e state, to the governor of the day. The events which occurred in
Spain, unimportant in themselves, are instructive in this respect.
In that country, where the government was less able than in other
provinces to confine itself to the part of a mere onlooker, the law
of nations was directly trampled under foot by the Roman governors;
and the honour of Rome was permanently dragged in the mire by a
faithlessness and treachery without parallel, by the most wanton
trifling with capitulations and treaties, by massacring people who
had submitted and instigating the assassination of the generals of
the enemy. Nor was this all; war was even waged and peace concluded
against the expressed will of the supreme authority in Rome, and
unimportant incidents, such as the disobedience of the Numantines,
were developed by a rare combination of perversity and folly into
a crisis of fatal moment for the state. And all this took place
without any effort to visit it with even a serious penalty in Rome.
Not only did the sympathies and rivalries of the different coteries
in the senate contribute to decide the filling up of the most
important places and the treatment of the most momentous political
questions; but even thus early the money of foreign dynasts found
its way to the senators of Rome. Timarchus, the envoy of Antiochus
Epiphanes king of Syria (590), is mentioned as the first who
attempted with success to bribe the Roman senate; the bestowal of
presents from foreign kings on influential senators soon became so
common, that surprise was excited when Scipio Aemilianus cast into
the military chest the gifts from the king of Syria which reached
him in camp before Numantia. The ancient principle, that rule was
its own sole reward and that such rule was as much a duty and a
burden as a privilege and a benefit, was allowed to fall wholly into
abeyance. Thus there arose the new state-economy, which turned its
eyes away from the taxation of the burgesses, but regarded the body
of subjects, on the other hand, as a profitable possession of the
community, which it partly worked out for the public benefit, partly
handed over to be worked out by the burgesses. Not only was free
scope allowed with criminal indulgence to the unscrupulous greed of
the Roman merchant in the provincial administration, but even the
commercial rivals who were disagreeable to him were cleared away by
the armies of the state, and the most glorious cities of neighbourin