possible that he could execute his enterprise by the route which he took.

The results of this war were, the destruction of the naval power of the Carthaginians, and, notwithstanding her immense loss, a great increase of the territorial dominion of Rome. Rome now presented the fearful spectacle of a great military Republic. Flushed with the brilliancy of her achievements, she became a nation of warriors, and to this cause may be ascribed her aspirations after the dominion of the world. It demanded the most dexterous and sagacious policy on the part of Rome to frustrate the powerful alliances formed against her. The Roman Senate at this epoch usurped almost unlimited control-despotic and oligarchical-and yet it was the embodiment of the highest political wisdom. Notwithstanding the remonstrance of the Tribunes, war was declared against Philip of Macedon. The Roman arms were led to conquest in the east, by T. Quintius Flaminius. He gained his victory more by strategy than by feats of arms. As he had already gained over the Achæan league, this brought Greece into a state of dependence upon Rome. A system of espionage was carried on by Rome, not only in the West, but also in the East, over Greece. The fall of Carthage and Macedonia sufficiently exemplifies the political rapacity of Rome.

The ambassadors or Roman commissioners were skilful in diplomacy and intrigue. By an artful policy, Rome procured the banishment of her most formidable foe, Hannibal, from Carthage, and thus prevented his projected league with Syria and Macedonia. A contest then arose between Rome and Antiochus, who, at the battle of Magnesia, was compelled to accept conditions of peace, and which reduced him to a state of dependence.

Within ten years, Rome had laid the foundation of her sway in the East, and she soon became sovereign arbitress of the world from the Adriatic to the Euphrates. The internal condition of Rome had now become grossly immoral, and her political system no less corrupt. Venality and perfidy obtained the mastery, and with reck

less disregard of honor, she devastated all the States that opposed the way to her universal dominion.

66

The civil broils under the Gracchi, to "the first use of power which the emperors made," Mr. Merivale observes, was to control the fiscal tyranny of the proconsuls and publicani. The revolution of Drusus and the Gracchi opened the spoils of the world to the Italians; but those of Julius and Octavius closed them again, and restored them to their rightful owners. The luxuriance of Roman oppression flourished but for a century and a half; but in that time it created, perhaps, the most extensive and searching misery the world has ever seen. The establishment of imperial despotism placed in the main an effective control over these petty tyrants; and notwithstanding all the crimes by which it won its way, and the corruptions which were developed in its progress, it deserves to be regarded, at least in this important particular, as one of the greatest blessings vouchsafed to the human race.”

Sallust forcibly remarks that the Roman manners were precipitated at once to the depth of corruption, after the manner of a resistless torrent. The era from which the rapid degeneracy is to be dated, was the destruction of Carthage; yet, it cannot be doubted that the atheistical tenets attributed to Epicurus, tended in no small degree to accelerate the subversion of Roman virtue and Roman liberty. A firm belief in the Divine superintendence of affairs is the true guarantee of public and private virtue as well as of liberty. It was Atheism that slew a million and a half of people during the first French Revolution. It was not Voltaire alone who blighted all France with the curse of infidelity; France had previously ignored the Sabbath, desecrated her temples, and banished her priesthood. It is evident from the lessons of all history, that the Supreme Governor of the world holds nations as well as individuals to a strict moral accountability.

The historical student, in comparing the Athenian Republic with the Roman, will at once perceive the characteristic differences of the

races.

The polished Greek preferred the polite arts of life, while the

sturdy Roman yielded to the instinct of his nature in love of martial exploits. With the former, genius and learning were the cynosure; with the latter, the ensanguined trophies of war. Except during the age of the Republic, the records of Roman history boast of few illustrious names in literature. It was then that public virtue was sustained by public education; it was then that the heroic fame of the Roman matrons passed into a proverb. No wonder that rhetoric and poetry should then have attained such rare excellence; or that the populace even should have been fired with emulation of literary distinction; or that Sallust, and Cæsar, Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Livy, became the master spirits of the age. will be also remembered that the laws of the "Twelve Tables" of the Decemvirs or ten Commissioners, were the product of the Republican intellect of Rome.

Though the temples of Rome are in ruins, these "Tables,” which Cicero declared, "contained more wisdom than the libraries of all the Philosophers," are preserved intact, through the lapse of twenty centuries, since they form the basis of the law and the jurisprudence of the civilized world.

The fate of the Republic seemed now to depend upon the success of her Liberator-the elder Gracchus. In his effort to establish a yeomanry-the last expedient for reconciling the ceaseless discords between the politicians and plebeians-he became the victim of the brutal fury of the former. "The election day for tribunes was in mid-summer; the few husbandmen, the only shadow of a Roman yeomanry, were busy in the field, gathering their crops, and failed to come to the support of their champion. He was left to rest his defence on the rabble of the city, and though early in the morning great crowds of the people gathered together, and though, as Gracchus appeared in the forum, a shout of joy rent the skies, which was redoubled as he ascended the steps of the Capitol, yet when the patricians, determined at every hazard to defeat the assembly, came with the whole weight of their adherents in a mass, the timid flock, yielding to the sentiment of awe rather than of cowardice, fled like

sheep before wolves, and left their defender, the incomparable Tiberius, to be beaten to death by the clubs of senators. Three hundred of his most faithful friends were left lifeless in the market-place. In the fury of triumphant passion, the corpse of the tribune was dragged through the streets, and thrown into the Tiber." The deluded nobles flattered themselves into a belief that they had accomplished a victory; that the senate had routed the people, but it was the avenging spirit of their fearful wrongs, that had struck the first deadly wound into the bosom of Rome. The blood of their victim, like that of other martyrs, but cemented his party. A succession of fearful insurrections ensued, and the soldiers of the Republic became the captives of their bondsmen, whose numbers had prodigiously increased.

Such were the horrors of this civil war in Sicily and Italy, that it is said a million of lives were sacrificed, and that Sicily suffered more from its devastations than during the Carthaginian war. Two evils seemed to have resulted, unbridled license among the wealthy, and the most degrading servitude of the bondsmen. It was now that Roman citizens, by their own vote, consented to the degradation of becoming paupers, their extreme poverty requiring that they should be fed from the public table. Discarding the pursuits of agriculture and the industrial arts, the public treasury had to be supplied by plunder of foreign countries, and thus Roman virtue and Roman valor were exchanged for piracy and pillage. At this crisis the demagogue Marius became the chieftain of the oppressed poor. The streets of Rome and the fields of Italy again became the scenes of massacre, and the oppressed bondsmen witnessed the fearful destruction of their oppressors.

They triumphed over Sylla, the leader of the opposite party, who, to gain influence, conferred freedom upon ten thousand of their number. The subsequent insurrection of Spartacus failed, however, of its proposed result, for, when in sight of the Alps, the immense emigration, which had already defeated the armies of four Roman generals, fell a snare to its lust of plunder, and was thus overthrown. The defeat of Bancroft's Miscellanies.

Spartacus took place at a moment when the Roman state was in jeopardy from foreign enemies, and from the fiercest domestic distractions. It was then that the haughty tyranny of her nobles was at its greatest height, and when the degradation of its industrial classes was most insupportable. It was at this juncture, when the last glimmering light of liberty had vanished, that the dark reign of despotism began.

Thus we see that oriental luxury was the parent, first of civil, then of political despotism, and the train of its vices appear to us through the lapse of time, in all their monstrous deformity. The reign of Roman luxury was gigantic in crime, for it would sacrifice ten thousand gladiators with as much unconcern as the Spaniards exhibit at a bull-fight.

"Despotism now became the government of the Roman empire. Yet there was such a validity even in the forms of liberty, that they were still in some degree preserved. Two centuries passed away, before the last vestiges of Republican simplicity disappeared, and the Eastern diadem was introduced with the slavish customs of the East. Up to the reign of Diocletian, a diadem had never been endured in Europe. Hardly had this emblem of servility become tolerated, when language also began to be corrupted; and, within the course of another century, the austere purity of the Greek and Roman tongue, the languages of Demosthenes and of Gracchus, became for the first time familiarized to the forms of oriental adulation. Your imperial highness, your grace, your excellency, your immensity, your honor, your majesty, then became first current in the European world; men grew ashamed of a plain name, and one person could not address another without following the customs of the Syrians, and calling him rabbi, master."

Previously, Roman citizenship constituted by far the smallest portion of her inhabitants. Her dependencies and allies were treated, with very slight exceptions, as aliens, who were denied the right of voting, &c. Herein consisted her safety, and her deviation from the

*Bancroft's Miscellanies.