Meantime Antony's lieutenants had crossed the Ionian Sea and penetrated without opposition into Thrace. The republican leaders found them at Philippi. The army of Brutus and Cassius amounted to at least eighty thousand infantry, supported by twenty thousand horse; but they were ill-supplied with experienced officers. For M. Valerius Messalla, a young man of twenty-eight, held the chief command after Brutus and Cassius; and Horace, who was but three-and-twenty, the son of a freedman, and a youth of feeble constitution, was appointed a legionary tribune. The forces opposed to them would have been at once overpowered had not Antony himself opportunely arrived with the second corps of the triumviral army. Octavian was detained by illness at Dyrrhachium, but he ordered himself to be carried on a litter to join his legions. The army of the triumvirs was now superior to the enemy; but their cavalry, counting only thirteen thousand, was considerably weaker than the force opposed to it. The republicans were strongly posted upon two hills, with intrenchments between: the camp of Cassius upon the left next the sea, that of Brutus inland on the right. The triumviral army lay upon the open plain before them, in a position rendered unhealthy by marshes; Antony, on the right, was opposed to Cassius; Octavian, on the left, fronted Brutus. But they were ill-supplied with provisions and anxious for a decisive battle. The republicans, however, kept to their intrenchments, and the other party began to suffer severely from famine.

Determined to bring on an action, Antony began works for the purpose of cutting off Cassius from the sea. Cassius had always opposed a general action, but Brutus insisted on putting an end to the suspense, and his colleague yielded. The day of the attack was probably in October. Brutus attacked Octavian's army, while Cassius assaulted the working parties of Antony. Cassius' assault was beaten back with loss, but he succeeded in regaining his camp in safety. Meanwhile, Messalla, who commanded the right wing of Brutus' army, had defeated the host of Octavian, who was still too ill to appear on the field, and the republican soldiers penetrated into the triumvirs' camp. Presently his litter was brought in stained with blood, and the corpse of a young man found near it was supposed to be Octavian's. But Brutus, not receiving any tidings of the movements of Cassius, became so anxious for his fate that he sent off a party of horse to make inquiries, and neglected to support the successful assaults of Messalla.

Cassius, on his part, discouraged at his ill-success, was unable to ascertain the progress of Brutus. When he saw the party of horse he hastily concluded that they belonged to the enemy, and retired into his tent with his freedman Pindarus. What passed there we know not for certain. Cassius was found dead, with the head severed from the body. Pindarus was never seen again. It was generally believed that Pindarus slew his master in obedience to orders; but many thought that he had dealt a felon blow. The intelligence of Cassius' death was a heavy blow to Brutus. He forgot his own success, and pronounced the elegy of Cassius in the well-known words, "There lies the last of the Romans." The praise was ill-deserved. Except in his conduct of the war against the Parthians, Cassius had never played a worthy part.

After the first battle of Philippi it would have still been politic in Brutus to abstain from battle. The triumviral armies were in great distress, and every day increased their losses. Reinforcements coming to their aid by sea were intercepted—a proof of the neglect of the republican leaders in not sooner bringing their fleet into action. Nor did Brutus ever hear of this success. He was ill-fitted for the life of the camp, and after the death of Cassius he only kept his men together by largesse and promises of plunder. Twenty days after the first battle he led them out again. Both armies faced one another. There was little manoeuvring. The second battle was decided by numbers and force, not by skill; and it was decided in favor of the triumvirs. Brutus retired with four legions to a strong position in the rear, while the rest of his broken army sought refuge in the camp. Octavian remained to watch them, while Antony pursued the republican chief. Next day Brutus endeavored to rouse his men to another effort; but they sullenly refused to fight; and Brutus withdrew with a few friends into a neighboring wood. Here he took them aside one by one, and prayed each to do him the last service that a Roman could render to his friend. All refused with horror; till at nightfall a trusty Greek freedman named Strato held the sword, and his master threw himself upon it. Most of his friends followed the sad example. The body of Brutus was sent by Antony to his mother. His wife Portia, the daughter of Cato, refused all comfort; and being too closely watched to be able to slay herself by ordinary means, she suffocated herself by thrusting burning charcoal into her mouth. Massalla, with a number of other fugitives, sought safety in the island of Thasos, and soon after made submission to Antony.

The name of Brutus has, by Plutarch's beautiful narrative, sublimed by Shakespeare, become a byword for self-devoted patriotism. This exalted opinion is now generally confessed to be unjust. Brutus was not a patriot, unless devotion to the party of the senate be patriotism. Toward the provincials he was a true Roman, harsh and oppressive. He was free from the sensuality and profligacy of his age, but for public life he was unfit. His habits were those of a student. His application was great, his memory remarkable. But he possessed little power of turning his acquirements to account; and to the last he was rather a learned man than a man improved by learning. In comparison with Cassius, he was humane and generous; but in all respects his character is contrasted for the worse with that of the great man from whom he accepted favors and then became his murderer.

The battle of Philippi was in reality the closing scene of the republican drama. But the rivalship of the triumvirs prolonged for several years the divided state of the Roman world; and it was not till after the crowning victory of Actium that the imperial government was established in its unity. We shall, therefore, here add a rapid narrative of the events which led to that consummation.

The hopeless state of the republican or rather the senatorial party was such that almost all hastened to make submission to the conquerors: those whose sturdy spirit still disdained submission resorted to Sext. Pompeius in Sicily. Octavian, still suffering from ill-health, was anxious to return to Italy; but before he parted from Antony, they agreed to a second distribution of the provinces of the empire. Antony was to have the Eastern world; Octavian the Western provinces. To Lepidus, who was not consulted in this second division, Africa alone was left. Sext. Pompeius remained in possession of Sicily.

Antony at once proceeded to make a tour through Western Asia, in order to exact money from its unfortunate people. About midsummer (B.C. 41) he arrived at Tarsus, and here he received a visit which determined the future course of his life and influenced Roman history for the next ten years.

Antony had visited Alexandria fourteen years before, and had been smitten by the charms of Cleopatra, then a girl of fifteen. She became Caesar's paramour, and from the time of the dictator's death Antony had never seen her. She now came to meet him in Cilicia. The galley which carried her up the Cydnus was of more than oriental gorgeousness: the sails of purple; oars of silver, moving to the sound of music; the raised poop burnished with gold. There she lay upon a splendid couch, shaded by a spangled canopy; her attire was that of Venus; around her flitted attendant cupids and graces. At the news of her approach to Tarsus, the triumvir found his tribunal deserted by the people. She invited him to her ship, and he complied. From that moment he was her slave. He accompanied her to Alexandria, exchanged the Roman garb for the Graeco-Egyptian costume of the court, and lent his power to the Queen to execute all her caprices.

Meanwhile Octavian was not without his difficulties. He was so ill at Brundusium that his death was reported at Rome. The veterans, eager for their promised rewards, were on the eve of mutiny. In a short time Octavian was sufficiently recovered to show himself. But he could find no other means of satisfying the greedy soldiery than by a confiscation of lands more sweeping than that which followed the proscription of Sylla. The towns of Cisalpine Gaul were accused of favoring Dec. Brutus, and saw nearly all their lands handed over to new possessors. The young poet, Vergil, lost his little patrimony, but was reinstated at the instance of Pollio and Maecenas, and showed his gratitude in his First Eclogue. Other parts of Italy also suffered: Apulia, for example, as we learn from Horace's friend Ofellus, who became the tenant of the estate which had formerly been his own.

But these violent measures deferred rather than obviated the difficulty. The expulsion of so many persons threw thousands loose upon society, ripe for any crime. Many of the veterans were ready to join any new leader who promised them booty. Such a leader was at hand.

Fulvia, wife of Antony, was a woman of fierce passions and ambitious spirit. She had not been invited to follow her husband to the East. She saw that in his absence imperial power would fall into the hands of Octavian. Lucius, brother of Mark Antony, was consul for the year, and at her instigation he raised his standard at Praeneste. But L. Antonius knew not how to use his strength; and young Agrippa, to whom Octavian intrusted the command, obliged Antonius and Fulvia to retire northward and shut themselves up in Perusia. Their store of provisions was so small that it sufficed only for the soldiery. Early in the next year Perusia surrendered, on condition that the lives of the leaders should be spared. The town was sacked; the conduct of L. Antonius alienated all Italy from his brother.

While his wife, his brother, and his friends were quitting Italy in confusion, the arms of Antony suffered a still heavier blow in the Eastern provinces, which were under his special government. After the battle of Philippi, Q. Labienus, son of Caesar's old lieutenant Titus, sought refuge at the court of Orodes, king of Parthia. Encouraged by the proffered aid of a Roman officer, Pacorus (the King's son) led a formidable army into Syria. Antony's lieutenant was entirely routed; and while Pacorus with one army poured into Palestine and Phoenicia, Q. Labienus with another broke into Cilicia. Here he found no opposition; and, overrunning all Asia Minor even to the Ionian Sea, he assumed the name of Parthicus, as if he had been a Roman conqueror of the people whom he served.

These complicated disasters roused Antony from his lethargy. He sailed to Tyre, intending to take the field against the Parthians; but the season was too far advanced, and he therefore crossed the AEgean to Athens, where he found Fulvia and his brother, accompanied by Pollio, Plancus, and others, all discontented with Octavian's government. Octavian was absent in Gaul, and their representation of the state of Italy encouraged him to make another attempt. Late in the year (41) Antony formed a league with Sext. Pompeius; and while that chief blockaded Thurii and Consentia, Antony assailed Brundusium. Agrippa was preparing to meet this new combination; and a fresh civil war was imminent. But the soldiery was weary of war: both armies compelled their leaders to make pacific overtures, and the new year was ushered in by a general peace, which was rendered easier by the death of Fulvia. Antony and Octavian renewed their professions of amity, and entered Rome together in joint ovation to celebrate the restoration of peace. They now made a third division of the provinces, by which Scodra (Scutari) in Illyricum was fixed as the boundary of the West and East; Lepidus was still left in possession of Africa. It was further agreed that Octavian was to drive Sext. Pompeius, lately the ally of Antony, out of Sicily; while Antony renewed his pledges to recover the standards of Crassus from the Parthians. The new compact was sealed by the marriage of Antony with Octavia, his colleague's sister, a virtuous and beautiful lady, worthy of a better consort. These auspicious events were celebrated by the lofty verse of Vergil's Fourth Eclogue.

Sext. Pompeius had reason to complain. By the peace of Brundusium he was abandoned by his late friend to Octavian. He was not a man to brook ungenerous treatment. Of late years his possession of Sicily had given him command of the Roman corn market. During the winter which followed the peace of Brundusium (B.C. 40-39), Sextus blockaded Italy so closely that Rome was threatened with a positive dearth. Riots arose; the triumvirs were pelted with stones in the Forum, and they deemed it prudent to temporize by inviting Pompey to enter their league. He met them at Misenum, and the two chiefs went on board his ship to settle the terms of alliance. It is said that one of his chief officers, a Greek named Menas or Menodorus, suggested to him the expediency of putting to sea with the great prize, and then making his own terms. Sextus rejected the advice with the characteristic words, "You should have done it without asking me." It was agreed that Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica should be given up to his absolute rule, and that Achaia should be added to his portion; so that the Roman world was now partitioned among four: Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, and Sext. Pompeius. On their return the triumvirs were received with vociferous applause.

Before winter, Antony sailed for Athens in company with Octavia, who for the time seems to have banished Cleopatra from his thoughts. But he disgusted all true Romans by assuming the attributes of Grecian gods and indulging in Grecian orgies.

He found the state of things in the East greatly changed since his departure. He had commissioned P. Ventidius Bassus, an officer who had followed Fulvia from Italy, to hold the Parthians in check till his return. Ventidius was son of a Picenian nobleman of Asculum, who had been brought to Rome as a captive in the Social War. In his youth he had been a contractor to supply mules for the use of the Roman commissariat. But in the civil wars which followed, men of military talent easily rose to command; and such was the lot of Ventidius. While Antony was absent in Italy, he drove Q. Labienus into the defiles of Taurus, and here that adventurer was defeated and slain. The conqueror then marched rapidly into Syria, and forced Pacorus also to withdraw to the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

In the following year (38) he repelled a fresh invasion of the Parthians, and defeated them in three battles. In the last of these engagements Pacorus himself was slain on the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Crassus. Antony found Ventidius laying siege to Samosata, and displaced him, only to abandon the siege and return to Athens. Ventidius repaired to Rome, where he was honored with a well-deserved triumph. He had left it as a mule jobber; he returned with the laurel round his brows. He was the first, and almost the last, Roman general who could claim such a distinction for victory over the Parthians.

The alliance with Sext. Pompeius was not intended to last, and it did not last. Antony refused to put him in possession of Achaia, and to avenge himself for this breach of faith Pompeius again began to intercept the Italian corn fleets. Fresh discontent appeared at Rome, and Octavian equipped a second fleet to sail against the naval chief; but after two battles of doubtful result, the fleet was destroyed by a storm, and Sextus was again left in undisputed mastery of the sea. Octavian, however, was never daunted by reverses, and he gave his favorite Agrippa full powers to conduct the war against Pompeius. This able commander set about his work with that resolution that marked a man determined not to fail. As a harbor for his fleet, he executed a plan of the great Caesar; namely, to make a good and secure harbor on the coast of Latium, which then, as now, offered no shelter to ships. For this purpose he cut a passage through the narrow necks of land which separated Lake Lucrinus from the sea, and Lake Avernus from Lake Lucrinus, and faced the outer barrier with stone. This was the famous Julian Port. In the whole of the two years B.C. 38 and 37 Agrippa was occupied in this work and in preparing a sufficient force of ships. Every dockyard in Italy was called into requisition. A large body of slaves was set free that they might be trained to serve as rowers.

On the 1st of July, B.C. 36, the fleet put to sea. Octavian himself, with one division, purposed to attack the northern coast of Sicily, while a second squadron was assembled at Tarentum for the purpose of assailing the eastern side. Lepidus, with a third fleet from Africa, was to assault Lilybaeum. But the winds were again adverse; and, though Lepidus effected a landing on the southern coast, Octavian's two fleets were driven back to Italy with great damage. But the injured ships were refitted, and Agrippa was sent westward toward Panormus, while Octavian himself kept guard near Messana. Off Mylae, a place famous for having witnessed the first naval victory of the Romans, Agrippa encountered the fleet of Sext. Pompeius; but Sextus, with the larger portion of his ships, gave Agrippa the slip, and sailing eastward fell suddenly upon Octavian's squadron off Tauromenium. A desperate conflict followed, which ended in the complete triumph of Sextus, and Octavian escaped to Italy with a few ships only. But Agrippa was soon upon the traces of the enemy. On the 3d of September Sextus was obliged once more to accept battle near the Straits of Messana, and suffered an irretrievable defeat. His troops on land were attacked and dispersed by an army which had been landed on the eastern coast by the indefatigable Octavian; and Sextus sailed off to Lesbos, where he had found refuge as a boy during the campaign of Pharsalia, to seek protection from the jealousy of Antony.

Lepidus had assisted in the campaign; but after the departure of Sextus he openly declared himself independent of his brother triumvirs. Octavian, with prompt and prudent boldness, entered the camp of Lepidus in person with a few attendants. The soldiers deserted in crowds, and in a few hours Lepidus was fain to sue for pardon, where he had hoped to rule. He was treated with contemptuous indifference, Africa was taken from him; but he was allowed to live and die at Rome in quiet enjoyment of the chief pontificate.

It was fortunate for Octavian that during this campaign Antony was on friendly terms with him. In B.C. 37 the ruler of the East again visited Italy, and a meeting between the two chiefs was arranged at Tarentum. The five years for which the triumvirs were originally appointed were now fast expiring; and it was settled that their authority should be renewed by the subservient senate and people for a second period of the same duration. They parted good friends; and Octavian undertook his campaign against Sext. Pompeius without fear from Antony. This was proved by the fate of the fugitive. From Lesbos Sextus passed over to Asia, where he was taken prisoner by Antony's lieutenants and put to death.

Hitherto Octavia had retained her influence over Antony. But presently, after his last interview with her brother, the fickle triumvir abruptly quitted a wife who was too good for him, and returned to the fascinating presence of the Egyptian Queen, whom he had not seen for three years. From this time forth he made no attempt to break the silken chain of her enchantments. During the next summer, indeed, he attempted a new Parthian campaign. But his advance was made with reckless indifference to the safety of his troops. Provisions failed; disease broke out; and after great suffering he was forced to seek safety by a precipitate retreat into the Armenian mountains. In the next year he contented himself with a campaign in Armenia, to punish the King of that country for alleged treachery in the last campaign. The King fell into his hands; and with this trophy Antony returned to Alexandria, where the Romans were disgusted to see the streets of a Graeco-Egyptian town honored by a mimicry of a Roman triumph.

For the next three years he surrendered himself absolutely to the will of the enchantress. To this period belong those tales of luxurious indulgence which are known to every reader. The brave soldier, who in the perils of war could shake off all luxurious habits and could rival the commonest man in the cheerfulness with which he underwent every hardship, was seen no more. He sunk into an indolent voluptuary, pleased by childish amusements. At one time he would lounge in a boat at a fishing party, and laugh when he drew up pieces of salt fish which by the Queen's order had been attached to his hook by divers. At another time she wagered that she would consume ten million sesterces at one meal, and won her wager by dissolving in vinegar a pearl of unknown value. While Cleopatra bore the character of the goddess Isis, her lover appeared as Osiris. Her head was placed conjointly with his own on the coins which he issued as a Roman magistrate. He disposed of the kingdoms and principalities of the East by his sole word. By his influence Herod, son of Antipater, the Idumaean minister of Hyrcanus, the late sovereign of Judea, was made king to the exclusion of the rightful heir. Polemo, his own son by Cleopatra, was invested with the sceptre of Armenia. Encouraged by the absolute submission of her lover, Cleopatra fixed her eye upon the Capitol, and dreamed of winning by means of Antony that imperial crown which she had vainly sought from Caesar.

While Antony was engaged in voluptuous dalliance, Octavian was resolutely pursuing the work of consolidating his power in the West. His patience, his industry, his attention to business, his affability, were winning golden opinions and rapidly obliterating all memory of the bloody work by which he had risen to power. He had won little glory in war; but so long as the corn fleets arrived daily from Sicily and Africa, the populace cared little whether the victory had been won by Octavian or by his generals. In Agrippa he possessed a consummate captain, in Maecenas a wise and temperate minister. It is much to his credit that he never showed any jealousy of the men to whom he owed so much. He flattered the people with the hope that he would, when Antony had fulfilled his mission of recovering the standards of Crassus, engage him to join in putting an end to their sovereign power and restoring constitutional liberty.

In point of fidelity to his marriage vows Octavian was little better than Antony. He renounced his marriage with Clodia, the daughter of Fulvia, when her mother attempted to raise Italy against him. He divorced Scribonia, when it no longer suited him to court the favor of her kinsman. To replace this second wife, he forcibly took away Livia from her husband, T. Claudius Nero, though she was at that time pregnant of her second son. But in this and other less pardonable immoralities there was nothing to shock the feelings of Romans.

But Octavian never suffered pleasure to divert him from business. If he could not be a successful general, he resolved at least to show that he could be a hardy soldier. While Antony in his Egyptian palace was neglecting the Parthian War, his rival led his legions in more than one dangerous campaign against the barbarous Dalmatians and Pannonians, who had been for some time infesting the province of Illyricum. In the year B.C. 33 he announced that the limits of the empire had been extended northward to the banks of the Save.

Octavian now began to feel that any appearance of friendship with Antony was a source of weakness rather than of strength at Rome. Misunderstandings had already broken out. Antony complained that Octavian had given him no share in the provinces wrested from Sext. Pompeius and Lepidus. Octavian retorted by accusing his colleague of appropriating Egypt and Armenia, and of increasing Cleopatra's power at the expense of the Roman Empire. Popular indignation rose to its height when Plancus and Titius, who had been admitted to Antony's confidence, passed over to Octavian, and disclosed the contents of their master's will. In that document Antony ordered that his body should be buried at Alexandria, in the mausoleum of Cleopatra. Men began to fancy that Cleopatra had already planted her throne upon the Capitol. These suspicions were sedulously encouraged by Octavian.

Before the close of B.C. 32, Octavian, by the authority of the senate, declared war nominally against Cleopatra. Antony, roused from his sleep by reports from Rome, passed over to Athens, issuing orders everywhere to levy men and collect ships for the impending struggle. At Athens he received news of the declaration of war, and replied by divorcing Octavia. His fleet was ordered to assemble at Corcyra; and his legions in the early spring prepared to pour into Epirus. He established his head-quarters at Patrae on the Corinthian Gulf.

But Antony, though his fleet was superior to that of Octavian, allowed Agrippa to sweep the Ionian Sea, and to take possession of Methone, in Messenia, as a station for a flying squadron to intercept Antony's communications with the East, nay, even to occupy Corcyra, which had been destined for his own place of rendezvous. Antony's fleet now anchored in the waters of the Ambracian Gulf, while his legions encamped on a spot of land which forms the northern horn of that spacious inlet. But the place chosen for the camp was unhealthy; and in the heats of early summer his army suffered greatly from disease. Agrippa lay close at hand watching his opportunity. In the course of the spring Octavian joined him in person.

Early in the season Antony had repaired from Patrae to his army, so as to be ready either to cross over into Italy or to meet the enemy if they attempted to land in Epirus. At first he showed something of his old military spirit, and the soldiers, who always loved his military frankness, warmed into enthusiasm; but his chief officers, won by Octavian or disgusted by the influence of Cleopatra, deserted him in such numbers that he knew not whom to trust, and gave up all thoughts of maintaining the contest with energy. Urged by Cleopatra, he resolved to carry off his fleet and abandon the army. All preparations were made in secret, and the great fleet put to sea on the 28th of August. For the four following days there was a strong gale from the south. Neither could Antony escape nor could Octavian put to sea against him from Corcyra. On the 2d of September, however, the wind fell, and Octavian's light vessels, by using their oars, easily came up with the unwieldy galleys of the eastern fleet. A battle was now inevitable.

Antony's ships were like impregnable fortresses to the assault of the slight vessels of Octavian; and, though they lay nearly motionless in the calm sea, little impression was made upon them. But about noon a breeze sprung up from the west; and Cleopatra, followed by sixty Egyptian ships, made sail in a southerly direction. Antony immediately sprang from his ship-of-war into a light galley and followed. Deserted by their commander, the captains of Antony's ships continued to resist desperately; nor was it till the greater part of them were set on fire that the contest was decided. Before evening closed, the whole fleet was destroyed; most of the men and all the treasure on board perished. A few days after, when the shameful flight of Antony was made known to his army, all his legions went over to the conqueror.

It was not for eleven months after the battle of Actium that Octavian entered the open gates of Alexandria. He had been employed in the interval in founding the city of Nicopolis to celebrate his victory on the northern horn of the Ambracian Gulf, in rewarding his soldiers, and settling the affairs of the provinces of the East. In the winter he returned to Italy, and it was midsummer, B.C. 30, before he arrived in Egypt.

When Antony and Cleopatra arrived off Alexandria they put a bold face upon the matter. Some time passed before the real state of the case was known; but it soon became plain that Egypt was at the mercy of the conqueror. The Queen formed all kinds of wild designs. One was to transport the ships that she had saved across the Isthmus of Suez and seek refuge in some distant land where the name of Rome was yet unknown. Some ships were actually drawn across, but they were destroyed by the Arabs, and the plan was abandoned. She now flattered herself that her powers of fascination, proved so potent over Caesar and Antony, might subdue Octavian. Secret messages passed between the conqueror and the Queen; nor were Octavian's answers such as to banish hope.

Antony, full of repentance and despair, shut himself up in Pharos, and there remained in gloomy isolation.

In July, B.C. 30, Octavian appeared before Pelusium. The place was surrendered without a blow. Yet, at the approach of the conqueror, Antony put himself at the head of a division of cavalry and gained some advantage. But on his return to Alexandria he found that Cleopatra had given up all her ships; and no more opposition was offered. On the 1st of August (Sextilis, as it was then called) Octavian entered the open gates of Alexandria. Both Antony and Cleopatra sought to win him. Antony's messengers the conqueror refused to see; but he still used fair words to Cleopatra. The Queen had shut herself up in a sort of mausoleum built to receive her body after death, which was not approachable by any door; and it was given out that she was really dead. All the tenderness of old times revived in Antony's heart. He stabbed himself, and in a dying state ordered himself to be laid by the side of Cleopatra. The Queen, touched by pity, ordered her expiring lover to be drawn up by cords into her retreat, and bathed his temples with her tears.

After he had breathed his last, she consented to see Octavian. Her penetration soon told her that she had nothing to hope from him. She saw that his fair words were only intended to prevent her from desperate acts and reserve her for the degradation of his triumph. This impression was confirmed when all instruments by which death could be inflicted were found to have been removed from her apartments. But she was not to be so baffled. She pretended all submission; but when the ministers of Octavian came to carry her away, they found her lying dead upon her couch, attended by her faithful waiting-women, Iras and Charmion. The manner of her death was never ascertained; popular belief ascribed it to the bite of an asp which had been conveyed to her in a basket of fruit.

Thus died Antony and Cleopatra. Antony was by nature a genial, open-hearted Roman, a good soldier, quick, resolute, and vigorous, but reckless and self-indulgent, devoid alike of prudence and of principle. The corruptions of the age, the seductions of power, and the evil influence of Cleopatra paralyzed a nature capable of better things. We know him chiefly through the exaggerated assaults of Cicero in his Philippic, and the narratives of writers devoted to Octavian. But after all deductions for partial representation, enough remains to show that Antony had all the faults of Caesar, with little of his redeeming greatness.

Cleopatra was an extraordinary person. At her death she was but thirty-eight years of age. Her power rested not so much on actual beauty as on her fascinating manners and her extreme readiness of wit. In her follies there was a certain magnificence which excites even a dull imagination. We may estimate the real power of her mental qualities by observing the impression her character made upon the Roman poets of the time. No meditated praises could have borne such testimony to her greatness as the lofty strain in which Horace celebrates her fall and congratulates the Roman world on its escape from the ruin which she was threatening to the Capitol.

Octavian dated the years of his imperial monarchy from the day of the battle of Actium. But it was not till two years after (the summer of B.C. 29) that he established himself in Rome as ruler of the Roman world. Then he celebrated three magnificent triumphs, after the example of his uncle the great dictator, for his victories in Dalmatia, at Actium, and in Egypt. At the same time the temple of Janus was closed—notwithstanding that border wars still continued in Gaul and Spain—for the first time since the year B.C. 235. All men drew breath more freely, and all except the soldiery looked forward to a time of tranquillity. Liberty and independence were forgotten words. After the terrible disorders of the last century, the general cry was for quiet at any price. Octavian was a person admirably fitted to fulfil these aspirations. His uncle Julius was too fond of active exertion to play such a part well. Octavian never shone in war, while his vigilant and patient mind was well fitted for the discharge of business. He avoided shocking popular feeling by assuming any title savoring of royalty; but he enjoyed by universal consent an authority more than regal.



GERMANS UNDER ARMINIUS REVOLT AGAINST ROME

A.D. 9

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

(The German race was beginning to make itself felt to a greater extent than hitherto in its efforts for freedom from the Roman rule. Research shows that from the earliest days there were two distinct peoples under this designation of German—the northern or Scandinavian, and the southern, being more truly the German. Both consisted of numerous tribes, the Romans giving separate names to each: from this arose the generic titles of Franks, Bavarians, Alamanni, and the rest.

They were great fighters and, as a natural sequence, mighty hunters. When warfare did not occupy their attention, hunting, feasting, and drinking took its place. Tacitus writes: "To drink continuously, night and day, was no shame for them." Their chief beverage was barley beer, though, in the South, wine was used to some extent.

Rome had garrisons throughout the whole land, and the fortunes of the Germans were at a low ebb. Freedom seemed stifled forever when Arminius led his forces against the Roman hosts in the forest of Teutoburgium. Rightly does Creasy rate this important battle so highly, for it meant the final uplifting of the Teuton, and with him the English-speaking races of a later time.)

To a truly illustrious Frenchman, whose reverses as a minister can never obscure his achievements in the world of letters, we are indebted for the most profound and most eloquent estimate that we possess of the importance of the Germanic element in European civilization, and of the extent to which the human race is indebted to those brave warriors who long were the unconquered antagonists, and finally became the conquerors, of imperial Rome.

Twenty-three eventful years have passed away since M. Guizot[82] delivered from the chair of modern history, at Paris, his course of lectures on the history of civilization in Europe. During those years the spirit of earnest inquiry into the germs and primary developments of existing institutions has become more and more active and universal, and the merited celebrity of M. Guizot's work has proportionally increased. Its admirable analysis of the complex political and social organizations of which the modern civilized world is made up must have led thousands to trace with keener interest the great crises of times past, by which the characteristics of the present were determined. The narrative of one of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us this special attraction—that it forms part of our own national history. Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eider and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and "we, this great English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning the earth, from one end of it to the other," would have been utterly cut off from existence.

[Footnote 82: Guizot was minister of foreign affairs, and later (1848) prime minister, under Louis Philippe.]

Arnold may, indeed, go too far in holding that we are wholly unconnected in race with the Romans and Britons who inhabited this country before the coming over of the Saxons; that, "nationally speaking, the history of Caesar's invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history of the animals which then inhabited our forests." There seems ample evidence to prove that the Romanized Celts whom our Teutonic forefathers found here influenced materially the character of our nation. But the main stream of our people was, and is, Germanic. Our language alone decisively proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus; and it was our own primeval fatherland that the brave German rescued when he slaughtered the Roman legions, eighteen centuries ago, in the marshy glens between the Lippe and the Ems.

Dark and disheartening, even to heroic spirits, must have seemed the prospects of Germany when Arminius planned the general rising of his countrymen against Rome. Half the land was occupied by Roman garrisons; and, what was worse, many of the Germans seemed patiently acquiescent in their state of bondage. The braver portion, whose patriotism could be relied on, was ill-armed and undisciplined, while the enemy's troops consisted of veterans in the highest state of equipment and training, familiarized with victory and commanded by officers of proved skill and valor. The resources of Rome seemed boundless; her tenacity of purpose was believed to be invincible. There was no hope of foreign sympathy or aid; for "the self-governing powers that had filled the Old World had bent one after another before the rising power of Rome, and had vanished. The earth seemed left void of independent nations."

The German chieftain knew well the gigantic power of the oppressor. Arminius was no rude savage, fighting out of mere animal instinct or in ignorance of the might of his adversary. He was familiar with the Roman language and civilization; he had served in the Roman armies; he had been admitted to the Roman citizenship, and raised to the rank of the equestrian order. It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to confer rank and privileges on the youth of the leading families in the nations which she wished to enslave. Among other young German chieftains, Arminius and his brother, who were the heads of the noblest house in the tribe of the Cherusci, had been selected as fit objects for the exercise of this insidious system. Roman refinements and dignities succeeded in denationalizing the brother, who assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and adhered to Rome throughout all her wars against his country. Arminius remained unbought by honors or wealth, uncorrupted by refinement or luxury. He aspired to and obtained from Roman enmity a higher title than ever could have been given him by Roman favor. It is in the page of Rome's greatest historian that his name has come down to us with the proud addition of "Liberator hand dubie Germaniae."

Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit which has thus immortalized him, have anxiously revolved in his mind the fate of the many great men who had been crushed in the attempt which he was about to renew—the attempt to stay the chariot wheels of triumphant Rome. Could he hope to succeed where Hannibal and Mithradates had perished? What had been the doom of Viriathus? and what warning against vain valor was written on the desolate site where Numantia once had flourished? Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and more recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight years against Caesar; and the gallant Vercingetorix, who in the last year of the war had roused all his countrymen to insurrection, who had cut off Roman detachments, and brought Caesar himself to the extreme of peril at Alesia—he, too, had finally succumbed, had been led captive in Caesar's triumph, and had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon.

It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic which for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world. Her system of government was changed, and, after a century of revolution and civil war, she had placed herself under the despotism of a single ruler. But the discipline of her troops was yet unimpaired and her warlike spirit seemed unabated. The first year of the empire had been signalized by conquests as valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding period. It is a great fallacy—though apparently sanctioned by great authorities—to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by Augustus was pacific; he certainly recommended such a policy to his successors (incertum metu an per invidiam: Tac., Ann., i. 11), but he himself, until Arminius broke his spirit, had followed a very different course. Besides his Spanish wars, his generals, in a series of generally aggressive campaigns, had extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to the Danube, and had reduced into subjection the large and important countries that now form the territories of all Austria south of that river, and of East Switzerland, Lower Wuertemberg, Bavaria, the Valtelline, and the Tyrol.

While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed the Germans from the south, still more formidable inroads had been made by the imperial legions on the west. Roman armies, moving from the province of Gaul, established a chain of fortresses along the right as well as the left bank of the Rhine, and, in a series of victorious campaigns, advanced their eagles as far as the Elbe, which now seemed added to the list of vassal rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus, the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the Tiber. Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbors of Gaul along the German coasts and up the estuaries, cooeperated with the land forces of the empire, and seemed to display, even more decisively than her armies, her overwhelming superiority over the rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the territory thus invaded the Romans had with their usual military skill established fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept on foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where a popular outbreak might be attempted.

Vast, however, and admirably organized as the fabric of Roman power appeared on the frontiers and in the provinces, there was rottenness at the core. In Rome's unceasing hostilities with foreign foes, and still more in her long series of desolating civil wars, the free middle classes of Italy had almost wholly disappeared. Above the position which they had occupied, an oligarchy of wealth had reared itself; beneath that position a degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves; the chance sweepings of every conquered country; shoals of Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others made up the bulk of the population of the Italian peninsula.

The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the absolute authority of Augustus. Adulation was now the chief function of the senate; and the gifts of genius and accomplishments of art were devoted to the elaboration of eloquently false panegyrics upon the prince and his favorite courtiers. With bitter indignation must the German chieftain have beheld all this and contrasted with it the rough worth of his own countrymen: their bravery, their fidelity to their word, their manly independence of spirit, their love of their national free institutions, and their loathing of every pollution and meanness. Above all, he must have thought of the domestic virtues that hallowed a German home; of the respect there shown to the female character, and of the pure affection by which that respect was repaid. His soul must have burned within him at the contemplation of such a race yielding to these debased Italians.

Still, to persuade the Germans to combine, in spite of the frequent feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against Rome; to keep the scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour for action arrived; and then, without possessing a single walled town, without military stores, without training, to teach his insurgent countrymen to defeat veteran armies and storm fortifications, seemed so perilous an enterprise that probably Arminius would have receded from it had not a stronger feeling even than patriotism urged him on. Among the Germans of high rank who had most readily submitted to the invaders and become zealous partisans of Roman authority was a chieftain named Segestes. His daughter, Thusnelda, was preeminent among the noble maidens of Germany. Arminius had sought her hand in marriage; but Segestes, who probably discerned the young chief's disaffection to Rome, forbade his suit, and strove to preclude all communication between him and his daughter. Thusnelda, however, sympathized far more with the heroic spirit of her lover than with the timeserving policy of her father. An elopement baffled the precautions of Segestes, who, disappointed in his hope of preventing the marriage, accused Arminius before the Roman governor of having carried off his daughter and of planning treason against Rome. Thus assailed, and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer, but bent all his energies to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman dominion.

A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it materially favored the ultimate success of the insurgents, served, by the immediate aggravation of the Roman oppressions which it produced, to make the native population more universally eager to take arms. Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, had recently been recalled from the command in Germany and sent into Pannonia to put down a dangerous revolt which had broken out against the Romans in that province. The German patriots were thus delivered from the stern supervision of one of the most suspicious of mankind, and were also relieved from having to contend against the high military talents of a veteran commander, who thoroughly understood their national character, and also the nature of the country, which he himself had principally subdued.

In the room of Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus, who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria. Varus was a true representative of the higher classes of the Romans, among whom a general taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual gratifications, a minute acquaintance with the principles and practice of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools of the rhetoricians, and a fondness for either partaking in or watching the intellectual strife of forensic oratory had become generally diffused, without, however, having humanized the old Roman spirit of cruel indifference to human feelings and human sufferings, and without acting as the least checks on unprincipled avarice and ambition or on habitual and gross profligacy. Accustomed to govern the depraved and debased natives of Syria—a country where courage in man and virtue in woman had for centuries been unknown—Varus thought that he might gratify his licentious and rapacious passions with equal impunity among the high-minded sons and pure-spirited daughters of Germany. When the general of an army sets the example of outrages of this description, he is soon faithfully imitated by his officers, and surpassed by his still more brutal soldiery. The Romans now habitually indulged in those violations of the sanctity of the domestic shrine, and those insults upon honor and modesty, by which far less gallant spirits than those of our Teutonic ancestors have often been maddened into insurrection.

Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathized with him in his indignation at their country's abasement, and many whom private wrongs had stung yet more deeply. There was little difficulty in collecting bold leaders for an attack on the oppressors, and little fear of the population not rising readily at those leaders' call. But to declare open war against Rome and to encounter Varus' army in a pitched battle would have been merely rushing upon certain destruction. Varus had three legions under him, a force which, after allowing for detachments, cannot be estimated at less than fourteen thousand Roman infantry. He had also eight or nine hundred Roman cavalry, and at least an equal number of horse and foot sent from the allied states, or raised among those provincials who had not received the Roman franchise.

It was not merely the number, but the quality of this force that made them formidable; and, however contemptible Varus might be as a general, Arminius well knew how admirably the Roman armies were organized and officered, and how perfectly the legionaries understood every manoeuvre and every duty which the varying emergencies of a stricken field might require. Stratagem was, therefore, indispensable; and it was necessary to blind Varus to their schemes until a favorable opportunity should arrive for striking a decisive blow.

For this purpose, the German confederates frequented the head-quarters of Varus, which seem to have been near the centre of the modern country of Westphalia, where the Roman general conducted himself with all the arrogant security of the governor of a perfectly submissive province. There Varus gratified at once his vanity, his rhetorical tastes, and his avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates attended to argue the cases before the tribunal of Varus, who did not omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to take in the forensic eloquence of their conquerors.

Meanwhile a succession of heavy rains rendered the country more difficult for the operations of regular troops, and Arminius, seeing that the infatuation of Varus was complete, secretly directed the tribes near the Weser and the Ems to take up arms in open revolt against the Romans. This was represented to Varus as an occasion which required his prompt attendance at the spot; but he was kept in studied ignorance of its being part of a concerted national rising; and he still looked on Arminius as his submissive vassal, whose aid he might rely on in facilitating the march of his troops against the rebels and in extinguishing the local disturbance. He therefore set his army in motion, and marched eastward in a line parallel to the course of the Lippe. For some distance his route lay along a level plain; but on arriving at the tract between the curve of the upper part of that stream and the sources of the Ems, the country assumes a very different character; and here, in the territory of the modern little principality of Lippe, it was that Arminius had fixed the scene of his enterprise.

A wooded and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two rivers, and forms the water-shed of their streams. This region still retains the name (Teutobergenwald = Teutobergiensis saltus) which it bore in the days of Arminius. The nature of the ground has probably also remained unaltered. The eastern part of it, round Detmold, the modern capital of the principality of Lippe, is described by a modern German scholar, Dr. Plate, as being a "table-land intersected by numerous deep and narrow valleys, which in some places form small plains, surrounded by steep mountains and rocks, and only accessible by narrow defiles. All the valleys are traversed by rapid streams, shallow in the dry season, but subject to sudden swellings in autumn and winter. The vast forests which cover the summits and slopes of the hills consist chiefly of oak; there is little underwood, and both men and horse would move with ease in the forests if the ground were not broken by gulleys or rendered impracticable by fallen trees." This is the district to which Varus is supposed to have marched; and Dr. Plate adds that "the names of several localities on and near that spot seem to indicate that a great battle had once been fought there. We find the names 'das Winnefeld' (the field of victory), 'die Knochenbahn' (the bone-lane), 'die Knochenleke' (the bone-brook), 'der Mordkessel' (the kettle of slaughter), and others."

Contrary to the usual strict principles of Roman discipline, Varus had suffered his army to be accompanied and impeded by an immense train of baggage wagons and by a rabble of camp followers, as if his troops had been merely changing their quarters in a friendly country. When the long array quitted the firm, level ground and began to wind its way among the woods, the marshes, and the ravines, the difficulties of the march, even without the intervention of an armed foe, became fearfully apparent. In many places the soil, sodden with rain, was impracticable for cavalry and even for infantry, until trees had been felled and a rude causeway formed through the morass.

The duties of the engineer were familiar to all who served in the Roman armies. But the crowd and confusion of the columns embarrassed the working parties of the soldiery, and in the midst of their toil and disorder the word was suddenly passed through their ranks that the rear-guard was attacked by the barbarians. Varus resolved on pressing forward; but a heavy discharge of missiles from the woods on either flank taught him how serious was the peril, and he saw his best men falling round him without the opportunity of retaliation; for his light-armed auxiliaries, who were principally of Germanic race, now rapidly deserted, and it was impossible to deploy the legionaries on such broken ground for a charge against the enemy.

Choosing one of the most open and firm spots which they could force their way to, the Romans halted for the night; and, faithful to their national discipline and tactics, formed their camp amid the harassing attacks of the rapidly thronging foes with the elaborate toil and systematic skill the traces of which are impressed permanently on the soil of so many European countries, attesting the presence in the olden time of the imperial eagles.

On the morrow the Romans renewed their march, the veteran officers who served under Varus now probably directing the operations and hoping to find the Germans drawn up to meet them, in which case they relied on their own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should reassure the supremacy of Rome. But Arminius was far too sage a commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broadswords and inefficient defensive armor, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, who were skilled to commence the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins hurled upon the foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon parade. Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to form first in line for action and then in column for marching, without the show of opposition.

For some distance Varus was allowed to move on, only harassed by slight skirmishes, but struggling with difficulty through the broken ground, the toil and distress of his men being aggravated by heavy torrents of rain, which burst upon the devoted legions, as if the angry gods of Germany were pouring out the vials of their wrath upon the invaders. After some little time their van approached a ridge of high wooded ground, which is one of the offshoots of the great Hercynian forest, and is situated between the modern villages of Driburg and Bielefeld. Arminius had caused barricades of hewn trees to be formed here, so as to add to the natural difficulties of the passage. Fatigue and discouragement now began to betray themselves in the Roman ranks. Their line became less steady; baggage wagons were abandoned from the impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the wagons to secure the most valuable portions of their property; each was busy about his own affairs, and purposely slow in hearing the word of command from his officers.

Arminius now gave the signal for a general attack. The fierce shouts of the Germans pealed through the gloom of the forests, and in thronging multitudes they assailed the flanks of the invaders, pouring in clouds of darts on the encumbered legionaries as they struggled up the glens or floundered in the morasses, and watching every opportunity of charging through the intervals of the disjointed column, and so cutting off the communication between its several brigades. Arminius, with a chosen band of personal retainers round him, cheered on his countrymen by voice and example. He and his men aimed their weapons particularly at the horses of the Roman cavalry. The wounded animals, slipping about in the mire and their own blood, threw their riders and plunged among the ranks of the legions, disordering all round them. Varus now ordered the troops to be countermarched, in the hope of reaching the nearest Roman garrison on the Lippe.

But retreat now was as impracticable as advance; and the falling back of the Romans only augmented the courage of their assailants and caused fiercer and more frequent charges on the flanks of the disheartened army. The Roman officer who commanded the cavalry, Numonius Vala, rode off with his squadrons in the vain hope of escaping by thus abandoning his comrades. Unable to keep together or force their way across the woods and swamps, the horsemen were overpowered in detail and slaughtered to the last man. The Roman infantry still held together and resisted, but more through the instinct of discipline and bravery than from any hope of success or escape.

Varus, after being severely wounded in a charge of the Germans against his part of the column, committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of those whom he had exasperated by his oppressions. One of the lieutenants-general of the army fell fighting; the other surrendered to the enemy. But mercy to a fallen foe had never been a Roman virtue, and those among her legions who now laid down their arms in hope of quarter, drank deep of the cup of suffering, which Rome had held to the lips of many a brave but unfortunate enemy. The infuriated Germans slaughtered their oppressors with deliberate ferocity, and those prisoners who were not hewn to pieces on the spot were only preserved to perish by a more cruel death in cold blood.

The bulk of the Roman army fought steadily and stubbornly, frequently repelling the masses of assailants, but gradually losing the compactness of their array and becoming weaker and weaker beneath the incessant shower of darts and the reiterated assaults of the vigorous and unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the column was pierced through and through, two of the eagles captured, and the Roman host, which on the morning before had marched forth in such pride and might—now broken up into confused fragments—either fell fighting beneath the overpowering numbers of the enemy or perished in the swamps and woods in unavailing efforts at flight. Few, very few, ever saw again the left bank of the Rhine. One body of brave veterans, arraying themselves in a ring on a little mound, beat off every charge of the Germans, and prolonged their honorable resistance to the close of that dreadful day. The traces of a feeble attempt at forming a ditch and mound attested in after-years the spot where the last of the Romans passed their night of suffering and despair. But on the morrow this remnant also, worn out with hunger, wounds, and toil, was charged by the victorious Germans, and either massacred on the spot or offered up in fearful rites on the altars of the deities of the old mythology of the North.

A gorge in the mountain ridge, through which runs the modern road between Paderborn and Pyrmont, leads from the spot where the heat of the battle raged to the Extersteine—a cluster of bold and grotesque rocks of sandstone—near which is a small sheet of water, overshadowed by a grove of aged trees. According to local tradition, this was one of the sacred groves of the ancient Germans, and it was here that the Roman captives were slain in sacrifice by the victorious warriors of Arminius.

Never was victory more decisive; never was the liberation of an oppressed people more instantaneous and complete. Throughout Germany the Roman garrisons were assailed and cut off; and within a few weeks after Varus had fallen, the German soil was freed from the foot of an invader.

At Rome the tidings of the battle were received with an agony of terror, the reports of which we would deem exaggerated did they not come from Roman historians themselves. They not only tell emphatically how great was the awe which the Romans felt of the prowess of the Germans if their various tribes could be brought to unite for a common purpose,[83] but they also reveal how weakened and debased the population of Italy had become. Dion Cassius says: "Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he had lost, and for terror respecting the Germans and the Gauls. And his chief alarm was that he expected them to push on against Italy and Rome; and there remained no Roman youth fit for military duty that were worth speaking of, and the allied populations, that were at all serviceable, had been wasted away. Yet he prepared for the emergency as well as his means allowed; and when none of the citizens of military age were willing to enlist, he made them cast lots, and punished, by confiscation of goods and disfranchisement, every fifth man among those under thirty-five and every tenth man of those above that age. At last, when he found that not even thus could he make many come forward, he put some of them to death. So he made a conscription of discharged veterans and of emancipated slaves, and, collecting as large a force as he could, sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany."

[Footnote 83: It is clear that the Romans followed the policy of fomenting dissensions and wars of the Germans among themselves.]

Dion mentions also a number of terrific portents that were believed to have occurred at the time, and the narration of which is not immaterial, as it shows the state of the public mind when such things were so believed in and so interpreted. The summits of the Alps were said to have fallen, and three columns of fire to have blazed up from them. In the Campus Martius, the temple of the war-god, from whom the founder of Rome had sprung, was struck by a thunderbolt. The nightly heavens glowed several times as if on fire. Many comets blazed forth together; and fiery meteors, shaped like spears, had shot from the northern quarter of the sky down into the Roman camps. It was said, too, that a statue of Victory, which had stood at a place on the frontier, pointing the way toward Germany, had of its own accord turned round, and now pointed to Italy. These and other prodigies were believed by the multitude to accompany the slaughter of Varus' legions and to manifest the anger of the gods against Rome.

Augustus himself was not free from superstition; but on this occasion no supernatural terrors were needed to increase the alarm and grief that he felt, and which made him, even months after the news of the battle had arrived, often beat his head against the wall and exclaim, "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions." We learn this from his biographer Suetonius; and, indeed, every ancient writer who alludes to the overthrow of Varus attests the importance of the blow against the Roman power, and the bitterness with which it was felt.

The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own territory; but that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her legions again into Germany, to parade a temporary superiority, but all hopes of permanent conquests were abandoned by Augustus and his successors.

The blow which Arminius had struck never was forgotten. Roman fear disguised itself under the specious title of moderation, and the Rhine became the acknowledged boundary of the two nations until the fifth century of our era, when the Germans became the assailants, and carved with their conquering swords the provinces of imperial Rome into the kingdoms of modern Europe.

ARMINIUS

I have said above that the great Cheruscan is more truly one of our national heroes than Caractacus is. It may be added that an Englishman is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than can be claimed by any German of modern Germany. The proof of this depends on the proof of four facts: First, that the Cheruscans were Old Saxons, or Saxons of the interior of Germany; secondly, that the Anglo-Saxons, or Saxons of the coast of Germany, were more closely akin than other German tribes were to the Cheruscan Saxons; thirdly, that the Old Saxons were almost exterminated by Charlemagne; fourthly, that the Anglo-Saxons are our immediate ancestors. The last of these may be assumed as an axiom in English history. The proofs of the other three are partly philological and partly historical. It may be, however, here remarked that the present Saxons of Germany are of the High Germanic division of the German race, whereas both the Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon were of the Low Germanic.

Being thus the nearest heirs of the glory of Arminius, we may fairly devote more attention to his career than, in such a work as the present, could be allowed to any individual leader; and it is interesting to trace how far his fame survived during the Middle Ages, both among the Germans of the Continent and among ourselves.

It seems probable that the jealousy with which Maroboduus, the king of the Suevi and Marcomanni, regarded Arminius, and which ultimately broke out into open hostilities between those German tribes and the Cherusci, prevented Arminius from leading the confederate Germans to attack Italy after his first victory. Perhaps he may have had the rare moderation of being content with the liberation of his country, without seeking to retaliate on her former oppressors. When Tiberius marched into Germany in the year 10, Arminius was too cautious to attack him on ground favorable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful to entangle his troops in the difficult parts of the country. His march and countermarch were as unresisted as they were unproductive. A few years later, when a dangerous revolt of the Roman legions near the frontier caused their generals to find them active employment by leading them into the interior of Germany, we find Arminius again active in his country's defence. The old quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes, had broken out afresh.

Segestes now called in the aid of the Roman general, Germanicus, to whom he surrendered himself; and by his contrivance, his daughter, Thusnelda, the wife of Arminius, also came into the hands of the Romans, she being far advanced in pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, more of the spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that could not be subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent to Ravenna, and there gave birth to a son, whose life we know, from an allusion in Tacitus, to have been eventful and unhappy; but the part of the great historian's work which narrated his fate has perished, and we only know from another quarter that the son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led captive in a triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome.

The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by these bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him, and of his babe doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed the eloquent invectives with which he roused his countrymen against the home-traitors, and against their invaders, who thus made war upon women and children. Germanicus had marched his army to the place where Varus had perished, and had there paid funeral honors to the ghastly relics of his predecessor's legions that he found heaped around him.[84] Arminius lured him to advance a little farther into the country, and then assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman accounts, was a drawn one.

[Footnote 84: In the Museum of Rhenish Antiquities at Bonn there is a Roman sepulchral monument the inscription on which records that it was erected to the memory of M. Coelius, who fell "Bella Variano."]

The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve on retreating to the Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops, embarked in some vessels on the Ems, and returned by that river, and then by sea; but part of his forces were intrusted to a Roman general named Caecina, to lead them back by land to the Rhine. Arminius followed this division on its march, and fought several battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on the Romans, captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have destroyed them completely had not his skilful system of operations been finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a confederate German chief, who insisted on assaulting the Romans in their camp, instead of waiting till they were entangled in the difficulties of the country, and assailing their columns on the march.

In the following year the Romans were inactive, but in the year afterward Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army on shipboard and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he disembarked and marched to the Weser, there encamping, probably in the neighborhood of Minden. Arminius had collected his army on the other side of the river; and a scene occurred, which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is the subject of a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned that the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up while young to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not only refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country, but fought against his country with the legions of Germanicus. He had assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and had gained considerable distinction in the Roman service, in which he had lost an eye from a wound in battle. When the Roman outposts approached the river Weser, Arminius called out to them from the opposite bank and expressed a wish to see his brother. Flavius stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the Roman bank of the river. This was done; and the brothers, who apparently had not seen each other for some years, began a conversation from the opposite sides of the stream, in which Arminius questioned his brother respecting the loss of his eye, and what battle it had been lost in, and what reward he had received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye was lost, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account of its loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations that had been given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of slavery; and then each began to try to win the other over—Flavius boasting the power of Rome and her generosity to the submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the name of their country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by the holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon proceeded to mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud for his horse and his arms, that he might dash across the river and attack his brother; nor would he have been checked from doing so had not the Roman general Stertinius run up to him and forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on the other bank, threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.

I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the stanzas in which Praed has described this scene—a scene among the most affecting, as well as the most striking, that history supplies. It makes us reflect on the desolate position of Arminius, with his wife and child captives in the enemy's hands, and with his brother a renegade in arms against him. The great liberator of our German race was there, with every source of human happiness denied him except the consciousness of doing his duty to his country.

"Back, back! he fears not foaming flood Who fears not steel-clad line: No warrior thou of German blood, No brother thou of mine. Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck, Her gems to deck thy hilt; And blazon honor's hapless wreck With all the gauds of guilt.

"But wouldst thou have me share the prey? By all that I have done, The Varian bones that day by day Lie whitening in the sun, The legion's trampled panoply, The eagle's shatter'd wing— I would not be for earth or sky So scorn'd and mean a thing.

"Ho, call me here the wizard, boy, Of dark and subtle skill, To agonize but not destroy, To torture, not to kill. When swords are out and shriek and shout Leave little room for prayer, No fetter on man's arm or heart Hangs half so heavy there.

"I curse him by the gifts the land Hath won from him and Rome, The riving axe, the wasting brand, Rent forest, blazing home. I curse him by our country's gods, The terrible, the dark, The breakers of the Roman rods, The smiters of the bark.

"Oh, misery that such a ban On such a brow should be! Why comes he not in battle's van His country's chief to be? To stand a comrade by my side, The sharer of my fame, And worthy of a brother's pride And of a brother's name?

"But it is past! where heroes press And cowards bend the knee, Arminius is not brotherless, His brethren are the free. They come around: one hour, and light Will fade from turf and tide, Then onward, onward to the fight, With darkness for our guide.

"To-night, to-night, when we shall meet In combat face to face, Then only would Arminius greet The renegade's embrace. The canker of Rome's guilt shall be Upon his dying name; And as he lived in slavery, So shall he fall in shame."

On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led his army across that river, and a partial encounter took place, in which Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a general action was fought, in which Arminius was severely wounded and the German infantry routed with heavy loss. The horsemen of the two armies encountered without either party gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained master of the ground and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected a trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription that the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly conquered by his army. But that army speedily made a final retreat to the left bank of the Rhine; nor was the effect of their campaign more durable than their trophy. The sarcasm with which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs of Roman generals over Germans may apply to the pageant which Germanicus celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman army of the Rhine. The Germans were "triumphati potius quam victi."

After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, king of the Suevi and Marcomanni, who was endeavoring to bring the other German tribes into a state of dependency on him. Arminius was at the head of the Germans who took up arms against this home invader of their liberties. After some minor engagements a pitched battle was fought between the two confederacies (A.D. 19) in which the loss on each side was equal, but Maroboduus confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a renewal of the engagement and by imploring the intervention of the Romans in his defence. The younger Drusus then commanded the Roman legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation a peace was concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the terms of which it is evident that the latter must have renounced his ambitious schemes against the freedom of the other German tribes.

Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence, which he successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated in the thirty-seventh year of his age by some of his own kinsmen, who conspired against him. Tacitus says that this happened while he was engaged in a civil war, which had been caused by his attempts to make himself king over his countrymen. It is far more probable, as one of the best biographers[85] has observed, that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of Arminius to extend his influence as elective war chieftain of the Cherusci and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity.

[Footnote 85: Dr. Plate, in Biographical Dictionary.]

When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades, we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with the tribe by open violence, and, when that seemed ineffectual, by secret assassination.

Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies, that we know his exploits.[86] His countrymen made history, but did not write it. But his memory lived among them in the days of their bards, who recorded

"The deeds he did, the fields he won, The freedom he restored."

Tacitus, writing years after the death of Arminius, says of him, "Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes." As time passed on, the gratitude of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The Irmin-sul, or the column of Herman, near Eresburgh (the modern Stadtberg), was the chosen object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci (the Old Saxons), and in defence of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the 'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of the deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of Eresburgh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic era."[87] Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors after their settlement in this island. One of the four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity, and was called the "Irmin street." The name Arminius is, of course, the mere Latinized form of Herman, the name by which the hero and the deity were known by every man of Low German blood on either side of the German Sea. It means, etymologically, the War-man, the man of hosts. No other explanation of the worship of the Irmin-sul, and of the name of the Irmin street, is so satisfactory as that which connects them with the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the existence of other columns of an analogous character. Thus there was the Roland-seule in North Germany; there was a Thor-seule in Sweden, and (what is more important) there was an Athelstan-seule in Saxon England.[88]

[Footnote 86: Tacitus: Annales.]

[Footnote 87: Palgrave: English Commonwealth.]

[Footnote 88: Lappenburg: Anglo-Saxons.]



CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME B.C. 450-A.D. 12

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals following give volume and page.

Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page references showing where the several events are fully treated.

"Est" means date uncertain.

B.C.

450. The decemvirate instituted at Rome; the Twelve Tables of law framed. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.

Alcibiades born.[Est]

448. First Sacred War between the Phocians and Delphians for the possession of the temple at Delphi.

The decemvirate abolished at Rome. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.

Athens is now the principal seat of Greek philosophy, literature, and art.

447. The Boeotians defeat the Athenians at Coronea; the conflict was brought about by Athens breaking the truce arranged between the Greek states to endure for five years, in order to combine against Persia. The result was the loss to Athens of Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris.

445.[Est] Nehemiah begins the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

Peace of Callias between the Greeks and Persians.

Birth of Xenophon, general and historian.

444. Ascendency of Pericles at Athens.[Est] See "PERICLES RULES IN ATHENS," ii, 12.

The military tribunes instituted at Rome. The consulship was in no sense abolished; until the passage of the Licinian Rogations (when it reappeared as a permanent annual magistracy) it alternated irregularly with the military tribunes. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.

Thucydides exiled Athens.

443. An Athenian colony planted at Thurium, near Sybarius; it is accompanied by Herodotus and Lysias.

442. Pericles, guided by Phidias the sculptor, adorns Athens; the Parthenon, Propylaea, and Odeum built.

440. Samos resists the Athenian sway; is besieged by Pericles and Sophocles; Melissus defends the city, but surrenders after a siege of nine months.

Comedies prohibited performance at Athens.

439. Great famine in Rome; Sp. Maelius distributes corn to the citizens, for which he is accused of wishing to be king, and is assassinated by Servilius Ahala.

438. Spartacus becomes king of Bosporus.

Ahala impeached and exiled Rome.

437. The prohibition of comedy repealed at Athens.

Syracuse, the predominant state in Sicily, reaches the height of its prosperity. See "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48.

436. Commencement of the dispute between Corinth and Corcyra regarding the city of Epidamnus, in which Athens supported the latter; this led to the Peloponnesian War.

435. Naval victory over the Corinthians by the Corcyraeans, near Actium.

432. Ambassadors from Corcyra implore the aid of Athens, which series a fleet to defend the island against the Corinthian attack. Corinth incites Potidaea to revolt from Athens.

431. Beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Sparta declares on the side of Corinth and makes war on Athens. The real cause of the war—which was to be so disastrous to Greece—was that Sparta and its allies were jealous of the great power Athens had attained. Sparta was an oligarchy and a friend of the nobles everywhere; Athens was a democracy and the friend of the common people; so that the war was to some extent a struggle between these classes all over Greece.

430. "GREAT PLAGUE AT ATHENS." See ii, 34. The physician Hippocrates distinguishes himself by extraordinary cures of the sick.

Second invasion of Attica by the Spartans.

429. Death of Pericles, during the plague, at Athens.

Potidaea reduced by the Athenians.

Birth of Plato.

428. Attica invaded the third time.

Lesbos revolts from the Athenian confederacy; on this the Athenians besiege Mitylene.

427. Mitylene reduced; Athens becomes master of Lesbos. Plataea, the ally of Athens, after being besieged, surrenders to the Peloponnesians and is destroyed.

Attica again invaded.

425. Agis begins the fifth invasion of Attica; he retires on learning that the Athenians under Cleon had taken Pylos and Sapachteria.

Mount AEetna in eruption.

On the death of Artaxerxes I, his son, Xerxes II, succeeds him as ruler of Persia; he reigns only forty-five days, being slain by his brother Sogdianus, who usurps the throne.

424. The island of Cythera taken by the Athenians. Brasidas, the Spartan general, captures Amphipolis, defeating Thucydides.

Ochus (Darius Nothus) rids himself of Sogdianus and succeeds him on the Persian throne.

423. The Athenians banish Thucydides for having suffered Amphipolis to be taken.

422. The Athenians send Cleon to recover Amphipolis; he is defeated by Brasidas; both fall in the battle.

421. Peace of Nicias between Sparta and Athens. End of the first period of the Peloponnesian War.

420. Alcibiades negotiates an alliance between Athens and Argos. Amphipolis retained by the Spartans.

419. An Athenian expedition is led into the Peloponnesus by Alcibiades.

418. Victory of the Spartans at Mantinea.

The league between Athens and Argos dissolved.

416. The island of Melos, which had remained neutral, is conquered by the Athenians; its inhabitants are treated with extreme cruelty.

415. The Athenians send an expedition against Syracuse under Nicias, Lamachus, and Alcibiades; the latter is recalled to answer an accusation of having broken some statues of Mercury in Athens; he takes refuge in Sparta. Andocides, the orator, implicated in the same charge, is imprisoned and exiled.

414. Syracuse is invested by the Athenians under Nicias; being hard pressed, Syracuse appeals to the other Greek states; Cylippus, the Spartan commander, comes with a fleet to the aid of the city. See "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48.

The Romans capture Bolae, an AEquian town; the division of the booty causes a mutiny among the soldiers, who slay the quaestor and the military tribune, M. Postumius.

413. On Alcibiades' advice the Spartans fortify a position at Decelea, in Attica.

"DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE." See ii, 48.

412. Alcibiades visits the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, with whose aid he negotiates an alliance between Persia and Sparta.

411. Owing to the machinations of Alcibiades a revolt is organized in Athens, by the aid of the clubs of the nobles and rich men; its object being to overthrow the democracy and establish an oligarchy. The rising is successful and the "Reign of the Four Hundred" ensues; it lasts four months; its framer, Antipho, is put to death. Alcibiades is recalled.

410. The Spartans are defeated by Alcibiades in a naval encounter at Cyzicus. Sparta makes overtures for peace.

409. The Carthaginians invade Sicily; they reduce Silenus and Himera.

408. Alcibiades takes Selymbria and Byzantium.

Psammeticus is king of Egypt.

Roman plebs first admitted to the quaestorship.

407. Lysander, the Spartan admiral, defeats the Athenian fleet at Notium; in consequence of this defeat, Alcibiades, who had been received with great honor, is banished, and ten generals are nominated to succeed him.

406. The Athenians vanquish the Spartan fleet under Callicratidas, at Arginusae. The Athenian generals are executed at Athens for not saving the shattered vessels and the bodies of the slain.

Dionysius the Elder becomes ruler of Syracuse.

Anxur and other towns captured by the Romans, who now first give their soldiers a regular pay.

405. The Spartan under Lysander, who had been restored to command, annihilate the Athenian navy at Aegospotami.

Artaxerxes II succeeds Darius II on the Persian throne.

Successful revolt of the Egyptians against the Persians; the independence of Egypt secured.

404. Athens taken by Lysander and dismantled; thirty tyrants appointed by him. Lysias and other orators banished. End of the Peloponnesian War.

403. Democracy is restored in Athens by Thrasybulus; he publishes an act of amnesty. The Ionian alphabet adopted at Athens.

401. Cyrus rebels against his brother Artaxerxes, of Persia; he is defeated and slain at the battle of Cunaxa.

400. The Ten Thousand Greek auxiliaries of Cyrus effect their retreat to the sea. See "RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS," ii, 68.

399. Sparta and Persia engage in war.

"CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES." See ii, 87.

396. Agesilaus, the Spartan general, begins his victorious campaigns against the Persians.

The Romans, headed by Camillus, capture Veii, after a ten years' siege.

395. Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and Athens combine against Sparta; the Spartans are defeated at Haliartus; Lysander is slain.

Tissaphernes' Persian army is defeated by Agesilaus, near Sardis.

394. The Athenian admiral Conon, in charge of the Persian fleet, crushingly defeats that of the Spartans, under Pisander, off Cnidus.

Agesilaus is recalled from Asia; commanding the Spartans, he gains a victory over the confederate Greeks at Coronea.

393. Conon undertakes the rebuilding of the walls in Athens and restores the fortifications.

392. Conon excites the jealousy of the Persians; he retires into Cyprus, where he dies.

391. Camillus banished from Rome, charged with misappropriating the booty secured at Veii, but really on account of his patrician haughtiness; he dies at Ardea, whither he had withdrawn.

389. Aeschines born; he was accounted in Athens second only to Demosthenes as an orator.

388[89] (387). Brennus, commanding the Gauls, burns Rome. See "BRENNUS BURNS ROME," ii, 110.

[Footnote 89: By the old chronological reckoning this event occurred B.C. 390.]

387. Through the mediation of Persia, Sparta compels the Greek states to accept the peace of Antalcidas, which leaves the Ionian cities and Cyprus at his mercy; this enables Sparta to maintain her supremacy in Greece.

385.[Est] Birth of Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator and general.

384. Aristotle born.

383. War of Syracuse with Carthage.

Thebes is betrayed to Sparta, during her war against Olynthus.

379. The Olynthians are forced to submission by the Spartans. Pelopidas and his associates drive the Spartans from Thebes.

378. Athens declares in favor of Thebes against Sparta.

376. Cleombrotus leads the Spartans into Boeotia; the Spartan fleet, under Pollis, is overwhelmed off Maxos, by Chabrias.

371. Congress of Sparta, Thebes being excluded from the treaty of peace; Pelopidas and Epaminondas gain the great victory of Leuctra, in which Cleombrotus, King of Sparta, is slain. Thebes becomes the dominant power in Greece.

The Arcadian union formed. One of the first effects of the battle of Leuctra was to emancipate the Arcadians, and a plan was formed to raise them in the political affairs of Greece.

370. Epaminondas, the Theban general, heads his first expedition into the Peloponnesus; he threatens Sparta, which Agesilaus saves.

369. The Thebans advance into Laconia; they restore the independence of the Messenians. Epaminondas and Pelopidas are condemned for having retained their command beyond the term allowed by the laws of Thebes; they are pardoned and reappointed.

The Arcadians found Megalopolis, which they make the capital of the Arcadian confederacy.

368. The Thebans again enter the Peloponnesus, but retreat before the arrival of succor sent by Dionysius to the Lacedaemonians. Pelopidas, treacherously made prisoner by Alexander of Pherae, is rescued by Epaminondas. A congress, under the mediation of Persia, is held at Delphi; it fails, because the Thebans will not abandon the Messenians.

The Carthaginians at war with Dionysius; but, after losing Selinus and other towns, they make peace.

Camillus, more than eighty years old, appointed dictator at Rome; he persuades the patricians to assent to the demands of the plebs, and builds the temple of Concord.

A celestial globe brought into Greece from Egypt.

367. The Licinian Rogations, Rome; three bills introduced by Licinius, decreeing: 1. That interest on loans be deducted from the principal; 2. Limiting the public land held by any individual to 500 jugera (320 acres); 3. Ordering that one of the two consuls should be a plebeian. Institution of the praetorship.

364. Pelopidas attacks Alexander of Pherae; during the battle of Cymoscephale his soldiers are alarmed at an eclipse of the sun, and he is slain.

362. The Spartans and allies defeated at Mantinea by Epaminondas; he is slain.

361 (359). Artaxerxes II of Persia succeeded by Artaxerxes III (Ochus).

359. Philip ascends the throne of Macedon; he concludes peace with the Athenians.

358.[Est] Athens involves herself in the Social War with Cos, Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium.

Amphipolis captured by Philip of Macedon; he loses his right eye by an arrow from Astor.

357. Outbreak of the Ten Years' Sacred War, caused by the Crissians levying grievous taxes on those who went to consult the oracle of Delphi.

356. Burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus; this building was accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Birth of Alexander the Great.

Dion frees Syracuse from Dionysius the Younger; he is expelled from Sicily.

355. The Social War ends in Greece. Athens recognizes the independence of the confederated states.

353. Final conquest of Egypt by the Persians.

352. Philip of Macedon interferes in the Greek Sacred War; Demosthenes delivers his First Philippic encouraging the Greeks to resist the Macedonians; Philip's attempt to seize Thermopylae is defeated.

Two thousand colonists are sent from Athens to Samos.

347. Philip of Macedon captures and destroys Olynthus.

346. Phocis occupied by Philip of Macedon; this ends the Sacred War.

Dionysius the Younger again assumes power in Syracuse.

343 (340). Timoleon effects the deliverance of Syracuse from Dionysius the Younger.

Rome engages in the First Samnite War.

341 (338). End of the First Samnite War.

Invasion of China by Meha the Hun. See "TARTAR INVASION OF CHINA BY MEHA," ii, 126.[Est]

340. Adoption of the Publilian laws in Rome, which further restricted the power of the patricians.

The Romans make war upon the Latins; the latter are subjugated. Manlius, one of the Roman consuls, condemns his son to death for a breach of discipline.

338. Athens and Thebes form an alliance to resist Philip of Macedon, who had passed Thermopylae and seized Elatea. The allied forces are overwhelmed at Chaeronea, and Philip establishes the Macedonian dominion in Greece.

Artaxerxes III is succeeded by Arses in Persia.

337. Philip of Macedon declares himself commander of the Greeks against the Persians; he repudiates his wife Olympias; their son Alexander attends his mother into Epirus.

336. Assassination of Philip of Macedon, by Pausanias at Aegae, while preparing to invade Persia; he is succeeded by his son, Alexander the Great.

Arses is succeeded by Darius III (Codomannus) in Persia.

335. Thebes, revolting against the Macedonian authority, is subdued and destroyed by Alexander, who, however, spares the house of Pindar the poet.

Rome concludes a peace with Gaul.

334. Alexander enters upon the conquest of Persia; he is victorious over Darius at the Granicus.

333. Lycia and Syria reduced by Alexander; Damascus captured by Parmenio, Alexander's general, and the siege of Tyre begun.

Darius is defeated at Issus; his family are among Alexander's captives.

332. "ALEXANDER REDUCES TYRE: LATER FOUNDS ALEXANDRIA." See ii, 133. He takes Gaza and occupies Egypt.

The Lucanians and Bruttians defeat and slay Alexander of Epirus, his ambitious designs in Italy having been betrayed.

331. "THE BATTLE OF ARBELA," in which Alexander the Great conquers Darius and overthrows the Persian empire. See ii, 141.