YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY
OF
ROME.
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE,
AUTHOR OF "THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE," "BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS," "YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF FRANCE," &c.
BOSTON:
ESTES & LAURIAT,
301 WASHINGTON STREET.
COPYRIGHT BY
D. LOTHROP & CO. and ESTES & LAURIAT.
1880.
PREFACE.
This sketch of the History of Rome covers the period till the reign of Charles the Great as head of the new Western Empire. The history has been given as briefly as could be done consistently with such details as can alone make it interesting to all classes of readers.
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.
CONTENTS.
1.—Italy
2.—The Wanderings of Æneas
3.—The Founding of Rome. B.C. 753-713
4.—Numa and Tullus. B.C. 713-618.
5.—The Driving Out of the Tarquins. B.C. 578-309
6.—The War with Porsena
7.—The Roman Government
8.—Menenius Agrippa's Fable. B.C. 494
9.—Coriolanus and Cincinnatus. B.C. 458
10.—The Decemvirs. B.C. 450
11.—Camillus' Banishment
12.—The Sack of Rome. B.C. 390
13.—The Plebeian Consulate. B.C. 367
14.—The Devotion of Decius. B.C. 357
15.—The Samnite Wars
16.—The War with Pyrrhus. 280-271
17.—The First Punic War. 264-240
18.—Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. 240-219
19.—The Second Punic War. 219
20.—The First Eastern War. 215-183
21.—The Conquest of Greece, Corinth, and Carthage. 179-145
22.—The Gracchi. 137-122
23.—The Wars of Marius. 106-98
24.—The Adventures of Marius. 93-84
25.—Sulla's Proscription. 88-71
26.—The Career of Pompeius. 70-63
27.—Pompeius and Cæsar. 61-48
28.—Julius Cæsar. 48-44
29.—The Second Triumvirate. 44-33
30.—Cæsar Augustus. B.C. 33-A.D. 14
31.—Tiberius and Caligula. A.D. 14-41
32.—Claudius and Nero. A.D. 41-68
33.—The Flavian Family. 62-96
34.—The Age of the Antonines. 96-194
36.—The Division of the Empire. 284-312
37.—Constantine the Great. 312-337
38.—Constantius. 337-364
39.—Valentinian and his Family. 364-392
40.—Theodosius the Great. 392-395
41.—Alaric the Goth. 395-410
42.—The Vandals. 403
43.—Attila the Hun. 435-457
44.—Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 457-561
45.—Belisarius. 533-563
46.—Pope Gregory the Great. 563-800
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
The Pope's Doortender. (Frontispiece.)
The Tiber
Curious Pottery
Jupiter
The Coast
Mount Etna
Carthage
Roman Soldier
Gladiatorial Shows at a Banquet
The Forum
Janus
Actors
Sybil's Cave
Brutus condemning his sons
Roman Ensigns, Standards, Trumpets etc.
Head of Jupiter
Female Costumes
Female Costumes
Senatorial Palace
View of a Roman Harbor
Roman Camp
Ploughing
Death of Virginia
Chariot Races
Arrow Machine
Siege Machine
Ruins of the Forum at Rome
Entry of the Forum Romanum by the Via Sacra
Costumes
Costume
The Apennines
Combat between a Mirmillo and a Samnite
Combat between a light armed Gladiator and a Samnite
Ancient Rome
Pyrrhus
Roman Orator
Roman Ship
Roman Order of Battle
The wounded Gaul
Hannibal's Vow
In the Pyrenees,
Meeting of Hannibal and Scipio at Zama
Archimedes
Hannibal
Corinth
Cornelia and her Sons
Roman Centurion
Marius
One of the Trophies, called of Marius, at the Capitol at Rome
The Catapult
Island on the Coast
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
Cornelius Sulla
Coast of Tyre
Mountains of Armenia
Cicero
Colossal Statue of Pompeius of the Palazzo Spada of Rome
Pompeius
Amphitheatre
The Arena
Julius Cæsar
Cato
Funeral Solemnities in the Columbarium of the House of Julius Cæsar at
the Porta Capena in Rome
Marcus Antonius
Marcus Brutus
Alexandria
Caius Octavius
Statue of Augustus at the Vatican
Paintings in the House of Livia
Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius
Agrippina
Rome in the time of Augustus Cæsar
Claudius
Nero
Vesuvius previous to the Eruption of A.D. 63
Persecution of the Christians
Coin of Nero
Temple of Antoninus and Faustina
Marcus Aurelius
Septimus Severus
Antioch
Alexander Severus
Temple of the Sun at Palmyra
The Catacombs at Rome
Coin of Severus
Diocletian
Diocletian in Retirement
Constantine the Great
Constantinople
Council of Nicea
Catacombs
Julian
Arch of Constantine
Alexandria
Goths
Convent on the Hills
Julian Alps
Roman Hall of Justice
Colonnades of St. Peter at Rome
Alaric's Burial
Roman Clock
Spanish Coast
Vandals plundering
Pyramids and Sphynx, Egypt
Hunnish Camp
St. Mark's, Venice
The Pope's House
Romulus Augustus resigns the Crown
illustration
Naples
Constantinople
Pope Gregory the Great
The Pope's Pulpit
Battle of Tours
YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF ROME.
CHAPTER I.
ITALY.
I am going to tell you next about the most famous nation in the world. Going westward from Greece another peninsula stretches down into the Mediterranean. The Apennine Mountains run like a limb stretching out of the Alps to the south eastward, and on them seems formed that land, shaped somewhat like a leg, which is called Italy.
Round the streams that flowed down from these hills, valleys of fertile soil formed themselves, and a great many different tribes and people took
THE TIBER
About the middle of the peninsula there runs down, westward from the Apennines, a river called the Tiber, flowing rapidly between seven low hills, which recede as it approaches the sea. One, in especial, called the Palatine Hill, rose separately, with a flat top and steep sides, about four hundred yards from the river, and girdled in by the other six. This was the place where the great Roman power grew up from beginnings, the truth of which cannot now be discovered.
CURIOUS POTTERY.
There were several nations living round these hills—the Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins being the chief. The homes of these nations seem to have been in the valleys round the spurs of the Apennines, where they had farms and fed their flocks; but above them was always the hill which they had fortified as strongly as possible, and where they took refuge if their enemies attacked them. The Etruscans built very mighty walls, and also managed the drainage of their cities wonderfully well. Many of their works remain to this day, and, in especial, their monuments have been opened, and the tomb of each chief has been found, adorned with figures of himself, half lying, half sitting; also curious pottery in red and black, from which something of their lives and ways is to be made out. They spoke a different language from what has become Latin, and they had a different religion, believing in one great Soul of the World, and also thinking much of rewards and punishments after death. But we know hardly anything about them, except that their chiefs were called Lucumos, and that they once had a wide power which they had lost before the time of history. The Romans called them Tusci, and Tuscany still keeps its name.
The Latins and the Sabines were more alike, and also more like the Greeks. There were a great many settlements of Greeks in the southern parts of Italy, and they learnt something from them. They had a great many gods. Every house had its own guardian. These were called Lares, or Penates, and were generally represented as little figures of dogs lying by the hearth, or as brass bars with dogs' heads. This is the reason that the bars which close in an open hearth are still called dogs. Whenever there was a meal in the house the master began by pouring out wine to the Lares, and also to his own ancestors, of whom he kept figures; for these natives thought much of their families, and all one family had the same name, like our surname, such as Tullius or Appius, the daughters only changing it by making it end in a instead of us, and the men having separate names standing first, such as Marcus or Lucius, though their sisters were only numbered to distinguish them.
JUPITER
Each city had a guardian spirit, each stream its nymph, each wood its faun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of fruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops were solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the old legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild sports and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn was mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring, and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became Time's scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was shortened into Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war, and in Greek times was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene was joined with the Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was called Vesta; and, in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin names. The old Greek tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer, more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever, thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now call sterling stuff in them.
At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language, and seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in the forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for his worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, the god of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the Cælian, and the Quirinal. The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen, when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from houses, where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.
The history of these people was not written till long after they had grown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up many Greek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards, and worked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and customs they found among them, and the tales they told were formed into a great history by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these stories which every one used to believe to be really history; so we will tell them first, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil.
CHAPTER II.
THE WANDERINGS OF ÆNEAS.
You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how Priam and all his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a prince called Æneas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam, and his mother was said to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the city was lost, he rushed back to his house, and took his old father Anchises on his back, giving him his Penates, or little images of household gods, to take care of, and led by the hand his little son Iulus, or Ascanius, while his wife Creusa followed close behind, and all the Trojans who could get their arms together joined him, so that they escaped in a body to Mount Ida; but just as they were outside the city he missed poor Creusa, and though he rushed back and searched for her everywhere, he never could find her. For the sake of his care for his gods, and for his old father, he is always known as the pious Æneas.
In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough to set forth with all
THE COAST.
They sailed away from this dismal prophetess, and touched on the coast of Epirus, where Æneas found his cousin Helenus, son to old Priam, reigning over a little new Troy, and married to Andromache, Hector's wife, whom he had gained after Pyrrhus had been killed. Helenus was a prophet, and gave Æneas much advice. In especial he said that when the Trojans should come to Italy, they would find, under the holly-trees by the river side, a large white old sow lying on the ground, with a litter of thirty little pigs round her, and this should be a sign to them where they were to build their city.
By his advice the Trojans coasted round the south of Sicily, instead of trying to pass the strait between the dreadful Scylla and Charybdis, and just below Mount Etna an unfortunate man came running down to the beach begging to be taken in. He was a Greek, who had been left behind when Ulysses escaped from Polyphemus' cave, and had made his way to the forests, where he had lived ever since. They had just taken him in when they saw Cyclops coming down, with a pine tree for a staff, to wash the burning hollow of his lost eye in the sea, and they rowed off in great terror.
MOUNT ETNA.
Poor old Anchises died shortly after, and while his son was still sorrowing for him, Juno, who hated every Trojan, stirred up a terrible tempest, which drove the ships to the south, until, just as the sea began to calm down, they came into a beautiful bay, enclosed by tall cliffs with woods overhanging them. Here the tired wanderers landed, and, lighting a fire, Æneas went in quest of food. Coming out of the forest, they looked down from a hill, and beheld a multitude of people building a city, raising walls, houses, towers, and temples. Into one of these temples Æneas entered, and to his amazement he found the walls sculptured with all the story of the siege of Troy, and all his friends so perfectly represented, that he burst into tears at the sight.
Just then a beautiful queen, attended by a whole troop of nymphs, came into the temple. This lady was Dido; her husband, Sichæus, had been king of Tyre, till he was murdered by his brother Pygmalion, who meant to have married her, but she fled from him with a band of faithful Tyrians and all her husband's treasure, and had landed on the north coast of Africa. There she begged of the chief of the country as much land as could be enclosed by a bullock's hide. He granted this readily; and Dido, cutting the hide into the finest possible strips, managed to measure off with it ground enough to build the splendid city which she had named Carthage. She received Æneas most kindly, and took all his men into her city, hoping to keep them there for ever, and make him her husband. Æneas himself was so happy there, that he forgot all his plans and the prophecies he had heard, until Jupiter sent Mercury to rouse him to fulfil his destiny. He obeyed the call; and Dido was so wretched at his departure that she caused a great funeral pile to be built, laid herself on the top, and stabbed herself with Æneas' sword; the pile was burnt, and the Trojans saw the flame from their ships without knowing the cause.
CARTHAGE.
By-and-by Æneas landed at a place in Italy named Cumæ. There dwelt one of the Sybils. These were wondrous virgins whom Apollo had endowed with deep wisdom; and when Æneas went to consult the Cumæan Sybil, she told him that he must visit the under-world of Pluto to learn his fate. First, however, he had to go into a forest, and find there and gather a golden bough, which he was to bear in his hand to keep him safe. Long he sought it, until two doves, his mother's birds, came flying before him to show him the tree where gold gleamed through the boughs, and he found the branch growing on the tree as mistletoe grows on the thorn.
Guarded with this, and guided by the Sybil, after a great sacrifice, Æneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sybil, however, made him take Æneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sybil threw him a cake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while Æneas passed on and found in myrtle groves all who had died for love, among them, to his surprise, poor forsaken Dido. A little further on he found the home of the warriors, and held converse with his old Trojan friends. He passed by the place of doom for the wicked, Tartarus; and in the Elysian fields, full of laurel groves and meads of asphodel, he found the spirit of his father Anchises, and with him was allowed to see the souls of all their descendants, as yet unborn, who should raise the glory of their name. They are described on to the very time when the poet wrote to whom we owe all the tale of the wanderings of Æneas, namely, Virgil, who wrote the Æneid, whence all these stories are taken. He further tells us that Æneas landed in Italy just as his old nurse Caiëta died, at the place which is still called Gaëta. After they had buried her, they found a grove, where they sat down on the grass to eat, using large round cakes or biscuits to put their meat on. Presently they came to eating up the cakes. Little Ascanius cried out, "We are eating our very tables;" and Æneas, remembering the harpy's words, knew that his wanderings were over.