AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA (continued 3)

After the death of Pericles, the war was continued, without interruption, for seven years longer, but with no very decisive advantage to either side. During this period the Athenian councils were chiefly directed by a coarse-minded and unprincipled demagogue named Cleon, who was at last killed in battle under the walls of Amphipolis, a Macedonian city, of which the possession was disputed by the Athenians and Lacedæmonians. Cleon was succeeded in the direction of public affairs by Nicias, the leader of the aristocratic party, a man of virtuous but unenterprising character, and a military officer of moderate abilities. Under his auspices a peace for fifty years, commonly known by the name of the ‘Peace of Nicias,’ was concluded in the tenth year of the war (421 B. C.). It was not long, however, till the contest was resumed. Offended that its allies had given up a contest undertaken for the assertion of its alleged rights, Corinth refused to be a party to the treaty of peace, and entered into a new quadruple alliance with Argos, Elis, and Mantinæa, a city of Arcadia; the ostensible object of which confederation was the defense of the Peloponnesian states against the aggressions of Athens and Sparta. This end seemed not difficult of attainment, as fresh distrust had arisen between the two last-mentioned republics, on account of the reluctance felt and manifested by both to give up certain places which they had bound themselves by treaty mutually to surrender. The jealousies thus excited were fanned into a violent flame by the artful measures of Alcibiades, a young Athenian, who now began to rise into political power, and whose genius and character subsequently exercised a strong influence upon the affairs of Athens.

Alcibiades. Alcibiades was the son of Clinias, an Athenian of high rank. Endowed with uncommon beauty of person, and talents of the very highest order, he was unfortunately deficient in that unbending integrity which is an essential element of every character truly great, and his violent passions sometimes impelled him to act in a manner which has brought disgrace on his memory. While still very young, Alcibiades served in the Athenian army, and became the companion and pupil of Socrates, one of the wisest and most virtuous of the Grecian sages. Having rendered some service to his country in a protracted and useless war with Lacedæmon, and being possessed of a talent for addressing the passions of the multitude, Alcibiades, as others had done before him, became the undisputed head of public affairs in Athens. But this preëminence was not of long continuance. An opinion arose among the people that he designed to subvert the constitution, and his fall was as quick as his promotion. Many of his friends were put to death, and he, while absent on an expedition, deprived of his authority. Being thus left without a public director of affairs, Athens, as usual, was torn by internal discords: the aristocratic faction succeeded in overthowing the democratic government (411 B. C.), and establishing a council of 400 individuals to administer the affairs of state, with the power of convoking an assembly of 5000 of the principal citizens for advice and assistance in any emergency. These 400 tyrants, as they were popularly called, were no sooner invested with authority, than they annihilated every remaining portion of the free institutions of Athens. They behaved with the greatest insolence and severity towards the people, and endeavored to confirm and perpetuate their usurped power, by raising a body of mercenary troops in the islands of the Ægean, for the purpose of overawing and enslaving their fellow-citizens. The Athenian army was at this period in the island of Samos, whither it had retired after an expedition against the revolted cities of Asia Minor. When intelligence arrived of the revolution in Athens, and the tyrannical proceedings of the oligarchical faction, the soldiers indignantly refused to obey the new government, and sent an invitation to Alcibiades to return among them, and assist in reëstablishing the democratic constitution. He obeyed the call; and as soon as he arrived in Samos, the troops elected him their general. He then sent a message to Athens, commanding the 400 tyrants to divest themselves immediately of their unconstitutional authority, if they wished to avoid deposition and death at his hands.

This message reached Athens at a time of the greatest confusion and alarm. The 400 tyrants had quarreled among themselves, and were about to appeal to the sword: the island of Eubœa, from which Athens had for some time been principally supplied with provisions, had revolted, and the fleet which had been sent to reduce it had been destroyed by the Lacedæmonians, so that the coasts of Attica, and the port of Athens itself, were now without defense. In these distressing circumstances, the people, roused to desperation, rose upon their oppressors, overturned the government of the 400, after an existence of only a few months, and reëstablished their ancient institutions. Alcibiades was now recalled; but before revisiting Athens, he was desirous of performing some brilliant military exploit, which might obliterate the recollection of his late connection with the Spartans, and give his return an air of triumph. He accordingly joined the Athenian fleet, then stationed at the entrance of the Hellespont, and soon obtained several important victories over the Lacedæmonians, both by sea and land. He then returned to Athens, where he was received with transports of joy. Chaplets of flowers were showered upon his head, and amidst the most enthusiastic acclamations he proceeded to the place of assembly, where he addressed the people in a speech of such eloquence and power, that at its conclusion a crown of gold was placed upon his brow, and he was invested with the supreme command of the Athenian forces, both naval and military. His forfeited property was restored, and the priests were directed to revoke the curses which had formerly been pronounced upon him.

This popularity of Alcibiades was not of long continuance. Many of the dependencies of Athens being in a state of insurrection, he assumed the command of an armament intended for their reduction. But circumstances arose which obliged him to leave the fleet for a short time in charge of one of his officers, named Antiochus, who, in despite of express orders to the contrary, gave battle to the Lacedæmonians during the absence of the commander-in-chief, and was defeated. When intelligence of this action reached Athens, a violent clamor was raised against Alcibiades: he was accused of having neglected his duty, and received a second dismissal from all his offices. On hearing of this, he quitted the fleet, and retiring to a fortress he had built in the Chersonesus of Thrace, he collected around him a band of military adventurers, with whose assistance he carried on a predatory warfare against the neighboring Thracian tribes.

Alcibiades did not long survive his second disgrace with his countrymen. Finding his Thracian residence insecure, on account of the increasing power of his Lacedæmonian enemies, he crossed the Hellespont, and settled in Bithynia, a country on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. Being there attacked and plundered by the Thracians, he proceeded into Phrygia, and placed himself under the protection of Pharnabasus, the Persian satrap of that province. But even thither the unfortunate chief was followed by the unrelenting hatred of the Lacedæmonians, by whose directions he was privately and foully assassinated. Thus perished, about the fortieth year of his age (403 B. C.), one of the ablest men that Greece ever produced. Distinguished alike as a warrior, an orator, and a statesman, and in his nature noble and generous, Alcibiades would have been truly worthy of our admiration if he had possessed probity; but his want of principle, and his unruly passions, led him to commit many grievous errors, which contributed not a little to produce or aggravate those calamities which latterly overtook him.

DECLINE OF ATHENIAN INDEPENDENCE.

With Alcibiades perished the last of the great men who possessed the power to sway the wild democracy, or, properly speaking, the mob of Athens. From the period of his death till the subjugation of the country, the Athenian people were at the mercy of contending factions, and without a single settled principle of government. During this brief period of their history, in which a kind of popular democracy had attained the command of affairs, happened the trial and condemnation of Socrates, an eminent teacher of morals, and a man guiltless of every offense but that of disgracing, by his illustrious merit, the vices and follies of his cotemporaries. On the false charge of corrupting the morals of the pupils who listened to his admirable expositions, and of denying the religion of his country, he was, to the eternal disgrace of the Athenians, compelled to die by drinking poison, a fate which he submitted to with a magnanimity which has rendered his name for ever celebrated. This odious transaction occurred in the year 400 B. C.

After the death of this great man, the political independence of Athens drew to its termination—​a circumstance which cannot excite the least surprise, when we reflect on the turbulence of its citizens, their persecution of virtue and talent, and their unhappy distrust of any settled form of government. Their ruin was finally accomplished by their uncontrollable thirst for war, and can create no emotions of pity or regret in the reader of their distracted history. The Lacedæmonians, under the command of an able officer named Lysander, attacked and totally destroyed the Athenian fleet. By this means having obtained the undisputed command of the sea, Lysander easily reduced those cities on the coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, and those islands of the Ægean, which still acknowledged the supremacy of Athens. Having thus stripped that once lordly state of all its dependencies, he proceeded to blockade the city of Athens itself. The Athenians made a heroic defense; but after a lengthened siege, during which they suffered all the horrors of famine, they were obliged to surrender on such conditions as their enemies thought fit to impose (404 B. C.). The Spartans demanded that the fortifications of Piræus, and the long walls which connected it with the city, should be demolished; that the Athenians should relinquish all pretensions to authority over their former tributaries, recall the exiled partisans of the 400 tyrants, acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta, and follow its commanders in time of war; and finally, that they should adopt such a political constitution as should meet the approbation of the Lacedæmonians.

Thus sank the power of Athens, which had so long been the leading state of Greece, and thus terminated the Peloponnesian war, in which the Grecian communities had been so long engaged, to little other purpose than to waste the strength, and exhaust the resources, of their common country.

Condition of Athens. During the age preceding its fall, Athens, as already mentioned, had been greatly beautified and enlarged by Pericles. At the same time, the comparative simplicity of manners which formerly prevailed was exchanged for luxurious habits. This alteration has been thus described by Gillies in his ‘History of Ancient Greece:’—​‘In the course of a few years, the success of Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, had tripled the revenues, and increased in a far greater proportion the dominions of the republic. The Athenian galleys commanded the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean; their merchantmen had engrossed the traffic of the adjacent countries; the magazines of Athens abounded with wood, metal, ebony, ivory, and all the materials of the useful as well as of the agreeable arts; they imported the luxuries of Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, Lydia, Pontus, and Peloponnesus; experience had improved their skill in working the silver mines of Mount Laurium; they had lately opened the valuable marble veins in Mount Pentelicus; the honey of Hymettus became important in domestic use and foreign traffic; the culture of their olives (oil being long their staple commodity, and the only production of Attica which Solon allowed them to export) must have improved with the general improvement of the country in arts and agriculture, especially under the active administration of Pericles, who liberally let loose the public treasure to encourage every species of industry.

‘But if that minister promoted the love of action, he found it necessary at least to comply with, if not to excite, the extreme passion for pleasure which then began to distinguish his countrymen. The people of Athens, successful in every enterprise against their foreign as well as domestic enemies, seemed entitled to reap the fruits of their dangers and victories. For the space of at least twelve years preceding the war of Peloponnesus, their city afforded a perpetual scene of triumph and festivity. Dramatic entertainments, to which they were passionately addicted, were no longer performed in slight, unadorned edifices, but in stone or marble theatres, erected at great expense, and embellished with the most precious productions of nature and of art. The treasury was opened, not only to supply the decorations of this favorite amusement, but to enable the poorer citizens to enjoy it, without incurring any private expense; and thus, at the cost of the state, or rather of its tributary allies and colonies, to feast and delight their ears and fancy with the combined charms of music and poetry. The pleasure of the eye was peculiarly consulted and gratified in the architecture of theatres and other ornamental buildings; for as Themistocles had strengthened, Pericles adorned, his native city; and unless the concurring testimony of antiquity was illustrated in the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, and other existing remains worthy to be immortal, it would be difficult to believe that in the space of a few years there could have been created those numerous, yet inestimable wonders of art, those temples, theatres, statues, altars, baths, gymnasia, and porticoes, which, in the language of ancient panegyric, rendered Athens the eye and light of Greece.

‘Pericles was blamed for thus decking one favorite city, like a vain voluptuous harlot, at the expense of plundered provinces; but it would have been fortunate for the Athenians if their extorted wealth had not been employed in more perishing, as well as more criminal, luxury. The pomp of religious solemnities, which were twice as numerous and costly in Athens as in any other city of Greece—​the extravagance of entertainments and banquets, which on such occasions always followed the sacrifices—​exhausted the resources, without augmenting the glory, of the republic. Instead of the bread, herbs, and simple fare recommended by the laws of Solon, the Athenians, soon after the eightieth Olympiad, availed themselves of their extensive commerce to import the delicacies of distant countries, which were prepared with all the refinements of cookery. The wines of Cyprus were cooled with snow in summer; in winter, the most delightful flowers adorned the tables and persons of the wealthy Athenians. Nor was it sufficient to be crowned with roses, unless they were likewise anointed with the most precious perfumes. Parasites, dancers, and buffoons, were a usual appendage of every entertainment. Among the weaker sex, the passion for delicate birds, distinguished by their voice or plumage, was carried to such excess, as merited the name of madness. The bodies of such youths as were not peculiarly addicted to hunting and horses, which began to be a prevailing taste, were corrupted by a lewd style of living; while their minds were still more polluted by the licentious philosophy of the sophists. It is unnecessary to crowd the picture, since it may be observed, in one word, that the vices and extravagances which are supposed to characterize the declining ages of Greece and Rome, took root in Athens during the administration of Pericles, the most splendid and most prosperous in the Grecian annals.’

During this period flourished Æschylus and Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, dramatists; Pindar, a lyrical poet; Herodotus and Thucydides, historians; Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, philosophers (reasoners upon the nature of the human mind, and upon man’s immortal destiny). In this period also, under the administration of Pericles (from 458 to 429 B. C.), sculpture and architecture attained their perfection. It was then that Phidias executed those splendid works, statues of the gods and goddesses, which excited the admiration of the world, and which succeeding artists have in vain endeavored to rival. While Athens had extended its power over a great part of the coasts of the Ægean Sea, and increased its trade and commerce by every available means, it had also become a city of palaces and temples, whose ruins continue to be the admiration of ages for their grandeur and beauty. It is understood that the Greeks had acquired their knowledge of architecture from the Egyptians; but they greatly excelled them in the elegance of their designs, and are in a great measure entitled to the character of inventors in the art. The beauty of the Corinthian pillar, for example, has never been excelled either in ancient or modern times.

After the surrender of Athens to the Spartans (404 B. C.), the democratic constitution was abolished, and the government was intrusted to thirty persons, whose rapacious, oppressive, and bloody administration ere long procured them the title of the Thirty Tyrants. The ascendancy of these intruders was not, however, of long duration. Conon, assisted privately by the Persians, who were desirous of humiliating the Spartans, expelled the enemy, and reëstablished the independence of his country. About seventy years later a new source of agitation throughout Greece was caused by the warlike projects of Alexander, king of Macedon, usually styled.

Alexander the Great. This intrepid and ambitious soldier was the son of Philip, king of Macedon, a small territory adjacent to the Grecian states, from which it had originally received a knowledge of arts and learning. Alexander was born in the year 356 B. C., and by his father was committed to the charge of the philosopher Aristotle to be educated; a duty which was faithfully fulfilled. By the assassination of Philip, Alexander was called to the throne of Macedon while yet only twenty years of age, and immediately had an opportunity of displaying his great warlike abilities in conducting an expedition into Greece, which was attended with signal success, and procured for him the honor of succeeding his father as commander-in-chief of the Grecian states. He now carried out a design which had been formed by Philip, to subdue Persia and other countries in Asia. In the spring of 334 B. C., he crossed over to the Asiatic coast, with an army of 30,000 foot and 5000 horse, thus commencing the most important military enterprise which is narrated in the pages of ancient history. Alexander marched through Asia Minor, and in successive encounters completely conquered the armies of Persia; but the whole history of his progress is but an account of splendid victories. During a space of about seven or eight years, he conquered Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia, and, in fact, became master of nearly all the half-civilized countries in Asia and Africa. It does not appear that Alexander had any motive for this wide-spread overthrow of ancient and remote sovereignties, excepting that of simple ambition, or desire of conquest, with perhaps the indefinite idea of improving the social condition of the countries which he overran. From various circumstances in his career, it is apparent that he never contemplated the acquisition of wealth or of praise, except such as could be shared with his soldiers, for whom he displayed a most paternal affection.

The extraordinary career of Alexander was suddenly cut short by death. At Babylon, while engaged in extensive plans for the future, he became sick, and died in a few days, 323 B. C. Such was the end of this conqueror, in his thirty-second year, after a reign of twelve years and eight months. He left behind him an immense empire, which, possessing no consolidated power, and only loosely united by conquest, became the scene of continual wars. The generals of the Macedonian army respectively seized upon different portions of the empire, each trusting in his sword for an independent establishment. The greedy struggle for power finally terminated in confirming Ptolemy in the possession of Egypt; Seleucus in Upper Asia; Cassander in Macedon and Greece; while several of the provinces in Lower Asia fell to the share of Lysimachus.

CONCLUDING PERIOD OF GREEK HISTORY.

At the death of Alexander, the Athenians considered it a fit opportunity to emancipate themselves from the ascendancy of Macedon; but without success. Demosthenes, one of the most eminent patriots and orators of Athens, on this occasion, to avoid being assassinated by order of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy, killed himself by swallowing poison; and his compatriot Phocion was shortly afterwards put to death by his own countrymen, the Athenians, in a mad outbreak of popular fury. Greece cannot be said to have produced one great man after Phocion; and this deficiency of wise and able leaders was doubtless one chief cause of the insignificance into which the various states, great and small, sunk after this epoch.

The ancient history of Greece, as an independent country, now draws to a close. Achaia, hitherto a small, unimportant state, having begun to make some pretensions to political consequence, excited the enmity of Sparta, and was compelled to seek the protection of Philip, the ruling prince of Macedon. Philip took the field against the Spartans, and their allies the Ætolians, and was in a fair way of subjecting all Greece, by arms and influence, when he ventured on the fatal step of commencing hostilities against the Romans. This measure consummated the ruin of Greece, as well as that of Macedon. The Romans warred with Philip till the end of his life (175 B. C.), and continued the contest with his son Perseus, whom they utterly defeated, and with whom ended the line of the kings of Macedon. In a few years the once illustrious and free republics of Greece were converted into a Roman province, under the name of Achaia (146 B. C.).

Thus terminates the fourth and last period of Greek history, during which flourished several eminent writers and philosophers, among whom may be numbered Theocritus, a pastoral poet; Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Herodian, historians; Demosthenes, an orator; and Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, philosophers; also Zeuxis, Timanthes, Pamphilus, Nicias, Appelles, and Eupompus, painters; and Praxiteles, Polycletus, Camachus, Naucides, and Lysippus, sculptors.

In the condition of a humble dependency of Rome, and therefore following the fate of that empire, Greece remained for upwards of four succeeding centuries; but although of little political importance, it still retained its preëminence in learning. Enslaved as the land was, it continued to be the great school of the time. As Greece had formerly sent her knowledge and arts over the East by the arms of one of her own kings, she now diffused them over the western world under the protection of Rome. Athens, which was the emporium of Grecian learning and elegance, became the resort of all who were ambitious of excelling either in knowledge or the arts; statesmen went thither to improve themselves in eloquence; philosophers to learn the tenets of the sages of Greece; and artists to study models of excellence in building, statuary, or painting; natives of Greece were also found in all parts of the world, gaining an honorable subsistence by the superior knowledge of their country. That country in the meantime was less disturbed by intestine feuds than formerly, but was not exempt from the usual fate of conquests, being subject to the continual extortions of governors and lieutenants, who made the conquered provinces the means of repairing fortunes which had been broken by flattering the caprices of the populace at home.

The period of the independence of Greece, during which all those great deeds were performed which have attracted the attention of the world, may be reckoned from the era of the first Persian war to the conquest of Macedon, the last independent Greek state, by the Romans. This period, as we have seen, embraced little more than 300 years. It is not, therefore, from the duration of the independent political power of the Grecian states that their celebrity arises. Even the patriotism of their soldiers, and the devoted heroism of Thermopylæ and Marathon, have been emulated elsewhere without attracting much regard; and we must therefore conclude that it is chiefly from the superiority of its poets, philosophers, historians, and artists, that the importance of the country in the eyes of modern men arises. The political squabbles of the Athenians are forgotten; but the moral and intellectual researches of their philosophers, and the elegant remains of their artists, possess an undying fame.

HISTORY OF ROME.

About the year 754 B. C., at that point of Central Italy, nearly fifteen miles from the Tuscan Sea, where the Anio joins the Tiber, there stood on a height, called the Palatine Mount, a little village named Roma, the centre of a small township, consisting probably of 5000 or 6000 inhabitants, all of them husbandmen and shepherds. This Rome was one of the border townships of Latium, a territory of fertile and undulating table-land extending from the Tiber to the Liris, and from the sea-coast to the hills of the interior. The whole surface of Latium was under diligent cultivation, and was covered with villages similar to Rome, which together constituted what was called the Latin nation.

Rome, we have said, was a frontier township of Latium. It was situated precisely at that point where the territories of Latium adjoined those of two other nations—​of the Sabines, a hardy Oscan race of shepherds inhabiting the angular district between the Anio and the Tiber; and of the Etruscans, a remarkable people, of unknown but probably Oriental origin, who had arrived in the north of Italy some centuries later than the Pelasgians, and conquering all before them, whether Pelasgians or Oscans, by the force of superior civilization, had settled chiefly in the region between the Arnus and the Tiber, corresponding to modern Tuscany. Between these three races—​Oscans, Pelasgians and Etruscans—​either apart, or in various combinations, all Italy, with the exception perhaps of some portions near the Alps, was divided: the Oscan predominating in the interior; the Pelasgians or rather Pelasgo-Oscans, along the coasts, as in Latium; and the Etruscans in the parts above-mentioned. While the Italian peninsula was thus occupied but by three great races or main stocks; the political divisions or nations into which it was parceled out were so numerous, however, that it would be scarcely possible to give a complete list of them.

Situated so near to the Sabine and Etruscan frontiers, an intercourse, sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, must naturally have been carried on between the Latins of Rome and the Sabines and Etruscans, with whom they were in contact. A chain of events, which history cannot now trace, but which is indicated in a poetic manner by a number of early Roman legends, led to the incorporation of Rome with two neighboring towns—​one of them a small dependency of the Etruscans, situated on the Cælian Hill, and probably named Lucerum; another a Sabine village on the Quirinal Hill, called Quirium. The Etruscans, or Etrusco-Latins as they seem rather to have been, of Lucerum, were received on a subordinate footing; the Sabines of Quirium on one of equality; but the joint city continued to bear its old name of Roma. The population of this new Rome consisted, therefore, of three tribes—​the ancient Romans, who called themselves Ramnes; the Sabines of Quirium, who called themselves Tities; and the Etrusco-Latins of Lucerum, who were named Luceres.

ORIGINAL ROMAN CONSTITUTION—​EARLY HISTORY UNDER THE KINGS—​ORIGIN OF THE PLEBEIANS.

With the enlargement of the population of Rome by the addition of these new masses of citizens, a change of the constitution became of course necessary. The following seems to have been the form ultimately assumed:—​Governed by a common sovereign, eligible by the whole community from one of the superior tribes—​the Ramnes and the Tities—​the three tribes intrusted the conduct of their affairs to a senate composed of 200 members, 100 of whom represented the gentes of the Ramnes, and 100 the gentes of the Tities. The Luceres as an inferior tribe, were not represented in the senate; and their political influence was limited to the right to vote with the other two tribes in the general assemblies of the whole people.

In these general assemblies, or Comitia, as they were called, the people voted; not individually, nor in families, nor in gentes, but in divisions called Curix or Curies; the Curia being the tenth part of a tribe, and including, according to the ancient system of round numbers, ten gentes. Thus the entire Populus Romanus, or Roman people, of this primitive time, consisted of thirty curies—​ten curies of Ramnes, ten of Tities, and ten of Luceres: the ten curies of each tribe corresponding to 100 gentes, and the thirty curies together making up 300 gentes. As the Luceres were an inferior tribe, their gentes were called Gentes Minores, or Lesser Houses; while those of the Ramnes and Tities were called Gentes Majores or Greater Houses. The assembly of the whole people was called the Comitia Curiatia, or meeting of curies. After a measure had been matured by the king and senate, it was submitted to the whole people in their curies, who might accept or reject, but could not alter, what was thus proposed to them. An appeal was also open to the curies against any sentence of the king, or of the judges nominated by him in his capacity of supreme justiciary. The king, moreover, was the high priest of the nation in peace, as well as the commander-in-chief during war. The 300 gentes furnished each a horseman, so as to constitute a body of cavalry; the mass of the people forming the infantry. The right of assembling the senate lay with the king, who usually convened it three times a month.

Such was ancient Rome, as it appears to the historic eye endeavoring to penetrate the mists of the past, where at first all seems vague and wavering. The inquirer to whom we owe the power to conceive the condition of ancient Rome, so far as that depended on political institutions, was the celebrated German historian Niebuhr. Not so, however, did the Romans conceive their own early history. In all ancient communities, it was a habit of the popular imagination, nay, it was part of the popular religion, to trace the fortunes of the community to some divine or semi-divine founder; whose exploits, as well as those of his heroic successors, formed the subject of numerous sacred legends and ballads. Now, it was part of the Roman faith that their city had been founded at a point of time corresponding with B. C. 754, by twin brothers of miraculous birth, called Romulus and Remus, whose father was the war god Mars, and their mother a vestal virgin of the line of the Alban kings, the progeny of the great Æneas.

Romulus, according to this legend, surviving his brother Remus, became the king of the village of shepherds which he had founded on the Palatine; and it was in his reign that those events took place which terminated in the establishment of the triple community of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. Setting out with Romulus, the Romans traced the history of their state through a series of legends relating to six kings his successors, whose characters, and the lengths of their reigns, are all duly determined. Of this traditionary succession of seven kings, extending over a period of 245 years (B. C. 754–509), history can recognize with certainty the existence of only the two or three latest. It is possible, however, to elicit out of the legends a glimmering of the actual history of the Roman state during these imaginary reigns.

Possessed, as all our information respecting the Romans in later times justifies us in supposing, of an unusual degree of that warlike instinct which was so rampant among the early tenants of our globe, the shepherd farmers of Rome were incessantly engaged in raids on their Latin, Etruscan, and Sabine neighbors. Strong-bodied, valiant, and persevering, as we also know them to have been, they were, on the whole, successful in these raids; and the consequence was, a gradual extension of their territory, particularly on the Latin side, by the conquest of those who were weaker than themselves. After each conquest, their custom was to deprive the conquered community of a part of their lands, and also of their political independence, annexing them as subjects to the Populus Romanus. The consequence was a gradual accumulation round the original Populus, with its 300 Houses, of a subject-population, free-born, and possessing property, but without political influence. This subject-population, the origin of which is dated by the legends from the reign of Ancus Martius, the fourth king from Romulus, received the name of the Plebs, a word which we translate ‘common people,’ but which it would be more correct, in reference to these very ancient times, to translate ‘conquered people.’ Besides the plebs, the Roman community received another ingredient in the persons called Clients; strangers, that is, most of them professing mechanical occupations, who, arriving in Rome, and not belonging to a gens, were obliged, in order to secure themselves against molestation, to attach themselves to some powerful citizen willing to protect them, and called by them Patronus, or Patron. About six centuries before Christ, therefore, the population of the growing township of Roma may be considered as having consisted of four classes: 1st, The populus, or patricians, a governing class, consisting of a limited number of powerful families, holding themselves aloof from the rest of the community, not intermarrying with them, and gradually diminishing in consequence; 2d, The plebs, or plebeians, a large and continually-increasing subject-population, of the same mixed Etrusco-Sabine-Latin blood as the populus, but domineered over by them by right of conquest; 3d, The clients, a considerable class, chiefly occupied in handicraft professions in the town, while the populus and the plebs confined themselves to the more honorable occupation, as it was then esteemed, of agriculture; and 4th, The slaves or servi, whether belonging to patricians, plebeians, or clients—​a class who were valued along with the cattle.

The increasing numbers of the plebs, the result of fresh wars, and the value of their services to the community, entitled them to possess, and emboldened them to claim, some political consideration. Accordingly, in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth of the legendary kings, and in whose reputed Etruscan lineage historians fancy that they can discern a time when Etruscan influence, if not Etruscan arms, reigned paramount in Rome, a modification of the original constitution took place. A number of the richest plebeian families were drafted into the populus, to supply the blanks caused by the dying out of many of the ancient gentes of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres; and at the same time the number of senators was increased to 300, by the admission of the Luceres to the same rights as the other two tribes. Even this modification was insufficient; and in order to do justice to the claims of the plebs, Servius Tullius, the successor of Tarquinius, and who is gratefully celebrated in Roman history as ‘the King of the Commons,’ proposed and effected an entire renovation of the political system of the state. His first reform consisted in giving the plebs a regular internal organization for its own purposes, by dividing it into thirty tribes or parishes—​four for the town, and twenty-six for the country—​each provided with an officer or tribe convener called the Tribune, as well as with a detailed machinery of local government; and all permitted to assemble in a general meeting called the Comitia Tributa, to discuss matters purely affecting the plebs. But this was not all. To admit the plebs to a share in the general legislative power of the community, he instituted a third legislative body, called the Comitia Centuriata, in addition to the two—​the senate and the comitia curiata—​already existing. The comitia centuriata was an assembly of the whole free population of the Roman territory—​patricians, plebeians, and clients—​arranged, according to the amount of their taxable property, in five classes, which again were subdivided into 195 bodies, called Centuries, each century possessing a vote, but the centuries of the rich being much smaller than those of the poor, so as to secure a preponderance to wealth. The powers of the comitia centuriata were similar to those of the comitia curiata under the former system. They had the right to elect supreme magistrates, and to accept or reject a measure referred to them by the king and senate. The comitia curiata, however, still continued to be held; and a measure, even after it had passed the comitia centuriata, had still to be approved by the curies ere it could become a law. Notwithstanding this restriction, the constitution of Servius Tullius was a great concession to the popular spirit, as it virtually admitted every free individual within the Roman territory to a share in the government.

An attempt on the part of Tarquinius Superbus, the successor of Servius Tullius, to undo the reforms of his predecessor, and to establish what the ancients called a tyranny, or a government of individual will, led to the expulsion of him and his family, and to the abolition of the kingly form of government at Rome, B. C. 509, or in the year of the city 245. Instead of a king, two annual magistrates called Consuls were appointed, in whom were vested all the kingly functions, with the exception of the pontifical, for which special functionaries were created. Otherwise, the Servian constitution remained in full operation.

THE COMMONWEALTH TO THE GAULISH INVASION—​STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS.

After the expulsion of the kings, the little republic had to struggle through many difficulties arising from the attacks of the neighboring nations, incited thereto by the Tarquinii. Ten of the twenty-six rural parishes were torn away in the contest—​a loss equivalent to a full third part of the Roman territory. It would have required a prophetic eye to foresee that, of all the states into which Italy was then divided, this little struggling republic was to obtain the preëminence. One would have been disposed to promise the supremacy of the peninsula rather to the cultured and large-brained Etruscans, already masters of the north of Italy; to the hardy and valiant Samnites, who were fast overspreading the southern interior; or, most probably of all, to the Greeks, who, after adding Sicily to the empire of their gifted race, were rapidly establishing colonies on the southern coasts of the peninsula. Nay, clustered round the Roman territories there were various petty states, any one of which might have appeared a match for Rome—​the Latins, the Æquians, the Volcians, the Hernicans, the Sabines, and the Etruscans of Veii on the right bank of the Tiber. Who could have predicted that, bursting this cincture of nations, the men of the Tiber would overspread the peninsula, and, by the leavening influence of their character and institutions, throw first it and then all Europe, into fermentation?

It required a period of 119 years (B. C. 509–390) to enable the Romans to burst the chain of petty nations—​Latins, Volscians, Vejentes, etc.—​which girdled in their strength. This was a period of almost incessant warfare; the last glorious act of which was the siege and capture of Veii by the hero Camillus, B. C. 395, or in the year of the city 359. By this capture part of Etruria was added to the Roman dominions, and the influence of the state considerably extended on all sides. This conquest, as well as the career of victory against Æquians, Volscians, etc., which had preceded it, was greatly facilitated by a confederacy, offensive and defensive, which had subsisted between the Romans and the adjacent nations of the Latins and the Hernicans from the year of the city 268, the twenty-third year after the expulsion of the kings, when it had been established by the instrumentality of an able patrician named Spurius Cassius, who was three times, in cases of difficulty, elected to the consulship. This confederacy with two powerful nations had insured the stability of the infant republic against all assaults.

The second consulship of Spurius Cassius (year of Rome 261, or B. C. 493) had also been remarkable as the epoch of a formidable civic tumult—​the first of that long series of struggles between the patricians and the plebeians which constitutes the most interesting portion of the annals of the early Commonwealth. Not long after the expulsion of the kings, the patrician gentes had begun to show a disposition to tamper with the Servian constitution, or at least to prevent the plebs from obtaining more power than they already possessed. The principal instrument by which they were able to cripple the energies of the plebs was the operation of the law of debt. In primitive Rome, as in other ancient states, an insolvent debtor was liable to be seized by his creditor, and kept in chains, or made to work as his slave. Now, such had been the distress of the first years of the republic, that multitudes of the plebeians, deprived, by the casualties of war, of their little properties, had been obliged, in order to preserve the lives of their families, to become debtors to the patricians, the exclusive proprietors of the state lands. Hundreds had, in consequence, fallen into a condition of slavery; and many more, fearing to offend their patrician creditors by opposing their designs, had become mere ciphers in the comitia centuriata. In short, the plebs, as a body, were disintegrated and disheartened. Some instances of oppression, more flagrant than ordinary, led to an outbreak, and a clamor for the abolition of all existing debts; and to enforce their demands, the plebeians adopted a method of agitation which seems singular enough to our modern conceptions; they, or at least such of them as were in arms for military service, retired in a mass from the city at a time when it was threatened with invasion, and encamped on a hill near, declaring they would starve sooner than live in such a place as Rome was. The government was thus reduced to a dead lock; Spurius Cassius was chosen consul by the patricians; and by his instrumentality an arrangement was come to, by which the demands of the commons were conceded, existing debts abolished, a treaty of mutual obligation for the future agreed to between the populus and the plebs as between two independent communities, and a new office instituted, under the title of the Tribuneship of the Common People, for the express purpose of protecting the interests of the plebs. The commons then returned to the city; two tribunes of the people were appointed; and their number was subsequently increased first to five, and afterwards to ten. No one could have foreseen how important this office would become.

Not content with alleviating the temporary distresses of the plebeians, Spurius Cassius wished permanently to ameliorate their condition; and accordingly, in his third consulship, in the year of the city 268, or B. C. 486, he boldly proposed and carried what was called an Agrarian Law. It is absolutely necessary that the reader of Roman history should understand this term. According to the early Roman constitution, the lands acquired in war became the property of the whole populus, or body of patricians, in common. Portions of the conquered lands might be purchased from the state by rich persons; and in such cases the purchaser, whether patrician or plebeian, became absolute owner. Usually, however, the lands were not sold, but were annexed to the unallotted property already belonging to the populus. With regard to this state land, a very curious system prevailed. Any patrician (but none else) was allowed to occupy and cultivate as much of it as he chose, on condition of paying to the state a tithe of the annual produce if it were arable land, and a fifth if it were laid out in oliveyards or vineyards. The land thus occupied did not, by right of possession, become the property of the individual: he was liable to be turned out of it at the pleasure of the state—​his landlord; and it was entirely at his own risk that he laid out capital in improving it. As, however, it rarely happened that an individual was ejected from land which he had thus occupied, large tracts of the state land were speedily occupied by enterprising patricians. Such being the plan of distribution, it is evident that in the state lands, occupied and unoccupied, the government possessed a constant fund upon which they could draw in cases of emergency. By selling portions of it, they could raise money; and by assigning portions of it to indigent families, they could permanently provide for them. Several times, it appears, this had been done in the case of indigent plebeian families; and the agrarian law of Spurius Cassius was simply a proposal that—​a large accession to the state lands having just taken place—​the government should seize the opportunity to provide for the distressed plebeians, by apportioning them small portions of these state lands. To the plebeians this proposal was exceedingly agreeable; not so, however, to the patricians, who possessed the right of occupying and farming as much of the public territory as they chose, but who lost that right from the moment that the land was apportioned by the state. The patricians, accordingly, resisted the proposal with all their might; and Spurius Cassius having carried it notwithstanding, they caused him to be impeached and put to death as soon as his consulship had expired.

After this event, the patricians renewed their efforts to suppress the plebs, proceeding so far as to transfer the right of electing the consuls from the centuries to the purely patrician body of the curies. The plebeians, however, behaved resolutely, asserting their rights through their tribunes, and by clamors in the comitia tributa, where none but plebeians had a right to take a part. In the year of the city 271, or B. C. 483, they regained the power of choosing one of the consuls; and in the year 283, or B. C. 471, they wrung from the patricians the right of electing their tribunes in their own comitia tributa, instead of the centuries, at the same time obtaining the right to discuss in the comitia tributa affairs affecting the whole Commonwealth. Other concessions followed; and at length, in the year 292, or B. C. 462, a tribune named Caius Terentilius Harsa was so bold as to propose a complete revision of the constitution in all its parts. It was not desirable, he said, that the old distinction between populus and plebs, which had originated in war, should be longer kept up; let, therefore, a revision of the whole body of the laws be undertaken, with a view to put the plebeians on a legal equality with the patricians, and let some more limited form of supreme magistracy be substituted for the consulship. After a protracted opposition, this proposal resulted, in the year 303, or B. C. 452, in the appointment of the famous First Decemvirate; a board of ten patricians, who were to revise the entire body of the laws, as well as the political machinery of the state, superseding in the meantime all other authority. The digest of Roman law prepared by these decemvirs became the foundation of all subsequent jurisprudence among the Romans; the amendments which they effected on the old laws were favorable to the plebeians. The principal constitutional changes which they carried out were the incorporation of patricians and clients with the plebeian tribes; the investment of the centuries with the powers of an ultimate court of appeal; and the substitution of the decemviral office, of which they themselves were an example, for the consulship, five of the decemvirs to be plebeians. This last change, however, was of short duration; for the second decemvirate was brought to an end by its own depravity. Compelled, by a new secession of the commons, to abdicate, the decemvirs of 305 were succeeded by two popular consuls, under whose auspices several important privileges were obtained for the plebeians, the most important of which was a law conferring on a plebiscitum, or resolution of the tribes, the right to become law on receiving the sanction of the patricians, thus enabling the whole people to originate measures as well as the senate. In 310, the plebeians mustered courage to demand that one of the consuls should thenceforward be chosen from their order. To divert them from this, the patricians yielded to another demand—​the repeal of the law prohibiting intermarriage between the two orders. The plebeians, however, still persisting in their demand regarding the consulship, the patricians, in 311, offered a compromise, which consisted in breaking down the supreme authority, hitherto concentrated in the consulship, into three offices—​the Censorship, the Quæstorship, and the Military Tribunate—​with consular powers. The censors were to be two in number, chosen for a period of five years, by the curies from among the patricians, subject to the approval of the centuries. The ostensible duty of the censors was the administration of the public revenues; but as they were intrusted with the task of determining the rank of every citizen, and of rating his taxable property, their power was, in reality, enormous. To watch over the moral conduct of the citizens, and to degrade such senators or knights as disgraced their order, were parts of their understood duty. The quæstors, two in number, were to keep the public accounts; they were likewise to be patricians, but were to be chosen by the centuries. Regarding the third office, the military tribunate, the plebeians were to have the option of this office, consisting of an indefinite number of persons of somewhat less dignity than the consuls, but to be chosen by the centuries from either order indiscriminately, or of consuls to be chosen, as before, from among the patricians only.

This compromise having been accepted, the period from 311 to 350 was one of incessant agitation on the part of the plebeians, of incessant opposition on the part of the patricians, of incessant shifting between the consulship and the military tribunate, according as the patricians or the plebeians were the stronger. On the whole, however, the plebeians gained ground. In 321, the active authority of the censors was limited to eighteen months out of the five years for which they were appointed. In 328, the tribes obtained the right of deliberating on questions of peace and war. In 334, the number of the quæstors was increased to four, to be chosen indiscriminately from either order. Lastly, in 350, or B. C. 404, the system of payment for military service became common. During these forty years the patricians had frequently had recourse to the expedient of appointing a Dictator, or supreme magistrate, with unlimited authority for six months. Such an appointment almost always proved a temporary check to the political advancement of the plebeians. In cases of difficulty also, arising from external danger, it was usual to appoint some able man dictator; and it was at such a juncture, in the year 359, that, determined to bring the siege of Veii to a close, the Romans appointed Camillus to this high office.

The siege of Veii having terminated so successfully, the Romans were prepared to resume their career of conquest without, and their political agitations within, when both the one and the other received a check from an unexpected quarter. Some cause, now unknown, had thrown the Gauls, or Celtic populations inhabiting the western portion of Central Europe, into commotion; and bursting from their native haunts, a mass of these savages crossed the Alps in quest of plunder and settlements, established a permanent abode in the country adjacent to the Po, and pushed their destructive way through almost the whole length of the peninsula. Rome suffered more severely than any other city. For several months (364–5, or B. C. 390–89) it was in the possession of the savages—​its rightful inhabitants, routed in the battle, having dispersed themselves for safety through the surrounding country. At length, however, the Gauls were bribed to return to their homes in the north, leaving Rome in ruins.

GRADUAL CONQUEST OF THE PENINSULA—​ITALY UNDER THE ROMAN RULE.

The invasion of the Gauls is a great notch in the line of the Roman annals. From this epoch to the time of the complete subjugation of the peninsula by the Romans (365–490, or—​B. C. 389–264) is a period of 125 years. Of this period, the first fifty years were spent in repairing the shattered Commonwealth. Her strength having been fairly renewed, the republic shook off all impediments, announced to Latins and Hernicans that she required their coöperation no longer, and boldly declared her resolution to conquer central Italy. The series of wars against Etruscans, Latins, Hernicans, Gauls, Volscians, and Samnites, sometimes singly, sometimes in combination, by which she carried her resolution into effect, is usually known in Roman history by the general designation of ‘the Samnite Wars’ (412–463), the Samnites being the leaders in this onset of the nations on Rome, the issue of which was to determine whether Rome or Samnium should govern Italy. Extricating herself by her valor from this confused conflict of nations, Rome, about the year 463, found herself mistress of Central Italy—​Samnites, Latins, etc., all her subjects. A consequence of the conduct of the Latins and Hernicans during these Samnite wars was, that the famous triple confederacy between these two nations and the Romans was brought to an end precisely when it had fully served its purpose, and when its longer continuance would have impeded the growth in Italy of that Roman unity which it had fostered. ‘The Samnite Wars’ were succeeded by a short but brisk war, designated in Roman history ‘the War with Pyrrhus and the Greeks in Italy.’ Pyrrhus was an able and enterprising Greek prince, whom the Greek towns of southern Italy—​fearful of being overwhelmed by the conquering barbarians, as they called them, of the Tiber, before whom even the Samnites had given way—​had invited over from his native kingdom of Epirus, that he might place himself at the head of a confederacy which they were forming against Rome. Full of enmity towards their conquerers, all the recently-subdued nations of Central and Northern Italy welcomed the arrival of Pyrrhus; and all Southern Italy followed his standard. His enterprise, however, failed, notwithstanding several victories; and about the year B. C. 275, Pyrrhus having withdrawn from Italy, the confederacy against the Roman Commonwealth crumbled to pieces, and the whole peninsula lay at their mercy. Before describing the manner in which the peninsula, thus acquired, was laid out and governed by the Romans, it will be necessary to continue our narrative of the gradual development of the constitution within, during the period which had elapsed since the Gaulish invasion.

The situation of Rome after the Gaulish invasion was extremely similar to what it had been after the expulsion of the kings—​the plebeians distressed, and many of them in slavery for debt, and the patricians disposed to tyrannize. As on the former occasion there had risen up, as the best friend of the plebs, the noble patrician Spurius Cassius, so on this occasion there appeared as their champion a prudent and brave plebeian, Caius Licinius Stolo, a tribune of the people. His measures were very similar to those of Spurius Cassius—​namely, a compromise on the subject of debts (not, however, an abolition of them); and an agrarian law, prohibiting any citizen from occupying any more than five hundred jugera (about 330 acres) of the public land, and depriving all who exceeded that quantity of the surplus for distribution among indigent commons. To these he added a proposal for constitutional reform—​namely, that the military tribunate should be abolished, and that the consulship should be reverted to, one of the consuls to be of necessity a plebeian. After a hard struggle, these important measures were carried in the year 384, nineteen years after the Gaulish invasion. Under these Licinian Laws, as they were called, the state enjoyed tolerable repose for a long period of years—​the principal source of disturbance being the attempts of the wealthy citizens to evade the operation of the agrarian law. The next great movement was in the year of the city 416, when, under the auspices of a plebeian dictator (for the dictatorship had also been thrown open to the plebeians), a considerable simplification of the constitution was effected. It was now rendered essential that one of the censors should be a plebeian; and the old patrician body of the curies was struck out of the machinery of the legislature, so as to leave the business of the state in the hands of the senate (itself become partly a plebeian body) and the people. Met in their centuries, the people could only accept or reject the measures proposed by the senate; but met in their tribes, they could originate a measure, and oblige the senate to consider it. Thus sometimes in the shape of a matured scheme descending from the senate to the people, sometimes in the shape of a popular resolution sent up to the senate, a measure became law. From this simplification of the constitution commences, according to historians, the golden age of Roman politics. The extension of dominion in the Samnite wars, by providing a large subject-population inferior both to patricians and plebeians, disposed these bodies to forget their differences, and to fall back upon their common consciousness of Roman citizenship. During the Samnite wars, however, a third party appeared in the field claiming political rights. These were the Ærarians, the name applied to all those residents in town pursuing mechanical occupations, who, as not belonging to any of the tribes (now thirty-three in number), did not rank as citizens. The claims of this class—​the city rabble, as both patricians and plebeians called it—​were supported by a daring and able patrician, Appius Claudius, who, during his censorship, admitted ærarians into all the tribes indiscriminately. Eventually, however, a compromise was effected: the ærarians were enrolled in the four city tribes, thus obtaining some influence, but not so much as Appius seemed to destine for them. It appears to have been at some period also during the Samnite wars that a modification took place in the constitution of the comitia centuriata, the leading feature of which seems to have been a blending of the tribes with the centuries, so as to accommodate the assembly to the altered state of society and the altered scale of wealth. Of the precise nature of this change, however, as of the precise time at which it occurred, we are ignorant. It may be considered, nevertheless, to have perfected the Roman constitution, and to have adapted it for the function of maintaining the government of the entire peninsula.

Italy, once fairly subjugated and laid out by the Romans (B. C. 266), its population may be considered as having been distributed into three political divisions—​the Populus Romanus, or citizens of Rome, properly so called; the Socii, or inhabitants of the allied and dependent Italian states; and the Nomen Latinum, or citizens of the ‘Latin name.’

The first of these, the Populus Romanus, included the whole body of the free inhabitants of the thirty-three tribes or parishes north and south of the Tiber, which constituted the Roman territory strictly so called, together with a considerable number of persons scattered over the other parts of Italy, who were also accounted citizens, either because they were colonists of Roman descent, or because the title had been conferred on them as an honorary distinction. The total number of adult Roman citizens towards the close of the fifth century was under 300,000—​a small proportion, evidently, of the vast Italian mass, which consisted, including the slaves, of about 5,000,000. Nor were all these equal in point of civil rights, many of them having the franchise, as it was called, or legal rights of citizens, without the suffrage, or political rights. The citizens with suffrage, those who voted on public questions—​the real governing power, therefore, by whose impulses all Italy, with its millions of inhabitants, was swayed, as the body is moved by the beats of the heart—​were a mere handful of men, such as might be assembled with ease in any public park or square.

The Italian subjects were the inhabitants of the allied or dependent states. The list of these was a long one, including, as it did, the various communities which made up the populations of Etruria, Umbria, the Sabine territory, Samnium, Campania, Apulia, Lucania, Messapia, and Bruttium. All the allies, however, were not equally subject to Rome: the relations in which they stood to it were determined by the particular treaties which formed the separate alliances, and these, of course, varied according to the circumstances under which they had been concluded. Almost all the allied states, however, were permitted to retain their own laws, their own municipal arrangements, their own judges, etc. Throughout the peninsula, however, care was taken to destroy every vestige of nationality or national legislature among the allies of the same race. Upon the whole, this change from independence to subjection to Rome was beneficial to the Italian nations. Not the least benefit attending it was the total abolition of those wars between neighboring states which, while the peninsula was subdivided into small independent territories, had raged incessantly and fiercely.

The Nomen Latinum, or Latin name, was a fictitious designation applied to a number of colonies scattered through the peninsula, and which, in respect of privileges, stood in an intermediate position between the Roman citizens and the Italians. The name probably originated in the circumstance, that the original colonists of this description were Latins.

It is a curious fact, that even after Rome had attained the supremacy of the peninsula, there did not exist such a thing as even a dawning Roman literature, although the state had now existed nearly five hundred years; so much earlier than their literary faculty did the native talent of the Romans for governing mankind develop itself. It was by their massive character, more than by their powers of speculation or expression, that they were to impress the world.

THE PUNIC WARS—​SUBJUGATION OF FOREIGN NATIONS—​ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES.

Masters of Italy, it was not long before the Romans found themselves in collision with the nations surrounding the great basin of the Mediterranean; and as the last 125 years of the existence of the Roman state had been spent in the gradual conquest of the Italic nations, so the next 130 years (Y. R. 490–620, or B. C. 264–134) were spent in a series of conquests, by which various foreign countries were reduced to the condition of mere provinces of Italy. This series of conquests may be designated generally by the title of ‘the Punic Wars, and the Wars with the Greek States.’ A bare enumeration of them, with a statement of their results, is all that our limits will allow.

The first foreign people with which the Romans came into collision were the Carthaginians—​a people of Phœnician lineage, who, settling in that part of Africa now called Tunis, and building a city there, about a century before Rome was founded, had in the interval become a great commercial nation, with ships sailing to all parts of the Mediterranean, and with colonies along the coasts of Algiers, in Sardinia and Corsica, and even in Spain. They had recently gained a footing in Sicily, and now shared it with the Greeks of Syracuse; and it was on this rich island as a battlefield that the Romans first came into conflict with the merchant-people of Africa. Invited over by the Mamertines, a robber-people who inhabited the north-eastern corner of the island, the Roman soldiers fought the armies of mercenaries hired by the Carthaginians. The war thus begun, the ‘First Punic War,’ as it is called, lasted twenty-three years (Y. R. 490–513, or B. C. 264–241). During it the Romans first learned to build ships of war, and to fight naval battles; and they were soon able to defeat the Carthaginians on their own element. On land they were sure of victory against mere mercenaries, collected, as these were, from all nations, and commanded by Carthaginian generals of ordinary capacity. In 249 B. C., however, the Carthaginians sent over the great Hamilcar Barca to command their forces in Sicily; and his efforts checked the Romans, who, meanwhile, had invaded Africa, and been repulsed. A victory or two, however, gained by the Romans over other generals than Hamilcar, disposed the Carthaginians for peace, who accordingly agreed (B. C. 241) to evacuate Sicily, and to pay the victors a large sum of money. The Romans then made themselves masters of Sicily; and shortly afterwards they found a pretext for wresting Corsica and Sardinia from the Carthaginians. For twenty-two years after these conquests (B. C. 241–119) the Romans were engaged in wars with the Cisalpine Gauls and other nations in the north of Italy, the effect of which was to extend their dominion to the foot of the Alps. Beyond the Alps, also, Illyria, a country skirting the east coast of the Adriatic, was at this time annexed to the dominions of the Commonwealth.

Meanwhile the Carthaginians had not been idle. During several years they had, in accordance with the advice of Hamilcar, been establishing their dominion in Spain, intending to repay themselves with that fine peninsula for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia. Killed in battle by a native tribe, Hamilcar was succeeded in Spain by his son-in-law Hasdrubal; and on his death, which took place soon after, Hannibal Barca, the son of Hamilcar, and then only twenty-six years of age, was appointed to the command. The siege by him of Saguntum, an independent Spanish town, which had claimed the assistance of the Romans, led to the Second Punic War (B. C. 218–201). Little did the Romans know what a war it was to be! Crossing the Pyrenees, the young Carthaginian general, the greatest military commander probably, and certainly one of the ablest men the world ever saw, pushed his way through the Gallic tribes, and effecting the passage of the Alps, descended into Italy with an army of 12,000 Africans, 8,000 Spaniards, and 6,000 Carthaginian horse. Rousing the Cisalpine Gauls, and defeating in several successive battles the Roman generals sent against him, he made his way into the south of Italy (B. C. 217); and having in the following year inflicted on the Romans at Cannæ the greatest defeat they had ever received, he remained in Italy fifteen years (B. C. 217–202), moving hither and thither, keeping seven or eight Roman generals, and among them the wary Fabius and the bold Marcellus, continually employed, scattering the Romans like chaff wherever he appeared, exhausting the finances of the state, and detaching the Italian nations from their allegiance. Had he received reinforcements, as he expected, from Spain, where he had left his brother Hasdrubal in command, Rome might have fallen. Fortunately, however, for the Romans, while they were manfully opposing Hannibal in Italy, one of their generals, the great Scipio, was busily engaged in Spain. To prevent Spain from falling into Scipio’s hands, Hasdrubal was obliged to remain in it; and it was not till B. C. 207, when all hope of retaining his footing in that peninsula was lost, that he set out to join his brother. He crossed the Alps in safety, but was attacked, defeated and slain on his march through Italy; and Hannibal was left to his own resources. These, however, were exhaustless; and with the assistance of the Italian nations, who, especially the unprivileged classes, were friendly to the Carthaginians, and hated Rome, he might still have shattered the Commonwealth in pieces, had not Scipio passed over from Spain into Africa, and defeating the Carthaginians in several battles, with the help of a Numidian prince named Masinissa, compelled them to recall their greatest man for the defense of his native city. In B. C. 202, or the year of the city 552, Hannibal quitted Italy, where he had spent the best period of his life. Not long after his landing in Africa, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama, and his countrymen were obliged in consequence to agree to a peace on very severe terms.

The Second Punic War concluded, and Italy once more pacified, the Romans made war on Philip III. king of Macedonia, and virtual ruler of all the Greek states, who had offended them by entering into a treaty with Hannibal. The war was protracted over seventeen years (B. C. 214–197), but ended in the reduction of Macedonia, and the proclamation by the Romans of the independence of the other Greek states. Seized with a desire to assume the place which the Macedonian king had been unable to maintain, Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, and representative therefore of the Greek empire in Asia, crossed into Greece, where he joined the Ætolians against the Romans. Defeated, however, in Greece, and forsaken by the Ætolians, he was pursued into Asia, and after the loss of a great battle at Magnesia, obliged to submit to the Romans, who thus became virtual masters of the various kingdoms and states of Asia Minor (B. C. 188). Meanwhile they had been engaged in suppressing various movements among the Ligurians, Boians, Istrians, and other nations in the north of Italy, as well as among the Spanish tribes and the savages of Sardinia. A declaration of hostilities by Perseus, the successor of Philip in Macedonia, in conjunction with Genthius, king of Illyria, led to another war against these countries, which terminated in their complete subjugation (B. C. 168). The next twenty years were spent in securing these conquests, and in establishing relations, virtually those of sovereignty, with various states of Asia Minor, such as Bithynia and Rhodes; and with various others of Africa, as Egypt and Numidia. The whole circuit of the Mediterranean in their power, and their ships respected in all its ports, as belonging to the ‘sovereign people of Italy,’ the Romans at length executed their long-cherished project, and pounced upon Carthage (B. C. 149), whose existence, even in its fallen condition of a mere commercial capital, they could not tolerate. Hannibal had been dead more than thirty years; but under such generals as they had, the wretched Carthaginians offered a desperate resistance to the Roman commanders. After a horrible siege, the city, containing a population of 700,000, was taken and sacked by Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son of the son of the great Scipio (B. C. 146). The houses were razed to the ground, and the province of Africa was the prize of this third ‘Punic war.’ The fall of Greece was cotemporary with that of Carthage. The Achaian League, a confederacy of cities in Greece proper and the Peloponnesus, showing a disposition to be independent of the Romans, provoked their vengeance; and the destruction of Corinth in the same year as that of Carthage extinguished the last sparks of liberty in Greece. The whole of the Greek countries were parceled out into Roman provinces, and from that time Greeks became the slave teachers of the Romans, their secretaries, their sycophants, their household wits. Yet out of Greece thus ruined there afterwards arose many great spirits; for no degradation, no series of misfortunes, could eradicate the wondrous intellect which lurked in the fine Greek organization. The last scene in this long series of wars was enacted in Spain, where, roused by a noble patriot called Viriathus—​the Wallace of that day—​the native tribes had revolted against the Romans. The fate of Spain, however, was sealed by the destruction of Numantia by Scipio Æmilianus (B. C. 133).

By the wars of 130 years which we have thus enumerated, the following countries had become subject to Rome:—​Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the smaller islands of the Mediterranean; Macedonia; Illyricum, with Thessaly and Epirus; Greece, including Greece proper and the Peloponnesus; Spain; and the whole northern coast of Africa. The Romans had likewise established their influence in Asia. The conquered countries were divided into provinces, so that the designation for the Roman dominion became ‘Italy and the Provinces.’ The provinces received each an organization at the time of its formation, according to its circumstances. Retaining their national habits, religion, laws, etc., the inhabitants of every province were governed by a military president, sent from Rome, with a staff of officials. Unlike the Italic nations, who furnished only subsidies of men to the sovereign states, the provincials were required to pay taxes in money and kind; and these taxes, were farmed out by the censors—​Roman citizens, who, under the name of Publicans, settled in the various districts of the provinces, and proved a great scourge by their avarice and rapacity.

To some towns and localities in the provinces, the Italic franchise was extended as a token of favor. Altogether, the government of the provinces was one which, although it led to beneficial results, in binding together a large mass of the human race, and carrying on various races and languages simultaneously in a career of civilization, yet gave great scope for oppression. Like a network proceeding from a centre, the political system of the Romans pervaded the mass of millions of human beings inhabiting the shores of the Mediterranean, holding them together by its mechanical tenacity, and slowly working them into union by its own powers of impregnation as well as by means of those ideas and moral agencies whose dissemination and operation over large areas at once it so marvellously facilitated. What a career was thus opened up for those who occupied the centre of this network—​the population of Rome! What a grand thing in those days to be a Roman citizen; so that, wherever one walked—​in Spain, in Africa, or even in once great Athens—​one was followed, feasted, flattered to one’s face, and mocked behind one’s back! What means of moneymaking in the provinces for the avaricious Romans! What opportunities for well-doing for the philanthropic! Alas! a philanthropic Roman was almost a contradiction in terms. To be patriotic was the highest virtue; and if a Roman, along with his patriotism, possessed a just disposition, those who were under his government might consider themselves fortunate. Nor was the career of administration in the provinces open to all Roman citizens. The following passage, which we translate from a French work—​(‘Etudes sur l’Histoire Romaine, par Prosper Mérimée, Paris, 1844,’)—​will give an idea of the manner in which a Roman citizen attained to public honors, and will illustrate the general spirit of the Roman administration. ‘The laws,’ says this author, ‘opened to all the citizens the career of magistracy; but in reality it was shut against all but those whom fortune or family credit placed in an exceptional situation. As all public offices were obtained by the suffrages of the people, it was of the utmost importance to make creatures in every class of society. In order to muster all these on the great day of election, there were no labors, fatigues, and even meannesses to which Romans of illustrious families did not submit from their earliest boyhood. Some offered the patronage of their families to embarrassed pleaders; others opened their purses to poor artisans; whoever had a vote in the comitia was flattered and cajoled in every possible way. From the time that the candidate had attained the age at which the law permitted him to stand for the dignity of the quæstorship—​that by which he must make his debut in public life—​he appeared in the Forum clothed in a white robe, shook hands with all the country folks, and with the lowest plebeians, solicited their votes, and often purchased them for money. The quæstor, once appointed, found the doors of the senate open for him. Ordinarily he was attached to the person of a consul, or a magistrate of superior rank, becoming his lieutenant; sometimes he obtained a little government for himself. In these offices he could learn business habits and find occasions for distinguishing himself, and for causing his name to be mentioned often in the senate or the assemblies of the people.

After the quæstorship came the Curule Edileship, a purely civil magistracy, whose duties consisted in watching the arrival of provisions, guarding public monuments, seeing to the embellishment of the city, and finally, in preparing the games and solemn shows. This charge entailed enormous expense on those ediles who wished to make themselves popular. They built temples and porticoes at their own cost, opened roads, constructed aqueducts; above all, they tried to surpass their predecessors by the magnificence of the games which they caused to be celebrated, and the truly colossal expense which they in part sustained. A happy man was that edile who had been able to exhibit in the arena the deaths of an unusual number of able gladiators, or who had presented to the people animals of a rare species or unknown before. His name was in every mouth, and all applauded his sprouting ambition. The edileship lasted a year. After it came the prætorship. There were six prætors—​two presided over the tribunals at Rome, the others governed provinces or commanded armies. Finally after having successively gone through the three previous stages, one presented himself as a candidate for the consulship. Intriguing, corruption, manœuvring of all kinds was now redoubled; for this was the goal of a Roman’s ambition. The consuls presided over the government of the republic, or directed important wars in person. At the expiration of their magistracy—​that is, after a year—​they were sent to a province with the title of Proconsuls; often to command military expeditions, almost always to administer an extensive government. In turn to amass and expend great wealth, was thus the chief care of candidates for honors. The profits of the quæstorship enabled one to make a brilliant curule edileship. Ruined by his extravagance, the edile repaired his fortune in the prætorship, and returned to Rome rich enough to buy votes at the consular election. Frequently he staked his all on this last election, confident of more than making it up again in the province which would be assigned him after his consulship. In a word, the career of public employment was a species of gambling, in which one’s profits were proportional to one’s stakes.’

Such a state of things as is here described, implies that an immense change had taken place in the character of the Roman society during the rapid career of foreign conquest which had elevated Rome from the position of metropolis of Italy to that of metropolis of the civilized world. The distinction between patrician and plebeian was now scarcely heard of (in B. C. 172 both consuls had been plebeians for the first time); it was superseded by that between illustrious and obscure; rich and poor. Although, however, the system of corruption was so general, that scarcely any one could attain to office except by unworthy means, yet there were at that time, and in the midst of that system, many men of really noble character. Among these must not be forgotten the honest old censor Cato, the enemy of Carthage, who kept up a constant protest all his life against what he called the growing luxury of his countrymen, and died declaring that they were a degenerate race. Of equal integrity with Cato, although of altogether a different form of character, were the two brothers of world-famous name, whose actions we shall now briefly notice.

THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE GRACCHI

‘A fatal effect,’ says M. Mérimée, ‘of the Roman domination was the impoverishment and depopulation of Italy. At Rome, where commerce and industry were despised, only one way led to wealth—​a career of public service. On his return from his government, a Roman official bought lands, built villas, and all at once became a great proprietor. If he chanced to have in his neighborhood an estate to his taste, he caused it to be ceded to him; sometimes he seized it while the lawful owner was fighting far away under the Roman eagles. By degrees all the small proprietors were despoiled, in order to form vast estates for the privileged class of public functionaries. Parks, gardens, and expensive fish-ponds took the place of cultivated fields. Laborers disappeared, and the country was peopled with slaves, dangerous by their numbers, and also by their robber habits, which they practised with impunity. Some masters, it is said, shared the profits of robbery with these wretches.’

The great social evils of the day—​the extinction of the old peasant proprietors of Italy; and the vast increase of slaves, the danger of which had been already manifested by several servile revolts in Sicily; and the congregation in the towns, and especially in Rome, of vast masses of population, not living as the artisans and traders in modern towns do, by honest industry, but living in noisy idleness upon the alms of the provinces and the sums they received for their votes—​these social evils must have struck many generous hearts among the Romans. The man, however, on whom they produced so decided an impression as to lead him to devote his life to their removal, was Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the son of a plebeian of rank who had attained distinction in the Spanish wars, and of Cornelia, the daughter of the great Scipio. Abandoning, in its first stage, the more tempting career which led through the quæstorship, edileship, and prætorship to the consulship, Tiberius chose rather the office of tribune of the people, which was more suitable for the purposes of political agitation. Elected to this office B. C. 133, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, he propounded his schemes of reform. His grand project was a revival, with some modifications, of the famous agrarian law of Licinius, which had long fallen into tacit desuetude. All citizens who were in possession of a larger extent of the state land than the 500 jugera allowed by the Licinian law (unless in the case of fathers of two sons, who were to be allowed 250 jugera in addition for each of them), were to be deprived of the surplus; the buildings, vine-presses, etc., which were erected on these surplus lands to be purchased at a fair valuation; and the whole land thus seized was to constitute a stock out of which the pauper plebeians of the city were to be furnished with little farms for the honest support of themselves and families, these farms to be incapable of alienation by the persons to whom they should be allotted. Utterly revolutionary as this measure would seem in modern legislation, and sufficiently sweeping as it was, even in a Roman point of view, considering that however unjustly the ancestors of many of the large proprietors had come by their lands, yet long possession and frequent transference had in many cases sanctified the ownership—​still the measure was strictly in the spirit of Roman law, and one of the supporters of Gracchus in proposing it was the eminent jurist Mucius Scævola. Tiberius and his associates probably thought that the ends proposed—​the removal of the venal mob out of Rome, and the restoration in Italy of a population of hard-working peasant proprietors, instead of the gangs of bandit slaves—​were difficult enough to require, and glorious enough to justify, somewhat revolutionary means. Accordingly, advocating by his eloquence in the Forum the scheme which he had matured in private, he did not cease until, in spite of the most obstinate resistance on the part of the senators, who used as their instrument against him one of his own colleagues in the tribuneship, he had gained his end. Three commissioners were appointed to superintend the execution of the law—​Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius, and his younger brother Caius. Loud and deep were the vows of vengeance on the part of the senators; and Tiberius saw that his only chance of life lay in being reelected to the tribuneship, the dignity of which was an inviolable protection. To prevent this, the senatorial party mustered all their strength; and a tumult ensuing on one of the days of election, Tiberius, along with about 300 of his followers, was killed.

For about ten years the excitement caused by the law of Gracchus continued, Fulvius Flaccus and Papirius Carbo acting as his successors in the popular interest, and carrying on the struggle against the nobles, who raised up obstacles to the execution of the law. But in the year B. C. 123, Caius Gracchus, who now felt himself old enough to assume the career which his brother had left him as an inheritance, claimed and obtained the tribuneship. Caius was a man of more vehement character and more comprehensive views than his brother, and the schemes which he proposed embraced a great variety of points, besides a reënactment of his brother’s agrarian law. In fact, a reformer by reputation and education, he made it his business to find out abuses, and either declaim against them or propose remedies for them. Perhaps the most objectionable of his measures was a law enacting a monthly distribution of corn among the city population at a nominal price—​a poor-law, for such it may be called, which had the effect of attracting all the paupers of Italy to Rome. A more valuable measure was his transference of the judicial power from the senators, who had hitherto held it, and who had been guilty of great corruption in the exercise of it, to the equites, or wealthy capitalists, intermediate between the senators and the poorer classes of the community. He also proposed and carried the establishment or various colonies in different parts of the empire, which afforded room for enterprise, thus relieving Rome of part of its overgrown population. More fortunate so far than his brother, he held the tribuneship for two years, and thus had time for more extensive action. Deserted, however, by the people at the end of the second year, in consequence of the policy of his opponents, who adopted the plan of outbidding him for popular favor, he lost his office. The senators, having him at their mercy, spared no means of revenge; and Gracchus, and his friend Fulvius Flaccus, having recourse to the armed assistance of their supporters to preserve their lives when they appeared in public, this was construed into a design of sedition. The consul was empowered to resort to force against them; a terrible fray occurred in one of the quarters of the town, 3000, it is said, being slain; and Gracchus was killed while trying to escape into the country (B. C. 121). He was then only in the thirty-third year of his age.

The aristocracy thus triumphed for the time, and the recent measures of reform were suffered to fall into disuse; but certain portions of the policy of the two brothers had taken full effect, and the agitation which they had originated was not lulled for many years. The seeds of much that afterwards appeared in storm and bloodshed, were sown during these movements of B. C. 133–121; and as long as the world takes an interest in Roman history, or respects disinterested political courage, it will remember the Gracchi.

THE JUGURTHINE, CIMBRIC, AND SOCIAL WARS—​MARIUS AND SULLA.

In the year of the first tribuneship of Caius Gracchus, the Belearic islands were added to the Roman dominion; and six years afterwards (B. C. 117), Dalmatia was reduced to a Roman province. About this time the famous Jugurtha, the illegitimate son of one of the sons of Masinissa, already mentioned as a king of Numidia in the Roman interest, was left heir to that kingdom, in conjunction with his two cousins, by Micipsa, their father and his uncle. Aspiring to the undivided sovereignty, he killed one of his cousins, and drove the other to Rome. Interfering in behalf of the expelled prince, the Romans compelled Jugurtha to share Numidia with him. By bribing the commissioners, however, who were sent to effect the division, Jugurtha obtained the best part for himself; and not long after (B. C. 112), he showed his contempt for the Romans by invading his cousin’s dominions, and putting him to death. Bribes and wily tactics protected him for a while from the vengeance of the Romans; but at length, in the year B. C. 109, the brave consul Metellus, who was proof against bribes, went over to Numidia to conduct the war which his predecessors had mismanaged. After he had carried on the war successfully for two years, he was supplanted by his second in command, Caius Marius, a man of humble birth, and nearly fifty years of age, who, although almost without education, had raised himself to high rank by his military talents, and whose services under Metellus had been so favorably represented at Rome, that he was appointed consul (B. C. 107), with the express intention that he should end the Jugurthine war. This he speedily accomplished, greatly assisted by his quæstor, a young man of high patrician family and unusual literary accomplishments, named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Jugurtha was sent to Rome, where he was starved in prison (B. C. 106); and the services of Marius were at the disposal of the Romans for a war of an infinitely more formidable character than that which had been waged against this ill-fated African.

About the year B. C. 113, a numerous tribe of savages, called Cimbri, but who were most probably Celts, had been set in motion in the south-east of Europe; and emigrating westward, they had communicated their restlessness to the Tutones, and undoubtedly German race, through whose territories they must have passed. Roving about in quest of settlements, sometimes together, and sometimes separately, the two barbarian hosts, consisting of men, women, and children, had thrown all Gaul into consternation; and as the Romans had already colonized the portion of Gaul contiguous to the Alps, the duty of checking the savages devolved on them, the more especially as there was some danger that Italy would be invaded. But such a moving mass of human beings, driven by that hardest of forces, hunger, was not easily to be checked; and army after army sent by the Romans to oppose them had been shivered to pieces. All Italy began to tremble, and there was a universal cry among the Romans, ‘Make Marius again consul.’ Accordingly Marius was chosen consul a second time in his absence (B. C. 104), that he might drive back the Cimbri. Meanwhile the poor homeless creatures had made a general rush towards Spain; and the Romans, to secure the services of Marius when they should be required, reëlected him to the consulship in B. C. 102. In the latter year, when Marius was consul for the fourth time, the barbarians, repulsed from Spain, directed their march towards the Alps. Fortunately, they divided themselves into two masses—​the Teutones taking one route, the Cimbri another. The former, amounting to about 300,000 men, were met by Marius, and slaughtered, all except 90,000, who were made prisoners, and sold as slaves. Meanwhile the Cimbri had been making progress in their route, and to oppose them, Marius was elected to a fifth consulship (B. C. 101). Another bloody field, in which about 140,000 were slain, and 60,000 taken prisoners, delivered Italy from its fears. Strange and affecting thought, that half a million of human beings, women and children, should be wandering through Europe for years, poor outcasts, with their little carts and cooking-kettles, and that a civilized nation should have been compelled, by the necessity of self-preservation, to take means to sweep them out of existence!

Marius was rewarded for his exertions with a sixth consulship (B. C. 100), which, there being now no enemy to call forth his military activity, he employed in political schemes for the humiliation of the aristocratic or senatorial party, to which, both by the accident of birth and on principle, he was a determined enemy. The efforts of the nobles, however, assisted by the violent conduct of the partisans of Marius, especially a tribune named Saturninus, occasioned a reaction; and on the expiry of his consulship, Marius withdrew from Rome, and undertook a journey to the East, where the Roman influence was extending itself. During the following ten years the political agitations were incessant, the liberal spirit of that party of which Marius was the head developing itself every year in fresh manifestations, and the aristocratic party becoming every year more fierce and dogged in their opposition. On the aristocratic side, the ablest and most earnest man, although not yet the most distinguished, was Sulla—​the former quæstor of Marius, and who had since been employed in various capacities both military and civil. At length, in the year B. C. 90, a storm which had been long gathering burst out in that war which is denominated in history ‘the Social or Marsic War,’ or ‘the War of Italian Independence.’

As early as the tribuneship of Caius Gracchus, a clamor had been raised for the emancipation of the various Italian states from the thraldom in which they were held by the Romans. The progress of time welding the various Italian nationalities into one common society, and giving to all parts of the peninsula a common interest, had made them sensible to the grievances arising from their subordinate condition. The system of a triple franchise—​Roman, Latin, and Italian—​inevitable perhaps at first, had now become a source of gross injustice. To put an end to this injustice, the Italians demanded the full Roman franchise. Caius Gracchus wished to bestow it on them; and from the time of his death, ‘Italian emancipation’ had been one of the watchwords of the liberal party. Despairing of effecting their end by agitation, and especially provoked by a recent persecution of the Italian tradesmen who had settled in Rome, the Italian nations had recourse to arms (B. C. 90). Ten of these—​namely, the Piceni, the Vestinians, the Marrucenians, the Marsians, the Pelignians, the Samnites, the Frentanians, the Hirpinians, the Lucanians, and the Apulians, constituted themselves into a confederacy for the destruction of Rome, and the foundation of a new Commonwealth, of which Corfinium, under the new name of Italica, was to be the capital, and which was to embrace the whole peninsula. Fortunately for Rome, the Latins (including the various colonies of the Latin name throughout Italy), the Etruscans, the Umbrians, and the Campanians, did not join the confederacy. The Latins were instantly rewarded with the Roman franchise, and the field was taken against the confederacy. During two years, the war was carried on vigorously on both sides, the most distinguished of the Roman generals being Marius, Sulla, and Cneius Pompeius Strabo. At length (B. C. 89), the Italians having been greatly reduced, and the whole peninsula having suffered much, the Romans saw fit to yield to demands which many even of those whose patriotism led them to fight against the allies believed to be just. The Roman citizenship was extending to all the nations of the peninsula south of the Po, the new citizens being either distributed, according to one account, among eight of the old tribes, or arranged, according to another, in fifteen new ones. At the same time the Latin franchise was conferred on the Gauls between the Po and the Alps.

Sulla had gained greater distinction in the Marsic War than Marius, who was now verging on old age. The public eye was consequently turned to Sulla; and as, on the appearance of the Cimbric hosts twenty years before, the Romans had placed their dependence on Marius, so now, on the breaking out of war in the East, they placed their dependence on his younger rival. Mithridates VI, the young king of Pontus, an Oriental by birth, but of Greek education, and a man of splendid abilities, had been for some years silently extending his dominions in western Asia; and the Romans, long jealous of his movements, had at length openly warned him to desist. Mithridates scouted the warning; marched through Asia Minor, putting the Romans to the sword; and was welcomed everywhere by the Asiatic Greeks as a deliverer from the Roman yoke: ultimately (B. C. 88), crossing over into Greece, he menaced the Empire near its centre.