[Illustration] YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME. BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, AUTHOR OF "THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE, " "BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS, " "YOUNG FOLKS'HISTORY OF FRANCE, " &c. [Illustration] BOSTON: ESTES & LAURIAT, 301 WASHINGTON STREET. COPYRIGHT BY D. LOTHROP & CO. And ESTES & LAURIAT. 1880. PREFACE. This sketch of the History of Rome covers the period till the reign ofCharles the Great as head of the new Western Empire. The history hasbeen given as briefly as could be done consistently with such details ascan alone make it interesting to all classes of readers. CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE. 1. --Italy 13 2. --The Wanderings of Æneas 21 3. --The Founding of Rome. B. C. 753-713 31 4. --Numa and Tullus. B. C. 713-618 39 5. --The Driving Out of the Tarquins. B. C. 578-309 47 6. --The War with Porsena 55 7. --The Roman Government 66 8. --Menenius Agrippa's Fable. B. C. 494 74 9. --Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. B. C. 458 84 10. --The Decemvirs. B. C. 450 92 11. --Camillus' Banishment 101 12. --The Sack of Rome. B. C. 390 110 13. --The Plebeian Consulate. B. C. 367 119 14. --The Devotion of Decius. B. C. 357 127 15. --The Samnite Wars 135 16. --The War with Pyrrhus. 280-271 144 17. --The First Punic War. 264-240 151 18. --Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 240-219 163 19. --The Second Punic War. 219 172 20. The First Eastern War. 215-183 181 21. --The Conquest of Greece, Corinth, and Carthage. 179-145 188 22. --The Gracchi. 137-122 195 23. --The Wars of Marius. 106-98 203 24. --The Adventures of Marius. 93-84 212 25. --Sulla's Proscription. 88-71 220 26. --The Career of Pompeius. 70-63 229 27. --Pompeius and Cæsar. 61-48 242 28. --Julius Cæsar. 48-44 252 29. --The Second Triumvirate. 44-33 263 30. --Cæsar Augustus. B. C. 33 A. D. 14 273 31. --Tiberius and Caligula. A. D. 14-41 285 32. --Claudius and Nero. A. D. 41-68 297 33. --The Flavian Family. 62-96 305 34. --The Age of the Antonines. 96-194 317 35. --The Prætorian Influence. 197-284 326 36. --The Division of the Empire. 284-312 337 37. --Constantine the Great. 312-337 345 38. --Constantius. 337-364 355 39. --Valentinian and his Family. 364-392 364 40. --Theodosius the Great. 392-395 374 41. --Alaric the Goth. 395-410 383 42. --The Vandals. 403 394 43. --Attila the Hun. 435-457 404 44. --Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 457-561 416 45. --Belisarius. 533-563 425 46. --Pope Gregory the Great. 563-800 434 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Pope's Doortender. (_Frontispiece. _) PAGE. The Tiber 14 Curious Pottery 15 Jupiter 17 The Coast 23 Mount Etna 25 Carthage 28 Roman Soldier 30 Gladiatorial Shows at a Banquet 34 The Forum 37 Janus 41 Actors 45 Sybil's Cave 50 Brutus condemning his sons 57 Roman Ensigns, Standards, Trumpets etc. 63 Head of Jupiter 68 Female Costumes 70 Female Costumes 71 Senatorial Palace 79 View of a Roman Harbor 81 Roman Camp 87 Ploughing 89 Death of Virginia 95 Chariot Races 98 Arrow Machine 102 Siege Machine 105 Ruins of the Forum at Rome 111 Entry of the Forum Romanum by the Via Sacra 117 Costumes 120 Costume 121 Curtius leaping into the Gulf 125 The Apennines 129 Combat between a Mirmillo and a Samnite 137 Combat between a light armed Gladiator and a Samnite 137 Ancient Rome 141 Pyrrhus 145 Roman Orator 147 Roman Ship 153 Roman Order of Battle 159 The wounded Gaul 165 Hannibal's Vow 168 In the Pyrenees 170 Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama 173 Archimedes 178 Hannibal 184 Corinth 190 Cornelia and her Sons 196 Roman Centurion 201 Marius 205 One of the Trophies, called of Marius, at the Capitol at Rome 207 The Catapult 215 Island on the Coast 217 Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 223 Cornelius Sulla 225 Coast of Tyre 231 Mountains of Armenia 235 Cicero 238 Colossal Statue of Pompeius of thePalazzo Spada of Rome 239 Pompeius 243 Amphitheatre 246 The Arena 247 Julius Cæsar 253 Cato 254 Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium ofthe House of Julius Cæsar at thePorta Capena in Rome 255 Marcus Antonius 265 Marcus Brutus 268 Alexandria 270 Caius Octavius 272 Statue of Augustus at the Vatican 275 Paintings in the House of Livia 281 Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius 287 Agrippina 290 Rome in the time of Augustus Cæsar 293 Claudius 298 Nero 301 Arch of Titus 308 Vesuvius previous to the Eruption of A. D. 63 311 Persecution of the Christians 314 Coin of Nero 316 Temple of Antoninus and Faustina 319 Marcus Aurelius 325 Septimus Severus 327 Antioch 328 Alexander Severus 329 Temple of the Sun at Palmyra 332 The Catacombs at Rome 333 Coin of Severus 336 Diocletian 338 Diocletian in Retirement 341 Constantine the Great 343 Constantinople 347 Council of Nicea 349 Catacombs 352 Julian 357 Arch of Constantine 361 Alexandria 365 Goths 367 Convent on the Hills 372 Julian Alps 375 Roman Hall of Justice 377 Colonnades of St. Peter at Rome 385 Alaric's Burial 391 Roman Clock 396 Spanish Coast 398 Vandals plundering 401 Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt 403 Hunnish Camp 405 St. Mark's, Venice 409 The Pope's House 413 Romulus Augustus resigns the Crown 419 Illustration 423 Naples 427 Constantinople 429 Pope Gregory the Great 435 The Pope's Pulpit 437 Battle of Tours 441 [Illustration] YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME. CHAPTER I. ITALY. I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world. Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into theMediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out ofthe Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land, shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy. Round the streams that flowed down from these hills, valleys of fertilesoil formed themselves, and a great many different tribes and peopletook up their abode there, before there was any history to explain theircoming. Putting together what can be proved about them, it is plain, however, that most of them came of that old stock from which the Greeksdescended, and to which we belong ourselves, and they spoke a languagewhich had the same root as ours and as the Greek. From one of thesenations the best known form of this, as it was polished in later times, was called Latin, from the tribe who spoke it. [Illustration: THE TIBER. ] About the middle of the peninsula there runs down, westward from theApennines, a river called the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven lowhills, which recede as it approaches the sea. One, in especial, calledthe Palatine Hill, rose separately, with a flat top and steep sides, about four hundred yards from the river, and girdled in by the othersix. This was the place where the great Roman power grew up frombeginnings, the truth of which cannot now be discovered. [Illustration: CURIOUS POTTERY. ] There were several nations living round these hills--the Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins being the chief. The homes of these nations seem tohave been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines, where theyhad farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill whichthey had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refugeif their enemies attacked them. The Etruscans built very mighty walls, and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well. Many oftheir works remain to this day, and, in especial, their monuments havebeen opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned withfigures of himself, half lying, half sitting; also curious pottery inred and black, from which something of their lives and ways is to bemade out. They spoke a different language from what has become Latin, and they had a different religion, believing in one great Soul of theWorld, and also thinking much of rewards and punishments after death. But we know hardly anything about them, except that their chiefs werecalled Lucumos, and that they once had a wide power which they had lostbefore the time of history. The Romans called them Tusci, and Tuscanystill keeps its name. The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like theGreeks. There were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southernparts of Italy, and they learnt something from them. They had a greatmany gods. Every house had its own guardian. These were called Lares, orPenates, and were generally represented as little figures of dogs lyingby the hearth, or as brass bars with dogs' heads. This is the reasonthat the bars which close in an open hearth are still called dogs. Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by pouring outwine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he keptfigures; for these natives thought much of their families, and all onefamily had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius, the daughters only changing it by making it end in _a_ instead of_us_, and the men having separate names standing first, such asMarcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguishthem. [Illustration: JUPITER] Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood itsfaun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates werededicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god offruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops weresolemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the oldlegends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy therewas a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his ownhandiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this timeevery year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves wereall allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wildsports and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturnwas mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring, and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time'sscythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened intoJupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek timeswas supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with theLatin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and, in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greektales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but onlyafterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of theirgods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious andfanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to theGreeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer, more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever, thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now callsterling stuff in them. At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language, and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which issaid to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster oflittle villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples inthe forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells forhis worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, thegod of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there werethe Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the Cælian, and the Quirinal. The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen, when they formed themselves into an army and made war on theirneighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosingall the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free fromhouses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for. The history of these people was not written till long after they hadgrown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up manyGreek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards, andworked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and customsthey found among them, and the tales they told were formed into a greathistory by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these stories whichevery one used to believe to be really history; so we will tell themfirst, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil. CHAPTER II. THE WANDERINGS OF ÆNEAS. You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how Priam andall his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a prince calledÆneas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother wassaid to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the city was lost, herushed back to his house, and took his old father Anchises on his back, giving him his Penates, or little images of household gods, to take careof, and led by the hand his little son Iulus, or Ascanius, while hiswife Creusa followed close behind, and all the Trojans who could gettheir arms together joined him, so that they escaped in a body to MountIda; but just as they were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, andthough he rushed back and searched for her everywhere, he never couldfind her. For the sake of his care for his gods, and for his old father, he is always known as the pious Æneas. In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough to set forth with allhis followers in quest of the new home which his mother, the goddessVenus, gave him hopes of. He had adventures rather like those of Ulyssesas he sailed about the Mediterranean. Once in the Strophades, someclusters belonging to the Ionian Islands, when he and his troops hadlanded to get food, and were eating the flesh of the numerous goatswhich they found climbing about the rocks, down on them came theharpies, horrible birds with women's faces and hooked hands, with whichthey snatched away the food and spoiled what they could not eat. TheTrojans shot at them, but the arrows glanced off their feathers and didnot hurt them. However, they all flew off except one, who sat on a highrock, and croaked out that the Trojans would be punished for thusmolesting the harpies by being tossed about till they should reachItaly, but there they should not build their city till they should havebeen so hungry as to eat their very trenchers. [Illustration: THE COAST. ] They sailed away from this dismal prophetess, and touched on the coastof Epirus, where Æneas found his cousin Helenus, son to old Priam, reigning over a little new Troy, and married to Andromache, Hector'swife, whom he had gained after Pyrrhus had been killed. Helenus was aprophet, and gave Æneas much advice. In especial he said that when theTrojans should come to Italy, they would find, under the holly-trees bythe river side, a large white old sow lying on the ground, with a litterof thirty little pigs round her, and this should be a sign to themwhere they were to build their city. By his advice the Trojans coasted round the south of Sicily, instead oftrying to pass the strait between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, andjust below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came running down to the beachbegging to be taken in. He was a Greek, who had been left behind whenUlysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had made his way to theforests, where he had lived ever since. They had just taken him in whenthey saw Cyclops coming down, with a pine tree for a staff, to wash theburning hollow of his lost eye in the sea, and they rowed off in greatterror. [Illustration: MOUNT ETNA. ] Poor old Anchises died shortly after, and while his son was stillsorrowing for him, Juno, who hated every Trojan, stirred up a terribletempest, which drove the ships to the south, until, just as the seabegan to calm down, they came into a beautiful bay, enclosed by tallcliffs with woods overhanging them. Here the tired wanderers landed, and, lighting a fire, Æneas went in quest of food. Coming out of theforest, they looked down from a hill, and beheld a multitude of peoplebuilding a city, raising walls, houses, towers, and temples. Into one ofthese temples Æneas entered, and to his amazement he found the wallssculptured with all the story of the siege of Troy, and all his friendsso perfectly represented, that he burst into tears at the sight. Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whole troop of nymphs, cameinto the temple. This lady was Dido; her husband, Sichæus, had been kingof Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant tohave married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyriansand all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast ofAfrica. There she begged of the chief of the country as much land ascould be enclosed by a bullock's hide. He granted this readily; andDido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed tomeasure off with it ground enough to build the splendid city which shehad named Carthage. She received Æneas most kindly, and took all his meninto her city, hoping to keep them there for ever, and make him herhusband. Æneas himself was so happy there, that he forgot all his plansand the prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse himto fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call; and Dido was so wretched athis departure that she caused a great funeral pile to be built, laidherself on the top, and stabbed herself with Æneas' sword; the pile wasburnt, and the Trojans saw the flame from their ships without knowingthe cause. [Illustration: CARTHAGE. ] By-and-by Æneas landed at a place in Italy named Cumæ. There dwelt oneof the Sybils. These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had endowed withdeep wisdom; and when Æneas went to consult the Cumæan Sybil, she toldhim that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to learn his fate. First, however, he had to go into a forest, and find there and gather agolden bough, which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. Longhe sought it, until two doves, his mother's birds, came flying beforehim to show him the tree where gold gleamed through the boughs, and hefound the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe grows on the thorn. Guarded with this, and guided by the Sybil, after a great sacrifice, Æneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, roundwhich flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, andwhom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sybil, however, made him take Æneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of ahuman body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sybil threw him acake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while Æneas passedon and found in myrtle groves all who had died for love, among them, tohis surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the homeof the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. Hepassed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysianfields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spiritof his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of alltheir descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of theirname. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote towhom we owe all the tale of the wanderings of Æneas, namely, Virgil, whowrote the _Æneid_, whence all these stories are taken. He further tellsus that Æneas landed in Italy just as his old nurse Caiëta died, at theplace which is still called Gaëta. After they had buried her, they founda grove, where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large roundcakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating upthe cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, "We are eating our very tables;"and Æneas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings wereover. [Illustration: ROMAN SOLDIER. ] CHAPTER III. THE FOUNDING OF ROME. B. C. 753--713. Virgil goes on to tell at much length how the king of the country, Latinus, at first made friends with Æneas, and promised him his daughterLavinia in marriage; but Turnus, an Italian chief who had before been asuitor to Lavinia, stirred up a great war, and was only captured andkilled after much hard fighting. However, the white sow was found in theright place with all her little pigs, and on the spot was founded thecity of Alba Longa, where Æneas and Lavinia reigned until he died, andhis descendants, through his two sons, Ascanius or Iulus, and ÆneasSilvius, reigned after him for fifteen generations. The last of these fifteen was Amulius, who took the throne from hisbrother Numitor, who had a daughter named Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin. In Greece, the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta was tended by good men, but in Italy it was the charge of maidens, who were treated with greathonor, but were never allowed to marry under pain of death. So there wasgreat anger when Rhea Silvia became the mother of twin boys, and, moreover, said that her husband was the god Mars. But Mars did not saveher from being buried alive, while the two babes were put in a trough onthe waters of the river Tiber, there to perish. The river had overflowedits banks, and left the children on dry ground, where, however, theywere found by a she-wolf, who fondled and fed them like her ownoffspring, until a shepherd met with them and took them home to hiswife. She called them Romulus and Remus, and bred them up as shepherds. When the twin brothers were growing into manhood, there was a fightbetween the shepherds of Numitor and Amulius, in which Romulus and Remusdid such brave feats that they were led before Numitor. He enquired intotheir birth, and their foster-father told the story of his finding them, showing the trough in which they had been laid; and thus it became plainthat they were the grandsons of Numitor. On finding this out, theycollected an army, with which they drove away Amulius, and brought theirgrandfather back to Alba Longa. They then resolved to build a new city for themselves on one of theseven low hills beneath which ran the yellow river Tiber; but they werenot agreed on which hill to build, Remus wanting to build on theAventine Hill, and Romulus on the Palatine. Their grandfather advisedthem to watch for omens from the gods, so each stood on his hill andwatched for birds. Remus was the first to see six vultures flying, butRomulus saw twelve, and therefore the Palatine Hill was made thebeginning of the city, and Romulus was chosen king. Remus was affronted, and when the mud wall was being raised around the space intended for thecity, he leapt over it and laughed, whereupon Romulus struck him dead, crying out, "So perish all who leap over the walls of my city. " [Illustration: GLADIATORIAL SHOWS AT A BANQUET] Romulus traced out the form of the city with the plough, and made italmost a square. He called the name of it Rome, and lived in the midstof it in a mud-hovel, covered with thatch, in the midst of about fiftyfamilies of the old Trojan race, and a great many young men, outlaws andrunaways from the neighboring states, who had joined him. The date ofthe building of Rome was supposed to be A. D. 753; and theRomans counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from theOlympiads, marking the date A. U. C. , _anno urbis conditæ_, theyear of the city being built. The youths who joined Romulus could notmarry, as no one of the neighboring nations would give his daughter toone of these robbers, as they were esteemed. The nearest neighbors toRome were the Sabines, and the Romans cast their eyes in vain on theSabine ladies, till old Numitor advised Romulus to proclaim a greatfeast in honor of Neptune, with games and dances. All the people in thecountry round came to it, and when the revelry was at its height each ofthe unwedded Romans seized on a Sabine maiden and carried her away tohis own house. Six hundred and eighty-three girls were thus seized, andthe next day Romulus married them all after the fashion ever afterobserved in Rome. There was a great sacrifice, then each damsel wastold, "Partake of your husband's fire and water;" he gave her a ring, and carried her over his threshold, where a sheepskin was spread, toshow that her duty would be to spin wool for him, and she became hiswife. [Illustration: THE FORUM. ] Romulus himself won his own wife, Hersilia, among the Sabines on thisoccasion; but the nation of course took up arms, under their kingTatius, to recover their daughters. Romulus drew out his troops intoCampus Martius, or field of Mars, just beneath the Capitol, or greatfort on the Saturnian Hill, and marched against the Sabines; but whilehe was absent, Tarpeia, the daughter of the governor of the little forthe had left on the Saturnian Hill, promised to let the Sabines in oncondition they would give her what they wore on their left arms, meaningtheir bracelets; but they hated her treason even while they tookadvantage of it, and no sooner were they within the gate than theypelted her with their heavy shields, which they wore on their left arms, and killed her. The cliff on the top of which she died is still calledthe Tarpeian rock, and criminals were executed by being thrown from thetop of it. Romulus tried to regain the Capitol, but the Sabines rolleddown stones on the Romans, and he was stunned by one that struck him onthe head; and though he quickly recovered and rallied his men, thebattle was going against him, when all the Sabine women, who had beennearly two years Roman wives, came rushing out, with their littlechildren in their arms and their hair flying, begging their fathers andhusbands not to kill one another. This led to the making of a peace, andit was agreed that the Sabines and Romans should make but one nation, and that Romulus and Tatius should reign together at Rome. Romulus livedon the Palatine Hill, Tatius on the Tarpeian, and the valley between wascalled the Forum, and was the market-place, and also the spot where allpublic assemblies were held. All the chief arrangements for war andgovernment were believed by the Romans to have been laws of Romulus. However, after five years, Tatius was murdered at a place calledLavinium, in the middle of a sacrifice, and Romulus reigned alone tillin the middle of a great assembly of his soldiers outside the city, astorm of thunder and lightning came on, and every one hurried home, butthe king was nowhere to be found; for, as some say, his father Mars hadcome down in the tempest and carried him away to reign with the gods, while others declared that he was murdered by persons, each of whomcarried home a fragment of his body that it might never be found. Itmatters less which way we tell it, since the story of Romulus was quiteas much a fable as that of Æneas; only it must be remembered as theRomans themselves believed it. They worshipped Romulus under the name ofQuirinus, and called their chief families Quirites, both words comingfrom _ger_ (a spear); and the she-wolf and twins were the favoritebadge of the empire. The Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, and the Forum allstill bear the same names. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. NUMA AND TULLUS. B. C. It was understood between the Romans and the Sabines that they shouldhave by turns a king from each nation, and, on the disappearance ofRomulus, a Sabine was chosen, named Numa Pompilius, who had been marriedto Tatia, the daughter of the Sabine king Tatius, but she was dead, andhad left one daughter. Numa had, ever since her death, been going aboutfrom one grove or fountain sacred to the gods to another offering upsacrifices, and he was much beloved for his gentleness and wisdom. Therewas a grove near Rome, in a valley, where a fountain gushed forth fromthe rock; and here Egeria, the nymph of the stream, in the shade of thetrees, counselled Numa on his government, which was so wise that helived at peace with all his neighbors. When the Romans doubted whetherit was really a goddess who inspired him, Egeria convinced them, for thenext time he had any guests in his house, the earthenware plates withhomely fare on them were changed before their eyes into golden disheswith dainty food. Moreover, there was brought from heaven a bronzeshield, which was to be carefully kept, since Rome would never fallwhile it was safe. Numa had eleven other shields like it made and hungin the temple of Mars, and, yearly, a set of men dedicated to the officebore them through the city with songs and dances. Just as all warlikecustoms were said to have been invented by Romulus, all peaceful andreligious ones were held to have sprung from Numa and his Egeria. He wassaid to have fixed the calendar and invented the names of the months, and to have built an altar to Good Faith to teach the Romans to keeptheir word to one another and to all nations, and to have dedicated thebounds of each estate to the Dii Termini, or Landmark Gods, in whosehonor there was a feast yearly. He also was said to have had such powerwith Jupiter as to have persuaded him to be content without receivingsacrifices of men and women. In short, all the better things in theRoman system were supposed to be due to the gentle Numa. At the gate called Janiculum stood a temple to the watchman god Janus, whose figure had two faces, and held the keys, and after whom was namedthe month January. His temple was always open in time of war, and closedin time of peace. Numa's reign was counted as the first out of onlythree times in Roman history that it was shut. [Illustration: JANUS. ] Numa was said to have reigned thirty-eight years, and then he graduallyfaded away, and was buried in a stone coffin outside the Janicular gate, all the books he had written being, by his desire, buried with him. Egeria wept till she became a fountain in her own valley; and so endedwhat in Roman faith answered to the golden age of Greece. The next king was of Roman birth, and was named Tullus Hostilius. He wasa great warrior, and had a war with the Albans until it was agreed thatthe two cities should join together in one, as the Romans and Sabineshad done before; but there was a dispute which should be the greatercity in the league and it was determined to settle it by a combat. Ineach city there was a family where three sons had been born at a birth, and their mothers were sisters. Both sets were of the same age--fineyoung men, skilled in weapons; and it was agreed that the six shouldfight together, the three whose family name was Horatius on the Romanside, the three called Curiatius on the Alban side, and whichever setgained the mastery was to give it to his city. They fought in the plain between the camps, and very hard was the strifeuntil two of the Horatii were killed and all the three Curiatii werewounded, but the last Horatius was entirely untouched. He began to run, and his cousins pursued him, but at different distances, as one was lesshindered by his wound than the others. As soon as the first came up. Horatius slew him, and so the second and the third: as he cut down thislast he cried out, "To the glory of Rome I sacrifice thee. " As the Albanking saw his champion fall, he turned to Tullus Hostilius and asked whathis commands were. "Only to have the Alban youth ready when I needthem, " said Tullus. A wreath was set on the victor's head, and, loaded with the spoil of theCuriatii, he was led into the city in triumph. His sister came hurryingto meet him; she was betrothed to one of the Curiatii, and was in agonyto know his fate; and when she saw the garment she had spun for himhanging blood-stained over her brother's shoulders, she burst into loudlamentations. Horatius, still hot with fury, struck her dead on thespot, crying, "So perish every Roman who mourns the death of an enemy ofhis country. " Even her father approved the cruel deed, and would notbury her in his family tomb--so stern were Roman feelings, putting thehonor of the country above everything. However, Horatius was broughtbefore the king for the murder, and was sentenced to die; but the peopleentreated that their champion might be spared, and he was only made topass under what was called the yoke, namely, spears set up like adoorway. Tullus Hostilius gained several victories over his neighbors, but he washarsh and presuming, and offended the gods, and, when he was using somespell such as good Numa had used to hold converse with Jupiter, theangry god sent lightning and burnt up him and his family. The peoplethen chose Ancus Martins, the son of Numa's daughter, who is said tohave ruled in his grandfather's spirit, though he could not avoid warswith the Latins. The first bridge over the Tiber, named the Sublician, was said to have been built by him. In his time there came to Rome afamily called Tarquin. Their father was a Corinthian, who had settled inan Etruscan town named Tarquinii, whence came the family name. He wassaid to have first taught writing in Italy, and, indeed, the Romanletters which we still use are Greek letters made simpler. His eldestson, finding that because of his foreign blood he could rise to nohonors in Etruria, set off with his wife Tanaquil, and their little sonLucius Tarquinius, to settle in Rome. Just as they came in sight ofRome, an eagle swooped down from the sky, snatched off little Tarquin'scap, and flew up with it, but the next moment came down again and put itback on his head. On this Tanaquil foretold that her son would be agreat king, and he became so famous a warrior when he grew up, that, asthe children of Ancus were too young to reign at their father's death, he was chosen king. He is said to have been the first Roman king whowore a purple robe and golden crown, and in the valley between thePalatine and Aventine Hills he made a circus, where games could be heldlike those of the Greeks; also he placed stone benches and stalls forshops round the Forum, and built a stone wall instead of a mud one roundthe city. He is commonly called Tarquinus Priscus, or the elder. [Illustration: ACTORS] There was a fair slave girl in his house, who was offering cakes to Lar, the household spirit, when he appeared to her in bodily form. When shetold the king's mother, Tanaquil, she said it was a token that he wantedto marry her, and arrayed her as a bride for him. Of this marriagethere sprang a boy called Servius Tullus. When this child lay asleep, bright flames played about his head, and Tanaquil knew he would begreat, so she caused her son Tarquin to give him his daughter inmarriage when he grew up. This greatly offended the two sons of AncusMartius, and they hired two young men to come before him aswood-cutters, with axes over their shoulders, pretending to have aquarrel about some goats, and while he was listening to their cause theycut him down and mortally wounded him. He had lost his sons, and hadonly two baby grandsons, Aruns and Tarquin, who could not reign as yet;but while he was dying, Tanaquil stood at the window and declared thathe was only stunned and would soon be well. This, as she intended, sofrightened the sons of Ancus that they fled from Rome; and ServiusTullus, coming forth in the royal robes, was at once hailed as king byall the people of Rome, being thus made king that he might protect hiswife's two young nephews, the two little Tarquins. CHAPTER V. THE DRIVING OUT OF THE TARQUINS. B. C. 578--309. Servius Tullus was looked on by the Romans as having begun making theirlaws, as Romulus had put their warlike affairs in order, and Numa hadsettled their religion. The Romans were all in great clans or families, all with one name, and these were classed in tribes. The nobler ones, who could count up from old Trojan, Latin, or Sabine families, werecalled Patricians--from _pater_, a father--because they were fathers ofthe people; and the other families were called Plebeian, from _plebs_, the people. The patricians formed the Senate or Council of Government, and rode on horseback in war, while the plebeians fought on foot. Theyhad spears, round shields, and short pointed swords, which cut on eachside of the blade. Tullus is said to have fixed how many men of eachtribe should be called out to war. He also walled in the city again witha wall five miles round; and he made many fixed laws, one being thatwhen a man was in debt his goods might be seized, but he himself mightnot be made a slave. He was the great friend of the plebeians, and firstestablished the rule that a new law of the Senate could not be madewithout the consent of the Comitia, or whole free people. The Sabines and Romans were still striving for the mastery, and ahusbandman among the Sabines had a wonderfully beautiful cow. An oracledeclared that the man who sacrificed this cow to Diana upon the AventineHill would secure the chief power to his nation. The Sabine drove thecow to Rome, and was going to kill her, when a crafty Roman priest toldhim that he must first wash his hands in the Tiber, and while he wasgone sacrificed the cow himself, and by this trick secured the rule toRome. The great horns of the cow were long after shown in the temple ofDiana on the Aventine, where Romans, Sabines, and Latins every yearjoined in a great sacrifice. The two daughters of Servius were married to their cousins, the twoyoung Tarquins. In each pair there was a fierce and a gentle one. Thefierce Tullia was the wife of the gentle Aruns Tarquin; the gentle Tullahad married the proud Lucius Tarquin. Aruns' wife tried to persuade herhusband to seize the throne that had belonged to his father, and when hewould not listen to her, she agreed with his brother Lucius that, whilehe murdered her sister, she should kill his brother, and then that theyshould marry. The horrid deed was carried out, and old Servius, seeingwhat a wicked pair were likely to come after him, began to consider withthe Senate whether it would not be better to have two consuls ormagistrates chosen every year than a king. This made Lucius Tarquin themore furious, and going to the Senate, where the patricians hated theking as the friend of the plebeians, he stood upon the throne, and wasbeginning to tell the patricians that this would be the ruin of theirgreatness, when Servius came in and, standing on the steps of thedoorway, ordered him to come down. Tarquin sprang on the old man andhurled him backward, so that the fall killed him, and his body was leftin the street. The wicked Tullia, wanting to know how her husband hadsped, came out in her chariot on that road. The horses gave back beforethe corpse. She asked what was in their way; the slave who drove hertold her it was the king's body. "Drive on, " she said. The horrid deedcaused the street to be known ever after as "Sceleratus, " or the wicked. But it was the plebeians who mourned for Servius; the patricians intheir anger made Tarquin king, but found him a very hard and cruelmaster, so that he is generally called Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquinthe proud. In his time the Sybil of Cumæ, the same wondrous maiden ofdeep wisdom who had guided Æneas to the realms of Pluto, came, bringingnine books of prophecies of the history of Rome, and offered them to himat a price which he thought too high, and refused. She went away, destroyed three, and brought back the other six, asking for them doublethe price of the whole. He refused. She burnt three more, and broughthim the last three with the price again doubled, because the fewer theywere, the more precious. He bought them at last, and placed them in theCapitol, whence they were now and then taken to be consulted as oracles. [Illustration: SYBIL'S CAVE. ] Rome was at war with the city of Gabii, and as the city was not to besubdued by force, Tarquin tried treachery. His eldest son, SextusTarquinius, fled to Gabii, complaining of ill-usage of his father, andshowing marks of a severe scourging. The Gabians believed him, and hewas soon so much trusted by them as to have the whole command of thearmy and manage everything in the city. Then he sent a messenger to hisfather to ask what he was to do next. Tarquin was walking through acornfield. He made no answer in words, but with a switch cut off theheads of all the poppies and taller stalks of corn, and bade themessenger tell Sextus what he had seen. Sextus understood, andcontrived to get all the chief men of Gabii exiled or put to death, andwithout them the city fell an easy prey to the Romans. Tarquin sent his two younger sons and their cousin to consult the oracleat Delphi, and with them went Lucius Junius, who was called Brutusbecause he was supposed to be foolish, that being the meaning of theword; but his folly was only put on, because he feared the jealousy ofhis cousins. After doing their father's errand, the two Tarquins askedwho should rule Rome after their father. "He, " said the priestess, "whoshall first kiss his mother on his return. " The two brothers agreed thatthey would keep this a secret from their elder brother Sextus, and, assoon as they reached home, both of them rushed into the women's rooms, racing each to be the first to embrace their mother Tullia; but at thevery entrance of Rome Brutus pretended to slip, threw himself on theground and kissed his Mother Earth, having thus guessed the rightmeaning of the answer. He waited patiently, however, and still was thought a fool when the armywent out to besiege the city of Ardea; and while the troops wereencamped round it, some of the young patricians began to dispute whichhad the best wife. They agreed to put it to the test by galloping latein the evening to look in at their homes and see what their wives wereabout. Some were idling, some were visiting, some were scolding, somewere dressing, some were asleep; but at Collatia, the farm of another ofthe Tarquin family, thence called Collatinus, they found his beautifulwife Lucretia among her maidens spinning the wool of the flocks. Allagreed that she was the best of wives; but the wicked Sextus Tarquinonly wanted to steal her from her husband, and going by night toCollatia, tried to make her desert her lord, and when she would notlisten to him he ill-treated her cruelly, and told her that he shouldaccuse her to her husband. She was so overwhelmed with grief and shamethat in the morning she sent for her father and husband, told them allthat that happened, and saying that she could not bear life after beingso put to shame, she drew out a dagger and stabbed herself before theireyes--thinking, as all these heathen Romans did, that it was better todie by one's own hand than to live in disgrace. Lucius Brutus had gone to Collatia with his cousin, and while Collatinusand his father-in-law stood horror-struck, he called to them to revengethis crime. Snatching the dagger from Lucretia's breast, he galloped toRome, called the people together in the Forum, and, holding up thebloody weapon in his hand, he made them a speech, asking whether theywould any longer endure such a family of tyrants. They all rose as oneman, and choosing Brutus himself and Collatinus to be their leaders, asthe consuls whom Servius Tullus had thought of making, they shut thegates of Rome, and would not open them when Tarquin and his sons wouldhave returned. So ended the kingdom of Rome. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE WAR WITH PORSENA. From the time of the flight of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by twoconsuls, who wore all the tokens of royalty except the crown. Tarquinfled into Etruria, whence his grandfather had come, and thence tried toobtain admission into Rome. The two young sons of Brutus and the nephewsof Collatinus were drawn into a plot for bringing them back again, andon its discovery were brought before the two consuls. Their guilt wasproved, and their father sternly asked what they had to say in theirdefence. They only wept, and so did Collatinus and many of the senators, crying out, "Banish them, banish them. " Brutus, however, as if unmoved, bade the executioners do their office. The whole Senate shrieked to heara father thus condemn his own children, but he was resolute, andactually looked on while the young men were first scourged and thenbeheaded. Collatinus put off the further judgment in hopes to save his nephews, and Brutus told them that he had put them to death by his own power as afather, but that he left the rest to the voice of the people, and theywere sent into banishment. Even Collatinus was thought to have actedweakly, and was sent into exile--so determined were the Romans to haveno one among them who would not uphold their decrees to the utmost. Tarquin advanced to the walls and cut down all the growing corn aroundthe Campus Martius and threw it into the Tiber; there it formed a heapround which an island was afterwards formed. Brutus himself and hiscousin Aruns Tarquin soon after killed one another in single combat in abattle outside the walls, and all the women of Rome mourned for him asfor a father. Tarquin found a friend in the Etruscan king called Lars Porsena, whobrought an army to besiege Rome and restore him to the throne. Headvanced towards the gate called Janiculum upon the Tiber, and drove theRomans out of the fort on the other side the river. The Romans thenretreated across the bridge, placing three men to guard it until allshould be gone over and it could be broken down. [Illustration: BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS. ] There stood the brave three--Horatius, Lartius, and Herminius--guardingthe bridge while their fellow-citizens were fleeing across it, three menagainst a whole army. At last the weapons of Lartius and Herminius werebroken down, and Horatius bade them hasten over the bridge while itcould still bear their weight. He himself fought on till he was woundedin the thigh, and the last timbers of the bridge were falling into thestream. Then spreading out his arms, he called upon Father Tiber toreceive him, leapt into the river and swam across amid a shower ofarrows, one of which put out his eye, and he was lame for life. A statueof him "halting on his thigh" was set up in the temple of Vulcan, and hewas rewarded with as much land as one yoke of oxen could plough in aday, and the 300, 000 citizens of Rome each gave him a day's provision ofcorn. Porsena then blockaded the city, and when the Romans were nearlystarving he sent them word that he would give them food if they wouldreceive their old masters; but they made answer that hunger was betterthan slavery, and still held out. In the midst of their distress, ayoung man named Caius Mucius came and begged leave of the consuls tocross the Tiber and go to attempt something to deliver his country. Theygave leave, and creeping through the Etruscan camp he came into theking's tent just as Porsena was watching his troops pass by in fullorder. One of his counsellors was sitting beside him so richly dressedthat Mucius did not know which was king, and leaping towards them, hestabbed the counsellor to the heart. He was seized at once and draggedbefore the king, who fiercely asked who he was, and what he meant bysuch a crime. The young man answered that his name was Caius Mucius, and that he wasready to do and dare anything for Rome. In answer to threats of torture, he quietly stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flamethat burnt in a brazier close by, holding it there without a sign ofpain, while he bade Porsena see what a Roman thought of suffering. Porsena was so struck that he at once gave the daring man his life, hisfreedom, and even his dagger; and Mucius then told him that threehundred youths like himself had sworn to have his life unless he leftRome to her liberty. This was false, but both the lie and the murderwere for Rome's sake; they were both admired by the Romans, who heldthat the welfare of their city was their very first duty. Mucius couldnever use his right hand again, and was always called Scævola, or theLeft-handed, a name that went on to his family. Porsena believed the story, and began to make peace. A truce was agreedon, and ten Roman youths and as many girls were given up to theEtruscans as hostages. While the conferences were going on, one of theRoman girls named Clelia forgot her duty so much as to swim home acrossthe river with all her companions; but Valeria, the consul's daughter, was received with all the anger that breach of trust deserved, and herfather mounted his horse at once to take the party back again. Just asthey reached the Etruscan camp, the Tarquin father and brothers, and awhole troop of the enemy, fell on them. While the consul was fightingagainst a terrible force, Valeria dashed on into the camp and called outPorsena and his son. They, much grieved that the truce should have beenbroken, drove back their own men, and were so angry with the Tarquins asto give up their cause. He asked which of the girls had contrived theescape, and when Clelia confessed it was herself, he made her a presentof a fine horse and its trappings, which she little deserved. This Valerius was called Publicola, or the people's friend. He died ayear or two later, after so many victories that the Romans honored himamong their greatest heroes. Tarquin still continued to seek supportamong the different Italian nations, and again attacked the Romans withthe help of the Latins. The chief battle was fought close to LakeRegillus; Aulus Posthumius was the commander, but Marcus Valerius, brother to Publicola, was general of the horse. He had vowed to build atemple to Castor and Pollux if the Romans gained the victory; and in thebeginning of the fight, two glorious youths of god-like stature appearedon horseback at the head of the Roman horse and fought for them. It wasa very hard-fought battle. Valerius was killed, but so was TitusTarquin, and the Latin force was entirely broken and routed. That sameevening the two youths rode into the Forum, their horses dripping withsweat and their weapons bloody. They drew up and washed themselves at afountain near the temple of Vesta, and as the people crowded round theytold of the great victory, and while one man named Domitius doubted ofit, since the Lake Regillus was too far off for tidings to have come sofast, one of them laid his hand on the doubter's beard and changed itin a moment from black to copper color, so that he came to be calledDomitius Ahenobarbus, or Brazen-beard. Then they disappeared, and thenext morning Posthumius' messenger brought the news. The Romans had nodoubt that these were indeed the glorious twins, and built their temple, as Valerius had vowed. [Illustration: ROMAN ENSIGNS, STANDARDS, TRUMPETS ETC. ] Tarquin had lost all his sons, and died in wretched exile at Cumæ. Andhere ends what is looked on as the legendary history of Rome, for thoughmost of these stories have dates, and some sound possible, there is somuch that is plainly untrue mixed up with them, that they can only belooked on as the old stories which were handed down to account for theRoman customs and copied by their historians. CHAPTER VII. THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT. So far as true history can guess, the Romans really did have kings anddrove them out, but there are signs that, though Porsena was a realking, the war was not so honorable to the Romans as they said, for hetook the city and made them give up all their weapons to him, leavingthem nothing but their tools for husbandry. But they liked to forgettheir misfortunes. The older Roman families were called patricians, or fathers, and thoughtall rights to govern belonged to them. Settlers who came in later werecalled plebeians, or the people, and at first had no rights at all, forall the land belonged to the patricians, and the only way for theplebeians to get anything done for them was to become hangers-on--or, asthey called it, clients--of some patrician who took care of theirinterests. There was a council of patricians called the Senate, chosenamong themselves, and also containing by right all who had been chiefmagistrates. The whole assembly of the patricians was called theComitia. They, as has been said before, fought on horseback, while theplebeians fought on foot; but out of the rich plebeians a body wasformed called the knights, who also used horses, and wore gold ringslike the patricians. [Illustration: HEAD OF JUPITER. ] But the plebeians were always trying not to be left out of everything. By and by, they said under Servius Tullius, the city was divided intosix quarters, and all the families living in them into six tribes, eachof which had a tribune to watch over it, bring up the number of its men, and lead them to battle. Another division of the citizens, bothpatrician and plebeian, was made every five years. They were all countedand numbered and divided off into centuries according to their wealth. Then these centuries, or hundreds, had votes, by the persons they chose, when it was a question of peace or war. Their meeting was called theComitia; but as there were more patrician centuries than plebeian ones, the patricians still had much more power. Besides, the Senate and allthe magistrates were in those days always patricians. These magistrateswere chosen every year. There were two consuls, who were like kings forthe time, only that they wore no crowns; they had purple robes, and satin chairs ornamented with ivory, and they were always attended bylictors, who carried bundles of rods tied round an axe--the first forscourging, the second for beheading. There were under them two prætors, or judges, who tried offences; two quæstors, who attended to the publicbuildings; and two censors, who had to look after the numbering andregistering of the people in their tribes and centuries. The consuls ingeneral commanded the army, but sometimes, when there was a great need, one single leader was chosen and was called dictator. Sometimes adictator was chosen merely to fulfil an omen, by driving a nail into thehead of the great statue of Jupiter in the Capitol. Besides these, allthe priests had to be patricians; the chief of all was called PontifexMaximus. Some say this was because he was the _fax_ (maker) of_pontes_ (bridges), as he blessed them and decided by omens wherethey should be; but others think the word was Pompifex, and that he wasthe maker of pomps or ceremonies. There were many priests as well asaugurs, who had to draw omens from the flight of birds or the appearanceof sacrifices, and who kept the account of the calendar of lucky andunlucky days, and of festivals. [Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES. ] The Romans were a grave religious people in those days, and did notcount their lives or their affections dear in comparison with theirduties to their altars and their hearths, though their notions of dutydo not always agree with ours. Their dress in the city was a whitewoollen garment edged with purple--it must have been more like in shapeto a Scottish plaid than anything else--and was wrapped round so as toleave one arm free: sometimes a fold was drawn over the head. No onemight wear it but a free-born Roman, and he never went out on publicbusiness without it, even when more convenient fashions had been copiedfrom Greece. Those who were asking votes for a public office wore itwhite (_candidus_), and therefore were called candidates. The consulshad it on great days entirely purple and embroidered, and all senatorsand ex-magistrates had broader borders of purple. The ladies wore a longgraceful wrapping-gown; the boys a short tunic, and round their neckswas hung a hollow golden ball called a _bulla_, or bubble. When a boywas seventeen, there was a great family sacrifice to the Lares and theforefathers, his bulla was taken off, the toga was put on, and he wasenrolled by his own prænomen, Caius or Lucius, or whatever it might be, for there was only a choice of fifteen. After this he was liable to becalled out to fight. A certain number of men were chosen from each tribeby the tribune. It was divided into centuries, each led by a centurion;and the whole body together was called a legion, from _lego_, tochoose. In later times the proper number for a legion was 6000 men. Eachlegion had a standard, a bar across the top of the spear, with theletters on it S P Q R--_Senatus, Populus Que Romanus_--meaning the RomanSenate and People, a purple flag below and a figure above, such as aneagle, or the wolf and twins, or some emblem dear to the Romans. Thelegions were on foot, but the troops of patricians and knights onhorseback were attached to them and had to protect them. [Illustration: FEMALE COSTUMES. ] The Romans had in those days very small riches, they held in generalsmall farms in the country, which they worked themselves with the helpof their sons and slaves. The plebeians were often the richest. They tooheld farms leased to them by the state, and had often small shops inRome. The whole territory was so small that it was easy to come intoRome to worship, attend the Senate, or vote, and many had no houses inthe city. Each man was married with a ring and sacrifice, and the ladywas then carried over the threshold, on which a sheepskin was spread, and made mistress of the house by being bidden to be Caia to Caius. TheRoman matrons were good and noble women in those days, and the highestpraise of them was held to be _Domum mansit, lanam fecit_--she stayedat home and spun wool. Each man was absolute master in his own house, and had full power over his grown-up sons, even for life or death, andthey almost always submitted entirely. For what made the Romans so greatwas that they were not only brave, but they were perfectly obedient, andobeyed as perfectly as they could their fathers, their officers, theirmagistrates, and, as they thought, their gods. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. MENENIUS AGRIPPA'S FABLE. B. C. 494. A great deal of the history of Rome consists of struggles between thepatricians and plebeians. In those early days the plebeians were oftenpoor, and when they wanted to improve their lands they had to borrowmoney from the patricians, who not only had larger lands, but, as theywere the officers in war, got a larger share of the spoil. The Roman lawwas hard on a man in debt. His lands might be seized, he might be throwninto prison or sold into slavery with his wife and children, or, if thecreditors liked, be cut to pieces so that each might take his share. One of these debtors, a man who was famous for bravery as a centurion, broke out of his prison and ran into the Forum, all in rags and withchains still hanging to his hands and feet, showing them to hisfellow-citizens, and asking if this was just usage of a man who had doneno crime. They were very angry, and the more because one of the consuls, Appius Claudius, was known to be very harsh, proud and cruel, as indeedwere all his family. The Volscians, a tribe often at war with them, broke into their land at the same time, and the Romans were called toarms, but the plebeians refused to march until their wrongs wereredressed. On this the other consul, Servilius, promised that a lawshould be made against keeping citizens in prison for debt or makingslaves of their children; and thereupon the army assembled, marchedagainst the enemy, and defeated them, giving up all the spoil to histroops. But the senate, when the danger was over, would not keep itspromises, and even appointed a Dictator to put the plebeians down. Thereupon they assembled outside the walls in a strong force, and weregoing to attack the patricians, when the wise old Menenius Agrippa wassent out to try to pacify them. He told them a fable, namely, that onceupon a time all the limbs of a man's body became disgusted with theservice they had to render to the belly. The feet and legs carried itabout, the hands worked for it and carried food to it, the mouth atefor it, and so on. They thought it hard thus all to toil for it, andagreed to do nothing for it--neither to carry it about, clothe it, norfeed it. But soon all found themselves growing weak and starved, andwere obliged to own that all would perish together unless they went onwaiting on this seemingly useless belly. So Agrippa told them that allranks and states depended on one another, and unless all worked togetherall must be confusion and go to decay. The fable seems to have convincedboth rich and poor; the debtors were set free and the debts forgiven. And though the laws about debts do not seem to have been changed, another law was made which gave the plebeians tribunes in peace as wellas war. These tribunes were always to be plebeians, chosen by their ownfellows. No one was allowed to hurt them during their year of office, onpain of being declared accursed and losing his property; and they hadthe power of stopping any decision of the senate by saying solemnly, _Veto_, I forbid. They were called tribunes of the people, while theofficers in war were called military tribunes; and as it was on the MonsSacer, or Sacred Mount, that this was settled, these laws were calledthe _Leges Sacrariæ_. An altar to the Thundering Jupiter was built toconsecrate them: and, in gratitude for his management, Menenius Agrippawas highly honored all his life, and at his death had a public funeral. But the struggles of the plebeians against the patricians were not byany means over. The Roman land--Agri (acre), it was called--had at firstbeen divided in equal shares--at least so it was said--but as belongingto the state all the time, and only held by the occupier. As time wenton, some persons of course gathered more into their own hands, andothers of spendthrift or unfortunate families became destitute. Thenthere was an outcry that, as the lands belonged to the whole state, itought to take them all back and divide them again more equally: but thepatricians naturally regarded themselves as the owners, and would nothear of this scheme, which we shall hear of again and again by the nameof the Agrarian Law. One of the patricians, who had thrice been consul, by name Spurius Cassius, did all he could to bring it about, but thoughthe law was passed he could not succeed in getting it carried out. Thepatricians hated him, and a report got abroad that he was only gainingfavor with the people in order to get himself made king. This made eventhe plebeians turn against him as a traitor; he was condemned by thewhole assembly of the people, and beheaded, after being scourged by thelictors. The people soon mourned for their friend, and felt that theyhad been deceived in giving him up to their enemies. The senate wouldnot execute his law, and the plebeians would not enlist in the next war, though the senate threatened to cut down the fruit trees and destroy thecrops of every man who refused to join the army. When they wereabsolutely driven into the ranks, they even refused to draw their swordsin face of the enemy, and would not gain a victory lest their consulshould have the honor of it. [Illustration: SENATORIAL PALACE. ] This consul's name was Kæso Fabius. He belonged to a very clever, waryfamily, whose name it was said was originally _Foveus_ (ditch), becausethey had first devised a plan of snaring wolves in pits or ditches. Theywere thought such excellent defenders of the claims of the patriciansthat for seven years following one or other of the Fabii was chosenconsul. But by-and-by they began either to see that the plebeians hadrights, or that they should do best by siding with them, for they wentover to them; and when Kæso next was consul he did all he could to getthe laws of Cassius carried out, but the senate were furious withhim, and he found it was not safe to stay in Rome when his consulate wasover. So he resolved at any rate to do good to his country. TheEtruscans often came over the border and ravaged the country; but therewas a watch-tower on the banks of the little river Cremera, which flowsinto the Tiber, and Fabius offered, with all the men of his name--306 innumber, and 4000 clients--to keep guard there against the enemy. Forsome time they prospered there, and gained much spoil from theEtruscans; but at last the whole Etruscan army came against them, showing only a small number at first to tempt them out to fight, thenfalling on them with the whole force and killing the whole of them, sothat of the whole name there remained only one boy of fourteen who hadbeen left behind at Rome. And what was worse, the consul, TitusMenenius, was so near the army that he could have saved the Fabii, butfor the hatred the patricians bore them as deserters from their cause. [Illustration: VIEW OF A ROMAN HARBOR. ] However, the tribune Publilius gained for the plebeians that thereshould be five tribunes instead of two, and made a change in the mannerof electing them which prevented the patricians from interfering. Alsoit was decreed that to interrupt a tribune in a public speech deserveddeath. But whenever an Appius Claudius was consul he took his revenge, and was cruelly severe, especially in the camp, where the consul asgeneral had much more power than in Rome. Again the angry plebeianswould not fight, but threw down their arms in sight of the enemy. Claudius scourged and beheaded; they endured grimly and silently, knowing that when he returned to Rome and his consulate was over theirtribunes would call him to account. And so they did, and before all thetribes of Rome summoned him to answer for his savage treatment of freeRoman citizens. He made a violent answer, but he saw how it would gowith him, and put himself to death to avoid the sentence. So were theRomans proving again and again the truth of Agrippa's parable, thatnothing can go well with body or members unless each will be ready toserve the other. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. CORIOLANUS AND CINCINNATUS. B. C. 458. All the time these struggles were going on between the patricians andthe plebeians at home, there were wars with the neighboring tribes, theVolscians, the Veians, the Latins, and the Etruscans. Every spring thefighting men went out, attacked their neighbors, drove off their cattle, and tried to take some town; then fought a battle, and went home to reapthe harvest, gather the grapes and olives in the autumn, and attend topublic business and vote for the magistrates in the winter. They weresmall wars, but famous men fought in them. In a war against theVolscians, when Cominius was consul, he was besieging a city calledCorioli, when news came that the men of Antium were marching againsthim, and in their first attack on the walls the Romans were beaten off, but a gallant young patrician, descended from the king Ancus Marcius, Caius Marcius by name, rallied them and led them back with such spiritthat the place was taken before the hostile army came up; then he foughtamong the foremost and gained the victory. When he was brought to theconsul's tent covered with wounds, Cominius did all he could to show hisgratitude--set on the young man's head the crown of victory, gave himthe surname of Coriolanus in honor of his exploits, and granted him thetenth part of the spoil of ten prisoners. Of them, however, Coriolanusonly accepted one, an old friend of the family, whom he set at libertyat once. Afterwards, when there was a great famine in Rome, Coriolanusled an expedition to Antium, and brought away quantities of corn andcattle, which he distributed freely, keeping none for himself. But though he was so free of hand, Coriolanus was a proud, shy man, whowould not make friends with the plebeians, and whom the tribunes hatedas much as he despised them. He was elected consul, and the tribunesrefused to permit him to become one; and when a shipload of wheatarrived from Sicily, there was a fierce quarrel as to how it should bedistributed. The tribunes impeached him before the people forwithholding it from them, and by the vote of a large number of citizenshe was banished from Roman lands. His anger was great, but quiet. Hewent without a word away from the Forum to his house, where he tookleave of his mother Veturia, his wife Volumnia, and his little children, and then went and placed himself by the hearth of Tullus the Volscianchief, in whose army he meant to fight to revenge himself upon hiscountrymen. Together they advanced upon the Roman territory, and after ravaging thecountry threatened to besiege Rome. Men of rank came out and entreatedhim to give up this wicked and cruel vengeance, and to have pity on hisfriends and native city; but he answered that the Volscians were now hisnation, and nothing would move him. At last, however, all the women ofRome came forth, headed by his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia, each with a little child, and Veturia entreated and commanded her son inthe most touching manner to change his purpose and cease to ruin hiscountry, begging him, if he meant to destroy Rome, to begin by slayingher. She threw herself at his feet as she spoke, and his hard spiritgave way. "Ah! mother, what is it you do?" he cried as he lifted her up. "Thouhast saved Rome, but lost thy son. " [Illustration: ROMAN CAMP] And so it proved, for when he had broken up his camp and returned to theVolscian territory till the senate should recall him as they proceeded, Tullus, angry and disappointed, stirred up a tumult, and he was killedby the people before he could be sent for to Rome. A temple to "Women'sGood Speed" was raised on the spot where Veturia knelt to him. Another very proud patrician family was the Quinctian. The father, Lucius Quinctius, was called Cincinnatus, from his long flowing curls ofhair. He was the ablest man among the Romans, but stern and grave, andhis eldest son Kæso was charged by the tribunes with a murder and fledthe country. Soon after there was a great inroad of the Æqui andVolscians, and the Romans found themselves in great danger. They saw noone could save them but Cincinnatus, so they met in haste and chose himDictator, though he was not present. Messengers were sent to his littlefarm on the Tiber, and there they found him holding the stilts of theplough. When they told their errand, he turned to his wife, who washelping him, and said, "Racilia, fetch me my toga;" then he washed hisface and hands, and was saluted as Dictator. A boat was ready to takehim to Rome, and as he landed, he was met by the four-and-twenty lictorsbelonging to the two consuls and escorted to his dwelling. In themorning he named as general of the cavalry Lucius Tarquitius, a braveold patrician who had become too poor even to keep a horse. Marching outat the head of all the men who could bear arms, he thoroughly routed theÆqui, and then resigned his dictatorship at the end of sixteen days. Norwould he accept any of the spoil, but went back to his plough, his onlyreward being that his son was forgiven and recalled from banishment. [Illustration: PLOUGHING] These are the grand old stories that came down from old time, but howmuch is true no one can tell, and there is reason to think that, thoughthe leaders like Cincinnatus and Coriolanus might be brave, the Romanswere really pressed hard by the Volscians and Æqui, and lost a good dealof ground, though they were too proud to own it. No wonder, while thetwo orders of the state were always pulling different ways. However, thetribune Icilius succeeded in the year 454 in getting the Aventine Hillgranted to the plebeians; and they had another champion called LuciusSicinius Dentatus, who was so brave that he was called the RomanAchilles. He had received no less than forty-five wounds in differentfights before he was fifty-eight years old, and had had fourteen civiccrowns. For the Romans gave an oak-leaf wreath, which they called acivic crown, to a man who saved the life of a fellow-citizen, and amural crown to him who first scaled the walls of a besieged city. Andwhen a consul had gained a great victory, he had what was called atriumph. He was drawn in his chariot into the city, his victorioustroops marching before him with their spears waving with laurel boughs, a wreath of laurel was on his head, his little children sat with him inthe chariot, and the spoil of the enemy was carried along. All thepeople decked their houses and came forth rejoicing in holiday array, while he proceeded to the Capitol to sacrifice an ox to Jupiter there. His chief prisoners walked behind his car in chains, and at the momentof his sacrifice they were taken to a cell below the Capitol and thereput to death, for the Roman was cruel in his joy. Nothing was moredesired than such a triumph; but such was often the hatred between theplebeians and the patricians, that sometimes the plebeian army wouldstop short in the middle of a victorious campaign to hinder their consulfrom having a triumph. Even Sicinius is said once to have acted thus, and it began to be plain that Rome must fall if it continued to be thusdivided against itself. [Illustration] CHAPTER X. THE DECEMVIRS. B. C. 450. The Romans began to see what mischiefs their quarrels did, and theyagreed to send three of their best and wisest men to Greece to study thelaws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any of them could be put inforce at Rome. To get the new code of laws which they brought home put into workingorder, it was agreed for the time to have no consuls, prætors, nortribunes, but ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine Athenianarchons. They were called Decemvirs (_decem_, ten; _vir_, a man), and at their head was Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who hadkilled himself to avoid being condemned for his harshness. At first theygoverned well, and a very good set of laws was drawn up, which theRomans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but Appius soon began to giveway to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a warwith the Æqui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatussaid it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundredand twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudiussent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army thathe might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when headvised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, andsent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretchesinstructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky passthey set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock andfought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come nearhim, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down onhis head. Then they went back with a story that they had been attackedby the enemy, which was believed, till a party went out to bury thedead, and found there were only Roman corpses all lying round thecrushed body of Sicinius, and that none were stripped of their armor orclothes. Then the true history was found out, but the Decemvirssheltered the commanders, and would believe nothing against them. Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all honest men even morethan this treachery to the brave old soldier. The Forum was not only theplace of public assembly for state affairs, but the regularmarket-place, where there were stalls and booths for all the wares thatRomans dealt in--meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold inearthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even booths where reading andwriting was taught to boys and girls, who would learn by tracing lettersin the sand, and then by writing them with an iron pen on a waxen tablein a frame, or with a reed upon parchment. The children of each familycame escorted by a slave--the girls by their nurse, the boys by onecalled a pedagogue. [Illustration: DEATH OF VIRGINIA. ] Appius, when going to his judgment-seat across the Forum, saw at one ofthese schools a girl of fifteen reading her lesson. She was so lovelythat he asked her nurse who she was, and heard that her name wasVirginia, and that she was the daughter of an honorable plebeian andbrave centurion named Virginius, who was absent with the army fightingwith the Æqui, and that she was to marry a young man named Icilius assoon as the campaign was over. Appius would gladly have married herhimself, but there was a patrician law against wedding plebeians, and hewickedly determined that if he could not have her for his wife he wouldhave her for his slave. There was one of his clients named Marcus Claudius, whom he paid to getup a story that Virginius' wife Numitoria, who was dead, had never hadany child at all, but had bought a baby of one of his slaves and haddeceived her husband with it, and thus that poor Virginia was really hisslave. As the maiden was reading at her school, this wretch and a bandof fellows like him seized upon her, declaring that she was hisproperty, and that he would carry her off. There was a great uproar, andshe was dragged as far as Appius' judgment-seat; but by that time herfaithful nurse had called the poor girl's uncle Numitorius, who couldanswer for it that she was really his sister's child. But Appius wouldnot listen to him, and all that he could gain was that judgment shouldnot be given in the matter until Virginius should have been fetched fromthe camp. [Illustration: CHARIOT RACES. ] Virginius had set out from the camp with Icilius before the messengersof Appius had reached the general with orders to stop him, and he cameto the Forum leading his daughter by the hand, weeping, and attended bya great many ladies. Claudius brought his slave, who made false oaththat she had sold her child to Numitoria; while, on the other hand, allthe kindred of Virginius and his wife gave such proof of the contrary asany honest judge would have thought sufficient, but Appius chose todeclare that the truth was with his client. There was a great murmur ofall the people, but he frowned at them, and told them he knew of theirmeetings, and that there were soldiers in the Capitol ready to punishthem, so they must stand back and not hinder a master from recoveringhis slave. Virginius took his poor daughter in his arms as if to give her a lastembrace, and drew her close to the stall of a butcher where lay a greatknife. He wiped her tears, kissed her, and saying, "My own dear littlegirl, there is no way but this, " he snatched up the knife and plunged itinto her heart, then drawing it out he cried, "By this blood, Appius, Idevote thy blood to the infernal gods. " He could not reach Appius, but the lictors could not seize him, and hemounted his horse and galloped back to the army, four hundred menfollowing him, and he arrived still holding the knife. Every soldier whoheard the story resolved no longer to bear with the Decemvirs, but tomarch back to the city at once and insist on the old government beingrestored. The Decemvir generals tried to stop them, but they onlyanswered, "We are men with swords in our hands. " At the same time therewas such a tumult in the city, that Appius was forced to hide himself inhis own house while Virginia's corpse was carried on a bier through thestreets, and every one laid garlands, scarfs, and wreaths of their ownhair upon it. When the troops arrived, they and the people joined indemanding that the Decemvirs should be given up to them to be burntalive, and that the old magistrates should be restored. However, twopatricians, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, were able so to arrangematters that the nine comparatively innocent Decemvirs were allowed todepose themselves, and Appius only was sent to prison, where he killedhimself rather than face the trial that awaited him. The new code oflaws, however, remained, but consuls, prætors, tribunes, and all therest of the magistrates were restored, and in the year 445 a law waspassed which enabled patricians and plebeians to intermarry. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI. CAMILLUS' BANISHMENT. B. C. 390. The wars with the Etruscans went on, and chiefly with the city of Veii, which stood on a hill twelve miles from Rome, and was altogether thirtyyears at war with it. At last the Romans made up their minds that, instead of going home every harvest-time to gather in their crops, theymust watch the city constantly till they could take it, and thus, as thebesiegers were unable to do their own work, pay was raised for them toenable them to get it done, and this was the beginning of paying armies. [Illustration: ARROW MACHINE. ] The siege of Veii lasted ten years, and during the last the Alban lakefilled to an unusual height, although the summer was very dry. One ofthe Veian soldiers cried out to the Romans half in jest, "You willnever take Veii till the Alban lake is dry. " It turned out that therewas an old tradition that Veii should fall when the lake was drained. Onthis the senate sent orders to have canals dug to carry the waters tothe sea, and these still remain. Still Veii held out, and to finish thewar a dictator was appointed, Marcus Furius Camillus, who chose for hissecond in command a man of one of the most virtuous families in Rome, astheir surname testified, Publius Cornelius, called Scipio, or the Staff, because either he or one of his forefathers had been the staff of hisfather's old age. Camillus took the city by assault, with an immensequantity of spoil, which was divided among the soldiers. Camillus in his pride took to himself at his triumph honors that hadhitherto only been paid to the gods. He had his face painted withvermilion and his car drawn by milk-white horses. This shocked thepeople, and he gave greater offence by declaring that he had vowed atenth part of the spoil to Apollo, but had forgotten it in the divisionof the plunder, and now must take it again. The soldiers would notconsent, but lest the god should be angry with them, it was resolved tosend a gold vase to his oracle at Delphi. All the women of Rome broughttheir jewels, and the senate rewarded them by a decree that funeralspeeches might be made over their graves as over those of men, andlikewise that they might be driven in chariots to the public games. Camillus commanded in another war with the Falisci, also an Etruscanrace, and laid siege to their city. The sons of almost all the chieffamilies were in charge of a sort of schoolmaster, who taught them bothreading and all kinds of exercises. One day this man, pretending to takethe boys out walking, led them all into the enemy's camp, to the tent ofCamillus, where he told that he brought them all, and with them theplace, since the Romans had only to threaten their lives to make theirfathers deliver up the city. Camillus, however, was so shocked at suchperfidy, that he immediately bade the lictors strip the fellowinstantly, and give the boys rods with which to scourge him back intothe town. Their fathers were so grateful that they made peace at once, and about the same time the Æqui were also conquered; and the commonsand open lands belonging to Veii being divided, so that each Romanfreeman had six acres, the plebeians were contented for the time. [Illustration] The truth seems to have been that these Etruscan nations were weakenedby a great new nation coming on them from the North. They were what theRomans called Galli or Gauls, one of the great races of the old stockwhich has always been finding its way westward into Europe, and they hadtheir home north of the Alps, but they were always pressing on and on, and had long since made settlements in northern Italy. They were inclans, each obedient to one chief as a father, and joining together inone brotherhood. They had lands to which whole families had a commonright, and when their numbers outgrew what the land could maintain, thebolder ones would set off with their wives, children, and cattle tofind new homes. The Greeks and Romans themselves had begun first in thesame way, and their tribes, and the claims of all to the common land, were the remains of the old way; but they had been settled in cities solong that this had been forgotten, and they were very different peoplefrom the wild men who spoke what we call Welsh, and wore checked tartantrews and plaids, with gold collars round their necks, round shields, huge broadswords, and their red or black hair long and shaggy. TheRomans knew little or nothing about what passed beyond their ownApennines, and went on with their own quarrels. Camillus was accused ofhaving taken more than his proper share of the spoil of Veii, inespecial a brass door from a temple. His friends offered to pay any finethat might be laid on him, but he was too proud to stand his trial, andchose rather to leave Rome. As he passed the gates, he turned round andcalled upon the gods to bring Rome to speedy repentance for havingdriven him away. Even then the Gauls were in the midst of a war with Clusium, the city ofPorsena, and the inhabitants sent to beg the help of the Romans, and thesenate sent three young brothers of the Fabian family to try to arrangematters. They met the Gaulish Bran or chief, whom Latin authors callBrennus, and asked him what was his quarrel with Clusium or his right toany part of Etruria. Brennus answered that his right was his sword, andthat all things belonged to the brave, and that his quarrel with the menof Clusium was, that though they had more land than they could till, they would not yield him any. As to the Romans, they had robbed theirneighbors already, and had no right to find fault. This put the Fabian brothers in a rage, and they forgot the caution oftheir family, as well as those rules of all nations which forbid anambassador to fight, and also forbid his person to be touched by theenemy; and when the men of Clusium made an attack on the Gauls theyjoined in the attack, and Quintus, the eldest brother, slew one of thechiefs. Brennus, wild as he was, knew these laws of nations, and ingreat anger broke up his siege of Clusium, and, marching towards Rome, demanded that the Fabii should be given up to him. Instead of this, theRomans made them all three military tribunes, and as the Gauls camenearer the whole army marched out to meet them in such haste that theydid not wait to sacrifice to the gods nor consult the omens. Thetribunes were all young and hot-headed, and they despised the Gauls; soout they went to attack them on the banks of the Allia, only seven anda-half miles from Rome. A most terrible defeat they had; many fell inthe field, many were killed in the flight, others were drowned in tryingto swim the Tiber, others scattered to Veii and the other cities, and afew, horror-stricken and wet through, rushed into Rome with the sadtidings. There were not men enough left to defend the walls! The enemywould instantly be upon them! The only place strong enough to keep themout was the Capitol, and that would only hold a few people within it! Sothere was nothing for it but flight. The braver, stronger men shutthemselves up in the Capitol; all the rest, with the women and children, put their most precious goods into carts and left the city. The VestalVirgins carried the sacred fire, and were plodding along in the heat, when a plebeian named Albinus saw their state, helped them into hiscart, and took them to the city of Cumæ, where they found shelter in atemple. And so Rome was left to the enemy. CHAPTER XII. THE SACK OF ROME. B. C. 390. Rome was left to the enemy, except for the small garrison in the Capitoland for eighty of the senators, men too old to flee, who devotedthemselves to the gods to save the rest, and, arraying themselves intheir robes--some as former consuls, some as priests, some asgenerals--sat down with their ivory staves in their hands, in theirchairs of state in the Forum, to await the enemy. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE FORUM AT ROME. ] In burst the savage Gauls, roaming all over the city till they came tothe Forum, where they stood amazed and awe-struck at the sight of theeighty grand old men motionless in their chairs. At first they looked atthe strange, calm figures as if they were the gods of the place, untilone Gaul, as if desirous of knowing whether they were flesh and bloodor not, stroked the beard of the nearest. The senator, esteeming this aninsult, struck the man on the face with his staff, and this was thesign for the slaughter of them all. Then the Gauls began to plunder every house, dragging out and killingthe few inhabitants they found there; feasting, revelling, and piling upriches to carry away; burning and overthrowing the houses. Day after daythe little garrison in the Capitol saw the sight, and wondered if theirstock of food would hold out till the Gauls should go away or till theirfriends should come to their relief. Yet when the day came round for thesacrifice to the ancestor of one of these beleaguered men, he boldlywent forth to the altar of his own ruined house on the Quirinal Hill, and made his offering to his forefathers, nor did one Gaul venture totouch him, seeing that he was performing a religious rite. The escaped Romans had rested at Ardea, where they found Camillus, andwere by him formed into an army, but he would not take the generalshipwithout authority from what was left of the Senate, and that was shut upin the Capitol in the midst of the Gauls. A brave man, however, namedPontius Cominius, declared that he could make his way through the Gaulsby night, and climb up the Capitol and down again by a precipice whichthey did not watch because they thought no one could mount it, and thathe would bring back the orders of the Senate. He swam the Tiber by thehelp of corks, landed at night in ruined Rome among the sleeping enemy, and climbed up the rock, bringing hope at last to the worn-out andnearly starving garrison. Quickly they met, recalled the sentence ofbanishment against Camillus, and named him Dictator. Pontius, havingrested in the meantime, slid down the rock and made his way back toArdea safely; but the broken twigs and torn ivy on the rock showed theGauls that it had been scaled, and they resolved that where man had goneman could go. So Brennus told off the most surefooted mountaineers hecould find, and at night, two and two, they crept up the crag, sosilently that no alarm was given, till just as they came to the top, some geese that were kept as sacred to Juno, and for that reason hadbeen spared in spite of the scarcity, began to scream and cackle, andthus brought to the spot a brave officer called Marcus Manlius, whofound two Gauls in the act of setting foot on the level ground on thetop. With a sweep of his sword he struck off the hand of one, and withhis buckler smote the other on the head, tumbling them both headlongdown, knocking down their fellows in their flight, and the Capitol wassaved. By way of reward every Roman soldier brought Manlius a few grains of thecorn he received from the common stock and a few drops of wine, whilethe tribune who was on guard that night was thrown from the rock. Foiled thus, and with great numbers of his men dying from the fever thatalways prevailed in Rome in summer, Brennus thought of retreating, andoffered to leave Rome if the garrison in the Capitol would pay him athousand pounds' weight of gold. There was treasure enough in thetemples to do this, and as they could not tell what Camillus was about, nor if Pontius had reached him safely, and they were on the point ofbeing starved, they consented. The gold was brought to the placeappointed by the Gauls, and when the weights proved not to be equal tothe amount that the Romans had with them, Brennus resolved to have all, put his sword into the other scale, saying, "Væ victis"--"Woe to theconquered. " But at that moment there was a noise outside--Camillus wascome. The Gauls were cut down and slain among the ruins, those who fledwere killed by the people in the country as they wandered in the fields, and not one returned to tell the tale. So the ransom of the Capitol wasrescued, and was laid up by Camillus in the vaults as a reserve forfuture danger. This was the Roman story, but their best historians say that it is madebetter for Rome than is quite the truth, for that the Capitol was reallyconquered, and the Gauls helped themselves to whatever they chose andwent off with it, though sickness and weariness made them afterwardsdisperse, so that they were mostly cut off by the country people. Every old record had been lost and destroyed, so that, before this, Roman history can only be hearsay, derived from what the survivorsrecollected; and the whole of the buildings, temples, senate-house, anddwellings lay in ruins. Some of the citizens wished to change the siteof the city to Veii; but Camillus, who was Dictator, was resolved tohold fast by the hearths of their fathers, and while the debate wasgoing on in the ruins of the senate-house a troop of soldiers weremarching in, and the centurion was heard calling out, "Plant your ensignhere; this is a good place to stay in. " "A happy omen, " cried one of thesenators; "I adore the gods who gave it. " So it was settled to rebuildthe city, and in digging among the ruins there were found the goldenrod of Romulus, the brazen tables on which the Laws of the Twelve Tableswere engraved, and other brasses with records of treaties with othernations. Fabius was accused of having done all the harm by having brokenthe law of nations, but he was spared at the entreaty of his friends. Manlius was surnamed Capitolinus, and had a house granted him on theCapitol; and Camillus when he laid down his dictatorship, was saluted aslike Romulus--another founder of Rome. The new buildings were larger and more ornamented than the old ones; butthe lines of the old underground drains, built in the mighty Etruscanfashion by the elder Tarquin as it was said, were not followed, and thistended to render Rome more unhealthy, so that few of her richer citizenslived there in summer or autumn, but went out to country houses on thehills. [Illustration: ENTRY OF THE FORUM ROMANUM BY THE VIA SACRA] CHAPTER XIII. THE PLEBEIAN CONSULATE. B. C. 367. All the old enemies of Rome attacked her again when she was weak andrising out of her ruins, but Camillus had wisely persuaded the Romans toadd the people of Veii, Capena, and Falerii to the number of theircitizens, making four more tribes; and this addition to their numbershelped them beat off their foes. But this enlarged the number of the plebeians, and enabled them to maketheir claims more heard. Moreover, the old quarrel between poor andrich, debtor and creditor, broke out again. Those who had saved theirtreasure in the time of the sack had made loans to those who had lost toenable them to build their houses and stock their farms again, andafter a time they called loudly for payment, and when it was notforthcoming had the debtors seized to be sold as slaves. Camillushimself was one of the hardest creditors of all, and the barracks whereslaves were placed to be sold were full of citizens. [Illustration: COSTUMES. ] Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was full of pity, and raised money to redeemfour hundred of them, trying with all his might to get the law changedand to save the rest; but the rich men and the patricians thought heacted only out of jealousy of Camillus, and to get up a party forhimself. They said he was raising a sedition, and Publius CorneliusCossus was named Dictator to put it down. Manlius was seized and putinto chains, but released again. At last the rich men bought over two ofthe tribunes to accuse him of wanting to make himself a king, and thishated title turned all the people against their friend, so that thegeneral cry sentenced him to be cast down from the top of the Tarpeianrock; his house on the Capitol was overthrown, and his family declaredthat no son of their house should ever again bear the name of Manlius. [Illustration: COSTUME. ] Yet the plebeians were making their way, and at last succeeded ingaining the plebeian magistracies and equal honors with the patricians. A curious story is told of the cause of the last effort which gained theday. A patrician named Fabius Ambustus had two daughters, one of whom hegave in marriage to Servius Sulpicius, a patrician and military tribune, the other to Licinius Stolo. One day, when Stolo's wife was visiting hersister, there was a great noise and thundering at the gates whichfrightened her, until the other Fabii said it was only her husbandcoming home from the Forum attended by his lictors and clients, laughingat her ignorance and alarm, until a whole troop of the clients came into pay their court to the tribune's wife. Stolo's wife went home angry and vexed, and reproached her husband andher father for not having made her equal with her sister, and so wroughton them that they put themselves at the head of the movement in favor ofthe plebeians; and Licinius and another young plebeian named LuciusSextius, being elected year after year tribunes of the people, went onevery time saying _Veto_ to whatever was proposed by anybody, and givingout that they should go on doing so till three measures werecarried--viz. , that interest on debt should not be demanded; that nocitizen should possess more than three hundred and twenty acres of thepublic land, or feed more than a certain quantity of cattle on thepublic pastures; and, lastly, that one of the two consuls should alwaysbe a plebeian. They went on for eight years, always elected by the people and alwaysstopping everything. At last there was another inroad of the Gaulsexpected, and Camillus, though eighty years old, was for the fifth timechosen Dictator, and gained a great victory upon the banks of the Anio. The Senate begged him to continue Dictator till he could set theiraffairs to rights, and he vowed to build a temple to Concord if he couldsucceed. He saw indeed that it was time to yield, and persuaded theSenate to think so; so that at last, in the year 367, Sextius waselected consul, together with a patrician, Æmilius. Even then the Senatewould not receive Sextius till he was introduced by Camillus. From thistime the patricians and plebeians were on an equal footing as far asregarded the magistracies, but the priesthood could belong only to thepatricians. Camillus lived to a great age, and was honored as havingthree times saved his country. He died at last of a terrible pestilencewhich raged in Rome in the year 365. The priests recommended that they should invite the players from Etruriato perform a drama in honor of the feats of the gods, and this was thebeginning of play-acting in Rome. Not long after there yawned a terrible chasm in the Forum, most likelyfrom an earthquake, but nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priestsand augurs consulted their oracles about it. These made answer that itwould only close on receiving of what was most precious. Gold andjewels were thrown in, but it still seemed bottomless, and at last theaugurs declared that it was courage that was the most precious thing inRome. Thereupon a patrician youth named Marcus Curtius decked himself inhis choicest robes, put on his armor, took his shield, sword, and spear, mounted his horse, and leapt headlong into the gulf, thus giving it themost precious of all things, courage and self-devotion. After this onestory says it closed of itself, another that it became easy to fill itup with earth. The Romans thought that such a sacrifice must please the gods and bringthem success in their battles; but in the war with the Hernici that wasnow being waged the plebeian consul was killed, and no doubt there wasmuch difficulty in getting the patricians to obey a plebeian properly, for in the course of the next twenty years it was necessary fourteentimes to appoint a Dictator for the defence of the state, so that it isplain there must have been many alarms and much difficulty in enforcingdiscipline; but, on the whole, success was with Rome, and theneighboring tribes grew weaker. [Illustration: CURTIUS LEAPING INTO THE GULF. (_From a Bas-Relief_. )] CHAPTER XIV. THE DEVOTION OF DECIUS. B. C. 357 Other tribes of the Gauls did not fail to come again and make freshinroads on the valleys of the Tiber and Anio. Whenever they came, instead of choosing men from the tribes to form an army, as in a warwith their neighbors, all the fighting men of the nation turned out tooppose them, generally under a Dictator. In one of these wars the Gauls came within three miles of Rome, and thetwo hosts were encamped on the banks of the Anio, with a bridge betweenthem. Along this bridge strutted an enormous Gallic chief, much tallerthan any of the Romans, boasting himself, and calling on any one of themto come out and fight with him. Again it was a Manlius whodistinguished himself. Titus, a young man of that family, begged theDictator's permission to accept the challenge, and, having gained it, hechanged his round knight's shield for the square one of the footsoldiers, and with his short sword came forward on the bridge. The Gaulmade a sweep at him with his broadsword, but, slipping within the guard, Manlius stabbed the giant in two places, and as he fell cut off hishead, and took the torc, or broad twisted gold collar that was the markof all Gallic chieftains. Thence the brave youth was called TitusManlius Torquatus--a surname to make up for that of Capitolinus, whichhad never been used again. [Illustration: THE APENNINES. ] The next time the Gauls came, Marcus Valerius, a descendant of the oldhero Publicola, was consul, and gained a great victory. It was said thatin the midst of the fight a monstrous raven appeared flying over hishead, resting now and then on his helmet, but generally pecking at theeyes of the Gauls and flapping its wings in their faces, so that theyfled discomfited. Thence he was called Corvus or Corvinus. The Gaulsnever again came in such force, but a new enemy came against them, namely, the Samnites, a people who dwelt to the south of them. They wereof Italian blood, mountaineers of the Southern Apennines, not unlikethe Romans in habits, language, and training, and the staunchest enemiesthey had yet encountered. The war began from an entreaty from the peopleof Campania to the Romans to defend them from the attacks of theSamnites. For the Campanians, living in the rich plains, whose name isstill unchanged, were an idle, languid people, whom the stout men ofSamnium could easily overcome. The Romans took their part, and ValeriusCorvus gained a victory at Mount Gaurus; but the other consul, CorneliusCossus, fell into danger, having marched foolishly into a forest, shutin by mountains, and with only one way out through a deep valley, whichwas guarded by the Samnites. In this almost hopeless danger one of themilitary tribunes, Publius Decius Mus, discovered a little hill abovethe enemy's camp, and asked leave to lead a small body of men to seizeit, since he would be likely thus to draw off the Samnites, and whilethey were destroying him, as he fully expected, the Romans could get outof the valley. Hidden by the wood, he gained the hill, and there theSamnites saw him, to their great amazement; and while they wereconsidering whether to attack him, the other Romans were able to marchout of the valley. Finding he was not attacked, Decius set guards, and, when night came on, marched down again as quietly as possible to jointhe army, who were now on the other side of the Samnite camp. Throughthe midst of this he and his little camp went without alarm, until, about half-way across, one Roman struck his foot against a shield. Thenoise awoke the Samnites, but Decius caused his men to give a greatshout, and this, in the darkness, so confused the enemy that they missedthe little body of Romans, who safely gained their own camp. Decius cutshort the thanks and joy of the consul by advising him to fall at onceon the Samnite camp in its dismay, and this was done; the Samnites wereentirely routed, 30, 000 killed, and their camp taken. Decius receivedfor his reward a hundred oxen, a white bull with gilded horns, and threecrowns--one of gold for courage, one of oak for having saved the livesof his fellow-citizens, and one of grass for having taken the enemy'scamp--while all his men were for life to receive a double allowance ofcorn. Decius offered up the white bull in sacrifice to Mars, and gavethe oxen to the companions of his glory. Afterwards Valerius routed the Samnites again, and his troops brought in120 standards and 40, 000 shields which they had picked up, having beenthrown away by the enemy in their flight. Peace was made for the time; but the Latins, now in alliance with Rome, began to make war on the Samnites. They complained, and the Romansfeeling bound to take their part, a great Latin war began. ManliusTorquatus and Decius Mus, the two greatest heroes of Rome, were consuls. As the Latins and Romans were alike in dress, arms, and language, inorder to prevent taking friend for foe, strict orders were given that noone should attack a Latin without orders, or go out of his rank, on painof death. A Latin champion came out boasting, as the two armies laybeneath Mount Vesuvius, then a fair vine-clad hill showing no flame. Young Manlius remembering his father's fame, darted out, fought hand tohand with the Latin, slew him, and brought home his spoils to hisfather's feet. He had forgotten that his father had only fought afterpermission was given. The elder Manlius received him with stern grief. He had broken the law of discipline, and he must die. His head wasstruck off amid the grief and anger of the army. The battle was bravelyfought, but it went against the Romans at first. Then Decius, recollecting a vision which had declared that a consul must devotehimself for his country, called on Valerius, the Pontifex Maximus, todedicate him. He took off his armor, put on his purple toga, covered hishead with a veil, and standing on a spear, repeated the words ofconsecration after Valerius, then mounted his horse and rode in amongthe Latins. They at first made way, but presently closed in andoverpowered him with a shower of darts; and thus he gave for his countrythe life he had once offered for it. The victory was won, and was so followed up that the Latins were forcedto yield to Rome. Some of the cities retained their own laws andmagistrates, but others had Romans with their families settled in them, and were called colonies, while the Latin people themselves became Romancitizens in everything but the power of becoming magistrates or votingfor them, being, in fact, very much what the earliest plebeians had beenbefore they acquired any rights. CHAPTER XV. THE SAMNITE WARS. In the year 332, just when Alexander the Great was making his conquestsin the East, his uncle Alexander, king of Epirus, brother to his motherOlympius, came to Italy, where there were so many Grecian citizens southof the Samnites that the foot of Italy was called Magna Græcia, orGreater Greece. He attacked the Samnites, and the Romans were not sorryto see them weakened, and made an alliance with him. He stayed in Italyabout six years, and was then killed. To overthrow the Samnites was the great object of Rome at this time, andfor this purpose they offered their protection and alliance to all thecities that stood in dread of that people. One of the cities was foundedby men from the isle of Euboea, who called it Neapolis, or the NewCity, to distinguish it from the old town near at hand, which theycalled Palæopolis, or the Old City. The elder city held out against theRomans, but was easily overpowered, while the new one submitted to Rome;but these southern people were very shallow and fickle, and little to bedepended on, as they often changed sides between the Romans andSamnites. In the midst of the siege of Palæopolis, the year of theconsulate came to an end, but the Senate, while causing two consuls asusual to be elected, at home, would not recall Publilius Philo from thesiege, and therefore appointed him proconsul there. This was in 326, andwas the beginning of the custom of sending the ex-consul as proconsul tocommand the armies or govern the provinces at a distance from home. [Illustration: COMBAT BETWEEN A MIRMILLO AND A SAMNITE. ] [Illustration: COMBAT BETWEEN A LIGHT-ARMED GLADIATOR AND A SAMNITE. ] In 320, the consul falling sick, a dictator was appointed, LuciusPapirius Cursor, one of the most stern and severe men in Rome. He wasobliged by some religious ceremony to return to Rome for a time, and heforbade his lieutenant, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, to venture a battle inhis absence. But so good an opportunity offered that Fabius attacked theenemy, beat them, and killed 20, 000 men. Then selfishly unwilling tohave the spoils he had won carried in the dictator's triumph, heburnt them all. Papirius arrived in great anger, and sentenced him todeath for his disobedience; but while the lictors were stripping him, hecontrived to escape from their hands among the soldiers, who closed onhim, so that he was able to get to Rome, where his father called theSenate together, and they showed themselves so resolved to save his lifethat Papirius was forced to pardon him, though not without reproachingthe Romans for having fallen from the stern justice of Brutus andManlius. Two years later the two consuls, Titus Veturius and Spurius Posthumius, were marching into Campania, when the Samnite commander, PontiusHerennius, sent forth people disguised as shepherds to entice them intoa narrow mountain pass near the city of Candium, shut in by thick woods, leading into a hollow curved valley, with thick brushwood on all sides, and only one way out, which the Samnites blocked up with trunks oftrees. As soon as the Romans were within this place the other end wasblocked in the same way, and thus they were all closed up at the mercyof their enemies. What was to be done with them? asked the Samnites; and they went toconsult old Herennius, the father of Pontius, the wisest man in thenation. "Open the way and let them all go free, " he said. "What! without gaining any advantage?" "Then kill them all. " He was asked to explain such extraordinary advice. He said that torelease them generously would be to make them friends and allies forever; but if the war was to go on, the best thing for Samnium would beto destroy such a number of enemies at a blow. But the Samnites couldnot resolve upon either plan; so they took a middle course, the worst ofall, since it only made the Romans furious without weakening them. Theywere made to take off all their armor and lay down their weapons, andthus to pass out under the yoke, namely, three spears set up like adoorway. The consuls, after agreeing to a disgraceful peace, had to gofirst, wearing only their undermost garment, then all the rest, two andtwo, and if any one of them gave an angry look, he was immediatelyknocked down and killed. They went on in silence into Campania, where, when night came on, they all threw themselves, half-naked, silent, andhungry upon the grass. The people of Capua came out to help them, andbrought them food and clothing, trying to do them all honor and comfortthem, but they would neither look up nor speak. And thus they went onto Rome, where everybody had put on mourning, and all the ladies wentwithout their jewels, and the shops in the Forum were closed. Theunhappy men stole into their houses at night one by one, and the consulswould not resume their office, but two were appointed to serve insteadfor the rest of the year. [Illustration: ANCIENT ROME. ] Revenge was all that was thought of, but the difficulty was the peaceto which the consuls had sworn. Posthumius said that if it was disavowedby the Senate, he, who had been driven to make it, must be given back tothe Samnites. So, with his hands tied, he was taken back to the Samnitecamp by a herald and delivered over; but at that moment Posthumius gavethe herald a kick, crying out, "I am now a Samnite, and have insultedyou, a Roman herald. This is a just cause of war. " Pontius and theSamnites were very angry, and they said it was an unworthy trick; butthey did not prevent Posthumius from going safely back to the Romans, who considered him to have quite retrieved his honor. A battle was fought, in which Pontius and 7000 men were forced to laydown their arms and pass under the yoke in their turn. The strugglebetween these two fierce nations lasted altogether seventy years, andthe Romans had many defeats. They had other wars at the same time. Theynever subdued Etruria, and in the battle of Sentinum, fought with theGauls, the consul Decius Mus, devoted himself exactly as his father haddone at Vesuvius, and by his death won the victory. The Samnite wars may be considered as ending in 290, when the chiefgeneral of Samnium, Pontius Telesimus, was made prisoner and put todeath at Rome. The lands in the open country were quite subdued, butmany Samnites still lived in the fastnesses of the Apennines in thesouth, which have ever since been the haunt of wild untamed men. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI. THE WAR WITH PYRRHUS. B. C. 280-271. In the Grecian History you remember that Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, thetownsman of Alexander the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This wasthe way it came about. The city of Tarentum was a Spartan colony at thehead of the gulf that bears its name. It was as proud as its parent, buthad lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as idle and fickleas the other places in that languid climate. The Tarentines firstmaltreated some Roman ships which put into their gulf, and then insultedthe ambassador who was sent to complain. Then when the terrible Romanswere found to be really coming to revenge their honor, the Tarentinestook fright, and sent to beg Pyrrhus to come to their aid. He readily accepted the invitation, and coming to Italy with 28, 000 menand twenty elephants, hoped to conquer the whole country; but he foundthe Tarentines not to be trusted, and soon weary of entertaining him, while they could not keep their promises of aid from the other Greeks ofItaly. [Illustration: PYRRHUS. ] The Romans marched against him, and there was a great battle on thebanks of the river Siris, where the fighting was very hard, but when theelephants charged the Romans broke and fled, and were only saved bynightfall from being entirely destroyed. So great, however, had beenPyrrhus' loss that he said, "Such another victory, and I shall have togo back alone to Epirus. " He thought he had better treat with the Romans, and sent his favoritecounsellor Kineas to offer to make peace, provided the Romans wouldpromise safety to his Italian allies, and presents were sent to thesenators and their wives to induce them to listen favorably. People inancient Greece expected such gifts to back a suit; but Kineas found thatnobody in Rome would hear of being bribed, though many were notunwilling to make peace. Blind old Appius Claudius, who had often beenconsul, caused himself to be led into the Senate to oppose it, for itwas hard to his pride to make peace as defeated men. Kineas was muchstruck with Rome, where he found a state of things like the best days ofGreece, and, going back to his master, told him that the senate-housewas like a temple, and those who sat there like an assembly of kings, and that he feared they were fighting with the Hydra of Lerna, for assoon as they had destroyed one Roman army another had sprung up in itsplace. However, the Romans wanted to treat about the prisoners Pyrrhus hadtaken, and they sent Caius Fabricius to the Greek camp for the purpose. Kineas reported him to be a man of no wealth, but esteemed as a goodsoldier and an honest man. Pyrrhus tried to make him take largepresents, but nothing would Fabricius touch; and then, in the hope ofalarming him, in the middle of a conversation the hangings of one sideof the tent suddenly fell, and disclosed the biggest of all theelephants, who waved his trunk over Fabricius and trumpetedfrightfully. The Roman quietly turned round and smiled as he said to theking, "I am no more moved by your gold than by your great beast. " [Illustration: ROMAN ORATOR. ] At supper there was a conversation on Greek philosophy, of which theRomans as yet knew nothing. When the doctrine of Epicurus was mentioned, that man's life was given to be spent in the pursuit of joy, Fabriciusgreatly amused the company by crying out, "O Hercules! grant that theGreeks may be heartily of this mind so long as we have to fight withthem. " Pyrrhus even tried to persuade Fabricius to enter his service, but theanswer was, "Sir. I advise you not; for if your people once tasted of myrule, they would all desire me to govern them instead of you. " Pyrrhusconsented to let the prisoners go home, but, if no peace were made, theywere to return again as soon as the Saturnalia were over; and this wasfaithfully done. Fabricius was consul the next year, and thus received aletter from Pyrrhus' physician, offering for a reward to rid the Romansof his master by poison. The two consuls sent it to the king with thefollowing letter:--"Caius Fabricius and Quintus Æmilius, consuls, toPyrrhus, king, greeting. You choose your friends and foes badly. Thisletter will show that you make war with honest men and trust rogues andknaves. We tell you, not to win your favor, but lest your ruin mightbring on the reproach of ending the war by treachery instead of force. " Pyrrhus made enquiry, put the physician to death, and by way ofacknowledgment released the captives, trying again to make peace; butthe Romans would accept no terms save that he should give up theTarentines and go back in the same ships. A battle was fought in thewood of Asculum. Decius Mus declared he would devote himself like hisfather and grandfather; but Pyrrhus heard of this, and sent word that hehad given orders that Decius should not be killed, but taken alive andscourged; and this prevented him. The Romans were again forced back bythe might of the elephants, but not till night fell on them. Pyrrhus hadbeen wounded, and hosts of Greeks had fallen, among them many ofPyrrhus' chief friends. He then went to Sicily, on an invitation from the Greeks settled there, to defend them from the Carthaginians; but finding them as littlesatisfactory as the Italian Greeks, he suddenly came back to Tarentum. This time one of the consuls was Marcus Curius--called Dentatus, becausehe had been born with teeth in his mouth--a stout, plain old Roman, verystern, for when he levied troops against Pyrrhus, the first man whorefused to serve was punished by having his property seized and sold. Hethen marched southward, and at Beneventum at length entirely defeatedPyrrhus, and took four of his elephants. Pyrrhus was obliged to returnto Epirus, and the Roman steadiness had won the day after nine years. Dentatus had the grandest triumph that had ever been known at Rome, with the elephants walking in the procession, the first that the Romanshad ever seen. All the spoil was given up to the commonwealth; and when, some time after, it was asserted that he had taken some for himself, itturned out that he had only kept one old wooden vessel, which he used insacrificing to the gods. The Greeks of Southern Italy had behaved very ill to Pyrrhus and turnedagainst him. The Romans found them so fickle and troublesome that theywere all reduced in one little war after another. The Tarentines had tosurrender and lose their walls and their fleet, and so had the people ofSybaris, who have become a proverb for idleness, for they were so lazythat they were said to have killed all their crowing-birds for wakingthem too early in the morning. All the peninsula of Italy now belongedto Rome, and great roads were made of paved stones connecting them withit, many of which remain to this day, even the first of all, called theAppian Way, from Rome to Capua, which was made under the direction ofthe censor Appius Claudius, during the Samnite war. CHAPTER XVII. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR. 264-240. We are now come to the time when Rome became mixed up in wars withnations beyond Italy. There was a great settlement of the Phoenicians, the merchants of the old world, at Carthage, on the northern coast ofAfrica, the same place at which Virgil afterwards described Æneas asspending so much time. Dido, the queen who was said to have foundedCarthage when fleeing from her wicked brother-in-law at Tyre, is thoughtto have been an old goddess, and the religion and manners of theCarthaginians were thoroughly Phoenician, or, as the Romans called them, Punic. They had no king, but a Senate, and therewith rulers called bythe name that is translated as judges in the Bible; and they did notlove war, only trade, and spread out their settlements for this purposeall over the coast of the Mediterranean, from Spain to the Black Sea, wherever a country had mines, wool, dyes, spices, or men to trade with;and their sailors were the boldest to be found anywhere, and were theonly ones who had passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, namely, theStraits of Gibraltar, in the Atlantic Ocean. They built handsome cities, and country houses with farms and gardens round them, and had all tokensof wealth and luxury--ivory, jewels, and spices from India, pearls fromthe Persian Gulf, gold from Spain, silver from the Balearic Isles, tinfrom the Scilly Isles, amber from the Baltic; and they had forts toprotect their settlements. They generally hired the men of thecountries, where they settled, to fight their battles, sometimes underhired Greek captains, but often under generals of their own. [Illustration: ROMAN SHIP. ] The first place where they did not have everything their own way wasSicily. The old inhabitants of the island were called Sicels, a roughpeople; but besides these there were a great number of Greeksettlements, also of Carthaginian ones, and these two hated one another. The Carthaginians tried to overthrow the Greeks, and Pyrrhus, bycoming to help his countrymen, only made them more bitter against oneanother. When he went away he exclaimed, "What an arena we leave for theRomans and Carthaginians to contend upon!" so sure was he that these twogreat nations must soon fight out the struggle for power. The beginning of the struggle was, however, brought on by another cause. Messina, the place founded long ago by the brave exiles of Messene, whenthe Spartans had conquered their state, had been seized by a troop ofMamertines, fierce Italians from Mamertum; and these, on beingthreatened by Xiero, king of Syracuse, sent to offer to become subjectsto the Romans, thus giving them the command of the port which securedthe entrance of the island. The Senate had great scruples aboutaccepting the offer, and supporting a set of mere robbers; but the twoconsuls and all the people could not withstand the temptation, and itwas resolved to assist the Mamertines. Thus began what was called theFirst Punic War. The difficulty was, however, want of ships. The Romanshad none of their own, and though they collected a few from their Greekallies in Italy, it was not in time to prevent some of the Mamertinesfrom surrendering the citadel to Xanno, the Carthaginian general, whothought himself secure, and came down to treat with the Roman tribuneClaudius, haughtily bidding the Romans no more to try to meddle with thesea, for they should not be allowed so much as to wash their hands init. Claudius, angered at this, treacherously laid hands on Xanno, and heagreed to give up the castle on being set free; but he had better haveremained a prisoner, for the Carthaginians punished him withcrucifixion, and besieged Messina, but in vain. The Romans felt that a fleet was necessary, and set to work to build wargalleys on the pattern of a Carthaginian one which had been wrecked upontheir coast. While a hundred ships were building, oarsmen were trainedto row on dry land, and in two months the fleet put to sea. Knowing thatthere was no chance of being able to fight according to the regularrules of running the beaks of their galleys into the sides of those oftheir enemies, they devised new plans of letting heavy weights descendon the ships of the opposite fleet, and then of letting drawbridges downby which to board them. The Carthaginians, surprised and dismayed, whenthus attacked off Mylæ by the consul Duilius, were beaten and chased toSardinia, where their unhappy commander was nailed to a cross by his ownsoldiers; while Duilius not only received in Rome a grand triumph forhis first naval victory, but it was decreed that he should never go outinto the city at night without a procession of torch-bearers. The Romans now made up their minds to send an expedition to attack theCarthaginian power not only in Sicily but in Africa, and this was placedunder the command of a sturdy plebeian consul, Marcus Attilius Regulus. He fought a great battle with the Carthaginian fleet on his way, and hehad even more difficulty with his troops, who greatly dreaded thelanding in Africa as a place of unknown terror. He landed, however, atsome distance from the city, and did not at once advance on it. When hedid, according to the story current at Rome, he encountered on the banksof the River Bagrada an enormous serpent, whose poisonous breath killedall who approached it, and on whose scales darts had no effect. At lastthe machines for throwing huge stones against city walls were usedagainst it; its backbone was broken, and it was at last killed, and itsskin sent to Rome. The Romans met other enemies, whom they defeated, and gained muchplunder. The Senate, understanding that the Carthaginians were cooped upwithin their walls, recalled half the army. Regulus wished much toreturn, as the slave who tilled his little farm had run away with hisplough, and his wife was in distress; but he was so valuable that hecould not be recalled, and he remained and soon took Tunis. TheCarthaginians tried to win their gods' favor back by offering horridhuman sacrifices to Moloch and Baal, and then hired a Spartan generalnamed Xanthippus, who defeated the Romans, chiefly by means of theelephants, and made Regulus prisoner. The Romans, who hated theCarthaginians so much as to believe them capable of any wickedness, declared that in their jealousy of Xanthippus' victory, they sent himhome to Greece in a vessel so arranged as to founder at sea. [Illustration: ROMAN ORDER OF BATTLE. ] However, the Romans, after several disasters in Sicily, gained a greatvictory near Panormus, capturing one hundred elephants, which werebrought to Rome to be hunted by the people that they might lose theirfear of them. The Carthaginians were weakened enough to desire peace, and they sent Regulus to propose it, making him swear to return if hedid not succeed. He came to the outskirts of the city, but would notenter. He said he was no Roman proconsul, but the slave of Carthage. However, the Senate came out to hear him, and he gave the message, butadded that the Romans ought not to accept these terms, but to standout for much better ones, giving such reasons that the whole people waspersuaded. He was entreated to remain and not meet the angry men ofCarthage; but nothing would persuade him to break his word, and he wentback. The Romans told dreadful stories of the treatment he met with--howhis eyelids were cut off and he was put in the sunshine, and at last hewas nailed up in a barrel lined with spikes and rolled down hill. Somesay that this was mere report, and that Carthaginian prisoners at Romewere as savagely treated; but at any rate the constancy of Regulus hasalways been a proverb. The war went on, and one of the proud Claudius family was in command atTrepanum, in Sicily, when the enemy's fleet came in sight. Before abattle the Romans always consulted the sacred fowls that were carriedwith the army. Claudius was told that their augury was against abattle--they would not eat. "Then let them drink, " he cried, and threwthem into the sea. His impiety, as all felt it, was punished by an utterdefeat, and he killed himself to avoid an enquiry. The war went on byland and sea all over and around Sicily, till at the end of twenty-fouryears peace was made, just after another great sea-fight, in which Romehad the victory. She made the Carthaginians give up all they held inSicily, restore their prisoners, make a large payment, and altogetherhumble their claims; thus beginning a most bitter hatred towards theconquerors, who as greatly hated and despised them. Thus ended the FirstPunic War. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII. CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GAUL. 240-219. After the end of the Punic war, Carthage fell into trouble with herhired soldiers, and did not interfere with the Romans for a long time, while they went on to arrange the government of Sicily into what theycalled a province, which was ruled by a proprætor for a year after hismagistracy at home. The Greek kingdom of Syracuse indeed still remainedas an ally of Rome, and Messina and a few other cities were allowed tochoose their own magistrates and govern themselves. Soon after, Sardinia and Corsica were given up to the Romans by thehired armies of the Carthaginians, and as the natives fought hardagainst Rome, when they were conquered they were for the most part soldas slaves. These two islands likewise had a proprætor. The Romans now had all the peninsula south of themselves, and as farnorth as Ariminim (now shortened into Rimini), but all beyond belongedto the Gauls--the Cisalpine Gauls, or Gauls on this side the Alps, asthe Romans called them; while those on the other side were calledTransalpine Gauls, or Gauls across the Alps. These northern Gauls weregathering again for an inroad on the south, and in the midst of therumors of this danger there was a great thunderstorm at Rome, and theCapitol was struck by lightning. The Sybilline books were searched intoto see what this might mean, and a warning was found, "Beware of theGauls. " Moreover, there was a saying that the Greeks and Gauls shouldone day enjoy the Forum; but the Romans fancied they could satisfy thisprophecy by burying a man and woman of each nation, slaves, in themiddle of the Forum, and then they prepared to attack the Gauls in theirown country before the inroad could be made. There was a great deal ofhard fighting, lasting for years; and in the course of it the consul, Caius Flaminius, began the great road which has since been called afterhim the Flaminian Way, and was the great northern road from Rome, asthe Appian Way was the southern. [Illustration: THE WOUNDED GAUL. ] The great hero of the war was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had alreadymade himself known for his dauntless courage. As consul, he fought adesperate battle on the banks of the Po with the Gauls of both sides theAlps, and himself killed their king or chief, Viridomar. He brought thespoils to Rome, and hung them in the Temple of Jupiter. It was only thethird time in the history of Rome that such a thing had been done. Cisalpine Gaul was thus subdued, and another road was made to secureit; while in the short peace that followed the gates of the Temple ofJanus were shut, having stood open ever since the reign of Numa. The Romans were beginning to make their worship the same with that ofthe Greeks. They sent offerings to Greek temples, said that their oldgods were the same as those of the Greeks, only under different names, and sent an embassy to Epidaurus to ask for a statue of Esculapius, thegod of medicine and son of Phoebus Apollo. The emblem of Esculapius wasa serpent, and tame serpents were kept about his temple at Epidaurus. One of these glided into the Roman galley that had come for the statue, and it was treated with great respect by all the crew until they sailedup the Tiber, when it made its way out of the vessel and swam to theisland which had been formed by the settling of the mud round the heapof corn that had been thrown into the river when Porsena wasted thecountry. This was supposed to mean that the god himself took possessionof the place, and a splendid temple there rose in his honor. Another imitation of the Greeks which came into fashion at this time hada sad effect on the Romans. The old funerals in Greek poems had endedby games and struggles between swordsmen. Two brothers of the Brutusfamily first showed off such a game at their father's funeral, and itbecame a regular custom, not only at funerals, but whenever there wasneed to entertain the people, to show off fights of swordsmen. Thesoldier captives from conquered nations were used in this way; and somepersons kept schools of slaves, who were trained for these fights andcalled gladiators. The battle was a real one, with sharp weapons, forlife or death; and when a man was struck down, he was allowed to live orsentenced to death according as the spectators turned down or turned uptheir thumbs. The Romans fancied that the sight trained them to bebrave, and to despise death and wounds; but the truth was that it onlymade them hard-hearted, and taught them to despise other people'spain--a very different thing from despising their own. Another thing that did great harm was the making it lawful for a man toput away a wife who had no children. This ended by making the Romansmuch less careful to have one good wife, and the Roman ladies becamemuch less noble and excellent than they had been in the good old days. [Illustration: HANNIBAL'S VOW. ] In the meantime, the Carthaginians, having lost the three islands, began to spread their settlements further in Spain, where their chiefcolony was New Carthage, or, as we call it, Carthagena. The mountainswere full of gold mines, and the Iberians, the nation who held them, were brave and warlike, so that there was much fighting to train upfresh armies. Hamilcar, the chief general in command there, had foursons, whom he said were lion whelps being bred up against Rome. He tookthem with him to Spain, and at a great sacrifice for the success of hisarms the youngest and most promising, Hannibal, a boy of nine years old, was made to lay his hand on the altar of Baal and take an oath that hewould always be the enemy of the Romans. Hamilcar was killed in battle, but Hannibal grew up to be all that he had hoped, and at twenty-six wasin command of the army. He threatened the Iberians of Saguntum, who sentto ask help from Rome. A message was sent to him to forbid him todisturb the ally of Rome; but he had made up his mind for war, and nevereven asked the Senate of Carthage what was to be done, but went on withthe siege of Saguntum. Rome was busy with a war in Illyria, and couldsend no help, and the Saguntines held out with the greatest bravery andconstancy, month after month, till they were all on the point ofstarvation, then kindled a great fire, slew all their wives andchildren, and let Hannibal win nothing but a pile of smoking ruins. [Illustration: IN THE PYRENEES. ] Again the Romans sent to Carthage to complain, but the Senate there hadmade up their minds that war there must be, and that it was a good timewhen Rome had a war in Illyria on her hands, and Cisalpine Gaul hardlysubdued; and they had such a general as Hannibal, though they did notknow what a wonderful scheme he had in his mind, namely, to make hisway by land from Spain to Italy, gaining the help of the Gauls, andstirring up all those nations of Italy who had fought so long againstRome. His march, which marks the beginning of the Second Punic War, started from the banks of the Ebro in the beginning of the summer of219. His army was 20, 000 foot and 12, 000 horse, partly Carthaginian, partly Gaul and Iberian. The horsemen were Moorish, and he hadthirty-seven elephants. He left his brother Hasdrubal with 10, 000 men atthe foot of the Pyrenees and pushed on, but he could not reach the Alpsbefore the late autumn, and his passage is one of the greatest wondersof history. Roads there were none, and he had to force his way up thepasses of the Little St. Bernard through snow and ice, terrible to themen and animals of Africa, and fighting all the way, so that men andhorses perished in great numbers, and only seven of the elephants wereleft when he at length descended into the plains of Northern Italy, where he hoped the Cisalpine Gauls would welcome him. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIX. THE SECOND PUNIC WAR. 219. When the Romans heard that Hannibal had passed the Pyrenees, they hadtwo armies on foot, one under Publius Cornelius Scipio, which was to goto Spain, and the other under Tiberius Sempronius Longus, to attackAfrica. They changed their plan, and kept Sempronius to defend Italy, while Scipio went by sea to Marsala, a Greek colony in Gaul, to try tostop Hannibal at the Rhone; but he was too late, and therefore, sendingon most of his army to Spain, he came back himself with his choicesttroops. With these he tried to stop the enemy from crossing the riverTicinus, but he was defeated and so badly wounded that his life was onlysaved by the bravery of his son, who led him out of the battle. [Illustration: MEETING OF HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO AT ZAMA. ] Before he was able to join the army again, Sempronius had foughtanother battle with Hannibal on the banks of the Trebia and suffered aterrible defeat. But winter now came on, and the Carthaginians found itvery hard to bear in the marshes of the Arno. Hannibal himself was soill that he only owed his life to the last of his elephants, whichcarried him safely through when he was almost blind, and in the end helost an eye. In the spring he went on ravaging the country in hopes tomake the two new consuls, Flaminius and Servilius, fight with him, butthey were too cautious, until at last Flaminius attacked him in a heavyfog on the shore of Lake Trasimenus. It is said that an earthquake shookthe ground, and that the eager warriors never perceived it; but againthe Romans lost, Flaminius was killed, and there was a dreadfulslaughter, for Hannibal had sworn to give no quarter to a Roman. Theonly thing that was hopeful for Rome was that neither Gauls, Etruscans, nor Italians showed any desire to rise in favor of Hannibal; and thoughhe was now very near Rome, he durst not besiege it without the help ofthe people around to bring him supplies, so he only marched southwards, hoping to gain the support of the Greek colonies. A dictator wasappointed, Quintus Fabius Maximus, who saw that, by strengthening allthe garrisons in the towns and cutting off all provisions, he shouldwear the enemy out at last. As he always put off a battle, he was calledCunctator, or the Delayer; but at last he had the Carthaginians enclosedas in a trap in the valley of the river Vulturnus, and hoped to cut themoff, posting men in ambush to fall on them on their morning's march. Hannibal guessed that this must be the plan; and at night he had thecattle in the camp collected, fastened torches to their horns, and drovethem up the hills. The Romans, fancying themselves surrounded by theenemy, came out of their hiding-places to fall back on the camp, andHannibal and his army safely escaped. This mischance made the Romansweary of the Delayer's policy, and when the year was out, and twoconsuls came in, though one of them, Lucius Æmilius Paulus, would havegone on in the same cautious plan of starving Hannibal out without abattle, the other, Caius Terentius Varro, who commanded on alternatedays with him, was determined on a battle. Hannibal so contrived that itwas fought on the plain of Cannæ, where there was plenty of space to usehis Moorish horse. It was Varro's day of command, and he dashed at thecentre of the enemy; Hannibal opened a space for him, then closed in onboth sides with his terrible horse, and made a regular slaughter of theRomans. The last time that the consul Æmilius was seen was by a tribunenamed Lentulus, who found him sitting on a stone faint and bleeding, andwould have given him his own horse to escape, but Æmilius answered thathe had no mind to have to accuse his comrade of rashness, and had ratherdie. A troop of enemies coming up, Lentulus rode off, and looking back, saw his consul fall, pierced with darts. So many Romans had been killed, that Hannibal sent to Carthage a basket containing 10, 000 of the goldrings worn by the knights. [Illustration: ARCHIMEDES. ] Hannibal was only five days' march beyond Rome, and his officers wantedhim to turn back and attack it in the first shock of the defeat, but hecould not expect to succeed without more aid from home, and he wanted towin over the Greek cities of the south; so he wintered in Campania, waiting for the fresh troops he expected from Africa or from Spain, where his brother Mago was preparing an army. But the Carthaginians didnot care about Hannibal's campaigns in Italy, and sent no help; andPublius Cornelius Scipio and his brother, with a Roman army in Spain, were watching Mago and preventing him from marching, until at last hegave them battle and defeated and killed them both. But he was notallowed to go to Italy to his brother, who, in the meantime, found hisarmy so unstrung and ill-disciplined in the delightful but languidCampania, that the Romans declared the luxuries of Capua were their bestallies. He stayed in the south, however, trying to gain the alliance ofthe king of Macedon, and stirring up Syracuse to revolt. Marcellus, whowas consul for the third time, was sent to reduce the city, which made afamous defence, for it contained Archimedes, the greatest mathematicianof his time, who devised wonderful machines for crushing the besiegersin unexpected ways; but at last Marcellus found a weak part of the wallsand surprised the citizens. He had given orders that Archimedes shouldbe saved, but a soldier broke into the philosopher's room withoutknowing him, and found him so intent on his study that he had neverheard the storming of the city. The man brandished his sword. "Onlywait, " muttered Archimedes, "till I have found out my problem;" but theman, not understanding him, killed him. Hannibal remained in Italy, maintaining himself there with wonderfulskill, though with none of the hopes with which he had set out. Hisbrother Hasdrubal did succeed in leaving Spain with an army to help him, but was met on the river Metaurus by Tiberius Claudius Nero, beaten, andslain. His head was cut off by Nero's order, and thrown into Hannibal'scamp to give tidings of his fate. Young Scipio, meantime, had been sent to Spain, where he gained greatadvantages, winning the friendship of the Iberians, and gaining townafter town till Mago had little left but Gades and the extreme south. Scipio was one of the noblest of the Romans, brave, pious, and what wasmore unusual, of such sweet and winning temper, that it was said of himthat wherever he went he might have been a king. On returning to Rome, he showed the Senate that the best way to getHannibal out of Italy was to attack Africa. Cautious old Fabius doubted, but Scipio was sent to Sicily, where he made an alliance withMassinissa, the Moorish king in Africa; and, obtaining leave to carryout his plan, he was sent thither, and so alarmed Carthage, thatHannibal was recalled to defend his own country, where he had not beensince he was a child. A great battle took place at Zama between him andHannibal, in which Scipio was the conqueror, and the loss of Carthagewas so terrible that the Romans were ready to have marched in on her andmade her their subject, but Scipio persuaded them to be forbearing. Carthage was to pay an immense tribute, and swear never to make war onany ally of Rome. And thus ended the Second Punic War, in the year 201. [Illustration] CHAPTER XX. THE FIRST EASTERN WAR. 215-183. Scipio remained in Africa till he had arranged matters and won such aclaim to Massinissa's gratitude that this king of Numidia was sure towatch over the interests of Rome. Scipio then returned home, and enteredRome with a grand triumph, all the nobler for himself that he did notlead Hannibal in his chains. He had been too generous to demand that sobrave an enemy should be delivered up to him. He received the surname ofAfricanus, and was one of the most respected and beloved of Romans. Hewas the first who began to take up Greek learning and culture, and toexchange the old Roman ruggedness for the graces of philosophy andpoetry. Indeed the Romans were beginning to have much to do with theGreeks, and the war they entered upon now was the first for the sake ofspreading their own power. All the former ones had been in self-defence, and the new one did in fact spring out of the Punic war, for theCarthaginians had tried to persuade Philip, king of Macedon, to followin the track of Pyrrhus, and come and help Hannibal in Southern Italy. The Romans had kept him off by stirring up the robber Ætolians againsthim; and when he began to punish these wild neighbors, the Romansleagued themselves with the old Greek cities which Macedon oppressed, and a great war took place. Titus Quinctius Flaminius commanded in Greece for four years, first asconsul and then as proconsul. His crowning victory was at Cynocephalæ, or the Dogshead Rocks, where he so broke the strength of Macedon that atthe Isthmian games he proclaimed the deliverance of Greece, and in theirjoy the people crowded round him with crowns and garlands, and shoutedso loud that birds in the air were said to have dropped down at thesound. Macedon had cities in Asia Minor, and the king of Syria's enemy, Antiochus the Great, hoped to master them, and even to conquer Greece bythe help of Hannibal, who had found himself unable to live in Carthageafter his defeat, and was wandering about to give his services to anyone who was a foe of Rome. As Rome took the part of Philip, as her subject and ally, there was soonfull scope for his efforts; but the Syrians were such wretched troopsthat even Hannibal could do nothing with them, and the king himselfwould not attend to his advice, but wasted his time in pleasure in theisle of Euboea. So the consul Acilius first beat them at Thermopylæ, andthen, on Lucius Cornelius Scipio being sent to conduct the war, hisgreat brother Africanus volunteered to go with him as his lieutenant, and together they followed Antiochus into Asia Minor, and gained suchadvantages that the Syrian was obliged to sue for peace. The Romansreplied by requiring of him to give up all Asia Minor as far as MountTarsus, and in despair he risked a battle in Magnesia, and met with atotal defeat; 80, 000 Greeks and Syrians being overthrown by 50, 000Romans. Neither Africanus nor Hannibal were present in this battle, since the first was ill, and the second was besieged in a city inPamphylia; but while terms of peace were being made, the two are saidhave met on friendly terms, and Scipio asked Hannibal whom he thoughtthe greatest of generals. "Alexander, " was the answer. "Whom the nextgreatest?" "Pyrrhus. " "Whom do you rank as the third?" "Myself, " saidHannibal. "But if you had beaten me?" asked Scipio. "Then I would haveplaced myself before Alexander. " [Illustration: HANNIBAL] The Romans insisted that Hannibal should be dismissed by Antiochus, though Scipio declared that this was ungenerous; but they dreaded hisnever-ceasing enmity; and when he took refuge with the king of Bothnia, they still required that he should be given up or driven a way. On this, Hannibal, worn-out and disappointed, put an end to his own life bypoison, saying he would rid the Romans of their fear of an old man. The provinces taken from Antiochus were given to Eumenes, king ofPergamus, who was to reign over them as tributary to the Romans. LuciusScipio received the surname of Asiaticus, and the two brothers returnedto Rome; but they had been too generous and merciful to the conquered tosuit the grasping spirit that had begun to prevail at Rome, and directlyafter his triumph Lucius was accused of having taken to himself an undueshare of the spoil. His brother was too indignant at the shamefulaccusation to think of letting him justify himself, but tore up hisaccounts in the face of the people. The tribune, Nævius, thereuponspitefully called upon him to give an account of the spoil of Carthagetaken twenty years before. The only reply he gave was to exclaim, "Thisis the day of the victory of Zama. Let us give thanks to the gods forit;" and he led all that was noble and good in Rome with him to thetemple of Jupiter and offered the anniversary sacrifice. No one durstsay another word against him or his brother; but he did not choose toremain among the citizens who had thus insulted him, but went away tohis estate at Liternum, and when he died, desired to be buried there, saying that he would not even leave his bones to his ungrateful country. The Cornelian family was the only one among the higher Romans who buriedinstead of burning their dead. He left no son, only a daughter, who wasmarried to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a brave officer who was amongthose who were sent to finish reducing Spain. It was a long, terriblewar, fought city by city, inch by inch; but Gracchus is said to havetaken no less than three hundred fortresses. But he was a milderconqueror than some of the Romans, and tried to tame and civilize thewild races instead of treating them with the terrible severity shown byMarcus Porcius Cato, the sternest of all old Romans. However, by theyear 178 Spain had been reduced to obedience, and the cities and thecoast were in good order, though the mountains harbored fierce tribesalways ready for revolt. Gracchus died early, and Cornelia, his widow, devoted herself to thecause of his three children, refusing to be married again, which wasvery uncommon in a Roman lady. When a lady asked her to show her herornaments, she called her two boys, Tiberius and Caius, and their sisterSempronia, and said, "These are my jewels;" and when she wascomplimented on being the daughter of Africanus, she said that thehonor she should care more for was the being called "the mother of theGracchi. " It was not, however, one of her sons that was chosen to carry on theirgrandfather's name and the sacrifices of the Cornelian family. ProbablyCaius was not born when Scipio died, for his choice had been the secondson of his sister and of Lucius Æmilius Paulus (son of him who died atCannæ. ) This child being adopted by his uncle, was called PubliusCornelius Scipio Æmilianus, and when he grew up was to marry his cousinSempronia. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXI. THE CONQUEST OF GREECE, CORINTH, AND CARTHAGE. 179--145. It was a great change when Rome, which to the Greeks of Pyrrhus' timehad seemed so rude and simple, was thought such a school of policy thatGreek and half-Greek kings sent their sons to be educated there, partlyas hostages for their own peaceableness, and partly to learn the spiritof Roman rule. The first king who did this was Philip of Macedon, whosent his son Demetrius to be brought up at Rome; but when he came back, his father and brother were jealous of him, and he was soon put todeath. When his brother Perseus came to the throne, there was hatred betweenhim and the Romans, and ere long he was accused of making war on theirallies. He offered to make peace, but they replied that they would hearnothing till he had laid down his arms, and this he would not do, sothat Lucius Æmilius Paulus (the brother-in-law of Scipio) was sent toreduce him. As Æmilius came into his own house after receiving theappointment, he met his little daughter crying, and when he asked herwhat was the matter, she answered, "Oh, father, Perseus is dead!" Shemeant her little dog, but he kissed her and thanked her for the goodomen. He overran Macedon, and gained the great battle of Pydna, afterwhich Perseus was obliged to give himself up into the hands of theRomans, begging, however, not to be made to walk in Æmilius' triumph. The general answered that he might obtain that favor from himself, meaning that he could die by his own hand; but Perseus did not take thehint, which seems to us far more shocking than it did to a Roman; he didwalk in the triumph, and died a few years after in Italy. Æmilius' twosons were with him throughout this campaign, though still boys underPolybius, their Achaian tutor. Macedon was divided into four provinces, and became entirely subject to Rome. [Illustration: CORINTH. ] The Greeks of the Achaian League began to have quarrels amongthemselves, and when the Romans interfered a fierce spirit broke out, and they wanted to have their old freedom, forgetting how entirelyunable they were to stand against the power of the Romans. CaiusCæcilius Metellus, a man of one of the best and most gracious Romanfamilies, was patient with them and did his best to pacify them, beingmost unwilling to ruin the noble old historical cities; but thesefoolish Greeks fancied that his kindness showed weakness, and forced onthe war, sending a troop to guard the pass of Thermopylæ, but they wereswept away. Unfortunately, Metellus had to go out of office, and LuciusMummius, a fierce, rude, and ignorant soldier, came in his stead tocomplete the conquest. Corinth was taken, utterly ruined and plunderedthroughout, and a huge amount of treasure was sent to Rome, as well aspictures and statues famed all over the world. Mummius was very muchlaughed at for having been told they must be carried in his triumph; andyet, not understanding their beauty, he told the sailors to whose chargethey were given, that if they were lost, new ones must be supplied. However, he was an honest man, who did not help himself out of theplunder, as far too many were doing. After that, Achaia was made a Romanprovince. At this time the third and last Punic war was going on. The old Moorishking, Massinissa, had been continually tormenting Carthage ever sinceshe had been weak, and declaring that Phoenician strangers had nobusiness in Africa. The Carthaginians, who had no means of defendingthemselves, complained; but the Romans would not listen, hoping, perhaps, that they would be goaded at last into attacking the Moor, andthus giving a pretext for a war. Old Marcus Porcius Cato, who was senton a message to Carthage, came back declaring that it was not safe tolet so mighty a city of enemies stand so near. He brought back a branchof figs fresh and good, which he showed the Senate in proof of how nearshe was, and ended each sentence with saying, "_Delenda est Carthago_"(Carthage is to be wiped out). He died that same year at ninety yearsold, having spent most of his life in making a staunch resistance to theeasy and luxurious fashions that were coming in with wealth andrefinement. One of his sayings always deserves to be remembered. When hewas opposing a law giving permission to the ladies to wear gold andpurple, he said they would all be vying with one another, and that thepoor would be ashamed of not making as good an appearance as the rich. "And, " said he, "she who blushes for doing what she ought, will sooncease to blush for doing what she ought not. " One wonders he did not see that to have no enemy near at hand to guardagainst was the very worst thing for the hardy, plain old ways he was soanxious to keep up. However, Carthage was to be wiped out, and ScipioÆmilianus was sent to do the terrible work. He defeated Hasdrubal, thelast of the Carthaginian generals, and took the citadel of Byrsa; butthough all hope was over, the city held out in utter desperation. Weapons were forged out of household implements, even out of gold andsilver, and the women twisted their long hair into bow-strings; and whenthe walls were stormed, they fought from street to street and house tohouse, so that the Romans gained little but ruins and dead bodies. Carthage and Corinth fell on the same day of the year 179. Part of Spain still had to be subdued, and Scipio Æmilianus was sentthither. The city of Numantia, with only 5000 inhabitants, endured oneof those long, hopeless sieges for which Spanish cities have in alltimes been remarkable, and was only taken at last when almost everycitizen had perished. At the same time, Attalus, king of Pergamus in Asia Minor, being thelast of his race, bequeathed his dominions to the Romans, and thus gavethem their first solid footing there. All this was altering Roman manners much. Weak as the Greeks were, theirold doings of every kind were still the admiration of every one, and theRomans, who had always been rough, straightforward doers, began to wishto learn of them to think. All the wealthier families had Greeks fortutors for their sons, and expected them to talk and write the language, and study the philosophy and poetry till they should be as familiar withit as if they were Greeks themselves. Unluckily, the Greeks themselveshad fallen from their earnestness and greatness, so that there was notmuch to be learnt of them now but vain deceit and bad taste. Rich Romans, too, began to get most absurdly luxurious. They hadsplendid villas on the Italian hill-sides, where they went to spend thesummer when Rome was unhealthy, and where they had beautiful gardens, with courts paved with mosaic, and fish-ponds for the pet fish for whichmany had a passion. One man was laughed at for having shed tears whenhis favorite fish died, and he retorted by saying that it was more thanhis accuser had done for his wife. Their feasts were as luxurious as they could make them, in spite of lawsto keep them within bounds. Dishes of nightingales' tongues, of fatteddormice, and even of snails, were among their food: and sometimes astream was made to flow along the table, containing the living companionof the mullet which served as part of the meal. CHAPTER XXII. THE GRACCHI. 137-122. Young Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the eldest of Cornelia's jewels, wassent in the year 137 to join the Roman army in Spain. As he went throughEtruria, which, as every one knew, had been a thickly peopled, fertilecountry in old times, he was shocked to see its dreariness anddesolation. Instead of farms and vineyards, there were great bare spacesof land, where sheep, kids, or goats were feeding. These vast tractsbelonged to Romans, who kept slaves to attend to the flocks; while allthe corn that was used in Rome came from Sicily or Africa, and thepoorer Romans lived in the city itself--idle men, chiefly trusting todistributions of corn, and unable to work for themselves because theyhad no ground to till; and as to trades and handicrafts, the rich menhad everything they wanted made in their own houses by their slaves. [Illustration: CORNELIA AND HER SONS. ] No wonder the Romans were losing their old character. This was the verything that the Licinian law had been intended to prevent, by forbiddingany citizen to have more than a certain quantity of land, and giving thestate the power of resuming it. The law was still there, but it hadbeen disused and forgotten; estates had been gathered into the hands offamilies and handed down, till now, though there were 400, 000 citizens, only 2, 000 were men of property. While Tiberius was serving in Spain, he decided on his plan. As hisfamily was plebeian, he could be a tribune of the people, and as soon ashe came home he stood and was elected. Then he proposed reviving theLicinian law, that nobody should have more than 500 acres, and that therest should be divided among those who had nothing, leaving, however, alarger portion to those who had many children. There was, of course, a terrible uproar; the populace clamoring fortheir rights, and the rich trying to stop the measure. They bribed oneof the other tribunes to forbid it; but there was a fight, in whichTiberius prevailed, and he and his young brother Caius, and hisfather-in-law Appius Claudius, were appointed as triumvers to see thelaw carried out. Then the rich men followed their old plan of spreadingreports among the people that Tiberius wanted to make himself a king, and had accepted a crown and purple robe from some foreign envoy. Whenhis year of office was coming to an end, he sought to be elected tribuneagain, but the patricians said it was against the law. There was agreat tumult, in the course of which he put his hand to his head, eitherto guard it from a blow or to beckon his friends. "He demands thediadem, " shouted his enemies, and there was a great struggle, in whichthree hundred people were killed. Tiberius tried to take refuge in theTemple of Jupiter, but the doors were closed against him; he stumbled, was knocked down with a club, and killed. However, the Sempronian law had been made, and the people wanted, ofcourse, to have it carried out, while the nobles wanted it to be a deadletter. Scipio Æmilianus, the brother-in-law of the Gracchi, had been inSpain all this time, but he had so much disapproved of Tiberius' doingsthat he was said to have exclaimed, on hearing of his death, "So perishall who do the like. " But when he came home, he did so much to calm andquiet matters, that there was a cry to make him Dictator, and let himsettle the whole matter. Young Caius Gracchus, who thought the causewould thus be lost, tried to prevent the choice by fixing on him thename of tyrant. To which Scipio calmly replied, "Rome's enemies may wellwish me dead, for they know that while I live Rome cannot perish. " When he went home, he shut himself into his room to prepare hisdiscourse for the next day, but in the morning he was found dead, without a wound, though his slaves declared he had been murdered. Somesuspected his wife Sempronia, others even her mother Cornelia, but theSenate would not have the matter enquired into. He left no child, andthe Africanus line of Cornelius ended with him. Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than his brother, and was electedtribune as soon as he was old enough. He was full of still greaterschemes than his brother. His mother besought him to be warned by hisbrother's fate, but he was bent on his objects, and carried some of themout. He had the Sempronian law reaffirmed, though he could not act onit; but in the meantime he began a regular custom of having corn servedout to the poorer citizens, and found work for them upon roads andbridges; also he caused the state to clothe the soldiers, instead oftheir doing it at their own expense. Another scheme which he firstproposed was to make the Italians of the countries now one with Romanterritory into citizens, with votes like the Romans themselves; but thisagain angered the patricians, who saw they should be swamped by numbersand lose their power. He also wanted to found a colony of plebeians on the ruins of Carthage, and when his tribuneship was over he went to Africa to see about it; butwhen he came home the patricians had arranged an attack on him, and hewas insulted by the lictor of the consul Opimius. The patricianscollected on one side, the poorer sort around Caius on the AventineHill; but the nobles were the strongest, the plebeians fled, and Caiuswithdrew with one slave into a sacred grove, whence he hoped to reachthe Tiber; but the wood was surrounded, his retreat was cut off, and hecommanded the slave to kill him that he might not fall alive into thehands of his enemies, after which the poor faithful fellow killedhimself, unable to bear the loss of his master. The weight of Caius'head in gold had been promised by the Senate, and the man who found thebody was said to have taken out the brains and filled it up with leadthat his reward might be larger. Three thousand men were killed in thisriot, ten times as many as at Tiberius' death. Opimius was so proud of having overthrown Caius, that he had a medalstruck with Hercules slaying the monsters. Cornelia, broken-hearted, retired to a country-house; but in a few years the feeling turned, great love was shown to the memory of the two brothers, statues were setup in their honor, and when Cornelia herself died, her statue wasinscribed with the title she had coveted, "The mother of the Gracchi. " [Illustration: ROMAN CENTURION. ] Things were indeed growing worse and worse. The Romans were as brave asever in the field, and were sure in the end to conquer any nation theycame in contact with; but at home, the city was full of overgrown richmen, with huge hosts of slaves, and of turbulent poor men, who onlycared for their citizenship for the sake of the corn they gained by it, and the games exhibited by those who stood for a magistracy. Immensesums were spent in hiring gladiators and bringing wild animals to bebaited for their amusement; and afterwards, when sent out to govern theprovinces, the expenses were repaid by cruel grinding and robbing thepeople of the conquered states. CHAPTER XXIII. THE WARS OF MARIUS. 106-98. After the death of Massinissa, king of Numidia, the ally of the Romans, there were disputes among his grandsons, and Jugurtha, whom they held tohave the least right, obtained the kingdom. The commander of the armysent against him was Caius Marius, who had risen from being a free Romanpeasant in the village of Arpinum, but serving under Scipio Æmilianus, had shown such ability, that when some one was wondering where theywould find the equal of Scipio when he was gone, that general touchedthe shoulder of his young officer and said, "Possibly here. " Rough soldier as he always was, he married Julia, of the high family ofthe Cæsars, who were said to be descended from Æneas; and though he wasmuch disliked by the Senate, he always carried the people with him. Whenhe received the province of Numidia, instead of, as every one had donebefore, forming his army only of Roman citizens, he offered to enlistwhoever would, and thus filled his ranks with all sorts of wild anddesperate men, whom he could indeed train to fight, but who had none ofthe old feeling for honor or the state, and this in the end made a greatchange in Rome. Jugurtha maintained a wild war in the deserts of Africa with Marius, butat last he was betrayed to the Romans by his friend Bocchus, anotherMoorish king, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Marius' lieutenant, was sentto receive him--a transaction which Sulla commemorated on a signet ringwhich he always wore. Poor Jugurtha was kept two years to appear at thetriumph, where he walked in chains, and then was thrown alive into thedungeon under the Capitol, where he took six days to die of cold andhunger. Marius was elected consul for the second time even before he had quitecome home from Africa, for it was a time of great danger. Two fierce andterrible tribes, whom the Romans called Cimbri and Teutones, and whowere but the vanguard of the swarms who would overwhelm them sixcenturies later, had come down through Germany to the settled countriesbelonging to Rome, especially the lands round the old Greek settlementsin Gaul, which had fallen of course into the hands of the Romans, andwere full of beautiful rich cities, with houses and gardens round them. The Province, as the Romans called it, would have been grand plunderingground for these savages, and Marius established himself in a camp onthe banks of the Rhone to protect it, cutting a canal to bring hisprovisions from the sea, which still remains. While he was thus engaged, he was a fourth time elected consul. [Illustration: MARIUS. ] The enemy began to move. The Cimbri meant to march eastward round theAlps, and pour through the Tyrol into Italy; the Teutones to go by theWest, fighting Marius on the way. But he would not come out of his campon the Rhone, though the Teutones, as they passed, shouted to ask theRoman soldiers what messages they had to send to their wives in Italy. When they had all passed, he came out of his camp and followed them asfar as Aquæ Sextiæ, now called Aix, where one of the most terriblebattles the world ever saw was fought. These people were a wholetribe--wives, children, and everything they had with them--and to bedefeated was utter and absolute ruin. A great enclosure was made withtheir carts and wagons, whence the women threw arrows and darts to helpthe men; and when, after three days of hard fighting, all hope was over, they set fire to the enclosure and killed their children and themselves. The whole swarm was destroyed. Marius marched away, and no one was leftto bury the dead, so that the spot was called the Putrid Fields, and isstill known as Les Pourrieres. [Illustration: ONE OF THE TROPHIES, CALLED OF MARIUS, AT THE CAPITOL ATROME. ] While Marius was offering up the spoil, tidings came that he was a fifthtime chosen consul; but he had to hasten into Italy, for the otherconsul, Catulus, could not stand before the Cimbri, and Marius met himon the Po retreating from them. The Cimbri demanded lands in Italy forthemselves and their allies the Teutones. "The Teutones have all theground they will ever want, on the other side the Alps, " said Marius;and a terrible battle followed, in which the Cimbri were as entirely cutoff as their allies had been. Marius was made consul a sixth time. As a reward to the brave soldierswho had fought under him, he made one thousand of them, who came fromthe city of Camerinum, Roman citizens, and this the patricians dislikedgreatly. His excuse was, "The din of arms drowned the voice of the law;"but the new citizens were provided for by lands in the Province, whichthe Romans said the Gauls had lost to the Teutones and they hadreconquered. It was very hard on the Gauls, but that was the last thinga Roman cared about. The Italians, however, were all crying out for the rights of Romans, andthe more far-sighted among the Romans would, like Caius Gracchus, havegranted them. Marcus Livius Drusus did his best for them; he was a goodman, wise and frank-hearted. When he was having a house built, and theplan was shown him which would make it impossible for any one to seeinto it, he said, "Rather build one where my fellow-countrymen may seeall I do. " He was very much loved, and when he was ill, prayers wereoffered at the temples for his recovery; but no sooner did he take upthe cause of the Italians than all the patricians hated him bitterly. "Rome for the Romans, " was their watchword. Drusus was one dayentertaining an Italian gentleman, when his little nephew, MarcusPorcius Cato, a descendant of the old censor, and bred in sternpatrician views, was playing about the room. The Italian merrily askedhim to favor his cause. "No, " said the boy. He was offered toys andcakes if he would change his mind, but he still refused; he wasthreatened, and at last he was held by one leg out of the window--allwithout shaking his resolution for a moment; and this constancy hecarried with him through life. People's minds grew embittered, and Drusus was murdered in the street, crying as he fell, "When will Rome find so good a citizen!" After this, the Italians took up arms, and what was called the Social War began. Marius had no high command, being probably too much connected with theenemy. Some of the Italian tribes held with Rome, and these wererewarded with the citizenship; and after all, though the consul LuciusJulius Cæsar, brother-in-law to Marius, gained some victories, therevolt was so widespread, that the Senate felt it wisest, on the firstsign of peace, to offer citizenship to such Italians as would comewithin sixty days to claim it. Citizenship brought a man under Romanlaw, freed him from taxation, and gave him many advantages and openingsto a rise in life. But he could only give his vote at Rome, and onlythere receive the distribution of corn, and he further became liable tobe called out to serve in a legion, so that the benefit was not so greatas at first appeared, and no very large numbers of Italians came toapply for it. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIV. THE ADVENTURES OF MARIUS. 93--84. The chief foe of Marius was almost always his second in command, PubliusCornelius Sulla, one of the men of highest family in Rome. He had allthe high culture and elegant learning that the rough soldier Mariusdespised, spoke and wrote Greek as easily as Latin, and was as well readin Greek poetry and philosophy as any Athenian could be; but he wasgiven up to all the excesses of luxury in which the wealthy Romansindulged, and his way of life had made him frightful to look at. Hisface was said to be like a mulberry sprinkled with salt, with a terriblepair of blue eyes glaring out of it. In 93 he was sent to command against Mithridates, king of Pontus, oneof the little kingdoms in Asia Minor that had sprung up out of thebreak-up of Alexander's empire. Under this king, Mithridates, it hadgrown very powerful. He was of Persian birth, had all the learning andscience both of Greece and the far East, and was said in especial to bewonderfully learned in all plants and their virtues, so as to have madehimself proof against all kinds of poison, and he could speaktwenty-five languages. He had great power in Asia Minor, and took upon himself to appoint aking of Cappadocia, thus leading to a quarrel with the Romans. In themidst of the Social War, when he thought they had their hands full inItaly, Mithridates caused all the native inhabitants of Asia Minor torise upon the Romans among them in one night and murder them all, sothat 80, 000 are said to have perished. Sulla was ordered to take thecommand of the army which was to avenge their death; but, while he wasraising his forces, Marius, angry that the patricians had hindered theplebeians and Italians from gaining more by the Social War, raised up agreat tumult, meaning to overpower the patricians' resistance. He wouldhave done more wisely had he waited until Sulla was quite gone, for thatgeneral came back to the rescue of his friends with six newly-raisedlegions, and Marius could only just contrive to escape from Rome, wherehe was proclaimed a traitor and a price set on his head. He was nowseventy years old, but full of spirit. First he escaped to his own farm, whence he hoped to reach Ostia, where a ship was waiting for him; but aparty of horsemen were seen coming, and he was hidden in a cart full ofbeans and driven down the coast, where he embarked, meaning to go toAfrica; but adverse winds and want of food forced him to land atCircæum, whence, with a few friends, he made his way along the coast, through woods and rocks, keeping up the spirits of his companions bytelling them that, when a little boy, he robbed an eyrie of seveneaglets, and that a soothsayer had then foretold that he would be seventimes consul. At last a troop of horse was seen coming towards them, andat the same time two ships near the coast. The only hope was in swimmingout to the nearest ship, and Marius was so heavy and old that this wasdone with great difficulty. Even then the ships were so near the shorethat the pursuers could command the crew to throw Marius out, but thisthey refused to do, though they only waited till the soldiers were gone, to put him on shore again. Here he was in a marshy, boggy place, wherean old man let him rest in his cottage, and then hid him in a cave undera heap of rushes. Again, however, the troops appeared, and threatenedthe old man for hiding an enemy of the Romans. It was in Marius'hearing, and fearing to be betrayed, he rushed out into a pool, where hestood up to his neck in water till a soldier saw him, and he was draggedout and taken to the city of Minturnæ. [Illustration: THE CATAPULT. ] There the council decided on his death, and sent a soldier to kill him, but the fierce old man stood glaring at him, and said. "Darest thoukill Caius Marius?" The man was so frightened that he ran away, cryingout, "I cannot kill Caius Marius. " The Senate of Minturnæ took this asan omen, and remembered besides that he had been a good friend to theItalians, so they conducted him through a sacred grove to the sea, andsent him off to Africa. On landing, he sent his son to ask shelter fromone of the Numidian princes, and, while waiting for an answer, he washarassed by a messenger from a Roman officer of low rank, forbidding hispresence in Africa. He made no reply till the messenger pressed to knowwhat to say to his master. Then the old man looked up, and sternlyanswered. "Say that you have seen Caius Marius sitting in the ruins ofCarthage"--a grand rebuke for the insult to fallen greatness. But theNumidian could not receive him, and he could only find shelter in alittle island on the coast. There he soon heard that no sooner had Sulla embarked for the East thanRome had fallen into dire confusion. The consuls, Caius Octavius andPublius Cornelius Cinna, were of opposite parties, and had a furiousfight, in which Cinna was driven out of Rome, and at the same time theItalians had begun a new Social War. Marius saw that his time was come. He hurried to Etruria, where he was joined by a party of his friends andfive hundred runaway slaves. The discontented Romans formed another armyunder Quintus Sertorius, and the Samnites, who had begun the war, overpowered the troops sent against them, and marched to Rome, declaringthey would have no peace till they had destroyed the wolf's lair. Cinnaand an army were advancing on another side, and, as he was reallyconsul, the Senate in their distress admitted him, hoping that he wouldstop the rest; but when he marched in and seated himself again in thechair of office, he had by his side old Marius clothed in rags. [Illustration: ISLAND ON THE COAST. ] They were bent on revenge, and terrible it was, beginning with theconsul, Caius Octavius, who had disdained to flee, and whose head wassevered from his body and displayed in the Forum, with many othersenators of the noblest blood in Rome, who had offended either Marius orCinna or any of their fierce followers. Marius walked along in gloomysilence, answering no one; but his followers were bidden to spare onlythose to whom he gave his hand to be kissed. The slaves pillaged thehouses, murdered many on their own account, and everything was in thewildest uproar, till the two chiefs called in Sertorius with a legion torestore order. Then they named themselves consuls, without even asking for an election, and thus Marius was seven times consul. He wanted to go out to the Eastand take the command from Sulla, but his health was too much broken, andbefore the year of his consulate was over he died. The last time he hadleft the house, he had said to some friends that no man ought to trustagain to such a doubtful fortune as his had been; and then he took tohis bed for seven days without any known illness, and there was founddead, so that he was thought to have starved himself to death. Cinna put in another consul named Valerius Flaccus, and invited all theItalians to enroll themselves as Roman citizens. Then Flaccus went outto the East, meaning to take away the command from Sulla, who washunting Mithridates out of Greece, which he had seized and held for ashort time. But Flaccus' own army rose against him and killed him, andSulla, after beating Mithridates, driving him back to Pontus, and makingpeace with him, was now to come home. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV. SULLA'S PROSCRIPTION. 88-71. There was great fear at Rome, among the friends of Cinna and Marius, atthe prospect of Sulla's return. A fire broke out in the Capitol, andthis added to their terror, for the Books of the Sybil were burnt, andall her prophecies were lost. Cinna tried to oppose Sulla's landing, butwas killed by his own soldiers at Brundusium. Sulla, with his victorious army, could not be stopped. Sertorius fled toSpain, but Marius' son tried, with the help of the Samnites, to resist, and held out Præneste, but the Samnites were beaten in a terrible battleoutside the walls, and when the people of the city saw the heads of theleaders carried on spear points, they insisted on giving up. YoungMarius and a Samnite noble hid themselves in a cave, and as they had nohope, resolved to die; so they fought, hoping to kill each other, andwhen Marius was left alive, he caused himself to be slain by a slave. Sulla marched on towards Rome, furious at the resistance he met with, and determined on a terrible vengeance. He could not enter the city tillhe was ready to dismiss his army and have his triumph, so the Senatecame out to meet him in the temple of Bellona. As they took their seats, they heard dreadful shrieks and cries. "No matter, " said Sulla; "it isonly some wretches being punished. " The wretches were the 8000 Samniteprisoners he had taken at the battle of Præneste, and brought to bekilled in the Campus Martius; and with these shocking sounds to markthat he was in earnest, the purple-faced general told the tremblingSenate that if they submitted to him he would be good to them, but thathe would spare none of his enemies, great or small. And his men were already in the city and country, slaughtering not onlythe party of Marius, but every one against whom any one of them had aspite, or whose property he coveted. Marius' body, which had been buriedand not burnt, was taken from the grave and thrown into the Tiber; andsuch horrible deeds were done that Sulla was asked in the Senate wherethe execution was to stop. He showed a list of eighty more who had yetto die; and the next day and the next he brought other lists of twohundred and thirty each. These dreadful lists were called proscriptions, and any one who tried to shelter the victims was treated in the samemanner. The property of all who were slain was seized, and theirchildren declared incapable of holding any public office. Among those who were in danger was the nephew of Marius' wife, CaiusJulius Cæsar, but, as he was of a high patrician family, Sulla onlyrequired of him to divorce his wife and marry a stepdaughter of his own. Cæsar refused, and fled to the Sabine hills, where pursuers were sentafter him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome, especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying, however, "Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius. " Cæsarwent to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off theidle life of pleasure he had been leading in Rome. [Illustration: PALAZZO VECCHIO, FLORENCE. ] The country people were even more cruelly punished than the citizens:whole cities were destroyed and districts laid waste; the whole ofEtruria was ravaged, the old race entirely swept away, and the townsruined beyond revival, while the new city of Florence was built withtheir remains, and all we know of them is from the tombs which have oflate years been opened. [Illustration: CORNELIUS SULLA. ] Both the consuls had perished, and Sulla caused himself to be namedDictator. He had really a purpose in all the horrors he had perpetrated, namely, to clear the way for restoring the old government at Rome, whichMarius and his Italians had been overthrowing. He did not see that therule which had worked tolerably well while Rome was only a little citywith a small country round it, would not serve when it was the head ofnumerous distant countries, where the governors, like himself andMarius, grew rich, and trained armies under them able to overpower thewhole state at home. So he set to work to put matters as much aspossible in the old order. So many of the Senate had been killed, thathe had to make up the numbers by putting in three hundred knights; and, to supply the lack of other citizens, after the hosts who had perished, he allowed the Italians to go on coming in to be enrolled as citizens;and ten thousand slaves, who had belonged to his victims, were not onlyset free, but made citizens as his own clients, thus taking the name ofCornelius. He also much lessened the power of the tribunes of thepeople, and made a law that when a man had once been a tribune he shouldnever be chosen for any of the higher offices of the state. By thesemeans he sought to keep up the old patrician power, on which he believedthe greatness of Rome depended; though, after all, the grand oldpatrician families had mostly died off, and half the Senate were onlyknights made noble. After this Sulla resigned the dictatorship, for he was growing old, andhad worn out his health by his riot and luxury. He spent his time in avilla near Rome, talking philosophy with his friends, and dictating thehistory of his own life in Greek. When he died, he bade them burn hisbody, contrary to the practice of the Cornelii, no doubt fearing itwould be treated like that of Marius. The most promising of the men of his party who were growing up andcoming forward was Cnæus Pompeius, a brave and worthy man, who had whilequite young, gained such a victory over a Numidian prince that Sullahimself gave him the title of Magnus, or the Great. He was afterwardssent to Spain, where Sertorius held out for eight years against theRoman power with the help of the native chiefs, but at last was put todeath by his own followers. Things were altogether in a bad state. Therewere great struggles in Rome at every election, for the officers of thestate were now chiefly esteemed for the sake of the three or five years'government in the provinces to which they led. No expense was thoughttoo great in shows of beasts and gladiators by which to win the votes ofthe people; for, after the year of office, the candidate meant amply torepay himself by what he could squeeze out of the unhappy province underhis charge, and nobody cared for cruelty or injustice to any one but aRoman citizen. Numbers of gladiators were kept and trained to fight in these shows; andwhile the Spanish war was going on, a whole school of them--seventy-eightin number--who were kept at Capua, broke out, armed themselves with thespits, hooks, and axes in a butcher's shop, and took refuge in the craterof Mount Vesuvius, which at that time showed no signs of being an activevolcano. There, under their leader Spartacus, they gathered together everygladiator slave or who could run away to them, and Spartacus wanted themto march northward, force their way through Italy, climb the Alps, andreach their homes in Thrace and Gaul; but the plunder of Italy temptedthem, and they would not go, till an army was sent against them underMarcus Licinius Crassus--called Dives, or the Rich, from the spoil he hadgained during the proscription. Then Spartacus hoped to escape in a fleetof pirate ships from Cilicia, and to hold out in the passes of MountTaurus; but the Cilician pirates deceived him, sailed away with his money, and left him to his fate, and he and his gladiators were all slain byCrassus and Pompeius, who had been called home from Spain. CHAPTER XXVI. THE CAREER OF POMPEIUS. 70-63. Cnæus Pompeius Magnus and Lucius Licinius Crassus Dives were consulstogether in the year 70; but Crassus, though he feasted the people at10, 000 tables, was envied and disliked, and would never have beenelected but for Pompeius, who was a great favorite with the people, andso much trusted, both by them and the nobles, that it seems to havefilled him with pride, for he gave himself great airs, and did not treathis fellow-consul as an equal. When his term of office was over, the most pressing thing to be done wasto put down the Cilician pirates. In the angle formed between Asia Minorand Syria, with plenty of harbors formed by the spurs of Mount Taurus, there had dwelt for ages past a horde of sea robbers, whose swiftgalleys darted on the merchant ships of Tyre and Alexandria; and now, after the ruin of the Syrian kingdom, they had grown so rich that theirstate galleys had silken sails, oars inlaid with ivory and silver, andbronze prows. They robbed the old Greek temples and the Eastern shrines, and even made descents on the Italian cities, besides stopping the shipswhich brought wheat from Sicily and Alexandria to feed the Romans. To enable Pompeius to crush them, authority was given him for threeyears over all the Mediterranean and fifty miles inland all round, whichwas nearly the same thing as the whole empire. He divided the sea intothirteen commands, and sent a party to fight the pirates in each; andthis was done so effectually, that in forty days they were all huntedout of the west end of the gulf, whither he pursued them with his wholeforce, beat them in a sea-fight, and then besieged them; but, as he wasknown to be a just and merciful man, they came to terms with him, and hescattered them about in small colonies in distant cities, so that theymight cease to be mischievous. [Illustration: COAST OF TYRE. ] In the meantime, the war with Mithridates had broken out again, andLucius Lucullus, who had been consul after Pompeius, was fighting withhim in the East; but Lucullus did not please the Romans, though he metwith good success, and had pushed Mithridates so hard that there wasnothing left for Pompeius but to complete the conquest, and he drove theold king beyond Caucasus, and then marched into Syria, where heoverthrew the last of the Seleucian kings, Antiochus, and gave him thelittle kingdom of Commagene to spend the remainder of his life in, whileSyria and Phoenicia were made into a great Roman province. Under the Maccabees, Palestine had struggled into being independent ofSyria, but only by the help of the Romans, who, as usual, tried to allythemselves with small states in order to make an excuse for making waron large ones. There was now a great quarrel between two brothers of theMaccabean family, and one of them, Hyrcanus, came to ask the aid ofPompeius. The Roman army marched into the Holy Land, and, after seizingthe whole country, was three months besieging Jerusalem, which, afterall, it only took by an attack when the Jews were resting on the Sabbathday. Pompeius insisted on forcing his way into the Holy of Holies, andwas very much disappointed to find it empty and dark. He did notplunder the treasury of the Temple, but the Jews remarked that, from thetime of this daring entrance, his prosperity seemed to fail him. Beforehe left the East, however, old Mithridates, who had taken refuge in theCrimea, had been attacked by his own favorite son, and, finding that hispower was gone, had taken poison; but, as his constitution was sofortified by antidotes that it took no effect, he caused one of hisslaves to kill him. The son submitted to the Romans, and was allowed to reign on theBosphorus; but Pompeius had extended the Roman Empire as far as theEuphrates; for though a few small kings still remained, it was only bysuffrance from the Romans, who had gained thirty-nine great cities. Egypt, the Parthian kingdom on the Tigris, and Armenia in the mountains, alone remained free. While all this was going on in the East, there was a very dangerous plotcontrived at Rome by a man named Lucius Sergius Catilina, and sevenother good-for-nothing nobles, for arming the mob, even the slaves andgladiators, overthrowing the government, seizing all the offices ofstate, and murdering all their opponents, after the example first set byMarius and Cinna. [Illustration: MOUNTAINS OF ARMENIA. ] Happily such secrets are seldom kept; one of the plotters told thewoman he was in love with, and she told one of the consuls, MarcusTullius Cicero. Cicero was one of the wisest and best men in Rome, andthe one whom we really know the best, for he left a great number ofletters to his friends, which show us the real mind of the man. He wasof the order of the knights, and had been bred up to be a lawyer andorator, and his speeches came to be the great models of Roman eloquence. He was a man of real conscience, and he most deeply loved Rome and herhonor; and though he was both vain and timid, he could put theseweaknesses aside for the public good. Before all the Senate he impeachedCatilina, showing how fully he knew all that he intended. Nothing couldbe done to him by law till he had actually committed his crime, andCicero wanted to show him that all was known, so as to cause him to fleeand join his friends outside. Catilina tried to face it out, but all thesenators began to cry out against him, and he dashed away in terror, andleft the city at night. Cicero announced it the next day in a famousspeech, beginning, "He is gone; he has rushed away; he has burst forth. "Some of his followers in guilt were left at Rome, and just then someletters were brought to Cicero by some of a tribe of Gauls whom theyhad invited to help them in the ruin of the Senate. This was positiveproof, and Cicero caused the nine worst to be seized, and, having provedtheir guilt, there was a consultation in the Senate as to their fate. Julius Cæsar wanted to keep them prisoners for life, which he said wasworse than death, as that, he believed, would end everything; but allthe rest of the Senate were for their death, and they were allstrangled, without giving them a chance of defending themselves orappealing to the people. Cicero beheld the execution himself, and thenwent forth to the crowd, merely saying, "They have lived. " [Illustration: CICERO. ] Catilina, meantime, had collected 20, 000 men in Italy, but they were nothalf-armed, and the newly-returned proconsul, Metellus, made headagainst him; while the other consul, Caius Antonius, was recalled fromMacedonia with his army. As he was a friend of Catilina, he did notchoose to fight with him, and gave up the command to his lieutenant, bywhom the wretch was defeated and slain. His head was cut off and sent toRome. [Illustration: COLOSSAL STATUE OF POMPEIUS OF THE PALAZZO SPADA ATROME. ] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVII. POMPEIUS AND CÆSAR. 61-48. Pompeius was coming home for his triumph, every one had hopes from him, for things were in a very bad state. There had been a great disturbanceat Julius Cæsar's house. Every year there was a festival in honor ofCybele, the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, to which none but women wereadmitted, and where it was sacrilege for a man to be seen. In the midstof this feast in Cæsar's house, a slave girl told his mother Aureliathat there was a man among the ladies. Aurelia shut the doors, took atorch and ran through the house, looking in every one's face for theoffender, who was found to be Publius Clodius, a worthless young man, who had been in Catilina's conspiracy, but had given evidence againsthim. He escaped, but was brought to trial, and then borrowed moneyenough of Crassus the rich, to bribe the judges and avoid the punishmenthe deserved. Cæsar's wife, the sister of Pompeius was free of blame inthe matter, but he divorced her, saying that Cæsar's wife must be freefrom all suspicion; and this, of course, did not bring her brother homein a friendly spirit to Cæsar. [Illustration: POMPEIUS. ] Pompeius' triumph was the most magnificent that had ever yet been seen. It lasted two days, and the banners that were carried in the procession, bore the names of nine hundred cities and one thousand fortresses whichhe had conquered. All the treasures of Mithridates--statues, jewels, andsplendid ornaments of gold and silver worked with precious stones--werecarried along; and it was reckoned that he had brought home 20, 000talents--equal to £5, 000, 000--for the treasury. He was admired, too, forrefusing any surname taken from his conquests, and only wearing thelaurel wreath of a victor in the Senate. Pompeius and Cæsar were the great rival names at this time. Pompeius'desire was to keep the old framework, and play the part of Sulla as itsprotector, only without its violence and bloodshed. Cæsar saw that itwas impossible that things should go on as they were, and had made uphis mind to take the lead and mould them afresh; but this he could notdo while Pompeius was looked up to as the last great conqueror. So Cæsarmeant to serve his consulate, take some government where he could growfamous and form an army, and then come home and mould everything anew. After a year's service in Spain as proprætor, Cæsar came back and madefriends with Pompeius and Crassus, giving his daughter Julia in marriageto Pompeius, and forming what was called a triumvirate, or union ofthree men. Thus he easily obtained the consulship, and showed himselfthe friend of the people by bringing in an Agrarian Law for dividing thepublic lands in Campania among the poorer citizens, not forgettingPompeius' old soldiers; also taking other measures which might make theSenate recollect that Sulla had foretold that he would be another Mariusand more. After this, he took Gaul as his province, and spent seven years insubduing it bit by bit, and in making two visits to Britain. He mightpretty well trust the rotten state of Rome to be ready for hisinterference when he came back. Clodius had actually dared to bringCicero to a trial for having put to death the friends of Catilinawithout allowing them to plead their own cause. Pompeius would not helphim, and the people banished him four hundred miles from Rome, when hewent to Sicily, where he was very miserable; but his exile only lastedtwo years, and then better counsels prevailed, and he was brought homeby a general vote, and welcomed almost as if it had been a triumph. Marcus Porcius Cato was as honest and true a man as Cicero, but veryrough and stern, so that he was feared and hated; and there were oftenfierce quarrels in the Senate and Forum, and in one of these Pompeius'robe was sprinkled with blood. On his return home, his young wife Juliathought he had been hurt, and the shock brought on an illness of whichshe died; thus breaking the link between her husband and father. [Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE. ] Pompeius did all he could to please the Romans when he was consultogether with Crassus. He had been for some time building a mostsplendid theatre in the Campus Martius, after the Greek fashion, open tothe sky, and with tiers of galleries circling round an arena; but theGreeks had never used their theatres for the savage sports for whichthis was intended. When it was opened, five hundred lions, eighteenelephants, and a multitude of gladiators were provided to fight indifferent fashions with one another before thirty thousand spectators, the whole being crowned by a temple to Conquering Venus. After hisconsulate, Pompeius took Spain as his province, but did not go there, managing it by deputy; while Crassus had Syria, and there went to warwith the wild Parthians on the Eastern border. In the battle of Carrhæ, the army of Crassus was entirely routed by the Parthians; he was killed, his head was cut off, and his mouth filled up with molten gold in scornof his riches. At Rome, there was such distress that no one thought mucheven of such a disaster. Bribes were given to secure elections, andthere was nothing but tumult and uproar, in which good men like Ciceroand Cato could do nothing. Clodius was killed in one of these frays, andthe mob grew so furious that the Senate chose Pompeius to be sole consulto put them down; and this he did for a short time, but all fell intoconfusion again while he was very ill of a fever at Naples, and evenwhen he recovered there was a feeling that Cæsar was wanted. But Cæsar'sfriends said he must not be called upon to give up his army unlessPompeius gave up his command of the army in Spain, and neither of themwould resign. [Illustration: THE ARENA. ] Cæsar advanced with all his forces as far as Ravenna, which was stillpart of Cisalpine Gaul, and then the consul, Marcus Marcellus, beggedPompeius to protect the commonwealth, and he took up arms. Two of Cæsarsgreat friends, Marcus Antonius and Caius Cassius, who were tribunes, forbade this; and when they were not heeded, they fled to Cæsar's campasking his protection. So he advanced. It was not lawful for an imperator, or general incommand of an army, to come within the Roman territory with his troopsexcept for his triumph, and the little river Rubicon was the boundary ofCisalpine Gaul. So when Cæsar crossed it, he took the first step inbreaking through old Roman rules, and thus the saying arose that one haspassed the Rubicon when one has gone so far in a matter that there is noturning back. Though Cæsar's army was but small, his fame was such thateverybody seemed struck with dismay, even Pompeius himself, and insteadof fighting, he carried off all the senators of his party to the South, even to the extreme point of Italy at Brundusium. Cæsar marched afterthem thither, having met with no resistance, and having, indeed, won allItaly in sixty days. As he advanced on Brundusium, Pompeius embarked onboard a ship in the harbor and sailed away, meaning, no doubt, to raisean army in the provinces and return--some feared like Sulla--to takevengeance. Cæsar was appointed Dictator, and after crushing Pompeius' friends inSpain, he pursued him into Macedonia, where Pompeius had been collectingall the friends of the old commonwealth. There was a great battle foughtat Pharsalia, a battle which nearly put an end to the old government ofRome, for Cæsar gained a great victory; and Pompeius fled to the coast, where he found a vessel and sailed for Egypt. He sent a message to askshelter at Alexandria, and the advisers of the young king pretended towelcome him, but they really intended to make friends with the victor;and as Pompeius stepped ashore he was stabbed in the back, his bodythrown into the surf, and his head cut off. CHAPTER XXVIII. JULIUS CÆSAR. 48--44. With Pompeius fell the hopes of those who were faithful to the oldgovernment, such as Cicero and Cato. They had only to wait and see whatCæsar would do, and with the memory of Marius in their minds. [Illustration: JULIUS CÆSAR. ] Cæsar did not come at once to Rome; he had first to reduce the East toobedience. Egypt was under the last descendants of Alexander's generalPtolemy, and was an ally of Rome, that is, only remaining a kingdom byher permission. The king was a wretched weak lad; his sister Cleopatra, who was joined with him in the throne, was one of the most beautiful andwinning women who ever lived. Cæsar, who needed money, demanded somethat was owing to the state. The young king's advisers refused, andCæsar, who had but a small force with him, was shut up in a quarter ofAlexandria where he could get no fresh water but from pits which his mendug in the sand. He burnt the Egyptian fleet that it might not stop thesuccors that were coming from Syria, and he tried to take the Isle ofPharos, with the lighthouse on it, but his ship was sunk, and he wasobliged to save himself by swimming, holding his journals in one handabove the water. However, the forces from Syria were soon brought tohim, and he was able to fight a battle in which the young king wasdrowned; and Egypt was at his mercy. Cleopatra was determined to have aninterview with him, and had herself carried into his rooms in a roll ofcarpet, and when there, she charmed him so much that he set her up asqueen of Egypt. He remained three months longer in Egypt collectingmoney; and hearing that Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates, had attackedthe Roman settlements in Asia Minor, he sailed for Tarsus, marchedagainst Pharnaces, routed and killed him in battle. The success wasannounced to the Senate in the following brief words, "_Veni, vidi, vici_"--"I came, I saw, I conquered. " [Illustration: CATO. ] He was a second time appointed Dictator, and came home to arrangeaffairs; but there were no proscriptions, though he took away theestates of those who opposed him. There was still a party of thesenators and their supporters who had followed Pompeius in Africa, withCato and Cnæus Pompeius, the eldest son of the great leader, and Cæsarhad to follow them thither. He gave them a great defeat at Thapsus, andthe remnant took refuge in the city of Utica, whither Cæsar followedthem. They would have stood a siege, but the townspeople would notconsent, and Cato sent off all his party by sea, and remained alone withhis son and a few of his friends, not to face the conqueror, but to dieby his own sword ere he came, as the Romans had learned from Stoicphilosophy to think the nobler part. [Illustration: FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES IN THE COLUMBARIUM (lit. _Pigeon-house_)OF THE HOUSE OF JULIUS CÆSAR AT THE PORTA CAPENA IN ROME. (The rows of niches for the cinerary urns in a Roman sepulchre werecalled by this name from their resemblance to a dovecot. )] Such of the Senate as had not joined Pompeius were ready to fall downand worship Cæsar when he came home. So rejoiced was Rome to fear noproscription, that temples were dedicated to Cæsar's clemency, and hisimage was to be carried in procession with those of the gods. He wasnamed Dictator for ten years, and was received with four triumphs--overthe Gauls, over the Egyptians, over Pharnaces, and over Juba, an Africanking who had aided Cato. Foremost of the Gaulish prisoners was the braveVercingetorix, and among the Egyptians, Arsinoë, the sister ofCleopatra. A banquet was given at his cost to the whole Roman people, and the shows of gladiators and beasts surpassed all that had ever beenseen. The Julii were said to be descended from Æneas and to Venus, ashis ancestress, Cæsar dedicated a breastplate of pearls from the rivermussels of Britain. Still, however, he had to go to Spain to reduce thesons of Pompeius. They were defeated in battle, the elder was killed, but Cnæus, the younger, held out in the mountains and hid himself amongthe natives. After this, Cæsar returned to Rome to carry out his plans. He wasdictator for ten years and consul for five, and was also imperator orcommander of an army he was not made to disband, so that he nearly wasas powerful as any king; and, as he saw that such an enormous domain asRome now possessed could never be governed by two magistrates changingevery year, he prepared matters for there being one ruler. The influenceof the Senate, too, he weakened very much by naming a great many personsto it of no rank or distinction, till there were nine hundred members, and nobody thought much of being a senator. He also made an immensenumber of new citizens, and he caused a great survey to be begun byRoman officers in preparation for properly arranging the provinces, governments, and tribute; and he began to have the laws drawn up inregular order. In fact, he was one of the greatest men the world hasever produced, not only as a conqueror, but a statesman and ruler; andthough his power over Rome was not according to the laws, and had beengained by a rebellion, he was using it for her good. He was learned in all philosophy and science, and his history of hiswars in Gaul has come down to our times. As a high patrician by birth, he was Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, and thus had to fix all thefestival days in each year. Now the year had been supposed to be onlythree hundred and fifty-five days long, and the Pontifex put in anothermonth or several days whenever he pleased, so that there was greatconfusion, and the feast days for the harvest and vintage came, according to the calendar, three months before there was any corn orgrapes. To set this to rights, since it was now understood that the length ofthe year was three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours, Cæsar andthe scientific men who assisted him devised the fresh arrangement thatwe call leap year, adding a day to the three hundred and sixty-five oncein four years. He also changed the name of one of the summer monthsfrom Sextile to July, in honor of himself. Another work of his wasrestoring Corinth and Carthage, which had both been ruined the sameyear, and now were both refounded the same year. He was busy about the glory of the state, but there was much to shockold Roman feelings in his conduct. Cleopatra had followed him to Rome, and he was thinking of putting away his wife Calphurnia to marry her. But his keeping the dictatorship was the real grievance, and the remainsof the old party in the Senate could not bear that the patrician freedomof Rome should be lost. Every now and then his flatterers offered him aroyal crown and hailed him as king, though he always refused it, andthis title still stirred up bitter hatred. He was preparing an army, intending to march into the further East, avenge Crassus' defeat on theParthians, and march where no one but Alexander had made his way; and ifhe came back victorious from thence, nothing would be able to standagainst him. The plotters then resolved to strike before he set out. Caius Cassius, atall, lean man, who had lately been made prætor, was the chiefconspirator, and with him was Marcus Junius Brutus, a descendant of himwho overthrew the Tarquins, and husband to Porcia, Cato's daughter, alsoanother Brutus named Decimus, hitherto a friend of Cæsar, and newlyappointed to the government of Cisalpine Gaul. These and twelve moreagreed to murder Cæsar on the 15th of March, called in the Romancalendar the Ides of March, when he went to the senate-house. Rumors got abroad and warnings came to him about that special day. Hiswife dreamt so terrible a dream that he had almost yielded to herentreaties to stay at home, when Decimus Brutus came in and laughed himout of it. As he was carried to the senate-house in a litter, a man gavehim a writing and begged him to read it instantly; but he kept it rolledin his hand without looking. As he went up the steps he said to theaugur Spurius, "The Ides of March are come. " "Yes, Cæsar, " was theanswer; "but they are not passed. " A few steps further on, one of theconspirators met him with a petition, and the others joined in it, clinging to his robe and his neck, till another caught his toga andpulled it over his arms, and then the first blow was struck with adagger. Cæsar struggled at first as all fifteen tried to strike at him, but, when he saw the hand uplifted of his treacherous friend Decimus, he exclaimed, "_Et tu Brute_"--"Thou, too, Brutus"--drew his toga overhis head, and fell dead at the foot of the statue of Pompeius. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIX. THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE. 44--33. The murderers of Cæsar had expected the Romans to hail them asdeliverers from a tyrant, but his great friend Marcus Antonius, who was, together with him, consul for that year, made a speech over his body asit lay on a couch of gold and ivory in the Forum ready for the funeral. Antonius read aloud Cæsar's will, and showed what benefits he hadintended for his fellow-citizens, and how he loved them, so that lovefor him and wrath against his enemies filled every hearer. The army, ofcourse, were furious against the murderers; the Senate was terrified, and granted everything Antonius chose to ask, provided he would protectthem, whereupon he begged for a guard for himself that he might besaved from Cæsar's fate, and this they gave him; while the fifteenmurderers fled secretly, mostly to Cisalpine Gaul, of which DecimusBrutus was governor. Cæsar had no child but the Julia who had been wife to Pompeius, and hisheir was his young cousin Caius Octavius, who changed his name to CaiusJulius Cæsar Octavianus, and, coming to Rome, demanded his inheritance, which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; butOctavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairnessthat many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, whohad always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thingto be done was to put down the murderers--Decimus Brutus was in Gaul, Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had alsoraised an army in Spain. Good men in the Senate dreaded no one so much as Antonius, and put theirhope in young Octavianus. Cicero made a set of speeches againstAntonius, which are called Philippics, because they denounce him asDemosthenes used to denounce Philip of Macedon, and like them, too, theywere the last flashes of spirit in a sinking state; and Cicero, inthose days, was the foremost and best man who was trying at his own riskto save the old institutions of his country. But it was all in vain;they were too rotten to last, and there were not enough of honest men tomake a stand against a violent unscrupulous schemer like Antonius, aboveall now that the clever young Octavianus saw it was for his interest tomake common cause with him, and with a third friend of Cæsar, rich butdull, named Marcus Æmilius Lepidus. They called on Decimus Brutus tosurrender his forces to them, and marched against him. Then his troopsdeserted him, and he tried to escape into the Alps, but was delivered upto Antonius and put to death. [Illustration: MARCUS ANTONIUS. ] Soon after, Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus all met on a little islandin the river Rhenus and agreed to form a triumvirate for five years forsetting things to rights once more, all three enjoying consular powertogether; and, as they had the command of all the armies, there was noone to stop them. Lepidus was to stay and govern Rome, while the othertwo hunted down the murderers of Cæsar in the East. But first, there wasa deadly vengeance to be taken in the city upon all who could besupposed to have favored the murder of Cæsar, or who could be enemies totheir schemes. So these three sat down with a list of the citizensbefore them to make a proscription, each letting a kinsman or friend ofhis own be marked for death, provided he might slay one related toanother of the three. The dreadful list was set up in the Forum, and aprice paid for the heads of the people in it, so that soldiers, ruffians, and slaves brought them in; but it does not seem that--as inthe other two proscriptions--there was random murder, and many bribedtheir assassins and escaped from Italy. Octavianus had marked the fewestand tried to save Cicero, but Antonius insisted on his death. On hearingthat he was in the fatal roll, Cicero had left Rome with his brother, and slowly travelled towards the coast from one country house to anothertill he came to Antium, whence he meant to sail for Greece; but there hewas overtaken. His brother was killed at once, but he was put into aboat by his slaves, and went down the coast to Formiæ, where he landedagain, and, going to a house near, said he would rather die in his owncountry which he had so often saved. However, when the pursuers knockedat the gate, his slaves placed him in a litter and hurried him out atanother door. He was, however, again overtaken, and he forbade hisslaves to fight for him, but stretched out his throat for the sword, with his eyes full upon it. His head was carried to Antonius, whose wifeFulvia actually pierced the tongue with her bodkin in revenge for thespeeches it had made against her husband. After this dreadful work, Antonius and Octavianus went across to Greece, where Marcus Brutus had collected the remains of the army that hadfought under Pompeius. He had been made much of at Athens, where hisstatue had been set up beside that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, theslayers of Pisistratus. Cassius had plundered Asia Minor, and the twomet at Sardis. It is said that the night before they were to pass intoMacedonia, Brutus was sitting alone in his tent, when he saw the figureof a man before him. "Who art thou?" he asked, and the answer was, "I amthine evil genius, Brutus; I will meet thee again at Philippi. " [Illustration: MARCUS BRUTUS. ] And it was at Philippi that Brutus and Cassius found themselves face toface with Antonius and Octavianus. Each army was divided into two, andBrutus, who fought against Octavianus, put his army to flight, butCassius was driven back by Antonius; and seeing a troop of horsemencoming towards him, he thought all was lost, and threw himself upon asword. Brutus gathered the troops together, and after twenty daysrenewed the fight, when he was routed, fled, and hid himself, but aftersome hours put himself to death, as did his wife Porcia when she heardof his end. After this, Octavianus went back to Italy, while Antonius stayed topacify the East. When he was at Tarsus, the lovely queen of Egypt came, resolved to win him over. She sailed up the Cydnus in a beautifulgalley, carved, gilded, and inlaid with ivory, with sails of purple silkand silvered oars, moving to the sound of flutes, while she lay on thedeck under a star-spangled canopy arrayed as Venus, with her ladies asnymphs, and little boys as Cupids fanning her. Antonius was perfectlyfascinated, and she took him back to Alexandria with her, heedingnothing but her and the delights with which she entertained him, thoughhis wife Fulvia and his brother were struggling to keep up his power atRome. He did come home, but only to make a fresh agreement withOctavianus, by which Fulvia was given up and he married Octavia, thewidow of Marcellus and sister of Octavianus. But he could not bear tostay long away from Cleopatra, and, deserting Octavia, he returned toEgypt, where the most wonderful revelries were kept up. Stories are toldof eight wild boars being roasted in one day, each being begun a littlelater than the last, that one might be in perfection when Antoniusshould call for his dinner. Cleopatra vowed once that she would drinkthe most costly of draughts, and, taking off an earring of inestimableprice, dissolved it in vinegar and swallowed it. [Illustration: ALEXANDRIA. ] In the meantime, Octavianus and Lepidus together had put down Decimus, and Lepidus had then tried to overcome Octavianus, but was himselfconquered and banished; for Octavianus, was a kindly man, who never shedblood if he could help it, and, now that he was alone at Rome, won everyone's heart by his gracious ways, while Antonius' riots in Egypt were ascandal to all who loved virtue and nobleness. So far was the Romanfallen that he even promised Cleopatra to conquer Italy and makeAlexandria the capital of the world. Octavia tried to win him back, butshe was a grave, virtuous Roman matron, and coarse, dissipated Antoniusdid not care for her compared with the enticing Egyptian queen. It wasneedful at last for Octavianus to destroy this dangerous power, and hemustered a fleet and army, while Antonius and Cleopatra sailed out ofAlexandria with their ships and gave battle off the Cape of Actium. Inthe midst, either fright or treachery made Cleopatra sail away, and allthe Egyptian ships with her, so that Antonius turned at once and fledwith her. They tried to raise the East in their favor, but all theirallies deserted them, and their soldiers went over to Alexandria, whereOctavianus followed them. Then Cleopatra betrayed her lover, and putinto the hands of Octavianus the ships in which he might have fled. Hekilled himself, and Cleopatra surrendered, hoping to charm youngOctavianus as she had done Julius and Antonius, but when she saw himgrave and unmoved, and found he meant to exhibit her in his triumph, shewent to the tomb of Antonius and crowned it with flowers. The next dayshe was found on her couch, in her royal robes, dead, and her two maidsdying too. "Is this well?" asked the man who found her. "It is well forthe daughter of kings, " said her maid with her last breath. Cleopatrahad long made experiments on easy ways of death, and it was believedthat an asp was brought to her in a basket of figs as the means of herdeath. [Illustration: CAIUS OCTAVIUS. ] CHAPTER XXX. CÆSAR AUGUSTUS. B. C. 33--A. D. 14. The death of Antonius ended the fierce struggles which had torn Rome solong. Octavianus was left alone; all the men who had striven for the oldgovernment were dead, and those who were left were worn out and onlylonged for rest. They had found that he was kind and friendly, andtrusted to him thankfully, nay, were ready to treat him as a kind ofgod. The old frame of constitution went on as usual; there was still aSenate, still consuls, and all the other magistrates, but CæsarOctavianus had the power belonging to each gathered in one. He wasprince of the Senate, which gave him rule in the city; prætor, whichmade him judge, and gave him a special guard of soldiers called thePrætorian Guard to execute justice; and tribune of the people, whichmade him their voice; and even after his triumph he was still imperator, or general of the army. This word becomes in English, emperor, but itmeant at this time merely commander-in-chief. He was also PontifexMaximus, as Julius Cæsar had been; and there was a general feeling thathe was something sacred and set apart as the ruler and peace-maker; and, as he shared this feeling himself, he took the name of Augustus, whichis the one by which he is always known. [Illustration: STATUE OF AUGUSTUS AT THE VATICAN. ] He did not, however, take to himself any great show or state. He livedin his family abode, and dressed and walked about the streets like anyother Roman gentleman of consular rank, and no special respect was paidto him in speech, for, warned by the fate of Julius, he was determinedto prevent the Romans from being put in mind of kings and crowns. He wasa wise and deep-thinking man, and he tried to carry out the plans ofJulius for the benefit of the nation and of the whole Roman world. Hehad the survey finished of all the countries of the empire, which nowformed a complete border round the Mediterranean Sea, reaching as farnorth as the British Channel, the Alps, and the Black Sea; as farsouth as the African desert, as far west as the Atlantic, and east asthe borders of the Euphrates; and he also had a universal census made ofthe whole of the inhabitants. It was the first time such a thing hadbeen possible, for all the world was at last at peace, so that theTemple of Janus was closed for the third and last time in Roman history. There was a feeling all over the world that a great Deliverer andpeaceful Prince was to be expected at this time. One of the Sybils wasbelieved to have so sung, and the Romans, in their relief at the goodrule of Augustus, thought he was the promised one; but they little knewwhy God had brought about this great stillness from all wars, or why Hemoved the heart of Augustus to make the decree that all the world shouldbe taxed--namely, that the true Prince of Peace, the real Deliverer, might be born in the home of His forefathers, Bethlehem, the city ofDavid. The purpose of Augustus' taxing was to make a regular division of theempire into provinces for the proconsuls to govern, with lesserdivisions for the proprætors, while many cities, especially Greek ones, were allowed their own magistrates, and some small tributary kingdomsstill remained till the old royal family should either die out oroffend the Romans. In these lands the people were governed by their ownlaws, unless they were made Roman citizens; and this freedom was moreand more granted, and saved them from paying the tribute all the resthad to pay, and which went to support the armies and other publicinstitutions at Rome, and to provide the corn which was regularlydistributed to such citizens as claimed it at Rome. A Roman colony was asettlement, generally of old soldiers who had had lands granted to them, and kept their citizenship; and it was like another little Rome managingits own affairs, though subject to the mother city. There were many ofthese colonies, especially in Gaul on the north coast, to defend it fromthe Germans. Cologne was one, and still keeps its name. The tribute wascarefully fixed, and Augustus did his best to prevent the governors frompreying on the people. He tried to bring back better ways to Rome, which was in a sad state, full of vice and riot, and with little of the old, noble, hardy ways ofthe former times. The educated men had studied Greek philosophy tillthey had no faith in their own gods, and, indeed, had so mixed up theirmythology with the Greek that they really did not know who their ownwere, and could not tell who were the greater gods whom Decius Musinvoked before he rushed on the enemy; and yet they kept up theirworship, because their feasts were so connected with the State thateverything depended on them; but they made them no real judges orhelpers. The best men of the time were those who had taken up the Stoicphilosophy, which held that virtue was above all things, whether it wasrewarded or not; the worst were often the Epicureans, who held that wehad better enjoy all we can in this life, being sure of nothing else. Learning was much esteemed in the time of Augustus. He and his two greatfriends, Caius Cilnius Mæcenas and Vipsanius Agrippa, both had a greatesteem for scholarship and poetry, and in especial the house of Mæcenaswas always open to literary men. The two chief poets of Rome, PubliusVirgilius Maro and Quintus Horatius Flaccus, were warm friends of his. Virgil wrote poems on husbandry, and short dialogue poems calledeclogues, in one of which he spoke of the time of Augustus in words thatwould almost serve as a prophecy of the kingdom of Him who was just bornat Bethlehem. By desire of Augustus, he also wrote the _Æneid_, a poemon the war-doings of Æneas and his settlement in Italy. Horace wrote odes and letters in verse and satires, which show thehabits and ways of thinking of his time in a very curious manner; andthere were many other writers whose works have not come down to us; butthe Latin of this time is the model of the language, and an Augustan agehas ever since been a term for one in which literature flourishes. All the early part of Augustus' reign was prosperous, but he had no son, only a daughter named Julia. He meant to marry her to Marcellus, the sonof his sister Antonia, but Marcellus died young, and was lamented inVirgil's _Æneid_; so Julia was given to Agrippa's son. Augustus' secondwife was Livia, who had been married to Tiberius Claudius Nero, and hadtwo sons, Tiberius and Drusus, whom Augustus adopted as his own andintended for his heirs; and when Julia lost her husband Agrippa and hertwo young sons, he forced Tiberius to divorce the young wife he reallyloved to marry her. It was a great grief to Tiberius, and seems to havequite changed his character into being grave, silent, and morose. Julia, though carefully brought up, was one of the most wicked and depravedof women, and almost broke her father's heart. He banished her to anisland near Rhegium, and when she died there, would allow no funeralhonors to be paid to her. [Illustration: PAINTINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LIVIA. ] The peace was beginning to be broken by wars with the Germans; and youngDrusus was commanding the army against them, and gaining such honor thathe was called Germanicus, when he fell from his horse and died of hisinjuries, leaving one young son. He was buried at Rome, and his brotherTiberius walked all the way beside the bier, with his long flaxen hairflowing on his shoulders. Tiberius then went back to command the armieson the Rhine. Some half-conquered country lay beyond, and the Germans inthe forests were at this time under a brave leader called Arminius. Theywere attacked by the proconsul Quinctilius Varus, and near the riverEms, in the Herycimian forest, Arminius turned on him and routed himcompletely, cutting off the whole army, so that only a few fled back toTiberius to tell the tale, and he had to fall back and defend the Rhine. The news of this disaster was a terrible shock to the Emperor. He satgrieving over it, and at times he dashed his head against the wall, crying, "Varus, Varus! give me back my legions. " His friends were dead, he was an old man now, and sadness was around him. He was soon, however, grave and composed again; and, as his health began to fail, he sent forTiberius and put his affairs into his hands. When his dying day came, hemet it calmly. He asked if there was any fear of a tumult on his death, and was told there was none; then he called for a mirror, and saw thathis grey hair and beard were in order, and, asking his friends whetherhe had played his part well, he uttered a verse from a play bidding themapplaud his exit, bade Livia remember him, and so died in hisseventy-seventh year, having ruled fifty-eight years--ten as a triumvir, forty-eight alone. CHAPTER XXXI. TIBERIUS AND CALIGULA. A. D. 14--41. No difficulty was made about giving all the powers Augustus had held tohis stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who had also a right to the namesof Julius Cæsar Augustus, and was in his own time generally calledCæsar. The Senate had grown too helpless to think for themselves, andall the choice they ever made of the consuls was that the Emperor gaveout four names, among which they chose two. Tiberius had been a grave, morose man ever since he was deprived of thewife he loved, and had lost his brother; and he greatly despised themean, cringing ways round him, and kept to himself; but his nephew, called Germanicus, after his father, was the person whom every oneloved and trusted. He had married Agrippina, Julia's daughter, who wasalso a very good and noble person; and when he was sent against theGermans, she went with him, and her little boys ran about among thesoldiers, and were petted by them. One of them, Caius, was called by thesoldiers Caligula, or the Little Shoe, because he wore a caliga or shoelike theirs; and he never lost the nickname. Germanicus earned his surname over again by driving Arminius back; buthe was more enterprising than would have been approved by Augustus, whothought it wiser to guard what he had than to make wider conquests; andTiberius was not only one of the same mind, but was jealous of the greatlove that all the army were showing for his nephew, and this distrustwas increased when the soldiers in the East begged for Germanicus tolead them against the Parthians. He set out, visiting all the famousplaces in Greece by the way, and going to see the wonders of Egypt, butwhile in Syria he fell ill of a wasting sickness and died, so that manysuspected the spy, Cnæus Piso, whom Tiberius had sent with him, ofhaving poisoned him. When his wife Agrippina came home, bringing hiscorpse to be burnt and his ashes placed in the burying-place of theCæsars, there was universal love and pity for her. Piso seized on allthe offices that Germanicus had held, but was called back to Rome, andwas just going to be put upon his trial when he cut his own throat. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACES OF TIBERIUS. ] All this tended to make Tiberius more gloomy and distrustful, and whenhis mother Livia died he had no one to keep him in check, but fell underthe influence of a man named Sejanus, who managed all his affairs forhim, while he lived in a villa in the island of Capreæ in the Bay ofNaples, seeing hardly any but a few intimates, given up to all sorts ofevil luxuries and self-indulgences, and hating and dreading every one. Agrippina was so much loved and respected that he dreaded and dislikedher beyond all others; and Sejanus contrived to get up an accusation ofplotting against the state, upon which she and her eldest son werebanished to two small rocky isles in the Mediterranean Sea. The othertwo sons, Drusus and Caius, were kept by Tiberius at Capreæ, tillTiberius grew suspicious of Drusus and threw him into prison. Sejanus, who had encouraged all his dislike to his own kinsmen, and was managingall Rome, then began to hope to gain the full power; but his plans wereguessed by Tiberius, and he caused his former favorite to be set uponin the senate-house and put to death. [Illustration: AGRIPPINA. ] It is strange to remember that, while such dark deeds were being done atRome, came the three years when the true Light was shining in thedarkness. It was in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, when Pontius Pilatus wasproprætor of Palestine, that our Lord Jesus Christ spent three years inteaching and working miracles; then was crucified and slain by wickedhands, that the sin of mankind might be redeemed. Then He rose againfrom the dead and ascended into Heaven, leaving His Apostles to makeknown what he had done in all the world. To the East, where our Lord dwelt, nay, to all the rest of the empire, the reign of Tiberius was a quiet time, with the good governmentarranged by Augustus working on. It was only his own family, and thesenators and people of rank at Rome, who had much to fear from hisstrange, harsh, and jealous temper. The Claudian family had in all timesbeen shy, proud, and stern, and to have such power as belonged toAugustus Cæsar was more than their heads could bear. Tiberius hated andsuspected everybody, and yet he did not like putting people to death, sohe let Drusus be starved to death in his prison, and Agrippina chose thesame way of dying in her island, while some of the chief senatorsreceived such messages that they put themselves to death. He led awretched life, watching for treason and fearing everybody, and trying todrown the thought of danger in the banquets of Capreæ, where the remainsof his villa may still be seen. Once he set out, intending to visitRome, but no sooner had he landed in Campania than the sight of hundredsof country people shouting welcome so disturbed him that he hastened onboard ship again, and thus entered the Tiber; but at the very sight ofthe hills of Rome his terror returned, and he had his galley turnedabout and went back to his island, which he never again quitted. Only two males of his family were left now--a great-nephew and a nephew, Caius, that son of the second Germanicus who had been nicknamedCaligula, a youth of a strange, exciteable, feverish nature, but whofrom his fright at Tiberius had managed to keep the peace with him, andhad only once been for a short time in disgrace; and his uncle, theyoungest son of the first Germanicus, commonly called Claudius, a verydull, heavy man, fond of books, but so slow and shy that he wasconsidered to be wanting in brains, and thus had never fallen undersuspicion. At length Tiberius fell ill, and when he was known to be dying, he wassmothered with pillows as he began to recover from a fainting fit, lesthe should take vengeance on those who had for a moment thought him dead. He died A. D. . 37, and the power went to Caligula, properlycalled Caius, who was only twenty-five, and who began in a kindly, generous spirit, which pleased the people and gave them hope; but tohave so much power was too much for his brain, and he can only bethought of as mad, especially after he had a severe illness, which madethe people so anxious that he was puffed up with the notion of hisown importance. [Illustration: ROME IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS CÆSAR. ] He put to death all who offended him, and, inheriting some of Tiberius'distrust and hatred of the people, he cried out, when they did notadmire one of his shows as much as he expected, "Would that the peopleof Rome had but one neck, so that I might behead them all at once. " Heplanned great public buildings, but had not steadiness to carry themout; and he became so greedy of the fame which, poor wretch, he couldnot earn, that he was jealous even of the dead. He burned the books ofLivy and Virgil out of the libraries, and deprived the statues of thegreat men of old of the marks by which they were known--Cincinnatus ofhis curls, and Torquatus of his collar, and he forbade the last of thePompeii to be called Magnus. He made an expedition into Gaul, and talked of conquering Britain, buthe got no further than the shore of the channel, where, instead ofsetting sail, he bade the soldiers gather up shells, which he sent hometo the Senate to be placed among the treasures of the Capitol, callingthem the spoils of the conquered ocean. Then he collected the Germanslaves and the tallest Gauls he could find, commanded the latter to dyetheir hair and beards to a light color, and brought them home to walkin his triumph. The Senate, however, were slow to understand that hecould really expect a triumph, and this affronted him so much that, whenthey offered him one, he would not have it, and went on insulting them. He made his horse a consul, though only for a day, and showed it withgolden oats before it in a golden manger. Once, when the two consulswere sitting by him, he burst out laughing, to think, he said, how withone word he could make both their heads roll on the floor. The provinces were not so ill off, but the state of Rome was unbearable. Everybody was in danger, and at last a plot was formed for his death;and as he was on his way from his house to the circus, and stopped tolook at some singers who were going to perform, a party of men set uponhim and killed him with many wounds, after he had reigned only fiveyears, and when he was but thirty years old. CHAPTER XXXII. CLAUDIUS AND NERO. A. D. 41-68. Poor dull Claudius heard an uproar and hid himself, thinking he wasgoing to be murdered like his nephew, but still worse was going tobefall him. They were looking for him to make him Emperor, for he wasthe last of his family. He was clumsy in figure, though his face wasgood, and he was a kind-hearted man, who made large promises, and triedto do well; but he was slow and timid, and let himself be led by wickedmen and women, so that his rule ended no better than that of the formerCæsars. He began in a spirited way, by sending troops who conquered the southernpart of Britain, and making an expedition thither himself. His wifechose to share his triumph, which was not, as usual, a drive in achariot, but a sitting in armor on their thrones, with the eagles andstandards over their heads, and the prisoners led up before them. Amongthem came the great British chief Caractacus, who is said to havedeclared that he could not think why those who had such palaces as therewere at Rome should want the huts of the Britons. Claudius was kind to the people in the distant provinces. He gave theJews a king again, Herod Agrippa, the grandson of the first Herod, whowas much loved by them, but died suddenly after a few years at Cæsarea, after the meeting with the Tyrians, when he let them greet him as a god. There were a great many Jews living at Rome, but those from Jerusalemquarrelled with those from Alexandria; and one year, when there was agreat scarcity of corn, Claudius banished them all from Rome. [Illustration: CLAUDIUS. ] Claudius was very unhappy in his wives. Two he divorced, and thenmarried a third named Messalina, who was given up to all kinds ofwickedness which he never guessed at, while she used all manner of artsto keep up her beauty and to deceive him. At last she actually married ayoung man while Claudius was absent from Rome; but when this came to hisknowledge, he had her put to death. His last wife was, however, theworst of all. She was the daughter of the good Germanicus, and bore hermother's name of Agrippina. She had been previously married to LuciusDomitius Ænobarbus, by whom she had a son, whom Claudius adopted when hemarried her, though he had a child of his own called Britannicus, son toMessalina. Romans had never married their nieces before, but the powerof the Emperors was leading them to trample down all law and custom, andit was for the misfortune of Claudius that he did so in this case, forAgrippina's purpose was to put every one out of the way of her own son, who, taking all the Claudian and Julian names in addition to his own, iscommonly known as Nero. She married him to Claudius' daughter Octavia, and then, after much tormenting the Emperor, she poisoned him with adish of mushrooms, and bribed his physician to take care that he did notrecover. He died A. D. 54, and, honest and true-hearted as hehad been, the Romans were glad to be rid of him, and told mockingstories of him. Indeed, they were very bad in all ways themselves, andmany of the ladies were poisoners like Agrippina, so that the cityalmost deserved the tyrant who came after Claudius. Nero, the son ofAgrippina by her first marriage, and Britannicus, the son of Claudiusand Messalina, were to reign together; but Nero was the elder, and assoon as his poor young cousin came to manhood, Agrippina had a dose ofpoison ready for him. Nero, however, began well. He had been well brought up by Seneca, anexcellent student of the Stoic philosophy, who, with Burrhus, thecommander of the Prætorian Guard, guided the young Emperor with goodadvice through the first five years of his reign; and though his wickedmother called herself Augusta, and had equal honors paid her with herson, not much harm was done to the government till Nero fell in lovewith a wicked woman, Poppæa Sabina, who was a proverb for vanity, andwas said to keep five hundred she-asses that she might bathe in theirmilk to preserve her complexion. Nero wanted to marry this lady, and ashis mother befriended his neglected wife Octavia, he ordered that whenshe went to her favorite villa at Baiæ her galley should be wrecked, and if she was not drowned, she should be stabbed. Octavia was divorced, sent to an island, and put to death there; and after Nero marriedPoppæa, he quickly grew more violent and savage. Burrhus died about the same time, and Seneca alone could not restrainthe Emperor from his foolish vanity. He would descend into the arena ofthe great amphitheatre and sing to the lyre his own compositions; and heshowed off his charioteering in the circus before the whole assembledcity, letting no one go away till the performance was over. It very muchshocked the patricians, but the mob were delighted, and he chiefly caredfor their praises. He was building a huge palace, called the GoldenHouse because of its splendid decorations; and, needing money, he causedaccusations to be got up against all the richer men that he might havetheir hoards. [Illustration: NERO. ] A terrible fire broke out in Rome, which raged for six days, andentirely destroyed fourteen quarters of the city. While it was burning, Nero, full of excitement, stood watching it, and sang to his lyre thedescription of the burning of Troy. A report therefore arose that he hadactually caused the fire for the amusement of watching it; and to putthis out of men's minds he accused the Christians. The Christian faithhad begun to be known in Rome during the last reign, and it was to Nero, as Cæsar, that St. Paul had appealed. He had spent two years in a hiredhouse of his own at Rome, and thus had been in the guard-room of thePrætorians, but he was released after being tried at "Cæsar'sjudgment-seat, " and remained at large until this sudden outburst whichcaused the first persecution. Then he was taken at Nicopolis, and St. Peter at Rome, and they were thrown into the Mamertine dungeon. Romecounts St. Peter as her first bishop. On the 29th of June, A. D. 66, both suffered; St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, beingbeheaded with the sword; St. Peter crucified, with his head, by his owndesire, downwards. Many others suffered at the same time, some beingthrown to the beasts, while others were wrapped in cloths covered withpitch, and slowly burnt to light the games in the Emperor's gardens. Atlast the people were shocked, and cried out for these horrors to end. And Nero, who cared for the people, turned his hatred and crueltyagainst men of higher class whose fate they heeded less. So common wasit to have a message advising a man to put himself to death rather thanbe sentenced, that every one had studied easy ways of dying. Nero's oldtutor, Seneca, felt his tyranny unbearable, and had joined in a plot foroverthrowing him, but it was found out, and Seneca had to die by his ownhand. The way he chose, and his wife too for his sake, was to open theirveins, get into a warm bath, and bleed to death. Nero made a journey to Greece, and showed off at Olympus and theIsthmus, at the same time robbing the Greek cities of numbers of theirbest statues and reliefs to adorn his Golden House; for the Romans hadno original art--they could only imitate the Greeks and employ Greekartists. But danger was closing in on Nero. Such an Emperor could beendured no longer, and the generals of the armies in the provinces beganto threaten him, they not being smitten dumb and helpless as every oneat Rome seemed to be. The Spanish army, under an officer named Galba, who was seventy-twoyears old, but to whom Augustus had said when he was a little boy, "Youtoo shall share my taste of empire, " began to move homewards to attackthe tyrant, and the army from Gaul advanced to join it. Nero went nearlywild with fright, sometimes raging, sometimes tearing his hair andclothes; and the people began to turn against him in anger at a dearthof corn, saying he spent everything on his own pleasures. As Galba camenearer, the nobles and knights hoped for deliverance, and the PrætorianGuard showed that they meant to join their fellow-soldiers, and wouldnot fight for him. The wretched Emperor found himself alone, and vainlycalled for some one to kill him, for he had not nerve to do it himself. He fled to a villa in the country, and wandered in the woods till heheard that, if he was caught, he would be put to death in the "ancientfashion, " which he was told was being fixed with his neck in a forkedstick and beaten to death. Then, hearing the hoofs of the horses of hispursuers, he set a sword against his breast and made a slave drive ithome, and was groaning his last when the horsemen came up. He was but 30years old, and was the last Emperor who could trace any connection, evenby adoption, with Augustus. He perished A. D. 68. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE FLAVIAN FAMILY. 62-96. The ablest of all Nero's officers was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, astern, rigid old soldier, who, with his son of the same name, was in theEast, preparing to put down a great rising of the Jews. He waited to seewhat was going to happen, and in a very few weeks old Galba had offendedthe soldiers by his saving ways; there was a rising against him, andanother soldier named Otho became Emperor; but the legions from Gaulmarched up under Vitellius to dethrone him, and he killed himself toprevent other bloodshed. When the Eastern army heard of these changes, they declared they wouldmake an Emperor like the soldiers of the West, and hailed Vespasian asEmperor. He left his son Titus to subdue Judea, and set out himself forItaly, where Vitellius had given himself up to riot and feasting. Therewas a terrible fight and fire in the streets of Rome itself, and theGauls, who chiefly made up Vitellius' army, did even more mischief thanthe Gauls of old under Brennus; but at last Vespasian triumphed. Vitellius was taken, and, after being goaded along with the point of alance, was put to death. There had been eighteen months of confusion, and Vespasian began his reign in the year 70. It was just then that his son Titus, having taken all the strongholds inGalilee, though they were desperately defended by the Jews, had advancedto besiege Jerusalem. All the Christians had heeded the warning that ourblessed Lord had left them, and were safe at a city in the hills calledPella; but the Jews who were left within were fiercely quarrelling amongthemselves, and fought with one another as savagely as they fought withthe enemy. Titus threw trenches round and blockaded the city; and thefamine within grew to be most horrible. Some died in their houses, butthe fierce lawless zealots rushed up and down the streets, breaking intothe houses where they thought food was to be found. When they smeltroasting in one grand dwelling belonging to a lady, they rushed in andasked for the meat, but even they turned away in horror when sheuncovered the remains of her own little child, whom she had been eating. At last the Roman engines broke down the walls of the lower city, andwith desperate struggling the Romans entered, and found every house fullof dead women and children. Still they had the Temple to take, and theJews had gathered there, fancying that, at the worst, the Messiah wouldappear and save them. Alas! they had rejected Him long ago, and this wasthe time of judgment. The Romans fought their way in, up the marblesteps, slippery with blood and choked with dead bodies; and fire ragedround them. Titus would have saved the Holy Place as a wonder of theworld, but a soldier threw a torch through a golden latticed window, andthe flame spread rapidly. Titus had just time to look round on all therich gilding and marbles before it sank into ruins. He took a terriblevengeance on the Jews. Great numbers were crucified, and the rest wereeither taken to the amphitheatres all over the empire to fight with wildbeasts, or were sold as slaves, in such numbers that, cheap as theywere, no one would buy them. And yet this wonderful nation has lived onin its dispersion ever since. The city was utterly overthrown and sownwith salt, and such treasures as could be saved from the fire werecarried in the triumph of Titus--namely, the shew-bread table, theseven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets--and laid up asusual among the spoils dedicated to Jupiter. Their figures are to beseen sculptured on the triumphal arch built in honor of Titus, whichstill stands at Rome. [Illustration: ARCH OF TITUS. ] These Flavian Cæsars were great builders. Much had to be restored atRome after the two great fires, and they built a new Capitol and newForum, besides pulling down Nero's Golden House, and setting up on partof the site the magnificent baths known as the Baths of Titus. Going tothe bath, to be steamed, rubbed, anointed, and perfumed by the slaves, was the great amusement of an idle Roman's day, for in the waiting-roomshe met all his friends and heard the news; and these rooms were splendidhalls, inlaid with marble, and adorned with the statues and picturesNero had brought from Greece. On part of the gardens was begun what wasthen called the Flavian Amphitheatre, but is now known as the Colosseum, from the colossal statue that stood at its door--a wonderful place, witha succession of galleries on stone vaults round the area, on which everyrank and station, from the Emperor and Vestal Virgins down to theslaves, had their places, whence to see gladiators and beasts struggleand perish, on sands mixed with scarlet grains to hide the stain, andperfumed showers to overcome the scent of blood, and under silkenembroidered awnings to keep off the sun. Vespasian was an upright man, and though he was stern and unrelenting, his reign was a great relief after the capricious tyranny of the lastClaudii. He and his eldest son Titus were plain and simple in theirhabits, and tried to put down the horrid riot and excess that wereruining the Romans, and they were feared and loved. They had greatsuccesses too. Britain was subdued and settled as far as the northernhills, and a great rising in Eastern Gaul subdued. Vespasian was accusedof being avaricious, but Nero had left the treasury in such a state thathe could hardly have governed without being careful. He died in the year79, at seventy years old. When he found himself almost gone, he desiredto be lifted to his feet, saying that an Emperor should die standing. [Illustration: VESUVIUS PREVIOUS TO THE ERUPTION OF A. D. 63. ] He left two sons, Titus and Domitian. Titus was more of a scholar thanhis father, and was gentle and kindly in manner, so that he was muchbeloved. He used to say, "I have lost a day, " when one went by withouthis finding some kind act to do. He was called the delight of mankind, and his reign would have been happy but for another great fire in Rome, which burnt what Nero's fire had left. In his time, too, Mount Vesuviussuddenly woke from its rest, and by a dreadful eruption destroyed thetwo cities at its foot, Herculaneum and Pompeii. The philosopherPlinius, who wrote on geography and natural history, was stifled by thesulphurous air while fleeing from the showers of stones and ashescast up by the mountain. His nephew, called Pliny the younger, has lefta full account of the disaster, and the cloud like a pine tree that hungover the mountain, the noises, the earthquake, and the fall at last ofthe ashes and lava. Drusilla, the wife of Felix, the governor beforewhom St. Paul pleaded, also perished. Herculaneum was covered with solidlava, so that very little could be recovered from it; but Pompeii, beingoverwhelmed with dust or ashes, was only choked, and in modern days hasbeen discovered, showing perfectly what an old Roman town waslike--amphitheatre, shops, bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons havebeen found: a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, a priestcrushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded into a vault, a sentry athis post; and in other cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impressionof the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into them the formsof the victims have been recovered, especially two women, elder andyounger, just as they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden inher mother's robe. [Illustration: PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. ] Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law Tacitus, who wrote thehistory of those reigns, laid the blame on his brother Domitian, who wasas cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does seem to have been shockedat the wickedness of the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grownshameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patrician families in Romewell brought up enough to become one. The blame was laid on forsakingthe old religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising, " which meantChristianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of theEmperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was thiswhich led to St. John, the last of the Apostles, being brought to Romeand placed in a cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate; but amiracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did him no hurt, uponwhich he was banished to the Isle of Patmos. The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, and the shows ofgladiators, fights with beasts, and even sea-fights, when the arena wasflooded, exceeded all that had gone before. There were fights betweenwomen and women, dwarfs and cranes. There is an inscription at Romewhich has made some believe that the architect of the Colosseum was oneGandentius, who afterwards perished there as a Christian. Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a gold crown with littlefigures of the gods on it. He did strange things. Once he calledtogether all his council in the middle of the night on urgent business, and while they expected to hear of some foreign enemy on the borders, amonstrous turbot was brought in, and they were consulted whether it wasto be cut in pieces or have a dish made on purpose for it. Another timehe invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a blackmarble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a columnlike a tomb, a feast laid as at a funeral, and black boys to wait onthem! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many peopleto death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, andhe had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in aglass if any one approached him from behind. But this did not save him. His wife found that he meant to put her to death, and contrived that aparty of servants should murder him, A. D. 96. [Illustration: COIN OF NERO. ] CHAPTER XXXIV. THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES. 96--194. Domitian is called the last of the twelve Cæsars, though all who cameafter him called themselves Cæsar. He had no son, and a highly esteemedold senator named Cocceius Nerva became Emperor. He was an upright man, who tried to restore the old Roman spirit; and as he thoughtChristianity was only a superstition which spoiled the ancient temper, he enacted that all should die who would not offer incense to the gods, and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who had been bredup among the Apostles. He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one of a set ofletters which remain to this day. He was then thrown to the lions in theColosseum. It seems strange that the good Emperors were often worse persecutorsthan the bad ones, but the fact was that the bad ones let the people doas they pleased, as long as they did not offend them; while the goodones were trying to bring back what they read of in Livy's history, ofplain living and high thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more ofthe Christians than that they were people who did not worship the gods. Moreover, Julius Trajanus, whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reignafter him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there were laws inforce against the Christians. When Pliny the younger was proprætor ofthe province of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Emperor whatto do about the Christians, telling him what he had been able to findout about them from two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, thatthey were wont to meet together at night or early morning, to singtogether, and eat what he called a harmless social meal. Trajan answeredthat he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if they were broughtbefore him, the law must take its course. In Rome, the chief refuge ofthe Christians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, from which thecity was chiefly built, and which were hollowed out in long galleries. Slaves and convicts worked them, and they were thus made known to theChristians, who buried their dead in places hollowed at the sides, usedthe galleries for their churches, and often hid there when there wassearch made for them. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA. ] Trajan was so good a ruler that he bears the title of Optimus, the Best, as no one else has ever done. He was a great captain too, and conqueredDacia, the country between the rivers Danube, Theiss, and Pruth, and theCarpathian Hills; and he also defeated the Parthians, and said if hehad been a younger man he would have gone as far as Alexander. As itwas, the empire was at its very largest in his reign, and he was a verygreat builder and improver, so that one of his successors called him awall-flower, because his name was everywhere to be seen on walls andbridges and roads--some of which still remain, as does his tall columnat Rome, with a spiral line of his conquests engraven round it from topto bottom. He was on his way back from the East when, in 117, he died atCilicia, leaving the empire to another brave warrior, Publius ÆtiusHadrianus, who took the command with great vigor, but found he could notkeep Dacia, and broke down the bridge over the Danube. He came toBritain, where the Roman settlements were tormented by the Picts. Therehe built the famous Roman wall from sea to sea to keep them out. He waswonderfully active, and hastened from one end of the empire to the otherwherever his presence was needed. There was a revolt of the Jews in thefar East, under a man who pretended to be the Messiah, and calledhimself the Son of a Star. This was put down most severely, and no Jewwas allowed to come near Jerusalem, over which a new city was built, andcalled after the Emperor's second name, Ælia Capitolina; and, to drivethe Jews further away, a temple to Jupiter was built where the Templehad been, and one to Venus on Mount Calvary. But Hadrian did not persecute, and listened kindly to an explanation ofthe faith which was shown him at Athens by Quadratus, a Christianphilosopher. Hadrian built himself a grand towerlike monument, surrounded by stages of columns and arches, which was to be called theMole of Hadrian, and still stands, though stripped of its ornaments. Before his death, in 138, he had chosen his successor, Titus AureliusAntoninus, a good upright man, a philosopher, and 52 years old; for ithad been found that youths who became Emperors had their heads turned bysuch unbounded power, while elder men cared for the work and duty. Antoninus was so earnest for his people's welfare that they called himPius. He avoided wars, only defended the empire; but he was a greatbuilder, for he raised another rampart in Britain, much further north, and set up another column at Rome, and in Gaul built a greatamphitheatre at Nismes, and raised the wonderful aqueduct which is stillstanding, and is called the Pont du Gard. His son-in-law, whom he adopted and who succeeded him, is commonlycalled Marcus Aurelius, as a choice among his many names. He was a deepstudent and Stoic philosopher, with an earnest longing for truth andvirtue, though he knew not how to seek them where alone they could befound; and when earthquake, pestilence and war fell on his empire, andthe people thought the gods were offended, he let them persecute theChristians, whose faith he despised, because the hope of Resurrectionand of Heaven seemed weak and foolish to him beside his stern, proud, hopeless Stoicism. So the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, the lastpupil of the Apostles themselves, was sentenced to be burnt in thetheatre of his own city, though, as the fire curled round him in acurtain of flame without touching him, he was actually slain with thesword. And in Gaul, especially at Vienne, there was a fearfulpersecution which fell on women of all ranks, and where Blandina theslave, under the most unspeakable torments, was specially noted for herbrave patience. Aurelius was fighting hard with the German tribes on the Danube, whogave him no rest, and threatened to break into the empire. Whilepursuing them, he and his army were shut into a strong place where theycould get no water, and were perishing with thirst, when a wholelegion, all Christian soldiers, knelt down and prayed. A cloud came up, a welcome shower of rain descended, and was the saving of the thirstyhost. It was said that the name of the Thundering Legion was given tothis division in consequence, though on the column reared by Aurelius itis Jupiter who is shown sending rain on the thirsty host, who arecatching it in their shields. After this there was less persecution, butevery sort of trouble--plague, earthquake, famine, and war--beset theempire on all sides, and the Emperor toiled in vain against thesetroubles, writing, meantime, meditations that show how sad and sick atheart he was, and how little comfort philosophy gave him, while his eyeswere blind to the truth. He died of a fever in his camp, while still inthe prime of life, in the year 180, and with him ended the period ofgood Emperors, which the Romans call the age of the Antonines. Aureliuswas indeed succeeded by his son Commodus, but he was a foolishgood-for-nothing youth, who would not bear the fatigues and toils ofreal war, though he had no shame in showing off in the arena, and issaid to have fought there seven hundred and fifty times, besides killingwild beasts. He boasted of having slain one hundred lions with onehundred arrows, and a whole row of ostriches with half-moon shapedarrows which cut off their heads, the poor things being fastened wherehe could not miss them, and the Romans applauding as if for some nobledeed. They let him reign sixteen years before he was murdered, and thena good old soldier named Pertinax began to reign; but the PrætorianGuard had in those sixteen years grown disorderly, and the moment theyfelt the pressure of a firm hand they attacked the palace, killed theEmperor, cut off his head, and ran with it to the senate-house, askingwho would be Emperor. An old senator was foolish enough to offer them alarge sum if they would choose him, and this put it into their heads torush out to the ramparts and proclaim that they would sell the empire tothe highest bidder. A vain, old, rich senator, named Didius Julianus, was at supper with hisfamily when he heard that the Prætorians were selling the empire byauction, and out he ran, and actually bought it at the rate of about£200 to each man. The Emperor being really the commander-in-chief, withother offices attached to the dignity, the soldiers had a sort of rightto the choice; but the other armies at a distance, who were reallyfighting and guarding the empire, had no notion of letting the matterbe settled by the Prætorians, mere guardsmen, who stayed at home andtried to rule the rest; so each army chose its own general and marchedon Rome, and it was the general on the Danube, Septimius Severus, whogot there first; whereupon the Prætorians killed their foolish Emperorand joined him. [Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS. ] CHAPTER XXXV. THE PRÆTORIAN INFLUENCE. 197--284. Septimus Severus was an able Emperor, and reigned a long time. He wasstern and harsh, as was needed by the wickedness of the time; and he wasvery active, seldom at Rome, but flashing as it were from one end of theempire to the other, wherever he was needed, and keeping excellentorder. There was no regular persecution of the Christians in his time;but at Lyons, where the townspeople were in great numbers Christians, the country-folk by some sudden impulse broke in and made a horriblemassacre of them, in which the bishop, St. Irenæus, was killed. So fewcountry people were at this time converts, that Paganus, a peasant, cameto be used as a term for a heathen. Severus was, like Trajan and Hadrian, a great builder and road-maker. The whole empire was connected by a network of paved roads made by thesoldiery, cutting through hills, bridging valleys, straight, smooth, andso solid that they remain to this day. This made communication sorapid that government was possible to an active man like him. He gavethe Parthians a check; and, when an old man, came to Britain and marchedfar north, but he saw it was impossible to guard Antonius' wall betweenthe Forth and Clyde, and only strengthened the rampart of Hadrian fromthe Tweed to the Solway. He died at York, in 211, on his return, and hislast watchword was "Labor!" His wife was named Julia Domna, and he lefttwo sons, usually called Caracalla and Geta, who divided the empire; butGeta was soon stabbed by his brother's own hand, and then Caracallashowed himself even worse than Commodus, till he in his turn wasmurdered in 217. [Illustration: SEPTIMUS SEVERUS. ] [Illustration: ANTIOCH. ] His mother, Julia Domna, had a sister called Julia Sæmias, who lived atAntioch, and had two daughters, Sæmias and Mammæa, who each had a son, Elagabalus--so called after the idol supposed to represent the sun, whose priest at Emesa he was--and Alexander Severus. The PrætorianGuard, in their difficulty whom to chose Emperor, chose Elagabalus, alad of nineteen, who showed himself a poor, miserable, foolish wretch, who did the most absurd things. His feasts were a proverb for excess, and even his lions were fed on parrots and pheasants. Sometimes he wouldget together a festival party of all fat men, or all thin, all tall, orshort, all bald, or gouty; and at others he would keep the wedding ofhis namesake god and Pallas, making matches between the gods andgoddesses all over Italy; and he carried on his service to his god withthe same barbaric dances in a strange costume as at Emesa, to the greatdisgust of the Romans. His grandmother persuaded him to adopt his cousinAlexander, a youth of much more promise, who took the name of Severus. The soldiers were charmed with him; Elagabalus became jealous, and wasgoing to strip him of his honors; but this angered the Prætorians, sothat they put the elder Emperor to death in 222. [Illustration: ALEXANDER SEVERUS. ] Alexander Severus was a good and just prince, whose mother is believedto have been a Christian, and he had certainly learned enough of theDivine Law to love virtue, and be firm while he was forbearing. He lovedvirtue, but he did not accept the faith, and would only look upon ourBlessed Lord as a sort of great philosopher, placing His statue withthat of Abraham, Orpheus, and all whom he thought great teachers ofmankind, in a private temple of his own, as if they were all on a level. He never came any nearer to the faith, and after thirteen years of goodand firm government he was killed in a mutiny of the Prætorians in 235. These guards had all the power, and set up and put down Emperors sorapidly that there are hardly any names worth remembering. In theunsettled state of the empire no one had time to persecute theChristians, and their numbers grew and prospered; in many places theyhad churches, with worship going on openly, and their Bishops were knownand respected. The Emperor Philip, called the Arabian, who was actuallya Christian, though he would not own it openly, when he was at Antioch, joined in the service at Easter, and presented himself to receive theHoly Communion; but Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should havedone open penance for the crimes by which he had come to the purple, and renounced all remains of heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but putoff his repentance; and the next year celebrated the games called theSeculæ, because they took place every Seculum or hundredth year, withall their heathen ceremonies, and with tenfold splendor, in honor ofthis being Rome's thousandth birthday. Soon after, another general named Decius was chosen by the army on theGerman frontier, and Philip was killed in battle with him. Decius wantedto be an old-fashioned Roman; he believed in the gods, and thought thetroubles of the empire came of forsaking them; and as the Parthiansmolested the East, and the Goths and Germans the North, and the soldiersseemed more ready to kill their Emperors than the enemy, he thought towin back prosperity by causing all to return to the old worship, andbegun the worst persecution the Church had yet known. Rome, Antioch, Carthage, Alexandria, and all the chief cities were searched forChristians. If they would not throw a handful of incense on the idol'saltar or disown Christ, they were given over to all the horrid tormentscruel ingenuity could invent, in the hope of subduing their constancy. Some fell, but the greater number were firm, and witnessed a gloriousconfession before, in 251, Decius and his son were both slain in battlein Mæsia. [Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE SUN AT PALMYRA. ] The next Emperor whose name is worth remembering was Valerian, who hadto make war against the Persians. The old stock of Persian kings, professing to be descended from Cyrus, and, like him, adoring fire, hadovercome the Parthians, and were spreading the Persian power in theEast, under their king Sapor, who conquered Mesopotamia, and on thebanks of the Euphrates defeated Valerian in a terrible battle atEdessa. Valerian was made prisoner, and kept as a wretched slave, whowas forced to crouch down that Sapor might climb up by his back whenmounting on horseback; and when he died, his skin was dyed purple, stuffed, and hung up in a temple. [Illustration: THE CATACOMBS AT ROME. ] The best resistance made to Sapor was by Odenatus, a Syrian chief, andhis beautiful Arabian wife Zenobia, who held out the city of Palmyra, onan oasis in the desert between Palestine and Assyria, till Saporretreated. Finding that no notice was taken of them by Rome, they calledthemselves Emperor and Empress. The city was very beautifully adornedwith splendid buildings in the later Greek style; and Zenobia, whoreigned with her young sons after her husband's death, was well read inGreek classics and philosophy, and was a pupil of the philosopherLonginus. Aurelian, becoming Emperor of Rome, came against this strangelittle kingdom, and was bravely resisted by Zenobia; but he defeatedher, made her prisoner, and caused her to march in his triumph to Rome. She afterwards lived with her children in Italy. Aurelian saw perils closing in on all sides of the empire, and thoughtit time to fortify the city of Rome itself, which had long spread beyondthe old walls of Servius Tullus. He traced a new circuit, and built thewall, the lines of which are the same that still enclose Rome, thoughthe wall itself has been several times thrown down and rebuilt. He alsobuilt the city in Gaul which still bears his name, slightly altered intoOrleans. He was one of those stern, brave Emperors, who vainly tried tobring back old Roman manners, and fancied it was Christianity thatcorrupted them; and he was just preparing for a great persecution whenhe was murdered in his tent, and there were three or four more Emperorsset up and then killed almost as soon as their reign was well begun. Thelast thirty of them are sometimes called the Thirty Tyrants. This powerof the Prætorian Guard, of setting up and pulling down their Emperor asbeing primarily their general, lasted altogether fully a hundred years. [Illustration: COIN OF SEVERUS] CHAPTER XXXVI. THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE. 284-312. A Dalmatian soldier named Diocles had been told by a witch that heshould become Emperor by the slaughter of a boar. He became a greathunter, but no wild boar that he killed seemed to bring him nearer tothe purple, till, when the army was fighting on the Tigris, the EmperorNumerianus died, and an officer named Aper offered himself as hissuccessor. Aper is the Latin for a boar, and Diocles, perceiving thescope of the prophecy, thrust his sword into his rival's breast, and washailed Emperor by the legions. He lengthened his name out toDiocletianus, to sound more imperial, and began a dominion unlike thatof any who had gone before. They had only been, as it were, overgrowngenerals, chosen by the Prætorians or some part of the army, and at thesame time taking the tribuneship and other offices for life. Diocletian, though called Emperor, reigned like the kings of the East. He broke thestrength of the Prætorians, so that they could never again kill oneEmperor and elect another as before; and he never would visit Rome lesthe should be obliged to acknowledge the authority of the Senate, whosepower he contrived so entirely to take away, that thenceforward Senatorbecame only a complimentary title, of which people in the subduedcountries were very proud. [Illustration: DIOCLETIAN. ] He divided the empire into two parts, feeling that it was beyond themanagement of any one man, and chose an able soldier of low birth butmuch courage, named Maximian, to rule the West from Trier as hiscapital, while he himself ruled the East from Nicomedia. Each of the twoEmperors chose a future successor, who was to rule in part of hisdominions under the title of Cæsar, and to reign after him. Diocletianchose his son-in-law Galerius, and sent him to fight on the Danube; andMaximian chose, as Cæsar, Constantius Chlorus, who commanded in Britain, Gaul, and Spain; and thus everything was done to secure that a stronghand should be ready everywhere to keep the legions from setting upEmperors at their own will. Diocletian was esteemed the most just and kind of the Emperors;Maximian, the fiercest and most savage. He had a bitter hatred of theChristian name, which was shared by Galerius; but, on the other hand, the wife of Diocletian was believed to be a Christian, and Helena, thewife of Constantius, was certainly one. However, Maximian and Galeriuswere determined to put down the faith. Maximian is said to have had awhole legion of Christians in his army, called the Theban, from theEgyptian Thebes. These he commanded to sacrifice, and on their refusalhad them decimated--that is, every tenth man was slain. They were calledon again to sacrifice, but still were staunch, and after a last summonswere, every man of them, slain as they stood with their tribune Maurice, whose name is still held in high honor in the Engadine. Diocletian wasslow to become a persecutor, until a fire broke out in his palace atNicomedia, which did much mischief in the city, but spared the chiefChristian church. The enemies of the Christians accused them of havingcaused it, and Diocletian required every one in his household to clearthemselves by offering sacrifice to Jupiter. His wife and daughteryielded, but most of his officers and slaves held out, and died in crueltorments. One slave was scourged till the flesh parted from his bones, and then the wounds were rubbed with salt and vinegar; others wereracked till their bones were out of joint, and others hung up by theirhands to hooks, with weights fastened to their feet. A city in Phrygiawas surrounded by soldiers and every person in it slaughtered; and theChristians were hunted down like wild beasts from one end of the empireto the other, everywhere save in Britain, where, under Constantius, onlyone martyrdom is reported to have taken place, namely, that of thesoldier at Verulam, St. Alban. It was the worst of all the persecutions, and lasted the longest. [Illustration: DIOCLETIAN IN RETIREMENT. ] The two Emperors were good soldiers, and kept the enemies back, so thatDiocletian celebrated a triumph at Nicomedia; but he had an illness justafter, and, as he was fifty-nine years old, he decided that it would bebetter to resign the empire while he was still in his full strength, and he persuaded Maximian to do the same, in 305, making Constantius andGalerius Emperors in their stead. Constantius stopped the persecution inthe West, but it raged as much as ever in the East under Galerius andthe Cæsar he had appointed, whose name was Daza, but who called himselfMaximin. Constantius fought bravely, both in Britain and Gaul, with theenemies who tried to break into the empire. The Franks, one of theTeuton nations, were constantly breaking in on the eastern frontier ofGaul, and the Caledonians on the northern border of the settlement ofBritain. He opposed them gallantly, and was much loved, but he died atYork, 305, and Galerius passed over his son Constantine, and appointed afavorite of his own named Licinius. Constantine was so much beloved bythe army and people of Gaul that they proclaimed him Emperor, and heheld the province of Britain and Gaul securely against all enemies. Old Maximian, who had only retired on the command of Diocletian, nowcame out from his retreat, and called on his colleague to do the same;but Diocletian was far too happy on his little farm at Salona to leaveit, and answered the messenger who urged him again to take upon him thepurple with--"Come and look at the cabbages I have planted. " However, Maximian was accepted as the true Emperor by the Senate, and made hisson Maxentius, Cæsar, while he allied himself with Constantine, to whomhe gave his daughter Fausta in marriage. Maxentius turned out a rebel, and drove the old man away to Marseilles, where Constantine gave him ahome on condition of his not interfering with government; but he couldnot rest, and raised the troops in the south against his son-in-law. Constantine's army marched eagerly against him and made him prisoner, but even then he was pardoned; yet he still plotted, and tried topersuade his daughter Fausta to murder her husband. Upon thisConstantine was obliged to have him put to death. [Illustration: CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. ] Galerius died soon after of a horrible disease, during which he wasfilled with remorse for his cruelties to the Christians, sent to entreattheir prayers, and stopped the persecution. On his death, Liciniusseized part of his dominions, and there were four men calling themselvesEmperors--Licinius in Asia, Daza Maximin in Egypt, Maxentius at Rome, and Constantine in Gaul. There was sure soon to be a terrible struggle. It began betweenMaxentius and Constantine. This last marched out of Gaul and enteredItaly. He had hitherto seemed doubtful between Christianity andpaganism, but a wonder was seen in the heavens before his whole army, namely, a bright cross of light in the noon-tide sky with the wordsplainly to be traced round it, _In hoc signo vinces_--"In this sign thoushalt conquer. " This sight decided his mind; he proclaimed himself aChristian, and from Milan issued forth an edict promising the Christianshis favor and protection. Great victories were gained by him at Turin, Verona, and on the banks of the Tiber, where, at the battle of theMilvian Bridge in 312, Maxentius was defeated, and was drowned incrossing the river. Constantine entered Rome, and was owned by theSenate as Emperor of the West. CHAPTER XXXVII. CONSTANTINE THE GREAT. 312-337. Constantine entered Rome as a Christian, and from his time forwardChristianity prevailed. He reigned only over the West at first, butLicinius overthrew Daza, treating him and his family with greatbarbarity, and then Constantine, becoming alarmed at his power, marchedagainst him, beat him in Thrace, and ten years later made another attackon him. In the battle of Adrianople, Licinius was defeated, and soonafter made prisoner and put to death. Thus, in 323, Constantine becamethe only Emperor. He was a Christian in faith, though not as yet baptized. He did notdestroy heathen temples nor forbid heathen rites, but he did everythingto favor the Christians and make Christian laws. Churches were rebuiltand ornamented; Sunday was kept as the day of the Lord, and on it nobusiness might be transacted except the setting free of a slave;soldiers might go to church, and all that had made it difficult anddangerous to confess the faith was taken away. Constantine longed to seehis whole empire Christian; but at Rome, heathen ceremonies were sobound up with every action of the state or of a man's life that it wasvery hard for the Emperor to avoid them, and he therefore spent aslittle time as he could there, but was generally at the newer cities ofArles and Trier; and at last he decided on founding a fresh capital, tobe a Christian city from the first. The place he chose was the shore of the Bosphorus, where Asia and Europeare only divided by that narrow channel, and where the old Greek city ofByzantium already stood. From hence he hoped to be able to rule the Eastand the West. He enlarged the city with splendid buildings, made apalace there for himself, and called it after his own name--Constantinople, or New Rome, neither of which names has it ever lost. He carried many ofthe ornaments of Old Rome thither, but consecrated them as far aspossible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His motherHelena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where ourblessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. Thechurches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativityat Bethlehem have been kept up even to this day. [Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE. ] There was now no danger in being a Christian, and thus worldly and evenwicked men and women owned themselves as belonging to the Church. Somuch evil prevailed that many good men fled from the sight of it, thinking to do more good by praying in lonely places free fromtemptation than by living in the midst of it. These were called hermits, and the first and most noted of them was St. Anthony. The Thebaid, orhilly country above Thebes in Egypt, was full of these hermits. Whenthey banded together in brotherhoods they were called monks, and thewomen who did the like were called nuns. At this time there arose in Egypt a priest named Arius, who fell awayfrom the true faith respecting our blessed Lord, and taught that he wasnot from the beginning, and was not equal with God the Father. ThePatriarch of Alexandria tried to silence him, but he led away an immensenumber of followers, who did not like to stretch their souls to confessthat Jesus Christ is God. At last Constantine resolved to call togethera council of the Bishops and the wisest priests of the whole Church, todeclare what was the truth that had been always held from the beginning. The place he appointed for the meeting was Nicea, in Asia Minor, and hepaid for the journeys of all the Bishops, three hundred and eighteen innumber, who came from all parts of the empire, east and west, so as toform the first Oecumenical or General Council of the Church. Many ofthem still bore the marks of the persecutions they had borne inDiocletian's time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off;some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard laborin the mines. The Emperor, in purple and gold, took a seat in thecouncil as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet baptized; andthe person who used the most powerful arguments was a young deacon ofAlexandria named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared that thedoctrine of Arius was contrary to what the Church had held from thefirst, and the confession of faith was drawn up which we call the NiceneCreed. Three hundred Bishops at once set their seals to it, and of thosewho at first refused all but two were won over, and these were banished. It was then that the faith of the Church began to be called Catholic oruniversal, and orthodox or straight teaching; while those who attackedit were called heretics, and their doctrine heresy, from a Greek wordmeaning to choose. [Illustration: COUNCIL OF NICEA. ] The troubles were not at an end with the Council and Creed of Nicea. Arius had pretended to submit, but he went on with his false teaching, and the courtly Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had the ear of theEmperor, protected him. Athanasius had been made Patriarch, orFather-Bishop, of Alexandria, and with all his might argued against thefalse doctrine, and cut off those who followed it from the Church. ButEusebius so talked that Constantine fancied quiet was better than truth, and sent orders to Athanasius that no one was to be shut out. This thePatriarch could not obey, and the Emperor therefore banished him toGaul. Arius then went to Constantinople to ask the Emperor to insist onhis being received back to communion. He declared that he believed thatwhich he held in his hand, showing the Creed of Nicea, but keepinghidden under it a statement of his own heresy. [Illustration: CATACOMBS. ] "Go, " said Constantine; "if your faith agree with your oath, you areblameless; if not, God be your judge;" and he commanded that Ariusshould be received to communion the next day, which was Sunday. But onhis way to church, among a great number of his friends, Arius was struckwith sudden illness, and died in a few minutes. The Emperor, as well asthe Catholics, took this as a clear token of the hand of God, andConstantine was cured of any leaning to the Arians, though he stillbelieved the men who called Athanasius factious and troublesome, andtherefore would not recall him from exile. The great grief of Constantine's life was, that he put his eldest sonCrispus to death on a wicked accusation of his stepmother Fausta. Onlearning the truth, he caused a silver statue to be raised, bearing theinscription, "My son, whom I unjustly condemned;" and when other crimesof Fausta came to light, he caused her to be suffocated. Baptism was often in those days put off to the end of life, that theremight be no more sin after it, and Constantine was not baptized till hislast illness had begun, when he was sixty-four years old, and he sentfor Sylvester, Pope or Bishop of Rome, where he then was, and receivedfrom him baptism, absolution, and Holy Communion. After this, Constantine never put on purple robes again, but wore white till the dayof his death in 337. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXXVIII. CONSTANTIUS. 337-364. Constantine the Great left three sons, who shared the empire betweenthem; but two were slain early in life, and only Constantius, the secondand worst of the brothers, remained Emperor. He was an Arian, and underhim Athanasius, who had returned to Alexandria, was banished again, andtook refuge with the Pope Liberius at Rome. Pope--papa in Latin--is thename for father, just as patriarch is; and the Pope had become moreimportant since the removal of the court from Rome; but Constantiustried to overcome Liberius, banished him to Thrace, and placed an Ariannamed Felix in his room. The whole people of Rome rose in indignation, and Constantius tried to appease them by declaring that Liberius andFelix should rule the Church together; but the Romans would not submitto such a decree. "Shall we have the circus factions in the Church?"they said. "No! one God, one Christ, one Bishop!" In the end Felix wasforced to fly, and Liberius kept his seat. Athanasius found his safestrefuge in the deserts among the hermits of the Thebaid in Egypt. Meantime Sapor, king of Persia, was attacking Nisibis, the most Easterncity of the Roman empire, where a brave Catholic named James was Bishop, and encouraged the people to a most brave resistance, so that they heldout for four months; and Sapor, thinking the city was under some divineprotection, and finding that his army sickened in the hot marshes aroundit, gave up the siege at last. [Illustration: JULIAN. ] Constantius was a little, mean-looking man, but he dressed himself up todo his part as Emperor. He had swarms of attendants like any Easternprince, most of them slaves, who waited on him as if he was perfectlyhelpless. He had his face painted, and was covered with gold embroideryand jewels on all state occasions, and he used to stand like a statue tobe looked at, never winking an eyelid, nor moving his hand, nor doinganything to remind people that he was a man like themselves. He wastimid and jealous, and above all others, he dreaded his young cousinJulian, the only relation he had. Julian had studied at Athens, and whathe there heard and fancied of the old Greek philosophy seemed to him fargrander than the Christianity that showed itself in the lives ofConstantius and his courtiers. He was full of spirit and ability, andConstantius thought it best to keep him at a distance by sending him tofight the Germans on the borders of Gaul. There he was so successful, and was such a favorite with the soldiers, that Constantius sent torecall him. This only made the army proclaim him Emperor, and he set outwith them across the Danubian country towards Constantinople, but on theway met the tidings that Constantius was dead. This was in 361, and without going to Rome Julian hastened on toConstantinople, where he was received as Emperor. He no longer pretendedto be a Christian, but had all the old heathen temples opened again, andthe sacrifices performed as in old times, though it was not easy to findany one who recollected how they were carried on. He said that all formsof religion should be free to every one, but he himself tried to livelike an ancient philosopher, getting rid of all the pomp of jewels, robes, courtiers, and slaves who had attended Constantius, wearingsimply the old purple garb of a Roman general, sleeping on a lion'sskin, and living on the plainest food. Meantime, he tried to put downthe Christian faith by laughing at it, and trying to get people todespise it as something low and mean. When this did not succeed, heforbade Christians to be schoolmasters or teachers; and as they declaredthat the ruin of the Temple of Jerusalem proved our Lord to have been atrue Prophet, he commanded that it should be rebuilt. As soon as thefoundations were dug, there was an outburst of fiery smoke and balls offlame which forced the workmen to leave off. Such things sometimeshappen when long-buried ruins are opened, from the gases that haveformed there; but it was no doubt the work of God's providence, and theChristians held it as a miracle. Julian hated the Catholic Christians worse than the Arians, because hefound them more staunch against him. Athanasius had come back toAlexandria, but the Arians got up an accusation against him that he hadbeen guilty of a murder, and brought forward a hand in a box to provethe crime; and though Athanasius showed the man said to have beenmurdered alive, and with both his hands in their places, he was stillhunted out of Alexandria, and had to hide among the hermits of theThebaid again. When any search was threatened of the spot where he was, the horn was sounded which called the hermits together to church, and hewas taken to another hiding-place. Sometimes he visited his flock atAlexandria in secret, and once, when he was returning down the Nile, helearned that a boat-load of soldiers was pursuing him. Turning back, hisboat met them. They called out to know if Athanasius had been seen. "Hewas going down the Nile a little while ago, " the Bishop answered. Hisenemies hurried on, and he was safe. Julian was angered by finding it impossible to waken paganism. At onegrand temple in Asia, whither hundreds of oxen used to be brought tosacrifice, all his encouragement only caused one goose to be offered, which the priest of the temple received as a grand gift. Julianexpected, too, that pagans would worship their old gods and yet live thevirtuous lives of Christians; and he was disappointed and grieved tofind that no works of goodness or mercy sprang from those who followedhis belief. He was a kind man by nature, but he began to grow bitterwith disappointment, and to threaten when he found it was of no use topersuade; and the Christians expected that there would be a greatpersecution when he should return from an expedition into the Eastagainst the king of Persia. [Illustration: ARCH OF CONSTANTINE. ] He went with a fine army in ships down the Euphrates, and thence marchedinto Persia, where King Sapor was wise enough to avoid a battle, andonly retreat before him. The Romans were half starved, and obliged toturn back. Then Sapor attacked their rear, and cut off their stragglers. Julian shared all the sufferings of his troops, and was alwayswherever there was danger. At last a javelin pierced him under the arm. It is said that he caught some of his blood in his other hand, cast itup towards heaven, and cried, "Galilean, Thou hast conquered. " He diedin a few hours, in 363, and the Romans could only choose the best leaderthey knew to get them out of the sad plight they were in--almost that ofthe ten thousand Greeks, except that they knew the roads and hadfriendly lands much nearer. Their choice fell on a plain, honestChristian soldier named Jovian, who did his best by making a treaty withSapor, giving up all claim to any lands beyond the Tigris, andsurrendering the brave city of Nisibis which had held out sogallantly--a great grief to the Eastern Christians. The first thingJovian did was to have Athanasius recalled, but his reign did not last ayear, and he died on the way to Constantinople. CHAPTER XXXIX. VALENTINIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 364-392. When Jovian died, the army chose another soldier named Valentinian, astout, brave, rough man, with little education, rude and passionate, buta Catholic Christian. As soon as he reached Constantinople, he dividedthe empire with his brother Valens, whom he left to rule the East, whilehe himself went to govern the West, chiefly from Milan, for the Emperorswere not fond of living at Rome, partly because the remains of theSenate interfered with their full grandeur, and partly because therewere old customs that were inconvenient to a Christian Emperor. He wasin general just and honest in his dealings, but when he was angry hecould be cruel, and it is said he had two bears to whom criminals werethrown. His brother Valens was a weaker and less able man, and was anArian, who banished Athanasius once more for the fifth time; but theChurch of Alexandria prevailed, and he was allowed to remain and die inpeace. The Creed that bears his name is not thought to be of hiswriting, but to convey what he taught. There was great talk at this timeall over the cities about the questions between the Catholics andArians, and good men were shocked by hearing the holiest mysteries ofthe faith gossiped about by the idlers in baths and market-places. [Illustration: ALEXANDRIA. ] At this time Damasus, the Pope, desired a very learned deacon of hischurch, named Jerome, to make a good translation of the whole of theScriptures into Latin, comparing the best versions, and giving anaccount of the books. For this purpose Jerome went to the Holy Land, andlived in a cell at Bethlehem, happy to be out of the way of the quarrelsat Rome and Constantinople. There, too, was made the first translationof the Gospels into one of the Teutonic languages, namely, the Gothic. The Goths were a great people, of the same Teutonic race as the Germans, Franks, and Saxons--tall, fair, brave, strong, and handsome--and were atthis time living on the north bank of the Danube. Many of their youngmen hired themselves to fight as soldiers in the Roman army; and theywere learning Christianity, but only as Arians. It was for them thattheir Bishop Ulfilas translated the Gospels into Gothic, and invented analphabet to write them in. A copy of this translation is still to beseen at Upsal in Sweden, written on purple vellum in silver letters. [Illustration: GOTHS. ] Another great and holy man of this time was Ambrose, the Archbishopof Milan, who was the guide and teacher of Gratian, Valentinian's eldestson, a good and promising youth so far as he went, but who, after thehabit of the time, was waiting to be baptized till he should be furtheron in life. Valentinian's second wife was named Justina; and when hedied, as it is said, from breaking a blood-vessel in a fit of rage, in375, the Western Empire was shared between her little son Valentinianand Gratian. Justina was an Arian, and wanted to have a church in Milan where shecould worship without ascribing full honor and glory to God the Son; butAmbrose felt that the churches were his Master's, not his own to begiven away, and filled the Church with Christians, who watched therechanting Psalms day and night, while the soldiers Justina sent to turnthem out joined them, and sang and prayed with them. Gratian did not choose to be called Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest ofall the Roman idols, as all the Emperors had been; and this offendedmany persons. A general named Maximus rose and reigned as Emperor inBritain, and Gratian had too much on his hands in the north to put himdown. In the meantime, a terrible wild tribe called Huns were coming from theWest and driving the Goths before them, so that they asked leave fromValens to come across the Danube and settle themselves in Thrace. Thereply was so ill managed by Valens' counsellors that the Goths wereoffended, and came over the river as foes when they might have come asfriends; and Valens was killed in battle with them at Adrianople in 378. Gratian felt that he alone could not cope with the dangers that besetthe empire, and his brother was still a child, so he gave the EasternEmpire to a brave and noble Spanish general named Theodosius, who was aCatholic Christian and baptized, and who made peace with the Goths, gavethem settlements, and took their young men into his armies. In themeantime, Maximus was growing more powerful in Britain, and Gratian, whochiefly lived in Gaul, was disliked by the soldiers especially formaking friends with the young Gothic chief Alaric, whom he joined inhunting in the forests of Gaul in a way they thought unworthy of anEmperor. Finding that he was thus disliked, Maximus crossed the Channelto attack him. His soldiers would not march against the British legions, and he was taken and put to death, bitterly lamenting that he had solong deferred his baptism till now it was denied to him. Young Valentinian went on reigning at Milan, and Maximus in Gaul. Thislast had become a Christian and a Catholic in name, but without layingaside his fierceness and cruelty, so that, when some heretics werebrought before him, he had them put to death, entirely against theadvice of the great Saint and Bishop then working in Gaul, Martin ofTours, and likewise of St. Ambrose, who had been sent by Valentinian tomake peace with the Gallic tyrant. It was a time of great men in the Church. In Africa a very great man hadrisen up, St. Augustine, who, after doubting long and living a life ofsin, was drawn to the truth by the prayers of his good mother Monica, and, when studying in Italy, listened to St. Ambrose, and became ahearty believer and maintainer of all that was good. He became Bishop ofHippo in Africa. [Illustration: CONVENT ON THE HILLS. ] But with the good there was much of evil. All the old cities, andespecially Rome, were full of a strange mixture of Christian show andheathen vice. There was such idleness and luxury in the towns thathardly any Romans had hardihood enough to go out to fight their ownbattles, but hired Goths, Germans, Gauls, and Moors; and these learnedtheir ways of warfare, and used them in their turn against the Romansthemselves. Nothing was so much run after as the games in theamphitheatres. People rushed there to watch the chariot races, and wentperfectly wild with eagerness about the drivers whose colors they wore;and even the gladiator games were not done away with by Christianity, although these sports were continually preached against by the clergy, and no really devout person would go to the theatres. Much time wasidled away at the baths, which were the place for talk and gossip, andwhere there was a soft steamy air which was enough to take away allmanhood and resolution. The ladies' dresses were exceedingly expensiveand absurd, and the whole way of living quite as sumptuous and helplessas in the times of heathenism. Good people tried to live apart. Morethan ever became monks and hermits; and a number of ladies, who had beenmuch struck with St. Jerome's teaching, made up a sort of society atRome which busied itself in good works and devotion. Two of the ladies, a mother and daughter, followed him to the Holy Land, and dwelt in aconvent at Bethlehem. Maximus after a time advanced into Italy, and Valentinian fled to askthe help of Theodosius, who came with an army, defeated and slewMaximus, and restored Valentinian, but only for a short time, for thepoor youth was soon murdered by a Frank chief in his own service namedArbogastes. CHAPTER XL. THEODOSIUS THE GREAT. 392-395. The Frank, Arbogastes, who had killed Valentinian did not make himselfEmperor, but set up a heathen philosopher called Eugenius, who for alittle while restored all the heathen pomp and splendor, and opened thetemples again, threatening even to take away the churches and turn thechief one at Milan into a stable. They knew that Theodosius would sooncome to attack them, so they prepared for a great resistance in thepasses of the Julian Alps, and the image of the Thundering Jupiter wasplaced to guard them. [Illustration] Theodosius had collected his troops and marched under the Labarum--thatis to say, the Cross of Constantine, which had been the ensign of theimperial army ever since the battle of the Milvian Bridge. It was thecross combined with the two first Greek letters of the name Christ, [Symbol: Greek chi & rho combined], and was carried, as the eagles hadbeen, above a purple silk banner. The men of Eugenius bore before them afigure of Hercules, and in the first battle they gained the advantage, for the more ignorant Eastern soldiers, though Christians, could not getrid of the notion that there was some sort of power in a heathen god, and thought Jupiter and Hercules were too strong for them. But Theodosius rallied them and led them back, so that they gained agreat victory, and a terrible storm and whirlwind which fell at the sametime upon the host of Eugenius made the Christian army feel the moresure that God fought on their side. Eugenius was taken and put to death, and Arbogastes fell on his own sword. Theodosius thus united the empires of the East and West once more. Hewas a brave and gallant soldier, and a good and conscientious man, andwas much loved and honored; but he could be stern and passionate, and hewas likewise greatly feared. At Antioch, the people had been muchoffended at a tax which Theodosius had laid on them; they rose inrebellion, overthrew his statues and those of his family, and draggedthem about in the mud. No sooner was this done than they began to beshocked and terrified, especially because of the insult to the statue ofthe Empress, who was lately dead after a most kind and charitable life. The citizens in haste sent off messengers, with the Bishop at theirhead, to declare their grief and sorrow, and entreat the Emperor'spardon. All the time they were gone the city gave itself up to prayerand fasting, listening to sermons from the priest, John--called from hiseloquence Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth--who preached repentance for allthe most frequent sins, such as love of pleasure, irreverence at church, etc. The Bishop on his way met the Emperor's deputies who were chargedto enquire into the crime and punish the people; and he redoubled hisspeed in reaching Constantinople, where he so pleaded the cause of thepeople that Theodosius freely forgave them, and sent him home to keep ahappy Easter with them. This was while he was still Emperor only of theEast. [Illustration: ROMAN HALL OF JUSTICE. ] But when he was in Italy with Valentinian, three years later, there wasanother great sedition at Thessalonica. The people there were as mad aswere most of the citizens of the larger towns upon the sports of theamphitheatre, and were vehemently fond of the charioteers whom theyadmired on either side. Just before some races that were expected, oneof the favorite drivers committed a crime for which he was imprisoned. The people, wild with fury, rose and called for his release; and whenthis was denied to them, they fell on the magistrates with stones, andkilled the chief of them, Botheric, the commander of the forces. Thenews was taken to Milan, where the Emperor then was, and his wrath wasso great and terrible that he commanded that the whole city shouldsuffer. The soldiers, who were glad both to revenge their captain and togain plunder, hastened to put his command into execution; the unhappypeople were collected in the circus, and slaughtered so rapidly andsuddenly, that when Theodosius began to recover from his passion, andsent to stay the hands of the slayers, they found the city burning andthe streets full of corpses. St. Ambrose felt it his duty to speak forth in the name of the Churchagainst such fury and cruelty; and when Theodosius presented himself atthe church door to come to the Holy Communion, Ambrose met him there, and turned him back as a blood-stained sinner unfit to partake of theheavenly feast, and bidding him not add sacrilege to murder. Theodosius pleaded that David had sinned even more deeply, and yet hadbeen forgiven. "If you have sinned like him, repent like him, " saidAmbrose; and the Emperor went back weeping to his palace, there toremain as a penitent. Easter was the usual time for receiving penitentsback to the Church, but at Christmas the Emperor presented himselfagain, hoping to win the Bishop's consent to his return at once; butAmbrose was firm, and again met him at the gate, rebuking him for tryingto break the rules of the Church. "No, " said Theodosius; "I am not come to break the laws, but to entreatyou to imitate the mercy of God whom we serve, who opens the gates ofmercy to contrite sinners. " On seeing how deep was his repentance, Ambrose allowed him to enter theChurch, though it was not for some time that he was admitted to the HolyCommunion, and all that time he fasted and never put on his imperialrobes. He also made a law that no sentence of death should be carriedout till thirty days after it was given, so as to give time to seewhether it were hasty or just. During this reign another heresy sprang up, denying the Godhead of Godthe Holy Ghost, and, in consequence, Theodosius called together anotherCouncil of the Church, at which was added to the Nicene Creed thoselatter sentences which follow the words, "I believe in the Holy Ghost. "In this reign, too, began to be sung the _Te Deum_, which is generallyknown as the hymn of St. Ambrose. It was first used at Milan, butwhether he wrote it or not is uncertain, though there is a story that hehad it sung for the first time at the baptism of St. Augustine. Theodosius only lived six months after his defeat of Eugenius, dying atMilan in 395, when only fifty years old. He was the last who reallydeserved the name of a Roman Emperor, though the title was kept up, andRome had still much to undergo. He left two young sons named Arcadiusand Honorius, between whom the empire was divided. [Illustration] CHAPTER XLI. ALARIC THE GOTH. 395-410. The sons of the great Theodosius were, like almost all the children ofthe Roman Emperors, vain and weak, spoiled by growing up as princes. Arcadius, who was eighteen, had the East, and was under the charge of aRoman officer called Rufinus; Honorius who was only eleven, reigned atRome under the care of Stilicho, who was by birth a Vandal, that is tosay, of one of those Teutonic nations who were living all round thenorthern bounds of the empire, and whose sons came to serve in the Romanarmies and learn Roman habits. Stilicho was brave and faithful, andalmost belonged to the imperial family, for his wife Serena was niece toTheodosius, and his daughter Maria was betrothed to the young Honorius. Stilicho was a very active, spirited man, who found troops to check theenemies of Rome on all sides of the Western Empire. Rufinus was not sofaithful, and did great harm in the East by quarrelling with Arcadius'other ministers, and then, as all believed, inviting the Goths to comeout of their settlements on the Danube and invade Greece, under Alaric, the same Gothic chief who had been a friend and companion of Gratian, and had fought under Theodosius. They passed the Danube, overran Macedon, and spread all over Greece, where, being Arian Christians, they destroyed with all their might allthe remaining statues and temples of the old pagans; although, as theydid not attack Athens, the pagans, who were numerous there, fancied thatthey were prevented by a vision of Apollo and Pallas Athene. Arcadiussent to his brother for aid, and Stilicho marched through Thrace;Rufinus was murdered through his contrivance, and then, marching on intothe Peloponnesus, he defeated Alaric in battle, and drove him out fromthence, but no further than Epirus, where the Goths took up theirstation to wait for another opportunity; but by this time Arcadiushad grown afraid of Stilicho, sent him back to Italy with many gifts andpromises, and engaged Alaric to be the guardian of his empire, not onlyagainst the wild tribes, but against his brother and his minister. [Illustration: COLONNADES OF SAINT PETER AT ROME. ] This was a fine chance for Alaric, who had all the temper of a greatconqueror, and to the wild bravery of a Goth had added the knowledge andskill of a Roman general. He led his forces through the Alps into Italy, and showed himself before the gates of Milan. The poor weak boy Honoriuswas carried off for safety to Ravenna, while Stilicho gathered all thetroops from Gaul, and left Britain unguarded by Roman soldiers, toprotect the heart of the empire. With these he attacked Alaric, andgained a great victory at Pollentia; the Goths retreated; he followedand beat them again at Verona, driving them out of Italy. It was the last Roman victory, and it was celebrated by the last Romantriumph. There had been three hundred triumphs of Roman generals, but itwas Honorius who entered Rome in the car of victory and was taken to theCapitol, and afterwards there were games in the amphitheatre as usual, and fights of gladiators. In the midst of the horrid battle a voice washeard bidding it to cease in the name of Christ, and between the swordsthere was seen standing a monk in his dark brown dress, holding up hishand and keeping back the blows. There was a shout of rage, and he wascut down and killed in a moment; but then in horror the games werestopped. It was found that he was an Egyptian monk named Telemachus, freshly come to Rome. No one knew any more about him, but this nobledeath of his put an end to shows of gladiators. Chariot races and gameswent on, though the good and thoughtful disapproved of the wildexcitement they caused; but the horrid sports of death and blood wereended for ever. Alaric was driven back for a time, but there were swarms of Germans whowere breaking in where the line of boundary had been left undefended bythe soldiers being called away to fight the Goths. A fierce heathenchief named Radegaisus advanced with at least 200, 000 men as far asFlorence, but was there beaten by the brave Stilicho, and was put todeath, while the other prisoners were sold into slavery. But Stilicho, brave as he was, was neither loved nor trusted by the Emperor or thepeople. Some abused him for not bringing back the old gods under whom, they said, Rome had prospered; others said that he was no honestChristian, and all believed that he meant to make his son Emperor. Whenhe married this son to a daughter of Arcadius, people made sure thatthis was his purpose. Honorius listened to the accusation, and hisfavorite Olympius persuaded the army to give up Stilicho. He fled to achurch, but was persuaded to come out of it, and was then put to death. And at that very time Alaric was crossing the Alps. There was no one tomake any resistance. Honorius was at Ravenna, safe behind walls andmarshes, and cared for nothing but his favorite poultry. Alaric encampedoutside the walls of Rome, but he did not attempt to break in, waitingtill the Romans should be starved out. When they had come to terribledistress, they offered to ransom their city. He asked a monstrous sum, which they refused, telling him what hosts there were of them, and thathe might yet find them dangerous. "The thicker the hay, the easier tomow, " said the Goth. "What will you leave us then?" they asked. "Yourlives, " was the answer. The ransom the wretched Romans agreed to pay was 5000 pounds' weight ofgold and 30, 000 of silver, 4000 silk robes, 3000 pieces of scarletcloth, and 3000 pounds of pepper. They stripped the roof of the templein the Capitol, and melted down the images of the old gods to raise thesum, and Alaric drew off his men; but he came again the next year, blocked up Ostia, and starved them faster. This time he brought a mannamed Attalus, whom he ordered them to admit as Emperor, and they didso; but as the governor of Africa would send no corn while this manreigned, the people rose and drove him out, and thus for the third timebrought Alaric down on them. The gates were opened to him at night, andhe entered Rome on the 24th of August, 410, exactly eight hundred yearsafter the sack of Rome by Brennus. [Illustration: ALARIC'S BURIAL. ] Alaric did not wish to ruin and destroy the grand old city, nor tomassacre the inhabitants; but his Goths were thirsty for the spoil hehad kept them from so long, and he gave them leave to plunder for sixdays, but not to kill, nor to do any harm to the churches. A set ofwild, furious men could not, of course, be kept in by these orders, andterrible misfortunes befell many unhappy families; but the mischief donewas much less than could have been expected, and the great churches ofSt. Peter and St. Paul were unhurt. One old lady named Marcella, afriend of St. Jerome, was beaten to make her show where her treasureswere; but when at last her tormentors came to believe that she had spenther all on charity, they led her to the shelter of the church with herfriends, soon to die of what she had undergone. After twelve days, however, Alaric drew off his forces, leaving Rome to shift for itself. Bishop Innocent was at Ravenna, where he had gone to ask help from theEmperor; but Honorius knew and cared so little that when he was toldRome was lost, he only thought of his favorite hen whose name was Rome, and said, "That cannot be, for I have just fed her. " Alaric marched southward, the Goths plundering the villas of the Romannobles on their way. At Cosenza, in the extreme south, he fell ill of afever and died. His warriors turned the stream of the river Bionzo outof its course, caused his grave to be dug in the bed of the torrent, andwhen his corpse had been laid there, they slew all the slaves who haddone the work, so that none might be able to tell where lay the greatGoth. CHAPTER XLII. THE VANDALS. 403. One good thing came of the Gothic conquest--the pagans were put tosilence for ever. The temples had been razed, the idols broken, and noone set them up again; but the whole people of Rome were Christian, atleast in name, from that time forth; and the temples and halls ofjustice began to be turned into churches. Honorius still lived his idle life at Ravenna, and the Bishop--or, asthe Romans called him, Papa, father, or Pope--came back and helped themto put matters into order again. Alaric had left no son, but his wife'sbrother Ataulf became leader of the Goths. At Rome he had made prisonerTheodosius' daughter Placidia, and he married her; but he did not chooseto rule at Rome, because, as he said, his Goths would never bear a quietlife in a city. So he promised to protect the empire for Honorius, andled his tribe away from Italy to Spain, which they conquered, and begana kingdom there. They were therefore known as the Visigoths, or WesternGoths. Arcadius, in the meantime, reigned quietly at Constantinople, where St. John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed preacher of Antioch, was madePatriarch, or father-bishop. The games and races in the circus atConstantinople were as madly run after as they had ever been at Rome orThessalonica; there were not indeed shows of gladiators, but people setthemselves with foolish vehemence to back up one driver against another, wearing their colors and calling themselves by their names, and the twofactions of the Greens and the Blues were ready to tear each other topieces. The Empress Eudoxia, Arcadius' wife, was one of the mostvehement of all, and was, besides, a vain, silly woman, who encouragedall kinds of pomp and expense. St. Chrysostom preached against all themischiefs that thus arose, so that she was offended, and contrived toraise up an accusation against him and have him driven out of the city. The people of Constantinople still showed so much love for him that sheinsisted on his being sent further off to the bleak shores of the BlackSea, and on the journey he died, his last words being, "Glory be to Godin all things. " [Illustration: ROMAN CLOCK. ] Arcadius died in 408, leaving a young son, called Theodosius II. , inthe care of his elder sister Pulcheria, under whom the Eastern Empirelay at peace, while the miseries of the Western went on increasing. NewEmperors were set up by the legions in the distant provinces, but weresoon overthrown, while Honorius only remained at Ravenna by the supportof the kings of the Teuton tribes; and as he never trusted them or keptfaith with them, he was always offending them and being punished byfresh attacks on some part of his empire, for which he did not greatlycare so long as they let him alone. Ataulf died in Spain, and Placidia came back to Ravenna, where Honoriusgave her in marriage to a Roman general named Constantius, and she had ason named Valentinian, who, when his uncle died after thirty-seven yearsof a wretched reign, became Emperor in his stead, under his mother'sguardianship, in 423. Two great generals who were really able men were her chiefsupporters--Boniface, Count or Commander of Africa; and Aëtius, who issometimes called the last of the Romans, though he was not by birth aRoman at all, but a Scythian. He gained the ear of the Empress Placidia, and persuaded her that Boniface wanted to set himself up in Africa asEmperor, so that she sent to recall him, and evil friends assured himthat she meant to put him to death as soon as he arrived. He was verymuch enraged, and though St. Augustine, now an old man, who had longbeen Bishop of Hippo, advised him to restrain his anger, he called onGenseric, the chief of the Vandals, to come and help him to defend hisprovince. [Illustration: SPANISH COAST. ] The Vandals were another tribe of Teutons--tall, strong, fair-haired, and much like the Goths, and, like them, they were Arians. They hadmarauded in Italy, and then had followed the Goths to Spain, where theyhad established themselves in the South, in the country called from themVandalusia, or Andalusia. Their chief was only too glad to obey thesummons of Boniface, but before he came the Roman had found out hismistake; Placidia had apologized to him, and all was right between them. But it was now too late; Genseric and his Vandals were on the way, andthere was nothing for it but to fight his best against them. He could not save Carthage, and, though he made the bravest defence inhis power, he was driven into Hippo, which was so strongly fortifiedthat he was able to hold it out a whole year, during which time St. Augustine died, after a long illness. He had caused the sevenpenitential Psalms to be written out on the walls of his room, and wasconstantly musing on them. He died, and was buried in peace before thecity was taken. Boniface held out for five years altogether beforeAfrica was entirely taken by the Vandals, and a miserable time began forthe Church, for Genseric was an Arian, and set himself to crush out theCatholic Church by taking away her buildings and grievously persecutingher faithful bishops. Valentinian III, made a treaty with him, and even yielded up to him allright to the old Roman province of Africa; but Genseric had a strongfleet of ships, and went on attacking and plundering Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy and the coasts of Greece. Britain, at the same time, was being so tormented by the attacks of theSaxons by sea, and the Caledonians from the north, that her chiefs senta piteous letter to Aëtius in Gaul, beginning with "The groans of theBritons;" but Aëtius could send no help, and Gaul itself was beingoverrun by the Goths in the south, the Burgundians in the middle, andthe Franks in the north, so that scarcely more than Italy itselfremained to Valentinian. [Illustration: VANDALS PLUNDERING] The Eastern half of the Empire was better off, though it was tormentedby the Persians in the East, on the northern border by the Eastern Gothsor Ostrogoths, who had stayed on the banks of the Danube instead ofcoming to Italy, and to the south by the Vandals from Africa. ButPulcheria was so wise and good that, when her young brother TheodosiusII. Died without children, the people begged her to choose a husband whomight be an Emperor for them. She chose a wise old senator namedMarcian, and when he died, she again chose another good and wise mannamed Zeno; and thus the Eastern Empire stood while the West was fastcrumbling away. The nobles were almost all vain, weak cowards, who onlythought of themselves, and left strangers to fight their battles; andevery one was cowed with fear, for a more terrible foe than any was nowcoming on them. [Illustration: PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX IN EGYPT. ] CHAPTER XLIII. ATTILA THE HUN 435-457. The terrible enemy who was coming against the unhappy Roman Empire wasthe nation of Huns, a wild, savage race, who were of the same stock asthe Tartars, and dwelt as they do in the northern parts of Asia, keepinghuge herds of horses, spending their life on horseback, and using mares'milk as food. They were an ugly, small, but active race, and used to cuttheir children's faces that the scars might make them look more terribleto their enemies. Just at this time a great spirit of conquest had comeupon them, and they had, as said before, driven the Goths over theDanube fifty years ago, and seized the lands we still call Hungary. Amost mighty and warlike chief called Attila had become their head, and wherever he went his track was marked by blood and flame, so that hewas called "The Scourge of God. " His home was on the banks of theTheiss, in a camp enclosed with trunks of trees, for he did not care todwell in cities or establish a kingdom, though the wild tribes of Hunsfrom the furthest parts of Asia followed his standard--a sword fastenedto a pole, which was said to be also his idol. [Illustration: HUNNISH CAMP. ] He threatened to fall upon the two empires, and an embassy was sent tohim at his camp. The Huns would not dismount, and thus the Romans wereforced to address them on horseback. The only condition upon which hewould abstain from invading the empire was the paying of an enormoustribute, beyond what almost any power of theirs could attempt to raise. However, he did not then attack Italy, but turned upon Gaul. So much washe hated and dreaded by the Teutonic nations, that all Goths, Franks, and Burgundians flocked to join the Roman forces under Aëtius to drivehim back. They came just in time to save the city of Orleans from beingravaged by him, and defeated him in the battle of Chalons with a greatslaughter; but he made good his retreat from Gaul with an immensenumber of captives, whom he killed in revenge. The next year he demanded that Valentinian's sister, Honoria, should begiven to him, and when she was refused, he led his host into Italy anddestroyed all the beautiful cities of the north. A great many of theinhabitants fled into the islands among the salt marshes and pools atthe head of the Adriatic Sea, between the mouths of the rivers Po andAdige, where no enemy could reach them; and there they built houses andmade a town, which in time became the great city of Venice, the queen ofthe Adriatic. [Illustration: ST. MARK'S, VENICE. ] Aëtius was still in Gaul, the wretched Valentinian at Ravenna washelpless and useless, and Attila proceeded towards Rome. It was well forRome that she had a brave and devoted Pope in Leo. I. , who went out atthe head of his clergy to meet the barbarian in his tent, and threatenhim with the wrath of Heaven if he should let loose his cruel followersupon the city. Attila was struck with his calm greatness, and, remembering that Alaric had died soon after plundering Rome, becameafraid. He consented to accept of Honoria's dowry instead of herself, and to be content with a great ransom for the city of Rome. He thenturned to his camp on the Danube with all his horde, and soon afterhis arrival he married a young girl whom he had made prisoner. The nextmorning he was found dead on his bed in a pool of his own blood, and shewas gone; but as there was no wound about him, it was thought that hehad broken a blood-vessel in the drunken fit in which he fell asleep, and that she had fled in terror. His warriors tore their cheeks withtheir daggers, saying that he ought to be mourned only with tears ofblood; but as they had no chief as able and daring as he, they graduallyfell back again to their north-eastern settlements, and troubled Europeno more. Valentinian thought the danger over, and when Aëtius came back toRavenna, he grew jealous of his glory and stabbed him with his own hand. Soon after he offended a senator named Maximus, who killed him inrevenge, became Emperor, and married his widow, Eudoxia, the daughter ofTheodosius II. Of Constantinople, telling her that it was for love ofher that her husband was slain. Eudoxia sent a message to invite thedreadful Genseric, king of the Vandals, to come and deliver her from arebel who had slain the lawful Emperor. Genseric's ships were ready, andsailed into the Tiber; while the Romans, mad with terror, stonedMaximus in their streets. Nobody had any courage or resolution but thePope Leo, who went forth again to meet the barbarian and plead for hiscity; but Genseric being an Arian, had not the same awe of him as thewild Huns, hated the Catholics, and was eager for the prey. He wouldaccept no ransom instead of the plunder, but promised that the lives ofthe Romans should be spared. This was the most dreadful calamity thatRome, once the queen of cities, had undergone. The pillage lastedfourteen days, and the Vandals stripped churches, houses, and all alike, putting their booty on board their ships; but much was lost in a stormbetween Italy and Africa. The golden candlestick and shew-bread tablebelonging to the Temple at Jerusalem were carried off to Carthage withthe spoil, and no less than sixty thousand captives, among them theEmpress Eudoxia, who had been the means of bringing in Genseric, withher two daughters. The Empress was given back to her friends atConstantinople, but one of her daughters was kept by the Vandals, andwas married to the son of Genseric. After plundering all the south ofItaly, Genseric went back to Africa without trying to keep Rome or setup a kingdom; and when he was gone, the Romans elected as Emperor asenator named Avitus, a Gaul by birth, a peaceful and good man. [Illustration: THE POPE'S HOUSE. ] His daughter had married a most excellent Gaulish gentleman namedSidonius Apollinaris, who wrote such good poetry that the Romans placedhis bust crowned with laurel in the Capitol. He wrote many letters, too, which are preserved to this time, and show that, in the midst of allthis crumbling power of Rome, people in Southern Gaul managed to havemany peaceful days of pleasant country life. But Sidonius' quiet dayscame to an end when, layman and lawyer as he was, the people of Clermontbegged him to be their Bishop. The Church stood, whatever fell, andpeople trusted more to their Bishop than to any one else, and wanted himto be the ablest man they could find. So Sidonius took the charge ofthem, and helped them to hold out their mountain city of Clermont for awhole year against the Goths, and gained good terms for them at last, though he himself had to suffer imprisonment and exile from these ArianGoths because of his Catholic faith. CHAPTER XLIV. THEODORIC THE OSTROGOTH. 457--561. Avitus was a good man, but the Romans grew weary of him, and in the year457 they engaged Ricimer, a chief of the Teutonic tribe called Suevi, todrive him out, when he went back to Gaul, where he had a beautifulpalace and garden. After ten months Ricimer chose another Sueve to beEmperor. He had been a captain under Aëtius, and had the Roman name ofMajorian. He showed himself brave and spirited; led an army into Spainand attacked Genseric; but he was beaten, and came back disappointed. Ricimer was, however, jealous of him, forced him to resign, and soonafter poisoned him. After this, Ricimer really ruled Italy, but he seemed to have a sort ofawe of the title of Cæsar Augustus, the Emperor, for he forbore to useit himself, and gave it to one poor weak wretch after another until hisdeath in 472. His nephew went on in the same course; but at last asoldier named Orestes, of Roman birth, gained the chief power, and setup as Emperor his own little son, whose Christian name was RomulusAugustus, making him wear the purple and the crown, and calling him byall the titles; but the Romans made his name into Augustulus, or LittleAugustus. At the end of a year, a Teutonic chief named Odoacer crossedthe Alps at the head of a great mixture of different German tribes, andOrestes could make no stand against him, but was taken and put to death. His little boy was spared, and was placed at Sorrento; but Odoacer sentthe crown and robes of the West to Zeno, the Eastern Emperor, sayingthat one Emperor was enough. So fell the Roman power in 476, exactlytwelve centuries after the date of the founding of Rome. It was thoughtthat this was meant by the twelve vultures seen by Romulus, and that theseven which Remus saw denoted the seven centuries that the Republicstood. It was curious, too, that it should be with the two names ofRomulus and Augustus that Rome and her empire fell. Odoacer called himself king, and, indeed, the Western Empire had beennearly all seized by different kings--the Vandal kings in Africa, theGothic kings in Spain and Southern Gaul, the Burgundian kings and Frankkings in Northern Gaul, the Saxon kings in Britain. The Ostro or EasternGoths, who had since the time of Valens dwelt on the banks of theDanube, had been subdued by Attila, but recovered their freedom afterhis death. One of their young chiefs, named Theodoric, was sent as ahostage to Constantinople, and there learned much. He became king of theEastern Goths in 470, and showed himself such a dangerous neighbor tothe Eastern Empire that, to be rid of him the Emperor Zeno advised himto go and attack Odoacer in Italy. The Ostrogoths marched seven hundredmiles, and came over the Alps into the plains of Northern Italy, whereOdoacer fought with them bravely, but was beaten. They besieged him evenin Ravenna, till after three years he was obliged to surrender and wasput to death. [Illustration: ROMULUS AUGUSTUS RESIGNS THE CROWN. ] Rome could make no defence, and fell into Theodoric's hands with therest of Italy; but he was by far the best of the conquerors--he did nothurt or misuse them, and only wished his Goths to learn of them andbecome peaceful farmers. He gave them the lands which had lost theirowners; about thirty or forty thousand families were settled there byhim on the waste lands, and the Romans who were left took courage andworked too. He did not live at Rome, though he came thither and wascomplimented by the Senate, and he set a sum by every year for repairingthe old buildings; but he chiefly lived at Verona, where he reigned overboth the Eastern and Western Goths in Gaul and Italy. He was an Arian, but he did not persecute the Catholics, and to suchpersons as changed their profession of faith to please him he showed nomore favor, saying that those who were not faithful to their God wouldnever be faithful to their earthly master. He reigned thirty-threeyears, but did not end as well as he began, for he grew irritable anddistrustful with age; and the Romans, on the other hand, forgot thatthey were not the free, prosperous nation of old, and displeased him. Two of their very best men, Boëthius and Symmachus, were by him kept fora long time prisoners at Rome and then put to death. While Boëthius wasin prison at Pavia, he wrote a book called _The Consolations ofPhilosophy_, so beautiful that the English king Alfred translated itinto Saxon four centuries later. Theodoric kept up a correspondence withthe other Gothic kings wherever a tribe of his people dwelt, even as faras Sweden and Denmark; but as even he could not write, and only had aseal with the letters [Greek: THEOD] with which to make his signature, the whole was conducted in Latin by Roman slaves on either side, whointerpreted to their masters. An immense number of letters fromTheodoric's secretary are preserved, and show what an able man hismaster was, and how well he deserved his name of "The Great. " He died in526, leaving only two daughters. Their two sons, Amalric and Athalaric, divided the Eastern and Western Goths between them again. Seven Gothic kings reigned over Northern Italy after Theodoric. Theywere fierce and restless, but had nothing like his strength and spirit, and they chiefly lived in the more northern cities--Milan, Verona, andRavenna, leaving Rome to be a tributary city to them, where there stillremained the old names of Senate and Consuls, but the person who wasgenerally most looked up to and trusted was the Pope. All this time Romewas leavening the nations who had conquered her. When they tried tolearn civilized ways, it was from her; they learned to speak her tongue, never wrote but in Latin, and worshipped with Latin prayers andservices. Far above all, these conquerors learned Christianity from theRomans. When everything else was ruined, the Bishop and clergy remained, and became the chief counsellors and advisers of many of these kings. [Illustration] It was just at this time that there was living at Monte Casino, in theSouth of Italy, St. Benedict, an Italian hermit, who was there joined bya number of others who, like him, longed to pray for the sinful worldapart rather than fight and struggle with bad men. He formed them into agreat band of monks, all wearing a plain dark dress with a hood, andfollowing a strict rule of plain living, hard work, and prayers at sevenregular hours in the course of the day and night. His rule was calledthe Benedictine, and houses of monks arose in many places, and were safeshelters in these fierce times. [Illustration] CHAPTER XLV. BELISARIUS. 533-563. The Teutonic nations soon lost their spirit when they had settled in theluxurious Roman cities, and as they were as fierce as ever, their kingstore one another to pieces. A very able Emperor, named Justinian, hadcome to the throne in the East, and in his armies there had grown up aThracian who was one of the greatest and best generals the world hasever seen. His name was Belisarius, and strange to say, both he and theEmperor had married the daughters of two charioteers in the circusraces. The Empress was named Theodora, the general's wife Antonina, andtheir acquaintance first made Belisarius known to Justinian, who, by hismeans, ended by winning back great part of the Western Empire. He began with Africa, where Genseric's grandson was reigning over theVandals, and paying so little heed to his defences that Belisariuslanded without any warning, and called all the multitudes of old Romaninhabitants to join him, which they joyfully did. He defeated theVandals in battle, entered Carthage, and restored the power of theempire. He brought away the golden candlestick and treasures of theTemple, and the cross believed to be the true one, and carried them toConstantinople, whence the Emperor sent them back to the Church of theHoly Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Just as Belisarius had returned to Constantinople, a piteous entreatycame to Justinian from Amalosontha, the daughter of Theodoric, who hadbeen made prisoner by Theodotus, the husband she had chosen. It seemedto be opening a way for getting back Italy, and Justinian sent offBelisarius; but before he had sailed, the poor Gothic queen had beenstrangled in her bath. Belisarius, however, with 4500 horse and 3000foot soldiers, landed in Sicily and soon conquered the whole island, allthe people rejoicing in his coming. He then crossed to Rhegium, and laidsiege to Naples. As usual, the inhabitants were his friends, and one ofthem showed him the way to enter the city through an old aqueduct whichopened into an old woman's garden. [Illustration: NAPLES. ] Theodotus was a coward as well as a murderer, and fled away, while abrave warrior named Vitiges was proclaimed king by the Goths at Rome. But with the broken walls and all the Roman citizens against him, Vitiges thought it best not to try to hold out against Belisarius, andretreated to Ravenna, while Rome welcomed the Eastern army asdeliverers. But Vitiges was collecting an army at Ravenna, and in threemonths was besieging Rome again. Never had there been greater braveryand patience than Vitiges showed outside the walls of Rome, andBelisarius inside, during the summer of 536. There was a terrible faminewithin; all kinds of strange food were used in scanty measure, and theRomans were so impatient of suffering, that Belisarius was forced towatch them day and night to prevent them betraying him to the enemy. Indeed, while the siege lasted a whole year, nearly all the people ofRome died of hunger and wretchedness; and the Goths, in the unhealthyCampagna around, died of fevers and agues, until they, too, had allperished except a small band, which Vitiges led back to Ravenna, whitherBelisarius followed him, besieged him, made him prisoner, and carriedhim to Constantinople. Justinian gave him an estate where he could livein peace. [Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE. ] The Moors in Africa revolted, and Belisarius next went to subdue them. While he was there, the Goths in Italy began to recover from the blow hehad given them, and chose a brave young man named Totila to be theirking. In a very short time he had won back almost all Italy, for therereally were hardly any men left, and even Justinian had only two smallarmies to dispose of, and those made up of Thracians and Isaurians fromthe shores of the Black Sea. One of these was sent with Belisarius toattack the Goths, but was not strong enough to do more than just holdTotila in check, and Justinian would not even send him all the helppossible, because he dreaded the love the army bore to him. After fouryears of fighting with Totila he was recalled, and a slave named Narces, who had always lived in the women's apartment in the palace, was sent totake the command. He was really able and skilled, and being bettersupported, he gained a great victory near Rome, in which Totila waskilled, and another near Naples, which quite overcame the Ostrogoths, sothat they never became a power again. Italy was restored to the Empire, and was governed by an officer from Constantinople, who lived atRavenna, and was called the Exarch. Belisarius, in the meantime, was sent to fight with the king of Persia, Chosroës, a very warlike prince, who had overrun Syria and carried offmany prisoners from Antioch. Belisarius gained victory after victoryover him, and had just driven him back over the rivers, when again camea recall, and Narses was sent out to finish the war. Theodora, theEmpress, wanted to reign after her husband, and had heard that, on areport coming to the army of his death, Belisarius had said that heshould give his vote for Justin, the right heir. So she worked on thefears all Emperors had--that their troops might proclaim a successfulgeneral as Emperor, and again Belisarius was ordered home, while Narseswas sent to finish what he had begun. There was one more war for this great man when the wild Bulgariansinvaded Thrace, and though his soldiers were little better than timidpeasants, he drove them back and saved the country. But Justinian grewmore and more jealous of him, and, fancying untruly that he was in aplot for placing Justin on the throne, caused him to be thrown intoprison, and sent him out from thence stripped of everything, and withhis eyes torn out. He found a little child to lead him to a church door, where he used to sit with a wooden dish before him for alms. When it wasknown who the blind beggar was, there was such an uproar among thepeople that Justinian was obliged to give him back his palace and someof his riches; but he did not live much longer. Though Justinian behaved so unjustly and ungratefully to this great manand faithful servant, he is noted for better things, namely, for makingthe Church of St. Sophia, or the Holy Wisdom, which Constantine hadbuilt at Constantinople, the most splendid of all buildings, and forhaving the whole body of Roman laws thoroughly overlooked and put intoorder. Many even of the old heathen laws were very good ones, but therewere others connected with idolatry that needed to be done away with;and in the course of years so many laws and alterations had been made, that it was the study of a lifetime even to know what they were, or howto act on them. Justinian set his best lawyers to put them all in order, so that it might be more easy to work by them. The Roman citizens inGreece, Italy, and all the lands overrun by the Teutonic nations werestill judged by their own laws, so that this was a very useful work; andit was so well done that the conquerors took them up in time, and theRoman law was the great model studied everywhere by those who wished tounderstand the rules of jurisprudence, that is, of law and justice. Thusin another way Rome conquered her conquerors. Justinian died in 563, and was succeeded by his nephew Justin, whosewife Sophia behaved almost as ill to Narses as Theodora had done toBelisarius, for while he was doing his best to defend Italy from thesavage tribes who were ready at any moment to come over the Alps, shesent him a distaff, and ordered him back to his old slavery in thepalace. CHAPTER XLVI. POPE GREGORY THE GREAT. 563--800. No sooner was Narses called home than another terrible nation ofTeutones, who had hitherto dwelt in the North, began to come over theAlps. These were the Longbeards, or Lombards, as they were more commonlycalled; fierce and still heathen. Their king, Alboin, had carried offRosamond, the daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepids, another Teutonictribe. There was a most terrible war, in which Kunimund was killed andall his tribe broken up and joined with the Lombards. With the twounited, Alboin invaded Italy and conquered all the North. Ravenna, Verona, Milan, and all the large towns held out bravely against them, but were taken at last, except Venice, which still owned the Emperor atConstantinople. Alboin had kept the skull of Kunimund as a trophy, andhad had it set in gold for a drinking-cup, as his wild faith made himbelieve that the reward of the brave in the other world would be todrink mead from the skulls of their fallen enemies. In a drunken fit atVerona, he sent for Rosamond and made her pledge him in this horriblecup. She had always hated him, and this made her revenge her father'sdeath by stabbing him to the heart in the year 573. The Lombard powerdid not, however, fall with him; his nephew succeeded him, and ruledover the country we still call Lombardy. Rome was not taken by them, butwas still in name belonging to the Emperor, though he had little powerthere, and the Senate governed it in name, with all the old magistrates. The Prætor at the time the Lombards arrived was a man of one of the oldnoble families, Anicius Gregorius, or, as we have learned to call him, Gregory. He had always been a good and pious man, and while he tookgreat care to fulfil all the duties of his office, his mind was more andmore drawn away from the world, till at last he became a monk of St. Benedict, gave all his vast wealth to build and endow monasteries andhospitals, and lived himself in an hospital for beggars, nursing them, studying the Holy Scriptures, and living only on pulse, which his mothersent him every day in a silver dish--the only remnant of hiswealth--till one day, having nothing else to give a shipwrecked sailorwho asked alms, he bestowed it on him. [Illustration: POPE GREGORY THE GREAT. ] He was made one of the seven deacons who were called Cardinal Deacons, because they had charge of the poor of the principal parishes ofRome; and it was when going about on some errand of kindness that he sawthe English slave children in the market, and planned the conversion oftheir country; but the people would not let him leave Rome, and in 590, the Senate, the clergy, and the people chose him Pope. It was just thenthat a terrible pestilence fell on Rome, and he made the people formseven great processions--of clergy, of monks, of nuns, of children, ofmen, of wives, and of widows--all singing litanies to entreat that theplague might be turned away. Then it was that he beheld an angelstanding on the tomb of Hadrian, and the plague ceased. Ever after, thegreat old tomb has been called the Castle of St. Angelo. [Illustration: THE POPE'S PULPIT. ] It was a troublous time, but Gregory was so much respected that he wasable to keep Rome orderly and safe, and to make peace between theEmperor Maurice and the Lombards' king, Agilulf, who had an excellentwife, Theodolinda. She was a great friend of the Pope, wrote a letter tohim, and did all she could to support him. The Eastern Empire was stillowned at Rome, but when there was an attempt to make out that thePatriarch of Constantinople was superior to the Pope, Gregory upheld theprinciple that no Patriarch had any right to be above the rest, nor tobe called Universal Bishop. Gregory was a very great man, and thejustice and wisdom of his management did much to make the Romans look totheir Pope as the head of affairs even after his death in 604. [Illustration: BATTLE OF TOURS. ] The Greek Empire sent an officer to govern the extreme South of Italy, which, like Rome and Venice, still owned the Emperor; but all the troopsthat could be hired were soon wanted to fight with the Arabs, whosefalse prophet Mahommed had taught them to spread religion with thesword. There was no one capable of making head against the Lombards, andthe Popes only kept them off by treaties and good management; and atlast, in 741, Pope Gregory III. Put himself under the protection ofCharles Martel, the great Frank captain who had beaten the Mahometans atthe battle of Tours. Charles Martel was rewarded by being made a Romansenator, so was his son Pippin, who was also king of the Franks, and hisgrandson Charles the Great, who had to come often to Italy to protectRome, and at last broke up the Lombard kingdom, was chosen Roman Emperoras of old, and crowned by Pope Leo III. In the year 800. From that timethere was again the Western Empire, commonly called the Holy RomanEmpire, the Emperor, or Cæsar--Kaisar, as the Germans still callhim--being generally also king of Germany and king of Lombardy. Rome wasall this time chiefly under the power of the Popes, who grew in courseof years to be more and more of princes, and at the same time to claimmore power over the Church, calling themselves Universal Bishopscontrary to the teaching of St. Gregory the Great. All this, however, belongs to the history of Europe in modern times, and will be found inthe history of Germany, since there were many struggles between thePopes and Emperors. For Rome has really had _two_ histories, and thosewho visit Rome and study the wonderful buildings there may dwell on theold or the new, the pagan or the Christian, as their minds lead them, orelse on that strange middle time when idolatry and Christianity werestruggling together.