Part 15

The Carthaginians were finally driven from Spain in 206. We may pass quickly over the next fifty years. By degrees the Roman power advanced till the whole peninsula, some mountainous regions in the north and centre excepted, became subject to it. Rebellions were frequent, for the Roman system was to change the provincial governors almost from year to year, and some of these officials were cruel and extortionate. As I am not writing a history either of Rome or of Spain, I must limit myself to the most important and representative persons and events.

Viriathus was a native of Lusitania, a region nearly corresponding to what is now called Portugal. His hatred of the Romans came from a shameful act of treachery from which his countrymen suffered at the hands of one of the Roman generals. This man had expressed his pity for the poverty of their country, which drove them, he said, into robbing their neighbours. He would give them, if they would trust him, lands better worth cultivating. What he did was to massacre them in detachments, one detachment being kept in ignorance of the fate of those who had gone before. Viriathus was one of the few who escaped.

It was not for some time that he secured the complete confidence of his countrymen, or was able to collect an army with which he could meet his adversaries in the field. His first great success was won in 147 B.C., when the proprætor Vetilius was drawn into an ambush and defeated. Vetilius was taken prisoner and killed by his captors, who, seeing only a "very fat old man," did not recognise his value. Two-fifths of the army of ten thousand perished at the same time. Another disaster happened in the year following. Plautius, the Roman general, was deceived by a pretended retreat, and suffered a heavy loss of men. Affairs seemed to be in so serious a condition that the authorities at Rome resolved on sending a large force and as able a commander as they could find to the seat of war. The man they chose was Fabius, the brother of the younger Scipio, and a son therefore of the famous conqueror of Macedonia.[35] Before Fabius could reach the scene of war another Roman army had been almost destroyed. Fabius himself for a time could do but little. He had to content himself with getting his forces, all of them newly recruited, into order. In his second year of command, however, he inflicted a severe defeat on Viriathus and compelled him to evacuate the Roman territory.

The war was carried on with varying fortunes for four years. In 141 B.C. it seemed to have been brought to a conclusion highly favourable to the Lusitanians and their gallant leaders. Viriathus surprised a Roman army that was investing one of the Lusitanian towns, and inflicted upon it so heavy a loss that it was compelled to raise the siege. In their retreat the Romans became entangled in a narrow pass, and were compelled to surrender. Viriathus was moderate in his demands. Lusitania was to be independent, and its people recognised as allies and friends of Rome. This treaty was ratified at Rome. But the ambition of a Roman general and the bad faith of the Senate brought this arrangement to an end. Servilius Cæpio was disappointed to find that the war had been brought to an end, and obtained permission from the Senate, which had not the effrontery to cancel the treaty, to make private war upon Viriathus. Before long something happened that gave the desired pretext, and Viriathus was declared a public enemy. He sent envoys to the Roman camp to arrange, if it were possible, terms of peace. Cæpio persuaded them by promises of great rewards to murder their chief. This they did, stabbing him in the neck as he lay asleep in his tent fully armed. The blow was so skilfully given that he died without a groan, and the murderers were able to escape to the Roman camp. From Cæpio, however, they received nothing but the remark that the Romans did not approve and could not reward soldiers who slew their own general. One is glad to record the disappointment of such villains, but it is not easy to understand the unblushing assurance with which Roman historians inveigh against the "_Punic faith_," as they are pleased to call it, of Hannibal. The war was carried on for a time, but the Lusitanians could find no competent successor to Viriathus and were compelled to submit.

But Spain was not yet subdued. The scene of war was transferred to Numantia (now Garay on the upper waters of the Douro). Though not a walled town, it was a very strong place, environed with woods, situated on steep cliffs, and protected by two rivers. The one accessible side was strongly entrenched. The fighting force which it could muster was small, numbering not more than eight thousand, but there were no better fighting-men in all Spain. General succeeded general in the Roman camp, but no advance was made. At last the people of Rome waxed impatient. There had been, they said, the same disappointment and mismanagement at Carthage, and they must employ the same man to put an end to them. Scipio Africanus was accordingly elected. He declined to take any men from the muster roll. There were soldiers enough, he thought, in Spain. And there was no lack of volunteers attracted by his remarkable prestige, among them a company of five hundred to which he gave the name of the "Company of Friends."[36] Even these he left to follow him while he hurried on to do for the besieging army at Numantia what he had done ten years before at Carthage. He cleared it of an idle and dissolute multitude, among whom soothsayers are specially mentioned, perpetually consulted, says the historian, by a soldiery demoralised by fear. A spit, a brass pot, and a single drinking-cup were all that was allowed for mess furniture; the rations were cut down to flesh, boiled or roasted (bread, we may presume, though it is not mentioned). In short, every luxury was banished, some of them seeming, certainly, a little strange, bath attendants, for instance. "Your mules," he said, "want rubbing down, for they have no hands, but you have." This purification effected, he proceeded to harden his men by exercise, avoiding battle till he thought they were fit for it. It is interesting to find that in the winter of this year he was joined by a contingent of African troops under the command of Jugurtha, a grandson of the old king Masinissa.

The Romans had an overwhelming superiority in numbers, and it was only a matter of time for a patient and skilful commander such as was Scipio to make resistance impossible. The river, which the besieged had found very useful as a method of communicating with the outer world and replenishing their supplies, was closed against them by elaborate contrivances. The whole town, which had a compass of fifteen miles, was closely invested, while a system of signals for the protection of the siege works from sudden attack was organised. Thirty thousand men were on constant duty in guarding the turrets and ramparts; twenty thousand more were held in readiness to deliver an assault wherever and whenever Scipio might see fit, and there was a further reserve of ten thousand. Every man of the whole number had his place, which he was not permitted to leave except under express orders. The besieged did not give up the hope of damaging the siege works, and made frequent attacks, but they contended in vain against a system so elaborately complete, one, too, which received the unwearying attention of the man who had contrived it. Not a day or a night passed, we are told, without Scipio visiting the whole circle of the investment. After all, it was by the pressure of famine not by superior strength that Numantia fell. An embassy was sent to ask for terms. Scipio, who knew from the deserters how desperate was the condition of the city, demanded an unconditional surrender. The unhappy men who carried back this unwelcome reply were slain by their infuriated countrymen. But there was no other alternative, except death. That was the choice of the great majority; a few hundreds came out to the conqueror, such a miserable spectacle, so squalid, so emaciated, and withal so savage as none had ever seen before. Scipio chose fifty of the poor wretches to adorn his triumph; the rest he sold as slaves. It must be admitted that the Romans were not generous enemies, for Scipio was conspicuous among his countrymen for humanity and culture. Yet this was the best treatment he could bring himself to accord to foes so brave that he had never ventured an assault on their city.

Sertorius is a remarkable, one might say, an admirable figure, but the story of the long struggle between him and the generals of Rome scarcely belongs to my subject. Yet it is not wholly unconnected with it. Political life at Rome did not habitually run into the excesses which were so lamentably common in the Greek states. When the aristocrat Coriolanus led the Volscian armies against his own country the act was exceptional. Sertorius was a democratic Coriolanus.

Sertorius won considerable distinction as a soldier in the campaigns against the Cimbri and Teutones. When the Consul Cæpio was defeated he narrowly escaped with his life, swimming across the Rhone in full armour; he fought at Aquæ Sextiæ, having done good service by entering the camp of the Teutones as a spy. When the Civil War broke out he declared for the democratic party. After various changes of fortune the aristocrats were victorious, and then Sertorius found himself in a most difficult position. The democratic leaders had given him a command in Spain, as much to get rid of him, for he was too honourable to suit them, as for any other reason. By degrees he drifted into the position of an enemy. He opposed the march of a Consular army sent across the Pyrenees by the Roman government, crossed to Africa when he could no longer remain in Spain, and came back again to take command of the Lusitanians when this tribe rebelled against Rome. Here he was joined by other adherents of the democratic party, the most important of whom was a certain Perpenna, who brought with him a considerable force, and became his second-in-command. All this time, though waging war with Roman consuls and proconsuls, he claimed to be the Roman governor of Spain, establishing, for instance, a Senate into which no one but Roman citizens were admitted. In 77 B.C. Pompey, who was already famous as a soldier--he had enjoyed the honour of a triumph at the age of twenty-five--was sent into Spain. But Pompey found his task more than he could perform. He won, it is true, victories over Sertorius' lieutenants, but he could not claim any decided success over the great man himself. In a great battle fought on the banks of the Sucro he was routed with the loss of six thousand men. Nor during the three years that followed did he make much way. What really happened during this time it is not easy to say. By some accounts Sertorius became self-indulgent and arbitrary; according to others, his Roman colleagues in command, many of them of better birth than their superior, were jealous of him. What is certain is that it was by a Roman hand that he fell. In 72 B.C. he was assassinated by the orders of Perpenna. Perpenna was wholly unequal to the position which he hoped to attain by the death of his chief. He was defeated in the first battle which he fought with the Roman armies, and was taken prisoner. To save his life he offered to put into Pompey's hands the private letters of Sertorius. Many of them had been sent from Rome, and would probably have compromised various persons of distinction. Pompey ordered the letters to be burnt and Perpenna to be executed.

One Spanish people, the Cantabri, represented by the modern Basques, still retained their independence. They were not finally subdued till fifty years after the death of Sertorius, and even then they had to be watched and kept in order. Spain, however, as a whole became the most thoroughly Italian in manners and speech of all the provinces of Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: Æmilius Paullus. This son had been adopted into the Fabian family.]

[Footnote 36: Possibly in recollection of the Royal Companions in the army of Alexander the Great, _vide_ p. 130.]

V

ACROSS EUPHRATES

It would be impossible to pass over without notice one of the most formidable enemies that Rome ever encountered--Mithradates, King of Pontus. Mithradates was, indeed, hardly to be called a barbarian. He had a taste for art and letters, had a museum of Greek and Persian antiquities, and played the part of a generous patron to poets and philosophers. But he was a barbarian at heart, savage and cruel in his dealings with his kinsfolk and his servants, and with no conception of enlightened rule. Rome, however oppressive and short-sighted her individual citizens might be, was an agent of civilisation, and her final triumph over the King of Pontus, the ablest, it may be said, of the Eastern potentates with whom she came into connection, was for the general good of mankind.

Mithradates came to the throne of Pontus in early youth. He cherished from the first ambitious schemes of extending his dominions. At first his efforts were directed against his neighbours on the north and east; when he attempted to extend his frontiers westward he naturally came into collision with the Romans. It is needless to go into details; it will suffice to say that war was declared in B.C. 89. The time suited Mithradates very well, for it found Rome in a very helpless condition. What is called the Social War, _i.e._, the revolt of the Italian allies against Rome, was still in progress, and there was positively no army available to meet the huge host, nearly 300,000 in all, which the King brought into the field. All that the Roman officers in Lesser Asia could do was to shut themselves up in such fortified towns as they could hope to hold against the King. Mithradates now gave orders for an act which was as foolish as it was wicked. He was at Ephesus--the fact shows how little remained to Rome--when he directed that all Italians sojourning in Lesser Asia should be put to death. Had he said "Romans," not "Italians," he might have secured the combination with himself of the Italian adversaries of Rome. As it was he hopelessly alienated them.

Nor did he make himself better liked by his new subjects in Asia. They found that in exchanging masters they had lost much more than they had gained. The Romans were often oppressive, but they had at least some kind of system, and were, in theory at least, subject to law; the King was a capricious tyrant, whose whims, often as cruel as they were strange, had to be instantaneously humoured under pain of death or torture. The end was that Mithradates was beaten everywhere. An army which he had sent into Greece was destroyed. His arms were equally unsuccessful in Asia. An attempt to make common cause with Sulla's political opponents--some of the democratic leaders were actually in arms--came to nothing. Finally, in 84 peace was made. The King had to give up all his conquests, to surrender for punishments the men who had taken a leading part in the massacre, and to pay a war indemnity of 20,000 talents.[37]

After a somewhat uneasy peace of ten years war broke out again. Each side was suspicious of the other. Mithradates had steadily employed himself in increasing his dominions in every direction where he did not come into actual collision with Rome. Rome, on the other hand, had a way of receiving legacies of kingdoms, very much to the annoyance of those who conceived themselves to have a better title to the inheritance. In 75 B.C., for instance, she took possession of Bithynia, which Mithradates had always coveted, in accordance with the will of Nicomedes III. The King naturally took offence at this proceeding, and as he saw at the same time a prospect of taking his great enemy at a disadvantage, he declared war. He hoped that Sertorius in Spain would make a diversion in his favour, and he also looked for help from the pirates who swarmed in the Mediterranean.

These expectations were but partially fulfilled. Sertorius was very near the end of his career, and could be practically ignored. Mithradates won a few successes here and there, but he had a very able soldier, Lucullus, to contend with. After a few months' fighting he had to fly from his kingdom and take refuge with his son-in-law, Tigranes, King of Armenia.

Lucullus now ventured on a very bold course of action. He sent envoys to Tigranes demanding the surrender of Mithradates. This was, of course, refused, as indeed Lucullus expected and even intended that it should be. The Roman general then crossed the Euphrates and marched on Tigranocerta. This was a new city, and was the creation as it bore the name of Tigranes. He had peopled it with inhabitants, taken, after the fashion of Eastern kings, from conquered or simply subject tribes, and had supplied it with all the conveniences and ornaments of Greek civilisation. Its walls, the historian tells us, were seventy feet high, and must have been of huge circuit, if there were parks and lakes within them. Lucullus laid siege to the city, though he could hardly have had sufficient force to invest it. It was not long before Tigranes moved to its relief. At first, indeed, he had simply refused to believe that the Romans could have made so audacious an advance, and with a savagery, in curious contrast with his veneer of civilisation, ordered the messenger who brought the unwelcome news to be crucified. When he learnt the truth, he raised a huge army--250,000 infantry and 50,000 cavalry are the numbers given us by historians--and marched to attack Lucullus.

Mithradates was with his son-in-law, and strongly advised him not to risk a battle. "Use your cavalry to cut off his supplies," was his advice, for the old King knew what Roman soldiers were when they were led by such a general as Lucullus. Tigranes laughed to scorn this prudent counsel. He could not conceive that the handful of men which were all that the Romans had to oppose to him, could possibly stand up against an army which was nearly twenty times as numerous. For Lucullus had divided his small force, leaving a part to carry on the siege of the city while he went to meet Tigranes with the remainder.[38]

The battle that followed was one of the most remarkable in history, worthy to be ranked with Marathon, for, indeed, the odds were at least as great as any of which we have a record. Unfortunately for the fame of Lucullus there was no one to tell the story as it ought to have been told. The strategy of Lucullus was that employed times out of number with success by the leader of a regular army acting against an undisciplined host--he outflanked his opponents. What we can understand from the accounts, not easily reconcilable, is that a front attack was made, or rather threatened, by the Roman cavalry. It advanced, and then retreated, in seeming panic, and the Asiatics pursued in headlong haste. Meanwhile the outflanking movement had been made unseen by the infantry. Attacking the rear of the army, they sent the camp-followers flying in wild confusion; these broke the lines of the infantry; the infantry in turn threw the horsemen into confusion. The panic once set up, the huge, unmanageable numbers of the Asiatic host did nothing but aggravate it. The pursuit was fierce and pitiless. Lucullus threatened the severest penalties against any soldier who should turn aside for a moment to encumber himself with spoil. For fifteen miles the road was strewed with costly chains and bracelets which no one picked up. The pursuit over, the men were allowed to appropriate all the treasures they could find. _Five_ Romans, and five only, are said to have been slain. The enemy's dead were counted by tens of thousands.

This great victory had not, it is true, the permanent result which might have been expected. This failure was due to the weakness of the Government at home and the jealousy of parties. Lucullus was hampered by want of means, and had to share his authority with incompetent colleagues. It was not long before both Tigranes and Mithradates recovered all that they had lost.

But this was but a temporary falling back of the Roman power. The people, profoundly dissatisfied with the policy that had made such brilliant victories unproductive, put the supreme power into the hands of a man whom it could trust. In 67 B.C. Pompey cleared the Mediterranean of the pirates, and two years later he brought to an end the long struggle with Mithradates. Tigranes had made his submission to Rome, and, while surrendering all his conquests, had been permitted to retain his hereditary kingdom of Armenia. Mithradates was driven to take refuge in a remote region at the eastern end of the Black Sea. He had conceived, it is said, a bold scheme of raising the tribes to the north of that sea and falling upon Italy as the Gauls and as Hannibal had fallen upon it. But he had not the means of carrying out so large a project. His subjects, wearied of perpetual exactions, rebelled, led by one of his sons, and he saw that nothing remained but death. His wives and his daughters were compelled or possibly offered to drink poison. He drank it himself, but--so runs the story--had so fortified himself with antidotes, that the drug did not affect him. He then commanded a Celtic mercenary to render him the last service by a stroke of his sword. By his death the Roman dominion was practically established as far as the Euphrates. That it was not to be extended beyond it was practically proved by the events which I have now to relate.

Five years after the fall of Mithradates there was formed at Rome what is commonly called the First Triumvirate.[39]