Part 17

Though he would not acknowledge himself to be convinced by the arguments of the philosopher, it is probable that Pyrrhus secretly felt the value of the advice that had been given him; for his first step was a proposal to treat; and he even offered a draft by way of preliminary, but the Roman Consul rejected the proffered measure. The armies accordingly met on the banks of the Siris, a small river near Heraclea, and Pyrrhus sent a spy with a spy-glass, to inspect the position of the enemy. The spy was immediately spied out on the other side, and arrested forthwith, so that the look-out of the spy appeared utterly deplorable. Having, however, been shown everything there was to be seen in the Roman camp, as if he had been a traveller in search of information, instead of a sneak traversing a hostile area, the spy was sent back with care--right side upwards, which he scarcely deserved--to his master. This incident elicited from Pyrrhus the remark, that "the barbarians had an exceedingly gentlemanly way of conducting a war;" and the next day being fixed for the battle, he felt that he should have the satisfaction of a gentleman in going out with them.

The attack was commenced by the Romans; and the Consul, resolving either to sink or swim, sent a body of cavalry across the river. Pyrrhus, putting himself at the head of his horse, proceeded to meet the charge, but he soon perceived that his brilliant armour was rendering him uncomfortably conspicuous, and he exchanged his dazzling coat of mail for an old rusty suit worn by his friend Megacles. The latter was perhaps proud to wear the trappings of royalty, but the emptiness of false glitter was speedily exemplified, for Megacles being mistaken for the king, was killed, and the shining armour was carried in triumph to the enemy's camp before the hollow mockery was discovered.

The battle was fought with determined bravery on both sides, but brute force decided it at last, for the elephants of Pyrrhus weighed immensely in the scale of victory. The creatures coming down _en masse_, were more effective than the heaviest of ordinary heavies, and advancing with all their might upon the horses, the latter, though resisting with all their mane, felt their animal spirits rapidly oozing out of them. The carnage committed upon the Romans would have been merciless and complete, had it not been for the humanity of one of the elephants, who, taking a benevolent turn, pulled himself short round, and prevented his own side from continuing the pursuit of the fugitives. Pyrrhus, having laid his hands on everything he could take, proceeded to take everything he could lay his hands upon. A rich harvest having been collected, he, on the day following, went to glean what he could on the field of battle. Perceiving that the Romans had all fallen with their eyes towards the foe, he could not but acknowledge, with so much bravery staring him in the face, the courage of his antagonists. "With such soldiers as these," he exclaimed, "the world would be mine, or, at all events, it would be theirs if I were their general." He had, however, lost half his own men; and as they lay prostrate before him, they seemed to offer a flat contradiction to the congratulations offered to him on his victory. "Another such a triumph," he replied, "and I should return to Epirus thoroughly unmanned, for there would not remain to me a single soldier." He offered to the prisoners employment in his own army, but they, without exception, refused; and, considering their conduct unexceptionable, he had their chains taken off, that they might feel themselves quite unfettered in their future movements. He burned the bodies of the dead, out of compliment to their remains, whose combustion, could they have acted for themselves, would no doubt have been spontaneous. He made a tolerably fair division of the spoil, giving some to his allies, and devoted a considerable slice to Zeus--a piece of devotion of which the priests of the temple got the chief benefit.

The policy of Pyrrhus was to turn old foes into new friends; and he sent his trusty counsellor, Cineas, to Rome, with a suggestion that all animosity should be buried in the graves of those who had fallen on both sides. The Senators were beginning to waver, when Appius Claudius the Blind--who had been carried down to the house by his four sons--an arrangement that suggests the picture of a veteran supported by a youth at each arm and at each leg--declared suddenly that he could see through the whole affair, and called upon the Romans to open their eyes to the designs of Pyrrhus. The veteran, who, from infirmity, was unable to stir without assistance, could still agitate with his tongue; he urged that the proposals of Cineas should be rejected; and the assembly having first carried the motion, carried home the mover in triumph.

Cineas, on returning to his master, described the city as a temple, and the Senate as an assembly of kings; for he could not get the temples out of his head; and the magnificent curule chairs kept reminding him of the dignified setting down he had received from the Senators.

Pyrrhus, finding his friendly advances repulsed, resolved on advancing upon Rome in a less amicable spirit. Proceeding towards Capua, he encountered Laevinius, the consul, whom he had on a previous occasion beaten; but he was now not quite so fortunate; for, after a severe contest, neither side could say exactly which had got the worst of it. Pyrrhus, however, marched upon Praeneste, which fell into his hands, in consequence of the Romans having let it slip through their fingers. From the acropolis of Praeneste he is said to have seen Rome, at a distance of eighteen miles; but he must have seen very little, if so far off, unless he was accustomed to magnify what he saw in a very remarkable manner. The sight was sufficiently imposing to cause him to retreat; and he went into winter quarters at Tarentum, where he spent his own time, and the money he had taken from the enemy.

While Pyrrhus was thus engaged, or rather disengaged, three ambassadors, named C. Fabricius, Q. A. Papus, and P. Dolabella, were sent to him from Rome, to negotiate for the release of prisoners. C. Fabricius was a very superior man; and Pyrrhus, thinking to gain over the superior man, employed means by which none but a very inferior individual was at all likely to be influenced. Bribery was the first expedient attempted by Pyrrhus; but C. Fabricius showed his contempt for money by pursing his eyebrows. Having failed in his coarse appeal to avarice, Pyrrhus tried what was to be done through fear; and one day a _tête-à-tête_ between the king and the ambassador was disturbed by the sudden introduction of a third _tête_, in the shape of the head of an elephant. The sagacious brute stood concealed behind a curtain, and, with a blow of the trunk on the cheek, he administered a smart box on the ear to the startled ambassador. The animal accompanied the act with a hideous roar, and threw his trunk over the head of C. Fabricius, who remained for a moment unable to see the clumsy joke that was being played upon him. He, nevertheless, retained his self-possession, remarking simply that neither by throwing gold dust in his eyes, nor by the still blacker job of the elephant's trunk, was he to be blinded to his duty.

Though Pyrrhus would not accede to the terms proposed for ransoming the Roman prisoners, he allowed them to go to Rome, for the season, to be present at the celebration of the _fêtes_ of the Saturnalia. These games appear to have included some rather melancholy mirth, the principal fun of the affair consisting in the practice of shouting out "Io!"--which is equivalent to "Go it!"--in the public thoroughfare. Presents were exchanged among friends; and servants were in the habit of offering wax candles to their masters,--a sort of composition, perhaps, which the former came to with their consciences, in memory of the enormities of the grease pot. The domestic was allowed to wear his employer's clothes; and this portion of the ceremonies of the Saturnalia is still privately observed by the gentleman's gentleman of the family. While the wardrobe of the master remained at the mercy of the valet, the synthesis, or dressing-gown, was the fashionable attire; and for a period of general relaxation, this loose wrapper was perfectly appropriate.

Having done at Rome as Rome was doing, during the Saturnalia, the prisoners returned to Pyrrhus, who opened the campaign in Apulia, and met the two Roman consuls--P. Sulpicius, and P. Decius Mus--at Asculum. This Mus is the third to which the labours of the historical muse have given birth; and he is said to have shared the fate of his grandfather and father--if at least that fate can be said to have been "shared," of which each had to bear the whole inconvenience. The battle fought at Asculum was severe, the Romans having lost 6000 men; for tradition delights in round numbers, with which probability often refuses to square; and no less than three thousand five hundred and five--for in this case exactness is carried to a degree of excess--are said to have fallen on the side of Pyrrhus.

War was found to be doing its usual work, the sword was cutting both ways at once; the candle was burning away at both ends, and the litigants were figuratively cutting their own throats, as well as those of their enemies. Each party would have backed out, if he could have seen his way, when an incident occurred that opened the door to a compromise. Pyrrhus had a medical attendant; who, perhaps, felt that doctor's work might as well be done at first as at last, and offered to poison by one dose, instead of by slow degrees, his illustrious patient. The medical traitor accordingly prepared a draft, which he knew he could persuade Pyrrhus to accept; but the Romans rejected the idea with scorn, and denounced the scoundrel, who when taken was severely shaken by his indignant countrymen. The wretch at first denied having written the prescription, and attempted to eat his own words; but they stuck in his throat, and he died from the physical impossibility of getting them either one way or the other.

Pyrrhus was so pleased with the treatment of the empiric who would have poisoned him, that he sent back all his prisoners to Rome without ransom, togged[38] out in new togas, and attended by pages, stitched in neat wrappers. After some negotiation, which was assisted by the returned prisoners, who urged their own new suits in support of that of Pyrrhus, now eager for peace, a truce for four years was agreed upon. It was stipulated that he should leave Italy, and he took the opportunity to cross to Sicily with the benevolent intention of freeing the people from the Carthaginian yoke; but, like most foreign liberators, if he took off an old yoke with one hand, he had in the other a new apparatus, which he was anxious to substitute. His object was to have made himself master of the place; but after remaining three years, he began to lament the faithlessness of friends, and helping himself to as much booty as he could lay his hands upon, he left the Sicilians to deplore the loss of himself and the treasure he took away with him. He had, in fact, been sent for by the Tarentines, and was on his way to see what he could do for them, when he was met by a Carthaginian fleet, which sank seventy of his ships--as we are told by the same authority that represents him to have started with only sixty,--a fact which leaves little doubt as to which party profited most by the friendship between Pyrrhus and the people of Sicily. He suffered a further loss in the mountain passes, where he had some very narrow escapes; but he nevertheless continued to keep a balance of 20,000 foot, and 3000 horse for the purpose of meeting any future engagements.

On his arrival at Tarentum, there was such a panic among the Romans that nobody would enlist, until Curius Dentatus announced his intention of confiscating the property of the first who refused to enter the rank that was open to him. Besides the panic caused by the name of Pyrrhus, an alarm had sprung up in consequence of the head of the god Summanus having been struck off his statue by lightning, and nobody could ascertain what had become of it. Accident led to its discovery in the bed of the Tiber, from which it had probably been fished by one of those extraordinary hooks which so many of our historical facts are found to hang upon. The augurs were consulted as a matter of course, and on a case being submitted to their opinion, they advised that the action against Pyrrhus should be carried on; for, according to the soothsayers, the loss and subsequent finding of the head, proved that after hair-breadth escapes victory would crown their labours.

Pyrrhus in the mean time marched to Beneventum to attack Curius, intending to surprise the latter by sending, through a mountain pass, some troops and elephants. The idea of a short cut for these massive brutes was absurd, and the unwieldy bulk of the elephants caused a succession of stoppages in the highways and byeways through which they were being driven. The Greek columns got occasionally into a fearful fix, and it was with difficulty they could lug through the mountain pass their extremely bulky luggage. Instead of completing their journey by night, it was daylight before they had commenced their descent on Curius, who saw them at a distance, and prepared a warm reception for the elephants. He attacked them with burning arrows, and lighted barrels of tar, which were pitched among the poor brutes, who fell back upon their own camp, and every tent was turned into a crush-room. Several elephants were killed, and four, being taken alive, were made to march as prisoners in the Consul's triumph. Pyrrhus reached Tarentum with a handful of horse, and a pocket-full of bread; but, being unable to pay the salaries of his adherents, they soon fell away in the absence of the usual golden rivets. He retired to Greece, where he engaged in all sorts of adventures, till the want of money prevented him from carrying on the war in any shape; and it is said that he had come down, at last, to such very petty disputes, that he died of a blow on the head, from a stone aimed at him in a street-row by an angry woman. On the death of Pyrrhus, those whom he had assisted relinquished all hope of maintaining themselves against such a formidable enemy as Rome, and the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites proceeded to do homage to a power they had been in the habit of defying as long as they had any one on their side strong enough to assist them in fighting their battles. The Samnite ambassadors, who were entrusted with the humiliating duty of conveying the submission of their countrymen to Curius Dentatus, found him at his Sabine farm, engaged in the discussion of a large dish of turnips. He received the envoys with no other form than a wooden one, upon which he was seated, and he continued his vegetarian meal, as he listened to their overtures. They offered to bribe him with gold; but, taking up a spoonful of the mashed turnips, he declared that, as long as he could make sure of his daily bunch of his favourite luxury, wealth had no charms for him.

The Samnites made one more desperate effort against Rome, and Lollius, a runaway hostage, who had escaped to his native mountains, found life such thoroughly up-hill work, that he resolved to change it, or part with it. Having got round him a band of robbers, who were just the sort of persons to do everything by stealth, he secretly prepared to attack the Romans; but they, hearing of the approach of the marauders, were early in the field, and, securing the leaders of the insurrection, struck off their heads in order to break the neck of it.

Rome was now mistress of Italy, but her ambition, which, though always vaulting, knew no bounds, would not allow her to keep her empire within its natural limits. In the management of her conquered possessions she affected much generosity, in professing to admit the vanquished to a share of her own advantages,--an operation she effected by taking all the advantages to herself in the first instance, and then conveying a small moiety back to those from whom they had been wrested.

The Colonial system pursued by Rome was peculiar, for instead of selecting uninhabited places, she preferred a population ready made, possessing wealth already acquired, of which she usually helped herself to a full third in exchange for a Government, which she supplied from her own large stock of persons in want of places. The relationship between Rome and her colonies has been compared to that of parent and child; but considering the stripping process to which Rome had recourse, she seems to have acted less as a mother than a kidnapper. The Roman Constitution, like the Roman cement, was an excellent compound, of which it is impossible to describe the ingredients; and, indeed, it is found that the best Constitutions--like our own British--are those which cannot be defined by a written prescription, or made the subject of a perfect analysis. There was a judicious spreading of political power over a considerable surface, and thus--to use a figure from the chemist's shop--a plaster was always ready to be applied to the sores, or even the trifling eruptions that might make their appearance on any portion of the great body of the nation.

As in our own admirable form of government, there were three estates, comprising the people, the senate, and the executive; but the want of a permanent and universally recognised head of the state, kept the country continually exposed to agitation on the part of designing demagogues.

As the sword, unfortunately, cuts the most prominent figure in the early history of Rome, we must not omit to speak of its military organisation, which was very complete; for in early times there seemed to be an impression that neighbours ought to be approached with the arm of war, rather than with the hand of friendship. Every Roman citizen was a soldier, and was liable at any moment to be called upon to turn his ploughshare into a sword, though when his special service was over he was at liberty to turn his sword back again into a ploughshare. This transformation was not effected without damage to the instrument, and the ordinary operations of agriculture were frequently interrupted by calling the labourer from the garden to the field, and forcing him to drill when engaged in sowing broad-cast. We have in a single chapter of Livy[39] an account of what a Roman army consisted of during the great Latin war, and though learned writers[40] have snarled and quarrelled over the materials, like dogs over a dry and meatless bone, we quietly walk into the midst of them, and deliberately extract the marrow. An army may be described in half-a-dozen lines, though it consisted of five, which were termed respectively, _Hastati_, _Principes_, _Triarii_, _Rorarii_, and _Accensi_.

The _Hastati_, so called from their carrying the _hasta_ or spear, consisted of youth in the bloom of early manhood, and who went in front, that their early bloom might encounter the first blow of the enemy. The next row was formed of the _Principes_, or men in the vigour of life, distinguished by the abundance and splendour of their shields, arms, and accoutrements, and comprising what may be termed the heavy swells of the army. Next in order came the _Triarii_, a body of veterans, selected for their past experience--a quality which, however valuable in council, may be often useless in war; for though experience might have told a veteran that he ought to run for his life, his heels, being as old as his head, might have refused to do the latter's bidding. The fourth rank was composed of _Rorarii_, from the word _Rora_, dew, who sprinkled the enemy with various missiles, and who standing behind the _Triarii_, must occasionally, by aiming short of the foe, have given more than their due to the veterans immediately in front of them. Last in order came the _Accensi_, or supernumeraries, whose courage and fidelity were not of the highest class, and who either brought up the rear or left it behind, as their resolution urged them on, or their want of it kept them back, while there was always an opening left in case their fears should run away with them. It was frequently the practice of the _Accensi_ to reserve the vacant back-ground as a sort of race-course, in which races between their valour and their discretion were being continually run, and in the majority of cases the latter got by far the best of it.

The habits of the early Romans were extremely simple; agriculture was their most honoured employment; and it was thought high praise to say of any man, that he was a good husband, and a good husbandman. Their food was chiefly corn; and many a happy family afforded an illustration of the fact that love, notwithstanding the assertion of the song writer to the contrary, can sometimes live on flour. Wine was so precious, that, in libations to the gods, it was poured out drop by drop, to prevent their getting a drop too much; and, indeed, so scarce was it in the early days of Rome, that Romulus is said to have used milk in his sacrifices; while Papirius, at a later period, vowed, in the event of his victory over the Samnites, a small glass--or _petit verre_--to Jupiter.

Long beards were worn by the Romans until the arrival of a Greek barber from Sicily; and he is said to have plucked out, with a pair of tweezers, the beard which had grown for four centuries and a half into a rooted habit. On some he employed the razor, and he was able to reap an abundant harvest from the chins of a people who had never yet worn a smooth-faced aspect.

The invasion of Pyrrhus caused the adoption at Rome of many Grecian luxuries, and among others was the luxury of substituting a silver coinage for copper, which had been found so inconvenient that a rich man had been obliged to use a wagon instead of a purse, if he wished to take his money about with him. Silver was, however, so scarce, that one Cornelius Rufinus was turned out of the Senate for having on his sideboard more than ten pounds of plate; for it was believed that he could not have come honestly by so much of it, and he was regarded as either a thief, or at least as a receiver of stolen property.

So humble were the pretensions to display in those early days, that a silver cup and a salt-cellar formed, usually, the entire contents of a Roman noble's plate-basket. Music, among the early Romans, was at the lowest possible pitch, and the only professors were flute-players, of scarcely any note, from Etruria. Their strains were so dismal as to be employed only at a sacrifice or a funeral, when extreme melancholy was required. On one occasion the band is said to have struck, and retired to Tibur, when the musicians were only brought back by being made helplessly drunk,--a weakness to which some of those hirelings who assist at the performance of funerals are in our day liable.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Polybius.

[37] Polyb., ii. 20.

[38] The ignorantly squeamish, who may object to the word "togged," will please to observe that it is purely classical--the Latin _toga_ being the root of the participle "togged," as well as the substantive "toggery."

[39] Livy, viii.--8.

[40] Lipsius and others.

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.