second day, the orator proceeded to answer all his former arguments, and to prove that justice was a mere conventional device for the maintenance of civil order, Cato indignantly moved the Senate to send the sophist back again to his school, and not to suffer the Roman youth to be corrupted.

The mitigation of the fine to 100 talents still left it beyond the resources of the Athenians, who seem to have taken the first opportunity of revenging themselves on Oropus (B.c. 150). This time the Oropians appealed to the Achæan League, relying less on the justice of their cause than on the corruption of the leading statesmen. So far as the transaction is intelligible, a bribe of ten talents was given to Menalcidas, the general of the league, who promised the half of it to Callicrates, for the use of his all-powerful influence. This promise he failed to keep, and Callicrates revenged himself by accusing Menalcidas, who was a Spartan, of advising the Romans to sever Sparta from the league. Menalcidas only escaped condemnation by a present to Diæus, his successor in the office of general; but Diæus-and this says something for the remnant of public virtue left among the Achæans-Diæus fell into such disgrace by the transaction that he was fain to occupy the attention of the confederacy by urging a new attack on the Spartans, on the ground that they had violated the laws of the league by a private appeal to Rome respecting a disputed boundary.

Other events had occurred to inflame and encourage the war party. In B.c. 151 the Achæan exiles had returned from Rome, having been dismissed with a sort of contemptuous mercy. After the repeated rejection of their petition for liberty, their cause was espoused by P. Scipio, as the friend of Polybius. Cato, gained over by Scipio, decided the question by a characteristic speech, thrown in when the debate was almost exhausted. "Have we nothing better to do," said he, "than to sit here all day long, debating whether a parcel of worn-out Greeks shall be carried to their graves here or in Achaia?" But when the exiles proceeded to petition the Senate for restoration to their honours, Cato told Polybius, with a smile, that he resembled Ulysses returning to the cave of the Cyclops for the hat and sash he had left behind. Of the 300 exiles who landed in Greece-for to this had their number been reduced-almost the only one who had learned the necessity of moderation was Polybius himself. They were mad enough to look with hope towards Andriscus, a low-born adventurer, who called himself Philip, and claimed the Macedonian throne as

the son of Perseus, but was defeated and taken prisoner by the prætor, Q. Metellus, after some brief success. In the same year Polybius retired from a scene where he found no good to be done, to join his friend Scipio in the Third Punic War; and Callicrates died at Rhodes, on an embassy to Rome respecting the affairs of Sparta, leaving his epitaph to be written by the traveller Pausanias, "his death being, for aught I know, a clear gain to the country (B.C. 149).

Thus every check on the war-party was removed; and the Spartans were left no resource but an appeal to Rome. The Senate sent two commissioners, who decided that the Achæan League should give up, not only Sparta, but Corinth; that is, that they should surrender the key of Peloponnesus, together with all other cities not Achæan (B.c. 147). The sentence was received with the greatest dissatisfaction at Corinth itself: the indignation of the citizens vented itself in an attack on the Spartan residents; and the Roman commissioners themselves were endangered in the riot. After a second fruitless embassy, to demand satisfaction for this new outrage, the Senate declared war against the Achæan League; and the prætor Metellus was ordered to march into Peloponnesus. The Achæan general Critolaüs proved as incompetent in the field as he had been headstrong in council. Abandoning the defence of Thermopylæ, he was overtaken and defeated at Scarphea in Locris, he himself never again being heard of. The other leader of the war party, Diæus, succeeded him as general, and checked the progress of Metellus; but meanwhile a second Roman army landed at the Isthmus under the consul Lucius Mummius. Diæus, marching to the defence of Corinth, was utterly defeated; and the city was evacuated, not only by the Achæan troops, but by the mass of the inhabitants. Their retirement failed to save Corinth from being made one of the chief examples of that vengeance by which the Romans were wont to put a decisive end to a long conflict. Mummius gave up the undefended city to the flames, the few men in it to slaughter, and the women and children to slavery. The precious treasures of art, which had been accumulated for centuries at Corinth-one of the chief schools of sculpture and painting-became partly the playthings of the Roman soldiers, a band of whom were seen by Polybius at a game of dice or draughts on a masterpiece of Aristides, and were partly exposed for sale. Taught their value by the enormous prices at which Attalus III. eagerly bought some of them, the consul sent

• The "Attalici Conditiones" of Horace, Carm. I. 1.

the remaining pictures to Rome, stipulating with the masters of the vessels that they should replace any that might be lost by others of equal value! It is almost an equal satire upon Roman ignorance of Greek history and the contempt into which the great names of Hellas had fallen, that the country was constituted a province under the name of that state which had, till lately, been the least influential of all the rest; while, by a curious revolution, that name recovered the predominance it had enjoyed during the heroic age. Greece became the PROVINCE OF ACHAIA, the northern limit being drawn south of Thessaly and Epirus, which were included in the new Province of Macedonia (B.C. 146).

Mummius remained for a year as proconsul, to regulate the affairs of Greece, in conjunction with ten commissioners sent from Rome (B.c. 145). The conqueror, so ignorant of art, is said to have displayed the old Roman accomplishments of equity and moderation; and Polybius, who had hastened from the ruins of Carthage to use his influence on behalf of his country, had power, as the friend of Scipio, to make his intercession respected. If we could penetrate the thoughts of such a man at witnessing, in the same year, the fate of Carthage and of his native land, we might venture on the hopeless task of writing an epitaph for the tomb of Hellenic freedom.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE THIRD PUNIC WAR. B.C. 150 TO B.C. 146.

STATE OF CARTHAGE BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND PUNIO WARS-HER PROSPERITY AND RESOURCES-HER LOYALTY TO ROME-ENCROACHMENTS OF MASINISSA-ROMAN COMMISSIONERS IN AFRICA-M. PORCIUS CATO AND P. SCIPIO NASICA-DELENDA EST CARTHAGO-HOSTILITIES WITH MASINISSA-SCIPIO IN MASINISSA'S CAMP-HIS DREAM -EMBASSIES TO ROME-DECLARATION OF WAR-THE CONSULS LAND IN AFRICACONFERENCE AT UTICA-THE CARTHAGINIANS GIVE UP THEIR ARMS-THE FINAL SENTENCE-RAGE AND RESISTANCE OF THE CITY-PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE-THE FIRST CAMPAIGN-OPERATIONS OF CENSORINUS-SERVICES OF SCIPIO-THE SECOND CAMPAIGN-HOPES FOR CARTHAGE-NEW ALLIES-HER INTERNAL DISSENSIONS-THE TWO HASDRUBALS-SCIPIO ELECTED CONSUL-HE LANDS IN AFRICA-PROGRESS OF THE SIEGE CAPTURE OF THE CITY THE SEVEN DAYS' FIGHT-DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE-THE TEARS AND TRIUMPH OF SCIPIO-LATER HISTORY OF CARTHAGE.

THE story of the last stand made by Carthage against Rome, in the agony of self-defence, is one of the briefest and most melancholy chapters in the history of the world. All the faults of character, all the crimes of policy, all the selfish arrogance of an aristocracy of wealth, seem not only to be forgiven in the pity excited by her fall, but atoned for by the absence of any provocation of her fate. And yet we must not pronounce too hastily that a blind hatred only sealed her doom. The wealth-producing power of the state survived her political extinction, and restored her to a prosperity which threatened to raise her again to political importance. Her fleet and army had been taken from her, but she still possessed her ports and walls: the sea divided her from Italy, and the resources of Africa were at her back. Thus situated, it might have been possible for her to devote herself solely to money-making, and to remain content as the vassal of Rome: no temptation might have prevailed to make the distress of Rome the opportunity of Carthage no second family of Barca might have roused her with its thunder: this might have been possible; but it was impossible

for Rome to believe it. Her statesmen knew what their ambition would have been, had the case of Rome and Carthage been reversed; and they believed they ought not to risk the experiment on the unlimited submissiveness of their late rival. The tongue of Cato uttered the decree of fate, as much as the voice of hatred, in the sentence, Delenda est Carthago, "Carthage must be destroyed."

Half a century, however, elapsed before the coming of the crisis; and it might perhaps have been delayed much longer, but for the peculiar relations in which Carthage had been left towards Masinissa. During all the wars in Macedonia and Asia, in Spain and Liguria, she had resisted the temptations of opportunity, and refused participation in the schemes of Hannibal, with equal prudence on her own account and good faith towards Rome. This policy had brought its own reward in a marvellous recovery of prosperity. While Rome was incessantly engaged in war, the commerce of the Mediterranean would naturally be conducted chiefly by the ships of Carthage; and her territory still included the luxuriant fields of Zeugitana and Byzacium. Even after the rapacity of Masinissa had stripped her of the rich towns of Emporia, she ruled over 300 subject Libyan cities, and her own population amounted to 700,000. Of the military resources still available for her defence, some idea is given by the 200,000 stand of arms and 2000 catapults which were surrendered on the first demand of the Romans; and she had still the means and energy to manufacture daily 140 shields, 300 swords, 500 spears, 1000 missiles for catapults, and to build 120 ships of war during the siege. Of the immense treasures, in gold, silver, precious stones, and works of art, still preserved in the temples and palaces, the Romans had ocular proof in the triumph of Scipio, who, after giving up all private property to pillage, brought home the value of £1,500,000.

and

The peace which concluded the Second Punic War bound Carthage to restore to Masinissa all the territory of which they had dispossessed either him or his ancestors. A far less ambitious prince might have found in such a stipulation licence for unlimited encroachment, and the clause which forbade the Carthaginians to make war in Africa without the consent of Rome might be taken as a guarantee of impunity. The Numidian prince ought to have been too well acquainted with the Republic to indulge the hope which some have ascribed to him, of setting up his throne on the

*These statistics of the resources of Carthage at the beginning of the Third Punic War are preserved by Strabo.