CONQUEST OF ITALY

416 to 488.

DESCRIPTION OF ITALY.

 

I. Ancient Italy did not comprise all the territory which has for its natural limits the Alps and the sea. What is called the continental part, or the great plain traversed by the Po, which extends between the Alps, the Apennines, and the Adriatic, was separated from it. This plain and part of the mountains on the coasts of the Mediterranean, formed Liguria, Cisalpine Gaul, and Venetia. The peninsula, or Italy proper, was bounded, on the north by the Rubicon, and, probably, by the lower course of the Arno; on the west, by the Mediterranean; on the east, by the Adriatic; on the south, by the Ionan Sea.

The Apennines traverse Italy in its whole length. They begin where the Alps end, near Savona, and their chain proceeds, continually rising in elevation, as far as the centre of the peninsula. Mount Velino is their culminating point, and from thence the Apennines continue decreasing in height, until they reach the extremity of the kingdom of Naples. In the northern region, they approach the Adriatic; but, in the centre, they cut the peninsula into two parts nearly equal; then, at Mount Caruso (Vultur), near the source of the Bradano (Bradanus), they separate into two branches, one of which penetrates into Calabria, the other into the Terra di Bari as far as Otranto.

The two slopes of the Apennines give birth to various streams which flow, some into the Adriatic, and others into the Mediterranean. On the eastern side the principal are—the Rubicon, the Pisaurus (Foglia), the Metaurus (Metauro), the Aesis (Esino), the Truentus (Tronto), the Aternus (Pescara), the Sangrus (Sangro), the Trinius (Trigno), the Frento (Fortore), and the Aufidus (Ofanto), which follow generally a direction perpendicular to the chain of mountains. On the western side, the Arnus (Arno), the Ombrus (Ombrone), the Tiber, the Amasenus (Amaseno), the Liris (Grarrigliano), the Vulturnus (Volturno), and the Silarus (Silaro or Sile), run parallel to the Apennines ; but towards their mouths they take a direction nearly perpendicular to the coast. The Bradanus (Bradano), the Casuentus (Basiento), and the Aciris (Argi), flow into the Gulf of Tarentum.

We may admit into ancient Italy the following great divisions and subdivisions:—

To the north, the Senones, a people of Gallic origin, occupying the shores of the Adriatic Sea, from the Rubicon to the neighborhood of Ancona; Umbria, situated between the Senones and the course of the Tiber; Etruria, between the Tiber and the Mediterranean Sea.

In the centre, the territory of Picenum, between Ancona and Hadria, in the Abruzzo Ulteriore; Latium, in the part between the Apennines and the Mediterranean, from the Tiber to the Liris; to the south of Latium, the Volsci, and the Arunci, the debris of the ancient Ausones, retired between the Liris and the Amasenus, and bordering upon another people of the same race, the Sidicines, established between the Liris and the Vulturnus; the country of the Sabines, between Picenum and Latium; to the east of Latium, in the mountains, the Aequi; the Hernici, backed by the populations of Sabellian stock, namely, the Marsi, the Peligni, the Vestini, the Marrucini, and the Frentani, dis­tributed in the valleys through which run the rivers received by the Adriatic from the extremity of Picenum to the river Fortore.

The territory of Samnium, answering to the great part of the Abruzzi and the province of Molisa, advanced towards the west as far as the upper arm of the Vulturnus, ou the west to the banks of the Fortore, and to the south to Mount Vultur. Beyond the Vulturnus extended Campania (Terra di Lavoro and part of the principality of Salerno), from Sinuessa to the Gulf of Paestum.

Southern Italy, or Magna Graecia, comprised, on the Adriatic: first, Apulia (the Capitanata and Terra di Bari) and Messapia (Terra di Otranto) this last terminated in the Iapygian promontory, and its central part was occupied by the Salentini and divers other Messapian populations, while there existed on the seaboard a great number of Greek colonies; secondly, Lucania, which answered nearly to the modern province of Basilicata, and was washed by the waters of the Gulf of Tarentum; thirdly, Bruttium (now the Calabrias), forming the most advanced point of Italy, and terminating in the promontory of Hercules.

 

DISPOSITIONS OF THE PEOPLE OF ITALY IN REGARD TO ROME.

 

In 416, Rome had finally subdued the Latins, and possessed a part of Campania. Her supremacy extended from the present territory of Viterbo to the Gulf of Naples, from Antium (Porto di Anzo) to Sora.

The frontiers of the Republic were difficult to defend, her limits ill determined, and her neighbors the most warlike people of the peninsula.

To the north only, the mountains of Viterbo, covered with a thick forest (silva Ciminia), formed a rampart against Etruria. The southern part of this country had been long half Roman; the Latin colonies of Sutrium (Sutri) and Nepete (Nepi) served as posts of observation. But the Etruscans, animated for ages with hostile feeling towards Rome, attempted continually to recover the lost territory. The Gaulish Senones, who, in 364, had taken and burnt Rome, and often renewed their invasions, had come again to try their fortune. In spite of their defeats in 404 and 405, they were always ready to join the Umbrians and Etruscans in attacking the Republic.

The Sabines, though entertaining from time immemorial tolerably amicable relations with the Romans, offered but a doubtful alliance. Picenum, a fertile and populous country, was peaceful, and the greater part of the mountain tribes of Sabellic race, in spite of their bravery and energy, inspired as yet no fear. Nearer Rome, the Aequi and the Hernici had been reduced to inaction; but the Senate kept in mind their hostilities and nourished projects of vengeance.

On the southern coast, among the Greek towns devoted to commerce, Tarentum passed for the most powerful; but these colonies, already in decline, were obliged to have recourse to mercenary troops, to resist the native inhabitants. They dis­puted with the Samnites and the Romans the preponderance over the people of Magna Graecia. The Samnites, indeed—a manly and independent race—aimed at seizing the whole of Southern Italy; their cities formed a confederacy, redoubtable on account of its close union in time of war. The mountain tribes gave themselves up to brigandage, and it is worthy of attention that recent events show that in our days manners have not much changed in that country. The Samnites had amassed considerable riches; their arms displayed excessive extravagance, and, if we believe Caesar, they served as models for those of the Romans.

A jealous rivalry had long prevailed between the Romans and the Samnites. The moment these two peoples found them­selves in presence of each other, it was evident that they would be at war; the struggle was long and terrible, and, during the fifth century, it was round Samnium that they disputed the empire of Italy. The position of the Samnites was very advantageous. Entrenched in their mountains, they could, at their will, either descend into the valley of the Liris, thence reach the country of the Aurunci, always ready to revolt, and cut off the communications of Rome with Campania, or follow the course of the upper Liris into the country of the Marsi, raise these latter, and hold out the hand to the Etruscans, turning Rome; or, lastly, penetrate into Campania by the valley of the Vulturnus, and fall upon the Sidicini, whose territory they coveted.

In the midst of so many hostile peoples, for a little state to succeed in raising itself above the others, and in subjugating them, it must have possessed peculiar elements of superiority. The peoples who surrounded Rome, warlike and proud of their independence, had neither the same unity, nor the same incen­tives to action, nor the same powerful aristocratic organization, nor the same blind confidence in their destinies. They displayed more selfishness than ambition. When they fought, it was much more to increase their riches by pillage than to augment the number of their subjects. Rome triumphed, because alone, in prospect of a future, she made war not to destroy, but to conserve, and after the material conquest, always set herself to ac­complish the moral conquest of the vanquished.

During four hundred years her institutions had formed a race animated with the love of country and with the sentiment of duty; but, in their turn, the men, incessantly retempered in intestine struggles, had successively introduced manners and tra­ditions stronger even than the institutions themselves. During three centuries, in fact, Rome presented, in spite of the annual renewal of powers, such a perseverance in the same policy, such a practice of the same virtues, that it might have been supposed that the government had but a single head, a single thought, and one might have believed that all its generals were great warriors, all its senators experienced statesmen, and all its citizens valiant soldiers.

The geographical position of Rome contributed no less to the rapid increase of its power. Situated in the middle of the only great fertile plain of Latium, on the banks of the only important river of Central Italy, which united it with the sea, it could be at the same time agricultural and maritime, conditions then indispensable for the capital of a new empire. The rich countries which bordered the coasts of the Mediterranean were sure to fall easily under her dominion; and as for the countries which surrounded her, it was possible to become mistress of them by occupying gradually the openings from all the valleys. The town of the seven hills, favored by her natural situation as well as by her political constitution, carried thus in herself the germs of her future greatness.

 

TREATMENT OF THE VANQUISHED PEOPLES.

 

From the commencement of the fifth century Rome prepares with energy to subject and assimilate to herself the peoples who dwelt from the Rubicon to the Strait of Messina. Nothing will prevent her from surmounting all obstacles, neither the coalition of her neighbors conspiring against her, nor the new incursions of the Gauls, nor the invasion of Pyrrhus. She will know how to raise herself from her partial defeats, and establish the unity of Italy, not by subduing at once all these peoples to the same laws and the same rule, but by causing them to enter by little and little, and in different degrees, into the great Roman family. “Of one city she makes her ally; on another she confers the honor of living under the Quiritary law, to this one with the right of suffrage, to that with the permission to retain its own government. Municipia of different degrees, maritime colonies, Latin colonies, Roman colonies, prefectures, allied towns, free towns, all isolated by the difference of their condition, all united by their equal dependence on the Senate, they will form, as it were, a vast network which will entangle the Italian peo­ples, until the day when, without new struggles, they will awake subjects of Rome.”

Let us examine the conditions of these various categories:—

The right of city, in its plenitude (jus civitatis optimo jure), comprised the political privileges peculiar to the Romans, and assured for civil life certain advantages, of which the concession might be made separately and by degrees. First came the commercium, that is, the right of possessing and transmitting according to the Roman law; next the connubium, or the right of contracting marriage, with the advantages established by Roman legislation; as, for example, to put the wife in complete obedience to her husband; to give the father absolute authority over his children, etc. The commercium and connubium united formed the Quiritary law (jus quiritium).

There were three sorts of municipia : first, the municipia of which the inhabitants, inscribed in the tribes, exercised all the rights and were subjected to all the obligations of the Roman citizens; secondly, the municipia sine suffragio, the inhabitants of which enjoyed in totality or in part the Quiritary law, and might obtain the complete right of Roman citizens on certain conditions: To be able to enjoy the right of city, it was necessary to be domiciliated at Rome, to have left a son in his majority at his municipium, or to have exercised there a magistracy; it is what constituted the jus Latti; these two first categories preserved their autonomy and their magistrates; third, the towns which had lost all independence in exchange for the civil laws of Rome, but without enjoyment, for the in­habitants, of the most important political rights; it was the law of the Caerites, because Caere was the first town which had been thus treated,

Below the municipia, which had their own magistrates, came, in this social hierarchy, the prefectures, so called because a prefect was sent there every year to administer justice.

The dediticii were still worse treated. Delivered by victory to the discretion of the Senate, they had been obliged to surren­der their arms and give hostages, to throw down their walls or receive a garrison within them, to pay a tax, and to furnish a determinate contingent. With the exclusion of these last, the towns which had not obtained for their inhabitants the complete rights of Roman citizens, belonged to the class of allies (foederati socii). Their condition differed according to the nature of their engagements. Simple treaties of friendship, of commerce, or of offensive alliance, or offensive and defensive, concluded on the footing of equality, were called foedera aequa. On the contrary, when one of the contracting parties (and it was never the Romans) submitted to onerous obligations from which the other was exempted, these treaties were called foedera non aequa. They consisted almost always in the cession of a part of the ter­ritory of the vanquished, and in the obligation to undertake no war of their own. A certain independence, it is true, was left to them; they received the right of exchange and free establish­ment in the capital; but they were bound to the interests of Rome by an alliance offensive and defensive. The only clause establishing the preponderance of Rome was conceived in these terms: Majestatem populi Romani comiter conservanto; that is, “They shall loyally acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman people.” It is a remarkable circumstance that, dating from the reign of Augustus, the freedmen were divided in categories sim­ilar to those which existed for the inhabitants of Italy.

The freedmen were, in fact, either Roman citizens or Latins, or ranged in the number of the dediticii; slaves who had, while they were in servitude, undergone a grave chastisement, if they arrived at freedom, obtained only the assimilation to the dediticii. If, on the contrary, the slave had undergone no punishment, if he was more than thirty years of age, if, at the same time, he belonged to his master according to the law of the quirites, and if the formalities of manumission or affranchisement exacted by the Roman law had been observed, he was a Roman citizen. He was only Latin if one of these circumstances failed.

As to the colonies, they were established for the purpose of preserving the possessions acquired, of securing the new frontiers, and of guarding the important passes; and even for the sake of getting rid of the turbulent class. They were of two sorts, the Roman colonies and the Latin colonies. The former differed little from the municipia of-the first degree, the others from the municipia of the second degree. The first were formed of Roman citizens, taken with their families from the classes subjected to military service, and even, in their origin, solely among the patricians. The coloni preserved the privileges attached to the title of citizen, and were bound by the same obligations, and the interior administration of the colony was an image of that of Rome.

There the peoplo (populus) named their magistrates; the duumviri performed the functions of consuls or praetors, whose title they sometimes took (Corpus Inscriptionum Latin., passim.); the quinquennales corresponded to the censors. Finally, there were questors and ediles. The Senate, as at Rome, was composed of members, elected for life, to the number of a hundred; the number was filled up every five years (lectio senatus).

The Latin colonies differed from the others in having been founded by the confederacy of the Latins on different points of Latium. Emanating from a league of independent cities, they were not, like the Roman colonies, tied by close bonds to the metropolis. But the confederacy once dissolved, these colo­nies were placed in the rank of allied towns (socii Latin)i. The act (formula) which instituted them was a sort of treaty guar­anteeing their franchise.

Peopled at first by Latins, it was not long before these colo­nies received Roman citizens who were induced by their poverty to exchange their title and rights for the advantages assured to the colonists. These did not figure on the lists of the censors. The formula fixed simply the tribute to pay and the number of soldiers to furnish. What the colony lost in privileges it gained in independence.

The isolation of the Latin colonies, placed in the middle of the enemy’s territory, obliged them to remain faithful to Rome, and to keep watch on the neighboring peoples. Their military importance was at least equal to that of the Roman colonies; they merited as well as these latter the name of propugnacula imperii and of specula, that is, bulwarks and watch-towers of the conquest. In a political point of view they rendered services of a similar kind. If the Roman colonies announced to the conquered people the majesty of the Roman name, their Latin sisters gave an ever-increasing extension to the nomen Latinum, that is, to the language, manners, and whole civilization of that race of which Rome was but the first representative. The Latin colonies were ordinarily founded to economize the colonies of Roman citizens, which were charged principally with the defence of the coasts and the maintenance of commercial relations with foreign people.

In making of the privileges of the Roman citizen an advantage which everyone was happy and proud to acquire, the Senate held out a bait to all ambitions; and this general desire, not to destroy the privilege, but to gain a place among the privileged, is a characteristic trait of the manners of antiquity. Tn the city, not less than in the ’State, the insurgents or discontented did not seek, as in our modern societies, to overthrow, but- to attain to. So everyone, according to his position, aspired to a legitimate object: the plebeians, to enter into the aristocracy, not to destroy it; the Italic peoples, to have a part in the sovereignty of Rome, not to contest it; the Roman provinces, to be declared allies and friends of Rome, and not to recover their independence.

The peoples could judge, according to their conduct, what lot was reserved for them. The paltry interests of city were re­placed by an effectual protection, and by new rights often more precious, in the eyes of the vanquished, than independence itself. This explains the facility with which the Roman domination was established. Tn fact, that only is destroyed entirely which may be replaced advantageously.

A rapid glance at the wars which effected the conquest of Italy will show how the Senate made application of the princi­ples stated above; how it was skilful in profiting by the divi­sions of its adversaries, in collecting its whole strength to over­whelm one of them; after the victory in making it an ally; in using the arms and resources of that ally to subjugate another people; in crushing the confederacies which united the van­quished against it; in attaching them to Rome by new bonds; in establishing military posts on all the points of strategic im­portance ; and, lastly, in spreading everywhere the Latin race by distributing to Roman citizens a part of the lands taken from the enemy.

But, before entering upon the recital of events, we must cast a glance upon the years which immediately preceded the pacifi­cation of Latium.

SUBMISSION OF LATIUM AFTER THE FIEST SAMNITE WAR.

During a hundred and sixty-seven years, Rome had been satisfied with struggling against her neighbors to reconquer a supremacy lost since the fall of her kings. She held herself al­ most always on the defensive; but, with the fifth century, she took the offensive, and inaugurated the system of conquests con­tinued to the moment when she herself succumbed.

In 411, she had, in concert with the Latins, combated the Samnites for the first time, and commenced against that redoubt­able people a struggle which lasted seventy-two years, and which brought twenty-four triumphs to the Roman generals. Proud of having contributed to the two great victories of Mount Gaurus and Suessula, the Latins, with an exaggerated belief in their own strength and a pretension to equality with Rome, went so far as to require that one of the two consuls, and half of the senators, should be chosen from their nation. War was immediately declared. The Senate was willing enough to have allies and subjects, but it could not suffer equals; it accepted without scruple the services of those who had just been ene­mies, and the Romans, united with the Samnites, the Hernici, and the Sabellian peoples, were seen in the fields of the Veseris and Trifanum, fighting against the Latins and Volsci. Latium once reduced, it remained to determine the lot of the vanquished. Livy reports a speech of Camillus, which explains clearly the policy recommended by that great citizen. “Will you,” he exclaims, addressing the members of the assembly, “use the utmost rigor of the rights of victory? You are masters to destroy all Latium, and to make a vast desert of it, after having often drawn from it powerful succors. Will you, on the con­trary, after the example of your fathers, augment the resources of Rome? Admit the vanquished among the number of your citizens; it is a fruitful means of increasing at the same time your power and your glory.” This last counsel prevailed.

The first step was to break the bonds which made of the Latin people a sort of confederacy. All political communalty, all war on their own account, all rights of commercium, and connubium, between the different cities, were taken from them.

The towns nearest Rome received the rights of city and suffrage. Others received the title of allies and the privilege of preserving their own institutions, but they lost a part of their territory. As to the Latin colonies founded before in the old country of the Volsci, they formed the nucleus of the Latin allies (socii nominis Latini). Velitrae, alone, having al­ready revolted several times, was treated with rigor; Antium was compelled to surrender its ships, and become a maritime colony. 

These severe but equitable measures had pacified Latium; applied to the rest of Italy, and even to foreign countries, they will facilitate everywhere the progress of Roman domination.

The momentary alliance with the Samnites had permitted Rome to reduce the Latins; nevertheless the Senate, without hesita­tion, turned against the former again as soon as the moment appeared convenient. It concluded, in 422, a treaty with the Gauls and Alexander Molossus, who, having landed near Paestum, attacked the Lucanians and the Samnites. This king of Epirus, the uncle of Alexander the Great, had been called into Italy by the Tarentines; but his premature death disappointed the hopes to which his co-operation had given rise, and the Samnites re­commenced their incursions on the lands of their neighbors. The intervention of Rome put a stop to the war. All the forces of the Republic were employed in reducing the revolt of the Volscian towns of Fundi and Privemum. In 425, Anxur (Terracina) was declared a Roman colony, and, in 426, Fregellae (Ceprano ?), a Latin colony.

The establishment of these fortresses, and of those of Cales and Antium, secured the communications with Campania; the Lilis and the Vulturnus became in that direction the principal lines of defence of the Romans. The cities situated on the shores of that magnificent gulf called Crater by the ancients, and in our days the Gulf of Naples, perceived then the dangers which threatened them. They turned their eyes towards the population of the interior, who were no less alarmed for their independence.

SECOND SAMNITE WAR.

The fertile countries which bordered the western shore of the peninsula were destined to excite the covetousness of the Romans and the Samnites, and become the prey of the conqueror. “Campania, indeed,” says Floras, “is the finest country of Italy, and even of the whole world. There is nothing milder than its climate. Spring flourishes there twice every year. There can be nothing more fertile than its soil. It is called the garden of Ceres and Bacchus. There is not a more hospitable sea than that which bathes its shores.” In 427, the two peoples disputed the possession of it, as they had done in 411. The inhabitants of Palaeopolis having attacked the Roman colo­nists of the ager Campanus, the consuls marched against that place, which soon received succor from the Samnites and the inhabitants of Nola, while Rome formed an alliance with the Apulians and the Lucanians. The siege dragged on, and the necessity of continuing the campaign beyond the ordinary limit led to the prolongation of the command of Publilius Philo with the title of proconsul, which appeared for the first time in the military annals. The Samnites were soon driven from Campa­nia; the Palaeopolitans submitted; their town was demolished; but they formed close to it a new establishment, at Naples (Neapolis), where a new treaty guaranteed them an almost absolute independence, on the condition of furnishing a certain number of vessels to Rome. After that, nearly all the Greek towns, re­duced one after another, obtained the same favorable conditions, and formed the class of the socii navales.

Yet the war was protracted in the mountains of the Apennine. Tarentum united with the Samnites, the only people who were still to be feared, and the Lucanians abandoned the alliance of the Romans; but in 429, the two most celebrated captains of the time, Q. Fabius Rullianus and Papirius Cursor, penetrated into the country of Samnium, and compelled the enemy to pay an indemnity for the war and accept a year’s truce.

At this epoch, an unforeseen event, which changed the destinies of the world, came to demonstrate the difference between the rapid creation of a man of genius and the patient work of an intelligent aristocracy. Alexander the Great, after having shone like a meteor, and brought into subjection the most powerful kingdoms of Asia, died at Babylon. His fruitful and decisive influence, which carried the civilization of Greece into the East, survived him; but at his death, the empire he founded became in a few years dismembered (431); the Roman aristocracy, on the contrary, perpetuating itself from age to age, pursued more slowly, but without interruption, the system which, binding again the peoples about a common center, was destined by little and little to secure her domination over Italy first, and then over the universe.

The defection of a part of the Apulians, in 431, encouraged the Samnites to take arms again; defeated in the following years, they asked for the restoration of friendly relations; but the haughty refusal of Rome led, in 433, to the famous defeat of the Furcae Caudinae. The generosity of the Samnite general, Pontius Herennius, who granted their lives to so many thou­sands of prisoners, on condition of restoring to force the old treaties, had no effect upon the Senate. Four legions had passed under the yoke, a circumstance in which the Senate only saw a new affront to revenge. The treaty of Caudium was not ratified, and subterfuges little excusable, although approved at a later period by Cicero, gave to the refusal an appearance of jus­tice.

Meanwhile the Senate exerted itself vigorously to repair this check, and soon Publilius Philo defeated the enemies in Samnium, and, in Apulia, Papirius, in his turn, caused seven thou­sand Samnites to pass under the yoke. The vanquished solicited peace, but in vain; they only obtained a truce for two years (436), and it had hardly expired, when, penetrating into the country of the Volsci, as far as the neighborhood of Tarracina, and taking a position at Lautulae, they defeated a Roman army raised hastily and commanded by Q. Fabius (439). Capua de­serted, and Nola, Nuceria, the Aurunci, and the Volsci of the Liris took part openly with the Samnites. The spirit of rebellion spread as far as Praeneste. Rome was in danger. The Senate required its utmost energy to restrain populations whose fidelity was always doubtful. Fortune seconded its efforts, and the allies, who had proved traitors, received a cruel chastisement, explained by the terror they had inspired. In 440, not far from Caudium, a numerous army encountered the Samnites, who lost 30,000 men, and were driven back into the Apennine terri­tory. The Roman legions proceeded to encamp before their capital, Bovianum, and there took up their winter quarters.

The year following (441), Rome, less occupied in fighting, profited by this circumstance to seize upon advantageous positions, establishing in Campania and Apulia colonies which sur­rounded the territory of Samnium. At the same epoch, Appius Claudius transformed into a regular causeway the road which has preserved his name. The Romans turned their attention to the defence of the coasts and communication by sea; a colony was sent to the Isle of Pontia, opposite Tarracina, and the ar­mament of a fleet was commenced, which was placed under the command of duumviri navales. The war had lasted fifteen years, and, although Rome had only succeeded in driving back the Samnites into their own territory, she had conquered two provinces, Apulia and Campania.

THIRD SAMNITE WAR.—COALITION OF SAMNITES, ETRUSCANS, UM-; BRIANS, AND HERNICI (443-449).

      A struggle so desperate had produced its effect even in Etruria, and the old league was formed again. Inured to war by their daily combats with the Gauls, and emboldened by the reports of the defeat of Lautulae, the Etruscans believed that the moment had arrived for recovering their ancient territory to the south of the Ciminian forest; they were further encouraged by the attitude of the peoples of Central Italy, who were weary of the continual passing of legions. From 443 to 449, the armies of the Republic were obliged to face different enemies at the same time. In Etruria, Fabius Rullianus relieved Sutrium, a rampart of Rome on the north; he passed through the Ciminian for­est, and by the victories of Lake Vadimo (445) and Perusia compelled all the Etruscan towns to ask for peace. At the same time, an army laid waste the country of the Samnites; and a Roman fleet, composed of vessels furnished by the maritime allies, took the offensive for the first time. Its attempt near Nuceria Alfaterna (Nocera, a town of Campania) was unfor­tunate.

War next breaks out against Apulia, Samnium, and Etruria, where the aged Papirius Cursor, named dictator anew, gains a brilliant victory at Langula (445). The year following Fabius penetrates again into Samnium, and the Consul Decius maintains Etruria. Suddenly the Umbrians conceive the project of seizing Rome by surprise. The consuls are recalled for the defence of the town. Fabius meets the Etruscans at Mevania (on the con­fines of Etruria and Umbria), and, the year following, at Allifae (447). Among the prisoners were some Aequi and Hernici. Their towns, feeling themselves thus compromised, declared open war against the Romans (448). The Samnites recovered cour­age; but the prompt reduction of the Hernici allowed the Senate to concentrate its forces. Two armies, penetrating into Samnium by way of Apulia and Campania, re-established the old frontiers. Bovianum was taken for the third time, and during six months the country was delivered up to devastation. In vain Tarentum tried to raise new quarrels for the Republic, and to force the Lucanians to embrace the cause of the Samnites. The success of the Roman arms led to the conclusion of treaties of peace with all the peoples of Southern Italy, constrained thenceforward to acknowledge the majesty of the Roman people. The Aequi re­mained alone exposed to the wrath of Rome; the Senate did not forget that at Allifae they had fought in the ranks of the enemy, and, once freed from its more serious embarrassments, it inflicted on this people a terrible chastisement: forty-one places were taken and burnt in fifty days. This period of six years thus ter­minated with the submission of the Hernici and Aequi.

Five years less agitated left Rome to regulate the position of its new subjects, and to establish colonies and ways of communi­cation.

The Hernici were treated in the same manner as the Latins, in 416, and deprived of commercium and connubium. Prefects and the law of the Caerites were imposed on Anagnia, Frusino, and other towns guilty of desertion. The cities which had re­mained faithful preserved their independence and the title of allies (448); the Aequi lost a part of their territory, and re­ceived the right of city without suffrage (450). The Samnites, sufficiently humiliated, obtained at last the renewal of their an­cient conventions (450). Foedera non aequa were concluded with the Marsi, the Peligni, the Marrucini, the Frentani (450), the Vestini (452), and the Picentini (455). Rome treated with Tarentum on a footing of equality, and engaged not to let her fleet pass the Lacinian promontory to the south of the Gulf of Tarentum.

Thus, on the one hand, the territories shared among the Ro­man citizens; on the other, the number of the municipia were considerably augmented. Further, the Republic had acquired new allies; she possessed at length the passages of the Apen­nines, and commanded both seas; a girdle of Latin fortresses protected Rome, and broke the communications between the north and south of Italy; among the Marsi and the Aequi, there were Alba and Carseoli; Sora, towards the sources of the Liris; and Narnia, in Umbria. Military roads connected the colonies with the metropolis.

FOURTH SAMNITE WAR.    SECOND COALITION OF THE SAMNITES, ETRUSCANS, UMBRIANS, AND GAULS (456-464).

Peace could not last long: between Rome and the Samnites it was a duel to death. In 456 these latter had already sufficiently recovered from their disasters to attempt once more the fortune of arms. Rome sends to the succor of the Lucanians, suddenly attacked, two consular armies. Vanquished at Tifernum by Fabius, at Maleventum by Decius, the Samnites witness the devastation of their whole country. Still they do not lose courage; their chief, Gellius Egnatius, conceives a plan which places Rome in great danger. He divides the Samnite army into three bodies: the first remains to defend the country; the second takes the offensive in Campania; the third, which he commands in person, throws itself into Etruria, and, increased by the junction of the Etruscans, the Gauls, and the Umbrians, soon forms a numerous army.The storm roared on all sides, and while the Roman generals were occupied, some in Samnium and others in Campania, dispatches arrived from Appius, placed at the head of the army of Etruria, announcing a terrible coalition, formed in silence by the peoples of the North, who were concen­trating all their forces in Umbria for the purpose of marching' upon Rome.

The terror was extreme; but the energy of the Romans was equal to the danger. All able men, even to the freedmen, were enrolled, and ninety thousand soldiers were raised. Under these grave circumstances (458), Fabius and Decius were, once again, raised to the supreme magistracy, and gained, under the walls of Sentium, a brilliant victory, long disputed. During the battle Decius devoted himself, as his father had done before. The coalition once dissolved, Fabius defeated another army which had issued from Perusia, and then came to receive the honor of a triumph in Rome. Etruria was subdued (460), and obtained a truce of forty years.

The Samnites still sustained an obstinate struggle of mingled successes and reverses. In 461, after having taken an oath to con­quer or die, thirty thousand of them were left on the field of battle of Aquilonia. A few months later the celebrated Pontius, the hero of the Furcae Caudinae, reappeared, at the end of twenty- nine years, at the head of his fellow-citizens, and inflicted upon the son of Fabius a check, which the latter soon retrieved, with  the assistance of his father. Finally, in 464, two Roman armies recommenced, in Samnium, a war of extermination, which led, for the fourth .time, to the renewal of the ancient treaties and the cession of a certain extent of territory. At the same epoch an insurrection, which broke out in the Sabine territory, was put down by Curius Dentatus. Central Italy was con­quered.

The peace with the Samnites lasted five years (464-469); Rome extended her frontiers and fortified those of the peoples placed under her protectorate; and at the same time established new military forts.

The right of city without suffrage was accorded to the Sabines, and prefects were given to some of the towns of the valley of the Vulturnus (Venafrum and Allifae). A Latin colony, of twenty thousand men, was sent to Venusia to watch over Southern Italy. It commanded at the same time Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania. If, owing to the treaty concluded with the Greek towns, the Roman supremacy extended over the south of the peninsula, to the north the Etruscans could not be reckoned as allies, since nothing more than truces had been concluded with them. In Umbria, the small tribe of the Sarsinates remained independent, and all the coast districts from the Rubicon to the Aesis was in the power of the Senones; on their southern fron­tier the Roman colony of Sena Gallica (Sinigaglia) was founded; the coast of Picenum was watched by that of Castrum Novum and by the Latin fortress of Hatria (465).

THIRD COALITION OF THE ETRUSCANS, GAULS, LUCANIANS AND TARENTUM (469-474).

The power of Rome had increased considerably. The Samnites, who hitherto had played the first parts, were no longer in a condition to plan further coalitions, and one people alone could hardly be rash enough to provoke the Republic. Yet the Lucanians, always hesitating, gave this time the signal for a general revolt.

The attack on Thurium, by the Lucanians and Bruttians, became the occasion of a new league, into which entered succes­sively the Tarentines, the Samnites, the Etruscans, and even the Gauls. The north was soon in flames, and Etruria again became the battlefield. A Roman army, which had hastened to relieve Arretium, was put to rout by the Etruscans united with Gaulish mercenaries. The Senones, to whom these belonged, having massacred the Roman ambassadors sent to expostulate on their violation of the treaty with the Republic, the Senate sent against them two legions, who drove them back beyond the Rubicon. The Gaulish tribe of the Boians, alarmed by the fate of the Senones, descended immediately into Umbria, and, rallying the Etruscans, prepared to march to renew the sack of Rome; but their march was arrested, and two successive victories, at Lake Vadimo (471) and Populonia (472), enabled the Senate to con­clude a convention which drove back the Boians into their old territory. Hostilities continued with the Etruscans during two years, after which their submission completed the conquest of Northern Italy.

PYRRHUS IN ITALY.--- SUBMISSION OF TARENTUM (474-488).

Free to the north, the Romans turned their efforts against the south of Italy; war was declared against Tarentum, the people of which had attacked a Roman flotilla. While the Consul Aemilius invested the town, the first troops of Pyrrhus, called in by the Tarentines, disembarked in the port (474).

This epoch marks a new phase in the destinies of Rome, who is going, for the first time, to measure herself with Greece. Hitherto, the legions have never had to combat really regular armies, but they have become disciplined in war by incessant struggles in the mountains of Samnium and Etruria; henceforth, they will have to face old soldiers disciplined in skilful tactics and commanded by an experienced warrior. The King of Epirus, after having already twice lost and recovered his kingdom, and in­vaded and abandoned Macedonia, dreamed of conquering the West. On the news of his arrival at the head of twenty-five thousand soldiers and twenty elephants, the Romans enrolled all citizens capable of bearing arms, even the proletaries; but, admirable example of courage! they rejected the support of the Carthaginian fleet, with this proud declaration: “The Republic only entertains wars which it can sustain with its own forces”. While fifty thousand men, under the orders of the Consul Laevinus, march against the King of Epirus, to prevent his junction with the Samnites, another army enters Lucania. The Consul Tiberius Coruncanius holds Etruria again in agitation. Lastly, an army of reserve guards the capital.

Laevinus encountered the King of Epirus near Heraclea, a colony of Tarentum (474). Seven times in succession the legions charged the phalanx, which was on the point of giving way, when the elephants, animals unknown to the Romans, decided the victory in favor of the enemy. A single battle had delivered to Pyrrhus all the south of the Peninsula, where the Greek towns received him with enthusiasm.

But, though victor, he had sustained considerable losses, and learned at the same time the effeminacy of the Greeks of Italy, and the energy of a people of soldiers. He offered peace, and asked of the Senate liberty for the Samnites, the Lucanians, and especially for the Greek towns. Old Appius Claudius declared it impossible so long as Pyrrhus occupied Italian soil, and peace was refused. The king then resolved to march upon Rome through Campania, where his troops made great booty.

Laevinus, made prudent by his defeat, satisfied himself with watching the enemy’s army, and succeeded in covering Capua; whence he followed Pyrrhus from place to place, looking out for a favorable opportunity. This prince, advancing by the Latin Way, had reached Praeneste without obstacle, when, sur­rounded by three Roman armies, he found himself under the necessity of falling back and retiring into Lucania. Next year, reckoning on finding new auxiliaries among the peoples of the east, he attacked Apulia; but the fidelity of the allies in Cen­tral Italy was not shaken. Victorious at Asculum (Ascoli di Satriano) (475), but without a decisive success, and encounter­ing always the same resistance, he seized the first opportunity of quitting Italy to conquer Sicily (476-78). During this time, the Senate re-established the Roman domination in Southern Italy, and even seized upon some of the Greek towns, among the rest Locri and Heraclea. Samnium, Lucania, and Bruttium were again given up to the power of the legions, and forced to surrender lands and renew treaties of alliance; on the coast, Tarentum and Rhegium alone remained independent. The Samnites still resisted, and the Roman army encamped in their country in 478 and 479. Meanwhile Pyrrhus returns to Italy, reckoning on arriving in time to deliver Samnium; but he is defeated at Beneventum by Curius Dentatus, and returns to his country. The invasion of Pyrrhus, cousin of Alexander the Great, and one of his successors, appears as one of the last efforts of Grecian civilization expiring at the feet of the rising grandeur of Roman civilization.

The war against the King of Epirus produced two remark­able results: it improved the Romans in military tactics, and introduced between the combatants those mutual regards of civilized nations which teach men to honor their adversaries, to spare the vanquished, and to lay aside wrath when the struggle is ended. The King of Epirus treated his Roman prisoners with great generosity. Cineas, sent to the Senate at Rome, and Fabricius, envoy to Pyrrhus, carried back from their mission a profound respect for those whom they had combated.

In the following years Rome took Tarentum (482), finally pacified Samnium, and took possession of Rhegium (483-485). Since the battle of Mount Gaurus, seventy-two years had passed, and several generations had succeeded each other, with­out seeing the end of this long and sanguinary quarrel. The Samnites had been nearly exterminated, and yet the spirit of independence and liberty remained deeply rooted in their mountains. When, at the end of two centuries and a half, the war of the allies shall come, it is there still that the cause of equality of rights shall find its strongest support.

The other peoples underwent quickly the laws of the con­queror. The inhabitants of Picenum, as a punishment for their revolt, were despoiled of a part of their territory, and a certain number among them received new lands in the south of Cam­pania, near the Gulf of Salernum (Picentini) (486). In 487, the submission of the Salentines allowed the Romans to seize Brundusium, the most important port of the Adriatic. The Sarsinates were reduced the years following. Finally, Volsinium, a town of Etruria, was again numbered among the allies of the Republic. The Sabines received the right of suffrage. Italy, become henceforth Roman, extended from the Rubicon to the Straits of Messina.

PREPONDERANCE OF ROME.

During this period, the conquest of the subjugated coun­tries was insured by the foundation of colonies. Rome became thus encircled by a girdle of fortresses commanding all the passages which led to Latium, and closing the roads to Cam­pania, Samnium, Etruria, and Gaul.

At the opening of the struggle which ended in the conquest of Italy, there were only twenty-seven tribes of Roman citizens; the creation of eight new tribes (the two last in 513) raised finally the number to thirty-five, of which twenty-one were reserved to the old Roman people and fourteen to the new citizens. Of these the Etruscans had four; the Latins, the Volsci, the Ausones, the Aequi, and the Sabines, each two; but, these tribes being at a considerable distance from the capital, the new citi­zens could hardly take part in the comitia, and the majority, with its influence, remained with those who dwelt at Rome. After 513, no more tribes were created; those who received the rights of citizens were only placed in the previously existing tribes; so that the members of one individual tribe were scat­tered in the provinces, and the number of those inscribed went on increasing continually by individual additions and by the tendency more and more apparent to raise the municipia of the second order to the rank of the first order. Thus, towards the middle of the sixth century, the towns of the Aequi, the Hernici, the Volsci, and a part of those of Campania, including the ancient Samnite cities of Venafrum and Allifae, obtained the right of city with suffrage.

Rome, towards the end of the fifth century, thus ruled, though in different degrees, the peoples of Italy proper. The Italian State, if we may give it that name, was composed of a reigning class, the citizens; of a class protected, or held in guardianship, the allies; and of a third class, the subjects. Allies or subjects were all obliged to furnish military contingents. The maritime Greek towns furnished sailors to the fleet. Even the cities, which preserved their independence for their interior affairs, obeyed, so far as the military administration was concerned, special functionaries appointed by the metropolis.

At the beginning of each consular year, the magistrates or deputies of the towns were obliged to repair to Rome, and the consuls there fixed the contingent which each of them was to furnish according to the list of the census. These lists were drawn up by the local magistrates, who sent them to the Senate, and were renewed, every five years, except in the Latin colonies, where they seem to have taken for a con­stant basis the number of primitive colonists.

The consuls had the right of raising in the countries bordering on the theatre of war all men capable of bearing arms. The equipment and pay of the troops remained at the charge of the cities; Rome provided for their maintenance during war. The auxiliary infantry was ordinarily equal in number to that of the Romans, the cavalry double or triple.

In exchange for this military assistance, the allies had a right to a part of the conquered territory, and, in return for an annual rent, to the usufruct of the domains of the State. These domains, considerable in the peninsula, formed the sole source of income which the treasury derived from the allies, free in other respects from tribute. Four questors (quaestores classici) were established to watch over the execution of the orders of the Senate, the equipment of the fleet, and the collection of the farm-rents.

Rome reserved to herself exclusively the direction of the affairs of the exterior, and presided alone over the destinies of the Republic. The allies never interfered in the decisions of the Forum, and each town kept within the narrow limits of its communal administration. The Italian nationality was thus gradually constituted by means of this political centralization, without which the different peoples would have mutually weakened each other by intestine wars, more ruinous than foreign wars, and Italy would not have been in a condition to resist the double pressure of the Gauls and Carthaginians.

The form adopted by Rome to rule Italy was the best possi­ble, but only as a transition form. The object to be aimed at was, in fact, the complete assimilation of all the inhabitants of the peninsula, and this was evidently the aim of the wise policy of the Camilli and the Fabii. When we consider that the colonies of citizens presented the faithful image of Rome; that the Latin colonies had analogous institutions and laws; , and that a great number of Roman citizens and Latin allies were dispersed, in the different countries of the peninsula, over the vast territories ceded as the consequence of war, we may judge how rapid must have been the diffusion of Roman manners and the Latin language.

If Rome, in later times, had not the wisdom to seize the favor­able moment in which assimilation, already effected in people’s minds, might have passed into the domain of facts, the reason of it was the abandonment of the principles of equity which had guided the Senate in the first ages of the Republic, and, above all, the corruption of the magnates, interested in main­taining the inferior condition of the allies. The right of city, extended to all the peoples of Italy time enough to be useful, would have given to the Republic a new force; but an obstinate refusal became the cause of the revolution commenced by the Gracchi, continued by Marius, extinguished for a moment by Sylla, and completed by Caesar.

STRENGTH OF THE INSTITUTIONS.

At the epoch with which we are occupied, the Republic is in all its splendor.

The institutions form remarkable men; the annual elections carry into power those who are most worthy, and recall them to it after a short interval. The sphere of action for the military chiefs does not extend beyond the natural frontiers of the penin­sula, and their ambition, restrained in their duty by public opinion, does not exceed a legitimate object, the union of all Italy under one dominion. The members of the aristocracy seem to inherit the exploits as well as the virtues of their an­cestors, and neither poverty nor obscurity of birth prevent merit from reaching it. Curius Dentatus, Fabricius, and Coruncanius, can show neither riches nor the images of their ancestors, and yet they attain to the highest dignities; in fact, the plebeian nobility walks on a footing of equality with the patrician. Both, in separating from the multitude, tend more and more to amalgamate together; but they remain rivals in patriotism and disinterestedness.

In spite of the taste for riches introduced by the war of the Sabines, the magistrates maintained their simplicity of man­ners, and protected the public domain against the encroachments of the rich by the rigorous execution of the law, which limited to five hundred acres the property which an individual was allowed to possess.

The first citizens presented the most remarkable examples of integrity and self-denial. Marcus Valerius Corvus, after occupy­ing twenty-one curule offices, returns to his fields without fortune, though not without glory (419). Fabius Rullianus, in the midst of his victories and triumphs, forgets his resentment towards Papirius Cursor, and names him dictator, sacrificing thus his private feelings to the interests of his country (429). Marcus Curius Dentatus keeps for himself no part of the rich spoils taken from the Sabines, and, after having vanquished Pyrrhus, resumes the simplicity of country life (479). Fabricius rejects the money which the Samnites offer him for his generous behavior towards them, and disdains the presents of Pyrrhus (476). Coruncanius furnishes an example of all the virtues. Fabius Gurges, Fabius Pictor, and Ogulnius, pour into the treasury the magnificent gifts they had brought back from their embassy to Alexandria. M. Rutilius Censorinus, struck with the danger of entrusting twice in succession the censorship in the same hands, refuses to be re-elected to that office (488).

The names of many others might be cited, who, then and in later ages, did honor to the Roman Republic; but let us add, that if the ruling class knew how to call to it all the men of eminence, it forgot not to recompense brilliantly those especially who favored its interests: Fabius Rullianus, for instance, the victor in so many battles, received the name of “most great” (Maximus) only for having, at the time of his censorship, an­nulled in the comitia the influence of the poor class, composed of freedmen, whom he distributed among the urban tribes (454), Where their votes were lost in the multitude of others.

The popular party, on its own side, ceased not to demand new concessions, or to claim the revival of those which had fallen-out of use. Thus, it obtained, in 428, the re-establishment of the law of Servius Tullius, which decided that the goods only of the debtor, and not his body, should be responsible for his debt, thus, all the captured citizens were free, and it was forbidden forever to put in bonds a debtor. In 450, Flavius, the son of a freedman, made public the calendar and the formulae of proceedings, which deprived the patricians of the exclusive knowledge of civil and religious law. But the lawyers found means of weakening the effects of the measure of Flavius, by inventing new formulae, which were almost unin­telligible to the public. The plebeians, in 454, were admit­ted into the college of the pontiffs, and into that of the augurs; the same year it was found necessary to renew for the third time the law Valeria, de provocations.

In 468, the people again withdrew to the Janiculum, demand­ing the remission of debts, and crying out against usury. Concord was restored only when they had obtained, first, by the law Hortensia, that the plebiscita should be obligatory on all; and next, by the law Marsia, that the orders obtained through Publilius Philo in 415 should be restored to vigor. These orders, as we have seen above, obliged the Senate to declare in advance whether or not the laws presented to the comitia were contrary to public and religious law.

The ambition of Rome seemed to be without bounds; yet all her wars had for reason or pretext the defence of the weak and the protection of her allies. Indeed, the cause of the wars against the Samnites was sometimes the defence of the inhabit­ants of Capua, sometimes that of the inhabitants of Palaeopolis, sometimes that of the Lucanians. The war against Pyrrhus had its origin in the assistance claimed by the inhabitants of Thurium; and the support claimed by the Mamertines will soon lead to the first Punic war.

The Senate, we have seen, put in practice the principles which found empires and the virtues to which war gives birth. Thus, for all the citizens, equality of rights; in face of danger to their country, equality of duties and even suspension of liberty. To the most worthy, honors and the command. No magisterial charge for him who has not served in the ranks of the army. The example is furnished by the most illustrious and richest families: at the battle of Lake Regillus (258), the principal senators were mingled in the ranks of the legions at the combat near the Cremera, the three hundred and six Fabii, who all, according to Titus Livius, were capable of filling the highest offices, perished fighting. Later, at Cannae, eighty senators, who had enrolled themselves as mere soldiers, fell on the field of battle. The triumph is accorded for victories which enlarged the territory, but not for those which only recovered lost ground. No triumph in civil wars : in such case, success, be what it may, is always a subject of public mourning. The consuls or proconsuls seek to be useful to their country without false sus­ceptibility; today in the first rank, tomorrow in the second, they serve with the same devotion under the orders of him whom they commanded the previous day. Servilius, consul in 281, becomes, the year following, the lieutenant of Valerius. Fabius, after so many triumphs, consents to be only lieutenant to his son. At a later period, Flamininus, who had vanquished the King of Macedonia, descends again, through patriotism, after the victory of Cynoscephalae, to the grade of tribune of the soldiers; the great Scipio himself, after the defeat of Hannibal, serves as lieutenant under his brother in the war against Antiochus.

To sacrifice every thing to patriotism is the first duty. By de­voting themselves to the gods of Hades, like Curtius and the two Decii, people believed they bought, at the price of their lives, the safety of the others, or victory. Discipline is enforced even to cruelty: Manlius Torquatus, after the example of Postumius Tubertus, punishes with death the disobedience of his son, though he had gained a victory. The soldiers who have fled are decimated, those who abandon their ranks or the field of battle are devoted, some to execution, others to dishonor; and those who have allowed themselves to be made prisoners by the ene­my, are disdained as unworthy of the price of freedom.

Surrounded by warlike neighbors, Rome must either triumph or cease to exist; hence her superiority in the art of war; for, as Montesquieu says, in transient wars most of the examples are lost; peace brings other ideas, and its faults and even its virtues are forgotten; hence that contempt of treason and that disdain for the advantages it promises. Camillus sends home to their parents the children of the first families of Falerii, delivered up to him by their school-master; the Senate rejects with indigna­tion the offer of the physician of Pyrrhus, who proposes to poison that prince;—hence that religious observance of oaths and that respect for engagements which have been contracted : the Roman prisoners to whom Pyrrhus had given permission to repair to Rome for the festival of Saturn all return to him faith­ful to their word ; and Regulus leaves the most memorable ex­ample of faithfulness to his oath!—hence that skilful and in­flexible policy which refuses peace after a defeat, or a treaty with the enemy so long as he is on the soil of their country; which makes use of war to divert people from domestic troubles; gains the vanquished by benefits if they submit, and admits them by degrees into the great Roman family; and, if they resist, strikes them without pity and reduces them to slavery; —hence that anxious provision for multiplying upon the conquered territories the race of agriculturists and soldiers; —hence, lastly, the improving spectacle of a town which becomes a people, and of a people which embraces the world.

 

CHAPTER IV.

PROSPERITY OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE THE PUNIC WARS.

 

COMMERCE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Rome had required two hundred and forty-four years to form her constitution under the kings, a hundred and seventy- two to establish and consolidate the consular Republic, seventy-two to complete the conquest of Italy, and now it will cost her nearly a century and a half to obtain the domination of the world, that is, of Northern Africa, Spain, the South of Gaul, Illyria, Epirus, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Before undertaking the recital of these conquests, let us halt an instant to consider the condition of the basin of the Mediterra­nean at this period, of that sea round which were successively unfolded all the great dramas of ancient history. In this exam­ination we shall see, not without a feeling of regret, vast countries where formerly produce, monuments, riches, numerous armies and fleets, all indeed revealed an advanced state of civilization, now deserts or in a state of barbarism.

The Mediterranean had seen grow and prosper in turn on its coasts Sidon, and Tyre, and then Greece.

Sidon, already a flourishing city before the time of Homer, is soon eclipsed by the supremacy of Tyre; then Greece comes to carry on, in competition with her, the commerce of the interior sea; an age of pacific greatness and fruitful' rivalries. To the Phoenicians chiefly, the South, the East, Africa, Asia, beyond Mount Taurus, the Erythrean sea (the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf), the ocean, and the distant voyages. To the Greeks, all the Northern Coasts, which they covered with their thousand settlements. Phoenicia devotes herself to adventurous enter­prises and lucrative speculations. Greece, artistic before becom­ing a trader, propagates by her colonies her mind and her ideas.

This fortunate emulation soon disappears before the creation of two new colonies sprung from their bosom. The splendor of Carthage replaces that of Tyre. Alexandria is substituted for Greece. Thus a western or Spanish Phoenicia shares the com­merce of the world with an Eastern and Egyptian Greece, the fruit of the intellectual conquests of Alexander.

NORTHERN AFRICA.

Rich in the spoils of twenty different peoples, Carthage was the proud capital of a vast empire. Its ports, hollowed out by the hand of man, were capable of containing a great number of ships. Her citadel, Byrsa, was two miles in circuit. On the land side the town was defended by a triple inclosure twen­ty-five stadia in length, thirty cubits high, and supported by towers of four stories, capable of giving shelter to 4,000 horse, 300 elephants, and 20,000 foot soldiers; it inclosed an immense population, since, in the last years of its resistance, after a strug­gle of a century, it still counted 700,000 inhabitants. Its monuments were worthy of its greatness: among its remarkable buildings was the temple of the god Aschmoun, assimilated by the Greeks to Aesculapius; that of the sun, covered with plates of gold valued at a thousand talents; and the mantle orpeplum, destined for the image of their great goddess, which cost a hundred and twenty. The empire of Carthage extended from the frontiers of Cyrenaica (the country of Barca, in the re­gency of Tripoli) into Spain; she was the metropolis of all the north of Africa, and, in Libya alone, possessed three hundred towns. Nearly all the isles of the Mediterranean, to the west and south of Italy, had received her factories. Carthage had im­posed her sovereignty upon all the ancient Phoenician establish­ments in this part of the world, and had levied upon them an an­nual contingent of soldiers and tribute. In the interior of Africa, she sent caravans to seek elephants, ivory, gold, and black slaves, which she afterwards exported to the trading places on the Mediterranean. In Sicily, she gathered oil and wine; in the isle of Elba she mined for iron; from Malta she drew valuable tissues; from Corsica, wax and honey; from Sardinia, corn, metals, and slaves; from the Baleares, mules and fruits; from Spain, gold, silver, and lead; from Mauritania, the hides of animals; she sent as far as the extremity of Britain, to the Cassiterides (the Scilly islands), ships to purchase tin. Within her walls industry flourished greatly, and tissues of great celebrity were fabri­cated.

No market of the ancient world could be compared with that of Carthage, to which men of all nations crowded. Greeks, Gauls, Ligurians, Spaniards, Libyans, came in multitudes to serve under her standard; the Numidians lent her a redoubtable cavalry. Her fleet was formidable; it amounted at this epoch to five hundred vessels. Carthage possessed a considera­ble arsenal; we may appreciate its importance from the fact, that, after her conquest by Scipio, she delivered to him two hundred thousand suits of armor, and three thousand machines of war. So many troops and stores imply immense revenue. Even after the battle of Zama, Polybius could still call her the richest town in the world. Yet she had already paid heavy contributions to the Romans. An excellent system of agricul­ture contributed no less than her commerce to her prosperity. A great number of agricultural colonies had been established, which, in the time of Agathocles, amounted to more than two hundred. They were ruined by the war (440 of Rome). Byzacena (the southern part of the regency of Tunis)was the granary of Carthage.

This province, surnmed Emporia, as being the trading coun­try par excellence, is vaunted by the geographer Scylax as the most magnificent and fertile part of Libya. It had, in the time of Strabo, numerous towns, so many magazines of the merchan­dise of the interior of Africa. Polybius speaks of its horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, as forming innumerable herds, such as he had never seen elsewhere. The small town of Leptis alone paid to the Carthaginians the enormous contribution of a talent a day. This fertility of Africa explains the importance of the towns on the coast of the Syrtes, an im­portance, it is true, revealed by later testimonies, because they date from the decline of Carthage, but which must apply still more forcibly to the flourishing condition which preceded it. In 537, the vast port of the isle Cercina (Kirkeni, in the regency of Tunis, opposite Sfax) had paid ten talents to Servilius. More  to the west, Hippo Regius (Bona) was still a considerable mari­time town in the time of Jugurtha. Tingis (Tangiers), in Mauritania, which boasted of a very ancient origin, carried on a great trade with Baetica. Three African peoples in these countries lay under the influence and often the sovereignty of Carthage: the Massylian Numidians, who afterwards had Cirta (Constantine) for their capital; the Massaesylian Numidians, who occu­pied the provinces of Algiers and Oran; and the Mauri, or Moors, spread over Morocco. These nomadic peoples maintained rich droves of cattle, and grew great quantities of corn.

Hanno, a Carthaginian sea-captain, sent, towards 245, to ex­plore the extreme parts of the African coast beyond the Straits of Gades, had founded a great number of settlements, no traces of which remained in the time of Pliny. These colonies intro­duced commerce among the Mauritanian and Numidian tribes, the peoples of Morocco, and perhaps even those of Senegal. But it was not only in Africa that the possessions of the Carthagin­ians extended; they embraced Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia.

SPAIN.

Iberia or Spain, with its six great rivers, navigable to the ancients, its long chains of mountains, its dense woods, and the fertile valleys of Baetica (Andalusia), appears to have nourished a population numerous, warlike, rich by its mines, its harvests, and its commerce. The centre of the peninsula was occupied by the Iberian and Celtiberian races; on the coasts, the Carthagin­ians and the Greeks had settlements; through contact with the Phoenician merchants, the population of the coast districts at­tained a certain degree of civilization, and from the mixture of the natives with the foreign colonists sprang a mongrel population which, while it preserved the Iberic character, had adopted the mercantile habits of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

Once established in Spain, the Carthaginians and Greeks turned to useful purpose the timber which covered the mountains. Gades (Cadiz), a sort of factory founded at the extremity of Baetica by the Carthaginians, became one of their principal maritime arsenals. It was there that the ships were fitted out which ventured on the ocean in search of the products of Armorica, of Britain, and even of the Canaries. Although Gades had lost some of its importance by the foundation of Carthagena (New Carthage), in 526, it had still, in the time of Strabo, so numerous a population that it was in this respect inferior only to Rome. The tables of the census showed five hundred citizens of the equestrian order, a number equalled by none of the Italian cities except Patavium (Padua). To Gades, celebrated for its temple of Hercules, flowed the riches of all Spain. The sheep and horses of Baetica rivalled in renown those of the Asturias. Corduba (Cordova), Hispalis (Seville), where, at a later period, the Romans founded colonies, were already great places of commerce, and had ports for the vessels which ascended the Baetis (Guadalquivir).

Spain was rich in precious metals; gold, silver, iron, were there the object of industrial activity. At Osca (Huesca), they worked mines of silver; at Sisapo (Almaden), silver and mercury. At Cotinae, copper was found along with gold. Among the Oretani, at Castulo (Cazlona, on the Guadalimar), the silver mines, in the time of Polybius, gave employment to 40,000 persons, and produced daily 25,000 drachmas. In thirty-two years, the Roman generals carried home from the peninsula considerable sums. The abundance of metals in Spain explains how so great a number of vessels of gold and silver was found among many of the chiefs or petty kings of the Iberian nations. Polybius compares one of them, for his luxury, with the king of the fabulous Phaeaces.

To the north, and in the centre, of the peninsula, agriculture and the breeding of cattle were the principal sources of wealth. It was there that were made the says (vests of flannel or goats’ hair) which were exported in great numbers to Italy. In the Tarraconese, the cultivation of flax was very productive; the inhabitants had been the first to weave those fine cloths called carbasa, which were objects greatly prized as far as Greece. Leather, honey, and salt were brought by cargoes to the principal ports along the coast; at Emporiae (Ampurias), a settlement of the Phocaeans in Catalonia; at Saguntum, founded by Greeks from the island of Zacynthas; at Tarraco (Tarragona), one of the most ancient of the Phoenician settle­ments in Spain; and at Malaca (Malaga), whence were exported all sorts of salt fish. Lusitania, neglected by the Phoenician or Carthaginian ships, was less favored. Yet we see, by the passage of Polybius which enumerates the mercantile exports of this province with their prices, that its agricultural products were very abundant.

The prosperity of Spain appears also from the vast amount of its population. According to some authors, Tiberius Gracchus took from the Celtiberiaus three hundred oppida. In Turdetania (part of Andalusia), according to Strabo, there were counted no less than two hundred towns. Appian, the historian of the Spanish wars, points out the multitude of petty tribes which the Romans had to reduce, and during the campaign of Cn. Scipio, more than a hundred and twenty submitted.

Thus the Iberian peninsula was at that time reckoned among the most populous and richest regions of Europe.

SOUTHERN GAUL.

The part of Gaul which is bathed by the Mediterranean offers a spectacle no less satisfactory. Numerous migrations, arriving from the East, had pushed back the population of the Seine and the Loire towards the mouths of the Rhone, and already in the middle of the fourth century before our era, the Gauls found themselves straitened in their frontiers. More civilized than the Iberians, but not less energetic, they com­bined gentle and hospitable manners with great activity, which was further developed by their contact with the Greek colonies spread from the maritime Alps to the Pyrenees. The cultiva­tion of the fields and the breeding of cattle furnished their principal wealth, and their industry found support in the products of the soil and in its herds. Their manufacture consisted of says, not less in repute than those of the Celtiberians, and exported in great quantities to Italy. Good sailors, the Gauls transported by water, on the Seine, the Rhine, the Sadne, the Rhone, and Loire, the merchandise and timber which, even from the coasts of the Channel, were accumulated in the Phocaean trading places on the Mediterranean. Agde (Agatha), Antibes (Antipolis), Nice (Nicaea), the isles of Ilyeres (Staechades), Monaco (Portus Herculis Monaeci), were so many naval stations which maintained relations with Spain and Italy.

Marseilles possessed but a very circumscribed territory, but its influence reached far into the interior of Gaul. It is to this town we owe the acclimatization of the vine and the olive. Thousands of oxen came every year to feed on the thyme in the neighborhood of Marseilles. The Massilian merchants trav­ersed Gaul in all directions to sell their wines and the produce of their manufactures. Without rising to the rank of a great maritime power, still the small Phocaean republic possessed suffi­cient resources to make itself respected by Carthage; it formed an early alliance with the Romans. Massilian houses had, as early as the fifth century of Rome, established at Syracuse, as they did subsequently at Alexandria, factories which show a great commercial activity.

LIGURIA, CISALPINE GAUL, VENETIA, AND ILLYRIA.

Alone in the Tyrrhene sea, the Ligures had not yet risen out of that almost savage life which the Iberians, sprung from the same stock, had originally led. If some towns on the Ligurian coast, and especially Genua (Genoa), carried on a mari­time commerce, they supported themselves by piracy rather than by regular traffic.

On the contrary, Cisalpine Gaul, properly so called, supported, as early as the time of Polybius, a numerous population. We may form some idea of it from the losses this province sustained during a period of twenty-seven years, from 554 to 582; Livy gives a total of 257,400 men killed, taken, or transported. The Gaulish tribes settled in the Cisalpine, though preserving their original manners, had, through their contact with the Etruscans, arrived at a certain degree of civilization. The num­ber of towns in this country was not very considerable, but it contained a great abundance of villages. Addicted to agri­culture, like the other Gauls, the Cisalpines bred in their forests droves of swine, in such numbers that they would have been sufficient, in the time of Strabo, to provision all Rome. The coins of pure gold, which in recent times have been found in Cisalpine Gaul, especially between the Pd and the Adda, and which were struck by the Boii and some of the Ligurian popula­tions, furnish evidence of the abundance of that metal, which was collected in the form of gold sand in the waters of the rivers. Moreover, certain towns of Etruscan origin, such as Mantua (Mantua) and Padua (Patavium), preserved vestiges of the prosperity they had reached at the time when the peoples of Tuscany extended their dominion beyond the Pd. At once a maritime town and a place of commerce, Padua, at a remote epoch, possessed a vast territory, and could raise an army of 120,000 men. The transport of goods was facilitated by means of canals crossing Venetia, partly dug by the Etruscans. Such were those especially which united Ravenna with Altinum (Altino), which became at a later period the grand storehouse of the Cisalpine territory.

The commercial relations entertained by Venetia with Ger­many, Illyria, and Rhaetia, go back far beyond the Roman epoch, and, at a remote antiquity, it was Venetia which received the amber from the shores of the Baltic.  All the traffic which was afterwards concentrated at Aquileia, founded by the Romans after the submission of the Veneti, had then for its centre the towns of Venetia; and the numerous colonies established by the Romans in this part of the peninsula are proofs of its immense resources. Moreover, the Veneti, occupied in cultivating their lands and breeding horses, had peaceful manners which facili­tated commercial relations, and contrasted with the piratical habits of the populations spread over the north and north­eastern coasts of the Adriatic.

The Istrians, the Liburni, and the Illyrians were the nations most formidable, both by their corsairs and by their armies; their light and rapid barks covered the Adriatic, and troubled the navigation between Italy and Greece. In the year 524, the Illyrians sent to sea a hundred lembi, while their land army counted hardly more than 5,000 men. Illyria was poor, and offered few resources to the Romans, notwithstanding the fer­tility of its soil. Agriculture was neglected, even in the time of Strabo. Istria contained a population much more considerable, in proportion to its extent.  Yet she had, no more than Dalmatia and the rest of Illyria, attained, at the epoch of which we are speaking, that high degree of prosperity which she ac­quired afterwards by the foundation of Tergeste (Trieste) and Pola. The Roman conquest delivered the Adriatic from the pirates who infested it, and then only the ports of Dyrrachium and Apollonia obtained a veritable importance.

EPIRUS.

Epirus, a country of pastures and shepherds, intersected by picturesque mountains, was a sort of Helvetia. Ambracia (now Arta), which Pyrrhus had chosen for his residence, had become a very fine town, and possessed two theatres. The palace of the king (Pyrrheum) formed a veritable museum, for it fur­nished for the triumph of M. Fulvius Nobilior, in 565, two hundred and eighty-five statues in bronze, two hundred and thirty in marble, and paintings by Zeuxis, mentioned in Pliny. The town paid also, on this occasion, five hundred talents, and offered the consul a crown of gold weighing a hundred and fifty thousand talents (nearly 4,000 kilogrammes). It appears that before the war of Paulus Aemilius this country contained a rather numerous population, and counted seventy towns, most of them situated in the country of the Molossi. After the battle of Pydna, the Roman general made so considerable a booty, that, without reckoning the treasury’s share, each foot-soldier received 200 denarii, and each horse-soldier 400; in addition to which the sale of slaves arose to the enormous num­ber of 150,000.

GREECE.

At the beginning of the first Punic war, Greece proper was divided into four principal powers: Macedonia, Aetolia, Achaia, and Sparta. All the continental part which extends northward of the Gulf of Corinth as far as the mountains of Pindus, was under the dependence of Philip; the western part belonged to the Aetolians. The Peloponnesus was shared between the Achaeans, the tyrant of Sparta, and independent towns. Greece had been declining during about a century, and seen her warlike spirit weaken and her population diminish; and yet Plutarch, comprising under this name the peoples of the Hellenic race, pretends that their country furnished King Philip with the money, food, and provisions of his army. The Greek navy had almost disappeared. The Achaean league, which comprised Argolis, Corinth, Sicyon, and the maritime cities of Achaea, had few ships. On land the Hellenic forces were less insignificant. The Aetolian league possessed an army of 10,000 men, and, in the war against Philip, pretended to have contributed more than the Romans to the victory of Cynoscephalae. Greece was still rich in objects of art of all descriptions. When, in 535, the King of Macedonia captured the town of Thermae, in Aetolia, he found in it more than two thousand statues.

Athens, in spite of the loss of her maritime supremacy, pre­served the remains of a civilization which had already attained the highest degree of splendor, and those incomparable build­ings of the age of Pericles, the mere name of which reminds us of all that the arts have produced in greatest perfection. Among the most remarkable were the Acropolis, with its Parthenon and its Propylaea, masterpieces of Phidias, the statue of Minerva in gold and ivory, and another in bronze, the casque and spear of which were seen afar off at sea. The arsenal of the Piraeus, built by the architect Philo, was, according to Plutarch, an ad­mirable work.

Sparta, although greatly fallen, was distinguished by its monu­ments and by its manufactures; the famous portico of the Per­sians, built after the Median wars—the columns of which, in white marble, represented the illustrious persons among the vanquished—was the principal ornament of the market. Iron, obtained in abundance from Mount Taygetus, was marvellously worked at Sparta, which was celebrated for the manufacture of arms and agricultural instruments. The coasts of Laconia abounded in shells, from which was obtained the purple, most valued after that of Phoenicia. The port of Gytheum, very populous, and very active in 559, still possessed great arsenals.

In the centre of the peninsula, Arcadia, although its popula­tion was composed of shepherds, had the same love for the arts as the rest of Greece. It possessed two celebrated temples: that of Minerva at Tegaea, built by the architect Scopas, in which were united the three orders of architecture; and that of Apollo, at Phigalia, situated at an elevation of 3,000 feet above the' level of the sea, and the remains of which still excite the wonder of travellers.

Elis, protected by its neutrality, was devoted to the arts of peace. There agriculture-flourished; its fisheries were produc­tive ; it had manufactories of tissues of byssys which rivalled the muslins of Cos, and were sold for their weight in gold. The town of Elis possessed the finest gymnasium in Greece; people came to it to prepare themselves (sometimes a year in advance) for competition in the Olympic games.

Olympia was the holy city, celebrated for its sanctuary and its consecrated garden, where stood, among a multitude of masterpieces of art, one of the wonders of the world, the statue of Jupiter, the work of Phidias, the majesty of which was such that Paulus Aemilius, when he first saw it, believed he was in the presence of the divinity himself.

Argos, the country of several celebrated artists, possessed temples, fountains, a gymnasium, and a theatre; and its public place had served for a field of battle to the armies of Pyrrhus and Antigonus. It remained, until the subjugation by the Romans, one of the finest cities of Greece. Within its territory were the superb temple of Juno, the ancient sanctuary of the Argives, with the statue of the goddess in gold and silver, the work of Polycletus, and the vale of Nemsaa, where one of the four national festivals of Greece was celebrated. Argolis also possessed Epidaurus, with, its hot springs; its temple of Aesculapius, enriched with the offerings of those who came to be cured of their diseases; and its theatre, one of the largest in the country.

Corinth, admirably situated upon the narrow isthmus which separates the Aegean Sea from the gulf which has preserved its name, with its dye-houses, its celebrated manufactories of carpets and of bronze, bore witness also to the ancient prosperity of the Hellenic race. Its population must have been considerable, since there were reckoned in it 460,000 slaves; marble palaces rose on all sides, adorned with statues and valuable vases. Corinth had the reputation of being the most voluptuous of towns. Among its numerous temples, that of Venus had in its service more than a thousand courtesans. In the sale of the booty made by Mummius, a painting by Aristides, representing Bacchus, was sold for 600,000 sestertii. There was seen in the triumph of Metellus surnamed Macedonicus, a group, the work of Lysippus, representing Alexander the Great, twenty-five horsemen, and nine foot-soldiers slain at the battle of the Granicus; this group, taken at Corinth, came from Dium in Macedonia.

Other towns of Greece were no less rich in works of art. The Romans carried away from the little town of Eretria, at the time of the Macedonian war, a great number of paintings and precious statues. We know, from the traveller Pausanias, how prodigious was the quantity of offerings brought from the most diverse countries into the sanctuary of Delphi. This town, which, by its reputation for sanctity and its solemn games, the Pythian, was the rival of Olympia, gathered in its temple during ages immense treasures; and when it was plundered by the Phocaeans, they found in it gold and silver enough to coin ten thousand talents of money. The ancient opulence of the Greeks had, nevertheless, passed into their colonies; and, from the extrem­ity of the Black Sea to Cyrene, numerous establishments arose remarkable for their sumptuousness.

MACEDONIA'

Macedonia drew to herself, since the time of Alexander, the riches and resources of Asia. Dominant over a great part of Greece and Thrace, occupying Thessaly, and extending her sovereignty over Epirus, this kingdom concentrated in herself the vital strength of those cities formerly independent, which, two centuries before, were her rivals in power and courage. Under an economical administration, the public revenues rising from the royal domains from the silver mines in Mount Pangeum, and from the taxes, were sufficient for the wants of the country. In 527 Antigonus sent to Rhodes consider­able succors, which furnish the measure of the resources of Macedonia.

Towards the year 563 of Rome, Philip had, by wise measures, raised again the importance of Macedonia. He collected in his arsenals materials for equipping three armies and provisions for ten years. Under Perseus, Macedonia was no less flourish­ing. That prince gave Cotys, for a service of six months with 1,000 cavalry, the large sum of 200 talents. At the battle of Pydna, which completed his ruin, nearly 20,000 men remained on the field, and 11,000 were made prisoners. In richness of equipment the Macedonian troops far surpassed other armies. The Leucaspidan phalanx was dressed in scarlet, and carried gilt armor; the Ghalcaspidan phalanx had shields of the finest brass. The prodigious splendor of the court of Per­seus and that of his favorites reveal still more the degree of opulence at which Macedonia had arrived. All exhibited in their dresses and in their feasts a pomp equal to that of kings. Among the booty made by Paulus Aemilius were paintings, statues, rich tapestries, vases of gold, silver, bronze, and ivory, which were so many masterpieces. His triumph was unequalled by any other.

Valerius of Antium estimates at more than 120 millions of sestertii the gold and silver exhibited on this occasion. Macedonia, as we see, had absorbed the ancient riches of Greece. Thrace, long barbarous, began also to rise out of the condition of inferiority in which it had so long languished. Numerous Greek colonies, founded on the shores of the Pontus Euxinus, introduced there civilization and prosperity; and among these colonies, Byzantium, though often harassed by the neighboring barbarians, had already an importance and prosperity which presaged its future destinies. Foreigners, resorting to it from all parts, had introduced a de­gree of licentiousness which became proverbial. Its com­merce was, above all, nourished by the ships of Athens, which went there to fetch the wheat of Tauris and the fish of the Euxine. When Athens, in her decline, became a prey to anarchy, Byzantium, where arts and letters flourished, served as a refuge to her exiles.

ASIA MINOR.

Asia Minor comprised a great number of provinces, of which several became, after the dismemberment of the empire of Alexander, independent states. Of these, the principal formed into four groups, composing so many kingdoms, namely, Pontus, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pergamus. We must except from them some Greek cities on the coast, which kept their autonomy or were placed under the sovereignty of Rhodes. Their extent and limits varied often until the time of the Roman conquest, and several of them passed from one domination to another. All these kingdoms participated in different degrees in the prosperity of Macedonia.

“Asia,” says Cicero, “is so rich and fertile, that the fecundity of its plains, the variety of its products, the extent of its pastures, the multiplicity of the objects of commerce exported from it, give it an incontestable superiority over all other countries of the earth.”

The wealth of Asia Minor appears from the amount of imposi­tions paid by it to the different Roman generals. Without speaking of the spoils carried away by Scipio, in his campaign against Antiochus, and by Manlius Volso in 565, Sylla, and afterwards Lucullus and Pompey, each drew from this country about 20,000 talents, besides an equal sum distributed by them to their soldiers received in a period of twenty-five years.

KINGDOM OF PONTUS.

The most northern of the four groups named above formed a great part of the kingdom of Pontus. This province, the ancient Cappadocia Pontica, formerly a Persian satrapy, reduced to sub­jection by Alexander and his successor, recovered itself after the battle of Ipsus (453). Mithridates III enlarged his territory by adding to it Paphlagonia, and afterwards Sinope and Galatia. Pontus soon expended from Colchis on the northeast to Lesser Armenia on the southeast, and had Bithynia for its boundary on the west. Thus, touching upon the Caucasus, and master of the Pontus Euxinus, this kingdom, composed of divers peoples, presented, under varied climates, a variety of different produc­tions. It received wines and oils from the Aegean Sea, and wheat from the Bosphorus; it exported salt fish in great quan­tity, dolphin oil, and, as produce of the interior, the wools of the Gadilonitis, the fleeces of Ancyra, the horses of Armenia, Media, and Paphlagonia, the iron of the Chalybes, a population of miners to the south of Trapezus, already celebrated in the time of Homer, and mentioned by Xenophon. There also were found mines of silver, abandoned in the time of Strabo, but which have been reopened in modern times. Important ports on the Black Sea facilitated the exportation of these products. It was at Sinope that Lucullus found a part of the treasures which he displayed at his triumph, and which give us a lofty idea of the kingdom of Mithridates. An object of admiration at Sinope was the statute of Autolycus, one of the protecting heroes of the town, the work of the statuary Sthenis.

Trapezus (Trebizonde) which before the time of Mithridates the Great preserved a sort of autonomy under the kings of Pontus, had an extensive commerce; which was the case also with another Greek colony, Amisus (Samsoun), regarded in the time of Lucullus as one of the most flourishing and richest towns in the country. In the interior, Amasia, which became afterwards one of the great fortresses of Asia Minor, and the metropolis of Pontus, had already probably, at the time of the Punic wars, a certain renown. Cabira, called afterwards, Sebaste, and then Neocaesarea, the central point of the resistance of Mithridates the Great to Lucullus, owed its ancient celebrity to its magnificent Temple of the Moon. From the country of Ca­bira there was, according to the statement of Lucullus, only the distance of a few days’ march into Armenia, a country the riches of which may be estimated by the treasures gathered by Tigranes.

We can hence understand how Mithridates the Great was able, two centuries later, to oppose the Romans with consider­able armies and fleets. He possessed in the Black Sea 400 ships, and his army amounted to 250,000 men and 40,000 horse. He received, it is true, succors from Armenia and Scythia, from the Palus Moeotis, and even from Thrace.

BITHYNIA.

Bithynia, a province of Asia Minor, comprised between the Propontis, the Sangarius, and Paphlagonia, formed a kingdom, which, at the beginning of the sixth century of Rome, was adjacent to Pontus, and comprised several parts of the provinces contiguous to Mysia and Phrygia. In it were found several towns, the commerce of which rivalled that of the maritime towns of Pontus, and especially Nicaea and Nicomedia. This last, founded in 475 by Nicomedes I, took a rapid extension. Heraclea Pontica, a Milesian colony situated between the San­garius and the Parthenius, preserved its extensive commerce, and an independence which Mithridates the Great himself could not entirely destroy; it possessed a vast port, safe and skilfully dis­posed, which sheltered a numerous fleet. The power of the Bithynians was not insignificant, since they sent into the field, in the war of Nicomedes against Mithridates, 56,000 men. If the traffic was considerable on the coasts of Bithynia, thanks to the Greek colonies, the interior was not less prosperous by its agriculture, and Bithynia was still, in the time of Strabo, renowned for its herds.

One of the provinces of Bithynia fell into the hands of the Gauls (a.u.c. 478). Three peoples of Celtic origin shared it, and exercised in it a sort of feudal dominion. It was called Galatia from the name of the conquerors. Its places of com­merce were: Ancyra, the point of arrival of the caravans coming from Asia, and Pessinus, one of the chief seats of the old Phry­gian worship, where pilgrims repaired in great number to adore Cybele. The population of Galatia was certainly rather con­siderable, since in the famous campaign of Cneius Manlius Volso, in 565, the Galatians lost 40,000 men. The two tribes united of the Tectosagi and Trocmi raised at that period, in spite of many defeats, an army of 50,000 foot and 10,000 horse.

CAPPADOCIA.

To the east of Galatia, Cappadocia, comprised, between the Halys and Armenia, distant from the sea, and crossed by numerous chains of mountains, formed a kingdom which escaped the conquests of Alexander, and which, a few years after his death, opposed Perdiccas with an army of 30,000 footmen and 15,000 horsemen. In the time of Strabo, wheat and cattle formed the riches of this country. In 566, King Ariarathes paid 600 talents for the alliance of the Romans. Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea), capital of Cappadocia, a town of an _;entirely Asiatic origin, had been, from a very early period, re­nowned for its pastures.

KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS.

The western part of Asia Minor is better known. It had seen, after the battle of Ipsus, the formation of the kingdom of Pergamus, which, thanks to the interested liberality of the Romans towards Eumenes II, increased continually until the moment when it fell under their sovereignty. To this kingdom belonged Mysia, the two Phrygias, Lycaonia, and Lydia. This last province, crossed by the Pactolus, had for its capital Ephesus, the metropolis of' the Ionian confederation, at the same time the mart of the commerce of Asia Minor and one of the localities where the fine arts were cultivated with most distinction. This town had two ports: one penetrated into the heart of the town, while the other formed a basin in the very middle of the public market. The theatre of Ephesus, the largest ever built, was 660 feet in diameter, and was capable of holding 60,000 specta­tors. The most celebrated artists, Scopas, Praxiteles, &c., worked at Ephesus upon the great Temple of Diana. This monument, the building of which lasted two hundred and twenty years, was surrounded by 128 columns, each 60 feet high, presented by so many kings. Pergamus, the capital of the kingdom, passed for one of the finest cities in Asia; the port of Elaea contained maritime arsenals, and could arm numerous vessels. The acropolis of Pergamus, an inaccessible citadel, defended by two torrents, was the residence of the Attalides; these princes, zealous protectors of the sciences and arts, had founded in their capital a library of 200,000 volumes. Pergamus carried on a vast traffic; its cereals were exported in great quantities to most places in Greece. Cyzicus, situated on an island of the Propontis, with two closed ports, forming a station for about two hundred ships, rivalled the richest cities of Asia. Like Adramyttium, it carried on a great commerce in perfumery, it worked the inex­haustible marble quarries of the island of Proconnesus, and its commercial relations were so extensive that its gold coins were current in all the Asiatic factories. The town of Abydos possessed gold mines. The wheat of Assus was reputed the best in the world, and was reserved for the table of the kings of Persia.

We may estimate the population and resources of this part of Asia from the armies and fleets which the kings had at their command at the time of the conquest of Greece by the Romans. In 555, Attalus II, and, ten years later, Eumenes II, sent them numerous galleys of five ranks of oars. The land forces of the kings of Pergamus were much less considerable Their direct authority did not extend over a great territory, yet they had many tributary towns; hence their great wealth and small army. The Romans drew from this country, now nearly bar­ren and unpeopled, immense contributions, both in gold and wheat. The magnificence of the triumph of Manlius and the reflections of Livy, compared with the testimony of Herodotus, reveal all the splendor of the kingdom of Pergamus. It was after the war against Antiochus and the expedition of Manlius, that extravagance began to display itself at Rome. Soldiers and generals enriched themselves prodigiously in Asia.

The ancient colonies of Ionia and Aeolis, such as Clazomenae, Colophon, and many others, which were dependent for the most part on the kingdom of Pergamus, were fallen from their ancient grandeur. Smyrna, rebuilt by Alexander, was still an object of admiration for the beauty of its monuments. The exportation of wines, as celebrated on the coast of Ionia as in the neighbor­ing islands, formed alone an important support of the commerce of the ports of the Aegean Sea.

The treasures of the temple of Samothrace were so considera­ble, that we are induced to mention here a circumstance relating to this little island, though distant from Asia, and near the coast of Thrace: Sylla’s soldiers took in the sanctuary the Cabiri, an ornament of the value of 1,000 talents.

CARIA, LYCIA, AND CILICIA.

On the southern coast of Asia Minor, some towns still sustained the rank they had attained one or two centuries before. The capital of Caria was Halicarnassus, a very strong town, defended by two citadels, and celebrated for one of the finest works of Greek art, the Mausoleum. In spite of the extraordinary fertility of the country, the Carians were accustomed, like the people of Crete, to engage as mercenaries in the Greek armies. On their territory stood the Ionian town of Miletus, with its four ports. The Milesians alone had civilized the shores of the Black Sea by the foundation of about eighty colonies.

In turn independent, or placed under foreign dominion, Lycia,, a province comprised between Caria and Cilicia, possessed some rich commercial towns. One especially, renowned for its ancient oracle of Apollo, no less celebrated than that of Delphi, was remarkable for its spacious port; this was Patara, which was large enough to contain the whole fleet of Antiochus, burnt by Fabius in 565. Xanthus, the largest town of the province, to which place ships ascended, only lost its importance after having been pillaged by Brutus. Its riches had at an earlier period drawn upon it the same fate from the Persians. Under the Roman dominion, Lycia beheld its population decline gradually; and of the seventy towns which it had possessed, no more than thirty-six remained in the eighth century of Rome.

More to the east, the coasts of Cilicia were less favored; subjugated in turn by the Macedonians, Egyptians, and Syrians, they had become receptacles of pirates, who were encouraged by the kings of Egypt in their hostility to the Seleucidae. From the heights of the mountains which cross a part of the province, robbers descended to plunder the fer­tile plains situated on the eastern side (Cilicia Campestris). Still, the part watered by the Cydnus and the Pyramus was more prosperous, owing to the manufacture of coarse linen and to the export of saffron. There stood ancient Tarsus, formerly the residence of a satrap, the commerce of which had sprung up along with that of Tyre; and Soli, on which Alexander levied an imposition of a hundred talents as a punishment for its fidelity to the Persians, and which, by its maritime position, excited the envy of the Rhodians. These towns and other ports entered, after the battle of Ipsus, into the great commercial movement of which the provinces of Syria became the seat.

SYRIA.

By the foundation of the empire of the Seleucidae, Greek civilization was carried into the interior of Asia, where the immobility of Eastern society was succeeded by the activity of Western life. Greek letters and arts flourished from the sea of Phoenicia to the banks of the Euphrates. Numerous towns were built in Syria and Assyria, with all the richness and elegance of the edifices of Greece; some were almost in ruins in the time of Pliny. Seleucia, founded by Seleucus Nicator, at the mouth of the Orontes, and which received, with five other towns built by the same monarch, the name of the head of the Graeco-Syrian dynasty, became a greatly frequented port. Antioch, built on the same river, rivalled the finest towns of Egypt and Greece by the number of its edifices, the extent of its places, and the beauty of its temples and statues.  Its walls, built by the architect Xenaeos, passed for a wonder, and in the Middle Ages their ruins excited the admiration of travellers. Antioch con­sisted of four quarters, having each its own inclosure; and the common inclosure which surrounded them all appears to have embraced an extent of six leagues in circumference. Not far from the town was the delightful abode of Daphne, where the wood, consecrated to Apollo and Diana, was an object of public veneration, and the place where sumptuous festivals were celebrated. Apamea was renowned for its pastures. Seleu­cus had formed there a stud of 30,000 mares, 300 stallions, and 500 elephants. The Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis (now Baalbeck) was the most colossal work of architecture that had ever existed.

The power of the empire of the Seleucidae went on increasing until the time when the Romans seized upon it. Extended from the Mediterranean to the Oxus and Caucasus, this empire was composed of nearly all the provinces of the ancient king­dom of the Persians, and included peoples of different origins.  Media was fertile, and its capital, Ecbatana, which Polybius represents as excelling in riches and the incredible luxury of its palaces the other cities of Asia, had not yet been des­poiled by Antiochus III;  Babylonia, once the seat of a powerful empire, and Phoenicia, long the most commercial country in the world, made part of Syria, and touched upon the frontiers of the Parthians. Caravans, following a route which has remained the same during many centuries, placed Syria in communication with Arabia, whence came ebony, ivory, perfumes, resins, and spices ; the Syrian ports were the interme­diate marts for the merchants who proceeded as far as India, where Seleucus I went to conclude a treaty with Sandrocottus. The merchandise of this country ascended the Euphrates as far as Thapsacus; and thence it was exported to all the prov­inces. Communications so distant and multiplied explain the prosperity of the empire of the Seleucidae. Babylonia com­peted with Phrygia in embroidered tissues; purple and the tissues of Tyre, the glass, goldsmiths’ work, and dyes of Sidon, were exported far. Commerce had penetrated to the extremi­ties of Asia. Silk stuffs were sent from the frontiers of China to Caspiae Portae, and thence conveyed by caravans at once towards the Tyrian Sea, Mesopotamia, and Pontus. Sub­sequently, the invasion of the Parthians, by intercepting the routes, prevented the Greeks from penetrating into the heart of Asia. Hence Seleucus Nicator formed the project of opening a way of direct communication between Greece and Bactriana, by constructing a canal from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. Mines of precious metals were rather rare in Syria; but there was abundance of gold and silver, introduced by the Phoe­nicians or imported from Arabia or Central Asia. We may judge of the abundance of money possessed by Seleucia, on the Tigris, by the amount of the contribution which was extorted from it by Antiochus III (a thousand talents). The sums which the Syrian monarchs engaged to pay to the Romans were immense. The soil gave produce equal in importance with that of industry. Susiana, one of the provinces of Persia which had fallen under the dominion of the Seleucidae, had so great a reputation for its corn, that Egypt alone could compete with it. Coele-Syria was, like the north of Mesopotamia, in repute for its cattle. Palestine furnished abundance of wheat, oil, and wine. The condition of Syria was still so prosperous in the seventh century of Rome, that the philoso­pher Posidonius represents its inhabitants as indulging in continual festivals, and dividing their time between the labors of the field, banquets, and the exercises of the gymnasium. The festivals of Antiochus IV, in the town of Daphne, give a notion of the extravagance displayed by the grandees of that country.

The military forces assembled at different epochs by the kings of Syria enable us to estimate the population of their empire. In 537, at the battle of Raphia, Antiochus had under his com­mand 68,000 men; in 564, at Magnesia, 62,000 infantry, and more than 12,000 horsemen.  These armies, it is true, comprised auxiliaries of different nations. The Jews of the district of Car­mel alone could raise 40,000 men.

The fleet was no less imposing. Phoenicia counted numerous ports and well stored arsenals; such were Aradus (Ruad), Berytus (Beyrout), Tyre (Sour). This latter town raised itself gradually from its decline. It was the same with Sidon (Saide), which Antiochus III, in his war with Ptolemy, did not venture to attack on account of its soldiers, its stores, and its population. More­over, the greater part of the Phoenician towns enjoyed, under the Seleucidae, a certain autonomy favorable to their industry. In Syria, Seleucia, which Antiochus the Great recovered from the Egyptians, had become the first port in the kingdom on the Mediterranean. Laodicea carried on an active commerce with Alexandria. Masters of the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia, the kings of Syria obtained from them great quantities of timber for ship-building, which was floated down the rivers from the mountains. Thus uniting their vessels with those of the Phoenicians, the Seleucidae launched upon the Mediterranean con­siderable armies.

Distant commerce also employed numerous merchant vessels; the Mediterranean, like the Euphrates, was furrowed by barks which brought or carried merchandise of every description. Vessels sailing on the Erythraean Sea were in communication, by means of canals, with the shores of the Mediterranean. The great trade of Phoenicia with Spain and the West had ceased; but the navigation of the Euphrates and the Tigris replaced it for the transport of products, whether foreign or fabricated in Syria itself, and sent into Asia Minor, Greece, or Egypt. The empire of the Seleucidae offered the spectacle: of the ancient civilization and luxury of Nineveh and Babylon, transformed by the genius of Greece.

EGYPT.

Egypt, which Herodotus calls a present from the Nile, did not equal in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidae, but it formed a power much more compact. Its civilization reached back more than three thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population to develop itself there to such a point that, under Amasis II., contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned in it. The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II, the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents, and a million and a half of artabi of wheat. Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year. Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, with the province of Samaria, yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents. A single feast cost Philadelphus 2,240 talents. The sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps exaggerated, of 740,000 talents. In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten millions of measures of wheat.  The precious metals abounded in the empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage, towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first commercial city in the world. It was fifteen miles in circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed the largest ships to anchor along the quay. There arrived the merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa; some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of Cosseir), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on the Red Sea. The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a stop to the piracies of the Arabs, and led to the establishment of numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia, gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, perfumes. All these products were exchanged against those which came from the Pontus Euxinus and the Western Sea. The native manufacture of printed and embroidered tissues, and that of glass, assumed under the Ptolemies a new development. The objects exhumed from the tombs of this period, the paintings with which they are decorated, the allusions contained in the hieroglyphic texts and Greek papyrus, proved that the most varied descriptions of in­dustry were exercised in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, and had attained a high degree of perfection. The excellence of the prod­ucts and the delicacy of the work prove the intelligence of the workmen. Under Ptolemy II., the army was composed of 200,000 footmen, 40,000 cavalry, 300 elephants, and 200 chariots; the arsenals were capable of furnishing arms for 300,000 men. The Egyptian fleet, properly so called, consisted of a hundred and twelve vessels of the first class (from five to thirty ranges of oars), and two hundred and twenty-four of the second class, together with light draft; the king had, besides these, more than four thousand ships in the ports placed in subjection to him. It was especially after Alexander that the Egyptian navy became greatly extended.

CYRENAICA.

Separating Egypt from the possessions of Carthage, Cyrenaica (the regency of Tripoli), formerly colonized by the Greeks, and independent, had fallen into the hands of the first of the Ptolemies. It possessed commercial and rich towns, and fertile plains; its cultivation extended even into the mountains; wine, oil, dates, saffron, and different plants, such as the silphium (laserpitium), were the object of considerable traffic. The horses of Cyrenaica, which had all the lightness of the Arabian horses, were objects of research even in Greece^^, and the natives of Cyrene could make no more handsome present to Alexander than to send him three hundred of their coursers. Nevertheless, political revolutions had already struck at the ancient prosperity of this country, which previously formed, by its navigation, its commerce, and its arts, probably the finest of the colonies founded by the Greeks.

CYPRUS.

The numerous islands in the Mediterranean enjoyed equal prosperity. Cyprus, colonized by the Phoenicians, and subsequently by the Greeks, passing afterwards under the dominion of the Egyptians, had a population which preserved, from its first native country, the love of commerce and distant voyages. Almost all its towns were situated on the sea-coast, and furnished with excellent ports. Ptolemy Soter maintained in it an army of 30,000 Egyptians. No country was richer in timber. Its fertility, passed for being superior to that of Egypt. To its agricultural produce were added precious stones, mines of copper worked from an early period, and so rich that this metal took its name from the island itself (Cuprum). In Cyprus were seen numerous sanctuaries, and especially the temple of Venus, at Paphos, which contained a hundred altars.

CRETE.

Crete, peopled by different races, had attained even in the heroic age a great celebrity; Homer sang its hundred cities: but during several centuries it had been on the decline. With­out commerce, without a regular navy, without agriculture, it possessed little else than its fruits and woods, and the sterility which characterizes it now had already commenced. Never­theless, there is every reason to believe that at the time of the Roman conquest, the island was still well peopled. Devoted to piracy, and reduced to sell their services, the Cretans, celebrated as archers, fought as mercenaries in the armies of Syria, Macedonia, and Egypt.

RHODES.

If Crete was in decline, Rhodes, on the contrary, was extending its commerce, which took gradually the place of that of the maritime towns of Ionia and Caria. Already inhabited, in the time of Homer, by a numerous population, and contain­ing three important towns, Lyndos, Ialysus, and Camirus, the isle was, in the fifth century of Rome, the first maritime power after Carthage. The town of Rhodes, built during the war of the Peloponnesus (346), had, like the Punic city, two ports, one for merchant vessels, the other for ships of war. The right of anchorage produced a revenue of a million of drachmas a year. The Rhodians had founded colonies on different points of the Mediterranean shore, and entertained friendly relations with a great number of towns, from which they re­ceived more than once succors and presents. They possessed, upon the neighboring Asiatic continent, tributary towns, such as Caunus and Stratonicea, which paid them 120 talents. The navigation of the Bosphorus, of which they strove to maintain the passage free, soon belonged to them almost exclusively. All the maritime commerce from the Nile to the Palus Maeotis thus fell into their hands. Laden with slaves, cattle, honey, wax, and salt meat their ships went to fetch on the coast of the Cimmerian Bosphorus (Sea of Azof) the wheat then very celebrated, and to carry wines and oils to the northern coast of Asia Minor. By means of its fleets, though its land army was composed wholly of foreign­ers, Rhodes several times made war with success. She con­tended with Athens, especially from 397 to 399; she resisted victoriously, in 450, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and owed her safety to the respect of this prince for a magnificent painting of Ialysus, the work of Protogenes. During the campaigns of the Romans in Macedonia and Asia, she furnished them with con­siderable fleets. Her naval force was maintained until the war which followed the death of Cesar; but was then an­nihilated.

The celebrity of Rhodes was no less great in arts and letters than in commerce. After the reign of Alexander, it became the seat of a famous school of sculpture and painting, from which issued Protogenes and the authors of the Laocoon and the Farnese Bull. The town contained three thousand statues, and a hundred and six colossi, among others the famous Statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world, a hundred and five feet high, the cost of which had been three thousand talents. The school of rhetoric at Rhodes was frequented by students who repaired thither from all parts of Greece, and Caesar, as well as Cicero, went there to perfect themselves in the art of oratory.

The other islands of the Aegean Sea had nearly all lost their political importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its port, the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favorable position an extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she became corrupted, like Byzantium and Zacynthus (Zante), which Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of luxury.

SARDINIA.

The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of independence. From 541 to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken, or sold. The number of these last was so considerable that the expression Sardinians to sell (Sardi venales) became proverbial. Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000 inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of com and numerous herds of cattle made of this island the second granary of Carthage. The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552, the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the freight. The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a superior quality occupied thousands of hands.

CORSICA.

Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly more than 30,000 inhabitants,)and Strabo represents them as savages, and living in the mountains. According to Pliny, however, it had thirty towns. Resin, wax, honey exported from factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocaeans on the coasts, were almost the only products of the island.

SICILY.

Sicily, called by the ancients the favorite abode of Ceres, owed its name to the Sicani or Siculi, a race which had once peopled a part of Italy; Phoenician colonies, and afterwards Greek colonies, had established themselves in it. In 371, the Greeks occupied the eastern part, about two-thirds of the island; the Carthaginians, the western part. Sicily, on account of its prodigious fertility, was, as may be supposed, coveted by both peoples; it was soon the same in regard to the Romans, and, after the conquest, it became the granary of Italy. The ora­tions of Cicero against Verres show the prodigious quantities of wheat which it sent, and to what a great sum the tenths or taxes amounted, which procured immense profits to the farmers of the revenues.

The towns which, under Roman rule, declined, were possessed of considerable importance at the time of which we are speak­ing. The first among them, Syracuse, the capital of Hiero’s kingdom, contained 600,000 souls; it was composed of six quar­ters, comprised in a circumference of 180 stadia (36 kilometres); it furnished, when it was conquered, a booty equal to that of Carthage. Other cities rivalled Syracuse in extent and power. Agrigentum, in the time of the first Punic war, con­tained 50,000 soldiers; it was one of the principal garrisons in Sicily. Panormus (Palermo), Drepana (Trapani), and Lilybaeum (Marsala.), possessed arsenals, docks for ship-building, and vast ports. The roadstead of Messina was capable of holding 600 vessels. Sicily is still the richest country in ancient monuments; our admiration is excited by the ruins of twenty-one temples and of eleven theatres, among others that of Taormina, which contained 40,000 spectators.

This concise description of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, two or three hundred years before our era, shows sufficiently the state of prosperity of the different peoples who inhabited them. The remembrance of such greatness inspires a very natural wish, namely, that henceforth the jealousy of the great powers may no longer prevent the East from shaking off the dust of twenty centuries, and from being born again to life and civilization!