Chapter 18

The challenge was accepted, war was declared, and Hannibal accomplished the amazing feat of leading an army of 60,000 men from Spain and effecting the passage of the Alps, while the Romans were landing an army in Spain. In a brilliant campaign, he defeated the stubborn Roman legions at Vercellæ and the Trebia.

But success depended not on the winning of victories by an isolated force, but on the disruption of Italy. His superiority in the field was again demonstrated at Trasimenus, but no Italian allies came in. He outwitted Fabius, and then utterly shattered at Cannæ a Roman force of double his own numbers. For a moment it seemed that Italian cohesion was weakening; but the Roman Senate and people were stirred only to a more dogged resolution.

Cannæ failed to break up the Roman confederation. Generalship unaided could accomplish no more. In Spain, where young Scipio was soon winning renown, the Roman arms were in the ascendant, and in Sicily. No effective aid was coming from Macedon, though war was declared between her and Rome. Hannibal's activities began to be paralysed; by slow degrees he was forced into the south. Hannibal succeeded in crossing the Alps with fresh forces, but by a brilliant operation was annihilated on the Metaurus. The time had come when Scipio could disregard Hannibal and strike at Carthage herself. Even Hannibal's return could not save her. The victory of Zama decided the issue. Carthage became virtually a tributary and subject state. Spain was a Roman province, and North Africa a sort of protectorate.

The threatening extension of Macedonian power now demanded the protecting intervention of Rome; an honest act of liberation for the Greeks, but entailing presently the war with Antiochus of Syria. Antiochus had left Phillip and Macedon in the lurch; now he sought to impose his own yoke in place of theirs. The practical outcome was his decisive overthrow at the battle of Magnesia, and the cession to Rome of Asia Minor. Pergamus, under the house of Actalus, was established as a protected kingdom, as Numidia under Masinissa had been. The Greek states, however, were becoming conscious that their freedom was hardly more than a name; Perseus of Macedon once more challenged Rome, not without Greek support. Macedon was finally crushed by Aemilius Paullus at Pydna. From that moment, Rome dropped the policy of maintaining free states beyond the seas, which had manifestly failed. Virtually, the known world was divided into subjects and dependencies of Rome, so vast was the change in the forty years between the battles of the Metaurus and Pydna.

Rapid extension of dominion by conquest had demoralising results; the ruling race was exposed to strong temptations in the provinces, and the city remained the seat of government, while the best of the burgesses were distributed elsewhere. Hence, the popular assembly became virtually the city mob, while the ruling families tended more and more to form a close and greedy and plutocratic oligarchy. The demoralisation was very inadequately checked by the austerity of the censorship as exercised by Cato.

In the provinces, the Spanish natives revolted, and were only repressed after severe fighting. In Greece, Asia and Africa, the Roman rule gave neither freedom nor strong government. In Africa, the disturbances led to the wiping out of Carthage; in Greece to the complete subjection of the dependent states; in the Far East, a new Parthian power arose under Mithridates. The Mediterranean was allowed to be infested by pirates. Revolution was at hand. Politics had become reduced to a process of intrigue for office emoluments, involving a pandering to the city mob for its suffrages.

_II.--The Revolution_

Socially, the most patent evil was the total disappearance of the free agricultural class, the absorption of all the land into huge estates under slave labour. The remedy proposed by Tiberius Gracchus was the partial state resumption of land and its re-allotment. He adopted unconstitutional methods for carrying his proposals, and was murdered in a riot led by the oligarchs. Appeals to the Roman populace were not, unfortunately, appeals to the Roman nation.

His brother, Gaius, deliberately designed a revolution. He proposed to work through the antagonism of the aristocrats and the wealthy non-senatorial equestrian order; and by concentrating power in the hands of the tribunate, hitherto checked by the restrictions on re-election. In effect, he meant to destroy the oligarchy by making the Tribune a perpetual dictator, and thus to carry through social reforms; to establish also legal equality first for the Italians, then for the provinces also. But these reforms were not particularly attractive to the city mob, and the other side could play the demagogue. The condition of Cæsarism is the control of physical force; Gaius Gracchus fell because he had not that essential control. The oligarchy remained supreme. The plans of Gracchus for planting colonies and distributing allotments were nullified.

The evils of slave labour multiplied, and issued in servile insurrections. In Numidia, the able Masimissa had been succeeded by Micipsa. On Micipsa's death, the rule was usurped by his illegitimate nephew Jugurtha, whose story has been told by Sallust. The war was at least terminated less by the low-born general in command, Marius, than his brilliant lieutenant Sulla. But Marius re-organised the army on the basis which was to make a military despotism practicable, as it made a professional instead of a citizen army.

But now a new foe appears; the first Teutonic (not Celtic) hordes of the Cimbri and Teutones; to meet with an overwhelming check at the hands of Marius at Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ. The successful soldier allied himself with the popular leader Saturninus; the programme of Gaius Gracchus was resuscitated. But Marius, a political incapable, separated from the demagogues, and by helping to crush them, effaced himself. Livius Drusus attempted to carry out the Gracchan social reform, with the senate instead of the tribunate as the controlling power; the senatorial party themselves wrecked his schemes, and the antagonistic power of the equestrian order was advanced.

But the immediate outcome was the revolt of the Italians, the _socii_ (whence the name social war). They were not citizens, not on an equal footing with the citizens before the law. The revolt was suppressed, but the legions were completely out of hand. The attempt of Sulpicius to head the reform movement was answered by Sulla, who for the first time led a Roman army against Rome, crushed Sulpicius, prescribed some of his adherents, and placed the power of the senate on a stronger footing by legal enactment. Then he went to the East, to conduct the war against Mithridates.

While Sulla was conducting his operations, military and diplomatic, with skill and success in the East, his arrangements at Rome had left discontent and disappointment seething. There was another revolution, led by Cinna, Marius and Sertorius; it mastered Rome. Marius spilt seas of blood, but soon died. For three years Cinna was supreme, but he had no constructive policy.

But now Sulla had finished his work in the East. He was returning at the head of a body of veterans devoted to him; and his diplomacy won over half Italy to his side. The struggle with the revolutionary government was not greatly prolonged, and it was decisive.

In plain terms, the Roman constitution had gone utterly to wreck; Sulla was in something of the same position as Oliver Cromwell. He had to reconstruct under conditions which made a constitutional restoration impracticable; but his control of the efficient military force gave him the necessary power. That any system introduced must be arbitrary and find its main sanction in physical force--that it should partake of terrorism--was inevitable.

Sulla obtained the formal conferment on himself of absolute power. He began by applying this rule of terror not vindictively, but with impersonal mercilessness, against the lives and property of the opposition. In the constitution which he promulgated the senatorial body was alone recognised as a privileged class; the senate itself was increased, it recovered full control of the judiciary and of legislation; no power was left of cancelling membership. The tribunician power was curtailed.

The civil and military functions of consuls and prætors were separated. They were to hold civil power in Italy proper during their year of office; they were then to have a second year in military control of a province. The planting of military colonies provided numerous garrisons whose interests were associated with the new constitution. When Sulla had done his work, he resigned his extraordinary powers with entire indifference. In a little more than a year he died.

The Sullan constitution saved the Roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like Cromwell's protectorate. There were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of Rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. And there was no man of the hour of supreme ability to carry on work demanding a master.

_III.--Pompey and Cæsar_

The young Graccus Pompeius was the most distinguished of the Sullan party; Crassus was the wealthiest and most powerful of the Equestrian group; Lepidus was the popular leader. A popular insurrection which he headed was suppressed, and he disappeared, but Sertorius, once an associate of Marius, had obtained a remarkable personal ascendancy in Spain, and, in league with the Mediterranean pirates, threatened to be a formidable foe of the new constitution. For some years he maintained a gradually waning resistance against the arms of Pompeius, but finally was assassinated.

Meanwhile Tigranes, King of Armenia, had been developing a powerful monarchy; and mutual distrust had brought on another war with Mithridates, successfully conducted by Lucullus. Out of this war arose a struggle with Tigranes, on whom an overwhelming defeat was inflicted at Tigranocerta. But the brilliant achievements of Lucullus were nullified by the mutinous conduct of the troops, and the factious conduct of the home government. The gross inefficiency of that government was shown by the immense extension of organised piracy, and by the famous slave revolt under Spartacus, which seriously endangered the state.

Pompeius on his return from Spain was barred on technical grounds from the triumph and the consulship which he demanded. He was thus driven into an alliance with the democratic party, and with Crassus. The result was the fall of the Sullan constitution, and the restoration of checks on the power of the senate. Pompeius might have grasped a military despotism; he did not, but he did receive extraordinary powers for dealing with the whole Eastern question, and when that work was settled successfully, he would be able to dictate his own terms.

Pompeius began his task by a swift and crushing blow against the pirate cities and fleets, which broke up the organisation. He crushed Mithridates in one campaign, and received the submission of Tigranes; Mithridates soon after fell by his own hand, the victim of an insurrection. Anarchy in Syria warranted Pompeius in annexing the Seleucid dominion. The whole of the nearer East was now a part of the Roman empire; and was thenceforth ruled not as protectorates, but as a group of provinces. Egypt alone was not incorporated.

Meanwhile, the democratic party at Rome were dominant, though their policy was inconsistent and opportunist. Probably the leading men, such as Crassus and the rising Gaius, Julius Cæsar, stood aside from the wilder schemes, such as the Catilinarian conspiracies, but secretly fostered them. Catiline's projects were betrayed, and the illegal execution of the captured conspirators by the consul Cicero was hailed by Cato and the senatorial party as a triumph of patriotic statesmanship. Catiline himself was crushed in the field.

The definite fact emerged, that neither the senatorial nor the democratic party could establish a strong government; that would be possible only for a military monarchy--a statesman with a policy and an irresistible, force at his back. But Pompeius lacked the courage and skill. Cæsar, as yet, lacked the military force. Pompeius, on his return from the East, again allied himself with Crassus and Cæsar, whose object was to acquire for himself the opportunity which Pompeius would not grasp. The alliance gave Pompeius the land allotments he required for his soldiers, and to Cæsar the consulship followed by a prolonged governorship of Gaul.

The conquest and organisation of Gaul was an end in itself, a necessary defence against barbarian pressure. Cæsar's operations there were invaluable to the empire; incidentally, they enabled him to become master of it. Cæsar has left his own record. Gaul was transformed into a barrier against the Teutonic migration. But Pompeius, nominally holding a far greater position, proved incapable of controlling the situation in Rome; he could not even suppress the demagogue Clodius, while the prestige of his military exploits was waning. Fear of the power of the Triumvirate was driving moderate men to the senatorial part; that party, without an efficient leader, began to find in Pompeius rather in ally against the more dangerous Cæsar than an enemy.

But they would not concede him the powers he required; which might yet be turned to the uses of his colleagues in the Triumvirate; he could not afford to challenge Cæsar; and Cæsar adroitly used the situation to secure for himself a prolongation of his Gallic command. The completion of his work there was to have precedence of his personal ambitions. Crassus was sent to the Eastern command; and Pompeius remained in Italy, while nominally appointed to Spain.

Pompeius, indeed, attained a predominance in Rome which enabled him to secure temporarily dictatorial powers which were employed to counteract the electoral machinery of the republican party; but he had not the qualifications or the inclination to play the demagogue, and could not unite his aspirations as a restorer of law and order with effective party leadership. Crassus disappeared; his armies in the East met with a complete disaster at Carrhæ, and he took his own life. Cæsar and Pompeius were left; Pompeius was not content that Cæsar should stand on a real equality with him, and the inevitable rupture came.

In effect Pompeius used his dictatorship to extend his own military command and to curtail Cæsar's. The position resolved itself into a rivalry between the two; Cæsar declaring as always for the democracy, Pompeius now assuming the championship of the aristocracy, and the guardianship of the constitution.

For Cæsar the vital point now was that his own command should not terminate till he exchanged it for a fresh consulship. As the law now stood, he could not obtain his election without resigning his command beforehand. But he succeeded in forcing Pompeius to break the law; and in making the official government responsible for declaring war. He offered a compromise, perhaps, in the certainty that it would be rejected--as it was. He was virtually declared a public enemy; and he struck at once.

At the head of his devotedly loyal veterans he crossed the Rubicon. His rapid and successful advance caused Pompeius to abandon Italy and fall back on the Eastern Provinces. The discipline preserved, and the moderation displayed by Cæsar won him unexpected favour. Having secured Italy, he turned next on Spain, and secured that. Swift and decisive action was pitted against inertness. When Cæsar entered Epirus the odds against him on paper were enormous; but the triumphant victory of Phansalus shattered the Pompeian coalition. Pompeius hurried to Egypt, but was assassinated while landing. The struggle, however, was not over till after the battle of Thapsus nearly two years after Phansalus.

Cæsar was now beyond question master of the whole Roman world. He had made himself one of the mightiest of all masters of the art of war; but he was even more emphatically unsurpassed as a statesman. In the brief time that was left him he laid the foundation of the new monarchy which replaced the ancient Republic of Rome.

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Mediæval History

EDWARD GIBBON

The Holy Roman Empire

The third of Gibbon's divisions of his great history was devoted to that period which is comprised between the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 and the final extinction of the Eastern Empire with the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet II. in 1453. Although this was the longest period, Gibbon devoted much less space to it than to the preceding parts of his history. This fact was partly due to the gradual diminution of Roman interests, for the dominions of the empire became contracted to the limits of a single city, and also to the fact that the material which the most painstaking search placed at his disposal was distinctly limited. But though the conquest of the Normans, to instance one section, has been dealt with inadequately in the light of modern research, the wonderful panorama that Gibbon's genius was able to present never fails in its effect or general accuracy. The Holy Roman Empire is, of course, properly classified under Mediæval History, which accounts for its separation from the rest of Gibbon's work.

_I.--Birth and Sway of the Empire_

The Western Empire, or Holy Roman Empire, as it has been called, which was re-established by Charlemagne (and lasted in shadow until the abdication of Francis II. under the pressure of Napoleon in 1806), was not unworthy of its title.

The personal and political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The Greek emperor was addressed by him as brother instead of father; and as long as the imperial dignity of the West was usurped by a hero, the Greeks respectfully saluted the _august_ Charlemagne with the acclamations of "Basileus" and "Emperor of the Romans." Lewis the Pious (814-840) possessed the virtue of his father but not the power. When both power and virtue were extinct, the Greeks despoiled Lewis II. of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation of _Rex_ degraded him amongst the crowd of Latin princes.

The imperial title of the West remained in the family of Charlemagne until the deposition of Charles the Fat in 884. His insanity dissolved the empire into factions, and it was not until Otho, King of Germany, laid claim to the title, with fire and sword, that the western empire was restored (962). His conquest of Italy and delivery of the pope for ever fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany. From that memorable era two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time: (1) That the prince who was elected in the German Diet acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome; (2) but that he might not legally assume the titles of Emperor and Augustus till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff.

The nominal power of the Western emperors was considerable. No pontiff could be legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the Church, had graciously signified his approbation and consent. Gregory VII., in 1073, usurped this power, and fixed for ever in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of election. Nominally, also, the emperors held sway in Rome, but this supremacy was annihilated in the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century the power derived from his title was still recognised in Europe; the hereditary monarchs confessed the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity.

The persecution of images and their votaries in the East had separated-Rome and Italy from the Byzantine throne, and prepared the way for the conquests of the Franks. The rise and triumph of the Mahometans still further diminished the empire of the East. The successful inroads of the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Russians, who assaulted by sea or by land the provinces and the capital, seemed to advance the approach of its final dissolution. The Norman adventurers, who founded a powerful kingdom in Apulia and Sicily, shook the throne of Constantinople (1146), and their hostile enterprises did not cease until the year 1185.

_II.--Latin Rulers of Constantinople_

Under the name of the Latins, the subjects of the pope, the nations of the West, enlisted under the banner of the Cross for the recovery or the release of the Holy Sepulchre. The Greek emperors were terrified and preserved by the myriads of pilgrims who marched to Jerusalem with Godfrey of Bouillon (1095-99) and the peers of Christendom. The second (1147) and the third (1189) crusades trod in the footsteps of the first. Asia and Europe were mingled in a sacred war of two hundred years; and the Christian powers were bravely resisted and finally expelled (1291) by Saladin (1171-93) and the Mamelukes of Egypt.

In these memorable crusades a fleet and army of French and Venetians were diverted from Syria to the Thracian Bosphorus; they assaulted the capital (1203), they subverted the Greek monarchy; and a dynasty of Latin princes was seated near three-score years on the throne of Constantine.

During this period of captivity and exile, which lasted from 1204 to 1261, the purple was preserved by a succession of four monarchs, who maintained their title as the heirs of Augustus, though outcasts from their capital. The _de facto_ sovereigns of Constantinople during this period, the Latin emperors of the houses of Flanders and Courtenay, provided five sovereigns for the usurped throne. By an agreement between the allied conquerors, the emperor of the East was nominated by the vote of twelve electors, chosen equally from the French and Venetians. To him, with all the titles and prerogatives of the Byzantine throne, a fourth part of the Greek monarchy was assigned; the remaining portions were equally snared between the republic of Venice and the barons of France.

Under this agreement, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and Hainault, was created emperor (1204-05). The idea of the Roman system, which, despite the passage of centuries devoted to the triumphs of the barbarians, had impressed itself on Europe, was seen in the emperor's letter to the Roman pontiff, in which he congratulated him on the restoration of his authority in the East.

The defeat and captivity of Baldwin in a war against the Bulgarians, and his subsequent death, placed the crown on the head of his brother Henry (1205-16). With him the imperial house of Flanders became extinct, and Peter of Courtenay, Count of Auxerre (1217-19), assumed the empire of the East. Peter was taken captive by Theodore, the legitimate sovereign of Constantinople, and his sons Robert (1221-28) and Baldwin II. (1228-37) reigned in succession. The gradual recovery of their empire by the legitimate sovereigns of the East culminated in the capture of Constantinople by the Greeks (1261). The line of Latin sovereigns was extinct. Baldwin lived the remainder of his life a royal fugitive, soliciting the Catholic powers to join in his restoration. He died in 1272.