But the dark side of the picture almost counterbalanced the brightness of this advance in culture. With the Greek philosophers came Greek soothsayers and charlatans, with the Greek drama the airs and abominations of the Greek world; with the Greek tutor the cook, the barber, and the courtesan came to Rome from the East and freely exercised their corrupting influence. The proceedings against the Bacchanalia in 186 B.C., in which thousands of guilty members of the secret society of Bacchus were condemned to death, show how rapid was the decline of the severity of Roman morals.
The forces which had made Rome great and won her a high place in the civilisation of the human race were spent. The rigid moral code of a well-regulated family life, the strict military discipline and organisation of the sturdy Italian peasantry, had become very rare, if they had not passed away altogether. Outwardly the development of Roman law and the Roman constitution maintained the appearance of freedom, but the selfishness of the ruling and moneyed classes threatened to destroy even this palladium of Roman libertas. With the fall of Carthage we reach the eve of the revolution which led to the repeated conquest of the capital by its own citizens, to the unchaining of mob violence, to a prætorian administration, and so to the rule of the Cæsars. “The beasts of the forest,” as Tiberius Gracchus cried to the Romans of his day, “have their dens and burrows, but the lords of the world have no place where they can lay their heads.” Such is the reverse of the medal of which the obverse reads: Foundation of the universal empire of Rome, after Corinth and Numantia, Macedonia and Carthage, were laid in the dust.
BOOK I
EARLY ROMAN HISTORY TO THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC
INTRODUCTION
THE SOURCES AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY
A GLANCE AT THE EARLY SOURCES
Monumental remains, casting more or less light directly or by inference upon Roman history, are numerous. The Romans were great practical builders, and wherever they went—even into distant Britain—they left architectural remains, of which traces at least are still in existence. In Rome itself, such monumental structures as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Trajan’s Pillar, and the ruins of the Forum, still bear testimony to the character of the ancient civilisation.
Even more interesting in some respects is the record brought to light through the exhumation of the buried cities of Herculaneum and of Pompeii. At Pompeii, in particular, the visitor of to-day finds himself in the midst of surroundings that give a most vivid impression of a Roman city of the golden age. The streets are flanked by the walls of buildings still intact as to their main structure; the road-beds themselves are paved with stones which still show deep channels made by the wheels of chariots that conveyed Romans of the time when Rome was mistress of the world. The broken pillars of the forums; the terraced seats of the great amphitheatres; the structure and contents of the private dwellings, unite to tell the story of the social life of a remote epoch with a vividness which no words can equal. And turning to details, the supply of interesting implements and utensils of every-day use which the lava and ashes of Vesuvius have preserved for us is almost inexhaustible.
Up to this point, the ruins of the buried Roman cities strongly suggest the ruins of Nineveh and Nippur, and those of the old Greek cities at Hissarlik. The parallel with the Mesopotamian cities holds even further, for there are numerous treasures of art preserved at Pompeii. But unfortunately, no such inexhaustible literary treasures as rewarded the explorer in Babylonia and Assyria have been discovered in the ruins of the Roman cities. A few most interesting tablets have been found; such tablets as both the Grecians and the Romans used constantly, but of which, owing to their perishable material, no examples whatever have been preserved, except in these buried cities and in Egypt. Then, too, a single collection of books was found in the small library of a private dwelling at Herculaneum. This collection, comprising several hundred papyrus rolls, gave promise of great things, if only the parched bundles could be unrolled and their contents deciphered. But when, with infinite patience, this end was effected, in a large number of instances the result was most disappointing; for contrary to expectation no important lost works of antiquity—no works throwing new light on any phase of ancient history—were found. Many of the manuscripts were injured beyond repair, and others have not yet been unrolled; but enough has been done to prove the general character of the collection and to dissipate the hopes of the antiquarian.
Of inscriptions on various monuments and on coins and medals there is no dearth. But these are by no means so comprehensive in their scope as were some of the inscriptions of the early Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs; and speaking broadly, it may be said that the entire epigraphic and numismatic testimony as to the history of Rome—particularly for the earlier period—amounts to no more than incidental references, and would leave us with but a vague knowledge of the subject, were it unsupported by more extensive records.
The more extensive records in question are, of course, the manuscripts of books. From a rather early day there was no dearth of writers in Rome, and among these the historians, or, as they more generally termed themselves, the annalists, were fully represented. Indeed, this class of writers appears to have held almost complete possession of the field in the early day. In the later Augustan age, though votaries of polite literature had fuller representation, yet the historians, with Livy at their head, still took front rank among writers of prose. No original manuscripts of any of these writers have come down to us; indeed, no manuscripts of the classical period whatever have been preserved, except a few fragments in Egypt and the collection at Herculaneum just mentioned. Our copies of the Roman historians date from the Middle Ages, and few of them are intact. The works of the early annalists and chroniclers have disappeared almost entirely. Doubtless they were regarded as having little utility after such great master-builders as Dionysius and Livy had used them in the construction of their great works. Many of the writers of a later period fared not much better; and even the greatest of all have come down to us in a damaged condition. Livy himself is represented among extant manuscripts by only about one-fifth of his original history—to say nothing of his other writings, which have perished altogether. Dionysius has been no more fortunate, as only the earliest portion of his work is preserved.
Dionysius himself has left us a list of the early authorities upon whom he drew. His comment on his predecessors is interesting; after noting that “no accurate history of the Romans, written in the Greek language, has hitherto appeared, but only small accounts and short epitomes,” he criticises these synopses as follows:
“Hieronymus Cardianus (the first author I know of upon this subject) has given a cursory account of the Roman antiquities in his history of the Epigoni. After him, Timæus, the Sicilian, treated of antiquities in his universal history, and placed in a separate work the wars of the Romans with Pyrrhus of Epirus. Besides these, Antigonus, Polybius, Silenus, and innumerable other authors have attempted this same subject, though in a different manner; each of whom has written some things concerning the Romans, which they have compiled from common reports without any diligence or accuracy. Like to these in all respects are the histories, which some Romans also have published in Greek, concerning the ancient transactions of their own nation; of whom the most ancient are Quintus Fabius, and Lucius Cincius, who both flourished during the Punic wars: each of these has related the actions, at which he himself was present, with great exactness, as being well acquainted with them, but has given a summary account of those early events that happened soon after the building of the city.”