The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)

The new monarch of Rome, the first ruler over the whole domain of Romano-Hellenic civilization, Gaius Julius Caesar, was in his fifty-sixth year (born 12 July 652?) when the bat...

Arms were thus to decide which of the two men who had hitherto jointly ruled Rome was now to be its first sole ruler. Let us see what were the comparative resources at the dispo...

When the course of history turns from the miserable monotony of the political selfishness, which fought its battles in the senate-house and in the streets of the capital, to mat...

In the development of religion and philosophy no new element appeared during this epoch. The Romano-Hellenic state-religion and the Stoic state-philosophy inseparably combined w...

The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. To estimate them correctly, it...

With the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy the supremacy of Rome not only became an established fact from the Pillars of Hercules to the mouths of the Nile and the Orontes, b...

The aim of Hannibal in his expedition to Italy had been to break up the Italian confederacy: after three campaigns that aim had been attained, so far as it was at all attainable...

When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which threatened the very existence of the senate, rendered it possible for the restored senatorial government to devote once more...

After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion that Rome was indebted for her greatness to the f...

The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character. We have already(1) indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that...

From the time when the defeat of Pyrrhus had put an end to the last war which the Italians had waged for their independence--or, in other words, for nearly two hundred years--th...

About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable temple, which had been erected by the kings, d...

We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687 Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude...

The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution kept the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of...

The work, which Alexander king of Macedonia had begun a century before the Romans acquired their first footing in the territory which he had called his own, had in the course of...

The tribunician movements appear to have mainly originated in social rather than political discontent, and there is good reason to suppose that some of the wealthy plebeians adm...

It is in the sixth century of the city that we first find materials for a history of the times exhibiting in some measure the mutual connection of events; and it is in that cent...

For upwards of a century the feud between the Carthaginians and the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the fair island of Sicily. On both sides the contest was carried on with th...

Marcus Crassus had for years been reckoned among the heads of the "three-headed monster," without any proper title to be so included. He served as a makeweight to trim the balan...

In the kingdom of Asia the diadem of the Seleucidae had been worn since 531 by king Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty. He had, like Phi...

Among the democratic chiefs, who from the time of the consulate of Caesar were recognized officially, so to speak, as the joint rulers of the commonwealth, as the governing "tri...

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at...

This state of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667 has been already described: the half-suppressed insurre...

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed for...

Philip of Macedonia was greatly annoyed by the treatment which he met with from the Romans after the peace with Antiochus; and the subsequent course of events was not fitted to...

With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital changed positions. From the time that the elected general of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his party,...

Ariovistus was a Chattan. The Marcomani cannot be demonstrated as a distinct people before Marbod; it is very possible that the word up to that point indicates nothing but what...

For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface. Its dominion extended over t...

Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained municipal rights as Cereatae Marian...

Father and mother, sons and daughters, home and homestead, servants and chattels--such are the natural elements constituting the household in all cases, where polygamy has not o...

The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we do not find in the field of authorship any more than in tha...

The treaty with Rome in 513 gave to the Carthaginians peace, but they paid for it dearly. That the tribute of the largest portion of Sicily now flowed into the enemy's exchequer...

In the development which law underwent during this period within the Roman community, probably the most important material innovation was that peculiar control which the communi...

Tiberius Gracchus was dead; but his two works, the distribution of land and the revolution, survived their author. In presence of the starving agricultural proletariate the sena...

The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity was intimately associated with the development of national festivals. The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman commun...

The appearance of the Carthaginian army on the Roman side of the Alps changed all at once the situation of affairs, and disconcerted the Roman plan of war. Of the two principal...

From the close of the sixth century the Roman community ruled over the three great peninsulas projecting from the northern continent into the Mediterranean, at least taken as a...

We have traversed a period of ninety years--forty years of profound peace, fifty of an almost constant revolution. It is the most inglorious epoch known in Roman history. It is...

The Semitic stock occupied a place amidst, and yet aloof from, the nations of the ancient classical world. The true centre of the former lay in the east, that of the latter in t...

The Roman world of gods, as we have already indicated,(1) was a higher counterpart, an ideal reflection, of the earthly Rome, in which the little and the great were alike repeat...

Under the new organization of the commonwealth the old burgesses had attained by legal means to the full possession of political power. Governing through the magistracy which ha...

Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the constitution and the external history of states, that the former must frequently be noticed in the course of describ...

We have no information, not even a tradition, concerning the first migration of the human race into Italy. It was the universal belief of antiquity that in Italy, as well as els...

Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody. While in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations have received a pre-eminent endowment of po...

The Sullan constitution still stood unshaken. The assault, which Lepidus and Sertorius had ventured to make on it, had been repulsed with little loss. The government had neglect...

While the Romans were fighting on the Liris and Volturnus, other conflicts agitated the south-east of the peninsula. The wealthy merchant-republic of Tarentum, daily exposed to...

In the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide circuit of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on the wane or disappearing. The most important...

The strict conception of the unity and omnipotence of the state in all matters pertaining to it, which was the central principle of the Italian constitutions, placed in the hand...

The Italian confederacy as it emerged from the crises of the fifth century--or, in other words, the State of Italy--united the various civic and cantonal communities from the Ap...

When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he found for the second time the diadem at his feet. For long the dev...

In the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east. While the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in...

The war waged by Hannibal had interrupted Rome in the extension of her dominion to the Alps or to the boundary of Italy, as was even now the Roman phrase, and in the organizatio...

In the previous chapters we have presented an outline of the development of the Roman constitution during the first two centuries of the republic; we now recur to the commenceme...

Life in the case of the Roman was spent under conditions of austere restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man. All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow...

The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man; the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing along with himself; together they make man--what nature ha...

The great achievement of the regal period was the establishment of the sovereignty of Rome over Latium under the form of hegemony. It is in the nature of the case evident that t...

The brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked feuds among themselves and with their neighbours: as the country flourished and civilization advanced, feuds must h...

About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber hills of moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream, higher on the right, lower on the left bank. With the lat...

History, as such, cannot reproduce the life of a people in the infinite variety of its details; it must be content with exhibiting the development of that life as a whole. The d...

The history of every nation, and of Italy more especially, is a --synoikismos-- on a great scale. Rome, in the earliest form in which we have any knowledge of it, was already tr...

The home of the Indo-Germanic stock lay in the western portion of central Asia; from this it spread partly in a south-eastern direction over India, partly in a northwestern over...

The Etruscan people, or Ras,(1) as they called themselves, present a most striking contrast to the Latin and Sabellian Italians as well as to the Greeks. They were distinguished...

Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharpl...

2. Italica must have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in Italy forum et -conciliabulum civium Romanorum-; Aquae Sextiae in Gaul had a similar origin afterwards. The...

This work contains many literal citations of and references to foreign words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including Gothic and Phoenician, but chie...

1. If Cicero has not allowed himself to fall into an anachronism when he makes Africanus say this as early as 625 (de Rep. iii. 9), the view indicated in the text remains perhap...

period, however, when only a man of consular standing could be made censor, the question has no practical importance. The plebeian aedileship certainly was not reckoned original...

The migration of the Umbrian stocks appears to have begun at a period later than that of the Latins. Like the Latin, it moved in a southerly direction, but it kept more in the c...

The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean, and, alternately narrowed by islands or projectio...

which he was acquainted, of the sacerdotal Alban dictatorship which was beyond doubt annual like that of Nomentum; a view in which, moreover, the democratic partisanship of its...

5. This total number is given by Valerius Maximus, ix. 2. 1. According to Appian (B. C. i. 95), there were proscribed by Sulla nearly 40 senators, which number subsequently rece...

7. These figures are taken from the numbers of the census of 639 and 684; there were in the former year 394, 336 burgesses capable of bearing arms, in the latter 910,000 (accord...

4. The words quoted as Phrygian --Bagaios-- = Zeus and the old royal name --Manis-- have been beyond doubt correctly referred to the Zend -bagha- = God and the Germanic -Mannus-...

6. This is apparent, as is well known, from the further course of events. In opposition to this view stress has been laid on the fact that in Valerius Maximus, vi. 9, 13, Quintu...

30. That Tusculum as it was the first to obtain passive burgess-rights (II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League) was also the first to exchange these for the rights of full...

4. -Exterae nationes in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiave populi Romani- (lex repet. v. i), the official designation of the non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted w...

4. To this occasion belongs his oration -contra legem iudiciariam- Ti. Gracchi--which we are to understand as referring not, as has been asserted, to a law as to the -indicia pu...

1. The whole of the representation that follows is based in substance on the recently discovered account of Licinianus, which communicates a number of facts previously unknown,...

1. In 537 the law restricting re-election to the consulship was suspended during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to 551 (p. 14; Liv. xxvii. 6). But after the...

in Auvergne, which is likewise a wide, much intersected, and uneven plain, with a superficial soil of decomposed lava and ashes--the remains of extinct volcanoes. The population...

in distinct contradiction to the stipulations of the treaties between Rome and Latium; the unprecedented march of the Roman army through the Marsian and Samnite territory to Cap...

28. As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, and one to each of the other provinces, and as moreover the two urban quaestors, the two attached to the consuls in conducting war, and...

7. It is not possible to distinguish exactly what belongs to the first and what to the second tribunate of Saturninus; the more especially, as in both he evidently followed out...

7. The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists (--technitai--) and athletes appeared as early as 568...

The original German version of this work, Roemische Geschichte, is also available in the Project Gutenberg library. Erstes Buch: bis zur Abschaffung des roemischen Koenigtums Se...

Wie er sich sieht so um und um, Kehrt es ihm fast den Kopf herum, Wie er wollt' Worte zu allem finden? Wie er mocht' so viel Schwall verbinden? Wie er mocht' immer muthig bleibe...

--Ta palaiotera saphos men eurein dia chronou pleithos adunata ein ek de tekmeirion on epi makrotaton skopounti moi pisteusai xumbainei ou megala nomizo genesthai oute kata tous...