The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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His successor, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, the adopted brother
of Maximus Aemilianus, sent to the peninsula with two fresh legions
and ten elephants, endeavoured to penetrate into the Lusitanian
country, but after a series of indecisive conflicts and an assault
on the Roman camp, which was with difficulty repulsed, found himself
compelled to retreat to the Roman territory. Viriathus followed him
into the province, but as his troops after the wont of Spanish
insurrectionary armies suddenly melted away, he was obliged to return
to Lusitania (612). Next year (613) Servilianus resumed the offensive,
traversed the districts on the Baetis and Anas, and then advancing
into Lusitania occupied a number of townships. A large number of the
insurgents fell into his hands; the leaders--of whom there were about
500--were executed; those who had gone over from Roman territory to
the enemy had their hands cut off; the remaining mass were sold into
slavery. But on this occasion also the Spanish war proved true to
its fickle and capricious character. After all these successes the
Roman army was attacked by Viriathus while it was besieging Erisane,
defeated, and driven to a rock where it was wholly in the power of the
enemy. Viriathus, however, was content, like the Samnite general
formerly at the Caudine passes, to conclude a peace with Servilianus,
in which the community of the Lusitanians was recognized as sovereign
and Viriathus acknowledged as its king. The power of the Romans had
not risen more than the national sense of honour had sunk; in the
capital men were glad to be rid of the irksome war, and the senate
and people ratified the treaty. But Quintus Servilius Caepio, the
full brother of Servilianus and his successor in office, was far
from satisfied with this complaisance; and the senate was weak
enough at first to authorize the consul to undertake secret
machinations against Viriathus, and then to view at least with
indulgence the open breach of his pledged word for which there was
no palliation. So Caepio invaded Lusitania, and traversed the land
as far as the territories of the Vettones and Callaeci; Viriathus
declined a conflict with the superior force, and by dexterous movements
evaded his antagonist (614). But when in the ensuing year (615)
Caepio renewed the attack, and in addition the army, which had in
The meantime become available in the northern province, made its
appearance under Marcus Popillius in Lusitania, Viriathus sued for
peace on any terms. He was required to give up to the Romans all
who had passed over to him from the Roman territory, amongst whom
was his own father-in-law; he did so, and the Romans ordered them
to be executed or to have their hands cut off. But this was not
sufficient; the Romans were not in the habit of announcing to the
vanquished all at once their destined fate.
His Death
One behest after another was issued to the Lusitanians, each successive
demand more intolerable than its predecessors; and at length they were
required even to surrender their arms. Then Viriathus recollected
the fate of his countrymen whom Galba had caused to be disarmed, and
grasped his sword afresh. But it was too late. His wavering had
sown the seeds of treachery among those who were immediately around
him; three of his confidants, Audas, Ditalco, and Minucius from Urso,
despairing of the possibility of renewed victory, procured from the
king permission once more to enter into negotiations for peace with
Caepio, and employed it for the purpose of selling the life of the
Lusitanian hero to the foreigners in return for the assurance of
personal amnesty and further rewards. On their return to the camp
they assured the king of the favourable issue of their negotiations,
and in the following night stabbed him while asleep in his tent.
The Lusitanians honoured the illustrious chief by an unparalleled
funeral solemnity at which two hundred pairs of champions fought in
the funeral games; and still more highly by the fact, that they did
not renounce the struggle, but nominated Tautamus as their commander-
in-chief in room of the fallen hero. The plan projected by the
latter for wresting Saguntum from the Romans was sufficiently bold;
but the new general possessed neither the wise moderation nor the
military skill of his predecessor. The expedition utterly broke
down, and the army on its return was attacked in crossing the Baetis
and compelled to surrender unconditionally. Thus was Lusitania
subdued, far more by treachery and assassination on the part of
foreigners and natives than by honourable war.
Numantia
While the southern province was scourged by Viriathus and the
Lusitanians, a second and not less serious war had, not without
their help, broken out in the northern province among the Celtiberian
nations. The brilliant successes of Viriathus induced the Arevacae
likewise in 610 to rise against the Romans; and for this reason the
consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, who was sent to Spain to relieve
Maximus Aemilianus, did hot proceed to the southern province, but
turned against the Celtiberians. In the contest with them, and
more especially during the siege of the town of Contrebia which was
deemed impregnable, he showed the same ability which he had displayed
in vanquishing the Macedonian pretender; after his two years'
administration (611, 612) the northern province was reduced to
obedience. The two towns of Termantia and Numantia alone had not
yet opened their gates to the Romans; but in their case also a
capitulation had been almost concluded, and the greater part of
the conditions had been fulfilled by the Spaniards. When required,
however, to deliver up their arms, they were restrained like
Viriathus by their genuine Spanish pride in the possession of a well-
wielded sword, and they resolved to continue the war under the daring
Megaravicus. It seemed folly: the consular army, the command of
which was taken up in 613 by the consul Quintus Pompeius, was four
times as numerous as the whole population capable of bearing arms in
Numantia. But the general, who was wholly unacquainted with war,
sustained defeats so severe under the walls of the two cities (613,
614), that he preferred at length to procure by means of negotiations
the peace which he could not compel. With Termantia a definitive
agreement must have taken place. In the case of the Numantines the
Roman general liberated their captives, and summoned the community
under the secret promise of favourable treatment to surrender to him
at discretion. The Numantines, weary of the war, consented, and
the general actually limited his demands to the smallest possible
measure. Prisoners of war, deserters, and hostages were delivered up,
and the stipulated sum of money was mostly paid, when in 615 the new
general Marcus Popillius Laenas arrived in the camp. As soon as
Pompeius saw the burden of command devolve on other shoulders, he,
with a view to escape from the reckoning that awaited him at Rome
for a peace which was according to Roman ideas disgraceful, lighted
on the expedient of not merely breaking, but of disowning his word;
and when the Numantines came to make their last payment, in the
presence of their officers and his own he flatly denied the conclusion
of the agreement. The matter was referred for judicial decision to
the senate at Rome. While it was discussed there, the war before
Numantia was suspended, and Laenas occupied himself with an expedition
to Lusitania where he helped to accelerate the catastrophe of
Viriathus, and with a foray against the Lusones, neighbours of the
Numantines. When at length the decision of the senate arrived, its
purport was that the war should be continued--the state became thus
a party to the knavery of Pompeius.
Mancinus
With unimpaired courage and increased resentment the Numantines
resumed the struggle; Laenas fought against them unsuccessfully,
nor was his successor Gaius Hostilius Mancinus more fortunate (617).
But the catastrophe was brought about not so much by the arms of the
Numantines, as by the lax and wretched military discipline of the Roman
generals and by--what was its natural consequence--the annually-
increasing dissoluteness, insubordination, and cowardice of the Roman
soldiers. The mere rumour, which moreover was false, that the
Cantabri and Vaccaei were advancing to the relief of Numantia,
induced the Roman army to evacuate the camp by night without orders,
and to seek shelter in the entrenchments constructed sixteen years
before by Nobilior.(5) The Numantines, informed of their sudden
departure, hotly pursued the fugitive army, and surrounded it:
there remained to it no choice save to fight its way with sword in
hand through the enemy, or to conclude peace on the terms laid down
by the Numantines. Although the consul was personally a man of
honour, he was weak and little known. Tiberius Gracchus, who served
in the army as quaestor, had more influence with the Celtiberians from
the hereditary respect in which he was held on account of his father
who had so wisely organized the province of the Ebro, and induced the
Numantines to be content with an equitable treaty of peace sworn to
by all the staff-officers. But the senate not only recalled the
general immediately, but after long deliberation caused a proposal to
be submitted to the burgesses that the convention should be treated
as they had formerly treated that of Caudium, in other words, that
they should refuse to ratify it and should devolve the responsibility
for it on those by whom it had been concluded. By right this
category ought to have included all the officers who had sworn to the
treaty; but Gracchus and the others were saved by their connections.
Mancinus alone, who did not belong to the circles of the highest
aristocracy, was destined to pay the penalty for his own and others'
guilt. Stripped of his insignia, the Roman consular was conducted to
the enemy's outposts, and, when the Numantines refused to receive him
that they might not on their part acknowledge the treaty as null,
the late commander-in-chief stood in his shirt and with his hands tied
behind his back for a whole day before the gates of Numantia, a
pitiful spectacle to friend and foe. Yet the bitter lesson seemed
utterly lost on the successor of Mancinus, his colleague in the
consulship, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. While the discussions as to
the treaty with Mancinus were pending in Rome, he attacked the free
people of the Vaccaei under frivolous pretexts just as Lucullus had
done sixteen years before, and began in concert with the general of
the Further province to besiege Pallantia (618). A decree of the
senate enjoined him to desist from the war; nevertheless, under the
pretext that the circumstances had meanwhile changed, he continued
the siege. In doing so he showed himself as bad a soldier as he was
a bad citizen. After lying so long before the large and strong city
that his supplies in that rugged and hostile country failed, he was
obliged to leave behind all the sick and wounded and to undertake a
retreat, in which the pursuing Pallantines destroyed half of his
soldiers, and, if they had not broken off the pursuit too early,
would probably have utterly annihilated the Roman army, which was
already in full course of dissolution. For this conduct a fine was
imposed on the high-born general at his return. His successors
Lucius Furius Philus (618) and Gaius Calpurnius Piso (619) had
again to wage war against the Numantines; and, inasmuch as they
did nothing at all, they fortunately came home without defeat.
Scipio Aemilianus
Even the Roman government began at length to perceive that matters
could no longer continue on this footing; they resolved to entrust
the subjugation of the small Spanish country-town, as an extraordinary
measure, to the first general of Rome, Scipio Aemilianus. The pecuniary
means for carrying on the war were indeed doled out to him with
preposterous parsimony, and the permission to levy soldiers, which
he asked, was even directly refused--a result towards which coterie-
intrigues and the fear of being burdensome to the sovereign people may
have co-operated. But a great number of friends and clients voluntarily
accompanied him; among them was his brother Maximus Aemilianus, whosome
years before had commanded with distinction against Viriathus. Supported
by this trusty band, which was formed into a guard for the general, Scipio
began to reorganize the deeply disordered army (620). First of all, the
camp-followers had to take their departure--there were found as many as
2000 courtesans, and an endless number of soothsayers and priests of all
sorts--and, if the soldier was not available for fighting, he had at
least to work in the trenches and to march. During the first summer
the general avoided any conflict with the Numantines; he contented
himself with destroying the stores in the surrounding country, and with
chastising the Vaccaei who sold corn to the Numantines, and compelling
them to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. It was only towards winter
that Scipio drew together his army round Numantia. Besides the Numidian
contingent of horsemen, infantry, and twelve elephants led by the
prince Jugurtha, and the numerous Spanish contingents, there were
four legions, in all a force of 60,000 men investing a city whose
citizens capable of bearing arms did not exceed 8000 at the most.
Nevertheless the besieged frequently offered battle; but Scipio,
perceiving clearly that the disorganization of many years was not to
be repaired all at once, refused to accept it, and, when conflicts
did occur in connection with the sallies of the besieged, the
cowardly flight of the legionaries, checked with difficulty by
the appearance of the general in person, justified such tactics
only too forcibly. Never did a general treat his soldiers more
contemptuously than Scipio treated the Numantine army; and he showed
his opinion of it not only by bitter speeches, but above all by his
course of action. For the first time the Romans waged war by means of
mattock and spade, where it depended on themselves alone whether they
should use the sword. Around the whole circuit of the city wall,
which was nearly three miles in length, there was constructed a double
line of circumvallation of twice that extent, provided with walls,
towers, and ditches; and the river Douro, by which at first some
supplies had reached the besieged through the efforts of bold boatmen
and divers, was at length closed. Thus the town, which they did not
venture to assault, could not well fail to be reduced through famine;
the more so, as it had not been possible for the citizens to lay in
provisions during the last summer. The Numantines soon suffered from
want of everything. One of their boldest men, Retogenes, cut his
way with a few companions through the lines of the enemy, and his
touching entreaty that kinsmen should not be allowed to perish without
help produced a great effect in Lutia at least, one of the towns
of the Arevacae. But before the citizens of Lutia had come to a
decision, Scipio, having received information from the partisans of
Rome in the town, appeared with a superior force before its walls, and
compelled the authorities to deliver up to him the leaders of the
movement, 400 of the flower of the youth, whose hands were all cut
off by order of the Roman general. The Numantines, thus deprived of
their last hope, sent to Scipio to negotiate as to their submission
and called on the brave man to spare the brave; but when the envoys
on their return announced that Scipio required unconditional surrender,
they were torn in pieces by the furious multitude, and a fresh term
elapsed before famine and pestilence had completed their work.
At length a second message was sent to the Roman headquarters,
that the town was now ready to submit at discretion. When the citizens
were accordingly instructed to appear on the following day before the
gates, they asked for some days delay, to allow those of their number
who had determined not to survive the loss of liberty time to die.
It was granted, and not a few took advantage of it. At last the
miserable remnant appeared before the gates. Scipio chose fifty of
the most eminent to form part of his triumphal procession; the rest
were sold into slavery, the city was levelled with the ground, and
its territory was distributed among the neighbouring towns. This
occurred in the autumn of 621, fifteen months after Scipio had
assumed the chief command.
The fall of Numantia struck at the root of the opposition that was
still here and there stirring against Rome; military demonstrations
and the imposition of fines sufficed to secure the acknowledgment of
the Roman supremacy in all Hither Spain.
The Callaeci Conquered
New Organization of Spain
In Further Spain the Roman dominion was confirmed and extended by
the subjugation of the Lusitanians. The consul Decimus Junius Brutus,
who came in Caepio's room, settled the Lusitanian war-captives in
the neighbourhood of Saguntum, and gave to their new town Valentia
(Valencia), like Carteia, a Latin constitution (616); he moreover
(616-618) traversed the Iberian west coast in various directions,
and was the first of the Romans to reach the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
The towns of the Lusitanians dwelling there, which were obstinately
defended by their inhabitants, both men and women, were subdued by
him; and the hitherto independent Callaeci were united with the Roman
province after a great battle, in which 50,000 of them are said to
have fallen. After the subjugation of the Vaccaei, Lusitanians, and
Callaeci, the whole peninsula, with the exception of the north coast,
was now at least nominally subject to the Romans.
A senatorial commission was sent to Spain in order to organize, in
concert with Scipio, the newly-won provincial territory after the Roman
method; and Scipio did what he could to obviate the effects of the
infamous and stupid policy of his predecessors. The Caucani for
instance, whose shameful maltreatment by Lucullus he had been obliged
to witness nineteen years before when a military tribune, were invited
by him to return to their town and to rebuild it. Spain began again
to experience more tolerable times. The suppression of piracy, which
found dangerous lurking-places in the Baleares, through the occupation
of these islands by Quintus Caecilius Metellus in 631, was singularly
conducive, to the prosperity of Spanish commerce; and in other respects
also the fertile islands, inhabited by a dense population which was
unsurpassed in the use of the sling, were a valuable possession.
How numerous the Latin-speaking population in the peninsula was even
then, is shown by the settlement of 3000 Spanish Latins in the towns
of Palma and Pollentia (Pollenza) in the newly-acquired islands.
In spite of various grave evils the Roman administration of Spain
preserved on the whole the stamp which the Catonian period, and
primarily Tiberius Gracchus, had impressed on it. It is true that
the Roman frontier territory had not a little to suffer from the
inroads of the tribes, but half subdued or not subdued at all, on
the north and west. Among the Lusitanians in particular the poorer
youths regularly congregated as banditti, and in large gangs levied
contributions from their countrymen or their neighbours, for which
reason, even at a much later period, the isolated homesteads in this
region were constructed in the style of fortresses, and were, in case
of need, capable of defence; nor did the Romans succeed in putting
an end to these predatory habits in the inhospitable and almost
inaccessible Lusitanian mountains. But what had previously been wars
assumed more and more the character of brigandage, which every tolerably
efficient governor was able to repress with his ordinary resources;
and in spite of such inflictions on the border districts Spain was
the most flourishing and best-organized country in all the Roman
dominions; the system of tenths and the middlemen were there
unknown; the population was numerous, and the country was rich
in corn and cattle.
The Protected States
Far more insupportable was the condition--intermediate between formal
sovereignty and actual subjection--of the African, Greek, and Asiatic
states which were brought within the sphere of Roman hegemony through
the wars of Rome with Carthage, Macedonia, and Syria, and their
consequences. An independent state does not pay too dear a price
for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it
cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find
at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures
for it peace with its neighbours. But these client states of Rome
had neither independence nor peace. In Africa there practically
subsisted a perpetual border-war between Carthage and Numidia.
In Egypt Roman arbitration had settled the dispute as to the
succession between the two brothers Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy
the Fat; nevertheless the new rulers of Egypt and Cyrene waged war
for the possession of Cyprus. In Asia not only were most of the
kingdoms--Bithynia, Cappadocia, Syria--likewise torn by internal
quarrels as to the succession and by the interventions of
neighbouring states to which these quarrels gave rise, but various
and severe wars were carried on between the Attalids and the
Galatians, between the Attalids and the kings of Bithynia, and even
between Rhodes and Crete. In Hellas proper, in like manner, the
pigmy feuds which were customary there continued to smoulder; and
even Macedonia, formerly so tranquil, consumed its strength in the
intestine strife that arose out of its new democratic constitutions.
It was the fault of the rulers as well as the ruled, that the last
vital energies and the last prosperity of the nations were expended
in these aimless feuds. The client states ought to have perceived
that a state which cannot wage war against every one cannot wage war
at all, and that, as the possessions and power enjoyed by all these
states were practically under Roman guarantee, they had in the event
of any difference no alternative but to settle the matter amicably
with their neighbours or to call in the Romans as arbiters. When the
Achaean diet was urged by the Rhodians and Cretans to grant them the
aid of the league, and seriously deliberated as to sending it (601),
it was simply a political farce; the principle which the leader of the
party friendly to Rome then laid down--that the Achaeans were no
longer at liberty to wage war without the permission of the Romans--
expressed, doubtless with disagreeable precision, the simple truth
that the sovereignty of the dependent states was merely a formal
one, and that any attempt to give life to the shadow must necessarily
lead to the destruction of the shadow itself. But the ruling
community deserves a censure more severe than that directed against
the ruled. It is no easy task for a man--any more than for a
state--to own to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the
ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an
imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation.
The Roman senate did neither. Invoked and importuned on all hands,
the senate interfered incessantly in the course of African, Hellenic,
Asiatic, and Egyptian affairs; but it did so after so inconstant
and loose a fashion, that its attempts to settle matters usually only
rendered the confusion worse. It was the epoch of commissions.
Commissioners of the senate were constantly going to Carthage and
Alexandria, to the Achaean diet, and to the courts of the rulers of
western Asia; they investigated, inhibited, reported, and yet
decisive steps were not unfrequently taken in the most important
matters without the knowledge, or against the wishes, of the senate.
It might happen that Cyprus, for instance, which the senate had
assigned to the kingdom of Cyrene, was nevertheless retained by Egypt;
that a Syrian prince ascended the throne of his ancestors under the
pretext that he had obtained a promise of it from the Romans, while
the senate had in fact expressly refused to give it to him, and he
himself had only escaped from Rome by breaking their interdict; that
even the open murder of a Roman commissioner, who under the orders of
the senate administered as guardian the government of Syria, passed
totally unpunished. The Asiatics were very well aware that they
were not in a position to resist the Roman legions; but they were
no less aware that the senate was but little inclined to give the
burgesses orders to march for the Euphrates or the Nile. Thus the
state of these remote countries resembled that of the schoolroom
when the teacher is absent or lax; and the government of Rome
deprived the nations at once of the blessings of freedom and of
the blessings of order. For the Romans themselves, moreover, this
state of matters was so far perilous that it to a certain extent left
their northern and eastern frontier exposed. In these quarters
kingdoms might be formed by the aid of the inland countries situated
beyond the limits of the Roman hegemony and in antagonism to the weak
states under Roman protection, without Rome being able directly or
speedily to interfere, and might develop a power dangerous to, and
entering sooner or later into rivalry with, Rome. No doubt the
condition of the bordering nations--everywhere split into fragments
and nowhere favourable to political development on a great scale--
formed some sort of protection against this danger; yet we very
clearly perceive in the history of the east, that at this period the
Euphrates was no longer guarded by the phalanx of Seleucus and was
not yet watched by the legions of Augustus. It was high time to put
an end to this state of indecision. But the only possible way of
ending it was by converting the client states into Roman provinces.
This could be done all the more easily, that the Roman provincial
constitution in substance only concentrated military power in the
hands of the Roman governor, while administration and jurisdiction
in the main were, or at any rate were intended to be, retained by
the communities, so that as much of the old political independence as
was at all capable of life might be preserved in the form of communal
freedom. The necessity for this administrative reform could not
well be mistaken; the only question was, whether the senate would
delay and mar it, or whether it would have the courage and the power
clearly to discern and energetically to execute what was needful.