BOOK I.
I. The Roman empire, than which the memory of man can recall scarcely any one smaller in its commencement, or greater in its progress throughout the world, had its origin from Romulus; who, being the son of a vestal virgin, and, as was supposed, of Mars, was brought forth at one birth with his brother Remus. While leading a predatory life among the shepherds, he founded, when he was eighteen years of age, a small city on the Palatine Hill, on the 21st day of April, in the third year of the sixth Olympiad, and the three hundred and ninety-fourth after the destruction of Troy.
II. After founding the city, which he called Rome, from his own name, he proceeded principally as follows. He took a great number of the neighbouring inhabitants into the city; he chose a hundred of the older men, by whose advice he might manage all his affairs, and whom, from their age, he named senators. Next, as both himself and his people were in want of wives, he invited the tribes contiguous to the city to an exhibition of games, and seized upon their young women. Wars having arisen in consequence of this outrage in capturing the females, he conquered the Caeninenses, the Antemnates, the Crustumini, the Sabines, the Fidenates, and the Vejentes; all whose towns lay around the city. And since, after a tempest that suddenly arose, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign, he was no longer to be seen, he was believed to have been translated to the gods, and was accordingly deified. The senators then ruled at Rome by periods of five days; and under their government a year was passed.
III. Afterwards Numa Pompilius was elected king, who engaged indeed in no wars, but was of no less service to the state than Romulus; for he established both laws and customs among the Romans, who, by the frequency of their wars, were now regarded as robbers and semi-barbarians. He divided the year, before unregulated by any computation, into ten months, and founded numerous sacred rites and temples at Rome. He died a natural death in the forty-third year of his reign.
IV. To him succeeded Tullus Hostilius, who re-commenced war. He conquered the Albans, who lay twelve miles distant from Rome. He overcame also in battle the Vejentes and Fidenates, the one six, the other eighteen miles from Rome: and increased the dimensions of the city by the addition of the Coelian hill. After reigning thirty-two years, he was struck by lightning, and consumed together with his house.
V. After him, Ancus Martius, the grandson of Numa by a daughter, succeeded to the government. He fought against the Latins, added the Aventine and Janiculan hills to the city, and founded Ostia, a city on the sea-coast, sixteen miles from Rome. He died a natural death in the twenty-fourth year of his reign.
VI. Priscus Tarquinius was next invested with the government. He doubled the number of the senators, built a Circus at Rome, and instituted the Roman games which continue even to our time. He also conquered the Sabines, and added a considerable extent of territory, which he took from that people, to the lands of Rome; he was also the first that entered the city in triumph. He built the walls and sewers, and commenced the Capitol. He was killed in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, by the sons of Ancus, the king whom he had succeeded.
VII. After him Servius Tullius was placed on the throne, the son of a woman of noble origin, but who was, nevertheless, a captive and a slave. He also defeated the Sabines; annexed three hills, the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline, to the city; and formed trenches round the city walls. He was the first to institute the census, which till that time was unknown throughout the world. The people being all subjected to a census during his reign, Rome was found to contain eighty-four thousand citizens, including those in the country. He was cut off in the forty-fifth year of his reign, by the criminal machinations of his son-in-law Tarquin the Proud, the son of the king to whom he had succeeded, and of his own daughter, whom Tarquin had married.
VIII. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last of the kings, overcame the Volsci, a nation not far from Rome, on the road to Campania; reduced the towns of Gabii and Suessa Pometia; made peace with the Tuscans; and built a temple to Jupiter in the Capitol. Afterwards, while he was besieging Ardea, a town that lay about eighteen miles from the city, he was deprived of his throne; for, as his younger son, who was also named Tarquin, offered violence to Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, a most noble and chaste woman; and as she, after complaining to her husband, her father, and her friends, of the injury that she had suffered, slew herself in the sight of them all; Brutus, in consequence, who was a kinsman of Tarquinius, excited an insurrection among the people, and deprived Tarquin of his regal authority. The army, also, which was engaged with the king in besieging Ardea, soon after deserted him; and the king himself, on going to the city, found the gates closed against him; and, after having reigned five-and-twenty years, was forced to take flight with his wife and children.
Thus a regal form of government continued at Rome, under seven kings, for the space of two hundred and forty-three years, while as yet the dominion of the city, where its extent was greatest, hardly reached fifteen miles.
IX. Henceforth, instead of one king, two consuls were chosen, with this view, that, if one should be disposed to act unjustly, the other, having equal authority, might exercise a control over him. It was determined also that they should not hold their office longer than a year; in order that they might not, by continued possession of power, grow too overbearing; but, knowing that in a year they would return to the level of private persons, might constantly conduct themselves with moderation.
In the first year, then, after the expulsion of the king and his family, the consuls were Lucius Junius Brutus, who had been the chief agent in the banishment of Tarquin, and Tarquinius Collatinus, the husband of Lucretia. But that dignity was soon taken from Tarquinius Collatinus; for it was enacted that no one who bore the name of Tarquin should remain in the city. Having collected, therefore, all his private property, he removed from the city, and Valerius Publicola was made consul in his stead. King Tarquin, however, after his expulsion, stirred up war against Rome, and, having collected a large force from all quarters, in order that he might be reinstated on the throne, took the field.
X. In the first encounter, Brutus and Aruns, Tarquin's son, killed each other; but the Romans left the field conquerors. The Roman matrons mourned for Brutus, the guardian of their honour, as if he had been their common father, for the space of a year. Valerius Publicola fixed upon Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, the father of Lucretia, for his colleague; and he dying of some disease, he next chose Horatius Pulvillus for his fellow consul.
Thus the first year had five consuls; Tarquinius Collatinus having left the city on account of his name, Brutus having fallen in battle, and Spurius Lucretius having died a natural death.
XI. In the second year also, Tarquin, with a view to being re-established on the throne, again made war on the Romans, and, as Porsena, king of Tuscany, afforded him aid, almost took Rome. But he was also defeated on that occasion.
In the third year after the expulsion of the royal family, Tarquin, as he could not get himself re-admitted into the kingdom, and as Porsena, who had made peace with the Romans, gave him no support, retired to Tusculum, a town which is not far from Rome; where he and his wife lived for fourteen years in a private station, and reached an advanced age.
In the fourth year after the abolition of the kingly power, the Sabines, having made war on the Romans, were conquered; and a triumph was celebrated over them.
In the fifth year, Lucius Valerius, the colleague of Brutus, and consul for the fourth time, died a natural death, and in such extreme poverty, that the expenses of his funeral were defrayed by a public subscription. The matrons mourned for him, as for Brutus, during a year.
XII. In the ninth year after the overthrow of the kingly power, the son-in-law of Tarquin, having assembled a vast army, in order to avenge the wrongs of his father-in-law, a new office was introduced at Rome, which was called the dictatorship, and which was more absolute than the consulate. In the same year also a master of the horse was appointed to be an officer under the dictator. Nor can anything be named more like to the imperial authority, which your Serenity now enjoys, than the ancient dictatorship, especially since Caesar Octavianus, also, of whom we shall speak hereafter, and Caius Caesar before him, ruled with the title and rank of dictator. The first dictator at Rome was Lartius; the first master of the horse, Spurius Cassius.
XIII. In the sixteenth year after the termination of the regal power, the people at Rome, thinking themselves oppressed by the senate and consuls, broke out into a sedition. On this occasion they created for themselves tribunes of the people, as their own peculiar judges and defenders, by whom they might be protected against the senateand the consuls.
XIV. In the following year the Volsci recommenced hostilities against the Romans; and being overcome in the field, lost also Corioli, the best city that they had.
XV. In the eighteenth year after the banishment of the royal family, Quintius Marcius, the Roman general who had taken Corioli, the city of the Volsci, being compelled to flee from Rome, directed his course, in resentment, to the Volsci themselves, and received from them support against the Romans. He obtained several victories over the Romans; he made his way even to the fifth mile-stone from the city; and, refusing to hear a deputation that came to sue for peace, would have laid siege even to the place of his birth, had not his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia gone out from the city to meet him, by whose tears and supplications he was prevailed on to withdraw his army. He was the next after Tarquin that acted as general against his country.
XVI. In the consulate of Caeso Fabius and Titus Virginius, three hundred noblemen, members of the Fabian family, undertook alone a war against the Vejentes, assuring the senate and the people that the whole contest should be brought to an end by themselves. These illustrious men, therefore, each of whom was capable of commanding a large army, setting out on their expedition, all fell in battle One only remained out of so numerous a family, who, from his extreme youth, could not be taken with them to the field. After these events a census was held in the city, in which the number of the citizens was found to be a hundred and nineteen thousand three hundred and nineteen.
XVII. In the following year, in consequence of the blockade of a Roman army on Mount Algidus, about twelve miles from the city, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was appointed dictator; a man who, possessing only four acres of land, cultivated it with his own hands. He, being found at his work, and engaged in ploughing, assumed, after wiping the sweat from his brow, the toga praetexta; and set free the army with great slaughter among the enemy.
XVIII. In the three hundred and second year from the founding of the city, the consular government ceased; and, instead of two consuls, ten magistrates were appointed to hold the supreme authority, under the title of decemviri. These during the first year conducted themselves with honour; but in the second, one of them, Appius Claudius, proceeded to offer violence to the maiden daughter of a certain Virginius, who was at that time filling an honourable post on military service against the Latins on Mount Algidus; but the father slew her with his own hand, that she might not suffer violation from the decemvir, and, returning to the army, raised an insurrection among the soldiers. Their power was in consequence taken from the decemviri, and they themselves received sentences of condemnation.
XIX. In the three hundred and fifteenth year from the founding of the city, the Fidenates rebelled against the Romans. The Vejentes and their king Tolumnius gave them assistance. These two states are so near to Rome, that Fidenae is only seven, Veii only eighteen miles distant. The Volsci also joined them; but they were defeated by Marcus Aemilius the dictator, and Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus the master of the horse, and lost also their king. Fidenae was taken, and utterly destroyed.
XX. Twenty years afterwards, the people of Veii resumed hostilities. Furius Camillus was sent as dictator against them, who first defeated them in battle, and then, after a long siege, took their city, the oldest and richest in Italy. He next took Falisci, a city of no less note. But popular odium was excited against him, on the ground that he had made an unfair division of the booty, and he was condemned on that charge and banished.
Soon after the Galli Senones marched towards Rome; and, pursuing the Romans, whom they defeated at the river Allia, eleven miles from the city, possessed themselves of the city itself, no part of which could be defended against them, except the Capitol. After they had besieged it a long time, and the Romans were suffering from famine, Camillus, who was in exile in a neighbouring city, attacked the Gauls unexpectedly, and gave them a severe defeat. Afterwards, on receiving a sum in gold, to desist from the siege of the Capitol, they retreated; Camillus, however, pursued them, and routed them with such a slaughter, that he recovered both the gold which had been given to them, and all the military standards which they had taken. Thus he entered the city for the third time in triumph, and received the appellation of a second Romulus, as if he also had been a founder of the city.
BOOK II.
I. In the three hundred and sixty-fifth year after the foundation of the city, and the first after its capture by the Gauls, the form of government was changed; and, instead of two consuls, military tribunes, invested with consular power, were created. From this time the power of Rome began to increase; for that very year Camillus reduced the state of the Volsci, which had persisted to make war for seventy years; also the cities of the Aequi and Sutrini; and, overthrowing their armies, took possession of them all; and thus enjoyed three triumphs at the same time.
II. Titus Quintius Cincinnatus, also, having pursued the Praenestini, who had advanced in a hostile manner to the very gates of Rome, defeated them on the river Allia, annexing eight cities that were under their dominion to the Roman empire; and, attacking Praeneste itself, forced it to surrender; all which acts were accomplished by him in the space of twenty days; and a triumph was decreed him.
III. But the office of military tribunes did not last long; for, after a short time, it was enacted that no more should be created; and four years passed in the state in such a manner that none of the superior magistrates were appointed. The military tribunes, however, were re-instated in their office with consular authority, and continued for three years, when consuls were again elected.
IV. In the consulship of Lucius Genucius and Quintus Servilius, Camillus died, and honour next to that of Romulus was paid him.
V. Titus Quintius was sent out as dictator against the Gauls, who had marched into Italy; and had encamped about four miles from the city, on the other side of the river Anio, Titus Manlius, one of the noblest of the senators, encountering a Gaul who had challenged him to single combat, slew him; and, having taken from his neck a chain of gold, and put it on his own, secured the appellation of Torquatus to himself and his posterity for ever. The Gauls were repulsed, and soon afterwards entirely defeated by Caius Sulpicius the dictator. Shortly after, the Tuscans were defeated by Caius Marcius, and eight thousand of them were taken prisoners and led in triumph.
VI. A census was again taken; and as the Latins, who had been subdued by the Romans, refused to furnish troops, recruits were levied from among the Romans only, and ten legions were raised, making sixty thousand fighting men, or upwards; so great was the power of the Romans in war, while their territory was as yet but small. These troops having marched out against the Gauls, under the conduct of Lucius Furius Camillus, one of the Gauls challenged the most valiant among the Romans to single combat; when Marcus Valerius, a tribune of the soldiers, came forward to accept the challenge; and, as he advanced in full armour, a crow settled upon his right shoulder. Afterwards, too, when he commenced the encounter with the Gaul, the same crow, with his wings and talons, furiously assailed the Gaul's eyes, so that he was not able to see before him, and thus, being slain by the tribune Valerius, he gave him not only a victory, but a name; for he was afterwards called Corvus. For the same service also, at the age of three and twenty, he was made consul.
VII. The Latins, who had refused to furnish troops, proceeded also to demand of the Romans, that one of the consuls should be elected from their own people, the other from the Romans; this demand having been rejected, war was commenced against them, and they were overcome in a great battle; and a triumph was celebrated on account of their defeat. Statues were erected to the consuls in the Rostra, for their service in gaining this victory.
VIII. The Romans had now begun to be powerful; for a war was carried on by them against the Samnites, who hold a middle situation between Picenum, Campania, and Apulia, at the distance of nearly a hundred and thirty miles from the city. Lucius Papirius Cursor went to conduct that war with the rank of dictator, and, on returning to Rome, gave orders to Quintus Fabius Maximus, his master of the horse, whom he left in charge of the army, not to fight during his absence. He, however, seeing a favourable opportunity, commenced an engagement with great success, and utterly defeated the Samnites; he was accordingly condemned to death by the dictator, for fighting contrary to his orders, but was saved by the powerful interposition of the soldiers and people, so great a tumult having been excited against Papirius, that he was almost slain.
IX. The Samnites subsequently, in the consulate of Titus Veturius and Spurius Posthumius, defeated the Romans with signal ignominy, and compelled them to pass under the yoke. The peace, however, which had been concluded with them through mere necessity, was broken by the senate and people. After this the Samnites were defeated by Lucius Papirius the consul, and seven thousand of them made to pass under the yoke. Papirius was granted a triumph over the Samnites. About the same time Appius Claudius the censor brought the Claudian water into the city, and made the Appian way.
The Samnites, renewing the war, defeated Quintus Fabius Maximus, with the slaughter of three thousand of his troops; but afterwards, his father, Fabius Maximus, being appointed his lieutenant, he both defeated the Samnites, and took several of their towns. Subsequently, Publius Cornelius Rufinus and Manius Curius Dentatus, the two consuls, being sent against the Samnites, reduced their strength in some considerable battles. Thus they brought the war with the Samnites to an end; a war which had lasted for forty-nine years. Nor was there any enemy in Italy that put the valour of the Romans more to the test.
X. After an interval of a few years, the forces of the Gauls united with the Tuscans and Samnites against the Romans; but, as they were marching to Rome, were cut off by the consul Cnaeus Cornelius Dolabella.
XI. War was at the same time proclaimed against the Tarentines (who are still a people at the extremity of Italy), because they had offered violence to some Roman ambassadors. These people asked aid against the Romans of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who derived his origin from the family of Achilles. He soon after passed over into Italy, and it was then that the Romans fought for the first time with an enemy from beyond sea. The consul Publius Valerius Laevinus was sent against him; who, having seized some spies of Pyrrhus, ordered them to be led through the camp, and the whole army to be exhibited to them, and then to be dismissed, that they might tell Pyrrhus whatever was going on among the Romans. An engagement taking place soon after, Pyrrhus, when on the point of fleeing, got the victory by means of his elephants, at the sight of which the Romans, to whom they were strange, were greatly terrified; but night put an end to the battle. Laevinus however fled during the night. Pyrrhus took a thousand eight hundred Romans prisoners, and treated them with the greatest honour; the slain he buried. On observing those lying dead, with their wounds in front, and with stern countenances, he is said to have lifted up his hands to heaven, exclaiming that "he might himself have been master of the whole world, if such soldiers had fallen to his lot."
XII. Pyrrhus afterwards, having united to him the Samnites, the Lucanians, and the Bruttii, proceeded towards Rome. He laid all waste with fire and sword, depopulated Campania, and advanced to Praeneste, eighteen miles from Rome. Soon after, through fear of an army which was pursuing him with a consul at its head, he fell back upon Campania. Ambassadors, who were sent to treat with Pyrrhus respecting the ransom of the captives, were honourably entertained by him; and he sent the captives back to Rome without payment. Fabricius, one of the Roman ambassadors, he admired so much, that, finding he was poor, he endeavoured to draw him over to his side with the promise of a fourth part of his kingdom, but he was repulsed with disdain by Fabricius. Pyrrhus, therefore, being struck with admiration at the character of the Romans, sent an eminent man. Cineas by name, as ambassador, to ask for peace on reasonable terms, provided that he might retain possession of that part of Italy, of which he had already become master in the war.
XIII. Such terms of peace were not satisfactory, and an answer was returned by the senate to Pyrrhus, that "he could have no peace with the Romans, unless he retired from Italy." The Romans then ordered that all the prisoners whom Pyrrhus had sent back should be considered infamous because they had suffered themselves to be taken with arms in their hands; and not to be restored to their former rank, until they had each produced the spoils of two slain enemies. Thus the ambassador of Pyrrhus returned; and, when Pyrrhus asked him "what kind of a place he had found Rome to be," Cineas replied, that "he had seen a country of kings, for that all there were such, as Pyrrhus alone was thought to be in Epirus and the rest of Greece."
The consuls Publius Sulpicius and Decius Mus were sent out as generals against Pyrrhus. A battle being commenced, Pyrrhus was wounded, his elephants killed, twenty thousand of the enemy slain, and of the Romans only five thousand. Pyrrhus was forced to retire to Tarentum.
XIV. After the lapse of a year, Fabricius was sent out against Pyrrhus, the same who, when he was before among the ambassadors, could not be won with a promise of the fourth part of his kingdom. As Fabricius and the king had their camps near to each other, the physician of Pyrrhus came to Fabricius by night, offering to despatch Pyrrhus by poison, if he would promise him some remuneration; upon which Fabricius ordered that he should be taken back in chains to his master, and that information should be given to Pyrrhus of the proposals which the physician had made against his life. The king, struck with admiration of his conduct, is reported to have exclaimed on the occasion, "That excellent Fabricius is a man who can less easily be diverted from the path of honour, than the sun from its course." Pyrrhus then departed for Sicily. Fabricius, after defeating the Samnites and Lucanians, obtained a triumph.
The consuls Manius Curius Dentatus and Cornelius Lentulus were next sent against Pyrrhus; and Curius came to an engagement with him, cut off his army, drove him back to Tarentum. and took his camp. On that day were slain twenty-three thousand of the enemy. Curius Dentatus triumphed in his consulate. He was the first that brought elephants to Rome, in number, four. Pyrrhus also soon after quitted Tarentum, and was killed at Argos, a city of Greece.
XV. In the consulship of Caius Fabricius Licinus and Caius Claudius Canina, in the four hundred and sixty-first year from the foundation of the city, ambassadors, from Alexandria, despatched by Ptolemy, arrived at Rome, and obtained from the Romans the friendship which they solicited.
XVI. In the consulate of Quintus Ogulnius and Caius Fabius Pictor, the Picenians commenced a war, and were conquered by the succeeding consuls Publius Sempronius and Appius Claudius, and a triumph was celebrated over them. Two cities were founded by the Romans, Ariminum in Gaul, and Beneventum in Samnium.
XVII. When Marcus Attilius Regulus and Lucius Junius Libo were consuls, war was declared against the Sallentines in Apulia; and the Brundusians and their city were taken, and a triumph granted on their subjugation.
XVIII. In the four hundred and seventy-seventh year of the city, although the Roman name had now become famous, yet their arms had not been carried out of Italy. That it might be ascertained, therefore, what the forces of the Romans were, a census was taken. On this occasion the number of citizens was found to be two hundred and ninety-two thousand, three hundred and thirty-four, although from the founding of the city wars had never ceased. It was then that the first war was undertaken against the Africans, in the consulate of Appius Claudius and Quintus Fulvius. A battle was fought with them in Sicily; and Appius Claudius obtained a triumph for a victory over the Africans and Hiero king of Sicily.
XIX. In the year following, Valerius Marcus and Otacilius being consuls, great deeds were achieved by the Romans in Sicily. The Tauromenitani, Catanians, and fifty cities more, were received into alliance. In the third year the war against Hiero in Sicily was brought to an end. He, with all the Syracusan nobility, prevailed upon the Romans to grant them peace, paying down two hundred talents of silver. The Africans were defeated in Sicily, and a triumph over them granted at Rome a second time.
XX. In the fifth year of the Punic war, which was carried on against the Africans, the Romans first fought by sea, in the consulate of Caius Duilius and Cnaeus Cornelius Asina, having provided themselves with vessels armed with beaks, which they term Liburnian galleys. The consul Cornelius fell a victim to treachery. Duilius, joining battle, defeated the commander of the Carthaginians, took thirty-one of their ships, sunk fourteen, took seven thousand of the enemy prisoners, and slew three thousand; nor was there ever a victory more gratifying to the Romans, for they were now not only invincible by land, but eminently powerful at sea.
In the consulship of Caius Aquilius Florus and Lucius Scipio, Scipio laid waste Corsica and Sardinia, carried away several thousand captives from thence, and obtained a triumph.
XXI. When Lucius Manlius Vulso and Marcus Attilius Regulus were consuls, war was carried over into Africa against Hamilcar the general of the Carthaginians. A naval engagement was fought, and the Carthaginian utterly defeated, for he retired with the loss of sixty four of his ships. The Romans lost only twenty-two; and, having then crossed over into Africa, they compelled Clypea, the first city at which they arrived in Africa, to surrender. The consuls then advanced as far as Carthage; and, having laid waste many places, Manlius returned victorious to Rome, and brought with him twenty-seven thousand prisoners. Attilius Regulus remained in Africa. He drew up his army against the Africans; and, fighting at the same time against three Carthaginian generals, came off victorious, killed eighteen thousand of the enemy, took five thousand prisoners, with eighteen elephants, and received seventy-four cities into alliance. The vanquished Carthaginians then sued to the Romans for peace, which Regulus refusing to grant, except upon the hardest conditions, the Africans sought aid from the Lacedaemonians, and, under a leader named Xantippus, who had been sent them by the Lacedaemonians, Regulus, the Roman general, was overthrown with a desperate slaughter; for two thousand men only escaped of all the Roman army; five hundred, with their commander Regulus, were taken prisoners, thirty thousand slain, and Regulus himself thrown into prison.
XXII. In the consulship of Marcus Aemilius Paulus and Servius Fulvius Nobilior, both the Roman consuls set sail for Africa, with a fleet of three hundred ships. They first overcame the Africans in a sea-fight; Aemilius the consul sunk a hundred and four of the enemy's ships, took thirty, with the soldiers in them, killed or took prisoners fifteen thousand of the enemy, and enriched his own army with much plunder; and Africa would then have been subdued, but that so great a famine took place that the army could not continue there any longer. The consuls, as they were returning with their victorious fleet, suffered shipwreck on the coast of Sicily, and so violent was the storm, that out of four hundred and sixty-four ships, eighty could scarcely be saved; nor was so great a tempest at sea ever heard of at any period. The Romans, notwithstanding, soon refitted two hundred ships, nor was their spirit at all broken by their loss.
XXIII. Cnaeus Servilius Caepio and Caius Sempronius Blaesus, when consuls, set out for Africa with two hundred and sixty ships, and took several cities. As they were returning with a great booty, they suffered shipwreck; and, as these successive calamities annoyed the Romans, the senate in consequence decreed that wars by sea should be given up, and that only sixty ships should be kept for the defence of Italy.
XXIV. In the consulship of Lucius Caecilius Metellus and Caius Furius Pacilus, Metellus defeated a general of the Africans in Sicily, who came against him with a hundred and thirty elephants and a numerous army, slew twenty thousand of the enemy, took six and twenty elephants, collected the rest, which were dispersed, with the aid of the Numidians whom he had to assist him, and brought them to Rome in a vast procession, filling all the roads with elephants, to the number of a hundred and thirty.
After these misfortunes, the Carthaginians entreated Regulus, the Roman general whom they had taken, to go to Rome, procure them peace from the Romans, and effect an exchange of prisoners.
XXV. Regulus, on arriving at Rome, and being conducted into the senate, would do nothing in the character of a Roman, declaring that, "from the day when he fell into the hands of the Africans, he had ceased to be a Roman." For this reason he both repelled his wife from embracing him, and gave his advice to the Romans, that "peace should not be made with the Carthaginians; for that they, dispirited by so many losses, had no hope left; and that, with respect to himself, he was not of such importance, that so many thousand captives should be restored on his account alone, old as he was, and for the sake of the few Romans who had been taken prisoners." He accordingly carried his point, for no one would listen to the Carthaginians, when they applied for peace. He himself returned to Carthage, telling the Romans, when they offered to detain him at Rome, that he would not stay in a city, in which, after living in captivity among the Africans, it was impossible for him to retain the dignity of an honourable citizen. Returning therefore to Africa, he was put to death with torture of every description,
XXVI. When Publius Claudius Pulcher and Caius Junius were consuls, Claudius fought in opposition to the auspices. and was defeated by the Carthaginians; for, out of two hundred and twenty ships, he escaped with only thirty; ninety, together with their men, were taken, the rest sunk, and twenty thousand men made prisoners. The other consul also lost his fleet by shipwreck, but was able to save his troops, as the shore was close at hand.
XXVII. In the consulate of Caius Lutatius Catulus and Aulus Posthumius Albinus, in the twenty-third year of the Punic war, the conduct of the war against the Africans was committed to Catulus. He set sail for Sicily with three hundred ships. The Africans fitted out four hundred against him. Lutatius Catulus embarked in an infirm state of health, having been wounded in a previous battle. An encounter took place opposite Lilybaeum, a city of Sicily, with the greatest valour on the part of the Romans, for seventy-three of the Carthaginian ships were taken, and a hundred and twenty-five sunk; thirty-two thousand of the enemy were made prisoners, and thirteen thousand slain; and a vast sum in gold and silver fell into the hands of the Romans. Of the Roman fleet twelve ships were sunk The battle was fought on the 10th of March. The Carthaginians immediately sued for peace, and peace was granted them. The Roman prisoners who were in the hands of the Carthaginians were restored; the Carthaginians also requested permission to redeem such of the Africans as the Romans kept in captivity. The senate decided that those who were state prisoners should be restored without ransom; but that those who were in the hands of private persons should return to Carthage on the payment of a sum to their owners; and that such payment should be made from the public treasury, rather than by the Carthaginians.
XXVIII. Quintus Lutatius and Aulius Manlius, being created consuls, made war upon the Falisci, formerly a powerful people of Italy, which war the consuls in conjunction brought to a termination within six days after they took the field; fifteen thousand of the enemy were slain, and peace was granted to the rest, but half their land was taken from them.
BOOK III.
I. The Punic war being now ended, after having been protracted though three and twenty years, the Romans, who were now distinguished by transcendent glory, sent ambassadors to Ptolemy, king of Egypt, with offers of assistance; for Antiochus, king of Syria, had made war upon him. He returned thanks to the Romans, but declined their aid, the struggle being now over. About the same time. Hiero, the most powerful king of Sicily, visited Rome to witness the games, and distributed two hundred thousand modii of wheat among the people.
II. In the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Lentulus and Fulvius Flaccus, in whose time Hiero came to Rome, war was carried on, within the limits of Italy, against the Ligurians, and a triumph obtained over them. The Carthaginians, too, at the same time, attempted to renew the war, soliciting the Sardinians, who, by an article of the peace, were bound to submit to the Romans, to rebel. A deputation, however, of the Carthaginians came to Rome, and obtained peace.
III. Under the consulate of Titus Manlius Torquatus and Caius Attilius Bulbus, a triumph was obtained over the Sardinians; and, peace being concluded on all sides, the Romans had now no war on their hands, a circumstance which had happened to them but once before since the building of the city, in the reign of Numa Pompilius.
IV. Lucius Posthumius Albinus and Cnaeus Fulvius Centumalus, when consuls, conducted a war against the Illyrians; and, having taken many of their towns, reduced their kings to a surrender, and it was then for the first time that a triumph was celebrated over the Illyrians.
V. When Lucius Aemilius was consul, a vast force of the Gauls crossed the Alps; but all Italy united in favour of the Romans; and it is recorded by Fabius the historian, who was present in that war, that there were eight hundred thousand men ready for the contest. Affairs, however, were brought to a successful termination by the consul alone; forty thousand of the enemy were killed, and a triumph decreed to Aemilius.
VI. A few years after, a battle was fought with the Gauls within the borders of Italy, and an end put to the war, in the consulship of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Cnaeus Cornelius Scipio. Marcellus took the field with a small body of horse, and slew the king of the Gauls, Viridomarus, with his own hand. Afterwards, in conjunction with his colleague, he cut to pieces a numerous army of the Gauls, stormed Milan, and carried off a vast booty to Rome. Marcellus, at his triumph, bore the spoils of the Gaul, fixed upon a pole on his shoulders.
VII. In the consulate of Marcus Minucius Rufus and Publius Cornelius, war was made upon the Istrians, because they had plundered some ships of the Romans, which were bringing a supply of corn, and they were entirely subdued.
In the same year the second Punic war was commenced against the Romans by Hannibal, general of the Carthaginians, who, in the twentieth year of his age, proceeded to besiege Saguntum, a city of Hispania, in alliance with the Romans, having assembled for that purpose an army of fifty thousand foot and twenty thousand horse. The Romans warned him, by deputies sent for the purpose, to desist from hostilities, but he refused them audience. The Romans sent also to Carthage, requiring that orders should be sent to Hannibal, not to make war on the allies of the Roman people; but the reply made by the Carthaginians promised no compliance. The Saguntines in the meantime, worn out with famine, were taken by Hannibal, and put to death with the utmost cruelty.
VIII. Publius Cornelius Scipio then went with an army into Hispania, and Tiberius Sempronius into Sicily. War was declared against the Carthaginians. Hannibal, leaving his brother Hasdrubal in Hispania, passed the Pyrenees, and made a way over the Alps, which, in that part, were previously impassable. He is said to have brought into Italy eighty thousand foot, twenty thousand horse, and thirty-seven elephants. Numbers of the Ligurians and Gauls joined him on his march. Sempronius Gracchus, hearing of Hannibal's arrival in Italy, conveyed over his army from Sicily to Ariminum.
IX. The first to meet Hannibal was Publius Cornelius Scipio; a battle being commenced, and his troops put to flight, he retired wounded into his camp. Sempronius Gracchus also came to an engagement with him near the river Trebia, and he too was defeated. Numbers in Italy submitted to Hannibal; who, marching from thence into Tuscany, encountered the consul Flaminius. Flaminius himself he cut off; and twenty-five thousand of the Romans were slain; the rest saved themselves by flight. Quintus Fabius Maximus was afterwards sent by the Romans to oppose Hannibal. This general, by avoiding an engagement, checked his impetuosity; and soon after, finding a favourable opportunity, defeated him.
X. In the five hundredand fortieth year from the foundation of the city, Lucius Aemilius and Publius Terentius Varro were sent against Hannibal, and took the place of Fabius, who forewarned both the consuls, that they could conquer Hannibal, who was a bold and energetic leader, only by declining a pitched battle with him. But an engagement being brought on, through the impetuosity of the consul Varro, in opposition to his colleague, near a village called Cannae, in Apulia, both the consuls were defeated by Hannibal. In this battle three thousand of the Africans fell, and a great part of Hannibal's army were wounded. The Romans, however, never received so severe a blow at any period of the Punic wars; for the consul Aemilius Paulus was killed; twenty officers of consular and praetorian rank, thirty senators, and three hundred others of noble descent, were taken or slain, as well as forty thousand foot-soldiers, and three thousand five hundred horse. During all these calamities, however, not one of the Romans deigned to speak of peace. A number of slaves were set free and made soldiers, a measure never before adopted.
XI. After this battle, several cities of Italy, which had been subject to the Romans, went over to Hannibal. Hannibal made proposals to the Romans concerning the redemption of the prisoners, but the senate replied, that "such citizens as would suffer themselves to be taken with arms in their hands were of no value to them." Hannibal then put them all to death with various tortures, and sent three modii of gold rings to Carthage, which he had taken from the fingers of Roman knights, senators, and soldiers. In the meantime, Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, who had remained in Hispania with a numerous army, in order to reduce all that country under the dominion of the Africans, was defeated there by the two Scipios, the Roman generals, and lost thirty-five thousand men in the battle; of these ten thousand were made prisoners, and twenty-five thousand slain. Upon this, twelve thousand foot, four thousand horse, and twenty elephants were sent to him by the Carthaginians to reinforce his army.
XII. In the fourth year after Hannibal's arrival in Italy, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, one of the consuls, engaged him with success at Nola, a city of Campania. But Hannibal possessed himself of several of the Roman cities in Apulia, Calabria, and the country of the Bruttii. About this time also Philip, king of Macedonia, sent ambassadors to him, offering him assistance against the Romans, on condition that, when he had subdued them, he, in turn, should receive assistance from Hannibal against the Greeks. But Philip's ambassadors being taken, and the affair thus discovered, the Romans ordered Marcus Valerius Laevinus to proceed to Macedonia, and Titus Manlius, as proconsul, into Sardinia; for that island also, at the solicitation of Hannibal, had revolted from the Romans.
XIII. Thus war was carried on at the same time in four different places; in Italy, against Hannibal; in Hispania, against Hasdrubal his brother; in Macedonia, against Philip; in Sardinia, against the Sardinians and another Hasdrubal, also a Carthaginian. Hasdrubal was taken alive by Titus Manlius the proconsul, who had been sent into Sardinia; twelve thousand of his men were slain, fifteen hundred made prisoners, and Sardinia brought under subjection to the Romans. Manlius, being thus successful, brought Hasdrubal and his other prisoners to Rome. In the meantime, Philip also was defeated by Laevinus in Macedonia, and Hasdrubal and Mago, a third brother of Hannibal, by the Scipios in Hispania.
XIV. In the tenth year after Hannibal's arrival in Italy, in the consulship of Publius Sulpicius and Cnaeus Fulvius, Hannibal advanced within four miles of Rome, and his cavalry rode up to the very gates; but soon after, through fear of the consuls, who were coming upon him with an army, he withdrew into Campania. In Hispania, the two Scipios, who had been victorious for many years, were killed by his brother Hasdrubal; the army however remained in full strength, for the generals had been ensnared rather by accident than the valour of the enemy. About this time, also, a great part of Sicily, which the Africans had begun to appropriate, was recovered by the consul Marcellus, and vast spoil brought to Rome from the celebrated city of Syracuse. In Macedonia, Laevinus made an alliance with Philip, and several of the Grecian states, as well as with Attalus, king of Asia; and. proceeding afterwards to Sicily, took Hanno, a general of the Carthaginians, at the city of Agrigentum, together with the town itself, and sent him with other noble prisoners to Rome. Forty cities he obliged to surrender; twenty-six he carried by storm. Thus all Sicily being recovered, and Macedonia humbled, he returned with great glory to Rome. In Italy, Hannibal, attacking Cnaeus Fulvius, one of the consuls, by surprise, cut him off, together with eight thousand of his men.
XV. In the meantime, Publius Cornelius Scipio, a man almost the very first of all the Romans, both in his own and succeeding ages, son of that Publius Scipio who had carried on the war there before, was despatched, at the age of twenty-four, into Hispania, where, after the death of the two Scipios, no Roman general was now left. He took Carthage, in Hispania, in which the Africans kept all their gold, and silver, and warlike stores; he took also a number of hostages, whom the Carthaginians had received from the Hispanics, as well as Mago, the brother of Hannibal, whom he sent with others to Rome. The rejoicing at Rome on this intelligence was very great. Scipio restored the Hispanic hostages to their parents; and in consequence almost all the Hispanics unanimously joined him. Soon after, he put to flight Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, and took a great quantity of spoil.
XVI. In Italy, meanwhile, Quintus Fabius Maximus, one of the consuls, recovered Tarentum, where a great body of Hannibal's troops were quartered, and cut off there also Carthalo, one of Hannibal's generals; twenty-five thousand of the prisoners he sold for slaves; the spoil he divided among the soldiers; and the money arising from the sale of the prisoners, he paid into the public treasury. At this time, several of the Roman cities, which had gone over to Hannibal, submitted themselves again to Fabius Maximus.
In the following year Scipio performed extraordinary exploits in Hispania, and, by his own exertions and those of his brother Lucius Scipio, recovered seventy cities. In Italy, however, the war went on unsuccessfully, for Claudius Marcellus the consul was cut off by Hannibal.
XVII. In the third year after Scipio's departure for Hispania, he again greatly distinguished himself. A king of Hispania, whom he had conquered in a great battle, he received into alliance; and was the first that refrained from demanding hostages of a vanquished enemy.
XVIII. Hannibal, having no hope that Hispania could be held longer against Scipio, summoned from it Hasdrubal his brother, with all his troops, to join him in Italy. Hasdrubal, pursuing the same route by which Hannibal had gone, fell into an ambush laid for him by the consuls Appius Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius Salinator, near Sena, a city of Picenum, but fell fighting valiantly; his numerous forces were either taken or put to the sword; and a great quantity of gold and silver carried off to Rome. Hannibal now began to despair of the issue of the war, and an accession of courage was felt by the Romans. They, therefore, also recalled Publius Cornelius Scipio out of Hispania; who arrived at Rome with great glory.
XIX. In the consulate of Quintus Caecilius and Lucius Valerius, all the cities in the territory of the Bruttii, which were in the possession of Hannibal, surrendered to the Romans.
XX. In the fourteenth year after Hannibal s invasion of Italy, Scipio, who had achieved such successes in Hispania, was created consul, and sent into Africa; a man in whom there was thought to be something divine, so that he was even imagined to hold converse with the gods. He encountered Hanno, the general of the Carthaginians in Africa, and destroyed his army. In a second battle he took his camp, with four thousand five hundred of his soldiers, eleven thousand being killed. Syphax, king of Numidia, who had joined the Africans, he took prisoner, and became master of his camp. Syphax himself, with the noblest of the Numidians, and a vast quantity of spoil, was sent by Scipio to Rome; on the news of which event, almost all Italy forsook Hannibal, who was desired by the Carthaginians to return to Africa, which Scipio was now laying waste.
XXI. Thus, in the seventeenth year after his arrival, Italy was delivered from Hannibal, and he is said to have quitted it with tears. Ambassadors from the Carthaginians applied to Scipio for peace, by whom they were sent to the senate, a truce of forty-five days being allowed for their journey to and from Rome; thirty thousand pounds of silver were accepted from them. The senate directed that a peace should be concluded with the Carthaginians at the discretion of Scipio. Scipio granted it on these conditions: "that they should retain, no more than thirty ships, that they should pay to the Romans five hundred thousand pounds of silver, and restore all the prisoners and deserters."
XXII. Hannibal in the meantime landing in Africa, the treaty was interrupted. Many hostilities were committed by the Carthaginians; yet when their ambassadors, as they were returning from Rome, were made prisoners by some Roman troops, they were by Scipio's orders set at liberty. Hannibal too, being defeated by Scipio in several battles, expressed also himself a desire for peace. A conference being held, peace was offered on the same terms as before, only a hundred thousand pounds of silver were added to the former five hundred thousand, on account of their late perfidy. The terms were, unsatisfactory to the Carthaginians, and they ordered Hannibal to continue the war.
The war was carried by Scipio, and Masinissa, another king of the Numidians, who had made an alliance with Scipio, to the very walls of Carthage. Hannibal sent three spies into Scipio's camp, who were captured, and Scipio ordered them to be led round the camp, the whole army to be shown them, and themselves to be entertained and dismissed, that they might report to Hannibal all that they had seen among the Romans.
XXIII. In the meantime preparations were made by both generals for a battle, such as scarce ever occurred in any age, since they were the ablest commanders that ever led forces into the field. Scipio came off victorious, having almost captured Hannibal himself, who escaped at first with several horse, then with twenty, and at last with only four. There were found in Hannibal's camp twenty thousand pounds of silver, and eight hundred of gold, with plenty of stores. After this battle, peace was concluded with the Carthaginians. Scipio returned to Rome, and triumphed with the greatest glory, receiving from that period the appellation of Africanus. Thus the second Punic war was brought to an end in the nineteenth year after it began.
BOOK IV.
I. After the Punic was terminated, the Macedonian war, against King Philip, succeeded.
II. In the five hundred and fifty-first year from the building of the city, Titus Quintius Flamininus was sent against King Philip. He was successful in his undertaking; and peace was granted to Philip on these conditions, that "he should not make war on those states of Greece which the Romans had defended against him; that he should restore the prisoners and deserters; that he should retain only fifty vessels, and deliver up the rest to the Romans; that he should pay, for ten years, a tribute of four thousand pounds weight of silver; and give his own son Demetrius as a hostage." Titus Quintius made war also on the Lacedaemonians; defeated their general Nabis, and admitted them into alliance on such terms as he thought proper. He led with great pride before his chariot hostages of most noble rank, Demetrius the son of Philip, and Armenes the son of Nabis.
III. The Macedonian war being thus terminated, the Syrian war, against King Antiochus, succeeded, in the consulship of Publius Cornelius Scipio and Manius Acilius Glabrio, To this Antiochus Hannibal had joined himself, abandoning his native country, Carthage, to escape being delivered up to the Romans. Manius Acilius Glabrio fought successfully in Achaia. The camp of King Antiochus was taken by an attack in the night, and he himself obliged to flee. To Philip his son Demetrius was restored, for having assisted the Romans in their contest with Antiochus.
IV. In the consulate of Lucius Cornelius Scipio and Caius Laelius, Scipio Africanus went out as lieutenant to his brother Lucius Cornelius Scipio, the consul, against Antiochus. Hannibal, who was with Antiochus, was defeated in a battle by sea. Antiochus himself was afterwards routed by Cornelius Scipio, the consul, in a great battle at Magnesia, a city of Asia, near mount Sipylus. Eumenes, who founded the city of Eumenia in Phrygia, the brother of king Attalus, assisted the Romans in that engagement. Fifty thousand foot, and three thousand horse were killed in that battle on the side of the king. In consequence, King Antiochus sued for peace, which was granted to him, though vanquished, by the senate, on the same conditions as it had been offered before: "that he should withdraw from Europe and Asia, and confine himself within mount Taurus; that he should pay ten thousand talents, and give twenty hostages, and surrender Hannibal, the author of the war." All the cities of Asia, which Antiochus had lost in this war, were given to Eumenes; many cities also were granted to the Rhodians, who had assisted the Romans against Antiochus. Scipio returned to Rome, and celebrated his triumph with great pomp; and he also, after the example of his brother, received the name of Asiaticus, from his conquest of Asia; as his brother, from the subjugation of Africa, had been surnamed Africanus.
V. Under the consuls Spurius Posthumius Albinus and Quintus Marcius Philippus, Marcus Fulvius triumphed for conquering the Aetolians. Hannibal, who, on the defeat of Antiochus, had fled to Prusias, king of Bithynia, that he might not be surrendered to the Romans, was demanded also at his hands by Titus Quintius Flamininus; and, as he seemed likely to be surrendered, he drank poison, and was buried at Libyssa, in the territory of the Nicomedians.
VI. On the death of Philip, king of Macedonia, who had both waged war with the Romans, and afterwards given aid to the Romans against Antiochus, his son Perseus took up arms again in Macedonia, having levied great forces for the war, and having as allies Cotys, king of Thrace, and the king of Illyricum, whose name was Gentius. On the side of the Romans were Eumenes, king of Asia, Ariarathes of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Masinissa of Numidia. Prusias, the king of Bithynia, although he had married the sister of Perseus, remained neutral. The general of the Romans, the consul Publius Licinius, was defeated by Perseus in a severe engagement; yet the Romans, although vanquished, refused peace to the king when he solicited it, except on condition that he should surrender himself and his people to the senate and the people of Rome. The consul Lucius Aemilius Paulus was afterwards sent against him, and the praetor Caius Anicius into Illyricum against Gentius: but Gentius, being defeated with ease in a single battle, soon surrendered; and his mother, his wife, his two sons, and his brother, fell at the same time into the power of the Romans. Thus the war was terminated within thirty days, and the news of Gentius's defeat arrived before it was announced that the war had been begun.
VII. The consul Aemilius Paulus came to a battle with Perseus on the 3rd of September, and defeated him, killing twenty thousand of his infantry; the cavalry which remained with the king was unbroken; on the side of the Romans only a hundred men were missing. All the cities of Macedonia, that Perseus had under his sway, submitted to the Romans. The king himself, deserted by his friends, fell into the hands of Paulus; but Paulus treated him with respect, and not as a vanquished enemy, for, when he desired to prostrate himself at his feet, he would not permit him, but placed him in a seat by his side. The terms granted to the Macedonians and Illyrians were these, "that they might remain free, on paying half the tribute which they had been accustomed to pay to their kings;" that it might be seen that the Roman people contended with a view to equity and not to covetousness: and these terms Paulus proclaimed in an assembly of a vast concourse of people, entertaining the ambassadors of several states, who had come to pay their respects to him, with a most sumptuous feast; saying that "it ought to be possible for the same individual to be victorious in war and elegant in his entertainments."
VIII. Shortly after he took seventy cities of Epirus, which had resumed hostilities; the booty he distributed among his soldiers. He then returned to Rome with great display, in a vessel belonging to Perseus, which is recorded to have been of such extraordinary magnitude, that it contained sixteen banks of oars. He celebrated his triumph most magnificently in a golden car, with his two sons standing on each side of him; the two sons of Perseus, and Perseus himself, then forty-five years of age, were led in procession before the car. After Aemilius, Caius Anicius also celebrated a triumph on account of the Illyrians; in which Gentius, with his brother and sons, were led before his car. To witness this spectacle the kings of several nations came to Rome; among others, even Attains and Eumenes, kings of Asia, and Prusias, king of Bithynia; who were entertained with great consideration, and, by permission of the senate, deposited the presents which they had brought in the Capitol. Prusias also entrusted his son Nicomedes to the senate.
IX. In the year following Lucius Memmius was successful in the war in Hispania. Marcellus the consul afterwards met with success in the same country.
X. A third war was then undertaken against Carthage, in the six hundred and second year from the building of the city, in the consulship of Lucius Manlius Censorinus and Marcus Manilius, and in the fifty-first year after the termination of the second Punic war. The consuls in consequence proceeded to attack Carthage. Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian general, engaged them; Phamea, another general, had the command of the Carthaginian cavalry. At that time, Scipio, the grandson of Scipio Africanus, served in the army in the capacity of tribune, for whom great fear and respect was felt by all; for he was regarded as eminently brave and skilful in the field. Many enterprises were accordingly conducted with success by his agency; nor did Hasdrubal or Phamea shrink from anything more than engaging with that part of the army in which Scipio commanded.
XI. About the same time, Masinissa, king of Numidia, who had been an ally of the Roman people for nearly sixty years, died in the ninety-seventh year of his age, leaving behind him forty-four sons. He appointed Scipio to divide his kingdom amongst his sons
XII. As the name of Scipio had already become famous, he was created consul, although but a young man, and sent against Carthage. He took it and demolished it: the spoils found there, which had been amassed by Carthage from the ruins of various cities, and the ornaments of towns, he restored to such cities of Sicily, Italy, and Africa, as recognized their own. Thus Carthage, in the seven hundredth year after its foundation, was destroyed. Scipio earned the same title which his grandfather had gained, being, on account of his valour, called Africanus Junior.
XIII. In the meantime a certain Pseudo-Philip took up arms in Macedonia, and defeated Publius Juvencius, a Roman prsstor, who had been sent out against him, with a terrible slaughter. After him Quintus Caecilius Metellus was sent by the Romans as general against this pretended Philip, and, having slain twenty-five thousand of his soldiers, recovered Macedonia, and took the impostor himself prisoner,
XIV. War was also declared against Corinth, the noblest city of Greece, on account of an affront offered to a Roman embassy. That city Mummius the consul took and demolished. Three most remarkable triumphs therefore were celebrated at Rome at the same time, that of Scipio for Africa, before whose chariot Hasdrubal was led; that of Metellus for Macedonia, before whose chariot walked Andriscus, also called Pseudo-Philip; and that of Mummius for Corinth, before whom brazen statues, pictures, and other ornaments of that celebrated city, were carried.
XV. In Macedonia, meanwhile, a Pseudo-Perseus, who called himself the son of Perseus, collecting the slaves, took up arms, and, when he was at the head of a force of seventeen thousand fighting men, was defeated by Tremellius the quaestor.
XVI. About the same time Metellus had singular success against the Hispanics in Celtiberia. Quintus Pompeius succeeded him. Not long after Quintus Caepio was also sent to the same war, which a leader named Viriathus was still keeping up against the Romans in Lusitania; through fear of whom Viriathus was killed by his own men. after he had kept Hispania in a state of excitement against the Romans for fourteen years. He was at first a shepherd, then captain of a band of robbers, and at last he stirred up so many powerful nations to war, that he was considered as the protector of Hispania against the Romans. When his assassins asked a reward of the consul Caepio, they received for answer, that "it was never pleasing to the Romans, that a general should be killed by his own soldiers."
XVII. The consul Quintus Pompeius being afterwards defeated by the Numantines, the most powerful nation of Hispania, made an ignominious peace with them. After him. the consul Caius Hostilius Mancinus again concluded a dishonourable peace with the Numantines, which the people and senate ordered to be annulled, and Mancinus himself to be given up to the enemy, that they might avenge themselves for the dissolution of the treaty on him with whom they had made it. After such signal disgrace, therefore, with which the Roman armies had been twice defeated by the Numantines, Publius Scipio Africanus was made consul a second time, and sent to Numantia. He reformed, in the first place, the dissolute and idle soldiery, rather by inuring them to labour than by punishment, and without any great severity. He then took several cities of Hispania, some by force, and allowing others to surrender. At last he reduced Numantia itself by famine, after it had been long besieged, and razed it to the ground, and received the rest of the province into alliance.
XVIII. About this time Attalus, king of Asia, the brother of Eumenes, died, and left the Roman people his heir. Thus Asia was added to the Roman empire by will.
XIX. Shortly after, also, Decimus Junius Brutus triumphed with great glory over the Gallaeciansand Lusitanians; and Publius Scipio Africanus had a second triumph over the Numantines. in the fourteenth year after his first triumph for his exploits in Africa.
XX. A war in the meantime was kindled in Asia by Aristonicus, the son of Eumenes by a concubine: this Eumenes was the brother of Attalus. Against him was sent out Publius Licinius Crassus, who had ample assistance from several kings, for not only Nicomedes, the king of Bithynia, supported the Romans, but also Mithridates king of Pontus, with whom they had afterwards a very great war, as well as Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, and Pylaemenes of Paphlagonia. Crassus notwithstanding was defeated, and killed in battle; his head was carried to Aristonicus, and his body buried at Smyrna. Soon after Perperna, the Roman consul, who was appointed successor to Grassus, hearing of the event of the war, hastened to Asia; and defeating Aristonicus in battle, near the city Stratonice to which he had fled, reduced him by famine to surrender. Aristonicus, by command of the senate, was strangled in prison at Rome; for a triumph could not be celebrated on his account, because Perperna had died at Pergamus on his return.
XXI. In the consulate of Lucius Caecilius Metellus and Titus Quintius Flamininus, Carthage in Africa, which still exists, was rebuilt by order of the senate, two and twenty years after it had been destroyed by Scipio. A colony of Roman citizens was sent out thither.
XXII. In the six hundred and twenty-seventh year from the founding of the city, Caius Cassius Longinus and Sextus Domitius Calvinus, the consuls, made war upon the Trans alpine Gauls, and the city of the Arverni, at that time very distinguished, and their king, Bituitus; and slew a vast number of men near the river Rhone. A great booty, consisting of the golden collars of the Gauls, was brought to Rome. Bituitus surrendered himself to Domitius, and was conveyed by him to Rome; and both consuls triumphed with great glory.
XXIII. In the consulship of Marcus Porcius Cato and Quintus Marcius Rex, in the six hundred and thirty-third year from the building of the city, a colony was led out to Narbonne in Gaul. Afterwards a triumph was obtained over Dalmatia by the consuls Lucius Metellus and Quintus Mucius Scaevola.
XXIV. In the six hundred and thirty-fifth year from the building of the city, the consul Caius Cato made war upon the Scordisci, and fought with them to his dishonour.
XXV. When Caius Caecilius Metellus and Cnaeus Carbo were consuls, the Metelli, two brothers, had triumphs on the same day, one for Sardinia, the other for Thrace; and news was brought to Rome, that the Cimbri had crossed from Gaul into Italy.
XXVI. In the consulship of Publius Scipio Nasica and Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, war was made upon Jugurtha, king of Numidia, because he had murdered Adherbal and Hiempsal, the sons of Micipsa, his cousins, princes, and allies of the Roman people. The consul Calpumius Bestia being sent against him, was corrupted by the king's money, and concluded a most ignominious treaty of peace with him, which was afterwards repudiated by the senate. Spurius Albinus Postumius proceeded against him in the following year: he also, through the agency of his brother, fought against the Numidians to his disgrace.
XXVII. In the third place, the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus being sent out against him, brought back the army, which he reformed with great severity and judgment, without exercising cruelty on any one, to the ancient Roman discipline. He defeated Jugurtha in various battles, killed or captured his elephants, and obliged many of his towns to surrender; and, when on the point of putting an end to the war, was succeeded by Caius Marius. Marius overthrew both Jugurtha and Bocchus, the king of Mauritania, who had undertaken to afford assistance to Jugurtha; he also took several towns in Numidia, and put an end to the war, having, through the instrumentality of his quaestor Cornelius Sulla, a distinguished man, taken Jugurtha prisoner, whom Bocchus, who had before fought for him, betrayed.
In Gaul, the Cimbri were defeated by Marcus Junius Silanus, the colleague of Quintus Metellus, the Scordisci and Triballi in Macedonia by Minutius Rufus, and the Lusitani in Hispania by Servilius Caepio; and two triumphs were celebrated on account of Jugurtha; the first by Metellus, the second by Marius. It was before the chariot of Marius, however, that Jugurtha, with his two sons, was led in chains; and he waa soon after, by order of the consul, strangled in prison.
BOOK V.
I. While the war was going on in Numidia against Jugurtha, the Roman consuls, Marcus Manlius and Quintus Caepio, were defeated by the Cimbri, Teutones, Tigurini, and Ambrones, nations of Germania and Gaul, near the river Rhone; and, being reduced by a terrible slaughter, lost their very camp, as well as the greater part of their army. Great was the consternation at Rome, such as was scarcely experienced during the Punic wars in the time of Hannibal, from dread that the Gauls might again march to the city. Marius, in consequence, after his victory over Jugurtha, was created consul the second time, and the war against the Cimbri and Teutones was committed to his management. The consulship was also conferred on him a third and fourth time, in consequence of the war with the Cimbri being protracted; but in his fourth consulship he had for his colleague Quintus Lutatius Catulus. He came to battle, accordingly, with the Cimbri, and in two engagements killed two hundred thousand of the enemy, and took eighty thousand prisoners, with their general Teutobodus; for which service he was elected consul a fifth time during his absence.
II. In the meantime the Cimbri and Teutones, whose force was still innumerable, passed over into Italy. Another battle was fought with them, by Caius Marius and Quintus Catulus, though with greater success on the part of Catulus, for in that battle, in which they both commanded, a hundred and forty thousand were either slain in the field or in the pursuit, and sixty thousand taken prisoners. Of the Roman soldiers in the two armies three hundred fell. Thirty-three standards were taken from the Cimbri; of which the army of Marius captured two, that of Catulus thirty-one. This was the end of the war: a triumph was decreed to both the consuls.
III. In the consulship of Sextus Julius Caesar and Lucius Marcius Philippus, in the six hundred and fifty-ninth year from the building of the city, when almost all other wars were at an end, the Piceni, Marsi, and Peligni, excited a most dangerous war in Italy; for after they had lived for many years in subjection to the Roman people, they now began to assert their claim to equal privileges. This was a very destructive war. Publius Rutilius, one of the consuls, Caepio, a nobleman in the flower of his age, and Porcius Cato, another consul, were killed in it. The generals against the Romans on the part of the Piceni and Marsi were Titus Vettius, Hierius Asinius, Titus Herennius, and Aulus Cluentius. The Romans fought against them successfully under the conduct of Caius Marius, who had now been made consul for the sixth time, also under Cnaeus Pompey, but particularly under Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who, among other signal exploits, so completely routed Cluentius, one of the enemy's generals, with his numerous forces, that he lost only one man of his own army. The war, however, was protracted for four years, with great havoc; at length, in the fifth, it was terminated by Lucius Cornelius Sulla when consul, who had greatly distinguished himself on many occasions when praetor in the same war.
IV. In the six hundred and sixty-second year from the foundation of the city, the first civil war began at Rome; and in the same year also the Mithridatic war. Marius, when in his sixth consulship, gave rise to the Civil war; for when Sulla. the consul, was sent to conduct the war against Mithridates, who had possessed himself of Asia and Achaia, and delayed his army for a short time in Campania, in order that the remains of the Social war, of which we have just spoken, and which had been carried on within the limits of Italy, might be extinguished, Marius showed himself ambitious to be appointed to the Mithridatic war. Sulla, being incensed at this conduct, marched to Rome with his army. There he fought with Marius and Sulpicius; he was the first to enter the city in arms; Sulpicius he killed; Marius he put to flight; and then, having appointed Cnaeus Octavius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna the consuls for the year ensuing, set out for Asia.
V. For Mithridates, who was king of Pontus, and possessed Armenia Minor and the entire circuit of the Pontic sea with the Bosphorus, first attempted to expel Nicomedes, an ally of the Romans, from Bithynia; sending word to the senate, that he was going to make war upon him on account of the injuries which he had received. Answer was returned by the senate to Mithridates, that if he did so he himself should feel the weight of a war from the Romans. Incensed at this reply, he immediately invaded Cappadocia, and expelled from thence Ariobarzanes the king, an ally of the Roman people. He next marched into Bithynia and Paphlagonia, driving out the kings, Pylaemenes and Nicomedes, who were also in alliance with the Romans. He then hastened to Ephesus, and sent letters into all parts of Asia, with directions that wherever any Roman citizens should be found, they should all be put to death the same day.
VI. In the meantime Athens also, a city of Achaia, was delivered up to Mithridates by Aristion an Athenian. For Mithridates had previously sent Archelaus, his general, into Achaia, with a hundred and twenty thousand horse and foot, by whom the rest of Greece was also occupied. Sulla besieged Archelaus at the Piraeeus near Athens, and took the city itself. Engaging afterwards in battle with Archelaus, he gave him such a defeat, that out of a hundred and twenty thousand of the army of Archelaus scarce ten remained; while of that of Sulla only fourteen were killed. Mithridates, on receiving intelligence of this battle, sent seventy thousand chosen troops out of Asia to Archelaus, with whom Sulla came again to an engagement. In the first battle twenty thousand of the enemy were slain, and Diogenes, the son of Archelaus; in the second the entire forces of Mithridates were cut off. Archelaus himself lay hid for three days, stript of his armour, in the marshes. On the news of this state of things, Mithridates sent orders to treat with Sulla concerning peace.
VII. In the meantime Sulla also reduced part of the Dardanians, Scordisci, Dalmatians, and Maedians, and granted terms of. alliance to the rest. But when ambassadors arrived from King Mithridates to treat about peace, Sulla replied that he would grant it on no other condition than that he should quit the countries on which he had seized, and withdraw into his own dominions. Afterwards, however, the two came to a conference, and peace was settled between them, in order that Sulla, who was in haste to proceed to the Civil war, might leave no danger in his rear; for while Sulla was victorious over Mithridates in Achaia and Asia, Marius, who had been driven from the city, and Cornelius Cinna, one of the consuls, had recommenced hostilities in Italy, and entering Rome, put to death the noblest of the senators and others of consular rank, proscribed many, and pulling down the house of Sulla himself, forced his sons and wife to seek safety by flight; while all the rest of the senate, hastily quitting the city, fled to Sulla in Greece, entreating him to come to the support of his country. He accordingly crossed over into Italy, to conduct the Civil war against the consuls Norbanus and Scipio. In the first battle he engaged with Norbanus not far from Capua, when he killed seven thousand of his men, and took six thousand prisoners, losing only a hundred and twenty-four of his own army. From thence he directed his efforts against Scipio, and before a battle was fought, or any blood shed, he received the surrender of his whole army.
VIII. But on a change of consuls at Rome, and the election of Marius, the son of Marius, and Papirius Carbo to the consulate, Sulla again came to battle with Marius the younger, and killed fifteen thousand men, with the loss of only four hundred. Immediately afterwards also he entered the city. He then pursued Marius, the younger, to Praeneste, besieged him there, and drove him even to self-destruction. He afterwards fought a terrible battle with Lamponius and Carinas, the leaders of the Marian faction, near the Colline gate. The number of the enemy in that battle against Sulla is said to have been seventy thousand; twelve thousand surrendered themselves to Sulla: the rest were cut off in the field, in the camp, or in the pursuit, by the insatiable resentment of the conqueror. Cnaeus Carbo also, the other consul, fled from Ariminum into Sicily, and was there slain by Cnaeus Pompey; to whom, although but a young man, being only one-and-twenty years of age, Sulla, perceiving his activity, had committed the management of his troops, so that he was accounted second only to Sulla himself.
IX. Carbo. then, being killed, Pompey recovered Sicily. Crossing next over into Africa, he put to death Domitius, a leader on the side of Marius, and Hiarbas the king of Mauritania, who had given assistance to Domitius. After these events, Sulla celebrated a triumph with great pomp for his success against Mithridates. Cnaeus Pompey also, while only in his twenty-fourth year, was allowed a triumph for his victories in Africa, a privilege which had been granted to no Roman before him. Such was the termination of two most lamentable wars, the Italian, also called the Social, and the Civil, which lasted for ten years, and occasioned the destruction of more than a hundred and fifty thousand men; twenty-four of consular rank, seven of praetorian, sixty of that of aedile, and nearly three hundred senators.
BOOK VI.
I. In the consulate of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Quintus Catulus, after Sulla had composed the troubles of the state, new wars broke out; one in Hispania, another in Pamphylia and Cilicia, a third in Macedonia, a fourth in Dalmatia. Sertorius. who had taken the side of Marius, dreading the fate of others who had been cut off, excited the Hispanics to a war. The generals sent against him were Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the son of that Metellus who had subdued Jugurtha, and the praetor Lucius Domitius. Domitius was killed by Hirtuleius, Sertorius's general. Metellus contended against Sertorius with various success. At length, as Metellus was thought singly unequal to the war, Cnaeus Pompey was sent into Hispania. Thus, two generals being opposed to him, Sertorius often fought with very uncertain fortune. At last, in the eighth year of the war, he was put to death by his own soldiers, and an end made of the war by Cnaeus Pompey, at that time but a young man, and Quintus Metellus Pius; and nearly the whole of Hispania was brought under the dominion of the Roman people.
II. Appius Claudius, on the expiration of his consulate was sent into Macedonia. He had some skirmishes with different tribes that inhabited the province of Rhodopa, and there fell ill and died. Cnaeus Scribonius Curio, on the termination of his consulship, was sent to succeed him. He conquered the Dardanians, penetrated as far as the Danube, and obtained the honour of a triumph, putting an end to the war within three years.
III. Publius Servilius, an energetic man, was sent, after his consulate, into Cilicia and Pamphilia. He reduced Cilicia, besieged and took the most eminent cities of Lycia, amongst them Phaselis, Olympus, and Corycus. The Isauri he also attacked, and compelled to surrender, and, within three years, put an end to the war. He was the first of the Romans that marched over Mount Taurus. On his return, he was granted a triumph, and acquired the surname of Isauricus.
IV. Cnaeus Cosconius was sent into Illyricum as proconsul. He reduced a great part of Dalmatia, took Salona, and, having made an end of the war, returned to Rome after an absence of two years.
V. About the same time, the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the colleague of Catulus, attempted to kindle a civil war; but in one summer that commotion was suppressed. Thus there were several triumphs at the same time, that of Metellus for Hispania, a second for Hispania obtained by Pompey, one of Curio for Macedonia, and one of Servilius for Isauria.
VI. In the six hundred and seventy-sixth year from the building of the city, in the consulate of Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, died, appointing by his will the Roman people his heir.
Mithridates, breaking the peace, again proceeded to invade Bithynia and Asia. Both the consuls being sent out against him, met with various success. Cotta, being defeated by him in a battle near Chalcedon, was even forced into the town, and besieged there. But Mithridates, having marched from thence to Cyzicus, that, after capturing that city, he might overrun all Asia, Lucullus, the other consul, met him; and, whilst Mithridates was detained at the siege of Cyzicus, besieged him in the rear, exhausted him with famine, defeated him in several battles, and at last pursued him to Byzantium, now called Constantinople. Lucullus also vanquished his commanders in a sea-fight. Thus, in a single winter and summer, almost a hundred thousand men on the king's side were cut off by Lucullus.
VII. In the six hundred and seventy-eighth year of Rome, Marcus Licinius Lucullus, the cousin of that Lucullus who had carried on the war against Mithridates, obtained the province of Macedonia. A new war, too, suddenly sprung up in Italy; for eighty-four gladiators, led by Spartacus, Crixus, and Oenomaus, having broken out of a school at Capua, made their escape; and, wandering over Italy, kindled a war in it, not much less serious than that which Hannibal had raised; for, after defeating several generals and two consuls of the Romans, they collected an army of nearly sixty thousand men. They were, however, defeated in Apulia by the proconsul Marcus Licinius Crassus; and, after much calamity to Italy, the war was terminated in its third year.
VIII. In the six hundred and eighty-first year from the founding of the city, in the consulate of Publius Cornelius Lentulus and Cnaeus Aufidius Orestes, there were but two wars of any importance throughout the Roman empire, the Mithridatic and the Macedonian. Of these the two Luculli, Lucius and Marcus, had the direction. Lucius Lucullus, after the battle at Cyzicus, in which he had conquered Mithridates, and the sea-fight, in which he had overcome his generals, pursued him; and, recovering Paphlagonia and Bithynia, invaded his very kingdom. He took Sinope and Amisus, two most eminent cities of Pontus. In a second battle, near the city Cabira, where Mithridates had assembled a vast army from all parts of his kingdom, thirty thousand of the king's chosen troops were cut in pieces by five thousand of the Romans, and Mithridates was put to flight and his camp plundered. Armenia Minor, also, of which he had taken possession, was wrested from him. Mithridates was, however, received after his flight by Tigranes, the king of Armenia, who at that time reigned in great glory; for he had frequently defeated the Persians, and had made himself master of Mesopotamia, Syria, and part of Phoenicia.
IX. Lucullus, therefore, still pursuing his routed enemy, entered even the kingdom of Tigranes, who ruled over both the Armenias. Tigranocerta, the most noble city of Armenia, he succeeded in taking; the king himself, who advanced against him with six hundred thousand cuirassiers, and a hundred thousand archers and other troops, he so completely defeated with a force of only eighteen thousand, that he annihilated a great part of the Armenians. Marching from thence to Nisibis, he took that city also, and made the king's brother prisoner. But as those whom Lucullus had left in Pontus with part of the army in order to defend the conquered countries belonging to the Romans, grew negligent and avaricious in their conduct, they gave Mithridates an opportunity of again making an irruption into Pontus, and thus the war was renewed. While Lucullus, after the reduction of Nisibis, was preparing for an expedition against the Persians, a successor was sent out to take his place.
X. The other Lucullus, who had the management of affairs in Macedonia, was the first of the Romans that made war upon the Bessi, defeating them in a great battle on Mount Haemus; he reduced the town of Uscudama, which the Bessi inhabited, on the same day in which he attacked it; he also took Cabyle, and penetrated as far as the river Danube. He then besieged several cities lying above Pontus, where he destroyed Apollonia, Calatis, Parthenopolis, Tomi, Histros, and Burziaone, and, putting an end to the war, returned to Rome. Both the Luculli however triumphed, but the Lucullus, who had fought against Mithridates, with the greater glory, because he had returned victorious over such powerful nations.
XI. After the Macedonian war was ended, but while that with Mithridates still continued (which, on the departure of Lucullus, that king had renewed, collecting all his forces for the purpose), the Cretan war arose, and Caecilius Metellus being sent to conduct it, secured the whole province, by a succession of great battles, within three years, and received the appellation of Creticus, and a triumph on account of the island. About this time Libya also, by the will of Apion, the king of the country, was added to the Roman empire; in it were the celebrated cities, Berenice, Ptolemais, and Cyrene.
XII. During these transactions, pirates infested all the seas, so that navigation, and that alone, was unsafe to the Romans, who were now victorious throughout the world. The war against these pirates, therefore, was committed to Cnaeus Pompey, who, with surprising success and celerity, finished it in the course of a few months. Soon after, the war against Mithridates and Tigranes was entrusted to him; in the conduct of which, he overcame Mithridates in Armenia Minor in a battle by night, and plundered his camp, killing at the same time forty thousand of his troops, while he lost only twenty of his own men, and two centurions. Mithridates fled with his wife and two attendants; and not long after, in consequence of his cruelty to his own family, he was reduced, through a sedition excited among his soldiers by his son Pharnaces, to the necessity of putting an end to his existence, and swallowed poison. Such was the end of Mithridates, a man of singular energy and ability; his death happened near the Bosporus. He reigned sixty years, lived seventy-two, and maintained a war against the Romans for forty.
XIII. Pompey next made war upon Tigranes, who surrendered himself, coming to Pompey's camp at sixteen miles distance from Artaxata; and, throwing himself at his feet, pla,ced in his hands his diadem, which Pompey returned to him, and treated him with great respect, but obliged him to give up part of his dominions and to pay a large sum of money: Syria, Phoenicia, and Sophene, were taken from him, and six thousand talents of silver, which he had to pay to the Roman people because he had raised a war against them without cause.
XIV. Pompey soon after made war also upon the Albani; and defeated their king Orodes three times; at length, being prevailed upon by letters and presents, he granted him pardon and peace. He also defeated Artoces, king of Iberia, in battle, and reduced him to surrender. Armenia Minor he conferred upon Deiotarus, the king of Galatia, because he had acted as his ally in the Mithridatic war. To Attalus and Pylaemenes he restored Paphlagonia; and appointed Aristarchus king of the Colchians. Shortly after he subdued the Itureans and Arabians; and, on entering Syria, rewarded Seleucia, a city near Antioch, with independence, because it had not admitted King Tigranes. To the inhabitants of Antioch he restored their hostages. On those of Daphne, being charmed with the beauty of the spot and the abundance of water, he bestowed a portion of land, in order that their grove might be enlarged. Marching from thence to Judea, he took Jerusalem, the capital, in the third month; twelve thousand of the Jews being slain, and the rest allowed to surrender on terms. After these achievements, he returned into Asia, and put an end to this most tedious war.
XV. In the consulate of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the orator, and Caius Antonius, in the six hundred and eighty-ninth year from the foundation of the city, Lucius Sergius Catiline, a man of very noble family, but of a most corrupt disposition, conspired to destroy his country, in conjunction with some other eminent but desperate characters. He was expelled from the city by Cicero; his accomplices were apprehended and strangled in prison; and he himself was defeated and killed in battle by Antonius, the other consul.
XVI. In the six hundred and ninetieth year from the building of the city, in the consulate of Decimus Junius Silanus and Lucius Muraena, Metellus triumphed on account of Crete, Pompey for the Piratic and Mithridatic wars. No triumphal procession was ever equal to this; the sons of Mithridates, the son of Tigranes, and Aristobulus, king of the Jews, were led before his car; a vast sum of money, an immense mass of gold and silver, was carried in front. At this time there was no war of any importance throughout the world.
XVII. In the six hundred and ninety-third year from the founding of the city, Caius Julius Caesar, who was afterwards emperor, was made consul with Lucius Bibulus; and Gaul and Illyricum, with ten legions, were decreed to him. He first subdued the Helvetii, who are now called Sequani; and afterwards, by conquering in most formidable wars, pro ceeded as far as the British ocean. In about nine years he subdued all that part of Gaul which lies between the Alps, the river Rhone, the Rhine, and the Ocean, and extends in circumference nearly three thousand two hundred miles. He next made war upon the Britons, to whom not even the name of the Romans was known before his time; and having subdued them, and received hostages, sentenced them to pay a tribute. On Gaul, under the name of tribute, he imposed the yearly sum of forty thousand sestertia; and invading the Germans on the other side of the Rhine, defeated them in several most sanguinary engagements. Among so many successes, he met with three defeats, once in person among the Arverni, and twice in Germania during his absence; for two of his lieutenant-generals, Titurius and Aurunculeius, were cut off by ambuscades.
XVIII. About the same time, in the six hundred and ninety-seventh year from the foundation of the city, Marcus Licinius Crassus, the colleague of Cnaeus Pompey the Great in his second consulship, was sent against the Parthians; and having engaged the enemy near Carrae, contrary to the omens and auspices, was defeated by Surena, the general of king Orodes, and at last killed, together with his son, a most noble and excellent young man. The remains of the army were saved by Caius Cassius the quaestor, who, with singular courage, so ably retrieved the ruined fortune of the Romans, that, in his retreat over the Euphrates, he defeated the Persians in several battles.
XIX. Soon after followed the Civil war, a war truly execrable and deplorable, in which, besides the havoc that occurred in the several battles, the fortune of the Roman people was changed. For Caesar, on returning victorious from Gaul, proceeded to demand another consulship, and in such a manner, that it was granted him without hesitation; yet opposition was made to it by Marcellus the consul, Bibulus, Pompey, and Cato, and he was in consequence ordered to disband his army and return to Rome; in revenge for which insult, he marched with his army from Ariminum, where he kept his forces assembled, against his country. The consuls, together with Pompey, the whole senate, and all the nobility, fled from the city, and crossed over into Greece; and in Epirus, Macedonia, and Achaia, the senate, under Pompey as their general, prepared war against Caesar.
XX. Caesar, having marched into the deserted city, made himself dictator. Soon after he set out for Hispania, where he defeated the armies of Pompey, which were very powerful and brave, with their three generals, Lucius Afranius, Marcus Petreius, and Marcus Varro. Returning from thence, he went over into Greece. He took the field against Pompey, but in the first battle was defeated and put to flight; he escaped, however, because Pompey declined to pursue him, as the night was coming on; when Caesar remarked, that Pompey knew not how to conquer, and that that was the only day on which he himself might have been vanquished. They next fought at Palaeopharsalus, in Thessaly, leading great forces into the field on both sides. The army of Pompey consisted of forty thousand foot, six hundred horse on the left wing, and five hundred on the right, besides auxiliary troops from the whole east, and all the nobility, senators without number, men of praetorian and consular rank, and some who had already been conquerors of powerful nations. Caesar had not quite thirty thousand infantry in his army, and but one thousand horse.
XXI. Never before had a greater number of Roman forces assembled in one place, or under better generals, forces which would easily have subdued the whole world, had they been led against barbarians. They fought with great eagerness, but Pompey was at last overcome, and his camp plundered. Pompey himself, when put to flight, sought refuge at Alexandria, with the hope of receiving aid from the king of Egypt, to whom, on account of his youth, he had been appointed guardian by the senate; he, however, regarding fortune rather than friendship, caused Pompey to be killed, and sent his head and ring to Caesar; at sight of which even Caesar is said to have shed tears, as he viewed the head of so great a man, once his own son-in law.
XXII. Caesar soon after went to Alexandria. Ptolemy attempted to form a plot against his life also; for which reason war was made upon him, and, being defeated, he perished in the Nile, and his body was found covered with a golden coat of mail. Caesar, having made himself master of Alexandria, conferred the kingdom on Cleopatra, the sister of Ptolemy, with whom he himself had an illicit connexion. On his return from thence, Caesar defeated in battle Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates the Great, who had assisted Pompey in Thessaly, taken up arms in Pontus, and seized upon several provinces of the Roman people; and at last drove him to self-destruction.
XXIII. Returning from thence to Rome, he created himself a third time consul with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been his master of the horse when dictator the year before. Next he went into Africa, where a great number of the nobility, in conjunction with Juba, king of Mauritania, had resumed hostilities. The Roman leaders were Publius Cornelius Scipio, of the most ancient family of Scipio Africanus (who had also been the father-in-law of the great Pompey) Marcus Petreius, Quintus Varus, Marcus Porcius Cato, and Lucius Cornelius Faustus, the son of Sulla the dictator. In a pitched battle fought against them, Caesar, after many struggles, was victorious. Cato, Scipio, Petreius, Juba, killed themselves; Faustus, Pompey's son-in-law, was slain by Caesar.
XXIV. On his return to Rome the year after, Caesar made himself a fourth time consul, and immediately proceeded to Hispania, where the sons of Pompey, Cnaeus, and Sextus, had again raised a formidable war. Many engagements took place, the last near the city of Munda, in which Caesar was so nearly defeated, that, upon his forces giving way, he felt inclined to kill himself, lest, after such great glory in war, he should fall, at the age of fifty-six, into the hands of young men. At length, having rallied his troops, he gained the victory; the elder son of Pompey was slain, the younger fled.
XXV. The civil wars throughout the world being now terminated, Caesar returned to Rome, and began to conduct himself with too great arrogance, contrary to the usages of Roman liberty. As he disposed, therefore, at his own pleasure, of those honours, which were before conferred by the people and did not even rise up when the senate approached him, an d exercised regal, or almost tyrannical power, in other respects, a conspiracy was formed against him by sixty or more Roman senators and knights. The chief among the conspirators were the two Bruti, (of the family of that Brutus who had been made first consul of Rome, and who had expelled the kings) Caius Cassius, and Servilius Casca. Caesar, in consequence, having entered the senate house with the rest, on a certain day appointed for a meeting of the senate, was stabbed with three and twenty wounds.
BOOK VII.
I. After the assassination of Caesar, in about the seven hundred and ninth year of the city, the civil wars were renewed; for the senate favoured the assassins of Caesar; and Antony, the consul, being of Caesar's party, endeavoured to crush them in a civil war. The state therefore being thrown into confusion, Antony, perpetrating many acts of violence, was declared an enemy by the senate. The two consuls, Pansa and Hirtius, were sent in pursuit of him, together with Octavianus, a youth of eighteen years of age, the nephew of Caesar, whom by his will he had appointed his heir, directing him to bear his name; this is the same who was afterwards called Augustus, and obtained the imperial dignity. These three generals therefore marching against Antony, defeated him. It happened, however, that the two victorious consuls lost their lives; and the three armies in consequence became subject to Caesar only.
II. Antony, being routed, and having lost his army, fled to Lepidus, who had been master of the horse to Caesar, and was at that time in possession of a strong body of forces, by whom he was well received. By the mediation of Lepidus, Caesar shortly after made peace with Antony, and, as if with intent to avenge the death of his father, by whom he had been adopted in his will, marched to Rome at the head of an army, and forcibly procured his appointment to the consulship in his twentieth year. In conjunction with Antony and Lepidus he proscribed the senate, and proceeded to make himself master of the state by arms. By their acts, Cicero the orator, and many others of the nobility, were put to death.
III. In the meantime Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Caesar, raised a great war; for there were several armies in Macedonia and the East, of which they took the command. Caesar Octavianus Augustus, therefore, and Mark Antony, proceeding against them (for Lepidus remained for the defence of Italy), came to an engagement at Philippi, a city of Macedonia. In the first battle Antony and Caesar were defeated, but Cassius, the leader of the nobility, fell; in the second they defeated and killed Brutus, and very many of the nobility who had joined them in the war; and the republic was divided among the conquerors, so that Augustus had Hispania, the Gauls, and Italy; Antony, Asia, Pontus, and the East. But the consul Lucius Antonius, the brother of him who had fought with Caesar against Brutus and Cassius, kindled a civil war in Italy; and being defeated near Perusia, a city of Tuscany, was taken prisoner, but not put to death.
IV. In the meantime a war of a serious nature was excited in Sicily by Sextus Pompey, the son of Cnaeus Pompey the Great, those that survived of the party of Brutus and Cassius flocking to join him from all parts. The war against Sextus Pompey was carried on by Gassar Augustus Octavianus and Mark Antony. A peace was at length concluded.
V. About that time Marcus Agrippa met with great success in Aquitania; also Lucius Ventidius Bassus defeated the Persians, who were making incursions into Syria, in three engagements. He killed Pacorus, the son of king Orodes, on that very day on which Orodes, the king of the Persians, had before put Crassus to death by the hands of his general Surena. He was the first who celebrated a most legitimate triumph at Rome over the Parthians.
VI. In the meantime Sextus Pompey violated the peace, and, being defeated in a sea-fight, fled to Asia, and was there put to death.
Antony, who was master of Asia and the East, having divorced the sister of Caesar Augustus Octavianus, married Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. He also fought in person against the Persians, and defeated them in the first encounters; but on his return suffered greatly from famine and pestilence; and as the Parthians pressed on him in his retreat, he retired from before them just as if he had been defeated.
VII. He also excited a great civil war, at the instigation of his wife Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, who aspired with a womanish ambition to reign at Rome. He was defeated by Augustus in the remarkable and celebrated sea-fight at Actium, a place in Epirus; whence he fled into Egypt, and there, as his circumstances grew desperate, since all went over to Augustus, committed suicide. Cleopatra applied to herself an asp, and perished by its venom. Egypt was added to, the Roman empire by Octavianus Augustus, and Cnaeus Cornelius Gallus appointed governor of it; he was the first Roman judge that Egypt had.
VIII. Having thus brought wars to an end throughout the world, Octavianus Augustus returned to Rome in the twelfth year after he had been elected consul. From that period he held the government as sole ruler for forty-four years, for during the twelve previous years he had held it in conjunction with Antony and Lepidus. Thus from the beginning of his reign to the end were fifty-six years. He died a natural death in his eighty-sixth year, at the town of Atella in Campania. and his remains are interred at Rome in the Campus Martius. He was a man who was considered in most respects, and not without reason, to resemble a divinity, for scarcely ever was there any one more successful than he in war, or more prudent in peace. During the forty-four years that he held the government alone, he conducted himself with the greatest courtesy, being most liberal to all, and most faithful to his friends, whom he raised to such honours, that he placed them almost on a level with his own dignity.
IX. At no period was the Roman state more flourishing; for, to say nothing of the civil wars, in which he was unconquered, he added to the Roman empire Egypt, Cantabria, Dalmatia, often before conquered but only then entirely subdued, Pannonia, Aquitania, Illyricum, Rhaetia, the Vindelici and Salassi on the Alps, and all the maritime cities of Pontus, among which the two most noble were Bosporus and Panticapaeon. He also conquered the Dacians in battle; put to the sword numerous forces of the Germans; and drove them beyond the river Elbe, which is in the country of the barbarians far beyond the Rhine. This war however he carried on by the agency of his step-son Drusus, as he had conducted the Pannonian war by that of his other step-son Tiberius, in which he transplanted forty thousand prisoners from Germania, and settled them in Gaul on the bank of the Rhine. He recovered Armenia from the Parthians; the Persians gave him hostages, which they had given to no one before; and also restored the Roman standards, which they had taken from Crassus when he was defeated.
X. The Scythians and Indians, to whom the Roman name was before unknown, sent him presents and ambassadors. Galatia also was made a province under his reign, having before been an independent kingdom, and Marcus Lollius was the first that governed it, in quality of praetor. So much was he beloved even by the barbarians, that kings, allies of the Roman people, founded cities in his honour, to which they gave the name of Caesarea, as one in Mauritania, built by King Juba, and another in Palestine, which is now a very celebrated city. Many kings, moreover, left their own dominions, and, assuming the Roman dress, that is, the toga, ran by the side of his carriage or his horse. At his death he was styled a divinity. He left the state in a most prosperous condition to his successor Tiberius, who had been his step-son, afterwards his son-in-law, and lastly his son by adoption.
XI. Tiberius distinguished his reign by great indolence, excessive cruelty, unprincipled avarice, and abandoned licentiousness. He fought on no occasion in person; the wars were carried on by his generals. Some kings, whom he induced to visit him by seducing allurements, he never sent back; among them was Archelaus of Cappadocia, whose kingdom also he reduced to the form of a province, and directed that its principal city should be called after his own name; and, having been before called Mazaca, it is now termed Caesarea. He died in Campania, in the three and twentieth year of his reign, and the eighty-third of his age, to the great joy of all men.
XII. To him succeeded Caius Caesar, surnamed Caligula, the grandson of Drusus, the step-son of Augustus, and grand-nephew of Tiberius himself, a most wicked and cruel prince, who effaced even the memory of Tiberius's enormities. He undertook a war against the Germans; but, after entering Suevia, made no effort to do anything. He committed incest with his sisters, and acknowledged a daughter that he had by one of them. While tyrannizing over all with the utmost avarice, licentiousness, and cruelty, he was assassinated in the palace, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, in the third year, tenth month, and eighth day of his reign.
XIII. After him reigned Claudius, the uncle of Caligula, and son of that Drusus who has a monument at Moguntiacum, whose grandson Caligula also was. His reign was of no striking character; he acted, in many respects, with gentleness and moderation, in some with cruelty and folly. He made war upon Britain, which no Roman since Julius Caesar had visited; and, having reduced it through the agency of Cnaeus Sentius and Aulus Plautius, illustrious and noble men, he celebrated a magnificent triumph. Certain islands also, called the Orcades, situated in the ocean, beyond Britain, he added to the Roman empire, and gave his son the name of Britannicus. So condescending, too, was he towards some of his friends, that he even attended Plautius, a man of noble birth, who had obtained many signal successes in the expedition to Britain, in his triumph, and walked at his left hand when he went up to the Capitol. He lived to the age of sixty-four, and reigned fourteen years; and after his death was consecrated and deified.
To him succeeded NERO, who greatly resembled his uncle Caligula, and both disgraced and weakened the Roman empire; he indulged in such extraordinary luxury and extravagance, that, after the example of Caius Caligula, he even bathed in hot and cold perfumes, and fished with golden nets, which he drew up with cords of purple silk. He put to death a very great number of the senate. To all good men he was an enemy. At last he exposed himself in so disgraceful a manner, that he danced and sung upon the stage in the dress of a harp-player and tragedian. He was guilty of many murders, his brother, wife, and mother, being put to death by him. He set on fire the city of Rome, that he might enjoy the sight of a spectacle such as Troy formerly presented when taken and burned.
In military affairs he attempted nothing. Britain he almost lost; for two of its most noble towns were taken and levelled to the ground under his reign. The Parthian's took from him Armenia, and compelled the Roman legions to pass under the yoke. Two provinces however were formed under him; Pontus Polemoniacus, by the concession of King Polemon; and the Cottian Alps, on the death of King Cottius.
XV. When, having become detestable by such conduct to the city of Rome, and being deserted at the same time by every one, and declared an enemy by the senate, he was sought for to be led to punishment (the punishment being, that he should be dragged naked through the streets, with a fork placed under his head, be beaten to death with rods, and then hurled from the Tarpeian rock), he fled from the palace, and killed himself in a suburban villa of one of his freed-men, between the Salarian and Nomentane roads, at the fourth milestone from the city. He built those hot baths at Rome, which were formerly called the Neronian, but now the Alexandrian. He died in the thirty-second year of his age, and the fourteenth year of his reign; and in him all the family of Augustus became extinct.
XVI. To Nero succeeded Servius Galba, a senator of a very ancient and noble family, elected emperor when in his seventy-third year by the Hispanics and Gauls, and soon after readily acknowledged by the whole army; for his life, though but that of a private person, had been distinguished by many military and civil exploits, having been often consul, often proconsul, and frequently general in most important wars. His reign was short, but had a promising commencement, except that he seemed to incline too much to severity. He was killed however by the treachery of Otho, in the seventh month of his reign, in the forum at Rome, and buried in his gardens, which are situated in the Aurelian way, not far from the city.
XVII. Otho, after Galba was killed, took possession of the government, a man of a nobler descent on the mother's than the father's side, but obscure on neither. In private life he was effeminate, and an intimate of Nero; in his government he could give no evidence of his disposition; for Vitellius, about the same time that Otho had slain Galba, having been also chosen emperor by the German armies, Otho, having commenced a war against him, and having sustained a defeat in a slight skirmish near Bebriacum in Italy, voluntarily, though he had still powerful forces remaining, put an end to his life, in spite of the entreaties of his soldiers that he would not so soon despair of the issue of the war; saying, "that he was not of sufficient importance that a civil war should be raised on his account." He perished thus voluntarily in the thirty-eighth year of his age, and on the ninety-fifth day of his reign.
XVIII. Vitellius next obtained the imperial dignity, of a family rather honourable than noble, for his father was not of very high birth, though he had filled three regular consulships. He reigned most disgracefully, being distinguished by the greatest cruelty, but especially by gluttony and voraciousness, since he is reported to have often feasted four or five times a day. A most remarkable supper at least has been recorded, which his brother Vitellius set before him, and in which, besides other expensive dainties, two thousand fishes and seven thousand birds are said to have been placed on the table.
Being anxious to resemble Nero, and aiming so openly at this that he even paid respect to his remains, which had been meanly buried, he was slain by the generals of the emperor Vespasian, Vitellius having previously put to death Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, and burned his corpse at the same time with the Capitol. When killed, he was dragged naked, with great ignominy, through the public streets of the city, with his hair erect, and his head raised by means of a sword placed under his chin, and pelted with dung on the face and breast by all that came in the way; at last his throat was cut, and he was thrown into the Tiber, and had not even the common rites of burial. He perished in the fifty-seventh year of his age, in the eighth month and first day of his reign.
XIX. To him succeeded Vespasian, who had been chosen emperor in Palestine, a prince indeed of obscure birth, but worthy to be compared with the best emperors, and in private life greatly distinguished, as he had been sent by Claudius into Germania, and afterwards into Britain, and had contended two and thirty times with the enemy; he had also added to the Roman empire two very powerful nations, twenty towns, and the Isle of Wight on the coast of Britain. At Rome he acted with the greatest forbearance during his government; though he was rather too eager after money; not however that he deprived any one of it unjustly, and even when he had collected it with the greatest diligence and anxiety, he was in the habit of distributing it most readily, especially to the indigent; nor was the liberality of any prince before him greater or more judicious: he was also of a most mild and amiable disposition, insomuch that he never willingly inflicted a severer penalty than banishment, even on persons convicted of treason against himself.
Under this prince Judaea was added to the Roman empire, and Jerusalem, the most celebrated city of Palestine. He also reduced to the form of provinces Achaia, Lycia, Rhodes, Byzantium, Samos, which had been free till this period; together with Thrace, Cilicia, and Comagena, which had been governed by their respective kings in alliance with the Romans.
XX. Offences and animosities he never bore in mind; reproaches uttered against himself by lawyers and philosophers he bore with indulgence, but was a strenuous enforcer of military discipline. He triumphed, together with his son Titus, on account of the taking of Jerusalem.
After having thus become an object of love and favour with the senate and the people, and indeed with all men, he died of a diarrhoea, in his own villa in the Sabine country, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, the ninth year and seventh day of his reign; and was enrolled among the gods.
To him succeeded his son Titus, who was also called Vespasian, a man remarkable for every species of virtue, so that he was styled the favourite and delight of mankind. He was extremely eloquent, warlike, and temperate; he pleaded causes in Latin, and composed poems and tragedies in Greek. At the siege of Jerusalem, while serving under his father, he killed twelve of the besieged with wounds from as many arrows. During his government at Rome, such was his lenity towards the citizens, that he did not punish a single person; and even some that were convicted of a conspiracy against himself he released, and treated them on the same terms of intimacy as before. Such was his good-nature and generosity, that he never refused any thing to any one, and being blamed by his friends on this account, replied, that no one ought to leave an emperor in discontent. Hence, having recollected once at supper, that he had conferred no obligation on any one that day, he exclaimed: "O, my friends! I have lost this day!" He built an amphitheatre at Rome, and slaughtered five thousand wild beasts at the dedication of it.
XXII. While beloved for such conduct, with extraordinary affection, he fell ill and died in the same villa as his father, two years, eight months, and twenty days after he became emperor, and in the forty-second year of his age. So great was the public lamentation on his death, that all mourned as for a loss in their own families. The senate, having received intelligence of his death about the evening, hurried into the senate-house in the night, and heaped upon him after his death even more expressions of good will and commendation, than they had uttered when he was alive and present among them. He was enrolled among the gods.
XXIII. Domitian next received the imperial dignity, the younger brother of Titus, but more like Nero, or Caligula, or Tiberius, than his father or brother. In the commencement however of his reign he used his power with moderation; but, soon proceeding to the greatest excesses of licentiousness, rage, cruelty, and avarice, he provoked such universal detestation, that he effaced the remembrance of his father's and his brother's merits. He put to death the most distinguished of the senate. He was the first that required to be addressed as Lord and God; and he suffered no statue to be erected to him in the Capitol except of gold or silver. He put his own cousins to death. His pride also was execrable.
He made four expeditions, one against the Sarmatians, another against the Catti, and two against the Dacians. On account of the Dacians and the Catti he celebrated a double triumph; for the Sarmatians, he assumed only the laurel. He suffered many disasters however in these wars, for in Sarmatia one of his legions was cut off together with its captain, and by the Dacians Oppius Sabinus, a person of consular dignity, and Cornelius Fuscus, the prefect of the praetorian cohort, were slain, with numerous armies. At Rome he also erected several public buildings, among which were the Capitol, the Forum Transitorium, the Odeum, the Porticus Divorum, the temples of Isis and Serapis, and the Stadium.
But, becoming universally odious on account of his crimes, he was put to death by a conspiracy of his own servants within the palace, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and the fifteenth of his reign. His corpse was carried out with extreme insult by common bearers, and buried ignominiously.
BOOK VIII.
I. In the eight hundred and fiftieth year from the foundation of the city, in the consulship of Vetus and Valens, the empire was restored to a most prosperous condition, being committed, with great good fortune, to the rule of meritorious princes. To Domitian, a most murderous tyrant, succeeded Nerva, a man of moderation and activity in private life, and of noble descent, though not of the very highest rank. He was made emperor at an advanced age, Petronius Secundus, the praefect of the praetorian guards, and Parthenius, one of the assassins of Domitian, giving him their support, and conducted himself with great justice and public spirit. He provided for the good of the state by a divine foresight, in his adoption of Trajan. He died at Rome, after a reign of one year, four months, and eight days, in the seventy-second year of his age, and was enrolled among the gods.
II. To him succeeded Ulpius Crinitus Trajanus, born at Italica in Hispania, of a family rather ancient than eminent for his father was the first consul in it. He was chosen emperor at Agrippina, a city of Gaul. He exercised the government in such a manner, that he is deservedly preferred to all the other emperors. He was a man of extraordinary skill in managing affairs of state, and of remarkable courage. The limits of the Roman empire, which, since the reign of Augustus, had been rather defended than honourably enlarged, he extended far and wide. He rebuilt some cities in Germania; he subdued Dacia by the overthrow of Decebalus, and formed a province beyond the Danube, in that territory which the Thaiphali, Victoali, and Theruingi now occupy. This province was a thousand miles in circumference.
III. He recovered Armenia, which the Parthians had seized, putting to death Parthamasires who held the government of it. He gave a king to the Albani. He received into alliance the king of the Iberians, Sarmatians, Bosporani, Arabians, Osdroeni, and Colchians. He obtained the mastery over the Cordueni and Marcomedi, as well as over Anthemusia, an extensive region of Persia. He conquered and kept possession of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Babylon, and the country of the Messenii. He advanced as far as the boundaries of India, and the Red Sea, where he formed three provinces, Armenia, Assyria, and Mesopotamia, including the tribes which border on Madena. He afterwards, too, reduced Arabia into the form of a province. He also fitted out a fleet for the Red Sea, that he might use it to lay waste the coasts of India.
IV. Yet he went beyond his glory in war, in ability and judgment as a ruler, conducting himself as an equal towards all, going often to his friends as a visitor, either when they were ill, or when they were celebrating feast days, and entertaining them in his turn at banquets where there was no distinction of rank, and sitting frequently with them in their chariots; doing nothing unjust towards any of the senators, nor being guilty of any dishonesty to fill his treasury; exercising liberality to all, enriching with offices of trust, publicly and privately, every body whom he had known even with the least familiarity; building towns throughout the world, granting many immunities to states, and doing every thing with gentleness and kindness; so that during his whole reign, there was but one senator condemned, and he was sentenced by the senate without Trajan's knowledge. Hence, being regarded throughout the world as next to a god, he deservedly obtained the highest veneration both living and dead.
V. Among other sayings of his, the following remarkable one is mentioned. When his friends found fault with him, for being too courteous to every body, he replied, that "he was such an emperor to his subjects, as he had wished, when a subject, that emperors should be to him."
After having gained the greatest glory both in the field and at home, he was cut off, as he was returning from Persia, by a diarrhoea, at Seleucia in Isauria. He died in the sixty-third year, ninth month, and fourth day of his age, and in the nineteenth year, sixth month, and fifteenth day of his reign. He was enrolled among the gods, and was the only one of all the emperors that was buried within the city. His bones, contained in a golden urn, lie in the forum which he himself built, under a pillar whose height is a hundred and forty-four feet. So much respect has been paid to his memory, that, even to our own times, they shout in acclamations to the emperors, "More fortunate than Augustus, better than Trajan!" So much has the fame of his goodness prevailed, that it affords ground for most noble illustration in the hands either of such as flatter, or of such as praise with sincerity.
VI. After the death of Trajan, Aelius Hadrian was made emperor, not from any wish to that effect having been expressed by Trajan himself, but through the influence of Plotina, Trajan's wife; for Trajan in his life-time had refused to adopt him, though he was the son of his cousin. He also was born at Italica in Hispania. Envying Trajan's glory, he immediately gave up three of the provinces which Trajan had added to the empire, withdrawing the armies from Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and deciding that the Euphrates should be the boundary of the empire. When he was proceeding, to act similarly with regard to Dacia, his friends dissuaded him, lest many Roman citizens should be left in the hands of the barbarians, because Trajan, after he had subdued Dacia, had transplanted thither an infinite number of men from the whole Roman world, to people the country and the cities; as the land had been exhausted of inhabitants in the long war maintained by Decebalus.
VII. He enjoyed peace, however, through the whole course of his reign; the only war that he had, he committed to the conduct of a governor of a province. He went about through the Roman empire, and founded many edifices. He spoke with great eloquence in the Latin language, and was very learned in the Greek. He had no great reputation for clemency, but was very attentive to the state of the treasury and the discipline of the soldiers. He died in Compania, more than sixty years old, in the twenty-first year, tenth month, and twenty-ninth day of his reign. The senate was unwilling to allow him divine honours; but his successor Titus Aurelius Fulvius Antonius, earnestly insisting on it, carried his point, though all the senators were openly opposed to him.
VIII. To Hadrian, then, succeeded Titus Antoninus Fulvius Boionius, who was also named Pius, sprung from an eminent, though not very ancient, family: a man of high character, who may justly be compared to Numa Pompilius, as Trajan may be paralleled with Romulus. He lived, before he came to the throne, in great honour, but in greater still during his reign. He was cruel to none, but indulgent to all. His reputation in military affairs was but moderate; he studied rather to defend the provinces than to enlarge them. He sought out the most just men to fill political offices. He paid respect to the good; for the bad he showed dislike without treating them with harshness. By kings in alliance with Rome he was not less venerated than feared, so that many nations among the barbarians, laying aside their arms, referred their controversies and disputes to him, and submitted to his decision. He was very rich before he began to reign, but diminished his wealth by pay to the soldiers and bounties to his friends; he left the treasury, however, well stored. It was for his clemency that he was surnamed Pius. He died at his country seat called Lorium, twelve miles from the city, in the seventy-third year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign. He was enrolled among the gods, and was deservedly an object of veneration.
IX. After him reigned Marcus Antoninus Verus, a man indisputably of noble birth; for his descent, on the father's side, was from Numa Pompilius, and on the mother's from a king of the Sallentines [in Apulia, Italy], and jointly with him reigned Lucius Antoninus Verus. Then it was that the commonwealth of Rome was first subject to two sovereigns, ruling with equal power, when, till their days, it had always had but one emperor at a time.
X. These two were connected both by relationship and affinity; for Verus Antoninus had married the daughter of Marcus Antoninus; and Marcus Antoninus was the son-in-law of Antoninus Pius, having married Galeria Faustina the younger, his own cousin. They carried on a war against the Parthians, who then rebelled for the first time since their subjugation by Trajan. Verus Antoninus went out to conduct that war, and, remaining at Antioch and about Armenia, effected many important achievements by the agency of his generals; he took Seleucia, the most eminent city of Assyria, with forty thousand prisoners; he brought off materials for a triumph over the Parthians, and celebrated it in conjunction with his brother, who was also his father-in-law. He died in Venetia, as he was going from the city of Concordia to Altinum. While he was sitting in his chariot with his brother, he was suddenly struck with a rush of blood, a disease which the Greeks call apoplexis. He was a man who had little control over his passions, but who never ventured to do anything outrageous, from respect for his brother. After his death, which took place in the eleventh year of his reign, he was enrolled among the gods.
XI. After him Marcus Antoninus held the government alone, a man whom any one may more easily admire than sufficiently commend. He was, from his earliest years, of a most tranquil disposition; so that even in his infancy he changed countenance neither for joy nor for sorrow. He was devoted to the Stoic philosophy, and was himself a philosopher, not only in his way of life, but in learning. He was the object of so much admiration, while yet a youth, that Hadrian intended to make him his successor; but having adopted Titus Antoninus Pius, he wished Marcus to become Titus's son-in-law, that he might by that means come to the throne.
XII. He was trained in philosophy by Apollonius of Chalcedon; in the study of the Greek language by Sextus of Chseronea, the grandson of Plutarch; while the eminent orator Fronto instructed him in Latin literature. He conducted himself towards all men at Rome as if he had been their equal, being moved to no arrogance by his elevation to empire. He exercised the most prompt liberality, and managed the provinces with the utmost kindness and indulgence. Under his rule affairs were successfully conducted against the Germans. He himself carried on one war with the Marcomanni, but this was greater than any in the memory of man, so that it is compared to the Punic wars; for it became so much the more formidable, as whole armies had been lost; since, under the emperor, after the victory over the Parthians, there occurred so destructive a pestilence, that at Rome, and throughout Italy and the provinces, the greater part of the inhabitants, and almost all the troops, sunk under the disease.
XIII. Having persevered, therefore, with the greatest labour and patience, for three whole years at Carnuntum, he brought the Marcomannic war to an end; a war which the Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Suevi, and all the barbarians in that quarter, had joined with the Marcomanui in raising; he killed several thousand men, and, having delivered the Pannonians from slavery, triumphed a second time at Rome with his son Commodus Antoninus, whom he had previously made Caesar. As he had no money to give his soldiers, in consequence of the treasury having been exhausted for the support of the war, and as he was unwilling to lay any tax on the provinces or the senate, he sold off all his imperial furniture and decorations, by an auction held in the forum of the emperor Trajan, consisting of vessels of gold, cups of crystal and murrha, silk garments belonging to his wife and himself, embroidered with gold, and numbers of jewelled ornaments. This sale was continued through two successive months, and a great quantity of money was raised from it. After his victory, however, he gave back the money to such of the purchasers as were willing to restore what they had bought, but was by no means troublesome to any one who preferred to keep their purchases.
XIV. He allowed the more eminent men to give entertainments with the same magnificence, and the same number of attendants, as himself. In the display of games after his victory, he was so munificent, that he is said to have exhibited a hundred lions at once. Having, then, rendered the state happy, both by his excellent management and gentleness of disposition, he died in the eighteenth year of his reign and the sixty-first of his life, and was enrolled among the gods, all unanimously voting that such honour should be paid him.
XV. His successor, Lucius Antoninus Commodus, had no resemblance to his father, except that he fought successfully the Germans. He endeavoured to alter the name of the month of September to his own, so that it should he called Commodus. But he was corrupted with luxury and licentiousness. He often fought, with gladiator's arms, in the fencing school, and afterwards with men of that class in the amphitheatre. He died so sudden a death, that he was thought to have been strangled or despatched by poison, after he had reigned twelve years and eight months after his father, and in the midst of such execration from all men, that even after his death he was styled "the enemy of the human race."
XVI. To him succeeded Pertinax, at a very advanced age, having reached his seventieth year; he was appointed to be emperor by a decree of the senate, when he was holding the office of prefect of the city. He was killed in a mutiny of the praetorian soldiers, by the villany of Julianus, on the eightieth day of his reign.
XVII. After his death Salvius Julianus seized the government, a man of noble birth, and eminently skilled in the law; he was the grandson of that Salvius Julianus who composed the perpetual edict in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. He was defeated by Severus at the Milvian bridge, and killed in the palace. He lived only eight months after he began to reign.
XVIII. Septimius Severus then assumed the government of the Roman empire; a native of Africa, born in the province of Tripolis, and town of Leptis. He was the only African, in all the time before or after him, that became emperor. He was first praefect of the treasury, afterwards military tribune, and then rose, through several offices and posts of honour, to the government of the whole state. He had an inclination to be called Pertinax, in honour of that Pertinax who had been killed by Julian. He was very parsimonious, and naturally cruel. He conducted many wars, and with success. He killed Pescennius Niger, who had raised a rebellion in Egypt and Syria, at Cyzicus. He overcame the Parthians, the interior Arabians, and the Adiabeni. The Arabians he so effectually reduced, that he made them a province; hence he was called Parthicus, Arabicus, and Adiabenicus. He rebuilt many edifices throughout the whole Roman world. In his reign, too, Clodius Albinus, who had been an accomplice of Julianus in killing Pertinax, set himself up for Caesar in Gaul, and was overthrown and killed at Lyons.
XIX. Severus, in addition to his glory in war, was also distinguished in the pursuits of peace, being not only accomplished in literature, but having acquired a complete knowledge of philosophy. The last war that he had was in Britain; and that he might preserve, with all possible security, the provinces which he had acquired, he built a rampart of thirty-two miles long from one sea to the other. He died at an advanced age at York, in the eighteenth year and fourth month of his reign, and was honoured with the title of god. He left his two sons, Bassianus and Geta, to be his successors, but desired that the name of Antoninus should be given by the senate to Bassianus only, who, accordingly, was named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Bassianus, and was his father's successor. As for Geta, he was declared a public enemy, and soon after put to death.
XX. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Bassianus, then, who was also called Caracalla, was a man very much of his father's disposition, but somewhat more rough and vindictive. He erected a bath of excellent construction at Rome, which is called the bath of Antoninus, but did nothing else worthy of record. He wanted ability to control his passions; for he married his own step-mother Julia. He died in Osdroene, near Edessa, while he was planning an expedition against the Parthians, in the sixth year and second month of his reign, having scarcely passed the forty-second year of his age. He was buried with a public funeral.
XXI. Opilius Macrinus, who was captain of the praetorian guards, and his son Diadumenus, were then made emperors, but did nothing memorable, in consequence of the shortness of their reign; for it lasted but a year and two months. They were both killed together in a mutiny of the soldiers.
XXII. After these, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was made emperor, who was thought to be the son of Antoninus Caracalla. He was however priest of the temple of Heliogabalus. Having come to Rome with high expectations on the part of the army and the senate, he polluted himself with every kind of impurity. He led a life of the utmost shamelessness and obscenity, and was killed at the end of two years and eight months in a tumult of the soldiers. His mother Soëmia, a native of Syria, perished with him.
XXIII. To him succeeded Aurelius Alexander, a very young man, who was named Caesar by the army, and Augustus by the senate. Having undertaken a war with the Persians, he defeated their king Xerxes with great glory. He enforced military discipline with much severity, and disbanded whole legions that raised a disturbance. He had for his adviser, or secretary of state, Ulpian, the compiler of the law. He was also in great favour at Rome. He lost his life in Gaul, in a tumult of the soldiery, in the thirteenth year and eighth day of his reign. He testified great affection for his mother Mammaea.
BOOK IX.
I. After him Maximin came to the throne, the first emperor that was elected from the army by the will of the soldiers, no approbation of the senate being given, and he himself not being a senator. After conducting a successful war against the Germans, and being on that account saluted Imperator by his troops, he was slain by Pupienus at Aquileia, together with his son who was then but a boy, his soldiers forsaking him. He had reigned, with his son, three years and a few days.
II. There were then three emperors at the same time, Pupienus, Balbinus, and Gordian, the two former of very obscure origin, the last of noble birth; for the elder Gordian, his father, had been chosen prince by the consent of the soldiery in the reign of Maximin, when he held the proconsulship of Africa. When Balbinus and Pupienus came to Rome, they were killed in the palace; and the empire was given to Gordian alone.
After Gordian, when quite a boy, had married Tranquillina at Rome, he opened the temple of Janus, and, setting out for the east, made war upon the Parthians, who were then proceeding to make an irruption. This war he soon conducted with success, and made havoc of the Persians in great battles. As he was returning, he was killed, not far from the Roman boundaries, by the treachery of Philip who reigned after him. The Roman soldiers raised a monument for him, twenty miles from Circessus, which is now a fortress of the Romans, overlooking the Euphrates. His relics they brought to Rome, and gave him the title of god.
III. When Gordian was killed, the two Philips, father and son, seized on the government, and, having brought off the army safe, set out from Syria for Italy. In their reign the thousandth year of the city of Rome was celebrated with games and spectacles of vast magnificence. Soon after, both of them were put to death by the soldiery; the elder Philip at Verona, the younger at Rome. They reigned but five years. They were however ranked among the gods.
IV. After these, Decius, a native of Lower Pannonia, born at Budalia, assumed the government. He suppressed a civil war which had been raised in Gaul. He created his son Caesar. He built a bath at Rome. When he and his son had reigned two years, they were both killed in the country of the Barbarians, and enrolled among the gods.
V. Immediately after, Gallus, Hostilian, and Volusianus the son of Gallus, were created emperors. In their reign Aemilianus attempted an insurrection in Moesia; and both of them, setting out to stop his progress, were slain at Interamna, when they had not quite completed a reign of two years. They did nothing of any account. Their reign was remarkable only for a pestilence, and for other diseases and afflictions.
VI. Aemilianus was little distinguished by birth, and less distinguished by his reign, in the third month of which he was cut off.
VII. Licinius Valerian, who was then employed in Rhaetia and Noricum, was next made general by the army, and soon after emperor. Gallienus also received the title of Caesar from the senate at Rome. The reign of these princes was injurious, and almost fatal, to the Roman name, either through their ill-fortune or want of energy. The Germans advanced as far as Ravenna. Valerian, while he was occupied in a war in Mesopotamia, was overthrown by Sapor king of Persia, and being soon after made prisoner, grew old in ignominious slavery among the Parthians.
VIII. Gallienus, who was made emperor when quite a young man, exercised his power at first happily, afterwards fairly, and at last mischievously. In his youth he performed many gallant acts in Gaul and Illyricum, killing Ingenuus, who had assumed the purple, at Mursa, and Regalianus. He was then for a long time quiet and gentle; afterwards, abandoning himself to all manner of licentiousness, he relaxed the reins of government with disgraceful inactivity and carelesness. The Alemanni, having laid waste Gaul, penetrated into Italy. Dacia, which had been added to the empire beyond the Danube, was lost. Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, Asia, were devastated by the Goths. Pannonia was depopulated by the Sarmatians and Quadi. The Germans made their way as far as Hispania, and took the noble city of Tarraco. The Parthians, after taking possession of Mesopotamia, began to bring Syria under their power.
IX. When affairs were in this desperate condition, and the Roman empire almost ruined, Postumus, a man of very obscure birth, assumed the purple in Gaul, and held the government with such ability for ten years, that he recruited the provinces, which had been almost ruined, by his great energy and judgment; but he was killed in a mutiny of the army, because he would not deliver up Moguntiacum, which had rebelled against him, to be plundered by the soldiers, at the time when Lucius Aelianus was endeavouring to effect a change of government.
After him Marius, a contemptible mechanic, assumed the purple, and was killed two days after. Victorinus then took on himself the government of Gaul; a man of great energy; but, as he was abandoned to excessive licentiousness, and corrupted other men's wives, he was assassinated at Agrippina, in the second year of his reign, one of his secretaries having contrived a plot against him.
X. To him succeeded Tetricus, a senator, who, when he was governing Aquitania with the title of prefect, was chosen emperor in his absence, and assumed the purple at Bourdeaux. He had to endure many insurrections among the soldiery. But while these transactions were passing in Gaul, the Persians, in the east, were overthrown by Odenathus, who, having defended Syria and recovered Mesopotamia, penetrated into the country as far as Ctesiphon.
XI. Thus, while Gallienus abandoned the government, the Roman empire was saved in the west by Posthumus, and in the east by Odenathus. Meanwhile Gallienus was killed at Milan, together with his brother, in the ninth year of his reign, and Claudius succeeded him, being chosen by the soldiers, and declared emperor by the senate. Claudius defeated the Goths, who were laying waste Illyricum and Macedonia, in a great battle. He was a frugal and modest man, strictly observant of justice, and well qualified for governing the empire. He was however carried off by disease within two years after he began to reign, and had the title of a god. The senate honoured him with extraordinary distinctions, insomuch that a golden shield was hung up to him in the senate house, and a golden statue erected to him in the Capitol.
XII. After him Quintillus, the brother of Claudius, was elected emperor by agreement among the soldiers, a man of singular moderation and aptitude for governing, comparable, or perhaps superior, to his brother. He received the title of emperor with the consent of the senate, and was killed on the seventeenth day of his reign.
XIII. After his death Aurelian succeeded to the throne. He was born in Dacia Ripensis, and was a man of ability in war, but of an ungovernable temper, and too much inclined to cruelty. He defeated the Goths with great vigour, and extended the Roman empire, by various successes in the field, to its former limits. He overthrew Tetricus at Catalauni in Gaul, Tetricus himself, indeed, betraying his own army, whose constant mutinies he was unable to bear; and he had even by secret letters entreated Aurelian to march towards him, using, among other solicitations, the verse of Virgil:—
Eripe me his, invicte, malis.He also took prisoner Zenobia, who, having killed her husband Odenathus, was mistress of the east, in a battle of no great importance near Antioch, and, entering Rome, celebrated a magnificent triumph, as recoverer of the east and the west, Tetricus and Zenobia going before his chariot. This Tetricus was afterwards governor of Lucania, and lived long after he was divested of the purple. Zenobia left descendants, who still live at Rome.
Unconquer'd hero, free me from these ills.
XIV. In his reign, the people of the mint raised a rebellion in the city, after having adulterated the money, and put to death Felicissimus the commissioner of the treasury. Aurelian suppressed them with the utmost severity; several noblemen he condemned to death. He was indeed cruel and sanguinary, and rather an emperor necessary for the times in some respects than an amiable one in any. He was always severe, and put to death even the son of his own sister. He was however a reformer, in a great degree, of military discipline and dissoluteness of manners.
XV. He surrounded the city of Rome with stronger walls. He built a temple to the Sun, in which he put a vast quantity of gold and precious stones. The province of Dacia, which Trajan had formed beyond the Danube, he gave up, despairing, after all Illyricum and Moesia had been depopulated, of being able to retain it. The Roman citizens, removed from the town and lands of Dacia, he settled in the interior of Moesia, calling that Dacia which now divides the two Moesiae, and which is on the right hand of the Danube as it runs to the sea, whereas Dacia was previously on the left. He was killed through the treachery of one of his own slaves, who carried to certain military men, the friends of Aurelian, their own names entered upon a list, having counterfeited the hand of Aurelian, and making it appear that he intended to put them to death. That he might be prevented from doing so, he was assassinated by them in the middle of the road, the old paved way, which is between Constantinople and Heraclea. The place is called Caenophrurium. But his death was not unavenged. He also gained the honour of being enrolled among the gods. He reigned five years and six months.
XVI. After him Tacitus succeeded to the throne; a man of excellent morals, and well qualified to govern the empire. He was unable, however, to show the world anything remarkable, being cut off by death in the sixth mouth of his reign. Florianus, who succeeded Tacitus, was on the throne only two mouths and twenty days, and did nothing worthy of mention.
XVII. Probus then succeeded to the government, a man rendered illustrious by the distinction which he obtained in war. He recovered Gaul, which had been seized by the Barbarians, by remarkable successes in the field. He also suppressed, in several battles, some persons that attempted to seize the throne, as Saturninus in the east, and Proculus and Bonosus at Agrippina. He allowed the Gauls and Cannonians to have vineyards. By obliging his soldiers to work, too, he planted vineyards on Mount Alma in Sirmium, and on Mount Aureus in Upper Moesia, and left them to the people of the provinces to cultivate. After he had gone through a great number of wars, and had at last obtained peace, he observed, that "in a short time soldiers would not be wanted." He was a man of spirit, activity, and justice, equalling Aurelian in military glory, and surpassing him in affability of manners. He was killed, however, at Sirmium, in an iron turret, during an insurrection of the soldiery. He reigned six years and four months.
XVIII. After the death of Probus, Carus was created emperor, a native of Narbo in Gaul, who immediately made his sons, Carinus and Numerianus, Caesars, and reigned, in conjunction with them, two years. News being brought, while he was engaged in a war with the Sarmatians, of an insurrection among the Persians, he set out for the east, and achieved some noble exploits against that people; he routed them in the field, and took Seleucia and Ctesiphon, their noblest cities, but, while he was encamped on the Tigris, he was killed by lightning. His son Numerianus, too, whom he had taken with him to Persia, a young man of very great ability, while, from being affected with a disease in his eyes, he was carried in a litter, was cut off by a plot of which Aper, his father-in-law, was the promoter; and his death, though attempted craftily to be concealed until Aper could seize the throne, was made known by the odour of his dead body; for the soldiers, who attended him, being struck by the smell, and opening the curtains of his litter, discovered his death some days after it had taken place.
XIX. In the meantime Carinus, whom Carus, when he set out to the war with Parthia, had left, with the authority of Caesar, to command in Illyricum, Gaul, and Italy, disgraced himself by all manner of crimes; he put to death many innocent persons on false accusations, formed illicit connexions with the wives of noblemen, and wrought the ruin of several of his school-fellows, who happened to have offended him at school by some slight provocation. Incurring the hatred of all men. by such proceedings, he not long after met with deserved punishment.
The victorious army, on returning from Persia, as they had lost their emperor Carus by lightning, and the Caesar Numerianus by a plot, conferred the imperial dignity on Diocletian, a native of Dalmatia, of such extremely obscure birth, that he is said by most writers to have been the son of a clerk, but by some to have been a freedman of a senator named Anulinus.
XX. Diocletian, in the first assembly of the army that was held, took an oath that Numerian was not killed by any treachery on his part; and while Aper, who had laid the plot for Numerian's life, was standing by, he was killed, in the sight of the army, with a sword by the hand of Diocletian. He soon after overthrew Carinus, who was living under the utmost hatred and detestation, in a great battle at Margum, Carinus being betrayed by his own troops, for though he had a greater number of men than the enemy, he was altogether abandoned by them between Viminacium and mount Aureus. He thus became master of the Roman empire; and when the peasants in Gaul made an insurrection, giving their faction the name of Bagaudae, and having for leaders Amandus and Aelianus, he despatched Maximian Herculius, with the authority of Caesar, to suppress them. Maximian, in a few battles of little importance, subdued the rustic multitude, and restored peace to Gaul.
XXI. During this period, Carausius, who, though of very mean birth, had gained extraordinary reputation by a course of active service in war, having received a commission in his post at Bononia, to clear the sea, which the Franks and Saxons infested, along the coast of Belgica and Armorica, and having captured numbers of the barbarians on several occasions, but having never given back the entire booty to the people of the province or sent it to the emperors, and there being a suspicion, in consequence, that the barbarians were intentionally allowed by him to congregate there, that he might seize them and their booty as they passed, and by that means enrich himself, assumed, on being sentenced by Maximian to be put to death, the imperial purple, and took on him the government of Britain.
XXII. While disorder thus prevailed throughout the world, while Carausius was taking arms in Britain and Achilleus in Egypt, while the Quinquegentiani were harassing Africa, and Narseus was making war upon the east, Diocletian promoted Maximian Herculius from the dignity of Caesar to that "of emperor, and created Constantius and Maximian Galerius Caesars, of whom Constantius is said to have been the grand-nephew of Claudius by a daughter, and Maximian Galerius to have been born in Dacia not far from Sardica. That he might also unite them by affinity, Constantius married Theodora the step-daughter of Herculius, by whom he had afterwards six children, brothers to Constantine; while Galerius married Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian; both being obliged to divorce the wives that they had before. With Carausius, however, as hostilities were found vain against a man eminently skilled in war, a peace was at last arranged. At the end of seven years, Allectus, one of his supporters, put him to death, and held Britain himself for three years subsequently, but was cut off by the efforts of Asclepiodotus, praefect of the praetorian guard.
XXIII. At the same period a battle was fought by Constantius Caesar in Gaul, at Lingonae, where he experienced both good and had fortune in one day; for though he was driven into the city by a sudden onset of the barbarians, with such haste and precipitation that after the gates were shut he was drawn up the wall by ropes, yet, when his army came up, after the lapse of scarcely six hours, he cut to pieces about sixty thousand of the Alemanni. Maximian the emperor, too, brought the war to an end in Africa, by subduing the Quinquegentiani, and compelling them to make peace. Diocletian, meanwhile, besieging Achilleus in Alexandria, obliged him to surrender about eight months after, and put him. to death. He used his victory, indeed, cruelly, and distressed all Egypt with severe proscriptions and massacres. Yet at the same time he made many judicious arrangements and regulations, which continue to our own days.
XXIV. Galerius Maximian, in acting against Narseus, fought, on the first occasion, a battle far from successful, meeting him between Callinicus and Carrae, and engaging in the combat rather with rashness than want of courage; for he contended with a small army against a very numerous enemy. Being in consequence defeated, and going to join Diocletian, he was received by him, when he met him on the road, with such extreme haughtiness, that he is said to have run by his chariot for several miles in his scarlet robes.
XXV. But having soon after collected forces in Illyricum and Moesia, he fought a second time with Narseus (the grandfather of Hormisdas and Sapor), in Greater Armenia, with extraordinary success, and with no less caution and spirit, for he undertook, with one or two of the cavalry, the office of a speculator. After putting Narseus to flight, he captured his wives, sisters, and children, with a vast number of the Persian nobility besides, and a great quantity of treasure; the king himself he forced to take refuge in the remotest deserts in his dominions. Returning therefore in triumph to Diocletian, who was then encamped with some troops in Mesopotamia, he was welcomed by him with great honour. Subsequently, they conducted several wars both in conjunction and separately, subduing the Carpi and Bastarntae, and defeating the Sarmatians, from which nations he settled a great number of captives in the Roman territories.
XXVI. Diocletian was of a crafty disposition, with much sagacity, and keen penetration. He was willing to gratify his own disposition to cruelty in such a way as to throw the odium upon others; he was however a very active and able prince. He was the first that introduced into the Roman empire a ceremony suited rather to royal usages than to Roman liberty, giving orders that he should be adored, whereas all emperors before him were only saluted. He put ornaments of precious stones on his dress and shoes, when the imperial distinction had previously been only in the purple robe, the rest of the habit being the same as that of other men.
XXVII. But Herculius was undisguisedly cruel, and of a violent temper, and showed his severity of disposition in the sternness of his looks. Gratifying his own inclination, he joined with Diocletian in even the most cruel of his proceedings. But when Diocletian, as age bore heavily upon him, felt himself unable to sustain the government of the empire, he suggested to Herculius that they should both retire into private life, and commit the duty of upholding the state to more vigorous and youthful hands. With this suggestion his colleague reluctantly complied. Both of them, in the same day, exchanged the robe of empire for an ordinary dress, Diocletian at Nicomedia, Herculius at Milan, soon after a magnificent triumph which they celebrated at Rome over several nations, with a noble succession of pictures, and in which the wives, sisters, and children of Narseus were led before their chariots. The one then retired to Salonae, and the other into Lucania.
XXVIII. Diocletian lived to an old age in a private station, at a villa which is not far from Salonae, in honourable retirement, exercising extraordinary philosophy, inasmuch as he alone of all men, since the foundation of the Roman empire, voluntarily returned from so high a dignity to the condition of private life, and to an equality with the other citizens. That happened to him, therefore, which had happened to no one since men were created, that, though he died in a private condition, he was enrolled among the gods.
BOOK X.
I. These emperors, then, having retired from the government of the state, Constantius and Galerius were made emperors; and the Roman world was divided between them in such a manner, that Constantius had Gaul, Italy, and Africa; Galerius Illyricum, Asia, and the East; two Caesars being joined with them. Constantius, however, content with the dignity of emperor, declined the care of governing Africa. He was an excellent man, of extreme benevolence, who studied to increase the resources of the provinces and of private persons, cared but little for the improvement of the public treasury, and used to say that "it was better for the national wealth to be in the hands of individuals than to be laid up in one place of confinement." So moderate was the furniture of his house, too, that if, on holidays, he had to entertain a greater number of friends than ordinary, his dining-rooms were set out with the plate of private persons, borrowed from their several houses. By the Gauls he was not only beloved but venerated, especially because, under his government, they had escaped the suspicious prudence of Diocletian, and the sanguinary rashness of Maximian. He died in Britain, at York, in the thirteenth year of his reign, and was enrolled among the gods.
II. Galerius, a man of excellent moral character, and skilful in military affairs, finding that Italy, by Constantius's permission, was put under his government, created two Caesars, Maximin, whom he appointed over the east, and Severus, to whom he committed Italy. He himself resided in Illyricum. But after the death of Constantius, Constantine, his son by a wife of obscure birth, was made emperor in Britain, and succeeded his father as a most desirable ruler. In the meantime the praetorian guards at Rome, having risen in insurrection, declared Maxentius, the son of Maximian Herculius, who lived in the Villa Publica not far from the city, emperor. At the news of this proceeding, Maximian, filled with hopes of regaining the imperial dignity, which he had not willingly resigned, hurried to Rome from Lucania, (which, on retiring into private life, he had chosen for his place of residence, spending his old age in a most delightful country), and stimulated Diocletian by letters to resume the authority that he had laid down, letters which Diocletian utterly disregarded. Severus Caesar, being despatched to Rome by Galerius to suppress the rising of the guards and Maxentius, arrived there with his army, but, as he was laying siege to the city, was deserted through the treachery of his soldiers.
III. The power of Maxentius was thus increased, and his government established. Severus, taking to flight, was killed at Eavenna. Maximian Herculius, attempting afterwards, in an assembly of the army, to divest his son Maxentius of his power, met with nothing but mutiny and reproaches from the soldiery. He then set out for Gaul, on a planned stratagem, as if he had been driven away by his son, that he might join his son-in-law Constantine, designing, however, if he could find an opportunity, to cut off Constantine, who was ruling in Gaul with great approbation both of the soldiers and the people of the province, having overthrown the Franks and Alemanni with great slaughter, and captured their kings, whom, on exhibiting a magnificent show of games, he exposed to wild beasts. But the plot being made known by Maximian's daughter Fausta, who communicated the design to her husband, Maximian was cut off at Marseilles, whence he was preparing to sail to join his son, and died a well-deserved death; for he was a man inclined to every kind of cruelty and severity, faithless, perverse, and utterly void of consideration for others.
IV. At this time Licinius, a native of Dacia, was made emperor by Galerius, to whom he was known by old companionship, and recommended by his vigorous efforts and services in the war which he had conducted against Narseus. The death of Galerius followed immediately afterwards. The empire was then held by the four new emperors, Constantine and Maxentius, sons of emperors, Licinius and Maximian, sons of undistinguished men. Constantine, however, in the fifth year of his reign, commenced a civil war with Maxentius, routed his forces in several battles, and at last overthrew Maxentius himself (when he was spreading death among the nobility by every possible kind of cruelty) at the Milvian bridge, and made himself master of Italy. Not long after, too, Maximin, after commencing hostilities against Licinius in the east, anticipated the destruction that was falling upon him by an accidental death at Tarsus.
V. Constantine, being a man of great energy, bent upon effecting whatever he had settled in his mind, and aspiring to the sovereignty of the whole world, proceeded to make war on Licinius, although he had formed a connexion with him by marriage, for his sister Constantia was married to Licinius. And first of all be overthrew him, by a sudden attack, at Cibalae in Pannonia, where he was making vast preparations for war; and after becoming master of Dardania, Maesia, and Macedonia, took possession also of several other provinces.
VI. There were then various contests between them, and peace made and broken. At last Licinius, defeated in a battle at Nicomedia by sea and land, surrendered himself, and, in violation of an oath taken by Constantine, was put to death, after being divested of the purple, at Thessalonica.
At this time the Roman empire fell under the sway of one emperor and three Caesars, a state of things which had never existed before; the sons of Constantine ruling over Gaul, the east, and Italy. But the pride of prosperity caused Constantine greatly to depart from his former agreeable mildness of temper. Falling first upon his own relatives, he put to death his son, an excellent man; his sister's son, a youth of amiable disposition; soon afterwards his wife, and subsequently many of his friends.
VII. He was a man, who, in the beginning of his reign, might have been compared to the best princes; in the latter part of it, only to those of a middling character. Innumerable good qualities of mind and body were apparent in him; he was exceedingly ambitious of military glory, and had great success in his wars; a success, however, not more than proportioned to his exertions. After he had terminated the Civil war, he also overthrew the Goths on various occasions, granting them at last peace, and leaving on the minds of the barbarians a strong remembrance of his kindness. He was attached to the arts of peace and to liberal studies, and was ambitious of honourable popularity, which he, indeed, sought by every kind of liberality and obligingness. Though he was slow, from suspicion, to serve some of his friends, yet he was exceedingly generous towards others, neglecting no opportunity to add to their riches and honours.
VIII. He enacted many laws, some good and equitable, but most of them superfluous, and some severe. He was the first that endeavoured to raise the city named after him to such a height as to make it a rival to Rome. As he was preparing for war against the Parthians, who were then disturbing Mesopotamia, he died in the Villa Publica, at Nicomedia, in the thirty-first year of his reign, and the sixty-sixth of his age. His death was foretold by a star with a tail, which shone for a long time, of extraordinary size, and which the Greeks call a 'comet'. He was deservedly enrolled among the gods.
IX. He left for his successors three sons and one nephew, the son of his brother. But Dalmatius Caesar, a man of happy genius, and not unlike his brother, was soon after cut off by a mutiny among the soldiers, Constantius, his cousin, sanctioning the act, rather than commanding it. The officers of Constans also put to death Constantine, when he was making war upon his brother, and had rashly commenced an engagement at Aquileia. Thus the government was left in the hands of two emperors. The rule of Constans was for some time energetic and just, but afterwards, falling into ill-health, and being swayed by ill-designing friends, he indulged in great vices; and, becoming intolerable to the people of the provinces, and unpopular with the soldiery, was killed by a party headed by Magnentius. He died not far from the borders of Hispania, in a fortress named Helena, in the seventeenth year of his reign, and the thirtieth of his age; yet not till he had performed many gallant actions in the field, and had made himself feared by the army through the whole course of his life, though without exercising any extraordinary severity.
X. The fortune of Constantius was different; for he suffered many grievous calamities at the hands of the Persians, his towns being often taken, his walled cities besieged, and his troops cut off. Nor had he a single successful engagement with Sapor, except that, at Singara, when victory might certainly have been his, he lost it, through the irrepressible eagerness of his men, who, contrary to the practice of war, mutinously and foolishly called for battle when the day was declining. After the death of Constans, when Magnentius held the government of Italy, Africa, and Gaul, Illyricum also felt some new commotions, Vetranio being elected to the throne by a combination of the soldiery, whom they made emperor when he was very old and universally popular from the length and success of his service in the field; an upright man, of morality severe as that of the ancients, and of an agreeable unassumingness of manner, but so ignorant of all polite learning, that he did not even acquire the first rudiments of literature until he was old and had become emperor.
XI. But the imperial authority was snatched from Vetranio by Constantius, who stirred up a civil war to avenge his brother's death; Vetranio being compelled, with the consent of the soldiers, and, by a new and extraordinary proceeding, to divest himself of the purple. There was at the same time an insurrection at Rome, Nepotianus, a son of Constantine's sister, endeavouring to secure the throne with the aid of a body of gladiators; but he met with an end such as his savage attempts merited, for he was cut off on the twenty-eighth day of his usurpation by the officers of Magnentius, and paid the penalty of his rashness. His head was carried through the city on a lance; and dreadful proscriptions and massacres of the nobility ensued.
XII. Not long afterwards Magnentius was overthrown in a battle at Mursa, and nearly taken prisoner. Vast forces of the Roman empire were cut off in that struggle, sufficient for any foreign wars, and for procuring many triumphs, and a lasting peace. Soon after, Gallus, his uncle's son, was appointed by Constantius, as Caesar, over the east; and Magnentius, being defeated in several battles, put an end to his life at Lyons, in the third year and seventh month of his reign, as did also his brother at Sens, whom he had sent as Caesar to defend Gaul.
XIII. About this time the Caesar Gallus, after committing many tyrannical acts, was put to death by Constantius. Gallus was a man naturally cruel, and too much inclined to tyranny, if he could but have reigned in his own right Silvanus also, who attempted an insurrection in Gaul, was cut off before the end of thirty days; and Constantius then remained sole ruler and emperor over the Roman dominions.
XIV. He then sent into Gaul, with the authority of Caesar, his cousin Julian, the brother of Gallus, giving him his sister in marriage, at a time when the barbarians had stormed many towns and were besieging others, when there was every where direful devastation, and when the Roman empire was tottering in evident distress. But by Julian, with but a moderate force, vast numbers of the Alemanni were cut off at Strasburg, a city of Gaul; their distinguished king was taken prisoner, and Gaul recovered. Many other honourable achievements, too, were afterwards performed by Julian against the barbarians, the Germans being driven beyond the Rhine, and the Roman empire extended to its former limits.
XV. Not long after, when the German armies were withdrawing from the defence of Gaul, Julian was made emperor by the unanimous consent of the army, and, after the lapse of a year, went to take the government of Illyricum, while Constantius was engaged in the war with Parthia. Constantius, hearing what had occurred, and returning to the civil strife, died on his march between Cilicia and Cappadocia, in the thirty-eighth year of his reign, and the forty-fifth of his age, and was deservedly enrolled among the gods. He was a man of a remarkably tranquil disposition, good-natured, trusting too much to his friends and courtiers, and at last too much in the power of his wives. He conducted himself with great moderation in the commencement of his reign; he enriched his friends, and suffered none, whose active services he had experienced, to go unrewarded. He was however somewhat inclined to severity, whenever any suspicion of an attempt on the government was excited in him; otherwise he was gentle. His fortune is more to be praised in civil than in foreign wars.
XVI. Julian then became sole emperor, and made war, with a vast force, upon the Parthians; in which expedition I was also present. Several towns and fortresses of the Persians he induced to surrender, or took them by storm; and, having laid waste Assyria, fixed his camp for some time at Ctesiphon. As he was returning victorious, and mingling rashly in the thick of a battle, he was killed by the hand of an enemy, on the 26th of June, in the seventh year of his reign, and the thirty-second of his age, and was enrolled among the gods. He was a remarkable man, and one that would have governed the empire with honour, if he had but been permitted by the fates. He was eminently accomplished in liberal branches of knowledge, but better read in the literature of the Greeks, so much so indeed that his Latin was by no means comparable to his Greek learning. He was possessed of great and ready eloquence, and of a most tenacious memory. In some respects he was more like a philosopher than a prince. Towards his friends he was liberal, yet less discriminating as to the objects of his generosity than became so great an emperor; for there were some of them that cast a stain on his glory. To the people of the provinces he was most just, and remitted the taxes on them as far as was possible. He was indulgent towards all men; he felt no great anxiety about the public treasury; but of glory he was a great lover, and manifested even an intemperate desire for the attainment of it. He was a persecutor of the Christian religion, yet so that he abstained from shedding blood. He was not unlike Marcus Antoninus, whom he even studied to rival.
XVII. After him Jovian, who attended him in the expedition as one of his body-guard, was chosen by the suffrages of the soldiers to fill the throne; a man better known to the army by the fame of his father than by his own. As affairs were now in confusion, and the army distressed for want of provisions, Jovian, after being defeated in one or two battles by the Persians, made peace with Sapor, a peace which was necessary indeed, but ignominious, for he was obliged to contract his boundaries, a portion of the Roman dominions being ceded to the enemy; a disgrace which had never occurred, before his time, since the Roman empire had been founded, during a space of one thousand one hundred and eighteen years. And though our legions were made to pass under the yoke, both at Caudium by Pontus Telesinus, at Numantia in Hispania, and in Numidia, yet no part of the Roman territory was given up on any of those occasions. Such terms would not have been altogether reprehensible, if he had been resolved, when it should be in his power, to throw off the obligation of the treaty, as was done by the Romans in all the wars that I have mentioned; for war was immediately after made upon the Samnites, Numantines, and Numidians, and the peace was never ratified. But being in dread, as long as he remained in the east, of a rival for the imperial dignity, he thought too little of his glory. After marching from thence, accordingly, and directing bis course towards Illyricum, he died suddenly on the borders of Galatia. He was a man, in other parts of his conduct, deficient neither in energy nor understanding.
XVIII. Many think that he was carried off by a violent fit of indigestion, for he had indulged in delicacies at supper; others suppose that he died of the odour of his chamber, which, from a recent plastering of lime, was dangerous to such as slept in it; others imagine that he fell a victim to the overpowering effects of charcoal, which he had ordered to be burnt in great abundance on account of the extreme cold. He died in the seventh month of his reign, on the 18th of April, in the thirty-third year of his age, and, by the kindness of the emperors that succeeded him, was enrolled among the gods; for he was inclined to equity, and liberal by nature.
Such was the state of the Roman empire in the consulship of the Emperor Jovian and Varronianus, in the year one thousand, one hundred and nineteen from the foundation of the city. But as we have now come to illustrious and venerable princes, we shall here fix a limit to the present part of our work; for the things that remain must be told in a more elevated style; and we do not, for the present, so much omit them, as reserve them for higher efforts in writing.
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