Chapter VI: The Mediterranean a Roman Lake

ROME IN PERIL. The conquest of Italy by the Romans took about two
hundred and fifty years. The conquest of the peoples living in the
other lands on the shores of the Mediterranean took nearly as long
again. Only twice in these four or five hundred years was Rome in
serious danger of destruction. Once it was by the Gauls, as we have
read, who captured all the city except the citadel. The second time it
was by the Carthaginians, who lived on the northern coast of Africa.
The Romans were finally victorious over all their enemies because they
were patient and courageous in misfortune and refused to believe that
they could be conquered.

CAUSE OF WAR WITH CARTHAGE. The Carthaginians were angry at the way
the Romans treated them. They watched with alarm the steady growth of
the Roman power, and feared that the Romans, if masters of Italy,
would attack their trade with the cities of the western Mediterranean.
A quarrel broke out over a city in Sicily. At first the Carthaginians
seemed to have the best of it, because they had a strong war fleet
while the Romans had only a few small vessels. But the Romans
hurriedly built ships and placed upon each a kind of drawbridge,
fitted with great hooks called grappling-irons. These they let down
upon the enemy's decks as soon as the ships came close enough, and
over these drawbridges the Roman soldiers rushed and captured the
Carthaginian ships.

When the Carthaginians asked for peace, the Romans demanded a great
sum of money and a promise that the Carthaginians would leave the
cities in Sicily which they occupied. Soon afterward the Romans took
advantage of a mutiny in the Carthaginian army to demand more money
and to seize Sardinia and Corsica. No wonder the Carthaginians were
angry. The result was a new and more terrible war.

HANNIBAL. The Carthaginians in the new war were led by Hannibal, who
understood how to fight battles better than any of the generals whom
the Romans sent against him. The story is told that when he was a boy
his father made him promise, at the altar of his city's gods, undying
hatred to Rome. Even the Romans thought him a wonderful man. Their
historians said that toil did not wear out his body or exhaust his
energy. Cold or heat were alike to him. He never ate or drank more
than he needed. He slept when he had time, whether it was day or
night, wrapping himself in a military cloak and lying on the ground in
the midst of his soldiers. He did not dress better than the other
officers, but his weapons and his horses were the best in the army.

WAR CARRIED INTO ITALY, 218 B.C. Hannibal decided that the war should
be carried into Italy to the very gates of Rome. He started from
Spain, half of which the Carthaginians ruled, marched across southern
Gaul, and came to the foot-hills of the Alps. To climb the Alps was
the most difficult part of his long journey.

CROSSING THE ALPS. There were no roads across the mountains, only
rough paths used by the mountaineers, who constantly attacked
Hannibal's soldiers, bursting out suddenly upon them from behind a
turn in the trail, or rolling huge rocks upon them from above. The
elephants, the horses, and the baggage animals of the army were
frightened, and in the tumult many of them slipped over the precipices
and were dashed on the rocks below. For five days the army toiled
upward, and then rested two days on the summit of the pass.

Although the road down into Italy was short, it was steep, and the
paths were slippery with ice and with snow trodden into slush by
thousands of men and animals. In one place there had been a landslide,
and the road along the rocky slope was cut away for a thousand feet.
In order to build a new road it was necessary to crack the rocks. This
the soldiers did by making huge fires and pouring wine over the heated
surface. At last, worn out, ragged, and half starved, the army reached
the plains of Italy, but with a loss of half its men.

HOW HANNIBAL WON A VICTORY. The first great battle with the Romans was
fought on the river Trebia in northern Italy, and in it Hannibal
showed how easily he could outwit and destroy a Roman army. It was a
winter's day and the river was swollen by rains. The two camps lay on
opposite banks. In the early morning Hannibal sent across the river a
body of horsemen to attack the Roman camp and draw the Romans into a
battle. At the same time he ordered his other soldiers to eat
breakfast, to build fires before their tents to warm themselves, and
to rub their bodies with oil, so that they might be strong for the
coming fight.

The Romans were suddenly roused by the attack of the Carthaginian
horsemen, and, without waiting for food, moved out of camp, chasing
the horsemen toward the river. Into its icy waters the Romans waded
breast-high, and when they came up on the opposite bank they were
benumbed with cold. As soon as Hannibal knew that the Romans had
crossed the river he attacked them fiercely with all his troops. Two
thousand men whom he had placed in ambush fell upon the rear of their
line. Their allies were frightened by a charge of elephants. Seeing
that destruction was certain, ten thousand of the best soldiers broke
through the Carthaginian line and marched away. All the rest of the
army was destroyed.

ROMAN ENDURANCE. This was not the last of the Roman defeats. Two other
armies were destroyed by Hannibal during the next two years. In the
battle of Cannae nearly seventy thousand Romans, including eighty
senators, were slain. The news filled the city with weeping women, but
the senate did not think of yielding. When their allies deserted them,
they besieged the faithless cities, took them, beheaded the rulers,
and sold the inhabitants into slavery.

They did not dare to fight Hannibal in the open field, but tried to
wear him out by cutting off all small bodies of his troops and by
making it difficult for him to get food for his army. They carried the
war into Spain and finally into Africa, and when, with a weakened
army, Hannibal faced them there, they defeated him. His defeat was the
ruin of Carthage, for the unhappy city was compelled to see her fleet
destroyed, to pay the Romans a huge sum of money, and to give up Spain
to them.

OTHER ROMAN TRIUMPHS. The war with Carthage ended two hundred and two
years before the birth of Christ. In the wars that followed, Roman
armies fought not only in Spain and Africa, but also in Greece and
Asia. Carthage was destroyed; as was also Corinth, a Greek city. Roman
generals enriched themselves and sent great treasures back to Rome.
Roman merchants grew rich because their rivals in Carthage and Corinth
were ruined or because the conquered cities were forbidden to trade
with any city but Rome. All this took a long time and many wars, but
in the end the Romans became masters of every land along the shores of
the Mediterranean. This was not wholly a misfortune, for the Romans
had learned that the Greeks were superior to them in some things and
they took the Greeks as their teachers in most of the arts of living.
The ancient world became a sort of partnership, and we call its
civilization Graeco-Roman, that is, both Greek and Roman.

THE ROMANS AS RULERS. The Romans at first treated the lands in Sicily,
Spain, Africa, Greece, and Asia as conquered territories, or
provinces, sending to rule over them officers who were to act both as
governors and judges. With these men went many tax-collectors or
"publicans." The Romans were obliged to leave in most provinces a
large body of soldiers to put down any attempt at rebellion. Often the
officers and the publicans robbed the country instead of ruling it
justly.

EVIL RESULTS OF CONQUEST. During the wars the Romans had lost many of
their simple ways of living. Some had grown rich in the business of
providing for the armies and navies, and they were eager for new wars
in order to make still bigger fortunes. Hannibal's marches up and down
Italy had driven thousands of farmers from their homes, and they had
wandered to Rome for safety and food. When the war was over many of
them did not go back to their homes. Those who did found that they
could no longer get fair prices for their crops because great
quantities of wheat were shipped to Rome from the conquered lands.
Wealthy men bought the little farms and joined them, making great
estates where slaves raised sheep and cattle or tended vineyards and
olive groves. There was not much work for free men in Rome, for slaves
were very cheap. One army of prisoners was sold at about eight cents
apiece. In this way the poor were made idle, while the rich sent
everywhere for new luxuries.

CRUEL SPORTS. To amuse the idle crowds, office-seekers and victorious
generals provided cruel sports. Savage animals were turned loose to
tear one another to pieces. What was worse, human prisoners were
compelled to fight, armed with swords or spears. These men were called
gladiators, and often were specially trained to fight with one another
or with wild beasts.

SOME THINGS THE ROMANS LEARNED. But the successes of the Romans
brought them other things which were good. They took the buildings of
the Greeks as models and built similar temples and porticoes in Rome,
especially about the old market place or Forum. Their own houses,
which in earlier times were nothing but cabins, they enlarged, and if
they were rich enough, built palaces, adorned with paintings and with
statues. Unfortunately many of these came from the plunder of Greek
cities, for the Romans were great robbers of other peoples. The poorer
Romans continued to live in wretched hovels.

THE THEATER. The Romans learned more about the theaters of the Greeks.
Their plays were either translated into Latin from Greek or retold in
a different manner from the original Greek. The Romans did not succeed
in writing any plays of their own which were as good as the plays of
the Greeks.

THE NEW EDUCATION OF THE ROMANS. The Greeks also taught the Romans how
to write poems and histories. The first histories were written in
Greek, but later the Romans learned how to write in Latin prose and
poetry as good as much that had been written by the Greeks. Greek
became the second language of every educated Roman, and thus he could
enjoy the books of the Greeks as well as those written by Romans. The
education of the Roman boy now began with the poems of Homer, and the
young man's education was not thought to be finished until he had
traveled in Greece and the lands along the eastern Mediterranean.

QUESTIONS

1. How long did it take the Romans to conquer Italy? How long to
conquer the lands about the Mediterranean? In what "Times" did all
this happen?

2. Why did the Carthaginians and the Romans fight? What did Hannibal
promise his father? What sort of a leader was Hannibal?

3. How did Hannibal reach Italy? How did he win the battle of the
Trebia?

4. Why was he unable to force the Romans to yield?

5. How long before the beginning of the Christian Era did this war
with Hannibal close? How long after the battle of Marathon, and
after the death of Alexander the Great?

6. What other lands did the Romans conquer? How did they rule these
colonies?

7. Were they better for the wealth and power they gained? What
became of many of the Italian farmers? Where did the Romans get
their slaves?

8. What good things did they learn from the Greeks? What was the
Graeco-Roman world?

EXERCISES

1. On an outline map of the lands around the Mediterranean mark on
each land, Spain, Greece, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt,
the dates at which the Romans conquered each, finding these dates in
any brief Roman or Ancient History--Botsford, Myers, Morey,
West, Wolfson.