CHAPTER XLIII

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Pallantium next demands my attention, both to describe what is worthy of record in it, and to show why the elder Antonine made it a town instead of a village, and also free and exempt from taxation. They say that Evander was the best of the Arcadians both in council and war, and that he was the son of Hermes by a Nymph the daughter of Lado, and that he was sent with a force of Arcadians from Pallantium to form a colony, which he founded near the river Tiber. And part of what is now Rome was inhabited by Evander and the Arcadians who accompanied him, and was called Pallantium in remembrance of the town in Arcadia. And in process of time it changed its name into Palatium. It was for these reasons that Pallantium received its privileges from the Roman Emperor. This Antonine, who bestowed such favours on Pallantium, imposed no war on the Romans willingly, but when the Mauri, (the most important tribe of independent Libyans, who were Nomads and much more formidable than the Scythians, as they did not travel in waggons but they and their wives rode on horseback,) commenced a war with Rome, he drove them out of all their territory into the most remote parts, and compelled them to retire from Libya to Mount Atlas and to the neighbourhood of Mount Atlas. He also took away from the Brigantes in Britain most of their territory, because they had attacked the Genunii who were Roman subjects. And when Cos and Rhodes cities of the Lycians and Carians were destroyed by a violent earthquake, the Emperor Antonine restored them by large expenditure of money and by his zeal in re-peopling them. As to the grants of money which he made to the Greeks and barbarians who stood in need of them, and his magnificent works in Greece and Ionia and Carthage and Syria, all this has been minutely described by others. This Emperor left another token of his liberality. Those subject nations who had the privilege of being Roman citizens, but whose sons were reckoned as Greeks, had the option by law of leaving their money to those who were no relations, or letting it swell the wealth of the Emperor. But Antonine allowed them to leave their property to their sons, preferring to exhibit philanthropy rather than to maintain a law which brought in money to the revenue. This Emperor the Romans called Pius from the honour he paid to the gods. I think he might also justly have borne the title of the elder Cyrus, Father of mankind. He was succeeded by his son Antonine, who fought against the Germans, the most numerous and warlike barbarians in Europe, and subdued the Sauromatæ who had commenced an iniquitous war.

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