Aemilius Paulus

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 319 sections

2.1.1
That the Aemilii were one of the ancient and patrician houses at Rome, most writers agree.
2.2.1
And that the first of them, and the one who gave his surname to the family, was Mamercus, a son of Pythagoras the philosopher, who received the surname of Aemilius for the grace and charm of his discourse, is the statement of some of those writers who hold that Pythagoras was the educator of Numa the king.
2.3.1
Now, most of this family who rose to distinction by their cultivation of virtue, were blessed with good fortune; and in the case of Lucius Paulus, his misfortune at Cannae gave testimony alike to his wisdom and valour.
2.4.1
For when he could not dissuade his colleague from giving battle, he took part with him in the struggle, though reluctantly, but would not be a partner in his flight; nay, though the one who had brought on the peril left him in the lurch, he himself kept his post and died fighting the enemy.
2.5.1
This Paulus had a daughter, Aemilia, who was the wife of Scipio the Great, and a son, Aemilius Paulus, whose Life I now write. He came of age at a time which abounded in men of the greatest reputation and most illustrious virtue, and yet he was a conspicuous figure, although he did not pursue the same studies as the young nobles of the time, nor set out on his career by the same path.
2.6.1
For he did not practise pleading private cases in the courts, and refrained altogether from the salutations and greetings and friendly attentions to which most men cunningly resorted when they tried to win the favour of the people by becoming their zealous servants; not that he was naturally incapable of either, but he sought to acquire for himself what was better than both, namely, a reputation arising from valour, justice, and trustworthiness. In these virtues he at once surpassed his contemporaries.
3.1.1
At all events, when he sued for the first of the high offices in the state, the aedileship, he was elected over twelve competitors, all of whom, we are told, afterwards became consuls.
3.2.1
Moreover, when he was made one of the priests called Augurs, whom the Romans appoint as guardians and overseers of the art of divination from the flight of birds and from omens in the sky, he so carefully studied the ancestral customs of the city, and so thoroughly understood the religious ceremonial of the ancient Romans, that his priestly function,
3.3.1
which men had thought to be a kind of honour, sought merely on account of the reputation which it gave, was made to appear one of the higher arts, and testified in favour of those philosophers who define religion as the science of the worship of the gods.
3.4.1
For all the duties of this office were performed by him with skill and care, and he laid aside all other concerns when he was engaged in these, omitting nothing and adding nothing new, but ever contending even with his colleagues about the small details of ceremony, and explaining to them that, although the Deity was held to be good-natured and slow to censure acts of negligence, still, for the city at least it was a grievous thing to overlook and condone them;
3.5.1
for no man begins at once with a great deed of lawlessness to disturb the civil polity, but those who remit their strictness in small matters break down also the guard that has been set over greater matters.
3.6.1
Furthermore, he showed a like severity in scrutinising and preserving his country’s military customs and traditions also, not courting popular favour when he was in command, nor yet, as most men did at this time, courting a second command during his first by gratifying his soldiers and treating them with mildness;
3.7.1
but, like a priest of other dread rites, he explained thoroughly all the details of military custom and was a terror to disobedient transgressors, and so restored his country to her former greatness, considering the conquest of his enemies hardly more than an accessory to the training of his fellow-citizens.
4.1.1
After the Romans had gone to war with Antiochus the Great, and while their most experienced commanders were employed against him, another war arose in the West, and there were great commotions in Spain.
4.2.1
For this war Aemilius was sent out as praetor, not with the six lictors which praetors usually have, but adding other six to that number, so that his office had a consular dignity.
4.3.1
Well, then, he defeated the Barbarians in two pitched battles, and slew about thirty thousand of them; and it would seem that his success was conspicuously due to his generalship, since by choosing favourable ground and by crossing a certain river he made victory easy for his soldiers; moreover, he made himself master of two hundred and fifty cities, which yielded to him of their own accord.
4.4.1
He left the province in peace and bound by pledges of fidelity, and came back to Rome, nor was he richer by a single drachma from his expedition.
4.5.1
And, indeed, in all other ways he was a rather indifferent money-maker, and spent generously and without stint of his substance. But this was not large; indeed, after his death it barely sufficed to meet the dowry due to his wife.
5.1.1
He married Papiria, a daughter of Maso, who was a man of consular dignity, and after he had lived with her a long time he divorced her, although she had made him father of most glorious sons; for she it was who bore him that most illustrious Scipio, and Fabius Maximus.
5.2.1
No documentary grounds for the divorce have come down to us, but there would seem to be some truth in a story told about divorce, which runs as follows. A Roman once divorced his wife, and when his friends admonished him, saying:
5.3.1
Is she not discreet? is she not beautiful? is she not fruitful? he held out his shoe (the Romans call it calceus), saying: Is this not handsome? is it not new? but no one of you can tell me where it pinches my foot?
5.4.1
For, as a matter of fact, it is great and notorious faults that separate many wives from their husbands; but the slight and frequent frictions arising from some unpleasantness or incongruity of characters, unnoticed as they may be by everybody else, also produce incurable alienations in those whose lives are linked together.
5.5.1
So then Aemilius, having divorced Papiria, took another wife; and when she had borne him two sons he kept these at home, but the sons of his former wife he introduced into the greatest houses and the most illustrious families, the elder into that of Fabius Maximus, who was five times consul, while the younger was adopted by the son of Scipio Africanus, his cousin-german, who gave him the name of Scipio.
5.6.1
Of the daughters of Aemilius, one became the wife of the son of Cato, and the other of Aelius Tubero, a man of the greatest excellence, and one who, more than any other Roman, combined the greatest dignity with poverty. For there were sixteen members of the family, all Aelii;
5.7.1
and they had a very little house, and one little farm sufficed for all, where they maintained one home together with many wives and children.
5.8.1
Among these wives lived also the daughter of that Aemilius who had twice been consul and twice had celebrated a triumph, and she was not ashamed of her husband’s poverty, but admired the virtue that kept him poor.
5.9.1
Brethren and kinsmen of the present day, however, unless zones and rivers and walls divide their inheritances and wide tracts of land separate them from one another, are continually quarrelling.
5.10.1
These, then, are considerations and examples which history presents to those who are willing to profit by them.
6.1.1
Aemilius, then, having been appointed consul, made an expedition against the Ligurians along the Alps, whom some call also Ligustines, a warlike and spirited folk, and one whose proximity to the Romans was teaching it skill in war.
6.2.1
For they occupy the extremities of Italy that are bounded by the Alps, and those parts of the Alps themselves that are washed by the Tuscan sea and face Africa, and they are mingled with Gauls and the Iberians of the coast.
6.3.1
At that time they had also laid hold of the sea with piratical craft, and were robbing and destroying merchandise, sailing out as far as the pillars of Hercules.
6.4.1
Accordingly, when Aemilius came against them, they withstood him with a force of forty thousand men; but he, with eight thousand men all told, engaged their fivefold numbers, and after routing them and shutting them up in their walled towns, gave them humane and conciliatory terms;
6.5.1
for it was not the wish of the Romans to extirpate altogether the Ligurian nation, since it lay like a barrier or bulwark against the movements of the Gauls, who were always threatening to descend upon Italy.
6.6.1
Accordingly, putting faith in Aemilius, they delivered their ships and cities into his hands. Their cities he restored to them, either doing them no harm at all, or simply razing their walls; but he took away all their ships, and left them no boat that carried more than three oars;
6.7.1
he also restored to safety those whom they had taken captive by land or sea, and these were found to be many, both Romans and foreigners. Such, then, were the conspicuous achievements of this first consulship.
6.8.1
Afterwards he often made it clear that he was desirous of a second consulship, and once actually announced his candidacy, but when he was passed by and not elected, he made no further efforts to obtain the office, giving his attention to his duties as augur, and training his sons, not only in the native and ancestral discipline in which he himself had been trained, but also, and with greater ardour, in that of the Greeks.
6.9.1
For not only the grammarians and philosophers and rhetoricians, but also the modellers and painters, the overseers of horses and dogs, and the teachers of the art of hunting, by whom the young men were surrounded, were Greeks.
6.10.1
And the father, unless some public business prevented, would always be present at their studies and exercises, for he was now become the fondest parent in Rome.
7.1.1
As to public affairs, that was the period when the Romans were at war with Perseus, the king of Macedonia, and were taking their generals to task because their inexperience and cowardice led them to conduct their campaigns ridiculously and disgracefully, and to suffer more harm than they inflicted.
7.2.1
For the people which had just forced Antiochus, surnamed the Great, to retire from the rest of Asia, driven him over the Taurus mountains, and shut him up in Syria, where he had been content to buy terms with a payment of fifteen thousand talents;
7.3.1
which had a little while before set the Greeks free from Macedonia by crushing Philip in Thessaly; and which had utterly subdued Hannibal, to whom no king was comparable for power or boldness;
7.4.1
this people thought it unendurable that they should be compelled to contend with Perseus as though he were an even match for Rome, when for a long time already he had carried on his war against them with the poor remains of his father’s routed army;
7.5.1
for they were not aware that after his defeat Philip had made the Macedonian armies far more vigorous and warlike than before. This situation I will briefly explain from the beginning.
8.1.1
Antigonus, who was the most powerful of Alexander’s generals and successors, and acquired for himself and his line the title of King, had a son Demetrius, and his son was Antigonus surnamed Gonatas.
8.2.1
His son in turn was Demetrius, who, after reigning himself for a short time, died, leaving a son Philip still in his boyhood.
8.3.1
The leading Macedonians, fearing the anarchy which might result, called in Antigonus, a cousin of the dead king, and married him to Philip’s mother, calling him first regent and general, and then, finding his rule moderate and conducive to the general good, giving him the title of King. He received the surname of Doson, which implied that he was given to promising but did not perform his engagements.
8.4.1
After him Philip succeeded to the throne, and, though still a youth, flowered out in the qualities which most distinguish kings, and led men to believe that he would restore Macedonia to her ancient dignity, and that he, and he alone, would check the power of Rome, which already extended over all the world.
8.5.1
But after he was defeated in a great battle at Scotussa by Titus Flamininus, for a time he took a humble posture, entrusted all his interests to the Romans, and was content to come off with a moderate fine.
8.6.1
Afterwards, however, his condition oppressed him, and thinking that to reign by favour of the Romans was more the part of a captive satisfied with meat and drink than of a man possessed of courage and spirit, he turned his thoughts to war, and made his arrangements for it in secrecy and with cunning.
8.7.1
Thus, those of his cities which lay on the highroads and the seashore he suffered to become weak and rather desolate, so as to awaken contempt, while in the interior he was collecting a large force; he also filled the fortresses, strongholds, and cities of the interior with an abundance of arms, money, and men fit for service, in this way preparing himself for the war, and yet keeping it hidden away, as it were, and concealed.
8.8.1
Thus, he had arms to equip thirty thousand men laid up in reserve, eight million bushels of grain had been immured in his strongholds, and a sum of money sufficient to maintain for ten years ten thousand mercenaries fighting in defence of the country.
8.9.1
But Philip, before he could put these plans and preparations into effect, died of grief and anguish of mind; for he came to know that he had unjustly put to death one of his sons, Demetrius, on false charges made by the other, who was his inferior.
8.10.1
The son, however, whom he left, Perseus, along with his father’s kingdom, inherited his hatred of the Romans, but was not equal to the burden because of the littleness and baseness of his character, in which, among all sorts of passions and distempers, avarice was the chief trait.
8.11.1
And it is said that he was not even a true-born son, but that Philip’s wife took him at his birth from his mother, a certain sempstress, an Argive woman named Gnathaenion, and passed him off as her own.
8.12.1
And this was the chief reason, as it would seem, why he feared Demetrius and compassed his death, lest the royal house having a true-born heir to the throne, should uncover his own spurious birth.
9.1.1
However, although he was ignoble and mean, the strength of his position led him to undertake the war, and he kept up the struggle for a long time, repulsing Roman commanders of consular rank with great armies and fleets, and actually conquering some of them.
9.2.1
Publius Licinius, for example, who was the first that invaded Macedonia, he routed in a cavalry battle, slew twenty-five hundred good men, and took six hundred prisoners besides;
9.3.1
then he made an unexpected attack upon the Roman fleet which was lying at anchor near Oreus, seized twenty ships of burden with their cargoes, and sank the rest together with the grain that filled them; he also made himself master of four quinqueremes.
9.4.1
He fought a second battle, too, in which he repulsed the consul Hostilius as he was trying to force his way into Macedonia at Elimiae; and after Hostilius had broken into the country undetected by way of Thessaly, he gave him a challenge to battle which he was afraid to accept.
9.5.1
Furthermore, as a side issue of the war, he made an expedition against the Dardanians, implying that he ignored the Romans and that time hung heavy on his hands; he cut to pieces ten thousand of the Barbarians and drove off much booty.
9.6.1
He also secretly stirred up the Gauls settled along the Danube, who are called Bisternae, an equestrian host and warlike; and he invited the Illyrians, through Genthius their king, to take part with him in the war. And a report prevailed that the Barbarians had been hired by him to pass through lower Gaul, along the coast of the Adriatic, and make an incursion into Italy.
10.1.1
When the Romans learned of these things, they decided that they would bid good-bye to the favours and promises of those who wanted to be generals, and themselves summon to the leadership a man of wisdom who understood how to manage great affairs.
10.2.1
This man was Paulus Aemilius, now advanced in life and about sixty years of age, but in the prime of bodily vigour, and hedged about with youthful sons and sons-in-law, and with a host of friends and kinsmen of great influence, all of whom urged him to give ear to the people when it summoned him to the consulship.
10.3.1
At first he was for declining the appeals of the multitude, and tried to avert their eager importunities, saying that he did not want office; but when they came daily to his house and called him forth into the forum and pressed him with their clamours, he yielded;
10.4.1
and when he presented himself at once among the candidates for the consulship, he did not appear to come into the Campus in order to get office, but as one who brought victory and might in war and offered them to the citizens.
10.5.1
With such eager hopes did all receive him, and they made him consul for the second time, and did not permit a lot to be cast for the provinces, as was the custom, but at once voted him the conduct of the Macedonian war.
10.6.1
And it is said that when he had been appointed general against Perseus, and had been escorted home in splendid fashion by the whole people, he found there his daughter Tertia, who was still a little child, in tears.
10.7.1
He took her in his arms, therefore, and asked her why she grieved. And she, embracing and kissing him, said: Pray dost thou not know, Father, that our Perseus is dead? meaning a little pet dog of that name.
10.8.1
And Aemilius cried: Good fortune! my daughter, I accept the omen. Such, then, is the story which Cicero the orator relates in his work On Divination.
11.1.1
It was the custom for those who obtained the consulship to return thanks, as it were, for the great favour in a friendly speech to the people from the rostra; but Aemilius, having gathered an assembly of the citizens, said he had sued for his first consulship because he himself wanted office, but for his second because they wanted a general;
11.2.1
wherefore he was under no obligation to them; on the contrary, if they thought the war would be carried on better by another, he resigned the conduct of it; but if they had confidence in him they must not make themselves his colleagues in command, nor indulge in rhetoric about the war, but quietly furnish the necessary supplies for it, since, if they sought to command their commander, their campaigns would be still more ridiculous than they were already.
11.3.1
By these words he inspired the citizens with great reverence for himself, and with great expectations of the future, and all were glad that they had passed by the flatterers and chosen a general who had resolution and frankness of speech.
11.4.1
Thus was the Roman people, to the end that it might prevail and be greatest in the world, a servant of virtue and honour.
12.1.1
Now, that Aemilius Paulus, after setting out upon his campaign, had a fortunate voyage and an easy passage and came speedily and safely to the Roman camp, I attribute to the favour of Heaven;
12.2.1
but when I see that the war under his command was brought to an end partly by his fierce courage, partly by his excellent plans, partly by the eager assistance of his friends, and partly by his resolute adoption of fitting conclusions in times of danger, I cannot assign his remarkable and brilliant success to his celebrated good fortune, as I can in the case of other generals.
12.3.1
Unless, indeed, it be said that the avaricious conduct of Perseus was good fortune for Aemilius, since it utterly subverted the great and brilliant prospects of the Macedonians for the war (wherein their hopes ran high), because Perseus played the coward with his money.
12.4.1
For there came to him from the Bisternae, at his request, ten thousand horsemen with ten thousand men to run at their sides, all professional soldiers, men who knew not how to plough or to sail the seas, who did not follow the life of herdsmen, but who were ever practising one business and one art, that of fighting and conquering their antagonists.
12.5.1
And when these had encamped in Maedica and mingled with the soldiers of the king,—men of lofty stature, admirable in their discipline, great boasters, and loud in their threats against their enemies,—they inspired the Macedonians with courage and a belief that the Romans could not withstand them, but would be utterly terrified by their looks and movements, which were strange and repulsive.
12.6.1
But after Perseus had disposed the feelings of his men in this way and filled them with so great hopes, upon being asked to pay each captain of the mercenaries a thousand pieces, he was bewildered and crazed at the amount of gold required, and out of parsimony renounced and abandoned the alliance, as if he were a steward, rather than a foe, of the Romans, and was to give an exact account of his expenditures for the war to those against whom he waged it;
12.7.1
and yet he had his foes to give him lessons, for, apart from their other preparations, they had a hundred thousand men assembled and ready for their needs.
12.8.1
But he, though contending against so large a force, and in a war where such large reserves were maintained, measured out his gold and sealed it up in bags, as afraid to touch it as if it had belonged to others.
12.9.1
And this he did although he was no Lydian or Phoenician born, but laid claim to a share in the virtues of Alexander and Philip, whose descendant he was,—men who mastered the world through their belief that empire was to be bought with money, not money with empire.
12.10.1
At all events, it was a common saying that the cities of Greece were taken, not by Philip, but by Philip’s money.
12.11.1
And Alexander, when he was starting on his expedition to India, and saw that his Macedonians were dragging along after them their Persian wealth, which was already burdensome and heavy, set fire to the royal baggage-waggons first, and then persuaded his followers to do the same with theirs, and to set out for the war in light marching order, like men released from bondage.
12.12.1
But Perseus would not consent to pour out his gold upon himself, his children, and his kingdom, and thus purchase salvation with a small part of his treasures, but chose to be carried with many treasures as the wealthy captive, and to show the Romans how much he had saved and watched for them.
13.1.1
For he not only sent away the Gauls after playing them false, but also, after inducing Genthius the Illyrian, on payment of three hundred talents, to assist him in the war, he showed to the king’s messengers the money all counted out, and suffered them to put their seals upon the bags;
13.2.1
then, when Genthius, convinced that he had the price he had asked, committed a dreadful and impious deed, arresting and imprisoning a Roman embassy that had been sent to him, Perseus, thinking that the money was no longer needed to make Genthius an enemy of Rome, since before getting it he had given a lasting earnest of his hatred and had involved himself in the war by the great wrong which he had done,
13.3.1
deprived the poor wretch of the three hundred talents, and suffered him in a little while to be taken from his kingdom with his wife and children, as birds from their nest, by Lucius Anicius, a general sent against him with an army.
13.4.1
Aemilius, coming against such an adversary, scorned him indeed, but admired his preparations and his army. For Perseus had four thousand horsemen, and not much fewer than forty thousand heavy-armed footmen.
13.5.1
And planting himself with the sea behind him, along the foot-hills of Mount Olympus, on ground which nowhere afforded an approach, and which had been fortified on all sides by him with bulwarks and outworks of wood, he lay in great security, thinking that by delay and expense he would wear out Aemilius.
13.6.1
But Aemilius was a man who clung to his purpose, and tested every plan and method of attack; seeing, however, that his army, by reason of their former license, was impatient of delay, and inclined to dictate to their general many impracticable things, he rebuked them, and instructed them to take no thought or concern for anything, except how each man might keep himself and his armour in readiness for action, and ply his sword in Roman fashion, when their general gave them the opportunity.
13.7.1
Furthermore, he ordered the night watchmen to keep watch without their spears, with the idea that they would be more on the alert and would struggle more successfully against sleep, if they were unable to defend themselves against their enemies when they approached.
14.1.1
But his men were annoyed especially by the lack of drinking water, since only a little of it issued forth and collected in pools at the very edge of the sea, and that was bad. Aemilius, therefore, seeing that the lofty and wooded mountain of Olympus lay near, and judging from the greenness of its trees that there were veins of water coursing under ground, dug a number of vents and wells for them along the foot of the mountain.
14.2.1
These were at once filled with streams of pure water, which, under the weight and impulse of the pressure that was upon them, discharged themselves into the vacuum afforded.
14.3.1
And yet some deny that stores of ready water lie hidden away beneath the places from which springs flow, and that they merely come to light or force a passage when they issue forth; they hold rather that the water is generated and comes into existence then and there through the liquefaction of matter,
14.4.1
and that moist vapour is liquefied by density and cold, whenever, that is, it is compressed in the depths of earth and becomes fluid.
14.5.1
For, they argue, just as the breasts of women are not, like vessels, full of ready milk which flows out, but by converting the nourishment that is in them produce milk and strain it out;
14.6.1
so those places in the ground which are chilly and full of springs do not have hidden water, nor reservoirs which send forth the currents and deep waters of all our rivers from a source that is ready at hand, but by forcibly compressing and condensing vapour and air, they convert them into water.
14.7.1
At all events, those places which are dug open gush and flow more freely in response to such manipulation, just as the breasts of women do in response to sucking, because they moisten and soften the vapours;
14.8.1
whereas all places in the ground which are packed tight and unworked, are incapable of generating water, since they have not been subjected to the agitation which produces moisture.

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