93

hood, as if he had no truer obligation to fulfil than that of a father. It was a different spirit that induced his doctrine of sparing the conquered wherever the Commonwealth could be better served by mercy than by wrath; for although there are repeated instances of his interfering in behalf of the subjects who came as suppliants to Rome, there are few campaigns of more horrible cruelty than that he led in Spain, and when Carthage was already weak with age and with defeat, Cato was the first and the foremost to urge its destruction. His errors, however, notwithstanding their frequency, have no further relation to the sketch we have here essayed in illustration of the attachment which might still linger amongst his countrymen towards their ancestors, than to take away all regret that the principles to which he clung had had their day.

94

No living men in Rome were more renowned, about the time of Cato's censorship, than Scipio Africanus and his brother Lucius, who obtained the title of Asiaticus in consequence of his victory, which Africanus 95 assisted him to gain, over king Antiochus,

93 As in preventing the triumph of a Proconsul who had done great wrong to the people among whom he led his soldiers. Liv., XXXVII. 46. See fragments of Cato's harangue or harangues against him, in Aul. Gell., X. 3, XIII. 24. So in backing the protest of the Spanish envoys against the exactions of their Roman governors (Liv., XLIII. 2); in defending the people of Rhodes 26

VOL. II.

(Ibid., XLV. 25); and in procuring the release of the Achæan exiles (Plut., Cat. Maj., 19).

94 Florus, II. 15. Vell. Pat., I.

13. Plin., Nat. Hist., XV. 20. Cato died at the beginning of the war, A. C. 149, being about eightyfive years old, and having outlived Scipio Africanus some five-andthirty years.

95 Unless Africanus had offered

near Magnesia. The glory they had thus acquired, literally throughout the ancient world, was acknowledged and gratefully honored by most of their countrymen; but, like many men of great military distinction, the Scipios had conceived opinions of their own grandeur which no mere popularity could compensate, and they, therefore, soon lost that they had at first obtained. It was rumored, apparently before their return from the East, that they had carried matters there, the one as commander and the other as lieutenant, with much too high a hand; and after Asiaticus had delayed for two years 96 to produce the accounts of the treasures he had received from the Syrian monarch, he was openly required by the Senate to defend himself against the accusations of which he was too notoriously the object amongst a large number of his fellow-citizens. Asiaticus, who would never have gone beyond the most common limits of service or repute but for his renowned and active brother, straightway prepared to obey the di

97

1

to go with his brother as a lieutenant, Asiaticus would never have got his command or won his name. Liv., XXXVII. 1. He had been Prætor before being Consul. Ibid., XXXIV. 54. Africanus had been Censor, and again Consul, besides being made the Princeps Senatus, in the interval between his return from Africa and his departure to the East. Ibid., XXXII. 7, XXXIV. 42, 44.

96 Until A. C. 187.

97 The details of the following

narrative are so contradictory in the ancient authorities, that my version is very conjectural. See Liv., XXXVIII. 50 et seq. I give the events, which some have separated, connectedly, because the part of Gracchus, presently to be mentioned, in them all, must have been in the single year of his tribunate. It is less certain that he married Cornelia in the same year, or even in her father's lifetime. See Plut., Tib. Gr., 1, 4.

rections of the Senate; but when he appeared with his papers, they were snatched from his hand by Africanus, who tore them to pieces with some bitter expression against his adversaries.98 On the departure of Africanus to Etruria, where he was then employed on the public service, the proceedings he had apparently quashed were revived against his brother, and pressed with such earnestness, as if to make the most of his absence, that Asiaticus, helpless without him, was tried, condemned, and just on the point of being committed to prison, when Africanus, who had purposely hurried back, appeared in the Forum, and effected the release of the criminal by some forcible means of which the account fails.99 With all his haughtiness, however, Scipio could not have prevented his brother from being taken into custody again, had he not procured the aid of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the same who was afterwards Prætor in Spain and Censor at Rome, then one of the Tribunes. He, though hitherto an enemy of the Scipios, and especially of Africanus, came forward to interfere in their behalf, and actually protected Asiaticus against the sentence of his colleagues, with some reproaches, however, upon the violence of which the Forum had been made the scene.100 It seemed as if the laws were to be set at defiance, although it might still be necessary to make a show of obe

98 Val. Max., III. 7. 1. Liv., XXXVIII. 66 55. Indignantem, quod, quum bis millies in ærarium intulisset, quadragies ratio ab se posceretur." This "quadragies"

kept back amounted to the moderate sum of four million sesterces.

99 Liv., XXXVIII. 56. 100 All this is unusually confused. Liv., XXXVIII. 56, 57, 60.

dience, as in this case, at the moment of their infringement.

But though Gracchus was rewarded by the hand of Cornelia, the famous daughter of Africanus, and honored, even amongst those whose designs he had baffled, for having sacrificed his enmity to the defence of the Scipios, the animosity against his new relatives was but increased by their escape from justice; and Africanus himself was soon after accused, on charges apparently extended wide in order to admit of no evasion, even if they could in part be broken down. He had no mind to be pursued, much less ensnared; and when his day of trial arrived, he advanced, with a crowd of friends and retainers, through the assembly to the rostra, from which he spoke in the midst of universal silence. "It was on this day, O ye Tribunes and citizens, that I conquered Hannibal; and to-day I shall go to the Capitol to thank the gods who dwell there that I was allowed the will and the power to protect and exalt the Commonwealth. Come with me, if ye will, O men of Rome, and pray the gods that ye may have other leaders like to me!" 101 From his youth, Scipio had believed himself, or pretended, to enjoy the peculiar favor of the immortals; and there were many in the assembly to think that the gods were speaking through him, as he stood firm and majestic in the presence of his enemies. And when he turned to ascend the Capitol, the Tribunes and their attend

101 Liv., XXXVIII. 52. Appian., De Reb. Syriac., 40.

ants were left alone in the Forum, either to wonder at their own daring in assailing so great a man, or else to resolve, that, though the laws were that day set at naught, they should be the more piously vindicated, when the people, returning to their senses, should remember the freedom they not only allowed, but enjoined.

Not yet, indeed, could the liberty of Rome be laid waste and low; or Africanus would not merely have resisted, but overthrown, her laws, like those who triumphed over her and them in after years. The day of the procession to the Capitol was the last of any show,102 as the historian phrases it, to Scipio. Again adduced before the Tribes, he did not wait his trial, but withdrew to an estate he had at Liternum, on the Campanian shore, whence it was at first proposed to bring him back by force, but where he was allowed, through the protection of his son-in-law, Gracchus, to end his days in silence and retirement.103 His brother Asiaticus was afterwards brought up to receive the sentence 104 he had before evaded; and though he strove to regain his lost position, it was over him that Cato was elected Censor,105 as if the ancient dispositions of Rome which Cato represented were prevailing against the changing temper which brought the Scipios in whom it was personified to shame.

Liv.,

102 Hic speciosus ultimus dies P. Scipioni illuxit." XXXVIII. 52.

103 Liv., XXXVIII. 52, 53. "Silentium deinde," he adds, "de Africano fuit."

104 Liv., XXXVIII. 55.

105 One of Cato's first judgments was to deprive Scipio Asiaticus of his honors as a Knight. Liv., XXXIX. 40, 44.