Eutropius, Abridgment of Roman History

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§ 5.2 In the meantime the Cimbri and Teutones, whose force was still innumerable, passed over into Italy. Another battle was fought with them, by Caius Marius and Quintus Catulus, though with greater success on the part of Catulus, for in that battle, in which they both commanded, a hundred and forty thousand were either slain in the field or in the pursuit, and sixty thousand taken prisoners. Of the Roman soldiers in the two armies three hundred fell. Thirty-three standards were taken from the Cimbri; of which the army of Marius captured two, that of Catulus thirty-one. This was the end of the war: a triumph was decreed to both the consuls.
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§ 5.3 In the consulship of Sextus Julius Caesar and Lucius Marcius Philippus, in the six hundred and fifty-ninth year from the building of the city, when almost all other wars were at an end, the Piceni, Marsi, and Peligni, excited a most dangerous war in Italy; for after they had lived for many years in subjection to the Roman people, they now began to assert their claim to equal privileges. This was a very destructive war. Publius Rutilius, one of the consuls, Caepio, a nobleman in the flower of his age, and Porcius Cato, another consul, were killed in it. The generals against the Romans on the part of the Piceni and Marsi were Titus Vettius, Hierius Asinius, Titus Herennius, and Aulus Cluentius. The Romans fought against them successfully under the conduct of Caius Marius, who had now been made consul for the sixth time, also under Cnaeus Pompey, but particularly under Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who, among other signal exploits, so completely routed Cluentius, one of the enemy's generals, with his numerous forces, that he lost only one man of his own army. The war, however, was protracted for four years, with great havoc; at length, in the fifth, it was terminated by Lucius Cornelius Sulla when consul, who had greatly distinguished himself on many occasions when praetor in the same war.
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§ 5.4 In the six hundred and sixty-second year from the foundation of the city, the first civil war began at Rome; and in the same year also the Mithridatic war. Marius, when in his sixth consulship, gave rise to the Civil war; for when Sulla. the consul, was sent to conduct the war against Mithridates, who had possessed himself of Asia and Achaia, and delayed his army for a short time in Campania, in order that the remains of the Social war, of which we have just spoken, and which had been carried on within the limits of Italy, might be extinguished, Marius showed himself ambitious to be appointed to the Mithridatic war. Sulla, being incensed at this conduct, marched to Rome with his army. There he fought with Marius and Sulpicius; he was the first to enter the city in arms; Sulpicius he killed; Marius he put to flight; and then, having appointed Cnaeus Octavius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna the consuls for the year ensuing, set out for Asia.
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§ 5.5 For Mithridates, who was king of Pontus, and possessed Armenia Minor and the entire circuit of the Pontic sea with the Bosphorus, first attempted to expel Nicomedes, an ally of the Romans, from Bithynia; sending word to the senate, that he was going to make war upon him on account of the injuries which he had received. Answer was returned by the senate to Mithridates, that if he did so he himself should feel the weight of a war from the Romans. Incensed at this reply, he immediately invaded Cappadocia, and expelled from thence Ariobarzanes the king, an ally of the Roman people. He next marched into Bithynia and Paphlagonia, driving out the kings, Pylaemenes and Nicomedes, who were also in alliance with the Romans. He then hastened to Ephesus, and sent letters into all parts of Asia, with directions that wherever any Roman citizens should be found, they should all be put to death the same day.
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§ 5.6 In the meantime Athens also, a city of Achaia, was delivered up to Mithridates by Aristion an Athenian. For Mithridates had previously sent Archelaus, his general, into Achaia, with a hundred and twenty thousand horse and foot, by whom the rest of Greece was also occupied. Sulla besieged Archelaus at the Piraeus near Athens, and took the city itself. Engaging afterwards in battle with Archelaus, he gave him such a defeat, that out of a hundred and twenty thousand of the army of Archelaus scarce ten remained; while of that of Sulla only fourteen were killed. Mithridates, on receiving intelligence of this battle, sent seventy thousand chosen troops out of Asia to Archelaus, with whom Sulla came again to an engagement. In the first battle twenty thousand of the enemy were slain, and Diogenes, the son of Archelaus; in the second the entire forces of Mithridates were cut off. Archelaus himself lay hid for three days, stript of his armour, in the marshes. On the news of this state of things, Mithridates sent orders to treat with Sulla concerning peace.
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§ 5.7 In the meantime Sulla also reduced part of the Dardanians, Scordisci, Dalmatians, and Maedians, and granted terms of alliance to the rest. But when ambassadors arrived from King Mithridates to treat about peace, Sulla replied that he would grant it on no other condition than that he should quit the countries on which he had seized, and withdraw into his own dominions. Afterwards, however, the two came to a conference, and peace was settled between them, in order that Sulla, who was in haste to proceed to the Civil war, might leave no danger in his rear; for while Sulla was victorious over Mithridates in Achaia and Asia, Marius, who had been driven from the city, and Cornelius Cinna, one of the consuls, had recommenced hostilities in Italy, and entering Rome, put to death the noblest of the senators and others of consular rank, proscribed many, and pulling down the house of Sulla himself, forced his sons and wife to seek safety by flight; while all the rest of the senate, hastily quitting the city, fled to Sulla in Greece, entreating him to come to the support of his country. He accordingly crossed over into Italy, to conduct the Civil war against the consuls Norbanus and Scipio. In the first battle he engaged with Norbanus not far from Capua, when he killed seven thousand of his men, and took six thousand prisoners, losing only a hundred and twenty-four of his own army. From thence he directed his efforts against Scipio, and before a battle was fought, or any blood shed, he received the surrender of his whole army.
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§ 5.8 But on a change of consuls at Rome, and the election of Marius, the son of Marius, and Papirius Carbo to the consulate, Sulla again came to battle with Marius the younger, and killed fifteen thousand men, with the loss of only four hundred. Immediately afterwards also he entered the city. He then pursued Marius, the younger, to Praeneste, besieged him there, and drove him even to self-destruction. He afterwards fought a terrible battle with Lamponius and Carinas, the leaders of the Marian faction, near the Colline gate. The number of the enemy in that battle against Sulla is said to have been seventy thousand; twelve thousand surrendered themselves to Sulla: the rest were cut off in the field, in the camp, or in the pursuit, by the insatiable resentment of the conqueror. Cnaeus Carbo also, the other consul, fled from Ariminum into Sicily, and was there slain by Cnaeus Pompey; to whom, although but a young man, being only one-and-twenty years of age, Sulla, perceiving his activity, had committed the management of his troops, so that he was accounted second only to Sulla himself.
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§ 5.9 Carbo. then, being killed, Pompey recovered Sicily. Crossing next over into Africa, he put to death Domitius, a leader on the side of Marius, and Hiarbas the king of Mauritania, who had given assistance to Domitius. After these events, Sulla celebrated a triumph with great pomp for his success against Mithridates. Cnaeus Pompey also, while only in his twenty-fourth year, was allowed a triumph for his victories in Africa, a privilege which had been granted to no Roman before him. Such was the termination of two most lamentable wars, the Italian, also called the Social, and the Civil, which lasted for ten years, and occasioned the destruction of more than a hundred and fifty thousand men; twenty-four of consular rank, seven of praetorian, sixty of that of aedile, and nearly three hundred senators.
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§ 6.1 BOOK VI IN the consulate of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Quintus Catulus, after Sulla had composed the troubles of the state, new wars broke out; one in Spain, another in Pamphylia and Cilicia, a third in Macedonia, a fourth in Dalmatia. Sertorius. who had taken the side of Marius, dreading the fate of others who had been cut off, excited the Spaniards to a war. The generals sent against him were Quintus Caecilius Metellus, the son of that Metellus who had subdued Jugurtha, and the praetor Lucius Domitius. Domitius was killed by Hirtuleius, Sertorius's general. Metellus contended against Sertorius with various success. At length, as Metellus was thought singly unequal to the war, Cnaeus Pompey was sent into Spain. Thus, two generals being opposed to him, Sertorius often fought with very uncertain fortune. At last, in the eighth year of the war, he was put to death by his own soldiers, and an end made of the war by Cnaeus Pompey, at that time but a young man, and Quintus Metellus Pius; and nearly the whole of Spain was brought under the dominion of the Roman people.
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§ 6.2 Appius Claudius, on the expiration of his consulate was sent into Macedonia. He had some skirmishes with different tribes that inhabited the province of Rhodopa, and there fell ill and died. Cnaeus Scribonius Curio, on the termination of his consulship, was sent to succeed him. He conquered the Dardanians, penetrated as far as the Danube, and obtained the honour of a triumph, putting an end to the war within three years.
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§ 6.3 Publius Servilius, an energetic man, was sent, after his consulate, into Cilicia and Pamphilia. He reduced Cilicia, besieged and took the most eminent cities of Lycia, amongst them Phaselis, Olympus, and Corycus. The Isauri he also attacked, and compelled to surrender, and, within three years, put an end to the war. He was the first of the Romans that marched over Mount Taurus. On his return, he was granted a triumph, and acquired the surname of Isauricus.
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§ 6.4 Cnaeus Cosconius was sent into Illyricum as proconsul. He reduced a great part of Dalmatia, took Salonae, and, having made an end of the war, returned to Rome after an absence of two years.
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§ 6.5 About the same time, the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the colleague of Catulus, attempted to kindle a civil war; but in one summer that commotion was suppressed. Thus there were several triumphs at the same time, that of Metellus for Spain, a second for Spain obtained by Pompey, one of Curio for Macedonia, and one of Servilius for Isauria.
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§ 6.6 In the six hundred and seventy-sixth year from the building of the city, in the consulate of Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, died, appointing by his will the Roman people his heir. Mithridates, breaking the peace, again proceeded to invade Bithynia and Asia. Both the consuls being sent out against him, met with various success. Cotta, being defeated by him in a battle near Chalcedon, was even forced into the town, and besieged there. But Mithridates, having marched from thence to Cyzicus, that, after capturing that city, he might overrun all Asia, Lucullus, the other consul, met him; and, whilst Mithridates was detained at the siege of Cyzicus, besieged him in the rear, exhausted him with famine, defeated him in several battles, and at last pursued him to Byzantium, now called Constantinople. Lucullus also vanquished his commanders in a sea-fight. Thus, in a single winter and summer, almost a hundred thousand men on the king's side were cut off by Lucullus.
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§ 6.7 In the six hundred and seventy-eighth year of Rome, Marcus Licinius Lucullus, the cousin of that Lucullus who had carried on the war against Mithridates, obtained the province of Macedonia. A new war, too, suddenly sprung up in Italy; for eighty-four gladiators, led by Spartacus, Crixus, and Oenomaus, having broken out of a school at Capua, made their escape; and, wandering over Italy, kindled a war in it, not much less serious than that which Hannibal had raised; for, after defeating several generals and two consuls of the Romans, they collected an army of nearly sixty thousand men. They were, however, defeated in Apulia by the proconsul Marcus Licinius Crassus; and, after much calamity to Italy, the war was terminated in its third year.
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§ 6.8 In the six hundred and eighty-first year from the founding of the city, in the consulate of Publius Cornelius Lentulus and Cnaeus Aufidius Orestes, there were but two wars of any importance throughout the Roman empire, the Mithridatic and the Macedonian. Of these the two Luculli, Lucius and Marcus, had the direction. Lucius Lucullus, after the battle at Cyzicus, in which he had conquered Mithridates, and the sea-fight, in which he had overcome his generals, pursued him; and, recovering Paphlagonia and Bithynia, invaded his very kingdom. He took Sinope and Amisus, two most eminent cities of Pontus. In a second battle, near the city Cabira, where Mithridates had assembled a vast army from all parts of his kingdom, thirty thousand of the king's chosen troops were cut in pieces by five thousand of the Romans, and Mithridates was put to flight and his camp plundered. Armenia Minor, also, of which he had taken possession, was wrested from him. Mithridates was, however, received after his flight by Tigranes, the king of Armenia, who at that time reigned in great glory; for he had frequently defeated the Persians, and had made himself master of Mesopotamia, Syria, and part of Phoenicia.
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§ 6.9 Lucullus, therefore, still pursuing his routed enemy, entered even the kingdom of Tigranes, who ruled over both the Armenias. Tigranocerta, the most noble city of Armenia, he succeeded in taking; the king himself, who advanced against him with six hundred thousand cuirassiers, and a hundred thousand archers and other troops, he so completely defeated with a force of only eighteen thousand, that he annihilated a great part of the Armenians. Marching from thence to Nisibis, he took that city also, and made the king's brother prisoner. But as those whom Lucullus had left in Pontus with part of the army in order to defend the conquered countries belonging to the Romans, grew negligent and avaricious in their conduct, they gave Mithridates an opportunity of again making an irruption into Pontus, and thus the war was renewed. While Lucullus, after the reduction of Nisibis, was preparing for an expedition against the Persians, a successor was sent out to take his place.
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§ 6.10 The other Lucullus, who had the management of affairs in Macedonia, was the first of the Romans that made war upon the Bessi, defeating them in a great battle on Mount Haemus; he reduced the town of Uscudama, which the Bessi inhabited, on the same day in which he attacked it; he also took Cabyle, and penetrated as far as the river Danube. He then besieged several cities lying above Pontus, where he destroyed Apollonia, Calatis, Parthenopolis, Tomi, Histros, and Burziaone, and, putting an end to the war, returned to Rome. Both the Luculli however triumphed, but the Lucullus, who had fought against Mithridates, with the greater glory, because he had returned victorious over such powerful nations.
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§ 6.11 After the Macedonian war was ended, but while that with Mithridates still continued (which, on the departure of Lucullus, that king had renewed, collecting all his forces for the purpose), the Cretan war arose, and Caecilius Metellus being sent to conduct it, secured the whole province, by a succession of great battles, within three years, and received the appellation of Creticus, and a triumph on account of the island. About this time Libya also, by the will of Apion, the king of the country, was added to the Roman empire; in it were the celebrated cities, Berenice, Ptolemais, and Cyrene.
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§ 6.12 During these transactions, pirates infested all the seas, so that navigation, and that alone, was unsafe to the Romans, who were now victorious throughout the world. The war against these pirates, therefore, was committed to Cnaeus Pompey, who, with surprising success and celerity, finished it in the course of a few months. Soon after, the war against Mithridates and Tigranes was entrusted to him; in the conduct of which, he overcame Mithridates in Armenia Minor in a battle by night, and plundered his camp, killing at the same time forty thousand of his troops, while he lost only twenty of his own men, and two centurions. Mithridates fled with his wife and two attendants; and not long after, in consequence of his cruelty to his own family, he was reduced, through a sedition excited among his soldiers by his son Pharnaces, to the necessity of putting an end to his existence, and swallowed poison. Such was the end of Mithridates, a man of singular energy and ability; his death happened near the Bosporus. He reigned sixty years, lived seventy-two, and maintained a war against the Romans for forty.
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§ 6.13 Pompey next made war upon Tigranes, who surrendered himself, coming to Pompey's camp at sixteen miles distance from Artaxata; and, throwing himself at his feet, placed in his hands his diadem, which Pompey returned to him, and treated him with great respect, but obliged him to give up part of his dominions and to pay a large sum of money: Syria, Phoenicia, and Sophene, were taken from him, and six thousand talents of silver, which he had to pay to the Roman people because he had raised a war against them without cause.
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§ 6.14 Pompey soon after made war also upon the Albani; and defeated their king Orodes three times; at length, being prevailed upon by letters and presents, he granted him pardon and peace. He also defeated Artoces, king of Iberia, in battle, and reduced him to surrender. Armenia Minor he conferred upon Deiotarus, the king of Galatia, because he had acted as his ally in the Mithridatic war. To Attalus and Pylaemenes he restored Paphlagonia; and appointed Aristarchus king of the Colchians. Shortly after he subdued the Itureans and Arabians; and, on entering Syria, rewarded Seleucia, a city near Antioch, with independence, because it had not admitted King Tigranes. To the inhabitants of Antioch he restored their hostages. On those of Daphne, being charmed with the beauty of the spot and the abundance of water, he bestowed a portion of land, in order that their grove might be enlarged. Marching from thence to Judea, he took Jerusalem, the capital, in the third month; twelve thousand of the Jews being slain, and the rest allowed to surrender on terms. After these achievements, he returned into Asia, and put an end to this most tedious war.
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§ 6.15 In the consulate of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the orator, and Caius Antonius, in the six hundred and eighty-ninth year from the foundation of the city, Lucius Sergius Catiline, a man of very noble family, but of a most corrupt disposition, conspired to destroy his country, in conjunction with some other eminent but desperate characters. He was expelled from the city by Cicero; his accomplices were apprehended and strangled in prison; and he himself was defeated and killed in battle by Antonius, the other consul.
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§ 6.16 In the six hundred and ninetieth year from the building of the city, in the consulate of Decimus Junius Silanus and Lucius Muraena, Metellus triumphed on account of Crete, Pompey for the Piratic and Mithridatic wars. No triumphal procession was ever equal to this; the sons of Mithridates, the son of Tigranes, and Aristobulus, king of the Jews, were led before his car; a vast sum of money, an immense mass of gold and silver, was carried in front. At this time there was no war of any importance throughout the world.
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§ 6.17 In the six hundred and ninety-third year from the founding of the city, Caius Julius Caesar, who was afterwards emperor, was made consul with Lucius Bibulus; and Gaul and Illyricum, with ten legions, were decreed to him. He first subdued the Helvetii, who are now called Sequani; and afterwards, by conquering in most formidable wars, proceeded as far as the British ocean. In about nine years he subdued all that part of Gaul which lies between the Alps, the river Rhone, the Rhine, and the Ocean, and extends in circumference nearly three thousand two hundred miles. He next made war upon the Britons, to whom not even the name of the Romans was known before his time; and having subdued them, and received hostages, sentenced them to pay a tribute. On Gaul, under the name of tribute, he imposed the yearly sum of forty thousand sestertia; and invading the Germans on the other side of the Rhine, defeated them in several most sanguinary engagements. Among so many successes, he met with three defeats, once in person among the Arverni, and twice in Germania during his absence; for two of his lieutenant-generals, Titurius and Aurunculeius, were cut off by ambuscades.
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§ 6.18 About the same time, in the six hundred and ninety-seventh year from the foundation of the city, Marcus Licinius Crassus, the colleague of Cnaeus Pompey the Great in his second consulship, was sent against the Parthians; and having engaged the enemy near Carrae, contrary to the omens and auspices, was defeated by Surena, the general of king Orodes, and at last killed, together with his son, a most noble and excellent young man. The remains of the army were saved by Caius Cassius the quaestor, who, with singular courage, so ably retrieved the ruined fortune of the Romans, that, in his retreat over the Euphrates, he defeated the Persians in several battles.
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§ 6.19 Soon after followed the Civil war, a war truly execrable and deplorable, in which, besides the havoc that occurred in the several battles, the fortune of the Roman people was changed. For Caesar, on returning victorious from Gaul, proceeded to demand another consulship, and in such a manner, that it was granted him without hesitation; yet opposition was made to it by Marcellus the consul, Bibulus, Pompey, and Cato, and he was in consequence ordered to disband his army and return to Rome; in revenge for which insult, he marched with his army from Ariminum, where he kept his forces assembled, against his country. The consuls, together with Pompey, the whole senate, and all the nobility, fled from the city, and crossed over into Greece; and in Epirus, Macedonia, and Achaia, the senate, under Pompey as their general, prepared war against Caesar.
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§ 6.20 Caesar, having marched into the deserted city, made himself dictator. Soon after he set out for Spain, where he defeated the armies of Pompey, which were very powerful and brave, with their three generals, Lucius Afranius, Marcus Petreius, and Marcus Varro. Returning from thence, he went over into Greece. He took the field against Pompey, but in the first battle was defeated and put to flight; he escaped, however, because Pompey declined to pursue him, as the night was coming on; when Caesar remarked, that Pompey knew not how to conquer, and that that was the only day on which he himself might have been vanquished. They next fought at Palaeopharsalus, in Thessaly, leading great forces into the field on both sides. The army of Pompey consisted of forty thousand foot, six hundred horse on the left wing, and five hundred on the right, besides auxiliary troops from the whole east, and all the nobility, senators without number, men of praetorian and consular rank, and some who had already been conquerors of powerful nations. Caesar had not quite thirty thousand infantry in his army, and but one thousand horse.
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§ 6.21 Never before had a greater number of Roman forces assembled in one place, or under better generals, forces which would easily have subdued the whole world, had they been led against barbarians. They fought with great eagerness, but Pompey was at last overcome, and his camp plundered. Pompey himself, when put to flight, sought refuge at Alexandria, with the hope of receiving aid from the king of Egypt, to whom, on account of his youth, he had been appointed guardian by the senate; he, however, regarding fortune rather than friendship, caused Pompey to be killed, and sent his head and ring to Caesar; at sight of which even Caesar is said to have shed tears, as he viewed the head of so great a man, once his own son-in law.
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§ 6.22 Caesar soon after went to Alexandria. Ptolemy attempted to form a plot against his life also; for which reason war was made upon him, and, being defeated, he perished in the Nile, and his body was found covered with a golden coat of mail. Caesar, having made himself master of Alexandria, conferred the kingdom on Cleopatra, the sister of Ptolemy, with whom he himself had an illicit connexion. On his return from thence, Caesar defeated in battle Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates the Great, who had assisted Pompey in Thessaly, taken up arms in Pontus, and seized upon several provinces of the Roman people; and at last drove him to self-destruction.
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§ 6.23 Returning from thence to Rome, he created himself a third time consul with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been his master of the horse when dictator the year before. Next he went into Africa, where a great number of the nobility, in conjunction with Juba, king of Mauritania, had resumed hostilities. The Roman leaders were Publius Cornelius Scipio, of the most ancient family of Scipio Africanus (who had also been the father-in-law of the great Pompey ) Marcus Petreius, Quintus Varus, Marcus Porcius Cato, and Lucius Cornelius Faustus, the son of Sulla the dictator. In a pitched battle fought against them, Caesar, after many struggles, was victorious. Cato, Scipio, Petreius, Juba, killed themselves; Faustus, Pompey's son-in-law, was slain by Caesar.
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§ 6.24 On his return to Rome the year after, Caesar made himself a fourth time consul, and immediately proceeded to Spain, where the sons of Pompey, Cnaeus, and Sextus, had again raised a formidable war. Many engagements took place, the last near the city of Munda, in which Caesar was so nearly defeated, that, upon his forces giving way, he felt inclined to kill himself, lest, after such great glory in war, he should fall, at the age of fifty-six, into the hands of young men. At length, having rallied his troops, he gained the victory; the elder son of Pompey was slain, the younger fled.
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§ 6.25 The civil wars throughout the world being now terminated, Caesar returned to Rome, and began to conduct himself with too great arrogance, contrary to the usages of Roman liberty. As he disposed, therefore, at his own pleasure, of those honours, which were before conferred by the people and did not even rise up when the senate approached him, an d exercised regal, or almost tyrannical power, in other respects, a conspiracy was formed against him by sixty or more Roman senators and knights. The chief among the conspirators were the two Bruti, (of the family of that Brutus who had been made first consul of Rome, and who had expelled the kings) Caius Cassius, and Servilius Casca. Caesar, in consequence, having entered the senate house with the rest, on a certain day appointed for a meeting of the senate, was stabbed with three and twenty wounds.
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§ 7.1 BOOK VII After the assassination of Caesar, in about the seven hundred and ninth year of the city, the civil wars were renewed; for the senate favoured the assassins of Caesar; and Antony, the consul, being of Caesar's party, endeavoured to crush them in a civil war. The state therefore being thrown into confusion, Antony, perpetrating many acts of violence, was declared an enemy by the senate. The two consuls, Pansa and Hirtius, were sent in pursuit of him, together with Octavianus, a youth of eighteen years of age, the nephew of Caesar, whom by his will he had appointed his heir, directing him to bear his name; this is the same who was afterwards called Augustus, and obtained the imperial dignity. These three generals therefore marching against Antony, defeated him. It happened, however, that the two victorious consuls lost their lives; and the three armies in consequence became subject to Caesar only.
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§ 7.2 Antony, being routed, and having lost his army, fled to Lepidus, who had been master of the horse to Caesar, and was at that time in possession of a strong body of forces, by whom he was well received. By the mediation of Lepidus, Caesar shortly after made peace with Antony, and, as if with intent to avenge the death of his father, by whom he had been adopted in his will, marched to Rome at the head of an army, and forcibly procured his appointment to the consulship in his twentieth year. In conjunction with Antony and Lepidus he proscribed the senate, and proceeded to make himself master of the state by arms. By their acts, Cicero the orator, and many others of the nobility, were put to death.
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§ 7.3 In the meantime Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Caesar, raised a great war; for there were several armies in Macedonia and the East, of which they took the command. Caesar Octavianus Augustus, therefore, and Mark Antony, proceeding against them (for Lepidus remained for the defence of Italy ), came to an engagement at Philippi, a city of Macedonia. In the first battle Antony and Caesar were defeated, but Cassius, the leader of the nobility, fell; in the second they defeated and killed Brutus, and very many of the nobility who had joined them in the war; and the republic was divided among the conquerors, so that Augustus had Spain, the Gauls, and Italy; Antony, Asia, Pontus, and the East. But the consul Lucius Antonius, the brother of him who had fought with Caesar against Brutus and Cassius, kindled a civil war in Italy; and being defeated near Perusia, a city of Tuscany, was taken prisoner, but not put to death.
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§ 7.4 In the meantime a war of a serious nature was excited in Sicily by Sextus Pompey, the son of Cnaeus Pompey the Great, those that survived of the party of Brutus and Cassius flocking to join him from all parts. The war against Sextus Pompey was carried on by Caesar Augustus Octavianus and Mark Antony. A peace was at length concluded.
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§ 7.5 About that time Marcus Agrippa met with great success in Aquitania; also Lucius Ventidius Bassus defeated the Persians, who were making incursions into Syria, in three engagements. He killed Pacorus, the son of king Orodes, on that very day on which Orodes, the king of the Persians, had before put Crassus to death by the hands of his general Surena. He was the first who celebrated a most legitimate triumph at Rome over the Parthians.
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§ 7.6 In the meantime Sextus Pompey violated the peace, and, being defeated in a sea-fight, fled to Asia, and was there put to death. Antony, who was master of Asia and the East, having divorced the sister of Caesar Augustus Octavianus, married Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. He also fought in person against the Persians, and defeated them in the first encounters; but on his return suffered greatly from famine and pestilence; and as the Parthians pressed on him in his retreat, he retired from before them just as if he had been defeated.
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§ 7.7 He also excited a great civil war, at the instigation of his wife Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, who aspired with a womanish ambition to reign at Rome. He was defeated by Augustus in the remarkable and celebrated sea-fight at Actium, a place in Epirus; whence he fled into Egypt, and there, as his circumstances grew desperate, since all went over to Augustus, committed suicide. Cleopatra applied to herself an asp, and perished by its venom. Egypt was added to, the Roman empire by Octavianus Augustus, and Cnaeus Cornelius Gallus appointed governor of it; he was the first Roman judge that Egypt had.
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§ 7.8 Having thus brought wars to an end throughout the world, Octavianus Augustus returned to Rome in the twelfth year after he had been elected consul. From that period he held the government as sole ruler for forty-four years, for during the twelve previous years he had held it in conjunction with Antony and Lepidus. Thus from the beginning of his reign to the end were fifty-six years. He died a natural death in his eighty-sixth year, at the town of Atella in Campania. and his remains are interred at Rome in the Campus Martius. He was a man who was considered in most respects, and not without reason, to resemble a divinity, for scarcely ever was there any one more successful than he in war, or more prudent in peace. During the forty-four years that he held the government alone, he conducted himself with the greatest courtesy, being most liberal to all, and most faithful to his friends, whom he raised to such honours, that he placed them almost on a level with his own dignity.
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§ 7.9 At no period was the Roman state more flourishing; for, to say nothing of the civil wars, in which he was unconquered, he added to the Roman empire Egypt, Cantabria, Dalmatia, often before conquered but only then entirely subdued, Pannonia, Aquitania, Illyricum, Rhaetia, the Vindelici and Salassi on the Alps, and all the maritime cities of Pontus, among which the two most noble were Bosporus and Panticapaeon. He also conquered the Dacians in battle; put to the sword numerous forces of the Germans; and drove them beyond the river Elbe, which is in the country of the barbarians far beyond the Rhine. This war however he carried on by the agency of his step-son Drusus, as he had conducted the Pannonian war by that of his other step-son Tiberius, in which he transplanted forty thousand prisoners from Germania, and settled them in Gaul on the bank of the Rhine. He recovered Armenia from the Parthians; the Persians gave him hostages, which they had given to no one before; and also restored the Roman standards, which they had taken from Crassus when he was defeated.
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§ 7.10 The Scythians and Indians, to whom the Roman name was before unknown, sent him presents and ambassadors. Galatia also was made a province under his reign, having before been an independent kingdom, and Marcus Lollius was the first that governed it, in quality of praetor. So much was he beloved even by the barbarians, that kings, allies of the Roman people, founded cities in his honour, to which they gave the name of Caesarea, as one in Mauritania, built by King Juba, and another in Palestine, which is now a very celebrated city. Many kings, moreover, left their own dominions, and, assuming the Roman dress, that is, the toga, ran by the side of his carriage or his horse. At his death he was styled a divinity. He left the state in a most prosperous condition to his successor Tiberius, who had been his step-son, afterwards his son-in-law, and lastly his son by adoption.
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§ 7.11 Tiberius distinguished his reign by great indolence, excessive cruelty, unprincipled avarice, and abandoned licentiousness. He fought on no occasion in person; the wars were carried on by his generals. Some kings, whom he induced to visit him by seducing allurements, he never sent back; among them was Archelaus of Cappadocia, whose kingdom also he reduced to the form of a province, and directed that its principal city should be called after his own name; and, having been before called Mazaca, it is now termed Caesarea. He died in Campania, in the three and twentieth year of his reign, and the eighty-third of his age, to the great joy of all men.
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§ 7.12 To him succeeded Caius Caesar, surnamed Caligula, the grandson of Drusus, the step-son of Augustus, and grand-nephew of Tiberius himself, a most wicked and cruel prince, who effaced even the memory of Tiberius's enormities. He undertook a war against the Germans; but, after entering Suevia, made no effort to do anything. He committed incest with his sisters, and acknowledged a daughter that he had by one of them. While tyrannizing over all with the utmost avarice, licentiousness, and cruelty, he was assassinated in the palace, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, in the third year, tenth month, and eighth day of his reign.
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§ 7.13 After him reigned Claudius, the uncle of Caligula, and son of that Drusus who has a monument at Moguntiacum, whose grandson Caligula also was. His reign was of no striking character; he acted, in many respects, with gentleness and moderation, in some with cruelty and folly. He made war upon Britain, which no Roman since Julius Caesar had visited; and, having reduced it through the agency of Cnaeus Sentius and Aulus Plautius, illustrious and noble men, he celebrated a magnificent triumph. Certain islands also, called the Orcades, situated in the ocean, beyond Britain, he added to the Roman empire, and gave his son the name of Britannicus. So condescending, too, was he towards some of his friends, that he even attended Plautius, a man of noble birth, who had obtained many signal successes in the expedition to Britain, in his triumph, and walked at his left hand when he went up to the Capitol. He lived to the age of sixty-four, and reigned fourteen years; and after his death was consecrated and deified. To him succeeded NeroCaligula, and both disgraced and weakened the Roman empire; he indulged in such extraordinary luxury and extravagance, that, after the example of Caius Caligula, he even bathed in hot and cold perfumes, and fished with golden nets, which he drew up with cords of purple silk. He put to death a very great number of the senate. To all good men he was an enemy. At last he exposed himself in so disgraceful a manner, that he danced and sung upon the stage in the dress of a harp-player and tragedian. He was guilty of many murders, his brother, wife, and mother, being put to death by him. He set on fire the city of Rome, that he might enjoy the sight of a spectacle such as Troy formerly presented when taken and burned. In military affairs he attempted nothing. Britain he almost lost; for two of its most noble towns were taken and levelled to the ground under his reign. The Parthian's took from him Armenia, and compelled the Roman legions to pass under the yoke. Two provinces however were formed under him; Pontus Polemoniacus, by the concession of King Polemon; and the Cottian Alps, on the death of King Cottius.
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§ 7.15 When, having become detestable by such conduct to the city of Rome, and being deserted at the same time by every one, and declared an enemy by the senate, he was sought for to be led to punishment (the punishment being, that he should be dragged naked through the streets, with a fork placed under his head, be beaten to death with rods, and then hurled from the Tarpeian rock ), he fled from the palace, and killed himself in a suburban villa of one of his freed-men, between the Salaria and Nomentana roads, at the fourth milestone from the city. He built those hot baths at Rome, which were formerly called the Neronian, but now the Alexandrian. He died in the thirty-second year of his age, and the fourteenth year of his reign; and in him all the family of Augustus became extinct.
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§ 7.16 To Nero succeeded Servius Galba, a senator of a very ancient and noble family, elected emperor when in his seventy-third year by the Spaniards and Gauls, and soon after readily acknowledged by the whole army; for his life, though but that of a private person, had been distinguished by many military and civil exploits, having been often consul, often proconsul, and frequently general in most important wars. His reign was short, but had a promising commencement, except that he seemed to incline too much to severity. He was killed however by the treachery of Otho, in the seventh month of his reign, in the forum at Rome, and buried in his gardens, which are situated in the Aurelian way, not far from the city.
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§ 7.17 OTHO, after Galba was killed, took possession of the government, a man of a nobler descent on the mother's than the father's side, but obscure on neither. In private life he was effeminate, and an intimate of Nero; in his government he could give no evidence of his disposition; for Vitellius, about the same time that Otho had slain Galba, having been also chosen emperor by the German armies, Otho, having commenced a war against him, and having sustained a defeat in a slight skirmish near Bebriacum in Italy, voluntarily, though he had still powerful forces remaining, put an end to his life, in spite of the entreaties of his soldiers that he would not so soon despair of the issue of the war; saying, “that he was not of sufficient importance that a civil war should be raised on his account.” He perished thus voluntarily in the thirty-eighth year of his age, and on the ninety-fifth day of his reign.
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§ 7.18 Vitellius next obtained the imperial dignity, of a family rather honourable than noble, for his father was not of very high birth, though he had filled three regular consulships. He reigned most disgracefully, being distinguished by the greatest cruelty, but especially by gluttony and voraciousness, since he is reported to have often feasted four or five times a day. A most remarkable supper at least has been recorded, which his brother Vitellius set before him, and in which, besides other expensive dainties, two thousand fishes and seven thousand birds are said to have been placed on the table. Being anxious to resemble Nero, and aiming so openly at this that he even paid respect to his remains, which had been meanly buried, he was slain by the generals of the emperor Vespasian, Vitellius having previously put to death Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, and burned his corpse at the same time with the Capitol. When killed, he was dragged naked, with great ignominy, through the public streets of the city, with his hair erect, and his head raised by means of a sword placed under his chin, and pelted with dung on the face and breast by all that came in the way; at last his throat was cut, and he was thrown into the Tiber, and had not even the common rites of burial. He perished in the fifty-seventh year of his age, in the eighth month and first day of his reign.
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§ 7.19 To him succeeded Vespasian, who had been chosen emperor in Palestine, a prince indeed of obscure birth, but worthy to be compared with the best emperors, and in private life greatly distinguished, as he had been sent by Claudius into Germania, and afterwards into Britain, and had contended two and thirty times with the enemy; he had also added to the Roman empire two very powerful nations, twenty towns, and the Isle of Wight on the coast of Britain. At Rome he acted with the greatest forbearance during his government; though he was rather too eager after money; not however that he deprived any one of it unjustly, and even when he had collected it with the greatest diligence and anxiety, he was in the habit of distributing it most readily, especially to the indigent; nor was the liberality of any prince before him greater or more judicious: he was also of a most mild and amiable disposition, insomuch that he never willingly inflicted a severer penalty than banishment, even on persons convicted of treason against himself. Under this prince Judaea was added to the Roman empire, and Jerusalem, the most celebrated city of Palestine. He also reduced to the form of provinces Achaia, Lycia, Rhodes, Byzantium, Samos, which had been free till this period; together with Thrace, Cilicia, and Comagena, which had been governed by their respective kings in alliance with the Romans.
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§ 7.20 Offences and animosities he never bore in mind; reproaches uttered against himself by lawyers and philosophers he bore with indulgence, but was a strenuous enforcer of military discipline. He triumphed, together with his son Titus, on account of the taking of Jerusalem. After having thus become an object of love and favour with the senate and the people, and indeed with all men, he died of a diarrhoea, in his own villa in the Sabine country, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, the ninth year and seventh day of his reign; and was enrolled among the gods. To him succeeded his son Titus, who was also called Vespasian, a man remarkable for every species of virtue, so that he was styled the favourite and delight of mankind. He was extremely eloquent, warlike, and temperate; he pleaded causes in Latin, and composed poems and tragedies in Greek. At the siege of Jerusalem, while serving under his father, he killed twelve of the besieged with wounds from as many arrows. During his government at Rome, such was his lenity towards the citizens, that he did not punish a single person; and even some that were convicted of a conspiracy against himself he released, and treated them on the same terms of intimacy as before. Such was his good-nature and generosity, that he never refused any thing to any one, and being blamed by his friends on this account, replied, that no one ought to leave an emperor in discontent. Hence, having recollected once at supper, that he had conferred no obligation on any one that day, he exclaimed: “O, my friends! I have lost this day!” He built an amphitheatre at Rome, and slaughtered five thousand wild beasts at the dedication of it.
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§ 7.22 While beloved for such conduct, with extraordinary affection, he fell ill and died in the same villa as his father, two years, eight months, and twenty days after he became emperor, and in the forty-second year of his age. So great was the public lamentation on his death, that all mourned as for a loss in their own families. The senate, having received intelligence of his death about the evening, hurried into the senate-house in the night, and heaped upon him after his death even more expressions of good will and commendation, than they had uttered when he was alive and present among them. He was enrolled among the gods.
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§ 7.23 Domitian next received the imperial dignity, the younger brother of Titus, but more like Nero, or Caligula, or Tiberius, than his father or brother. In the commencement however of his reign he used his power with moderation; but, soon proceeding to the greatest excesses of licentiousness, rage, cruelty, and avarice, he provoked such universal detestation, that he effaced the remembrance of his father's and his brother's merits. He put to death the most distinguished of the senate. He was the first that required to be addressed as Lord and God; and he suffered no statue to be erected to him in the Capitol except of gold or silver. He put his own cousins to death. His pride also was execrable. He made four expeditions, one against the Sarmatians, another against the Catti, and two against the Dacians. On account of the Dacians and the Catti he celebrated a double triumph; for the Sarmatians, he assumed only the laurel. He suffered many disasters however in these wars, for in Sarmatia one of his legions was cut off together with its captain, and by the Dacians Oppius Sabinus, a person of consular dignity, and Cornelius Fuscus, the prefect of the praetorian cohort, were slain, with numerous armies. At Rome he also erected several public buildings, among which were the Capitol, the Forum Transitorium, the Odeum, the Porticus Divorum, the temples of Isis and Serapis, and the Stadium. But, becoming universally odious on account of his crimes, he was put to death by a conspiracy of his own servants within the palace, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and the fifteenth of his reign. His corpse was carried out with extreme insult by common bearers, and buried ignominiously.
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§ 8.1 BOOK VIII IN the eight hundred and fiftieth year from the foundation of the city, in the consulship of Vetus and Valens [96 CE], the empire was restored to a most prosperous condition, being committed, with great good fortune, to the rule of meritorious princes. To Domitian, a most murderous tyrant, succeeded Nerva, a man of moderation and activity in private life, and of noble descent, though not of the very highest rank. He was made emperor at an advanced age, Petronius Secundus, the praefect of the praetorian guards, and Parthenius, one of the assassins of Domitian, giving him their support, and conducted himself with great justice and public spirit. He provided for the good of the state by a divine foresight, in his adoption of Trajan. He died at Rome, after a reign of one year, four months, and eight days, in the seventy-second year of his age, and was enrolled among the gods.
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§ 8.2 To him succeeded Ulpius Crinitus Trajanus, born at Italica in Spain, of a family rather ancient than eminent for his father was the first consul in it. He was chosen emperor at Agrippina, a city of Gaul. He exercised the government in such a manner, that he is deservedly preferred to all the other emperors. He was a man of extraordinary skill in managing affairs of state, and of remarkable courage. The limits of the Roman empire, which, since the reign of Augustus, had been rather defended than honourably enlarged, he extended far and wide. He rebuilt some cities in Germania; he subdued Dacia by the overthrow of Decebalus, and formed a province beyond the Danube, in that territory which the Thaiphali, Victoali, and Theruingi now occupy. This province was a thousand miles in circumference.
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§ 8.3 He recovered Armenia, which the Parthians had seized, putting to death Parthamasires who held the government of it. He gave a king to the Albani. He received into alliance the king of the Iberians, Sarmatians, Bosporani, Arabians, Osdroeni, and Colchians. He obtained the mastery over the Cordueni and Marcomedi, as well as over Anthemusia, an extensive region of Persia. He conquered and kept possession of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Babylon, and the country of the Messenii. He advanced as far as the boundaries of India, and the Red Sea, where he formed three provinces, Armenia, Assyrians, and Mesopotamia, including the tribes which border on Madena. He afterwards, too, reduced Arabia into the form of a province. He also fitted out a fleet for the Red Sea, that he might use it to lay waste the coasts of India.
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§ 8.4 Yet he went beyond his glory in war, in ability and judgment as a ruler, conducting himself as an equal towards all, going often to his friends as a visitor, either when they were ill, or when they were celebrating feast days, and entertaining them in his turn at banquets where there was no distinction of rank, and sitting frequently with them in their chariots; doing nothing unjust towards any of the senators, nor being guilty of any dishonesty to fill his treasury; exercising liberality to all, enriching with offices of trust, publicly and privately, every body whom he had known even with the least familiarity; building towns throughout the world, granting many immunities to states, and doing every thing with gentleness and kindness; so that during his whole reign, there was but one senator condemned, and he was sentenced by the senate without Trajan's knowledge. Hence, being regarded throughout the world as next to a god, he deservedly obtained the highest veneration both living and dead.
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§ 8.5 Among other sayings of his, the following remarkable one is mentioned. When his friends found fault with him, for being too courteous to every body, he replied, that “he was such an emperor to his subjects, as he had wished, when a subject, that emperors should be to him.” After having gained the greatest glory both in the field and at home, he was cut off, as he was returning from Persia, by a diarrhoea, at Seleucia in Isauria. He died in the sixty-third year, ninth month, and fourth day of his age, and in the nineteenth year, sixth month, and fifteenth day of his reign. He was enrolled among the gods, and was the only one of all the emperors that was buried within the city. His bones, contained in a golden urn, lie in the forum which he himself built, under a pillar whose height is a hundred and forty-four feet. So much respect has been paid to his memory, that, even to our own times, they shout in acclamations to the emperors, “More fortunate than Augustus, better than Trajan!” So much has the fame of his goodness prevailed, that it affords ground for most noble illustration in the hands either of such as flatter, or of such as praise with sincerity.
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§ 8.6 After the death of Trajan, Aelius Hadrian was made emperor, not from any wish to that effect having been expressed by Trajan himself, but through the influence of Plotina, Trajan's wife; for Trajan in his life-time had refused to adopt him, though he was the son of his cousin. He also was born at Italica in Spain. Envying Trajan's glory, he immediately gave up three of the provinces which Trajan had added to the empire, withdrawing the armies from Assyrians, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and deciding that the Euphrates should be the boundary of the empire. When he was proceeding, to act similarly with regard to Dacia, his friends dissuaded him, lest many Roman citizens should be left in the hands of the barbarians, because Trajan, after he had subdued Dacia, had transplanted thither an infinite number of men from the whole Roman world, to people the country and the cities; as the land had been exhausted of inhabitants in the long war maintained by Decebalus.
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§ 8.7 He enjoyed peace, however, through the whole course of his reign; the only war that he had, he committed to the conduct of a governor of a province. He went about through the Roman empire, and founded many edifices. He spoke with great eloquence in the Latin language, and was very learned in the Greek. He had no great reputation for clemency, but was very attentive to the state of the treasury and the discipline of the soldiers. He died in Campania, more than sixty years old, in the twenty-first year, tenth month, and twenty-ninth day of his reign. The senate was unwilling to allow him divine honours; but his successor Titus Aurelius Fulvius Antonius, earnestly insisting on it, carried his point, though all the senators were openly opposed to him.
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§ 8.8 To Hadrian, then, succeeded Titus Antoninus Fulvius Boionius, who was also named Pius, sprung from an eminent, though not very ancient, family: a man of high character, who may justly be compared to Numa Pompilius, as Trajan may be paralleled with Romulus. He lived, before he came to the throne, in great honour, but in greater still during his reign. He was cruel to none, but indulgent to all. His reputation in military affairs was but moderate; he studied rather to defend the provinces than to enlarge them. He sought out the most just men to fill political offices. He paid respect to the good; for the bad he showed dislike without treating them with harshness. By kings in alliance with Rome he was not less venerated than feared, so that many nations among the barbarians, laying aside their arms, referred their controversies and disputes to him, and submitted to his decision. He was very rich before he began to reign, but diminished his wealth by pay to the soldiers and bounties to his friends; he left the treasury, however, well stored. It was for his clemency that he was surnamed Pius. He died at his country seat called Lorium, twelve miles from the city, in the seventy-third year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign. He was enrolled among the gods, and was deservedly an object of veneration.
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§ 8.9 After him reigned Marcus Antoninus Verus, a man indisputably of noble birth; for his descent, on the father's side, was from Numa Pompilius, and on the mother's from a king of the Sallentines, and jointly with him reigned Lucius Antoninus Verus. Then it was that the commonwealth of Rome was first subject to two sovereigns, ruling with equal power, when, till their days, it had always had but one emperor at a time.
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§ 8.10 These two were connected both by relationship and affinity; for Verus Antoninus had married the daughter of Marcus Antoninus; and Marcus Antoninus was the son-in-law of Antoninus Pius, having married Galeria Faustina the younger, his own cousin. They carried on a war against the Parthians, who then rebelled for the first time since their subjugation by Trajan. Verus Antoninus went out to conduct that war, and, remaining at Antioch and about Armenia, effected many important achievements by the agency of his generals; he took Seleucia, the most eminent city of Assyrians, with forty thousand prisoners; he brought off materials for a triumph over the Parthians, and celebrated it in conjunction with his brother, who was also his father-in-law. He died in Venetia, as he was going from the city of Concordia to Altinum. While he was sitting in his chariot with his brother, he was suddenly struck with a rush of blood, a disease which the Greeks call apoplexis. He was a man who had little control over his passions, but who never ventured to do anything outrageous, from respect for his brother. After his death, which took place in the eleventh year of his reign, he was enrolled among the gods.
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§ 8.11 After him Marcus Antoninus held the government alone, a man whom any one may more easily admire than sufficiently commend. He was, from his earliest years, of a most tranquil disposition; so that even in his infancy he changed countenance neither for joy nor for sorrow. He was devoted to the Stoic philosophy, and was himself a philosopher, not only in his way of life, but in learning. He was the object of so much admiration, while yet a youth, that Hadrian intended to make him his successor; but having adopted Titus Antoninus Pius, he wished Marcus to become Titus's son-in-law, that he might by that means come to the throne.
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§ 8.12 He was trained in philosophy by Apollonius of Chalcedon; in the study of the Greek language by Sextus of Chaeronea, the grandson of Plutarch; while the eminent orator Fronto instructed him in Latin literature. He conducted himself towards all men at Rome as if he had been their equal, being moved to no arrogance by his elevation to empire. He exercised the most prompt liberality, and managed the provinces with the utmost kindness and indulgence. Under his rule affairs were successfully conducted against the Germans. He himself carried on one war with the Marcomanni, but this was greater than any in the memory of man, so that it is compared to the Punic wars; for it became so much the more formidable, as whole armies had been lost; since, under the emperor, after the victory over the Parthians, there occurred so destructive a pestilence, that at Rome, and throughout Italy and the provinces, the greater part of the inhabitants, and almost all the troops, sunk under the disease.
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§ 8.13 Having persevered, therefore, with the greatest labour and patience, for three whole years at Carnuntum, he brought the Marcomannic war to an end; a war which the Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Suevi, and all the barbarians in that quarter, had joined with the Marcomanni in raising; he killed several thousand men, and, having delivered the Pannonians from slavery, triumphed a second time at Rome with his son Commodus Antoninus, whom he had previously made Caesar. As he had no money to give his soldiers, in consequence of the treasury having been exhausted for the support of the war, and as he was unwilling to lay any tax on the provinces or the senate, he sold off all his imperial furniture and decorations, by an auction held in the forum of the emperor Trajan, consisting of vessels of gold, cups of crystal and murrha, silk garments belonging to his wife and himself, embroidered with gold, and numbers of jewelled ornaments. This sale was continued through two successive months, and a great quantity of money was raised from it. After his victory, however, he gave back the money to such of the purchasers as were willing to restore what they had bought, but was by no means troublesome to any one who preferred to keep their purchases.
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§ 8.14 He allowed the more eminent men to give entertainments with the same magnificence, and the same number of attendants, as himself. In the display of games after his victory, he was so munificent, that he is said to have exhibited a hundred lions at once. Having, then, rendered the state happy, both by his excellent management and gentleness of disposition, he died in the eighteenth year of his reign and the sixty-first of his life, and was enrolled among the gods, all unanimously voting that such honour should be paid him.
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§ 8.15 His successor, Lucius Antoninus Commodus, had no resemblance to his father, except that he fought successfully the Germans. He endeavoured to alter the name of the month of September to his own, so that it should he called Commodus. But he was corrupted with luxury and licentiousness. He often fought, with gladiator's arms, in the fencing school, and afterwards with men of that class in the amphitheatre. He died so sudden a death, that he was thought to have been strangled or despatched by poison, after he had reigned twelve years and eight months after his father, and in the midst of such execration from all men, that even after his death he was styled “the enemy of the human race.”
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§ 8.16 To him succeeded Pertinax, at a very advanced age, having reached his seventieth year; he was appointed to be emperor by a decree of the senate, when he was holding the office of prefect of the city. He was killed in a mutiny of the praetorian soldiers, by the villany of Julianus, on the eightieth day of his reign.
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§ 8.17 After his death Salvius Julianus seized the government, a man of noble birth, and eminently skilled in the law; he was the grandson of that Salvius Julianus who composed the perpetual edict in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. He was defeated by Severus at the Milvian bridge, and killed in the palace. He lived only eight months after he began to reign.
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§ 8.18 Septimius Severus then assumed the government of the Roman empire; a native of Africa, born in the province of Tripolis, and town of Leptis. He was the only African, in all the time before or after him, that became emperor. He was first praefect of the treasury, afterwards military tribune, and then rose, through several offices and posts of honour, to the government of the whole state. He had an inclination to be called Pertinax, in honour of that Pertinax who had been killed by Julian. He was very parsimonious, and naturally cruel. He conducted many wars, and with success. He killed Pescennius Niger, who had raised a rebellion in Egypt and Syria, at Cyzicus. He overcame the Parthians, the interior Arabians, and the Adiabeni. The Arabians he so effectually reduced, that he made them a province; hence he was called Parthicus, Arabicus, and Adiabenicus. He rebuilt many edifices throughout the whole Roman world. In his reign, too, Clodius Albinus, who had been an accomplice of Julianus in killing Pertinax, set himself up for Caesar in Gaul, and was overthrown and killed at Lyons.
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§ 8.19 Severus, in addition to his glory in war, was also distinguished in the pursuits of peace, being not only accomplished in literature, but having acquired a complete knowledge of philosophy. The last war that he had was in Britain; and that he might preserve, with all possible security, the provinces which he had acquired, he built a rampart of thirty-two miles long from one sea to the other. He died at an advanced age at York, in the eighteenth year and fourth month of his reign, and was honoured with the title of god. He left his two sons, Bassianus and Geta, to be his successors, but desired that the name of Antoninus should be given by the senate to Bassianus only, who, accordingly, was named Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Bassianus, and was his father's successor. As for Geta, he was declared a public enemy, and soon after put to death.
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§ 8.20 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Bassianus, then, who was also called Caracalla, was a man very much of his father's disposition, but somewhat more rough and vindictive. He erected a bath of excellent construction at Rome, which is called the bath of Antoninus, but did nothing else worthy of record. He wanted ability to control his passions; for he married his own step-mother Julia. He died in Osdroene, near Edessa, while he was planning an expedition against the Parthians, in the sixth year and second month of his reign, having scarcely passed the forty-second year of his age. He was buried with a public funeral.
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§ 8.21 Opilius Macrinus, who was captain of the praetorian guards, and his son Diadumenus, were then made emperors, but did nothing memorable, in consequence of the shortness of their reign; for it lasted but a year and two months. They were both killed together in a mutiny of the soldiers.
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§ 8.22 After these, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was made emperor, who was thought to be the son of Antoninus Caracalla. He was however priest of the temple of Heliogabalus. Having come to Rome with high expectations on the part of the army and the senate, he polluted himself with every kind of impurity. He led a life of the utmost shamelessness and obscenity, and was killed at the end of two years and eight months in a tumult of the soldiers. His mother Soëmia, a native of Syria, perished with him.
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§ 8.23 To him succeeded Aurelius Alexander, a very young man, who was named Caesar by the army, and Augustus by the senate. Having undertaken a war with the Persians, he defeated their king Xerxes with great glory. He enforced military discipline with much severity, and disbanded whole legions that raised a disturbance. He had for his adviser, or secretary of state, Ulpian, the compiler of the law. He was also in great favour at Rome. He lost his life in Gaul, in a tumult of the soldiery, in the thirteenth year and eighth day of his reign. He testified great affection for his mother Mammaea.
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§ 9.1 BOOK IX After him Maximin came to the throne, the first emperor that was elected from the army by the will of the soldiers, no approbation of the senate being given, and he himself not being a senator. After conducting a successful war against the Germans, and being on that account saluted Imperator by his troops, he was slain by Pupienus at Aquileia, together with his son who was then but a boy, his soldiers forsaking him. He had reigned, with his son, three years and a few days.
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§ 9.2 There were then three emperors at the same time, Pupienus, Balbinus, and Gordian, the two former of very obscure origin, the last of noble birth; for the elder Gordian, his father, had been chosen prince by the consent of the soldiery in the reign of Maximin, when he held the proconsulship of Africa. When Balbinus and Pupienus came to Rome, they were killed in the palace; and the empire was given to Gordian alone. After Gordian, when quite a boy, had married Tranquillina at Rome, he opened the temple of Janus, and, setting out for the east, made war upon the Parthians, who were then proceeding to make an irruption. This war he soon conducted with success, and made havoc of the Persians in great battles. As he was returning, he was killed, not far from the Roman boundaries, by the treachery of Philip who reigned after him. The Roman soldiers raised a monument for him, twenty miles from Circessus, which is now a fortress of the Romans, overlooking the Euphrates. His relics they brought to Rome, and gave him the title of god.
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§ 9.3 When Gordian was killed, the two Philips, father and son, seized on the government, and, having brought off the army safe, set out from Syria for Italy. In their reign the thousandth year of the city of Rome was celebrated with games and spectacles of vast magnificence. Soon after, both of them were put to death by the soldiery; the elder Philip at Verona, the younger at Rome. They reigned but five years. They were however ranked among the gods.
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§ 9.4 After these, Decius, a native of Lower Pannonia, born at Budalia, assumed the government. He suppressed a civil war which had been raised in Gaul. He created his son Caesar. He built a bath at Rome. When he and his son had reigned two years, they were both killed in the country of the Barbarians, and enrolled among the gods.
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§ 9.5 Immediately after, Gallus, Hostilianus, and Volusianus the son of Gallus, were created emperors. In their reign Aemilianus attempted an insurrection in Moesia; and both of them, setting out to stop his progress, were slain at Interamna, when they had not quite completed a reign of two years. They did nothing of any account. Their reign was remarkable only for a pestilence, and for other diseases and afflictions.
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§ 9.6 Aemilianus was little distinguished by birth, and less distinguished by his reign, in the third month of which he was cut off. 61
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§ 9.7 Licinius Valerian, who was then employed in Rhaetia and Noricum, was next made general by the army, and soon after emperor. Gallienus also received the title of Caesar from the senate at Rome. The reign of these princes was injurious, and almost fatal, to the Roman name, either through their ill-fortune or want of energy. The Germans advanced as far as Ravenna. Valerian, while he was occupied in a war in Mesopotamia, was overthrown by Sapor king of Persia, and being soon after made prisoner, grew old in ignominious slavery among the Parthians.
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§ 9.8 Gallienus, who was made emperor when quite a young man, exercised his power at first happily, afterwards fairly, and at last mischievously. In his youth he performed many gallant acts in Gaul and Illyricum, killing Ingenuus, who had assumed the purple, at Mursa, and Regalianus. He was then for a long time quiet and gentle; afterwards, abandoning himself to all manner of licentiousness, he relaxed the reins of government with disgraceful inactivity and carelesness. The Alemanni, having laid waste Gaul, penetrated into Italy. Dacia, which had been added to the empire beyond the Danube, was lost. Greece, Macedonia, Pontus, Asia, were devastated by the Goths. Pannonia was depopulated by the Sarmatians and Quadi. The Germans made their way as far as Spain, and took the noble city of Tarraco. The Parthians, after taking possession of Mesopotamia, began to bring Syria under their power.
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§ 9.9 When affairs were in this desperate condition, and the Roman empire almost ruined, Postumus, a man of very obscure birth, assumed the purple in Gaul, and held the government with such ability for ten years, that he recruited the provinces, which had been almost ruined, by his great energy and judgment; but he was killed in a mutiny of the army, because he would not deliver up Moguntiacum, which had rebelled against him, to be plundered by the soldiers, at the time when Lucius Aelianus was endeavouring to effect a change of government. After him Marius, a contemptible mechanic, assumed the purple, and was killed two days after. Victorinus then took on himself the government of Gaul; a man of great energy; but, as he was abandoned to excessive licentiousness, and corrupted other men's wives, he was assassinated at Agrippina, in the second year of his reign, one of his secretaries having contrived a plot against him.
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§ 9.10 To him succeeded Tetricus, a senator, who, when he was governing Aquitania with the title of prefect, was chosen emperor in his absence, and assumed the purple at Burdigala. He had to endure many insurrections among the soldiery. But while these transactions were passing in Gaul, the Persians, in the east, were overthrown by Odenathus, who, having defended Syria and recovered Mesopotamia, penetrated into the country as far as Ctesiphon.
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§ 9.11 Thus, while Gallienus abandoned the government, the Roman empire was saved in the west by Posthumus, and in the east by Odenathus. Meanwhile Gallienus was killed at Milan, together with his brother, in the ninth year of his reign, and Claudius succeeded him, being chosen by the soldiers, and declared emperor by the senate. Claudius defeated the Goths, who were laying waste Illyricum and Macedonia, in a great battle. He was a frugal and modest man, strictly observant of justice, and well qualified for governing the empire. He was however carried off by disease within two years after he began to reign, and had the title of a god. The senate honoured him with extraordinary distinctions, insomuch that a golden shield was hung up to him in the senate house, and a golden statue erected to him in the Capitol.
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§ 9.12 After him Quintillus, the brother of Claudius, was elected emperor by agreement among the soldiers, a man of singular moderation and aptitude for governing, comparable, or perhaps superior, to his brother. He received the title of emperor with the consent of the senate, and was killed on the seventeenth day of his reign.
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§ 9.13 After his death Aurelian succeeded to the throne. He was born in Dacia Ripensis, and was a man of ability in war, but of an ungovernable temper, and too much inclined to cruelty. He defeated the Goths with great vigour, and extended the Roman empire, by various successes in the field, to its former limits. He overthrew Tetricus at Catalauni in Gaul, Tetricus himself, indeed, betraying his own army, whose constant mutinies he was unable to bear; and he had even by secret letters entreated Aurelian to march towards him, using, among other solicitations, the verse of Virgil: — — Eripe me his, invicte, malis. Unconquer'd hero, free me from these ills. He also took prisoner Zenobia, who, having killed her husband Odenathus, was mistress of the east, in a battle of no great importance near Antioch, and, entering Rome, celebrated a magnificent triumph, as recoverer of the east and the west, Tetricus and Zenobia going before his chariot. This Tetricus was afterwards governor of Lucania, and lived long after he was divested of the purple. Zenobia left descendants, who still live at Rome.
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§ 9.14 In his reign, the people of the mint raised a rebellion in the city, after having adulterated the money, and put to death Felicissimus the commissioner of the treasury. Aurelian suppressed them with the utmost severity; several noblemen he condemned to death. He was indeed cruel and sanguinary, and rather an emperor necessary for the times in some respects than an amiable one in any. He was always severe, and put to death even the son of his own sister. He was however a reformer, in a great degree, of military discipline and dissoluteness of manners.
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§ 9.15 He surrounded the city of Rome with stronger walls. He built a temple to the Sun, in which he put a vast quantity of gold and precious stones. The province of Dacia, which Trajan had formed beyond the Danube, he gave up, despairing, after all Illyricum and Moesia had been depopulated, of being able to retain it. The Roman citizens, removed from the town and lands of Dacia, he settled in the interior of Moesia, calling that Dacia which now divides the two Moesiae, and which is on the right hand of the Danube as it runs to the sea, whereas Dacia was previously on the left. He was killed through the treachery of one of his own slaves, who carried to certain military men, the friends of Aurelian, their own names entered upon a list, having counterfeited the hand of Aurelian, and making it appear that he intended to put them to death. That he might be prevented from doing so, he was assassinated by them in the middle of the road, the old paved way, which is between Constantinople and Heraclea. The place is called Caenophrurium. But his death was not unavenged. He also gained the honour of being enrolled among the gods. He reigned five years and six months.
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§ 9.16 After him Tacitus succeeded to the throne; a man of excellent morals, and well qualified to govern the empire. He was unable, however, to show the world anything remarkable, being cut off by death in the sixth mouth of his reign. Florianus, who succeeded Tacitus, was on the throne only two months and twenty days, and did nothing worthy of mention.
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§ 9.17 Probus then succeeded to the government, a man rendered illustrious by the distinction which he obtained in war. He recovered Gaul, which had been seized by the Barbarians, by remarkable successes in the field. He also suppressed, in several battles, some persons that attempted to seize the throne, as Saturninus in the east, and Proculus and Bonosus at Agrippina. He allowed the Gauls and Cannonians to have vineyards. By obliging his soldiers to work, too, he planted vineyards on Mount Alma in Sirmium, and on Mount Aureus in Upper Moesia, and left them to the people of the provinces to cultivate. After he had gone through a great number of wars, and had at last obtained peace, he observed, that “in a short time soldiers would not be wanted.” He was a man of spirit, activity, and justice, equalling Aurelian in military glory, and surpassing him in affability of manners. He was killed, however, at Sirmium, in an iron turret, during an insurrection of the soldiery. He reigned six years and four months.
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§ 9.18 After the death of Probus, Carus was created emperor, a native of Narbo in Gaul, who immediately made his sons, Carinus and Numerianus, Caesars, and reigned, in conjunction with them, two years. News being brought, while he was engaged in a war with the Sarmatians, of an insurrection among the Persians, he set out for the east, and achieved some noble exploits against that people; he routed them in the field, and took Seleucia and Ctesiphon, their noblest cities, but, while he was encamped on the Tigris, he was killed by lightning. His son Numerianus, too, whom he had taken with him to Persia, a young man of very great ability, while, from being affected with a disease in his eyes, he was carried in a litter, was cut off by a plot of which Aper, his father-in-law, was the promoter; and his death, though attempted craftily to be concealed until Aper could seize the throne, was made known by the odour of his dead body; for the soldiers, who attended him, being struck by the smell, and opening the curtains of his litter, discovered his death some days after it had taken place.
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§ 9.19 In the meantime Carinus, whom Carus, when he set out to the war with Parthia, had left, with the authority of Caesar, to command in Illyricum, Gaul, and Italy, disgraced himself by all manner of crimes; he put to death many innocent persons on false accusations, formed illicit connexions with the wives of noblemen, and wrought the ruin of several of his school-fellows, who happened to have offended him at school by some slight provocation. Incurring the hatred of all men. by such proceedings, he not long after met with deserved punishment. The victorious army, on returning from Persia, as they had lost their emperor Carus by lightning, and the Caesar Numerianus by a plot, conferred the imperial dignity on Diocletian, a native of Dalmatia, of such extremely obscure birth, that he is said by most writers to have been the son of a clerk, but by some to have been a freedman of a senator named Anulinus.
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§ 9.20 Diocletian, in the first assembly of the army that was held, took an oath that Numerian was not killed by any treachery on his part; and while Aper, who had laid the plot for Numerian's life, was standing by, he was killed, in the sight of the army, with a sword by the hand of Diocletian. He soon after overthrew Carinus, who was living under the utmost hatred and detestation, in a great battle at Margum, Carinus being betrayed by his own troops, for though he had a greater number of men than the enemy, he was altogether abandoned by them between Viminacium and mount Aureus. He thus became master of the Roman empire; and when the peasants in Gaul made an insurrection, giving their faction the name of Bagaudae, and having for leaders Amandus and Aelianus, he despatched Maximian Herculius, with the authority of Caesar, to suppress them. Maximian, in a few battles of little importance, subdued the rustic multitude, and restored peace to Gaul.
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§ 9.21 During this period, Carausius, who, though of very mean birth, had gained extraordinary reputation by a course of active service in war, having received a commission in his post at Bononia, to clear the sea, which the Franks and Saxons infested, along the coast of Belgica and Armorica, and having captured numbers of the barbarians on several occasions, but having never given back the entire booty to the people of the province or sent it to the emperors, and there being a suspicion, in consequence, that the barbarians were intentionally allowed by him to congregate there, that he might seize them and their booty as they passed, and by that means enrich himself, assumed, on being sentenced by Maximian to be put to death, the imperial purple, and took on him the government of Britain.
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§ 9.22 While disorder thus prevailed throughout the world, while Carausius was taking arms in Britain and Achilleus in Egypt, while the Quinquegentiani were harassing Africa, and Narseus was making war upon the east, Diocletian promoted Maximian Herculius from the dignity of Caesar to that “of emperor, and created Constantius and Maximian Galerius Caesars, of whom Constantius is said to have been the grand-nephew of Claudius by a daughter, and Maximian Galerius to have been born in Dacia not far from Sardica. That he might also unite them by affinity, Constantius married Theodora the step-daughter of Herculius, by whom he had afterwards six children, brothers to Constantine; while Galerius married Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian; both being obliged to divorce the wives that they had before. With Carausius, however, as hostilities were found vain against a man eminently skilled in war, a peace was at last arranged. At the end of seven years, Allectus, one of his supporters, put him to death, and held Britain himself for three years subsequently, but was cut off by the efforts of Asclepiodotus, praefect of the praetorian guard.
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§ 9.23 At the same period a battle was fought by Constantius Caesar in Gaul, at Lingonae, where he experienced both good and had fortune in one day; for though he was driven into the city by a sudden onset of the barbarians, with such haste and precipitation that after the gates were shut he was drawn up the wall by ropes, yet, when his army came up, after the lapse of scarcely six hours, he cut to pieces about sixty thousand of the Alemanni. Maximian the emperor, too, brought the war to an end in Africa, by subduing the Quinquegentiani, and compelling them to make peace. Diocletian, meanwhile, besieging Achilleus in Alexandria, obliged him to surrender about eight months after, and put him. to death. He used his victory, indeed, cruelly, and distressed all Egypt with severe proscriptions and massacres. Yet at the same time he made many judicious arrangements and regulations, which continue to our own days.

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Translated by John Selby Watson (1804-84). Composed ca. 369 CE. Licence: public domain. Source.