The History of Rome, Book IV - 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 | 47
Achaean War
In order to screen a foul transaction, Diaeus, the president of the
Achaean league for the time being, about 605 threw out in the diet
the assertion that the special privileges conceded by the Achaean
league to the Lacedaemonians as members--viz. their exemption from
the Achaean criminal jurisdiction, and the right to send separate
embassies to Rome--were not at all guaranteed to them by the Romans.
It was an audacious falsehood; but the diet naturally believed what
it wished, and, when the Achaeans showed themselves ready to make
good their assertions with arms in hand, the weaker Spartans yielded
for the time, or, to speak more correctly, those whose surrender was
demanded by the Achaeans left the city to appear as complainants
before the Roman senate. The senate answered as usual that it would
send a commission to investigate the matter; but instead of reporting
this reply the envoys stated in Achaia as well as in Sparta, and in
both cases falsely, that the senate had decided in their favour.
The Achaeans, who felt more than ever their equality with Rome as
allies and their political importance on account of the aid which
the league had just rendered in Thessaly against the pseudo-Philip,
advanced in 606 under their -strategus- Damocritus into Laconia: in
vain a Roman embassy on its way to Asia, at the suggestion of Metellus,
admonished them to keep the peace and to await the commissioners of
the senate. A battle took place, in which nearly 1000 Spartans
fell, and Sparta might have been taken if Damocritus had not been
equally incapable as an officer and as a statesman. He was superseded,
and his successor Diaeus, the instigator of all this mischief,
zealously continued the war, while at the same time he gave to the
dreaded commandant of Macedonia assurances of the full loyalty of the
Achaean league. Thereupon the long-expected Roman commission made its
appearance, with Aurelius Orestes at its head; hostilities were now
suspended, and the Achaean diet assembled at Corinth to receive its
communications. They were of an unexpected and far from agreeable
character. The Romans had resolved to cancel the unnatural and
forced(20) inclusion of Sparta among the Achaean states, and generally
to act with vigour against the Achaeans. Some years before (591)
these had been obliged to release from their league the Aetolian
town of Pleuron;(21) now they were directed to renounce all the
acquisitions which they had made since the second Macedonian war--viz.
Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea
near to Oeta--and to reduce their league to the condition in which it
stood at the end of the Hannibalic war. When the Achaean deputies
learned this, they rushed immediately to the market-place without even
hearing the Romans to an end, and communicated the Roman demands to the
multitude; whereupon the governing and the governed rabble with one
voice resolved to arrest at once the whole Lacedaemonians present in
Corinth, because Sparta forsooth had brought on them this misfortune.
The arrest accordingly took place in the most tumultuary fashion,
so that the possession of Laconian names or Laconian shoes appeared
sufficient ground for imprisonment: in fact they even entered the
dwellings of the Roman envoys to seize the Lacedaemonians who had
taken shelter there, and hard words were uttered against the Romans,
although they did not lay hands on their persons. The envoys
returned home in indignation, and made bitter and even exaggerated
complaints in the senate; but the latter, with the same moderation
which marked all its measures against the Greeks, confined itself at
first to representations. In the mildest form, and hardly mentioning
satisfaction for the insults which they had endured, Sextus Julius
Caesar repeated the commands of the Romans at the diet in Aegium
(spring of 607). But the leaders of affairs in Achaia with the new
-strategus- Critolaus at their head -strategus- (from May 607 to May
608), as men versed in state affairs and familiar with political arts,
merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome
with reference to Carthage and Viriathus could not but be very
unfavourable, and continued at once to cheat and to affront the
Romans. Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of
the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the question.
He did so; but, after Caesar and the Lacedaemonian envoys had waited
there long in vain for the Achaeans, Critolaus at last appeared
alone and informed them that the general assembly of the Achaeans
was solely competent in this matter, and that it could only be settled
at the diet or, in other words, in six months. Caesar thereupon
returned to Rome; and the next national assembly of the Achaeans
on the proposal of Critolaus formally declared war against Sparta.
Even now Metellus made an attempt amicably to settle the quarrel, and
sent envoys to Corinth; but the noisy -ecclesia-, consisting mostly of
the populace of that wealthy commercial and manufacturing city, drowned
the voice of the Roman envoys and compelled them to leave the platform.
The declaration of Critolaus, that they wished the Romans to be their
friends but not their masters, was received with inexpressible delight;
and, when the members of the diet wished to interpose, the mob
protected the man after its own heart, and applauded the sarcasms
as to the high treason of the rich and the need of a military
dictatorship as well as the mysterious hints regarding an impending
insurrection of countless peoples and kings against Rome. The spirit
animating the movement is shown by the two resolutions, that all clubs
should be permanent and all actions for debt should be suspended till
the restoration of peace.
The Achaeans thus had war; and they had even actual allies, namely
the Thebans and Boeotians and also the Chalcidians. At the beginning
of 608 the Achaeans advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience
Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of
the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul
Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece,
had not yet arrived; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect
Heraclea with the Macedonian legions. When the advance of the Romans
was announced to the Achaeo-Theban army, there was no more talk of
fighting; they deliberated only how they might best succeed in reaching
once more the secure Peloponnesus; in all haste the army made off,
and did not even attempt to hold the position at Thermopylae.
But Metellus quickened the pursuit, and overtook and defeated
the Greek army near Scarpheia in Locris. The loss in prisoners and
dead was considerable; Critolaus was never heard of after the battle.
The remains of the defeated army wandered about Greece in single troops,
and everywhere sought admission in vain; the division of Patrae
was destroyed in Phocis, the Arcadian select corps at Chaeronea;
all northern Greece was evacuated, and only a small portion of
the Achaean army and of the citizens of Thebes, who fled in a body,
reached the Peloponnesus. Metellus sought by the utmost moderation
to induce the Greeks to abandon their senseless resistance, and gave
orders, for example, that all the Thebans with a single exception,
should be allowed their liberty; his well-meant endeavours were
thwarted not by the energy of the people, but by the desperation of
the leaders apprehensive for their own safety. Diaeus, who after
the fall of Critolaus had resumed the chief command, summoned all men
capable of bearing arms to the isthmus, and ordered 12,000 slaves,
natives of Greece, to be enrolled in the army; the rich were applied
to for advances, and the ranks of the friends of peace, so far as they
did not purchase their lives by bribing the ruling agents in this reign
of terror, were thinned by bloody prosecutions. The war accordingly was
continued, and after the same style. The Achaean vanguard, which, 4000
strong, was stationed under Alcamenes at Megara, dispersed as soon as
it saw the Roman standards. Metellus was just about to order an
attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius
Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters
and took the command. Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a
successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered
battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at
Leucopetra on the isthmus. The Romans were not slow to accept it.
At the very first the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the
Roman cavalry of six times their strength; the hoplites withstood the
enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion
also into their ranks. This terminated the resistance. Diaeus fled
to his home, put his wife to death, and took poison himself. All the
cities submitted without opposition; and even the impregnable Corinth,
into which Mummius for three days hesitated to enter because he
feared an ambush, was occupied by the Romans without a blow.
Province of Achaia
The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to
a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius,
who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered
country. Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him
to assume the name of "Achaicus" on account of his feats of war and
victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to
Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic
luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a "new man" and
comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and
indulgent administrator. The statement, that none of the Achaeans
perished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a
rhetorical exaggeration: in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred;
but yet on the whole moderation was observed in the infliction of
penalties. Mummius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues
of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the
fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman
exchequer, but for the injured Greek cities, and were mostly
remitted afterwards; and the property of those traitors who had
parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over
to their relatives. The works of art alone were carried away from
Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and were erected partly in the
capital, partly in the country towns of Italy:(22) several pieces were
also presented to the Isthmian, Delphic, and Olympic temples. In the
definitive organization of the country also moderation was in general
displayed. It is true that, as was implied in the very introduction
of the provincial constitution,(23) the special confederacies, and
the Achaean in particular, were as such dissolved; the communities were
isolated; and intercourse between them was hampered by the rule that no
one might acquire landed property simultaneously in two communities.
Moreover, as Flamininus had already attempted,(24) the democratic
constitutions of the towns were altogether set aside, and the
government in each community was placed in the hands of a council
composed of the wealthy. A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was
imposed on each community; and they were all subordinated to the
governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme
military chief, exercised a superintendence over administration and
justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of
the more important criminal processes. Yet the Greek communities
retained "freedom," that is, a formal sovereignty--reduced, doubtless,
by the Roman hegemony to a name--which involved the property of the
soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of
their own.(25) Some years later not only were the old confederacies
again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive
restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.
Destruction of Corinth
The communities of Thebes, Chalcis, and Corinth experienced a treatment
more severe. There is no ground for censure in the fact that the two
former were disarmed and converted by the demolition of their walls
into open villages; but the wholly uncalled-for destruction of
the flourishing Corinth, the first commercial city in Greece, remains
a dark stain on the annals of Rome. By express orders from the senate
the Corinthian citizens were seized, and such as were not killed were
sold into slavery; the city itself was not only deprived of its walls
and its citadel--a measure which, if the Romans were not disposed
permanently to garrison it, was certainly inevitable--but was
levelled with the ground, and all rebuilding on the desolate site
was prohibited in the usual forms of accursing; part of its territory
was given to Sicyon under the obligation that the latter should
defray the costs of the Isthmian national festival in room of Corinth,
but the greater portion was declared to be public land of Rome.
Thus was extinguished "the eye of Hellas," the last precious ornament
of the Grecian land, once so rich in cities. If, however, we review
the whole catastrophe, the impartial historian must acknowledge--
what the Greeks of this period themselves candidly confessed--that
the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the
contrary, the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks
compelled the Roman intervention. The abolition of the mock
sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams
connected with them was a blessing for the country; and the government
of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much it fell
short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous
confusion and misrule of Greek confederacies and Roman commissions.
The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries;
it is affirmed, and may readily be believed, that with the direct
government of Rome security and prosperity in some measure returned.
The epigram of Themistocles, that ruin had averted ruin, was applied
by the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss
of Greek independence. The singular indulgence, which Rome even now
showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared
with the contemporary conduct of the same authorities towards the
Spaniards and Phoenicians. To treat barbarians with cruelty seemed
not unallowable, but the Romans of this period, like the emperor Trajan
in later times, deemed it "harsh and barbarous to deprive Athens
and Sparta of the shadow of freedom which they still retained." All
the more marked is the contrast between this general moderation and
the revolting treatment of Corinth--a treatment disapproved by the
orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and
far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by
the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets
of Corinth. And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality
of any single individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure
deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate. We shall not err,
if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus
early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy
proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial
rival. If the great merchants of Rome had anything to say in the
regulation of Greece, we can understand why Corinth was singled out for
punishment, and why the Romans not only destroyed the city as it stood,
but also prohibited any future settlement on a site so pre-eminently
favourable for commerce. The Peloponnesian Argos thenceforth became
the rendezvous for the Roman merchants, who were very numerous even
in Greece. For the Roman wholesale traffic, however, Delos was
of greater importance; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had
attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes,(26) and now
in a similar way entered on the heritage of Corinth. This island
remained for a considerable time the chief emporium for merchandise
going from the east to the west.(27)
In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion
exhibited a development more imperfect than in the African and
Macedono-Hellenic countries, which were separated from Italy
only by narrow seas.
Kingdom of Pergamus
In Asia Minor, after the Seleucids were driven back, the kingdom
of Pergamus had become the first power. Not led astray by
the traditions of the Alexandrine monarchies, but sagacious and
dispassionate enough to renounce what was impossible, the Attalids
kept quiet; and endeavoured not to extend their bounds nor to
withdraw from the Roman hegemony, but to promote the prosperity of
their empire, so far as the Romans allowed, and to foster the arts
of peace. Nevertheless they did not escape the jealousy and suspicion
of Rome. In possession of the European shore of the Propontis,
of the west coast of Asia Minor, and of its interior as far as
the Cappadocian and Cilician frontiers, and in close connection with
the Syrian kings--one of whom, Antiochus Epiphanes (d. 590), had
ascendedthe throne by the aid of the Attalids--king Eumenes II had
by his power, which seemed still more considerable from the more and
more deep decline of Macedonia and Syria, instilled apprehension
in the minds even of its founders. We have already related(28)
how the senate sought to humble and weaken this ally after the third
Macedonian war by unbecoming diplomatic arts. The relations--
perplexing from the very nature of the case--of the rulers of
Pergamus towards the free or half-free commercial cities within
their kingdom, and towards their barbarous neighbours on its borders,
became complicated still more painfully by this ill humour on the part
of their patrons. As it was not clear whether, according to the
treaty of peace in 565, the heights of the Taurus in Pamphylia and
Pisidia belonged to the kingdom of Syria or to that of Pergamus,(29)
the brave Selgians, nominally recognizing, as it would seem, the Syrian
supremacy, made a prolonged and energetic resistance to the kings
Eumenes II and Attalus II in the hardly accessible mountains of
Pisidia. The Asiatic Celts also, who for a time with the permission
of the Romans had yielded allegiance to Pergamus, revolted from
Eumenes and, in concert with Prusias king of Bithynia the hereditary
enemy of the Attalids, suddenly began war against him about 587.
The king had had no time to hire mercenary troops; all his skill
and valour could not prevent the Celts from defeating the Asiatic
militia and overrunning his territory; the peculiar mediation, to which
the Romans condescended at the request of Eumenes, has already been
mentioned.(30) But, as soon as he had found time with the help of his
well-filled exchequer to raise an army capable of taking the field, he
speedily drove the wild hordes back over the frontier, and, although
Galatia remained lost to him, and his obstinately-continued attempts
to maintain his footing there were frustrated by Roman influence,(31)
he yet, in spite of all the open attacks and secret machinations which
his neighbours and the Romans directed against him, at his death
(about 595) left his kingdom in standing un-diminished. His brother
Attalus II Philadelphia (d. 616) with Roman aid repelled the attempt
of Pharnaces king of Pontus to seize the guardianship of Eumenes'
son who was a minor, and reigned in the room of his nephew, like
Antigonus Doson, as guardian for life. Adroit, able, pliant,
a genuine Attalid, he had the art to convince the suspicious senate
that the apprehensions which it had formerly cherished were baseless.
The anti-Roman party accused him of having to do with keeping the land
for the Romans, and of acquiescing in every insult and exaction at
their hands; but, sure of Roman protection, he was able to interfere
decisively in the disputes as to the succession to the throne in Syria,
Cappadocia, and Bithynia. Even from the dangerous Bithynian war, which
king Prusias II, surnamed the Hunter (572?-605), a ruler who combined
in his own person all the vices of barbarism and of civilization,
began against him, Roman intervention saved him--although not until
he had been himself besieged in his capital, and a first warning given
by the Romans had remained unattended to, and had even been scoffed at,
by Prusias (598-600). But, when his ward Attalus III Philometor
ascended the throne (616-621), the peaceful and moderate rule of
the citizen kings was replaced by the tyranny of an Asiatic sultan;
under which for instance, the king, with a view to rid himself of
the inconvenient counsel of his father's friends, assembled them in
the palace, and ordered his mercenaries to put to death first them,
and then their wives and children. Along with such recreations he
wrote treatises on gardening, reared poisonous plants, and prepared
wax models, till a sudden death carried him off.
Province of Asia
War against Aristonicus
With him the house of the Attalids became extinct. In such an event,
according to the constitutional law which held good at least for
the client-states of Rome, the last ruler might dispose of the
succession by testament. Whether it was the insane rancour against
his subjects which had tormented the last Attalid during life that
now suggested to him the thought of bequeathing his kingdom by will
to the Romans, or whether his doing so was merely a further recognition
of the practical supremacy of Rome, cannot be determined. The testament
was made;(32) the Romans accepted the bequest, and the question as to
the land and the treasure of the Attalids threw a new apple of contention
among the conflicting political parties in Rome. In Asia also this
royal testament kindled a civil war. Relying on the aversion of
the Asiatics to the foreign rule which awaited them, Aristonicus,
a natural son of Eumenes II, made his appearance in Leucae, a small
seaport between Smyrna and Phocaea, as a pretender to the crown.
Phocaea and other towns joined him, but he was defeated at sea off
Cyme by the Ephesians--who saw that a steady adherence to Rome
was the only possible way of preserving their privileges--and was
obliged to flee into the interior. The movement was believed to
have died away when he suddenly reappeared at the head of the new
"citizens of the city of the sun,"(33) in other words, of the slaves
whom he had called to freedom en masse, mastered the Lydian towns of
Thyatira and Apollonis as well as a portion of the Attalic townships,
and summoned bands of Thracian free-lances to join his standard.
The struggle was serious. There were no Roman troops in Asia;
the Asiatic free cities and the contingents of the client-princes
of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, could not
withstand the pretender; he penetrated by force of arms into Colophon,
Samos, and Myndus, and already ruled over almost all his father's
kingdom, when at the close of 623 a Roman army landed in Asia.
Its commander, the consul and -pontifex maximus- Publius Licinius
Crassus Mucianus, one of the wealthiest and at the same time one of
the most cultivated men in Rome, equally distinguished as an orator
and as a jurist, was about to besiege the pretender in Leucae, but
during his preparations for that purpose allowed himself to be surprised
and defeated by his too-much-underrated opponent, and was made a prisoner
in person by a Thracian band. But he did not allow such an enemy
the triumph of exhibiting the Roman commander-in-chief as a captive;
he provoked the barbarians, who had captured him without knowing
who he was, to put him to death (beginning of 624), and the consular
was only recognised when a corpse. With him, as it would seem, fell
Ariarathes king of Cappadocia. But not long after this victory
Aristonicus was attacked by Marcus Perpenna, the successor of
Crassus; his army was dispersed, he himself was besieged and taken
prisoner in Stratonicea, and was soon afterwards executed in Rome.
The subjugation of the last towns that still offered resistance
and the definitive regulation of the country were committed, after
the sudden death of Perpenna, to Manius Aquillius (625). The same
policy was followed as in the case of the Carthaginian territory.
The eastern portion of the kingdom of the Attalids was assigned
to the client kings, so as to release the Romans from the protection
of the frontier and thereby from the necessity of maintaining a
standing force in Asia; Telmissus(34) went to the Lycian confederacy;
the European possessions in Thrace were annexed to the province of
Macedonia; the rest of the territory was organized as a new Roman
province, which like that of Carthage was, not without design,
designated by the name of the continent in which it lay. The land
was released from the taxes which had been paid to Pergamus; and it
was treated with the same moderation as Hellas and Macedonia. Thus
the most considerable state in Asia Minor became a Roman province.