The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire

10 The Adventurer

A YOUNG KING LAY DYING ON HIS BED IN BABYLON. On 29 May, he had given a splendid banquet in honor of one of his commanders and taken a bath, as he was accustomed to do. Then, uncharacteristically, for he enjoyed late-night drinking sessions, he wanted to go to bed. Perhaps he was feeling out of sorts. However, a friend of his invited him to a party and he changed his mind. He went on drinking all through the next day, at the end of which he felt feverish.

That night he slept in the palace bathhouse, for its coolness. The following morning, he returned to his bedroom and spent the day playing dice. By the night of 1 June, he was back in the bathhouse, and the following morning he discussed a projected military expedition with his senior officers. The fever intensified, and two days later it became clear that he was seriously ill. What, exactly, was the matter is unknown, but he had recently returned from a boating trip on the river Euphrates and may have contracted malaria; also, he had not fully recovered from a serious battle wound to his chest.

The king continued to fulfill his royal duties, leading the daily sacrifice, but by 5 June he was forced to recognize the gravity of his condition and issued orders for high officials to stay within reach of his bedside. Not many hours passed before he began to lose the power of speech and, in a bleak symbolic gesture, he handed his signet ring to his senior marshal. Authority was transferred.

The city was seething with rumors, and anxious soldiers gathered outside the palace, threatening to break down the doors. Eventually, they were allowed in and passed in an endless file one by one through the king’s bedroom. The king could not say a word and, as the men took their leave, he sometimes painfully raised his head a little and gestured to them with his right hand. Otherwise, only his eyes expressed awareness.

At some point during his illness, while he was still able to converse, the king was asked to whom he left his kingdom. He gasped, “To the strongest.” His last words reveal a cynical prediction that his generals would soon be at one another’s throats as they fought for their share of his empire. He added, “There will be funeral ‘games’ in good earnest when I have gone.”

So died Alexander the Great on 10 or 11 June 334, at the early age of thirty-two. While Rome was engaged in its long, slow struggle with the Samnites for control of central Italy, this boyking of Macedon had spent ten years in a whirlwind of triumphant campaigning against the vast Persian Empire; although he claimed to be leading a Hellenic crusade, he expropriated it for himself. One of the world’s great field commanders, he seems to have seen war as an end in itself. Homer’s Iliad was his bible, and he agreed with the indomitable warrior Achilles that the only reasonable purpose of life was the pursuit of personal glory. The cost in lives was of little concern to Alexander and hecatombs of men, women, and children were sacrificed to his vaulting ambition.

In his final months, he was planning new campaigns. According to his biographer Arrian, there were reports that he meant to make for Sicily and southern Italy in order to check the Romans, whose growing reputation was already causing him concern.

He would never have remained idle in the enjoyment of any of his conquests, even had he extended his empire from Asia to Europe and from Europe to the British Isles. On the contrary, he would have continued to seek beyond them for unknown lands, as it was ever his nature, if he had no rival, to strive to better his own best.

Alexander personified a human type, the legendary seeker for the world’s end, whose purpose, in Tennyson’s unforgettable phrase, is always “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

The Macedonian king’s cynical view of a future without him was more than justified by the event. His empire was divided up among his generals and members of his family. Nicknamed the Diadochoi, or Successors, they immediately started squabbling among themselves and war succeeded war. Like players in a murderous game of musical chairs, almost every one of them came to a violent end. Alexander’s half-witted half brother and nominal successor as king; his formidable mother, Olympias; his wife, Roxana, and their posthumous son—all were eventually executed as the wheel of fortune whirled round.

THE GLAMOUR OF Alexander’s personality and the blinding afterglow of his achievements caught the imagination of many ambitious young men of the time and, indeed, later throughout the classical period. His example energized famous Greeks and Romans in their own pursuit of glory. (Not everyone was an admirer, it is worth noting. Cicero saw Alexander as a global menace and told of his encounter with a captured pirate. The king asked the man what wickedness drove him to terrorize the seas. He replied, “The same wickedness that drives you to terrorize the entire world.”)

One of the earliest emulators was Pyrrhus, king of the disputed throne of the Molossians. The Molossians were one of the tribes that made up the federation of Epirus (a territory in what is today northern Greece and southern Albania, which looks across a narrow stretch of the Ionian Sea to the island of Corfu); their monarch was the federation’s hereditary hegemon, or leader.

A rugged and mountainous region, Epirus is dominated by the high Pindus range and lay on the edge of the Hellenic world. The Greeks looked down on its inhabitants, as they did on the Macedonians, as being semi-barbarous. Epirotes spoke a sort of Greek but lived in scattered villages rather than cities, or poleis, like Athens, Thebes, and Sparta. Of course, after Alexander, northern outlanders were no longer beyond the pale.

Pyrrhus boasted a remarkable pedigree, for he was believed to be a descendant of Achilles, and bore the name of the hero’s son. As so often in this story, the elaborate tapestry of the Trojan War forms the backdrop of contemporary events and personalities. To us it may be legend, but to the Greeks and Romans it was reality. Achilles had been the invincible fighter on the Greek side (and, as a point of interest, had defeated Rome’s originator, Aeneas, in single combat), but in the last year of the war he fell victim to an arrow shot by Paris, whose love for Helen had set in motion the whole long, tragic saga. The original Pyrrhus (he was also known as Neoptolemus) was one of the stowaways in the wooden horse. He led the charge during the fall of the city and killed its aged king, Priam. On his return to Greece, he settled in Epirus and founded the Molossian dynasty.

The infancy of his descendant and namesake was disturbed. Born in 319, Pyrrhus was a baby when his father was forcibly removed from the throne and replaced by a relative, and he had a hair-raising escape from pursuers. He was in the care of three sturdy young men and a nurse. They had nearly reached a place of safety, but just as the sun was setting they came to a river swollen by rains. They could not cross it in the dark without help. They saw some local people standing on the far bank and shouted for help, but the noise of the torrent made them inaudible.

One of the youths had the bright idea to strip some bark from a tree and scratch a message on it with a buckle pin. He wrapped the bark around a stone and flung it across the river. Those on the other side read the message and quickly cut down some trees, lashed them together, and improvized a rough-and-ready rail that Pyrrhus’s party could grasp as they crossed the turbulent water.

The child’s final destination was a tribe in Illyria, to the north. This was a lawless land, and the Illyrians had a deserved reputation for sea piracy. The tribe’s ruler, a certain Glaucias, gave him asylum and resisted large bribes to hand him over to his enemies. This was where Pyrrhus grew up—in a wild world of heroic bandits who set a premium on physical bravery and personal honor.

He was only thirteen when he was restored to the Molossian throne under a regency, but a few years later he was ousted once again, this time by the ruthless and ambitious king of Macedonia, Cassander, who was one of the Diadochoi and had cast a covetous eye on northwestern Greece.

Now adult, Pyrrhus dreamed of winning or creating an empire somewhere in the world, but he had no choice but to lead the life of an adventurer. He served in the army of one of the Successors and received his first taste of large-scale warfare at the Battle of Ipsus, where his patron lost his life at the hands of a grand coalition. One more athlete in Alexander’s funeral games was removed from competition.

The only Successor to die comfortably in his bed after many years in power and to found a long-lived dynasty was Ptolemy, who had known Alexander as a boy and had been one of his most trusted companions. He seized Egypt and made himself pharaoh. Less ambitious than his rivals, he contented himself with this corner of the empire and aimed for no more than dominance of the Aegean. Pyrrhus spent some time in Egypt and so impressed Ptolemy that he married the young man to his stepdaughter (a political polygamist, he collected five wives during his career). The pharaoh also gave him substantial military and financial support, which enabled Pyrrhus once more to regain the Molossian throne.

The charms of his small kingdom soon palled. Pyrrhus devoted time and energy to expanding the territory he controlled, but he was a marginal player in the great game of international politics. He nursed his hopes. A second cousin of Alexander the Great through Olympias, who had been a Molossian princess, he went so far as to claim a special relationship with the dead conqueror. He once reported that Alexander called to him in a dream. He answered the summons and found the king lying on a couch. Alexander promised him his help. “But your majesty,” said Pyrrhus, never backward in coming forward, “how will you be able to help me, seeing that you are unwell?” The king replied, “My name will be enough,” and, mounting a pedigree horse, led the way into the future.

And so it was. Pyrrhus did not hesitate to use Alexander’s name, and he made the most of the family connection when, in 287, he persuaded the Macedonian army to proclaim him king of Macedon. However, a rival pretender soon drove him out, and back into his Molossian backwater.

Pyrrhus was a chivalrous and charismatic figure, although Plutarch writes that his appearance “conveyed terror rather than majesty.” As with the King’s Evil, practiced by medieval and early modern European monarchs, sufferers from depression believed the king could cure their condition by pressing his right foot against their spleen. No beauty, Pyrrhus had few teeth and, oddly, it is said that his upper jaw was a continuous line of bone on which the usual intervals between the teeth were indicated by slight depressions. (There is no plausible condition known to modern dentists that matches this description; the most likely explanation is that the king wore a bone or ivory denture.) He was discreet and polite in his personal life, but tended to be aloof with social inferiors. He was widely acknowledged to be naturally brilliant, well-educated, and experienced in public affairs—an opinion of himself that he shared.

As the years passed, though, Pyrrhus remained a man of promise rather than of accomplishment. Like his ancestor Achilles, he could not stand idleness, and, as Homer writes,

He was in his late thirties when, not a moment too soon, the opportunity of his lifetime finally presented itself. An embassy from the city of Tarentum (today’s Taranto), a Greek foundation on the heel of Italy, traveled to Epirus and laid before the king an extremely interesting proposition.

TARENTUM WAS ONE of the wealthiest cities of the Greek world. Founded in 706 in Apulia, on the instep of the Italian boot, it stood on an island between a large inland lagoon and a bay, which was itself protected from the open sea by another island and a spit of land. The city was “leafy” and the climate delightful, with “mild winters and long lingering springs.” To the poet Horace, the surrounding countryside was:

Tarentum enjoyed a thriving cultural life; it was a center for the philosophy of Pythagoras and manufactured high-quality decorated pottery and a beautiful silver coinage. The city was especially famous for the purple dye it made from the murex, a marine mollusk. It also had a thriving wool industry and sold figs and salt. Politically, it was a democracy and was dominated for thirty years in the middle of the fourth century by a certain Archytas, whom we would call today a Renaissance man. He is believed to have been the founder of mathematical mechanics, and designed a bird-shaped flying machine, probably propelled by steam power. Archytas had known Plato personally and attempted to rescue him from his difficulties with the tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius II. The Athenian philosopher may have seen in him a model of the philosopher king he recommended in his Republic as the ideal ruler of a state.

Archytas was also a successful field commander against continual incursions by the Sabellian tribes that ringed the city from their mountain fastnesses. The Tarentines could field an army of more than thirty thousand men and deployed a powerful fleet. However, in more recent times they seemed to have lost their edge. According to the geographer Strabo:

The Sabellians were not the only threat. For a long time, the Tarentines watched the growth of Roman power with concern, and then alarm. They had no locus in the Second Samnite War and at one point offered their services as neutral mediators between the warring parties, but in truth they were pro-Samnite non-belligerents. They could see that sooner rather than later the expanding Republic would interest itself in the affairs of southern Italy. This was particularly worrying for the democratic government of Tarentum, for Roman practice with its defeated “allies” was to support the local aristocrats, who tended to welcome external support in order to maintain their rule.

It was not that the Romans were actively looking for trouble. As already noted, they believed in the principle of a just war, at least in theory, and wished to avoid the displeasure of the gods brought on by acting aggressively without due cause. However, a due cause duly presented itself in 285, when Thurii, another port in the Gulf of Tarentum, appealed to Rome for protection against Sabellian attacks, and some help was apparently provided. One might have thought Thurii would apply to its bigger neighbor Tarentum, but Thurii was an oligarchy and there was little love lost between the two of them. A curse of the political culture on the Greek mainland was the inability of small city-states, such as Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, to get on with one another. Those colonists who migrated to Italy brought the bad habit with them.

Three years later, another request came from Thurii. From the Republic’s point of view, the timing was extremely inconvenient. The Romans had recently been defeated by a Celtic force from the north, and the Samnites had risen once more against their overlords. However, it was decided to respond favorably and a consular army was sent south to beat back the Sabellians and to garrison Thurii. Some other Greco-Italian, or Italiote, cities came into alliance with Rome. The Senate was coming to understand that, as Italy’s dominant power, it would be unwise not to develop a rational policy for Magna Graecia.

The Tarentines were furious, and a chance opportunity of displaying their displeasure soon arose. In breach of an old treaty agreement not to sail in the Gulf of Tarentum, a squadron of ten Roman warships unexpectedly appeared in the harbor, hoping to anchor there. One tradition suggests that it was merely on a sightseeing expedition, but not surprisingly, the Tarentines guessed at a more sinister intention. They feared a plot to overthrow their democracy or, at least, some kind of hostile naval reconnaissance.

As luck would have it, a festival in honor of the god Dionysus was being held that day and a large, inebriated audience sat in the city’s open-air theater watching a show. Soon there was news of the squadron’s arrival, tempers rose, and an enraged mob rushed out to the quayside. An attack was launched on the intruders. Four Roman vessels were sunk, the commander was killed, and a fifth was captured with its crew; the others were hard put to make their escape.

As far as Thurii was concerned, Tarentum acted quickly and decisively. Its army marched on the city and expelled not only the ruling élite but also the Roman garrison. In its view, Thurii was doubly to be damned: it had preferred Rome to fellow Greeks, and an oligarchic form of government to a democracy.

These were serious provocations, but the Senate responded with a cool head and merely dispatched an embassy led by a former consul, Lucius Postumius Megellus, to seek an explanation. It probably calculated that Rome did not need another declared enemy at this point and could turn a blind eye if Tarentum agreed to maintain its ostensible neutrality. However, if the delegation expected anything approaching an apology it was to be disappointed.

Tarentum being a Greek-style direct democracy, all important decisions were taken by its citizens in full assembly. Postumius was invited to attend a meeting in the theater. The Tarentines happened to be celebrating another festival and, doubtless fueled by alcohol again, were in high good humor. They looked on the envoys as figures of fun, ridiculing their heavy and elaborate togas and slips Postumius made when speaking Greek. The Romans were unamused, which only made the Tarentines laugh the louder.

Postumius demanded the release of their sailors and ship, and required the Tarentines to surrender Thurii, pay compensation, and hand over for punishment those who had ordered the attack on the Roman fleet. When their presentation was over, the former consul and his colleagues made their way out of the theater, pursued by catcalls. At the exit, a well-known local drunk planted himself in Postumius’s way, turned his back on him, bent over, lifted his tunic, and evacuated his bowels over the Roman’s toga. This feat was greeted with laughter and applause.

“Laugh while you can,” shouted Postumius. “You will soon be weeping for a very long while.” Noticing that his threat infuriated some in the crowd, he went on, “Just to make you even angrier, let me say this. This toga will be washed clean with much blood.”

Romans regarded ambassadors as sacrosanct and did not expect this kind of treatment. Taken by surprise, Postumius had handled the incident maladroitly, but he understood how to exploit the humiliation and inflame opinion in Rome. He kept the soiled toga just as it was and, once he was back home, put it on display as evidence of the insults he had endured. Although Rome’s armies were fully stretched elsewhere, the Senate voted for war at once, and the Assembly ratified the decision.

This incident may have been somewhat enhanced in the telling, but it exposed an important truth. At this stage in its history, Rome was regarded by civilized opinion in the Greek world as a provincial semi-barbarous backwater; its representatives were good for a laugh and hardly to be taken seriously.

THE SMILES WERE wiped from their faces when the Tarentines witnessed the rapid arrival of a Roman army outside their walls, which proceeded methodically to ravage their delightful countryside, before withdrawing for the winter of 281/80 to a colonia at Venusia, where it could keep an eye on the Samnites and on the southern Sabellian tribes. They cautiously appointed a pro-Roman general who might be able to negotiate an early peace.

The commanding consul offered the Tarentines the same terms as Postumius had, or all-out war if they were rejected. As the historian Appian puts it, “This time they did not laugh.” At a rowdy public meeting, the debate on what to do next was evenly balanced, but eventually it was agreed to send for the Molossian king to come over from Epirus with an expeditionary force and make war on the Romans. The idea of recruiting a foreign general was not a new one. In the past, feeling themselves too weak to fight on their own, the Tarentines had invited a succession of condottieri to provide military support against Sabellian incursions, albeit without great success: one of them had been Pyrrhus’s uncle Alexander the Molossian, Olympias’s brother and a previous occupant of the Molossian throne. He had died campaigning for the city. The present crisis provoked a surprising entente with Tarentum’s aggressive neighbors, who found that they disliked Rome even more than they did Italiotes.

When the embassy arrived at Pyrrhus’s court, it presented the king with gifts and assured him of a military coalition of the Sabellians, the Tarentines, and—a great prize, this—the Samnites. The envoys gave him a ludicrously inflated estimate of the number of troops that would be awaiting his arrival, but they were good judges of their man. A potential opportunity was opening up for Pyrrhus to regain the Macedonian throne, but he took the bait without hesitation, although his senior adviser, a Thessalian intellectual named Cineas, tried to dissuade him.

According to a famous anecdote of Plutarch’s, Cineas asked the king, “What will you do when you have beaten the Romans?” We would take Italy was the reply. “What then?” Sicily would be a rich prize, the king opined, not seeing the trap. “And then?” Carthage and Libya would be too tempting to resist. Cineas concluded his interrogation: “After that, it’s obvious that we will have no trouble taking back Macedonia and Greece.”

Pyrrhus said, smiling, “Why then, we will be able to live a life of leisure and spend our days drinking and in private conversation.” “What is stopping us from doing that now?” Cineas inquired.

The king was somewhat cast down, for he could see that he was inviting a world of trouble, but he was unable to renounce his high hopes. The Elysian shades of Alexander and Achilles expected nothing less of him.

THE VALLEY WAS remote, cold, and barren, with a craggy backdrop of snow-capped mountains. At the foot of a hill stood an oak tree inside a walled enclosure. There was a small, very basic stone temple. This was Dodona, the most ancient of Hellenic oracles and sacred to the king of the gods, Zeus, and his consort, Dione, usually called Hera (Rome’s Jupiter and Juno). Three priestesses, known as “doves,” interpreted the rustlings of the oak tree’s leaves in the breeze for those with questions about their future.

Despite its great age, Dodona was not as well known as the sanctuary at Delphi and was used mainly by ordinary people to help them solve the difficulties of daily life, rather as today we seek the advice of a lawyer or a doctor. Anyone who consulted the oracle was required to submit his or her questions to the two gods in writing, scratched onto lead tablets. These were then put into a pot and studied by one of the priestesses. Archaeologists have discovered some of the tablets (ranging from throughout the oracle’s long history): suppliants included not only local peasants but travelers from across the Mediterranean world.

Among them are Eubandros and his wife, who ask to what god, hero, or spirit (daimon) they must pray and sacrifice if they and their household are to be prosperous “for all time.” A man named Socrates wants to know how he can trade most profitably for himself and his family. Agis inquires about his mattresses and pillows, which have been lost: Has some foreigner stolen them?

From time to time, celebrities consulted the divinities of Dodona. Homer has Achilles pray to “Lord Zeus, Dodonean, Pelasgian Zeus, you that live far away and rule over wintry Dodona” that his lover, Patroclus, come back victorious and alive from battle with the Greeks on the plain of Troy. Typically, the god gives with one hand and takes with the other. Homer adds, “Zeus the Counselor heard Achilles’ prayer and granted him half of it but not the rest.” Patroclus drives back the Trojans but is killed.

The oracle was perfectly capable of unscrupulous subterfuge. During the great war between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century, the Athenians were advised to colonize Sicily. Without considering what the oracle really meant, they felt encouraged to mount their disastrous Sicilian invasion. In fact, what the doves were referring to was a hillock of that name near Athens.

As the Molossian king, Pyrrhus was ex officio the patron of the oracle at Dodona. He was an enthusiastic supporter and made it the religious center of his kingdom. At considerable expense, he upgraded its facilities. The Temple of Zeus was rebuilt on a grand scale, and an arts and athletics festival launched, with plays performed in a new open-air theater.

When the king was planning his Italian expedition, he consulted the oracle about his prospects of success. With his close connection to the oracle, he would be forgiven for expecting the king of the gods and his queen to allow him an auspicious outcome. However, the doves listened to the rustling leaves and offered an ambiguous interpretation. In the Greek, their words could be read two ways—either “If you cross into Italy, you will be victorious over the Romans” or “The Romans will be victorious over you.”

Pyrrhus was no fool and must have recognized the double meaning, but, as Cassius Dio put it, he chose to “construe the advice according to his wishes, for desire is very apt to deceive.” He refused to countenance the slightest delay and would not even wait for the arrival of spring before setting off on his grand enterprise.

BEING ONLY A constitutional monarch in Epirus, Pyrrhus could not simply do as he pleased. His first step was to win the federation’s backing and, more particularly, an agreement to supply troops. He made full use of his descent from Achilles: if the Romans claimed to be inheritors of the Trojan name, an invasion led by the Molossian king should be seen as a return match. Troy redivivus had to be cast down for a second time. Inheritor of the mantle of Alexander, Pyrrhus presented himself as the leader of a Hellenic crusade against barbarians. He was also the avenger of his uncle Alexander the Molossian.

Coins had a wide distribution throughout the Mediterranean, and for rulers with an instinct for public relations they were an invaluable means of communicating their message. Those issued under Pyrrhus’s aegis at Tarentum could hardly have been more explicit. On some of them, the image of Zeus and Dione of Dodona appear, guaranteeing Pyrrhus’s optimistic expectation of their divine blessing. Others imitated the gold staters of Alexander the Great, and showed Athena Promachos, champion against the barbarians, and a personified Nike, or Victory, bearing a trophy. On one coin we see Achilles, possibly with Pyrrhus’s features. On another, Achilles’ mother, Thetis, is depicted, as Homer described in the Iliad, bringing a shield and new weapons to rearm her son after the death of Patroclus.

Pyrrhus got his way, winning the support not only of his Epirote tribes but also of other Hellenistic monarchs, Diadochoi, or their heirs, who were delighted to see this military and militant nuisance sail away and annoy other people elsewhere. The king recruited an army of up to 22,500 infantry, including 2,000 archers and 500 men with slings (both of them little used by the Romans but lethal at a distance). He also disposed of 2,000 cavalry and 20 elephants.

Elephants were something of a novelty. The Greeks first came across them when Darius III, the Persian King of Kings, fielded them, unsuccessfully, against Alexander the Great at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331. Alexander never used elephants himself, but they became a favorite weapon of his successors. They were imported from India and, unlike African bush elephants, were large enough to carry a howdah, with a mahout and a few soldiers armed with missiles.

Their main advantage was that they terrified the enemy; horses would not face them, especially if they had not encountered them before. On the debit side, they could do serious damage to their own forces if they were wounded or for some other reason panicked and ran amok.

Arrian gives a vivid account of what can happen in those circumstances, when describing another of Alexander’s battles, on this occasion against an Indian king:

In early 280, Pyrrhus wisely sent Cineas ahead with an advance guard of three thousand troops. Only when they had arrived safely at Tarentum and received their expected welcome did he follow with the main body of his army. They traveled in a fleet of transport ships that the Tarentines had sent across the Adriatic to Epirus. The king soon had cause to rue his insistence on sailing before the winter was over. His fleet was scattered far and wide by a storm. Some ships, including the flagship, which carried Pyrrhus, were unable to round the Iapygian promontory (the heel of the Italian boot) into the Bay of Tarentum. Night fell and a heavy sea drove them onto a bare and harborless coast, where many ships broke up on the rocks. An exception was the royal galley, which was saved because of its great size and sturdy build.

Saved only for the moment, though. The wind unexpectedly veered round and began to blow from the shore. The ship was likely to founder if it met the wind head-on, but to sail out to sea and allow it to bounce about in the boiling swell was equally dangerous. The king took a bold decision, as Plutarch reports:

The king made his way to Tarentum, where he lay low for a time. Although immediately appointed commander-in-chief with unlimited powers, he did nothing that might alarm his hosts, until his damaged fleet limped into port and disgorged the Epirote army. Surprisingly, all his elephants survived the passage, although how a nervous animal weighing five tons was kept calm on board a twenty-meter-long galley in stormy seas must remain a mystery. Then Pyrrhus ran up his true colors. He believed, so Plutarch puts it, that “the mass of people were incapable, unless under strict discipline, of either saving themselves or saving anyone else, but were inclined to let him do their fighting for them while they remained at home in the enjoyment of their baths and social festivities.”

This was not his idea of how to run a war. He occupied the acropolis, or citadel, with his own troops and billeted his officers in citizens’ houses. Military conscription was introduced for the Tarentine youth. All theatrical performances were banned, the gymnasiums were closed (people met there not only for exercise but also for conversation during which “they fought out their country’s battles”), and the men’s communal messes (an institution peculiar to the communal lifestyle of Sparta, Tarentum’s founder) were prohibited. The city’s loungers and layabouts were shocked, and some of them managed to evade Pyrrhus’s guards and left town. The king’s popularity fell, and opponents of the ruling democracy tried to stir up trouble. They were quickly rounded up and sent to Epirus or simply put to death. Tarentum was no longer its own master.

THE NEWS OF Pyrrhus’s arrival on Italian soil caused consternation in Rome. A joint Celtic and Etruscan army had only recently been defeated in the north, and what the Republic needed was a period of recuperation. The heavy casualties in the third and last Samnite War were still a painful memory. However, there was nothing for it; another immense effort was required if the threat posed by Pyrrhus was to be met. Fresh troops were levied, even (apparently) from those citizens, the proletarii, who owned no property and so were usually exempt from military service. Such a step was taken only when there was a tumultus maximus, an extreme military emergency. Rome was garrisoned and an army in the north was tasked to prevent the Molossian king from making common cause with the Etruscans.

One of the consuls for 280, Publius Valerius Laevinus, marched a force of about thirty thousand men southward toward Tarentum. At this point, Pyrrhus intervened with a peace proposal. Although his highest value was prowess on the battlefield, he was not a warmonger. Throughout his career, he would always deploy diplomacy to win an argument before resorting to arms, and he recommended this policy in his well-known (but now lost) book on military tactics. If we can trust Cassius Dio, he wrote to the consul in the following terms:

This was the first direct dealing the king had had with representatives of the Republic, so it is hard to assess whether he expected a favorable reply. He certainly did not receive one. The consul asked, “What use have I got for trash and rubbish, when I can stand trial in the court of Mars, our forefather?”

Pyrrhus was slightly outnumbered by the Romans, for he had to leave a garrison behind in Tarentum. He was encamped on one side of a river near Heraclea, a town a little inland from the Gulf of Tarentum. The consul approached and made his camp on the other. He captured one of the king’s scouts and, rather than execute him, Laevinus drew up his army in battle formation and showed the man around. He asked him to report faithfully to his master what he had seen. Pyrrhus himself rode up to the river to get a view of them. When he had observed their good order, impressive drill, and the efficient arrangement of their camp, he remarked, “The discipline of these barbarians is not barbarous.”

He was now less confident of victory and tried to avoid being forced into battle until reinforcements arrived. He prevented the Romans from crossing the river. Laevinus, in the light of his numerical superiority, was eager for a fight. The consul took a leaf out of Alexander’s book at Granicus and sent his cavalry off to ride along the river and cross where they were unopposed. When the legions appeared unexpectedly in their rear, the Greeks guarding the riverbank pulled back and Laevinus’s infantry was able to begin crossing the river.

It is difficult to make sense of the surviving accounts of the battle, which opened messily. What exactly happened was probably confusing to those taking part. But it appears that Pyrrhus, much alarmed, rode with three thousand Epirote horsemen to meet the Roman cavalry and hold them up, giving time for his phalanx and the rest of his army to form themselves into order of battle. Unfortunately, he was unhorsed and severely shaken.

In an echo of the Achilles and Patroclus story, and presumably to give him a breathing space in which to recover, the king handed over his richly ornamented armor and purple cloak shot through with gold to one of his companions, a certain Megacles, to wear in his place, for his disappearance would be fatal for his soldiers’ morale. For the time being, he stayed in the rear. Unfortunately, Megacles was killed. Pyrrhus mounted another horse and rode along the line with his head bare to show that he was alive, both by his appearance and his voice.

The king’s tactics were similar to those of Alexander, who combined an unbreakable phalanx with a flanking cavalry charge. The Epirote phalanx, with its bristling pikes, was to hold or push back the Roman infantry. Elephants were usually deployed about fifteen to thirty meters apart along the front of an army, but Pyrrhus had too few of them to do this. So he placed his band of twenty as a reserve to be brought forward at an appropriate moment in the battle. His cavalry were on the wings, with instructions to rout the enemy’s horse and attack its infantry from the flanks. Although the legions, armed with short swords and throwing javelins, had some difficulty engaging with the phalanx, they stood their ground. The battle became a stalemate.

Pyrrhus decided to bring on his elephants, which thoroughly unnerved the Roman cavalry. Horses bolted and threw their riders. Men in the howdahs shot down many foot soldiers, and others were trampled. Disheartened, the legions pulled back and left the field. They managed to cross the river and retreated to Venusia (joining the Roman force that had originally appeared before Tarentum and ravaged the city’s territory). More than seven thousand men had fallen and eighteen hundred been captured.

But success was sour, for Pyrrhus had lost about four thousand men, including friends and officers whom he knew well and trusted. As we have seen, Rome commanded a very substantial reservoir of men of fighting age, and had no difficulty in quickly reinforcing the consul. However, the king would struggle to raise more troops. When congratulations were offered him, he replied gloomily, “Another victory like this, and I am done for!” (Hence the modern phrase a “Pyrrhic victory.”)

Nevertheless, he made the most of a good public-relations opportunity. Captured enemy weapons were sent to Dodona as a votive trophy. A small bronze tablet marking the gift has survived: “King Pyrrhus and the Epirotes and the Tarentines to Zeus Naios from the Romans and their allies.” The Tarentines sent offerings to Athens to celebrate this triumph over barbarians, and the armor the king wore during the battle, or at least part of it, was sent to a Temple of Athena on the island of Rhodes. The underlying message was simple and clear: the Hellenic world would soon be hearing no more of the upstart Italian Republic.

The Samnites and the Sabellian tribes now declared openly for Pyrrhus, as did a number of Italiote cities that had been waiting on events before deciding whom to back. However, the king seems to have been unsure of his next military move. One of his rivals for the throne of Macedonia once said of him, “He is like a player with dice, who makes many fine throws, but does not know how to exploit them when they are made.”

What appears to have been a weakness may in part have been a certain reasonableness of disposition. His war aim was not Rome’s unconditional surrender, something he must have known he could not achieve with the army at his disposal. Instead, he wanted to force the Republic to withdraw from Greater Greece and revert to its status as a middling power in central Italy. This could be done, he hoped, by demonstrating his military superiority so convincingly that the Republic would be persuaded to accept a negotiated peace.

ONE FURTHER THROW of the dice was worth risking. Pyrrhus tested the loyalty of Rome’s Latin allies by marching his army north through Campania and along the Via Latina toward Rome. He may also have hoped to entice Etruria into revolt. But central Italy was unimpressed, and if the king expected defections he was disappointed. The cities of Naples and Capua refused to capitulate. He advanced to within a few miles of Rome, but the threat to the city, with its high walls and garrison, was not serious.

Laevinus, having gathered together his scattered forces and added to them the reinforcements sent by the Senate, chased after Pyrrhus, harassing his army. The king was astonished and compared the Roman army to the Hydra, a poisonous water serpent with many heads; if one was chopped off, others grew in its place. “After being cut to pieces the legions grow whole again!” he remarked admiringly. The consular army that had been keeping watch over the Etruscans began to move south, and the king, fearful of being trapped in a pincer, turned around and went back to Tarentum, where he spent the winter of 280.

The time had come for diplomacy, and the Romans delivered another shock. A delegation of three senior politicians, headed by Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, arrived to treat with Pyrrhus. Much to his surprise, the only topic they wished to raise was the ransoming of Roman prisoners of war. He had assumed that, as was customary in the Hellenistic world, they would accept the fact that they had been defeated and seek terms. Uncertain what to do, he consulted his advisers. He followed Cineas’s recommendation that he free the captives without price and send envoys and money to Rome.

Before the embassy left Tarentum, he took Fabricius on one side, offered him generous gifts, and asked for his cooperation in securing peace. The Roman declined the gifts on the grounds that he already had enough possessions, and said coolly, “I commend you, Pyrrhus, for wanting peace and I will secure it for you, always providing that it proves to be to our advantage.”

Fabricius was not offended by these advances, for sometime later he very decently passed intelligence to Pyrrhus that his personal physician was planning to assassinate him. The king was not put off by the Roman’s rebuff, either, and commissioned Cineas to go to Rome and induce the Senate to come to an agreement. Reputed to be the most eloquent public speaker of his day, Cineas reminded his hearers of the famous fourth-century orator Demosthenes. Pyrrhus rated his persuasive powers so highly that he used to say, “His words have won me more cities than my own military campaigns.”

Just in case words were not enough, Cineas brought with him a large amount of gold and, we are informed, every kind of fashionable women’s dress. If the men could not be won over, he thought, then their wives, corrupted by the allure of classical haute couture, would charm them into changing their minds. Hellenistic monarchs were expected to be magnificently openhanded, but to Romans this was bribery, even if many pocketed what was on offer.

Although he did not quite understand this cultural difference, Pyrrhus’s adviser was no fool. Once he had arrived in Rome, he delayed seeking an audience with the Senate. Alleging one reason or another, he hung around the city, getting the feel of the place and making the acquaintance of all the best people. A charming conversationalist and a generous giver, Cineas was soon a popular figure on the social scene. By the time he met the Senate, many of its members knew him well and had been persuaded to back his peace plan.

The terms he proposed were tough. Tarentum and the other Greek cities in southern Italy were to be fully independent. All lands taken from the Samnites and other Sabellian tribes were to be returned to their original owners. Finally, an alliance would be offered with Pyrrhus (not, interestingly enough, with Tarentum or Epirus). The total effect of this pact would have been to reduce Rome’s sphere of influence to Latium only. It is evidence either of Cineas’s golden tongue (and gold specie) or of the Republic’s exhaustion and demoralization, or something of both, that it appeared that the Senate would accept the proposals.

This was to reckon without Appius Claudius Caecus. Old, ill, and completely blind, he had retired from public life. When he learned that a vote for a cessation of hostilities was about to be passed, he could not hold himself back. He ordered his servants to lift him up and had himself carried in a litter to the Senate House. At the door, his sons and sons-in-law took him in their arms and helped him inside.

He addressed the Senate in the strongest terms. According to Plutarch, he said, “Up to this time, I have regarded the misfortune to my eyes as an affliction. But when I hear your shameful resolutions and decrees, I am only sorry I am not deaf as well as blind.”

He insisted that Pyrrhus must first leave Italy before there was any talk of friendship and alliance. The Senate performed a rapid volte-face and voted unanimously to accept his opinion. Cineas was sent back to his master empty-handed, except for a greater understanding of the Roman character. He told Pyrrhus ruefully that the Senate was a “council of many kings.”

Claudius’s speech must have been a powerful and persuasive composition. It was still read in the first century and, although now lost, was believed to be the oldest text of its kind to have been preserved. Cicero judged the aged radical to have been a “ready speaker.”

IN PYRRHUS’S OPINION, the Romans had been defeated and the war should have been over, but only now did the monarch from Epirus understand the depth of Rome’s resources and its stamina. To keep his army fed and paid in a foreign land was prohibitively expensive, even more so now that he had recruited new mercenaries, mainly from southern Italy. Large sums of money had to be raised if he was to stay in the game. The Italiote cities on whose behalf the campaign was being fought were requested (in a tone of voice that signified “required”) to finance operations.

The wealth of these cities and the extent of the demands made of them was startingly revealed in the late 1950s, when archaeologists unearthed a stone box containing thirty-eight bronze tablets with writing incised on them from the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Locri, a port on the toe of Italy. Seven can be dated to between 281 and 275, the years of Pyrrhus’s Italian adventure. During that time, no less than 11,240 silver talents (about six hundred and forty thousand modern pounds of silver) were paid to the king from the temple income as a “contribution to the common cause.” With this huge sum, a force of between twenty thousand and twenty-four thousand mercenaries could be paid their customary salary of one drachma a day each for six years. The revenue of temples derived from taxes, collections, and gifts, from the sale of wheat, barley, and olive oil grown on temple lands, the sale of homemade tiles and bricks and, last but not least, from temple prostitution, a custom at Locri in times of crisis. One of the city’s largest payments was made after the Battle of Heraclea. We can safely assume that its neighbors in the region made similar contributions.

Seeing that the Senate refused to make peace, Pyrrhus had no option but to resume hostilities. In the spring of 279, he marched his army, forty thousand strong, slowly north through Apulia and encamped near the town of Asculum beside a bridge over the river Aufidus, then in full flood. The Romans faced them across the river. In the days before the battle, Pyrrhus’s troops became obsessed with the fact that one of the Roman consuls was Publius Decius Mus, whose father and grandfather had both “devoted” their lives to the gods of the underworld and fought suicidally to the death in the field. This had won Rome divine favor and victory.

The rumor (inaccurate, as it turned out) spread that this latest Decius Mus was planning the same religious act. The king was obliged to encourage his superstitious soldiers by saying that incantations and magic could not defeat arms and men. He added that if anyone saw a man wearing a toga pulled over his head, the prescribed costume for a devotio, they should make sure not to kill him but to take him alive. A message was sent to the consul forbidding him to try to devote himself.

Yet again, the surviving accounts of an ancient battle are confused and contradictory. It appears that the fighting took place over two days. To enable an engagement, the Romans were allowed to cross the river, but Pyrrhus found himself on rough ground unsuitable for both his cavalry and his phalanx. Inconclusive and scrappy fighting lasted until nightfall. At first light, the king sent skirmishers to occupy the battlefield and so deny it to the Romans. He then drew up his main forces for battle on a level plain where they would be able to operate with greater ease. His cavalry was placed on the wings, with the elephants once again held in reserve. The Greek army faced four Roman legions with roughly the same number of auxiliary troops.

Since Heraclea, the Romans had thought hard about how to deal with the elephant problem. This time they fielded wagons equipped with movable poles tipped with scythes, three-pronged spikes, grappling irons, or flaming devices wrapped in tow and pitch. These were swung into the elephants’ faces and had some success in disturbing the animals, at least to start with.

The Greek cavalry on the left wing retreated, and Pyrrhus extended his center to fill the gap they left behind them. Meanwhile, some Roman allies arriving late for the battle saw that the enemy camp was poorly defended and seized the opportunity to capture and loot it. Eventually, Pyrrhus, with his cavalry and elephants, succeeded in breaking up the front lines of two Roman legions. The fighting was fierce, and the king was seriously wounded in the arm by a javelin, but the day was his.

However, the consuls managed to extricate their forces and withdrew to their camp across the river. They had lost six thousand men, but, as had happened at Heraclea, the winners also suffered losses. According to the king’s war commentaries (no longer extant), three and a half thousand of his soldiers were killed. Because his camp had been fired and destroyed, he had lost all his tents, pack animals, and slaves. His army was compelled to sleep under the open sky. Many of the wounded died from lack of food and medical supplies.

The Battle of Asculum was as disastrous a victory as could be imagined. Plutarch summed up the king’s predicament:

LUCK STRUCK again for the restless monarch. Just when his Italian campaign was losing steam, two new and enticing opportunities presented themselves. The inexperienced young king of Macedonia had gone down to defeat and death in a great battle with an invading Celtic horde. Pyrrhus had always yearned for the Macedonian throne and Alexander’s realm. If he could only find a way out of his obligations to Tarentum, he could cross back into Greece and drive the barbarians away. Epirus would certainly support the move, for it worried that the Celts might turn their gaze in its direction. Pyrrhus could hardly imagine a more glorious goal than to be the acknowledged savior of the Hellenes.

Then messengers arrived at Tarentum from the rich Sicilian city-state of Syracuse. Once more than capable of looking after itself, Syracuse was now riven by internal disputes. The numerous other Greek communities on the island were also politically unstable, veering wildly between rule by a despot and a rowdy democracy. For many years, the Carthaginians had controlled western Sicily. Always fearful that the Greeks would, if left to themselves, threaten their trade routes in the Western Mediterranean, they saw in their present confusion a chance to take control of the entire island. Hence the desperate Syracusan appeal to Pyrrhus to cross over from Tarentum, become the city’s supreme commander, and combat Carthaginian aggression.

There is no evidence, but we can safely guess that the king had long meditated as a career option not to stop at Italy but to press on westward to the invasion of Carthage, a sail of only 130 miles from Sicily. Indeed, his late father-in-law, Agathocles, who had been the ruler of Syracuse until his death in 289 (surprisingly, in his bed, despite the most colorful of careers), had anticipated him by leading an expedition against the North African merchant-state. Admittedly it had failed, but it was not in Pyrrhus’s nature to be disheartened by the difficulty of an enterprise, rather the opposite. The future was always bright.

The king’s weakness was not uncertainty or excessive caution but, rather, a short attention span for the matter at hand. Rome, a tougher prey to engorge than he had expected, was already beginning to recede from the front of his mind. He decided to accept the invitation from Syracuse, rather than the Celtic challenge. He never explained his choice, but we may suppose that the West offered new, untrodden lands and an Alexandrine vista of unending conquest, whereas the East was tediously familiar and crowded with powerful competitors and fellow claimants.

Not unnaturally, the Tarentines were extremely upset by Pyrrhus’s demarche, but he promised to return in due course and resume his campaign. He also took the precaution of installing garrisons in all the Italiote cities, although this augmented his already rising unpopularity in Greater Greece.

Carthage was also angered. Just when its dream of taking all Sicily under its control was about to be realized, the last thing it wanted was for a general of Pyrrhus’s ability to champion the Sicilian Greeks. It immediately sought an alliance with Rome against the king. This would keep the Republic in the war and so make it unsafe for Pyrrhus to leave Italy.

After a brief demurral, the Senate agreed to a third treaty with Carthage, the terms of which survive in the Greek translation of Polybius. The previous accords had in large part been designed to protect Carthage’s trading interests and had set down the parties’ respective zones of influence and exclusion, with Rome mostly as the junior partner. These restrictions were now overridden in the current emergency. The key clauses read:

The Republic knew little of the sea and had few warships. The treaty was weighted in its favor, for it brought into play the resources of the Mediterranean’s naval superpower; so it would now be easy to blockade Tarentum by sea and reduce the likelihood of any new reinforcements coming in from Epirus. By contrast, Rome was under no obligation to go to Carthage’s aid in Sicily.

PYRRHUS’S ADVENTURES IN Sicily followed a familiar pattern. Before his own arrival there, he sent Cineas ahead to prepare the ground diplomatically. Then, in the summer of 278, he set sail, this time with a comparatively small army of eight thousand infantry and some cavalry and elephants. He lifted the Punic siege of Syracuse and entered the city to a hero’s welcome. He marched triumphally across the island, liberating city after city, and besieged the port of Lilybaeum (today’s Marsala) at Sicily’s far western end, the only stronghold not under new Greek management.

The Carthaginians changed their tune and proposed peace terms, which included a large indemnity and the provision of ships. Clearly, they were tempting Pyrrhus to return to Italy (despite the treaty with Rome), and he was tempted. In his absence, consular armies were regaining their dominance in Greater Greece and the situation needed to be retrieved before it was too late. Unfortunately, the royal council, which included Sicilian representatives, rejected the offer. No deals were to be struck until the last Carthaginian had been chased from the island.

The shine was rubbing off the Molossian king. Lilybaeum proved to be impregnable by land and would fall only to a sea blockade, but unfortunately the Greeks did not have enough ships for the purpose. So Pyrrhus, who had been behaving despotically, decided to play double or quits. He would invade Carthage on its home territory. To transport the war to Africa meant commissioning a new fleet, and that, in turn, meant taxing his Sicilian allies and demanding oarsmen and sailors. The plan aroused furious opposition.

Carthage spied a chance to turn its fortunes around and dispatched a powerful new army to the island. Meanwhile, the Samnites and Sabellian tribes in Lucania and Bruttium sent an embassy to Syracuse begging the king to return as quickly as possible, for Rome was forcing them into submission. In other words, his overland link to Tarentum was under threat and unless he acted now his entire position in Sicily and southern Italy might collapse.

So in the late summer of 276, Pyrrhus set sail from Syracuse with 110 warships and many transports. On his way north up the Sicilian coast, he was surprised by a Punic fleet that sank 70 ships and severely damaged others. Luckily, the transports escaped and his army landed safely at Locri. It was an ignominious end to a high undertaking.

Before marching to Tarentum, the king tried to capture the strategically important city of Rhegium, which was garrisoned by the Romans and some Italian mercenaries. The attempt failed and the mercenaries mauled his army as it made off. Pyrrhus himself was badly wounded on the head. A huge enemy soldier in splendid armor challenged him to a duel “if he is still alive.” With typical chutzpah, the new Achilles accepted. Plutarch writes, if we are to believe him:

The king managed to extricate his forces from the fight and made his way back to Locri. He had under his command twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, and was in urgent need of funds with which to pay them. He again required a substantial sum from the Temple of Zeus. He also foolishly plundered another temple for its treasures, which, he had to acknowledge, was an act of sacrilege. The ships transporting the stolen goods ran into a storm, and Pyrrhus superstitiously gave back most of what he had taken.

All sides in the war were tiring. Plague at Rome depressed public opinion and Livy reports that the number of citizens fell from 287,222 in 280 to 271,224 in 275. The Samnites and other Italian allies of Pyrrhus had been weakened by heavy losses during five long years of war. Nevertheless, in the spring of 275 two consular armies marched south and took up positions designed to prevent an advance on Rome. Meanwhile, Pyrrhus, in order to help the hard-pressed Samnites, moved northward with a force of about twenty thousand men. He meant to meet the consuls singly and found one of them at the Samnite town of Malventum (later Beneventum).

He detached part of his army to intercept the other consul in case he came up to help his colleague. With the remainder, he was now outnumbered by the Roman legions, and decided on a bold night operation. His idea was, under cover of darkness, to find high ground from which he could make a surprise attack on the enemy camp. He set out after sunset, with his best troops and his fiercest elephants. He marched on a wide circuit through dense woods, but his soldiers lost their way and straggled. This created delay, their torches failed, and daybreak revealed them to the Romans as they descended the heights. The consul led his forces out and routed the Epirotes. Some of the elephants were captured. This engagement was followed by a conventional battle on the plain. Showers of burning arrows stampeded the remaining elephants, which ran in panic among their own men. Pyrrhus’s camp was captured and his army driven from the field.

The king did not entirely give up his dream of a western empire, but this was, to be realistic, the end of the expedition. As token of a hopeful return, he left a strong garrison at Tarentum under his son Helenus’s command, but with the rest of his troops—about eight thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry, less than half the number he had brought with him six years earlier—he set sail for Epirus. Despite his optimism, Italy had seen the last of him.

The Romans spent the next three years subduing the Samnites and their Sabellian cousins. Then they turned their attention to Tarentum, forcing out the Epirote garrison in 272 and compelling the Tarentines to hand over their fleet and pull down their walls. Tears in plenty rather than laughter now. Eventually, all the Greek cities in southern Italy came under Roman control.

As for Pyrrhus himself, his career went from good to worse. He defeated the existing king of Macedon, Antigonus Gonatas, and, to great applause, won back his throne. However, he had learned nothing from past experience and almost immediately alienated the Macedonians by occupying their towns with his troops and allowing some Celtic mercenaries to plunder the royal tombs at Aegae (archaeologists rediscovered them in 1976).

Unable to keep still, he suddenly turned up at the head of an army in the Peloponnese, with a mission to restore the ancestral rights of a Spartan general in his employ. Bogged down by a fierce Spartan defense, he then announced his intention to expel Antigonus from Greece and marched to Argos to do battle with him. Maddened by the killing of one of his sons, he challenged the Macedonian ruler to come down from the hills where he was encamped and fight for his kingdom. “Many roads to death lie open to Pyrrhus if he is tired of life,” came the dismissive response.

Argos begged the king to go away and leave them to their neutrality, but Pyrrhus was having none of it. An Argive friend of his let him and his soldiers into the city at dead of night. The alarm was raised, and Antigonus sent in some troops to help repel the Epirotes. Pyrrhus was in the marketplace and saw he was in trouble, so sounded a retreat. He sent a message to troops outside the walls, asking them to create a diversion. Due to a mishearing, reinforcements were sent into Argos through the same gate by which Pyrrhus was trying to leave. The result was that he was immobilized in a traffic jam. He attacked a local man, whose mother happened to be looking down from a rooftop. Seeing that her son was in danger, she flung a roof tile at Pyrrhus, which struck him in the base of the neck. His sight blurred and he fell off his horse. The man pulled him into a doorway. He decided to chop Pyrrhus’s head off but, made nervous by the recovering king’s glare, slashed him across the mouth and chin. It was some time before he finished the job.

PYRRHUS ACHIEVED NOTHING that lasted. Achilles and Alexander were his evil angels, but in his case the pursuit of glory was not accompanied by the necessary unswerving obsessiveness. Unlike his cousin, the conqueror of the Persian Empire, Pyrrhus’s cult of himself was not conducted within a broader framework of policy but was undiluted egoism.

He certainly had good qualities. He had a charismatic personality, a generous nature, and, on the battlefield, he led from the front. He enthusiastically flung himself into hand-to-hand combat, taking wounds and risking death. Famous for his chivalry, he was a courteous paladin of the ancient world. He was much admired for his genius as a field commander. Contemporaries said that other successor kings resembled Alexander,

From our perspective thousands of years later, it is hard to understand his military reputation. This may not be his fault so much as that of our literary sources, whose accounts of his battles are confused and maddeningly vague just when precision is most needed.

For all the brilliance, energy, and charm, a cloud of pointlessness hangs over Pyrrhus’s career. He was an opportunist who failed to make anything of his opportunities. The danger the Molossian king posed to Rome was serious but never life-threatening. One senses that he failed to research his projects sufficiently. He did not understand until it was too late the extent of the Republic’s human reserves. The rapid Hydra-like rebirth of Laevinus’s mangled army came as a severe shock, but by then he was committed to Tarentum and war.

However, the failure of his Italian expedition had one major consequence. The Greeks now recognized that a new player had joined the international table. They were hypnotized by the steely stare of this warlike state that now dominated the Italian peninsula. For their part, having bloodied Pyrrhus’s nose, the Romans hoped they had persuaded the quarrelsome Hellenic world to mind its own business and leave them free to conduct theirs without interruption.

Now that they had won responsibility for the city-states of southern Italy, they wondered whether they might have to keep an eye open for trouble in Sicily, just across the narrow strip of water between Rhegium and Messana (today’s Messina). Instability there would act like an airborne infection capable of blowing across seas to an exhausted peninsula, which more than anything needed a period of peace and quiet.

After all, Pyrrhus had warned them. On his final departure from Tarentum, he discussed with his entourage the consequences of his failure in Sicily: “My friends, what a wrestling ring we are leaving behind for the Carthaginians and the Romans.”

11 All at Sea

ON ITS MISSION OF EXPLORATION, THE FLEET sailed out of the Mediterranean, through the Pillars of Hercules, and into the unnerving swell of the Atlantic Ocean. It turned south and set its course along the generous bulge of western Africa.

The Pillars are on either side of the narrow stretch of water we call the Strait of Gibraltar, and for most well-informed people of the fifth century they marked the western limits of the known world. The name was a reminder that the demigod once passed this way while undertaking his labors. So, too, did Greek explorers and traders, but their heyday was over. Massilia and some settlements in northern Spain were the only Hellenic outposts left. These Occidental waters had become the monopoly of Phoenician merchants, especially those from the great North African city of Carthage.

Sixty galleys with fifty oars apiece were commanded by Hanno, a member of a leading Carthaginian family. His orders, issued sometime about or after the year 500, were to found trading outposts on the African coast. Two days from Gibraltar, the explorers set up their first mini-colony and then arrived at an inland lagoon that was covered with reeds. Elephants and other animals were feeding there. They continued sailing and established some more settlements along the way, which in due course probably became the source of pickled and salted fish that Carthage exported to Greece; perhaps also Tyrian purple dye was extracted from sea snails harvested on this coast.

Carthage was interested in what is called “dumb barter” with African tribes south of the Sahara, as Herodotus, the Greek “father of history,” explained in the fifth century:

In the dispatch he wrote about his expedition, which was displayed as an inscription in the Temple of Baal Hammon, in Carthage, Hanno made no mention of the gold trade, doubtless to avoid alerting competition.

The basic purpose of the enterprise had now been achieved and, despite the fact that they suffered from a lack of water and blazingly hot weather, the flotilla sailed on, presumably motivated now by curiosity and a taste for excitement. At one point, the ships tried to make landfall, but savages clothed in animal skins made it clear they were unwelcome by throwing stones at the visitors. On another occasion, some black men ran away from them.

A number of days later, they arrived at the Niger Delta, where they encamped on an island. Hanno wrote:

The Carthaginians were not sure how to interpret all this, although we recognize that they had encountered an erupting volcano.

Some time later, as they continued sailing south, they arrived at another island in a lake, where they came across some mysterious beings:

Another puzzling encounter, then, this time between homo sapiens and some primate cousins.

Thirty-five days had elapsed since Hanno left Carthage and, running short of provisions, he ordered his ships back to the familiar Mediterranean and safety.

THE CARTHAGINIANS IN particular and the Phoenicians in general were intrepid explorers and traders. They usually acted for commercial reasons, although as early as the seventh century an Egyptian pharaoh with a penchant for grandiose schemes commissioned some Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa. Their fate is uncertain, but if they succeeded—and it was claimed that they did, after a journey lasting two years—it was to little purpose, for the continent’s landmass was unexpectedly large and the sea route was too long to be of practical use to denizens of the Mediterranean.

Himilco, a contemporary of Hanno and perhaps his brother, made another daring trading voyage and published a report of his adventures (now lost, although quoted by a fourth-century A.D. Latin author). He, too, sailed to the Pillars of Heracles, but turned northward. His aim was to reconnoiter the Atlantic coast of Spain, Portugal, and France. This time there was no question of searching for gold but for control of the trade in tin for making bronze and in lead, the two newly exploited metals of the age.

He reached Brittany, rich in ore, and perhaps even Heligoland (a source of amber), but seems not to have stopped off at Britain. In his dispatch, he made his journey sound as difficult and unpleasant as he could. He reported marine monsters, dangerous sandbars, and carpets of thick, clogging seaweed. The ocean was terrifyingly vast, if only one could see it through the fog. One senses that Himilco was talking up the dangers to discourage any rivals from following in his wake.

The Carthaginians were ambitious, energetic, and clever. They kept in touch with their mother city, Tyre, but in the sixth century Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to it for thirteen years. According to the Bible, an excited Ezekiel crowed on behalf of his single god, “I will stop the music of your songs. No more will the sound of harps be heard among your people. I will make your island a bare rock, a place for fishermen to spread their nets.” The prophet spoke too soon. The city held out, but eventually agreed to recognize Babylonian suzerainty. In later centuries, Egyptian and Persian invaders took their toll, and finally, in 332, Alexander the Great captured Tyre after another bitter siege. Furious at having been held up, he had two thousand citizens crucified on the beach and thirty thousand sold into slavery.

It was evident that an independent future for Phoenicians did not lie in the East. The balance of power shifted toward Carthage, whose location and excellent harbor in the Bay of Tunis suited it well for the development of trade in the Western Mediterranean. With time, its citizens were “transformed from Tyrians into Africans” and became leaders of an informal empire of Phoenician colonies, usually small mercantile outposts, throughout the region. The Atlantic port of Gades, an island stronghold separated from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea, fell under its control around the year 500.

The Carthaginians were congenital seafarers and had little interest in acquiring land. However, to protect their “pond” and to exclude other traders, they occupied western Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and southern Spain. They also acquired footholds along the North African coast, although there were no good harbors between the Atlantic and Carthage itself. This was their backyard, and woe betide any wandering Greeks whose ship strayed into their waters. Drowning was the best that could be expected.

IN ORDER TO lower their reliance on food imports, the Carthaginians annexed the fertile hinterland that lay to the south of their capital. They became expert farmers, and were guided by a celebrated writer on agriculture named Mago. He disliked urban living: “If you have bought land, you should sell your town house so that you won’t be tempted to worship the city’s household gods instead of those of the country.”

Although his book is lost, it was often cited by Greek and Latin authors. Mago advised on planting and pruning vines, on the management of olive trees and fruit trees, on growing marsh plants, on beekeeping (including the lost art of “getting bees from the carcass of a bullock or ox,” once known to Samson), and on preserving pomegranates, known to the Romans as malum Punicum, or the Punic apple. One of his recipes was for a sweet raisin wine, or pas-sum (still drunk today in Italy as passito). Carthaginian amphorae have been found all over the Mediterranean, evidence of a thriving export trade.

The city of Carthage itself, which consumed these provisions, stood on a triangular peninsula connected to the mainland by an isthmus about two miles wide at its narrowest point. On one side lay a lagoon and on the other the sea. Any visitor walking in from the countryside was confronted by a massive battlemented wall that ran across the isthmus. It was more than forty feet high and thirty feet wide, with four-story towers every fifty or sixty yards. Inside, stables housed elephants and horses. In front were two ramparts and a wide ditch. The wall was said to have continued for twenty miles, on a less gargantuan scale, around the entire city. (By comparison, Rome’s walls ran for a little more than thirteen miles.) It was a bold general who imagined that he could capture Carthage.

In his historical novel about Carthage, Salammbo, Gustave Flaubert vividly evokes the urban panorama:

One of these internal walls surrounded the city’s heart, a hill called Byrsa and the two harbors, forming a citadel. Here also was a public square, or forum, and a council chamber outside which justice was administered in the open air. Three narrow winding streets, lined with six-story houses, led up to the top of Byrsa.

The first or outer harbor catered to merchant vessels. It was rectangular, measuring about 1,600 by 1,000 feet, and opened to the sea through a single entrance that could, if necessary, be barred with iron chains. Outside this entrance, a massive quay was built where merchant ships could load and unload goods. At the other end of the rectangle, a narrow channel led into the inner naval harbor. This was a circle of water about 1,000 feet in diameter, with a small island in the middle. Appian writes:

Around both the island and the circumference of the circle were quays and sheds to accommodate two hundred and twenty warships, as well as arsenals and shipbuilding yards. Two Ionic columns stood in front of each shed and gave the impression of continuous porticoes running around the island and the harbor’s edge. All these state-of-the-art facilities, probably completed in the late fourth century, were a state secret. They were surrounded by a high double wall and were invisible even from the mercantile harbor.

This was the city that, legend had it, Dido had built and her treacherous lover, Aeneas, had abandoned. Her dying curse of unceasing enmity between Carthage and Rome was approaching its fulfillment.

THE CARTHAGINIANS RECEIVED a bad press from ancient historians. There was sarcastic talk of Punica fides, “Punic good faith,” meaning sharp dealing and betrayal. Plutarch, writing in the second century A.D. but following some much older source, claims:

There is hardly any surviving evidence for this harsh judgment—with one colossal exception, their religious practices, to which (like other Semitic peoples) they were fiercely attached. There were many temples, shrines, and sacred enclosures, or tophets, in Carthage. The city’s most popular deities in a numerous pantheon were Baal Hammon, Lord of the Altars of Incense, and his wife, Tanit, Face of Baal. Tanit’s name suggests that she was subordinate to her husband, but in fact she was more than his equal. Once the Carthaginians had acquired their North African lands, they felt the need for a guarantor of life and fertility and looked to Tanit, as their mother goddess, to fill that role.

Various ancient texts report a dark side to Punic worship. The Bible has it that the Phoenicians sacrificed small children. A king of Judah desecrated one of their holy places “so that no one could sacrifice his son or daughter as a burnt offering,” and the prophet Jeremiah quotes the Jewish God as saying, “They have built altars for Baal in order to burn their children in the fire as sacrifices. I never commanded them to do this; it never even entered my mind.”

The Greek Diodorus Siculus, not the most reliable of historians, has left a celebrated description of a Carthaginian attempt to placate an angry Baal. He equated Baal not with the chief Greek god, Zeus, but with his terrifying father, Cronos, who ate up his own progeny:

According to Plutarch, parents saved their own infants by replacing them with street children, whom they purchased, and loud music was played at the place of sacrifice to drown out the victims’ screams.

Modern scholars were unsure what to make of these exotic holocausts. Were they invented by hostile propagandists? If there was any truth in the stories, perhaps animal sacrifices were substituted at some point for human beings (as in the legend of Abraham and Isaac). Then, in the 1920s, a tophet was unearthed containing the burned remains of young children. For a time, it was argued that this was merely a cemetery for dead newborn and stillborn infants, offered postmortem to appease the gods. Further investigation, however, revealed the remains of children up to four years old, and inscriptions made the nature of the sacrifice explicit. Thus, one father wrote: “It was to the lady Tanit and to Baal Hammon that Bomilcar son of Hanno, grandson of Milkiathon, vowed this son of his own flesh. Bless him you!”

A NATION WITH a small territory will necessarily have a small population, and so it proved with Carthage. The geographer Strabo claimed a total number of 700,000 inhabitants, but that is conceivable only if it encompassed the entire countryside and the other townships that made up the Carthaginian estate. There were surely never more than 200,000 people of pure Phoenician descent living outside the city walls. At the time of its greatest prosperity in the early third century, the city probably housed about 400,000 souls, including slaves and resident aliens.

For a nation with international and imperial responsibilities, Carthage did not have enough citizens to stock its armies. To fight its wars, it routinely recruited mercenaries, from among African tribesmen and, farther afield, from Spain and Gaul. This practice brought with it certain dangers, for mercenaries are motivated by pay rather than by patriotism and have been known to turn on their defenseless employers if they have a grievance. Sea, not land, being the Punic element, citizens, perhaps of the poorer sort, apparently helped to man its ships.

It was unusual for non-Greek states to have an established constitution, but Carthage and Rome were exceptions to the rule. To the Hellenic mind, this meant they were not altogether barbarians—that is to say, incomprehensible foreigners whose speech was pilloried as sounding like “bar bar”—and, at least in this regard, were allowed to become honorary members of the club of civilized nations. The philosopher Aristotle was a connoisseur of constitutions and found that the Carthaginians had “an excellent form of government.” He went on, “The superiority of their constitution is proved by the fact that the common people remain loyal to it. They have never had any revolution worth speaking of, and have never been under the rule of a popular dictator”—unlike many if not most Hellenic states, he might have added.

The Punic and Roman constitutions were in some ways similar, for they were both “mixed”—that is, they contained elements of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. It is unlikely that Carthage (pace Dido) was ever ruled by a king or queen, but at various times one leading family or clan dominated the government. In the third century, there were two chief officials, the sufets; this is the same word as the Hebrew shophet, usually translated as “judge,” as in the Book of Judges. So we may infer that sufets exercised a judicial as well as an executive role. Like Roman consuls, they were elected by an assembly of the People, held office for only a year, and probably shared power with one other colleague. Candidates for office had to be wellborn and wealthy.

A Council of Elders drawn from the upper class advised the sufets on the full range of political and administrative issues; there were several hundred members, and a standing committee of thirty dealt with pressing business and, as is the way with such groups, probably managed the council’s agenda. If council and sufets agreed on a course of action, there was no need for it to be submitted to the assembly. So far, so conventional. More constitutionally innovative was a special panel of 104 members of the Council of Elders. Called the Court of the Hundred and Four Judges, it controlled justice and the law courts and, like the Spartan ephors, looked after state security and supervised the activities of officials. It had something in common with a Ministry of the Interior in a police state.

Unlike Roman consuls, the sufets had no military duties. There was a separate post of general to which anybody could be elected. Carthage’s characteristic mode was one of peaceful commerce. When wars did occur, they were usually fought a long way from home and regarded as short-term upheavals best handled by short-term appointees. In times of peace, sufets could simultaneously serve as generals, too, but if Carthage was at war the door was opened wider to attract proven military ability.

Self-confidence was an essential qualification for Punic generals, for theirs was a dangerous job. Failure on the battlefield was completely unacceptable to the authorities, and often led to instant crucifixion. Success also brought negative consequences, for the home government feared that victorious commanders would return to Carthage with their mercenaries and seize power.

Of the three elements of the Punic constitution, there is no doubt that oligarchy had the upper hand. The Carthaginians’ main occupation was making money, and few objected to the wealthy being in charge of government. The mass of people failed to develop the solidarity and capacity for collective action that marked the Roman populus. In our terms today, Carthage was more of an international corporation than a nation-state.

Whatever reservations we may have about Punic politics and society, it is worth recalling Cicero’s remark: “Carthage would not have maintained an empire for six hundred years had it not been ruled with statesmanship and professionalism.”

THE GREEKS HAD largely been driven out of the western seas, but they had no intention of letting go of Sicily. With intermittent hostilities between them and Carthage for three hundred years, the island was still the flash point between the two halves of the Mediterranean world. And now a newcomer had arrived on the scene, Rome. A spark presented itself.

If ever evidence were required of the danger posed by mercenaries, the story of what happened to the city of Messana, guardian of the straits between Sicily and Italy, stood as a terrible example. A band of daredevils from Campania was hired by the ruler of Syracuse. On his death in 289, they found themselves unexpectedly out of work. They liked Sicily and the soldier’s life away from home, but what were they to do? Reluctantly en route back to Italy, they came upon wealthy, beautiful, pacific but gullible Messana. This was the mercenaries’ last chance to stay on the island, and they had a smart idea. They insinuated themselves into the city as friends and, betraying their unsuspecting hosts, one night took possession of it. According to Polybius:

This hijacking of a city went unpunished. The mercenaries, who named themselves Mamertines—after Mamers, the Sabellian version of the war god Mars—transformed Messana from a quiet trading emporium into a raiding base. They applied the only skills they were able to command: they made a living from plundering nearby towns, capturing unwary merchant ships, holding people they abducted for ransom, and generally disseminating mayhem. They impartially damaged Carthaginian and Greek interests.

Eventually, the greatest power in western Sicily, Syracuse, decided that enough was enough. In about 270, its young despot, Hiero, defeated the Mamertines in a pitched battle and arrested their leaders. This halted their depredations, although they still held Messana. A few years later, Hiero felt it was time to put an end to the Mamertines altogether and besieged Messana.

These superannuated and ageing hirelings made a fateful decision, or, rather, two decisions. Some of them appealed for help to a passing Carthaginian fleet, which accepted the commission and garrisoned the citadel. When he saw Punic ships in the harbor, Hiero did not want more trouble than he could handle and tactfully retired to Syracuse. Then another faction called on the Romans for support.

The Senate was at a loss. The Mamertines were the most disreputable of victims. Across the narrow water from Messana some other Campanians, this time serving in the Roman army, had been sent to Rhegium as a garrison during the war against Pyrrhus. Inspired by the Mamertines, they had committed a copycat massacre of its citizens and taken over the town. Rome refused to tolerate such a scandalous breach of faith and sent an army to take the city. This it did, killing most of the renegades. Three hundred survivors were sent to Rome, where they were marched into the Forum, flogged, and beheaded.

How could the Senate conceivably go to the rescue of men who had committed exactly the same crime? But this was what happened, and the explanation was reason of state. The undeceived Hiero observed that the Romans were using “pity for those at risk as a cloak for their own advantage.” The Carthaginians already dominated much of Sicily, and might very well cast a predatory eye northward across the narrow straits if they won Messana.

From the Senate’s point of view, as Polybius noted, “they would prove the most vexatious and dangerous of neighbors, since they would hem Italy in on all sides and threaten every part of the country. This was a prospect that Rome dreaded. It was obvious that they would soon be masters in Sicily, if the Mamertines were not helped.” The anxiety was not misplaced, for Sardinia and Corsica were already Punic possessions and the Etruscan port of Caere was so full of Carthaginian traders that it had been nicknamed Punicum. What was more, the cities of Greater Greece would expect their new master to consult their interests; the loss of Sicily to the “barbarian” African power would be a terrible symbolic blow to the Hellenic cause.

Opinion in the Senate was finely balanced and, most unusually, the matter was referred to a popular Assembly without a recommendation. Despite the fact that the Republic was worn down by years of nonstop fighting, a resolution in favor of sending help was carried. A consul was sent to Messana at the head of an army. He managed to slip through a sea blockade. The Carthaginian commander, lacking instructions, was finessed into withdrawing his troops from the city. The authorities in Carthage promptly had him crucified “for want of judgment and courage.”

Both the Carthaginians and the Syracusans were shocked by the turn of events and, despite their long enmity, entered into an improbable mariage de convenance with the common aim of expelling the Romans. However, the consul picked off each of their armies in separate engagements before they could join forces. The astute Hiero had second thoughts; judging that it was in Syracuse’s long-term interest to switch sides, he agreed to an alliance with Rome, from which he never strayed during the rest of a long life. In the coming years he remained an invaluable friend, offering the legions a base and local supplies.

The parties had slipped into war without altogether intending to do so or being fully conscious of the consequences. But once full-scale hostilities had opened, the true reasons for the conflict emerged like a mountain out of mist. Dio explains that Messana was no more than a pretext:

Messana and the Mamertines faded into the background. (In fact, we never learn what was the Mamertines’ final fate; they simply vanish and one can only hope they came to a bad end.)

The Senate cannot have had firm war aims. To secure Messana as a Rome-friendly outpost may have been enough at the outset. But once Hiero’s friendship had been won and Syracuse became, in effect, a client kingdom, it was possible to be a little more ambitious and attempt to push the Carthaginians back eastward into their traditional zone of influence. Rome could then gather the Greek settlements in central Sicily under its security umbrella. It soon became clear, though, that Carthage would not tolerate a Roman presence in Sicily, and it followed that conquest of the entire island was the only rational response.

Campaigning went well for the Romans, who captured Acragas, an important Greek city and the Punic headquarters. Nevertheless, the Senate realized that however well the war went on land, it would be impossible to expel the Carthaginians as long as they commanded the seas, transporting reinforcements, blockading harbors, and raiding Italy. Rome, which had never been much interested in maritime matters, would have to build a fleet.

THE SEA WAS busy but perilous. For hundreds of years sailors, Phoenicians and Greeks especially, had crisscrossed the Mediterranean, ferrying wheat from the Black Sea, boat timber from Berytus, woolen fabrics from Miletus. Heavy goods such as oil and wine were much more easily transported by ship than on carts lumbering along unmetaled roads. Merchant vessels could carry from one hundred tons of cargo to a maximum of about five hundred tons. Their hulls were broad and well rounded, and they were equipped with a single low, rectangular sail (sometimes with additional triangular sails). They had no rudders, and one or two steering oars fastened to the stern were used instead.

Warships were very different creatures—sleek, fast death machines. They were galleys with rows of oars to supplement sails. By the third century, the quinqereme was the craft of choice. It carried a crew of some three hundred oarsmen. It might be about forty meters long and, at sea level, five wide. The deck stood about three meters above the water. A metal beak was attached to the keel and projected from the bow, and the main tactic of attack was to ram an enemy midships and sink or, at least, swamp it. A quinquereme at action stations could attain more than ten knots an hour, but only in spurts. Five knots was a more likely average.

The word quinquereme derives from the Latin for “five oars.” This is misleading, for it seems it was oarsmen not oars that were arranged in groups of five. They controlled three oars set one above another. Two men rowed with each of the top two oars and one with the bottom oar. The team occupied a wooden box, or frame, that jutted out of the ship’s side.

Ships of every kind were vulnerable to bad weather and tended to hug the coast for safety. Few ventured out in the winter months. This was not only to avoid storms but also because of the increased cloudiness. In the daytime, mariners navigated by the sun and landmarks, and by the stars at night. Without clear skies, they were lost.

The Carthaginians had the most technically advanced navy, and for Rome to create a fleet from a standing start that could compete with them was a bold, some must have said foolhardy, enterprise. But just as the serendipitous capture of an Enigma code machine helped the British win the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War, so chance came to the Republic’s rescue. Apparently, quinqueremes were unknown in Italy and Roman shipbuilders were completely inexperienced at building them. Polybius observes:

At the beginning of the war, Rome had no warships of any kind and borrowed some small secondhand vessels from Tarentum and other Italiote cities to guard the transport of troops to Messana. Luckily, all went well, and, even more luckily, a Punic quinquereme ventured too close to shore, ran aground, and fell into Roman hands.

We know from the discovery of the remains of a third-century military craft off the port of Lilybaeum that each part of it was marked with different letters, enabling speedy “flat pack” assembly. So it cannot have been a difficult or lengthy task to produce copycat versions of the captured ship. Within two months, despite the inexperience of their shipwrights, the Romans were the proud owners of a brand-new fleet, comprising one hundred quinqeremes and twenty triremes (galleys rowed by oarsmen in groups of three).

While the ships were being built, sailors—more than thirty thousand of them—were recruited. Their training had to be undertaken on dry land, however foolish those taking part must have felt. Polybius records what happened:

As soon as the ships were completed, they were launched and the crews went aboard for some “real-life” practice. Under the command of a consul-admiral, they then set sail for the high seas.

To have established a maritime arm in so short a space of time was an extraordinary achievement. In its wars with the Samnites and the campaigns against Pyrrhus, Rome had shown a capacity to hang on, to bear disaster, and to return grimly to the fray. Here was evidence now of a less reactive, more purely aggressive energy. The creation of a new fleet almost out of thin air revealed Rome’s unremitting enthusiasm for new challenges. It had learned how to upgrade itself into a more expansive, more irresistible state of being.

WOULD THIS UNTESTED fleet win victories against the marine superpower of the age? An instant setback and the consul’s humiliating capture by the enemy gave pause for thought. However hard the shipbuilders tried, the fact was that the Roman ships were heavier and clumsier than their Punic counterparts. The Carthaginians were masters of maneuver. They knew how to sink their opponents by ramming, and they avoided having to fight hand to hand.

Some creative but now anonymous Roman came up with a very clever idea that restored the balance of advantage. He invented a device called a corvus, or “raven.” This was a wooden bridge with low railings attached to a vertical pole. Probably fixed near a ship’s bow, it could swivel around and be raised or lowered by a system of pulleys. A spike was attached to its underside. A Roman warship would approach an enemy quinquereme and drop the bridge down onto its deck. The spike pierced the deck and held the bridge in place. Then a team of between seventy and a hundred marines, experienced soldiers all, crossed over to the other vessel and captured it.

In effect, the corvus transformed a sea battle into a land battle on water, and took the Carthaginians completely by surprise. In the summer of 260, the Romans received intelligence that the enemy was ravaging the countryside near Mylae (today’s Milazzo), not far from Sicily’s northeastern tip, and sent their entire fleet there. As soon as the Carthaginians sighted them, they sailed ahead without hesitation. They were full of scorn for these Italian amateurs and did not trouble to keep any formation. They were puzzled by the ravens but rowed on regardless.

To their dismay, the first thirty ships to engage were grappled and boarded. The rest of the Punic fleet saw what was happening and sheered off to encircle and ram the Romans. But they simply swung their gangways around to meet attacks from any direction. The Carthaginians, unnerved, turned and fled, having lost 50 ships out of a total of 130.

The Punic commander avoided execution because he had prophylactically sought and won advance permission from the authorities in Carthage to fight the battle. But when the cock-a-hoop Romans successfully extended their field of operations to Corsica and Sardinia his men mutinied and put him to death, perhaps by stoning.

An odd reversal of reputations was taking place. On the one hand, the Republic was ruling the waves, launching successful raids and scoring a devastating second victory over the enemy fleet; on the other, the Carthaginians were doing well on land in Sicily. They practiced a policy of attrition, avoiding open battle and forcing the Romans to undertake siege after lengthy siege of fortified hill town after hill town.

The Senate engaged in another strategic review. It was decided to exploit Rome’s new superiority at sea, bypass Sicily, and send an expeditionary force to attack Carthage itself. In 256, the two consuls and an armada of 330 ships set sail for North Africa; 120 foot soldiers joined each boat, making a total army strength of 120,000 in addition to the regular 100,000 oarsmen. This was a hugely ambitious project, with an unprecedented number of lives at risk.

The Carthaginians saw that this was a crisis point and assembled an even larger fleet of 350 galleys. The two sides met at Cape Ecnomus (today’s Poggio di Sant’Angelo, in Licata), on Sicily’s southern coast, and once again the Romans routed the enemy, sinking or capturing more than ninety ships. The way lay clear to the Punic capital.

The consuls disembarked safely to the east of Cape Bon, a promontory at the opposite end of the Gulf of Tunis from Carthage, and set about plundering the countryside, ravaging fertile estates and capturing twenty thousand slaves. The campaign could not have gotten off to a better start. But summer was wearing on, and the Senate recalled one of the consuls, who sailed back to Italy with much of the army, loot, and captives. His colleague, Marcus Atilius Regulus, was left behind to winter in Africa with fifteen thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and forty ships. The Carthaginians realized, as they were meant to do, that this was no brief raid but an invasion. The legions intended to stay.

The Punic army came to the relief of a fort only twenty or so miles from the town of Tunes (today’s Tunis). Nervous of the Roman infantry, its commanders did their best to avoid a set-piece battle but still managed to get dislodged, with heavy losses, from their safe position on high ground. Tunes then fell to Regulus. Refugees from the hinterland crowded into Carthage and food supplies fell dangerously low. The endgame was at hand.

The Carthaginians opened peace talks. Regulus was an unimaginative man with too high an opinion of himself. He wanted the campaign over during his year of office, and then the satisfaction of a triumph. He was in a hurry. Virtually master of the city, he felt that all he needed to do was state his terms for them to be accepted. These were unrealistically harsh and had the opposite of the intended effect. The Carthaginians were to withdraw from Sicily and Sardinia; all Roman prisoners of war were to be released, while Punic captives were to be ransomed. Rome’s war costs were to be paid and an annual tribute levied. Carthage would be allowed to go to war only with Rome’s permission. These conditions were tantamount to unconditional surrender, but while the situation of the Punic state was critical, it was by no means terminal. The talks foundered.

Meanwhile, the Carthaginian high command recognized that its generals were incompetent and, in the spring of 255, sought advice from a Spartan military expert on the best way of dealing with the invaders. Firm discipline and training were introduced, and the soldiers’ morale rose. The Punic army marched out and trounced the complacent Romans. The victory was won by cavalry outflanking the legions and destroying them. Regulus and five hundred others were captured, and of the rest of his force only two thousand made their escape from the field of slaughter.

Regulus’s fate is uncertain. He most probably died of natural causes in captivity. A tradition grew that he was released on his honor to negotiate a treaty at Rome. He advised the Senate to reject the Punic proposals and, keeping his word, returned to Carthage. According to a first-century historian, an acquaintance of Cicero:

Others report that he died from sleep deprivation.

The disaster put an end to the invasion, but it was not yet complete. The Senate had intended to send out a fleet to blockade Carthage while Regulus attacked from the city’s landward side. News of the debacle arrived before the fleet set out, but some 210 vessels were dispatched to rescue what was left of the expeditionary force. This they accomplished, brushing off a Carthaginian fleet and raiding the countryside for provisions. On their way home, though, they sailed into a tremendous storm. Hampered by their corvi, most ships were driven onto the rocks off the southeastern corner of Sicily. About 25,000 soldiers and 70,000 oarsmen drowned. In no previous war had Rome lost so many men at a single blow. The fleet was soon rebuilt, but in 253 it, too, was destroyed in a storm after raiding the African coast. This time, 150 ships were lost.

It is hard to know how much these catastrophes owed to bad luck. No doubt, something, but it seems that Rome’s admirals understood fighting better than they did seamanship. Whatever the explanation, the public in Italy was shocked by the losses at sea and even Rome could not stand this human hemorrhage. The decision to fight Carthage by sea had failed. The Carthaginians were exhausted, too, not only by the struggle with Rome but also by a long-standing insurgency by the Numidians, their African neighbors. The war had reached a stalemate. For the next two years, there was a lull in hostilities.

A NEW CLAUDIUS now arrived on the political scene at Rome. Grandson of Claudius Caecus, the Blind, Publius possessed a full share of the clan’s awkward, arrogant genes (or else was typecast by later disobliging historians). He was given the cognomen of Pulcher, meaning beautiful or pretty, so good looks can be inferred—or perhaps merely vanity about his looks.

The campaign in Sicily remained a long, hard slog, but Rome made some progress, capturing the Punic city of Panormus (today’s Palermo). Lilybaeum, on the island’s western tip, was one of Carthage’s last two strongholds. In 250, it was decided that a further effort should be made to clear Sicily of Carthaginians. A consular army and a new fleet of two hundred ships was sent out from Italy and invested the highly defensible port.

Consul for the following year, Claudius decided to launch a surprise attack on nearby Drepana (close to modern Trapani), the only other Punic base. Before battle commenced, he took the auspices in his capacity as admiral. An auspice was an omen as revealed through the observed behavior of birds—how they flew, sang, or ate. On this occasion, some sacred chickens were given food. They refused to touch it, a very bad sign, and Claudius ought to have aborted his enterprise, at least for that day. Instead, he lost his temper and threw the fowls into the sea, with the words “Let them drink, if they won’t eat!”

The raid was an embarrassing failure. Apparently the Roman ships were not equipped with the corvus, allowing the enemy full scope for maneuver and ramming. Claudius lost more than 90 galleys (out of 120), although many of the crew made it to shore and rejoined the army outside Lilybaeum.

But a fresh disaster quickly followed. A consular fleet of 120 ships accompanying 800 transports sailed from Syracuse to resupply the army outside Lilybaeum. It was outsmarted by the enemy and driven without a battle onto the rocky coastline of southern Sicily. The Carthaginian admiral, an experienced sailor, detected a change in the weather and withdrew behind a promontory, Cape Pachynus (today’s Cape Passero), leaving the Romans to face a tempest that blew unforgivingly at the shore. The entire fleet was wrecked, except for twenty ships.

Claudius was recalled and put on trial. He was accused of impiety as well as of commanding without due care and attention. A thunderstorm, a bad omen, halted the trial, but he was impeached a second time and found guilty. He was heavily fined and only just escaped the death penalty. He did not long survive his disgrace and may have killed himself. Not long after his death, one of his sisters, another chip off the old block, was returning home from the Games in her litter and was held up by large numbers of people in the street. “If only my brother were alive,” she exclaimed, “he might lose another fleet and thin out these crowds!”

ROME WAS NOW without a navy and was too exhausted to raise another one. Carthage also was content to let sleeping dogs lie. It was running out of money and had to debase its coinage. It was reduced to asking its North African neighbor Ptolemy II of Egypt for a large loan. The king was too wily to intervene in a quarrel between two states, both of which he wanted to be on good terms. He explained, dryly, “It is perfectly proper to assist one’s friends against one’s enemies, but not against one’s friends.” Meanwhile, the Senate had relatively few financial worries, for Hiero was minting large quantities of silver and bronze coinage and helped finance his ally’s war effort.

Although nothing much was happening to relieve the Sicilian stalemate, the Romans were in much the stronger position, for the enemy had only a toehold on the island. Lilybaeum and Drepana remained under siege. In 247, an energetic young Punic commander, Hamilcar Barca, arrived in Sicily after raiding southern Italy. He was probably too much of a realist to suppose he could win the war, but he aimed to at least wear the enemy down. He mostly avoided pitched battles and adopted guerrilla tactics. He made a permanent camp on a mountain not far from Panormus and later at the high-altitude city of Eryx, although the temple sacred to Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of fertility and sexual relations, which was perched on a mountaintop above Eryx, remained in Roman hands. From these bases, he launched hit-and-run attacks. He scored many successes, although they were more spectacular than of strategic importance.

The weary years passed. Both sides were being driven to despair by the strain of an unbroken succession of hard-fought Sicilian campaigns. Polybius writes:

This was because Hamilcar’s efforts did achieve something, for they persuaded Rome, not for the first time, that it would not win the war on land.

So the Senate braced itself for one last life-and-death effort. It would launch another fleet and, for the third time, try its fortunes at sea. It raised a loan, repayable in the event of victory, and no doubt the wealthy and the well-to-do were pressed for “voluntary” patriotic contributions. Individuals and syndicates each promised to pay for a quinquereme. Two hundred warships were built and fitted out in short order, on the more technically advanced and lighter model of a Punic galley captured off Lilybaeum. These vessels were not equipped with corvi, in the belief that their crews were expert enough now to outdo the enemy at its own combat methods.

The arrival of a new Roman fleet in Sicilian waters in the summer of 242 astonished the enemy. The Carthaginians’ own ships were laid up at home, for the crews were needed for continuing wars in Africa. By March of the following year, they managed to man about 170 ships, recruiting sailors mostly from citizens. The plan was to resupply Hamilcar’s forces, take on board some of his best mercenaries as marines, and return to the open sea to face the Romans. Because of a lack of transports, the warships were weighed down with freight.

Unluckily for the Carthaginians, the commanding consul, Gaius Lutatius Catulus, learned that they were approaching and lay in wait for them at the island of Aegusa off Lilybaeum. He warned his crews that a battle would probably take place the following day. With dawn, though, the weather deteriorated. A strong breeze blew and it would be difficult for the Romans to beat up against the wind. However, they dared not wait and risk the Carthaginian fleet’s linking with Hamilcar’s land forces, so an attack was decided. The fleet was marshaled in a single row facing the enemy.

The Carthaginians stowed their masts and, cheering one another on, advanced toward the enemy. Their confidence was ill-placed: the heavily laden ships were clumsy to maneuver; the new crews were poorly trained; and such marines as there were were raw recruits. They were swiftly put to flight. Fifty ships were sunk outright and seventy captured. The poor remainder raised their sails and ran before the wind, which had swung to an easterly, to make their escape. The victorious Roman consul sailed to the army at Lilybaeum and busied himself with disposing of the men and ships he had captured. This was a considerable task, for he had in his possession nearly ten thousand prisoners.

Carthage had shot its bolt. No longer in control of the seas, it could not supply its forces in Sicily and had none at home with which to continue the war. Hamilcar was given full powers to take what steps he deemed necessary. All his instincts were to continue the fight, but he was too prudent a commander not to see that this was impossible. He sued for peace.

Catulus’s opening position was that he would not agree to a cease-fire until Hamilcar’s army handed over its arms and left Sicily. Hamilcar replied, “Even though my country submits, I would rather perish on the spot than go back home under such disgraceful conditions.” The Romans conceded the point and, in the event, agreed to fairly lenient terms. The two warring states were to be friends and allies; Carthage should evacuate Sicily and not make war on Hiero, return all prisoners without ransom, and pay substantial reparations in annual installments over twenty years.

The authorities in Rome took a sterner view and refused to ratify the draft treaty. Ten commissioners were sent to Sicily to renegotiate it. They raised the indemnity and reduced the repayment period to ten years. Perhaps as a compensating concession to Hamilcar, a new clause stated that the allies of both parties should be secure from attacks by the other.

SUDDENLY, THE WAR was over. It had lasted twenty-three years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives (most of them Romans or their allies). As Polybius wrote in the second century, it was “the longest, the most continuous and the greatest conflict of which we have knowledge.” Nevertheless, it had not been a struggle à outrance. As in a boxing match, the decision had been given on points, not by a knockout.

In essence, the quarrel had been over who was to control Sicily. That question was now settled, for the island was to become Rome’s first province. A provincia usually signified an elected official’s sphere of activity (for example, a campaign against a particular enemy), but from now it began to take on its conventional meaning as a territory outside Italy under Rome’s direct rule. This was a novelty, for in Italy the Republic usually imposed its will by treaty or by absorption. It preferred to allow local administrations to govern themselves. But Sicily was rather too large and too far away to be left safely to its own devices. A governor was appointed, probably a former praetor.

The loss of Sicily was a setback, a bad one, but not a mortal blow. In fact, it seems that Carthage had already been contemplating expansion elsewhere. For some time it had been fighting on two fronts, battling with local tribes to enlarge its lands in Africa while simultaneously trying to fend off the Romans.

Rome showed that, in addition to stamina, it had a killer instinct, and was beginning to imagine for itself an imperial destiny. By contrast, its Punic opponents were willing enough to endure but they did not have a hunger for victory, nor did they ever come close to achieving it. They did not want the war, they did not choose the war, and if only the war would go away they could concentrate on their peaceful habit of wealth creation.

And, in spite of defeat, that was what the peace allowed them to do. Carthage remained a great mercantile power and still dominated the trade routes of the Western Mediterranean. The voyages of Hanno and Himilco had pointed the way long ago to a prosperous future in corners of the world free from the aggressive interference of their new “friends and allies.”

12 “Hannibal at the Gates!”

THE ELDERLY GENERAL WAS A VISITOR AT COURT. NO longer in command of any armies, he was a wandering exile. He was hoping to be military adviser to Antiochus the Great, lord of many of the Asian lands conquered a century before by Alexander the Great. The king was pondering a war with that annoying new Mediterranean power, Rome, and was uncertain of his guest’s loyalty.

In response, the old man told a story to prove his bona fides:

The king was convinced and put the old man on his payroll.

For the little boy, the oath he swore that day was a defining, emotionally purifying moment. It remained a vivid memory and guided his actions all his life. He was Hannibal the Carthaginian—a military genius and, in all its long history, the Roman Republic’s most formidable enemy.

When, as commander of a great army, he camped outside Rome’s walls, it was a monstrous, never-to-be-forgotten image of nightmare; in future, if Roman children were boisterous their parents would calm them by uttering the worst threat imaginable: “Hannibal ad portas” (“Hannibal’s outside the city gates”).

HANNIBAL’S FATHER WAS the energetic Hamilcar Barca, who had commanded Carthage’s armed forces in Sicily during the final years of the First Punic War. His arrival on the island in 247 coincided with his son’s birth. Barca was not a family or clan name but a nickname meaning “lightning” or “sword flash” (the word is related to the Hebrew barak), which conveys a reputation for liveliness and drive.

This was a quality Hamilcar appears to have asserted in his private as well as his public life. As well as siring three sons and at least one daughter, he became besotted with an attractive young male aristocrat, Hasdrubal (nicknamed the Handsome). Since Hamilcar was a leading politician and general, this gave rise to much critical comment (indeed, his rivals may have invented the story) and the authorities charged with oversight of morals banned the two men from seeing each other. Nothing daunted, Hamilcar married his lover to a daughter of his, on the grounds that it would be illegal to prevent a father-in-law and his son-in-law from meeting.

Once Hamilcar had negotiated the peace that brought the war in Sicily to a close, he sailed back to Carthage, leaving to others the thankless task of repatriating the multiethnic Punic mercenary army. Being an agile tactician, he wanted to distance himself as far as possible from the humiliating capitulation to Rome and the problem of how a bankrupt state could pay off its soldiery. He also had to deal with charges of maladministration brought by his political enemies.

The return of twenty thousand mercenaries proved to be a mistake of truly disastrous proportions and nearly led to the destruction of Carthage. They were not Punic citizens, and their first loyalty was, very naturally, to themselves, not to their employers. The cash-strapped authorities paid them only a small proportion of the money owed, and the men promptly revolted. It was a mortal crisis, for the rebels were the national army and there was no other soldiery with which to resist them. The Carthaginians were obliged to recruit in short order a citizen force and, with the small amount of cash in its coffers, hire some new mercenaries.

To begin with, an incompetent commander was appointed and the war went very badly. So Hamilcar was given a small force to try his hand at defeating the insurgents. Both sides perpetrated disgusting acts of cruelty. Hamilcar trapped the mercenary army and eventually the revolt collapsed. Anyone luckless enough to fall into his hands was crucified. One of the main leaders, an African named Matho, endured a parody of a triumphal procession through the streets of Carthage. He was led along by young men who, Polybius writes, “inflicted on him all kinds of torture.” What this may have meant in practice was imagined by Flaubert in his novel Salammbo:

One final twist in the story deepened the rancor against Rome among leading Carthaginians. Mercenaries on the Punic island of Sardinia revolted in solidarity with their comrades in Africa. They came under pressure from native inhabitants and appealed to Rome for help. In 238/7, the Senate decided to send an expedition to take over the island. When the Carthaginians learned of this, they reminded the Senate that Sardinia was still regarded as their possession and they intended to recover it. The response was both surprising and cynical. Despite the fact that they had not a shred of justification, the Romans claimed that Carthage’s preparations were a hostile act and delivered an ultimatum demanding an abdication of all its rights to the island and an indemnity of twelve hundred talents. These new conditions were added to the treaty of 241. Rome took possession of Sardinia and, with it, Corsica, which became a single province, like Sicily.

This was grand larceny. The historian Polybius was a great admirer of Rome, but even he condemned the annexation out of hand. He observed, “It is impossible to discover any reasonable ground or pretext for the Romans’ action,” and noted that men like Hamilcar neither forgot nor forgave the injustice.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE war ended, Hamilcar set off for Spain. Carthage was no place at present for a child, and it was little wonder that he took young Hannibal with him. But the motive for his departure was not personal; it was nothing less than to reverse the misfortunes of his motherland.

Little is known of internal Carthaginian politics, but there appear to have been two factions—one representing the landed interest, which much preferred expansion in Africa and the development of agriculture to risky foreign escapades, and the other consisting of merchants and traders who sought military protection for their activities in international waters. The former represented the governing oligarchy, and the latter advocated democratic reform.

Hamilcar was a leading figure in the second group. Although he was respected as a prudent statesman, the defeat in Sicily and the agony of the Mercenary War appear to have radicalized him. According to Diodorus:

Hamilcar was behaving very much like a common Hellenic political type—the turranos, whose one-man rule was backed by the ordinary citizen. However, as it turned out, he had no ambitions to stage a coup d’état at Carthage. He merely wanted a free hand in Spain.

Two basic and interlinked challenges faced Carthage. How was it to rebuild its ruined economy? Both trade abroad and agricultural production at home had been gravely damaged by the recent military struggles, and the huge indemnity was an annual financial hemorrhage. And, taking the longer view, how was Carthage ever to get its own back on the Romans?

For Hamilcar, the answer to both questions lay in the Iberian Peninsula, which boasted a large human reservoir of potential military recruits and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of silver, iron, and other metals. He accepted that the loss of Sicily was permanent. Like all Carthaginians, he was humiliated by Rome’s decision to annex the Punic islands of Corsica and Sardinia, a clear and scandalous breach of the peace treaty. The Phoenicians had long had mercantile outposts in Spain, and Gades was a great city and port. Hamilcar now decided to create a large and powerful Carthaginian province in the peninsula. Predictably, even those tribes which were accustomed to a Phoenician coastal presence put up resistance. Hamilcar applied the combination of clemency and cruelty that had served him when dealing with the rebellious mercenaries.

He brought with him his son-in-law-cum-lover, the beautiful Hasdrubal, who turned out to be as persuasive a diplomat as he was an aggressive and resourceful commander. Hasdrubal tactfully chose a Spanish princess as a second wife. During the next decade, the two leaders conquered most of southern and southeastern Spain. The Carthaginians also reorganized the silver-mining industry, massively increasing its productivity. It has been calculated that in later centuries a labor force of forty thousand slaves worked the mines and created a hundred thousand sesterces of profit every day. There is no reason to suppose that the Carthaginians in Hamilcar’s day were any less efficient.

Having no strategic interest in Spain or assets to protect, the Romans paid little attention to these developments, but after a time decided to look into reports of Punic expansion (not that this meant Carthage had in any way breached an agreement). They sent an embassy to Hamilcar to ask for a briefing. It was received with carefully controlled courtesy. The Carthaginian general replied to its inquiries with a plausible explanation. “I have to make war on the Spaniards,” he asserted, “to find the money to pay our indemnity to Rome.” This very effectively silenced the envoys.

In 229, Hamilcar suffered a rare military setback at the hands of a Spanish chieftain. Hannibal and another son were with him, but he saved their lives by turning off onto a different road, the enemy following after him rather than the rest of his force. He was overtaken by the chieftain. To escape from him, he plunged on horseback into a river and drowned. Hamilcar’s death did not dent Punic dominance in the peninsula, and a successor was swiftly appointed. At eighteen, his son Hannibal, though popular and able, was too young to be considered. So the Council of Elders in Carthage confirmed Hasdrubal, who had shown himself to be far more than a pretty face.

The new commander-in-chief continued his predecessor’s good work, achieving as much by negotiation as by force of arms. This included a treaty with Rome: the Senate realized it had been “fast asleep” and let Carthage recruit and equip a large army. It sent a second embassy to Spain, and Hasdrubal agreed not to cross the river Hiberus (the present-day Ebro). This was some way north of territory then controlled by Carthage and was an easy concession; and, from Rome’s point of view, the accord satisfactorily protected the interests of its anxious ally, Massilia, and its colonies on the coast of northeastern Spain. The larger issue of the unwelcome Punic revival remained unsettled, and, indeed, even the most obdurate senatorial envoy could hardly expect Carthage to renounce its acquisitions simply on request.

Even if Rome had wanted to issue any threats at this time, it would not have been able to follow them up, for the Republic was facing a major crisis in northern Italy. The Celtic tribes that formed the population of the Po Valley were infuriated by Roman encroachments and had mobilized a vast horde of warriors. In 225, they were defeated at the Battle of Telamon but remained discontented and ungoverned neighbors.

Hasdrubal’s enduring accomplishment was the foundation of a new port, one of the best harbors in the Western Mediterranean, which he called Carthago Nova (New Carthage, today’s Cartagena). The name was appropriate, for, like the mother city, it was built on a promontory between a shallow lagoon and a bay. An island at the mouth of the bay broke the waves of the sea. Occasionally, a southwest breeze raised a slight swell, but otherwise few winds ruffled the surface of the water inside. It was an ideal spot, not merely for fishermen and merchants but as an up-to-the-minute export facility for the growing silver trade. On the city’s highest eminence, Hasdrubal erected a magnificent palace, which stood as a gleaming symbol of the new empire he and his father-in-law had created.

The message to the world was unmistakable: Carthage was back.

HASDRUBAL’S PACIFIC POLICIES did not save him from a violent end. One night in 221, he was killed in his lodgings by a Celtic slave, whose master he had had executed. The assassin was seized by bystanders but showed no sign of fear or remorse. Under torture, the expression on his face never changed.

Hannibal was now twenty-five years old, popular with his men, daring, with a quick and fertile brain and, though still young, experienced; he had, after all, spent the past fifteen years at the center of affairs while his father pursued his self-ordained mission of conquest. As a member of a leading democratic family, the rank and file acclaimed him as the new commander-in-chief, as did the popular Assembly at Carthage. Despite some opposition in the Council of Elders, Hannibal’s appointment was confirmed.

He was soon to win Rome’s complete attention and his personality became of absorbing interest. Livy summed up the general perception:

On the negative side, he was notorious among his fellow citizens for his love of money and among Romans for his cruelty. This, at least, was the general impression. The accuracy of these criticisms is obscured by the murk of hostile propaganda. Also, in Polybius’s wise words, pressure of circumstances made it exceptionally difficult “to pass judgement on Hannibal’s real nature.”

At this point, the young general’s thinking was unknown. For two years, he maintained the Carthaginian policy of expansion but reverted to his father’s aggressive military approach. He, too, took care to marry a local princess, as his brother-in-law had done. Soon Punic territory reached as far as the Hiberus. Did he have a long-term plan?

If he did not, events soon prompted him to create one. Saguntum was a small coastal town well south of the Hiberus, of no great military or commercial importance. It was on friendly but not formal terms with Rome, which at the town’s request had acted as arbiter in an internal political dispute. It is not known exactly when this entente with Rome was agreed, but if it was before Hasdrubal’s Hiberus treaty, then that, it might be supposed, superseded the entente. If afterward, Rome had incontestably breached the treaty, for Hasdrubal’s commitment not to march his forces beyond the Hiberus could only mean that territory south of the river lay inside Carthage’s sphere of influence. Either way, Hannibal had grounds for irritation with Roman meddling.

Then Saguntum became involved in a quarrel with a local, pro-Punic tribe, which appealed to Hannibal for assistance. For the Punic general, this was the last straw. However, he acted with caution, not wanting to give the Romans any pretext for war until he had completed his conquest of all territory south of the Hiberus, and fully secured his gains. This he achieved in 220, after a decisive victory over enemy tribes. He now controlled about half of the Iberian Peninsula, some 230,000 square kilometers.

Only Saguntum refused to recognize Punic dominance, but feared Hannibal’s anger. The townsfolk could feel the noose tightening around their neck and sent embassy after embassy to Rome asking for urgent assistance. The Senate, busy with other matters, took a long time to respond but eventually dispatched envoys to warn Hannibal against taking action against Saguntum.

The Carthaginian general found them at the palace at Carthago Nova, where he was to spend the winter after the end of the campaigning season. He launched into a critique of Rome for intervening in Saguntum’s internal affairs. He said, “We will not overlook this breach of good faith.”

The Roman delegation concluded that war was inevitable and sailed to Carthage to repeat their protests, to no avail. Hannibal reported to the home authorities that Saguntum, confident in its Roman support, had attacked a tribe under Punic protection and asked for instructions. There was some token opposition, but the Council of Elders hesitated to take a stand against a well-liked and successful general in command of a large army and with support among the People. Hannibal was given a free hand, if without great enthusiasm.

In early 219, he lay siege to Saguntum. The inhabitants put up a stiff resistance, believing that the Romans would come and save them. They were to be disappointed, for the Republic had just finished one war, against the Celts of northern Italy, and was now busy with another, against the piratical Illyrians on the far side of the Adriatic Sea. The Senate never liked to fight on two fronts, so Saguntum went to the wall. It fell to Hannibal in the autumn after eight long, desperate months.

The defenders were driven by starvation to cannibalism. Once they had despaired of Rome, they gathered together all their gold and melted it with lead and brass to make it unusable. Believing it best to die fighting, the men sortied from the town and battled bravely but futilely against the besiegers. Appian writes:

Hannibal, whose temper had not been improved by a javelin wound, was so cross over the loss of the gold that he put all surviving adults to death by torture.

Everything now went into slow motion. Rome was of two minds what to do. The clan of the Fabii, led by a respected Senator, Quintus Fabius Maximus (to which was added the descriptive cognomen Verrucosus, or Warty, for he had a wart above his lip), opposed war, whereas the Cornelii Scipiones argued for it. It was not until early or late spring of 218 that, after a lively debate, the Senate sent some senior politicians to Carthage to deliver an ultimatum. They told the Council of Elders that either Hannibal was to be handed over to Rome or there would be war. A Punic spokesman pointed out that the annexation of Sardinia had been a Roman breach of the peace treaty of 241, and that Saguntum had not been listed in that treaty as a Roman ally and so was not protected by its terms from Carthaginian attack. The Romans did not like being seen to have acted illegally, and declined to reply to what had been said. Polybius reports what happened next:

The Romans went home and, for a time, very little seemed to happen. It was assumed that the war would be fought out in Spain and in Africa. So the two consuls, Publius Cornelius Scipio and Titus Sempronius Longus, raised armies for that purpose. Sometime in the summer, they set off from Italy in different directions. Scipio took ship for Massilia, after which he was to march to the Pyrenees. Meanwhile, his colleague established himself in Sicily and laid his invasion plans.

HANNIBAL HAD OTHER ideas. Although no record survives of his having said so, he must have thought long and hard about his next step, which was nothing less than the invasion of Italy.

He did not acccept the verdict of the First Punic War as final, and we may strongly suspect that his dead father, Hamilcar, had been of the same mind. This is not to say that either of them intended war from the outset. Twenty years had passed since the loss of Sicily, and many of these were spent on the arduous, absorbing, and ambitious task of reasserting the greatness of Carthage and building a Spanish empire. An eventual second round with Rome would have seemed to them a possibility rather than a realistic objective. However, now that it had arrived, the energetic young commander relished the prospect.

For Hannibal, the unfair and illegal annexation of Sardinia and the massive reparations still rankled. In his eyes, the Saguntum affair was yet another example of Rome playing fast and loose with freely negotiated agreements. Romans liked to sneer at Punica fides, Carthaginian “good faith”; what price now Romana fides? Perhaps the most important factor in persuading Hannibal to make war was his belief that he was able to do so with a good prospect of success. The conquest of half the Iberian Peninsula gave him two huge advantages—for all practical purposes, an inexhaustible flow of cash, thanks to the silver mines, and of manpower, thanks to the fierce Spanish tribesmen whom he now governed. There would never be a more favorable opportunity for a return match.

He had no intention of destroying Rome altogether; rather, he would cut it down to size. This would mean unpicking its web of Italian “allies.” If he could give them back their freedom, he would remove from Rome what he had just won in Spain—the money and men that a minor regional player needed if it was to become a great power. This political objective determined his military strategy. He had to take the war to Italy.

He laid his preparations carefully and secretly. He dispatched a large contingent of Spanish troops to protect North Africa and of African troops to garrison Spain; in this way, he insured himself against disloyalty by separating soldiers from their home communities. He entrusted the defense of the peninsula to his younger brother, another Hasdrubal. He would also, and crucially, depend on him for reinforcement as and when required, and for supplies of ready money. Messages were sent to forewarn the Gallic tribes whose territory in southern France he would have to traverse and to make logistical arrangements for the upkeep of a large army.

Hannibal went to Gades and sacrificed at the famous Temple of Melqart-Hercules, with its eight columns of brass on which the money-minded Phoenicians had inscribed the cost of its construction, before proceeding to his capital, Carthago Nova. In May or thereabouts he set out northward with an army of about ninety thousand infantry and twelve thousand cavalry. He crossed the contentious river Hiberus and, after conducting a quick blitzkrieg in northern Spain, sent a number of troops home to stand ready as a reserve for future deployment. He crossed the Pyrenees and advanced into Gaul with a force of fifty thousand infantry, nine thousand cavalry, and thirty-seven war elephants. He forced a crossing of the river Rhodanus (the Rhône), with difficulty persuading his nervous elephants to be drawn across the water on large earth-surfaced rafts.

A LEGENDARY PERSONALITY from the early years of Rome’s story (see this page) now puts in a reappearance.

Hannibal took care to promote his image as a great commander, and as a practitioner of moral and social virtues. Like Alexander the Great (as ever a model for would-be conquerors), he gathered round him a group of trusted Greek intellectuals. One was his old teacher, a certain Sosylus of Sparta, who had taught him Greek, a language in which he was fluent, and another the distinguished historian Silenus, the author of a four-volume study of Sicily, whom Cicero praised as a “thoroughly reliable authority on Hannibal’s life and achievements.”

Their task was not simply to record the events of the campaign but to put the best possible gloss on them and even to tell symbolic stories (invented or enhanced) about their hero. It was Silenus who first recounted a dream Hannibal was supposed to have had after taking Saguntum. He was summoned by Jupiter to a council of the Olympian gods and ordered to invade Italy. One of those at the assembly was produced as his guide. After he and his army began their march, the guide told him not to look back. He could not resist doing so. But unlike Orpheus, who yielded to a similar temptation when leaving the underworld ahead of his wife, Hannibal was not punished but given a vision of the horrors to come. According to Cicero:

The beast sounds very much like the Hydra, a many-headed serpent whom Hercules killed during one of his labors. In the dream it stands for Rome, and Hannibal is cast as the brave demigod.

This was no casual identification. The Punic commander presented himself as a new Melqart-Hercules who restaged the demigod’s original journey from west to east, which began at Gades, proceeded up Spain, along southern Gaul, and as far as Italy. (In the original legend, of course, Hercules then crossed over into Greece.) He issued silver shekels to pay his troops, some showing Hercules with (almost certainly) the features of a bearded Hamilcar and others of his clean-shaven son. A reconciler of different cultures, especially the Greek and the Phoenician, an upholder of law, a dauntless fulfiller of labors, Hannibal was to be a standard-bearer for civilization, sent by heaven to defeat the cruel, barbaric power that was Rome. It was these qualities which helped him unite his disparate army and would, he hoped, persuade the peoples of Italy to switch their allegiance to him.

Hannibal also seems to have appealed to one of Rome’s most implacable enemies on Mount Olympus, the goddess Juno. She may have reconciled herself to the fall of her city of Veii, but she forgot nothing and forgave nothing—especially her humiliation at the hands of Paris, prince of Troy, and Aeneas’s rejection of her favorite, Dido, the lovelorn queen of Carthage.

MEANWHILE, THE UNKNOWING Consul Scipio arrived in Gaul on his way to Spain at about the same time as the Carthaginians, coming in the opposite direction. The armies brushed against each other, Hannibal avoiding an engagement and slipping away toward the Alps and Italy. It was only now that, with a shock of dismay, the Romans realized what Hannibal’s destination was. The consul chose not to chase after him; instead, he sent most of his force onward to Spain as planned, and he himself returned to Italy, where he would confront Hannibal with new troops. It was the single most important strategic decision of the war, for if Roman legions were active in Spain they should be able to remove or, at least, severely limit Hasdrubal’s opportunities to reinforce his brother.

In October or early November, Hannibal crossed the Alps. He would probably have taken Hercules’ route by the relatively straightforward Montgenèvre Pass, but he had to avoid Scipio and so marched north away from the sea. We do not know which pass the Carthaginians actually chose (it was a matter of dispute even in ancient times), but wherever it was they were confronted by aggressive mountain tribesmen and unseasonable snow. Both men and animals made heavy going of it. The descent was just as hazardous as the ascent. The track down the mountainside was narrow and steep. New snow lying on top of old made surfaces treacherous. At one point an earlier landslide had removed part of the pathway, and the army looked fearfully over the edge of a brand-new precipice. Going back was out of the question—but how to go on? The pass had become an impasse.

Hannibal refused to admit defeat at the hands of nature. He had the snow cleared off a ridge and made camp. Livy writes:

And then, all at once, the ordeal was over. The soldiers, freezing, filthy, unkempt, and starving, found themselves strolling amid sunny Alpine pastures with woods and flowing streams. Hannibal gave them three days’ rest to recover and clean themselves up, and then they continued their descent into the plains—in Livy’s words, “a kindlier region with kindlier inhabitants.”

The news of Hannibal’s arrival on Italian soil at the head of a large army stupefied public opinion, for at Rome the last that had been heard of him was his capture of Saguntum. Although Celts regularly went to and fro across the Alps, there was widespread amazement at his achievement in taking a large army across the mountains in wintry weather. Rather than a campaign in Spain, the Senate now had to contemplate a struggle in its backyard: It canceled the invasion of Africa and instructed Sempronius to rush north. Worse, in place of the usual incompetent generals of the First Punic War, it faced in Hannibal a commander of daring, stamina, and élan.

However, this public-relations triumph came at a high price. Since leaving Spain five months previously, Hannibal had lost more than half his army. As we saw, the Carthaginians had begun their journey with 50,000 foot and 9,000 horse. By the passage across the Rhodanus, these numbers had dwindled to 38,000 and 8,000, respectively. Only 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, plus a handful of elephants, made it to the valley of the mighty river Padus. The greater part of Hannibal’s supplies had been lost, along with many pack animals. Undaunted, he immediately launched a recruitment drive among the discontented Celtic tribes of northern Italy, who regarded him as a liberator from their Roman conqueror, and soon 14,000 fresh volunteers had joined his ranks. A successful cavalry engagement near the river Ticinus convinced the Celts that they were backing a winner. The careful Scipio was in command, and nearly lost his life. Luckily, his seventeen-year-old son Publius was close at hand, as Polybius describes:

This shamed his comrades, who followed him into the fray and saved his father. Scipio’s wound incapacitated him (although it did not kill him), and he stepped down as commander.

Effective control of the legions was handed to his colleague, the incautious and overconfident Sempronius. Hannibal was lucky.

IT WAS A bitterly cold December morning with gusts of snow, on or around the winter solstice. The night before, there had been a downpour and the river Trebia, together with its accompanying web of streams running beside it, was in full spate. Hannibal decided to make the weather work for him.

The two armies, Carthaginian and Roman, both perhaps forty thousand strong, were encamped on either side of the river. The land was flat and treeless and suitable for a set-piece battle, but the Punic commander noticed that it was crossed by a watercourse with high banks that were densely overgrown with thorns and brambles. There was room here for quite a substantial special-service unit to hide away out of sight. Hannibal arranged for a body of a thousand cavalry and the same number of foot soldiers to be assembled and placed his younger brother Mago in charge of them.

After dark on the evening before the battle, once the army had eaten its evening meal, this force made its way through rain to its place of ambush. First thing in the morning, some Numidian horsemen galloped across the river and threw javelins at the Roman camp. Their instructions were to lure the consul Sempronius to lead out his army before the men had had breakfast, ford the Trebia, and offer battle. Sempronius, eager to fight before his term of office expired at the end of the year, was only too happy to oblige.

The legions struggled across the rushing river and formed up in battle order. The whole process must have taken several hours and the men were soaking wet, cold, and hungry. In contrast, before deploying, the Carthaginian rank and file had time to warm themselves by large fires in front of their tents. They breakfasted at leisure and groomed their horses. They were given portions of olive oil so that they could rub themselves down to keep their bodies supple.

After all this, the outcome of the battle itself was a foregone conclusion. The foot soldiers faced one another in the center and were evenly matched, but the Punic cavalry on the wings soon drove back their Roman counterparts. This exposed the legions’ flanks to attack. Then Mago’s hidden force suddenly emerged and fell on them from behind. Despite the fact that ten thousand Roman legionaries pushed their way through the enemy line out of the battle and quit the field in good order, the day was lost. Well over half of the Roman army was slaughtered.

On the Carthaginian side, the Spaniards and Africans were more or less unscathed, but the newly recruited Celts suffered heavy losses. Unluckily, the winter continued harsh and, in the coming days, more rain, snow, and intolerable cold took their toll. Men and horses perished. In this weather, Hannibal, riding the only surviving elephant, marched south through marshy terrain on the way to Etruria. He suffered intense pain from a bout of ophthalmia and lost the use of one eye.

For all that, it was the Romans who had been defeated. The Senate was not so much alarmed as energized. A hundred thousand men were conscripted, and Sicily, Sardinia, and Rome garrisoned against possible attack. The losses sustained by the four consular legions at the Trebia were made good. Nevertheless, it was a dark time. Many portents were reported to bode ill for Rome. A spring sacred to Hercules at the Etruscan city of Caere was found to have flecks of blood in it, and a propitiatory lectisternium was held—a banquet at which an image of the demigod reclined on a couch, with the food spread around him. Expensive gifts were donated to shrines of hostile Juno—evidence, perhaps, that Hannibal’s public-relations campaign was working.

LAKE TRASIMENE, IN Etruria, was shallow, muddy, and humid, a breeding ground of pike, carp, tench—and malarial mosquitoes. Its northern shore was guarded by a line of steep hills. Approached from the west, some high ground gently sloped down to the lakeside (near today’s Borghetto, in the comune of Tuoro). It opened out onto a small plain that extended for a mile or so before closing in again and ending at almost but not altogether impassable heights. Beyond lay the way to the south.

In the spring of 217, the Punic army, well rested after its winter trials, marched down through Etruria, laying waste to the countryside as it went. It bypassed a Roman army led by a new consul, Gaius Flaminius, who immediately set off in hot pursuit. Hannibal reached the lake and turned east into the defile. An idea struck him; here was the ideal spot for an ambush, if only the consul was foolhardy enough to walk into the obvious trap. One of the habits of the Carthaginian was to seek out intelligence on enemy commanders and to tailor his tactics to what he knew of their personality. Flaminius, he discovered, was not without military experience, but as a plebeian he seems to have had a chip on his shoulder and was an impatient leader. He would have felt humiliated by having to take his legions through a devastated landscape, and now be eager for revenge.

This was a correct judgment. Flaminius saw the Punic army enter the defile and followed straight after, setting up camp on the plain. Hannibal’s camp could be seen in open view right at the far end of the lake, but he had stationed most of his troops unseen in the hills, where the ground narrowed and there was no room for maneuver.

In the early dawn of 21 June, Flaminius formed up his troops into column of route and they proceeded along the lakeside. He did not trouble to send out scouts. Visibility was poor, for a heavy mist hung over the water and the shore. So when the Carthaginians charged down from the high ground, the surprise was complete. The Romans hardly knew what had hit them and there was little they could do to defend themselves. Nevertheless, the battle, or perhaps more accurately the bloodbath, lasted for three hours. Flaminius fought bravely, but at last was struck down by a Celtic lance. Livy takes up the narrative:

A vanguard managed to push through the Carthaginian line and escape into the hills, but fifteen thousand Romans perished, while Hannibal lost only fifteen hundred men. When the news reached Rome, there was no attempt to hide the magnitude of the catastrophe. A praetor went to the Forum and announced, with becoming brevity, “Magna pugna victi sumus” (“We have been defeated in a great battle”).

A YEAR PASSED, and the date was now 2 August 216. The scene was a windy, dusty plain in Apulia a few miles from the Adriatic coast. High summer in southern Italy brought fierce heat and a permanent chorus of cicadas. Within a space of five square miles, two armies, consisting in total of about 150,000 men, confronted each other. One of the great battles of the world was about to be fought, and has inspired generals down the ages. It is a rare military training college today whose curriculum does not include it.

After the Battle of Lake Trasimene and two routs in a row, the Romans had lost heart. A dictator was appointed for a six-month term of office, the warty Fabius Maximus. He seems to have attracted nicknames; as well as Verrucosus, he was called Ovicula, or “lambkin.” According to Plutarch, this was

According to Cicero, he had read a lot “for a Roman.”

Fabius raised two new legions and, adding them to existing Roman and allied troops, commanded an army of forty thousand men. He pursued a wise, but extremely unpopular, policy of tailing Hannibal but never offering battle. His idea was to wear down the enemy in the hope that eventually he would make a bad mistake and expose himself to defeat. The policy nearly brought a quick success, for Fabius bottled up the Carthaginians in mountainous territory. On the following night, Hannibal, never at a loss, tied burning brands to the horns of two thousand cattle and set the terrified animals to run around on the high ground. This bizarre ruse worked. The Romans thought they were about to be attacked and the Carthaginians crept away through the concealing dark.

The policy of delay also enabled the elderly dictator to train his new troops and allowed time to heal the Republic’s wounded morale. But public opinion very soon swung against Fabius, who duly retired after his six-month term. A huge army of eighty-seven thousand men was assembled—that is, eight legions plus roughly the same number of allied troops. This would give them the edge over Hannibal, who disposed of only about fifty thousand soldiers. The two consuls who succeeded Fabius held very different views of the plan of campaign. Lucius Aemilius Paullus, a member of one of the most ancient patrician clans, was a Fabian and believed Hannibal should be starved out of his winter quarters in southern Italy; but Gaius Terentius Varro, a plebeian parvenu much disliked by the gratin, argued that Rome should make the most of its advantage in numbers and provoke a full-scale battle as soon as possible.

They tracked Hannibal down to the neighborhood of a small town in Apulia called Cannae, amid the dust and the cicadas. As was the practice, they alternated command daily. Paullus was in charge when Hannibal led his army out and offered battle; he declined the invitation. The next day, Varro accepted the challenge. Immediately after sunrise, he sported the red flag, or vexillum, outside his tent, the traditional signal for battle. He formed up his army, with cavalry on the wings and a mass of infantry in the center; the right wing abutted against a river and the left against rising ground.

Hannibal looked carefully at the enemy and noticed that the foot soldiers were short of space, and as a result were in deep formation and rather squashed together. They would find it hard to maneuver. The Carthaginian general formed his troops in a way that would exploit that potential weakness. He lined his Celtic and Spanish infantry in a convex curve opposite the Roman center. Behind them, at either end and out of sight, he placed two substantial detachments of his best troops—Libyan infantry, well-trained and reliable. On his wings, his cavalry faced the Roman horse.

When the fighting started, the Roman center pushed back the Celts and the Spaniards, so that their line changed from convex to concave. Pleased to find more space to fight in, they unwisely continued to press forward until the Libyans suddenly came into view on either side and turned inward to attack them on their flanks.

Meanwhile, Hannibal’s cavalry on his left wing routed their Roman counterparts, commanded by Consul Paullus. With great self-discipline, the victorious Celtic and Spanish horsemen then disengaged and crossed behind the Roman army to attack the enemy cavalry on the far wing, which fled in panic. For a second time, they pulled away and proceeded to attack the rear of the Roman infantry, which now found itself boxed in on all sides.

The rest of the battle consisted of exhausting hours of blood-slippery butchery. Gradually, the packed mass of Roman legionaries and allies was cut down. Paullus, felled by a stone from a slingshot, fought bravely to his last breath, but Varro escaped with seventy horsemen. He rounded up stragglers and took general charge of the grim aftermath. When he returned to Rome, crowds turned out to greet him “because he had not despaired of the Republic.” He continued to receive public appointments, although he was never to lead a consular army again. This was Rome at its magnanimous best.

A larger group also managed to extricate itself from the hecatomb, among whom was Publius Scipio, now nineteen years old. He threatened to kill some young noblemen who chattered disloyally of fleeing abroad, and forced them to swear that they would never abandon their homeland.

Seventy thousand Romans lay dead on the battlefield. Twenty-nine senior commanders and eighty senators lost their lives. Cannae was the worst military disaster in Rome’s history. Immediately, the Greek poleis and the local tribes of southern Italy switched their loyalty to Carthage. The famous city of Capua and other towns in Campania defected. After the death of the aged Hiero, Syracuse abandoned its long-standing alliance with Rome. Tarentum was captured by a clever trick (although the Roman garrison retained the citadel and control of the harbor).

Rome was inflamed by religious panic, stoked by portents and prodigies. In some inexplicable way, the gods were gravely offended. An embassy was sent to Delphi for advice, and two Greeks and two Gauls were buried alive in the city in a bid to regain divine favor. This extreme gesture was a sign of the despair and hysteria of the time, for human sacrifice was almost unknown in Roman religious practice.

Everyone could see that the Republic was staring total defeat in the face.

13 The Bird Without a Tail

CANNAE APPEARED TO BE THE END OF THE ROAD for Rome, but although nobody knew it at the time and many years would pass before peace came, the war was already won. This was because Hannibal depended for victory on two factors, and both failed him. These were the expected defection of Rome’s Italian allies and the arrival of reinforcements from Spain.

First, the Republic’s fair-minded concordat with the peoples it had conquered in central Italy more or less held good. The Republic could still draw on its large supply of men of fighting age to serve in its armies. Second, for seven years the former consul Scipio and his brother Gnaeus campaigned tirelessly in Spain, dismantling Hamilcar Barca’s hard-won empire and preventing Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal from sending any troops to Italy. The Punic reservoir was drained.

But perhaps the most important factor of all was the Republic’s sheer bloody-mindedness. After his brilliant sequence of victories, Hannibal (like Pyrrhus before him) expected the Romans to do the sensible thing and negotiate a peace. He did not understand that they were at their most obstinate in defeat. When knocked down, they would not lie down. The Carthaginian general offered to ransom the prisoners of Cannae, but the Senate refused to discuss anything whatever with the enemy, even though this meant consigning many Roman and allied citizens to slavery or execution.

By 211, much of the lost ground had been recovered. Fabius Maximus came into fashion again and set-piece battles were avoided. A new cognomen, Cunctator, or Delayer, was a badge of pride, as was recognized by the second-century epic poet Ennius. He famously wrote of Fabius that one man’s procrastination saved the state:

New legions were recruited, but they were divided into small forces rather than large armies, encircling the enemy like dogs and biting as opportunity offered. In an (unsuccessful) attempt to make the Romans break off their siege to regain Capua, Hannibal marched on Rome itself. He encamped three miles from the city and then rode up to the Colline Gate with a cavalry escort. He threw a spear over the wall; as he knew very well, the gesture was symbolic of wish rather than fulfillment. There were a number of temples near the gate, one of them dedicated to Fortuna. The Carthaginian left that undependable goddess to herself, but he paid his respects at a shrine to Hercules, whose metaphorical reincarnation he remained. This was evidently felt to be something of a propaganda coup, for a couple of years later the temple was removed to the safety of the Capitol. With its massive walls, Rome was in no danger of capture, but the visit was a terrifying event.

Cities that resisted Rome’s military might were treated with merciless ferocity. Capua fell. Most of its citizens were dispersed without hope of return, its wealth was confiscated, and its leaders were beaten with rods and beheaded. What had been a rich and famous city was reduced to a dim agricultural market town, directly administered by a Roman official.

After a siege, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, an able if hotheaded commander, took Syracuse. Apparently, on the eve of its fall he looked down on the city from a hill and (not unlike Lewis Carroll’s Walrus and Carpenter, we may think) wept at the havoc he intended to wreak. In the event, he looted so many paintings and statues that he boasted that he had taught the ignorant Romans to appreciate Greek art. During the sack, Marcellus was embarrassed by the unintended death of a brilliant but absentminded scientist and mathematician, Archimedes. He was absorbed by a diagram he had drawn in the sand and was oblivious of the rape and pillage going on around him. A passing soldier killed him.

In 209 Tarentum, betrayed to Hannibal, was betrayed again to Fabius. The city was sacked and a vast amount of war booty captured. Fabius showed less interest than Marcellus in art. When asked what he wanted done with some statues of the city’s divine guardians, he replied, “The Tarentines can keep their gods, who are obviously angry with them.”

Tellingly, Hannibal now spent his winters after the campaigning season in Italy’s southern toe, a silent acknowledgment that he was no longer free to roam where he wished.

But then Carthaginian prospects in Spain took a sharp turn for the better. Within a few days of each other, the Scipio brothers were defeated and killed in two successive battles. Everything they had gained south of the river Hiberus was lost. Had the Punic generals the slightest aptitude for cooperating with one another, the Romans would very probably have been driven out of the peninsula altogether.

IN ROME, PEOPLE went into mourning for the two dead heroes and had no clear idea of the next step to take. They were tired of the war, and some exhausted allied communities said they were unable to send their due contingents to join the legions. The burning question of the hour was who could replace the Scipios. According to Livy, the Senate was unable to make up its mind whom to appoint to the Spanish command, and referred the question to the People. This self-denial was out of character and it is much more likely that public opinion favored a candidate of whom the political class disapproved, and that in some way the Senate was circumvented.

And there was indeed a rogue applicant for the job. This was Publius, the promising young son of the former consul Scipio. At a public election meeting for senior government appointments no name was put forward, and Publius suddenly announced that he wanted the commission. He was famous for his bravery at Trebia and Cannae, but he was only twenty-four years old. According to the rules, he was much too young for the job. But he brushed aside such quibbles, as he had done a few years previously when elected to the post of aedile. Objections were raised because of his youth, but he replied, rather pompously, “If the People want to make me aedile, then I am old enough.”

The young man made a powerful speech to the Assembly. He was the only Scipio left to avenge his father and uncle, he said, and he promised not merely to win back Spain but to conquer North Africa and Carthage, too. This sounded boastful, but it cheered up his listeners and he won the command as a privatus cum imperio (a private citizen with the public authority of a proconsul) by a unanimous vote. Grumblings among senior politicians gave him pause, however, and he saw it could be argued that the People had acted impulsively. So he arranged for another session, at which he agreed to stand down if any older and more experienced candidate put himself forward. This took the wind out of the opposition. As he had anticipated, nobody wanted to risk the fury of the assembled citizenry. Silence fell, and his election was confirmed.

Scipio was a new type of Roman—dashing, attractive, humane, and proud to be a man of culture. Even at this early stage in his career, all could see that he was exceptionally gifted. Having been given a Greek education, he was impatient with Rome’s traditions. He had a pronounced sense of his own destiny and claimed always to consult the gods before making any important decision. Where, for the ordinary Roman, religion was a set of superstitious rules designed to placate volatile deities, he seems to have had, or claimed to have had, a more Hellenic, more mystical sense of the numinous. If he was in Rome on serious business he would go up to the Capitol, where he would sit alone and commune with supernatural powers. The temple dogs, it was said, never barked at him. He liked to convey the impression that there was a touch of the divine about him, and the story was bruited about that a snake slithered over the infant Scipio but did not harm him (echoing a legend about the childhood of Alexander the Great).

The historian Polybius was a friend of the Scipios, but he was a rationalist and believed that Scipio acted with calculation, perhaps even a degree of cynicism. There is something to this, for Scipio placed as much value on imaginative propaganda as did Hannibal. However, the most effective propaganda has a basis in truth. It is likely that this talented and arrogant young patrician believed his own publicity.

He turned out to be a brilliant field commander. When he arrived in Spain, he learned that there were three Carthaginian armies in different parts of the peninsula, and none of them were less than ten days’ march from the Punic capital, Carthago Nova. In a bold move, the new commander led his legions several hundred miles at top speed from the river Hiberus to the city and laid siege to it. He threw up earthworks on its eastern, or landward, side, and launched assaults from that direction.

These were in fact diversions, for he had learned from local fishermen that the lagoon north of the promontory on which the city was built was shallow enough to be forded, especially in the early evening, when water ebbed from it through a channel into the bay south of the city. (This was perhaps the result of a regular breeze blowing up at that time of year.) Scipio ordered a specially picked unit with scaling ladders to wade through the lagoon and take the defenders by surprise. He promised money to the first soldiers to scale the walls and, typically, told them that the sea god Neptune had suggested the plan of attack to him. All went well: the water ebbed as predicted, the men entered the city, opened a gate, and let the legions in.

Scipio showed his lack of conventional Romanitas by not doing to Carthago Nova what had been meted out to the citizens of Capua, Syracuse, and Tarentum. The killing of civilians stopped as soon as the garrison surrendered. The legionaries were given leave to pillage for a short, fixed period, but were then withdrawn. The citizens were not massacred but allowed to return to their homes (albeit probably now empty of valuables). The Roman commander released all the hostages whom the Carthaginians had interned to ensure the Spanish tribes’ good behavior. This intelligent clemency won him high praise, and most of the Iberian tribes lost no time in changing sides.

In 208, to stem the flood of defections, the Punic commander-in-chief, Hasdrubal, accepted battle at Baecula (probably present-day Bailén, Jaén). Seeing himself about to be outflanked, he disengaged and led what he could of his troops—not much more than half of the original twenty-five thousand men—on the long march to join his brother in Italy. At last he could bring Hannibal the reinforcements he had sought for so many years, even if this meant leaving affairs in Spain in dangerous disarray. Scipio did not chase after him but turned his attention to the two Carthaginian armies that remained in the field.

After the victory all the tribes hailed Scipio as king, a dangerous title for a Roman to accept. He paid no obvious notice at the time, but summoned their chieftains to a meeting. He told them, “I am happy to be spoken of as kingly, and to act in a kingly manner, but I do not want to be king nor to receive this title from anyone.” In other words, they could treat him as a king even if they could not call him one. A pattern was beginning to emerge of a man who saw himself as rising above the constitutional rules of the game. Scipio had the potential to become a Greek-style turannos. This set a dangerous precedent for less scrupulous men in future years.

A relief force from Africa was quickly disposed of, and in 208 Scipio met the Carthaginians at Ilipa (near today’s Seville). Outnumbered, he planned an encirclement, borrowing from Hannibal’s tactics at Cannae. Several days passed and each morning the opposing armies formed up but did not engage. Every time, Scipio placed his crack legionaries in the center and his weaker Spaniards on his wings facing Punic Spaniards. Then one day he emerged from his camp at first light, but on this occasion his Spaniards were in the center and the Roman infantry on the wings (with cavalry on the far wings). Obviously, he had in mind an outflanking movement with his more disciplined, well-drilled, and experienced troops.

The Punic general (confusingly, yet another Hasdrubal) deployed as usual, and didn’t notice Scipio’s new dispositions until it was too late for him to make any changes. The Roman commander now forced a battle: his cavalry and legions wheeled quickly to the left and right in column of route curving away from and then toward the Carthaginian wings. The cavalry drove off its opponents and the legions maneuvered back from column into line and attacked the Punic Spaniards on their flanks, who broke and fled. They proceeded to cut into the flanks of the Punic center, which also had to fight off a frontal attack by Scipio’s Spanish infantry. What had been an army became a rabble in headlong flight.

Spain now belonged to Rome. His task completed, Scipio set sail for home. His performance at Ilipa showed that he possessed the triple qualities of a great field commander: a daring conception, meticulous preparation, and commitment to intensive training. At last, Rome had produced a match for Hannibal.

HASDRUBAL MADE GOOD progress to Italy, where he arrived in 207. He recruited Gauls in the Po Valley, raising his total numbers to about thirty thousand. He sent six horsemen to ride south with a letter to his brother specifying that their two armies should meet in Umbria. They lost their way and were picked up by a Roman foraging party outside Tarentum. Having read the letter, the consul, who was keeping an eye on Hannibal, detached part of his army without the Carthaginian commander’s noticing. He marched north to join his colleague, who was facing Hasdrubal at the river Metaurus (today’s Metauro, in the Marche). He arrived at night unobserved, but the following day Hasdrubal sensed that something was wrong. According to Livy:

Hasdrubal confirmed his fears by checking how many ceremonial consular trumpet calls had sounded that morning in the enemy camp; when he was told that, surprisingly, two had been heard, he realized that both consuls were now present. He presumed, correctly, that one had arrived secretly with his army from the south. He was tortured by the fear that his brother had suffered defeat and might be dead.

Now heavily outnumbered, the Carthaginian commander had no choice but to extricate himself as best he could. He withdrew after nightfall, having ordered his men to pack their gear in silence. His guides ran off and the army strayed from the correct route. The Romans soon caught up, and in the ensuing battle routed the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal acted with great gallantry and, according to Livy, refused to survive the destruction of his army. He set spurs to his horse and galloped straight into the middle of an enemy cohort. Polybius paid him a generous tribute:

Hasdrubal’s head was mummified and taken south. It was flung down in front of one of Hannibal’s outposts. Two Punic prisoners of war were released and sent to Hannibal to tell him all that had happened. The story is that he groaned, “Now, at last, I see plainly the fate of Carthage.”

In Hannibal’s final stronghold, in Bruttium, stood a famous shrine to Juno, Rome’s old foe and so, as we have seen, a favorite of the Punic publicity machine. Livy reports that “it had an enclosure surrounded by dense woodland, with lofty firs, and, in the center, rich grassland where cattle of all kinds, sacred to the goddess, grazed without any shepherd to attend them.” Here in 205 the Punic general, assiduous self-promoter that he was, erected an altar on which he inscribed at some length, in Greek as well as Carthaginian, his achievements, his res gestae. Perhaps this was less a brag than an epitaph for lost hopes.

If we can believe Cicero, he nearly committed an act of divine lèse-majesté. Inside the temple there was a golden column. Hannibal was curious to find out if it was merely plate, and bored a hole in it. Finding it to be solid gold, he decided to take it away. The enraged goddess appeared to the Carthaginian commander in a dream and warned him that unless he left her column alone she would make him lose the sight in his good eye. He complied. With the gold shavings from his drilling, he had a little heifer made which he apologetically affixed to the top of the column.

What are we to make of this story? It comes from a pro-Carthaginian original source. In one sense, it redounds to Hannibal’s credit; he behaved well and gave way to Juno’s wishes. But, with the defeat of Carthage looming, the anecdote also reflects a coolness between them.

The Romans knew it was in their interest to be equally energetic champions of Juno. Two years previously, her famous temple on the Aventine Hill was struck by lightning. To propitiate the goddess, an elaborate ceremony was staged: a couple of white cows led a procession in which two ancient statues of Juno were carried through the streets and twenty-seven virgins sang a hymn in her praise. The cows were sacrificed. The goddess accepted the best offer still on the table, and finally set aside her anger with the descendants of Troy. The bad-tempered consequences of the Judgment of Paris and of Aeneas’s betrayal of Queen Dido had finally arrived at a harmonious conclusion.

For, in truth, Hannibal was right to be pessimistic. Continuing attempts to reinforce his army failed. He no longer held the initiative and was condemned to enforced inactivity. The once all-conquering general had played his last card.

At the time, Cannae appeared to mark a turning point in world history, but it is the battle at the Metaurus that deserves the accolade. It was now obvious to all, including the Queen of Heaven, that Carthage was entering a bleak endgame.

THE END OF the saga is swiftly told. Back in Rome, the privatus cum imperio was not allowed a triumph, because he was not and had not been a praetor or a consul. However, it was some recompense that he was easily elected consul for 205. He was assigned Sicily as his provincia, or theater of activity, with permission to invade Africa if he saw fit. The permission was reluctantly given, for the old Delayer, Fabius Maximus, took a dim view of harebrained gambles. Better by far, he argued, to concentrate on removing Hannibal from Italy.

Scipio completely disagreed, for once the Punic army had left, a war-weary people would surely press for a quick peace, leaving Carthage more or less where it had been at the end of the First Punic War—still a substantial and independent power. Scipio envisaged Rome as master of the Western Mediterranean, and that meant demoting Carthage to the status of a permanent dependent. This would be accomplished only by a decisive victory in Africa.

In the spring of 204, Scipio landed an army of thirty-five thousand men in the Punic heartland and laid siege to the important town of Utica. In these early days, his weakness was cavalry, although a new ally, the young Numidian chieftain Masinissa, supplied some horsemen, and little progress was made until the following year. Peace discussions were held, inconclusively, but they had a surprising by-product. Roman officers were able to visit the two enemy camps and learned about their construction (timber and reeds) and layout. One night, in a remarkable commando operation, Roman troops set fire to them and caused heavy casualties. Many victims did not even realize that the conflagration had been arson, rather than misadventure. If Hannibal had engaged in such a stratagem, it would have been denounced as typical underhand Punic treachery.

Later in the year, Scipio won a full-dress battle. Although he had fewer troops, he pushed back the enemy’s wings and encircled the infantry in the center, in fine Hannibalic style. Peace terms were agreed to end the war. Carthage was to surrender all prisoners, evacuate Italy and Gaul, abandon Spain and all islands between Italy and Carthage, hand over its entire navy (bar twenty ships), and pay a large indemnity of five thousand talents. However, the Council of Elders crossed its collective fingers behind its back and sent word to Hannibal, recalling him and his army to Carthage. He angrily obeyed, but blamed the home authorities for not having supported him wholeheartedly in the past. If they had, Carthage would not be in its present state.

Still determined to win the public-relations battle for Juno’s goodwill, the Romans put about a story that some Italian soldiers in the Punic army refused to go to Africa. Hannibal invited them to an assembly in the goddess’s peaceful and hitherto inviolate precinct in Bruttium, where he had them surrounded by other troops and slaughtered. Another black mark in the goddess’s book.

With between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand men safely back in North Africa, the Council of Elders was ready to abandon its peace treaty and renew hostilities. In a deliberate provocation, a convoy of Roman supply ships was attacked. A coldly furious Scipio, who had probably suspected all along that the enemy was playing for time, summoned Masinissa, who was now able to supply a substantial cavalry force, and set about compelling Hannibal to offer battle. This he did, by launching a ruthless campaign of massacre and destruction in the fertile Punic countryside. Towns were taken, laid waste, and their populations sold into slavery.

The policy worked. In late October 202, the Carthaginian and Roman armies met near Zama, a town five days’ march from the sea. Eager to meet his young rival, Hannibal asked for a personal conference à deux with Scipio. Halfway between the opposing lines, each attended by an interpreter, the generals met. Nothing came of this remarkable encounter. The Carthaginian proposed peace, but Scipio was confident of victory and refused.

The following morning, battle was joined. In one sense, the outcome did not much matter. If fate insisted, Rome could afford yet another defeat, and would simply come back with yet another army. Carthage, however, was at its last gasp. Hannibal commanded the larger number of men, but for once he had few cavalry and much of his infantry was untested. His battle plan took account of these weaknesses. He knew that Scipio’s cavalry would scatter his own and gallop away in pursuit; his task was to rout the legions in the Roman center and win the day before the horsemen had time to return and take his infantry in the rear. Eighty war elephants were drawn up in front. Behind them, the Carthaginian commander arranged his foot soldiers in three lines, with the less experienced in the first two and his seasoned veterans from the Italian years at the back.

The course of the battle went more or less as Hannibal guessed it would, but not with a happy outcome for him. The Romans quickly drove his cavalry from the field. Unfortunately, the elephants were a disaster, some hurtling down lanes or gaps in the line that Scipio specially created for them (the beasts were then dealt with at leisure in the rear) and others stampeding back into their own forces. Hannibal’s first two lines of foot soldiers were swept away. Then the Roman legionaries paused methodically to regroup from their loose maniples into a dense phalanx, before engaging with his third line. For a while there was an evenly balanced slogging match, until, crucially, Scipio’s cavalry rode back and, as Hannibal had gloomily foreseen, attacked them from behind. He had done his best under the circumstances, but it had not been good enough. The game was up, and sixteen years of blood and victories had gone for nothing.

Further resistance by Carthage was futile, and risked bringing on the annihilation of the city itself. The fates of Capua, Tarentum, and Syracuse were fresh in the mind. The final peace terms were more severe than those previously negotiated. The indemnity rose to ten thousand talents, payable in fifty annual installments. Carthage was to remain independent but within boundaries, as it was before the war (a territory about the size of modern Tunisia); formerly Numidian lands claimed by Masinissa were to be returned. The city was not allowed to make war outside Africa, and only with Rome’s permission within Africa. The entire fleet was to be burned, except for ten triremes, the maximum now permitted. This was the end of Carthage as a Mediterranean power.

When the draft treaty was laid before the Council of Elders, a member stood up and began to oppose acceptance. Hannibal forcibly pulled him down from the speakers’ platform. Censured for breeching the conventions of the house, he apologized. According to Polybius, he said:

The council followed Hannibal’s advice and passed a resolution to conclude the treaty on the conditions set out.

TWO ROMAN LEGIONS are on the march, commanded by one of the consuls. It is late afternoon and twilight will soon set in. The long column comes to a halt, and the men break up into an extraordinary daily routine. In a few hours, they build a complete military camp.

The pattern is always the same. First an officer goes forward to find a suitable site. When that is done, the spot where the consul’s tent, or praetorium, is to be erected is decided and, in front of it, a forum or marketplace. Nearby will be the tent of the quaestor, the logistics manager, and those of the tribunes, or staff officers. Every other component falls into a predetermined place. The camp is square, with four gates and a grid of streets laid out with flags planted in the ground. All the distances are regulated and familiar.

The site quickly becomes a busy anthill. Each legionary has a specific task to fulfill. Some dig a ditch and a low rampart, with stakes (every soldier carries one) hammered into it to form a defensive palisade. Others put up tents in orderly rows. Watchwords are set, and sentries posted, and officers prepare to do their rounds. Night falls on what looks like a small city.

The whole process is a fine example of discipline under pressure. When Pyrrhus of Epirus witnessed the Roman legions encamp for the night, he was daunted by the spectacle, realizing for the first time that, when fighting Rome, he might have issued a challenge he could not win. Another Greek, the historian Polybius, has left a detailed and admiring description of the Republic’s military dispositions as it emerged from the struggle with Hannibal, from which this account is taken. He wanted to understand the legions’ remarkable record of success in war after war.

When the need arose for recruiting an army, the consuls announced the day for a levy when all men of military age, between seventeen and forty-six, and with property valued at more than four hundred denarii, were to assemble on the Capitol. The denarius was a small silver coin, the value of which in today’s terms is hard to compute because of widely differing economic conditions, but a legionary in this period received a daily allowance of one-third of a denarius. Each man was allocated the legion with which he would serve and the fighting category—whether he was to join the light-armed velites, the youthful hastati, the mature principes, or the veteran triarii. Meanwhile, messengers went out to the allied communities throughout the peninsula, requiring the provision of a requisite number of troops.

Much of a Roman’s life on and off through his twenties and thirties was spent in the army. The maximum length of service was sixteen years for an infantryman (twenty in a national emergency) and ten for an eques. Normally, he would serve for a continuous period of six years, after which, as an evocatus, he could be called back to the colors as and when required. Conscription was compulsory, and no one could stand for public office before completing a decade of national service.

Punishments were ferocious. A man on nighttime guard duty who was found to be asleep or absent without leave could expect to suffer a fustuarium. A military tribune touched him lightly with a cudgel, whereupon his fellow soldiers fell upon him with clubs and stones and beat him to death. Other capital offenses included theft, perjury, homosexual acts committed by a mature adult on a teenager, and cowardice in the field (for example, throwing away one’s weapons in fear). A “third strike and you’re dead” policy was applied to convictions for noncapital crimes.

If a group of soldiers—for example, a maniple—broke and ran under pressure and deserted their posts, no mercy was shown. The legion was paraded and those found guilty were brought to the front and reprimanded. Then one out of every ten of them was selected by lot and beaten to death. The remainder were put on iron rations and expelled from the camp; they were forced to quarter themselves in a place without any defenses.

Carrots accompanied sticks. When soldiers distinguished themselves in battle, the commander would summon a general assembly of the troops and call forward those whom he considered to have shown exceptional courage. When a city was stormed, the first man to scale the wall was awarded a crown of gold. Anyone who had shielded or saved a comrade’s life was honored with gifts from the consul—a spear or a cup or horse trappings. A man whose life had been saved was obliged to treat his rescuer as if he were a parent, a paterfamilias, for the rest of his life.

Polybius was much impressed by this system of discipline and decorations: “When we consider this people’s almost obsessive concern with military rewards and punishments, and the immense importance which they attach to both, it is not surprising that they emerge with brilliant success from every war in which they engage.”

The Greek historian has a point, but, as the Punic Wars showed, other factors also need to be taken into account if we are to give a complete explanation of Rome’s talent for making war. The way the state fused civilian politics and military activity meant that many members of the ruling class could expect to command an army at some point in their careers. They received long and intensive military training and so were equipped, in principle at least, to get the best from the legions.

The fact that senior politicians usually held office only for a year led to a rapid throughput of distinctly variable talent. Disasters in the field occurred with surprising frequency. It took a generation before a general was identified who was capable of worsting Hannibal. However, this disadvantage was amply compensated by Rome’s access to abundant human capital.

Both Pyrrhus and Hannibal were astounded by the legions’ capacity for self-renewal. An army could be destroyed and within a very short space of time a brand-new fighting force took its place. Being a militarized society with long experience, Roman leaders developed a culture of invincibility, a powerful will to victory, and a bloody-minded refusal to accept defeat. They also had the self-confidence to innovate when their backs were to the wall; there is no more striking example of this than the Senate’s decision to build fleets during the First Punic War despite its almost complete inexperience of naval matters.

HANNIBAL WAS IN early middle age. What was he to do with the rest of his life? He decided to stay on in Carthage and play an active part in the city’s recovery. He seems to have encouraged the further development of agriculture as compensation for the loss of the Punic trading empire and employed the army (what remained of it) to plant a huge number of olive trees.

He also had a score to settle with the ruling oligarchy, for failing to back his Italian campaign. For the first time, he entered domestic politics and emerged as a radical reformer, as energetic in the council chamber as he had been on the battlefield. In 196 he was elected sufet, one of the city’s two chief magistrates, and set in motion a review of public finances. He ordered a treasury official to appear before him, but the man refused, relying on the fact that he was about to join the Hundred and Four—the “supreme court,” which had the right of scrutiny of public administrators, and in which membership was for life.

A furious Hannibal had the official arrested and hauled before the People’s Assembly, where he launched an attack on the committee for its arrogance and its overbearing use of power. He immediately proposed and carried a law whereby committee members could hold office for only one year and never for two years in a row. Having conducted his review, he returned to the Assembly and reported widespread embezzlement of public funds and tax evasion. If property and harbor duties were properly collected, the war indemnity could be paid off, he claimed, without the necessity of levying higher taxes.

The great and the good of Carthage were much put out. They wrote letter after letter to the Senate in Rome, alleging that Hannibal was in secret and seditious communication with Antiochus the Great, who was then engaged in a diplomatic confrontation with the Romans. There appears to have been no good evidence to back this up, and Hannibal’s generous onetime adversary, Scipio, advised his colleagues that it would be undignified to intervene in what was obviously an internal dispute. “We should be satisfied with having defeated him in the field without then taking him to court!” he declared.

The Senate disagreed and sent delegates to Carthage to charge Hannibal with conspiracy before the Council of Elders. In order to avoid arousing his suspicions, they put it about that they were coming to arbitrate in a dispute between Carthage and Masinissa, the Numidian ruler. Hannibal was too wily to be taken in and quietly slipped abroad to avoid arrest. His first stop was Carthage’s mother city, Tyre, but he ended up at Antiochus’s court. Whether or not he had been in contact with the king previously is unknown, but the maladroit Senate had driven Hannibal into his arms, the precise opposite of what it wanted.

The two men did not get on very well. Hannibal thought little of Antiochus’s military abilities. From the king’s point of view, the advice his guest dispensed was always a variation on the same theme: war with Rome should be taken to Italy. It was as if Hannibal wanted to rerun his career. The king paid no attention and gave him only second-ranking jobs.

The ancient historians report that in 193 Scipio, now called Africanus in honor of Zama, was among an embassy the Romans sent to Antiochus. He and Hannibal met at Ephesus and had a conversation on the subject of generalship. Scipio asked the Carthaginian who in his opinion was the greatest commander of all time. Hannibal chose Alexander and placed Pyrrhus second. And the third? inquired Scipio, rather nettled but expecting that he would at least be given third place. Hannibal unhesitatingly chose himself:

It is a good story, but (probably) too good to be true. Scipio seems to have been in Carthage at the time that he was supposed to be in Ephesus.

As we shall see in Chapter 15, Antiochus lost his contest with Rome, and Hannibal was obliged to set off on his travels again. He sought refuge in various corners of the Middle East, eventually ending up at the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, on the Black Sea coast. Rome had a long memory. When a former consul came calling, he criticized Prusias for sheltering Rome’s great enemy. The king took the hint and made some necessary dispositions.

Hannibal knew that he would always be on the run, and had arranged for his house by the sea in Bithynia to have seven underground exits; if necessary, he should be able to make a swift and secret getaway. The arrival of a Roman envoy meant that it was time to escape, but he had left matters too late. He found the king’s guards in all the passageways. His only remaining option was suicide if he was not to fall into the hands of his lifelong foe. He wound his cloak around his neck and ordered a slave to plant his knee in the small of his back and simultaneously twist and tug at the cloak as if it were a rope. In this way, he choked to death. According to another account, he took poison; but most poisons known at that time were slow-acting, and Hannibal would have needed something that killed quickly.

Plutarch gives the Carthaginian some famous last words: “The Romans have found it too tedious and difficult a business to wait for a hated old man’s death. Let us now at last put them out of their misery.” Whether or not this is what he actually said, it is surely what he would have liked to say. When the news of Hannibal’s suicide reached the Senate, many thought the former consul’s behavior had been odious and officious, for Hannibal was “like a bird who is too old to fly and has lost his tail, and who is allowed to live on tamely and harmlessly.” Others took the view that the Carthaginian’s hatred of Rome was ingrained and that, if ever he were given the chance, he would be as dangerous as ever.

One thing was certain: the little boy had been true to the oath he swore in the temple at Carthage nearly half a century earlier, although it cost him a failed life and a lonely death.

14 Change and Decay

THE BOY WAS IN HIS LATE TEENS AND ENJOYING HIS first serious love affair. Then a small cloud appeared on the horizon. One day in 186, he lightheartedly told his girlfriend that they would be unable to have sex for a week or so.

He was Publius Aebutius and she, somewhat older than he, was Hispala Faecenia, a high-class prostitute and former slave. An archetypal good-time girl with a heart of gold, she adored her young lover. He had not started the affair, for, uncharacteristically in a man’s world, she had picked him up. In fact, rather than make money from the relationship, as she would with an ordinary client, she subsidized him.

This was because Aebutius had trouble at home. He came from an affluent, upper-class family, but his father died when he was small and he was brought up by his mother and a stepfather. They embezzled his fortune and made as little provision for his daily needs as possible. He was able to get by only thanks to Hispala’s generosity.

After Aebutius had recovered from an illness, his mother told him that she wanted to initiate him into a secret cult devoted to Bacchus, the Latin name for Dionysus, the god of intoxication and ritual madness. She had vowed to do this on his behalf, she claimed, once he had got better. He agreed to fall in with her wish, and she warned that he would have to be sexually continent for ten days before the ceremony.

This was the reason, Aebutius explained to Hispala, for staying away from her bed. Her reaction astonished him. “Heaven forbid!” she exclaimed. “Better for both of us to die than you should do that!” He protested that he was only following his mother’s request.

“This means that your stepfather—I suppose it would be offensive to mention your mother—is in a hurry to destroy your virtue, your good name, your prospects and your life.”

Swearing her lover to the strictest secrecy, Hispala said that she had been initiated while still a slave, and the cult was a cover for the grossest immorality and even murder. As Livy describes them, the rites were

Aebutius went home and announced that he would have nothing to do with the Bacchic cult. This enraged his mother and his stepfather, and they drove him out of the house. He took refuge with an aunt, who advised him to go and tell all to the consul Spurius Postumius Albinus. After checking that Aebutius was a reliable witness, Postumius made some discreet inquiries. He arranged for his mother-in-law to ask Hispala to pay her a visit. Mystified by the fact that this well-known and eminently respectable lady should want to see her, Hispala obeyed.

Puzzlement turned to terror when she saw the consul’s lictors and entourage in the hall, and then the consul himself. Eventually, she calmed down and told her story. Apparently, the rites had originally been all-female and had taken place only three times a year, but then a Campanian priestess had introduced reforms. Now men were allowed to take part, the ceremonies were held at night, and their frequency had risen to five times a month. According to Livy:

Anyone unwilling to take part was whisked away by, or in, some sort of mechanical device and done away with in hidden caves.

Postumius made a full report to a shocked Senate. Although the immoral goings-on were to be deprecated in themselves, what really worried members was that a secret society could recruit adherents from across the classes and plan heaven knows what clandestine mischief, political as well as sexual. Dionysus was associated with breaches of social control and the dissolution of gender, age, and class distinctions. It may be no accident that the orgies took place in a grove on the Aventine, the traditional center of popular agitation, and that Aebutius and Hispala both lived on the hill, too.

An inscription has survived communicating the Senate’s decision on the cult to communities across the peninsula. It ordered:

Care was taken not to offend the god needlessly. Bacchic rituals could still be performed, but only with official permission and in the presence of no more than five people.

As for the lovers, they were handsomely rewarded. Aebutius was forgiven his military service and Hispala was allowed to marry a freeborn Roman, and, it was decreed, “no slur or disgrace on account of the marriage should attach to the man who married her.” History does not relate what happened to them next.

With this permission granted, the couple were entitled to become husband and wife, in theory. But the boy was young and, like many who have their first sexual experience with a knowledgeable and kindly older woman, he probably moved on. After all, he and his girlfriend were from radically different social classes. Whatever the Senate said, prejudice against former slaves and prostitutes was fierce. The integrity of the family line had to be protected at all costs.

We may hope for, but doubt, a happy ending.

THE REAL IMPORTANCE of the scandal was the light it threw on Rome’s contradictory attitudes toward Greece. From the Republic’s earliest years, the Hellenic world had been a major influence, but now that they were emerging as the dominant Mediterranean state, Romans were coming into direct contact with this culture for the first time. They admired the deathless achievements of a glorious past—the works of the great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; the sculpture of Pheidias; the architecture of Ictinus and so forth—and knew they could not compete with them.

The decadent descendants of these great men looked down their noses on the provincial newcomers from Italy. They “would jeer at their habits and customs, others at Roman achievements, others at the appearance of the city itself, which was not yet beautified in either its public places or private districts.” For his part, the average Roman harbored a healthy distrust of contemporary Greeks (they were the classical equivalent of cheese-eating surrender monkeys). Livy makes this clear when, with a sneer, he attributes the Bacchanalia as a “method of infecting people’s minds with error” to a “Greek of humble origin, a man possessed of none of those numerous accomplishments which the Greek people, the most highly educated and civilized of nations, has introduced among us for the cultivation of mind and body.”

While the Senate disliked and discouraged foreign cults from the Orient, it was by no means consistent in practice. In 293, an outbreak of plague led to a consultation of the Sibylline Books and the importation from Epidaurus, in Greece, of a snake sacred to the god of medicine, Asklepios (Latinized into Aesculapius), for whom a shrine and a healing center were built on Tiber Island. In 206, a prophecy was discovered which stated that if ever a foreign enemy were to invade Italy he would be driven out only if Cybele, or the Great Mother, was brought to Rome (in the shape of a holy black stone).

Desperate to see an end to Hannibal’s occupation of the peninsula, the goddess was welcomed into the city and a new temple was built for her on the Palatine. Cybele and her youthful consort, Attis, expressed the annual cycle of the fertility of the land in a manner that a Roman traditionalist would find distinctly unappealing. Her spring festivities, during which self-castrated eunuchs danced to cymbals and drums, were no less exotic than those dedicated to Dionysus. Attis had set the precedent. As the first-century poet Catullus writes, he,

This was all most un-Roman, and care was taken to limit the impact of the new cult. The goddess’s priests were and remained foreigners, and their numbers and activities were strictly limited.

Meanwhile, the ruling élite maintained, with its usual attention to detail, the superstitious, placatory rituals of Rome’s official religion. Change was unwelcome, and loyalty to the mos maiorum was essential to the Republic’s well-being. This was sometimes taken to absurd lengths. One example may speak for all. Every year the senior outgoing consul proclaimed his successors in office. In 163, the officeholder of the day, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, conducted the ceremony as usual. But after the new magistrates had taken command in their respective spheres of activity Gracchus came across an ancient book of religious practices, in which he found a regulation he knew nothing about. Plutarch explains it:

Tiberius had innocently twice used the same house for his observations before making his consular proclamations. Horrified, he referred the matter to the Senate, which recalled the consuls and made them resign their offices. They were then reappointed after the liturgy had been repeated in proper form.

The mos maiorum received its symbolic incarnation in the funerals of noblemen. The corpse was carried into the Forum and displayed in an upright position, as if the dead man were still alive, on the Rostra. His son or some other relative delivered a eulogy, listing the facts of his career, as both a history lesson and an assertion of Republican virtue. Polybius, the observant foreigner who spent much of a lifetime observing Romans, describes the most extraordinary aspect of the ceremony. He reports that an image of the deceased was present alongside those of his famous forebears and, after the burial, was put on permanent show in a wooden shrine in his house:

What a spectacle this must have been. The dead had reawakened—perhaps they had never fallen asleep—and were now listening attentively to the life story of their freshly deceased posterity. Today’s generation could see, with all the sharpened focus of a waking dream, that it was on trial before its ancestors.

THERE WERE OTHER ways in the city of Rome by which the sanctified past kept company with the present. On every corner were shrines, temples, and holy groves, sacred to one divinity or another. Temples were storehouses of old trophies, bronze tablets with the texts of laws and treaties, votive offerings, and other obsolete odds and ends. In the Forum and elsewhere, paintings of famous military exploits, originally made for triumphs, were on display. Masterpieces of Greek art, captured in the sack of such cities as Syracuse and Tarentum, transformed Rome into an open-air museum. Here was a treasury of clutter, awaiting the explanations of both the historian and the antiquarian, although these were often inaccurate or imaginative.

On the Sacred Way, Romulus and his Sabine counterpart, Titus Tatius, kept watch, in sculptural form, over the Forum below. In the middle of the square itself, the fig tree beneath which the founding brothers were suckled by the she-wolf still flourished. Nearby was a pool, now dried up, called the Lacus Curtius. Here a chasm had once split open; it was said that it would never close until Rome’s most valued possession had been deposited in it. Gold and jewelry were thrown in, to no effect. At last, a young cavalryman realized that the answer to the riddle was the Roman soldier. He galloped into the abyss and the earth closed above his head.

Not far away, next to the Temple of Castor, with its lofty podium, was the spring of Iuturna, where the divine twins watered their horses after the Battle of Lake Regillus. At the other end of the Forum was the speakers’ platform, the Rostra. Orators addressing the populace had to compete for attention with a throng of half-life-size statues of ambassadors who had perished while on missions for the state.

The hill of the Capitol was also littered with statues of famous Romans, kings, and that expeller of the kings, Marcus Brutus. Among them stood two colossi of the hero Hercules and another of Jupiter himself, erected in the fourth century. There were so many representations of the great men of old that visitors must have had the eerie impression that they were walking through a crowd turned into stone by some passing Medusa.

Subterranean chambers beneath the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest were packed not only with old dedications but also with sculptures that had fallen from the temple roof and a variety of superfluous gifts. Walls were covered with bronze tablets on which the terms of treaties and the texts of laws were inscribed. Victory trophies and votive monuments occupied every spare corner.

OF COURSE, ROME was more than a space for memory, a cemetery field of relics; it was also a living city, expanding all the time and well on its way to becoming an early megalopolis. The Forum was the city’s center, part shopping center, part law courts, and part political arena. Human life in all its variety pushed its way up among the statues, the shrines, the temples.

We are lucky to have a direct account of daily life from someone who lived and thrived in Rome during and after the wars with Carthage. He was the comedy playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. In one of his pieces, a character conducts a tour of the Forum, a locale where the best and worst of human nature can be found. “From virtue down to trash,” he says, “here is god’s plenty.” The lower or southern part of the piazza was the preserve of the respectable or, in Plautus’s words, “the good men and the opulent.” He comments, “For perjurers, you can apply to the courts of law,” which were held in the open air near the circular Comitium, where public assemblies were convened (there was room, at a squeeze, for perhaps five thousand citizens to attend and for ten thousand in the Forum as a whole). Liars and dishonest salesmen congregated at the little shrine of Venus Cloacina, or Venus of the Drain. A statue of Venus was said once to have fallen into the open drain here, hence her cognomen. The shrine was a low circular platform with two statues of the goddess, a pleasant enough place to loiter.

“Rich and errant husbands” frequented the Basilica, a business hall where bankers set up their tables and entrepreneurs sold shares in enterprises. Across the square a line of retail outlets, the tabernae veteres, or Old Shops, was largely peopled with moneylenders, and behind the Temple of Castor and Pollux “conmen extract loans from the unwary.” Near the Vicus Tuscus (Etruscan Street), was the rent boys’ cruising ground. The street led to the Velabrum, a saddle of land between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, where “you’ll find bakers, butchers and fortune-tellers.”

Unlike Alexandria, the gleaming white, checkered capital of the Ptolemies, Rome was unplanned. Buildings grew up ad hoc along ancient pathways that led to the Palatine and Capitoline hills, until the city became a maze of gloomy, narrow alleys and little squares. The principles of hygiene were little understood and infectious diseases were rife. Some (not altogether successful) efforts were made to collect sewage for use as agricultural fertilizer, and it was recognized that a copious supply of clean water was essential. Two aqueducts, mainly running underground, were built in 312 (by Appius Claudius Caecus, see this page) and in 272. By the middle of the second century, a rising population had led to the construction of the Aqua Marcia, an astonishing feat of engineering that brought water to the top of the Capitol. Few people could afford baths at home, and by about 100 public baths had become a universal feature of daily life.

Most thoroughfares in the city were unpaved, although they might have raised sidewalks; people dumped rubbish and sewage in them, as well as dead animals and the occasional unwanted corpse. Slops from pots often fell on the heads of unwary passersby (Laws were passed regulating claims for damages.) Unsanitary conditions were not the only danger, for wheeled traffic took up much of the available space and accidents were common.

The urban unit was the vicus, a street that functioned as an artery for pedestrians and wheeled traffic and served the neighborhood around it. Each vicus had a central point of reference—a crossroads, a sacred grove, a shrine. To qualify officially for the title of street, or via, the Twelve Tables specified that a roadway should be eight feet wide when straight and sixteen at bends; only two roadways merited the title—the Via Sacra and the Via Nova (New Street), which ran between the Forum and the Palatine.

A snatch of dialogue from the comic playwright Publius Terentius Afer (or Terence) from the middle of the second century, conveys the flavor of a well-to-do part of town. A slave is giving someone directions in a city that has no street signs.

“Do you know that arcade by the market?”

“Of course I do.”

“Go uphill past it, straight along the road. When you get to the top, there’s a slope downward. Rattle your way down that. Next there’s a little shrine on this side, and there’s an alleyway thereabouts.”

“Which one?”

“There’s also a big fig tree.”

“But you can’t get through that alleyway.”

“You’re absolutely right! Really! … I made a mistake: go back to the arcade; yes, you’ll get there much more directly this way, and there isn’t so far to walk. Do you know the house of old Cratinus?”

“I do.”

“When you’ve passed that, go left straight along that road; when you come to the temple of Diana, go to the right. Before you reach the gate, just by the pond, there’s a bakery, and a workshop opposite: that’s where he is.”

On main streets, one- or two-room shops or poky apartments for the poor faced one another along either side. These were usually open to the passersby and could be secured by wooden shutters. All sorts of goods were sold—food, cloth, kitchenware, jewelry, and books. Bars served wine mixed with water and flavored with herbs, honey, or resin (the ancestor of today’s Greek retsina). Soup with bread, stews, diced roasted meat, sausages, pies, fruit, and filled buns were also on offer, even a kind of proto-pizza. Restaurants with seating catered to the more affluent customer.

THE ROWS OF shops and apartments protected the houses of the well-to-do, which lay behind them, from the noises and stinks of the street. They were laid out according to a basic pattern on which those with money and space could expand. A front door led through a narrow vestibule to a semi-public waiting room or hallway; this was the atrium, with an opening to the sky, and lined on three sides by small dark bedrooms. The side facing the visitor was occupied by a raised space, the tablinum, originally the master bedroom but now the owner’s study, with rich frescoes on the walls and the masks of the family’s ancestors on pedestals. Nearby, the triclinium was a formal dining room where guests ate elaborate meals lying on couches. The back of the house was the family’s living quarters, dominated by a columned garden courtyard or peristyle. In the bigger houses there was a first floor and a summer triclinium by the peristyle.

As always, some parts of town were more fashionable—and costly—than others. The most expensive houses could be found on the Palatine and the Velia, a ridge of ground running down alongside the Sacred Way into the Forum, the hub of élite transactions. The land surrounding the city was taken up with market gardens that produced flowers and vegetables. During the second century, many of these horti were purchased by the rich and powerful, who built villas in them: calm, green retreats where they could escape the din and anger of city life. This was rus in urbe, an urban countryside.

There was too little space inside the city walls to meet Rome’s requirements, and buildings began to appear on the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. This was an open area beyond the Capitol that was used for pasturage and military exercises. Scipio Africanus built a villa and garden there. The Circus Flaminius, a public square, was commissioned in 221 for the Plebeian Games by Gaius Flaminius, the populist leader who fell at Lake Trasimene a few years later. It also served as a marketplace and a display area for triumphal booty. There were government structures on the Campus, too; the Ovile was an enclosure rather like a sheep pen where the comitia centuriata held its votes; the adjoining Villa Publica, rebuilt and enlarged in 194, was a headquarters for state officials in which the census was taken and troops were levied.

Rome’s increasing wealth in the second century led to civic improvements. The rich and famous built triumphal arches (Scipio among them), porticoes, and basilicas as public amenities. More streets were paved and the drainage system was improved. Concrete, opus caementicium, was widely used and new temples were constructed, in the Greek manner, from marble or travertine. But the city’s largest entertainment venue, the Circus Maximus, remained a less than glamorous construction of painted wood.

Rome had a long way to go before it could match the magnificence of the Hellenic cities of the East.

AS EVER, THE poor had a hard time of it. There were plenty of jobs in service industries such as food supplies (grain, meat, fish), in construction, in retail and crafts of various kinds (ceramics, glassware, metalwork). But Rome’s population was growing rapidly and slaves soaked up much available work. We can assume high levels of unemployment or part-time employment, at least periodically.

Space was at a premium. As in modern cities, developers began to look skyward and built apartment blocks as many as eight stories high. At first, these were rickety wood-framed structures that had an alarming tendency to catch fire. With the introduction of concrete, something rather more solid was created; the Romans called it an insula, or island. This solidity was more apparent than real, however, for insulae often collapsed without warning.

Many people joined associations (collegia, sodalicia, corpora, or curiae), which would give their lives some stability beyond the family. There was little in the way of local government, and no regular police force or fire service. However, the four aediles (two were originally deputies to the tribunes and were joined in 387 by another pair elected by patricians only) were responsible for the upkeep of the city’s fabric, presentation of the Games, the supply of grain and water, and oversight of the markets. Membership in a trade guild, a professional association, or a cult group provided some protection against the vicissitudes and injustice of life. Members of these organizations met regularly (say, once a month), held a sacrifice, and ate a meal together. There were neighborhood societies, which took part in the annual festival of the Compitalia, a celebration in honor of the Lares Compitales, the gods of local crossroads. Some collegia were burial clubs, to which members made small, regular financial contributions to pay for their funeral costs.

The state was uneasy about these societies, as its reaction to the Bacchanalia crisis showed, because it did not know what they were up to. At times of political upheaval, they might conspire against good order. But potentially subversive “horizontal” social structures were counteracted by the “vertical” pyramid of the clientela. As we have seen, everyone, except those at the very pinnacle of society, was a cliens helpful to and dependent on one or more richer patrons. The relationship was hereditary and recognized, albeit not enforced, by law. If a man was lucky enough to be the client of a senator, he was expected to call on this person at home first thing in the morning and accompany him to the Forum; the more followers in a great man’s train, the greater his prestige. In return, he could expect a sportula—some food or pocket money.

This system of mutual exchange of goods and services bound society together and made revolt from below or the emergence of reform movements unlikely. Of course, patrons could sometimes be mean or fall on hard times for one reason or another. Plautus imagines an unemployed and half-starved client lamenting his fate:

Rome was a great and growing community, it was the center of government, it was where the action was. In fact, its inhabitants often dispensed with its name and instead referred to it as urbs—not any ordinary city but the city. However, urban life was corrupting; money made the rich idle, and unemployment did the same for the moneyless. Responsible citizens believed that the countryside was a far, far better place. After all, it was to his small farm that the dictator Cincinnatus retired after saving the state, eschewing glory and wealth. It was from smallholders that the Republic’s victorious legions were recruited. Cicero’s friend the antiquarian and polymath Varro wrote in De re rustica, his compendium of country lore: “It was not without reason that those great men, our ancestors, put the Romans who lived in the country ahead of those who lived in the city.”

An ordinary Roman farmer has left us his summary of the good life in his own words, found on an inscription at Forlì, in Italy. It expresses the tough, hardworking, sober values of the countrymen:

A new generation of politicians emerged after the end of the wars with Carthage, the most able but most unlikable of whom was Marcus Porcius Cato (called the Elder, or the Censor, to distinguish him from his first-century namesake). He came from yeoman stock and spent the earlier years of his adult life, when not fighting in the army, tilling his own fields, just like a latter-day Cincinnatus. Plutarch said of him:

Talent-spotted by an aristocratic neighbor, he was introduced to Roman politics in the capital and soon rose to the top.

For Cato, there was something unforgivably Greek about the sophisticated self-indulgences of city life. Every true Roman’s moral guide, the mos maiorum, was a treasury of rural virtues. In his book on farming, De agri cultura, Cato observed that trade was more profitable than farming, but too risky; the same went for banking, with the addition that it was more dishonorable. By contrast, he wrote, “it is from the farming class that the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers come, their calling is most highly respected, their livelihood is most assured and is looked on with the least hostility.” The citizen, in the field with his plow and on the battlefield with his sword and spear, stood for all that was best about Rome.

Cato did in fact farm his own acres himself, but only when he was young and poor. An austere hypocrite, he lived very simply but amassed a fortune, against his fine principles, as a moneylender and a property investor. Once he had made his way in the world, he ran his estates as an absentee landlord. He gives the game away in his book. In it, he offers copious practical advice to a landowner like himself, who pays his farm only the occasional visit. The overseer or bailiff, who runs the business on his behalf and manages the workers, some of them slaves and others freeborn, is to be kept on a tight rein:

Cato is unsentimental. He wants the laborers to be well enough looked after to function efficiently, but that’s all. They should be either at work or asleep. Failure or illness, even old age, is not to be tolerated:

We can blame Cato for his mean-spiritedness and intellectual dishonesty, but the fact is that the heyday of the independent smallholder, tilling his own soil and sending his sons to war, was over. Sixteen years of burning, looting, and destruction by Hannibal’s army had emptied much of the Italian countryside and swelled the population of Rome. It would take many years for the land to recover, and in some parts of the south it never did.

POVERTY WAS PARTLY alleviated by fun, albeit in the cause of religion. Throughout the year, groups of days were dedicated to the gods and set aside as holidays. In the city, public and commercial business was suspended, the Senate did not meet, and the city’s routine was interrupted by festivals, or “games.” The oldest were the ludi Romani (Roman Games), founded in the days of the kings and celebrated in September. They featured pantomime dances set to flute music, which doubled as both ritual and entertainment, and from 240 B.C. plays were added to the schedule. The other games were founded during the nerve-racked time of the war with Hannibal and its aftermath, and were attempts either to placate the menacing supernatural order or to express heartfelt thanks for victory.

As already noted, the ludi Plebeii, or People’s Games, were established in 221 by the plebeian leader Gaius Flaminius. The ludi Apollinares, the games of Apollo, followed in 208; the ludi Cereales, the games of Ceres, in 202; and in 194 the ludi Megalenses, held in honor of the Magna Mater in front of her new temple on the Palatine.

Antiquarians like Varro were fascinated by the origins of live performance. They posited archaic rituals in the countryside, with dances and crude verses. Italians, wrote Virgil on the back of antiquarian speculation, were

Professional dance companies were imported from Etruria, but (we are told) the Roman youths began to imitate them, adding obscene verses of their own composition. This blend of words, music and gesture was cleaned up and professionalized, and led to the presentation of written comedies, which were performed at the ludi. (The young amateurs maintained their tradition of ribald songs regardless.)

The first proper plays to appear at the Games were written by Livius Andronicus, a half-Greek who was sold into slavery when Rome captured Tarentum after the defeat of King Pyrrhus. He tutored his master’s son and wrote a translation into Latin of Homer’s Odyssey; Cicero thought it poor stuff, but it became a set text that hapless schoolboys had to learn by rote. Little of his work survives except for a few titles—farces inspired by Greek models such as “The Gambler” and “The Dagger.” His plots centered on rich young men’s love affairs with prostitutes (who invariably turned out to be wellborn) and clever slaves who ran rings around their masters. His more famous successors, Plautus (Latin for “flatfoot,” c. 254–184), a stage carpenter and sceneshifter from Umbria, and a young Carthaginian slave, Terence (195/185–159), used much the same kind of material.

Tragedies on Greek mythological themes (the adventures of Trojan heroes, for example) were also popular, as was an authentic Roman form, fabulae praetextae, poetic dramas about “documentary” or real-life subjects. These celebrated great moments in Republican history, such as the devotio of Decius Mus at Sentinum and Manlius’s duel with a Gallic chieftain.

Plays were presented in the open air, and the audience sat on the grass or on temporary bleachers in front of a wooden stage. They fulfilled a useful social function, for they appealed to all classes, each of which was allocated special seating. A Roman could look around the audience and see all Rome represented, from a senior senator to a slave who had been given some time off.

Conservative politicians felt that the performing arts were a decadent, Hellenic innovation and blocked all attempts to build a permanent theater with more convenient and comfortable facilities. At one point, a senatorial decree was passed banning the erection of seats for shows on the risible grounds that “mental relaxation should go together with the virility of a standing posture proper to the Roman nation.”

The atmosphere at the ludi could be rowdy. Terence was furious that noise and commotion made a play of his, in which he was acting, fail:

When he revived the play, the first part went well, but then the performance was disrupted by the rumor of a gladiatorial show, a spectacle that was much in demand.

Fights to the death as public display were akin to human sacrifice. Their origin is uncertain; perhaps Rome borrowed them from funeral rites in Etruria (along with wild-animal hunts) or came across them in Campania. The killing of prisoners of war to mark the passing of great men was not unknown. Homer, that universal maker of classical precedents, reports that the grief-stricken Achilles “hacked to pieces with his bronze [sword]” twelve young Trojans at the pyre of his dead friend or lover, Patroclus.

However, physical combat was unusual. The first report we have of it dates from 264, the year that the First Punic War began. At the funeral of a former consul, Decimus Junius Brutus Pera, his sons presented three pairs of slaves, selected from a group of prisoners of war, who fought one another in the Forum Boarium. By 216, the number of fights in a single program had risen to twenty-two, and in 174 seventy-four men fought over a period of three days.

As we saw with drama, entertainment and religion marched hand in hand, and it was not for nothing that a gladiatorial show was called in Latin a munus—a service or gift to a man’s ancestors and to the gods. Until the first century, it always marked the death of a male relative, and was often staged in the Forum in a temporary arena. As violent death became an increasingly popular spectator sport, Romans offered a rational justification of its purpose. Gladiators were expected to act bravely and give up their lives with grace. They were an inspiring example of bravery, it was said, which citizens were to learn from and imitate. They were a metaphor for Rome’s martial spirit—in a word, for virtus.

Munera were regularly programmed in December, especially during the festival of Saturnalia. This prototype of Christmas was the celebration to end all celebrations, and was introduced in 217. It had about it more than a whiff of misrule. Whereas the ludi affirmed social class, the Saturnalia temporarily subverted it. For up to a week, beginning on December 17, the ordinary rules of social interaction were turned upside down. Slaves were excused from work, and their owners would serve them a meal (often actually prepared by the slaves). They were allowed to gamble. Even Cato gave his slaves an extra ration of wine. Citizens were not obliged to dress in togas and everyone wore the pileus, the felt bonnet denoting a slave’s manumission. Gifts were exchanged—wax candles and small pottery figurines, or sigillaria.

Rome’s frequent festivities certainly mitigated the pain of life, but to the slave and the jobless citizen or part-timer the city was a cramped, crowded, smelly, unhealthy habitat. The rich and powerful enjoyed a high level of comfort and ease, but wisely kept a weather eye on the discontents that surrounded them in every street, alley, or crossroads.

IF THERE WAS one man Cato could not stand, who was the epitome of the decadent Greekness of which he so passionately disapproved, it was the hero of Zama, the all-conquering Scipio Africanus. Cato devoted much of his time attempting to discredit him.

There was an annoying grandeur about Scipio. He came from an extremely distinguished patrician family with many consulships to its credit. As we have seen, his father and uncle had been distinguished generals. Since being given command of an army himself at the early age of twenty-five, he had never lost a battle or seen a Roman force defeated. When abroad on foreign commissions, he tended to give himself the airs and graces of a Hellenistic monarch. He did not have the patience or the moral flexibility to thrive in the noisy rivalry of the marketplace; the first-rate general was a third-rate politician.

Worst of all, from Cato’s point of view, Scipio was an unrepentant lover of Hellenic culture. He enjoyed wearing Greek fashions (and when he did put on a toga he draped it in an unusual and, unfriendly commentators said, effeminate manner). He wrote a memoir in Greek and spoke the language fluently. He gave his two sons a Greek education, and probably his two daughters, too, for one of them, Cornelia, the wife of that stickler for religious rules, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, had a reputation in adult life as a highly cultivated woman and an intellectual.

IN 204, THE two men’s paths crossed for the first time. Scipio was in Sicily, assembling his consular army for the invasion of Africa. Cato was one of his quaestors, a junior elected official with financial duties. He argued that his commander was indulging in typically lavish personal expenditure and overpaying his troops. (Many of them were volunteers, so, if there was truth in the claim, the high command was very probably conceding to market forces.) They received much more money than was needed for the necessaries of life, it was said, and were spending the surplus on luxuries and the pleasures of the senses. In other words, Scipio was corrupting the “natural simplicity of his men”; the phrase is Plutarch’s, but it rings true of Cato’s self-serving self-righteousness.

Scipio replied tartly that he had no use for a cheese-paring quaestor, and Cato returned home to stir things up at Rome. He helped Fabius to attack the consul’s waste of immense sums of money. They deplored Scipio’s “boyish addiction to Greek gymnasia and theatrical performances. It was as if he had been appointed the director of an arts festival, not a commander on active service.” A board of inquiry was sent to Sicily, but found nothing to substantiate the charges. The army was in excellent shape, as Scipio showed when he quickly went on to destroy the power of Carthage. He had won this round against his critics, but they would return. The squabbles and maneuvers of domestic politics bored and irritated him. His enemies were always lying in wait for any slip they could exploit.

And, reluctant though some might be to admit it, the suspicion in which Cato and his friends held Scipio was by no means irrational. So great now and so far-flung were the challenges and opportunities facing the triumphant Republic that a general could spend years away from Rome and the picky oversight of the Senate. (Scipio fought in Spain and Africa for almost all of a decade starting in 211.) He commanded soldiers who expected to spend many seasons far from home; in the past, they had been farmers who would leave their fields for only a few months, but now their link with the soil was becoming more and more tenuous. When Scipio demobilized his forces, he was obliged to ask the Senate to give them smallholdings from the ager publicus (state-owned land) so that they had somewhere to live and some means of making a living. If their general did not look after his landless legionaries, who would?

Scipio posed a potential danger to the state, given that he was the master of a great army whose first loyalty was to him. Had he so wished, he could have overshadowed the Senate and even established a formal or an informal despotism. In fact, he did not so wish. He remained at heart loyal to the constitution, that haphazard cocktail of oligarchy moderated by democracy and peopled by an annual procession of temporary monarchs. But it must have occurred to observant senators that a less scrupulous man could accumulate sufficient power with which to subvert the Republic.

It was also true that Rome’s transformation from a middling Italian city-state into an invincible superpower had a coarsening impact on standards in public life. Vast quantities of wealth began to flow not only into the treasury but also into the pockets of the senatorial élite. Bribery during elections began to be widespread, and elected officials recouped the expenditure by extorting money from the provinces—to begin with, the two Spains (Near and Further), Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily—which they went on to govern after their year of office as consul or praetor was over.

As censor in 184, Cato did his best to discourage high living and set punitive taxes on expensive clothing, carriages, women’s ornaments, furniture and plate. Many young men paid fortunes for a rent boy or for highly fashionable pickled fish. In a public speech, Cato said, “Anybody can see that the Republic is going downhill when a pretty lad can cost more than a plot of land and jars of fish more than plowmen.” In no way did Scipio and his family have anything to do with that kind of behavior, but to judge by Polybius’s account of his wife’s appearances in public at religious services there was little attempt to cut costs:

Scipio’s critics regarded the extravagant splendor of his lifestyle as part of the same general picture of moral decline.

Cato was disgusted by the abuses of power he came across as censor and ruthlessly weeded out the unworthy when he scrutinized the membership lists of the Senate and the class of equites. One particular case that Cato exposed concerned a former consul, Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, and horrified public opinion. Flamininus was conducting an affair with an expensive and notorious male prostitute named Philippus the Carthaginian. He persuaded Philippus to join him on campaign in Cisalpine Gaul (today’s Po Valley). The boy used to tease his lover for having made him leave Rome just before the gladiatorial games, which, as a result, he had had to miss. One evening they were having a dinner party and were flushed with wine when a senior Celtic deserter arrived in the camp. He asked to see the consul, with a view to winning his personal protection.

The man was brought into the tent and began to address Flamininus through an interpreter. While he was speaking, the consul turned to his lover and said, “Since you missed the gladiatorial show, would you like to see this Celt dying?”

The boy nodded, not taking the offer seriously. Flamininus then drew his sword, which was hanging above his couch, struck the Celt’s head while he was still speaking, and ran him through as he tried to escape. This breach of good faith toward someone seeking Rome’s friendship was shocking enough, but what was really dreadful to the Roman mind was the casual ending of a life at a convivium, a boozy party.

Had the virtuous Republic of Cincinnatus come to this?

AS THE GLORIOUS victory over Hannibal receded into history, Cato and his friends sought every occasion to muddy the reputation of the Scipios. Africanus responded to these attacks with the clumsiness of a hurt lion trying to fend off a pack of hyenas. Matters came to a head when he and his brother Lucius returned to Rome in 190 after a successful campaign against Antiochus the Great of Syria. (I describe this in the next chapter.)

A few years later, during a meeting of the Senate, a hostile tribune, eager to stir up trouble, asked Lucius to account for the sum of five hundred talents, the first installment of a vast Syrian indemnity of fifteen thousand talents. There seems to have been no real suspicion of fraud; the money probably went to pay the soldiers’ wages. In any event, while Lucius, as consul and commander-in-chief, was under a legal obligation to account for state funds, he was much less accountable for moneys won from the enemy.

Whoever was in the right, Africanus—then princeps senatus, or honorary leader of the Senate—lost his temper. Realizing that he was the indirect target of the intervention, he asked for the campaign books to be brought to him and tore them up in front of the Senate. The affair was allowed to drop, but the Scipios had been shown to be high-handed and possibly light-fingered. The opposition under Cato soon resumed their assault; another tribune was found who laid the question before the People. When Lucius still refused to account for the five hundred talents, he was fined, with a threat of imprisonment if he declined to pay. However, yet another tribune entered a veto. Cato was satisfied that enough had been done to discredit the brothers and no further action was taken.

When the Bacchanalia scandal broke in 186, Cato (of course) blamed Scipio and his circle for having opened the doors to Greek cults and influences, which now posed such great danger to the security of the Republic.

The final onslaught came in 184, and this time Scipio himself was accused (with a farrago of old charges). A huge crowd of clients and friends accompanied him to the Forum. According to Polybius, he spoke only briefly and with typically lofty sangfroid: “The Roman People are not entitled to listen to anyone who speaks against Publius Cornelius Scipio, for it is thanks to him that they have the power of speech at all.”

The hearing was adjourned to a new date, which happened to be the anniversary of the Battle of Zama. This was too good an opportunity to be missed. Scipio arrived in court and announced that he was going to climb up to the Capitol to render thanks to the gods for the victory. Anyone who wished to accompany him would be very welcome. With one accord, the crowd left the Forum and followed in Scipio’s footsteps. The master publicist did not stop at the Capitol but spent the rest of the day visiting other temples in the city. It was indeed as if Rome were celebrating a festival, with Scipio Africanus as its impresario. Cato’s old insult had become reality.

But the lordly patrician had had enough. He retired to his villa at Liternum, a town on the sandy shore near Cumae, and refused to appear at the trial when it resumed. He pleaded sickness; this may have been a truthful rather than a diplomatic excuse, for within a year he was dead, at the comparatively early age of fifty-two.

He left instructions that he should be buried on the grounds of his villa, rather than in the Scipio mausoleum on the Via Appia. Rome’s most talented commander wanted nothing more to do with his ungrateful city, even in death.

15 The Gorgeous East

THE WAR WITH HANNIBAL WAS OVER AND PEOPLE were worn out. The Italian countryside was devastated, the economy wrecked, the public finances deep in the red, and hundreds of thousands of citizens and allies had lost their lives in eighteen years of fighting. Victory was usually sweet, but this time it tasted bitter. There was no life-threatening enemy in sight, and for once Romans had had enough of the battlefield. Everybody was looking forward to a period of peace and recuperation. And yet, within a couple of years of the Battle of Zama, the Senate entered into a major new war. The People vetoed the enterprise when the question was broached, but, when invited to return to the subject, gave its reluctant consent.

How could this be?

THE REPUBLIC WAS unprepared for greatness. As the heir of Carthage, it now controlled the islands of the Western Mediterranean and most of Spain, but it had no other territorial ambitions. The old enemy was allowed to manage its own affairs in northern Africa but could not act independently at home or abroad without the Senate’s express permission. Italy, although not yet the Celtic Po Valley, was well used to the yoke and after Pyrrhus and Hannibal the legions were invincible. Now in charge of half the known world, Rome had become a superpower, without being fully aware of what this might mean.

For many of its citizens, by contrast, the Eastern Mediterranean was terra incognita. Of course, traders traded and from time to time inquirers made the arduous trip to Delphi to learn about the future. In the third century, the Senate entered into friendly but remote relations with Egypt, but otherwise it had little direct experience of the world of Hellenic politics, and little interest in acquiring more. However, this was about to change.

Rome was now more open than ever to foreign, especially Greek, cultural influence. This seemed to some dangerously intoxicating, and to others an irresistible means of civilizing a provincial people. The contradiction in Roman attitudes was a proxy for a deeper uncertainty. Was the Republic to hoard its new power and live within an old, comfortable but limited mindset? And would the outside world allow it to do so? Multiple appeals for political and military assistance from across the known world began to pour into Rome. Cato and his puritans were fighting against human nature when they argued that these things had to be rejected. If a state has power and refuses to use it, it may create a vacuum that other unfriendly interests will seek to fill.

Was the Republic to welcome the prospect of empire and a mission civilisatrice? If so, somehow traditional ways would have to be adapted to new conditions. Men like Scipio Africanus envisioned a Hellenized Rome ready to embrace cultural diversity, to police the Mediterranean, and to operate a disinterested hegemony. Of course, this was a utopian vision. Imperialists may comfort themselves with their benevolence, but it is in their nature to intrude, to decide from a distance, to believe that the consent of provincials to foreign rule is freely given and not simply a rational response to the use of force.

Cato and Scipio represented two different responses to Rome’s military successes. The former inherited the native, negative caution of Fabius Maximus the Delayer, of whom he was an admirer: he was a narrow nationalist and had no ambition for a wider empire. Although he knew a good deal more about Greek language and literature than he let on, he wanted nothing to do with Hellenic culture and the East. It was enough to have expelled Hannibal from Italy. By contrast, Scipio was a natural expansionist. The two men embodied the dilemmas facing the Republic—between tradition and innovation, Hellenism and the mos maiorum, patriotism and internationalism, superstition and mysticism, severity and tolerance, self-denial and extravagance. Which direction would Rome take? Cato and his principles won many supporters, but, with his acceptance of Rome’s imperial destiny, Scipio saw a long way further into the future.

MORE THAN A century had passed since the death of Alexander the Great, and his Oriental empire had broken down into three large pieces—the kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, which jostled among themselves in an uneasy balance of power. To them should be added some smaller fragments—including the mercantile island of Rhodes and the compact but wealthy kingdom of Pergamum, in Asia Minor. The tiny city-states of Greece had long since lost their international importance and dwelled reluctantly in the chilling shadow of Macedon, which kept them under control by garrisoning three strategic fortresses, nicknamed the “fetters of Greece,” at Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias. Some of them gathered together into federations—the most important being the Aetolian League, in the northern half of Greece, and the Achaean League, in the Peloponnese. Athens lived off its past glories and had dwindled into a center for the ancient equivalent of postgraduate studies, especially in philosophy.

The intervention of Pyrrhus had been an unpleasant introduction to Hellenic belligerence, but, as already noted, Rome’s first military operation on Greek soil had been against the Illyrians, a half-Hellenized and piratical kingdom along the Dalmatian coastline, which in the mid-third century expanded downward into today’s Albania. No doubt they were alarmed by the establishment, in 244, of a Latin fortress-colony just across the strait at Brundisium, one of the finest harbors on the peninsula’s east coast. During the Second Punic War, the murder of a Roman envoy at the hands of Illyrian privateers led the Senate to authorize a decisive intervention on their home territory.

This annoyed the king of Macedon, Philip V, a ruthless and impulsive ruler with a black sense of humor. He objected to intrusion into what he regarded as his sphere of influence. The Battle of Cannae persuaded him to join what he wrongly guessed would be the winning side, and he concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with Hannibal. Nothing very much happened as a consequence except for some desultory fighting on the Greek mainland. By 205, with Scipio on the point of invading North Africa, the king realized that he had misjudged the situation and negotiated a peace. He was in a strong military position at the time. The Romans usually discussed terms only when they were the victors, but on this occasion they were too busy to pursue Philip and agreed a treaty. However, they had not closed their account with Macedon.

Philip was always on the lookout for an unfair advantage. When a six-year-old boy acceded to the throne of the Ptolemies, he judged that the time was right to grab some of Egypt’s overseas possessions. Not for nothing did the (possibly contemporary) author of Ecclesiastes write: “Woe to you, oh land, where your king is a child.” In the winter of 203–202, the Macedonian monarch reached an understanding with his royal colleague and competitor, Antiochus the Great of Syria, according to which they would share the spoils.

While Syria marched southward, Philip indiscriminately assaulted unoffending cities on the Bosphorus, annexed the Cyclades, and took the island of Samos. Pergamum and Rhodes were outraged, and it was not long before the king went on to attack them, too. This uncalled-for aggression infuriated his victims, but what could they do? Macedon and Syria were in cahoots, and Egypt was impotent. Philip would not have had to answer for his crimes had it not been for the arrival of Rome as a new actor on the geopolitical stage.

Pergamum and Rhodes appealed to the Republic for assistance. The Senate was minded to send out an expeditionary force at once, but the Assembly’s opposition made it hold its hand. The truth was that Philip had acted perfectly properly toward Rome, and none of the complainants were officially allies, requiring or permitting intervention. This was awkward if the law, the ius fetiale, was to be obeyed. It stipulated that war could be declared only in the Republic’s or its oathbound allies’ self-defense.

So in 200 the Senate sent Philip an ultimatum so severe that he would be compelled to reject it. The king duly obliged. In a sharp exchange, a senior senatorial envoy blamed him for his aggression, to which the king replied that if there had to be war his Macedonians would give a good account of themselves. The envoy broke off the discussion and reported unfavorably to the Senate in Rome. Philip had to be taught a lesson. When the subject was broached a second time the People gave way and war was declared.

The sequence of events is clear, but no record survives of the Senate’s debates which might explain its motives. So we have to speculate. Some have argued that this was a case of naked imperialism. But there is little evidence that the ruling élite was set on a course of territorial enlargement. It had annexed no Carthaginian land in North Africa, and at present its hands were full dealing with recalcitrant Spaniards and unsettled Celts in northern Italy. Senators were as reluctant to go to war as the rest of the population.

Others have said that the Senate was packed with idealists who wanted to free Greece from its Macedonian despot, that it was willing, for no advantage, to be the known world’s “policeman.” Certainly aristocrats like Scipio Africanus were steeped in Greek culture, but they had no special fondness for modern Greeks and deployed their philhellenism strictly for Rome’s benefit.

We must not exclude the possibility that miscalculation played a part in the slide towards conflict. Neither side knew enough about the other; Rome may have exaggerated the threat Macedon posed, and Philip simply would not take the Senate’s interference in his own internal affairs seriously until it was too late.

In all likelihood, there was one main reason for the outbreak of hostilities, and two subordinate background motives. The Senate took the long view and was anxious to allow no hostile power to gather strength in the Eastern Mediterranean, as Carthage had done in the West. The military partnership between Macedon and Syria might well now be directed against Egypt, but it was easy to imagine Rome becoming a target in the future. It was wise to cut Philip down to size when the opportunity offered. After all, he had already fought a war against Rome, and (here was one of the secondary motives) he had not yet been punished for it.

Finally, there were the individual ambitions of those who governed the Republic. They were essentially a closed group of about two thousand men, a gentlemen’s club, to which only a few “new men” (such as Cato) were admitted. Competition among them was more or less friendly, but at any given time most would be without a public commission. Following the defeat of Hannibal, Rome’s new possessions in the Western Mediterranean (Near Spain and Further Spain, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia) all required governors and other officials, opening new opportunities for political action, military adventure, and self-enrichment. And now that the complicated, glamorous polity of the Orient had come within the Republic’s purview there were jobs as ambassadors, advisers and, it could safely be predicted, army commanders. Roman travelers—officials and businessmen—stepped expectantly into this new world, and it is easy to imagine their mixed feelings of excitement and greed as they explored great cities such as Athens, Antioch, and Ephesus, toured the Seven Wonders of the World, and admired the amenities of Hellenic civilization.

AS USUAL, THE legions were slow off the mark, and Philip’s energy and his willingness to deploy pillage and massacre as tools of policy gave him the initiative.

In the second year of the war, the tempo changed when an attractive and talented young man took over command of the Roman war effort. He was Titus Quinctius Flamininus (brother of the Flamininus who killed a Celt to amuse his lover and the same man who, later in his career, pursued Hannibal to his grave—see this page). Charismatic, charming, and a philhellene, he was a Scipio mark two. Against some opposition, he was elected consul at the unusually early age of twenty-nine.

Consul and king met for a conference at which Flamininus bluntly told Philip to unlock the fetters of Greece (in other words, withdraw his garrisons) and compensate the states whose lands and cities he had plundered. The king replied that he would never free cities that had previously been under Macedonian control, and that any claims for damages should be submitted to arbitration. The consul hit back: “There is no need for referees; it is obvious who is the aggressor.” Philip lost his temper. He objected to being treated as if he had already been defeated, he said, and stormed out.

It was clear that Flamininus intended to eject the Macedonians from their three fortresses and then chase them from Greece altogether. Philip knew he did not command the manpower to survive a war of attrition and, betting on a quick victory, took the offensive. However, the Romans, supported by the Aetolian League, drove him back into Thessaly. The furious king adopted a scorched-earth policy as he withdrew, while the more astute Flamininus avoided looting and atrocities. Although one or two of his allies in the Peloponnese remained loyal, Philip could see that Greece was slipping from his grasp. He asked for another conference.

Someone at the meeting took notes, and a detailed account has survived that throws light on how international relations were conducted in those days, and on Philip’s personality. The subtext is that, despite his readiness to talk, Flamininus never had any intention of agreeing a peace, whereas the king was eager for one, provided he could avoid complete capitulation.

THE ENCOUNTER TOOK place in the open air on a beach near Thermopylae. Captains and kings did not trust one another, and it was essential to choose a spot where the chances of an ambush were reduced to a minimum. A built-up area was risky, and in any event it would be hard to find a town or city that was reliably neutral. The coast had the advantage that one party could travel to the rendezvous by land and the other on water. This meant that neither could easily pursue and capture the other.

On this occasion, Flamininus and various delegates from Greece, Pergamum, and Rhodes gathered on the beach and waited for Philip to turn up. He arrived in a warship escorted by five galleys. He sailed close to the shore but refused to disembark.

The consul asked, tactlessly, “What are you afraid of?”

“I fear nothing but the gods, but I don’t trust many of those present, especially the Aetolians,” the King replied.

This was an inauspicious beginning, but Flamininus invited the king, who had requested the meeting, to raise whatever topics he wished.

“It is not for me to speak first, but rather for you. Kindly explain what I must do to have peace.”

The consul set out his terms, of which the most important was that Philip should withdraw completely from Greece. Then the other representatives itemized detailed shopping lists. So, for example, the envoy from Pergamum wanted the king to restore the sanctuary of Aphrodite and the Temple of Athena the Bringer of Victory, near Pergamum, both of which he had destroyed during his foray into the kingdom.

A certain Phaeneas from the Aetolian League spoke at great length, making the point, with copious examples, that Philip had a habit of impartially devastating the territories of friends and allies as well as foes. This riled the king, who approached closer to the shore and criticized Phaeneas for speaking in “typically theatrical and Aetolian style.” He went on to reject his charges, while conceding that commanders sometimes had to do things they would rather not do.

Phaeneas, who had very poor eyesight, interrupted and pointed out that words were not the issue: “The truth is that you must either fight and conquer, or else obey those who are stronger than you.”

Philip, who had a reputation for being more satirical than was entirely suitable for a king, could not resist a sarcastic (and un-amusing) joke at the speaker’s expense: “Yes, even a blind man can see that!”

A disjointed conversation followed, in which the king continued to grumble about the Aetolians. He then put a clever question to those at the meeting: “In any case, what is this Greece you want me to evacuate? Most of the Aetolians themselves are not Greek.” He cited other territories that were not regarded as genuinely Hellenic. “Am I allowed to stay in these places?” he asked.

He then turned his attention to the other speakers, dealing brusquely and mordantly with each issue they raised, point by point: “As for the damage done to the sanctuary of Athena and the shrine of Aphrodite, I can’t help with the restoration, but I’ll send some gardeners to look after the place and see to the growth of the trees that were cut down.” Flamininus smiled.

Finally, Philip turned to the consul. “Is it the general’s wish that I should withdraw from those towns and places I myself conquered, or that I should leave those which I inherited from my ancestors?” Flamininus remained silent, although some of his delegates were ready and primed to reply. However, the hour was getting late and Philip concluded by asking all the parties present to give him written statements of their positions. “I am alone and have no one to advise me,” he explained. “I would like to reflect on your various demands.”

The consul was amused by the mockery in Philip’s tone of voice. He replied, “Of course you are alone by this time, Philip, for you have killed off all those friends who could give you good advice.” The king grinned sardonically and said nothing. Everyone agreed to meet again the next day.

The Romans arrived punctually, but there was no sign of the king. They waited all day, and at last the Macedonians arrived just before dusk. Philip said in excuse that he had been delayed studying all the submissions. This was gamesmanship, for what he wanted was to finesse a tête-à-tête with Flamininus. The hour being late, the assembled dignitaries agreed that the two men, accompanied by only a few members of their staffs, should confer privately. The king disembarked and he and the consul talked together for a long time in the fading light.

Flamininus reported back to his delegation on the complicated but limited concessions the Macedonians were prepared to make. All present loudly declared their dissatisfaction with the proposals. Philip could see that an animated discussion was going on and proposed another adjournment to the following day.

The next morning, the king arrived on time. He gave a short speech, in which he said that he would be willing to send an embassy to the Senate for these matters to be determined if agreement was not possible now. Flamininus was happy to concede the point, for he wanted time to arrange for the Senate to approve the extension of his command. One may surmise that the idea of a reference to Rome had been mooted in quiet conversation on the darkened beach the night before.

THE SENATE DEBATED Philip’s peace proposals, rejected them, and gave the consul the extension he was seeking. For all his cleverness, the king’s diplomacy had failed and hostilities resumed. By the spring of 197, Flamininus had won over almost all of Greece, except for the fetters. More than twenty-three thousand Macedonians marched south into Thessaly, where they approached a Roman army of about the same size. The ground was unsuitable for a battle and Philip and Flamininus led their men along each side of a chain of hills called Cynoscephalae (Greek for “dogs’ heads”). They collided more or less by chance. A battle ensued on uneven ground, which suited the flexible legion more than the unwieldy phalanx. A Roman detachment managed to outflank the enemy and fell on their rear. The day was won.

Since the reigns of Alexander the Great and his talented father, Philip, during the fourth century, the Macedonian phalanx had been insuperable. Now, to the amazement of the Hellenic world, it was destroyed as a fighting force. The initiative had shifted decisively to the still unfamiliar invaders from the west.

The ambitious and overbearing Aetolian League, whose soldiers had fought alongside the Romans, wanted to see Philip’s power destroyed, but Flamininus knew better. It was enough that Macedon had been humbled and pushed back behind its borders. Its complete elimination would create a vacuum, upsetting the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean and encouraging Celts in the north to march down into Greece. A tamed Philip was left on his throne, stripped of his external dependencies, including the fetters, and bound into an alliance with Rome. Nothing if not a realist, he accepted his new, reduced status.

The senatorial decree that laid down the peace terms was more than a treaty with the king of Macedon; it was also a manifesto, which announced that Greeks everywhere (that is, in Asia Minor as well as the Balkans) were to be free. Rome was arrogating to itself the authority to determine the governance of Alexander’s fractured empire. It not only decided the fate of Philip, its defeated enemy, but also warned Antiochus, whose path it had never crossed, to behave himself.

But what, exactly, was freedom to mean? As soon as Philip had withdrawn his garrisons from the fetters, the Senate substituted its own. Cynics wondered if one despot was to be replaced with another. Rome wanted to avoid military occupation and direct rule, which would bring much convenience and no obvious advantage, but was worried by a possible threat from Antiochus in the east; without the deterrent fortresses manned by Romans, he might be tempted to invade. Also, there were a number of awkward disputes that only Rome was in a position to settle. An ambitious king of Sparta needed to be restrained. The Aetolians were furious that the Senate had not rewarded them generously enough for their help in the war; they wanted additional territory, even though this was obviously inconsistent with giving the Greek city-states their independence. They put it about that the plan to free Greece was a fraud, claiming, “Flamininus has unshackled the foot of Greece only to put a collar round her neck.”

There was something in these rumors. Ten senatorial commissioners advised Flamininus on the details of the settlement of Greece, and took the view that the fetters should remain in Roman hands. This would be a disaster, the commander felt, for when announced it would justify the suspicions of the Aetolians. With some difficulty, he persuaded the commission to change its mind.

Flamininus decided to dispel the fractious mood by staging a public-relations spectacular in Corinth, the wealthy entrepôt on the isthmus connecting the Peloponnese to northern Greece and the capital of the Achaean League. The Isthmian Games, an athletics and arts festival, were held there every two years (before and after the quadrennial Olympic Games) in the summer. A general truce was declared, to guarantee free passage to athletes, and people came from all over Greece to watch chariot races, boxing, wrestling, and the pankration, a blend of boxing and wrestling but with no rules except for a ban on eye-gouging and biting. There were also poetry and music contests, in which women were, apparently and unusually, allowed to compete.

At the Games of 196, the first peacetime festival for some years, a large crowd gathered in the stadium. Flamininus arranged for a trumpeter to signal a general silence. A public crier then stepped forward and announced:

The states and cities mentioned were all those which had recognized claims to independence and had been directly governed by Philip.

At the beginning of the proclamation, there was a deafening shout and some people did not hear what was said. Most did, though, and could not believe their ears. Polybius writes:

As requested, the trumpeter blew his trumpet and the crier read out the text for a second time. A tremendous burst of cheering arose, so loud that it was heard at sea, and the entire audience got to its feet. Eyewitnesses many years later said it was difficult for those who could only read of the event in the present day to imagine how it sounded. Some ravens that happened to be flying over the stadium were so startled by the unexpected noise that they fell out of the sky.

When the shouting finally died away, it was replaced by a hubbub of excited chatter. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the athletic contests, but mobbed Flamininus. People pressed forward to touch his hand, garlands and headbands made from ribbon were thrown over him, and he was hailed as the savior of the Greeks. He only just escaped from the congratulations unharmed.

This was the reception that every liberator throughout history has dreamed of, but, as so many benevolent invaders have found to their cost, the moment of joy was shortlived.

The Greek cities, now to be freed, were as unquenchably quarrelsome as ever; Flamininus and his commission had to spend a year adjudicating and settling various disputes. Inevitably, this was unpopular work, not helped by the proconsul’s de haut en bas manner, but once it was completed the Senate fervently hoped that it would not have to concern itself any more with Greek affairs. In the fall of 194, the Romans at last removed their garrisons from the fetters, and evacuated from Greece. Flamininus brought back cartloads of Greek art and much treasure, which decorated his triumph.

PHILIP OF MACEDON’S onetime partner in crime, Antiochus the Great, was tired of Rome’s intrusion into what he regarded as his sphere of influence—namely, Asia Minor. For its part, the Senate feared that he planned to attack Rome—a fear much enhanced by Hannibal’s arrival at his court. In fact, the Syrian monarch had no such intention. His vision was to restore the empire that his dynastic ancestor, Seleucus, had carved from the dead Alexander’s domains, and that was the extent of his ambitions. As far as the Romans were concerned, he simply wanted them to leave him alone. If only a pact could be agreed, along with a few platitudes about perpetual friendship, the two states could pursue their separate courses unhindered.

On the face of it, Antiochus was a highly successful ruler. Born in about 241, he was a young man when he inherited the throne and a disorganized realm from his elder brother, who had been assassinated. He and the other Successors were of Macedonian or sometimes Greek stock. They were absolute despots, devoted to the perpetuation of their dynasties and to enriching themselves at the expense of their subjects. Seleucus told his army bluntly toward the end of his reign, “And I tell you that it is not the customs of the Persians and other such nations that I shall impose on you rather than this one law, common to them all, that whatever the king decides is always right.”

Philosophers developed a meritocratic theory that kingship was a reward for noble deeds, and the next natural step upward (not unlike the cursus honorum for elected magistrates in Rome) was promotion to godhead. Heracles (the Greek version of Hercules) had pointed the way, transcending his mortality. Homer had given his imprimatur to the concept of a divided self, when his wanderer Odysseus descends into hell and meets the hero’s ghost:

Some monarchs reserved their divinity à la Heracles until after their death, but alive they were at least isotheoi, or godlike. Others put in a claim to deification before the tomb. A king of Macedon in the previous century was greeted on his entry into Athens by a choir singing a specially written hymn:

This attitude, which combined rational skepticism with divine worship, was widespread in the sophisticated East among rulers such as Antiochus and his subjects.

On his accession, the energetic and ambitious Antiochus set about rebuilding his empire. He failed to take back from the Ptolemies Syrian lands into which they had encroached, but he had more success in pressing his cause in Asia Minor. Then he decided to follow in Alexander’s footsteps and marched east into Parthia and Bactria. He crossed into the Kabul Valley and descended into India, where he made friends with an Indian king, Subhashsena, from whom he procured elephants for his army. After a short expedition down the Persian Gulf, he returned home to general applause. He had restored his father’s empire and on his return acquired the complimentary title of “the Great.” He took to styling himself the Great King, after the long-gone Persian monarchs.

Antiochus’s reputation was at its height, and from Rome’s viewpoint he presented a serious threat. He was apparently an able general and now commanded a supply of manpower that outmatched that of the Republic. In fact, though, his seven-year anabasis (“journey up-country”) had as much to do with public relations as with actual conquest. We do not know whether the Senate had any inkling of this, but the king had managed only to win friendly allies rather than to impose satrapies or annex provinces. He controlled nothing much beyond Persepolis. What he had done, admittedly with some skill, was to erect a sword-and-sandals film set, impressive from a distance but lath and plasterboard in close-up.

Having won the coastal cities of Asia Minor, the spoils of his mutual aggression pact with Philip, he decided to fit into place the last piece of the Seleucid imperial jigsaw—Thrace, Greece’s unruly, semi-barbarous neighbor. To secure this, he crossed the Bosphorus onto European soil in 196. It was a truly momentous mistake, made from nostalgia rather than necessity.

Understandably, the Romans were displeased. In their view, Thrace was the essential no-man’s-land between their sphere of influence and that of Antiochus. But the Syrian king located his neutral buffer zone somewhere west—the liberated Balkans. The sooner the Senate pulled back its troops from there, the better. This mismatch of understandings led inexorably to war.

The king opened negotiations with the Romans, but to little purpose. His embassies were rebuffed and he was infuriated by the Senate’s patronizing assumption that it had the right to tell him how to govern in his own lands. Meanwhile, Pergamum, as alarmed by Syrian expansionism as it had been by that of Philip, dripped poison about his hostile intentions into the Senate’s receptive ear. It was against its better judgment that it had endorsed the evacuation of Greece.

In 193 Flamininus, now back in Rome and speaking with the full authority of the Senate, at last offered Antiochus, through his envoys, a clear if cynical deal: “If he wishes us to take no interest in the concerns of the [Greek] cities of Asia, he on his part must keep his hands off any part of Europe.” In other words, provided that Antiochus gave up Thrace, Rome would give him a free hand in Asia Minor (so much for the liberty of the Greeks!). But this was the one thing he would not do, so dear to him was his dream of reassembling Seleucus’s vast domain.

It was at this awkward moment that the leaders of the Aetolian League moved to avenge themselves on an ungrateful Rome. They looked about for allies, and first of all they made overtures to King Philip. But bitter experience had taught him to stay in the Senate’s good books, and he declined to join any insurrection. Finally, the Aetolians invited Antiochus to liberate Greece from the Romans. Most observers would have thought that it was not the Republic that posed any threat (after all, the legions had left), but, rather, the Aetolians themselves, ambitious to fill the space left by the Romans and a reduced Macedon.

While waiting for an answer, they set about making trouble. They assassinated the—admittedly annoying—Spartan king. The league then tried to capture Chalcis, one of the fetters, but was told sharply by its inhabitants that since Chalcis was already free it did not need freeing. The port of Demetrias, whose citizens were nervous that Rome might hand them back to Philip as a reward for his loyalty, was another of the fetters, and here the Aetolians were successful.

After a pause for thought, the Great King accepted the invitation. What persuaded him to take such a foolhardy step? Surely he could see that the Aetolians were unreliable, and that the Romans, who had already defeated the Hellenic phalanx, would return to Greece in force. In the autumn of 192, his fleet arrived at Demetrias and a small body of only ten thousand men and six of his famous elephants disembarked. This would hardly frighten off the Romans. It seems that all he wanted was respect.

Antiochus spent a lazy winter enjoying his recent marriage to a pretty local girl from Chalcis, and a more trying spring being unceremoniously chased out of Greece. A Roman army thrashed the invaders so overwhelmingly at that most symbolic of locations, Thermopylae, that the king lost no time in setting sail for home. If he hoped that the legions would now leave him be in his eastern empire, he was to be disappointed.

The Senate intended to teach him a lesson. Lucius Scipio, consul, with his much more famous brother Africanus as his deputy, or legatus, headed an army of about thirty thousand men. They were assisted by Philip, who, as a token of gratitude, had his war indemnity reduced and his son Demetrius, a hostage in Rome, sent back to Macedon. Pergamum and Rhodes were, of course, on Rome’s side. Despite some setbacks, the legions crossed over into Asia for the first time and in December 190 met Antiochus’s host, twice their number, at Magnesia, a city in Lydia not far from Smyrna.

The Great King, on his army’s right wing, led a successful cavalry charge and galloped off in hot pursuit of the enemy. Meanwhile, the Romans routed and methodically butchered the phalanx. Antiochus only turned around when he met resistance at the Roman camp. He presumed that he was the victor and rode back in a haughty frame of mind. But when he saw the battlefield strewn with the dead bodies of his own men, horses, and elephants and his camp captured, he precipitately fled. Darkness fell, but still he rode on, reaching the Lydian capital, Sardis, and safety at midnight.

This was the end of Syria as a great power. Rome set an indemnity at fifteen thousand talents, the highest ever recorded. Antiochus was barred from Greece and most of Asia Minor, and was compelled to abandon his ancestral claim to Thrace. But, as with Philip, he was left on his throne. At this time, the Senate preferred to neutralize a fallen enemy, rather than to totally destroy him. In that way, it ensured the region’s stability without being obliged to govern it itself.

That said, the message of Magnesia was unmistakable. The Successors to Alexander were no longer free agents. Rome insisted on obedience to its wishes, so they had to think twice before doing anything that might disturb the always uneasy equilibrium in the region.

By contrast, Pergamum, Rhodes, and the free Greek cities along the Aegean coastline had cause to be thankful to their protector. The Senate could depend on them to keep a watchful eye on behalf of Roman interests.

A small town off the beaten track on the coast of Phrygia was surprised to receive largesse from the victors, in the form of an exemption from taxes. This was Troy, now a mound of multidated ruins beside an unimpressive village that made a living from tourism. It had rendered no recent services to merit the award. But for Romans this was their once-upon-a-time patria, their land of lost content.

And what a pleasure it was to enjoy at leisure the humiliation of the once triumphant Greeks!

PHILIP’S SON BY a legal wife, Demetrius, now back home, was a charming and attractive young man. During his enforced stay in Rome, he had become popular in leading circles. How much more congenial it would be, senators mused, if they could deal with him on the Macedonian throne rather than with his prickly father or the heir apparent, his older brother Perseus, the offspring of a mistress. Perseus became convinced that Demetrius was plotting to oust him from the succession; he may well have been right in suspecting that attention and flattery had turned the inexperienced prince’s head.

Unfortunately, there was no evidence, so Perseus manufactured some. He produced a forged letter from Flamininus spelling out Demetrius’s treasonable plans. The king was taken in, and in 180 arranged his son’s murder. At a dinner party, poison was added to Demetrius’s drink. Draining the cup, the boy instantly realized what had happened and before long the pains began. He withdrew to his bedroom and raged against his father and brother, whom he correctly blamed for his death. The noise was embarrassing, and a man was sent in to smother him.

Too late, Philip became convinced that the letter was a fabrication. He blamed Perseus, who was fortunate that the king soon died. Apparently, his final illness was psychological rather than physical: he could not sleep for remorse.

Safely enthroned, Perseus did all he could to calm any fears the Senate might harbor about him. But he was an energetic ruler, determined to turn over a new leaf after his father’s long reign. His aim was to reestablish Macedon’s good name in Greece and the wider East. Openness and generosity marked a break with his father’s caustic machtpolitik. Measures such as an amnesty for debtors signaled support for the democratic masses rather than the local aristocracies with whom the Senate preferred to do business. His marriage to Antiochus’s daughter and his half sister’s union with the king of Bithynia improved his international standing. While keeping carefully to the terms of the treaty with Rome, the king built up and trained his army.

All this activity disturbed the Senate. In recent years, it had become much more aggressive in Greece, irritated by the city-states’ endless sniping at one another and, in particular, the ambition of the Achaean League to take over the entire Peloponnese. But Perseus’s new popularity was a sign of something much more serious. Pergamum still had the Senate’s ear, into which it continually whispered far-fetched accusations, and did all it could to turn opinion against the king.

Was a revived and renewed Macedon preparing a fresh challenge to the Republic? Yes and no. Perseus certainly wanted to improve his kingdom’s political position, but Philip had recognized that Macedon could not compete with Rome, and so, surely, did his son. The Romans reacted evasively to requests for dialogue and agreed to a deceitful truce to allow time to recruit troops. It was as if they wanted war however weak the case for it. Eventually, in 171, the Senate sent an expeditionary force to Greece.

As in the conflict with Philip, the campaign got off to a desultory start, but in 168 Perseus, who was not a confident commander, lost a decisive battle at Pydna. This was the end of Macedon as a political entity. The kingdom was split up into four self-governing republics and its former ruler walked in his victor’s triumphal procession. Perseus spent the rest of his days under house arrest in a small hill town not far from Rome. He was allowed to live in some comfort, supplied with palace furniture from Macedon and served by former court attendants. A disappointed man, he lasted for only a couple of years, starving himself to death in 166.

By an irony of fate, his throneless son was named Alexander, a sad echo of the most glorious of Macedonian monarchs. He was left to make his own way in the world. He learned Latin, and made a living as a skilled metalworker in gold and silver and as a public notary.

THE MAN WHO broke the phalanx at Pydna was a veteran Roman general, Lucius Aemilius Paullus. On his way back to Rome, he received an appalling instruction from the Senate. Epirus had not distinguished itself greatly since the days of its glamorous king Pyrrhus, and had unwisely favored Perseus in the war now ended. In order to supply the legions with booty, the Senate instructed Paullus to pillage every Epirote city, town, or settlement that had come out for Macedon. The general was a connoisseur of all things Hellenic and had just finished a sightseeing tour of Greece, but he set his hand to this new task with a will.

Leading men from each community were ordered to bring out the silver and gold in their houses and temples; legionary detachments spread out across the territory to collect this treasure. This they did, and then simultaneously and without warning overran and sacked each settlement. In a single day 150,000 men, women, and children were made slaves and Epirus became a wasteland, a condition from which it never fully recovered.

There had always been slaves in Rome—serfs, bankrupt citizen peasants who sold themselves as labor, and, as the legions marched through Italy, captured enemies. They were a common feature of life—noticeable but not dominant. It was only when the Republic fought and won its overseas campaigns that the number of slaves rose to the point that it transformed the city’s way of life—that, in a word, Rome became a slave society.

It has been estimated that the first Carthaginian war produced some seventy-five thousand slaves. In the struggle with Hannibal the capture of a single city, Tarentum, saw the sale of thirty thousand prisoners. Now, with the collapse of Macedon and the defeat of Syria, slaves and money flooded into Italy. People could also be purchased through organized piracy and trafficking.

A slave had no rights: he or she was a res mancipi—the property of an owner who was entitled to do with it as he liked, including inflicting death. Varro said, with a Roman’s carelessly brutal frankness, that, along with a propertyless farmworker, a slave was “a kind of speaking tool.”

A wealthy man would dispose of many, perhaps hundreds, of slaves, but even a lowly artisan owned one or two. The worst fate was to lead a short life working in the mines. Diodorus Siculus observed that many of these slaves preferred death to survival:

Almost as bad as the mines was hard labor on the great landed estates that were replacing peasant smallholdings across the peninsula.

To be a house servant was also bad, but better. Owner and slave could get close. Good-looking boys and girls fetched large sums at auction, and a master might well expect sexual favors. “I know of a slave who dreamed that his penis was stroked and aroused by his master’s hand,” wrote an expert on the interpretation of dreams, adding ominously that this meant he would be bound to a pillar and “receive many strokes.” In this way, the dream elided many slaves’ two recurring fears—of sexual and physical abuse.

Slaves often managed to have a family life, even if it was the master who allocated partners. But, having produced children, they had to live with the permanent anxiety that their offspring might be sold off or, conversely, that the children might have to watch their old or sick parents auctioned or abandoned.

Open resistance was dangerous, although unhappy slaves sometimes absconded. This was a dangerous thing to do, though, for the reach of the Roman state was long. Cicero, in the following century, was upset when his highly educated slave, Dionysius, ran off with some books from his library. The man was tracked down to the province of Illyricum, and his disgruntled owner asked two successive governors to help him retrieve the fugitive. History does not record the outcome, but the incident shows how hard it was for a man on the run to vanish without trace.

Uniforms were forbidden on the grounds that this would show slaves how many of them there were and encourage solidarity and conspiracy. And indeed a slave revolt would occasionally terrify the authorities, but they all failed and were savagely put down. The most famous was that of Spartacus, a Thracian slave who led a revolt that began in 73 at the gladiatorial school at Capua. He routed three Roman armies before being cornered and destroyed in 71. Interestingly, rebels did not criticize the “peculiar institution” as such; they merely wanted to escape its grip.

One of the most remarkable, and in part mitigating, features of the Roman slave system was the widespread practice of manumission. Slaves were often freed, although they were likely to remain in their former owner’s employ and were bound by the clientela system of mutual obligations. Affection may often have been the motive (although freedom was sometimes bought with hard-won savings), but liberation as a promised ultimate goal was a means of ensuring obedience and hard work.

Former slaves automatically became Roman citizens and (in theory, at least) their male progeny could stand for public office, although in practice a man’s servile origin was remembered negatively for generations. The Romans had no concept of racial purity and, just as they had welcomed conquered states into partnership with them since the days of Romulus, so they invited individuals whom they had oppressed and degraded to join them as collaborators in their imperial project. Over time, Rome became the most culturally diverse of cities and its population mirrored the ethnic composition of its growing empire.

AT SOME POINT in the 190s, when the memory of the war with Hannibal was still sharp, Plautus wrote a comedy called The Little Carthaginian (in Latin Poenulus). What is striking is that the juvenile leads are sympathetically drawn in spite of the fact that they are all Carthaginian. One of them is a young man who is sold into slavery and adopted by his wealthy purchaser, and the other two are kidnapped girls bought by a pimp for prostitution.

A businessman named Hanno, the girls’ father, has long been looking for them and arrives from Carthage. He gives his opening speech in the Punic language before slipping into fluent Latin. He is a typical, shrewd, polyglot Carthaginian who astutely conceals his linguistic ability, but he is also an affectionate parent and a man of authority. The play leaves the impression that the Carthaginians were regarded as a clever race but had had bad luck. There is no residual enmity from the years of war, and we may suppose that this reflected the general opinion among Plautus’s audiences.

It was not at all how the eighty-one-year-old Cato the Censor saw things. A member of a senatorial commission, he visited Carthage in 157, and was shocked by what he found. The city had recovered from its defeat and was enjoying an economic boom. It no longer had to bear the costs of running an empire and hiring mercenaries. In the old days, its wealth derived from trading in the Western Mediterranean, but Rome had annexed its possessions in Sicily, Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia and its prosperity now depended on the agriculture in its North African hinterland. It exported foodstuffs and developed a thriving trade with Italy. The envoys were disturbed by the evidence of revival. Appian writes:

On their return to Rome, Cato and his colleagues reported what they had seen and argued that Carthage would once again become a threat to the security of the Republic. The aged censor would not let the matter drop. On one occasion, he spoke on the subject from the speakers’ platform in the Forum; he took a large and appetizing Punic fig from the folds of his toga. The country where it grew, he said, was only three days’ sail from Rome. At the end of every speech he made in the Senate, he added the sentence “Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” (“In addition, it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed”).

This is very odd. Carthage had behaved toward Rome as a faithful and assiduous ally for half a century and had made no attempt to run an independent foreign policy. It supplied large amounts of grain as gifts during the Macedonian Wars and the war with Antiochus. It also helped stimulate the Republic’s economy by importing vast quantities of ceramics and kitchenware from Campania and elsewhere in central Italy. Although the city restored its great military and commercial harbors at about this time, it had adhered to the terms of the peace treaty. Hardly a single Carthaginian citizen had done any serious military service since Zama. What’s more, it was obvious that, without an army and with no fleet to speak of, Carthage no longer had the resources, let alone the will, to mount a serious challenge against Rome.

There was one difficulty, which took the form of the irrepressible Numidian ruler Masinissa, now an old man in his late eighties. He had lost little of his energy over the passage of time; in his personal life he was philoprogenitive, having sired fifty-four children by numerous women, of whom the youngest was an infant. The king had a policy of settling and uniting the nomadic tribes over which he ruled; he admired Punic cultural values and wanted his subjects to adopt them. But he coveted Carthaginian land. According to the peace treaty of 201, he was entitled to claim back any territory that lay outside Carthage’s borders and had originally been a part of his domain. Unfortunately the terms were vaguely expressed and Masinissa constantly encroached on real estate that the Carthaginians knew was theirs. The Council of Elders regularly complained to the Senate, which sent out delegations to arbitrate, including the one on which Cato served. These invariably found for the king or suspended judgment, whatever the rights and wrongs of the particular case.

However, despite this open wound Carthage continued to thrive and to do all it could to placate the Senate. Why, then, was Cato so monomanic on the subject? He had fought in the war against Hannibal and his memories were bitter. He may have seriously believed that the old enemy was making a comeback. His political opponents did not disagree with his analysis of Carthage’s growing strength, but they argued that without a strong potential enemy Rome would grow soft and decadent.

A growing number of Romans supported Cato, but for more cynical reasons. They were aware that war was a highly profitable business. Carthage was a ripe fruit ready to fall from the tree into their grasping hands. Plutarch tells the story of a rich young Roman who held an extravagant dinner party. The centerpiece was a honey cake designed to look like a city. He said to his guests, “This is Carthage, please plunder it.” Rome was becoming both greedy and ruthless. As with Philip of Macedon the Senate secretly made up its mind for war and waited for an excuse to act.

Two events precipitated the crisis. In 151, Carthage paid its last installment of reparations, so a useful source of income for the Republic now dried up. And then, with the self-confidence and independence of spirit of a house owner who has paid off a mortgage, the Council of Elders lost patience with Masinissa, who had made an encroachment too far.

THE 150S WERE an uneasy time. The men who had defeated the Carthaginians were leaving the stage. They had had quick and easy successes in the Eastern Mediterranean and long, hard campaigns as they slowly Romanized Cisalpine Gaul in the north of the peninsula, but now their experience and skills gradually faded away. There was less fighting to be done, and in the absence of grand campaigns the Republic’s legions were demobilized. When an army was needed, the business of training had to start again from scratch. Younger commanders placed less emphasis on discipline, development, and high-quality logistics.

Since acquiring Spain from the Carthaginians and establishing two provinces, the Romans had had trouble taming the Spaniards, who resented being plundered by venal governors. Cato campaigned successfully there in the year after his consulship and was awarded a triumph, but trouble continued. A great insurrection broke out in 154 and raged until 133. Roman generals combined incompetence with treachery. Even the Senate was shocked when a proconsul invaded Lusitania (roughly today’s Portugal) and agreed to a peace treaty with the rebels. On his promise of resettling them on good farming land, he persuaded them to gather on three separate plains, where he would assign them their new territories. He asked the Lusitanians to lay down their weapons, an order they unwisely obeyed, for, one after another, each group was massacred. Back in Rome, the proconsul was brought to trial and Cato spoke against him, but he deployed his ill-gotten gains to procure an acquittal.

One of the few to escape the butchery was a shepherd and hunter, who carried on the struggle. A stickler for fair dealing and true to his word, Viriathus was a shining and shaming contrast to his Roman opponents. He was also a guerrilla fighter of genius, who deployed small bands that made sudden raids and then disappeared into the sierra. Eventually, in 140, a proconsul bribed three of Viriathus’s senior followers to kill him while he slept. This they did, but when they asked for their money the general refused, saying, “It never pleases the Romans that a general should be killed by his own soldiers.” The remark was a fine example of that fusion of high-mindedness and fraud that was becoming a routine feature of Roman public life.

The great hill fortress of Numantia (Cerro de la Muela, near Soria), which stood at the junction of two rivers running between steep banks through wooded valleys, repelled Roman attacks for ten years. Bungling legionary commanders behaved with their usual bad faith, but eventually, in 133, Numantia fell to the able Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Aemilianus: he was the birth son of Aemilius Paullus and had been adopted by Scipio Africanus’s childless son (hence the “Aemilianus” at the end, to signal the original genetic connection). Noble families often helped out those facing extinction because of an absence of male heirs by allowing one of their boys to be adopted. Without consulting the Senate, Scipio razed the town to the ground, as a layer of burned material found on the site testifies to this day.

At last, Rome had a firm hold on Spain.

WITH APPALLINGLY BAD judgment, the Carthaginians laid a trap for themselves and then, eyes wide open, walked into it.

They had agreed never to make war without the Senate’s permission. In 152, they raised an army to put an end to Masinissa’s depredations and went on the offensive. They did not inform Rome. Scipio Aemilianus happened to be in the country and tried unsuccessfully to mediate a cease-fire. The Numidian king then cornered and besieged the Punic forces, which were gradually weakened by disease and shortage of food and forced to capitulate. Harsh terms were agreed, and the Carthaginians were allowed to march away with nothing but a tunic each. As they were leaving, Numidian cavalry fell on the defenseless men and massacred most of them. Of an estimated twenty-five thousand men, only a handful returned to Carthage.

When the Senate learned of these events, it began to raise troops without offering an explanation, except to say that it was “just in case of emergencies.” The Council of Elders was not deceived and immediately sent envoys to Rome. They explained that the war with Masinissa had not been approved by the government and that those responsible for it had been put to death. The Senate, aware that it now had its casus belli, refused to be appeased. Why, a senator inquired, had Carthage not condemned its officers at the first opportunity instead of waiting until they were beaten? It was an unanswerable question. The envoys asked what they could do to win a pardon. “You must make things right with the Roman People” was the alarmingly obscure response. A second embassy pleaded for specific instructions. The Senate dismissed it with the words “You know perfectly well what is necessary.”

The Carthaginian authorities were at their wits’ end. Their only hope, they decided, lay in unconditional surrender. A third delegation made its way to Rome to announce this, only to find that war had already been declared. Neverthess, the Senate cynically accepted the surrender and demanded three hundred child hostages.

There was no difficulty in attracting recruits to the legions, for it was clear to everyone that Carthage could not conceivably achieve victory and soldiers could expect rich pickings, treasure, and slaves. In 149, an unusually large army of eighty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry crossed the sea to Africa. The two consuls were in command and carried secret orders to destroy the city utterly when they captured it. Very helpfully, the important Phoenician port of Utica, a few miles from Carthage, which was “well adapted for landing an army,” came over to the Romans.

The Punic leadership was appalled by news of the invasion and was willing to do almost anything to avoid fighting an unwinnable war. Yet more envoys were dispatched to plead for peace, this time to the Roman camp. When they arrived, the consuls, surrounded by their chief officers and military tribunes, were seated on a high dais. The entire army, with polished armor and weapons and erect standards, was drawn up to attention. A trumpet blew and, in dead silence, the Carthaginians were then obliged to walk the length of the camp before they reached the consuls. A rope cordon prevented them from drawing near.

They asked why an expeditionary force was necessary to defeat an enemy that had no intention of fighting. Carthage would submit willingly to any penalty. In response, the consuls demanded the city’s complete disarmament. This was at once conceded, and soon a line of wagons brought to the camp armor and weapons for twenty thousand men and many artillery pieces.

Only then did the consuls show their hand. They complimented the Carthaginians for their obedience so far, and asked them to accept bravely the Senate’s final commands: “Hand over Carthage to us, and resettle yourselves wherever you like inside your own borders at a distance of at least nine miles from the sea, for we have decided to raze your city to the ground.”

This was unendurable. The people would wither away if banished from their traditional element, the sea. They rose up in rage and grief. They stoned to death the hapless envoys on their return and any pro-Roman politicians they could find. Roman traders who by ill chance happened to be in the city were set upon and killed. With magnificent, despairing defiance, Carthage made the decision to resist Rome.

If the Carthaginians knew they could not vanquish their opponents, they were no walkover. They were greatly assisted by the poor quality of the Roman commanders. The city’s triple defenses, its high walls, and its fortified towers presented the besiegers with a very considerable challenge. Two years of hard but inconclusive fighting ensued. From the Roman perspective, the only bright spots were the valor and presence of mind of Scipio Aemilianus, who at this point in his career was a military tribune in his mid-thirties. Among other things, he arranged the defection of Carthage’s Numidian cavalry.

The two very old men who were largely responsible for the war, Cato and Masinissa, died before its outcome was known. They shared a high opinion of young Scipio. Despite his dislike of the Scipio clan and his destruction of the grandfather Africanus’s career, Cato recognized talent when he saw it. He campaigned successfully for Scipio’s election as consul and army commander, despite the fact that he was officially too young to hold the post. Giving the lie to his pretended ignorance of all things Greek, Cato quoted the Odyssey:

The Numidian monarch, anxious to protect his hard-won kingdom, decided that it should be divided among three of his sons. Wiser than King Lear, he knew that he would need external guarantees. So in his will he charged Scipio with the disposal of his territories and powers.

Now that Scipio had consular imperium, he tightened the discipline of his troops and in lieu of training launched some exploratory assaults on the walls. He completely blockaded the city by building vast fortifications on the isthmus that connected it to the mainland and a mole across the harbor entrance. Once that was done, the fall of Carthage was only a matter of time. Food grew short and the Punic commander-in-chief, Hasdrubal, seized autocratic powers.

Before the final assault, Scipio conducted an evocatio, as Camillus had done before the sack of Veii, luring the Punic divinities to desert their temples and migrate to new homes in Rome. Carthage was now a godless community on which any kind of misery could be inflicted. Then the legions marched from the Roman mole along the twin harbors and up the narrow streets leading to the city’s high place, the Byrsa. Scipio fired and demolished houses to make space for the advancing infantry. The grim, methodical fighting went on day and night for nearly a week. Some men were detailed as street cleaners, sweeping away rubbish, corpses, and even the wounded. Suppliants walked out of the Byrsa and asked Scipio for the lives of the survivors. The consul agreed, and fifty thousand exhausted and famished men, women, and children emerged, their ultimate destinies to be determined at slave auctions.

Only nine hundred or so Roman deserters remained, who could not expect forgiveness and had no choice but to make a last stand. They occupied the Temple of Aesculapius, the god of healing, which was built on a highly defensible rocky outcrop. They were joined by Hasdrubal and his family.

Hasdrubal could see that his position was hopeless and slipped across the Roman lines. Scipio accepted his surrender, despite the fact that he had committed atrocities and had tortured to death some prisoners of war, and showed him to the deserters. When they saw him, they asked for silence and hurled insults at him. They then set the temple on fire. Hasdrubal’s wife was made of sterner stuff than her husband. After reproaching him, she killed her children, threw them onto the flames, and plunged in after them. The deserters, too, burned themselves to death.

Now that resistance was over and the war won, Scipio surveyed the scene and, like Marcellus at Syracuse, burst into tears. The long, proud history of Carthage was at an end. He stayed wrapt in thought for a long time, reflecting on the mutability of fortune. He thought of the rise and fall of great cities and empires—Troy, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and, most recently, the dominions of Alexander. Did a similar fate in some future age await Rome?

He turned to a friend who was with him, the historian Polybius, and, as educated Romans tended to do in moments of high emotion, quoted some lines from Homer. They appear in the Iliad and are spoken by Hector, Troy’s leading soldier, on the eve of his death:

This outburst of fine feeling did not deter the victorious general from razing the city to the ground and uttering a solemn curse that where Carthage once stood should forever be pasture for sheep.

THE ROMANS HAD behaved very badly toward Carthage. They had, in truth, no real justification for the Third Punic War, and even less for the city’s annihilation. As we have seen, they liked speaking sarcastically of Punica fides, but their own reputation for fair and honest dealing took many knocks in the second century. They must have felt uneasy about what they had done. So it is no accident that they began to rewrite the legendary past, in an attempt to retrieve their good name.

The early histories of Rome were written in Greek. In the opening chapters of this book, I showed how the Romans linked themselves to the myths and legends of the Greeks. In this way, they acquired Hellenic credentials and proved that they were not barbarians beyond the pale of civilized life. Of course, in reality they had no connection that we know of with Trojans and (if it ever took place) the Trojan War.

Cato was the first to write a history of Rome in Latin: this was Origines (Origins), a substantial prose work of seven books that have, unfortunately, been lost. From what is known of it and the fragments that survive, it was a massive exercise in collective self-justification. The man who willfully advocated the destruction of Carthage highlighted the typical Roman virtues of valor, obedience to law, honesty, and respect for the family, the state, and the gods.

Two books were devoted to the beginnings of the peoples of Italy, perhaps to assert Rome’s national integrity and right to leadership. The early centuries were described in only one book, while the two wars with Carthage were allocated one book each, and finally two books covered the first half of the second century down to the fateful year 149. This emphasis on the recent past no doubt reflected reader interest, but it also gave the author an opportunity to explain, excuse, and celebrate Rome’s genocidal victory. He presented a dossier of seven alleged breaches by Carthage of its obligations to Rome. We may surmise that the Punic version of events received little notice.

Rome’s first epic poets, Gnaeus Naevius and Quintus Ennius, from Calabria, also focused on the Punic Wars. Their poems have been lost, but we know that they interwove historical events with the legends of Greece and made much of Rome’s genetic link to Troy. In Naevius’s Bellum Punicum (Punic War), one or two fragments reveal Venus, Rome’s traditional protectress, begging her father, Jupiter, to calm a storm that threatens to destroy Aeneas’s fleet. We can just detect, offstage, the malign presence of Juno, for it appears that one hundred and fifty years later Virgil, in his masterpiece the Aeneid, which we have in full, lifted the entire episode from Naevius. Virgil blames the storm on the Queen of Heaven, and so, no doubt, did his predecessor. The earlier version probably also has Aeneas being blown off course onto Dido’s shore. Their tragic relationship sets the stage for the struggles between their descendants.

Ennius, friend and admirer of Cato, saw himself as a second Homer. His masterpiece, Annales, or The Annals, took as its subject the whole of Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 (according to the calculations of Eratosthenes, a famous Greek mathematician and the inventor of the word and discipline of geography) to Cato’s censorship in 184. It was a remarkable compliment to close his thousand-year saga at this apex of the aged statesman’s career. Ennius’s theme was the unending growth of Roman rule and the eventual defeat of the Greek powers that had once destroyed Troy. Three books, or chapters, are devoted to the Carthaginians; in one fragment, they are “boys in frocks,” and in another “wicked haughty foes” who hamstring their opponents. The poet shows that during the Second Punic War Juno at last moderates her wrath and shows goodwill; and he has her all-powerful husband, Jupiter, swear the overthrow of Carthage.

The underlying purpose of the poets and early historians is to maintain an artificial equivalence between the two nations; this is why Dido and Aeneas were wrongly made out to be contemporaries. The argument is that the quarrel between Rome and Carthage had nothing to do with the motives of greed, fear, or self-interest among mortals but was a foreordained encounter governed by the loves and hatreds in the Olympian pantheon.

Fate follows a circular or repetitive course. Thus Hannibal is Dido’s avenger and Flamininus and his successors have paid back the Greeks with interest for their capture of Troy. No wonder Scipio Aemilianus feared for the future, for he knew the wheel of fortune would continue turning.

BY A MACABRE coincidence, Rome destroyed another famous and outstandingly beautiful city in the same year that Carthage met its end. With the ruin of Corinth, the Greeks lost their freedom. By a savage irony, it was here that Flamininus had told the Greeks, exactly fifty years earlier, that Rome would guarantee it.

In 167, after the Battle of Pydna, the Romans decided to teach the disputatious and unreliable Greek states a lesson. Their conduct during the Third Macedonian War had fallen below expectations. Of the two leagues, the Aetolians fared worse, for more than five hundred of their leading men were liquidated. As for the Achaeans, one thousand named individuals, whose loyalty was suspected, were deported to Italy (history is grateful, for the list included Polybius, who spent many years in Rome studying its politics and, as already noted, became a close friend of Scipio Aemilianus).

A generation passed without incident. It was not until 150 that the surviving exiles, now well on in years, were allowed to return to their homes. The Senate discussed the topic at length, and Cato was moved to complain, “Just as if we had nothing else to do, we sit here all day debating whether some ghastly old Greeks should be buried in Rome or in Greece.” In fact, the men’s long absence had serious consequences, for it fanned the flames of anti-Roman feeling.

In the following year, a pretender to the throne of Macedon turned up out of the blue. He quickly took control of the four miniature republics; these had been designed to be unable to harm Rome, but by the same token they were unable to protect themselves. The revolt was soon put down, but the Senate realized that the only way to ensure stability was to annex Macedon and turn it into a province. A great road, the Via Egnatia, was built from the western coast of Greece to the Bosphorus, linking Roman colonies and enabling rapid access to trouble spots in the Balkans and the Hellenic kingdoms of the East.

In Greece, a quarrel with the embittered Achaeans led to an international incident. Some Roman ambassadors visited the capital, Corinth, and were beaten up. Rome’s patience snapped. In 146, a consular army defeated the Achaeans in battle and entered the undefended city. To set an example, all the inhabitants who had not already fled were sold into slavery and its buildings and temples were leveled. Its treasures and centuries’ old works of art were looted. A century later, the place was still deserted. Greece was added to the province of Macedon. It has been estimated that during the first half of the second century the region lost one quarter of its inhabitants.

The fates of Macedon, Carthage, and Corinth taught the world that the Romans were changing. Wealth beyond imagination and the absence of any enemy that could seriously imperil their military dominance lured them to act without restraint. They were no longer willing to tolerate dissent. Diodorus Siculus, perhaps drawing on Rome’s affectionate but honest critic Polybius and writing from the vantage point of the first century B.C., remarked that the Republic used to be noted for “the kindest possible treatment of those whom it defeated.” He continues:

This new brutality was accompanied by rising corruption in public life. Sooner or later, it would corrode the institutions of the Republic. The bacterium of self-destruction began to multiply beneath the glittering carapace of glory.

Cato was a humbug and a hypocrite, but when he denounced the moral devaluation of his times he spoke of what he knew.

16 Blood Brothers

CORNELIA WAS A VERY GRAND LADY INDEED. AS THE second daughter of Scipio Africanus, she belonged to one of Rome’s wealthiest and most aristocratic families. Well educated, she cultivated intellectual pursuits and, Plutarch writes, “always had Greeks and literary men about her.”

Her lifestyle was one of some splendor, although, like many millionairesses of taste, she dressed with elegant simplicity (as the poet Horace famously put it, simplex munditiis, or “casually chic”). Once, she was entertaining a woman friend from Campania, where bling or deluxe display was de rigueur. Her guest drew particular attention to the fine jewelry she was wearing. Cornelia waited until her two sons came home from school, and then said, “These are my jewels.”

Noblemen’s daughters seldom married for love, and the Scipiones were no exception. Cornelia’s husband, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, had been a political opponent of her father but had objected to the attempts of Cato and his friends to bring her uncle Lucius to trial for corruption. Cornelia was his reward. When they married, sometime after Africanus’s death in disappointed retirement, she was in her teens and Gracchus was in his forties.

Despite the disparity in their ages, the union was a happy one and Cornelia gave birth to twelve children, although only three reached adulthood—a daughter and the boys, Tiberius and Gaius. Gracchus loved his wife, as a curious anecdote bears witness. One day he discovered two snakes on his bed. Being a typically superstitious Roman, he saw this as an alarming prodigy and consulted the appropriate religious authority. The advice he received could not have been more awkward if that had been the intention. He was neither to kill the snakes nor to let them go; rather, he should kill one or the other of them. An unhelpful caveat was added: if the male snake was killed, he would soon die, and if the female snake was killed, then Cornelia would die. Because Gracchus was so much older than his wife, he decided that it was fairer to sacrifice himself, so he killed the male and let the female slither away.

Whatever the truth of the story, Gracchus did die sometime after his second consulship in 163, leaving his young widow to bring up the children alone. We have observed that Africanus conducted himself as the equal of an eastern monarch, and his daughter was the nearest thing the Republic had to an international royal celebrity. The pharaoh of Egypt, Ptolemy VIII, offered her his hand in marriage. Nicknamed Physcon (Greek for “sausage,” “potbelly,” or “bladder”), he was an unappealing prospect, and Cornelia politely declined. She decided not to marry again, but to manage her estates and devote herself to the education of her children. She lived the blameless life of a Roman matron. It was unusual for aristocratic widows to remain unmarried, but Cornelia was that rare thing in the ancient world—an independent woman.

HOW CORNELIA BROUGHT up her sons is uncertain, but at some point in the third century educational practice in Rome changed. Originally, it was based on an apprenticeship supervised by the father—in working families probably linked to agriculture or a trade, in more aristocratic homes to military training and an induction into public life in the Forum. Gradually, a Greek model came to be followed. Greek-speaking tutors were employed (for example, the poets Livius Andronicus and Ennius), who taught both Latin and Greek. This is no doubt what a wealthy Hellenistic family such as the Scipios would have done.

At about the same time, elementary and secondary schools opened, to which Cornelia could have sent Tiberius and Gaius. In that case, a paedagogus, usually a slave, would have taken them to and from their classes and generally supervised their behavior. A secondary school master, or grammaticus, taught language and poetry, and was sometimes a distinguished intellectual in his own right. For children in their mid to late teens, the principle of apprenticeship was maintained, with boys being attached for a time to a leading senator, rather like today’s interns. Oratory was a highly developed art form and was essential to a political career. Teachers of rhetoric offered advanced training in the elaborate techniques of persuasion.

THE STATUS OF women in ancient Rome was mixed. Their main task was to bear legitimate children, and chastity outside the marriage bed was essential to achieving that aim. They had no political rights; they could not attend, address, or vote at citizen assemblies, and they could not hold public office.

As a rule, a girl married young, between twelve and fifteen years of age, but her husband was often a man in his twenties or older. Irrespective of whether she had passed puberty (generally thought to begin in the fourteenth year), it seems that she was expected to have, or perhaps to endure, sex immediately upon marriage. There were different kinds of contract. A wife might be passed into the manus, or hands, of her husband, but this was becoming increasingly unpopular. Otherwise, she remained under her father’s nominal patria potestas or, if he was dead, she controlled her affairs sui iuris, by her own legal authority, albeit under the guidance of a guardian or tutor. This was Cornelia’s situation.

Divorce was easy, and because of the age difference there was a large number of widows. While many remarried, Romans rather admired the univira, the woman who, like Cornelia, stayed true to the memory of one man.

(Boys, of course, enjoyed greater license than girls. They were expected to sow their wild oats, within reason. Once, when Cato saw a young nobleman emerge from a brothel, he told him, “Keep up the good work.” When he came across the young man a short time later, in similar circumstances, he remarked, “When I complimented you on ‘good work’ I didn’t mean you should make this place your home.”)

In spite of legal constraints, women were able to play an important role in family and public life if they wished, provided they obeyed the conventions of modesty and respectability. Within her household, a wife was the domina, or mistress, and she was regarded on an equal level with her husband. She led a full social life, visiting friends, patronizing the Games, and attending her husband’s dinner parties. She was able to exert political influence through her husband, whose career she promoted. Although marriages were often cool, professional affairs, we know of many happy couples.

Cornelia was not alone in seeing so many of her children die in their early years. The duty to produce progeny was hampered by primitive medical knowledge. The upper classes seem to have practised birth control and abortion, although it is unclear how effective their methods were. Techniques such as washing out the vagina, coating it with old olive oil, inserting sponges soaked in vinegar, or jumping up and down after intercourse are unlikely to have done much good. Doctors did their best to encourage fertility and were not meant to facilitate abortion, but in Hippocratic medicine a substance known as misy was claimed to prevent pregnancy for a year; unfortunately, we do not know what it is (some have suggested yellow copperas). Various plants were commonly used for birth control, and some have been found in modern times to have contraceptive properties—Daucus carota, or Queen Anne’s lace, for example.

Women who broke the rules of propriety received no mercy. In the first century, a certain Sempronia met the full force of male condemnation. It has been speculated that she was Cornelia’s granddaughter and, whether or not this was so, was similarly well-endowed with charm and intellect. She married well and received a good education in Greek and Latin literature. She wrote poetry, had a ready wit, and was an amusing conversationalist.

However, according to the historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus (whom we know as Sallust), there was another side to her personality:

It is a curiously unconvincing passage: venial sins such as being a lively partygoer are gradually amplified into an unsubstantiated accusation of involvement in murder, as if one thing naturally led to the other. Some of Sempronia’s excesses echo those of Tanaquil and Tullia, perhaps because historians from the late Republic borrowed her traits in order to flesh out their portraits of those early fictionalized queens. As in their cases, Sempronia’s real offense seems to have been that she openly supported a dissident politician, an impermissible intervention into an exclusively masculine sphere of activity. Charges of sexual promiscuity and criminality, invented or exaggerated, were her punishment, for they would destroy her social standing.

CORNELIA MARRIED HER daughter, another Sempronia of course, to her celebrated cousin, Scipio Aemilianus. Her two boy jewels were the center of her attention. They shared a family resemblance, but their personalities were very different. Tiberius, the elder by nine years, was “gentle and sedate,” their biographer Plutarch writes, “while Gaius was highly strung and impetuous. When addressing the assembly one stood composedly on the spot, while the other was the first Roman to walk up and down the speakers’ platform and pull his toga off his shoulder as he spoke.” As regards food and lifestyle, Tiberius lived simply, while Gaius was ostentatious and picky.

As descendants of the most famous Roman of his day, the young men had distinguished political and military futures ahead of them. Cornelia used to tease them, complaining that she was still known as Scipio Aemilianus’s mother-in-law, and not as the mother of the Gracchi. Tiberius’s career nearly ended as soon as it began. He was appointed quaestor, or finance officer, to a consular general in Spain. The campaign against guerrilla insurgents went very badly. The Romans were comprehensively outmaneuvered and took refuge in their camp. Hearing that the enemy expected reinforcements, the consul had all fires put out and led his army of twenty thousand men out into the dead of night. He hoped to find safety at a remote former campsite. However, the Spaniards followed and soon had the Romans at their mercy. The consul, seeing that his situation was hopeless, agreed a surrender, to which he bound himself by oath. Thanks to his father, who had once commanded in Spain, Tiberius had excellent connections and played a leading part in negotiating the terms.

The Senate was outraged when it heard what had happened. Legions did not surrender. A tribunal with Scipio Aemilianus among its members ruled that the treaty should not stand. But sworn agreements could not be abrogated with impunity. In expiation for the religious offense of the breach, the consul was sent back naked and bound and handed over to the Spaniards. (They refused to accept him, in a faint echo of the Caudine Forks fiasco.)

Tiberius got off scot-free, despite the fact that he had been instrumental in making the treaty. Some put it down to the influence of Scipio, his adoptive uncle. His popularity with the troops may have counted for something, too. Cicero writes that the scandal was “a constant source of grief and fear to Tiberius Gracchus; and this estranged him, brave and famous as he was, from the wisdom of the Senators.” He was not simply unnerved but mortified that his fides, his good faith, had been sabotaged.

Tiberius’s politics changed. From being a political conservative, he began to promote the interests of the People. There was one issue in particular that drew his attention—land reform.

ON THE LONG overland journey to Spain to take up his quaestor-ship, Tiberius had passed through Tuscany on his way north. He was struck by how few people there were in the fields. Those he did see, tilling the soil or tending flocks, were foreign slaves rather than native Italians or Roman citizens. On his return in 137, he looked further into the matter.

What he found was a situation that needed to be addressed. As Rome vanquished its enemies in the peninsula, it confiscated a proportion of the land of defeated communities. Some of this was made over to smallholders and coloniae, but the rest remained ager publicus, or publicly owned land. After the end of the struggle with Carthage, the authorities had been preoccupied with new wars in Greece, Asia Minor, and Spain; and in southern Italy a great deal of ager publicus remained undistributed.

Wealthy landowners, especially profiteers from the lucrative wars of the second century, bought up the farms of soldiers who had been absent for years on distant campaigns and also silently expropriated public land. Hannibal had laid waste thousands on thousands of acres and substantial investment was needed to rebuild the farming industry. Large estates, or latifundia, were created rather than single farms. They were more often devoted to animal husbandry than to the labor-intensive production of crops and were staffed by teams of slaves.

The net result of these changes was the gradual disappearance of the sturdy peasant farmer, who earned enough to qualify for recruitment into the army. (As we have seen, the very poor—capite censi, or the “head count”—were not allowed to serve.) This applied not only to Romans but also to the citizens of allied communities, liable as they were to provide troops for the Republic’s wars. One obvious solution to the problem was to open the legions to the head count, but it was a firm and traditional belief that only those with property, who had something to lose, would fight bravely for their country. So that exit was barred.

Tiberius was not alone in believing that the situation was untenable and urgently needed correction. Thoughtful Romans were less worried about economic change in the countryside (for they increasingly imported grain and other foodstuffs from northern Africa and Sicily) than they were about the decline of the social class that stocked the legions. They also feared the large and growing population of disaffected slaves who were replacing freemen throughout the peninsula. This was no nightmarish fantasy but a real threat, for in 133 a great slave revolt broke out in Sicily that took more than a year to put down. Senior politicians supported change, and a friend of Aemilianus had suggested reform when he was consul a few years previously, but he met with furious resistance and withdrew his plans; for this he was rewarded with the sarcastic nickname Sapiens, or the Wise. Many senators were illegally squatting on ager publicus and were vehemently opposed to any interference.

Tiberius decided that the time for action had arrived. He was too junior a figure to get his hands on the official levers of power as praetor or consul, but he was well liked by the People and was entitled to stand for tribune. As already explained, the tribuneship was not a governmental position conferring imperium, and appointments were made by the concilium plebis. Its purpose was to promote popular sovereignty and public accountability. Tribunes could propose laws and summon meetings of the Senate. However, they had become an accepted part of the political scene and were sometimes even used by the Senate to veto the plans of unruly elected officials. They were not as radical as they used to be, until the arrival of Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.

He was elected one of the ten tribunes for 133 and put forward a land-reform bill, or lex agraria. He knew there would be fierce and self-interested opposition in the Senate and was careful to design a balanced package. He renewed an old law, which had fallen into disuse, banning the occupation of more than five hundred iugera of land—that is, about three hundred acres. But he sweetened the pill by allowing an additional two hundred and fifty iugera for each landowner’s son (the concession was withdrawn after it failed to win over critics) and by offering all the land as freehold in perpetuity. Also, the fertile fields of Campania were excluded from the legislation. The territory so reclaimed was to be distributed to Roman citizens in up to thirty-iugera parcels. These could not be sold (although presumably they could be inherited), and a small rent would be payable.

So far, so reasonable. But Tiberius then made a fateful decision. A convention had grown up that all new legislation was first presented to the Senate for its consideration before being taken to the Assembly for enactment. The bold tribune decided to sidestep the obstructive Senate and proceed directly to the People. This was legal but highly unusual: such a thing had not happened for almost exactly a century.

Tiberius ran a vigorous campaign to promote his proposal, which was hugely popular. In an ancient equivalent of a poster campaign, graffiti were written on walls, monuments, and porticoes or colonnades, which were busy gathering places. “Wild beasts who roam over Italy all have caves and lairs to lurk in,” he would say, “but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy the common air and light, but nothing else.” This high-flying oratory went down well with his audiences, but a young fellow tribune, Marcus Octavius, indicated that he intended to use his official powers to veto the legislation. Tiberius did his best to make him change his mind. He pointed out that Octavius was a large-scale occupier of ager publicus, but that he would pay him from his own resources the value of any of his land that was confiscated.

All to no avail. Tiberius convened an Assembly in the Forum and had the clerk read the bill. Octavius told the man to be silent. Tiberius postponed the meeting to another day, and again tried to have the bill read, with the same result. He took his cause to the Senate in the Senate House nearby, where he was treated contemptuously. He hurried back to the Assembly, where he took his next fateful step. He announced a further postponement, but warned that he would not only put his bill to the vote but also table a motion on whether Octavius should continue to hold office. He was as good as his word, and at the following meeting the vote on Octavius’s deposition was taken, although there was a delay because the voting urns had been stolen. The ballot was conducted by tribes, and one after another they voted to remove Octavius. As each tribe reported, Tiberius turned to Octavius and asked him to reconsider his position. “Do not throw into chaos a project that is morally right and of the greatest utility to all Italy,” he pleaded. Octavius refused, and when a majority against him had been reached he was dragged down from the speakers’ platform. His friends rushed him away from the Forum or he might well have been lynched. The land-reform bill was then passed and a commission to implement it was established, of which the two Gracchus brothers were members.

At about this time the king of Pergamum died and, to avert a civil war, bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, which now became the province of Asia. The contents of the Pergamum treasury were paid into the Roman exchequer, and Tiberius had the bright idea of passing a law that distributed this money to the new smallholders, so that they could stock up on seed and equipment.

In his handling of the Octavius crisis, Tiberius had, once again, probably broken no law, but the deposition of a tribune was unprecedented. Even if land reform was a worthy cause—and many believed it was—it began to look as if its supporters were willing to subvert the constitution in order to achieve their ends. They had upset the delicate balance between the Assembly and the Senate, which had served the Republic well for centuries.

With all the postponed Assembly meetings, it was now summer and the victorious Tiberius feared that when he left office at the end of the year his law might be repealed before it had been put into full effect. All his good work would have gone for nothing. Also, he was worried about his security and, as an elected guardian of the People, his person was inviolable. He took his third and last fateful decision. Although once again it broke convention, he stood for a second year as tribune. For conservatives in the Senate, this was too much.

Voting began at the election, which was held on the Capitol, but order soon broke down. The presiding officer handed over to another tribune, who was a friend of Tiberius. Noisy objections were raised. Tiberius put off the voting until the next day. He and his followers got up early to occupy the assembly-place in front of the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest before the opposition arrived. When leaving his house, he accidentally stubbed his big toe on the threshold and blood was noticed leaking from his sandal—not a good omen.

A meeting of the Senate was also held that day in the tiny Temple of Fides, Good Faith, at the edge of the assembly-place. It was dominated by Tiberius’s enemies, in particular a cousin of his who was another of Africanus’s grandsons. This was Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica (“big nose”). A senior politician who had held all the great offices of state and was now pontifex maximus, or high priest, he had a high opinion of himself: at a noisy public meeting, he once said, “Be quiet, please, citizens. I know more about the public interest than you do.”

Nasica tried to persuade the consul to call a state of emergency, but the consul declined to use force or kill a citizen without trial. Meanwhile, a fight started outside between supporters of the different sides. Confusion reigned. The tribunes deserted their places, priests closed the Temple of Jupiter, and many people ran wildly about trying to escape. In the noise, Tiberius signaled that he was in personal danger by pointing to his head. This was reported to the Senate, which decided that the gesture meant that he wanted a diadem (a white cloth headband signifying royal power) and was aspiring to be king.

Throughout the history of the Republic, this ambition was the ultimate crime. Would-be tyrants deserved no mercy. Nasica seized his moment. “Since the Consul betrays the state, anyone who wants to save the constitution, follow me,” he declared. The pontifex maximus then pulled a fold of his toga over his head, as if he were about to conduct a sacrifice, and ran out of the temple followed by senators and their attendants.

The Gracchans were startled by the sight of so distinguished a company rushing at them and lost their nerve. Nasica and his people snatched the makeshift weapons with which their opponents had armed themselves—sticks, rods, and the like—and broke up the benches that had been laid out for the meeting. They then chased the Gracchans over the precipitous edges of the Capitoline Square. Somebody grabbed at Tiberius’s clothes. He let his toga fall and ran off. With bitter symbolism, he was caught, this (allegedly) potential despot, beside a cluster of statues of Rome’s kings. An assailant hit him on the head with a bench leg; others piled in, and the sacrosanct tribune was beaten to death. He was not quite thirty years old. When the riot was over, all the corpses were thrown into the Tiber under the cover of darkness.

The death of Tiberius was an earthquake that shook the pillars of the state. Reactions were contradictory. Tiberius’s cousin and the leading man of his day, the cultured Scipio Aemilianus, gave the deed his cautious approval. The Senate instructed the consuls for 132 to investigate and execute those who had conspired with Tiberius. However, Nasica was the object of popular fury and was challenged even in the Senate to justify his actions. His continued presence in Rome was an embarrassment. He was sent off on a foreign assignment and soon conveniently died in Pergamum.

Tellingly, no one challenged the land-reform legislation, and the implementation commission got on with its work unhindered. It was Tiberius’s methods, not so much his policies, that had incensed Rome’s élite. Furthermore, repeal could well lead to dangerous public disturbances. Best to leave well enough alone.

ONE DAY A Roman consul paid a visit to Teanum Sidicinum (modern Teano), an Oscan-speaking settlement on the borders of Samnium. His wife accompanied him, and said that she wanted to bathe in the men’s baths. (These seem to have been something of an attraction, and the remains of extensive baths can be seen by today’s visitors.) A certain Marcus Marius, the town treasurer, was instructed to send the bathers away so that she could have the place to herself. Later, she complained to her husband that the baths were not cleared quickly, and that they were not clean enough.

The consul had a stake planted in the main square and Marius, Teanum’s leading citizen, was led to it. Then his clothes were stripped off and he was whipped with rods. When news of this reached a nearby municipality, its Assembly passed a law forbidding anyone to use the public baths when a Roman elected official was in town.

Gaius Sempronius Gracchus told this story in a speech complaining of the outrageous behavior of senior Romans when traveling in Italy. It was not only officeholders who acted with criminal insolence. “I will give you a single example of the lawlessness of our young men, and their complete lack of self-control,” Gracchus said on another occasion. “Not many years ago a young man who had not yet held public office was sent as an envoy to the province of Asia. He was carried in a curtained litter. A herdsman from Venusia in southern Italy [presumably, the Roman was on his way to the port of Brundisium] met him and, not knowing who the passenger was, asked as a joke if the litter-bearers were carrying a dead body. The young man heard this. He ordered that the litter be set down and that the peasant be beaten to death with the leather thongs by which it was fastened.”

Rome’s allied communities were seething with resentment. They not only complained of arrogance by roaming dignitaries; they felt that the historic concordat between them and their conqueror all those centuries ago was breaking down.

The system of some one hundred and fifty bilateral treaties between Rome and each of them had worked well. As we have seen, they were obliged to supply troops on request to help fight Rome’s many wars. In return, allies were guaranteed security and a share of the very considerable spoils of victory. They also had the right to benefit from land assignations and to join or found coloniae.

With the acquisition of a large overseas empire, the terms of advantage changed. The regular taxes paid by new provinces were monopolized by the Roman exchequer. Colonization dried up and, although Tiberius Gracchus recognized that Italians were as much in need of succor as Roman citizens, his reforms had meant a loss of ager publicus in their territories.

Just as observant Romans recognized the case for land reform, they also saw that something would have to be done to quiet the allied communities and compensate them for their economic losses. One of these was Scipio Aemilianus, to whom allied landowners made representations. They objected to having a Roman commission interfere with their local property rights, and Scipio arranged for their cases to be considered by the consul; that official, however, knew what a thankless task he had been given and immediately went abroad to his province.

Scipio had already caused offense by his opposition to Tiberius Gracchus, and his sympathy for the allies only compounded his unpopularity with the urban mob, which saw no reason to make concessions to “foreigners.” His political enemies claimed that he was set on undoing Tiberius’s agrarian law and was plotting an armed massacre. With the city in this ill-tempered mood, few were surprised when, in 129, Scipio was found dead, his body unmarked. Intending to write a speech that night which he was due to deliver at a meeting of the Assembly, he had a notebook beside him.

The rumor mill got to work. Perhaps Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi (as she now certainly was known), had killed Scipio to prevent a repeal of her son’s legislation. Very probably, word went, her daughter Sempronia had aided and abetted her; she was Scipio’s wife, but unloved because of her ugliness and her childlessness. Others claimed that Scipio had committed suicide in the realization that he could not accomplish what he had undertaken to do. Apparently, Scipio’s slaves were put to the torture (this was the rule when a paterfamilias was murdered). They confessed, it was said, that strangers had been brought into the back of the house and had strangled their master.

Scipio may have been murdered, but if the reports of how he was found and the appearance of his body are correct, it is more likely that he succumbed to a heart attack or a stroke. In any case, he was dead, and despite the distinction of his career public opinion would not allow him the honor of a state funeral.

FOR SOME YEARS after his brother’s killing, Gaius had stayed away from the Forum and the alarms of public life. But he disliked having nothing to do and was uninterested in the sexual promiscuity, drinking, and moneymaking practiced by many of his peers. He enjoyed army life but lost his temper when his commission as quaestor in Sardinia was unfairly extended. He sailed away to Rome in a rage. Charged with dereliction of duty, he easily cleared himself with a powerful speech in his defense. He had already served longer than the law required, he pointed out, and added, “I am the only man in the army who entered the campaign with a full purse, and left it with an empty one. My colleagues brought amphorae of wine with them which they drank on service, and then took back home with them, stuffed with silver and gold.”

Supporters of reform kept prompting him to stand for tribune, and conservative senators let it be seen how much they feared that he would. Tiberius was said to have appeared to Gaius in a dream and said, “However much you try to defer your destiny, you must die the same death that I suffered.” His mother was no ghost, and expressed her disapproval. A letter of hers has survived in which she tells her son, “Apart from those who killed Tiberius Gracchus, no enemy has caused me so many troubles and so many labors as you. As my only surviving son, you should have taken trouble and care that I should have the fewest anxieties in my old age.”

Gaius refused Cornelia’s pleas and bowed to the inevitable. He was elected tribune in 123.

In a sign that times were slowly changing, he had no trouble getting reelected for a second year and he introduced a far-reaching catalog of reforms. First of all, he appeased his brother’s spirit by introducing two new laws. The first banned anyone who had been deposed from public office from serving again in any capacity. This was obviously aimed at Octavius, but, according to Plutarch, Cornelia made representations and persuaded her son to withdraw it. This magnanimous gesture delighted public opinion.

Second, a bill was passed forbidding any capital trials without the Assembly’s approval. Anyone found to have deprived a citizen of his civic rights through execution or exile, as if he were an enemy of the state, was to be arraigned before the People. The prohibitions were retrospective, and the former consul who chaired the commission that persecuted Tiberius’s followers in 132 was driven into exile. It was not simply that revenge was sweet; reactionary senators needed to be reminded of the dangers they faced if they ignored the will of the People.

Gaius reaffirmed Tiberius’s land act but exempted some ager publicus from redistribution, perhaps so that it could be leased to non-Romans. He also announced the foundation of three coloniae in Italy and one in northern Africa, on the desolate site of Carthage. This last was to be named Junonia, or Juno’s Place (a tactful nod in the direction of the goddess?). It was a controversial project to countermand the recently dead Aemilianus’s curse and, in the event, the sheep pastures of Carthage were left undisturbed. Plans were commissioned for the building of new roads across Italy. All these measures would have the effect of alleviating unemployment.

The burgeoning city of Rome required reliable and copious supplies of grain, imported from Africa and Sicily. When harvests failed, famine followed. Food riots imperiled government. Gaius arranged permanent stockpiles of grain as an insurance policy against shortages and set a bargain price for its sale to citizens.

The tribune turned his attention to corruption in public life. He passed laws against fraud and theft by governors of provinces, and a special extortion court, quaestio de repetundis, heard cases in front of a jury of senators. The conviction rate was low, because the jurors were often friends of the defendants. Gaius decided to put this right by asking equites, originally Rome’s cavalry but now men possessing the next property qualification beneath that of senators, to share jury service. Then, on second thought, senators were barred altogether from serving on juries, which now consisted entirely of equites.

This was not all that Gaius did to the advantage of equites. The class had grown in economic importance in recent years. Some were country landowners uninterested in entering national politics, but a growing number were prosperous businessmen. The Republic had little in the way of a civil service, and indirect revenue collection (customs dues and the like) was contracted out to companies, or societates of equites; they also won commissions for public works, the construction of public buildings and roads, and the provision of military supplies. Of course, senators were not allowed to engage directly in trade, but provincial governors, proconsuls, and propraetors were responsible for the collection of direct taxes, a profitable opportunity for the practise of extortion. However, to ensure an adequate inflow to pay for his reforms, the tribune put the collection of direct taxes in the wealthy new province of Asia up for auction. This was a plum concession for commercial interests, as well as a vote of no confidence in senatorial probity.

These measures all served immediate, sometimes urgent purposes, but in the longer run Gaius probably intended to encourage the growth of a wealthy nonpolitical class as a counterweight to the aristocracy in the Senate, and if that was not his intention it was certainly the result.

Other constitutional and administrative changes were made. As ever, honesty and efficiency were the watchwords. Gaius had a larger and more all-embracing vision than his brother. His reforms were a comprehensive political program. In fact, when he was out and about in the Forum it was as if he were a government; Plutarch reports him as being “closely attended by a throng of contractors, technicians, ambassadors, officials, soldiers and literary men.” Although nowhere did he say this, it is clear that he was aiming to rebalance the constitution in the direction of popular sovereignty.

However, there is no evidence that he wanted to emasculate or even abolish the Senate; rather, his idea was to purify the Senate and make it more responsive to the interests of the People. He shared something of Cato’s disgust with the activities of the ruling élite and of Scipio Aemilianus’s commitment to fair treatment for the provinces. He was a radical, not a revolutionary.

DURING HIS SECOND term, Gaius grasped the nettle of allied resentment. He could see from Aemilianus’s fate that it would be hard to win public opinion to the Italian cause. A colleague of his on the tribunician bench had tabled a proposal, while serving as consul a few years earlier, to grant citizenship to any allied community that wanted it and, for those who didn’t, the right of appeal against Roman officials. The Senate was nervous and dispatched the consul to Gaul in response to a conveniently timed call from the port of Massilia for military assistance. The matter had had to be dropped.

The tribune would have been wise to let leave well alone, but the danger of serious disaffection across Italy was too great to ignore. He proposed that communities with Latin status (that is, a second-class citizenship—see this page) should be awarded the full franchise, and that plain and simple allies should receive Latin status. The Roman mob was displeased, and there was heated opposition in the Senate.

One of the consuls led the assault, deploying the fear-inducing slogans of the anti-immigrant campaigner through the ages. He declaimed:

A fellow tribune, working for the Senate, trumped Gaius with a populist package designed to satisfy both the People’s Assembly and Italian opinion. This was approved but (as intended, no doubt) never implemented, and Gaius’s bill failed. The only practical result of the initiative was his rising unpopularity among the city’s masses.

He failed to win a third term as tribune, and his opponents at once began to unpick his legislation. He had recently returned from a visit to Carthage to make arrangements for the building of Junonia, and at a crowded Assembly on the Capitol one of the new tribunes for 121 attacked the law authorizing it. Now that the crisis had arrived, Cornelia set aside her opposition to her son and helped him recruit bodyguards. These hired men lurked on the outskirts of the meeting, with Gaius walking up and down a portico in a nervous frame of mind. He may have intended only to observe the debate, but it is possible that he planned to disrupt the meeting.

Fate then played a wild card. A servant of Lucius Opimius, one of the consuls, bared his arm and made an insulting gesture. An overexcited Gracchan stabbed him fatally with a writing stylus. This was just the pretext the consul was hoping for. He immediately went to the Senate and persuaded it to vote a state of emergency. This was the first time that what came to be called the Final Decree, or senatus consultum ultimum, was passed. The Senate resolved: “Let the consuls see to it the Republic comes to no harm,” (“Videant consules ne quid detrimenti res publica caperet”).

This vague formula was understood to give senior officeholders the power to use lethal force against malefactors who were endangering the state. But did the Senate actually have the power to suspend a Roman citizen’s constitutional rights? The answer depended on a man’s political point of view, on the emotion of the moment. If we look at the issue dispassionately, the Senate was, in the final resort, an advisory body and its resolutions had no legal force. A consul had imperium, but the law insisted that he could not execute citizens without trial (reinforced by Gaius Gracchus’s own recent legislation); this was because they had the right of appeal, of provocatio, to the People. In practice, few would disobey a serving consul’s command, but he was wise to remember that, once out of office, he was subject to the courts and the anger of the Assembly.

Such fine considerations were of little interest in the heat of the present moment. Opimius called on senators to arm themselves, and for all equites to turn up the following morning with two armed servants. Rome passed an uneasy night. In the morning, the Gracchans seized the Aventine Hill, the traditional refuge of plebeian agitators through the ages. Gaius refused to arm himself (except for a dagger) and left home wearing a toga as if it were a normal day and he were just going down to the Forum on routine business.

After unsuccessful negotiations, Opimius had some archers loose their arrows into the crowds on the Aventine, throwing them into confusion. Gaius, furious at what was happening, took no part in the fighting. He walked up the broad steps of the Temple of Diana, standing high on its plateau on the hilltop, and entered the precinct. Ironically, the shrine was devoted to community, sanctuary, and arbitration, attributes not on offer that day. Gaius was so depressed that he considered taking his own life, but his companions confiscated his dagger and urged him to escape.

With enemies close behind, Gaius, a slave, and two friends ran across the narrow wooden footbridge spanning the Tiber, the Pons Sublicius. The friends halted and turned round at the head of the bridge, where, like Horatius and his companions, they fought their pursuers in order to give Gaius time to make a getaway. But they were soon overwhelmed.

Bystanders watched Gaius run to the other side of the river. They told him to hurry up, but offered no help. When he called for a horse, nobody gave him one. On being caught, the slave with him threw his arms around his master and had to be killed as well. (Another version of Gaius’s end has him finally succeed in committing suicide.) Gaius’s head was cut off and taken to Opimius, who had promised to reward the bearer with its weight in gold. Some say Gaius’s killer gouged out his brains and replaced them with lead to make the head heavier.

FOR ALL THE brothers’ good intentions the Gracchan episode was a disaster. Their policies were rational, and ultimately much of their legislation passed into the body of Roman law. The economic consequences of their land reforms were beneficial. The Senate reacted to the brothers rather like a general faced with a mutiny, who concedes most of the grievances but executes the ringleaders.

However, the constitutional results of their efforts were overwhelmingly negative. The Italians were more embittered than ever, through the Assembly the People had stretched their muscles, and for the first time the equites had become aware of their own strength vis-à-vis the Senate. Before the Gracchi, nobody had realized that the Republic could be governed from the tribunes’ bench. Both the Senate and the People had been shown to act with breathtaking selfishness, always consulting their own rather than the public interest.

The Roman constitution was a complicated contraption of levers and balances, with obsolete pieces of machinery left in place alongside modern additions. Its management called for sensitivity, imagination, and, above all, an ability to accommodate, to concede, to compromise. For centuries, these qualities among Rome’s politicians had drawn the admiration, reluctant or full-hearted, of friend and foe.

Now, though, the tragic trajectory of the Gracchi exposed the Republic for what it had become, an unstable and uncreative monster. It is no accident that, in his Civil Wars, Appian chose this moment at which to begin his story. He observed:

The mother of the Gracchi left Rome after Gaius’s death. She settled in Misenum, a narrow isthmus culminating in a rocky outcrop at the northern end of the Bay of Naples. It had beautiful views and was off the beaten track. However, Cornelia did not hide herself away and made no alteration to the gregarious brilliancy of her lifestyle. Plutarch reports: “She had many friends and because of her love of visitors kept a good table. She always had Greeks and intellectuals as guests, and all the reigning monarchs exchanged gifts with her.”

It made her happy to reminisce about her father’s life and character. Remarkably, she spoke of her sons without any tears or displays of emotion and discussed their careers and sad ends as if she were referring to immemorial statesmen from Rome’s first centuries.

Cornelia survived her lost jewels for more than ten years, dying at the turn of the century. She was lucky not to witness the fulfillment of their legacies.

17 Triumph and Disaster

THE TWO MEN WERE, TO PUT IT MILDLY, UNPROMISing and even distasteful specimens of humanity.

The older one was Gaius Marius. He was born in 157 in a small village near Arpinum, a hill town in Latium of Volscian and Samnite origins, some sixty miles southeast of Rome. He was lucky to be a voting citizen of Rome, for the full franchise had been awarded the town only thirty years earlier.

According to his biographer Plutarch, the boy’s parents lived in very humble circumstances and he is said to have worked for wages as a simple peasant. He may have been a blacksmith for a time. He grew up rough and uncouth and lived frugally. He seems to have been proud of his modest background. When campaigning later in life for public office, Marius certainly made the most of it, and liked to compare himself, a little in the manner of Cato, with effete aristocrats:

The teenage Marius chose the only escape route from provincial isolation that was open to him, the army. His exceptional ability soon allowed him to shine. It is possible, too, that despite his poverty his social status was higher than he cared to admit and that he came from an equestrian family that had fallen on hard times; if so, that would have helped speed promotion.

He had a fierce temper. Plutarch once saw a statue of him at Ravenna and wrote: “It very well expresses the harshness and bitterness of character that are attributed to him.” Military life suited him. He refused to study Greek literature and never spoke Greek; he could not see the point of having anything to do with the culture of a subject people. Some critics regarded him as a hypocrite who would say anything to get his way and was not above employing blackmail; to their annoyance, Iago-like, he actually won a reputation for honest dealing.

What nobody could deny was Marius’s combination of fortitude and realism. Later in life, he suffered from varicose veins in both legs. Disliking their ugly appearance, he decided to undergo surgery to remove them. Anesthetic had not been discovered, but he refused to be tied down, as was the practice, to keep himself still. He endured the excruciating pain from the knife in silence and without moving. But when the surgeon proceeded to the other leg, Marius stopped him, saying, “I can see that the cure is not worth the pain.”

LUCIUS CORNELIUS SULLA could not have been more different in background and personality from a bright country lad with rough edges. Nearly twenty years Marius’s junior, he was born into a patrician family of little distinction and less money. His only ancestor of whom anything was known had been expelled from the Senate. He inherited so little from his father that he lived in a cheap ground-floor apartment in an unfashionable part of town.

Sulla loved literature and the arts, and before he had any money he spent most of his time with actors and actresses. He liked a good time and enjoyed drinking and joking with the most indiscreet theater people; once seated at a dinner table, he categorically refused to discuss any serious topic, although when on business he was severe and unyielding.

The young nobleman seems to have got on well with older women; his stepmother loved him as if he were her own son and left him her estate. He fell in love with a wealthy courtesan, a certain Nicopolis, and his charm and youthful grace eventually led her to return his feelings; on her death, he inherited again. In this way, he became moderately well-off. However, Sulla was bisexual and the true love of his life was Metrobius, a celebrated tragic actor who specialized in women’s roles, of whom he remained passionately fond until his dying day.

Sulla’s most remarkable feature was his appearance. He had gray eyes and a sharp and powerful gaze. His face was covered with an ugly birthmark—coarse blotches of red interspersed with white. An Athenian wit wrote a famous verse about him:

Marius and Sulla came to represent two emerging groups in Roman public life. On the one hand, the populares spoke for the People; in the footsteps of the Gracchi, they supported the sovereignty of the Assembly against the authority of the Senate. They were inheritors of the centuries-old campaigners for the rights of the plebs. Then there were the optimates, the soi-disant “best people,” who distrusted democracy and spoke for the predominance of the great families that monopolized the offices of state.

These groups were not disciplined political parties with agreed programs, as in today’s parliamentary democracies. Rather, they were fluctuating factions. Their methods varied; a popularis leader tended to be an individualist who sought power for himself, whereas the optimates defended a collective interest. Although the occasional novus homo, “new man,” such as Marius, was admitted via elections into the ruling class, the membership of both groups was drawn from the aristocracy. Ordinary citizens were allowed to vote, but otherwise their participation in politics did not extend much beyond watching and waiting, receiving bribes from candidates for public office, and, when they lost patience, rioting.

THE PATHS OF Marius, the unpolished commoner, and Sulla, the hard-up sensualist, crossed for the first time in northern Africa. They were fighting Jugurtha, a very able but unscrupulous grandson of the old Numidian king Masinissa, who had helped the Romans defeat Hannibal at the Battle of Zama nearly a century earlier. As a young man, he had served in Spain under Scipio Aemilianus, and won golden praises. He was ambitious and very free with his money. Scipio gave him some avuncular advice. In a private meeting, he told Jugurtha to cultivate Rome’s friendship, not that of individual Romans, and to suppress his habit of offering bribes. The prince paid absolutely no attention to these wise words.

When the current king of Numidia died, he bequeathed his realm to his two sons and to Jugurtha, his nephew. A similar tripartite division had worked well enough on Masinissa’s death, probably because it had been guaranteed by the Romans. But Jugurtha did not want to share power. He had one brother assassinated and the other, Adherbal, fled to Rome. The Senate misguidedly decided that Numidia should be bisected between the two surviving rivals. Jugurtha refused to accept the settlement and besieged Adherbal in his capital. A resident community of Italian merchants persuaded the beleaguered king to give himself up on condition that his life be spared.

Jugurtha accepted the terms, but as soon as he had his cousin in his possession he put him to death—and many of the Italian merchants were massacred, too, for good measure. This was an irreparable mistake. Rome never forgave the murder of its citizens. War was declared and the Senate dispatched an army to Africa. However, Jugurtha soon agreed to surrender to a Roman general on condition that he keep his throne.

This was a completely unexpected outcome, and it was widely supposed that Jugurtha had bribed every Roman official with whom he had come into contact. The Senate set up a board of inquiry and Jugurtha was invited to Rome under a safe-conduct to reveal the identity of all those he had suborned. Incorrigible as ever, he bribed a tribune to prevent him from announcing any names. He was also responsible for the assassination of a cousin, who was living in Rome and had been invited by one of the consuls to claim the Numidian throne for himself. By now it was obvious that Jugurtha was a man with whom it was impossible to do business. He was sent back to Africa, and the fighting resumed.

An incompetent Roman army was soundly beaten by the Numidians and forced to march under a yoke of spears, as in the bad old days of the Samnite Wars. It was obliged to evacuate Numidia. At long last in 109, the Senate was persuaded to treat Jugurtha seriously and a competent and incorruptible general was sent out to rescue the war.

He was Quintus Caecilius Metellus, a member of a leading senatorial family. Marius was among Metellus’s clients and served as his legatus, or deputy. Now in his late forties, he had made reasonable progress up the political ladder for a novus homo, having been elected praetor in 114 and appointed governor of Lusitania. He was ambitious for the top job, even if it meant offending his longtime patron.

Metellus was winning the campaign, but slowly. Jugurtha had not been captured. Marius began to agitate that the war was being spun out unnecessarily. He was popular with the army rank and file and with Roman traders, not to mention voters at home. He asked Metellus for permission to return to Rome so that he could run for the consulship and take over the command. Being the aristocrat that he was, an irritated Metellus could not resist cracking a joke at his deputy’s expense. “So you are going to abandon us, are you, my dear fellow?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it be a better idea to delay your campaign until you can stand at the same time as this boy of mine?” Metellus’s son was only twenty.

Eventually, Marius was allowed to take his leave. In Rome, he raised enough popular and equestrian support to win the consulship. The Assembly disregarded the Senate’s decision to prolong Metellus’s command and appointed Marius in his place. This usurpation of the Senate’s traditional role in deciding provincial commands set a dangerous precedent. It paved the way for extraordinary commands for ambitious politicians who were willing to bypass the usual constitutional limitations.

Marius was determined to finish off Jugurtha at the earliest opportunity, so he levied more troops. However, he found the going as difficult and time-consuming as his predecessor had. He reduced stronghold after stronghold, but the legions were hard put to worst a highly mobile enemy on land well suited to the deployment of cavalry. Jugurtha strengthened his position by an alliance with his neighbor, Bocchus, the king of Mauretania. At long last a pitched battle was fought, which Marius won decisively—thanks in large part to Sulla, who commanded the cavalry, turning up at just the right moment.

However, the slippery Numidian king was still at large. He was not so slippery, though, as his new friend Bocchus, who decided to surrender him to the Romans. Simultaneously and falsely, the king promised Jugurtha to hand Sulla over to him; with such a distinguished captive, the Numidian calculated, he would easily be able to negotiate a peace with Rome. Bocchus invited the two men to a conference. Sulla, taking his life in his hands, rode to the rendezvous with only a few followers. At the last minute, the Mauretanian king had second thoughts and wondered anxiously whether, after all, he should favor Jugurtha. He eventually decided that the Roman was the better bet, and Jugurtha was arrested.

Jugurtha was taken to Rome and paraded in Marius’s triumph. Defeat made him lose his mind. When he was inserted, naked, into Rome’s main prison, the Tullianum, a tiny drumlike cellar with a shaft leading into the Cloaca Maxima, he said, “God, this Roman bath is cold.” He lasted six days in the dark and without food before dying.

Much to Marius’s fury, Sulla made the most of his coup and was widely credited with winning the war. He had a seal ring made that depicted Bocchus delivering, and Sulla receiving, Jugurtha.

We may imagine a smile lighting up Metellus’s face.

MARIUS WAS CREDITED with being a great military innovator, although it may be that the ancient sources have used him as a clotheshorse on which to hang a number of important reforms agreed at different times.

As the Gracchi had discovered, the days of the reasonably well-off yeoman were closing and, when he raised his additional troops for Africa, Marius recruited directly from the head count, Rome’s lowest economic and social stratum, who owned little or nothing and by law could not be drafted. This was not as revolutionary a step as might at first appear, for the prescribed property qualifications for legionaries had been falling for some time, and Marius was careful to ask for volunteers rather than conscripts.

One way or another, many recruits could no longer afford to pay for their own gear, as they had been expected to do in the past, and had no farms to return to. What had once been a militia was mutating into a near-professional army. This had one very dangerous consequence: soldiers became increasingly dependent on their commanders, both to ensure that they were well equipped and, already a problem in the age of Scipio, that they had somewhere to go when they were demobilized after their six to sixteen years’ term of service.

The system of maniples, the three lines of infantry and the forward screen of light-armed skirmishers, gave way during the second and first centuries to the cohort, a grouping of four hundred and eighty foot soldiers equivalent to three maniples. Not as complex and decentralized as the old arrangement, a legion of ten cohorts was more readily responsive to its commander during battle.

Marius standardized uniforms and weapons and, to foster esprit de corps, introduced the aquila, a silver eagle carried on a pole. It symbolized the legion, and its capture by the enemy conferred lasting shame on all its soldiers.

An ingenious technical device helped make survival on the field of battle a better bet. The heavy javelin, or pilum, was an essential part of the legionary’s armory. But when he threw it at his opponents, they often picked it up and hurled it back. Its iron head was attached to a wooden pole by two metal rivets. One of these was now replaced by a wooden dowel, so that the head was bent or snapped off entirely when the pilum reached its target or fell to the ground. This meant that it could not be reused.

Marius reduced the number of camp followers, making individual legionaries more self-reliant. In addition to their weapons, they had to carry on their backs emergency food rations and essential equipment for cooking and entrenching. With their bent, ungainly gait, infantrymen looked like beasts of burden. They were nicknamed Marius’s mules.

A TERRIBLE THREAT to Rome’s very existence suddenly materialized. Every Roman remembered the horror story of the Battle of the Allia and the capture and looting of their city by the Celts in the fourth century. Barbarian hordes pressing down from the dark forests of central Europe into the sunlit lands of the Mediterranean remained figures of nightmare, lurking just beyond the direct field of vision.

Every now and again, the Celts reappeared. In 279 they invaded Greece, reaching as far as Delphi before being repulsed. Immigrant Celts settled in Galatia (in what is today’s central Anatolia). Rome did what it could to reduce the risk of further incursions into Italy by creating buffer territories. In 120, southern France became the province of Gallia Transalpina, later Narbonensis. Over the years, many consular armies marched north to reduce the Celtic communities in the Po Valley; eventually, in the first century, the region became the province of Cisalpine Gaul.

Alarming reports reached Rome in 113 that two Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, were emigrating en masse with their women and children southward from their homelands in or near Jutland. The record of incompetence and corruption in Rome’s political class continued; somewhere in the eastern Alps, a consul crashed to defeat at the hands of the tribal wanderers. Most fortunately for the Republic, they turned westward toward Gaul, which they reached in 110.

A succession of consuls suffered further routs, culminating in 105 at Arausio (modern Orange, not far from Avignon), in Rome’s greatest military disaster since Cannae, with a reported loss of eighty thousand men. Italy lay at the invader’s mercy. Men under the age of thirty-five were forbidden to leave the country. Rome prepared for the worst.

Marius was still in Africa when the news of the catastrophe reached Rome. On a wave of popular enthusiasm, he was reelected consul in absentia for the following year. This was against all the conventions, but the Assembly had had enough of hopeless aristocrats and wanted a commander who had a chance of repulsing the Celts.

The Celts were in no hurry to do anything in particular and rambled around the Gallic countryside. This gave Marius breathing space, during which he introduced his military reforms (or refined earlier ones) and honed his troops into an efficient fighting force. He went on being elected consul for six years in a row. This was unprecedented, but it was evidently more sensible to keep the Republic’s most able general in place than to insist on an annual change of command just for the constitutional principle of the thing.

The Celts split their forces into two. The Teutones (alongside a fellow tribe, the Ambrones) intended to enter Italy via the seacoast, while the Cimbri would descend on the peninsula through the Brenner Pass. Marius was waiting for the former, but did not immediately give battle. The Celts were a terrifying sight, and their vast numbers covered the plain. The Romans stayed in their camp and watched them pass by; if we are to believe Plutarch, this took six days.

Marius shadowed the enemy until he found a suitable site for a battle. A skirmish led to a successful engagement, and on the following day the Roman army deployed for battle. A force of three thousand men hid in ambush behind the Celts. In the face of an onslaught by the Teutones, the legions more than held their ground; astounded by an attack on their rear, the enemy panicked and fled.

The bodies of the Celtic dead were left where they were. They fertilized the ground, and the people of Massilia used their bones to fence fields. For some years, it was said that the grape harvests were unusually rich.

Marius quickly joined the consular army confronting the Cimbri in the Po Valley, and in 101 the combined forces met the enemy outside Vercellae (today’s Vercelli, in Piedmont) on a hot midsummer’s day. The armies raised such a cloud of dust that at the beginning they missed each other. The Celts were unused to the sweltering temperature and were soon cut to pieces. Their disgusted womenfolk killed any fugitives who came their way, and many of them strangled their children and cut their own throats.

Rome had outfaced an external challenge, but it was to have no peace. Now it was to risk destruction from enemies within.

MARIUS WAS NOT much of a politician. A man without grace, he was happier giving orders to troops than compromising with civilians. While serving his successive consulships and campaigning against the Celts, he needed political support in the Forum. He found it, unwisely, in an embittered and daring tribune, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, a nobleman who turned against his class and became a popularis after being sacked from his job as quaestor in charge of managing Rome’s grain supply at the port of Ostia.

A fine public speaker and a clever fixer, Saturninus was elected tribune in 103. His policy was uncomplicated: it was to be as disobliging as possible to the Senate. He entered into a partnership with Marius and on his behalf passed a law settling the general’s veterans from the war with Jugurtha on land in the province of Africa. He had no qualms about using violence. When a fellow tribune tried to interpose a veto, Saturninus got his followers to drive him off with a hail of stones. He also helped Marius win his fourth consulship in 102.

After his victories over the Celts, Marius returned to Rome and entered into a new compact with Saturninus. The tribune and the consul shared a hatred for Metellus, who had not only patronized Marius in Africa but also tried to remove Saturninus from the Senate on the grounds of immorality. They laid a trap for him.

A proposal was put to the Senate that all soldiers, Latins as well as Roman citizens, demobilized after the defeat of the Cimbri and the Teutones, should be given allotments in Transalpine Gaul and colonies in various places across the Mediterranean. A controversial clause was added that each senator should swear to observe the new law. Everyone knew that for Metellus this was an unconstitutional infringement of senatorial independence.

Marius assured all and sundry that he would never bind himself in this way. Then, a few days later, just before the legal deadline for taking the oath, he unexpectedly convened the Senate and said that because of popular pressure he had changed his mind. But he had worked out an ingenious formula that would address Metellus’s objection. He would swear to obey the law “insofar as it was a law.” A nervous Senate followed his lead, except for Metellus. He was outmaneuvered and isolated, but, having taken a stand, he refused to backtrack. His punishment was exile.

Marius, although cussed, was no revolutionary and could see that the populares were running out of control. Saturninus won a third term as tribune, and a colleague of his ran for consul. When a leading rival for the consulship was beaten to death in public, it was clear that a line had been crossed. Popular support for Saturninus evaporated.

For the second time, the Senate passed the Final Decree. The tribune and his friends occupied the Capitol. Abandoning them to their fate, Marius put together an armed force and cut off their water supply. This was a turning point in the history of Rome, for soldiers in uniforms and carrying weapons were strictly forbidden within the city boundary; also, the ease and speed with which the consul found and deployed these men strongly suggests a personal loyalty to him rather than to the state.

The parched revolutionaries soon surrendered. Promised their lives would be spared, they were locked up, as a temporary expedient, in the Senate House at the foot of the Capitol. But a furious lynch mob climbed onto the roof, stripped off the roof tiles, and threw them down onto the rebels until most of them were dead.

That was the end of the affair. Marius completed his term as consul, but his lack of political skill and principle were embarrassingly obvious, and thereafter he was frozen out of public life. As Plutarch put it: “He lacked the abilities others had of making themselves agreeable socially and useful politically. So he was left on the side like military equipment in peace-time.” He traveled to the East, apparently on private business, and disappeared from view.

Ancient historians have not been kind to Saturninus, and we cannot now judge his value as a statesman. He may have been no more than an upper-class monster with a chip on his shoulder, or a worthy successor of the Gracchi, or a bit of both. But one truth stands out: where the old Republic used to solve problems through discussion, now the optimates and the populares had acquired an addiction to violence that they were unable to shake off.

IF THE ENTENTE in the Forum was dissolving, so, too, were relations between Rome and its allies throughout Italy. For years there had been talk of offering them full Roman citizenship, but proposals had always lapsed. The urban masses who voted at assemblies in Rome would not allow any measure that benefited others than themselves.

In 91, a bright young optimate, Marcus Livius Drusus, was elected tribune. He was hardworking but self-important. From his boyhood, he refused to take holidays. When he was building a house on the fashionable Palatine Hill, his architect thought of a way of designing it that would prevent it from being overlooked. “No,” replied Drusus. “Build it so that my fellow citizens are able to see everything I do.” The tribune had a solution to every political conundrum, and a talent for putting backs up—in the Senate and among the People and the equites. He correctly judged that the Italian allies should be given what they wished, and proposed that they should be enfranchised. But the opposition was too strong. Drusus was suspected of conspiring with allied leaders, some of whom he was known to have entertained in his house—no doubt because of its openness to observers. It was there, too, that he paid for his plans with his life. One evening, after conducting business in a portico, he dismissed the crowd. Then, suddenly, he shouted that he had been stabbed, and fell to the ground with the words on his lips. He had been fatally wounded in the groin. A leather worker’s knife was found, but not the assassin.

The allies laid secret plans for an uprising but awaited the outcome of Drusus’s attempts at reform. With his death, they abandoned negotiation for armed force. Their war aim was, to put it mildly, unusual: most of them sought not to overthrow the Republic but to join it. They intended to force the Romans to be their friends and equals, and to give them the vote. There was one exception, a community that had harbored hatred for their conquerors through long, bitter centuries of servitude. These were the Samnites. They had never accepted the verdict of defeat after defeat after defeat two centuries earlier. Whenever the opportunity arose, they enthusiastically took up arms against their ancient enemy once again.

By mischance the allies’ plans were detected too soon, and they were obliged to launch their attack rather late in the campaigning season. However, they held the initiative and swept all before them. After all, they regularly supplied more than half of Rome’s ever-victorious armies and knew all there was to know about their methods. The legions were fighting against old comrades.

Rome had the winter to gather its forces, and by spring of 90 put fourteen legions into the field. Every Roman of good family was called up. (Even the unmilitary young Cicero served as an officer.) There were two theaters of war—north-central Italy and Samnium. In both of them, the Italians scored a catalog of victories culminating in the defeat and death of a consul. Marius was recalled and held off the onslaught in the north (he soon retired, ostensibly on grounds of ill health, but perhaps because, as a man of Arpinum, he was not altogether trusted). Although much of the peninsula was in flames, the Latin and Roman fortress coloniae remained true.

As one disastrous month followed another, the revolt spread southward, and toward the end of the year the Etruscans and Umbrians in the north demanded the franchise. The Senate made a historic decision. The only way Rome could win the war was by conceding the main point at issue. A law was passed granting full Roman citizenship to any Latin or Italian communities that either had not revolted or had laid down their arms.

The war carried on for another two years, but this timely concession, later extended to everybody, threw a blanket over the flames. Sulla was successfully active in the south. The legions began to win victories, and even the Samnites lost heart. Gradually, the fighting petered out.

It had been a terrible convulsion. Many thousands of lives had been lost, and it was said that the devastation of the countryside exceeded that wreaked by Pyrrhus and Hannibal. In the long run, there were both positive and negative consequences. Every man south of the Po became a Roman citizen, and there was a growing sense of Italy as a single nation. Local identities continued to flourish, but within a larger commonwealth that the civitas Romana brought into being and guaranteed.

However, Italian enfranchisement weakened a constitution that had been designed for a city-state where most citizens were within a day or two’s traveling distance of Rome, and so were able to cast their democratic vote. In future, the interests of those attending Assembly meetings in Rome were not necessarily the same as those of the new larger, far-flung citizenship.

A FLAMBOYANT NEW actor now strode onto the stage—Mithridates, the king of Pontus, a remote realm on the southern littoral of the Black Sea. For the ordinary Roman, this was near the edge of the known world, but it had formed part of Alexander’s empire and had been duly Hellenized. The official language was Greek, and city-states in the Greek manner lined the coast. In the interior, mountains stood guard over a large, high plateau where Persian aristocrats presided over a native peasantry.

The royal house claimed descent from Darius, the luckless King of Kings whom the Macedonian conqueror overthrew in the fourth century. The character of Mithridates’ home life can be gauged by a glance at his family tree. His father was murdered, and his mother died in prison. Five siblings (from a total brood of seven) met untimely ends, all of them at the hands of their brother Mithridates, who was also responsible for the deaths of two of his own sons. None of this was particularly unusual in Hellenistic monarchies, where a ruler’s greatest enemies were usually his closest relatives.

Mithridates was born in about 120, the elder of two boys. When he was eleven, his father was poisoned at a banquet. The beneficiary, and perhaps the assassin, was his wife, a daughter of Antiochus the Great, who took over the reins of power during her sons’ minority. She seems to have preferred her youngest child, Chrestus, to Mithridates, or (just as likely) had no intention of letting either of them reach adulthood and claim the crown back from her.

By the age of fourteen, Mithridates began to fear for his life. He rode off on a hunting trip, and did not return for seven years. He seems to have spent the time in the valleys and forests of Pontus’s massif central, and became a romantic folk hero in the popular mind. When he eventually came back to Sinope, the capital of Pontus, he had the support of the masses and his mother gave herself up without making trouble. He agreed to rule with Chrestus, but the boy became a focus of palace intrigue. Mithridates was too strong-willed to bother with the constraints of a dual monarchy. He gave Chrestus a show trial and a public execution.

Traditionally, Pontus pursued a pro-Roman policy, but the young king intended to challenge the new imperialists from the west. Calculating that the Republic would hardly notice, he began by creating an empire up the eastern coast of the Black Sea as far as Colchis, the legendary birthplace of Medea and once the home of the Golden Fleece.

In 104, he and the neighboring king of Bithynia invaded and annexed Galatia and Paphlagonia. They then marched into Cappadocia but quarreled over who should control it. Mithridates sent an embassy to Rome to bribe senators to tolerate his interventions and to take his side on the issue of Cappadocia. In 99 or 98, Marius, who was in the region on his eastern travels as a privatus, warned Mithridates to take care. “Either be greater than the Romans,” he advised, “or else obey them.”

The Senate found the whole business tediously complicated and ordered both kings to withdraw, which they did. Sulla, who was the propraetor of Cilicia at the time, installed a new king of Cappadocia, chosen by the local nobility.

In 90, with Rome preoccupied by its war with the Italian allies, Mithridates went on the offensive again. This time he occupied Bithynia and (for a second time) Paphlagonia. The Senate sent out a commission to deal with this turbulent despot, led by a certain Manius Aquillius. Backed by a small military force, the commissioners ordered Mithridates to return to Pontus forthwith. Again, he obeyed. The Romans were not offering a free service and asked their protégés for payment. To raise the necessary cash, they recommended an invasion of Pontus. Bithynia reluctantly complied.

This was too much for Mithridates. He had always taken care to avoid a direct military confrontation with Rome, but now he felt that he had no choice but to resist. In short order, he defeated three armies sent against him. Aquillius was captured and put to death; as punishment for his greed, gold was melted and poured down his throat.

The king had reached a point of no return, and felt obliged to go to a further extreme. He marched on the Roman province of Asia, promising freedom for the Greek city-states and canceling debts. He accepted an invitation from Athens to liberate Greece. But what was he to do with the many thousands of Roman and Italian businessmen in the cities of Asia? If they were left alone, they would be a potential fifth column, but it was impractical to gather them together and expel them.

Mithridates made the most dangerous decision of his long career. He sent a round-robin letter to Asia’s local authorities, in which he instructed them, in exactly thirty days from the date of writing, to kill all people of Italian birth—men, women, and children—and, in the ancient world the ultimate insult, to leave them unburied. Almost everyone obeyed with enthusiasm, although at least one municipality used hired killers. There were terrible scenes. Once the slaughter began, many victims ran to temples for sanctuary. In Ephesus, fugitives in the world-famous Temple of Artemis (the Greek equivalent of Diana) were torn from statues of the goddess, and in Pergamum those who had fled to the temple of the god of healing, Asklepios, were shot with arrows. In total, about eighty thousand people lost their lives.

The king knew that Rome would never forgive him, or anyone complicit in the extermination. The citizens of Asia were now bound to follow the fortunes of Pontus. From the Senate’s point of view, there was a painful lesson to be learned: the zeal with which the population took to mass murder exposed the widespread hatred of Roman corruption and cruelty.

THE SENATE PLAYED a dirty trick when it offered the full Roman franchise, in effect, to all the allied communities south of the river Po. The many thousands of new citizens were enrolled in only a few of the thirty-five tribes, instead of being distributed among them all; this meant that, despite their large numbers, they would never be able to win a majority for their views. (It should be remembered that each tribe cast only a single collective vote.)

In 88, the conservative-minded Sulla was consul, a reward for his distinguished record in the Italian war. He was allocated the province of Asia—in other words, the potentially very lucrative command against Mithridates. So far, so straightforward.

A tribune of the same year, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, was one of the finest public speakers of the day. Cicero in his youth witnessed him perform. “Sulpicius of all the orators I have ever heard was the most theatrical,” he claimed. “His voice was strong but pleasing and noble.” Now in his mid-thirties, Sulpicius had been a brilliant and influential optimate, but as soon as he was elected tribune he switched loyalties and joined the populares. This probably had something to do with his close friendship with the assassinated Drusus. He was a warm supporter of the Italian allies and set himself the difficult task of passing a law that distributed Rome’s new citizens fairly across all the thirty-five tribes.

Sulpicius could count on opposition in the Senate and among the People, so he struck a deal with Marius, who was still bitter that he had been excluded from public life and, at seventy, eager for one final military adventure. Marius was a popular figure among ordinary voters and could also muster backing for Sulpicius from the equites. In return, the tribune would repeal the law giving Sulla the eastern command and transfer it to Marius.

An outraged Sulla called a halt to public business (a iustitium). In reply, Sulpicius brought his mob onto the streets. Fighting broke out in the Forum, and an attempt was made on the consuls’ lives. Sulla was able to make his escape but was forced, humiliatingly, to take refuge in Marius’s house near the Forum. His pursuers ran past the building and Marius let him out by a back door. Sulla stayed in the city long enough to call off the iustitium and then slipped away to join the six legions he was to lead against the king of Pontus.

Sulpicius passed his legislation, and some of Sulla’s supporters were killed. As soon as the consul learned that he had lost the command he convened a meeting of the army. The soldiers were looking forward to a profitable war and feared that Marius might recruit other men in their place. Sulla reported the violence to which he, a consul of Rome, had been subjected. He asked the men to obey orders, without specifying exactly what these were likely to be. They could read between the lines, though, and when Sulla commanded them to march on Rome they did as they were told. Their officers, however, could not stomach leading an army against their own country and fled the camp.

Another of Rome’s great turning points had been reached. Politicians had now graduated from roughing up their opponents, and from time to time killing them, to out-and-out civil war. Appian writes bluntly: “The murders and civil disturbances had so far been internal and sporadic; but after this the faction leaders struggled against each other with great armies in military fashion for the prize of their native land.”

THERE BEING NO garrison and so no official resistance, Sulla entered Rome at the head of two legions. This was sacrilege. A strict and ancient taboo forbade soldiers to enter the city (except for a triumph). Never before had it been so comprehensively broken. As the men filed down the narrow street to the center, shocked citizens flung stones and roof tiles on their heads, until Sulla threatened to set fire to their houses.

Once master of Rome, the consul had no trouble annulling Sulpicius’s legislation. He also pushed through a few measures to strengthen the Senate and limit the power of tribunes. The consular elections took place, but he had no time to manage the results and one of the two new consuls, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, was a popularis and not to be trusted. Too bad, for Sulla was in a hurry to reach the East and deal with Mithridates.

Sulpicius was found hiding in a villa and put to death; the slave who betrayed him was given his freedom and then flung from the Tarpeian Rock. Marius, however, made good his escape, but not without some unpleasant ordeals as he tried to elude his pursuers. He set sail for Africa but became seasick and made landfall near the seaside resort of Circeii, sixty miles south of Rome. Fainting from hunger, he and his companions wandered about aimlessly in a forest. At the seashore again, they were alarmed to see a troop of horsemen in the distance and swam out to some merchant ships that, luckily, happened to be sailing by. These reluctantly took their celebrated but unwanted guest aboard, and soon dropped him off again with some provisions.

The old man stripped off his clothes and hid in a muddy marsh. He was discovered and dragged out naked and covered in slime. He was taken to a nearby town and handed over to the local council, which decided that he should be put to death. A Celt (perhaps a member of the Cimbrian tribe that Marius had destroyed in battle more than ten years earlier) was ordered to do the deed. He entered the darkened room where Marius was lying. A loud voice roared from the shadows: “Man, do you dare kill Gaius Marius?”

The Celt threw down his sword, ran out of doors, and said, “I can’t kill Gaius Marius!” Consternation was followed by a change of heart. Marius was taken back to the coast, a ship was found for him, and he made his way to the province of Africa, where he had settled many of his veterans. At last, he was among friends.

WITH SULLA SAFELY in the East, the new consul, Cinna, tried to reintroduce Sulpicius’s legislation for the new citizens but was declared a public enemy by the Senate and driven out of the city. Marius, tormented by his trials, returned to Italy and raised troops. He was soon joined by Cinna. For the second time in its history, the legions marched on Rome.

The two men launched a massacre of optimates. Soldiers were allowed to loot and kill at will. Among the many statesmen who lost their lives was Quintus Lutatius Catulus, who had been Marius’s fellow consul in 102, when they had jointly fought off the Celtic hordes. He averted murder by suicide, suffocating himself by burning charcoal in a newly plastered room. No one was allowed to bury the dead, so birds and dogs tore apart the corpses. After five days, Cinna called a halt.

Marius won an unprecedented seventh consulship for 86, but within seven days of taking office he was dead. Old, sick, and mad, he fell into a delirium. According to Plutarch:

Three years passed, with Cinna retaining the consulship and Italy remaining at peace. There appears to have been good government; useful laws were passed to alleviate indebtedness and restore the quality of a debased coinage. But, at last, Sulla, victorious over the Pontic king, returned to Italy. He had vengeance in mind. Cinna was killed by his own troops, who then switched sides. A short civil war put paid to the popularis administration.

For the very last time the Samnites, still bleeding from the war of the allies, rose again. They joined a consular army, which Sulla defeated. Many prisoners were taken and the victor, to settle the matter once and for all, had any Samnites put to death. After this atrocity, the Samnite nation could foresee its ultimate fate and made one final bold throw of the dice. Its forces made a dash for Rome. But Sulla rushed back and intercepted them just in time outside the city’s Colline Gate. The fighting went on all day and lasted well into the night. Although at one point the Samnites gained the upper hand, they went down in defeat. It was their last battle. An invasion of their homeland followed, and much of the population was put to the sword. Samnium became a desolation.

Once in Rome, Sulla launched a domestic pogrom, the Proscription (as we have seen, names of the doomed were listed on a public notice board). He decided to liquidate all the political opponents he could find, and the butchery went on for months. Victims’ heads were displayed on the speakers’ platform in the Forum. Their estates were confiscated and used to finance the settlement of demobilized veterans. According to Appian, ninety senators died, and about sixteen hundred equites, but we may guess that the final total was much higher. Many Italians also suffered. The Senate, usually about three hundred strong at this time, was reduced to a hundred and fifty members. Marius’s remains were disinterred and scattered.

Sulla freed himself of any legal checks by reviving the all-powerful post of dictator, which had been in abeyance for more than a century. He was elected dictator legibus scribundis et rei publicae constituendae (“dictator for the writing of laws and organization of the Republic”). His term of office was not the traditional six months but for an indefinite period.

This gave the new master of Rome as much time as he needed to reform the constitution. In his view, the Senate was broken and needed to be mended. The tribunes were overmighty and needed to be tamed. In a word, the world was to be made safe for optimates. Above all, Sulla sought to prevent the emergence of another Sulla.

The Senate was increased to six hundred members. A ladder of political progression—the cursus honorum, or “honors race”—was clearly laid down, with minimum ages for magistrates. A man qualified for election as quaestor, a junior treasury official, from the age of thirty; as aedile, from thirty-six (this post was optional); as praetor, from thirty-nine; and, finally, as consul, from forty-two. The number of quaestors was raised from eight to twenty; they automatically joined the Senate once their term of office was over. So the membership would be regularly refreshed. New law courts were established that covered a range of crimes. Jurors were no longer to be equites but exclusively senators again.

In an attempt to control unruly generals, such as Sulla himself had been, governors were forbidden to leave their provinces or make war outside them without explicit permission from Rome. The charge for disobedience was to be treason, maiestas minuta populi Romani (literally, “the diminution of the majesty of the Roman people”).

The veto of tribunes was restricted, and they were no longer allowed to promote bills without the Senate’s prior authorization.

To universal astonishment, the dictator resigned his office on completing his legislative program, and in 80 retired into private life. He seems to have had a wonderful time. According to Plutarch, his wife died and he remarried a younger woman, who had picked him up at a gladiatorial show. In spite of that, Plutarch writes:

Curiously, when he walked about the city with his friends nobody arrested or physically attacked him. The worst that happened to him were the insults of a teenage boy who once trailed him all the way to his house. The former dictator put up with this patiently, only remarking (presciently), “This lad will stop anyone else from laying aside such power.”

Throughout his life, Sulla believed in his luck and added the cognomen Felix, or Lucky, to his name. In this he resembled the legendary king of Rome Servius Tullius, who also made much of his good fortune. As with the king, Sulla’s luck abandoned him at the end. His retirement was brief. In 78, after a very unpleasant illness, entailing an ulcerated bowel, malodorous discharges, and worms guzzling on necrotic flesh, he died. He was about sixty years old. The early symptoms of a terminal disease may help to explain his unexpected abdication.

IN THE FOURTH century A.D., when the Roman Empire in the west was within a century of its fall, a collection of eighty-six short biographies of famous Romans was published: De viris illustribus urbis Romae (Famous Men of the City of Rome). All the most celebrated names of Roman history were there, from Romulus and Remus to Mark Antony. The list also included five foreigners, those who had been the Republic’s most dangerous enemies: they were Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Viriathus (the Spanish guerrilla fighter), Cleopatra—and Mithridates.

The king of Pontus spent a long lifetime opposing Rome, and came close to destroying its power in the Eastern Mediterranean. When Sulla left Italy to campaign against him, Mithridates was in command of the Balkans and Asia Minor, and disposed of vast financial and manpower resources. But after two great battles the legions drove him out of Greece and captured Athens, which had invited the king to free it from Roman rule. Much of the city center was destroyed and many Athenians were put to the sword.

In 85, Sulla crossed into Asia Minor, but instead of continuing the fight he negotiated a quick settlement at a place called Dardanus, near the ruins of Troy. Mithridates agreed to surrender a fleet, evacuate all the territory he had conquered in Asia Minor, and pay an indemnity of two thousand talents. In return, he not only kept his throne but was granted “most favored nation” status as a Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Under the circumstances, not a bad result. But the ghosts of eighty thousand businessmen remained unappeased.

In 75 or 74, the king of Bithynia, at various times the friend and the enemy of Pontus, died. He bequeathed his realm to Rome. The Senate accepted the legacy, careless of the impact this would have on the balance of power in the east. To have Rome right on his doorstep was more than Mithridates could bear, and he invaded the new province.

Two proconsuls were appointed to Bithynia and Asia. Mithridates defeated the former but was worsted by the latter—Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a talented but haughty general. Two years of fighting saw the destruction of a large Pontic army. Mithridates escaped to the safety of his own kingdom.

Lucullus was in no hurry and refused to countenance a compromise peace, as Sulla had done; he moved against Pontus itself. The campaign was hard-fought, but by 70 he had the kingdom at his mercy. Mithridates fled to Armenia, where his son-in-law Tigranes was the ruler and gave him refuge. The Roman commander sent an envoy to the Armenian court to demand the Pontic king’s surrender. While waiting for an answer, Lucullus reorganized the finances of his province, which was laboring under a high level of indebtedness. His reforms infuriated extortionate Roman tax collectors, who were used to excessive profits. They instigated a whispering campaign against Lucullus, alleging that he was prolonging the war for his own glory.

Tigranes refused to hand over his father-in-law, who returned to Pontus. Lucullus invaded Armenia, but after winning some important victories his troops refused to carry on the war. An effective commander, he was a poor manager of men. Much to his annoyance, he was replaced by a onetime favorite of Sulla, Gnaeus Pompeius, known to us as Pompey the Great. He had little trouble finishing off what Lucullus had almost concluded.

Betrayed by two of his sons, Mithridates was holed up in a castle in the Crimea. He no longer had any hope and took poison, but even though he walked around quickly to hasten the effect of the drug, it failed to work. Apparently, as an unsurprising precaution for an eastern monarch, he had regularly consumed small doses of various poisons for many years and had inured himself to their effect. So the king of Pontus had a servant dispatch him. He was about seventy years old and had been troubling the Romans for the better part of five decades.

POMPEY WAS NOT only a competent soldier but an administrator of genius. Before returning to Italy, he reconstructed the East in a settlement that lasted for many years. He established a line of directly governed provinces that ran from Pontus on the Black Sea, down the Eastern Mediterranean to the frontier of the still independent kingdom of Egypt. Alongside, a band of free states, governed by client kings, acted as a buffer between Rome’s sphere of influence and the great Parthian Empire, which stretched from the Euphrates to India.

On 29 September 61, his forty-fifth birthday, Pompey celebrated the most splendid of triumphs, mainly for his victories in Asia Minor but also for a successful earlier campaign against pirates in the Mediterranean. A long line of horse-drawn carriages and litters carried a fabulous quantity of precious metals. It included more than 75,000,000 denarii’s worth of silver coins (probably equivalent to Rome’s entire tax income for a year); Mithridates’ throne and scepter as well as a statue of the king, more than twelve feet high and made of solid gold; and chariots of gold and silver.

Among other exotic exhibits were a moon of solid gold, an outsize chessboard in precious stones and, writes the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, a “square mountain of gold, with stags and lions on it and all sorts of fruit, framed by a golden vine.” This mysterious object was perhaps a table decoration for a banquet. All in all, the Roman public was offered a display of Oriental luxury at its most extravagant.

Large paintings illustrated high points in the campaigns. Tigranes and Mithridates were depicted fighting, defeated, and in flight. The Pontic king’s death was shown, too. Tigranes had been taken alive and he, with his wife and daughter and other captives, walked in the procession. Once the triumph was over, he was put to death in the Tullianum, according to custom.

The general himself rode a chariot studded with gems and wore a cloak that had once belonged to Alexander the Great—“If anyone can believe that!” remarked a skeptical Appian. Apparently, it was found among Mithridates’ possessions. Pompey was a great admirer of the Macedonian king, and somewhere in the procession there was a portait bust of him, ingeniously made from pearls and showing him, in imitation of Alexander, with his hair thrown back from his forehead.

WITH POMPEY’S RETURN from the East, the rise of Rome was complete. The Republic had destroyed the last of its external foes, and its position as proprietor of the largest empire the classical world had seen was secure. Except for desolate stretches of northern Africa, the Republic controlled the full extent of the Mediterranean coastline.

The next one hundred and fifty years would see further acquisitions. In the main, these were a form of extremely aggressive consolidation. They guarded against the Celtic threat from the north, Rome’s recurrent nightmare since the capture of the city in the fourth century. In the 50s, Gaius Julius Caesar conquered and annexed Gaul (roughly equivalent to France), and that was followed a century later by the invasion of Britannia under the emperor Claudius. During the same period, the conquest of all Spain was finally concluded and Rome’s northern frontier was extended to the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, a strong defensive position. With the death of Cleopatra, Egypt changed from being a client kingdom to a Roman province. The empire had found its natural frontiers.

SULLA’S HOPES WERE posthumously dashed; by reducing the power of the People, reinforcing that of the Senate, and curbing that of overmighty proconsuls at the head of armies, he had intended to restore constitutional stability. But the bad example he set by marching on Rome was more attractive to his successors than were his good intentions. The Proscription (and Marius’s earlier massacres) revealed a fateful truth: the ruling class had forgotten the imaginative tolerance it showed during the Conflict of the Orders.

The reforms Sulla introduced came too late to do any good. The governing system had broken down beyond repair. For this, there were interlocking reasons. First, as noted, the enfranchisement of all Italy meant that a People’s Assembly, suitable for a small city-state, lost its democratic legitimacy, because most citizens were unable to attend its meetings. From being guardians of the popular interest, tribunes became managers of the city mob and so were able to hijack the powers of government from the Senate. This upset the balance between the “mixed” constitution’s three component parts (as Polybius and Cicero saw it)—namely, the principles of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy as represented by the consuls, the Senate, and the People.

The arrival of empire greatly complicated the business of government. An arrangement whereby all executive posts were subject to annual election made strategic planning difficult, if not impossible. There was not enough talent in the aristocracy to ensure competent administration. It proved impractical to supervise provincial governors and prevent them from making fortunes through extortion and fraud. In theory, the Senate was a forum where long-term issues could be thrashed out, but the attacks on it by populist tribunes weakened its authority.

Major crises in distant corners of the Mediterranean meant that the rules had to be bent. A handful of able and ambitious men, supported by the People, were able to insist on special commands that would inevitably last for a number of years (for instance, both Sulla’s and Pompey’s eastern commissions to suppress Mithridates).

The decline of the class of rural smallholders, which used to supply the legions with recruits, and the transformation of a citizens’ militia into a professional army with long terms of service meant that soldiers were no longer primarily loyal to the state. Rather, they relied on their generals to look after their interests. The selfish reluctance of senators to reward demobilizing soldiers with grants of farming land only made the situation worse.

IT DID NOT take long for Sulla’s legislation to be unpicked. Pompey entered into a political alliance with a daring financial speculator, Marcus Licinius Crassus. The Senate was too weak to prevent them from becoming consuls in 70 (although they were conspicuously unqualified to stand) and from restoring the powers of the tribunes of the plebs.

However, it was not too weak to snub them. The latest in a series of special commands was the conduct of the war against Mithridates. After Pompey’s spectacular triumph, he was due to disband his army, but the Senate refused to help. The most brilliant politician of the age was a blue-blooded popularis, Gaius Julius Caesar. He persuaded Pompey and Crassus, who had fallen out, to join him in a secret alliance, which came to be known as the First Triumvirate.

Pooling their resources—clients as well as cash—the three men took control of the state. Caesar was elected consul for 59. Ignoring his consular colleague’s attempts at obstruction, he passed a law settling Pompey’s soldiers and obtained special commands for Crassus and himself. Crassus led an expedition against the Parthian Empire but found that his reach failed to exceed his grasp. In short order, he was defeated and killed.

Caesar did much better. He spent ten years conquering the Celtic tribes of Gaul, showing himself to be as brilliant in the field as he was in the Forum. He only returned to domestic politics in 50. He intended to stand for the consulship again, but the Senate blocked him on an electoral technicality. So Caesar led his legions across a little stream called the Rubicon, which marked the frontier between the province of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy itself. “The dice have been thrown,” he remarked dryly. The Senate won Pompey to its side and fought back, but Caesar defeated his old partner in a great battle at Pharsalus, in central Greece. Pompey fled to Egypt, where the nervous authorities had him killed.

By 45, the war was over and Caesar was master of the Roman world. He did not intend to repeat Sulla’s mistake and retire early. He appointed himself dictator for life. This was tantamount to being king, the unforgivable crime. On the Ides of March in 44 B.C., during a meeting of the Senate, he was stabbed to death by angry aristocrats. He collapsed at the feet of a statue of Pompey the Great.

Another fourteen years were to pass before peace returned to the empire. Caesar’s adoptive son, Octavian, an inexperienced but clever eighteen-year-old, and Mark Antony, an able but idle military commander who had been one of Caesar’s henchmen, launched a Proscription as savage as that of Sulla. After defeating Caesar’s assassins at Philippi, they divided the empire between them. Octavian took the West and Antony the East. As far as they were concerned, the Republic was dead. They, too, then fell out, however. Another civil war ensued, which Octavian won at the sea battle of Actium.

In 27, with breathtaking dexterity, he brought back the Republic—but in name only. Renamed Augustus, the Revered One, he restored elections, and political life seemed to return to normal. However, he made sure to maintain control over the legions, and he was given a tribune’s powers regularly renewed—the veto, authority to table laws, personal inviolability—but without the tiresome obligation of actually having to hold the office. The ruling class, decimated in the wars, accepted the pretense.

A little more than one hundred years had passed since the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus and almost exactly fifty years since the reign of Sulla, the Sullanum regnum. Like the inexorable plot of a Greek tragedy, the consequences of the constitutional breakdown they brought about had finally worked themselves out.

18 Afterword

IT HAS OFTEN BEEN SAID THAT HISTORY IS WRITTEN by the victors, but in the case of Rome it was the losers who commandeered the narrative. Even those who published under the severe gaze of the emperors looked back on the Roman Republic with respect and nostalgia. For this, Cicero and Varro can take much of the credit. They committed scholarly errors and misjudgments, but, like a sacred flame, they preserved the spirit of the Republic that was dying.

They were political failures. Enemies of Julius Caesar, they witnessed the destruction of all their hopes. Varro made his peace with the great dictator, won over by a commission to establish Rome’s first public library; he died in his bed at the ripe age of eighty-nine. Cicero was made of sterner stuff. After the Ides of March, he bravely returned to politics. He tried to save the Republic, but fell victim to Octavian and Mark Antony’s Proscription.

As authors, though, the two friends excelled. Their rural retirement was not wasted. They wrote much on the rise of Rome, excavating and analyzing the past as best they could. Cicero said of Varro:

Cicero was less of a scholar than Varro and more of a controversialist. He noted: “Like the learned men of old, we must serve the state in our libraries, if we cannot do so in the Senate or the Forum, and pursue our researches into custom and law.” His main contributions were Republic and Laws, two substantial tomes in which he examined the history of the Roman constitution and, while allowing for reforms, commended its virtues. A moderate conservative, he believed that “excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery.”

Cicero had sharp eyes, and it seems strange that his books do not offer a more accurate perception of what was really happening. The explanation is that, like most of his contemporaries, he saw politics fundamentally in personal rather than ideological or structural terms. There had been a decline in moral standards in public life. All would be well if only there was a return to traditional values, to the mos maiorum. Caesar disagreed. With the insight of genius, he saw that incremental reforms would not save the day, nor would a return to the ideals of Cincinnatus. An altogether new system of government was required.

Grief-stricken by his daughter’s death in 45, Cicero went on to write a series of books that presented Greek philosophy to Latin readers. They form the basis of his reputation with posterity and, in the past two millennia, empowered the thinking of generations of European readers.

Cicero regarded Julius Caesar as a second Hannibal, but though the dictator manipulated and bullied him as a politician, he held Cicero in the highest esteem as an author. He once wrote of him that he was “winner of a greater laurel wreath than any gained by a triumph, insomuch as it is greater to have advanced the frontiers of Roman genius than those of the Roman empire.”

Praise from one’s worst enemy is the most annoying, but also the most credible, of compliments.

SO THE LONG, slow collapse of the Roman Republic had one positive consequence. The uncertainties of the age impelled men like Cicero and Varro to inquire into their collective past—to find an explanation for the crisis and, as a kind of antidote, to reveal the basis of their country’s vanishing greatness. They evoked an idea of Rome that still lives and breathes two thousand years later.

But what was gone was gone, and they knew that. Cicero wrote the epitaph: