other leader; but it was beyond their power to elect that the spirit of him they mourned with unfeigned grief should go with his authority to any successor, and within a few months they yielded to the employer of his assassins, the Consul Cæpio.53

55

Some sort of decency was observed by Cæpio in refusing to reward the murderers of Viriathus; and it was so far forth creditable to the Senate and the people of Rome, that the returning Consul should himself have been denied a triumph. But the motive, in either instance, was not so much, it is to be feared, a feeling of sympathy for the fallen as a desire to disparage his importance, and therefore to contradict the merit of his murderers. Even Cicero, removed as he was from the alarm or the contempt with which Viriathus was regarded by his contemporaries, yet found it in his heart to cast a slur upon the Lusitanian hero.56 But it would have been far better to have lost than to have won the victory which thus deadened the sensibilities of a whole nation towards a foe of such a nature as Viriathus. The passions which laid Corinth and Carthage low were not nearly so fatal as those which first murdered and then slandered the Champion of Spain.

The larger dominion resulting from the conquests we have thus attempted to review was very apparent in the events and relations of the times. One sys

53 Appian., De Reb. Hisp., 75. Diod. Sic., Reliq., XXXIII. 22.

54 Eutrop., IV. 16. Appian (loc. cit. 74) says he referred them to the Senate.

55 De Vir. Ill., LXXI. Cf. Val. Max., IX. 6. 4.

56 De Off.,

II. 11.

tem, if so it may be called, in which the Commonwealth betrayed its consciousness of expanding boundaries, was that by which it sought a surer hold upon its former possessions, as by planting colonies," or on its elder subjects and citizens, as by grants of land 58 or largesses of food 59 and games. Another sign, partially of the same sort, was the increase of the places in the prætorship from four to six,60 as if that the administration of the conquered countries might in no wise detract from the watchfulness with which order was maintained at home. Yet the same severity as of yore could scarcely be maintained, where one king, like Prusias of Bithynia, was suffered to prostrate himself before the Senate and call its members his guardian gods, or where another monarch, like Eumenes of Pergamus, was forbidden to approach any nearer to Rome than Brundusium, where he had already arrived when the edict was issued against him, not, as must be added, because he was feared, but rather because he was despised. Such things as these could not happen without encouraging the proneness for some time manifest amongst the victorious people to indulge in the pride, the luxury,

note.

61

62

57 Vell. Pat., I. 15, and next Liv., Epit. XLV. This sort of adulation was getting to be very comSee the address of the Rhodian ambassadors, Liv., XXXVII.

58 Liv., XXXI. 4, 49, XXXIV. 45, 53, etc.

mon.

59 Liv., XXIX. 37, XXX. 26, 54. Beaufort has collected other XXXI. 4, 50, XXXIII. 42.

60 A. C. 197. Liv., XXXII. 27.

Cf. XL. 44.

61 Χαίρετε, θεοὶ σωτῆρες, was his exclamation. Polyb., XXX. 16.

instances, Rép. Rom., Livre II. ch. 3.

62"Ne cui regi Romam venire liceret." Liv., Epit. XLVI. Polyb., ΧΧΧ. 17.

and the oppression which triumph had first given and security then confirmed. But it was not suddenly possible, either that they should escape all restraint, or that their subjects should lose all protection; and the repeated decisions of the Senate and the Tribes, sometimes against individual, and sometimes against numerous offenders,63 show plainly that there was as yet no open privilege of disgracing the Roman name in the eyes of those who bore it proudly or obeyed it tremblingly.

The cares of the Commonwealth in relation to its subjects in Italy were still the paramount part of what may be styled its foreign policy. A broken account of a conspiracy originating just after the second Punic war with some slaves and captives, and spreading, as is possible, among the people with whom they were quartered,64 exposes the dangers which were likely to arise from the contact of the Italians with strangers whose stouter spirit rebelled against the hardship and the ignominy of their fallen fortunes. On the other hand, the repeated complaints before the Senate from the Italian towns, which found themselves wellnigh empty in consequence of their inhabitants being drawn away from them to the metropolis, bring up to view the causes of discontentment, if not of sedition, that would be generated by the intercourse of the dependent people with their masters or superiors. Only an exceptional instance is to be found of these difficulties having been ag

63 See note 73 and text.

64 In Setia and Præneste. Liv., XXXII. 26.

gravated by any exceeding superciliousness on the part of the Romans, as when the Consul Postumius Albinus ran riot in authority and presumption at Præneste, commanding supplies and services beyond all that had been before proposed, and making a precedent, as the historian remarks, for the extortions of those who were to come after him.65 In general, the treatment of these nearer subjects was much more considerate; and while they were anxiously controlled, their complaints, like the foregoing in relation to their emigrants, were carefully redressed,66 and their feelings of attachment, as in other cases, were thoughtfully strengthened by privileges of greater or less importance. Some people, indeed, still brooded over the humiliation they had inherited from their forefathers; but, comparatively speaking, the agony of defeat was passed away from Italy into remoter lands.

67

At about the time of the fall of Carthage, eight provinces were annexed to the Roman Commonwealth, under the names of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Nearer Spain, Farther Spain, Illyria, Macedonia, Achaia, and Africa, to which Cisalpine Gaul may be

65 Liv., XLII. 1.

66 As when 12,000 Latins, or Italians generally, were dismissed from Rome by orders of the Senate, Liv., XXXIX. 13; or when additional measures were adopted to, satisfy the murmurs which still continued, Ibid., XLI. 8, 9.

67 Liv., XXXVIII. 36. It must also be observed, that the taxes up

on the Italians, as well as those upon the Romans, were much alleviated by the derivation of the great revenues of the Commonwealth from its foreign dominions. The customs, the returns of the public lands, and the tax upon the emancipation of slaves were all that continued to be raised in Italy.

"68

added as a ninth, although it was not yet formed into a province, but retained as a district more immediately dependent upon Italy. This vast extent of territory, with its multitudinous variety of popula tion, transfixed by the same arms, had then been impaled, so to speak, within the same "laws of peace, as the institutions of the conquerors were significantly termed. The period of the first neighbouring conquests, stamped by the settlement of the Latins and the formation of the municipalities, to which succeeded the second period of Italian victotories, with its system of the Latin Name and the alliances, was now followed by the third period of foreign dominions, of which the organization and administration were devised with harder hearts and meaner aims. It is through these that we are chiefly enabled to estimate the contemporary character of liberty as it existed amongst the conquerors.

The description of the provinces may be made in very general terms, without losing any of its impressiveness in contrast with the system which one acquainted with the earlier history alone of the Romans might suppose them to have established throughout their wider realms. The great point in their organization of the foreign countries was to keep them in subjection. Some local offices or customs might here and there remain, amidst the general wreck of ancient independence; but they were too shattered or too disjointed to make more than a few exceptions to the common ruin. So, too, occasional grants of peculiar

68 46 Leges pacis." Liv., XXXIII. 30, etc.