THE INSUBRIANS AND BOIANS VANQUISHED. WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS. WAR WITH THE GALATIANS.
We have now reached much beyond the times of the development of the constitution at home, and the rest of the history has not for us the same interest which it had for the ancients. Even the wars are losing that grand character which arose from the display of native energy. What sort of a subject for description, for instance, is the battle of Magnesia, in which a well-ordered Roman army came off victorious over a horde of eastern barbarians, which did not even deserve the name of army? Some wars, like the Cimbric, form an exception. Livy from henceforth becomes more and more diffuse; for he had other interests in his history, and more than two-thirds of his work are taken up by the two centuries which now follow. We are going to adopt just the opposite plan, and are able to be more and more concise.
The Insubrians had risen against the Romans. During the second Punic war, they had been quiet; except in the first years, they took no part in it, as the scene of operations was in general too far distant from them, and they kept up but little communication with Hannibal. But now they were in arms, and the Romans met with peculiar difficulty, owing to Hamilcar, an enterprising Carthaginian who had remained behind from Mago’s army, and had organised the Ligurian and Gallic forces. The Insubrians were very different from the Boians: the former made their submission after one or two campaigns; but the war with the latter lasted to the tenth year. They defended themselves with distinguished bravery, and they destroyed the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona; for they knew that the Romans were carrying on against them a war of extermination, and they therefore fought with all the energy of despair. Historians do not state as explicitly as a fragment of Cato does, that they were utterly rooted out. The fate of this people is remarkable. After their emigration from Gaul, they had either turned themselves to Italy, or had gone to the Danube: in Gaul, their seats are now hardly known; in the country near the Danube, they were probably exterminated in the Cimbric war, and hence the desertum Boiorum (Böheim, Bohemia), which was afterwards occupied by the Marcomanni: in Italy they are said to have had a hundred and twelve cantons. That in Italy they were extirpated, and that there could therefore have been no question about them, was not at all understood by the jurists who have written on the lex de Gallia Cisalpina. But all the Celts south of the Po were destroyed, and the whole of their land taken up by Roman colonies: Bologna, Modena, Parma, and also Lucca, were founded at that time, and received a considerable territory. Yet even in the days of Polybius, that country was nearly without inhabitants, and it was repeopled only by slow degrees. The Lex Julia united the Cispadana as to political rights with Italy.
At the close of the war with Philip, the Ætolians were filled with the most envenomed resentment. This bitterness of feeling was by no means softened down in the course of time; for the Ætolians made too great pretensions, and the Romans were unfair towards them. Yet even without that, they would have moved heaven and earth to drive the Romans out of Greece. They therefore turned their eyes towards Antiochus.
Antiochus is one of those princes, who unjustly bear in history the surname of the Great. The Seleucidæ were poorer in great men than any of the dynasties which succeeded Alexander; even Seleucus himself hardly deserved to be so called: the Asiatic degeneracy shows itself in them much earlier than among the Ptolemies. Antiochus got that surname because his reign was happy: compared with the princes of his house who had the same name, Antiochus Soter, and the utterly infamous Theos, his grandfather and great-grandfather, he may have been the better man. He certainly restored his empire, which had come to him almost in a state of dissolution from his brother Seleucus; but he did this without any grand achievement of his own, as he only put forth against his cowardly enemies the comparatively great might of his dominion. He had no real difficulties in his way, and those, which he had to face, he did not overcome like a great man. He might have called himself εὐτυχής; for before his war with the Romans he had a more extensive monarchy than the kings of Syria had ever possessed. He ruled from the Hellespont to the borders of India, over Phrygia, Cilicia, Syria, Palæstine, Cœle-Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Media, Persia as far as Sidgistan and Cabool; he had made treaties with Indian princes, and his riches were immense: but with all this, there was nowhere the vigour of a warlike state, but Asiatic effeminacy throughout. His strength had not been put to the proof. The descendants of the Macedonians and Greeks in the colonies of Alexander and Seleucus, had become quite unwarlike; just as the Pullani (the offspring of the crusaders) in the Holy Land, a set of people with all the vices of the east without its virtues. Yet, as he possessed the whole extent of the Persian empire, Antiochus was looked upon in Asia as the μέγας βασιλεύς, and in Europe, as the terrible adversary of the Romans: the Ætolians therefore built great hopes on him.
It was natural that Hannibal should turn himself towards this prince, and try to stir him up to a war against Rome; although as things then were, he did not wish to begin it at once, especially as he had the prospect of still remaining for a long time in the prime of life. The Romans had, since the war with Philip, entered into negotiations with Antiochus, which, however, led to nothing: it was a step, such as they had often taken before, as they would risk an enterprise, and not mind if it miscarried. When leagued with Philip, Antiochus had gained the Egyptian possessions in Asia Minor, and he dreamt of nothing less than of extending his empire to Europe. Philip, in consequence of his peace with the Romans, had been obliged to abandon the towns which he had conquered from the Egyptians; these were exposed to the inroads of the savage Thracian tribes, and they called upon Antiochus for help. This prince also meddled in the feuds in the Chersonesus, and restored Lysimachia which had been destroyed by the Thracians. But the Romans forbade him to set his foot in Europe; they declared that they would never let him overstep the natural boundaries of his empire, in which they very wisely kept to this undefined expression: he was also to acknowledge the independence of the Greek towns in Asia,—this was a piece of immense presumption, put forth by those who wanted a war. Antiochus refused; and thus the negotiations were carried on for four years, during which he fortified Lysimachia and the Chersonesus as the outworks of Asia. He also fitted out a fleet, for which he possessed the most ample resources, having taken the Phœnician coast from the Ægyptians, and being likewise master of Cilicia and Pamphylia. In Greece the Ætolians were on his side; but the Rhodians were decidedly against him, as they were allies of the Egyptians, and though not actually leagued with the Romans, yet on terms of such good understanding with them, that it came nearly to the same thing.
Antiochus had not always his abode at Antioch; he had at that time chosen the beautiful city of Ephesus for his capital: thither Hannibal came, and was received with the greatest distinction. The latter, who had passed the first years after the conclusion of the second Punic war in his native city, had by no means given himself up to despair: he soon showed himself, after the peace, to be as great as during the war. He had been made Suffete, a term which we also find in the Book of Judges, meaning the head of the state in peace; and though this was a dignity which had not any longer much weight, as the ruling power in Carthage was already seriously paralysed by the democratical element, while in office, he by his ability had given it its former influence. He reformed abuses of every kind,[33] and turned his attention particularly to the finances, in which he had found out an immense deficit, as the great men had helped themselves to all the good things: in short, he brought with him new life and new hopes into his native city. But the more he laid abuses bare, the faster grew the party of the traitors, who at that time were to be met with in Carthage as well as in all the states,—a set of men who sought their own individual power, whilst sacrificing their country to the Romans. The latter, who, to use Livy’s fine expression, had made peace with Carthage, but not with Hannibal, looked upon him with great mistrust; which was very natural, as his only thought was to raise his country. Rome had long ceased to be a conscientious state; her unsullied moral purity, which in her earlier days was far from being a mere dream, was quite gone, and just when she had the power, and therefore the opportunity of acting uprightly, she broke all the laws of honour and virtue. The Romans had already more than once complained of Hannibal; and now they regularly charged him with the design of preparing war, and demanded that he should be given up to them. This embassy, however, was not set on foot without the strongest opposition from the great Scipio, who denounced such conduct as unworthy, as shameful indeed. But before the Carthaginians had come to a resolution which would perhaps have been wrung from them, Hannibal fled to Antiochus, the king of Syria.
Hannibal was startled, when he saw the state of the Syrian troops. He found a host, of which the great mass were barbarians, which though apparently trained in some measure to the Macedonian way of fighting, was unsound to the core, and quite as cowardly as under the Persian rule: it was only from single divisions of such an army that he could expect anything. But his plan was worthy of him. He advised Antiochus to bestow his greatest exertions on the fleet, and by means of it to carry the war into Italy; the picked troops and those which he himself still hoped to train, might then be embarked on it and landed in southern Italy, which was so exasperated against Rome on account of the revenge which she had taken. Greece he should not touch; for that would irritate Philip, to whom he should rather leave it, and seek to aggrandize himself in Egypt. But it was natural that men of small minds should reject this plan; and it was resolved to transfer the war to Greece, where the Ætolians were their allies, and to try and gain over Philip. The latter plan was the more hazardous, and in fact quite impracticable, owing to the folly which the advisers of Antiochus displayed in all that they did: they wished to work upon Philip, not by fair means only, but also by fear. Thus at the very moment, when everything turned upon Philip’s goodwill being won, a pretender, who gave himself out to be a descendant of Alexander the Great, and who had been with the Acarnanians in Epirus, was received at Ephesus as the rightful sovereign of Macedon: they even fostered the fond hope of bringing about a revolution there. This was childish folly. As matters now stood, Hannibal gave his advice against war; and this was accounted to him as treachery, and the wretched king with his wretched councillors so thoroughly misunderstood this great man as to think him capable of playing into the hands of Rome. In this belief they were confirmed by a stratagem of the Romans by which bad men only could have been taken in. Scipio was sent over to Asia for a last negotiation with Antiochus. He and Hannibal were personally acquainted, and two such great men passed lightly over the circumstance of their having faced each other as enemies. They were not mere tools of the state; but they were as two great moral powers arrayed against each other, which after a mighty struggle had made peace, and not as ordinary men. In such cases, there is kindled in truly great souls a mutual love. They met familiarly, and Hannibal was thus led to offer hospitality to Scipio, which the latter said that he would have accepted, had not Hannibal been dependent on an enemy of Rome. Scipio was perhaps less frank in this conversation than Hannibal, and he may have taken advantage of him: this may have contributed to make Hannibal suspected.
When it became known, that the Romans began to arm, the Ætolians demanded that Antiochus should come over with his forces to Greece. Hannibal saw that Antiochus was running to his destruction, if he undertook the war with his present means; and he told him, that he must gain over Philip, and if possible, the Egyptians. Yet there were great difficulties in the way of these alliances. If Philip united with the Ætolians, the Achæans were thrown into the arms of the Romans. Philip also was angry, because Antiochus had not supported him in his war; and moreover, should everything turn out most favourably, the object of Antiochus was no other than to conquer Greece: if it therefore became possible to weaken Rome, the Macedonians thereby merely got another dangerous neighbour. Thus the negotiations did not advance matters; and if Antiochus had been wise, he would not have listened to the blind rage of the Ætolians, and he would have been aware of their insignificance: but he thought them to be a great nation.
The preparations were made with so little method, that Antiochus had no more than ten thousand men ready to embark. The Ætolians, who expected an innumerable army, had likewise described their own power as much larger than it really was; so that he was highly astonished to find that they had scarcely four thousand men. He landed at Demetrias, which, as we shall see, was already evacuated by the Romans, and now occupied by the Ætolians. He now reduced Phthiotis, and passed over to Eubœa, and made himself master of the strong town of Chalcis. It was fated that the Romans should be justified in their unwillingness to intrust their fortresses to the Greeks, who did not know how to behave. From thence he went on to Bœotia, where he was joyfully welcomed, to Phocis, and into Thessaly. This last country had been converted by the Romans into a republic; yet it had never known how to govern itself, and owing to its having been so long dependent on Macedon, it had become quite unable to take care of its own affairs: the Magnesians and Phthiotes had been detached, and formed into an independent state. He met with a good reception on both sides of mount Œta, and here he made fresh acquisitions. This was the critical moment: had Philip energetically declared himself, the Romans would have been driven back as far as Illyricum. But Philip was diverted from it by the Romans. He saw that the war had been begun with so little judgment that there was not much to be expected from it: moreover, he had not himself acquired strength enough, and he knew well, that if the issue were unfavourable, he should fare the worst; and if he were to wait awhile, he might hope that the Romans would crush his enemies the Ætolians, whilst his position would be none the worse, and then he might quietly abide his time when the Greeks would begin to be hostile to the Romans. He therefore only took possession of the town of Demetrias, one of the three chief strongholds of Greece, which gave him the command of Thessaly. There must have been a secret treaty about it with the Romans; for it henceforth remained Macedonian until the fall of that empire, without its evacuation having been called for. The district of Magnesia was also incorporated with Macedon.
In the war of Nabis already, a bitterness of feeling between the Romans and Achæans had begun to show itself: the latter were mistrustful, because the Romans had not yet withdrawn their garrisons from the Acrocorinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias. But as Antiochus was approaching, of whose power quite an exaggerated opinion was entertained, the Romans were wise enough now to remove those garrisons. The other Greek states likewise fell off one by one from Rome, and there was everywhere a Roman and a Macedonian party. Flamininus now sullied his fair fame by allowing the faction devoted to himself and to the Romans in Bœotia to murder the leader of the Macedonian faction, and by screening the guilty from justice. The Achæans were still his friends, but very negative ones: they did not wish to join themselves with the Ætolians.
Antiochus and the Ætolians had now on both sides their eyes opened with regard to the expectations which they had entertained of each other. Hannibal, who from the very first had been a prophet of evil, was now called in. This is the usual fate of great men. So long as one is doing well, and one can still follow their advice, they are not listened to; but if one has got into trouble by acting against it, then are they charged with obstinacy, if they declare that nothing any more is to be done. Hannibal could only propose that they should renew the attempts to gain over Philip. But the latter had already concluded his alliance with Rome, hoping thereby to regain Thessaly; at the same time, to him the thought was delightful of revenging himself on the Ætolians by means of a union with the Romans. Antiochus now ventured no more on any greater undertaking; but by the advice of his courtiers, he sought to employ the winter in making preparations in Asia. This, however, was only done to a small extent, and in the meanwhile he wasted his time in feasts at Chalcis. By the beginning of spring, a new consular army under M’. Acilius Glabrio, which was reinforced by the Macedonians, appeared in Thessaly, where it was opposed by no more than ten thousand Asiatics and a few Ætolians; and it encamped near Heraclea, whilst Antiochus occupied Thermopylæ, just the reverse of what happened in the days of the Persians: for this time it was the Asiatics, though indeed these were half-Macedonians, who in their turn defended the pass. The Achæans had now again decidedly joined the Romans, and they did them good service. That the pass at Thermopylæ could be turned, unless Œta, over which there lay a path, were occupied as well, was then generally known already, as experience had twice shown it. The order to take two mountains which covered the defile, was given to old Cato, and to his friend L. Valerius Flaccus. The latter was unsuccessful; but the former got possession of the heights, and dashed into the enemy’s camp along with the flying Ætolians, whilst M’. Acilius beat the Syrians in front. The army of Antiochus broke, and was scattered; he himself escaped to Chalcis, where a short time before he had been revelling in Asiatic luxury and childish festivities. That town he abandoned, leaving behind a weak garrison which made no stand against the Romans, who, however, did not pursue him; and he went to Asia. His fleet also, at the sight of a Roman one which had now arrived, sheered off to Asia Minor. Antiochus looked upon the war as ended; yet he gathered together a new army, and again gave himself up to his pleasures. There is no doubt but that he would have agreed to any peace, however indifferent it might have been.
M’. Acilius Glabrio now turned the war against the Ætolians. Heraclea and Lamia, on the Thessalian side of Thermopylæ, belonged to Ætolia Epictetus: the former of these was besieged by the consul, Lamia by Philip. The siege of Heraclea, where the main force of the Ætolians lay, was carried on with the utmost spirit, according to all the rules of military art. The town was taken by storm, and the garrison surrendered at discretion. The Ætolians now lost courage. Yet they were still saved by the eagerness of the Romans to pass over into the rich country of Asia, and to have done with this toilsome mountain war against a race which had nothing; and also by the anxiety of these that Philip should not gain his ends. When Lamia was about to fall, although without doubt possession of it had been promised to Philip, the consul sent him word, that he had made a convention for Lamia, and that therefore the king was to give up the siege. Hereupon Philip took no further share in the war, beyond reducing the Athamanians and the Dolopians.
The Ætolians would have been extirpated, had not the Romans themselves wished to have them preserved. The latter besieged Naupactus. Had they urged on this siege with true vigour and earnestness the town must have yielded; but they went to work sluggishly and with much forbearance, which enabled the Ætolians to save the place. The war ended with the siege of Ambracia, which at that time was Ætolian, and in the defence of which the little people of the Ætolians, though abandoned by all the Greeks, and without any great man to head them, displayed the highest gallantry. The siege is one of the most scientific in the whole of ancient history: the description of it is delightful, owing to the cleverness of invention, and the stedfastness of the besieged: it does one good to see physical weakness holding its own by means of skill. This defence does honour to the Ætolians, whose wars are otherwise not very glorious: it is of a somewhat later date (564). At length, peace was mediated by the Athenians. The Ætolians had to pay a few hundred talents as a war-contribution; to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, and to bind themselves to follow the Romans in their wars; to evacuate Ambracia, and to give it up to them, as well as Cephallenia, which was taken and laid waste by the conquerors: a like fate had already befallen the Acarnanians. The peace was a hard one, yet under the circumstances fair enough. Thus the Romans gained possession of the country along the coast, and of the landing places in Greece.
Antiochus now confined himself to holding out with his fleet against the Rhodians and the ships of Eumenes, amongst which there were only a very few Roman ones. An unimportant battle was fought, in which these had the best of it; but after the fleets had separated, the Rhodians were shamefully deceived, surprised, and defeated by the Syrians. The Roman admiral, M. Æmilius Regillus, now came up with a new fleet of not more than eighty ships: the Romans were so little made for the sea-service, that they kept no fleet whatever, when they did not actually want one. Hence likewise, at least one half of their crews were then Rhodians; for these were the best seamen of the age, being yet in their prime, as in the best days of Greece. The fleet of Antiochus had been furnished almost entirely by the Phœnician towns, which, however, important as they were during the Persian rule, must now have very much gone down; and it was commanded by Hannibal. Yet though led by Hannibal, it was not able to effect a junction with another division, when a battle was fought near Myonnesus. The victory was altogether on the side of the Romans and their allies: the fleet of Antiochus was all but destroyed; the ships which were left, fled away into two harbours in Caria. This success had been achieved by the Rhodians; it was won, however, by means of fire, the Rhodians having engines on board their ships which hurled fire upon the enemy, most likely a kind of what was afterwards called Greek fire: it was not thrown with rockets, and from the way in which historians speak of it, this at least is certain, that the masses of it were quite extraordinary, and that it could not be quenched. This naval victory decided the war. Antiochus, by the advice of Hannibal, had meant to occupy the Chersonesus, which is joined to Thrace only by a narrow tongue of land about half a mile in length; on this lay Lysimachia, a well fortified town, from whence strong walls stretched out to the Melas Colpos and the Propontis, so that on the landside it could only be taken by a siege: one could land indeed at several places, but the Syrian fleet might have prevented it, and ought to have done so. He would then have been unassailable in Asia, so long as he chose to keep on the defensive. Yet such was the blindness of this king, that he sent Hannibal, as a hateful reminder of rejected counsels to Pamphylia, and banished him from his presence. It is possible that Antiochus by occupying the Chersonesus might have protected Asia, although he could not have kept it in the long run; but what was senseless, was his giving it up without making even so much as an attempt to defend it: the rich magazines there, which had been laid up for a long campaign, were abandoned to the Romans, and the garrisons withdrawn from the towns. He beguiled himself, or his subjects, with the thought that he should be able to make a stand behind the Hellespont; yet this coast also he forsook at the approach of the Romans, and fell back into Lydia. In the same way, the troops of Philip, which, even before Alexander’s days, had set foot on those shores, were not hindered by the Persians from crossing.[34]
In the year 562, L. Scipio and C. Lælius were consuls. They both of them wished for the command of the expedition to Asia, and the senate gave it to Scipio, who would not, however, have gotten it, had not his great brother offered to serve as a legate under him. For the latter could not be appointed consul, as the law by which ten years were to elapse between two consulships of the same individual, was now very strictly adhered to. P. Scipio had in the meantime been censor, and his influence was still almost unbounded, as was plainly shown on this occasion, when L. Scipio, a most insignificant being, was chosen merely for the sake of his brother; just as the great Fabius Maximus in former times had procured the consulship for his son, under whom he then acted as legate. The Roman fleet had scarcely appeared off the coast of Asia, the Scipios being still in Macedonia, when ambassadors arrived from Antiochus, to ask for the conditions of peace. He offered to give up the Chersonesus; to acknowledge the freedom of the Asiatic towns, Smyrna and Abydos, which had been taken by the Romans; and to bear half of the expenses of the war. These conditions, coming from one who owned himself vanquished, the Romans did not accept: Scipio declared that they would have been good enough before Antiochus had evacuated the Chersonesus, but that now the bridle was put upon Asia. They marched through Macedon and Thrace over very difficult roads, aided, however, by Philip, whom they rewarded by giving up to him the possession of the towns on the Thracian coast. When the Romans had now crossed the Hellespont, P. Scipio fell sick, a thing which often happened to him, and as he was not able to follow the army, he was obliged to stay behind at Elæa, an Æolian town. This put a stop to all the operations, and Antiochus took advantage of the delay to set on foot fresh negotiations, which, however, led to nothing. Scipio proposed very fair terms; but they offended the pride of Antiochus. A son of the great Scipio had in some way or other been taken prisoner in Asia, and was treated with the greatest distinction. The ambassadors first offered to set him free; then Antiochus sent him back without ransom, hoping that it would now be easier for him to obtain peace. Scipio wished that a decisive battle might be put off until his recovery; Antiochus, on the other hand, was in a hurry to have it fought. The armies encountered on the borders of Lydia, near Magnesia, at the foot of mount Sipylus, in a country of moderately high hills, which is one of the finest in the world, being, like all the lands along the coast of Asia Minor, quite a contrast to the inland regions which are barren and devastated by volcanic convulsions. The army of Antiochus consisted of eighty thousand men, its chief strength being the Macedonian phalanx, which in all likelihood was made up of men of all countries: there were likewise some Macedonians among these, the descendants of the troops of Alexander, who, however, were already mingled in blood with the Asiatic population. Besides these, he had peltasts armed in the Greek manner, and a host of Asiatics, concerning whose arms and equipments Livy and Appian tell us nothing. The Romans had only a consular army, as the other was still fighting against the Ætolians: besides two legions and the proportionate number of allies, there were a few thousand Achæans, and a small number of auxiliaries from Eumenes (who only ruled over Pergamus and some Ionian and Mysian towns), the whole being much less than thirty thousand men. They had been advancing against each other for three days; on the fourth, the battle came on. The large army of Antiochus outflanked the Romans: their left wing rested on a river, which, however, had no depth, and thus they were outflanked on the opposite bank. The Syrian army consisted of the phalanx, of a medley of troops attached to it, of cavalry, elephants, and war-chariots. The Romans also had elephants, but African ones, which they did not use because they were far weaker, and much more timid than those of India. The battle was decided at the very first onset, the victory being contested for a moment, only by the mass of the Macedonian phalanx, and on one single point: on another, Antiochus drove the Roman troops back as far as their own camp, whereupon, however, he was repulsed. A good general might with the aid of the phalanx have given the Romans a great deal of trouble, as was still done at Cynoscephalæ; but all was lost by the king’s wretched tactics. The phalanx at first was formed into a number of smaller bodies with intervals; and instead of their keeping that order, and acting together in masses, these gathered from fear into one huge cluster, which could have been of use only in a plain, and in extreme danger: but here, on uneven ground, there arose an immense confusion, in which the light troops of the Romans so harassed them with their javelins and slings, that they all broke and fled. Just as vain had been the attempt, in the beginning of the battle, to use the scythed chariots against the Romans, whose skirmishers put them to flight, as the horses were soon made to shy: this is an Asiatic invention, but it is also to be found among the Celts, especially in Britain. The overthrow was so complete, that it was impossible to bring together again the small remnants of the army. The king fled through Phrygia, and sent Xeuxis as his ambassador to Scipio to beg for peace, stooping at the same time to the meanest offers. Scipio was glad to come to terms. It is possible that L. Scipio received also some presents, which was the charge afterwards brought against him; yet there is no need for supposing this, as a Roman consul could not have wished for anything better than to make peace before the coming of his successor. The conditions were, as follows:—Antiochus was at once to pay down five hundred talents (675,000 dollars) for the truce;[35] the definitive peace was to be settled in Rome, and as soon as it was concluded, he was again to pay two thousand five hundred: this latter condition, very likely by accident, is never mentioned again. Then he was to pay twelve thousand talents (16,200,000 dollars) in yearly instalments of one thousand each, and to give twenty hostages, among whom was his own son. He was to place at the disposition of the Romans the whole of the country on this side of the Taurus which belonged to him, that is to say, Asia Minor with the exception of the two Cilicias north of the Taurus, the Halys was to be the boundary. Thus Antiochus was to yield up all that he possessed in Phrygia. It was afterwards a moot point, whether Pamphylia was also included therein: Livy and the fragments of Polybius throw no light upon it, and, on the whole, the geography of these countries is very obscure; as far, however, as I can understand Appian, Pamphylia did not remain under the rule of Antiochus, nor was it bestowed upon Eumenes, but it existed as an independent state between both. Moreover the king was not to meddle with the affairs of Europe without leave from Rome, nor to wage war with nations which were allies of the Romans, unless he were attacked; he was to give up his ships of war, even the triremes, all but ten; to keep no elephants; to enlist no mercenaries from countries which were subject to the Romans; to pay a specified sum to Eumenes; and also to deliver up Hannibal, and some others whom he had received at his court: (these last were added only for the sake of appearances, to give a good colouring to the demand for the surrender of Hannibal). But these made their escape. This happened in the year 562, the definitive peace being concluded somewhat later. A rashly undertaken war could have led by one battle to such a peace; but that a prince capable of making it should have been called the Great, is quite inconceivable: and yet he had still an immense empire, as large as Germany, France, and Spain put together.
In the following year, Cn. Manlius, the successor of L. Scipio, took the command, quite impatient to do something. This, and the hope of booty, led him in compliance with the wishes of the Asiatics to undertake a campaign against the Galatians or Gallo-Grecians in Phrygia. About the time of Pyrrhus, the Gauls overran Macedonia, and had forced their way as far as Delphi: then—whether moved, as the Greeks relate, by awful natural phenomena, or allured by the accounts which they had heard of the beautiful countries in Asia—they marched off out of Greece eastward to Thrace: there many of them remained, and established their rule in it; others, twenty thousand in number, crossed in two divisions, the one over the Hellespont, the other over the Bosporus, being favoured by the feuds of the Asiatic princes. Here they gained settlements in Ancyræan Phrygia, on the northern coast; just as in later times the Normans did in Neustria; and henceforth they lived in thirty free towns, in a land which is meant by nature to be the seat of the greatest wealth and happiness, but which now under the rule of barbarians has become a wilderness. There were three tribes of them, the Trocmi, Tolistoboii, and Tectosages, the two first of which seem to have been formed in the course of their migrations; for we do not meet with them elsewhere, as we certainly do with the third. They united themselves with the Bithynians, among whom two small kingdoms arose. The latter were Thracians, and they dwelt between Nicomedia and Heraclea: during the Persian domination, they were under their native princes; but after the breaking up of the Persian and the Macedonian empires, which had always been least consolidated in Asia Minor, they widened their sway, and became proportionally important. Nicomedes, who was then king, took the Gauls, among whom there were still but ten thousand armed men, into his pay; he defeated his rival, and founded the Bithynian state, which now became hellenized. From that time, the Gauls sold their aid to whosoever wanted it, and made the whole of western Asia tributary to themselves. This part of history is still very confused; but it may be disentangled, as we have many materials for it. They were defeated by Antiochus Soter, on which they withdrew into the mountains, and when circumstances had changed, they burst forth again: every one paid them tribute to escape their ravages. When the war broke out between Ptolemy Euergetes and Seleucus Callinicus, and afterwards between the former and Antiochus Hierax, they sold themselves, being thoroughly faithless, now to one now to the other, and they became the scourge of the whole of Asia, until to the astonishment of everybody, Attalus of Pergamus, refusing to pay them tribute any longer, attacked, and defeated them; which is only to be accounted for by the fact, that sloth had made them utterly effeminate and unwarlike; just like the Goths whom Belisarius encountered in Italy. From this blow they never quite recovered; yet they still retained considerable influence, as Asia was always divided, and although Antiochus was living in their neighbourhood, he was too busy notwithstanding to be able to protect that part of Phrygia which bordered on the country where they dwelt. They therefore went on raising tribute far and wide; and now, after the downfall of Antiochus, the Asiatic peoples were afraid that they should not be able to defend themselves: this gave Cn. Manlius an opportunity of taking the field as the defender of these against the Galatians. Those barbarians had answered his summons to yield, with a stolida ferocia. He marched through Phrygia, and attacked them in their mountains, without, however, exterminating them; they remained there, and retained the Celtic language for a remarkably long period, even down to the times of Augustus. By degrees they also hellenized themselves, and such we find them to have been in the days of St. Paul.[36] The war was most desirable for the inhabitants of Asia Minor; but thoroughly unjust on the side of the Romans. Cn. Manlius undertook it contrary to the expressed will of the decem legati who followed him. It was ended in two campaigns, and brought the Romans no other fruits but the booty and the sum of money which may perhaps have been paid; for the countries between western Asia and the land of the Galatians, were not the subjects, but the allies of Rome. The Gauls suffered such severe defeats, that thenceforth they lived quietly, and in subjection to the Romans.
The Romans now divided their conquests. Eumenes, who until then had had quite a small dominion, very much like that of a petty German prince, now became a great king. Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia on the Hellespont and Great Phrygia (the two were afterwards made one under the name of the kingdom of Asia, and the inhabitants were called Asians), Ionia with the exception of Smyrna, Phocæa, Erythræ, and some other Greek towns, which retained their freedom, became his. It was a great, and an enviable empire, but for all that a feeble one, owing to Asiatic effeminacy. The Rhodians got Caria and Lycia, with the exception of Telmissus which, heaven knows why, fell to the share of Eumenes. This was for a little republic an immense windfall, as these were fine rich countries, from which they might draw millions of our money: the taxes among the ancients were very heavy, and mostly on land, being a third of the whole produce. Revenues like these made the Rhodians very rich, and they spent them partly in armaments, and partly on the embellishment of their city, which, even without this, was already so beautiful. The Rhodians are a thoroughly respectable people; the Romans themselves acknowledged that they had none of the levitas Grœcorum about them, but were quite their equals as to severitas disciplinæ.