HISTORY OF ROME. 



Macedonian empire, which was broken up into 

 four oligarchic republics. Further, the imperial 

 republic stopped Antiochus Epiphanes in his career 

 of Egyptian conquest, ordered him instantly to 

 abandon his acquisitions, and accepted the pro- 

 tectorate of Egypt, which the grateful and fright- 

 ened monarch offered her (168 B.C.). We may 

 here, for the sake of connection, anticipate the 

 course of history, and mention the last Greek and 

 Punic Wars. Both of these came to an end in 

 the same year (146 B.C.). The former was caused 

 by an expiring outburst of pseudo-patriotism in 

 the Achaian League, consequent on the return of 

 the exiles from Rome, and was virtually closed on 

 the destruction of Corinth by the consul Mum- 

 mius. The latter was not so much a war as a 

 aloody sacrifice to the genius of Roman ambition. 



fter Hannibal's death, his party in Carthage 



sms to have recovered the ascendency, and as 

 coincident therewith, the commercial prosperity of 



ic city began to revive, a bolder front was shewn 

 resisting the encroachments of Masinissa, the 



fumidian ruler, whom the Roman senate pro- 

 tected and encouraged in his aggressions. This 

 was enough. Fierce old Cato only expressed the 

 instinctive sentiment of the Roman burgesses, 

 when he came to utter incessantly Delenda est 

 Carthago, and in 149 B.C. the senate adopted his 

 barbarous conviction. After a siege of three years, 

 in which the inhabitants displayed superhuman 

 energy and heroism, Carthage was stormed by 

 the younger Scipio, and the Carthaginian empire 

 vanished for ever from the earth. 



POSITION OF ROME AT THE CLOSE OF THE 

 PUNIC WARS, AND SKETCH OF ITS SUBSE- 

 QUENT SOCIAL CONDITION TO THE TERMIN- 

 ATION OF THE REPUBLIC. 



' Polybius dates from the battle of Pydna the 

 jll establishment of the universal empire of 

 lome. It was in fact the last battle in which 

 civilised state confronted Rome in the field on 

 footing of equality with her as a great 

 Dwer ; all subsequent struggles were rebel- 

 ions or wars with peoples beyond the pale of 

 the Romano-Greek civilisation the barbarians, 

 they were called.' But contemporaneous 

 nth this enormous extension of power and 

 ithority in foreign lands, the national char- 

 ter underwent a complete and fatal altera- 

 tion. The simplicity and stern integrity of life, 

 the religious gravity of deportment, and the 

 fidelity with which common civic and household 

 duties were discharged well expressed in the 

 saying of Cato, that it was ' better to be a good 

 husband than a great senator' which in early 

 times nobly distinguished the Roman burgess, 

 had now all but disappeared. Those hardy virtues 

 frugality, temperance, justice, and rectitude 

 which, combined with courage and energy, had 

 given the strength to the nation that made it great, 

 required for their permanence the social conditions 

 out of which they sprang. But the class of peas- 

 ant proprietors who had laid the foundations of 

 Roman greatness were either extinct or no longer 

 what they once had been. The victories of 

 Rome abroad furthered rather than retarded 

 that degradation. The long and distant wars 

 made it more and more impossible for the soldier 

 to be a good citizen or a successful farmer. 



The freedom and licentiousness of camp-life, the 

 sweets of pillage and rapine, ever grew more 

 pleasant to the Italian burgess and colonist ; thus 

 indolence, inaptitude, and spendthrift habits aided 

 the greedy designs of the capitalists, and in most 

 cases the paternal acres gradually slipped into the 

 possession of the great landlords, who found it 

 more profitable to turn them into pasture or culti- 

 vate them by gangs of slaves. The rise of the 

 slave-system, though an inevitable result of foreign 

 conquest, was, indeed, the most horrible curse 

 that ever fell on ancient Rome ; and the atrocities 

 inflicted on its unhappy victims are far beyond 

 the possibility of description. If the Italian 

 farmer honourably strove to retain his small 

 farm, he was exposed to the competition of 

 the capitalists who shipped immense quantities 

 of corn from Egypt and other granaries, where 

 slave-labour rendered its production cheap, and 

 of course he failed in the unequal struggle. Not 

 less pernicious was the change that passed over 

 the character of the rich. We have already shewn 

 how the old Roman patricians lost their exclusive 

 privileges, how the plebeians gradually acquired 

 a full- equality with them, and how the germs of a 

 new social aristocracy originated, based on wealth 

 rather than pedigree, and comprising both ple- 

 beians and patricians. During the fourth and third 

 centuries B.C. the political power of this order 

 immensely increased. In fact, the whole govern- 

 ment of the state passed into their hands. Regard- 

 ing themselves as the Roman community par excel- 

 lence, and the poor burgesses as a mere canaille, 

 whose wishes and interests were unworthy of a 

 moment's consideration, they virtually relapsed 

 into the exclusiveness of the ancient populus, with 

 this difference for the worse, that their wealth, 

 influence, and pride were a thousandfold greater 

 than those of Coriolanus or Camillus. But far 

 worse than even the nepotism and selfishness of 

 the nobles was their ever-increasing luxury and 

 immorality. When Rome had conquered Greece, 

 and Syria, and Asia Minor, the days of her true 

 greatness were ended. The wealth that poured 

 into the state coffers, thence to be (really if not 

 formally) distributed among the clique of nobles, 

 the treasures which victorious generals acquired, 

 enabled them to gratify to the full the morbid 

 appetites for pleasure engendered by exposure to 

 the voluptuousness of the East. Such results 

 were, it is true, not brought about in a day, nor 

 without a resolute protest on the part of indi- 

 vidual Romans. The attitude of Cato Major 

 towards the Hellenising tendencies of his brother 

 nobles was doubtless patriotic, and posterity has 

 been generous in its laudation of his antique 

 virtue ; but Cato Major was nevertheless only a 

 political fanatic and incarnate anachronism. So 

 long as Rome chose to subdue foreign nations, 

 and to hold them by the demoralising tenure of 

 conquest that is, as mere provinces, whose in- 

 habitants, held in check by a fierce and unscrupu- 

 lous soldiery (like the Kabyles of Algeria by the 

 French, or, until recently, the Hindus by the 

 British), neither possessed political privileges nor 

 dared cherish the hope of them it was morally 

 impossible for the citizens, either at home or 

 abroad, to resume the simple and frugal habits of 

 their forefathers. After Cato's time, things grew 

 worse instead of better, nor from this period down 

 to the final dissolution of the empire was a single 



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