No More Learning

It was of more moment in their view to deal in buying and selling with the natives than to acquire extensive territories in distant lands, and to carry out there the slow and difficult
work of colonization. They avoided war even with their rivals they allowed themselves to be supplanted in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the east of Sicily almost without resistance; and in the great naval battles, which were fought in early times for the supremacy of the western
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BJ7. 474. Mediterranean, at Alalia (217) and at Cumae (280), was the Etruscans, and not the Phoenicians, that bore the brunt of the struggle with the Greeks. If rivalry could not be avoided, they compromised the matter as best they could no attempt was ever made by the Phoenicians to
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conquer Caere or Massilia. Still less, of course, were the Phoenicians disposed to enter on aggressive war. On the only occasion in earlier times when they took the field on
the offensive — in the great Sicilian expedition of the African Phoenicians which ended in their defeat at Himera by Gelo
of Syracuse (274) —it was simply as dutiful subjects of the 480. great-king and in order to avoid taking part in the campaign against the Hellenes of the east, that they entered the lists
the Hellenes of the west; just as their Syrian kinsmen were in fact obliged in that same year to share
against
the defeat of the Persians at Salamis
This was not the result of cowardice navigation in
unknown waters and with armed vessels requires brave hearts, and that such were to be found among the Phoe nicians, they often showed. Still less was the result of any lack of tenacity and idiosyncrasy of national feeling on the contrary the Aramaeans defended their nationality with the weapons of intellect as well as with their blood against all the allurements of Greek civilization and all the coercive measures of eastern and western despots, and that with an obstinacy which no Indo-Germanic people has ever equalled, and which to us who are Occidentals seems to be sometimes more, sometimes less, than human. It was the result of that want of political instinct, which amidst all their lively sense of the ties of race, and amidst all their faithful attachment to the city of their fathers, formed the most essential feature in the character of the Phoenicians. Liberty had no charms for them, and they lusted not after dominion " quietly they lived," says the Book of Judges, "after the manner of the Sidonians, careless and secure, and in possession of riches. "
Of all the Phoenician settlements none attained more Carthage, rapid and secure prosperity than those which were established
by the Tyrians and Sidonians on the south coast of Spain
and the north coast of Africa—regions that lay beyond the
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reach of the arm of the great-king and the dangerous rivalry of the mariners of Greece, and in which the natives held the same relation to the strangers as the Indians in America held to the Europeans. Among the numerous and flourishing Phoenician cities along these shores, the most prominent by far was the "new town," Karthada or, as the Occidentals called Karchedon or Carthago. Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians in this region, and originally perhaps dependency of the adjoining Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, soon out stripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity of its inhabitants. was situated not far from the (former) mouth of the Bagradas (Mejerda), which flows through the richest corn district of northern Africa, and was placed on fertile rising ground, still occupied with country houses and covered with groves of olive and orange trees, falling off in gentle slope towards the plain, and terminating towards the sea in sea-girt promontory. Lying in the heart of the great North-African roadstead, the Gulf of Tunis, at the very spot where that beautiful basin affords the best anchorage for vessels of larger size, and where drinkable spring water got close
the shore, the place proved singularly favourable for agriculture and commerce and for the exchange of their respective commodities —so favourable, that not only was the Tyrian settlement that quarter the first of Phoenician mercantile cities, but even in the Roman period Carthage was no sooner restored than became the third city in the empire, and even now, under circumstances far from favourable and on site far less judiciously chosen, there exists and flourishes in that quarter city of hundred thousand inhabitants. The prosperity, agricultural, mercan tile, and industrial, of city so situated and so peopled, needs no explanation but the question requires an answer
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—In what way did this settlement come to attain a de
velopment of political power, such as no other Phoenician
city possessed ?
That the Phoenician stock did not even in Carthage re- Carthage
nounce its policy of passiveness, there is no lack of evidence heads the to prove. Carthage paid, even down to the times of its Phoe- prosperity, a ground-rent for the space occupied by the city mcians
to the native Berbers, the tribe of the Maxyes or Maxitani to the and although the sea and the desert sufficiently protected HeUene'' the city from any assault of the eastern powers, Carthage
appears to have recognized — although but nominally — the supremacy of the great-king, and to have paid tribute to him occasionally, in order to secure its commercial com munications with Tyre and the East
But with all their disposition to be submissive and cringing, circumstances occurred which compelled these Phoenicians to adopt more energetic policy. The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring ceaselessly towards the west had already dislodged the Phoenicians from Greece proper and Italy, and was preparing to supplant them also in Sicily, Spain, and even in Libya itself. The Phoenicians had to make stand somewhere, they were not willing to be totally crushed. In this case, where they had to deal with Greek traders and not with the great-king, submission did not suffice to secure the continuance of their commerce and industry on its former footing, liable merely to tax and tribute. Massilia and Cyrene were already founded the whole east of Sicily was already in the hands of the Greeks was full time for the Phoeni cians to think of serious resistance. The Carthaginians undertook the task after long and obstinate wars they set
limit to the advance of the Cyrenaeans, and Hellenism was unable to establish itself to the west of the desert of Tripolis. With Carthaginian aid, moreover, the Phoeni cian settlers on the western point of Sicily defended them
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selves against the Greeks, and readily and gladly submitted
to the protection of the powerful cognate city
These important successes, which occurred in the second century of Rome, and which saved for the Phoenicians the south-western portion of the Mediterranean, served of themselves to give to the city which had achieved them the hegemony of the nation, and to alter at the same time its political position. Carthage was no longer mere mer cantile city aimed at the dominion of Libya and of part of the Mediterranean, because could not avoid doing so. probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed materially to these successes. That custom came into vogue in Greece somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among the Orientals and the Carians more especially was far older, and was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it By the system of foreign recruiting war was converted into vast pecuniary speculation, which was quite in keep ing with the character and habits of the Phoenicians.
It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad, that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their occupation in Africa from tenure of hire and sufferance to one of proprietorship and conquest
appears to have been only about the year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the natives. This change enabled them to prosecute husbandry of their own on great scale. From the outset the Phoenicians had been desirous to employ their capital
as landlords as well as traders, and to practise agriculture on large scale by means of slaves or hired labourers large portion of the Jews in this way served the merchant- princes of Tyre for daily wages. Now the Carthaginians could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil system akin to that of the modern planters
184).
The Car-
do^ni""1 in Africa,
450.
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slaves in chains cultivated the land—we find single citizens possessing as many as twenty thousand of them. Nor was this all. The agricultural villages of the surrounding region —agriculture appears to have been introduced among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt — were subdued by force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. Hostilities were constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (i/o/idtSes) on the borders ; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory enclosed by them, and the Nomades were slowly driven back into the deserts and mountains, or were compelled to recognize Carthaginian supremacy, to pay tribute, and to furnish contingents. About the period of the first Punic war their great town Theveste (Tebessa, at the sources of the Mejerda) was conquered by the Carthaginians. These formed the "towns and tribes (iOvrj) of subjects," which appear in the Carthaginian state-treaties ; the former being the non-free Libyan villages, the latter the subject Nomades.
To this fell to be added the sovereignty of Carthage Libyphc* over the other Phoenicians in Africa, or the so-called Liby- mciaM- phoenicians. These included, on the one hand, the
smaller settlements sent forth from Carthage along the
whole northern and part of the north-western coast of Africa — which cannot have been unimportant, for on the Atlantic seaboard alone there were settled at one time 30,000 such colonists —and, on the other hand, the old Phoenician settlements especially numerous along the coast of the present province of Constantine and Beylik of Tunis, such as Hippo afterwards called Regius (Bona), Hadru- metum (Susa), Little Leptis (to the south of Susa) —the second city of the Phoenicians in Africa — Thapsus (in the
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same quarter), and Great Leptis (Lebda to the west of Tripoli). In what way all these cities came to be subject to Carthage —whether voluntarily, for their protection perhaps from the attacks of the Cyrenaeans and Numidians, or by constraint —can no longer be ascertained ; but it is certain that they are designated as subjects of the Cartha ginians even in official documents, that they had to pull down their walls, and that they had to pay tribute and furnish contingents to Carthage. They were not liable however either to recruiting or to the land-tax, but con tributed a definite amount of men and money, Little Leptis for instance paying the enormous sum annually of 365 talents (,£90,000) ; moreover they lived on a footing of equality in law with the Carthaginians, and could marry with them on equal terms. 1 Utica alone escaped a similar fate and had its walls and independence preserved to less perhaps from its own power than from the pious feeling of the Carthaginians towards their ancient protectors in fact, the Phoenicians cherished for such relations remark able feeling of reverence presenting thorough contrast to the indifference of the Greeks. Even in intercourse with
The most precise description of this important class occurs in the Carthaginian treaty (Polyb. vii. 9), where in contrast to the Uticenses on the one hand, and to the Libyan subjects on the other, they are called ol VLapxTI$ovlwi) virapxoi &r« Toil oiVois vbfj. au xpuyrat. Elsewhere they are spoken of as cities allied ((rvfifiaxlS( rAXeit, Diod. xx. 10) or tributary (Liv. xxxiv. 62 Justin, xxii. 7, 3). Their cmubium with the Cartha ginians ia mentioned by Diodorus, xx. 55 the cammercium implied in the
"like laws. " That the old Phoenician colonies were included among the Libyphoenicians, shown by the designation of Hippo as a Libyphoe- nician city (Liv. xxv. 40) on the other hand as to the settlements founded from Carthage, for instance, said in the Periplus of Hanno "the Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of Libyphoenicians. " In substance the word " Libyphoenicians " was used by the Carthaginians not as a national de signation, but as a category of state-law. This view quite consistent with the fact that grammatically the name denotes Phoenicians mingled with Libyans (Liv. xxi. 22, an addition to the text of Polybius) in reality, at least in the institution of very exposed colonies, Libyans were frequently associated with Phoenicians (Diod. xiii. 79 Cic. fro Scauro, 4a). The analogy in name and legal position between the Latins of Rome and the
Libyphoenicians of Carthage unmistakable.
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foreigners it is always " Carthage and Utica " that stipulate and promise in conjunction ; which, of course, did not preclude the far more important " new town " from practi cally asserting its hegemony also over Utica. Thus the Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North-African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the south. The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly expresses converted from Tyrians into Libyans. Phoenician civilization prevailed Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed in Asia Minor and Syria
after the campaigns of Alexander, although not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet
to Phoenicise them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor the policy of Carthage.
The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because the change doubtless took place
The author just mentioned names Hanno as the reformer of the nation. If the Hanno meant who
The Libyan or Numidian alphabet, by which we mean that which was and employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language —one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean one—certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its forms to the latter than the Phoenician alphabet but by no means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from deriving these from the Greek. We must rather assume that the Libyan alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician language that have reached us were written.
gradually.
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Spain.
lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome.
The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline in the great cities of the Phoenician mother- country, in Sidon and especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities, particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome. The noble families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. At the time when the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the Latin com munities.
But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage ; its maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period, a not less powerful development
In Spain the chief station of the Phoenicians was the primitive Tyrian settlement at Gades (Cadiz). Besides this they possessed to the west and east of it a chain of factories, and in the interior the region of the silver mines ; so that they held nearly the modern Andalusia and Granada, or at least the coasts of these provinces. They made no effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations ; they were content with the possession of the mines and of the stations for traffic and for shell and other fisheries ; and they had difficulty in maintaining their ground even in these against the adjoining tribes. It is probable that these possessions were not properly Carthaginian but Tyrian, and Gades was not reckoned
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among the cities tributary to Carthage ; but practically, like all the western Phoenicians, it was under Carthaginian hegemony, as is shown by the aid sent by Carthage to the Gaditani against the natives, and by the institution of Carthaginian trading settlements to the westward of Gades. Ebusus and the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged from these
stations.
In like manner the Carthaginians already at the end of Sardinia,
the second century of Rome established themselves in Sardinia, which was utilized by them precisely in the same way as Libya. While the natives withdrew into the mountainous interior of the island to escape from bondage as agricultural serfs, just as the Numidians in Africa with drew to the borders of the desert, Phoenician colonies were conducted to Caralis (Cagliari) and other important points, and the fertile districts along the coast were turned to account by the introduction of Libyan cultivators.
Lastly in Sicily the straits of Messana and the larger Sicily. eastern half of the island had fallen at an early period into
the hands of the Greeks ; but the Phoenicians, with the
help of the Carthaginians, retained the smaller adjacent islands, the Aegates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra — the settle
ment in Malta especially was rich and flourishing —and they kept the west and north-west coast of Sicily, whence the} maintained communication with Africa by means of Motya and afterwards of Lilybaeum and with Sardinia by means of Panormus and Soluntum. The interior of the island remained in the possession of the natives, the Elymi, Sicani, and Siceli. After the further advance of the Greeks was checked, a state of comparative peace had
prevailed in the island, which even the campaign under taken by the Carthaginians at the instigation of the
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480. Persians against their Greek neighbours on the island (274) did not permanently interrupt, and which continued on the whole to subsist till the Attic expedition to Sicily
415-418. (339-341)- The two competing nations made up their minds to tolerate each other, and confined themselves in the main each to its own field.
Maritime supremacy,
All these settlements and possessions were important enough in themselves ; but they were of still greater moment, inasmuch as they became the pillars of the Carthaginian maritime supremacy. By their possession of the south of Spain, of the Baleares, of Sardinia, of western Sicily and Melita, and by their prevention of Hellenic colonies on the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of
the Syrtes, the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their sea a closed one, and monopolized the western straits. In the Tyrrhene and Gallic seas alone the Phoenicians were obliged to admit the rivalry of other nations. This state of things might perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans and the Greeks served to counter balance each other in these waters; with the former, as the less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the Greeks. But when, on the fall of the Etruscan power—a fall which, as is usually the case in such forced alliances, Carthage had hardly exerted all her power to avert—and after the miscarriage of the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth as indisputably the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of Syracuse naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower Italy and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the Carthaginians also were com pelled to adopt a more energetic policy. The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between them and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius
Rivalry with Syracuse.
406-865. of Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the intervening Sicilian states —a result which both
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parties had an interest in accomplishing —and the division
of the island between the Syracusans and Carthaginians.
The most flourishing cities in the island —Selinus, Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana —were utterly destroyed
by the Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy con flicts : and Dionysius was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed or suppressed there, so that, leaning for support
on foreign mercenaries enlisted from Italy, Gaul and Spain,
he might rule in greater security over provinces which lay desolate or which were occupied by military colonies.
The peace, which was concluded after the victory of the Carthaginian general Mago at Kronion (371), and which 888. subjected to the Carthaginians the Greek cities of Thermae
(the ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa, Selinus,
and a part of the territory of Agrigentum as far as the
Halycus, was regarded by the two powers contending for
the possession of the island as only a temporary accommoda
tion ; on both sides the rivals were ever renewing their
attempts to dispossess each other. Four several times—
in 360 in the time of Dionysius the elder; in 410 in that 894. 844. of Timoleon; in 445 in that of Agathocles; in 476 in 809. 278. that of Pyrrhus — the Carthaginians were masters of all
Sicily excepting Syracuse, and were baffled by its solid walls ; almost as often the Syracusans, under able leaders, such as were the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, seemed equally on the eve of dislodging the Africans from the island. But more and more the balance inclined to the side of the Carthaginians, who were, as a rule, the aggressors, and who, although they did not follow out their object with Roman steadfastness, yet conducted their attack with far greater method and energy than the Greek city, rent and worn out by factions, conducted its defence. The Phoenicians might with reason expect that a pestilence or a foreign condottitre would not always snatch the prey from their hands ; and for the time being, at least at sea,
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the struggle was already decided 41) the attempt of Pyrrhus to re-establish the Syracusan fleet was the last After the failure of that attempt, the Carthaginian fleet commanded without rival the whole western Mediter ranean and their endeavours to
occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum, showed the extent of their power and the objects at which they aimed. Hand in
hand with these attempts went the endeavour to mono polize more and more the maritime commerce of this region, at the expense alike of foreigners and of their own subjects and was not the wont of the Carthaginians to recoil from any violence that might help forward their purpose. A contemporary of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes,
476-194. the father of geography (479—560), affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia or towards the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the Cartha ginians, was thrown by them into the sea and with this statement the fact completely accords, that Carthage by the treaty of 406 41) declared the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman trading vessels, whereas
818. 806.
Constitu tion of Carthage.
Council.
that of 448 44), totally closed them, with the exception of the port of Carthage itself, against the same.
Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the com mencement of the first Punic war, describes the constitution of Carthage as having changed from monarchy to an aris tocracy, or to democracy inclining towards oligarchy, for he designates by both names. The conduct of affairs was immediately vested in the hands of the Council of
Ancients, which, like the Spartan gerusia, consisted of the two kings nominated annually by the citizens, and of twenty- eight gerusiasts, who were also, as appears, chosen annually the citizens. was this council which mainly transacted the business of the state —making, for instance, the preliminary arrangements for war, appointing levies and enlistments, nominating the general, and associating with
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him a number of gerusiasts from whom the sub-commanders
were regularly taken ; and to it despatches were addressed.
It is doubtful whether by the side of this small council
there existed a larger one ; at any rate it was not of much importance. As little does any special influence seem to MagU- have belonged to the kings ; they acted chiefly as supreme trate*' judges, and they were frequently so named (shofetes,
The power of the general was greater. Iso- crates, the senior contemporary of Aristotle, says that the Carthaginians had an oligarchical government at home, but a monarchical government in the field ; and thus the office of the Carthaginian general may be correctly described by Roman writers as a dictatorship, although the gerusiasts attached to him must have practically at least restricted his
power and, after he had laid down his office, a regular official reckoning —unknown among the Romans —awaited him. There existed no fixed term of office for the general, and for this very reason he was doubtless different from the annual king, from whom Aristotle also expressly distin guishes him. The combination however of several offices in one person was not unusual among the Carthaginians, and it is not therefore surprising that often the same person appears as at once general and shofete.
But the gerusia and the magistrates were subordinate to the corporation of the Hundred and Four (in round numbers the Hundred), or the Judges, the main bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. It had no place in the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate, it originated in an aristocratic opposition to the monarchical elements of that constitution. As public offices were purchasable and the number of members forming the supreme board was small, a single Carthaginian family, eminent above all others in wealth and military renown, the clan of Mago 413), threatened to unite in its own hands the management of the state peace and war and the
praetores).
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administration of justice. This led, nearly about the time of the decemvirs, to an alteration of the constitution and to the appointment of this new board. We know that the holding of the quaestorship gave a title to admission into the body of judges, but that the candidate had nevertheless to be elected by certain self-electing Boards of Five (Pentarchies) ; and that the judges, although presumably by law chosen from year to year, practically remained in office for a longer period or indeed for life, for which reason they are usually called " senators" by the Greeks and Romans. Obscure as are the details, we recognize clearly the nature of the body as an oligarchical board constituted by aristocratic cooptation ; an isolated but characteristic indication of which is found in the fact that there were in Carthage special baths for the judges over and above the common baths for the citizens. They were primarily in tended to act as political jurymen, who summoned the generals in particular, but beyond doubt the shofetes and gerusiasts also when circumstances required, to a reckoning on resigning office, and inflicted even capital punishment at pleasure, often with the most reckless cruelty. Of course in this as in every instance, where administrative function aries are subjected to the control of another body, the real centre of power passed over from the controlled to the controlling authority; and it is easy to understand on the one hand how the latter came to interfere in all matters of administration —the gerusia for instance submitted import ant despatches first to the judges, and then to the people — and on the other hand how fear of the control at home,
which regularly meted out its award according to success, hampered the Carthaginian statesman and general in council and action.
The body of citizens in Carthage, though not expressly restricted, as in Sparta, to the attitude of passive bystanders in the business of the state, appears to have had but a very
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slight amount of practical influence on it In the elections to the gerusia a system of open corruption was the rule ; in the nomination of a general the people were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by pro posal on the part of the gerusia ; and other questions only went to the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree. Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in Carthage. The powerless- ness of the citizens probably in the main resulted from their political organization ; the Carthaginian mess-associa tions, which are mentioned in this connection and com pared with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical management. Mention is made even of a distinction between " burgesses of the city " and " manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.
On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have been a govern- ment of capitalists, such as might naturally arise in a burgess- community which had no middle class of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers. The system of repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the subjects, by despatching them as tax- assessors and taskwork-overseers to the dependent communi ties —that infallible token of a rotten urban oligarchy —was not wanting in Carthage ; Aristotle describes it as the main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution. Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in Carthage either from above or from below. The multitude remained without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of
Character
govern. menu
ISO
CARTHAGE BOOK III
Capital and Its power In Carthage,
electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the rich. A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a government to emerge ; but at the time of the first Punic war it was still quite powerless. At a later period, partly under the influence of the defeats which were sus tained, its political influence appears on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the similar party at the same period in Rome ; the popular assemblies began to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. After the termination of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office for two consecutive years ; and thereby a complete democracy was introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so. This opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm ; but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared by well- informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so dis orderly that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless ; and it might well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in Carthage, the boys helped to make them.
From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect the first place among the states of antiquity. At the time of the Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony of the first of Greek his
to all the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the great-king ; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world. The
intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry —which, as was the case subsequently in Rome, generals and states men did not disdain scientifically to practise and to teach
torians, financially superior
chap, I CARTHAGE
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—is attested by the agronomic treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended to the Italian landholders. A characteristic feature was the close connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of capital : it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage. The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of great advantage to the Carthaginians. As these were the instructors of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects ; by virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the " best part of Europe, " and of the rich—and in some portions, such as in Byzacitis and
on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive —region of northern Africa. Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which commerce rendered flourishing, brought even in the natural course of things golden harvests annually to the settlers there ; and we have already indicated how skilfully, by an extensive and ever growing system of monopoly, not only all the foreign but also all the inland commerce of the western Mediterranean, and the whole carrying trade between the west and east, were more and more concentrated in that single harbour.
Science and art in Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, seem to have been mainly dependent on Hellenic influ ences, but they do not appear to have been neglected. There was a respectable Phoenician literature ; and on the
i5*
CARTHAGE book hi
conquest of the city there were found rich treasures of art —not created, it is true, in Carthage, but carried off from Sicilian temples —and considerable libraries. But even
intellect there was in the service of capital ; the prominent features of its literature were chiefly agronomic and geo graphical treatises, such as the work of Mago already mentioned and the account by the admiral Hanno of his voyage along the west coast of Africa, which was originally deposited publicly in one of the Carthaginian temples, and which is still extant in a translation. Even the general diffusion of certain attainments, and particularly of the knowledge of foreign languages,1 as to which the Carthage of this epoch probably stood almost on a level with Rome
under the empire, forms an evidence of the thoroughly
turn given to Hellenic culture in Carthage. It is absolutely impossible to form a conception of the mass of capital accumulated in this London ofantiquity, but some notion at least may be gained of the sources of public revenue from the fact, that, in spite of the costly system on which Carthage organized its wars and in spite of the careless and faithless administration of the state property, the contri butions of its subjects and the customs-revenue completely covered the expenditure, so that no direct taxes were levied from the citizens ; and further, that even after the second Punic war, when the power of the state was already broken, the current expenses and the payment to Rome of a yearly instalment of ,£48,000 could be met, without levying any tax, merely by a somewhat stricter manage ment of the finances, and fourteen years after the peace the state proffered immediate payment of the thirty-six
1 The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i. 17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture. In the pro logue of the " Poenulus " of Plautus, it is said of the hero of the title : —
El is omnes lingual scit ; sed dissimulat scient Se scire; Poenus plane est 1 quid verbis opuitt
practical
chap. I CARTHAGE
153
remaining instalments. But it was not merely the sum total of its revenues that evinced the superiority of the financial administration at Carthage. The economical principles of a later and more advanced epoch are found by us in Carthage alone of all the more considerable states of antiquity. Mention is made of foreign state-loans, and in the monetary system we find along with gold and silver mention of a token-money having no intrinsic value—a species of currency not used elsewhere in antiquity. In fact, if government had resolved itself into mere mercantile speculation, never would any state have solved the problem more brilliantly than Carthage.
Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome. Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect Carthage had made greater progress than Rome. But in Carthage the moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the burgesses still tilled their fields in person. The majority of the population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative ; the majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for reform. In Carthage there already pre vailed all that opulence which marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome, they told their colleagues that the relations of
intimacy among the Roman senators surpassed all con ception ; that a single set of silver plate sufficed for the whole
Compari-
^ween Carthage *" om*"
I" their
In their constitu tion.
senate, and had reappeared in every house to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.
In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of police-control. The strict state of dependence in which the governing board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government at Rome ; but in com
parison with the cruel harshness and the absolute precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and reasonable. The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able also to trust and had no need to fear the magis trates. The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on jealous control of administration the govern ment, and represented exclusively the leading families its essence was mistrust of all above and below and therefore
could neither be confident that the people would follow whither led, nor free from the dread of usurpations on the part of the magistrates. Hence the steady course of Roman policy, which never receded step in times of misfortune, and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or indifference whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle when last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed building to fall to pieces, only to begin in few years anew. Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinarily on good
154
CARTHAGE BOOK IS
with his government; in Carthage he was frequently at decided feud with his masters at home, and
understanding
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by
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CHAP. I CARTHAGE
155
was forced to resist them by unconstitutional means and to make common cause with the opposing party of reform.
Both Carthage and Rome ruled over communities of In the lineage kindred with their own, and over numerous others ^5,^ of alien race. But Rome had received into her citizenship subjects, one district after another, and had rendered it even legally accessible to the Latin communities ; Carthage from the
first maintained her exclusiveness, and did not permit the dependent districts even to cherish a hope of being some
day placed upon an equal footing. Rome granted to the communities of kindred lineage a share in the fruits of victory, especially in the acquired domains ; and sought, by conferring material advantages on the rich and noble, to
gain over at least a party to her own interest in the other
subject states.
Carthage not only retained for herself the produce of her victories, but even deprived the most privileged cities of their freedom of trade. Rome, as a rule,
did not wholly take away independence even from the
subject communities, and imposed a fixed tribute on none ; Carthage despatched her overseers everywhere, and loaded even the old-Phoenician cities with a heavy tribute, while her subject tribes were practically treated as state-slaves. In this way there was not in the compass of the Carthagino- African state a single community, with the exception of Utica, that would not have been politically and materially benefited by the fall of Carthage; in the Romano-Italic there was not one that had not much more to lose than to gain in rebelling against a government, which was careful to avoid injuring material interests, and which never at least by extreme measures challenged political opposition to conflict. If Carthaginian statesmen believed that they had attached to the interests of Carthage her Phoenician subjects by their greater dread of a Libyan revolt and all the land holders by means of token-money, they transferred
in finance.
mercantile calculation to a sphere to which it did not apply. Experience proved that the Roman symmachy, notwith standing its seemingly looser bond of connection, kept together against Pyrrhus like a wall of rock, whereas the Carthaginian fell to pieces like a gossamer web as soon as a hostile army set foot on African soil. It was so on the landing of Agathocles and of Regulus, and likewise in the mercenary war; the spirit that prevailed in Africa is illustrated by the fact, that the Libyan women voluntarily contributed their ornaments to the mercenaries for their war against Carthage. In Sicily alone the Carthaginians appear to have exercised a milder rule, and to have attained on that account better results. They granted to their subjects in that quarter comparative freedom in foreign trade, and allowed them to conduct their internal commerce, probably from the outset and exclusively, with a metallic currency ; far greater freedom of movement generally was allowed to them than was permitted to the Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into Carthaginian hands, their policy would doubtless soon have changed. But that result did not take place ; and so, owing to the well-calculated mild ness of the Carthaginian government and the unhappy dis tractions of the Sicilian Greeks, there actually existed in Sicily a party really friendly to the Phoenicians ; for example, even after the island had passed to the Romans, Philinus of Agrigentum wrote the history of the great war in a thoroughly Phoenician spirit Nevertheless on the whole the Sicilians must, both as subjects and as Hellenes, have been at least as averse to their Phoenician masters as the Samnites and Tarentines were to the Romans,
In a financial point of view the state revenues of Carthage doubtless far surpassed those of Rome ; but this advantage was partly neutralized by the facts, that the sources of the Carthaginian revenue —tribute and customs— dried up far sooner (and just when they were most needed) than those
156
CARTHAGE book iii
chap, I CARTHAGE
157
of Rome, and that the Carthaginian mode of conducting war was far more costly than the Roman.
The military resources of the Romans and Carthaginians In their were very different, yet in many respects not unequally jSJJJf balanced. The citizens of Carthage still at the conquest
of the city amounted to 700,000, including women and children,1 and were probably at least as numerous at the
close of the fifth century ; in that century they were able in
case of need to set on foot a burgess-army of 40,000 hoplites. At the very beginning of the fifth century, Rome
had in similar circumstances sent to the field a burgess-army
equally strong (p. 55, note); after the great extensions of
the burgess-domain in the course of that century the number
of full burgesses capable of bearing arms must at least have doubled. But far more than in the number of men capable
of bearing arms, Rome excelled in the effective condi
tion of the burgess-soldier. Anxious as the Carthaginian government was to induce its citizens to take part in
military service, it could neither furnish the artisan and the manufacturer with the bodily vigour of the husbandman,
nor overcome the native aversion of the Phoenicians to
warfare. In the fifth century there still fought in the Sicilian armies a "sacred band" of 2500 Carthaginians
as a guard for the general ; in the sixth not a single Carthaginian, officers excepted, was to be met with in the Carthaginian armies, e. g. in that of Spain. The Roman
farmers, again, took their places not only in the muster-
1 Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number, and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account the avail able space, has been reckoned at 250,000. Apart from the uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is doubtless to be under stood in a political, not in an urban, sense, just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other lands. There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in the case of Carthage ; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher dumber than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.
<
158
CARTHAGE book hi
roll, but also in the field of battle. It was the same with the cognate races of both communities ; while the Latins rendered to the Romans no less service than their own burgess-troops, the Libyphoenicians were as little adapted for war as the Carthaginians, and, as may easily be sup posed, still less desirous of and so they too disappeared from the armies the towns bound to furnish contingents presumably redeemed their obligation by payment of money. In the Spanish army just mentioned, composed of some 15,000 men, only single troop of cavalry of 450 men consisted, and that but partly, of Libyphoenicians. The flower of the Carthaginian armies was formed by the Libyan subjects, whose recruits were capable of being trained under able officers into good infantry, and whose
light cavalry was unsurpassed in its kind. To these were added the forces of the more or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between allied contingents and mercenary troops and finally, case of need, the hired soldiery enlisted abroad. So far as numbers were concerned, such an army might without difficulty be raised almost to any desired strength and
the ability of its officers, in acquaintance with arms, and in courage might be capable of coping with that of Rome. Not only, however, did dangerously long interval elapse, in the event of mercenaries being required, ere they could be got ready, while the Roman militia was able at any moment to take the field, but —which was the main matter — there was nothing to keep together the armies of Carthage but military honour and personal advantage, while the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men in modern warfare estimate cannon- balls; hence such disgraceful proceedings as the betrayal
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chap, I CARTHAGE
159
of the Libyan troops by their general Himilco in 358, 394. which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage ex perienced in full measure all the evils which armies of fellahs
and mercenaries could bring upon a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous than her foes.
The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by every available means. They insisted on maintaining full chests and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip mercenaries. They bestowed great care on those elements which among the ancients represented the modern artillery — the construction of machines, in which we find the Carthaginians regularly superior to the Siceliots, and the use of elephants, after these had superseded in warfare the earlier war -chariots: in the casemates of Carthage there were stalls for 300 elephants. They could not venture to fortify the dependent cities, and were obliged to submit to the occupation of the towns and villages as well as of the open country by any hostile army that landed in Africa — a thorough contrast to the state of Italy, where most of the subject towns had retained their walls, and a chain of Roman fortresses com manded the whole peninsula. But on the fortification of the capital they expended all the resources of money and of art, and on several occasions nothing but the strength of
its walls saved the state ; whereas Rome held a political and military position so secure that it never underwent a formal siege. Lastly, the main bulwark of the state was their war-marine, on which they lavished the utmost care. In the building as well as in the management of vessels the Carthaginians excelled the Greeks ; it was at Carthage that ships were first built of more than three banks of oars, and the Carthaginian war-vessels, at this
period
i6o CARTHAGE book in
mostly quinqueremes, were ordinarily better sailers than the Greek; the rowers, all of them public slaves, who never stirred from the galleys, were excellently trained, and the captains were expert and fearless. In this respect Carthage was decidedly superior to the Romans, who, with the few ships of their Greek allies and still fewer of their own, were unable even to show themselves in the open sea against the fleet which at that time without a rival ruled the western Mediterranean.
If, in conclusion, we sum up the results of this compari son of the resources of the two great powers, the judgment expressed by a sagacious and impartial Greek is perhaps borne out, that Carthage and Rome were, when the struggle between them began, on the whole equally matched. But we cannot omit to add that, while Carthage had put forth all the efforts of which intellect and wealth were capable to provide herself with artificial means of attack and defence, she was unable in any satisfactory way to make up for the
fundamental wants of a land army of her own and of a symmachy resting on a self-supporting basis. That Rome
could only be seriously attacked in Italy, and Carthage only in Libya, no one could fail to see; as little could any one fail to perceive that Carthage could not in the long run escape from such an attack. Fleets were not yet in those times of the infancy of navigation a permanent heir loom of nations, but could be fitted out wherever there were trees, iron, and water. It was clear, and had been several times tested in Africa itself, that even powerful maritime states were not able to prevent enemies weaker by sea from landing. When Agathocles had shown the way thither, a Roman general could follow the same course ; and while in Italy the entrance of an invading army simply
began the war, the same event in Libya put an end to it by converting it into a siege, in which, unless special accidents should intervene, even the most obstinate and heroic courage must finally succumb.
chap, u WAR BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE 161
CHAPTER II
THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
For upwards of a century the feud between the Cartha- State of
ginians and the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the fair island of Sicily. On both sides the contest was carried on with the weapons of political proselytism, for, while Carthage kept up communications with the aristocratic-
T'
in Syracuse, the Syracusan dynasts maintained relations with the national party in the Greek cities that had become tributary to Carthage. On both sides armies of mercenaries were employed to fight their
republican opposition
battles—by Timoleon and Agathocles, as well as by the Phoenician generals. And as like means were employed
on both sides, so the conflict had been waged on both with
a disregard of honour and a perfidy unexampled in the history of the west. The Syracusans were the weaker party. In the peace of 440 Carthage had still limited her 814. claims to the third of the island to the west of Heraclca Minoa and Himera, and had expressly recognized the hegemony of the Syracusans over all the cities to the east ward. The expulsion of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (479) left by far the larger half of the island, and especially 276. the important Agrigentum, in the hands of Carthage ; the Syracusans retained nothing but Tauromenium and the south-east of the island.
VOL. u
43
Ompanian
a^ '
16a THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book hi
in the second great city on the east coast, Messana, a band of foreign soldiers had established themselves and held the city, independent alike of Syracusans and Cartha
ginians. These new rulers of Messana were Campanian mercenaries. The dissolute habits that had become pre valent among the Sabellians settled in and around Capua
457), had made Campania in the fourth and fifth centuries —what Aetolia, Crete, and Laconia were after wards — the universal recruiting field for princes and cities in search of mercenaries. The semi-culture that had been called into existence there by the Campanian Greeks, the barbaric luxury of life in Capua and the other Campanian cities, the political impotence to which the hegemony of Rome condemned them, while yet its rule was not so stern as wholly to withdraw from them the right of self-disposal —all tended to drive the youth of Campania in troops to the standards of the recruiting officers. As matter of course, this wanton and unscrupulous selling of themselves here, as everywhere, brought in its train estrangement from their native land, habits of violence and military disorder, and indifference to the breach of their allegiance. These Campanians could see no reason why band of mercen aries should not seize on their own behalf any city en trusted to their guardianship, provided only they were in position to hold —the Samnites had established their dominion in Capua itself, and the Lucanians in succession of Greek cities, after fashion not much more honourable.
Nowhere was the state of political relations more inviting for such enterprises than in Sicily. Already the Campanian captains who came to Sicily during the Peloponnesian war had insinuated themselves in this way into Entella and
M. imer- '""' .
384. Aetna. Somewhere about the year 470 Campanian band, which had previously served under Agathocles and
289.
after his death (465) took up the trade of freebooters on their own account, established themselves in Messana, the
a
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(i.
chap, II CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
163
second city of Greek Sicily, and the chief seat of the anti- Syracusan party in that portion of the island which was still in the power of the Greeks. The citizens were slain or expelled, their wives and children and houses were dis tributed among the soldiers, and the new masters of the city, the Mamertines or " men of Mars," as they called themselves, soon became the third power in the island, the north-eastern portion of which they reduced to subjection in the times of confusion that succeeded the death of Agathocles. The Carthaginians were no unwilling spectators of these events, which established in the immediate vicinity of the Syracusans a new and powerful adversary instead of a cognate and ordinarily allied or dependent city. With Carthaginian aid the Mamertines maintained themselves
and the untimely departure of the king restored to them all their power.
It is not becoming in the historian either to excuse the
crime by which the Mamertines seized their power, or to forget that the God of history does not neces sarily punish the sins of the fathers to the fourth generation. He who feels it his vocation to judge the sins of others may condemn the human agents ; for Sicily it might be a blessing that a warlike power, and one belonging to the island, thus began to be formed in it — a power which was already able to bring eight thousand men into the field, and which was gradually putting itself in a position to take up at the proper time and on its own resources that struggle against the foreigners, to the maintenance of which the Hellenes, becoming more and more unaccustomed to arms notwithstanding their perpetual wars, were no longer equal
In the first instance, however, things took another turn. Hlero of A young Syracusan officer, who by his descent from the sYnau^ family of Gelo and his intimate relations of kindred with
king Pyrrhus as well as by the distinction with which he
against Pyrrhus,
perfidious
i64
THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book hi
had fought in the campaigns of the latter, had attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens as well as of the Syracusan soldiery — Hiero, son of Hierocles —was called by military election to command the army, which was at variance with
S75-274. the citizens (479-480). By his prudent administration, the nobility of his character, and the moderation of his views, he rapidly gained the hearts of the citizens of Syracuse— who had been accustomed to the most scandalous lawless ness in their despots—and of the Sicilian Greeks in general. He rid himself —in a perfidious manner, it is true—of the insubordinate army of mercenaries, revived the citizen- militia, and endeavoured, at first with the title of general, afterwards with that of king, to re-establish the deeply sunken Hellenic power by means of his civic troops and of fresh and more manageable recruits. With the Cartha ginians, who in concert with the Greeks had driven king Pyrrhus from the island, there was at that time peace. The immediate foes of the Syracusans were the Mamer-
War
betweenthe tineS- They were the kinsmen of those hated mercenaries
Syracusans whom the Syracusans had extirpated had
and Ma- mertinea.
recently ; they murdered their own Greek hosts ; they had curtailed the Syracusan territory ; they had oppressed and plundered a number of smaller Greek towns. In league with the
Romans who just about this time were sending their legions against the Campanians in Rhegium, the allies, kinsmen, and confederates in crime of the Mamertines (p. 38), Hiero turned his arms against Messana. By a great victory, after which Hiero was proclaimed king of the
270. Siceliots (484), he succeeded in shutting up the Mamer tines within their city, and after the siege had lasted some years, they found themselves reduced to extremity and unable to hold the city longer against Hiero on their own resources. It is evident that a surrender on stipulated
conditions was impossible, and that the axe of the execu tioner, which had fallen upon the Campanians of Rhegium
chap, H CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
165
at Rome, as certainly awaited those of Messana at Syracuse. Their only means of safety lay in delivering up the city either to the Carthaginians or to the Romans, both of whom could not but be so strongly set upon acquiring that important place as to overlook all other scruples. Whether it would be more advantageous to surrender it to the masters of Africa or to the masters of Italy, was doubtful ; after long hesitation the majority of the Campanian bur gesses at length resolved to offer the possession of their sea-commanding fortress to the Romans.
It was a moment of the deepest significance in the history The Ma- of the world, when the envoys of the Mamertines appeared j"! *S"? in the Roman senate. No one indeed could then anti- into the cipate all that was to depend on the crossing of that narrow Itai&n arm of the sea ; but that the decision, however it should acy.
go, would involve consequences far other and more import
ant than had attached to any decree hitherto passed
the senate, must have been manifest to every one of the deliberating fathers of the city. Strictly upright men might
indeed ask how it was possible to deliberate at all, and
how any one could even think of suggesting that the
Romans should not only break their alliance with Hiero, but should, just after the Campanians of Rhegium had
been punished by them with righteous severity, admit the no less guilty Sicilian accomplices to the alliance and friendship of the state, and thereby rescue them from the punishment which they deserved. Such an outrage on propriety would not only afford their adversaries matter for declamation, but must seriously offend all men of moral feeling. But even the statesman, with whom political morality was no mere phrase, might ask in reply, how Roman burgesses, who had broken their military oath and treacherously murdered the allies of Rome, could be placed on a level with foreigners who had committed an outrage on foreigners, where no one had constituted the Romans
by
s
166 THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND BOOK in
judges of the one or avengers of the other? Had the question been only whether the Syracusans or Mamertines should rule in Messana, Rome might certainly have acquiesced in the rule of either. Rome was striving for the possession of Italy, as Carthage for that of Sicily ; the designs of the two powers scarcely then went further. But that very circumstance formed a reason why each desired to have and retain on its frontier an intermediate power— the Carthaginians for instance reckoning in this way on Tarentum, the Romans on Syracuse and Messana—and why, if that course was impossible, each preferred to see these adjacent places given over to itself rather than to the other great power. As Carthage had made an attempt in Italy, when Rhegium and Tarentum were about to be occupied by the Romans, to acquire these cities for itself, and had only been prevented from doing so by accident, so in Sicily an opportunity now offered itself for Rome to bring the city of Messana into its symmachy; should the Romans reject was not to be expected that the city would remain independent orwould become Syracusan they would themselves throw into the arms of the Phoenicians. Were they justified in allowing an opportunity to escape, such as certainly would never recur, of making themselves masters of the natural tite de pont between Italy and Sicily, and of securing by means of brave garrison on which they could, for good reasons, rely? Were they justified in abandoning Messana, and thereby surrendering the com mand of the last free passage between the eastern and western seas, and sacrificing the commercial liberty of Italy true that other objections might be urged to the occupation of Messana besides mere scruples of feeling and of honourable policy. That could not but lead to war with Carthage, was the least of these serious as was such war, Rome might not fear But there was the more important objection that crossing the sea the
a
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by it
;
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a
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;
chap, II CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
167
Romans would depart from the purely Italian and purely continental policy which they had hitherto pursued ; they would abandon the system by which their ancestors had founded the greatness of Rome, to enter upon another system the results of which no one could foretell. It was
one of those moments when calculation ceases, and when faith in men's own and in their country's destiny alone gives them courage to grasp the hand which beckons to them
out of the darkness of the future, and to follow it no one knows whither. Long and seriously the senate deliberated
on the proposal of the consuls to lead the legions to the help of the Mamertines ; it came to no decisive resolution.
But the burgesses, to whom the matter was referred, were animated by a lively sense of the greatness of the power which their own energy had established. The conquest
of Italy encouraged the Romans, as that of Greece en couraged the Macedonians and that of Silesia the Prussians,
to enter upon a new political career. A formal pretext for supporting the Mamertines was found in the protectorate which Rome claimed the right to exercise over all Italians.
The transmarine Italians were received into the Italian confederacy; 1 and on the proposal of the consuls the citizens resolved to send them aid (489). 265.
Much depended on the way in which the two Sicilian Variance powers, immediately affected by this intervention of the Ro- r:tween mans in the affairs of the island, and both hitherto nominally Carthage. in alliance with Rome, would regard her interference.
Hiero had sufficient reason to treat the summons, by which the Romans required him to desist from hostilities against their new confederates in Messana, precisely in the same way as the Samnites and Lucanians in similar circumstances had received the occupation of Capua and Thurii, and to
1 The Mamertines entered quite into the same position towards Rome as the Italian communities, bound themselves to furnish ships (Cic. Verr. v. 19, 50), and, as the coins show, did not possess the right of coining silver.
168 THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book iii
answer the Romans by a declaration of war. however, he remained unsupported, such war would be folly and might be expected from his prudent and moderate policy
years after the attempt of the Phoenician fleet to gain pos session of Tarentum, to demand explanations as to these incidents 38). Grievances not unfounded, but half- forgotten, once more emerged— seemed not superfluous amidst other warlike preparations to replenish the diplomatic armoury with reasons for war, and for the coming manifesto to reserve to themselves, as was the custom of the Romans, the character of the party aggrieved. This much at least might with entire justice be affirmed, that the respective enterprises on Tarentum and Messana stood upon exactly the same footing in point of design and of pretext, and that
was simply the accident of success that made the differ ence. Carthage avoided an open rupture. The ambas sadors carried back to Rome the disavowal of the Carthaginian admiral who had made the attempt on Tarentum, along with the requisite false oaths the counter- complaints, which of course were not wanting on the part of Carthage, were studiously moderate, and abstained from characterizing the meditated invasion of Sicily as ground for war. Such, however, was; for Carthage regarded the affairs of Sicily—just as Rome regarded those of Italy —as internal matters in which an independent power could allow no interference, and was determined to act accord
But Phoenician policy followed gentler course than that of threatening open war. When the preparations of Rome for sending help to the Mamertines were at length so far advanced that the fleet formed of the war-vessels of Naples, Tarentum, Velia, and Locri, and the vanguard of the Roman land army under the military tribune Gaius
that he would acquiesce in what was inevitable,
Carthage should be disposed for peace. This seemed not impossible. 265. A Roman embassy was now (489) sent to Carthage, seven
ingly.
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chap, II CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
169
Claudius, had appeared at Rhegium (in the spring of 490), 264. unexpected news arrived from Messana that the Cartha- Carthagi- ginians, having come to an understanding with the anti- ^^ m Roman party there, had as a neutral power arranged a
peace between Hiero and the Mamertines ; that the siege
had in consequence been raised ; and that a Carthaginian
fleet lay in the harbour of Messana, and a Carthaginian
garrison in the citadel, both under the command of admiral
Hanno. The Mamertine citizens, now controlled
Carthaginian influence, informed the Roman commanders,
with due thanks to the federal help so speedily accorded to
them, that they were glad that they no longer needed
The adroit and daring officer who commanded the Roman vanguard nevertheless set sail with his troops. But the Carthaginians warned the Roman vessels to retire, and
even made some of them prizes; these, however, the Carthaginian admiral, remembering his strict orders to give
no pretext for the outbreak of hostilities, sent back to his
good friends on the other side of the straits. almost seemed as the Romans had compromised themselves as uselessly before Messana, as the Carthaginians before Tarentum. But Claudius did not allow himself to be deterred, and on second attempt he succeeded in landing. Scarcely had he arrived when he called meeting of the citizens; and, at his wish, the Carthaginian admiral also appeared at the meeting, still imagining that he should be
able to avoid an open breach. But the Romans seized his Messana person in the assembly itself; and Hanno and the ? ? '"? Phoenician garrison in the citadel, weak and destitute of a Romans leader, were pusillanimous enough, the former to give to
his troops the command to withdraw, the latter to comply with the orders of their captive general and to evacuate the city along with him. Thus the tele de pont of the island fell into the hands of the Romans. The Carthaginian authorities, justly indignant at the folly and weakness of
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it.
War be tween the Romans and the Carthagi nians and Syra-
iyo THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND BOOK III
their general, caused him to be executed, and declared war against the Romans. Above all it was their aim to recover the lost place, A strong Carthaginian fleet, led by Hanno, son of Hannibal, appeared off Messana; while the fleet blockaded the straits, the Carthaginian army landing from it began the siege on the north side. Hiero, who had only waited for the Carthaginian attack to begin the war with
Rome, again brought up his army, which he had hardly withdrawn, against Messana, and undertook the attack on the south side of the city.
But meanwhile the Roman consul Appius Claudius Caudex had appeared at Rhegium with the main body of his army, and succeeded in crossing on a dark night in spite of the Carthaginian fleet Audacity and fortune were on the side of the Romans ; the allies, not prepared for an attack by the whole Roman army and consequently not united, were beaten in detail by the Roman legions issuing from the city ; and thus the siege was raised. The Roman army kept the field during the summer, and even made an attempt on Syracuse ; but, when that had failed and the siege of Echetla (on the confines of the territories of Syracuse and Carthage) had to be abandoned with loss, the Roman army returned to Messana, and thence, leaving a strong garrison behind them, to Italy. The results obtained in this first campaign of the Romans out of Italy may not quite have corresponded to the expectations at home, for the consul had no triumph; nevertheless, the energy which the Romans displayed in Sicily could not fail to make a great impression on the Sicilian Greeks. In the following year both consuls and an army twice as large entered the island unopposed. One of them, Marcus Valerius Maximus, afterwards called from this campaign the "hero of Messana" (Messalld), achieved a brilliant victory over the allied Carthaginians and Syracusans. After this battle the Phoenician army no longer ventured
chap, ii CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
171
to keep the field against the Romans ; Alaesa, Centuripa,
and the smaller Greek towns generally fell to the victors,
and Hicro himself abandoned the Carthaginian side and Peace with made peace and alliance with the Romans (491). He ^rs"" pursued a judicious policy in joining the Romans as soon
as it appeared that their interference in Sicily was in
earnest, and while there was still time to purchase peace
without cessions and sacrifices. The intermediate states
in Sicily, Syracuse and Messana, which were unable to
follow out a policy of their own and had only the choice
between Roman and Carthaginian hegemony, could not
but at any rate prefer the former; because the Romans
had very probably not as yet formed the design of conquer
ing the island for themselves, but sought merely to prevent
its being acquired by Carthage, and at all events Rome
might be expected to substitute a more tolerable treatment
and a due protection of commercial freedom for the tyrannizing and monopolizing system that Carthage pursued. Henceforth Hiero continued to be the most important,
the steadiest, and the most esteemed ally of the Romans
in the island.
gentum.
The Romans had thus gained their immediate object Captor* By their double alliance with Messana and Syracuse, and of *gri"
'''
the firm hold which they had on the whole east coast,
they secured the means of landing on the island and of maintaining —which hitherto had been a very difficult matter — their armies there ; and the war, which had previously been doubtful and hazardous, lost in a great measure its character of risk. Accordingly, no greater exertions were made for it than for the wars in Samnium
and Etruria ; the two legions which were sent over to the island for the next year (492) sufficed, in concert with the 262. Sicilian Greeks, to drive the Carthaginians everywhere into their fortresses. The commander-in-chief of the Cartha
Hannibal son of Gisgo, threw himself with the
ginians,
I7S
THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book in
Beginning
maritime war.
flower of his troops into Agrigentum, to defend to the last that most important of the Carthaginian inland cities. Unable to storm a city so strong, the Romans blockaded it with entrenched lines and a double camp ; the besieged, who numbered 50,000, soon suffered from want of pro visions. To raise the siege the Carthaginian admiral Hanno landed at Heraclea, and cut off in turn the supplies from the Roman besieging force. On both sides the distress was great. At length a battle was resolved on, to put an end to the state of embarrassment and uncertainty. In this battle the Numidian cavalry showed itself just as superior to the Roman horse as the Roman infantry was superior to the Phoenician foot ; the infantry decided the victory, but the losses even of the Romans were very considerable. The result of the successful struggle was somewhat marred by the circumstance that, after the battle, during the confusion and fatigue of the conquerors, the beleaguered army succeeded in escaping from the city and in reaching the fleet The victory was nevertheless of importance ; Agrigentum fell into the hands of the Romans, and thus the whole island was in their power, with the exception of the maritime fortresses, in which the Carthaginian general Hamilcar, Hanno's successor in com
mand, entrenched himself to the teeth, and was not to be driven out either by force or by famine. The war was thenceforth continued only by sallies of the Carthaginians from the Sicilian fortresses and their descents on the Italian coasts.
In fact, the Romans now for the first time felt the real difficulties of the war. as we are told, the Carthaginian
before the outbreak of hostilities warned the Romans not to push the matter to breach, because against their will no Roman could even wash his hands in the sea, the threat was well founded. The Carthaginian fleet ruled the sea without rival, and not only kept the
diplomatists
a
a
If,
chap, ii CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
173
coast towns of Sicily in due obedience and provided them
with all necessaries, but also threatened a descent upon
Italy, for which reason it was necessary in 492 to retain a 262. consular army there. No invasion on a large scale oc
curred; but smaller Carthaginian detachments landed on
the Italian coasts and levied contributions on the allies of
Rome, and what was worst of all, completely paralyzed the commerce of Rome and her allies. The continuance of
such a course for even a short time would suffice entirely
to ruin Caere, Ostia, Neapolis, Tarentum, and Syracuse,
while the Carthaginians easily consoled themselves for the
loss of the tribute of Sicily with the contributions which
they levied and the rich prizes of their privateering. The Romans now learned, what Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus had learned before, that it was as difficult to conquer the Carthaginians as it was easy to beat them in the
field. They saw that everything depended on procuring The
a fleet, and resolved to form one of twenty triremes and a buiU^**
hundred quinqueremes. The execution, however, of this energetic resolution was not easy. The representation
in the schools of the rhetoricians, which would have us believe that the Romans then for the first time dipped their oars in water, is no doubt a childish tale; the mercantile marine of Italy must at this time have been very extensive, and there was no want even of Italian vessels of war. But these were war-barks and triremes, such as had been in use in earlier times ; quinqueremes, which under the more modern system of naval warfare that had originated chiefly in Carthage were almost ex clusively employed in the line, had not yet been built in
The measure adopted by the Romans was there fore much as if a maritime state of the present day were to pass at once from the building of frigates and cutters to the building of ships of the line ; and, just as in such a case now a foreign ship of the line would, if possible,
fleet.
originating
Italy.
174
THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book ill
be adopted as a pattern, the Romans referred their master shipbuilders to a stranded Carthaginian penteres as a model No doubt the Romans, had they wished, might have sooner attained their object with the aid of the Syracusans and Massiliots ; but their statesmen had too much sagacity to desire to defend Italy by means of a fleet not Italian. The Italian allies, however, were largely drawn upon both for the naval officers, who must have been for the most part taken from the Italian mercantile marine, and for the sailors, whose name (socii navales) shows that for a time they were exclusively furnished by the allies; along with these, slaves provided by the state and the wealthier families were afterwards employed, and ere long also the poorer class of burgesses. Under such circumstances, and when we take into account, as is but fair, on the one hand the comparatively low state of shipbuilding at that time, and on the other hand the energy of the Romans, there is
nothing incredible in the statement that the Romans solved within a year the problem —which baffled Napoleon —of converting a continental into a maritime power, and actually launched their fleet of 120 sail in the spring of
260. 494. It is true, that it was by no means a match for the Carthaginian fleet in numbers and efficiency at sea ; and these were points of the greater importance, as the naval tactics of the period consisted mainly in manoeuvring. In the maritime warfare of that period hoplites and archers no doubt fought from the deck, and projectile machines were also plied from it ; but the ordinary and really decisive mode of action consisted in running foul of the enemy's vessels, for which purpose the prows were furnished with heavy iron beaks : the vessels engaged were in the habit of sail ing round each other till one or the other succeeded in giving the thrust, which usually proved decisive. Accord ingly the crew of an ordinary Greek trireme, consisting of about 200 men, contained only about 10 soldiers, but on
CHAP. II CARTHAGE CONCERNING SICILY
175
the other hand 170 rowers, from 50 to 60 on each deck; that of a quinquereme numbered about 300 rowers, and soldiers in proportion.
The happy idea occurred to the Romans that they might make up for what their vessels, with their unpractised officers and crews, necessarily lacked in ability of manoeu vring, by again assigning a more considerable part in naval warfare to the soldiers. They stationed at the prow of each vessel a flying bridge, which could be lowered in front or on either side ; it was furnished on both sides with parapets, and had space for two men in front When the enemy's vessel was sailing up to strike the Roman one, or was lying alongside of it after the thrust had been evaded, the bridge on deck was suddenly lowered and fastened to its opponent by means of a grappling-iron : this not only prevented the running down, but enabled the Roman marines to pass along the bridge to the enemy's deck and to carry it by assault as in a conflict on land. No distinct body of marines was formed, but land troops were employed, when required, for this maritime service. In one instance as many as 120 legionaries fought in each ship on occasion
of a great naval battle ; in that case however the Roman fleet had at the same time a landing-army on board.
In this way the Romans created a fleet which was a match for the Carthaginians. Those err, who represent this building of a Roman fleet as a fairy tale, and besides they miss their aim ; the feat must be understood in order to be admired. The construction of a fleet by the Romans was in very truth a noble national work—a work through which, by their clear perception of what was needful and possible, by ingenuity in invention, and by energy in resolution and in execution, they rescued their country from a position which was worse than at first it seemed.
The outset, nevertheless, was not favourable to the Naval Romans. The Roman admiral, the consul Gnaeus JjyiS*1
176
THE WAR BETWEEN ROME AND book in
Cornelius Scipio, who had sailed for Messana with the first &0. seventeen vessels ready for sea (494), fancied, when on the voyage, that he should be able to capture Lipara by a coup
de main. But a division of the Carthaginian fleet stationed at Panormus blockaded the harbour of the island where the Roman vessels rode at anchor, and captured the whole squadron along with the consul without a struggle. This, however, did not deter the main fleet from likewise sailing, as soon as its preparations were completed, for Messana.