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Hiero II. They were not happy and in tranquillity till the reign of Hiero II. which was very long and almost always pacific.

Hieronymus. He reigned scarcely one year. His death was followed with great troubles and the taking of Syracuse by Marcellus.

After that period, what passed in Sicily, to its total reduction, is little remarkable. There were still some remains of war fomented in it by the partisans of tyranny, and the Carthaginians who supported them; but those wars were of little importance, and Rome was soon absolute mistress of all Sicily. Half the island had been a Roman province from the treaty which put an end to the first punic war. By that treaty, Sicily was divided into two parts; the one continued in the possession of the Romans, and the other under the government of Hiero; which last part, after the surrender of Syracuse, fell also into their hands.

SECTION III.-reflections upon the goVERNMENT AND CHARACTER of the SYRACUSANS, AND UPON ARCHIMEDES.

By the taking of Syracuse, all Sicily became a province of the Roman empire; but it was not treated as the Spaniards and Carthaginians were afterwards, upon whom a certain tribute was imposed as the reward of the victors and punishment of the vanquished. "Quasi victoriæ præmium, ac puna belli," Sicily, in submitting to the Roman people, retained all her ancient rights and customs, and obeyed them upon the same conditions she had obeyed her kings.* And she certainly well deserved that privilege and distinction. She was the first of all foreign nations that had entered into alliance and amity with the Romans; the first conquest their arms had the glory to make out of Italy; and the first country that had given them the grateful experience of commanding a foreign people. The greatest part of the Sicilian cities had expressed an unexampled attachment, fidelity, and affection for the Romans. The island was afterwards a kind of pass for their troops into Africa; and Rome would not so easily have reduced the formidable power of the Carthaginians, if Sicily had not served it as a magazine abounding with provisions, and a secure retreat for their fleets. Hence, after the taking and ruin of Carthage, Scipio Africanus thought himself obliged to adorn the cities of Sicily with a great number of excellent paintings and curious statues; in order that a people, who were so highly satisfied with the success of the Roman arms, might be sensible of its effects, and retain illustrious monuments of their victories among them.†

Sicily would have been happy in being governed by the Romans, if they had always given her such magistrates as Cicero; knowing, as he did, the obligations of their office, and, intent as he was, upon the due discharge of them. It is highly pleasing to hear him complain himself upon this subject; which he does in his defence of Sicily against Verres.

After having invoked the gods as witnesses of the sincerity of what he was going to expose, he says: In all the employments with which the Roman people have honoured me to this day, I have ever thought myself obliged, by the most sacred ties of religion, worthily to discharge the duties of them. When I was made quæstor, I looked upon that dignity, not as a gratuity conferred upon me for my particular use, but as a charge confided to my vigilance and fidelity. When I was afterwards sent to act in that office, I thought all eyes were turned upon me, and that my person and administration were in a manner exhibited as a spectacle to the view of all the world; and in this thought, I not

Sicilia civitates sic in amicitiam recepimus, ut eodem jure essent, quo fuissent; eadem conditione po pulo R. parerent,qua suis antea paruissent.-Cic.

Omnium nationum exterarum princeps Sicilia se ad amicitiam fidemque populi R. applicuit; prima omnium, id quod ornamentum imperit est, provincia est appellata; prima docuit majores nostros, quam præclarum esset exteris gentibus imperare. Itaque majoribus nostris in Africam ex hac provincia gradus imperii factus est. Neque enim tam facile opes Carthaginis tantæ concidissent; nisi illud, et rei frumentariæ subsidium, et receptaculum classibus nostris pateret. Quare P. Africanus, Carthagine deleta, Siculorum urbes signis monumentisque puloherrimis exornavit; ut, quos victoria populf K. latari arbitrabatur, apad eos monumenta victoria plurima collocaret.-Cic. Ver 3. n. 2, 3. 22

Vol. IV.

only denied myself all pleasures of an extraordinary kind, but even those that are authorized by nature and necessity. I am now intended for Edile. I call the gods to witness, that however honourable this dignity seems to me, I have too just a sense of its weight, not to have more solicitude and disquietude than joy and pleasure from it; so much do I desire to make it appear, that it was not bestowed on me by chance, or the necessity of being filled up, but confided deservedly by the choice and discernment of my country.'

All the Roman governors were far from being of this character; and Sicily, above all other provinces, experienced, as Cicero reproaches Verres, that they were almost all of them like so many tyrants, who believed themselves only attended by the fasces and axes, and invested with the authority of the Roman empire, to exercise in their province an open robbery of the public with impu nity, and to break through all the barriers of justice and shame in such a manner, that no man's estate, life, house, or even honour, were safe from their violence.t

Syracuse, from all we have seen of it, ought to appear like a vast theatre, on which many different and surprising scenes have been exhibited; or rather like a sea, sometimes calm and untroubled, but oftener violently agitated by winds and storms, always ready to overwhelm it entirely. We have seen in no other republic such sudden, frequent, violent and various revolutions: sometimes enslaved by the most cruel tyrants; at others under the government of the wisest kings: sometimes abandoned to the capricious will of a populace, without either government or restriction; sometimes perfectly docile and submissive to the authority of law and the empire of reason; it passed alternately from the most insupportable slavery to the most grateful liberty; from a kind of convulsions and frantic emotions, to a wise, peaceable, and regular conduct. The reader will easily call to mind, on the one side, Dionysius the elder and younger, Agathocles and Hieronymus, whose cruelties made them the objects of the public hatred and detestation; on the other, Gelon, Dion, Timoleon, and the two Hieros, ancient and modern, universally beloved and revered by the people.

To what are such opposite extremes and vicissitudes so contrary, to be attri buted? Undoubtedly, I think, the levity and inconsistency of the Syracusans, which was their distinguishing characteristic, had a great share in them: but what I am convinced conduced the most to them, was the very form of their government, compounded of the aristocratic and democratic, that is to say, divided between the senate or elders and the people. As there was no counterpoise in Syracuse to support a right balance between those two bodies, when authority inclined either to the one side or the other, the government presently changed either into a violent and cruel tyranny, or an unbridled liberty, without order or regulation. The sudden confusion at such times of all orders of the state, made the way to the sovereign power easy to the most ambitious of the citizens to attract the affection of their country, and soften the yoke to their fellow-citizens, some exercised that power with lenity, wisdom, equity, and popular behaviour; and others, by nature less virtuously inclined, carried it to the last excess of the most absolute and cruel despotism, under pretext of supporting themselves against the attempts of their citizens, who, jealous of their liberty, thought every means for the recovery of it legitimate and laudable.

O dii immortales Ita mihi meam voluntatem spemque reliquæ vitæ vestra populique R. existimatio comprobet, ut ego quos adhuc mihi magistratus populus R. mandavit, sic eos accepi, ut me omusa officiorum obstringi religione arbitrarer. Ita quæstor sum factus, ut mihi honorem illum non tam datum quam creditum ac commissum putarem. Sic obtinui quæsturam in provincia, ut omnium oculos in me coum conjectos arbitrarer: ut me questuramque meam quasi in aliquo orbis terræ theatro versari existimarem; ut omnia semper, quæ jucunda videntur esse, non modo his extraordinariis cupiditatibus, sed etiam ipsi naturæ ac necessitati denegarem. Nunc sum designatus Edilis. Ita mihi deos omnes propitios esse velim, ut tametsi mihi jucundissimus est honos populi, tamen nequaquam tantum capio voluptatis, quantum solice tudinis et laboris, ut hæc ipsa ædilitas, non quia necesse fuit alicui candidato data, sed quia sic oportuerit recte collocata, et judicio populi digno in loco posita esse videatur.-Cic. Ver. 7. 35-37.

Nunquam tibi venit in mentem, non tibi idcirco fasces et secures, et tantam imperii vim, tantamque or namentorum omnium dignitatem datam; ut earum rerum vi et auctoritate omnia repagula juris, pudoris, et officii perfringeres; ut omnium bona prædam tuam duceres; nullius res tuta, nullius domus clausa, nullius vita septa, nullius pudicitia munita, contra tuam cupiditatem et audaciam posset esse.-Cic. Ver. n. 33.

There were besides other reasons that rendered the government of Syracuse difficult, and thereby made way for the frequent changes it underwent. That city did not forget the signal victories it had obtained against the formidable power of Africa, and that it had carried its victorious arms and terror even to the walls of Carthage; not once only, as afterwards against the Athenians, but during several ages. The high idea its fleets and numerous troops suggested of its maritime power, at the time of the irruption of the Persians into Greece, occasioned its pretending to equal Athens in that respect, or at least to divide the empire of the sea with that state.

Besides which, riches, the natural effect of commerce, had rendered the Syracusans proud, haughty, and imperious, and at the same time had plunged them into a sloth and luxury, that inspired them with a disgust for all fatigue and application. They generally abandoned themselves blindly to their orators, who had acquired an absolute ascendant over them. In order to make them obey, it was necessary either to flatter or reproach them.

They had naturally a fund of equity, humanity and good nature; and yet, when influenced by the seditious discourses of the orators, they would proceed to excessive violence and cruelties, which they immediately after repented.

When they were left to themselves, their liberty, which at that time knew no bounds, soon degenerated into caprice, fury, violence, and I might say even frenzy. On the contrary, when they were subjected to the yoke, they became base, timorous, submissive, and cringing like slaves. But as this condition was violent, and directly contrary to the character and disposition of the Greek nation, born and nurtured in liberty, the sense of which was not wholly extinguished in them, and only lulled to sleep, they waked from time to time from their lethargy, broke their chains, and made use of them, if I may be permitted to use the expression, to beat down and destroy the unjust masters who had imposed them. With a small attention to the whole series of the history of the Syracusans, it may easily be perceived, as Galba afterwards said of the Romans, that they were equally incapable of bearing either entire liberty or entire servitude; so that the ability and policy of those who governed them, consisted in keeping the people to a wise medium between those two extremes, by seeming to leave them an entire freedom in their resolutions, and reserving only to themselves the care of explaining the utility, and facilitating the execution of good measures; and in this the magistrates and kings we have spoken of were wonderfully successful, under whose government the Syracusans always enjoyed peace and tranquillity, were obedient to their princes, and perfectly submissive to the laws. And this induces me to conclude, that the revolutions of Syracuse were less the effect of the people's levity than the fault of those who governed them, who had not the art of managing their passions, and engaging their affection, which is properly the science of kings, and of all who command others.

* Imperaturus es hominibus, qui nec totam servitutem pati possunt, nec totam libertatem.-Tacit. Hist. 1. i. c. 16

BOOK TWENTY-SECOND.

THE

HISTORY

OF

PONTUS.

PLAN.

THIS book includes the space of sixty years, which is three years more than the reign of Mithridates; from the year of the world 3880 to the year 3943.

SECTION I.

MITHRIDATES ASCENDS THE THRONE OF PONTUS. LIBRARY OF ATHENS

CARRIED TO ROME.

MITHRIDATES, king of Pontus, whose history we are now beginning, and who rendered himself so famous by the war he supported during almost thirty years against the Romans, was surnamed Eupator. He was descended from a house which had given a long succession of kings to the kingdom of Pontus. The first, according to some historians, was Artabazus, one of the seven princes that slew the Magi, and set the crown of Persia upon the head of Darius Hystaspes, who rewarded him with the kingdom of Pontus. But, besides that, we do not find the name of Aratabazus among those Persians, many reasons induce us to believe, that the prince of whom we speak was the son of Darius, the same who is called Artabarzanes, who was competitor with Xerxes for the throne of Persia, and was made king of Pontus either by his father or his brother, to console him for the preference given to Xerxes. His posterity enjoyed that kingdom during seventeen generations. Mithridates Eupator, of whom we shall treat in this place, was the sixteenth from him.

He was but twelve years of age when he began to reign.* His father, before his death, had appointed him his successor, and had given him his mother for guardian, who was to govern jointly with him. He began his reign by putting his mother and brother to death; and the sequel answered but too well to such a beginning of it. Nothing is said of the first years of his reign, except that one of the Roman generals, whom he had corrupted with money, having surrendered, and put him into possession of Phrygia, it was soon after taken from him by the Romans, which gave rise to his enmity for them.

Ariarathes king of Cappadocia being dead, Mithridates caused the two sons he had left to be put to death, though their mother Laodice was his own sister, and placed one of his own sons, at that time very young, upon the throne, giving him the name of Ariarathes, and appointing Gordius his guardian and regent.§ Nicomedes king of Bithynia, who apprehended that this increase of power would put Mithridates into a condition to possess himself also of his dominions in time, thought proper to set up a certain young man, who seemed very fit for such a part, as a third son of Ariarathes. He engaged Laodice, whom he had espoused after the death of her first husband, to acknowledge him as such; and sent her to Rome, to assist and support, by her presence, the claim of this pretended son, whom she carried thither along with her. The cause being brought be

Ant. J. C. 124.

A. M. 3880.
Appian. in Mithrid. p. 177, 178.

↑ Memaon. in Excerptis Photii, c. 32.
A. M. 3913. Ant. J. C. 91.

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