VIII. THE CONQUEST OF CENTRAL ITALY
THE SAMNITES
The fifth century is the most beautiful century of Rome. The plebeians had conquered the consulship and are succeeding in conquering their admission to other magistracies which the patricians wished to reserve; they free themselves from the servitude which, under the name of Nexus, weighed on the debtors. They arrive at political equality and individual independence; at the same time the old aristocracy still dominates in the senate and maintains there the inflexibility of its resolves and the persistence of its designs. It was thanks to this interior condition that the Roman people was able to survive the strongest tests from without over which it had triumphed, and to make that progress which cost it most dear. We see the peoples fight, one by one, and often all together; the Latin people, the Etruscans, the Goths, the Samnites, the other Sabellic peoples of the Apennines; and the end is always victory. The beginnings of this history were sombre. Rome was afflicted by one of those pestilences which one finds in all the epochs of the history of this unsanitary city. Thence was the origin of those scenic pieces imported by the Etruscans and giving origin to comedy--a means devised to appease the gods; so that Roman comedy had an origin religious and dismal. The fifth century is for Rome the age of great devotions and of grand sacrifices.[d]
We must now carry our eyes beyond the plain of Latium, and penetrate into Campania and the valleys of the Apennines.
The Sabines are a people connected with the earliest legends of Rome. But the Sabines of Cures and the country between the Anio and the Tiber are those who have hitherto engaged our attention. It is in the highlands of Reate and Amiternum that we must search for the cradle of the race. The valleys of this high district afford but scanty subsistence; and the hardy mountaineers ever and anon cast off swarms of emigrants, who sought other homes, and made good their claim by arms. It was a custom of the Sabellian tribes, when famine threatened and population became dense, to devote the whole produce of one spring-time to the gods. Among other produce, the youth born in that year were dedicated to the god Mamers (Mars), and went forth to seek their fortunes abroad. On one such occasion the emigrants, pressing southward from the Sabine highlands, occupied the broad mountainous district which lies northward of Campania, and took the name of Samnites. The Picenians and Frentanians, on the north coast, with the four allied cantons of the Vestinians, Marrucinians, Pelignians, and Marsians, who were interposed between the Samnites and their ancestral Sabines, claimed kin with both nations. The Samnites themselves also formed four cantons--the Caracenians, Pentrians, Caudinians, and Hirpinians. Of these the Pentrians were far the most considerable; they occupied the rugged mountain district between the upper valleys of the Vulturnus and the Calor. Here a great mass of mountains, now known by the name of Mount Matese, rises boldly from the central chain to the height of more than six thousand feet; and its steep defiles offer defences of great natural strength. But the remains of massive polygonal masonry, which are still seen on the rocky heights occupied by their towns of Æsernia and Bovianum (Isernia and Bojano), showed that the Samnites used art to strengthen their natural defences. Below Mount Matese, in the valley of the Calor, lay the canton of the Caudinians, whose town of Beneventum (anciently called Maleventum or Maliessa) was also made strong by art. It is within these limits, from Æsernia to Beneventum, that the scenes of the chief campaigns of the Samnite wars were laid.
[Sidenote: [423-354 B.C.]]
From the nature of their country the Samnites were a pastoral people. Their mountains break into numberless valleys, sloping both north and south, well watered, and fresh even in the summer heats. Into these valleys, as is still the practice of the country, the flocks were driven from the lower lands, ascending higher as the heats increased, and descending towards the plain as autumn inclined towards winter.
But the Samnites were not contented with these mountain homes. As they had themselves been sent forth from a central hive, so in time they cast forth new swarms of emigrants. In early times a Samnite tribe, under the name of Frentanians, had taken possession of the coast lands north of Apulia. Other bands of adventurous settlers pushed down the Vulturnus and Calor into the rich plain that lay beneath their mountains, to which they gave the name of Campania, or the champagne land. In earlier times this fair plain had attracted Etruscan conquerors; and its chief city, anciently called Vulturnum, is said from them to have received the lasting name of Capua. But about the year 423 B.C., nearly a century before the time of which we are presently to speak, a band of Samnites seized the famous city, and reduced the ancient Oscan inhabitants to the condition of clients. Soon after, the great Greek city of Cumæ, which then gave name to the Bay of Naples, was conquered by the new lords of Capua, who from this time forth, under the name of Campanians, became the dominant power of the country. In course of time, however, the Samnites of Capua, or the Campanians, adopted the language and customs of their Oscan subjects. Hence the Campanian Samnites broke off their connection with the old Samnites of the mountains, just as the Roman Sabines lost all sympathy with the old Sabines of Cures, and as in England the Anglo-Normans became the national enemies of the French.
It may be added that the Lucanians and Apulians, who stretched across the breadth of Italy below Campania, were formed by a mixture of Samnite invaders with the ancient population, themselves a compound of Oscan and Pelasgian races; while the Bruttians, who occupied the mountainous district south of the Gulf of Tarentum, were a similar offcast from the Lucanians. But these half-Sabellian tribes, like the old races from whom the Samnites came, lent uncertain aid to their kinsmen in the struggle with Rome.
[Sidenote: [354-343 B.C.]]
These remarks will prepare us for the great conflict which in fact determined the sovereignty of Italy to be the right of the Roman, and not of the Samnite people.[38] The first war arose out of a quarrel such as we have just alluded to between the Campanians and the old Samnites of the Matese. In the year 354 B.C. a league had been concluded with the Romans and the Samnites. Since that time, Samnite adventurers had been pressing down the valley of the Liris, and had taken the Volscian cities of Sora and Fregellæ, while the Romans, combined with the Latins again since the year 358 B.C., were forcing back the Volscians from the west. In 343 B.C., the Samnites pursued their encroachments so far as to assail Teanum, the chief city of the Sidicines, an Oscan tribe, who occupied the lower hills in the north of Campania. The Sidicines demanded the aid of Capua against their assailants; and the Campanians, venturing to give this aid, drew upon their own heads the wrath of the mountaineers. The Samnites took possession of Mount Tifata, a bare hill which overhangs Capua on the north, and plundered at will the rich plain below. Unable to meet the enemy in the field, the degenerate Campanians entreated the assistance of the Roman and Latin league. There was some difficulty in listening to this application; for a treaty of peace had been concluded eleven years before, and no aggression against Rome was chargeable upon the Samnites. But it is probable that their progress in the valleys of the Liris and Vulturnus had alarmed the senate; and all scruples were removed when the Campanians offered to surrender their city absolutely, so that in defending them Rome would be defending her own subjects. This quibbling bargain was struck, and war was declared against the Samnites.[b]
THE FIRST SAMNITE WAR
[Sidenote: [343-342 B.C.]]
The consuls were ordered to take the field. The consul M. Valerius Corvus led his legions into Campania, where, probably in consequence of some reverses of which we are not informed, he encamped on the side of Mount Gaurus over Cumæ. The Samnite army came full of confidence; the consul led out his troops, and a battle commenced, highly important in the history of the world, as the prelude of those which were to decide whether the empire of Italy and of the world was reserved for Rome or for Samnium.
The two armies were equal in courage, and similarly armed and arrayed; that of the Samnites consisted entirely of infantry, and the cavalry, which the consul sent first into action, could make no impression on its firm ranks. He then ordered the cavalry to fall aside to the wings, and led on the legions in person. The fight was most obstinate: each seemed resolved to die rather than yield: at length, a desperate effort of despair on the part of the Romans drove the Samnites back; they wavered, broke, and fled to their entrenched camp, which they abandoned in the night, and fell back to Suessula. They declared to those who asked why they had fled, that the eyes of the Romans seemed to be on fire and their gestures those of madmen, so that they could not stand before them.
The other consul, A. Cornelius Cossus, having been directed to invade Samnium, led his army to Saticula, the nearest Samnite town to Capua. The Apennines in this part run from north to south, in parallel ranges, enclosing fertile valleys, and the road to Beneventum passes over them. The consul, advancing carelessly, had crossed the first range, and his line of march had reached the valley, when on looking back the Romans saw the wooded heights behind them occupied by a Samnite army. To advance was dangerous, retreat seemed impossible. In this perplexity a tribune named P. Decius proposed to occupy with the hastats and principes of one legion (that is, sixteen hundred men,) an eminence over the way along which the Samnites were coming. The consul gave permission; Decius seized the height, which he maintained against all the efforts of the enemy till the favourable moment was lost, and the consul had led back his army and gained the ridge. When night came, the Samnites remained about the hill and went to sleep; in the second watch Decius led down his men in silence, and they took their way through the midst of the slumbering foes. They had got halfway through, when one of the Romans in stepping over the Samnites struck against a shield; the noise awoke those at hand; the alarm spread; the Romans then raised a shout, fell on all they met, and got off without loss. They reached their own camp while it was yet night, but they halted outside of it till the day was come. At dawn, when their presence was announced, all poured forth to greet them, and Decius was led in triumph through the camp to the consul, who began to extol his deeds; but Decius interrupted him, saying that now was the time to take the enemy by surprise. The army was then led out, and the scattered Samnites were fallen on and routed with great slaughter. After the victory the consul gave Decius a golden crown and a hundred oxen, one of which was white with gilded horns; this Decius offered in sacrifice to Father Mars, the rest he gave to his comrades in peril, and each soldier presented them with a pound of corn and a pint (sextarius) of wine, while the consul, giving them each an ox and two garments, assured them of a double allowance of corn in future. The army further wove the obsidional crown of grass and placed it on the brows of Decius, and a similar crown was bestowed on him by his own men. Such were the generous arts by which Rome fostered the heroic spirit in her sons!
Meantime the Samnites at Suessula had been largely reinforced, and they spread their ravages over Campania. The two consular armies being united under Valerius, came and encamped hard by them, and as Valerius had left all the baggage and camp-followers behind, the Roman army occupied a much smaller camp than was usual to their numbers. Deceived by the size of their camp the Samnites clamoured to storm it, but the caution of their leaders withheld them. Necessity soon compelled them to scour the country in quest of provisions, and emboldened by the consul’s inactivity they went to greater and greater distances. This was what Valerius waited for; he suddenly assailed and took their camp, which was but slightly guarded; then leaving two legions to keep it, he divided the rest of the army, and falling on the scattered Samnites cut them everywhere to pieces. The shields of the slain and fugitives amounted, we are told, to forty thousand, the captured standards to one hundred and seventy. Both consuls triumphed.
While the Roman arms were thus engaged in Campania, the Latins invaded the territory of the Pelignians, the kinsmen and allies of the Samnites.
No military events are recorded of the year 342, but a strange tale of an insurrection of the Roman army has been handed down. The tale runs thus: The Roman soldiers, who at the end of the last campaign, had been left to winter in Capua, corrupted by the luxury which they there witnessed and enjoyed, formed the nefarious plan of massacring the inhabitants and seizing the town. Their projects had not ripened, when C. Marcius Rutilus, the consul for 342, came to take the command. He first, to keep them quiet, gave out that the troops were to be quartered in Capua the following winter also; then noting the ringleaders, he sent them home under various pretexts and gave furloughs to any that asked for them; his colleague, Q. Servilius Ahala, meantime taking care to detain all who came to Rome. The stratagem succeeded for some time; but at length the soldiers perceived that none of their comrades came back; and a cohort that was going home on furlough halted at Lautulæ, a narrow pass between the sea and the mountains east of Tarracina; it was there joined by all who were going home singly on leave, and the whole number soon equalled that of an army. They soon after broke up, and marching for Rome encamped under Alba Longa. Feeling their want of a leader, and learning that T. Quinctius, a distinguished patrician, who being lame of one leg from a wound had retired from the city, was living on his farm in the Tusculan district, they sent a party by night, who seized him in his bed, and gave him the option of death or becoming their commander. He therefore came to the camp, where he was saluted as general, and desired to lead them to Rome. Eight miles from the city they were met by an army led by the dictator M. Valerius Corvus. Each side shuddered at the thought of civil war, and readily agreed to a conference. The mutineers consented to entrust their cause to the dictator, whose name was a sufficient security. He rode back to the city, and at his desire the senate and curies decreed that none should be punished for, or even reproached with, their share in the mutiny, that no soldier’s name should be struck out of the roll without his own consent, that no one who had been a tribune should be made a centurion, and that the pay of the knights (as they had refused to join in the mutiny) should be reduced. And thus this formidable mutiny commenced in crime and ended in--nothing!
Another and a far more probable account says that the insurrection broke out in the city, where the plebeians took arms, and having seized C. Manlius in the night, and forced him to be their leader, went out and encamped four miles from the city, where, as it would seem, they were joined by the army from Campania. The consuls raised an army and advanced against them; but when the two armies met, that of the consuls saluted the insurgents, and the soldiers embraced one another. The consuls then advised the senate to comply with the desires of the people, and peace was effected.
The still existing weight of debt seems to have been the cause of this secession also, and a cancel of debts to have been a condition of the peace. Lending on interest at all is said to have been prohibited at this time by a plebiscitum, or decree of the tribes; and others were passed forbidding any one to hold the same office till after an interval of ten years, or to hold two offices at the same time. It was also decreed that both the consuls might be plebeians. The name of the tribune L. Genucius being mentioned, it is probable that he was the author of the new laws.
[Sidenote: [341-340 B.C.]]
The following year (341) peace was made with the Samnites on the light condition of their giving a year’s pay and three months’ provisions to the Roman army; and they were allowed to make war on the Sidicinians. This moderation on the side of the Romans might cause surprise, were it not that we know they now apprehended a conflict with their ancient allies the Latins; for the original terms of their federation could not remain in force, and one or other must become the dominant state.
The Sidicinians and Campanians, on being thus abandoned, put themselves under the protection of the Latins, with whom the Volscians also formed an alliance. The Hernicans adhered to the Romans, and the Samnites also became their allies. As war between Rome and Latium seemed inevitable, T. Manlius Torquatus, and P. Decius Mus were made consuls for the ensuing year with a view to it. But the Latins would first try the path of peace and accommodation; and at the call, it is said, of the Roman senate, their two prætors and ten principal senators repaired to Rome. Audience was given to them on the Capitol, and nothing could be more reasonable than their demands. Though the Latins were now the more numerous people of the two, they only required a union of perfect equality,--one of the consuls and one-half of the senate to be Latins, while Rome should be the seat of government, and Romans the name of the united nation.[39] But the senate exclaimed against the unheard-of extravagance of these demands, the gods were invoked as witnesses of this scandalous breach of faith, and the consul Manlius vowed that if they consented to be thus dictated to, he would come girt with his sword into the senate-house and slay the first Latin he saw there. Tradition said, that when the gods were appealed to, and the Latin prætor L. Annius spoke with contempt of the Roman Jupiter, loud claps of thunder and a sudden storm of wind and rain told the anger of the deity, and that as Annius went off full of rage, he tumbled down the flight of steps and lay lifeless at the bottom. It was with difficulty that the magistrates saved the other envoys from the fury of the people. War was forthwith declared, and the consular armies were levied.
THE LATIN WAR
[Sidenote: [340 B.C.]]
As the Latin legions were now in Campania (340), the Romans, instead of taking the direct route through Latium, made a circuit through the country of the Sabines, Marsians, and Pelignians, and being joined by the Samnites, and probably the Hernicans, came and encamped before the Latins near Capua. Here a dream presented itself to the consuls: the form of a man, of size more than human, appeared to each, and announced that the general on one side, the army on the other, was due to the Manes and Mother Earth; of whichever people the general should devote himself and the adverse legions, theirs would be the victory. The victims when slain portending the same, the consuls announced, in presence of their officers, that he of them whose forces first began to yield would devote himself for Rome.
To restore strict discipline and to prevent any treachery, the consuls forbade, under pain of death, any single combats with the enemy. One day the son of the consul Manlius chanced with his troop of horse to come near to where the Tusculan horse was stationed, whose commander, Geminus Metius, knowing young Manlius, challenged him to a single combat. Shame and indignation overpowered the sense of duty in the mind of the Roman; they ran against each other, and the Tusculan fell; the victor, bearing the bloody spoils, returned to the camp and came with them to his father. The consul said nothing, but forthwith called an assembly of the army; then reproaching his son with his breach of discipline, he ordered the lictor to lay hold of him and bind him to the stake. The assembly stood mute with horror; but when the axe fell, and the blood of the gallant youth gushed forth, bitter lamentation, mingled with curses on the ruthless sire, arose. They took up the body of the slain, and buried it without the camp, covered with the spoils he had won; and when after the war Manlius entered Rome in triumph, the young men would not go forth to receive him, and throughout life he was to them an object of hatred and aversion.
The war between Rome and Latium was little less than civil; the soldiers and officers had for years served together in the same companies and they were all acquainted. They now stood in battle-array opposite each other at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, the Samnites and Hernicans being opposed to the Oscan allies of the Latins. Both the consuls sacrificed before the battle; the entrails of the victim offered by Decius portended misfortune, but hearing that the signs boded well to Manlius, “’Tis well,” said he, “if my colleague has good signs.” In the battle, the left wing, led by Decius, was giving way; the consul saw that his hour was come; he called aloud for M. Valerius, the pontifex maximus, and standing on a naked weapon, clad in his consular robe, his head veiled, and his hand on his chin, he repeated after the pontiff the form of devotion. He then sent the lictors to announce to Manlius what he had done, and girding his robe tightly round him, and mounting his horse, he rushed into the midst of the enemies. He seemed a destructive spirit sent from heaven; wherever he came he carried dismay and death; at length he fell covered with wounds. The ardour of the Roman soldiers revived, and the skill of Manlius secured the victory. When the front ranks (antesignani) of both armies were wearied, he ordered the accensi to advance; the Latins then sent forward their triarians; and when these were wearied, the consul ordered the Roman triarians to rise and advance. The Latins having no fresh troops to oppose to them were speedily defeated, and so great was the slaughter that but one-fourth of their army escaped. Next day the body of the consul Decius was found amidst heaps of slain, and magnificently interred.
[Sidenote: [340-338 B.C.]]
The Latins fled to the town of Vescia, and by the advice of their prætor Numisius a general levy was made in Latium, with which, in reliance on the reduced state of the Roman army, he ventured to give the consul battle at a place named Trifanum, between Sinuessa and Minturnæ, on the other side of the Liris. The rout of the Latins, however, was so complete, that few of the towns even thought of resistance when the consul entered Latium. The Latin public land, two-thirds of that of Privernum, and the Falernian district of Campania, were seized for the Roman people, and assignments of 2¾ jugera on this side, 3¼ on the other side of the Liris, were made to the poor plebeians, who murmured greatly at the large quantity that was reserved as domain. As the Campanian knights (sixteen hundred in number) had remained faithful to Rome, they were given the Roman municipium, and each assigned a rent charge of 350 denarii a year on the state of Capua.
The Latin and Volscian towns continued singly to resist, and the conquest was not completed till the year 338. Prudence and some moderation were requisite on the part of Rome, in order not to have rebellious subjects in the Latins. Citizenship therefore, in different degrees, was conferred on them; but they were forbidden to hold national diets, and commerce and intermarriage between the people of their different towns were prohibited. The principal families of Velitræ were forced to go and live beyond the Tiber, and their lands were given to Roman colonists. Their ships of war were taken from the Antiates, who were forbidden to possess any in future. Some of them were brought to Rome; the beaks (rostra) of others were cut off, and the pulpit (suggestum) in the Forum was adorned with them, whence it was named the “rostra.” The municipium, such as the Latins had formerly had, was given to the people of Capua, Cumæ, Suessula, Fundi, and Formiæ. The Latin contingents in war were henceforth to serve under their own officers apart from the legions.
While the Roman dominion was thus extended without, wise and patriotic men of both orders saw the necessity of internal concord, and of abolishing antiquated and now mischievous claims and pretensions. In 339, therefore, the patrician consul Tib. Æmilius named his plebeian colleague Q. Publilius Philo dictator, who then brought forward the following laws to complete the constitution. (1) The patricians should give a previous consent to any law that was to be brought before the centuries; for as such a law must previously have passed the senate, and the centuries could make no alteration in it, their opposition, it would seem, could hardly have any ground but prejudice and spite. (2) The Plebiscita should be binding on all Quirites. (3) One of the censors should of necessity be a plebeian. The curies were induced, we know not how, to give their assent to these laws.[40] Internal discord was now at an end, and the golden age of Roman heroism and virtue began.
THE SECOND SAMNITE WAR
[Sidenote: [338-325 B.C.]]
The affairs for the ten succeeding years are of comparative unimportance. The Romans and Samnites both knew that another war was inevitable, and they made the necessary preparations for it. In the year 327 the people of the Greek town of Palæopolis (Old Town) being in alliance with the Samnites, began to exercise hostilities against the Roman colonists in Campania. As they refused to give satisfaction, the consul Q. Publilius Philo was sent against them, while his colleague, L. Cornelius Lentulus, watched the motions of the Samnites. Publilius encamped between Palæopolis and its kindred town of Neapolis (New Town), and on his sending word home that there was a large body of Samnite and Nolan troops in them, envoys were sent to Samnium to complain of this breach of treaty. The Samnites replied that those were volunteers, over whom the state had no control; that moreover they had not, as the Romans had alleged, excited the people of Fundi and Formiæ to revolt, while the Romans had sent a colony to Fregellæ, in a district which of right was theirs; that, in fine, there was no use in arguing or complaining when the plain between Capua and Suessula offered a space on which they might decide whose should be the empire of Italy. The Roman fetial then veiled his head, and with hands raised to heaven prayed the gods to prosper the arms and counsels of Rome if right was on her side; if not, to blast and confound them. Right certainly was not on the side of Rome, for she had first violated the treaty; but war was not to be averted, and it was now to begin.
A Roman army entered Samnium on the Volscian side, ravaged the country, and took some towns. Publilius’ year having expired, his command was continued to him (326) under the new title of proconsul; and soon a party in Neapolis, weary of the insolence of the foreign soldiers, began to plot a surrender. While Nymphius, one of the leading men, induced the Samnites to go out of the town, to embark in the ships in the port, and make a descent on the coast of Latium, Charilaus, another of the party, closed the gate after them, and admitted the Romans at another. The Samnites instantly dispersed and fled home; the Nolans retired from the town unmolested.
A chief ally of the Samnites were the people of the Greek city of Tarentum; on the other hand, their kinsmen, the Apulians and Lucanians, were in alliance with Rome. But in this year, a revolution took place in Lucania, in consequence of which the country became subject to Samnium. A similar fate menaced the Apulians, if not aided; but to reach Apulia it was necessary to pass through the Vestinian country, the people of which (one of the Marsian confederacy) refused a passage. It was apprehended at Rome, that if the Vestinians were attacked, the other three states, who were now neutral, would take arms, and throw their weight into the Samnite scale, and their valour was well known; but, on the other hand, the importance of Apulia, in a military point of view, was too great to allow it to be lost. The consul D. Junius Brutus accordingly led his army (325) into the Vestinian country: a hard-fought victory, and the capture of two of their towns, reduced the Vestinians to submission, and the other members of the league remained at peace.
The other consul, L. Camillus, fell sick as he was about to invade Samnium and L. Papirius Cursor was made dictator;[41] but as there was said to have been some error in the auspices, he was obliged to return to Rome to renew them. As he was departing, he strictly charged Q. Fabius Rullianus, the master of the horse, whom he left in command, not to risk an action on any account during his absence. But, heedless of his orders, Fabius seized the first occasion of engaging the enemy, over whom he gained a complete victory. As soon as the dictator learned what had occurred, he hastened to the camp, breathing fury. Fabius, warned of his approach, besought the soldiers to protect him. Papirius came, ascended his tribunal, summoned the master of the horse before him, and demanded why he had disobeyed orders, and thus weakened the military discipline. His defence but irritated his judge the more; the lictors approached and began to strip him for death; he broke from them, and sought refuge among the triarians: confusion arose; those nearest the tribunal prayed, the more remote menaced, the dictator: the legates came round him, entreating him to defer his judgment till the next day; but he would not hear them. Night at length ended the contest.
[Sidenote: [325-322 B.C.]]
During the night Fabius fled to Rome, and by his father’s advice made his complaint of the dictator to the assembled senate; but while he was speaking, Papirius, who had followed him from the camp with the utmost rapidity, entered, and ordered his lictors to seize him. The senate implored; but he was inexorable: the elder Fabius then appealed to the people, before whom he enlarged on the cruelty of the dictator. Every heart beat in unison with that of the time-honoured father; but when Papirius showed the rigorous necessity of upholding military discipline, by which the state was maintained, all were silent, from conviction. At length the people and their tribunes united with Fabius and the senate in supplication, and the dictator, deeming his authority sufficiently vindicated, granted life to his master of the horse.
Papirius, when he returned to his army, gave the Samnites a decisive defeat; and having divided the spoil among his soldiers to regain their favour, and granted a truce for a year to the enemy, on condition of their giving each soldier a garment and a year’s pay, he returned to Rome and triumphed.
The events of the next year (323) are dubious; but in 322 the camp of the dictator, A. Cornelius Arvina, who had entered Samnium without sufficient caution, was surprised by a superior force of the enemy. The day closed before an attack could be made, and in the night the dictator, leaving a number of fires burning in the camp, led away his legions in silence. But the enemy were on the alert, and their cavalry hung on the retiring army, to slacken its pace. With daybreak the Samnite infantry came up, and the dictator, finding further retreat impossible, drew his forces up in order of battle. A desperate conflict commenced; during five hours neither side gave way an inch; the Samnite horse, seeing the baggage of the Romans but slightly guarded, made for it, and began to plunder: while thus engaged, they were fallen on and cut to pieces by the Roman horse, who then turned and assailed the now unprotected rear of the Samnite infantry. The dictator urged his legions to new exertions; the Samnites wavered, broke, and fled; their general and thousands fell, and thousands were made captives.
[Sidenote: [322-321 B.C.]]
Meantime, on the side of Apulia an equally glorious victory was gained by the consul Q. Fabius; and the spirit of the Samnites being now quite broken, they were anxious for peace on almost any terms. As it is usual with a people, when measures to which they have given their full and eager consent have failed, to throw the entire blame on their leaders, so now the Samnites cast all their misfortunes on Papius Brutulus, one of their principal men, and resolved to deliver him up to the Romans as the cause of the war. The noble Samnite saved himself from disgrace by a voluntary death; his lifeless corpse was carried to Rome; the Roman prisoners, of whom there was a large number, were released, and gold was sent to ransom the Samnites. The utmost readiness to yield to all reasonable terms was evinced; but nothing would content the haughty senate but the supremacy, and sooner than thus resign their national independence the Samnites resolved to dare and endure the uttermost.
In the spring (321) the Roman legions, led by the consuls T. Veturius and Sp. Postumius, encamped at Calatia in Campania, with the intention of directing their entire force against central Samnium. But the Samnite general, C. Pontius, having spread a false report that Luceria, in Apulia, was hard pressed by a Samnite army, and on the point of surrender, the consuls resolved to attempt its relief without delay. They entered the Samnite country, and advanced heedlessly and incautiously. In the vicinity of the town of Caudium they reached the Caudine Forks, as a pass was named consisting of a deep valley between two wooded mountains; a hollow way led into it at one end, and a narrow path over a mountain, which closed it up, led out of it at the other end. Into these toils the consuls conducted their army; they saw nothing to alarm them till the head of the column came to the further end, and found the passage stopped with rocks and trunks of trees, and on looking round they beheld the hills occupied by soldiery. To advance or to retreat was now equally impossible; they therefore threw up entrenchments in the valley, and remained there, the Samnites not attacking them, in reliance on the aid of famine. At length, when their food was spent and hunger began to be felt, they sent deputies to learn the will of the Samnite leaders. It is said that Pontius, on this occasion, sent for his father to advise him: this venerable old man, who, in high repute for wisdom, dwelt at Caudium, was conveyed to the camp in a wain, and his advice was either to let the Romans go free and uninjured, or totally to destroy the army. Pontius preferred a middle course, and the old man retired, shedding tears at the misery he saw thence to come on his country. The terms accorded by Pontius were the restoration of the ancient alliance between Rome and Samnium, the withdrawal of Roman colonies from places belonging to the Samnites, and the giving back of all places to which they had a right. The arms and baggage of the vanquished army, were, as a matter of course, to be given up to the conquerors. How rarely has Rome ever granted a vanquished enemy terms so mild as these! Yet the Roman historians had the audacity to talk of the insolence of the victorious Samnites, and the Roman senate and people the baseness and barbarity to put to an ignominous death the noble Pontius twenty-seven years after!
These terms were sworn to by the consuls and their principal officers, and six hundred knights were given as hostages till they should have been ratified by the senate and people. A passage wide enough for one person to pass was made in the paling with which the Samnites had enclosed them, and one of the pales laid across it, and through this door the consuls, followed by their officers and men, each in a single garment, came forth. Pontius gave beasts of burden to convey the sick and wounded, and provisions enough to take the army to Rome. They then departed and reached Capua before nightfall; but shame, or doubt of the reception they might meet with, kept them from entering. Next morning, however, all the people came out to meet and console them. Refreshments and aid of every kind were given them, and they thence pursued their way to Rome.
When the news of their calamity had first reached Rome, a total cessation of business (justitium) had taken place, and a general levy, either to attempt their relief or to defend the city, had been made, and all orders of people went into mourning. In this state of things the disgraced army reached the gates. It there dispersed; those who lived in the country went away; those who dwelt in the city slank with night to their houses. The consuls, having named a dictator for the consular elections, laid down their office; and Q. Publilius Philo and L. Papirius Cursor were appointed to be their successors.[c]
“If other nations delight in remembering the days of national triumphs,” says Wilhelm Ihne, “and in celebrating the memory of victories by which they feel their strength was increased and their pride gratified, the greatness of the Roman people is shown much more by their keeping continually before their eyes the evil days when the god of battles was unfavourable to them, and by celebrating the anniversaries of their defeats, in a certain degree, as days of national humiliation. The day of the Allia and the day of Cannæ stood before the eye of the Roman in more burning colours than the day of the victory of Zama. But by the side of those names there was yet a third in the list of evil days--a name which was more painful than any other to the proud Roman, because the feeling of national disgrace and humiliation could not be separated from it; it was the name of the Caudine Pass. At the Allia and at Cannæ thousands fell in open battle; at Caudium four legions agreed to purchase life and freedom by the sacrifice of military honour, and the Roman people, when they refused to ratify the agreement, covered themselves with a load of infamy, from which no sophistry could free them, even in their own conscience.”[f]
[Sidenote: [321-315 B.C.]]
The senate having met to consider of the peace, the consul Publilius called on Sp. Postumius to give his opinion. He rose with downcast looks, and advised that himself and all who had sworn to the treaty should be delivered up to the Samnites, as having deceived them, by making a treaty without the consent of the Roman people, and a fresh army be levied, and the war renewed; and though there was hardly a senator who had not a son or some other relative among the hostages, it was resolved to do as he advised. Postumius and his companions were taken bound to Caudium; the fetial led them before the tribunal of Pontius, and made the surrender of them in the solemn form. Postumius, as he concluded, struck his knee against the fetial’s thigh, and drove him off, crying, “I am now a Samnite, thou an ambassador: I thus violate the law of nations; ye may justly now resume the war.”
Pontius replied with dignity: he treated this act of religious hypocrisy as a childish manœuvre; he told the Romans that if they wished to renounce the treaty with any show of justice, they should place their legions as they were when it was made; but their present conduct he said was base and unworthy, and he would not accept such a surrender as this, or let them thus hope to avert the anger of the gods. He then ordered Postumius and the other Romans to be unbound and dismissed.
The war therefore was renewed, and the Romans returning to their original plan of carrying it on simultaneously in Apulia and on the western frontier of Samnium, sent (319) the consul Papirius to lay siege to Luceria, which was now in the hands of the Samnites, while his colleague Publilius led his army into Samnium. Papirius sat down before Luceria; but a Samnite army came and encamped at hand, and rendered his communication with Arpi, whence he drew his supplies, so difficult, that it was only by the knights’ going and fetching corn in little bags on their horses that any food could be had in the camp. They were at length relieved by the arrival of Publilius, who having defeated a Samnite army marched to their aid; and after a fruitless attempt of the Tarentines to mediate a peace, the Romans attacked and stormed the Samnite camp with great slaughter, which, though they were unable to retain it, had the effect of making the Samnite army retire, and leave Luceria to its fate. Its garrison of seven thousand men then capitulated, on condition of a free passage, without arms or baggage.
The two following years were years of truce, in consequence of exhaustion on both sides; and during the truce the Romans so extended and consolidated their dominion in Apulia that no attempt was ever after made to shake it off. The war was resumed in 316, and the Romans laid siege to Saticula, an Oscan town not far from Capua and in alliance with the Samnites. Meantime the Samnites reduced the colonial town of Plistia; and the Volscians of Sora, having slain their Roman garrison, revolted to them. They then made an attack on the Roman army before Saticula, but were defeated with great loss, and the town immediately surrendered. The Roman armies forthwith entered and ravaged Samnium, and the seat of war was transferred to Apulia. While the consular armies were thus distant, the Samnites made a general levy, and came and took a position at Lautulæ, in order to cut off the communication between Rome and Campania. The dictator, Q. Fabius, instantly levied an army, and hastened to give them battle. The Romans were utterly defeated, and fled from the field; the master of the horse, Q. Aulius, unable to outlive the disgrace of flight, maintained his ground, and fell fighting bravely. Revolt spread far and wide among the Roman subjects in the vicinity; the danger was great and imminent, but the fortune of Rome prevailed, and the menacing storm dispersed.
[Sidenote: [314-311 B.C.]]
In 314 the Samnites sustained a great defeat near a town named Cinna, whose site is unknown. The Campanians, who were in the act of revolting at this time, submitted on the appearance of the dictator, C. Mænius, and the most guilty withdrew themselves from punishment by a voluntary death. The Ausonian towns, Ausona, Minturnæ, and Vescia, were taken by treachery and stratagem, and their population massacred or enslaved, as a fearful lesson to the subjects of Rome against wavering in their allegiance.
The united armies of the consuls, M. Pœtelius and C. Sulpicius, entered Samnium on the side of Caudium; but while they were advancing timidly and cautiously through that formidable region, they learned that the Samnite army was wasting the plain of Campania. They immediately led back their forces, and ere long the two armies encountered. The tactics of the Romans were new on this occasion; the left wing, under Pœtelius, was made dense and deep, while the right was expanded more than usual. Pœtelius, adding the reserve to his wing, made a steady charge with the whole mass: the Samnites gave way; their horse hastened to their aid, but Sulpicius coming up with his body of horse, and charging them with the whole Roman cavalry, put them to the rout. He then hastened to his own wing, which now was yielding; the timely reinforcement turned the scale, and the Samnites were routed on all sides with great slaughter.
The following year (313) was marked by the capture of Nola and some other towns, and by the founding of colonies, to secure the dominion which had been acquired. In 312 Sora was taken in the following manner: A deserter came to the consuls, and offered to lead some Roman soldiers by a secret path up to the Arx, or citadel, which was a precipitous eminence over the town. His offer was accepted; the legions were withdrawn to a distance of six miles from the town; some cohorts were concealed in a wood at hand, and ten men accompanied the Soran traitor. They clambered in the night up through the stones and bushes, and at length reached the area of the citadel. Their guide, showing them the narrow, steep path that led thence to the town, desired them to guard it while he went down and gave the alarm. He then ran through the town crying that the enemy was on the citadel; and when the truth of his report was ascertained, the people prepared to fly from the town; but in the confusion, the Roman cohorts broke in and commenced a massacre. At daybreak the consuls came; they granted their lives to the surviving inhabitants, with the exception of 225, who, as the authors of the revolt, were brought bound to Rome, and scourged and beheaded in the Forum.
[Sidenote: [311-310 B.C.]]
The tide of war had turned so decidedly against the Samnites, that one or two campaigns more of the whole force of Rome would have sufficed for their subjugation. But just now a new enemy was about to appear, who was likely to give ample employment to the Roman arms for some time. The Etruscans, who, probably owing to their contests with and fears of the Gauls, had for many years abstained from war with the Romans, either moved by the instances of the Samnites or aware of the danger of suffering Rome to grow too powerful, began to make such hostile manifestations that great alarm prevailed at Rome. Various circumstances, however, kept off the war for nearly two years longer; at length in 311 all the peoples of Etruria, except the Arretines, having sent their troops, a Tuscan army prepared to lay siege to the frontier town of Sutrium. The consul Q. Æmilius came to cover it, and the two armies met before it. At daybreak of the second day, the Tuscans drew out in order of battle; the consul, having made his men take their breakfast, led them out also. The armies stood opposite each other, each hesitating to begin, till after noon; the Tuscans then fell on: night terminated a bloody and indecisive action, each retired to their camp, and neither felt themselves strong enough to renew the conflict next day.
The next year (310) a Tuscan army having laid siege to Sutrium, the consul Q. Fabius hastened from Rome to its relief. As his troops were far inferior to the Etruscans in number, he led them cautiously along the hills. The enemy drew out his forces in the plain to give him battle; but the consul, fearing to descend, formed his array on the hillside in a part covered with loose stones. Relying on their numbers the Tuscans charged up hill; the Romans hurled stones and missile weapons on them, and then charging, with the advantage of the ground, drove them back, and the horse getting between them and their camp forced them to take refuge in the adjacent Ciminian wood. Their camp became the prize of the victors.
Like so many others in the early Roman history, this battle has probably been given a magnitude and an importance which does not belong to it, and the truth would seem to be, that the consul only repulsed the advanced guard of the enemy, and not feeling himself strong enough to engage their main army, resolved to create a diversion by invading their country.
To the north of Sutrium, between it and the modern city of Viterbo, extends a range of high ground, which at that time formed the boundary between Roman and independent Etruria. It was covered with natural wood, and was thence named the Ciminian wood. Over this barrier Fabius resolved to lead his troops. He sent to inform the senate of his plan, in order that measures might be taken for the defence of the country during his absence. Meantime he directed one of his brothers, who spoke the Tuscan language, to penetrate in disguise to the Umbrians, and to form alliances with any of them that were hostile to the Etruscans. The only people however whom the envoy found so disposed were the Camertes, who agreed to join the Romans if they penetrated to their country.
The senate, daunted at the boldness of Fabius’ plan, sent five deputies accompanied by two tribunes of the people to forbid him to enter the wood, perhaps to arrest him if he should hesitate to obey. But they came too late: in the first watch of the night Fabius sent forward his baggage, the infantry followed; he himself a little before sunrise led the horse up to the enemy’s camp, as it were to reconnoitre. In the evening he returned to his own camp, and then set out and came up with his infantry before night. At daybreak they reached the summit of the mountain, and beheld the cultured vales and plains of Etruria stretched out before them. They hastened to seize the offered prey: the Etruscan nobles assembled their vassals to oppose them, but they could offer no effectual resistance to the disciplined troops of Rome. The Roman army spread their ravages as far as Perusia, where they encountered and totally defeated a combined army of Etruscans and Umbrians; and Perusia, Cortona, and Arretium, three of the leading cities of Etruria, sent forthwith to sue for peace, which was granted for a term of thirty years. As the Romans were returning to the relief of Sutrium they encountered at the lake of Vadimo another Etruscan army, of select troops bound by a solemn oath (lege sacrata) to fight to their uttermost. The two armies engaged hand to hand at once; the first ranks fought till they were exhausted; the reserve then advanced, and the victory was only decided by the Roman knights dismounting and taking their place in the front of the line.
While Fabius was conducting the war in Etruria, his colleague C. Marcius had entered Samnium and taken Allifæ and some other strongholds. The Samnites collected their forces and gave him battle, and the Romans were defeated; several of their officers slain, the consul himself wounded, and their communication with Rome cut off. When the news reached Rome, the senate at once resolved to create a dictator, and to send him off to the relief of Marcius with the reserve which had been levied on account of the Etruscan War. Their hopes lay in L. Papirius Cursor; but the dictator could only be named by the consul; there was no way of reaching Marcius, and Fabius had not yet forgiven the man who had thirsted after his blood. The resolve of the senate was borne to Fabius by consulars; they urged him to sacrifice his private feelings to the good of his country: he heard them in silence, his eyes fixed on the ground, and they retired in uncertainty. In the stillness of the night he arose, and, as was the usage, named L. Papirius dictator, and in the morning he again listened in silence to the thanks and praises of the deputies. The dictator immediately set forth and relieved the army of Marcius, but, impetuous as he was, he contented himself for some time with merely observing the enemy.
[Sidenote: [310-304 B.C.]]
At length the time arrived for a decisive action. The Samnite army was divided into two corps, the one clad in purple, the other in white linen tunics, the former having their brazen shields adorned with gold, the latter with silver: the shields were broad above, narrow below. Each soldier wore a crested helmet, a large sponge to protect his breast, and a greave on his left leg. In the battle the Roman dictator led the right wing against the gold-shielded, the master of the horse, C. Junius, the left against the silver-shielded Samnites. Junius made the first impression on the enemy; the dictator urged his men to emulation, and the Roman horse by a charge on both flanks completed the victory. The Samnites fled to their camp, but were unable to retain it, and ere night it was sacked and burned. The golden shields adorned the dictator’s triumph, and they were then given to the money dealers to ornament their shops in the Forum.
Q. Fabius was continued in the consulate for 309 and P. Decius given to him as his colleague; the former had the Samnite, the latter the Etruscan War. Fabius routed the Marsians and Pelignians, who had now joined against Rome, and he then led his legions into Umbria, whose people had taken arms, and with little difficulty reduced them to submission. Decius meantime had forced the Etruscans to sue for peace, and a year’s truce was granted them on their giving each soldier two tunics, and a year’s pay for the army.
In the remaining years of the war, the exhausted powers of the Samnites could offer but a feeble resistance to the legions of Rome. On the occasion of a defeat which they sustained in 308, the proconsul, Q. Fabius, adopted the novel course of dismissing the Samnite prisoners, and selling for slaves those of their allies. Among these there were several Hernicans, whom he sent to Rome; the senate having instituted an inquiry into the conduct of the Hernican people in this affair, those who had urged them to give aid to the Samnites now engaged them to take arms openly. All the Hernican peoples but three shared in the war; but they made a stand little worthy of their old renown; one short campaign sufficed for their reduction, and they were placed (307) on nearly the same footing as the Latins had been thirty years before.
The Samnites at length (304) sued for peace, and obtained it on the condition they had so often spurned, that of acknowledging Rome’s supremacy, in other words, of yielding up their independence; but peace on any terms was now necessary, that they might recruit their strength for future efforts. The Romans then turned their arms against the Æquians who had joined the Hernicans in aiding the Samnites, and in fifty days the consuls reduced and destroyed forty-one of their Cyclopean-walled towns. The Marsian league sought and obtained peace from Rome.
THE THIRD SAMNITE AND ETRUSCAN WARS
[Sidenote: [304-297 B.C.]]
A few years passed away in tolerable tranquillity; in 298 Lucanian envoys appeared at Rome, praying for aid against the Samnites who had entered their country in arms, given them various defeats, and taken several of their towns. The Romans, in right of their supremacy, sent orders to the Samnites to withdraw their troops from Lucania: the pride of the Samnites was roused at being thus reminded of their subjection; they ordered the fetials off their territory, and war was once more declared against them by the Romans. As the Etruscans were now also in arms, the consul L. Cornelius Scipio went against them, while his colleague Cn. Fulvius invaded Samnium.
Scipio engaged a numerous Etruscan army near Volaterræ. Night ended a hard-fought battle, leaving it undecided. The morn however revealed that the advantage was on the side of the Romans, as the enemy had abandoned their camp during the night. Having placed his baggage and stores at Falerii, Scipio spread his ravages over the country, burning the villages and hamlets; and no army appeared to oppose him. Fulvius meantime carried on the war with credit in Samnium. Near Bovianum he defeated a Samnite army, and took that town and another named Aufidena.
[Sidenote: [297-295 B.C.]]
The rumour of the great preparations which the Samnites and the Etruscans were said to be making caused the people to elect Q. Fabius to the consulate, against his will; and at his own request they joined with him P. Decius. As the Etruscans remained quiet, both the consuls invaded Samnium (297), Fabius entering from Sora, Decius from Sidicinum. The Samnites gave Fabius battle near Tifernum, their infantry stood firm against that of the Romans, and the charge of the Roman cavalry had as little effect. At length, when the reserve had come to the front, and the contest was most obstinate, the legate Scipio, whom the consul had sent away during the action with the hastats of the first legion, appeared on the neighbouring hills. Both armies took them for the legions of Decius; the Samnites’ courage fell, that of the Romans rose, and evening closed on their victory. Decius had meantime defeated the Apulians at Maleventum. During five months both armies ravaged Samnium with impunity; the traces of five-and-forty camps of Decius, of eighty-six of Fabius, bore witness to the sufferings of the ill-fated country.
The next year (296) the Samnites put into execution a daring plan which they had formed in the preceding war, namely, sending an army, to be paid and supported out of their own funds, into Etruria, leaving Samnium meantime at the mercy of the enemy. The Samnite army, under Gellius Egnatius, on arriving there, was joined by the troops of most of the Tuscan states; the Umbrians also shared in the war, and it was proposed to take Gallic mercenaries into pay. The consul App. Claudius entered Etruria with his two legions and twelve thousand of the allies, but he did not feel himself strong enough to give the confederates battle. His colleague L. Volumnius, probably by command of the senate, led his army to join him; but Appius gave him so ungracious a reception that he was preparing to retire, when the officers of the other army implored him not to abandon them for their general’s fault. Volumnius then agreed to remain and fight: a victory was speedily gained over the Etruscans and Samnites, whose general Egnatius was unfortunately absent; 7300 were slain, 2120 taken, and their camp was stormed and plundered.
As Volumnius was returning by rapid marches to Samnium, he learned that the Samnites had taken advantage of his absence to make a descent on Campania, where they had collected an immense booty. He forthwith directed his course thither: at Cales he heard that they were encamped on the Vulturnus, with the intention of carrying their prey into Samnium to secure it. He came and encamped near them, but out of view; and when the Samnites had before day sent forward their captives and booty under an escort, and were getting out of their camp to follow them, they were suddenly fallen on by the Romans: the camp was stormed with great slaughter; the captives, hearing the tumult, unbound themselves, and fell on their escort; the Samnites were routed on all sides--six thousand were slain, twenty-five hundred were taken, seventy-four hundred captives, with all their property, were recovered.
The union of the Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls, which had now been formed, caused the greatest apprehension at Rome, and the people insisted on again electing Q. Fabius consul, to which he would only consent on condition of his approved mate in arms P. Decius being given him for colleague. His wish was complied with. The four legions of the former year were kept on foot and completed, two new ones were raised, and two armies of reserve formed. The number of troops furnished by the allies was considerable: among them were one thousand Campanian horse; for as the Gauls were strong in this arm, it was necessary to augment its force.
[Sidenote: [295-293 B.C.]]
During the winter, Fabius set out, with four thousand foot and six hundred horse, to take the command in Etruria. As he drew nigh to the camp of App. Claudius he met a party sent out for firewood; he ordered them to go back and use the palisades of their camp for the purpose. This gave confidence to the soldiers; and to keep up their spirits, he never let them remain stationary, but moved about from place to place. In the spring (295) he returned to Rome to arrange the campaign, leaving the command in Etruria with L. Scipio.
The consuls led their main force to join the troops left with Scipio; one army of reserve, under the proprætor Cn. Fulvius, was stationed in the Faliscan; another, under the proprætor L. Postumius, in the Vatican district. But the Gauls, pouring in by the pass of Camerinum, had annihilated a Roman legion left to defend it; their numerous cavalry spread over Umbria and got between Scipio and Rome; and as they rode up to the consular army, the heads of the slain Romans which they carried on spears and hung at their horses’ breasts, made the Romans believe that Scipio’s whole army had been destroyed. A junction however was formed with him, and the proconsul L. Volumnius, who commanded in Samnium, was directed to lead his legions to reinforce those of the consuls. The three united armies then crossed the Apennines, and took a position in the Sentine country to menace the possessions of the Senonian Gauls; and the two armies of reserve advanced in proportion, the one to Clusium, the other to the Faliscan country. The confederates came and encamped before the Romans; but they avoided an action, probably waiting for reinforcements. The consuls, learning by deserters that the plan of the enemy was for the Gauls and Samnites to give them battle, and the Etruscans and Umbrians to fall on their camp during the action, sent orders to Fulvius to ravage Etruria: this called a large part of the Etruscans home, and the consuls endeavoured to bring on an engagement during their absence. For two entire days they sought in vain to draw the confederates to the field; on the third their challenge was accepted.
Fabius commanded on the right, opposed to the Samnites and the remaining Etruscans and Umbrians; Decius led the left wing against the Gauls. Ere the fight began, a wolf chased a hind from the mountains down between the two armies; the hind sought refuge among the Gauls, by whom she was killed; the wolf ran among the Romans, who made way for him to pass; and this appearance of the favourite of Mars was regarded as an omen of victory.
In the hope of tiring the Samnites, Fabius made his men act rather on the defensive, and he refrained from bringing his reserve into action. Decius, on the other hand, knowing how impetuous the first attack of the Gauls always was, resolved not to await it; he therefore charged with both foot and horse, and twice drove back the numerous Gallic cavalry; but when his horse charged a third time, the Gauls sent forward their war-chariots, which spread confusion and dismay among them; they fled back among their infantry; the victorious Gauls followed hard upon them. The battle, and with it possibly the hopes of Rome, was on the point of being lost, when Decius, who had resolved, if defeat impended, to devote himself like his father at Vesuvius, desired the pontiff M. Livius, whom he had kept near him for the purpose, to repeat the form of devotion; then adding to it these words, “I drive before me dismay and flight, slaughter and blood, the anger of the powers above and below; with funereal terrors I touch the arms, weapons, and ensigns of the foe; the same place shall be that of my end and of the Gauls and Samnites,” he spurred his horse, rushed into the thick of the enemies, and fell covered with wounds.
The pontiff to whom Decius had given his lictors, encouraged the Romans; a part of Fabius’ reserve came to their support: the Gauls stood in a dense mass covered with their shields; the Romans, collecting the pila that lay on the ground, hurled them on them; but the Gauls stood unmoved, till Fabius, who by bringing forward his reserve, and causing his cavalry to fall on their flank, had driven the Samnites to their camp, sent five hundred of the Campanian horse, followed by the principes of the third legion, to attack them in the rear; they then at length broke and fled. Fabius again assailed the Samnites under their rampart; their general, Gellius Egnatius, fell, and the camp was taken. The confederates lost twenty-five thousand men slain and eight thousand taken; seven thousand was the loss in the wing led by Decius, twelve hundred in that of Fabius. Such was the victory at Sentinum, one of the most important ever achieved by the arms of Rome.
The following year (294) the war was continued in Etruria and Samnium, and a bloody but indecisive battle was fought at Nuceria. The next year (293) the consuls, L. Papirius Cursor and Sp. Carvilius, took the field against a Samnite army, which all the aids of superstition had been employed to render formidable.
All the fighting men of Samnium were ordered to appear at the town of Aquilonia. A tabernacle, two hundred feet square, and covered with linen, was erected in the midst of the camp. Within it a venerable man named Ovius Pacctius offered sacrifice after an ancient ritual contained in an old linen book. The imperator or general then ordered the nobles to be called in separately: each as he entered beheld through the gloom of the tabernacle the altar in the centre, about which lay the bodies of the victims, and around which stood centurions with drawn swords. He was required to swear, imprecating curses on himself, his family, and his race, if he did not in the battle go whithersoever the imperator ordered him; if he fled himself, or did not slay any one whom he saw flying. Some of the first summoned, refusing to swear, were slain, and their bodies lying among those of the victims served as a warning to others. The general selected ten of those who had thus sworn, each of whom was directed to choose a man till the number of sixteen thousand was completed, which was named from the tabernacle the Linen legion. Crested helmets and superior arms were given them for distinction. The rest of the army, upwards of twenty thousand men, was little inferior in any respect to the Linen legion.
The Roman armies entered Samnium; and while Papirius advanced to Aquilonia, Carvilius sat down before a fortress named Cominium, about twenty miles from that place. The ardour for battle is said to have been shared to such an extent by all the Roman army, that the pullarius, or keeper of the sacred fowl, made a false report of favourable signs. The truth was told to the consul as he was going into battle; but he said the signs reported to him were good, and only ordered the pullarii to be placed in the front rank; and when the guilty one fell by the chance blow of a pilum, he cried that the gods were present, the guilty was punished. A crow was heard to give a loud cry as he spoke; the gods, he then declared, had never shown themselves more propitious, and he ordered the trumpets to sound and the war-cry to be raised.
The Samnites had sent off twenty cohorts to the relief of Cominium; their spirits were depressed, but they kept their ground, till a great cloud of dust, as if raised by an army, was seen on one side. For the consul had sent off before the action Sp. Nautius, with the mules and their drivers, and some cohorts of the allies, with directions to advance during the engagement, raising all the dust they could. Nautius now came in view, the horseboys having boughs in their hands, which they dragged along the ground; and the arms and banners appearing through the dust, made both Romans and Samnites think that an army was approaching. The consul then gave the sign for the horse to charge; the Samnites broke and fled, some to Aquilonia, some to Bovianum. The number of their slain is said to have been 30,340, and 3870 men and 97 banners were captured. Aquilonia and Cominium were both taken on the same day. Carvilius then led his army into Etruria; his colleague remained in Samnium, ravaging the country, till the falling of the snow obliged him to leave it for the winter.
[Sidenote: [293-290 B.C.]]
In the next campaign (292), the Samnite general C. Pontius gave the Roman consul Q. Fabius Gurges, son of the great Fabius, a complete defeat. A strong party in the senate, the enemies of the Fabian house, were for depriving the consul of his command; but the people yielded to the prayers of his father, who implored them to spare him this disgrace in his old age; and he himself went into Samnium as legate to his son. At a place whose name is unknown the battle was fought, which decided the fate of Samnium. Fabius gained the victory by his usual tactics, of keeping his reserve for the proper time. The Samnites had twenty thousand slain and four thousand taken, among whom was their great general C. Pontius. In the triumph of Fabius Gurges, his renowned father humbly followed his car on horseback; and C. Pontius was led in bonds, and then, to Rome’s disgrace, beheaded. Q. Fabius Maximus, one of the greatest men that Rome ever produced, died, it is probable, shortly afterwards.
The Samnite War, which had lasted with little intermission for nine-and-forty years, was now terminated by a peace, of the exact terms of which we are not informed (290). The Sabines, who, after a cessation of 150 years, foolishly took up arms against Rome, were easily reduced by the consul M. Curius Dentatus, and a large quantity of their land was taken from them. Much larger assignments than the usual seven jugera might now be made, but Curius deemed it unwise to pass that limit; and when the people murmured, he replied that he was a pernicious citizen whom the land which sufficed to support him did not satisfy. He refused for himself five hundred jugera and a house at Tifata which the senate offered him, and contented himself with a farm of seven jugera in the Sabine country.
The Samnite War caused considerable distress at Rome, and it even came to a secession. The people posted themselves on the Janiculum; but the dictator, Q. Hortensius, induced them to submit, either by an abolition or a considerable reduction of the amount of their debts. This is the last secession we read of in Roman history.
On this occasion the Hortensian law, which made the plebiscits binding on the whole nation, was passed;[42] a measure probably caused by the obstinacy and caprice of the patricians, but pregnant with evil, from which however the good fortune of Rome long preserved her. It was as if in England a measure which had passed the Commons were to become at once the law of the land.
Among the events of this period, the introduction of the worship of the Grecian god Æsculapius deserves to be noticed. In the year 293 an epidemic prevailed at Rome, and the Sibylline books being consulted, it was directed to fetch Æsculapius to Rome. A trireme with ten deputies was sent to Epidaurus for that purpose. The legend relates, that the senate of that place agreed that the Romans should take whatever the god should give them; and that as they were praying at the temple, a huge snake came out of the sanctuary, went on to the town five miles off, through the streets, to the harbour, thence on board the Roman trireme, and into the cabin of Q. Ogulnius. The envoys having been instructed in the worship of the god, departed, and a prosperous wind brought them to Antium. Here they took shelter from a storm; the snake swam ashore, and remained twined round a palm-tree at the temple of Apollo while they stayed. When they reached Rome he left the ship again, and swimming to the island, disappeared in the spot where the temple of the god was afterwards built.
LUCANIAN, GALLIC, AND ETRUSCAN WARS
[Sidenote: [290-282 B.C.]]
Rome now rested from war for some years. At length (284) the Tarentines, who had been the chief agents in exciting the last Samnite War, succeeded in inducing the Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls in the north, and the Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites in the south, to take arms simultaneously against her. The commencement was the hostility exercised by the Lucanians against the people of the Greek town of Thurii, who, despairing of aid from any other quarter, applied to the Romans.
[Sidenote: [282-280 B.C.]]
In 282, a Roman army under C. Fabricius Luscinus came to the relief of Thurii. The spirits of the Romans sank as they viewed their own inferiority of force; when, lo! a youth of gigantic stature, wearing a double-crested helm, like those on the statues of Mars, was seen to seize a scaling-ladder, and mount the rampart of the enemies’ camp. The courage of the Romans rose, that of the foes declined, and a signal victory crowned the arms of Rome. When next day the consul sought that valiant youth, to bestow on him the suitable meed, he was nowhere to be found. Fabricius then directed a thanksgiving to Father Mars (as it must have been he) to be held throughout the army. Many other victories succeeded; and no Roman general had as yet acquired so much booty as Fabricius did in this campaign.
When the Roman army retired, a garrison was left for the defence of Thurii. As it was only by sea that a communication could be conveniently kept up with it, a squadron of ten triremes, under the duumvir L. Valerius, was now in these waters. Some years before, it had been an article in a treaty with the Tarentines, that no Roman ship of war should sail to the north of the Lacinian Cape; but as they had taken no notice of it now, and there was as yet no open hostility between them and the Romans, Valerius appeared off the port of Tarentum. The people unluckily happened at that moment to be assembled in the theatre, which commanded a view of the sea; a demagogue named Philocharis, a man of the vilest character,[43] pointing to the Roman ships, reminded them of the treaty; the infuriated populace rushed on shipboard, attacked and sank four, and took one of the Roman vessels. The Tarentines then sent a force against Thurii, where they plundered the town and banished the principal citizens: the Roman garrison was dismissed unmolested.
The Romans, as they had an Etruscan war on their hands, were anxious to accommodate matters amicably in the south. Their demands were therefore very moderate: they only required the release of those taken in the trireme; the restoration of the Thurians, and restitution of their property; and the surrender of the authors of the outrage. Audience was given to the envoys in the theatre. When they entered, the people laughed at the sight of their purple-bordered prætextæ, and the faults of language committed by L. Postumius, the chief of the embassy, redoubled their merriment. As the envoys were leaving the theatre, a drunken buffoon came and befouled the robe of Postumius in the most abominable manner: the peals of laughter were redoubled; but Postumius, holding up his robe, cried out, “Ay, laugh, laugh while ye may; ye will weep long enough when ye have to wash this out in blood.” He displayed at Rome his unwashed garment; and the senate, after anxious deliberation, declared war against Tarentum (281). The consul L. Æmilius Barbula was ordered to lead his army thither, to offer anew the former terms, and if they were refused, to carry on the war with vigour. The Tarentines, however, would listen to no terms; they resorted to their usual system of seeking aid from the mother country, and sent an embassy to invite over Pyrrhus, the renowned king of Epirus. Meantime Æmilius laid waste their country, took several strong places, and defeated them in the field.
We will now turn our view northwards. In 283 a combined army of Etruscans and Senonian Gauls having laid siege to Arretium, the prætor L. Metellus hastened to its relief; but his army was totally defeated, thirteen thousand men being slain, and nearly all the remainder made prisoners. When an embassy was sent to the Gauls to complain of breach of treaty, and to redeem the prisoners, the Gallic prince Britomaris, to avenge his father, who had fallen at Arretium, caused the fetiales to be murdered. The consul P. Cornelius Dolabella instantly marched through the Sabine and Picentian country into that of the Senonians, whom he defeated when they met him in the field: he then wasted the lands, burned the open villages, put all the men to death, and reduced the women and children to slavery. Britomaris, who was taken alive, was reserved to grace the consul’s triumph.
The Boians, who dwelt between the Senonians and the Po, were filled with rage and apprehension at the fate of their brethren, and assembling all their forces they entered Etruria, where being joined by the Etruscans and the remnant of the Senonians, they pressed on for Rome; but at the Lake Vadimo the consular armies met and nearly annihilated their whole army; the Senonians, it is said, in frenzy of despair put an end to themselves when they saw the battle lost. The Gauls appeared again the next year (284) in Etruria; but a signal defeat near Populonia (282) forced them to sue for peace, which on account of the war in the south, the Romans readily granted.
The war with the Etruscans continued till the year 280, when, in consequence of that with Pyrrhus, the Romans concluded a peace with them on most favourable terms. This peace terminated the conflict, which had now lasted for thirty years, and converted Etruria into Rome’s steadiest and most faithful ally.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[38] [Edward A. Freeman[e] calls the Samnites “the worthiest foes whom Rome ever met within her own peninsula.” He adds, “There can be little doubt that they possessed a Federal Constitution. Their resistance ended only with the extermination of their race.”]
[39] [Freeman[e] notes that Rome had never appeared to be “the mere capital of the Latin League. As far as the faintest glimmerings of history go back, Rome holds a position towards Latium far more lordly than that of Thebes towards Bœotia. It is no wonder that a League of small towns could not permanently bear up against a single great city of their own race whose strength equalled their united strength, and which was more liberal of its franchise than any other city-commonwealth ever was.”]
[40] [In the interpretations of clauses 1 and 2 of the Publilian Law scholars are divided. The comitia curiata had now lost all real power, and in fact had never enjoyed the right to pass upon resolutions adopted by other assemblies. It was probably either the senate or the patrician part of the senate which was required to give its previous consent to bills brought before the centuries. Clause 2 probably gave validity to resolutions of the tribal assembly, even when no patricians were present; cf. Botsford.[h]]
[41] [This is the Papirius Cursor of whom Livy [g] writes the glowing eulogy we have quoted in the preceding Volume, Chapter LVII, where Livy claims that Papirius Cursor--as the contemporary of Alexander and the general whom he would have met had he attacked Rome instead of Persia--would have equalled the Macedonian and driven him out of Italy.]
[42] [This law probably made unnecessary the consent of the senate to resolutions passed by the tribal assembly under the presidency of the plebeian tribunes.]
[43] [The Tarentines were not of course so bad as the Roman historians represent. Though imprudent, they had good ground for indignation.]
IX. THE COMPLETION OF THE ITALIAN CONQUEST
Through a long series of struggles, Rome had now become mistress of central Italy, with growing power in the north, and almost complete subjugation of the Greek cities of the south. There were a few of the latter, however, that still held out against the Roman influence. Pre-eminent among these was Tarentum, and it was through a conflict with this city that the Romans were threatened by the first important invasion of an armed force from the east. This force came under the guidance of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, a relative of Alexander the Great, who sought to emulate the deeds of that great hero.
Pyrrhus was not precisely another Alexander, but he was quite the foremost warrior of his time. Doubtless he had the aspiration to make Epirus the centre, and himself the master, of the world. His ambition was not to be realised; but he was able, for a time, to challenge the power of Rome, and more cogently to threaten its overthrow than any one before him had done, since the invasion of the Gauls, or than any one after him was able to do, with the single exception of Hannibal, until a late period of imperial history. The invasion of Pyrrhus, quite aside from the personal ambitions of the invader, had the widest and most world-historic importance, for it was a struggle of the old East against the new West--a repetition in some sense of that earlier struggle in which the Persians had sought to overthrow the growing power of Greece. Pyrrhus brought with him the famed Macedonian phalanx. He was met by the Roman legion, which, in its time, was to become even more famous, and with even better reason. Whether for the moment phalanx or legion would have proved the more formidable it is difficult to say, but in addition Pyrrhus brought with him a troop of war elephants, and it was this factor, largely, which turned the scale at first in his favour. Up to this time no elephant, probably, had ever been landed on the peninsula of Italy, and the sight of these beasts advancing in line of battle was enough to bring terror to the heart of the most hardened veterans.
It is true that fifty years earlier the Macedonians had met an oriental enemy aided by this, to them, new arm of warfare, and had easily found a means of overcoming their adversary, and nullifying the advantage which these great beasts were supposed to give them. Whether it was the lack of an Alexander, or that the Romans were of less staunch fibre than the Macedonians, or that the soldiers of Pyrrhus were more competent to meet the Romans hand to hand than were the Persians to oppose the hosts of Alexander--whatever the explanation, the fact remains that the elephants of Pyrrhus turned the scale clearly in his favour in the first two great battles in which he met the Romans on their soil. But the Romans, if defeated, were by no means dishonoured. The classical saying of Pyrrhus that another such victory would mean his ruin, shows that the battles of Heraclea and Asculum were very different affairs from most of the battles of an earlier day, in which Greek had met Persian, or even those in which Greek met Greek. In those Grecian battles, as we have seen, the courageous front of the one side, and the timidity of the other, often decided the day with scarcely more than the clashing of arms, or the chance wounding of here and there a fugitive. But here, the arbitrament of arms in its sternest phase was necessary to decide the victory. The Macedonians, with the fame of Alexander fresh in their minds, might scorn at first, but soon learned to respect these new foemen of the West, finding them, indeed, foemen worthy of their steel, and the conqueror who remained on the field after the battle had almost as much cause for regret over his losses as for rejoicing over his victory.
But the strangest thing of all was the way in which the vanquished Romans met their fate and rallied from defeat, refusing to recognise their disasters as more than momentary checks. Herein it was that the Roman proved himself a very different person from the typical Greek, of, for example, the best day of Athens. Instead of acknowledging defeat and accepting or offering terms of surrender, the Romans indignantly rejected all overtures from Pyrrhus, and set desperately to work to rehabilitate an army and win back their laurels, declaring that they would never rest content while the enemy remained on Italian soil; and in due time they made their word good. Pyrrhus, indeed, for a period of two years left Italian soil, not to return to Greece, but to go to Sicily, there to aid the Syracusans who were beset by the Carthaginians. Recognising in Pyrrhus a common enemy, the Carthaginians and the Romans for the first and last time in their history formed an alliance, and the Carthaginians did good service for the cause in defeating the fleet of Pyrrhus when on its way back from Sicily. Beyond this, however, the land-forces of Rome--and up to this time it was solely as a land power that Rome could lay claim to great importance--were left to their own resources in dealing with the Epirot enemy. This resource, however, proved in the end quite sufficient, for in the great battle of Beneventum, in the year 275 B.C., the tables were turned on Pyrrhus and his forces were unequivocally routed. Nothing remained for him but to return to Epirus, where local wars also claimed his attention.
It is more than likely that in thus retreating from Italy, Pyrrhus intended some day to return and revenge himself for his losses, but if so the intention never became a reality, for three years later the greatest warrior of his time was killed at Argos after a victorious siege of that city. Meantime Rome had proved herself able to cope with the Epirot invasion, and she was never again to be seriously threatened from that direction.
It would probably be difficult to overestimate the value to the Roman commonwealth of this test of skill with Pyrrhus and his famed Macedonian phalanx in giving them confidence in themselves and in their own prowess which should stand them in good stead in meeting those other enemies who must needs be put down before Rome could become what she was now aspiring to be, Mistress of the World.[a]
PYRRHUS IN ITALY
Pyrrhus was now in his thirty-eighth year. His whole life had been a course of adventure and peril. His father, Æacides, had been king of Epirus; and the young prince, being left an orphan at the age of five amid the troubles which followed the death of Alexander the Great, led a wandering and uncertain life, till, at about seventeen years of age, he sought refuge at the court of Antigonus, the Macedonian king of Syria. Here he formed a friendship with the king’s son, the celebrated Demetrius Poliorcetes, and was present on the bloody field of Ipsus (301 B.C.), which deprived Antigonus of his life, and Demetrius of his succession. After this defeat, he was received at the magnificent court of Ptolemy Soter, the first Macedonian king of Egypt, as a hostage for his friend Demetrius. Here Pyrrhus found favour with Queen Berenice, who gave him in marriage Antigone, her daughter by a former marriage, and persuaded Ptolemy to assist him in recovering his Epirot sovereignty, where he established himself so firmly that on the death of Cassander, he disputed with his former friend Demetrius the succession to the throne of Macedon. For a time he was master of the eastern provinces; but, after a seven months’ reign, Pyrrhus was again driven across the mountains into Epirus (287 B.C.). For the next few years he lived at peace; built Ambracia as a new capital of his dominions, and reigned there in security and magnificence. He was in the prime of life, handsome in person, happy in temper, popular from his frankness and generosity, and reputed to be a skilful soldier. But neither his nature nor his restless youth had fitted him for the enjoyment of happy tranquillity. He had married as his second wife the daughter of Agathocles of Syracuse; the exploits of that remarkable man fired his soul; he remembered that Alcibiades, that Alexander, that every Greek conqueror had looked to the West as a new scene for enterprise and triumph; and he lent a ready ear to the solicitations of the Italian envoys. After defeating the Romans and Carthaginians, he might return as king of southern Italy and Sicily, and dictate terms to the exhausted monarchs of Macedon and Asia. These had been the dreams of less romantic persons than himself.[44]
[Sidenote: [281-280 B.C.]]
It was at the end of the year 281 B.C. that he left Epirus with a force of about twenty thousand foot, and four thousand or five thousand horse, together with a squadron of twenty elephants, held by the Greeks at that time to be a necessary part of a complete armament. On the passage his ships were scattered by a storm, but eventually they all reached Tarentum in safety. His infantry was in part supplied by Ptolemy Ceraunus, now king of Macedon. His cavalry were Thessalian, the best in Greece. It was a small army for the execution of designs so vast. But he trusted to the promises of the Lucanians and Samnites; and he also intended to make the Tarentines into soldiers. No sooner had he landed, than this people found how true were the words of their fellow-citizen. They had meant Pyrrhus to fight their battles, like his kinsman, Alexander of Molossus; but he resolved that they also should fight his battles. He shut up the theatres and other places of public amusement; closed the democratic clubs; put some demagogues to death, and banished others; and ordered all citizens of military age to be drilled for the phalanx. The indolent populace murmured, but in vain. The horse had taken a rider on his back to avenge him on the stag, and it was no longer possible to shake him off.
With the early spring the Romans took the field. Ti. Coruncanius, plebeian consul for the year 280, commanded against the Etrurians, with orders to make a peace if possible. P. Valerius Lævinus, his patrician colleague, was to march through Lucania, so as to prevent the Lucanians from joining the king; while Æmilius, consul of the former year, was stationed at Venusia, to hold the Samnites and Apulians in check. A Campanian legion, composed of Mamertines, commanded by one Decius Jubellius, an officer of their own choosing, occupied Rhegium, in order (we may suppose) to intercept communications from Sicily.
As the king moved along the coast from Heraclea he came in view of the Roman army, encamped on the right bank of the little river Siris. His practised eye was at once struck by the military order of the enemy’s camp. And when he saw them cross the broad but shallow stream in the face of his own army, and form their line before he could close with them, he remarked, “In war, at least, these barbarians are no way barbarous.”
And now for the first time the Roman legions had to stand the shock of the Greek phalanx. The tactics of the two armies were wholly different. The free order of the legions, which now fought with pila and swords, has been described above. On the other hand, the Epirots formed two great columns, called the phalanxes, in which each man stood close to his fellow, so that half his body was covered by his right-hand man’s shield. They were drawn up sixteen deep, and their long pikes, called sarissæ, bristled so thickly in front, that the line was impenetrable unless a gap could be made in the front ranks. They acted mechanically, by weight. If they were once broken they were almost defenceless. Level ground, therefore, was necessary to their effective action.
Pyrrhus had secured this last-named advantage: the plain of Heraclea was well adapted for the regular movement of the phalanxes, as well as for that of his cavalry and elephants. The action began by the Roman cavalry crossing the Siris, and driving back a squadron of the Thessalian horse, the remainder of which, with the elephants, were yet in the rear. The main body of the Romans, inspirited by this success, followed across the bed of the river to assail the phalanxes. But they could make no impression on these solid masses; the principes took the place of the hastati, and the triarii succeeded to the principes, in vain. Lævinus then ordered up his cavalry to attack the phalanxes in flank. But they were met by the whole body of Thessalian horse, supported by the elephants. The Romans had never before seen these monstrous animals, which in their ignorance they called “Lucanian oxen”: their horses would not face them, and galloped back affrighted among the infantry. Pyrrhus now led his whole line forward, and the rout was general. The Romans were driven back across the Siris, and did not attempt to defend their camp. Yet they soon rallied, and retired in good order into Apulia, where Venusia was ready to receive them. It was now seen with what judgment the senate had occupied that place with a large colony.
The victory of Heraclea was gained at a very heavy loss. Pyrrhus now rightly estimated the task he had undertaken. He had a soldier’s eye. When he visited the field of battle next day, and saw every Roman corpse with its wounds in front, he exclaimed: “If these were my soldiers, or if I were their general, we should conquer the world.” When he offered in the temple of Jove at Tarentum a portion of the spoils taken after the battle, he placed on them the following inscription:
“Those who had ne’er been vanquished yet, great Father of Olympus, Those have I vanquished in the fight, and they have vanquished me.”
And when he was asked why he spoke thus, he answered: “Another victory like this will send me without a man back to Epirus.”
The battle of Heraclea, however, encouraged the Greek cities of Locri and Rhegium to throw off the Roman yoke. Locri joined Pyrrhus; but Decius Jubellius, with his Campanian soldiers, declared themselves independent, and seized Rhegium for themselves. But, above all, the battle of Heraclea left the ground open for the Lucanians and Samnites to join the king; and he advanced into Samnium to claim the fulfilment of their promises. But as he advanced he was struck by the desolate condition of the country; and he reproached the Italians with deceiving him. The battle which had just been fought taught him how formidable was the foe he had to deal with, and what he now saw, that he must trust to his own resources. He resolved therefore to end the war at once by negotiating an advantageous peace.
The person employed in this negotiation was Cineas, a name only less remarkable than that of Pyrrhus himself. He was a Thessalian Greek, famous for his eloquence, but still more famous for his diplomatic skill. He served Pyrrhus as minister at home and ambassador abroad. “The tongue of Cineas,” Pyrrhus used to say, “had won him more battles than his own sword.” So quick was his perception, and so excellent his memory, that he had hardly arrived in Rome when he could call every senator by his name, and address every one according to his character. The terms he had to offer were stringent; for Pyrrhus required that all Greek cities should be left free, and that all the places that had been taken from the Samnites, Apulians, and his other allies, should be restored. Yet the skill of Cineas would have persuaded the senate to submit to these terms if it had not been for one man. This was Appius Claudius the censor. He was now in extreme old age; he had been blind for many years, and had long ceased to take part in public affairs. But now, when he heard of the proposed surrender, he caused himself to be conducted to the senate-house by his four sons and his five sons-in-law, and there, with the authoritative eloquence of an oracle, he confirmed the wavering spirits of the fathers, and dictated the only answer worthy of Rome--that she would not treat of peace with Pyrrhus till he had quitted the shores of Italy. The dying patriotism of Appius covers the multitude of arbitrary acts of which he was guilty in his censorship.
Cineas returned to Pyrrhus, baffled and without hope. He told his master, that “to fight with the Roman people was like fighting with the hydra”; he declared that “the city was as a temple of the gods, and the senate an assembly of kings.” But the king resolved to try what effect might be produced by the presence of his army in Latium. He passed rapidly through Campania, leaving it to be plundered by the Samnites, and advanced upon Rome by the upper or Latin road. He took the colony of Fregellæ by storm; he received the willing submission of Anagnia, the capital of the Hernicans, and was admitted into the impregnable citadel of Præneste, for both the Hernicans and the Prænestines were only half Roman citizens; they bore the burdens without enjoying the privileges, and were therefore glad to welcome a chance of liberty. He then advanced six miles beyond Præneste, within eighteen miles of Rome. But here his course was stayed. There were no signs of defection among the bulk of the Latins, or Volscians, or Campanians, who had been admitted into the tribes and enjoyed the full honours of Roman citizenship. Ti. Coruncanius, afterwards chief pontiff, and now consul, was himself a Latin of Tusculum. What he had gained all might hope for.
This winter is famous for the embassy of C. Fabricius, who was sent by the senate with two other consulars to propose to Pyrrhus an interchange of prisoners. The character and habits of Fabricius resembled those of Curius. He lived in frugal simplicity upon his own farm, and was honoured by his countrymen for his inflexible uprightness. He was somewhat younger than Curius, and seems to have been less rough in manners and more gentle in disposition. The stories are well known which tell how Pyrrhus practised upon his cupidity by offering him gold, and upon his fears by concealing an elephant behind the curtains of the royal tent, which, upon a given signal, waved its trunk over his head; and how Fabricius calmly refused the bribe, and looked with unmoved eye upon the threatening monster. Pyrrhus, it is said, so admired the bearing of the Roman that he wished him to enter into his service like Cineas, an offer which, to a Roman ear, could convey nothing but insult. The king refused to give up any Roman citizens whom he had taken, unless the senate would make peace upon the terms proposed through Cineas: but he gave his prisoners leave to return home in the month of December to partake in the joviality of the Saturnalia, if they would pledge their word of honour to return. His confidence was not misplaced. The prisoners used every effort to procure peace; but the senate remained firm, and ordered every man, under penalty of death, to return to Tarentum by the appointed day.
[Sidenote: [280-278 B.C.]]
Hostilities were renewed next year. The new consuls were P. Sulpicius for the Patricians, and P. Decius Mus, son and grandson of those illustrious plebeians who had devoted themselves to death beneath Vesuvius and at Sentinum. We are ignorant of the details of the campaign till we find the consuls strongly encamped on the hills which command the plain of Apulian Asculum. Here Pyrrhus encountered them. After some skilful manœuvring he drew the Romans down into the plain, where his phalanx and cavalry could act freely. He placed the Tarentines in the centre, the Italian allies on his left wing, and his Epirots and Macedonians in phalanx on the right; his cavalry and elephants he kept in reserve. A second time the Roman legions wasted their strength upon the phalanxes. Again and again they charged that iron wall with unavailing bravery, till Pyrrhus brought up his cavalry and elephants, as at Heraclea, and the Romans were broken. But this time they made good their retreat to their entrenched camp, and Pyrrhus did not think it prudent to pursue them. He had little confidence in his Italian allies, who hated the Greeks even more than they hated the Romans, and gave signal proof of their perfidy by plundering the king’s camp while he was in action. The loss on both sides was heavy. The second victory was now won; but the king’s saying was fast being fulfilled. In these two battles he had lost many of his chief officers and a great number of the Epirots, the only troops on whom he could rely. He dared not advance; and when he returned to Tarentum news awaited him which dispirited him still more. The Romans, he heard, had concluded a defensive alliance with Carthage, so that the superiority of Tarentum at sea would be lost; Ptolemy Ceraunus, who had promised him fresh troops from Macedon, had been slain by the Gauls, and these barbarians were threatening to overrun Greece.
Under these circumstances he seized the first occasion of making peace with Rome. This was afforded early in the next year by a communication he received from the new consuls Q. Æmilius and C. Fabricius. They sent to give him notice that his physician or cup-bearer (the accounts vary) had offered to take him off by poison. Pyrrhus returned his warmest thanks, sent back all his prisoners fresh-clothed and without ransom, and told his allies he should accept an invitation he had just received to take the command of a Sicilian-Greek army against the Carthaginians and Mamertines. Accordingly he sailed from Locri to Sicily, evading the Carthaginian fleet which had been lying in wait for him. He left the Italians to the mercy of the Romans, but Milo still kept hold of the citadel of Tarentum, and Alexander, the king’s son, remained in garrison at Locri.
He had been a little more than two years in Italy, for he came at the end of the year 281 B.C. and departed early in 278: he returned towards the close of 276, so that his stay in Sicily was about two years and a half. The events of this period may be very briefly summed up.
[Sidenote: [278-275 B.C.]]
The Samnites and Lucanians continued a sort of partisan warfare against Rome, in which, though the consuls were honoured with triumphs, no very signal advantages seem to have been gained. The Romans no doubt took back the places on the Latin road which had submitted to the king; they also made themselves masters of Locri, and utterly destroyed the ancient city of Croton, but they failed to take Rhegium, which was stoutly maintained by Decius Jubellius and his Campanians against Pyrrhus and Romans alike. Meanwhile Pyrrhus was pursuing a career of brilliant success in Sicily. He confined the Mamertines within the walls of Messana, and in a brilliant campaign drove the Carthaginians to the extreme west of the island. But in an evil hour he undertook the siege of Lilybæum, a place which the Carthaginians had made almost impregnable. He was obliged to raise the siege and lost the confidence of his fickle Greek allies. Before this also death had deprived him of the services of Cineas. Left to himself, he was guilty of many harsh and arbitrary acts, which proceeded rather from impatience and disappointment than from a cruel or tyrannical temper. It now became clear that he could hold Sicily no longer, and he gladly accepted a new invitation to return to Italy.
Accordingly, late in the year 276 B.C., he set sail for Tarentum. On the passage he was intercepted by a Carthaginian fleet, and lost the larger number of his ships; and, on landing between Rhegium and Locri, he suffered further loss by an assault from the Campanians, who still held the former city. Yet, once in Italy, he found himself at the head of a large army, composed partly of his veteran Epirots, and partly of soldiers of fortune who had followed him from Sicily. His first act was to recover possession of Locri; and here, in extreme want of money, he listened to evil counsellors, and plundered the rich temple of Proserpine. The ships that were conveying the plunder were wrecked, and Pyrrhus, conscience-stricken, restored all that was saved. But the memory of the deed haunted him: he has recorded his belief that this sacrilegious act was the cause of all his future misfortunes.
The consuls of the next year were L. Cornelius Lentulus and M. Curius Dentatus. On Curius depended the fortunes of Rome. The people were much disheartened, for pestilence was raging. The statue of Capitoline Jupiter had been struck by lightning, and men’s hearts were filled with ominous forebodings. When the consuls held their levy, the citizens summoned for service did not answer to their names. Then Curius ordered the goods of the first recusant to be sold, a sentence which was followed by the loss of all political rights. This severe measure had its effect, and the required legions were made up.
Lentulus marched into Lucania, Curius into Samnium. Pyrrhus chose the latter country for the seat of war. He found Curius encamped above Beneventum, and he resolved on a night attack, so as to surprise him before he could be joined by his colleague. But night attacks seldom succeed: part of the army missed its way, and it was broad daylight before the Epirot army appeared before the camp of the consul. Curius immediately drew out his legions, and assaulted the enemy while they were entangled in the mountains. He had instructed his archers to shoot arrows wrapped in burning tow at the elephants, and to this device is attributed the victory he won. One of the females, hearing the cries of her young one, which had been wounded in this way, rushed furiously into the ranks of her own men. Curius now brought up the main body of his foot and attacked the disordered phalanxes; they were broken and became helpless. The defeat was complete: Pyrrhus fell back at once upon Tarentum, and resolved to quit the shores of Italy, leaving Milo to hold the citadel.
But the glory of his life was ended; the two or three years that remained of it were passed in hopeless enterprises. In storming Argos he was killed by a tile thrown by a woman from the roof of a house. Such was the end of this remarkable man. Like Richard I of England or Charles XII of Sweden, he passed his life in winning battles without securing any fruits of victory; and, like them, a life passed in the thick of danger was ended in a petty war and by an unknown hand. His chivalric disposition won him the admiration even of his enemies; his impetuous temper and impatience of misfortune prevented him from securing the confidence of his friends. Yet he left a name worthy of his great ancestry; and we part with regret from the history of his Italian wars, for it is the most frank and generous conflict in which Rome was ever engaged.
THE FINAL REDUCTION OF ITALY
[Sidenote: [273-272 B.C.]]
The departure of Pyrrhus left Italy at the mercy of Rome. Yet Milo, the king’s lieutenant, still held the citadel of Tarentum, and none of the nations who had lately joined the Epirot standard submitted without a final struggle. The Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttians, and other tribes continued a kind of guerrilla warfare, for which their mountains afforded great facilities. To put an end to this, in the year 272 B.C., L. Papirius Cursor the younger, and Sp. Carvilius, who had crushed the Samnites at the close of the third war, were again elected consuls. Papirius invested Tarentum; and while the lines were being formed, he received the submission of the Lucanians and Bruttians.
Meanwhile Carvilius attacked the Samnites, and the scattered remnants of that brave people saw themselves compelled to submit finally to Rome, after a struggle of about seventy years. Thus ended what is sometimes called the Fourth Samnite War.
The same summer witnessed the reduction of Tarentum. Papirius entered into a secret treaty with Milo, by which the latter was to evacuate the city and leave it to the will of the Romans. He sailed for Epirus with all his men and stores, and Tarentum was left to itself. The aristocratical party instantly seized the government, and made submission to Rome. They were allowed to continue independent, on condition of paying an annual tribute to the conqueror; but their fortifications were razed, their arsenal dismantled, the fleet surrendered to Rome, and a Roman garrison placed in their citadel.
The attention excited by the failure of Pyrrhus is attested by the fact that in the year 273 B.C. Ptolemy Philadelphus, sovereign of Egypt, sent ambassadors to Rome, and entered into alliance with Rome. Thus began a connection with Egypt which continued unbroken to the time of Cæsar.
[Sidenote: [271-265 B.C.]]
In 271 B.C. the plebeian consul C. Genucius was sent to reduce Decius Jubellius and the Campanian soldiers, who had made themselves lords of Rhegium, and formed a military oligarchy in that city. The senate formed a treaty with the Mamertine soldiery, who had occupied Messana in the same manner, and thus detached them from alliance with their compatriots; they also secured supplies of corn from Hiero, the new sovereign of Syracuse. The Campanians of Rhegium being thus forsaken, the city was taken by assault and all the soldiery put to the sword, except the original legionaries of Jubellius, who as burgesses of Capua possessed some of the rights of Roman citizens, and were therefore reserved for trial before the people of Rome. Not more than three hundred still survived out of several thousands; but they met with no mercy. Every tribe voted that they should be first scourged and then beheaded as traitors to the republic. Rhegium was restored to the condition of a Greek community.
A few years later, the Salentines and Messapians in the heel of Italy submitted to the joint forces of both consuls. Brundusium and its lands were ceded to Rome; and about twenty years afterwards (244 B.C.) a colony was planted there. Brundusium became the Dover of Italy, as Dyrrhachium, on the opposite Epirot coast, became the Calais of Greece.
In the year 268 B.C. both consuls undertook the reduction of the Picenians, who occupied the coast land between Umbria and the Marrucinians. Their chief city, Asculum, was taken by storm. A portion of the people was transferred to that beautiful coast between Naples and the Silarus, where they took the name of Picentines. Soon after (266 B.C.) Sarsina, the chief city of the Umbrians, was taken, and all Umbria submitted to Rome.
It remains to speak of Etruria. No community here was strong enough, so far as we hear, to maintain active war against Rome; even Volsinii was now compelled to sue for succour. The ruling aristocracy had ventured to arm their serfs, probably for the purpose of a Roman war; but these men had turned upon their late masters, and were now exercising a still direr oppression than they had suffered. The senate readily gave ear to a call for assistance from the Volsinian lords; and (in the year 265 B.C.) Q. Fabius Gurges, son of old Fabius Maximus, invested the city. He was slain in a sally made by the Etruscan serfs, who were, however, obliged to surrender soon after. The Romans treated the city as lawfully gotten booty. The old Etruscan town on the hill-top, with its polygonal walls, was destroyed; its two thousand statues and other works of art were transferred to Rome; a new town was founded on the low ground, which in the modernised name of Bolsena still preserves the memory of its ancient fame. After the fall of Volsinii, all the Etruscan communities made formal submission; and all Italy awaited the will of the conquering city of the Tiber.
GOVERNMENT OF THE ACQUIRED TERRITORY
[Sidenote: [265 B.C.]]
To conceive of ancient Rome as the capital of Italy in the same sense that London is the capital of England, or Paris of France, would be a great mistake. London and Paris are the chief cities of their respective countries only because they are the seat of government. But the city of ancient Rome was a great corporate body or community, holding sovereignty over the whole of Italy, from the Macra and Rubicon southwards. The Roman territory itself, in the first days of the Republic, consisted (as we have seen) of twenty-one tribes or wards. Before the point at which we have arrived, these tribes had been successively increased to three-and-thirty. These tribes included a district beyond the Tiber stretching somewhat farther than Veii; a portion of the Sabine and Æquian territory beyond the Anio; with part of Latium, part of the Volscian country, and the coast land as far as the Liris, southwards. None but persons enrolled on the lists of these tribes had a vote in the popular assemblies or any share in the government and legislation of the city. The Latin cities not included in the tribes, and all the Italian communities, were subject to Rome, but had no share in her political franchise.
The principles on which the Italian nations were so settled as to remain the peaceable subjects of Rome were these: first, they were broken up and divided as much as possible; secondly, they were allowed, with little exception, to manage their own affairs. The isolation enforced by Rome prevented them from combining against her. The self-government granted by Rome made them bear her supremacy with contentment.
Prefectures; Municipalities
The arts by which isolation was produced were put in practice at the settlement of Latium fifty years before. The same plan was pursued with the different Italian nations. Those which submitted with a good grace were treated leniently. Those which resisted stubbornly were weakened by the confiscation of their lands and by the settlement of colonies in their principal towns. The Frentanians are the best examples of the milder treatment; the Samnites afford the most notable instance of the more harsh.
The work of isolation was promoted partly by the long and narrow shape of Italy and the mountain range by which it is traversed, which make a central government difficult, and still break it up into many states, but partly also by a sentiment common to most of the Italian nations, as well as to those of Greece. They regarded a man, not as one of a nation, but as the member of a civic community. Every one regarded his first duties as owed to his own city, and not to his nation. Their city was their country. They addressed one another not as fellow-countrymen, but as fellow-citizens. Rome herself was the noblest specimen of this form of society. And the settlement which she adopted throughout Italy took advantage of this prevailing rule, and perpetuated it.
Not only were the Italians split up into civic communities, but these communities were themselves placed in very different conditions. The division of the Italian communities, as established by the Roman government, was threefold--prefectures, municipal towns, and colonies.
The prefectures did not enjoy the right of self-government, but were under the rule of prefects or Roman governors, annually appointed; and the inhabitants of the prefecture were registered by the Roman censor, so as to be liable to all the burdens of Roman citizens, without enjoying any of their privileges. This condition was called the Cærite franchise, because the town of Cære was the first community placed in this dependent position. Amid the terror of the Gallic invasion, Cære had afforded a place of refuge to the sacred things, to the women and children of the Romans, and had been rewarded by a treaty of equal alliance. But at a later period she joined other Etruscan communities in war against Rome, and for this reason she was reduced to the condition of a prefecture. Capua afterwards became a notable instance of a similar change. After the Samnite Wars she enjoyed a state of perfect equality in respect to Rome. The troops which she supplied in virtue of the alliance between her and Rome formed a separate legion, and were commanded by her own officers, as in the case of Decius Jubellius. But in the Hannibalic War she joined Hannibal; and to punish her she was degraded to the condition of a prefecture.
At the period of which we write, the municipal towns were communities bound to Rome by treaties of alliance, framed on a general principle with respect to burdens and privileges. Their burdens consisted in furnishing certain contingents of troops, which they were obliged to provide with pay and equipments while on service. Their privileges consisted in freedom from all other taxes, and in possessing the right of self-government. This condition was secured by a treaty of alliance, which, nominally at least, placed the municipal community on a footing of equality with Rome; though sometimes this treaty was imposed by Rome without consulting the will of the other community.[45] Thus there was, no doubt, a considerable diversity of condition among the municipia. Some regarded their alliance as a boon, others looked upon it as a mark of subjection. In the former condition were Cære and Capua before they were made prefectures; in the latter condition was Volsinii and the Etruscan cities. The municipal towns enjoyed the civil or private rights of Roman citizens; but none, without special grant, had any power of obtaining the political or public rights. In some cases even the private rights were withheld, as from the greater part of the Latin communities after the war of 338 B.C., when the citizens of each community were for a time forbidden to form contracts of marriage or commerce with Roman citizens or with their neighbours. They stood to Rome and to the rest of Italy much in the same condition as the plebeians to the patricians before the Canuleian law. But these prohibitions were gradually and silently removed. Municipal towns were often rewarded by a gift of the Roman franchise, more or less completely, while those which offended were depressed to the condition of prefectures. At length, by the Julian and other laws (B.C. 90), all the municipal towns of Italy, as well as the colonies, received the full Roman franchise; and hence arose the common conception of a municipal town--that is, a community of which the citizens are members of the whole nation, all possessing the same rights, and subject to the same burdens, but retaining the administration of law and government in all local matters which concern not the nation at large.
Colonies; Free and Confederate States
It is in the colonial towns that we must look for the chief instruments of Roman supremacy in Italy. Directly dependent upon Rome for existence, they served more than anything to promote that division of interests which rendered it so difficult for any part of Italy to combine against Rome.
When we speak or think of Roman colonies, we must dismiss all those conceptions of colonisation which are familiar to our minds from the practice pursued in the familiar cases of the maritime states of modern Europe.[46] Roman colonies were not planted in new countries by adventurers who found their old homes too narrow for their wants or their ambition. When the Romans planted a colony (at the time we speak of and for more than a century later), it was always within the limits of the Italian peninsula, and within the walls of ancient cities whose obstinate resistance made it imprudent to restore them to independence, and whose reduced condition rendered it possible to place them in the condition of subjects. But these colonies were not all of the same character. They must be distinguished into two classes: the colonies of Roman citizens, and the Latin colonies.
The colonies of Roman citizens consisted usually of three hundred men of approved military experience, who went forth with their families to occupy conquered cities of no great magnitude, but which were important as military positions, being usually on the seacoast. These three hundred families formed a sort of patrician caste, while the old inhabitants sank into the condition formerly occupied by the plebeians at Rome. The heads of these families retained all their rights as Roman citizens, and might repair to Rome to vote in the popular assemblies. When in early Roman history we hear of the revolt of a colony, the meaning seems to be that the natives rose against the colonists and expelled them. Hence it is that we hear of colonists being sent more than once to the same place, as to Antium.
But more numerous and more important than these were the Latin colonies, of which there were thirty in existence when Hannibal crossed the Alps. Of these thirty no fewer than twenty-six had been founded before the close of the year 263 B.C. The reason for the name they bore was this: We have seen that a close connection had subsisted between Rome and the Latin communities from the earliest times. Under the later kings Rome was the head of Latium; and by Spurius Cassius a league was formed between Rome and Latium, which continued with a slight interruption till the great Latin war of 338 B.C. So long as this league lasted, Latins enjoyed all the private rights of Roman citizens in Rome; and Romans enjoyed all the private rights of the Latin citizens in any of the cities of Latium. During the period of the league many colonies were sent forth, in which the settlers consisted jointly of Romans and Latins, and were not confined to the small number of three hundred, but usually amounted to some thousands. But the citizens of these Latin colonies seem to have had no rights at Rome, except such as were possessed by the allied municipal towns. They were therefore regarded politically as communities in alliance with Rome. After the Latin war, similar colonies still continued to be sent forth. Indeed, these were the colonies which chiefly relieved the poor of the Roman territory.
The rights and privileges of these Latin colonies are only known to us as they are found at a later period of the republic under the name Latinitas, or the Right of Latium (Jus Latii). This right, at the later time we speak of, we know to have consisted in the power of obtaining the full rights of a Roman burgess, but in a limited and peculiar manner. Any citizen of a Latin community, whether one of the free cities of Latium or a Latin colony, was allowed to emigrate to Rome and be enrolled in one of the Roman tribes, on two conditions: first, that he had held a magistracy in his native town: secondly, that he left a representative of his family in that native town. Thus was formed that large body of half-Roman citizens throughout Italy, who are so well known to readers of Livy under the appellation of “the Latin name.” Socii et nomen Latinum--the allies and the Latin name--was the technical expression for all those Italian communities who were bound to supply soldiers for her armies.
Besides the mass of the Italian communities which were in a condition of greater or less dependence upon Rome,--the prefectures in a state of absolute subjection, the colonies bound by ties of national feeling and interest, the municipal towns by articles of alliance,--there remain to be noticed, fourthly, the cities which remained wholly independent of Rome, but bound to her by treaties of equal alliance. Of the Latin cities, Tibur and Præneste alone were in this condition; in Campania, most of the cities, till, after the Hannibalic War, Capua and others were reduced to the condition of prefectures; of the Hellenic cities in the south, Neapolis, Rhegium, and others; in Umbria, Camerium; in Etruria, Iguvium; with all the cities of the Frentanians. But as Roman power increased, most of these communities were reduced to the condition of simple municipal towns.
Whatever is known of the internal constitution of these various communities belongs to later times, when by the Julian law they all obtained the Roman franchise, and became part and parcel of the Roman state. There can, however, be little doubt that in the colonies a constitution was adopted similar to that of Rome herself. The colonists formed a kind of patriciate or aristocracy, and the heads of their leading families constituted a senate. There were two chief magistrates, called duumviri, representing the consuls, to whom (in the more important towns) were added one or two men to fulfil the duties of censor and quæstor. In course of time similar constitutions were introduced into the municipal towns also.
Thus, by placing the Italian cities in every possible relation to herself, from real independence to complete subjection, and by planting colonies, some with full Roman rights, some with a limited power of obtaining these rights, Rome wove her net of sovereignty over the peninsula, and covered every part with its entangling meshes. The policy of Rome, as has been said, may be summed up in the two words--isolation and self-government.[c]
FOOTNOTES
[44] [Mommsen[b] thinks of Pyrrhus as “simply a military adventurer.” He finds his dream of western empire, “analogous in greatness and boldness to the idea which led Alexander over the Hellespont.” But he finds a vast difference between the chances of success, seeing in the disorganised and independent Italian states “poor material for a united realm.” In all points the plan of the Macedonian appears as a feasible, that of the Epirot as an impracticable, enterprise; the former as the completion of a great historical task, the latter as a remarkable blunder. And yet we must not forget that we look at these attempts from the viewpoint of result not of purpose, and to his contemporaries the conquest of Italy would have seemed easier, if less worth while, than the then apparently impossible dream of Alexander.]
[45] Hence the distinction between Civitates Federatæ and Liberæ. All federate communities were free, but not all free communities were federate.]
[46] [Roman colonies were essentially similar to the cleruchies of Athens.]
X. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR
Carthage clears the Alps, Rome traverses the seas, the two peoples, personified in two men Hannibal and Scipio, wrestle and are desperate to terminate the struggle. ’Tis a duel à outrance, a fight to the death. Rome totters, she utters a cry of anguish: Hannibal ad portas! But she rises again, uses the limits of her strength in a last blow, throws herself on Carthage and effaces her from the world.--VICTOR HUGO.
A taste of blood whets the appetite of a nation no less than of an animal. It is notorious that the love of power grows with its acquisition. It was inevitable then that the Romans, after beating off their eastern enemy, should turn their eyes more and more jealously towards their one remaining rival in the west--namely, Carthage. A certain amount of antagonism there had doubtless been all along between Rome and Carthage, but there was a long time during which the Italian city had hardly achieved strength enough to excite a real jealousy on the part of a community of such recognised power as Carthage. And even now there was no possibility that Rome could claim to compete with her rival on the sea. Inheriting the traditions of her mother city, Tyre, Carthage was pre-eminently a commercial city. She occupied that pre-eminence of the western Mediterranean that Tyre so long held in the East, and she was little disposed to accept without a struggle the rivalry of a people of another land and race. It was inevitable then that a war to the death must sooner or later determine the question of mastery so soon as Rome had achieved a degree of power which enforced her recognition as an actual rival of Carthage. The contest was precipitated--as might have been expected--by the condition of things in Sicily, an island which lay intermediate between the territories of the two powers, and thus almost of necessity became a bone of contention between them. In the early days, indeed, it was the Greeks and Carthaginians who disputed over Sicily, and perpetually quarrelled there, but now after the death of Agathocles, the powerful tyrant of Syracuse, and the defeat of Pyrrhus, it became clear that Syracuse and the other Greek cities of Sicily must look for aid in future to Rome rather than to Greece. But the acceptance of such an alliance on the part of Rome virtually implied war with Carthage, and such a war broke out actively only a few years after the expulsion of Pyrrhus from Italy. It required indeed a series of three most memorable wars, extending over a period of more than a century, finally to decide the fate of Carthage.
The first of these wars--in some sense perhaps the most important, yet as regards its results by far the least striking in itself--lasted some twenty-three years. It was fought out largely in Sicily itself by the Romans who were, for the most part, successful and in the end entirely victorious; and on the sea, where the fleets of the Romans were for a long time quite unable to compete with their rivals; the same dogged pertinacity, however, that had made Rome mistress of Italy and that had brought about the final triumph over Pyrrhus, stood them in good stead in the new effort to create a powerful navy--an effort which was at last crowned with such complete success that in the final decisive battle at the Ægatian Islands, the fleet of Carthage was entirely destroyed and dispersed. At last Carthage sued for peace, acknowledging the supremacy of Rome in Sicily and giving up all claim to that island.
The events that followed illustrate not merely the inertia of long-established institutions in the way in which Carthage rallied from her defeat and returned again and again to the contest, but they illustrate even more strikingly the influence which individual great men have in history. There have been philosophers who have contended that great statesmen and great warriors are rather the result of the opportunity of their times than a directing influence; but it is hard for any one who attentively considers the course of history to overlook the fact that the great man, even though in some sense called forth by the necessities of the time, yet may put his stamp in a most definitive way upon the trend of future events. So it was, for example, with Alexander; so it was with Pyrrhus; and so it was now with a group of great Carthaginians including Hamilcar Barca, his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and most notably of all, the son of Hamilcar, the famous but ill-fated warrior Hannibal.
These men, fired with loyalty to their native city, were imbued with a bitter hatred of Rome, and swore to devote their lives to the work of gaining back prestige for Carthage and to the destruction of her enemy. In the end their effort was not successful; yet the struggle in which they participated was one of the most wonderful and picturesque episodes in all history, and it has bequeathed us the name of Hannibal as that of one of the three or four greatest generals of all time. The story of how he precipitated the Second Punic War through the destruction of Saguntum; how he crossed the Alps with his army, invading the territory of Italy itself, and there defeating the Romans again and again until their very national existence seemed threatened; and of how, finally, recalled from Italy to protect Carthage herself against the invasion of the Roman Scipio Africanus, Hannibal was defeated before Carthage, all his labour of years coming to nought--must be told in detail. Suffice it here to say that this story, fascinating in itself, is of double interest, because it relates not merely to the prowess of individual warriors, of individual hosts, but to the evolution of that world-power through which Rome was to stamp her influence for all time on European history.
Yet a Third Punic War was necessary before Carthage was finally removed for all time from the stage of important history. Another Scipio, called Africanus Minor, the adopted son of his great predecessor, was the leader of the Roman arms in that final assault upon Carthage, and the somewhat unwilling officer who carried out the mandate of the Roman senate, which declared that Carthage should be absolutely destroyed. That mandate was put into effect. No rival remained to Rome in the West, and, as we shall see, steps had been taken which resulted almost simultaneously in the final subjugation of those powers that hitherto had disputed the influence of Rome in the East.[a]
CAUSES OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR
[Sidenote: [326-289 B.C.]]
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of Rome than the manner in which she was brought into contact with only one enemy at a time. During the heat of her contest with the Samnites, Alexander of Macedon was terminating his career. The Second Samnite War broke out in 326 B.C.; and in the following year the great king died at the untimely age of thirty-two. The possibility that he might have turned his course westward occurred to Roman minds. Livy[c] broaches the question, whether Rome would have risen superior to the contest or not, and decides it in the affirmative. But his judgment is that of a patriot, rather than of a historian. Scarcely did Rome prevail over the unassisted prowess of the Samnites. Scarcely did she drive the adventurous Pyrrhus from her shores. If a stronger than Pyrrhus--a man of rarest ability both for war and peace--had joined his power to that of C. Pontius the Samnite, it can hardly be doubted that the history of the world would have been changed.
The same good fortune attended Rome in her collision with Carthage. The adventurous temper of Pyrrhus led him from Italy to Sicily, and threw the Carthaginians into alliance with the Romans. What might have been the result of the Tarentine War, if the diplomacy of Cineas had been employed to engage the great African city against Rome? Now that Italy was prostrate, it was plain that a collision between the two governments was inevitable. As Pyrrhus left the soil of Italy forever, he said regretfully: “How fair a battle-field we are leaving for the Romans and Carthaginians!”
It was by means of her fleets that Carthage was brought into connection and collision with other countries. In early days she had established commercial settlements in the south of Spain and in Sicily. It was in the latter country that she came in contact first with the Greeks, and afterwards with the Romans. In early times the Carthaginians contented themselves with obtaining possession of three factories or trading marts on the coast of Sicily--Panormus, Motya, and Lilybæum, which they fortified very strongly. But after the great overthrow of the Athenian power by the Syracusans (413 B.C.), the Carthaginian government formed the design of becoming masters of this fertile and coveted island. But their successes were checked by Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, whose long reign of thirty-eight years (405-367 B.C.) comprises the time of Rome’s great depression by the Gallic invasion, while the year of his death is coincident with that of the Licinian laws, the era from which dates the constant advance of the great Italian city. After many vicissitudes he was obliged to conclude a peace by which the river Halycus was settled as the boundary between Grecian and Carthaginian Sicily, and the territory of Agrigentum was added to Syracusan rule (383 B.C.).
In 317 B.C. Agathocles made himself king of Syracuse, and in 310 B.C. the Carthaginians declared war against him. Reduced to great straits, he took the bold step of transporting the troops which remained for the defence of the capital into Africa, so as to avail himself of the known disaffection of the Libyan subjects of Carthage. His successes were marvellous. One of the suffets fell in battle, the other acted as a traitor. All the Libyan subjects of Carthage supported the Sicilian monarch, but he was obliged to return to Sicily by an insurrection there. The remainder of his life was spent in vain attempts in Sicily, in Corcyra, and in southern Italy. He died in 289 B.C., less than ten years before the appearance of that other fearless adventurer Pyrrhus in Italy.
[Sidenote: [289-264 B.C.]]
After the death of Agathocles, the Carthaginians and Greeks of Sicily rested quiet till Pyrrhus undertook to expel the former from the island. The appearance of Carthaginian fleets off Ostia, and in the Gulf of Tarentum, roused the jealousy of the Italian republic, and an opportunity only was wanting to give rise to open war between the two states.
The occupation of Messana by the Campanian mercenaries of Agathocles, calling themselves Mamertines, has been noticed. From this place they became dangerous neighbours of Syracuse. A young man named Hiero, who had won distinction in the Sicilian campaigns of Pyrrhus, defeated these marauders at Centuripæ, and was by his grateful compatriots proclaimed king about the year 270 B.C. In 265 B.C. the new king resolved to destroy this nest of robbers, and advanced against Messana with a force superior to any they could bring into the field against him. The Mamertines, in this peril, were divided; one party wished to call in the Carthaginians, another preferred alliance with Rome. The latter prevailed, and envoys were despatched to demand immediate aid. The senate were well inclined to grant what was asked; for that Messana, a town with a good harbour, and separated from Italy by a narrow strait, should pass into the hands of Carthage, might have given alarm to a less watchful government. Yet shame restrained them. It was barely six years since Hiero had assisted them in punishing the Campanian legion which had seized Italian Rhegium, as the Mamertines had seized Sicilian Messana, and the senate declined to entertain the question. But the consuls, eager for military glory, brought the matter before the centuriate assembly, which straightway voted that support should be given to the Mamertines, or in other words, that the Carthaginians should not be allowed to gain possession of Messana. The consul Appius Claudius, son of the old censor, was to command the army.
During this delay, however, the Carthaginian party among the Mamertines had prevailed, and Hanno, with a party of Carthaginian soldiers, had been admitted into the town. But Appius succeeded in landing his troops to the south of the town,[47] and defeated Hiero with such loss that the prudent king retired to Syracuse. Next day the Romans fell upon Hanno, and also defeated him. The consul pursued his successes by plundering the Syracusan dominions up to the very gates of the city.
The Romans, having now set foot in Sicily, determined to declare war against Carthage. It is probable that the senate, recollecting the rapid success of Pyrrhus, who in two years almost swept the Carthaginians out of the island, reckoned on a speedy conquest; else, after their late exhausting wars, they would hardly have engaged in this new and terrible conflict. But they were much deceived. The First Punic War, which began in 264 B.C., did not end till 241, having dragged out its tedious length for three-and-twenty years. The general history of it is most uninteresting. All the great men of Rome, who had waged her Italian wars with so much vigour and ability, were in their graves; we hear no more of Decius, or Curius, or Fabricius, and no worthy successors had arisen. The only men of note who appear on the Roman side are Duilius and Regulus. But the generals of Carthage are no less obscure, except the great Hamilcar.[48]
THE WAR BEGINS
[Sidenote: [264-262 B.C.]]
To make the dreary length of this war more intelligible, it may conveniently be divided into three periods. The first comprises its first seven years (264-257), during which the Romans were uniformly successful, and at the close of which they had driven the Carthaginians to the south and west coasts of Sicily. The second is an anxious period of mingled success and failure, also lasting for seven years (256-250): it begins with the invasion of Africa by Regulus, and ends with his embassy and death. The third is a long and listless period of nine years (249-241), in which the Romans slowly retrieve their losses, and at length conclude the war by a great victory at sea.
FIRST PERIOD (264-257 B.C.)
The ill success of Hanno at Messana so displeased the Carthaginian government that they ordered the unfortunate general to be crucified. The Romans pursued their first success with vigour. In the year 264 B.C. both the consuls crossed over into Sicily with an army of nearly fifty thousand men. A number of the Sicilian towns declared in favour of the new power, which might (they hoped) secure their independence against both Syracuse and Carthage; for at present no one dreamed of a permanent occupation of the island by the Romans. Hiero, a prudent man, was struck by the energy of the new invaders. “They had conquered him,” he said, “before he had had time to see them.” He shrewdly calculated that the Carthaginians would prove inferior in the struggle, and forthwith concluded a treaty of alliance with Rome, by which he was left in undisturbed possession of a small but fertile region lying round Syracuse; some more remote towns, as Tauromenium, being also subject to his sceptre.
From this time forth to the time of his death, a period of forty-seven years, he remained a useful ally of the Roman people. In 262 B.C. both consuls laid siege to the city of Agrigentum, which, though fallen from her ancient splendour, was still the second of the Hellenic communities in Sicily. Another Hanno was sent from Carthage to raise the siege, and for some time fortune favoured him. He drew a second circle of entrenchments round the Roman lines, so as to intercept all supplies; and thus the besiegers, being themselves besieged, were reduced to the greatest straits. But the consul at length forced Hanno to give him battle, and gained a complete victory. Upon this the commandant of the garrison, finding further defence useless, slipped out of Agrigentum by night, and deserted the hapless city after a siege of seven months. The Romans repaid themselves for the miseries they had undergone by indulging in all those excesses which soldiers are wont to commit when they take a town by storm after a long and obstinate defence. It is said that twenty-five thousand men were slain.
[Sidenote: [262-260 B.C.]]
This great success raised the spirits of the Romans. And now the senate conceived the hope and formed the plan of expelling the Carthaginians entirely from Sicily: but after a short experience, that sagacious council became aware that a fleet was indispensable for success. Nothing shows the courage and resolution of the Romans more than their manner of acting in this matter. It is no light matter for landsmen to become seamen; but for unpractised landsmen to think of encountering the most skilful seamen then known might have been deemed a piece of romantic absurdity, if the men of Rome had not undertaken and accomplished it.
What they wanted first was a set of ships, which, in size at least and weight, should be a match for those of the enemy. It is a mistake to suppose that the Romans had no fleet before this time. The treaties with Carthage sufficiently prove the contrary; and on several occasions we hear of ships being employed by them. But these ships were of the trireme kind, formerly employed by the Greeks. The Carthaginians, like the Greeks after Alexander, used quinqueremes; and it would have been as absurd for the small Roman ships to have encountered those heavier vessels, as for a frigate to cope with a three-decker. The Romans therefore determined to build quinqueremes. A Carthaginian ship cast ashore on the coast of Bruttium served as a model; the forest of Sila, in that district, supplied timber. In sixty days from the time the trees were felled they had completed, probably by the help of Greek artisans, a fleet of one hundred quinqueremes, and twenty triremes; and while it was building, they trained men to row in a manner which to us seems laughable, by placing them on scaffolds ranged on land in the same way as the benches in the ships (262 B.C.).
[Sidenote: [260-256 B.C.]]
The consul Cn. Cornelius put to sea first with seventeen ships, leaving the rest of the fleet to follow; but he was surprised near Lipara and captured, with the whole of his little squadron, by the Carthaginian admiral. His plebeian colleague, C. Duilius, was in command of the army in Sicily; but as soon as he heard of this disaster, he hastened to take charge of the main body of the fleet, and sailed slowly along the north coast of Sicily (260 B.C.).
Meantime, the Roman shipwrights had contrived certain engines, by means of which their seamen might grapple with the enemy’s ships, so as to bring them to close quarters and deprive them of the superiority derived from their better construction and the greater skill of their crews. These engines were called crows (corvi). They consisted of a gangway thirty-six feet long and four broad, pierced with an oblong hole towards one end, so as to play freely round a strong pole twenty-four feet high, which was fixed near the ship’s prow. At the other end was attached a strong rope, which passed over a sheaf at the head of the pole. By this rope the gangway was kept hauled up till within reach of the enemy’s ship; it was then suddenly let go, and as it fell with all its weight, a strong spike on its under side (shaped like a crow’s beak) was driven into the enemy’s deck. Then the Roman men-at-arms poured along the gangway, and a stand-up fight followed, in which the best soldiers must prevail.
Thus prepared, Duilius encountered the enemy’s fleet. He found them ravaging the coast at Mylæ, a little to the west of Palermo. The admiral was the same person who had commanded the garrison of Agrigentum, and was carried in an enormous septireme, which had formerly belonged to Pyrrhus. Nothing daunted, Duilius attacked without delay. By his rude assault the skilful tactics of the Carthaginian seamen were confounded. The Roman fighting-men were very numerous, and when they had once boarded an enemy’s ship, easily made themselves masters of her. Duilius took thirty-one Carthaginian ships and sunk fourteen. For a season, no Roman name stood so high as that of Duilius. Public honours were awarded him; he was to be escorted home at night from banquets and festivals by the light of torches and the music of the flute; a pillar was set up in the Forum, ornamented with the beaks of the captured ships, and therefore called the Columna Rostrata, to commemorate the great event; fragments of the inscription still remain in the Capitoline Museum at Rome. And no doubt the triumph was signal. The honours conferred upon the conqueror cannot but give a pleasing impression of the simple manners then prevailing at Rome, especially when we contrast them with the cruelty of the Carthaginian government, who crucified their unfortunate admiral. To have defeated the Mistress of the Sea upon her own element in the first trial of strength was indeed remarkable.
The sea fight of Duilius was fought in the year 260 B.C. In the following years the Carthaginians were only able to act upon the defensive. Not only Agrigentum, but Camarina, Gela, Enna, Segesta, and many other cities had surrendered to the Romans. The Carthaginians were confined to their great trading marts, Drepana, Lilybæum, Eryx, and Panormus. They did not dare to meet the Romans in the field; yet these places were very strong, especially Lilybæum. Against its iron fortifications all the strength of Pyrrhus had been broken. It was not time yet for Carthage to despair.
But in the eighth year of the war the senate determined on more decisive measures. They knew the weakness of the Carthaginians at home; they had a victorious fleet, and they determined not to let their fortune slumber.
SECOND PERIOD (256-250 B.C.)
[Sidenote: [256-255 B.C.]]
Duilius appears for a brief time as the hero of the first part of the war; but its second period is marked by the name of a man who has become famous as a patriot--M. Atilius Regulus. It was in the year 256, the eighth of the war, that the consuls, M. Regulus and L. Manlius, sailed from Italy and doubled Cape Pachynus with a fleet of 330 quinqueremes. The Carthaginian fleet, even larger in number, had been stationed at Lilybæum to meet the enemy, whether they should approach from the north or from the east. They now put to sea, and sailed westwards along the southern coast of Sicily. They met the Roman fleet at a place called Ecnomus, a little more than halfway along that coast. The battle that ensued was the greatest that, up to that time, had ever been fought at sea; it is calculated that not fewer than 300,000 men were engaged. It was desperately contested on both sides; but at Ecnomus, again, we are astonished to find the Roman fleet victorious (256 B.C.).
The way was now open to Africa. The consuls, after refitting and provisioning their fleet, sailed straight across to the Hermæan promontory, which is distant from the nearest point of Sicily not more than eighty miles. But the omens were not auspicious; the Roman soldiery went on board with gloomy forebodings of their fate; one of the tribunes refused to lead his legionaries into the ships, till Regulus ordered the lictors to seize him. The passage, however, was favoured by the wind. The consuls landed their men, drew up the fleet on shore, and fortified it in a naval camp; and then, marching southwards, they took the city of Aspis or Clupea by assault. No Carthaginian army met them; every place they came near, except Utica, surrendered at discretion, for they were unfortified and defenceless. Carthage, being of old mistress of the sea, feared no invaders, and, like England, trusted for defence to her wooden walls. Yet she had not been unwarned. Sixty years before the adventurous Agathocles had landed like Regulus. Then, as now, the whole country lay like a garden before him, covered with wealthy towns and the luxurious villas of the Carthaginian merchants. Then two hundred towns or more had surrendered almost without stroke of sword. It appeared as if the same easy success now awaited Regulus and the Romans.
The consuls were advancing along the coast of the gulf towards Carthage, when Manlius was recalled with the greater part of the army, and Regulus was left in Africa with only fifteen thousand foot and five hundred horse. Yet even with this small force he remained master of the country. He had gone round the whole Gulf of Tunis as far as Utica, and now he turned upon his steps with the intention of marching upon the capital itself. On his way he was obliged to cross the river Bagradas, and here (so ran the legend) the army was stopped by a huge serpent, so strong and tough of skin that they were unable to destroy it, till they brought up their artillery of catapults and balists; he then continued his route southwards to the Bay of Carthage. He was allowed to take Tunis, which stood within twenty miles of Carthage. The great city was now reduced to the utmost straits. A Roman army was encamped within sight; famine stared the townsmen in the face; the government trembled. In this abject condition the council sent an embassy to ask what terms of peace Regulus would grant.
The consul was so elated by success, that he demanded the most extravagant concessions. The Carthaginians were to give up their fleet, pay all the expenses of the war, and cede all Sicily, with Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles, to Rome. When these terms were reported, the government took care to publish them, and public indignation rose against the arrogant invaders. The civic force was not untrained to arms, and they had now to fight for their hearths and altars. A good general was sought for. At that time there happened to be at Carthage a soldier of fortune, by name Xanthippus, a Lacedæmonian.[49] This man had been heard to censure the native generals, and to declare that the victories of the Romans were due, not to their own superior skill, but to the faults of their opponents. He was summoned before the council and desired to give reasons for his remarks. He did so; and, for a moment, the government, dismissing all jealousy, appointed this obscure foreigner general-in-chief. Xanthippus immediately drew together all the mercenaries he could find, and united them with the armed citizens; then, supported by a large body of elephants, he boldly took the field. The Romans were astonished; but they were too much accustomed to victory to hesitate about accepting battle. But they were both outnumbered and outgeneralled. Xanthippus gained a victory as easy as it was complete. Regulus himself was taken prisoner; only two thousand of his men succeeded in making good their retreat to Clupea.
Thus was Carthage delivered by the ability of one man, and that man a foreigner. The government did not improve in wisdom or generosity; their incapable generals resumed the command, and Xanthippus, loaded with honours and presents, prudently withdrew from the jealous city.
The Roman senate did their best to repair this great calamity. The new consuls were ordered to put to sea, and bring off the garrison and fugitives from Clupea. Near the Hermæan promontory they encountered the enemy’s fleet, and again defeated it; and then, having taken up the ships and men at Clupea, they sailed for Syracuse. But a still greater disaster was in store for Rome than the destruction of her African army. This was the loss of that fleet of which she was justly proud. The time of year was about the beginning of the dog-days, when the Mediterranean is apt to be visited by sudden storms. The consuls, upon their passage, were warned that such a storm was at hand; but they were ignorant and rash, and continued their course. Before they could double Cape Pachynus they were caught by the tempest; almost the whole fleet was wrecked or foundered; the coast of Sicily from Camarina to Pachynus was strewed with fragments of ships and bodies of men. Such was the end of the first Roman fleet (255 B.C.).
[Sidenote: [255-250 B.C.]]
These successive disasters might well raise the hopes of Carthage, and they sent a considerable force into Sicily, with 140 elephants. Agrigentum is said to have been recovered, and no doubt it was expected that the whole island would once more become their own. But the Romans showed a spirit equal to the need. In three months’ time (so wonderful was their energy) a new fleet of 220 sail was ready for sea. The consuls of the year 254 B.C., having touched at Messana to take up the remnants of the old fleet, passed onwards to Drepana. They could not take this strong place, but they were more successful at Panormus, the modern Palermo, which yielded after a short siege to the Roman arms. This was an important conquest.
Next year the fleet touched at several places on the African coast, but without making any impression on the country. Among the shoals and currents of the Lesser Syrtis it ran great danger of being lost; but having escaped this peril, the consuls returned to Panormus and thence stood straight across for the mouth of the Tiber. On the passage they were overtaken by another of those terrible storms, and again nearly the whole fleet was lost. Thus, within three years, the Romans lost two great fleets. This was enough to damp even their courage; and the senate determined to try whether it were not possible to keep their ground in Sicily without a navy. For the present they gave up all claim to the command of the sea, and limited themselves to a small fleet of sixty ships.
Matters continued in this state for two years. Neither party seemed willing to hazard a battle by land; but in 250 B.C. Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian general, was induced to march secretly from Lilybæum to Panormus, in the hope of surprising and recovering that important town. The Roman commandant was the proconsul L. Cæcilius Metellus. He allowed the enemy to approach the walls, and then suddenly sallied forth, covering his attack by a cloud of light troops, slingers, and javelin-men. Some of the elephants being wounded, carried confusion into their own ranks, and Metellus, seizing the occasion, charged the enemy and defeated them utterly. Besides thirteen Carthaginian generals, 120 elephants were taken and carried across the sea on strong rafts to adorn the triumph of the proconsul. The battle of Panormus was the greatest battle that was fought on land in the course of the war, and it was the last. In memory of this victory we find the elephant as a frequent device on the coins of the great family of the Metelli.[b] We may well quote here Polybius’ account both of the loss of the fleet in 255 and of this victory at Panormus or Palermo.
POLYBIUS’ ACCOUNT OF ROMAN AFFAIRS[50]
[Sidenote: [255-251 B.C.]]
The Romans had made ready, early in the Spring, a Fleet of Three Hundred and Fifty Sail; and Embarking their Army under the Command of their new Consuls, M. Æmilius, and Servius Fulvius, and standing along the Coast of Sicily towards Africa, they met, and fought off of Cape Mercury with the Carthaginian Fleet, which was not able to sustain the first shock, but being entirely beaten, lost in the Ingagement, an Hundred and Fourteen of their Vessels, and all that was in them, to the Romans; who afterwards prosecuting their course, arriv’d at Aspis; where taking their Men on Board that remain’d in Africa, they shap’d their Course back to Sicily. And being well advanc’d on their way, they were surpriz’d off of Camarina with so dreadful a Tempest, that the losses and hardships they sustain’d were without Example, and beyond Expression: So terrible it was, that of Three Hundred and Seventy odd Vessels that compos’d their Fleet, Fourscore only escap’d Shipwreck, the rest being either founder’d in the Sea, or were lost and broken against the Rocks, that whole Coast being cover’d with dead bodies, and strew’d with the Ruines and Fragments of their Ships, insomuch as History affords no Example of the like dreadful disaster. And yet it may be said, that this Calamity was not owing so much to Fortune, as to the obstinacy of the Consuls: For the Pilots endeavour’d to obviate the hazard they should be expos’d to by Navigating on that Coast of Sicily, which borders on the African Sea, there being there not only no Harbours to succour vessels in distress; but the Season too of the Year was now improper; for by observation of the rising and setting of Orion and the Dog Star, they compute and know the safe Seasons for Navigation. But the Consuls, contemning their Counsel, stood boldly out to Sea, in hopes that after this signal Victory, their appearing suddenly on the Coast, might terrify many Towns, and awe them to submission: But their folly was chastis’d by this memorable loss, which they sustain’d upon a motive much too little for the hazard. The Romans have indeed this inflexibility of Mind peculiar to them, believing that whatsoever they have resolv’d and determin’d to undertake, ought to be indispensably perform’d; and they have establish’d it into a Principle, that what they once have decreed to execute, cannot be impossible to bring to pass: The effect, indeed, of a generous obstinacy, but the cause oftentimes of their falling into pernicious Errors and Misfortunes, and their sustaining unspeakable losses, especially in their Naval Expeditions. As to their Exploits by Land, where the Encounter is only Man to Man, their Courage frequently conducts them to the Success they propose, by reason their adventures are with Men like themselves; and yet there want not Examples wherein their Measures and Forces have fail’d, and they have sunk and miscarry’d under the weight of their Enterprises. But whenever, by a temerarious Audacity, they act against these raging Elements, and attempt to vanquish the Sea and Wind, they are sure to reap no other fruit of their Obstinacy, than Loss and Calamity. This we have now mentioned, is an instance, and they have heretofore smarted by the like Errors; and they shall always stand liable to the same disasters, till they appear better advis’d and instructed in the weakness of that overweening Presumption, which they are apt to entertain in all their Designs, vainly imagining, that both Sea and Land should on all occasions consent and open their way to Success in all their Enterprises.
The Carthaginians, upon advice of this Misfortune of the Romans at Sea, were of Opinion, that they should now be a match for them by Land, whereunto they were perswaded through the late Victory they had gain’d. That they should be equal to them likewise by Sea, they had no doubt, by reason of their late great loss by Tempest; howbeit they omitted not to reinforce their Strength both by Sea and Land. They dispatch’d Hasdrubal into Sicily, to whom, besides the Forces already there, they order’d a farther supply of Troops out of those that were lately drawn out of Heraclea, together with an Hundred and Forty Elephants: He was no sooner departed, but they sent after him Two Hundred Vessels laden with all things necessary for the Service of the War. Hasdrubal, being safely arriv’d at Lilybæum, apply’d himself with diligence to Exercise and Discipline his Troops and his Elephants, intending to spread his Army all over the Country, and to make himself entire Master of the Field. As for the Romans, they were not without a very sensible sorrow, when by those who had escap’d Shipwreck, they receiv’d an account of the mighty loss they had sustain’d at Sea; nevertheless, being determin’d not to yield the Advantage to the Enemy, they order’d a new Fleet to be speedily built, to consist of Two Hundred and Twenty Sail; which Fleet (a wonderful and incredible thing to relate) was compleatly built and finish’d in the space of three Months; on which the new Consuls, Aulus Atilius, and C. Cornelius speedily Embark’d; who, after having pass’d the Streight, and touch’d at Messina, to take with them the Vessels that had been sav’d in the late Storm, shap’d their Course for Palermo with a Naval Army consisting of Three Hundred Sail, and forthwith sat down and besieg’d that place, which then was the Capital City of the Carthaginians in Sicily. They made their Attacks in two several places, and when their Works were advanc’d to their Minds, they approach’d with their Engines of Battery, by which, a Tower or Work standing near the Sea, was quickly, and without much trouble, demolish’d; at which breach the Souldiers enter’d, and took by Assault, and kept Possession of that quarter of the City call’d the New Town, whereby the place it self was put into manifest danger; but the Inhabitants coming seasonably in to the Relief, they advanc’d no farther; so the Consuls, after they had put a good Garrison into the place they had taken, return’d back to Rome. Early the next Summer the new Consuls, C. Servilius, and C. Sempronius, sail’d over to Sicily with all their Naval Power, and from thence, soon after, stood for the Coast of Africk, where they made several Descents, but perform’d nothing of moment; at length arriving at the Island of the Lotophagy, which is likewise call’d Meninx, not far distant from the lesser Syrtis, or Flatts; here being unacquainted with the Coast, their Fleet fell among the Sands, where their Vessels grounded, and stuck fast, as if they had been a-shoar, and there remain’d till the Flood fetch’d them off; when with great difficulty and hazard, throwing their Lumber over-board, they made a shift to escape. From thence, like People flying from an Enemy, they stood away for the Coast of Sicily; and after they had doubl’d the Cape of Lilybæum they got into the Port of Palermo. But from thence steering their Course homeward, a Storm took them in the Phare of Messina, where, by a blind Obstinacy they were imbay’d, which Storm attack’d them with such violence, that above an Hundred and Fifty of their Ships miscarry’d. Things happening thus adverse to them by Sea, tho’ the Senate and People could not subdue their Thirst of Glory and Empire, nevertheless their Losses and Calamities, and the straits to which they were now reduc’d, prevail’d with them to quit all farther attempts of trying their Fortune by Sea; so they now totally abandon’d all thoughts of Naval Preparations. And determining to rely solely on their Land Armies, they dispatch’d the Consuls, L. Cæcilius, and Cn. Furius to Sicily with the Legions, alotting them only about Threescore Vessels whereon securely to Embark and waft over the Army, their Baggage and Amunition. These Misfortunes of the Romans much augmented the Carthaginian Glory and Fame in the World, and gave a new Face to their Affairs. In a word, as the Romans had now yielded them up the Dominion of the Sea, it was no difficulty for them to be entirely Masters there; nor were they without hopes of succeeding in their Affairs by Land; nor did they reckon very wide of the matter, for from the time of the defeat of the Roman Army, by the assistance of the Elephants, which discompos’d and broke their Ranks in the Battel fought in Africk, where those Animals made such destruction of their People, the Souldiers became so terribly aw’d, that tho’ they had been on several occasions drawn up in Battalia to ingage within five or six Furlongs of the Carthaginian Army; sometimes in the Territory of Selinunce, sometimes about Lilybæum, yet for the space of two Years together they wanted Resolution to ingage them, or to adventure to abide in the Champain Country, so great a dread they had conceiv’d of the Fury and Shock of those stupendious beasts: So that little or no Progress was made in their Affairs during all that space, saving the taking of Lipary and Thermes, the Army continuing Coopt up in the Mountains, and Inaccessible Places. Wherefore the Romans, observing this Terrour among their Legions, took a Resolution once more, to tempt their Fortune by Sea: Accordingly upon the Creation of C. Atilius and L. Manlius Consuls, they Order’d the Building of Fifty Vessels, and Levies of men for that Service; and now they had a Navy once again establish’d.
[Sidenote: [251-250 B.C.]]
Hasdrubal having observ’d this dread that possess’d the Roman Army, when ever he presented them Battel, and having Intelligence that one of the Consuls was now return’d back to Rome, and one half of the Army with him; and that Cæcilius with the rest of the Troops was at Palermo, Assisting their Allies in gathering in their Harvest, their Corn being now Ripe; he March’d out of Lilybæum with his Troops, and came and Incamp’d on the Borders of the Territory of Palermo. Cæcilius observing this weak Proceeding of the Carthaginian, kept his People within the Walls of the Town, thereby to ingage him to Advance nearer, which Hasdrubal accordingly did, perswaded thereto by the shew of fear the Romans were under, and imagining that Cæcilius had not the Resolution to appear in the Field, he rashly adventur’d his Army into a narrow Straight: and albeit he wasted the Country to the very Walls of Palermo, Cæcilius nevertheless held his first determination, not to move till the Enemy had pass’d the River that runs close by the Town. When, in short, after the Elephants and the whole Army had got over, he Order’d some of his light Arm’d Souldiers, to advance out against them to Pickeer, and draw them the more boldly on. And observing all things to Succeed as he had projected, he Posted a Body of select and skilful Souldiers upon the Counterscarp of the Town, with Orders that if the Elephants advanc’d upon them, to Attack them with Darts and Missive Weapons, and in case they should be press’d by those Animals, that they should then retire into the Ditch; and from thence gall and molest them all they could. He Order’d the Towns People at the same time to furnish themselves with great quantities of Darts, and Post themselves without the Town at the Foot of the Walls, and there abide in a Posture of Defence. Cæcilius himself with all his troops remain’d in readiness at a certain Gate of the Town, that was oppos’d to the Right Wing of the Enemy, from whence he sustain’d the Troops with fresh Supplies of men, who were already Ingaged. In a Word, the Battel began now to grow warm, and the Leaders of the Elephants being resolv’d to be sharers with Hasdrubal in the Honour of the day, proceeding as if they design’d the Victory should be wholly owing to them, advanc’d all in Order upon the Romans, whom they soon forc’d to give Ground and retire into the Ditch. But now the Elephants, smarting with the Wounds they had receiv’d, and vex’d with the Darts wherewith they were gall’d both from the Ditch and the Walls of the Town, began to grow unruly, fell upon their own People, and destroy’d many, and put their Troops in disorder. This being observ’d by Cæcilius he forthwith Salli’d out with his Troops fresh and in good Order, and attacking the Enemy in Flank, who were already in Confusion, slew many, and put the rest of the Army to Flight. Ten Elephants were then taken with the Indians their Guides, and others who had lost their Leaders fell likewise into their Hands after the Battel. The happy Issue of this Action got Cæcilius the Reputation every where of having Restor’d the Roman Courage by Land, to Attempt Incamping in the open and plain Country, and to know how to behave themselves well again out of their Retrenchments. There was great joy at Rome upon the Arrival of the News of this Defeat, not so much on account of the Elephants which had been taken, tho’ it was a very sensible blow to the Enemy, but because the taking of those Animals, and the Victory obtain’d against them, had restor’d the Souldiers Resolution. Wherefore they determin’d once again, as had been propos’d (to the end they might at any rate put a Period to this War) to Dispatch the Consuls away with a new Navy. And when all things were in readiness for the Expedition, they departed for Sicily with a Fleet of Two Hundred Sail, it being now the Fourteenth Year of the First Punic War.[d]
[Sidenote: [250-249 B.C.]]
After the battle of Panormus, the hopes of the Romans rose again, and the senate gave orders to build a third fleet of two hundred sail. But the Carthaginians, weary of the expenses of the war, and suffering greatly in their commerce, thought that a fair opportunity for making peace was now offered. The Romans had not so entirely recovered from their late disasters, but that they might be glad to listen to fair terms. Accordingly an embassy was despatched to offer an exchange of prisoners and to propose terms on which a peace might be concluded. Regulus (according to the well-known story) accompanied this embassy, under promise to return to Carthage if the purposes of the embassy should fail. When he arrived at Rome he refused to enter the walls and take his place in the senate, as being no longer a citizen or a senator. Then the senate sent certain of their own number to confer with him in presence of the ambassadors, and the counsel which he gave confirmed the wavering minds of the fathers. “Useless it was,” he said, “to ransom prisoners who had ignobly yielded with arms in their hands: let them be left to perish unheeded; let war go on till Carthage be subdued.” His counsel prevailed, and the embassy returned without effect. Regulus also returned to suffer the vengeance of the Carthaginians. Every one knows the horrid tortures by which it is said that life was taken from him; how his eyelids were cut off; how he was placed in a barrel stuck full of nails, with one end knocked out; and how he was exposed to the unmitigated glare of an African sun, to die by the slow agonies of pain, and thirst, and fever.
Regulus was a man of the old Roman kind, like Curius and Fabricius, devoted to his country, eager for glory, frugal, bold, resolute or (call it) stubborn. He has been censured for excessive presumptuousness in his African campaign, and for the extravagance by which he lost all the advantages which he might have secured. But it must be allowed that he had some grounds even for overweening confidence. Ever since the two nations had met in arms, the star of Carthage had grown dim before that of Rome. Even on the sea, where her navies had long ridden triumphant, the Queen of the Mediterranean had twice been beaten by her unskilled rival. There was enough to make more sagacious men than Regulus believe that Carthage was well-nigh powerless against Rome. The Romans had yet to learn that when the jealous government of Carthage allowed great generals to command their armies, such as Xanthippus, and Hamilcar, and Hannibal, then the well-trained mercenaries might gain easy victories over their own brave but less practised citizens.
The whole story of the embassy and death of Regulus has been doubted, chiefly because of the silence of Polybius, the most authentic historian of the time; and from the certainty that at least one mythical marvel has been introduced into the narrative. But if allowance be made for some patriotic exaggeration, there is nothing improbable in the story. Those who crucified their own unlucky generals would not be slow to wreak any measure of vengeance on a recusant prisoner. We read also that the Romans retaliated by torturing some Carthaginian prisoners, and this fact can hardly be an invention. At all events, the personal qualities of Regulus rest too firmly on old tradition to be questioned. While we read the beautiful passage in which Cicero describes his disinterested patriotism; while we repeat the noble ode, in which Horace paints him as putting aside all who would have persuaded him to stay--people, friends, and family--and going forth to torture and death with the same serene indifference as if he were leaving the busy life of Rome for the calm retirement of his country house, so long will the blood flow more quickly and the heart beat higher at mention of the name of Regulus.[b]
Of Regulus, Niebuhr writes rather sharply: Few events in Roman history are more celebrated than this embassy and the martyrdom of Regulus, which have been sung by Roman poets and extolled by orators. Who does not know that Regulus, as a slave of the Carthaginians, refused to enter the city; that he attended the deliberations of the senate with their sanction, and rejected the exchange no less vehemently than the peace; that he confirmed the wavering fathers in their resolution; that he preferred his honour and his oath to all the enticements to remain behind; and that, in order to remove the temptation, he pretended that a slow poison had been administered him by Punic faithlessness, which would soon end his days, even if the senate, less mindful of the country than of the individual, should wish to retain him by exchange or protection; how he withdrew from the embraces of his friends as a dishonoured man, and after his return to Carthage was put to death by diabolical tortures?
Palmerius[g] was the first who attacked this account after the Valesian extracts from Diodorus[h] had become known, and his reasons have been strengthened by Beaufort[i] with very appropriate arguments besides. But Beaufort has perhaps carried his scepticism too far in doubting, and in reality rejecting, the truth of the embassy on account of the silence of Polybius.
Neither of these writers has mentioned, which is of great importance, that Dion Cassius[j] declared the martyrdom of Regulus to be a mere fable, although he repeated it. He also related that after Regulus had fallen into captivity, his sleep was at first disturbed, as he was kept shut up with an elephant, but that this cruelty did not last long. It may be accounted for, and even pardoned, as Regulus forgot all human feelings towards Carthage when it had fallen and implored his compassion; and it is not unlikely that this account may have given rise to the more widely extended one respecting the mode of his death.
It is most probable that the death of Regulus happened in the course of nature; and it is very possible that the cruel maltreatment of the Punic prisoners, respecting whom it is certain, even according to Roman testimonies, that they were surrendered to the family as hostages or for revenge, has become the occasion of the prevailing narrative through that unpardonable calumny which the Romans constantly indulged in against Carthage. It seems most credible that Hasdrubal and Bostar were given as hostages, because Regulus actually believed, and the Romans shared his opinion, that he was secretly poisoned. But with an unbiassed judgment we must regard the narrative of Diodorus respecting the perfectly inhuman fury of the family of Regulus against these innocent prisoners to be no less doubtful than the Roman one; since it is quite certain that no Roman recorded this disgrace to his nation, and here, as well as elsewhere, Philinus must be regarded as the source of Diodorus, whose hatred against Rome is very pardonable, but always renders his testimony highly suspicious.
For the rest, if this deed of Regulus had not been praised to us in early years as heroic, we should without prejudice find it less brilliant. That he went back because he had sworn, was an act which, if he had not done it, would have been branded with infamy. If he had reason to fear, it was a consequence of the shameful abuse which he himself had made of his victory, inasmuch as he only knew how to use it as a mere child of fortune, and in a way inferior to most of the generals who were his contemporaries.[e]
THIRD PERIOD (249-241 B.C.)
[Sidenote: [249-244 B.C.]]
It has been said that the senate, encouraged by the victory of Panormus, resolved once more to attempt the sea. In the year 249 B.C. the third fleet was ready, and its purpose soon became evident. The consuls were ordered to invest Lilybæum, the queen of Carthaginian fortresses, both by sea and land. If this strong place fell, the Carthaginians would have no firm hold on Sicily: but it could not be taken unless it were blockaded by sea, for by sea supplies could be poured into it from Carthage. The Romans began the siege with activity; they constructed enormous works, they endeavoured to throw a dam across the harbour, but in vain. The skilful seamen of Carthage contrived to carry provision ships into the harbour through the midst of the Roman fleet. Their navy lay at hand in the Bay of Drepana, ready to take advantage of any remissness on the part of the Romans.
Yet the invincible perseverance of the Romans would have prevailed but for the headstrong folly of the patrician consul for the year 249 B.C. This was P. Claudius, a younger son of the old censor, brother of him who had relieved Messana. As he lay before Lilybæum, he formed a plan for surprising the enemy’s fleet at Drepana, and left his station for this purpose. In vain he was warned by the pullarii, that the sacred chickens would not feed. “Then let them drink,” said the irreverent commander, and threw them into the sea. But the men were much dispirited by the omen and the contempt of the omen. And the consul had managed matters with so little secrecy and skill that the enemy were informed of his intended attack. As the Romans sailed in column into the harbour, the Carthaginian fleet was seen sailing outward. But on a sudden they tacked and bore down upon the side of the Roman column. Of Claudius’ 220 ships, only thirty escaped.
The reckless consul was recalled to Rome by the senate, and ordered to supersede himself by naming a dictator. With the old insolence of his family, he named the son of one of his own freedmen, by name Claudius Glycias. But the senate set aside the nomination, and themselves appointed A. Atilius Calatinus, also called Serranus. What became of Claudius we know not. But he was dead three years after; for a story is preserved, that at that time his sister insolently expressed a wish that he were still alive, that he might lose more men, and make the streets less crowded. She was heavily fined for this speech; and if words deserve punishment, none deserved it more than hers.
The loss of the fleet of Claudius was not the only disaster of the year. L. Junius, his plebeian colleague, was less guilty, but even more unfortunate. He was convoying a large fleet of ships, freighted with supplies for the forces at Lilybæum, when, near Camarina, he was overtaken by a tremendous hurricane, and both the convoy and the convoying squadron perished. The destruction was so complete, that every single ship was broken up, and not a plank (says Polybius) was fit to be used again.
Thus by the folly of one consul and the misfortune of the other, the Romans lost their entire fleet for the third time. It seemed to them as if the god of the sea was jealous of these new pretenders to his favour.
These disasters left the Carthaginians once more masters of the sea. And at the same time a really great man was appointed to a command in Sicily. This was Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal. He seems not to have had many ships or troops at his command; but the skill with which he used his means abundantly shows what might have been done if the government had trusted him more completely. He made continual descents on the coast of Italy, plundering and alarming. Before long he landed suddenly near Panormus, and in the face of the Roman commandant seized a hill called Hercta, which overhung the town (the same with the modern Monte Pelegrino). Here he fortified himself; and hence he carried on a continual predatory warfare against the Romans for the space of three years. After this, by an equally sudden movement, he made a descent on Eryx, which had been taken by the Romans not long before, and surprised it. To this place he now shifted his quarters, and continued the same harassing attacks.
[Sidenote: [243-241 B.C.]]
Except for this, matters were at a standstill. The whole strength of the Romans was concentrated in the lines of Lilybæum; but they had no fleet now, and therefore the place was fully supplied from the sea. On the other hand the activity of Hamilcar kept the enemy always in alarm. Slight actions constantly took place; and an anecdote is told by Diodorus, which sets the character of Hamilcar in a pleasing light. In a skirmish with the Roman consul, C. Fundanius, he had suffered some loss, and sent (according to custom) to demand a truce, that he might bury his dead. But the consul insolently replied that he ought to concern himself about the living rather than the dead, and save further bloodshed by surrendering at once. Soon after it was Hamilcar’s turn to defeat the Romans, and when their commander sent for leave to bury their dead, the Carthaginian general at once granted it, saying that he “warred not with the dead, but with the living.”
These interminable hostilities convinced the senate that they must once more build a fleet, or give up all hopes of driving the Carthaginians out of Sicily. Lilybæum would foil all their efforts, as it had foiled the efforts of Pyrrhus. The siege had now lasted eight years, from 250 to 241 B.C., and it appeared no nearer its conclusion than at first. All sacrifices must be made. A fleet must be built. And it was built. At the beginning of the year 241 B.C., the patrician consul, C. Lutatius Catulus, put to sea with more than two hundred sail. This was the fourth navy which the Romans had created. It is impossible not to admire this iron determination; impossible not to feel satisfaction at seeing it rewarded.
The consul, with his new fleet, sailed early in the year, and blockaded Drepana by sea and land, hoping to deprive the Carthaginians of the harbour in which their fleet lay to watch the Romans at Lilybæum. He also took great pains to train his seamen in naval tactics. In an action which took place at Drepana he was severely wounded.
On the other hand the Carthaginians had of late neglected their navy; and it was not till early in the following year (241) that a fleet was despatched to the relief of Drepana. It was heavily freighted with provisions and stores. Hanno, its commander, touched at Hiera, a small island, about twenty or twenty-five miles from the port of Drepana. Of this (it appears) Catulus was informed, and, though still suffering from his wound, he at once put to sea, hoping to intercept the enemy before they unloaded their ships. On the evening of the 9th of March he lay to at Ægusa, another small island, not above ten miles distant from Hiera. Next morning the Carthaginians put to sea and endeavoured to run into Drepana. But they were intercepted by the Roman fleet, and obliged to give battle. They fought under great disadvantages, and the Romans gained an easy victory. Fifty of the enemy’s ships were sunk, seventy taken; the rest escaped to Hiera.
This battle, called the battle of the Ægatian Islands (for that was the general name of the group), decided the war. It was plain that Lilybæum must now surrender; and that though Hamilcar might yet stand at bay, he could not recover Sicily for the present. The merchants of Carthage were eager for the conclusion of the war; and the government sent orders to Hamilcar to make a peace on the best terms he could obtain. Catulus at first required, as a preliminary to all negotiations, that Hamilcar should lay down his arms, and give up all Roman deserters in his service. But when the Carthaginians disdainfully refused this condition, the consul prudently waived it, and a treaty was finally agreed on by the two commanders to the following effect--that the Carthaginians should evacuate Sicily; should give up all Roman prisoners without ransom; and should pay twenty-two hundred talents in twenty years towards the expenses of the war. But the Roman tribes refused to ratify the treaty without inquiry. Accordingly the senate sent over ten envoys, who confirmed the treaty of Catulus, except that they raised the sum to thirty-two hundred talents, and required this larger sum to be paid in ten years, instead of twenty. They also insisted on the cession of all the small islands between Italy and Sicily.
Thus ended the First Punic War. The issue of this long struggle was altogether in favour of Rome. She had performed few brilliant exploits; she had sent few eminent men to conduct the war; but she had done great things. She had beaten the Mistress of the Sea upon her own element. She had gained possession of an island nearly twice as large as Yorkshire, and fertile beyond the example of other lands. Her losses, indeed, had been enormous; for she had lost seven hundred ships, a vast number of men, and large sums of money. But Carthage had suffered still more. For though she had lost not more than five hundred ships, yet the interruption to her trade, and the loss of her great commercial emporiums of Lilybæum and Drepana, not only crippled the resources of the state, but largely diminished the fortunes of every individual citizen. The Romans and Italians, who fought in this war, were mostly agricultural; and the losses of such a people are small, and soon repaired, while those suffered by a great commercial state are often irreparable.
This war was only the prelude to a more fierce and deadly contest. Carthage had withdrawn discomfited from Sicily, and her empty treasury and ruined trade forbade her to continue the conflict at that time. But it was not yet decided whether Rome or Carthage was to rule the coasts of the Mediterranean. The great Hamilcar left Eryx without despair. He foresaw that by patience and prudence he might shake off the control of his jealous government, and train up an army in his own interest, with which he might defy the Roman legions.
EVENTS BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND PUNIC WARS
[Sidenote: [241-218 B.C.]]
The First Punic War lasted three-and-twenty years; and the interval between the end of this war and the beginning of the next was of nearly the same duration. In the course of this period (from 240 to 218 B.C.) both Rome and Carthage, notwithstanding their exhausted condition, were involved in perilous wars. In the next three years Carthage was brought to the very brink of destruction by a general mutiny of her mercenary troops, which had been employed in Sicily, and were now to be disbanded. Their leaders were Spendius, a runaway Campanian slave, who feared to be given up to the Romans, and Matho, a Libyan, who had been too forward in urging the demands of the army for their pay, to hope for forgiveness from the Carthaginian government. Led on by these desperadoes, the soldiers gave full vent to their ferocity; they seized Gisco, who had been sent to treat with them, as a hostage; plundered the country round about; raised the subject Africans in rebellion; besieged the fortified towns of Utica and Hippo; and cut off all communication by land with the promontory upon which Carthage stands. At the end of the second year, however, Hamilcar, being invested with the command of the civic forces, reduced Spendius to such extremities that he surrendered at discretion, and compelled Matho to shut himself up in Tunis.
[Sidenote: [240-235 B.C.]]
The spirit of the insurgents was now quite broken, and they would fain have given in. But Matho and his officers were fighting with halters round their necks, and whenever any one attempted to persuade peaceful measures, a knot of the more violent cried him down; and thus, as usually happens in popular commotions, the real wishes of the greater part were drowned in the loud vociferations of a few bold and resolute desperadoes. What made the task of these men easier was that the army was composed of a great many different nations; and the soldiers, not being able to understand one another, could not so readily combine against their leaders. Almost the only word which was understood by all, was the terrible cry of “Stone him, stone him!” which was raised by the leading insurgents, whenever any one rose to advocate peace, and was re-echoed by the mass in ignorance or fear. But Hamilcar maintained a strict blockade, and the insurgents in Tunis were reduced to such extremities of famine that Matho was obliged to risk a battle. He was utterly defeated, taken prisoner, and put to death. Thus terminated this terrible war, which had lasted more than three years and four months, and at one time threatened the very existence of Carthage. It was known by the name of the War without Truce, or the Inexpiable War.
The forbearance shown by the Romans to Carthage during this fearful war makes their conduct at its close the more surprising. The mercenary troops in Sardinia had mutinied after the example of their brethren, and had taken possession of the island. After the close of the war in Africa these insurgents, fearing that their turn was come, put themselves under Roman protection; and their prayer for aid, like that of the Mamertines, was granted. The senate had the effrontery not only to demand the cession of Sardinia and Corsica, but also the payment of a further sum of twelve hundred talents. The Carthaginians were too weak to refuse; not even Hamilcar could have counselled them to do so. But this ungenerous conduct strengthened Hamilcar’s grim resolve, to take full vengeance on the grasping Italian republic.
To execute this resolve it was necessary for him to obtain an independent authority, so as to form armies and carry on campaigns, without being fettered by the orders of the narrow-minded government. And now seemed the time to obtain this authority. Hanno and the leading members of the council had long been jealous of the family of Barca, of which Hamilcar was the chief. Hamilcar’s fame and popularity were now so high that it was possible he might overthrow the power of the council of One Hundred. It was, therefore, with pleasure that they received his proposal to reduce Spain under the Carthaginian power. Carthage already had settlements in the south of Spain, and the old trading city of Gades was in alliance with her. But the rest of the country was peopled by wild and savage tribes, who could not be conquered in a day. But, before we trace the consequences of this extension of Carthaginian power in Spain, the affairs of Rome and Italy claim our attention.
During the Mercenary War in Africa, the Romans had remained at peace; and so profound was the general tranquillity in the year 235 B.C., that the temple of Janus was closed by the consul Manlius Torquatus, for the first time (say the annals) since the reign of Numa. In the last year of the First Punic War, the lower Sabine country had been formed into two tribes--the Veline and the Quirine. Thus the number of thirty-five was completed, and no addition was hereafter made to the Roman territory.
This tranquillity was of no long duration. The success of their arms in Sicily, and their newly acquired maritime power, encouraged the Romans to cross the Adriatic, not so much for the purpose of advancing their own dominion as to render a service to all who frequented these seas for the purposes of traffic. The far side of the Adriatic, then called Illyricum, consists of a narrow ledge of coast land flanked by parallel mountain chains. Many islands appear off the shore, and several large creeks afford safe anchorage for ships. These natural advantages made the Illyrians of the coast skilful seamen. Their light barks (lembi) issued from behind the islands or out of the creeks, and practised piracy on their neighbours. Their main stronghold was Scodra (Scutari). In 231 B.C., Teuta, a woman of bold and masculine spirit, became chief of this piratical race during the infancy of her son Pinnes, and in 230 B.C. had made herself supreme over all the islands except Issa, which she blockaded in person in that year. The senate had not hitherto found leisure to check the progress of these pirates. But in the year just named, they sent C. and L. Coruncanius as envoys to remonstrate with Teuta. But Teuta was little disposed to listen to remonstrance. It was not, she said, customary for the chiefs of Illyricum to prevent their subjects from making use of the sea. The younger Coruncanius, indignant at this avowal of national piracy, replied that if such were the institutions of the Illyrians, the Romans would lose no time in helping her to mend them. Exasperated by this sarcasm, Teuta ordered the envoys to be pursued and the younger one to be put to death. The Romans at once declared war against the Illyrians.
[Sidenote: [235-229 B.C.]]
After the surrender of Issa, the Illyrian queen pursued her success by the capture not only of Dyrrhachium, but also of Corcyra; and Demetrius, a clever and unscrupulous Greek of Pharos (a place on the coast of upper Illyricum), the chief counsellor of Teuta, was made governor of this famous island. The Epirots now sent ambassadors to crave protection from Rome; and the senate gladly took advantage of this opening. Early in the next spring both consuls appeared at Corcyra with a powerful fleet and army. Demetrius quickly discerned to which side fortune would incline, and surrendered Corcyra to the Romans without a blow. This treachery paralysed Teuta’s spirit; and Demetrius enabled the Roman commanders to overpower her forces with little trouble. She was obliged to surrender the greater part of her dominions to the traitor, who now became chief of Corcyra and southern Illyricum, under the protection of Rome. The Illyrians were not to appear south of Lissus with more than two barks at a time.
The suppression of Illyrian piracy was even more advantageous to the commerce of Greece than that of Rome. The leading men of the senate began, even at this time, to show a strong disposition to win the good opinion of the Greeks, who, degenerate as they were, were still held to be the centre of civilisation and the dispensers of fame. Postumius the consul, therefore, sent envoys to various Greek states to explain the appearance of a Roman force in those quarters. They were received with high distinction. The Athenians and Corinthians, especially, paid honour to Rome; and the latter people recognised her Greek descent by voting that her citizens should be admitted to the Isthmian games (228 B.C.). This short war was scarcely ended, when Rome saw a conflict impending, which filled her with alarm.
It will be remembered that just before the war with Pyrrhus, the Senonian Gauls had been extirpated, and the Boians defeated with great slaughter in two battles near Lake Vadimo in Etruria (283 B.C.). From that time the Gauls had remained quiet within their own boundaries. But in 232 B.C., the tribune C. Flaminius, a man who will hereafter claim more special notice, proposed to distribute all the public land held by Rome on the Picenian and Umbrian coasts to a number of poor citizens; a law which was put into effect four years afterwards. When the colonies of Sena Gallica and Ariminum had been planted on that same coast, the Boians were too much weakened by their late defeats to offer any opposition. But in two generations their strength was recruited, and they were encouraged to rise against Rome by the promised support of the Insubrians, a powerful tribe who occupied the trans-Padane district about Milan. The arrival of large bodies of Gauls from beyond the Alps completed their determination, and increased the terror which the recollections of the Allia still wrought upon the Roman mind. Report exaggerated the truth, and the Romans made larger preparations for this Gallic war than they had made against Pyrrhus or the Carthaginians. Active preparations were seconded by superstitious rites. The Sibylline books were consulted, and in them it was found written that the soil of Rome must be twice occupied by a foreign foe. To fulfil this prediction, the government barbarously ordered a Gaulish man and woman, together with a Greek woman, to be buried alive in the Forum.
[Sidenote: [229-223 B.C.]]
The campaign opened in northern Etruria. The Gauls crossed the Apennines into the vale of the Arno and fell suddenly upon the prætor stationed with an army at Fæsulæ. Him they overpowered, and defeated with great slaughter. The consul Æmilius now, with great promptitude, crossed the Umbrian hills into Etruria; and on his approach the Gauls retired northwards along the coast, wishing to secure their booty; while Æmilius hung upon their rear, without venturing to engage in a general action. But near Pisa they found that the other consul, Atilius, had landed from Sardinia; and thus hemmed in by two consular armies, they were obliged to give battle at a place called Telamon. The conflict was desperate; but the Romans were better armed and better disciplined than of old, while the Gauls had remained stationary. Their large heavy broadswords, forged of ill-tempered iron, bent at the first blow, and while they stooped to straighten them with the foot, they were full exposed to the thrust of the short Roman sword. The victory of Telamon was as signal as that of Sentinum or of Vadimo (225 B.C.).
The consuls of the next year (224 B.C.) again invaded the Boian country, and received the complete submission of all the tribes on the left bank of the Po. In the following year C. Flaminius, the reputed cause of the war, was consul, and pushed across the Po, with the resolution of punishing the Insubrians (Milanese) for the part they had taken in the invasion of Etruria. The place at which he crossed the great river was somewhere above Mantua; and here he formed a league with the Cenomani, who were at deadly feud with the Insubrians. Assisted by these auxiliaries, he moved westward across the Adda, the boundary of the Insubrian district. At this moment Flaminius received despatches from the senate, forbidding him to invade the Insubrian country. But he laid them aside unopened, and at once gave battle to the enemy. He gained a signal victory; and then, opening the despatches, he laughed at the caution of the senate.
During the winter the Insubrians sued for peace; but the new consuls, Cn. Cornelius Scipio and M. Claudius Marcellus, afterwards so celebrated, persuaded the senate to undertake a fourth campaign. The consuls both marched north, and entered the Insubrian territory. But Marcellus, hearing that Viridomarus, the Insubrian chief, had crossed the Po to ravage the country lately occupied by the Romans, left his colleague to reduce the principal towns of the Insubrians, while he pursued the chief with his army. He came up with him near Clastidium, and attacked him with his cavalry alone. A smart action ensued, in which Marcellus encountered Viridomarus, and slew him with his own hand; and the Gauls fled in disorder. Thus were won the third and last spolia opima. Meanwhile Scipio had taken Mediolanum (Milan), the chief city of the Insubrian Gauls, and the war was concluded (221 B.C.).
Soon after this it was resolved, probably at the instance of Flaminius, to plant two colonies, Cremona and Placentia, on opposite sides of the Po, so as to secure the territory lately won in the Boian and Insubrian territories. But the execution of this project did not take place till three years later, when Hannibal was on his march. Some years afterwards we hear this district spoken of as the province of Ariminum. Communication was secured between Rome and Ariminum by a road constructed in the censorship of Flaminius, which bore his name (220 B.C.).
During this great disturbance in Italy, Demetrius of Pharos proved as false to his new patrons as he had been to Teuta. Relying on the support of Philip, king of Macedon, he assumed the air of an independent chief, and encouraged his subjects in their old piratical practices. In 219 B.C. L. Æmilius Paulus, the patrician consul, received orders from the senate to put a stop to these proceedings. In one short campaign he reduced Corcyra, took Pharos, and forced Demetrius to take refuge at the court of Philip, where we shall find him at a later time active in promoting hostilities against Rome. Illyricum again fell into the hands of native chiefs; the Romans, however, kept possession of the island of Corcyra, together with the strong towns of Oricum and Apollonia--positions of great service in the Macedonian Wars.
Thus triumphant on all sides and on all sides apparently secure, the Roman government had no presentiment of the storm that had long been gathering in the west. We must now return to Hamilcar.
HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL
[Sidenote: [235-219 B.C.]]
He crossed the straits of Gibraltar in 235 B.C. With him went his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his son Hannibal, then a boy of nine years old, but even then giving promise of those qualities which afterwards made him the terror of Rome. Hamilcar had not intended to take him to Spain; but the boy pleaded so earnestly, that the father yielded on condition that he should swear eternal enmity to Rome and the Romans. Hannibal himself, in his old age, told the tale to Antiochus, king of Syria, how he was led to the altar of his country’s gods, and took this direful oath. Nothing can more strongly show the feelings with which Hamilcar left his country. He went, not as the servant of Carthage but as the enemy of Rome, with feelings of personal hostility, not to be appeased save by the degradation of his antagonist.
His first object was to conquer Spain, and thus put Carthage in possession of a province which might itself become a great kingdom, and was worth many Sicilies and Sardinias. One of the chief advantages he proposed to himself in this conquest was the supply of hardy soldiers, which would be given by the possession of Spain. But he was well aware that for this purpose conquest was not sufficient; he must enlist the feelings of the Spaniards in his cause, he must teach them to look up to himself and his family as their friends and benefactors. Accordingly he married a Spanish lady of Castulo; he lived among the natives like one of themselves; he taught them to work their rich silver mines; and in all ways opened out the resources of the country. Meanwhile he collected and disciplined an excellent army, with which he reduced many of the ruder tribes to the northward of the modern Andalusia and Murcia. Thus he reigned (this is the best word to express his power) with vigour and wisdom for eight years; and in the ninth he fell in battle, admired and regretted by all southern Spain.
Hannibal was yet only in his eighteenth year, too young to take up the work which his father had left unfinished. But Hasdrubal, the son-in-law of the great commander, proved his worthy successor. He at once assumed supreme authority. By the gentler arts of conciliation he won over a great number of tribes; and in order to give a capital to this new realm, he founded the city of New Carthage, now Carthagena, on the coast of Murcia. The successes of Hamilcar had already attracted the notice of the senate; and in the year 227 B.C., presently after his death, they concluded a league with Hasdrubal, whereby the river Ebro was fixed as the northern boundary of the Carthaginian empire in Spain. Hasdrubal fell by the knife of an assassin in the year 221 B.C., the seventh of his command.
Hannibal was now in his twenty-fourth year. He was at once elected by the acclamations of the army to stand in his great father’s place. Nor did the government venture to brave the anger of a young general at the head of an army devoted to his cause. Hannibal remained as ruler of Carthaginian Spain. The office was becoming hereditary in his family.
Hamilcar had enlarged the Carthaginian rule in Spain from a few trading settlements to a great province. Hasdrubal had carried the limits of this province as far as the sierra of Toledo. Hannibal immediately crossed this range into the valley of the Tagus, and reduced the Celtiberian tribes which then occupied Castille. He even passed the Castilian Mountains which form the upper edge of the basin of the Tagus, and made the name of Carthage feared among the Vaccæans of the Douro, by taking their chief town, Helmantica (Salamanca). At the close of the year 220 B.C., all Spain south of the Ebro was in subjection to Carthage, or in alliance with her. The great qualities of the three men through whom they knew her made them not unwilling vassals.
[Sidenote: [219-218 B.C.]]
But there was one city south of the Ebro which still maintained independence. This was Saguntum, an ancient colony from the Greek island of Zacynthus. Its site on the coast of modern Valencia is marked by the present town of Murviedro (Muri Veteres), rather more than halfway between New Carthage and the mouth of the Ebro. Saguntum had been for some time in alliance with Rome; and therefore, though it was on the Carthaginian side of the Ebro, was by Roman custom entitled to support. In the year 219 B.C. this city was at war with a neighbouring tribe, and Hannibal eagerly accepted an invitation to destroy the ally of his enemy. He surrounded Saguntum with a large army; but the people held out for eight months with that heroic obstinacy which seems to distinguish all dwellers on Spanish ground, when engaged in defensive warfare. In many respects the siege of Saguntum brings that of Saragossa to mind.
While the siege yet lasted, the Roman senate had sent envoys to Hannibal, requiring him to desist from attacking their ally. He replied coldly, that “he could not answer for their safety in his camp; they had better seek redress at Carthage.” They went on their way; but meantime the news of the fall of Saguntum reached Rome, and an embassy was sent to Carthage to demand that Hannibal, the author of the mischief, should be given up. There was a large party, that of Hanno and the government, which would probably have complied with this demand. But Rome was hated at Carthage, and the government did not dare to oppose the general feeling. They replied that Saguntum was not mentioned in the treaty of Hasdrubal; even if it were, that treaty had never been ratified by the government, and therefore was of no authority. Then Q. Fabius Buteo, chief of the Roman envoys, doubling his toga in his hand, held it up and said: “In this fold I carry peace and war: choose ye which ye will have.” “Give us which you will,” replied the suffet. “Then take war,” said the Roman, letting his toga fall loose. “We accept the gift,” cried the senators of Carthage, “and welcome.”
Thus war was formally declared against Rome. But before we pass on to the narrative of this war, it will be well to form some idea of the extraordinary man who, by his sole genius, undertook and supported it with success for so many years.
Hannibal was now in his twenty-eighth year, nearly of the same age at which Napoleon Bonaparte led the army of the French republic into Italy. And when we have named Napoleon, we have named, perhaps, the only man, ancient or modern, who can claim to be superior, or even equal, to Hannibal as a general. Bred in the camp, he possessed every quality necessary to gain the confidence of his men. His personal strength and activity were such that he could handle their arms and perform their exercises, on foot or on horseback, more skilfully than themselves. His endurance of heat and cold, of fatigue and hunger, excelled that of the hardiest soldier in the camp. He never required others to do what he could not and would not do himself. To these bodily powers he added an address as winning as that of Hasdrubal his brother-in-law, talents for command fully as great as those of his father Hamilcar. His frank manners and genial temper endeared him to the soldiery; his strong will swayed them like one man. The different nations who made up his motley arms--Africans and Spaniards, Gauls and Italians--looked upon him each as their own chief.
Amid the hardships which his mixed army underwent for sixteen years in a foreign land, there never was a mutiny in his camp. This admirable versatility of the man was seconded by qualities required to make the general. His quick perception and great sagacity led him to marvellously correct judgment of future events and distant countries--which in those days, when travellers were few and countries unknown, must have been a task of extraordinary difficulty. He formed his plans after patient inquiry, and kept them profoundly secret till it was necessary to make them known. But with this caution in designing was united marvellous promptness in executing. “He was never deceived himself,” says Polybius, “but never failed to take advantage of the errors of his opponent.” Nor was he a mere soldier. In leisure hours he delighted to converse with Greeks on topics of intellectual cultivation. As a statesman, he displayed ability hardly inferior to that which he displayed as a general.
Against these great qualities, he is said to have been cruel even to ferocity, and treacherous beyond the common measure of his country. As to perfidy, we hear of no single occasion on which Hannibal broke faith with Rome. As to cruelty, there can be no doubt that he was indifferent to human life; and on several occasions we shall find him, under the influence of passion, treating his prisoners with great barbarity. But though he had been trained to consider the Romans as his natural enemies, to be hunted down like wolves, we shall find him treating worthy foemen, such as Marcellus, with the magnanimity of a noble nature.
But whatever might be the ability, whatever the hardihood of the young general, he required it all. To penetrate from the Ebro to the Po--with chains of giant mountains to bar his progress, through barbarous and hostile countries, without roads or maps or accurate knowledge of his route, without certain provision for the food and clothing of his army, without the hearty concurrence of his own government--was an undertaking from which the boldest might shrink, and to have accomplished this march with triumphant success would alone justify the homage which is still paid to the genius of Hannibal.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[47] [In the words of Polybius,[d] “App. Claudius with unspeakable bravery passing the strait by night, got at length into Messana.”]
[48] [Hamilcar took command of an army in Sicily six years before the close of the war. The story of his brilliant achievements reads like a romance; but all his energy, skill, and daring did not save his city from defeat.]
[49] [Appian[f] says that Lacedæmon, being asked for a general, sent Xanthippus.]
[50] [H. Shear’s version of 1693 is here adopted. We retain the chief features of the original typographical setting, in keeping with the quaint phraseology.]