Part 24

When the Romans, in the year 605, now saw that they were about to overthrow Carthage, they also took a different tone towards Achaia. The Achæans had acted in direct disobedience to them, and had thus drawn down their vengeance upon themselves, although they had remained faithful during the revolt of the pseudo-Philip, and had given them their aid. But the very prosperity of Achaia may have led the Romans to break it up. Its extent in those times cannot be stated with exactness: it very likely took in the whole of Peloponnesus and Megara, and although Attica, Phocis, and Locris did not belong to it, several places yet farther off, by having isopolity, were in the league; for instance, Heraclea, by mount Oeta, Pleuron, in Ætolia. The Roman commissioners, C. Aurelius Orestes and his colleagues, appeared at Corinth, and announced it to be the will of the Roman senate, that Lacedæmon should be declared independent; and that all the places, which, at the time of the alliance with Philip, had not belonged to Achaia, but had been under Philip’s sway, should be separated from it: these were Corinth, Orchomenus in Arcadia, Heraclea, Pleuron. (Whether Elis and Messene belonged to the same category, is more than we know, as Appian’s notices are so scanty: the _excerpta_ of Constantinus Porphyrogenitus will very likely still bring to light a great deal more of this period.) This was about the half of the Peloponnesus, and the most distinguished of their towns. The Achæan council, then assembled in Corinth, would not listen to the end of this message; they ordered the doors to be thrown open, and the people to be called together to hear the insolence of the Romans. The rage of the people was beyond all bounds: the Romans returned to their lodgings, without having gotten an answer; the citizens spread themselves about the town and fell upon the Lacedæmonians; everywhere the houses were searched to see whether any Lacedæmonian had hidden himself within, and not even that of the Roman ambassadors was spared. The first of these, Aurelius Orestes, was bent upon revenge; but the Roman senate was not yet inclined to inflict immediate punishment. We find it often stated that Corinth had been destroyed _ob pulsatos legatos_; this is not to be understood literally of personal violence, _pulsare_ being the technical expression for every violation of the law of nations. Even a derogatory _appellatio_ of the ambassador, by which his dignity was insulted, was termed _pulsatio_.

The Roman senate did not trust its allies, and again sent commissioners; so that the Achæans might have easily saved themselves by submission. The demand of the Romans was a most glaring injustice; but unhappily there is henceforward in all the dealings of the Roman people with foreign nations, nothing but insolence and unrighteousness. And yet, now that the moral interest of the Roman history is quite at an end, a new one begins: the history of Rome becomes neither more nor less than the general history of those ages, and the events in the latter which find no place in the former, are so insignificant that they cannot be made into an independent history. Now though the Achæans could hardly have succeeded in getting the Romans to desist from their demands, they ought at all events to have submitted to their will: it was madness to kick against it. But it was with them as with the ill-fated Jews, in that last struggle with the Romans of which we read the history in Josephus; those who had the language of freedom on their lips, were the fiercest tyrants of the nation. He who votes for yielding to necessity, is often held to be a vile traitor; the man, on the contrary, who is for risking everything, is looked up to as a lover of his country. The prophet Jeremy already had good reason to complain of the false prophets who beguiled the people to mad undertakings. Just so it was with the Achæans. Those among them who talked the most loudly of freedom, were by no means its best friends; the true patriots indeed were those who gave their advice for peace. The Romans were now still waiting for more favourable circumstances, as they were not in a condition to take the field, on account of the Macedonian and Punic wars: embassies therefore went backwards and forwards on both sides. Achaia had formerly been under the lead of Callicrates, one of its citizens, who had sold himself to the Romans; and it was now under the influence of a couple of madmen, Critolaus and Diæus, his most violent foes, who were for resistance, even to the last gasp. Critolaus amused the Roman ambassadors. As the Achæans only met twice a-year, he now sent to call one of these meetings, and promised to introduce the Roman ambassadors; but he secretly warned all the members not to come, and then declared that, according to the laws, a new assembly could not be held for six months.

The Achæans now armed themselves. Yet one can hardly conceive how so small and insignificant a people could have the madness even to dream of being able to stand against the Romans. During the fifty years which had elapsed since they had been under their protection, they had been quite inactive: they had only carried on petty and trifling wars, and as they had ceased to have a standing army, they had nothing but militia, which was still to be properly trained. They had spent their time, while they were well off, in sensual indulgence, and had neglected everything which they ought to have done for their armament; so that they were not prepared for the chance of a danger which might try their utmost strength, as may be seen from the newly discovered fragments of Polybius. A wanton luxury and moral degeneracy, the contemplation of which awakens most dismal thoughts, was now rife among them. They came, as we have said, to the resolution of waging war; and they were joined by the Bœotians and Chalcidians, the latter of whom may have feared for their newly recovered freedom. These transactions are, however, very obscure. The Ætolians did not take part with them, perhaps from revenge and a malignant joy at seeing the downfall of their rivals. Critolaus led a small army to Thessaly, in all likelihood with the hope that the false Philip would still be able to hold out, and that the Romans would thus be placed between two fires: for it was thought that the Macedonians would go on with the war, and that the Thessalians perhaps would rise in a body. But in Macedon all was over. Heraclea, which before had sided with the Achæans, was in fact separated from them by the Romans: an Achæan detachment, which had already penetrated through Thermopylæ, and was besieging Heraclea, quickly fled at the approach of Metellus and the Romans to the main army, and joined Critolaus, who had not yet reached Thermopylæ. Experience indeed had shown that this pass could be turned; yet the very place ought surely to have called upon the Greeks to die a glorious death: but they did the very worst thing that they could have done; for they made off in all haste for the Isthmus, and when near Scarphea,[60] Metellus came up with their rear-guard, being seized by a sudden panic, they were scattered like chaff before the wind. Critolaus disappeared: the most likely supposition is that he sank with his horse in the marshes on the sea-shore, though it is possible that they who told this, may also have meant by this mysterious account to designate him as the evil genius of Greece. The Romans now entered Bœotia, and fell in at Chæronea with the Arcadian contingent of one thousand men, which, at the tidings of the battle, was trying to retreat. The misery of Greece is described by Polybius, and we then see how unjust it was to this great man to have looked upon him as having no feeling for the fate of his native country. Metellus advanced towards the Isthmus. The whole population of Thebes had left it, and had fled for refuge to Cithæron and Helicon; Metellus took the town, and treated it with much forbearance: he wished to end the war, and to deal mildly with the Greeks. But that he could not do; for which the Greeks themselves, as well as their stars, are to be blamed. In almost all the towns it was the same as in Thebes; no one thought of making a stand. At the same time, a Roman fleet went to Peloponnesus, and, landing on the coast of Elis, barbarously ravaged the country, the Achæans not being able anywhere to protect their shores: the contingent belonging to those parts did not now go to the Isthmus; it tried to defend its own towns, but in vain. Diæus, who, on the death of Critolaus, had seized upon the office of _strategus_, and had posted himself near Megara, at the approach of Metellus, retreated to the Isthmus. Now indeed the Achæans might have made peace; for Metellus was a great soul, and had the safety of Greece at heart. He offered to negotiate; but Diæus, whose faction had the upperhand at Corinth, thought that he was able to maintain the Isthmus: reckless as he was, he scouted every proffer like a madman. How lucky it would have been if, like Papius Brutulus, he had thought of opening, by his own death, to his country, the prospect of tranquillity! It would then have been an easy thing for the Achæans to have gotten a peace, in which the existence of the single states would have been maintained.

Before Metellus reached the Isthmus, Mummius hastened to take the command of the army. Mummius was not of so mild a disposition as Metellus; he sought laurels for himself, and booty for the Romans. He tried to come up before Metellus could have concluded a peace: for the latter, although a plebeian like Mummius, was of a family which had long been in possession of the curule dignities, and being a _nobilis_, he could easily have carried the peace in the senate; Mummius was a _novus homo_, and not one of the aristocracy. Diæus had enlisted all the slaves who were able to bear arms, and yet he had only got together an army of fourteen thousand men, though there had been more than half a century of peace: this, more than anything, shows in what a wretched moral and political condition the country was; for wealthy the Achæans undoubtedly were. These had their heads turned by an advantage which they won in a cavalry fight, and they provoked the Romans to a battle, which was soon so utterly lost as to leave no hope of safety. They ought to have defended the impregnable Acrocorinthus; but the whole population of Corinth fled into the Arcadian mountains, and the town and the citadel were abandoned, not a soul having remained behind. On the third day after the battle, Mummius, who would not believe it possible that they had given up every thought of defence, ordered the gates to be broken open, and convinced himself that the city was deserted. The pillage of Corinth; Mummius’ barbarian honesty; and the burning of the most wealthy commercial town then in Europe, are well known facts. The booty was immense: all the Corinthians were sold for slaves, and the most noble works of art were carried away. In the same manner, Thebes and Chalcis were destroyed: with regard to other towns, we have no distinct information. Thebes, in Pausanias’ times, was only a small village within the Cadmea. The inhabitants of the whole of the Peloponnesus would have been sold into slavery, had not Polybius, through his friend Scipio, managed to get some merciful decrees from the senate.

Greece was changed into a Roman province, a few places only, like Sparta and Athens, remaining _liberæ civitates_: the real province was Achaia, the prætor of which had the other Greek districts under his rule as dependencies. Phocis and Bœotia were to pay tribute, a thing which they had never done even in the days of the Macedonian sway. Moreover, they got a uniform constitution, which Polybius had a hand in bringing about, and which is said to have contributed greatly towards the reviving of the country. But the national strength was paralysed by the law, that no one should possess landed property in a state to which he did not politically belong; all the συστήματα of the peoples were done away with; all _concilia_, and most likely, all _connubia_ and _commercia_ were forbidden: the territory of Corinth was added to the _ager publicus_. Polybius now returned to the land of his fathers, to obtain for his unhappy countrymen as fair conditions as he could. But his lot was that of a physician who performs on his wife or his child the most painful and dangerous cure: it is his love which animates him in his task; and yet it is that very love which, in such an operation, rends his heart with thrice the agony that it does that of others. This courage is more than heroism: to bear up under such a trial, where once he had lived happily; not to despair amid the general dismay, and even then only to get the tyrants to keep within bounds; and after all to attain at last to a certain end, truly bespeaks a great soul. The author of a petulant essay on Polybius which was published a few years ago, has only exposed himself by his incapability of understanding the sterling greatness of the man. It was through Polybius that the statue of Philopœmen was restored; and all the concessions which were at all favourable to Greece, were owing to nothing but his endeavours alone.

WARS IN SPAIN. VIRIATHUS. DESTRUCTION OF NUMANTIA.

In Spain, fortune was so far from smiling on the Romans, that it seemed as if fate wished to remind them of a Nemesis, as the slave did the warrior in his triumph. The Spanish wars may be divided into periods. The first goes down to the end of the second Punic war; the second, to the treaty of Gracchus by which the Romans ruled over Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, as well as western Aragon and eastern Castile, and also acquired a kind of supremacy over the Celtiberians. The violation of this peace by the fortification of Segida, called forth a fresh struggle which we may name as the first Celtiberian war: M. Claudius Marcellus had then the command; it lasted three or four years.

Out of the war against the Lusitanians, in which Galba by his faithlessness had branded the Roman name with dishonour, that of Viriathus sprang. This man, who was a Lusitanian, had been a common shepherd and also a robber, as is very often the case with herdsmen in southern Europe, even as it is to this very day in Italy; and having been among those Lusitanians towards whom Galba had behaved with such infamous treachery, he had vowed implacable revenge against the Romans. He placed himself at the head of a small band; for in Spain it is characteristic of the nation to have a continual guerilla warfare, for which the Spaniards have a turn, owing to the nature of their country, and also from their disposition, law and order not having the least power over them, while personal qualities are everything. Viriathus enjoyed unbounded confidence as the hero of the nation. He seldom engaged with the Romans in a pitched battle; but to lie in ambush, to cut off supplies, to go round the enemy, to scatter quickly after a defeat, were the ways in which he would wage war. By his great skill he wore out the Roman generals, more than one of whom lost his life against him. The history of his achievements, imperfectly as we know it, is exceedingly interesting. For eight years[61] (605-612), he maintained himself against the Romans; they would march against him with a superior force, and yet he always got out of their reach, and then would suddenly show himself in their rear, or hem them in on impassable roads, and rob them of their baggage, and cut them to pieces in detail. By these means, he gained the whole of the country for himself; only the inhabitants of the coast of Andalusia, who had ever been the least warlike, remained subject to the Romans, being quickly latinized. Among these, therefore, Viriathus made his appearance as a foe; but the ground which was particularly friendly to him, lay from Portugal, all through Estremadura, as far as Aragon: here he moved remarkably quickly with his light horse and foot. Seldom did he meet with loss against the Romans. The Celtiberians also he managed to win over to his side: they did not indeed carry on their warfare according to his plan, but still, as is always the case with Spaniards, they sought the same end in a way of their own. The Romans saw themselves reduced to the necessity of concluding with him a formal peace, in which they acknowledge him as _socius_ and _amicus populi Romani æquissimo jure_, and by which he and his people became completely sovereign,--a peace the like of which the Romans had hardly ever made before. On his side it was honestly meant; whereas the Romans, on the contrary, did not deem themselves bound to keep a treaty which was so utterly at variance with their maxims. The Roman proconsul Cæpio wished for a triumph and booty, like all the Roman generals of that time; and so he rekindled the war, having with an utter want of faith been authorized by the senate to do harm to Viriathus, wherever it was in his power. Thus the war broke out anew, though negotiations were seemingly going on. Traitors were found who offered to murder Viriathus: they accomplished the deed in his tent, and, before any body was aware of his death, escaped to the Romans, from whom they received the price of blood. All that the Lusitanians could now do, was to bury him with an enthusiasm which has become famous in history (612): the friends of this great man fought with each other over his grave, until they fell. Treachery like this is often met with among the Iberians:--the Celtiberians, however, are to be excepted. The character of the Spaniards has in many points remained entirely the same; and though we must lay not a few such cases to the charge of that fearful party spirit of theirs, which still displays itself as strong as ever, of them most particularly the saying holds good, that friendship dies, but that hatred is immortal. Another characteristic has continued to distinguish them even to this day: they are hardly fit for any thing in the lines, and they have shown themselves great in battles only at times, and under great generals,--under Hamilcar and Hannibal, in ancient history; in the middle ages and afterwards, under Gonsalvo de Cordova who formed the Spanish infantry, down to the duke of Alva, under whom it still was excellent: from thence it began to decline.[62]

The Lusitanians now went on with the war under several other generals; but none of the successors of Viriathus was as great as he was,--there was not the same confidence in their personal qualities. D. Junius Brutus Callaicus concluded a peace with them, and they accepted the offer of settling as a sort of Roman colony in Valencia, where they founded the town of that name: the climate there is most softening, so that they soon lost their warlike character. It is remarkable with what ease the same Brutus made conquests in the north-west of Spain, and the north-east of Portugal; and also in modern times, these peoples have shown little perseverance, except against the Moorish rule. He is the first Roman who advanced beyond the Minho into the country of the Callæcians; but his campaign did not leave any lasting consequences, although it made a deep impression in those parts.

These conquests, which shed such lustre upon Rome, took place at the very time when the wars with the Celtiberians were carrying on so unsuccessfully. This people was divided in several small tribes, of which the Belli, Titthi, and Arevaci were the chief. Of their constitution we have no satisfactory idea. Southern Spain seems to have been ruled by kings; the Celtiberians were republican, and perhaps had highly popular institutions: besides which, as in Greece, the most important towns had a free and independent existence of their own, Termantia or Termestia, and Numantia being in the first rank among those of the Arevaci. The Celtiberian wars began in 609, and ended in 619 or 620: when we bear in mind what the races were which held out in them, their great length is well nigh inconceivable. At first, most of the Celtiberians were under arms; little by little, one place after the other fell off. Numantia lay in a very strong position, amid ravines and torrents, near the spot where Soria now stands: whether it is true that it had no walls, or whether this be only said in imitation of the accounts of Sparta, can no longer be made out. They were able to send but eight thousand men into the field, a number which was greatly lessened in the course of the war: at the time of the blockade, there were not more than four thousand left. Twice the Romans make a peace with them, and twice did they break it again: at last, Scipio was once more charged with the commission of torturing to death a noble people.