“WHO is so worthless or indolent,” Polybius demands to know, “as not to wish to understand by what means and under what system of polity the Romans in less than fifty-three years have succeeded in subjecting the whole inhabited world to their sole government—a thing unique in history? Who is so passionately devoted to other studies as to regard anything of greater moment than the acquisition of this knowledge?”1 It is a permissible inquiry, which may engage us later; but there have been so many conquests since Polybius wrote that we cannot spend much time on any of them. We have tried to show that the essential cause of the Roman conquest of Greece was the disintegration of Greek civilization from within. No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself. Deforestation and the abuse of the soil, the depletion of precious metals, the migration of trade routes, the disturbance of economic life by political disorder, the corruption of democracy and the degeneration of dynasties, the decay of morals and patriotism, the decline or deterioration of the population, the replacement of citizen armies by mercenary troops, the human and physical wastage of fratricidal war, the guillotining of ability by murderous revolutions and counterrevolutions—all these had exhausted the resources of Hellas at the very time when the little state on the Tiber, ruled by a ruthless and farseeing aristocracy, was training hardy legions of landowners, conquering its neighbors and competitors, capturing the food and minerals of the western Mediterranean, and advancing year by year upon the Greek settlements in Italy. These ancient communities, once proud of their wealth, their sages, and their arts, had been impoverished by war, by the depredations of Dionysius I, and by the growth of Rome as a rival center of trade. The native tribes that, centuries before, had been enslaved by the Greeks or pushed back into the hinterland, increased and multiplied while their masters cultivated comfort through infanticide and abortion. Soon the native stocks were contesting the control of southern Italy. The Greek cities turned to Rome for help; they were helped, and absorbed.
Taras, frightened by the growth of Rome, called to its aid the dashing young king of Epirus. In that picturesque and mountainous country, known to us as southern Albania, Greek culture had kept a precarious footing ever since the Dorians had raised a shrine to Zeus at Dodona.* In 295 Pyrrhus, who traced his ancestry to Achilles, became king of the Molossians, the dominant Epirote tribe. He was handsome and brave, a despotic but popular ruler. His subjects thought that he could cure the spleen by pressing his right foot upon their prostrate backs; nor was anyone so poor as to be refused his ministrations.2 When the Tarentines appealed to him he saw an alluring opportunity: he would conquer Rome, the danger in the West, as Alexander had conquered Persia, the danger in the East; and he would prove his genealogy by his courage. In 281 he crossed the Ionian (Adriatic) Sea with 25,000 infantry, three thousand horse, and twenty elephants; the Greeks had taken elephants as well as mysticism from India. He met the Romans at Heracleia, and won a “Pyrrhic victory”: his losses were so great, and his resources in men and materials were now so small, that when an aide complimented him on his success he created an historic phrase by replying that another such triumph would ruin him.3 The Romans sent Caius Fabricius to treat with him for an exchange of prisoners. At supper, says Plutarch,
amongst all sorts of things that were discoursed of, but more particularly Greece and its philosophers, Cineas [the Epirote diplomat] spoke of Epicurus, and explained the opinions his followers hold about the gods and the commonwealth, and the objects of life, placing the chief happiness of man in pleasure, and declining public affairs as an injury and disturbance of a happy life, removing the gods afar off both from kindness or anger, or any concern for us at all, to a life wholly without business and flowing in pleasures. Before he had done speaking, “O Hercules!” Fabricius cried out to Pyrrhus, “may Pyrrhus and the Samnites† entertain themselves with opinions as long as they are at war with us.”4
Impressed by the Romans, and despairing of adequate aid from the Greeks of Italy, Pyrrhus dispatched Cineas to Rome to negotiate peace. The Senate was about to agree when Appius Claudius, blind and dying, had himself carried into the senate house and protested against making peace with a foreign army on Italian soil. Frustrated, Pyrrhus fought again, won another suicidal victory at Asculum, and then, hopeless of success against Rome, sailed to Sicily with the generous resolve to free it from the Carthaginians. There he drove the Carthaginians back with reckless heroism; but whether it was that the Sicilian Greeks were too timid to rally to him, or that he governed them as willfully as any tyrant, he received so little support that he had to abandon the island after a three years’ campaign, making the prophetic remark, “What a battlefield I am leaving to Carthage and Rome!” Arriving with depleted forces in Italy, he was defeated at Beneventum (275), where for the first time the light-armed and mobile cohorts proved their superiority to the unwieldy phalanxes, and thereby wrote a chapter in military history.5 Pyrrhus returned to Epirus, says the philosophical Plutarch,
after he had consumed six years in these wars; and though unsuccessful in his affairs, yet preserved his courage unconquerable among all these misfortunes, and was held, for military experience and personal valor and enterprise, above all the other princes of his time; but what he got by brave actions he lost again by vain hopes, and by new desires of what he had not, kept nothing of what he had.6
Pyrrhus went out now to fresh wars, and was killed with a tile by an old woman in Argos. In that same year (272) Taras yielded to Rome.
Eight years later Rome began her century-long struggle against Carthage for the mastery of the western Mediterranean. After a generation of fighting Carthage ceded to Rome Sardinia, Corsica, and the Carthaginian portions of Sicily. In the Second Punic War Syracuse made the mistake of siding with Carthage, whereupon Marcellus starved it into surrender. The victors plundered the city so thoroughly that it never recovered. Marcellus “removed to Rome,” says Livy, “the ornaments of Syracuse—the statues and pictures in which it abounded. . . . The spoils were almost greater than if Carthage itself had been taken.”7 By 210 all Sicily had fallen forfeit to Rome. The island was transformed into a granary for Italy, and relapsed into an agricultural economy in which nearly all the work was done by hopeless slaves. Industries were discouraged, trade was limited, wealth was sluiced off to Rome, and the free population withered away. Sicily disappeared from the history of civilization for a thousand years.
At every step the expansion of Rome was aided by the mistakes of her enemies. In the year 230 two Romans were sent to Scodra, capital of Illyria (northern Albania) to remonstrate against the attacks of Illyrian pirates upon Roman shipping. Queen Teuta, who had been allowed to share the spoils, answered that “it was contrary to the custom of the Illyrian rulers to hinder their subjects from winning booty from the sea.”8 When one envoy threatened war Teuta had him killed. Pleased with so inexpensive an excuse for seizing the Dalmatian coast, Rome dispatched an expedition which reduced Illyria to a Roman protectorate almost as easily in 229 B.C. as in A.D. 1939. Corcyra (Corfu), Epidamnus (Durazzo), and other Greek settlements became Roman dependencies. Since Greek trade had also suffered from Illyrian piracy, Athens, Corinth, and the two leagues applauded Rome as a deliverer, accepted her ambassadors, and admitted the Romans to participation in the Eleusinian mysteries and the Isthmian games.
In 216 Hannibal annihilated the Roman army at Cannae, and marched up to the gates of Rome. While Rome faced the greatest crisis in the history of the republic, Philip V, King of Macedon, signed an alliance with Hannibal and prepared to invade Italy (214). In the conference at Naupactus (213) the Aetolian delegate Agelaus appealed for the unity of all Greeks, in this First Macedonian War, against the rising power in the west:
It would be best of all if the Greeks never made war upon each other, but regarded it as the highest favor in the gift of the gods could they always speak with one heart and voice, and marching arm in arm like men fording a river, repel barbarian invaders and unite in preserving themselves and their cities. . . . For it is evident that whether the Carthaginians beat the Romans or the Romans the Carthaginians in this war, it is not in the least likely that the victors will be content with the sovereignty of Italy and Sicily, but they are sure to come here and extend their ambitions beyond the bounds of justice. Therefore I implore you all to secure yourselves against this danger, and I address myself especially to King Philip. For you, Sire, the best security is, instead of exhausting the Greeks and making them an easy prey to the invader, on the contrary to take thought for them as for your own body, and to attend to the safety of every province of Greece as if it were part and parcel of your own dominions.9
Philip heard him politely, and became for a moment the idol of Greece. But his treaty with Hannibal, if we may believe the too patriotic Livy, specified that in return for Philip’s attack upon Italy, Carthage, if successful in the present war, would help Philip to subdue all mainland Greece to Macedonia.10 Perhaps because the terms of such an agreement became known to the Greek states, most of them, including Agelaus’ Aetolian League, entered into a pact with Rome against Macedon, and kept Philip so harassed at home that his invasion of Italy was indefinitely postponed. In 205 Rome signed a treaty with Philip so that she might give all her attention to Hannibal, and three years later the elder Scipio overwhelmed the Carthaginian at Zama. As the last great century of Greek civilization came to an end Egypt, Rhodes, and Pergamum appealed to Rome for help against Philip. Rome responded by inviting the Second Macedonian War. Opposed by nearly all of Greece as well as by Rome, Philip fought with the ferocity of a beast at bay. He used every treachery, stole whatever he found to his purpose, and treated captives with such cruelty that every man in Abydos, when Philip’s siege was proving irresistible, killed his wife and children and then himself.11 In 197 Titus Quinctius Flamininus, a patrician of the type that made Polybius a pro-Roman enthusiast, so overwhelmed Philip at Cynoscephalae that suddenly all Macedonia—indeed, all Greece—lay at the mercy of Rome. To the disgust of his Aetolian allies (who claimed that they had won the battle), Flamininus, after exacting severe indemnities and appropriating a shipload of spoils, allowed the safely weakened Philip to keep his throne, on the ground that Macedonia was needed as a bulwark against the barbarians in the north.
The Roman general had learned Greek at Tarentum (as Rome called Taras), and had known the fascination of Greek literature, philosophy, and art. It was apparently his sincere resolve to liberate the Greek city-states from Macedonian domination, and to give them every opportunity to live in freedom and peace. Having with some difficulty convinced the Roman commissioners that this was a wise policy, he went to the Isthmian games at Corinth (196), where all the important Greek world was gathered (each man telling the next, says Polybius, what the Romans would do now), and announced through a herald: “The Senate of Rome, and Titus Quinctius the proconsul, having overcome King Philip and the Macedonians, leave the following people free, without garrisons, subject to no tribute, and governed by their own laws: the Corinthians, Phocians, Locrians, Euboeans, Phthiotic Achaeans, Magnesians, Thessalians, and Perrhaebians”—i.e., all those mainland Greeks who were not already free. The greater part of the assemblage, unable to credit so unprecedented an act of liberality, cried out that the announcement should be repeated. When the herald read it again, “such a mighty burst of cheering arose,” says Polybius, “that those who listen to the tale today cannot easily conceive what it was.”12 Many doubted the sincerity of the declaration, and looked for a trick behind it; but Flamininus that day began the removal of Roman troops from Corinth, and by 194 his entire army was back in Italy. Greece hailed him as “Savior and Liberator,” and entered happily upon its last days of freedom.
The Aetolians were not satisfied with these arrangements. Some of the cities that Rome had freed had once been under Aetolian domination, and were not now restored to the League. The Second Macedonian War was hardly over when the Aetolians invited Antiochus III to rescue Greece from Rome. Pergamum and Lampsacus, caught between the restless Gauls on the north and the expanding Seleucid power on the south, appealed to Rome for help against Antiochus. The Senate sent its ablest general, Publius Scipio Africanus, victor of Zama. With a few legions and the troops of Eumenes II, the Roman generals defeated Antiochus at Magnesia, and turning northward, drove back the Gauls. The Romans extended their protection over nearly all the Mediterranean coast of Asia, and then returned to Italy. Eumenes was grateful, but mainland Greece denounced him as a traitor to Hellas for calling in the barbarous Romans against his fellow Greeks.
For fickle Greece already regretted that she had ever accepted the favors of her rude rescuer from the west. It was observed that though Flamininus and his successors had given Greece freedom, they had taken in payment—from any city that had supported Philip or Antiochus or the Aetolians—so much booty that the Greeks dreaded another such liberation. For three days, in Flamininus’ triumph, the spoils of his Grecian campaign passed in continuous train before the eyes of Rome: on the first day arms, armor, and innumerable statues of marble or bronze; on the second day 18,000 pounds of silver, 3,714 pounds of gold, and 100,000 silver coins; on the third day 114 coronets.13 Moreover, the Romans had supported, and now through their representatives continued actively to support, the moneyed classes in Greece against the poorer citizens, and had forbidden all manifestations of class war. The Greeks did not want peace at such a price; they wished to be free to settle their own disputes, and to give play to national territorial ambitions; they could not bear changelessness. Soon the rival leagues were at odds, and faction ran rife everywhere. Each city or group laid conflicting claims before the Roman Senate; the Senate dispatched commissions to investigate and adjudicate; the Greeks denounced this interference as vassalage. The chains of foreign control were invisible but real; year after year the Greeks—all but the rich—felt them more sharply, and prayed for an end to this freedom. The Senate began to listen to those of its members who contended that there would never be order or quiet in Greece until Rome took full control.
In 179 Philip V died, and his eldest son Perseus, not without bloodshed, inherited his throne. Seventeen years of peace had restored the economy of Macedon, and had raised up a fresh generation of youths for the jaws of war. Perseus negotiated an alliance with Seleucus IV, and married Seleucus’ daughter; Rhodes joined the alliance, and sent a great fleet to escort the bride. All Greece rejoiced, and saw in Perseus a living hope against the power of Rome. Eumenes II, fearful for the independence of Pergamum, journeyed to Rome and urged the Senate, for its own sake, to destroy Macedon. On his way home he was almost killed in a private quarrel. It suited Rome to interpret the brawl as a plot of Perseus to assassinate the king; and a patriotic exchange of diplomatic recriminations announced the Third Macedonian War. Only Epirus and Illyria had the courage to help Perseus; the Greek states sent him secret letters of sympathy, but did nothing. In 168 Aemilius Paulus annihilated the Macedonian army at Pydna, destroyed seventy Macedonian cities, banished their upper classes to Italy, and quartered the kingdom into four autonomous but tributary republics, among which all trade and intercourse were forbidden. Perseus was imprisoned in Italy, and died of maltreatment in two years. Epirus was devastated, and 100,000 Epirots were sold into slavery at a dollar a head.14 Rhodes, which had played no active part in the war, was punished by the liberation of her possessions on the Asiatic coast, and by the establishment of a competitive and free port at Delos. The private papers of Perseus were captured, and all Greeks who had offered him aid or comfort were banished or jailed. A thousand of the Achaean League’s most prominent representatives, including Polybius, were deported to Italy; they remained in exile there for sixteen years, during which seven hundred of them died. The admiration of Greece for Rome the liberator had never been so intense as was now the Greek hatred of Rome the conqueror.
The severity of the victors had unwilled results. The weakening of Rhodes ended her policing of the Aegean, and revived a trade-destroying piracy. The removal of so many aristocrats left the field open to radical leadership in the cities of the Achaean League, and the class war enjoyed one of its bitterest periods. The rich clung to the protection of Rome, the poor demanded the expulsion both of the rich and of the Roman power. In 150 the surviving Achaean exiles returned from Italy, and joined in the demand for the repudiation of Roman authority in Greece. To weaken the Achaean power Rome sent to Greece a commission that ordered Corinth, Orchomenos, and Argos to secede from the League. The ladies of Corinth replied by emptying pails of refuse upon the heads of the commissioners.15 In 146 the League voted for a war of liberation, hoping that Rome’s campaigns in Spain and Africa would divert her energies and incline her to a complaisant peace. A fever of patriotism swept the cities of the League. Slaves were freed and armed, a moratorium on debts was proclaimed, and land was promised to the poor, while the unhappy rich, trembling between socialism and Rome, reluctantly contributed their jewelry and their money to the cause of freedom. Athens and Sparta remained aloof, but Boeotia, Locria, and Euboea committed themselves bravely to the war. The republics of Macedonia joined in open revolt against Rome.
The angry Senate sent over an army under Mummius and a fleet under Metellus. Their combined forces overcame all resistance, and in 146 Mummius captured Corinth, the citadel of the League. Whether to destroy a commercial rival in the east as the younger Scipio was in that year destroying Carthage in the west, or to give rebellious Greece a lesson after the fashion of Alexander at Thebes, the rich city of merchants and courtesans was put to the flames, all the men were slaughtered, and all the women and children were sold into slavery. Mummius carried off to Italy whatever wealth could be moved, including the works of art with which the Corinthians had adorned their cities and their homes. Polybius tells how Roman soldiers used world-famous paintings as boards for their games of draughts or dice. The League was dissolved, and its leaders were put to death. Greece and Macedonia were united into one province under a Roman governor. Boeotia, Locris, Corinth, and Euboea were subjected to annual tribute; Athens and Sparta were spared, and were allowed to remain under their own laws. The party of property and order was upheld everywhere, and all attempts to wage war, or make revolutions, or change the constitution, were proscribed. The turbulent cities had at last found peace.