CHAPTER V.

FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC EVENTS.

B.C. 146-142.

I HAVE written in a continuous narrative the war with Viriathus, which would be more obscure than it is, if the story had been interrupted. I shall now retrace the principal foreign and domestic events after the destruction of Carthage and Corinth and the close of the year B.C. 146.

In B.C. 145 the tribune C. Licinius Crassus attempted to make a great constitutional change. He proposed a rogatio or bill by which the Sacerdotes or priests should be elected by the people like the civil magistrates instead of being chosen by their several colleges, which was the practice. This rogatio is entitled by Cicero de collegiis' and 'de sacerdotiis.' It is not said to what class of Sacerdotes the Rogatio applied, but it is certain that it must have applied to the great Colleges of priests, the Pontifices, the Decemviri sacris faciundis, who had the charge of the Sibylline books, the Augures, and the Triumviri afterwards Septemviri Epulones. These collegia or incorporations had lands from which they derived an income, and they had severally their duties as superintendents and ministers of the religious system of Rome. The members of these priestly colleges had never been appointed by popular election, except perhaps the Pontifex Maximus, if we may take Livy's statement as to the election of the year B.c. 212, on which occasion he speaks of the choice of the Pontifex Maximus by popular election, as if it had long been the usual practice. Yet in B.c. 180 he speaks of the Pontifex Maximus being chosen by the members of the College of Pontifices; and this was certainly the method of

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filling up the vacancies caused by the death of the other members. A Pontifex held his office for life, and when he died, the surviving members appointed a man to fill his place. This mode of election was named co-optatio. It would have been a revolutionary measure to give to the people the power of electing the members of these colleges, which were now an instrument of government in the hands of the nobility and Senate. The people would have filled the colleges with men of a different stamp, and a popular election of ecclesiastical persons would seem to every sensible Roman an absurd and dangerous principle. It was the opinion of Polybius and others that, even if the gods did not concern themselves about human affairs, it was still useful for the community that fear of supernatural powers should be impressed on the minds of the many, for few men act right from their own virtuous principles, and the greater part of mankind are only kept from doing wrong by the penalties of the law and fear of divine punishment. This was the opinion of the Roman nobles, and they acted consistently with it. The praetor C. Laelius Sapiens opposed the Rogatio as contrary to antient custom and the religious system of Rome. This speech was extant in Cicero's time, and he speaks highly of it. The bill was rejected, but the matter was not dropped, as we shall afterwards see.

L. Mummius stayed some time in Greece after the destruction of Corinth. It was necessary to secure the tranquillity of the country and to keep an eye towards the East which was in a disturbed state. Mummius was assisted in settling the affairs of Greece by ten commissioners from Rome. They completed their labours in six months and returned to Italy just before the commencement of the spring of B.c. 145. On their departure they enjoined Polybius to visit the Achaean cities, and to explain to the people any thing which they might have a difficulty in understanding in the new arrangements. Polybius obeyed these instructions, and he soon made the people satisfied with the new rules under which they were to live. His services were gratefully appreciated by his countrymen both during his life and after his death.

The behaviour of Mummius was also well adapted to soothe

the Greeks after their subjugation. He sent presents to the temple at Delphi, and he set up at Olympia a bronze Jupiter and twenty-one gilded brass shields, the produce of the Achaean spoils. He was the first Roman who made any dedication in a Greek temple. He visited the Achaean cities, where he was received with the greatest honours, and perhaps with real respect, for he had only obeyed the order of the Roman Senate in destroying Corinth, and though a rough soldier he was not cruel and he exercised his great authority with judgment and moderation. He was entirely free from the common Roman vice of greediness. He carried off indeed many of the finest works of art, but he kept nothing for himself, and he lived and died a poor man. The state gave his daughter a marriage portion out of the public treasury.

An instance of his generosity is commemorated by Polybius. There were many valuable statues of Philopoemen. which the Achaean cities had set up. Some Roman proposed that they should all be removed, because Philopoemen had been an enemy to Rome. Polybius answered this argument in presence of Mummius and the commissioners, who determined that the monuments of a great man should not be disturbed. This is the way that Plutarch tells the story, following Polybius as it seems; but Polybius also says, that taking advantage of this decision about the statues he asked the general for some which had been already removed from the Peloponnesus to Acarnania on their way to Rome; and these were a statue of Achaeus, and of Aratus, and Philopoemen. He obtained his request, and his countrymen showed their gratitude by setting up a marble statue of Polybius.

There is a story in Velleius that when Mummius was making a contract for the carriage of the pictures and sculptures to Rome, he told the undertakers that if any of the things were lost, they must replace them. This story is alleged as a proof of the ignorance of Mummius, but if it is true, it is rather a proof that he loved a joke, for a man who had seen and collected the noblest specimens of Greek art must have known, however ignorant he might be, that they could not be made to order. Most of his countrymen knew little about the arts, and they were indebted to Mummius

for first showing them what Greek painting was. King Attalus the Second of Pergamum, who was a collector, bid at the sale of the booty of Corinth, and he had offered six thousand denarii for the Dionysus of Aristides; but Mummius being surprised, as Pliny says, and suspecting that there was some merit in the picture would not let Attalus have it. If the amount offered by Attalus is rightly given in Pliny's text, it could not be the largeness of the king's bid which surprised Mummius, but something else. Mummius sent this glorious painting to Rome and placed it in the temple of Ceres. It might be inferred from another passage of Pliny that this famous picture was a Dionysus and Ariadne, for he says that Liber (Dionysus) and Ariadne were seen in the temple of Ceres. Strabo, who saw the picture, names it only a Dionysus, and so we must either conclude that there were two pictures, a Dionysus and an Ariadne, or, what I think is much more likely, that the picture was sometimes called Dionysus simply instead of Dionysus and Ariadne. Pliny thinks that the Dionysus or Liber, as he calls it, was the first foreign picture that the city of Rome possessed. It had been recently destroyed by fire together with the temple when Strabo was writing the eighth book of his Geography. One might say that the Romans brought fine things to Rome only to be burnt, for this was the fate of many other Greek works. Rome was indebted to Mummius for the best of her statues and pictures. He brought so many that even the towns about Rome were decorated with them. Instead of Mummius being without taste we might rather say that the sight of so many beautiful objects had opened his eyes. At the capture of Corinth Polybius saw the finest pictures lying on the ground and the brutal soldiers of Italy playing at dice on them. If Mummius had been like his men, the pictures and statues would have been destroyed. Another beautiful picture by Aristides was placed in Apollo's temple at Rome. The praetor M. Junius ordered it to be cleaned for exhibition at the Ludi Apollinares, but the unlucky cleaner spoiled it; a warning to all picture-scourers.

Mummius was honoured with the name Achaicus, and he had a splendid triumph, in which the bronzes and other

noble works of art taken from the Greek towns were exhibited to the gaze of the Roman people. Roman generals before Mummius had brought to Rome the spoils of the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily, but never either before or after was such a display of the wonders of Grecian art carried in triumphal pomp through the streets of Rome.

Corinth was at one time the greatest commercial city of Greece and the centre of trade between the East and the West. It was usual, as we see in the Roman writers, to speak of the fine bronze works of Corinth; but Corinth was not the only place where such works were made. It was the great market in which the products of Grecian skill were collected for sale and exportation. When the city was taken, the rich merchants probably lost all their wares, some of which would be sold and the rest carried to Italy. Before the capture of Corinth the Romans had made the little island of Delos a great emporium between Asia and Europe, and after the destruction of Corinth, Delos would take a large part of the Corinthian trade. Accordingly we read of Delian bronzes, so named because Delos was a great dépôt for the products of Asia, for nobody supposes that such things were made on this miserable rock.

L. Lucullus, as we have seen, built a temple to Felicitas or Good Fortune, which he had vowed after the fashion of Roman generals in his unlucky Spanish campaign. He applied to Mummius after the capture of Corinth to lend him some statues to decorate his new temple until it was consecrated. Mummius had plenty of such things in his possession and he was very ready to give or lend. In this case it was a loan, and Lucullus promised to restore the statues. But Lucullus dedicated the statues together with the temple and then told Mummius that he might take them away, if he chose. The statues had become sacred things by being dedicated with the temple, and Mummius could not remove them, unless we may suppose that the college of Pontifices, the supreme court in matters of religion, should give him permission, or a faculty. It would have been a nice point of ecclesiastical law to argue, whether a fraudulent dedication had the effect of converting a man's moveables into sacred things. However