Atellanae
The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Roman literature. It was in itself very old:(9) long before Rome arose, the merry youths of Latium may have improvised on festal occasions in the masks once for all established for particular characters. These pastimes obtained a fixed local background in the Latin "asylum of fools," for which they selected the formerly Oscan town of Atella, which was destroyed in the Hannibalic war and was thereby handed over to comic use; thenceforth the name of "Oscan plays" or "plays of Atella" was commonly used for these exhibitions.(10) But these pleasantries had nothing to do with the stage(11) and with literature; they were performed by amateurs where and when they pleased, and the text was not written or at any rate was not published. It was not until the present period that the Atellan piece was handed over to actors properly so called,(12) and was employed, like the Greek satyric drama, as an afterpiece particularly after tragedies; a change which naturally suggested the extension of literary activity to that field. Whether this authorship developed itself altogether independently, or whether possibly the art-farce of Lower Italy, in various respects of kindred character, gave the impulse to this Roman farce,(13) can no longer be determined; that the several pieces were uniformly original works, is certain. The founder of this new species of literature, Lucius Pomponius from the Latin colony of Bononia, appeared in the first half of the seventh century;(14) and along with his pieces those of another poet Novius soon became favourites. So far as the few remains and the reports of the old -litteratores- allow us to form an opinion, they were short farces, ordinarily perhaps of one act, the charm of which depended less on the preposterous and loosely constructed plot than on the drastic portraiture of particular classes and situations. Festal days and public acts were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as the "Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate"; so were also foreign nationalities—the Transalpine Gauls, the Syrians; above all, the various trades frequently appear on the boards. The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer, the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker, pass across the stage; the public criers were severely assailed and still more the fullers, who seem to have played in the Roman fool-world the part of our tailors. While the varied life of the city thus received its due attention, the farmer with his joys and sorrows was also represented in all aspects. The copiousness of this rural repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature, such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine," "the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig- gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard." In these pieces it was always the standing figures of the stupid and the artful servant, the good old man, the wise man, that delighted the public; the first in particular might never be wanting— the -Pulcinello- of this farce—the gluttonous filthy -Maccus-, hideously ugly and yet eternally in love, always on the point of stumbling across his own path, set upon by all with jeers and with blows and eventually at the close the regular scapegoat. The titles "-Maccus Miles-," "-Maccus Copo-," "-Maccus Virgo-," "-Maccus Exul-," "-Macci Gemini-" may furnish the good-humoured reader with some conception of the variety of entertainment in the Roman masquerade. Although these farces, at least after they came to be written, accommodated themselves to the general laws of literature, and in their metres for instance followed the Greek stage, they yet naturally retained a far more Latin and more popular stamp than even the national comedy. The farce resorted to the Greek world only under the form of travestied tragedy;(15) and this style appears to have been cultivated first by Novius, and not very frequently in any case. The farce of this poet moreover ventured, if not to trespass on Olympus, at least to touch the most human of the gods, Hercules: he wrote a -Hercules Auctionator-. The tone, as a matter of course, was not the most refined; very unambiguous ambiguities, coarse rustic obscenities, ghosts frightening and occasionally devouring children, formed part of the entertainment, and offensive personalities, even with the mention of names, not unfrequently crept in. But there was no want also of vivid delineation, of grotesque incidents, of telling jokes, and of pithy sayings; and the harlequinade rapidly won for itself no inconsiderable position in the theatrical life of the capital and even in literature.
Dramatic Arrangements
Lastly as regards the development of dramatic arrangements we are not in a position to set forth in detail—what is clear on the whole—that the general interest in dramatic performances was constantly on the increase, and that they became more and more frequent and magnificent. Not only was there hardly any ordinary or extraordinary popular festival that was now celebrated without dramatic exhibitions; even in the country-towns and in private houses representations by companies of hired actors were common. It is true that, while probably various municipal towns already at this time possessed theatres built of stone, the capital was still without one; the building of a theatre, already contracted for, had been again prohibited by the senate in 599 on the suggestion of Publius Scipio Nasica. It was quite in the spirit of the sanctimonious policy of this age, that the building of a permanent theatre was prohibited out of respect for the customs of their ancestors, but nevertheless theatrical entertainments were allowed rapidly to increase, and enormous sums were expended annually in erecting and decorating structures of boards for them. The arrangements of the stage became visibly better. The improved scenic arrangements and the reintroduction of masks about the time of Terence are doubtless connected with the fact, that the erection and maintenance of the stage and stage-apparatus were charged in 580 on the public chest.(16) The plays which Lucius Mummius produced after the capture of Corinth (609) formed an epoch in the history of the theatre. It was probably then that a theatre acoustically constructed after the Greek fashion and provided with seats was first erected, and more care generally was expended on the exhibitions.(17) Now also there is frequent mention of the bestowal of a prize of victory—which implies the competition of several pieces—of the audience taking a lively part for or against the leading actors, of cliques and -claqueurs-. The decorations and machinery were improved; moveable scenery artfully painted and audible theatrical thunder made their appearance under the aedileship of Gaius Claudius Pulcher in 655;(18) and twenty years later (675) under the aedileship of the brothers Lucius and Marcus Lucullus came the changing of the decorations by shifting the scenes. To the close of this epoch belongs the greatest of Roman actors, the freedman Quintus Roscius (d. about 692 at a great age), throughout several generations the ornament and pride of the Roman stage,(19) the friend and welcome boon-companion of Sulla—to whom we shall have to recur in the sequel.
Satura
In recitative poetry the most surprising circumstance is the insignificance of the Epos, which during the sixth century had occupied decidedly the first place in the literature destined for reading; it had numerous representatives in the seventh, but not a single one who had even temporary success. From the present epoch there is hardly anything to be reported save a number of rude attempts to translate Homer, and some continuations of the Ennian Annals, such as the "Istrian War" of Hostius and the "Annals (perhaps) of the Gallic War" by Aulus Furius (about 650), which to all appearance took up the narrative at the very point where Ennius had broken off—the description of the Istrian war of 576 and 577. In didactic and elegiac poetry no prominent name appears. The only successes which the recitative poetry of this period has to show, belong to the domain of what was called -Satura—-a species of art, which like the letter or the pamphlet allowed of any form and admitted any sort of contents, and accordingly in default of all proper generic characters derived its individual shape wholly from the individuality of each poet, and occupied a position not merely on the boundary between poetry and prose, but even more than half beyond the bounds of literature proper. The humorous poetical epistles, which one of the younger men of the Scipionic circle, Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer of Corinth, sent home from the camp of Corinth to his friends, were still read with pleasure a century afterwards; and numerous poetical pleasantries of that sort not destined for publication probably proceeded at that time from the rich social and intellectual life of the better circles of Rome.
Lucilius
Its representative in literature is Gaius Lucilius (606-651) sprung of a respectable family in the Latin colony of Suessa, and likewise a member of the Scipionic circle. His poems are, as it were, open letters to the public. Their contents, as a clever successor gracefully says, embrace the whole life of a cultivated man of independence, who looks upon the events passing on the political stage from the pit and occasionally from the side-scenes; who converses with the best of his epoch as his equals; who follows literature and science with sympathy and intelligence without wishing personally to pass for a poet or scholar; and who, in fine, makes his pocket-book the confidential receptacle for everything good and bad that he meets with, for his political experiences and expectations, for grammatical remarks and criticisms on art, for incidents of his own life, visits, dinners, journeys, as well as for anecdotes which he has heard. Caustic, capricious, thoroughly individual, the Lucilian poetry has yet the distinct stamp of an oppositional and, so far, didactic aim in literature as well as in morals and politics; there is in it something of the revolt of the country against the capital; the Suessan's sense of his own purity of speech and honesty of life asserts itself in antagonism to the great Babel of mingled tongues and corrupt morals. The aspiration of the Scipionic circle after literary correctness, especially in point of language, finds critically its most finished and most clever representative in Lucilius. He dedicated his very first book to Lucius Stilo, the founder of Roman philology,(20) and designated as the public for which he wrote not the cultivated circles of pure and classical speech, but the Tarentines, the Bruttians, the Siculi, or in other words the half-Greeks of Italy, whose Latin certainly might well require a corrective. Whole books of his poems are occupied with the settlement of Latin orthography and prosody, with the combating of Praenestine, Sabine, Etruscan provincialisms, with the exposure of current solecisms; along with which, however, the poet by no means forgets to ridicule the insipidly systematic Isocratean purism of words and phrases,(21) and even to reproach his friend Scipio in right earnest jest with the exclusive fineness of his language.(22) But the poet inculcates purity of morals in public and private life far more earnestly than he preaches pure and simple Latinity. For this his position gave him peculiar advantages. Although by descent, estate, and culture on a level with the genteel Romans of his time and possessor of a handsome house in the capital, he was yet not a Roman burgess, but a Latin; even his position towards Scipio, under whom he had served in his early youth during the Numantine war, and in whose house he was a frequent visitor, may be connected with the fact, that Scipio stood in varied relations to the Latins and was their patron in the political feuds of the time.(23) He was thus precluded from a public life, and he disdained the career of a speculator—he had no desire, as he once said, to "cease to be Lucilius in order to become an Asiatic revenue-farmer." So he lived in the sultry age of the Gracchan reforms and the agitations preceding the Social war, frequenting the palaces and villas of the Roman grandees and yet not exactly their client, at once in the midst of the strife of political coteries and parties and yet not directly taking part with one or another; in a way similar to Beranger, of whom there is much that reminds us in the political and poetical position of Lucilius. From this position he uttered his comments on public life with a sound common sense that was not to be shaken, with a good humour that was inexhaustible, and with a wit perpetually gushing:
-Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto
Toto itidem pariterque die populusque patresque
Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam.
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti;
Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se,
Insidias facere ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes-.
The illustrations of this inexhaustible text remorselessly, without omitting his friends or even the poet himself, assailed the evils of the age, the coterie-system, the endless Spanish war-service, and the like; the very commencement of his Satires was a great debate in the senate of the Olympian gods on the question, whether Rome deserved to enjoy the continued protection of the celestials. Corporations, classes, individuals, were everywhere severally mentioned by name; the poetry of political polemics, shut out from the Roman stage, was the true element and life-breath of the Lucilian poems, which by the power of the most pungent wit illustrated with the richest imagery—a power which still entrances us even in the remains that survive—pierce and crush their adversary "as by a drawn sword." In this—in the moral ascendency and the proud sense of freedom of the poet of Suessa—lies the reason why the refined Venusian, who in the Alexandrian age of Roman poetry revived the Lucilian satire, in spite of all his superiority in formal skill with true modesty yields to the earlier poet as "his better." The language is that of a man of thorough culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his humour; a poet like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made two hundred hexameters before dinner and as many after it, is in far too great a hurry to be nice; useless prolixity, slovenly repetition of the same turn, culpable instances of carelessness frequently occur: the first word, Latin or Greek, is always the best. The metres are similarly treated, particularly the very predominant hexameter: if we transpose the words—his clever imitator says—no man would observe that he had anything else before him than simple prose; in point of effect they can only be compared to our doggerel verses.(24) The poems of Terence and those of Lucilius stand on the same level of culture, and have the same relation to each other as a carefully prepared and polished literary work has to a letter written on the spur of the moment. But the incomparably higher intellectual gifts and the freer view of life, which mark the knight of Suessa as compared with the African slave, rendered his success as rapid and brilliant as that of Terence had been laborious and doubtful; Lucilius became immediately the favourite of the nation, and he like Beranger could say of his poems that "they alone of all were read by the people." The uncommon popularity of the Lucilian poem is, in a historical point of view, a remarkable event; we see from it that literature was already a power, and beyond doubt we should fall in with various traces of its influence, if a thorough history of this period had been preserved. Posterity has only confirmed the judgment of contemporaries; the Roman judges of art who were opposed to the Alexandrian school assigned to Lucilius the first rank among all the Latin poets. So far as satire can be regarded as a distinct form of art at all, Lucilius created it; and in it created the only species of art which was peculiar to the Romans and was bequeathed by them to posterity.
Of poetry attaching itself to the Alexandrian school nothing occurs in Rome at this epoch except minor poems translated from or modelled on Alexandrian epigrams, which deserve notice not on their own account, but as the first harbingers of the later epoch of Roman literature. Leaving out of account some poets little known and whose dates cannot be fixed with certainty, there belong to this category Quintus Catulus, consul in 652(25) and Lucius Manlius, an esteemed senator, who wrote in 657. The latter seems to have been the first to circulate among the Romans various geographical tales current among the Greeks, such as the Delian legend of Latona, the fables of Europa and of the marvellous bird Phoenix; as it was likewise reserved for him on his travels to discover at Dodona and to copy that remarkable tripod, on which might be read the oracle imparted to the Pelasgians before their migration into the land of the Siceli and Aborigines—a discovery which the Roman annals did not neglect devoutly to register.
Historical Composition
Polybius
In historical composition this epoch is especially marked by the emergence of an author who did not belong to Italy either by birth or in respect of his intellectual and literary standpoint, but who first or rather alone brought literary appreciation and description to bear on Rome's place in the world, and to whom all subsequent generations, and we too, owe the best part of our knowledge of the Roman development. Polybius (c. 546-c. 627) of Megalopolis in the Peloponnesus, son of the Achaean statesman Lycortas, took part apparently as early as 565 in the expedition of the Romans against the Celts of Asia Minor, and was afterwards on various occasions, especially during the third Macedonian war, employed by his countrymen in military and diplomatic affairs. After the crisis occasioned by that war in Hellas he was carried off along with the other Achaean hostages to Italy,(26) where he lived in exile for seventeen years (587-604) and was introduced by the sons of Paullus to the genteel circles of the capital. By the sending back of the Achaean hostages(27) he was restored to his home, where he thenceforth acted as permanent mediator between his confederacy and the Romans. He was present at the destruction of Carthage and of Corinth (608). He seemed educated, as it were, by destiny to comprehend the historical position of Rome more clearly than the Romans of that day could themselves. From the place which he occupied, a Greek statesman and a Roman prisoner, esteemed and occasionally envied for his Hellenic culture by Scipio Aemilianus and the first men of Rome generally, he saw the streams, which had so long flowed separately, meet together in the same channel and the history of the states of the Mediterranean resolve itself into the hegemony of Roman power and Greek culture. Thus Polybius became the first Greek of note, who embraced with serious conviction the comprehensive view of the Scipionic circle, and recognized the superiority of Hellenism in the sphere of intellect and of the Roman character in the sphere of politics as facts, regarding which history had given her final decision, and to which people on both sides were entitled and bound to submit. In this spirit he acted as a practical statesman, and wrote his history. If in his youth he had done homage to the honourable but impracticable local patriotism of the Achaeans, during his later years, with a clear discernment of inevitable necessity, he advocated in the community to which he belonged the policy of the closest adherence to Rome. It was a policy in the highest degree judicious and beyond doubt well-intentioned, but it was far from being high-spirited or proud. Nor was Polybius able wholly to disengage himself from the vanity and paltriness of the Hellenic statesmanship of the time. He was hardly released from exile, when he proposed to the senate that it should formally secure to the released their former rank in their several homes; whereupon Cato aptly remarked, that this looked to him as if Ulysses were to return to the cave of Polyphemus to request from the giant his hat and girdle. He often made use of his relations with the great men in Rome to benefit his countrymen; but the way in which he submitted to, and boasted of, the illustrious protection somewhat approaches fawning servility. His literary activity breathes throughout the same spirit as his practical action. It was the task of his life to write the history of the union of the Mediterranean states under the hegemony of Rome. From the first Punic war down to the destruction of Carthage and Corinth his work embraces the fortunes of all the civilized states—namely Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Carthage, and Italy—and exhibits in causal connection the mode in which they came under the Roman protectorate; in so far he describes it as his object to demonstrate the fitness and reasonableness of the Roman hegemony. In design as in execution, this history stands in clear and distinct contrast with the contemporary Roman as well as with the contemporary Greek historiography. In Rome history still remained wholly at the stage of chronicle; there existed doubtless important historical materials, but what was called historical composition was restricted—with the exception of the very respectable but purely individual writings of Cato, which at any rate did not reach beyond the rudiments of research and narration—partly to nursery tales, partly to collections of notices. The Greeks had certainly exhibited historical research and had written history; but the conceptions of nation and state had been so completely lost amidst the distracted times of the Diadochi, that none of the numerous historians succeeded in following the steps of the great Attic masters in spirit and in truth, or in treating from a general point of view the matter of world-wide interest in the history of the times.
Their histories were either purely outward records, or they were pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic rhetoric and only too often by the venality and vulgarity, the sycophancy and the bitterness of the age. Among the Romans as among the Greeks there was nothing but histories of cities or of tribes. Polybius, a Peloponnesian, as has been justly remarked, and holding intellectually a position at least as far aloof from the Attics as from the Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits, treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but which was at any rate dissociated from the mere local states and laid hold of the Romano-Greek state in the course of formation. Never perhaps has any historian united within himself all the advantages of an author drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius. The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real historical connection of events. The legend, the anecdote, the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the description of countries and peoples, the representation of political and mercantile relations—all the facts of so infinite importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of being nailed to a particular year—are put into possession of their long-suspended rights. In the procuring of historic materials Polybius shows a caution and perseverance such as are not perhaps paralleled in antiquity; he avails himself of documents, gives comprehensive attention to the literature of different nations, makes the most extensive use of his favourable position for collecting the accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine, methodically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.(28) Truthfulness is his nature. In all great matters he has no interest for one state or against another, for this man or against that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential connection of events, to present which in their true relation of causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but the sole task of the historian. Lastly, the narrative is a model of completeness, simplicity, and clearness. Still all these uncommon advantages by no means constitute a historian of the first rank. Polybius grasps his literary task, as he grasped his practical, with great understanding, but with the understanding alone. History, the struggle of necessity and liberty, is a moral problem; Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event, the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly artificial mechanism which is named the state. So far Polybius was certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous problem of raising itself to unparalleled internal and external greatness without producing a single statesman of genius in the highest sense, and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself with wonderful almost mathematical consistency. But the element of moral freedom bears sway in the history of every people, and it was not neglected by Polybius in the history of Rome with impunity. His treatment of all questions, in which right, honour, religion are involved, is not merely shallow, but radically false. The same holds true wherever a genetic construction is required; the purely mechanical attempts at explanation, which Polybius substitutes, are sometimes altogether desperate; there is hardly, for instance, a more foolish political speculation than that which derives the excellent constitution of Rome from a judicious mixture of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, and deduces the successes of Rome from the excellence of her constitution. His conception of relations is everywhere dreadfully jejune and destitute of imagination: his contemptuous and over-wise mode of treating religious matters is altogether offensive. The narrative, preserving throughout an intentional contrast to the usual Greek historiography with its artistic style, is doubtless correct and clear, but flat and languid, digressing with undue frequency into polemical discussions or into biographical, not seldom very self- sufficient, description of his own experiences. A controversial vein pervades the whole work; the author destined his treatise primarily for the Romans, and yet found among them only a very small circle that understood him; he felt that he remained in the eyes of the Romans a foreigner, in the eyes of his countrymen a renegade, and that with his grand conception of his subject he belonged more to the future than to the present Accordingly he was not exempt from a certain ill-humour and personal bitterness, which frequently appear after a quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his attacks upon the superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical Roman historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the historian to that of the reviewer. Polybius is not an attractive author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all ornament and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps can be named to whom we are indebted for so much real instruction. His books are like the sun in the field of Roman history; at the point where they begin the veil of mist which still envelops the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars is raised, and at the point where they end a new and, if possible, still more vexatious twilight begins.
Roman Chroniclers
In singular contrast to this grand conception and treatment of Roman history by a foreigner stands the contemporary historical literature of native growth. At the beginning of this period we still find some chronicles written in Greek such as that already mentioned(29) of Aulus Postumius (consul in 603), full of wretched rationalizing, and that of Gaius Acilius (who closed it at an advanced age about 612). Yet under the influence partly of Catonian patriotism, partly of the more refined culture of the Scipionic circle, the Latin language gained so decided an ascendency in this field, that of the later historical works not more than one or two occur written in Greek;(30) and not only so, but the older Greek chronicles were translated into Latin and were probably read mainly in these translations. Unhappily beyond the employment of the mother-tongue there is hardly anything else deserving of commendation in the chronicles of this epoch composed in Latin. They were numerous and detailed enough—there are mentioned, for example, those of Lucius Cassius Hemina (about 608), of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul in 621), of Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus (consul in 625), of Gaius Fannius (consul in 632). To these falls to be added the digest of the official annals of the city in eighty books, which Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul in 621), a man esteemed also as a jurist, prepared and published as -pontifex maximus-, thereby closing the city-chronicle in so far as thenceforth the pontifical records, although not exactly discontinued, were no longer at any rate, amidst the increasing diligence of private chroniclers, taken account of in literature. All these annals, whether they gave themselves forth as private or as official works, were substantially similar compilations of the extant historical and quasi-historical materials; and the value of their authorities as well as their formal value declined beyond doubt in the same proportion as their amplitude increased. Chronicle certainly nowhere presents truth without fiction, and it would be very foolish to quarrel with Naevius and Pictor because they have not acted otherwise than Hecataeus and Saxo Grammaticus; but the later attempts to build houses out of such castles in the air put even the most tried patience to a severe test No blank in tradition presents so wide a chasm, but that this system of smooth and downright invention will fill it up with playful facility. The eclipses of the sun, the numbers of the census, family-registers, triumphs, are without hesitation carried back from the current year up to the year One; it stands duly recorded, in what year, month, and day king Romulus went up to heaven, and how king Servius Tullius triumphed over the Etruscans first on the 25th November 183, and again on the 25th May 187, In entire harmony with such details accordingly the vessel in which Aeneas had voyaged from Ilion to Latium was shown in the Roman docks, and even the identical sow, which had served as a guide to Aeneas, was preserved well pickled in the Roman temple of Vesta. With the lying disposition of a poet these chroniclers of rank combine all the tiresome exactness of a notary, and treat their great subject throughout with the dulness which necessarily results from the elimination at once of all poetical and all historical elements. When we read, for instance, in Piso that Romulus avoided indulging in his cups when he had a sitting of the senate next day; or that Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol to the Sabines out of patriotism, with a view to deprive the enemy of their shields; we cannot be surprised at the judgment of intelligent contemporaries as to all this sort of scribbling, "that it was not writing history, but telling stories to children." Of far greater excellence were isolated works on the history of the recent past and of the present, particularly the history of the Hannibalic war by Lucius Caelius Antipater (about 633) and the history of his own time by Publius Sempronius Asellio, who was a little younger. These exhibited at least valuable materials and an earnest spirit of truth, in the case of Antipater also a lively, although strongly affected, style of narrative; yet, judging from all testimonies and fragments, none of these books came up either in pithy form or in originality to the "Origines" of Cato, who unhappily created as little of a school in the field of history as in that of politics.
Memoirs and Speeches
The subordinate, more individual and ephemeral, species of historical literature—memoirs, letters, and speeches—were strongly represented also, at least as respects quantity. The first statesmen of Rome already recorded in person their experiences: such as Marcus Scaurus (consul in 639), Publius Rufus (consul in 649), Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), and even the regent Sulla; but none of these productions seem to have been of importance for literature otherwise than by the substance of their contents. The collection of letters of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, was remarkable partly for the classical purity of the language and the high spirit of the writer, partly as the first correspondence published in Rome, and as the first literary production of a Roman lady. The literature of speeches preserved at this period the stamp impressed on it by Cato; advocates' pleadings were not yet looked on as literary productions, and such speeches as were published were political pamphlets. During the revolutionary commotions this pamphlet-literature increased in extent and importance, and among the mass of ephemeral productions there were some which, like the Philippics of Demosthenes and the fugitive pieces of Courier, acquired a permanent place in literature from the important position of their authors or from their own weight. Such were the political speeches of Gaius Laelius and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent Latin as of the noblest patriotism; such were the gushing speeches of Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place and the time—his description of the senatorial juryman has been given already(31)—the national comedy borrowed various points; such above all were the numerous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose fiery words preserved in a faithful mirror the impassioned earnestness, the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny of that lofty nature.
Sciences
In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions by Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year 600, presents a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome the method usual among the Greeks of handling professional subjects by means of dialogue, and to give to his treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a machinery of conversation in which the persons, time, and place were distinctly specified. But the later men of science, such as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside this method, more poetical than practical, both in the sciences of general culture and in the special professional sciences. The increasing value of science as such, and the preponderance of a material interest in it at Rome, are clearly reflected in this rapid rejection of the fetters of artistic form. We have already spoken(32) in detail of the sciences of general liberal culture, grammar or rather philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far as these now became essential elements of the usual Roman training and thereby first began to be dissociated from the professional sciences properly so called.
Philology
In the field of letters Latin philology flourished vigorously, in close association with the philological treatment—long ago placed on a sure basis—of Greek literature. It was already mentioned that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found their -diaskeuastae- and revisers of their text;(33) it was also noticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with the regulation of orthography and of grammar. At the same period we find isolated attempts to develop archaeology from the historical side; although the dissertations of the unwieldy annalists of this age, such as those of Hemina "on the Censors" and of Tuditanus "on the Magistrates," can hardly have been better than their chronicles. Of more interest were the treatise on the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable for political objects,(34) and the metrically composed -Didascaliae- of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the Latin drama. But those early attempts at a scientific treatment of the mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the Bodmer- Klopstock period; and we may likewise without injustice assign but a modest place to the antiquarian researches of this epoch.
Stilo
The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650.(35) He first went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables. He devoted his special attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine. He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings and to ascertain in each case the "inventor," and at the same time brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his research. The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical, and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into things to his disciple Varro.
Rhetoric
The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might be expected, of a more subordinate kind. There was nothing here to be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the need for them, partly on account of vanity and money. Such a manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models. Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics—that "loquacious science of inability to speak"—whose finished master, for sheer fear of expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to pronounce his own name. The Greek school-terminology is throughout and intentionally avoided. Very earnestly the author points out the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice in the Roman advocate-world. It deserves attention, that the opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric,(37) continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity and a greater usefulness.
Philosophy
Philosophy, in fine, was not yet represented in literature, since neither did an inward need develop a national Roman philosophy nor did outward circumstances call forth a Latin philosophical authorship. It cannot even be shown with certainty that there were Latin translations of popular summaries of philosophy belonging to this period; those who pursued philosophy read and disputed in Greek.
Professional Sciences
Jurisprudence
In the professional sciences there was but little activity. Well as the Romans understood how to farm and how to calculate, physical and mathematical research gained no hold among them. The consequences of neglecting theory appeared practically in the low state of medical knowledge and of a portion of the military sciences. Of all the professional sciences jurisprudence alone was flourishing. We cannot trace its internal development with chronological accuracy. On the whole ritual law fell more and more into the shade, and at the end of this period stood nearly in the same position as the canon law at the present day. The finer and more profound conception of law, on the other hand, which substitutes for outward criteria the motive springs of action within—such as the development of the ideas of offences arising from intention and from carelessness respectively, and of possession entitled to temporary protection—was not yet in existence at the time of the Twelve Tables, but was so in the age of Cicero, and probably owed its elaboration substantially to the present epoch. The reaction of political relations on the development of law has been already indicated on several occasions; it was not always advantageous. By the institution of the tribunal of the -Centumviri- to deal with inheritance,(38) for instance, there was introduced in the law of property a college of jurymen, which, like the criminal authorities, instead of simply applying the law placed itself above it and with its so-called equity undermined the legal institutions; one consequence of which among others was the irrational principle, that any one, whom a relative had passed over in his testament, was at liberty to propose that the testament should be annulled by the court, and the court decided according to its discretion.
The development of juristic literature admits of being more distinctly recognized. It had hitherto been restricted to collections of formularies and explanations of terms in the laws; at this period there was first formed a literature of opinions (-responsa-), which answers nearly to our modern collections of precedents. These opinions—which were delivered no longer merely by members of the pontifical college, but by every one who found persons to consult him, at home or in the open market-place, and with which were already associated rational and polemical illustrations and the standing controversies peculiar to jurisprudence—began to be noted down and to be promulgated in collections about the beginning of the seventh century. This was done first by the younger Cato (d. about 600) and by Marcus Brutus (nearly contemporary); and these collections were, as it would appear, arranged in the order of matters.(39) A strictly systematic treatment of the law of the land soon followed. Its founder was the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Mucius Scaevola (consul in 659, d. 672),(40) in whose family jurisprudence was, like the supreme priesthood, hereditary. His eighteen books on the -Ius Civile-, which embraced the positive materials of jurisprudence—legislative enactments, judicial precedents, and authorities—partly from the older collections, partly from oral tradition in as great completeness as possible, formed the starting- point and the model of the detailed systems of Roman law; in like manner his compendious treatise of "Definitions" (—oroi—) became the basis of juristic summaries and particularly of the books of Rules. Although this development of law proceeded of course in the main independently of Hellenism, yet an acquaintance with the philosophico-practical scheme-making of the Greeks beyond doubt gave a general impulse to the more systematic treatment of jurisprudence, as in fact the Greek influence is in the case of the last-mentioned treatise apparent in the very title. We have already remarked that in several more external matters Roman jurisprudence was influenced by the Stoa.(41)
Art exhibits still less pleasing results. In architecture, sculpture, and painting there was, no doubt, a more and more general diffusion of a dilettante interest, but the exercise of native art retrograded rather than advanced. It became more and more customary for those sojourning in Grecian lands personally to inspect the works of art; for which in particular the winter- quarters of Sulla's army in Asia Minor in 670-671 formed an epoch. Connoisseur-ship developed itself also in Italy. They had commenced with articles in silver and bronze; about the commencement of this epoch they began to esteem not merely Greek statues, but also Greek pictures. The first picture publicly exhibited in Rome was the Bacchus of Aristides, which Lucius Mummius withdrew from the sale of the Corinthian spoil, because king Attalus offered as much as 6000 -denarii- (260 pounds) for it. The buildings became more splendid; and in particular transmarine, especially Hymettian, marble (Cipollino) came into use for that purpose—the Italian marble quarries were not yet in operation. A magnificent colonnade still admired in the time of the empire, which Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the conqueror of Macedonia constructed in the Campus Martius, enclosed the first marble temple which the capital had seen; it was soon followed by similar structures built on the Capitol by Scipio Nasica (consul in 616), and near to the Circus by Gnaeus Octavius (consul in 626). The first private house adorned with marble columns was that of the orator Lucius Crassus (d. 663) on the Palatine.(42) But where they could plunder or purchase, instead of creating for themselves, they did so; it was a wretched indication of the poverty of Roman architecture, that it already began to employ the columns of the old Greek temples; the Roman Capitol, for instance, was embellished by Sulla with those of the temple of Zeus at Athens. The works, that were produced in Rome, proceeded from the hands of foreigners; the few Roman artists of this period, who are particularly mentioned, are without exception Italian or transmarine Greeks who had migrated thither. Such was the case with the architect Hermodorus from the Cyprian Salamis, who among other works restored the Roman docks and built for Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the temple of Jupiter Stator in the basilica constructed by him, and for Decimus Brutus (consul in 616) the temple of Mars in the Flaminian circus; with the sculptor Pasiteles (about 665) from Magna Graecia, who furnished images of the gods in ivory for Roman temples; and with the painter and philosopher Metrodorus of Athens, who was summoned to paint the pictures for the triumph of Lucius Paullus (587). It is significant that the coins of this epoch exhibit in comparison with those of the previous period a greater variety of types, but a retrogression rather than an improvement in the cutting of the dies.
Finally, music and dancing passed over in like manner from Hellas to Rome, solely in order to be there applied to the enhancement of decorative luxury. Such foreign arts were certainly not new in Rome; the state had from olden time allowed Etruscan flute-players and dancers to appear at its festivals, and the freedmen and the lowest class of the Roman people had previously followed this trade. But it was a novelty that Greek dances and musical performances should form the regular accompaniment of a genteel banquet. Another novelty was a dancing-school, such as Scipio Aemilianus full of indignation describes in one of his speeches, in which upwards of five hundred boys and girls—the dregs of the people and the children of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up together—received instruction from a ballet-master in far from decorous castanet-dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of the proscribed Greek stringed instruments. It was a novelty too— not so much that a consular and -pontifex maximus- like Publius Scaevola (consul in 621) should catch the balls in the circus as nimbly as he solved the most complicated questions of law at home— as that young Romans of rank should display their jockey-arts before all the people at the festal games of Sulla. The government occasionally attempted to check such practices; as for instance in 639, when all musical instruments, with the exception of the simple flute indigenous in Latium, were prohibited by the censors. But Rome was no Sparta; the lax government by such prohibitions rather drew attention to the evils than attempted to remedy them by a sharp and consistent application of the laws.
If, in conclusion, we glance back at the picture as a whole which the literature and art of Italy unfold to our view from the death of Ennius to the beginning of the Ciceronian age, we find in these respects as compared with the preceding epoch a most decided decline of productiveness. The higher kinds of literature—such as epos, tragedy, history—have died out or have been arrested in their development. The subordinate kinds—the translation and imitation of the intrigue-piece, the farce, the poetical and prose brochure—alone are successful; in this last field of literature swept by the full hurricane of revolution we meet with the two men of greatest literary talent in this epoch, Gaius Gracchus and Gaius Lucilius, who stand out amidst a number of more or less mediocre writers just as in a similar epoch of French literature Courier and Beranger stand out amidst a multitude of pretentious nullities. In the plastic and delineative arts likewise the production, always weak, is now utterly null. On the other hand the receptive enjoyment of art and literature flourished; as the Epigoni of this period in the political field gathered in and used up the inheritance that fell to their fathers, we find them in this field also as diligent frequenters of plays, as patrons of literature, as connoisseurs and still more as collectors in art. The most honourable aspect of this activity was its learned research, which put forth a native intellectual energy, more especially in jurisprudence and in linguistic and antiquarian investigation. The foundation of these sciences which properly falls within the present epoch, and the first small beginnings of an imitation of the Alexandrian hothouse poetry, already herald the approaching epoch of Roman Alexandrinism. All the productions of the present epoch are smoother, more free from faults, more systematic than the creations of the sixth century. The literati and the friends of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves that the season of the nation's youth was past, and may have ever and anon perhaps felt in the still depths of the heart a secret longing to stray once more in the delightful paths of youthful error.
NOTES FOR VOLUME IV
Chapter I
1. III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain.
2. Italica must have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in Italy forum et -conciliabulum civium Romanorum-; Aquae Sextiae in Gaul had a similar origin afterwards. The formation of transmarine burgess- communities only began at a later date with Carthage and Narbo: yet it is remarkable that Scipio already made a first step, in a certain sense, in that direction.
3. III. VII. Gracchus
4. The chronology of the war with Viriathus is far from being precisely settled. It is certain that the appearance of Viriathus dates from the conflict with Vetilius (Appian, Hisp. 61; Liv. lii.; Oros. v. 4), and that he perished in 615 (Diod. Vat. p. 110, etc.); the duration of his rule is reckoned at eight (Appian, Hisp. 63), ten (Justin, xliv. 2), eleven (Diodorus, p. 597), fifteen (Liv. liv.; Eutrop. iv. 16; Oros. v. 4; Flor. i. 33), and twenty years (Vellei. ii. 90). The first estimate possesses some probability, because the appearance of Viriathus is connected both in Diodorus (p. 591; Vat. p. 107, 108) and in Orosius (v. 4) with the destruction of Corinth. Of the Roman governors, with whom Viriathus fought, several undoubtedly belong to the northern province; for though Viriathus was at work chiefly in the southern, he was not exclusively so (Liv. lii.); consequently we must not calculate the number of the years of his generalship by the number of these names.
5. IV. I. Celtiberian War
6. III. VII. Massinissa
7. III. VI. Peace, III. VII. Carthage
8. The line of the coast has been in the course of centuries so much changed that the former local relations are but imperfectly recognizable on the ancient site. The name of the city is preserved by Cape Cartagena—also called from the saint's tomb found there Ras Sidi bu Said—the eastern headland of the peninsula, projecting into the gulf with its highest point rising to 393 feet above the level of the sea.
9. The dimensions given by Beule (Fouilles a Carthage, 1861) are as follows in metres and in Greek feet (1=0.309 metre):—
Outer wall 2 metres = 6 1/2 feet.
Corridor 1.9 " = 6 "
Front wall of casemates 1 " = 3 1/4 "
Casemate rooms 4.2 " = 14 "
Back wall of casemates 1 " = 3 1/4 "
————————————
Whole breadth of the walls 10.1 metres = 33 feet.
Or, as Diodorus (p. 522) states it, 22 cubits (1 Greek cubit = 1 1/2 feet), while Livy (ap. Oros. iv. 22) and Appian (Pun. 95), who seem to have had before them another less accurate passage of Polybius, state the breadth of the walls at 30 feet. The triple wall of Appian—as to which a false idea has hitherto been diffused by Floras (i. 31)—denotes the outer wall, and the front and back walls of the casemates. That this coincidence is not accidental, and that we have here in reality the remains of the famed walls of Carthage before us, will be evident to every one: the objections of Davis (Carthage and her Remains, p. 370 et seq.) only show how little even the utmost zeal can adduce in opposition to the main results of Beule. Only we must maintain that all the ancient authorities give the statements of which we are now speaking with reference not to the citadel-wall, but to the city-wall on the landward side, of which the wall along the south side of the citadel-hill was an integral part (Oros. iv. 22). In accordance with this view, the excavations at the citadel-hill on the east, north, and west, have shown no traces of fortifications, whereas on the south side they have brought to light the very remains of this great wall. There is no reason for regarding these as the remains of a separate fortification of the citadel distinct from the city wall; it may be presumed that further excavations at a corresponding depth—the foundation of the city wall discovered at the Byrsa lies fifty-six feet beneath the present surface—will bring to light like, or at any rate analogous, foundations along the whole landward side, although it is probable that at the point where the walled suburb of Magalia rested on the main wall the fortification was either weaker from the first or was early neglected. The length of the wall as a whole cannot be stated with precision; but it must have been very considerable, for three hundred elephants were stabled there, and the stores for their fodder and perhaps other spaces also as well as the gates are to be taken into account. It is easy to conceive how the inner city, within the walls of which the Byrsa was included, should, especially by way of contrast to the suburb of Magalia which had its separate circumvallation, be sometimes itself called Byrsa (App. Pun. 117; Nepos, ap. Serv. Aen. i. 368).
10. Such is the height given by Appian, l. c.; Diodorus gives the height, probably inclusive of the battlements, at 40 cubits or 60 feet. The remnant preserved is still from 13 to 16 feet (4-5 metres) high.
11. The rooms of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of the entrances is not specified. Whether these dimensions and the proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by a more accurate investigation. The partition-walls, which separate the apartments, have a thickness of 1.1 metre = 3 1/2 feet.
12. Oros. iv. 22. Fully 2000 paces, or—as Polybius must have said—16 stadia, are=about 3000 metres. The citadel-hill, on which the church of St. Louis now stands, measures at the top about 1400, half-way up about 2600, metres in circumference (Beule, p. 22); for the circumference at the base that estimate will very well suffice.
13. It now bears the fort Goletta.
14. That this Phoenician word signifies a basin excavated in a circular shape, is shown both by Diodorus (iii. 44), and by its being employed by the Greeks to denote a "cup." It thus suits only the inner harbour of Carthage, and in that sense it is used by Strabo (xvii. 2, 14, where it is strictly applied to the admiral's island) and Fest. Ep. v. -cothones-, p. 37. Appian (Pun. 127) is not quite accurate in describing the rectangular harbour in front of the Cothon as part of it.
15. —Oios pepnutai, toi de skiai aissousin—.
16. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria, III. IX. Macedonia
17. III. X. Macedonia Broken Up
18. This road was known already by the author of the pseudo- Aristotelian treatise De Mirabilibus as a commercial route between the Adriatic and Black seas, viz. As that along which the wine jars from Corcyra met halfway those from Thasos and Lesbos. Even now it runs substantially in the same direction from Durazzo, cutting through the mountains of Bagora (Candavian chain) near the lake of Ochrida (Lychnitis), by way of Monastir to Salonica.
19. III. X. Greek National Party
20. III. IX. The Achaeans
21. III. IX. The Achaeans
22. At Sabine townships, at Parma, and even at Italica in Spain (p. 214), several pediments marked with the name of Mummius have been brought to light, which once supported gifts forming part of the spoil.
23. III. III. Organization of the Provinces
24. III. VIII. Final Regulation of Greece
25. The question whether Greece did or did not become a Roman province in 608, virtually runs into a dispute about words. It is certain that the Greek communities throughout remained "free" (C. I. Gr. 1543, 15; Caesar, B. C. iii. 5; Appian, Mithr. 58; Zonar. ix. 31). But it is no less certain that Greece was then "taken possession of" by the Romans (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21; 1 Maccab. viii. 9, 10); that thenceforth each community paid a fixed tribute to Rome (Pausan. vii. 16, 6; comp. Cic. De Prov. Cons. 3, 5), the little island of Gyarus, for instance, paying 150 —drachmae— annually (Strabo, x. 485); that the "rods and axes" of the Roman governor thenceforth ruled in Greece (Polyb. xxxviii. l. c.; comp. Cic. Verr. l. i. 21, 55), and that he thenceforth exercised the superintendence over the constitutions of the cities (C. I. Gr. 1543), as well as in certain cases the criminal jurisdiction (C. I. Gr. 1543; Plut. Cim. 2), just as the senate had hitherto done; and that, lastly, the Macedonian provincial era was also in use in Greece. Between these facts there is no inconsistency, or at any rate none further than is involved in the position of the free cities generally, which are spoken of sometimes as if excluded from the province (e. g. Sueton. Cats., 25; Colum. xi. 3, 26), sometimes as assigned to it (e. g. Joseph. Ant. Jud. xiv. 4, 4). The Roman domanial possessions in Greece were, no doubt, restricted to the territory of Corinth and possibly some portions of Euboea (C. I. Gr. 5879), and there were no subjects in the strict sense there at all; yet if we look to the relations practically subsisting between the Greek communities and the Macedonian governor, Greece may be reckoned as included in the province of Macedonia in the same manner as Massilia in the province of Narbo or Dyrrhachium in that of Macedonia. We find even cases that go much further: Cisalpine Gaul consisted after 665 of mere burgess or Latin communities and was yet made a province by Sulla, and in the time of Caesar we meet with regions which consisted exclusively of burgess-communities and yet by no means ceased to be provinces. In these cases the fundamental idea of the Roman -provinicia- comes out very clearly; it was primarily nothing but a "command," and all the administrative and judicial functions of the commandant were originally collateral duties and corollaries of his military position.
On the other hand, if we look to the formal sovereignty of the free communities, it must be granted that the position of Greece was not altered in point of constitutional law by the events of 608. It was a difference de facto rather than de jure, when instead of the Achaean league the individual communities of Achaia now appeared by the side of Rome as tributary protected states, and when, after the erection of Macedonia as a separate Roman province, the latter relieved the authorities of the capital of the superintendence over the Greek client-states. Greece therefore may or may not be regarded as a part of the "command" of Macedonia, according as the practical or the formal point of view preponderates; but the preponderance is justly conceded to the former.
26. III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
27. A remarkable proof of this is found in the names employed to designate the fine bronze and copper wares of Greece, which in the time of Cicero were called indiscriminately "Corinthian" or "Delian" copper. Their designation in Italy was naturally derived not from the places of manufacture but from those of export (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 2, 9); although, of course, we do not mean to deny that similar vases were manufactured in Corinth and Delos themselves.
28. III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus
29. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
30. III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus
31. Several letters recently brought to light (Munchener Sitzungsberichte, 1860, p. 180 et seq.) from the kings Eumenes II, and Attalus II to the priest of Pessinus, who was uniformly called Attis (comp. Polyb. xxii. 20), very clearly illustrate these relations. The earliest of these and the only one with a date, written in the 34th year of the reign of Eumenes on the 7th day before the end of Gorpiaeus, and therefore in 590-1 u. c. offers to the priest military aid in order to wrest from the Pesongi (not otherwise known) temple-land occupied by them. The following, likewise from Eumenes, exhibits the king as a party in the feud between the priest of Pessinus and his brother Aiorix. Beyond doubt both acts of Eumenes were included among those which were reported at Rome in 590 et seq. as attempts on his part to interfere further in Gallic affairs, and to support his partisans in that quarter (Polyb. xxxi. 6, 9; xxxii. 3, 5). On the other hand it is plain from one of the letters of his successor Attalus that the times had changed and his wishes had lowered their tone. The priest Attis appears to have at a conference at Apamea obtained once more from Attalus the promise of armed assistance; but afterwards the king writes to him that in a state council held for the purpose, at which Athenaeus (certainly the known brother of the king), Sosander, Menogenes, Chlorus, and other relatives (—anagkaioi—) had been present, after long hesitation the majority had at length acceded to the opinion of Chlorus that nothing should be done without previously consulting the Romans; for, even if a success were obtained, they would expose themselves to its being lost again, and to the evil suspicion "which they had cherished also against his brother" (Eumenes II.).
32. In the same testament the king gave to his city Pergamus "freedom," that is the —demokratia—, urban self-government. According to the tenor of a remarkable document that has recently been found there (Staatsrecht, iii(3). p. 726) after the testament was opened, but before its confirmation by the Romans, the Demos thus constituted resolved to confer urban burgess-rights on the classes of the population hitherto excluded from them, especially on the -paroeci- entered in the census and on the soldiers dwelling in town and country, including the Macedonians, in order thus to bring about a good understanding among the whole population. Evidently the burgesses, in confronting the Romans with this comprehensive reconciliation as an accomplished fact, desired, before the Roman rule was properly introduced, to prepare themselves against it and to take away from the foreign rulers the possibility of using the differences of rights within the population for breaking up its municipal freedom.
33. These strange "Heliopolites" may, according to the probable opinion which a friend has expressed to me, be accounted for by supposing that the liberated slaves constituted themselves citizens of a town Heliopolis—not otherwise mentioned or perhaps having an existence merely in imagination for the moment—which derived its name from the God of the Sun so highly honoured in Syria.
34. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
35. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
36. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
37. III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
38. III. IX. Armenia
39. From him proceed the coins with the inscription "Shekel Israel," and the date of the "holy Jerusalem," or the "deliverance of Sion." The similar coins with the name of Simon, the prince (Nessi) of Israel, belong not to him, but to Bar-Cochba the leader of the insurgents in the time of Hadrian.
40. III. III. Illyrian Piracy
41. IV. I. New Organization of Spain
42. III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
Chapter II
1. In 537 the law restricting re-election to the consulship was suspended during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to 551 (p. 14; Liv. xxvii. 6). But after the death of Marcellus in 546 re-elections to the consulship, if we do not include the abdicating consuls of 592, only occurred in the years 547, 554, 560, 579, 585, 586, 591, 596, 599, 602; consequently not oftener in those fifty-six years than, for instance, in the ten years 401-410. Only one of these, and that the very last, took place in violation of the ten years' interval (i. 402); and beyond doubt the singular election of Marcus Marcellus who was consul in 588 and 599 to a third consulship in 602, with the special circumstances of which we are not acquainted, gave occasion to the law prohibiting re-election to the consulship altogether (Liv. Ep. 56); especially as this proposal must have been introduced before 605, seeing that it was supported by Cato (p. 55, Jordan).
2. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries
3. III. XI. Festivals
4. IV. I. General Results
5. III. XII. Results
6. I. XIII. Landed Proprietors
7. It was asserted even then, that the human race in that quarter was pre-eminently fitted for slavery by its especial power of endurance. Plautus (Trin. 542) commends the Syrians: -genus quod patientissitmum est hominum-.
8. III. XII. Rural Slaves ff., III. XII. Culture of Oil and Wine, and Rearing of Cattle
9. III. XII. Pastoral Husbandry
10. III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa
11. The hybrid Greek name for the workhouse (-ergastulum-, from —ergaszomai—, after the analogy of -stabulum-, -operculum-) is an indication that this mode of management came to the Romans from a region where the Greek language was used, but at a period when a thorough Hellenic culture was not yet attained.
12. III. VI. Guerilla War in Sicily
13. III. XII. Falling Off in the Population
14. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
15. IV. I. Cilicia
16. Even now there are not unfrequently found in front of Castrogiovanni, at the point where the ascent is least abrupt, Roman projectiles with the name of the consul of 621: L. Piso L. f. cos.
17. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws
18. III. I. Capital and Its Power in Carthage
19. II. III. Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in Elevating the Farmer-Class
20. III. XI. Assignations of Land
21. II. II. Public Land
22. III. XII. Falling Off of the Population
23. IV. II. Permanent Criminal Commissions
24. III. XI. Position of the Governors
25. III. IX. Death of Scipio
26. III. XI. Reform of the Centuries
27. III. VII. Gracchus
28. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
29. IV. I. Mancinus
30. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws
31. II. III. Its Influence in Legislation
32. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
33. II. III. Attempts at Counter-Revolution
34. This fact, hitherto only partially known from Cicero (De L. Agr. ii. 31. 82; comp. Liv. xlii. 2, 19), is now more fully established by the fragments of Licinianus, p. 4. The two accounts are to be combined to this effect, that Lentulus ejected the possessors in consideration of a compensatory sum fixed by him, but accomplished nothing with real landowners, as he was not entitled to dispossess them and they would not consent to sell.
35. II. II. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius
36. III. XI. Rise of A City Rabble
37. III. IX. Nullity of the Comitia