The degree of liberty that there was to be a dramatist or a poet may be apparent without any exacter definition.

It is plain, on the one hand, that all the four names over which we have passed belonged to an inferior estate; and yet, on the other, that the enterprises they denote could never have been ended, or even been begun, without the protection and the appreciation of the higher classes. The pursuits, however, which interested the eminent Romans so much as to induce them to make them their own, with persevering eagerness, were the triad, so to speak, of the military, the legal, and the oratorical sciences,28 each, so far as it was then advanced, having something to contribute to the success of the citizen. We have had occasion to notice various personages like Appius the Blind, in whom oratory, jurisprudence, and the art of war,29 together, had an earnest votary; and there are but few names like Papirius,30 preserved in such a manner as to mark that they who bore them were distinguished in but a single branch of this not very widely spread knowledge. It must have been the high-born Roman, too, that repeated or composed many of the lays concerning which men

28" Artes honestas, et sive ad rem militarem, sive ad juris scientiam, sive ad eloquentiam inclinasset." Cited by Savigny from the treatise entitled "De Caussis Corruptæ Eloquentiæ."

29 See the testimony in Orelli, Inscript. Lat., 539; to which I refer, because the account of Appius, in

connection with his colleague, Volumnius (Ch. X.), is against his reputation as a warrior.

30 The first Roman jurist, properly speaking, and the collector of the royal laws, as those of the Monarchy were called. He was Chief Pontiff at the time of the Patrician revolution. Dion. Hal., III. 36.

tion has several times been made; though the most zealous minstrels whom the memories of earlier times inspired were probably those who chanted their verses in the streets or at the festivals amongst the multitude. When it became the turn of history to take the legends to itself, the greater dignity that they then assumed abashed the lower classes, but induced the Patrician, like Fabius Pictor, to esteem the subject worthy of his patriotism, and therefore of his highest faculties of mind.

It cannot but be wonderful, although strictly consistent with the Roman character, that the intercourse with various people, in all directions, should not have been sooner followed by a love of art or poetry, or some humanizing knowledge, even if the rudeness of the conquerors were such as to make philosophy difficult, and abstract science impossible, to their understanding. There is always danger, as we have before observed, in professing to interpret the designs of our Infinite Creator; but it does not seem presumptuous to believe that the Romans were allowed the freedom, first of warriors, then of rulers, but never of a humane and cultivated nation. In this light it seems fit that their intellectual powers should have been employed as they were, in the works of conquest, dominion, and destruction.

CHAPTER XIV.

FOREIGN CONQUESTS AND PROVINCES.

"Post Carthaginem vinci neminem puduit."-FLORUS, II. 7.

"Thus up the hill of empire slow they toiled:

Till, the bold summit gained, ....

Then o'er the nations they resistless rushed,

And touched the limits of the failing world."

THOMSON, Liberty, Part III.

THE rapid conquests of the Romans taught them to love warfare but too well for their own improvement or continuing prosperity. Alike with all classes, with the soldier as well as the general, and the ally as well as the citizen, the excitement or the authority of a campaign was nearly enough to make it the most attractive of all occupations, even had its close brought no glory or no booty to those who survived its perils and enjoyed its manifold rewards. We must go into the wars themselves, as it were, in order to comprehend how passion and policy could unite to turn the energies of a free nation into so rocky and so turbid a course as that pursued by the Romans almost from one end to the other of the earth. There were some, after the peace with Carthage, to be weary' of the trials and the struggles in

1 "Fessi diuturnitate et gravitate belli sua sponte homines tædio

laborum periculorumque." Liv., XXXI. 6.

which their lives appeared to have been consumed; but they were neither sufficiently numerous nor sufficiently steadfast to prevent the immediate declaration of hostilities against Macedonia. The wars of the next sixty or seventy years2 made it as plain as it is now, that the armies which had achieved the conquest of Italy, Spain, and Carthage were destined to overrun the fairest countries of the ancient world.

At about the middle of this period, on the occasion of some difficulty in an enlistment at Rome, a "few words," as the historian styles them, were addressed to the multitude by one whose military experience gave him the right of advising any men who hesitated to serve as soldiers. "I am Spurius Ligustinus," he said, "of Sabine stock and the Crustuminian Tribe. My father left me a juger of land and a little cottage, where I was born and bred, and where I still dwell. Thirty years ago,3 I enlisted for the first time, and served in Macedonia, as a private soldier, for two years, when the command of a company was given me, because of the valor I had shown. As soon as we got back to Italy and were disbanded, I set out, as a volunteer, for Spain, but was there promoted to a higher post than that I had held in Greece. Afterwards I volunteered in the great Eastern expedition, and was put at the head of the first company of all. Then I came back, but still kept myself in service, going twice to Spain, and having had, within a few years, the first company four times under my com

2 A. C. 200 to 137.

3 The translation here and throughout the speech is free.

mand. Four-and-thirty times have my generals rewarded me for bravery, and six civic crowns have been given me for having saved the lives of Roman citizens in battle. Altogether, I have served for two-and-twenty years, and am now past fifty years old. So, then, I might be excused, I think, from any further duty, especially as I have four sons in the army; but I trust you will take my words for what they are meant, when I say, that, as long as any one who holds a levy thinks me fit for service, I will never shirk the call, and will always try, too, that no better soldier shall be found in the whole army."4 The boast of valor and the promise of devotion which mark the veteran's harangue may be joined with the image he presents of the father, twenty-two years absent from his home, educating his children to spend their lives, as he had done, in arms; and the Roman soldier stands before us, in his hand the drawn sword, on his lips the vaunt of bravery, and highest in his heart the hope of crowns and public admiration. Of such stuff were they who, trained in freedom, went forth to conquer the uncultivated or the exhausted nations by whom they were surrounded.

The character of the individual, formed under the circumstances observed throughout our history, was confirmed by the tone and the discipline of the army, the constitution of which at once enforced obedience and encouraged self-respect. No offences could be visited with more dreadful punishment than those

4 Liv., XLII. 34.