168 B.C.

no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the Italian seas, but should keep in check the numerous dependent states by a mere political supremacy. The treatment of Macedonia and other states after the battle of Pydna shows that Rome had at last recognized the impracticable nature of this protectorate; the necessity of her constant intervention had proved to Rome that the effort to preserve vanquished states, even at the cost of faithful allies, was a failure. Signs were now forthcoming that by gradual steps these clientstates would be reduced to the position of subjects. When we review the extension of Rome's power from the conquest of Sicily to the battle of Pydna, it becomes clear that the universal empire of Rome was a result forced upon the Roman government, without, and even in opposition to its wish-certainly it was not a gigantic plan contrived and carried out by a thirst for territorial aggrandizement. All that the Roman government wished for was the sovereignty of Italy; and they earnestly opposed the extension of this sovereignty to Africa, Greece, and Asia, from the sound view that they ought not to suffer the kernel of their empire to be crushed by the shell. Their blind hatred of Carthage led them into the error of retaining Spain, and of assuming in some measure the guardianship of Africa; their still blinder enthusiasm for Greek freedom made them commit the equal blunder of conferring liberty everywhere on the Greeks.

The policy of Rome was not projected by a single mighty intellect and bequeathed by tradition from generation to generation; it was the policy of a very able but somewhat narrow-minded deliberative assembly, which had far too little power of grand combination, and far too much of an instinctive desire for the preservation of its own commonwealth, to devise projects in the spirit of a Caesar or a Napoleon. The universal empire of Rome was, in fact, based on the political development of antiquity in general. In the ancient world balance of power was unknown, and every nation's aim was to subdue his neighbor or to render him harmless. Though we may sentimentally mourn the extinction of so many richly gifted and highly developed nations by the supremacy of Rome, we must bear in mind that that supremacy was not due to a mere superiority of arms, but was a necessary consequence of the international relations. of antiquity generally; and therefore the issue was not one of mere chance, but the fulfillment of an unchangeable and therefore endurable destiny.

A

Chapter XVI

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED

MID the din of arms and constant succession of victories, it is difficult to trace the secret and silent growth of those changes which were fraught with such momentous consequences to the Roman constitution. The new aristocracy, consisting of the old patrician families and of those plebeians who had become united with the old patricians, gradually gathered in its grasp the reins of government. The leaders of the plebeian element of the aristocracy were most zealous in maintaining the barrier of caste, and in assigning a political significance to those outward badges, such as the ius imaginum, the laticlave, the gold rings, and the bulla, which had originally merely distinguished the higher from the lower patrician families. The senate and the equestrian order 1 were no longer organs of the whole state, but organs of the aristocracy. In each case this change was due to the power of the censorship. Everyone who had held a curule magistracy 2 had a legal claim to a vote and seat in the senate; but the censor had the power of summoning men to become members of that body, and of striking off the names of such as were unworthy of so high a position. Inasmuch as the election to a curule office and the choice of censor really lay in the hands of the senate, it was but natural that curule magistrates and censors were chosen out of the ranks of the nobility, and thus practically gave a strong aristocratic character to the composition of the senate. So, too, the censors selected the members of the equestrian centuries, and no doubt, as a rule, had regard to the birth and position of the members they selected, rather than to their military capacity. Thus the equestrian order

1 The equestrian order was originally made up of those citizens who served as the cavalry contingent of the legions. As this service presupposed considerable wealth, and as in the comitia centuriata they voted by themselves in the eighteen equestrian centuries into which they were divided, they came to be looked upon as a wealthy, privileged class of nobles, a little inferior to the senators, but far superior in rank to the ordinary plebeians.

2 The curule officers were the dictator consuls, pretors, censors, and ediles.

became a stronghold of the aristocracy. The distinction between classes was further rendered more marked by the unwise change introduced by the great Scipio in 194 B.C. This change separated the special seats assigned to the senatorial order from those occupied by the mass of the people at the national festivals.

The office of censor, owing to these changes, became invested with a peculiar glory of its own, as the palladium of the aristocratic order, and great efforts were made to resist attacks on the censorship or judicial prosecution of unpopular censors, and to prevent opponents of the aristocracy from holding this office. An important check, moreover, was placed upon the censor himself by the usage which obliged him to specify the grounds on which he erased the name of senator or knight. The nobility, in order to keep the government in their own hands, were naturally averse to appointing more magistrates than the growth of Roman power rendered unavoidable. The appointment, in 243 B.C., of two pretors in the place of one, and the assignation of all lawsuits between Roman citizens to the city pretor (praetor urbanus) and of all lawsuits between men who were not Roman citizens to his colleague (praetor peregrinus) was manifestly inadequate to the growing needs of the state. Further, the attempt to govern the four transmarine provinces by the appointment of four pretors in 197 B.C. showed a desire to limit the number of magistrates who were outside the immediate control of the senate, rather than a real grasp of the requirements of the new empire. A more serious evil was the election of the twenty-four military tribunes. i. e., of the whole military staff, by the comitia tributa; thus the choice of officers became subject to the evils of popular election, and every effort was made by the aristocracy to secure the position for members of their own order, and to make the military tribunate the stepping-stone in the political career of young nobles. In serious wars, e. g., in 171 B.C., it was found necessary to suspend this system, and to restore to the general the power of electing his own staff.

Owing to the aristocratic spirit that pervaded every section of the government, the chief magisterial offices of consul and censor not only centered in the hands of a limited number of gentes, but, what was worse, in the hands of particular families. This was markedly the case in the policy of the Scipios and the Flaminini. Moreover, a serious laxity began to prevail in the management of the public money; and, although embezzlement was still rare among

Roman officials, the corruption prevalent in the provinces could not fail to react with pernicious effect on the pretors and their retinue. The relations of Rome to her allies and dependents, both within and outside Italy, gradually underwent a change. In the first place, such communities as had been passive burgesses of Rome, and had sided with Hannibal, e. g., Capua, lost their Roman citizenship, while other communities which had remained true to Rome acquired the full franchise; thus, except in isolated cases, the position occupied by passive burgesses ceased to exist. Admission to the Roman franchise became more and more difficult; and the tendency arose on the part of the Roman citizens to separate themselves, not only from the mass of Italians, but even from their old Latin allies, whose staunch support had saved the state in the war with Hannibal. The chief burdens of war, of garrison duty, and of the Spanish service, now fell upon the allies, while the Roman citizens appropriated most of the spoil and of the honors and advantages that accrued from the successes won by the arms of their allies. Indeed, the Latins, though of course far removed from the servile position held by the Bruttians and other communities, felt that the distinction between themselves and the mass of the Italian confederacy was being abolished, and that they were fast becoming the subjects, instead of the privileged allies, of Rome.

A far graver error was the retention of the old constitution, which Carthage had established in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain: by retaining the tribute imposed by their predecessors, the Romans renounced their old policy of having no tributary subjects; and by applying this method to Hither Spain, Macedonia, and Illyria, they clearly adopted the dangerous and demoralizing expedient of making money out of their new possessions. It is true that the governors were legally bound to administer their office with honesty. and frugality, and it is equally true that many, like Cato in Sardinia, scrupulously observed the legal injunction. But the temptation was too great; the control exercised by the senate over the governors was of necessity very lax, and the complaints of the governed, unless the severity and rapacity of the pretor had exceeded all ordinary limits, met with but scant attention. Moreover, the governor could not be called to account during his term of office, and the charges laid against him were, as a rule, heard by a jury consisting of men of his own order, and therefore little inclined to visit the offender with severe punishment. We can, then, scarcely

doubt that, owing to the feeble control exercised by the senate, and the absolute nature of the governor's provincial office, and, still more, owing to the corrupt servility of those whom he governed, it was a rare thing for governors to return home with clean hands. A wholesome corrective to the abuse of the senatorial power, theoretically at least, still existed in the assemblies of the people. But this period exhibits to us the growing unimportance, nay impotence, of the popular comitia. The reason is plain. With the extension of the Roman suffrage, not only throughout Latium, Sabina, and a part of Campania, but to the new colonies founded in Picenum and across the Apennines, the burgess-body no longer consisted of farmers living within easy distance of the capital. Thus the decision of the great questions of foreign policy rested with men scattered over Italy, who met together in the capital by mere chance, and who were unable by previous consultation to arrive at some joint course of action and to show an intelligent grasp of the weighty questions submitted to their judgment. As a rule, then, the people played a passive part on such occasions, and ratified without discussion the proposals made to them by the senate.

Again, out of the old clients of powerful houses now arose a city rabble, whose votes in the comitia were becoming of even more importance than those of the scattered burgesses, and were employed by the aristocracy to counterbalance the independence of the farmers. Systematic corruption began to be practiced upon these clients by the sale of grain at low prices, by an increase of festivals and holidays, and by gladiatorial shows, in order that the aristocratic candidate might secure his election to the offices of state at the expense of his poorer rival. The spoils of war were even employed to corrupt the soldiers, and the stern refusal of Lucius Paulus to turn his victory at Pydna to such base uses almost cost him the honor of a triumph. It was but natural that such corruption should work the decay of the old warlike spirit, and that cowardice should stain the honor of the Roman officers and soldiers.

Another sign of the universal degeneration was the miserable love for petty distinctions: triumphs were granted to the victor of Ligurian or Corsican robbers; statues and monuments became so common that it was said to be a distinction to have none; men received permanent surnames from the victories they had won; and among the lower orders equal anxiety was manifested to mark their social grade by trifling badges.