Epirus, as you may see, is the north-western region of Greece, and the nearest to Italy. Pyrrhus had allied himself by marriage with Ptolemy of Egypt and had made a great effort to gain the throne of Macedonia, but was defeated in that attempt and had to content himself awhile with being king of his own little country of Epirus. It was then that there came to him, and was welcomed by him, a call to their assistance by the people of Tarentum menaced by the Roman armies.

Pyrrhic victories

Pyrrhus marched into Italy with a force that was strong in cavalry and also in elephants. The elephants seem to have terrified the Romans, and Pyrrhus won several victories. But though he won victories it was always at so great a cost to his own force that the phrase "a Pyrrhic victory," which you may have heard, is taken even now to mean a victory in which the victor loses more heavily than the vanquished.

We are now, I would have you see, at a point of some particular interest in the great story, for it is the first time that Greek and Roman have been facing each other and fighting each other in any large force and as nation against nation.

Pyrrhus, after his victories, called on Rome to surrender. His army was then on the Roman territory of Latium. Rome replied that she would hold no parley with a foe as long as any of his troops were on her soil. It was a proud reply, worthy of her future greatness, to a victorious enemy at her very gates; but she had formed a strong confederation of several states that acknowledged her as their sovereign and was still formidable. Pyrrhus won another victory, but again gained little by it, and finding that his project did not prosper in Italy itself he went over to Sicily.

He came to that island on the invitation of the Greek city states there, who wished his help to rid them of the Carthaginians, but here again, although he won victories, he could not establish his power. He made himself thoroughly unpopular with the Greeks, who had called him in, by the despotic manner in which he tried to lord it over them, and, what was still worse for him, his attacks on the Carthaginians drove them to make an alliance with the Romans against him. A result of that alliance was that when, after three years of unproductive fighting in Sicily, he went back to the mainland of Italy, his fleet was attacked and severely handled by the Carthaginians. He fought one more battle against the Romans and their confederates, in Italy, but he did not receive much support from the Tarentines or any of the Italian-Greek cities. This time it was not even a "Pyrrhic victory" for him, but a decisive defeat, and he went back to his native Epirus after a six years' absence. He was killed some years later in a political revolution in Greece.

The total result of the enterprise of Pyrrhus was to establish Rome more firmly than ever as the mistress state of Italy, and to bring her into alliance, which was very soon to be broken, with the great sea-power of the Carthaginians.

The story of Rome herself, within the city walls, during all the years from the expulsion of the Etruscan kings down to the date, about 280 B.C., to which we have now come, was one of perpetual struggle between the patricians, the aristocratic party, and the plebs, the party of the people, the populace. The patricians had all the power after the first driving out of the Tarquins, as the Etruscan kings were called, because they had been the chief managers of the revolution against them, but all through the later years the populace grew in power, and took the power out of the hands of the patricians. The constitution of the state became, as we should say, more and more democratic. The power fell more and more into the hands of the "demos," the plebeians, the common people.

The Romans, as you saw, had made an alliance with the Carthaginians at the time of the invasion of Italy and Sicily by Pyrrhus; but it was a friendship that lasted only a very short while. Our story is now coming to a point at which it will be very largely occupied by wars between these two nations who are now, for the moment, friends. The Romans continually accused the Carthaginians of treachery and of broken faith. The Roman name for the Carthaginians was "Punici," which is somehow derived from the name, Phœnicia, of the country from which, as you know, the colony of Carthage was founded. So bitterly did the Romans resent their acts of treachery that the words "Punica fides," that is to say, Punic, or Carthaginian, faith, were used as a kind of proverb to express a faith or fidelity which was no faith at all—a promise made only to be broken. Probably they were not very true to their engagements; they were a very bold, enterprising people, wonderful sailors, considering the ships that they had. They went round Africa, they planted colonies all along the shores of Spain, they went to the Cassiterides, or tin islands, which are said to have been our own British islands. It is a marvellous record of adventure.

But they do not seem to have been as highly civilised as the Romans, who had been very largely influenced by this time by that civilisation and culture of Greece which we have seen spreading itself very widely. Greece had some influence even with them, for among the temples for the worship of those gods Baal and Astaroth, which they had brought with them from Phœnicia, was a temple to the Greek god Apollo. But in thinking over the whole story of the intercourse and the fighting between Rome and Carthage we ought to remember that it is almost entirely from the Roman point of view that we have the story told. We do not know much of what the Carthaginians might have had to say about the Romans. They might perhaps have said something about broken faith on the Roman side also. It is likely that neither party was very particular about keeping promises which it was more convenient not to keep.

First Punic war

However that may be, it was almost inevitable that trouble must break out between them before long; for here was the great and growing land power of Rome on the northern side of the Mediterranean stretching down the long leg of Italy; here was Carthage, with its powerful navy, its determined sailors, and its adventurous courage, on the southern shore; and there was Sicily, supposed to be independent of both, lying like a football just at the very toe of Italy, ready to be kicked, and reaching nearly over to the Carthaginian coast. It was an unfortunate position for that island, and may remind us of the position of Palestine as the bridge between the great ancient empires of Egypt and Babylonia. There is this difference between the positions of the two, that the fighting round about Sicily was sure to be largely naval, an affair of sea-fights. It was not so in Palestine.

Pyrrhus was driven back home to Epirus out of Italy in 275 B.C. In 268 B.C., only seven years later, began the first of those great struggles between Rome and Carthage which are known as the Punic Wars. There were three of these wars, interrupted by truces which—owing, as the Romans said, to the infamous "Punica fides"—never were lasting. The true reason doubtless was that both powers were too masterful in character to endure a rival. One or other had to have the upper hand. There were times in the struggle when it looked very doubtful indeed which would have it.

Sicily was of great importance to the Romans, because they depended much on the supply of corn which it gave them. That was another reason, besides the reason of its position as a kind of bridge or stepping-stone between the two great rivals, why it became their battle-field. If the Carthaginians could get Sicily, they could cut off much of the enemy's food supply. The Romans, for their own preservation, had to make sure of Sicily. It was over the possession of Sicily that this first Punic war broke out.

The Romans had gradually made their fleet stronger and stronger until they were powerful enough to risk a sea battle with the great naval forces of Carthage, and they twice met and beat the navies of Carthage, once in 260 B.C. and again four years later. Thus, having command of the sea, they ventured to send an army into Africa, against Carthage itself, but there they suffered a very heavy defeat and their general was taken captive. The Carthaginians were much aided in this victory by Spartan mercenaries. But the fate of Sicily, where there were both Roman and Carthaginian armies, remained to be decided. The war went on, with varying results, in and around that unfortunate island, with now the one nation and now the other gaining a victory, until a decision was at length reached by a great victory of the Romans in 241 B.C. This war had lasted twenty-seven years.

And here we may note a point in which Rome seems to have been like our own country, of which Napoleon I. complained that she always won "the last battle of a war." Many times we see her very hardly pressed, with the enemy at the gates of the city; but she goes on fighting and she wins the last battle, the battle which counts and which settles the result in her favour.

This was more particularly so in the Second Punic War, which began in 219 B.C.

Carthage had very great trouble with her own mercenary troops at the end of the first war against Rome; they demanded their pay, which was long overdue. That matter was largely settled by such heavy fighting between them and the Carthaginians themselves that comparatively few of the mercenaries were left alive at the end of it to receive pay, if there had been any for them.

In the years that followed, Carthage became rich and prosperous. She had a large trade with the interior of Africa as well as with all the coast cities round the Mediterranean. She worked mines in Spain, and in order to draw more wealth from that rich and fertile country she gradually made herself mistress of a great part of it, and it was the capture by Carthage of Saguntum, a city in southern Spain, which was in the Roman alliance, that led to the outbreak in 219 B.C. of the Second Punic War.

Hannibal

The Carthaginian general who captured Saguntum, and thus provoked this greatest of the three Punic Wars, was Hannibal, perhaps the most famous leader of armies in all history.

In telling this story of the world in mere outline, as I am trying to tell it, it is impossible to speak of any of the details of his extraordinary campaign. He had his army there in southern Spain. He marched with it, meeting no very serious opposition, through Spain into that northern part of Italy which was then part of Gaul, and he thence descended into southern Italy and into the very heart of the Roman country itself. He won three great victories over the Roman armies on the way, and finally, a fourth, at Cannæ, in the autumn of 216 B.C., three years after he set out from Spain; and after Cannæ Rome herself seemed to lie at his mercy.

HANNIBAL.
HANNIBAL.

There were several rival parties in Carthage itself, and it seems likely that there was jealousy of Hannibal's great successes. Whatever the reason, the help he expected was very long in coming. He stayed on in Italy with his army which had been so victorious. The Romans would not come to another fixed battle with him, but they hovered about his army, continually harassing it. Probably it lost much of its fighting force in this time of waiting. It was not until nine years after Cannæ that Hannibal's brother, Hasdrubal, was sent with an army to his help, and by that time the Romans had so recovered their strength that they met and defeated, on the Metaurus, this army of Hasdrubal's; and it was really this great battle that settled the war. It left Hannibal helpless for any big fighting in Italy. It left the Romans free to make their power firm again in Spain. They were so little troubled by the presence of Hannibal, in his present condition, in Italy, that they again sent a force oversea into Africa. This time their arms were completely successful over the Carthaginians and their African allies. The Carthaginians, in their alarm, recalled Hannibal, to see if his genius could save them. But it was too late. He was defeated in the battle of Zama, in 202 B.C., and therewith came the end of the Second Punic War.

Really it was the end of Carthage as a formidable rival to the power of Rome. In the arrangements which followed she was compelled to give up her fleet, to give up all her claims on Spain, and on the islands in the Mediterranean, and to be content with her possessions in Africa itself.

Again, Rome had won the last battle.

Why she did not meet her doom after Cannæ, we can never know. Had Hannibal pressed forward after that victory the whole course of the great story would probably have been quite different. To what extent the hand of Providence interferes at such moments of the story as these we cannot tell—or to what extent man is allowed to work out his own fortunes without that correcting hand. Undoubtedly there are certain moments when it looks very much as if Providence had actively intervened; and perhaps, in our ignorance, we had better not attempt to say more than that.

For more than fifty years, Rome had no trouble from Carthage, nor can she really have been very seriously troubled when, in 149 B.C., she declared the Third Punic War. Carthage had existed during that half-century as an opulent and large city. She had made alliance with some of the African peoples. There were certain of the Romans who deemed her power dangerous. A pretext for a quarrel was easily found. Rome had now become so powerful that there was no question as to where the battle-fields of this war would be. There was no prospect of a Punic force in Italy or Sicily. The war, which began in 149, lasted for three years, for the Carthaginians within their walls made a desperate resistance which was worthy of their splendid history; but at the last they had to yield. No mercy was shown; the city was destroyed. Carthage ceased to exist.

CHAPTER XIII

ROME AT HOME AND IN THE EAST

As we have seen, there was a moment in the Second Punic War, just after the Battle of Cannæ, when it seems marvellous that Rome escaped destruction. What is almost more marvellous still is that it was just during the same time that she was fighting so hard, and in the end so victoriously, against the Carthaginians that she was able to fight and to extend her power towards the East, over Macedon, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It is an extent of conquest which must seem most marvellous of all when we consider how quickly it was all done. It is only a few pages back that we have seen her coming into the great story at all, as an actor of any importance, and now she begins to take such a masterful part in it that all the rest become of little account when compared with her.

How did that happen? We may be very sure that it could never have happened unless those Romans had been very uncommon people, unless they had possessed great courage and determination, and unless they had devised a very excellent form of government, both for themselves and also for the nations over whom their armies and their fleet got the mastery. The fighting forces had to be of splendid qualities in order to win that mastery, but the government had to be wonderfully wise in order to keep it.

It is a point that you should notice particularly, that all through the story of Rome, even from those days when the story is really so little known that you need not believe much more of it than you like—from the days of Romulus and Remus and of the mother-wolf—we are told that Romulus himself appointed a body of men called the Senate to manage the affairs of the city. What I want you to notice is that the name Senate comes from the Latin word "senex," meaning an old man. This governing assembly was an assembly of the old men, and they were thought likely to be the best rulers because they had lived long in the world and had been learning the lessons that it had to teach them longer than younger men.

The Senate

All through their story, down to a later date than that to which we have followed it, they paid very much reverence to old age. The power of the father was very great over his children, and the authority of the mother was looked up to only a little less than his. The children were thus brought up in the habit of obedience to their parents, and there is not the least doubt that this habit must have helped them to be obedient to military discipline when they had to go out and fight.

Even after their fathers had died they had a great reverence for their memory, and this reverence made them try to be worthy sons of their fathers and to rival them in fine actions, in showing courage and so on. And this same feeling made them very respectful of all the customs that their fathers had followed. The custom of their ancestors was the custom that they thought they ought to follow. Religion, in the sense of expecting a reward or punishment from the gods, whether for good or for bad deeds, does not seem to have counted for much in their lives, but this idea, of living in a manner of which their ancestors would have approved, to some extent took the place of religion. It made fine men and women of them, ready to fight their best for the state and to die for it.

I do not mean that the Senate was chosen by Romulus really of the hundred oldest men in his city—a hundred is said to have been its number at first, but it increased to many times a hundred as time went on—but it would have been made up of men of age and experience chosen from the most important citizens. Thus it continued right on to the time when the Tarquins, the Etruscan kings, were driven out; and after they were driven out the Senators chose, each year, two of their own number to be the rulers of the state for that year. As these rulers, called consuls, ruled for a year only, it is probable that the Senate knew pretty well what they were likely to do during that year. The Senate would not elect consuls who would go against the will of the Senate. So probably it was the Senate that really had the power.

The Senate was thus an aristocratic body, as we might call it. The men who composed it were called "patricians"; and there again you see the idea of reverence for the father's authority, because "patrician" comes from "pater," meaning a father.

But, as we have noticed already, the plebs, or common people, that is to say, all who were not patricians, began to assert themselves more and more against the government by this patrician, or aristocratic, class. After a while they gained the right of holding their own assembly, called the Comitia (from "co" or "com," meaning together, and "ire" to go)—they "went together" in this assembly. And as they were, of course, far more in number than the Senate, they succeeded by degrees in getting more and more power of law-making and so on into their hands. They, according to the laws which they succeeded in passing, became the chief power in the state, and the Senate was only a bad second to them.

But though that was the condition of things according to the law, the power which the Senate retained was, in fact, very considerable, because the Senate, still only a few hundred in number, were always there, in Rome, ready to be called together and come to a decision. The Comitia, composed of members many of whom lived at a distance outside Rome, and not at hand to express their views and give their votes, could not decide matters nearly so quickly; and often, when Rome was so constantly at war, important decisions had to be taken quickly.

Chiefly for this reason, though in part for various other reasons too, the power of the Senate was still great, and far greater than it would have been if they had kept strictly to what they were allowed to do by law.

The Forum, that famous place of assembly, of which we may still see the remains in Rome, was the site where the Comitia met. It was only those who were owners of land, or who owned property of a certain value, who had the right to vote in the Comitia, and it was a right that belonged only to citizens of the Roman Republic and a few cities outside, which had won this privilege by some special services rendered to the Republic. In its beginnings the Comitia may have been open to patricians only, but by the time that Rome came to take any big part in the story of the world the Comitia had become the assembly of the people, as opposed to the patrician Senate.

The Legions

The ownership of land or of property sufficient to give a man a vote for the Comitia made him a citizen in another sense also, namely, that he was obliged, if summoned, to take arms for the Republic and serve in war, and these citizens, thus summoned, became the famous Roman legions which won battles all over the world. After a while, as the power of Rome extended, legions were formed in subject provinces far away from the capital city, but they were always under the command of Roman officers.

It would take far too long to tell you about all the stages by which the people, the common citizens, grew to have more and more power, and the patricians to have less. You must understand that the Senate was not in the least like our House of Lords. The eldest son of a Senator did not become a Senator when his father died, but the numbers of the Senate were kept up by elections, and some of the highest officials of the Comitia became Senators by reason of their holding these offices, so that by degrees many of the plebs, that is, of the people themselves, became Senators, and this made the citizens more content than they would otherwise have been with the Senate deciding how the wars should be carried on and when it was right to make war and peace with their enemies.

The number of soldiers in a legion was from four to six thousand. These legionaries, as they were called, all being—at first, at all events—holders of property in the Roman Republic, must have felt that it was for themselves and for their own property that they went to fight. That must have added to their courage and determination. They were heavily-armed infantry soldiers, and to each legion was assigned some auxiliary lighter-armed troops and some cavalry.

The way of fighting was much the same as that of the Macedonian phalanx, and it was actually the Macedonian phalanx that the Roman legions came clashing up against when Rome began to extend herself eastward beyond Italy.

That came about in this way. Philip V., king of Macedon, had allied himself with the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War, that war in which Hannibal seemed to have Rome at his mercy. During its progress the Romans had made alliances with several powers in the East: with Egypt, where one of the Ptolemies was king; with Rhodes, the large island lying just off the coast of Asia Minor, which had a strong navy; with Pergamus, a city state on the mainland, which also had a strong fleet; and of course she was the defender, in Italy and in Sicily, of the Greek colonies there.

When she was threatened by Philip of Macedon on her north-eastern side, she put herself at the head of a confederation of Greek states against Philip.

Philip, on his part, had made an ally of Antiochus, one of the dynasty of Seleucus, who was king of Syria, and they agreed between them to take possession of Egypt, which had little power of its own at this time to withstand them.

Rome against Macedon

Thus the Romans, with all the trouble with Carthage on their hands on the one side, had these enemies in Macedonia and right away to Asia Minor on the other. But the alliance with Pergamus and Rhodes gave them strength in the eastern waters of the Mediterranean.

Then, in 201 B.C., the Punic War ended, in a manner probably quite different from that which Philip and his Syrian friend had expected. Rome was free to turn her full attention to the East.

The legions met the Macedonians in several battles in Greece itself; a force sent from Rhodes defeated an army that Philip had sent into Asia Minor, where his ally Antiochus, who had troubles in his own kingdom, seems to have given him very little help. Another of his armies was broken up by the Greeks themselves at Corinth. In fact he suffered disaster in all directions. Within two years the war was over. The power of Macedon was crushed. Philip was allowed, by the treaty of peace which followed, to keep his kingdom of Macedonia, but he lost all that he had claimed to hold in Asia Minor, and Greece was set free from the sovereignty of the Macedonians which had weighed over them ever since the conquests of Alexander.

At the end of the Punic War Rome had claimed, and had annexed as her own by right of conquest, both Sicily and Spain, from which she had expelled the Carthaginians, but she did not at first, after the defeat of Philip, claim any of the territory which he lost in the war. She left Greece to enjoy the freedom she had won for her. But she had, of course, increased her reputation and her power towards the east of Italy enormously. The Greeks looked on Rome as their liberator and champion. About Antiochus they perhaps would not have troubled themselves, since he had proved such a feeble ally to Philip, but Antiochus began to stir up trouble for himself by his own imprudence and ambition.

He had given such feeble help to his ally, Philip, partly because he was engaged in an attack on Egypt. Already, nearly twenty years before, he had attempted to gain possession of the Egyptian provinces Phœnicia and Palestine, but had been heavily defeated near Gaza.

Now, just at the time that Philip was being finally beaten off the field in Greece, Antiochus was completely successful against Egypt. The reigning Ptolemy was a child, the government was in weak hands, Antiochus had little trouble. Amongst other consequences of his victories, one was that Palestine and Jerusalem passed from the hands of Egypt into the control of Syria, and it seems that the Jews resented the manner in which the later Ptolemies had ruled them, and welcomed the change. The Egyptian garrison was driven out.

Philip, conquered by the Romans, had lost his hold of the Greek cities in Asia Minor, and Antiochus seems to have thought it was the moment to take advantage of the misfortunes of his ally and seized those cities for his own.

Both the Egyptian enterprise and also this in Asia Minor were a direct offence to the Romans, seeing that both Egyptians and Greeks were their allies and looked to Rome for protection.

They did not look in vain. It is likely that Antiochus did not realise how great Rome had become. She was a long way off. But a few years ago she was scarcely known. We may imagine that he had very little idea of the might of the nation whose allies he had dared to attack. Perhaps the Romans themselves did not realise their own strength or the weakness of the enemy, for they tried their best to come to terms with him.

It was all to no purpose. Antiochus actually ventured into Greece itself with an army; but before he achieved anything of importance the Romans had come to the help of the Greeks, and the Syrian force broke up and melted away after the very first battle.

The Legions in Asia

But the Romans had not finished with them yet. They had seen, perhaps, that the Syrians were less formidable than they had thought. The Syrian navy was beaten heavily by the combined navies of Rome, Rhodes, and Pergamus. The following year, that is, 190 B.C., saw a sight new to our story—Roman legions in Asia Minor. They were under the leadership of one of the Scipios, who was consul for the year and brother of that Scipio who had led the Roman legions in Africa in the last years of the Second Punic War, and for his victories had been given the surname of Scipio "Africanus." Scipio Africanus accompanied his brother, the consul, with the legions in Asia Minor. There West met East, and there was no doubt, after the first clash of arms, with which the victory must be. The Roman legionaries under this Scipio, who assumed the title of "Asiaticus," as his brother took that of "Africanus," had a discipline and a battle formation against which the impetuous attacks of the more lightly armed Syrians broke and wasted themselves. Just so far as the Romans chose to advance must those others recede before them. They had all Asia behind them for their retreat. Rome at her strongest could not utterly destroy the power of the East as she had destroyed the power of Carthage; but she could drive it back and back at her pleasure, so long and so far as she chose to put out her power. The East would come on again after each driving back, like flies at some great creature which has whisked them away for a moment, but they could not really get through the great creature's hide; certainly they could not get to any vital part, to any centre of his body where they could do him real hurt. Rome had perpetual trouble with these buzzing swarms in the East all through her days of world-power; but it was this kind of trouble—vexatious, and costing her much money and many lives of her soldiers, but never threatening her own life or power, as the Gauls from the north had threatened it once, and were to threaten it, and worse than threaten it, again.

After the first punishment had been given to Antiochus, Rome did not annex any of his dominions or form them into a province under a Roman governor. There is this remarkable difference that we may see between the Romans and other conquerors whom we have met in the course of this great story, that the Romans, before they went on farther, always consolidated, made solid and firm and almost a part of themselves, what they won.

They acted on the principle divide et impera, that is, disunite people and then you can rule them. They did not interfere much with the customs and laws of the peoples that they conquered. They let them manage their affairs in their own way. They expected them perhaps to pay tribute and to furnish soldiers for the army. So long as they did this they were not greatly troubled by their Roman governors. But—and this is the point on which the Romans insisted, and to which they owed a very great deal of their success—although these peoples were allowed to manage their own affairs, within their own borders, they were not allowed to make wars or treaties of peace and alliance or anything of that kind with their neighbours. On all such questions they had to refer back to Rome and ask her permission and advice and help.

One sees what the effect of that must have been—to make these always look to Rome as their sovereign. That was one effect. Another was that they were not able to combine together and so become strong enough to be a danger to that sovereign. And Rome was wise in her dealings with them. She punished them heavily if they did not obey her, but rewarded them, by giving them rights and privileges, if they were very faithful in obeying and in helping her.

The prudence of Rome

She was prudent, at this moment, in not attempting to annex any of the domain of Antiochus, because, if she had, she would have had this province lying far away out in the East, and between herself and this province would have been Greece and Macedonia, which were supposed to be free countries, though they doubtless knew that Rome could take them for her own if she chose.

Antiochus, lately the ally of Philip, had attacked and taken Philip's cities in Asia as soon as he knew that the Romans had broken Philip's power. Philip, in revenge, had helped the Romans when they attacked Antiochus, but he did not get much reward for it, in the treaty of peace. He was dissatisfied and restless; the Greek cities, as usual, quarrelled among themselves. Another page of the story was turned when Perseus, son of Philip, succeeding his father on the throne of Macedon, made an alliance of Thracians, Syrians, Greeks, and others, and declared war against Rome. What followed? The Greeks were very brave while the Roman legions were in Italy. As soon as the legions marched on Greece the fighting spirit went out of the Greek cities. Syria was too far East to help the West. Macedon and Thrace met Rome in a big battle fought at Pydna. Perseus was utterly beaten. He was taken prisoner and brought to Rome. Macedonia was allowed some form of freedom, but she began intriguing and giving trouble again; Rome could suffer it no longer, and she made Macedonia into a Roman province.

The story of the Greek states after Pydna was much the same. The authority of Rome over them was really supreme if she cared to exert it, but for a while she contented herself with the punishment of those that had helped Perseus. Again, it was their own imprudence which compelled Rome to take action. They formed a confederacy and were ill-advised enough to go to war with her. It was a war that gave Rome no trouble. The Greek armies made little resistance, some of the cities had their walls razed to the ground. Even yet, Greece was not formally annexed as a Roman province, but the Roman governor of Macedonia was given some authority over Greece also, and the states were forbidden to form any more alliances with each other. Rome might do as she would with them.

Rome must be obeyed

This being so, you will see that Rome was now in a position to advance her power, whenever it pleased her, into Asia Minor without leaving unconquered nations between the centre of her power and those Eastern nations. But she went slowly, perhaps to make the more sure. She reduced the power of those strong naval states, Rhodes and Pergamus, although they had lately been her allies. She acted, in all her dealings, with a purely selfish regard to her own interests. Egypt acknowledged her supremacy. A new king of Syria was appointed under her direction, and as he was quite young a Roman guardian was given to guide his actions. It was said, and no doubt it was said truly, by the Greek historian Polybius, whom the Romans had taken prisoner to Rome, that in all the world men knew that there was nothing else to be done, if Rome gave an order, but to obey it.

And now I want you to pause a moment in the story and see whither it has brought us. For we have now come to a condition of the world which had never been seen before.

CHAPTER XIV

ROME MISTRESS OF THE WORLD

We have never before seen the world in the condition to which we have brought it now, in the whole course of the story.

At first, you will remember, there were the two great empires warring, the Nile Valley empire and the empire of the Euphrates and Tigris. Then came the Persian. He overthrew them both. But then he came up against a wall too strong for him to break down, in the opposition of Greece; and he broke his own head against that wall. After him came Alexander, the Macedonian, going through the world, as it was then known, like a flash of lightning, getting the better of everything that stood in his way as if it was of no account at all. But like a flash of lightning his light went out again, and he left the world he had conquered to be cut up into pieces and quarrelled for by the generals that he had led to the conquest.

Then the scene of action shifted westward along the inland sea. Carthage had grown to power at the cost of Phœnicia, her mother-land, and over against Carthage had grown together, in a wonderfully short time, this new Roman power. Carthage and Rome had fought, and Rome had utterly prevailed.

Then Rome, looking eastward, and troubled by King Pyrrhus, who had helped the Carthaginians, came in touch with the Macedonians and the Greeks, and after a period of trouble got the better of both, came up against the peoples of Asia Minor, and had them at her mercy whenever she chose to put out her strength. Already Egypt, though independent nominally, had acknowledged Rome as sovereign.

Pax Romana

So you see whither we have come. Hitherto it has always been a struggling world that the story has had to tell of—one or the other master holding power a short while perhaps, but never really having a hold over the whole world and getting all his opponents under. It is quite otherwise now. Rome is mistress; and she is not going to let go her hold for a very long while. When she does lose hold it will be really because her grip has lost power owing to her own maladies, rather than that any other very formidable foe has come against her.

You will understand, of course, what I mean when I talk of "the whole world" at this point of the story, and what that Greek historian, Polybius, of whom I told you in the last chapter, meant by it. He knew, no doubt, that there was a great deal of the world, in the sense of land inhabited by human beings, beyond the wide lands over which the Roman power really did extend. But neither he nor any one else in the Greek or Roman world of that day thought that these lands and their inhabitants counted for anything. They did not matter. These peoples were called barbarians. They were considered rather as we consider the North American Indians or the negroes. They were far more formidable to the Romans than either of these are to us, because the people away to the east and north-east of Syria, to the north of Asia Minor and Thrace and of Italy itself, all these had limitless lands behind them, on the sides farthest from the central power of Rome, to retreat into when she came with any power against them. For the most part they were peoples who led a wandering life. It was no trouble to them to strike their tents and go back into the wilds. But it was terrible trouble for the legions to follow them very far into those wilds; and the legions could not easily force them to a decided battle if they did follow them.

Therefore the Romans doubtless knew that however far they might push out their power in the east and north there would always be peoples on the edge of the lands which they could really make their own who would be apt to give trouble and would require small campaigns to be waged against them from time to time. Probably they made up their minds to that. But inside that wide barbarian fringe, and with the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the nearly uninhabited deserts of Africa on the south—within the wide expanse of which these form the boundary, the Roman power was such that if Rome said a thing had to be done, there was no man who questioned it. Done that thing had to be. That is what is meant by a phrase that you have most likely heard, the "Pax Romana," the Roman peace. It meant the peace which Rome could, and did, enforce within these regions under her power—a peace that could not be broken because every man knew that whatever she said was to be done, must be done. There was no help for it.

Of course the peace was not perfect, it was not untroubled. No peace ever is. But it was peace of a kind that the world had never known before. The whole world—the whole world that mattered—was for the first time under one single authority. It was also for the last time; for it is a condition that the world has never been in again since the break-up of the Roman power. So I think I was justified in asking you to stop a moment in the course of the story in order to consider the position of affairs to which it has brought us. It is interesting, is it not?

* * * * *

Mithridates

Now, I do not know that there is any need to trouble you with all the smaller happenings which led to Rome's asserting herself more and more strongly in the East. Probably she would have done better if she had established her power more strongly in Syria rather earlier than she did. In the end she took it and turned it into one of her provinces as well as the other lands that she conquered; but by the time she did so a certain king called Mithridates, of a certain kingdom called Pontus, on the Black Sea, to the north of Syria, had made himself very strong, and gave the Romans a terrible deal of trouble about the year 88 B.C. and onward.

But long before that, and even while she was claiming to impose her "Pax Romana," the Roman peace, on all the world, she had very little peace within her own borders. It is all an outgrowth of the old trouble that we saw beginning as far back as the time when the Romans drove out those Etruscan kings and formed themselves into a Republic. All through their story we have seen the Senate, which was for the most part the high-born, the rich party, on the one side, and the Comitia, or assembly of the plebeians, on the other. And the last was perpetually struggling to get power and to take power away from the first. That struggle still went on until it ended in neither of them having any power at all. And that happened in this way.

As Rome grew rich, by the plunder and taxation of the provinces that she conquered and annexed, an immense number of slaves were brought into Italy. They cultivated the land for their masters a great deal more cheaply than the native small farmers could cultivate it, and at the same time a great deal of corn and other things that these farmers used to grow was brought in from the provinces at a cheap price. The small farmers, what we might call peasants, could not grow corn in Italy as cheaply as this, so the fields fell out of cultivation and the peasants flocked into the towns where they could get their share of the cheap corn.

Great discontent grew out of this. Two brothers, who were leading men of the people, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, got laws passed to give the people a chance of cultivating their land on better terms, but the selfishness of the rich party, who were opposed to them, made these laws of no use.

The power of the generals

The people had succeeded in getting one of their own class, Marius by name, appointed as general of an army in Africa, which conquered a restless and powerful people called the Numidians, who had been giving much anxiety to the Romans and had defeated the armies under the general that the Senate had sent out in command. When Marius came back, as victor, from Africa, some of the northern barbarous tribes were harassing Italy itself. He took command of the army against them, and again was completely successful. Thus he rose to great power, and one of his acts, when at the height of his power, was to repeal the law according to which it had always been compulsory on the people to serve in certain legions, and to allow them to enlist in what legions they pleased.

Do you see what that meant? It meant that the people would go and enlist under a popular general, and, this being so, the general became the authority to whom they gave their allegiance and to whom they looked up as their head. It was no longer to Rome that the soldiers looked as the great authority. They looked to their general.

That made a very great difference in the whole state of affairs. It meant that the general who was able to rely on his army became really independent of the power of either Senate or Comitia. They might give him orders, but he had the armed force at his back and could almost please himself as to whether he should obey the orders or not.

Thus it was that the real power passed altogether out of the hands of the Senate and Comitia and fell into that of the commanders of the legions, or of whichever of the several commanders of legions might prove the strongest. The Senate or the Comitia, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, might appoint the commanders, but once the commanders were appointed, the power was with them so long as they could rely on the support of the soldiers.

The Senate succeeded in getting leaders devoted to their interests appointed to command some of the legions, and the Comitia got men of their own side appointed to others, and so it came to pass that there were these two opposing forces in the world, the legions that were under a general who was on the side of the aristocratic party and the legions that were commanded by one who favoured the popular side.

It is much more easy to see, long after it all happened, how one state of affairs grows out of what has gone before, than it is for the people who are acting in them to see it. We can see how it all happened much better than they can have seen then, but I suppose that even those Romans who were in the very middle of it all and were actors in the story must have realised that something was going on which they had never known before, and which was certain to make a great difference, when they saw one of these commanders of the legions march his forces right up to Rome and take forcible possession of the city.

ROMAN LEGIONARIES.
ROMAN LEGIONARIES.

This commander was Sulla, and he acted as he did because Rome at the time had fallen into such a state of lawlessness, owing to the fights between the rich people and the poor, and to all the evil causes that I have mentioned, that no man's property or life was safe. Sulla came in with his soldiers and enforced what we might call Martial Law. He restored order, but he restored it only by terribly severe punishments. He was on the side of the Senate, of the rich and patrician class. This was in the year 88 B.C. But he did not stay in Rome. That war on the eastern boundary of the Empire with King Mithridates of Pontus required attention. Mithridates had been terribly successful at its commencement. He had overrun Asia Minor, and it is said that in a single day 80,000 persons who claimed to be Romans, or to be under the protection of the great Roman power, were massacred.

Sulla and Pompey

Sulla was a great general. Mithridates had advanced into Greece, but he made no stand against the legions. His armies were defeated in Asia Minor too, and by 84 B.C. this, which was called the First Mithridatic War, was over. A treaty was made whereby the territories of the king of Pontus were strictly defined, and Sulla came back to Rome.

The popular party had been busy while he was away. Marius, their champion, was dead, but his place had been taken by another popular general, Cinna. When Sulla returned he found Rome in possession of Cinna and the populace. With his own legions Sulla overthrew Cinna and his power, and his punishment of his opponents was even more fearfully cruel than before. The story of the years that followed is a terrible one. The life of no man of any importance was safe in Rome if he was suspected of showing any favour to the popular cause.

And now another very great name comes into the story, that of Pompey—Pompey the Great as he was sometimes called. In Rome, Sulla had drowned in blood the opposition of the popular party; but there were legions outside Italy itself, and some of them, in Spain, were under popular leadership. Against these Pompey went out as commander on the patrician side. After some three years of fighting he was completely successful. Sulla, wearied of power and tyranny, had thrown up his dictatorship at Rome and had retired into the country and to private life. Pompey led back his victorious legions, and with his soldiers at the gates of the city demanded the honours which he thought due to him as victor.

There was no denying them to him, and he was elected Consul.

The condition of affairs in Italy was bad. There had been a great uprising of the slaves who had become very numerous and had banded themselves together, to a number said to be 70,000. They traversed the country, pillaging and acting in defiance of all law.

Pompey, as Consul and with the military power at his command, showed himself a far less cruel dictator than Sulla. He revoked many of the worst laws and lawless institutions of Sulla. The slave revolt, as it was called, was put down. Something like order was restored again. And when all this had been done in Italy, Pompey was given, or maybe took for himself, command of a fleet and of armies in the East, for the special purpose of destroying the sea pirates in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and strengthening the Roman power in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. The treaty with Mithridates had not succeeded in making peace in that corner of the world for long, and, though he had been beaten in one or two battles by the legions, he was still in the field and far beyond the boundaries which that treaty had assigned to him.

Julius Cæsar

Pompey carried all before him. He put down the pirates in a series of sea fights, settled affairs in Syria, which he at length made into a Roman province, and then went northward, where he met Mithridates and defeated him so decisively that he gave the Romans no further trouble, and shortly afterwards took his own life. With all these victories to his credit, Pompey returned to Italy, where by that time had come into the story one whose name, great as was that of Pompey, was to become greater even than his—Julius Cæsar.

Cæsar had gained fame both as an orator and as a soldier. His sympathies were with the popular party. He had been chosen as Consul, but had not yet entered into that office when Pompey came back, triumphant, from the East. We might expect that Pompey, who was on the patrician side, would be opposed to Cæsar, but Pompey was dissatisfied with his treatment by his own party. He seems to have promised his soldiers, as a reward for their bravery and their victories, that they should be given grants of land, to live on, in Italy. The Senate were not ready to confirm this promise, and they did not approve of all that he had done in Asia Minor.

The result was that Cæsar and Pompey became friends and allies. Cæsar married Pompey's daughter. They brought into their alliance one Crassus, whose chief value to them as a friend was that he had immense wealth. This combination was known as the Triumvirate, or combination of three men (from tres, meaning three, and vir, meaning man). Acting together, the three could get any laws passed that they pleased. One of the measures which they joined in passing made an immense difference in our story. It was that measure which gave to Cæsar the command of the legions in Gaul.

The difference that it was to make was not seen just at first. Cæsar went up north to his command. His campaign against the Gauls, of which he himself has written the account in his "Commentaries," are a little out of the direct line of our great story. They had their effect on the big story, for if they had ended in any other way than the way in which they did, if Cæsar had been killed or conquered—and he was nearly killed or conquered more than once—the big story might have gone quite differently. But as it was, in the end—and the end of his campaigns in Gaul did not come until nine years had passed—he was completely victorious. During those years he made an expedition to Great Britain, but did not stay there long. At the end of the nine years he came back. He was chosen as Consul for the second time. He came back to the borders of Italy at the head of his victorious legions. He was commanded by the Senate to disband his troops before coming to Rome to be made Consul. The Senate and Pompey, for Pompey still was chief man in Rome, did not want a general with soldiers devoted to him at the gates of the city.

Cæsar halted for a time, while messages about this went to and fro between him and the Senate, the Senate ordering him to disband the troops, and Cæsar refusing. He halted on the banks of a small stream, the Rubicon, which has become very famous because it was the boundary of Italy beyond which he was forbidden to go at the head of troops.

Finally, in the year 49 B.C., he determined to go against the order of the Senate and brave the consequences. Cæsar crossed the Rubicon!

The crossing of that river meant war. Cæsar knew it. The Senate knew it. Pompey knew it. The great Pompey fled before him, and took command of the Senatorial armies in Greece. Cæsar, who had no fleet, went in pursuit.

They met at Pharsalia, in Thessaly, and there was fought one of the great battles of history. Cæsar gained the day, and Pompey again fled, into Egypt. Again Cæsar pursued him, and was met on coming to Egypt by a messenger who thought to find favour with him by bringing him the head of Pompey, who had been murdered. But Cæsar was a generous enemy. Pompey had been his friend, and he mourned his death with respect.

Cleopatra

There was trouble in Egypt at this time. The rulers were supposed to be one of the Ptolemies and Cleopatra, also of the same family, the two sharing the throne. But the Ptolemy had thrust the queen out and claimed to rule alone. Cæsar, captivated by the beauty of Cleopatra, restored her to her share in the government. Then he marched up with his force into Syria. There, too, there was trouble.

The trouble was with a powerful people called the Parthians, coming from that part of Asia, east of the Euphrates, from which the Persians had come long ago. They were a warlike nation, fighting on horseback, lightly clad in mail; and their mode of fighting was like that of the Persians of old—to come galloping down upon the enemy, to shower arrows, discharged from horseback, upon him, to gallop off again, turning in the saddle and shooting as they went, and then to reform, to come back again, and repeat the same tactics until the enemy's formation was broken up.

Really it was very like the fighting of the Persians, which, as we saw, was broken by the solid Greek phalanx. But these Parthians prevailed in several battles against the Roman legions. They had defeated a Roman army under the command of that Crassus who was one of the triumvirate. Of these three, Cæsar was the only one who was alive after Pompey's murder in Egypt.

Cæsar met the Parthian forces and defeated them very heavily. He drove them back over the Euphrates; and the Euphrates we have to look on as the boundary, eastward, of the Roman power. The Romans did not try to press farther. They had enough, and more than enough, work on their hands in making good the conquests they had gained.

Cæsar returned to Rome, victorious; but still he had enemies, in the shape of armies in the field, under commanders appointed by the Senate. There were some such forces in Africa. Thither Cæsar went and made an end of them. Still there were others in Spain, and there, at length, he seems to have put out the last spark of opposition by a victory in the battle of Munda in 45 B.C. He had crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. What he had accomplished in those four years is wonderful. Victorious in Greece, Egypt, Syria, Africa, Spain. All enemies had gone down before him. He was elected "dictator for life" of the Roman Commonwealth.

CHAPTER XV

TROUBLES IN THE EAST

We have seen that in the year 190 B.C. a new thing happened in Asia Minor—Roman legions appeared there for the first time in history. It was an appearance which was a sign of what was sure to come, that Rome, when it pleased her to do so, would conquer all that country. Conquer it all, and subdue it to her own power, in course of time she did. The last people that she succeeded in perfectly subduing were the Jews.

Judæa, at the date of the arrival in Asia of the legions, was held as a province of the kingdom of Syria by one of the dynasty of Seleucus.

Seleucus and his Court were, practically, Grecian. Antioch, the capital of Syria (several of the Seleucid kings were called Antiochus), was practically a Greek city. The influence of Greek thought began to flow into Judæa and Jerusalem more and more from Syria and the north, and we have seen already how it flowed in from Egypt and Alexandria. It brought in strange knowledge, strange speculations and, so far as the Greeks troubled themselves about religion, a strange religion. We have seen from of old how intensely the Jews were devoted to their own religion, and how they retained it in exile and in persecution. A very large number of them held to it fiercely now against all these new ideas that the Greeks were bringing in.

So, all through the hundred years that follow, the story of the Jews is the story of a series of struggles for the mastery in Jerusalem between the party that favoured the Greek new ways and the party faithful to the old Jewish ways. The latter came to be called Pharisees and the former are represented by the Sadducees, as you read of them in the Bible.

Besides this cause of unrest, there was still constantly trouble between Syria and Egypt. The fact that both were overshadowed equally by the growing power of Rome did not prevent them quarrelling about their own claims in Palestine. And Judæa, as ever of old, lay between the two rivals. Judæa knew little peace in these days of the so-called Pax Romana.

Fortitude of the Jews

The insults which the national religion and laws suffered from the "Gentiles," as the Jews called the Greeks and all who were not of their own race and way of thinking, roused their great resentment. The fighting between the parties was fierce. There was one moment in the story when the Jews under those great fighters, the Maccabees, became really the strongest power, so long as Rome did not care to exert her power, in all that region—stronger than Syria, of which she had lately been a mere province. She had power as extensive as Solomon had wielded when king of Israel and Judah united. But it did not endure. The rivalry between the two parties within Judæa itself weakened her. At the date of Pompey's coming to Syria, about a hundred years later than the first coming of the legions, Judæa was again in subjection to Syria, and Syria herself was made into a Roman province. Judæa, like the rest of the world, turned her eyes to Rome as mistress of them all; but, of them all, the eyes of Judæa expressed, probably, the least obedience and submission, the strongest purpose of resistance.

It is this strength of resistance that has made the Jews, in spite of all the calamities that they have continually had to endure all through the course of our story, still play such an active and large part in it. All read with reverence the same sacred Book. Even those Jews that had been scattered, and had settled far from Jerusalem, looked up to Jerusalem as their capital city. The Temple of their great God was there. They received and obeyed orders from there. They went up there to great feasts and religious ceremonies. There were very many Jews in the many Greek cities of Asia Minor, very many in Egypt, many in Cyprus and other islands, many in Greece itself. Although Judæa was a small subject state when Pompey saw it, and had an official appointed by Rome as its ruler, it was important to him to have the favour of the Jews on his side, just because they were so far and widely dispersed and could exercise influence in so many lands.

At first, in the struggle between Cæsar and Pompey, the favour of the Jews had been given to Pompey. Probably they were disposed to fight for the side that they thought most likely to win, so as to get some future favours for themselves in return. As a matter of fact, both Greeks and Romans were so little concerned with religious things that, except for insulting the Jewish customs by their indifference, they showed very little hostility to them.

When Cæsar went to Egypt he gave the Jews every opportunity of worshipping God in their own way and living their peculiar life in the manner that pleased them. The official appointed by Rome to govern Judæa at this time was Antipater, a native of the neighbouring land of Idumæa, and his son, who succeeded him in the governorship, was called Herod, Herod the Great, who ruled, with the title of king (though he was only a king by leave of Rome, and king of a country paying tribute to Rome), until the year 4 B.C. We are just coming now to the Christian Era, as we call it. The years will then no longer grow fewer and fewer as they come to the year of the birth of Christ; but more and more as they mount up away from that date.

In the early days of the rule of Herod in Judæa, that is, about the year 40 B.C., there came a new danger on the land. Those Parthians, whom Julius Cæsar had defeated, swarmed back again, on their horses, across the Euphrates, and swept over a great part of the country. Herod implored the help of Rome, and not in vain; but Julius Cæsar was no longer the world's master then. He had been dead for several years.

You must, I am sure, remember that scene in the Senate-house in Rome—if you do not remember reading it in any history book you will have heard of it from Shakespeare's play of Julius Cæsar—how his best friends clustered round him, and the dearest of all gave him a fatal dagger-stroke. "Et tu, Brute!" he exclaimed, as even Brutus, his most intimate friend, dealt a death blow.

The assassins of Cæsar asserted that they did the foul deed for the good of the State, to rid Rome of the tyranny of the dictator. That may have been the real reason of some of them. Others may have been thinking of their own advantage and how they might advance if they put such a big man as Cæsar out of the way. But whatever their intentions were, the effect on the State was terrible.

The great orator, Cicero, had hopes that the Republic might be restored, that the rule of one man might be ended and the good old days come back again. But the people in Rome were not such as they had been in those good old days when they followed the good old customs. It is no wonder that they had changed.

See what had happened. Rome had conquered the world. Masses of wealth from the conquered provinces had been brought to her and were constantly coming in. The rich men had their splendid houses and villas. They vied with each other in giving feasts and entertainments to the populace, in order to gain the votes of the people and to be elected to high positions, at home or abroad, in which they could make large fortunes by receiving bribes or by taxing the provinces. All their old ideas of what it was right to do had been upset by the Greek thought that prevailed through all the world that was at all educated. There was no respect for the laws, and they had no religion that made any difference to their conduct.

Octavius and Antony

Therefore, when Cæsar was killed, and his power to dictate and to make the laws obeyed went, at once there was terrible lawlessness, several parties in the city trying to get the power into their hands. Cæsar had been appointed dictator for life, but no arrangement had been made about what should happen at his death. So it went for the space of two years or so, and out of all the troubles of these two years we find a state of things coming about very like that which happened before, when Pompey and Cæsar were the two most powerful men—powerful, because each had legions willing to obey him. There was a third at that time, Crassus, powerful in his wealth. Two men now again came to the front, each with military forces at his back—Octavius and Antony. There was a third, of less power, Lepidus. Pompey and Cæsar had been friends at first, and were joined together to rule the affairs of Rome. Afterwards they fell fighting, with the result that you know—the complete victory of Cæsar. Crassus had been killed, fighting in the East; and that was the end of that which was called the first Triumvirate.

Antony, the nephew and the friend of Cæsar, had designs of succeeding to his power, but almost at the outset he found Octavius, who was Cæsar's grand-nephew, opposing him. Antony had been Consul, with Cæsar, in 44 B.C. Now he had command of legions in the north of Italy, and when he went to take up that command he found Brutus, Cæsar's assassin, holding possession of a town called Mutina, which he refused to give up. Antony attacked him. The Senate took the side of Brutus and sent Octavius up in command of some of the legions to oppose Antony. Antony was defeated before the town that he was besieging, and fled.

He fled, but he still had his army. He was joined by Lepidus, who brought with him a strong army from the south. Octavius may have thought this combined force too formidable for him, but whatever his reason was he made friends with Antony, whom he had lately been fighting, and with Lepidus, and the Senate seems to have approved of their combination. Perhaps they were so strong that they had no choice, but were obliged to seem to approve. And so what is called the second Triumvirate came into existence.

Brutus and Cassius, who were trying to bring back the old republican ways of Government, still held out; but they were defeated at the famous battle of Philippi, and the Triumvirate had all power in the Roman world.

They proceeded to map out that world in pieces, so that each should take his portion. To Lepidus, as perhaps the least important, was given Africa; to Antony went Egypt and the East. Octavius seems to have had the best of the bargain from the start, with the home legions and Italy, Greece and Spain, together with Gaul that Cæsar had conquered, for his own. Antony married Octavia, who was sister of Octavius; so it all looked a very good arrangement.

But just as trouble had crept in between the chief men of the first Triumvirate, so too with this second.

Antony was not a very prudent man, and Octavius was. Antony had the most troublesome frontier to defend, for to the east was that country of the Parthians who had come upon Judæa. Herod's appeal for help was heard by the Triumvirate. It was Antony's special task to deal with them; and, for the time being, he dealt with them successfully, though he did not march against them himself. But one of his generals took the field and drove them back over the Euphrates, whence they had come.

That was not by any means the end of these Parthians, however. We have seen how they fought—charging down on the legions, shooting a flight of arrows, then off again, and again coming back to perform the same manœuvres. Just as they did in each particular battle of a war, so they did in the war itself, as a whole. If the war went against them, away they went, over the Euphrates and as far east as the Romans cared to pursue. They must have known that the Romans would not go on pursuing for ever, farther and farther from their base. And the Parthians had all Asia to retreat into.

So they retreated, and left Judæa and Herod in peace, but a very few years later they were making trouble again, and this time Antony himself led an army against them, into Parthia itself, and met with a disastrous defeat. And now Octavius, who had been making his own power very firm in Rome and Italy all this while, thought the time was come when he might declare war against Antony—his brother-in-law, and until lately his friend.

Antony had given him much cause. You will remember that Queen Cleopatra whom Cæsar had put on the Egyptian throne beside Ptolemy. Cæsar had fallen in love with her. Antony fell in love with her too. For her sake he divorced and sent back Octavia, his wife, to her brother, Octavius, at Rome. He assumed all the airs of an Eastern despotic ruler, with Cleopatra as his queen. A great many of his own people and friends and servants were disgusted by this. Probably the support that they had given him was not given very whole-heartedly. Certainly Octavius could easily find an excuse for making war on him, for Antony's ideas of government were not at all such as agreed with the Romans' idea of how government should be conducted by a Roman citizen.

The deciding battle between the two was a sea-fight off Actium. Cleopatra was there, but even she does not seem to have fought very bravely for Antony. She turned out of the fight before it was really decided, and fled, with her ships, to Egypt. Her flight probably did decide the result, and Antony, with such ships as could escape, went to Egypt after her. Octavius did not pursue them at once, but a year later he went to Egypt, and, rather than face his coming, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide.

Octavius victorious

Several years before this, Octavius had dealt with the other man of the Triumvirate, Lepidus. Lepidus, like Antony, seems to have acted just as if he wished Octavius to have a good excuse for getting rid of him, or of his power. He came to Sicily from Africa, apparently at Octavius' bidding; and when he tried, or was accused of trying, to gain possession of Sicily for himself, Octavius replied by defeating his forces, taking Lepidus himself to Italy, and, with more magnanimity than conquerors often show, allowing him to retain his high office of Pontifex Maximus.