THE EARLY YEARS OF ROME

From very early times, nomadic people had surged into the Italian peninsula from the north, some using the western coast-track, some the "amber road" through the Brenner Pass, by which that coveted article of merchandise had long been brought from the Baltic for export the Mediterranean sea-board.

By about 1000 B.C. "Italic" tribes of Indo-European stock had driven the native Iberians southwards before them and established small agricultural communities, for whose continued existence they were soon forced to fight against hordes of Semitic invaders landing on the Tuscan shores. These Etruscans are one of the mystery peoples of the Ancient World, for we cannot read the inscriptions on their monuments: but what is left of their civilization shows that it had reached a high level both in building and metalwork, and that it probably had close commercial relations with the Orient.

It was indeed many stages in advance of the simple existence of the Italian peasant folk, so that when Rome began to rise on her seven hills, close to a convenient ford across the, Tiber it was the Etruscans who ruled there as kings, the inhabitants of "Latiun" as their subjects - Legend has given the date 750 B.C. as the founding of Rome, but without any more historical justification than the tale of its original building by Romulus and Remus.

At length the Latins, or Romans as they came to be called later, rose in rebellion and drove out their tyrannous kings. This remarkable success had been favoured by outward circumstances. The land of Italy had in the course of time invited other invaders to settle there besides the Etruscans. One body of settlers were colonists from Corinth and similar Ægean city -states, who established "Great Greece" on the southern coasts and disputed Sicily with Carthaginians from North Africa. In the north there were Gallic tribes who settled in large numbers between the Alps and the river Po.

The Roman Republic

Somewhere about 500 B.C. the Roman King (Tarquinius Superbus, according to Legend), at war with his neighbours and exhausted by the struggle, failed to withstand the disaffection within his own state. His subjects drove him out, became masters of the city, and set up a Roman republic, placing the chief power in the hands of two Consuls, who were to be elected yearly from amongst the principal landowners, or patricians. Since this arrangement left the poorer population, or plebeians, entirely at the mercy of the better off, the former presently secured officials of their own - the tribunes - to whom complaints of tyranny and corruption could be made.

The internal history of the Roman Republic for some two centuries after its establishment is that of a perpetual struggle between patricians and plebeians. On the whole, since the Latin character was naturally conservative, the patricians won, and the Senate (originally the council of "old men"), who came in time to conduct all the important business of state, was chosen from this class alone.

On the other hand the plebeians succeeded after an embittered struggle in obtaining the codification of the laws of the republic in the Twelve Tables (451 B.C.), and permission to appeal to the General Assembly by the Lex Valeria (509 B.C.) where lives and rights of citizens were at stake.

It was unfortunate that as Rome grew the meetings of this Assembly were doomed to become a farce. in the small city-state of Athens, such a body could take a genuine share in civic life; but in a republic rapidly ; spreading over the countryside it was obviously quite impossible for all to attend or even hear the Herald's proclamation of its opening. Thus it tended to develop more and more into what Mr. H. G. Wells has described as "a gathering of political hacks and the city riff-raff."

It is interesting to compare the political situation in Greece and Italy in early times. The Greeks were as contemptuous of "outlanders" as the Chinese to-day of "foreign devils"; and city-states of the Ægean shrank as a rule from widening their franchise; and until the time of Alexander rulers treated subject races with a distant patronage that chilled loyalty and prevented fellowship. The Romans in their early days of expansion were far less exclusive, granting citizenship to the peoples they absorbed, and ensuring a strong nucleus of loyalty in each district by planting it with a colony of their own surplus citizens, to whom were given individual grants of land and the protection of the home government.

Through such practical foresight Rome, when she went to war with Carthage in later centuries, was able to put armies in the field made up of sturdy peasant-farmers, and the ideals of the republic were respected even when her actual government prove too often corrupt and class selfish.

The Conquest of Italy

After the establishment of the republic Rome found herself, as chief city of a League of Latin states, involved in a series of wars within the peninsula. First of all there were the Etruscan strongholds to be subdued, such as Veil (captured 396 B.C.), but this laid a way open to the Gallic tribes who for a while gained the upper hand and even sacked the town of Rome herself (382 B.C..). Those in the citadel, aroused by its cackling geese, we are told, withstood all attacks; and when the Gauls. accepting a ransom, withdrew once more, the garrison emerged and the population began to rebuild their town.

Within a generation Rome was engaged in a life and death struggle with another "Italic" race, the Samnites, who had made their homes along the Apennines, and were now trying to absorb the western plain, the Campania. At Sentium (295 B.C.) the Romans finally crushed the Samnite levies and so decided the future of Italy for over two thousand years.

The next contest was to be with Great Greece: and here, had the wealthy colonies shown any more ability to act in union than the city-states of their home mainland, it might have gone hard with the far less civilized Romans. Perpetual internecine warfare in the past, however, prevented any chance of unity; and when Roman expansion began to threaten Greek independence, it was to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (modern Albania), across the seas, that Tarentum, the wealthiest state in southern Italy, appealed for help.

An adventurer born, Pyrrhus was soon on the scene with his chariots and his elephants, routing the Romans at Heraclea (280 B.C.) and then pushing on triumphantly to secure the greater part of Sicily; but this was to bring a new enemy into the field. The western part of the island was held by the Carthginians who, lacking prophetic vision, feared the Romans less than they did Pyrrhus. It was largely the appearance of their fleet as an ally that caused the Romans to reject the terms offered them by Pyrrhus after his victories, and which sent that royal adventurer swiftly back to Epirus before his line of communication was cut.

The Greek cities, now deserted by their protector and, as usual, torn by internal feuds, allowed themselves to be conquered piecemeal by the Roman armies. By 275 B.C. the little republic of the Tiber banks had become ruler of all Italy south of the Po.

THE PUNIC WARS
The Influence of Greece on Rome.

Rome had conquered Great Greece. Just that ability to unite and pursue some practical ambition with bulldog tenacity that the average Hellene lacked, the Latin possessed to a fuller extent than any other race of ancient times. Thus, in the struggle for world domination, the Latin was to gain a spectacular victory; but there are two sorts of conquests, and in the kingdom of the mind and spirit it was the Greek who triumphed, and whose culture was to permeate and transform the minds of those to whom he lived in political subjection.

"The strength of the antique Roman character lay in its narrowness, its Calvinistic sense of sin, its austere conception of personal duties, its hardy asceticism, its rigid family ties." This being so, in the early days of the republic art and literature meant little: religion, animistic and formal, depended mainly on exactness of ritual; and the state's public worship of Jupiter, Mars, Ceres, etc., was merely a development of the household reverence for its "Lares et Penates."

Then came the conquest of southern Italy, so largely Hellenic, opening the door to a new world. In Greek philosophy the Latin student found a key to secret chambers of the mind of whose very existence he had hitherto scarcely been aware. The natural lover of beauty and luxury reveled in the sudden realization of what art could add to mere existence. Thus Rome began to demand a wider life, softened by the culture and material comforts which city-states such as Syracuse, Neapolis, and Tarentum, had long regarded as necessities.

The way to such a goal lay obviously though the development of trade relations with the Orient, but to free the seas for such commerce the Republic on the Tiber must break the monopoly of Carthage, her ally in the late war against King Pyrrhus, whose fleet now reigned supreme in Mediterranean waters.

Carthage.

Carthage, on the North African coast, was the last of the great Semitic empires of the Ancient World. A Phoenician colony in origin, dominated for a while by Libyan tribes from the hinterland, it was at this time an independent state normally ruled by two elected Judges but really by an oligarchy of merchant princes. In regard to a prolonged struggle with Rome it had the advantage of naval experience - we have already drawn attention to the adventurous spirit of Phoenician seamen - as well as a treasury heaped with the profits of worldwide commerce, but where the Latin republic could draw on a loyal citizen army of peasant proprietors, the Carthaginians had only foreign mercenaries, since the estates of their landed class were worked by slave-labour.

The First Punic War (264 - 241 B.C.)

The struggle between Rome and Carthage has been called "the most wasteful and disastrous series of wars that ever darkened the history of mankind."

The first of this series was concerned with the disputed ownership of the island of Sicily, Carthage having sent aid to the Greek tyrant hero of Syracuse, who was struggling to preserve his patrimony from a band of Italian adventurers, the Mamertini, supported by Rome.

On land the Romans occupied Messina, and won over Hiero as their ally, driving the Carthaginians into the western coast towns, but in order to do more than this it was necessary for them first of all to build a fleet of quinquiremes (galleys with five banks of oars) and then to find the navigators and oarsmen who could direct and work them. Now the Roman's practical mind realized that sea-craft was a skilled trade that he could not hope to learn all in a day. His genius was military rather than naval, and so instead of studying how to ram the enemy's vessels and break their oars in the orthodox sea-dog fashion, he invented a bridge with grappling hooks at the- ends, that once he had maneuvered his ship alongside another would hold the two fast. By means of this bridge soldiers could board their foreign vessels in large numbers and so turn a sea-fight into the sort of hand-to-hand engagement at which the Romans preferred.

To the surprise of the Carthaginians their enemies, following this method, proceeded to win several victories at sea, but still the tide of war did not always run in the same direction, since the North African city had found a great general in Hamilcar Barcas, and his stubborn resistance in Sicily began to exhaust Roman resources, It needed the building of a new Roman fleet of two hundred ships to reduce the last Carthaginian stronghold, and then with the complete surrender of the island the first Punic War came to an end.

The Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.).

This is sometimes called the Hannibalic War after the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, Son of Hamilcar Barcas, whose military genius dominated its course. We are told that the father had made his eleven-year-old son take an oath of undying hatred to Rome. By the time he was twenty-four Hannibal was prepared to put this oath to its test, in spite of the opposition of a peace party in his own country.

His military experience had been gained in Spain, that Carthaginian outpost of the West, under his brother-in-law Hasdrubal. While Rome's attention had been distracted by Gallic invasions in North Italy, Hasdrubal had been opening up the Spanish Mediterranean coastline as far as the Ebro, founding New Carthage (Carthagena) close to some silver mines, and raising an army that he trained in wars against native Iberians and Celts.

Only a few years after peace had been made the Latin republic had seized the Carthaginians towns along the coast of Sardinia and Corsica, and now on the far side of the Ebro she was stealthily taking certain Greek colonies under her protection, and forbidding her rivals to cross the river. In 221 B.C. Hasdrubal was assassinated. Two years later, without sanction from Carthage. his young brother-in-law at the head of 40,000 men was on the march across Southern Gaul.

The ensuing war has been described as "a colossal contest between the nation, Rome, and the Man, Hannibal." Evading a Roman army near the Rhône, Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218 B.C.; but it was already autumn, and his cavalry and elephants, accustomed to the climate of Spain, suffered terribly from cold and insecure foothold in the mountain passes. He had hoped to raise the Gallic tribes north of the Po in his favour, but those who joined him proved raw recruits, and his own seasoned veterans were woefully few compared to the enemy. Nor, since the Roman fleet now held the seas, could he expect reinforcements from Carthage.

It was a mad adventure; but Hannibal, who had heard of Alexander the Great's conquests from his youth, advanced confidently on the road south, ambushing and cutting to pieces the legions of an unwary Consul on the shores of Lake Trasimene. Rome herself it seemed lay ready for him to sack and pillage; but Hannibal had no siege machines and turned away towards the Adriatic. One more big battle and he felt sure he could compel her to submit.

A certain Roman general, Fabius (from whose name we derive "Fabian tactics"), fearing this might prove only too true, was careful not to give him the chance but pursued a policy of perpetually harassing his army and trying to break its morale. Unfortunately Rome misunderstood this caution and appointed new Consuls instead of the man they derisively called "the Laggard" (Cunctator), with orders to give Hannibal instant battle. The two armies met at Cannæ (216 B.C.), where the Carthaginian, with a larger number of cavalry but much fewer heavy armed infantry than his opponents, utterly annihilated them.

This campaign of Hannibal, which lasted fifteen years from his crossing of the Alps, has been aptly termed "the most brilliant and futile raid in history." Yet had outside forces, Philip V of Macedon with whom he formed an alliance, the subject Greek cities of Italy, and his own home-government, really combined to give him adequate support, he must surely have crushed the enemy he had so steadfastly hated.

As it was, Rome, drawing stubbornly on her resources of citizen levies, was able to create new armies. Syracuse, (Archimedes, the scientist was killed during the Roman siege.) Tarentum, and Capua were reduced, and an army under Publius Cornelius Scipio (later called Africanus) drove the Carthaginians out of Spain. Scipio now demanded to be sent to North Africa, and the Carthaginian government was compelled to recall Hannibal from Italy to deal with him. He obeyed the summons, and at Zama (202 B.C..) a decisive battle was fought that crushed the power of Carthage and left Rome mistress of the western Mediterranean, Peace was made on humiliating terms for the conquered, and Hannibal fled to the East, where hunted from court to court he at last poisoned himself.

The Third Punic War (149 - 146 B.C.)

During Hannibal's prolonged Italian campaign the hatred to which as a boy he had vowed his life, had sowed its dragon's teeth amongst his enemies. Carthage, once peace was made, contrived not only to pay her heavy war indemnity but even to recover some of her commercial prosperity; and this caused dismay and fury amongst Italians whose dead had strewn the field of Cannae and who had trembled lest Rome herself be sacked. Loudly they shouted their agreement when in the Senate the old diehard Cato mouthed his perpetual hymn of hate, "Carthage must be destroyed."

Fifty years passed and a new generation imbibed the frantic jealousy of the elder. Seizing an occasion of Carthage having dared to resist the continuous aggression or her neighbour Massinissa, King of Numidia, without leave from the Senate, thus violating one of the original peace terms, Rome declared war. In the course of a three years' campaign her armies at last stormed and sacked Carthage, thus blotting out for ever the old Phoenician empire.

Through her Punk Wars, Rome had not only gained control of the Western Mediterranean but emerged as an imperial power. It remained for her citizens to pay the price of such overwhelming success.

ROME A REPUBLIC - Wars in the East.

Immediately after the second Punic War those who were demanding that not one stone of Carthage be left upon another sought also revenge against her allies. The special object of Roman fear was Philip V of Macedon, and it was pointed out that if an attack were made upon this ambitious descendant of the great Philip, it would be warmly welcomed by Athens and Sparta who, since Alexander's death, had contrived to regain a shadowy independence.

The other city-states of Greece were divided by the Gulf of Corinth into the Æchean League to the south, the Ætolian to the north; the former in vassalage to Philip, and the latter in consequence antagonistic. At Cynoscephalae (191 B.C.), near a ridge of hills called "Dogs' Heads," the King of Macedon and his Æcheans met the Roman legions supported by Ætolian cavalry, and were cut to pieces, Philip himself escaping but leaving 8,000 dead on the field.

This was the end of Greece as a political force in the Ancient World. Macedonia dwindled from a kingdom into a Roman province, and when the Achaean League ventured later to oppose the Republic a thousand of her young nobles were carried away as hostages and Corinth was burnt to the ground. Amongst these hostages was Polybius (d. 120 B.C.), who afterwards wrote a history of the Rome he had learned to admire.

In the Orient, Antiochus of Syria. attempting to absorb into his Seleucid Empire some of the possessions of the fallen Philip, was the next opponent of the Roman armies. At Magnesia (190 B.C.) the legions routed his undisciplined Orientals and a peace was made that brought the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria within the Roman dominions. When in 168 B.C. Egypt offered herself as a subject state the Mediterranean had become a Latin lake.

The Republican Government.

The government of the Roman republic was professedly based, we have seen, on the will of an Assembly of its free citizens; but long before her empire was achieved any association of her name with political principles of liberty and justice had become ridiculous.

The Italian allies of the city of Rome (ltalici) had fought in her armies in the Wars but were still denied rights of citizenship since the early policy of following each absorption of territory by wise grants of rights had been long discontinued. Thus discontent was seething, caused as much by resentment as by the terrible economic conditions resulting from Hannibal's devastation's and protracted foreign wars.

Properly administered, the vast accumulation indemnities and spoils that made direct taxation unnecessary should have more than paid for sound schemes of reconstruction; but unfortunately "in no department was the failure of republican government ... more conspicuous than in the field of finance."

Loot and the chances of personal advancement offered by official posts at home and in the government of the provinces went to enrich a new moneyed class, as alien from the old patrician of high principles and simple life as from the sturdy peasant-farmer. Since land represented social position the war-profiteer used his sudden wealth to add farm to farm, building up huge estates (latifundia) worked by the cheap slave labour that the perpetual wars of conquest threw on the market. No patrician landlord of modest means nor peasant-farmer could hope to compete with crops or herds farmed on such methods, nor with the corn imported from Sicily and sold at a cheap rate by the government to satisfy the dangerous proletarian element growing up in the towns-

Political Revolt in Italy.

The political situation during the third and second centuries before Christ has been summed up in the phrase, "the Senate governed but did not reign, while the people reigned but did not govern. As social conditions grew worse during and after the Punic Wars, various efforts were made by popular leaders to improve them, though not to amend the comitia publica from any more workable angle.

"The first systematic attack upon the senatorial government is connected with the names of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus."

Their appeal was to the old Licinian Law (367 B.C.), limiting the amount of land that any one person could buy, but which had been allowed to become a dead letter.

Tiberius Gracchus (Tribune, 133 B.C.) suggested that the surplus of the legal amount should be redistributed amongst the poor. "You are called masters of the world," he said, addressing those who had elected him, "yet the beasts which roam over Italy have each their den . . . and they who have fought for Italy have only light and air in it."

This was too dangerously near the truth for rulers of Rome to listen to unmoved. At the end of his year of office Tiberius Gracchus was set on by a mob of senators and murdered. In 121 B.C.. his brother Gaius met the same fate.

After his murder, the popular cause languished until it found an eloquent spokesman in a Roman noble, Marcus Livius Drusus (elected Tribune 91 B.C.). By this time the hostility between Romans and allies (Italici) had become so intense that when Drusus declared himself in favour of the complete enfranchisement of all Italians the Senators were able to stir up the mob in Rome itself against him, and like the Gracchi brothers he was assassinated.

This was a blind act of folly, for the Allies blazed into rebellion in the "Social War" (91 - 88 B.C.), a struggle carried on with such passionate intensity that Rome, even when her generals gained the upper hand, was forced to yield to the rebels' demands, lest they should carry out their threat of forming an independent state. Thus the Italici south of the Po were duly enfranchised, though since they must still go to Rome to vote in the "comitia" this privilege was at the time more a sop to their pride than a political safeguard.

Marius.

If at home the Senate's hand was forced to act against its will by the Social War, overseas in North Africa its prestige had received a severe wound some years before. The trouble had originated with an African prince Jugurtha who, defying senatorial decrees, had made himself the independent ruler of Numidia.

In earlier years he had served in the Roman army in Spain and had also been in Rome itself, which he aptly described as "a city for sale.'' Ho proceeded to buy the Roman generals sent against him instead of fighting them, defying the republic until intense popular indignation led to the appointment of a certain Marius as Consul (107 B.C.).

Marius was of peasant birth but loyal, hard-headed and practical. Without more ado he embroiled regiments from the workless poor, drilled and paid them, and then, when he had brought his army to a high state of efficiency, led it against Jugurtha. The desultory seven years' war came to a prompt close, and Jugurtha, loaded with chains, was brought back in triumph to Rome.

Miarius also defeated the Cimbrians and Teutons, who were causing trouble in the north of Italy, and thus became the hero of the Roman populace. His rise to power opens up a last chapter in the history of the republic that has been called the stage of "One-Man rule"; but before we enter on this we must deal with the changing social conditions that made it possible.

Numbers of free peasants, we are told, helped the slaves set fire to their masters' villas at the time of the Sicilian rising. Landless themselves, through the creation of the slave-run "latifundia," there was no opening for them or their sons save in the army, where luck or courage during a foreign campaign might raise them to the moneyed class.

The Roman Legions

In all the history of republican Rome there is no more important change than this transformation of the national citizen levies, returning to harvest their fields when their campaigns were over, into the professional legions who made "war the national industry of the Roman republic."

This change originated first through the impossibility of holding down distant provinces such as Spain with a home militia. Men had to be enrolled for longer terms for foreign service. For this they received pay and booty, and also became disciplined and highly trained. In time they acquired "esprit de corps" and became devoted subjects, not so much of Rome as of the army, and later of their special legions.

The man who was more responsible than anyone else for creating the military professional was Marius, who proved himself a great organizer. It was he who improved the legions, increasing their number to 6,000, and dividing each into cohorts of 600, to whose mobility much of the Roman success on the battlefield was due. Its secret was discipline, and this discipline, interpreted as the loyalty of legions to their generals, was to become a deciding factor in Roman history.

After his defeat of Jugurtha, Marius was exceedingly popular in Rome. When therefore Mithridates, King of Pontus, began to give trouble in the East, he expected to be sent against him as Commander in-chief. Instead the Senate selected a. younger general, Sulla, at that time in the north of Italy.

The Roman people, enraged at this choice, vociferously demanded their old favourite, whereupon Sula at the bead of his legions marched south and insisted on his own nomination. "For the first time a Roman Consul took possession of the City by force."

It is true that directly he set out for the East the Romans elected his rival Consul in his place; but Marius soon died (86 B.C.) and, having made a triumphant peace with Mithridates, Sulla on his return easily defeated the citizen armies sent against him. In 82 B.C. he entered Rome as Dictator, proscribed his chief enemies and secured the passage of laws reducing the Tribunes and Popular Assembly to impotency. The Senate remained supreme, but it was merely a mask concealing the features of his "One-Man-Rule."

Pompey "the Fortunate" (d. 48 B.C.).

War with Mithridates soon broke out once more; and this time a young commander, Gnæus Pompeius, was sent against him. An able soldier, ho was often called "the Fortunate" because of his ability in reaping the credit of others' victories as well as of his own. Having cleared the Mediterranean of pirates who had infested the harbours and even held up to ransom Roman citizens whom they captured on the Appian Way, he became the darling of the populace, and on his return from the East was accorded a triumph.

This aroused the secret alarm and jealousy of the Senate, and Pompey, no politician him-self, looked round for help against their machinations. He found it in Crassus, a wealthy noble with ambitions but no real gift for leadership, and another budding statesman, Julius Caesar. These two agreed to stand as Consuls and carry through the great soldier's measures. Thus the First Triumvirate was formed, cemented by Pompey's marriage to Caesar's daughter Julia.

Julius Cæsar (d. 44 B.C.).

Julius Cæsar probably the most famous name in Roman history. His title as a supreme military genius is scarcely in dispute. Republican Rome, mistress of the civilized world from Spain to the Euphrates, was before his day perpetually at the mercy of the warring tribes along her northern frontier. While she was yet a small city-state the Gauls had penetrated to her Forum. As late as the days of Marius there was still the danger they might do the same.

By his conquest of the Gauls. Cæsar freed Rome from this fear; it has been said that through the pacification with which he followed up victory in the field, this land beyond the Alps, once the seat of barbarism, "was destined to remain the last repository of the Roman tradition."

"Julius Cæsar gave civilization a life of five further centuries before the dark curtain descended.''It is a big claim not to be denied by those who would paint the Gallic people as quiet inoffensive tribes "butchered to make a Roman holiday" for an ambitious politician. Cæsarian politics played their part, no doubt, in fomenting war; but so did the Gauls themselves, chafing restlessly beyond the Roman outposts in the dawn of that big movement, "the Wandering of the Peoples" from the Atlantic to the Chinese Wall.

The Gallic Wars.

It is impossible even to outline here campaigns that can be best read in detail in that contemporary political pamphlet the "Commentaries" (De Bello Gallico) of Cæsar himself. Suffice it to say that in the years 58 - 51 B.C. the new Governor of Gaul subdued what we now call France and Belgium from the Atlantic to the Rhine, making the name of Rome feared even in the distant island of Britain, visited by Cæsar himself in 54 B.C. That this was not the mere military walk-over of disciplined legions pitted against a rabble, we find in the heroic struggle of the Arvernian Chief, Vercingetorix.

There were times when it seemed that all the Romans had achieved and spent must be lost in the risings that would of a sudden flame across Gaul in slaughter and pillage. Only Cæsar's military genius and dogged persistence finally triumphed: and Vereingetorix, marched to the Forum not at the head of his army, but in chains.

Caesar as a Statesman.

Superb as a soldier, it is more difficult to estimate Julius Cæsar as a statesman. In city politics as leader of the democratic party (populares) as opposed to the aristocratic classes (Optimates) he knew how to keep his name before his following by judiciously bestowing the panem at circenses that they preferred to any reform of the comitia publica .

During the Sicilian War the first exhibition of gladiators had been held but later this combat of a few couples degenerated into miniature battles involving the deaths of hundreds of slaves and prisoners of war. Cæsar, humane and fastidious in his personal approach to life, accepted this public with its primitive blood-lust as he found it. For the more intelligent he wrote his military autobiography, deeming it well that his countrymen should learn the extent of his experience.

Crassus had died in the East, and now it was to be a duel between the former allies Pompey and Cæsar. Pompey had secured the Senate, and the Senate ordered Cæsar, who was in Cis-Alpine Gaul, to disband his legions and come to Rome as a private citizen. To comply meant the extinction of all his political ambitions, probably of his life, so Cæsar instead crossed the river Rubicon with his army and marched south, as Sulla had done before him - He drove Pompey and his Senators not only from Rome but out of Italy, and then, with the deadly swiftness of a hawk, struck down those who rose to resist him in Spain.

Pompey was in Greece, and at Pharsala, in Thessaly (48 B.C..), the rivals met, the once "fortunate" being utterly routed, so that he fled to Egypt only to be murdered on his landing there. His victor followed him, remaining some nine months with his headquarters at Alexandria. in thrall it was said to the charms of the young Queen Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolomies.

From Egypt Caesar passed to Asia Minor, sending back to Italy an account of his triumphs there in the well-known phrase Veni, Vidi, Vici - " I came, I saw, I conquered."

Master of the civilized world, he could on his return to Italy do as he chose with Rome and its Senate, or so it seemed to those such as Marcus Brutus who believed he intended to make himself a king. A conspiracy was hatched amongst many who had in early' days been his friends, and in March 44, just before he was starting on a campaign against Parthia, Caesar was murdered in the Forum, leaving unsolved the problem of how he would have "moulded the sorry scheme" of republican Rome "nearer to his heart's desire."

If any vision of kingship had really dazzled him it was Alexander's Hellenic Empire, bit set on a solid Roman foundation of well paved roads and provincial cities linked together in an organized system of local government. His mantle, both as soldiers and reformer, fell on the shoulders of his grand-nephew Octavian, a youth of 18, who with Marcus Antonius, his chief supporter, avenged his death on the conspirators at Philippi (42 B.C.).

Last Years of the Republic.

After Philippi, the Roman dominions were divided between the victors, Mark Antony departing to the East, and Octavian remaining in the West nominally as the servant of the Senate. A. man of tact, he soon persuaded that almost moribund body that the luxury and pomp maintained by Antony in Alexandria, where he was now the consort of Cleopatra, were a menace to the republic's authority.

Once more civil war broke out, and at Actium, on the coast of Greece, the rivals met (31 B.C..) in what was a battle both by sea and land. The fortunes of the day began to come against Antony, and Cleopatra, who was with the fleet, persuaded him to seek safety in flight, thus bringing their cause to hopeless ruin. Later, as both realized their fate would be to grace Octavian's triumph, they committed suicide, and the heir of Cæsar was left master of the Roman dominions. But he battle of Actium marks more than this mastery, or than the fall of Antony and the Ptolomies It is the line drawn between Republic and Empire, and between the Ancient World of the West and the medieval .

Incidentally, for the first time for two hundred years, Rome was at peace with the world.

ROME IN HER GREATNESS

Augustus Cæsar (d. A.D.14). - Octavian had marched against Marcus Antonius as the servant of the Senate; and now on his return, while the crowds in the streets were still hymning his victory as though he were a god, he quietly surrendered his command into the hands of those who had bestowed it.

In this assumption of humility lay a gift of conciliation that the great Julius had lacked. The Senate, secretly aware of its own fatuity, was anxious merely to retain the trappings of power. In 27 B.C. it created a Principiate with Octavian as Princeps (First Citizen). He was also elected Tribune and confirmed in his "imperium," or supreme military command. The special title of August was bestowed on him; and as Augustus Caesar, first Emperor (imperator), his name lives in history.

The Government of Augustus.

The Republic on its administrative side had been not merely corrupt but badly planned, lacking the centralized purpose that under Darius the Great had so successfully directed from Susa the affairs of the Persian satrapies. In the time of Augustus we can for the first time glimpse the law and order that our minds instantly connect with the word " ROME "

The Senate was still honoured and consulted, but its chief work now was merely to register imperial edicts. The emperor's law-courts, too, gradually drew into their net cases of vital importance to the state, creating in time a body of scientifically trained jurists, ready to supply their royal master with professional advice. In the words of Professor Barker, "it was the legal genius of Roman citizens - . . which gave to the Empire the framework and structure of its institutions."

This new government appeared to rest on the popularity of Augustus; but it was in point of fact a military conception. Behind its emperor stood massed the Legions, and in the Palace the cohorts of the Prætorian Guards, whose presence dominated the ordinary citizen and senator alike. Later, this pampered body of troops was to make and unmake emperors at will. Under Augustus it knew its royal master's voice, and enabled him to check the civic anarchy that had constantly disgraced republican Rome.

Augustus, a lover of peace, though his power rested on his imperium, made little or no attempt to push the boundaries of the Empire further than the Rhine and Danube in the North, or the Euphrates in the East.

Within those boundaries he travelled widely, like Alexander laying the foundations of imperial cities that were to be connected with his capital and civilized by well-laid Roman roads. It was during his reign that Lugudunum (Lyons) became the centre of three Gallic provinces and the second most important city of the world-empire

In the Provinces, where during the Republic annually-elected Consuls had been quite unable to control rapacious Governors, he now made those officials responsible to himself, removing any who displeased him, and advancing others who had carried out his will.

Except in Palestine, always irreconcilable to foreign domination, this one-man rule was not unpopular, for the Romans had learned the lesson of their Social War, and citizenship was granted to all who could pay the price, either in money or by service in the Roman Legions. Very proud was the Roman-born to be a son of this universal empire, loved as much for her even scales of justice as for her glory and wealth.

The Augustan Age.

Augustus boasted that he found Rome brick and left it marble. On the Palatine hill he built a palace with a colonnaded temple to Apollo, while below there arose Senate House and Law Courts, the Theatre of Marcellus, public baths, and obelisks brought from the East.

The fire of Nero's reign was to destroy much that had been erected; but the inspiration that made Rome a fitting capital for her mighty Empire came from the first of her Emperors.

On the Palatine, alongside the royal palace and Apollo's temple, was an immense library, for Augustus the architect was also a patron of Learning. Under Greek influence Roman culture had steadily developed. Julius Cæsar himself had deigned to be an historian, and during her last years the Republic had numbered many distinguished men of letters amongst her citizens. The chief of these was Cicero (d. 43 B.C.), the orator and letter-writer who, in the Latin prose he had perfected, wrote of the literary studies he pursued. "they increase happiness in good fortune, they are in affliction a consolation and refuge; they give us joy at home, and they do not hamper us abroad: they tarry with us at night-time and go forth with us to the countryside."

Cicero was a believer in republican ideals, and had shrunk from what he guessed were Julius Cæsar's monarchical ambitions; but those who succeeded him as leaders of the cultured world during the first years of the Empire were steeped in its glory and in admiration for its founder.

It was a period of great public joy and confidence (it may be compared in that respect with the Periclean and Elizabethan Ages), and men researched amid the legends of a past Rome to find the promise of her present triumphs.

Livy the historian (d. A.D. 17) composed on his 142 rolls of papyrus a wonderful piece of Latin literature devoted to the wholly inaccurate fortunes of his city from the earliest times; while Virgil the poet (d. 19 B.C.) delved back as far as the Homeric tales to rescue the "Pius Æneas" from a burning Troy and send him forth, the hero of his Æneid, to found an even mightier city among the Latin hills.

Virgil was born at Mantua, and was a lover of the countryside as well as of war and adventure. In his "Georgics" his aim "was to describe with realistic fidelity, and to surround with an atmosphere of poetry, the annual round of labour in which the Italian yeoman's life was passed."
Another poet of this age was Horace (d. 8 B.C.), author of the "Odes," who also wrote "satires" on the life of Rome in his day. Though he had been a republican, supporting Brutus at Philippi, he took advantage of the amnesty offered later and allowed himself to be won over to the new regime by Maecenas, the friend of Augustus and wealthy patron of men- of- letters.

The Julian Emperors

The Emperors who followed Augustus and claimed to be of the same Julian line either by birth or adoption were

Tiberius, Caius Caligula, Claudius, and Nero.

Of these Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) and Claudius were both able rulers who enriched Rome with fine buildings. Claudius (A.D. 41-54) visited Britain and made the southern part of that island a province of the Empire. He added Thrace to Roman Greece, and at home built two huge aqueducts by which fresh water was brought from the hills into the city.

During the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68) a large part of the new magnificent Rome was burnt to the ground. It is more likely that the Emperor tried to extinguish the flames than fiddled; for, if a Bohemian, he was no fool, and had shown promise at first of doing credit to his wise tutor, Seneca the Stoic.
An exaggerated belief in his own gifts as a star performer in the arena and theatre, and an insatiable appetite for admiration turned him from a well meaning young man into a vicious monster, responsible for the deaths of his mother, wife, and a number of the leading senators, as well as of many of the Christians in Rome, whom he accused of incendiarism

When a revolution against his tyranny proved successful he took his own life reluctantly, saving:
"What an artist dies in me! "With these words, not before it was time, the curtain rang down on the tragedy of the House of Julian.

The Flavian Emperors.

Out of civil war emerged a Flavian dynasty from the provinces in the person of the rough soldier Vespasian (A.D. 69-79) and his sons Titus and Domitian.

Titus (A.D. 79-81) conquered Palestine, which had blazed into revolt, and took Jerusalem after a prolonged siege. The Temple was sacked and the golden candlesticks carried away to grace his triumph.
The Golden Age of the Empire.
To the period stretching from the accession of Nerva (A.D.. 96-98) to the death of Marcus Aurelius has been given the title "Golden Age"
During the reign of Trajan (x.r. 98-117) the legions advanced the boundaries of the empire to their widest extent, incorporating Dacia (Roumania) and in the Orient even gaining temporary possession of Armenia, which had been long disputed with the Parthians.

Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), came to Britain and built a wall from Tyne to Solway as a protection against Picts and Scots. He also completed the line of fortifications begun by Trajan from Rhine to Danube, ever the weakest section of Rome's northern frontier. Such measures restored to the Empire the prestige it had enjoyed under Augustus.
"Be it thine, oh Roman, to govern the nations with thy imperial rule."
So Virgil had sung, and if the gloomy historian Tacitus (d. A.D. 120), contrasted unfavorably Roman corruption with the simple customs of the Teuton tribes massing beyond the northern outposts, an ordinary citizen realized that in all the world before his day there had been no counterpart to the peace and prosperity he saw about him.

To-day we can still see part of Trajan's Forum and walk past Hadrian's tomb in his fortress by the Tiber, now the Castle of St. Angelo. The greatest monument of this reign is, however, the Pantheon with its huge concrete dome.

The Pont du Card, near Nimes, in southern France, was built by Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161), and has aroused the admiration of each succeeding generation. Its three tiers of massive stone arches reach a height of 160 feet.

In literature, apart from Tacitus, the chief names are those of Plutarch (d. A.D. 120) whose "lives" of great men were to inspire Shakespeare's dramas: Pliny the elder, scientist and author of the encyclopedic "Natural History," and his nephew Pliny the younger (d. A.D. 113), Governor of Bythinia, who corresponded with the Emperor Trajan on the vexed question of what to do with obstinate Christians.

THE DECLINE OF ROME
The Emperor Diocletian (A.D 284-305).

One reason why Rome, which had seemed immortal, fell at last was that the Barbarians in overwhelming numbers were knocking at the gates not only of her northern frontiers but of those in the East as well. Here the Parthians had been conquered by the Sassanids, who made their capital at Ctesiphon, on the Tigris. This new Persia. as it expanded westwards, proved a very dangerous rival to Rome.

The Emperor Diocletian was forced to establish his headquarters at Nicomedia in Asia Minor, and to deal with imperial business in the West he appointed a joint Emperor to rule at Milan. He also settled that to avoid disputed successions each "Augustus" would choose a "Cæsar" as his legal heir to step into his shoes on his death.

This was an indication of the future division of the Empire into East and West, though the intention of Diocletian had been merely to make a workable government. He saw that the Sassanid dynasty was, through its absolute authority, in a very strong military position, arid so he proceeded to "orientalize" his own empire. Up till this time the shadowy dignity of the Senate had always received a certain "lip service." Diocletian brushed such sentiment aside, the fiction of Roman democracy ceased, and Rome herself lost her privileged position and became subject to the same scale of taxation as other provincial cities.
Government of the Later Roman Empire

Under Diocletian with his fellow Augustus at Milan and two Cæsars, each surrounded by a Court and army of officials, the burden of bureaucracy became alarmingly heavy; and there were even ominous whispers that the State might go bankrupt. Her principal source of revenue was a land-tax, whose collection was left to the curiæ (local councils), each being assessed by the government at a certain sum. Since they were unable to compel local magnates to pay their share, these tax-collectors exacted the amount from their poorer neighbours, giving rise to the saying, "so many curiales, so many robbers." In the fifth century we read, "the name of Roman citizen formerly so highly valued . - is now regarded with abomination."

Many of the curiales, themselves oppressed and overburdened, took to brigandage, or voluntarily surrendered their freedom to become dependents of some neighbouring lord's villa. These villas were entirely self. sufficing, since between the labours of freemen and slaves they provided their inhabitants with all the food, drink, and clothing they required. In type they bore a strong resemblance to the fiefs of an earlier Egyptian or later medieval stage of civilization.

In Rome and other large cities the proletariat had been increasing steadily, since it was continually swollen by deserters from the decaying land-system. The greater part, unable as in republican times to compete with slave labour, existed mainly on free distributions of corn, and was kept from exhibiting violent discontent by gladiatorial shows. Some idea of the crowds that would turn out to watch the latest spectacle can be pictured from the size of the Coloseum, the big amphitheatre built by Vespasian .

The worst symptom of this declining Rome was that scarcely any of her citizens, rich or poor, wished for the radical reforms in organization and economy that could alone have saved her.

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

The Goths .-The Goths were on friendly terms with the Roman Empire, and their savagery was mitigated by contact with Roman culture. They began to imitate Roman institutions and customs, and many of them became converted to (Arian) Christianity- They were driven from their homes north of the Danube by the invasion of the Huns, and sought protection from the Eastern Emperor, Valens, who grudgingly allowed them to occupy the province of Dacia. Starvation and misery led the Goths to rebel against the emperor, and at last they formed an army, and met and defeated the Imperial forces at Adrianople in 378, Valens himself being slain.

The battle of Adrianople was a smashing blow to the Eastern Empire, but worse was to befall in the west, for in 410 a great host of the Visigoths came sweeping across the Alps and bearing down upon Rome. Their leader was Alaric, most competent of Barbarian generals, and he led his men into the city with scarcely a blow. Alaric would not allow indiscriminate slaughter or looting; he was no savage, nor were the Visigoths mere destroyers, like the Huns. When. Jerome (St.) heard of the sack of Rome he exclaimed "that city is subdued which subdued the world," and lamented the happening as though the end of the world were at hand.

Soon after his triumph, Alaric died, and his successors moved westwards into Gaul and Spain. The Visigoths founded the kingdom of Toulouse, which merged into the Frankish kingdom during the sixth century, and others made their homes in Spain, choosing Toledo for their capital, until they were conquered by the Mohammedans.

In Eastern Europe, the East Goths, under their famous ruler Theodoric (493-526), allied with the Vandals, and established their dominion over north-eastern Italy. Theodoric was a most enlightened and civilized man, and he proved himself a far-seeing ruler in combating the rising power of the Franks.

Vandals, Burgundians and Alemanni.

Meanwhile, the Vandals who had settled in Spain, crossed over to Africa, and founded an Empire on the northern coast, which was ultimately destroyed by Justinian (521 - 565). The Vandals developed their sea power, and conquered many of the Mediterranean islands; they were pirates by temperament and choice, and were less amenable to civilization than their Gothic neighbours.

The Burgundians moved (c. 440) into the lands to which they have given their name the later Duchy and County of Burgundy, while the Alemanni occupied lands north and south of the Rhine which they had just left. All these migrations were caused by the Huns, who were rapidly pushing their way westward, destroying as they came.

The Huns under Attila.

The invasions of the Huns were the greatest danger civilization had yet known, for they were the worst type of all Barbarians, ignorant, destructive, and inhumanly cruel.

In the year 451 the Huns under Attila swept into Gaul, ravaging the country as they went, and making their way as far as Orleans, which they unsuccessfully besieged. The Franks, the Goths and the Burgundians allied with the remnants of the Roman armies under a Roman general, in a desperate effort to answer this challenge to civilization. The Huns were defeated at Chàlons-sur-Marne, and forced to withdraw from Gaul. They turned their attention to Italy, and ravaged the country round Aquileia. In 453, when Attila died, their power ebbed away.

Europe had been threatened with the destruction of all civilization, just as she would again be threatened by the Mongol hordes in the thirteenth century, but this alliance between Romans and Romanized barbarians had averted the danger. Roman provincials like Apollinaris Sidonius might complain that the Burgundians were vulgar fellows who greased their hair with rancid butter, but there could be no doubt that Roman culture was influencing those who had conquered Rome