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.
IMPEACHMENT OF L. SCIPIO. END OF P. SCIPIO AFRICANUS AND OF HANNIBAL. DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. M. PORCIUS CATO.
The contradictions which, according to Livy, were everywhere rife with regard to P. Scipio’s end, are a remarkable instance of the way in which even impossible statements were got up; and we see from thence, that even at a time in which contemporary history was already written, when the work of Fabius was ended, and that of Acilius began, these accounts were very little substantiated. We do not know for certain the year in which Scipio died. What is quoted in Livy from the speech of Tib. Gracchus, must be deemed to be worth more than the stories of the annalists. There is no doubt that L. Scipio was once called upon in the senate by the Petillii to answer to the charge of having received sums of money from Antiochus, and of not having accounted to the republic for those which had been gained during the course of the war. This kind of impeachment is one of the earliest which we meet with among the Romans. The consuls might indeed freely dispose of the manubia; they might distribute them among the soldiers, or deposit them in the ærarium; but they were always to be ready to give account, as the Romans in money matters were very particular with regard to this point. L. Scipio sent for his books, and produced them in the senate; but his brother snatched them out of his hands and destroyed them, saying that it was a shame, when he and his brother had made the state so rich, to ask an account for such a trifle as a million of drachmæ. Thus 225,000 dollars were already then a trifle! Hereupon an impeachment was brought against P. Scipio; he spoke a few proud words, and then it was—which can hardly be otherwise than authentic—that he cried out, “This is the day that I conquered Hannibal at Zama, on which ye are always wont to offer sacrifice: let those who are well disposed, follow me.” The tribunes alone are said to have staid behind. This accusation may perhaps be made to agree with the fact that Gracchus himself had wanted to have L. Scipio arrested, and that on this, when the prætor Terentius Culleo was about to try the case, P. Scipio had in all haste come up from Etruria, and rescued his brother from the beadles. And therefore as P. Africanus plus quam civiles animos gerebat, he too was impeached. He either did not wait for this prosecution, and retired to Liternum, a Latin colony, or colonia maritima, between Cumæ and Minturnæ, or he had lived there already before. Thus much is certain, that the last years of his life he did not pass in Rome. That he lived at Liternum in exile, and not for his own pleasure, becomes probable from the circumstance, that before his death, some one else was princeps senatus. Such an exile was easy to bring about; for, if he settled at Liternum as a citizen, he had thereby renounced the right of Roman citizenship.
L. Scipio, with his quæstor and legate, was found guilty of having embezzled the sum with which he had been charged. He was not addicted; but his property was seized by the state, and it is said not to have been sufficient to cover the demand. To conclude from thence that he was innocent, would be quite absurd; for he might have been a spendthrift in the meanwhile.