The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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Quarrels between Achaeans and Spartans
The Achaeans in particular, who, in their eagerness to round their
territory, wholly failed to see how much it would have been for their
own good that Flamininus had not incorporated the towns of Aetolian
sympathies with their league, acquired in Lacedaemon and Messene a
very hydra of intestine strife. Members of these communities were
incessantly at Rome, entreating and beseeching to be released from the
odious connection; and amongst them, characteristically enough, were
even those who were indebted to the Achaeans for their return to their
native land. The Achaean league was incessantly occupied in the work
of reformation and restoration at Sparta and Messene; the wildest
refugees from these quarters determined the measures of the diet.
Four years after the nominal admission of Sparta to the confederacy
matters came even to open war and to an insanely thorough restoration,
in which all the slaves on whom Nabis had conferred citizenship were
once more sold into slavery, and a colonnade was built from the
proceeds in the Achaean city of Megalopolis; the old state of property
in Sparta was re-established, the of Lycurgus were superseded by
Achaean laws, and the walls were pulled down (566). At last the Roman
senate was summoned by all parties to arbitrate on all these doings
--an annoying task, which was the righteous punishment of the
sentimental policy that the senate had pursued. Far from mixing
itself up too much in these affairs, the senate not only bore the
sarcasms of Achaean candour with exemplary composure, but even
manifested a culpable indifference while the worst outrages were
committed. There was cordial rejoicing in Achaia when, after that
restoration, the news arrived from Rome that the senate had found
fault with it, but had not annulled it. Nothing was done for the
Lacedaemonians by Rome, except that the senate, shocked at the
judicial murder of from sixty to eighty Spartans committed by the
Achaeans, deprived the diet of criminal jurisdiction over the
Spartans--truly a heinous interference with the internal affairs of
an independent state! The Roman statesmen gave themselves as little
concern as possible about this tempest in a nut-shell, as is best
shown by the many complaints regarding the superficial, contradictory,
and obscure decisions of the senate; in fact, how could its decisions
be expected to be clear, when there were four parties from Sparta
simultaneously speaking against each other at its bar? Add to this
the personal impression, which most of these Peloponnesian statesmen
produced in Rome; even Flamininus shook his head, when one of them
showed him on the one day how to perform some dance, and on the next
entertained him with affairs of state. Matters went so far, that the
senate at last lost patience and informed the Peloponnesians that it
would no longer listen to them, and that they might do what they chose
(572). This was natural enough, but it was not right; situated as
the Romans were, they were under a moral and political obligation
earnestly and steadfastly to rectify this melancholy state of things.
Callicrates the Achaean, who went to the senate in 575 to enlighten
it as to the state of matters in the Peloponnesus and to demand a
consistent and calm intervention, may have had somewhat less worth as
a man than his countryman Philopoemen who was the main founder of that
patriotic policy; but he was in the right.
Death of Hannibal
Thus the protectorate of the Roman community now embraced all the
states from the eastern to the western end of the Mediterranean.
There nowhere existed a state that the Romans would have deemed it
worth while to fear. But there still lived a man to whom Rome
accorded this rare honour--the homeless Carthaginian, who had
raised in arms against Rome first all the west and then all the east,
and whose schemes perhaps had been only frustrated by infamous
aristocratic policy in the former case, and by stupid court policy in
the latter. Antiochus had been obliged to bind himself in the treaty
of peace to deliver up Hannibal; but the latter had escaped, first to
Crete, then to Bithynia,(8) and now lived at the court of Prusias king
of Bithynia, employed in aiding the latter in his wars with Eumenes,
and victorious as ever by sea and by land. It is affirmed that he was
desirous of stirring up Prusias also to make war on Rome; a folly,
which, as it is told, sounds very far from credible. It is more
certain that, while the Roman senate deemed it beneath its dignity to
have the old man hunted out in his last asylum--for the tradition
which inculpates the senate appears to deserve no credit--Flamininus,
whose restless vanity sought after new opportunities for great
achievements, undertook on his own part to deliver Rome from Hannibal
as he had delivered the Greeks from their chains, and, if not to
wield--which was not diplomatic--at any rate to whet and to point,
the dagger against the greatest man of his time. Prusias, the most
pitiful among the pitiful princes of Asia, was delighted to grant the
little favour which the Roman envoy in ambiguous terms requested; and,
when Hannibal saw his house beset by assassins, he took poison. He
had long been prepared to do so, adds a Roman, for he knew the Romans
and the word of kings. The year of his death is uncertain; probably
he died in the latter half of the year 571, at the age of sixty-seven.
When he was born, Rome was contending with doubtful success for the
possession of Sicily; he had lived long enough to see the West wholly
subdued, and to fight his own last battle with the Romans against the
vessels of his native city which had itself become Roman; and he was
constrained at last to remain a mere spectator, while Rome overpowered
the East as the tempest overpowers the ship that has no one at the
helm, and to feel that he alone was the pilot that could have
weathered the storm. There was left to him no further hope to be
disappointed, when he died; but he had honestly, through fifty years
of struggle, kept the oath which he had sworn when a boy.
Death of Scipio
About the same time, probably in the same year, died also the man whom
the Romans were wont to call his conqueror, Publius Scipio. On him
fortune had lavished all the successes which she denied to his
antagonist--successes which did belong to him, and successes which did
not. He had added to the empire Spain, Africa, and Asia; and Rome,
which he had found merely the first community of Italy, was at his
death mistress of the civilized world. He himself had so many titles
of victory, that some of them were made over to his brother and his
cousin.(9) And yet he too spent his last years in bitter vexation,
and died when little more than fifty years of age in voluntary
banishment, leaving orders to his relatives not to bury his remains
in the city for which he had lived and in which his ancestors reposed.
It is not exactly known what drove him from the city. The charges of
corruption and embezzlement, which were directed against him and still
more against his brother Lucius, were beyond doubt empty calumnies,
which do not sufficiently explain such bitterness of feeling; although
it is characteristic of the man, that instead of simply vindicating
himself by means of his account-books, he tore them in pieces in
presence of the people and of his accusers, and summoned the Romans
to accompany him to the temple of Jupiter and to celebrate the
anniversary of his victory at Zama. The people left the accuser on
the spot, and followed Scipio to the Capitol; but this was the last
glorious day of the illustrious man. His proud spirit, his belief
that he was different from, and better than, other men, his very
decided family-policy, which in the person of his brother Lucius
especially brought forward a clumsy man of straw as a hero, gave
offence to many, and not without reason. While genuine pride protects
the heart, arrogance lays it open to every blow and every sarcasm, and
corrodes even an originally noble-minded spirit. It is throughout,
moreover, the distinguishing characteristic of such natures as that of
Scipio--strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel--that
they need the good fortune and the brilliance of youth in order
to exercise their charm, and, when this charm begins to fade, it is
the charmer himself that is most painfully conscious of the change.
Notes for Chapter IX
1. According to a recently discovered decree of the town of Lampsacus
(-Mitth, des arch. Inst, in Athen-, vi. 95) the Lampsacenes after the
defeat of Philip sent envoys to the Roman senate with the request that
the town might be embraced in the treaty concluded between Rome and
(Philip) the king (--opos sumperilephthomen [en tais sunthekais] tais
genomenais Pomaiois pros ton [basilea]--), which the senate, at least
according to the view of the petitioners, granted to them and referred
them, as regarded other matters, to Flamininus and the ten envoys.
From the latter they then obtain in Corinth a guarantee of their
constitution and "letters to the kings." Flamininus also gives to them
similar letters; of their contents we learn nothing more particular,
than that in the decree the embassy is described as successful. But
if the senate and Flamininus had formally and positively guaranteed
the autonomy and democracy of the Lampsacenes, the decree would hardly
dwell so much at length on the courteous answers, which the Roman
commanders, who had been appealed to on the way for their intercession
with the senate, gave to the envoys.
Other remarkable points in this document are the "brotherhood" of the
Lampsacenes and the Romans, certainly going back to the Trojan legend,
and the mediation, invoked by the former with success, of the allies
and friends of Rome, the Massiliots, who were connected with the
Lampsacenes through their common mother-city Phocaea.
2. The definite testimony of Hieronymus, who places the betrothal of
the Syrian princess Cleopatra with Ptolemy Epiphanes in 556, taken in
connection with the hints in Liv. xxxiii. 40 and Appian. Syr. 3, and
with the actual accomplishment of the marriage in 561, puts it beyond
a doubt that the interference of the Romans in the affairs of Egypt
was in this case formally uncalled for.
3. For this we have the testimony of Polybius (xxviii. i), which the
sequel of the history of Judaea completely confirms; Eusebius (p. 117,
-Mai-) is mistaken in making Philometor ruler of Syria. We certainly
find that about 567 farmers of the Syrian taxes made their payments at
Alexandria (Joseph, xii. 4, 7); but this doubtless took place without
detriment to the rights of sovereignty, simply because the dowry of
Cleopatra constituted a charge on those revenues; and from this very
circumstance presumably arose the subsequent dispute.
4. II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy
5. III. VII. The Romans Maintain a Standing Army in Spain
6. III. VIII. The Celts of Asia Minor ff.
7. From the decree of Lampsacus mentioned at III. IX. Difficulties
with Rome, it appears pretty certain that the Lampsacenes requested
from the Massiliots not merely intercession at Rome, but also
intercession with the Tolistoagii (so the Celts, elsewhere named
Tolistobogi, are designated in this document and in the Pergamene
inscription, C. J. Gr. 3536,--the oldest monuments which mention
them). Accordingly the Lampsacenes were probably still about the
time of the wax with Philip tributary to this canton (comp. Liv.
xxxviii. 16).
8. The story that he went to Armenia and at the request of king
Artaxias built the town of Artaxata on the Araxes (Strabo, xi. p. 528;
Plutarch, Luc. 31), is certainly a fiction; but it is a striking
circumstance that Hannibal should have become mixed up, almost like
Alexander, with Oriental fables.
9. Africanus, Asiagenus, Hispallus.
Chapter X
The Third Macedonian War
Dissatisfactions of Philip with Rome
Philip of Macedonia was greatly annoyed by the treatment which he
met with from the Romans after the peace with Antiochus; and the
subsequent course of events was not fitted to appease his wrath.
His neighbours in Greece and Thrace, mostly communities that had once
trembled at the Macedonian name not less than now they trembled at
the Roman, made it their business, as was natural, to retaliate on the
fallen great power for all the injuries which since the times of
Philip the Second they had received at the hands of Macedonia. The
empty arrogance and venal anti-Macedonian patriotism of the Hellenes
of this period found vent at the diets of the different confederacies
and in ceaseless complaints addressed to the Roman senate. Philip had
been allowed by the Romans to retain what he had taken from the
Aetolians; but in Thessaly the confederacy of the Magnetes alone
had formally joined the Aetolians, while those towns which Philip
had wrested from the Aetolians in other two of the Thessalian
confederacies--the Thessalian in its narrower sense, and the
Perrhaebian--were demanded back by their leagues on the ground that
Philip had only liberated these towns, not conquered them. The
Athamahes too believed that they might crave their freedom; and
Eumenes demanded the maritime cities which Antiochus had possessed
in Thrace proper, especially Aenus and Maronea, although in the peace
with Antiochus the Thracian Chersonese alone had been expressly
promised to him. All these complaints and numerous minor ones from
all the neighbours of Philip as to his supporting king Prusias against
Eumenes, as to competition in trade, as to the violation of contracts
and the seizing of cattle, were poured forth at Rome. The king of
Macedonia had to submit to be accused by the sovereign rabble before
the Roman senate, and to accept justice or injustice as the senate
chose; he was compelled to witness judgment constantly going against
him; he had with deep chagrin to withdraw his garrisons from the
Thracian coast and from the Thessalian and Perrhaebian towns, and
courteously to receive the Roman commissioners, who came to see
whether everything required had been carried out in accordance with
instructions. The Romans were not so indignant against Philip as they
had been against Carthage; in fact, they were in many respects even
favourably disposed to the Macedonian ruler; there was not in his case
so reckless a violation of forms as in that of Libya; but the
situation of Macedonia was at bottom substantially the same as that of
Carthage. Philip, however, was by no means the man to submit to this
infliction with Phoenician patience. Passionate as he was, he had
after his defeat been more indignant with the faithless ally than with
the honourable antagonist; and, long accustomed to pursue a policy not
Macedonian but personal, he had seen in the war with Antiochus simply
an excellent opportunity of instantaneously revenging himself on the
ally who had disgracefully deserted and betrayed him. This object he
had attained; but the Romans, who saw very clearly that the Macedonian
was influenced not by friendship for Rome, but by enmity to Antiochus,
and who moreover were by no means in the habit of regulating their
policy by such feelings of liking and disliking, had carefully
abstained from bestowing any material advantages on Philip, and had
preferred to confer their favours on the Attalids. From their first
elevation the Attalids had been at vehement feud with Macedonia, and
were politically and personally the objects of Philip's bitterest
hatred; of all the eastern powers they had contributed most to maim
Macedonia and Syria, and to extend the protectorate of Rome in the
east; and in the last war, when Philip had voluntarily and loyally
embraced the side of Rome, they had been obliged to take the same side
for the sake of their very existence. The Romans had made use of
these Attalids for the purpose of reconstructing in all essential
points the kingdom of Lysimachus--the destruction of which had been
the most important achievement of the Macedonian rulers after
Alexander--and of placing alongside of Macedonia a state, which was
its equal in point of power and was at the same time a client of Rome.
In the special circumstances a wise sovereign, devoted to the
interests of his people, would perhaps have resolved not to resume the
unequal struggle with Rome; but Philip, in whose character the sense
of honour was the most powerful of all noble, and the thirst for
revenge the most potent of all ignoble, motives, was deaf to the voice
of timidity or of resignation, and nourished in the depths of his
heart a determination once more to try the hazard of the game. When
he received the report of fresh invectives, such as were wont to be
launched against Macedonia at the Thessalian diets, he replied with
the line of Theocritus, that his last sun had not yet set.(1)
The Latter Years of Philip
Philip displayed in the preparation and the concealment of his designs
a calmness, earnestness, and persistency which, had he shown them in
better times, would perhaps have given a different turn to the
destinies of the world. In particular the submissiveness towards
Rome, by which he purchased the time indispensable for his objects,
formed a severe trial for the fierce and haughty man; nevertheless he
courageously endured it, although his subjects and the innocent
occasions of the quarrel, such as the unfortunate Maronea, paid
severely for the suppression of his resentment. It seemed as if war
could not but break out as early as 571; but by Philip's instructions,
his younger son, Demetrius, effected a reconciliation between his
father and Rome, where he had lived some years as a hostage and was a
great favourite. The senate, and particularly Flamininus who managed
Greek affairs, sought to form in Macedonia a Roman party that would be
able to paralyze the exertions of Philip, which of course were not
unknown to the Romans; and had selected as its head, and perhaps as
the future king of Macedonia, the younger prince who was passionately
attached to Rome. With this purpose in view they gave it clearly to
be understood that the senate forgave the father for the sake of the
son; the natural effect of which was, that dissensions arose in the
royal household itself, and that the king's elder son, Perseus, who,
although the offspring of an unequal marriage, was destined by his
father for the succession, sought to ruin his brother as his future
rival. It does not appear that Demetrius was a party to the Roman
intrigues; it was only when he was falsely suspected that he was
forced to become guilty, and even then he intended, apparently,
nothing more than flight to Rome. But Perseus took care that his
father should be duly informed of this design; an intercepted letter
from Flamininus to Demetrius did the rest, and induced the father to
give orders that his son should be put to death. Philip learned, when
it was too late, the intrigues which Perseus had concocted; and death
overtook him, as he was meditating the punishment of the fratricide
and his exclusion from the throne. He died in 575 at Demetrias, in
his fifty-ninth year. He left behind him a shattered kingdom and a
distracted household, and with a broken heart confessed to himself
that all his toils and all his crimes had been in vain.
King Perseus
His son Perseus then entered on the government, without encountering
opposition either in Macedonia or in the Roman senate. He was a man
of stately aspect, expert in all bodily exercises, reared in the camp
and accustomed to command, imperious like his father and unscrupulous
in the choice of his means. Wine and women, which too often led
Philip to forget the duties of government, had no charm for Perseus;
he was as steady and persevering as his father had been fickle and
impulsive. Philip, a king while still a boy, and attended by good
fortune during the first twenty years of his reign, had been spoiled
and ruined by destiny; Perseus ascended the throne in his thirty-first
year, and, as he had while yet a boy borne a part in the unhappy war
with Rome and had grown up under the pressure of humiliation and under
the idea that a revival of the state was at hand, so he inherited
along with the kingdom of his father his troubles, resentments, and
hopes. In fact he entered with the utmost determination on the
continuance of his father's work, and prepared more zealously than
ever for war against Rome; he was stimulated, moreover, by the
reflection, that he was by no means indebted to the goodwill of the
Romans for his wearing the diadem of Macedonia. The proud Macedonian
nation looked with pride upon the prince whom they had been accustomed
to see marching and fighting at the head of their youth; his
countrymen, and many Hellenes of every variety of lineage, conceived
that in him they had found the right general for the impending war of
liberation. But he was not what he seemed. He wanted Philip's
geniality and Philip's elasticity--those truly royal qualities, which
success obscured and tarnished, but which under the purifying power of
adversity recovered their lustre. Philip was self-indulgent, and
allowed things to take their course; but, when there was occasion, he
found within himself the vigour necessary for rapid and earnest
action. Perseus devised comprehensive and subtle plans, and
prosecuted them with unwearied perseverance; but, when the moment
arrived for action and his plans and preparations confronted him in
living reality, he was frightened at his own work. As is the wont of
narrow minds, the means became to him the end; he heaped up treasures
on treasures for war with the Romans, and, when the Romans were in the
land, he was unable to part with his golden pieces. It is a
significant indication of character that after defeat the father first
hastened to destroy the papers in his cabinet that might compromise
him, whereas the son took his treasure-chests and embarked. In
ordinary times he might have made an average king, as good as or
better than many another; but he was not adapted for the conduct of
an enterprise, which was from the first a hopeless one unless some
extraordinary man should become the soul of the movement.
Resources of Macedonia
The power of Macedonia was far from inconsiderable. The devotion of
the land to the house of the Antigonids was unimpaired; in this one
respect the national feeling was not paralyzed by the dissensions
of political parties. A monarchical constitution has the great
advantage, that every change of sovereign supersedes old resentments
and quarrels and introduces a new era of other men and fresh hopes.
The king had judiciously availed himself of this, and had begun his
reign with a general amnesty, with the recall of fugitive bankrupts,
and with the remission of arrears of taxes. The hateful severity of
the father thus not only yielded benefit, but conciliated affection,
to the son. Twenty-six years of peace had partly of themselves filled
up the blanks in the Macedonian population, partly given opportunity
to the government to take serious steps towards rectifying this which
was really the weak point of the land. Philip urged the Macedonians
to marry and raise up children; he occupied the coast towns, whose
inhabitants he carried into the interior, with Thracian colonists of
trusty valour and fidelity. He formed a barrier on the north to check
once for all the desolating incursions of the Dardani, by converting
the space intervening between the Macedonian frontier and the
barbarian territory into a desert, and by founding new towns in the
northern provinces. In short he took step by step the same course in
Macedonia, as Augustus afterwards took when he laid afresh the
foundations of the Roman empire. The army was numerous--30,000 men
without reckoning contingents and hired troops--and the younger men
were well exercised in the constant border warfare with the Thracian
barbarians. It is strange that Philip did not try, like Hannibal, to
organize his army after the Roman fashion; but we can understand it
when we recollect the value which the Macedonians set upon their
phalanx, often conquered, but still withal believed to be invincible.
Through the new sources of revenue which Philip had created in mines,
customs, and tenths, and through the flourishing state of agriculture
and commerce, he had succeeded in replenishing his treasury,
granaries, and arsenals. When the war began, there was in the
Macedonian treasury money enough to pay the existing army and 10,000
hired troops for ten years, and there were in the public magazines
stores of grain for as long a period (18,000,000 medimni or 27,000,000
bushels), and arms for an army of three times the strength of the
existing one. In fact, Macedonia had become a very different state
from what it was when surprised by the outbreak of the second war with
Rome. The power of the kingdom was in all respects at least doubled:
with a power in every point of view far inferior Hannibal had been
able to shake Rome to its foundations.