It was impossible for the Carthaginians to provision their distressed garrison, and still less could they quickly fit out a new fleet. They therefore resolved to make peace, and, according to Polybius, chose Hamilcar to negociate it. Sicily, of course, was to be ceded; two thousand two hundred talents (3,300,000 dollars) were to be paid, and all the Roman prisoners and deserters to be given up, while they should have to ransom their own prisoners: the assent of the Roman people was reserved. The demand that Hamilcar and his troops should lay down their arms, and march out as prisoners of war, was indignantly rejected. The Roman people insisted on an additional charge of a thousand talents, these to be paid at once, and the two thousand two hundred by instalments within ten years; and likewise on the cession of all the islands between Sicily and Carthage, which shows that the Carthaginians still held the Lipari isles. This was necessary, if a lasting peace was to be concluded.
Thus ended this war of twenty-four years, which indeed gained Sicily for the Romans, but turned it into a wilderness: the whole of the western part of the island especially was laid desolate, and from that time it has never recovered. There was yet, it is true, some civilization left; Greek art still lingered there. The work of devastation was completed in the second Punic war; in the Servile war, the island was nothing but a dreary waste, and however wretched its state is now,—the modern Sicilians, next to the Portuguese, rank the lowest among the nations of Europe,—yet it was still more lonely and desolate in the times of Verres. Under the Roman emperors, there was no amendment: hence in the itineraries we find that the roads do not pass by towns,—for these had perished,—but by farms. Thus dissolved into large estates Sicily continues until the days of Gregory the Great, when we may again have an insight into its condition from the letters of that pontiff. The present population, in spite of its miserable government, has risen nearly to the double of what it was: under Verres it was below a million. It is as if the soil had lost all its heart and fruitfulness. The small kingdom of Syracuse was an exception, owing to the great wisdom with which it was ruled by Hiero.
SICILY A ROMAN PROVINCE. PRÆTOR PEREGRINUS. WAR WITH THE FALISCANS. MUTINY OF THE MERCENARIES IN CARTHAGE. THE FIRST ILLYRIAN WAR. THE LEX FLAMINIA FOR THE DIVISION OF THE AGER GALLICUS PICENUS. WAR AGAINST THE CISALPINE GAULS. THE SECOND ILLYRIAN WAR. THE CARTHAGINIANS FOUND AN EMPIRE IN SPAIN.
After the peace, the Romans formed Sicily into a province. In a province, a Roman commander, either still holding a curule office or with a prolonged imperium, carried on the government, and had the same power over the country as in times of war, by virtue of the lex de imperio. It is a false notion, that in the provinces the inhabitants had no right of ownership; they had indeed, though not according to Roman, but according to provincial law. There were in the provinces civitates liberæ, civitates foederatæ, and subjects. The confederate states were treated like the Italian allies: some of them had the land as their own, and paid taxes on it, sometimes in proportion to the produce, and sometimes at a fixed rate; others indeed lost their ownership in it, so that it might be disposed of by the Roman republic; but retained the enjoyment of it on paying a rent. This was done when the provinces rebelled again and again, and were reconquered; and thus it came to pass that in several states the land was almost entirely forfeited to the Roman republic, whilst in others it was not so at all. This was not understood by the later writers, as Theophilus, and even Gaius himself already. From that time, there was generally a prætor and a quæstor in the province of Sicily. Hiero remained independent as did the free cities in Italy, and likewise the state of the Mamertines, Tauromenium, Centoripa, and other towns in the interior.
The war was ruinous to the Romans, whom it impoverished, and consequently to their morals also; for wounds like these do not always heal after the return of peace. During a struggle of this kind, contractors and the very dregs of the rabble grow rich, and the old citizens become poor: the first Punic war is therefore one of the first causes of the degeneracy of the Roman people. In the course of this war, there must have been many changes of which we have few or no records; we only know of some small matters. In the year of the city 506, as we have now been able to learn from Lydus de Magistratibus, a second prætor was appointed, who was to administer the laws to the peregrini. A great change had therefore taken place, that foreigners were to have a persona in Rome, instead of being obliged to be represented by a citizen as formerly: in this we acknowledge an important diminution of the spirit of faction. Suetonius says of a Claudius, who without doubt belongs to the beginning of the first Punic war, that he had resolved upon ruling Italy by means of the clients: this is one of the proofs which show that the clientship had a dangerous character, and how beneficial it was to dissolve that connexion. Yet the prætor was not restricted to his civil jurisdiction; Q. Valerius commanded the fleet besides, and another prætor we meet with at a later period in Etruria. We also find in Livy by no means in every year a prætor for the peregrini. The phrase prætor peregrinus is a barbarism; Livy, in the fourth decade, always uses a circumlocution instead of it.[9]
Another great change from an accidental cause, is little noticed. Dionysius says, that until the Φοινικὸς πόλεμος, the state had yearly given fifty thousand drachmas for the public festivals. This was now changed, and the Greek system of Liturgies was introduced, by which rich men had to defray the cost of the festivals as a public burthen. As the ædileship was the stepping-stone to higher offices, this measure gave rise to an important political revolution. Polybius has not remarked this. He finds fault with the Carthaginians for their practice of selling offices, and sets the custom of the Romans in direct contrast with theirs; yet it was then just the same at Rome. Fabricius, and men like him, could now no longer have worked their way to high office, without having to encounter the greatest difficulties.
In the nature of the senate, there was likewise a great change effected shortly before the first Punic war. The senate had at first been a representation of the people, and then of the curies; afterwards the will of the censors was paramount in its selection, and this was a blessing for the state. The composition of the Roman senate may perhaps have been best about this time: on the other hand, this power was in truth anomalous and dangerous, as the example of Ap. Claudius had shown. But now the senate was indirectly chosen by the people for life. The quæstors, of whom there had originally been two, then four, and now eight, became the seminarium senatus: he who had been quæstor had already the right sententiam dicendi in senatu, and might in case of a vacancy at the next census, if there was no particular charge brought against him, reckon with certainty upon getting into the senate. In this way, the senate was then changed into a sort of elective council; only the expulsion of unworthy members still belonged to the province of the censor. Still more completely was the senate chosen by the people in the seventh century, when the tribunes of the people also got into it.
As may be well imagined, it was with much difficulty that the Romans recovered from so exhausting a struggle. Their losses had been immense; besides other things, there were seven hundred ships of war: of the arrangements and measures which they adopted after the restoration of peace, we know but little. Soon afterwards, a war broke out against the Faliscans, which was ended in six days. It is almost incomprehensible, when the whole of Italy, with the exception of some little troubles in Samnium, had remained in obedience all the time of the Punic War, that after its conclusion such a dwarf could now have risen against the giant. This can only be accounted for in this way, that perhaps at that period a truce had expired, and the Romans did not wish to renew the former conditions. The town was destroyed, in order to strike terror into the Italians by the example.
Yet the Carthaginians were in a still worse plight than the Romans. Their distress was the same; they had also been beaten, and had every year to pay a portion of the heavy contribution; and the Romans moreover were no indulgent creditors. They had likewise to pay off their mercenaries who had returned from Sicily; but they had no money. Besides all this, the state was badly governed, and Hamilcar, the greatest man of his age, was thwarted by a whole faction. The friends of Hamilcar are likewise called factio; yet this means nothing else but people from all ranks, the best part of the nation, who sided with the distinguished man whom the majority attempted to cry down. Such was the condition of Carthage, that the great resources which Providence gave her in Hamilcar and Hannibal, led to nothing but her ruin; had she followed the advice of Hamilcar, and not spared her rich citizens, but made another mighty effort, she might have paid off the mercenaries, and have raised a new army. Instead of this, the Carthaginians foolishly tried to bargain with these barbarians, and with this view brought together the whole army. The consequence was, that it threw off its obedience to them, and a dreadful war broke out, which became a national one for Africa, as the Libyans, even with enthusiasm, rushed into the arms of the troops: the women gave their trinkets for the support of the war. Even old Phœnician colonies, such as Utica, Hippo, Clupea, rose against Carthage, so that the power of the city was often driven back almost within its own walls. The Roman deserters, who were afraid of being given up to their own government, placed themselves at the head of the insurrection, especially a slave from Campania of the name of Spendius: Carthage was brought to the brink of destruction. The Romans, during this war, at first behaved in a high-minded manner; and here we meet with the first traces of navigation laws, and of those claims on neutrals which have caused so many quarrels in modern history. The Romans in fact decreed, that no ships of the rebels should be allowed to come to Italy; and that, on the other hand, none should sail from thence to the harbours of the rebels in Africa. The Italian ship-masters did not observe this; but they went whithersoever their interest called them: the Carthaginians had therefore a right to seize all the Roman ships which were bound for such a harbour, to confiscate the cargo, and to detain the crews as prisoners; and for this they might appeal to the Roman proclamation. The Romans had even let the Carthaginians levy troops in Italy; they also negociated with them for the liberation of the prisoners: the Carthaginians gave them up, and the Romans, on their side, released those whom they had still kept since the war. They likewise facilitated the traffic with Carthage. The war lasted three years and four months; it was waged with a cruelty which is beyond all conception, very much like the thirty years’ war, which was a war of fiends. At last, owing to the generalship of the great Hamilcar Barcas, and the horrors committed by the mercenaries themselves, it was put down, and revenge was taken.
Then the envy of the Romans was aroused. The mercenaries in Sardinia had likewise risen against the Carthaginians, and had murdered many of those who were settlers there, though probably only the officers and magistrates; for as late as Cicero’s times, the population of the sea-port towns of Sardinia was Punic. Against the mercenaries, the Sards now rose in their turn, and drove them out of the island, renouncing also their allegiance to the Carthaginians. After the war in Africa was ended, Carthage wished to reconquer Sardinia; but the rebels placed themselves under the Romans, who, with shameful hypocrisy, declared themselves bound not to abandon those who had committed themselves to their protection, and, when the Carthaginians fitted out a fleet against Sardinia, asserted that this would be a war against themselves. It was therefore impossible for the Carthaginians to carry on this war; and Hamilcar, who like all men of sterling mind, was for letting go what could not be kept, without giving way to maudlin sorrow, advised them to yield in this matter until better times: on this, the Carthaginians swore to have their revenge, but for the present not to make war. They made a new peace, in which they gave up Corsica and Sardinia, and had besides to pay twelve hundred talents. This conduct is one of the most detestable misdeeds in the Roman history.