Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79)

by Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  [7.1] After he had secured these men as his assistants and participants with him in the struggle, and had acquainted each one with the part he was to play, and furthermore had set at liberty without ransom all the prisoners he was bringing along, in order to gain their goodwill also, he sailed with his ships decked out into the harbours of Cumae. When the soldiers disembarked, they were met by their fathers and mothers and all the rest of their kinsmen, their children and their wedded wives, who embraced them with tears and kisses and called each of them by the most endearing terms. [2] And all the other citizens, receiving the general with joy and applause, conducted him to his house. But the chief men of the city, particularly those who had given him the command and concerted the other measures for his destruction, were vexed at these manifestations and felt sinister apprehensions regarding the future. [3] Aristodemus allowed a few days to pass, during which he performed his vows to the gods and waited for the merchantmen that were late in arriving, and then, when the proper time came, he said he desired to give the senate an account of the circumstances of the battle and to show them the spoils taken in the war. Then, the authorities having assembled in great numbers, he came forward and made a speech, in which he related everything that had happened in the battle; and while he was speaking, the accomplices in the plot with whom he had arranged matters rushed into the senate-house in a body with swords under their garments and killed all the members of the aristocracy. [4] Thereupon there ensued a flight of those who were in the forum and a rush of some to their houses and of others away from the city, except of such as were privy to the conspiracy; the latter in mean time captured the citadel, the dockyards, and the strong places of the city. The following night he released from the prisons all who were under sentence of death, of whom there were many, arming them together with his friends, among whom were the Tyrrhenian prisoners, he formed out of these a bodyguard for himself. [5] When it was day, he assembled the people and after inveighing at length against the citizens who had been put to death by his orders, he said that those men, having often sought his life, had been justly punished by him, but that, as for the rest of the citizens, he had come to give them liberty, equal rights of speech, and many other advantages.

  [8.1] When he had said this and thereby filled all the common people with wonderful hopes, he established two institutions which are the worst of all human institutions and the prologues to every tyranny — a redistribution of the land and an abolition of debts. He promised that he would take upon himself the care of both these matters if he were appointed general with absolute power till the public tranquillity should be secured and they had established a democratic constitution. [2] When the common people and the unprincipled rabble gladly accepted the proposal to pillage the goods of other men, Aristodemus conferred upon himself the supreme command, and proposed another measure by which he deceived them and deprived them all of their liberty. For pretending to suspect that the rich would raise disturbances and insurrections against the common people on account of the redistribution of the land and the abolition of debts, he said the only means he could think of to prevent a civil war and the slaughter of citizens and to guard against these miseries before they happened, was for all of them to bring the arms out of their houses and to consecrate them to the gods, in order that they might make use of them against foreign enemies who should attack them, whenever the necessity should arise, and not against one another, and that in the mean time they would be suitably placed in the keeping of the gods. [3] When they agreed to this also, he disarmed all the Cumaeans that very day, and during the following days he searched their houses, where he put to death many worthy citizens, alleging that they had not produced all their arms for the gods. After this he strengthened his tyranny by three sorts of guards. The first consisted of the filthiest and the most unprincipled of the citizens, by whose aid he had overthrown the aristocracy; the second, of the most impious knaves, whom he himself had freed for having killed their masters; and the third, a mercenary force, consisting of the most average barbarians, who amounted to no fewer than two thousand and were far better soldiers than any of the rest. [4] He destroyed the statues of those he had put to death in all places both sacred and profane and set up his own in their stead; and seizing their houses and lands and the rest of their fortunes, he reserved for himself the gold and silver and everything else that was worthy of a tyrant, and divided the remainder among those who had aided him in gaining his power. But the most numerous and the largest gifts he made to the slaves who had killed their masters. Thereupon these insisted also on marrying the wives and daughters of their late masters.

  [9.1] At first he paid no attention to the male children of those who had been put to death, but afterwards, either at the direction of some oracle or influenced also by the reflection he any naturally make, that in them no small danger was being secretly reared up against him, he resolved to destroy them all in one day. [2] But at the earnest entreaties of all the men with whom the children’s mothers were living and the children themselves were being brought up, since he wished to grant them this favour also, he saved them from death, contrary to his intention. Taking precautions, however, against them, lest they should combine together and conspire against his tyranny, he ordered them all to depart from the city and to live in the country dispersed here and there, receiving instruction in no profession or branch of learning becoming to the children of freemen, but tending flocks and performing the other labours of the husbandmen; and he threatened with death anyone of them who should be found in the city. [3] These children, accordingly, forsaking the houses of their fathers, were brought up in the country like slaves, serving the murderers of their fathers. And to the end that no noble or manly spirit might spring up in any of the rest of the citizens, he resolved to make effeminate by means of their upbringing all the youths who were being reared in the city, and with that view he suppressed the gymnasiums and the practice of arms and changed the manner of life previously followed by the children. [4] For he ordered the boys to wear their hair long like the girls, to adorn it with flowers, to keep it curled and to bind up the tresses with hair-nets, to wear embroidered robes that reached down to their feet, and, over these, thin and soft mantles, and to pass their lives in the shade. And when they went to the schools kept by dancing-masters, flute-players and others who, like these, pay court to the Muses, their governesses attended them, taking along parasols and fans; and these women bathed them, carrying into the baths combs, alabaster pots filled with perfumes, and looking-glasses. [5] By such training he continued to enervate the youth till they had completed their twentieth year, and from that time permitted them to be considered as men. Having by these and many other methods abused and insulted the Cumaeans without refraining from any kind of lust or cruelty, when he thought himself secure in the possession of the tyranny, being now grown old, he was punished to the satisfaction of both gods and men and extirpated with all his family.

  [10.1] Those who rose against him and freed their country from his tyranny were the sons of the citizens he had murdered, all of whom he had at first resolved to put to death in one day, but being prevailed upon by the entreaties of his bodyguards, to whom he had given their mothers, had refrained, as I said, [2] and ordered them to live in the country. A few years later, as he was making a progress through the villages, he saw a large number of these youths, who made a brave appearance; and fearing they might conspire together and rise against him, he purposed to forestall them by putting them all to death before any one should be aware of his intention. Assembling his friends, accordingly, he considered with them how the youths might most easily and speedily be put to death in secret. [3] The youths, being apprised of this, either by the information of some person who was acquainted with his purpose, or suspecting it themselves by reasoning from probabilities, fled to the mountains, taking with them the iron implements they used in husbandry. They were speedily joined by the Cumaean exiles who resided in Capua, most distinguished of whom and possessi
ng the largest number of friends among the Campanians were the sons of Hippomedon, who had been commander of the horse in the war against the Tyrrhenians. These were not only well armed themselves, but also brought with them arms for the youths as well as a goodly band of Campanian mercenaries and of their own friends which they had raised. [4] When they had all united, they made descents after the manner of brigands and plundered the lands of their enemies, lured the slaves away from their masters, released the men confined in prisons and armed them, and whatever they could not carry or drive off they either burnt or killed. [5] While the tyrant was at a loss to know in what manner he ought to make war upon them, because they neither made their attempts openly nor stayed long in the same places, but timed their raids either from the fall of night to the break of day or from daybreak to nightfall, and after he had often sent out the soldiers to the relief of the country in vain, one of the fugitives, sent by the rest in the guise of a deserter, came to him, his body torn with whips, and after suing for impunity, promised the tyrant to conduct any troops he should think fit to send with him to the place where the fugitives proposed to encamp the following night. [6] The tyrant, being induced to trust this man, who asked nothing and offered his own person as a hostage, sent his most trusted commanders at the head of a large number of horse and the band of mercenaries with orders to bring to him in chains all the fugitives if they could, otherwise as many of them as possible. The pretended deserter then led the army during the whole night through untrodden paths and lonely woods, where they suffered greatly, till they came to the regions that were most remote from the city.

  [11.1] In the meantime the rebels and fugitives, who lay in ambush on the mountain which lies near Lake Avernus and not far from Cumae, when they learned from the signals made by their scouts that the tyrant’s army had marched out of the city, sent thither about sixty of the most resolute of their number, clad in goatskins and carrying faggots of brushwood. [2] These men contrived to steal into the city by various gates about the time for lighting the lamps, being taken for labourers and thus escaping detection. Once inside the walls, they drew out the swords they had concealed in the faggots and all met in one place. And proceeding thence in a body to the gate that led to Lake Avernus, they killed the guards while they were asleep, and, all their own force, having by this time arrived near the walls, they opened the gates and received them into the city. All this they did without being discovered. [3] For that night there happened to be a public festival; hence the whole population of the city was occupied in drinking and other pleasures. This afforded the fugitives an opportunity of marching through all the streets that led to the tyrant’s palace without meeting any opposition; and even at the palace doors they did not find any considerable number of guards on the alert, but here also some were already asleep and others drunk, and these they killed without any difficulty. Then, rushing into the palace in a body, they found all the rest no longer masters of either their bodies or their wits because of wine, and they cut their throats as if they were so many sheep. And having seized Aristodemus himself with his children and the rest of his relations, they tore their bodies with whips and tortures until late in the night, and after inflicting on them almost every kind of punishment they put them to death. [4] Having wiped out the whole family of the tyrant, so as to leave neither children, wives, nor anyone related to them, and having spent the whole night in hunting down all the abetters of the tyranny, as soon as it was day, they proceeded to the forum. Then, calling the people together, they laid down their arms and restored the traditional government.

  [12.1] It was before this Aristodemus, then, when he had already reigned as tyrant of Cumae close to fourteen years, that the Roman exiles with Tarquinius presented themselves, asking him to decide their cause against the country. The Roman ambassadors opposed this for some time, alleging that they had not come to enter into a contest of this sort and had no authority to plead the cause for the commonwealth since the senate had entrusted no such power to them. [2] But when they availed naught with their plea and they saw the tyrant inclined to the other side because of the earnestness and entreaties of the exiles, they desired time to prepare a defence. And having deposited a sum of money as a pledge for their appearance, in the interval while the suit was pending and they were no longer guarded, they fled; whereupon the tyrant seized their servants, their pack-animals, and the money they had brought with them to purchase corn.

  [3] It was the fate of these embassies, then, after being treated in the manner I have related, to return without having accomplished anything. But the ambassadors who had been sent to the cities in Tyrrhenia bought there a quantity of millet and spelt and brought it down to Rome in river-boats. This supply sustained the Romans for a short time, but its exhaustion brought them to the same straits as before. There was no sort of food to which men have ever been reduced through necessity that they did not venture to try; and it happened that not a few of them, by reason both of the scarcity and of the strangeness of the unaccustomed food, were either weakened in body or were neglected because of their poverty and entirely helpless. [4] When the Volscians, who had been recently conquered in war, became aware of this, they undertook by means of embassies sent out secretly to incite one another to war against the Romans, in the belief that if anyone should attack them while they were distressed both by war and famine, they would be unable to resist. But some benevolence of the gods, who were always careful not to permit the Romans to become subject to their enemies, manifested its power upon this occasion also in a most conspicuous manner. For so great a pestilence suddenly descended upon the cities of the Volscians as is not recorded to have occurred anywhere else in either the Greek or the barbarian world, destroying the people without distinction of age, condition, or sex, it mattered not whether their bodies were strong or weak. [5] The extreme nature of the calamity was shown in the case of an important city of the Volscians named Velitrae, till then a large and populous place, of which the plague left but one person out of every ten, attacking and carrying off all the rest. At last those who survived the calamity sent ambassadors to the Romans to inform them of their desolation and to deliver up their city to them. They had even before that time received a colony from Rome, for which reason they now desired colonists to be sent to them a second time.

  [13.1] When the Romans learned of this, they felt compassion for their misfortunes and thought they ought to retain no resentment against their enemies when under so severe an affliction, since they had sufficiently atoned to the gods for what they had been intending to do. As to the city of Velitrae, they thought proper to accept it and to send a large colony thither, in consideration of the many advantages that would result to them from that measure. [2] For the place itself, if occupied by an adequate garrison, seemed capable of proving a serious check and hindrance to the designs of any who might be disposed to begin a rebellion or create any disturbance, and it was expected that the scarcity of provisions under which the city then laboured would be far less serious if a considerable part of the citizens removed elsewhere. But, above all other considerations, the sedition which was now flaring up again, before the former one was as yet satisfactorily appeased, induced them to vote to send out the colony. [3] For once more the plebeians were becoming inflamed, as before, and growing exasperated against the patricians, were uttering many harsh words against them, some accusing them of neglect and indolence in not having long foreseen the scarcity of corn that was to occur, and taken the necessary precautions to avert the calamity, and others declaring that the scarcity had been brought about by their contrivance, because of their resentment and a desire to injure the plebeians when they remembered their secession. [4] For these reasons the colony was sent out promptly, three persons being appointed by the senate to be the leaders of it. The plebeians were pleased at first that lands were to be allotted to colonists, since they would thus be freed from the famine and inhabit a fertile country; but afterwards, when they bethought themselves of the pestilence whic
h had raged violently in the city that was to receive them and had not only destroyed the inhabitants, but gave room to fear that it would treat the new settlers in the same manner, their feelings were gradually reversed. Consequently those who offered themselves to join the colony were not many, but far fewer than the senate had decreed; and these, moreover, were already blaming themselves for having been ill advised and were endeavouring to avoid going out. [5] However, this element was included and likewise the others who had not willingly joined the colony, the senate having ordered that all the Romans should draw lots for completing the colony, and having fixed severe and inexorable penalties for those upon whom the lot fell, if they did not go. This colony, then, was sent to Velitrae after being recruited by a specious compulsion; and not many days after another colony was sent to Norba, which is no mean city of the Latins.