Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

WAR WITH PYRRHUS AND UNION OF ITALY (282-264 B.C.).

TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS.—The Samnites were overcome. The Greeks and Romans were now to come into closer intercourse with one another,—an intercourse destined to be so momentous in its effect on each of the two kindred races, and, through their joint influence, on the whole subsequent course of European history. Alexander the Great had died too soon to permit him to engage in any plan of conquest in the West. In the wars of his successors the Romans had stood aloof. Now they were brought into conflict with a Greek monarch, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who was a relative of Alexander, and had married into the royal family of Egypt. He was a man of fascinating person and address, a brilliant and famous soldier, but adventurous, and lacking the coolness and prudence requisite to carry out his project of building up an Hellenic Empire in the western Mediterranean. In the war against the Samnite coalition, the Lucanians had rendered decisive support to the Romans. This was one reason why Tarentum, the rich and prosperous Dorian city on the Tarentine Gulf, had been a spectator of the contest in which it had abundant occasion to feel a deep interest. Rome had given up to the Lucanians the non-Dorian Greek cities in that region. But when they sought to subdue Thurii, and the Thurines besought the help of Rome, offering to submit themselves to her, the Romans warned the Lucanians to desist. This led to another combination against Rome, in which they took part. A Roman army was destroyed by the Senonian Gauls. In consequence of this, the Romans slaughtered, or drove out of Umbria, this people, and, gaining other decisive victories, put their garrisons into Locri, Crotona, and Thurii. The Romans were already masters of Central Italy. Only the Greek cities on the south remained for them to conquer. It was high time for Tarentum to bestir itself. It was from the side of Tarentum that the immediate provocation came. The Tarentines were listening to a play in the theater as ten Roman ships came into the harbor. Under a sudden impulse of wrath, a mob attacked them, and destroyed five of them. Even then the Romans were in no haste to engage in hostilities. The Tarentines themselves were divided as to the policy best to be pursued. But the war-party had the more voices. An embassy was dispatched to solicit the help of Pyrrhus. At Tarentum an embassy from Rome was treated with contempt. Pyrrhus came over with a large army. He obliged the Tarentines themselves to arm, and to join his forces.

EVENTS OF THE WAR.—The Romans were fully alive to the peril, and prepared to meet it. Even the proletarians, who were not liable to military service, were enrolled. The first great battle took place at Heraclea, near the little river Siris (280 B.C.). Then the Roman cohort and the Macedonian phalanx met for the first time. It was a collision of trained mercenary troops with the citizen soldiery of Rome. It was a struggle between the Greek and the Roman for the ascendency. The confusion caused by the elephants of Pyrrhus, an encounter with which was something new and strange to the Romans, turned the tide in his favor. "A few more such victories," said Pyrrhus, "and I am ruined." He desired peace, and sent Cineas as a messenger to the Senate. But Appius Claudius, who had been consul and censor, and was now old and blind, begged them not to make peace as long as there was an enemy in Italy. Cineas reported that he found the Senate "an assembly of kings." In the next year, the two armies, each with its allies numbering seventy thousand men, met at Asculum (279). After a bloody conflict, Pyrrhus remained in possession of the field, but with an enormous loss of men. The Syracusans in Sicily, who had been hard pressed by the Carthaginians, now called upon him to aid them. He was not reluctant to leave Italy. The Romans captured all the cities on the south coast, except Tarentum and Rhegium. After two years' absence, Pyrrhus returned to Italy. His fleet, on the passage from Sicily, was defeated by the Carthaginians. At Beneventum, he was completely vanquished by the Romans, who captured thirteen hundred prisoners and four elephants. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus; and, after his death (272), Milon, who commanded the garrison left by him in Tarentum, surrendered the city and fortress. The Tarentines agreed to deliver up their ships and arms, and to demolish their walls. One after another of the resisting tribes yielded to the Romans, ceding portions of their territory, and receiving Roman colonies. In 266, the Roman sway was established over the whole peninsula proper, from the Rubicon and the Macra to the southern extremity of Calabria.

CITIZENSHIP.—In order to understand Roman history, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the Roman system in respect to citizenship. All burgesses of Rome enjoyed the same rights. These were both Public and Private. The private rights of a Roman citizen were (1) the power of legal marriage with the families of all other citizens; (2) the power of making legal purchases and sales, and of holding property; and (3) the right to bequeath and inherit property. The public rights were, (1) the power of voting wherever a citizen was permitted to vote; (2) the power of being elected to all offices.

CONQUERED TOWNS.—"The Roman dominion in Italy was a dominion of a city over cities." With regard to conquered towns, there were, (i) Municipal cities (municipia) the inhabitants of which, when they visited Rome, could exercise all the rights of citizens. (2) Municipal cities which had the private, but not the public, rights of citizenship. Some of them chose their own municipal officers, and some did not. (3) Latin Colonies, as they were called. Lands ceded by conquered places were divided among poor Roman citizens, who constituted the ruling class in the communities to which they were transplanted. In the Latin colonies, the citizens had given up their public rights as citizens. (4) Towns of a lower class, called Praefectures. In these, the principal magistrate was the Prefect, who was appointed by the Praetor (Praeter Urbanus) at Rome.

THE ALLIES (Socii).—These were a more favored class of cities. They had their relation to Rome defined by treaty. Generally they appointed their own magistrates, but were bound, as were all subject cities, to furnish auxiliary troops for Rome.

THE LATIN FRANCHISE.—This was the privilege which was first given to the cities of Latium and then to inhabitants of other places. It was the power, on complying with certain conditions, of gaining full citizenship, and thus of taking part in elections at Rome.

ROMAN COLONIES.—The Roman Colony (which is not to be confounded with the Latin Colony referred to above) was a small body of Roman citizens, transplanted, with their families, to a spot selected by the government. They formed a military station. To them lands taken from the native inhabitants were given. They constituted the ruling class in the community where they were established. Their government was modeled after the government at Rome. They retained their rights as Roman burgesses, which they could exercise whenever they were in that city. By means of these colonies, planted in places wisely chosen, Italy was kept in subjection. The colonies were connected together by roads. The Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, was built in the midst of the conflict with Samnium. It was made of large, square stones, laid on a platform of sand and mortar. In later times the Roman Empire was traversed in all directions by similar roads.

PERIOD III. THE PUNIC WARS: TO THE CONQUEST OF CARTHAGE AND OF THE GREEK STATES. (264-146 B.C.)

CHAPTER I. THE FIRST AND SECOND PUNIC WABS (264-202 B.C.).

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.—By dint of obstinacy, and hard fighting through long centuries, the Romans had united under them all Italy, or all of what was then known as Italy. It was natural that they should look abroad. The rival power in the West was the great commercial city of Carthage. The jealousy between Rome and Carthage had slumbered so long as they were threatened by the invasion of Pyrrhus, which was dangerous to both. Sicily, from its situation, could hardly fail to furnish the occasion of a conflict. The Mamertines, a set of Campanian pirates, had captured Messana. They were attacked by Hiero II., king of Syracuse. A part of them besought help of the Romans, and a part applied to the Carthaginians. The gravity of the question, whether Rome should enter on an untried path, the end of which no man could foresee, caused hesitation. The assemblies voted to grant the request. The Romans had begun as early as 311 to create a fleet. The ships which they now used, however, were mostly furnished by their South Italian allies. They crossed the channel, and drove out the Carthaginian garrison from Messana. The Carthaginians declared war (264). Hiero was gained over to the side of the Romans; and after a bloody conflict, with heavy losses to both armies, the city of Agrigentum was captured by the Romans. The Romans were novices on the sea, where the Carthaginians were supreme. Successful on the land, the former were beaten in naval encounters. One of the most characteristic proofs of the energy of the Romans is their creation of a fleet, at this epoch, to match that of their sea-faring enemies. Using, it is said, for a model, a Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the shore of Italy, they constructed quinqueremes, vessels with five banks of oars, furnished with bridges to drop on the decks of the hostile ships,—thus giving to a sea-fight a resemblance to a combat on land. At first, as might be expected, the Romans were defeated; but in 260, under the consul Caius Duilius, they won their first naval victory at Mylae, west of Messana. The Roman Senate decided to invade Africa. A fleet of three hundred and thirty vessels sailed under the command of the consul M. Atilius Regulus, which was met by a Carthaginian fleet at Ecnomus, on the south coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians were completely vanquished. The Romans landed at Clupea, to the east of Carthage, and ravaged the adjacent district. There Regulus remained with half the army, fifteen thousand men. The Carthaginians sued for peace; but when he required them to surrender all their ships of war except one, and to come into a dependent relation to Rome, they spurned the proposal. Re-enforcing themselves with mercenaries from Greece under the command of the Spartan, Xanthippus, they overpowered and captured Regulus in a battle at Tunis (255). A Roman fleet, sent to Clupea for the rescue of the troops, on the return voyage lost three-fourths of its ships in a storm. The Carthaginians, under Hasdrubal, resumed hostilities in Sicily. He was defeated by the consul Caecilius Metellus, at Panormus, who included among his captures one hundred elephants (251). The story of the embassy of Regulus to Rome with the Carthaginian offer of peace, of his advising the Senate not to accept it, of his voluntary return according to a promise, and of his cruel death at the hands of his captors, is probably an invention of a later time. The hopes of the Romans, in consequence of their success at Panormus, revived; but two years later, under Appius Claudius at Drepanum, they were defeated on sea and on land. Once more their naval force was prostrated. Warfare was now carried forward on land, where, in the south of Sicily, the Carthaginian leader, Hamilcar Barca, maintained himself against Roman attacks for six years, and sent out privateers to harass the coasts of Italy. Finally, at Rome, there was an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm. Rich men gave liberally, and treasures of the temples were devoted to the building of a new fleet. This fleet, under command of C. Lutatius Catulus, gained a decisive victory over the Carthaginian Hanno, at the Aegatian Islands, opposite Lilybaeum (241). The Carthaginians were forced to conclude peace, and to make large concessions. They gave up all claim to Italy and to the neighboring small islands. They were to pay an indemnity, equal to four million dollars, in ten years. The western part of Sicily was now constituted a province, the first of the Roman provinces.

CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GUAL.—The Carthaginians were for some time busy at home in putting down a revolt of mercenary troops, whose wages they refused to pay in full. The Romans snatched the occasion to extort a cession of the island of Sardinia (238), which they subsequently united with Corsica in one province. They entered, about ten years later (229-228), upon an important and successful war against the Illyrian pirates, whose depredations on the coasts of the Adriatic and Ionian seas were very daring and destructive. The Greek cities which the pirates held were surrendered. The sway of the Romans in the Adriatic was secured, and their supremacy in Corcyra, Epidamnus, and other important places. The next contest was a terrific one with the Cisalpine Gauls, who were stirred up by the founding of Roman military colonies on the Adriatic, and by other proceedings of Rome. They called in the help of transalpine Gauls, and entered Etruria, on their way to Rome, with an army of seventy thousand men. They met the Roman armies near Telamon, south of the mouth of the Umbro, but were routed, with a loss of forty thousand men slain, and ten thousand men prisoners (225). The Romans marched northward, crossed the Po, and subdued the most powerful of the Gallic tribes, the Insubrians (223). Other victories in the following year reduced the whole of upper Italy, with Mediolanum (Milan) the capital of the Insubrians, under Roman rule. Fortresses were founded as usual, and the great Flaminian and Aemilian roads connected that region with the capital. Later, Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province.

CARTHAGINIANS IN SPAIN.—Meantime Carthage endeavored in Southern Spain to make up for its losses. The old tribes, the Celtiberians and Lusitanians in the central and western districts, and the Cantabrians and Basques in the north, brave as they were, were too much divided by tribal feuds to make an effectual resistance. The national party at Carthage, which wished for war, had able leaders in Hamilcar and his three sons. By the military skill of Hamilcar, and of Hasdrubal his son-in-law, the Carthaginians built up a flourishing dominion on the south and east coasts. The Romans watched the growth of the Carthaginian power there with discontent, and compelled Hasdrubal to declare in a treaty that the Ebro should be the limit of Carthaginian conquests (226). At the same time Rome made a protective alliance with Saguntum, a rich and powerful trading-city on the south of that river. Hasdrubal was murdered in 221; and the son of Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal, who was then only twenty-eight years old, was chosen by the army to be their general. He laid hold of a pretext for beginning an attack upon Saguntum, which he took after a stout resistance, prolonged for eight months (219). The demand of a Roman embassy at Carthage—that Hannibal should be delivered up—being refused, Rome declared war.

When the Carthaginian Council hesitated at the proposal of the Roman embassy, their spokesman, Quintus Fabius, said that he carried in his bosom peace or war: they might chose either. They answered, "We take what you give us;" whereupon the Roman opened his toga, saying, "I give you war!" The Carthaginians shouted, "So let it be!"

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.—When the treaty of Catulus was made (241), all patriots at Carthage felt that it was only a truce. They must have seen that Rome would never be satisfied with any thing short of the abject submission of so detested and dangerous a rival. There was a peace party, an oligarchy, at Carthage; and it was their selfishness which ultimately brought ruin upon the state. But the party which saw that the only safety was in aggressive action found a military leader in Hannibal,—a leader not surpassed, and perhaps not equaled, by any other general of ancient or modern times. He combined skill with daring, and had such a command over men, that under the heaviest reverses his influence was not broken. If he was cruel, it is doubtful whether he went beyond the practices sanctioned by the international law of the time and by Roman example. When a boy nine years old, at his father's request he had sworn upon the altar never to be the friend of the Roman people. That father he saw fall in battle at his side. The oath he kept, for Rome never had a more unyielding or a more powerful enemy.

HANNIBAL IN ITALY.—In the summer of 218, Hannibal crossed the Ebro, conquered the peoples between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and, leaving his brother Hasdrubal in Spain, pushed into Gaul with an army of fifty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and thirty-seven elephants. He crossed the swift Rhone in the face of the Gauls who disputed the passage, and then made his memorable march over the Alps, probably by the way now known as the Little St. Bernard pass. Through ice and snow, climbing over crags and circling abysses, amid perpetual conflicts with the rough mountaineers who rolled stones down on the toiling soldiers, the army made its terrible journey into Northern Italy. Fifteen days were occupied in the passage. Half the troops, with all the draught-animals and beasts of burden, perished on the way. The Cisalpine Gauls welcomed Hannibal as a deliverer. No sooner had the valiant consul, Cornelius Scipio, been defeated in a cavalry battle on the Ticinus, a northern branch of the Po (218), and, severely wounded, retreated to Placentia, and his rash colleague, Sempronius, been defeated with great loss in a second battle on the Trebia, than the Gauls joined Hannibal, and reinforced him with sixty thousand troops inured to war. Hannibal, by marching through the swampy district of the Arno, where he himself lost an eye, flanked the defensive position of the Romans. The consul Flaminius was decoyed into a narrow pass; and, in the battle of Lake Trasumenus (217), his army of thirty thousand men was slaughtered or made prisoners. The consul himself was killed. All Etruria was lost. The way seemed open to Rome; but, supported by the Latins and Italians, the Romans did not quail, or lower their mien of stern defiance. They appointed a leading patrician, Quintus Fabius Maximus, dictator. Hannibal, not being able to surprise and capture the fortress of Spoletium, preferred to march towards the sea-coast, and thence south into Apulia. His purpose was to open communication with Carthage, and to gain over to his support the eastern tribes of Italy. Fabius, the Delayer (Cunctator), as he was called, followed and watched his enemy, inflicting what injuries he could, but avoiding a pitched battle. The Roman populace were impatient of the cautious, but wise and effective, policy of Fabius. In the following year (216) the consulship was given to L. Aemilius Paulus—who was chosen by the upper class, the Optimates—and C. Terentius Varro, who was elected by the popular party for the purpose of taking the offensive. Varro precipitated a battle at Cannae, in Apulia, where the Romans suffered the most terrible defeat they had ever experienced. At the lowest computation, they lost forty thousand foot and three thousand horse, with the consul Aemilius Paulus, and eighty men of senatorial rank. No such calamity since the capture of Rome by the Gauls had ever occurred. The Roman Senate did not lose heart. They limited the time of mourning for the dead to thirty days. They refused to admit to the city the ambassadors of Hannibal, who came for the exchange of prisoners. With lofty resolve they ordered a levy of all who could bear arms, including boys and even slaves. They put into their hands weapons from the temples, spoils of former victories. They thanked Varro that he had not despaired of the Republic. Some of the Italian allies went over to Hannibal. But all the Latin cities and all the Roman colonies remained loyal. The allies of Rome did not fall away as did the allies of Athens after the Syracusan disaster. It has been thought, that, if Hannibal had followed up the victory at Cannae by marching at once on the capital, the Roman power might have been overthrown. What might then have been the subsequent course of European history? Even the Roman school-boys, according to Juvenal, discussed the question whether he did not make a mistake in not attacking Rome. But it is quite doubtful whether he could have taken the city, or, even if he had taken it, whether his success would then have been complete. He took the wiser step of getting into his hands Capua, the second city in Italy. He may have hoped to seize a Campanian port, where he could disembark reinforcements "which his great victories had wrung from the opposition at home." Hannibal judged it best to go into winter-quarters at Capua, where his army was in a measure enervated by pleasure and vice. Carthage made an alliance with Philip V. of Macedonia, and with Hiero of Syracuse. But fortune turned in favor of the Romans. At Nola, Hannibal was repulsed by Marcellus (215); and, since he could obtain no substantial help from home, he was obliged to act on the defensive. Marcellus crossed into Sicily, and, after a siege of three years, captured Syracuse, which had been aided in its defense by the philosopher Archimedes. Capua, in 211, surrendered to the Romans, and was visited with a fearful chastisement. Hannibal's Italian allies forsook him, and his only reliance was on his brother in Spain. For a long time, the two brothers, Publius and Cnaeus Scipio, maintained there the Roman cause successfully; but they were defeated and slain (212).

SCIPIO: ZAMA.—Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of one and nephew of the other Scipio just named, a young man twenty-five years old, and a popular favorite, took the command, and gained important successes; but he could not keep Hasdrubal from going to his brother's assistance in Italy. The Romans, however, were able to prevent a junction of his force with that of Hannibal; and Hasdrubal was vanquished and slain by them in the battle of Sena Gallica, near the little river Metaurus (207). Scipio expelled the Carthaginians from Spain, and, having returned to Rome, was made consul (205). His plan was to invade Africa. He landed on the coast, and was joined by Masinissa, the king of Numidia, who had been driven from his throne by Syphax, the ally of Carthage. The defeat of the Carthaginians, and the danger of Carthage itself, led to the recall of Hannibal, who was defeated, in 202, by Scipio in the decisive battle of Zama. Carthage made peace, giving up all her Spanish possessions and islands in the Mediterranean, handing over the kingdom of Syphax to Masinissa, and agreeing to pay a yearly tribute equal to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for fifty years, to destroy all their ships of war but ten, and to make no war without the consent of the Romans (201). Scipio Africanus, as he was termed, came back in triumph to Rome. The complete subjugation of Upper Italy followed (200-191).