CHAP. VIII. FOURTH PERIOD, B.C. was accordingly an easy task for Hanno, who commanded in these parts, to capture or cut to pieces the whole band. Pomponius was taken prisoner, and it was perhaps fortunate for him that he thus escaped the vengeance of 212-211 his countrymen, whose curses he had richly deserved, not only by his incompetence as an officer, but much more by the rascality with which he, in conjunction with other contractors, had robbed the public and jeopardized the safety of the state. of Roman contrac It now became evident that the apparently self-denying Dishonesty patriotism of which, two years before, several large capitalists had made an ostentatious display, was nothing but a tors. cover for the meanest rapacity, selfishness, and dishonesty. The ungovernable craving for wealth which at all times possessed the great men of Rome, joined with their utter contempt of right-the two great evils which the Gracchi in vain endeavoured to check-show themselves for the first time with great distinctness in the trial of the contractor M. Postumius Pyrgensis and his fellow-conspirators in the beginning of the year 212 B.C. Postumius This Postumius, like the just-mentioned Pomponius, Trial of M. was a member of a joint-stock company, which in 215 had Pyrgensis. offered to furnish, on credit, the materials of war necessary for the army in Spain, on condition that the government should insure them against sea risks.1 Since then the pretended patriots had been discovered to be common rogues and villains. They had laden old vessels with worthless articles, had scuttled and abandoned them at sea, and then claimed compensation for the alleged full value. This act was not merely an ordinary fraud on the public purse, but a crime of the gravest nature, inasmuch as it endangered the safety of the army in Spain. Information of it had been given as early as the year 213; but, as Livy assures us, the senate did not venture at once to proceed against the men whose wealth gave them 1 See p. 288. Livy, xxv. 3: 'quia patres ordinem publicanorum in tali tempore offensum nolebant.' BOOK Condemnation of Postumius and his accom plices. an overpowering influence in the state. Pomponius accordingly remained not only unpunished, but was even appointed to a sort of military command, and allowed to carry on a predatory war on his own account and for his own profit. We can easily understand that men of such reckless audacity and so unprincipled as Pomponius, who commanded bands of armed ruffians, could not easily be punished like common offenders. Yet after Pomponius had fallen into captivity, and his band was annihilated, the government plucked up courage to call his accomplices to account for their misdeeds. Two tribunes of the people, Spurius Carvilius and Lucius Carvilius, impeached Postumius before the assembly of tribes. The people were highly incensed. Nobody ventured to plead in favour of the accused; even the tribune C. Servilius Casca, a relative of Postumius, was kept by fear and shame from interceding. The accused now ventured upon an act which seems almost incredible, and which shows to what an extent, even at the best time of the republic, the internal order and the public peace were at the mercy of any band of desperate villains who ventured to set the law at defiance. The Capitol, where the tribes were just about to give their votes, was invaded by a mob, which created such an uproar that acts of violence would have been committed if the tribunes, yielding to the storm, had not broken up the assembly. This triumph of lawlessness over the established order of the state was a temporary success which carried the anarchical party beyond their real strength. Rome was not yet so degenerate that a permanent terrorism could be established by the audacity of some rich and influential malefactors. It was rather an outbreak of madness than a deliberate act which prompted Postumius and his accomplices to resist the authority of the Roman people and its lawful magistrates. They were far from forming a political party, or from finding men in the senate or in the popular assembly who would venture to defend or even to excuse them. Their vile frauds were now a small offence compared with their attempt to outrage the majesty of the Roman people. The tribunes dropped the minor charge, and, instead of asking the people to inflict a fine, insisted upon a capital punishment. Postumius forfeited his bail, and escaped from Rome. The punishment of exile was formally pronounced against him, and all his property was confiscated. All participators in the outrage were punished with the same severity, and thus the offended majesty of the Roman people was fully and promptly vindicated.1 CHAP. VIII. FOURTH The villany of the Roman publicani, who abused the Roman necessities of the state to enrich themselves, and whose civic morality. criminal rapacity endangered the safety of the troops in Spain, is not without parallels in history, and has been equalled or surpassed in modern Europe, as well as in America during the late civil war. We must not, therefore, be too harsh in our judgment, or too sweeping in our condemnation of the Roman people among whom such swindlers could prosper. But we shall do well to remember infamous acts like these, when we hear the fulsome praise often lavished on the civic virtue, the self-denial, and the devotion of the Roman people in the service of the state. The moral and religious elements of the community must have been deeply tainted if, in the very midst of the Hannibalian war, in the agonizing struggle for existence, a great number of men could be found among the influential classes so utterly void of patriotic feeling and conscientiousness, so hardened against public indignation, so careless of just retribution. tion in Not only public morality, but also the religion of the Growth of Romans, felt the injurious effect of the protracted war. superstiIt seemed that men gradually lost confidence in their Rome. native gods. All the prayers, vows, processions, sacrifices, and offerings, all the festivals and sacred games which had been celebrated on the direct injunction of the priests, had proved to be of no avail. Either the ancestral gods BOOK Levying of new legions. had forsaken the town, or they were powerless against the decrees of fate. In their despair the people turned towards strange gods. The number of the superstitious was swelled by a mass of impoverished peasants, who had left their wasted fields and burnt homesteads to find support and protection in the capital.1 The streets swarmed with foreign priests, soothsayers, and religious impostors, who no longer secretly, but openly, carried on their trade, and profited by the fear and ignorance of the multitude. Such a neglect of the national religion was, in the eyes of every community in the ancient world, a kind of treason, which, if tolerated, would have brought about the most fatal consequences. No nation of antiquity rose to the conception of a God common to the human race. Every people, every political society, had its own special protecting deity, distinct from the deity of the next neighbour and hostile to the gods of the national enemy. It was of the utmost importance that all citizens should combine in duly worshipping those powers who, in consideration of uninterrupted worship, vouchsafed to grant their protection, and who were jealous of the admission of foreign rivals. It was therefore a sure sign of national decay if a people began to lose confidence in their own paternal religion, and turned hopefully to the gods of their neighbours. The Roman government began to be alarmed. The senate commissioned the magistrates to interfere. Not the priests or pontifices, who might be expected to be more directly concerned in upholding the purity of religion, but a civil magistrate-the prætor-caused the town to be cleared of all the foreign rituals, prayers, and oracles; and it appears that the people submitted to this interference as to a legitimate exercise of civil authority, just as they submitted to the burdens of the war. The condemnation of Postumius took place in the beginning of the year 212, about the time of the consular elections, which placed Quintus Fulvius Flaccus and 1 Livy, xxv. 1. CHAP. VIII. FOURTH PERIOD, B.C. of Taren tum to Appius Claudius Pulcher at the head of the government. Great difficulties had now been regularly experienced for some time past in the conscription of recruits for the army. The number of twenty-three legions was, however, completed 212-211 for the impending campaign,' and even this enormous force proved by no means too large. In spite of the taking of Syracuse, the year 212 was destined to be one of the most disastrous for the Romans in the whole course of the war. The first calamity was the loss of Tarentum, which took Surrender place even before the opening of the campaign. The Romans had been themselves the cause of it through their Hannibal. short-sighted cruelty. A number of hostages of Tarentum and Thurii, detained at Rome, had made an attempt to escape, but were seized at Terracina, brought back to Rome, and tortured to death as traitors. By this act the Romans had themselves cut the bonds which had thus far held the Tarentines in their allegiance. It was a proceeding intended to inspire terror, like the massacre of Enna; but, like this, it produced the opposite effect, by engendering only a feeling of revenge and implacable hatred. A conspiracy was immediately formed at Tarentum for betraying the town to Hannibal. Nikon and Philodemos, the chiefs of the conspirators, under the pretence of going out on hunting expeditions, found means of seeing Hannibal, who still tarried in the neighbourhood of Tarentum ; they concluded a formal treaty with him, stipulated that their town should be free and independent, and that the house of no Tarentine citizen should be plundered by the Carthaginian troops. The situation of Tarentum is known from the history of the first war with Rome. On the eastern side of the town, where the narrow peninsula on which it lay was joined to the mainland, a large open space within the walls formed the public burial-ground. In this lonely place Nikon and some of his fellow-conspirators hid themselves on a night previously fixed upon, and waited for a fire signal, which Hannibal had promised 2 See vol. i. p. 486. 1 Livy, xxv. 3, 5. |