Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks

e thousand foot and three hundred horse out of his whole people, where every individual was obliged to be a soldier. The Tyrians, who accompanied Dido

ed the Thebans and Athenians to the sad necessity of yielding up the government of Greece, as well as their liberty, to the Macedonians. These misfortunes Dionysius imputes to the mistaken policy of the Grecians, who were, in general, unwilling to communicate the privileges of their respective states to foreigners. Whereas the Romans, who admitted even their enemies to the rights of citizenship, derived additional strength even from their misfortunes. And he affirms, that after the terrible defeat of Cann?, where out of eighty-six thousand little more than three thousand three hundred and seventy men escaped, the Romans owed the preservation of their state, not to the benevolence of fortune, as some, he says, imagine, but to the number of their disciplined militia, which enabled them to encounter every danger. I am sensible that the remarks of Dionysius, which have been adopted by many of our modern writers, are extremely just in relation to the Thebans and Athenians. Because as the former of these people endeavoured to exten

t admitted great numbers of the natives who settled with her in the new city, and consequently became Carthaginians.330 I may add too in proof of this account, that unless the Carthaginians had long pursued this wise policy, it is scarce possible by the course of nat

ent maxims prevailed at Carthage. Wealth with them was the chief support of merit, and nothing was so contemptible as poverty. Hence the Carthaginians, who were well acquainted with the power and influence of wealth, required the additional qualifications of an ample fortune in all candidates for the senatorial dignity, and publick employments. For they judged that such men would be less exposed to the temptations of corruption, and at the same time more anxious for the welfare of a state, in which they were so deeply interested by their private property. That this was the real state of the case, at Carthage, notwithstanding the suggestions of Aristotle and the Greek and Roman historians, may, I think, be fairly proved from the behaviour of their senate and the choice of their officers, which ought certainly to be admitted as the best evidence. For we constantly find all their publick employments filled up with men of the greatest families, and (unless when the intrigues of faction sometimes prevailed) of the greatest abilities. We find in general the same firm and steady attachment to the service of their country, and the same indefatigable zeal for extending the territories and power of their republick. Nor does the most partial historian charge any one of them with sacrificing the honour and interest of his country to any foreign power for money: a practice which was shamefully common amongst the Roman generals in the time of Jugurtha. Hence we may, I think, assign the true reason, why the greatest families in Carthage (as we are informed by historians) thought it no way derogatory to their honour to engage in commerce. For as this is most probably to be understood of the younger sons of their nobility, the true motive seems to arise, not from avarice, as their enemies object, but from a view of raising such a fortune, as might qualify them for admission into the senate, or any of the great employments. Hence too it is evident, that a regulation which might be highly useful and salutary in an opulent commercial republick, would be greatly injurious to such military republicks as Rome and Sparta, by corrupting their manners. We need no other proof than the fate of those two republicks, who both owed their ruin to the introduction of that wealth, which was unknown to their virtuous ancestors. The Carthaginian senate seems to have been much more numerous than the Roman. For at Carthage there was a select standing committee established, of one hundred and four of the most respectable members, to keep a watchful eye over the great families, and repress any attempts which their ambition might make to subvert the constitution.334 To this committee all their commanding officers by sea and land, without exception, were obliged to give a strict account of their conduct at the end of every campaign. We may therefore properly term it the Carthaginian court-martial. Out of this venerable body another select committee was formed of five members only, who were most conspicuous for their probity, ability, and experience. These served without

e dernier resort of all power. This Aristotle censures as inclining more towards democracy than was consistent with the just rules of a well regulated republick.338 Because the magistrates were not only obliged to open all the different opinions and debates of the senators upon the question, in the hearing of the people, who we

ity, and could commit the most outrageous, and most shameful acts of licentiousness with impunity, because their office rendered their persons sacred by law, I esteem the Carthaginian polity infinitely more eligible. For that fear and jealousy of ceding any part of the authority, which is so natural to men in power, would always be a strong motive to union in a Carthaginian senate; because it would naturally induce any member, rather to give up his private opinion, than suffer an essential part of their power to devolve to the peo

tween the aristocratick and democratick powers, which fill the history of that republick. The Patricians had recourse frequently to their only resource a dictator with absolute power, to defend them from the insolence of the tribunes. But this was only a temporary expedient. The people renewed their attacks, until they had abolished the distinct prerogatives arising from birth and family, and laid open all honours, even the consulship, and dictatorship, the supreme magistracy of all, to the free admission of their own body. The people were highly elated with these repeated victories, as they imagined them, over their old enemies the Patricians, but they were quickly sensible, that in fact, they were only the dupes of their ambitious leaders. The most opulent and powerful of the Plebeians, by serving the high offices of the state, acquired the title of nobles, in contradistinction to those, who were descended fr

r as to compel them to act contrary to their opinion. This was that shameful violation of the law of nations in seizing the transports which were bringing necessaries to Scipio's camp, during the truce he had granted that they might send ambassadours to Rome to negotiate a peace with the Roman senate. For though they threatened violence to the senate, if they submitted to those hard terms which were imposed by Scipio after the defeat at Zama; yet they were easily reduced to obedience by Hannibal, and resigned the w

before the Romans. For both Herodotus and Thucydides (who was but thirteen years younger) take notice of them as a very formidable maritime power, a circumstance which could only arise from their naval genius and extensive commerce. Yet we find no instance of their being corrupt, until the conclusion of the second Punick war, when Hannibal reformed those shameful abuses, which had crept into the management of the publick revenue, and restrained that power which the committee of five had usurped over the lives and fo

elled,340 upon this dreadful occasion, to affect all the joy and cheerfulness of festivity, because, as Plutarch informs us, if a sigh or a tear escaped them, the merit of the offering would be absolutely lost, and themselves liable to a fine. That the Carthaginians were no more void of parental affection than other nations, is evident from that pious fraud they had so long practised,341 of secretly buying up poor children, whom they substituted as victims to their bloody deity instead of their own. But after a great defeat which they received from Agathocles, they attributed their ill fortune to the resentment of their god for their repeated sacrilege. They sacrificed two hundred children of the first families in Carthage,342 and three hundred other persons offered themselves as voluntary victims to atone for a crime, to which the highest degree of guilt wa

alternately with either party, as they found it most conducive to their own interest, play one against the other, until they had reduced all equally into provinces: that they frequently employed the subtilty and ambiguity of terms in their own language, to finesse and chicane in their treaties." Thus they cheated the ?tolians by the ambiguous phrase of yielding themselves up to the faith of the Roman people.347 The poor ?tolians imagined, that the term implied only alliance. But the Romans soon convinced them, that what they meant by it, was absolute subjection. They destroyed Carthage under sanction of the most vile equivocation,348 pretending, "that though they promised that deluded people to preserve their state, they did not mean to grant them their city, which word they had purposely omitted." Maxims which the French have steadily and too successfully pursued, and are still pursuing!... Montesquieu very judiciously observes "... that the Romans were ambitious from the lust of domination: the Carthaginians from the lust of gain." This accounts for the different reception which commerce met with in the two nations. At Carthage commerce was esteemed the most honourable of all employments. At Rome commerce

her view than to raise a fortune at the expense of the people. Whether the wretched and defenceless condition in which the French found our colonies at the beginning of this war, ought not to be ascribed chiefly to thi

of the most abject slaves. The Carthaginian virtue was so far from degenerating that it shone brighter in the last period of their history, than in any of the former. Even the behaviour of their women in that long and brave defence of their city against the whole Roman power, equalled, or rather exceeded, that of the Roman matrons in those times, when they were most celebrated for publick virtue. When the Romans were masters of the city, one small part only excepted, and that part actua

rce, and stopped the spring which supplied their publick exchequer. The loss of a battle in Africa, where their country was quite open, and destitute of fortresses, and the natives as much strangers to the use of arms as our own country people, reduced them to submit to whatever terms the victors thought proper to impose. Regulus, in the first Punick war, cooped up the Carthaginians in their capital, after he had given them one defeat by sea, and one by land. The Romans, after receiving four successive defeats from Hannibal, the last of which was the fatal battle of Cann?, where they lost

he defeat at Cann?, when they were at the very brink of ruin, to the force of their institution. He seems to place this force in the superior wisdom and firmness of the Roman senate. A short inquiry into their conduct, duri

fered so severely by trusting men of his genius. Yet, by the most unaccountable folly, they raised Minucius to an equality of power with Fabius; and Rome, for the first time, saw two dictators vested with unlimited authority. The wiser Fabius, though amazed at the stupidity of his countrymen, adhered steadily to his first plan. He gave up half the army to the command of his new colleague, but was determined to preserve the other moiety at least, upon which so much depended. Hannibal was sensible that the Romans could not have done him a more essential piece of service, unless they had recalled Fabius. He immediately threw out a bait for Minucius, which that rash, unthinking commander as greedily bit at. He fell into the trap laid for him by the crafty Hannibal; was enveloped by the Carthaginians, and must inevitably have perished, with all the troops under his command, if Fabius had not flown to his assistance, repulsed the enemy, and rescued him from the most imminent danger of death or captivity. Though Fabius had been so ill used by his countrymen in general, and by his colleague Minucius in particular, yet he showed, by this generous action, a greatness of soul superior to private resentment, and every selfish passion, which he was always ready to sacrifice to the publick welfare. Minucius indeed felt the force of the obligation, as well as of his own incapacity: he nobly acknowledged it in the strongest terms, and returned to his former post and duty to his abler commander. But this heroick behaviour of Fabius seems to have made no more impression upon his countrymen, than his masterly conduct. Two new consuls were chosen, to whom he resigned his authority and army, and retired to Rome neglected and unemployed. The new consuls followed the advice of Fabius, and avoided coming to action, which distressed Hannibal extremely. But the following year exhibits such a masterpiece of folly and stupidity in that Roman senate, whose firmness and wisdom are so much boasted of by historians, and such infatuation in the body of the Roman people as would seem incredible, if the facts, as handed down to us by their own historians themselves, did not prove it beyond a possibility of doubt or contradiction. Determined to drive Hannibal out of Italy, and put a speedy end to so ruinous a war, they raised one of the mightiest armies they had ever yet brought into the field, and employed in it every officer of note or distinction at that time in Rome, the great Fabius alone excepted. This was the last stake of the Romans, upon which their all was ventured. But where does the boasted wisdom of the senate appear in the management of this affair, which was of the last importance? Of the two consuls, Paulus ?milius, the one, was a respectable man, and an experienced officer: Terentius Varro, the other, was a fellow of the lowest extraction, who, by noise and impudence, had raised himself to the tribuneship, was afterwards made pr?tor, and, by the assistance of one Bebius, his relation, at that time a tribune of the people, had forced himself into the consular dignity. This wretch, who had but just talents sufficient for a captain of the mob, who had never seen an action (nor perhaps an army) in his life, had the impudence to censure the conduct of Fabius, and to boast in the senate, that he would immediately drive Hannibal out of Italy. The wise senate were not only so weak as to believe, but, in opposition to all the remonstrances of Fabius, even to trust such an empty coxcomb with an equal share in the command. They even gave the consuls orders to fight the enemy without delay, so great was their confidence in the gasconading Varro. Hannibal at that time was so greatly distressed for want of provisions, that his Spanish troops begun to mutiny, and talked openly of revolting to the Romans, and he himself had thoughts of retiring into Gaul for his own personal safety. ?milius, who endeavoured in every point to follow the advice of Fabius, declined fighting, and was convinced by his intelligence, that Hannibal could not subsist his troops above ten days longer. But Varro was alike deaf to reason or persuasion. Debates at last run so high between the consuls, that repeated expresses were sent to the senate by ?milius for fresh orders. Had the senate acted with that prudence, which has been so loudly celebrated by historians, they would certainly have created Fabius dictator at that critical juncture, which would have put an end to the differences and authority of the consuls. For how could they reasonably hope for success, whilst the army was commanded by two generals, vested with equal power, who differed as widely in opinion as in temper? But their chief view at that time seems to have been to mortify Fabius, and to that favourite point they wilfully sacrificed the publick honour and safety.353 ?milius at last returned to Rome, and laid the whole affair before the senate. But Varro's party proved the majority, and orders were renewed for fighting, but not immediately. ?milius still declined fighting, and followed the advice of Fabius, b

ary cause of the dreadful defeat at Cann?. To the latter cause we may justly attribute the long duration of the Hannibalick war. When the great man, who entered Italy with no more than twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse, maintained his ground above sixteen years, without any assistance from Carthage, against the whole united force and efforts of the Romans, by the mere strength of his own extraordinary genius. For as every man, who had interest sufficient to obtain the consulship, was immediately vested with the command of an army, however qualified or not, so he was obliged to resign his command at the end of the year, before he had well time to be thoroughly acquainted with the true method of dealing with his enemy. Thus every new successive com

est senators, was a perpetual, and never-failing check upon their ambition, or ill behavior of their generals.358 The sacred cohort amongst the Carthaginians, consisted of a large body of volunteers of the richest and greatest families of the nation. This wise and noble institution was one of the chief supports of the Carthaginian state; and as it was the constant seminary of their officers and com

d it by bloody experience from Pyrrhus, the most consummate captain of that age. The Carthaginians were only exercised in war with the wild undisciplined Africans, or the irregular Spaniards, nor were they able with their numerous fleets and prodigious armies to complete the reduction of that part of

in at the battle of Cann?, and a complication of factions completed the subversion of that republick under the two triumvirates. The envy and jealousy of the Hannonian faction deprived Carthage of all the fruits of Hannibal's amazing victories and progr