Montesquieu
Considerations on the Causes of
the
Greatness of the Romans
and their Decline
1734
TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION,
by David Lowenthal
THE FREE PRESS, NEW YORK
COLLIER-MACMILLAN LIMITED,
LONDON
EDITOR'S NOTE
With this new translation of Montesquieu's Considerations on the Greatness and Decline of the Romans the Agora Editions makes available another capital text in political philosophy, a text which is important not only on historical grounds but because of the relevance of its thought to modern problems. The work has fallen into undue neglect: Napoleon admired it and recognized its Machiavellian roots. Through it can be seen the way in which the new political doctrines were transmitted from their origins and transformed on their way to the American founders and the French revolutionaries.
We continue our policy of publishing useful works not adequately presented in English, in a format which makes it most possible to penetrate the spirit of the source.
Allan Bloom
General Editor, Agora Editions
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
This work was first published in 1734, not in France but in Holland, and anonymously. Montesquieu revised it himself for the edition of 1748, which is therefore authoritative.
I am aware of two earlier translations into English, one by an Englishman in Montesquieu's own day, the other by an American scholar, Jehu Baker, in 1882. Both have long been out of print. Both are written with more flourish than befits current tastes. Of the two, Baker's is considerably more accurate, and I have occasionally adopted a phrase from it, but it also contains many errors and departs too frequently from an exact rendition of the text.
The function of translators is to translate, not to improve — as they think — upon an author's intelligibility. I have not presumed any incapacity to express himself on Montesquieu's part, or any superiority in my own historical vantage point that might allow me to say better what he thought he had said well enough. My sole purpose has been to reproduce the meaning and fluency of his text as closely as possible. From this rule I have regularly admitted only one deviation: sentences too lengthy or complex to parallel in English have been divided up. All paragraphing, however, is faithful to the original.
The most erudite French editions are those of Camille Jullian (1906) and Henri Barckhausen (1900), but these too have long been unavailable to the public. Two recent editions are those of Gonzague Truc (published by Gamier) and Roger Caillois (in the Pléiade series). The notes by Jullian and Truc are especially helpful, and in all four French editions the interested reader can find Montesquieu's textual revisions. A facsimile of the first edition of Montesquieu's collected works (1758) appeared recently under the editorship of André Masson (published by Nagel).
My own notes are meant merely to be informative, not interpretive, and, for the most part, only on points the reader might have difficulty elucidating for himself. Montesquieu's notes are indicated numerically and are found at the end of each chapter, mine are by letter and at the foot of the page. The references set in parenthesis are taken from Jullian and serve to correct, amplify or supplement those of Montesquieu and thus to help the reader use modern editions of the works he cites. Latin titles and quotations have also been translated, and the Index is the one prepared for the 1748 edition either by Montesquieu himself or under his supervision.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to the editor, Mr. Bloom, to Mrs. Monique Miles, and to my wife for their generous assistance in improving the translation. I am also grateful to Wheaton College for a grant facilitating my studies as well as for the leisure afforded by a sabbatical leave of absence.
David Lowenthal Sharon, Mass.
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION 1
I BEGINNINGS OF ROME; ITS WARS 23
II THE ART OF WAR AMONG THE ROMANS 33
III HOW THE ROMANS WERE ABLE TO EXPAND 39
IV THE GAULS; PYRRHUS; COMPARISON OF CARTHAGE AND ROME; HANNIBAL'S WAR 43
V THE CONDITION OF GREECE, MACEDONIA, SYRIA, AND EGYPT AFTER THE REDUCTION OF THE CARTHAGINIANS 55
VI THE CONDUCT THE ROMANS PURSUED TO SUBJUGATE ALL PEOPLES 67
VII HOW MITHRIDATES WAS ABLE TO RESIST THEM 79
VIII THE DISSENSIONS THAT ALWAYS EXISTED IN THE CITY 83
IX TWO CAUSES OF ROME'S RUIN 91
X THE CORRUPTION OF THE ROMANS 97
XI SULLA; POMPEY AND CAESAR 101
XII THE CONDITION OF ROME AFTER CAESAR'S DEATH 113
XIII AUGUSTUS 119
XIV TIBERIUS 129
XV THE EMPERORS FROM CAIUS CALIGULA TO ANTONINUS 135
XVI THE CONDITION OF THE EMPIRE, FROM ANTONINUS TO PROBUS 145
XVII CHANGE IN THE STATE 157
XVIII NEW MAXIMS ADOPTED BY THE ROMANS 167
XIX ATTILA'S GREATNESS; CAUSE OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE BARBARIANS; REASONS WHY THE WESTERN EMPIRE WAS THE FIRST TO FALL 175
XX JUSTINIAN'S CONQUEST; HIS GOVERNMENT 185
XXI DISORDERS OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE 195
XXII WEAKNESS OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE 201
XXIII REASON FOR THE DURATION OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE; ITS DESTRUCTION 213
INDEX 221
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CAUSES OF
THE
GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS
AND THEIR DECLINE
INTRODUCTION
i
Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline was published almost midway between his Persian Letters (1721) and The Spirit of the Laws (1748). Today it is the least well known of the three, though not through any fault of its own. It may have been the first (and certainly was one of the first) of all efforts to comprehend the whole span of Roman history, and among such efforts it still has few if any peers — even after a century and a half of the scientific historiography Montesquieu's own writings did so much to engender, and which has now grown disdainful of its philosophic forbears. It was probably one of the works Gibbon had in mind in his Memoirs when he wrote: "... but my delight was in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style, and boldness of hypothesis, were powerful to awaken and stimulate the genius of the age." But the context in which it must be understood, and from which it derives its chief value, is not that of history but of political philosophy. In the annals of this subject, it is one of the few instances when a philosopher has undertaken an extended analysis of any particular society, let alone of its entire history. The only comparable thing on Rome is Machiavelli's Discourses, to which it bears a deep inner kinship. But it is simpler than the Discourses, both in structure and meaning. For the most part it uses an historical framework, beginning with Rome's origins and ending with its collapse, and its teaching is in some ways less devious.
Not that the Considerations automatically empties itself into the reader's mind; on the contrary, it is written with a care — indeed, a caution — which its apparent simplicity and directness belie, and only the penetrating and reflective reader will catch sight of its depths. The work is less than candid. In fact, it does not even vouchsafe its own purpose, and in this respect differs markedly from Montesquieu's other two main works. It has no preface, and there is no statement of intent elsewhere in the text. Its purpose must therefore be inferred. Its unusually informative title indicates that Montesquieu is not primarily interested in presenting a general history of Rome, or even a history of its greatness and decline, but an account of the causes of that greatness and decline. And it is the Romans — an entity transcending particular political forms — not their republic or empire as such that is under study.
In a manner becoming a political observer of political life, Montesquieu makes no attempt in the text to set forth obtrusive "scientific" definitions of greatness and decline. He uses the term "greatness" with fair frequency, "decline" more sparingly. "Greatness" conveys the idea of large size and also of power (let us call these its physical and political meanings, respectively). As Rome grows larger and more powerful, it becomes greater. But power is the crux of a nation's greatness, and a multitude of examples suggest that, for Montesquieu, power is nothing but the ability to coerce other nations. Correspondingly, the chief meaning of "decline" is increased weakness.
The third, or moral, aspect of "greatness" is related to, but not identical with, the political. Roman power derived from Roman virtue, i.e., from great moral qualities. The average Roman was simple, steadfast, honest, courageous, law-abiding, and patriotic; and his leaders were men of unusual dedication and acumen. Now these virtues had their origin in the particular circumstances of a small society constantly at war for its life, and Montesquieu never regards them in terms of a natural perfection toward which mankind is drawn. Nevertheless, they elicit his unabashed admiration and are treated as elements not merely of Roman but of human greatness. Somehow these virtues have a status rising beyond the particularity of their origin and befitting man as such, but we are never told the reasons why.
Although Montesquieu seems to consider the moral virtues intrinsically valuable and not simply socially useful, he does associate them especially with the political life of small republics, and with the ancient city in particular. His portrait of the city is vivid and profound. Few moderns have rivaled it, and those who have, such as Rousseau and Fustel de Coulanges, were inspired by it. He shows us the city's link to the gods, its sense of common destiny and long-established custom, its sharing of a common life; he lets us see how the free Roman citizen, through participation in fighting and ruling, developed a keen sense of personal pride and patriotic ambition; he reveals the discord between the higher and lower elements of Roman society, and its consequences. Amid such circumstances, the ancient republic both nurtured, and was nurtured by, moral virtues. The result was a powerful state; indeed, Montesquieu implies that nothing can match a republic for sustained conquest, i.e., for the steady augmentation of political power and greatness, as in the case of Rome.
ii
Rome's power first revealed itself under the early kings and rose to its height under the republic, apparently with Pompey (c. 65 B.C.), who "... completed the splendid work of Rome's greatness." But by that time Rome's internal corruption had become manifest and irremediable, and the republic could no longer endure. It was replaced by the empire, which maintained itself largely by means of habits and institutions inherited from the republic. Because of these and other factors, it was only after the end of the third century that the empire "... went, by slow degrees, from decline to fall, until it suddenly collapsed under Arcadius and Honorius." (c. 400 A.D.)
If, as Montesquieu tells us, Pompey's foreign conquests did not really increase Rome's power, real and apparent greatness must be distinguished. Mere size, and even continuing conquests, do not suffice as indices of a nation's real power. Its enemies of the moment may be weak; its magnitude may burden rather than assist it. In the long run, and at bottom, a nation's strength depends on the state of its internal health. It is hard to say when Rome reached the height of its real power. The civil wars of the first century B.C. assisted rather than obstructed its conquests, but they gave evidence of a deepseated decay that ultimately had to reduce Roman power by destroying the republic. In one place, Montesquieu generally dates this decay from the time of Rome's expansion beyond Italy, and in another specifies that "... the war they waged against Antiochus is the true beginning of their corruption." This would mean that the republic began to decline internally from about 200 B.C. onward, and that its corruption was completed in one and a half centuries.
Rome's greatness had many causes: the virtue of its citizens, the system of consuls, the senate's wisdom, the limited influence of the people, the concentration on war, the triumphs, the public sharing of booty, the equal partition of land, the censorship, the broad distribution of political power. The people were imbued with a passionate and indomitable love of country, and the senate sustained a military and foreign policy that led unceasingly to the defeat and subjection of Rome's enemies. Thus, once formed, it was the republican order, not particular individuals, that made Rome great, and, in Montesquieu's account, individuals hardly regain prominence till this order breaks down.
Rome's decline was the result of its conquests. The waning of public spiritedness in distant Roman generals and soldiers, the growing inequality of wealth and power, with extremes of luxury and poverty, the exacerbation of faction, the loss of a sense of common identity among Romans as citizenship was extended to other peoples — these made it impossible to preserve the republic. Montesquieu also draws attention to the corroding effect of Epicureanism on Roman morals, implying that the spread of its atheistic materialism and hedonism helped destroy religious and moral beliefs upon which Roman patriotism and virtue depended.
Montesquieu judges the empire by the moral and political standards of the republic, thereby making clear the general human decline that, in his view, occurred with the transition from one to the other. At first the empire was more wanting in liberty, security, and virtue than in external power. While tyranny intensified from Augustus to Caligula, an effort was made to preserve the territory of the empire in peace. And as the emperors became increasingly arbitrary, harsh and fear-ridden, both the senate and the people — stripped of their political function and dignity — became slavish and despicable. Yet, especially in the span from Nerva to the Antonines (96-180 A.D.), the empire had its glorious moments. The highest praise of any man in the entire book is reserved for the emperor Trajan — "the most accomplished prince in the annals of history." Montesquieu also extols Marcus Aurelius, and refers admiringly to the Stoic sect which, in contrast to Epicureanism, had helped produce such rulers. After the Antonines, however, the empire degenerated into a tyranny of armies and then a more subtle and withdrawn tyranny of emperors. It recovered from third century barbarian invasions, but then divided the imperial authority and split into an East and a West (c. 300 A.D.). Ultimately, the ancient Roman military virtues and practices were themselves abandoned, and marauding barbarians overran the West (400 A.D.).
iii
By deciding to concentrate on the theme of Rome's greatness or power, Montesquieu already shows that he has decided the crucial philosophical question against Plato and Aristotle and in favor of Machiavelli. If the proper yardstick for measuring political worth is power, it cannot be moral goodness as such. He must therefore eschew the kind of moral criticism the Greek political philosophers leveled at Sparta and Cicero leveled at Rome. Departing from the "Utopian" standards of the classics and adopting Machiavelli's "realism," he must be willing to sacrifice moral virtue to political greatness at crucial points. Especially in a nation's external conduct but also in its internal affairs, too much by way of moral virtue is not to be expected or sought. Thus, Rome's dedication not only to war but to aggressive conquest, its nefarious practices in foreign policy, its use of slavery, its internal factiousness must either go without serious criticism or receive express approval.
At one point, while analyzing the causes of Rome's ruin, Montesquieu states that Rome could have remained a republic had it not sought domination beyond the borders of Italy. And he does indeed advise wise republics to hazard neither good fortune nor bad, and to perpetuate their condition without expanding. Soon afterward, however, he takes it for granted that the necessary result of "good laws" in a small republic is to cause it to conquer other states and grow larger, until it reaches the point where it can no longer retain a republican form of government. Here republican imperialism is accorded something approaching a necessary and natural status, and this supposition, coupled with Montesquieu's admiration for Roman greatness and the means by which it was achieved, differs little in its net effect from Machiavelli's forthright support of such imperialism.
Machiavelli had let the decision concerning the internal make-up of a properly constituted republic depend on whether the republic would be nonexpansionist, like Sparta and Venice, or expansionist, like Rome. Pondering this alternative, he recognized that the expansionist republic could not avoid civil discord between nobles and people, since the people, growing in size, would be emboldened by their military importance to struggle with the nobles for supremacy. He decided in favor of adopting the Roman course from the outset, on the ground that necessity would at some point probably compel the Spartan type either to engage in an expansion for which it was utterly unfit, or to be weakened by excessive freedom from war; a steady middle way between these alternatives was impossible. To avoid these risks, therefore, it is better to begin with an expansionist, and factious, republic. Montesquieu, by contrast, does not even seem to admit the Spartan alternative. He acknowledges that both Rome and Sparta exemplify the most powerful kind of republic, the kind based on passion, or patriotism; but he flatly denies that a free republic can be composed of soldiers and yet be lacking in civil discord (as Sparta was). This makes the Roman solution seem even more natural than in Machiavelli.
The best regimes devised by classical political philosophy were meant to embody the highest possibilities of human existence. Although they would be strong, their chief objective was neither conquest nor war but rather a life of nobility, pursued in a civic setting where the best men had the predominant voice and where harmony and stability prevailed. The preservation of these regimes from the risks of defeat in war and decay in peace could not be absolutely guaranteed, though it could be reasonably well provided for. Nor were such political conceptions to be abandoned because of the difficulty of the moral training they required, or the rarity of the circumstances under which they would be practicable. But Machiavelli, followed later by Montesquieu, was impatient with demands and risks that had their source in a conception of human virtue higher than that practiced by any state whatsoever. Once both men had decided they could not criticize a Spartan-type dedication to war, they were led to reject Spartan defensiveness in favor of Roman aggression, and hence to support the unequalled political greatness of imperialistic Rome.
The encouragement thus given to the imitation of Rome does indeed eliminate certain risks and demands. However, it also guarantees that the republic involved will be constantly risking its survival in the wars it seeks, constantly embroiled in civil discord, and inevitably transformed into some kind of tyranny should its imperialism prove successful. And this is wholly apart from the general impetus given to the bellicosity of states by such a teaching, and to impractical attempts to create a Roman-type republic. To make such choices for the sake of being more realistic and avoiding chance evils would assuredly have been decried by the classics. Chance, and a prudent use of the conception of human excellence, were kinder masters than these harsh, self-imposed necessities. And it is less compromising to one's love of moral greatness and republican advantages in general to see a good republic go down by chance than to see it subverted by a tyranny made necessary by one's own initial choice of expansionism.
Such are the costs of distinguishing political from moral greatness, and of making the former the supreme political objective rather than the latter. Machiavelli could do so because of his view that the moral virtue of classical philosophy had no basis in human nature. But Montesquieu seems intent on preserving the dignity of moral virtue even while refusing to follow the classics in making it the direct object of political life. The best evidence of this is his glowing tribute to Trajan, which begins by calling Trajan a great statesman and general, then acclaims his noble, great, and beautiful soul and his virtues, and ends by describing him as "the man most suitable for honoring human nature, and representing the divine." Here Montesquieu implies that the best of all princes is the best of all men, and that moral virtue displayed in ruling constitutes the chief end of man and the chief criterion of human greatness.
This panegyric sounds more classical than Machiavellian, and the feelings of tenderness to which Montesquieu confesses on reading about Marcus Aurelius — like his earlier testimonial to the friendships of Cicero and the last republicans — is certainly not in the style of Machiavelli. Nevertheless, Montesquieu does not make a classical use of the virtue he admires and loves. The life of full virtue is not taken as the model for the life of political societies. Trajan himself is depicted as a conqueror, and even the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius is praised for its moral and political effects but not for its intrinsic merits as a philosophy, or for the act of philosophizing as such. In sort, we are given no glimpse of an excellence grounded in contemplation rather than action from which the latter receives inspiration, guidance, and restraint. Warlike action, not rational thought, is the model for human societies. This bears out the Aristotelian insight linking an interest limited to action and politics to an interest in war. Ultimately, then, it is not possible that Montesquieu, any more than Machiavelli, believed man to be fitted by nature for a life of reason and virtue, or that political life lends itself to their guidance. But if moral virtue is not in accord with man's nature, what is the source of its value? And must not this justification be made clear if virtue is not to suffer a mortal wound from the new teaching?
iv
Whereas the choice of Rome over Sparta was made behind the scenes, so to speak, Montesquieu is more open about showing the nature of Rome's superiority to Carthage. Carthage, we may remember, had been regarded by Aristotle, less than a century before the First Punic War, as perhaps the best of all actual regimes, better even than Sparta. He had not called attention to its mercantile character and imperialism, any more than he had to its being a non-Greek or "barbarian" city. But among its defects he had numbered its stress on wealth and also certain powers of the popular assembly. According to Montesquieu, Carthage's main weakness relative to Rome lay in defects of a similar kind, deriving from its mercantile character and the excessive power wielded by its people. Rome, on the other hand, was not a commercial power, and its imperialism stemmed mainly from ambition rather than avarice. Its moral virtue, its devotion to war, its constancy and unity in war, its wise leadership could therefore be greater than Carthage's, and these, in the long run, prevailed. Nevertheless, the threat to Rome mounted by Carthage was graver than any thereafter, and Montesquieu saves the superlative "finest spectacle presented by antiquity" for the exploits of the Carthaginian, Hannibal. Eventually, however, the imperialistic commercial republic proved inferior in power to the imperialistic noncommercial or agricultural republic, and suffered extinction at its hands.
While following Machiavelli's approval of fraud and force in the international arena and adopting his enthusiasm for the imperialistic noncommercial republic, Montesquieu refuses to follow him in teaching the use of fraud and force for the purpose of obtaining or maintaining tyrannical rule, or in advocating private wickedness. Instead, he constantly and severely criticizes tyrants for the harm they inflict upon their country, and he never gives positive encouragement to the clever cruelty of princes or individuals. In a few cases he may possibly intimate a willingness to overlook grave misdeeds on the part of great and ruthless men — as, for example, in what he says and does not say about Tarquin, Caesar and even Severus — but his reticence in doing so lends even greater emphasis to his modification or correction of Machiavelli. The principle he seems to adopt is that the responsible political philosopher or statesman must always seek to promote the common good, not some merely private good, and must also do as little as possible to promote the cause of tyranny, which for all normal purposes is the worst of possible regimes.
Although Montesquieu can glorify the monarchical rule of a Trajan or a Marcus Aurelius, the regime he considers the source of Rome's political and moral greatness is the republic. It is, moreover, a regime in transition from an aristocratic to a democratic republic, under the stress of civil discord. Unlike the classics, Montesquieu is not averse to the idea of a factious community in principle; commotion can be part of its proper working. He even finds a cosmological basis for the idea in the action and reaction that keep the heavenly bodies in their course — a derivative from Newtonian physics. But his discussion in this place of the desirability of contending groups in Rome is less explicit than Machiavelli's; he is less willing to admit candidly that the "true peace" at which Rome's harmony of dissonances aimed was the constant subjection of its neighbors and rivals.
In his discussions of Rome's internal politics, Montesquieu does not appear to be an enthusiastic democrat, or even, like Machiavelli, a supporter of the justness of the people's cause as over against the cause of the patricians or nobles. He does suggest that the most fortunate republics are those without an hereditary privileged class, but in so doing he stresses the simple fact that such a class is detested by the people, not that it practices injustices deserving popular detestation. And in outlining Rome's internal conflicts, he remains strangely aloof, again without taking the side of the people against the privileged groups. The main exception to this rule is forceful but not express: he quotes from a speech by the ill-fated Tiberius Gracchus adjuring the nobles to be less avaricious for land, and thus implies criticism of the oligarchical tendencies of the dominant class. In general, however, he is less explicitly critical of the rich and wellborn than Aristotle himself. At the same time, although perfectly aware of the virtues of the Roman people, he always recognizes the superior and leading virtues of the senate, and sees that the immoderate liberty and power of the people is a great evil. In short, Montesquieu seems to favor a republic where the people have enough power to protect themselves against grave injustices but insufficient power to direct the state. That task must be left to a body of men who make it their main occupation, and who, by the scope and continuity of their experience, are able to sustain well-reflected policies for generations. Here the views of Montesquieu and the classics approach each other — if we discount the imperialism he would have the senate pursue as its highest goal. But Montesquieu would claim that it is this very dedication to conquest that serves to engender the other advantages of which this republic can boast — its internal liberty and security, its moral virtue, and, indeed, the prominence of its senate.
v
In the most theoretical statement of the Considerations, Montesquieu asserts that general moral and physical causes, not chance or particular causes, rule the world and account for Rome's greatness and decline. It is impossible for us to inquire here as to how he would have defined the basic terms involved, or to ask whether his thesis allows sufficient room for the actions of great individuals or the effects of chance. Nevertheless, it is clear that no sense of physical, historical or divine teleology pervades the work. Montesquieu approaches Rome as an entirely "natural" phenomenon in the modern sense of the term, with a beginning, middle, and end that are more clearly discernible, and more impressive, than in the case of other nations, and that requires to be explained by some combination of general and particular causes. He seems to write as a Cartesian who, unlike Descartes himself and Pascal after him, refuses to abandon the realm of human affairs to particularity, chance and the unintelligible. As to the role in this scheme of divine or supernatural powers, miracles — or, more broadly, divine acts of particular providence — are never dwelled upon and barely alluded to. Nor is there any place among general "moral" cause for divine influence. The only "moral," as opposed to "physical," causes seem to consist in man's varying ideas and the institutions, habits and ways of doing things directly connected with them; ideas about morality are only one of many kinds of ideas or moral causes. And we are never told how, as a matter of theoretical principle, moral and physical causes are related to each other. The work naturally concentrates on moral or human causes, though without ignoring the effects of such physical things as climate, geography and terrain. And of the diverse kinds of moral causes, Montesquieu is mostly interested in those bearing on the critical problems of Roman life, and hence in those that are political. He is very sensitive to the influence of social, economic, military, technological, intellectual, religious, and other kinds of moral causes, but always because of the light they throw on the nature and behavior of the Roman body politic. The political community, and nothing else, is assumed to be the core of human life.
Not only is the Considerations conceived in independence of religion: it has a strong anti-Christian animus as well. This is most manifest in its sympathetically reviving the image of Rome's greatness, but more particular indications of the same intent also abound, both in what Montesquieu says and fails to say. Not long after displaying a remarkable openness to the motives underlying pagan suicide, for example, he declares Trajan "the man most suitable for honoring human nature, and representing the divine," and then is unstinting in his praise of the Stoics, whom he distinctly links with nature and human nature rather than with the Christian God. On the other hand, such crucial Christian (and Roman) events as the birth of Christ, the spread of Christianity, the persecutions it suffered, its toleration by Constantine, and Julian's apostasy are buried in a tomb of silence — never directly recounted and seldom mentioned at all. The reader has settled into what is almost complete ignorance of the very existence of Christianity when Chapter XIX — the one on Attila and the collapse of the West — suddenly opens with a topic not even indicated by the chapter title. The topic is the argument that raged at the time between pagans and Christians over Christianity's responsibility for Rome's collapse. After presenting the pagan position in somewhat greater detail than the Christian, Montesquieu attributes to St. Augustine the view that "... the ancient Romans, for some human virtues, had received rewards that were as vain as these virtues." He does not try to settle the argument directly, but this quotation shows the significance of his own work with beautiful conciseness. The whole issue is then abruptly dropped as he goes on to display an unusual fascination for the person and accomplishments of Attila the Hun.
The criticism of Christianity begins to mount in the following chapter on Justinian, and it rises to a crescendo in the three final chapters on what Montesquieu calls the Eastern or Greek (not Roman) empire. He contrasts the tolerance of pagan Rome with the Christian Justinian's extermination of dissenting Christian and non-Christian sects. He describes the heresy-hunting of the Greeks, and their loss of obedience to their princes. He refers to the Christian trend toward slackening the punishment of crimes not directly involving religion, including rebellion. In accounting for the rapid conquest of parts of the Christian Eastern empire by Mohammedanism, he quotes "a celebrated author" to the effect that sickness, or weakness, is the true state of a Christian, and far from denying it, applies the maxim to the condition of the Christian church, claiming that the church is at its real height when its worldly extension and power are minimal, i.e., when it is "sickest." He depicts the small-mindedness of the Greeks, their superstition and bigotry, their endless religious turmoil, their faintheartedness, and, finally, their neglect of political action, even to the point of jeopardizing survival.
Montesquieu concludes his criticism of the Greeks by speaking of the fundamental need to distinguish ecclesiastical from secular power. He approvingly adduces the old Roman solution to the problem, which, while distinguishing the two kinds of power, amounted to having no independent clergy and giving supreme religious authority to the highest political authority. We must conclude, therefore, that Montesquieu considered Christianity a contributory cause of the Roman empire's decline (West and East), just as Epicureanism had contributed to the decline of the republic. But the empire was in decay without it, and the main reason for dwelling upon the connection between the Greek empire and Christianity is to illumine the essential effect of Christianity on political life. This is why a work considering the greatness and decline of the Romans ends with three chapters explicitly devoted to the Greeks. The otherworldly Greeks — meaning Christianity in its most unrestrained form — are the diametrical opposites of the Roman republic.
In acclaiming the political life of ancient Rome, Montesquieu does more than spurn classical political philosophy and Christianity: he apparently rejects modern theory and practice as well. Remarks in which he approves of anything modern are infrequent and usually incidental. He does evince admiration for such things as improvements in marine navigation, the role of communications technology in preventing conspiracies against the state, the destiny of the Swiss republic of Bern, the more limited powers of modern European monarchs as compared to the Roman emperors, and the self-correction inherent in the English government. He credits gentler manners and a "more repressive" religion (i.e., Christianity) with making impossible the imperial Roman practice of putting citizens to death in order to confiscate their property. He admits the Romans made sport of human nature in their treatment of children and slaves, and lacked "this virtue we call humanity," yet at the same time strongly criticizes the inhuman colonial practices of modern European powers. His analysis of self-love has an anti-Christian but also a peculiarly modern ring, as does his assertion that the most legitimate basis for a people's acquiring sovereign power over itself consists in its right to self-preservation. But apart from such traces of reservations in favor of post-Machiavellian political philosophy, humanitarianism, and technological and political possibilities that rise superior to the imperialistic polis — reservations that are only permitted to triumph in The Spirit of the Laws — the Considerations cannot be characterized as anything but a monument to pagan republican Rome. Implicitly, however, it is also a monument to the modern genius of Machiavelli, who was the first philosopher to dare supply the true understanding and justification of Roman greatness.
vi
The Considerations is an inquiry into the greatness and decline of Rome that is cast in the form of a history, proceeding from Rome's origins to its end, and even beyond its end. But the purpose Montesquieu reveals in his title would not require such a structure. Had he wanted to, he could have presented a summary view of the causes of Rome's greatness and decline, as he actually does in many chapters. Instead, he chooses to follow the history, sketching in its most significant features or drawing attention to them by omission, and making what must have been a rather novel use of extensive footnoting, much in the manner of more recent scholarship. It would seem, then, that in order to explain the general and particular causes of Rome's historical saga, that saga had first to be ascertained in its reality and established as an accepted subject matter. Its various parts, its various aspects had first to be gathered together and freed of the heavy incrustation of prejudice built up over centuries. They had also to be seen in the light of new and shocking principles attacking both the religious and philosophic traditions. The notes are therefore important not only for supplying the demonstrative evidence required in historical studies but for calling men back to the original sources and alerting them to those novelties of interpretation Montesquieu could not express unguardedly.
Since the work is little given to overt practical recommendations for Montesquieu's own day and even less to overt theoretical reflection, its surface appearance is closer in substance as well as form to history and a limited kind of political philosophy. On the one hand, the overall impression it leaves is a stimulus not to political innovation or even participation but to something more like sad, scholarly withdrawal from politics. For it is indeed melancholy to watch the "eternal city" perish. It is melancholy to contemplate the "spectacle of things human," whereby Rome's republican virtues are seen leading inexorably to imperial tyranny. It is melancholy to see Roman greatness reduced to Greek decadence, and to lose cosmological and political optimism with the realization that all human things grow and die untended by higher powers of any kind.
Nevertheless, beneath its historical exterior, and on the very nutriment of disillusion, the Considerations quite perceptibly revives the conception of a political life that is both pagan and republican, rather than Christian and monarchical, that admires ancient rather than Christian virtue, republican equality rather than monarchical inequality, republican patriotism rather than monarchical honor, and that approves imperialism on the Roman model. We may therefore discern in the work an effort to achieve both theoretical and practical effects: theoretical, by teaching, however indirectly, the true standard of political greatness and, therewith, the nature of political things; practical, by preparing minds and hearts for action in the style of the ancients should the occasion ever arise. But exactly what Montesquieu purported by this double influence remains unclear. He never openly indicates what the practical possibilities of restoration are, or might become. To be sure, his single most extensive comment on modern society is ostensibly devoted to showing how the new technology of communications and commerce drastically reduces the possibility of conspiratorial revolutions against princes. Yet his strange euphemism for such conspiracies is "great enterprises," he omits considering the impact of modern weapons (such as guns and bombs), and he leads the reader to think of the sanctity of rulers in terms of nothing but the precedents established in different nations. Thus, in spite of its colorations as "mere history," the work may have had the effect of encouraging in its readers an incautious contempt for their own society and arousing groundless or excessive hopes. It may, in short, have contributed to the initial growth of that radical, secular republicanism partly modeled on Rome that later showed itself so violently in the French Revolution. By comparison, the republicanism of The Spirit of the Laws is meant to be, and is, much more prudent. It is kinder to the possibilities of modern monarchy; it delineates the special conditions required for a successful republic; it strongly criticizes republican imperialism; and it opens up a modern alternative (England) superior to the ancient republic as such. Nevertheless, the Considerations, by the very glare of its relatively rash concentration, does more than any other of Montesquieu's works to reveal the Machiavellian foundations of his thought, and to ready the public for his later innovations.
This study of Rome has a particular utility for us in the West today. The societies of the West are living embodiments of the modern representative republic first rationally conceived by Locke and then elaborated by Montesquieu himself. This daring quasi-English republic was to be based on liberty and commerce rather than virtue, and was to emphasize the private life rather than communal solidarity. Montesquieu's own portrait of Rome serves to remind us of one of the great alternatives to such a republic, and gives prominence to some of the qualities most lacking, and missed in it. Among these are moral integrity, and, in general, the more severe virtues; dedication to the public weal; and the will and capacity to subdue foreign foes. But the broader significance of the Considerations is that it helps remind us of the great issues separating classical, Christian and modern thought — issues which were uppermost in Montesquieu's mind, but of which we are only dimly aware. By picturing ancient political practice against the background of Machiavellian political principles, it especially forces us to re-examine the original alternative to this combination: classical political philosophy. Above all, it inspires us to imitate the author and those like him who sought the fullest truth about things human, who ruled out no vital question, and whose voices fail to move only those whose vanity has already rendered them immobile.
ABOUT THE NOTES
Montesquieu's notes are numbered and follow each chapter. The numbers in parentheses are those supplied as aids to the reader from the French edition of Camille Jullian. Roman and Arabic numerals stand for book and chapter, respectively. The translator's notes are lettered and fall to the foot of the page.
CHAPTER I
1. BEGINNINGS OF ROME 2. ITS WARS
We should not form the same impression of the city of Rome in its beginnings a as we get from the cities we see today, except perhaps for those of the Crimea, which were built to hold booty, cattle and the fruits of the field. The early names of the main places in Rome are all related to this practice.
The city did not even have streets, unless you call the continuation of paths that led to it by that name. The houses were located without any particular order, and were very
a Montesquieu, oddly enough, cites no dates. Of the twenty-three chapters, seven are clearly general or nonchronological in content (II, III, VI, VIII, IX, X, and XVIII). Present historians would date the stretch of events covered by the others in something like the following manner: I (753-387 B.C.); IV (fourth century to 201 B.C.); V (201-168 B.C.); VII (89-63 B.C.); XI (first half of first century B.C.); XII (44-42 B.C.); XIII (42 B.C. to 14 A.D.); XIV (14-37 A.D.); XV (37-138 A.D.); XVI (138-282 A.D.); XVII (285-378 A.D.); XIX (end of fourth century and second half of fifth century A.D.); XX (527-565 A.D.); XXI (565-610 A.D.); XXII (610-1300 A.D.); XXIII (seventh century to 1400 A.D.). Chapters XXI and XXII are both historical and general.
small, for the men were always at work or in the public square, and hardly ever remained home.
But the greatness b of Rome soon appeared in its public edifices. The works1 which conveyed and today still convey the strongest impression of its power were produced under the kings. Already the Romans were beginning to build the eternal city.
To obtain citizens, wives and lands, Romulus and his successors were almost always at war with their neighbors. Amid great rejoicing they returned to the city with spoils of grain and flocks from the conquered peoples. Thus originated the triumphs, which subsequently were the main cause of the greatness this city attained.
Rome markedly increased its strength by its union with the Sabines — a tough and warlike people, like the Lacedaemonians from whom they were descended. Romulus2 adopted their buckler, which was a large one, in place of the small Argive buckler he had used till then. And it should be noted that the main reason for the Romans becoming masters of the world was that, having fought successively against all peoples, they always gave up their own practices as soon as they found better ones.
In those days in the republics of Italy it was thought that the treaties they made with a king did not bind them toward his successor. This was a kind of law of nations for them.3 Thus, whoever had fallen under the domination of one Roman king claimed to be free under another, and wars constantly engendered wars.
b I have, throughout, translated grandeur and decadence by "greatness" and "decline" because "grandeur" and "decadence" have a somewhat more specialized meaning today. On the other hand, I have retained "considerations" in the title, despite its rarity today, because Montesquieu himself seems to distinguish it, in some his titles, from the more common "reflections."
Numa's long and peaceful reign was ideal for keeping Rome in a state of mediocrity, and if it had then had a less limited territory and greater power, its fate would probably have been decided once and for all.
One of the causes of its success was that its kings were all great men. Nowhere else in history can you find an uninterrupted succession of such statesmen and captains.
At the birth of societies, the leaders of republics create the institutions; thereafter, it is the institutions that form the leaders of republics.
Tarquin seized the throne without being elected by either the senate or the people.4 Power was becoming hereditary: he made it absolute. These two revolutions were soon followed by a third.
In violating Lucretia, his son Sextus did the sort of thing that has almost always caused tyrants to be expelled from the city they ruled. Such an action makes the people keenly aware of their servitude, and they immediately go to extremes.
A people can easily endure the exaction of new tributes: it does not know whether some benefit may come to it from the use to which the money is put. But when it receives an affront, it is aware of nothing but its misfortune, and begins thinking of all the possible evils to which it may be subjected.
It is true, however, that the death of Lucretia was only the occasion of the revolution which occurred. For a proud, enterprising and bold people, confined within walls, must necessarily either shake off its yoke or become gentler in its ways.c
c The French word moeurs signifies the "morals," "moral customs, "manners" or "ways" of societies and individuals; it refers to both expected and actual behavior, as well as to the inner character of which they are expressions. In each case I have used one of these four terms to express its meaning, depending on context.
One of two things had to happen: either Rome would change its government, or it would remain a small and poor monarchy.
Modern history furnishes us with an example of what happened at that time in Rome, and this is well worth noting. For the occasions which produce great changes are different, but, since men have had the same passions at all times, the causes are always the same.
Just as Henry VII, king of England, increased the power of the commons in order to degrade the lords, so Servius Tullius, before him, had extended the privileges of the people5 in order to reduce the senate. But the people, at once becoming bolder, overthrew the one and the other monarchy.
The portrait painted of Tarquin is not flattering; his name did not escape any of the orators who had something to say against tyranny. But his conduct before his misfortune — which we know he himself foresaw, his mild treatment of conquered peoples, his generosity toward the soldiers, the art he had of interesting so many people in his preservation, his public works, his courage in war, his constancy in misfortune, a war that he waged or had waged against the Roman people for twenty years when he had neither realm nor wealth, his continual resourcefulness — all clearly show that he was not a contemptible man.
The places bestowed by posterity are subject, like others, to the caprice of fortune. Woe to the reputation of any prince who is oppressed by a party that becomes dominant, or who has tried to destroy a prejudice that survives him!
Having ousted the kings, Rome established annual consuls, and this too helped it reach its high degree of power. During their lifetime, princes go through periods of ambition, followed by other passions and by idleness itself. But, with the republic having leaders who changed every year and who sought to signalize their magistracy so that they might obtain new ones, ambition did not lose even a moment. They in-
duced the senate to propose war to the people, and showed it new enemies every day.
This body was already rather inclined that way itself. Wearied incessantly by the complaints and demands of the people, it sought to distract them from their unrest by occupying them abroad.6
Now war was almost always agreeable to the people, because, by the wise distribution of booty, the means had been found of making it useful to them.
Since Rome was a city without commerce, and almost without arts, pillage was the only means individuals had of enriching themselves.
The manner of pillaging was therefore brought under control, and it was done with much the same discipline as is now practiced among the inhabitants of Little Tartary.d
The booty was assembled7 and then distributed to the soldiers. None was ever lost, for prior to setting out each man had sworn not to take any for himself. And the Romans were the most religious people in the world when it came to an oath — which always formed the nerve of their military discipline.
Finally, the citizens who remained in the city also enjoyed the fruits of victory. Part of the land of the conquered people was confiscated and divided into two parts. One was sold for public profit, the other distributed to poor citizens subject to a rent paid to the republic.
Since only a conquest or victory could obtain the honor of a triumph for the consuls, they waged war with great impetuosity. They went straight for the enemy, and strength decided the matter immediately.
Rome was therefore in an endless and constantly violent war. Now a nation forever at war, and by the very principle of its government, must necessarily do one of two things.
d Little Tartary: southern Russia, from the Crimea to the Caucasus.
Either it must perish, or it must overcome all the others which were only at war intermittently and were therefore never as ready to attack or as prepared to defend themselves as it was.
In this way the Romans acquired a profound knowledge of military art. In transient wars, most of the examples of conduct are lost; peace brings other ideas, and one's faults and even one's virtues are forgotten.
Another consequence of the principle of continual war was that the Romans never made peace except as victors. In effect, why make a shameful peace with one people to begin attacking another?
With this idea in mind, they always increased their demands in proportion to their defeats. By so doing they consternated their conquerors and imposed on themselves a greater necessity to conquer.
Since they were always exposed to the most frightful acts of vengeance, constancy and valor became necessary to them. And among them these virtues could not be distinguished from the love of oneself, of one's family, of one's country, and of all that is most dear to men.
The peoples of Italy made no use of machines for carrying on sieges.8 In addition, since the soldiers fought without pay, they could not be retained for long before any one place. Thus, few of their wars were decisive. They fought to pillage the enemy's camp or his lands — after which the victor and vanquished each withdrew to his own city. This is what produced the resistance of the peoples of Italy, and, at the same time, the obstinacy of the Romans in subjugating them. This is what gave the Romans victories which did not corrupt them, and which let them remain poor.
If they had rapidly conquered all the neighboring cities, they would have been in decline at the arrival of Pyrrhus, the Gauls, and Hannibal. And following the fate of nearly
all the states in the world, they would have passed too quickly from poverty to riches, and from riches to corruption.
But, always striving and always meeting obstacles, Rome made its power felt without being able to extend it, and, within a very small orbit, practiced the virtues which were to be so fatal to the world.
All the peoples of Italy were not equally warlike. The Tuscans had grown soft from their affluence and luxury. The Tarentines, Capuans, and nearly all the cities of Campania and Magna Graecia e languished in idleness and pleasures. But the Latins, Hernicans, Sabines, Aequians, and Volscians loved war passionately. They were all around Rome. Their resistance to it was unbelievable, and they outdid it in obstinacy.
The Latin cities were colonies of Alba founded9 by Latinus Sylvius. Aside from a common origin with the Romans, they also had common rites, and Servius Tullius 10 had induced them to build a temple in Rome to serve as the center of the union of the two peoples. Having lost a great battle near Lake Regillus, they were subjected to an alliance and military association 11 with the Romans.
During the short time the tyranny of the decemvirs lasted, we clearly see the degree to which the extension of Rome's power depended on its liberty. The state seemed to have lost12 the soul which animated it.
There were then only two sorts of men in the city: those who endured servitude, and those who sought to impose it for their own interests. The senators withdrew from Rome as from a foreign city, and the neighboring peoples met with no resistance anywhere.
e Campania: a district of western Italy below Latium; Magna Graecia: southern Italy, where there were numerous colonies founded by the Greeks.
When the senate had the means of paying the soldiers, the siege of Veii was undertaken. It lasted ten years. The Romans employed a new art and a new way of waging war. Their successes were more brilliant; they profited more from their victories; they made larger conquests; they sent out more colonies. In short, the taking of Veii was a kind of revolution.
But their labors were not lessened. The very fact that they struck harder blows against the Tuscans, Aequians, and Volscians caused their allies — the Latins and Hernicans, who had the same arms and discipline they did — to abandon them. It caused the Samnites, the most warlike of all the peoples of Italy, to wage war against them furiously.
With the establishment of military pay, the senate no longer distributed the lands of conquered peoples to the soldiers. It imposed other conditions on these peoples; it required them, for example, to furnish 13 the army with its pay for a certain time, and to give it grain and clothing.
The capture of Rome by the Gauls deprived it of none of its strength. Dispersed rather than vanquished, almost the whole army withdrew to Veii. The people took refuge in the neighboring cities; and the burning of the city only amounted to the burning of some shepherds' cabins.
NOTES
1. See the amazement of Dionysius of Halicarnassus at the sewers built by Tarquin; Roman Antiquities, III (67). They still exist.
2. Plutarch, Life of Romulus (21).
3. This is shown by the whole history of the kings of Rome.
4. The senate named a magistrate of the interregnum who elected the king; this election had to be confirmed by the people. See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, II (40), III, and IV.
5. See Zonaras (VII, 9) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IV
(43).
6. Besides, the authority of the senate was less limited in external affairs than in those of the city.
7. See Polybius, X (16).
8. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IX (68), says so expressly, and it is shown by history. They did not know how to make galleries to shelter themselves from the besieged; they tried to take cities by scaling the walls. Ephorus recorded that Artemon, an engineer, invented heavy machines for battering down the strongest walls. Pericles used them first at the siege of Samos, according to Plutarch's Life of Pericles (27).
9. As we see in the treatise entitled Origin of the Roman People (17), believed to be by Aurelius Victor.
10. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IV (26).
11. See one of the treaties made with them, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, VI (115).
12. On the pretext of giving the people written laws, they seized the government. See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, XI.
13. See the treaties that were made.
CHAPTER II
THE ART OF WAR AMONG THE ROMANS
Destined for war, and regarding it as the only art, the Romans put their whole spirit and all their thoughts into perfecting it. It was doubtlessly a god, says Vegetius,1 who inspired them with the idea of the legion.
They judged it necessary to give the soldiers of the legion offensive and defensive arms stronger and heavier2 than those of any other people.
But since warfare requires things that a heavy troop cannot do, they wanted the legion to contain in its midst a light troop that could sally forth into battle, and, if necessary, withdraw to it. They also wanted the legion to have cavalry, archers,a and slingers to pursue fugitives and consummate the victory. They wanted it to be defended by every type of war machinery, drawn along with it. They wanted it to entrench every evening and become, as Vegetius3 says, a kind of fortress.
So that they could handle heavier arms than other men, they had to make themselves more than men. This they did by continual labor, which increased their strength, and by
a The term translated as "archers" is hommes de trait and actually refers to soldiers who shot or hurled various kinds of missiles.
exercises giving them dexterity, which is nothing more than the proper use of one's strength.
We observe today that our armies suffer great losses from the soldiers laboring4 excessively, yet it was by enormous labor that the Romans preserved themselves. The reason is, I believe, that their toil was continual, whereas our soldiers constantly go from extremes of labor to extremes of idleness — which is the best way in the world to destroy them.
I must report here what the authors5 tell us about the education of Roman soldiers. They were accustomed to marching at military pace, that is, to covering twenty miles, and sometimes twenty-four, in five hours. During these marches, they had to carry sixty-pound packs. They were kept in the habit of running and jumping completely armed. In their exercises they used 6 swords, javelins, and arrows double the weight of ordinary arms, and these exercises were continual.
The camp was not their only military school. There was a place in the city where citizens went to exercise (the Campus Martius). After their labors,7 they threw themselves into the Tiber to keep up their swimming ability and clean off the dust and sweat.
We no longer have the right idea about physical exercises. A man who applies himself to them excessively seems contemptible to us because their only purpose now is enjoyment. For the ancients, however, all exercises, including the dance, were part of the military art.
With us it has even come to pass that too studied a dexterity in the use of military weapons has become ridiculous. For since the introduction of the custom of single combat, fencing has come to be regarded as the science of quarrelers or cowards.
Those who criticize Homer for usually exalting the physical strength, dexterity or agility of his heroes should find Sallust quite ridiculous when he praises Pompey 8 "for run-
ning, jumping and carrying a load as well as any man of his time."
Whenever the Romans believed themselves in danger or wanted to make up for some loss, their usual practice was to tighten military discipline. Is it necessary to wage war against the Latins — peoples as inured to war as themselves? Manlius, intent on strengthening his authority, has his own son put to death for conquering the enemy without an order to do so. Are they defeated at Numantia? Scipio Aemilianus immediately deprives them of everything that had made them soft.9 Have the Roman legions been forced to submit in Numidia? Metellus repairs this shame as soon as he has made them revive their old institutions. To defeat the Cimbri and the Teutones, Marius begins by turning rivers from their course. And when the soldiers of Sulla's army are afraid of the war against Mithridates, he works them so hard 10 that they beg for combat as an end to their pains.
Publius Nasica made them construct a fleet without needing one. Idleness was feared more than their enemies.
Aulus Gellius 11,b gives rather poor reasons for the Roman custom of bleeding soldiers who had committed some offense. The true reason is that weakening them was a means of degrading them, since strength is a soldier's main attribute.
Men so hardened were general[ly] healthy. We do not notice in the authors that the Roman armies, which made war in so many climates, lost many men through sickness. But today it happens almost continually that armies dissolve, so to speak, in a campaign without fighting a single battle.
Among us desertions are frequent because soldiers are the vilest part of each nation, and no one nation has or believes it has an unquestionable advantage over the others. With the Romans they were more rare. Soldiers drawn from
b Aulus Gellius was a Latin author and grammarian (c. 130-180 A.D.).
the midst of a people that was so bold, so proud, so sure of commanding others could scarcely think of humbling themselves to the point of ceasing to be Romans.
Since their armies were not large,c it was easy to provide for their subsistence. The commander could know them better, and detected offenses and breaches of discipline more easily.
The strength they derived from their exercises and the admirable roads they had constructed enabled them to make long and rapid marches.12 Their unexpected appearance chilled the spirit. They showed up particularly after a setback, when their enemies were displaying the negligence that usually follows victory.
In our battles today, an individual soldier hardly has any confidence except when he is part of a multitude. But each Roman, more robust and inured to war than his opponent, always relied on himself. Courage — the virtue which is the consciousness of one's own strength — came to him naturally.
Since their troops were always the best disciplined, it was unusual, even in the most unfavorable battle, if they did not rally somewhere, or if disorder did not arise somewhere among their opponents. The histories, therefore, constantly show them wresting victory from the hands of the enemy in the end, although at first they may have been overcome by his numbers or his ardor.
Their chief care was to examine in what way the enemy might be superior to them, and they corrected the defect immediately. They became accustomed to seeing blood and wounds at their gladiatorial exhibitions, which they acquired from the Etruscans.13
The cutting swords14 of the Gauls and the elephants of Pyrrhus surprised them only once. They made up for
c An army, consisting of two legions, had about twelve thousand Romans in it and an equal number of allies.
the weakness of their cavalry,15 first by removing the bridles of their horses so. that their impetuosity could not be restrained, then by introducing velites.16 When they became familiar with the Spanish sword,17 they abandoned their own. They got around the skill of pilots by inventing a device Polybius describes to us.d In sum, as Josephus says,18 war was a meditation for them, and peace an exercise.
If nature or its institutions gave a nation some particular advantage, the Romans immediately made use of it. They left no stone unturned to get Numidian horses, Cretan archers, Balearic slingers, and Rhodian vessels.
In short, no nation ever prepared for war with so much prudence, or waged it with so much audacity.
NOTES
1. II, 1 (II, 21).
2. See what the arms of the Roman soldier were in Polybius (VI, 13) and in Josephus, The Jewish War, II (III, 5, 6). The latter says there is little difference between packhorses and Roman soldiers. "They carry," Cicero tells us, "food for more than fifteen days, everything they will use, and whatever is necessary to fortify themselves. As for their arms, they are no more encumbered by them than by their hands." Tusculan Disputations, III (II, 16).
3. II, 25.
4. Especially from digging up the ground.
5. See Vegetius, I (9). See in Livy, XXVI (51), the exercises Scipio Africanus made his soldiers do after the capture of New Carthage. Marius, in spite of his old age, went to the Campus Martius every day. Pompey, at the age of fifty-eight, went in full armor to fight with the young men; he mounted his horse, rode at full speed, and hurled his javelins. Plutarch, Lives of Marius and Pompey.
d Polybius, I, 22.
6. Vegetius, I (11-14).
7. Vegetius I (10).
8. Cum alacribus saltu, cum velocibus cursu, cum validis vecte certabat. (He vied in leaping with the most active, in running with the swiftest, and in exercises of strength with the most robust). Fragment of Sallust, reported by Vegetius, I, 9.
9. He sold all the beasts of burden of the army, and made each soldier carry thirty days of grain and seven stakes. Florus, Epitome, LVII.
10. Frontinus, Strategems, I, 11.
11. X, 8.
12. See especially the defeat of Hasdrubal and their diligence against Viriathus.
13. Fragment of Nicolaus of Damascus, X, taken from Athenaeus, IV (39). Before the soldiers left for the army, they were shown a gladiatorial combat. Julius Capitolinus, Lives of Maximus and Balbinus.
14. The Romans held out their javelins, which received the strokes of the Gallic swords, and blunted them.
15. Nevertheless, it was better than the cavalry of the small peoples of Italy. It was formed from the leading citizens, for each of whom a horse was maintained at public expense. When dismounted, there was no more redoubtable infantry, and very often it was decisive in achieving victory.
16. These were young men, lightly armed, and the most agile in the legion, who, at the slightest signal, jumped on the rump of the horses, or fought on foot. Valerius Maximus, II (3); Livy, XXVI (4).
17. Fragment of Polybius cited by Suidas in connection with the word ma/xaira.
18. The Jewish War, II (III, 5, 6).
CHAPTER III
HOW THE ROMANS WERE ABLE
TO EXPAND
Since all the peoples of Europe these days have practically the same arts, the same arms, the same discipline, and the same way of making war, the marvelous good fortune of the Romans seems incredible to us. Besides, such great differences in power exist today that a small state cannot possibly rise by its own efforts from the lowly position in which Providence has placed it.
This calls for reflection; otherwise, we would see events without understanding them, and, by not being aware of the difference in situations, would believe that the men we read about in ancient history are of another breed than ourselves.
In Europe constant experience has shown that a prince who has a million subjects cannot maintain more than ten thousand troops without ruining himself. Only great nations therefore have armies.
It was not the same in the ancient republics. Today the proportion of soldiers to the rest of the people is one to a hundred, whereas with them it could easily be one to eight.
The founders of the ancient republics had made an equal partition of the lands. This alone produced a powerful people, that is, a well-regulated society. It also produced a good army, everyone having an equal, and very great, interest in defending his country.
When the laws were no longer stringently observed, a situation just like the one we are in came about. The avarice of some individuals and the prodigality of others caused landed property to pass into the hands of a few, and the arts were at once introduced for the mutual needs of rich and poor. As a result, almost no citizens or soldiers were left. Landed properties previously destined for their support were employed for the support of slaves and artisans — instruments of the luxury of the new owners. And without this the state, which had to endure in spite of its disorder, would have perished. Before the corruption set in, the primary incomes of the state were divided among the soldiers, that is, the farmers. When the republic was corrupt, they passed at once to rich men, who gave them back to the slaves and artisans. And by means of taxes a part was taken away for the support of the soldiers.
Now men like these were scarcely fit for war. They were cowardly, and already corrupted by the luxury of the cities, and often by their craft itself. Besides, since they had no country in the proper sense of the term, and could pursue their trade anywhere, they had little to lose or to preserve.
In a census of Rome 1 taken some time after the expulsion of the kings, and in the one Demetrius of Phalerum took at Athens,2 nearly the same number of inhabitants was found. Rome had a population of four hundred and forty thousand, Athens four hundred and thirty-one thousand. But this census of Rome came at a time when its institutions were vigorous, and that of Athens at a time when it was entirely corrupt. It was discovered that the number of citizens at the age of puberty constituted one fourth of Rome's inhabitants and a little less than one twentieth of Athens'. At these different times, therefore, the power of Rome was to the power of Athens nearly as one quarter to one twentieth — that is, it was five times larger.
When the kings Agis and Cleomenes realized that instead
of the nine thousand citizens Sparta had in Lycurgus' time,3 only seven hundred were left, hardly a hundred of whom were landowners,4 and that the rest were only a mob of cowards, they set out to restore the laws5 in this regard. Lacedaemon regained the power it once had and again became formidable to all the Greeks.
It was the equal partition of lands that at first enabled Rome to rise from its lowly position; and this was obvious when it became corrupt.
It was a small republic when, after the Latins refused to contribute the troops they had promised, ten legions were raised in the city on the spot.6 "Today's Rome," says Livy, "even though the whole world cannot contain it, could hardly do as much if an enemy suddenly appeared before its walls. This is a certain indication that we have not become greater at all, and that we have only increased the luxury and riches that obsess us."
"Tell me," said Tiberius Gracchus to the nobles,7 "who is worth more: a citizen or a perpetual slave; a soldier, or a man useless for war? In order to have a few more acres of land than other citizens, do you wish to renounce the hope of conquering the rest of the world, or to place yourself in danger of seeing these lands you refuse us snatched away by enemies?"
NOTES
1. This is the census of which Dionysius of Halicarnassus speaks in IX, art. 25, and which seems to me to be the same as the one he reports toward the end of his sixth book, which was taken sixteen years after the expulsion of the kings.
2. Ctesicles, in Athenaeus, VI.
3. These were citizens of the city, properly called Spartans. Lycurgus made nine thousand shares for them; he gave thirty thousand to the other inhabitants. See Plutarch. Life of Lycurgus (8).
4. See Plutarch, Lives of Agis and Cleomenes.
5. Ibid.
6. Livy, First Decade, VII (25). This was some time after the capture of Rome, under the consulate of L. Furius Camillus and Ap. Claudius Crassus.
7. Appian, The Civil War (I, 11).
CHAPTER IV
1. THE GAULS
2. PYRRHUS
3. COMPARISON OF CARTHAGE
AND ROME
4. HANNIBAL'S WAR
The Romans had many wars with the Gauls. The love of glory, the contempt for death, and the stubborn will to conquer were the same in the two peoples. But their arms were different. The buckler of the Gauls was small, and their sword poor. They were therefore treated in much the same way as the Mexicans were treated by the Spaniards in recent centuries. And the surprising thing is that these peoples, whom the Romans met in almost all places, and at almost all times, permitted themselves to be destroyed one after the other without ever knowing, seeking or forestalling the cause of their misfortunes.
Pyrrhus came to make war on the Romans at a time when they were in a position to resist him and to learn from
his victories. He taught them to entrench, and to choose and arrange a camp. He accustomed them to elephants and prepared them for greater wars.
Pyrrhus' greatness consisted only in his personal qualities.1 Plutarch tells us that he was forced to undertake the Macedonian war because he could not support the eight thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry that he had.2 This prince — ruler of a small state of which nothing was heard after him — was an adventurer who constantly undertook new enterprises because he could exist only while undertaking them.
His allies, the Tarentines, had strayed far from the institutions of their ancestors,3 the Lacedaemonians. He could have done great things with the Samnites, but the Romans had all but destroyed them.
Having become rich sooner than Rome, Carthage had also been corrupted sooner. In Rome, public office could be obtained only through virtue, and brought with it no benefit other than honor and being preferred for further toils, while in Carthage everything the public could give to individuals was for sale, and all service rendered by individuals was paid for by the public.
The tyranny of a prince does no more to ruin a state than does indifference to the common good to ruin a republic. The advantage of a free state is that revenues are better administered in it. But what if they are more poorly administered? The advantage of a free state is that there are no favorites in it. But when that is not the case — when it is necessary to line the pockets of the friends and relatives, not of a prince, but of all those who participate in the government — all is lost. There is greater danger in the laws being evaded in a free state than in their being violated by a prince, for a prince is always the foremost citizen of his state, and has more interest in preserving it than anyone else.
The old morals, a certain custom favoring poverty, made
fortunes at Rome nearly equal, but at Carthage individuals had the riches of kings.
Of the two factions that ruled in Carthage, one always wanted peace, the other war, so that it was impossible there to enjoy the former or do well at the latter.
While war at once united all interests in Rome, it separated them still further in Carthage.4
In states governed by a prince, dissensions are easily pacified because he has in his hands a coercive power that brings the two parties together. But in a republic they are more durable, because the evil usually attacks the very power that could cure it.
In Rome, governed by laws, the people allowed the senate to direct public affairs. In Carthage, governed by abuses, the people wanted to do everything themselves.
Carthage, which made war against Roman poverty with its opulence, was at a disadvantage by that very fact. Gold and silver are exhausted, but virtue, constancy, strength and poverty never are.
The Romans were ambitious from pride, the Carthaginians from avarice; the Romans wanted to command, the Carthaginians to acquire. Constantly calculating receipts and expenses, the latter always made war without loving it.
Lost battles, the decrease in population, the enfeeblement of commerce, the exhaustion of the public treasury, the revolt of neighboring nations could make Carthage accept the most severe conditions of peace. But Rome was not guided by experiences of goods and evils. Only its glory determined its actions, and since it could not imagine itself existing without commanding, no hope or fear could induce it to make a peace it did not impose.
There is nothing so powerful as a republic in which the laws are observed not through fear, not through reason, but through passion — which was the case with Rome and Lace-
daemon. For then all the strength a faction could have is joined to the wisdom of a good government.
The Carthaginians used foreign troops, and the Romans employed their own. Since the latter never regarded the vanquished as anything but instruments for further triumphs, they made soldiers of all the peoples they had overcome, and the more trouble they had in conquering them, the more they judged them suitable for incorporation into their republic. Thus we see the Samnites, who were subjugated only after twenty-four triumphs,5 become the auxiliaries of the Romans. And some time before the Second Punic War they drew from them and their allies — that is, from a country scarcely larger than the states of the pope and of Naples — seven hundred thousand infantry and seventy thousand cavalry to oppose the Gauls.6
At the height of the Second Punic War, Rome always had from twenty-two to twenty-four legions in action. Yet it appears from Livy that the census then indicated only about one hundred and thirty-seven thousand citizens.
Carthage employed greater forces for attacking, Rome for defending itself. The latter, as has just been said, armed a prodigious number of men against the Gauls and Hannibal, who attacked it, and sent out only two legions against the greatest kings — a policy which perpetuated its forces.
Carthage's situation at home was less secure than Rome's. Rome had thirty colonies around it, which were like ramparts.7 Prior to the battle of Cannae, no ally had abandoned it, for the Samnites and the other peoples of Italy were accustomed to its domination.
Since most of the cities of Africa were lightly fortified, they surrendered at once to whoever came to take them. Thus, all who disembarked there — Agathocles, Regulus, Scipio — immediately drove Carthage to despair.
The ills which befell the Carthaginians throughout the
war waged against them by the first Scipio can only be attributed to a bad government. Their city and even their armies were starving, while the Romans had an abundance of all things.8
Among the Carthaginians, armies which had been defeated became more insolent. Sometimes they crucified their generals, and punished them for their own cowardice. Among the Romans, the consul decimated the troops that had fled, and led them back against the enemy.
The rule of the Carthaginians was very harsh.9 So severely had they tormented the peoples of Spain that when the Romans arrived there they were regarded as liberators. And, if we bear in mind the immense sums it cost them to support a war in which they were defeated, we plainly see that injustice is a bad manager, and that it does not even accomplish its own ends.
The founding of Alexandria had considerably diminished the commerce of Carthage. In early times superstition practically banished foreigners from Egypt, and, when the Persians conquered it, they had thought only of weakening their new subjects. But under the Greek kings Egypt carried on almost all the commerce of the world, and that of Carthage began to decline.
Commercial powers can continue in a state of mediocrity a long time, but their greatness is of short duration. They rise little by little, without anyone noticing, for they engage in no particular action that resounds and signals their power. But when things have come to the point where people cannot help but see what has happened, everyone seeks to deprive this nation of an advantage it has obtained, so to speak, only by surprise.
The Carthaginian cavalry was superior to the Roman for two reasons. First, the Numidian and Spanish horses were better than those of Italy; second, the Roman cavalry was
poorly armed, for it was only during the wars the Romans fought in Greece that this feature was changed, as we learn from Polybius.10
In the First Punic War, Regulus was beaten as soon as the Carthaginians chose to bring their cavalry into combat on the plains, and, in the Second, Hannibal owed his principal victories to his Numidians.11
After Scipio conquered Spain and made an alliance with Masinissa, he took this superiority away from the Carthaginians. It was the Numidian cavalry that won the battle of Zama and finished the war.
The Carthaginians had more experience on the sea and could manoeuver better than the Romans, but I think this advantage was not so great then as it would be today.
Since the ancients did not have the compass, they could hardly navigate anywhere but near the coasts. Also, they used only boats with oars, which were small and flat. Practically every inlet was a harbor for them. The skill of pilots was very limited, and their manoeuvers amounted to very little. Thus Aristotle said 12 that it was useless to have a corps of sailors, and that laborers sufficed for the job.
The art was so imperfect that they could scarcely do with a thousand oars what today is done with a hundred.13
Large vessels were disadvantageous, since the difficulty the crew had in moving them made them unable to execute the necessary turns. Anthony had a disastrous experience 14 with them at Actium; his ships could not move, while Augustus' lighter ones attacked them on all sides.
Because ancient vessels were rowed, the lighter ones easily shattered the oars of the larger ones, which then became nothing more than immobile objects, like our dismasted vessels today.
Since the invention of the compass, things have changed. Oars have been abandoned,15 the coasts have been left be-
hind, great vessels have been built. The ship has become more complicated, and sailing practices have multiplied.
The invention of powder had an unsuspected effect. It made the strength of navies consist more than ever in nautical art. For to resist the cannon's violence and avoid being subjected to superior firing power, great ships were needed. But the level of the art had to correspond to the magnitude of the ship.
The small vessels of former days used to grapple on to each other suddenly, and the soldiers of both sides did the fighting. A whole land army was placed on a fleet. In the naval battle that Regulus and his colleague won, we see one hundred and thirty thousand Romans fighting against one hundred and fifty thousand Carthaginians. At that time soldiers meant a great deal and an expert crew little; at present, soldiers mean nothing, or little, and an expert crew a great deal.
The victory of the consul Duilius brings out this difference well. The Romans had no knowledge of navigation. A Carthaginian galley ran aground on their coasts; they used it as a model to build their own. In three months' time, their sailors were trained, their fleet constructed and equipped. It put to sea, found the Carthaginian navy and defeated it.
At present, a lifetime hardly suffices for a prince to create a fleet capable of appearing before a power which already rules the sea. It is perhaps the only thing that money alone cannot do. And if, in our day, a great prince immediately succeeds at it,16 others have learned from experience that his example is more to be admired than followed.17
The Second Punic War is so famous that everybody knows it. When we carefully examine the multitude of obstacles confronting Hannibal, all of which this extraordinary man surmounted, we have before us the finest spectacle presented by antiquity.
Rome was a marvel of constancy. After the battles of Ticinus, Trebia, and Lake Trashnene, after Cannae more dismal still, abandoned by almost all the peoples of Italy, it did not sue for peace. The reason is that the senate never departed from its old maxims.a It dealt with Hannibal as it had previously dealt with Pyrrhus, with whom it had refused to make any accommodation so long as he remained in Italy. And I find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus 18 that, at the time of the negotiation with Coriolanus, the senate declared that it would not violate its old practices, that the Roman people could not make peace while enemies were on its soil, but that, if the Volscians withdrew, their just demands would be met.
Rome was saved by the strength of its institutions. After the battle of Cannae not even the women were permitted to shed tears. The senate refused to ransom the prisoners, and sent the miserable remains of the army to make war in Sicily, without pay or any military honor, until such time as Hannibal was expelled from Italy.
In another instance, the consul Terentius Varro had fled shamefully to Venusia.b This man, who was of the lowest birth, had been elevated to the consulate only to mortify the nobility. But the senate did not wish to enjoy this unhappy triumph. Seeing how necessary it was on this occasion to win the confidence of the people, it went before Varro and thanked him for not having despaired of the republic.
Usually it is not the real loss sustained in battle (such as that of several thousands of men) which proves fatal to a
a The French word maxime means "rule -of conduct"; "maxim," in English, still has this as one of its meanings, and, for the sake of simplicity and consistency, will be used throughout.
b Venusia: an Italian city of Apulia, some distance south of Rome.
state, but the imagined loss and the discouragement, which deprive it of the very strength fortune had left it.
There are things that everybody says because they were once said.c People believe that Hannibal made a signal error in not having laid siege to Rome after the battle of Cannae. It is true that at first the terror in Rome was extreme, but the consternation of a warlike people, which almost always turns into courage, is different from that of a vile populace, which senses only its weakness. A proof that Hannibal would not have succeeded is that the Romans were still able to send assistance everywhere.
People say further that Hannibal made a great mistake in leading his army to Capua, where it grew soft. But they fail to see that they stop short of the true cause. Would not the soldiers of his army have found Capua everywhere, having become rich after so many victories? On a similar occasion, Alexander, who was commanding his own subjects, made use of an expedient that Hannibal, who had only mercenary troops, could not use. He had the baggage of his soldiers set on fire, and burned all their riches and his too. We are told that Kuli Khan,d after his conquest of India, left each soldier with only a hundred rupees of silver.19
It was Hannibal's conquests themselves that began to change the fortunes of this war. He had not been sent to Italy by the magistrates of Carthage; he received very little help, whether because of the jealousy of one party or the overconfidence of the other. While he retained his whole army, he defeated the Romans. But when he had to put garrisons in the cities, defend his allies, besiege strongholds or prevent
c For this reference and the one in the next paragraph, see Livy, XXII, 51, and XXIII, 18.
d Kuli Khan: Nadir Shah, who was shah of Iran from 1736-47. A.D.
them from being besieged, his forces were found to be too small, and he lost a large part of his army piecemeal. Conquests are easy to make, because they are made with all one's forces; they are difficult to preserve because they are defended with only a part of one's forces.
NOTES
1. See a fragment from Dio, I, in The Extract of Virtues and Vices.
2. Life of Pyrrhus (26).
3. Justin, XX (1).
4. The presence of Hannibal made all dissensions among the Romans cease, but Scipio's presence embittered the dissensions already existing among the Carthaginians, and took all the remaining strength from the government. The generals, the senate, the notables became more suspect to the people, and the people became wilder. See, in Appian, the entire war of the first Scipio.
5. Floras, I (16).
6. See Polybius (II, 24). Floras' Epitome says that they raised three hundred thousand men in the city and among the Latins.
7. Livy, XXVII (9, 10).
8. See Appian, The Punic Wars (25).
9. See what Polybius says of their exactions, especially in the fragment of book IX (11) in The Extract of Virtues and Vices.
10. VI (25).
11. Entire corps of Numidians went over to the side of the Romans, who from that point began to breathe again.
12. Politics, VII (6 (5).
13. See what Perrault says about the oars of the ancients, Essay in Physics, tit. HI, Mechanics of the Ancients.
14. The same thing happened at the battle of Salamis. Plutarch, Life of Themistocles (14). History is full of similar facts.
15. From which we can judge the imperfection of the navigation of the ancients, since we have abandoned a practice in which we were so superior to them.
16. Louis XIV.
17. Spain and Muscovy.
18. Roman Antiquities, VIII.
19. History of His Life, Paris, 1742, p. 402.
CHAPTER V
THE CONDITION OF GREECE,
MACEDONIA, SYRIA, AND EGYPT
AFTER THE REDUCTION OF
THE CARTHAGINIANS
I imagine Hannibal made few witty remarks and even fewer favoring Fabius and Marcellus over himself.a I regret seeing Livy strewing his flowers on these enormous colosses of antiquity. I wish he had done as Homer, who refrained from adorning them and knew so well how to make them come alive.
Furthermore, the remarks attributed to Hannibal should be sensible. For if on learning of his brother's defeat he confessed he foresaw the ruin of Carthage, I know nothing better calculated to throw despair into the peoples who had placed themselves under his protection, and to discourage an army which expected such great rewards after the war.
Since the Carthaginians faced only victorious armies in Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia, Hannibal — whose enemies were constantly gaining strength — was reduced to a defensive war.
a For the passages referred to here and in the next paragraph, see Livy, XXVII, 16, 51.
This gave the Romans the idea of carrying the war to Africa, and Scipio went there. The successes he had there forced the Carthaginians to recall Hannibal from Italy, weeping for grief as he yielded to the Romans the soil on which he had vanquished them so often.
Everything a great statesman and captain can do, Hannibal did to save his country. Unable to induce Scipio to make peace, he fought a battle in which fortune seemed to take pleasure in confounding his skill, experience, and good sense.
Carthage obtained peace not from an enemy but from a master. It was forced to pay ten thousand talents in fifty years, to give hostages, to hand over its vessels and elephants, and to make no war without the consent of the Roman people. And the power of its inveterate enemy, Masinissa, was increased in order to keep it humbled forever.
After the reduction of the Carthaginians, Rome had almost nothing but small wars and great victories, whereas before it had had small victories and great wars.
In those times something like two separate worlds existed. In one, the Carthaginians and Romans fought each other. The other was agitated by quarrels dating from Alexander's death. There no thought was given to what was happening in the West,1 for although Philip, king of Macedonia, had made a treaty with Hannibal, it was practically without consequence. And this prince, who gave the Carthaginians nothing but very feeble assistance, only demonstrated useless ill will toward the Romans.
When we see two great peoples engage in a long and stubborn war, it is often impolitic to think we can remain tranquil spectators. For the people which wins immediately undertakes new wars, and a nation of soldiers goes off to fight against peoples who are only citizens.
This was shown very clearly in those times, for the Romans had hardly subdued the Carthaginians when they attacked
new peoples and appeared everywhere on earth to invade every country.
Only four powers in the East were then capable of resisting the Romans: Greece, and the kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. Let us see what the situation of these first two powers was, since the Romans began by subjugating them. Three notable peoples lived in Greece: the Aetolians, the Achaeans, and the Boeotians. These were grouped in associations of free cities which had general assemblies and common magistrates. The Aetolians were warlike, hardy, reckless, greedy for gain, and always free with their word and oaths; in short, they made war on land as pirates do at sea. The Achaeans were constantly vexed by troublesome neighbors or protectors. The Boeotians, dullest of the Greeks, participated as little as possible in general affairs. Led solely by their immediate experience of good and evil, they did not have enough spirit to make it easy for orators to agitate them, and, surprisingly, their republic was preserved amid anarchy itself.2
Lacedaemon had preserved its power — that is, the warlike spirit with which the institutions of Lycurgus imbued it. The Thessalians were, to a considerable degree, kept in subjection by the Macedonians. The kings of Illyria had already been crushed by the Romans. The Acarnanians and Athamenes b were ravaged in turn by the forces of Macedonia and Aetolia. Without any strength of their own and without allies,3 the Athenians no longer amazed the world except by their flattery of kings. And the tribune where Demosthenes had spoken was no longer mounted except to propose the most cowardly and scandalous decrees.
Otherwise, Greece was formidable because of its situation, its strength, the multitude of its cities, the number of its sol-
b Acarnanians: a people of western Greece; Athamanes: a people of Epirus.
diers, its public order,c its morals, its laws. It loved war, it knew the art of war, and had it been united it would have been invincible.
It had indeed been shaken by the first Philip, Alexander, and Antipater, but not subjugated. And the kings of Macedonia, who could not resolve to abandon their claims and hopes, stubbornly labored to enslave it.
Macedonia was almost surrounded by inaccessible mountains. Its people were admirably suited for war — courageous, obedient, industrious, indefatigable. And they must have received these qualities from the climate, since to this day the men of that country are still the best soldiers of the Turkish empire.
Greece maintained itself by a kind of balance: the Lacedaemonians were usually the allies of the Aetolians, and the Macedonians of the Achaeans. But all equilibrium was upset by the coming of the Romans.
Since the kings of Macedonia could not maintain a great number of troops,4 the least reverse was of consequence to them. Besides, they would have had trouble extending their power, since their designs were not unknown, and their proceedings were always watched closely. And the successes they had in wars undertaken for their allies were an evil that these same allies sought at once to repair.
But the kings of Macedonia were usually skilful princes. Their monarchy was not one of those that are carried along by a kind of momentum imparted to them at their beginning. Continually instructed by perils and problems, entangled in all the quarrels of the Greeks, they had to win the leaders of
c Police, the French word here, referred to the function or branch of government involving the keeping of public order and morality — a conception still retained in the "police powers" thought to be inherent in the state governments of the United States. See also Blackstone's Commentaries, IV, 13.
the cities, dazzle the peoples, divide or unite interests. In short, they were forced to expose themselves at every moment.
Philip, who at the beginning of his reign won the love and confidence of the Greeks by his moderation, suddenly changed. He became a cruel tyrant, at a time when policy and ambition should have made him just.5 He saw, though from afar, the Carthaginians and the Romans, whose forces were immense. He had ended the war to the advantage of his allies, and had reconciled himself with the Aetolians. It was natural that he should think of uniting all of Greece behind him in order to prevent foreigners from establishing themselves there. But, instead, he irritated it by small usurpations, and, amusing himself with quarrels about vain interests when his very existence was at stake, he made himself odious and detestable to all the Greeks by three or four bad actions.
The Aetolians were the most irritated, and the Romans, seizing the opportunity offered by their resentment, or rather by their folly, made an alliance with them, entered Greece, and armed it against Philip.
This prince was vanquished at the battle of Cynoscephalae, and the victory was due in part to the valor of the Aetolians. He was so consternated as to be reduced to a treaty that was less a peace than an abandonment of his own forces. He withdrew his garrisons from all Greece, surrendered his vessels, and obligated himself to pay a thousand talents in ten years.
With his usual good sense, Polybius compares the military order of the Romans with that of the Macedonians, which was adopted by all the kings succeeding Alexander. He lets us see the advantages and inconveniences of the phalanx and the legion; he prefers the Roman order, and appears to be right, judging by all the events of those days.
In the Second Punic War, the fact that Hannibal immediately armed his soldiers in Roman style greatly endangered the Romans. But the Greeks changed neither their arms nor their manner of fighting. It did not so much as enter their
minds to renounce practices with which they had done such great things.
The success of the Romans against Philip was the greatest of all the steps they took toward general conquest. To assure themselves of Greece, they used all sorts of ways to reduce the Aetolians who had helped them conquer. What is more, they ordained that every Greek city which had been under Philip or some other prince would be governed thenceforth by its own laws.
It is easy to see that these small republics could only be dependent. The Greeks abandoned themselves to senseless delight and believed themselves free in reality because the Romans declared them so.
The Aetolians, who had imagined they would dominate Greece, were in despair upon seeing that they had only succeeded in giving themselves masters. And since they always went to extremes, seeking to correct their follies by still other follies, they called into Greece the king of Syria, Antiochus, as they had called in the Romans.
The kings of Syria were the most powerful of Alexander's successors, for they possessed almost all the states of Darius, except Egypt. But events had taken place to weaken their power considerably.
Toward the end of his life, Seleucus, who had founded the Syrian empire, destroyed the kingdom of Lysimachus. In the confusion, several provinces revolted. The kingdoms of Pergamum, Cappadocia, and Bithyniad were formed. But these small timid states always regarded the humbling of their old masters as a piece of good fortune for themselves.
Since the kings of Syria always looked upon the felicity of the kingdom of Egypt with extreme envy, they thought of nothing but reconquering it. Neglecting the East for this
d Pergamum, Cappadocia, and Bithynia were in Asia Minor.
reason, they lost several provinces there and met with much disobedience in the others.
Finally, the kings of Syria held upper and lower Asia,e but experience has shown that when the capital and the main forces are in the lower provinces of Asia, the upper ones cannot be preserved, and when the seat of empire is in the upper ones, the state is weakened by the attempt to protect the lower. The Persian and Syrian empires were never as strong as the Parthian, which comprised only a part of the provinces of the other two. If Cyrus had not conquered the kingdom of Lydia, if Seleucus had stayed in Babylonia and had left the maritime provinces to Antigonus' successors, the Persian empire would have been invincible to the Greeks, and Seleucus' to the Romans. Nature has given states certain limits to mortify the ambition of men. When the Romans transgressed these limits, the Parthians almost always destroyed them;6 when the Parthians dared to transgress them, they were immediately forced to withdraw. And in our own day the Turks, after advancing beyond these limits, were compelled to retire within them.
The kings of Syria and of Egypt had two kinds of subjects in their countries: conquering peoples, and conquered peoples. The former,f still thinking of their original condition, were very difficult to govern. They did not have the spirit of independence that prompts men to throw off their yoke, but the impatience that makes them desire to change masters.
But the main weakness of the kingdom of Syria came from that of the court where the successors of Darius and not of Alexander reigned. The luxury, vanity, and indolence which,
e "Upper" and "lower" Asia, as the terms are used here, refer to the contrast between Iran, on the one hand, and the maritime provinces of Asia Minor, on the other.
f Former: This is the wording in Jullian and Masson, yet other editions read "latter."
in all ages, have never left the courts of Asia, reigned especially at this one. The evil passed to the people, and to the soldiers, and became contagious even for the Romans, since the war they waged against Antiochus is the true beginning of their corruption.
Such was the situation of the kingdom of Syria when Antiochus, who had done such great things, undertook to make war against the Romans. But he did not even conduct himself with the prudence one employs in ordinary affairs. Hannibal wanted the war in Italy renewed and Philip won over or made neutral. Antiochus did neither of these. He appeared in Greece with a small part of his forces and, as if he had wanted to observe a war there rather than wage one, he was only concerned with his pleasures. He was defeated and fled to Asia, more frightened than conquered.
In this war, Philip, swept along by the Romans as by a torrent, served them with all his power and became the instrument of their victories. The pleasure of avenging himself and ravaging Aetolia, the promise that his tribute would be reduced and that some cities would be left to him, his jealousy of Antiochus — in short, petty motives — determined his conduct. And, not daring to conceive the idea of throwing off his yoke, he thought only of moderating it.
Antiochus judged matters so badly that he imagined the Romans would leave him alone in Asia. But they followed him there. He was defeated again and, in his consternation, consented to the most infamous treaty a great prince has ever made.
I know nothing so magnanimous as the resolve of a monarch of our own day7 to be buried under the debris of his throne rather than accept proposals that a king should not even hear. He had too proud a soul to descend lower than the level of his misfortunes, and he well knew that a crown can be strengthened by courage but never by infamy.
It is a common thing to find princes who can conduct a battle. There are very few who know how to wage a war, who are equally capable of taking advantage of fortune and awaiting it, and who, with the frame of mind that makes them cautious before an undertaking, fear nothing once the undertaking is begun.
After the reduction of Antiochus only small powers remained except for Egypt, which by its situation, its fecundity, its commerce, the number of its inhabitants, and its naval and land forces could have been formidable. But the cruelty of its kings, their cowardice, their avarice, their imbecility, their frightful sensuality made them so odious to their subjects that most of the time only the protection of the Romans kept them in power.
It was practically a fundamental law of the crown of Egypt that sisters succeeded to it along with brothers; and, in order to maintain unity in the government, the brother was married to the sister. Now it is difficult to imagine anything in politics more pernicious than such an order of succession. Every little domestic quarrel became a disorder in the state, and whichever one of the pair had the slightest grievance immediately raised the people of Alexandria in revolt against the other. This immense populace was always ready to join the first of its kings who wanted to agitate it. Moreover, since the kingdoms of Cyrene g and Cyprus were usually in the hands of other princes of this family, all with reciprocal rights of succession, both reigning princes and pretenders to the crown were almost always in existence. These kings therefore sat on an unstable throne, and they were powerless outside the country because they were insecurely established within it.
g Cyrene: a North African city on the Mediterranean west of Egypt.
The forces of the kings of Egypt, like those of other Asian kings, consisted of their Greek auxiliaries. Aside from the spirit of liberty, honor and glory that animated the Greeks, they were constantly engaged in all sorts of physical exercises. In the main cities they had regular games where the victors obtained crowns in the sight of all Greece, thus producing a general spirit of emulation. Now at a time when arms required strength and dexterity for success in battle, men trained in this way doubtlessly had great advantages over a crowd of barbarians selected at random and led to war involuntarily — as the armies of Darius indeed demonstrated.
To deprive the kings of such a militia and quietly take their main forces from them, the Romans did two things. First, they gradually established it as a maxim among the Greeks that they could not form any alliance, accord help or make war on anyone without Roman consent. In addition, in their treaties with the kings they forbade them to levy troops among the allies of the Romans — which left them only their national troops.8
NOTES
1. It is surprising, as Josephus remarks in his book Against Apion (I, 12), that neither Herodotus nor Thucydides ever spoke of the Romans, even though they waged such great wars.
2. To please the multitude, the magistrates no longer permitted the courts to open; dying men bequeathed their property to their friends for use at feasts. See a fragment of Polybius, XX (4, 6), in The Extract of Virtues and Vices.
3. They had no alliance with the other peoples of Greece. Polybius, VIII (V, 106).
4. See Plutarch, Life of Flamininus (2).
5. See, in Polybius (VII, 12), the injustices and cruelties by which Philip discredited himself.
6. I shall speak of the reasons for this in Chapter XV. They are drawn, in part, from the geographic situation of the two empires.
7. Louis XIV.
8. They had already had this policy with the Carthaginians, whom they forced by treaty to make no further use of auxiliary troops, as we see from a fragment of Dio.
CHAPTER VI
THE CONDUCT THE ROMANS
PURSUED TO SUBJUGATE
ALL PEOPLES
In the course of so many successes, when men ordinarily become negligent, the senate always acted with the same profundity; and while the armies caused consternation everywhere, it held on to the nations that had already been struck down.
It set itself up as a tribunal for judging all peoples, and at the end of every war decided the penalties and rewards each had deserved. It took part of the domain of the conquered peoples for Rome's allies, and by this means accomplished two things, attaching to Rome those kings from whom it had little to fear and much to hope for, and weakening others from whom it had little to hope for and everything to fear.
Allies were used to make war on an enemy, but then the destroyers were at once destroyed. Philip was conquered by means of the Aetolians, who immediately afterward were annihilated for having joined with Antiochus. Antiochus was conquered with the help of the Rhodians; but after receiving splendid rewards, they were forever humbled on the pretext of having demanded that peace be made with Persia.
When the Romans had several enemies on their hands they made a truce with the weakest, which believed itself fortunate to obtain it, placing great value on the postponement of its ruin.
While engaging in a great war, the senate pretended not to notice all sorts of wrongs, and waited in silence till the time for punishment had come. And if the people in question sent it the culprits, it refused to punish them, preferring to consider the whole nation criminal and reserving to itself a more useful vengeance.
Since they inflicted unbelievable evils upon their enemies, leagues were hardly ever formed against them, for the country furthest from the peril did not wish to venture closer.
Because of this, they were rarely warred upon, but always went to war at the time, in the manner, and with those that suited them. And of all the peoples they attacked, very few would not have borne all kinds of insults if the Romans had wanted to leave them in peace.
Since it was their custom always to speak as masters, the ambassadors they sent to peoples who had not yet felt their power were sure to be mistreated — which was a sure pretext for waging a new war.1
Since they never made peace in good faith, and since universal conquest was their object, their treaties were really only suspensions of war, and they put conditions into them that always began the ruin of the state accepting them. They made garrisons leave strongholds, or limited the number of ground troops, or had horses or elephants surrendered to them. And if the people was a sea power they forced it to burn its vessels and sometimes to live further inland.
After destroying the armies of a prince, they ruined his finances by excessive taxes or a tribute on the pretext of making him pay the expenses of the war — a new kind of tyranny that forced him to oppress his subjects and lose their love.
When they granted peace to some prince, they took one of his brothers or children in hostage, which gave them the means of vexing his kingdom at will. When they had the closest heir, they intimidated the present ruler; if they only had a prince of distant degree, they used him to instigate popular revolts.
When some prince or people broke away from obedience to a ruler, they were immediately accorded the title of ally of the Roman people.2 This way the Romans made them sacred and inviolable, so that there was no king, however great, who could be sure of his subjects or even of his family for a moment.
Although the title of being their ally entailed a kind of servitude, it was nevertheless much sought after.3 Those holding it were sure to receive insults only from the Romans, and there were grounds for hoping these would be smaller. Thus, to obtain it there were no services peoples and kings were not ready to render, and no baseness to which they would not stoop.
They had many sorts of allies. Some were united to them by privileges and a participation in their greatness, like the Latins and Hernicans; others, by origin itself, like their colonies; some by benefits, as were Masinissa, Eumenes, and Attalus, who received their kingdoms or the extension of their power from the Romans; other by free treaties, and these became subjects through long-existing alliance, like the kings of Egypt, Bithynia, and Cappadocia, and most of the Greek cities; several, finally, by forced treaties, like Philip and Antiochus, for the Romans never made a peace treaty with an enemy unless it contained an alliance — that is, they subjugated no people which did not help them in reducing others.
When they allowed a city to remain free, they immediately caused two factions to arise within it.4 One upheld local laws and liberty, the other maintained that there was
no law except the will of the Romans. And since the latter faction was always the stronger, it is easy to see that such freedom was only a name.
Sometimes they became masters of a country on the pretext of succession. They entered Asia, Bithynia, and Libya by the testaments of Attalus, Nicomedes,5 and Apion,a and Egypt was enslaved by the testament of the king of Cyrene.
To keep great princes permanently weak, the Romans did not want them to make any alliance with those to whom they had accorded their own.6 And since they did not refuse their own to a powerful prince's neighbors, this condition, stipulated in a peace treaty, left him without allies.
Moreover, when they had conquered some eminent prince, they wrote into the treaty that he could not have recourse to war to settle his differences with allies of the Romans (that is, usually with all his neighbors), but that he would have to use arbitration. This removed his military power for the future.
And, to reserve all such power to themselves, they deprived even their allies of it. As soon as the allies had the least dispute, the Romans sent ambassadors who forced them to make peace. We need only observe how they terminated the wars of Attalus and Prusias.
When some prince had made a conquest, which often left him exhausted, a Roman ambassador immediately arrived to snatch it from his hands. From among a thousand examples, we can recall how, with a word, they drove Antiochus out of Egypt.
Knowing how well-suited the peoples of Europe were for war, they made it a law that no Asian king would be permitted to enter Europe and subjugate any people whatsoever.7 The main motive for their war against Mithridates was that
a Pergamum is said to have been willed to the Romans by Attalus III (133 B.C.), Bithynia by Nicomedes III (74 B.C.), and Cyrene by Apion (96 B.C.).
he had contravened this prohibition by subduing some barbarians.8
When they saw two peoples at war, even though they had no alliance or dispute with one or the other, they never failed to appear on the scene. And like our knights-errant, they took the part of the weaker. Dionysius of Halicarnassus9 says it was an old practice of the Romans always to extend their help to whomever came to implore it.
These practices of the Romans were in no sense just particular actions occurring by chance. These were ever-constant principles, as may readily be seen from the fact that the maxims they followed against the greatest powers were precisely the ones they had followed, in the beginning, against the small cities around them.
They used Eumenes and Masinissa to subjugate Philip and Antiochus in the same way they had used the Latins and Hernicans to subjugate the Volscians and Tuscans. They required the fleets of Carthage and of the Asian kings to be surrendered to them in the same way that they had forced the barks of Antium to be given up. They removed the political and civil links connecting the four parts of Macedonia in the same way that they had formerly broken up the union of the small Latin cities.10
But, above all, their constant maxim was to divide. The Achaean republic was formed by an association of free cities. The senate declared that thenceforth each city would be governed by its own laws, without depending on a common authority.
The republic of the Boeotians was similarly a league of several cities. But in the war against Perseus some cities sided with Perseus and the rest with the Romans, and the Romans took the latter into their favor only on condition that the common alliance be dissolved.
If a great prince b who reigned in our day had followed
b This is an allusion to Louis XIV and James II.
these maxims, he would have employed stronger forces to support a neighboring prince who was overthrown by revolt, so as to confine him within the island which remained loyal to him. By dividing the only power that could oppose his designs, he would have derived immense advantages from the very misfortune of his ally.
When disputes broke out in some state, the Romans adjudicated the matter immediately, and by this means they were sure of having against them only the party they had condemned. If princes of the same blood were disputing the crown, the Romans sometimes declared them both kings.11 If one of them was under age,12 they decided in his favor and took him under their tutelage, as protectors of the world. For they had carried things to the point where peoples and kings were their subjects without knowing precisely by what title, the rule being that it was enough to have heard of them to owe them submission.
They never waged distant wars without procuring some ally near the enemy under attack, who could join his troops to the army they were sending. And since this army was never very large, they always made sure to keep another13 in the province nearest the enemy, and a third in Rome constantly ready to march. Thus they exposed only a very small part of their forces, while their enemy hazarded all of his.14
Sometimes they abused the subtlety of the terms of their language. They destroyed Carthage, saying that they had promised to preserve the people of the city but not the city itself.c We know how the Aetolians, who had entrusted themselves to the good faith of the Romans, were deceived: the Romans claimed that the meaning of the words to entrust oneself to the good faith of an enemy d entailed the loss of
c In French the distinction is between cité and ville, in Latin between civitas and oppidum.
d The Romans interpreted the phrase to mean unconditional surrender. See Jullian, and Polybius, XX, 9.
all sorts of things — of persons, lands, cities, temples, and even tombs.
They could even give a treaty an arbitrary interpretation. Thus, when they wanted to reduce the Rhodians, they said they had not previously given them Lycia as a present but as a friend and ally.
When one of their generals made peace to save his army as it was about to perish, the senate did not ratify the peace but profited from it and continued the war. Thus, when Jugurtha had surrounded a Roman army and, trusting to a treaty, let it go, the very troops he had spared were used against him. And when the Numantians had forced twenty thousand Romans who were about to die of hunger to sue for peace, this peace which had saved so many citizens was broken at Rome, and public faith was evaded by handing back the consul who had signed it.15
Sometimes they made peace with a prince on reasonable conditions, and when he had executed them, added such unreasonable ones that he was forced to reopen the war. Thus, after making Jugurtha surrender16 his elephants, horses, treasures, and Roman deserters, they demanded that he surrender himself — an act which is the worst possible misfortune for a prince and can never constitute a condition of peace.
Finally, they judged kings for their personal faults and crimes. They heard the complaints of all those who had some dispute with Philip; they sent deputies to provide for their safety. And they had Perseus accused before them for some murders and quarrels with citizens of allied cities.
Since a general's glory was judged by the amount of gold and silver carried at his triumph, he left nothing to the conquered enemy. Rome continually grew richer, and every war put it in a position to undertake another.
The peoples who were friends or allies all ruined themselves by the immense presents they gave to keep or gain
favor, and half the money sent to the Romans for this purpose would have been enough to conquer them.17
Masters Of the world, they assigned all its treasures to themselves, and in plundering were less unjust as conquerors than as legislators. Learning that Ptolemy, king of Cyprus, had immense riches, on the motion of a tribune they enacted 18 a law by which they gave themselves the estate of a living man and a fortune confiscated from an allied prince.
Soon the cupidity of individuals finished carrying off whatever had escaped public avarice. The magistrates and governors sold their injustices to kings. Two competitors ruined themselves vying with each other to buy a protection that was always doubtful against any rival whose funds were not