that was sufficiently civilized to maintain a settled government was ruled by the Roman Republic. The period of rude and restless valor among the Greeks was past. The stage of cultivation they had reached inclined them to the quiet and elegant refinements of the scholar, and they readily received the Roman rule which suppressed the turbulance of ambitious adventurers and suffered no oppression but their own. The Romans represented the strength of the male element in human nature, the Greeks the grace of the female. They now coalesced, were married, so to speak, and the product of their union was, in the course of ages, modern civilization, which, when mature, was to share the eminent qualities of both. 7. The broken fragments of Alexander's immense empire in Western Asia and Egypt were all that now stood between Rome and the mastery of the world. The Roman people were too well convinced that it was their grand destiny to achieve universal dominion to hasten prematurely the conquest of the primitive home of civilization. They watchfully waited until the course of events should throw the dominions of the Seleucida and the Ptolemys into their hands, without offending the majesty of the republic by an undignified violence and haste. 190- Antiochus the Great, who now reigned over the empire of the Seleucidæ, with true Grecian imprudence, became ambitious of conquests in Europe. He invaded Greece 191 and was defeated at Thermopyle by the Romans and driven into Asia. The younger Scipio, brother of the conqueror of Hannibal, followed and totally defeated 189-him at Magnesia, in Asia Minor. He purchased peace by the loss of all the fruits of his ambition, but was left in possession of the Syrian kingdom. The failure to destroy so powerful an enemy appears to have brought on the two Scipios the rebuke of the repulic, the conqueror of Carthage having aided his brother in the war. They were condemned to a heavy fine, which Scipio Africanus refused to pay and went into 183-exile, where he died. His death occurred in the same year that Hannibal, pursued by the vengeance of the Romans for having aided Antiochus, committed suicide. by taking poison to avoid falling into their hands; and in this year also Philopoemen, the last patriotic hero 170-of Greece, was slain by his enemies. Perses, king of Macedon, revolted, and, after some successes, was finally overthrown under the walls of Pydna and dethroned. 168 - The Carthaginians could not altogether forget their ancient greatness, and having displeased the Romans by some independence of action, it was resolved to 148 — destroy their city. With the courage of despair they set the Romans at defiance, and defended themselves with a resolute bravery that engaged the lively sympathies of all after times for their painful fate. For two years they maintained the combat against their pitiless foes, who could pardon everything but rivalry in their 146-sweeping ambition, and then perished in the ruins of their once glorious metropolis. A revolt of the Achaians was punished, in the same year, by the destruction of the splendid city of Corinth, in Greece. 140- The embers of independence in Spain broke forth in war, which was checked by the assassination of Viriathes, a patriotic chieftain of great ability, and 133- quenched in blood by the self-destruction of the citizens of Numantium. About the same time the republic acquired the kingdom of Pergamus, covering the richest parts of Asia Minor, by the will of Attalus, its king, who, on his death, bequeathed it to Rome. This led, in a few years, to contests with the neighboring Asiatic sovereigns, and resulted, in about half a century, in the conquest and reduction into the state of Roman provinces of all Western Asia. SECTION VIII. DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 1. But while Rome was thus steadily advancing to universal dominion, great and unfortunate changes were taking place in its internal constitution. The spoils of Carthage and the east, rich in accumulations of the industry, commerce and art of two thousand years, flowed into Rome and was gathered into the hands of those in power; the equilibrium between the plebeians and the patricians was lost; the selling of captives taken in war filled Italy with slaves; and the inequality of conditions produced the most disastrous consequences. 133- The eldest son of a noble house, the Gracchi, undertook to stem the torrent that was sweeping away the ancient barriers of the constitution, and to raise the people from the misery into which the increase of patrician wealth and power and the innumerable multitudes of slaves had plunged them. In the year in which Numantia fell and Spain was thoroughly subdued, Tiberius Gracchus was slain in a tumult, produced by the patricians, who determined that his project should not succeed. He had attempted to revive the old agrarian law, by which the landed possessions of the republic were shared among the people as well as the patricians, which would have rescued the plebeians from poverty and oppression; but the patricians were too powerful and too violent. He was removed by assassination. 2. 121-Twelve years later his brother, Caius Gracchus, attempted the same thing and was likewise slain. This point was vital to the internal liberties of Rome. The failure of the Gracchi announced the overthrow of the constitution; and, after seventy years of civil anarchy and the murderous conflict of rival factions, the empire was found the only refuge against the ruiz of the state. Vigorous Rome, who could govern all the world but herself, must have a master, and became the prey of the strongest. It is a melancholy history, a sad conclusion for a people whose strength and grandeur of character had made them masters of the world, but a perfectly legitimate result of the immoral principle that lay at the foundation of the state. That principle legalized the doctrine of force, or robbery on the grandest scale. They carried it out with great consistency and skill, with all the ability of a race eminently sagacious and steady in the pursuit of an end. The conservative force that dwelt in their organization, so instinctively and exceptionally wise, and the power of religious faith, strong in a hardy and simple people, however weakened by pagan ignorance and superstition, long maintained the integrity of their institutions but Greek culture, too imperfect not to culminate in skepticism, came in to confuse their moral sense at the same time that boundless wealth flowed into their hands to corrupt their manners, that slavery assumed gigantic proportions to demoralize labor, and the conquest of the world relieved them from the severe discipline that might not, otherwise, have left them the leisure to become deeply vicious. The sternness of even Roman character was unequal to the heavy strain and virtue gave way. The native vigor of the race made them as excessive in unrestrained passion as wise in council and invincible in war. The cruelty and rapacity that were common in the civil wars of the Republic, and under many of the early emperors, educated giants in crime, and only the Roman spirit in the army, and the vigorous organization everywhere maintained through the institutions established in the subject world by Roman law, could have held its vast dominions together. Rome had vitality and sense to govern others, even in the midst of civil war. 3. From the death of the Gracchi to the consulship 107 Of Marius, Rome was in a tumult of corrupt intrigue, 106 - Jugurtha, who was brought to Rome and starved in prison. In the same year Cicero, the great Roman orator, was born. 105 A vast horde of Cimbri and Teutons from northern Europe, invaded Gaul and defeated several Roman consuls. 100 Marius led an army against these barbarians and defeated them, more than 100,000 being slain or made prisoners. He was equally successful in a second engagement. During the war 200,000 barbarians were slain and 90,000 taken prisoners. A revolt of the slaves was put down about the same time with circumstances of extreme cruelty. More than a million of these unfortunates were slain or thrown to wild beasts for the amusement of the Roman populace. 4. 100 In this year Julius Cæsar, one of the greatest men 90 of any time, and virtual founder of the Roman Empire, was born. His supreme ability put an end to civil dissention and saved society from total ruin. The Italian allies revolted against Rome. They claimed the privileges of Roman citizenship, which the Senate refused. A war of three years followed and half a million of men perished, when, having conquered them, the Senate granted their first request. 88 Mithridates, king of Pontus, talented and ambitions, sought to drive the Romans out of Asia and Greece, and warred with them for twenty-five years. Sylla procured the banishment of his rival, Marius, and conducted the war against Mithridates. |