. As we see, the Republic applied the system practised in 416 to dissolve the Latin confederacy, and later, in 449, that of the Hernici. Illyria was also divided into three parts. The towns which had first yielded were exempt from all tribute, and the taxes of the others reduced to half.580

It is not uninteresting to recall to mind how Livy appreciates the institutions which Macedonia and Illyria received at this epoch. “It was decreed,” he says, “that liberty should be given to the Macedonians and Illyrians, to prove to the whole universe that, in carrying their arms so far, the object of the Romans was to deliver the enslaved peoples, not to enslave the free peoples; to guarantee to these last their independence, to the nations subject to kings a milder and more just government; and to convince them that, in the wars which might break out between the Republic and their sovereigns, the result would be the liberty of the peoples: Rome reserving to herself only the honour of victory.”581

Greece, and above all Epirus, sacked by Paulus Æmilius, underwent the penalty of defection. As to the Achæan league, the fidelity of which had appeared doubtful, nearly a thousand of the principal citizens, guilty or suspected of having favoured the Macedonians, were sent as hostages to Rome.582

Modification of Roman policy.

XI. In carrying her victorious arms through almost all the borders of the Mediterranean, the Republic had hitherto obeyed either legitimate needs or generous inspirations. Care for her future greatness, for her existence even, made it absolute on her to dispute the empire of the sea with Carthage. Hence the wars, of which Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Italy, and Africa, by turns, became the theatre. It was also her duty to combat the warlike peoples of the Cisalpine, that she might ensure the safety of her frontiers. As to the expeditions of Macedonia and Asia, Rome had been drawn into them by the conduct of foreign kings, their violation of treaties, their guilty plottings, and their attacks on her allies.

To conquer thus became to her an obligation, under pain of seeing fall to ruin the edifice which she had built up at the price of so many sacrifices; and, what is remarkable, she showed herself after victory magnificent towards her allies, clement to the vanquished, and moderate in her pretensions. Leaving to the kings all the glory of the throne, and to the nations their laws and liberties, she had reduced to Roman provinces only a part of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cisalpine Gaul. In Sicily she preserved the most intimate alliance with Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, for fifty years. The constant support of this prince must have shown the Senate how much such alliances were preferable to direct dominion. In Spain she augmented the territory of all the chiefs who consented to become her allies. After the battle of Cynoscephalæ, as after that of Magnesia, she maintained on their thrones Philip and Antiochus, and imposed on this last only the same conditions as those offered before the victory. If, after the battle of Pydna, she overthrew Perseus, it was because he had openly violated his engagements; but she gave equitable laws to Macedonia. Justice then ruled her conduct, even towards her oldest rival; for when Masinissa asked the help of the Senate in his quarrels with Carthage, he received for answer that, even in his favour, justice could not be sacrificed.583

In Egypt her protection preserved the crown on the head of Ptolemy Philometor and of his sister Cleopatra.584 Finally, when all the kings came after the victory of Pydna to offer their congratulations to the Roman people, and to implore their protection, the Senate regulated their demands with extreme justice. Eumenes, himself an object of suspicion, sent his brother Attalus to Rome; and he, willing to profit by the favourable impression he had made, thought to ask for him a part of the kingdom of Pergamus. He was recommended to give up the design. The Senate restored his son to Cotys, king of Thrace, without ransom, saying that the Roman people did not make a traffic of their benefits.585 Finally, in the disputes between Prusias, king of Bithynia, and the Gallo-græcians, it declared that justice alone could dictate its decision.586

How, then, did so much nobleness of views, so much magnanimity in success, so much prudence in conduct seem to be belied, dating from that period of twenty-two years which divides the war against Persia from the third Punic war? Because too much success dazzles nations as well as kings. When the Romans began to think that nothing could resist them in the future because nothing had resisted them in the past, they believed that all was permitted them. They no longer made war to protect their allies, defend their frontiers, or destroy coalitions, but to crush the weak, and use nations for their own profit. We must also acknowledge that the inconstancy of the peoples, faithful in appearance, but always plotting some defection, and the hatred of the kings, concealing their resentment under a show of abasement, concurred to render the Republic more suspicious and more exacting, and caused it to count from henceforth rather on its subjects than on its allies. Vainly did the Senate seek to follow the grand traditions of the past; it was no longer strong enough to curb individual ambitions; and the same institutions which formerly brought forth the virtues, now only protected the vices of aggrandised Rome. The generals dared no longer to obey; thus, the consul Cn. Manlius attacks the Gallo-græcians in Asia without the orders of the Senate;587 A. Manlius takes on himself to make an expedition into Istria;588 the consul C. Cassius abandons the Cisalpine, his province, and attempts of his own accord to penetrate into Macedonia by Illyria;589 the prætor Furius, on his own authority, disarms one of the peoples of Cisalpine Gaul, the Cenomani, at peace with Rome;590 Popilius Lænas attacks the Statiellates without cause, and sells ten thousand of them; others also oppress the peoples of Spain.591 All these things doubtless incur the blame of the Senate; the consuls and prætors are disavowed, even accused, but their disobedience none the less remain unpunished, and the accusations without result. In 599, it is true, L. Lentulus, consul in the preceding year, underwent condemnation for exaction, but that did not prevent him from being raised again to the chief honours.592

As long as the object was only to form men destined for a modest part on a narrow theatre, nothing was better than the annual election of the consuls and prætors, by which, in a certain space of time, a great number of the principal citizens of both the patrician and plebeian nobility participated in the highest offices. Powers thus exercised under the eyes of their fellow-citizens, rather for honour than interest, obliged them to be worthy of their trust; but when, leading their legions into the most remote countries, the generals, far from all control, and invested with absolute power, enriched themselves by the spoils of the vanquished, dignities were sought merely to furnish them with wealth during their short continuance. The frequent re-election of the magistrates, in multiplying the contests of candidates, multiplied the ambitious, who scrupled at nothing to attain their object. Thus Montesquieu justly observes, that “good laws which have made a small republic great, become a burden to it when it has increased, because their natural effect was to create a grand people, and not to govern it.”593

The remedy for this overflowing of unruly passions would have been, on the one hand, to moderate the desire for conquest; on the other, to diminish the number of aspirants to power, by giving them a longer term of duration. But then, the people alone, guided by its instincts, felt the need of remedying this defect in the institution, by retaining in authority those who had their confidence. Thus, they wished to appoint Scipio Africanus perpetual dictator;594 while pretended reformers, such as Portius Cato, enslaved to old customs, and in a spirit of exaggerated rigorism, made laws to interdict the same man from aspiring twice to the consulship, and to advance the age at which it was lawful to try for this high office.

All these measures were contrary to the object at which they aimed. In maintaining annual elections, the way was left free to vulgar covetousness; in excluding youth from high functions, they repressed the impulses of those choice natures which early reveal themselves, and the exceptional elevation of which had so often saved Rome from the greatest disasters. Have we not seen, for example, in 406, Marcus Valerius Corvus, raised to the consulate at twenty-three years of age, gain the battle of Mount Gaurus against the Samnites; Scipio Africanus, nominated proconsul at twenty-four, conquer Spain and humiliate Carthage; the consul Quinctius Flamininus, at thirty, carry off from Philip the victory of Cynoscephalæ? Finally, Scipio Æmilianus, who is to destroy Carthage, will be elected consul, even before the age fixed by the law of Cato.

No doubt, Cato the Censor, honest and incorruptible, had the laudable design of arresting the decline of morals. But, instead of attacking the cause, he only attacked the effect; instead of strengthening authority, he tended to weaken it; instead of leaving the nations a certain independence, he urged the Senate to bring them all under its absolute dominion; instead of adopting what came from Greece with an enlightened discernment, he indiscriminately condemned all that was of foreign origin.595 There was in Cato’s austerity more ostentation than real virtue. Thus, during his censorship, he expelled Manlius from the Senate for having kissed his wife before his daughter in open daylight; he took pleasure in regulating the toilette and extravagance of the Roman ladies; and, by an exaggerated disinterestedness, he sold his horse when he quitted Spain, to save the Republic the cost of transport.596

But the Senate contained men less absolute, and wiser appreciators of the needs of the age; they desired to repress abuses, to carry out a policy of moderation, to curb the spirit of conquest, and to accept from Greece all that she had of good. Scipio Nasica and Scipio Æmilianus figured among the most important.597 One did not reject whatever might soften manners and increase human knowledge; the other cultivated the new muses, and was even said to have assisted Terence.

The irresistible inclination of the people towards all that elevates the soul and ennobles existence was not to be arrested. Greece had brought to Italy her literature, her arts, her science, her eloquence; and when, in 597, there came to Rome three celebrated philosophers – Carneades the Academician, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic – as ambassadors from Athens, they produced an immense sensation. The young men flocked in crowds to see and hear them; the Senate itself approved this homage paid to men whose talent must polish, by the culture of letters, minds still rude and unformed.598 Cato alone, inexorable, pretended that these arts would soon corrupt the Roman youth, and destroy its taste for arms; and he caused these philosophers to be dismissed.

Sent to Africa as arbiter to appease the struggle between Masinissa and Carthage, he only embittered it. Jealous at seeing this ancient rival still great and prosperous, he did not cease pronouncing against her that famous decree of death: Delenda est Carthago. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, opposed the destruction of Carthage, which he considered too weak to do injury, yet strong enough to keep up a salutary fear, which might prevent the people from casting themselves into all those excesses which are the inevitable consequences of the unbounded increase of empires.599 Unhappily, the opinion of Cato triumphed.

As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice, which is the error of the wicked.”

Cato, by persecuting with his accusations the principal citizens, and, among others, Scipio Africanus, taught the Romans to doubt virtue.600 By exaggeration in his attacks, and by delivering his judgments with passion, he caused his justice to be suspected.601 By condemning the vices from which he himself was not exempt, he deprived his remonstrances of all moral force.602 When he scourged the people as accuser and judge, without seeking to raise them by education and laws, he resembled, says a learned German, that Persian king who whipped the sea with rods to make the tempest cease.603 His influence, though powerless to arrest the movement of one civilisation taking the place of another, failed not to produce a fatal effect on the policy of that period.604 The Senate, renouncing the moderation and justice which hitherto had stamped all its deeds, adopted in their stead a crafty and arrogant line of action, and a system of extermination.