History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

More to the east, the coasts of Cilicia were less favoured; subjugated in turn by the Macedonians, Egyptians, and Syrians, they had become receptacles of pirates, who were encouraged by the kings of Egypt in their hostility to the Seleucidæ.394 From the heights of the mountains which cross a part of the province, robbers descended to plunder the fertile plains situated on the eastern side (Cilicia Campestris).395 Still, the part watered by the Cydnus and the Pyramus was more prosperous, owing to the manufacture of coarse linen and to the export of saffron. There stood ancient Tarsus, formerly the residence of a satrap, the commerce of which had sprung up along with that of Tyre;396 and Soli, on which Alexander levied an imposition of a hundred talents as a punishment for its fidelity to the Persians,397 and which, by its maritime position, excited the envy of the Rhodians.398 These towns and other ports entered, after the battle of Ipsus, into the great commercial movement of which the provinces of Syria became the seat.

Syria.

XV. By the foundation of the empire of the Seleucidæ, Greek civilisation was carried into the interior of Asia, where the immobility of Eastern society was succeeded by the activity of Western life. Greek letters and arts flourished from the Sea of Phœnicia to the banks of the Euphrates. Numerous towns were built in Syria and Assyria, with all the richness and elegance of the edifices of Greece;399 some were almost in ruins in the time of Pliny.400 Seleucia, founded by Seleucus Nicator, at the mouth of the Orontes, and which received, with five other towns built by the same monarch, the name of the head of the Græco-Syrian dynasty, became a greatly frequented port. Antioch, built on the same river, rivalled the finest towns of Egypt and Greece by the number of its edifices, the extent of its places, and the beauty of its temples and statues.401 Its walls, built by the architect Xenæos, passed for a wonder, and in the Middle Ages their ruins excited the admiration of travellers.402 Antioch consisted of four quarters, having each its own enclosure;403 and the common enclosure which surrounded them all appears to have embraced an extent of six leagues in circumference. Not far from the town was the delightful abode of Daphne, where the wood, consecrated to Apollo and Diana, was an object of public veneration, and the place where sumptuous festivals were celebrated.404 Apamea was renowned for its pastures. Seleucus had formed there a stud of 30,000 mares, 300 stallions, and 500 elephants.405 The Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis (now Baalbek) was the most colossal work of architecture that had ever existed.406

The power of the empire of the Seleucidæ went on increasing until the time when the Romans seized upon it. Extending from the Mediterranean to the Oxus and Caucasus, this empire was composed of nearly all the provinces of the ancient kingdom of the Persians, and included peoples of different origins.407 Media was fertile, and its capital, Ecbatana, which Polybius represents as excelling in riches and the incredible luxury of its palaces the other cities of Asia, had not yet been despoiled by Antiochus III.;408 Babylonia, once the seat of a powerful empire, and Phœnicia, long the most commercial country in the world, made part of Syria, and touched upon the frontiers of the Parthians. Caravans, following a route which has remained the same during many centuries, placed Syria in communication with Arabia,409 whence came ebony, ivory, perfumes, resins, and spices; the Syrian ports were the intermediate marts for the merchants who proceeded as far as India, where Seleucus I. went to conclude a treaty with Sandrocottus. The merchandise of this country ascended the Euphrates as far as Thapsacus, and thence it was exported to all the provinces.410 Communications so distant and multiplied explain the prosperity of the empire of the Seleucidæ. Babylonia competed with Phrygia in embroidered tissues; purple and the tissues of Tyre, the glass, goldsmiths’ work, and dyes of Sidon, were exported far. Commerce had penetrated to the extremities of Asia. Silk stuffs were sent from the frontiers of China to Caspiæ Portæ, and thence conveyed by caravans at once towards the Tyrian Sea, Mesopotamia, and Pontus.411 Subsequently, the invasion of the Parthians, by intercepting the routes, prevented the Greeks from penetrating into the heart of Asia. Hence Seleucus Nicator formed the project of opening a way of direct communication between Greece and Bactriana, by constructing a canal from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea.412 Mines of precious metals were rather rare in Syria; but there was abundance of gold and silver, introduced by the Phœnicians, or imported from Arabia or Central Asia. We may judge of the abundance of money possessed by Seleucia, on the Tigris, by the amount of the contribution which was extorted from it by Antiochus III. (a thousand talents).413 The sums which the Syrian monarchs engaged to pay to the Romans were immense.414 The soil gave produce equal in importance with that of industry.415 Susiana, one of the provinces of Persia which had fallen under the dominion of the Seleucidæ, had so great a reputation for its corn, that Egypt alone could compete with it.416 Cœle-Syria was, like the north of Mesopotamia, in repute for its cattle.417 Palestine furnished abundance of wheat, oil, and wine. The condition of Syria was still so prosperous in the seventh century of Rome, that the philosopher Posidonius represents its inhabitants as indulging in continual festivals, and dividing their time between the labours of the field, banquets, and the exercises of the gymnasium.418 The festivals of Antiochus IV., in the town of Daphne,419 give a notion of the extravagance displayed by the grandees of that country.

The military forces assembled at different epochs by the kings of Syria enable us to estimate the population of their empire. In 537, at the battle of Raphia, Antiochus had under his command 68,000 men;420 in 564, at Magnesia, 62,000 infantry, and more than 12,000 horsemen.421 These armies, it is true, comprised auxiliaries of different nations. The Jews of the district of Carmel alone could raise 40,000 men.422

The fleet was no less imposing. Phœnicia counted numerous ports and well-stored arsenals; such were Aradus (Ruad), Berytus (Beyrout), Tyre (Sour). This latter town raised itself gradually from its decline. It was the same with Sidon (Saïde), which Antiochus III., in his war with Ptolemy, did not venture to attack on account of its soldiers, its stores, and its population.423 Moreover, the greater part of the Phœnician towns enjoyed, under the Seleucidæ, a certain autonomy favourable to their industry. In Syria, Seleucia, which Antiochus the Great recovered from the Egyptians, had become the first port in the kingdom on the Mediterranean.424 Laodicea carried on an active commerce with Alexandria.425 Masters of the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia, the kings of Syria obtained from them great quantities of timber for ship-building, which was floated down the rivers from the mountains.426 Thus uniting their vessels with those of the Phœnicians, the Seleucidæ launched upon the Mediterranean considerable armies.427

Distant commerce also employed numerous merchant vessels; the Mediterranean, like the Euphrates, was furrowed by barques which brought or carried merchandise of every description. Vessels sailing on the Erythræan Sea were in communication, by means of canals, with the shores of the Mediterranean. The great trade of Phœnicia with Spain and the West had ceased, but the navigation of the Euphrates and the Tigris replaced it for the transport of products, whether foreign or fabricated in Syria itself, and sent into Asia Minor, Greece, or Egypt. The empire of the Seleucidæ offered the spectacle of the ancient civilisation and luxury of Nineveh and Babylon, transformed by the genius of Greece.

Egypt.

XVI. Egypt, which Herodotus calls a present from the Nile, did not equal in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidæ, but it formed a power much more compact. Its civilisation reached back more than three thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population to develop itself there to such a point, that under Amasis II., contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned in it.428 The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II., the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents (86,150,800 francs [£3,446,032]), and a million and a half of artabi429 of wheat.430 Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year. Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, with the province of Samaria, yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents (46 millions and a half [£1,860,000]).431 A single feast cost Philadelphia 2,240 talents (more than 13 millions [more than half a million sterling]).432 The sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps exaggerated, of 740,000 talents (about 4 milliards 300 millions of francs [172 millions sterling]).433 In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten millions of measures of wheat.434 The precious metals abounded in the empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage, towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first commercial city in the world.435 It was fifteen miles in circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed the largest ships to anchor along the quay.436 There arrived the merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa; some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of Cosseïr), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on the Red Sea.437 The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a stop to the piracies of the Arabs,438 and led to the establishment of numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia, gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, perfumes.439 All these products were exchanged against those which came from the Pontus Euxinus and the Western Sea. The native manufacture of printed and embroidered tissues, and that of glass, assumed under the Ptolemies a new development. The objects exhumed from the tombs of this period, the paintings with which they are decorated, the allusions contained in the hieroglyphic texts and Greek papyrus, prove that the most varied descriptions of industry were exercised in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, and had attained a high degree of perfection. The excellence of the products and the delicacy of the work prove the intelligence of the workmen. Under Ptolemy II., the army was composed of 200,000 footmen, 40,000 cavalry, 300 elephants, and 200 chariots; the arsenals were capable of furnishing arms for 300,000 men.440 The Egyptian fleet, properly so called, consisted of a hundred and twelve vessels of the first class (from five to thirty ranges of oars), and two hundred and twenty-four of the second class, together with light craft; the king had, besides these, more than four thousand ships in the ports placed in subjection to him.441 It was especially after Alexander that the Egyptian navy became greatly extended.

Cyrenaica.

XVII. Separating Egypt from the possessions of Carthage, Cyrenaica (the regency of Tripoli), formerly colonised by the Greeks and independent, had fallen into the hands of the first of the Ptolemies. It possessed commercial and rich towns, and fertile plains; its cultivation extended even into the mountains;442 wine, oil, dates, saffron and different plants, such as the silphium (laserpitium),443 were the object of considerable traffic.444 The horses of Cyrenaica, which had all the lightness of the Arabian horses, were objects of research even in Greece,445 and the natives of Cyrene could make no more handsome present to Alexander than to send him three hundred of their coursers.446 Nevertheless, political revolutions had already struck at the ancient prosperity of the country,447 which previously formed, by its navigation, its commerce, and its arts, probably the finest of the colonies founded by the Greeks.

Cyprus.

XVIII. The numerous islands of the Mediterranean enjoyed equal prosperity. Cyprus, colonised by the Phœnicians, and subsequently by the Greeks, passing afterwards under the dominion of the Egyptians, had a population which preserved, from its native country, the love of commerce and distant voyages. Almost all its towns were situated on the sea-coast, and furnished with excellent ports. Ptolemy Soter maintained in it an army of 30,000 Egyptians.448 No country was richer in timber. Its fertility passed for being superior to that of Egypt.449 To its agricultural produce were added precious stones, mines of copper worked from an early period,450 and so rich, that this metal took its name from the island itself (Cuprum). In Cyprus were seen numerous sanctuaries, and especially the temple of Venus at Paphos, which contained a hundred altars.451

Crete.

XIX. Crete, peopled by different races, had attained even in the heroic age a great celebrity; Homer sang its hundred cities; but during several centuries it had been on the decline. Without commerce, without a regular navy, without agriculture, it possessed little else than its fruits and woods, and the sterility which characterises it now had already commenced. Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that at the time of the Roman conquest, the island was still well peopled.452 Devoted to piracy,453 and reduced to sell their services, the Cretans, celebrated as archers, fought as mercenaries in the armies of Syria, Macedonia, and Egypt.454

Rhodes.

XX. If Crete was in decline, Rhodes, on the contrary, was extending its commerce, which took gradually the place of that of the maritime towns of Ionia and Caria. Already inhabited, in the time of Homer, by a numerous population, and containing three important towns, Lindos, Ialysus, and Camirus,455 the isle was, in the fifth century of Rome, the first maritime power after Carthage. The town of Rhodes, built during the war of the Peloponnesus (346), had, like the Punic city, two ports, one for merchant vessels, the other for ships of war. The right of anchorage produced a revenue of a million of drachmas a year.456 The Rhodians had founded colonies on different points of the Mediterranean shore,457 and entertained friendly relations with a great number of towns from which they received more than once succours and presents.458 They possessed upon the neighbouring Asiatic continent tributary towns, such as Caunus and Stratonicea, which paid them 120 talents (700,000 francs [£28,000]). The navigation of the Bosphorus, of which they strove to maintain the passage free, soon belonged to them almost exclusively.459 All the maritime commerce from the Nile to the Palus Mæotis thus fell into their hands. Laden with slaves, cattle, honey, wax, and salt meats,460 their ships went to fetch on the coast of the Cimmerian Bosphorus (Sea of Azof) the wheat then very celebrated,461 and to carry wines and oils to the northern coast of Asia Minor. By means of its fleets, though its land army was composed wholly of foreigners,462 Rhodes several times made war with success. She contended with Athens, especially from 397 to 399; she resisted victoriously, in 450, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and owed her safety to the respect of this prince for a magnificent painting of Ialysus, the work of Protogenes.463 During the campaigns of the Romans in Macedonia and Asia, she furnished them with considerable fleets.464 Her naval force was maintained until the civil war which followed the death of Cæsar, but was then annihilated.

The celebrity of Rhodes was no less great in arts and letters than in commerce. After the reign of Alexander, it became the seat of a famous school of sculpture and painting, from which issued Protogenes and the authors of the Laocoon and the Farnese Bull. The town contained three thousand statues,465 and a hundred and six colossi, among others the famous Statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world, a hundred and five feet high, the cost of which had been three thousand talents (17,400,000 francs [£696,000]).466 The school of rhetoric at Rhodes was frequented by students who repaired thither from all parts of Greece, and Cæsar, as well as Cicero, went there to perfect themselves in the art of oratory.

The other islands of the Ægean Sea had nearly all lost their political importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its port the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favourable position an extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she became corrupted like Byzantium and Zacynthus (Zante), which Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of luxury.467

Sardinia.

XXI. The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of independence.468 From 541469 to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken, or sold.470 The number of these last was so considerable, that the expression Sardinians to sell (Sardi venales) became proverbial.471 Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000 inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of corn, and numerous herds of cattle, made of this island the second granary of Carthage.472 The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552, the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the freight.473 The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a superior quality474 occupied thousands of hands.

Corsica.

XXII. Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly more than 30,000 inhabitants,475 and Strabo represents them as savages, and living in the mountains.476 According to Pliny, however, it had thirty towns.477 Resin, wax, honey,478 exported from factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocæans on the coasts, were almost the only products of the island.

Sicily.

XXIII. Sicily, called by the ancients the favourite abode of Ceres, owed its name to the Sicani or Siculi, a race which had once peopled a part of Italy; Phœnician colonies, and afterwards Greek colonies, had established themselves in it. In 371, the Greeks occupied the eastern part, about two-thirds of the island; the Carthaginians, the western part. Sicily, on account of its prodigious fertility, was, as may be supposed, coveted by both peoples; it was soon the same in regard to the Romans, and, after the conquest, it became the granary of Italy.479 The orations of Cicero against Verres show the prodigious quantities of wheat which it sent, and to what a great sum the tenths or taxes amounted, which procured immense profits to the farmers of the revenues.480

The towns which, under Roman rule, declined, were possessed of considerable importance at the time of which we are speaking. The first among them, Syracuse, the capital of Hiero’s kingdom, contained 600,000 souls; it was composed of six quarters, comprised in a circumference of 180 stadia (36 kilometres); it furnished, when it was conquered, a booty equal to that of Carthage.481 Other cities rivalled Syracuse in extent and power. Agrigentum, in the time of the first Punic war, contained 50,000 soldiers;482 it was one of the principal garrisons in Sicily.483 Panormus (Palermo), Drepana (Trapani), and Lilybæum (Marsala), possessed arsenals, docks for ship-building, and vast ports. The roadstead of Messina was capable of holding 600 vessels.484 Sicily is still the richest country in ancient monuments; our admiration is excited by the ruins of twenty-one temples and of eleven theatres, among others that of Taormina, which contained 40,000 spectators.485

This concise description of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, two or three hundred years before our era, shows sufficiently the state of prosperity of the different peoples who inhabited them. The remembrance of such greatness inspires a very natural wish, namely, that henceforth the jealousy of the great powers may no longer prevent the East from shaking off the dust of twenty centuries, and from being born again to life and civilisation!

CHAPTER V.

PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA

(From 488 to 621.)

Comparison between Rome and Carthage.

I. ROME, having extended her dominion to the southern extremity of Italy, found herself in face of a power which, by the force of circumstances, was to become her rival.

Carthage, situated on the part of the African coast nearest to Sicily, was only separated from it by the channel of Malta, which divides the great basin of the Mediterranean in two. She had, during more than two centuries, concluded, from time to time, treaties with Rome, and, with a want of foresight of the future, congratulated the Senate every time it had gained great advantages over the Etruscans or the Samnites.

The superiority of Carthage at the beginning of the Punic wars was evident; yet the constitution of the two cities might have led any one to foresee which in the end must be the master. A powerful aristocracy reigned in both; but at Rome the nobles, identified continually with the people, set an example of patriotism and of all civic virtues, while at Carthage the leading families, enriched by commerce, made effeminate by an unbridled luxury, formed a selfish and greedy caste, distinct from the rest of the citizens. At Rome, the sole motive of action was glory, the principal occupation war, and the first duty military service. At Carthage, everything was sacrificed to interest and commerce; and the defence of the fatherland was, as an insupportable burden, abandoned to mercenaries. Hence, after a defeat, at Carthage the army was recruited with difficulty; at Rome it immediately recruited itself, because the populace was subject to the recruitment. If the poverty of the treasury caused the pay of the troops to be delayed, the Carthaginian soldiers mutinied, and placed the State in danger; the Romans supported privations and suffering without a murmur, out of mere love for their country.

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1

Montesquieu, Grandeur et Décadence des Romains, xviii.

2

Suetonius, Cæsar, 22.

3

“Cæsar resolved to pass into Britain, the people of which had, in nearly all wars, assisted the Gauls.” (Cæsar, Gallic War, IV. 20.)

4

Suetonius, Cæsar, 47.

5

Appian, Civil Wars, I. 110, 326, edit. Schweighæuser.

6

Cicero, Epistolæ ad Atticum, XIV. 10.

7

In fact, how many disturbances, civil wars, and revolutions in Europe since 1815! in France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Hungary, Greece, and Germany!

8

Grandeur et Décadence des Romains.

9

Titus Livius I. 44. – Dionysius of Halicarnassus, speaking of the portion of the rampart between the Porta Æsquilina and the Porta Collina, says, “Rome is fortified by a fosse thirty feet deep and a hundred or more wide in the narrowest part. Above this fosse rises a wall supported internally by a lofty and wide terrace, so that it cannot be shaken by battering rams, or overthrown by undermining.” (Antiq. Roman., IX. 68.)