The History of Rome, Theodor Mommsen [good english books to read txt] 📗

we review the whole catastrophe, the impartial historian must acknowledge— what the Greeks of this period themselves candidly confessed—that the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the contrary, the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks compelled the Roman intervention. The abolition of the mock sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams connected with them was a blessing for the country; and the government of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much it fell short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous confusion and misrule of Greek confederacies and Roman commissions. The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries; it is affirmed, and may readily be believed, that with the direct government of Rome security and prosperity in some measure returned. The epigram of Themistocles, that ruin had averted ruin, was applied by the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss of Greek independence. The singular indulgence, which Rome even now showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared with the contemporary conduct of the same authorities towards the Spaniards and Phoenicians. To treat barbarians with cruelty seemed not unallowable, but the Romans of this period, like the emperor Trajan in later times, deemed it "harsh and barbarous to deprive Athens and Sparta of the shadow of freedom which they still retained." All the more marked is the contrast between this general moderation and the revolting treatment of Corinth—a treatment disapproved by the orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets of Corinth. And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality of any single individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate. We shall not err, if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial rival. If the great merchants of Rome had anything to say in the regulation of Greece, we can understand why Corinth was singled out for punishment, and why the Romans not only destroyed the city as it stood, but also prohibited any future settlement on a site so pre-eminently favourable for commerce. The Peloponnesian Argos thenceforth became the rendezvous for the Roman merchants, who were very numerous even in Greece. For the Roman wholesale traffic, however, Delos was of greater importance; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes,(26) and now in a similar way entered on the heritage of Corinth. This island remained for a considerable time the chief emporium for merchandise going from the east to the west.(27)

In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion exhibited a development more imperfect than in the African and Macedono-Hellenic countries, which were separated from Italy only by narrow seas.

Kingdom of Pergamus

In Asia Minor, after the Seleucids were driven back, the kingdom of Pergamus had become the first power. Not led astray by the traditions of the Alexandrine monarchies, but sagacious and dispassionate enough to renounce what was impossible, the Attalids kept quiet; and endeavoured not to extend their bounds nor to withdraw from the Roman hegemony, but to promote the prosperity of their empire, so far as the Romans allowed, and to foster the arts of peace. Nevertheless they did not escape the jealousy and suspicion of Rome. In possession of the European shore of the Propontis, of the west coast of Asia Minor, and of its interior as far as the Cappadocian and Cilician frontiers, and in close connection with the Syrian kings—one of whom, Antiochus Epiphanes (d. 590), had ascendedthe throne by the aid of the Attalids—king Eumenes II had by his power, which seemed still more considerable from the more and more deep decline of Macedonia and Syria, instilled apprehension in the minds even of its founders. We have already related(28) how the senate sought to humble and weaken this ally after the third Macedonian war by unbecoming diplomatic arts. The relations— perplexing from the very nature of the case—of the rulers of Pergamus towards the free or half-free commercial cities within their kingdom, and towards their barbarous neighbours on its borders, became complicated still more painfully by this ill humour on the part of their patrons. As it was not clear whether, according to the treaty of peace in 565, the heights of the Taurus in Pamphylia and Pisidia belonged to the kingdom of Syria or to that of Pergamus,(29) the brave Selgians, nominally recognizing, as it would seem, the Syrian supremacy, made a prolonged and energetic resistance to the kings Eumenes II and Attalus II in the hardly accessible mountains of Pisidia. The Asiatic Celts also, who for a time with the permission of the Romans had yielded allegiance to Pergamus, revolted from Eumenes and, in concert with Prusias king of Bithynia the hereditary enemy of the Attalids, suddenly began war against him about 587. The king had had no time to hire mercenary troops; all his skill and valour could not prevent the Celts from defeating the Asiatic militia and overrunning his territory; the peculiar mediation, to which the Romans condescended at the request of Eumenes, has already been mentioned.(30) But, as soon as he had found time with the help of his well-filled exchequer to raise an army capable of taking the field, he speedily drove the wild hordes back over the frontier, and, although Galatia remained lost to him, and his obstinately-continued attempts to maintain his footing there were frustrated by Roman influence,(31) he yet, in spite of all the open attacks and secret machinations which his neighbours and the Romans directed against him, at his death (about 595) left his kingdom in standing un-diminished. His brother Attalus II Philadelphia (d. 616) with Roman aid repelled the attempt of Pharnaces king of Pontus to seize the guardianship of Eumenes' son who was a minor, and reigned in the room of his nephew, like Antigonus Doson, as guardian for life. Adroit, able, pliant, a genuine Attalid, he had the art to convince the suspicious senate that the apprehensions which it had formerly cherished were baseless. The anti-Roman party accused him of having to do with keeping the land for the Romans, and of acquiescing in every insult and exaction at their hands; but, sure of Roman protection, he was able to interfere decisively in the disputes as to the succession to the throne in Syria, Cappadocia, and Bithynia. Even from the dangerous Bithynian war, which king Prusias II, surnamed the Hunter (572?-605), a ruler who combined in his own person all the vices of barbarism and of civilization, began against him, Roman intervention saved him—although not until he had been himself besieged in his capital, and a first warning given by the Romans had remained unattended to, and had even been scoffed at, by Prusias (598-600). But, when his ward Attalus III Philometor ascended the throne (616-621), the peaceful and moderate rule of the citizen kings was replaced by the tyranny of an Asiatic sultan; under which for instance, the king, with a view to rid himself of the inconvenient counsel of his father's friends, assembled them in the palace, and ordered his mercenaries to put to death first them, and then their wives and children. Along with such recreations he wrote treatises on gardening, reared poisonous plants, and prepared wax models, till a sudden death carried him off.

Province of Asia
War against Aristonicus

With him the house of the Attalids became extinct. In such an event, according to the constitutional law which held good at least for the client-states of Rome, the last ruler might dispose of the succession by testament. Whether it was the insane rancour against his subjects which had tormented the last Attalid during life that now suggested to him the thought of bequeathing his kingdom by will to the Romans, or whether his doing so was merely a further recognition of the practical supremacy of Rome, cannot be determined. The testament was made;(32) the Romans accepted the bequest, and the question as to the land and the treasure of the Attalids threw a new apple of contention among the conflicting political parties in Rome. In Asia also this royal testament kindled a civil war. Relying on the aversion of the Asiatics to the foreign rule which awaited them, Aristonicus, a natural son of Eumenes II, made his appearance in Leucae, a small seaport between Smyrna and Phocaea, as a pretender to the crown. Phocaea and other towns joined him, but he was defeated at sea off Cyme by the Ephesians—who saw that a steady adherence to Rome was the only possible way of preserving their privileges—and was obliged to flee into the interior. The movement was believed to have died away when he suddenly reappeared at the head of the new "citizens of the city of the sun,"(33) in other words, of the slaves whom he had called to freedom en masse, mastered the Lydian towns of Thyatira and Apollonis as well as a portion of the Attalic townships, and summoned bands of Thracian free-lances to join his standard. The struggle was serious. There were no Roman troops in Asia; the Asiatic free cities and the contingents of the client-princes of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, could not withstand the pretender; he penetrated by force of arms into Colophon, Samos, and Myndus, and already ruled over almost all his father's kingdom, when at the close of 623 a Roman army landed in Asia. Its commander, the consul and -pontifex maximus- Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus, one of the wealthiest and at the same time one of the most cultivated men in Rome, equally distinguished as an orator and as a jurist, was about to besiege the pretender in Leucae, but during his preparations for that purpose allowed himself to be surprised and defeated by his too-much-underrated opponent, and was made a prisoner in person by a Thracian band. But he did not allow such an enemy the triumph of exhibiting the Roman commander-in-chief as a captive; he provoked the barbarians, who had captured him without knowing who he was, to put him to death (beginning of 624), and the consular was only recognised when a corpse. With him, as it would seem, fell Ariarathes king of Cappadocia. But not long after this victory Aristonicus was attacked by Marcus Perpenna, the successor of Crassus; his army was dispersed, he himself was besieged and taken prisoner in Stratonicea, and was soon afterwards executed in Rome. The subjugation of the last towns that still offered resistance and the definitive regulation of the country were committed, after the sudden death of Perpenna, to Manius Aquillius (625). The same policy was followed as in the case of the Carthaginian territory.

The eastern portion of the kingdom of the Attalids was assigned to the client kings, so as to release the Romans from the protection of the frontier and thereby from the necessity of maintaining a standing force in Asia; Telmissus(34) went to the Lycian confederacy; the European possessions in Thrace were annexed to the province of Macedonia; the rest of the territory was organized as a new Roman province, which like that of Carthage was, not without design, designated by the name of the continent in which it lay. The land was released from the taxes which had been paid to Pergamus; and it was treated with the same moderation as Hellas and Macedonia. Thus the most considerable state in Asia Minor became a Roman province.

Western Asia
Cappadocia

The numerous other small states and cities of western Asia— the kingdom of Bithynia, the Paphlagonian and Gallic principalities, the Lycian and Pamphylian confederacies, the free cities of Cyzicus and Rhodes—continued in their former circumscribed relations.

Beyond the Halys Cappadocia—after king Ariarathes V Philopator (591-624) had, chiefly by the aid of the Attalids, held his ground against his brother and rival Holophernes who was supported by Syria— followed substantially the Pergamene policy, as respected both absolute devotion to Rome and the tendency to adopt Hellenic culture. He was the means of introducing that culture into the hitherto almost barbarous Cappadocia, and along with it its extravagancies also, such as the worship of Bacchus and the dissolute practices of the bands of wandering actors—the "artists" as they were called. In reward for the fidelity to Rome, which had cost this prince his life in the struggle with the Pergamene pretender, his youthful heir Ariarathes VI was not only protected by the Romans against the usurpation attempted by the king of