Streams of History: Ancient Rome (Yesterday's Classics) (7 page)

Rome now stood like a young Hercules—master of Italy, Sicily and Carthage, all, as you have seen, about midway in the Mediterranean Sea. If it was desired to conquer Spain in the West it would be easy, for Spain was made up of many tribes who had never been bound together into one strong nation; if it was desired to conquer the old countries of the East,—Greece, Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Judea and Egypt,—it would be still easier, for these countries were now quarreling among themselves, and, like the sticks, when separated could be easily broken in pieces one by one.

Rome had grown so accustomed to conquering people, that when she had destroyed Carthage, and no longer had any great power to fear, she was not satisfied. Her appetite grew sharper, the more she ate; the more she conquered, the more she wanted to conquer. So for the next fifty years after Carthage was destroyed (from 146 to about 100 B.C.), Rome took many of her young men from the stores and the plow and sent them to Greece and Asia Minor to overcome the dozen or more snarling, warring states which had grown up there since Alexander the Great's empire broke into pieces about two hundred years before.

We must now see how Rome did this, and finally see what effect it had upon Rome herself.

The first armies sent into the East were under very poor generals and the Romans were often defeated. The people at last concluded to put Æmilius Pau'lus in command. Æmilius was the son of the Æmilius Paulus who was killed at Cannæ in the battle against Hannibal. He was a poor man, who would not make himself rich, as many of the other generals did, by dishonesty. Now Æmilius had commanded armies in different places and was a great commander. He did not thank the people for the honor of making him general, but said he supposed they thought he could command, otherwise they would not have put him in the place, and that now they should not meddle with his affairs but leave him to do as he pleased; and he generally did do as he pleased, and generally succeeded well. He was now sent against King Perseus of Macedonia, who was the cause of much of the trouble in the East. At Pydna, in Macedonia, he soon defeated the king's army, commanding it bareheaded and in light armor, took Perseus captive and brought all of the king's country under Roman control. He captured very great treasure here, but being as honest as an old-time Roman, he took nothing for himself.

Æmilius sent home to Rome all the riches he captured, and this displeased some of his soldiers who wanted the gold for themselves. When the senate of Rome wanted to vote Æmilius a triumph, the army objected on that account, but an old general arose and said that he now saw how good a general Æmilius was, for he had won a great victory with an army of grumblers. This reply rebuked the soldiers and Æmilius was voted a triumph.

The triumph was a great celebration given by the senate to a victorious general, and was the highest honor that could be given him. This one given Æmilius Paulus was not the first or the last one given in Rome, but it was the last one given to an army made up of
free
  Roman citizens and a very grand affair and so I will tell you something about it.

That you may better understand what the triumph meant, I will tell you what a general had to do in order to be granted one. He must have held some of the highest offices in the government. He must have been actually in command of the army at the time of the victory. The victory must have been gained with his own troops. There must have been at least five thousand of the enemy killed in the battle and the war must have been brought to a successful close. Now the general had to do all these things before he might even ask for a triumph and then he had often to press his claims before the senate quite a while in order to get the senate to vote him the honor.

Let us imagine how it was in Rome on the occasion of the triumphal procession. The city was decorated with wreaths of flowers. The temples were thrown open and incense rose from every altar. Sight-seers, in their holiday attire, occupied every nook and corner where one could stand. Seats and stands were placed in the Forum and in other convenient places to accommodate the people. Rome was all alive with sight-seers. The public baths, the parks, the race courses, were swarming with the crowd. Officers kept the streets open for the procession, being careful that the crowd did not get in the way. It required three days for all of the ceremonies of the triumphal procession of Æmilius Paulus.

The consuls, followed by the senate and trumpeters, led the procession, after which came wagonloads of the rare and beautiful things taken in the war. Pictures of the conquered countries and forts, having banners with the names of the towns, were borne after them. This took most of the first day. On the second day came wagons with armor, arms and the spoils of war. After them marched three thousand men bearing bowls filled with silver coins, and still after them, men carrying silverware of all sorts captured and collected from the captured towns. But the third day was the most splendid of all. The procession was led by a body of flute players, followed by young men leading one hundred and twenty snow-white oxen, with their horns gilded and decked with ribbons. These oxen were intended for sacrifices to the gods. After the oxen came seventy-seven men bearing basins of gold coins, and with them marched those carrying the gold vessels that had been captured. Next came the chariot of King Perseus, bearing his armor and crown. His little children with their teachers followed, and then came the captured king himself, dressed in black. After all this followed Æmilius Paulus, the conqueror, dressed in the robe of Jupiter, wearing a gold crown, and riding in a chariot drawn by white horses. A slave rode with him and reminded him every little while that he must not be too proud, for he was but a man. The last of the procession was composed of the conquering army—the soldiers bearing branches in their hands and singing songs. After marching through the streets amid the shouts of the throng, the blare of the trumpets and the music of the flutes, the general, dressed in his sacred robes, rode to the Capitol, slew the oxen, offered sacrifices and paid his vows to Jupiter, and then went to the mansion prepared for him at public expense by the senate.

One of the events of these wars in the East had a great influence on Rome and on her life. This was the destruction of another great city. For some offense the senate ordered the beautiful city of Corinth, in Greece, to be destroyed and burned.

Corinth was a wealthy city and full of the most beautiful works of art, such as pictures, statues and buildings. Many scholars and artists lived there. You no doubt recollect that in our earlier work we found that Greece was a land of scholars and artists, and now I want to tell you how Rome got a liking for such things, and, alas! for other things which were not so beautiful.

The general who captured and destroyed Corinth was named Mummius, who, it seems, was a very ignorant but a very honest man. He had no notion of the value of the pictures and statues which he found in the city. He sent everything to Rome, and it is said that he made each captain agree to replace any of the valuables that might get lost or damaged, just as if it were within the officer's power, for example, to carve statues equal to those of Phidias, or paint pictures like those of Zeuxis (who, it is said, painted grapes so well that he deceived the birds), or those of Parrhasius (who painted a curtain so well as to deceive even Zeuxis himself). Just as these fine things were sent from Corinth to Rome, so many other luxurious and artistic things were sent from other towns taken by the Romans. Indeed, Rome was now rapidly becoming the center toward which everything that was artistic, rich or luxurious took its way. And since the sober, practical, warlike Romans did not have a talent for making these beautiful things, when they wanted to learn about them they had to learn from the Greeks themselves; and before they could do this, they had to know how to talk and read the Greek language. This, as you see, will help the Romans to carry Greek art and culture to the West, just as we saw earlier, Alexander the Great carried it to the East.

Before this it was not common for the Romans to know how to speak or read Greek. Scipio, of whom we learned in connection with the war with Hannibal, took great interest in Greek, as did Cato, who so strongly urged the destruction of Carthage, and the Gracchi, of whom we shall learn later.

After the destruction of Corinth, her people, together with thousands of others of the Greeks, were sold as slaves to Rome. You know that Rome has had slaves for hundreds of years before this time, but they were not educated slaves as these Greeks were. Rome scarcely ever left the people alone in the countries she conquered, but sold the best of them into slavery. We once had, as you know, a great many slaves in this country, but you must not think of Roman slavery as being just like ours, for the Roman slave was generally white like his master, and was only a slave because he had been captured in war.

That you may better understand the effect of Greek slavery in Rome, let us imagine an example: Suppose we were to get into a war with France, and, defeating her, were to capture a great many educated Frenchmen. Then suppose a number of them were brought to the capital of your state and your fathers should go there and buy a finely educated Frenchman to be your teacher, one perhaps who had been a doctor, or lawyer or college professor at home; or suppose he should buy the grown-up daughters of a very rich man for your house servants, or the sons for farm hands or gardeners. Would it not seem strange to have such persons as slaves? Well, it was something so with the Romans when they conquered the Greeks and sent so many of them home as slaves. Thousands of these educated Greeks were scattered among the Roman homes. There were also thousands of other slaves, as Carthaginians, Spaniards, Gauls, Asiatics,—people from all parts of the world,—but the Greeks, because of their education and manners, of which I will tell you later, had the very greatest influence upon Rome. Human beings as slaves became very cheap and very plentiful. You have heard the expression, "as cheap as dirt"; well, once the inhabitants of Sardinia rebelled from Rome, and when subdued were sold in such numbers that the Romans had an expression, "as cheap as a Sardinian." A Sardinian could be bought for fifty cents. At one time it is said that three-fourths of the population of Rome were slaves. As to their influence on Rome let us think of these slaves as divided into two classes, or groups,—the educated and the uneducated. Of course the majority belonged to the uneducated class; we will talk of them first and of the educated last, and this will bring us back to the Greeks.

Slaves on the great farms were treated more like animals than like human beings. The master had complete control of his slaves and could treat them as cruelly as his passions moved him to do, even to the point of killing them if he liked, and no one could interfere.

The farmers had come now, at about a hundred years before Christ, to employ slaves almost altogether in cultivating their farms, with the result that the small farmers were obliged to give up farming because they could not raise produce to sell so cheaply as the large farmers. They then went to the cities to make a living, and often became idle, poor and vicious, and spent their lives in stealing, selling their votes to politicians and begging for something to eat. These, you see, are not the self-reliant, plain, common people, free and independent, with homes of their own, like those we saw in the early days of Rome. They have become a class of beggars, depending upon the rich for their living. This then is one thing the wars and slavery have done—they have driven the small farmer out of the country into the city, where he has become poorer and often a pauper in the city of Rome. Thus some of the Roman people are becoming very rich while others grow very poor.

In the second place, there were so many of these slaves who had once been free that it kept Rome continually watching for fear they would arm themselves and strike for freedom,—as in fact they did try to do time and time again. In 73 B.C. a slave named Spartacus persuaded seventy of his companions to rebel with him. They went into the crater of Vesuvius to make arrangements for their struggle for liberty. Here they were joined by thousands of slaves and robbers. Three thousand Roman soldiers were sent against them, but Spartacus quickly defeated them. This victory caused the slaves, around on the farms and in the cities, to run away from their masters by the thousands, until finally Spartacus had a slave army of seventy thousand men. They captured many of the Romans and treated them as cruelly as the Romans had treated the slaves. They managed to withstand the Roman armies for two years, or until their leader was killed and his followers scattered. Thus Rome was always afraid of her slaves, for as I said, there were now really more slaves than there were Romans.

Again many of the uneducated slaves were men and women who had immoral habits, into which the Romans gradually fell.

But I must tell you also that many of the bad habits which Rome contracted from her slave-class, and which helped toward her ruin, were taken from the well-educated Greeks.

That you may understand this better, I will tell you something about some of the customs of the Greeks before they became slaves. You remember how Greece was cut up by the mountains. These many little city-states were never able to make a single government binding them all together. They finally quit trying to do so, and gave themselves up to luxurious living, study and art. They spent so much time in warring and in trying to turn life into pleasure, that they forgot the worship of their ancient gods. They argued so much and so cleverly about some of their bad habits that nobody was quite sure that anything was really wrong or bad. One group of these debaters, or philosophers, as they were called, was led by a man named Epicurus, who taught that all people should live for was to enjoy themselves. Epicurus himself was a very good man, but what he taught did not have a good effect upon the people, because it gave them an excuse for doing all sorts of bad things which they would pass by lightly, saying these were for their enjoyment, and that Epicurus taught that whatever would lead to enjoyment was right to do.