Niebuhr's lectures on Roman history, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by Barthold Georg Niebuhr

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.

Every body knows that Carthage is a colony of Tyre, founded seventy-two years before the received date of the building of Rome. This statement is quite historical. It rests upon those highly important notices in Josephus’ work against Apion, from Phœnician chronicles which he read in a Greek version of Menander of Ephesus. They are fully as genuine as Berosus and Sanchoniathon, and closely tally with the history of the Jewish kings: fraud on the part of Josephus is not to be thought of. The Romans knew of the historical books of the Phœnicians: after the destruction of Carthage, they presented them to the library of the Numidian kings. If we wish for a true and authentic account of the earliest history, we should be very thankful to have such dates as these. The assertion also of Timæus that Rome was built about the same time as Carthage, is not wide of the mark; that is to say, if we reckon the Sæcula at a hundred and ten years. Utica (Athika עֲתִיקָא) is an older colony of Tyre than Carthage: its foundation belongs to the age in which the power of the Phœnicians was at its height, and they had settlements in Cyprus, and were establishing themselves in every quarter. Those of Cythera, Thasos, and elsewhere, are of much later date; but it is likely that Cadiz (Gades) already existed when Carthage was built.

Carthage was originally founded under the name of Bozra (in Greek Βύρσα, whence the legend of the bullock’s hide). By the side of this Bozra, that is to say, city, there arose, even as Naples did at the side of Parthenope, a new town, קַרִתָּה חַדְתָּא Kartha chadtha, (by contraction Karchadta, from which the Greeks made out Καρχηδών). The town, for perhaps two hundred years, increased but slowly; it paid tribute to the Libyan peoples, and was for a long time in a state of dependence upon Tyre. Towards this, her mother-city, Carthage was never wanting in filial piety, not even when its relations to her had completely changed, which is one of the fine traits in her history. Of the time when Carthage began to extend its sway, we know nothing: placed as it was in the midst of barbarous nations, which were not able to amalgamate with it, it could not have risen into prosperity as quickly as the Greek colonies on the Asiatic coasts, where races of men were dwelling between which and the Pelasgian stock there was affinity, although not in language, yet in that spirit of refined humanity which distinguished them; as, for instance, the Lycians, and Carians, who, even before they were hellenized, had already attained to a considerable degree of civilization, as we see from their monuments and institutions. The Carthaginians did not betake themselves to husbandry, and therefore they could not multiply as fast as families which spread out; the Libyans were hard, oppressive neighbours, barbarians (Berbers as they are called to this very day) who only gradually mingled with the Phœnician settlers. It was not until the middle of the third century of Rome, more than three hundred years after her own foundation, that Carthage made her appearance as a power. The earlier times are shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Justin gives some notices from Trogus, but most carelessly; so does also Diodorus, who in all likelihood borrowed from Timæus: the former has an account of a civil war, and of a conquest of Carthage by Malcus, one of its generals. Certain it is, that Carthage for a long time paid tribute to the Libyans; and the first sign of its vigour, is the throwing off of this yoke in a hard-fought struggle. Particularly favourable to Carthage seem to have been the fortunes of the mother country Phœnicia, which, after having long and painfully striven against Egypt, yielded itself to Persian protection; for though indeed its condition was thus tolerable enough, yet at times a foreign yoke was felt to be galling, and many may have then emigrated to the free colony, which was made to thrive the more, as Tyre, owing to its connexion with Persia, now became the port for the whole of Asia, even as far as India. The treaty with Rome in the year of the city 245, shows that the Carthaginians were then already masters of part of Sicily, of Sardinia, and of Libya, so that they were a great people for that age. About the year 272, they are said to have come over with an army of 300,000 men into Sicily, against Gelon of Syracuse and Theron of Agrigentum: this, however, is not real history. Pindar and Simonides sang the achievements of Gelon and Theron; but history was not yet written. It is not that such an expedition has never taken place; what is doubtful, is the assertion that it happened at the same time as the invasion of Xerxes. The battle of Himera is said to have been fought on the very day that he was defeated at Salamis; but, on the other hand, the better chronological statements which rest upon the authority of Timæus, show that Gelon, who is supposed to have conquered at Himera, came to the throne at a later date than that of the battle of Salamis. The expedition of the Carthaginians must have happened in the 76th, or 77th Olympiad, and it must have been insignificant. They were beaten, and did not for a long time think again of undertaking anything against Sicily: they now strengthened themselves in other quarters. When the Athenians engaged in their enterprise against Sicily, we hear little or nothing of the Carthaginians; they were confined to Motye, Panormus, and Solois, the first of which three places is a Phœnician settlement. Yet when the expedition had come to such an unhappy end, the implacable revenge wreaked against Segesta and the other cities which had welcomed the Athenians, now brought on the ruin of Sicily. These cities applied to Carthage, which sent a considerable army over (350): all the Greek towns were involved in the greatest danger; Selinus, Agrigentum, Camarina, Gela, and other places were destroyed. Dionysius the elder concluded a disadvantageous peace, but was afterwards more successful. In the reign of Dionysius the second, the Carthaginians renewed the contest. Timoleon defeated them, and drove them back to Motye and Lilybæum; yet in the peace the old status quo was re-established, and the western part of Sicily remained in their hands: the rivers Nimera and Halycus continued to be the boundaries which thenceforth were looked upon as the normal ones, and were generally restored when a peace was made. In the days of Agathocles, the Carthaginians besieged Syracuse; but in a second campaign, during which Motye was destroyed, and they were for some time confined to Lilybæum, they were compelled to restore the boundary of the Himera. Then followed the events of the times of Pyrrhus, who carried out the plans of Agathocles still further. After his departure, the Carthaginians spread themselves again, and afterwards got possession once more of Agrigentum.

At the beginning of the first Punic war, Carthage was mistress of the whole of the western half of Sicily, and of the northern coast as far as Messana. In Africa, her rule extended to the corner of the great Syrtis; nearly the whole of the territory of Tunis was subject to her. Along a great part of the African coast, there was a number of Carthaginian colonial towns. There were likewise several of them in the interior; for the Libyans had adopted Punic civilization: even St. Augustine says that the Punic language was his mother tongue. When two hundred years afterwards the Arabs conquered these regions, they were able in some degree to converse with the inhabitants; and the present Tunisian dialect, as well as the Maltese, without doubt has still retained some Punic elements. The coast of Algiers, as far as the straits of Gibraltar, was occupied by their factories only, the mountains there approaching too near the sea to leave room for colonies. In Sardinia, the Carthaginians ruled over the whole of that gloomy but fruitful isle, with the exception of the inner highlands; and these were inhabited by savage tribes, which to this day have not changed their way of living, but, for instance, even now wear those sheep skins which Cicero calls mastrucæ. In Corsica, they had a few settlements, probably the excellent harbours there: the Balearic isles were also subject to them. The coasts of Granada and Murcia were likewise in their possession; and Cadiz, although a sister town, was treated as a dependent.

As to the constitution of Carthage, we are utterly in the dark. What has been written on it, is but insignificant; nor have my researches led me to any important results. They had, according to Aristotle, a δῆμος, that is to say, a mixed commonalty which had come together (συνήλυδες) of colonial citizens and Libyans (Amazirgh, Schilha’s, Maxyes, Massesyles). The Libyans, in their whole physical constitution, do not in the least differ from the nations of Southern Europe; and thus likewise ancient Egypt, before it was conquered by the Æthiopians, had a white population: the whole of the Mediterranean therefore was inhabited around by whites. These Libyans could very easily have amalgamated with the Pœni in a δῆμος, even as at Rome the plebeians did with the patricians; yet there would be this distinction, that these last were of the same stock, whereas the Libyans and the Pœni were altogether different, and particularly so in their language. The relation between the Libyans and the Pœni is analogous to that of the Lettish and Lithuanian tribes to the German settlers, or of the Slavonic population near Lübeck and the Germans, the former of whom also became completely Germanized. We know moreover that Carthage had a senate; this is still the governing body in the first Punic war. According to Aristotle, the δῆμος at Carthage had but little to say, not much more than at Sparta, where only those who were in authority might speak in the assembly, and not the people, who were merely to assent or to reject; at Carthage, any one of the people was at least free to stand up and make a speech. Those whom Aristotle calls the βασιλεῖς, even the Suffetes or Schofetim, were no doubt in earlier times the commanders of the army likewise: afterwards, when the civil and military power were jealously kept distinct, their office was merely an administrative one. We also find that there was a powerful corporation called the Hundred, which cannot but be the same as the Hundred and Four in Aristotle: these I have long ago referred to the fifty weeks of the year. Moreover, he speaks of another kind of magistracy, of which we merely know that it was a πενταρχία (if the reading be correct, as the text of Aristotle’s Politics is derived from a single Parisian MS. of the fourteenth century), and that its members were chosen by the Hundred and Four. Of what nature it was, we do not know.

The Hundred and Four are no doubt the centum senatores, before whom, says Justin, the kings and generals had to undergo their εὐθύναι; they may have been a court of control to check the administration of the senate, very much like the Ephors in Sparta (παραπλήσιοι ἐφόροις). Aristotle points out, that, properly speaking, the power of government lay with the senate; single cases only were brought before the people: there was therefore no magistracy which could agitate the δῆμος, like the tribunes at Rome. The chief offices were given ἀριστίνδην and πλουτίνδην: in a later passage, Aristotle says positively that the highest places were ὠνηταί, and Polybius confirms it. People were not in the least ashamed to take money from the candidates: things were managed as in the small cantons in Switzerland, where the office of bailiff (Landvogt) was sold in the most shameless manner, or as in Venice. There the places were not quite bought in due form; but it was well understood, that one had to pay for them: the great offices of state were sought after as a provvigione, as a means of restoring embarrassed fortunes. The rich were never punished, not even for murder; but they paid damages, and there was a regular sale of cartes blanches for manslaughter. This was also the case with the Carthaginians. They were a commercial people, but this should by no means have bereft them of the feeling of honour: we do not find it to be so in England, for instance. Among the trading communities of the United States, similar sentiments are said to prevail as in Carthage. Such a disposition as this cannot but lead to utter ruin. The Carthaginians, owing to their rapacity, were grievously hateful to their subjects: the Libyans had to pay a fourth part of their produce, and in some extraordinary cases even half; besides which, there was whatever the governors might squeeze out of them on their own account; and these, as Aristotle already tells us, were positively sent down to suck the blood of those who were under their rule. This plan was adopted to keep individuals among the citizens in good humour. The contrast between the Carthaginians and the Romans in their better times, is very striking. Some great men, of course, were exceptions, as they were able to act freely, like kings: when Hamilcar commanded in Spain, the Carthaginians were quite popular there. The nation was unwarlike; they kept mercenaries, and had only a cavalry of their own: the mercenaries were faithless in a countless number of instances. The Carthaginians not unseldom left the same generals for many years in possession of their command; but the separation of it from the civil magistracy had this disadvantage, that they often rebelled. The generals, however, became very familiarly acquainted with their armies, and a good captain was thus enabled to achieve quite incredible things, whilst a bad one might also do great mischief. Among the Romans, it was, of course, quite different. With them, there was a constant change; men were in office for one year, and then, at most, one more as proconsuls.

If we would understand the first Punic war, we ought to have in our mind’s eye an outline of the natural features of Sicily. As every body knows, the core and frame-work of the whole island is Ætna, from which a chain of mountains stretches close along the sea, and is continued on the opposite shore as far as Hipponium in Bruttium. For the mountain ranges in the South of Italy belong geologically to Sicily, whilst the hills of the Northern Apennines are a different ridge. The Apenninus so ends that the two sets of mountains are connected together by low hills, on the spot where the Greeks had more than once the intention of making a canal. The mountain ridge, therefore, runs north from Ætna as far as Messina on the eastern coast; to the south, it leaves a considerable plain near Leontini towards the sea; between Syracuse and the western country, there is only a low range of hills. West of Ætna, it continues under the names of the Heræan and Nebrodian mountains. From Pelorus to Himera, it is quite close to the sea, which washes its foot; so that sometimes there is not even a road between. From Himera onward, there is a small strip of coast, and the mountains fall off in height: at some distance from Palermo, the country becomes quite flat; the only eminence is the hill in which is the cavern of St. Rosalia (the ancient Hercta).[1] The range of mountains then goes further to the west, and rises again: Eryx (Monte San Giuliano) is the largest mountain after Ætna; it towers in a quite extraordinary way from among the lower groups. The country round Enna is flat. The southern coast to Agrigentum is a large plain, by Gela and Camarina also it is flat; south of a line drawn from Agrigentum to Catana, there is either nothing but hillocks, or a dead level.—According therefore to this nature of the ground, campaigns had to be managed. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible why the Romans did not march from Messina to Palermo by the northern coast, but went to the southern part, where they could have had no other base but Syracuse to rest upon. To this, my attention was directed by the campaigns of the English in 1812, in which likewise the troops could not go by land from Messina to Palermo.

The first Punic war may be divided into five periods:—

1. From 488 to 491, when the Romans carry on the war without a fleet. The Carthaginians are masters of the sea; the Romans have the greatest difficulty in crossing, and can only get at them in Sicily by land.

2. From 492 to 496, to the landing of Regulus in Africa.

3. From 496 to 497, the campaign of Regulus in Africa.

4. From the destruction of the army of Regulus to the victory of L. Cæcilius Metellus near Panormus. Fortune is nearly equally balanced; the Romans lose two fleets by storms, the Carthaginians have the upperhand in Sicily: nevertheless the Romans are victorious at last.

5. From the beginning of the year 502 to 511; from the contest for Lilibæum and Drepana, to the victory near the Ægatian isles. The ten years’ struggle is confined to an exceedingly narrow space, being important rather in a military than in an historical point of view. The diversion of Hamilcar Barcas, of which, unfortunately, we know so little, is, owing to the taking of Hercta and Eryx, one of the most remarkable in the military history of any age; it shows a great man, who creates new resources for himself, and avails himself of them. Yet for the history of nations this period is not so important.

The Carthaginian system of warfare is quite unknown to us; we can only say, that, where the Carthaginians themselves were in arms, they were drawn up in a phalanx just like the Greeks. The Spaniards very likely stood in catervæ, and fought with small swords, and in cetris, that is to say, linen coats of mail. The Gauls, no doubt, fought in great masses.

In the year 490, the third of the war, the Romans undertook to besiege Agrigentum with two armies. This town was of great extent; yet, as a city it was but a mere shadow of what it had been a hundred and forty years earlier, before its first destruction by the Carthaginians. Within its high and strong walls, a considerable army of the enemy had now thrown itself. The name of the Punic general was Hannibal. The Carthaginians were called by their first-names only, and one might be easily led to think that they were all related to each other, as there were so few of these names, Hannibal, Hanno, Hamilcar, and some others. These correspond to our christian names, to the Roman prænomina, as Gaius, &c. They certainly had, all of them, family names also, which, however, at that time were not yet made use of to designate individuals: they had even bye-names, but these have been partly lost to us. The generals who bear the name of Hannibal, are in the whole of Carthaginian history so insignificant, when set beside that great man who gave the name its renown, that little mention only is made of them. Hannibal had posted himself with fifty thousand men within the wide and waste precincts of Agrigentum; the two consular armies advanced on the south against the town, entrenched themselves in two camps, and constructed two lines against the city, and against any one who might attempt to relieve it. The Carthaginian generals were very bad in the beginning of the war; they either made no use at all of the elephants, or only a limited one, and they were very loth to give battle to the Romans. Hannibal had now imprudently allowed himself to be thus hemmed in, and as Agrigentum does not lie close to the sea, he could not get any succours from thence: yet he succeeded in conveying to the Carthaginians, by single messengers and letters, his entreaties for relief. They indeed, when he had been besieged five months, sent Hanno with a large army and fifty elephants. This general pitched a strong camp near Heraclea; took Erbessus, the arsenal of the Romans; and by means of barricades of felled trees, &c., so shut them in, that they were much distressed for want of supplies, and on account of the state of health of their troops: for the Carthaginians were masters of the sea, and the Numidian horsemen, the Cossacks of the ancients, made it exceedingly difficult for them to forage. It seemed as if they would be obliged to give up the siege, and to retreat; yet they could not bring themselves to do so, showing in this instance also their perseverance, and on the contrary, they kept up the blockade so strictly, that Hannibal found no means of bettering the condition of his troops. When under these circumstances two months had gone by, Hanno may have had reasons to attack; yet the Romans gained a complete victory, and set themselves up again by the booty which they got in his camp. All this time, Hiero had given them every possible help: without him they would have perished. Hannibal, who had been brought to extremities, took advantage of the moment when the Romans were enjoying themselves the night after their victory, to make preparations for a sally. The soldiers filled the ditches of the Roman lines with fascines and sacks of straw, climbed over the ramparts, drove back the outposts, and thus fought their way through: all that the Romans could do, was to annoy them in the rear. Whoever was able to bear arms, got off in this way; but the inhabitants of the town were for the most part left behind, as well as the sick and the weak. Agrigentum was, on the following morning, sacked and pillaged, like a town taken by storm. Here the Romans made up for all their privations: the whole of the unfortunate population was swept away.

After this frightful event, a year passed by without any remarkable occurrence. The Carthaginians strongly provisioned and fortified their other stations in the west; yet they also acted on the offensive. Their fleet cruised off the coasts of Italy, which it laid waste; the northern coasts of Sicily likewise surrendered to their power from fear, whilst the Romans kept the inner island and the eastern coast. The conquest of Agrigentum gave the latter quite different ideas with regard to the war. Formerly, they merely wanted to have Messana and Syracuse as dependent allies; but now their object was to drive the Carthaginians altogether from the island, as Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus had done: they saw, however, that this could not be done without a fleet. It was the same difficulty as at Athens, where, in the Peloponnesian war, and in the times immediately following it, they had no other ships but penteconters, lembi, and triremes (with from 200 to 220 men, who were partly rowers and partly marines, and with a deck; the penteconters, which had 50 men,[2] were open, and the benches for the rowers in both were placed across, before and above each other); these vessels had been outdone long since, and larger ones were needed. In Syracuse, the cradle of mechanical art, quadriremes, and soon afterwards quinqueremes, were first mounted, ships of a larger class, which were not round, and which might properly be called ships of the line; for, the difference of the triremes and quinqueremes cannot have consisted merely in the number of the benches and the rowers, but it must really have been in the build itself, otherwise no great skill would have been required to construct them. These quinqueremes had already for a long time been in use, especially in the Macedonian, Sicelian, and Punic fleets; but neither the Romans, nor the Antiates had them. The Romans had also triremes, and wherever the Antiate vessels are mentioned, they are triremes.—The oars had the same effect as our steam boats, being independent of wind and tide: the ancients could, however, sail very well besides.

A quinquereme had three hundred rowers and a hundred and twenty marines; to these rowers the triremes could oppose but a hundred and twenty, who therefore were able to do as little against them, as a frigate or a brigantine would against a ship of the line. This accounts for the statement, that the Romans had had no fleet at all; and yet they had built triremes for the passage to Sicily. They wanted therefore a model, from which the ships might be built on correct principles, so that they could be worked with ease; and they might certainly have sent for a shipbuilder to Greece, or to Egypt, to Ptolemy Philadelphus, with whom they were already allied, and have fetched a model thence; for the ancients indeed built from models. But it so happened that a Carthaginian ship of war was driven ashore, and from it they built a hundred and twenty quinqueremes.[3] These were indeed very unwieldy, and the Romans had not the number of sailors which they wanted, that is to say, more than 30,000. They were therefore obliged to man them with levies from the inland districts, and with slaves, as the Russian ships are by conscription in the interior of the empire;—for, the seamen from Etruria and the Greek towns were by no means sufficient (Polybius goes too far, in stating that they had had no able seamen at all): these were trained to ply the oars upon scaffoldings on dry ground. This drilling, as it is told to us, seems to be utterly ridiculous; and the Carthaginians must have been altogether unlike our nations, if on this occasion a whole crowd of caricatures were not published among them. There was in those times the same contrast between a Roman and a Carthaginian ship, which there is now-a-days between a Russian and an English or American man of war. But the Romans, being great in this as they were in all things, devised the means of overcoming this disadvantage. Their fleet was unable to make head against the Carthaginians in the ordinary tactics; and it was very likely at that very time, and not at a later one, that the idea was conceived of ridding the sea-fight of all artificial evolutions, and rather making ship fight against ship. For it required the greatest skill to manage and steer the ships against wind and tide in the same way as a rider manages his horse, so as to shatter the enemy’s vessel by means of the rostrum, and to tear off the benches of the rowers; this was more than the Romans dared to think of. Wherever an enemy is to be met who is greatly superior in skill, the only way of conquering is by employing masses, or some unexpected invention. Thus Carnot gained the victory for the French, by opposing masses to the thin lines of the enemy; the battle of Wattignies (15, 16 Oct. 1793) is the turning point of the modern history of warfare, the end of the old, and the beginning of the new tactics. General Hoche had recourse to the same system in Lorraine; by masses the Americans also beat the English ships, which, otherwise, they would have never succeeded in doing. The Romans invented boarding-bridges made of wood, which were wide enough for two men to run upon abreast, and protected on both sides by railings; on the prow of every ship a large mast was set up, resting on which the bridge was drawn up aloft, the upturned end having an iron ring through which a hawser was passed: the bridge was raised or lowered by a windlass, and it fastened itself to the hostile vessel by means of a grappling-iron. Thus the advantage of superior skill which the Carthaginian rowers possessed, was done away with. The Romans, moreover, had their best legions on board, and in all likelihood the Carthaginians had only middling or bad marine soldiers, as these were not picked. This was in the year 492, according to Cato; in 494, according to Varro. The first attempt was not, however, successful, or in the beginning all the ships were not yet armed in this manner. A squadron was caught at a great disadvantage near the Liparian isles, owing to the bad look-out of the Roman commander Cn. Cornelius, and many ships were lost; but the Carthaginians also, some time afterwards, got right into the midst of the Roman squadron, and several of their ships were taken. But the decisive affair was the naval victory of the consul C. Duilius off Mylæ. The Carthaginians engaged in the battle with a feeling of great contempt for their enemy, having 130 vessels against 100 Roman ones; but they soon found how much they were mistaken, when the Romans began to board, and the sea-fight was changed into the nature of a land one. Fifty Carthaginian ships were taken; then the Romans, quite intoxicated with their victory, landed in Sicily, and relieved Segesta (which, like Rome, boasted of its descent from Troy). Duilius was the first who led forth a naval triumph at Rome. He got the right of being lighted by a torch carried before him, when returning home of an evening from a feast, and of being accompanied by a flute player; moreover, as is generally known, the columna rostrata was erected to him. What this really was, we do not exactly know; perhaps it was a brazen pillar, cast from the beaks of the ships which had been taken: a pillar from which brazen beaks stick out, as it is generally represented, is quite a modern, and altogether ungrounded conceit. On the column there was an inscription, in which the victory and the booty won by Duilius were set forth. A small remnant of it is still in existence; yet the present tablet has not been put up in the time of Duilius himself, as some of the Roman antiquaries have also perceived. It is built of Greek marble, which in those days was not yet known in Rome. According to Tacitus, it was struck by lightning in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, and restored by Germanicus; but the old language and spelling were still faithfully kept. With that age, the form of the letters also agrees: those on the tombs of the Scipios are altogether different.

After this victory, the hopes of the Romans were unbounded: the war in Sicily was pursued with redoubled vigour. In the following year, the Roman fleet went to Sardinia. The conquest of this island was difficult, as on the coasts the Punic language and manners had spread; yet as all the subjects there had been kept in an unwarlike condition owing to the jealousy of the mother state, the attack was somewhat facilitated. But for all that, it had no important result.

The two following years were spent in making conquests in Sicily, besides this expedition to Sardinia. In this war, A. Atilius Calatinus got into an impassable part of the country; and a tribune, whose name is stated differently, M. Calpurnius Flamma, or Q. Cæditius Laberius, sacrificed himself with a small band for the sake of the army, as Decius did in Samnium. According to Cato, in the Origines, he was found after the battle, dangerously wounded and still scarcely breathing, among the dead; but he afterwards recovered.

In the third year after the victory of Duilius, the Romans appeared with a considerable naval force before Sicily; and a drawn battle was fought off Tyndaris on the northern coast, of which the Carthaginians were masters, from Lilybæum nearly to Mylæ. But as the war in Sicily was not decided, and year by year a few small places only were taken, while the Carthaginians still held all the important possessions in their province, the Romans in 496 resolved upon transporting the war to Africa, as there was no hope of its being ended without some great blow being struck. The example of Agathocles had shown how vulnerable the Carthaginians were in Africa. They therefore intended to force the Carthaginians to make peace; at that time they would indeed have contented themselves with Sicily. They now doubled their armaments, and built an immense fleet; the Carthaginians likewise, when they heard of it, built a very great number of ships. Such huge masses do not give one much pleasure in history, as even barbarians are able to get them up: the superiority of talent and skill over physical force has no chance on such occasions. The victory also of Duilius by means of boarding-bridges, is, when closely looked at, only the result of a clumsy device by which the true science of the Carthaginian navy was baffled. In the seven years’ war, when line-tactics were in vogue, the art of war, as an art, was of a far higher order than it is, now that armies fight in masses: the masses likewise of artillery mark the evident decline of the intellectual spirit and of humanity in warfare. The Romans put to sea with three hundred and thirty ships, most of which were quinqueremes, and the Carthaginians with three hundred and fifty. Polybius himself is amazed at these huge masses, and remarks in his preface, how even the great battles of the Macedonian kings, of Demetrius, Ptolemy, and others, and in later times, those of the Rhodians, shrink to nothing in comparison. They also outvied each other from henceforth in the size of their ships, some of which had even as many as nine banks of oars, like the one which was built by Archimedes for Hiero, who sent it to Alexandria. These preposterous monsters surpassed in bulk our ships of the line. Men afterwards came back to the use of the very lightest vessels, such as liburnæ and lembi; of these we are unable to give a clear idea. In the most brilliant days of the Byzantines and Venetians, battles were fought with very small ships. The Romans were 140,000 rowers and marines, the land forces alone amounting to 40,000: they had also a number of transports, especially for the cavalry (ἱππηγοί). It is not unlikely that the Romans built so many ships, merely to carry over their large army to Africa in one voyage; and that the Carthaginians did so, on the other hand, in order to resist them. The expectations of every one were riveted upon this undertaking, just as in the times of the Spanish Armada.

As the most important points on the northern coast of Sicily were still in the possession of the Carthaginians, and provisions had to be taken in at Syracuse, the Romans did not venture to sail round Lilybæum; but they preferred the way round Pachynus. Between that headland and Agrigentum, the Carthaginians met them with the whole of their fleet. The Roman ships being still unwieldy, the result depended, as before, on the use of the boarding-bridges. They had hit upon a strange disposition: their ships were divided into four squadrons, each of which had one legion with its brigade of allies, and a number of transports. The two first squadrons sailed so as to form two sides of a triangle, or an angle, the two admirals being placed side by side, and therefore with their rostra standing out towards the sea. The base of the triangle was formed by the third squadron, which advanced straight forwards, and had the transports in tow. Behind these sailed the fourth squadron, which was to cover the rear. The two first were each commanded by a consul, the third and fourth by other leaders, of whom we do not know any thing further. They therefore formed an ἔμβολον, in which the attack of the enemy is a manœuvre for the execution of which a great many favourable circumstances are requisite; and the ships which at other times used to sail on in a straight line, diverged and made a wedge.

1, 2, 3, 4, the numbers of the squadrons. 5, the transports.

The Carthaginians, who fell in with them near Ecnomus, had a more judicious arrangement. Their left wing, being about the fourth part of the whole of their fleet, sailed in a long line along the coast; and joining it at a right angle was the main body of their large armament, which, ship by ship, stood out far into the sea. The Romans passed by the line along the coast, and attacked the salient line. It was not the plan of the Carthaginian admiral, that this should withstand the end of the wedge which was forcing itself in; they therefore set sail, and seemed to flee, so as to separate the Romans from their third and fourth lines, and the Romans pursued them. But two parts of the long line formed again, and fell upon the Romans, who had detached themselves from the third squadron; the third part, which was sailing in the open sea, returned and attacked the fourth Roman squadron; and in the meanwhile, the line which was off the coast, came up and engaged the third squadron, which now abandoned the transports to their fate. Thus arose three distinct sea-fights: the first and second Roman squadrons conquered easily; the fourth had a doubtful victory; and the third was hard pressed, but the centre turned back to defend it. The boarding-bridges were also employed in this action with great effect. The result was the complete rout of the Carthaginians: thirty ships were sunk, part of them being driven ashore and wrecked, and sixty-four taken; from thirty to forty thousand men fell into the power of the Romans.

After this defeat, the beaten fleet made its escape to Africa, and went to protect Carthage against an attack; the men had lost all strength and spirit. The Romans had the sea clear before them to carry their plan into execution, and the two consular armies, that of Manlius and that of Regulus, proceeded to Africa. They landed on the south side of the headland of Hermæum, over-against Carthage, at the mouth of the gulf of Tunis, near a town which the Romans call Clupea, the Greeks Aspis, (the Punic name we do not know,) a place, which they took after a creditable defence. They now made it their arsenal, and spread from thence into the heart of the country. The really efficient armies of the enemy were stationed in Sicily; the Carthaginians had made sure of baffling the undertaking, and were therefore quite unprepared in Africa. They had fortified colonies on the coast only; as for the interior, with the exception of a few municipia, they had the same policy as the Vandals, who, fearing rebellions, pulled down all the walls of the towns, just as the Lombards did afterwards in Italy. Wherever therefore the Romans came, they marched in: a foreign conqueror was looked upon by the Libyans as a deliverer; for, although the Carthaginians were no barbarians, yet they were very hard masters. For they followed the system, which is found throughout the East, that the sovereign is the owner of the soil, and the possessor has the enjoyment of it only so long as it pleases the lord and master. They also wanted immense sums of money for their Celtic and Iberian mercenaries, and were therefore obliged to squeeze them out of their subjects. In the war of Agathocles, the consequences of this system had already been seen. Indeed the spirit of the Africans had been crushed, so that they did not break out in open rebellion, as they did in his time; for the Carthaginians had taken a fell revenge after his departure. Yet they did not aid Carthage in any way. A most inconceivable order now came from Rome, that one of the consuls, L. Manlius, should return home, it being perhaps believed, that the force of Regulus was sufficient by itself: Manlius therefore sailed back with almost the whole of the fleet, and brought over the booty. The Carthaginians retreated into inaccessible parts of the country: Regulus nevertheless defeated them near Adis. Their militia troops were exceedingly timid; it was easy for the Romans to drive them out of their strongholds. Regulus stationed himself not far from Carthage: he took the fortified town of Tunes, and encamped near the river Bagradas: the Carthaginians were pressed most closely. In this camp, as the ancients generally relate, (Livy also has it,) a serpent, which was a hundred and twenty ells in length, is said to have made its appearance, and to have torn to pieces a great many Romans, until the soldiers battered it with catapults and ballistæ. This tale, in the midst of an account which is quite historical, is most surprising. That earth and sea may contain creatures which occur so rarely, that one is inclined to take them for fabulous, cannot indeed be positively denied; it may have been a giant serpent. But in all likelihood, this story, like so many others, has its origin in Nævius’ Bellum Punicum, which poet himself served as a soldier in that war. At all events, it would be wonderful if the size of the dragon had amounted in ells to exactly that number which is so often met with in Roman measurements, namely, 12 × 10.

The Carthaginians had utterly lost courage, and they could not withdraw their army from Sicily without giving up that island altogether: they therefore sent an embassy to Regulus, and sued for peace. Regulus’ fame has been very much exaggerated by apophthegmatical histories; he is undeservedly represented as a martyr: in the heyday of his good fortune, he showed himself ruthless, intoxicated with victory, and ungenerous. We have a story of him, that he had then asked the senate for his recall, that he might attend to his farm; but we know on the contrary from Polybius, that he had particularly set his heart upon bringing the war to a brilliant end, before a successor arrived. So much the more senseless was it in him to ask of the Carthaginians impossibilities, and to offer them much worse terms than they really obtained at the conclusion of the war, just as if he had meant to drive them to despair. Had he stipulated for the evacuation of Sicily and the payment of a contribution, the Carthaginians would have been quite willing; but he had the preposterous idea of crushing Carthage with one blow. His conditions were quite insane: even had they been besieged, the Carthaginians could not have fared worse. They were to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome; to make an offensive and defensive alliance with the Romans; to enter into no treaty without the permission of the Romans; to yield up all their ships of war but one, and to have nothing but triremes; to give up Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Lipari isles; to abandon their Italian allies; to deliver up the prisoners and deserters; to ransom their own captives; to pay all the expenses of the war, and a contribution besides. The Carthaginians declared that they would rather perish; and luckily for them the Romans carried on the war badly. Instead of establishing themselves within the gulf of Tunis, opposite Carthage, as they ought to have done, they had now sent off their fleet; the Carthaginians therefore could make use of their ships to hire troops everywhere. Among these, there were also many from Greece; one of them, the celebrated Xanthippus, who was not, as Diodorus says, a Spartan, but as we learn from Polybius, a Neodamode who in his education had been subjected to the laws of the Spartans (τῆς Λακωνικῆς ἀγωγῆς μετεσχηκώς), and had thereby acquired an inferior right of citizenship. In the case of a Spartan, this would have been quite a matter of course; but, besides these, Lacedæmonians also (περίοικοι), and Neodamodes, even the children of foreign πρόξενοι, might subject themselves to the laws of Lycurgus, which is a position not yet clearly explained. Xanthippus was one of the greatest men of his age; and he furnishes us with a case in point, which shows how much Sparta must have been stunted, owing to her not making the Lacedæmonians equal to the Spartans. He came to Carthage as a mercenary, but as an officer: he had certainly been recruiting at Tænarus. When he saw the preparations of the Carthaginians, he openly declared that it was no wonder that Carthage was going to ruin; and on this he was called before the senate,—in this case, it was an advantage that the military and the civil administrations were distinct,—and he was asked for his opinion. He explained to them, that as indeed they had plenty of elephants[4] and Numidian cavalry, which was a formidable force against such a small army as that of the Romans in the midst of an enemy’s country, (about 16,000 men, according to Polybius; with all the reinforcements, perhaps 20,000, among whom there were 15 or 1,600 cavalry) they ought to seek the plains, whilst the advantage of the Romans was in the mountains. The elephants had hardly been employed in any battle by land at all, unless perhaps in the little skirmish near Tunis. Xanthippus was listened to: he was intrusted with the charge of the mercenaries. His arrangements excited astonishment: the soldiers believed that under his guidance they were sure to conquer; the whole of the camp demanded him for their leader, and the Carthaginian general, who very likely had got his instructions in this matter from the city, yielded the command to him. This is a great resolve. When Xanthippus had now well drilled the Carthaginians, he went out against the Romans into the open field, and thereby filled them with great wonder and dismay. He compelled them to fight, and made a masterly disposition: the Roman army had no centre; but the Greeks had three divisions, and he drew up his army in the following manner. The Carthaginians occupied the centre as a phalanx; for being townsmen, they could only be usefully employed in masses:[5] on the two wings, he placed the mercenaries, and joined to them the cavalry on the flanks. The Romans likewise put their cavalry on the flanks; but in placing the infantry they departed from their general custom, as before the centre of the Carthaginians a hundred elephants had been stationed: they formed themselves against these in an order of battle of great depth. Yet the shock was irresistible: the left wing of the Romans indeed conquered the mercenaries; but in the meanwhile, the cavalry of the Carthaginians had thrown itself upon the right wing, and the elephants trampled down everything before them: then the phalanx rushed on, and the whole of the Roman army was annihilated. Only two thousand men of the left wing made their escape in the rear of the Carthaginians to Clupea. Regulus retreated with five hundred Romans to a hill, and was obliged to surrender. Xanthippus was now the universal hero: they wished him to stay at Carthage; but he was wise enough to return home with the rich presents which he received, lest he should become an eyesore to an envious and heartless people, as the Carthaginians were. Polybius tells us that there was also another account, even that the Carthaginians had given him a bad ship, that he might perish on the passage; and that according to some, he had really become a victim, and according to others, he had saved himself by getting into another vessel. The Romans sent out the fleet, which had been still preserved, to take up the garrison of the besieged town of Clupea; the Carthaginians went against them, and were defeated. The number of ships which, according to Polybius, were captured on this occasion, is very likely to have been changed from 114 to 14.

The Romans now evacuated Africa, taking with them the garrison of Clupea; and they sailed back for Syracuse, to make their passage through the straits of Messina to Rome. As it was the time of the summer-solstice, the pilots warned them against the possibility of a storm, as the Sirocco at that season of the year sometimes increases into the most dreadful hurricane, and the coast in those parts is destitute of harbours. But the commanders scorned them, most likely because they were foreigners; and thus a terrible shipwreck between Agrigentum and Pachynus utterly destroyed nearly three hundred vessels out of three hundred and sixty, which was the most dreadful disaster that had occurred until then (497). Not long afterwards, Seleucus Callinicus also suffered a similar shipwreck. The Carthaginians might now believe that the Romans would grant a peace on fair terms. For this reason, it is said, they sent Regulus to Rome with offers of peace: if he could not get them accepted, he was to obtain at least an exchange of prisoners; yet Regulus advised against both of these things, returned to Carthage, and was there put to death by torture. The first who, with great independence of spirit, proved the groundlessness of this story, was the excellent French philologist Paulmier de Grentemesnil (Palmerius). He lived in the times of the brothers Henry and Adrian Valesius (Valois); he was particularly well read in Polybius, and he pointed out, how incomprehensible it was, that Polybius, although he told the achievements of Regulus at such length, should not have mentioned a word of this story. The further arguments have been put forth by Beaufort. From a fragment of Diodorus, it appears that the Roman senate gave as a pledge for Regulus, into the hands of his wife and family, two Carthaginian prisoners of rank; and that these were most frightfully tortured, so that the tribunes of the people called together the senate, and compelled the monsters to liberate one of the prisoners whom they had shut up in an exceedingly narrow chest with the other, who was already dead. Now, both of these learned critics say very rightly, that even if the Carthaginians had really tortured Regulus, this had merely been done in retaliation; and that moreover the accounts of his death are so very different. According to some, he was blinded; according to others, tortured to death in a chest stuck full of iron spikes; and again, according to others, he was exposed to the sun and the insects. Some writers of the middle ages, like the authors of the spurious Acta Martyrum, felt quite a particular pleasure in devising the most horrible and complicated tortures: this is also the case with the story of Regulus. It is altogether a forgery; and Palmerius and Beaufort have just grounds for their conclusion, that it was only invented to wash out the foul stain of the tortures of the Carthaginian prisoners. I believe that it has been borrowed from Nævius; for Diodorus does not know of it, as is evident from his fragments: he had but a very imperfect knowledge of Roman history, and only from the earlier, and almost contemporary writers, Philinus of Agrigentum, Timæus, and Fabius Pictor; the poet Nævius, he had not read. Thus it was very likely that the latest Roman historians brought that tale into circulation from Nævius. Cicero already is acquainted with the legend; it must have therefore been either in Cato’s Origines or in Nævius.[6] If it originated with the later historians, it has arisen at least a hundred, or a hundred and twenty years after the time of Regulus.

The Romans did not conclude the peace; in spite of their ill luck, they were resolved upon going on with the war. The Carthaginians now armed themselves with redoubled courage: they sent considerable reinforcements to Sicily, and learnt how to make a right use of their elephants; the Romans, on the other hand, became daunted, and withdrew into the mountains. The Carthaginians wished to carry on the war either by sea or by land: to do both at the same time, was more than they could manage. The Romans then built a new fleet, took Panormus (Palermo), and went again to Africa, and wasted the country between Carthage and Tripolis; hereupon they returned to Sicily, the fleet having had a wonderful escape in the small Syrtis. When bound for Italy, they were again overtaken on the passage by a storm, and hardly a vessel was saved.

The southern gales, every one of them from south-east to south-west, are always in the Mediterranean the most dangerous storm-winds; and they are the more destructive, as the Italian coast is almost without any harbours, and full of breakers: the storms which blow from the north are harmless. Yet when the currents from the Adriatic and the Pontus meet, ships during a north easterly wind are irresistibly drawn into the Syrtes (from σύρειν), so that they are in them before their reckonings would lead one to suppose it.

This was now a second blow for the Romans, and one from which they did not recover: they did not think of making peace, yet they tried to carry on the war at less expense. The Carthaginians were masters of the sea, and they made use of their superiority to lay waste the Italian coasts; but they managed the war in a wretched manner. The Romans remained unshaken in Sicily, and thus, although indeed they shunned a general engagement, they took several strong places under the very eyes of the enemy, and reduced the Carthaginians to the possession of the north-western part of Sicily. In the year 501 (according to Cato), fortune turned her back upon the Carthaginians: L. Cæcilius Metellus defeated Hasdrubal near Palermo. Hasdrubal had tried to take advantage of the great fear which the Romans had of the African cavalry, and to recover Palermo, very likely with the connivance of the inhabitants: he encamped in its beautiful plain about half a (German) mile from the town, and ravaged the fields. Metellus kept himself in his fortified camp ready to fight: he showed himself here to be a great general, and made it his particular object to render the elephants harmless. The Carthaginians advanced to attack the camp: Metellus drew up all his light troops on the edge of the ditch, with a good supply of missiles; the legions manœuvred on the flanks. The light infantry now sallied forth against the enemy, enticed them on, and then threw themselves into the ditch, and hurled an immense number of javelins and burning arrows against the Carthaginians and their elephants: the camp-followers were constantly bringing them fresh ammunition from the town, and at the same time, the soldiers from behind the breast-works discharged their pila. The Carthaginians now wished to sweep them down with one mighty onset; but the elephants were wounded, and thus became wild, and several of them plunged into the trenches, from whence the light-armed soldiers of the Romans jumped behind the fortified lines, and the maddened beasts turned against their own masters. This was the moment for which Metellus had waited all along: from the sidegates of the lines, the legions burst forth, routed the Carthaginian infantry, and put their whole army to flight. More than a hundred elephants were captured. These were brought to Rome on rafts built for the purpose, and killed by missiles in the circus, perhaps to give the people a representation of the battle in which they had been taken.

This victory restored the courage of the Romans; yet the conclusion of the war was extremely hard to bring about, as they did not again venture over to Africa, and the Carthaginians made no attempts to recover what they had lost in Sicily. The latter were now pent up quite at the western end of the island; all that they had still left were the towns of Lilybæum, Drepana, and Eryx. The year after (502), the Romans therefore began the siege of Lilybæum, which lasted till the close of the war, yet not as a siege in form, but as a blockade. The part of the war which follows, might with great propriety be called the Lilybæan one. This last act is the finest on the side of the Carthaginians; the Romans distinguish themselves in it only by their perseverance.

The victory of Metellus in the fourteenth year of the war, was the first pitched battle, with the exception of that near Adin in Africa, in which the Romans had conquered. The siege of Lilybæum was undertaken by them under very unfavourable circumstances. The Carthaginians were in fact masters of the sea; but owing to the tremendous expenses of the war, they had retrenched their naval armaments as much as they possibly could: the Romans had again a fleet off Lilybæum, which was likewise of limited force, and not intended for sea-fights, yet sufficient to make the communication difficult with that town. Lilybæum is a Punic name; it means, according to Bochart, the place which lies towards Libya (לְלֻבִּי); it was without doubt a mixed Punico-Libyan colony, and at that time the only Punic town in Sicily, having been founded by the inhabitants of Motye, which had been destroyed by Dionysius. As Lilybæum was the residence of the Carthaginian general, it had grown into a considerable town just as did Carthagena in Spain; Palermo, on the contrary, was a thoroughly Greek city, peopled by Greeks and Hellenized Siculians and Sicanians, although it had long been under the Punic rule. Lilybæum had a good harbour, which was yet safer from its being so difficult to get into it. The sand which the south winds bring thither from the Syrtes, had already accumulated there, and formed a sort of lagune; owing to this very cause, the whole harbour of Marsala is now no longer in existence. The fortifications of the place were very strong.

Besides Lilybæum, three German miles from it, the Carthaginians had Drepana (the present Trapani) with its noble harbour, which even now, in spite of the attempts of Charles V. to fill it up, is excellent; and besides Drepana, the town of Eryx with the mountain of that name. Within this district the war was concentrated for nine years; this gave rise to the utter wretchedness of the island, which was quite ruined by it.

The Romans blockaded Lilybæum on the land side, and at the same time cruised before the harbour: they battered the wall, and pulled down part of it; but Himilco, the commander of the Carthaginians, withstood them with the most unflinching steadfastness. A disposition to treachery often showed itself among the troops of the Carthaginians; for they scarcely ever employed their citizens as soldiers, but only as officers, and some also in the cavalry; the main body therefore consisted of mercenaries, so that it is the more to be wondered at that the Carthaginians had distinguished generals. For this reason, they had now much trouble to secure the attachment of these soldiers, who were gathered together from all quarters, most of them being Greeks, Gauls and Spaniards; they could scarcely manage them by any other means than by the hope of gain. Hamilcar and Hannibal alone knew how to bind to themselves even these mixed masses by their own personal qualities; at all other times, these men were ready to commit every sort of treachery for money. Into a plot of this kind some of them now entered with the Roman consul; but an Achæan, Alexo, discovered it, and tried to counteract it; and so the rest were gained over by promises and sacrifices, and the traitors cast out. The Romans here, for the first time, betook themselves to the Greek method of besieging: before the Punic wars, there is nothing like a real siege, but only blockading and storming.[7] They made great progress, and threw down six towers (unless Polybius dates this circumstance too early). The Carthaginians communicated with the besieged by means of a bold seaman, who in a swift ship ventured to pass through the midst of the Roman fleet, and repeated the same feat several times. They ascertained that without speedy assistance, the town must be lost; and so they determined to send ten thousand men to its relief, who, to the great dismay of the Romans, made their way through their guardships. Just at first, the Carthaginians made a sally, which indeed led to no advantage; but soon afterwards, during a dreadful hurricane, they ventured upon a new and successful attack with every possible sort of contrivance for setting fire: as all the Roman machines were made of wood, they were every one of them burnt. It was high time, as six towers had already fallen (for to this period of the siege the notice in Polybius seems in fact to belong). The Romans must have felt convinced that after the loss of their battering engines, they could no longer do any harm to the town by merely blockading it; they tried therefore to throw up a mole across the entrance of the harbour. In this, however, they only succeeded so far, as in some measure to obstruct the communication of the Carthaginians with the town, which had hitherto been too free.

In the course of so long a war as this, some distinguished Carthaginian generals had already been formed; but not a single one among the Romans, whose advantage lay only in their troops. In 503, the Romans, without the enemy’s being aware of it, received reinforcements under the command of the consul P. Claudius, the son[8] of Ap. Claudius Cæcus, who had all the faults of his father, but none of his great qualities. He was a reckless, unprincipled man. On account of the great expense, Rome seems to have confined herself to one army. It is uncertain, whether Claudius had already come out as consul to Sicily before the sally of Himilco, or only after it. The Roman fleet was lying near Lilybæum, most of the vessels being drawn up on the strand, while only single ships rode out at sea to keep up the blockade; the sailors had been armed, and made to fight on shore. But infectious diseases had broken out to some extent, as might be expected, the small island of Sicily being quite exhausted by the war; many also had perished in the engagements, so that seamen were scarce. To remedy this defect, sailors were enlisted at Rome; they were, however, people of the lowest rank, whose property was under four hundred asses, and who had certainly never been at sea. Claudius now proposed in a council of war, to make an attempt to surprise by sea the port of Drepana, where the enemy’s fleet was stationed. The council, according to Polybius, seems to have approved of it. This writer indeed is himself of opinion that the undertaking was practicable; yet we can hardly believe it, when we see that it was so easily foiled. Claudius then set sail about midnight with the newly manned fleet; at the dawn of day, the Carthaginians beheld from their watch-towers that part of the Roman ships were already in the harbour. The fleet was sailing in a single line along the coast. The Carthaginian general Adherbal knew that, if he confined himself to the defence of the town, his ships in the harbour would be in great danger of being taken; he therefore ordered the ships to be quickly manned, and to sail out on the other side of the haven. His object was, to drive the Romans quite into the harbour along the coast, which was lined by the Carthaginian soldiers. The Roman consul now gave the signal for retreat; but this, owing to the narrow entrance of the harbour, occasioned the greatest confusion: the thronging of the ships which turned back, and of those, which, having received no counter order, were still coming in, was very great, and they were severely damaged. Outside the harbour, they found the Carthaginian fleet, which had better ships and better crews, already drawn up; and these now advanced to attack the Romans. The consul then placed his ships along the coast, with the πρύμνα towards the land, in a long line; the Carthaginians, having behind them the open sea, had the advantage of being able freely to manœuvre: it seems that the Romans made no more use of the boarding-bridges. Ninety-three Roman ships were taken, many were destroyed, not more than about thirty reached Lilybæum: with them was the consul Claudius. He was recalled: fierce reproaches were made against him that he was the cause of the disaster; that he had impiously scorned the auspices; that the birds of the augurs had refused to eat, and that thereupon he had ordered them to be thrown into the sea. He had to appoint a dictator: in mockery he named the son of a freedman, a client of his, one M. Claudius Glycia: the name of the grandfather is not mentioned in the Fasti. Since the curies had lost their power, it had become the right of the consul to appoint a dictator; whereas formerly he merely proclaimed him. P. Claudius was put on his trial: according to Polybius, and to judge from an expression of Cicero’s, he was condemned to a severe punishment; according to others, the comitia were dispersed by a thunderstorm, whereupon the matter was dropped, which seems to betoken the influence of a powerful party. When he was already dead, his sister likewise brought upon herself a severe punishment by her genuine Claudian insolence. Annoyed by the crowd in a procession, in which she took a part as a Vestal, she loudly exclaimed, it was a pity that her brother was no more alive to get rid of some of the rabble at sea. This also proves, that at that time the sailors were levied from the capite censi. She was prosecuted for a crimen majestatis before the plebeian ædiles, and condemned to pay a heavy fine. The dictator Claudius Glycia was of course induced by the senate and the people to resign his dignity. The conduct of Claudius is quite in keeping with the many acts of wanton insolence which were displayed by all his family; they may be traced from the middle of the fourth century down to the emperor Tiberius: the character for insolence is nearly hereditary in them. Immediately afterwards, another misfortune befalls the Romans. They had still kept up their spirits; for they already sent again eight hundred ships with provisions to Lilybæum, without doubt escorted by a considerable fleet, a proof of the importance of the commerce in the Mediterranean; but the ships of war were not sufficient to protect them. With this fleet the consul L. Junius sailed again through the straits of Messina to Syracuse, as the commissariat was chiefly dependent on the latter town; he there took in his full cargo, and very imprudently sent part of the fleet with some ships of war in advance. The Carthaginians under Carthalo put to sea to meet them, and so frightened them, that they laid to in a very bad roadsted among breakers, off the southern coast (between Agrigentum and Camarina), so that even Carthalo shrank from attacking them. L. Junius was very late before he set out from Syracuse, and when he found that Carthalo was lying between him and the other convoy, he likewise went to a bad roadsted. Then arose one of those terrific gales, which in Italy are always southerly winds. The Carthaginians, experienced seamen as they were, had the foresight to double Pachynus in time, and there they got into a safe harbour; the Romans, on the contrary, were driven by the Scirocco on the breakers off the coast, and were so completely wrecked that not a plank of their ships remained serviceable; out of the whole fleet, two ships only were saved. A great number of lives also were lost; the consul escaped, and retreated with the survivors by land towards Lilybæum. An opportunity now offered itself to him of doing something after all, even of surprising Eryx, a town, which lay on the slope of the mountain of the same name, at the top of which was the temple of Venus as an Acropolis. He made himself master of the town by means of bribery. This was the only advantage which the Romans gained this year.

The Romans now gave up the sea, with the exception of a few ships, and the war was hopeless for them: it required Roman perseverance, not to despair altogether. No doubt it was also somewhat earlier than this that the Carthaginians tried to get a loan from Ptolemy, 15,000,000 dollars, I believe; but he declared to them, that he would thus break his neutrality. The Romans helped themselves in every possible way by war-taxes; yet this struggle ate away their strength as well as that of the Carthaginians.

Now appeared the great Hamilcar Barcas. Whether he sprang from a high family, is unknown to us. Barcas, Barak (ברק), seems to mean lightning, even as the Scipios in Lucretius are called fulmina belli: Barka is the Syriac form. He enters upon the stage at once. His undertakings are not dazzling, he makes no conquests; but he retrieved the affairs of Carthage in Sicily by his indefatigable activity (unus illis restituit rem). Hamilcar, to my mind, is almost greater than his son; the whole of history does not know another instance of a father and son who were so eminently great in an art, as these two were: one must be born a general as well as a painter, or indeed any other kind of artist. Had Hamilcar guided the councils of the senate of Carthage earlier, the war would have ended to the disadvantage of Rome. Hamilcar began his career with an undertaking, which in boldness surpasses everything that we know. Near Palermo is Hercte, a mountain of considerable extent; from its name, there must have been there a state-prison; by its side is a harbour which was quite sufficient for the wants of the ships of war of those times. Here Hamilcar landed unexpectedly with a squadron; gained possession of the height by surprise or treachery; established himself in it, and remained in connexion with the fleet, which, at every opportunity, devastated from thence the coast of Italy as far as Cumæ, perhaps also with the intention of driving the allies into defection. He was himself just returned from a foray into Bruttium when he took up his position there, and he maintained himself, as in a fortress; he got reinforcements from time to time, but as for provisions, he had often barely enough to keep body and soul together. By his appearance in the field, the attention of the Romans was turned from the siege of Lilybæum. Battles were of daily occurrence; men fought from sheer exasperation. At the end of three years, he managed to get into communication with the town of Eryx, and made himself master of it quite unexpectedly. The Romans, however, still held the arx on the top of the mountain; and he now encamped between it and the town below, that by blockading the citadel, he might always give the Romans plenty to do, and thus draw them away from Lilybæum and Drepana, and wear them out. He fully attained his object; and so he remained four years in this position, without the Romans making any progress. This struggle shows what dogged resolution can do; and therefore Polybius himself, who had much experience in war, expresses the highest admiration for it. The communication with the sea was more difficult here, than even at Hercte. Hamilcar found himself there with an army of mercenary soldiers, hundreds of whom would certainly have sold their father and mother for a hundred pieces of gold; but such was the awe with which he inspired them, that not an attempt was made to practise any treachery against him. He now carried on the war in the most simple manner; Polybius says that it was not possible to relate its history, on account of the sameness of the incidents; we therefore know but very little of it. The engagements were often most bloody; yet they never afforded any decisive advantage to the Romans, not even when the Carthaginians were beaten. The newly discovered fragments of Diodorus contain an interesting anecdote. The year before the war was brought to a close, C. Fundanius, an obscure general, was fighting against Hamilcar, whose troops suffered a defeat, owing to the fault of Vodostor, a commander of the infantry. Hamilcar sought for a truce, that he might fetch the dead bodies and bury them; but the consul answered, that he ought rather to take care of the living, and to capitulate to him. A very short time afterwards, the Romans in their turn were soundly beaten; but Hamilcar told them, that as far as he was concerned, they might freely take away their dead, as he made war against the living only. This story, like others of the same kind, is no doubt from Philinus, who always represents the Carthaginians as generous.

The peculiar character of the war in Sicily impressed the Romans with the conviction, that without an immense effort they would not be able to bring it to an end. They therefore resolved upon building a third fleet, and had recourse to a very remarkable way of raising a loan. The property-tax, which had hitherto defrayed the expense of building the fleet,—it was so much per thousand,—could no more be levied, because the poor could not now pay it: it must until then have been a dreadful burthen upon the people. The state may have in the meanwhile sold much of the ager publicus; the cost besides of the administration of the republic was almost nothing, and indeed the allies also may have contributed much to the building of the former fleets. Of permanent loans the ancients had no idea: once, in the second Punic war, we meet with one which was more in the style of our own. The wealthy Romans now undertook to build two hundred ships at their own expense, on condition that the money was to be repaid to them should matters turn out well. This implies that in the event of a failure they renounced their claims. The fleet was built quite on a different plan from the former ones; for the Romans had got hold near Lilybæum of a very fine Carthaginian galley, and all the quinqueremes were constructed after its model. These were manned with particular care from the best sailors of all Italy; as marines, the best soldiers of the legions were employed. This time also, the Romans made no more use of the boarding-bridges. It is possible that the ships were better built owing to the very circumstance of their having been taken in hand by private individuals: all the public works were done by contract, and of course the censor could not always have his eye upon the way in which they were executed.

Upon the Carthaginians, the news of this building came quite unexpectedly. They too had broken up their fleet on account of the expense, and had confined themselves merely to what was strictly necessary; nor had they at Carthage any notion of making extraordinary sacrifices, as was done at Rome. They therefore equipped in all haste what ships they had, in order to convey reinforcements and provisions to Lilybæum, Drepana, and Eryx. These vessels, even those which were ships of war, laden with corn, and manned with marines who were by no means picked, arrived at the Ægatian islands, from whence they were to cross over to the coast, along which the Roman fleet was then cruising. The plan of the Carthaginians was, after having landed, to take in the best troops of Hamilcar as marines, and then to risk a sea-fight. The Roman fleet was under the command of the consul C. Lutatius Catulus, and of the prætor Q. Valerius Falto. They also had their doubts. A battle could not be avoided; it was therefore best to attack at once, while the Carthaginian ships were still heavily laden. Corn, when it is only pitched in loosely, and not put into sacks, is a very bad cargo, as it shifts with every wind. If then these were allowed to land, they would return with lightened ships, and with marines from Hamilcar’s army who were not afraid of fighting the Romans; yet the true advantage of the latter was indeed in the lightness of their galleys and the excellence of their troops. There was only this objection, that the Carthaginians had the wind in their favour, whilst the Romans would have with great difficulty to bear up against them with their oars,—a circumstance which among the ancients was very unfavourable in a sea-fight, as a ship which was going against the wind, offered a much greater surface to the stroke of the enemy. Hanno, the Carthaginian general, tried to cross over with full sails, and perhaps also with oars (the ancients had latteen sails); thus they came upon the Romans with double force, and it seemed a great risk for the latter to accept the battle. Nevertheless they did not shrink from it. The Carthaginians were hardly able to move their ships, and the bad condition of their troops gave the Romans such an advantage, that they won a complete victory. Both had played their last stake, so that the Carthaginians were ruined. The Romans took seventy of their ships, sank a number of them, and scattered the rest.

It was impossible for the Carthaginians to provision their distressed garrison, and still less could they quickly fit out a new fleet. They therefore resolved to make peace, and, according to Polybius, chose Hamilcar to negociate it. Sicily, of course, was to be ceded; two thousand two hundred talents (3,300,000 dollars) were to be paid, and all the Roman prisoners and deserters to be given up, while they should have to ransom their own prisoners: the assent of the Roman people was reserved. The demand that Hamilcar and his troops should lay down their arms, and march out as prisoners of war, was indignantly rejected. The Roman people insisted on an additional charge of a thousand talents, these to be paid at once, and the two thousand two hundred by instalments within ten years; and likewise on the cession of all the islands between Sicily and Carthage, which shows that the Carthaginians still held the Lipari isles. This was necessary, if a lasting peace was to be concluded.

Thus ended this war of twenty-four years, which indeed gained Sicily for the Romans, but turned it into a wilderness: the whole of the western part of the island especially was laid desolate, and from that time it has never recovered. There was yet, it is true, some civilization left; Greek art still lingered there. The work of devastation was completed in the second Punic war; in the Servile war, the island was nothing but a dreary waste, and however wretched its state is now,—the modern Sicilians, next to the Portuguese, rank the lowest among the nations of Europe,—yet it was still more lonely and desolate in the times of Verres. Under the Roman emperors, there was no amendment: hence in the itineraries we find that the roads do not pass by towns,—for these had perished,—but by farms. Thus dissolved into large estates Sicily continues until the days of Gregory the Great, when we may again have an insight into its condition from the letters of that pontiff. The present population, in spite of its miserable government, has risen nearly to the double of what it was: under Verres it was below a million. It is as if the soil had lost all its heart and fruitfulness. The small kingdom of Syracuse was an exception, owing to the great wisdom with which it was ruled by Hiero.

SICILY A ROMAN PROVINCE. PRÆTOR PEREGRINUS. WAR WITH THE FALISCANS. MUTINY OF THE MERCENARIES IN CARTHAGE. THE FIRST ILLYRIAN WAR. THE LEX FLAMINIA FOR THE DIVISION OF THE AGER GALLICUS PICENUS. WAR AGAINST THE CISALPINE GAULS. THE SECOND ILLYRIAN WAR. THE CARTHAGINIANS FOUND AN EMPIRE IN SPAIN.

After the peace, the Romans formed Sicily into a province. In a province, a Roman commander, either still holding a curule office or with a prolonged imperium, carried on the government, and had the same power over the country as in times of war, by virtue of the lex de imperio. It is a false notion, that in the provinces the inhabitants had no right of ownership; they had indeed, though not according to Roman, but according to provincial law. There were in the provinces civitates liberæ, civitates foederatæ, and subjects. The confederate states were treated like the Italian allies: some of them had the land as their own, and paid taxes on it, sometimes in proportion to the produce, and sometimes at a fixed rate; others indeed lost their ownership in it, so that it might be disposed of by the Roman republic; but retained the enjoyment of it on paying a rent. This was done when the provinces rebelled again and again, and were reconquered; and thus it came to pass that in several states the land was almost entirely forfeited to the Roman republic, whilst in others it was not so at all. This was not understood by the later writers, as Theophilus, and even Gaius himself already. From that time, there was generally a prætor and a quæstor in the province of Sicily. Hiero remained independent as did the free cities in Italy, and likewise the state of the Mamertines, Tauromenium, Centoripa, and other towns in the interior.

The war was ruinous to the Romans, whom it impoverished, and consequently to their morals also; for wounds like these do not always heal after the return of peace. During a struggle of this kind, contractors and the very dregs of the rabble grow rich, and the old citizens become poor: the first Punic war is therefore one of the first causes of the degeneracy of the Roman people. In the course of this war, there must have been many changes of which we have few or no records; we only know of some small matters. In the year of the city 506, as we have now been able to learn from Lydus de Magistratibus, a second prætor was appointed, who was to administer the laws to the peregrini. A great change had therefore taken place, that foreigners were to have a persona in Rome, instead of being obliged to be represented by a citizen as formerly: in this we acknowledge an important diminution of the spirit of faction. Suetonius says of a Claudius, who without doubt belongs to the beginning of the first Punic war, that he had resolved upon ruling Italy by means of the clients: this is one of the proofs which show that the clientship had a dangerous character, and how beneficial it was to dissolve that connexion. Yet the prætor was not restricted to his civil jurisdiction; Q. Valerius commanded the fleet besides, and another prætor we meet with at a later period in Etruria. We also find in Livy by no means in every year a prætor for the peregrini. The phrase prætor peregrinus is a barbarism; Livy, in the fourth decade, always uses a circumlocution instead of it.[9]

Another great change from an accidental cause, is little noticed. Dionysius says, that until the Φοινικὸς πόλεμος, the state had yearly given fifty thousand drachmas for the public festivals. This was now changed, and the Greek system of Liturgies was introduced, by which rich men had to defray the cost of the festivals as a public burthen. As the ædileship was the stepping-stone to higher offices, this measure gave rise to an important political revolution. Polybius has not remarked this. He finds fault with the Carthaginians for their practice of selling offices, and sets the custom of the Romans in direct contrast with theirs; yet it was then just the same at Rome. Fabricius, and men like him, could now no longer have worked their way to high office, without having to encounter the greatest difficulties.

In the nature of the senate, there was likewise a great change effected shortly before the first Punic war. The senate had at first been a representation of the people, and then of the curies; afterwards the will of the censors was paramount in its selection, and this was a blessing for the state. The composition of the Roman senate may perhaps have been best about this time: on the other hand, this power was in truth anomalous and dangerous, as the example of Ap. Claudius had shown. But now the senate was indirectly chosen by the people for life. The quæstors, of whom there had originally been two, then four, and now eight, became the seminarium senatus: he who had been quæstor had already the right sententiam dicendi in senatu, and might in case of a vacancy at the next census, if there was no particular charge brought against him, reckon with certainty upon getting into the senate. In this way, the senate was then changed into a sort of elective council; only the expulsion of unworthy members still belonged to the province of the censor. Still more completely was the senate chosen by the people in the seventh century, when the tribunes of the people also got into it.

As may be well imagined, it was with much difficulty that the Romans recovered from so exhausting a struggle. Their losses had been immense; besides other things, there were seven hundred ships of war: of the arrangements and measures which they adopted after the restoration of peace, we know but little. Soon afterwards, a war broke out against the Faliscans, which was ended in six days. It is almost incomprehensible, when the whole of Italy, with the exception of some little troubles in Samnium, had remained in obedience all the time of the Punic War, that after its conclusion such a dwarf could now have risen against the giant. This can only be accounted for in this way, that perhaps at that period a truce had expired, and the Romans did not wish to renew the former conditions. The town was destroyed, in order to strike terror into the Italians by the example.

Yet the Carthaginians were in a still worse plight than the Romans. Their distress was the same; they had also been beaten, and had every year to pay a portion of the heavy contribution; and the Romans moreover were no indulgent creditors. They had likewise to pay off their mercenaries who had returned from Sicily; but they had no money. Besides all this, the state was badly governed, and Hamilcar, the greatest man of his age, was thwarted by a whole faction. The friends of Hamilcar are likewise called factio; yet this means nothing else but people from all ranks, the best part of the nation, who sided with the distinguished man whom the majority attempted to cry down. Such was the condition of Carthage, that the great resources which Providence gave her in Hamilcar and Hannibal, led to nothing but her ruin; had she followed the advice of Hamilcar, and not spared her rich citizens, but made another mighty effort, she might have paid off the mercenaries, and have raised a new army. Instead of this, the Carthaginians foolishly tried to bargain with these barbarians, and with this view brought together the whole army. The consequence was, that it threw off its obedience to them, and a dreadful war broke out, which became a national one for Africa, as the Libyans, even with enthusiasm, rushed into the arms of the troops: the women gave their trinkets for the support of the war. Even old Phœnician colonies, such as Utica, Hippo, Clupea, rose against Carthage, so that the power of the city was often driven back almost within its own walls. The Roman deserters, who were afraid of being given up to their own government, placed themselves at the head of the insurrection, especially a slave from Campania of the name of Spendius: Carthage was brought to the brink of destruction. The Romans, during this war, at first behaved in a high-minded manner; and here we meet with the first traces of navigation laws, and of those claims on neutrals which have caused so many quarrels in modern history. The Romans in fact decreed, that no ships of the rebels should be allowed to come to Italy; and that, on the other hand, none should sail from thence to the harbours of the rebels in Africa. The Italian ship-masters did not observe this; but they went whithersoever their interest called them: the Carthaginians had therefore a right to seize all the Roman ships which were bound for such a harbour, to confiscate the cargo, and to detain the crews as prisoners; and for this they might appeal to the Roman proclamation. The Romans had even let the Carthaginians levy troops in Italy; they also negociated with them for the liberation of the prisoners: the Carthaginians gave them up, and the Romans, on their side, released those whom they had still kept since the war. They likewise facilitated the traffic with Carthage. The war lasted three years and four months; it was waged with a cruelty which is beyond all conception, very much like the thirty years’ war, which was a war of fiends. At last, owing to the generalship of the great Hamilcar Barcas, and the horrors committed by the mercenaries themselves, it was put down, and revenge was taken.

Then the envy of the Romans was aroused. The mercenaries in Sardinia had likewise risen against the Carthaginians, and had murdered many of those who were settlers there, though probably only the officers and magistrates; for as late as Cicero’s times, the population of the sea-port towns of Sardinia was Punic. Against the mercenaries, the Sards now rose in their turn, and drove them out of the island, renouncing also their allegiance to the Carthaginians. After the war in Africa was ended, Carthage wished to reconquer Sardinia; but the rebels placed themselves under the Romans, who, with shameful hypocrisy, declared themselves bound not to abandon those who had committed themselves to their protection, and, when the Carthaginians fitted out a fleet against Sardinia, asserted that this would be a war against themselves. It was therefore impossible for the Carthaginians to carry on this war; and Hamilcar, who like all men of sterling mind, was for letting go what could not be kept, without giving way to maudlin sorrow, advised them to yield in this matter until better times: on this, the Carthaginians swore to have their revenge, but for the present not to make war. They made a new peace, in which they gave up Corsica and Sardinia, and had besides to pay twelve hundred talents. This conduct is one of the most detestable misdeeds in the Roman history.

To the east of Italy, since the Peloponnesian war, an empire had arisen in a country where formerly there were only single tribes. This was the Illyrian kingdom. How it rose, we cannot exactly tell: it did not spring from the Taulantians. Since the days of Philip especially, larger states had formed themselves out of the small ones; and perhaps it was created by Bardylis, who in the times of that king founded an empire in those parts. Nor do we know anything for certain about the royal city: it was probably in the neighbourhood of Ragusa; the worst pirates must have dwelt in northern Dalmatia. For some time (about the year 520), in the then broken state of Greece, they, like the Albanians of the present day, roamed everywhere by land and by sea; and wasting the coasts, particularly the unfortunate Cyclades, they dragged away the full-grown inhabitants, and cut off all traffic. Perhaps only the Macedonians and Rhodians opposed to them any resistance; yet they were very likely not sorry to see piracy carried on against others, as is also the case with modern nations, which rule the seas. The Illyrians, however, meddled also with the Romans; and the more so as their boldness increased, when under Agron, their king, the gain from their piracy grew greater, and having a run of luck, they made prizes on the coast of Epirus and Acarnania. The Romans dispatched an embassy thither. Agron had died in the meanwhile, and his son Pinnes was under the guardianship of his mother, queen Teuta, who held the regency. She answered, that on the part of the state no wrong would be done to the Romans; but that it was an ancient right and custom of the Illyrians, for every single captain to take whatever fell in his way. One of the Roman envoys, probably a son of the great Ti. Coruncanius, now replied that it was the custom of the Romans to amend the bad customs of other nations. For this she had the ambassadors murdered, whereupon the Romans sent a fleet and army over to Illyria. The Illyrians, who now began to spread their rule, were just besieging Corcyra, which before the Peloponnesian war was a paradise guarded by a fleet of several hundred galleys, but owing to incessant wars, was now all but a desert. The island was obliged to surrender before the Romans arrived. These however landed from Brundusium before Dyrrhachium near Apollonia, and rescued it, as they also did Epidamnus and Dyrrhachium. The neighbouring tribes submitted; and the governor of Corcyra, Demetrius Pharius, a scoundrel, who in all likelihood was bribed, gave up to them the island. Issa also the Romans delivered, and they advanced through Upper Albania along the Dalmatian coast. They met with no resistance of any consequence: only one strong place held out, all the rest surrendered; so that the queen was obliged to come to terms and make peace. The Illyrians now renounced their dominion over part of the Dalmatian isles and over Upper Albania; and they bound themselves not to sail to the south beyond the Drin, a river which flows from the lake of Scutari, and with no more than two unarmed vessels. This was an immense benefit for the Greeks. What was the fate of the tribes between Epirus and Scutari, cannot be told with certainty; but most likely, they, as well as Epidamnus and Apollonia, remained absolutely dependent on the Romans, although these had no garrison and no prætor there. The latter may perhaps have levied a moderate tribute from them.

As benefactors of the Greeks, and attracted by the irresistible charm which the praises of that people had for so many nations, the Romans sent ambassadors to Greece, to make known there the conditions of the treaty with the Illyrians. At that time, the Ætolians and Achæans were united against Demetrius of Macedon, which gave a moment of relief to this unfortunate country: to both of these peoples the Romans dispatched the embassy on political grounds. But the one to Athens had no other object than to earn Greek praises; it was an homage paid to the intellectual power of that city. For though the poor Athenians had in those days fallen to the very lowest ebb, yet the memory of their ancestors was still alive, and honours bestowed by them were still of value.[10] The motive for a special embassy to Corinth, although it belonged to the Achæan league, is evident, as Corcyra, Apollonia, and Epidamnus, were Corinthian colonies. The Corinthians rewarded the Romans by giving them the right of taking part in the Isthmian games; the Athenians granted them isopolity, and admission to the Eleusinian mysteries.

Once before already,—soon after the Punic war, or even while it yet lasted,—the Romans had meddled in the affairs of Greece. The Acarnanians and Ætolians were then at war. The Ætolians and Alexander of Epirus had divided Acarnania between them; but the Acarnanians had recovered their freedom, and were defending it against the Ætolians. They now betook themselves to Rome, on the strength of their forefathers not having fought against Troy; in proof of which they referred to the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad. Patron too, who piloted the ships of Æneas, was an Acarnanian. The Romans also alleged this as the motive of their protection; but their embassy was treated by the Ætolians with utter scorn, and it led to nothing. Justin, not without a certain feeling of enjoyment, tells this from Trogus Pompeius; for Trogus was no Roman by birth, but was sprung from a Ligurian or Gallic tribe.[11] They now, in the year 524, had better success, and obtained from the Greeks the honours which have been mentioned.

It is by no means true that history has the effect of weakening one’s belief in an overruling Providence: in it we see realized what Herodotus so often says, ἔδεε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀπολέσθαι; one may say just as often, ἔδεε γὰρ αὐτὸν σώζεσθαι. Had the Gauls, for instance, burst upon Italy during the first Punic war, they alone would have been sufficient to interrupt its course, and the Romans could not have thrown themselves with all their might on Sicily. If Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, had tried to avenge the misfortunes of his father in Italy, there can be no doubt but what he might at that time have still broken up the leagues in that country, and have destroyed the power of the Romans. Yet everything combined in their favour: the Carthaginians got a good general only at the end of the war; Alexander of Epirus contented himself with small conquests; the Gauls were quiet. The Romans indeed were in dread of an attack from the east; they seem to have been prepared for whatever might happen, and for this reason they still kept a garrison in Tarentum. Even before the first Punic war, they had made a friendly alliance with Ptolemy Philadelphus; after the peace they concluded another with Seleucus Callinicus. Thus far did they now already stretch out their arms.

The Gauls had lost the Romagna, and had not stirred for fifty years: they were perhaps themselves glad that the Romans seemed to have forgotten them. The Senonian territory had come into the hands of the Romans as a wilderness; but it is a fine country: here, according to the provisions of the agrarian law, a great number might settle and occupy land. About the year 522, the tribune C. Flaminius, in spite of the violent opposition of the senate, carried a bill in the assembly of the people for the division of this ager Gallicus Picenus. The ager of the Senonians is part of the Romagna, of Urbino, and the March of Ancona; the colony of Ariminum was already established there. Polybius, in a most unaccountable manner, calls this motion of Flaminius an attempt at rebellion; an example of how even a sensible man may err in judging of some particular circumstance, or follow others, without thinking himself on the subject. As none of the other tribunes would interfere, those who were in power got the father of Flaminius to make his son desist; and the old man ascended the rostra, and led him off. Here we behold the change which had taken place in the state of things: the father, a plebeian like his son, opposes the division of the ager. And again, we see in this an instance in which, as might be done by virtue of the Lex Hortensia, a measure of this kind was carried against the wishes of the senate, by a plebiscitum which emanated from a single body; and in this meaning perhaps is the expression of Polybius to be understood (ἀρχηγὸς τῆς ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον διαστροφῆς τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας). In this assignation of the ager publicus, the point in dispute was no longer whether the plebeians were to have any share in it. On the contrary, the leading men of both orders had divided the possession between them, and had thus enriched themselves; and now the population which had since grown up, laid claim to its assignation, so as to establish a new and free peasantry in the room of those who had died off, or had been bought up, and to give fresh life to what was left of the old yeomanry, which had thus dwindled away.

It is, however, quite a different question, whether an extensive settlement in those parts was prudent at such a time, when a war with the neighbouring Gauls was to be dreaded. Yet after all, this war must one day or other have broken out. The Gauls could not long dwell quietly in Lombardy, and it was all one, whether it came on a little sooner. Certain it is, that this settlement alarmed the Boians in what are now the districts of Modena and Bologna, probably also in that of Parma: the population in fact had recovered from its losses, and was thirsting for revenge. They were also afraid that the great men at Rome, who had lost their large estates in the Romagna, might seek for new ones in their own country. The Romans, however, did not yet think of war with the Gauls: they had cast their eyes on Spain, and they had no hope of being able to drive the Gauls out of Lombardy. It is said that at that time the Romans carried on wars against the Ligurians; but we should be sadly mistaken if we fancied that they had already invaded Liguria proper, the territory of Genoa. It was, on the contrary, the Ligurians who had spread in the Apennines as far as Casentino and Arezzo, after the might of the Etruscans and Gauls had been broken at the Vadimo; and it could have been none other than these. It was a hard struggle. The Ligurians defended every single mountain, and each of the small tribes was only mastered after having been almost entirely crushed.

Of the Gauls, there were in the north of Italy the Boians and Insubrians; the former, south of the Po in the Romagna; the latter, in the territory of Milan, and in the plain between Bergamo and Brescia; yet these two cantons were not Gallic, but probably Rhætian, of Etruscan extraction. Between the Insubrians and Venetians dwelt the Cenomanians, between Milan and Mantua; these had placed themselves under the protection of the Romans. On the other side of the Alps, there was a great movement, and the Boians could now induce Transalpine volunteers to come over: these negociations caused the Romans great alarm. Several years now passed away: at length, eight years after the Flaminian law, a countless horde made its appearance, and the war broke out in 527. This war is memorable in history for the immense preparations of the Romans; it was a swarm which they had to deal with, very much as in the time of the Cimbrians. Among the tribes which were in arms, there were also Tauriscans. These, on other occasions, we meet with only in Carniola: whether in those days they were also in Helvetia, we must leave undecided. The Romans called forth a general levy throughout all Italy: the allies obeyed very readily, as they looked forward with dismay to an invasion of the Gauls. The Romans opposed to the enemy an army on the common road of the Gauls near Rimini, which was under the consul L. Æmilius, and another, a prætorian one, in Etruria. At the same time, the consul C. Atilius had gone with a fleet and army to Sardinia, as the Sards had revolted. In the neighbourhood of Rome, there was a reserve: all the Italian nations were in marching order. Polybius here gives a list, from which we find that he had not a clear insight into the subject. The numbers are wrongly written, and all attempts to sum them up are fruitless: several peoples are not named at all. I believe that Fabius wrote in a hurry, when he stated the numbers at 800,000 foot and 80,000 horse. In short, this list is of no use; and at any rate, one ought never to draw from this census such conclusions with regard to the population of the ancient world, as was done in the dispute between Hume and Wallace; for although Hume keeps on the side of common sense, yet he takes the matter too lightly. Perhaps something has slipped out in Polybius.

The Romans evidently looked forward to this war with far greater fear than they did to that of Hannibal. Such is human nature! The Apennines north of Tuscany were then quite impassable, and there were only two ways there by which Italy could be invaded: the one was by Fæsulæ, and the other through the territory of Lucca, down by Pisa, where the whole valley at that time was a great marsh. By one of these two roads the Gauls must have passed, probably by the latter; but whilst Hannibal’s march through these swamps has become famous, history is silent with regard to that of the Gauls. They left the Roman consul in his position near Ariminum, and fifty thousand of them burst into Etruria. Probably the army of the Romans was stationed near Florence, so as to block up the road to Rome; and thus one can understand that they were late in knowing of the invasion of the Gauls, and of their march as far as Clusium. Thither the Gauls had arrived, within three days’ march from Rome. The Romans now broke up, that they might either cut off from them the way to Rome, or at least follow after them: the Gauls were apprised of this, and retreated. They marched from Clusium through the Siennese territory to the sea: here we find them in the neighbourhood of Piombino, over-against Elba. Polybius says that they now fell in with the Romans near a place called Φαίσολα. This the commentators preposterously mistook for Fæsulæ above Florence; yet it must have been between Chiusi and the sea-coast, not far from Aquapendente.[12] Here they laid a trap for the Romans. They broke up with their infantry, and withdrew to a good position; the cavalry remained behind, and was to provoke the Romans, and then, slowly falling back, to entice them to the spot whither they wished to bring them. The Romans suffered there a great defeat: a part only of them retreated to a strong height among the Apennines, where they defended themselves against the Gauls. Luckily, the consul Æmilius, who had left his station near Ariminum, had now advanced through the Apennines to reinforce the army; and when he did not find it in its former place, he proceeded by forced marches along the road to Rome, and came up the night after the disastrous battle. He did not know that the Romans were surrounded on the mountains; but the Gauls halted when they saw his watch-fires, and the hard-pressed Romans sent messengers to him, and acquainted him with their situation. The next morning, he now wanted to attack the Gauls; these, however, had chosen to retire. As they had gotten a vast deal of booty during the campaign, they did not wish with such an agmen impeditum to enter into battle, and so they resolved to return home, and advance again afterwards. Such a resolution can only be made by a barbarous people. They marched slowly along the sea-coast, laying everything waste: the consular army followed, to keep them in check, but was afraid of them. The Gauls would thus have returned unhurt, had not Atilius in the meanwhile brought his undertaking in Sardinia to a successful close. The Sardinian army having been recalled, was driven by contrary winds to land at Pisa, not far from the very spot where the Gauls just happened to be. Atilius had the intention of joining the other army; but when he heard of the invasion of the Gauls, he left his baggage behind at Pisa, and began his march to Rome along the coast: as for the defeat of the Romans, he knew nothing of it. Near a place, called Telamon, his light troops fell in with some of the Gauls. Some of these, who were made prisoners, let out how matters really stood; that the Gauls were close at hand, and that the consul Æmilius was following them. Æmilius had heard of the march of Atilius; but he was not aware how near he was. Now as the battle of Telamon was fought in the neighbourhood of Populonia, it is evident also from this, that Φαίσολα could not possibly have been Fæsulæ near Florence. The Gauls, who were now in a dreadful plight, first got their baggage out of the way, and then tried to occupy an eminence hard by the road: thither Atilius sent his cavalry, and the fight began. The Gauls opposed one front to Atilius, and another to Æmilius. Atilius was slain, and his head cut off, and brought to the prince of the Gauls; but his troops avenged his death, and the cavalry became masters of the hillock. The warriors who were arrayed against Æmilius, fought stark naked with all the wildness of savages; the rest of the Gauls also were without coats of mail, and they had narrow shields, and large Celtic mantles. Polybius speaks in this battle of Gæsati; these can hardly have been mercenaries, as he supposes, but javelin bearers,—from gæsum, a javelin, inasmuch as Virgil in his magnificent description of the Gauls uses this word in contradistinction to the swordbearers: they were Allobroges; for they came from the Rhone. These Gæsatians all of them made a stand against Æmilius; the light troops, armed likewise with missiles, were sent to attack them, and after a fierce struggle they fled. The rest of the Gauls having collected on both sides into immense masses, the day ended in the death of 40,000, and the captivity of 10,000 of them, so that scarcely any one escaped. Thus, by the most lucky combination of circumstances, the danger was warded off. The war was not, however, decided before the fourth year.

In the following year, the Romans crossed over the Apennines into the country of the Boians, who immediately submitted. In 529 and 530, the war was in the Milanese territory, the land of the Insubrians. These were supported by the Transalpine Gauls, and they offered a stout resistance: that such an open country, which had but one stronghold, was defended in this manner, does honour to the bravery of these tribes. The Romans were forced at the confluence of the Po and the Adda to retreat. The Cenomanians, between the Adda and the Lago di Garda; the Venetians, whose capital was Patavium; and the Euganeans, were friendly to the Romans: the Venetians were a people of quite a different race from the Tuscans, being probably of Liburno-Pelasgian descent; they possessed the country between the Adige and the four eastern rivers, and were highly civilized. The Insubrians afterwards sued in vain for peace: the Romans did not trust them, and wished for their destruction. In 529, C. Flaminius gained a great battle against the Insubrians, north of the Po, in which he is unjustly reproached with bad generalship. In the fourth year of the war, the Romans reduced their only fortified place, Acerræ, and utterly routed them near Clastidium. The great captain M. Claudius Marcellus slew with his own hand the Gallic chief Virodomarus. After this campaign, Milan was taken, and the Insubrians made their unconditional submission, having been all but exterminated.

In the Capitoline Fasti, we find that Marcellus had triumphed De Gallis Insubribus et Germanis. I cannot say positively whether the piece of stone on which the er stands, has been put in at a later period or not, often as I have examined that monument. The stone is broken at the r, thus much is certain: but whether the restoration is new, or whether the piece which was broken off, was again fastened in, I do not venture to decide. It cannot be Cenomanis, the G being distinct; Gonomanis does not occur among the Romans. The thing is not quite impossible. This would then be the earliest mention of our national name. In the age of Julius Cæsar, the Germans in all likelihood dwelt only as far as the Main, or the Neckar at most; but in earlier times, they lived further to the south, and were pushed back by the Gauls. Those Germans in the Valais who were known to Livy,[13] are remnants of that migration.

After the victory at Clastidium, between Piacenza and Alessandria, the Romans immediately founded two colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on both banks of the Po: the boundary was pushed on to the Ticinus. There is every reason to think that Modena also was fortified; but it was afterwards lost again for some time, during a fresh insurrection of the Boians. The Ligurian tribes in Piedmont were still independent by rights, though not in reality.

In the first Illyrian war, the Romans owed their speedy success to a Greek, Demetrius of Pharus. As governor of Corcyra, having in all probability been bribed, he had surrendered the island to them; and by their influence he had been appointed guardian of the king who was a minor. His was a character in keeping with that age of infamy; he was a traitor to all parties. He now conspired against the Romans, and during the Gallic war he excited the Illyrians to rebellion, which shows that these peoples paid tribute to Rome. Besides this, with a fleet of fifty Lembi, he dared to commit piracy in the Archipelago against the defenceless Cyclades. The Romans sent over a consular army under L. Æmilius Paulus; the hopes of the rebels were quickly blighted, and their capital Dimalus was taken (a name which proves, that the modern Albanian language is like the ancient Illyrian, for dimal in Albanian means a double mountain). The seat of Demetrius was his native island Pharus, which the Romans took by a stratagem: he himself made his escape to Macedon, where the last Philip had just begun his reign, and he became his evil genius. Thus the second Illyrian war was very soon ended. The Romans on the whole at that time enlarged their dominion. We have nothing to inform us when the Venetians became dependent: in the great Gallic war we find them as allies. The Istrians, however, were subjected even before the war of Hannibal, and the Venetians must then have been already conquered; so that the acquisition of the supremacy over them probably dates from this period.

While all this was taking place, events were brooding, of the fearful nature of which the Romans were far from having the least conception. Hamilcar Barcas had turned his eyes towards Spain, thus showing that he was a truly great man in not allowing himself to be discouraged by his former ill successes, and in not repining against fate. The Carthaginians had until then placed all their hopes on Sicily; and there were fellows indeed at Carthage (like Hanno, by whose speeches Livy spoils his fine description of the war of Hannibal), who partly from envy and bad feeling, and partly from miserable cowardice, were of opinion, that after the loss of Sicily and Sardinia, one ought now to yield altogether. Just as Pitt, after the American war, when it was believed in foreign countries that the peace of Paris had broken the power of England, with redoubled courage undertook the task of infusing new strength into his country; thus also did Hamilcar. At an early period already, the Phœnicians had settled in Spain. Gades is said to have been older than Carthage, and that place was indeed very important as the centre of the trade with the Cassiterides. Tin was of the greatest value to the ancients for making the copper, of which they had plenty, fusible: the use of calamine in the manufacture of brass, is of much later invention. Very likely, neither the Phœnicians nor Carthaginians had any settlements on the western coast besides Gades; but they certainly had some on the southern coast, in Granada, Malaga, and Abdera, and a mixed nation (Μιξοφοίνικες) had sprung up there, namely the Bastulans. But into the interior the Carthaginians had not yet penetrated, although they seem to have had connexions there. The yoke of Carthage was deeply hated in Africa, as was shown in the insurrection of the mercenaries; now, on the contrary the great tact of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal shines forth in the foundation of a Carthaginian empire in Spain: they laid upon the Spaniards a very easy yoke. Hannibal was married to a Spanish woman of Castulo, and these alliances between Carthaginians and native women must have been of very frequent occurrence: among the Romans, such marriages were regarded only as concubinage. Hamilcar had devised the plan of creating in Spain a province, which was to make up to Carthage for Sicily and Sardinia, and from which it might also derive what it could never have got from those isles: neither Sicily nor Sardinia were able to give Carthage any considerable military strength. The weakness of Carthage lay in this, that it had no army of its own; and that great man now conceived the idea of forming a national Carthaginian army out of Spaniards, who were partly to be subjected, and partly to be gained over and made Punic. Southern Spain has immense natural advantages; its silver mines are of extraordinary richness. The Carthaginians had known of these before; but it was Hamilcar who first introduced a regular system of working them, and thus he, or his son-in-law Hasdrubal, was led to found the town of New Carthage (Carthagena). The stores which had been furnished by Sicily and Sardinia, were just as well supplied by Spain. They now got a population of millions, from which they no more took faithless mercenaries; but there they made levies as in their own country. The Romans no doubt looked with jealousy at the progress they were making; yet they could not hinder it, so long as the Cisalpine Gauls stood on their frontier, prepared to avenge the defeat of the Senonians and Boians.

The whole of Spain consisted of a number of petty tribes without any connexion whatever between them; whilst in Gaul, at least some one nation or other, the Æduans, the Arvernians, held the supremacy. The Spaniards were of various kinds: whether the Turdetanians and the northern peoples, the Cantabrians, were of a different race, as the ancients say; or whether all the Iberians were sprung from the same stock, as is maintained by that great etymologist, Humboldt, we cannot decide. Not being acquainted with the language myself, I must abstain from giving an opinion; yet surely, notwithstanding the great weight of Humboldt’s authority, the statements of the ancients ought also to be taken in consideration. Certain it is, that the tribes south of the Sierra Morena, the inhabitants of Bœtica, had quite a different character from those of the northern part of the country. They were highly civilized; they had a literature of their own, written laws, and books; of their alphabet, which is altogether peculiar to themselves, and not derived from that of the Phœnicians, there are remnants still existing on inscriptions and coins. The letters have quite a primitive form. Yet these peoples were quite as warlike as those of the north: they were not, however, good for attack, but merely for defence. In earlier times only, they succeeded in driving the Celts across the Pyrenees into Aquitain; afterwards, we always find them confined to their boundaries, within which they made a desperate stand; so that what an Arab general said of them is true, that behind walls they were more than men, and in the field more cowardly than women, which has also been borne out in the latest wars. An exception to this, however, were the Celtiberians; and the others also showed themselves brave, when they were trained by great generals like Hannibal and Sertorius, and likewise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Otherwise, they confine themselves to desperate resistance, even behind wretched fortifications; they kill their women and children, and defend themselves to their last drop of blood. Now Hamilcar, and after him Hasdrubal, spread further and further, drawing one people after the other into the Carthaginian league, and training soldiers.

Hamilcar had hardly finished his war against the mercenaries, when he founded the Carthaginian empire in Spain. He staid there eight years, of which he made an incomparable use. He died in Spain, and left the command to his son-in-law Hasdrubal, which was quite different from the Roman custom. The Carthaginian general not only keeps his office for life, but he also bequeaths it at his death to his son-in-law, like an heirloom. It is true that this required a great deal of influence at Carthage, and this is what Livy calls factio Barcina.