(5) Though I frequently search for the reasons why men of similar talents occur exclusively in certain epochs and not only flock to one pursuit but also attain like success, I can never find any of whose truth I am certain, though I do find some which perhaps seem likely, and particularly the following. (6) Genius is fostered by emulation, and it is now envy, now admiration, which enkindles imitation, and, in the nature of things, that which is cultivated with the highest zeal advances to the highest perfection; but it is difficult to continue at the point of perfection, and naturally that which cannot advance must recede. (7) And as in the beginning we are fired with the ambition to overtake those whom we regard as leaders, so when we have despaired of being able either to surpass or even to equal them, our zeal wanes with our hope; it ceases to follow what it cannot overtake, and abandoning the old field as though pre-empted, it seeks a new one. Passing over that in which we cannot be pre-eminent, we seek for some new object of our effort. It follows that the greatest obstacle in the way of perfection in any work is our fickle way of passing on at frequent intervals to something else.
[18] (1) From the part played by epochs our wonder and admiration next passes to that played by individual cities. A single city of Attica blossomed with more masterpieces of every kind of eloquence than all the rest of Greece together — to such a degree, in fact, that one would think that although the bodies of the Greek race were distributed among the other states, their intellects were confined within the walls of Athens alone. (2) Nor have I more reason for wonder at this than that not a single Argive or Theban or Lacedaemonian was esteemed worthy, as an orator, of commanding influence while he lived, or of being remembered after his death. (3) These cities, otherwise distinguished, were barren of such literary pursuits with the single exception of the lustre which Pindar gave to Thebes; for, in the case of Alcman, the claim which the Laconians lay to him is spurious.
BOOK II.
[1] (1) The first of the Scipios opened the way for the world power of the Romans; the second opened the way for luxury. For, when Rome was freed of the fear of Carthage, and her rival in empire was out of her way, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption, not gradually, but in headlong course. The older discipline was discarded to give place to the new. The state passed from vigilance to slumber, from the pursuit of arms to the pursuit of pleasure, from activity to idleness. (2) It was at this time that there were built, on the Capitol, the porticoes of Scipio Nasica, the porticoes of Metellus already mentioned, and, in the Circus, the portico of Gnaeus Octavius, the most splendid of them all; and private luxury soon followed public extravagance.
(3) Then followed a war that was disaster and disgraceful to the Romans, the war in Spain with Viriathus, a guerilla chief. The fortunes of this war during its progress shifted constantly and were, more frequently than not, adverse to the Romans. On the death of Viriathus through the perfidy rather than the valour of Servilius Caepio, there broke out in Numantia a war that was more serious still. (4) Numantia city was never able to arm more than ten thousand men of its own; but, whether it was owing to her native valour, or to the inexperience of our soldiers, or to the mere kindness of fortune, she compelled first other generals, and then Pompey, a man of great name (he was the first of his family to hold the consulship) to sign disgraceful treaties, and forced Mancinus Hostilius to terms no less base and hateful. (5) Pompey, however, escaped punishment through his influence. As for Mancinus his sense of shame, in that he did not try to evade the consequences, caused him to be delivered to the enemy by the fetial priests, naked, and with his hands bound behind his back. The Numantines, however, refused to receive him, following the example of the Samnites at an earlier day at Caudium, saying that a national breach of faith should not be atoned for by the blood of one man.
[2] (1) The surrender of Mancinus aroused in the state a quarrel of vast proportions. Tiberius Gracchus, the son of Tiberius Gracchus, an illustrious and eminent citizen, and the grandson, on his mother’s side, of Scipio Africanus, had been quaestor in the army of Mancinus and had negotiated the treaty. Indignant, on the one hand, that any of his acts should be disavowed, and fearing the danger of a like trial or a like punishment, he had himself elected tribune of the people. (2) He was a man of otherwise blameless life, of brilliant intellect, of upright intentions, and, in a word, endowed with the highest virtues of which a man is capable when favoured by nature and by training. In the consulship of Publius Mucius Scaevola and Lucius Calpurnius (one hundred and sixty-two years ago), he split with the party of the nobles, promised the citizenship to all Italy, (3) and at the same time, by proposing agrarian laws which all immediately desired to see in operation, turned the state topsyturvy, and brought it into a position of critical and extreme danger. He abrogated the power of his colleague Octavius, who defended the interests of the state, and appointed a commission of three to assign lands and to found colonies, consisting of himself, his father-in‑law the ex-consul Appius, and his brother Gaius, then a very young man.
[3] (1) At this crisis Publius Scipio Nasica appeared. He was the grandson of the Scipio who had been adjudged by the senate the best citizen of the state, the son of the Scipio who, as censor, had built the porticoes on the Capitol, and great-grandson of Gnaeus Scipio, that illustrious man who was the paternal uncle of Publius Scipio Africanus. Although he was a cousin of Tiberius Gracchus, he set his country before all ties of blood, choosing to regard as contrary to his private interests everything that was not for the public weal, a quality which earned for him the distinction of being the first man to be elected pontifex maximus in absentia. He held no public office at this time and was clad in the toga. Wrapping the fold of his toga about his left forearm he stationed himself on the topmost steps of the Capitol and summoned all those who wished for the safety of the state to follow him. (2) Then the optimates, the senate, the larger and better part of the equestrian order, and those of the plebs who were not yet infected by pernicious theories rushed upon Gracchus as he stood with his bands in the area of the Capitol and was haranguing a throng assembled from almost every part of Italy. As Gracchus fled, and was running down the steps which led from the Capitol, he was struck by the fragment of a bench, and ended by an untimely death the life which he might have made a glorious one. (3) This was the beginning in Rome of civil bloodshed, and of the licence of the sword. From this time on right was crushed by might, the most powerful now took precedence in the state, the disputes of the citizens which were once healed by amicable agreements were now settled by arms, and wars were now begun not for good cause but for what profit there was in them. Nor is this to be wondered at; (4) for precedents do not stop where they begin, but, however narrow the path upon which they enter, they create for themselves a highway whereon they may wander with the utmost latitude; and when once the path of right is abandoned, men are hurried into wrong in headlong haste, nor does anyone think a course is base for himself which has proven profitable to others.
[4] (1) While these events were taking place in Italy King Attalus had died, bequeathing Asia in his will to the Roman people, as Bithynia was later bequeathed to them by Nicomedes, and Aristonicus, falsely claiming to be a scion of the royal house, had forcibly seized the province. Aristonicus was subdued by Marcus Perpenna and was later led in triumph, but by Manius Aquilius. He paid with his life the penalty for having put to death at the very outset of the war the celebrated jurist Crassus Mucianus, proconsul of Asia, as he was leaving his province.
(2) After all the defeats experienced at Numantia, Publius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus, the destroyer of Carthage, was a second time elected consul and then dispatched to Spain, where he confirmed the reputation for good fortune and for valour which he had earned in Africa. Within a year and three months after his arrival in Spain he surrounded Numantia with his siege works, destroyed the city and levelled it to the ground. (3) No man of any nationality before his day had immortalized his name by a more illustrious feat of destroying cities; for by the destruct
ion of Carthage and Numantia he liberated us, in the one case from fear, in the other from a reproach upon our name. (4) This same Scipio, when asked by Carbo the tribune what he thought about the killing of Tiberius Gracchus, replied that he had been justly slain if his purpose had been to seize the government. When the whole assembly cried out at this utterance he said, “How can I, who have so many times heard the battle shout of the enemy without feeling fear, be disturbed by the shouts of men like you, to whom Italy is only a stepmother?” (5) A short time after Scipio’s return to Rome, in the consulship of Manius Aquilius and Gaius Sempronius — one hundred sixty years ago — this man who had held two consulships, had celebrated two triumphs, and had twice destroyed cities which had brought terror to his country, was found in the morning dead in his bed with marks as though of strangulation upon his throat. (6) Great man though he was, no inquest was held concerning the manner of his death, and with covered head was borne to the grave the body of him whose services had enabled Rome to lift her head above the whole world. Whether his death was due to natural causes as most people think, or was the result of a plot, as some historians state, the life he lived was at any rate so crowded with honours that up to this time it was surpassed in brilliance by none, excepting only his grandsire. He died in his fifty-sixth year. (7) If anyone questions this let him call to mind his first consulship, to which he was elected in his thirty-eighth year, and he will cease to doubt.
[5] (1) In Spain, even before the destruction of Numantia, Decimus Brutus had conducted a brilliant campaign in which he penetrated to all the peoples of the country, took a great number of men and cities and, by extending his operations to regions which hitherto had scarcely been heard of, earned for himself the cognomen of Gallaecus.
(2) A few years before in this same country Quintus Macedonicus had exercised command as general with a discipline of remarkable rigour. For instance, in an assault upon a Spanish town called Contrebia he ordered five legionary cohorts, which had been driven down from a steep escarpment, forthwith to march up it again. (2) Though the soldiers were making their wills on the battlefield, as though they were about to march to certain death, he was not deterred, but afterwards received the men, whom he sent forth to die, back in camp victorious. Such was the effect of shame mingled with fear, and of a hope born of despair. Macedonicus won renown in Spain by the uncompromising bravery of this exploit; Fabius Aemilianus, following the example of Paulus on the other hand, by the severity of his discipline.
[6] (1) After an interval of ten years the same madness which had possessed Tiberius Gracchus now seized upon his brother Gaius, who resembled him in his general virtues as well as in his mistaken ambition, but far surpassed him in ability and eloquence. (2) Gaius might have been the first man in the state had he held his spirit in repose; but, whether it was with the object of avenging his brother’s death or of paving the way for kingly power, he followed the precedent which Tiberius had set and entered upon the career of a tribune. His aims, however, were far more ambitious and drastic. He was for giving the citizenship to all Italians, extending it almost to the Alps, (3) distributing the public domain, limiting the holdings of each citizen to five hundred acres as had once been provided by the Licinian law, establishing new customs duties, filling the provinces with new colonies, transferring the judicial powers from the senate to the equites, and began the practice of distributing grain to the people. He left nothing undisturbed, nothing untouched, nothing unmolested, nothing, in short, as it had been. Furthermore he continued the exercise of his office for a second term.
(4) The consul, Lucius Opimius, who, as praetor, had destroyed Fregellae, hunted down Gracchus with armed men and put him to death, slaying with him Fulvius Flaccus, a man who, though now entertaining the same distorted ambitions, had held the consulship and had won a triumph. Gaius had named Flaccus triumvir in the place of his brother Tiberius and had made him his partner in his plans for assuming kingly power. (5) The conduct of Opimius was execrable in this one respect, that he had proposed a reward to be paid for the head, I will not say of a Gracchus, but of a Roman citizen, and had promised to pay it in gold. (6) Flaccus, together with his elder son, was slain upon the Aventine while summoning to battle his armed supporters. Gracchus, in his flight, when on the point of being apprehended by the emissaries of Opimius, offered his neck to the sword of his slave Euporus. Euporus then slew himself with the same promptness with which he had given assistance to his master. On the same day Pomponius, a Roman knight, gave remarkable proof of his fidelity to Gracchus; for, after holding back his enemies upon the bridge, as Cocles had done of yore, he threw himself upon his sword. The body of Gaius, like that of Tiberius before him, was thrown into the Tiber by the victors, with the same strange lack of humanity.
[7] (1) Such were the lives and such the deaths of the sons of Tiberius Gracchus, and the grandsons of Publius Scipio Africanus, and their mother Cornelia, the daughter of Africanus, still lived to witness their end. An ill use they made of their excellent talents. Had they but coveted such honours as citizens might lawfully receive, the state would have conferred upon them through peaceful means all that they sought to obtain by unlawful agitations.
(2) To this atrocity was added a crime without precedent. The son of Fulvius Flaccus, a youth of rare beauty who had not yet passed his eighteenth year and was in no way involved in the acts of his father, when sent by his father as an envoy to ask for terms, was put to death by Opimius. An Etruscan soothsayer, who was his friend, seeing him dragged weeping to prison, said to him, “Why not rather do as I do?” At these words he forthwith dashed out his brains against the stone portal of the prison and thus ended his life.
(3) Severe investigations, directed against the friends and followers of the Gracchi, followed. But when Opimius, who during the rest of his career had been a man of sterling and upright character, was afterwards condemned by public trial, his conviction aroused no sympathy on the part of the citizens because of the recollection of his cruelty in this instance. (4) Rupilius and Popilius, who, as consuls, had prosecuted the friends of Tiberius Gracchus with the utmost severity, deservedly met at a later date with the same mark of popular disapproval at their public trials.
I shall insert here a matter hardly relevant to these important events. (5) It was this same Opimius from whose consulship the famous Opimian wine received its name. That none of this wine is now in existence can be inferred from the lapse of time, since it is one hundred and fifty years, Marcus Vinicius, from his consulship to yours.
(6) The conduct of Opimius met with a greater degree of disapproval because it was a case of seeking revenge in a private feud, and this act of revenge was regarded as having been committed rather in satisfaction of a personal animosity than in defence of the rights of the state.
(7) In the legislation of Gracchus I should regard as the most pernicious his planting of colonies outside of Italy. This policy the Romans of the older time had carefully avoided; for they saw how much more powerful Carthage had been than Tyre, Massilia than Phocaea, Syracuse than Corinth, Cyzicus and Byzantium than Miletus, — all these colonies, in short, than their mother cities — and had summoned all Roman citizens from the provinces back to Italy that they might be enrolled upon the census lists. (8) The first colony to be founded outside of Italy was Carthage. Shortly afterwards the colony of Narbo Martius was founded, in the consulship of Porcius and Marcius.
[8] (1) I must next record the severity of the law courts in condemning for extortion in Macedonia Gaius Cato, an ex-consul, the grandson of Marcus Cato, and son of the sister of Africanus, though the claim against him amounted to but four thousand sesterces. But the judges of that day looked rather at the purpose of the culprit than at the measure of the wrong, applying to actions the criterion of intention and weighing the character of the sin and not the extent of it.
(2) About the same time the two brothers Marcus and Gaius Metellus celebrated their triumphs on one and the same day. A coincidence equally celebrated
which still remains unique, was the conjunction in the consulship of the sons of Fulvius Flaccus, the general who had conquered Capua, but one of these sons, however, had passed by adoption into the family of Acidinus Manlius. As regards the joint censorship of the two Metelli, they were cousins, not brothers, a coincidence which had happened to the family of the Scipios alone.
(3) At this time the Cimbri and Teutons crossed the Rhine. These peoples were soon to become famous by reason of the disasters which they inflicted upon us and we upon them. About the same time took place the famous triumph over the Scordisci of Minucius, the builder of the porticoes which are famous even in our day.
Complete Works of Velleius Paterculus Page 18