No More Learning

The west had peace
Let us pause for a moment over the conflict, which ex- tended the dominion of Rome beyond the circling sea that conduct of encloses the peninsula. It was one of the longest and most severe which the Romans ever waged ; many of the
soldiers who fought in the decisive battle were unborn when the contest began. Nevertheless, despite the incom parably noble incidents which it now and again presented, we can scarcely name any war which the Romans managed so wretchedly and with such vacillation, both in a military and in a political point of view. It could hardly be other wise. The contest occurred amidst a transition in their political system—the transition from an Italian policy, which no longer sufficed, to the policy befitting a great state, which had not yet been found. The Roman senate and the Roman military system were excellently organized for a purely Italian policy. The wars which such a policy
Remaita
Roman
chap, II CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
199
provoked were purely continental wars, and always rested on the capital situated in the middle of the peninsula as the ultimate basis of operations, and proximately on the chain of Roman fortresses. The problems to be solved were mainly tactical, not strategical ; marches and operations occupied but a subordinate, battles held the first, place; fortress warfare was in its infancy ; the sea and naval war hardly crossed men's thoughts even incidentally. We can easily understand —especially if we bear in mind that in the battles of that period, where the naked weapon predominated, it was really the hand-to-hand encounter that proved decisive —how a deliberative
assembly might direct such operations, and how any one who just was burgomaster might command the troops. All this was
changed in a moment. The field of battle stretched away to an incalculable distance, to the unknown regions of another continent, and beyond a broad expanse of sea; every wave was a highway for the enemy ; from any harbour he might be expected to issue for his onward march. The siege of strong places, particularly maritime fortresses, in which the first tacticians of Greece had failed, had now for the first time to be attempted by the Romans. A land army and the system of a civic militia no longer sufficed. It was essential to create a fleet, and, what was more difficult, to employ it ; it was essential to find out the true points of attack and defence, to combine and to direct masses, to calculate expeditions extending over long periods and great distances, and to adjust their co-operation ; if these things were not attended to, even an enemy far weaker in the tactics of the field might easily vanquish a stronger opponent. Is there any wonder that the reins of govern ment in such an exigency slipped from the hands of a deliberative assembly and of commanding burgomasters ?
It was plain, that at the beginning of the war the Romans did not know what they were undertaking ; it was
MO THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book iii
only during the course of the struggle that the inadequacies of their system, one after another, forced themselves on their notice — the want of a naval power, the lack of fixed military leadership, the insufficiency of their generals, the total uselessness of their admirals. In part these evils were remedied by energy and good fortune; as was the case with the want of a fleet That mighty creation, how ever, was but a grand makeshift, and always remained so. A Roman fleet was formed, but it was rendered national only in name, and was always treated with the affection of a stepmother ; the naval service continued to be little esteemed in comparison with the high honour of serving in the legions ; the naval officers were in great part Italian Greeks ; the crews were composed of subjects or even of slaves and outcasts. The Italian farmer was at all times distrustful of the sea ; and of the three things in his life which Cato regretted one was, that he had travelled by sea when he might have gone by land. This result arose partly out of the nature of the case, for the vessels were oared
galleys and the service of the oar can scarcely be ennobled; but the Romans might at least have formed separate legions of marines and taken steps towards the rearing of a class of Roman naval officers. Taking advantage of the impulse of the nation, they should have made it their aim gradually to establish a naval force important not only in numbers but in sailing power and practice, and for such a purpose they had a valuable nucleus in the privateering that was developed during the long war ; but nothing of the sort was done by the government. Nevertheless the Roman fleet with its unwieldy grandeur was the noblest creation of genius in this war, and, as at its beginning, so at its close it was the fleet that turned the scale in favour of Rome.
Far more difficult to be overcome were those deficiencies, which could not be remedied without an alteration of the
chap, il CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY 201
constitution. That the senate, according to the strength of the contending parties within should leap from one
of conducting the war to another, and perpetrate
errors so incredible as the evacuation of Clupea and the
repeated dismantling of the fleet that the general of one
year should lay siege to Sicilian towns, and his successor, instead of compelling them to surrender, should pillage the African coast or think proper to risk naval battle and that at any rate the supreme command should by law change hands every year—all these anomalies could not be done away without stirring constitutional questions the solution of which was more difficult than the building of
fleet, but as little could their retention be reconciled with
the requirements of such war. Above all, moreover, neither the senate nor the generals could at once adapt themselves to the new mode of conducting war. The campaign of Regulus an instance how singularly they adhered to the idea that superiority in tactics decides every thing. There are few generals who have had such successes thrown as were into their lap fortune in the year
498 he stood precisely where Scipio stood fifty years later, 25& with this difference, that he had no Hannibal and no experienced army arrayed against him. But the senate withdrew half the army, as soon as they had satisfied them selves of the tactical superiority of the Romans in blind reliance on that superiority the general remained where he
was, to be beaten in strategy, and accepted battle when was offered to him, to be beaten also in tactics. This was the more remarkable, as Regulus was an able and experi enced general of his kind. The rustic method of warfare, by which Etruria and Samnium had been won, was the very cause of the defeat in the plain of Tunes. The principle, quite right in its own province, that every true burgher fit for general, was no longer applicable the new system of war demanded the employment of generals
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302 WAR BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE book iii
who had a military training and a military eye, and every burgomaster had not those qualities. The arrangement was however still worse, by which the chief command of the fleet was treated as an appanage to the chief command of the land army, and any one who chanced to be president of the city thought himself able to act the part not of general only, but of admiral too. The worst disasters which Rome suffered in this war were due not to the storms and still less to the Carthaginians, but to the presumptuous folly of its own citizen-admirals.
Rome was victorious at last But her acquiescence in a gain far less than had at first been demanded and indeed offered, as well as the energetic opposition which the peace encountered in Rome, very clearly indicate the indecisive and superficial character of the victory and of the peace ; and if Rome was the victor, she was indebted for her victory in part no doubt to the favour of the gods and to the energy of her citizens, but still more to the errors of her enemies in the conduct of the war—errors far surpassing even her own.
CHAP, m THE EXTENSION OF ITALY
CHAPTER IIL
THB EXTENSION OF ITALY TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES.
The Italian confederacy as it emerged from the crises of Natural the fifth century—or, in other words, the State of Italy— of un united the various civic and cantonal communities from the
to the Ionian Sea under the hegemony of
Rome. But before the close of the fifth century these
limits were already overpassed in both directions, and
Italian communities belonging to the confederacy had
sprung up beyond the Apennines and beyond the sea. In
the north the republic, in revenge for ancient and recent
wrongs, had already in 47 1 annihilated the Celtic Senones ; 288.
in the south, through the great war from 490 to 513, it 264-241. had dislodged the Phoenicians from the island of Sicily.
In the north there belonged to the combination headed by
Rome the Latin town of Ariminum (besides the burgess- settlement of Sena), in the south the community of the Mamertines in Messana, and as both were nationally of
Italian origin, so both shared in the common rights and obligations of the Italian confederacy. It was probably
the pressure of events at the moment rather than any com prehensive political calculation, that gave rise to these extensions of the confederacy ; but it was natural that now
at least, after the great successes achieved against Carthage,
new and wider views of policy should dawn upon the Roman
/
Apennines
Sicily a de- onuSr*
government —views which even otherwise were obviously enough suggested by the physical features of the peninsula. Alike in a political and in a military point of view Rome was justified in shifting its northern boundary from the low and easily crossed Apennines to the mighty mountain-wall that separates northern from southern Europe, the Alps, and in combining with the sovereignty of Italy the sovereignty of the seas and islands on the west and east of the penin sula ; and now, when by the expulsion of the Phoenicians from Sicily the most difficult portion of the task had been already achieved, various circumstances united to facilitate its completion by the Roman government
In the western sea which was of far more account for ^y than thhe Adriatic, the most important position, the large and fertile island of Sicily copiously furnished with harbours, had been by the peace with Carthage transferred for the most part into the possession of the Romans. King Hiero of Syracuse indeed, who during the last twenty-two
years of the war had adhered with unshaken steadfastness to the Roman alliance, might have had a fair claim to an extension of territory ; but, if Roman policy had begun the war with the resolution of tolerating only secondary states in the island, the views of the Romans at its close decidedly tended towards the seizure of Sicily for themselves. Hiero might be content that his territory —namely, in addition to the immediate district of Syracuse, the domains of Elorus, Neetum, Acrae, Leontini, Megara, and Tauromenium — and his independence in relation to foreign powers, were (for want of any pretext to curtail them) left to him in their former compass; he might well be content that the war between the two great powers had not ended in the com plete overthrow of the one or of the other, and that there consequently still remained at least a possibility of subsist ence for the intermediate power in Sicily. In the remaining and by far the larger portion of Sicily, at
904
THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book iii
chap, m TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
205
Panormus, Lilybaeum, Agrigentum, Messana, the Romans effected a permanent settlement
They only regretted that the possession of that beautiful Sardinia island was not enough to convert the western waters into a Roman inland sea, so long as Sardinia still remained Carthaginian. Soon, however, after the conclusion of the
peace there appeared an unexpected prospect of wresting
from the Carthaginians this second island of the Mediter
ranean. In Africa, immediately after peace had been The concluded with Rome, the mercenaries and the subjects of sm^;,,,,," the Phoenicians joined in a common revolt. The blame
of the dangerous insurrection was mainly chargeable on the Carthaginian government In the last years of the war Hamilcar had not been aole to pay his Sicilian mercenaries as formerly from his own resources, and he had vainly requested that money might be sent to him from home ; he might, he was told, send his forces to Africa to be paid off. He obeyed ; but as he knew the men, he prudently embarked them in small subdivisions, that the authorities might pay them off by troops or might at least separate them, and thereupon he laid down his command. But all his precautions were thwarted not so much by the emptiness of the exchequer, as by the collegiate method of transacting business and the folly of the bureaucracy. They waited till the whole army was once more united in Libya, and then endeavoured to curtail the pay promised to the men. Of course a mutiny broke out among the troops, and the hesitating and cowardly demeanour of the authorities showed the mutineers what they might dare. Most of them were natives of the districts ruled by, or dependent on, Carthage; they knew the feelings which had been provoked throughout these districts by the slaughter decreed by the government
after the expedition of Regulus (p. 184) and by the fearful pressure of taxation, and they knew also the character of their government, which never kept faith and never
ao6 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book hi
pardoned; they were well aware of what awaited them, should they disperse to their homes with pay exacted by mutiny. The Carthaginians had for long been digging the mine, and they now themselves supplied the men who could not but explode it Like wildfire the revolution spread from garrison to garrison, from village to village ; the Libyan women contributed their ornaments to pay the wages of the mercenaries ; a number of Carthaginian
citizens, amongst whom were some of the most distinguished officers of the Sicilian army, became the victims of the in furiated multitude ; Carthage was already besieged on two sides, and the Carthaginian army marching out of the city was totally routed in consequence of the blundering of its unskilful leader.
When the Romans thus saw their hated and still dreaded foe involved in a greater danger than any ever brought on that foe by the Roman wars, they began more and more to
141. regret the conclusion of the peace of 513 —which, if it was not in reality precipitate, now at least appeared so to all— and to forget how exhausted at that time their own state had been and how powerful had then been the standing of their Carthaginian rival. Shame indeed forbade their entering into communication openly with the Carthaginian rebels ; in fact, they gave an exceptional permission to the Carthaginians to levy recruits for this war in Italy, and pro hibited Italian mariners from dealing with the Libyans. But it may be doubted whether the government of Rome was very earnest in these acts of friendly alliance ; for, in spite of them, the dealings between the African insurgents and the Roman mariners continued, and when Hamilcar, whom the extremity of the peril had recalled to the command of the Carthaginian army, seized and imprisoned a number of Italian captains concerned in these dealings, the senate interceded for them with the Carthaginian government and procured their release. The insurgents themselves appeared
CHAP. Iil TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
307
to recognize in the Romans their natural allies. The garrisons in Sardinia, which like the rest of the Carthaginian army had declared in favour of the insurgents, offered the possession of the island to the Romans, when they saw that they were unable to hold it against the attacks of the un- conquered mountaineers of the interior (about 515); and 239. similar offers came even from the community of Utica, which had likewise taken part in the revolt and was
now hard pressed by the arms of Hamilcar. The latter suggestion was declined by the Romans, chiefly doubtless because its acceptance would have carried them beyond the natural boundaries of Italy and therefore farther than the Roman government was then disposed to go; on the other hand they enter tained the offers of the Sardinian mutineers, and took
over from them the portion of Sardinia which had been in the hands of the Carthaginians (516). In this in- 288. stance, even more than in the affair of the Mamertines, the Romans were justly liable to the reproach that the great
and victorious burgesses had not disdained to fraternize and share the spoil with a venal pack of mercenaries, and had
not sufficient self-denial to prefer the course enjoined by justice and by honour to the gain of the moment The Carthaginians, whose troubles reached their height just about the period of the occupation of Sardinia, were silent
for the time being as to the unwarrantable violence ; but, after this peril had been, contrary to the expectations and probably contrary to the hopes of the Romans, averted by
the genius of Hamilcar, and Carthage had been reinstated to
her full sovereignty in Africa (5 1 Carthaginian envoys 237. immediately appeared at Rome to require the restitution of Sardinia. But the Romans, not inclined to restore their booty, replied with frivolous or at any rate irrelevant com plaints as to all sorts of injuries which they alleged that the
Carthaginians
had inflicted on the Roman traders, and
7),
Conic*.
ao8 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY BOOK Hi
hastened to declare war;1 the principle, that in politics power is the measure of right, appeared in its naked effrontery. Just resentment urged the Carthaginians to accept that offer of war; had Catulus insisted upon the cession of Sardinia five years before, the war would prob ably have pursued its course. But now, when both islands were lost, when Libya was in a ferment, and when the state was weakened to the utmost by its twenty-four years' struggle with Rome and the dreadful civil war that had raged for nearly five years more, they were obliged to submit It was only after repeated entreaties, and after the Phoenicians had bound themselves to pay to Rome a compensation of 1200 talents (^292,000) for the warlike preparations which had been wantonly occasioned, that the Romans reluctantly desisted from war. Thus the Romans acquired Sardinia almost without a struggle ; to which they
added Corsica, the ancient possession of the Etruscans, where perhaps some detached Roman garrisons still remained over from the last war (p. 177). In Sardinia, however, and still more in the rugged Corsica, the Romans restricted themselves, just as the Phoenicians had done, to an occupation of the coasts. With the natives in the interior they were continually engaged in war or, to speak more correctly, in hunting them like wild beasts; they baited them with dogs, and carried what they captured to the slave market ; but they undertook no real conquest They had occupied the islands not on their own account, but for the security of Italy. Now that the confederacy possessed the three large islands, it might call the Tyrrhene Sea its own.
The acquisition of the islands in the western sea of Italy introduced into the state administration of Rome a distinc
Method of
adminis
tration In
the trans
marine pos the peace of 513 prescribed to the Carthaginians, did not include the sessions, cession of Sardinia is a settled point (p. 198) ; but the statement, that the
1 That the cession of the islands lying between Sicily and Italy, which
241. Romans made that a pretext for their occupation of the island three years after the peace, is ill attested. Had they done so, they would merely have added a diplomatic folly to the political effrontery.
CHAP. HI TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
909
tion, which to all appearance originated in mere considera
tions of convenience and almost accidentally, but neverthe
less came to be of the deepest importance for all time following —the distinction between the continental and transmarine forms of administration, or to use the appellations afterwards current, the distinction between Italy and the provinces. Hitherto the two chief magistrates
of the community, the consuls, had not had any legally defined sphere of action ; on the contrary their official field extended as far as the Roman government itself. Of course, however, in practice they made a division of functions between them, and of course also they were bound in every particular department of their duties by the enactments existing in regard to it ; the jurisdiction, for instance, over Roman citizens had in every case to be left to the praetor,
and in the Latin and other autonomous communities the existing treaties had to be respected. The four quaestors
who had been since 487 distributed throughout Italy did 267. not, formally at least, restrict the consular authority, for in Italy, just as in Rome, they were regarded simply as auxi
liary magistrates dependent on the consuls. This mode of administration appears to have been at first extended also
to the territories taken from Carthage, and Sicily and
Sardinia to have been governed for some years by quaestors
under the superintendence of the consuls ; but the Romans
must very soon have become practically convinced that it
was indispensable to have superior magistrates specially appointed for the transmarine regions. As they had been Provincial obliged to abandon the concentration of the Roman jurisdic- PraeUn- tion in the person of the praetor as the community became enlarged, and to send to the more remote districts deputy
judges (p. 67), so now (527) the concentration of adminis- 227. trative and military power in the person of the consuls had
to be abandoned. For each of the new transmarine regions —viz. Sicily, and Sardinia with Corsica annexed to it—
VOL. II
46
Organiza tion of the provinces.
Comttur* eium.
210 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY
there was appointed a special auxiliary consul, who was in rank and title inferior to the consul and equal to the praetor, but otherwise was — like the consul in earlier times before the praetorship was instituted —in his own sphere of action at once commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme judge. The direct administration of finance alone was withheld from these new chief magistrates, as from the first it had been withheld from the consuls 322); one or more quaestors were assigned to them, who were every way indeed subordinate to them, and were their assistants in the administration of justice and in command, but yet had speci ally to manage the finances and to render account of their ad ministration to the senate after having laid down their office.
This difference in the supreme administrative power was the essential distinction between the transmarine and con tinental possessions. The principles on which Rome had organized the dependent lands in Italy, were in great part transferred also to the extra-Italian possessions. As
matter of course, these communities without exception lost independence in their external relations. As to internal intercourse, no provincial could thenceforth acquire valid property the province out of the bounds of his own community, or perhaps even conclude valid marriage. On the other hand the Roman government allowed, at least to the Sicilian towns which they had not to fear, certain federative organization, and probably even general Siceliot diets with harmless right of petition and complaint. 1 In monetary arrangements was not indeed practicable at once to declare the Roman currency to be the only valid tender in the islands but seems from the first to have
That this was the case may be gathered partly from the appearance of the " Siculi " against Marcellus (I. iv. xxvi. 26, uq. partly from the " conjoint petitions of all the Sicilian communities" (Cicero, Vtrr. ii. 49, 10a 45, 114 50, 146 iii. 88, 204), partly from well-known analogies (Marquardt, Ilandb. iii. 367). Because there was no commercium between the different towns, by no means follows that there was no
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obtained legal circulation, and in like manner, at least as a
rule, the right of coining in precious metals seems to have
been withdrawn from the cities in Roman Sicily. 1 On the Property, other hand not only was the landed property in all Sicily
left untouched —the principle, that the land out of Italy fell
by right of war to the Romans as private property, was
still unknown to this century — but all the Sicilian and Sardinian communities retained self-administration and
some sort of autonomy, which indeed was not assured to
them in a way legally binding, but was provisionally allowed.
If the democratic constitutions of the communities were everywhere set aside, and in every city the power was trans
ferred to the hands of a council representing the civic aris
tocracy ; and if moreover the Sicilian communities, at least,
were required to institute a general valuation corresponding
to the Roman census every fifth year ; both these measures
were only the necessary sequel of subordination to the Roman
senate, which in reality could not govern with Greek ecdesiae,
or without a view of the financial and military resources of
each dependent community ; in the various districts of Italy
also the same course was in both respects pursued.
Autonomy,
But, side by side with this essential equality of rights, there was established a distinction, very important in its effects, between the Italian communities on the one hand and the transmarine communities on the other. While the treaties concluded with the Italian towns imposed on them a fixed contingent for the army or the fleet of the Romans, such a contingent was not imposed on the trans marine communities, with which no binding paction was
1 The right of coining gold and silver was not monopolized by Rome in the provinces so strictly as in Italy, evidently because gold and silver money not struck after the Roman standard was of less importance. But in their case too the mints were doubtless, as a rule, restricted to the coinage of copper, or at most silver, small money ; even the most favour ably treated communities of Roman Sicily, such as the Mamertines, the Centuripans, the Halaesines, the Segestans, and also in the main the Parionmuni coined only copper.
Tenths and customs.
SM THE EXTENSION OF ITALY BOOK nr
entered into at all, but they lost the right of arms,1 with the single exception that they might be employed on the summons of the Roman praetor for the defence of their own homes. The Roman government regularly sent Italian troops, of the strength which it had fixed, to the islands ; in return for this, a tenth of the field-produce of Sicily, and a toll of 5 per cent on the value of all articles of commerce exported from or imported into the Sicilian harbours, were paid to Rome. To the islanders these taxes were nothing new. The imposts levied by the Persian great-king and the Carthaginian republic were substantially of the same character with that tenth ; and in Greece also such a taxation had for long been, after Oriental precedent, associated with the tyrannis and often also with a hege
The Sicilians had in this way long paid their tenth either to Syracuse or to Carthage, and had been wont to levy customs-dues no longer on their own account "We received," says Cicero, " the Sicilian communities into our clientship and protection in such a way that they continued under the same law under which they had lived before, and obeyed the Roman community under relations similar to those in which they had obeyed their own rulers. " It is fair that this should not be forgotten ; but to continue an injustice is to commit injustice. Viewed in relation not to the subjects, who merely changed masters, but to their new rulers, the abandonment of the equally wise and magnani mous principle of Roman statesmanship—viz. , that Rome should accept from her subjects simply military aid, and never pecuniary compensation in lieu of it — was of a fatal importance, in comparison with which all alleviations in the rates and the mode of levying them, as well as all exceptions in detail, were as nothing. Such exceptions
1 This is implied in Hiero's expression (Liv. xxii. 37) : that he knew that the Romans made use of none but Roman or Latin infantry and cavalry, and employed " foreigners " at most only among the light-armed troop*.
mony.
CHA*. in TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
213
were, no doubt, made in various cases. Messana was di- Commu- rectly admitted to the confederacy of the togati, and, like ^^pted. the Greek cities in Italy, furnished its contingent to the
Roman fleet A number of other cities, while not admitted
to the Italian military confederacy, yet received in addition to other favours immunity from tribute and tenths, so that their position in a financial point of view was even more favourable than that of the Italian communities. These were Segesta and Halicyae, which were the first towns of Carthaginian Sicily that joined the Roman alliance ; Cen- turipa, an inland town in the east of the island, which was destined to keep a watch over the Syracusan territory in its neighbourhood ; 1 Halaesa on the northern coast, which was the first of the free Greek towns to join the Romans, and above all Panormus, hitherto the capital of Carthaginian, and now destined to become that of Roman, Sicily. The Romans thus applied to Sicily the ancient principle of their policy, that of subdividing the dependent communities into carefully graduated classes with different privileges ; but, on the average, the Sardinian and Sicilian communities were
not in the position of allies but in the manifest relation of tributary subjection.
It is true that this thorough distinction between the Italy communities that furnished contingents and those that paid and fhe tribute, or at least did not furnish contingents, was not in
law necessarily coincident with the distinction between Italy
and the provinces. Transmarine communities might belong to the Italian confederacy; the Mamertines for example were substantially on a level with the Italian Sabellians, and there existed no legal obstacle to the establishment even of new communities with Latin rights in Sicily and Sardinia
1 This is shown at once by a glance at the map, and also by the remarkable exceptional provision which allowed the Centuripans to buy in any part of Sicily. They needed, as Roman spies, the utmost freedom of movement. We may add that Centuripa appears to have been among the first cities that went over to Rome (Diodorus, /. xxiii. p. 501).
ai4
THE EXTENSION OF ITALY BOOK lil
any more than in the country beyond the Apennines. Com munities on the mainland might be deprived of the right of bearing arms and become tributary ; this arrangement was already the case with certain Celtic districts on the Po, and was introduced to a considerable extent in after times. But, in reality, the communities that furnished contingents just as decidedly preponderated on the mainland as the tributary communities in the islands; and while Italian settlements were not contemplated on the part of the Romans either in Sicily with its Hellenic civilization or in Sardinia, the Roman government had beyond doubt already determined not only to subdue the barbarian land between the Apennines and the Alps, but also, as their conquests advanced, to establish in it new communities of Italic origin and Italic rights. Thus their transmarine possessions were not merely placed on the footing of land held by subjects, but were destined to remain on that
in all time to come ; whereas the official field recently marked off by law for the consuls, or, which is the same thing, the continental territory of the Romans, was to become a new and more extended Italy, which should reach from the Alps to the Ionian sea. In the first instance, indeed, this essentially geographical conception of Italy was not altogether coincident with the political con ception of the Italian confederacy ; it was partly wider, partly narrower. But even now the Romans regarded the whole space up to the boundary of the Alps as Italia, that
as the present or future domain of the togati, and, just as was and still the case in North America, the boundary was provisionally marked off in geographical sense, that the field might be gradually occupied in political sense
also with the advance of colonization. 1
This distinction between Italy as the Roman mainland or consular sphere on the one hand, and the transmarine territory or praetorial sphere on the other, already appears variously applied in the sixth century. The ritual rule, that certain priests should not leave Rome (VaL Max. i, l),
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In the Adriatic sea, at the entrance of which the im- Events portant and long-contemplated colony of Brundisium had ^^Ji. at length been founded before the close of the war with coasts. Carthage (510), the supremacy of Rome was from the very 244. first decided. In the western sea Rome had been obliged
to rid herself of rivals ; in the eastern, the quarrels of the Hellenes themselves prevented any of the states in the
Grecian peninsula from acquiring or retaining power.
The most considerable of them, that of Macedonia, had
through the influence of Egypt been dislodged from the
upper Adriatic by the Aetolians and from the Peloponnesus
by the Achaeans, and was scarcely even in a position to
defend its northern frontier against the barbarians. How concerned the Romans were to keep down Macedonia and
its natural ally, the king of Syria, and how closely they associated themselves with the Egyptian policy directed
to that object, is shown by the remarkable offer which
after the end of the war with Carthage they made to king
Ptolemy III. Euergetes, to support him in the war which
he waged with Seleucus II. Callinicus of Syria
reigned 507-529) on account of the murder of Berenice, 247-226. and in which Macedonia had probably taken part with the
latter. Generally, the relations of Rome with the Hellenistic
was explained to mean, that they were not allowed to cross the sea (Liv.
Ep. 19, xxxviL 51'; Tac. Ann. iii. 58, 71 j Cic Phil. xi. 8, 18 ; comp.
Liv. xxviil. 38, 44, Ep. 59). To this head still more definitely belongs
the interpretation which was proposed in 544 to be put upon the old rule, 210. that the consul might nominate the dictator only on " Roman ground " :
viz. that " Roman ground " comprehended all Italy (Liv. xxvii. 5). The erection of the Celtic land between the Alps and Apennines into a special province, different from that of the consuls and subject to a separate standing chief magistrate, was the work of Sulla. Of course no one will urge as an objection to this view, that already in the sixth century Gallia or Ariminum is very often designated as the "official district " (provincial, usually of one of the consuls. Provincia, as is well known, was in the older language not —what alone it denoted subsequently — a definite space assigned as a district to a standing chief magistrate, but the department of duty fixed for the individual consul, in the first instance by agreement with his colleague, under concurrence of the senate ; and in this sense frequently individual regions in northern Italy, or even North Italy generally, were assigned to individual consuls as provincia.
(who
myrian P"*07'
Even the evil of piracy, which was naturally in such a state of matters the only trade that flourished on the Adriatic coast, and from which the commerce of Italy suffered greatly, was submitted to by the Romans with an undue measure of patience, — a patience intimately connected with their radical aversion to maritime war and their wretched marine. But at length it became too flagrant. Favoured by Macedonia, which no longer found occasion to continue its old function of protecting Hellenic commerce from the corsairs of the Adriatic for the benefit of its foes, the rulers of Scodra had induced the
Illyrian tribes — nearly corresponding to the Dalmatians, Montenegrins, and northern Albanians of the present day —to unite for joint piratical expeditions on a great scale.
216 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book HI
states became closer; the senate already negotiated even with Syria, and interceded with the Seleucus just mentioned on behalf of the Ilians with whom the Romans claimed affinity.
For a direct interference of the Romans in the affairs of the eastern powers there was no immediate need. The Achaean league, the prosperity of which was arrested by the narrow-minded coterie -policy of Aratus, the Aetolian republic of military adventurers, and the decayed Mace donian empire kept each other in check ; and the Romans of that time avoided rather than sought transmarine ac
When the Acarnanians, appealing to the that they alone of all the Greeks had taken no part in the destruction of Ilion, besought the descendants
of Aeneas to help them against the Aetolians, the senate did indeed attempt a diplomatic mediation ; but when the Aetolians returned an answer drawn up in their own saucy fashion, the antiquarian interest of the Roman senators by no means provoked them into undertaking a war by which they would have freed the Macedonians from their heredi-
289. tary foe (about 515).
quisitions. ground
chap, in TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
217
With whole squadrons of their swift- sailing biremes, the well-known "Liburnian" cutters, the Illyrians waged war by sea and along the coasts against all and sundry. The Greek settlements in these regions, the island-towns of Issa (Lissa) and Pharos (Lesina), the important ports of
(Durazzo) and Apollonia (to the north of Avlona on the Aous) of course suffered especially, and were repeatedly beleaguered by the barbarians. Farther to
the south, moreover, the corsairs established themselves in Phoenice, the most flourishing town of Epirus;
voluntarily, partly by constraint, the Epirots and Acar- nanians entered into an unnatural symmachy with the foreign freebooters ; the coast was insecure even as far as Elis and Messene. In vain the Aetolians and Achaeans collected what ships they had, with a view to check the
evil : in a battle on the open sea they were beaten by the pirates and their Greek allies; the corsair fleet was able
at length to take possession even of the rich and im portant island of Corcyra (Corfu). The complaints of Italian mariners, the appeals for aid of their old allies
the Apolloniates, and the urgent entreaties of the besieged Issaeans at length compelled the Roman senate to send
at least ambassadors to Scodra. The brothers Gaius and Lucius Coruncanius went thither to demand that
Agron should put an end to the disorder. The king answered that according to the national law of the Illyrians piracy was a lawful trade, and that the government had
no right to put a stop to privateering ; whereupon Lucius Coruncanius replied, that in that case Rome would make it
her business to introduce a better law among the Illyrians.
For this certainly not very diplomatic reply one of the envoys was — by the king's orders, as the Romans asserted —murdered on the way home, and the surrender of the murderers was refused. The senate had now no choice
left to it In the spring of 525 a fleet of 200 ships of 229.
Epidamnus
partly
king
»8 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book iil
Expedition the line, with a landing -army on board, appeared off
sSJiriL
Apollonia; the corsair-vessels were scattered before the former, while the latter demolished the piratic strongholds ; the queen Teuta, who after the death of her husband Agron conducted the government during the minority of her son Pinnes, besieged in her last retreat, was obliged to accept the conditions dictated by Rome.
The rulers of Scodra were again confined both on the north and south to the narrow limits of their original domain, and had to quit their hold not only on all the Greek towns, but also on the Ardiaei in Dalmatia, the Parthini around Epidamnus, and the Atintanes in northern Epirus ; no Illyrian vessel of war at all, and not more than two unarmed vessels in company, were to be allowed in future to sail to the south of Lissus (Alessio, between Scutari and Durazzo). The maritime supremacy of Rome in the Adriatic was asserted, in the most praiseworthy and durable way, by the rapid and energetic suppression of the evil of piracy.
But the Romans went further, and established them- selves on the east coast. The Illyrians of Scodra were rendered tributary to Rome; Demetrius of Pharos, who had passed over from the service of Teuta to that of the Romans, was installed, as a dependent dynast and ally of Rome, over the islands and coasts of Dalmatia; the Greek cities Corcyra, Epidamnus, Apollonia, and the communities of the Atintanes and Parthini were attached to Rome under mild forms of symmachy. These acquisi tions on the east coast of the Adriatic were not sufficiently extensive to require the appointment of a special auxiliary consul ; governors of subordinate rank appear to have been sent to Corcyra and perhaps also to other places, and the superintendence of these possessions seems to have been entrusted to the chief magistrates who administered Italy. 1 Thus the most important maritime stations in the
1 A lUndlng Roman commandant of Corcyra is apparently mentioned
Acquisition
in iuyita/
chap, ill TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
319
Adriatic became subject, like Sicily and Sardinia, to the authority of Rome. What other result was to be expected ? In»i Rome was in want of a good naval station in the upper ^| Adriatic—a want which was not supplied by her possessions donia. on the Italian shore ; her new allies, especially the Greek commercial towns, saw in the Romans their deliverers, and doubtless did what they could permanently to secure so
a protection; in Greece itself no one was in a to oppose the movement; on the contrary, the praise of the liberators was on every one's lips. It may be a question whether there was greater rejoicing or shame in Hellas, when, in place of the ten ships of the line of the Achaean league, the most warlike power in Greece, two hundred sail belonging to the barbarians now entered her
harbours and accomplished at a blow the task, which properly belonged to the Greeks, but in which they had failed so miserably. But if the Greeks were ashamed that the salvation of their oppressed countrymen had to come from abroad, they accepted the deliverance at least with a good grace; they did not fail to receive the Romans solemnly into the fellowship of the Hellenic nation by ad mitting them to the Isthmian games and the Eleusinian mysteries.
Macedonia was silent; it was not in a condition to protest in arms, and disdained to do so in words. No
in Polyb. xxil. 15, 6 (erroneously translated by Liv. xxxviil. 11, comp. xlii. 37), and a similar one in the case of Issa in Liv. xliii. 9. We have, moreover, the analogy of the praefcctus pro legato insularum Baliarum (Orelli, 732), and of the governor of Pandataria (Inicr. Reg. Neapol.
It appears, accordingly, to have been a rule in the Roman admini stration to appoint non-senatorial praefecti for the more remote islands. But these "deputies" presuppose in the nature of the case a superior magistrate who nominates and superintends them ; and this superior magistracy can only have been at this period that of the consuls. Sub sequently, after the erection of Macedonia and Gallia Cisalpina into pi jvinces, the superior administration was committed to one of these two governors ; the very territory now in question, the nucleus of the subsequent Roman province of Illyricum, belonged, as is well known, in part to Caesar's district of administration.
powerful position
3528).
aio THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book III
resistance was encountered. Nevertheless Rome, by seizing the keys to her neighbour's house, had converted that neighbour into an adversary who, should he recover his power, or should a favourable opportunity occur, might be expected to know how to break the silence. Had the energetic and prudent king Antigonus Doson lived longer, he would have doubtless taken up the gauntlet which the Romans had flung down, for, when some years afterwards the dynast Demetrius of Pharos withdrew from the hegemony of Rome, prosecuted piracy contrary to the treaty in concert with the Istrians, and subdued the Atintanes whom the Romans had declared independent, Antigonus formed an alliance with him, and the troops of Demetrius fought along with the army of Antigonus at the
222. battle of Sellasia (532). But Antigonus died (in the 921. 220. winter 533—4) ; and his successor Philip, still a boy, allowed
the Consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus to attack the ally of
Macedonia, to destroy his capital, and to drive him from 219. his kingdom into exile (535).
Northern Ital7-
The mainland of Italy proper, south of the Apennines, enjoyed profound peace after the fall of Tarentum : the six
283. 282.
241. days' war with Falerii (513) was little more than an in terlude. But towards the north, between the territory of the confederacy and the natural boundary of Italy—the chain of the Alps —there still extended a wide region which was not subject to the Romans. What was regarded as the boundary of Italy on the Adriatic coast was the river Aesis immediately above Ancona. Beyond this boundary the adjacent properly Gallic territory as far as, and includ ing, Ravenna belonged in a similar way as did Italy proper to the Roman alliance; the Senones, who had formerly settled there, were extirpated in the war of 47 1— 2 and the several townships were connected with Rome, either as burgess-colonies, like Sena Gallica or as allied towns, whether with Latin rights, like Ariminum 39), or with
(p.
(p. 1
2),
(p. 1
1),
chap, in TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES aai
Italian rights, like Ravenna. On the wide region beyond Ravenna as far as the Alps non-Italian peoples were settled. South of the Po the strong Celtic tribe of the Boii still held its ground (from Parma to Bologna); alongside of them, the Lingones on the east and the Anares on the west (in the region of Parma)— two smaller Celtic cantons presumably clients of the Boii — peopled the plain. At the western end of the plain the Ligurians began, who, mingled with isolated Celtic tribes, and settled on the
Apennines from above Arezzo and Pisa westward, occupied
the region of the sources of the Po. The eastern
of the plain north of the Po, nearly from Verona to the coast, was possessed by the Veneti, a race different from the Celts and probably of Illyrian extraction. Between these and the western mountains were settled the Cenomani (about Brescia and Cremona) who rarely acted with the Celtic nation and were probably largely inter mingled with Veneti, and the Insubres
The latter was the most considerable of the Celtic cantons
in Italy, and was in constant communication not merely with the minor communities partly of Celtic, partly of non-Celtic extraction, that were scattered in the Alpine valleys, but also with the Celtic cantons beyond the Alps. The gates of the Alps, the mighty stream navigable for 230 miles, and the largest and most fertile plain of the then civilized Europe, still continued in the hands of the hereditary foes of the Italian name, who, humbled indeed
and weakened, but still scarce even nominally dependent
and still troublesome neighbours, persevered in their barbarism, and, thinly scattered over the spacious plains,
continued to pasture their herds and to plunder. It was
to be anticipated that the Romans would hasten to possess themselves of these regions ; the more so as the Celts
gradually began to forget their defeats in the campaigns of
471 and 472 and to bestir themselves again, and, what 888. 282
/
portion
(around Milan).
Celtic
222 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book hi
was still more dangerous, the Transalpine Celts began anew to show themselves on the south of the Alps.
In fact the Boii had already renewed the war in 516, and their chiefs Atis and Galatas had—without, it is true, the authority of the general diet — summoned the Trans alpine Gauls to make common cause with them. The
286. latter had numerously answered the call, and in 518 a Celtic army, such as Italy had not seen for long, encamped before Ariminum. The Romans, for the moment much too weak to attempt a battle, concluded an armistice, and to gain time allowed envoys from the Celts to proceed to Rome, who ventured in the senate to demand the cession of Ariminum —it seemed as if the times of Brennus had returned. But an unexpected incident put an end to the war before it had well begun. The Boii, dissatisfied with their unbidden allies and afraid probably for their own territory, fell into variance with the Transalpine Gauls. An open battle took place between the two Celtic hosts ; and, after the chiefs of the Boii had been put to death by their own men, the Transalpine Gauls returned home. The Boii were thus delivered into the hands of the Romans, and the latter were at liberty to expel them like the Senones, and to advance at least to the Po ; but they preferred to grant the Boii peace in return for the cession
136. of some districts of their land (518). This was probably done, because they were just at that time expecting the renewed outbreak of war with Carthage ; but, after that war had been averted by the cession of Sardinia, true policy required the Roman government to take possession as speedily and entirely as possible of the country up to the Alps. The constant apprehensions on the part of the Celts as to such a Roman invasion were therefore sufficiently justified; but the Romans were in no haste. So the Celts on their part began the war, either because
282. the Roman assignations of land on the east coast (522),
288
chap, in TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
M3
although not a measure immediately directed against them, made them apprehensive of danger; or because they per ceived that a war with Rome for the possession of Lom- bardy was inevitable ; or, as is perhaps most probable, because their Celtic impatience was once more weary of inaction and preferred to arm for a new warlike expedition. With the exception of the Cenomani, who acted with the Veneti and declared for the Romans, all the Italian Celts concurred in the war, and they were joined by the Celts of
the upper valley of the Rhone, or rather by a number of adventurers belonging to them, under the leaders Conco- litanus and Aneroestus. 1 With 50,000 warriors on foot,
and 20,000 on horseback or in chariots, the leaders of the Celts advanced to the Apennines (529). The Romans 226. had not anticipated an attack on this side, and had not expected that the Celts, disregarding the Roman fortresses
on the east coast and the protection of their own kinsmen, would venture to advance directly against the capital. Not very long before a similar Celtic swarm had in an exactly similar way overrun Greece. The danger was serious, and appeared still more serious than it really was. The belief that Rome's destruction was this time inevitable, and that the Roman soil was fated to become the property of the Gauls, was so generally diffused among the multitude in Rome itself that the government reckoned it not beneath its dignity to allay the absurd superstitious belief of the mob by an act still more absurd, and to bury alive a Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman in the Roman Forum
1 These, whom Polybius designates as the ' ' Celts in the Alps and on the Rhone, who on account of their character as military adventurers are called Gaesatae (free lances)," are in the Capitoline Fasti named Germani. It is possible that the contemporary annalists may have here mentioned Celts alone, and that it was the historical speculation of the age of Caesar and Augustus that first induced the redactors of these Fasti to treat them as "Germans. " If, on the other hand, the mention of the Germans in the Fasti was based on contemporary records—in which case this is the earli est mention of the name— we shall here have to think no' if t'y Germanic races who wan aftarwardl to called, but of a Celtic horde.
224
THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book iil
with a view to fulfil the oracle of destiny. At the same time they made more serious preparations. Of the two consular armies, each of which numbered about 25,000 infantry and 1100 cavalry, one was stationed in Sardinia under Gaius Atilius Regulus, the other at Ariminum under Lucius Aemilius Papus. Both received orders to repair as speedily as possible to Etruria, which was most immediately threatened. The Celts had already been under the necessity of leaving a garrison at home to face the Cenomani and Veneti, who were allied with Rome; now the levy of the Umbrians was directed to advance from their native mountains down into the plain of the Boii, and to inflict all the injury which they could think of on the enemy upon his own soil. The militia of the Etruscans and Sabines was to occupy the Apennines and if possible to obstruct the passage, till the regular troops could arrive. A reserve was formed in Rome of 50,000 men. Throughout all Italy, which on this occasion recog nized its true champion in Rome, the men capable of service were enrolled, and stores and materials of war were collected.
All this, however, required time. For once the Romans had allowed themselves to be surprised, and it was too late at least to save Etruria. The Celts found the Apennines hardly defended, and plundered unopposed the rich plains of the Tuscan territory, which for long had seen no enemy. They were already at Clusium, three days' march from Rome, when the army of Ariminum, under the consul Papus, appeared on their flank, while the Etruscan militia, which after crossing the Apennines had assembled in rear of the Gauls, followed the line of the enemy's march. Suddenly one evening, after the two armies had already encamped and the bivouac fires were kindled, the Celtic infantry again broke up and retreated on the road towards Faesulae (Fiesole) : the cavalry occupied the advanced
chap, m TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
225
posts during the night, and followed the main force next
When the Tuscan militia, who had pitched their camp close upon the enemy, became aware of his departure, they imagined that the host had begun to disperse, and marched hastily in pursuit. The Gauls had reckoned on this very result : their infantry, which had rested and was drawn up in order, awaited on a well- chosen battle-field the Roman militia, which came up from its forced march fatigued and disordered. Six thousand men fell after a furious combat, and the rest of the militia, which had been compelled to seek refuge on a hill, would have perished, had not the consular army appeared just in time. This induced the Gauls to return homeward. Their dexterously -contrived plan for preventing the union of the two Roman armies and annihilating the weaker in detail, had only been partially successful; now it seemed to them advisable first of all to place in security their considerable booty. For the sake of an easier line of march they proceeded from the district of Chiusi, where they were, to the level coast, and were marching along the shore, when they found an uaexpected obstacle in the way. It was the Sardinian legions, which had landed at Pisae ; and, when they arrived too late to obstruct the passage of
the Apennines, had immediately put themselves in motion
and were advancing along the coast in a direction opposite
to the march of the Gauls. Near Telamon (at the mouth Battle of of the Ombrone) they met with the enemy. While the on" Roman infantry advanced with close front along the great
road, the cavalry, led by the consul Gaius Atilius Regulus
in person, made a side movement so as to take the Gauls
in flank, and to acquaint the other Roman army under
Papus as soon as possible with their arrival. A hot cavalry engagement took place, in which along with many brave Romans Regulus fell ; but he had not sacrificed his life
in vain : his object was gained. Papus became aware
morning.
vol. u
47
The Celts
their own tand-
was [n the hands of the Romans. The conquest of the northern bank of the river cost a more serious struggle. Gaius Flaminius crossed the river in the newly-acquired
aa6 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book hi
of the conflict, and guessed how matters stood ; he hastily arrayed his legions, and on both sides the Celtic host was now pressed by Roman legions. Courageously it made its dispositions for the double conflict, the Transalpine Gauls and Insubres against the troops of Papus, the Alpine Taurisci and the Boii against the Sardinian infantry; the cavalry combat pursued its course apart on the flank. The forces were in numbers not unequally matched, and the desperate position of the Gauls impelled them to the most obstinate resistance. But the Transalpine Gauls, accustomed only to close fighting, gave way before the missiles of the Roman skirmishers ; in the hand-to-hand combat the better temper of the Roman weapons placed the Gauls at a disadvantage; and at last an attack in flank by the victorious Roman cavalry decided the day. The Celtic horsemen made their escape ; the infantry, wedged in between the sea and the three Roman armies, had no means of flight. 10,000 Celts, with their king Concolitanus, were taken prisoners ; 40,000 others lay dead on the field of battle; Aneroestus and his
attendants had, after the Celtic fashion, put themselves to death.
The victory was complete, and the Romans were firmly resolved to prevent the recurrence of such surprises by the complete subjugation of the Celts on the south of the Alps.
224. In the following year (530) the Boii submitted without
resistance along with the Lingones ; and in the year after
228. that (531) the Anares; so that the plain as far as the Po
228. territory of the Anares (somewhere near Piacenza) in 531 ; but during the crossing, and still more while making good his footing on the other bank, he suffered so heavy losses and found himself with the river in his rear in so danger
chap, Ill TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES xaj
ous a position, that he made a capitulation with the enemy
to secure a free retreat, which the Insubres
conceded. Scarce, however, had he escaped when he appeared in the territory of the Cenomani, and, united with them, advanced for the second time from the north into the canton of the Insubres. The Gauls perceived what was now the object of the Romans, when it was too late : they took from the temple of their goddess the golden standards called the "immovable," and with their whole levy, 50,000 strong, they offered battle to the Romans. The situation of the latter was critical : they were stationed with their back to a river (perhaps the Oglio), separated from home by the enemy's territory, and left to depend for aid in battle as well as for their line of retreat on the uncertain friendship of the Cenomani. There was, however, no choice. The Gauls fighting in the Roman ranks were placed on the left bank of the stream ; on the right, opposite to the Insubres, the legions were drawn up, and the bridges were broken down that they might not be assailed, at least in the rear, by their dubious allies.
In this way undoubtedly the river cut off their retreat, and their way homeward lay through the hostile army. But the superiority of the Roman arms and of Roman discipline achieved the victory, and the army cut its way through : once more the Roman tactics had redeemed the blunders of the general. The victory was due to the soldiers and officers, not to the generals, who gained a triumph only through popular favour in opposition to the just decree of the senate. Gladly would the Insubres have made peace ; but Rome required unconditional subjection, and things had not yet come to that pass. They tried to maintain their ground with the help of their northern kins men; and, with 30,000 mercenaries whom they had raised amongst these and their own levy, they received the two
foolishly
The Celts bynRome.
land. Various obstinate combats took place ; in a diver sion, attempted by the Insubres against the Roman fortress of Clastidium (Casteggio, below Pavia), on the right bank of the Po, the Gallic king Virdumarus fell by the hand of the consul Marcus Marcellus. But, after a battle already half won by the Celts but ultimately decided in favour of the Romans, the consul Gnaeus Scipio took by assault Mediolanum, the capital of the Insubres, and the capture of that town and of Comum terminated their resistance. Thus the Celts of Italy were completely vanquished, and as, Just before, the Romans had shown to the Hellenes in the war with the pirates the difference between a Roman and a Greek sovereignty of the seas, so they had now brilliantly demonstrated that Rome knew how to defend the gates of Italy against freebooters on land otherwise than Macedonia had guarded the gates of Greece, and that in spite of all internal quarrels Italy presented as united a front to the national foe, as Greece exhibited distraction and discord.
The boundary of the Alps was reached, in so far as the whole flat country on the Po was either rendered subject to the Romans, or, like the territories of the Cenomani and Veneti, was occupied by dependent allies. It needed time, however, to reap the consequences of this victory and to Romanize the land. In this the Romans did not adopt a uniform mode of procedure. In the mountainous north west of Italy and in the more remote districts between the Alps and the Po they tolerated, on the whole, the former inhabitants ; the numerous wars, as they are called, which
228 THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book hi
consular armies advancing once more in the following year 222. (532) from the territory of the Cenomani to invade their
288. were waged with the Ligurians in particular (first in 516) appear to have been slave-hunts rather than wars, and, often as the cantons and valleys submitted to the Romans, Roman sovereignty in that quarter was hardly more than a
chap, in TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES
339
name. The expedition to Istria also (533) appears not to 221. have aimed at much more than the destruction of the last lurking-places of the Adriatic pirates, and the establish ment of a communication by land along the coast between
the Italian conquests of Rome and her acquisitions on the other shore. On the other hand the Celts in the districts south of the Po were doomed irretrievably to destruction ;
for, owing to the looseness of the ties connecting the Celtic nation, none of the northern Celtic cantons took part with their Italian kinsmen except for money, and the Romans looked on the latter not only as their national foes, but as
the usurpers of their natural heritage. The extensive assignations of land in 522 had already filled the whole 232. territory between Ancona and Ariminum with Roman colonists, who settled here without communal organization
in market-villages and hamlets. Further measures of the same character were taken, and it was not difficult to dis lodge and extirpate a half-barbarous population like the Celtic, only partially following agriculture, and destitute of walled towns. The great northern highway, which had been, probably some eighty years earlier, carried by way of Otricoli to Narni, and had shortly before been prolonged to
the newly-founded fortress of Spoletium (514), was now 240. (534) carried, under the name of the "Flaminian" road, 220. by way of the newly-established market-village Forum Flaminii (near Foligno), through the pass of Furlo to the coast, and thence along the latter from Fanum (Fano) to Ariminum ; it was the first artificial road which crossed the Apennines and connected the two Italian seas. Great
zeal was manifested in covering the newly-acquired fertile territory with Roman townships. Already, to cover the passage of the Po, the strong fortress of Placentia (Piacenza) had been founded on the right bank ; not far from it Cremona had been laid out on the left bank, and the building of the walls of Mutina (Modena), in the
ayi THE EXTENSION OF ITALY book hi
territory taken away from the Boii, had far advanced ; already preparations were being made for further assigna tions of land and for continuing the highway, when a sudden event interrupted the Romans in reaping the fruit of their successes.
chap. IT HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL
131
CHAPTER IV HAMILCAR AMD HANNIBAL
The treaty with Rome in 513 gave to the Carthaginians 241. peace, but they paid for it dearly. That the tribute of carth^e"* the largest portion of Sicily now flowed into the enemy's after the exchequer instead of the Carthaginian treasury, was the peiCe' least part of their loss. They felt a far keener regret when
they not merely had to abandon the hope of monopolizing
all the sea-routes between the eastern and the western Mediterranean —just as that hope seemed on the eve of fulfilment —but also saw their whole system of commercial
policy broken up, the south-western basin of the Mediterranean, which they had hitherto exclusively com
manded, converted since the loss of Sicily into an open thoroughfare for all nations, and the commerce of Italy
rendered completely independent of the Phoenician. Nevertheless the quiet men of Sidon might perhaps have
prevailed on themselves to acquiesce in this result They
had met with similar blows already ; they had been obliged
to share with the Massiliots, the Etruscans, and the Sicilian
Greeks what they had previously possessed alone; even
now the possessions which they retained, Africa, Spain,
and the gates of the Atlantic Ocean, were sufficient to
confer power and prosperity. But in truth, where was their
security that these at least would continue in their hands ?
The demands made by Regulus, and his very near
War [341.
P^*" party in
approach to the obtaining of what he asked, could only be forgotten by those who were willing to forget; and if Rome should now renew from Lilybaeum the enterprise which she had undertaken with so great success from Italy, Carthage would undoubtedly fall, unless the perversity of the enemy or some special piece of good fortune should intervene to save it No doubt they had peace for the present ; but the ratification of that peace had hung on a thread, and they knew what public opinion in Rome thought of the terms on which it was concluded. It might be that Rome was not yet meditating the conquest of
Africa and was as yet content with Italy; but if the existence of the Carthaginian state depended on that con tentment, the prospect was but a sorry one ; and where was the security that the Romans might not find it even con venient for their Italian policy to extirpate rather than reduce to subjection their African neighbour ?
In short, Carthage could only regard the peace of 513 in the light of a truce, and could not but employ it in preparations for the inevitable renewal of the war ; not for
232
HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL book iil
art^t the purpose of avenging the defeat which she had suffered, nor even with the primary view of recovering what she had lost, but in order to secure for herself an existence that should not be dependent on the good-will of the enemy. But when a war of annihilation is surely, though in point of time indefinitely, impending over a weaker state, the wiser, more resolute, and more devoted men — who would immediately prepare for the unavoidable struggle, accept it at a favourable moment, and thus cover their defensive policy by a strategy of offence — always find themselves hampered by the indolent and cowardly mass of the money- worshippers, of the aged and feeble, and of the thoughtless who are minded merely to gain time, to live and die in peace, and to postpone at any price the final struggle. So there was in Carthage a party for peace and a party for
chap, iv HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL
833
war, both, as was natural, associating themselves with the political distinction which already existed between the conservatives and the reformers. The former found its support in the governing boards, the council of the Ancients and that of the Hundred, led by Hanno the Great, as he was called ; the latter found its support in the leaders of the multitude, particularly the much-respected Hasdrubal, and in the officers of the Sicilian army, whose great successes under the leadership of Hamilcar, although they had been otherwise fruitless, had at least shown to the patriots a method which seemed to promise deliverance from the great danger that beset them. Vehement feud had probably long subsisted between these parties, when the Libyan war intervened to suspend the strife. We have already related how that war arose. After the governing party had instigated the mutiny by their incapable adminis
tration which frustrated all the precautionary measures of the Sicilian officers, had converted that mutiny into a revolution by the operation of their inhuman system of government, and had at length brought the country to the verge of ruin by their military incapacity —and particularly that of their leader Hanno, who ruined the army — Hamilcar Barcas, the hero of Ercte, was in the perilous emergency solicited by the government itself to save it from the effects of its blunders and crimes. He accepted the command, and had the magnanimity not to resign it even when they appointed Hanno as his colleague. Indeed, when the indignant army sent the latter home, Hamilcar had the self-control a second time to concede to him, at the urgent request of the government, a share in the command ; and, in spite of his enemies and in spite of such a colleague, he was able by his influence with the insurgents, by his dexterous treatment of the Numidian sheiks, and by his unrivalled genius for organization and generalship, in a
singularly short time to put down the revolt
entirely
S34
HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL BOOK ill
and to recall rebellious Africa to its allegiance M7. of si
During this war the patriot party had kept silence now spoke out the louder. On the one hand this catastrophe
had brought to light the utterly corrupt and pernicious character of the ruling oligarchy, their incapacity, their coterie-policy, their leanings towards the Romans. On the other hand the seizure of Sardinia, and the threatening attitude which Rome on that occasion assumed, showed plainly even to the humblest that declaration of war by Rome was constantly hanging like the sword of Damocles over Carthage, and that, Carthage in her present circumstances went to war with Rome, the consequence must necessarily be the downfall of the Phoenician dominion in Libya. Probably there were in Carthage not
few who, despairing of the future of their country, counselled emigration to the islands of the Atlantic who could blame them But minds of the nobler order disdain to save themselves apart from their nation, and great natures enjoy the privilege of deriving enthusiasm from circumstances in which the multitude of good men despair. They accepted the new conditions just as Rome dictated them no course was left but to submit and, adding fresh bitterness to their former hatred, carefully to cherish and husband resentment — that last resource of an injured nation. They then took steps towards political reform. 1 They had become sufficiently convinced of the incorrigible- ness of the party in power: the fact that the governing lords had even in the last war neither forgotten their spite
Our accounts as to these events are not only imperfect but one-sided, for of course was the version of the Carthaginian peace party which was adopted by the Roman annalists. Even, however, in our fragmentary and confused accounts (the most important are those of Fabius, in Polyb. iii. Appian. Hisp. and Diodorus, xxv. p. 567) the relations of the parties appear clearly enough. Of the vulgar gossip by " which its opponents sought to blacken the " revolutionary combination (trcupela rur TomjporiTwv ivOptlnruv) specimens may be had in Nepos (Ham. 3), to which will be difficult perhaps to find a parallel.
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chap, IV HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL
335
nor learned greater wisdom, was shown by the effrontery bordering on simplicity with which they now instituted pro ceedings against Hamilcar as the originator of the mercenary war, because he had without full powers from the government made promises of money to his Sicilian soldiers. Had the club of officers and popular leaders desired to overthrow this rotten and wretched government, it would hardly have encountered much difficulty in Carthage itself; but it would have met with more formidable obstacles in Rome, with which the chiefs of the government in Carthage already maintained relations that bordered on treason. To all the other difficulties of the position there fell to be added the circumstance, that the means of saving their country had to be created without allowing either the Romans, or their own government with its Roman leanings, to become rightly aware of what was doing.
So they left the constitution untouched, and the chiefs Hamilcar of the government in full enjoyment of their exclusive privi- com' leges and of the public property. It was merely proposed chief, and carried, that of the two commanders-in-chief, who at
the end of the Libyan war were at the head of the Cartha ginian troops, Hanno and Hamilcar, the former should be recalled, and the latter should be nominated commander- in-chief for all Africa during an indefinite period. It was arranged that he should hold a position independent of the governing corporations —his antagonists called it an uncon stitutional monarchical power, Cato calls it a dictatorship — and that he could only be recalled and placed upon his trial by the popular assembly. 1 Even the choice of a successor was to be vested not in the authorities fo the capital, but in the army, that in the Carthaginians
The Barca family conclude the most important state treaties, and the ratification of the governing board a formality (Pol. iii. 21). Rome enters her protest before them and before the senate (Pol. iii. 15). The position of the Barca family towards Carthage in many points resembles that of the Princes of Orange towards the States-General.
1
is
is,
Hamnc«r'» project*.
The army.
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HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL book til
in the army as gerusiasts or officers, who were named in treaties also along with the general ; of course the right of confirmation was reserved to the popular assembly at home. Whether this may or may not have been a usurpation, it clearly indicates that the war party regarded and treated the army as its special domain.
The commission which Hamilcar thus received sounded but little liable to exception. Wars with the Numidian tribes on the borders never ceased; only a short time
serving
the "city of a hundred gates," Theveste (Tebessa), in the interior had been occupied by the Cartha
The task of continuing this border warfare, which was allotted to the new commander-in-chief of Africa, was not in itself of such importance as to prevent the Cartha ginian government, which was allowed to do as it liked in its own immediate sphere, from tacitly conniving at the decrees passed in reference to the matter by the popular assembly ; and the Romans did not perhaps recognize its significance at all.