No More Learning

The history of Rome; tr. with the sanction of the author by William
Purdie Dickson.
Mommsen, Theodor, 1817-1903. New York, Scribner, 1905.
http://hdl. handle. net/2027/njp. 32101075685980
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THE HISTORY OF
ROME MOMMSEN
THE HISTORY OF ROME
BY THEODOR MOMMSEN
TRANSLATED
WITH THE SANCTION OF THE AUTHOR
BY
WILLIAM PURDIE DICKSON, D. D. , LLD. runmi or divinity in tms umivumtv or ulasgow
A NEW EDITION REVISED THROUGHOUT AND EMBODYING RECENT ADDITIONS
VOL. II
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1905
CONTENTS
BOOK SECOND
From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy — Continued
. . . . . . . CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VII
Struggle between Pyrrhus and Rome, and Union o?
FAGS i
. . . . . .
Italy
Law— Religion — Military System — Economic Condition
— Nationality
CHAPTER IX . . . . . .
BOOK THIRD
62
Art and Science
96
Italy
Carthage and the Greek States
. . . . . . . . .
From the Union of
Carthage . /
131
to the Subjugation of CHAPTER I
. . . . . . .
CHAPTER III
The Extension of Italy to its Natural Boundaries .
Hamilcar and Hannibal
VI CONTENTS
Sicily
CHAPTER II
Carthage concerning The War between Rome and Carth.
PAGE 161
CHAPTER V
The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae
. . . . .
203
231
266
300
369
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER VI
The War under Hannibal from Cannae to Zama .
CHAPTER VII
The West from thk Peace of Hannibal to the Close
of the Third Period
The Third Macedonian War
. . . . .
CHAPTER VIII
The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War .
CHAPTER IX
The War with Antiochus of Asia . . . 444
485
CHAPTER X
APPENDIX
The Treaties between Rome and Carthage . . 523
. . . .
395
CHAPTER VH
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS AND ROUE, AMD UNION Or ITALY
After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the Relations world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters j^^J by the assertion that Rome was indebted for her greatness and west. to the fever of which Alexander of Macedonia died at
Babylon on the nth of June, 431. As it was not too 828. agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were
fond of allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the great king turned his arms—as was
said to have been his intention at the time of his death— towards the west and contested the Carthaginian supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with his phalanxes. It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished such thoughts ; nor is it necessary to resort for an explanation of their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat, who is fond of war and is well provided with soldiers and ships, experiences in setting limits to his warlike career. It was an enterprise worthy of a Greek great king to protect the Siceliots against Carthage and the Tarentines against Rome, and to put an end to piracy on either sea ; and the Italian embassies from the
Bruttians, Lucanians, and Etruscans,1 that along with
1 The story that the Romans also sent envoys to Alexander at Babylon rests on the testimony of Clitarchus (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5, 57), from
TOI. II 33
S STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
numerous others made their appearance at
afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the peninsula and of entering into relations with it Carthage with its many connections in the east could not but attract the attention of the mighty monarch, and it was probably one of his designs to convert the nominal sovereignty of the Persian king over the Tyrian colony into a real one: it was not for nothing that a Phoenician spy was found in the retinue of Alexander. Whether, however, these ideas were dreams or actual projects, the king died without having interfered in the affairs of the west, and his ideas were buried with him. For but a few brief years a Greek ruler had held in his hand the whole intellectual vigour of the Hellenic race combined with the whole material resources of the east. On his death the work to which his life had been devoted —the establishment of Hellenism in the east—was by no means undone ; but his empire had barely been united when it was again dismembered, and, amidst the constant quarrels of the different states that were formed out of its ruins, the object of world-wide interest which they were destined to promote —the diffusion of Greek culture in the east — though not abandoned, was prosecuted on a feeble and stunted scale. Under such circumstances, neither the Greek nor the Asiatico-Egyptian states could think of acquiring a footing in the west or of turning their efforts against the Romans or the Carthaginians. The eastern and western state-systems subsisted side by side for a time
whom the other authorities who mention this fact (Aristus and Asclepiades, af. Arrian, Til 15, 5 ; Memnon, c. 35) doubtless derived it Clitarcbus certainly was contemporary with these events ; nevertheless, his Life of Alexander was decidedly a historical romance rather than a history ; and, looking to the silence of the trustworthy biographers (Arrian, /. c . ; Liv. is. 18) and the utterly romantic details of the account —which represents the Romans, for instance, as delivering to Alexander a chaplet of gold, and the latter as prophesying the future greatness of Rome —we cannot but set down this story as one of the many embellishments which Clitarchas
1 into the history.
Babylon,
chap, vil AND ROME
3
without crossing, politically, each other's path ; and Rome
in particular remained substantially aloof from the com plications in the days of Alexander's successors. The only relations established were of a mercantile kind ; as in the instance of the free state of Rhodes, the leading representa
tive of the policy of commercial neutrality in Greece and
in consequence the universal medium of intercourse in an
age of perpetual wars, which about 448 concluded a treaty 306. with Rome —a commercial convention of course, such as
was natural between a mercantile people and the masters of the Caerite and Campanian coasts. Even in the supply of mercenaries from Hellas, the universal recruiting field of those times, to Italy, and to Tarentum in particular, political relations—such as subsisted, for instance, between Tarentum and Sparta its mother-city —exercised but a very subordinate influence. In general the raising of mercenaries was simply a matter of traffic, and Sparta, although it regularly supplied the Tarentines with captains for their
Italian wars, was by that course as little involved in hostilities with the Italians, as in the North American war of independence the German states were involved in hostilities with the Union, to whose opponents they sold the services of their subjects.
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was himself simply a military The adventurer. He was none the less a soldier of fortune J^JJjJ,,, „( that he traced back his pedigree to Aeacus and Achilles, Pyrrhus. and that, had he been more peacefully disposed, he might
have lived and died as " king " of a small mountain tribe
under the supremacy of Macedonia or perhaps in isolated
independence. He has been compared to Alexander of Macedonia ; and certainly the idea of founding a Hellenic empire of the west—which would have had as its core Epirus, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, would have commanded both the Italian seas, and would have reduced Rome and Carthage to the rank of barbarian peoples bordering on the
4
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS BOOK II
Hellenistic state-system, like the Celts and the Indians— was analogous in greatness and boldness to the idea which led the Macedonian king over the Hellespont. But it was not the mere difference of issue that formed the distinction between the expedition to the east and that to the west Alexander with his Macedonian army, in which the staff especially was excellent, could fully make head against the great-king; but the king of Epirus, which stood by the side of Macedonia somewhat as Hesse by the side of Prussia, could only raise an army worthy of the name by means of mercenaries and of alliances based on accidental political combinations. Alexander made his appearance in the Persian empire as a conqueror ; Pyrrhus appeared in Italy as the general of a coalition of secondary states. Alexander left his hereditary dominions completely secured by the unconditional subjection of Greece, and by the strong army that remained behind under Antipater ; Pyrrhus had no security for the integrity of his native dominions but the word of a doubtful neighbour. In the case of both conquerors, if their plans should be crowned with success, their native country would necessarily cease to be the centre of their new empire; but it was far more practicable to transfer the seat of the Macedonian military monarchy to Babylon than to found a soldier-dynasty in
Tarentum or Syracuse. The democracy of the Greek republics —perpetual agony though it was—could not be at all coerced into the stiff forms of a military state ; Philip had good reason for not incorporating the Greek republics with his empire. In the east no national resistance was to be expected ; ruling and subject races had long lived there side by side, and a change of despot was a matter of indifference or even of satisfaction to the mass of the population. In the west the Romans, the Samnites, the Carthaginians, might be vanquished; but no conqueror
could have transformed the Italians into Egyptian
fellahs.
chap, vii AND ROME
5
or rendered the Roman farmers tributaries of Hellenic barons. Whatever we take into view—whether their own power, their allies, or the resources of their antagonists— in all points the plan of the Macedonian appears as a feasible, that of the Epirot an impracticable, enterprise; the former as the completion of a great historical task, the latter as a remarkable blunder ; the former as the founda tion of a new system of states and of a new phase of civilization, the latter as a mere episode in history. The work of Alexander outlived him, although its creator met an untimely death; Pyrrhus saw with his own eyes the wreck of all his plans, ere death called him away. Both were by nature daring and great, but Pyrrhus was only the foremost general, Alexander was eminently the most gifted statesman, of his time ; and, if it is insight into what is and what is not possible that distinguishes the hero from the adventurer, Pyrrhus must be numbered among the latter class, and may as little be placed on a parallel with his greater kinsman as the Constable of Bourbon may be put in comparison with Louis the Eleventh.
And yet a wondrous charm attaches to the name of the Epirot—a peculiar sympathy, evoked certainly in some degree by his chivalrous and amiable character, but still more by the circumstance that he was the first Greek that met the Romans in battle. With him began those direct relations between Rome and Hellas, on which the whole
subsequent development of ancient, and an essential part of modern, civilization are based. The struggle between phalanxes and cohorts, between a mercenary army and a militia, between military monarchy and senatorial govern ment, between individual talent and national vigour — this struggle between Rome and Hellenism was first fought out in the battles between Pyrrhus and the Roman generals ;
and though the defeated party often afterwards appealed anew to the arbitration of arms, every succeeding day of
Character and earlier
Pyrrhus.
6 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
battle simply confirmed the decision. But while the Greeks were beaten in the battlefield as well as in the senate-hall, their superiority was none the less decided on every other field of rivalry than that of politics ; and these very struggles already betokened that the victory of Rome over the Hellenes would be different from her victories over Gauls and Phoenicians, and that the charm of Aphrodite only begins to work when the lance is broken and the helmet and shield are laid aside.
King Pyrrhus was the son of Aeacides, ruler of the Molossians (about Janina), who, spared as a kinsman and faithful vassal by Alexander, had been after his death drawn into the whirlpool of Macedonian family-politics, and lost
818. in it first his kingdom and then his life (441). His son, then six years of age, was saved by Glaucias the ruler of the Illyrian Taulantii, and in the course of the conflicts for the possession of Macedonia he was, when still a boy, restored by Demetrius Poliorcetes to his hereditary
807. principality (447)—but only to lose it again after a few years through the influence of the opposite party (about 802. 452), and to begin his military career as an exiled prince in the train of the Macedonian generals. Soon his personality asserted itself. He shared in the last campaigns of Antigonus; and the old marshal of Alexander took
delight in the born soldier, who in the judgment of the grey-headed general only wanted years to be already the first warrior of the age. The unfortunate battle at Ipsus brought him as a hostage to Alexandria, to the court of the founder of the Lagid dynasty, where by his daring and downright character, and his soldierly spirit thoroughly despising everything that was not military, he attracted the attention of the politic king Ptolemy no less than he attracted the notice of the royal ladies by his manly beauty, which was not impaired by his wild look and stately tread. Just at this time the enterprising Demetrius was once more
chap, vii AND ROME
7
establishing himself in a new kingdom, which on this occasion was Macedonia ; of course with the intention of using it as a lever to revive the monarchy of Alexander.
To keep down his ambitious designs, it was important to give him employment at home; and Ptolemy, who knew
how to make admirable use of such fiery spirits as the Epirot youth in the prosecution of his subtle policy, not only met the wishes of his consort queen Berenice, but
also promoted his own ends, by giving his stepdaughter
the princess Antigone in marriage to the young prince, and lending his aid and powerful influence to support the return of his beloved "son" to his native land (458). 298. Restored to his paternal kingdom, he soon carried all before him. The brave Epirots, the Albanians of antiquity, clung with hereditary loyalty and fresh enthusiasm to the high-spirited youth — the " eagle," as they called him. In
the confusion that arose regarding the succession to the Macedonian throne after the death of Cassander (45 the 297. Epirot extended his dominions step by step he gained
the regions on the Ambracian gulf with the important town of Ambracia, the island of Corcyra 491), and even
part of the Macedonian territory, and with forces far inferior he made head against king Demetrius to the admiration of the Macedonians themselves. Indeed, when Demetrius was his own folly hurled from the Macedonian throne, was voluntarily proffered by them to his chivalrous
kinsman of the Alexandrid house (467). No 287. one was in reality worthier than Pyrrhus to wear the royal diadem of Philip and of Alexander. In an age of deep depravity, in which princely rank and baseness began to
be synonymous, the personally unspotted and morally pure character of Pyrrhus shone conspicuous. For the free farmers of the hereditary Macedonian soil, who, although diminished and impoverished, were far from sharing in
that decay of morals and of valour which the government
opponent,
it a
by
a
(i.
:
7),
8 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
of the Diadochi produced in Greece and Asia, Pyrrhus appeared exactly formed to be the fitting king, —Pyrrhus, who, like Alexander, in his household and in the circle of his friends preserved a heart open to all human sympathies, and constantly avoided the bearing of an Oriental sultan which was so odious to the Macedonians ; and who, like Alexander, was acknowledged to be the first tactician of his time. But the singularly overstrained national feeling of the Macedonians, which preferred the most paltry Macedonian sovereign to the ablest foreigner, and the irrational insubordination of the Macedonian troops towards every non-Macedonian leader, to which Eumenes the Cardian, the greatest general of the school of Alexander, had fallen a victim, put a speedy termination to the rule of the prince of Epirus. Pyrrhus, who could not exercise sovereignty over Macedonia with the consent of the Macedonians, and who was too powerless and perhaps too
to force himself on the nation against its will, after reigning seven months left the country to its native misgovernment, and went home to his faithful
S87. Epirots (467). But the man who had worn the crown of Alexander, the brother-in-law of Demetrius, the son-in-law of Ptolemy Lagides and of Agathocles of Syracuse, the
high spirited
tactician who wrote memoirs and scientific dissertations on the military art, could not possibly end his days in inspecting at a set time yearly the accounts of the royal cattle steward, in receiving from his brave Epirots their customary gifts of oxen and sheep, in thereupon, at
the altar of Zeus, procuring the renewal of their oath of allegiance and repeating his own engagement to respect the laws, and—for the better confirmation of the whole—in carousing with them all night long. If there was no place for him on the throne of Macedonia, there was no abiding in the land of his nativity at all ; he was fitted for the first place, and he could not be content with the second. His
highly-trained
CHAP, vii AND ROME
9
views therefore turned abroad. The kings, who were quarrelling for the possession of Macedonia, although agreeing in nothing else, were ready and glad to concur in aiding the voluntary departure of their dangerous rival; and that his faithful war-comrades would follow him where- ever he led, he knew full well. Just at that time the circumstances of Italy were such, that the project which had been meditated forty years before by Pyrrhus's kinsman, his father's cousin, Alexander of Epirus, and quite recently by his father-in-law Agathocles, once more seemed feasible ; and so Pyrrhus resolved to abandon his Macedonian schemes and to found for himself and for the Hellenic nation a new empire in the west
The interval of repose, which the peace with Samnium in 464 had procured for Italy, was of brief duration ; the impulse which led to the formation of a new league against Roman ascendency came on this occasion from the Luca- nians. This people, by taking part with Rome during the Samnite wars, paralyzed the action of the Tarentines and essentially contributed to the decisive issue ; and in con sideration of their services, the Romans gave up to them the Greek cities in their territory. Accordingly after the conclusion of peace they had, in concert with the Bruttians, set themselves to subdue these cities in succession. The Thurines, repeatedly assailed by Stenius Statilius the gene ral of the Lucanians and reduced to extremities, applied for assistance against the Lucanians to the Roman senate — just as formerly the Campanians had asked the aid of Rome against the Samnites—and beyond doubt with a like sacrifice of their liberty and independence. In conse quence of the founding of the fortress Venusia, Rome could dispense with the alliance of the Lucanians ; so the Romans granted the prayer of the Thurines, and enjoined their friends and allies to desist from their designs on a city which had surrendered itself to Rome. The Luca-
290.
Jj^JJJf Italians
^j^f'
The I. ucania
f
STRUGGLE BFTWEEN PYRRHUS BOOK II
nians and Bruttians, thus cheated by their more powerful allies of their share in the common spoil, entered into negotiations with the opposition-party among the Samnites and Tarentines to bring about a new Italian coalition ; and when the Romans sent an embassy to warn them, they detained the envoys in captivity and began the war
285. against Rome with a new attack on Thurii (about 469), while at the same time they invited not only the Samnites and Tarentines, but the northern Italians also — the Etrus cans, Umbrians, and Gauls —to join them in the struggle
The for freedom. The Etruscan league actually revolted, and
Etruscans and Celts.
hired numerous bands of Gauls ; the Roman army, which the praetor Lucius Caecilius was leading to the help of the Arretines who had remained faithful, was annihilated under the walls of Arretium by the Senonian mercenaries of the Etruscans: the general himself fell with 13,000 of his men
The SunnUef.
S84. (470). The Senones were reckoned allies of Rome; the Romans accordingly sent envoys to them to complain of their furnishing warriors to serve against Rome, and to re quire the surrender of their captives without ransom. But by the command of their chieftain Britomaris, who had to take vengeance on the Romans for the death of his father, the Senones slew the Roman envoys and openly took the Etruscan side. All the north of Italy, Etruscans, Umbri ans, Gauls, were thus in arms against Rome ; great results might be achieved, if its southern provinces also should seize the moment and declare, so far as they had not already done so, against Rome. In fact the Samnites, ever ready to make a stand on behalf of liberty, appear to have declared war against the Romans ; but weakened and
hemmed in on all sides as they were, they could be of little service to the league ; and Tarentum manifested its wonted delay. While her antagonists were negotiating alliances, settling treaties as to subsidies, and collecting mercenaries, Rome was acting. The Senones were first made to feel
chap, vn AND ROME ir
how dangerous it was to gain a victory over the Romans. The The consul Publius Cornelius Dolabella advanced with a ann°y? *
strong army into their territory ; all that were not put to the sword were driven forth from the land, and this tribe was erased from the list of the Italian nations (471). In the case of a people subsisting chiefly on its flocks and herds such an expulsion en masse was quite practicable ; and the Senones thus expelled from Italy probably helped to make up the Gallic hosts which soon after inundated the countries of the Danube, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor.
The next neighbours and kinsmen of the Senones, the Boii, terrified and exasperated by a catastrophe which had been accomplished with so fearful a rapidity, united in stantaneously with the Etruscans, who still continued the war, and whose Senonian mercenaries now fought against the Romans no longer as hirelings, but as desperate
lated. 288.
The Boll.
of their native land. A powerful Etrusco-Gallic
army marched against Rome to retaliate the annihilation of
the Senonian tribe on the enemy's capital, and to extirpate
Rome from the face of the earth more completely than
had been formerly done by the chieftain of these same Senones. But the combined army was decidedly defeated
by the Romans at its passage of the Tiber in the neighbour
hood of the Vadimonian lake (471). After they had once
more in the following year risked a general engagement
near Populonia with no better success, the Boii deserted
their confederates and concluded a peace on their own
account with the Romans (472). Thus the Gauls, the 282. most formidable member of the league, were conquered
in detail before the league was fully formed, and by that
means the hands of Rome were left free to act against
Lower Italy, where during the years 469—471 the contest 286-288. had not been carried on with any vigour. Hitherto the
weak Roman army had with difficulty maintained itself in
Thurii against the Lucanians and Bruttians ; but now
avengers
288.
804.
bJjJJeen Rome and Tarentum.
The Tarentines since the treaty of 450 had lived at peace with Rome. They had been spectators of the long struggle of the Samnites, and of the rapid extirpation of the Senones they had acquiesced without remonstrance in the establishment of Venusia, Atria, and Sena, and in the occupation of Thurii and of Rhegium. But when the Roman fleet, on its voyage from the Tyrrhene to the Adriatic sea, now arrived in the Tarentine waters and cast anchor in the harbour of the friendly city, the long, cherished resentment at length overflowed. Old treaties, which prohibited the war-vessels of Rome from sailing to the east of the Lacinian promontory, were appealed to popular orators in the assembly of the citizens. furious mob fell upon the Roman ships of war, which, assailed
IS STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book II
282. (472) the consul Gaius Fabricius Luscinus appeared with a strong army in front of the town, relieved defeated the Lucanians in great engagement, and took their general Statilius prisoner. The smaller non-Doric Greek towns, recognizing the Romans as their deliverers, everywhere voluntarily joined them. Roman garrisons were left behind in the most important places, in Locri, Croton, Thurii, and especially in Rhegium, on which latter town the Carthaginians seem also to have had designs.
In an age of deep depravity, in which princely rank and baseness began to
be synonymous, the personally unspotted and morally pure character of Pyrrhus shone conspicuous. For the free farmers of the hereditary Macedonian soil, who, although diminished and impoverished, were far from sharing in
that decay of morals and of valour which the government
opponent,
it a
by
a
(i.
:
7),
8 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
of the Diadochi produced in Greece and Asia, Pyrrhus appeared exactly formed to be the fitting king, —Pyrrhus, who, like Alexander, in his household and in the circle of his friends preserved a heart open to all human sympathies, and constantly avoided the bearing of an Oriental sultan which was so odious to the Macedonians ; and who, like Alexander, was acknowledged to be the first tactician of his time. But the singularly overstrained national feeling of the Macedonians, which preferred the most paltry Macedonian sovereign to the ablest foreigner, and the irrational insubordination of the Macedonian troops towards every non-Macedonian leader, to which Eumenes the Cardian, the greatest general of the school of Alexander, had fallen a victim, put a speedy termination to the rule of the prince of Epirus. Pyrrhus, who could not exercise sovereignty over Macedonia with the consent of the Macedonians, and who was too powerless and perhaps too
to force himself on the nation against its will, after reigning seven months left the country to its native misgovernment, and went home to his faithful
S87. Epirots (467). But the man who had worn the crown of Alexander, the brother-in-law of Demetrius, the son-in-law of Ptolemy Lagides and of Agathocles of Syracuse, the
high spirited
tactician who wrote memoirs and scientific dissertations on the military art, could not possibly end his days in inspecting at a set time yearly the accounts of the royal cattle steward, in receiving from his brave Epirots their customary gifts of oxen and sheep, in thereupon, at
the altar of Zeus, procuring the renewal of their oath of allegiance and repeating his own engagement to respect the laws, and—for the better confirmation of the whole—in carousing with them all night long. If there was no place for him on the throne of Macedonia, there was no abiding in the land of his nativity at all ; he was fitted for the first place, and he could not be content with the second. His
highly-trained
CHAP, vii AND ROME
9
views therefore turned abroad. The kings, who were quarrelling for the possession of Macedonia, although agreeing in nothing else, were ready and glad to concur in aiding the voluntary departure of their dangerous rival; and that his faithful war-comrades would follow him where- ever he led, he knew full well. Just at that time the circumstances of Italy were such, that the project which had been meditated forty years before by Pyrrhus's kinsman, his father's cousin, Alexander of Epirus, and quite recently by his father-in-law Agathocles, once more seemed feasible ; and so Pyrrhus resolved to abandon his Macedonian schemes and to found for himself and for the Hellenic nation a new empire in the west
The interval of repose, which the peace with Samnium in 464 had procured for Italy, was of brief duration ; the impulse which led to the formation of a new league against Roman ascendency came on this occasion from the Luca- nians. This people, by taking part with Rome during the Samnite wars, paralyzed the action of the Tarentines and essentially contributed to the decisive issue ; and in con sideration of their services, the Romans gave up to them the Greek cities in their territory. Accordingly after the conclusion of peace they had, in concert with the Bruttians, set themselves to subdue these cities in succession. The Thurines, repeatedly assailed by Stenius Statilius the gene ral of the Lucanians and reduced to extremities, applied for assistance against the Lucanians to the Roman senate — just as formerly the Campanians had asked the aid of Rome against the Samnites—and beyond doubt with a like sacrifice of their liberty and independence. In conse quence of the founding of the fortress Venusia, Rome could dispense with the alliance of the Lucanians ; so the Romans granted the prayer of the Thurines, and enjoined their friends and allies to desist from their designs on a city which had surrendered itself to Rome. The Luca-
290.
Jj^JJJf Italians
^j^f'
The I. ucania
f
STRUGGLE BFTWEEN PYRRHUS BOOK II
nians and Bruttians, thus cheated by their more powerful allies of their share in the common spoil, entered into negotiations with the opposition-party among the Samnites and Tarentines to bring about a new Italian coalition ; and when the Romans sent an embassy to warn them, they detained the envoys in captivity and began the war
285. against Rome with a new attack on Thurii (about 469), while at the same time they invited not only the Samnites and Tarentines, but the northern Italians also — the Etrus cans, Umbrians, and Gauls —to join them in the struggle
The for freedom. The Etruscan league actually revolted, and
Etruscans and Celts.
hired numerous bands of Gauls ; the Roman army, which the praetor Lucius Caecilius was leading to the help of the Arretines who had remained faithful, was annihilated under the walls of Arretium by the Senonian mercenaries of the Etruscans: the general himself fell with 13,000 of his men
The SunnUef.
S84. (470). The Senones were reckoned allies of Rome; the Romans accordingly sent envoys to them to complain of their furnishing warriors to serve against Rome, and to re quire the surrender of their captives without ransom. But by the command of their chieftain Britomaris, who had to take vengeance on the Romans for the death of his father, the Senones slew the Roman envoys and openly took the Etruscan side. All the north of Italy, Etruscans, Umbri ans, Gauls, were thus in arms against Rome ; great results might be achieved, if its southern provinces also should seize the moment and declare, so far as they had not already done so, against Rome. In fact the Samnites, ever ready to make a stand on behalf of liberty, appear to have declared war against the Romans ; but weakened and
hemmed in on all sides as they were, they could be of little service to the league ; and Tarentum manifested its wonted delay. While her antagonists were negotiating alliances, settling treaties as to subsidies, and collecting mercenaries, Rome was acting. The Senones were first made to feel
chap, vn AND ROME ir
how dangerous it was to gain a victory over the Romans. The The consul Publius Cornelius Dolabella advanced with a ann°y? *
strong army into their territory ; all that were not put to the sword were driven forth from the land, and this tribe was erased from the list of the Italian nations (471). In the case of a people subsisting chiefly on its flocks and herds such an expulsion en masse was quite practicable ; and the Senones thus expelled from Italy probably helped to make up the Gallic hosts which soon after inundated the countries of the Danube, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor.
The next neighbours and kinsmen of the Senones, the Boii, terrified and exasperated by a catastrophe which had been accomplished with so fearful a rapidity, united in stantaneously with the Etruscans, who still continued the war, and whose Senonian mercenaries now fought against the Romans no longer as hirelings, but as desperate
lated. 288.
The Boll.
of their native land. A powerful Etrusco-Gallic
army marched against Rome to retaliate the annihilation of
the Senonian tribe on the enemy's capital, and to extirpate
Rome from the face of the earth more completely than
had been formerly done by the chieftain of these same Senones. But the combined army was decidedly defeated
by the Romans at its passage of the Tiber in the neighbour
hood of the Vadimonian lake (471). After they had once
more in the following year risked a general engagement
near Populonia with no better success, the Boii deserted
their confederates and concluded a peace on their own
account with the Romans (472). Thus the Gauls, the 282. most formidable member of the league, were conquered
in detail before the league was fully formed, and by that
means the hands of Rome were left free to act against
Lower Italy, where during the years 469—471 the contest 286-288. had not been carried on with any vigour. Hitherto the
weak Roman army had with difficulty maintained itself in
Thurii against the Lucanians and Bruttians ; but now
avengers
288.
804.
bJjJJeen Rome and Tarentum.
The Tarentines since the treaty of 450 had lived at peace with Rome. They had been spectators of the long struggle of the Samnites, and of the rapid extirpation of the Senones they had acquiesced without remonstrance in the establishment of Venusia, Atria, and Sena, and in the occupation of Thurii and of Rhegium. But when the Roman fleet, on its voyage from the Tyrrhene to the Adriatic sea, now arrived in the Tarentine waters and cast anchor in the harbour of the friendly city, the long, cherished resentment at length overflowed. Old treaties, which prohibited the war-vessels of Rome from sailing to the east of the Lacinian promontory, were appealed to popular orators in the assembly of the citizens. furious mob fell upon the Roman ships of war, which, assailed
IS STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book II
282. (472) the consul Gaius Fabricius Luscinus appeared with a strong army in front of the town, relieved defeated the Lucanians in great engagement, and took their general Statilius prisoner. The smaller non-Doric Greek towns, recognizing the Romans as their deliverers, everywhere voluntarily joined them. Roman garrisons were left behind in the most important places, in Locri, Croton, Thurii, and especially in Rhegium, on which latter town the Carthaginians seem also to have had designs. Every where Rome had most decidedly the advantage. The annihilation of the Senones had given to the Romans considerable tract of the Adriatic coast With view, doubtless, to the smouldering feud with Tarentum and the already threatened invasion of the Epirots, they hastened to make themselves sure of this coast as well as of the
188. Adriatic sea. A burgess colony was sent out (about 471) to the seaport of Sena (Sinigaglia), the former capital of the Senonian territory; and at the same time Roman fleet sailed from the Tyrrhene sea into the eastern waters, manifestly for the purpose of being stationed in the Adriatic and of protecting the Roman possessions there.
;
a
A
by a
a
a
it,
CHAP. VII AND ROME
13
suddenly in a piratical fashion, succumbed after a sharp struggle ; five ships were taken and their crews executed or sold into slavery ; the Roman admiral himself had fallen in the engagement Only the supreme folly and supreme unscrupulousness of mob-rule can account for those dis graceful proceedings. The treaties referred to belonged to a period long past and forgotten ; it is clear that they no longer had any meaning, at least subsequently to the founding of Atria and Sena, and that the Romans entered the bay on the faith of the existing alliance; indeed, it was very much their interest—as the further course of things showed — to afford the Tarentines no sort of pretext for declaring war. In declaring war against Rome — if such was their wish — the statesmen of Tarentum were only doing what they should have done long before ; and if they preferred to rest their declaration of war upon the formal pretext of a breach of treaty rather than upon the real ground, no further objection could be taken to that course, seeing that diplomacy has always reckoned it beneath its dignity to speak the plain truth in plain language. But to make an armed attack upon the fleet without warning, instead of summoning the admiral to retrace his course, was a foolish no less than a barbarous act—one of those horrible barbarities of civilization, when moral principle suddenly forsakes the helm and the merest coarseness emerges in its room, as if to warn us against the childish belief that civilization is able to extirpate brutality from human nature.
And, as if what they had done had not been enough,
the Tarentines after this heroic feat attacked Thurii, the
Roman garrison of which capitulated in consequence of
the surprise (in the winter of 472-473); and inflicted 282-281. severe chastisement on the Thurines—the same, whom Tarentine policy had abandoned to the Lucanians and
thereby forcibly constrained into surrender to Rome — for
Attempts
their desertion from the Hellenic party to the bar barians.
The barbarians, however, acted with a moderation which, considering their power and the provocation they had re ceived, excites astonishment It was the interest of Rome to maintain as long as possible the Tarentine neutrality, and the leading men in the senate accordingly rejected the proposal, which a minority had with natural resentment sub mitted, to declare war at once against the Tarentines. In fact, the continuance of peace on the part of Rome was
proffered on the most moderate terms consistent with her honour —the release of the captives, the restoration of Thurii, the surrender of the originators of the attack on the fleet A Roman embassy proceeded with these proposals to
14
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
Ml. Tarentum (473), while at the same time, to add weight to their words, a Roman army under the consul Lucius Aemilius advanced into Samnium. The Tarentines could, without forfeiting aught of their independence, accept these terms ; and considering the little inclination for war in so wealthy a commercial city, the Romans had reason to pre sume that an accommodation was still possible. But the attempt to preserve peace failed, whether through the oppo sition of those Tarentines who recognized the necessity of meeting the aggressions of Rome, the sooner the better, by
a resort to arms, or merely through the unruliness of the city rabble, which with characteristic Greek naughtiness sub jected the person of the envoy to an unworthy insult. The consul now advanced into the Tarentine territory ; but in stead of immediately commencing hostilities, he offered once more the same terms of peace; and, when this proved in vain, he began to lay waste the fields and country houses, and he defeated the civic militia. The principal persons captured, however, were released without ransom; and the hope was not abandoned that the pressure of war would give
to the aristocratic party ascendency in the city and so bring
chap, vh AND ROME
15
about peace. The reason of this reserve was, that the Romans were unwilling to drive the city into the arms of the Epirot king. His designs on Italy were no longer a secret. A Tarentine embassy had already gone to Pyrrhus and re turned without having accomplished its object. The king had demanded more than it had powers to grant. It was necessary that they should come to a decision. That the civic militia knew only how to run away from the Romans, had been made sufficiently clear. There remained
only the choice between a peace with Rome, which the Romans
still were ready to agree to on equitable terms, and a treaty with Pyrrhus on any condition that the king might think proper ; or, in other words, the choice between submission to the supremacy of Rome, and subjection to the tyrannis of a Greek soldier.
The parties in the city were almost equally balanced. At length the ascendency remained with the national party — a result, that was due partly to the justifiable predilection which led them, if they must yield to a master at all, to prefer a Greek to a barbarian, but partly also to the dread of the demagogues that Rome, notwith standing the moderation now forced upon it by circum stances, would not neglect on a fitting opportunity to exact vengeance for the outrages perpetrated by the Tarentine rabble. The city, accordingly, came to terms with Pyrrhus. He obtained the supreme command of the troops of the Tarentines and of the other Italians in arms against Rome, along with the right of keeping a garrison in Tarentum. The expenses of the war were, of course, to be borne by the city. Pyrrhus, on the other hand, promised to remain no longer in Italy than was necessary ; probably with the tacit reservation that his own judgment should fix the time during
Pyrrhus J^j^y
Nevertheless, the prey While the Tarentine envoys — the chiefs, no doubt, of the war party — were
which he would be needed there. had almost slipped out of his hands.
16 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
absent in Epirus, the state of feeling in the city, now hard pressed by the Romans, underwent a change. The chief command was already entrusted to Agis, a man favourable to Rome, when the return of the envoys with the concluded treaty, accompanied by Cineas the confidential minister of Pyrrhus, again brought the war party to the helm.
Landing of
the citadel of the town. He was followed in the beginning 280. of the year 474 by the king himself, who landed after a stormy passage in which many lives were lost He
Pyn-hus and the coalition.
a. firmer hand now grasped the reins, and put an end to 28i. the pitiful vacillation. In the autumn of 473 Milo, the
general of Pyrrhus, landed with 3000 Epirots and occupied
transported to Tarentum a respectable but miscellaneous army, consisting partly of the household troops, Molossians, Thesprotians, Chaonians, and Ambraciots; partly of the Macedonian infantry and the Thessalian cavalry, which Ptolemy king of Macedonia had conformably to stipu lation handed over to him ; partly of Aetolian, Acarnanian, and Athamanian mercenaries. Altogether it numbered
20,000 phalangitae, 2000 archers,
cavalry, and 20 elephants, and thus was not much smaller than the army with which fifty years before Alexander had crossed the Hellespont
The affairs of the coalition were in no very favourable state when the king arrived. The Roman consul indeed, as soon as he saw the soldiers of Milo taking the field against him instead of the Tarentine militia, had abandoned the attack on Tarentum and retreated to Apulia ; but, with the exception of the territory of Tarentum, the Romans virtually ruled all Italy. The coalition had no army in the field anywhere in Lower Italy; and in Upper Italy the
Etruscans, who alone were still in arms, had in the last 281. campaign (473) met with nothing but defeat The allies had, before the king embarked, committed to him the chief
command of all their troops, and declared that they were
500 slingers, 3000
chap, vil AND ROME
17
able to place in the field an army of 350,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry. The reality formed a sad contrast to these great promises. The army, whose chief command had been committed to Pyrrhus, had still to be created ; and for the time being the main resources available for forming it were those of Tarentum alone. The king gave orders for the enlisting of an army of Italian mercenaries with Tarentine money, and called out the able-bodied citizens to serve in the war. But the Tarentines had not so understood the agreement They had thought to purchase victory, like any other commodity, with money ; it was a sort of breach of contract, that the king should compel them to fight for it themselves. The more glad the citizens had been at first after Milo's arrival to be quit of the burdensome service of mounting guard, the more unwillingly they now rallied to the standards of the king: it was necessary to threaten the negligent with the penalty of death. This result now justified the peace party in the eyes of all, and communications were entered into, or at any rate appeared
to have been entered into, even with Rome.
prepared for such opposition, immediately treated Tarentum as a conquered city ; soldiers were quartered in the houses, the assemblies of the people and the numerous clubs
were suspended, the theatre was shut, the promenades were closed, and the gates were occupied with Epirot guards. A number of the leading men were sent over the sea as hostages ; others escaped the like fate by flight to Rome. These strict measures were necessary, for it was absolutely impossible in any sense to rely upon the Taren tines. It was only now that the king, in possession of that important city as a basis, could begin operations in the field.
The Romans too were well aware of the conflict which Prepar*. awaited them. In order first of all to secure the fidelity of ^°" in their allies or, in other words, of their subjects, the towns
that could not be depended on were garrisoned, and the
(trurorma)
VOL. II
34
Pyrrhus,
Com-
of the conflict
in Lower Italy.
|8 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
leaders of the party of independence, where it seemed needful, were arrested or executed : such was the case with a number of the members of the senate of Praeneste. For the war itself great exertions were made ; a war con tribution was levied; the full contingent was called forth from all their subjects and allies ; even the proletarians who we re properly exempt from obligation of service were called to arms. A Roman army remained as a reserve in the capital. A second advanced under the consul Tiberius Coruncanius into Etruria, and dispersed the forces of Volci
and Volsinii. The main force was of course destined for .
Lower Italy; its departure was hastened as much as possible, in order to reach Pyrrhus while still in the territory of Tarentum, and to prevent him and his forces from
a junction with the Samnites and other south Italian levies that were in arms against Rome. The Roman garrisons, that were placed in the Greek towns of Lower Italy, were intended temporarily to check the king's progress. But the mutiny of the troops stationed in Rhegium—one of the legions levied from the Campanian subjects of Rome under a Campanian captain Decius— deprived the Romans of that important town. It was not, however, transferred to the hands of Pyrrhus. While on the one hand the national hatred of the Campanians against the Romans undoubtedly contributed to produce this military insurrection, it was impossible on the other hand that Pyrrhus, who had crossed the sea to shield and protect the Hellenes, could receive as his allies troops who had put to death their Rhegine hosts in their own houses. Thus they remained isolated, in close league with their kinsmen and comrades in crime, the Mamertines, that the Campanian mercenaries of Agathocles, who had similar means gained possession of Messana on the opposite side of the straits; and they pillaged and laid waste for their own behoof the adjacent Greek towns, such as Croton,
forming
by
is,
chap, vu AND ROME
19
where they put to death the Roman garrison, and Caulonia, which they destroyed. On the other hand the Romans succeeded, by means of a weak corps which advanced along the Lucanian frontier and of the garrison of Venusia, in preventing the Lucanians and Samnites from uniting with Pyrrhus; while the main force — four legions as it would appear, and so, with a corresponding number of allied troops, at least 50,000 strong —marched
Pyrrhus, under the consul Publius Laevinus.
With a view to cover the Tarentine colony of Heraclea, Battle neat
the king had taken up a position with his own and the Heraclea-
Tarentine troops between that city and Pandosia1
The Romans, covered by their cavalry, forced the passage of the Siris, and opened the battle with a vehement and successful cavalry charge ; the king, who led his cavalry in person, was thrown from his horse, and the Greek horse men, panic-struck by the disappearance of their leader, abandoned the field to the squadrons of the
Pyrrhus, however, put himself at the head of his infantry, and began a fresh and more decisive engagement Seven times the legions and the phalanx met in shock of battle, and still the conflict was undecided. Then Megacles, one of the best officers of the king, fell, and, because on this hotly-contested day he had worn the king's armour, the army for the second time believed that the king had fallen ; the ranks wavered; Laevinus already felt sure of the victory and threw the whole of his cavalry on the flank of the Greeks. But Pyrrhus, marching with uncovered head
through the ranks of the infantry, revived the sinking courage of his troops. The elephants which had hitherto been kept in reserve were brought up to meet the cavalry ; the horses took fright at them ; the soldiers, not knowing how to encounter the huge beasts, turned and fled; the
1 Near the modern Anglona ; not to be confounded with the better known town of the same name in the district of Co—Mi
against
(474). 2g0
enemy.
so STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
masses of disordered horsemen and the pursuing elephants at length broke the compact ranks of the Roman infantry, and the elephants in concert with the excellent Thessalian cavalry wrought great slaughter among the fugitives. Had not a brave Roman soldier, Gaius Minucius, the first hastate of the fourth legion, wounded one of the elephants and thereby thrown the pursuing troops into confusion, the Roman army would have been extirpated ; as it was, the remainder of the Roman troops succeeded in retreating across the Siris. Their loss was great; 7000 Romans were found by the victors dead or wounded on the field of battle, 2000 were brought in prisoners; the Romans themselves stated their loss, including probably the wounded carried off the field, at 15,000 men. But Pyrrhus's army had suffered not much less : nearly 4000 of his best soldiers strewed the field of battle, and several of his ablest captains had fallen. Considering that his loss fell chiefly on the veteran soldiers who were far more difficult to be replaced than the Roman militia, and that he owed his victory only to the surprise produced by the attack of the elephants which could not be often repeated, the king, skilful judge of tactics as he was, may well at an after period have described this victory as resembling a defeat ; although he was not so foolish as to communicate that piece of self- criticism to the public—as the Roman poets afterwards invented the story—in the inscription of the votive offering presented by him at Tarentum. Politically it mattered little in the first instance at what sacrifices the victory was bought ; the gain of the first battle against the Romans was of inestimable value for Pyrrhus. His talents as a general had been brilliantly displayed on this new field of battle, and if anything could breathe unity and energy into the languishing league of the Italians, the victory of Heraclea could not fail to do so. But even the immediate results of the victory were considerable and lasting. Lucania was
chap, vii AND ROME Si
lost to the Romans : Laevinus collected the troops stationed there and marched to Apulia. The Bruttians, Lucanians, and Samnites joined Pyrrhus unmolested. With the exception of Rhegium, which pined under the oppression of the Campanian mutineers, the whole of the Greek cities joined the king, and Locri even voluntarily delivered up to him the Roman garrison ; in his case they were persuaded, and with reason, that they would not be abandoned to the Italians. The Sabellians and Greeks thus passed over to Pyrrhus ; but the victory produced no further eflect. The Latins showed no inclination to get quit of the Roman rule, burdensome as it might be, by the help of a foreign dynast. Venusia, although now wholly surrounded by enemies, adhered with unshaken steadfastness to Rome. Pyrrhus proposed to the prisoners taken on the Siris, whose brave demeanour the chivalrous king requited by the most honourable treatment, that they should enter his army in accordance with the Greek fashion ; but he learned that he was fighting not with mercenaries, but with a nation. Not one, either Roman or Latin, took service with him.
Pyrrhus offered peace to the Romans. He was too Attempts sagacious a soldier not to recognize the precariousness of at P*3"*- his footing, and too skilled a statesman not to profit opportunely by the moment which placed him in the most favourable position for the conclusion of peace. He now
hoped that under the first impression made by the great
battle on the Romans he should be able to secure the freedom of the Greek towns in Italy, and to call into existence between them and Rome a series of states of the
second and third order as dependent allies of the new
Greek power ; for such was the tenor of his demands : the
release of all Greek towns —and therefore of the Campanian
and Lucanian towns in particular —from allegiance to Rome,
and restitution of the territory taken from the Samnites,
Daunians, Lucanians, and Bruttians, or in other words
32 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ll
especially the surrender of Luceria and Venusia. If a further struggle with Rome could hardly be avoided, it was not desirable at any rate to begin it till the western Hellenes should be united under one ruler, till Sicily should be acquired and perhaps Africa be conquered.
Provided with such instructions, the Thessalian Cineas, the confidential minister of Pyrrhus, went to Rome. That dexterous negotiator, whom his contemporaries compared to Demosthenes so far as a rhetorician might be compared to a statesman and the minister of a sovereign to a popular leader, had orders to display by every means the respect which the victor of Heraclea really felt for his vanquished
opponents, to make known the wish of the king to come to Rome in person, to influence men's minds in the king's favour by panegyrics which sound so well in the mouth of an enemy, by earnest flatteries, and, as opportunity offered, also by well-timed gifts—in short to try upon the Romans all the arts of cabinet policy, as they had been tested at the courts of Alexandria and Antioch. The senate hesitated ; to many it seemed a prudent course to draw back a step and to wait till their dangerous antagonist should have further entangled himself or should be no more. But the
and blind consular Appius Claudius (censor 812-807. 442, consul 447, 458), who had long withdrawn from state affairs but had himself conducted at this decisive moment to the senate, breathed the unbroken energy of his own
vehement nature with words of fire into the souls of the younger generation. They gave to the message of the king the proud reply, which was first heard on this occasion and became thenceforth a maxim of the state, that Rome never negotiated so long as there were foreign troops on Italian ground ; and to make good their words they dis missed the ambassador at once from the city. The object of the mission had failed, and the dexterous diplomatist, instead of producing an effect by his oratorical art, had
grey-haired
chap, Til AND ROME
23
on the contrary been himself impressed by such manly earnestness after so severe a defeat — he declared at home that every burgess in that city had seemed to him a king ; in truth, the courtier had gained a sight of a free people.
Pyrrhus, who during these negotiations had advanced Pynfcmi into Campania, immediately on the news of their being ^Lj^J* broken off marched against Rome, to co-operate with the Rome. Etruscans, to shake the allies of Rome, and to threaten the
city itself. But the Romans as little allowed themselves to
be terrified as cajoled. At the summons of the herald " to
enrol in the room of the fallen," the young men immediately
after the battle of Heraclea had pressed forward in crowds
to enlist ; with the two newly-formed legions and the corps withdrawn from Lucania, Laevinus, stronger than before, followed the march of the king. He protected Capua
against him, and frustrated his endeavours to enter into communications with Neapolis. So firm was the attitude
of the Romans that, excepting the Greeks of Lower Italy,
no allied state of any note dared to break off from the
Roman alliance. Then Pyrrhus turned against Rome itself. Through a rich country, whose flourishing condition he
beheld with astonishment, he marched against Fregellae
which he surprised, forced the passage of the Liris, and
reached Anagnia, which is not more than forty miles from
Rome. No army crossed his path ; but everywhere the
towns of Latium closed their gates against him, and with measured step Laevinus followed him from Campania,
while the consul Tiberius Coruncanius, who had just con
cluded a seasonable peace with the Etruscans, brought up
a second Roman army from the north, and in Rom" itself
the reserve was preparing for battle under the dictator
Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus. In these circumstances Pyrrhus
could accomplish nothing; no course was left to him but
to retire. For a time he still remained inactive in Cam-
280. Second
year of the war.
pania in presence of the united armies of the two consuls ; but no opportunity occurred of striking an effective blow. When winter came on, the king evacuated the enemy's territory, and distributed his troops among the friendly towns, taking up his own winter quarters in Tarentum. Thereupon the Romans also desisted from their operations. The army occupied standing quarters near Firmum in Picenum, where by command of the senate the legions defeated on the Siris spent the winter by way of punishment under tents.
Thus ended the campaign of 474. The separate peace which at the decisive moment Etruria had concluded with Rome, and the king's unexpected retreat which entirely disappointed the high-strung hopes of the Italian con federates, counterbalanced in great measure the impression of the victory of Heraclea. The Italians complained of the burdens of the war, particularly of the bad discipline of the mercenaries quartered among them, and the king, weary of the petty quarrelling and of the impolitic as well as un- military conduct of his allies, began to have a presentiment that the problem which had fallen to him might be, despite all tactical successes, politically insoluble. The arrival of a Roman embassy of three consulars, including Gaius Fabricius the conqueror of Thurii, again revived in him for a moment the hopes of peace ; but it soon appeared that they had only power to treat for the ransom or exchange of prisoners. Pyrrhus rejected their demand, but at the festival of the Saturnalia he released all the prisoners on their word of honour. Their keeping of that word, and the repulse by the Roman ambassador of an attempt at bribery, were celebrated by posterity in a manner most unbecoming and betokening rather the dishonourable character of the later, than the honourable feeling of that earlier, epoch.
In the spring of 475 Pyrrhus resumed the offensive, and advanced into Apulia, whither the Roman army
24
STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS BOOK 11
179.
chap, vii AND ROME
marched to meet him. In the hope of shaking the Roman Battle of
symmachy in these regions by a decisive victory, the king offered battle a second time, and the Romans did not refuse it The two armies encountered each other near Ausculum (Ascoli di Puglia). Under the banners of
Pyrrhus there fought, besides his Epirot and Macedonian troops, the Italian mercenaries, the burgess-force—the white shields as they were called—of Tarentum, and the allied Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites —altogether 70,000 infantry, of whom 16,000 were Greeks and Epirots, more than 8000 cavalry, and nineteen elephants. The Romans were supported on that day by the Latins, Campanians, Volscians, Sabines, Umbrians, Marrucinians, Paelignians, Frentanians, and Arpanians. They too numbered above 70,000 infantry, of whom 20,000 were Roman citizens, and 8000 cavalry. Both parties had made alterations in their military system. Pyrrhus, perceiving with the sharp eye of a soldier the advantages of the Roman manipular organization, had on the wings substituted for the long front of his phalanxes an arrangement by companies with intervals between them in imitation of the cohorts, and— perhaps for political no less than for military reasons—had placed the Tarentine and Samnite cohorts between the sub divisions of his own men. In the centre alone the Epirot phalanx stood in close order. For the purpose of keeping off the elephants the Romans produced a species of war- chariot, from which projected iron poles furnished with chafing-dishes, and on which were fastened moveable masts adjusted with a view to being lowered, and ending in an iron spike — in some degree the model of the boarding- bridges which were to play so great a part in the first Punic war.
According to the Greek account of the battle, which seems less one-sided than the Roman account also extant, the Greeks had the disadvantage on the first day, as tney
35
ol °*
*6 STRUGGLE BETWEEN PYRRHUS book ii
did not succeed in deploying their line along the steep and marshy banks of the river where they were compelled to accept battle, or in bringing their cavalry and elephants into action. On the second day, however, Pyrrhus antici pated the Romans in occupying the intersected ground, and thus gained without loss the plain where he could without disturbance draw up his phalanx. Vainly did the Romans with desperate courage fall sword in hand on the sar issue ; the phalanx preserved an unshaken front under every assault, but in its turn was unable to make any
on the Roman legions. It was not till the numerous escort of the elephants had, with arrows and stones hurled from slings, dislodged the combatants stationed in the Roman war-chariots and had cut the traces of the horses, and the elephants pressed upon the Roman line, that it began to waver. The giving way of the attached to the Roman chariots formed the signal foruniversal flight, which, however, did not involve the sacrifice of many lives, as the adjoining camp received the fugitives. The Roman account of the battle alone mentions the circum stance, that during the principal engagement an Arpanian corps detached from the Roman main force had attacked and set on fire the weakly-guarded Epirot camp ; but, even if this were correct, the Romans are not at all justified in their assertion that the battle remained undecided. Both accounts, on the contrary, agree in stating that the Roman army retreated across the river, and that Pyrrhus remained in possession of the field of battle. The number of the fallen was, according to the Greek account, 6000 on the side of the Romans, 3505 on that of the Greeks. 1 Amongst
1 These numbers appear credible. The Roman account assigns, probably in dead and wounded, 15,000 to each side ; a later one even specifies 5000 as dead on the Roman, and 20,000 on the Greek side. These accounts may be mentioned here for the purpose of exhibiting, in one of the few instances where it is possible to check the statement, the untrustworthiness —almost without exception —of the reports of numbers.
impression
guard
CHAP, vil AND ROME ay
the wounded was the king himself, whos e arm had been
pierced with a javelin, while he was fighting, as was his wont, in the thickest of the fray. Pyrrhus had achieved a victory, but his were unfruitful laurels ; the victory was creditable to the king as a general and as a soldier, but it did not promote his political designs.