The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. John Lord
laws of moral obligation for any questionable policy of expediency. I look upon the great civil wars of the Romans, which followed these conquests, in which so much blood was shed, and in which Marius and Sulla and Caesar and Pompey exhausted the resources of the state, and made an imperial regime necessary, only as the visitation of God in rebuke of such wicked ambition.
[Sidenote: Greece reaps the penalty of the unscrupulous wars of
Alexander.]
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the Greeks.]
[Sidenote: Spoils of Greece fall into the hands of the Romans.]
[Sidenote: The triumph of Paulus.]
[Sidenote: Grecian provinces added to the empire.]
The conquest over the Macedonians, however, by the Romans, was not an unmixed calamity, and was a righteous judgment on the Greeks. Nothing could be more unscrupulous than the career of Alexander and his generals. Again, the principle which had animated the Oriental kings before him was indefensible. We could go back still further, and show from the whole history of Asiatic conquests that their object was to aggrandize ambitious conquerors. The Persians, at first, were a brave and religious people, hardy and severe, and their conquest of older monarchies resulted in a certain good. But they became corrupt by prosperity and power, and fell a prey to the Greeks. The Greeks, at that period, were the noblest race of the ancient world—immortal for genius and art. But power dazzled them, and little remained of that glorious spirit which was seen at Thermopylae and Marathon. The Greek ascendency in Asia and Egypt was followed by the same luxury and extravagance and effeminacy that resulted from the rule of Persia. The Greeks had done great things, and contributed to the march of civilization, but they had done their work, and their turn of humiliation must come. Their vast empire fell into the hands of the Romans, and the change was beneficial to humanity. They who had abused their trust were punished, and those were exalted above them who were as yet uncorrupted by those vices which are most fatal to nations. The great fruit of these wars were the treasures of Greece, especially precious marbles, and other works of art. The victory at Pydna, B.C. 168, which gave the final superiority to the Roman legion over the Macedonian phalanx, was followed by the triumph of Paulus himself—the grandest display ever seen at Rome. First passed the spoils of Greece—statues and pictures—in two hundred and fifty wagons; then the arms and accoutrements of the Macedonian soldiers; then three thousand men, each carrying a vase of silver coin; then victims for sacrifice, with youths and maidens with garlands; then men bearing vases of gold and precious stones; then the royal chariot of the conquered king laden with armor and trophies; then his wife and children, and the fallen monarch on foot; then the triumphal car of the victorious general, preceded by men bearing four hundred crowns of gold—the gift of the Grecian cities—and followed by his two sons on horseback, and the whole army in order. The sack of Corinth by Mummius was the finale of Grecian humiliation, soon followed by the total subjection of Macedonia, Greece, and Illyria, forming three provinces. Nine provinces now composed the territories of Rome, while the kings of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt were vassals rather than allies, B.C. 133.
[Sidenote: Change of manners and morals at Rome.]
[Sidenote: Reforms of Cato the Censor.]
[Sidenote: Great degeneracy produced by the Grecian wars.]
The manners and habits of the imperial capital had undergone a gradual change since the close of the second Punic War. During these fifty years, the sack of so many Grecian cities, the fall of Carthage, and the prestige of so many victories, had filled Rome with pride and luxury. In vain did M. Portius Cato, the most remarkable man who adorned this degenerate age, lift up his voice against increasing corruption. In vain were his stringent measures as censor. In vain did he strike senators from the list, and make an onslaught on the abuses of his day. In vain were his eloquence, his simple manners, his rustic garb, and his patriotic warnings. That hard, narrow, self-sufficient, arbitrary, worldly-wise old statesman, whose many virtues redeemed his defects, and whose splendid abilities were the glory of his countrymen, could not restore the simplicities of former times. An age of "progress" had set in, of Grecian arts and culture, of material wealth, of sumptuous banquets, of splendid palaces, of rich temples, of theatrical shows, of circus games, of female gallantries, of effeminated manners—all the usual accompaniments of civilization, when it is most proud of its triumphs; and there was no resisting its march—to the eye of many a great improvement; to the eye of honest old Cato, the descensus averi. Wealth had become a great power; senatorial families grew immensely rich; the divisions of society widened; slavery was enormously increased, while the rural population lost independence and influence.
Then took place the memorable struggles of Rome, not merely with foreign enemies, but against herself. Factions and parties convulsed the city; civil war wasted the national resources.
[Sidenote: Wars with the Cimbri and Teutones.]
[Sidenote: Success of Marius, who rolls back the tide of northern emigration.]
It was in that period of civic strife, when factions and parties struggled for ascendency—when the Gracchi were both reformers and demagogues, patriots and disorganizes, heroes and martyrs—when fortunate generals aimed at supreme power, and sought to overturn the liberties of their country, that Rome was seriously threatened by the barbarians. Both Celts and Teutones, from Gaul and Germany, formed a general union for the invasion of Italy. They had successively defeated five consular armies, in which one hundred and twenty thousand men were slain. They rolled on like a devastating storm—some three hundred thousand warriors from unconquered countries beyond the Alps. They were met by Marius the hero of the African war, who had added Numidia, to the empire—now old, fierce, and cruel, a plebeian who had arisen by force of military genius—and the Gaulish hordes were annihilated on the Rhone and the Po. The Romans at first viewed those half-naked warriors—so full of strength and courage, so confident of victory, so reckless of life, so impetuous and savage—with terror and awe. But their time had not yet come. Numbers were of no avail against science, when science was itself directed by genius and sustained by enthusiasm. The result of the decisive battles of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae was to roll back the tide of northern immigration for three hundred years, and to prepare the way for the conquests of Caesar in Gaul.
[Sidenote: The Social War.]
[Sidenote: Rise of Sulla.]
Then followed that great insurrection of the old states of Italy against their imperious mistress—their last struggle for independence, called the Social War, in which three hundred thousand of the young men of Italy fell, and in which Sulla so much distinguished himself as to be regarded as the rival of Marius, who had ruled Rome since the slaughter of the Cimbrians and Teutones. Sulla, who had served under Marius in Africa, dissolute like Antony, but cultivated like Caesar—a man full of ambition and genius, and belonging to one of the oldest and proudest patrician families, the Cornelian gens—was no mean rival of the old tyrant and demagogue, and he was sent against Mithridates, the most powerful of all the Oriental kings.
This Asiatic potentate had encouraged the insurgents in Italy, and was also at war with the Romans. Marius viewed with envy and hatred the preference shown to Sulla in the conduct of the Mithridatic War, and succeeded, by his intrigues and influence with the people, in causing Sulla to be superseded, and himself to be appointed in his place.
[Sidenote: Civil wars between Marius and Sulla.]
Hence that dreadful civil contest between these two generals, in which Rome was alternately at the mercy of both, and in which the most horrible butcheries took place that had ever befallen the city—a reign of terror, a burst of savage passion, especially on the part of Marius, who had lately abandoned himself to wine and riotous living. He died B.C. 86, victor in the contest, in his seventh consulate, worn out by labor and dissolute habits, nearly seventy years of age.
[Sidenote: Death of Marius.]
His opportune death relieved Rome of a tyrannical rule, and opened the way for the splendid achievements of Sulla in the East. A great warrior had arisen in a quarter least expected. In the mountainous region along the north side of the Euxine, the kingdom of Pontus had grown from a principality to a