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TEXTS ON ROMAN WAYS
1. Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro), Aeneid 6.847–853 (ca 70 BCE- 19 BCE)
Let others fashion from bronze more lifelike, breathing images—
For so they shall—and evoke living faces from marble;
Others excel as orators, others track with their instruments
The planets circling in heaven and predict when stars will appear.
But Romans, never forget that government is your medium!
Be this your art:—to practice men in the habit of peace,
Generosity to the conquered, and firmness against aggressors.
2. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Epistles 2.1.156 ( 65 BCE –8 BCE)
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror
3. Polybius, Histories 6.2 (c. c. 200 BCE – c. 118 BCE)
I am aware that some will wonder why I have deferred until the present occasion my account
of the Roman constitution, thus being obliged to interrupt the due course of my narrative.
Now, that I have always regarded this account as one of the essential parts of my whole
design, I have, I am sure, made evident in numerous passages and chiefly in the prefatory
remarks dealing with the fundamental principles of this history, where I said that the best and
most valuable result I aim at is that readers of my work may gain a knowledge how it was and
by virtue of what peculiar political institutions that in less than in fifty-three years nearly the
whole world was overcome and fell under the single dominion of Rome, a thing the like of
which had never happened before. Having made up my mind to deal with the matter, I found
no occasion more suitable than the present for turning my attention to the constitution and
testing the truth of what I am about to say on the subject. For just as those who pronounce in
private on the characters of bad or good men, do not, when they really resolve to put their
opinion to the test, choose for investigation those periods of their life which they passed in
composure and repose, but seasons when they were afflicted by adversity or blessed with
success, deeming the sole test of a perfect man to be the power of bearing high-mindedly and
bravely the most complete reverses of fortune, so it should be in our judgement of states.
Therefore, as I could not see any greater or more violent change in the fortunes of the Romans
than this which has happened in our own times, I reserved my account of the constitution for
the present occasion. . . .
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What chiefly attracts and chiefly benefits students of history is just this — the study of causes
and the consequent power of choosing what is best in each case. Now the chief cause of
success or the reverse in all matters is the form of a state’s constitution; for springing from
this, as from a fountain-head, all designs and plans of action not only originate, but reach their
consummation.
4. Livy (Titus Livius Patavinus), Ab Urbe Condita 2.12 (c. 59 BCE-17 CE)
Gaius Mucius Scaevola
[The Etruscan king Lars Porsena is laying siege to Rome in 508 BCE]
The blockade, however, was carried on none the less, and corn was both scarce and very dear.
Porsina still entertained the hope that, by continuing the blockade, he would be able to reduce
the city, when Gaius Mucius, a young noble, who considered it a disgrace that the Roman
people, who, even when in a state of slavery, while under the kings, had never been confined
within their walls during any war, or blockaded by any enemy, should now, when a free
people, be blockaded by these very Etruscans whose armies they had often routed--and
thinking that such disgrace ought to be avenged by some great and daring deed, at first
designed on his own responsibility to make his way into the enemy's camp. Then, being afraid
that, if he went without the permission of the consuls, and unknown to all, he might perhaps
be seized by the Roman guards and brought back as a deserter, since the circumstances of the
city at the time rendered such a charge credible, he approached the senate. "Fathers," said he,
"I desire to cross the Tiber, and enter the enemy's camp, if I may be able, not as a plunderer,
nor as an avenger to exact retribution for their devastations: a greater deed is in my mind, if
the gods assist." The senate approved. He set out with a dagger concealed under his garment.
When he reached the camp, he stationed himself where the crowd was thickest, near the king's
tribunal. There, as the soldiers happened to be receiving their pay, and the king's secretary,
sitting by him, similarly attired, was busily engaged, and generally addressed by the soldiers,
he killed the secretary, against whom chance blindly directed the blow, instead of the king,
being afraid to ask which of the two was Porsina, lest, by displaying his ignorance of the king,
he should disclose who he himself was. As he was moving off in the direction where with his
bloody dagger he had made a way for himself through the dismayed multitude, the crowd ran
up on hearing the noise, and he was immediately seized and brought back by the king's
guards: being set before the king's tribunal, even then, amid the perilous fortune that
threatened him, more capable of inspiring dread than of feeling it, "I am," said he, "a Roman
citizen; men call me Gaius Mucius; an enemy, I wished to slay an enemy, nor have I less
courage to suffer death than I had to inflict it. Both to do and to suffer bravely is a Roman's
part. Nor have I alone harboured such feelings toward you; there follows after me a long
succession of aspirants to the same honour. Therefore, if you choose, prepare yourself for this
peril, to be in danger of your life from hour to hour: to find the sword and the enemy at the
very entrance of your tent: such is the war we, the youth of Rome, declare against you; dread
not an army in the field, nor a battle; you will have to contend alone and with each of us one
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by one." When the king, furious with rage, and at the same time terrified at the danger,
threateningly commanded fires to be kindled about him, if he did not speedily disclose the
plots, at which in his threats he had darkly hinted, Mucius said, "See here, that you may
understand of how little account the body is to those who have great glory in view"; and
immediately thrust his right hand into the fire that was lighted for sacrifice. When he allowed
it to burn as if his spirit were quite insensible to any feeling of pain, the king, well-nigh
astounded at this surprising sight, leaped from his seat and commanded the young man to be
removed from the altar. "Depart," said he, "thou who hast acted more like an enemy toward
thyself than toward me. I would bid thee go on and prosper in thy valour, if that valour were
on the side of my country. I now dismiss thee unharmed and unhurt, exempt from the right of
war." Then Mucius, as if in return for the kindness, said: "Since bravery is held in honour
with you, that you may obtain from me by your kindness that which you could not obtain by
threats, know that we are three hundred, the chief of the Roman youth, who have conspired to
attack you in this manner. The lot fell upon me first. The rest will be with you each in his turn,
according to the fortune that shall befall me who drew the first lot, until fortune on some
favourable opportunity shall have delivered you into their hands."
Mucius, to whom the surname of Scaevola was afterward given from the loss of his right
hand, was let go and ambassadors from Porsina followed him to Rome. The danger of the first
attempt, in which nothing had protected him but the mistake of his secret assailant, and the
thought of the risk of life he would have to run so often in proportion to the number of
surviving conspirators that remained, made so strong an impression upon him that of his own
accord he offered terms of peace to the Romans.
5. Livy (Titus Livius Patavinus), Ab Urbe Condita 3.26-29 (c. 59 BCE-17 CE)
Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus in warfare against Sabines and Aequi in 458 BCE
A large body of Sabines, committing dreadful devastation, approached very close to the walls
of the city. The fields were laid waste, the city was struck with terror. [..]
Lucius Quintius, the sole hope of the Roman people, cultivated a farm of four acres, at the
other side of the Tiber, which are called the Quintian meadows, opposite to the very place
where the dock-yard now is. There, whether leaning on a stake in a ditch which he was
digging, or in the employment of ploughing, engaged at least on some rural work, as is
certain, after mutual salutations had passed, being requested by the ambassadors to put on his
gown, and listen to the commands of the senate, (with wishes) that it might be happy both to
him and to the commonwealth, being astonished, and asking frequently "whether all was
safe," he bids his wife Racilia immediately to bring his toga from his hut. As soon as he put
this on and came forward, after first wiping off the dust and sweat, the ambassadors,
congratulating him, unite in saluting him as dictator: they call him into the city; explain to him
what terror now exists in the army. A vessel was prepared for Quintius by order of
government, and his three sons having come out to meet him, receive him on his landing at
the other side; then his other relatives and friends; then the greater part of the patricians.
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Accompanied by this numerous attendance, and the lictors going before him, he was
conducted to his residence. [..]
27 [..] Then he commands that all, whoever were of the military age, should attend under
arms, in the Campus Martius, before sun-set, with dressed provisions for five days and twelve
palisades, and he commanded that whose age was too far advanced for military service,
should dress their victuals for the soldiers in their vicinity, whilst the latter were preparing
arms, and procuring the palisade. Accordingly, the young men run in different directions to
procure the palisades; they took them wherever they were nearest to them; no one was
prevented, and they all attended punctually according to the dictator's order. Then the troops
being formed, not more fitted for the march than for an engagement, should the occasion
require it, the dictator himself marches at the head of the legions, the master of the horse at
the head of his cavalry.
29 The enemy's camp being taken, which was full of every thing, (for he had sent them away
naked,) he distributed all the booty among his own soldiers only: chiding the consul's army
and the consul himself, he says, "Soldiers, ye shall do without any portion of the spoil taken
from that enemy to which you were well nigh becoming a spoil: and you, Lucius Minutius,
until you begin to assume the spirit of a consul, shall command these legions as lieutenantgeneral." Minutius accordingly resigns his office of consul, and remains with the army, as he
had been commanded. But so meekly obedient were the minds of men at that time to authority
combined with superior merit, that this army, mindful of the kindness (conferred) rather than
of the slur (cast on them), both voted a golden crown of a pound weight to the dictator, and
saluted him as their patron when setting out. The senate at Rome, being convened by Quintus
Fabius, præfect of the city, ordered Quintius to enter the city in triumph, in the order of march
in which he was coming. The leaders of the enemy were led before his car: the military
standards were carried before him: his army followed laden with spoil. Tables with provisions
are said to have been laid out before the houses of all, and (the soldiers) partaking of the
entertainment, followed the car with the triumphal hymn and the usual jests, after the manner
of revellers. On that day the freedom of the state was granted to Lucius Mamilius of
Tusculum, with universal approbation. The dictator would have laid down his office, had not
the assembly for the trial of Marcus Volscius, the false witness, detained him; the fear of the
dictator prevented the tribunes from obstructing it. Volscius was condemned and went into
exile to Lanuvium. Quintius laid down his dictatorship on the sixteenth day, having received
it for six months.
6. Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 45.12 (c. 59 BCE-17 CE)
[Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of the Seleucid kingdom (Syria, Plaestine, Mesopotamia and
beyond) invades Ptolemaic Egypt in 168 BCE]
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After receiving the submission of the inhabitants of Memphis and of the rest of the Egyptian
people, some submitting voluntarily, others under threats, [Antiochus] marched by easy stages
towards Alexandria. After crossing the river at Eleusis, about four miles from Alexandria, he
was met by the Roman commissioners, to whom he gave a friendly greeting and held out his
hand to Popilius. Popilius, however, placed in his hand the tablets on which was written the
decree of the senate and told him first of all to read that. After reading it through he said he
would call his friends into council and consider what he ought to do. Popilius, stern and
imperious as ever, drew a circle round the king with the stick he was carrying and said,
“Before you step out of that circle give me a reply to lay before the senate.” For a few
moments he hesitated, astounded at such a peremptory order, and at last replied, “I will do
what the senate thinks right.” Not till then did Popilius extend his hand to the king as to a
friend and ally. Antiochus evacuated Egypt at the appointed date, and the commissioners
exerted their authority to establish a lasting concord between the brothers, as they had as yet
hardly made peace with each other.
7. Plutarch (Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus), Parallel Lives. Life of Sulla, 12-14 (c. 46-120
CE)
[Sulla is fighting Greeks, who had joined Mithridates of Pontus in his war against Rome 88–
84 BCE, Athens is sacked on March 1st in 86 BCE after a five month siege.]
12, 1 As for Sulla, he at once received deputations and invitations from the other cities, but
Athens was compelled by the tyrant Aristion to side with Mithridates. Against this city,
therefore, Sulla led up all his forces, and investing the Piraeus, laid siege to it, bringing to bear
upon it every sort of siege-engine, and making all sorts of assaults upon it. 2 And yet if he had
been patient a little while, he might have captured the upper city without hazard, since it
lacked the necessities of life and was already reduced by famine to the last extremity. But
since he was eager to get back to Rome, and feared the spirit of revolution there, he ran many
risks, fought many battles, and made great outlays that he might hasten on the war, in which,
not to speak of his other munitions, the operation of the siege-engines called for ten thousand
pairs of mules, which were employed daily for this service. 3 And when timber began to fail,
owing to the destruction of many of the works, which broke down of their own weight, and to
the burning of those which were continually smitten by the enemy's fire-bolts, he laid hands
upon the sacred groves, and ravaged the Academy, which was the most wooded of the city's
suburbs, as well as the Lyceum. And since he needed much money also for the war, he
diverted to his uses the sacred treasures of Hellas, partly from Epidaurus, and partly from
Olympia, sending for the most beautiful and most precious of the offerings there. 4 He wrote
also to the Amphictyons at Delphi that it was better to have the treasures of the god sent to
him; for he would either keep them more safely, or, if he spent them, would restore as much.
And he sent Caphis, the Phocian, one of his friends, with the letter, bidding him receive each
article by weight. Caphis came to Delphi, but was loth to touch the sacred objects, and shed
many tears, in the presence of the Amphictyons, over the necessity of it. 5 And when some of
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them declared they heard the sound of the god's lyre in the inner sanctuary, Caphis, either
because he believed them, or because he wished to strike Sulla with superstitious fear, sent
word to him about it. But Sulla wrote back jocosely, expressing his amazement that Caphis
did not understand that singing was done in joy, not anger; his orders were therefore to take
boldly, assured that the god was willing and glad to give.
13 1 For he was possessed by some dreadful and inexorable passion for the capture of Athens,
either because he was fighting with a sort of ardour against the shadow of the city's former
glory, or because he was provoked to anger by the scurrilous abuse which had been showered
from the walls upon himself and Metella by the tyrant Aristion, who always danced in
mockery as he scoffed. This man's spirit was compounded of licentiousness and cruelty; 2 he
had made himself a sink for the worst of the diseases and passions of Mithridates; and in these
her last days he had fixed himself, like a fatal malady, upon a city which had previously
passed safely through countless wars, and many usurpations and seditions. This man, although
at the time a bushel of wheat sold in the city for a thousand drachmas, and although men made
food for themselves of the fever-few which grew on the acropolis, 3 and boiled down shoes
and leather oil-flasks to eat, was himself continually indulging in drinking-bouts and revels by
daylight, was dancing in armour and making jokes to deride the enemy, while he suffered the
sacred lamp of the goddess to go out for lack of oil; and when the chief priestess begged him
for a twelfth of a bushel of wheat, he sent her so much pepper; and when the senators and
priests came to him in suppliant array, and entreated him to take pity on the city and come to
terms with Sulla, he scattered them with a volley of arrows. 4 But after a long time, at last,
with much ado, he sent out two or three of his fellow-revellers to treat for peace, to whom
Sulla, when they made no demands which could save the city, but talked in lofty strains about
Theseus and Eumolpus and the Persian wars, said: “Be off, my dear Sirs, and take these
speeches with you; for I was not sent to Athens by the Romans to learn its history, but to
subdue its rebels.”
14 1 But at this juncture, as it is said, certain soldiers in the Cerameicus overheard some old
men talking with one another, and abusing the tyrant because he did not guard the approaches
to the wall at the Heptachalcum, at which point alone it was possible and easy for the enemy
to get over. When this was reported to Sulla, 2 he did not make light of it, but went thither by
night, and after seeing that the place could be taken, set himself to the work. And Sulla
himself says, in his Memoirs, that Marcus Ateius was the first man to mount the wall, and that
when an enemy confronted him, he gave him a downward cut on the helmet with his sword,
and shattered the weapon; he did not, however, yield ground, but remained and held his own.
At any rate, the city was taken at this point, as the oldest Athenians used to testify. 3 And
Sulla himself, after he had thrown down and levelled with the ground the wall between the
Piraïc and the Sacred Gate, led his army into the city at midnight. The sight of him was made
terrible by blasts of many trumpets and bugles, and by the cries and yells of the soldiery now
let loose by him for plunder and slaughter, and rushing through the narrow streets with drawn
swords. There was therefore no counting of the slain, but their numbers are to this day
determined only by the space that was covered with blood. 4 For without mention of those
who were killed in the rest of the city, the blood that was shed in the market-place covered all
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the Cerameicus inside the Dipylon gate; nay, many say that it flowed through the gate and
deluged the suburb. But although those who were thus slain were so many, there were yet
more who slew themselves, out of yearning pity for their native city, which they thought was
going to be destroyed. For this conviction made the best of them give up in despair and fear to
survive, since they expected no humanity or moderation in Sulla.
8. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 9.33.4 (c. 110-180 CE).
Sulla, who was so savage and so un-Roman at Athens, was the same at Thebes and
Orchomenus; he went to work even at Alalcomenae [in Boeotia], looting the very statue of
Athena. This man who was so mad against the cities and the gods of Greece was gripped by
the most horrible disease there is: He died seething with maggots. His early apparent good
luck came round to so terrible an end.
9. Pliny (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus), Letters 8.24 (c. 61-113 CE)
To Maximus
The love I bear you obliges me to give you, not indeed a precept (for you are far from needing
a preceptor), but a reminder that you should resolutely act up to the knowledge you already
have, or else improve it. Consider that you are sent to the province of Achaia, that real,
genuine Greece where politeness, learning, and even agriculture itself, are supposed to have
first arisen. You are commissioned to superintend the affairs of free states; in other words, of
men who are in the fullest sense men, and freemen who are in the highest sense free; who
have maintained the right they received from Nature, by courage, by virtue, by friendship in
fine, by civil treaties and religious sanctions.
You will revere their Divine Founders, and the workings of divine powers among them; their
ancient glory, and even their very age, which as it is venerable in men, in states it is sacred.
Cherish sentiments of respect for their antiquity, their colossal achievements, and even for
their legends. Let no man's dignity, liberty, or vanity, suffer the least diminution at your
hands. Remember it was from this land we derived our legal code, that she gave us laws not
by right of conquest, but as a favour. Remember it is Athens you approach; it is Lacedaemon
you govern; and to snatch from such a people the shadow that remains, the name that is left,
of their freedom, would be a harsh, cruel, nay, barbarous, act. Physicians, you see, though in
sickness there is no difference between slaves and freemen, yet give the latter milder and
more gentle treatment.