the power of her various adversaries rather than destroying any one for the advantage of another.

Flamininus had now exercised the imperium, as consul and proconsul, for nearly four years, and it was necessary that he should soon retire from the scene of his exploits. Rome, it seems, was not yet prepared to convert her protectorate over Greece into an absolute dominion, and her general was allowed to play a more honorable part, and declare that the Greeks should be left at liberty to govern themselves, while every Roman garrison should be withdrawn from her fortresses. Once more he sum

U.O. 560.

B.C. 194. moned the states to a general assembly, and solemnly took leave of them, enjoining them to prove themselves in the eyes of Rome worthy of the gift of freedom which she had generously made them. Another scene of excitement occurred, and Flamininus himself was moved to tears with sympathetic emotion. In Scipio Africanus, and again in Quinctius Flamininus, two men who deserve to be placed together as types of Roman greatness in its simplest and highest development, we may recognize the same general qualities of sternness and even ferocity in action combined with an occasional tenderness of feeling, both of which we shall find as we proceed to be common characteristics of their nation. We may further remark how in both these great men their per sonal ambition was subordinated to a generous spirit of patriotism. The triumph, the highest reward of this virtue, which the Roman prized the highest, was never more justly conferred upon any Roman heroes than upon the conqueror of Hannibal and the lib erator of the Greeks.

Meanwhile Greece, under the protectorate of the republic, which, with a generosity unusual to herself or to other conquerors, had left her the show at least of independence, enjoyed a period of repose, the happiest perhaps if not the brightest in the whole course of her annals. She enjoyed a respite from the tyranny of the Macedonians, which had kept her in alarm or suffering for a hundred and fifty years, and she had recovered sufficient strength and self-command to control the petty ambition of her several states, now again combined under one political system. The destruction of her works of art and the accumulated treasures of her age of grandeur might now be effectually stayed; the rapid decline of her industry and decrease of her population might receive a check. The numbers she could maintain on her own barren and mountainous territory were but small, but the carrying trade of the world had in other times made her rich and populous, and under the protection of Rome she might extend far and wide the operations of her mercantile marine. She might acquire, moreover, by the charm of her arts and literature a powerful influence over the

CHAP. XXIV.

WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS.

191

minds of the stronger race which was beginning to balance in the West the preponderance which the successors of Alexander had so long exercised in the opposite quarter. To enjoy and to prolong this period of repose, the highest boon which she could now possibly obtain, it was only necessary that she should frankly accept the conditions imposed upon her. The policy of Rome demanded that she should be submissive, and that she should not be powerful. Rome was graciously pleased to allow her a nominal independence; this was as much as fortune could now secure for her, and this perhaps only for a time. She had still some generous spirits among her children who were galled by these conditions; but the truest patriots were those who controlled their own impatience in the interests of their countrymen.

CHAPTER XXIV.

War with Antiochus, king of Syria.-He is defeated in the battle of Magnesia, and is required to withdraw from his acquisitions in Asia Minor.Formation of a kingdom of Asia in dependence upon Rome.-War with the Celtiberians and Lusitanians in Spain.-Complete reduction of Cisalpine Gaul and Sardinia. (B.c. 191–178.)

WE rest for a moment with pleasure on the vision of peace and quiet which is opened to us by the terms accorded by Rome to Greece, but the general aspect of the world around us is still one of incessant action and hostile demonstrations. Rome was at deadly feud with the Gauls and the Spaniards in the north and west; the hostility of Carthage, to the south, was at best disguised only, and the ablest of the citizens of Carthage was still constantly intriguing against her. But Carthage herself was kept in check by the Numidians and Mauritanians, on her western frontier, and harassed by internal dissensions by which Rome knew well how to profit. On the cast the Etolians were the implacable and indomitable enemies of the great republic, while the Ætolians in their turn were restrained by the Achæans under the Roman protectorate. The Achæans were at feud with Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, and the activity they showed in their private quarrel under the direction of the brave Philopamen moved the jealousy even of their protectors. Philip of Macedon now found it for his interest to take sides with Rome as a guarantee against the encroachments of the Syrian Antiochus. Antiochus himself, glorying in some successes gained over the Bactrians and Indians,

and exulting in the title of the Great, was bent on restoring the empire of a Cyrus or a Xerxes, and was threatening the independence of the petty kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia, with the help of the Galatians and other warlike tribes of Asia Minor. He had also another enemy on his flank in the person of the King of Egypt. Among these conflicting elements the power of the Roman and the Syrian stood undoubtedly the highest. The Syrian might exceed in the numbers he could bring into the field, and in the infinite resources of an ancient civilization which he wielded. The Roman, on the other hand, excelled in the personal bearing of his legions, and in the skill and conduct of his commanders. The wars, indeed, which Rome was still constantly waging against the hardy barbarians of Gaul and Spain were a school of military prowess; the armies she trained in these campaigns were fit to do anything and to go anywhere; the vast multitudes which an Antiochus could bring into the field against them were scattered like chaff before them; in battle the Romans were ever victorious against the Asiatics, and in craft and policy they were little if at all inferior to them. As long, therefore, as the chiefs of the legions and the Senate maintained their loyalty to their common country their success was assured, and it was not till the civilized world lay prostrate at their feet that they forgot their duty to Rome, and turned their arms upon one another.

U.C. 563.

In the wars of Greece and Asia which continued for many years to occupy the chief attention of the republic, the triumphs of her policy followed in rapid and unvaried succession. Antiochus had ventured to plant his fortresses on the European shore of the Hellespont, and had advanced even to the frontiers of Greece in defiance of her protests and menaces. At Thermopylæ his armies were encountered almost at the outset by the consul Acilius in the year 191, and driven across the sea into Asia Minor. The consul found himself at leisure to turn around upon the Etolians and inflict a severe check upon that enemy also. Disembarrassed of the foe on their flank, and assisted by Philippus, who prepared stores for their army as it advanced, the Romans, now led by Scipio Africanus and his brother Lucius, effected the passage of the Hellespont, and sought out the great Antiochus in his retreat at Ephesus. It was in vain that he had at his side the veteran Hannibal, who had long been the soul of the intrigues by which the enemies of Rome had been marshalled against her, and who, since he had been expelled from Carthage by the success of the faction there opposed to him, had wandered from coast to coast, and fixed himself at last as the trusted adviser of Antiochus. Hannibal seems, indeed, to have been unable to make any head against the Romans with the wretched troops which the

CHAP. XXIV.

DEFEAT OF ANTIOCHUS.

193

Syrian could place under his command, but the Romans were still alarmed at the bitterness of his hatred and the persistency of his efforts against them, and they did not disdain to create a jealousy against him by pretending to bestow attentions upon him and make him offers of their confidence. At last Antiochus was driven to sue for peace, but the only answer vouchsafed him was the demand that he should evacuate Asia Minor even to the line of the Taurus. Antiochus preferred to risk a battle. He was met and worsted by Lucius Scipio at Magnesia in a battle in which about 30,000 Romans overthrew 80,000 Asiatics, and pretended to have slain 50,000 of them, with the loss of only a few hundreds. The Galatians, the children of a Gaulish invasion of a century previously, were the only troops who made any u.c. 564. show of resistance. On that day the fate of Asia was sealed for the whole duration of the Roman Empire. The Romans affected, indeed, to think much of Antiochus, but he was no foeman worthy of their steel. He acceded at once to all that was required of him, renounced his pretensions to any portion of Asia Minor, surrendered his chariots, his elephants, and his treasures, and gave up his fleet to be burned by the conquerors. He was further required and would not have hesitated to deliver up Hannibal, but the Carthaginian escaped to carry on his intrigues with no better success elsewhere.

B.C. 190.

The immediate result of the defeat of Antiochus was the formation of a "kingdom of Asia" from the spoils of the Syrian monarchs between the Hellespont and Mount Taurus. Eumenes, king of Pergamus, had fortunately sided with the Romans. He was well fitted to become a puppet in their hands, and to him were given the rich provinces of Lydia and Phrygia, Mysia and Lycaonia-the greater part of the great peninsula of Asia Minor. The native chiefs and people were equally pleased to be delivered from the brigandage exercised by the Galatians and the more systematic extortions of Antiochus. By accepting the protection of Rome they might hope to be freed also from the exactions of the Roman soldiery, who under the lax discipline of the consul Manlius were beginning to give the rein to their rapacity and licentiousness, or rather perhaps were left by the Senate to provide for their own necessities. The pretended alliance of Rome was, indeed, merely a disguised subjection; the Senate began already to flatter itself with the spectacle of the kings who at tended servilely upon it. Meanwhile even beyond the Taurus the nations stretching to the Euphrates heard with awe the name of the great Western republic, and even at the court of the King of Persia, the Empire of Rome, it was whispered, extended to the

frontier of Cilicia.

Manlius and his colleague Fulvius were the first, perhaps, of the Roman commanders who ventured openly to declare war without the consent and direction of the government at home. It was thus that Manlius had attacked and defeated the Galatians; and thus did Fulvius turn his forces against the Etolians, besiege Ambracia, and compel the enemy to seek terms of peace at his hands. The return of the victorious legions homeward was thus secured; but a large portion of their enormous booty was snatched from them by an insurrection of Thracians on their flank. The Romans were not intoxicated by their successes. They still kept faith with Greece, and when their armies had repassed the Adriatic they left not a single garrison behind them. They were content with the terror of their invincible army, supported as it was by a devoted party in every state and city in the East. In the year 189 L. Scipio enjoyed a military and Æmilius a naval triumph over Antiochus, and Scipio ventured to emulate the glory of his brother, the victor of Africa, by assuming the title of Asiaticus. In 187 Manlius and Fulvius succeeded also to the honors of the triumph.

U.C. 565.

We are not to suppose, however, that the activity of the Romans was confined during the wars of Greece and Asia to the eastern quarter of the world. The legions had been employed not less assiduously in the conquest of the West, while Rome had never been left in ease and security even on the soil of Italy itself. The warlike tribes of Spain, which had constantly risen to support the Romans against their first enemies, the Carthaginians, were not the more disposed to acquiesce in the Roman supremacy when the Carthaginians were overthrown and expelled. There was, indeed, little for the Romans to gain, as regarded tangible wealth, in the rude mountains which abutted upon the waste waters of the Atlantic. Here and there, indeed, on the southern coast the Tyrians had planted colonies which had grown into flourishing cities. Here and there both gold and silver mines had been discovered, and perhaps the greater part of the precious metals then in use throughout the world was derived from the working of their yet unexhausted veins. But these sources of wealth and objects of cupidity were few and difficult of access. Blind as the ancients were to their true economical interests, even the Romans, the blindest of them all, could not have supposed it cheaper to fight than to trade for them. We must be content to attribute the pertinacity with which Rome continued to assail the liberties of Spain to a mere military instinct, a lust of fighting for its own sake, the results of which were really disastrous to her in all respects but one, but that perhaps the most important for her policy of all, inasmuch as the wars of Spain constituted a regular school