Chapter V (1)

PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA.

(From 488 to 621.)

[Sidenote: Comparison between Rome and Carthage.]

I. Rome, having extended her dominion to the southern extremity of Italy, found herself in face of a power which, by the force of circumstances, was to become her rival.

Carthage, situated on the part of the African coast nearest to Sicily, was only separated from it by the channel of Malta, which divides the great basin of the Mediterranean in two. She had, during more than two centuries, concluded, from time to time, treaties with Rome, and, with a want of foresight of the future, congratulated the Senate every time it had gained great advantages over the Etruscans or the Samnites.

The superiority of Carthage at the beginning of the Punic wars was evident; yet the constitution of the two cities might have led any one to foresee which in the end must be the master. A powerful aristocracy reigned in both; but at Rome the nobles, identified continually with the people, set an example of patriotism and of all civic virtues, while at Carthage the leading families, enriched by commerce, made effeminate by an unbridled luxury, formed a selfish and greedy caste, distinct from the rest of the citizens. At Rome, the sole motive of action was glory, the principal occupation war, and the first duty military service. At Carthage, everything was sacrificed to interest and commerce; and the defence of the fatherland was, as an insupportable burden, abandoned to mercenaries. Hence, after a defeat, at Carthage the army was recruited with difficulty; at Rome it immediately recruited itself, because the populace was subject to the recruitment. If the poverty of the treasury caused the pay of the troops to be delayed, the Carthaginian soldiers mutinied, and placed the State in danger; the Romans supported privations and suffering without a murmur, out of mere love for their country.

The Carthaginian religion made of the Divinity a jealous and malignant power, which required to be appeased by horrible sacrifices or honoured by shameful practices: hence manners depraved and cruel; at Rome, good sense or the interest of the government moderated the brutality of paganism, and maintained in religion the sentiments of morality.[486]

And, again, what a difference in their policies! Rome had subdued, by force of arms, it is true, the people who surrounded her, but she had, so to say, obtained pardon for her victories in offering to the vanquished a greater country and a share in the rights of the metropolis. Moreover, as the inhabitants of the peninsula were in general of one and the same race, she had found it easy to assimilate them to herself. Carthage, on the contrary, had remained a foreigner in the midst of the natives of Africa, from whom she was separated by origin, language, and manners. She had made her rule hateful to her subjects and to her tributaries by the mercantile spirit of her agents, and their habits of rapacity; hence frequent insurrections, repressed with unexampled cruelty. Her distrust of her subjects had engaged her to leave all the towns on her territory open, in order that none of them might become a centre of support to a revolt. Thus two hundred towns surrendered without resistance to Agathocles immediately he appeared in Africa. Rome, on the contrary, surrounded her colonies with ramparts, and the walls of Placentia, Spoletum, Casilinum, and Nola, contributed to arrest the invasion of Hannibal.

The town of Romulus was at that time in all the vigour of youth, while Carthage had reached that degree of corruption at which States are incapable of supporting either the abuses which enervate them, or the remedy by which they might be regenerated.

To Rome then belonged the future. On one hand, a people of soldiers, restrained by discipline, religion, and purity of manners, animated with the love of their country, surrounded by devoted allies; on the other, a people of merchants with dissolute manners, unruly mercenaries, and discontented subjects.

[Sidenote: First Punic War (490-513).]

II. These two powers, of equal ambition, but so opposite in spirit, could not long remain in presence without disputing the command of the rich basin of the Mediterranean. Sicily especially was destined to excite their covetousness. The possession of that island was then shared between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, the Carthaginians, and the Mamertines. These last, descended from the old adventurers, mercenaries of Agathocles, who came from Italy in 490 and settled at Messina, proceeded to make war upon the Syracusans. They first sought the assistance of the Carthaginians, and surrendered to them the acropolis of Messina as the price of their protection; but soon, disgusted with their too exacting allies, they sent to demand succour of Rome under the name of a common nationality, for most of them called themselves Italiots, and consequently allies of the Republic; some even were or pretended to be Romans.[487]

The Senate hesitated; but public opinion carried the day, and, in spite of the little interest inspired by the Mamertines, war was decided. A body of troops, sent without delay to Messina, expelled the Carthaginians. Soon after, a consular army crossed the Strait, defeated first the Syracusans and then the Carthaginians, and effected a military settlement in the island. Thus commenced the first Punic War.

Different circumstances favoured the Romans. The Carthaginians had made themselves objects of hatred to the Sicilian Greeks. The towns still independent, comparing the discipline of the legions with the excesses of all kinds which had marked the progress of the mercenaries of Agathocles, Pyrrhus, and the Carthaginian generals, received the consuls as liberators. Hiero, master of Syracuse, the principal town in Sicily, had no sooner experienced the power of the Roman armies than he foresaw the result of the struggle, and declared for the strongest. His alliance, maintained faithfully during fifty years, was of great utility to the Republic.[488] With his support, the Romans, at the end of the third year of the war, had obtained possession of Agrigentum and the greater part of the towns of the interior; but the fleets of the Carthaginians remained masters of the sea and of the fortresses on the coast.

The Romans were deficient in ships of war.[489] They could, no doubt, procure transport vessels, or, by their allies (_socii navales_), a few triremes,[490] but they had none of those ships with five ranks of oars, better calculated, by their weight and velocity, to sink the ships of the enemy. An incomparable energy supplied in a short time the insufficiency of the fleet: a hundred and twenty galleys were constructed after the model of a Carthaginian quinquireme which had been cast on the coast of Italy; and soldiers were exercised on land in the handling of the oar.[491] At the end of two months, the crews were embarked, and the Carthaginians were defeated at Mylæ (494), and three years after at Tyndaris (497). These two sea-fights deprived Carthage of the prestige of her maritime superiority.

Still the struggle continued on land without decisive results, when the two rivals embraced the same resolution of making a final effort for the mastery of the sea. Carthage fitted out three hundred and fifty decked vessels; Rome, three hundred and thirty of equal force. In 498 the two fleets met between Heraclea Minora and the Cape of Ecnomus, and, in a memorable combat, in which 300,000 men[492] contended, the victory remained with the Romans. The road to Africa was open, and M. Atilius Regulus, inspired, no doubt, by the example of Agathocles, formed the design of carrying the war thither. His first successes were so great, that Carthage, in her terror, and to avoid the siege with which she was threatened, was ready to renounce her possessions in Sicily. Regulus, relying too much on the feebleness of the resistance he had hitherto encountered, thought he could impose upon Carthage the hardest conditions; but despair restored to the Africans all their energy, and Xanthippus, a Greek adventurer, but good general, placed himself at the head of the troops, defeated the consul, and almost totally destroyed his army.

The Romans never desponded in their reverses; they carried the war again into Sicily, and recovered Panormus, the head-quarters of the Carthaginian army. For several years the fleets of the two countries ravaged, one the coast of Africa, the other the Italian shores; in the interior of Sicily the Romans had the advantage; on the coast, the Carthaginians. Twice the fleets of the Republic were destroyed by tempests or by the enemy, and these disasters led the Senate on two occasions to suspend all naval warfare. The struggle remained concentrated during six years in a corner of Sicily: the Romans occupied Panormus; the Carthaginians, Lilybæum and Drepana. It might have been prolonged indefinitely, if the Senate, in spite of the poverty of the treasury, had not succeeded, by means of voluntary gifts, in equipping another fleet of two hundred quinquiremes. Lutatius, who commanded it, dispersed the enemy’s ships near the Ægates, and, master of the sea, threatened to starve the Carthaginians. They sued for peace at the very moment when a great warrior, Hamilcar, had just restored a prestige to their arms. The fact is, that the enormity of her expenses and sacrifices for the last twenty-four years had discouraged Carthage, while at Rome, patriotism, insensible to material losses, maintained the national energy without change. The Carthaginians, obliged to give up all their establishments in Sicily, paid an indemnity of 2,200 talents.[493] From that time the whole island, with the exception of the kingdom of Hiero, became tributary, and, for the first time, Rome had a subject province.

If, in spite of this definitive success, there were momentary checks, we must attribute them in great part to the continual changes in the plans of campaign, which varied annually with the generals. Several consuls, nevertheless, were wanting neither in skill nor perseverance, and the Senate, always grateful, gave them worthy recompense for their services. Some obtained the honours of the triumph; among others, Duilius, who gained the first naval battle, and Lutatius, whose victory decided peace. At Carthage, on the contrary, the best generals fell victims to envy and ingratitude. Xanthippus, who vanquished Regulus, was summarily removed through the jealousy of the nobles, whom he had saved;[494] and Hamilcar, calumniated by a rival faction, did not receive from his government the support necessary for the execution of his great designs.

During this contest of twenty-three years, the war often experienced the want of a skilful and stable direction; but the legions lost nothing of their ancient valour, and they were even seen one day proceeding to blows with the auxiliaries, who had disputed with them the possession of the most dangerous post. We may cite also the intrepidity of the tribune Calpurnius Flamma, who saved the legions shut up by Hamilcar in a defile. He covered the retreat with three hundred men, and, found alive under a heap of dead bodies, received from the consul a crown of leaves--a modest reward, but sufficient then to inspire heroism. All noble sentiments were raised to such a point as even to do justice to an enemy. The consul, L. Cornelius, gave magnificent funeral rites to Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who had died valiantly in fighting against him.[495]

During the first Punic war, the Carthaginians had often threatened the coasts of Italy, but never attempted a serious landing. They could find no allies among the peoples recently subdued; neither the Samnites, nor the Lucanians who had declared for Pyrrhus, nor the Greek towns in the south of the Peninsula, showed any inclination to revolt. The Cisalpine Gauls, lately so restless, and whom we shall soon see taking arms again, remained motionless. The disturbances which broke out at the close of the Punic war among the Salentini and Falisci were without importance, and appear to have had no connection with the great struggle between Rome and Carthage.[496]

This resistance to all attempts at insurrection proves that the government of the Republic was equitable, and that it had given satisfaction to the vanquished. No complaint was heard, even after great disasters; and yet the calamities of war bore cruelly upon the cultivators--incessantly obliged to quit their fields to fill up the voids made in the legions. At home, the Senate had in its favour a great prestige, and abroad it enjoyed a reputation of good faith which ensured sincere alliances.

The first Punic war exercised a remarkable influence on manners. Until then the Romans had not entertained continuous relations with the Greeks. The conquest of Sicily rendered these relations numerous and active, and whatever Hellenic civilisation contained, whether useful or pernicious, made itself felt.

The religious ideas of the two peoples were different, although Roman paganism had great affinity with the paganism of Greece. This had its philosophers, its sophists, and its freethinkers. At Rome, nothing of the sort; there, creeds were profound, simple, and sincere; and, moreover, from a very remote period, the government had made religion subordinate to politics, and had laboured to give it a direction advantageous to the State.

The Greeks of Sicily introduced into Rome two sects of philosophy, the germs of which became developed at a later period, and which had perhaps more relation with the instincts of the initiated than with those of the initiators. _Stoicism_ fortified the practice of the civic virtues, but without modifying their ancient roughness; _Epicurism_, much more extensively spread, soon flung the nation into the search after material enjoyments. Both sects, by inspiring contempt for death, gave a terrible power to the people who adopted them.

The war had exhausted the finances of Carthage. The mercenaries, whom she could not pay, revolted in Africa and Sardinia at the same time. They were only vanquished by the genius of Hamilcar. In Sardinia, the excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives, who drove them out of the country. The Romans did not let this opportunity for intervention escape them; and, as before in the case of the Mamertines, the Senate, according to all appearance, assumed as a pretext that there were Italiots among the mercenaries in Sardinia. The island was taken, and the conquerors imposed a new contribution on Carthage for having captured some merchant vessels navigating in those latitudes--a scandalous abuse of power, which Polybius loudly condemns.[497] Reduced to impotency by the loss of their navy and the revolt of their army, the Carthaginians submitted to the conditions of the strongest. They had quitted Sicily without leaving any regrets; but it was not the same with Sardinia; there their government and dominion were popular, probably from the community of religion and the Phœnician origin of some of the towns.[498] For a long time afterwards, periodical rebellions testified to the affection of the Sardinians for their old masters. Towards the same epoch, the Romans took possession of Corsica, and, from 516 to 518, repulsed the Ligures and the Gaulish tribes, with whom they had been at peace for forty-five years.

[Sidenote: War of Illyria (525).]

III. While the Republic protected its northern frontiers against the Gauls and Ligures, and combated the influence of Carthage in Sardinia and Corsica, she undertook, against a small barbarous people, another expedition, less difficult, it is true, but which was destined to have immense consequences. The war of Illyria, in fact, was on the point of opening to the Romans the roads to Greece and Asia, subjected to the successors of Alexander, and where Greek civilisation was dominant. Now become a great maritime power, Rome had henceforward among her attributes the police of the seas. The inhabitants of the eastern coasts of the Adriatic, addicted to piracy, were destructive to commerce. Several times they had carried their depredations as far as Messenia, and defeated Greek squadrons sent to repress their ravages.[499] These pirates belonged to the Illyrian nation. The Greeks considered them as barbarians, which meant foreigners to the Hellenic race; it is probable, nevertheless, that they had a certain affinity with it. Inconvenient allies of the kings of Macedonia, they often took arms either for or against them; intrepid and fierce hordes, they were ready to sell their services and blood to any one who would pay them, resembling, in this respect, the Albanians of the present day, believed by some to be their descendants driven into the mountains by the invasions of the Slaves.[500]

The king of the Illyrians was a child, and his mother, Teuta, exercised the regency. This fact alone reveals manners absolutely foreign to Hellenic and Roman civilisation. A chieftain of Pharos (_Lesina_), named Demetrius, in the pay of Teuta, occupied as a fief the island of Corcyra Nigra (now _Curzola_), and exercised the functions of prime minister. The Romans had no difficulty in gaining him; moreover, the Illyrians furnished a legitimate cause of war by assassinating an ambassador of the Republic.[501] The Senate immediately dispatched an army and a fleet to reduce them (525). Demetrius surrendered his island, which served as a basis against Apollonia, Dyrrhachium, Nutria, and a great part of the coast. After a resistance of some months, the Illyrians submitted, entered into an engagement to renounce piracy, surrendered several ports, and agreed to choose Demetrius, the ally of the Romans, for the guardian of their king.[502]

By this expedition, the Republic gained great popularity throughout Greece; the Athenians and the Achaian league especially were lavish of thanks, and began from that time to consider the Romans as their protectors against their dangerous neighbours, the kings of Macedonia. As to the Illyrians, the lesson they had received was not sufficient to correct them of their piratical habits. Ten years later another expedition was sent to chastise the Istrians at the head of the Adriatic,[503] and soon afterwards the disobedience of Demetrius to the orders of the Senate brought war again upon Illyria. He was compelled to take refuge with Philip of Macedon, while the young king became the ally or subject of the Republic.[504] In the mean time a new war attracted the attention of the Romans.

[Sidenote: Invasion of the Cisalpines (528).]

IV. The idea of the Senate was evidently to push its domination towards the north of Italy, and thus to preserve it from the invasion of the Gauls. In 522, at the proposal of the tribune Flaminius, the Senones had been expelled from Picenum, and their lands, declared public domain, were distributed among the plebeians. This measure, a presage to the neighbouring Gaulish tribes of the lot reserved for them, excited among them great uneasiness, and they began to prepare for a formidable invasion. In 528, they called from the other side of the Alps a mass of barbarians of the warlike race of the Gesatæ.[505] The terror at Rome was great. The same interests animated the peoples of Italy, and the fear of a danger equally threatening for all began to inspire them with the same spirit.[506] They rushed to arms; an army of 150,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry was sent into the field, and the census of men capable of bearing arms amounted to nearly 800,000. The enumeration of the contingents of each country[507] furnishes valuable information on the general population of Italy, which appears, at this period, to have been, without reckoning the slaves, about the same as at the present day, yet with this difference, that the men capable of bearing arms were then in a much greater proportion.[508] These documents also give rise to the remark that the Samnites, only forty years recovered from the disasters of their sanguinary struggles, could still furnish 77,000 men.

The Gauls penetrated to the centre of Tuscany, and at Fesulæ defeated a Roman army; but, intimidated by the unexpected arrival of the consul L. Æmilius coming from Rimini, they retired, when, meeting the other consul, Caius Atilius, who, returning from Sardinia, had landed at Pisa, they were enclosed between two armies, and were annihilated. In the following year, the Gaulish tribes, successively driven back to the other side of the Po, were defeated again on the banks of the Adda; the coalition of the Cisalpine peoples was dissolved, without leading to the complete submission of the country. The colonies of Cremona and Placentia contributed, nevertheless, to hold it in check.

While the north of Italy seemed sufficient to absorb the attention of the Romans, great events were passing in Spain.

[Sidenote: Second Punic War (536-552).]

V. Carthage, humiliated, had lost the empire of the sea, with Sicily and Sardinia. Rome, on the contrary, had strengthened herself by her conquests in the Mediterranean, in Illyria, and in the Cisalpine. Suddenly the scene changes: the dangers which threatened the African town disappear, Carthage rises from her abasement, and Rome, which had lately been able to count 800,000 men in condition to carry arms, will soon tremble for her own existence. A change so unforeseen is brought about by the mere appearance in the ranks of the Carthaginian army of a man of genius, Hannibal.

His father, Hamilcar, chief of the powerful faction of the Barcas, had saved Carthage by suppressing the insurrection of the mercenaries. Charged afterwards with the war in Spain, he had vanquished the most warlike peoples of that country, and formed in silence a formidable array. Having discovered early the merit of a young man named Hasdrubal, he took him into his favour with the intention of making him his successor. In taking him for his son-in-law, he entrusted to him the education of Hannibal, on whom rested his dearest hopes. Hamilcar having been slain in 526, Hasdrubal had taken his place at the head of the army.

The progress of the Carthaginians in Spain, and the state of their forces in that country, had alarmed the Senate, which, in 526, obliged the government of Carthage to subscribe to a new treaty, prohibiting the Punic army from passing the Ebro, and attacking the allies of the Republic.[509] This last article referred to the Saguntines, who had already had some disputes with the Carthaginians. The Romans affected not to consider them as aborigines, and founded their plea on a legend which represented this people as a colony from Ardea, contemporary with the Trojan war.[510] By a similar conduct Rome created allies in Spain to watch her old adversaries, and this time, as in the case of the Mamertines, she showed an interested sympathy in favour of a weak nation exposed to frequent collisions with the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal had received the order to carry into execution the new treaty; but he was assassinated by a Gaul, in 534, and the army, without waiting for orders from Carthage, chose by acclamation for its chief Hannibal, then twenty-nine years of age. In spite of the rival factions, this choice was ratified, and perhaps any hesitation on the part of the council in Carthage would only have led to the revolt of the troops. The party of the Barcas carried the question against the government, and confirmed the power of the young general. Adored by the soldiers, who saw in him their own pupil, Hannibal exercised over them an absolute authority, and believed that with their old band he could venture upon anything.

The Saguntines were at war with the Turbuletæ,[511] allies or subjects of Carthage. In contempt of the treaty of 256, Hannibal laid siege to Saguntum, and took it after a siege of several months. He pretended that, in attacking his own allies, the Saguntines had been the aggressors. The people of Saguntum hastened to implore the succour of Rome. The Senate confined itself to despatching commissioners, some to Hannibal, who gave them no attention, and others to Carthage, where they arrived only when Saguntum had ceased to exist. An immense booty, sent by the conqueror, had silenced the faction opposed to the Barcas, and the people, as well as the soldiers, elevated by success, breathed nothing but war. The Roman ambassadors, sent to require indemnities, and even to demand the head of Hannibal, were ill received, and returned declaring hostilities unavoidable.

Rome prepared for war with her usual firmness and energy. One of the consuls was ordered to pass into Sicily, and thence into Africa; the other to lead an army by sea to Spain, and expel the Carthaginians from that country. But, without waiting the issue of negotiations, Hannibal was in full march to transfer the war into Italy. Sometimes treating with the Celtiberian or Gaulish hordes to obtain a passage through their territory, sometimes intimidating them by his arms, he had reached the banks of the Rhone, when the consul charged with the conquest of Spain, P. Cornelius Scipio, landing at the eastern mouth of that river, learnt that Hannibal had already entered the Alps. He then leaves his army to his brother Cneius, returns promptly to Pisa, places himself at the head of the troops destined to fight the Boii, crosses the Po with them, hoping by this rapid movement to surprise the Carthaginian general at the moment when, fatigued and weakened, he entered the plains of Italy.

The two armies met on the banks of the Tessino (536). Scipio, defeated and wounded, fell back on the colony of Placentia. Rejoined in the neighbourhood of that town by his colleague Tib. Sempronius Longus, he again, on the Trebia, offered battle to the Carthaginians. A brilliant victory placed Hannibal in possession of a great part of Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul, the warlike hordes of which received him with enthusiasm and reinforced his army, reduced, after the passage of the mountains, to less than 30,000 men. Flattered by the reception of the Gauls, the Carthaginian general tried also to gain the Italiots, and, announcing himself as the liberator of oppressed peoples, he took care, after the victory, to set at liberty all the prisoners taken from the allies. He hoped that these liberated captives would become for him useful emissaries. In the spring of 537 he entered Etruria, crossed the marshes of the Val di Chiana, and, drawing the Roman army to the neighbourhood of the Lake Trasimenus, into an unfavourable locality, destroyed it almost totally.

The terror was great at Rome; yet the conqueror, after devastating Etruria, and attacking Spoletum in vain, crossed the Apennines, threw himself into Umbria and Picenum, and thence directed his march through Samnium towards the coast of Apulia. In fact, having reached the centre of Italy, deprived of all communication with the mother country, without the engines necessary for a siege, with no assured line of retreat, having behind him the army of Sempronius, what must Hannibal do?--Place the Apennines between himself and Rome, draw nearer to the populations more disposed in his favour, and then, by the conquest of the southern provinces, establish a solid basis of operation, in direct communication with Carthage. In spite of the victory of Trasimenus, his position was critical, for, except the Cisalpine Gauls, all the Italiot peoples remained faithful to Rome, and so far no one had come to increase his army.[512] Thus Hannibal remained several months between Casilinum and Arpi, where Fabius, by his skilful movements, would have succeeded in starving the Carthaginian army, if the term of his command had not expired. Moreover, the popular party, irritated at a system of temporising which it accused of cowardice, raised to the consulship, as the colleague of Æmilius Paulus, Varro, a man of no capacity. Obliged to remain in Apulia, to procure subsistence for his troops, Hannibal, being attacked imprudently, entirely defeated, near Cannæ, two consular armies composed of eight legions and of an equal number of allies, amounting to 87,000 men (538).[513] One of the consuls perished, the other escaped, followed only by a few horsemen. 40,000 Romans had been killed or taken, and Hannibal sent to Carthage a bushel of gold rings taken from the fingers of knights who lay on the field of battle.[514] From that moment part of Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and Bruttium declared for the Carthaginians, while the Greek towns of the south of the peninsula remained favourable to the Romans.[515] About the same time, as an increase of ill fortune, L. Postumus, sent against the Gauls, was defeated, and his army cut to pieces.

The Romans always showed themselves admirable in adversity; and thus the Senate, by a skilful policy, went to meet the consul Varro, and thank him for not having despaired of the Republic; it would, however, no longer employ the troops which had retreated from the battle, but sent them into Sicily with a prohibition to return into Italy until the enemy had been driven out of it. They refused to ransom the prisoners in Hannibal’s hands. The fatherland, they said, had no need of men who allowed themselves to be taken arms in hand.[516] This reply made people report at Rome that the man who possessed power was treated very differently from the humble citizen.[517]

The idea of asking for peace presented itself to nobody. Each rivalled the other in sacrifices and devotion. New legions were raised, and there were enrolled 8,000 slaves, who were restored to freedom after the first combat.[518] The treasury being empty, all the private fortunes were brought to its aid. The proprietors of slaves taken for the army, the farmers of the revenue charged with the furnishing of provisions, consented to be repaid only at the end of the war. Everybody, according to his means, maintained at his own expense freedmen to serve on the galleys. After the example of the Senate, widows and minors carried their gold and silver to the public treasury. It was forbidden for anybody to keep at home either jewels, plate, silver or copper money, above a certain value, and, by the law Oppia, even the toilette of the ladies was limited.[519] Lastly, the duration of family mourning for relatives slain before the enemy was restricted to thirty days.[520]

After the victory of Cannæ it would have been more easy for Hannibal to march straight upon Rome than after Trasimenus; yet, since so great a captain did not think this possible to attempt, it is not uninteresting to inquire into his motives. In the first place, his principal force was in Numidian cavalry, which would have been useless in a siege;[521] then, he had generally the inferiority in attacking fortresses. Thus, after Trebia, he could not reduce Placentia;[522] after Trasimenus, he failed before Spoletum; three times he marched upon Naples, without venturing to attack it; later still, he was obliged to abandon the sieges of Nola, Cumæ, and Casilinum.[523] What, then, could be more natural than his hesitation to attack Rome, defended by a numerous population, accustomed to the use of arms?

The most striking proof of the genius of Hannibal is the fact of his having remained sixteen years in Italy, left almost to his own forces, reduced to the necessity of recruiting his army solely among his new allies, and of subsisting at their expense, ill seconded by the Senate of his own country, having always to face at least two consular armies, and, lastly, shut up in the peninsula by the Roman fleets, which guarded its coasts to intercept reinforcements from Carthage. His constant thought, therefore, was to make himself master of some important points of the coast in order to open a communication with Africa. After Cannæ, he occupies Capua, seeks to gain the sea by Naples,[524] Cumæ, Puteoli; unable to effect these objects, he seizes upon Arpi and Salapia, on the eastern coast, where he hopes to meet the ambassadors of the King of Macedonia. He next makes Bruttium his base of operation, and his attempts are directed against the maritime places, now against Brundusium and Tarentum, now against Locri and Rhegium.

All the defeats sustained by the generals of the Republic had been caused, first, by the superiority of the Numidian cavalry, and the inferiority of the hastily levied Latin soldiers,[525] opposed to old veteran troops; and, next, by excessive rashness in face of an able captain, who drew his adversaries to the position which he had chosen. Nevertheless, Hannibal, considerably weakened by his victories, exclaimed, after Cannæ, as Pyrrhus had done after Heraclea, that such another success would be his ruin.[526] Q. Fabius Maximus, recalled to power (539), continued a system of methodical war; while Marcellus, his colleague, bolder,[527] assumed the offensive, and arrested the progress of the enemy, by obliging him to shut himself up in a trapezium, formed on the north by Capua and Arpi, on the south by Rhegium and Tarentum. In 543 the war was entirely concentrated round two places; the citadel of Tarentum, blockaded by the Carthaginians, and Capua, besieged by the two consuls. These had surrounded themselves with lines of countervallation against the place, and of circumvallation against the attacks from without. Hannibal, having failed in his attempt to force these latter, marched upon Rome, in the hope of causing the siege of Capua to be raised, and by separating the two consular armies, defeating them one after the other in the plain country. Having arrived under the walls of the capital, and foreseeing too many difficulties in the way of making himself master of so large a town, he abandoned his plan of attack, and fell back to the environs of Rhegium. His abode there was prolonged during several years, with alternations of reverse and success, in the south of Italy, the populations of which were favourable to him; avoiding engagements, keeping near the sea, and not going beyond the southern extremity of the territory of Samnium.

In 547, a great army, which had left Spain under the command of one of his brothers, Hasdrubal, had crossed the Alps, and was advancing to unite with him, marching along the coast of the Adriatic. Two consular armies were charged with the war against the Carthaginians: one, under the command of the consul M. Livius Salinator, in Umbria; the other, having at its head the consul C. Claudius Nero, held Hannibal in check in Lucania, and had even obtained an advantage over him at Grumentum. Hannibal had advanced as far as Canusium, when the consul Claudius Nero, informed of the numerical superiority of the army of succour, leaves his camp under the guard of Q. Cassius, his lieutenant, conceals his departure, effects his junction with his colleague, and defeats, near the Metaurus, Hasdrubal, who perished in the battle with all his army.[528] From that moment Hannibal foresees the fate of Carthage; he abandons Apulia, and even Lucania, and retires into the only country which had remained faithful, Bruttium. He remains shut up there five years more, in continual expectation of reinforcements,[529] and only quits Italy when his country, threatened by the Roman legions, already on the African soil, calls him home to her defence.

In this war the marine of the two nations performed an important part. The Romans strained every nerve to remain masters of the sea; their fleets, stationed at Ostia, Brundusium, and Lilybæum, kept incessantly the most active watch upon the coasts of Italy; they even made cruises to the neighbourhood of Carthage and as far as Greece.[530] The difficulty of the direct communications induced the Carthaginians to send their troops by way of Spain and the Alps, where their armies recruited on the road, rather than dispatch them to the southern coast of Italy. Hannibal received but feeble reinforcements;[531] Livy mentions two only: the first of 4,000 Numidians and 40 elephants; and the second, brought by Bomilcar to the coast of the Ionian Gulf, near Locri.[532] All the other convoys appear to have been intercepted, and one of the most considerable, laden with stores and troops, was destroyed on the coast of Sicily.[533]

We cannot but admire the constancy of the Romans in face of enemies who threatened them on all sides. During the same period they repressed the Cisalpine Gauls and the Etruscans, combated the King of Macedonia, the ally of Hannibal, sustained a fierce war in Spain, and resisted in Sicily the attacks of the Syracusans, who, after the death of Hiero, had declared against the Republic. It took three years to reduce Syracuse, defended by Archimedes. Rome kept on foot, as long as the Second Punic war lasted, from sixteen to twenty-four legions,[534] recruited only in the town and in Latium.[535] These twenty-three legions represented an effective force of about 100,000 men, a number which will not appear exaggerated if we compare it with the census of 534, which gave 270,213 men, and only comprised persons in a condition to bear arms.

In the thirteenth year of the war the chances seemed in favour of the Republic. P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of the consul defeated at Trebia, had just expelled the Carthaginians from Spain. The people, recognising his genius, had conferred upon him, six years before, the powers of proconsul, though he was only twenty-four years of age. On his return to Rome, Scipio, elected consul (549), passed into Sicily, and from thence to Africa, where, after a campaign of two years, he defeated Hannibal in the plains of Zama, and compelled the rival of Rome to sue for peace (552). The Senate accorded to the conqueror the greatest honour which a Republic can confer upon one of her citizens--she left it to him to dictate terms to the vanquished. Carthage was compelled to give up her ships and her elephants, to pay 10,000 talents (58,000,000 francs [£2,320,000]), and, finally, to enter into the humiliating engagement not to make war in future without the authorisation of Rome.

[Sidenote: Results of the Second Punic War.]

VI. The second Punic war ended in the submission of Carthage and Spain, but it was at the price of painful sacrifices. During this struggle of sixteen years, a great number of the most distinguished citizens had perished; at Cannæ alone two thousand seven hundred knights, two questors, twenty-one tribunes of the soldiers, and many old consuls, prætors, and ediles were slain; and so many senators had fallen, that it was necessary to name a hundred and seventy-seven new ones, taken from among those who had occupied the magistracies.[536] But such hard trials had tempered anew the national character.[537] The Republic felt her strength and her resources unfold themselves; she rejoiced in her victories with a just pride, without yet experiencing the intoxication of a too great fortune, and new bonds were formed between the different peoples of Italy. War against a foreign invasion, in fact, has always the immense advantage of putting an end to internal dissensions, and unites the citizens against the common enemy. The greater part of the allies gave unequivocable proofs of their devotion. The Republic owed its safety, after the defeat of Cannæ, to the assistance of eighteen colonies, which furnished men and money.[538] The fear of Hannibal had fortunately given strength to concord, both in Rome and in Italy: no more quarrels between the two orders,[539] no more divisions between the governing and the governed. Sometimes the Senate refers to the people the most serious questions; sometimes the people, full of trust in the Senate, submits beforehand to its decision.[540]

It was especially during the struggle against Hannibal that the inconvenience of the duality and of the annual change of the consular powers became evident;[541] but this never-ceasing cause of weakness was, as we have seen before, compensated by the spirit of patriotism. Here is a striking example: while Fabius was pro-dictator, Minucius, chief of the cavalry, was, contrary to the usual custom, invested with the same powers. Hurried on by his temper, he compromised the army, which was saved by Fabius. He acknowledged his error, submitted willingly to the orders of his colleague, and thus restored, by his own voluntary act, the unity of the command.[542] As to the continual change of the military chiefs, the force of circumstances rendered it necessary to break through this custom. The two Scipios remained seven years at the head of the army of Spain; Scipio Africanus succeeded them for almost as long a period. The Senate and the people had decided that, during the war of Italy, the powers of the proconsuls and prætors might be prorogued, and that the same consuls might be re-elected as often as might be thought fit.[543] And subsequently, in the campaign against Philip, the tribunes pointed out in the following terms the disadvantage of such frequent changes: “During the four years that the war of Macedonia lasted, Sulpicius had passed the greater part of his consulship in seeking Philip and his army; Villius had overtaken the enemy, but had been recalled before giving battle; Quinctius, retained the greater part of the year at Rome by religious cares, would have pushed the war with sufficient vigour to have entirely terminated it, if he could have arrived at his destination before the season was so far advanced. He had hardly entered his winter quarters, when he made preparations for recommencing the campaign with the spring, with a view of finishing it successfully, provided no successor came to snatch victory from him.”[544] These arguments prevailed, and the consul was prorogued in his command.

Thus continual wars tended to introduce the stability of military powers and the permanence of armies. The same legions had passed ten years in Spain; others had been nearly as long in Sicily; and though, at the expiration of their service, the old soldiers were dismissed, the legions remained always under arms. Hence arose the necessity of giving lands to the soldiers who had finished their time of service; and, in 552, there were assigned to Scipio’s veterans, for each year of service in Africa and Spain, two acres of the lands confiscated from the Samnites and Apulians.[545]

It was the first time that Rome took foreign troops into her pay, sometimes Celtiberians, at others Cretans sent by Hiero of Syracuse,[546] in fact, mercenaries, and a body of discontented Gauls who had abandoned the Carthaginian army.[547]

Many of the inhabitants of the allied towns were drawn to Rome,[548] where, in spite of the sacrifices imposed by the wars, commerce and luxury increased. The spoils which Marcellus brought from Sicily, and especially from Syracuse, had given development to the taste for the arts, and this consul boasted of having been the first who caused his countrymen to appreciate and admire the masterpieces of Greece.[549] The games of the circus, in the middle of the sixth century, began to be more in favour. Junius and Decius Brutus had, in 490, exhibited for the first time the combats of gladiators, the number of which was soon increased to twenty-two pairs.[550] Towards this period, also (559), theatrical representations were first given by the ediles.[551] The spirit of speculation had taken possession of the high classes, as appears by the law forbidding the senators (law Claudia, 536) to maintain at sea ships of a tonnage of more than three hundred amphoræ; as the public wealth increased, the knights, composed of the class who paid most taxes, increased also, and tended to separate into two categories, some serving in the cavalry, and possessing the horse furnished by the State (_equus publicus_),[552] the others devoting themselves to commerce and financial operations. The knights had long been employed in civil commissions,[553] and were often called to the high magistracies; and therefore Perseus justly called them “the nursery of the Senate, and the young nobility out of which issued consuls and generals (_imperatores_).”[554] During the Punic wars they had rendered great services by making large advances for the provisioning of the armies;[555] and if some, as undertakers of transports, had enriched themselves at the expense of the State, the Senate hesitated in punishing their embezzlements, for fear of alienating this class, already powerful.[556] The territorial wealth was partly in the hands of the great proprietors; this appears from several facts, and, among others, from the hospitality given by a lady of Apulia to 10,000 Roman soldiers, who had escaped from the battle of Cannæ, whom she entertained at her own private cost on her own lands.[557]

Respect for the higher classes had been somewhat shaken, as we learn from the adoption of a measure of apparently little importance. Since the fall of the kingly power, there had been established in the public games no distinction between the spectators. Deference for authority rendered all classification superfluous, and “never would a plebeian,” says Valerius Maximus,[558] “have ventured to place himself before a senator.” But, towards 560, a law was passed for assigning to the members of the Senate reserved places. It is necessary, for the good order of society, to increase the severity of the laws as the feeling of the social hierarchy becomes weakened.

Circumstances had brought other changes; the tribuneship, without being abolished, had become an auxiliary of the aristocracy. The tribunes no longer exclusively represented the plebeian order; they were admitted into the Senate; they formed part of the government, and employed their authority in the interest of justice and the fatherland.[559] The three kinds of comitia still remained,[560] but some modifications had been introduced into them. The assembly of the curiæ[561] consisted now only of useless formalities. Their attributes, more limited every day, were reduced to the conferring of the _imperium_, and the deciding of certain questions about auspices and religion. The comitia by centuries, which in their origin were the assembly of the people in arms, voting in the Campus Martius, and nominating their military chiefs, retained the same privileges; only, the century had become a subdivision of the tribe. All the citizens inscribed in each of the thirty-five tribes were separated into five classes, according to their fortune; each class was divided into two centuries, the one of the young men (_juniores_) the other of the older men (_seniores_).

As to the comitia by tribes, in which each voted without distinction of rank or fortune, their legislative power continued to increase as that of the comitia by centuries diminished.

Thus the Roman institutions, while appearing to remain the same, were incessantly changing. The political assemblies, the laws of the Twelve Tables, the classes established by Servius Tullius, the yearly election to offices, the military services, the tribuneship, the edileship, all seemed to remain as in the past, and in reality all had changed through the force of circumstances. Nevertheless, this appearance of immobility in the midst of progressing society was one advantage of Roman manners. Religious observers of tradition and ancient customs, the Romans did not appear to destroy what they displaced; they applied ancient forms to new principles, and thus introduced innovations without disturbance, and without weakening the prestige of institutions consecrated by time.

[Sidenote: The Macedonian War (554).]

VII. During the second Punic war, Philip III., king of Macedonia, had attacked the Roman settlements in Illyria, invaded several provinces of Greece, and made an alliance with Hannibal. Obliged to check these dangerous aggressions, the Senate, from 540 to 548, maintained large forces on the coasts of Epirus and Macedonia; and, united with the Ætolian league, and with Attalus, king of Pergamus, had forced Philip to conclude peace. But in 553, after the victory of Zama, when this prince again attacked the free cities of Greece and Asia allied to Rome, war was declared against him. The Senate could not forget that at this last battle a Macedonian contingent was found among the Carthaginian troops, and that still there remained in Greece a large number of Roman citizens sold for slaves after the battle of Cannæ.[562] Thus from each war was born a new war, and every success was destined to force the Republic into the pursuit of others. Now the Adriatic was to be passed, first, to curb the power of the Macedonians, and then to call to liberty those famous towns, the cradles of civilisation. The destinies of Greece could not be a matter of indifference to the Romans, who had borrowed her laws, her science, her literature, and her arts.

Sulpicius, appointed to combat Philip, landed on the coast of Epirus, and penetrated into Macedonia, where he gained a succession of victories, while one of his lieutenants, sent to Greece with the fleet, caused the siege of Athens to be raised. During two years the war languished, but the Roman fleet, combined with that of Attalus and the Rhodians, remained master of the sea (555). T. Quinctius Flamininus, raised to the consulship while still young, justified, by his intelligence and energy, the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He detached the Achaians and Bœtians from their alliance with the King of Macedonia, and, with the aid of the Ætolians, gained the battle of Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly (557), where the legion routed the celebrated phalanx of Philip II. and Alexander the Great. Philip III., compelled to make peace, was fain to accept hard conditions; the first of which was the obligation to withdraw his garrisons from the towns of Greece and Asia, and the prohibition to make war without the permission of the Senate.

The recital of Livy, which speaks of the decree proclaiming liberty to Greece, deserves to be quoted. We see there what value the Senate then attached to moral influence, and to that true popularity which the glory of having freed a people gives:--

“The epoch of the celebration of the Isthmian games generally attracted a great concourse of spectators, either because of the natural taste of the Greeks for all sorts of games, or because of the situation of Corinth, which, seated on two seas, offered easy access to the curious. But on this occasion an immense multitude flocked thither from all parts, in expectation of the future fate of Greece in general, and of each people in particular: this was the only subject of thought and conversation. The Romans take their place, and the herald, according to custom, advances into the middle of the arena, whence the games are announced according to a solemn form. The trumpet sounds, silence is proclaimed, and the herald pronounces these words: ‘The Roman Senate, and S.T. Quinctius, imperator, conquerors of Philip and the Macedonians, re-establish in the enjoyment of liberty, their laws, and privileges, the Corinthians, the Phocians, the Locrians, the island of Eubœa, the Magnetes, the Thessalians, the Perrhœbi, and the Achæans of Phthiotis.’ These were the names of all the nations which had been under the dominion of Philip. At this proclamation, the assembly was overcome with excess of joy. Hardly anybody could believe what he heard. The Greeks looked at each other as if they were still in the illusions of a pleasant dream, to be dissipated on awakening, and, distrusting the evidence of their ears, they asked their neighbours if they were not deceived. The herald is recalled, each man burning, not only to hear, but to see the messenger of such good news; he reads the decree a second time. Then, no longer able to doubt their happiness, they uttered cries of joy, and bestowed on their liberator such loud and repeated applause as make it easy to see that, of all good, liberty is that which has most charm for the multitude. Then the games were celebrated, but hastily, and without attracting the looks or the attention of the spectators. One interest alone absorbed their souls, and took from them the feeling of every other pleasure.

“The games ended, the people rush towards the Roman general; everybody is anxious to greet him, to take his hand, to cast before him crowns of flowers and of ribbons, and the crowd was so great that he was almost suffocated. He was but thirty-three years of age, and the vigour of life, joined with the intoxication of a glory so dazzling, gave him strength to bear up against such a trial. The joy of the peoples was not confined to the enthusiasm of the moment: the impression was kept up long afterwards in their thoughts and speech. ‘There was then,’ they said, ‘one nation upon earth, which, at its own cost, at the price of fatigues and perils, made war for the liberty of peoples even though removed from their frontiers and continent: this nation crossed the seas, in order that there should not be in the whole world one single unjust government, and that right, equity, and law should be everywhere dominant. The voice of a herald had been sufficient to restore freedom to all the cities of Greece and Asia. The idea alone of such a design supposed a rare greatness of soul; but to execute it needed as much courage as fortune.’”[563]

There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III., who had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have annihilated.[564] But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and Gaul.[565] Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome, bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an object of envy to the successors of Alexander.

[Sidenote: War against Antiochus (563).]