Flint axes indicate that humans lived in the Italian peninsula
as early as 200,000 years ago, and skulls of the Neanderthal
and
Cro-Magnon people have also been found.
Farming began about 5,000
BC,
and bronze was developed there about 1800 BC.
The Mycenaeans
seem to have established trade at Tarentum
in southern Italy about
1400 BC though it only lasted about
two centuries before Mycenaean
power collapsed.
According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus three
generations
before the Trojan War, prolonged warfare between the
aborigines, and the Sicels eventually drove the latter
to the island
of Sicily, which is named after them.
Human sacrifice seems to
have been practiced in Italy
as well as by the Celts and at Carthage,
and sending youths
away instead stimulated conflicts with other
peoples such as the Sicels.
Livy and Dionysius recounted the story
that had been
circulating for several centuries that the Trojan
hero Aeneas
founded a city called Lavinium, where later Rome was
to be,
but this is considered legend not history;
settlers using
bronze had already been there
for about three centuries.
Etruscan culture developed during the iron age, and its
confederation
of twelve city states flourished during
the seventh and sixth
centuries BC.
Corinthian pottery indicates active trading and
the immigration
of artisans, such as Demaratus about 655 BC.
Artistic
expression and strong religious beliefs using divination
methods
suggest likely influences from Asia.
Herodotus reported that Lydians
led by prince Tyrrhenus,
who were called Tyrrhenians, emigrated
to Etruria,
and Thucydides' belief that Tyrrhenians had lived
on the island
of Lemnos has been backed up
by written inscriptions
found there.
Ancient Etruscans themselves believed their ancestors
had come from Lydia.
Greek settlers seem to have introduced into
Italy the cultivation
of olives, figs, and grapes.
Etruscan religion
demanded human sacrifices,
and public duels were organized.
Their
kings wore purple and a golden crown, carried a scepter,
sat on
an ivory throne, and were protected by guards
with an ax in a
bundle of rods (fasces),
a symbol of their authority to
punish.
A wealthy class of nobles apparently
exploited the labor
of serfs and slaves.
Traditional Roman history dates from 753 BC when it was
believed
that Romulus defeated his brother Remus,
moving from Alba to build
the city of Rome.
The birth of the twins and the death of Romulus
are shrouded
in legend and mystery, but he is credited with establishing
the
patrician class from the one hundred
fathers (patres)
elected to the senate.
These aristocrats were considered patrons
of the
client plebeians who supported them.
Duties of the patrician
patrons were to explain the laws
to their clients, take care of
them, and bring suits for them.
The clients were expected to help
provide dowries for their
daughters, pay ransoms if the patricians
were captured,
and even pay fines for them.
Patrons often got
their clients to vote their way.
However, in contrast to the Lycurgan
customs of Sparta,
the nobles
were both soldiers and farmers or artisans.
The society was strongly patriarchal, as fathers had complete
power over their children until they died;
the wife was expected
to be virtuous and obey her husband
although she could be as much
mistress
of the house as he was master.
Romulus favored capital
punishment for women who
committed adultery or drank wine,
which
he believed led to adultery.
At a festival the new Roman men seized
virgin Sabines
and carried them off to forced marriages.
The Sabines
and other tribes complained to the Sabine king
Tatius, but the
other tribes attacked Rome
separately and were defeated.
The large
armies of the Romans and Sabines fought to a
standstill after
a Tarpeian girl betrayed the citadel to the latter.
Finally the
young Sabine women, most of whom had become
mothers, intervened
between their fathers and husbands
to facilitate a peace settlement.
The two tribes were unified into one state,
and the number of
senators was doubled.
When some Laurentian envoys were murdered by Sabines,
Tatius
did not punish them and was murdered in revenge.
Romulus decided
that the murders canceled each other out
and refused to go to
war with Lavinium.
However, wars with the Etruscan Fidenates and
Veii
increased the size and power of Rome as the
Romans began their practice of incorporating
conquered peoples into their state.
The disappearance of Romulus after a reign of 37 years
led to
an interregnum in which senators
alternated as leader every five
days.
Finally a compromise was reached by which the older
Roman
senators chose a new king,
who came from the Sabines.
The Sabine Numa Pompilius was not even a senator but was
selected
because of his reputation for virtue and piety.
Romulus had greatly
increased the army and territory of Rome,
but Numa was said to
have brought peace
throughout his reign based on law and religion.
A temple of Janus was built, and its doors were not opened
for
war until after Numa Pompilius died;
they were only closed for
peace once after that
until the empire of Augustus began in 30
BC.
Numa gave the people much to think about besides war
during
his 44 years as king.
Religious ceremonies involved flour and
wine instead of
bloody sacrifices, as violence became sacrilegious.
Numa promoted agriculture to do away with poverty and crime.
The
law of Romulus that fathers could sell their children
into slavery
was amended to forbid
the practice after the son was married.
One of the eight sacred institutions established by
Numa Pompilius
was the college of the fetiales, who served
for life as
heralds to prevent conflicts from developing into war.
Numa instituted
this, after the Fidenae had ravaged their
territory, in order
to resolve the problem peacefully.
The duty of the fetiales
involved not allowing
Rome to enter an unjust war.
They went as
ambassadors to other states to demand justice;
only if justice
was refused, could war begin.
Also other states might bring complaints
of
Roman injustice to them for resolution.
They were to make sure
that treaties did not violate holy laws
and were religiously observed,
and they investigated and corrected generals.
When Numa Pompilius died about 672 BC, Tullus Hostilius,
the
grandson of a war hero, was elected king.
According to Dionysius,
he inherited much agricultural land
from Numa as king and divided
it equally among the poor
so that they could work their own land.
Cattle raids on both sides between the Albans and Romans
led to
negotiations by the fetiales.
An agreement was made that
the three Horatii brothers
would fight for the Romans against
the three Curiati brothers
of the Albans for dominion.
One Horatius
survived the contest; but when his sister
mourned the death of
her betrothed Curiatus, he killed her.
His patriotic father condoned
the killing,
and a trial by the people also acquitted Horatius.
Tullus Hostilius allowed the Alban government to continue
as
before, made the Albans Roman citizens, and expanded the
senate;
but after Mettius conspired with the Fidenae and Veii,
holding
back his troops to see which side won,
Tullus cleverly won the
battle and after a trial
had Mettius' body torn apart by chariots.
The town of Alba was leveled except for the temples,
and the Albans
moved to Rome.
The Caelian hill was opened to build houses for
those
who had none, and Tullus had his palace built there.
He
also declared war on the Sabines and invaded.
Continuing war with
the Latin cities was blamed for a plague,
which eventually infected
and broke the spirit of Tullus.
After reigning 32 years Tullus
Hostilius was killed in a fire
said to have been caused by lightning
from an angry Jupiter,
but others blamed his successor Marcius
for having him killed.
Ancus Marcius was the maternal grandson of Numa Pompilius.
When the Latins abandoned the treaty they had made with
Tullus
and raided Roman territory, according to Livy,
Marcius went through
the fetiales process, declared war,
assaulted Politorium,
took much plunder,
and removed its inhabitants to Rome.
During
his reign the port of Ostia was built for trade and to
safeguard
the essential salt works.
After reigning 24 years Marcius was
succeeded by an
Etruscan whose name meant Tarquin king (r. 616-579
BC);
he was said to be the son of the Corinthian Demaratus
and
a Tarquinian aristocrat.
According to Livy, Tarquin was the first
to canvass
the people personally for votes.
Tarquin encouraged
the immigration of Etruscans,
added more senators, and conquered
many Latin cities,
celebrating his triumphs with public games
in the newly built Circus Maximus.
The Sabines were also forced
to sue for peace,
and building projects included a stone wall.
The story of Servius Tullius is that his mother was a war
captive
in the palace; but after a brightness around his head
appeared
like flames, he was educated like a prince
and married Tarquin's
daughter.
When the sons of Marcius had Tarquin assassinated with
an ax,
his queen told the people he was still alive and that
Servius
Tullius would act as regent,
while the sons of Marcius went into
exile.
Eventually a funeral was held for Tarquin,
and Servius
was accepted as king.
The Roman Emperor Claudius in encouraging
Romans to
accept foreigners announced in 48 CE that he had discovered
that Servius Tullius had been an Etruscan named
Mastarna and that
his rule had been beneficial.
Servius originated the census and established a class structure
that demanded military service from citizens in proportion to
their wealth but also gave them comparable political power.
Eighty
centuries were formed from those whose property was
worth more
than 100,000 asses (an as being a bronze coin);
the second, third, and fourth classes were divided every
25,000 asses below this and had twenty centuries each.
The fifth
class having 11,000 asses comprised 34 centuries,
and all
the remaining poor with less than that made up
only one century,
although they were not required
to contribute to the military.
Above all these was an elite 18 centuries of knights,
whose horses
were subsidized.
Voting on proposed measures began with the knights
and the first class and proceeded until a majority was gained.
Since the knights and the wealthy class had 98 out of
193 centuries,
most votes were determined by the wealthiest
classes, and the
chance of the poor ever voting to break
a tie was next to impossible.
According to the ancient historians 80,000 men were
capable of
bearing arms at this time.
Each class provided their own arms
from the heavy bronze
armor of the first class down to the
slings
and stones of the fifth class.
Eventually Servius did get the people to elect him as king,
although the senate was never asked to concur,
since they disapproved
of his distributing land.
According to Dionysius, Servius persuaded
the Romans
to make it easier for slaves to gain their freedom.
Servius had no sons, but his two daughters
married the grandsons
of Tarquin.
The story is that the ambitious daughter and son-in-law
murdered their unambitious spouses
so that they could marry each
other.
One day the young Tarquin sat on the throne criticizing
Servius as a slave who had usurped the throne;
when Servius arrived
and would not give up the kingship
to him, Tarquin threw his aged
father-in-law
down the steps of the capitol.
Then his assassins
killed Servius in the street,
and his ruthless daughter was even
said to have driven her
carriage over his dead body.
Livy called
the 44-year reign of Servius Tullus good.
Tarquin became known as the Proud (Superbus) and displayed
the bad attributes of a tyrant.
He was never elected, employed
a bodyguard, executed
leading senators and the wealthy for their
property,
and did not consult with the senate.
He wooed the Latin
leaders by marrying his daughter to
Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum
and called a conference at
Ferentina but failed to appear himself,
for which he was criticized by Turnus.
Tarquin Superbus bribed
the servants of Turnus to hide
weapons in his house, accused him
of treason,
and when the weapons were found,
had him executed
before he could defend himself.
Tarquin brought in Latin troops
in equal numbers
but put them under Roman centurions.
He sent
his son Sextus as a spy to the Gabii pretending
to be a rebel;
after he had gained their confidence by raiding
and killing Tarquin's
Roman enemies,
Sextus arranged for leading Gabii to be executed,
bribing support with their confiscated property;
finally he betrayed
the Gabii to Rome.
Tarquin Superbus' ambitious building plans included a new
temple,
extending the circus, and the great sewer.
Settlers were also
sent out to expand Roman territory.
However, an assault on Ardea
failed, and a long siege resulted.
A rape of the noble Lucretia
by Sextus Tarquin brought her
father Lucretius and husband Tarquin
Collatinus with
Publius Valerius to Brutus, who witnessing the
suicide
of Lucretia, vowed to overcome
the proud Tarquin and his
family.
Brutus had been pretending to be dull-witted so that
he
would not be murdered like his father and older brother.
Suddenly
Brutus was eloquently telling the story
of Lucretia's rape, the
crimes of the Tarquins,
and persuading Romans to overthrow the
tyrants and set up
a republic in which two men
would be elected
each year to rule.
The army was won over,
and about 509 BC the
Tarquins went into exile.
Brutus and Tarquin Collatinus
were the
first two consuls elected.
Brutus began by having the people swear never to allow
a king
in Rome again and got laws passed to prevent this.
He brought
more leading men into the equestrian rank
and the senate back
up to 300.
Fear of Collatinus as a Tarquin persuaded him to resign
and voluntarily go into exile with his property;
Valerius was
elected consul in his place.
Tarquin Superbus sent envoys to Rome,
and the senate
debated whether to return his property.
A slave
named Vindicius discovered a conspiracy of young
aristocrats to
put Tarquin back on the throne,
and their letters to him proved
their guilt.
Two of them were sons of Brutus, and after a brief
trial
he ordered and witnessed impassively his sons' execution.
The people were allowed to plunder Tarquin's property.
Tarquin
appealed to the Etruscan Veii and Tarquinii.
In a battle Brutus
and Tarquin's son Arruns killed each other.
Although the Romans
had barely won the battle,
the Veii and Tarquinii went home.
Publius Valerius became known as Publicola,
the people's friend,
by proposing measures that gave
individuals the right of appeal
to the people,
made it a capital crime to usurp any magistracy
without the
people's consent, and relieved the poor of taxes.
Criticized for not holding an election for the other consulship
after Brutus was killed and for building his house on a hill
overlooking
the forum, he held the election
and moved his house to the bottom
of the hill.
Tarquin had fled to Porsena, the king of Clusium,
who invaded
Roman territory.
As the Roman farmers moved into the city, the
senate sent
to the Greek colony of Cumae and the Volscians
to purchase
grain; the salt monopoly was taken over by the state;
and the commons were exempted from tolls and taxes.
After Mucius
Scaevola tried to assassinate Porsena,
this king agreed to withdraw,
exchange prisoners,
and eventually even the Roman hostages were
returned.
Tarquin turned to his son-in-law Mamilius in Tusculum,
while the Romans battled the Sabines.
The Sabine Appius Claudius,
who led a party opposing
the war with Rome, fled to Rome
and was
soon made a senator.
The Romans led by Valerius defeated the Sabines.
Although he was the most prominent Roman when he died,
Valerius
Publicola did not have the resources for a funeral,
which was
provided by the state.
Battles with Latin cities continued as Mamilius
tried to organize
an alliance against Rome.
In this crisis the senate appointed
the first dictator of Rome
with supreme power but only for six
months.
Mamilius was killed in the battle of Lake Regillus,
and
the dictator Postumius returned to Rome
in triumph with 5,500
captives.
Tarquin finally died in Cumae.
The Volscians tried to
incite the Latin cities to rebellion,
but they had had enough
and turned the Volscian envoys
over to Rome, which in gratitude
returned
nearly 6,000 Latin prisoners of war.
Meanwhile the debtors
complained that their fighting
had made them worse off at home.
When an impoverished war veteran reduced to slavery
appeared at
the forum, an angry crowd
demanded the senate act.
As the Volscian
army approached, the poor were ready
to let the patricians, who
profit from the wars, do the fighting.
However, when a law was
passed prohibiting seizing or
selling property of any soldier
on active service,
the debtors enrolled in the army,
and the Volscians
were defeated.
Appius Claudius, now a consul, gave harsh judgments for
the
recovery of debts; when the people saw debtors
being hauled off
to court, they set upon the creditors.
This time the Sabines were
invading, but people refused to
enroll in the army by not answering
to their names;
when the consul ordered the lictor to arrest one
man,
the people intervened without using violence.
After the appointment
of a moderate dictator,
the brother of the late Valerius, people
enlisted,
and the Romans managed to fight off their enemies
without
having to arm the Latins.
However, the senate still refused to
satisfy the
debtors' grievances; so Manlius Valerius resigned.
The senate ordered the soldiers to march on the pretext that
the
Aequians were hostile, but instead
they camped out on the Sacred
Mount.
Menenius Agrippa was sent, and he told them the fable
of
the parts of the body, which stopped eating because
the belly
was always taking until they realized that
this central organ
by distribution nourished them also.
After negotiations in 494
BC it was agreed that five tribunes
would be elected by the people
to protect the commons
(plebeians) against abuses by the consuls.
Patricians were not allowed to hold this office.
For his courageous role in helping to take the Volscian town
of Corioli, Caius Marcius, declining to accept one-tenth
of the
spoils, was named Coriolanus.
The secession of the plebeians for
several months during which
farming was neglected had led to a
famine, which was relieved
by a gift of grain from Gelon of Sicily.
Angry at the plebeians after not being elected consul,
the aristocratic
Coriolanus opposed low grain prices unless
the plebeians would
restore the patricians' privileges;
his haughty speech allowed
them
little choice but starvation or slavery.
Led by Sicinius
and the oratory of Lucius Junius,
who was called Brutus, the plebeians
had passed a law
protecting the speech of the tribunes
and providing
for trials by the people.
Tribunes representing the anger of the
people ordered
Coriolanus arrested, but he resisted
and was protected
by the senate.
Eventually a trial was held before the tribes of
the people
on the charge that he had attempted tyranny and specifically
for distributing the spoils of war to his friends instead of
turning
them over to the state; he was banished for life.
Coriolanus went into exile to the Volscians, where he planned
his revenge with the Volscian Rome-hater Attius Tullius.
Volscian
resentment against Rome was stirred up,
and these two men were
appointed commanders in the war.
They took back several towns
including Corioli,
expelled Roman settlers, and marched on Rome.
The plebeians persuaded the senate to attempt a
diplomatic solution,
but Coriolanus was inflexible.
However, when his mother and wife
criticized him for
attacking their country and pleaded with him,
he withdrew his army.
According to Dionysius, as Coriolanus attempted
to speak in his defense in the Volscian forum,
the faction of
Attius Tullius stoned him to death.
The alliance between the Volscians
and Aequians
broke into violent conflict when the latter
refused
to serve under Attius Tullius.
Consul Spurius Cassius tried to distribute public land
that was illegally being kept in private hands
but was blocked by the
senate.
Cassius also failed when his proposal to repay the money
people paid for the grain was interpreted
as an attempt to gain
power.
Because he proposed distributing two-thirds of the land
to the conquered Latins and Hernicans,
after his term of office Cassius was tried, condemned,
and thrown off the Tarpeian precipice.
Two more attempts to refuse military service failed
when most
of the tribunes supported the consuls,
as Appius Claudius claimed
that the tribune power
could thus be easily overridden.
The Fabius
clan, which dominated the consulship
or many years, attempted
to fight as a private army for Rome
with 4,000 supporters; they
established a fortress at Cremera
and raided the surrounding country,
but eventually
all 306 of the Fabius clan were lured
into an ambush chasing cattle and were killed.
People were holding meetings complaining,
because the consuls
refused to do anything
about the distribution of the land.
So
the consuls tried to enroll them in the army,
using the forays
of robbers in neighboring lands as an excuse;
but the people refused
to enroll until they realized that if they
did not, their enemy
Appius would be appointed dictator.
On the next occasion the people
refused to join the army,
the consuls enrolled troops just outside
the city limits,
where the tribunes had no power; those who refused
were fined or had their property taken or destroyed.
Roman forces
led by Servilius after a reckless attack
defeated the Etruscans,
and Rome made a forty years'
truce with the Veii, who agreed to
pay an indemnity
and supply Rome with grain.
The famine was over, but the tribunes put on trial after their
consulships Menenius, who was fined, and Servilius,
who noted
that the Romans prefer war to peace,
because in war they hurt
their enemies,
but in peace they hurt their friends.
Servilius
escaped condemnation; but when the next two
ex-consuls were summoned
and complained they were being
led to the sacrifice, a tribune
was found dead at home.
Tribunes did not defend the centurion
Volero when he refused
to be enrolled as a common soldier, as
the lictors tried
to arrest him; but Volero fought back,
and the
people broke the rods of the lictors.
Volero became a tribune
in the next election and proposed
that
plebeian magistrates should
be elected by the tribal assembly.
The patricians countered by
electing as consul
Appius Claudius, the son of Appius.
Despite
his resistance the senate passed the law allowing
tribune election
by the tribal assembly.
Yet land reform was still delayed, though
Appius Claudius
was indicted and either committed suicide
or died
of illness awaiting trial.
After Antium was taken from the Aequians and garrisoned,
the
senate opened the town to settlers;
but apparently few wanted
to leave Rome.
Those who did go to Antium were won over by the
Aequians.
After Rome recovered from a plague, the Volscians were
severely defeated with 13,470 killed.
The tribune Terentillus
proposed that a commission be
appointed to codify laws that would
limit the power of the
consuls and grant more equality,
but this
was resisted by the patricians.
When war was declared against
the Antiates,
an attempt to enroll people into the army caused
a riot.
The crisis became worse when a Sabine named Herdonius
led 2500 slaves and exiles in taking over the fortress
on the
capitol hill, killing every man there
who refused to join them.
While Rome suffered its internal conflicts, a contingent from
their ally Tusculum marched to the capitol.
Valerius, because
of his family's history of supporting the
people and his promise
to continue to do so, was able
to raise a force to aid the Tusculans
in taking back
the capitol; Herdonius was killed, but so was Valerius.
The senate did not fulfill the promise of Valerius,
as battles
with the Aequians and Volscians continued.
When the army of consul
Minucius was surrounded
by the Aequians, Quinctius Cincinnatus
was appointed
dictator, left his farm, raised an army,
defeated
the Aequians, and resigned after only fifteen days.
The tribunes got the senate to increase the number of tribunes
to ten, though two had to be from each of the five classes.
When
the Aequians invaded Tusculan territory,
they were again defeated
and lost 7,000 men.
After a commission to study Greek
laws returned,
a board of ten (decemvirs), who were
beyond appeal,
was appointed to draw up a written code
while they
each alternately acted as chief magistrate too.
Their laws of
the Ten Tables were adopted.
However, the election of another
ten to add some more laws
was controlled by a young Appius,
who
had turned demagogue.
Suddenly the new decemvirs appeared each
with twelve
lictors armed with fasces containing axes
and
with power beyond appeal.
Two more tables of laws were added;
but after their terms ended, these decemvirs stayed in power,
making biased judgments for themselves and their friends
and using
the rods for beatings and executions.
The Sabines invaded Roman
territory and drove off cattle
with impunity; the Aequians occupied
Algidus
and threatened Tusculum.
Reluctantly troops were raised
but fought poorly for the tyrannical decemvirs.
After Siccius suggested the soldiers elect tribunesand refuse
service, he was ordered murdered by other soldiers;
the story
that he and those he killed defending himself
were killed by the
enemy was not believed.
When Appius lusted after beautiful Verginia,
her betrothed
Icilius defended her; but in the trial
Appius declared
her a slave.
Rather than let her be raped by Appius, her father
Verginius
stabbed her in the heart with a butcher knife.
The younger
Valerius and Horatius stopped the lictors from
arresting Icilius,
arguing that they had no authority from
Appius and the decemvirs,
whose terms had expired.
Bloody Verginius went to the army and
roused them
to march to the Aventine hill,
where they appointed
ten military tribunes.
When the army left Rome and was joined
by many civilians
on the Sacred Mount, Rome appeared empty.
In 449 BC the senate adopted most of the people's demands,
replacing the decemvirs with newly
elected tribunes and consuls.
Measures brought by the tribunes and passed by the tribal
assembly
were to be binding on all the people.
They made it a crime even
to advocate electing
a magistrate who is beyond appeal.
The Twelve
Tables of the law probably modified by these
Valerio-Horatian
laws were enshrined in bronze.
The important obligation of patrons
to their clients was
affirmed by making it a capital crime
for
a patron to cheat his client.
Women at the age of 25 were allowed
to retain
their own property, and a wife could free herself from
her husband's legal control by living at least three nights
each
year away from his house.
Appius was put in jail, where he killed
himself before his trial.
Feeling safer and protected from abuse,
the people were
persuaded by Quinctius to wage wars against Rome's
enemies.
The tribune Canuleius proposed legalizing marriages
between the patricians and plebeians and also
a bill allowing plebeians
to be elected consul.
Ardea was complaining about the land the
Romans
had taken from them; the Veii were raiding the frontier;
and as usual the Volscians and Aequians
were preparing for battle.
Eventually the ban on intermarriage was removed,
and military
tribunes with consular power were elected,
though no plebeians
were elected for 44 years.
For the first time censors were appointed
to take the census
and regulate social proprieties.
The wealthy
Maelius gained popularity by giving away grain;
but he was killed
resisting arrest
after trying to make himself king.
Tolumnius,
the king of the Veii, ordered four Roman envoys
murdered and was
later killed by Roman cavalry officer
Cossus for this violation
of the
human contract and law of nations.
After the Roman army
defeated the Aequians and sacked
Labici, the senate approved sending
a settlement;
1500 settlers were given grants of one and a half
acres each.
Patrician consuls were elected, but three out of four
quaestors (treasury officials) elected were plebeians.
The senate
issued a decree that now the soldiers were
to be paid by the state
instead of
having to provide their own expenses.
Wars with Etruscan Veii led to the regular election of
military
tribunes that now included a few plebeians.
After a reported ten-year
siege that made the soldiers serve
in winter as well as summer,
the prosperous city of Veii was
sacked in 396 BC; the dictator
Camillus ordered
its free citizens sold into slavery.
Anti-government
agitation led to the sending of 3,000 settlers
into Volscian territory,
where commissioners
assigned two acres to each family.
When Camillus
was besieging the Falerii, a schoolmaster
brought out sons of
the nobles, expecting to be rewarded;
but Camillus had him whipped
for his treachery
as the boys escorted him back into the town.
According to Livy this stimulated the Falerii to submit to
Roman
honor, and Camillus asked from them only tribute
to pay the army's
expenses for the year in order to relieve
the Romans from their
war taxes.
The senate granted three and a half acres to free plebeians
wanting to move to Veii.
Camillus become unpopular by depriving
his soldiers of the
Falerian plunder and for resisting migration
to Veii;
he was prosecuted by a tribune for forgetting about
the
ten percent of the plunder taken from Veii
he swore to give to
Apollo.
Facing a large fine, Camillus chose to go into exile to
Ardea,
even though his friends offered to pay the fine.
When news of a large migration of Gauls reached Rome,
three
Fabii were sent as envoys.
The Celtic Gauls asked for land and
threatened war if they did not get it.
The argument turned into
a fight,
and Quintus Fabius killed a Gallic chieftain.
The Gallic
envoys demanded that the three Fabii envoys
be surrendered; but
instead the
Romans elected them military tribunes.
So the Gauls
marched on Rome and turned the Roman army
to flight at the Allia
River; those not killed or drowned
fled to Veii or retreated into
the Capitoline citadel in Rome.
The Gauls marched into Rome and
besieged the citadel
for seven months until the starving Romans
agreed to provide a large quantity of gold.
According to Roman
historians, Camillus took command of
the Roman army in Veii, attacked
the Gauls in the countryside,
and defeated their army after they
burned and left Rome.
He then gave a patriotic speech urging his
countrymen
to rebuild Rome rather than abandon it for Veii.
Camillus
was again appointed dictator,
and according to Livy he laid waste
the Volscian territory
and after seventy years of warfare
forced
the Volscians to surrender.
Marcus Manlius, who had heroically saved the Capitoline
citadel
when the geese warned him that the Gauls were
climbing up the
precipice, took the side of the suffering debtors,
paying off
their fines and accusing the patricians of hiding gold
they had
taken back from the Gauls.
Manlius accused the patricians of using
the pretense of war
to appoint a dictator to champion the money-lenders
and
attack the plebeians and him; he was charged with falsely
accusing the senate of theft and put in prison when the
plebeians
would not challenge the dictator.
Noting resentment of the dictator's
triumph, the senate
assigned about two acres each to
2,000 Roman
colonists to Satricum.
When a crowd threatened to break into the
prison,
the senate released Manlius, who asked the people
to stand
by him and stop the legal proceedings on debts.
The senate put
Manlius on trial; even though he produced
nearly 400 men he had
lent money free of interest,
he was convicted; then the tribunes
threw him off
the Tarpeian Rock, the very place of his earlier
heroism.
Many blamed the plague and famine
that followed on this
sacrilege.
In a battle against the Volscians the Romans captured
some Tusculans; but when the Romans attacked their city,
the Tusculans
acted so peacefully by simply
going about their business unarmed
that the
Romans granted them their freedom.
As continual wars
were being used to distract
the plebeians from gaining debt relief,
they refused to enroll in the army once more.
The Praenestines
advanced on Rome
but fled when a dictator was appointed.
Finally the tribunes Licinius and Sextius, who had been
in office for nine years in a row, demanded three things:
first,
that all interest paid should be subtracted from
the capital owed
and the remaining debt
be paid in three years without interest;
second, no one should be allowed to own
more land than 300 acres;
and third, one of the two consuls should be a plebeian.
They argued
that several patricians had been brought to
justice after their
military tribuneships but never a plebeian.
Worried, the patricians
appointed Camillus dictator,
but the tribunes summoned the tribes
to an assembly.
The senate threatened a veto, and Camillus was
replaced
by another dictator before the people voted for the
first
two proposals but rejected the third.
In their tenth elections
Licinius and Sextius demanded
all three, which were finally won
in 366 BC when
Sextius was the first plebeian elected consul,
though the patricians were mollified
with the new office of praetor.
In 358 BC a law against bribery proposed by a tribune was
authorized
by the senate, and the people voted enthusiastically
for a reduction
of the interest rate to one-twelfth.
The senate proposed a tax
on manumitted slaves of
one-twentieth to raise revenue, and this
was passed
by soldiers in their camp voting in tribes.
Concerned
about the precedent, the tribunes made it a
capital offense to
hold a people's assembly outside of Rome.
An Etruscan uprising
brought the appointment of the first
plebeian dictator, Rutulus,
who won a people's triumph
by capturing 8,000 and driving the
rest out of Roman territory.
The patricians reacted by electing
two of their own as consuls.
Rome revenged the Tarquins' killing
of 307 of their soldiers
by beheading 358 Tarquins in the forum.
The Samnites made a treaty of alliance with Rome,
and Caere was
given a hundred-year truce.
Conflicts between patricians and plebeians
led to brawls
protesting increasing interest payments until debts
were paid
by the treasury while the debtors' property was fairly
valuated.
By 348 BC social harmony was reflected in a reduction
of interest to 1/24 and remission of taxes and conscription;
in
a treaty Carthage agreed not to capture slaves
from Roman towns,
while Rome restricted
their maritime trade only to Carthaginians.
Livy noted that the war with the Samnites marked the
beginning
of more serious wars in remoter areas.
The Samnites had attacked
the Sidicini,
who turned to the prosperous Campanians.
The Campanians,
defeated by the Samnites,
asked for aid from Rome.
The senate
decided to help but first sent envoys to the
Samnites asking them
not to injure the Campanians.
When the Samnites raided Campanian
territory,
the Roman senate sent the fetial priests to demand
redress
and, not getting it, declared war.
The Romans killed as
many as 30,000 Samnites
in a single battle in their initial victories.
At the request of the Campanians garrisons were
sent to protect
them all year round.
Observing the prosperous Campanian life-style
and discontent with conditions in Rome,
the Roman soldiers organized
a mutiny, kidnapped
Quinctius as a commander, and marched toward
Rome;
but Marcus Valerius was named dictator
and managed to resolve
the crisis peacefully.
Historians disagreed on the details, but
apparently several
innovative plebiscites were passed prohibiting
interest
and individuals from holding the same office within
ten
years or more than one office at a time
and allowing both consuls
to be plebeians.
The truce Rome made with the Samnites in 341 BC
was to last
sixteen years.
However, Latin demands to be represented by one
consul
and half the senate were scornfully rejected by the Romans,
who defeated them in battle and settled plebeians
in their territory
and in Campania.
When Publilius was dictator, the plebeians got
the people's
decrees made binding on every Roman citizen and the
assurance at least one of the censors must be a plebeian.
Eventually
most of the Latin townships were given citizenship,
though some
of the rebellious ones lost territory given to
colonists; Campanians
were citizens but could not vote.
After the Romans defeated Privernum
in 329 BC,
their envoy was asked by the senate
what punishment
they deserved.
He replied what those who think
themselves worthy
of freedom.
When asked what kind of peace the Romans could
expect with them, he said, "If you grant us a good one,
it will
be loyally kept and permanent.
If a bad one, it will not last
long."1
The senate decided that people who value
such freedom
deserved citizenship.
After a young man flogged for his debt complained
in the street,
imprisonment and slavery for debt
were outlawed in Rome.
Those
in bondage for debt were freed, and from then on
a debtor's property
could be seized but not one's person.
The dictator Papirius, who
wanted to punish with death
his master of horse (second in command)
for disobeying
orders, was persuaded by the people not to do so.
The Samnites were disturbed when the Romans planted
a colony in
their territory at Fregellae.
Violence on the plain of Campania
was to determine
whether the Samnites or the Romans were to dominate
Italy.
The Romans defeated the Samnites, who tried to expiate
their guilt for breaking the treaty by returning all the
prisoners
and plunder and their commander,
who committed suicide.
When the Samnites trapped a Roman army in the
Caudine Forks,
their general sent to his father
Herennius Pontius for advice,
which was to send the
Romans away unharmed as soon as possible.
When this was rejected, he suggested killing them
to the last
man, later explaining that the best policy would
be to establish
peace with a powerful people;
but the second was to postpone war
as long as possible.
Instead the Samnites humiliated the Romans
by demanding
their weapons, taking their knights as hostages,
and making the other 20,000 pass under the yoke.
The naked army
was welcomed and aided
by the city of Capua in Campania.
At Rome
it was eventually decided to return the officers,
who had guaranteed
this humiliating treaty;
but the Samnite general Pontius did not
accept the surrender
of the leaders alone as valid and let them
depart.
Before the next battle envoys from Tarentum asked
each
side to desist from war and
promised to join the side that was
attacked.
The Romans rejected the Tarentine offer,
but the Samnites
did not.
However, the Romans won the battle and were only
restrained
from slaughtering their enemy out of fear
their imprisoned knights
might be executed.
Luceria was besieged and its vast plunder captured;
7,000 Samnite soldiers passed under the yoke,
and the Roman cavalry
was released in 314 BC.
The Capuans were given laws by Roman praetor
Lucius Furius,
and prefects were sent there.
Antium also requested such laws,
and the senate sent patrons to the colony.
When Sora killed its
Roman colonists and went over to the
Samnites, the Romans defeated
them and beheaded 225
of its leaders in the forum before cheering
people.
The Romans also massacred the Ausonian people
even though
they may not have been guilty of revolt.
However, the senate voted
to spare the inhabitants of
Luceria and sent 2500 colonists instead.
The Romans continued to defeat the Samnites,
killing and capturing
as many as 30,000.
Colonies were established at Suessa,
Pontiae,
and Interamna Sucasina.
In 312 BC censor Appius Claudius got the landless
population
distributed throughout the tribes,
the sons of freedman admitted
into the senate,
the first aqueduct built to bring water nine
miles from Gabii
to the Circus Maximus, and the Appian Way paved
for the
115 miles from Rome to Capua.
After the Roman garrison
at Cluviae was starved into surrender
and put to death, the town
was stormed and all its men killed.
The wealthy city of Bovianum
was captured
by the Romans for its plunder.
While the Romans were
killing another 20,000 Samnites,
the Etruscans attacked and besieged
Sutrium.
Eventually a Roman army defeated the Etruscans,
killing
many thousands.
The Roman army entered the Ciminian forest;
after
killing and capturing 60,000,
a truce for thirty years was made
with the Etruscans in 310 BC.
War with the Samnites continued, as 7,000 of their allies
were
sold into slavery.
A revolt by the Umbrians resulted in their
surrender,
as did one by the Hernici.
Rome's treaty with Carthage
was renewed in 306 BC.
The Samnites finally sent envoys to end
the war;
but the Romans told them that peace negotiations could
have proceeded if they had not been preparing for war.
After the
Roman army found Samnium peaceful,
the treaty was restored.
Having
helped Rome's enemies after nearly a century of truce
and concerned
about how the Hernici were treated,
the Aequians found themselves
at war with Rome and
retreated into their cities, many of which
were destroyed,
stimulating the Marrucini, Marsi, Paeligni, and
Frentani
to make peace with the Romans.
6,000 settlers were sent
to Alba Fucens in Aequian territory
and 4,000 to Sora in Volscian
land
that had been occupied by Samnites.
The Marsi forcibly resisted
a colony being placed
at Carseoli, but Rome appointed a dictator,
defeated the Marsi, and confiscated some
of their territory before
renewing the treaty.
Eight more years of war with the Samnites began in 298 BC.
Samnium allied itself with the Etruscans, who hired Gauls
to fight;
but the Romans raised enough soldiers
by conscripting older men
and
freed men to triumph once again.
In the battle at Sentinum
25,000 of Rome's enemies
were killed while 8,000 were taken prisoner;
the Romans had 8700 casualties,
and their consul Decius Mus was
killed.
This was followed by a battle against the Etruscans in
which
4500 Perusini were killed and another battle in which
16,300
Samnites were killed and 2700 captured,
while the Roman army lost
2700 men.
Heavy casualties in these wars continued, and at Aquilonia
20,340 Samnites were killed and 3870 captured,
followed by a battle
at Cominium in which
4880 died and 11,400 surrendered.
Both Aquilonia
and Cominium were burned
to the ground on the same day.
The Romans
killed another 10,000 in three more towns
and then took 2,533,000
pounds of bronze and
1830 pounds of silver, all of which went
into the
Roman treasury, causing resentment among the soldiers.
In 287 BC the problem of debt led to the appointment
of Hortensius
as dictator, and from then on plebiscites
passed by the plebeian
council had the force of law
on everyone and did not have to be
approved
by the assembly, the classes of centuries, or the senate.
Gauls invaded Etruria again in 283 BC and in violation
of their
treaty were aiding the Etruscans against the Romans.
Roman envoys
sent to the Celtic Senones were murdered
by Britomaris, and so
consul Cornelius turned his army
from the Etruscans to destroy
all the Senones men,
enslaving their women and children;
the Boii,
attempting to retaliate for their Senones kinsmen,
with the Etruscans
were defeated
by the other consul's army and made peace.
The next year the Romans sent Cornelius with a force
south
to relieve Greek Thurii from Lucanian attacks;
but the Tarentines,
who had their own army of 25,000,
destroyed the Roman fleet killing
its admiral
and driving the garrison out of Thurii.
Next Tarentum
called in from Epirus in Greece king Pyrrhus,
who battled Romans
at Heraclea
on the Gulf of Otranto with 20,000 men.
This first
of his costly "Pyrrhic" victories won over to the
Greek
cause the Lucanians and Samnites, doubling his forces.
Pyrrhus
had a diplomat named Cineas, who had failed to
persuade his king
to enjoy his own possessions
rather than try to rule the world.
Cineas was sent to Rome with presents to make peace
by releasing
all Roman captives without ransom and
reducing Pyrrhus' demands
to freedom for the Greeks
and a guarantee for his Oscan allies;
but old and blind Appius Claudius persuaded the
Roman senate not
to negotiate with Pyrrhus
as long as he had forces in Italy.
Pyrrhus marched toward Rome; but the Latin cities closed
their
gates to him, and he spent the winter at Tarentum.
Rome had made
peace with the Etruscans and sent Fabricius
to Pyrrhus to try
to get the Roman prisoners released.
Pyrrhus offered Fabricius
gifts and a top position with him,
but the humble Fabricius declined
the bribe and chided the
king for being so poor that he had to
leave his dominions
to reach out for more.
Unable to persuade
the captured Romans to join him,
Pyrrhus released them at the
Saturnalia on their honor.
Elephants helped Pyrrhus "win"
again against the Romans
at Asculum, but he admitted to a soldier
who congratulated
him that one more victory over the Romans like
that
would completely destroy him.
After Fabricius informed him
of a plot to assassinate him,
Pyrrhus once again released Roman
prisoners without ransom.
Hicetas ruled Syracuse for nine years after the death of
Agathocles;
but in 279 BC he was replaced by Thoenon and
Sosistratus, who
fought each other, and both invited to Sicily
Pyrrhus, who had
previously married Agathocles' daughter.
Concerned about Sicily,
the Carthaginians had offered Rome
naval and financial aid and
blockaded Syracuse with a
hundred ships, while 50,000 men
wasted
the surrounding territory.
However, Carthaginian ships allowed
Pyrrhus to sail into the
harbor and take over the island Ortygia
from Thoenon
and the city of Syracuse from Sosistratus, reconciling
the two.
Pyrrhus now had a fleet of two hundred ships,
and Leontini
and other Sicilian cities cooperated with him
as he took over
Acragas and thirty cities from Sosistratus.
Pyrrhus took away the estates of Agathocles' friends and
relatives,
assigning as magistrates his own officers,
whose greed became
burdensome to the cities.
As the people became hostile, Pyrrhus
introduced garrisons,
arresting and executing many prominent men including Thoenon.
He attacked the Carthaginians with 30,000 soldiers.
After Carthaginian reinforcements arrived from Africa,
Pyrrhus'
forces became bogged down in Sicily and went back
to Italy, where
after stealing treasure from the temple of
Persephone at Locri
they were defeated at Beneventum.
After six years Pyrrhus returned
to Greece, where he was
killed in 272 BC, the year Tarentum accepted
a Roman
alliance and the Roman armies completed their subjugation
of the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttians,
and the year after Ptolemy
II of Egypt entered
into
a formal friendship with Rome.
Latin colonies settled in Cosa in 273, Ariminum in 268,
and
Firnum in 264 BC, the year Rome captured the
Etruscan town of
Volsinii to complete its conquest
of the Italian peninsula south
of Cisalpine Gaul.
Rome had made treaties of alliance with 150
Italian
communities, which required them
to supply military aid
to Rome;
after 338 BC the allied forces
outnumbered the Roman
soldiers.
Rome tended to support the aristocratic class in these
cities,
as it intervened on their behalf at Arretium in 302,
Lucania
in 296, and at Volsinii in 264 BC.
In addition to material plunder
Roman wars also captured
land that was colonized by the Latins
and their allies.
Between 334 and 263 BC nineteen colonies were
settled by about 70,000 men and their dependents.
The Roman silver
coin denarius was minted in 268 BC.
Having entertained Etruscans, Samnites, and Campanians,
in
264 BC the first gladiatorial contests
were held in the city of
Rome.
Carthage, founded a half millennium before as a Phoenician
colony from Tyre on the Tunisian peninsula, now had a
population
three times that of Rome's with whom
they came into conflict in
Sicily.
In Syracuse the general Hiero by reforming the army and
eliminating mercenaries had risen to become king in 270 BC
and
besieged for years at Messena the Mars-worshiping
Mamertines,
who finally got the aid of a
Carthaginian fleet in 264 BC.
After
Hiero II left, the Mamertines turned to the Romans
to rid them
of the Carthaginians.
The senate hesitated, but greed for plunder
tipped the
balance of the Roman assembly toward intervention.
The Carthaginians were persuaded by Roman threats and
misrepresentations
to withdraw from Messena, for which
the commander was crucified
by the Carthaginians,
who then sent an expedition of its usual
Numidian troops
under Carthaginian officers, enlisting the support
of Hiero.
Messena was under siege when Roman consul
Manius Valerius' army arrived and chased Hiero
back to Syracuse, which the Romans
besieged.
Hiero came to terms in a 15-year alliance with Rome
that allowed him thirty miles of territory.
Carthage next sent 50,000 Ligurian, Celtic, and Iberian
mercenaries
to Agrigentum.
The Roman armies besieged Agrigentum and although
blockaded by sea, stormed and sacked the city;
25,000 Agrigentines
were sold into slavery.
To expel the Carthaginians from Sicily
the Romans built
a fleet of a hundred quinqueremes and twenty
triremes,
designing boarding platforms for hand-to-hand combat,
and at Mylae the usually superior Carthaginian navy
was defeated,
losing fifty ships.
Hamilcar's forces killed 4,000 Romans in Sicily,
but a Hannibal lost so many ships at Sardinia
that the Carthaginians
crucified him.
In 256 BC the navies of Rome and Carthage met each
other with 350 ships on each side; the Romans captured
64 Carthaginian
ships and their crews
but had no ships taken.
Romans landed in
Libya, took Aspis and Tunis,
and captured 20,000 slaves.
A revolt
by the Numidians was driving
Carthaginians into the city.
However,
a Spartan general named Xanthippus revived
their army, defeating
and capturing Rome's Regulus.
The Roman navy captured another
114 Carthaginian
crews, but a storm off Palinurus reduced their
over-confident fleet of 364 to 80.
Rome re-built its navy and
took Panormus (Palermo) in Sicily.
Romans besieged Lilybaeum in 250 BC, and the next year
consul
Publius Claudius attacked the last Carthaginian
hold-out in Sicily
at Drepana; but he was defeated
as 93 Roman ships were captured
with their crews.
Hamilcar Barca raided the Italian coast; but
with both
economies exhausted by war in 242 BC wealthy Romans
paid for 200 more quinqueremes to defeat the Carthaginians,
who
sued for peace, agreeing to evacuate Sicily,
give up all Roman
prisoners without ransom,
and pay Rome 3200 talents of silver
within ten years.
All together in the war the Romans had lost
700
of the large quinqueremes and the Carthaginians 500.
Except
for Syracuse, Rome annexed Sicily as its first
overseas province,
adopting Hiero's taxation system
of taking one-tenth of the crops.
Unable to pay their mercenaries what they were demanding,
Carthage
faced a "truceless war" led by the runaway Roman
slave
Spendius and a Libyan named Mathos and a throng
of foreign soldiers,
who stoned anyone
attempting to speak against them.
The war had
taken half the agricultural produce and doubled
the tribute of
the towns; Utica and Hippo Zarytus, the two
cities which refused
to join the revolt, were besieged.
Eventually Hamilcar Barca raised
an army of 10,000
Carthaginian citizens, broke the siege of Utica,
and with Rome's cooperation finally
annihilated the mercenary
army.
A mutiny also occurred on Sardinia;
the Carthaginians led
by Hanno deserted,
and Hanno was crucified.
Rome sent a force
and, refusing arbitration, declared war.
Thus Carthage lost Sardinia
and Corsica and had to pay
another 1200 talents to Rome.
This
injustice was resented by the Carthaginians,
providing seeds for
more war.
Rome made Sardinia and Corsica a second province,
but
it took a century to pacify the people in the mountains.
In 238 BC Hamilcar took an army into Iberia (Spain)
and spent
nine years there conquering the tribes,
exploiting the mines,
and conscripting troops
before he was killed and succeeded in
command
by his son-in-law Hasdrubal.
After they stopped the Gallic
Boii at Ariminum,
the Romans actually had a brief peace during
which
they closed the temple of Janus.
Pillaging raids sponsored
by Queen Teuta in Illyria
stimulated Romans in 230 BC to offer
military protection
to Corcyra and other coastal towns.
Plebeian
power now depended on a few nobles,
though tribune Flaminius managed
to get land from the
Ager Gallicus distributed despite protests
by the senate
that it would cause conflicts with Gallic tribes.
In 225 BC Celtic Gauls crossed the alps with an army
of 150,000
infantry and 20,000 horse and chariots.
They were met by a Roman
army of 130,000
of which 6,000 fell; but when a Roman army returning
from Sardinia came up behind them, the Gauls caught
in between
had 40,000 killed and 10,000 captured.
The Roman consuls of 222
BC would not grant peace
to the Insubres Gauls until they
completely
submitted to Rome.
The next year Hasdrubal was assassinated in
Iberia,
and the young Hannibal, son of Hamilcar,
was elected commander
by the army.
Across the Adriatic Sea in 219 BC a Roman navy
defeated the piratical Demetrius of Pharos,
who fled to the Macedonian
court of Philip V.
Hasdrubal had promised the Romans the Carthaginians
would not
cross north of the Ebro River,
and south of that river Saguntum
asked for Roman protection.
Roman envoys warned Hannibal to leave
Saguntum alone;
but Hannibal, who had promised his father
eternal
hatred toward Rome, besieged it for eight months
and took it,
ordering all the men of military age killed.
So Rome sent diplomats
to Carthage asking them to arrest
Hannibal for this crime; the
Carthaginians chose war instead.
Roman delegations sent to Iberia
to gain friends found that
the example of Saguntum had lost their
trust;
nor were they able to persuade the Gauls to take their
side,
since most resented how the Romans had expelled Gauls
from
Italy or demanded tribute from them,
and many were bought off
by Hannibal's gold.
Some Roman envoys were even seized by Gallic
chiefs
to exchange for hostages.
Starting with about 100,000 men,
Hannibal crossed the
Pyrenees mountains, the Rhone River in spite
of Gallic
opposition, climbed over the Alps, and lost more men
and animals sliding down the icy slopes.
With a quarter of his forces left,
Hannibal led a cavalry skirmish,
which wounded Roman consul Cornelius Scipio.
Some Celtic Gauls
eager to plunder Roman Italy
now joined Hannibal, who trapped
at the Trebia River
40,000 Roman soldiers, of which only 10,000
were left
to withdraw from northern Italy.
Fabius Maximus was
appointed dictator but was then
criticized for not engaging the
enemy fully,
though his self-restraint proved a better strategy.
Roman forces captured the island of Malta and auctioned
Carthaginian
prisoners of war at Lilybaeum.
The Roman navy defeated Hasdrubal,
capturing 25 of his 40 ships, and more than
120 Spanish tribes
gave hostages
and submitted to Roman authority.
In Italy the Romans
lost another 15,000 troops and their
impulsive consul Flaminius
at the battle of Lake Trasimene;
Hannibal distributed the Roman
prisoners to his companies
but released the captured allies to
their own countries.
However, no towns in Roman territory opened
their gates
to Hannibal; so his forces plundered Umbria and Picenum,
as he ordered all adults in their way killed.
The Roman senate decided to double
their army to eight legions.
At Cannae in August 216 BC Hannibal had 40,000 infantry
and 10,000
cavalry; but losing only 8,000 men,
the Carthaginian army wiped
out about
50,000 of the Roman forces and captured several thousand
in their camp; these the Roman senate refused to ransom,
using
their funds to arm 8,000 slaves instead.
Most of the Samnites
and Greeks went over to the
Carthaginians, who now controlled
most of what the
Latins called Magna Graecia in southern Italy.
A few days later some Celts in Gaul ambushed a
Roman praetor and
annihilated his army
by felling trees on them.
In 214 BC Romans
led by Fabius Maximus killed or
captured 25,000 Caudini as the
territory was devastated.
In the senate at Carthage Hanno again spoke about
the folly of the war and again was outvoted.
If Hannibal had won such victories,
he asked,
why was he still asking for reinforcements
and more
money and grain?
In addition to the slaves, who won their freedom
fighting
at Beneventum, Rome enlisted 6,000 debtors from prison.
Marcellus took Nola and after an inquiry
executed seventy traitors.
Hannibal spent the winter at luxurious Capua,
which Livy believed
corrupted his men.
Philip V of Macedonia sent envoys to make an
alliance
with the winning Hannibal, while Hiero II of Syracuse
supplied the Romans with 200,000 measures
of wheat and 100,000
of barley.
On Sardinia victorious Romans killed 12,000
and captured
3700, and in Spain according to Livy
only 16,000 Romans killed
about half of their enemy's
army of 60,000, as nearly all the
Spanish tribes
came over to the Romans.
Hiero II died after ruling
Syracuse as a Roman ally
for 54 years and was succeeded by his
grandson
Hieronymus, who sided with Hannibal
and was assassinated.
Various intrigues, coups, and murders resulted in
Syracuse being
besieged by Marcellus and the Romans,
but it was well defended
by the
engineering genius of Archimedes.
After the Roman massacre
of the sacred city of Henna,
many Sicilians went over to the Carthaginians.
By 212 BC Rome by borrowing money had raised
25 legions, and
troops were going without pay.
A Roman centurion put in command
of an army
lost most of his recruits at Lucania.
Volunteer-slaves
deserted
when their leader Gracchus was killed.
The Romans lost
another 16,000 men
to Hannibal's veterans at Herdonea.
Finally
the Romans stormed Syracuse at night after
a drunken
festival,
and Archimedes was killed during the plundering;
Marcellus ordered
Roman deserters beheaded
and shipped much Sicilian art to Rome.
In Spain the Celtiberians were persuaded to abandon the
Romans
and go home, resulting in the defeat of two armies
and the death
of both the Scipio brothers;
but Lucius Marcius took command of
what was left
and defeated the Carthaginians.
In Campania after
a long siege by the Romans,
during which Hannibal approached Rome,
and seventy Numidians pretending to be deserters
had their hands
cut off by the Romans for spying,
Capua was starved into surrender.
Fifty-three Capuan senators who did not commit suicide
were executed
after bringing out 2,070 pounds of gold
and 31,200 pounds of silver.
The rest of the Capuans were sold into slavery,
as Rome took over
the government of the city.
Rome also oversaw the future of Syracuse and allied itself with
the Greek Aetolians in opposition to Philip V of Macedonia.
The Roman aristocrats were drained by taxation and had
most of
their lands stripped, many of their houses burnt,
and their slaves
stolen, impressed as oarsmen,
or bought cheap for military service.
Now their precious metals were contributed to build
ships in order
to keep the Macedonians
out of Italy.
Hannibal captured Tarentum except for the Roman
garrison in the citadel, which held out for three years
until
their compatriots retook the city.
The fall of Agrigentum soon
brought
most of Sicily over to the Romans.
Publius Cornelius Scipio was sent to Spain to replace
his father and uncle even though at 25
he was too young for the office.
In
209 BC his army captured New Carthage,
where he took over their
mines and had workers
supply his army with the better Spanish
swords.
Scipio won over Iberians by restoring hostages to their
families.
The next year at Metaurus they defeated Hannibal's brother
Hasdrubal, who then took his troops across the Alps,
gaining Celtic
allies on his way to Italy.
At Ilipa Scipio's strategy decisively
defeated the
Carthaginian army, which in 205 BC surrendered Spain
at Gades on the Atlantic coast,
as Mago's remaining forces departed
in ships.
The Romans required military service from the Iberians
and silver tribute from their first province on the continent.
The town of Iliturgi was destroyed and all its people
massacred
for having killed Romans during the war.
Scipio dealt with a mutiny
by deceptively arresting
and then executing 35 of its leaders,
but he bought back the allegiance
of the army by paying their
wages.
In Rome envoys from twelve Latin colonies told the consuls
that they could no longer supply men or money for the war,
though
the other eighteen colonies continued their support.
Many Bruttians,
who betrayed the city to the Romans,
were killed along with the
Carthaginians and Tarentines
when Tarentum was retaken by Roman
soldiers;
3,080 pounds of gold went into the Roman treasury,
and
30,000 Tarentines were sold into slavery.
The two Roman consuls
joined their armies to wipe out
Hasdrubal and his army at the
Metaurus River,
though Livius restrained his men from killing
the fleeing Gauls
so that they would tell people what happened.
Seeing now the fate of Carthage, Hannibal retreated
to Bruttium
at the southern end of the Italian peninsula.
In 204 BC the Asian
cult of the mother goddess
Cybele was brought to Rome.
Laevinus led a Roman fleet to Africa and raided around
Utica
and Carthage; they defeated a Carthaginian squadron
of seventy
ships and now controlled the shipping of grain.
Scipio made treaties
with Numidian kings
Masinissa and Syphax in Africa before returning
to Rome,
where he prepared to invade Carthage.
Fabius Maximus
argued that there should be peace
and safety in Italy before war
was taken to Africa.
Scipio Africanus was elected consul, given the army
in Sicily,
and was allowed to recruit volunteers.
Mago, also a brother
of Hannibal, raised troops in the
Balearic Islands, then captured
and destroyed Genoa.
A Spanish uprising resulted in the killing
of 13,000
of them by the Romans before peace was restored.
The
twelve Latin colonies that had stopped their support
were now
required to provide twice their quota of soldiers,
as Roman men
between the ages of 18 and 46
continued to serve an average of
seven years in the army.
In Africa the Carthaginians gained the alliance of Numidian
king Syphax when another Hasdrubal gave his daughter
to him in
marriage, while Scipio lied to his men about it.
Masinissa survived
defeats by the army of Syphax
and eventually showed up with 6,000
infantry
and 4,000 cavalry to join the Romans.
Scipio's soldiers
set fire to the wooden and thatched huts
in the camps of the Carthaginians
and Syphax's Numidians,
then attacked them, killing 40,000 and
capturing
5,000 prisoners and 2,700 Numidian horses.
Carthage
won a naval victory but then was defeated
by the Romans along
with the large army of Syphax
in a battle dominated by cavalry.
Carthage agreed to terms with Scipio and sent some
young envoys
to Rome, while Hannibal and Mago
were recalled from Italy.
Unable
to negotiate an agreement, in 201 BC
Hannibal's forces met Scipio's
at Zama near Carthage.
The cavalry of Masinissa turned the battle,
as 20,000 of the Carthaginians and their allies were killed.
Hannibal told the senate of Carthage
to accept the terms of
Scipio.
Carthage was allowed to live under their own laws while
giving up all deserters, runaway slaves, prisoners of war,
warships
(except ten), and elephants.
They lost all claims outside of Africa
and were not allowed
to make war except in Africa and only with
Rome's permission.
They made a treaty with Masinissa, who gained
the
city of Cirta and the lands of Syphax.
Carthage had to supply
grain and wages for the Roman
soldiers and pay 10,000 talents
over fifty years,
giving 100 hostages.
When a member of Carthage's
minority peace party was
asked by the Roman senate what gods would
sanction this
treaty when they had forsworn the previous one,
he replied,
"The same gods, since their hostility
to treaty-breakers
is now proved."2
Hannibal had spent fifteen years fighting
in Italy and was said
to have killed 300,000 in battles alone
and destroyed
400 towns, accomplishing little if any good;
even
though he had no mutinies,
the mercenaries hired by the Carthaginians
were
ultimately no match for the continued efforts
of Roman soldiers
and their Latin allies.
Soon after the war with Carthage ended,
Rome turned its attention
to other conflicts.
In Gaul the Boii, Insubres, and Cenomani led
by Carthaginian
Hamilcar destroyed Placentia and were attacking
Cremona
in 200 BC, but two years later they had 35,000 slain
(including
Hamilcar) by the Roman army and eventually lost
half their territory,
which was given to colonists.
Envoys from Rhodes and Pergamum's
King Attalus
complained that the Macedonians were harassing cities
in Asia Minor; Athenians also asked for help.
At first the Roman
people, tired of war, voted against it;
but the senate and consul
posed the choice as sending
legions to Macedonia
or suffering their invasion of Italy.
They argued that allowing
King Philip V to take Athens
would repeat the mistake when they
let Hannibal take Saguntum.
The people were won over, and the
fetial priests
declared war on Philip's Macedonia.
At the Aetolian congress Rome declared its imperialist
policy that the fate of any nation would depend
on its services or disservices
to Rome.
Philip's forces suffered two cavalry defeats from the Romans,
and at a funeral his men saw how the Romans'
Spanish swords had
inflicted such terrible wounds.
The Aetolians once again formed
an alliance
with Rome against Philip.
Two thousand war-weary Roman
soldiers moving
from Africa to Sicily to Macedonia mutinied but
waited,
while the consul wrote to the senate about their discharge.
When King Attalus asked Rome for aid against a threatened
attack
by Seleucid king Antiochus
III, who was an
ally of Rome, the senate declared its policy that
their allies should keep peace among themselves.
Attalus could
call his troops home, and Rome sent envoys to
persuade Antiochus
to keep away from Attalus' Pergamum.
At the Aous River the Roman
consul Flamininus asked
Philip V to withdraw his garrisons from
Greek cities,
restore their plundered property, and pay for the
injuries
to Attalus and Rhodes; but Philip, insisting on keeping
possessions he had inherited,
broke up the conference over Thessaly.
The Romans attacked and destroyed Phaloria,
causing Metropolis
and Cierium to surrender.
The fleets of Rome, Rhodes, and Attalus
combined to capture Eretria.
The council of the Achaeans decided to join this alliance
against
Philip V, who had inflicted greater injuries on the
Aetolians
when they were his ally than as enemies.
Now Philip was forcing
Thessalians to leave their homes
as he destroyed their cities
before retreating;
both Polybius and Livy contrasted this policy
to that
of Alexander and his
successors, who tended to
spare cities not only of allies but
of enemies.
Negotiations failed again, and Philip handed over
Argos
to the Spartan tyrant Nabis.
Roman consul Titus Flamininus
brought the Boeotians
into their alliance also, though he connived
at the murder
of Boeotarch Brachyllas because he was pro-Macedonian.
In 198 BC Carthaginians interned in the Latin fortress at Setia
and African slaves had revolted but were betrayed;
500 were put
to death.
Two years later slaves in Etruria rebelled and were
put down.
The Macedonian phalanx met the Roman legions in 197 BC
at the
battle of Cynocephalae, where the rough territory
gave the advantage
to the more flexible legions.
The Macedonians had 8,000 killed
and 5,000 captured,
while the Romans lost only 700;
Philip fled
to Tempe and sued for peace.
All 35 tribes in Rome voted for the
peace treaty in which
Philip V agreed to allow all the Greek cities
in Europe
and Asia to be free with their own laws;
his army was
to be limited to 5,000, and he was not allowed
to make war outside Macedonia without the senate's
permission; also he had to pay 1,000 talents to Rome.
Everyone
accepted the treaty except the Aetolians,
who complained that
Rome was garrisoning the key locations
of Acrocorinth, Chalcis,
and Demetrias that
Philip had called and used as the "shackles
of Greece."
At the Isthmian games at Corinth and the Nemean games
at Argos
in 196 BC Titus Flamininus announced to grateful
audiences the
liberation of Greece, as
he traveled from
city to city urging the Greeks to practice obedience
to law, justice, unity, and friendship with each other.
Many democracies
and even kings asked to have
their states protected by Rome.
Envoys
warned Antiochus III to keep his hands off the
free Greek cities
too, but he was claiming what his
great great grandfather Seleucus
I had conquered
from Lysimachus in Thrace as well as in Asia.
Meanwhile Hannibal as praetor in Carthage was reforming
their
judicial system by making judges,
who had served for life, only
eligible to be elected
for one year at a time; this and other
reforms to remove
peculation and government waste made him
political
enemies among the aristocracy.
About to be indicted for plotting
war with Antiochus III,
Hannibal went and joined him at Ephesus.
In Rome tribunes proposed repealing the lex Oppia, passed
twenty years before, that limited the jewelry, colored clothing,
and carriage-riding of Roman women.
When many women lobbied officials,
consul Marcus Cato
spoke against repeal, arguing that the husband's
authority
over his wife prevents trouble with women.
Known for
renouncing luxuries, Cato warned against
this mass movement and
compared it to the
secession of the plebeians in 494 BC.
He asked
if the men could endure equality with women
and suggested that
once equality was granted,
women would be superior.
Cato cautioned
that excessive spending led to the vices
of extravagance and avarice,
which destroy empires.
He pitied the husbands, who would be entreated
by
their wives for money whether they yield or refuse.
Tribune
Lucius Valerius argued that women benefited
Rome in the past and
should not have to suffer this
war-time measure in peace-time,
believing women's
finery should be controlled by husbands and
fathers,
not by the law; greater power requires greater moderation.
A crowd of women besieged the doors of those who
intended to veto
the tribunes' proposal until they relented;
then the tribes voted
for the repeal.
The Roman senate declared war on the Spartan tyrant Nabis,
who complained of being called a tyrant and felt
he was being
persecuted by the wealthy for having
freed slaves and helped the
poor get land.
The Romans accused him of capturing their ally
Messena
and of attacking their ships off the coast of Malea;
they
demanded he give up Argos and listed
numerous conditions for peace.
Cornered, Nabis finally capitulated; but some Romans
asked why
a tyrant had been allowed
to live and rule in liberated Greece.
Flamininus' answer was that they would have had to
destroy Sparta
to remove him.
In 194 BC the Romans showed the Aetolians they
were
keeping their word by removing their garrisons from
Acrocorinth,
Chalcis, and Demetrias.
At the same time their armies left Greece
they insisted
that all Roman citizens who had been enslaved
(many
because Rome had refused to ransom them
in the war against Hannibal)
in Greece be freed.
In Thessaly, which had never known an election,
Flamininus appointed a senate and officials based on property.
In reply to Antiochus III, Titus Flamininus warned that if
the
Seleucid king wished
Rome to stay out of Asia
he had better stay away from Europe;
but if he crossed into Europe,
Rome would protect her allies in
Asia.
In Spain Roman forces killed 12,000 rebelling Lusitanians
with few losses; but in Liguria the Romans lost 5,000
while destroying
14,000 Boii, and Lucius Flamininus executed
with his own hands
one of their leaders to please his boyfriend.
In Greece
the Aetolians resented their limited share of the
spoils from
the Macedonian war and appealed to
Antiochus III to liberate Greeks
from Roman domination.
In 192 BC Antiochus brought his Seleucid
forces across the
Hellespont, and the Aetolians took Demetrias
in Thessaly,
where the Seleucids arrived with only 10,000 infantry,
500 cavalry, and six elephants.
The Aetolians gave Antiochus command,
but the Chalcidians,
Athenians and Achaeans found no need for
military aid
against absent Romans with whom
they were enjoying
freedom and peace.
The war began when Antiochus took Chalcis on
Euboea,
coming into conflict with small contingents of Achaeans,
Romans, and Pergamenes that had been sent for protection.
Rome
sent commissioners to buy grain from Carthage
and Numidia but
refused to accept gifts
from them or Egypt's Ptolemy V.
As Antiochus and the Aetolians controlled Thessaly and
Euboea,
Rome sent Marcus Acilius with 20,000 troops,
who defeated the
Seleucid-Aetolian alliance at Thermopylae;
Antiochus fled across
the Aegean with only 500 men.
When the Romans captured Heraclea,
the Aetolians
asked for peace, refusing the consul Lucius Scipio's
option
of paying a thousand talents and opting to entrust themselves
to the "good faith of the Roman people."
Yet when the
Romans demanded certain leaders,
who had induced their revolt,
the Aetolian leader Phaeneas balked.
So Acilius marched Romans
down to attack Naupactus,
while the Messenians surrendered to
the Romans after
refusing to join the Achaean league, which had
to
restore the island of Zacynthus to the Romans.
The Aetolians
arranged a truce for six months through the
famous Scipio Africanus,
raising the siege of Amphissa,
while Philip V escorted the Roman
army through Macedonia
and
Thrace to the Hellespont.
A letter from the Scipio brothers to
Bithynian king Prusias
persuaded him that Rome did not deprive
friendly kings
of their thrones, and he came over to their side.
The Seleucid navy was
defeated
by the Roman fleet at Corycus.
Seleucus, the son of Antiochus
III, attacked Pergamum
while its king Eumenes II was fighting
in alliance with
Rome and Rhodes on the Lycian coast,
and Antiochus
ravaged the countryside.
The navy of Antiochus III was beaten
again at Myonessus
with the loss of 42 ships, and he withdrew
his garrison
from Lysimachia, retreating to Asia and even allowing
the
Roman army to cross the Hellespont without opposition.
Aemilius
Regillus tried to control
the Romans pillaging Phocaea.
Antiochus
offered to pay half of Rome's war expenses in
exchange for peace;
but now that they had crossed into Asia,
the Romans demanded he
pay the whole expense
and vacate Asia to the Taurus mountains,
since he had started the war.
Antiochus decided this was worse
than risking a battle,
but at Magnesia he lost about 50,000 men,
fleeing with a few friends to Sardis and then Apamea.
As Romans
took Sardis, his envoys asked for magnanimity
from Rome, whose
victory now made them
"masters of the world."
Scipio Africanus offered Antiochus the same terms previously
made as equals to equals: that he stay out of Europe,
withdraw
from Asia to the other side of the Taurus mountains
pay 15,000
talents over twelve years, compensate Eumenes
with 400 talents,
give twenty hostages, and surrender Hannibal,
the Aetolian Thoas,
and three others who incited the war.
The Asian territory was
divided between Eumenes of
Pergamum and Rhodes, which got Lycia
and Caria
south of the Meander.
Those who had previously paid
tribute to Attalus of
Pergamum now had to pay Eumenes, but those
who had paid Antiochus were liberated.
Cappadocian king Ariarathes,
who had sided with Antiochus,
was able to buy peace from Rome
for 600 talents.
Meanwhile the Aetolians moved against the Amphilochians, and
the Epirotes persuaded the Roman consul to besiege Ambracia.
When
they heard of Antiochus' defeat, the Aetolians made
peace with
the Romans, agreeing to pay 500 talents and
turning over Ambracia;
consul Fulvius Nobilior was later
prosecuted for sacking the city
after it capitulated,
but instead of being punished he was given
a triumph.
The Gauls in Asian Galatia were punished for their
warriors'
raids by Roman forces led by consul Manlius Vulso;
this
was more appreciated by the allies
than the defeat of Antiochus.
Although Manlius was criticized for fighting these battles
without
a senatorial declaration of war,
Rome was pleased with the immense
loot that was obtained.
Charges of peculation were brought against
Scipio Africanus
and his brother Lucius Scipio;
but Africanus
became ill and died, and eventually the
ill will toward the Scipios
recoiled against their prosecutors,
as even their adversary Sempronius
Gracchus defended them.
Yet this showed that not even the greatest
Roman hero
could be considered above the law.
The spread of a Bacchic cult celebrating licentious
Bacchanalian
orgies at night in which young people were
initiated came to the
attention of the Roman consuls,
and these "criminal gatherings"
were broken up;
many were imprisoned or executed, while condemned
women
were turned over to their families for private punishment.
Bacchic shrines were destroyed in Rome and throughout Italy.
Historians
may have confused the killing of 7,000 shepherd
slaves in an upheaval
in Apulia
with the execution of fleeing bacchanals.3
Many complaints came to Rome about Macedonian
violations in
Thrace and Thessaly.
Roman commissioners were sent to a conference
at Tempe
in Thessaly; some were afraid that their cities would
be
despoiled by Philip V if he had to give them back.
Macedonian
garrisons were withdrawn,
and Philip was restricted to Macedonia.
Thracian problems were taken up at Thessalonica.
Philip noted
that he had constructed roads, built bridges,
and provided supplies
for the Roman army's recent passage
to Asia, and he complained
that
Eumenes was trying to despoil him.
Eumenes II accused Philip
of sending aid
to Bithynian king Prusias.
The commission confirmed
the status quo between
Macedonia and Pergamum and referred disputed
cities
to the Roman senate, though insisting garrisons should
be
withdrawn from them.
Upset, Philip told Onomastus to send Cassander
to punish
Maronea, where many were killed, causing the head
of
the commission to request that these two men
be questioned by
the senate,
though Philip only sent Cassander.
As governor of Sardinia, Marcus Cato had greatly reduced
government
expenditures by his simple living.
Although most candidates for
censor, whose duty was to
watch, regulate, and punish any licentious
behavior,
campaigned promising leniency, in 184 BC Cato and
Lucius
Valerius were elected censors by promising drastic
purification
like the strenuous treatment of a physician;
their inexorable
administration of justice made
Roman authority greatly feared
and respected.
In attacking extravagance Cato asked how could
a city be
saved where people pay more for pickled fish than for
an ox.
Taxes on luxuries valued over
1500 drachmas were increased
tenfold.
Cato said, "A man who beats his wife or child is
laying
sacrilegious hands on the most sacred thing in the world."4
Cato owned many slaves he bought as prisoners of war;
they could
earn their freedom, and a man could pay
a price to sleep with
one of the women and no other;
but those found guilty of a capital
crime
in his formal trial, he executed.
Though he said that he
would rather have people ask
why there is not a statue of him
than why there is one,
a statue was erected in his honor in the
temple
of Hygieia with the following inscription:
When the Roman state was sinking into decay,
he became censor and through his wise leadership,
sober discipline and sound
principles restored its strength.5
Suspicious of Eumenes II, Cato described a king
as an animal
that lives on human flesh.
He said that he would rather do what
was right and go
unrewarded than do wrong and be unpunished,
and
he was prepared to forgive everyone's mistakes
except his own.
He noted that the wise learn from the mistakes of fools;
but fools
do not imitate the wise.
Cato undertook numerous prosecutions
and caused
Lucius Scipio to pay a heavy fine, but 44 impeachments
were brought against Cato himself.
In Spain he defeated rebellions
by giving his army
little opportunity to flee from battle.
In
less than a year he captured 400 cities in Spain,
and his soldiers
received a pound of silver each,
which he said was better than
having the pockets
of a few filled with gold.
Succeeded early
in Spain by his adversary Scipio Africanus,
Cato on his march
to Rome subdued the Lacetani
and executed 600 deserters they handed
over to him.
Cato was the first to publish his speeches and wrote
other works such as histories; his only extant book,
On Agriculture,
is the oldest Latin book we have.
Full of practical advice he
described the duties
of the overseer as the following:
He must show good management.
The feast days must be observed.
He must withhold his hands from another's goods
and diligently preserve his own.
He must settle disputes among the slaves;
and if anyone commits an offense he must
punish him properly in proportion to the fault.
He must see that the servants are well provided for,
and that they do not suffer from cold or hunger.
Let him keep them busy with their work—
he will more easily keep them
from wrongdoing and meddling.
If the overseer set his face against wrongdoing,
they will not do it; if he allows it,
the master must not let him go unpunished.
He must express his appreciation of good work,
so that others may take pleasure in well-doing.6
In Arcadia a Roman commission took up Achaean-Spartan
conflicts
and decided that the Spartan exiles should be
forgiven and restored,
though Sparta
was to remain in the Achaean league.
Philip reluctantly
complied with the commission's requests
and
sent his younger son
Demetrius to Rome as his ambassador.
Demetrius, who had been a
hostage in Rome,
became very friendly with Romans such as Flamininus;
this was resented by his father and older brother Perseus,
who
eventually accused Demetrius of trying to kill him.
Demetrius
was able to defend himself verbally;
but Perseus used a forged
letter from Flamininus to accuse
his brother again, and Demetrius
was poisoned and killed,
probably by Philip's order in 181 BC.
Romans killed 15,000 Ligurians in a battle; peace was made,
and
40,000 Ligurians were moved to Samnium land,
though occasional
revolts continued in Liguria.
In a series of revolts in Spain
by the Celtiberians more than
a hundred thousand of them were
killed before
they were pacified to accept Roman rule.
Sempronius
Gracchus received the surrender of more
than a hundred towns in
Spain,
carrying off much of the population into slavery.
Censors like Marcus Cato had brought some reforms
and large
public projects, such as an
improved sewer system to Rome.
Two
feuding censors elected in 179 BC were urged to end
their quarrel
by Caecilius Metellus, who quoted the proverb
that "our friendships
should be immortal,
but our enmities should be mortal."7
Overwhelmed by grief and remorse over the death of his son
Demetrius,
Philip V died and was succeeded by Perseus,
who ordered the man
Philip had come to prefer,
Antigonus, put to death.
In 177 BC
Roman forces led by consul Sempronius
Gracchus killed or captured
80,000 Sardinians.
The Achaeans had banned Macedonians, which
resulted
in runaway slaves fleeing safely to Macedonia.
Some in the Achaean council wanted this policy changed,
but Callicrates
accused Perseus of preparing for war
against Rome, of turning
the northern Bastarnae tribes loose
on the Dardanians, and of
subduing Dolopia by force;
so the matter was delayed.
Carthaginians complained to the Roman senate that
Masinissa's
Numidians had taken over by force
more than seventy towns in their
territory.
In Liguria in 173 BC Roman consul Popillius Laenas
subjugated the Statielli; after they capitulated and
were disarmed,
he destroyed their town
and sold them as slaves and their property.
The senate ordered him to release the prisoners
and restore their
property; but Laenas, escaping
punishment himself, kept many as
slaves, and the rest were
deported north of the Po River.
The
same year two Epicurean philosophers
were expelled from Rome.
Three Roman officials accused of extortion in Spain
were
given
perfunctory trials and avoided punishment by fleeing.
Similar
charges against Roman praetors in Chalcis
came to trial;
Lucretius
Gallus was fined a million asses,
but Hortensius went on
to exploit and abuse Abdera in Thrace
the next year and was again
reprimanded by the senate
and forced to liberate the free citizens
he had enslaved.
When Eumenes II complained he was attacked at Delphi
by assassins
sent by Perseus, the Roman senate declared war
on Macedonia
and mobilized against Perseus' army of 43,000.
Perseus lost possible
allies, such as the Gauls,
because of his reluctance to give them
money.
Eventually King Gentius in Illyria, having received ten
of a
promised 300 talents, arrested the Roman envoys.
According
to Polybius, Perseus offered Eumenes 500 talents
to abstain from
helping the Romans or 1500 talents
to end the war, but his failure
to
make a payment ended the deal.
It took the Roman armies about
three years before the
forces led by Aemilius Paulus in 168 BC
finally met and
defeated the Macedonian army at Pydna,
killing
about 20,000 and capturing 11,000.
Once again the steel of Rome's
Spanish swords proved
superior to the iron Macedonian pikes.
Within
two days of the battle all of Macedonia had submitted.
Aemilius
Paulus advised his officers to show moderation
in their good fortune,
noting that fools only learn by their
own misfortunes, the wise
learn from those of others.
The Illyrian army was defeated, and
Gentius was captured.
In Rome the senate decided that Macedonia
and Illyria should
be allowed to be free to show that Romans
did
not enslave but liberated people.
Macedonia
was divided into four governing districts,
but half the tribute
they had been paying
to their king was now to go to Rome.
Illyria
received similar treatment
and was divided into three districts.
Envoys from Rhodes, feeling imperiled because they had tried
to
get both sides in the war to make peace, argued their case
in
Rome, which ordered Rhodian governors
be withdrawn from Lycia
and Caria.
Making Delos a free port punished
Rhodes and rewarded
Athens.
Towns such as Aeginium, Agassae and the city of the Aenii
which had opposed Rome, were sacked.
In Epirus 150,000 Molossians
were sold into slavery, and
seventy cities were plundered so that
each Roman soldier
could receive 200 denarii (a denarius
equaling a day's wage).
So much gold and silver came to Rome from
this war that
the land tax on Roman citizens was eliminated
for
more than a century.
A thousand prominent Achaeans, including
the historian
Polybius, were taken to Italy and were detained
there
as prisoners without trial; 700 died there,
and the rest were released after seventeen years.
Analysis of Rome's institutions by Polybius noted that the
senate controlled the most important spending on public
buildings
by the censors and the investigation of the crimes
of treason,
conspiracy, and murder.
Foreign affairs and the imposing of penalties
or rewards
on other nations were also the prerogative of the senate.
Nonetheless the people were responsible for conferring
honors
and punishment, bestowing of offices, passing or
repealing laws,
declaring war or peace, and ratifying treaties.
Tribunes could
still veto decrees of the senate and could
even prevent them from
meeting.
By this time the rise of "new men" to the consulship
from
the plebeians ennobled their families so that now there were
many noble plebeian families and more plebeians
in the senate
than patricians.
The senate usurped more power by nullifying new
laws
that did not give due regard to existing laws and by
appointing
judicial commissions with unlimited punitive power.
According
to Polybius all citizens were supposed to serve
at least ten years
in the army except for the poorest,
who served in the navy, and
no one could hold office
before completing ten years of military
service.
When Seleucid king Antiochus
IV Epiphanes invaded Egypt
and besieged Alexandria in 168 BC, Rome's envoy
Popillius Laenas
handed Antiochus a decree from the senate,
drew a circle around
him, and demanded his answer
before he moved out of the circle.
Antiochus withdrew his army to Syria, and the Roman
commissioners
confirmed the reign
of Ptolemy VI in Egypt
and Ptolemy VII in Cyrene.
Having restored order in Alexandria,
Popillius next ejected
the Seleucid navy from the island of Cypress,
which was transferred to Ptolemy VII.
Attalus was welcomed in Rome as a friend;
but his brother King
Eumenes II, who had wavered
during the war, was excluded by a
new law
prohibiting any king from visiting Rome.
By obeying the
senate and condemning to death those
hostile to Rome, Rhodes eventually
secured an alliance
with the dominant power.
A Roman commissioner
named Octavius was killed in Syria
during a riot after zealously
burning Seleucid ships and
killing
their elephants to enforce their treaty of Apamea;
but
when his murderer Leptines was sent to Rome,
the senate refused
to punish him.
The summary of Livy's lost books claims that
when
Cappadocian king Ariarathes was deprived of his
kingdom by Seleucid king Demetrius, the
senate restored
it to him, and the Dalmatians were punished
by
Roman legions for encroaching on the Illyrians.
Cato attempted to lessen the impact of Greek philosophy
on
Rome in 155 BC when he got the three philosophers
representing
Athens as diplomats dismissed,
because he feared their effect
on ancient Roman discipline.
In 154 BC, five years after Eumenes
II died, Rome sided
with his brother Attalus II and made Bithynia's
Prusias II pay
500 talents in war damages and give twenty ships
to Pergamum.
Prusias was hated for his cruelty, and Roman envoys'
feeble
attempts to restrain Attalus from supporting the rebellion
of Prusias' son Nicomedes did not stop the murder
of Prusias in
the temple of Zeus; Nicomedes was confirmed
as king by the Roman
senate.
In 139 BC astrologers and Jews were expelled from Rome.
After ruling Pergamum for five years Attalus III died in 133 BC
and left his kingdom to Rome in his will,
stipulating that Pergamum
and the Greek cities
should be exempt from tribute.
Cato visited Carthage and began ending every speech
with the
imperative that Carthage must be destroyed.
Rome's bias toward
Numidian king Masinissa in his conflicts
with Carthage, his frequent
encroachments, and his standing
army of 50,000 led to war between
these African states in 150 BC.
He besieged Oroscopa, and 25,000
Carthaginians led by
Hasdrubal marched against the Numidians
and
were joined by many more.
According to Appian 110,000 engaged
in the battle,
and most of the 58,000 disarmed men returning to
Carthage
were slain by order of Masinissa's son Gulassa
after
the surrender.
Utica asked for Rome's protection; accusing Carthage
of
violating its treaty, Rome declared its third and last Punic
war,
mobilizing an army of 80,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry.
Carthage asked for peace, sent 300 hostages to Rome
via Lilybaeum,
and surrendered arms for 200,000 men
and 2,000 catapults; but
when the Romans demanded that
the mercantile Carthaginians all
move ten miles inland,
they refused and began making more weapons.
At Nepheris as many as 70,000 African soldiers and civilians
were
killed, while 10,000 were captured
and only 4,000 escaped.
Carthage
held out under siege for three years until
they were starved into
surrender; 50,000 were sold as slaves,
and Carthage was burned
to the ground in 146 BC.
Rome annexed the Tunisian peninsula as
the province of Africa.
In Greece Andriscus,
claiming to be a son of Perseus,
raised an army that ravaged Thessaly
in 149 BC;
but the next year a Roman army led by Caecilius Metellus
chased him out of Macedonia
into Thrace,
and the senate decided to annex Macedonia
as a province
that included Thessaly and Epirus.
Roman attempts
to break up the Achaean league stimulated
a proletarian revolution
led by Critolaus, who was appointed
dictator by Corinth; this
was also squelched
by the legions of Metellus.
Corinth, having
beaten up Roman envoys,
was also razed to the ground in 146 BC,
and its inhabitants were sold into slavery.
The Roman army broke
down the walls and took the
armaments of every city that had resisted
Rome
before sending the advisory commission, which then ended
the democracies and established governments
based on property
qualifications.
The national leagues of the Achaeans, Phocians,
and Boeotians were all broken up.
The governor of Macedonia
was authorized to settle any
conflicts between the isolated city
states,
now mostly ruled by the wealthy class.
Not finding trustworthy native leaders and wanting their mineral
wealth, the provinces Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior
were ruled by two Roman praetors.
Sempronius Gracchus founded
Gracchuris, and after many
wars Spain had a quarter century of
peace until 154 BC
when Roman oppression stimulated revolts
by
the Celtiberians and invasion by Lusitanians.
In spite of the
senate's wishes, Marcellus conciliated the
Spaniards for eight
more years in Hispania Citerior.
In 151 BC so many men resisted
conscription into the army
that the tribunes even arrested the
consuls for refusing
to grant exemptions; the same thing
happened
again thirteen years later.
Greedy for fame and money, Lucullus
invaded the Vaccaei
with a Roman army without any provocation
or authorization by the senate.
After a battle with losses on
both sides, the Vaccaei retreated
into their city and asked for
a settlement.
Two thousand Roman soldiers were allowed in to garrison
the city; but they began killing all the men there,
and very few
of the 20,000 escaped.
Lucullus also attacked other Celtiberians,
who turned out
not to have any gold or silver,
and he was never
held to account for his crimes.
Lusitanian leader Viriathus won several victories over five
Roman commanders and even survived the massacre of
three groups
by governor Galba
after they had surrendered their arms.
The wealthy
Galba distributed some of the plunder to his
soldiers and kept
the rest for himself; he was eventually
prosecuted but avoided
punishment
by an emotional plea for mercy.
In 149 BC the tribune
Calpurnius Piso proposed establishing
a permanent court of senators
for cases of extortion,
and its judgments could not be appealed
to the people or the tribunes.
Viriathus, who considered self-sufficiency
his greatest wealth,
freedom his country, and eminence won by
bravery his
securest possession, made a treaty with Fabius Servilianus
and the senate which was broken by his brother Caepio
and the
senate; though Viriathus had been declared a friend
of the Romans,
he was assassinated while sleeping.
Numantia, the central city
of Spain, defied Roman authority
for nine years until Rome broke
another treaty and then sent
Scipio Aemilianus with 60,000 soldiers,
who built a wall
around the city, while he disciplined the lax
troops
and expelled 2,000 prostitutes from the camp.
Numantia
was destroyed, and the inhabitants
were sold into slavery in 133
BC.
After the lex Claudia of 218 BC prohibited patricians
from
participating in shipping commerce and Hannibal's ravaging
Italy and the conscription of so many farmers into the army
of
about 100,000, small landholders were replaced by
larger farms
with vineyards and olive groves and
cattle ranches in the second
century BC,
as aristocratic estates expanded, and slave labor increased.
The war with Hannibal had produced 75,000 slaves,
and
many were
imported from Asia after the war with Antiochus.
Greek slaves
brought their culture and education as teachers,
physicians, and
artisans, and these, as in Greece, might earn
their freedom; but
increasing numbers of slaves working
on
plantations or in the
mines had little chance of gaining freedom.
In Sicily a revolt inspired by a psychic Syrian slave named
Eunus in 135 BC took over the city of Enna and declared him
King
Antiochus, stimulating the Cilician Cleon
to raise an army and
overrun Acragas.
The two armies of liberated slaves joined, and
the revolt
lasted three years; as their numbers grew to about
70,000,
they also controlled Agrigentum, Tauromenium, and Catana.
They killed slave owners but spared those
who had been kind to
slaves.
Diodorus noted, "Even among slaves human nature needs
no instructor in regard to just repayment,
whether of gratitude
or revenge."8
Other slave outbreaks occurred then in Italy,
Attica,
and at Delos, the center of the slave trade.
The empire
of republican Rome now stretched from the
Atlantic coast of Spain
to Asia Minor, but the increased
militarism and social inequities
were beginning to erupt
in what would be a century of revolution
and civil wars.
1. Livy 8:21 tr. Betty Radice.
2. Livy 30:42 tr. Aubrey de Selincourt.
3. See Toynbee, Hannibal's Legacy, Vol. 2, p. 320-321.
4. Plutarch, Cato the Elder 20 tr. Ian Scott-Kilvert.
5. Ibid., 19.
6. Cato, On Agriculture 5:1-2 tr. William Davis Hooper.
7. Livy 40:46 tr. Henry Bettenson.
8. Diodorus Siculus 34/35:2:40 tr. Francis R. Walton.
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