Alfred John Church

“ The combatants below plied their swords; those on the higher ground showered javelins on the advancing foe. Only a few of these could struggle up the somewhat steep bank; of the few some were slain, others thrust back upon the troops that followed them. The attack seemed to have failed. But when the king himself took up the attack the fortunes of the day were rapidly changed. For the first of many times throughout his marvellous career the personal courage of Alexander, his strength, his dexterity in arms, turned the tide of battle. ”

“ Nothing could be imagined more absurd than [Pg 189] that the army should have been entrusted to generals, changed every year, and elected by popular vote. To oppose such men to the unequalled genius of Hannibal was to ensure defeat. The mere permanence of the Carthaginian command gave him an immense advantage. But we must never forget the other side of the case. Without these constitutional forms neither Rome nor Greece (about which the historian has to say much the same thing) could have been what they were. We must expect to find in a nation as in a man the defects of its great qualities. ”

“ The watch has neglected its duty; the very dogs are asleep. But Roman piety saves the last refuge of Rome. There was a flock of sacred geese in the temple of Juno, and these had been not only spared but fed, hard pressed as the garrison had been for food. And now they give warning of the enemy's approach. Manlius, one of the most distinguished veterans in the garrison, for he had been Consul, is roused by their clamour, hurries to the edge of the height, hurls one man down by driving his shield into his face, slays others, and gives the garrison time to assemble. ”

“ Lucullus laid siege to the city, though he could hardly have had sufficient force to invest it. It was not long before Tigranes moved to its relief. At first, indeed, he had simply refused to believe that the Romans could have made so audacious an advance, and with a savagery, in curious contrast with his veneer of civilisation, ordered the messenger who brought the unwelcome news to be crucified. When he learnt the truth, he raised a huge army—250,000 infantry and 50,000 cavalry are the numbers given us by historians—and marched to attack Lucullus. ”

“ No one thought of the step usually taken in an emergency, the appointment of the ablest soldier available as dictator. Even the ordinary preparations for meeting a formidable enemy were neglected.
Meanwhile the Gauls were advancing on Rome, thinking of nothing but vengeance on this insolent city. The appearance of their host terrified the inhabitants of the country through which they passed, but they did not turn aside to attack or plunder any of the towns on their route. They gave it to be understood that all their quarrel was with Rome. ”

“ I. A CENTURY OF DISGRACE One of the strangest facts in history is the rapid decline of Roman power that set in immediately after the Empire had enjoyed such a succession of good rulers as had never before fallen to its lot. The period of eighty-four years which began with the accession of Nerva and ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius has always been regarded, and rightly regarded, as the golden age of Rome. Trajan was, it is true, a warlike Emperor by choice, and Marcus Aurelius the same by necessity, but Rome had never had since its founding any but the briefest intervals of peace. ”

“ If he should conquer us he will certainly attack you. Join with us therefore in resisting him. Combined, we shall be a match for him; disunited, we shall certainly be conquered."
Gelo: "When I asked you for help against Carthage you would not give it. For anything that you did to stop it, Sicily might have been conquered by the barbarians. But I will return good for evil. You shall have two hundred ships of war, twenty thousand men-at-arms, two thousand cavalry, as many more light-armed troops, and corn for your whole army as long as the war lasts. Only you must give me the chief command." ”

“ So fierce was the fight that the combatants were wholly unconscious of an earthquake which, at the very hour when the battle raged most fiercely, laid more than one city in ruins, changed the courses of river, and brought down huge masses of earth and rock from the mountains to the plains. ”

“ The danger that threatened civilisation must [Pg 89] have seemed great at the time, though it was probably less than had been the case when the fate of the world, so to speak, had been in suspense on the day of Salamis. But the fears of Sicily, felt also, we may believe, in mainland Greece, were suddenly relieved. Hannibal had accomplished his object. He had exacted a never-to-be-forgotten vengeance for the death of his grandfather, and he wanted no more. Half Sicily was now in the hands of Carthage, and the Greek name was more humbled than it had been within the memory of man. ”

“ In whatever respects the world may have advanced and improved, in this it remains much about the same. But the Carthaginians seem to have used their victory with more than common barbarity. That the prisoners should be slaughtered in cold blood was unhappily a common incident. A Greek conqueror was more likely than not to treat fellow Greeks in this way. But mutilation was a hideous barbarity, and in this Hannibal permitted his soldiers to indulge. I mention the fact because it helps us to realise how the world would have been put backward if Carthage had triumphed over Greece. ”

“ We need not prove that it was for the lasting good of the world that Rome was not crushed by the Celtic invaders of 390 B.C. or the Teutonic swarm of 112 B.C. It is equally plain that the development of the human race was largely helped by the subsequent spread of the Empire, till it embraced all Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, all Northern Africa, and Asia west of the Euphrates. It is enough to say that Roman law is a dominating [Pg 381] power in most of the codes of modern Europe, and an important element in all. ”

“ To us, who know what Rome became in after days, it seems strange indeed that the kingdoms which she was destined to crush one after another should not have joined with Carthage in the attempt to destroy her. If Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt could have combined while Hannibal had still a footing in Italy, she could hardly have survived. But they were too jealous of each other, or too short-sighted. Possibly they were unwilling to make Carthage, which the Greeks had no reason to love, too [Pg 226] powerful. And what was not done after Cannæ would hardly be attempted after the Metaurus. ”

“ The battle of Carrhæ, as it may be called, though it happened at some distance from that town, was one of the worst disasters in Roman history. What especially touched the pride of the Empire was the submission of the numerous prisoners to their fate. Horace inveighs against the cowardice of the men who were content to forget all the glorious associations of Rome and to become the subjects of a barbarian king. He seeks to console himself by telling how the standards captured from the army of Crassus were torn down from the Parthian temples by the victorious Augustus. ”

“ As many as sixty thousand prisoners, however, were taken, while the number that fell on the field of battle is said to have been twice as great. The Cimbri perished as utterly as the Teutones.
The triumph which Marius and his colleague celebrated on their return to Rome was indeed well deserved if we consider the consequences of the victory which it was given to reward. For more than two centuries Rome was not again called upon to fight for her life against barbarian foes. Her armies met indeed more than once with serious disasters, but these defeats were incurred in campaigns of aggression. ”

“ A few years after his establishment in Illyricum, Alaric, who had been in the meantime saluted king by his countrymen, felt himself equal to the task of invading Italy. Stilicho, however, was still in command of the Roman armies—now almost wholly recruited from barbarian tribes—and he proved himself more than a match for the Gothic king. The great battle of Pollentia (in Northern Italy) was contested with more than usual stubbornness. Fortune changed sides more than once. Stilicho's genius prevailed, however, in the end; the Goths were driven from the field ”

“ The retreat of the Greek forces from Thermopylæ and Artemisium left Athens without defence. There had been a promise that an army of the allies should make a stand against the invaders in Bœotia. No attempt was made to keep it. The only plan of defence that commended itself to the Peloponnesian States was to fortify the Isthmus of Corinth—and all the states outside the Peloponnesus, Athens excepted, were either pro-Persian or indifferent. As Athens was unwalled, there was no question of defending it; the only thing that could be done was to save as much life and property as was possible. ”

“ He was all for action. "It is intolerable," he urged, "that Italy should be invaded and Rome threatened in this fashion. And what are we waiting for? There is no third army that can join us. Our men will lose all heart if we let them sit in their camp while the enemy plunders our friends." All this is natural enough, especially when we know that the Romans had very little idea, so far, of what Hannibal really was. But Livy, doubtless, is right when he adds that Sempronius had before his eyes the approaching election of Consuls. ”

“ Hannibal is ranked by common consent among the greatest generals of the world. If Rome could have been overthrown by any enemy, it would have been by him, so brilliant was his strategy, so great his capacity for leadership—nothing is [Pg 178] more remarkable in his career than his power of giving unity to the varied components of a mercenary army—and so resolute his hostility to Rome. He himself narrated towards the close of his life the incident which seems to have made this feeling the dominant motive of his life. He was then in exile, and the guest of Antiochus the Great, King of Syria. ”

“ That Roman pride covered a humiliating fall is plain enough, and we may well doubt the too opportune arrival of the victorious Camillus. But it is certainly true that Rome recovered with amazing rapidity from what might well have been an overwhelming blow. In the first three centuries and a half of her existence Rome has made so little progress that she has still a rival city not more than ten miles from her gates. She is reduced to her last stronghold, and has to ransom even that. Nevertheless in the course of another century and a half she is in undisputed possession of the whole of Italy. ”

“ As soon as the sun rose, the Greek fleet moved forward to the attack, the crews joining, as they advanced, in the pæan or shout of battle. They met no reluctant foe. So confident, indeed, was the bearing of the Persians, that the Greeks were checked. Some of the crews even began to back water. The issues of great battles are often decided by examples of courage. So it was at Salamis, for one of the Greek ships advanced and led the way for the rest. ”

“ As I am not writing a history either of Rome or of Spain, I must limit myself to the most important and representative persons and events.
Viriathus was a native of Lusitania, a region nearly corresponding to what is now called Portugal. His hatred of the Romans came from a shameful act of treachery from which his countrymen suffered at the hands of one of the Roman generals. This man had expressed his pity for the poverty of their country, which drove them, he said, into robbing their neighbours. He would give them, if they would trust him, lands better worth cultivating. ”