B.C. 200-130.] THE NEW NOBILITY OF ROME. : 553 the West of Numidia and the barbarous regions beyond the Alps, seemed to be only a question of time; and the formation of the province of Asia marks the epoch of Rome's dominion over the civilized world. Her empire, spreading like a vast arch over the Mediterranean basin, with one foot resting on the Atlas, and the other on the Taurus, comprised, besides Italy itself, the following provinces (1) SICILY, acquired in B.C. 241; (2) SARDINIA and CORSICA, B.C. 238; (3, 4) HISPANIA CITERIOR and ULTERIOR, B.C. 205; (5) GALLIA CISALPINA, B.C. 191; (6) MACEDONIA, including Epirus, Thessaly, and Thrace, B.C. 146; (7) ILLYRICUM, probably formed about the same time; (8) ACHAIA, that is, Greece south of Epirus and Thessaly, B.C. 146; (9) AFRICA, formerly the territory of Carthage, B.C. 129; (10) ASIA, including all the richest part of Asia Minor, B.C. 129. While Rome was thus acquiring the dominion of the civilized world, her internal state was marked by the decay of the old Roman virtues, the dissolution of the bonds of her old constitution, and the beginning of new troubles that were only to end with the fall of the Republic. This inward degeneracy was directly connected with the progress of foreign conquest, which poured a flood of wealth upon a people whose social habits had been based upon frugality and simplicity, and opened an unlimited field to speculation and rapacity. These causes of change had been partly anticipated by the working of the Roman constitution within the limits of Italy itself. The old distinctions of patricians, clients, and plebeians had vanished. With the admission of the plebeians to the higher magistracies, the increasing power of wealth to influence elections, and the custom of admitting those who had held the offices of state to the Senate, a new nobility had arisen, under the names of the Optimates, and a rabble, misnamed plebeian, had grown up by their side. The nobility were in possession of the Senate, whose initiative in legislation had grown into the dominant power in the state; and the prerogative vote of the equestrian centuries gave them the command of the Comitia Centuriata. The old equality of the Roman citizens was publicly annulled by the innovation carried by the elder Africanus, in his second consulship (B.c. 194), of assigning the front seats in the theatre to the senatorial order; and the censorship formed the great means of maintaining the powers of the nobility, so long as their vehement efforts could keep that office in their own hands. The importance of the higher magistracies was kept up by the policy of abstaining from multiplying them with the growth of the Roman dominions, for it was only on the imperious demands of the newly- Thus the old republican aristocracy, based upon the equal rights *The Prætor Urbanus and Prætor Peregrinus, of whom, as we have seen, the first This was the Lex Annalis of the tribune L. Villius, according to which a man B.C. 200-130.] THE GOVERNMENT OF THE NOBLES. 555 ment. In those external affairs which have necessarily occupied most of our attention, we have seen the dignity and moderation, the caution sometimes degenerating into sluggishness, and the marvellous energy and still more marvellous endurance when a great occasion called for great efforts, which characterize an oligarchy in general, and prove that the old Roman virtues still survived. "During the severe disciplinary period of the Sicilian war," says Mommsen, "the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height of its new position; and, if it unconstitutionally usurped for the Senate powers which the law divided between the magistrates and Comitia alone, it vindicated the step by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady pilotage of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm, and showed to the world that the Roman Senate was alone able, and in many respects alone deserved, to rule the wide circle of the Italo-Hellenic states." The ascendancy of Fabius Maximus, and the jealousy shown towards a Marcellus and a Scipio, are practical illustrations of the strength and weakness of the senatorial management of foreign affairs. The internal administration was not only far less successful, but it seemed as if it were conducted on the very opposite principles. The arts of canvassing not only showed these nobles who could assume so lofty a mien towards kings and foreign states divested of their stern dignity, but undermined the self-respect of the citizens, whose free voices had once raised to office the worthiest of their own body. The weakened sense of responsibility, except to the public opinion of their own class, led to that military indiscipline and those outrages upon justice of which the few instances we have noticed give but a scanty sample. The vast growth of revenue from the increased public domain, the tribute of foreign subjects, the customs duties, the Spanish mines, the spoils of war -of which Antiochus and Perseus alone contributed above four millions sterling-produced no corresponding measure of financial prosperity. So vast and sudden an accession of wealth could not but be in part wasted by mismanagement, and intercepted both by the gains of lessees and by the embezzlement of officers and magistrates. And here the political and financial systems reacted upon each other. The governor or military commander in a distant province was not only subject to the temptation of indulging the passion for luxury and the state of a viceroy with all the more zest because they were new to the spirit of a Roman, but he had to acquire the means of maintaining his conse quence in the eyes of his fellow-citizens, and his influence in the Comitia; and proconsuls, corrupted themselves by luxury and arbitrary power, and perverted by the homage of eastern flatterers or western barbarians, returned to make their fellow-citizens more and more deserving by their corruption of the contempt with which they learnt to regard them. The prevalence at once and the impunity of official plunder are attested by the saying of Cato:" He who steals from a citizen ends his days in chains and fetters; but he who steals from the commonwealth ends them in gold and purple." Meanwhile the growth of the empire itself absorbed a large proportion of the new revenues in roads, bridges, aqueducts, and those other works which the Romans never performed negligently, besides the expenses of civil administration. Large sums were expended in perfecting the system of roads in Italy itself; and the public works in the capital and its neighbourhood formed some of the best uses of the public wealth. The construction of the great system of sewers which ramified beneath the city from the Cloaca Maxima,* appears to have been contracted for in B.C. 180. Six years later the streets of Rome were paved (B.c. 174). In B.C. 160, the Pomptine marshes were drained; and P. Scipio Nasica, in his consulship in the following year, set up a public clepsydra, or waterclock, the city of Rome having gone on for six centuries without any accurate means of knowing the time by night as well as day (B.C. 159).† But the most magnificent work of this period was the great aqueduct (Aqua Marcia), constructed by the Prætor Q. Marcius Rex, under the direction of the Senate, in B.C. 144. Rome had hitherto been supplied with water by only two of the fourteen aqueducts which spanned the Campagna with their long lines of arches, and of which only three still suffice to bring into the city a pure and copious stream that puts our boasted sanitary science to shame.‡ * See p. 192. A sun-dial (solarium) is said to have been brought from Greece and set up before the temple of Quirinus by the Consul L. Papirius Cursor, in B.C. 293; but being constructed for a lower latitude it was of course incorrect at Rome. A more accurate solarium was placed beside it by the Censor Q. Marcius Philippus, in B.C. 164. Had the Romans possessed an imperial capital on the banks of the Thames, it is as certain that they would never have converted the noble river into a brackish estuary, by drawing off from it a scanty supply of muddy water, mixed with the sewage of the towns on its upper course, to be doled out for the space of half an hour each day at an enormous price, as it is that, with the resources of modern engineering, they would have built an aqueduct from the Bala lake, or even a more distant source, if needful. Nay, stranger still, they would have found ædiles wealthy and liberal enough to pay for the work, for Rome was ignorant of a water-rate. .B.C. 234-149.] MARCUS PORCIUS CATO. 557 The Aqua Claudia was, like the Via Appia, the work of the Censor Appius Claudius Cæcus, B. c. 313, and was about eleven miles long. The Anio Vetus was begun in B.C. 273, with the produce of the spoil taken from Pyrrhus, to bring the water of the Anio from a point above Tibur, twenty miles from Rome, by a circuit of forty-three miles. Both these channels having fallen into decay, and the water of the latter being considered unfit for drinking, the Senate entrusted to the Prætor Marcius the work of their repair and the construction of the new aqueduct which was named after him. It began at a point thirty-six miles from Rome in a direct line; but its entire course was above sixty miles, about one-ninth of the whole length being above ground, chiefly on arches, and the rest carried through the hills by tunnels. It delivered its water at a height equal to the summit of the Capitoline hill, and sufficed for the supply of Rome till the time of Augustus, when it was repaired by Agrippa, who united with it the Aqua Tepula and the Aqua Julia, so that the three entered the city in a triple tier of channels. The two great works of the Emperor Claudius, by which alone the Marcian aqueduct was eclipsed, were similarly carried one over the other near their termination. Of the cost of the work we have no information; but we are told that the sum allotted to the sewers was nearly 250,000l. The reserve on which the state was obliged to fall back in B.c. 209 amounted to 4000 pounds' weight of gold, or 164,000l. ; while in B.c. 157 the value of the precious metals in the treasury was about 860,000%. Such were the general results of the aristocratic government at home and abroad. The altered spirit of the ruling class was of course not unopposed; and the type of the party of resistance and reform is to be seen in the celebrated M. PORCIUS CATO, who is often called CATO MAJOR, to distinguish him from his equally famous greatgrandson, Cato of Utica. Born at Tusculum, in B.C. 234, he was brought up on his father's Sabine farm, where his attachment to the hardy habits of the old yeomen-heroes was inflamed into a passion by the constant view of a neighbouring cottage, whither M'. Curius Dentatus had retired after his three triumphs. There Curius had been found roasting turnips on his hearth by the Samnite ambassadors, whose costly presents he rejected, telling them that he had rather rule over those who possessed gold than possess it himself. Such was the model on which the youthful Cato formed his character; and he soon attracted the notice of a neighbour, L. Valerius Flaccus, one of the few young |