people to fill the high offices of the state, and so had the capacity of being members of the supreme executive, the Senate. The policy of this body was continual war in foreign parts, a policy as settled and systematic as the civil administration of Rome and her Italian dependencies. War brought wealth to the aristocracy of Rome and employed the citizens, who would not have been easy at home. Rome could not have existed without war. She had neither the industry nor the commerce which make a rich nation; but she held the power of the sword, which when well used will always make a poorer people the masters of those who are only rich. Her annual change of magistrates was also favourable to the growth of her military system. A Roman consul had his consular army and he sought employment for it in Italy, as long as there was any thing to do in Italy, and then in foreign war. Their generals were, as generals are now, many incompetent, others skilful and daring. But an incompetent consul or praetor had only his term of office to command in, and if he was not punished for his misconduct, the State at least was rid of him at the end of the year. A good commander might have his term of office extended, the first example of which was in the case of Q. Publilius Philo B.C. 326. This extension (prorogatio), as the term implies, was originally effected by a vote of the Comitia Tributa upon a proposal to that effect made by the Senate. But it appears that the Senate alone sometimes exercised this power of proroguing a magistrate's office. At a later time we shall see the Senate exclusively in possession of this power, which was ultimately the direct cause of the overthrow of the Roman constitution. If the powerful tribes of Spain, such as the Celtiberi, had possessed a political body like the Roman senate, the conquest of the peninsula could never have been effected; but the divisions among the nations of Spain and the want of political union made the final conquest of the Spaniards inevitable. All the skill and daring of Viriathus and of the Numantini could only prolong the contest. The fragmentary notices of Viriathus' bold exploits may contain much that is false, but they prove that he was a soldier for whom many of the Roman generals were no match. Like Hannibal

Viriathus has had no historians except his enemies, and we may accept the truth of any defeat which a Roman has recorded.

There is a story of Viriathus during some part of his successful career making a marriage with the daughter of a rich man. Looking on the display of gold and silver at the marriage feast and the splendid draperies, he said that the owner of all this wealth was only the slave of him who held the sword. He would neither wash nor sit down with the guests, but taking some meat and bread from the well-filled table he gave it to his men and ate a little himself. He then called for his wife and after performing some religious ceremonies usual among the Iberians, he set the girl on his horse and carried her off to his mountain home.

In B.C. 142 the consul Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus was sent to repair the mischief that Quintius had done. This Servilianus was one of the Roman writers of Annales, but there is no evidence that he wrote any thing on the Lusitanian war. He also wrote on the Jus Pontificium or Roman ecclesiastical law. Servilianus was adopted from the Servilia into the Fabia Gens by Q. Fabius Maximus, the son of Q. Fabius Cunctator, and consequently he was by adoption the brother of Q. Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, consul B.C. 145. Servilianus came with the usual consular army of two legions, which the troops of the allies made up to a force of eighteen thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse. While he was moving with part of his force to Itucce, Viriathus attacked the Romans with great impetuosity, but he was repulsed. Being joined by the rest of his men and by three hundred horsemen and ten elephants, which the Numidian king Micipsa sent to him, Servilianus made a strong camp to secure his stores and to serve as a place of retreat. Advancing from his camp he attacked Viriathus and put him to flight. We never read of the Spaniards being a match for the Romans in the field, the reason of which was their want of discipline and military training. Here again we find the usual story in these Spanish campaigns, as if a Roman general could never be cautious enough against a barbarian chief. The flight of Viriathus was only a feint. When his pursuers were all in

disorder, Viriathus turned round, killed three thousand of them, drove the rest back to their camp and attacked it. Little resistance was made at the gates of the camp; the men skulked under their tents and could hardly be brought out by the general and the tribunes to fight for their lives. C. Fannius Strabo the historian, the son-in-law of C. Laelius Sapiens, of him who was famed for his friendship with the younger Africanus, was in the army of Servilianus and greatly distinguished himself on this occasion. Night came and saved the Romans. But Viriathus gave them no rest. He harassed the Romans in the midday heats, a time when in the south of Spain men would rather sleep than fight, and at all hours of the night. With his active men and fleet horses he pressed on the consul till he had driven him back to Itucce. This town fared badly in the contest between the Romans and the Lusitani, for the people were sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, and so they suffered from both in turns. It is not easy to see how some of the sharp sayings of Viriathus have been preserved, nor what authority Diodorus could have for putting in his mouth and applying to Itucce the story of the middle-aged man marrying a young woman and an old woman, who wishing to bring him near their respective ages picked off his hair, the young woman the grey and the old woman the black, till they left his head without any hair on it.

Viriathus being in want of food and his numbers diminished set fire to his camp by night and retreated into Lusitania. The movements of Servilianus are hardly intelligible in Appian's narrative. He advanced through Baeturia, the country on the left bank of the Guadiana and plundered five towns which were friendly to Viriathus. Crossing the river Servilianus entered the country of the Cunei, and there he seems to have wintered. His command was prolonged for the next year B.C. 141. In this campaign he again advanced against the Lusitani. On his march he was attacked by two robber chiefs, as they are named by Appian, Curius and Apuleius, both Roman names. Curius fell in the attack, and Servilianus lost some of his baggage, but he recovered it soon after. Servilianus also took the towns Iscadia, Gemella and

Obulcula which were held by garrisons for Viriathus. In Pliny's geography Gemella is named Augusta Gemella and he identifies it with Tucci or Tuccis mentioned both by Strabo and Ptolemy. This town was in Pliny's time in the conventus of Astigis (Ecija). Astigis is south of Corduba and on the river Singulis (Genil); and Gemella is identified with Martos. Obulcula was also a town in the conventus of Astigis, and it is said to be Moncloua which lies between Ecija and Carmona. The situation of these towns shows where Servilianus was now carrying on the war, and that the Lusitani had invaded that country and held some of the towns east of the Guadalquivir. The proconsul's retreat into the country of the Conii appears then to have been a matter of necessity, and the Romans had been driven out of a large part of their southern province. Servilianus however was now master of the country east of the Guadalquivir, and he had taken ten thousand prisoners, of whom he eased himself by cutting off the heads of five hundred and selling the rest. The five hundred may have been deserters or if not, Spaniards who had broken their allegiance to Rome. There must have been some reason for killing five hundred of the prisoners, when the rest of them were turned into money. The purchasers of these prisoners were the mercatores or dealers who had long been in the habit of following the Roman armies and in some measure supplied the want of a regular commissariat. They bought the captives, and sold them in the Roman settlements or sent them to Italy and Sicily to supply the demand there. We have in this campaign another story of Roman ferocity told with variations. As Appian tells it, a certain leader of robbers named Connobas surrendered with his men to the proconsul and was spared: but Servilianus ordered the hands of all the men to be cut off. The anecdote in Valerius Maximus is more precise. After praising the mildness of the temper of Servilianus, he says that the proconsul was driven to severity by the disturbed state of the country. Accordingly when any men were taken who had deserted from the Roman stations to the enemy, he cut off their hands as an example to others. Orosius also has a story of five hundred of the chief among certain men who had surrendered being punished with

the loss of their hands. The fact of these stories not being quite the same may either be urged as evidence against the credibility of any of them, or as evidence that this cruelty was practised more than once. The Romans themselves have recorded this shameful barbarity, and it was committed by one who was not among the worst of the Romans. We shall find other examples like it in the history of Roman

war.

Servilianus now went against Erisane, a city which belonged to Viriathus. Unfortunately we do not know where it is, and so we lose what would have been a valuable indication of the country in which this campaign was conducted. The Roman general began to blockade the town by surrounding it with a ditch after Roman fashion; but Viriathus slipped into the place by night, and at daybreak he fell on the men in the trenches who fled and left their spades behind. Servilianus hastily set his soldiers in battle order, but the impetuosity of the enemy's attack broke the Romans and they were driven into a place from which they could not escape. The Lusitanian commander thought it wise to end the war honourably to himself by letting the Romans off on easy terms. He made a treaty with Servilianus which was ratified by the Roman people. Viriathus was declared to be a friend of the Romans, a usual formula in such treaties, and all his people were to keep the lands, which they then held. We have in addition to Appian the testimony of Livy's Epitome that Servilianus made peace with Viriathus on equal terms, which means that Viriathus was acknowledged as an independent prince. The confirmation of the treaty by the Roman people is not mentioned in the Epitome; but we know that since the affair of the Fauces Caudinae the writers on Roman history often speak of the confirmation of treaties by a vote of the people. If this had not been done in the case of the treaty of Servilianus, we cannot understand how he escaped the fate of Mancinus in the Numantine war. Thus it seemed that the war with Viriathus was terminated by the Romans submitting to a defeat and acknowledging their enemy as an independent power. But if Viriathus hoped to end a war by generous conduct to a vanquished Roman, he