CÆSAR, MARCUS AURELIUS, CICERO, and SENECA

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HENRY CABOT LODGE

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FRANCIS W. HALSEY

Associate Editor

With an Introduction, Biographical and
Explanatory Notes, etc.

IN TEN VOLUMES

Vol. II

ROME

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1909, by

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY

The Best of the World's Classics

VOL. II

ROME

234 b.c.—180 a.d.

CONTENTS

Vol. II—Rome

ROME

234 b.c.—180 a.d.

CATO, THE CENSOR

Born in Tusculum, Italy, in 234 b.c., died in 149; celebrated as statesman, general, and writer; questor under Scipio in 204; Consul in 195; served in Spain in 194; censor in 184; ambassador to Carthage in 150; one of the chief instigators of the third Punic war; among his writings are "De Re Rustica" and "Origines."[1]

OF WORK ON A ROMAN FARM[2]

When the owner of the farm and slaves visits his country villa, after saluting the household god, he should the same day, if possible, go round the farm; if not the same day, he should do so the day after. On seeing how the farm is being cultivated, and what work has been done or left undone, he should call for his steward and inquire for his account of what work has been done and what remains to be done. He should ask whether the work has been completed in good time and whether what is left uncompleted can be finished. He should find what wine has been made, and what wheat stored. When he has gone into these particulars, he should ask for an account of the days spent in accomplishing the work.

If the work does not seem satisfactory and the steward should excuse himself by declaring that he has done his best, that the slaves were good for nothing, that the weather was bad, that some slaves had run away, that he himself had been called off on public service, and should allege other such excuses, he should still be strictly called to account. He should be asked if on rainy or tempestuous days he had seen that indoor operations had been carried on. Had the wine-casks been scoured and lined with pitch; had the house-cleaning been done; had the grain been taken from the thrashing-floor to the granary; had manure been thrown from the stables and cow-houses and piled into heaps; had the seed been winnowed; had any rope been made; had the old rope been repaired, and had he seen that the slaves mended their coats and caps. He should be reminded that on religious festivals old ditches might have been cleared out, the public road mended, briers cut down, the garden dug over, the meadow cleared, the trees trimmed, thorns pulled up by the roots, the grain ground and a general clearing up carried through. He should also be told that when slaves were sick their rations should be cut down.

When the matters have been settled to the master's satisfaction, he should take measures to see that what has not been done be at once accomplished. He should then proceed to consider the account of the farm, and a consideration of the amount of grain which has been prepared for fodder. He should have returns made of wine and olive-oil, and learn how much has been consumed, how much sold, how much is left over and may be put on sale. If there is a deficit any year, he should order it to be made up from the outside, and whatever is above the needs of the farm sold. If there is anything to let out on contract, he should order this to be done, and concerning the work which he wishes to be thus accomplished he should give his order in writing. As regards the cattle he should order them to be sold by auction, and in the same way should sell the oil, if the price of oil has risen; likewise the superfluous wine and corn of the estate. He should also order to be sold worn-out bulls, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, any plow that is old, old tools, old slaves, slaves who are diseased, or anything else which is useless, for the owner of a farm must be a seller and not a purchaser.

The owner of a farm and of slaves must begin to study in early manhood the cultivation and sowing of the land. He should, however, think a long time before building his villa, but not about farming his property, which he should set about at once. Let him wait until his thirty-sixth year and then build, provided his whole property is under cultivation. So build that neither the villa be disproportionately small in comparison with the farm nor the farm in comparison with the villa. It behooves a slave-owner to have a well-built country house, containing a wine-cellar, a place for storing olive-oil, and casks in such numbers that he may look forward with delight to a time of scarcity and high prices, and this will add not only to his wealth, but to his influence and reputation. He must have wine-presses of the first order, that his wine may be well made. When the olives have been picked, let oil be at once made or it will turn out rancid. Recollect that every year the olives are shaken from the trees in great number by violent storms. If you gather them up quickly and have vessels ready to receive them, the storm will have done them no harm and the oil will be all the greener and better. If the olives be on the ground or even on the barn floor too long, the oil made from them will be fetid. Olive-oil will be always good and sweet if it be promptly made.

The following are the duties of a steward: He must maintain strict discipline, and see that the festivals are observed. While he keeps his hands off the property of a neighbor, let him look well to his own. The slaves are to be kept from quarreling. If any of them commits a fault, he should be punished in a kindly manner. The steward must see that the slaves are comfortable and suffer neither from cold nor hunger. By keeping them busy he will prevent them from running into mischief or stealing. If the steward sets his face against evil doing, evil will not be done by them. His master must call him to task if he let evil doing go unpunished. If one slave do him any service, he should show gratitude that the others may be encouraged to do right. The steward must not be a gadder or a diner-out, but must give all his attention to working the slaves, and considering how best to carry out his master's instructions....

It is at times worth while to gain wealth by commerce, were it not so perilous; or by usury, were it equally honorable. Our ancestors, however, held, and fixt by law, that a thief should be condemned to restore double, a usurer quadruple. We thus see how much worse they thought it for a citizen to be a money-lender than a thief. Again, when they praised a good man, they praised him as a good farmer or a good husbandman. Men so praised were held to have received the highest praise. For myself, I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and studious of gain; but it is a career, as I have said, that leads to danger and ruin. However, farming makes the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers, and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most natural, and the least invidious, and those who are busy with it have the fewest bad thoughts.[3]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cato was Rome's first thoroughly national author. He is usually classed as the creator of Latin prose. Other Roman authors of his time wrote in Greek. Cato bitterly opposed Greek learning, declaring that, when Greece should give Rome her literature, she would "corrupt everything." On Cato's mind no outside literary influence ever prevailed. He has been called "the most original writer that Rome ever produced."

[2] From "De Re Rustica." Translated for this work by Dr. Epiphanius Wilson.

[3] The translation of this paragraph is taken from Cruttwell's "History of Roman Literature."

CICERO

Born in 106 b.c., assassinated in 43; celebrated as orator, philosopher, statesman, and man of letters; served in the social war in 89; traveled in Greece and Asia in 79-77; questor in Sicily in 75; accused Verres in 70; prætor in 60; as Consul supprest Catiline's conspiracy in 63; banished in 58; recalled in 57; proconsul in Cicilia in 51-50; joined Pompey in 49; pronounced orations against Mark Antony in 44-43; proscribed by the Second Triumvirate in 43; of his orations fifty-seven are extant, with fragments of twenty others; other extant works include "De Oratore," "De Republica," "Cato Major," "De Officiis," and four collections of letters.

I

THE BLESSINGS OF OLD AGE[4]

Nor even now do I feel the want of the strength of a young man, no more than when a young man I felt the want of the strength of the bull or of the elephant. What one has, that one ought to use; and whatever you do, you should do it with all your strength. For what expression can be more contemptible than that of Milo[5] of Crotona, who, when he was now an old man, and was looking at the prize-fighters exercising themselves on the course, is reported to have looked at his arms, and, weeping over them, to have said, "But these, indeed, are now dead." Nay, foolish man, not these arms so much as yourself; for you never derived your nobility from yourself, but from your chest and your arms. Nothing of the kind did Sextus Ælius ever say, nothing of the kind many years before did Titus Coruncanius, nothing lately did Publius Crassus; by whom instructions in jurisprudence were given to their fellow citizens, and whose wisdom was progressive even to their latest breath. For the orator, I fear lest he be enfeebled by old age; for eloquence is a gift not of mind only, but also of lungs and strength. On the whole, that melodiousness in the voice is graceful, I know not how, even in old age; which, indeed, I have not lost, and you see my years.

Yet there is a graceful style of eloquence in an old man, unimpassioned and subdued, and very often the elegant and gentle discourse of an eloquent old man wins for itself a hearing; and if you have not yourself the power to produce this effect, yet you may be able to teach it to Scipio and Lælius. For what is more delightful than old age surrounded with the studious attention of youth? Shall we not leave even such a resource to old age, as to teach young men, instruct them, train them to every department of duty? an employment, indeed, than which what can be more noble? But, for my part, I thought the Cneius and Publius Scipios,[6] and your two grandfathers, L. Æmilius and P. Africanus, quite happy in the attendance of noble youths; nor are any preceptors of liberal accomplishments to be deemed otherwise than happy, tho their strength hath fallen into old age and failed; altho that very failure of strength is more frequently caused by the follies of youth than by those of old age; for a lustful and intemperate youth transmits to old age an exhausted body. Cyrus too, in Xenophon, in that discourse which he delivered on his deathbed when he was a very old man, said that he never felt that his old age had become feebler than his youth had been. I recollect, when a boy, that Lucius Metellus,[7] who, when four years after his second consulship he had been made "pontifex maximus," and for twenty-two years held that sacerdotal office, enjoyed such good strength at the latter period of his life, that he felt no want of youth. There is no need for me to speak about myself, and yet that is the privilege of old age, and conceded to my time of life.

Do you see how, in Homer, Nestor very often proclaims his own virtues? for he was now living in the third generation of men; nor had he occasion to fear lest, when stating the truth about himself, he should appear either too arrogant or too talkative; for, as Homer says, from his tongue speech flowed sweeter than honey; for which charm he stood in need of no strength of body; and yet the famous chief of Greece nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax, but like Nestor; and he does not doubt if that should happen, Troy would in a short time perish.

But I return to myself. I am in my eighty-fourth year. In truth I should like to be able to make the same boast that Cyrus did; but one thing I can say, that altho I have not, to be sure, that strength which I had either as a soldier in the Punic war or as questor in the same war, or as Consul in Spain, or, four years afterward, when as military tribune I fought a battle at Thermopylæ, in the consulship of Marcus Acilius Glabrio; yet, as you see, old age has not quite enfeebled me or broken me down: the senate-house does not miss my strength, nor the rostra, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor my guests; for I have never agreed to that old and much-praised proverb which advises you to become an old man early if you wish to be an old man long. I for my part would rather be an old man for a shorter length of time than be an old man before I was one. And, therefore, no one as yet has wished to have an interview with me to whom I have been denied as engaged.

But I have less strength than either of you two. Neither even do you possess the strength of Titus Pontius the centurion; is he, therefore, the more excellent man? Only let there be a moderate degree of strength, and let every man exert himself as much as he can; and in truth that man will not be absorbed in regretting the want of strength. Milo, at Olympia, is said to have gone over the course while supporting on his shoulders a live ox. Whether, then, would you rather have this strength of body, or Pythagoras' strength of intellect, bestowed upon you? In a word, enjoy that blessing while you have it; when it is gone, do not lament it, unless, indeed, young men ought to lament the loss of boyhood, and those a little advanced in age the loss of adolescence. There is a definite career in life, and one way of nature, and that a simple one; and to every part of life its own peculiar period has been assigned; so that both the feebleness of boys, and the high spirit of young men, and the steadiness of now fixt manhood, and the maturity of old age, have something natural which ought to be enjoyed in their own time. I suppose that you hear, Scipio, what your grandfather's host, Masinissa,[8] is doing at this day, at the age of ninety. When he has commenced a journey on foot, he never mounts at all; when on horseback, he never dismounts; by no rain, by no cold, is he prevailed upon to have his head covered; that there is in him the greatest hardiness of frame; and therefore he performs all the duties and functions of a king. Exercise, therefore, and temperance, even in old age, can preserve some remnant of our pristine vigor.

Is there no strength in old age? neither is strength exacted from old age. Therefore, by our laws and institutions, our time of life is relieved from those tasks which can not be supported without strength. Accordingly, so far are we from being compelled to do what we can not do that we are not even compelled to do as much as we can. But so feeble are many old men that they can not execute any task of duty or any function of life whatever; but that in truth is not the peculiar fault of old age, but belongs in common to bad health. How feeble was the son of Publius Africanus, he who adopted you. What feeble health, or rather no health at all, had he! and had that not been so, he would have been the second luminary of the state; for to his paternal greatness of soul a richer store of learning had been added. What wonder, therefore, in old men if they are sometimes weak when even young men can not escape that.

We must make a stand, Scipio and Lælius, against old age, and its faults must be atoned for by activity; we must fight, as it were, against disease, and in like manner against old age. Regard must be paid to health; moderate exercises must be adopted; so much of meat and drink must be taken that the strength may be recruited, not opprest. Nor, indeed, must the body alone be supported, but the mind and the soul much more; for these also, unless you drop oil on them as on a lamp, are extinguished by old age. And our bodies, indeed, by weariness and exercise, become opprest; but our minds are rendered buoyant by exercise. For as to those of whom Cæcilius speaks, "foolish old men," fit characters for comedy, by these he denotes the credulous, the forgetful, the dissolute, which are the faults not of old age, but of inactive, indolent, drowsy old age. As petulance and lust belong to the young more than to the old, yet not to all young men, but to those who are not virtuous; so that senile folly, which is commonly called dotage, belongs to weak old men, and not to all. Four stout sons, five daughters, so great a family, and such numerous dependents, did Appius manage, altho both old and blind; for he kept his mind intent like a bow, nor did he languidly sink under the weight of old age. He retained not only authority, but also command, over his family; the slaves feared him; the children respected him; all held him dear; there prevailed in that house the manners and good discipline of our fathers. For on this condition is old age honored if it maintains itself, if it keeps up its own right, if it is subservient to no one, if even to its last breath it exercises control over its dependents. For, as I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be an old man, but he will never be an old man in mind.

I have in hand my seventh book of Antiquities; I am collecting all the materials of our early history; of all the famous causes which I have defended; I am now completing the pleadings;[9] I am employed on a law of augurs, of pontiffs, of citizens. I am much engaged also in Greek literature, and, after the manner of the Pythagoreans, for the purpose of exercising my memory, I call to mind in the evening what I have said, heard, and done on each day. These are the exercises of the understanding; these are the race-courses of the mind; while I am perspiring and toiling over these, I do not greatly miss my strength of body. I attend my friends, I come into the senate very often, and spontaneously bring forward things much and long thought of, and I maintain them by strength of mind, not of body; and if I were unable to perform these duties, yet my couch would afford me amusement, when reflecting on those matters which I was no longer able to do, but that I am able is owing to my past life; for, by a person who always lives in these pursuits and labors, it is not perceived when old age steals on. Thus gradually and unconsciously life declines into old age; nor is its thread suddenly broken, but the vital principle is consumed by length of time.

Then follows the third topic of blame against old age, that they say it has no pleasures. Oh, noble privilege of age! if indeed it takes from us that which is in youth the greatest defect. For listen, most excellent young men, to the ancient speech of Archytas[10] of Tarentum, a man eminently great and illustrious, which was reported to me when I, a young man, was at Tarentum with Quintus Maximus. He said that no more deadly plague than the pleasure of the body was inflicted on men by nature; for the passions, greedy of that pleasure, were in a rash and unbridled manner incited to possess it; that hence arose treasons against one's country, hence the ruining of states, hence clandestine conferences with enemies—in short, that there was no crime, no wicked act, to the undertaking of which the lust of pleasure did not impel; but that fornications and adulteries and every such crime were provoked by no other allurements than those of pleasure. And whereas either nature or some god had given to man nothing more excellent than his mind, that to this divine function and gift, nothing was so hostile as pleasure; since where lust bore sway, there was no room for self-restraint; and in the realm of pleasure, virtue could by no possibility exist. And that this might be the better understood, he begged you to imagine in your mind any one actuated by the greatest pleasure of the body that could be enjoyed; he believed no one would doubt but that so long as the person was in that state of delight, he would be able to consider nothing in his mind, to attain nothing by reason, nothing by reflection; wherefore that there was nothing so detestable and so destructive as pleasure, inasmuch as that when it was excessive and very prolonged, it extinguished all the light of the soul.

Nearchus of Tarentum, our host, who had remained throughout in friendship with the Roman people, said he had heard from older men that Archytas held this conversation with Caius Pontius the Samnite, the father of him by whom, in the Caudian[11] battle, Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius, the consuls, were overcome, on which occasion Plato the Athenian had been present at that discourse; and I find that he came to Tarentum in the consulship of Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius.[12] Wherefore do I adduce this? that we may understand that if we could not by reason and wisdom despise pleasure, great gratitude would be due to old age for bringing it to pass that that should not be a matter of pleasure which is not a matter of duty. For pleasure is hostile to reason, hinders deliberation, and, so to speak, closes the eyes of the mind, nor does it hold any intercourse with virtue. I indeed acted reluctantly in expelling from the senate Lucius Flaminius, brother of that very brave man Titus Flaminius,[13] seven years after he had been Consul; but I thought that his licentiousness should be stigmatized. For that man, when he was Consul in Gaul, was prevailed on at a banquet by a courtezan to behead one of those who were in chains, condemned on a capital charge. He escaped in the censorship of his brother Titus, who had immediately preceded me; but so profligate and abandoned an act of lust could by no means be allowed to pass by me and Flaccus, since with private infamy it combined the disgrace of the empire.

I have often heard from my elders, who said that, in like manner, they, when boys, had heard from old men, that Caius Fabricius was wont to wonder that when he was ambassador to King Pyrrhus, he had heard from Cineas the Thessalian that there was a certain person at Athens who profest himself a wise man, and that he was accustomed to say that all things which we did were to be referred to pleasure; and that hearing him say so, Manius Curius and Titus Coruncanius were accustomed to wish that that might be the persuasion of the Samnites and Pyrrhus[14] himself, that they might the more easily be conquered when they had given themselves up to pleasure. Manius Curius had lived with Publius Decius, who, five years before the consulship of the former, had devoted himself for the commonwealth in his fourth consulship. Fabricius had been acquainted with him, and Coruncanius had also known him, who, as well from his own conduct in life, as from the great action of him whom I mention, Publius Decius, judged that there was doubtless something in its own nature excellent and glorious, which should be followed for its own sake, and which, scorning and despising pleasure, all the worthiest men pursued....

But why do I refer to others? Let me now return to myself. First of all, I always had associates in clubs; and clubs were established when I was questor, on the Idæan worship of the great mother being adopted. Therefore I feasted with my associates altogether in a moderate way, but there was a kind of fervor peculiar to that time of life, and as that advances, all things will become every day more subdued. For I did not calculate the gratification of those banquets by the pleasures of the body so much as by the meetings of friends and conversations. For well did our ancestors style the reclining of friends at an entertainment, because it carried with it a union of life, by the name "convivium" better than the Greeks do, who call this same thing as well by the name of "compotatio" as "concœnatio"; so that what in that kind (of pleasures) is of the least value that they appear most to approve of.

For my part, on account of the pleasure of conversation, I am delighted also with seasonable entertainments, not only with those of my own age, of whom very few survive, but with those of your age, and with you; and I give great thanks to old age, which has increased my desire for conversation, and taken away that of eating and drinking. But even if such things delight any person (that I may not appear altogether to have declared war against pleasure, of which perhaps a certain limited degree is even natural), I am not aware that even in these pleasures themselves old age is without enjoyment. For my part, the presidencies established by our ancestors delight me; and that conversation, which after the manner of our ancestors, is kept up over our cups from the top of the table; and the cups, as in the Symposium of Xenophon, small and dewy, and the cooling of the wine in summer, and in turn either the sun, or the fire in winter—practises which I am accustomed to follow among the Sabines also—and I daily join a party of neighbors, which we prolong with various conversation till late at night, as far as we can. But there is not, as it were, so ticklish a sensibility of pleasures in old men. I believe it; but then neither is there the desire. However, nothing is irksome unless you long for it. Well did Sophocles, when a certain man inquired of him advanced in age whether he enjoyed venereal pleasures, reply, "The gods give me something better; nay, I have run away from them with gladness, as from a wild and furious tyrant." For to men fond of such things, it is perhaps disagreeable and irksome to be without them; but to the contented and satisfied it is more delightful to want them than to enjoy them; and yet he does not want who feels no desire; therefore I say that this freedom from desire is more delightful than enjoyment.

But if the prime of life has more cheerful enjoyment of those very pleasures, in the first place they are but petty objects which it enjoys, as I have said before; then they are those of which old age, if it does not abundantly possess them, is not altogether destitute. As he is more delighted with Turpio Ambivius, who is spectator on the foremost bench, yet he also is delighted who is in the hindmost; so youth having a close view of pleasures is perhaps more gratified; but old age is as much delighted as is necessary in viewing them at a distance. However, of what high value are the following circumstances, that the soul, after it has served out, as it were, its time under lust, ambition, contention, enmities, and all the passions, shall retire within itself, and, as the phrase is, live with itself? But if it has, as it were, food for study and learning, nothing is more delightful than an old age of leisure. I saw Caius Gallus, the intimate friend of your father, Scipio, almost expiring in the employment of calculating the sky and the earth. How often did daylight overtake him when he had begun to draw some figure by night, how often did night, when he had begun in the morning! How it did delight him to predict to us the eclipses of the sun and the moon, long before their occurrence! What shall we say in the case of pursuits less dignified, yet, notwithstanding, requiring acuteness! How Nævius did delight in his Punic war! how Plautus in his Truculentus! how in his Pseudolus! I saw also the old man Livy,[15] who, tho he had brought a play upon the stage six years before I was born, in the consulship of Cento and Tuditanus, yet advanced in age even to the time of my youth. Why should I speak of Publius Licinius Crassus' study both of pontifical and civil law? or of the present Publius Scipio, who within these few days was created chief pontiff? Yet we have seen all these persons whom I have mentioned, ardent in these pursuits when old men. But as to Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius rightly called the "marrow of persuasion," with what great zeal did we see him engage in the practise of oratory, even when an old man! What pleasures, therefore, arising from banquets, or plays, or harlots, are to be compared with these pleasures? And these, indeed, are the pursuits of learning, which too, with the sensible and well educated, increase along with their age; so that is a noble saying of Solon, when he says in a certain verse, as I observed before, that he grew old learning many things every day—than which pleasure of the mind, certainly, none can be greater.

I come now to the pleasures of husbandmen, with which I am excessively delighted, which are not checked by any old age, and appear in my mind to make the nearest approach to the life of a wise man. For they have relation to the earth, which never refuses command, and never returns without interest that which it hath received; but sometimes with less, generally with very great interest. And yet for my part it is not only the product, but the virtue and nature of the earth itself that delight me, which, when in its softened and subdued bosom it has received the scattered seed, first of all confines what is hidden within it, from which harrowing, which produces that effect, derives its name (occatio); then, when it is warmed by heat and its own compression, it spreads it out, and elicits from it the verdant blade, which, supported by the fibers of the roots, gradually grows up, and, rising on a jointed stalk, is now enclosed in a sheath, as if it were of tender age, out of which, when it hath shot up, it then pours forth the fruit of the ear, piled in due order, and is guarded by a rampart of beards against the pecking of the smaller birds. Why should I, in the case of vines, tell of the plantings, the risings, the stages of growth? That you may know the repose and amusement of my old age, I assure you that I can never have enough of that gratification. For I pass over the peculiar nature of all things which are produced from the earth; which generates such great trunks and branches from so small a grain of the fig or from the grape-stone, or from the minutest seeds of other fruits and roots; shoots, plants, twigs, quicksets, layers, do not these produce the effect of delighting any one even to admiration? The vine, indeed, which by nature is prone to fall, and is borne down to the ground, unless it be propt, in order to raise itself up, embraces with its tendrils, as it were with hands, whatever it meets with, which, as it creeps with manifold and wandering course, the skill of the husbandmen pruning with the knife, restrains from running into a forest of twigs, and spreading too far in all directions.

Accordingly, in the beginning of spring, in those twigs which are left, there rises up as it were at the joints of the branches that which is called a bud, from which the nascent grape shows itself, which, increasing in size by the moisture of the earth and the heat of the sun, is at first very acid to the taste, and then as it ripens grows sweet, and being clothed with its large leaves does not want moderate warmth, and yet keeps off the excessive heat of the sun; than which what can be in fruit on the one hand more rich, or on the other hand more beautiful in appearance? Of which not only the advantage, as I said before, but also the cultivation and the nature itself delight me; the rows of props, the joining of the heads, the tying up and propagation of vines, and the pruning of some twigs, and the grafting of others, which I have mentioned. Why should I allude to irrigations, why to the diggings of the ground, why to the trenching by which the ground is made much more productive? Why should I speak of the advantage of manuring? I have treated of it in that book which I wrote respecting rural affairs, concerning which the learned Hesiod has not said a single word, tho he has written about the cultivation of the land. But Homer, who, as appears to me, lived many ages before, introduces Lærtes soothing the regret which he felt for his son by tilling the land and manuring it. Nor indeed is rural life delightful by reason of corn-fields only and meadows and vineyards and groves, but also for its gardens and orchards; also for the feeding of cattle, the swarms of bees, and the variety of all kinds of flowers. Nor do plantings only give me delight, but also graftings, than which agriculture has invented nothing more ingenious....

Was then their old age to be pitied who amused themselves in the cultivation of land? In my opinion, indeed, I know not whether any other can be more happy; and not only in the discharge of duty, because to the whole race of mankind the cultivation of the land is beneficial; but also from the amusement, which I have mentioned, and that fulness and abundance of all things which are connected with the food of men, and also with the worship of the gods; so that, since some have a desire for these things, we may again put ourselves on good terms with pleasure. For the wine-cellar of a good and diligent master is always well stored; the oil-casks, the pantry also, the whole farmhouse is richly supplied; it abounds in pigs, kids, lambs, hens, milk, cheese, honey. Then, too, the countrymen themselves call the garden a second dessert. And then what gives a greater relish to these things is that kind of leisure labor, fowling and hunting. Why should I speak of the greenness of meadows, or the rows of trees, or the handsome appearance of vineyards and olive grounds? Let me cut the matter short. Nothing can be either more rich in use or more elegant in appearance than ground well tilled, to the enjoyment of which old age is so far from being an obstacle that it is even an invitation and allurement. For where can that age be better warmed either by basking in the sun or by the fire, or again be more healthfully refreshed by shades or waters? Let the young, therefore, keep to themselves their arms, horses, spears, clubs, tennis-ball, swimmings, and races; to us old men let them leave out of many amusements the tali and tesseræ; and even in that matter it may be as they please, since old age can be happy without these amusements....

What, therefore, should I fear if after death I am sure either not to be miserable or to be happy? Altho who is so foolish, even if young, as to be assured that he will live even till the evening? Nay, that period of life has many more probabilities of death that ours has; young men more readily fall into diseases, suffer more severely, are cured with more difficulty, and therefore few arrive at old age. Did not this happen so we should live better and more wisely, for intelligence, and reflection, and judgment reside in old men, and if there had been none of them, no states could exist at all. But I return to the imminence of death. What charge is that against old age, since you see it to be common to youth also? I experienced not only in the case of my own excellent son, but also in that of your brothers, Scipio, men plainly marked out for the highest distinction, that death was common to every period of life. Yet a young man hopes that he will live a long time, which expectation an old man can not entertain. His hope is but a foolish one; for what can be more foolish than to regard uncertainties as certainties, delusions as truths? An old man indeed has nothing to hope for; yet he is in so much the happier state than a young one; since he has already attained what the other is only hoping for. The one is wishing to live long, the other has lived long.

And yet, good gods! what is there in man's life that can be called long? For allow the latest period; let us anticipate the age of the kings of Tartessii. For there dwelt, as I find it recorded, a man named Arganthonius at Gades;[16] who reigned for eighty years, and lived 120. But to my mind, nothing whatever seems of long duration to which there is any end. For when that arrives, then the time which has passed has flown away; that only remains which you have secured by virtue and right conduct. Hours indeed depart from us, and days and months and years; nor does past time ever return, nor can it be discovered what is to follow. Whatever time is assigned to each to live, with that he ought to be content; for neither need the drama be performed entire by the actor in order to give satisfaction, provided he be approved in whatever act he may be; nor need the wise man live till the plaudite. For the short period of life is long enough for living well and honorably, and if you should advance further, you need no more grieve than farmers do when the loveliness of spring-time hath passed, that summer and autumn have come. For spring represents the time of youth, and gives promise of the future fruits; the remaining seasons are intended for plucking and gathering in those fruits. Now the harvest of old age, as I have often said, is the recollection and abundance of blessings previously secured. In truth everything that happens agreeably to nature is to be reckoned among blessings. What, however, is so agreeable to nature as for an old man to die which even is the lot of the young, tho nature opposes and resists. And thus it is that young men seem to me to die just as when the violence of flame is extinguished by a flood of water; whereas old men die, as the exhausted fire goes out, spontaneously, without the exertion of any force; and as fruits when they are green are plucked by force from the trees, but when ripe and mellow drop off, so violence takes away their lives from youths, maturity from old men—a state which to me indeed is so delightful that the nearer I approach to death, I seem, as it were, to be getting sight of land, and at length, after a long voyage, to be just coming into harbor.

Of all the periods of life there is a definite limit; but of old age there is no limit fixt; and life goes on very well in it, so long as you are able to follow up and attend to the duty of your situation, and, at the same time, to care nothing about death; whence it happens that old age is even of higher spirit and bolder than youth. Agreeable to this was the answer given to Pisistratus,[17] the tyrant, by Solon, when on the former inquiring, "in reliance on what hope he so boldly withstood him," the latter is said to have answered, "on old age." The happiest end of life is this—when the mind and the other senses being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder her own work. As in the case of a ship or a house, he who built them takes them down most easily; so the same nature which has compacted man most easily breaks him up. Besides, every fastening of glue, when fresh, is with difficulty torn asunder, but easily when tried by time. Hence it is that that short remnant of life should be neither greedily coveted nor without reason given up; and Pythagoras forbids us to abandon the station or post of life without the orders of our commander, that is, of God.[18] There is indeed a saying of the wise Solon in which he declares that he does not wish his own death to be unattended by the grief and lamentation of friends. He wishes, I suppose, that he should be dear to his friends. But I know not whether Ennius does not say with more propriety,

"Let no one pay me honor with tears, nor
celebrate my funeral with mourning."

He conceives that a death ought not to be lamented when immortality follows. Besides, a dying man may have some degree of consciousness, but that for a short time, especially in the case of an old man; after death, indeed, consciousness either does not exist or it is a thing to be desired. But this ought to be a subject of study from our youth to be indifferent about death, without which study no one can be of tranquil mind. For die we certainly must, and it is uncertain whether or not on this very day. He, therefore, who at all hours dreads impending death, how can he be at peace in his mind? concerning which there seems to be no need of such long discussion, when I call to mind not only Lucius Brutus, who was slain in liberating his country; nor the two Decii, who spurred on their steeds to a voluntary death; nor Marcus Atilius,[19] who set out to execution that he might keep a promise pledged to the enemy; nor the two Scipios, who even with their very bodies sought to obstruct the march of the Carthaginians; nor your grandfather Lucius Paulus,[20] who by his death atoned for the temerity of his colleague in the disgraceful defeat at Cannæ; nor Marcus Marcellus,[21] whose corpse not even the most merciless foe suffered to go without the honor of sepulture; but that our legions, as I have remarked in my Antiquities, have often gone with cheerful and undaunted mind to that place from which they believed that they should never return. Shall, then, well-instructed old men be afraid of that which young men, and they not only ignorant, but mere peasants, despise? On the whole, as it seems to me indeed, a satiety of all pursuits causes a satiety of life. There are pursuits peculiar to boyhood; do therefore young men regret the loss of them? There are also some of early youth; does settled age, which is called middle life, seek after these? There are also some of this period; neither are they looked for by old age. There are some final pursuits of old age; accordingly, as the pursuits of the earlier parts of life fall into disuse, so also do those of old age; and when this has taken place, satiety of life brings on the seasonable period of death.

Indeed, I do not see why I should not venture to tell you what I myself think concerning death; because I fancy I see it so much the more clearly in proportion as I am less distant from it. I am persuaded that your fathers, Publius Scipio and Caius Lælius, men of the greatest eminence and very dear friends of mine, are living, and that life too which alone deserves the name of life. For while we are shut up in this prison of the body, we are fulfilling, as it were, the function and painful task of destiny; for the heaven-born soul has been degraded from its dwelling-place above, and, as it were, buried in the earth, a situation uncongenial to its divine and immortal nature. But I believe that the immortal gods have shed souls into human bodies, that beings might exist who might tend the earth, and by contemplating the order of the heavenly bodies might imitate it in the manner and regularity of their lives. Nor have reason and argument alone influenced me thus to believe, but likewise the high name and authority of the greatest philosophers. I used to hear that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, who were all but our neighbors, who were formerly called the Italian philosophers, had no doubt that we possess souls derived from the universal divine mind. Moreover, the arguments were conclusive to me which Socrates delivered on the last day of his life concerning the immortality of the soul—he who was pronounced by the oracle of Apollo the wisest of all men. But why say more? I have thus persuaded myself, such is my belief; that since such is the activity of our souls, so tenacious their memory of things past and their sagacity regarding things future, so many arts, so many sciences, so many discoveries, that the nature which comprizes these qualities can not be mortal; and since the mind is ever in action and has no source of motion, because it moves itself, I believe that it never will find any end of motion, because it never will part from itself; and that since the nature of the soul is uncompounded, and has not in itself any admixture heterogeneous and dissimilar to itself, I maintain that it can not undergo dissolution; and if this be not possible, it can not perish; and it is a strong argument that men know very many things before they are born, since when mere boys, while they are learning difficult subjects, they so quickly catch up numberless ideas, that they seem not to be learning them then for the first time, but to remember them, and to be calling them to recollection. Thus did our Plato argue....

Let me, if you please, revert to my own views. No one will ever persuade me that either your father, Paulus, or two grandfathers, Paulus and Africanus, or the father of Africanus, or his uncle, or the many distinguished men whom it is unnecessary to recount, aimed at such great exploits as might reach to the recollection of posterity had they not perceived in their mind that posterity belonged to them. Do you suppose, to boast a little of myself, after the manner of old men, that I should have undergone such great toils, by day and night, at home and in service, had I thought to limit my glory by the same bounds as my life? Would it not have been far better to pass an easy and quiet life without any toil or struggle? But I know not how my soul, stretching upward, has ever looked forward to posterity, as if, when it had departed from life, then at last it would begin to live. And, indeed, unless this were the case, that souls were immortal, the souls of the noblest of men would not aspire above all things to an immortality of glory.

Why need I adduce that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest equanimity, the most foolish with the least? Does it not seem to you that the soul, which sees more and further, sees that it is passing to a better state, while that body whose vision is duller, does not see it? I, indeed, am transported with eagerness to see your fathers, whom I have respected and loved; nor in truth is it those only I desire to meet whom I myself have known; but those also of whom I have heard or read, and have myself written. Whither, indeed, as I proceed, no one assuredly should easily force me back, nor, as they did with Pelias, cook me again to youth. For if any god should grant me that from this period of life I should become a child again and cry in the cradle, I should earnestly refuse it; nor in truth should I like, after having run, as it were, my course, to be called back to the starting-place from the goal. For what comfort has life? What trouble has it not, rather? But grant that it has; yet it assuredly has either satiety or limitation (of its pleasures). For I am not disposed to lament the loss of life, which many men, and those learned men too, have often done; neither do I regret that I have lived, since I have lived in such a way that I conceive I was not born in vain; and from this life I depart as from a temporary lodging, not as from a home.

For nature has assigned it to us as an inn to sojourn in, not a place of habitation. Oh, glorious day! when I shall depart to that divine company and assemblage of spirits, and quit this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have spoken before, but also to my son Cato, than whom never was better man born, nor more distinguished for pious affection, whose body was burned by me, whereas, on the contrary, it was fitting that mine should be burned by him. But his soul not deserting me, but oft looking back, no doubt departed to those regions whither it saw that I myself was destined to come. This, tho a distress to me, I seemed patiently to endure; not that I bore it with indifference, but I comforted myself with the recollection that the separation and distance between us would not continue long. For these reasons, O Scipio (since you said that you with Lælius were accustomed to wonder at this), old age is tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself; nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers should ridicule this my delusion. But if we are not destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to expire at his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary to all other things, so does she also to life. Now old age is the consummation of life, just as of a play, from the fatigue of which we ought to escape, especially when satiety is super-added. This is what I had to say on the subject of old age, to which may you arrive! that, after having experienced the truth of those statements which you have heard from me, you may be enabled to give them your approbation.

II

ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER TULLIA[22]

Yes, my dear Servius, I could indeed wish you had been with me, as you say, at the time of my terrible trial. How much it was in your power to help me if you had been here, by sympathizing with, and I may almost say, sharing equally in my grief, I readily perceive from the fact that after reading your letter I now feel myself considerably more composed; for not only was all that you wrote just what is best calculated to soothe affliction, but you yourself in comforting me showed that you too had no little pain at heart. Your son Servius, however, has made it clear, by every kindly attention which such an occasion would permit of, both how great his respect was for myself and also how much pleasure his kind feeling for me was likely to give you; and you may be sure that, while such attentions from him have often been more pleasant to me, they have never made me more grateful.

It is not, however, only your arguments and your equal share—I may almost call it—in this affliction which comforts me, but also your authority; because I hold it shame in me not to be bearing my trouble in a way that you, a man endowed with such wisdom, think it ought to be borne. But at times I feel broken down, and I scarcely make any struggle against my grief, because those consolations fail me which under similar calamities were never wanting to any of those other people whom I put before myself as models for imitation. Both Fabius Maximus, for example, when he lost a son who had held the consulship, the hero of many a famous exploit; and Lucius Paulus, from whom two were taken in one week; and your own kinsman Gallus; and Marcus Cato, who was deprived of a son of the rarest talents and the rarest virtue—all these lived in times when their individual affliction was capable of finding a solace in the distinctions they used to earn from their country.

For me, however, after being stript of all those distinctions which you yourself recall to me, and which I had won for myself by unparalleled exertions, only that one solace remained which has been torn away. My thoughts were not diverted by work for my friends, or by the administration of affairs of state; there was no pleasure in pleading in the courts; I could not bear the very sight of the Senate House; I felt, as was indeed too true, that I had lost all the harvest of both my industry and my success. But whenever I wanted to recollect that all this was shared with you and other friends I could name, and whenever I was breaking myself in and forcing my spirit to bear these things with patience, I always had a refuge to go to where I might find peace, and in whose words of comfort and sweet society I could rid me of all my pains and griefs. Whereas now, under this terrible blow, even those old wounds which seemed to have healed up are bleeding afresh; for it is impossible for me now to find such a refuge from my sorrows at home in the business of the state as in those days I did in that consolation of home, which was always in store whenever I came away sad from thoughts of state to seek for peace in her happiness. And so I stay away both from home and from public life; because home now is no more able to make up for the sorrow I feel when I think of our country than our country is for my sorrow at home. I am therefore looking forward all the more eagerly to your coming, and long to see you as early as may possibly be; no greater alleviation can be offered me than a meeting between us for friendly intercourse and conversation. I hope, however, that your return is to take place, as I hear it is, very shortly. As for myself, while there are abundant reasons for wanting to see you as soon as possible, my principal one is in order that we may discuss together beforehand the best method of conduct for present circumstances, which must entirely be adapted to the wishes of one man only, a man nevertheless who is far-seeing and generous, and also, as I think I have thoroughly ascertained, to me not at all ill-disposed and to you extremely friendly. But admitting this, it is still a matter for much deliberation what is the line—I do not say of action, but of keeping quiet—that we ought by his good leave and favor to adopt. Farewell!

III

OF BRAVE AND ELEVATED SPIRITS[23]

A spirit altogether brave and elevated is chiefly discernible by two characters. The first consists in a low estimate of mere outward circumstances, since it is convinced that a man ought to admire, desire, or court nothing but what is virtuous and becoming; and that he ought to succumb to no man, nor to any perturbation either of spirit or fortune. The other thing is that, possest of such a spirit as I have just mentioned, you should perform actions which are great and of the greatest utility, but extremely arduous, full of difficulties and danger both to life and the many things which pertain to life.

In the latter of those two characters consist all the glory, the majesty, and, I add, the utility; but the causes and the efficient means that form great men is in the former, which contains the principles that elevate the soul, and gives it a contempt for temporary considerations. Now, this very excellence consists in two particulars: you are to deem that only to be good is to be virtuous, and that you be free from all mental irregularity. For we are to look upon it as the character of a noble and an elevated soul, to slight all those considerations that the generality of mankind account great and glorious, and to despise them, upon firm and durable principles; while strength of mind and greatness of resolution are discerned in bearing those calamities which, in the course of man's life, are many and various, so as not to be driven from your natural disposition, nor from the dignity of a wise man; for it is not consistent that he who is not subdued by fear should be subjugated by passion, nor that he who has shown himself invincible by toil should be conquered by pleasure. Wherefore, we ought to watch and avoid the love of money; for nothing so truly characterizes a narrow, groveling disposition as to love riches; and nothing is more noble and more exalted than to despise riches if you have them not, and if you have them, to employ them in beneficence and liberality.

An inordinate passion for glory, as I have already observed, is likewise to be guarded against; for it deprives us of liberty, the only prize for which men of elevated sentiments ought to contend. Power is so far from being desirable in itself that it sometimes ought to be refused, and sometimes to be resigned. We should likewise be free from all disorders of the mind, from all violent passion and fear, as well as languor, voluptuousness, and anger, that we may possess that tranquillity and security which confer alike consistency and dignity. Now, many there are, and have been, who, courting that tranquillity which I have mentioned here, have withdrawn themselves from public affairs and taken refuge in retirement. Among these, some of the noblest and most prominent of our philosophers; and some persons, of strict and grave dispositions, were unable to bear with the manners either of the people or their rulers; and some have lived in the country, amusing themselves with the management of their private affairs. Their aim was the same as that of the powerful, that they might enjoy their liberty, without wanting anything or obeying any person; for the essence of liberty is to live just as you please....

But, since most persons are of opinion that the achievements of war are more glorious than civil affairs, this judgment needs to be restricted; for many, as generally is the case with high minds and enterprising spirits, especially if they are adapted to military life and are fond of warlike achievements, have often sought opportunities of war from their fondness for glory; but if we are willing to judge truly, many are the civil employments of greater importance, and of more renown, than the military.

For tho Themistocles is justly praised—his name is now more illustrious than that of Solon, and his glorious victory at Salamis is mentioned preferably to the policy of Solon, by which he first confirmed the power of the Areopagus—the one should not be considered more illustrious than the other; for the one availed his country only for once—the other is lastingly advantageous; because by it the laws of the Athenians, and the institutions of their ancestors, are preserved. Now, Themistocles could not have stated any respect in which he benefited the Areopagus, but Solon might with truth declare that Themistocles had been advantaged by him; for the war was carried on by the counsels of that senate which was constituted by Solon.

We may make the same observation with regard to Pausanias[24] and Lysander among the Lacedæmonians; for all the addition of empire which their conquests are supposed to have brought to their country is not to be compared to the laws and economy of Lycurgus; for indeed, owing to these very causes they had armies more subordinate and courageous. In my eyes, Marcus Scaurus (who flourished when I was but a boy) was not inferior to Caius Marius;[25] nor, after I came to have a concern in the government, Quintus Catulus[26] to Cneius Pompey. An army abroad is but of small service, unless there be a wise administration at home. Nor did that good man and great general Africanus perform a more important service to his country when he razed Numantia than did that private citizen P. Nasica[27] when at the same period he killed Tiberius Gracchus. An action which it is true was not merely of a civil nature; for it approaches to a military character, as being the result of force and courage; but it was an action performed without an army, and from political considerations....

Now all that excellence which springs from a lofty and noble nature is altogether produced by the mental and not by the corporeal powers. Meanwhile, the body ought to be kept in such action and order as that it may be always ready to obey the dictates of reason and wisdom, in carrying them into execution, and in persevering under hardships. But with regard to that honestas we are treating of, it consists wholly in the thoughtful application of the mind, by which the civilians who preside over public affairs are equally serviceable to their country as they who wage wars. For it often happens that by such counsels wars are either not entered into or they are brought to a termination; sometimes they are even undertaken, as the third Punic war was by the advice of Marcus Cato, whose authority was powerful, even after he was dead.

Wisdom in determining is therefore preferable to courage in fighting; but in this we are to take care that we are not swayed by an aversion to fighting rather than by a consideration of expediency. Now in engaging in war we ought to make it appear that we have no other view than peace. But the character of a brave and resolute man is not to be ruffled with adversity, and not to be in such confusion as to quit his post, as we say, but to preserve a presence of mind, and the exercise of reason, without departing from his purpose. And while this is the characteristic of a lofty spirit, so this also is that of a powerful intellect; namely, to anticipate futurity in thought, and to conclude beforehand what may happen on either side, and, upon that, what measures to pursue, and never be surprized so as to say, "I had not thought of that." Such are the operations of a genius, capacious and elevated; of such a one as relies on its own prudence and counsel; but to rush precipitately into the field, and to encounter an enemy with mere physical force has somewhat in it that is barbarous and brutal. When the occasion, however, and its necessity compel it, we should resist with force, and prefer death to slavery or dishonor.

IV

OF SCIPIO'S DEATH AND OF FRIENDSHIP[28]

Should I say that I am not distrest by the loss of Scipio, philosophers may determine with what propriety I should do so; but assuredly I should be guilty of falsehood. For I am distrest at being bereaved of such a friend, as no one, I consider, will ever be to me again, and, as I can confidently assert, no one ever was; but I am not destitute of a remedy. I comfort myself, and especially with this consolation, that I am free from that error by which most men, on the decease of friends, are wont to be tormented; for I feel that no evil has happened to Scipio; it has befallen myself, if indeed it has happened to any. Now to be above measure distrest at one's own troubles is characteristic of the man who loves not his friend, but himself. In truth, as far as he is concerned, who can deny that his end was glorious? for unless he had chosen to wish for immortality, of which he had not the slightest thought, what did he fail to obtain which it was lawful for a man to wish for? A man who, as soon as he grew up, by his transcendent merit far surpassed those sanguine hopes of his countrymen which they had conceived regarding him when a mere boy, who never stood for the consulship, yet was made Consul twice; on the first occasion, before his time; on the second, at the proper age as regarded himself, tho for the commonwealth almost too late; who, by overthrowing two cities,[29] most hostile to our empire, put an end not only to all present but all future wars. What shall I say of his most engaging manners; of his dutiful conduct to his mother; his generosity to his sisters; his kindness to his friends; his uprightness toward all? These are known to you; and how dear he was to the state was displayed by its mourning at his death....

The authority of the ancients has more weight with me, either that of our own ancestors, who paid such sacred honors to the dead, which surely they would not have done if they thought those honors did in no way affect them, or that of those who once lived in this country, and enlightened, by their institutions and instructions, Magna Græcia[30] (which now indeed is entirely destroyed, but then was flourishing), or of him who was pronounced by the oracle of Apollo to be the wisest of men, who did not say first one thing and then another, as is generally done, but always the same; namely, that the souls of men are divine, and that when they have departed from the body, a return to heaven is opened to them, and the speediest to the most virtuous and just. This same opinion was also held by Scipio; for he indeed, a very few days before his death, as if he had a presentiment of it, when Philus and Manilius were present, and many others, and you also, Scævola, had gone with me, for three days descanted on the subject of government; of which discussion the last was almost entirely on the immortality of souls, which he said he had learned in sleep through a vision from Africanus. If this be the fact, that the spirit of the best man most easily flies away in death, as from the prison-house and chains of the body, whose passage to the gods can we conceive to have been readier than that of Scipio? Wherefore, to be afflicted at this his departure, I fear, would be the part rather of an envious person than of a friend....

But yet I so enjoy the recollection of our friendship that I seem to have lived happily because I lived with Scipio, with whom I had a common anxiety on public and private affairs, and with whom my life both at home and abroad was associated, and there existed that, wherein consists the entire strength of friendship, an entire agreement of inclinations, pursuits, and sentiments. That character for wisdom, therefore, which Fannius a little while ago mentioned does not so delight me, especially since it is undeserved, as the hope that the recollection of our friendship will last forever. And it is the more gratifying to me because scarcely in the history of the world are three or four pairs of friends mentioned by name; and I indulge in the hope that the friendship of Scipio and Lælius will be remembered....

I can only urge you to prefer friendship to all human possessions; for there is nothing so suited to our nature, so well adapted to prosperity or adversity. But first of all, I am of opinion that except among the virtuous friendship can not exist; I do not analyze this principle too closely, as they do who inquire with too great nicety into those things, perhaps with truth on their side, but with little general advantage; for they maintain that there is no good man but the wise man. Be it so, yet they define wisdom to be such as no mortal has ever attained to; whereas we ought to contemplate those things which exist in practise and in common life, and not the subjects of fictions or of our own wishes. I would never pretend to say that Caius Fabricius, Marius Curius, and Titus Coruncanius, whom our ancestors esteemed wise, were wise according to the standard of these moralists. Wherefore let them keep to themselves the name of wisdom, both invidious and unintelligible, and let them allow that these were good men—nay, they will not even do that; they will declare that this can not be granted except to a wise man.

Let us therefore proceed with our dull genius, as they say. Those who so conduct themselves and so live that their honor, their integrity, their justice, and liberality are approved; so that there is not in them any covetousness, or licentiousness, or boldness; and that they are of great consistency, as those men whom I have mentioned above—let us consider these worthy of the appellation of good men, as they have been accounted such, because they follow (as far as men are able) nature, which is the best guide of a good life. For I seem to myself to have this view, that we are so formed by nature that there should be a certain social tie among all; stronger, however, as each approaches nearer us. Accordingly, citizens are preferable to foreigners, and relatives to strangers; for with the last-named, Nature herself has created a friendly feeling, tho this has not sufficient strength. For in this respect friendship is superior to relationship, because from relationship benevolence can be withdrawn and from friendship it can not; for with the withdrawal of benevolence the very name of friendship is done away, while that of relationship remains. Now how great the power of friendship is may be best gathered from this consideration, that out of the boundless society of the human race, which Nature herself has joined together, friendship is a matter so contracted, and brought into so narrow a compass, that the whole of affection is confined to two, or at any rate to very few.

Now friendship is nothing else than a complete union of feeling on all subjects, divine and human, accompanied by kindly feeling and attachment, than which, indeed, I am not aware whether, with the exception of wisdom, anything better has been bestowed on man by the immortal gods. Some men prefer riches, others good health, others influence, others again honors, many prefer even pleasures; the last, indeed, is the characteristic of beasts; while the former are fleeting and uncertain, depending not so much on our own purpose as on the fickleness of fortune. Whereas those who place the supreme good in virtue, therein do admirably; but this very virtue itself both begets and constitutes friendship; nor without this virtue can friendship exist at all. Now let us define this virtue according to the usage of life and of our common language; and let us not measure it, as certain learned persons do, by pomp of language; and let us include among the good those who are so accounted—the Paulli, the Catos, the Galli, the Scipios, and the Phili; with these men ordinary life is content; and let us pass over those who are nowhere found to exist. Among men of this kind, therefore, friendship finds facilities so great that I can scarcely describe them.

In the first place—to whom can life be "worth living," as Ennius says, who does not repose on the mutual kind feeling of some friend? What can be more delightful than to have one to whom you can speak on all subjects just as to yourself? Where would be the great enjoyment in prosperity if you had not one to rejoice in it equally with yourself? And adversity would indeed be difficult to endure without some one who would bear it even with greater regret than yourself. In short, all other objects that are sought after are severally suited to some one single purpose—riches, that you may spend them; power that you may be courted; honors, that you may be extolled; pleasures, that you may enjoy them; good health, that you may be exempt from harm, and perform the functions of the body. Whereas friendship comprizes the greatest number of objects possible; wherever you turn yourself, it is at hand; shut out of no place, never out of season, never irksome; and therefore we do not use fire and water, as they say, on more occasions than we do friendship. And I am not now speaking of commonplace or ordinary friendship (tho even that brings delight and benefit), but of real and true friendship, such as belonged to those of whom very few are recorded; for prosperity, friendship renders more brilliant, and adversity more supportable, by dividing and communicating it.

And while friendship embraces very many and great advantages, she undoubtedly surpasses all in this, that she shines with a brilliant hope over the future, and never suffers the spirit to be weakened or to sink. Besides, he who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of himself; wherefore friends, tho absent, are still present; tho in poverty, they are rich; tho weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, tho dead they are alive; so entirely does the honor, the memory, the regret of friends attend them; from which circumstance the death of the one seems to be happy, and the life of the other praiseworthy; nay, should you remove from nature the cement of kind feelings, neither a house nor a city will be able to stand; even the cultivation of the land will not continue. If it be not clearly perceived how great is the power of friendship and concord, it can be distinctly inferred from quarrels and dissensions; for what house is there so established, or what state so firmly settled, that may not utterly be overthrown by hatred and dissension? From which it may be determined how much advantage there is in friendship. They relate, indeed, that a certain learned man of Agrigentum[31] promulgated in Greek verses the doctrine that all things which cohere throughout the whole world, and all things that are the subjects of motion, are brought together by friendship, and are dispelled by discord; and this principle all men understand, and illustrate by their conduct. Therefore, if at any time any act of a friend has been exhibited, either in undergoing or in sharing dangers, who is there that does not extol such an act with the highest praise?...

Now if such be the influence of integrity, that we love it even in those whom we have never seen, and, what is much more, even in an enemy, what wonder if men's feelings are affected when they seem to discover the goodness and virtue of those with whom they may become connected by intercourse? altho love is confirmed by the reception of kindness, and by the discovery of an earnest sympathy, and by close familiarity, which things being added to the first emotion of the mind and the affections, there is kindled a large amount of kindly feeling. And if any imagine that this proceeds from a sense of weakness, so that there shall be secured a friend, by whom a man may obtain that which he wants, they leave to friendship a mean and, indeed, if I may so speak, anything but respectable origin, when they make her to be born of indigence and want; were this the case, then in proportion as a man judged that there were the least resources in himself, precisely in that degree would he be best qualified for friendship, whereas the fact is far otherwise. For just as a man has most confidence in himself, and as he is most completely fortified by worth and wisdom, so that he needs no one's assistance, and feels that all his resources reside in himself, in the same proportion he is most highly distinguished for seeking out and forming friendships. For what did Africanus want of me? Nothing whatever, nor indeed did I need aught from him; but I loved him from admiration of his excellence; he in turn perhaps was attached to me from some high opinion which he entertained of my character, and association fostered our affection. But altho many and great advantages ensued, yet it was not from any hope of these that the causes of our attachment sprang; for as we are beneficent and liberal not to exact favor in return (for we are not usurers in kind actions), but by nature are inclined to liberality, thus I think that friendship is to be desired, not attracted by the hope of reward, but because the whole of its profit consists in love only. From such opinions, they who, after the fashion of beasts, refer everything to pleasure, widely differ, and no great wonder, since they can not look up to anything lofty, magnificent, or divine who east all their thoughts on an object so mean and contemptible.

Therefore let us exclude such persons altogether from our discourse; and let us ourselves hold this opinion, that the sentiment of loving and the attachment of kind feelings are produced by nature when the evidence of virtue has been established; and they who have eagerly sought the last-named draw nigh and attach themselves to it, that they may enjoy the friendship and character of the individual they have begun to love, and that they may be commensurate and equal in affection, and more inclined to confer a favor than to claim any return. And let this honorable struggle be maintained between them; so not only will the greatest advantages be derived from friendship, but its origin from nature rather than from a sense of weakness will be at once more impressive and more true. For if it were expediency that cemented friendships, the same when changed would dissolve them; but because nature can never change, therefore true friendships are eternal....

Listen, then, my excellent friends, to the discussion which was very frequently held by me and Scipio on the subject of friendship; altho he indeed used to say that nothing was more difficult than that friendship should continue to the end of life; for it often happened either that the same course was not expedient to both parties or that they held different views of politics; he remarked also that the characters of men often changed, in some cases by adversity, in others by old age becoming oppressive; and he derived an authority for such notions from a comparison with early life, because the strongest attachments of boys are constantly laid aside with the prætexta; even if they should maintain it to manhood, yet sometimes it is broken off by rivalry, for a dowried wife, or some other advantage which they can not both attain. And even if men should be carried on still further in their friendship, yet that feeling is often undermined should they fall into rivalry for preferments; for there is no greater enemy to friendship than covetousness of money, in most men, and even in the best, an emulous desire of high offices and glory, in consequence of which the most bitter enmities have often arisen between the dearest friends. For great dissensions, and those in most instances justifiable, arise when some request is made of friends which is improper, as, for instance, that they should become either the ministers of their lust or their supporters in the perpetration of wrong; and they who refuse to do so, it matters not however virtuously, yet are accused of discarding the claims of friendship by those persons whom they are unwilling to oblige; but they who dare to ask anything of a friend, by their very request seem to imply that they would do anything for the sake of that friend; by the complaining of such persons, not only are long-established intimacies put an end to, but endless animosities are engendered. All these many causes, like so many fatalities, are ever threatening friendship, so that, he said, to escape them all seemed to him a proof not merely of wisdom, but even of good fortune....

Let this, therefore, be established as a primary law concerning friendship, that we expect from our friends only what is honorable, and for our friends' sake do what is honorable; that we should not wait till we are asked; that zeal be ever ready, and reluctance far from us; but that we take pleasure in freely giving our advice; that in our friendship, the influence of our friends, when they give good advice, should have great weight; and that this be employed to admonish not only candidly, but even severely, if the case shall require, and that we give heed to it when so employed; for, as to certain persons whom I understand to have been esteemed wise men in Greece, I am of opinion that some strange notions were entertained by them; but there is nothing which they do not follow up with too great subtlety; among the rest, that excessive friendships should be avoided, lest it should be necessary for one to feel anxiety for many; that every one has enough, and more than enough, of his own affairs; that to be needlessly implicated in those of other people is vexatious; that it was most convenient to hold the reins of friendship as loose as possible, so as either to tighten or slacken them when you please; for they argue that the main point toward a happy life is freedom from care, which the mind can not enjoy if one man be, as it were, in travail for others.

Nay, they tell us that some are accustomed to declare, still more unfeelingly (a topic which I have briefly touched upon just above), that friendships should be cultivated for the purpose of protection and assistance, and not for kind feeling or affection; and therefore the less a man possesses of independence and of strength, in the same degree he most earnestly desires friendships; that thence it arises that women seek the support of friendship more than men, and the poor more than the rich, and persons in distress rather than those who are considered prosperous. Admirable philosophy! for they seem to take away the sun from the world who withdraw friendship from life; for we receive nothing better from the immortal gods, nothing more delightful; for what is this freedom from care?—in appearances, indeed, flattering; but, in many eases, in reality to be disdained. Nor is it reasonable to undertake any honorable matter or action lest you should be anxious, or to lay it aside when undertaken; for if we fly from care, we must fly from virtue also; for it is impossible that she can, without some degree of distress, feel contempt and detestation for qualities opposed to herself; just as kind-heartedness for malice, temperance for profligacy, and bravery for cowardice. Accordingly, you see that upright men are most distrest by unjust actions; the brave with the cowardly; the virtuous with the profligate; and, therefore, this is the characteristic of a well-regulated mind, both to be well pleased with what is excellent and to be distrest with what is contrary. Wherefore, if trouble of mind befall a wise man (and assuredly it will, unless we suppose that all humanity is extirpated from his mind), what reason is there why we should altogether remove friendship from life, lest because of it we should take upon ourselves some troubles? for what difference is there (setting the emotions of the mind aside), I do not say between a man and a beast, but between a man and a stone, or log, or anything of that kind? For they do not deserve to be listened to who would have virtue to be callous and made of iron, as it were, which indeed is, as in other matters, so in friendship also, tender and susceptible; so that friends are loosened, as it were, by happy events, and drawn together by distresses.

Wherefore the anxiety which has often to be felt for a friend is not of such force that it should remove friendship from the world, any more than that the virtues, because they bring with them certain cares and troubles, should therefore be discarded. For when it produces friendship (as I said above), should any indication of virtue shine forth, to which a congenial mind may attach and unite itself—when this happens, affection must necessarily arise. For what is so unmeaning as to take delight in many vain things, such as preferments, glory, magnificent buildings, clothing and adornment of the body, and not to take an extreme delight in a soul endued with virtue, in such a soul as can either love or (so to speak) love in return? for there is nothing more delightful than the repayment of kindness and the interchange of devotedness and good offices. Now if we add this, which may with propriety be added, that nothing so allures and draws any object to itself as congeniality does friendship, it will of course be admitted as true that the good must love the good, and unite them to them selves, just as if connected by relationship and nature; for nothing is more apt to seek and seize on its like than nature. Wherefore this certainly is clear, Fannius and Scævola (in my opinion), that among the good a liking for the good is, as it were, inevitable; and this indeed is appointed by Nature herself as the very fountain of friendship.

But the same kind disposition belongs also to the multitude; for virtue is not inhuman, or cruel, or haughty, since she is accustomed to protect even whole nations, and to adopt the best measures for their welfare, which assuredly she would not do did she shrink from the affection of the vulgar. And to myself, indeed, those who form friendships with a view to advantage seem to do away with its most endearing bond; for it is not so much the advantage obtained through a friend as the mere love of that friend which delights; and then only what has proceeded from a friend becomes delightful if it has proceeded from zealous affection; and that friendship should be cultivated from a sense of necessity is so far from being the case that those who, being endowed with power and wealth, and especially with virtue (in which is the strongest support of friendship), have least need of another, are most liberal and generous. Yet I am not sure whether it is requisite that friends should never stand in any need; for wherein would any devotedness of mine to him have been exerted if Scipio had never stood in need of my advice or assistance at home or abroad? Wherefore friendship has not followed upon advantage, but advantage on friendship.

Persons, therefore, who are wallowing in indulgence will not need to be listened to if ever they shall descant upon friendship, which they have known neither by experience nor by theory. For who is there, by the faith of gods and men, who would desire, on the condition of his loving no one, and himself being loved by none, to roll in affluence, and live in a superfluity of all things? For this is the life of tyrants, in which undoubtedly there can be no confidence, no affection, no steady dependence on attachment; all is perpetually mistrust and disquietude—there is no room for friendship. For who can love either him whom he fears or him by whom he thinks he himself is feared? Yet are they courted, solely in hypocrisy, for a time; because, if perchance (as it frequently happens) they have been brought low, then it is perceived how destitute they were of friends. And this, they say, Tarquin[32] exprest; that when going into exile, he found out whom he had as faithful friends, and whom unfaithful ones, since then he could no longer show gratitude to either party; altho I wonder that, with such haughtiness and impatience of temper, he could find one at all. And as the character of the individual whom I have mentioned could not obtain true friends, so the riches of many men of rank exclude all faithful friendship; for not only is Fortune blind herself, but she commonly renders blind those whom she embraces....

He who, therefore, shall have shown himself in both cases, as regards friendship, worthy, consistent, and stedfast; such a one we ought to esteem of a class of persons extremely rare—nay, almost godlike. Now, the foundation of that stedfastness and constancy, which we seek in friendship, is sincerity. For nothing is stedfast which is insincere. Besides, it is right that one should be chosen who is frank and good-natured, and congenial in his sentiments; one, in fact, who is influenced by the same motives, all of which qualities have a tendency to create sincerity. For it is impossible for a wily and tortuous disposition to be sincere. Nor in truth can the man who has no sympathy from nature, and who is not moved by the same considerations, be either attached or steady. To the same requisites must be added that he shall neither take delight in bringing forward charges nor believe them when they arise, all of which causes belong to that consistent principle of which now for some time I have been treating. Thus the remark is true which I made at first that friendship can exist only among the good; for it is the part of a good man (whom at the same time we may call a wise man) to observe these two rules in friendship: first, that there shall be nothing pretended or simulated (for even to hate openly better becomes the ingenuous man than by his looks to conceal his sentiments); in the next place, that not only does he repel charges when brought (against his friends) by any one, but is not himself suspicious, ever fancying that some infidelity has been committed by his friend. To all this there should be added a certain suavity of conversation and manners, affording, as it does, no inconsiderable zest to friendship. Now solemnity and gravity on all occasions, certainly, carry with them dignity; but friendship ought to be easier and more free and more pleasant, and tending more to every kind of politeness and good nature....

FOOTNOTES:

[4] From the "Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age." Translated by Cyrus R. Edmonds. This work is composed in the form of a dialog, in which, in the person of Cato the Censor as speaker, the benefits of old age are pointed out.

[5] A famous athlete who was many times crowned at the Pythian and Olympian games.

[6] Cneius Scipio was Consul in 222, and with Marcellus completed the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. He served with his brother Publius Cicero against the Carthaginians in Spain, where, after several victories, both were slain in 212 b.c.

[7] Lucius Metellus, a Roman general who defeated the Carthaginians at Panormus, now Palermo, Sicily, in 250 b.c.

[8] Masinissa, king of a small territory in northern Africa, was at first an ally of Carthage against Rome, but afterward became an ally of Rome against Carthage.

[9] The translator explains that the speeches here referred to, as collected and published by Cato, numbered about 150. Cato was known to his contemporaries as "the Roman Demosthenes." Later writers often referred to him as "Cato the orator."

[10] Archytas was a Greek philosopher, eminent also as statesman, mathematician, and general. He lived about 400 b.c., and is credited with having saved the life of Plato through his influence with Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. He was seven times general of the army of Tarentum and successful in all his campaigns; eminent also for domestic virtues. He is pronounced by a writer in Smith's "Dictionary" to have been "among the very greatest men of antiquity." He was drowned while making a voyage in the Adriatic.

[11] Caudium was a Samnite town near which the Romans were defeated by Pontius Herennius.

[12] Not the Appius Claudius from whom the Appian Way and one of the great aqueducts were named. The older Appius Claudius, here referred to, lived in the century that followed Plato.

[13] Titus Flaminius, general and statesman, was Consul in 198 b.c. It was not Titus, but Caius Flaminius, who built the famous circus and road bearing his name. Caius lived at an earlier period.

[14] Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, the eminent military genius, who several times defeated the Romans before he was finally overthrown by them at Beneventum in 275 b.c.

[15] Livius Andronicus, who lived in Rome about 240 b.c.

[16] A small island (now a peninsula), lying off the coast of Spain. It is to-day called Cadiz, but anciently was known as Erythia, Tartessus, and Gades. It was founded about 1100 b.c., by the Phenicians, of whose western commerce it was the center.

[17] The tyrant of Athens who reigned thirty-three years and died about 527 b.c.

[18] Melmoth has commented on this passage that, altho suicide too generally prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, the wisest philosophers condemned it. "Nothing," he says, "can be more clear and explicit" than the prohibition imposed by Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.

[19] Better known as the famous Regulus, whose alleged speech to the "Conscript Fathers" has been declaimed by generations of schoolboys.

[20] Lucius Paulus died at the battle of Cannæ, which was precipitated by his colleague Terentius Varro in 260 b.c., 40,000 Romans being killed by the Carthaginians.

[21] Marcellus, a Roman consul, who fought against Hannibal and was killed in an ambuscade.

[22] Cicero's daughter was born about 79 b.c., and thrice married, the last time to Dolabella, who has been described as "one of the most profligate men of a profligate age." She was divorced from Dolabella in 44 b.c., gave birth to a son soon afterward, and died in the same year. Cicero's letter was written in reply to one which he had received from Servius Sulpicius, a celebrated Roman jurist. Cicero intended to erect a temple as a memorial to Tullia, but the death of Cæsar and the unsettled state of public affairs that ensued, and in which Cicero was concerned, prevented him from doing so.

[23] From Book I of the "Offices." Translated by Cyrus R. Edmonds.

[24] Pausanias, a Spartan general, was the son of Clœmbrotus, the king of Sparta, killed at the battle of Leuctra. Pausanias commanded at Platæa; but having conducted a treasonable correspondence with Xerxes, was starved to death as a punishment.

[25] The general who contended against Sulla in the Civil war.

[26] Catulus was consul with Marius in 102 b.c. He acted with Sulla during the Civil war.

[27] Nasica, "a fierce and stiff-necked aristocrat," was of the family of Scipios. When the consuls refused to resort to violence against Tiberius Gracchus, it was he who led the senators forth from their meeting-place against the popular assembly outside, with whom ensued a fight, in which Gracchus was killed by a blow from a club. Nasica left Rome soon after, seeking safety. After spending some time as a wandering exile, he died at Pergamus.

[28] From the Dialogue on "Friendship." Translated by Cyrus E. Edmonds. Lælius, a Roman who was contemporary with the younger Scipio, is made the speaker in the passage here quoted. Lælius, was a son of Caius Lælius, the friend and companion of the elder Scipio, whose actions are so interwoven with those of Scipio that a writer in Smith's "Dictionary" says, "It is difficult to relate them separately." The younger Lælius was intimate with the younger Scipio in a degree almost as remarkable as his father had been with the elder. The younger, immortalized by Cicero's treatise on Friendship, was born about 186 b.c., and was a man of fine culture noted as an orator. His personal worth was so generally esteemed that it survived to Seneca's day. One of Seneca's injunctions to a friend was that he should "live like Lælius."

[29] Scipio Africanus minor by whom Carthage was destroyed in 146 b.c., and Numantia, a town of Spain, was destroyed in 133 b.c. From the letter he obtained the surname of Numantinus.

[30] Magna Græcia was a name given by the ancients to that part of southern Italy which, before the rise of the Roman state, was colonized by Greeks. Its time of greatest splendor was the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.; that is, intermediate between the Homeric age and the Periclean. Among its leading cities were Cumæ, Sybaris, Locri, Regium, Tarentum, Heraclea, and Pæstum. At the last-named place imposing ruins still survive.

[31] Empedocles, philosopher, poet, and historian, who lived et Agrigentum in Sicily, about 490-430 b.c., and wrote a poem on the doctrines of Pythagoras. A legend has survived that he jumped into the crater of Etna, in order that people might conclude, from his complete disappearance, that he was a god. Matthew Arnold's poem on this incident is among his better-known works.

[32] Tarquinius Superbus, seventh and last King of Rome, occupied the throne for twenty-five years, and as a consequence of the rape of Lucretia by his son Sextus was banished about 509 b.c.

JULIUS CÆSAR

Born in 100 b.c.; assassinated in 44; famous as general, statesman, orator, and writer; served in Mitylene in 80; captured by pirates in 76; questor in 68; pontifex maximus in 63; propretor in Spain in 61; member of the First Triumvirate in 60; Consul in 59; defeated the Helvetii in 58; invaded Britain in 55 and 54; crossed the Rhine in 55; crossed the Rubicon and began the Civil war in 49; dictator from 49 to 45; defeated Pompey in 48; reformed the calendar in 46; refused the diadem in 44; assassinated in the senate house in 44.[33]

I

THE BUILDING OF THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE RHINE[34]

Cæsar, for those reasons which I have mentioned, had resolved to cross the Rhine; but to cross by ships he neither deemed to be sufficiently safe nor considered consistent with his own dignity or that of the Roman people. Therefore, altho the greatest difficulty in forming a bridge was presented to him, on account of the breadth, rapidity, and depth of the river, he nevertheless considered that it ought to be attempted by him, or that his army ought not otherwise to be led over. He devised this plan of a bridge: he joined together, at the distance of two feet, two piles, each a foot and half thick, sharpened a little at the lower end, and proportioned in length to the depth of the river.

After he had, by means of engines, sunk these into the river, and fixt them at the bottom, and then driven them in with rammers, not quite perpendicularly, like a stake, but bending forward and sloping, so as to incline in the direction of the current of the river; he also placed two [other piles] opposite to these, at the distance of forty feet lower down, fastened together in the same manner, but directed against the force and current of the river. Both these, moreover, were kept firmly apart by beams two feet thick (the space which the binding of the piles occupied), laid in at their extremities between two braces on each side; and in consequence of these being in different directions and fastened on sides the one opposite to the other, so great was the strength of the work, and such the arrangement of the materials, that in proportion as the greater body of water dashed against the bridge, so much the closer were its parts held fastened together. These beams were bound together by timber laid over them in the direction of the length of the bridge, and were [then] covered with laths and hurdles; and, in addition to this, piles were driven into the water obliquely, at the lower side of the bridge, and these serving as buttresses, and being connected with every portion of the work, sustained the force of the stream; and there were others also above the bridge, at a moderate distance, that if trunks of trees or vessels were floated down the river by the barbarians for the purpose of destroying the work, the violence of such things might be diminished by these defenses, and might not injure the bridge.

Within ten days after the timber began to be collected, the whole work was completed, and the whole army led over. Cæsar, leaving a strong guard at each end of the bridge, hastens into the territories of the Sigambri. In the mean time, ambassadors from several nations come to him, whom, on their suing for peace and alliance, he answers in a courteous manner, and orders hostages to be brought to him. But the Sigambri, at the very time the bridge was begun to be built, made preparations for a flight (by the advice of such of the Tenchtheri and Usipĕtes as they had among them), and quitted their territories and conveyed away all their possessions, and concealed themselves in deserts and woods.

Cæsar, having remained in their territories a few days, and burned all their villages and houses, and cut down their corn, proceeded into the territories of the Ubii; and having promised them his assistance, if they were ever harassed by the Suevi,[35] he learned from them these particulars: that the Suevi, after they had by means of their scouts found that the bridge was being built, had called a council, according to their custom, and sent orders to all parts of their state to remove from the towns and convey their children, wives, and all their possessions into the woods, and that all who could bear arms should assemble in one place; that the place thus chosen was nearly the center of those regions which the Suevi possest; that in this spot they had resolved to await the arrival of the Romans, and give them battle there. When Cæsar discovered this, having already accomplished all these things on account of which he had resolved to lead his army over—namely, to strike fear into the Germans, take vengeance on the Sigambri, and free the Ubii from the invasion of the Suevi, having spent altogether eighteen days beyond the Rhine, and thinking he had advanced far enough to serve both honor and interest—he returned into Gaul, and cut down the bridge.

II

THE INVASION OF BRITAIN[36]

The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself; the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgæ[37] for the purpose of plunder and making war; almost all of whom are called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the lands. The number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceedingly numerous, for the most part very like those of the Gauls; the number of cattle is great. They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a certain weight, as their money. Tin is produced in the midland regions; in the maritime, iron; but the quantity of it is small; they employ brass, which is imported. There, as in Gaul, is timber of every description, except beech and fir. They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare and the cock and the goose; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure. The climate is more temperate than in Gaul, the cold being less severe.

The island is triangular in its form, and one of its sides is opposite to Gaul. One angle of this side, which is in Kent, whither almost all ships from Gaul are directed, [looks] to the east; the lower looks to the south. This side extends about 500 miles. Another side lies toward Spain,[38] and the west, on which part is Ireland, less, as is reckoned, than Britain, by one half; but the passage [from it] into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul. In the middle of this voyage is an island which is called Mona;[39] many smaller islands besides are supposed to lie [there], of which islands some have written that at the time of the winter solstice it is night there for thirty consecutive days. We, in our inquiries about that matter, ascertained nothing, except that, by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The length of this side, as their account states, is 700 miles. The third side is toward the north, to which portion of the island no land is opposite; but an angle of that side looks principally toward Germany. This side is considered to be 800 miles in length. Thus the whole island is [about] 2,000 miles in circumference.

The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district, nor do their customs differ much from Gallic. Most of the inland inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britains, indeed, dye themselves with wood, which occasions a bluish color, and thereby have a more terrible appearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their body shaved except their head and upper lip. Ten and even twelve have wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and parents among their children; but if there be any issue by these wives, they are reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first espoused when a virgin.

The horse and charioteers of the enemy contended vigorously in a skirmish with our cavalry on the march; yet so that our men were conquerors in all parts, and drove them to their woods and hills; but, having slain a great many, they pursued too eagerly, and lost some of their men. However, the enemy, after some time had elapsed, when our men were off their guard, and occupied in the fortification of the camp, rushed out of the woods, and making an attack upon those who were placed on duty before the camp, fought in a determined manner; and two cohorts being sent by Cæsar to their relief, and these severally the first of two legions, when these had taken up their position at a very small distance from each other, as our men were disconcerted by the unusual mode of battle, the enemy broke through the middle of them most courageously, and retreated thence in safety. That day, Q. Laberius Durus, a tribune of the soldiers, was slain. The enemy, since more cohorts were sent against them, were repulsed.

In the whole of this method of fighting since the engagement took place under the eyes of all and before the camp, it was perceived that our men, on account of the weight of their arms, inasmuch as they could neither pursue [the enemy when] retreating, nor dare quit their standards, were little suited to this kind of enemy; that the horse also fought with great danger, because they [the Britons] generally retreated even designedly, and, when they had drawn off our men a short distance from the legions, leapt from their chariots and fought on foot in unequal [and to them advantageous] battle. But the system of cavalry engagement is wont to produce equal danger, and indeed the same, both to those who retreat and those who pursue. To this was added, that they never fought in close order, but in small parties and at great distances, and had detachments placed [in different parts], and then the one relieved the other, and the vigorous and fresh succeeded the wearied.

The following day the enemy halted on the hills, a distance from our camp, and presented themselves in small parties, and began to challenge our horse to battle with less spirit than the day before. But at noon, when Cæsar had sent three legions, and all the cavalry with C. Trebonius, the lieutenant, for the purpose of foraging, they flew upon the foragers suddenly from all quarters, so that they did not keep off [even] from the standards and the legions. Our men, making an attack on them vigorously, repulsed them; nor did they cease to pursue them until the horse, relying on relief, as they saw the legions behind them, drove the enemy precipitately before them, and, slaying a great number of them, did not give them the opportunity either of rallying, or halting, or leaping from their chariots. After this retreat the auxiliaries departed; nor after that time did the enemy ever engage with us in very large numbers.

Cæsar, discovering their design, leads his army into the territories of Cassivelaunus[40] to the river Thames, which river can be forded in one place only, and that with difficulty. When he had arrived there, he perceives that numerous forces of the enemy were marshaled on the other bank of the river; the bank also was defended by sharp stakes[41] fixt in front, and stakes of the same kind fixt under the water were covered by the river. These things being discovered from [some] prisoners and deserters, Cæsar, sending forward the cavalry, ordered the legions to follow them immediately. But the soldiers advanced with such speed and such ardor, tho they stood above the water by their heads only, that the enemy could not sustain the attack of the legions and of the horse, and quitted the banks, and committed themselves to flight.

Cassivelaunus, as we have stated above, all hope [rising out] of battle being laid aside, the greater part of his forces being dismissed, and about 4,000 charioteers only being left, used to observe our marches and retire a little from the road, and conceal himself in intricate and woody places, and in those neighborhoods in which he had discovered we were about to march, he used to drive the cattle and the inhabitants from the fields into the woods; and, when our cavalry, for the sake of plundering and ravaging the more freely, scattered themselves among the fields, he used to send out charioteers from the woods by all the well-known roads and paths, and, to the great danger of our horse, engaged with them; and this source of fear hindered them from straggling very extensively. The result was that Cæsar did not allow excursions to be made to a great distance from the main body of the legions, and ordered that damage should be done to the enemy in ravaging their lands and kindling fires only so far as the legionary soldiers could, by their own exertion and marching, accomplish it.

In the mean time the Trinobantes,[42] almost the most powerful state of those parts, from which the young man Mandubratius, embracing the protection of Cæsar, had come to the continent of Gaul to [meet] him (whose father, Imanuentius, had possest the sovereignty in that state, and had been killed by Cassivelaunus; he himself had escaped death by flight) send ambassadors to Cæsar, and promise that they will surrender themselves to him and perform his command: they entreat him to protect Mandubratius from the violence of Cassivelaunus, and send to their state some one to preside over it, and possess the government. Cæsar demands forty hostages from them, and corn for his army, and sends Mandubratius to them. They speedily performed the things demanded, and sent hostages to the number appointed, and the corn.

The Trinobantes, being protected and secured from any violence of the soldiers, the Cenimagni, the Segontiăci, the Ancalites, the Bibrŏci, and the Cassi, sending embassies, surrender themselves to Cæsar.[43] From them he learns that the capital town of Cassivelaunus was not far from that place, and was defended by woods and morasses, and a very large number of men and of cattle had been collected in it. (Now the Britons, when they have fortified the intricate woods, in which they are wont to assemble for the purpose of avoiding the incursion of an enemy with an entrenchment and a rampart, call them a town.) Thither he proceeds with his legions; he finds the place admirably fortified by nature and art; he, however, undertakes to attack it in two directions. The enemy, having remained only a short time, did not sustain the attack of our soldiers, and hurried away on the other side of the town. A great amount of cattle was found there, and many of the enemy were taken and slain in their flight....

III

OVERCOMING THE NERVII[44]

Cæsar, having sent his cavalry on before, followed closely after them with all his forces; but the plan and order of the march were different from that which the Belgæ had reported to the Nervii.[45] For as he was approaching the enemy, Cæsar, according to his custom, led on [as the van] six legions unencumbered by baggage; behind them he had placed the baggage-trains of the whole army; then the two legions which had been last raised closed the rear, and were a guard for the baggage-train. Our horse, with the slingers and archers, having passed the river, commenced action with the cavalry of the enemy. While they from time to time betook themselves into the woods to their companions, and again made an assault out of the wood upon our men, who did not dare to follow them in their retreat further than the limit to which the plain and open parts extended; in the mean time the six legions which had arrived first, having measured out the work, began to fortify the camp. When the first part of the baggage-train of our army was seen by those who lay hidden in the woods, which had been agreed on among them as the time for commencing action, as soon as they had arranged their line of battle and formed their ranks within the woods, and had encouraged one another, they rushed out suddenly with all their forces and made an attack upon our horse. The latter being easily routed and thrown into confusion, the Nervii ran down to the river with such incredible speed that they seemed to be in the woods, the river, and close upon us almost at the same time. And with the same speed they hastened up the hill to our camp and to those who were employed in the works.

Cæsar had everything to do at one time: the standard to be displayed, which was the sign when it was necessary to rim to arms; the signal to be given by the trumpet; the soldiers to be called off from the works; those who had proceeded some distance for the purpose of seeking materials for the rampart, to be summoned; the order of battle to be formed; the soldiers to be encouraged; the watchword to be given. A great part of these arrangements was prevented by the shortness of time and the sudden approach and charge of the enemy. Under these difficulties two things proved of advantage: [first] the skill and experience of the soldiers, because, having been trained by former engagements, they could suggest to themselves what ought to be done as conveniently as receive information from others; and [secondly] that Cæsar had forbidden his several lieutenants to depart from the works and their respective legions before the camp was fortified. These, on account of the near approach and the speed of the enemy, did not then wait for any command from Cæsar, but of themselves executed whatever appeared proper.

Cæsar, having given the necessary orders, hastened to and fro into whatever quarter fortune carried him, to animate the troops, and came to the tenth legion. Having encouraged the soldiers with no further speech than that "they should keep up the remembrance of their wonted valor, and not be confused in mind, but valiantly sustain the assault of the enemy"; as the latter were not farther from them than the distance to which a dart could be cast, he gave the signal for commencing battle. And having gone to another quarter for the purpose of encouraging [the soldiers], he finds them fighting. Such was the shortness of the time, and so determined was the mind of the enemy on fighting, that time was wanting not only for affixing the military insignia, but even for putting on the helmets and drawing off the covers from the shields. To whatever part any one by chance came from the works (in which he had been employed), and whatever standards he saw first, at these he stood, lest in seeking his own company he should lose the time for fighting.

The army having been marshaled, rather as the nature of the ground and the declivity of the hill and the exigency of the time than as the method and order of military matters required, while the legions in the different places were withstanding the enemy, some in one quarter, some in another, and the view was obstructed by the very thick hedges intervening, as we have before remarked, neither could proper reserves be posted, nor could the necessary measures be taken in each part, nor could all the commands be issued by one person. Therefore, in such an unfavorable state of affairs, various events of fortune followed....

At the same time, our horsemen, and light-armed infantry, who had been with those who, as I have related, were routed by the first assault of the enemy, as they were betaking themselves into the camp, met the enemy face to face, and again sought flight into another quarter; and the camp-followers, who from the Decuman Gate, and from the highest ridge of the hill had seen our men pass the river as victors, when, after going out for the purposes of plundering, they looked back and saw the enemy parading in our camp, committed themselves precipitately to flight; at the same time there arose the cry and shout of those who came with the baggage-train; and they (affrighted) were carried some one way, some another. By all these circumstances the cavalry of the Treviri were much alarmed (whose reputation for courage is extraordinary among the Gauls, and who had come to Cæsar, being sent by their state as auxiliaries), and, when they saw our camp filled with a large number of the enemy, the legions hard prest and almost held surrounded, the camp-retainers, horsemen, slingers, and Numidians fleeing on all sides divided and scattered, they, despairing of our affairs, hastened home, and related to their state that the Romans were routed and conquered, [and] that the enemy were in possession of their camp and baggage-train.

Cæsar proceeded, after encouraging the tenth legion, to the right wing, where he perceived that his men were hard prest, and that in consequence of the standards of the twelfth legion being collected together in one place, the crowded soldiers were a hindrance to themselves in the fight; that all the centurions of the fourth cohort were slain, and the standard-bearer killed, the standard itself lost, almost all the centurions of the other cohorts either wounded or slain, and among them the chief centurion of the legion, P. Sextius Baculus, a very valiant man, who was so exhausted by many and severe wounds that he was already unable to support himself; he likewise perceived that the rest were slackening their efforts, and that some, deserted by those in the rear, were retiring from the battle and avoiding the weapons; that the enemy [on the other hand], tho advancing from the lower ground, were not relaxing in front, and were [at the same time] pressing hard on both flanks; he perceived also that the affair was at a crisis; and that there was not any reserve which could be brought up; having therefore snatched a shield from one of the soldiers in the rear (for he himself had come without a shield), he advanced to the front of the line, and addressing the centurions by name, and encouraging the rest of the soldiers, he ordered them to carry forward the standards, and extend the companies, that they might the more easily use their swords. On his arrival, as hope was brought to the soldiers and their courage restored, while every one for his own part, in the sight of his general, desired to exert his utmost energy, the impetuosity of the enemy was a little checked.

Cæsar, when he perceived that the seventh legion, which stood close by him, was also hard prest by the enemy, directed the tribunes of the soldiers to effect a junction of the legions gradually, and make their charge upon the enemy with a double front, which having been done since they brought assistance the one to the other, nor feared lest their rear should be surrounded by the enemy, they began to stand their ground more boldly, and to fight more courageously. In the mean time, the soldiers of the two legions which had been in the rear of the army, as a guard for the baggage-train, upon the battle being reported to them, quickened their pace, and were seen by the enemy on the top of the hill; and Titus Labienus, having gained possession of the camp of the enemy, and observed from the higher ground what was going on in our camp, sent the tenth legion as a relief to our men who, when they had learned from the flight of the horse and the sutlers in what position the affair was, and in how great danger the camp and the legion and the commander were involved, left undone nothing [which tended] to despatch.

By their arrival, so great a change of matters was made that our men, even those who had fallen down exhausted with wounds, leaned on their shields, and renewed the fight; then the camp-retainers, tho unarmed, seeing the enemy completely dismayed, attacked [them tho] armed; the horsemen too, that they might by their valor blot out the disgrace of their flight, thrust themselves before the legionary soldiers in all parts of the battle. But the enemy, even in the last hope of safety, displayed such great courage that when the foremost of them had fallen, the next stood upon them prostrate, and fought from their bodies; when these were overthrown, and their corpses heaped up together, those who survived cast their weapons against our men [thence] as from a mound, and returned our darts which had fallen short between [the armies]; so that it ought not to be concluded that men of such great courage had injudiciously dared to pass a very broad river, ascend very high banks, and come up to a very disadvantageous place; since their greatness of spirit had rendered these actions easy, altho in themselves very difficult.

This battle being ended, and the nation and name of the Nervii being almost reduced to annihilation, their old men, who together with the boys and women we have stated to have been collected together in the fenny places and marshes, on this battle having been reported to them, since they were convinced that nothing was an obstacle to the conquerors, and nothing safe to the conquered, sent ambassadors to Cæsar by the consent of all who remained, and surrendered themselves to him; and in recounting the calamity of their state said that their senators were reduced from 600 to three; that from 60,000 men they [were reduced] to scarcely 500 who could bear arms, whom Cæsar, that he might appear to use compassion toward the wretched and the suppliant, most carefully spared, and ordered them to enjoy their own territories and towns, and commanded their neighbors that they should restrain themselves and their dependents from offering injury or outrage [to them]....

IV

THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA AND THE DEATH OF POMPEY[46]

(48 b.c.)

Pompey, because he was encamped on a hill, drew up his army at the very foot of it, ever in expectation, as may be conjectured, that Cæsar would expose himself to this disadvantageous situation. Cæsar, seeing no likelihood of being able to bring Pompey to an action, judged it the most expedient method of conducting the war to decamp from that post, and to be always in motion; with this hope, that by shifting his camp and removing from place to place, he might be more conveniently supplied with corn, and also that by being in motion he might get some opportunity of forcing them to battle, and might by constant marches harass Pompey's army, which was not accustomed to fatigue.[47] These matters being settled, when the signal for marching was given, and the tents struck, it was observed that shortly before, contrary to his daily practise, Pompey's army had advanced farther than usual from his entrenchments, so that it appeared possible to come to an action on equal ground. Then Cæsar addrest himself to his soldiers, when they were at the gates of the camp, ready to march out. "We must defer," says he, "our march at present, and set our thoughts on battle, which has been our constant wish; let us then meet the foe with resolute souls. We shall not hereafter easily find such an opportunity." He immediately marched out at the head of his troops.

Pompey also, as was afterward known, at the unanimous solicitation of his friends, had determined to try the fate of a battle. For he had even declared in council a few days before that, before the battalions came to battle, Cæsar's army would be put to the rout. When most people exprest their surprize at it, "I know," says he, "that I promise a thing almost incredible; but hear the plan on which I proceed, that you may march to battle with more confidence and resolution. I have persuaded our cavalry, and they have engaged to execute it, as soon as the two armies have met, to attack Cæsar's right wing on the flank, and enclosing their army on the rear throw them into disorder, and put them to the rout, before we shall throw a weapon against the enemy. By this means we shall put an end to the war, without endangering the legions, and almost without a blow. Nor is this a difficult matter, as we far outnumber them in cavalry." At the same time, he gave them notice to be ready for battle on the day following, and since the opportunity which they had so often wished for was now arrived, not to disappoint the opinion generally entertained of their experience and valor....

Cæsar, observing his former custom, had placed the tenth legion on the right, the ninth on the left, altho it was very much weakened by the battles at Dyrrachium.[48] He placed the eighth legion so close to the ninth as almost to make one of the two, and ordered them to support each other. He drew up on the field eighty cohorts, making a total of twenty-two thousand men. He left two cohorts to guard the camp. He gave the command of the left wing to Antonius, of the right to P. Sulla, and of the center to Cn. Domitius; he himself took his post opposite Pompey. At the same time, fearing, from the disposition of the enemy which we have previously mentioned, lest his right wing might be surrounded by their numerous cavalry, he rapidly drafted a single cohort from each of the legions composing the third line, formed of them a fourth line, and opposed them to Pompey's cavalry, and, acquainting them with his wishes, admonished them that the success of that day depended on their courage. At the same time, he ordered the third line and the entire army not to charge without his command; that he would give the signal whenever he wished them to do so....

But our men, when the signal was given, rushed forward with their javelins ready to be launched, but perceiving that Pompey's men did not run to meet their charge, having acquired experience by custom, and being practised in former battles, they of their own accord repressed their speed, and halted almost midway, that they might not come up with the enemy when their strength was exhausted, and after a short respite they again renewed their course, and threw their javelins, and instantly drew their swords, as Cæsar had ordered them. Nor did Pompey's men fail in this crisis, for they received our javelins, stood our charge, and maintained their ranks; and, having launched their javelins, had recourse to their swords. At the same time, Pompey's horse, according to their orders, rushed out at once from his left wing, and his whole host of archers poured after them. Our cavalry did not withstand their charge; but gave ground a little, upon which Pompey's horse prest them more vigorously, and began to file off in troops, and flank our army. When Cæsar perceived this, he gave the signal to his fourth line, which he had formed of the six cohorts. They instantly rushed forward and charged Pompey's horse with such fury that not a man of them stood; but all wheeling about, not only quitted their post, but galloped forward to seek a refuge in the highest mountains. By their retreat the archers and slingers, being left destitute and defenseless, were all cut to pieces. The cohorts, pursuing their success, wheeled about upon Pompey's left wing, while his infantry still continued to make battle, and attacked them in the rear.

At the same time, Cæsar ordered his third line to advance, which till then had not been engaged, but had kept their post. Thus, new and fresh troops having come to the assistance of the fatigued, and others having made an attack on their rear, Pompey's men were not able to maintain their ground, but all fled,[49] nor was Cæsar deceived in his opinion that the victory, as he had declared in his speech to his soldiers, must have its beginning from those six cohorts, which he had placed as a fourth line to oppose the horse. For by them the cavalry were routed; by them the archers and slingers were cut to pieces; by them the left wing of Pompey's army was surrounded, and obliged to be the first to flee. But when Pompey saw his cavalry routed, and that part of his army on which he reposed his greatest hopes thrown into confusion, despairing of the rest, he quitted the field, and retreated straightway on horseback to his camp, and calling to the centurions, whom he had placed to guard the prætorian gate, with a loud voice, that the soldiers might hear: "Secure the camp," says he, "defend it with diligence, if any danger should threaten it; I will visit the other gates, and encourage the guards of the camp." Having thus said, he retired into his tent in utter despair, yet anxiously waiting the issue.

Cæsar having forced the Pompeians to flee into their entrenchment, and thinking that he ought not to allow them any respite to recover from their fright, exhorted his soldiers to take advantage of fortune's kindness, and to attack the camp. Tho they were fatigued by the intense heat, for the battle had continued till midday, yet, being prepared to undergo any labor, they cheerfully obeyed his command. The camp was bravely defended by the cohorts which had been left to guard it, but with much more spirit by the Thracians and foreign auxiliaries. For the soldiers who had fled for refuge to it from the field of battle, affrighted and exhausted by fatigue, having thrown away their arms and military standards, had their thoughts more engaged on their further escape than on the defense of the camp. Nor could the troops who were posted on the battlements long withstand the immense number of our darts, but fainting under their wounds quitted the place, and under the conduct of their centurions and tribunes fled, without stopping, to the high mountains which adjoined the camp.

In Pompey's camp you might see arbors in which tables were laid, a large quantity of plate set out, the floors of the tents covered with fresh sods, the tents of Lucius Lentulus and others shaded with ivy, and many other things which were proofs of excessive luxury, and a confidence of victory, so that it might readily be inferred that they had no apprehensions of the issue of the day, as they indulged themselves in unnecessary pleasures, and yet upbraided with luxury Cæsar's army, distrest and suffering troops, who had always been in want of common necessaries. Pompey, as soon as our men had forced the trenches, mounting his horse, and stripping off his general's habit, went hastily out of the back gate of the camp, and galloped with all speed to Larissa. Nor did he stop there, but with the same despatch, collecting a few of his flying troops, and halting neither day nor night, he arrived at the seaside, attended by only thirty horse, and went on board a victualing bark, often complaining, as we have been told, that he had been so deceived in his expectation that he was almost persuaded that he had been betrayed by those from whom he had expected victory, as they began the flight.

Cæsar, having possest himself of Pompey's camp, urged his soldiers not to be too intent on plunder, and lose the opportunity of completing their conquest. Having obtained their consent, he began to draw lines round the mountain. The Pompeians distrusting the position, as there was no water on the mountain, abandoned it, and all began to retreat toward Larissa, which Cæsar perceiving divided his troops, and ordering part of his legions to remain in Pompey's camp, sent back a part to his own camp, and, taking four legions with him, went by a shorter road to intercept the enemy; and having marched six miles, drew up his army. But the Pompeians, observing this, took a post on a mountain, whose foot was washed by a river. Cæsar having encouraged his troops, tho they were greatly exhausted by incessant labor the whole day, and night was now approaching, by throwing up works cut off the communication between the river and the mountain, that the enemy might not get water in the night. As soon as the work was finished, they sent ambassadors to treat about a capitulation. A few senators who had espoused that party made their escape by night.

At break of day, Cæsar ordered all those who had taken post on the mountain to come down from the higher grounds into the plain and pile their arms. When they did this without refusal, and, with, outstretched arms, prostrating themselves on the ground, with tears, implored his mercy, he comforted them and bade them rise, and having spoken a few words of his own clemency to alleviate their fears, he pardoned them all, and gave orders to his soldiers that no injury should be done to them, and nothing taken from them. Having used this diligence, he ordered the legions in his camp to come and meet him, and those which were with him to take their turn of rest, and go back to the camp, and the same day went to Larissa.

In that battle, no more than two hundred privates were missing, but Cæsar lost about thirty centurions, valiant officers. Crastinus, also, of whom mention was made before, fighting most courageously, lost his life by the wound of a sword in the mouth, nor was that false which he declared when marching to battle; for Cæsar entertained the highest opinion of his behavior in that battle, and thought him highly deserving of his approbation. Of Pompey's army, there fell about fifteen thousand; but upward of twenty-four thousand were made prisoners; for even the cohorts which were stationed in the forts surrendered to Sulla. Several others took shelter in the neighboring states. One hundred and eighty stands of colors and nine eagles were brought to Cæsar. Lucius Domitius, fleeing from the camp to the mountains, his strength being exhausted by fatigue, was killed....

Cæsar thought he ought to postpone all business and pursue Pompey, whithersoever he should retreat, that he might not be able to provide fresh forces, and renew the war; he therefore marched on every day, as far as his cavalry were able to advance, and ordered one legion to follow him by shorter journeys. A proclamation was issued by Pompey at Amphipolis[50] that all the young men of that province, Grecians and Roman citizens, should take the military oath; but whether he issued it with an intention of preventing suspicion, and to conceal as long as possible his design of fleeing farther, or to endeavor to keep possession of Macedonia by new levies, if nobody pursued him, it is impossible to judge. He lay at anchor one night, and calling together his friends in Amphipolis, and collecting a sum of money for his necessary expenses, upon advice of Cæsar's approach, set sail from that place, and arrived in a few days at Mitylene.[51] Here he was detained two days, and having added a few galleys to his fleet he went to Cilicia, and thence to Cyprus. There he is informed that, by the consent of all the inhabitants of Antioch[52] and Roman citizens who traded there, the castle had been seized to shut him out of the town; and that messengers had been dispatched to all those who were reported to have taken refuge in the neighboring states, that they should not come to Antioch; that if they did so, it would be attended with imminent danger to their lives. The same thing had happened to Lucius Lentulus, who had been Consul the year before, and to Publius Lentulus, a consular senator, and to several others at Rhodes,[53] who having followed Pompey in his flight, and arrived at the island, were not admitted into the town or port; and having received a message to leave that neighborhood, set sail much against their will; for the rumor of Cæsar's approach had now reached those states.

Pompey, being informed of these proceedings, laid aside his design of going to Syria, and having taken the public money from the farmers of the revenue, and borrowed more from some private friends, and having put on board his ships a large quantity of brass for military purposes, and two thousand armed men, whom he partly selected from the slaves of the tax farmers, and partly collected from the merchants, and such persons as each of his friends thought fit on this occasion, he sailed for Pelusium.[54] It happened that King Ptolemy,[55] a minor, was there with a considerable army, engaged in war with his sister Cleopatra, whom a few months before, by the assistance of his relatives and friends, he had expelled from the kingdom; and her camp lay at a small distance from his. To him Pompey applied to be permitted to take refuge in Alexandria, and to be protected in his calamity by his powerful assistance, in consideration of the friendship and amity which had subsisted between his father and him. But Pompey's deputies, having executed their commission, began to converse with less restraint with the king's troops, and to advise them to act with friendship to Pompey, and not to think meanly of his bad fortune. In Ptolemy's army were several of Pompey's soldiers, of whom Gabinius[56] had received the command in Syria, and had brought them over to Alexandria, and at the conclusion of the war had left with Ptolemy the father of the young king.

The king's friends, who were regents of the kingdom during the minority, being informed of these things, either induced by fear, as they afterward declared, lest Pompey should corrupt the king's army, and seize on Alexandria[57] and Egypt, or despising his bad fortune, as in adversity friends commonly change to enemies, in public gave a favorable answer to his deputies, and desired him to come to the king; but secretly laid a plot against him, and dispatched Achillas, captain of the king's guards, a man of singular boldness, and Lucius Septimius, a military tribune, to assassinate him. Being kindly addrest by them, and deluded by an acquaintance with Septimius, because in the war with the pirates the latter had commanded a company under him, he embarked in a small boat, with a few attendants, and was there murdered by Achillas and Septimius. In like manner, Lucius Lentulus was seized by the king's order, and put to death in prison....

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Cicero, whose praise of Cæsar as a writer has been shared by many readers since his time, described Cæsar's works as "unadorned, straightforward, and elegant, their ornament being stript off as it were a garment." Cæsar did his work so well that "he has deterred all men of sound taste from touching him."

[34] From Book IV of the "Commentaries on the Gallic War." Translated by McDivett and W. S. Bohn. The site of this bridge is believed to be in the neighborhood of Cologne.

[35] The Suevi were migratory Germans who, in Cæsar's time, occupied the eastern banks of the Rhine in and about the present country of Baden.

[36] From Book V of the "Commentaries on the Gallic War."

[37] The Belgæ comprised various tribes that lived between the Seine and the Rhine and were the most warlike of the Gauls.

[38] Cæsar's error here has often been commented on, Spain lying to the south, rather than to the west, of Britain.

[39] Now known as the Isle of Man.

[40] Cassivelaunus was a chieftain of the Britons who had been entrusted with the supreme command against Cæsar. His own territory lay north of the Thames.

[41] Bede, the learned Benedictine, who lived in the eighth century, says that, in his time, remains of these stakes were still to be seen.

[42] These people occupied what are now the counties of Essex and Middlesex.

[43] The translator notes that Tacitus has remarked that Britain was surveyed, rather than conquered, by Cæsar. He gives the honor of its real conquest to his own father-in-law, Agricola. While the Roman armies "owe much to the military virtues of Agricola as displayed in England, Cæsar," adds the translator, "did what no one had done before him; he levied tribute upon the Britons and effectually paved the way for all that Rome subsequently accomplished in this island."

[44] From Book II of the "Commentaries on the Gallic War."

[45] The Nervii were one of the Belgic tribes and are understood to have been the most warlike of them all.

[46] From Book III of the "Commentaries on the Civil War." Pharsalia is a district of Thessaly in Greece. Cæsar's army numbered 22,000 legionaries and 1,000 cavalry; Pompey's, 45,000 legionaries and 7,000 cavalry.

[47] Pompey's army having been recruited from aristocratic families and their dependents, was not so much accustomed to the severities of war as were the soldiers of Cæsar, recruited largely from the populace.

[48] The modern Durazzo, a seaport on the Adriatic in Albania. It was founded by colonies from Corfu about 625 B.C. and became important afterward as a terminus of one of the great Roman roads. Pompey here defeated Cæsar a short time before he was himself defeated at Pharsalia.

[49] Cæsar on this occasion is said to have advised his soldiers to aim at the faces of Pompey's cavalry, who, being composed principally of the young noblemen of Rome, dreaded a scar in the face more than death itself.

[50] Amphipolis, a city of Macedonia, originally Thracian, but colonized from Athens. It was situated three miles inland from the Ægean Sea.

[51] Mitylene was the capital of the island of Lesbos, and an important maritime power in ancient times.

[52] Arrowsmith describes Antioch as, not only the capital of Syria, but at one time of Western Asia. It was for years the third city of the world in beauty, size, and population. It was here that the followers of Christ first received the name of Christians (in A.D. 39), having before been called Nazarenes and Galileans. In a neighboring grove stood a famous temple to Apollo and Diana.

[53] Rhodes is the largest island in the Ægean Sea after Crete and Eubœa. Its capital, having the same name and situated near the northern end of the island, was famous for a bronze statue of the sun called the Colossus, which was one of the "seven wonders of the world."

[54] Pelusium was an ancient city of Egypt, situated in the delta of the Nile, strongly fortified and regarded as the gate to Egypt, on its eastern frontier. It lay in the midst of marshes formed by the overflow of the river, and continued its importance, in a military sense, until the waters of the river found their way into the Damietta branch.

[55] Ptolemy XII, who came to the throne of Egypt co-jointly with his sister Cleopatra in 51 b.c. He expelled Cleopatra in 49, and in 48 Cæsar reinstated her. In the war which ensued, he was defeated and drowned in the Nile.

[56] Gabinius was a Roman tribune who had proposed the statute bearing his name which gave to Pompey command of the Mediterranean coast for the suppression of pirates.

[57] Alexandria was founded in 331 b.c. by Alexander the Great. Its principal street, 2,000 feet wide, was adorned with "some of the most costly edifices and structures of marble which perhaps the world ever saw." Many of these marbles were subsequently taken to Rome and Constantinople. Alexandria for a long period was the center of commerce for all merchandise passing between Europe and the East. As a city of learning, it possest a famous library, which at one period comprized 700,000 volumes.

SALLUST

Born in Italy about 86 b.c.; died about 34; elected tribune in 52; expelled from the Senate by the censors in 50, probably for being an active partizan of Cæsar; accompanied Cæsar on his African campaign in 46; became governor of Numidia, where he is said to have amassed a fortune unjustly; author of histories of the Catiline conspiracy and the war with Jugurtha.[58]

I

THE GENESIS OF CATILINE[59]

Of the city of Rome, as I understand, the founders and earliest inhabitants were the Trojans, who, under the conduct of Æneas, were wandering about as exiles from their country, without any settled abode; and with these were joined the Aborigines, a savage race of men, without laws or government, free, and owning no control. How easily these two tribes, tho of different origin, dissimilar language, and opposite habits of life, formed a union when they met within the same walls is almost incredible. But when their state, from an accession of population and territory and an improved condition of morals, showed itself tolerably flourishing and powerful, envy, as is generally the case in human affairs, was the consequence of its prosperity. The neighboring kings and people, accordingly, began to assail them in war, while a few only of their friends came to their support; for the rest, struck with alarm, shrunk from sharing their dangers. But the Romans, active at home and in the field, prepared with alacrity for their defense. They encouraged one another, and hurried to meet the enemy. They protected, with their arms, their liberty, their country, and their homes. And when they had at length repelled danger by valor, they lent assistance to their allies and supporters, and procured friendships rather by bestowing favors than by receiving them.

They had a government regulated by laws. The denomination of their government was monarchy. Chosen men, whose bodies might be enfeebled by years, but whose minds were vigorous in understanding, formed the council of the state; and these, whether from their age, or from the similarity of their duty, were called Fathers. But afterward, when the monarchical power, which had been originally established for the protection of liberty and for the promotion of the public interest, had degenerated into tyranny and oppression, they changed their plan, and appointed two magistrates, with power only annual; for they conceived that, by this method, the human mind would be least likely to grow overbearing through want of control.

At this period every citizen began to seek distinction, and to display his talents with greater freedom; for, with princes, the meritorious are greater objects of suspicion than the undeserving, and to them the worth of others is a source of alarm. But when liberty was secured, it is almost incredible how much the state strengthened itself in a short space of time, so strong a passion for distinction had pervaded it. Now, for the first time, the youth, as soon as they were able to bear the toils of war, acquired military skill by actual service in the camp, and took pleasure rather in splendid arms and military steeds than in the society of mistresses and convivial indulgence. To such men no toil was unusual, no place was difficult or inaccessible, no armed enemy was formidable; their valor had overcome everything. But among themselves the grand rivalry was for glory; each sought to be first to wound an enemy, to scale a wall, and to be noticed while performing such an exploit. Distinction such as this they regarded as wealth, honor, and true nobility. They were covetous of praise, but liberal of money; they desired competent riches, but boundless glory. I could mention, but that the account would draw me too far from my subject, places in which the Roman people, with a small body of men, routed vast armies of the enemy; and cities which, tho fortified by nature, they carried by assault....

By these two virtues, intrepidity in war and equity in peace, they maintained themselves and their state; of their exercise of which virtues, I consider these as the greatest proofs: that, in war, punishment was oftener inflicted on those who attacked an enemy contrary to orders, and who, when commanded to retreat, retired too slowly from the contest, than on those who had dared to desert their standards, or, when prest by the enemy, to abandon their posts; and that, in peace, they governed more by conferring benefits than by exciting terror, and, when they received an injury, chose rather to pardon than to revenge it.

But when, by perseverance and integrity, the republic had increased its power; when mighty princes had been vanquished in war; when barbarous tribes and populous states had been reduced to subjection; when Carthage, the rival of Rome's dominion, had been utterly destroyed, and sea and land lay everywhere open to her sway, Fortune then began to exercise her tyranny, and to introduce universal innovation. To those who had easily endured toils, dangers, and doubtful and difficult circumstances, ease and wealth, the objects of desire to others, became a burden and a trouble. At first the love of money, and then that of power, began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil. For avarice subverted honesty, integrity, and other honorable principles, and in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion, and general venality. Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart. These vices at first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes restrained by correction; but afterward, when their infection had spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became rapacious and insupportable.

At first, however, it was ambition, rather than avarice, that influenced the minds of men—a vice which approaches nearer to virtue than the other. For of glory, honor, and power, the worthy is as desirous as the worthless; but the one pursues them by just methods; the other, being destitute of honorable qualities, works with fraud and deceit. But avarice has merely money for its object, which no wise man has ever immoderately desired. It is a vice which, as if imbued with deadly poison, enervates whatever is manly in body or mind. It is always unbounded and insatiable, and is abated neither by abundance nor by want.

But after Lucius Sulla, having recovered the government by force of arms, proceeded, after a fair commencement, to a pernicious termination, all became robbers and plunderers; some set their affections on houses, others on lands; his victorious troops knew neither restraint nor moderation, but inflicted on the citizens disgraceful and inhuman outrages. Their rapacity was increased by the circumstance that Sulla, in order to secure the attachment of the forces which he had commanded in Asia, had treated them, contrary to the practise of our ancestors, with extraordinary indulgence and exemption from discipline; and pleasant and luxurious quarters had easily, during seasons of idleness, enervated the minds of the soldiery. Then the armies of the Roman people first became habituated to licentiousness and intemperance, and began to admire statues, pictures, and sculptured vases; to seize such objects alike in public edifices and private dwellings; to spoil temples; and to cast off respect for everything, sacred and profane. Such troops, accordingly, when once they obtained the mastery, left nothing to the vanquished. Success unsettles the principles even of the wise, and scarcely would those of debauched habits use victory with moderation....

In so populous and so corrupt a city, Catiline, as it was very easy to do, kept about him, like a body-guard, crowds of the unprincipled and desperate. For all those shameless, libertine, and profligate characters who had dissipated their patrimonies by gaming, luxury, and sensuality; all who had contracted heavy debts, to purchase immunity for their crimes or offenses; all assassins or sacrilegious persons from every quarter, convicted or dreading conviction for their evil deeds; all, besides, whom their tongue or their hand maintained by perjury or civil bloodshed; all, in fine, whom wickedness, poverty, or a guilty conscience disquieted, were the associates and intimate friends of Catiline. And if any one, as yet of unblemished character, fell into his society, he was presently rendered, by daily intercourse and temptation, similar and equal to the rest. But it was the young whose acquaintance he chiefly courted, as their minds, ductile and unsettled from their age, were easily ensnared by his stratagems. For as the passions of each, according to his years, appeared excited, he furnished mistresses to some, bought horses and dogs for others, and spared, in a word, neither his purse nor his character, if he could but make them his devoted and trustworthy supporters. There were some, I know, who thought that the youth who frequented the house of Catiline were guilty of crimes against nature; but this report arose rather from other causes than from any evidence of the fact....

Depending on such accomplices and adherents, and knowing that the load of debt was everywhere great, and that the veterans of Sulla,[60] having spent their money too liberally, and remembering their spoils and former victory, were longing for a civil war, Catiline formed the design of overthrowing the government. There was no army in Italy; Pompey was fighting in a distant part of the world;[61] he himself had great hopes of obtaining the consulship; the Senate was wholly off its guard; everything was quiet and tranquil, and all these circumstances were exceedingly favorable for Catiline....

II

THE FATE OF THE CONSPIRATORS[62]

When the Senate, as I have stated, had gone over to the opinion of Cato, the Consul, thinking it best not to wait till night, which was coming on, lest any new attempts should be made during the interval, ordered the triumvirs to make such preparations as the execution of the conspirators required. He himself, having posted the necessary guards, conducted Lentulus[63] to the prison; and the same office was performed for the rest by the prætors.

There is a place in the prison, which is called the Tullian dungeon,[64] and which, after a slight ascent to the left, is sunk about twelve feet under ground. Walls secure it on every side, and over it is a vaulted roof connected with stone arches; but its appearance is disgusting and horrible, by reason of the filth, darkness, and stench. When Lentulus had been let down into this place, certain men, to whom orders had been given, strangled him with a cord. Thus this patrician who was of the illustrious family of the Cornelii, and who had filled the office of Consul at Rome, met with an end suited to his character and conduct. On Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius, and Cœparius, punishment was inflicted in a similar manner.

During these proceedings at Rome, Catiline, out of the entire force which he himself had brought with him, and that which Manlius had previously collected, formed two legions, filling up the cohorts as far as his numbers would allow; and afterward, as any volunteers, or recruits from his confederates, arrived in his camp, he distributed them equally throughout the cohorts, and thus filled up his legions, in a short time, with their regular number of men, tho at first he had not had more than two thousand. But, of his whole army, only about a fourth part had the proper weapons of soldiers; the rest, as chance had equipped them, carried darts, spears, or sharpened stakes.

As Antonius[65] approached with his army, Catiline directed his march over the hills, encamping, at one time, in the direction of Rome, at another in that of Gaul. He gave the enemy no opportunity of fighting, yet hoped himself shortly to find one, if his accomplices at Rome should succeed in their objects. Slaves, meanwhile, of whom vast numbers had at first flocked to him, he continued to reject, not only as depending on the strength of the conspiracy, but as thinking it impolitic to appear to share the cause of citizens with runagates.

When it was reported in his camp, however, that the conspiracy had been discovered at Rome, and that Lentulus, Cethegus, and the rest whom I have named had been put to death, most of those whom the hope of plunder or the love of change had led to join in the war fell away. The remainder Catiline conducted, over rugged mountains and by forced marches, into the neighborhood of Pistoria, with a view to escape covertly, by crossroads, into Gaul.

But Quintus Metellus Celer, who, with a force of three legions, had, at that time, his station at Picenum, suspected that Catiline, from the difficulties of his position, would adopt precisely the course which we have just described. When, therefore, he had learned Catiline's route from some deserters, he immediately broke up his camp, and took his post at the very foot of the hills, at the point where Catiline's descent would be, in his hurried march into Gaul.[66] Nor was Antonius far distant, as he was pursuing, tho with a large army, yet through plainer ground, and with fewer hindrances, the enemy in retreat.

Catiline, when he saw that he was surrounded by mountains and by hostile forces, that his schemes in the city had been unsuccessful, and that there was no hope either of escape or of succor, thinking it best, in such circumstances, to try the fortune of a battle, resolved upon engaging, as speedily as possible, with Antonius....

When he had spoken, he ordered, after a short delay, the signal for battle to be sounded, and led down his troops, in regular order, to the level ground. Having then sent away the horses of all the cavalry, in order to increase the men's courage by making their danger equal, he himself, on foot, drew up his troops suitably to their numbers and the nature of the ground. As a plain stretched between the mountains on the left, with a rugged rock on the right, he placed eight cohorts in front, and stationed the rest of his force, in close order, in the rear. From among these he removed all the ablest centurions, the veterans, and the stoutest of the common soldiers that were regularly armed into the foremost ranks. He ordered Caius Manlius to take the command on the right, and a certain officer of Fæsulæ on the left; while he himself, with his freedmen and the colonists, took his station by the eagle, which Caius Marius was said to have had in his army in the Cimbrian war.

On the other side, Caius Antonius, who, being lame, was unable to be present in the engagement, gave the command of the army to Marcus Petreius, his lieutenant-general. Petreius ranged the cohorts of veterans, which he had raised to meet the present insurrection, in front, and behind them the rest of his force in lines. Then, riding round among his troops, and addressing his men by name, he encouraged them, and bade them remember that they were to fight against unarmed marauders, in defense of their country, their children, their temples, and their homes. Being a military man, and having served with great reputation for more than thirty years, as tribune, prefect, lieutenant, or prætor, he knew most of the soldiers and their honorable actions, and, by calling these to their remembrance, roused the spirits of the men.

When he had made a complete survey, he gave the signal with the trumpet, and ordered the cohorts to advance slowly. The army of the enemy followed his example; and when they had approached so near that the action could be commenced by the light-armed troops, both sides, with a loud shout, rushed together in a furious charge. They threw aside their missiles, and fought only with their swords. The veterans, calling to mind their deeds of old, engaged fiercely in the closest combat. The enemy made an obstinate resistance; and both sides contended with the utmost fury. Catiline, during this time, was exerting himself with his light troops in the front, sustaining such as were prest, substituting fresh men for the wounded, attending to every exigency, charging in person, wounding many an enemy, and performing at once the duties of a valiant soldier and a skilful general.

When Petreius, contrary to his expectation, found Catiline attacking him with such impetuosity, he led his prætorian cohort against the center of the enemy, among whom, being thus thrown into confusion, and offering but partial resistance, he made great slaughter, and ordered, at the same time, an assault on both flanks. Manlius and the Fæsulan, sword in hand, were among the first that fell; and Catiline, when he saw his army routed, and himself left with but few supporters, remembering his birth and former dignity, rushed into the thickest of the enemy, where he was slain, fighting to the last.

When the battle was over, it was plainly seen what boldness and what energy of spirit had prevailed throughout the army of Catiline; for, almost everywhere, every soldier, after yielding up his breath, covered with his corpse the spot which he had occupied when alive. A few, indeed, whom the prætorian cohort had dispersed, had fallen somewhat differently, but all with wounds in front. Catiline himself was found, far in advance of his men, among the dead bodies of the enemy; he still breathed, and exprest in his countenance the fierceness of spirit which he had shown during his life. Of his whole army, neither in the battle, nor in flight, was any free-born citizen made prisoner, for they had spared their own lives no more than those of the enemy.

Nor did the army of the Roman people obtain a joyful or bloodless victory; for all their bravest men were either killed in the battle or left the field severely wounded.

Of many who went from the camp to view the ground or plunder the slain, some, in turning over the bodies of the enemy, discovered a friend, others an acquaintance, others a relative; some, too, recognized their enemies. Thus, gladness and sorrow, grief and joy, were variously felt throughout the whole army.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] Quintilian thought Sallust had rivaled Thucydides, but it has generally been held that he rather imitated him. The resemblance lies in the main in the language he employs. Cruttwell remarks "that the deep insight of the Athenian into the connection of events is far removed from the popular rhetoric in which the Roman deplores the decline of virtue."

[59] From "The Conspiracy of Catiline." Translated by J. S. Watson. Catiline came of an old but impoverished patrician family. In the first Civil War, he had joined Sulla, and in the time of the proscription is said to have killed with his own hand his brother-in-law. In 67 b.c. he was governor of Africa; in 64 he joined P. Antronius in an attempt to murder the consuls-elect; in 64 he was himself defeated for the consulship.

[60] These were men to whom Sulla had given land as rewards for services, but who from extravagance had fallen into debt. Cicero said nothing could help them but the resurrection of Sulla from the dead.

[61] Pompey was then conducting his campaign against Mithridates.

[62] From "The Conspiracy of Catiline." Translated by J. S. Watson.

[63] Lentulus, who came of the ancient and noble Cornelian family, was one of the chiefs of the Catiline conspiracy. In 71 b.c. he was Consul, but in the next year was ejected from the Senate for "infamous life and manners."

[64] The Tullian dungeon at Rome was built by King Ancus Martius and enlarged by Servius Tullius, from whom it derived its name. It still exists as a subterranean chapel beneath the small church of San Pietro in Carcere. The church tradition is that St. Peter was imprisoned in this dungeon.

[65] Not the triumvir, but his uncle, Caius Antonius, a man who after the conspiracy made a scandalous record, and in consequence was surnamed "Hybrida." He was Consul with Cicero, and is believed to have been one of the original Catiline conspirators, but Cicero gained him over to his own side by promising him the rich province of Macedonia. As Consul, Antonius was under the necessity of leading the army against Catiline; but, owing to unwillingness to fight against his former friend (Sallust says owing to lameness) he gave the immediate command on the day of battle to his legate, Petreius. The father of this Antonius and the grandfather of Mark Antony, the triumvir, was Mark Antony, the orator, frequently referred to by Cicero as one of the greatest of Roman orators.

[66] That is, northern Italy, which In ancient times had been occupied by Gallic people. Pistoria was an Etruscan town lying at the foot of the Apennines.

LIVY

Born In Padua in 59 b.c.; died there in 17 a.d.; one of the most famous of the Roman historians; his work, embracing the period from the founding of the city, comprized one hundred and forty-two books, of which only thirty-five have come down to us; he spent over forty years in writing the history; he wrote also philosophical dialogs and a work on rhetorical training.[67]

I

HORATIUS COCLES AT THE BRIDGE[68]

(About 510 b.c.)

The Sublician bridge[69] well-nigh afforded a passage to the enemy, had it not been for one man, Horatius Cocles, given by fortune on that day as a defense of Rome. He happened to be posted on guard at the bridge and when he saw the Janiculum taken by a sudden assault, and that the enemy were pouring down thence in full speed, and that his own party in terror and confusion were abandoning their arms and ranks—laying hold of them one by one, standing in their way, and appealing to the faith of gods and men, he declared "that their flight would avail them nothing if they deserted their post; if they passed the bridge and left it behind them, there would soon be more of the enemy in the Palatium and Capitol than in the Janiculum; for that reason he advised and charged them to demolish the bridge, by their sword, by fire, or by any means whatever; that he would stand the shock of the enemy as far as could be done by one man."

He then advanced to the first entrance of the bridge, and being easily distinguished among those who showed their backs in retreating from the fight, facing about to engage the foe hand to hand, by his surprizing bravery he terrified the enemy. Two indeed a sense of shame kept with him—Spurius Lartius and Titus Herminius—men eminent for their birth, and renowned for their gallant exploits.

With them he for a short time stood the first storm of the danger, and the severest brunt of the battle. But as they who demolished the bridge called upon them to retire, he obliged them also to withdraw to a place of safety on a small portion of the bridge still left. Then casting his stern eyes round all the officers of the Etrurians in a threatening manner, he sometimes challenged them singly, sometimes reproached them all: "the slaves of haughty tyrants, who, regardless of their own freedom, came to oppress the liberty of others." They hesitated for a considerable time, looking round one at the other, to commence the fight; shame then put the army in motion, and a shout being raised, they hurled their weapons from all sides on their single adversary; and when they all stuck in the shield held before him, and he with no less obstinacy kept possession of the bridge with firm step, they now endeavored to thrust him down from it by one push, when at once the crash of the falling bridge, at the same time a shout of the Romans raised for joy at having completed their purpose, checked their ardor with sudden panic. Then Cocles says, "Holy father Tiberinus, I pray that thou wouldst receive these arms and this thy soldier in thy propitious stream." Armed as he was, he leapt into the Tiber, and, amid showers of darts hurled on him, swam across safe to his party, having dared an act which is likely to obtain more fame than belief with posterity. The state was grateful toward such valor; a statue was erected to him in the Comitium, and as much land was given to him as he plowed around in one day. The zeal of private individuals also was conspicuous among the public honors. For amid the great scarcity, each person contributed something to him according to his supply at home, depriving himself of his own support.

II

HANNIBAL'S CROSSING OF THE ALPS[70]

(218 b.c.)

From the Druentia, by a road that lay principally through plains, Hannibal arrived at the Alps without molestation from the Gauls who inhabit those regions. Then, tho the scene had been previously anticipated from report (by which uncertainties are wont to be exaggerated), yet the height of the mountains when viewed so near, and the snows almost mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and wildly drest, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renewed their alarm.

To them, marching up the first acclivities, the mountaineers appeared occupying the heights overhead, who, if they had occupied the more concealed valleys, might, by rushing out suddenly to the attack, have occasioned great flight and havoc. Hannibal orders them to halt, and having sent forward Gauls to view the ground, when he found there was no passage that way, he pitches his camp in the widest valley he could find, among places all rugged and precipitous. Then, having learned from the same Gauls, when they had mixed in conversation with the mountaineers, from whom they differed little in language and manners, that the pass was only beset during the day, and that at night each withdrew to his own dwelling, he advanced at the dawn to the heights, as if designing openly and by day to force his way through the defile. The day then being passed in feigning a different attempt from that which was in preparation, when they had fortified the camp in the same place where they had halted, as soon as he perceived that the mountaineers had descended from the heights, and that the guards were withdrawn, having lighted for show a greater number of fires than was proportioned to the number that remained, and having left the baggage in the camp, with the cavalry and the principal part of the infantry, he himself with a party of light-armed soldiers, consisting of all the most courageous of his troops, rapidly cleared the defile, and took posts on those very heights which the enemy had occupied.

At dawn of light the next day the camp broke up, and the rest of the army began to move forward. The mountaineers, on a signal being given, were now assembling from their forts to their usual station, when they suddenly behold part of the enemy overhanging them from above, in possession of their former position, and the others passing along the road. Both these objects, presented at the same time to the eye and the mind, made them stand motionless for a little while; but when they afterward saw the confusion in the pass, and that the marching body was thrown into disorder by the tumult which itself created, principally from the horses being terrified, thinking that whatever terror they added would suffice for the destruction of the enemy, they scramble along the dangerous rocks, as being accustomed alike to pathless and circuitous ways. Then indeed the Carthaginians were opposed at once by the enemy and by the difficulties of the ground; and each striving to escape first from the danger, there was more fighting among themselves than with their opponents. The horses, in particular, created danger in the lines, which being terrified by the discordant clamors that the groves and reechoing valleys augmented, fell into confusion; and if by chance struck or wounded, they were so dismayed that they occasioned a great loss both of men and baggage of every description; and as the pass on both sides was broken and precipitous, this tumult threw many down to an immense depth, some even of the armed men; but the beasts of burden, with their loads, were rolled down like the fall of some vast fabric.

Tho these disasters were shocking to view, Hannibal, however, held his place for a little, and kept his men together, lest he might augment the tumult and disorder: but afterward, when he saw the line broken, and that there was danger that he should bring over his army preserved to no purpose if deprived of their baggage, he hastened down from the higher ground; and tho he had routed the enemy by the first onset alone, he at the same time increased the disorder in his own army; but that tumult was composed in a moment, after the roads were cleared by the flight of the mountaineers, and presently the whole army was conducted through, not only without being disturbed, but almost in silence. He then took a fortified place, which was the capital of that district, and the little villages that lay around it, and fed his army for three days with the corn and cattle he had taken; and during these three days, as the soldiers were neither obstructed by the mountaineers, who had been daunted by the first engagement, nor yet much by the ground, he made considerable way.

He then came to another state, abounding, for a mountainous country, with inhabitants, where he was nearly overcome, not by open war, but by his own arts of treachery and ambuscade. Some old men, governors of forts, came as deputies to the Carthaginian, professing, "that having been warned by the useful example of the calamities of others, they wished rather to experience the friendship than the hostilities of the Carthaginians; they would, therefore, obediently execute his commands, and begged that he would accept of a supply of provisions, guides of his march, and hostages for the sincerity of their promises." Hannibal, when he had answered them in a friendly manner, thinking that they should neither be rashly trusted nor yet rejected, lest if repulsed they might openly become enemies, having received the hostages whom they proffered, and made use of the provisions which they of their own accord brought down to the road, followed their guides, by no means as among a people with whom he was at peace, but with his line of march in close order. The elephants and cavalry formed the van of the marching body; he himself, examining everything around, and intent on every circumstance, followed with the choicest of his infantry. When they came into a narrower pass, lying on one side beneath an overhanging eminence, the barbarians, rising at once on all sides from their ambush, assail them in front and rear, both at close quarters and from a distance, and roll down huge stones on the army. The most numerous body of men prest on the rear; against whom the infantry facing about and directing their attack made it very obvious that, had not the rear of the army been well supported, a great loss must have been sustained in that pass. Even as it was, they came to the extremity of danger, and almost to destruction; for while Hannibal hesitated to lead down his division into the defile, because, tho he himself was a protection to the cavalry, he had not in the same way left any aid to the infantry in the rear; the mountaineers, charging obliquely, and on having broken through the middle of the army, took possession of the road; and one night was spent by Hannibal without his cavalry and baggage....

On the standards being moved forward at daybreak, when the army proceeded slowly over all places entirely blocked up with snow, and languor and despair strongly appeared in the countenances of all, Hannibal, having advanced before the standards, and ordered the soldiers to halt on a certain eminence, whence there was a prospect far and wide, pointed out to them Italy and the plains of the Po, extending themselves beneath the Alpine mountains; and said "that they were now surmounting not only the ramparts of Italy, but also of the city of Rome; that the rest of the journey would be smooth and down-hill; that after one, or, at most, a second battle, they would have the citadel and capital of Italy in their power and possession." The army then began to advance, the enemy now making no attempts beyond petty thefts, as opportunity offered. But the journey proved much more difficult than it had been in the ascent, as the declivity of the Alps, being generally shorter on the side of Italy, is consequently steeper; for nearly all the road was precipitous, narrow, and slippery, so that neither those who made the least stumble could prevent themselves from falling, nor, when fallen, remain in the same place, but rolled, both men and beasts of burden, one upon another.

They then came to a rock much more narrow, and formed of such perpendicular ledges that a light-armed soldier, carefully making the attempt, and clinging with his hands to the bushes and roots around, could with difficulty lower himself down. The ground, even before very steep by nature, had been broken by a recent falling away of the earth into a precipice of nearly a thousand feet in depth. Here when the cavalry halted, as if at the end of their journey, it was announced to Hannibal, wondering what obstructed the march, that the rock was impassable. Having then gone himself to view the place, it seemed clear to him that he must lead his army, by however great a circuit, through the pathless and untrodden regions around it. But this route also proved impracticable; for while the new snow of a moderate depth remained on the old, which had not been removed, their footsteps were planted with ease as they walked upon the new snow, which was soft and not too deep; but when it was dissolved by the trampling of so many men and beasts of burden, they then walked on the bare ice below, and through the dirty fluid formed by the melting snow. Here there was a wretched struggle, both on account of the slippery ice not affording any hold to the step, and giving way beneath the foot more readily by reason of the slope; and whether they assisted themselves in rising by their hands or their knees, their supports themselves giving way, they would tumble again; nor were there any stumps or roots near by pressing against which one might with hand or foot support oneself; so that they only floundered on the smooth ice and amidst the melted snow. The beasts of burden sometimes also cut into this lower ice by merely treading upon it, at others they broke it completely through, by the violence with which they struck in their hoofs in their struggling, so that most of them, as if taken in a trap, stuck in the hardened and deeply frozen ice.

At length, after the men and beasts of burden had been fatigued to no purpose, the camp was pitched on the summit, the ground being cleared for that purpose with great difficulty, so much snow was there to be dug out and carried away. The soldiers being then set to make a way down the cliff, by which alone a passage could be effected, and it being necessary that they should cut through the rocks, having felled and lopped a number of large trees which grew around, they make a huge pile of timber; and as soon as a strong wind fit for exciting the flames arose, they set fire to it, and, pouring vinegar on the heated stones, they render them soft and crumbling. They then open a way with iron instruments through the rock thus heated by the fire, and soften its declivities by gentle windings, so that not only the beasts of burden, but also the elephants, could be led down it. Four days were spent about this rock, the beasts nearly perishing through hunger; for the summits of the mountains are for the most part bare, and if there is any pasture the snows bury it. The lower parts contain valleys, and some sunny hills, and rivulets flowing beside woods, and scenes more worthy of the abode of man. There the beasts of burden were sent out to pasture, and rest given for three days to the men, fatigued with forming the passage; they then descended into the plains, the country and the dispositions of the inhabitants being now less rugged.

In this manner chiefly they came to Italy, in the fifth month (as some authors relate) after leaving New Carthage, having crossed the Alps in fifteen days. What number of forces Hannibal had when he had passed into Italy is by no means agreed upon by authors. Those who state them at the highest make mention of a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse; those who state them at the lowest, of twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse. Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who relates that he was made prisoner by Hannibal, would influence me most as an authority did he not confound the number by adding the Gauls and Ligurians. Including these (who, it is more probable, flocked to him afterward, as some authors assert), he says that eighty thousand foot and ten thousand horse were brought into Italy; and that he had heard from Hannibal himself that, after crossing the Rhone, he had lost thirty-six thousand men, and an immense number of horses and other beasts of burden among the Taurini,[71] the next nation to the Gauls, as he descended into Italy.

III

HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO AT ZAMA[72]

(202 b.c.)