After Hasdrubal had led his troops into Italy, there still remained in Spain the two armies of Hasdrubal Gisgo and of Mago, which had been driven back to the Atlantic. Against these, Scipio carried on the war the rest of that year, and in the following one; but all the spirit of it had fled with the Barcine Hasdrubal. Mago tried only to keep Gades; Hasdrubal after a series of battles went over to Africa. In Gades, a city which wanted to be equal with Carthage, and yet was subject to her, treachery was brewing; they were engaged in a plan to give up Mago to the Romans. It was discovered and defeated: the magistrates were enticed out, and put to death. Mago, however, now received orders to withdraw from the place. He was to go to the Balearic isles, which seem to have revolted against Carthage; and from thence to Liguria, there to collect a force with which he was to support Hannibal in Italy, and also, at the same time, to raise troubles in Etruria. When the Spanish peoples saw that the Carthaginians had given them up, and that they were employing the last means in their power to squeeze out of them supplies for other wars, they refused to obey them any longer. To the inhabitants of Gades also, the severity which had been shown towards them, was only an additional motive for an everlasting separation; and they made an alliance with the Romans, to which some writers give an earlier date than we can possibly assume from the very connected account of Livy. This is a political falsification of history; the Gaditanians in fact pretended out of vanity to have concluded it immediately after Scipio’s arrival in the country. Scipio was still remaining in Spain in 545 and 546; the Carthaginians were quite driven out of it.
Yet the Romans had no firm footing in that country; for they only offered to its people, who had reckoned upon having freedom, a rule which perhaps was still more oppressive than that of the Carthaginians, with whom they had an opportunity of getting pay, as these employed mercenaries, whilst the Romans only occasionally took small bodies of Celtiberian troops into their service. The Romans also now revenged themselves on some towns which had behaved with particular fury against them. There happened at this period some horrible events, the outbursts of a fanaticism of bravery which is turned into madness. Such was the defence of Illiturgis and of Astapa. From the latter of these, all who were able to bear arms sallied forth, and fought to the last man; and at the same time, those who remained behind killed the women and children, and set fire to the town, laying hands on themselves also while it was burning.
While Scipio was now putting the province in order, which was still limited to Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia, an insurrection was planned among the Spaniards. Few of the Spanish states were republics; most of them were governed by princes, two of whom, Mandonius and Indibilis, after a long alliance with the Romans, had imbibed a furious hatred against them. Here also that nationality of the Spaniards which one meets with in all ages, displays itself in the wrath which all at once breaks out against the foreigners, whom they had wished from the beginning only to use as tools. These events are also remarkable for another reason, being the first traces of a state of things which long afterwards showed itself in a more decided shape, the tendency of the Italian allies towards equality with the Romans. Yet our accounts of them are incomplete, and do not hit the main point. Scipio was very ill; and a report got abroad of his death, at a time when there was stationed near Sucro an army of eight thousand men, consisting of Italian allies, and not, as Livy says, of Romans. These resolved to make themselves masters of Spain, and to found an independent state. The first pretext of this insurrection was the arrears of their pay, which, although it was taken from their own treasuries, they received much more irregularly than the Romans: on the whole, they felt that they were neglected, and yet they well knew, that there was no doing without them. They chose two from among themselves, an Umbrian, and a Latin from Cales, to be their generals, and even invested them with the consular insignia, which Zonaras mentions, though Livy says nothing about it: these took the command, and were entering into an understanding with the two Spanish princes. The crisis seemed most highly dangerous; but when the tidings of Scipio’s recovery reached the camp, they at once lost courage, and his personal character had such influence, that they abandoned every idea of an insurrection, and thought of nothing but making their peace. Scipio came down to Carthagena; he behaved as if he deemed them to be in the right, and intimated to them, that they might atone for their offence by serving against the Spanish princes; and that they were to go to Carthagena to receive their pay, either singly, or in a body. They determined upon coming in a body, as this seemed to be the safer plan, and they believed that everything had been forgiven them. And their minds were set quite at ease, when on the day before their entry into Carthagena, they met with a quartermaster, who told them that the Roman army was to march to Catalonia: thus they arrived in the evening, and were quartered in the suburbs, the officers in the town itself. The latter were invited to the houses of the most respectable Romans, and arrested during the night. The next morning, the Roman army, on which he could implicitly rely, made a show of marching out of the gates, and the mutineers were summoned to the forum to get their pay: these had their suspicions completely lulled, and they came unarmed. But at the gates, the columns were ordered to halt; they occupied all the streets, and hemmed in the mutineers. Scipio now addressed these last, and told them what punishment they had deserved; yet he contented himself with having only the ringleaders, thirty-five in number, seized and put to death: the rest received their pay, and were let off. After this, the war against the Spaniards was easy. The two princes were pardoned on their oath to keep quiet.
Before Scipio had yet left Spain, he achieved a feat of romantic daring in going over to Africa to visit Syphax, the king of the Massæsylians, who lived in eastern and part of western Algeria, and whose capital was Cirta: the geography of those countries at the time of the Carthaginian rule, is one of the most obscure. Syphax was not tributary to the Carthaginians, but in that sort of dependence in which the prince of a barbarous people must be upon a very powerful and civilized state: he served them for pay, and felt altogether subordinate; sometimes he was quite at their disposition, at others, he fell away from them, after which, he would make peace again. Just then, he was at peace with them; but he had previously, when at war, made overtures to the Romans, and on his demand for Roman officers to train his troops, Scipio had sent over envoys with full powers. This, however, led to no results; for in the meanwhile peace had been concluded, and Syphax kept neutral. Scipio now ventured to cross over at his invitation, in the hope of forming an alliance with him, as he had, from the very first, entertained the just notion of attacking Carthage on her own ground. Here he actually met with Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, at the same banquet. The object of the conduct of Syphax towards the Romans, was not to allow the Carthaginians to become too powerful, and to draw money out of them: that he let Scipio escape, is really to be wondered at.
In Spain, all was now ended, and Scipio returned to Italy, where, however, he was not granted a triumph, because while conducting this war, he had not held any curule office: every other mark of honour was shown him. He was still proconsul; before that, he had been ædile; he had not yet been prætor; nevertheless he now stood for the consulship, though he had not yet reached the age prescribed by law: the leges annales, by a very wise enactment, had been set aside for so long as the war should last. He was unanimously chosen by all the centuries; the nation longed to see the end of the war, and every one expected it from him. As far as we can see, this was nothing but one of those silly notions, by which the public are so easily taken in; the great men, it was said, were right glad that the war with Hannibal should drag on, as thus they could so much the oftener get for themselves the highest dignities. Scipio, who was the idol of the people, was withstood by the party of the grandees, of which Fabius is to be deemed the mainspring,—a party just like the one which Livy describes as having existed in Carthage against Hannibal. Yet one ought to be fair, even to that party. Old Fabius Maximus, perhaps already in his eightieth year, was at its head for more reasons than one; perhaps, even because, like every old man who sees his own brightness fading away, he was inclined to look upon the rising young men with unfavourable eyes. Scipio also, from the very circumstance of his being no common man, may have seemed to the Romans a very incomprehensible character; many may have been afraid that his good luck would make him reckless, as it did Regulus; others, that it might tempt him to overthrow the constitution. That this suspicion was utterly groundless, as far as it was founded upon Scipio’s personal disposition, may safely be asserted; yet we find it mentioned here and there,[29] that it was intended to make him consul or censor for life: had this been done, he would have been king, although, as things then were, this could not possibly have been brought about without bloodshed: yet it shows, that the mistrust, after all, was not without reason. Hence it was that a determined opposition manifested itself in the senate, to whose department belonged grants of men and money. Scipio tried to get Africa for his province; but they gave him Sicily, without allowing him any other troops but those which were there already: he, however, got leave to try his chance in an expedition with those who might voluntarily offer themselves. This conduct of the senate towards Scipio is an acknowledged fact, and by it Rome was very nearly on the point of losing again all the advantages of the war. This behaviour of the senate ought to be borne in mind, when its stedfastness in the war with Hannibal is spoken of.
The influence of Scipio’s personal qualities was now seen. In Italy there was famine and disease, and yet part of the Etruscan and Umbrian states, which were not obliged to bear any burthens whatever, and therefore, owing to the regard which the Romans then had for every sort of privilege, had remained in full vigour, whilst Rome had worn herself out, exerted themselves for Scipio, as much as if they had themselves to undertake a war. They built a fleet for him, and equipped it; Arretium gave him arms for thirty thousand men, and likewise money and provisions; from the Sabines, Picentines, Marsians, and other neighbouring peoples, a great number of veterans and young discharged soldiers volunteered to serve under him. Thus he got a considerable fleet and a large army, quite against the wishes of the senate. He crossed over to Sicily, made from thence an attempt upon Locri, and took that town from Hannibal; yet, on the whole, the year of his consulship passed off without any thing remarkable. Why he waited so long in Sicily, has not been fully accounted for; it seems that he took matters easy, and willingly lingered in these Sicilian regions, being particularly delighted with Syracuse. Men’s expectations were most signally disappointed: it had been believed, that as soon as his preparations were at all complete, he would pass over to Africa; and now it was understood that he was living quite in the Greek style at Syracuse. Commissioners thereupon were sent to inquire into the matter, and if the charge were true, to depose him; but he so overawed them, that they reported that he was by no means wasting his time, but was finishing his preparations.
Hannibal, after the battle of Sena, had already foreseen the issue of the war; but he did not yet lose courage. On the contrary, he deemed it his duty to struggle to the last moment, that the Romans might not be sure of their own country; yet, as he could not defend such extensive provinces, he evacuated Apulia, Messapia, the country of the Hirpinians, and the greater part of Lucania, so that he only kept the south-eastern part of it, and Bruttium. Here he remained for three campaigns, with a perseverance which Livy himself admires; like a lion, he made whoever dared to touch him, pay heavily for it. Within this narrow tract of country, he had to recruit and provision his army, and to detain the Romans, so as to keep them away from Africa, living the whole time in the midst of peoples whom he drove to despair by the most exorbitant demands. And he succeeded in all this, without a thought either of rebellion or of violence being awakened against him; yet he was neither able to pay nor to feed his army, and he suffered from plague and hunger. His headquarters and arsenal was Croton. Thus the war went on, until the Carthaginians called him to Africa, the Romans narrowing his district more and more by wresting from him one place after the other.
It was not till the year after his consulship, 548, when his proconsular imperium was prolonged, that Scipio with four hundred transports, protected by forty quinqueremes, crossed over to Africa. If the Carthaginians had had their ships of war assembled, they must have baffled Scipio’s undertaking; but this could hardly have been the case, or else their inactivity would have been quite unaccountable. How many troops he carried over, was unknown, even to the ancients themselves; as an average number, we may assume sixteen thousand men foot, several thousand horse, and a considerable fleet: when these departed, there were great tremblings of heart in the timid party among the Romans, who thought of nothing but the fate of Regulus. Scipio’s arrangements were admirable. In three days he made the passage, and landed north of Carthage, not far from Utica, near a headland at the mouth of the river Bagradas, which, like almost all the rivers which fall into the Mediterranean, has formed another mouth farther on, its old one having been choked up with sand; Shaw, however, in his travels, fixes the point with admirable precision. Its memory was kept up as long as the Roman empire lasted, by the name of Castra Cornelia; it was a headland with an offing, a gradually sloping beach of gravel, on which the ships had to be drawn up. Here Scipio entrenched himself, and from thence made excursions. In the meanwhile, Syphax had been entirely gained over to the Carthaginians, having married Sophonis (in Hebrew Zephaniah), or, as Livy has it, Sophonisbe, the daughter of Hasdrubal, the son of Gisgo. When Scipio had landed, a Carthaginian army under Hasdrubal, a great Numidian one under Syphax, and a smaller Numidian one under Masinissa, went out to meet him. Masinissa was hereditary prince of the Massylians, a people on the frontier of what is now Tunis, which dwelt at the foot of the mountains. He was a vassal of the Carthaginians, had served under their standards in Spain, and in that country already had entered into some correspondence with the Romans. He is known to have been the guest-friend of Scipio; in the Somnium Scipionis, he makes his appearance as a venerable old man; he was brought up in Carthage, and, at least in his later years, understood Greek or Latin. These African princes were all of them thoroughly faithless. That his truth to the Romans ever became so renowned, was merely owing to the fact that it was his object to enrich himself at the expense of Carthage, in which he was aided by the Romans; but his son, who already stood in a different relation to them, in the third Punic war certainly did them a great deal of mischief. A romance has been got up, in which Masinissa is in love with Sophonisbe, and therefore jealous of Syphax; with the latter, he is said to have been involved in a war, and afterwards reconciled. He now came, it would seem, as an ally of the Carthaginians against Scipio, who enticed him to go over. He had lost his hereditary right, owing to the Carthaginians having favoured a rival of his; for some time, he had roved in the desert: he now wished to try his luck with the Romans, and he showed himself useful to them as a centre, round which a host of Africans gathered. He imparted to Scipio his plan by which he had beguiled the Carthaginians, and Scipio fell upon them from an ambush: the loss was considerable for Carthage, as it comprised a number of her citizens. The Carthaginian general Hanno was taken prisoner, and afterwards exchanged for Masinissa’s mother. In the meanwhile, Syphax had had the presumption to act as mediator between the Romans and Carthaginians; which, of course, came to nothing, as everything was then to remain as before, and Hannibal and Scipio were each of them to withdraw from Italy and Africa. But the attempt was of use to Scipio; for while this was going on, he was able to establish himself in Africa.
Scipio besieged Utica with ill success; Hasdrubal and Syphax kept him in check, very likely in open camps. On this, Scipio undertook a sudden night-attack, which shows what wretched discipline there was in their armies. He managed to get in, and to set fire to both the camps, which were of straw-built huts; the enemy, taken by surprise, tried to make their escape, but were pent in like sheep, and slaughtered by the Romans. The two armies were scattered; Syphax left the Carthaginians, and returned to his own country. Masinissa now set himself up as a competitor for his throne, and marched against him: the subjects of Syphax joined him in great masses, and Lælius accomplished the undertaking. Syphax was taken prisoner. Masinissa followed up his advantage, and made himself master of Cirta, the chief town, afterwards called Constantineh, a name which it still bears. There the wife of Syphax was found, and Masinissa immediately married her, without asking the consent of the Romans. But Scipio was positive in his demand, that Sophonis, as a Carthaginian woman and an enemy of the Romans, should be given up; Masinissa, not wishing to let her suffer such a fate, sent her poison, and she killed herself. Part of the kingdom of Syphax was given to his son; he himself was sent as a prisoner to Italy, and led in the triumph of Scipio: he died an old man at Alba in the country of the Marsians. His statues must have been common: there are still several pedestals which have his name and a summary of his history.
The Carthaginians became convinced that their force was not sufficient; they had indeed succeeded in an attempt against the Roman ships, but this was also the only time during the three years of the war in Africa. They sent word to Hannibal and Mago that both of them were to come, which was good news for Italy; yet as it was uncertain, whether the transport of the armies was possible, the Carthaginians also made Scipio proposals of peace, to which he listened the more readily, as he had now for three years been proconsul in Africa, and had always to expect his dismissal, in which case the consul of the following year, Ti. Claudius Nero, would have carried away the glory of having ended the war. Moreover, the issue of the contest with Hannibal was still very doubtful; and therefore the conditions of Scipio, hard as they were, were yet tolerable in comparison with what happened afterwards. The independence of the Carthaginians was acknowledged; they were to be masters of the whole tract of country within the Punic canal, (what its extent was, is uncertain;) to give up Italy, Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia, and likewise all their ships but thirty, probably triremes, and to deliver up the prisoners of war: how much was asked by way of payment for the expenses of the war, is uncertain. Livy says that the annalists stated the numbers very differently: the exact numbers which we meet with in the later Greek writers (fifteen hundred talents in Appian), are taken from these statements, between which Livy does not venture to decide. The latter mentions also a great quantity of corn. On these conditions, the rulers of Carthage were resolved to make peace; but quite different was the feeling of the restless, unruly populace, who fiercely raved against the peace, without, however, being willing to shed a drop of their own blood. These were in despair. After having gloriously fought for so long, were they, it was said, to declare themselves vanquished, while Hannibal was still alive? for the great mass of the people certainly looked upon him as an idol. In the meanwhile, the government carried its point, and a truce was concluded, and ambassadors sent to Rome. There the peace was accepted on condition that Hannibal should leave Italy. But the Carthaginians now heard that Hannibal was really going to evacuate Italy, and they thought that they might try a different tack. The peace was all but sworn to, when a large Roman fleet, which had arrived with provisions, but had not yet landed them, was driven from its moorings by a storm. Carthage had for a long time been in want of food, and the people murmured at this supply being allowed to go to the enemy, when the gods themselves were against them, and they could take it if they liked; so they embarked in a riotous manner, and cut out the Roman ships, which, relying on the truce, had cast anchor there. Scipio on this sent envoys to remonstrate, and to demand satisfaction. This, however, was not to be had, such was the general fermentation, and the Roman emissaries got away with great difficulty; it was only under the protection of a guard, that they managed to return to their ship, which—contrary, it is true, to the wish of the government—was chased by a Carthaginian vessel, and had to save itself, by running ashore. This story reminds one of the murder of the French ambassadors at Rastadt. All hope of peace was now utterly gone, and the Carthaginian ambassadors were commanded to withdraw from Rome.