These things, I say, I pass in silence; but I can by no means be silent regarding the order given by Mithridates, king of Asia, that on one day all Roman citizens residing anywhere in Asia (where great numbers of them were following their private business)should be put to death: and this order was executed.How miserable a spectacle was then presented, when each man was suddenly and treacherously murdered wherever he happened to be, in the field or on the road, in the town, in his own home, or in the street, in market or temple, in bed or at table ! Think of the groans of the dying, the tears of the spectators, and even of the executioners themselves.For how cruel a necessity was it that compelled the hosts of these victims, not only to see these abominable butcheries in their own houses, but even to perpetrate them:
to change their countenance suddenly from the bland kindliness of friendship, and in the midst of peace set about the business of war; and, shall I say, give and receive wounds, the slain being pierced in body, the slayer in spirit ! Had all these murdered persons, then, despised auguries? Had they neither public nor household gods to consult when they left their homes and set out on that fatal journey? If they had not, our adversaries have no reason to complain of these Christian times in this particular, since long ago the Romans despised auguries as idle.If, on the other hand, they did consult omens, let them tell us what good they got thereby, even when such things were not prohibited, but authorized, by human, if not by divine law CHAP.23.--OF THE INTERNAL DISASTERS WHICH VEXED THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, AND FOLLOWEDA PORTENTOUS MADNESS WHICH SEIZED ALL THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS.
But let us now mention, as succinctly as possible, those disasters which were still more vexing, because nearer home; I mean those discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil interests.The seditions had now become urban wars, in which blood was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another, not with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force and arms.What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and devastations were occasioned in Italy by wars social, wars servile wars civil! Before the Latins began the social war against Rome, all the animals used in the service of man--dogs, horses, asses, oxen, and all the rest that are subject to man--suddenly grew wild, and forgot their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and wandered at large, and could not be closely approached either by strangers or their own masters without danger.If this was a portent, how serious a calamity must have been portended by a plague which, whether portent or no, was in itself a serious calamity! Had it happened in our day, the heathen would have been more rabid against us than their animals were against them.
CHAP.24.--OF THE CIVIL DISSENSION OCCASIONED BY THE SEDITION OF THEGRACCHI.
The civil wars originated in the seditions which the Gracchi excited regarding the agrarian laws; for they were minded to divide among the people the lands which were wrongfully possessed by the nobility.
But to reform an abuse of so long standing was an enterprise full of peril, or rather, as the event proved, of destruction.
For what disasters accompanied the death of the older Gracchus ! what slaughter ensued when, shortly after, the younger brother met the same fate! For noble and ignoble were indiscriminately massacred; and this not by legal authority and procedure, but by mobs and armed rioters.After the death of the younger Gracchus, the consul Lucius Opimius, who had given battle to him within the city, and had defeated and put to the sword both himself and his confederates, and had massacred many of the citizens, instituted a judicial examination of others, and is reported to have put to death as many as 3000 men.From this it may be gathered how many fell in the riotous encounters, when the result even of a judicial investigation was so bloody.The assassin of Gracchus himself sold his head to the consul for its weight in gold, such being the previous agreement.In this massacre, too, Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank, with all his children, was put to death.
CHAP.25.--OF THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD, WHICH WAS ERECTED BY A DECREE OFTHE SENATE
ON THE SCENE OF THESE SEDITIONS AND MASSACRES.
A pretty decree of the senate it was, truly, by which the temple of Concord was built on the spot where that disastrous rising had taken place, and where so many citizens of every rank had fallen.(1)I suppose it was that the monument of the Gracchi's punishment might strike the eye and affect the memory of the pleaders.
But what was this but to deride the gods, by building a temple to that goddess who, had she been in the city, would not have suffered herself to be torn by such dissensions? Or was it that Concord was chargeable with that bloodshed because she had deserted the minds of the citizens, and was therefore incarcerated in that temple? For if they had any regard to consistency, why did they not rather erect on that site a temple of Discord? Or is there a reason for Concord being a goddess while Discord is none? Does the distinction of Labeo hold here, who would have made the one a good, the other an evil deity?--a distinction which seems to have been suggested to him by the mere fact of his observing at Rome a temple to Fever as well as one to Health.But, on the same ground, Discord as well as Concord ought to be deified.A hazardous venture the Romans made in provoking so wicked a goddess, and in forgetting that the destruction of Troy had been occasioned by her taking offence.