No More Learning

Public opinion, unavailing in the hands of the so-called
popular party, became an irresistible weapon in the hands of the future king of Rome. We do not mean to say that Marius intended to play the pretender, at least at the time when he canvassed the people for the supreme command in Africa; but, whether he did or did not understand what he was doing, there was evidently an end of the restored aristocratic government when the comitial machine began to make generals, or, which was nearly the same thing,
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
413
when every popular officer was able in legal fashion to nominate himself as general. Only one new element emerged in these preliminary crises ; this was the introduc
tion of military men and of military power into the political revolution. Whether the coming forward of Marius would
be the immediate prelude of a new attempt to supersede
the oligarchy by the fyrannis, or whether it would, as in various similar cases, pass away without further consequence
as an isolated encroachment on the prerogative of the government, could not yet be determined; but it could
well be foreseen that, if these rudiments of a second tyrannis should attain any development, it was not a states
man like Gaius Gracchus, but an officer that would become
its head. The contemporary reorganization of the military system —which Marius introduced when, in forming his army destined for Africa, he disregarded the property- qualification hitherto required, and allowed even the poorest burgess, if he was otherwise serviceable, to enter
the legion as a volunteer —may have been projected by its author on purely military grounds; but it was none the
less on that account a momentous political event, that the army was no longer, as formerly, composed of those who
had much, no longer even, as in the most recent times, composed of those who had something, to lose, but became gradually converted into a host of people who had nothing
but their arms and what the general bestowed on them.
The aristocracy ruled in 650 just as absolutely as in 620; 104. but the signs of the impending catastrophe had multiplied,
and on the political horizon the sword had begun to appear by the side of the crown.
13 1
Relations the north.
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 whole. Even there however—in the north and west of Spain, in the valleys of the Ligurian Apennines and the Alps, and in the mountains of Macedonia and Thrace— tribes wholly or partially free continued to defy the lax Roman government. Moreover the continental communi cation between Spain and Italy as well as between Italy and Macedonia was very superficially provided for, and the countries beyond the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkan chain —the great river basins of the Rhone, the Rhine, and
the Danube —in the main lay beyond the political horizon of the Romans. We have now to set forth what steps were taken on the part of Rome to secure and to round off her empire in this direction, and how at the same time the great masses of peoples, who were ever moving to and fro behind that mighty mountain-screen, began to beat at the gates of the northern mountains and rudely to remind the Graeco-Roman world that it was mistaken in believing itself the sole possessor of the earth.
Let us first glance at the region between the western
The
414
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
CHAPTER V
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
JJJ^nd,e Alps and the Pyrenees. The Romans had for long corn-
Alps and
manded this part of the coast of the Mediterranean through
CHAP, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
415
their client city of Massilia, one of the oldest, most faithful,
and most powerful of the allied communities dependent on
Rome. Its maritime stations, Agatha (Agde) and Rhoda
(Rosas) to the westward, and Tauroentium (Ciotat), Olbia (Hyeres? ), Antipolis (Antibes), and Nicaea (Nice) on the
east secured the navigation of the coast as well as the land-
route from the Pyrenees to the Alps ; and its mercantile
and political connections reached far into the interior. An Conflicts expedition into the Alps above Nice and Antibes, directed ur,^^ against the Ligurian Oxybii and Decietae, was undertaken
by the Romans in 600 partly at the request of the Massiliots, 154. partly in their own interest ; and after hot conflicts, some
of which were attended with much loss, this district of the mountains was compelled to furnish thenceforth standing hostages to the Massiliots and to pay them a yearly tribute.
It is not improbable that about this same period the cultiva
tion of the vine and olive, which flourished in this quarter
after the model set by the Massiliots, was in the interest of
the Italian landholders and merchants simultaneously prohibited throughout the territory beyond the Alps dependent on Massilia. 1 A similar character of financial and the speculation marks the war, which was waged by the Romans SalassL under the consul Appius Claudius in 61 1 against the Salassi 143. respecting the gold mines and gold washings of Victumulae
(in the district of Vercelli and Bard and in the whole valley of the Dorea Baltea). The great extent of these washings, which deprived the inhabitants of the country lying lower down of water for their fields, first gave rise to an attempt at mediation and then to the armed intervention of the
1 If Cicero has not allowed himself to fall into an anachronism when he makes Africanus say this as early a* 625 (de Rep. iii. 9), the view indicated 129, in the text remains perhaps the mly possible one. This enactment did not
refer to Northern Italy and Liguria, as the cultivation of the vine by the Genuates in 637 (p. 81, note) proves ; and as little to the immediate 117. territory of Massilia (Just xlili 4 ; Posidon. Fr. 25. Mull. ; Strabo, iv.
The large export of wine and oil from Italy to the region of the Rhone in the seventh century of the city is well known.
179).
416
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book iv
Romans. The war, although the Romans began it like all the other wars of this period with a defeat, led at last to the subjugation of the Salassi, and the cession of the gold district to the Roman treasury. Some forty years afterwards
100. (654) the colony of Eporedia (Ivrea) was instituted on the territory thus gained, chiefly doubtless with a view to command the western, as Aquileia commanded the eastern, passage of the Alps.
125. in 629. He was the first to enter on the career of Trans alpine conquest. In the much -divided Celtic nation at this period the canton of the Bituriges had lost its real hegemony and retained merely an honorary presidency, and the actually leading canton in the region from the Pyrenees to the Rhine and from the Mediterranean to the
rhe Western Ocean was that of the Arverni ;l so that the state ment seems not quite an exaggeration, that it could bring into the field as many as 180,000 men. With them the Haedui (about Autun) carried on an unequal rivalry for the hegemony; while in north-eastern Gaul the kings of the Suessiones (about Soissons) united under their protect orate the league of the Belgic tribes extending as far as Britain. Greek travellers of that period had much to tell of the magnificent state maintained by Luerius, king of the Arvernians —how, surrounded by his brilliant train of clans men, his huntsmen with their pack of hounds in leash and his band of wandering minstrels, he travelled in a silver- mounted chariot through the towns of his kingdom, scatter ing the gold with a full hand among the multitude, and gladdening above all the heart of the minstrel with the glittering shower. The descriptions of the open table
1 In Auvergne. Their capital, Nemetum or Nemossus, lay not far from Clermont.
These Alpine wars first assumed a more serious character,
Trans-
relations of when Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, the faithful ally of Gaius Rome. Gracchus, took the chief command in this quarter as consul
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
417
which he kept in an enclosure of 1500 double paces square, and to which every one who came in the way was invited, vividly remind us of the marriage-table of Camacho. In fact, the numerous Arvernian gold coins of this period still extant show that the canton of the Arvernians had attained to extraordinary wealth and a comparatively high standard of civilization.
The attack of Flaccus, however, fell in the first instance
not on the Arverni, but on the smaller tribes in the district
between the Alps and the Rhone, where the original Ligurian Arverni. inhabitants had become mixed with subsequent arrivals
of Celtic bands, and there had arisen a Cel to -Ligurian population that may in this respect be compared to the Celtiberian. He fought (629, 630) with success against 126. ! '4• the Salyes or Salluvii in the region of Aix and in the
valley of the Durance, and against their northern neighbours
the Vocontii (in the departments of Vaucluse and Drome) ;
and so did his successor Gaius Sextius Calvinus (631, 632) 123. 122. against the Allobroges, a powerful Celtic clan in the rich
valley of the Isere, which had come at the request of the
fugitive king of the Salyes, Tutomotulus, to help him to
War with
broges jnd
reconquer his land, but was defeated in the district of Aix. When the Allobroges nevertheless refused to surrender the king of the Salyes, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, the suc cessor of Calvinus, penetrated into their own territory (632). 122. Up to this period the leading Celtic tribe had been spectators
of the encroachments of their Italian neighbours ; the Arver nian king Betuitus, son of the Luerius already mentioned, seemed not much inclined to enter on a dangerous war for the sake of the loose relation of clientship in which the eastern cantons might stand to him. But when the Romans showed signs of attacking the Allobroges in their own territory, he offered his mediation, the rejection of which was followed by his taking the field with all his forces to help the Allobroges ; whereas the Haedui embraced the
VOL. It.
92
418
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book IT
side of the Romans. On receiving accounts of the rising 121. of the Arverni, the Romans sent the consul of 633, Quintus Fabius Maximus, to meet in concert with Aheno-
barbus the impending attack. On the southern border of
the canton of the Allobroges at the confluence of the Isere ML with the Rhone, on the 8th of August 633, the battle was fought which decided the mastery of southern Gaul. King Betuitus, when he saw the innumerable hosts of the
dependent clans marching over to him on the bridge of boats thrown across the Rhone and the Romans who had not a third of their numbers forming in array against them, is said to have exclaimed that there were not enough of the latter to satisfy the dogs of the Celtic army. Nevertheless Maximus, a grandson of the victor of Pydna, achieved a decisive victory, which, as the bridge of boats broke down under the mass of the fugitives, ended in the destruction of the greater part of the Arvernian army. The Allobroges, to whom the king of the Arverni declared himself unable to render further assistance, and whom he advised to make their peace with Maximus, submitted to the consul ; where upon the latter, thenceforth called Allobrogicus, returned to Italy and left to Ahenobarbus the no longer distant termination of the Arvernian war. Ahenobarbus, per sonally exasperated at king Betuitus because he had in
duced the Allobroges to surrender to Maximus and not to him, possessed himself treacherously of the person of the king and sent him to Rome, where the senate, although disapproving the breach of fidelity, not only kept the men betrayed, but gave orders that his son, Congonnetiacus, should likewise be sent to Rome. This seems to have been the reason why the Arvernian war, already almost at an end, once more broke out, and a second appeal to arms took place at Vindalium (above Avignon) at the conflu ence of the Sorgue with the Rhone. The result was not different from that of the first: on this occasion it was
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
419
chiefly the African elephants that scattered the Celtic army. Thereupon the Arverni submitted to peace, and tranquillity was re-established in the land of the Celts. 1
The result of these military operations was the institution Province of
of a new Roman province between the maritime Alps and the Pyrenees. All the tribes between the Alps and the Rhone became dependent on the Romans and, so far as they did not pay tribute to Massilia, presumably became now tributary to Rome. In the country between the Rhone and the Pyrenees the Arverni retained freedom and were not bound to pay tribute to the Romans ; but they had to cede to Rome the most southerly portion of their direct or indirect territory —the district to the south of the Cevennes as far as the Mediterranean, and the upper course of the Garonne as far as Tolosa (Toulouse). As the primary object of these occupations was the establishment of a land communication between Italy and Spain, arrangements were made immediately thereafter for the construction of the road along the coast For this purpose a belt of coast from the Alps to the Rhone, from i to if of a mile in breadth, was handed over to the Massiliots, who already had a series of maritime stations along this coast, with the obligation of keeping the road in proper condition; while from the
Rhone to the Pyrenees the Romans themselves laid out a military highway, which obtained from its originator Aheno- barbus the name of the Via Domitia.
Narbo*
As usual, the formation of new fortresses was combined Roman
with the construction of roads. In the eastern portion the "
1 The battle at Vindalium is placed by the epitomator of Livy and by "8* °n of Orosius before that on the Isara ; but the reverse order is supported by "" Rhone. Floras and Strabo (iv. 191), and is confirmed partly by the circumstance
that Maximus, according to the epitome of Livy and Pliny, H. N, vii. 50,
conquered the Gauls when consul, partly and especially by the Capitoline
Fasti, according to which Maximus not only triumphed before Aheno-
barbus, but the former triumphed over the Allobroges and the king of
the Arverni, the latter only over the Arverni. It is clear that the battle
with the Allobroges and Avverni must have taken place earlier than that
with the Arverni alone.
meemen
4ao
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book iv
The
of the"* Romans
Romans chose the spot where Gaius Sextius had defeated the Celts, and where the pleasantness and fertility of the region as well as the numerous hot and cold springs invited them to settlement; a Roman township sprang up there —the "baths of Sextius," Aquae Sextiae (Aix). To the west of the Rhone the Romans settled in Narbo, an ancient Celtic town on the navigable river Atax (Aude) at a small distance from the sea, which is already mentioned by Heca- taeus, and which even before its occupation by the Romans vied with Massilia as a place of stirring commerce, and as sharing the trade in British tin. Aquae did not obtain civic rights, but remained a standing camp ; 1 whereas Narbo, although in like manner founded mainly as a watch and outpost against the Celts, became as "Mars' town," a Roman burgess-colony and the usual seat of the governor of the new Transalpine Celtic province or, as it was more frequently called, the province of Narbo.
The Gracchan party, which suggested these extensions of terr'torv beyond the Alps, evidently wished to open up there a new and immeasurable field for their plans of coloni-
the policy' zaL^on> —a fi^d which offered the same advantages as Sicily
of the
restoration. natives than he Sicilian and Libyan estates from the
and Africa, and could be more easily wrested from the
Italian capitalists. The fall of Gaius Gracchus, no doubt, made itself felt here also in the restriction of acquisitions of territory and still more of the founding of towns ; but, if the design was not carried out in its full extent, it was at any rate not wholly frustrated. The territory acquired and,
still more, the foundation of Narbo—a settlement for which the senate vainly endeavoured to prepare the fate of that at
1 Aquae was not a colony, as Livy says (P. p. 61), but a casiellxm (Strabo, iv. 180 ; Velleius, i. 15 ; Madvig, Opine, i. 303). The same holds true of Italica (p. 214), and of many other places —Vindonissa, for instance, never was in law anything else than a Celtic village, but was withal a fortified Roman camp, and a township of very considerable importance.
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
421
Carthage — remained standing as parts of an unfinished structure, exhorting the future successor of Gracchus to continue the building. It is evident that the Roman mercantile class, which was able to compete with Massilia in the Gallo-Britannic traffic at Narbo alone, protected that settlement from the assaults of the Optimates.
A problem similar to that in the north-west had to be niyria. dealt with in the north-east of Italy ; it was in like manner
not wholly neglected, but was solved still more imperfectly
than the former. With the foundation of Aquileia (571) 188. the Istrian peninsula came into possession of the Romans
(ii. 372) ; in part of Epirus and the former territory of the
lords of Scodra they had already ruled for some considerable
time previously. But nowhere did their dominion reach Dalma- into the interior ; and even on the coast they exercised scarcely a nominal sway over the inhospitable shore-belt between Istria and Epirus, which, with its wild series of mountain -caldrons broken neither by river-valleys nor by coast-plains and arranged like scales one above another, and
with its chain of rocky islands stretching along the shore, separates more than it connects Italy and Greece. Around
the town of Delminium (on the Cettina near Trigl) clustered
the confederacy of the Delmatians or Dalmatians, whose manners were rough as their mountains. While the neigh bouring peoples had already attained a high degree of culture, the Dalmatians were as yet unacquainted with money, and divided their land, without recognizing any special right of property in afresh every eight years among the members of the community. Brigandage and
piracy were the only native trades. These tribes had in
earlier times stood in loose relation of dependence on the
rulers of Scodra, and had so far shared in the chastisement inflicted by the Roman expeditions against queen Teuta
218) and Demetrius of Pharos 220) but on the acces sion of king Genthius they had revolted and had thus escaped
(ii.
(ii. ;
a
it,
148.
Macedonia U(1
The
433
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH BOOK iv
166.
Their sub- jugation.
166.
the fate which involved southern Illyria in the fall of the Macedonian empire and rendered it permanently dependent on Rome The Romans were glad to leave the far from attractive region to itself. But the complaints of the Roman Illyrians, particularly of the Daorsi, who dwelt on the Narenta to the south of the Dalmatians, and of the inhabitants of the islands of Issa (Lissa), whose continental stations Tragyrium (Trau) and Epetium (near Spalato) suffered severely from the natives, compelled the Roman government to despatch an embassy to the latter, and on receiving the reply that the Dalmatians had neither troubled themselves hitherto about the Romans nor would do so in future, to send thither an army in 598 under the consul Gaius Marcius Figulus. He penetrated into Dalmatia, but was again driven back as far as the Roman territory. was nQt till his successor publius Scipio Nasica took the large and strong town of Delminium in 599, that the confederacy conformed and professed itself subject to the Romans. But the poor and only superficially subdued country was not sufficiently important to be erected into distinct province the Romans contented themselves, as they had already done the case of the more important possessions in Epirus, with having administered from Italy along with Cisalpine Gaul an arrangement which was, at least as a rule, retained even when the province of Macedonia had been erected in 608 and its north western frontier had been
fixed to the northward of Scodra. 1
But this very conversion of Macedonia into province
directly dependent on Rome gave to the relations of Rome with the peoples on the north-east greater importance, by imposing on the Romans the obligation of defending the everywhere exposed frontier on the north and east against
P. «6a. The Pimstae in the valleys of the Drin belonged to the province of Macedonia, but made forays into the neighbouring IUyricurn (Caesar, B. G. v.
1).
;
in
(ii. 51
1
a
a
it
:
It
o).
chap, T THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
433
the adjacent barbarian tribes ; and in a similar way r. ot
ong afterwards (621) the acquisition by Rome of the 188.
Thracian Chersonese (peninsula of Gallipoli) previously belonging to the kingdom of the Attalids devolved on the Romans the obligation hitherto resting on the kings of Pergamus to protect the Hellenes here against the Thraciani. From the double basis furnished by the valley of the Po and the province of Macedonia the Romans could now advance in earnest towards the region of the headwaters of the Rhine and towards the Danube, and possess themselves of the northern mountains at least so far as was requisite for the security of the lands to the south.
In these regions the most powerful nation at that time was the great Celtic people, which according to the native tradition 423) had issued from its settlements on the Western Ocean and poured itself about the same time into the valley of the Po on the south of the main chain of the Alps and into the regions on the Upper Rhine and on the Danube to the north of that chain. Among their various tribes, both banks of the Upper Rhine were occupied by the powerful and rich Helvetii, who nowhere came into immediate contact with the Romans and so lived in peace and in treaty with them at this time they seem to have stretched from the lake of Geneva to the river Main, and to have occupied the modern Switzerland, Suabia, and Fran- conia. Adjacent to them dwelt the Boii, whose settlements were probably in the modern Bavaria and Bohemia. 1 To
"The Helvetii dwelt," Tacitus says (Germ. 28), "between the Hercynian Forest (i. e. here probably the Rauhe Alp), the Rhine, and the Main the Boii farther on. " Posidonius also (ap. Strab. vii. 393) states that the Boii, at the time when they repulsed the Cimbri, inhabited the Hercynian Forest, i. e. the mountains from the Rauhe Alp to the Bohmer- wald. " The circumstance that Caesar transplants them " beyond the Rhine (B. G. by no means inconsistent with this, for, as he there speaks from the Helvetian point of view, he may very well mean the country to the north-east of the lake of Constance which quite accords with the fact, that Strabo (vii. 393) describes the former Boian country as bordering on the lake of Constance, except 'hat he not quite accurate in naming along with them the Vindelici as dwelling by the lake of Cob-
The tribes *xthe
the Rhine Danube.
Helvetii.
Boil,
is
;
\.
5) is
1 ;
:
f? g
(i.
Kuganel, Venetl
ality of the latter ; but they appear under the name of the Raeti in the mountains of East Switzerland and the Tyrol, and under that of the Euganei and Veneti about Padua and Venice ; so that at this last point the two great Celtic streams almost touched each other, and only a narrow belt of native population separated the Celtic Cenomani about Brescia from the Celtic Carnians in Friuli. The Euganei and Veneti had long been peaceful subjects of the Romans ; whereas the peoples of the Alps proper were not only still
free, but made regular forays down from their mountains into the plain between the Alps and the Po, where they
itance, for the latter only established themselves there after the Boii had evacuated these districts. From these seats of theirs the Boii were dis possessed by the Marcomani and other Germanic tribes even before the
424
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH BOOK IV
the south-east of these we meet with another Celtic stock,
which made its appearance in Styria and Carinthia under Taurisd. the name of the Taurisci and afterwards of the Norici, in Carni. Friuli, Carniola, and Istria under that of the Cami. Their
city Noreia (not far from St Veit to the north of Klagenfurt) was flourishing and widely known from the iron mines that were even at that time zealously worked in those regions ; still more were the Italians at this very period allured thither by the rich seams of gold brought to light, till the natives excluded them and took this California of that day wholly into their own hands. These Celtic hordes streaming along on both sides of the Alps had after their fashion occupied chiefly the flat and hill country; the Alpine regions proper and likewise the districts along the Adige and the Lower Po were not occupied by them, and remained in the hands of the earlier indigenous population.
Raeti, Nothing certain has yet been ascertained as to the nation
100. time of Posidonius, consequently before 650 ; detached portions of them in Caesar's time roamed about in Carinthia (B. G. i. 5), and came thence to the Helvetii and into western Gaul ; another swarm found new settle ments on the Plattensee, where it was annihilated by the Getae ; but the district — the " Boian desert," as it was called — preserved the name of this the most harassed of all the Celtic peoples (comp. 373, note).
ii.
chap, v
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
425
were not content with levying contributions, but conducted themselves with fearful cruelty in the townships which they captured, not unfrequently slaughtering the whole male population down to the infant in the cradle — the practical answer, it may be presumed, to the Roman razzias in the Alpine valleys. How dangerous these Raetian inroads were, appears from the fact that one of them about 660 94. destroyed the considerable township of Comum.
If these Celtic and non-Celtic tribes having their settle- iiiyrian
ments upon and beyond the Alpine chain were already
P"*1**
there was, as may easily be con ceived, a still more comprehensive intermixture of peoples in the countries on the Lower Danube, where there were no high mountain ranges, as in the more western regions,
variously intermingled,
to serve as natural walls of partition. The original Iiiyrian population, of which the modern Albanians seem to be the
last pure survivors, was throughout, at least in the interior,
largely mixed with Celtic elements, and the Celtic armour
and Celtic method of warfare were probably everywhere introduced in that quarter. Next to the Taurisci came the
Japydes, who had their settlements on the Julian Alps in
the modern Croatia as far down as Fiume and Zeng, — a
tribe originally doubtless Iiiyrian, but largely mixed with
Celts. Bordering with these along the coast were the already-mentioned Dalmatians, into whose rugged mountains
the Celts do not seem to have penetrated ; whereas in the
interior the Celtic Scordisci, to whom the tribe of the Scordbd. Triballi formerly especially powerful in that quarter had succumbed, and who had played a principal part in the
Celtic expeditions to Delphi, were about this time the leading nation along the Lower Save as far as the Morava in the modern Bosnia and Servia. They roamed far and wide towards Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and fearful tales were told of their savage valour and cruel customs. Their chief place of arms was the strong Segestica or Siscia
Japydes.
Conflicts frontier
in the Alps, 118. 95.
at the point where the Kulpa falls into the Save. The peoples who were at that time settled in Hungary, Transylvania, Roumania, and Bulgaria still remained for the present beyond the horizon of the Romans ; the latter came into contact only with the Thracians on the eastern frontier of Macedonia in the Rhodope mountains.
It would have been no easy task for a government more energetic than was the Roman government of that day to establish an organized and adequate defence of the frontier against these wide domains of barbarism ; what was done for this important object under the auspices of the govern ment of the restoration, did not come up to even the most moderate requirements. There seems to have been no want of expeditions against the inhabitants of the Alps : in 636 there was a triumph over the Stoeni, who were probably settled in the mountains above Verona ; in 659 the consul Lucius Crassus caused the Alpine valleys far and wide to De ransacked and the inhabitants to be put to death, and
yet he did not succeed in killing enough of them to enable him to celebrate a village triumph and to couple the laurels of the victor with his oratorical fame. But as the Romans remained satisfied with razzias of this sort which merely ex asperated the natives without rendering them harmless, and, apparently, withdrew the troops again after every such inroad, the state of matters in the region beyond the Po remained substantially the same as before.
On the opposite Thracian frontier they appear to have given themselves little concern about their neighbours ; except that there is mention made in 651 of conflicts with the Thracians, and in 65 7 of others with the Maedi in the border mountains between Macedonia and Thrace.
More serious conflicts took place in the Illyrian land, where complaints were constantly made as to the turbulent Dalmatians by their neighbours and those who navigated the Adriatic ; and along the wholly exposed northern frontier
4a6
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH BOOK it
in Thrace,
108. 97.
In iiijrria.
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
4*7
of Macedonia, which, according to the significant expression
of a Roman, extended as far as the Roman swords and spears reached, the conflicts with the barbarians never ceased.
In 619 an expedition was undertaken against the Ardyaei 181k or Vardaei and the Pleraei or Paralii, a Dalmatian tribe on
the coast to the north of the mouth of the Narenta, which was incessantly perpetrating outrages on the sea and on the op posite coast : by order of the Romans they removed from
the coast and settled in the interior, the modern Herzegovina, where they began to cultivate the soil, but, unused to their
new calling, pined away in that inclement region. At the same time an attack was directed from Macedonia against
the Scordisci, who had, it may be presumed, made common cause with the assailed inhabitants of the coast. Soon afterwards (625) the consul Tuditanus in connection with 129. the able Decimus Brutus, the conqueror of the Spanish Callaeci, humbled the Japydes, and, after sustaining a defeat at the outset, at length carried the Roman arms into
the heart of Dalmatia as far as the river Kerka, 115 miles distant from Aquileia; the Japydes thenceforth appear
as a nation at peace and on friendly terms with Rome.
But ten years later (635) the Dalmatians rose afresh, once 119. more in concert with the Scordisci. While the consul Lucius Cotta fought against the latter and in doing so advanced apparently as far as Segestica, his colleague Lucius Metellus afterwards named Dalmaticus, the elder brother of
the conqueror of Numidia, marched against the Dalmatians, conquered them and passed the winter in Salona (Spalato), which town henceforth appears as the chief stronghold of the Romans in that region. It is not improbable that the construction of the Via Gabinia, which led from Salona in an easterly direction to Andetrium
(near Much) and thence farther into the interior, falls within this
period.
The expedition of the consul of 639, Marcus AemUius llfc
Th» RomaAnSsS
lib* ^*
Scaurus, against the Taurisci 1 presented more the character Qt a war Qc conquest. jje was the first of the Romans to cross the chain of the eastern Alps where it falls lowest between Trieste and Laybach, and contracted hospitable relations with the Taurisci ; which secured a not unim
118.
4*8
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
commercial intercourse without involving the Romans, as a formal subjugation would have involved them, in the movements of the peoples to the north of the Alps. Of the conflicts with the Scordisci, which have
almost wholly into oblivion, a page, which speaks clearly even in its isolation, has recently been brought to light through a memorial stone from the year 636 lately discovered in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica. Accord ing to in this year the governor of Macedonia Sextus Pompeius fell near Argos (not far from Stobi on the upper Axius or Vardar) in battle fought with these Celts and, after his quaestor Marcus Annius had come up with his troops and in some measure mastered the enemy, these same Celts connection with Tipas the king of the Maedi (on the upper Strymon) soon made fresh irruption in still larger masses, and was with difficulty that the Romans defended themselves against the onset of the barbarians.
1 Things soon assumed so threatening shape that became necessary to despatch consular armies to
portant
passed
114. Macedonia. * few years afterwards the consul of 640
They are called in the Triumphal Fasti Galli Kami and in Victor Ligurcs Taurisci (for such should be the reading instead of the received
Ligures et Caurisci).
The quaestor of Macedonia M. Annius P. to whom the town of
Lete (Aivati four leagues to the north-west of Thessalonica) erected in the 118. year 29 of the province and 636 of the city this memorial stone (Ditten-
1Mb
If Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus consul in 638 went to Mac©
berger, Syll. 247), not otherwise known the praetor Sex. Pompeius whose fall mentioned in can be no other than the grandfather of the Pompeius with whom Caesar fought and the brother-in-law of the poet Lucilius. The enemy are designated as rnXarflr tSvot. brought into prominence that Annius in order to spare the provincials omitted to call out their contingents and repelled the barbarians with the Roman troops alone. To all appearance Macedonia even at that time required a 4* facto standing Roman garrison.
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Gaius Porcius Cato was surprised in the Servian mountains
by the same Scordisci, and his army completely destroyed,
while he himself with a few attendants disgracefully fled ; and reach with difficulty the praetor Marcus Didius protected the ^V. Roman frontier. His successors fought with better fortune,
Gaius Metellus Caprarius (641-642), Marcus Livius Drusus 11j. 112. (642—643), the first Roman general to reach the Danube, 112-111. and Quintus Minucius Rufus (644-647) who carried his 110. 107. arms along the Morava1 and thoroughly defeated the
Scordisci. Nevertheless they soon afterwards in league with
the Maedi and the Dardani invaded the Roman
territory and plundered even the sanctuary at Delphi ; it was not till then that Lucius Scipio put an end to the thirty-two years' warfare with the Scordisci and drove the remnant over to the left bank of the Danube. 2 Thenceforth in their stead the just-named Dardani (in Servia) begin to
play the first part in the territory between the northern frontier of Macedonia and the Danube.
donia (C. I. Gr. 1534 ; Zumpt, Comm. Epigr. 167), he too
have suffered misfortune there, since Cicero. In Pison. 16, 38, says at (Macedonia) aliquot praetario imperie, consular* quidem nemo rediit, qui incolumit futrit, quin triumphant for the triumphal 1st, which complete for this epoch, knows only the three Macedonian iriumphs of Metellus in 643, of Drusus in 644, and of Minucius in 648.
111. 110. As, according to Frontinus (ii. 43), Velleius and Eutropius, . he tribe 106.
conquered by Minucius was the Scordisci, can only be through an error on the part of Floras that he mentions the Hebrus (the Maritza) instead of
the Margus (Morava).
This annihilation of the Scordisci, while the Maedi and Dardani were
admitted to treaty, reported by Appian (Illyr. 5), and in fact thence
forth the Scordisci disappear from this region. If the final subjugation
took place in the 32nd year irb TTJt x/xinjt Kt\roii irefpas, would
seem that this must be understood of a thirty-two years' war between the
Romans and the Scordisci, the commencement of which presumably falls
not long after the constituting of the province of Macedonia (608) and of 146. which the incidents in arms above recorded, 636-647, are a part It 118-107. obvious from Appian's narrative that the conquest ensued shortly before the
outbreak of the Italian civil wars, and so probably at the latest in 663. 91. falls between 650 and 656, a triumph followed for the triumphal list before and after complete possible however that for some reason there was no triumph. The victor not further known perhaps was no other than the consul of the year 671 since the latter may well have been 8S. late in attaining the consulate in consequence of the Cinnan-Marian troubles.
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But these victories had an effect which the victors did not anticipate. For a considerable period an "unsettled people " had been wandering along the northern verge of the country occupied by the Celts on both sides of the Danube. They called themselves the Cimbri, that the Chempho, the champions or, as their enemies translated the robbers; designation, however, which to all appear ance had become the name of the people even before their
migration. They came from the north, and the first Celtic people with whom they came in contact were, so far as known, the Boii, probably in Bohemia. More exact details as to the cause and the direction of their migration have not been recorded by contemporaries,1 and cannot be supplied by conjecture, since the state of things in those times to the north of Bohemia and the Main and to the east of the Lower Rhine lies wholly beyond our knowledge.
But the hypothesis that the Cimbri, as well as the similar horde of the Teutones which afterwards joined them, belonged essentially not to the Celtic nation, to which the Romans at first assigned them, but to the Germanic, supported by the most definite facts viz. , by the appear ance of two small tribes of the same name — remnants apparently left behind in their primitive seats—the Cimbri
the modern Denmark, the Teutones in the north-east of Germany the neighbourhood of the Baltic, where
430
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
of Alexander the Great, makes mention of them thus early in connection with the amber trade by the insertion of the Cimbri and Teutones in the
list of the Germanic peoples among the Ingaevones along side of the Chauci by the judgment of Caesar, who first made the Romans acquainted with the distinction between
The account that large tracts on the coasts of the North Sea had been torn away by inundations, and that this had occasioned the migration of the Cimbri in body (Strabo, vii. 893), does not indeed appear to us fabulous, as seemed to those who recorded but whether was based on tradition or on conjecture, cannot be decided.
Pytheas, contemporary
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chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
431
the Germans and the Celts, and who includes the Cimbri, many of whom he must himself have seen, among the Germans ; and lastly, by the very names of the peoples and the statements as to their physical appearance and habits in other respects, which, while applying to the men of the north generally, are especially applicable to the Germans. On the other hand it is conceivable enough that such a horde, after having been engaged in wandering perhaps for many years and having in its movements near to or within the land of the Celts doubtless welcomed every brother-in arms who joined would include certain amount of Celtic elements; so that not surprising that men of Celtic name should be at the head of the Cimbri, or that the Romans should employ spies speaking the Celtic tongue to gain information among them. It was marvellous movement, the like of which the Romans had not yet seen not predatory expedition of men equipped for the purpose, nor " ver sacrum " of young men migrating to foreign land, but migratory people that had set out with their women and children, with their goods and chattels, to seek new home. The waggon, which had everywhere among the still not fully settled peoples of the north different importance from what had among the Hellenes and the Italians, and which universally accompanied the Celts also in their encampments, was among the Cimbri as
were their house, where, beneath the leather covering stretched over place was found for the wife and children and even for the house-dog as well as for the furniture. The men of the south beheld with astonish ment those tall lank figures with the fair locks and bright- blue eyes, the hardy and stately women who were little inferior in size and strength to the men, and the children with old men's hair, as the amazed Italians called the flaxen-haired youths of the north. Their system of warfare was substantially that of the Celts of this period, who no
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THE PEOPLES OP THE NORTH book iv
longer fought, as the Italian Celts had formerly done, bare headed and with merely sword and dagger, but with copper helmets often richly adorned and with a peculiar missile weapon, the materis ; the large sword was retained and the long narrow shield, along with which they probably wore also a coat of maiL They were not destitute of cavalry ; but the Romans were superior to them in that arm. Their order of battle was as formerly a rude phalanx professedly drawn up with just as many ranks in depth as in breadth, the first rank of which in dangerous combats not unfre- quently tied together their metallic girdles with cords. Their manners were rude. Flesh was frequently devoured raw. The bravest and, if possible, the tallest man was king of the host. Not unfrequently, after the manner of the Celts and of barbarians generally, the time and place of the combat were previously arranged with the enemy, and sometimes also, before the battle began, an individual opponent was challenged to single combat The conflict was ushered in by their insulting the enemy with unseemly gestures, and by a horrible noise—the men raising their battle-shout, and the women and children increasing the
din by drumming on the leathern covers of the waggons. The Cimbrian fought bravely—death on the bed of honour was deemed by him the only death worthy of a free man— but after the victory he indemnified himself by the most
and sometimes promised beforehand to present to the gods of battle whatever victory should place in the power of the victor. The effects of the enemy were
broken in pieces, the horses were killed, the prisoners were hanged or preserved only to be sacrificed to the gods. It was the priestesses — grey -haired women in white linen dresses and unshod —who, like Iphigenia in Scythia, offered these sacrifices, and prophesied the future from the stream ing blood of the prisoner of war or the criminal who formed the victim. How much in these customs was the universal
savage brutality,
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
433
usage of the northern barbarians, how much was borrowed from the Celts, and how much was peculiar to the Germans, cannot be ascertained; but the practice of having the army accompanied and directed not by priests, but by priestesses, may be pronounced an undoubtedly Germanic custom. Thus marched the Cimbri into the unknown land — an immense multitude of various origin which had congregated round a nucleus of Germanic emigrants from the Baltic— not without resemblance to the great bodies of emigrants, that in our own times cross the ocean similarly burdened and similarly mingled, and with aims not much less vague ; carrying their lumbering waggon-castle, with the dexterity which a long migratory life imparts, over streams and mountains; dangerous to more civilized nations like the sea-wave and the hurricane, and like these capricious and unaccountable, now rapidly advancing, now suddenly paus ing, turning aside, or receding. They came and struck like lightning ; like lightning they vanished ; and un happily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was no observer who deemed it worth while accurately to describe the marvellous meteor. When men afterwards began to trace the chain, of which this emigration, the first Germanic movement which touched the orbit of ancient civilization, was a link, the direct and living knowledge of it had long passed away.
This homeless people of the Cimbri, which hitherto had Cimbrian been prevented from advancing to the south by the Celts TM°Jrenl
on the Danube, more especially by the Boii, broke through conflict*, that barrier in consequence of the attacks directed by the
Romans against the Danubian Celts; either bec se the
latter invoked the aid of their Cimbrian antagonists against
the advancing legions, or because the Roman attack pre
vented them from protecting as hitherto their northern
frontiers. Advancing through the territory of the Scordisci Defeat of into the Tauriscan country, they approached in 641 the m,
vol. in
93
Defeat of Si
100.
434
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book IT
passes of the Carnian Alps, to protect which the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo took up a position on the heights not far from Aquileia. Here, seventy years before, Celtic tribes had attempted to settle on the south of the Alps, but at the bidding of the Romans had evacuated without resist
ance the ground which they had already occupied
even now the dread of the Transalpine peoples at the Roman name showed itself strongly. The Cimbri did not attack indeed, when Carbo ordered them to evacuate the territory of the Taurisci who were in relations of hospitality with Rome — an order which the treaty with the latter by no means bound him to make—they complied and followed the guides whom Carbo had assigned to them to escort them over the frontier. But these guides were in fact instructed to lure the Cimbri into an ambush, where the consul awaited them. Accordingly an engagement took place not far from Noreia in the modern Carinthia, in which the betrayed gained the victory over the betrayer and inflicted on him considerable loss storm, which separated the combatants, alone prevented the complete annihilation of the Roman army. The Cimbri might have
immediately directed their attack towards Italy; they pre ferred to turn to the westward. By treaty with the Helvetii and the Sequani rather than force of arms they made their way to the left bank of the Rhine and over the Jura, and there some years after the defeat of Carbo once more threatened the Roman territory by their immediate vicinity.
With view to cover the frontier of ene Rhine and the immediately threatened territory of the Allobroges, Roman army under Marcus Junius Silanus appeared in 645 in Southen Gaul. The Cimbri requested that land might be assigned to them where they might peacefully settle—
which certainly could not be granted. The consul instead of replying attacked them he was utterly defeated and the Roman camp was taken. The new levies
request
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CHAP, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
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which were occasioned by this misfortune were already at tended with so much difficulty, that the senate procured the abolition of the laws —presumably proceeding from Gaius Gracchus —which limited the obligation to military service in point of time (p. 347). But the Cimbri, instead of following up their victory over the Romans, sent to the senate at Rome to repeat their request for the assignment of land, and meanwhile employed themselves, apparently, in the subjugation of the surrounding Celtic cantons.
Thus the Roman province and the new Roman army were left for the moment undisturbed by the Germans; but a new enemy arose in Gaul itself. The Helvetii, who had suffered much in the constant conflicts with their north-eastern neighbours, felt themselves stimulated by the example of the Cimbri to seek in their turn for more quiet and fertile settlements in western Gaul, and had perhaps, even when the Cimbrian hosts inarched through their land, formed an alliance with them for that purpose. Now under the leadership of Divico the forces of the Tougeni
unknown) and of the Tigorini (on the lake of Murten) crossed the Jura,1 and reached the territory of the Nitiobroges (about Agen on the Garonne). The Roman army under the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, which they here encountered, allowed itself to be decoyed by the Helvetii into an ambush, in which the general himself and his legate, the consular Lucius Piso, along with the greater portion of the soldiers met their death ; Gaius Popillius, the interim commander-in-chief of the force which had escaped to the camp, was allowed to withdraw under the yoke on condition of surrendering half the property which the
1 The usual hypothesis, that the Tougeni and Tigorini had advanced at the same time with the Cimbri into Gaul, cannot be supported by Strabo (viL 293), and is little in harmony with the separate part acted by the Helvetii. Our traditional accounts of this war are, besides, so fragmentary that, just as in the case of the Samnite wars, a connected historical narration can only lay claim to approximate accuracy.
Inroad
Hd4tii into
q^
(position
Defeat of ^"P1""'
436
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book iv
107. troops carried with them and furnishing hostages
So perilous was the state of things for the Romans, that one of the most important towns in their own province, Tolosa, rose against them and placed the Roman garrison in chains.
But, as the Cimbri continued to employ themselves elsewhere, and the Helvetii did not further molest for the moment the Roman province, the new Roman commander- in-chief, Quintus Servilius Caepio, had full time to recover possession of the town of Tolosa by treachery and to empty at leisure the immense treasures accumulated in the old and famous sanctuary of the Celtic Apollo. It was a desirable gain for the embarrassed exchequer, but unfor tunately the gold and silver vessels on the way from Tolosa to Massilia were taken from the weak escort by a band of robbers, and totally disappeared : the consul himself and his staff were, it was alleged, the instigators of this onset
Meanwhile they confined themselves to the strictest defensive as regarded the chief enemy, and guarded the Roman province with three strong armies, till it should please the Cimbri to repeat their attack.
105. They came in 649 under their king Boiorix, on this
Defeat of occasion seriously meditating an inroad into Italy. They
were opposed on the right bank of the Rhone by the pro consul Caepio, on the left by the consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus and by his legate, the consular Marcus Aureliu* Scaurus, under him at the head of a detached corps. The first onset fell on the latter ; he was totally defeated and brought in person as a prisoner to the enemy's head-quarters, where the Cimbrian king, indignant at the proud warning given to him by the captive Roman not to venture with his army into Italy, put him to death. Maximus thereupon
ordered his colleague to bring his army over the Rhone : the latter complying with reluctance at length appeared at Arausio (Orange) on the left bank of the river, where the
Arausio.
106. (648).
(647).
CHAP, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
437
whole Roman force now stood confronting the Cimbrian army, and is alleged to have made such an impression by
its considerable numbers that the Cimbri began to negotiate.
But the two leaders lived in the most vehement discord. Maximus, an insignificant and incapable man, was as consul
the legal superior of his prouder and better born, but not better qualified, proconsular colleague Caepio; but the latter refused to occupy a common camp and to devise operations in concert with him, and still, as formerly, main tained his independent command. In vain deputies from
the Roman senate endeavoured to effect a reconciliation ;
a personal conference between the generals, on which the officers insisted, only widened the breach. When Caepio
saw Maximus negotiating with the envoys of the Cimbri,
he fancied that the latter wished to gain the sole credit of their subjugation, and threw himself with his portion of the army alone in all haste on the enemy. He was utterly annihilated, so that even his camp fell into the hands of the enemy (6 Oct. 649) ; and his destruction was followed by 106. the no less complete defeat of the second Roman army.
It is asserted that 80,000 Roman soldiers and half as many of the immense and helpless body of camp-followers perished, and that only ten men escaped: this much is certain, that only a few out of the two armies succeeded in escaping, for the Romans had fought with the river in their rear. It was a calamity which materially and morally far surpassed the day of Cannae. The defeats of Carbo, of Silanus, and of Longinus had passed without producing any permanent impression on the Italians. They were accustomed to open every war with disasters ; the invin- cibleness of the Roman arms was so firmly established, that it seemed superfluous to attend to the pretty numerous exceptions. Bnt the battle of Arausio, the alarming proxi mity of the victorious Cimbrian army to the undefended passes of the Alps, the insurrections breaking out afresh
The opposition.
and with increased force both in the Roman territory beyond the Alps and among the Lusitanians, the defence less condition of Italy, produced a sudden and fearful awakening from these dreams. Men recalled the never wholly forgotten Celtic inroads of the fourth century, the day on the Allia and the burning of Rome : with the double force at once of the oldest remembrance and of the freshest alarm the terror of the Gauls came upon Italy ; through all the west people seemed to be aware that the Roman empire was beginning to totter. As after the battle
of Cannae, the period of mourning was shortened by decree of the senate. 1 The new enlistments brought out the most painful scarcity of men. All Italians capable of bearing arms had to swear that they would not leave Italy; the captains of the vessels lying in the Italian ports were instructed not to take on board any man fit for service.
It is impossible to tell what might have happened, had the Cimbri immediately after their double victory advanced through the gates of the Alps into Italy. But they first overran the territory of the Arverni, who with difficulty defended themselves in their fortresses against the enemy ; and soon, weary of sieges, set out from thence, not to Italy,
but westward to the Pyrenees.
If the torpid organism of the Roman polity could still of
'tse^ reach a crisis of wholesome reaction, that reaction could not but set in now, when, by one of the marvellous pieces of good fortune, in which the history of Rome is so rich, the danger was sufficiently imminent to rouse all the energy and all the patriotism of the burgesses, and yet did not burst upon them so suddenly as to leave no space for the development of their resources. But the very same phenomena, which had occurred four years previously after the African defeats, presented themselves afresh. In fact the African and Gallic disasters were essentially of the same
1 To this, beyond doubt, the fragment of Diodorus ( Vat. p. laa) relates.
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THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
chap, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
439
kind. It may be that primarily the blame of the former
fell more on the oligarchy as a whole, that of the latter
more on individual magistrates ; but public opinion justly recognized in both, above all things, the bankruptcy of the government, which in its progressive development im
perilled first the honour and now the very existence of the
state. People just as little deceived themselves then as
now regarding the true seat of the evil, but as little now
as then did they make even an attempt to apply the
remedy at the proper point. They saw well that the system Wirfcw of was to blame ; but on this occasion also they adhered to {JJJJJ00" the method of calling individuals to account — only no
doubt this second storm discharged itself on the heads of the oligarchy so much the more heavily, as the calamity of 649 105. exceeded in extent and peril that of 645. The sure 109. instinctive feeling of the public, that there was no resource against the oligarchy except the tyrannis, was once more apparent in their readily entering into every attempt by officers of note to force the hand of the government and, under one form or another, to overturn the oligarchic rule
by a dictatorship.
It was against Quintus Caepio that their attacks were
first directed ; and justly, in so far as he had primarily occasioned the defeat of Arausio by his insubordination, even apart from the probably well-founded but not proved charge of embezzling the Tolosan booty; but the fury which the opposition displayed against him was essentially augmented by the fact, that he had as consul ventured on an attempt to wrest the posts of jurymen from the capitalists
On his account the old venerable principle, that the sacredness of the magistracy should be respected even in the person of its worst occupant, was violated; and, while the censure due to the author of the calamitous day of Cannae had been silently repressed within the breast, the author of the defeat of Arausio was decree of the people
376).
by
(p.
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THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH boor iv
unconstitutionally deprived of his proconsulship, and—what had not occurred since the crisis in which the monarchy had perished — his property was confiscated to the state-
105. chest (649 Not long afterwards he was second 104. decree of the burgesses expelled from the senate (650).
But this was not enough more victims were desired, and above all Caepio's blood. A number of tribunes of the people favourable to the opposition, with Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Norbanus at their head, proposed in
Gaul; in spite of the de facto abolition of arrest investigation and of the punishment of death for political offences, Caepio was arrested and the intention of pro nouncing and executing in his case sentence of death was openly expressed. The government party attempted to get rid of the proposal by tribunician intervention but the interceding tribunes were violently driven from the assembly, and in the furious tumult the first men of the senate were assailed with stones. The investigation could not be prevented, and the warfare of prosecutions pursued its
108. course in 651 as had done six years before Caepio himself, his colleague in the supreme command Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, and numerous other men of note were condemned tribune of the people, who was friend of Caepio, with difficulty succeeded by the sacrifice of his own civic existence in saving at least the life of the chief persons accused. 1
The deposition from office of the proconsul Caepio, with which was combined the confiscation of his property (Li v. Ep. 67), was probably pronounced by the assembly of the people immediately after the battle of
105. Arausio (6th October 649). That some time elapsed between the deposition and his proper downfall, clearly shown by the proposal made 104. in 650, and aimed at Caepio, that deposition from office should involve the forfeiture of a seat in the senate (Asconius in Corntl, p. 78). The
to appoint an extraordinary judicial commission in
101. 651
reference to the embezzlement and treason perpetrated in
fragments of Licinianus (p. 10 Caepio L. Saturnini rogation* up the allusion in Cic. ie Or.
Cn. Manilius oh eandem causam quam et civitate est eito [? ] eiectus which clears a8, 125) now inform us that iaw
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441
Of more importance than this measure of revenge was Marfai the question how the dangerous war beyond the Alps was eom'dm, to be further carried on, and first of all to whom the in-chiet supreme command in it was to be committed. With an
treatment of the matter it was not difficult to make a fitting choice. Rome was doubtless, in comparison
with earlier times, not rich in military notabilities; Quintus Maximus had commanded with distinction in Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and Quintus Minucius in the regions of the Danube, Quintus Metellus, Publius Rutilius Rufus, Gaius Marius in Africa ; and the object proposed was not to defeat a Pyrrhus or a Hannibal, but again to make good the often-tried superiority of Roman arms and Roman tactics in opposition to the barbarians of the north —an object which required no genius, but merely a stern and capable soldier. But it was precisely a time when nothing was so difficult as the unprejudiced settlement of a question of administration. The government was, as it
unprejudiced
yet
proposed by Lucius Appuleius Saturninus brought about this catastrophe.
This is evidently no other than the Appuleian law as to the minuta maiestas of the Roman state (Cic. de Or. ii. 35, 107 ; 49, aoi), or, as its
tenor was already formerly explained (ii. p. 143 of the first edition [of the German]), the proposal of Saturninus for the appointment of an extra ordinary commission to investigate the treasons that had taken place during
the Cimbrian troubles. The commission of inquiry as to the gold of Tolosa
(Cic. de N. D. lii. 30, 74) arose in quite a similar way out of the Appuleian
law, as the special courts of inquiry —further mentioned in that passage—as
to a scandalous bribery of judges out of the Mucian law of 613, as to the 141. occurrences with the Vestals out of the Peducaean law of 641, and as to the 118. Jugurthinewarout oftheMamilianlawof644. — A comparison of these cases 110. also shows that in such special commissions different in this respect from
the ordinary ones —even punishments affecting life and limb might be and were inflicted. If elsewhere the tribune of the people, Gaius Norbanus, is named as the person who set agoing the proceedings against Caepio and was afterwards brought to trial for doing so (Cic. de Or. 410, 167 48,
49, aoo Or. Part. 30, 105, et al. ), this not inconsistent with the view given above for the proposal proceeded as usual from several tribunes
of the people {ad Herenn. 14, 34 Cic. de Or. 47, 197), and, as Saturninus was already dead when the aristocratic party was in a position
to think of retaliation, they fastened on his colleague. As to the period of this second and final condemnation of Caepio, the usual very inconsiderate hypothesis, which places in 659, ten years after the battle of Arausio, 95. has been already rejected. rests simply on the fact that Crassus when
199
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THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
could not but be and as the Jugurthine war had already shown, so utterly bankrupt in public opinion, that its ablest generals had to retire in the full career of victory, whenever it occurred to an officer of mark to revile them before the people and to get himself as the candidate of the opposition appointed by the latter to the head of affairs.