IX
* * * proved a more powerful enemy15 than the Romans had apprehended; for he maintained a struggle, during two years, with such variation of fortune, that he had generally the advantage, and drew a great part of Greece into alliance with him. Even the Rhodians, who had previously been most faithful to the Romans, began, with wavering allegiance, to watch the turns of fortune, and appeared rather inclined to the side of the king. Eumenes, too, in this war, was undecided in his views, and acted consistently neither with his brother’s16 proceedings at first, nor with his own general conduct. At length the senate and people of Rome elected to the consulship Lucius Æmilius Paulus, who had previously triumphed both as prætor and consul; a man deserving of the highest honour which merit can be conceived to attain. He was the son of that Paulus who commenced with such reluctance the battle of Cannæ, so fatal to the commonwealth, and who met death in it with so much fortitude. He routed Perses, in a great battle, near a city named Pydna in Macedonia, and drove him from his camp; and at last, after destroying his troops, forced him to flee from his dominions. The king, after quitting Macedonia, took refuge in the island of Samothrace, and committed himself, as a suppliant, to the sanctuary of the temple. Cnæus Octavius, the prætor, who had the command of the fleet, followed him thither, and prevailed on him, rather by persuasion than by force, to trust himself to the honour of the Romans. Æmilius Paulus, in consequence, led this most eminent and celebrated prince in triumph.
In this year, too, were two other famous triumphs; that of Octavius, the naval commander, and that of Anicius, who drove before his chariot Gentius the king of the Illyrians. How constantly envy attends eminent fortune, and how closely it pursues the highest characters, may be understood from the follow circumstance, that while no one objected to the triumphs of Anicius and Octavius, there were some who endeavoured to hinder that of Paulus, though it far exceeded the others, as well in the greatness of Perses as a monarch, as in the magnificent display of war-trophies, and the quantity of money carried in it; as it brought into the treasury two hundred thousand sestertia17, being beyond comparison more splendid than any triumph that preceded it.
X
During the same time, while Antiochus Epiphanes, who built the Temple of Jupiter at Athens, and who was then king of Syria, was besieging Ptolemy the young king of Egypt, in Alexandria, Marcus Popilius Lænas was sent as ambassador to him, to require him to desist from the siege. Popilius delivered his message, and the king replying that he would consider of the matter, he drew a circle round him with a rod upon the sand, desiring him to give a decisive answer before he passed that boundary. Roman firmness overcame the king’s hesitation, and the consul was obeyed.
Lucius Æmilius Paulus, who obtained the great victory over Perses, had four sons; of whom he had allowed the two eldest to be adopted, one by Publius Scipio, the son of Africanus, who retained nothing of his father’s greatness but the splendour of his name and the force of his eloquence, and the other by Fabius Maximus; the two younger, at the time when he gained the victory, he had still at home, as being yet under age. Previously to the day of his triumph, when, according to ancient usage, he was making a statement of his services to an assembly without the city, he intreated the immortal gods, that if any of them looked enviously on his actions and fortune, they would vent their displeasure on himself rather than on the Commonwealth. This expression, as if uttered by an oracle, robbed him of a great part of his offspring; for of the two sons whom he had in his house, he lost one a few days before his triumph, and the other in fewer days after it.
About this time occurred the censorship of Fulvius Flaccus and Posthumius Albinus, which was exercised with great severity; for Cnæus Fulvius, the brother of Fulvius the censor, and partner with him in property18, was expelled from the senate by those very censors.
XI
Subsequently to the conquest and capture of Perses, who died four years afterwards in private custody19 at Alba, a man who, from his false representations concerning his birth, was called Pseudo-Philippus, (for he said that his name was Philip, and that he was of the royal blood, though he was, in reality, of the meanest extraction,) seized the government of Macedonia by force of arms, and assumed the ensigns of royalty. But he soon paid the penalty of his rashness; for the prætor Quintus Metellus, who, from his merit in war, had received the surname of Macedonicus, gained a noble victory over both the imposter and his nation, and subdued at the same time, in a great battle, the Achæans20 who had recommenced hostilities. This is the Metellus Macedonicus who erected the porticos round the two temples without an inscription, now encircled by the porticos of Octavia, and who brought from Macedonia the group of equestrian statues that face the front of the temples, and form at present the chief ornament of the place. Of this group the following origin is related. Alexander the Great, it is said, desired Lysippus, an eminent artist in such performances, to make statues of such horsemen of his own troop as had fallen at the river Granicus, representing their likenesses in the figures, and placing one of Alexander himself among them. It was this Metellus, too, who first built at Rome a temple of marble21, among the edifices just mentioned, and who was consequently the introducer of what is to be called either magnificence or luxury. It would be difficult to find, indeed, a man of any nation, age, or rank, whose felicity can be compared with that of Metellus; for besides his splendid triumph, his distinguished honours, his acknowledged pre-eminence in the state, his long extent of life, and his zealous yet harmless contests with opponents for the good of his country, he was the father of four sons, whom he saw arrive at manhood, and whom he left surviving, and in enjoyment of the highest honours. These four sons supported his bier before the Rostra, one of them having been consul and censor, another consul, the third being consul at the time, and the fourth a candidate for the honour, which he afterwards obtained. Such an end may rather be called a happy retirement from life, than death.
XII
The whole of Achaia, of which a great part had been reduced by the conduct and arms of Metellus, was now, as we have said, strongly inclined to hostilities, being instigated chiefly by the Corinthians, who were guilty even of great insults to the Romans; and to conduct the war against them the consul Mummius was chosen. About the same time, too, rather because the Romans wished to believe whatever was said against the Carthaginians, than because anything was said against them worthy of belief, the senate resolved on the destruction of Carthage. Accordingly Publius Scipio Æmilianus, a man who emulated alike the virtues of his grandfather Publius Africanus and his father Lucius Paulus; who, in every qualification for war or peace, was the most eminent of his age as well in natural ability as in acquired knowledge; who, through the whole of his life, neither did, nor said, nor thought anything but what was praiseworthy; and who, as I have observed, had been adopted by Scipio the son of Africanus, was elected consul, though at the time he was only candidate for an ædileship. He had been previously honoured in Spain with a mural, and in Africa with an obsidional crown; in Spain, also, in consequence of a challenge, he had, though but of moderate bodily strength, slain an antagonist of extraordinary stature; and he now pressed on the war against Carthage, which had been conducted for two years by the preceding consuls, with additional vigour. This city, which, rather from jealousy of its power than from any recent offence, was an object of hatred to Rome, he utterly destroyed, and made it as much a monument of his own military prowess as it had previously been of his grandfather’s clemency.
Carthage was demolished a hundred and seventy-seven years ago, in the consulship of Cnæus Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Mummius, after having stood six hundred and seventy-two years. Such was the end of Carthage, the rival of the empire of Rome, with which our forefathers commenced war in the consulate of Claudius and Fulvius, two hundred and ninety-six years before you, Marcus Vinicius, entered upon your consulship. Thus for a hundred and twenty years there subsisted between these two nations either war, or preparations for war, or unsettled pe
ace. Nor did Rome, though the whole world were subdued, trust the she should be safe while there was left even the name of Carthage unremoved. So apt is hatred, arising from contentions, to continue longer than the fear of danger, and not to be laid aside even when the opposite party is vanquished; nor does the object of enmity cease to be detested until it has ceased to exist.
XIII
Three years before Carthage was demolished, Marcus Cato, who had been a constant advocate for its destruction, died, in the consulship of Lucius Censorinus and Marcus Manlius. In the very year in which Carthage fell, Lucius Mummius utterly destroyed Corinth, nine hundred and fifty-two years after it had been built by Aletes the son of Hippotes. Each of the generals was honoured with a name from the people whom he conquered, the one being styled Africanus, the other Achaicus. No new man22, before Mummius, had ever assumed a surname derived from military merit. Of these two commanders, the dispositions, as well as the pursuits, were entirely different. Scipio was so elegant a cultivator and admirer of liberal studies, and of every kind of learning, that he had constantly with him, at home and in the field, two men of eminent talents, Polybius and Panætius; for no man balanced the fatigues of business with the enjoyments of leisure more judiciously than Scipio, as he was constantly studying the arts either of war or of peace, and constantly exercising either his body in toil or his mind in learning. Mummius, on the contrary, was so extremely ignorant, that when, on the taking of Corinth, he was hiring persons to carry pictures and statues, finished by the hands of the greatest masters, into Italy, he ordered notice to be given to the contractors, that, if they lost any of them, they must find new ones. Yet I think you, Vinicius, must be of opinion, that it would have been more for the advantage of our countrymen that their minds should have remained still ignorant of Corinthian elegancies, than that their knowledge of them should have reached its present height; and that the ancient ignorance would have been more conducive to the public honour than our modern skill.
XIV
As a view of any historical subject, when contracted into one continuous narrative, is retained more easily in the eye and the memory than when left dispersed in different periods, I have determined to introduce between the former and latter part of this volume, a summary of particulars on a not unimportant subject, and to specify, in this part of my work, what colonies, since the capture of Rome by the Gauls, have been established by order of the senate, and at what times; for of the military settlements the occasions and founders are sufficiently known from their names. With this detail I shall unite, I think without impropriety, an account of the enlargement of the state, and the extension of the Roman name, by the communication of its privileges.
Seven years after the Gauls took the city, the colony of Sutrium was settled; the year after, that of Setia; and, after an interval of nine years, that of Nepe. Two-and-thirty years afterwards, the Aricians received the civic franchise. Three hundred and sixty-two years ago, in the consulship of Spurius Posthumius and Veturius Calvinus, the freedom of the city, but without the right of voting, was given to the Campanians and part of the Samnites; and the same year a colony was settled at Cales. Three years afterwards, the people of Fundi and Formiæ were admitted as citizens, in the very year that Alexandria was founded. In the following consulship, when Spurius Posthumius and Philo Publilius were censors, the civic franchise was granted to Acerra. Three years afterwards, that of Luceria; in four years more, that of Suessa Aurunca, and two years later, those of Saticula and Interamna. Then followed ten years in which nothing of the kind occurred; at the end of which time were established the colonies of Sora and Alba, and two years afterwards that of Carseoli. In the consulate of Quintus Fabius for the fifth time, and that of Decius Mus for the fourth time, the year in which Pyrrhus began to reign, colonies were sent to Sinuessa and Minturnæ, and four years afterwards to Venusia. After an interval of two years, in the consulate of Marcus Curius and Rufinus Cornelius, the rights of citizenship, but without that of voting, were given to the Sabines; an event which took place about three hundred and twenty years ago. About three hundred years ago, in the consulship of Fabius Dorso and Claudius Canina, colonies were sent to Cosa and Pæstum, and five years afterwards, in the consulship of Sempronius Sophus and Appius, the son of Appius Cæcus, to Ariminum and Beneventum; and the right of voting was then granted to the Sabines. At the commencement of the first Punic war, Firmum and Castrum were occupied with colonies, and the following year Æsernia; in seventeen years afterwards Æsulum and Alsium; two years later, Fregenæ; in the next year, when Torquatus and Sempronius were consuls, Brundisium; three years after, in the year when the games of Flora commenced, Spoletium. Two years later, Valentia was colonised, and, about the time of Hannibal’s arrival in Italy, Cremona and Placentia.
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Neither while Hannibal remained in Italy, nor for several years immediately succeeding his departure, had the Romans any opportunities of founding colonies; for, while the war lasted, they were obliged to press soldiers, instead of discharging them, and, when it was ended, their strength required to be recruited rather than dispersed. However, in the consulship of Manlius Volso and Fabius Nobilior, about two hundred and seventeen years ago, the colony of Bononia was settled, and five years afterwards, those of Pisaurum and Potentia; in three years more, Aquileia and Gravisca; four years later, Luca. During the same period, though some express a doubt of it, colonies were sent to Puteoli, Salernum, and Buxentum. One hundred and eighty-seven years ago, a colony was sent to Auximum in the Picenian territory; this took place three years before Cassius the censor began to build the theatre looking from the Lupercal23 towards Mount Palatine, when the great austerity of manners, and the consul Scipio, prevented him24 from completing it; an occurrence which I number among the most honourable testimonies to the public character in those days. In the consulship of Cassius Longinus and Sextius Calvinus, (who defeated the Salyes25 at the springs which were from him named Aquæ Sextiae,) about one hundred and fifty-seven years ago, the colony of Fabrateria was settled, and the year after those of Scylacium, Minervium, Tarentum, and Neptunia, as well as Carthage in Africa26, which was, I have said, the first colony planted beyond the bounds of Italy. Concerning Dertona there is no certainty; but Narbo Martius in Gaul was settled in the consulship of Porcius and Marcius, about a hundred and fifty-three years ago. Twenty-three years after was founded Eporedia among the Bagienni27, when Marius was consul, for the sixth time, with Valerius Flaccus. Any colony settled since that time, except the military colonies, I am unable to recollect.
XVI
Though this little portion of my work has exceeded the limits intended, and though I am sensible that in so hasty a composition, which, like a wheel or rapid torrent28, allows me nowhere to make a stand, I ought rather to omit some things that may seem necessary than to introduce any that are superfluous, I yet cannot refrain from noticing a point on which I have often reflected, and on which I could never arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. For who can sufficiently wonder, that the most eminent geniuses in every art have agreed in one common character, and have fallen within one period of time; and that, as different kinds of animals, shut up in a fold or other inclosure, continue each distinct from those around it, and form themselves into separate bodies, so minds, capable of any great achievements, have formed distinct assemblages about the same time and with similar effect? One age, and that not extending through many years, gave lustre to tragedy by the works of those great authors, men animated by a divine spirit, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. One age produced the Ancient Comedy, under Cratinus, Aristophanes, and Eupolis. As for the New Comedy, Menander, with Philemon and Diphilus, his equals in age rather than ability, not only invented it within a few years, but left works in it beyond imitation. The distinguished philosophers, too, deriving their knowledge from the lips of Socrates, in how short a time did they all, whom I have a little before enumerated29, flourish after the death of Plato and Aristotle! And in oratory what splendour was there bef
ore Isocrates, or after the death of his hearers and their immediate disciples? So crowded were they into a short space of time, that all who were worthy of being remembered must have been known to each other.
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Nor has this peculiarity occurred more among the Greeks than among the Romans. Roman tragedy, unless we go back to the rudest and most barbarous efforts, which deserve no praise but as attempts at invention, subsists wholly in the writings of Accius and his contemporaries. The agreeable sportiveness of Latin humour displayed itself, about the same time, in Cæcilius, Terence, and Afranius30. As for the historians, a period of less than eighty years (even if we include Livy in the age of the earlier writers) produced them all, with the exception of Cato and some old and obscure annalists. Nor did the assemblage of poets extend further in time, either upwards or downwards. With respect to oratory, forensic pleading, and the perfect beauty of prose eloquence, they burst forth complete (to say nothing of Cato, and to speak with due respect for Publius Crassus, Scipio, Lælius, the Gracchi, Fannius, and Servius Galba) under Cicero, who was the coryphæus in his art; as of all other orators we receive pleasure from few, and admire none, except such as lived in his time, or immediately succeeded it31. That the same has been the case with regard to grammarians, statuaries, painters, and sculptors32, whoever investigates the records of ages will easily convince himself, and will see that the most eminent performances in every art are confined within very narrow limits of time.
Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus Page 2