The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46
But, while in the southern and eastern provinces the culture of the
natives may have so far prepared the way for Roman civilization and
Roman rule that these encountered no serious difficulties, the west
and north on the other hand, and the whole of the interior, were
occupied by numerous tribes more or less barbarous, who knew little of
any kind of civilization--in Intercatia, for instance, the use of gold
and silver was still unknown about 600--and who were on no better
terms with each other than with the Romans. A characteristic trait
in these free Spaniards was the chivalrous spirit of the men and, at
least to an equal extent, of the women. When a mother sent forth her
son to battle, she roused his spirit by the recital of the feats of
his ancestors; and the fairest maiden unasked offered her hand in
marriage to the bravest man. Single combat was common, both with
a view to determine the prize of valour, and for the settlement of
lawsuits; even disputes among the relatives of princes as to the
succession were settled in this way. It not unfrequently happened
that a well-known warrior confronted the ranks of the enemy and
challenged an antagonist by name; the defeated champion then
surrendered his mantle and sword to his opponent, and even entered
into relations of friendship and hospitality with him. Twenty years
after the close of the second Punic war, the little Celtiberian
community of Complega (in the neighbourhood of the sources of the
Tagus) sent a message to the Roman general, that unless he sent to
them for every man that had fallen a horse, a mantle, and a sword,
it would fare ill with him. Proud of their military honour, so that
they frequently could not bear to survive the disgrace of being
disarmed, the Spaniards were nevertheless disposed to follow any
one who should enlist their services, and to stake their lives in
any foreign quarrel. The summons was characteristic, which a Roman
general well acquainted with the customs of the country sent to a
Celtiberian band righting in the pay of the Turdetani against the
Romans--either to return home, or to enter the Roman service with
double pay, or to fix time and place for battle. If no recruiting
officer made his appearance, they met of their own accord in free
bands, with the view of pillaging the more peaceful districts and
even of capturing and occupying towns, quite after the manner of the
Campanians. The wildness and insecurity of the inland districts are
attested by the fact that banishment into the interior westward of
Cartagena was regarded by the Romans as a severe punishment, and that
in periods of any excitement the Roman commandants of Further Spain
took with them escorts of as many as 6000 men. They are still more
clearly shown by the singular relations subsisting between the Greeks
and their Spanish neighbours in the Graeco-Spanish double city of
Emporiae, at the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees. The Greek
settlers, who dwelt on the point of the peninsula separated on the
landward side from the Spanish part of the town by a wall, took care
that this wall should be guarded every night by a third of their civic
force, and that a higher official should constantly superintend the
watch at the only gate; no Spaniard was allowed to set foot in the
Greek city, and the Greeks conveyed their merchandise to the natives
only in numerous and well-escorted companies.
Wars between the Romans and Spaniards
These natives, full of restlessness and fond of war--full of the
spirit of the Cid and of Don Quixote--were now to be tamed and, if
possible, civilized by the Romans. In a military point of view
the task was not difficult. It is true that the Spaniards showed
themselves, not only when behind the walls of their cities or under
the leadership of Hannibal, but even when left to themselves and in
the open field of battle, no contemptible opponents; with their short
two-edged sword which the Romans subsequently adopted from them, and
their formidable assaulting columns, they not unfrequently made even
the Roman legions waver. Had they been able to submit to military
discipline and to political combination, they might perhaps have
shaken off the foreign yoke imposed on them. But their valour was
rather that of the guerilla than of the soldier, and they were utterly
void of political judgment. Thus in Spain there was no serious war,
but as little was there any real peace; the Spaniards, as Caesar
afterwards very justly pointed out to them, never showed themselves
quiet in peace or strenuous in war. Easy as it was for a Roman
general to scatter a host of insurgents, it was difficult for the
Roman statesman to devise any suitable means of really pacifying and
civilizing Spain. In fact, he could only deal with it by palliative
measures; because the only really adequate expedient, a comprehensive
Latin colonization, was not accordant with the general aim of Roman
policy at this period.
The Romans Maintain a Standing Army in Spain
Cato
Gracchus
The territory which the Romans acquired in Spain in the course of the
second Punic war was from the beginning divided into two masses--the
province formerly Carthaginian, which embraced in the first instance
the present districts of Andalusia, Granada, Murcia, and Valencia, and
the province of the Ebro, or the modern Arragon and Catalonia, the
fixed quarters of the Roman army during the last war. Out of these
territories were formed the two Roman provinces of Further and Hither
Spain. The Romans sought gradually to reduce to subjection the
interior corresponding nearly to the two Castiles, which they
comprehended under the general name of Celtiberia, while they were
content with checking the incursions of the inhabitants of the western
provinces, more especially those of the Lusitanians in the modern
Portugal and the Spanish Estremadura, into the Roman territory;
with the tribes on the north coast, the Callaecians, Asturians,
and Cantabrians, they did not as yet come into contact at all.
The territories thus won, however, could not be maintained and secured
without a standing garrison, for the governor of Hither Spain had no
small trouble every year with the chastisement of the Celtiberians,
and the governor of the more remote province found similar employment
in repelling the Lusitanians. It was needful accordingly to maintain
in Spain a Roman army of four strong legions, or about 40,000 men,
year after year; besides which the general levy had often to be called
out in the districts occupied by Rome, to reinforce the legions. This
was of great importance for two reasons: it was in Spain first, at
least first on any larger scale, that the military occupation of the
land became continuous; and it was there consequently that the service
acquired a permanent character. The old Roman custom of sending
troops only where the exigencies of war at the moment required them,
and of not keeping the men called to serve, except in very serious
and important wars, under arms for more than a year, was found
incompatible with the retention of the turbulent and remote Spanish
provinces beyond the sea; it was absolutely impossible to withdraw
the troops from these, and very dangerous even to relieve them
extensively. The Roman burgesses began to perceive that dominion over
a foreign people is an annoyance not only to the slave, but to the
master, and murmured loudly regarding the odious war-service of Spain.
While the new generals with good reason refused to allow the relief of
the existing corps as a whole, the men mutinied and threatened that,
if they were not allowed their discharge, they would take it of
their own accord.
The wars themselves, which the Romans waged in Spain, were but of
a subordinate importance. They began with the very departure of
Scipio,(3) and continued as long as the war under Hannibal lasted.
After the peace with Carthage (in 553) there was a cessation of
arms in the peninsula; but only for a short time. In 557 a general
insurrection broke out in both provinces; the commander of the
Further province was hard pressed; the commander of Hither Spain was
completely defeated, and was himself slain. It was necessary to take
up the war in earnest, and although in the meantime the able praetor
Quintus Minucius had mastered the first danger, the senate resolved in
559 to send the consul Marcus Cato in person to Spain. On landing at
Emporiae he actually found the whole of Hither Spain overrun by the
insurgents; with difficulty that seaport and one or two strongholds
in the interior were still held for Rome. A pitched battle took place
between the insurgents and the consular army, in which, after an
obstinate conflict man against man, the Roman military skill at length
decided the day with its last reserve. The whole of Hither Spain
thereupon sent in its submission: so little, however, was this
submission meant in earnest, that on a rumour of the consul having
returned to Rome the insurrection immediately recommenced. But the
rumour was false; and after Cato had rapidly reduced the communities
which had revolted for the second time and sold them -en masse- into
slavery, he decreed a general disarming of the Spaniards in the Hither
province, and issued orders to all the towns of the natives from the
Pyrenees to the Guadalquivir to pull down their walls on one and the
same day. No one knew how far the command extended, and there was no
time to come to any understanding; most of the communities complied;
and of the few that were refractory not many ventured, when the Roman
army soon appeared before their walls, to await its assault.
These energetic measures were certainly not without permanent effect.
Nevertheless the Romans had almost every year to reduce to subjection
some mountain valley or mountain stronghold in the "peaceful
province," and the constant incursions of the Lusitanians into the
Further province led occasionally to severe defeats of the Romans.
In 563, for instance, a Roman army was obliged after heavy loss to
abandon its camp, and to return by forced inarches into the more
tranquil districts. It was not till after a victory gained by the
praetor Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 565,(4) and a second still more
considerable gained by the brave praetor Gaius Calpurnius beyond the
Tagus over the Lusitanians in 569, that quiet for some time prevailed.
In Hither Spain the hitherto almost nominal rule of the Romans over
the Celtiberian tribes was placed on a firmer basis by Quintus Fulvius
Flaccus, who after a great victory over them in 573 compelled at least
the adjacent cantons to submission; and especially by his successor
Tiberius Gracchus (575, 576), who achieved results of a permanent
character not only by his arms, by which he reduced three hundred
Spanish townships, but still more by his adroitness in adapting
himself to the views and habits of the simple and haughty nation.
He induced Celtiberians of note to take service in the Roman army,
and so created a class of dependents; he assigned land to the roving
tribes, and collected them in towns--the Spanish town Graccurris
preserved the Roman's name--and so imposed a serious check on their
freebooter habits; he regulated the relations of the several tribes
to the Romans by just and wise treaties, and so stopped, as far as
possible, the springs of future rebellion. His name was held in
grateful remembrance by the Spaniards, and comparative peace
henceforth reigned in the land, although the Celtiberians still
from time to time winced under the yoke.
Administration of Spain
The system of administration in the two Spanish provinces was similar
to that of the Sicilo-Sardinian province, but not identical. The
superintendence was in both instances vested in two auxiliary consuls,
who were first nominated in 557, in which year also the regulation of
the boundaries and the definitive organization of the new provinces
took place. The judicious enactment of the Baebian law (573), that
the Spanish praetors should always be nominated for two years, was not
seriously carried out in consequence of the increasing competition for
the highest magistracies, and still more in consequence of the jealous
supervision exercised over the powers of the magistrates by the
senate; and in Spain also, except where deviations occurred in
extraordinary circumstances, the Romans adhered to the system of
annually changing the governors--a system especially injudicious in
the case of provinces so remote and with which it was so difficult to
gain an acquaintance. The dependent communities were throughout
tributary; but, instead of the Sicilian and Sardinian tenths and
customs, in Spain fixed payments in money or other contributions were
imposed by the Romans, just as formerly by the Carthaginians, on the
several towns and tribes: the collection of these by military means
was prohibited by a decree of the senate in 583, in consequence of the
complaints of the Spanish communities. Grain was not furnished in
their case except for compensation, and even then the governor might
not levy more than a twentieth; besides, conformably to the just-
mentioned ordinance of the supreme authority, he was bound to adjust
the compensation in an equitable manner. On the other hand, the
obligation of the Spanish subjects to furnish contingents to the Roman
armies had an importance very different from that which belonged to
it at least in peaceful Sicily, and it was strictly regulated in the
several treaties. The right, too, of coining silver money of the
Roman standard appears to have been very frequently conceded to the
Spanish towns, and the monopoly of coining seems to have been by no
means asserted here by the Roman government with the same strictness
as in Sicily. Rome had too much need of her subjects everywhere in
Spain, not to proceed with all possible tenderness in the introduction
and handling of the provincial constitution there. Among the
communities specially favoured by Rome were the great cities along
the coast of Greek, Phoenician, or Roman foundation, such as Saguntum,
Gades, and Tarraco, which, as the natural pillars of the Roman rule
in the peninsula, were admitted to alliance with Rome. On the whole,
Spain was in a military as well as financial point of view a burden
rather than a gain to the Roman commonwealth; and the question
naturally occurs, Why did the Roman government, whose policy at that
time evidently did not contemplate the acquisition of countries beyond
the sea, not rid itself of these troublesome possessions? The not
inconsiderable commercial connections of Spain, her important iron-
mines, and her still more important silver-mines famous from ancient
times even in the far east(5)--which Rome, like Carthage, took into
her own hands, and the management of which was specially regulated by
Marcus Cato (559)--must beyond doubt have co-operated to induce its
retention; but the chief reason of the Romans for retaining the
peninsula in their own immediate possession was, that there were no
states in that quarter of similar character to the Massiliot republic
in the land of the Celts and the Numidian kingdom in Libya, and that
thus they could not abandon Spain without putting it into the power
of any adventurer to revive the Spanish empire of the Barcides.
Notes for Chapter VII
1. According to the account of Strabo these Italian Boii were driven
by the Romans over the Alps, and from them proceeded that Boian
settlement in what is now Hungary about Stein am Anger and Oedenburg,
which was attacked and annihilated in the time of Augustus by the
Getae who crossed the Danube, but which bequeathed to this district
the name of the Boian desert. This account is far from agreeing with
the well-attested representation of the Roman annals, according to
which the Romans were content with the cession of half the territory;
and, in order to explain the disappearance of the Italian Boii,
we have really no need to assume a violent expulsion--the other
Celtic peoples, although visited to a far less extent by war and
colonization, disappeared not much less rapidly and totally from the
ranks of the Italian nations. On the other hand, other accounts
suggest the derivation of those Boii on the Neusiedler See from the
main stock of the nation, which formerly had its seat in Bavaria and
Bohemia before Germanic tribes pushed it towards the south. But it is
altogether very doubtful whether the Boii, whom we find near Bordeaux,
on the Po, and in Bohemia, were really scattered branches of one
stock, or whether this is not an instance of mere similarity of name.
The hypothesis of Strabo may have rested on nothing else than an
inference from the similarity of name--an inference such as the
ancients drew, often without due reason, in the case of the Cimbri,
Veneti, and others.
2. III. I. Libyphoenicians
3. III. VI. Gades Becomes Roman
4. Of this praetor there has recently come to light the following
decree on a copper tablet found in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar
and now preserved in the Paris Museum: "L. Aimilius, son of Lucius,
Imperator, has ordained that the slaves of the Hastenses [of Hasta
regia, not far from Jerez de la Frontera], who dwell in the tower of
Lascuta [known by means of coins and Plin. iii. i, 15, but uncertain
as to site] should be free. The ground and the township, of which
they are at the time in possession, they shall continue to possess and
hold, so long as it shall please the people and senate of the Romans.
Done in camp on 12 Jan. [564 or 565]." (-L. Aimilius L. f. inpeirator
decreivit utei qui Hastensium servei in turri Lascutana habitarent,
leiberei essent, Agrum oppidumqu[e], guod ea tempestate posedissent,
item possidere habereque ioussit, dum poplus senatusque Romanus
vettet. Act. in castreis a. d. XII. k. Febr.-) This is the oldest
Roman document which we possess in the original, drawn up three years
earlier than the well-known edict of the consuls of the year 568 in
the affair of the Bacchanalia.
5. 1 Maccab. viii. 3. "And Judas heard what the Romans had done
to the land of Hispania to become masters of the silver and gold
mines there."
Chapter VIII
The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War
The Hellenic East
The work, which Alexander king of Macedonia had begun a century
before the Romans acquired their first footing in the territory which
he had called his own, had in the course of time--while adhering
substantially to the great fundamental idea of Hellenizing the east
--changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Hellene-
Asiatic states. The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for
migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders
to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly
held what the king had won; and under the protection of the -sarissae-,
Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere throughout
the ancient empire of the Achaemenidae. The officers, who divided the
heritage of the great general, gradually settled their differences,
and a system of equilibrium was established, of which the very
Oscillations manifest some sort of regularity.
The Great States
Macedonia
Of the three states of the first rank belonging to this system
--Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt--Macedonia under Philip the Fifth, who
had occupied the throne since 534, was externally at least very much
what it had been under Philip the Second the father of Alexander
--a compact military state with its finances in good order. On its
northern frontier matters had resumed their former footing, after the
waves of the Gallic inundation had rolled away; the guard of the
frontier kept the Illyrian barbarians in check without difficulty,
at least in ordinary times. In the south, not only was Greece in
general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it--including
all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and
the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea,
the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of
isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the
promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian
territory--was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian
garrisons; more especially the three important fortresses of Demetrias
in Magnesia, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of
the Hellenes." But the strength of the state lay above all in its
hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia. The population, indeed,
of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting
forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as
many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two
legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet
recovered from the depopulation occasioned by the campaigns of
Alexander and by the Gallic invasion. But while in Greece proper
the moral and political energy of the people had decayed, the day of
national vigour seemed to have gone by, life appeared scarce worth
living for, and even of the better spirits one spent time over the
wine-cup, another with the rapier, a third beside the student's lamp;
while in the east and Alexandria the Greeks were able perhaps to
disseminate elements of culture among the dense native population and
to diffuse among that population their language and their loquacity,
their science and pseudo-science, but were barely sufficient in point
of number to supply the nations with officers, statesmen, and
schoolmasters, and were far too few to form even in the cities middle-
class of the pure Greek type; there still existed, or the other hand,
in northern Greece a goodly portion of the old national vigour, which
had produced the warriors of Marathon. Hence arose the confidence
with which the Macedonians, Aetolians, and Acarnanians, wherever they
made their appearance in the east, claimed to be, and were taken as,
a better race; and hence the superior part which they played at the
courts of Alexandria and Antioch. There is a characteristic story,
that an Alexandrian who had lived for a considerable time in Macedonia
and had adopted the manners and the dress of that country, on
returning to his native city, now looked upon himself as a man and
upon the Alexandrians as little better than slaves. This sturdy
vigour and unimpaired national spirit were turned to peculiarly good
account by the Macedonians, as the most powerful and best organized
of the states of northern Greece. There, no doubt, absolutism had
emerged in opposition to the old constitution, which to some extent
recognized different estates; but sovereign and subject by no means
stood towards each other in Macedonia as they stood in Asia and Egypt,
and the people still felt itself independent and free. In steadfast
resistance to the public enemy under whatever name, in unshaken
fidelity towards their native country and their hereditary government,
and in persevering courage amidst the severest trials, no nation in
ancient history bears so close a resemblance to the Roman people as
the Macedonians; and the almost miraculous regeneration of the state
after the Gallic invasion redounds to the imperishable honour of its
leaders and of the people whom they led.
Asia
The second of the great states, Asia, was nothing but Persia
superficially remodelled and Hellenized--the empire of "the king
of kings," as its master was wont to call himself in a style
characteristic at once of his arrogance and of his weakness--with the
same pretensions to rule from the Hellespont to the Punjab, and with
the same disjointed organization; an aggregate of dependent states in
various degrees of dependence, of insubordinate satrapies, and of
half-free Greek cities. In Asia Minor more especially, which was
nominally included in the empire of the Seleucidae, the whole north
coast and the greater part of the eastern interior were practically
in the hands of native dynasties or of the Celtic hordes that had
penetrated thither from Europe; a considerable portion of the west was
in the possession of the kings of Pergamus, and the islands and coast
towns were some of them Egyptian, some of them free; so that little
more was left to the great-king than the interior of Cilicia, Phrygia,
and Lydia, and a great number of titular claims, not easily made good,
against free cities and princes--exactly similar in character to the
sovereignty of the German emperor, in his day, beyond his hereditary
dominions. The strength of the empire was expended in vain endeavours
to expel the Egyptians from the provinces along the coast; in frontier
strife with the eastern peoples, the Parthians and Bactrians; in feuds
with the Celts, who to the misfortune of Asia Minor had settled within
its bounds; in constant efforts to check the attempts of the eastern
satraps and of the Greek cities of Asia Minor to achieve their
independence; and in family quarrels and insurrections of pretenders.
None indeed of the states founded by the successors of Alexander were
free from such attempts, or from the other horrors which absolute
monarchy in degenerate times brings in its train; but in the kingdom
of Asia these evils were more injurious than elsewhere, because, from
the lax composition of the empire, they usually led to the severance
of particular portions from it for longer or shorter periods.