The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  It is not hackneyed or just like the rest;

  It has no filthy lines one must not quote,

  No perjured pander, and no wicked wench.

  It is true; but the plot is so intricate, so dependent upon improbable coincidences and revelations, that a mind allergic to dead history may be forgiven for passing it by. What made these comedies succeed was not their ancient plots but their wealth of humorous incident, their rollicking puns as bad as Shakespeare’s, their boisterous indecency, their gallery of precipitate women, and their occasional sentiment; in every play the audience could rely upon finding a love affair, a seduction, a handsome and virtuous hero, and a slave with more brains than all the rest of the characters put together. Here, almost at its outset, Roman literature touches the common man, and reaches, through Greek disguises, to the realities of daily life as Latin poetry would never do again.

  Probably in the year of Plautus’ death (184), Publius Terentius Afer was born at Carthage of Phoenician, perhaps also of African, blood. We know nothing more of him until he appears as the slave of Terentius Lucanus in Rome. This senator recognized the shy lad’s talent, gave him an education, and freed him; the youth in gratitude took his master’s name. We get a pleasant note of Roman manners when we hear how Terence, “poor and meanly clad,” came to the house of Caecilius Statius—whose comedies, now lost, were then dominating the Roman stage—and read him the first scene of the Andria. Caecilius was so charmed that he invited the poet to dinner and listened admiringly to the rest.37 Terence soon won a hearing from Aemilianus and Laelius, who sought to form his style in the polished Latin so dear to their hearts. Hence gossip said that Laelius was writing Terence’s plays—a report which the author, with tact and prudence, neither confirmed nor denied.38 Moved perhaps by the respectful Hellenism of the Scipionic circle, Terence adhered faithfully to his Greek originals, gave his plays Greek titles, avoided allusions to Roman life, and called himself merely a translator39—a modest understatement of his work.

  We do not know the fate of the play that Caecilius liked so well. The Hecyra, which Terence wrote next, failed because its audience slipped away to watch a bear fight. Fortune smiled in 162 when he produced his most famous play—the Heauton Timoroumenos, or “Self-Tormentor.” It told the story of a father who had forbidden his son to marry the girl of his choice; the son married her nevertheless; the father disowned and banished him, and then, in self-punishing remorse, refused” to touch his wealth, but lived in hard labor and poverty. A neighbor proposes to mediate; the father asks why he takes so kindly an interest in the troubles of others; and the neighbor replies in a world-renowned line which all the audience applauded:

  Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto—

  “I am a man; I consider nothing human alien to me.” In the following year The Eunuch was so well received that it was performed twice in the same day (then a rare event), and earned Terence 8000 sesterces ($1200) between morning and night.40 A few months later appeared the Phormio, named from the witty servant who saved his master from paternal ire, and became the model for Beaumarchais’ lusty Figaro. In 160 Terence’s last play, the Adelphi, or “Brothers,” was performed at the funeral games of Aemilius Paulus. Soon afterward the playwright sailed for Greece. On the way back he died of illness in Arcadia, in his twenty-fifth year.

  His later plays had suffered in popularity because Hellenism had won in him too full a victory. He lacked the vivacity and abounding humor of Plautus; he never thought to deal with Roman life. There were no lusty villains in his comedies, no reckless strumpets; all his feminine characters were handled with tenderness, and even his prostitutes hovered on the brink of virtue. There were fine pithy lines and memorable phrases: hinc Mae lacrimae (“hence those tears”), fortes fortuna adiuvat (“fortune favors the brave”), quot homines tot sententiae (“as many opinions as men”), and a hundred more; but they required for their appreciation a philosophical intelligence or literary sensitivity which the African slave found wanting in the Roman plebs. It did not care for his comedies that were half tragedies, his well-built but slowly moving plots, his subtle studies of strange characters, his quiet dialogue and too even style, and the almost insulting purity of his language; it was as if the audience felt that a breach, never to be healed, had been opened between the people and the literature of Rome. Cicero, too near to Catullus to see him, and too prudent to relish Lucretius, thought Terence the finest poet of the Republic. Caesar estimated him more justly when he praised the “lover of pure speech,” but deplored the lack of vis comica—the power of laughter—in Terence, and called him dimidiatus Menander—“half a Menander.” One thing, nevertheless, Terence had achieved: this Semitic alien, inspired by Laelius and Greece, had molded the Latin language at last into a literary instrument that would in the next century make possible the prose of Cicero, and Virgil’s poetry.

  VI. CATO AND THE CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION

  This Greek invasion, in literature, philosophy, religion, science, and art, this revolution in manners, morals, and blood, filled old-fashioned Romans with disgust and dread. Out on a Sabine farm a retired senator, Valerius Flaccus, fretted over the decay of the Roman character, the corruption of politics, the replacement of the mos maiorum with Greek ideas and ways. He was too old to fight the tide himself. But on a near-by homestead, just outside Reate, was a young plebeian peasant who showed all the old Roman qualities, loved the soil, worked hard, saved carefully, lived with conservative simplicity, and yet talked as brilliantly as a radical. He bore the names Marcus Porcius Cato: Porcius because his family had for generations raised pigs; Cato because they had been shrewd. Flaccus encouraged him to study law; Cato did, and won his neighbors’ cases in the local courts. Flaccus advised him to go to Rome; Cato went, and by the age of thirty obtained the quaestorship (204). By 199 he was aedile, by 198 praetor, by 195 consul; in 191 tribune, in 184 censor. Meanwhile he served twenty-six years in the army as a fearless soldier and an able and ruthless general. He considered discipline the mother of character and freedom; he despised a soldier “who plied his hands in marching and his feet in fighting, and whose snore was louder than his battle cry”; but he won the respect of his troops by marching beside them on foot, giving each of them a pound of silver from the spoils, and keeping nothing for himself.41

  In the intervals of peace he denounced rhetors and rhetoric, and became the most powerful orator of his time. The Romans listened in reluctant fascination, for no one had ever spoken to them with such obvious honesty and stinging wit; the lash of his tongue might fall upon any man present, but it was pleasant to see it descend upon one’s neighbor. Cato fought corruption recklessly, and seldom let the sun set without having made new enemies. Few loved him, for his scar-covered face and wild red hair disconcerted them, his big teeth threatened them, his asceticism shamed them, his industry left them lagging, his green eyes looked through their words into their selfishness. Forty-four times his patrician enemies tried to destroy him by public indictments; forty-four times he was saved by the votes of farmers who, like him, resented venality and luxury.42 When their votes made him censor, all Rome shuddered. He carried out the threats with which he had won the campaign; laid heavy taxes upon luxuries, fined a senator for extravagance, and excluded from the Senate six members in whose record he found malfeasance. He expelled Manilius for kissing his wife in public; as for himself, he said, he never embraced his wife except when it thundered—though he was glad when it thundered. He completed the drainage system of the city, cut the pipes that had clandestinely tapped water from the public aqueducts or conduits, compelled owners to demolish the illegal projections of their buildings upon or over the public right of way, forced down the price paid by the state for public works, and frightened the tax collectors into remitting a larger share of their receipts to the Treasury.43 After five years of heroic opposition to the nature of man, he retired from office, made successful investments, manned his now vast farm with slaves, lent money at usurious rates, bought
slaves cheap and—after training them in some skill—sold them dear, and became so rich that he could afford to write books—an occupation he despised.

  Cato was the first great writer of Latin prose. He began by publishing his own speeches. Then he issued a manual of oratory, demanded a rugged Roman style instead of the Isocratean smoothness of the rhetors, and set a theme for Quintilian by defining the orator as vir bonus dicendi peritus44—“a good man skilled in speaking” (but was there ever union so rare?). He put his farming experiences to use by composing a treatise De agri cultura—the only work of Cato, and the oldest literary Latin, that time has saved. It is written in a simple and vigorous style, pithily compact; Cato wastes no words, and seldom condescends to a conjunction. He gives detailed advice on buying and selling slaves (old ones should be sold before they become a loss), on renting land to share-croppers, on viticulture and aboriculture, on domestic management and industries, on making cement and cooking dainties, on curing constipation and diarrhea, on healing snakebite with the dung of swine, and offering sacrifice to the gods. Asking himself what is the wisest use of agricultural land, he answers, “Profitable cattle raising.” The next best? “Moderately profitable cattle raising.” The third best? “Very unprofitable cattle raising.” The fourth? “To plow the land.” This was the argument that gave the latifundia to Italy.

  The most important of his books was probably the lost Origines, a brave attempt to deal with the antiquities, ethnology, institutions, and history of Italy from the beginnings to the very year of Cato’s death. Nearly all that we know of it is that, to spite the aristocracy through its touted ancestors, the author named no generals in it, but lauded by name an elephant that had fought well against Pyrrhus.45 Cato designed this work, and his essays on oratory, agriculture, sanitation, military science, and law, to form an encyclopedia for the education of his son. By writing in Latin he hoped to displace the Greek textbooks that were in his judgment warping the minds of Roman youth. Though he himself studied Greek, he seems to have been sincere in his conviction that an education in Greek literature and philosophy would so rapidly dissolve the religious beliefs of young Romans that their moral life would be left defenseless against the instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex. His condemnation, like Nietzsche’s, took in Socrates; that prattling old midwife, Cato thought, had been rightly poisoned for undermining the morals and laws of Athens.46 Even Greek physicians irked him; he preferred the old household remedies, and distrusted the ever-ready surgeons.

  The Greeks [he wrote to his son] are an intractable and iniquitous race. You may take my word for it that when this people bestows its literature upon Rome it will ruin everything. . . . And all the sooner if it sends us its physicians. They have conspired among themselves to murder all “barbarians.” ... I forbid you to have anything to do with physicians.47

  Having these ideas, he was a natural antagonist of the Scipionic circle, which thought the spread of Greek literature in Rome a necessary ferment in lifting Latin letters and the Roman mind to a fuller growth. Cato lent his aid to the prosecution of Africanus and his brother; the laws against embezzlement should be no respecters of persons. Toward foreign states, with one exception, he advocated a policy of justice and nonintervention. Despising Greeks, he respected Greece; and when the imperialistic plunderers in the Senate were for waging war upon rich Rhodes, he madea decisive speech in favor of conciliation. The exception, as all the world knows, was Carthage. Sent there on an official mission in 175, he had been shocked by the rapid recovery of the city from the effects of the Hannibalic war, the fruitful orchards and vineyards, the wealth that poured in from revived commerce, the arms that mounted in the arsenals. On his return he held up before the Senate a bundle of fresh figs that he had plucked in Carthage three days before, as an ominous symbol of her prosperity and her nearness to Rome; and he predicted that if Carthage were left unchecked, she would soon be rich and strong enough to renew the struggle for the mastery of the Mediterranean. From that day, with characteristic pertinacity, he ended all his speeches in the Senate, on whatever subject, with his dour conviction: Ceterum censeo delendam esse Carthaginem—“Besides, I think that Carthage must be destroyed.” The imperialists in the Senate agreed with him, not so much because they coveted Carthage’s trade, as because they saw in the well-irrigated fields of north Africa a new investment for their money, new latifundia to be tilled by new slaves. They awaited eagerly a pretext for the Third Punic War.

  VII. CARTHAGO DELETA

  Their cue came from the most extraordinary ruler of his time. Masinissa, King of Numidia, lived ninety years (238-148), begot a son at eighty-six,48 and by a vigorous regimen kept his health and strength almost to the end. He organized his nomad people into a settled agricultural society and a disciplined state, ruled them ably for sixty years, adorned Cirta, his capital, with lordly architecture, and left as his tomb the great pyramid that still stands near the town of Constantine, in Tunisia. Having won the friendship of Rome, and knowing the political weakness of Carthage, he repeatedly raided and appropriated Carthaginian terrain, took Great Leptis and other cities, and finally controlled all land approaches to the harassed metropolis. Bound by treaty to make no war without Rome’s consent, Carthage sent ambassadors to the Senate to protest against Masinissa’s encroachments. The Senate reminded them that all Phoenicians were interlopers in Africa and had no rights there which any well-armed nation was obliged to respect. When Carthage paid the last of her fifty annual indemnities of 200 talents to Rome, she felt herself released from the treaty signed after Zama. In 151 she declared war against Numidia, and a year later Rome declared war against her.

  The latter declaration, and the news that the Roman fleet had already sailed for Africa, reached Carthage at the same time. The ancient city, however rich in population and trade, was quite unprepared for a major war. She had a small army, a smaller navy, no mercenaries, no allies. Rome controlled the sea. Utica therefore declared for Rome, and Masinissa blocked all egress from Carthage to the hinterland. An embassy hastened to Rome with authority to meet all demands. The Senate promised that if Carthage would turn over to the Roman consuls in Sicily 300 children of the noblest families as hostages, and would obey whatever orders the consuls would give, the freedom and territorial integrity of Carthage would be preserved. Secretly the Senate bade the consuls carry out the instructions that they had already received. The Carthaginians gave up their children with forebodings and laments; the relatives crowded the shores in a despondent farewell; at the last moment the mothers tried by force to prevent the ships from sailing; and some swam out to sea to catch a last glimpse of their children. The consuls sent the hostages to Rome, crossed to Utica with army and fleet, summoned the Carthaginian ambassadors, and required of Carthage the surrender of her remaining ships, a great quantity of grain, and all her engines and weapons of war. When these conditions had been fulfilled, the consuls further demanded that the population of Carthage should retire to ten miles from the city, which was then to be burned to the ground. The ambassadors argued in vain that the destruction of a city which had surrendered hostages and its arms without striking a blow was a treacherous atrocity unknown to history. They offered their own lives as a vicarious atonement; they flung themselves upon the ground and beat the earth with their heads. The consuls replied that the terms were those of the Senate and could not be changed.

  When the people of Carthage heard what was demanded of them they lost their sanity. Parents mad with grief tore limb from limb the leaders who had advised surrendering the child hostages; others killed those who had counseled the surrender of arms; some dragged the returning ambassadors through the streets and stoned them; some killed whatever Italians could be found in the city; some stood in the empty arsenals and wept. The Carthaginian Senate declared war against Rome and called all adults—men and women, slave or free—to form a new army, and to forge anew the weapons of defense. Fury gave them resolution. Public buildings were demolished to provide metal a
nd timber; the statues of cherished gods were melted down to make swords, and the hair of the women was shorn to make ropes. In two months the beleaguered city produced 8000 shields, 18,000 swords, 30,000 spears, 60,000 catapult missiles, and built in its inner harbor a fleet of 120 ships.49

  Three years the city stood siege by land and sea. Again and again the consuls led their armies against the walls, but always they were repulsed; only Scipio Aemilianus, one of the military tribunes, proved resourceful and brave. Late in 147 the Roman Senate and Assembly made him consul and commander, and all men approved. Soon afterward Laelius succeeded in scaling the walls. The Carthaginians, though weakened and decimated by starvation, fought for their city street by street, through six days of slaughter without quarter. Harassed by snipers, Scipio ordered all captured streets to be fired and leveled to the ground. Hundreds of concealed Carthaginians perished in the conflagration. At last the population, reduced from 500,000 to 55,000, surrendered. Hasdrubal, their general, pleaded for his life, which Scipio granted, but his wife, denouncing his cowardice, plunged with her sons into the flames. The survivors were sold as slaves, and the city was turned over to the legions for pillage. Reluctant to raze it, Scipio sent to Rome for final instructions; the Senate replied that not only Carthage, but all such of her dependencies as had stood by her were to be completely destroyed, that the soil should be plowed and sown with salt, and a formal curse laid upon any man who should attempt to build upon the site. For seventeen days the city burned.

  There was no treaty of peace, for the Carthaginian state no longer existed. Utica and other African cities that had helped Rome were left free under a protectorate; the remainder of Carthage’s territory became the province of “Africa.” Roman capitalists came in to divide the land into latifundia, and Roman merchants fell heir to Carthaginian trade. Imperialism became now the frank and conscious motive of Roman politics. Syracuse was absorbed into the province of Sicily, southern Gaul was subdued as a necessary land route to completely subjected Spain, and the Hellenistic monarchies of Egypt and Syria were quietly induced—like Antiochus IV by Popilius—to submit to the wishes of Rome. From the moral standpoint, which is always a window dressing in international politics, the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 must rank among the most brutal conquests in history; from the standpoint of empire—of security and wealth—it laid simultaneously the two cornerstones of Rome’s commercial and naval supremacy. From that moment the political history of the Mediterranean flowed through Rome.