CHAPTER XIV

ROME MISTRESS OF THE WORLD

We have never before seen the world in the condition to which we have brought it now, in the whole course of the story.

At first, you will remember, there were the two great empires warring, the Nile Valley empire and the empire of the Euphrates and Tigris. Then came the Persian. He overthrew them both. But then he came up against a wall too strong for him to break down, in the opposition of Greece; and he broke his own head against that wall. After him came Alexander, the Macedonian, going through the world, as it was then known, like a flash of lightning, getting the better of everything that stood in his way as if it was of no account at all. But like a flash of lightning his light went out again, and he left the world he had conquered to be cut up into pieces and quarrelled for by the generals that he had led to the conquest.

Then the scene of action shifted westward along the inland sea. Carthage had grown to power at the cost of Phœnicia, her mother-land, and over against Carthage had grown together, in a wonderfully short time, this new Roman power. Carthage and Rome had fought, and Rome had utterly prevailed.

Then Rome, looking eastward, and troubled by King Pyrrhus, who had helped the Carthaginians, came in touch with the Macedonians and the Greeks, {191} and after a period of trouble got the better of both, came up against the peoples of Asia Minor, and had them at her mercy whenever she chose to put out her strength. Already Egypt, though independent nominally, had acknowledged Rome as sovereign.

[Sidenote: Pax Romana]

So you see whither we have come. Hitherto it has always been a struggling world that the story has had to tell of--one or the other master holding power a short while perhaps, but never really having a hold over the whole world and getting all his opponents under. It is quite otherwise now. Rome is mistress; and she is not going to let go her hold for a very long while. When she does lose hold it will be really because her grip has lost power owing to her own maladies, rather than that any other very formidable foe has come against her.

You will understand, of course, what I mean when I talk of "the whole world" at this point of the story, and what that Greek historian, Polybius, of whom I told you in the last chapter, meant by it. He knew, no doubt, that there was a great deal of the world, in the sense of land inhabited by human beings, beyond the wide lands over which the Roman power really did extend. But neither he nor any one else in the Greek or Roman world of that day thought that these lands and their inhabitants counted for anything. They did not matter. These peoples were called barbarians. They were considered rather as we consider the North American Indians or the negroes. They were far more formidable to the Romans than either of these are to us, because the people away to the east and north-east of Syria, to the north of Asia Minor and Thrace and of Italy itself, all these had limitless lands behind them, on the sides farthest {192} from the central power of Rome, to retreat into when she came with any power against them. For the most part they were peoples who led a wandering life. It was no trouble to them to strike their tents and go back into the wilds. But it was terrible trouble for the legions to follow them very far into those wilds; and the legions could not easily force them to a decided battle if they did follow them.

Therefore the Romans doubtless knew that however far they might push out their power in the east and north there would always be peoples on the edge of the lands which they could really make their own who would be apt to give trouble and would require small campaigns to be waged against them from time to time. Probably they made up their minds to that. But inside that wide barbarian fringe, and with the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the nearly uninhabited deserts of Africa on the south--within the wide expanse of which these form the boundary, the Roman power was such that if Rome said a thing had to be done, there was no man who questioned it. Done that thing had to be. That is what is meant by a phrase that you have most likely heard, the "Pax Romana," the Roman peace. It meant the peace which Rome could, and did, enforce within these regions under her power--a peace that could not be broken because every man knew that whatever she said was to be done, must be done. There was no help for it.

Of course the peace was not perfect, it was not untroubled. No peace ever is. But it was peace of a kind that the world had never known before. The whole world--the whole world that mattered--was for the first time under one single authority. It was also for the last time; for it is a condition that the {193} world has never been in again since the break-up of the Roman power. So I think I was justified in asking you to stop a moment in the course of the story in order to consider the position of affairs to which it has brought us. It is interesting, is it not?

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Mithridates]

Now, I do not know that there is any need to trouble you with all the smaller happenings which led to Rome's asserting herself more and more strongly in the East. Probably she would have done better if she had established her power more strongly in Syria rather earlier than she did. In the end she took it and turned it into one of her provinces as well as the other lands that she conquered; but by the time she did so a certain king called Mithridates, of a certain kingdom called Pontus, on the Black Sea, to the north of Syria, had made himself very strong, and gave the Romans a terrible deal of trouble about the year 88 B.C. and onward.

But long before that, and even while she was claiming to impose her "Pax Romana," the Roman peace, on all the world, she had very little peace within her own borders. It is all an outgrowth of the old trouble that we saw beginning as far back as the time when the Romans drove out those Etruscan kings and formed themselves into a Republic. All through their story we have seen the Senate, which was for the most part the high-born, the rich party, on the one side, and the Comitia, or assembly of the plebeians, on the other. And the last was perpetually struggling to get power and to take power away from the first. That struggle still went on until it ended in neither of them having any power at all. And that happened in this way.

{194}

As Rome grew rich, by the plunder and taxation of the provinces that she conquered and annexed, an immense number of slaves were brought into Italy. They cultivated the land for their masters a great deal more cheaply than the native small farmers could cultivate it, and at the same time a great deal of corn and other things that these farmers used to grow was brought in from the provinces at a cheap price. The small farmers, what we might call peasants, could not grow corn in Italy as cheaply as this, so the fields fell out of cultivation and the peasants flocked into the towns where they could get their share of the cheap corn.

Great discontent grew out of this. Two brothers, who were leading men of the people, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, got laws passed to give the people a chance of cultivating their land on better terms, but the selfishness of the rich party, who were opposed to them, made these laws of no use.

[Sidenote: The power of the generals]

The people had succeeded in getting one of their own class, Marius by name, appointed as general of an army in Africa, which conquered a restless and powerful people called the Numidians, who had been giving much anxiety to the Romans and had defeated the armies under the general that the Senate had sent out in command. When Marius came back, as victor, from Africa, some of the northern barbarous tribes were harassing Italy itself. He took command of the army against them, and again was completely successful. Thus he rose to great power, and one of his acts, when at the height of his power, was to repeal the law according to which it had always been compulsory on the people to serve in certain legions, and to allow them to enlist in what legions they pleased.

{195}

Do you see what that meant? It meant that the people would go and enlist under a popular general, and, this being so, the general became the authority to whom they gave their allegiance and to whom they looked up as their head. It was no longer to Rome that the soldiers looked as the great authority. They looked to their general.

That made a very great difference in the whole state of affairs. It meant that the general who was able to rely on his army became really independent of the power of either Senate or Comitia. They might give him orders, but he had the armed force at his back and could almost please himself as to whether he should obey the orders or not.

Thus it was that the real power passed altogether out of the hands of the Senate and Comitia and fell into that of the commanders of the legions, or of whichever of the several commanders of legions might prove the strongest. The Senate or the Comitia, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, might appoint the commanders, but once the commanders were appointed, the power was with them so long as they could rely on the support of the soldiers.

The Senate succeeded in getting leaders devoted to their interests appointed to command some of the legions, and the Comitia got men of their own side appointed to others, and so it came to pass that there were these two opposing forces in the world, the legions that were under a general who was on the side of the aristocratic party and the legions that were commanded by one who favoured the popular side.

It is much more easy to see, long after it all happened, how one state of affairs grows out of what has gone before, than it is for the people who are acting in them {196} to see it. We can see how it all happened much better than they can have seen then, but I suppose that even those Romans who were in the very middle of it all and were actors in the story must have realised that something was going on which they had never known before, and which was certain to make a great difference, when they saw one of these commanders of the legions march his forces right up to Rome and take forcible possession of the city.

[Illustration: ROMAN LEGIONARIES.]

This commander was Sulla, and he acted as he did because Rome at the time had fallen into such a state of lawlessness, owing to the fights between the rich people and the poor, and to all the evil causes that I have mentioned, that no man's property or life was safe. Sulla came in with his soldiers and enforced what we might call Martial Law. He restored order, but he restored it only by terribly severe punishments. He was on the side of the Senate, of the rich and patrician class. This was in the year 88 B.C. But he did not stay in Rome. That war on the eastern boundary of the Empire with King Mithridates of Pontus required attention. Mithridates had been terribly successful at its commencement. He had overrun Asia Minor, and it is said that in a single day 80,000 persons who claimed to be Romans, or to be {197} under the protection of the great Roman power, were massacred.

[Sidenote: Sulla and Pompey]

Sulla was a great general. Mithridates had advanced into Greece, but he made no stand against the legions. His armies were defeated in Asia Minor too, and by 84 B.C. this, which was called the First Mithridatic War, was over. A treaty was made whereby the territories of the king of Pontus were strictly defined, and Sulla came back to Rome.

The popular party had been busy while he was away. Marius, their champion, was dead, but his place had been taken by another popular general, Cinna. When Sulla returned he found Rome in possession of Cinna and the populace. With his own legions Sulla overthrew Cinna and his power, and his punishment of his opponents was even more fearfully cruel than before. The story of the years that followed is a terrible one. The life of no man of any importance was safe in Rome if he was suspected of showing any favour to the popular cause.

And now another very great name comes into the story, that of Pompey--Pompey the Great as he was sometimes called. In Rome, Sulla had drowned in blood the opposition of the popular party; but there were legions outside Italy itself, and some of them, in Spain, were under popular leadership. Against these Pompey went out as commander on the patrician side. After some three years of fighting he was completely successful. Sulla, wearied of power and tyranny, had thrown up his dictatorship at Rome and had retired into the country and to private life. Pompey led back his victorious legions, and with his soldiers at the gates of the city demanded the honours which he thought due to him as victor.

{198}

There was no denying them to him, and he was elected Consul.

The condition of affairs in Italy was bad. There had been a great uprising of the slaves who had become very numerous and had banded themselves together, to a number said to be 70,000. They traversed the country, pillaging and acting in defiance of all law.

Pompey, as Consul and with the military power at his command, showed himself a far less cruel dictator than Sulla. He revoked many of the worst laws and lawless institutions of Sulla. The slave revolt, as it was called, was put down. Something like order was restored again. And when all this had been done in Italy, Pompey was given, or maybe took for himself, command of a fleet and of armies in the East, for the special purpose of destroying the sea pirates in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and strengthening the Roman power in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. The treaty with Mithridates had not succeeded in making peace in that corner of the world for long, and, though he had been beaten in one or two battles by the legions, he was still in the field and far beyond the boundaries which that treaty had assigned to him.

[Sidenote: Julius Cæsar]

Pompey carried all before him. He put down the pirates in a series of sea fights, settled affairs in Syria, which he at length made into a Roman province, and then went northward, where he met Mithridates and defeated him so decisively that he gave the Romans no further trouble, and shortly afterwards took his own life. With all these victories to his credit, Pompey returned to Italy, where by that time had come into the story one whose name, great as was that of Pompey, was to become greater even than his--Julius Cæsar.

Cæsar had gained fame both as an orator and as a {199} soldier. His sympathies were with the popular party. He had been chosen as Consul, but had not yet entered into that office when Pompey came back, triumphant, from the East. We might expect that Pompey, who was on the patrician side, would be opposed to Cæsar, but Pompey was dissatisfied with his treatment by his own party. He seems to have promised his soldiers, as a reward for their bravery and their victories, that they should be given grants of land, to live on, in Italy. The Senate were not ready to confirm this promise, and they did not approve of all that he had done in Asia Minor.

The result was that Cæsar and Pompey became friends and allies. Cæsar married Pompey's daughter. They brought into their alliance one Crassus, whose chief value to them as a friend was that he had immense wealth. This combination was known as the Triumvirate, or combination of three men (from _tres_, meaning three, and _vir_, meaning man). Acting together, the three could get any laws passed that they pleased. One of the measures which they joined in passing made an immense difference in our story. It was that measure which gave to Cæsar the command of the legions in Gaul.

The difference that it was to make was not seen just at first. Cæsar went up north to his command. His campaign against the Gauls, of which he himself has written the account in his "Commentaries," are a little out of the direct line of our great story. They had their effect on the big story, for if they had ended in any other way than the way in which they did, if Cæsar had been killed or conquered--and he was nearly killed or conquered more than once--the big story might have gone quite differently. But as it was, {200} in the end--and the end of his campaigns in Gaul did not come until nine years had passed--he was completely victorious. During those years he made an expedition to Great Britain, but did not stay there long. At the end of the nine years he came back. He was chosen as Consul for the second time. He came back to the borders of Italy at the head of his victorious legions. He was commanded by the Senate to disband his troops before coming to Rome to be made Consul. The Senate and Pompey, for Pompey still was chief man in Rome, did not want a general with soldiers devoted to him at the gates of the city.

Cæsar halted for a time, while messages about this went to and fro between him and the Senate, the Senate ordering him to disband the troops, and Cæsar refusing. He halted on the banks of a small stream, the Rubicon, which has become very famous because it was the boundary of Italy beyond which he was forbidden to go at the head of troops.

Finally, in the year 49 B.C., he determined to go against the order of the Senate and brave the consequences. _Cæsar crossed the Rubicon!_

The crossing of that river meant war. Cæsar knew it. The Senate knew it. Pompey knew it. The great Pompey fled before him, and took command of the Senatorial armies in Greece. Cæsar, who had no fleet, went in pursuit.

They met at Pharsalia, in Thessaly, and there was fought one of the great battles of history. Cæsar gained the day, and Pompey again fled, into Egypt. Again Cæsar pursued him, and was met on coming to Egypt by a messenger who thought to find favour with him by bringing him the head of Pompey, who had been murdered. But Cæsar was a generous enemy. {201} Pompey had been his friend, and he mourned his death with respect.

[Sidenote: Cleopatra]

There was trouble in Egypt at this time. The rulers were supposed to be one of the Ptolemies and Cleopatra, also of the same family, the two sharing the throne. But the Ptolemy had thrust the queen out and claimed to rule alone. Cæsar, captivated by the beauty of Cleopatra, restored her to her share in the government. Then he marched up with his force into Syria. There, too, there was trouble.

The trouble was with a powerful people called the Parthians, coming from that part of Asia, east of the Euphrates, from which the Persians had come long ago. They were a warlike nation, fighting on horseback, lightly clad in mail; and their mode of fighting was like that of the Persians of old--to come galloping down upon the enemy, to shower arrows, discharged from horseback, upon him, to gallop off again, turning in the saddle and shooting as they went, and then to reform, to come back again, and repeat the same tactics until the enemy's formation was broken up.

Really it was very like the fighting of the Persians, which, as we saw, was broken by the solid Greek phalanx. But these Parthians prevailed in several battles against the Roman legions. They had defeated a Roman army under the command of that Crassus who was one of the triumvirate. Of these three, Cæsar was the only one who was alive after Pompey's murder in Egypt.

Cæsar met the Parthian forces and defeated them very heavily. He drove them back over the Euphrates; and the Euphrates we have to look on as the boundary, eastward, of the Roman power. The Romans did not try to press farther. They had enough, and more {202} than enough, work on their hands in making good the conquests they had gained.

Cæsar returned to Rome, victorious; but still he had enemies, in the shape of armies in the field, under commanders appointed by the Senate. There were some such forces in Africa. Thither Cæsar went and made an end of them. Still there were others in Spain, and there, at length, he seems to have put out the last spark of opposition by a victory in the battle of Munda in 45 B.C. He had crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. What he had accomplished in those four years is wonderful. Victorious in Greece, Egypt, Syria, Africa, Spain. All enemies had gone down before him. He was elected "dictator for life" of the Roman Commonwealth.

{203}