The Rise of Rome (Penguin Classics)

by Plutarch

  Meanwhile, the Achaean cavalry had regrouped after their flight, and Philopoemen was nowhere to be seen. They assumed he must be dead. For a long time they remained where they were, calling aloud on Philopoemen and telling one another how dishonourable and unfair was their escape: here they were after abandoning their commander to the enemy, a man who had risked his own life for their sake. Then they went forward and made inquiries, and heard how he had been captured. They immediately spread the news around the cities of Achaea, and everywhere it was regarded as a great calamity. The cities decided to send an embassy to the Messenians to demand the man’s return, and meanwhile they made preparations for a military invasion.

  20. While they were engaged on this, Deinocrates was afraid of delay. Time, he thought, was the one thing most likely to save Philopoemen, and he wanted to strike before the Achaeans could intervene.134 It grew dark, and the Messenian crowd dispersed. Deinocrates opened the prison and sent in a public slave with some poison; his orders were to take it to Philopoemen and not to leave him until he had drunk it down. The slave found him lying on the floor in his soldier’s cloak. He was not asleep, but deep in grief and anxiety. When he saw the light and the man standing by him with the poisoned cup, he managed to gather himself in his weak state and sit up; he took the cup and asked if the slave had any news about the cavalry, and particularly about Lycortas.135 The man told him that most had escaped. Philopoemen inclined his head, and looked calmly at him: ‘That is good,’ he said, ‘if not everything has gone badly.’ That was all he said or uttered; he drained the cup, and lay back down again. The poison met with little resistance, and he died quickly in his weakened state.

  21. When news of his death reached the Achaeans, the cities felt a common sense of shame and grief. The men of military age collected with the councillors at Megalopolis, and there was no delay at all in exacting vengeance; they elected Lycortas as their general,136 invaded Messenia and ravaged the country, until the Messenians reached agreement and allowed the Achaean force to enter the city.137 Deinocrates forestalled them by taking his own life. As for the others, those who had voted for Philopoemen’s death were killed by them;138 those who had voted to torture him were rounded up by Lycortas to suffer mutilation before they died.

  They burnt Philopoemen’s body and placed his ashes in an urn. It was all done in an ordered and careful way, and the homeward procession was triumphal as well as funerary: it was a sight to see – some people wearing crowns, the same persons weeping, the enemies led in chains. The urn itself, barely visible under all its garlands and crowns, was carried by Polybius,139 the son of the Achaean general, and he was surrounded by the most prominent of the Achaeans. The soldiers followed in full armour, riding elaborately decorated horses and giving an impression neither of being downcast by their great grief nor of exultation at their victory.

  People poured out to meet them from the cities and villages on the way, and it was as if they were congratulating the man himself on his return from campaign, touching the urn and escorting it back to Megalopolis. Then the elder men joined the gathering along with the women and children, and now the sound of mourning spread among the army until they reached the city. They were thinking with sadness of how much they would miss him; his death seemed to bring with it the end of the city’s supremacy among the Achaeans. The urn was buried with all the honours one would expect; the Messenian prisoners were stoned to death next to the tomb.

  There were many statues erected to Philopoemen, and many honours voted by the cities.140 Later, at the time when Greece was suffering the troubles which culminated in the destruction of Corinth,141 a certain Roman tried to remove them all: Philopoemen was Rome’s bitter enemy, he needed to be driven out – it was all just as if he were still alive. Speeches were made, Polybius opposed the man’s slanderous charges142 and neither Mummius nor the commissioners143 would allow the destruction of the honours of so famous a man, even though he had mounted considerable opposition to Titus and Manius. They were able to distinguish between human excellence and the needs of the time, and between honour and advantage. This was the correct and proper view. Rewards and gratitude are owed to benefactors from those whom they benefit, but good men deserve honour from all those like themselves. That is the story of Philopoemen.

  TITUS FLAMININUS

  * * *

  Introduction to Titus Flamininus

  The Freedom of the Greeks

  It was unlikely in the extreme that Plutarch would have overlooked Flamininus, who vanquished Philip V and liberated Greece from Macedonian domination. Indeed, although a Roman, Flamininus was an honoured hero in Greece, a supreme benefactor – and Plutarch believed strongly in gratitude. But it could also not go unobserved that Flamininus’ proclamation of the freedom of the Greeks in Corinth in 196 BC did not in fact usher in a new age of Greek independence. Instead, and not very gradually, Macedonian suzerainty was replaced by Roman authority. Admittedly, in Plutarch’s view, this transition was part of a divine plan,1 but its end was undeniable:

  People did not only receive Roman commanders into their towns, they even sent and called for them and put themselves in their hands; and it was not merely peoples and cities which did this, but even kings who were wronged by other kings and fled to the Romans’ arms. The result was that in a short time, perhaps with God’s assistance, everything was within their power.

  (ch. 12)

  In pairing Philopoemen, ‘the last of the Greeks’, with the contemporary Roman who was their liberator, Plutarch rendered unmistakable the disturbing incompatibility of Greek freedom with the rise of Rome, and thus emphasized for his readers the unavoidable challenge, for the Greeks, of finding the right response to this uncomfortable circumstance. The problem pervades each Life.2 At the same time, however, Plutarch will not allow this weighty and, even in his own day, disquieting issue – elsewhere Plutarch underscores the potentially uneasy situation of elite Greeks who are nonetheless subordinate to Roman power3 – to blunt his admiration for the individual excellence of his hero, whose meteoric rise was, Plutarch makes the point clearly, a stroke of luck for the Romans:

  if the Greeks could not be detached from Philip, the war would certainly not be a question of a single battle. At the time Greece had little experience of Rome, and this was their first practical exposure. What would have happened if the commander had not been naturally a fine man, one who turned more readily to words than to war, one who carried conviction as he met people, one who was unaggressive to those he met, one who strained for justice? Greece would certainly not have been so ready to accept the rule of foreigners instead of those they knew.

  (ch. 2)

  Titus Quinctius Flamininus

  Almost no aspect of Flamininus’ career is uncontroversial, which is perhaps not surprising for a man so deeply involved in the politics and diplomacy of his time. He was born in 229 or 228 BC, to an ancient patrician family but one which had in recent generations missed out on holding the consulship. In 208 BC he served in the Second Punic War as a tribune of the soldiers under Marcellus, during the year in which the consul fell to Hannibal, and, soon afterwards, but still at an unknown date, was elected quaestor.4 In 205 BC he was part of the Roman garrison at Tarentum, serving, possibly as quaestor, under Quintus Claudius, the praetor of 208 BC.5 Upon Claudius’ death, Flamininus was put in command and granted the military authority of a praetor, a remarkable appointment for a man so young, and a clear token of the esteem in which he was already held by the senate. He remained in this post for two or three years, and it is usually accepted that it was during this period, while negotiating Roman military governance in a Greek city, that Flamininus developed the easy facility with Greek culture and politics that would prove the hallmark of his career.

  Flamininus performed so well at Tarentum that he was thereafter awarded two plum assignments: first, in 201 BC, he was placed on a commission whose duty was to provide land for veterans of the Second Punic War, and, in the next year, he joined the board resp
onsible for establishing a Roman colony at Venusia. However mundane such posts may sound, they were in fact important positions, and each presented its holder with a chance to acquire extensive gratitude and influence among likely voters. It was an opportunity Flamininus did not bungle. He quickly amassed a strong political following and, as a consequence, put himself forward for the consulship of 198 BC, an unconventional decision inasmuch as he was too young even to stand for the office of praetor, the magistracy that normally preceded the consulship.6 But it is clear that Flamininus enjoyed considerable establishment support: when his candidature was challenged by two tribunes, the senate instructed them to leave the matter to the Roman people. Flamininus was then duly elected. His was a breathtakingly swift rise.

  Nor did it take Flamininus long to win glory on the battlefield. After Carthage had been defeated, in 201 BC, the senate turned its attention to Philip V of Macedon, whom Rome continued to regard as an enemy even after the conclusion of the First Macedonian War (214–205 BC).7 In 200 BC, hostilities were resumed, with the Aetolian League again serving as a Roman ally.8 But the early years of this war favoured Philip, and, by the time of Flamininus’ election, the Roman war effort had largely stalled. That soon changed.

  Flamininus brought renewed vigour and diplomatic acumen. In negotiations with Philip, the consul demanded his total evacuation from Greece, designating Rome a champion of Greek freedom, itself a posture long familiar in Hellenistic diplomacy.9 Naturally Philip refused, but he was soon defeated by Flamininus at the battle of Aoüs Gorge (chs. 3–5), a success that was instrumental in rallying most of Greece to the Roman side. Having gained this advantage, Flamininus went on, in 197 BC, to win a decisive victory at the battle of Cynoscephalae (ch. 8). After his defeat, Philip’s kingdom was restricted mostly to Macedon, an indemnity was imposed and he was compelled to become an ally of Rome. The Romans then turned to the business of restoring the affairs of all the Greek communities that had been captured during the course of the war (ch. 12), a settlement in which the Aetolians found Flamininus ungenerous (chs. 9–10).10 Their disaffection would soon lead to another war for Greek freedom.

  In the rest of Greece, however, Flamininus was idolized when, in 196 BC, he proclaimed the freedom of the Greeks, in both Europe and Asia Minor (chs. 10–11). Now by this decree the Romans meant to convey that Greek cities would no longer be subject to Hellenistic kings, not that thereafter they would be immune from receiving Roman advice they were expected to heed. Still, this policy represented a significant attempt on the part of Rome to secure Greek loyalty, to win their ‘hearts and minds’. For their part, the Greeks filled their country with tokens of honour, including divine honours, for Flamininus (chs. 12 and 16–17). His final project was a war against Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta (ch. 13), the purpose of which, from the Romans’ perspective, was to dislodge him from Argos, although Rome’s Achaean allies had different aims in mind (Philopoemen 15). In 194 BC, Flamininus – and all the Romans in Greece – returned to Italy, where he celebrated an unprecedented three-day triumph (chs. 13–14). By this time his political clout in Rome was so formidable that he easily propelled his brother Lucius into the consulship of 192 BC, despite the opposition of Scipio Africanus, who was supporting rival candidates (Livy 35.10).

  The Romans’ guarantee of Greek freedom, including the freedom of Greek cities in Asia Minor, was intended at least in part to put diplomatic pressure on Antiochus the Great, the king of the Seleucid empire and a rival to Rome for influence in the Greek east.11 At the same time, Antiochus was being cultivated by the dissatisfied Aetolians, who ultimately persuaded the king to enter Greece to defend its freedom against what was portrayed to him by the Aetolians as Roman domination (ch. 15). The two liberating powers soon came to blows. Flamininus played an important role in the diplomatic negotiations that preceded the outbreak of this war, first in 193 BC when he met with Antiochus’ ambassadors in Rome (Livy 34.57–9), and thereafter in Greece, where he tried to keep the Aetolians from pursuing their aggressive line and where his influence was instrumental in preserving the loyalty of Rome’s remaining allies (ch. 15).12 When the Syrian War broke out in 191 BC, Flamininus was still in Greece, endeavouring to preserve the spirit of his original settlement, not least through his continuing efforts to resolve hostilities between Rome and the Aetolian League (chs. 15–17). He returned to Rome in 190 BC and in the following year was elected censor, at an age when other men were only just preparing to stand for the consulship.

  The year 183 BC marked Flamininus’ last incursion into Greek affairs, when, as part of a commission of former consuls, he tried in vain to persuade the Achaean League to moderate its treatment of Sparta (Philopoemen 17).13 This embassy then went on to Bithynia, where it resolved hostilities between its king, Prusias I, and Eumenes II, the king of Pergamum. While there, however, Flamininus insisted on the extradition of Hannibal, who had become a refugee in the court of Prusias, in reaction to which Hannibal committed suicide (chs. 20–21). Back in Rome, Flamininus initiated communications with Demetrius, the pro-Roman son of Philip V, perhaps as his supporter in palace intrigue, but the affair remains obscure, and in any case Demetrius was executed in 180 BC.14 Flamininus then vanishes from our sources, an absence which is extraordinary in view of his distinguished standing and has yet to be satisfactorily explained. His death is recorded in Livy (41.28.11) by way of an account of the splendid gladiatorial games given in his honour by his son.

  Plutarch’s Titus Flamininus

  Plutarch’s Flamininus is explicit, perhaps to the extent of becoming unsubtle, in drawing the character of its subject. We are told immediately that, although easily angered, he was quick to relent, and that he was motivated by a keen desire to act as a benefactor to others (ch. 1). A delicate balance for anyone in a position of power, but Flamininus, Plutarch hastens to add in the following chapter, was a man brimming with charm and who ‘strained for justice’. It is not until chapter 5, after Flamininus has defeated Philip in the battle of Aoüs Gorge, that Plutarch discloses the Greeks’ reaction to the Roman consul:

  They had heard from the Macedonians that a man was approaching in command of a barbarian army, conquering and enslaving everything in arms; then they met a person who was young in years, welcoming in appearance, speaking Greek like a native and a lover of true honour. They were wholly enchanted, and they went off and filled the cities with goodwill for him: they had, they thought, their champion of freedom.

  (ch. 5)

  Flamininus, then, was one of them, almost, and was fired by his passion for ‘true honour’.

  Just as Philopoemen was affected by contentiousness (philoneikia), so in this Life Flamininus is driven by ambition, literally by his ‘love of honour’ (philotimia). This trait, for Plutarch, was an ambiguous and dangerous one.15 A desire for renown was a healthy urge, if rightly pursued, but it was all too easy for philotimia to degrade into philoneikia or worse, and the career of Coriolanus, in this volume, exhibits the grave peril of ambition in a man of imperfect character.16 If philotimia is to thrive and prove beneficial in a man’s life, it must, according to Plutarch, be tempered by a suitably philosophical education,17 and for a Roman of Flamininus’ time this kind of instruction was unavailable. Nor does Plutarch suggest that Flamininus ever received such an education, however good his Greek was. Thus, for a reader of Plutarch, Flamininus’ philotimia is something of a red flag, and it activates apprehension.

  But, as the Life unfolds, Flamininus wins honour after honour, in Rome and especially in Greece, when, as the agent of their liberation, he is honoured by the Greeks as a god. In this way, Plutarch presents his reader with a Flamininus who, by virtue of his natural gifts, seems to escape the hazard of his philotimia. Or did he? The final act in Flamininus’ Life is his hounding to death of Hannibal (ch. 20), which, Plutarch states, was motivated by ambition and resulted in the first stain on Flamininus’ reputation:

  Titus’ natural ambition brought him credit, as long as he had sufficient material
to exercise it in the wars which I have described. He even served a further term as tribune after his consulship, though no one was pressing him to do so. But he grew older, his commands were over and the rest of his life offered no sphere of action; and at this stage it became clearer that he could not restrain his lust for glory and the youthfulness of his emotions. This seems to be the key to the vigour with which he hounded Hannibal, something which made him very unpopular.

  In depicting Hannibal’s death, Plutarch reprises Philopoemen’s in a drama that casts Flamininus in the role of Deinocrates, a highly unflattering portrayal.18 And so, it would seem, in the end Flamininus’ ambition overwhelmed his finer qualities, not least his commitment to justice (emphasized in chs. 1–2) and his natural inclination towards mercy (ch. 1). Flamininus’ failure is put into sharper relief when Plutarch introduces an internal comparison with Scipio Africanus: he treated Hannibal with ‘clemency and magnanimity’ (ch. 21).

  Yet Plutarch does not end there. He goes on to put the case for those who approved of Flamininus’ deed, and the argument is a strong one. It is not, however, an entirely unproblematic one in a pairing concerned with the nature of Roman power. For this argument focuses on the reality of Roman imperialism and its relevance for Flamininus’ persecution of Hannibal, whose abiding menace is demonstrated by adducing instances from the Romans’ later history in which their eastern empire was threatened. Here Plutarch refers to the revolt of Aristonicus (133–129 BC) and the wars with Mithridates (88–85, 83–81 and 73–63 BC), violent episodes in Rome’s conquest of Asia Minor. What is disturbing about this defence is that, on its own terms, Flamininus ceases to be the liberator of anything, but instead becomes the grim instrument of Roman power. ‘That is why’, Plutarch concludes, ‘some people say that Titus was not acting on his own initiative, but was sent with Lucius Scipio on an embassy whose sole purpose was Hannibal’s death’ (ch. 21). This, too, is a dark note, even if it is no longer a matter of Flamininus’ personal ambition.