The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

Hitherto the Roman people had been noble, honourable, pious, upright, and illustrious. Their subsequent actions in this age, as they were equally grand, so were they more turbulent and dishonourable, their vices increasing with the very greatness of their empire. So that if any one divides this third age, which was occupied in conquest beyond the sea, and which we have made to consist of two hundred years, into two equal parts, he will allow, with reason and justice, that the first hundred years, in which they subdued Africa, Macedonia, Sicily, and Spain, were (as the poets sing) golden years; and that the other hundred, which to the Jugurthine, Cimbrian, Mithridatic, and Parthian wars, as well as those of Gaul and Germany, (in which the glory of the Romans ascended to heaven,) united the murders of the Gracchi and Drusus, the Servile War and (that nothing might be wanting in their infamy) the war with the gladiators, were iron, blood-stained, and whatever more severe can be said of them. Turning at last upon themselves, the Romans, as if in a spirit of madness, and fury, and impiety, tore themselves in pieces by the dissensions of Marius and Sulla, and afterwards by those of Pompey and Cæsar.e Such was the destructive, but not glorious work, which earned for Scipio the name of Numantinus, as the ruin of Carthage had given him a better title than adoption to that of Africanus.

Commissioners were sent, according to custom, to reorganise the Spanish provinces. The conquests of Scipio and of Dec. Brutus were comprehended in the limits of the hither province, and for some years Spain remained in tranquillity.

There was no enemy now left on the coast lands of the Mediterranean to dispute the sovereignty of Rome. Nine provinces, each fit to be a kingdom, owned her sway, and poured yearly taxes into her revenue. The kings of Asia Minor, of Syria, of Egypt, were her obedient vassals.

FIRST SLAVE WAR IN SICILY

[134-133 B.C.]

While Numantia was yet defying the Roman generals, a war broke out near home of a more dreadful kind than any distant contest with foreigners could be—the insurrection of the slaves in Sicily. Some remarks have already been made on the rapid increase in the number of slaves which attended the career of Roman conquest; and it was observed that, while domestic slaves usually were well treated, the agricultural slaves were thrust down to a condition worse than that of the oxen which laboured on the land. The evils which such oppression might engender were now proved by terrible experience.

Every one knows that in the early times of Rome the work of the farm was the only kind of manual labour deemed worthy of a free citizen. This feeling long survived, as may be seen from the praise bestowed on agriculture by Cicero, whose enthusiasm was caught from one of his favourite heroes, old Cato the censor, whose Treatise on Agriculture has been noticed. The taste for books on farming continued. Varro the antiquarian, a friend of Cicero, has left an excellent treatise on the subject. A little later came the famous Georgics of Virgil, followed at no long interval by Pliny’s notices, and then by the elaborate Dissertations of Columella, who refers to a great number of Roman writers on the same subject. It is manifest that the subject of agriculture possessed a strong and enduring charm for the Roman mind.

But, from the times of the Hannibalic War, agriculture lost ground in Italy. When Cato was asked what was the most profitable kind of farming, he said, “Good grazing.” What next? “Tolerable grazing.” What next? “Bad grazing.” What next? “Corn-growing.” Later writers, with one accord, deplore the diminished productiveness of land.

This result was due in part, no doubt, to war, but much more to other causes. Corn could be imported with facility from the southern lands of Sicily, from Egypt, and from Numidia, while a great part of Italy was little suited for the production of grain-crops. These causes found a powerful assistant in the growth of large estates, and the profitable employment of slaves as shepherds and herdsmen.

A few examples will show the prodigious number of slaves that must have been thrown into the market after the Second Punic War. To punish the Bruttians for the fidelity with which they adhered to the cause of Hannibal, the whole nation were made slaves; 150,000 Epirots were sold by Æmilius Paulus; fifty thousand captives were sent home from Carthage. These numbers are accidentally preserved; and if, according to this scale, we calculate the hosts of unhappy men sold into slavery during the Syrian, Macedonian, Illyrian, Grecian, and Spanish wars, we shall be prepared to hear that slaves fit only for unskilled labour were plentiful and cheap.