"The eyes of everyone in the synagogue," Luke adds, "were fixed upon him. And he began by saying to them, 'This passage of Scripture has been ful filled here in your hearing today.' And they all spoke well of him, and were astonished at the winning words that fell from his lips."48 When the news came that John had been beheaded, and his followers sought a new leader, Jesus assumed the burden and the risk, at first retiring cautiously to quiet villages, always refraining from political controversy, then more and more boldly proclaiming the gospel of repentance, belief, and salvation. Some of his hearers thought he was John risen from the dead.49
It is difficult to see him objectively, not only because the evidence is derived from those who worshiped him, but even more because our own moral heritage and ideals are so closely bound up with him and formed on his example that we feel injured in finding any flaw in his character. His religious sensitivity was so keen that he condemned severely those who would not share his vision; he could forgive any fault but unbelief. There are in the Gospels some bitter passages quite out of key with what else we are told about Christ. He seems to have taken over without scrutiny the harshest contemporary notions of an everlasting hell where unbelievers and unrepentant sinners would suffer from inextinguishable fire and insatiable worms.50 He tells without protest how the poor man in heaven was not per mitted to let a single drop of water fall upon the tongue of the rich man in hell.51 He counsels nobly, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," but he cursed the men and cities that would not receive his gospel, and the fig tree that bore no fruit.52 He may have been a bit harsh to his mother.53 He had the puritan zeal of the Hebrew prophet rather than the broad calm of the Greek sage. His convictions consumed him; righteous indignation now and then blurred his profound humanity; his faults were the price he paid for that passionate faith which enabled him to move the world.
For the rest he was the most lovable of men. We have no portrait of him, nor do the evangelist describe him; but he must have had some physical comeliness, as well as spiritual magnetism, to attract so many women as well as men. We gather from stray words 54 that, like other men of that age and land, he wore a tunic under a cloak, had sandals on his feet, and probably a cloth headdress falling over his shoulders to shield him from the sun.55 Many women sensed in him a sympathetic tenderness that aroused in them an un stinted devotion. The fact that only John tells the story of the woman taken
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVI
in adultery is no argument against its truth; it does not help John's theology, and is completely in character with Christ.* Of like beauty, and hardly within the inventive powers of the evangelists, is the account of the prostitute who, moved by his ready acceptance of repentant sinners, knelt before him, anointed his feet with precious myrrh, let her tears fall upon them, and dried them with her hair; of her Jesus said that her sins ,vere forgiven "because she loved much." 57 We are told that mothers brought their children to be touched by him, and "he took the children in his arms, laid his hands upon them, and blessed them." 58
Unlike the prophets, the Essenes, and the Baptist, he was no ascetic. He is represented as providing abundant wine for a marriage feast, as living with "publicans and sinners," and receiving a .Magdalene into his company. He was not hostile to the simple joys of life, though he was unbiologically harsh on the desire of a man for a maid. Occasionally he partook of banquets in the homes of rich men. Generally, however, he moved among the poor, even among the almost untouchable Amhaarez so scorned and shunned by Sad ducees and Pharisees alike. Realizing that the rich would never accept him, he built his hopes upon an overturn that would make the poor and humble supreme in the coming Kingdom. He resembled Caesar only in taking his stand with the lower classes, and in the quality of mercy; otherwise what a world of outlook, character, and interests separated them! Caesar hoped to reform men by changing institutions and laws; Christ wished to remake institutions, and lessen laws, by changing men. Caesar too was capable of anger, but his emotions were always under the control of his clear-eyed intellect. Jesus was not without intellect; he answered the tricky questions of the Pharisees with almost a la,vyer's skill, and yet with wisdom; no one could confuse him, even in the face of death. But his powers of mind were not intellectual, did not depend upon knowledge; they were derived from keenness of perception, intensity of feeling, and singleness of purpose. He did not claim omniscience; he could be surprised by events; only his earnest ness and enthusiasm led him to overestimate his capacities, as in Nazareth and Jerusalem. That his powers were nevertheless exceptional seems proved by his miracles.
Probably these were in most cases the result of suggestion-the influence of a strong and confident spirit upon impressionable souls. His presence was itself a tonic; at his optimistic touch the weak grew strong and the sick were made well. The fact that like stories have been told of other characters in legend and history 511 does not prove that the miracles of Christ were myths.
John, vrr, 52 f. The episode is found also in some old manuscripts of Mark and Luke; it was expunged from later texts, perhaps through fear of encouraging immorality.56
CHAP.XXVI)	JESUS	563
With a few exceptions they are not beyond belief; similar phenomena may be observed almost any day at Lourdes, and doubtless occurred in Jesus' time at Epidaurus and other centers of psychic healing in the ancient world; the apostles too would work such cures. The psychological nature of the miracles is indicated by two features: Christ himself attributed his cures to the "faith" of those whom he healed; and he could not perform miracles in Nazareth, apparently because the people there looked upon him as "the carpenter's son," and refused to believe in his unusual powers; hence his remark that "a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house." 60 We are told of Mary Magdalene that "seven demons had been driven out of her"; i.e., she suffered from nervous diseases and seizures (the word recalls the theory of "possession"); these seemed to abate in the presence of Jesus; therefore she loved him as one who had restored her to life, and whose nearness was indispensable to her sanity. In the case of Jairus' daughter Christ said frankly that the girl was not dead but asleep
-perhaps in a cataleptic state; in calling upon her to awake he used not his wonted gentleness but the sharp command, "Little gir get up!" 61 This is not to say that Jesus considered his miracles to be purely natural phe nomena; he felt that he could work them only through the help of a divine spirit within him. We do not know that he was wrong, nor can we yet set limits to the powers that lie potential in the thought and will of man. Jesus himself seems to have experienced a psychical exhaustion after his miracles. He was reluctant to attempt them, forbade his followers to advertise them, reproved men for requiring a "sign," and regretted that even his apostles accepted him chiefly because of the "wonders" he performed.
These men were hardly of the type that one would have chosen to re mold the world. The Gospels reafotically differentiate their characters, and honestly expose their faults. They were frankly ambitious; to quiet them Jesus promised that at the Last Judgment they would sit upon twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel.62 When the Baptist was imprisoned one of his followers, Andrew, attached himself to Jesus, and brought with him his brother Simon, whom Christ called Cephas-"the rock"; the Greeks translated the name into Petros. Peter is a thoroughly human figure, im pulsive, earnest, generous, jealous, at times timid to the point of a forgivable cowardice. He and Andrew were fishermen on the Lake of Galilee; so were the two sons of Zebedee-James and John; these four forsook their work and their families to become an inner circle about Christ. Matthew was the collector of customs at the frontier town of Capernaum; he was a "pub lican"-i.e., a man engaged in public or state business, therefore in this case serving Rome, and hated by every Jew who longed for freedom. Judas of Kerioth was the only one of the apostles who did not come from Galilee.
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVI
The Twelve pooled their material possessions, and entrusted Judas with their common funds. As they followed Christ in his missionary wandering they lived on the country, taking their food now and then from the fields they passed, and accepting the hospitality of converts and friends. In addi tion to the Twelve Jesus appointed seventy-two ot!iers as disciples, and sent two of them to each town that he intended to visit. He bade them "carry no purse, nor wallet, nor shoes." 63 Kindly and pious women joined the apostles and disciples, contributed to their support, and performed for them those solicitous domestic functions which are the supreme consola tion of male life. Through that little band, lowly and letterless, Christ sent his gospel into the world.
THE  GOSPEL
He taught with the simplicity required by his audiences, with interesting stories that insinuated his lessons into the understanding, with pungent aphor isms rather than with reasoned argument, and with similes and metaphors as brilliant as any in literature. The parable form that he used was cus• tomary in the East, and some of his fetching analogies had come down to him, perhaps unconsciously, from the prophets, the psalmists, and the rabbis; 64 nevertheless, the directness of his speech, the vivid colors of his imagery, the warm sincerity of his nature lifted his utterances to the most inspired poetry. Some of his sayings are obscure, some seem at first sight unjust,65 some are sharp with sarcasm and bitterness; nearly all of them are models of brevity, clarity, and force.
His starting point was the Gospel of John the·Baptist, which itself went back to Daniel and Enoch; historia non facit saltum. The Kinadom of Heaven was at hand, he said; soon God would put an end to the reign of wickedness on earth; the Son of Man would come "on the clouds of the sky" to judge all humanity, living and dead.66 The time for repentance was running out; those who repented, lived justly, loved God, and put their faith in his messenger would inherit the Kingdom, would be raised to power and glory in a world at last freed from all evil, suffering, and death.
As these ideas were familiar to his hearers, Christ did not define them clearly, and many difficulties obscure his conception now. What did he mean by the Kingdom? A supernatural heaven? Apparently not, for the apostles nd the early _Christi s unanimo ly. expe_cted an earthly king dom. This was the Jewish tradmon that Chnst mhented; and he taught his followers to pray to the Father, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on
CHAP. XXVI)	JESUS	565
earth as it is in heaven." Only after that hope had faded did the Gospel of John make Jesus say, "My kingdom is not of this world." 67 Did he mean a spiritual condition, or a material utopia? At times he spoke of the King dom as a state of soul reached by the pure and sinless 68-"the Kingdom of God is within you"; 69 at other times he pictured it as a happy future so ciety in which the apostles would be rulers, and those who had given or suffered for Christ's sake would receive a hundredfold reward.70 He seems to have thought of moral perfection as only metaphorically the Kingdom, as the preparation and price for the Kingdom, and as the condition of all saved souls in the Kingdom when realized.71
When would the Kingdom come? Soon. "I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new in the Kingdom of God." 72 "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel," he told his followers, "till the Son of Man is come." 73 Later he deferred it a bit: "There be some standing here that shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in the Kin3dom"; 74 and "this generation shall not pass till all these things be
done." 75 In more politic moments he warned his apostles: "Of that day
and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." 76 Certain signs would precede the coming: "wars and rumors of war ...  nation will rise against nation ...  there will be famines and earthquakes ...  many shall be offended, and ...  shall hate one another. Many false prophets will appear, many will be misled by them; and because of the increase of wickedness most men's love will grow cold." 77 Sometimes Jesus made the advent of the Kingdom depend and wait upon the conversion of man to God and justice; usually he made its coming an act of God, a sudden and miraculous gift of divine grace.
Many have interpreted the Kingdom as a communist utopia, and have seen in Christ a social revolutionist.78 The Gospels provide some evidence for this view. Christ cbviously scorned the man whose chief purpose in life is to amass money and luxuries.79 He promised hunger and woe to the rich and filled, and comforted the poor with Beatitudes that pledged them the Kingdom. To the rich youth who asked what he should do besides keeping the commandments, Christ answered: "Sell your property, give your money to the poor, and ...  follow me." 80 Apparently the apostles interpreted the Kingdom as a revolutionary inversion of the existing relationships be tween the rich and the poor; we shall find them and the early Christians forming a communistic band which "had all things in common." 81 The charge on which Jesus was condemned was that he had plotted to make himself "King of the Jews."
But a conservative can also quote the New Testament to his purpose.


HAMILCAR
Of Hamilcars, Hasdrubals, and Hannibals Carthage had an abundance, for these names were given in almost every generation in their oldest families. They were pious names, formed from those of the gods: Hamilcar was "He whom .Melkart protects"; Hasdrubal was "He whose help is Baal"; Hannibal was the very "Grace of Baal." Our present Hamilcar was surnamed Barca
-"lightning"; it was his nature to strike swiftly, suddenly, anywhere. He was still a youth when (247) Carthage gave him supreme command of its forces. Taking a small fleet, he harassed the coast of Italy with surprise landings, destroying Roman outposts and taking many prisoners. Then, in the face of a Roman army holdiJJg Panormus (Palermo), he disembarked his troops and captured a height overlooking the wwn. His contingent was too small to risk a major engagement; but every time he led it forth it re turned with spoils. He begged the Carthaginian Senate for reinforcements and supplies; it refused, hugged its hoards, and bade him feed and clothe his soldiers on the country that surrounded him.
Meanwhile the Roman fleet had won another victory, but had suffered a serious defeat at Drepana (249). \Vom out almost equally, the two nations rested for nine years. But while in those years Carthage did nothing, relying upon the genius of Hamilcar, a number of Roman citizens voluntarily pre sented to the state a fleet of 200 men-of-war, carrying 60,000 troops. This new armada, sailing secretly, caught the Carthaginian fleet unprepared at the Aegadian Isles off the west coast of Sicily, and so overwhelmed it that Carthage sued for peace (241). Carthaginian Sicily was surrendered to Rome, an annual indemnity of 440 talents was pledged to Rome for ten years, and all Carthaginian restrictions on Roman trade were withdrawn.
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. III
The war had lasted nearly twenty-four years and had brought Rome so near to bankruptcy that its currency was debased eighty-three per cent. But it had proved the irresistible tenacity of the Roman character and the superiority of an army composed of free men over mercenaries seeking the greatest booty for the least blood.
Carthage was now to be all but destroyed by its own greed. It had with held for some time the pay of its mercenaries, even of those who had served Hamilcar well. They poured into the city and demanded their money; and when the government temporized and tried to disperse them, they broke into mad revolt. Carthage's subject peoples, taxed beyond endurance during the war, joined the uprising, and the women of Libya sold their jewels to finance revolution. Twenty thousand mercenaries and rebels, led by Matha, a Libyan freeman, and Spendius, a Campanian slave, laid siege to Canhage at a time when hardly a soldier was there to defend it. The rich merchants trembled for their lives and appealed to Hamilcar to save them. Torn be tween affection for his mercenaries and his city, Hamilcar organized an army of 10,000 Canhaginians, trained them, led them forth, and raised the siege. The defeated mercenaries, retreating into the mountains, cut off-the hands and feet of Gesco, a Carthaginian general, and 700 other prisoners, broke their legs, and then threw the still living victims into an indiscriminate grave.17 Hamilcar maneuvered 40,000 of the rebels into a defile and blocked all exits so well that they began to starve. They ate their remaining captives, then their slaves; at last they sent Spendius to beg for peace. Hamilcar cruci fied Spendius and had hundreds of prisoners trampled to death under elephants' feet. The mercenaries tried to fight their way out, but were cut to pieces. Matho was captured and was made to run through the streets of Carthage while the citizens beat him with thongs and tortured him till he died.18 This "\Var of the Mercenaries" lasted forty months (241-237), and "was by far," said Polybius, "the most bloody and impious war in history." 19 When the conflict was over, Carthage found that Rome had occupied Sardinia. Canhage protested, and Rome declared war. The desperate Carthaginians bought peace only by paying Rome an additional I 200 talents, and surrendering Sardinia and Corsica.
We may judge the fury of Hamilcar at this treatment of his country. He proposed to his government that it should provide him with troops and funds to re-establish the power of Carthage in Spain, as a steppingstone to an attack upon Italy. The landowning aristocracy opposed the plan, fearing fnrther war; the mercantile middle class, resenting the loss of their foreign markets and ports, supported it. As a compromise Hamilcar was given a modest contingent, with which he crossed to Spain (238). He recaptured the cities whose allegiance to Carthage had lapsed during the war, built up
CHAP. III)	HANNIBAL  AGAINST  ROME	47
his army with native recruits, .financed and equipped it with the products of Spain's mines, and died while leading a charge against a Spanish tribe (229).
He left behind him in the camp his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his sons Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago-his "lion's-brood." The son-in-law was chosen commander, and for eight years governed wisely, winning the co operation of the Spaniards and building near the silver mines a great city, known to Rome as Nova Carthago, or New Carthage-the Cartagena of today. When he was assassinated (22 I), the army elected as its leader Hamilcar's eldest son, Hannibal, then twenty-six years of age. Before leav ing Carthage, his father had brought him, a boy of nine, to the altar of Baal-Haman and had bidden him swear that someday he would revenge his country against Rome. Hannibal swore, and did not forget.
HA:N"NIBAL
\Vhy had Rome permitted the reconquest of Spain? Because she was harassed with class strife, was expanding in the Adriatic, and was at war with the Gauls. In z3 z a tribune, Caius Flarninius, foreshadowed the Gracchi by carrying through the Assembly, against the violent opposition of the Senate, a measure distributing among the poorer citizens some lands recently • won from the Gauls. In 230  Rome took her first step toward the conquest of Greece by clearing the Adriatic of pirates and seizing a part of the Illyrian coast as a further protection for Italian trade. Safe now on south and east, she resolved to drive the Gauls over the Alps and make Italy a completely united state. To secure herself on the west she signed a treaty with Hasdrubal by which the Carthaginians in Spain agreed to stay south of the Ebro River; and at the same time she made an alliance with the semi Greek towns of Saguntum and Ampurias_ in Spain. In the following year
(225) a Gallic army of 50,000 foot and 20,000 horse s,vept down the peninsula. The inhabitants of the capital were so frightened that the Senate returned to the primitive custom of human sacrifice and buried two Gauls alive in the Farum as an appeasement of the gods.20 The legions met the invaders near Telamon, killed 40,000, took 10,000 prisoners, and marched on to subjugate all Cisalpine Gaul. In three years the task was completed; protective colonies were established at Placentia and Cremona, and from the Alps to Sicily Italy was one.
It was an untimely victory. Had the Gauls been left unmolested for a few years more they might have stopped Hannibal; but now all Gaul was aflame against Rome. Hannibal saw the opportunity he had longed for-
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. III
to cross Gaul with little opposition and to invade Italy with Gallic tribes as his allies.
The Punic leader was now twenty-eight years old, at his prime in body and mind. In addition to a Carthaginian gentleman's schooling in the lan guages, literatures, and history of Phoenicia and Greece,21 he had received a soldier's training through nineteen years in camp. He had disciplined his body to hardship, his appetite to moderation, his tongue to silence, his thought to objectivity. He could run or ride with the swiftest, hunt or fight with the bravest; he was "the first to enter the battle," says the hostile Livy, "and the last to abandon the field." 22 The veterans loved him because in his commanding presence and piercing eyes they saw their old leader Hamil car return to them in fresh youth; the recruits liked him because he wore no distinctive dress, never rested till he had provided for his army's needs, and shared with them all sufferings and gains. The Romans accused him of avarice, cruelty, and treachery, for he honored no scruples in seizing sup plies for his troops, punished disloyalty severely, and laid many snares for his foes.Yet we find him often merciful, always chivalrous. "Nothing occurs in the accounts of him,'' says the judicious Mommsen, "which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law of the times." 23 The Romans could not readily forgive him for winning battles with his brains rather than with the lives of his men. The tricks he
•played upon them, the skill of his espionage, the subtlety of his strategy, the surprises of his tactics were beyond their appreciation until Carthage was destroyed.
In z 19 B.c. Roman agents organized in Saguntum a coup d'etat that set
up a government patriotically hostile to Carthage. When the Saguntines molested tribes friendly to him, Hannibal ordered them to desist; when they refused he besieged the city. Rome protested to Carthage and threatened war; Carthage replied that since Saguntum was a hundred Iniles south of the Ebro, Rome had no right to interfere, and had, by signing an alliance with it, violated her treaty with Hasdrubal. Hannibal persisted in the siege, and Rome took up arms again, never dreaining that this Second Punic \Var was to be the most terrible in her history.
Hannibal spent eight months in subduing the Saguntines; he did not dare advance toward Italy while leaving to the Romans so excellent a port for landing in his rear. In z 1 8 he crossed the Ebro, challenging fate as Caesar would at the Rubicon. He had an army of 50,000 infantry and 9.000 cavalry, none of them mercenaries, most of them Spaniards and Libyans. Three thou sand Spaniards deserted when they learned that he planned to cross the Alps, and Hannibal released 7000 others \vho protested against his enter prise as impossible.24 It was hard enough to force a passage through the
CHAP. III)	HANNIBAL  AGAINST  ROME	49
Pyrenees; more unexpected was the fierce resistance of some Gallic tribes allied with Marseilles; a summer of fighting was required to reach the Rhone, and a major battle to cross it. He had hardly left its banks when a Roman army arrived at the mouth of the river.
Hannibal led his troops nonh toward Vienne and then struck eastward into the Alps. Celtic hordes had crossed those ranges before him, and he too might have done it without extraordinary hardship had it not been for the hostility of the Alpine tribes, and the difficulty of getting his elephants through narrow or precipitous passages. Early in September, after a climb of nine days, he reached the summit and found it covered with snow; there he let his men and animals rest for two days and then began the downward march through passes steeper than the ascent, over roads sometimes buried by landslides and often paved with ice. Many soldiers and beasts lost their footing and tumbled to their deaths. Hannibal spurred on his despairing forces by pointing out to them, in the distant south, the green fields and sparkling streams of Italy; that paradise, he promised them, would soon be theirs. After seventeen days in the Alps they reached the plain and rested. So many men and horses had been lost in the crossing that the army was now reduced to 26,000-less than half the force that had left New Canhage four months before. Had the Cisalpine Gauls resisted him as the Transalpine Gauls had done, Hannibal's progress might have ended there. But the Boii and other tribes welcomed him as a savior and joined him as allies, while the recently established Roman settlers fled southward across the Po.


discipline, and would have no nonsense about liberty. He obeyed as a train ing for command. He took it for granted that the government had a right to inquire into his morals as well as his income, and to value him purely according to his services to the state. He distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, and unstable fluency of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect; and organization was his fone. He lacked imagination, even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effon love beauty, but he could seldom create it. He had no use for pure science, and was sus picious of philosophy as a devilish dissolvent of ancient beliefs and ways. He could not, for the life of him, understand Plato, or Archimedes, or Christ. He could only rule the world.
LETTERS
The Roman was formed not only by the family, the religion, and the moral code, but, in less degree, by the school, the language, and the litera ture. Plutarch dates the first Roman school about 2 50 B.c.;38 but Livy, per haps romancing, describes Virginia, the desired of the Decemvir, as "going to a grammar school in the Forum" as early as 450.39 The demand for written laws, and the publication of the Twelve Tables, suggest that by that date a majority of the citizens could read.
The teacher was usually a slave or freedman, employed by several fam ilies to instruct their children, or setting up his own private school and taking any pupil that came. He taught reading, writing, grammar, arith metic, history, and obedience; moral education was fundamental and un ceasing; disciple and discipline were almost the same word. Memory and character alike were trained by memorizing the Twelve Tables of the law. Heine remarked that "the Romans would not have had much time left for conquering the world if they had first had to learn Latin";40 but they too had to conjugate irregular Latin verbs, and soon would be put to Greek. The boy familiarized himself, through poetry and prose, with the exploits of his country and its heroes, and received many a patriotic lesson conveyed through edifying episodes that had never occurred. No attention was given to athletics; the Romans thought it better to tnin and harden the body by useful work in the field or the camp rather than through contests in the palaestra or gymnasium.
The language, like the people, was practical and economical, martially
sharp and brief; its sentences and clauses marched in disciplined subordina-
CHAP. IV)	STOIC  ROME	73
ti.on to a determined goal. A thousand similarities allied it, within the lndo European family, with Sanskrit and Greek and the Celtic tongues of an cient Gaul, \Vales, and Ireland. Latin was poorer than Greek in imagery, flexibility, and ready formation of compounds; Lucretius and Cicero com plained of its limited vocabulary, its lack of subtle shadings. Nevertheless, it had a sonorous splendor and masculine strength that made it ideal for oratory, and a compactness and logical sentence form that made it an apt vehicle for Roman law. The Latin alphabet came from Euboean Chalcis via Cumae and Etruria.41 In the oldest Latin inscription known to us,
ascribed to the sixth century B.c., all the letters are Greek in form. C was
sounded like our K, J like Y, V like U or TV, the vowels as in Italian. Caesar's contemporaries knew him as Y oo!eoos Keyssar, and Cicero was
Keekero.
The Romans wrote in ink with a slit metal reed (calanzus, stilus), at first upon leaves (folia), whence our words folio and leaf (two pages); then upon strips of inner bark (liber); often upon white (album) tablets of waxed wood; later upon leather, linen paper, and parchment. As the written forms of Latin resisted change more than the spoken words, the language of literature diverged more and more from the speech of the people, as in modern America or France. The melodious Romance languages-Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Ru manian-evolved from the crude popular Latin brought to the provinces, not by poets and grammarians, but by soldiers, merchants, and adventurers. So the
,vords for horse in the Romance languages-caballo, cavallo, cheval, cal-were taken from the spoken Latin caballus, not from the written equus. In popular Latin ille (he) was one syllable, like French and Italian il; and final -s and -m were, as in those languages, dropped or not pronounced. The best came from a corruption of the worst: corruptio pessinzi optima.
What literature did the young Roman read in those first three centuries of the Republic? There were religious hymns and chants, such as the song of the Arval Brethren, and there were popular lays of Rome's historic or legendary past. There were official-usually priestly-records of elections, magistracies, events, portents, and holidays.* On the basis of these archives Q. Fabius Pictor compiled ( 202  B.C.) a respectable History of Rome-but in Greek; Latin was not yet thought fit for literary prose and was not used by historians until Cato. There were farragoes of prose called saturae-medleys of merry nonsense and erotic banter-out of which Lucilius would forge a new form for Horace and Juvenal. There were boisterously obscene burlesques or mimes, usually acted by players from Etruria; some of these performers, coming from the town of Istria, were named istriones, and gave the ,vord histrio (actor) to Latin, and its
Fasti consulcrres, libri 11zagistratuum, annales maximi, fasti calendcrres.
74	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. IV
derivatives to modem tongues. There were also, on holidays or market days, crude, half-impromptu farces that gave their stock characters to thousands of Italian comedies, ancient and modem: the rich and stupid father, the extrava gant love-entangled youth, the maligned virgin, the clever intriguing servant, the glutton always maneuvering for a meal, the rollicking, tumbling clown. Al ready the last flaunted the gaily colored patches, the long expansive trousers, the large-sleeved doublet, and the shorn head, still familiar to our youth. An exact likeness of Punchinello, or Punch, has been found on the frescoes of Pompeii.42
Literature came formally to Rome about 272 B.c. in the person of a Greek slave. In that year Tarentum fell; many of its Greek citizens were slaugh tered, but Livius Andronicus had the luck to be merely enslaved. Brought to Rome, he taught Latin and Greek to his master's children and some others, and translated the Odyssey for them into Latin "Saturnian" verse-lines of loose and irregular rhythm, scanned by accent rather than quantity. Freed for his services, he was commissioned by the aediles to produce a tragedy and a comedy for the ludi, or games, of 240 B.c. He composed them on Greek models, directed them, acted the main parts, and sang them to the accompaniment of a flute till his voice gave out; then he had another sing the lines while he acted them-a method followed in many later plays at Rome, and influential in generating the pantomime. The government was so well pleased by this introduction of the literary drama that in honor of Andronicus it gave poets the right to incorporate, and allowed them to hold their meetings in the Temple of Minerva on the Aventine. Henceforth it became the fashion to present such Judi scenici, or scenic plays, at the public festivals.43
Five years after this historic prerniere a plebeian ex-soldier from Cam
pania, Cnaeus Naevius, shocked the conservatives by producing a comedy in which he satirized with Aristophanic freedom the political abuses that were flourishing in the capital. The old families complained, and Naevius was jailed. He apologized and was freed, wrote another satire as sharp a the first, and was banished from Rome. In exile and old age he composed, with undiscourageable patriotism, an epic poem on the First Punic \Var, in which he had fought; it began with the founding of Rome by Trojan refugees, and provided Virgil with a theme and several scenes. His con demnation was a double misfortune: the vitality and originality of Roman comedy suffered from a censorship that made libel a capital crime, and Roman politics lost the purge of a public critique. Naevius wrote also a poetic drama based on Roman history; this experiment too ended with him, and thereafter Roman tragedy circled vainly in the cropped pastures
CHAP. IV)	STOIC  ROME	75
of Greek myth. Only a few fragments survive to_ reveal Naevius' quality. One describes a coquettish girl:
As if playing ball in a ring she skips from one to another, and is all things to all men with her words and winks, her caresses and em braces; now a squeeze of the hand or a pressure of the foot; her ring to look at, her lips to blow an inviting kiss; here a song, there the lan guage of signs.44
It is pleasant to see that women were then as charming as now, that not all Romans were Catos, and that under the shadow of the Porch even virtue might take a holiday.
Beyond the essentials of arithmetic, and enough geometry to plot a fann or plan a temple, science played as yet no part in the education or culture of the Roman citizen. The boy counted on his fingers (digita), and the figures he used were imitations of an extended digit (I), a hand CV), or two hands joined at their apexes (X); and he was content to form the other numerals by repeating these symbols (II, III), and prefixing (IV, IX) or suffixing (VI, XII) digits to V or X to lessen or increase them. Out of this manual arithmetic came the decimal system, constructed on parts and multiples of ten-i.e., .the ten fingers. The Romans used geometry well in building and engineering, but added not one theorem to that rounded achievement of the Greek mind. \Ve hear nothing of Roman astronomy in this period except in its blundering calendar and its prosperous sister or mother-astrology.


Did this religion help Roman morals? In some ways it was immoral: its stress on ritual suggested that the gods rewarded not goodness but gifts and formulas; and its prayers were nearly always for material goods or martial victory. Ceremonies gave drama to the life of man and the soil, but they multiplied as if they, and not the devotion of the part to the whole, were the proper essence of religion. The gods were, with some exceptions, awesome spirits without moral aspect or nobility.
Nevertheless, the old religion made for morality, for order and strength in the individual, the family, and the state. Before the child could learn to doubt, faith molded its ·character into discipline, duty, and decency. Religion gave divine sanctions and suppon to the family: it instilled in parents and children a mutual respect and piety never surpassed, it gave sacramental significance and dignity to binh and death, encouraged fidelity to the marriage vow, and promoted fertility by making parentage indispen sable to the peace of the dead soul. By ceremonies sedulously performed before each campaign and batcle it raised the soldier's morale, and led him to believe that supernatural powers were fighting on his side. It strengthened law by giving it celestial origins and religious form, by making crime a disturbance of the order and peace of Heaven, and by placing the author ity of Jove behind every oath. It invested every phase of public life with religious solemnity, prefaced every act of government with ritual and prayer, and fused the state into such intimate union with the gods that piety and patriotism became one, and love of country rose to a passion stronger than in any other society known to history. Religion shared with the family the honor and responsibility of forming tbat iron character which was the secret of Rome's mastery of the world.
MORALS
What kind of morality emerged from this life in the family and among the gods? Roman literature, from Ennius to Jm·enal, idealized these earlier
68	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. IV
generations and mourned the passing of ancient simplicity and virtue. These pages too will suggest a contrast between the stoic Rome of Fabius and the epicurean Rome of Nero. But the contrast must not be exaggerated by a biased selection of the evidence. There were epicureans in Fabius' days and stoics in Nero's.
From beginning to end of Roman history the sexual morality of the common man remained essentially the same: coarse and free, but not in compatible with a successful family life. In all free classes virginity was demanded of young women, and powerful tales were told to exalt it; for the Roman had a strong sense of property and wanted a wife of such steady habits as would reasonably ensure him against leaving his goods to his rival's breed. But in Rome, as in Greece, premarital unchastity in men was not censured if it preserved a decent respect for the hypocrisies of mankind. From the elder Cato to Cicero 25 we find express justifications of it. What increases with civilization is not so much immorality of intent as opportunity of expression. In early Rome prostitutes were not numerous. They were forbidden to wear the matron's robe that marked the reputable wife, and were confined to the dark corners of Rome and Roman society. There were as yet no educated courtesans like the hetairai of Athens, nor such delicate drabs as posed for Ovid's verse.
Men married early-usually by twenty; not through romantic love but for the sound purposes of having a helpmate, useful children, and a healthy sexual life. In the words of the Roman wedding ceremony, marriage was liberum quaerendorum causa-for the sake of getting children; on the farm, children, like wives, ere economic assets, not biological toys. Marriages were often arranged by the parents and engagements were sometimes made for couples in their infancy. In every case the consent of both fathers was required. Betrothal was formal and constituted a legal bond. The relatives gathered in a feast to witness the contract; a stipula, or straw, was broken between the parties as a sign of their agreement; the stipulations-especially those concerning the dowry-were put in writing; and the man placed an iron ring upon the fourth finger of the girl's left hand, because it was believed that a nerve ran thence to the heart.26 The minimum age for legal marriage was twelve for the girl, fourteen for the man. Early Roman law made marriage compulsory;27 but this law must have become a dead letter by 413 B.c., when Camillus as censor imposed a tax on bachelors.
Marriage was either cum manu or sine nza11u-with or without the hand ing over of the bride and her possessions to the authority of the husband or the father-in-law..Marriage sine nurnu dispensed with religious cere mony and required only the consent of the bride and groom. Marriage cum manu was by usus-a year's cohabitation; or by coemptio-purchase;
CHAP. IV)	STOIC  ROME
or by confarreatio (literally, eating a cake together), which required re ligious ceremony and was confined to patricians. Marriage by actual pur chase disappeared at an early date, or was reversed; the bride's dowry often in effect bought the man. This dowry was usually at the husband's dis posal, but its equivalent had to be returned to the wife in divorce or on the death of the male. Weddings were rich in folk ceremony and song. The two families feasted in the home of the bride; then they marched in col orful and frolicsome procession to the home of the groom's father, to an accompaniment of flutes, hymeneal chants, and Rabelaisian raillery. At the garlanded door the bridegroom asked the girl, "\Vho art thou?" and she answered with a simple formula of devotion, equality, and unity: "\Vhere thou art Caius, there am I Caia." He lifted her over the threshold, pre sented her with the keys of the house, and put his neck with hers under a yoke to signify their common bond; hence marriage was called ·coniugium
-a yoking together. In token of her joining the new family the bride then took part with the others in worshiping the household gods.
Divorce was difficult and rare in marriages by confarreatio; marriages cum manu could be dissolved only by the husband; in marriage sine manu divorce was open to either party at will, without asking consent of the state. The first recorded divorce in Roman history is dated 268 B.c.; a sus picious tradition claimed that no divorce had previously occurred since the foundation of the city.28 Cl::m custom required a husband to divorce an unfaithful or childless wife. "If you find your wife in the act of adultery," said old Cato, "the law permits you to kill her without trial. If by chance she surprises you in the same condition she must not touch you even with the tips of her fingers; the law forbids her." 29 Despite these distinctions
there were apparently many happy marriages. The tombstones abound in post-mortem affection. One honored touchingly a lady who had served two husbands well:
Thou wert beautiful beyond measure, Statilia, and true to thy husbands! . . . He who came first, had he been able to withstand the fates, would have set up this stone to thee; while I, alas, ,vho have been blessed by thy pure heart these sixteen years, now have lost thee.30
The young women of early Rome were probably not quite so pretty as the later ladies whom the experienced Catullus would credit with laneum latusculum manusque mollicellas 31-"lictle sides as smooth as wool, and soft little hands." Presumably in those rural days toil and care soon overlaid this adolescent loveliness. Feminine features were classically regular, nose small and thin, hair and eyes usually dark. Blondes were at a premium, as
70	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. IV
were the German dyes that made them. As for the Roman male, he was impressive rather than handsome. A stern education and years of military life, hardened his face, as later indulgence would soften it into flabbiness. Oeopatra must have loved Antony for something else than his wine-puffed chee!·s, and Caesar for some other charm than his eagle's head and nose. The Roman nose was like the Roman character-sharp and devious. Beards and long hair were customary till about 300  B.C., when barbers began to ply their trade in Rome. Dress was essentially like the Greek. Boys, girls, magistrates, and the higher priests wore the toga praetexta, or purple-fringed robe; on attaining his sixteenth birthday the youth changed to the toga virilis-the white robe of manhood-as a symbol of his right to vote in the assemblies and his duty to serve in the army. Women wore, indoors, a dress (stola) bound with a girdle under the breasts, and reaching to the feet; outdoors they covered this with a palla, or cloak. Indoors, men wore a simple tunica, or shirt; outdoors they added a toga, and sometimes a cloak. The toga (tegere, to cover) was a woolen gannent in one piece, twice the width and thrice in length the height of the wearer. It was wrapped around the body, and the surplus was thrown back over the left shoulder, brought forward under the right arm, and again thrown over the left shoul der. The folds at the breast served as pockets; the right ann remained free. The Roman male cultivated a severe dignity (gravitas) as an uncom fortable necessity in an aristocracy that ruled a people, then a peninsula, then an empire. Sentiment and tenderness belonged to private life; in public a man of the upper classes had to be as stern as his statue, and hide behind a mask of austere calm the excitability and humor that cry out nor only in the comedies of Plautus but in the speeches of Cicero. Even in private life the Roman of this age was expected to live Spartanly. Luxury of dress or table was reproved by the censor; even negligent tillage could bring some Cato down upon the farmer's head. In the First Punic \Var the Carthagin ian ambassadors, returning from Rome, amused the rich merchants by tell ing how the identical set of silver plate had appeared in every house to which they had been invited; one set, secretly passed about, had sufficed the whole parriciate. In that age the Senate sat on hard wooden benches
in a curia, or hall, never heated even in winter.
Nevertheless, between the First and Second Punic \Vars, wealth and luxury made a good beginning. Hannibal gathered a peck of gold rings from the fingers of Romans slain at Cannae;32 and sumptuary laws repeat edly-therefore vainly-forbade ornate jewelry, fancy dress, and costly meals. In the third century n.c. the menu of the average Roman was still simple: breakfast (ientaculum) of bread with honey or olives or cheese; luncheon (prandium) and dinner (cena) of grains, vegetables, and fruit;
CHAP. IV)	STOIC  ROME	71
only the rich ate fish or meat.33 Wine, usually diluted, graced nearly every table; to drink undiluted wine was considered intemperance. Festivals and banquets were a necessary relaxation in this stoic age; those who could not unbend to them became too tense, and showed their nervous fatigue in the portrait statues they left to posterity.
Charity found little scope in this frngal life. Hospitality survived as a mutual convenience at a time when inns were poor and far between; but the sympathetic Polybius reports that "in Rome no one ever gives away anything to anyone if he can help it" 3-1-doubtless an exaggeration. The young were kind to the old, but in general the graces and courtesies of life came to Rome only with the dying Republic. vVar and conquest molded morals and manners and left men often coarse and usually hard, prepared to kill without compunction and be killed without complaint. \Var cap tives were sold into slavery by the thousands, unless they were kings or generals; these were usually slaughtered at the victor's triumph or allowed to starve leisurely to death. In the business world these qualities took on a fairer aspect. The Romans loved money, bur Polybius (about 160 B.c.) describes them as industrious and honorable men; a Greek, said the Greek, could not be prevented from embezzling, no matter how many clerks were set to watch him, while the Romans spent great sums of public money with only rare cases of ascertained dishonesty.30 We note, however, that a law to check malpractice at elections was passed in 432 n.c. Roman historians report that political integrity was at its height in the first three centuries of the Republic; but they arouse suspicion by their high praise of Valerius Corvus, who, after occupying twenty-one magistracies, returned to his fields as poor as he had come; of Curius Dematos, who kept no part of the spoils he had taken from the enemy; and of Fabius Pictor and his associates, who handed over to the state the rich presents they had received on an -embassy to Egypt. Friends lent one another substantial amounts without interest. The Roman government was guilty of frequent treach ery in dealing with other states, and perhaps in foreign relations the Empire was more honorable than the Republic. But the Senate refused to connive at the poisoning of Pyrrhus, and warned him of the plot. When, after Cannae, Hannibal sent ten prisoners to Rome to negotiate for the ransom of 8000 others, and drew from them a promise to return, all bur one kept their word; the Senate apprehended the tenth, put him in irons, and rorned him over to Hannibal, whose joy at his victory, says Polybius, "was not so great as his dejection when he saw how steadfast and high-spirited the Romans were." 27
In summary, the typical educated Roman of this age was orderly, con servative, loyal, sober, reverent, tenacious, severe, practical. He enjoyed
72	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. IV


The Carthaginians were Semites, akin in blood and features to the ancient Jews. Their language now and then struck a Hebraic note, as when it called the chief magistrates shofetes-the Hebrew shophetim, or judges. The men grew beards, but usually shaved the upper lip with bronze razors. Most of them wore a fez or a turban, shoes or sandals, and a long loose gown; but the upper classes adopted the Greek style of dress, dyed their robes with purple, and fringed them with glass beads. The women led for the most part a veiled and secluded life; they could rise to high place in the priesthoods but otherwise had to be contented with the sovereignty of their charms. Both sexes used jewelry and perfume, and occasionally displayed a ring in the nose. We know little of their morals except from their enemies. Greek and Roman writers describe them as heavy eaters and drinkers, loving to gather in dinner clubs, and as loose in their sex relations as they were corrupt in their politics. The treacherous Romans employed fides Punica-Cartha ginian faith-as a synonym for treachery. Polybius reported that "at Carthage nothing that results in profit is regarded as disgraceful." 4 Plutarch denounced the Carthaginians as "harsh and gloomy, docile to their rulers, hard to their subjects, running to extremes of cowardice in fear and of savagery in anger, stubborn in decisions, austere, and unresponsive to amuse ment or the graces of life." 5 But Plutarch, though usually fair, was always a Greek; and Polybius was bosom friend of the Scipio who burned Carthage to the ground.
The Carthaginians appear at their worst in their religion, which again we know only from their enemies. Their ancestors in Phoenicia had wor shiped Baal-Moloch and Astarte as personifying the male and female prin ciples in nature, and the sun and moon in the sky; the Carthaginians ad dressed similar devotions to corresponding deities-Baal-Haman and Tanith. Tanith above all aroused their loving piety; they filled her temples with
42	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. III
gifts, and took her name in their oaths. Third in honor was the god Melkart, "Key of the City"; then Eshmun, god of wealth and health; then a host of minor gods-"baals" or lords; even Dido was worshiped.6 To Baal-Haman, in great crises, living children were sacrificed, as many as three hundred in a day. They were placed upon the inclined and outstretched arms of the idol and rolled off into the fire beneath; their cries were drowned in the noise of trumpets and cymbals; their mothers were required to look upon the scene without moan or tear, lest they be accused of impiety and lose the credit due them from the god. In time the rich refused to sacrifice their own children and bought substitutes among the poor; but when Agathocles of Syracuse besieged Carthage, the upper classes, fearing that their subter fuge had offended the god, cast two hundred aristocratic infants into the
fire.7 It should be added that these stories are told us by Diodorus, a Sicilian
Greek, who looked with equanimity upon the Greek custom of infanticide. It may be that the Carthaginian sacrifice solaced with piety an effort to control the excesses of human fertility.
When the Romans destroyed Carthage they presented the libraries they found there to their African allies. Of these collections nothing survives except Hanno's record of his voyage, and fragments of Mago on husbandry. Saint Augustine vaguely assures us that "in Carthage there were many things wisely handed down to memory," 8 and Sallust and Juba made use of Carthaginian historians; but we have no native account of Carthage's history. Of its architecture the Romans left not a stone upon a stone. We are told that its style was a mi'Cture of Phoenician and Greek, that its temples were massive and ornate; that the temple and statue of Baal-Haman were plated with gold valued at a thousand talents; 9 and that even the proud Greeks considered Carthage one of the world's most beautiful capitals. The museums of Tunis contain some pieces of sculpture from sarcophagi found in tombs near the site of Carthage; the finest is a strong and graceful figure, per haps of Tanith, in a manner essentially Greek. Smaller statues, unearthed from Carthaginian graves in the Baleares, are crude and often repulsively grotesque, as if designed to impress children or frighten devils away. The surviving pottery is purely utilitarian; but we know that Carthaginian craftsmen did good work in textiles, jewelry, ivory, ebony, amber, and glass.
Any clear picture of Carthaginian government is now beyond our pens. Aristotle praised the constitution of Carthage as "in many respects superior to all others," for "a state is proved to be well ordered when the commons are steadily loyal to the constitution. when no civil conflict worth speaking of has arisen, and when no one has succeeded in making himself dictator." 10 The citizens met occasionally in an Assembly empowered to accept or reject, but not to discuss or amend, proposals referred to it by a Senate of three hundred elders; the Senate, however, was not obliged to submit to the Assembly any measures upon which it could itself agree.11 The people elected the Senate, but
CHAP. III)	HANNIBAL  AGAINST  ROME	43
open bribery reduced the virtue or danger of this democratic procedure, and replaced an aristocracy of birth with an oligarchy of wealth. From nominations presented by the Senate, the Assembly annually chose two shofetes to head the judicial and administrative branches of the state. Above all these bodies was a court of 104 judges, who, in contravention of the law, held office for life. As it was empowered to supervise all administration, and to require an accounting from every official at the end of his term, this court acquired, by the time of the Punic Wars, supreme control over every governmental agency and every citizen.
The commander of the armies was nominated by the Senate and chosen by the Assembly. He was in a better position than the Roman consul, for his command could be continued as long as the Senate desired. The Roman, however, led against Carthage legions of landowning patriots, whereas the Carthaginian army was a mercenary force of foreign-chiefly Libyan-origin, feeling no affection for Carthage, but loyal only to its paymaster and, occasionally, to its general. The Carthaginian navy was without question the most powerful of its time; '
500  quinqueremes, gaily painted, slim and swift, ably protected Carthaginian
colonies, markets, and trade routes. It was the conquest of Sicily by this army, and the closing of the western Mediterranean to Roman commerce by this navy, that brought on the century-long duel to the death known to us as the three Punic Wars.
REGULUS
The two nations had once been friends when one of them was strong enough to dominate the other. In 508 they had made a treaty that recog nized the hegemony of Rome over the coast of Latium, but pledged the Romans not to sail the Mediterranean west of Carthage, nor to land in
Sardinia or Libya except for the brief repair or provisioning of ships.12 It
became a common practice among the Carthaginians, says a Greek geog rapher, to drown any foreign sailor found between Sardinia and Gibraltar.13 The Greeks of Massalia (J\Iarseilles) had developed a peaceful coastal com merce between southern Gaul and northeastern Spain; Carthage, we are told, warred on this trade piratically, and Massalia was a faithful' ally of Rome. (vVe do not know how much of this is war propaganda dignified as history.) Now that Rome controlled Italy she could not feel secure so long as two hostile powers-Greeks and Carthaginians-held Sicily, hardly a mile from the Italian coast. Besides, Sicily was fertile; it might supply half of Italy with grain. Sicily taken, Sardinia and Corsica would of themselves fall into Roman hands. Here was manifest destiny, the natural next step in the expansion of Rome.
How to .find a casus belli? About 26-1- B.c. a band of Samnite mercenaries who called themselves Mamenines-i.e., "Men of Mars"-seized the town of
44	CAESAR  AND CHRIST	(CHAP. Ill.
Messana, on the Sicilian coast nearest to Italy. They slew or expelled the Greek citizens, divided among themselves the women, children, and goods of the victims, and made a living by raiding the Greek cities near by. Hiero II, Dictator of Syracuse, besieged them; a Carthaginian force landed at Messana, drove Hiero back, and took possession of the city. The Mamertines appealed to Rome for help in expelling their saviors. The Senate hesitated, knowing the power and wealth of Carthage; but the rich plebeians who dominated the Centuria! Assembly clamored for war and Sicily. Rome decided that at whatever cost she must keep the Carthaginians from so near and strategic a port. A fleet was fitted out and dispatched under Caius Claudius to rescue the Mamertines. But these had meanwhile been persuaded by the Carthagin ians to withdraw their request for Roman aid, and a message from them to this effect reached Claudius at Rhegium. Ignoring it, he crossed the strait, invited the Carthaginian commander to a conference, imprisoned him, and sent word to the Carthaginian army that he would be killed if they resisted. The mercenaries welcomed so gallant an excuse for avoiding the legions, and .Messana fell to Rome.
Two heroes were thrown up by this First Punic War: on the Roman side, Regulus; on the Carthaginian, Hamilcar. Perhaps we should add a third and fourth-the Senate and the Roman people. The Senate won Hiero of Syracuse to Rome's side, and thereby assured supplies for Roman troops in Sicily; it organized the nation with wisdom and resolution, and led it to victory through almost overwhelming disasters. The citizens provided money, materials, labor, and men to build Rome's .first fleet-330 vessels, nearly all quinqueremes 150 feet long, each manned by 300 rowers and 120 soldiers, and most of them equipped with novel grappling irons and movable gangways for seizing and boarding enemy ships; by these means naval war fare, unfamiliar to the Romans, could be turned into hand-to-hand combat, in which the legionaries could use all their disciplined skill. "This fact," says Polybius, "shows us better than anything else how spirited and daring the Romans are when they are determined to do a thing.    They had never
given a· thought to a navy; yet when they had once conceived the project they took it in hand so boldly that before gaining any experience in such matters they at once engaged the Carthaginians, who for generations had held undisputed command of the sea."14 Off Ecnomus, on the southern coast of Sicily, the hostile fleets, carrying 300,000 men, fought the greatest sea battle of antiquity ( 256). The Romans under Regulus won decisively and sailed on unhindered to Africa. Landing there without careful reconnais sance, they soon met a superior Carthaginian force, which almost annihilated them, and took their reckless consul prisoner. Shortly afterward the Roman fleet was dashed by a storm against a rocky coast, 284 vessels were wrecked,
CHAP.III)	HANNIBAL  AGAINST  ROME	45
and some 80,000 men were drowned; it was the worst naval calamity in the memory of men. The Romans showed their quality by building 200 new quinqueremes in three months, and training 80,000 men to man them.
After keeping Regulus a prisoner for five years, his captors allowed him to accompany a Carthaginian embassy sent to Rome to seek peace, but on his promise to return to captivity if the Senate refused the proffered terms. When Regulus heard these he advised the Senate to reject them and, despite the entreaties of his family and his friends, went back with the embassy to Carthage. There he was tortured to death by being prevented from sleep ing.15 His sons at Rome took two Carthaginian captives of high rank, bound them in a chest studded with spikes, and kept them awake till they died.16 Neither tale seems credible, until we recall the barbarities of our time.


Says a great Jewish scholar, perhaps too strongly: "H we had ancient sources like those in the Gospels for the history of Alexander or Caesar, we should not cast any doubt upon them whatsoever."-Klausner, J., From Jesus to Paul, z6o.
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVI
Jesus as "about thirty years old" when John baptized him "in the fifteenth year of Tiberius" 27:t-i.e., A.D. 28-29; this would place Christ's binh in the year 2-1 B.c. Luke adds that "in those days there went out a decree of Caesar Auaustus that all the world should be taxed ... when Quirinius w:.1s governor of Syria." Quirinius is known to have been legate in Syria between
A.D. 6 and 12; Josephus notes a census by him in Judea, but ascribes it to A.D.
6-7; 28 we have no further mention of this census. T enullian 29 records a census of Judea by Samrninus, governor of Syria 8-7 n.c.; if this is the census that Luke had in mind, the birth of Christ would have to be placed before 6 n.c. \Ve have no knowledge of the specific day of his birth. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 200) repons diverse opinions on the subject in his day, some chronologists dating the binh April 19, some May 20; he himself assigned it to November r 7, 3 n.c. As far back as the second century the Eastern Christians celebrated the Nativity on January 6. In 354 some \Vest ern churches, including those of Rome, commemorated the binh of Christ on December 25; this was then erroneously calculated as the winter solstice, on which the days begin to lengthen; it was already the central festival of
.Mithraism, the natalis invicti solis, or birthday of the unconquered sun. The Eastern churches clung for a time to January 6, and charged their Western brethren with sun worship and idolatry, but by the end of the founh cen tury December 25 had been adopted also in the East.30
Matthew and Luke place the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, five miles south of Jerusalem; thence, they tell us, the family moved to Nazareth in Galilee. Mark makes no mention of Bethlehem, but merely names Christ "Jesus of Nazareth." * His parents gave him the quite common name Yeshu'a (our Joshua), meaning "the help of Yahveh"; the Greeks made this into lesous, the Romans into Jesus.
.  He was _ap arently ?ne of a lar e family, _for his neig bors, marveling at his authontative teaching, asked, \Vhere did he get this wisdom, and the power to do these wonders? Is he not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother named Mary, and are not his brothers named James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? And do. n t his isters live.here among us?" 31 Luke tells the story of the Annunciat10n with some literary an, and puts into the mouth of Miriam-Mary-that Magnificat which is one of the great poems embedded in the New Testament.
Next to her son, .M ry is ?1e most touching figure in the narrative: rearing him through_ all the pamf Joys f mothe l100 , proud of his youthful learn ing, wondenng later at his doctnne and his claims, wishing to withdraw him
Critics suspect Matthew and Luke of choo ing Bethlehem to strengthen the claim that Jesus was the M siah, and descended, as. J_e'l.vISh prophecy required, from David-whose family had dwelt m Bethlehem; but the susp1c1on falls far short of proof.
CHAP. XXVI)	JESUS	559
from the exciting throng of his followers and bring him back to the healing quiet of his home ("thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing"), help lessly witnessing his crucifixion, and receiving his body into her arms; if this is not history it is supreme literature, for the relations of parents and children hold deeper dramas than those of sexual love. The tales later circu lated, by Celsus and others, about Mary and a Roman soldier are by critical consent "clumsy fabrications." 32 Not so awkward are the stories, chiefly contained in the apocryphal or uncanonical gospels, about the birth of Christ in a cave or stable, the adoration of the shepherds and the Magi, the massacre of the innocents, and the flight into Egypt; the mature mind will not resent this popular poetry. The virgin birth is not mentioned by Paul or John; and Matthew and Luke, who tell of it, trace Jesus back to David through Joseph, by conflicting genealogies; apparently the belief in the virgin birth rose later than that in the Davidic descent.
The evangelists tell us little of Christ's youth. vVhen he was eight days old he was circumcized. Joseph was a carpenter, and the occupational heredity usual in that age suggests that Jesus followed that pleasant trade for a time. He knew the craftsmen of his village, and the landlords, stewards, tenants, and slaves of his rural surroundings; his speech is studded with them. He was sensitive to the natural beauties of the countryside, to the grace and color of flowers, and the silent fruitfulness of trees. The story of his questioning the scholars in the temple is not incredible; he had an alert and curious mind, and in the Near East a boy of twelve already touches maturity. But he had no formal education. "How is it," his neighbors asked, "that this man can read when he has never gone to school?" 33 He attended the syna gogue, and heard the Scriptures with evident delight; the Prophets and the Psalms above all sank deep into his memory, and helped to mold him. Per haps he read also the books of Daniel and Enoch, for his later teaching was shot through with their visions of the Messiah, the Last Judgment, and the coming Kingdom of God.
The air he breathed was tense with religious excitement. Thousands of Jews awaited anxiously the Redeemer of Israel. Magic and witchcraft, demons and angels, "possession" and exorcism, miracles and prophecies, divination and astrology were taken for granted everywhere; probably the story of the Magi was a necessary concession to the astrological convic tions of the age.34 Thaumaturgists-wonder-workers-toured the towns. On the annual journeys that all good Palestinian Jews made to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, Jesus must have learned something of the Essenes, and their half-monastic, almost Buddhistic, life;* possibly he heard also of a sect
Ashoka had sent his Buddhist missionaries as far west as Egypt and Cyrene; 35 very likely, therefore, to the Near East.
560	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVI
called "Nazarenes," who dwelt beyond the Jordan in Peraea, rejected Tem ple worship, and denied the binding character of the Law.36 But the experi ence that aroused him to religious fervor was the preaching of John, the son of Mary's cousin Elizabeth.
Josephus tells John's story in some detail.37 We tend to picture the Baptist as an old man; on the contrary, he was apparently of the same age as Jesus. Mark and Matthew describe him as garbed in haircloth, living on dried locusts and honey, standing beside the Jordan, and calling people to repent ance. He shared the asceticism of the Essenes, but differed from them in holding one baptism to be enough; his name "the Baptist" may be a Greek equivalent of "Essene" (bather).38 To his rite of symbolic purification John added a menacing condemnation of hypocrisy and loose living, warned sinners to prepare themselves for the Last Judgment, and proclaimed the early coming of the Kingdom of God.39 If all Judea should repent and be cleansed of sin, said John, the Messiah and the Kingdom would come at once. In or shortly after "the fiftee_nth year of Tiberius," says Luke, Jesus came down to the Jordan to be baptized by John. This decision, by a man now "about thirty years old," 40 attested Christ's acceptance of John's teaching; his own would be essentially the same. His methods and character, however, were different: he would himself never baptize anyone,41 and he would live not in the wilderness but in the world. Soon after this meeting Herod Antipas, tetrarch ("ruler of four cities") of Galilee, ordered the imprison ment of John. The Gospels ascribe the arrest to John's criticism of Herod's acts in divorcing his wife and marrying Herodias while she was still the wife of his half brother Philip. Josephus attributes the arrest to Herod's fear that John was fomenting a political rebellion in the guise of a religious reforma tion.42 Mark 43 and Matthew 44 tell here the story of Salome, Herodias' daughter, who danced so alluringly before Herod that he offered her any reward she might name. At her mother's urging, we are told, she asked for the head of John, and the tetrarch reluctantly accommodated her. There is nothing in the Gospels about Salome loving John, nor anything in Josephus
about her share in John's death.
THE MISSION
When John was imprisoned J:sus took up the Baptist's work, and began to preach the coming of the Kmgdom.45 He "returned to Galilee," says
Luke, "and tauht• m he sy_nagogues." 4.6 W e have an i•mpressive picture of
the young idealist taking his um at readmg the Scriptures to the congre gation at Nazareth, and choosmg a passage from Isaiah:
CHAP. XXVI)	JESUS
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the down-trodden free.47


CHAP. xx1)	ITALY
occasion they furnished free oil or wine, or a public banquet, or a gift of money, to all citizens, sometimes to all inhabitants. Extant inscriptions abound in com memorations of such generosity. A millionaire gave Altinum, in Venetia, 1,600,- 000 sesterces for public baths; a rich lady built a temple and an amphitheater for Casinum; Desumius Tullus gave Tarquinii baths costing 5,000,000 sesterces; Cremona, destroyed by Vespasian's troops, was rapidly rebuilt by the contribu tions of private citizens; and two physicians exhausted their fortunes in gifts to Naples. At populous Ostia, Lucilius Gemala invited all the inhabitants to dinner, paved a long and spacious avenue, repaired or restored seven temples, rebuilt the municipal baths, and donated 3,000,000 sesterces to the city treasury.22 It was the custom of many rich men to invite a considerable portion of the citizenry to a feast on the occasion of their birthday, their election to office, their daughter's marriage, their son's assumption of the toga virilis of manhood, or the dedication of a building which they had presented to the community. In return for such favors the city voted the giver an office, a statue, a panegyric, or an inscription. The poor were not overwhelmed with all these gifts; they accused the rich of deriving the means of philanthropy from exploitation, and they demanded less ornate buildings and cheaper com, less statuary and more games.23
When we add to private munificence the donations of the emperors to the towns, the buildings erected, and the catastrophes mitigated, in them by im perial funds, and the public works and functions financed by the municipal treasury, we begin to feel the splendor and pride of the Italian cities under the Principate. Streets were paved, drained, policed, and adorned, free medical service was maintained for the poor, clean water was piped into privat'1 homes for a small fee, food was offered to the paor at a low price, public baths were often free through private subsidies, alinzenta were paid to straitened families to help them rear their children, schools and libraries were built, plays were presented, concerts were given, games were arranged in reckless emulation of Rome. Civilization in the Italian towns was not so materialistic as in the capital. They rivaled one another in erecting amphi theaters, but also they raised noble temples, sometimes equaling Rome's best,24 and made the months gay with picturesque religious festivals. They spent freely on works of art and provided halls for lecturers, poets, sophists, rhetors, philosophers, and musicians. They supplied their citizens with facili ties for health, cleanliness, recreation, and a vigorous cultural life. From them, not from Rome, came most of the great Latin authors, and some of the finest sculptural masterpieces in our museums, like the Nike of Naples, the Eros of Centumcellae, the Zeus of Otricoli. They supported as large a popu lation as their modern successors before our century, and gave it an un paralleled security from war. The first two hundred years of our era saw the zenith of the great peninsula.
CHAPTER  XXII
Civilizing	the  West
I. ROME AND THE  PROVINCES
HE blot on Italian prosperity-aside from a system of slavery common to ancient states-was its partial dependence upon provincial exploita
tion. Italy was free of taxation because the provinces had yielded so much in plunder and tribute; and to them could be traced some of the wealth that came to flower in the Italian towns. Rome, before Caesar, frankly classed the provinces as conquered territory; all their inhabitants were Roman subjects, only a few were Roman citizens; all their land was the property of the Roman state and was held by the possessors on revocable grants from the imperial government. To lessen the likelihood of revolt Rome cut conquered regions into smaller states, forbade any province to have direct political dealings witli another, and favored the business classes against the lower classes everywhere. Divide et impera was the secret of Roman rule.
Cicero perhaps exaggerated when, in excoriating Verres, he pictured the
.Mediterranean nations as desolate under the Republic: "All the provinces mourn, all free peoples cry out, all kingdoms protest against our cruelty and greed; from one ocean to another there is no place, however hidden or remote, that has not felt our lust and our iniquity." 1 The Principate dealt more liberally with the provinces, not from generosity so much as from husbandry. Taxation was made bearable, local religions, languages, and customs were respected, freedom of speech was allowed except for attacks against the sovereign power, and local laws were retained so far as they did not conflict with Roman profit and mastery. A wise flexibility created a useful diversity of rank and privilege among and within the subject states. Certain municipalities, like Athens and Rhodes, were "free cities"; they paid no tribute, w re i:ot subject to he provincial governor, and managed their domestic affairs without Roman mterference so long as they maintained social order and peace. Some old kingdoms, like N umidia and Cappadocia, were allowed tc keep their kings, but these were "clients" of Rome-de pendent upon her protection and her pol cy and required to aid her with men and materials at her call. In the provmces the governor (proconsul or propraetor) combined in himself the power to legislate, to administer, and to judge; his power was limited only by the free cities, by a Roman citizen's 462
CHAP.XXII)	CIVILIZING  THE  WEST
right of appeal to the emperor, and by the financial supervision exercised by the provincial quaestor or procurator. Such near-omnipotence invited abuse; and though the lengthening of the governor's term under the Princi pate, his ample salary and allowance, and his financial responsibility to the emperor considerably lessened malfeasance, we may see from the letters of Pliny and some passages in Tacitus 2 that extortion and corruption were still no rarities at the end of the first century.
Taxation was a primary industry of the governor and his aides. Under the Empire a census was taken of every province for the purpose of assessing the tax on land and the tax on property-which included animals and slaves. To stimulate production a fixed tribute was substituted for the tithe. "Publicans'.' no longer gathered these ta.'Ces, but they collected port duties and managed some state forests, mines, and public works. The provinces were expected to contribute towards a golden crown for each new emperor, pay the cost of provincial administration, and in some cases send heavy ship ments of grain to Rome. The old custom of liturgies was maintained in the East, and spread through the West, by which the local or the Roman gov ernment might "ask" rich men to provide loans for war, ships for the navy, buildings for public purposes, food for famine victims, or choruses for festivals and plays.
Cicero, having joined the Ins, contended that the taxes paid by the prov inces barely covered the cost of administration and defense; 3 "defense" included the suppression of revolts, and "administration" presumably em braced the perquisites. that made so many Roman millionaires. We must reconcile ourselves to the probability that whatever power establishes security and order will send taxgatherers to collect something more than the cost. Despite all levies the provinces prospered under the Principate. The emperor and the Senate exercised a more careful supervision over provincial staffs and severely punished those who stole beyond their station. Ultimately the.excess taken from the provinces flowed back to them in payment for therr goods; and in the end the industries so supported made the provinces stronger than a precariously parasitic Italy. A government, said Plutarch, ought to give a people two boons above all: liberty and peace. "As to peace," he wrote, "there is no need to occupy ourselves, for all war has ceased. As to liberty, we have that which the government [Rome] leaves us; and perhaps it would not be good if we had any more." 4
ll.  AFRICA
Corsica and Sardinia were classed together as a province, not as parts of Italy. Corsica was for the most part a mountainous wilderness, in which Romai-is
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.XXll
hunted the natives with dogs to sell them as slaves.5 Sardinia provided slaves, silver, copper, iron, and grain; it had a thousand miles of road and one excellent harbor, Carales (Cagliari). Sicily had been reduced to an almost purely agricul tural province as one of the "frumentary supports" of Rome; its arable soil was largely taken up with latifundia devoted to cattle raising, and manned by slaves so poorly clothed and fed that they periodically revolted and escaped to form robber bands. The island had in Augustus' days some 750,000 souls. (In 1930 it had 3,972,000.) Of its sixty-five cities the most flourishing were Catania, Syracuse, Tauromenium (Taormina), Messana, Agrigentum, and Panormus (Palermo). Syracuse and T auromenium had magnificent Greek theaters, still in use today. Despite Verres' depredations Syracuse was so full of impressive architecture, famous sculptures, and historic sites that professional guides prospered on the tourist trade,6 and Cicero considered it the finest city in the world. Most well to-do urban families had farms or orchards in the suburbs, and the whole Sicilian countryside was fragrant with fruit trees and vineyards, as it is today.
All that Sicily lost through Roman domination Africa gained. It gradually replaced Sicily as an unwilling granary for Rome; but in return Roman soldiers, colonists, businessmen, and engineers made it blossom into a hardly credible affluence. Doubtless the new conquerors had found cenain regions thriving when they came; between the mountains that frowned upon the Mediterranean, and the Atlas range that kept out the Sahara, ran a semi tropical valley sufficiently watered by the Bagradas (Medjerda) River, and two months of rain, to repay the patient husbandry that Mago had taught and Masinissa had enforced. But Rome improved and expanded what she found. Her engineers built dams across the rivers that flowed down from the southern hills; they gathered the surplus water in reservoirs in the rainy season, and poured it into irrigation canals in the hot months when the streams ran dry.7 Rome asked no heavier taxes than native chiefs had levied, but her legion and fonifications gave better protection against nomad raiders from the mountains; mile by mile new soil was won from desert or savagery for cultivation and settlement. The valley produced so much olive oil that when in our seventh century the Arabs came, they were amazed to find that they could ride from Tripoli to Tangier without ever moving from the shade of olive trees.8 Towns and cities multiplied, architecture exalted them, and literature found new voice. The ruins of Roman forums, temples, aqueducts, and theaters on now arid wastes reveal the reach and wealth of Roman Africa. Those fields decayed and became dead sand not through a change in climate but through a change in gov rnment-from a state that gave economic security, order, and discipline to one that allowed chaos and negligence to ruin the roads, reservoirs, and canals.
At the head of this restored prosperity was the resurrected city of
OcEA}(y.5
G£RMAN1cus
·:, ·:.,
I
07-yrf.-'j	-	I


e1111s or Baacbus at Baalbek	-
CHAP. XXIV)	THE   HELLENISTIC  REVIVAL
tells us, that Hercules himself would have shunned.55 Time in its tenderness has buried all his works, as at its leisure it will cover ours.
ASIA MINOR
North of Syria was the client kingdom-later the province-of Commagene, with a populous capital at Samosata, Lucian's childhood home. Across the Euphrates stood the little realm of Osrhoene; Rome fortified its capital, Edessa (Urfa), as a base against Parthia; we shall hear more of it in Christian days. Westward from Syria one passed into Cilicia (as now into Turkey) at Alex andria Issi (Alexandretta). This, Cicero's province, was highly civilized along the southern Asia Minor coast, but still barbarous in the Taurus hills. Tarsus (Tersous), the capital, was "no mean city," said its son Saint Paul, but was re nowned for its schools and philosophers.
Over against Cilicia, in the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus pursued its immemorial life of mining copper, cutting cypress, building ships, and bearing patiently a succession of conquerors. The lucrative mines were owned by Rome and worked by slaves. Galen describes how in his time a mine there collapsed and crushed hundreds of workers-a periodical incident in the geological basis of human comforts and powers.
North of Cilicia lay arid and mountainous Cappadocia, mining precious metals, and raising wheat, cattle, and slaves for export. West of it, Lycaonia would enter into history with the visits of Saint Paul to Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium. Again north was Galatia, settled and named by the Gauls in the third century B.c.; its most famous product was the Black Stone of Pessinus, sent to Rome as a symbol of Cybele; its chief city was Ancyra, capital of the Hittites 3500  years ago, and of Turkey today. West of Cilicia, the province of Pisidia counted fine cities within its borders, like Xanthus, now recovering from its mass suicide before Brutus, and Aspendus, whose theater is so well preserved that one easily imagines it filling again to hear Menander or Euripides.
West and north of Pisidia was the province of "Asia," divided into Phrygia, Caria, Lydia, and Mysia. Here, where the civilization of Ionia still flourished after a thousand years, Philostratus counted 500 towns, '\vith a total population far greater than the region supports today. The countryside was fertile, the crafts had grown in skill from age to age, and the ports profited from the development of rich markets in Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul. Phrygia was mountainous, but it boasted large cities like Apamea Celaenae-ranked by Strabo as second only to Ephesus in "Asia"-and Laodicea, fortunate in its philanthropic philosophers and millionaires. Cnidus was yet important enough to make an alliance with Rome; but Halicarnassus had declined from Herodotus to Dionvsius
-an excellent literary critic, an uncritical historian. Miletus was no longer in its prime, though still an active port; the oracle of Apollo in the temple at near-by
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIV
Didyma continued to answer questions with puzzles; and the storytellers of the region were weaving those amorous picaresque "Milesian tales" that would soon develop into the Greek novel. Priene was a minor town, but its citizens vied honorably in making it fair with fine buildings. Here, in the first century B.c., a woman, Phile, was elected to the highest municipal office; the influence of wealth and Rome was raising the status of woman in Hellenic lands. Magnesia on the Maeander had what many rated as the most nearly perfect temple in Asia-dedicated to Artemis ( 129 B.c.), and designed by Hermogenes, the supreme architect of the age. At .Mycale the koinon, or Commons, still met annually as a general council and religious union for Ionia.
Of the islands lying off the Carian coast Cos prospered with its silk industry and its medical school, rich with traditions of Hippocrates, and Rhodes (i.e., the Rose) was even in her decline the most beautiful city of the Greek world. When, after the Civil War, Augustus sought to relieve the distress of the eastern cities by allowing the cancellation of all debts, Rhodes refused to avail herself of the expedient and met all her obligations faithfully. As a result she rapidly regained her place as banker to the Aegean trade and became again a halfway port for vessels plying between Asia and Egypt The city was celebrated for
its fallen Colossus, its handsome buildings, its famous statuary, its clean and . orderly streets, its competent aristocratic government, its celebrated schools of rhetoric and philosophy. Here Apollonius Molo taught Caesar and Cicero those arts of style which through them influenced all later Latin prose.
The most famous Rhodian of this period was Poseidonius, the last great synthetic mind of antiquity. Born at Syrian Apamea ( r 35 B.c.), he first earned fame as a long-distance runner. After studying under Panaetius in Athens he made Rhodes his home, served her as magistrate and ambassador, traveled into many provin.ces, returned to Rhodes, and drew such men as Pompey and Cicero to his lectures on the Stoic philosophy. At 83 he went to live in Rome and died there a year later. His lost Universal History-covering Rome and its possessions from 144 to 82 B.c.-was ranked by ancient scholars as equal to the work of Polybius. His report of his travels in Gaul and his treatise On the Ocean were basic sources for Strabo. His calculation of the sun's distance from the earth- 52,000,000 miles-was closer than that of any other ancient student to our modem reckoning. He went to Cadiz to study the tides, and explained them by the joint action of the sun and the moon. He underestimated the distance across the Atlantic and predicted that one sailing from Spain would come to India after 8000 miles. -espi e s :"ide acqu n nce with natural science, he accepted many of the spmtuahstic ideas of his tlme-daimones, divination, astrology, telepathy, and the power of the soul to rise to a mystic union with God, whom he defined as the Life-Fo ce of the world. Cicero too generously ranked him
as the greatest of the Stoics; we might also consider him a forerunner of the Neo-Platonists, a bridge from Zeno to Plotinus.
Following the coast of Asia northward from Caria, the traveler entered Lydia
CHAP. XXIV)	THE  HELLENISTIC  REVIVAL
and its greatest city, Ephesus. It flourished under the Romans as never before. Though Pergamum was the formal capital of "Asia," Ephesus became the seat of the Roman proconsul and his staff; it was also the main port of the province and the meeting place of the provincial assembly. Its polyglot population of 225,ooo ranged from philanthropic sophists to a noisy and superstitious rabble. The streets were well paved and lighted and had miles of shady porticoes. There were the usual public buildings, some unearthed as late as 1894: a "museum" or scientific center, a medical school, a library with a strangely baroque fa ade, and a theater that seated 56,000 persons; here Demetrius the image-maker would arouse the populace against Saint Paul. The center (and chief bank) of the city was the Temple of Artemis, surrounded by 128 columns each the gift of a king. The eunuch priests were attended by virgin priestesses and a swarm of slaves; the rites were a mixture of Oriental and Greek; the barbarous statue that rep resented the goddess had two rows of supernumerary breasts, symbolizing fer tility. The Festival of Artemis made all May a month of rejoicing, feasting, and games.
Smyrna, despite its fishermen, had a better atmosphere. Apollonius of Tyana, who traveled far and wide, called it "the most beautiful city under the sun." 59 It was proud of its long, straight streets, its double-tiered colonnades, its library, and its university. One of its most famous sons, Aelius Aristides (A.D. 117-187), described it in terms that reveal the splendor of these Roman-Hellenistic cities.
Go from east to west, and you will pass from temple to temple and from hill to hill along a street fairer than its name (the Golden Way). Stand on the acropolis: the sea flows beneath you, the suburbs lie about you, the city through three lovely views fills the goblet of your soul. ... Everything to the very shore is a shining mass of gymnasia, markets, theaters ...  baths-so many that you hardly know where to bathe . . . fountains and public walks, and running water in every home. The abundance of her spectacles, contests, and exhibitions is beyond telling, and the variety of her handicrafts. Of all cities this is best suited for those who like to live at ease and be philosophers without guile.60
Aelius was one of many rhetors and sophists whose fame drew Students to Smyrna from all Bellas. His teacher Polemo was so great (says Philostratus) "that he talked with cities as his inferiors, with emperors as not his superiors, and with the gods as his equals." 61 When he lectured in Athens Herodes Atticus, his greatest rival in opulent eloquence, attended as an admiring pupil. In payment for the privilege Herodes sent him 150,000 drachmas ($90,000); when Polemo failed to thank him a friend suggested that he felt underpaid; Herodes sent 100,000 more, which Polemo quietly accepted as his due. Polemo used his for tune to embellish his adopted city; he took part in its government, harmonized its factions, and served it as ambassador. Tradition says that finding his arthritis
516	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIV
unbearable he shut himself uo in the tomb of his ancestors at Laodicea and died of voluntary starvation at the age of fifty-si'<.62
Sardis, Croesus' ancient capital, was still "a great city" in Strabo's time. Cicero was impressed by the splendor and refinement of 1'1ytilene, and in the third cen tury Longus described it in terms suggestive of Venice.63 Pergamum shone \\·ith the great altar and costly buildings raised by the Attalid kings out of a treasury fattened by the labor of slaves in state forests, fields, mines, and factories. Attalus III anticipated Roman expansion and social revolution by bequeathing his realm to Rome in 133 B.C. Aristonicus, son of King Eumenes II by a concubine, de nounced the bequest as forced, called the slaves and the free poor to revolt,
defeated a Roman army ( 1 32), captured many cities, and planned a socialist state with the help of Blossius, teacher of the Gracchi. The neighboring kings of Bithynia and Pontus, and the business classes of the occupied cities, joined Rome in suppressing the rebellion, and Aristonicus died in a Roman dungeon. This uprising, and the Mithridatic Wars, interrupted the cultural life of Pergamum for half a century, and Antony despoiled its famous library to re imburse Alexandria for the volumes burned during Caesar's stay. Pergamum must have recovered by Vespasian's time, for the elder Pliny judged it the most brilliant city in Asia. It enjoyed a new flurry of building under the Antonines, and developed in its Asclepieum a medical school from ,vhich Galen went forth to cure the world.