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.