Part 38

Pompey was now made consul: he was the favourite of the people, as it was expected that he would restore the tribuneship. In no other way can I account for this enthusiasm. It might indeed much rather have been felt for Cæsar, whose nature was such that no worthy hearted man could come near him without loving him, even as Cicero in truth was always fond of him: it is a very noble want of the people, that it longs so often to find an object for its enthusiasm. Pompey had not yet been invested with any curule dignity; notwithstanding which, he was consul with Crassus, a man with whom he was at that time on such ill terms, that the Romans trembled lest the two foes should take up arms against each other. But at the urgent entreaties of the senate they made up their quarrel, and both of them behaved like honourable men; for during nineteen years afterwards they never were really enemies again, and they sometimes even appeared to be very good friends.

Crassus had gained his importance as the conqueror of Spartacus. About three[117] years after Sylla’s death, Spartacus, a Thracian, had with forty, others say with seventy-four gladiators, broken out of a barrack of gladiators at Capua. There is a house at Pompeii which is very like a barrack, with rooms in which arms were found, and which has therefore been called the soldiers’ quarters. The very fact that there should have been a garrison at Pompeii, seemed to me quite incredible; but on closer examination, I recognised the arms as being of the same description as those described by Livy as having been in use among the Samnites, which were afterwards adopted by the Campanians, and then by the gladiators; there is therefore no doubt but that it was a _ludus gladiatorius_, which we must thus suppose to have been a building of this kind, in which the gladiators were shut up at night. The number of the gladiators had gone on increasing; as the rage for them among the Romans had daily become greater, and such games were the surest means by which the men of rank could make themselves popular.

Spartacus, after having broken out, escaped with his followers to mount Vesuvius: he must have been a very great man, and would undoubtedly have proved himself to be one in any other position. The volcano had at that time quite burnt out: there was on it an old tumbled-down crater very difficult of access, in which they hid themselves, and whither immense crowds of slaves, of which there were then great numbers in Italy, ran to join them. Spartacus at first formed a band of robbers; and when troops were sent to surround and take him, he gave them the slip, and defeated the Romans with much loss on their side. By this means, the slaves began to be provided with good arms; hitherto they had made their own weapons themselves, as well as they could. Spartacus now proclaimed the freedom of the slaves. Lower Italy was in those days either altogether lying waste, or it was overrun by slaves, all of whom forthwith hastened to him: the freemen had so much dwindled since the devastations of Sylla, that there was no one at hand to check the insurrection. It is strange that among the slaves Germans also are positively mentioned: of these there cannot now have been many from the Teutones; they must have come thither from the Gauls by _commercium_. The leaders ruled with dictatorial power; Spartacus was a Thracian, Crixus and Oenomaus were Gauls. The war lasted until the third year. Two consular, and three prætorian armies were utterly routed; a great number of towns like Nola, Grumentum, Thurii, very likely also Compsa in the country of the Hirpinians, were taken and sacked with the atrocious cruelty which might have been looked for in a horde of bandits; we know but the smallest part of these horrors. Crassus defeated them in the third year. They had large forges for making arms, and did not shrink from the mighty thought of conquering the greater part of Italy, not to speak of destroying Rome itself. Rome would have been obliged to concentrate her power from all quarters, had not quarrels arisen among the rebels themselves, owing to which they split into three different bodies, each of which was hostile to the others; thus Crassus was enabled to defeat them one by one. Near Petilia in Lucania, he gained the last decisive victory; and he followed it up with the same cruelty which the German princes displayed after the Peasants’ War in the sixteenth century. Every where prisoners were seen speared, hung up mangled on the highways, and tortured to death. The devastations of southern Italy have indeed never been so completely repaired, as to restore it to the same condition as that to which it had reached before the Marsian war; yet I fully believe, that even its present wretched state is better, and that its inhabitants are more numerous, than in the most prosperous times under the emperors. The free population was quite rooted out, the towns were laid waste, and the few places which are mentioned of Lucania in the itineraries, were hardly anything else but posting stages; the whole country moreover was turned into large estates which were used for the breeding of cattle, especially of horses. The number of monuments which one finds of the towns of that period, is incredibly small.

SECOND AND THIRD WAR AGAINST MITHRIDATES.

At the same time, Rome was carrying on a war in Asia, against Mithridates. It was also in fact the third against him, and it had sprung out of the one with Sertorius: others, however, call it the second.

After Sylla had left Asia, Mithridates fulfilled most of the conditions of the peace; he gave Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Paphlagonia to the prince set up by the Romans; he also had delivered up ships, money and prisoners; in Cappadocia alone, the surrender had not been complete. Yet he had likewise yielded up the greater part of that country to Ariobarzanes, the prince protected by Romans, and he had kept but a small part of it; nor can we blame his motives for doing so. Having faithfully performed every stipulation with the exception of this single point, he now demanded that the Romans should exchange the treaty in form, and that the peace should be ratified in a regular written document by the senate and people, as Sylla had promised him; for as yet he had but Sylla’s word. That he had not put forth these claims at once, was very naturally owing to Sylla’s wishing first to regain Italy himself. Afterwards, the blame lay not so much with Sylla, who was not false in such matters, as with the senate, which flatly refused to grant such a document.

L. Murena now proceeded to Cappadocia, and thence he made an inroad into Mithridates’ territory, and plundered the rich temple of Anaitis in Comana. Although Mithridates did everything in his power to avoid a collision, Murena carried things so far that a war broke out, in which he was worsted. After this, Mithridates still continued to declare with perfect truth, that he was only acting in self-defence; and he begged the Romans to ratify the treaty. Sertorius being still in arms, the Romans held their peace and took his excuses; but the treaties seem never to have been exchanged.

They left him in possession of that part of Cappadocia, and he affianced to Ariobarzanes one of his daughters who at that time was still a child. This is to be considered as the second Mithridatic War.

The last great war against Mithridates, a war which lasted even to the twelfth year, was brought about by Sertorius, who sent two proscribed persons (L. Marius, probably a Campanian new-citizen, and L. Fannius) to Mithridates, and made an alliance with him. It was stipulated that the latter should aid Sertorius with his naval forces, and place at his disposition the Cilician pirates, who were under his influence; Sertorius, on the other hand, was in the event of success to give up the whole of Asia to Mithridates.

END OF VOL. II.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Monte Pellegrino.--Germ. Edit.

[2] This number is stated in the Lex. Rhetoricum (Bekker Anecd. I. p. 298). Herodotus (VII. 184.) mentions eighty as the number of the crews of the penteconters. The number given in the text, rests only on one Manuscript of the lectures, but on a very trustworthy one.--Germ. Ed.

[3] One hundred quinqueremes, and twenty quadriremes. R. H. III, note 1053.--Germ. Edit.

[4] The elephants might perhaps have been introduced but a short time before from India, where they were in use from time immemorial: the Carthaginians had not yet employed them against Dionysius and Agathocles.

[5] The _legiones urbanæ_ likewise were only phalangites.

[6] This remark that the story of the horrid death of Regulus originated with the poem of Nævius, was not repeated by Niebuhr in the year 1829, which may perhaps justify the surmise, that he had afterwards abandoned this conjecture; yet it is not to be forgotten, that at that period he treated this point on the whole much more concisely.--Germ. Ed.

[7] Thus the Romans always learned from their enemies; they are also said to have told the Carthaginians in the beginning of the struggle, not to compel them to a war by sea, as they had always learned from their enemies, and then surpassed them.

[8] In some MSS. _grandson_, which is in contradiction to the Fasti, but seems more appropriate, as 58 years intervene between the consulship of the two.

[9] By this is to be understood that, previous to the fourth decade, the office itself is not yet mentioned at all in our Livy, but from thence, and in the fifth, more frequently. See Sigonius ad Liv. XXXIII. 21, 9.--Germ. Edit.

[10] In Suidas there is a touching story. When Antigonus Gonatas took Athens, which made a stout resistance, and was only compelled by famine to surrender, the old poet Philemon was still living in the Piræeus, whither he had removed, though not perhaps till after the downfall of the city. He was hoary with age, but still a hale old man, and his poetical powers had not yet left him. His last comedy was finished, all but one scene. He lay half dreaming on his couch, when he saw nine maidens in the room before him, who were just going away. Being asked who they were, and why they were leaving, they answered that he might well know them. They were the Muses: turning round towards him, they left him. Then he got up, finished his comedy, and died. Greek literature received its death-blow at the time of the loss of the Piræeus: the spirit may indeed be said to have fled from Greece.

[11] According to Justin, XLIII, extr., Trogus Pompeius was a Vocontian, from south-eastern Gaul. Conf. Niebuhr’s Lectures on Ancient History, p. 9.--Germ. Edit.

[12] Montepulciano. (Lectures of 1826)--Germ. Edit.

[13] XXI, 38. R. H. II, 589.--Germ. Edit.

[14] Mistake, instead of, “in Lacinium.” Polyb. III, 33, 18; 56, 4.--Germ. Edit.

[15] _Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Geschichte._

[16] When Bohemond, to check the Turks in the crusades, had corpses roasted, and shown to the ambassadors, this was a necessity. (See Wilken, History of the Crusades I, 87.)--Germ. Edit.

[17] Zonaras IX, 2. (from Dio Cassius). Appian. Pun. 63.--Germ. Edit.

[18] Cicero (de Oratore II, 18), in the anecdote of the rhetorician who expatiated before Hannibal on the excellencies of a general, says that Hannibal did not speak Greek well (_non optime Græce_).

[19] J. A. de Luc, Histoire du passage des Alpes par Annibal. Genève, 1818.

[20] See Leon. Aretino’s description of the roads and inhabitants of Tyrol in the fifteenth century, in his journey to Constance, which quite reminds one of the times of the Romans.

[21] So in the MSS. Probably Niebuhr made a slip of the tongue. According to Polybius, Lilybæum is the place.--Germ. Edit.

[22] In the year 1828, this assertion is expressed quite positively, “Sempronius came from Africa to Genoa,” in which of course the soldiers taking their oath that they would be at Rimini by an appointed time, is left out.--Germ. Edit.

[23] There seems to be a mistake here; but the MSS. agree in giving “Apennines.” What is to be placed instead, seems to me difficult to say for certain; perhaps “Ariminum.”--Germ. Edit.

[24] This name also seems incorrect; yet all the MSS. have either this, or another of a similar sound.

[25] The following account is borrowed from the lectures of 1826-7, which I think I ought not to suppress. “Whether Hannibal now marched along the Arno into the upper valley of that river, or whether he turned towards the district of Siena, is not to be decided. I believe that he did the latter, although Livy talks of a devastation of the upper valley of the Arno (very likely a figment of Cœlius Antipater); but in that case, Flaminius could not have executed his hapless march. Hannibal’s object must have been, not the laying waste of some Etrurian districts, but to gain the road to Rome; and that he also did. I believe therefore that on getting out of the swamps, he threw himself into the mountains of Chiusi. Flaminius heard of this movement, and tried by forced marches to reach the road to Rome. If my opinion be correct, even the description of Polybius is wrong; for according to his account, as well as that of Livy, Hannibal had passed by Cortona, and thrown himself between the mountains and the lake Trasimenus, and Flaminius had followed him: here Hannibal stopped, occupied the hills, and placed an ambush for Flaminius. In my opinion, both the generals went round the lake, but from different sides; otherwise it would be impossible that Flaminius had allowed himself to be surprised. If Hannibal had marched by that road, he would have passed within only a few leagues of Arezzo, and then Flaminius must have long known of his march; if, on the contrary, he went through the district of Siena by San Gemignano and Colle, all may be accounted for. We understand then, that Flaminius, who started in pursuit, was not able to catch him; that Hannibal came to the south side of the Trasimenus, whilst Flaminius imagined that he was already much further advanced on the road to Rome, and that he only intended to cut him off. Then it could happen that Hannibal took up his position on the south side of the lake, and placed his light troops around on the hills, between which and the lake the road lay. This could be done unknown to Flaminius, only when he was not aware, that Hannibal had taken this road.” Whilst elsewhere there is reason to presume, that wherever the later lectures differ from the earlier ones, Niebuhr had changed his views, and therefore, generally speaking, his last opinions only are given, the present case seems to have been different; and on this ground, the detailed discussion on the march of Hannibal has been inserted in this note.--Germ. Edit.

[26] V, 17. from Q. Claudius (_Quadrigarius_, _Annalium_ l. V.) and Macrob. Saturn. I, 16.--Germ. Edit.

[27] In the same manner there exist three different accounts of the death of Marcellus.

[28] According to Appian, they were 48,000 foot, 8,000 horse, and 15 elephants.

[29] Liv. XXXVIII, 56. Valer. Max. IV, I. 6. According to both passages, he was, however, to be appointed consul and _dictator_ for life.--Germ. Edit.

[30] Here follows in the lectures of 1829 a very brief review of the state of things in Italy after the war of Hannibal, which, however, to avoid repetitions, I have made into one with the more explicit account, which follows after the war of Antiochus.--Germ. Edit.

[31] The second war of Philip against the Romans is generally reckoned as the first Macedonian War; we more correctly so call the one which coincides with the war with Hannibal.

[32] See above, p. 48.

[33] When we read that Hannibal had changed the _ordo judicum_, this means without a doubt not the Suffetes, whom the Greeks always call βασιλεῖς, but the hundred or hundred and four of Aristotle, a power which was quite distinct from that of the constituted authorities of state, and was very like the state-inquisition at Venice.

[34] Diod. XVI. 91. Just. IX. 5.--Germ. Edit.

[35] A dollar (Prussian) = 3 shillings.--TRANS.

[36] St. Jerome, as he says, heard the same language in Phrygia which he had heard in Treves. This does not, however, refer to the Galatians; but St. Jerome probably had seen Germans, who at different times, especially Gothic ones under Theodosius, had settled in Phrygia. For it is to be considered as an undoubted fact, that Treves was German, and the Gallic language could have scarcely maintained itself in Asia to such a late period as his.

[37] II, 9.

[38] Ulixes was Siculian: in a temple in the island of Sicily, there was found some connexion with him. (Plut. Marc. c. 20.--Germ. Ed.)

[39] Circe was quite correctly placed in Circeii, which is the most ancient form of the fable.

[40] If this be meant for _S. C. de Bacchanalibus_, the quotation is a mistake, as that decree is not later than Plautus: probably instead of “_senatus consultum_” it ought to be said inscription, or a similar word, as undoubtedly the inscription of the _columna rostrata_ is meant.--Germ. Edit.

[41] See on the other hand vol. i., p. 17.--Germ. Edit.

[42] Niebuhr uses the English word.--Transl.

[43] Jul. Victor, p. 224. Or., and in the same place. Ang. Maius.--Germ. Ed.

[44] Fabr. Bibl. Gr. IV. 461.--Germ. Edit.

[45] Polyb. X. 9, 3.

[46] Gall. 12. A. U. C. 631. Appian.--Germ. Ed.

[47] P. Cornelius Cethegus and M. Bæbius Tamphilus, in the year of the city 571.--Germ. Ed.

[48] De Colon. ed. Goës, p. 106.--Germ. Ed.

[49] Plut. Æmil. Paull. 19.

[50] Schneider in his Latin grammar has a whole chapter on the name of _Perseus_. But all the Greek names ending in εύς had in the old Latin the termination _-es_, and were in the genitive case declined after the second declension. _Piraeeus_ makes in the genitive _Piraei_, (_Piraeei_ being a barbarism which is not to be met with in any MS.). _Perseus_ differs from the rest, in afterwards getting into the third declension. Its accusative is _Persen_: _Persum_ does not occur, but certainly _Piraeum_ does.

[51] This original opinion on the work of Polybius, which Niebuhr repeated several times (see R. H. III. p. 49.) is probably to be understood thus, that he makes the first edition reach to the conclusion of the thirtieth book, (one MS. states in this passage, books I. to XXVIII., in which very likely the first two books are not included,) and considers the rest as added in the second edition.--Germ. Edit.

[52] This remark dates from 1826, and was therefore anterior to the emancipation of the Roman Catholics.--Germ. Ed.

[53] Liv. Epit. 48.

[54] Liv. Epit. 55.

[55] Schol. Bob. in Orat. pro Sulla. (Orelli vol. V. P. 2. p. 361.) In Liv. XL, 19, the reading is very doubtful, see the commentators, whence the supposition, that the law dates from Sulla. Others refer this _Lex Cornelia_ to the consul Cn. Cornelius Dolabella (595), quoting Liv. Epit. 47.--Germ. Edit.

[56] In several very good MSS., there is here the following reading, “but probably later than is generally assumed; it must have been shortly before the last war with Rome.” The editor quotes this, since there are no arguments given, for deciding the question; yet the reading inserted in the text, seems to be more correct, as the general belief places the war of Masinissa very close indeed to the outbreak of the third Punic war.--Germ. Edit.

[57] In the received editions of the Capitoline Fasti, the name _Æmilianus_ at the year 618 (19) seems genuine, we also meet with _Æmiliano Scipioni_, Cic. Phil. XIII. 4, 9.--Germ. Ed.

[58] There have been published of him, “J. E. Humbert, Notice sur quatre cippes sepulcraux, et deux fragmens decouverts en 1817 sur le sol de l’ancienne Carthage, à la Haye 1821.” The papers of Borgia, which seem to be at Naples, are made use of in H. F. J. Estrup _Lineæ topographicæ Carthaginis Tyriæ Hafn._ 1821. 8.--Germ. Ed.

[59] _Literally_, “villages as large as Sinzig.”

[60] Thonium in Locris 1829, probably a _lapsus linguæ_.--Germ. Ed.

[61] If in the Epitome of Livy the time of his war is stated as being fourteen years, one is to add the former war, in which he already distinguished himself in a separate command among the Lusitanians.

[62] See above, p. 60.

[63] Zumpt’s annals are very recommendable in their way.

[64] I know of no passage where this is stated. May this not perhaps have been a mistake for Blæsus, who has written Rhintonian pieces?--Germ. Edit.

[65] See vol. I., p. 251.

[66] Ibid. p. 398.

[67] These words are in the original.

[68] In Liv. XXXI, 4. Lucania is not mentioned.--Germ. Edit. II.

[69] I have supplied this name merely from conjecture: the MSS. have _Solino_, a place which I do not find.--Germ. Ed.

[70] This English word is in the original.

[71] A mistake, very likely from misreading the academical shorthand of the MSS. It should be, _the queen_, the quotation being from the mock tragedy “Esther” in the _Jahrmarkt Zu Plundersweilern_.--TRANSL.

[72] Olive plantations especially are only productive after a long time, so that an ejectment renders entirely fruitless a very great amount of labour bestowed upon them.

[73] For Niebuhr reads Liv. Epit. LVIII, _ne quis ex publica agro plus quam M jugera possideret_. R. H. vol. II., p. 150.--Germ. Edit.

[74] See vol. I., p. 401.

[75] This is one of the instances, when Niebuhr was cut short by the close of the hour in the middle of an idea, the thread of which he did not carefully take up at the beginning of the next lecture.--Germ. Edit.

[76] In Plutarch, _Vit. C. Gracch._, on the contrary, it is stated, ἐνέστησαν _οἱ πολλοὶ_ καὶ κατέλυσαν τὴν κρίσιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ Γαΐου φοβηθέντες, μὴ περιπετὴς τῇ αἰτίᾳ τοῦ φόνου ζητουμένου γένηται, which, when applying to C. Gracchus, is hardly substantiated.--Germ. Ed.

[77] It is now printed in _Auctores classici e Vaticanis Codd. editi, cur. Ang. Majo_, _Vol._ II. _Rom._ 1828. (_Schol. Bobiensia in Cic. Milon. c. 7. in Orelli V._ 2. p. 283.)

[78] This is perhaps to be modified thus, that this formula here occurs for the first time since the abolition of the dictatorship (in the middle of the sixth century): it is, on the whole, very old, and we meet with it for the first time in the year 290. Liv. III, 4.--Germ. Edit.

[79] _Cantharidas sumpsisse dicitur._ _Cic. Fam._ IX. 21: it was another Cn. Papirius Carbo, who put an end to himself by means of _atramentum sutorium_. _Cic. ibid._--Germ. Edit.

[80] I cannot answer for the correctness of the name; it occurs, indistinctly written, only in one of my MSS. of 1826-7.--Germ. Edit.

[81] See Bentl. ad Hor. Carm. IV, 8, 17; who, however, strikes out that line, from metrical reasons also. Others conjecture that there is a hiatus in that passage.--Germ. Edit.

[82] In vol. I, p. 258, and R. H. II, 195, the Cassii are considered as plebeians: our passage dates from 1826-7; the former one from 1828-9.--Germ. Edit.

[83] Conf. vol. I, p. 367.

[84] Bonn is here spoken of.--TRANSL.