HISTORYHISTORY — ROME The Birth of the Republic Rome’s astonishing ascent was not based wholly or even mostly on her military exploits, but on the moral sensibilities of her people and the limitation of government power.

by Steve Bonta attained the wealth, power and vitality of of Rome’s success can be attributed to her Roman civilization at its peak. In the more fanatical attention to military order and This is the first installment in a series of than two centuries since the American to the cultivation of virtues conducive to articles on the rise and fall of the Roman founding, American and European civi- military strength: unswerving loyalty, obe- Republic. lization have far outstripped and eclipsed dience, frugality, and disregard for peril to the achievements of ancient Rome. But life and limb. s with most ancient nations, the the mystique of Rome persists. The les- From her remotest beginnings, Rome origins of Rome are clouded by sons of the rise and fall of Rome resonate enjoyed an almost uninterrupted string Alegend. The first inhabitants of in our age, when a single power consumed of military successes, at first over hostile what became the city-state of Rome may by imperialistic ambition and cankered neighbors like the Aequans, the Volscians have been refugees from defeated Troy, by moral decay — the United States of and the Samnites, and later against over- led by the semi-legendary hero Aeneas. America — seems to be slouching down seas rivals like Carthage, Macedonia and Rome’s greatest poet, Virgil, said as much the same path to decline that the Romans Pontus. Rome’s military setbacks, during in his immortal epic, the Aeneid, and followed. the seven and a half centuries between her Roman historians, such as Appian and Of the time between the traditional founding and the destruction of the legions Livy, claimed the same. founding of Rome around 753 B.C.with of Varro by the Germans at the Battle of By all accounts, Rome in the eighth the ascent of Romulus and the birth of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D., were few century B.C. was little more than an armed Roman Republic in about 509 B.C. with and memorable. They included the sack- camp of brigands. Yet within seven hun- the expulsion of the Tarquins, we know ing of Rome by the Gauls in about 390 dred years, this squalid, warlike settlement nothing not colored by legend. Yet there B.C.; the humiliation under the Samnite became the greatest man-made power the is no reason to believe that Romulus did yoke at Caudine Forks in 321 B.C. (which world had ever seen, mistress of most of not exist, or that he was not, as Plutarch was speedily avenged by an overwhelm- Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and and Livy both assert, the first Roman king. ing Roman reprisal); the setbacks against the Middle East. Ancient Rome was the Romulus is depicted as a violent, warlike Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and Hannibal, incubator for Christianity, the repository individual, the most ruthless member of a the Carthaginian general; the challenge of Western Civilization for over a thou- very rough crowd. The stories of his mur- of Mithridates, king of Pontus; Spartacus’ sand years, and the setting for much of the der of Remus, his brother, and his war with short-lived slave revolt; and the slaughter greatest historical drama — and many of the Sabines over the rape of the Sabine of Crassus and his legions by the Parthians the most extraordinary characters — ever women by his men, whether true or not, in 53 B.C. at Carrhae. to occupy the human stage. are certainly in keeping with the warlike But for the most part, Roman military Rome rose to unexampled heights, only spirit the Romans cultivated, from the very history is a dreary catalog of one-sided to fall with a shock that still reverber- foundation of their city. battles with outmatched and poorly orga- ates across the centuries. Unlike the great nized foes, of the destruction or absorption civilizations that preceded her — Egypt, State of War of entire nations into the expanding Roman Elam, Sumer, Babylon, Carthage and oth- With only a few brief interludes, Rome state, and of almost superhuman resilience ers — Rome’s legacy was far more than was perpetually at war from the time of in rebounding from rare defeats that would jumbled ruins. Of Rome we preserve a the Tarquins to the ascent of Caesar Au- have broken the back of any other people, vast literature, a code of laws, and many gustus. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, such as the disaster at Cannae in 216 B.C., of our political, cultural, artistic and reli- she “never sated of carnage and conquest.” where Hannibal’s forces cut down the gious forms. For instead of collapsing ut- Like Sparta, Rome, both as a monarchy flower of Rome’s entire military. terly, like its predecessors, Rome was first and as a republic, was organized along broken into fragments and then transmuted military lines. Every able-bodied Roman Political Strength into the political and religious institutions male saw annual military service through- But the ascent of Rome was not due wholly that served as a foundation for modern out his young adult years, until the time or even mostly to her military successes. Western civilization. of Marius in the late second century B.C. Rome, in her evolution from armed America’s Founding Fathers, as well when Rome professionalized her military. camp to monarchy to republic to em- as their European contemporaries, were So pervasive was the military in Roman pire, discovered a formula for limiting fascinated with Rome, for in the 18th cen- political culture that even the senators the power of government by dividing it tury the Western world had only recently were known as “conscript fathers.” Much among several different magistrates and

34 THE NEW AMERICAN • OCTOBER 4, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

elected bodies. The Roman Republic also Rome’s second king, Numa developed a written code of laws that de- Pompilius — a Sabine states- fined and protected the rights of Roman man who refused an offer of Ancient Rome was the incubator for citizens. The exquisitely balanced Roman the kingship until a large body Christianity, the repository of Western state conferred an extraordinary degree of his fellow-citizens persuaded of political stability, while granting to him to accept — set about civi- Civilization for over a thousand years, Roman citizens a degree of personal lib- lizing the Romans and refining and the setting for much of the greatest erty almost unknown in human history be- the crude despotism of his pre- historical drama — and many of the fore that time. The Roman state was, wrote decessor. “The first thing he did Polybius, “a union which is strong enough at the entrance into government,” most extraordinary characters — ever to withstand all emergencies, so that it is Plutarch relates, “was to dismiss to occupy the human stage. impossible to find a better form of consti- the band of three hundred men tution than this.” which had been Romulus’ life- Many of the institutions of the Roman guard … saying that he would not distrust subjects were pleased to emulate. republican government, as well as the those who put confidence in him; nor rule Numa was by disposition a man of roots of the distinctive Roman culture, de- over a people that distrusted him.” peace, and wanted to reduce the Romans’ veloped well before the founding of the Numa forbade the use of any graven love of violence and warfare. He insti- republic itself. The Senate, Rome’s oldest image in the worship of God, a practice tuted the order of the Fetials, a college of government body, was apparently founded that seems to have persisted for more than priests whose special task it was, in Plu- by Romulus. It may have been patterned a century after his death. He instituted tarch’s words, to “put a stop to disputes after the Gerousia, a governing body of many other religious reforms, including by conference and by speech; for it was Sparta, and also resembled the Athenian the creation of the Vestal Virgins, and lived not allowable to take up arms until they Areopagus. a life of conspicuous piety that many of his had declared all hopes of accommodation

The Vestal Virgins were the guardians of the sacred fire at the temple of the goddess Vesta that came to symbolize the Roman state. Violation of their oath of virginity was punished by being buried alive.

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temple of the god Janus during tle air had blown from Rome upon times of peace, a custom that, after them, began to experience a change Rome discovered a formula for Numa, was put into practice only of feeling, and partook in the general limiting the power of government by once — during the consulship of longing for the sweets of peace and Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius order.... For during the whole reign dividing it among several different in the third century B.C. — in all of Numa, there was neither war, nor magistrates and elected bodies. The of the centuries leading up to the sedition, nor innovation in the state, Roman Republic also developed a reign of Caesar Augustus. Wrote nor any envy or ill-will to his person, Plutarch with admiration: nor plot or conspiracy from views of written code of laws that defined and ambition. protected the rights of Roman citizens. During the reign of Numa, those gates were never seen Kings and Despots open a single day, but contin- Unfortunately, this state of affairs did not to be at an end.” The Fetials endured until ued constantly shut for a space of outlive Numa himself. Tullus Hostilius, the late Roman Empire, providing a check forty-three years together, such an his immediate successor, was, according to of sorts on the power of the Roman state entire and universal cessation of war Livy, “not only unlike the preceding king, to go to war. existed. For not only had the people but was even of a more warlike disposition During his reign, at least, Numa appears of Rome itself been softened and than Romulus.... Thinking, therefore, that to have been successful in taming the war- charmed into a peaceful temper by the state was becoming languid through like disposition of his people, even if it the just and mild rule of a pacific quiet, he everywhere sought for pretexts was seldom assuaged thereafter. It was the prince, but even the neighboring cit- for stirring up war.” Before long, he suc- custom in Rome to shut the doors of the ies, as if some salubrious and gen- ceeded in provoking a war with the Albans,

Rome triumphant: The pageantry of a Roman military triumph was a common sight in the streets of ancient Rome. The Roman Republic, almost incessantly at war, became the most formidable military power the world had ever seen.

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a closely related neighboring nation. The war ended with the Roman destruction of Alba, and the permanent enmity, towards Rome, of Alba’s allies. After the Alban conflict, Tullus declared war against the Sabines, which resulted in a speedy Roman victory. In all, the reign of Tullus, which lasted 32 years, was ap- plauded by Livy for its “great military re- nown.” It set the pattern, to be followed by Rome ever after, of incessant warfare with her neighbors, and aggressive territo- rial expansion. The four kings that followed Tullus con- tinued the Roman tradition of endless war, with campaigns against formidable foes like the Veii, the Aequans and the Vols- cians. The latter two in particular fought the Romans for generations before finally being vanquished and absorbed into the burgeoning Roman state. The last king of early Rome, Lucius Tar- quinius Superbus (“Tarquin the Proud”), was a vicious despot who came to power by murdering his predecessor, the aged monarch Servius Tullius. Tarquin is said to have been aided in his misdeed by Tullius’ daughter Tullia, with whom he had devel- oped an adulterous liaison. Tullia found her father’s lifeless body in the street outside the Senate where Tarquin had personally cast Reluctant king: Numa Pompilius, Rome’s second and greatest king, at first refused the offer of it, whereupon she triumphantly drove her kingship. His reign was the most peaceful period in Rome’s history, and was marked by many religious reforms. chariot over it. She even, according to Livy, carried off a portion of her father’s remains to be offered up to her household gods. Tarquin lost no time clamping down on the Roman state. He purged the govern- For the Serious Student ment of suspected rivals, including many senior senators, and even had a number of his own relatives murdered. He surround- he original sources for Rome’s semi-legendary early history are many, but two in ed himself with an armed entourage, since, Tparticular stand out, as much for their literary quality as for their historical inter- in Livy’s estimation, “he had no claim to est: Livy and Plutarch. Titus Livius or Livy was, if not the greatest, certainly the most comprehensive source for Roman history, from the founding of Rome up to the late the kingdom except by force, inasmuch as republican period. As with most ancient authors, much of Livy’s Roman history has he reigned without either the order of the been lost, but the remaining portions are packed with fascinating details and vivid de- people or the sanction of the senate.” Like scriptions of pivotal events like the expulsion of the Tarquins. In the American Founders’ most tyrants, Tarquin was preoccupied day, Livy was required reading for advanced Latin students. Nowadays, the complete with war and with building a monument surviving works of Livy are available in very readable translation, and are one of the to himself, in this case an immense temple best introductions to both the history and culture of early Rome. of Jupiter intended to be the most magnifi- Plutarch, a Greek who compiled his famous book of parallel biographies of ancient cent building in the ancient world. Greeks and Romans in the early 2nd century A.D., is one of the best-loved writers of all time. His brief but engaging sketches portray his subjects with honesty and affection; Rise of the Republic their failings and strengths are both held up for the reader to evaluate. Still the best trans- Tarquin’s downfall was as dramatic as his lation of Plutarch’s Lives — one of the most widely read books in early America — is seizure of power. His youngest son Sextus the so-called Dryden translation. Compiled by poet John Dryden in the late 1600s and conceived an illicit passion for Lucretia, later edited by scholar Arthur Clough in the mid-19th century, this masterly translation the wife of a Roman aristocrat related to is still in print in a two-volume Modern Library Classics edition. ■ Tarquin himself. While Lucretia’s husband — STEVE BONTA

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for his crime. Rome took an oath never to allow another It was Brutus who drew king to reign over Rome. The new state, The ascent of Rome was not due wholly Lucretia’s dagger from the called a “res publica” (“people’s thing”) or even mostly to her military successes. self-inflicted wound, and, in Latin, was something new: a form of holding it aloft, reputedly government that protected the rights of its The exquisitely balanced Roman state said: “By this blood, most citizens while being itself limited by laws conferred an extraordinary degree of pure before the pollution of and by the diffusion of its powers into political stability, while granting to Roman royal villainy, I swear, and many different magistrates and governing I call upon you, O gods, to bodies. Brutus’ commitment to the new citizens a degree of personal liberty almost witness my oath that I shall republic was so unshakeable that he even unknown in human history before that time. pursue Lucius Tarquin the presided over the execution of several of Proud, his wicked wife, his own sons and nephews after finding and all their race with fire, them guilty of conspiring with agents of was away, Sextus crept into her chamber sword, and all other means in my power; the exiled Tarquin to reinstall the monar- and violated her at the point of a sword. nor shall I ever suffer them or any other chy. He eventually perished on the battle- Lucretia immediately sent for her father to reign at Rome.” He then led the other field in hand-to-hand combat with the son and husband, enjoining each to bring a three in the same oath, and they then bore of Tarquinius Superbus, during one of sev- trustworthy friend. Accordingly her father Lucretia’s body to the Forum, where they eral unsuccessful attempts by the Tarquins brought Publius Valerius and her husband raised a revolt against the Tarquins. After a to reconquer Rome. summoned Lucius Junius Brutus, who 25-year reign of terror, Tarquin the Proud His consular colleague Collatinus, happened to be a disaffected nephew of was expelled from Rome, and Brutus and because of bearing the surname Tarquin- Tarquin. The distraught Lucretia informed Collatinus, Lucretia’s husband, elected ius, soon left office and voluntarily went the four men what had happened and, as Rome’s first consuls. into exile, to remove any apprehensions an affirmation of her testimony, commit- Lucius Junius Brutus is thus remembered that another Tarquin might usurp power. ted suicide on the spot, after securing their as the father of the Roman Republic. After His place was taken by Publius Valerius, promise that the guilty party would suffer the expulsion of the Tarquins, he and all the other witness to Lucretia’s suicide,

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and usually reckoned along with L. Bru- ment was probably a distinct improvement leading Rome in a series of wars instigated tus as Rome’s most important founding over the suffocating despotism that held mostly by the vindictive Tarquins, stepped father. the rest of the human race in thrall. down from the consulship and died, hav- Plutarch compared Publius Valerius, With the career and reforms of Publius ing lived a life that “so far as human life afterwards nicknamed Poplicola (“lover Valerius — whose name in a latter age was may be, had been full of all that is good of the people”), to Solon, the great law- used by the authors of The Federalist Pa- and honorable,” in Plutarch’s admiring ter- giver of Athens. Indeed, Publius proved to pers as an enlightened pseudonym — the minology. But the Roman Republic was to be more of a statesman than his erstwhile Roman Republic was off to a brilliant outlive its founders by many centuries, and colleague Brutus, while being as strong a beginning. Poplicola, after successfully its legacy by millennia. ■ partisan of popular liberty. When Publius heard that some had criti- cized him for his stately house on a hill overlooking the Forum, he ordered the house pulled down, and moved in with friends until furnished with a more modest house of his own. Publius also made substantial reforms in Roman law to shore up the new republican govern- ment and to fortify the rights of the people against depredations by the state. He appointed 164 new senators to fill the vacan- cies of those purged by Tarquin. He enacted a law permitting of- fenders convicted by the consuls to appeal their sentences directly to the people, a device that, by depending on the doubtful abil- ity of the populace to deliberate en masse, was probably much less effective as a check on state power than it was intended to be. He also instituted the death pen- alty for usurping any public of- fice without the people’s consent and provided for tax relief for the very poor. Such measures may smack more of democratic excess than of true republican government. Indeed, while Rome eventually achieved the best-balanced form of government in the ancient world and deserved the appella- tion of republic, she shared with most other ancient popular states the fatal deficiency of allowing the masses to assemble and de- liberate directly. In the long run, this handicap, together with cer- tain other flaws, was to doom the Roman Republic. But it must be borne in mind that, when Western Rome on the ropes: The sacking of Rome by the Gauls in circa 390 B.C. was a rare instance of Roman Civilization was in its infancy, military defeat, and the only time the Eternal City was breached by a foreign military invader until the last any degree of popular govern- years of the Empire in the Fifth Century A.D.

THE NEW AMERICAN • OCTOBER 4, 2004 39 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME The Republic Matures The Roman Republic was not built in a day, but was the product of generations of reform and even some serious reverses.

by Steve Bonta and wounds, some of them very recent, (all senators and consuls were patricians), from tortures received in debtors’ prison. but providing the bulk of Rome’s military This is the second installment in a series of He had, he explained to the onlookers, forces. Most plebeians depended for their articles on the rise and fall of the Roman been deprived of his livelihood. Having livelihood on farming, an activity that was Republic. served in many wars, he was unable to cul- frequently disrupted by warfare. More- tivate his lands. Enemy armies had burnt over, the new lands annexed by Rome as bout 15 years after the founding his property and driven away his cattle. spoils of war were invariably parceled out of the Roman Republic in 509 Worse still, he had been assessed crip- to patricians, widening the gap between A B.C., an apparition appeared one pling taxes, which he could only pay by the urban gentry, who controlled the ma- day in the Roman Forum. It was no phan- taking on heavy debt. As a result, he had chinery of state and exploited the laws tom or divine portent, though, but a flesh- lost his property and had been delivered to amass more and more wealth, and the and-blood figure, a pale and emaciated old to “a house of correction and a place of rural underclass, who were systematically man dressed in rags who soon attracted a execution” as punishment. divested of their landholdings by war, debt large crowd of curious onlookers. Display- The man’s story was by no means un- and heavy taxes. ing a chest covered with battle scars, the usual. Rome, despite having ousted the wild-haired old man announced that he cruel Etruscan monarch Tarquin the Proud, Discontent and Reforms had fought bravely for Rome during the remained an oligarchic state ruled by the Popular resentment boiled over that day war with the Sabines. Then, to gasps of in- aristocratic patricians. The plebeians or in the Forum, as the wretched old man’s dignation, he displayed his back to his au- underclass remained disenfranchised, with testimony reminded the assembled mass- dience. It was covered with hideous scars little representation in Roman government es of the injustices of Rome’s class-based

The Roman Forum: Even the ruins of Rome’s political and social hub still display fragments of the majesty of the Eternal City in her prime.

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system of government. Before long Rome Spurius Cassius. His proposal was blocked great Greek statesman and lawgiver. The was in complete turmoil, as angry mobs by patrician influence, however, and Cas- Romans then appointed a council of 10 demanded political representation and sius himself was eventually tried and ex- men, the Decemvirs. They were charged even threatened to assassinate the consuls. ecuted for alleged treason. During the later with producing a body of laws that would The Roman Republic, in spite of its many history of the republic, the absence of a protect the rights of the Roman people, strengths, had serious flaws that only dras- just “agrarian law” resurfaced periodical- and that would be inscribed in stone and tic reforms could mend. ly. Eventually, during the administrations remain unchanged. After much delibera- Before long, the exasperated plebe- of the Gracchi in the Second Century B.C., tion, the Decemvirs produced the famed ians emigrated en masse from Rome to this contentious issue became the spark Twelve Tables of Roman Law. a nearby mountain in what has come to that lit the fuse leading to a long series of The Twelve Tables are sometimes char- be known as the First Plebeian Secession. civil wars — wars that ended with the rise acterized as a Roman constitution. How- They demanded more active representa- of the Caesars. ever, they had far more in common with tion in the republican government, and ancient legal codes like the Code of Ham- were rewarded with the creation of the The Need for Written Laws murabi and the law books of ancient Israel office of the tribune, a special magistrate Even with the tribunes in place, the ple- than with modern written constitutions like who represented the plebeians. There were beians chafed under another form of legal the U.S. Constitution. The Twelve Tables originally two tribunes, but more were abuse. Rome had no body of written laws. were a code of civil laws that protected the added with the passage of time. The tri- Therefore, the patricians, the self-anointed rights of citizens rather than defining the bunes held veto power over laws, elections guardians of Roman law, interpreted the powers and offices of the Roman state. and actions of all magistrates except dicta- law however they saw fit — and always From a modern perspective, those por- tors, who in the Roman Republic were ap- with their own class interests in mind. The tions of the Twelve Tables that have come pointed for six-month spans to lead Rome plebeians, demanding equal representa- down to us are something of a mixed bag. through extreme military crises. tion under the law, pressed for a written On the one hand, the Tables gave debtors Unfortunately, another cause of plebeian legal code that could be read and under- certain protections, such as a 30-day grace discontent, the inequity of property laws, stood by all. period to pay debts (Table III) and outlaw- particularly regarding newly acquired ter- In response to pressure for a code of ing capital punishment without convic- ritory, was never adequately addressed. An written laws, the Senate, in about 450 tion (Table IX). On the other, the Tables early attempt at a so-called “agrarian law,” B.C., sent a commission of three men to required the killing of deformed infants which would reform the division of public Greece to study the Greek legal code, par- (Table IV), prescribed the death penalty for land, was attempted by a consul named ticularly the laws devised by Solon, the slander and “giving false witness” (Table

Turning the Tables: Appius Claudius (center) and the other Decemvirs were appointed by the Senate to produce a written law code for Rome. They produced the celebrated Twelve Tables to protect the rights of Roman citizens, but, refusing to relinquish power once the task was finished, became despots themselves.

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VIII), and forbade marriage between patri- cians and hired many of them cians and plebeians (Table XI). But with as personal military escorts. Moral strength has to be accounted the creation of a written code of laws, Thus protected, they were im- which were engraved on 12 stone tablets pervious to popular threats. one of the reasons for Rome’s rise to and kept in the Forum, the Roman Re- Senators and plebeians alike greatness. In contrast with most of public was solidified. The Twelve Tables found themselves under the became, like the English Magna Carta, a decemviral yoke. Despite the their contemporaries, the Romans were palpable symbol of Roman liberty, and persecutions, many plebeians a moral people, renowned for their they served as an effective restraint on the took great satisfaction in the arbitrary interpretation of Roman law. Decemvirs’ treatment of prom- honorable dealings even with enemies, inent patricians, while others and zealous upholders of family values. From Lawgivers to Despots looked in vain to the patricians The story of the Decemvirs, however, did for leadership against the new not end with the creation of the Twelve oppressors. “Liberty,” wrote Decemvirs, Rome’s salvation came as a re- Tables. Led by the charismatic and am- Livy, “was now deplored as lost forever; sult of the abuse of a woman. In this case, bitious Appius Claudius, the Decemvirs nor did any champion stand forth, or ap- Appius Claudius developed a consuming refused to step down and attempted to pear likely to do so.” lust for a certain virtuous plebeian maiden usurp government power. They managed As with the crisis under Tarquin the named Virginia. After failing to seduce to curry favor with many young patri- Proud, so under Appius Claudius and the the young woman with bribes and other

Innocent blood: The persecution of the virtuous Virginia by the Decemvir-turned-despot Appius Claudius led her father to take her life to save her from rape and slavery. The shocking event incited the Romans to rise up and overthrow the tyrannical Decemvirs.

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prompted by attacks on Roman to incur for its sake obligations for base Only when the later Romans succumbed women. For this reason, these and impious acts. A great general should two episodes were often held rely on his own virtue, and not on other to moral depravity did Rome cease up by later historians as evi- men’s vices.’” Having rebuked the man, to produce leaders of the caliber of dence of the moral rectitude of Camillus had him stripped and bound with the early Roman Republic. The ropes, and ordered rods and scourges to Camillus, Poplicola and Scipio. Only dissolute Empire of later cen- be given to the children. The children then then did she become easy prey to turies, which Juvenal famously drove their treasonous schoolmaster back condemned for its addiction to to the city, where the astonished citizens, foreign military powers; only then was “bread and circuses,” placed having already discovered the disappear- she wracked with unending civil unrest. no such premium on chastity, ance of their children, expected the worst. feminine or otherwise. But the When their children were returned to them early Romans, if the stories of unharmed and the traitor in their midst de- inducements, Appius turned to violence. Lucretia and Virginia are to be believed, livered up for punishment, they counseled He attempted to have Virginia seized and valued the honor of their women so highly together and decided to surrender to Ca- enslaved, provoking a hue and cry among that they were willing to defy tyrants to millus, confident that they could trust the the commons. preserve it. character of a man who adhered to such At first Icilius, Virginia’s husband-to-be, high moral standards even in wartime. tried to reason with Appius: “Though you A Moral Society Camillus paid a severe price for his have taken from us the aid of our tribunes, Moral strength, in fact, has to be account- principled actions at Falerii. His soldiers and the power of appeal to the commons ed one of the reasons for Rome’s rise to were indignant at being denied the spoils of Rome, the two bulwarks for maintain- greatness. While the Romans lacked some from a city that had surrendered voluntari- ing our liberty,” Icilius protested, “absolute of the civilizing virtues introduced by ly. Many of Rome’s citizenry were disap- dominion has not, therefore, been given to Christianity, there can be no question that, pointed at losing the opportunity to oust you over our wives and children. Vent your in contrast with most of their contempo- the inhabitants of the great city and re- fury on our backs and necks; let chastity raries, the Romans were a moral people, settle it themselves, as had been the usual at least be secure.” Virginius, Virginia’s fa- renowned for their honorable dealings Roman custom with conquered cities. In ther, was summoned home in haste from even with enemies, and zealous upholders consequence, Camillus found himself the the front, where he found the machinery of of family values. target of a political smear campaign and tyranny moving relentlessly against his in- Such a society tends to produce out- finally resolved to go into exile. nocent daughter. Appius was preparing to standing leaders, and early Rome was Not long after Camillus left Rome, seize Virginia by force in the Forum, when no exception. Marcus Furius Camillus, the Gauls, led by Brennus, occupied and Virginius confronted him. “To Icilius, and sometimes called the “Second Founder of sacked the city of Rome in about 390 B.C. not to you, Appius, have I betrothed my Rome,” epitomized the virtuous heroism Their capture of the city was accompa- daughter,” he told the smirking Decem- of the Roman Republic at its peak. Camil- nied by a fearful slaughter in which men, vir, “and for matrimony, not prostitution, lus first earned renown by successfully women and children were indiscriminately have I brought her up. Do you wish men to storming the city of the Veii, which the put to the sword. The desperate senators gratify their lust promiscuously like cattle Romans had been besieging for 10 years. barricaded themselves inside the Capitol and wild beasts? Whether these persons His next success came against the Falis- and sent word to Camillus, begging him to will endure such things, I know not; I hope cans at the siege of the well-fortified city return and save the city from the Gaulish that those will not who have arms in their of Falerii. According to tradition, a certain marauders. Camillus accepted the appoint- hands.” schoolmaster inside Falerii used his influ- ment of dictator, raised a military force, At this implied threat, Appius ordered ence to trick a group of schoolchildren and destroyed the Gaulish host almost to his men to clear away the crowd protect- into following him outside the city walls. a man. ing Virginia. In despair, her father asked There he delivered them into the hands of Camillus led several other noteworthy if he might have a moment alone with his the Romans, with the suggestion that they military campaigns against such perennial daughter before delivering her into bond- be used as hostages to persuade the people foes as the Volscians and the Aequans, and age. Seizing a knife, he stabbed his daugh- of Falerii to surrender. continued active in public affairs into old ter to death, crying, “In this one way, the When the Falerian traitor was brought age, until finally succumbing to the plague only one in my power, do I secure to you to Camillus, the latter was, according to during an epidemic. For his selfless devo- your liberty.” Virginius himself then led a Plutarch, “astounded at the treachery of tion to the republic, his unshakeable integ- revolt that overthrew the Decemvirs. Ap- the act, and, turning to the standers-by, rity, and his judgment as a military leader, pius was thrown into prison, where he observed that ‘war, indeed, is of neces- Camillus exemplified the principled sol- took his own life, and Roman liberty was sity attended with much injustice and dier-statesmen who led the republic to restored. violence! Certain laws, however, all good greatness during its best years. Both the expulsion of the Tarquins and men observe even in war itself, nor is vic- Rome’s greatest strength was her abil- the overthrow of the Decemvirs were tory so great an object as to induce us ity to produce men of the caliber of Ca-

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millus. As late as the Second Punic War There is nothing more conducive to in the late 3rd century B.C., when Rome the destruction of a nation … than the was already building an overseas empire, lack of men of wisdom or intellect. Scipio (later surnamed Africanus), anoth- When a republic has many citizens er great military leader, had taken captive … of high quality it quickly recov- the bride-to-be of an Iberian prince named ers from those losses that are brought Allucius. Allucius himself was brought about by misfortune. When such before Scipio and assured that his future men are lacking, it falls into the very wife had not been mistreated in any way depths of disgrace. by his men. “This only reward I bargain for in return for the service I have rendered As long as the Roman Republic pro- you,” he told the grateful young prince, duced men and women of integrity, its “that you would be a friend to the Roman vitality was assured. Rome remained people; and if you believe that I am a true nearly impervious to external military man,... that you would feel assured that in threat, and avoided the scourge of civil the Roman state there are many like us; war and other debilitating internal cri- and that no nation in the world at the pres- ses. On the rare occasions when Rome ent time can be mentioned … with which saw her freedom threatened by external you would rather be in friendship.” or internal threats, she always displayed The greatness of Rome was a reflec- resourcefulness and resiliency. Only tion of the greatness of her people. In an when the later Romans succumbed to altogether different age, when the might moral depravity did Rome cease to pro- Scipio Africanus: The most illustrious of the of ancient Rome was already distant his- duce leaders of the caliber of Camillus, Scipios, Africanus earned his title by leading tory, another sovereign, John Cantacuze- Poplicola and Scipio. Only then did she Roman forces to victory against Hannibal and nus, one of the last rulers of Byzantium, become easy prey to foreign military his Carthaginians in the decisive Battle of Zama contemplating the imminent ruin of his powers; only then was she wracked with in North Africa. His military prowess aside, people, observed: unending civil unrest. ■ Scipio was noted for his upright character. HISTORYHISTORY — ROME The Imperial Republic Once a republic reluctant to fight wars except in self-defense, Rome became an imperial colossus capable of annihilating an entire nation out of sheer spite.

by Steve Bonta Romans, who had deployed extra infantry Rome by brute experience that imperial in the center of the formation in hopes of expansion has a high price. This is the third installment in a series of breaking through the Carthaginian lines, Rome had never been a peaceful state. articles on the rise and fall of the Roman found themselves outflanked by elite In the early centuries of the republic, how- Republic. North African cavalry units. Hannibal’s ever, many of Rome’s conflicts were pro- cavalry overwhelmed the Roman cavalry voked by jealous neighbors like the Vols- n all of human history, there have been on both flanks and then swept behind the cians and the Aequans. The early Italian few spectacles to rival the great battles Roman forces to attack from the rear. In peninsula was a tough neighborhood, with I of the ancient world, with their pag- short order, the Romans were completely rival Etruscan and Latin states, including eantry, color — and awful carnage. And hemmed in by the Carthaginians. Han- Rome, jostling for control, and the Gauls, few battles of that age could match the nibal’s numerically inferior forces then who occupied parts of northern Italy, fre- drama that unfolded under the hot Ital- slaughtered the Romans on the field al- quently making incursions southward. ian sun one August morning in 216 B.C. most to a man. Enclaves of southern Italy, called Magna near Cannae during the Second Punic War. When the choking dust of battle subsid- Graeca, or “Greater Greece,” were Greek. On that fateful day, two of the mightiest ed, more than 70,000 Romans lay dead on Though conflict was frequent among all armies ever assembled faced each other for the fields of Cannae, including one con- of these jostling ethnic groups, many of what was to be a cataclysmic showdown. sul and at least two former consuls, not to Rome’s early campaigns against her pen- On one side was arrayed almost the entire mention most of the rest of Rome’s land insular neighbors were defensive, not ex- military force of Rome: eight full legions, forces. Ten thousand more, who had been pansionist. amounting to more than 80,000 men. On left to guard the Roman camp, were taken It was Rome’s dispute with the Greek the other were the forces of Carthage, led prisoner by the victorious Carthaginians, city of Tarentum in southern Italy that by the matchless Hannibal, the greatest foe who themselves had lost only 6,000 men. gave Rome her first taste of conflict with Rome had ever faced. Only 3,000 Romans escaped Cannae alive. an overseas power. The Tarentines request- With dazzling speed, Hannibal had led By all appearances, Rome was doomed. ed the aid of Pyrrhus, who sailed with his his vast army out of Spain, across southern The brilliant and apparently invincible forces across the Adriatic and defeated the Gaul, and over the Alps into Italy before Carthaginian general had virtually wiped Romans in two costly battles, Heraclea Rome even realized he had left the Ibe- out Rome’s military forces in a single and Asculum. In a later campaign, Rome rian peninsula. Hannibal’s army quickly stroke, and the road to Rome itself now finally defeated Pyrrhus at the Battle of inflicted two crushing defeats on Roman lay undefended. Beneventum, but was content to expel him forces, at Trebia and Lake Trasimene. For How could such a tragedy come to from Italy, rather than to seek reprisals on a time, the Romans adopted a policy of pass? In the fairly recent past, Rome had Greek territory. containment, avoiding direct battle with successfully fended off the challenge of Hannibal while harassing his forces and another military genius, Pyrrhus, the king A Fateful Choice attacking his supply lines. But Rome soon of Epirus, a kingdom in southwest Greece. The situation was far different a decade or tired of permitting Hannibal to ravage Rome’s leader at Cannae, Lucius Aemilius so later in 264 B.C., when Rome decided Italy uncontested, and resolved to risk all Paulus, had earned distinction in successful to intervene militarily in a conflict on the in a single battle. Hannibal’s forces, espe- campaigns in Illyricum (in the approximate island of Sicily. The powerful Greek city cially his celebrated elephants, had been area of modern Albania). In the First Punic of Syracuse had besieged the city of Mes- depleted by the arduous trek over the Alps War, the Romans had soundly beaten the sina, which was occupied by an unsavory and the subsequent campaigning. But they Carthaginians, leaving Rome in possession band of Italian mercenaries called the were still formidable: around 50,000 men, of the island of Sicily and with significant Mamertines. The Mamertines frequently including expert cavalrymen from Numid- alliances and interests elsewhere. plundered surrounding territories, as ban- ia in North Africa and slingers from the Now an upstart general with an uncon- dits are wont to do, until Syracuse grew Balearic Islands. ventional, multinational force had invaded weary of their depredations. The Mam- Amidst the din of trumpets and of bat- the Roman heartland and had struck a blow ertines, in turn, called upon both Rome tle cries, the two massive forces charged from which no reasonable observer could and Carthage for help. Initially only Car- across the plain, the respective infantries expect Rome to recover. Hannibal Barca thage jumped into the fray, but then Rome flanked on either side by crack cavalry was tutoring Rome in the costs of empire. — against her better judgment, and ratio- units. As the lines crashed together, the His massive invasion force was showing nalizing that she needed to act as a coun-

34 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 1, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

terpoise against Carthage’s occupation of solve and the military genius to do Messina — jumped in as well. For the first so. After leading his army across The First Punic War exhausted both time ever, Rome sent a large expedition- the Alps into Italy, he won three ary force overseas, and soon found herself monumental victories against Rome and Carthage for a generation, directly confronting the Carthaginians for the Romans culminating in the but it had kindled in Rome a fatal yen control of Messina and the rest of Sicily. debacle at Cannae, victories that Thus began the first of the three Punic laid the Eternal City itself bare for for conquest. No longer content to Wars between Rome and Carthage. conquest. mind her own affairs in Italy, Rome The First Punic War, one of the costliest Fortunately for Rome, in one of in recorded history up to that time, lasted history’s more enduring myster- began to see herself as the mistress for 23 years. Because it was primarily a ies, Hannibal chose not to follow of the Mediterranean. naval conflict, the Carthaginians, with his crushing victory at Cannae their vast navy and experience with sea warfare, enjoyed a heavy ad- vantage. Nevertheless, the Romans soon built a navy of their own, de- signing their craft after captured Carthaginian vessels, and before long, the tide of the war began to change. Rome enjoyed a substantial constitutional advantage over Car- thage, because the old, oligarchic Carthaginian state could not match the vitality of Rome’s compara- tively open society and competitive marketplace. Rome failed in her at- tempt to conquer Carthage by land, but ultimately won the war at sea, forcing Carthage’s army stranded on Sicily to surrender. The First Punic War exhausted both Rome and Carthage for a gen- eration, but it had kindled in Rome a fatal yen for conquest. No longer content to mind her own affairs in Italy, Rome began to see herself as the mistress of the Mediterra- nean. Besides governing her new Sicilian territory, Rome sought to dictate terms to Carthage at the far western end of the Mediterranean, in Iberia. There, Rome ordered the Carthaginians to keep their forces south of the Ebro River. When the impetuous young Carthaginian general Hannibal flouted Rome’s dictate in 218 B.C., Rome declared war against Carthage for a second time. The Second Punic War was shorter than the first, but its 16 years exacted a far heavier toll on both sides than the first. Hannibal, according to Roman accounts, had Hannibal Crossing the Alps: In one of the most brilliant and unconventional maneuvers in military sworn an oath to fight Rome all his history, the Carthaginian leader Hannibal led his forces, complete with war elephants, across the Alps life and, unlike many of Carthage’s into Italy. Thousands of his men and nearly all of the elephants were lost in transit, but Hannibal still won dissolute nobility, possessed the re- many victories over Rome in the Italian heartland.

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 1, 2004 35 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

ing tactics kept Hannibal at war to Carthage itself. Only such a bold Rome was soon to learn an awful lesson: bay where direct confronta- move, he argued, would induce Hannibal, tion could not, and Marcus who was still making trouble in Italy, to Imperial republics are inherently unstable. Claudius Marcellus, whose vacate the Roman heartland and return to They must either abandon their designs of forces took Syracuse. But defend his own borders. Rome’s champion, and the Many senators, led by the now-vener- conquest abroad, or modify their domestic central figure of the age, was able Fabius Maximus, opposed Scipio’s policies to better conform to a program of Publius Cornelius Scipio, af- plan. Besides the additional cost in men terwards named Africanus. and materiel, the pitfalls of further over- imperial administration — and renounce seas expansion troubled their republican liberty into the bargain. Scipio’s Defiance instincts. Scipio, however, made it very Several of Scipio’s rela- clear that he would ignore Senate au- tives had died in war against thority and appeal directly to the people, with an immediate assault on the Roman Carthage, and Scipio himself was one if need be, to secure approval for the capital, but instead resumed his campaign- of the few to escape the carnage at Can- invasion. ing in Italy, seeking allies among the fickle nae. Young Scipio had, therefore, a very In an epic Senate debate recorded by Roman tributary cities. Some, like Taren- keen appreciation of the potency of the Livy, Fabius reproved his younger col- tum and Syracuse, declared themselves Carthaginian military. He volunteered to league for being more interested in per- for Hannibal and later incurred the wrath lead Roman forces in Iberia and, despite sonal glory than in wise policy. Hannibal, of Rome. Syracuse, defended by the in- his youth, his demeanor so impressed the Fabius pointed out, was still in Italy; did it genious war machines designed by Archi- Senate that he was given the command. not make better sense to undertake the less medes, fell to the Romans after a two-year Scipio was as good as his word, and after glamorous task of defending the Italian siege. Tarentum became a focal point of his forces had defeated the Carthaginians homeland than to seek glory and conquest the war in Italy, with control over the city in Spain, he was hailed as a hero. overseas? “Although you naturally prize changing hands several times between Yet Scipio, for all his brilliance as a lead- more highly the renown which you have Rome and Carthage. er, orator, and military strategist, was also acquired than that which you hope for,” he The Second Punic War produced its a man of boundless personal ambition. He told young Scipio, “yet surely you would share of Roman leaders — among them wanted to achieve greater glory by leading not boast more of having freed Spain from Fabius Maximus, whose careful delay- Roman forces into Africa and taking the war than of having freed Italy.... Why then

167 B.C. 264 B.C. 218 B.C. 202 B.C. Final Triumph Outbreak Outbreak End of Rome over 146 B.C. of First of Second of Second Macedonian Destruction Punic War Punic War Punic War Greeks of Carthage 509 B.C. Founding of the Republic

THE IMPERIAL REPUBLIC

753 B.C. Founding of Rome 280 B.C. 241 B.C. 216 B.C. 186 B.C. 149 B.C. Pyrrhus End Battle of Suppression Outbreak invades Italy of First Cannae of the of Third Punic War Bacchic Cult Punic War

36 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 1, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

do you not apply yourself to this, and carry to the people.” Leaving no doubt of his in- a tributary nation. Hannibal himself, wily the war in a straightforward manner to the tentions, Scipio responded boldly that “he as ever, managed to elude capture and flee place where Hannibal is...? Let there be would act as he thought for the interest of to Syria, where he took refuge with King peace in Italy before war in Africa; and let the state,” in Livy’s words. Antiochus and played a significant role in us be free from fear ourselves before we Scipio’s defiance was the first time in stirring up that potentate to make war with bring it upon others.” Concluding his ad- the history of the republic — though not, Rome. dress, Fabius added witheringly, “Publius unhappily, the last — when a charismatic, Scipio was elected consul for the service successful military leader placed his own War Without End of the state and of us, and not to forward judgment above the laws of Rome and the The third century B.C. closed with Rome his own individual interest; and the armies counsels of the Senate. The Senate, fear- in control of all of the former dominions were enlisted for the protection of the ing a confrontation, eventually authorized of Carthage save a few portions of North city and of Italy, and not for the consuls, Scipio to cross into Africa, giving the Africa and the city itself. Having secured like kings, to carry into whatever part of color of legality to the young general’s the western Mediterranean as Roman do- the world they please from motives of challenge. But his impudence set another minions, Rome now turned her attentions vanity.” gloomy precedent, one that Rome would to the east, where the Greek city-states In reply, Scipio reminded the senators bitterly regret in generations to come were in turmoil, threatened both by a re- that he had lost his father and uncle to — when military leaders less principled surgent Sparta under the despot Nabis and Carthaginian arms, and admitted that he than Scipio would not scruple to trample by ambitious Macedonian rulers seeking did indeed seek greater glory — an instinct underfoot the will of the Senate and the to establish hegemony over the Hellenic that he considered natural and noble. The people alike. world. Now acclimated to her role as Med- Senate, having already been informed Scipio successfully invaded Carthagin- iterranean policeman, Rome sent troops of Scipio’s intent to bypass their author- ian territories in North Africa and won a to Greece to quell the ambitions of Nabis, ity, was unimpressed. Quintus Fulvius, resounding victory at Zama over Hanni- justifying every step of the expedition as a a former consul, bluntly asked Scipio to bal’s hastily recalled forces, ending the mission to liberate the Greeks. declare openly to the Senate whether “he Second Punic War. The city of Carthage After defeating Nabis and his Mace- submitted to the fathers to decide respect- itself was left intact, but the terms of the donian allies, the Roman general Titus ing the provinces, and whether he intended Roman victory denied the Carthaginians Quinctius made a dramatic announcement to abide by their determination, or to put it all but a token military and reduced her to at Corinth to the effect that Rome, having

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 1, 2004 37 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

greater administrative challenges ond Punic War, the Carthaginians, who The Roman Republic would not outlive to the Roman state. The republic, were first and foremost a commercial, not after all, was designed to govern a military, republic, rebounded economi- fallen Carthage by many generations. Romans within a single cohesive cally. Seemingly content to prosper com- Rome, having sown the wind abroad, territory; her constitution was not mercially under the Roman military yoke, well adapted to the suppression of the Carthaginians strove to keep the oner- before many years would reap the multinational imperial subjects. ous obligations of their treaty with Rome. whirlwind at home. Unfortunately for them, the Roman lust Social Decay for vengeance had not yet been satisfied. At home, too, the character of A large number of Roman politicians restored to the Greeks the freedom that Roman society was beginning to change. viewed the resurgence of Carthage as an was their birthright, would now withdraw The Romans began to develop a taste for unacceptable challenge and agitated for all her forces to Italy. The rumor-mon- luxury and contempt for the austere vir- a resumption of hostilities. Their mouth- gers were wrong, he claimed, who “had tues of earlier times. In 186 B.C., Rome piece was the senator Cato the Elder, spread the calumny that the cause of lib- was shocked by an unprecedented calam- whose condemnation of Carthage was so erty had been wrongly entrusted to the ity that signalized the moral dry rot con- intense that he ended every speech with Roman people, and that the Greeks had suming Roman society. The crisis began, the famous phrase “Carthago delenda est” merely exchanged Macedonian masters according to Livy, with the arrival in Italy (“Carthage must be destroyed”). Rome for Roman lords.” He laid down strong of a mysterious Greek who claimed to be would not rest until she found a pretext recommendations for how the Greeks an initiate of a secret cult dedicated to for eliminating Carthage. Massinissa, the should conduct their affairs in the future, Bacchus, the god of wine and transgres- Numidian king, finally gave her one. and enjoined them to “guard and preserve sive behavior. The Numidians, a rival African power, [their liberty] by their own watchfulness, The cult, with its secret nighttime or- had long been at odds with the Carthagin- so that the Roman people might be as- gies, human sacrifices and other abomi- ians, their former allies. When Massinissa sured that liberty had been given to men nable practices, spread rapidly among the began taking advantage of Carthaginian who deserved it, and that their boon had Romans. The adherents of Bacchus aimed military weakness and attacked Carthagin- been well-bestowed.” According to Livy, not merely to corrupt Roman morals, but ian towns (with the support of Rome), the the source of this account, “the delegates also to undermine the Roman government, Carthaginians, unable to rely on protection listened to these words as if to a father’s according to the consul Spurius Postumius, from Rome, raised their own military and voice, and tears of joy trickled from every who first exposed the conspiracy before the defended themselves. eye.” The servile Greeks watched with en- Roman Senate. “Never,” exclaimed Postu- This was all the pretext that Rome need- thusiasm as, in 194 B.C., the Romans, as mius, “has there been so much wickedness ed. Frothing senators, led by Cato, pointed good as their word, evacuated their forces in this commonwealth, never wickedness to the developing new Carthaginian armed from Greek territory. affecting so many people, nor manifesting forces as an intolerable threat to Rome. Unfortunately for Greece, the Romans’ itself in so many ways.... And they have not The Carthaginians were put on notice that ardor for Greek independence was short- yet put into practice all the crimes towards they could expect a Roman invasion and lived. Within a few years, Antiochus of which they have conspired. Their impious utter desolation unless they submitted to Syria, egged on by the vindictive Han- conspiracy still confines itself to private Roman terms. The supine Carthaginians nibal, declared war on Rome and sought outrages, because it has not yet strength sent envoys to Rome to plead their case, allies among the Greeks. In the complex enough to overthrow the state. But the evil but found themselves confronted by a wars that followed, the Roman military re- grows with every passing day.... It aims at hostile united front of Roman leadership turned to Greece to fight Antiochus and his the supreme power in the state.” already resolved upon war. With perfidy Greek allies, and then became embroiled In response to Postumius’ warnings, the more reminiscent of the smirking despots in several decades of war in the eastern Bacchic cult was broken up, its shrines Rome had overthrown in nobler times, the Mediterranean, primarily against the kings destroyed, and many of its adherents im- Roman senators, holding out false prom- of Macedonia, that left Rome in permanent prisoned or executed. For the time being, ises of peace, deliberately misled the Car- control of Greece by about 167 B.C. the fabric of Roman society was kept from thaginians into surrendering hostages and During the first half of the second cen- unraveling; but as the very potency of the armaments to Rome. tury B.C., Rome was not only conquer- Bacchic cult showed, it was starting to fray Even after a huge Roman expeditionary ing the eastern Mediterranean, but was around the edges. force had crossed into Africa, Carthage also constantly at war in Iberia and in was still suing for peace. But it was not to North Africa. While preserving the politi- Carthage’s Last Stand be. The Romans finally showed their hand cal forms of the old republic, Rome was With the Roman conquest of the Mediter- by deliberately demanding what even the transforming into an empire in substance. ranean all but assured by the middle of the terrified Carthaginians could not accept: Her vast new dominions, with their unruly second century B.C., only one lingering evacuating their city and moving inland, citizenries, alien cultures, and harsh, far- challenge lay yet unresolved — Carthage. where they would be resettled. Rome flung geography, would pose greater and After Carthage’s total defeat in the Sec- would demolish the city itself, to ensure

38 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 1, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME

that it could never be a threat again. was soon to learn an awful lesson: Im- sume Carthage, reportedly likened the In dismay, the Carthaginians resolved perial republics are inherently unstable. scene to the destruction of Troy and won- to fight their implacable enemy. The They must either abandon their designs dered aloud whether a similar fate would merciless Roman forces laid siege to of conquest and domination abroad, or befall Rome. As events turned out, the the great city of Carthage, wonder of the modify their domestic policies to better Roman Republic would not outlive fallen Mediterranean for an entire age. The Car- conform to a program of imperial admin- Carthage by many generations. Rome, thaginians proved astonishingly resilient istration — and renounce liberty into the having sown the wind abroad, before in their final struggle. Though they had bargain. many years would reap the whirlwind at been beguiled by Rome into destroying Scipio, as he watched the flames con- home. ■ their navy and giving up their weapons, they managed to construct new ships and weapons using resources within the walls of their own city. The entire city worked night and day manufacturing weapons out of any available objects. All metal was melted down to be converted into spear and arrow tips and swords. Even women’s hair was cut off and braided into cords for catapults. The desperate Carthaginians enjoyed several military successes against Rome, but they could not break the siege. Fi- nally, after two years of stalemate, Rome appointed Scipio Aemilianus, the adoptive grandson of Africanus, as the leader of the forces besieging Carthage. Under Scipio’s energetic generalship, the war was soon resolved. As the Carthaginian defenses collapsed, 50,000 of her citizens surrendered to the Romans under a promise of leniency. Their lives were spared, but they were eventually sold into slavery. The remain- ing inhabitants of the city, numbering as many as 650,000, were less fortunate. The Romans systematically slaughtered all the Carthaginians, including women and children, an event that may have been the worst butchery of civilians before the 20th century. It is said that Scipio Aemilianus shed tears of regret as he witnessed the de- struction of Carthage, but that did not stop him from allowing his men to massacre the inhabitants. He then razed the entire city to the ground in a final act of fanati- cal vindictiveness that even the barbarians who sacked Rome in later centuries never equaled. Such was the moral decline of Rome, from a republic reluctant to fight wars ex- cept in self-defense to a belligerent, self- absorbed colossus capable of annihilat- ing an entire nation out of sheer spite. For Rome had become an imperial republic; her chief concern now was not securing Death of a republic, rise of an empire: It could be argued that two republics died in spring the liberty of her own citizens, but the of 146 B.C., when Roman forces, resolved on a program of imperial conquest, stormed and domination of foreign powers. But Rome destroyed Carthage, a centuries-old citadel of Mediterranean trade and culture.

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 1, 2004 39 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME Rise of the Welfare/Warfare State The death throes of the once-great Roman Republic began when its leadership embarked on militarism and exploited class envy to consolidate power.

by Steve Bonta the first civil violence in Rome. In both managed to solve her internal disputes instances, the controversy had arisen over without resort to violence or betrayal. This is the fourth installment in a series of a centuries-old injustice: the unequal rec- Even episodes of plebeian unrest, such as articles on the rise and fall of the Roman ognition of property rights under Roman the First Plebeian Secession, had always Republic. law, and the perceived need for some kind been settled through peaceful compromise. of land redistribution, known to the Ro- But with the tumult under the Gracchi, the he man sped down the Capitoline mans as an “agrarian law.” waning Roman Republic entered a new, Hill from the Roman Senate, flee- One of Rome’s greatest strengths had more perilous stage of decline, in which T ing from a bloodthirsty mob. At a always been her unity. With the exception, demagogues incited civil unrest with wel- wooden bridge several of his companions centuries before, of the treason of Corio- fare-state programs, and a new generation urged him to run on, while they defended lanus and his defection to Rome’s sworn of ambitious politician-generals began to the narrow way. He raced through the enemies, the Volscians, Rome had always covet absolute power. streets of Rome, calling loudly for help. Throngs of onlook- ers cheered encouragingly as he passed, but no one offered to help. He pleaded with curious bystand- ers to lend him a horse to escape his pursuers, but to no avail. As the relentless pursuit drew close, the man, together with his most trusted servant, slipped into a sacred grove consecrated to the Furies. Realizing that escape was impossible, he ordered his servant to cut his throat to spare him the indignity of execution by the mob. The rabid partisans soon found his lifeless body, with that of the faithful servant, who had turned his dagger on himself after carry- ing out his master’s last wish. Tri- umphantly, they severed the dead man’s head and carried it off to claim a reward in gold. The man’s headless body, along with those of thousands of his followers who had been killed in the unrest, was dumped in the Tiber River. The un- fortunate victim of the mob’s wrath was Caius Gracchus, and the year was 121 B.C., just 25 years after the destruction of Carthage. The spasm of civil violence was not Rome’s first. Just 11 years ear- lier, Caius’ older brother Tiberius Gracchus and many of his sup- Mob rule: In one of Rome’s first experiences with civil unrest, Caius Gracchus, demagogue and would-be porters had suffered a similar fate reformer, flees from a murderous mob. Like his older brother Tiberius, Caius proposed unwise solutions in what was acknowledged to be to long-standing social grievances — and paid the ultimate price at the hands of bloodthirsty partisans.

36 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 15, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

Class Warfare ranches instead of single farms. While Rome was assembling her overseas They employed slave hands and With the tumult under the Gracchi, the empire, various problems, both civil and shepherds in the estates to avoid constitutional, continued to fester at home. having free men dragged off to waning Roman Republic entered a new, Foremost among them was the growing serve in the army, and they de- more perilous, stage of decline, in disparity between the wealthy patricians on rived great profit from this form the one hand and the masses of plebeians of ownership too, as the slaves which demagogues incited civil unrest and slaves on the other. Slavery in ancient had many children and no li- with welfare-state programs, and Rome was not, as practiced more recently ability to military service and in Europe and the United States, solely their numbers increased freely. ambitious politician-generals began to or even primarily dependent on imported For these reasons the powerful covet absolute power. chattels from conquered lands. It was part were becoming extremely rich, of Roman civil law: parents under certain and the number of slaves in the circumstances could sell their children into country was reaching large proportions, owner should hold more than 500 jugera slavery, and desperate citizens sometimes while the Italian people were suffering (one Roman jugerum equaled roughly 5/8 even sold themselves into slavery to avoid from depopulation and a shortage of men, of an acre). Under Tiberius’ measure, the debts and other problems. worn down as they were by poverty and state would buy back from the landown- Because of Rome’s longstanding prac- taxes and military service.” Romans, in ers those holdings of land exceeding this tice of granting or selling real estate ac- other words, were losing their livelihood limit, and would redistribute them among quired through conquest to certain pow- to armies of slaves on vast estates, while the poor. Three men, or triumvirs, would erful patrician families, the wealthy few enduring higher and higher taxes and the oversee the redistribution; they were to be became wealthier still, while the numbers ravages of endless war. Tiberius Gracchus himself, his younger of the enslaved swelled. “The rich,” ex- For these ills, the Gracchi offered an brother Caius, and his father-in-law Ap- plained the historian Appian, “gained equally unpalatable solution: confiscat- pius Claudius. possession of most of the undistributed ing land from Rome’s wealthy classes Not surprisingly, the wealthy bitterly land.... They used persuasion or force to and forcibly redistributing it among the opposed Tiberius’ agrarian law. His col- buy or seize property which adjoined their poor. The first, Tiberius, while serving as league, the tribune Octavius, went so own, or any other smallholdings belong- a plebeian tribune, successfully pushed for far as to veto the measure to prevent it ing to poor men, and came to operate great an agrarian law stipulating that no land- from being passed. Tiberius Gracchus,

132 B.C. Death of 112 B.C. 105 B.C. 101 B.C. Tiberius Outbreak of End of Battle of Gracchus Jugurthine War Jugurthine War Vercellae 509 B.C. Founding of the Republic

RISE OF THE WELFARE/WARFARE STATE

753 B.C. Founding of 91 B.C. Rome Outbreak 200 B.C. 121 B.C. 105 B.C. 102 B.C. of the The Imperial Death of Caius Battle of Battle of Social War Republic Gracchus Arausin Aquae Sextiae

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 15, 2004 37 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME

The Rise of Militarism Jugurtha was a renegade king of Numidia, an important North African nation that at various times had been an important ally both of Carthage and of Rome. Numidia’s greatest monarch, Massinissa, had been a Roman ally in the Second Punic War, but his illegitimate grandson Jugurtha, after killing off a rival heir, incurred the enmity of Rome by seeking to enlarge his inherited kingdom and by killing some Roman merchants in the process. Though not a particularly gifted military tactician, Jugurtha was a master of intrigue and managed to keep the Romans off-balance with a mixture of well-placed bribes and feigned compliance. In 112 B.C., however, war finally broke out, and for several years Jugurtha, taking advantage of the desert terrain, the harsh climate, and the mobility of his lightly armed forces, managed to fend off the Roman military. After five years, however, Rome appointed a new consul, Caius Mar- Failed reforms: The Gracchi brothers proposed to rectify unjust Roman property laws by ius, whose name, along with that of his forcible land redistribution, which inflamed rather than mollified partisan passions. right-hand man and eventual rival Lucius Sulla, was to become a hiss and a byword however, declaring that no tribune was bune. He too found himself the target of for future generations of Romans. qualified for office who was unwilling to patrician wrath and met an untimely end, Marius changed the makeup of Rome’s carry out the will of the people in support along with up to 3,000 of his backers. military by turning the former all-civilian of his bill, illegally ousted his rival. The The civil unrest associated with the corps into professional volunteers. More- bill was then passed by the Assembly, but Gracchi brothers is usually regarded as over, whereas property ownership had was denied funding by the Senate, which the beginning of Rome’s long spiral into formerly been a requirement for Roman controlled the purse strings of the Roman civil war and Caesarism. The actions of soldiers, the Marian reforms led to the re- government. the Gracchi and of their opponents set yet cruitment of vast numbers of poor, prop- Gracchus then tried to usurp the Senate’s another perilous precedent: that political ertyless plebeians whose prospects could prerogative by seizing monies bequeathed differences could be resolved by using be enhanced if land were redistributed to to Rome by a wealthy king, in order to the power of mob violence to override the them. This encouraged tension between fund his agrarian reform bill. He flouted law. Before the time of the Gracchi, as- the military and the Senate, most of whose Roman tradition by seeking re-election the sassinations had been unknown in Rome; members opposed land redistribution. It following year, in spite of a longstanding after their time, they quickly became was also a strong incentive for Rome’s custom that prohibited the same man from routine. new professional soldiery to be less loyal holding the office twice in succession. After the defeat of Carthage, Rome’s to the far-away Roman government than to This was enough for the senators and their overseas expansion continued. In North the military leaders they served under. patrician support base. On the day of the Africa and in Iberia, Roman forces met The deadly rivalry that grew up between election, Gracchus appeared in the Forum with constant resistance and several sig- Marius and Sulla began in the Jugurthine with an armed entourage. Violence broke nificant setbacks. The Iberians were fi- War. When Jugurtha was eventually cap- out, led by the senator Scipio Nasica, and nally subdued, after decades of warfare, tured by the Romans after being betrayed Gracchus and several hundred supporters with the fall of the city of Numantia in by an unreliable ally, both men claimed were killed. 133 B.C. Conflict in Africa, however, was credit for his defeat, but soon patched up A decade later, history repeated itself in never to be completely resolved, and one their public differences. Marius’ stock with the tragic career of the younger Gracchus, African war in particular — the Jugurthine the Roman people rose still further during Caius. Caius revived his brother’s land War — though relatively insignificant in the war with the Cimbri and Teutoni, two redistribution scheme, and added to it a terms of Roman lives and materiel lost, ferocious German tribes that invaded Gaul multitude of other leveling measures, such did incalculable long-term damage to the in 109 B.C. They inflicted a catastroph- as price controls on grain. Like Tiberius, Roman state because it set the stage for the ic defeat on Roman forces at Arausio in Caius also ran for successive terms as tri- rise of the first Roman despots. 105, wiping out two entire armies total-

38 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 15, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME

ing as many as 80,000 men, many of whom had been pinned against a river. This, the worst Roman defeat since Cannae, opened the way for the first Germanic invasion of Italy in 102 B.C., and Marius proved equal to the challenge. He dealt first with the Teutoni and their allies at Aquae Sextiae as they marched to- wards the Alps in what is now south- east France. The battle was one of the bloodi- est in history and cost up to 130,000 lives, wiping out the forces of the Teutones. The victorious Marius then turned his attention to the Cim- bri, who had managed to penetrate northern Italy. In a decisive encoun- ter at Vercellae, his forces slaugh- tered up to 100,000 more Germans, ending the German threat for several generations. The numbers of battle dead are truly staggering, even to the mod- ern mind. In a single war consisting mostly of three major battles, nearly 300,000 men had perished, an as- tonishing figure when the smaller populations in Europe of that day are taken into account. In the sec- ond half of the second century B.C. alone, Roman dominions had been the setting for bloodshed and slaughter on a scale seldom seen, much less surpassed, in human his- tory. The Third Punic War had cost as many as three quarters of a mil- lion lives, while wars in Iberia and North Africa had claimed many tens of thousands more. Rome’s wars were becoming bigger, bloodier, and more frequent, and her adversaries more and more determined. At the same time, Roman forces became more and more ruthless, giving little quarter and asking none. But worse was yet to come. In the turbulent, blood-soaked first century B.C. that would see the final end of the republic, the fearsome Roman armed forces, with their formidable discipline and awesome military ma- chines, would be turned upon Rome herself and visit on the Roman peo- ple the same horrors that they had Despot-in-waiting: Caius Marius, distinguished Roman military leader in wars against Jugurtha, the become accustomed to inflict upon Cimbri, and the Teutones, reclines against the ruins of Carthage. Marius, by later introducing Rome to the rest of the world. ■ the horrors of despotism, started Rome down the same road that fallen Carthage had followed.

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 15, 2004 39 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME Civil Wars and Despotism Plagued by murderous ambition, Rome’s politician-generals turned their armies against each other — and even against Rome herself.

by Steve Bonta mile after mile along the road, festering Defeated by Crassus, one of Rome’s bodies hung from crucifixes as kites, jack- iron generals, thousands of Spartacan This is the fifth installment in a series of daws, and other carrion birds picked at the rebels had been publicly executed as a articles on the rise and fall of the Roman remains. More than 6,000 men had been salutary lesson to others contemplating Republic. brutally put to death along Rome’s main rebellion against the Roman state. The thoroughfare. They were not common bodies were never removed, but hung on ravelers passing along Rome’s criminals but captured soldiers of a for- their grisly scaffolds for years thereafter, Appian Way between Capua and mer gladiator named Spartacus, who had a grim and poignant reminder of the mon- T Rome in the spring of 71 B.C. led a damaging revolt against the Roman strous regime taking shape in the heart were greeted with a gruesome sight. For government. of what had once been the world’s freest

Routing the rebellion: In 71 B.C., Roman troops led by General Crassus defeated an army of rebel slaves led by the former gladiator, Spartacus. Thousands of the captured rebels were nailed to crosses alongside the Appian Way; their lifeless and rotting bodies were displayed for years thereafter as a warning to other would-be rebels.

36 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 29, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

civilization. In 71 B.C., the mass execu- bellious Italians and to those tions along the Appian Way were only the rebels who laid down their Sulla lost no time in reforming the Roman latest in a series of horrors that Rome had arms. endured during nearly two decades of civil In the meantime, another constitution in his favor, diminishing the war and despotic government. No doubt threat to Rome had arisen in unconstitutional power of the tribunes. some of the older passersby, who remem- the east, in the person of the bered Rome in better days, gazed on the formidable Mithridates VI, His reforms, though long overdue, had fly-blown victims of the latest convulsion the king of Pontus, a pow- been instituted by force of arms, setting and wondered: how had the republic come erful state in Asia Minor. to this? Mithridates was a prototypi- Rome on a path toward despotism from cal oriental despot, having which recovery was increasingly unlikely. The First Civil War come to power by murdering It began with the so-called Social War, most of his siblings and mar- which erupted in 91 B.C. At issue was a rying his own sister. He is said to have spo- diplomatic envoys as well as their families. long-standing sore spot among the non- ken 25 languages and to have spent years After such a catastrophe, Rome had little Roman Italian peoples living under Roman building immunity to every kind of poison choice but to declare war on Mithridates, rule. For centuries, Rome had been absorb- then known. He possessed a huge, well- an enterprise that promised to be Rome’s ing other Italian peoples into the republic, equipped army and navy. Having territori- greatest military exploit since the Second but had never granted them Roman citizen- al ambitions of his own in Asia Minor and Punic War. ship. When a consul named Drusus, who the Aegean, Mithridates detested Roman had been pushing to extend citizenship to power and the high-handed way in which Rome’s First Despots non-Roman Italians, was assassinated, the the Romans presumed to dictate terms to With such a prospect for personal glory, the Italian cities formed a league and revolted every other nation. In 88 B.C., as the So- rivalry between Marius and Sulla, which against Rome. Tens of thousands of Ro- cial War was petering out in Italy, Mith- had simmered since the Jugurthine War mans and Italians died in three years of ridates decided to make his move against more than a decade earlier, exploded into brutal war — in which Marius and Sulla, Rome. the open. Sulla, serving as one of Rome’s two of Rome’s most prominent military In that year, Mithridates’ agents insti- consuls, was chosen to lead the campaign leaders, became bitter political enemies. gated a massacre of all Romans living in against Mithridates. Marius, seething with The war ended when Rome negotiated a Asia Minor. The victims, numbering in the envy but having no legal recourse, allied settlement granting citizenship to non-re- tens of thousands, included merchants and himself with the newly enfranchised Ital-

Sarmatia Germania

Gaul

Narbo Pontus Armenia ROMAN (Vassal of ROME Praeneste MITHRIDATIC Mithridates) REPUBLIC Capua ALLIANCE ASIA MINOR Cilicia LYCIA Syria Rhodes Numidia (Roman Vassal)

Egypt Roman Republic during Mithridates VI anti-Roman alliance of 85 B.C. Joseph W. Kelly The New American, Joseph W.

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 29, 2004 37 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

asked him why he was march- which recovery was increasingly unlikely. In the year of Sulla’s death, 78 B.C., the ing against his native land “This was,” noted Appian gloomily, “the under arms. His reply, shame- first army composed of Roman citizens to purges had subsided, Mithridates had less and unwavering, was the attack their own country as though it were been placated, and tenuous threads of rationale of usurpers in every a hostile power. From this point onwards age: “To free her from tyrants.” their conflicts continued to be settled by legality still held the Roman Republic As his troops swept into Rome, military means and there were frequent together. But forces were already in they encountered only light attacks on Rome, and sieges, and every resistance from the Marians, sort of incident of war, because nothing motion that could not be stopped, and and large-scale butchery was remained, neither law, nor political institu- the Spartacan revolt still lay ahead. averted — for the time being. tions, nor patriotism, that could induce any Marius himself slipped out of sense of shame in the men of violence.” the city and escaped to Africa, After having a number of prominent ian citizens of Rome. He encouraged them intending to regroup and return. Sulla Marians killed, Sulla, anxious to leave to vote for a new law giving him command meanwhile lost no time in reforming the the seething capital, took his army and over the Mithridatic task force. Roman constitution in his favor, which departed for Asia Minor. There, in what Furious, Sulla decided to use the troops included installing several hundred new became known as the First Mithridatic under his command to unseat Marius be- senators and diminishing the power of the War, he eventually forced Mithridates to fore turning his attention to Mithridates. tribunes, who since the days of the Grac- capitulate. In less than three years, Sulla’s Although many of his officers resigned chi, Rome’s first full-blown demagogues, forces killed more than 160,000 of the in protest, his foot soldiers, eager for the had been exercising unconstitutional, enemy and recovered Greek and Asian spoils of war in the East once Marius was demagogic power. territories annexed by Mithridates. The out of the way, followed their leader in His reforms, though long overdue, had monarch of Pontus himself, however, was a fateful march on Rome. Sulla was met been instituted by force of arms, setting allowed to live on and to rule over his along the way by several deputations, who Rome on a path toward despotism from original domains because Sulla had run

Sulla’s fateful march: Decades before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, General Sulla invaded Rome. “This was the first army composed of Roman citizens to attack their own country as though it were a hostile power,” recorded the historian Appian. Sulla’s march inaugurated a tragic era of civil war and despotism.

38 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 29, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

out of time. During his absence, Marius with another longtime confederate, Carbo. ber of battles across Italy and overseas. had returned to Rome and had instigated a Cinna was then assassinated by a mob of The conflict escalated into an epic civil reign of terror. unruly soldiers, leaving Carbo in sole war that claimed many tens of thousands command of Rome. of Roman lives in Italy, Africa, and even Proscriptions and Pogroms In the midst of this bloody tumult, Sulla Spain. Sulla’s generals won a string of vic- Sulla had left as his consular successor returned from the East, bent on retaliation tories against the Marians and committed in Rome a man named Cinna, who soon for the Marian outrages. He quickly at- widescale atrocities in many conquered allied himself with the Marians and with tracted many allies, including the able gen- cities. When Praeneste fell, thousands of the voting bloc of new Italian citizens. In eral Metellus, who had been busy stamp- her citizens were put to the sword. When a showdown with the other consul, Octa- ing out the last remnants of the Social Narbo was overwhelmed, her city, along vius, who represented the Senate and the War, and a young general named Gnaeus with most of its inhabitants, was burned interests of the old citizenry, Cinna was Pompeius, or Pompey, who raised three to the ground. defeated, divested of his consular office, legions in support of Sulla. With these Sulla finally entered Rome and and chased from the capital city, where- forces, Sulla for the second time marched launched a fearful bloodbath there as upon he began inciting neighboring cities toward Rome. well, massacring dozens of senators and to rebellion. He soon raised an army and This time, the consular forces, led by thousands of noblemen. “He was so ter- returned to encamp outside of Rome. The Carbo and Marius, the son of the late rible and quick to anger in everything,” Roman consuls summoned an army of despot, engaged Sulla’s forces in a num- wrote Appian, “that he killed Quintus their own and encamped nearby, while the city waited fearfully for what was sure to be a dreadful outcome. The fugitive Mar- ius seized this opportunity to return from Africa, and using his past military exploits For the Serious Student as a sales pitch, quickly raised yet another army and marched to Rome to join forces ur sources for the late Roman Republic are fairly detailed. Most of the best with Cinna. Roman historians lived in the early Empire, and for them, the age of the Grac- The Marian forces cut off Rome’s food O chi and the civil wars was fairly recent history. It was also the time of Rome’s supplies. The Senate, seeing that condi- greatest pathos, of heroes and villains, of epic battles and world-convulsing political tions were hopeless, negotiated the sur- turmoil. render of Rome on condition that Marius The best comprehensive source for the period extending from the Gracchi to the would not perpetrate a massacre. As the death of Sulla is undoubtedly Appian. For the events between 133 and 70 B.C., his terms of surrender were accepted, re- is the only surviving continuous source. Like many of Rome’s best historians, Ap- cords a somber Appian, “Marius, stand- pian was Greek. He was a native of Alexandria, born in the late 1st century A.D., and ing beside the consular stool, said not a probably composed his history between 145 and 165 A.D., at the zenith of the Roman word but made it plain by the savagery Empire under the Antonines. Living during a comparatively peaceful interlude, Appian, of his expression what murder he would more than any other Roman historian, wrote with passion and dismay of the horrors of unleash.” civil war and despotism. He deplored the destruction of the republic and traced many No sooner were Cinna and Marius ush- significant details — the conspiracies, the political rivalries, the assassinations, and ered into Rome by the cowed citizens than the brutal personages — with unforgiving attention to detail that make his history the an orgy of bloodletting was unleashed the best all-around work for those wishing to understand the fall of the republic from an likes of which Rome had never witnessed original source. Besides chronicling Rome’s civil wars, Appian also wrote volumes on nor could have imagined. All political en- Rome’s many wars of conquest. His accounts of the Iberian, African, and Mithridatic wars are noteworthy for the author’s sympathy with subjugated peoples and his unstint- emies of Marius were cruelly put to the ing criticism of Roman brutality. Appian’s history of the civil wars is available in a fine sword, and the heads of slain senators, Penguin paperback translation. The balance of his Roman history is available only in consuls, and praetors were put on public Loeb Classic hardcover editions, unlikely to be on the shelf at most local bookstores, exhibit in the forum. “No one,” says Appi- but well worth the time and expense to order from the publisher. an, “was permitted to give any of the dead Plutarch has given us fine biographies of several of the personalities that figure in burial, and birds and dogs tore apart the this article, including Sulla, Marius, and the Gracchi. Plutarch’s character portraits, as bodies of such distinguished men. There always, seek to give balanced accounts, highlighting wherever possible the heroism as were many further unauthorized and unin- well as the villainy of his subjects. vestigated murders carried out by the rival A very readable source on the Jugurthine War is Sallust, a Roman politician who parties.... All [Sulla’s] friends were put to was a contemporary and friend of Julius Caesar. Many of Sallust’s writings have been death, his house was razed to the ground, lost, but his two surviving complete works — a description of the Jugurthine War and his property was declared forfeit, and he an account of the Catilinarian conspiracy — are gems of conciseness, if not altogether was proclaimed an enemy of the state.” historically accurate and sometimes encumbered by the author’s undisguised biases. Marius died before he could be re-elect- Both of Sallust’s works are available in a single Penguin paperback translation. ■ ed consul, but Cinna remained in power — STEVE BONTA

THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 29, 2004 39 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

In general he would seem annihilated. In the year of Sulla’s death, In the space of a few decades, the Roman to have been of a very ir- 78 B.C., the purges had subsided, Mithri- regular character, full of dates had been placated, tenuous threads Republic had descended into despotism inconsistencies with him- of legality still held the Roman Republic and civil war. The decades that lay ahead self; much given to rapine, together, and the Spartacan revolt still lay to prodigality yet more; in ahead. were to be a season of tragic heroism, promoting or disgracing But forces were already in motion that as the final defenders of the old republic whom he pleased, alike could not be stopped. Mithridates would unaccountable; cringing to soon rise again, providing political oppor- made a magnificent last stand on behalf those he stood in need of, tunity for the ambitious young general, of Roman civilization and liberty. and domineering over oth- Pompey. The Spartacan revolt would do ers who stood in need of the same for Crassus. Yet another military him, so that it was hard to prodigy, Julius Caesar, who had already Lucretius Ofella [a former friend] in the tell whether his own nature had more distinguished himself in various Asian open forum.... After this, Sulla called the in it of pride or of servility. campaigns, was in Rhodes studying the people to an assembly and said: ‘Under- art of rhetoric and persuasion, preparing stand this, my friends, and hear it from He was also, Plutarch tells us, shamelessly for a political career. my own lips: I killed Lucretius because immoral, consorting with dissolute enter- In the space of only a few decades, the he would not obey me.’ And he told them tainers night and day. His riotous lifestyle Roman Republic had descended swiftly a story: ‘A farmer who was plowing was brought about physical as well as moral from irresponsible demagoguery to full- being bitten by lice. Twice,’ he said, ‘he deterioration. He was afflicted by a “creep- blown despotism, and from militarism let go of the plough and shook out his ing sickness” that saw his flesh corrupted overseas to civil war at home. The de- tunic; but when he was bitten again, he by an unknown cause and his entire body cades and wars that yet lay ahead were burnt the tunic so as not to keep wasting literally eaten alive by lice. to produce horrors beside which even time. So I advise people who have been Before meeting such a horrible end, the atrocities of Marius and Sulla would defeated twice not to ask for incineration Sulla had abdicated his dictatorial power pale. But they were also to be a season the third time.’ With these words, then, — the only Roman despot ever to do so. of tragic heroism, as the final defend- Sulla reinforced their terror, and ruled A deceptive calm settled over Italy, al- ers of the old republic — Cato, Cicero, them as he pleased.” Even Plutarch, so though the civil war persisted for several and Brutus — made a magnificent last often the eulogist, had little good to say more years in distant Spain before the last stand on behalf of Roman civilization about Sulla’s character: remnants of the Marian forces were finally and liberty. ■

88 B.C. 105 B.C. Outbreak Rise of the of the First 84 B.C. 78 B.C. Welfare/Warfare Mithridatic Sulla returns Death of State War from the East Sulla 509 B.C. Founding of the Republic

CIVIL WARS AND DESPOTISM

753 B.C. Founding of 55 B.C. Rome Conspiracy 200 B.C. 91 B.C. 87-86 B.C. 82 B.C. and Caesarism The Imperial Outbreak Marian Sulla defeats Republic of the Purges Marian forces Social War

40 THE NEW AMERICAN • NOVEMBER 29, 2004 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME Cicero, Catiline, and Conspiracy Vying for control, Lucius Catiline conspired to become Rome’s monarch, while Cicero worked to expose and thwart his plans and keep Rome’s Republic alive.

by Steve Bonta Caesar was sailing to Rhodes to improve transferred by you to Rome.” True to the his rhetorical skills under the tutelage of prediction of the old Greek scholar, Cicero This is the sixth installment in a series of the legendary Appolonius Molo, a noted became Rome’s greatest orator, as well as articles on the rise and fall of the Roman philosopher and rhetorician. her greatest statesman and man of letters Republic. Julius Caesar was not Appolonius’ only — and an able foil for the rising ambitions pupil of note. Another young Roman, of Julius Caesar and his confederates. ometime in the year 75 B.C., a Marcus Tullius Cicero, also spent signifi- In the wake of the dictatorship of Sulla, boat sailed from Italy bound for cant time with the master rhetorician at other ambitious men besides Julius Caesar Sthe island of Rhodes in the eastern about the same time. Appolonius, it is said, were jostling for power in Rome. Licinius Mediterranean. The boat’s most important spoke no Latin, but he was so impressed Crassus, the vanquisher of Spartacus and passenger was a 25-year-old Roman advo- with both Cicero’s command of Greek reputed to be Rome’s wealthiest citizen, cate, who was sailing with his entourage. and with the young man’s rhetorical abil- was one of them. Gnaeus Pompeius, also The advocate, Caius Julius Caesar, was al- ity that he allegedly told him: “You have known as Pompey, was another. Pompey ready well known in the Roman capital for my praise and admiration, Cicero, and had been an able military leader for the his flowing and persuasive oratory and for Greece my pity and commiseration, since Sullan forces and cemented his reputation having logged a string of successful pros- those arts and that eloquence which are the with the destruction of the Cilician pirates ecutions of corrupt governors. The young only glories that remain to her, will now be in 67 B.C. But in the years between 70 and

Cicero denounces Catiline in the Roman Senate, in Maccari’s famous rendition. Cicero was Rome’s greatest statesman and orator, as well as a formidable man of letters (many of his voluminous letters, speeches, and commentaries have come down to us). He proved more than a match for the conspiratorial cunning of Catiline.

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historian Sallust (and Cat- criminals. Debauchees, adulterers, and Never had the Roman state been so ripe iline’s contemporary) tells gamblers, who had squandered their in- us, “endure hunger, cold, and heritances in gaming-dens, pot-houses, for overthrow. In addition to declining want of sleep to an incred- and brothels; anyone who had bankrupted moral standards, Rome was bankrupt. Italy ible extent. His mind was himself to buy impunity for his infamous daring, crafty, and versatile, or criminal acts; men convicted anywhere had been emptied of most of her military capable of any pretense and of murder or sacrilege, or living in fear of forces, including their strongest leader, dissimulation. A man of conviction; cut-throats and perjurers, too, flaming passions, he was as who made a trade of bearing false witness Pompey, who was fighting a second war covetous of other men’s pos- or shedding the blood of fellow citizens; in against a rejuvenated Mithridates. sessions as he was prodigal short, all who were in disgrace or afflicted of his own.... His monstrous by poverty or consciousness of guilt, were ambition hankered continu- Catiline’s intimate associates.” 60 B.C., the greatest threat to the republic ally after things extravagant, impossible, Catiline specialized in corrupting came not from charismatic generals but beyond his reach.” youth, procuring mistresses for them, from a subtler source — a clever, amoral Disaffected with republican govern- encouraging the practice of unnatural intriguer who formed a conspiracy to over- ment and determined to replace it with a vice, and even training them in the art throw the republic. monarchy, Catiline formed a secret soci- of forging documents. He enlisted many ety to prepare for a revolution. In morally veterans of the Sullan dictatorship in his Master of Deceit decrepit Rome, he had no trouble attract- movement, men who had expended their Lucius Catiline was a dissolute patrician ing a following. Sallust informs us: “Amid spoils since the death of their leader and and senator gifted with good looks, intelli- the corruption of the great city Catiline wished to renew the despotism which had gence, boundless energy, and tremendous could easily surround himself, as with a once rewarded them. personal magnetism. Catiline could, the bodyguard, with gangs of profligates and Never had the Roman state been so

Conspiracy unmasked: Some of the leaders of the Catilinarian conspiracy are brought before the Senate, under Cicero’s orders, to be tried for treason and sedition.

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ripe for overthrow. In addition to de- clining moral standards, Rome was bankrupt. Italy had been emptied of most of her military forces, including their strongest leader, Pompey, who was fighting a second war against a rejuvenated Mithridates. Many of Rome’s political leaders, includ- ing Crassus, Pompey’s bitter rival, were aware of and sympathetic with Catiline’s designs. Catiline, having assembled a considerable following throughout Italy, as well as a core of confidants in the Senate, began organizing and training his recruits, preparing for an armed overthrow of the republic. Only one man stood between Catiline and his goal of ab- solute power: Cicero.

Defender of the Republic In 63 B.C., Cicero defeated Catiline in the consular election, and the latter immediately began plotting Cicero’s demise. He sent a band of assassins to Cicero’s house, but Cicero, hav- ing been warned that his life was in danger, barricaded himself inside and frustrated the plot. In spite of these events, however, it appears that Cicero had not yet learned the full extent of Catiline’s conspiracy. Nevertheless, Cicero did deliver, on November 8th, the first of four orations in opposition to Catiline in the Senate. According Rome’s rivals: Gallic warriors as they probably appeared in the first century B.C. Catiline’s conspirators to Sallust’s version of events (which tried to enlist the help of Gallic tribes living under Roman rule in Italy to support the planned overthrow does not agree with Cicero’s), Cati- of the republic. line sat in smug silence as the great Roman orator heaped invective on him. leaving instructions with his most trusted subject peoples. Some of them, still smart- When Cicero sat down, Catiline rose to confidants, led by Cethegus and Lentulus, ing from the indignities of the Social War, defend himself. He invoked his high birth to “do everything possible to increase the an unsuccessful bid for independence from and his years of public service; how could strength of their party, to find an early op- Rome on the part of various Italian subject anyone, he asked, take the word of this up- portunity of assassinating Cicero, and to states, agreed to support the revolution. start immigrant (Cicero was a native of Ar- make arrangements for massacre, fire- But one group betrayed Catiline — the pinium, about 70 miles from Rome) against raising, and other violent outrages.” He Allobroges, a Gallic tribe whose territory that of a patrician like himself? promised them that he would soon return formed the northernmost portion of the Cicero’s powerful oratory, however, to Rome — at the head of a large army. Roman province of Transalpine Gaul. The had won many allies. The entire Senate Catiline’s agents busied themselves with Allobroges themselves had dispatched shouted down Catiline, calling him an final preparations for what was shaping up envoys to Rome to complain of abuses enemy and a traitor. At this unexpected to be a meticulously planned and remark- by Roman administrators and of heavy reversal, Catiline became enraged. “Since ably sophisticated revolution. Many of Ca- debts. Yet presented with an opportunity I am encompassed by foes,” he thundered, tiline’s corrupted youth confederates were to overthrow their overweening masters, “and hounded to desperation, I will check instructed to murder their fathers, even as the Allobroges hesitated. Considering the the fire that threatens to consume me by 12 conflagrations were to be kindled at vast resources of Rome, defeat was a real pulling everything down about your ears.” picked spots across Rome. Catiline’s emis- possibility, with the reprisals that would Saying this, he stormed out of the Sen- saries fanned out across Roman territories inevitably follow. Perhaps they doubted ate and fled from Rome — but not before in Italy, seeking allies among non-Roman as well the good faith of their would-be

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tulus, Cethegus, and the other and unabashed partisan of Caesar — did Cato the Younger urged the Senate: core conspirators and requested not. Whatever the case, Julius Caesar’s sealed, written instructions to actions in the Senate on the conspirators’ “In heaven’s name,... wake up while carry back to their countrymen. behalf certainly are more suggestive of there is still time and lend a hand to Some of Catiline’s men were to trying to help associates than of preserving accompany the Allobroges back the republic. “It is not easy to discern the defend the Republic. It is not a matter to their homeland. This was truth,” Caesar told his Senate colleagues, of misappropriated taxes, or wrongs communicated to Cicero. The “when one’s view is obstructed by emo- latter arranged to have the party tions.... You … gentlemen must take care done to subject peoples; it is our intercepted and arrested, with the that the guilt of Publius Lentulus and the liberty and lives that are at stake.” understanding that the Allobro- others does not outweigh your sense of ges were to be released. Cicero what is fitting, and that you do not in- personally interrogated the first dulge your resentment at the expense of patron, Lucius Catiline. Whatever the rea- detainees and examined their papers. He your reputation.” Caesar went on to give sons, after considerable debate, it was the then ordered the other chief conspirators a carefully nuanced discourse on the dan- Allobroges that dealt Catiline’s conspiracy in Rome, including Lentulus and Cethe- gers of overreacting and of taking extreme a crippling setback. gus, to be rounded up. measures without legal coloration. He rec- There was in Rome a certain Quintus ommended that, instead of being executed, Fabius Sanga, who acted as the Allobro- Debate in the Senate the conspirators should be deprived of their ges’ patron. It was Sanga whom the Allo- At this point, Cicero faced a dilemma: he property and consigned to internal exile in broges approached with tidings of the im- was well aware that the conspirators had various cities that “are best provided to un- pending revolution and the vast conspiracy many allies in the Senate and elsewhere, dertake their custody.” behind it. Sanga immediately informed allies that would make successful pros- Caesar’s calculated rhetoric swayed Cicero, who instructed the Allobroges to ecution well nigh impossible. He also many in the Senate, but the debate was feign sympathy with the conspirators, in understood that, if the leaders of the con- not finished. Marcus Cato, known to his- order to find out as much as they could spiracy were freed, the republic was likely tory as Cato the Younger, arose. Remind- about the organization’s membership and doomed, so pervasive and well organized ing his audience that the men before them plans. They obligingly met with Len- had Catiline’s organization become. The planned to “make war on their country, Roman public, upon first parents, altars, and hearths,” he observed learning of the conspiracy that mere punishment was not enough: and its exposure, “praised Ci- “Other crimes can be punished when they cero to the skies,” in Sallust’s have been committed; but with a crime like words; but partisans of Cati- this, unless you take measures to prevent line were still at work sowing its being committed, it is too late: once it discord and shoring up Cati- has been done, it is useless to invoke the line’s support base. law.” He then chided many of the sena- Cicero had the conspirators tors for having been “more concerned for brought before the Senate in your houses, villas, statues, and pictures, order to discuss how to pun- than you have for your country.” “In heav- ish them. Instead of unanim- en’s name, men,” he urged them, “if you ity on the need to rid Rome of want to keep those cherished possessions, the band of execrable traitors, whatever they may be, if you want to have Cicero found to his consterna- peace and quiet for the enjoyment of your tion that the Catilinarians had pleasures, wake up while there is still time a powerful senatorial patron and lend a hand to defend the Republic. It who was nearly his equal in is not a matter of misappropriated taxes, or eloquence and popularity: wrongs done to subject peoples; it is our Julius Caesar. Both Cicero liberty and lives that are at stake.” and his able colleague, Cato He contrasted for his audience the moral the Younger, believed Julius virtues of the old republic with the para- Caesar to be a member of Ca- lyzing vices of the present era: “They were tiline’s band, a belief that was hard workers at home, just rulers abroad; apparently shared by many and to the council-chamber they brought other contemporaries. The untrammeled minds, neither racked by Pompey the Great: Rome’s greatest military leader in historian Appian also gave consciousness of guilt, nor enslaved by Cicero’s time, Pompey vanquished the Cilician pirates and some credence to this view, passion. We have lost these virtues. We Mithridates, king of Pontus, before subduing Palestine. although Sallust — a friend pile up riches for ourselves while the state

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is bankrupt. We sing the praises of prosperity — and idle away our lives. Good men or bad — it is all one: all the prizes that merit ought to win are carried off by ambitious intriguers. And no wonder, when each of you schemes only for himself, when in your private lives you are slaves to pleasure, and here in the Senate House the tools of money or influence. The result is that when an assault is made upon the Republic, there is no one there to defend it.” Having thus rebuked his colleagues, Cato recommended death for the conspirators. The Senators, acclaiming Cato’s courage and, according to Sallust, “reproaching one another for their faintheartedness,” adopted a resolution to put the con- spirators to death. Fearing delay, Cicero directed that they at once be taken to the place of execution deep inside the prison, a filthy, sunless chamber called the Tullianum. There, Cethe- gus, Lentulus, and three other conspirators were put to death by strangling.

Defeat of Catiline Catiline himself, however, was still at large with a consider- able army. Many of his men deserted when they learned that the conspiracy had been exposed and its leaders executed. Even so, more than a few remained faithful to their leader and joined him in a retreat to a remote, mountainous area near Pistoria, a city in the Tuscany region of northern Italy. Wait- ing nearby for an opportunity to attack Catiline were several legions under Metellus and Caius Antonius, who cornered Catiline and his army against a range of mountains. Out of options, Catiline decided to risk immediate battle to decide the issue. After a rousing speech, he led his men into combat against the veteran Roman legions. Catiline’s men, having resolved to conquer or die, fought savagely and exacted a ter- rible toll on the government forces. Catiline himself, realizing his cause was lost, decided to die like a Roman and waded into the thick of the affray. His forces were cut down to a man, but many Roman soldiers lost their lives as well. Perhaps 20,000 died in the Battle of Pistoria in January of 62 B.C.; Sallust informs us that Catiline’s body was found far from the place where his vanguards had fallen, surrounded by the bodies of government soldiers. For the moment, Rome breathed more easily. A deadly con- spiracy had been unmasked and uprooted, though at a high cost in lives. The prestige of Cicero and his able colleague, Cato, had never been higher. But Crassus and Caesar, both of whom had been sympa- thetic with, and probable participants in, the Catilinarian con- spiracy, were alive and well. Julius Caesar in particular was already regrouping from his failure to save the Catilinarians. He was at once subtler and more charismatic than Catiline. He knew that power lay in forging alliances of convenience, and he began to look to Crassus and Pompey for support. In addition to Caesar’s intrigues, Rome was still beset by economic woes, and the moral turpitude that Cato had con- demned was as prevalent as ever. The republic, in spite of the best efforts of Cicero and a dwindling number of republican Julius Caesar: The man who gave his name to imperial despotism, patriots, was teetering on the brink of collapse. The descent Caesar was a gifted orator, writer, and advocate besides being a talented into Caesarism was less than two decades away. ■ military leader.

THE NEW AMERICAN • DECEMBER 13, 2004 39 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME The Rise of Caesarism The weakened Roman Republic was crushed by Julius Caesar, a charismatic military leader who exploited his popularity with a Roman people who desired security above all else.

by Steve Bonta and had spread their depredations over the som of 20 talents. He told them they had entire Aegean Sea. By 75 B.C. they appar- no idea whom they had captured and in- This is the seventh installment in a se- ently enjoyed the sponsorship of Rome’s structed them to ask for 50 talents instead. ries of articles on the rise and fall of the sworn enemy Mithridates, king of Pontus, The pirates readily agreed to his bold de- Roman Republic. who, having already lost one debilitating mand, and Caesar dispatched most of his war with Rome, still sought to undermine entourage back to Italy to round up the he Cilician pirates in the early first Roman power any way he could. Some- ransom money. In the meantime, Caesar century B.C. were the scourge of time in that year, a group of Cilicians cap- more or less took command of the pirates’ T the eastern Mediterranean. They tured a vessel carrying a young Roman camp, insisting on preferential treatment, commanded huge fleets and immense aristocrat named Julius Caesar. writing letters and essays, and deriding the amounts of wealth from their strongholds According to the story, the young Caesar illiterate pirates as ignorant savages. He along the southeast coast of Asia Minor laughed at his captors’ demand for a ran- also laughingly promised the pirates that he would crucify every last one of them. The Cilicians, unsure what to make of this cheerful, powerfully built young man with the emotionless eyes, played along with what they assumed were foolish jests by a spoiled socialite who hadn’t grasped the full peril of his situation. After a lapse of little more than a month, Caesar’s friends returned with the ransom money, and the Cilician pirates set him free. It was the last mistake they were to make. Julius Caesar went directly to the nearest port, Miletus in Asia Minor, and assembled a small fleet of mercenaries. He then sailed back to the island where his erstwhile captors were still encamped. His forces quickly defeated and captured the pirates, and Caesar ordered them all crucified. However, in a fit of magnanim- ity to the condemned, he ordered their throats to be cut, to spare them the full agony of death by crucifixion. After all, he reminded them, they had treated him well in captivity. This was the personality of the man who dominated his age like no other before or since, saving only One who came into the world a few decades later to preach the coming of a very different kind of king- dom from that espoused by Caesar and his confederates, and who had nothing in com- mon with Julius Caesar except his initials. Gaius Julius Caesar — military genius, charismatic leader of men, author, dema- gogue, consummate politician — was one Adoring fans: Julius Caesar basking in the admiration of his soldiers. Caesar’s rise to power of the most contradictory characters ever owed much to the fierce loyalty of the fighting men who served under him. to occupy the stage of history. He shared

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Sulla’s lust for dominion, but lacked his in Asia Minor. While there, bloodthirsty vindictiveness. Capable of he is said to have developed In an age that produced a constellation of ruthlessness beyond measure, Caesar also an indecent relationship with frequently displayed calculated clemency. the king of Bithynia, a pow- luminaries — Cicero, Pompey, and many He understood, where Marius, Sulla, and erful kingdom in northern others — Caesar outshone all the rest. Yet Cinna had not, that the path to supremacy Asia Minor. Homosexuality lay in patronage and flattery, not in po- at the time was still taboo in in spite of his extraordinary assets, Julius groms. His personal assets — a keen wit, Rome (in stark contrast to Caesar was a tragic man who, more than powerful intellect, decisiveness, and an ancient Greece), and Cae- athletic physique hardened by years of sar’s political enemies were any other Roman leader, was responsible discipline — won him instant allegiance quick to amplify the rumors for the downfall of the republic. among the men he commanded and al- of Caesar’s moral miscon- lowed him to ingratiate himself with the duct. masses. In an age that produced a constel- In spite of the scandal, Caesar, return- between the rival despots Marius and lation of luminaries — Cicero, Brutus, ing to Rome after Sulla’s death, was able Sulla, was rewarded by the latter with his Cato, Pompey, Crassus, and many others to build a creditable career as an advocate daughter’s hand in marriage. Pompey was — Caesar outshone all the rest. Yet in spite and gained a reputation as an unusually only too happy to divorce his first wife to of his extraordinary assets, Julius Caesar powerful and persuasive orator. become the Roman dictator’s son-in-law. was a tragic man who, more than any Caesar had two great rivals in Rome After his marriage, he was dispatched to other Roman leader, was responsible for for power and prestige: one, Pompey, Sicily to quell the remnants of the Marian the downfall of the republic. eclipsed him in military exploits and the resistance there. In Sicily, Pompey earned other, Cicero, in rhetorical skill. Although a reputation as a capable but ruthless mili- Early Life friends from youth, Pompey and Cicero tary leader noted for his severity in dealing Caesar was born in 100 B.C. and as a were completely different in background with opposition. Sicily was a major source young man married Cornelia Cinnilla, the and temperament. Pompey came from a of Roman grain, and its strategic position daughter of Cinna, the leader of the Mari- wealthy, well-connected family, whereas in the mid-Mediterranean made it an asset an faction. He found himself on the wrong Cicero came from what would now be that could not be squandered. “Stop quot- side of Rome’s first civil war when the vic- styled the middle class, lacking the pedi- ing laws,” Pompey reputedly told the re- torious Sulla began his purge of all of Mar- gree for automatic promotion and patron- fractory Sicilians, “we carry weapons.” ius’ supporters. Caesar fled from Rome age. Pompey, who sided with the Sullan Following his success in bringing Sicily and enlisted in the military to campaign faction in the great civil war that arose to heel, Pompey was dispatched to North

59 B.C. Julius Caesar 55 B.C. 63 B.C. elected consul Caesar 49 B.C. Exposure of and First invades Caesar’s Catilinarian Triumvirate Britain for forces invade Conspiracy formed fi rst time Italy 42-31 B.C. 509 B.C. From Founding of Republic to the Republic Empire

CONSPIRACY AND THE RISE OF CAESARISM

753 B.C. Founding of Rome 58 B.C. 53 B.C. 62 B.C. Caesar’s Crassus’ 48 B.C. 44 B.C. Defeat and Gallic defeat and Defeat of Assassination death of campaigns death at Pompey at of Julius Catiline begin Carrhae Pharsalus Caesar

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He was then elected consul timated by his enemies. He recognized The Senate ordered Caesar to disband his for the first time, in 70 B.C. Pompey and Crassus, two of Rome’s Pompey’s profile grew wealthiest men and most celebrated mili- army. He chose instead, to the everlasting still further during the next tary leaders, as indispensable allies. In regret of history, to risk all for the sake of decade. In 67 B.C., in spite 59 B.C., Caesar, having managed to get of bitter debate in the Senate, himself elected consul for the first time, his ambition and cast aside forever the Pompey was given unprec- forged an informal, semi-secret political brittle husk of the old republic. On January edented power — absolute alliance with these two men. This, the so- authority over the Mediter- called First Triumvirate, was very much a 10, 49 B.C., Caesar led his army across ranean Sea and all coastal marriage of convenience. Pompey needed the Rubicon River and marched on Rome. territory extending 50 miles Caesar’s political support for his project of inland — in order to conduct conferring state lands on veterans who had a campaign against the Cili- served under his command, and Crassus cian pirates. The campaign coveted the authority to launch a military was brief and exterminated expedition against Parthia, a powerful the pirates as a military Persian state in Mesopotamia. Pompey threat. Instead of returning and Caesar agreed to set aside their quar- to Rome, however, Pompey rels, and the former even married Caesar’s departed for Asia Minor, daughter Julia to cement the alliance. where he helped another The following year, 58 B.C., Caesar was general, Lucullus, defeat made proconsul over Roman Gaul, where Mithridates for the second he promptly launched his famous war of and final time. He then led conquest in Gaul and Britain. The Gallic Roman forces into Arme- campaigns, generally considered the great- nia, Syria, and Palestine, est military feat since the conquests of Al- including Jerusalem itself, exander the Great, were a turning point in all of which he annexed for the history of Rome and of the Western Rome. He returned to Rome world. They not only brought most of what in late 61 B.C. to wild ac- is now France and the Low Countries, as claim and a sumptuous two- well as a part of Britain, under the Roman day triumph in honor of his yoke, they transformed Caesar into a mili- exploits. His popularity at tary hero whose popularity, at least with an all-time high, Pompey’s the masses, eclipsed even that of Pompey. stock rose still higher after Caesar, a tireless chronicler of his own several large personal dona- exploits, disseminated accounts of his vic- tions to the Roman treasury. tories over the various Gallic and British tribes. His history, designed to appeal to The Road to Power the general public rather than to the liter- In the meantime, Caesar’s ati, was written in the terse, straightfor- other rival, Cicero, had got- ward language familiar to every second- ten the better of the Catiline year Latin student. affair, in which a monstrous In addition to his undeniable qualities as conspiracy to overthrow both a military leader and rhetorician, Ju- the Roman Republic was lius Caesar was blessed with extraordinary exposed and dismantled, charisma. Endowed with a hardy physique largely through Cicero’s and uncommon stamina, he earned the Victors and vanquished: The once-proud Gauls submit to diligence. Caesar, who had slavish devotion of his soldiers through Caesar and the Roman yoke. defended Catiline’s confed- his willingness to share their hardships erates in the Senate, was and risks on the battlefield, often plung- Africa and eventually to Spain, where the oratorically worsted by both Cicero and ing into the thick of combat heedless of last remnants of the Marians, led by a ca- Cato; suspicions of his involvement in the mortal danger. pable general named Sertorius, held out Catilinarian conspiracy tainted him in the After three years of Caesar’s spectacu- until 71 B.C. Immediately after his vic- eyes of many. By all appearances, in the lar success in Gaul, Pompey and Crassus, tory in Spain, Pompey returned to Italy in late 60s, Caesar’s star was declining, and elected consuls in 55 B.C., honored their time to assist Crassus in suppressing the those of his rivals were ascending. agreement with him and extended his pro- uprising of Spartacus — and lay claim to Julius Caesar, however, had the good consular authority. They, like many others, a piece of the credit for the Roman victory. fortune of being consistently underes- appear to have underestimated Caesar and

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put too much faith in the strength of their with his Tenth Legion, reputedly uttering had seen during the wars between Marius alliance with him. But in the years imme- the phrase that has become synonymous and Sulla, or perhaps Caesar’s swiftness diately following, fate took a hand in two with irreversible, all-or-nothing decisions: and resolution dismayed him, but Pompey crucial events that none had foreseen. “Alea jacta est” (“The die is cast”). the invincible found himself needing to The first blow to the Triumvirate was With his battle-hardened veterans, regroup to prepare to meet Caesar’s chal- the death of Julia in 54 B.C. Both Caesar Caesar stormed southwards, prompting lenge. Caesar may have sought reconcili- and Pompey were heartbroken, and Pom- Pompey, Cato, and others of the so-called ation with his rival, but the mask was now pey soon began to have second thoughts “Optimates” (the party opposed to Caesar) off, and Pompey wasn’t having any. Their about his alliance with Caesar. He spurned to flee Rome. Perhaps Pompey wanted to forces collided first at Dyrrachium in Caesar’s offer to marry one of his nieces, spare the Eternal City the bloodbaths it Greece, where Pompey’s experience and choosing instead one Cornelia Metella, the daughter of one of Caesar’s political enemies. The following year, catastrophe struck the Roman expeditionary forces in Parthia. Crassus and his son, leading a huge Roman army, allowed themselves to be lured deep into the burning desert by the wily Par- thian general Surena, where they were cut off and slaughtered to a man. This, the bat- tle of Carrhae, was one of Rome’s worst military defeats ever. It set the stage for centuries of warfare between Rome and her greatest imperial rival, Parthia/Persia, whom Rome never completely defeated. Crassus himself was taken prisoner by the Parthians, where he met a gruesome end peculiarly apt for Rome’s wealthiest citizen: the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat. Crassus’ defeat and death provoked outrage in Rome and calls for military re- prisals, but Rome was in no position mili- tarily or politically to avenge the setback. The rivalry between Caesar and Pompey had hardened and, with the dissolution of the First Triumvirate, Rome trembled at the prospect of another civil war.

The Fall of the Republic In 52 B.C. Caesar cemented his military reputation with a decisive victory over a coalition of Gauls led by Vercingetorix. In 50 B.C., his five-year extended consulship expired, and the Senate ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome. Cae- sar recognized that the time had come for decisive action. Compliance with the Sen- ate mandate would mean the end of his po- litical career, given the hostility of most of his senatorial colleagues, Pompey in par- ticular. He chose instead, to the everlasting regret of history, to risk all for the sake of his ambition and cast aside forever the brittle husk of the old republic. On January No escape: Pompey, shown here fleeing Rome before Caesar’s arrival, wanted to avoid 10, 49 B.C., Caesar crossed the Rubicon bloodshed in the capital city. After nearly defeating Caesar at Dyrrachium, his army was River, which marked the Italian frontier, overwhelmed at Pharsalus.

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equipment. Caesar, as was ness to capture him as prelude to one of his his trademark, was mag- famous reconciliations. But Cato, idealist, nanimous with captured courageous patriot, and unshakeable par- enemy leaders. He par- tisan of the old republic, wanted no part of doned them all, judging the new order that Caesar was ushering in. that he would do better Seeing that the republic was lost beyond to win allies by showing recovery, he denied Caesar any personal mercy. triumph in the only way he knew how: by Pompey, Cato, and a committing suicide. number of others eluded Pompey’s sons escaped to Spain, where capture, however. Pompey they decided to make a last stand against set sail, along with his wife Julius Caesar. Now in his fourth term as and a substantial entou- consul, Caesar hurried to Spain, the last rage, hoping to reach Af- of Rome’s dominions to defy his rule, and rica and regroup. Reach- destroyed the last opposing army at the ing the coast of Egypt, Battle of Munda in 45 B.C., in which more Pompey was lured onto than 30,000 Romans perished. Caesar the beach by emissaries himself, now in his fifties, is said to have of the Egyptian monarch led his reluctant men in an all-out charge. Ptolemy, who had decided This time, however, he may have pushed to have Pompey murdered his luck too far, for in the total victory at to ingratiate himself with Munda he wiped out all the remaining Caesar. As his horrified family and confederates of Pompey, save wife and friends watched only one son who escaped the carnage. from the boat, the treach- This, Plutarch tells us, displeased large erous Egyptians cut down numbers of Romans who still held Pom- Pompey on the beach. pey in very high esteem. Not only that, Caesar, pursuing Pom- Caesar arrogantly celebrated this victory pey to Egypt, appeared with a colossal triumph in Rome, which A monarch uncrowned: Caesar, understanding the distasteful to be genuinely upset at stirred up even more antagonism. symbolism of a coronation, publicly refused a crown that Mark the latter’s assassination, Nevertheless, he managed to get himself Antony tried to give him. It was probably a cynical publicity since it denied him yet appointed dictator for life and elected to a stunt, since Caesar had made himself a monarch in everything another opportunity to put 10-year term as consul. He shrewdly cur- but name. his self-serving victor’s ried favor with the masses by publicly re- magnanimity on display. pudiating calls for him to be crowned king. able generalship carried the day in July, As Plutarch noted, without a trace of irony, In one incident — probably staged — his 48 B.C. “in his letter to his friends at Rome, [Cae- political ally and fellow consul Marcus At this point, Pompey was seized with sar] told them that the greatest and most Antonius (Mark Anthony) attempted to reluctance to prosecute the war further, signal pleasure his victory had given him place a diadem on Caesar’s head during distressed at the prospect of shedding was to be able continually to save the lives a major religious festival. Caesar ostenta- more Roman blood. Cato the Younger, of fellow-citizens who had fought against tiously declined the honor, to the delight according to Plutarch, wept bitter tears at him.” In Egypt, Caesar supported Cleopa- of onlookers. However, as Appian noted the sight of thousands of dead Romans on tra in a civil war that had lately broken out somberly, “the people hoped that [Caesar] the battlefield after Dyrrachium. But most and installed her as ruler. He also had an would also give them back democracy, just of Pompey’s other associates urged him to affair with Cleopatra that produced his as Sulla had done, who had achieved a po- pursue Caesar, to finish him off while his only known son. sition of equal power. However, they were forces were reeling. Tormented by premo- After a brief interlude in Asia Minor, disappointed in this.” nitions of disaster, Pompey bowed to the where he defeated the latest upstart king According to Appian, Caesar’s person demands of his men and led them to the of Pontus, Pharnaces II, the son of Mith- was made inviolate, and he began conduct- place where all would be hazarded, Phar- ridates, Caesar returned to Africa to deal ing business from a throne of ivory and salus in northern Greece. with the remnants of the forces represent- gold. Temples were dedicated to him, and Only about a month had elapsed since ing Pompey and the Senate. Another char- the priests and priestesses were instruct- Dyrrachium, and Pompey’s forces greatly acteristically decisive victory followed, ed to offer public prayers on his behalf. outnumbered those of his determined ad- which saw most of the remaining opposi- Magistrates were placed under oath not to versary. Yet Julius Caesar’s army carried tion leadership killed. Cato the Younger, oppose any of Caesar’s decisions. Even a the day, routing Pompey’s 45,000-man who was also in Africa, was informed of month of the Roman calendar, Quintus, force and capturing all of his tents and the defeat and of Caesar’s great anxious- was renamed Julius in his honor.

38 THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARY 10, 2005 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME

Caesar used his dictatorial powers to to more than twenty knife wounds. Rome now craved peace, luxury, and secu- redistribute wealth and land. He began After the assassination, the senators rity. But with the permanent rise of Cae- planning grandiose public works and even fled in confusion, and Rome descended sarism, Rome lost not only her liberty but reformed the Roman calendar. His most into turmoil. The man who had dealt the also her peace and security. Her opulence ambitious dream was a grand military republic its death blow was dead in his and fearsome military machine guaranteed campaign into Parthia and Scythia, and turn, but contrary to the expectations of his yet a few generations of imperial domi- thence north and west into Germania, to assassins, few Romans rallied now to the nance, but for Rome’s unhappy citizens, bring under Roman dominion all of the na- cause of the republic. Instead, the mass- the years to come would bring a nightmar- tions to the north and east that still defied es mourned the passing of a charismatic ish pageant of bloodshed and oppression Roman arms. leader who had kept them entertained and that in the end would undo the civilizing who had never hesitated to raid the public work of centuries and bring to a close the Death of a Dictator treasury on their behalf. Instead of liberty, first flowering of Western civilization. ■ But the recently expired republic still had its champions. Cicero maintained a low profile, opting to play the survivor rather than the martyr. Other senators, however, led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, were dismayed at the Caesarian dictatorship. Brutus and Cassius had both been pardoned by Caesar after the defeat of Pompey, and young Brutus was even alleged by some to have been Caesar’s illegitimate son. Brutus, Cassius, and their senatorial confederates now de- cided that only drastic action could restore the republic. They formed a conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar. The date chosen for the assassination was March 15 in 44 B.C. According to tradition, Caesar had ample warning of the plot against him. His associates warned him that trouble was brewing, and a sooth- sayer advised him to beware of the Ides of March, as the Romans referred to that fateful day. On the eve before his assassi- nation, his wife Calpurnia dreamt that he had been murdered and begged him to stay at home the next day. Yet in spite of all these portents, Caesar made his way to the Forum the next day. Plutarch records that he met the soothsay- er along the way and told him jestingly, “The Ides of March are come;” to which the soothsayer, unruffled, replied, “Yes, they are come, but they are not past.” On that day, the Senate had chosen to meet in a building where a great statue of Pompey stood. It was at the very foot of this statue, as Caesar was surrounded by a knot of senators, that the assassins, bear- ing daggers concealed under their togas, made their move. As soon as he realized what was happening, Caesar fought fe- rociously against his assailants, but soon sank to his knees. Seeing Brutus among Thus ever to tyrants: Caesar’s assassins wanted to restore the republic by killing a usurper, but the assassins, he is supposed to have said, only made matters worse. Many Romans loved Caesar for his generosity with public monies and “Even you, my child?” before succumbing for his military prowess, and had lost interest in self-government.

THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARY 10, 2005 39 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME From Republic to Empire The assassins of Julius Caesar hoped to restore the Roman Republic, but they instead set in motion events that encouraged the rise and triumph of despots worse than Caesar.

by Steve Bonta lamplight, long after the rest of his men and powerful, but might be confident of had gone to sleep. Suddenly he became the assistance of the gods also, in this our This is the eighth installment in a series of aware that he was not alone and, looking most sacred and honorable attempt.” articles on the rise and fall of the Roman toward the entrance of the tent, saw a per- Brutus’ reply is not recorded. But with Republic. sonage of, in Plutarch’s words, “a terrible the Roman government now in the grip of and strange appearance” standing beside tyrants, the old republic in tatters, and Rome t is said that Marcus Brutus, one of his bed. Brutus, undismayed, asked the ap- embroiled in yet another titanic civil war, Julius Caesar’s assassins and, along parition what it was and why it had come. Brutus and many other trembling citizens I with Cassius, the leader of Rome’s “I am your evil genius, Brutus,” the figure must have wondered whether, indeed, the last republican army, had an extraordinary replied. “You shall see me at Philippi.” powers of heaven had abandoned them. vision one night while encamped with his Brutus stared at the dark figure with all army in Asia Minor. He and Cassius had the courage he could muster and replied From Bad to Worse raised a vast military force to challenge evenly, “Then I shall see you.” The assassination of Julius Caesar, instead the Second Triumvirate of Mark Antony, The next day he told his friend and as- of solving Rome’s problems, made them Octavian, and Lepidus, a sort of military sociate Cassius of the vision. Cassius reas- worse. Brutus, Cassius, and the other as- junta assembled after the death of Julius sured him, saying that the mind had lim- sassins ran through the streets of Rome Caesar. Brutus, sometimes called “the last itless capacities for inventing such things with blood on their hands and togas, pro- Roman,” knew that the time was fast ap- and that there were no such things as su- claiming liberty and the death of the ty- proaching for a climactic battle with the pernatural beings. He added with more rant. They were greeted for the most part forces of the Second Triumvirate, and was than a little irony, “I confess I wish that by sullen stares, while the remainder of making preparations to cross back into there were such beings, that we might not the Roman government fled the Forum in Greece for the final confrontation. rely upon our arms only, and our horses confusion, expecting perhaps that this lat- Brutus was alone in his tent reading by and our navy, all of which are so numerous est blow to Rome could only lead to more

Funeral of a dictator: Mark Antony exploited Caesar’s funeral to stir up the Roman masses against Caesar’s assassins. The mob burned the houses of Cassius and Brutus, but the two men escaped to make a final attempt to rescue the republic.

34 THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARY 24, 2005 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

pogroms. Before long, Brutus and Cassius ed. This process required a certain amount Triumvirate now fanned out across Roman realized that, rather than ridding Rome of of cynical give and take; Cicero, for ex- territory to eliminate the hundreds of a detested tyrant, they had made a martyr ample, had been a supporter of Octavian Romans on the proscription lists. They out of a popular despot. against Antony, but the latter now insisted tracked Cicero down at a remote villa by Two men who watched events unfold on Cicero’s death. According to Plutarch’s the sea, where, weary of flight, the aged with opportunistic glee were Mark Anto- version of events, “They [the Triumvirs] statesman offered his neck willingly. His ny, Caesar’s junior consular partner, and met secretly and by themselves, for three head and hands were taken back to Rome Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son (and the days near the town of Bononia.... Caesar and delivered to a jubilant Antony, who son of Caesar’s niece), who was barely 20 [i.e., Octavian] contended earnestly for ordered them fastened up over the rostra years of age. Mark Antony feigned soli- Cicero the first two days; but on the third in the Senate, “a sight,” Plutarch tells us, darity with the assassins until the day of day he yielded, and gave him up. The “which the Roman people shuddered to Caesar’s funeral. When he eulogized Cae- terms of their mutual conces- sar, he took advantage of the solemn oc- sions were these: that Caesar casion to heap imprecations on Caesar’s should desert Cicero, Lepidus Octavian was victorious after a assassins and displayed Caesar’s bloody, his brother Paulus, and Anto- decade-long struggle for dominion, yet slashed toga to the onlookers. The crowd, ny, Lucius Caesar, his uncle by enraged at the sight, surged into the streets his mother’s side. Thus they let he wavered as to whether he would forge to hunt down and kill Caesar’s murderers. their anger and fury take from ahead as Rome’s sole ruler or attempt They tore to pieces an innocent bystander them the sense of humanity, who happened to have the same name as and demonstrated that no beast to restore republican government. In the one of the assassins, prompting Brutus, is more savage than man when end, he chose to become emperor and Cassius, and the rest to flee Rome. possessed with power answer- While Cassius and Brutus escaped to able to his rage.” took the title Caesar Augustus. Greece to try to raise armies of their own, The assassins of the new Antony set about consolidating power for himself. He soon found his popularity on the wane, thanks in large measure to Ci- cero. The tireless statesman delivered to the Senate and the Assemblies a total of 14 passionate speeches denouncing Antony and his tyrannical ambitions, calling them — only half in jest — his Philippics, after the Greek orator Demosthenes’ celebrated denunciations of Philip of Macedon. At the same time, Octavian, having returned to Rome, became Antony’s great rival. He adopted for himself the title of Caesar and soon garnered enough factional support to force Antony temporarily to withdraw from the city. But Octavian in his turn quickly learned what his adopted father had understood: the road to absolute power would be more secure if reinforced by willing allies. With a political precocity that belied his extreme youth, Octavian sent emissaries both to Antony and to a third man, Lepi- dus, a former consul and staunch ally of both Julius Caesar and Antony, proposing reconciliation. Antony and Lepidus both seized the olive branch and with Octavian formed, in 43 B.C., the unholy alliance known as the Second Triumvirate.

The Proscriptions Death of Cicero: Betrayed by Octavian and proscribed by the bloodthirsty Mark Antony, Cicero The first act of the Triumvirs was to draw was tracked down by government assassins at a remote villa, where he resignedly offered his up a list of political enemies to be eliminat- neck to the sword.

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behold, and they believed they saw there, their forces outside the city of Philippi, the and pillaged it, setting to flight or killing not the face of Cicero, but the image of provincial capital. large numbers of Octavian’s troops. But Antony’s own soul.” Before long, the combined armies of on the other wing of the battle, Antony’s Octavian and Antony made their appear- men prevailed and sacked the camp of the Last Stand at Philippi ance. On the morning of battle, October republican forces. Thinking all was lost, Brutus and Cassius, hearing of the pro- 27, 42 B.C., Brutus and Cassius conferred, Cassius, ever the pessimist, committed scriptions and the death of Cicero, were for what would be the last time. Cassius suicide. Brutus withdrew his forces from hardened in their determination to haz- asked Brutus what he resolved to do if the battlefield to defend his camp, and the ard all for Old Rome. They had enjoyed things went ill for them. “If Providence,” battle ended inconclusively. Eight thou- considerable success in winning over or Brutus replied, “shall not dispose what we sand of the republican army lay dead on conquering portions of Greece, and their now undertake according to our wishes, the battlefield and roughly twice that num- combined army was one of the largest I resolve to put no further hopes or war- ber from the forces of the Triumvirate. that Rome had ever fielded. Having won like preparations to the proof, but will die The two armies regrouped and prepared Macedonia to their cause, they assembled contented with my fortune. For I have al- for a second engagement. Brutus’ navy, in ready given up my life for my the meantime, engaged that of Octavian country on the Ides of March; and wiped it out, prompting Octavian to The Roman people and the Senate, and have lived since then a renew hostilities before Brutus could learn exhausted by decades of turmoil, wearily second life for her sake, with of his good fortune. On the evening of No- liberty and honor.” vember 16, the dark apparition reputedly resigned themselves to the loss of their In the battle that followed, appeared to Brutus again, but vanished republic. The Senate was preserved by many thousands were hewn without saying a word. And on the follow- down on both sides. Octavi- ing day, his forces met with disaster. Caesar Augustus, but shorn of meaningful an retired prudently from the The battle was comparatively brief. The power. The senators, the emperor made field, which saved the young forces of the Triumvirate smashed through Caesar’s life, since Brutus’ republican lines. Marcus, the son of Cato clear, were now his subordinates. republican forces fought the Younger, died a hero. Refusing to flee, their way to the enemy camp he shouted his father’s name over and over

Britain

Bastarnae Sarmatians Gaul Noricum Dacia

Italy Moesia Pontus Spain Thrace ROME Macedonia Armenia Asia Minor Mesopotamia

Mauretania Syria

Africa Arabia Cyrene The Roman Empire at the death of Caesar The Roman Empire at the death of Augustus Egypt The Roman Empire under Trajan A.D.117 THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT Joseph W. Kelly The New American, Joseph W.

36 THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARY 24, 2005 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME

as enemy troops closed in about him, leaving many of them dead on the field before finally succumbing. Another of Brutus’ men, Lucilius, pretended to be Brutus and allowed himself to be captured by Antony’s forces, buying time for Brutus him- self to escape. But Brutus, seeing the ruin of everything that he had lived and fought for, fell upon his sword.

Contest for Empire With the final defeat of the repub- lican forces, all that remained for the rival members of the Trium- virate was a battle for the prize of absolute power. Lepidus managed to avoid all-out war with Octavian and Antony, content with gradual diminution of his role until finally being removed from power in 36 Battle of Actium: Regarded as one of the most important naval battles in history, Actium — which B.C. Antony and Octavian, how- ended with the fiery destruction of Antony’s fleet — decided nothing except which of two tyrants would ever, rekindled their earlier dispute. inherit the imperial spoils. It soon became apparent that the Roman Empire was not large enough for Cleopatra, who fled to Egypt and soon Act wisely, while you have the op- both of them. committed suicide, the decade-long portunity, and entrust to the people The first rift occurred in 41 B.C., with struggle for uncontested dominion was the control of the army, the provin- a revolt against Octavian led by Fulvia, at an end. Yet still the young Caesar wa- ces, the offices of state and the pub- Antony’s wife. Octavian quashed the re- vered, according to historian Cassius Dio, lic funds. If you do this now and of volt the following year, and Fulvia died in as to whether to forge ahead as Rome’s your own accord, you will be at once exile. Octavian and Antony patched things sole ruler or to attempt to restore repub- the most famous of men and the most up temporarily with Antony’s marriage to lican government. We can only speculate secure.... It would be an immensely Octavia, Octavian’s half-sister. as to Octavian’s sincerity, but one of his hard task to bring this city, which has Antony’s affair with Queen Cleopatra of advisers, Agrippa, counseled him to es- known democratic government for Egypt led to a permanent and irreconcilable chew monarchy. “I do not see what reason so many years, and which rules an break between the two triumvirs, Octavian could possibly persuade you to desire to empire of such a size, to a state of accusing Antony of repudiating his Roman become sole ruler,” he told the young auto- slavery.... The state of monarchy is birthright to pursue an adulterous liaison crat. “Such a regime is difficult to impose such that even virtuous men cannot with the Egyptian queen, and Antony ac- upon democracies in general, and would possibly redeem it. cusing Octavian of usurping power that be far more difficult still for you yourself rightfully belonged to Ptolemy Caesar, to operate. Surely you can see how the city Agrippa reminded the sovereign that cer- also known as Caesarion, the illegitimate of Rome and its affairs are even now in a tain men, like Sulla, had been able to lay son of Caesar and Cleopatra. Tensions sim- state of turmoil. It is difficult in the first aside supreme authority and retire, and mered for a number of years before open place to make yourself master of the mass recommended that Octavian do the same. civil war again ignited in 31 B.C. The cli- of our citizens who have lived for so many Octavian’s other adviser, Maecenas, mactic engagement took place in the gulf years in freedom, and secondly it is diffi- was of the opposite opinion. He urged of Actium on September 2, in which the cult, when we are surrounded by so many Octavian to accept the reality of empire navies of Antony and Cleopatra squared enemies, to reduce once more to slavery and to indulge no further vain hopes that off against Octavian’s navy in the greatest the allies and the subject nations, bearing the republic could ever be reconstituted. sea battle until Lepanto, 1,600 years later. in mind that some have been democratical- “So long as our numbers were not large In the midst of the battle, Cleopatra fled in ly governed for generations, and others we and we did not differ in any important re- her ship, and Antony forsook the battle to ourselves have set free.” Agrippa pointed spects from our neighbors,” he pointed out, pursue her. The forces of Octavian finally out the many advantages of free states over “our system of government worked well, wiped out Antony’s navy by setting the fleet tyrannies and recommended that Octavian and we brought almost the whole of Italy on fire, incinerating thousands of men. set the affairs of the state in order and then under our rule. But ever since we ventured With the final defeat of Antony and lay aside the scepter: beyond our native soil, crossed the water,

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set foot on many islands and city, like a great merchant vessel, manned Imperial Rome was now at peace, for many continents, and filled the with a crew of every race but lacking a whole sea and the whole earth pilot, has now for many generations con- the time being. But it was a peace dearly with our name and power, we tinued to roll and plunge as it drifted here bought, as succeeding generations would have experienced nothing but and there in a heavy sea.... Do not, then, ill fortune. At first it was only allow her to be waterlogged. And do not discover. Beginning with the emperor at home and within our own let her be smashed to pieces on a reef, for Tiberius, a hundred-year parade of brutal walls that we split into fac- her timbers are rotten and she will not be tions and quarreled with one able to hold out much longer.” Republi- monsters was soon to teach Rome of the another, but later we intro- can government was clearly inadequate to true price of empire. duced this sickness even into the demands of a far-flung, multi-ethnic the army. For this reason our empire and the vast military that held it together, but rather than renounce impe- rial dominion, Maecenas preferred to re- nounce liberty. After his councilors finished, Octavian, who had now adopted the title Caesar Au- gustus, thanked them both for their sincer- ity and openness. Unsurprisingly it was, according to Dio, “the advice of Maecenas that he was inclined to accept.” The Roman people and the Senate, exhausted by decades of warfare and domestic turmoil, and bereft of the lead- ership of a Cicero or a Brutus, wearily resigned themselves to the loss of their republic. The Senate and various mag- istracies — the forms of republicanism — were preserved by Augustus, but shorn of meaningful power. The senators, the emperor made clear, were now his subor- dinates. He purged the Senate of refractory elements by compelling hundreds of sena- tors to resign without open reprisals. He also forbade the remaining senators from ever traveling outside of Italy, a law that remained in force in Rome ever after. Augustus made much fanfare out of closing, in 29 B.C., the doors of the temple of Janus. Roman custom for centuries had decreed that the doors remain open in time of war and be closed only during peace. For many generations, the doors had been kept open, in acknowledgement of the endless warfare that had afflicted Rome since her earliest forays into imperial- ism. Imperial Rome was now at peace, for the time being. But it was a peace dearly bought, as succeeding generations would discover. Augustus himself was the most benign emperor Rome was to see for a century and a half, but his immediate successors, beginning with Tiberius and continuing with a hundred-year parade of Cleopatra on her ship: The Egyptian queen, who had borne Julius Caesar’s illegitimate son, later brutal monsters, were soon to teach Rome had a famous affair with Mark Antony. In the heat of battle at Actium, however, she turned tail and — and the entire Western world — of the sailed away, contributing to Antony’s catastrophic defeat. true price of empire. ■

38 THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARY 24, 2005 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME Rome’s Dark Night of Tyranny When the republic fell, Rome entered the dark decline of empire. Only after centuries of misery under predominantly tyrannical emperors did Rome finally meet its end.

by Steve Bonta n the fourth century of our era, the edges of the known world. Beyond them Danube River marked the northern — according to the uncertain traditions of This is the ninth installment in a series of I frontier of the Roman Empire. To the the ancients — lay a savage, frozen wil- articles on the rise and fall of the Roman north and east of the Danube, fierce Ger- derness populated by the likes of the Gel- Republic. manic and Scythian tribes roamed to the oni, who dressed in the skins of their slain enemies, and the Melanchlaenae, who fed on human flesh. Immediately to the north of the eastern Danube were vast settlements of Goths, who by the mid-370s found themselves threatened by invading Huns and Alans from the east. To escape the ravaging bar- barians from the hinterlands, the Goths fled en masse to the banks of the Danube and sent envoys to the Roman emperor Va- lens, begging for permission to cross into Roman territory to escape the marauding hordes, and to settle in the province of Thrace. Valens, persuaded of the need for a mercenary and labor force to fortify and protect the northern boundaries of the em- pire, and anxious to expand his tax base, made one of the most fateful decisions in all of history: he opened the borders of the empire and invited the Goths to immigrate to Roman territory. With the help of boats furnished by the Romans, the Goths poured across the Danube into Roman territory — “like lava from Etna,” in the words of Roman his- torian Ammianus Marcellinus — and set up encampments in Thrace. The occupy- ing population was estimated by Edward Gibbon to have numbered at least 200,000 fighting men and up to a million total im- migrants. The Romans immediately took advantage of the situation by bartering food and other necessaries (including, sup- posedly, spoiled dog meat) to the desperate Goths, in exchange for slaves. The Goths resented such treatment and soon rebelled against the Roman authorities. Before too many months, the Goths, led by their crafty general, Fritigern, were pillaging and lay- ing waste to cities all across Thrace.

Rome prostrate: Alaric the Goth surveys Rome prior to entering and sacking the city. Alaric, a Disaster at Hadrianople Christian, was benign compared to later conquerors, like Attila and Genseric, who dismembered After several bloody and indecisive bat- the empire. tles, the Roman emperor Valens himself

36 THE NEW AMERICAN • FEBRUARY 7, 2005 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

decided to intervene. He marched north at Roman soldiers, or up to 80 the head of an enormous army that rep- percent of the entire existing By the end of the first century A.D., even resented much of the military might of Roman military force. Rome and encountered the Gothic army Not since Cannae in the the architectural remnants of republican — which by now was strengthened by Second Punic War had Rome Rome had been swept away by the fires Alan and Hun auxiliaries — outside the suffered such a disaster. But city of Hadrianople. Hadrianople, the “city unlike Cannae, which be- that had scoured the city. The Senate still of Hadrian,” was named for the emperor came a rallying point for re- existed in name, and would persist for best remembered for his efforts to fortify publican Rome, Hadrianople another Roman frontier, the boundary be- shattered the empire beyond several centuries, but old Rome had been tween Roman and Celtic Britain known repair. Over the next few dec- consumed in the holocaust of empire. as “Hadrian’s Wall.” But on August 9, ades, the empire was swept 378 A.D., the plains outside the city of away by successive invasions Hadrian witnessed the battle that brought of barbarians eager to take advantage of ever, a symptom, not a cause, of Roman the Roman Empire to her knees. Rome’s undefended borders. imperial decline. In historical hindsight, Valens and his forces advanced con- Within 30 years of the disaster in Thrace, the longevity of the Roman Empire was fidently against the howling barbarian Alaric and his Gothic horde were besieging extraordinary, given the centuries of al- host, only to be outflanked and outfought the Eternal City. By 429 A.D., the Vandals most unrelenting tyranny, warfare, eco- by the furious Goths, who had cleverly were pouring into Roman North Africa, nomic decay, and even natural disasters postponed the engagement until the heat and in 455 they sacked Rome itself. At- that ravaged the once-proud Roman do- of the day, when the Romans were weak- tila and his Huns, most formidable of all, minions. That the weary denizens of the ened and dehydrated. Crushed together by overran much of Greece, Italy, and Gaul in empire could have endured so many gen- the furious onslaught, the Romans, unable the early decades of the fifth century, leav- erations of grinding tyranny is a testimony to maneuver or even use their swords and ing desolation in their wake. Well could to human endurance. But more than a few javelins, were slaughtered like cattle. By Romans, by the mid-fifth century, lament may have felt a sense of relief at the col- the end of that terrible day, the flower of the fateful decision of a weak and foolish lapse of their imperial oppressors. the Roman military had been cut down, emperor, and what Ammianus mournfully The Roman Empire proper began with including 35 tribunes, many distinguished called the “tumultuous eagerness of those Octavian, better known as Caesar Augustus generals, and Valens himself, whose body who urged on the proceedings [that] led to who initially, after the assassination of Ju- was never recovered. With them fell the destruction of the Roman world.” lius Caesar, allied himself with Mark Anto- somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 The disaster at Hadrianople was, how- ny and Lepidus to defeat the last republican

42 B.C. 14 A.D. 37 - 41 64 A.D. 180 A.D. 306 - 307 410 A.D. Battle of Death of A.D. Great Fire Death of A.D. Alaric the Philippi Caesar Reign of destroys Marcus Reign of Goth sacks Augustus Caligula Rome Aurelius Constantine Rome 509 B.C. the Great Founding of the Republic

THE DARK NIGHT OF TYRANNY

753 B.C. Founding of Rome

31 B.C. 14 - 37 54 - 68 70 A.D. 192 A.D. 378 A.D. 455 A.D. Battle of A.D. A.D. Destruction Commodus Battle of Genseric the Actium Reign of Reign of of strangled by Hadrianople Vandal sacks Tiberius Nero Jerusalem gladiator Rome

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Tiberius set up a massive numbers of captive children to gratify The Roman loss at Hadrianople network of informers, and his twisted whims. passed laws making writings or Tiberius, like most of Rome’s emper- shattered the empire beyond repair. utterances critical of his regime ors, met a violent end. Having fallen se- Within 30 years of this disaster, Alaric high treason, and punishable verely ill, he was suffocated by certain by death. If Julius Caesar and of his attendants after partly recovering and his Gothic horde were besieging the Octavian had transformed the from a bout of illness that had been ex- Eternal City. By 429 A.D., the Vandals Roman Republic into a mili- pected to claim his evil life. He was suc- tary dictatorship, Tiberius now ceeded by Gaius Germanicus, also known were pouring into Roman North Africa, changed it into a police state. as Caligula, a man whose perversions and and in 455 they sacked Rome. In addition to his political despotic behavior have always taxed the cruelty, Tiberius, if the frank credulity of modern historians. Caligula testimony of Suetonius is to carried on incestuous relationships with army at Philippi, led by Cassius and Brutus. be believed, was a depraved monster in his three sisters. He had numerous ho- After 10 years of rivalry, he forced Lepidus his private life. A recitation of the details mosexual partners and forced adulterous into retirement and defeated Mark Antony of Tiberius’ private life would appall and liaisons with many of Rome’s most illus- and his Egyptian allies led by Cleopatra at sicken the reader; it is enough to record trious women. the naval battle of Actium. that Tiberius was an enthusiastic and in- Caligula took full advantage of the po- After Actium, Augustus’ subsequent satiable practitioner of every base sexual lice-state apparatus founded by his prede- reign of more than 40 years was a compar- depravity known, and even kept vast cessor to unleash a reign of terror unsur- atively tranquil one, in spite of passed (though often matched) atrocities committed by certain in imperial Roman history. A of his imperial subordinates, like brief excerpt from Suetonius’ the Judean tetrarch Herod. But lengthy and horrifying descrip- with the death of Augustus in tion of Caligula’s reign will give 14 A.D., a new type of monarch the reader an idea of Rome under assumed the scepter in Rome, Caligula’s administration: embodied in Augustus’ adopted son Tiberius. Gaius made parents attend their sons’ executions, and Darkness Falls when one father excused Tiberius, like nearly all of his im- himself on the ground of ill perial successors, was a monster. health, provided a litter for “If we were to draw a picture of him.... A knight, on the point his life,” wrote the Abbé Millot, of being thrown to the wild a historian held in high esteem by beasts, shouted that he was the American Founding Fathers, innocent; Gaius brought him “we might say that he knew what back, removed his tongue, was good, and often commanded and then ordered the sentence it, but the general tenor of his to be carried out.... The meth- conduct was to do evil with cool od of execution he preferred deliberate malevolence.” One was to inflict numerous small of Tiberius’ first acts in office wounds; and his familiar was to order the assassination order: “Make him feel that he of Agrippa, the son of Augustus’ is dying!” soon became pro- most famous adviser of the same verbial. name. He was also accused of ordering the murder of Germani- “Let them hate me, so long as cus, a Roman military leader of they fear me,” Caligula is al- great integrity who had success- leged to have often said. On one fully put down a sedition in the well-known occasion, Caligula, military aiming to set him up as angry at crowds cheering a team emperor in Tiberius’ stead. But he opposed, publicly wished that instead of the emperor’s grati- Rogues’ gallery: Of these first-century Roman leaders, only all Romans had but one neck to tude, Germanicus’ popularity Germanicus and Augustus were not total monsters. Tiberius, sever. He terrorized Romans of with the Roman people earned Caligula, and Nero in particular were among the most bestial princes every social class, delighting in him only Tiberius’ bitter envy. history has ever produced. mass executions of senators and

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in having prisoners tortured in his presence the practices of civilized rule that had was quite possibly his own doing, although during mealtime. His erratic behavior sug- characterized the Augustan period, and he the historical evidence for that is inconclu- gests what Suetonius and others have con- lowered taxes dramatically. However, he sive. What seems beyond dispute was that cluded, that Caligula was clinically insane. soon began spending extravagant sums on he reveled in the destruction and played his Caligula was assassinated after terrorizing lavish games and other public entertain- lyre as the Eternal City went up in flames. Rome for nearly four years. ment extravaganzas. He was succeeded by Claudius, another His penchant for monstrous personal Persecutions and Power Factions monster, somewhat less bloodthirsty, but vices gradually gained the upper hand. All In the aftermath, Nero encouraged the fickle and depraved nonetheless. Claudius of the perversions of his predecessors were belief that members of a new religion, appears to have been of subnormal intel- Nero’s stock in trade. Suetonius accuses Christians, were to blame, and launched ligence, which made him susceptible to him of committing frequent incest with the most horrific large-scale persecu- manipulation by amoral power-mongers his mother Agrippina, of raping a vestal tions that Christianity had yet seen. In the like his appalling wife Messalina. virgin, and of attempting to convert one of words of Tacitus, “an immense multitude his young male consorts into a woman by [of Christians] was convicted, not so much Dean of Depravity mutilating him and forcing him to undergo of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred Claudius, who was finally poisoned by as- a wedding in bridal attire. And these, if against mankind. Mockery of every sort sassins, was followed by another bestial Suetonius is given credibility, were among was added to their deaths. Covered with personage whose name, like that of Adolf his milder vices. the skins of wild beasts, they were torn by Hitler, has become virtually synonymous His bloodlust turned Rome into a hor- dogs and perished, or were nailed to the with wanton dictatorial cruelty: Nero. ror show for 14 awful years. In addition crosses, or were doomed to the flames and Nero was a man of many gifts. He had an to murdering many members of his own burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, aptitude for the arts and was an accom- family, including his mother and aunt, when daylight had expired.” plished musician. He was a man of con- Nero continued the reign of terror of his Nero’s behavior finally brought about siderable charisma and had a photographic predecessors in emphatic style. The best- armed revolt, led by Galba, who marched memory for names and faces. His reign known episode in his misbegotten rule, the on Rome in 68 A.D. Nero committed sui- started promisingly; he pledged to restore great conflagration that destroyed Rome, cide as Galba’s forces closed in. Rome for

Mass martyrdom: The emperor Nero publicly blamed Christians for the great fire that destroyed Rome in 64 A.D. — a fire he may have set himself. At his orders, thousands of Christians were burned alive all across the city.

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human history. Even the archi- ture, including the writings of Plutarch Much has been made of the decline and tectural remnants of republican and Tacitus. It was this period that Gib- Rome had been swept away by bon chose as his point of departure in his fall of the empire, but the real story was the fires that had scoured the famous History of the Decline and Fall of the decline and fall of the republic. The city, and every last vestige of the Roman Empire — a misleading starting republican virtue and manners point to support his mistaken premise that fall of empires is a foregone conclusion, had been eradicated. The Sen- the early empire represented the pinnacle but the causes leading to the decline and ate still existed in name, and of Roman achievement. Calling the empire would persist as a feeble insti- “the most civilized portion of mankind,” fall of republics pose a vexing problem tution for several centuries, but Gibbon went on to extol Rome’s “disci- that man has not yet fully fathomed. old Rome had been consumed plined valor,” “peaceful inhabitants,” “free in the holocaust of empire. constitution,” and “gentle, but powerful, Beginning with the em- influence of laws and manners.” Howev- the next several years was the scene of peror Nerva and continuing with Trajan, er, Rome during this comparatively placid unending slaughter and civil war, as three Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus Aurelius, interval was still a decrepit civilization of more bloodthirsty tyrants — Galba, Otho, imperial Rome from the late first century unending foreign wars and conquests, of and Vitellius — succeeded to the purple by until the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 palace intrigue, and of the debased mor- violent overthrow. Tacitus gives vivid de- A.D. enjoyed a brief sunlit interlude that als that had incubated the likes of Caligula scriptions of Rome ravaged by fire and the saw the flowering of Christianity and the and Nero. The virtues of Nerva, Trajan, sword again and again, and of thousands production of many great works of litera- Hadrian, and the two Antonines appear of terrified citizens cut down by magnified by the faults of their successive power factions. Sueto- predecessors. But with the death nius, never one to mince words, of Marcus Aurelius, Rome’s lucky complements Tacitus’ account streak ended. with his usual revolting personal portraits of these men. Empire’s End It was during this period that Marcus Aurelius was succeeded the Roman military acquired a by his son Commodus, another habit it was seldom to relinquish bestial ruler cast from the same for the remainder of the empire: mold as Nero, with the same vices proclaiming emperors solely on and insatiable appetite for cruelty. the authority and whim of the He was eventually strangled by a soldiers. Unlike later European gladiator in the employ of a pal- monarchies, imperial Rome (as ace conspiracy. well as its successor regime in And so it went. For the next the east, Byzantium) never devel- several hundred years, the Roman oped a system of orderly succes- Empire was strained to the break- sion, with the result that almost ing point by civil wars, foreign all emperors were enthroned by adventures, heavy taxation, and armed revolt culminating in the constant political turmoil. Emper- murder of their predecessor and or succeeded emperor, usually by of any potential rivals. violence. For each tolerable ruler If the Christians had endured — a Diocletian, Pertinax, Con- unspeakable persecution under stantine, or Julian — there were Nero, it was the turn of the Jews a dozen monsters, such as Cara- to do the same under Vespasian calla, Elagabalus, Maximin, Va- and Titus, the latter of whom fi- lens, and others far too numerous nally destroyed Jerusalem in a to merit mention. Most of them horrific campaign that resulted in slashed their way to the top, only the destruction of the temple and to be deposed in bloody coups the slaughter of hundreds of thou- within weeks or months of acces- sands of Jews. sion to the purple. And even the Rome vandalized: Led by the fearsome Genseric, the Vandals, By the end of the first century a Germanic tribe that had already wrested Iberia and North best were deeply flawed or com- A.D., Rome and her dominions Africa from the Roman Empire, sacked and burned Rome mitted unpardonable atrocities. had endured several generations itself in 455 A.D. After centuries of impregnability, Rome was Constantine the Great, despite of horror and bloodshed on a scale now experiencing the same horrors her legions had so often establishing Christianity as the and duration never before seen in inflicted on others. official religion of Rome, was ca-

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pable of remarkable acts of cruelty, which in July 365 A.D., the Roman world was Gothic rulers of former Roman dominions, included having his own wife and son put literally shaken by an unprecedented ca- like Theodoric and Totila, were fairly just to death. Julian, nicknamed “the Apos- tastrophe. An immense earthquake struck and humane rulers compared to the mor- tate,” was a brilliant and able leader, but the greater part of the Mediterranean basin ally bankrupt Romans, and many former chose to persecute Christians and to wage and was followed by gigantic tsunamis imperial citizens were happy to submit unprovoked war on the Persian empire, that wiped out much of coastal Sicily, to these gentler masters. Meanwhile, the where he died of battle wounds during the Dalmatia, Greece, and Egypt. The great eastern empire lived on, with its capital retreat from Ctesiphon, the Persian capital. city of Alexandria was nearly wiped out, at Constantinople and its distinctly Greek Pertinax, who followed Commodus, seems losing 50,000 inhabitants. This event filled and Asiatic character, for another thousand to have been a genuinely virtuous man. the Roman world, pagans and Christians years. He attempted to restore Senate authority, alike, with consternation, as the very pow- Thus did Rome die, more than 1,300 transferred all his personal property to ers of nature now seemed to be unleashed years after the founding of the city by Ro- his wife and son to avoid the reproach of against the dying Roman world. Thirteen mulus and his band of followers. Following personal enrichment, and overturned the years later came the calamitous battle of Gibbon, much has been made of the decline unjust decrees of his predecessor. Unfor- Hadrianople, the event that traditionally and fall of the empire, but the real story, tunately, this decent man was murdered by marks the beginning of the Dark Ages. which had concluded by the time of Christ, his own Praetorian guards after less than After Hadrianople, predatory barbar- was the decline and fall of the republic. For three months as emperor. Imperial Rome ian tribes were quick to pounce on the the fall of empires is a foregone conclusion; was beyond repair and no longer suited to enfeebled Roman world, and by the late they are always built on foundations of sand virtuous leadership. fifth century, the last remnant of the West- — despotism, militarism, expansionism, Diocletian, who reigned for 20 years, ern Roman Empire was conquered by and welfarism — and soon exhaust them- divided the empire for the first time, a di- the Goths and other tribes. Many of the selves, or are dismembered by other pow- vision that became permanent in the mid- Germanic tribes, most conspicuously the ers. But the causes leading to the decline fourth century in the time of Valentinian Goths, did possess a certain rustic virtue, and fall of republics pose a vexing problem I and Valens. At about this same time, enhanced by their Arian Christian beliefs. that man has not yet fully fathomed. ■ For the Serious Student

irect documentation of the Roman Empire and its decline Finally, no discussion of Roman sources would be complete with- is surprisingly sparse. The best sources for the first century out reference to the venerable Edward Gibbon, whose massive His- D A.D., Tacitus and Suetonius, both make grim if informa- tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains, more than tive reading. Tacitus, lauded by many as the best Roman historian two centuries after its original publication, the most comprehensive for his concision, attention to detail, and reliability, is a must-read such history, and perhaps the greatest historical treatise on any sub- for anyone wanting a dispassionate account of Roman culture and ject ever written. That said, the authority of Gibbon is often over- politics at the beginning of the Christian era. The surviving portions drawn. His obvious command of the facts and copious documenta- of Tacitus’ two magisterial works on Roman history, The Annals and tion are often overshadowed by his pompous tone, overuse of certain The Histories, are available complete in a Modern Library Classics stock words and phrases, and blatant hostility to Christianity. All paperback edition. writers are entitled to their prejudices, of course, but Gibbon attri- Tacitus’ scandalous counterpart, Suetonius, is not for all tastes. butes the fall of the Roman Empire largely to the rise of Christianity. Where Tacitus draws a curtain of discretion over the baser acts of There is ample reason to suppose instead that Christianity artificially his subjects, Suetonius unstintingly describes perversities that would prolonged the life of an otherwise moribund state. It was certainly make even some modern pornographers squirm with unease. The the case that Byzantium, the heir of the Eastern Empire, lacked any reader of Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, available complete in a semblance of good government, and was preserved mostly by the Penguin Paperbacks edition, must be prepared for an utterly candid vitality of her faith. view of diabolical levels of personal corruption. If nothing else, Sue- Nor was Gibbon any great champion of republican virtue and lib- tonius is the most devastating testimony ever written of the dangers erty. He, like many elites of his age, was awed by empire and cared inherent in unlimited government power. little for the bucolic virtues of early Rome. As a consequence Gibbon, The last true Roman historian was Ammianus Marcellinus, who despite the canonical status he now enjoys, was very controversial chronicled the events of his lifetime, many of which he witnessed. both in America and in Europe when his work was first published. A professional soldier, he participated in Julian’s disastrous Persian Many early Americans preferred the now-forgotten world history of campaign. He lived to see the virtual destruction of the Roman Em- the Frenchman Abbé Millot, a less monumental work but infinitely pire, and his history concludes with a vivid description of the Battle friendlier to republican values than Gibbon. In sum, Gibbon is with- of Hadrianople. The Penguin Paperbacks edition of his history is out parallel as a source of raw information, but less reliable as an nearly complete, but a few passages have been removed for editorial interpreter of the events he chronicled. ■ reasons. — STEVE BONTA

THE NEW AMERICAN • FEBRUARY 7, 2005 41 HISTORYHISTORY — ROME Lessons of Rome The rise and fall of the Roman Republic provides lessons that hint at flaws in modern political policies.

by Steve Bonta to most Romans, made the loss of Roman Where Persia, and Babylonia before her, liberty only vaguely noticeable. submitted to an all-powerful priesthood This is the 10th (final) installment in a se- The primary reason for Rome’s fall was who were superior in power to political ries of articles on the rise and fall of the moral decline. Every Roman writer who rulers, Roman priests remained subordi- Roman Republic. chronicled the fall of the republic — Ap- nate to magistrates of the republic. pian, Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Sallust, Cicero, rom a modern vantage point, Roman and others — marveled at the evaporation Cultural Revolution history instructs poignantly on both of ancient virtue that preceded the loss of The end of the republic saw a revolution F the genius of prudent government liberty. While republican Rome lacked not only in political but in moral and even and the folly of empire. Imperial Rome many of the softer virtues of later Chris- religious manners. By the first century was finally extinguished in the fifth cen- tian civilization, there can be no question B.C., sexual mores had been abandoned, tury A.D., and though strands of her cul- that, in comparison with most contempo- and the former sanctity of marriage for- ture persisted — in the Venetian Republic, rary pagan societies, Rome was a paragon gotten. Crime, once almost unknown in in the Byzantine Empire, and in Western of rectitude, resisting for centuries many Rome, became rampant. In such an envi- Christendom, which preferred the Latin of the debilitating vices and superstitions ronment, Rome became an easy target for language over the vernacular for the next of the rest of the pagan world. Where the political conspiracies like that of Catiline, thousand years — the books were closed Greeks institutionalized homosexual be- which exploited the criminal elements in on the civilization of Cicero, Brutus, and havior, sexual perversion was taboo in the Rome to carry out bribery, blackmail, and even the Caesars. Because well-constitut- Roman Republic. Where the Carthagin- assassination. ed states usually decline gradually rather ians practiced human sacrifice, includ- More ominously still, the bucolic sim- than suddenly, the lessons of Rome were ing child sacrifice on a large scale, Rome plicity of authentic Roman religion was centuries in the teaching — centuries that, generally refrained from such excesses. gradually contaminated by a monstrous cult from the east, the Persian mystery religion of Mithra that, by the late second cen- tury A.D., had permeated every level of Roman society. This cult was in fact a vast secret society consecrated to emperor-worship and to the amoral doctrine of radi- cal dualism — the idea that good and evil are eternal, ab- solutely equivalent principles that must both be appeased. It was apparently introduced into Rome in the first century B.C. by the Cilician pirates and spread through the ranks of political officialdom and the military, claiming as ad- herents emperors like Com- modus, Aurelian, Diocletian, and Julian. Fortunately for Western

AP/Wide World civilization, Christianity Remains to be seen: Millions of people have marveled at the ruins of the Roman Forum, which was once eventually eclipsed Mithra- the setting for some of the greatest political dramas, and some of the most extraordinary leaders, in all of ism, breathing new life into human history. decrepit imperial Rome.

36 THE NEW AMERICAN • FEBRUARY 21, 2005 HISTORYHISTORY— ROME

Rome’s successor civilization in the East, cians had always been resolved Byzantium, was sustained for more than by negotiation and political re- The primary reason for Rome’s fall was a thousand years by the Christian piety of form. But beginning with the her citizens and more capable rulers, de- administrations of the Gracchi moral decline. Every Roman writer spite ceaseless assaults by barbarian na- in the late second century B.C., who chronicled the fall of the republic tions and an irremediably weak system of Rome exploded into episodes of law and government. partisan violence. The following marveled at the evaporation of ancient century saw a series of devastat- virtue that preceded the loss of liberty. Wages of War ing civil wars that tore the re- Much of Rome’s strength in her early years flowed from her martial virtues. Her citizen soldiers were fearless and superbly organized. The Roman genius for order soon led to innovations in military science that made the Roman legions a virtually invincible fighting force for centuries. But Rome’s military successes engendered a love of conflict and conquest that hastened her undoing. For republican Rome was un- willing to interrupt her ceaseless warfare at the water’s edge, and plunged into over- seas empire building at the first challenge from abroad. The Punic wars were followed by sev- eral generations of mostly craven conquest against much weaker foes in Iberia, Afri- ca, and Asia Minor. Caesar’s victories over the Gauls were mostly achieved by play- ing disunited tribes against one another, and further encouraged Rome to trust in her own invincibility. Yet when Rome was confronted with truly formidable foes, the results were sometimes calamitous. Such was the case with the Parthians at Carrhae and the Germans at Teutoberg, both of which resulted in the slaughter of entire legions. In the imperial period, the sturdy Gothic nation, unimpressed by Rome’s inflated opinion of herself, became Rome’s most successful adversary. To the north, the Germans never succumbed to Roman arms, and to the east, the Persian empire of the Sassanids presented an impossible challenge. But Rome, once addicted to international warfare, never found the strength of will to lay down the sword. Her endless wars of conquest depleted her coffers (despite the plunders of war), deci- mated her population, made enemies far and wide — and created irresistible pres- sure for surrendering domestic liberties. For Rome, her greatest civic strength had always been her unity. Until the late second century B.C., Rome had never seen bloodshed from civil unrest. The various Factional strife: When Rome’s military forces were turned against her own people, from the first disputes between the plebeians and patri- century B.C. onwards, the resulting purges often decimated the city’s populace.

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and Caesar. For another, the its best years, was a far cry from the stan- The fall of Rome, although a tragedy to the Roman constitution failed dards of liberty and peace to which modern to give equal protection to Americans are accustomed. Rome was at generations that experienced it, has proven all Roman citizens, institu- war nearly all the time, and all able-bodied to be a blessing for mankind in the longer tionalizing the patrician ar- men served throughout their prime adult istocracy and ensuring that years during each campaigning season. term. For while Rome’s collapse led to a Rome would always have a Roman citizens were bound by rigid class dark age, it also made possible the rise of ruling class. distinctions, and slavery was pervasive. While the Roman system Citizenship was generally not granted to a modern civilization that has far eclipsed of government recognized subject peoples, even in Italy, until the first Rome’s greatest achievements. the need for checks and bal- century B.C. ances and for separating the Above all else, it must be borne in mind powers of the state among that Rome was a pre-Christian civilization. public apart and eased the way for the rise various offices and magistracies, the Absent from Roman culture was the value of military dictators like Caesar, Antony, Roman state did not enjoy the neat mod- on human life and individual dignity that and Octavian, who put an end to Roman ern divisions of executive, legislative, and has characterized enlightened states in liberties. From that time forward, Rome judicial power. Instead, fragments of these Western Christian civilization. The Twelve was never free from factional violence. Po- powers were parceled out into various of- Tables of Roman law required the killing litical assassinations and riots, unknown in fices. The judicial power, for example, was of deformed infants, for example. More- the early centuries of the republic, became shared among certain of the assemblies over, while the Roman military, at least commonplace. Emperors were enthroned and the praetors. The executive power was during the republican period, acted with and deposed almost exclusively by mili- divided among the consuls, praetors, sen- more restraint than was characteristic of tary coups, often accompanied by dreadful ate, quaestors, and others. The legislative the ancient world, their wars, battles, and purges and epic battles. power, meanwhile, appertained to the vari- sieges were nonetheless usually fought ous assemblies and to the Senate. without negotiation and without quarter Constitutional Flaws Like the ancient Greek city states, for the vanquished. The Roman constitution, superior though Rome provided for deliberation and even it was to other contemporary political sys- the enactment of laws by the masses in Legacy of Rome tems, contained a number of serious flaws popular assemblies. This serious flaw — The fall of Rome, although a tragedy to the that came to the fore as the republic dis- the absence of representative government generations that experienced it, has proven integrated. For one thing, it provided for — guaranteed all of the instability and to be a blessing for mankind in the longer the appointment of dictators for six-month tumult associated with direct democracy, term. For while Rome’s collapse led to a periods during times of acute crisis, an in- finally leading to the rise of unscrupulous dark age of several centuries, it also made stitution that furnished a pretext for mili- demagogues. possible, in the longer run, the rise of a tary coups by the likes of Marius, Sulla, Overall, the Roman Republic, even in modern civilization that has far eclipsed

Modern parallels: As the design of the U.S. Supreme Court alongside the Roman Pantheon attests, Roman architecture has had a profound influence on modern architectural styles. Rome lives on in her literature, language, law, art, and republican ideals.

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Rome’s greatest achievements. Had Rome academic, and legal lexicon. And like the America in which we now maintained indefinitely her grip on Eng- Perhaps most importantly, America’s live, Rome underwent a dizzying cultural land, Anglo-Saxon civilization with its dis- Founding Fathers looked to Rome as and moral decline, which, in the case of tinctive common law system could never their primary inspiration in learning the Rome, eventually destroyed Rome’s ca- have arisen. Germany would never have lessons of civilizations past, lessons ex- pacity for self-government. become civilized without the demise of the tracted from striking historical parallels In spite of the many parallels, there are Roman legions that fought unceasingly to that modern Americans would do well to also differences that suggest that America subdue her. The Italian city-state republics heed. Like America, Rome began as a tiny need not suffer the same fate as Rome. would never have inaugurated the Renais- colony of immigrants surrounded by hos- For one thing, in spite of the venality of sance under the heel of the Roman mili- tile neighbors. Like America, Rome was modern American society, we are nowhere tary. Modern Western civilization, espe- governed first by kings, and founded a re- near the pitch of moral decline depicted cially American civilization, with all of its public when its monarchy turned into des- in the pages of Suetonius, Tacitus, and blessings of freedom and progress, could potism. Like America, early Rome placed Juvenal. For another, our Constitution is never have been born under the banners of great importance on separating and limit- vastly superior to Rome’s, and ought to the Roman legions. ing the powers of government. Like mod- prove far more durable. Most crucially, But Rome lives on in the fragments ern America, republican Rome embarked modern America possesses many layers of Roman civilization that have inspired on a destructive program of foreign mili- of strength — cultural, moral, religious, and guided her modern inheritors. It was tary adventurism that added to her inter- institutional, and even technological — a reawakening of interest in classical lan- national prestige but sapped her strength that ancient Rome did not have, that may guage and culture, particularly art and and resources. Like America, Rome suc- allow America to endure where Rome architecture, that motivated the pioneers cumbed to the temptations of the welfare faltered. of the Renaissance. Roman laws were the state, teaching her citizens to divide into With all her tarnished greatness, Rome source of the civil law code of continental factions to fight over the spoils of the pub- is a witness, not only of the pitfalls of Europe, and had significant influence on lic treasury and to depend on government power, prestige, and prosperity, but of the English law as well. The Latin language for their material well-being. Like Ameri- transcending truth that, even under the has enriched modern English immeasur- ca, Rome saw the rise of subversive move- most adverse circumstances, freedom and ably, providing us with a vast scientific, ments that attacked her free constitution. enduring civilization are possible. ■