Bab Bab 22 · Became An Empire

When the Roman armies returned from these many victorious campaigns,

they were received with great jubilation. Alas and alack! this sudden

glory did not make the country any happier. On the contrary. The

endless campaigns had ruined the farmers who had been obliged to do the

hard work of Empire making. It had placed too much power in the hands

of the successful generals (and their private friends) who had used the

war as an excuse for wholesale robbery.

The old Roman Republic had been proud of the simplicity which had

characterised the lives of her famous men. The new Republic felt

ashamed of the shabby coats and the high principles which had been

fashionable in the days of its grandfathers. It became a land of rich

people ruled by rich people for the benefit of rich people. As such it

was doomed to disastrous failure, as I shall now tell you.

Within less than a century and a half, Rome had become the mistress of

practically all the land around the Mediterranean. In those early days

of history a prisoner of war lost his freedom and became a slave. The

Roman regarded war as a very serious business and he showed no mercy to

a conquered foe. After the fall of Carthage, the Carthaginian women and

children were sold into bondage together with their own slaves. And a

like fate awaited the obstinate inhabitants of Greece and Macedonia and

Spain and Syria when they dared to revolt against the Roman power.

Two thousand years ago a slave was merely a piece of machinery.

Nowadays a rich man invests his money in factories. The rich people

of Rome (senators, generals and war-profiteers) invested theirs in

land and in slaves. The land they bought or took in the newly-acquired

provinces. The slaves they bought in open market wherever they happened

to be cheapest. During most of the third and second centuries before

Christ there was a plentiful supply, and as a result the landowners

worked their slaves until they dropped dead in their tracks, when

they bought new ones at the nearest bargain-counter of Corinthian or

Carthaginian captives.

And now behold the fate of the freeborn farmer!

He had done his duty toward Rome and he had fought her battles without

complaint. But when he came home after ten, fifteen or twenty years,

his lands were covered with weeds and his family had been ruined.

But he was a strong man and willing to begin life anew. He sowed and

planted and waited for the harvest. He carried his grain to the market

together with his cattle and his poultry, to find that the large

landowners who worked their estates with slaves could underbid him all

along the line. For a couple of years he tried to hold his own. Then

he gave up in despair. He left the country and he went to the nearest

city. In the city he was as hungry as he had been before on the land.

But he shared his misery with thousands of other disinherited beings.

They crouched together in filthy hovels in the suburbs of the large

cities. They were apt to get sick and die from terrible epidemics. They

were all profoundly discontented. They had fought for their country

and this was their reward. They were always willing to listen to those

plausible spell-binders who gather around a public grievance like so

many hungry vultures, and soon they became a grave menace to the safety

of the state.

But the class of the newly-rich shrugged its shoulders. “We have our

army and our policemen,” they argued, “they will keep the mob in

order.” And they hid themselves behind the high walls of their pleasant

villas and cultivated their gardens and read the poems of a certain

Homer which a Greek slave had just translated into very pleasing Latin

hexameters.

In a few families however the old tradition of unselfish service to the

Commonwealth continued. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus,

had been married to a Roman by the name of Gracchus. She had two

sons, Tiberius and Gaius. When the boys grew up they entered politics

and tried to bring about certain much-needed reforms. A census had

shown that most of the land of the Italian peninsula was owned by two

thousand noble families. Tiberius Gracchus, having been elected a

Tribune, tried to help the freemen. He revived two ancient laws which

restricted the number of acres which a single owner might possess.

In this way he hoped to revive the valuable old class of small and

independent freeholders. The newly-rich called him a robber and an

enemy of the state. There were street riots. A party of thugs was

hired to kill the popular Tribune. Tiberius Gracchus was attacked when

he entered the assembly and was beaten to death. Ten years later his

brother Gaius tried the experiment of reforming a nation against the

expressed wishes of a strong privileged class. He passed a “poor law”

which was meant to help the destitute farmers. Eventually it made the

greater part of the Roman citizens into professional beggars.

He established colonies of destitute people in distant parts of the

empire, but these settlements failed to attract the right sort of

people. Before Gaius Gracchus could do more harm he too was murdered

and his followers were either killed or exiled. The first two reformers

had been gentlemen. The two who came after were of a very different

stamp. They were professional soldiers. One was called Marius. The name

of the other was Sulla. Both enjoyed a large personal following.

Sulla was the leader of the landowners. Marius, the victor in a great

battle at the foot of the Alps when the Teutons and the Cimbri had been

annihilated, was the popular hero of the disinherited freemen.

Now it happened in the year 88 B.C. that the Senate of Rome was greatly

disturbed by rumours that came from Asia. Mithridates, king of a

country along the shores of the Black Sea, and a Greek on his mother’s

side, had seen the possibility of establishing a second Alexandrian

Empire. He began his campaign for world-domination with the murder

of all Roman citizens who happened to be in Asia Minor, men, women

and children. Such an act, of course, meant war. The Senate equipped

an army to march against the King of Pontus and punish him for his

crime. But who was to be commander-in-chief? “Sulla,” said the Senate,

“because he is Consul.” “Marius,” said the mob, “because he has been

Consul five times and because he is the champion of our rights.”

Possession is nine points of the law. Sulla happened to be in actual

command of the army. He went east to defeat Mithridates and Marius fled

to Africa. There he waited until he heard that Sulla had crossed into

Asia. He then returned to Italy, gathered a motley crew of malcontents,

marched on Rome and entered the city with his professional highwaymen,

spent five days and five nights, slaughtering his enemies in the

Senatorial party, got himself elected Consul and promptly died from the

excitement of the last fortnight.

There followed four years of disorder. Then Sulla, having defeated

Mithridates, announced that he was ready to return to Rome and settle

a few old scores of his own. He was as good as his word. For weeks his

soldiers were busy executing those of their fellow citizens who were

suspected of democratic sympathies. One day they got hold of a young

fellow who had been often seen in the company of Marius. They were

going to hang him when some one interfered. “The boy is too young,” he

said, and they let him go. His name was Julius Cæsar. You shall meet

him again on the next page.

As for Sulla, he became “Dictator,” which meant sole and supreme ruler

of all the Roman possessions. He ruled Rome for four years, and he died

quietly in his bed, having spent the last year of his life tenderly

raising his cabbages, as was the custom of so many Romans who had

spent a lifetime killing their fellow-men.

But conditions did not grow better. On the contrary, they grew worse.

Another general, Gnæus Pompeius, or Pompey, a close friend of Sulla,

went east to renew the war against the ever troublesome Mithridates.

He drove that energetic potentate into the mountains where Mithridates

took poison and killed himself, well knowing what fate awaited him as a

Roman captive. Next he re-established the authority of Rome over Syria,

destroyed Jerusalem, roamed through western Asia, trying to revive the

myth of Alexander the Great, and at last (in the year 62) returned

to Rome with a dozen ship-loads of defeated Kings and Princes and

Generals, all of whom were forced to march in the triumphal procession

of this enormously popular Roman who presented his city with the sum of

forty million dollars in plunder.

It was necessary that the government of Rome be placed in the hands

of a strong man. Only a few months before, the town had almost fallen

into the hands of a good-for-nothing young aristocrat by the name of

Catiline, who had gambled away his money and hoped to reimburse himself

for his losses by a little plundering. Cicero, a public-spirited

lawyer, had discovered the plot, had warned the Senate, and had forced

Catiline to flee. But there were other young men with similar ambitions

and it was no time for idle talk.

Pompey organised a triumvirate which was to take charge of affairs. He

became the leader of this Vigilante Committee. Gaius Julius Cæsar, who

had made a reputation for himself as governor of Spain, was the second

in command. The third was an indifferent sort of person by the name of

Crassus. He had been elected because he was incredibly rich, having

been a successful contractor of war supplies. He soon went upon an

expedition against the Parthians and was killed.

[Illustration: CÆSAR GOES WEST]

As for Cæsar, who was by far the ablest of the three, he decided that

he needed a little more military glory to become a popular hero. He

crossed the Alps and conquered that part of the world which is now

called France. Then he hammered a solid wooden bridge across the Rhine

and invaded the land of the wild Teutons. Finally he took ship and

visited England. Heaven knows where he might have ended if he had not

been forced to return to Italy. Pompey, so he was informed, had been

appointed dictator for life. This of course meant that Cæsar was to

be placed on the list of the “retired officers,” and the idea did not

appeal to him. He remembered that he had begun life as a follower of

Marius. He decided to teach the Senators and their “dictator” another

lesson. He crossed the Rubicon River which separated the province of

Cis-alpine Gaul from Italy. Everywhere he was received as the “friend

of the people.” Without difficulty Cæsar entered Rome and Pompey

fled to Greece. Cæsar followed him and defeated his followers near

Pharsalus. Pompey sailed across the Mediterranean and escaped to Egypt.

When he landed he was murdered by order of young king Ptolemy. A few

days later Cæsar arrived. He found himself caught in a trap. Both

the Egyptians and the Roman garrison which had remained faithful to

Pompey, attacked his camp.

Fortune was with Cæsar. He succeeded in setting fire to the Egyptian

fleet. Incidentally the sparks of the burning vessels fell on the roof

of the famous library of Alexandria (which was just off the water

front,) and destroyed it. Next he attacked the Egyptian army, drove

the soldiers into the Nile, drowned Ptolemy, and established a new

government under Cleopatra, the sister of the late king. Just then

word reached him that Pharnaces, the son and heir of Mithridates, had

gone on the war-path. Cæsar marched northward, defeated Pharnaces in

a war which lasted five days, sent word of his victory to Rome in the

famous sentence “veni, vidi, vici,” which is Latin for “I came, I saw,

I conquered,” and returned to Egypt where he fell desperately in love

with Cleopatra, who followed him to Rome when he returned to take

charge of the government, in the year 46. He marched at the head of not

less than four different victory-parades, having won four different

campaigns.

Then Cæsar appeared in the Senate to report upon his adventures, and

the grateful Senate made him “dictator” for ten years. It was a fatal

step.

The new dictator made serious attempts to reform the Roman state.

He made it possible for freemen to become members of the Senate.

He conferred the rights of citizenship upon distant communities

as had been done in the early days of Roman history. He permitted

“foreigners” to exercise influence upon the government. He reformed

the administration of the distant provinces which certain aristocratic

families had come to regard as their private possessions. In short

he did many things for the good of the majority of the people but

which made him thoroughly unpopular with the most powerful men in the

state. Half a hundred young aristocrats formed a plot “to save the

Republic.” On the Ides of March (the fifteenth of March according to

that new calendar which Cæsar had brought with him from Egypt) Cæsar

was murdered when he entered the Senate. Once more Rome was without a

master.

[Illustration: THE GREAT ROMAN EMPIRE]

There were two men who tried to continue the tradition of Cæsar’s

glory. One was Antony, his former secretary. The other was Octavian,

Cæsar’s grand-nephew and heir to his estate. Octavian remained in Rome,

but Antony went to Egypt to be near Cleopatra with whom he too had

fallen in love, as seems to have been the habit of Roman generals.

A war broke out between the two. In the battle of Actium, Octavian

defeated Antony. Antony killed himself and Cleopatra was left alone to

face the enemy. She tried very hard to make Octavian her third Roman

conquest. When she saw that she could make no impression upon this very

proud aristocrat, she killed herself, and Egypt became a Roman province.

As for Octavian, he was a very wise young man and he did not repeat

the mistake of his famous uncle. He knew how people will shy at words.

He was very modest in his demands when he returned to Rome. He did not

want to be a “dictator.” He would be entirely satisfied with the title

of “the Honourable.” But when the Senate, a few years later, addressed

him as Augustus—the Illustrious—he did not object and a few years

later the man in the street called him Cæsar, or Kaiser, while the

soldiers, accustomed to regard Octavian as their Commander-in-chief

referred to him as the Chief, the Imperator or Emperor. The Republic

had become an Empire, but the average Roman was hardly aware of the

fact.

In 14 A.D. his position as the Absolute Ruler of the Roman people

had become so well established that he was made an object of that

divine worship which hitherto had been reserved for the Gods. And his

successors were true “Emperors”—the absolute rulers of the greatest

empire the world had ever seen.

If the truth be told, the average citizen was sick and tired of anarchy

and disorder. He did not care who ruled him provided the new master

gave him a chance to live quietly and without the noise of eternal

street riots. Octavian assured his subjects forty years of peace. He

had no desire to extend the frontiers of his domains. In the year 9

A.D. he had contemplated an invasion of the northwestern wilderness

which was inhabited by the Teutons. But Varus, his general, had been

killed with all his men in the Teutoburg Woods, and after that the

Romans made no further attempts to civilise these wild people.

They concentrated their efforts upon the gigantic problem of internal

reform. But it was too late to do much good. Two centuries of

revolution and foreign war had repeatedly killed the best men among

the younger generations. It had ruined the class of the free farmers.

It had introduced slave labor, against which no freeman could hope to

compete. It had turned the cities into beehives inhabited by pauperized

and unhealthy mobs of runaway peasants. It had created a large

bureaucracy—petty officials who were underpaid and who were forced

to take graft in order to buy bread and clothing for their families.

Worst of all, it had accustomed people to violence, to blood shed, to a

barbarous pleasure in the pain and suffering of others.

Outwardly, the Roman state during the first century of our era was

a magnificent political structure, so large that Alexander’s empire

became one of its minor provinces. Underneath this glory there lived

millions upon millions of poor and tired human beings, toiling like

ants who have built a nest underneath a heavy stone. They worked for

the benefit of some one else. They shared their food with the animals

of the fields. They lived in stables. They died without hope.

It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the founding of

Rome. Gaius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus was living in the palace

of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged upon the task of ruling his empire.

In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph the

Carpenter, was tending her little boy, born in a stable of Bethlehem.

This is a strange world.

Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open combat.

And the stable was to emerge victorious.