This was a century in which the Roman Empire ballooned out particularly south and east. In central and western Europe the Celts and Germanic tribes vied for position, both pushed from the south by the Romans. Meanwhile in the east a thriving, expanding and civilized China began to have increasing trouble with Asiatic nomads, particularly the Hsuing-nu. Central and South American cultures continued their slow but progressive developments.
Back to Africa: 300 to 201 B.C.
In the southern part of this area Kush as well as Axum continued to flourish. About 200 B.C. Egypt lost all its acquisitions outside of continental Africa as the Ptolemaic armies were defeated by the Seleucids at Panion. The Macedonian dynasty continued to reign, however, and their administrations promoted continued intellectual and commercial activity, particularly at Alexandria. The welding of Egypt and Syria onto the rejuvenated Ionic Greek world created a high economic unit and allowed cities of the magnitude of ninety to one hundred and fifty thousand people to develop, the first of these being, of course, Alexandria. By the end of the century the Egyptians were chafing under the Hellenic Ptolemy ruling class, however, and eventually the Egyptian priesthood swallowed up the Ptolemies as they also destroyed the Aristotelian mentality of the Museum, and scientific energy was extinguished. (Ref. 46, 28, 206)
Carthage recovered from the Second Punic War and regained considerable prosperity although it was subjected to frequent raids from neighbors such as King Massinissa of the Numidians, who were the ancestors of the Berbers. In 151 B.C. Carthage finally declared war on Numidia (now primarily Algeria) and a year later Rome joined the battle, initiating the Third Punic War. For three years Carthage valiantly withstood the Roman siege engineered by Scipio Aemilianus, but the city finally fell and in 146 B.C. the Romans brutally plundered and burned it, possibly to prevent its falling into the hands of the Numidians. (Ref. 83) This pretty well terminated the old Phoenician Empire, but the Punic cisterns remained and street plans were preserved and later used as patterns for Roman reconstruction.
After this last Punic War Massinissa's son, Micipsa, ruled Numidia and remained an ally of Rome. Misipsa's heirs included a nephew, Jugurtha, along with his own two sons. By 116 B.C. Jugurtha had one of the sons assassinated and had run off the other and taken his own case for control of Numidia before the Roman Senate. The latter gave most of Numidia to Jugurtha except for the city of Cirta which was granted to the remaining son of Misipsa, Adherbal. Jagurtha promptly set siege to Cirt, killing off all the inhabitants including some Roman business men, thus incensing Rome and particularly the Equestrian business community. Armies were sent to North Africa once again, this time against Numidia, but Jugurtha was not defeated until his father-in-law, Bocchus, King of Mauretania, was persuaded by Lucius Cornelius Sulla to betray him. The African struggle ended in 105 B.C. with Jugurtha a prisoner and strangled in Rome. The Romans then spread west from Carthage, also controlling Morocco. (Ref. 53, 28, 175)
Polybius, the Roman historian, regarded the North African Greeks as a people considerably different from those of Greece, itself. They were olive-skinned and represented a fusion of Greek and North African natives. These were the Libyans and they were devoted to the sea, living all along the North African coast from Cyrene next to Egypt, west to Mauretania on the Atlantic. The area included not only what we now call Libya but also Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. A long chain of ruined, once great, beautiful, marble and limestone cities now mark the places where these seafarers once lived. When Libyan kings ruled Egypt their ships sailed to the Atlantic ports of Spain and Fell (Ref. 66) says to the Americas across the Atlantic and to the Pacific via the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Strait. The ancient Libyans living west of Cyrene spoke a dialect of pre-classical Arabic containing many Berber loan words. According to Fell's hypotheses this may be the origin of the Arabic found in some American locations.
Radio-carbon datings from the walls and potsherds of the mud buildings in the Mali region caves of the Toloy people indicate that they were still there in this century, but not subsequently. (Ref. 251) This was an era of continued Negro migrations down the entire continent. This gradual occupation of almost the whole of the arable soil of Africa in the west by Negroes and of the east and south by the Bantu-speaking groups, overall took about 1,500 years, during which time sub-Saharan Africa was largely cut off from the rest of the world.
Back to The Near East: 300 to 201 B.C.
Arabian dromedary caravan traffic was now the monopoly of the Nabataean Arabs who maintained a series of caravan stations. Upon the collapse of the Seleucids late in the century these Arabs then acquired Damascus itself. (Ref. 136)
The Book of Daniel was written about 165 B.C. and the Book of Enoch perhaps slightly later. In the former year Judah Maccabee and his brothers, after taking Jerusalem back from the Syrians, restored the monotheistic religion. It was later said that they found only enough oil left in the temple to keep a light burning for one day, but somehow it lasted eight days and this is the event celebrated annually as the Hanukkah. By 143 B.C. Simon Maccabee had freed Judea entirely, beginning the Hasmonean Dynasty of priest kings which ruled Judea and some lands east of the Jordan until 104 B.C., after which Aristobulus I and his brother, Alexander Jannaeus, ruled savagely until well into the next century. (Ref. 222)
Near the Mediterranean coast there was a thriving Hellenic culture centered on the large city of Antioch and the supporting cities of Laodicea and Apamia. The great Seleucid King Antiochus III invaded Greece in 192 B.C. but was soon pushed back by Roman armies and the Roman fleet. In 190 two of the Scipio brothers crossed the Hellespont and defeated Antiochus in the great battle of Magnesia, near Smyrna in Asia Minor. The result was that the Seleucids lost all European and Asiatic possessions as far as the Taurus Mountains and from then on the old Syrian Dynasty continued to decline. By the end of the century almost this entire area was taken over by the Parthians.
Eastern Persia was ruled by the Parthian Arsacid Dynasty and they continued to develop a powerful empire, keeping the administrative structure of the preceding Seleucid government. In 141 B.C. Mithridates I of Parthia entered Seleucia, itself, on the Tigris River and for the next 775 years, with only a few minor set backs, Persia remained one of the richest and most powerful regions of the ancient world. (Ref. 8) Their military system was based on an Iranian nobility but they accorded the Hellenic cities full autonomy and did nothing to weaken the Hellenic stamp.
The western spread of the Parthians was the result, in part at least, of pressure on their northeastern frontier by migrating peoples from the Asian steppes. Some of these may have been a Mongolian people called "Hsiung-nu" by the Chinese, but probably the chief offenders were the Yue-chi, another Iranian tribe returning from a previous expansion into Asia proper. Their immediate descendants were called "Kushans" and they pushed their cousins the Shakas and Samartians ahead of them toward southern Russia and the Parthians down into Persia. (Ref. 136)
Early in the century the Roman armies began to be active in Asia Minor, driving the invading Celts from the north back out of the peninsula, and defeating the Seleucid Antiochus, in the battle of Magnesia, thus inaugurating the Roman conquest of the Hellenic East.
Meanwhile in northeastern Asia Minor activity was rampant in the regions of Bithynia and Pontus. The people of both were mixtures of Thracians, Greeks and Iranians, overlying an antique Hittite stock. Mithridates VI, who now inherited the throne of Pontus, was a strong, educated man, speaking twenty-two languages and with the help of Greek officers and mercenaries he conquered Armenia and the Caucasus and entered the Crimea of southern Russia, controlling the Black Sea on all sides except the southwest. He then invaded Bithynia, arousing fears for the Bosporus Straits in the minds of the Roman military. So the latter ordered Mithridates out of Bithynia, setting the stage for actual war in the next century. The Galatians continued to oppose Pergamum, sometimes allying themselves with Bithynia, but they received a crushing defeat by Eumenes II in 166 B.C., and had great difficulty holding Pontus off their territory. When the Pergamum King Attalus died in 133 B.C. he left his kingdom to Rome. It was at this period that Hipparchus of Nicaea elaborated the scheme of spheres and epicycles that became the classical construction of the universe. (Ref. 48, 91)
NOTE: Insert Map: 26: ASIA MINOR IN 189 B.C
We noted at the close of the last century that Armenia was conquered by Antiochus III and divided into two satrapies. The western one, Armenia Minor, was given to Zadriades and the eastern one, Armenia Major, to Artaxis. After Antiochus' defeat at Magnesia in 190 B.C. the two governors made themselves independent rulers, founding two separate dynasties. At the end of the century the area was temporarily overrun by Mithridates VI, the ambitious king of Pontus. (Ref. 119)
Back to Europe: 300 to 201 B.C.
As the commerce of Rhodes declined the government allied itself with Rome, a situation which was to continue for several centuries. In the Cyclades there were frequent changes of control. Crete remained a somewhat wild area with nests of pirates while Cyprus was still subservient to Egypt. (Ref. 38)
From this time on for a number of centuries the affairs and destiny of Greece became intimately connected and almost inseparable from the Roman Empire and the military and political expansion of Hellenism lost momentum. The Romans fastened their control on Macedonia and Greece with remarkable ease between 200 and 146 B.C.. Sparta, under Nabis, attempted a revival of independence in 195 B.C. but it ended with Roman conquest. At the request of the Aetolians, Antiochus III brought Syrian forces into Greece in 192 B.C., but they, too, were routed by the Romans in the following year. Various members of the Achaean League fought as late as 146 B.C., but they did so in a divided way and fell, to become a mere backwater of the Roman Empire. As a political entity Greece disappeared from history for 2,000 years. (Ref. 28, 222, 77)
It was mentioned in the last chapter that Philip of Macedonia had given some help to Hannibal and that had started the Second Macedonian War in 200 B.C. Although Philip was beaten in a final battle at Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C. he was graciously restored to his throne by the Roman victor, T. Quincteus Flamininus. (Ref. 8) As Rome took over more territory in Asia Minor Greek-Macedonian and Roman interests again collided, opening the way for the Third Macedonian War (171-168 B.C.) in which Perseus was defeated at Pydna. After seventy Macedonian towns were razed the Romans took direct rule of the country in 146 B.C. In the latter half of the century with its gold deposits exhausted and its manpower weakened by wars and emigration, Macedon could hardly maintain its former place among the world powers.
On the western coast of the Balkan area the Romans conquered Scodra (Albania) with its King Genthius, and established Illyrium as one of the earliest of the Roman colonies. Living in the areas of modern Yugoslavia and Serbia the Dalmatians split from the Illyrians and in several later battles Dalmatia was also then conquered by the Romans. The first Germanic tribe to reach into this area was the east German Bastarnian, which settled between the lower Danube and the Black Sea. (Ref. 8, 136)
In the first half of the century Rome continued the imperialistic conquests in the Mediterranean basin so that by 150 B.C. its territories included most of Spain, all of Italy to the Alps, Sardinia, Sicily, Illyria and the entire Greek peninsula. Allies included Numidia, Egypt, Pontus and after 133 B.C. Pergamum. In 159 B.C. after encouraging the Numidians to encroach upon Carthage to stimulate a fight locally, Rome moved in on the pretext of a broken treaty, declaring the Third Punic War. As noted in an earlier section, by 145 B.C. Carthage lay in burned ruins and Rome was in control of the Mediterranean. A typical Roman of this time was Cato, a sour, revengeful man - publicly moral, but individually cruel and selfish. He could not stand happiness in other people and it was he who urged on the Third Punic War with the slogan "Carthage must be destroyed". (Ref. 48)
Meanwhile at home all was not well and the signs of social downfall were already appearing. An uprising of slaves and free workers began in 196 B.C. and gradually increased in intensity. In 193 Tiberius Gracchus passed the Agrarian Law which was an attempt at reform, dividing large farms into segments to be given to the poor. Octavius, another tribune, opposed the reform and Tiberius had him thrown out, dividing Rome into two bitter factions. Tiberius was soon murdered and although his brother, Gaius Gracchus, became tribune and continued the reforms, the aristocrats won in the end and the land again began to be accumulated in large tracts and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. Coupled with this was a general moral degeneration with restriction of the size of families by abortion and infanticide. The plunder from the provinces provided funds for orgies of corruption. The great indemnities exacted from the captured countries, with gold and silver seized, turned the propertied classes of Rome from men of means to persons of opulence so that reckless luxury resulted. It was a time of the rise and prominence of women, sexuality, and licentiousness.
In 144 B.C. another Agrarian Revolt broke out as a result of four factors:
The import of grain from abroad reducing the domestic price
The growth of large farms, as mentioned above
The influx of slaves for farm labor, which led to
The migration of the small farmer to the city
This revolution raged for 73 years and gradually passed into an actual civil war at the end of the century. Related were revolts of slaves on Sicilian plantations in 135 and 103 B.C. (Ref. 222) Finley (Ref. 249) writes that "--there was no action or belief or institution in Greco-Roman antiquity that was not one way or other affected by the possibility that someone involved might be a slave"[72]. Millions of slave owners bought and sold slaves, overworked them, beat and tortured them and sometimes killed them, without legal retribution.
Other troubles also developed with the invasion in the north by two Celtic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, who defeated Roman armies as they rolled on down through Gaul. In addition the Numidians in North Africa turned on them and attacked under the Leadership of Jugurtha, as we have detailed in section 1, B of this chapter.
Originally Roman medicine had been inherited from the Etruscans and was based chiefly on religious healing, but Greek medicine gradually infiltrated from Alexandria. The first well known Greek physician to go to Rome was Archagathos of Sparta who had arrived with much celebration and honor just before this century opened, but who was later repudiated and called "butcher". (Ref. 125, 249)
The Germanic or Teutonic tribes now began to dominate central Europe. They were fair-haired like the Celts, but taller. By 150 B.C. the pressure of these tribes in the north and the Romans in the south had begun to tip the military balance against the Celts and their culture started to disappear in central Europe except in the kingdom of Noricum (present day southern Austria) from which the Romans had been forced to with- draw, and Switzerland. By the end of the century the Romans had pretty well reconquered these areas also.
The Celtic peoples were now concentrated all along the Atlantic states. We insert at this time a few remarks about the Celtic religion, since the only source of inf ormation has been from the Roman records as they conf ronted the Celts in Gaul. Throughout all their tribes, the Celts had a priestly caste of Druids, although each group seemed to have its own local dieties and cults. The Druids were teachers of the young nobility and they forecasted the future. Once a year, Druid priests from all over met in solemn assembly near Chartres, France. They mediated disputes between tribes and enforced their judgments by excommunication or exclusion from the sacrifices, which seemed central to this religion.
The sacrifices included humans, of ten criminals or prisoners of war, and they were of ten burned in a sea of flames. (Ref. 194) The suggestion has been made that the astronomical knowledge and the basic cult of the Druids may have been passed to them from prehistoric peoples in England.
The Germanic tribes continued raids into western continental Europe, pushing the Celts into more and more rather narrow bands along the Atlantic and into the British Isles. The Cimbers and the Teutons had left Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein about 120 B.C., migrated into Gaul, defeating several Roman armies and spreading fear and terror. The two tribes finally separated, however, and were then defeated by the Roman Marius, in 102 B.C. The Cimbrians met their defeat at Aqua Sextia and the Teutons at Vercellae. But the Cimbri had already sent forces into Spain from Germany and in Portugal the Lusitanian tribes, led by