distinguished for his knowledge of law, and Pontifex Maximus. He was so well acquainted with Greek that he mastered the five dialects of the language, and was able when he sat in courts in Asia to answer every suitor in his own speech." The same historian relates an incident characteristic of the manner in which the Roman governors were now beginning to treat the provincials. "Crassus was preparing to besiege Leucæ, which we must suppose that Aristonicus had seized again. He wanted a large piece of timber for a battering-ram, and he wrote to a master-builder of Elæa, a town friendly to the Romans, to send the larger of two pieces of timber which Crassus had seen there. The builder, knowing the purpose for which the timber was wanted, did not send the larger piece, but he sent the smaller, which he considered to be more suitable for the purpose, and it was of course more portable. Crassus summoned the man to his presence, and without any regard to the reasons which were alleged for sending the smaller piece, he ordered him to be stripped and whipped well, on the ground that the authority of a commander would be ruined if a man should not exactly obey orders, and should use his own judgment when he was not told to do so. Crassus's notions of obedience would not satisfy a wise general, who is content when he has a thing done in the best way.

Of his military operations we know nothing beyond this siege, which seems to have failed, for his great disaster took place near Leucæ. He appears to have been content to retire at the end of his year, after gathering the riches which attracted him to Asia, and to leave Aristonicus to his successor. On his way home, encumbered with baggage, he was surprised near Leucæ, utterly defeated, and slain in the pursuit. "We cannot," says Mr. Long, "add military ability to the five things which Crassus possessed. In connection with this campaign, the historians relate a curious example of Roman superstition. The statue of Apollo at Cumæ wept for four days. The haruspices, who interpreted the omen to signify that the war with Aristonicus would last four years, advised the Senate to have the statue broken and thrown into the sea; but the elders of Cumæ pleaded that the same sign had preceded the victories over Antiochus and Perseus. It was decided, on second thoughts, that the tears of the Cumaan Apollo were for Asiatic Greece, the mother-country of the colony, and he was propitiated with sacrifices and costly presents.†

Long, vol. i. pp. 206-7.

The historian may safely leave to the special enquirer into the annals of super

The triumph of Aristonicus was cut short by the arrival of the consul M. Perperna, whose unexpected attack drove him defeated to Stratonice in Caria, where famine compelled him to surrender (B.C. 130). The death of Perperna, from sickness, at Pergamus, left the settlement of Asia and the disposal of the prisoner to his successor, Manius Aquillius (B.c. 129), and it seems that Aristonicus was carried to Rome, and there strangled in prison. The kingdom of Pergamus was formed by Aquillius, assisted by ten commissioners, into the Roman province of ASIA.* It included the three great western divisions of Mysia, Ionia, and Caria, with the Greek colonies of Æolis, Ionia, and Doris, except that a strip of coast on the south of Caria was left to Rhodes. The Thracian Chersonese, which had belonged to Pergamus, was added to the province of Macedonia. The Lesser Phrygia was included in the province, and the Greater was given to Mithridates V., king of Pontus, as the reward of his aid against Aristonicus; but upon his death in B.C. 120, the gift was resumed, and annexed to the province of Asia during the minority of his son Mithridates VI., who became the great antagonist of the Roman people. With sovereign contempt for the rights of Syria, which was now torn by a dynastic contest, Cilicia and Lycaonia were given, if we may believe Justin, to the sons of Ariarathres, king of Cappadocia, who had fallen in battle against Aristonicus. Thus at length the Romans possessed on the continent of Asia a province abounding in natural resources, and filled with rich and magnificent cities, whose Greek inhabitants, however far inferior to their European brethren in military and political renown, had always taken the lead in the refinements of civilization. The wealth which had been fostered under the peaceful government of the Attalids offered inexhaustible resources to Italian speculators and Roman governors, and the prosperity of the Asiatics survived even the ravages of the Great Mithridatic War, which threatened for a time to drive back the Romans out of Asia. Meanwhile, the acquisition of the effete kingdoms of Syria and Egypt in the East, and in

stition that class of prodigies which were as regularly produced as they were regu larly expected, and which, even if better attested than they are, have no visible bearing on the course of history. It may however be remarked, in passing, that some of them are the simplest natural phenomena. Any one who has noticed the deposit of dew on the smooth cold surface of marble or painted walls, and the like, on a sudden increase of warmth and moisture in the surrounding atmosphere, will be at no loss to understand the frequent mention of sweating and weeping statues.

This use of the word Asia requires to be borne in mind in reading the New Tes tament, as well as the ancient historians.

the West of Numidia and the barbarous regions beyond the Alps, seemed to be only a question of time; and the formation of the province of Asia marks the epoch of Rome's dominion over the civilized world. Her empire, spreading like a vast arch over the Mediterranean basin, with one foot resting on the Atlas, and the other on the Taurus, comprised, besides Italy itself, the following provinces :-(1) SICILY, acquired in B.C. 241; (2) SARDINIA and CORSICA, B.C. 238; (3, 4) HISPANIA CITERIOR and ULTERIOR, B.C. 205; (5) GALLIA CISALPINA, B.C. 191; (6) MACEDONIA, including Epirus, Thessaly, and Thrace, B.C. 146; (7) ILLYRICUM, probably formed about the same time; (8) ACHAIA, that is, Greece south of Epirus and Thessaly, B.C. 146; (9) AFRICA, formerly the territory of Carthage, B.C. 129; (10) ASIA, including all the richest part of Asia Minor, B.C. 129.

While Rome was thus acquiring the dominion of the civilized world, her internal state was marked by the decay of the old Roman virtues, the dissolution of the bonds of her old constitution, and the beginning of new troubles that were only to end with the fall of the Republic. This inward degeneracy was directly connected with the progress of foreign conquest, which poured a flood of wealth upon a people whose social habits had been based upon frugality and simplicity, and opened an unlimited field to speculation and rapacity. These causes of change had been partly anticipated by the working of the Roman constitution within the limits of Italy itself. The old distinctions of patricians, clients, and plebeians had vanished. With the admission of the plebeians to the higher magistracies, the increasing power of wealth to influence elections, and the custom of admitting those who had held the offices of state to the Senate, a new nobility had arisen, under the names of the Optimates, and a rabble, misnamed plebeian, had grown up by their side. The nobility were in possession of the Senate, whose initiative in legislation had grown into the dominant power in the state; and the prerogative vote of the equestrian centuries gave them the command of the Comitia Centuriata. The old equality of the Roman citizens was publicly annulled by the innovation carried by the elder Africanus, in his second consulship (B.c. 194), of assigning the front seats in the theatre to the senatorial order; and the censorship formed the great means of maintaining the powers of the nobility, so long as their vehement efforts could keep that office in their own hands. The importance of the higher magistracies was kept up by the policy of abstaining from multiplying them with the growth of the Roman

dominions, for it was only on the imperious demands of the newly-
acquired provinces that they added to the two Prætors, who judged
the causes of citizens and foreigners, the four who governed the
provinces of Sicily and Sardinia (B.C. 227) and the two Spains
(B.C. 197). The device of prolonging the consular and prætorian
commands, and committing the government of provinces to pro-
consuls and proprætors, multiplied the dignities of the nobility,
and gave them enlarged opportunities for gaining wealth and
honour, instead of widening the circle of those who might aspire
to share them. The transference of the appointment of military
tribunes from the general in command to the Comitia Tributa made
this military grade, like the civil magistracies, the prize of success-
ful canvassing, and what ought to have been the promotion of
the deserving soldier became the first step in the public career of
a young noble. Such was the effect of this system on the effi-
ciency of the army that, in the war with Perseus, in which the
Roman military system for the first time thoroughly broke down,
it was found necessary to restore to the commander the appoint-
ment of the superior officers (B.c. 171). The exclusiveness of the
civil magistracies had been somewhat checked, as we have seen,
by the law which forbade re-election to the same office till after
the expiration of ten years (B.C. 217); and in B.C. 180 another
law fixed the order in which the magistracies must be sought, and
the age below which they could not be held.† But, for all this,
the curule offices, and consequently the Senate, became more and
more the virtual inheritance of a few great houses, and the
entrance of a "new man" into the well-fenced circle was re-
garded as an usurpation, unless he had some close personal tie
with the noble families, such as bound the Lælii to the Scipios.

Thus the old republican aristocracy, based upon the equal rights
of the original citizens, was transformed into a family oligarchy,
in which the old patrician houses still held the predominance,
while the lesser nobles, who should have formed a natural opposi-
tion, were united with them by common interests. The change
in the governing body was reflected in the character of the govern-

* The Prætor Urbanus and Prætor Peregrinus, of whom, as we have seen, the first
was created in B. C. 366, the second in B.C. 246.

This was the Lex Annalis of the tribune L. Villius, according to which a man
might be Questor at 31 years of age; Curule Ædile at 37 ; Prætor at 40; Consul at
43. An example of this succession is given in the case of Cicero, who was always
proud of having, though a novus homo, obtained the magistracies "in his own year."
Born at the beginning of B.C. 106, he was Quæstor in B. c. 75, Curule Edile in B.C.
69, Prætor in B. C. 66, and Consul in B. C. 63.

ment. In those external affairs which have necessarily occupied most of our attention, we have seen the dignity and moderation, the caution sometimes degenerating into sluggishness, and the marvellous energy and still more marvellous endurance when a great occasion called for great efforts, which characterize an oligarchy in general, and prove that the old Roman virtues still survived. "During the severe disciplinary period of the Sicilian war," says Mommsen, "the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height of its new position; and, if it unconstitutionally usurped for the Senate powers which the law divided between the magistrates and Comitia alone, it vindicated the step by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady pilotage of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm, and showed to the world that the Roman Senate was alone able, and in many respects alone deserved, to rule the wide circle of the Italo-Hellenic states." The ascendancy of Fabius Maximus, and the jealousy shown towards a Marcellus and a Scipio, are practical illustrations of the strength and weakness of the senatorial management of foreign affairs.

The internal administration was not only far less successful, but it seemed as if it were conducted on the very opposite principles. The arts of canvassing not only showed these nobles who could assume so lofty a mien towards kings and foreign states divested of their stern dignity, but undermined the self-respect of the citizens, whose free voices had once raised to office the worthiest of their own body. The weakened sense of responsibility, except to the public opinion of their own class, led to that military indiscipline and those outrages upon justice of which the few instances we have noticed give but a scanty sample. The vast growth of revenue from the increased public domain, the tribute of foreign subjects, the customs duties, the Spanish mines, the spoils of war -of which Antiochus and Perseus alone contributed above four millions sterling-produced no corresponding measure of financial prosperity. So vast and sudden an accession of wealth could not but be in part wasted by mismanagement, and intercepted both by the gains of lessees and by the embezzlement of officers and magistrates. And here the political and financial systems reacted upon each other. The governor or military commander in a distant province was not only subject to the temptation of indulging the passion for luxury and the state of a viceroy with all the more zest because they were new to the spirit of a Roman, but he had to acquire the means of maintaining his conse