Chapter Ii. Conquest of Macedonia: the Third Punic War:

THE DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH (202-146 B.C.).

PHILIP V.: ANTIOCHUS III.--The Romans were now dominant in the West. They were strong on the sea, as on the land. Within fifty years Rome likewise became the dominant power in the East. Philip V. of Macedon had made an alliance with Hannibal, but had furnished him no valuable aid. The Senate maintained that a body of Macedonian mercenaries had fought against the Romans at Zama. Rhodes and Athens, together with King Attalus of Pergamon, sought for help against Philip. The Romans were joined by the Ætolians, and afterwards by the Achaians. In 197, the consul T. Quintius Flamininus defeated him at the battle of Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly, and imposed upon him such conditions of peace as left him powerless against the interests of Rome. At the Isthmian games, amid great rejoicing, Flamininus declared the Greek states independent. When they found that their freedom was more nominal than real, and involved a virtual subjection to Rome, the Ætolians took up arms, and obtained the support of Antiochus III., king of Syria. Another grievance laid at the door of this king was the reception by him of Hannibal, a fugitive from Carthage, whose advice, however, as to the conduct of the war, Antiochus had not the wisdom to follow. In 190 he was vanquished by a Roman army at Magnesia, under L. Cornelius Scipio, with whom was present, as an adviser, Scipio Africanus. He was forced to give up all his Asiatic possessions as far as the Taurus mountains. The territory thus obtained, the Romans divided among their allies, Pergamon and Rhodes. About seven years later (183), Hannibal, who had taken refuge at the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, finding that he was to be betrayed, took poison and died. The ingratitude of his country, or of the ruling party in it, did not move him to relax his exertions against Rome. He continued until his death to be her most formidable antagonist, exerting in exile an effective influence in the East to create combinations against her.

PERSEUS.--Philip V. laid a plan to avenge himself on the Romans, and regain his lost Macedonian territory. Perseus, his son, followed in the same path, having slain his brother Demetrius, who was a friend of Rome. The war broke out in 171. For several campaigns the management of the Roman generals was ill-judged; but at last L. Æmilius Paulus, son of the consul who fell at Cannæ, routed the Macedonians at the battle of Pydna. Immense spoils were brought to Rome by the conqueror. Perseus himself, who had sat on the throne of Alexander, adorned the consul's triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. The cantons of Greece, where there was nothing but continual strife and endless confusion, were subjected to Roman influence. One thousand Achaians of distinction, among them the historian Polybius, were carried to Italy, and kept under surveillance for many years. The imperious spirit of Rome, and the deference accorded to her, is illustrated in the interview of C. Popilius Lænas, who delivered to Antiochus IV. of Syria a letter of the Senate, directing him to retire from before Alexandria. When that monarch replied that he would confer with his counselors on the matter, the haughty Roman drew a circle round him on the ground, and bade him decide before he should cross that line. Antiochus said that he would do as the Senate ordered.

THE THIRD PUNIC WAR.--The treaty with Carthage had bound that city hand and foot. Against the encroachments of Masinissa, the Carthaginians could do nothing; but at length they were driven to take up arms to repel them. This act the Romans pronounced a breach of the treaty (149). That stern old Roman, who in his youth had served against Hannibal, M. Porcius Cato, had been unceasing in his exhortation to destroy Carthage. He was in the habit of ending his speeches with the saying, "But I am of opinion that Carthage should be destroyed." The Roman armies landed at Utica. Their hard demands, which included the surrender of war-ships and weapons, were complied with. But when the Carthaginians were required to abandon their city, and to make a new settlement ten miles distant, they rose in a fury of patriotic wrath. The women cut off their hair to make bowstrings. Day and night the people worked, in forging weapons and in building a new fleet in the inner harbor. The Romans were repulsed; but P. Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son of the first Scipio Africanus, shut in the city by land and by sea, and, in 146, captured and destroyed it. Its defenders fought from street to street, and from house to house. Only a tenth part of the inhabitants were left alive. These were sold into slavery. Carthage was set on fire, and almost entirely consumed. The fire burned for seventeen days. The remains of the Carthaginian wall, when excavated in recent times, "were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and projectiles." Scipio would have preserved the city, but the Senate was inexorable. With the historian Polybius at his side, the Roman commander, as he looked down on the horrors of the conflagration, sorrowfully repeated the lines of Homer,--

"The day shall come when sacred Troy shall be leveled with the plain, And Priam and the people of that good warrior slain."

"Assyria," he is said to have exclaimed, "had fallen, and Persia and Macedon. Carthage was burning: Rome's day might come next." Carthage was converted into a Roman province under the name of Africa.

DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH.--The atrocious crime of the destruction of Carthage was more than matched by the contemporaneous destruction of Corinth. Another rising in Macedonia resulted, in 146, in the conversion of that ancient kingdom into a Roman province. The return to Greece of three hundred Achaian exiles who had been detained in Italy for sixteen years, strengthened the anti-Roman party in Greece, and helped to bring on war with the Achaian league. In 146, after the battle of Leucopetra, Corinth was occupied by the consul L. Mummius. The men were put to the sword; the women and children were sold at auction into slavery; all treasures, all pictures, and other works of art, were carried off to Rome, and the city was consigned to the flames. The other Greek cities were mildly treated, but placed under the governor of Macedonia, and obliged to pay tribute to Rome. At a later date Greece became a Roman province under the name of Achaia.

THE PROVINCES.--At this epoch, there were eight provinces,--Sicily (241), Sardinia (238) and Corsica, two provinces in Spain (205), Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum (168), Africa (146), Macedonia (146), and Achaia. The first four were governed by Prætors. Later, however, the judicial functions of the praetors kept them in Rome. At the end of the year, the prætor, on laying down his office at home, went as proprætor to rule a province. But where there was war or other grave disturbances, the province was assigned to a consul in office, or to a proconsul, who was either the consul of the preceding year, or an ex-consul, or an ex-prætor who was appointed proconsul. The provinces were generally organized by the conquering general and a senatorial commission. Some cities retained their municipal government. These were the "free cities." The taxes were farmed out to collectors called publicans, who were commonly of the equestrian order. The last military dictator was appointed in 216. In times of great danger, dictatorial power was given to a consul.

LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY.--The intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks opened to the former a new world of art, literature, and philosophy, and a knowledge of other habits and modes of life. There were those who regarded the Greek authors and artists with sympathy, and showed an intelligent enthusiasm for the products of Greek genius. Under the patronage of the Scipios, Roman poets wrote in imitation of Greek models. Such were Plautus (who died in 184), and the less original, but more refined, Terence (185-159), who had been the slave of a senator. Ennius (239-169), a Calabrian Greek, wrote epics, and also tragedies and comedies. Him the later Romans regarded as the father of their literature. The beginnings of historical writing--which go beyond mere chronicles and family histories--appear, as in the lost work on Roman history by M. Portias Cato (Cato the Censor, 234-149). The great historian of this period, however, was the Greek Polybius. The Greek philosophy was introduced, in spite of the vigorous opposition of such austere conservatives as Cato. Panaetius (185-112), the Stoic from Rhodes, had a cordial reception at Rome. The Stoic teaching was adapted to the Roman mind. The Platonic philosophy was brought in by Carneades. This was frequently more acceptable to orators and statesmen. Along with the Stoic, the Epicurean school found adherents. Cato--who, although a historian and an orator, was, in theory and practice, a rigid man, with the simple ways of the old time--procured the banishment of Carneades, together with Critolaus the Peripatetic, and the Stoic Diogenes. The schools of oratory he caused to be shut up. He did what he could to prevent the introduction of the healing art, as it was practiced by the Greeks. He preferred the old-fashioned domestic remedies.

THE STATE OF MORALS.--If the opposition of the Conservatives to Greek letters and philosophy was unreasonable, as it certainly proved futile, there was abundant ground for alarm and regret at the changes that were going on in morals and in ways of living. The conquest of Greece and of the East brought an amazing increase of wealth. Rome plundered the countries which she conquered. The optimates, the leading families, who held the chief offices in the state and in the army, grew very rich from the booty which they gained. They left their small dwellings for stately palaces, which they decorated with works of art, gained by the pillage of nations. They built villas in the country, with extensive grounds and beautiful gardens. Even women, released from the former strict subordination of the wife to her husband, indulged lavishly in finery, and plunged into gaieties inconsistent with the household virtues. The optimates, in order to enrich themselves further, often resorted to extortion of various sorts. In order to curry favor with the people, and thereby to get their votes, they stooped to flattery, and to demagogical arts which the earlier Romans would have despised. They provided games, at great expense, for the entertainment of the populace. In the room of the invigorating and of the intellectual contests, which had been in vogue among the Greeks, the Romans acquired an increasing relish for bloody gladiatorial fights of men with wild beasts, and of men against one another. Slaves multiplied to an enormous extent: "as cheap as a Sardinian" was a proverb. The race of plain farmers dwindled away. The trade in slaves became a flourishing branch of business. Field-hands toiled in fetters, and were often branded to prevent escape. If slaves ran away, and were caught, they might be crucified. If a householder were killed by a slave, all the slaves in his house might be put to death. As at Athens, the testimony of slaves was given under torture. Hatred to the master on the part of the slave was a thing of course. "As many enemies as slaves," was a common saying.

NUMANTIAN WAR.--The intolerable oppression of the provinces occasionally provoked resistance. It was in Spain that the Romans found it most difficult to quell the spirit of freedom. The Lusitanians in the territory now called Portugal, under a gallant chieftain, Viriathus, maintained for nine years a war in which they were mostly successful, and were finally worsted only in consequence of the perfidious assassination of their leader (149-140). The Celtiberians, whose principal city, Numantia, was on the upper Douro, kept up their resistance with equal valor for ten years (143-133). On one occasion a Roman army of twenty thousand men was saved from destruction by engagements which the Senate, as after the surrender at the Caudine Forks, repudiated. In 133, after a siege of eighteen months, Numantia was taken by Scipio Africanus Æmilianus. It was hunger that compelled the surrender; and the noblest inhabitants set fire to the town, and slew themselves, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy.

PERGAMON.--More subservience the Romans found in the East. In the same year that the desperate resistance of the Numantians was overcome, Attalus III., king of Pergamon, an ally of Rome, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of Asia Minor, left his kingdom and all his treasures, by will, to the Roman people. There was a feeble struggle on the part of the expectant heir, but the Romans formed the larger part of the kingdom into a province. Phrygia Major they detached, and gave to Mithridates IV., king of Pontus, who had helped them in this last brief contest.

PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND OF THE CIVIL WARS. (146-31 B.C.)