Internal state of Carthage during the second Punic war.
7. Until Africa became the scene of action, the second war cost the republic much less than the first; the expenses being principally defrayed by Spain and Italy. Hanno, however, was at the head of a powerful party at home, who were clamorous for peace, and who can say they were wrong? As might be expected, the family of the Barcas were for war, and their influence carried the day. That general who, with hardly any support from Carthage, was yet able to maintain a footing in the country of his powerful foes for no less than fifteen years, and that, too, as much by policy as by force of arms, must extort our admiration. It cannot, however, be denied, that during the struggle one favourable opportunity, at least, was let slip of making peace; a fatal omission, for which the hero of Cannæ paid dearly enough, by the failure of his darling project.
A disgraceful peace the result of the war.
8. By the second peace with Rome, Carthage was deprived of all her possessions out of Africa, and her fleet was delivered into the hands of the Romans. She was now to be a mere trading city under the tutelage of Rome. But Carthage found by this peace her most formidable enemy on the soil of Africa itself. Massinissa had been elevated to the dignity of king of Numidia; and his endeavours to form his nomads into an agricultural Massinissa of Numidia a new instrument of Roman policy. people, and to collect them into cities, must have changed the military system that Carthage had hitherto followed. Roman policy, moreover, had taken care that the article inserted in his favour in the last treaty of peace, should be so ambiguously worded, as to leave abundant openings for dispute.
Hannibal at the head of affairs;
attempts to check the oligarchy.
9. Even after this disgraceful peace, the family of the Barcas still preserved their influence, and Hannibal was placed as supreme magistrate at the head of the republic. He attempts to reform the constitution and the finances, by destroying the oligarchy of the hundred, by whom the finances had been thrown into confusion. Complete as was the success of the first blow, it soon became apparent that aristocratic factions are not so readily annihilated as armies.
The democratic faction to which even the Barcas owed their first elevation, was the cause of the degeneracy of the Carthaginian constitution. By that faction the legislative authority of the senate and magistrates was withdrawn and transferred to the ordo judicum—probably the same as the high state tribunal of the hundred—which now assumed the character of an omnipotent national inquisition; and the members being chosen for life exercised oppressive despotism. This tribunal was formed of those who had served the office of ministers of finance, with whom it shared unblushingly the revenues of the state. Hannibal destroyed this oligarchy by a law, enacting that the members should hold their office but for one year; whereas before they held it for life. In the reform wrought by this law in the finances it was seen, that after all wars and losses, the revenues of the republic were still sufficient, not only for the usual expenditure and the payment of tribute to Rome, but also for leaving a surplus in the public treasury. Ten years had hardly elapsed before Carthage was enabled to pay down at once the whole of the tribute which she had engaged to furnish by instalments.
Hannibal compelled to fly to Syria.
10. The defeated party, whose interests were now the same with those of Rome, joined the Romans, to whom they discovered Hannibal's plan of renewing the war in conjunction with Antiochus the Great, king of Syria. A Roman embassy was sent over to Africa, under some other pretext, to demand that Hannibal should be given up. The Carthaginian general secretly fled to 195. king Antiochus, at whose court he became the chief fomenter of the war against Rome; although unsuccessful in his endeavour to implicate the Carthaginian republic in the struggle.
See hereafter the history of Syria, Book IV, Period iii, separate kingdoms. I. Seleucidæ, parag. 18; and Book V, Period ii, parag. 10 sq.