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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The Grecian states submitted to various and multiplied acts of oppression, without a struggle. The government which retained the longest a portion of the spirit of ancient times, was the Achæan. In their treatment of Achaia, the Romans, although they had gained over to their interests several of the Achæan chiefs, were obliged to proceed with great circumspection, lest the destruction of their own creatures should defeat their designs. They endeavoured to trace some vestiges of a correspondence between the Achæan body and the late king of Macedon; and when no such vestiges could be found, they determined that fiction should supply the place of evidence. Caius Claudius, and Cneius Domitius Ahenobarbus, were sent as commissioners from Rome, to complain that some of the first men of Achaia had acted in concert with Macedon. At the same time they required, that all who were in such a predicament should be sentenced to death: promising that, after a decree for that purpose should be enacted, they would produce the names of the guilty. “Where,” exclaimed the assembly, “would be the justice of such a proceeding? First name the persons you accuse, and make good your charge.” “I name, then,” said the commissioner, “all those who have borne the office of chief magistrate of Achaia, or been the leaders of your armies.” “In that case,” answered Xenon, an Achæan nobleman, “I too shall be accounted guilty, for I have commanded the armies of Achaia; and yet I am ready to prove my innocence, either here, or before the senate of Rome.” “You say well,” replied one of the Roman commissioners, laying hold on his last words, “let the senate of Rome then be the tribunal before which you shall answer.”
A decree was framed for this end, and above a thousand Achæan chiefs were transported into Italy, a hundred and sixty-seven years before Christ.f Among these was Polybius,b who afterwards became famous as the historian of the Roman Conquest, and whose work, though preserved only in fragments beyond the fifth book of the original forty, is the chief reliable source of information regarding some of the events of the period we have just considered. Had fortune spared us the later books of Polybius, our knowledge of the history of the Leagues would have been far different from what it is; for this Greek of the “degenerate” Hellenistic age is universally admitted to be the most philosophical and reliable of all historical writers among his countrymen of any age, Thucydides alone excepted. We shall see more of his work when we come to the history of the Punic wars, where he is again the chief authority.a
FOOTNOTES
[48] [Freemani comparing the two great Leagues says: “The political conduct of the Achæan League with some mistakes and some faults, is, on the whole, highly honourable. The political conduct of the Ætolian League is, throughout the century in which we know it best, simply infamous.”]
[49] [Freemani praises Marcus of Cerynea, as the probable founder or “Washington of the original League,” though obscured later by Aratus.]
[50] [Freemani calls Aratus “the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer” of the League and bitterly compares his surrender of Corinth with Cavour’s delivery of Savoy and Nice to Napoleon III.]
[51] [“This infamous action,” says Polybius,b “was not for some time discovered to the world; for the poison was not of that kind which procures immediate death; but was one of those which weaken the habit of the body, and destroy life by slow degrees. Aratus himself was very sensible of the injury that he had received. ‘Such, Cephalo,’ he said to a favourite servant, ‘is the reward of the friendship which I have had for Philip.’ So great and excellent a thing is moderation, which disposed the sufferer, and not the author of the injury, to feel the greatest shame when he found that all the glorious actions which he had shared with Philip, in order to promote the service of that prince, had been at last so basely recompensed.
“Such was the end of this magistrate, who received after his death, not from his own country alone, but from the whole republic of the Achæans, all the honours that were due a man who had so often held the administration of their government, and performed such signal services for the State. For they decreed sacrifices to him, with the other honours that belong to heroes, and, in a word, omitting nothing that could serve to render his name immortal.”]
The Plain of Argos
CHAPTER LXIV. THE FINAL DISASTERS
The condition of Achaia during this period of the Roman dominion, from B.C. 172 to 152, was peculiar and is very obscure. The government was in a very sad condition; Callicrates and Andronidas tyrannised over the Achæans, although they had no followers, and although the people were so enraged against the former that he was publicly hissed, and everybody shunned him. “He is a man who stands forth branded in every respect with everlasting infamy; he was never invited by a Greek either to dinner or to a wedding;” but still it was impossible to change the direction he gave to the state. “He was regarded as a demon, whose existence could not be controlled.” No consideration was shown towards foreign powers; it was a state of utter inactivity and leisure, but at the same time of material prosperity. Commerce and agriculture were thriving, as is mentioned several times by Polybius; the taxes were not very heavy, the laws were suited to the circumstances, and hence it was a period of general material well-being. But at the same time, it is evident that the number of regular marriages decreased immensely, and consequently that of persons who were born citizens also; it was just the same as towards the end of the Roman Republic and under the Roman emperors, when people generally lived in concubinage. It was a deplorable condition.
There was not a trace of intellectual life; literature no longer existed, except that a few philosophers still lived at Athens. Poetry was confined to little poems, and was cultivated in Asia more than in Peloponnesus; the new comedy had entirely died away. In spite of the material prosperity, nothing was done for the arts and for monuments. The Achæans preserved the Greek name until the end, but the Romans need not have been jealous of them. There were still some places to be subdued to complete the supremacy of Rome, as Carthage, for example; and so long as that city existed, the Romans turned their eyes towards those who might be an obstacle to their subduing those places.
[156-150 B.C.]
At the middle of the second century B.C., Achaia embraced the whole of Peloponnesus; it must have extended its dominion even beyond it, for not to mention Megara, which had belonged to it before, it now also comprised Pleuron and Calydon, which were originally Ætolian towns, but are called both Ætolian and Achæan. In general people had become accustomed to the Achæan League; Sparta alone bore the connection reluctantly.