CHAPTER I.

ANTECEDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.


During the last half of the second century before Christ Rome was
undisputed mistress of the civilised world. A brilliant period of
foreign conquest had succeeded the 300 years in which she had overcome
her neighbours and made herself supreme in Italy. In 146 B.C. she had
given the death-blow to her greatest rival, Carthage, and had annexed
Greece. In 140 treachery had rid her of Viriathus, the stubborn
guerilla who defied her generals and defeated her armies in Spain.
In 133 the terrible fate of Numantia, and in 132 the merciless
suppression of the Sicilian slave-revolt, warned all foes of the
Republic that the sword, which the incompetence of many generals had
made seem duller than of old, was still keen to smite; and except
where some slave-bands were in desperate rebellion, and in Pergamus,
where a pretender disputed with Rome the legacy of Attalus, every land
along the shores of the Mediterranean was subject to or at the mercy
of a town not half as large as the London of to-day. Almost exactly a
century afterwards the Government under which this gigantic empire had
been consolidated was no more.

Foreign wars will have but secondary importance in the following
pages. [Sidenote: The history will not be one of military events.] The
interest of the narrative centres mainly in home politics; and though