After the victory at Clastidium, between Piacenza and Alessandria, the Romans immediately founded two colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on both banks of the Po: the boundary was pushed on to the Ticinus. There is every reason to think that Modena also was fortified; but it was afterwards lost again for some time, during a fresh insurrection of the Boians. The Ligurian tribes in Piedmont were still independent by rights, though not in reality.
In the first Illyrian war, the Romans owed their speedy success to a Greek, Demetrius of Pharus. As governor of Corcyra, having in all probability been bribed, he had surrendered the island to them; and by their influence he had been appointed guardian of the king who was a minor. His was a character in keeping with that age of infamy; he was a traitor to all parties. He now conspired against the Romans, and during the Gallic war he excited the Illyrians to rebellion, which shows that these peoples paid tribute to Rome. Besides this, with a fleet of fifty Lembi, he dared to commit piracy in the Archipelago against the defenceless Cyclades. The Romans sent over a consular army under L. Æmilius Paulus; the hopes of the rebels were quickly blighted, and their capital Dimalus was taken (a name which proves, that the modern Albanian language is like the ancient Illyrian, for dimal in Albanian means a double mountain). The seat of Demetrius was his native island Pharus, which the Romans took by a stratagem: he himself made his escape to Macedon, where the last Philip had just begun his reign, and he became his evil genius. Thus the second Illyrian war was very soon ended. The Romans on the whole at that time enlarged their dominion. We have nothing to inform us when the Venetians became dependent: in the great Gallic war we find them as allies. The Istrians, however, were subjected even before the war of Hannibal, and the Venetians must then have been already conquered; so that the acquisition of the supremacy over them probably dates from this period.
While all this was taking place, events were brooding, of the fearful nature of which the Romans were far from having the least conception. Hamilcar Barcas had turned his eyes towards Spain, thus showing that he was a truly great man in not allowing himself to be discouraged by his former ill successes, and in not repining against fate. The Carthaginians had until then placed all their hopes on Sicily; and there were fellows indeed at Carthage (like Hanno, by whose speeches Livy spoils his fine description of the war of Hannibal), who partly from envy and bad feeling, and partly from miserable cowardice, were of opinion, that after the loss of Sicily and Sardinia, one ought now to yield altogether. Just as Pitt, after the American war, when it was believed in foreign countries that the peace of Paris had broken the power of England, with redoubled courage undertook the task of infusing new strength into his country; thus also did Hamilcar. At an early period already, the Phœnicians had settled in Spain. Gades is said to have been older than Carthage, and that place was indeed very important as the centre of the trade with the Cassiterides. Tin was of the greatest value to the ancients for making the copper, of which they had plenty, fusible: the use of calamine in the manufacture of brass, is of much later invention. Very likely, neither the Phœnicians nor Carthaginians had any settlements on the western coast besides Gades; but they certainly had some on the southern coast, in Granada, Malaga, and Abdera, and a mixed nation (Μιξοφοίνικες) had sprung up there, namely the Bastulans. But into the interior the Carthaginians had not yet penetrated, although they seem to have had connexions there. The yoke of Carthage was deeply hated in Africa, as was shown in the insurrection of the mercenaries; now, on the contrary the great tact of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal shines forth in the foundation of a Carthaginian empire in Spain: they laid upon the Spaniards a very easy yoke. Hannibal was married to a Spanish woman of Castulo, and these alliances between Carthaginians and native women must have been of very frequent occurrence: among the Romans, such marriages were regarded only as concubinage. Hamilcar had devised the plan of creating in Spain a province, which was to make up to Carthage for Sicily and Sardinia, and from which it might also derive what it could never have got from those isles: neither Sicily nor Sardinia were able to give Carthage any considerable military strength. The weakness of Carthage lay in this, that it had no army of its own; and that great man now conceived the idea of forming a national Carthaginian army out of Spaniards, who were partly to be subjected, and partly to be gained over and made Punic. Southern Spain has immense natural advantages; its silver mines are of extraordinary richness. The Carthaginians had known of these before; but it was Hamilcar who first introduced a regular system of working them, and thus he, or his son-in-law Hasdrubal, was led to found the town of New Carthage (Carthagena). The stores which had been furnished by Sicily and Sardinia, were just as well supplied by Spain. They now got a population of millions, from which they no more took faithless mercenaries; but there they made levies as in their own country. The Romans no doubt looked with jealousy at the progress they were making; yet they could not hinder it, so long as the Cisalpine Gauls stood on their frontier, prepared to avenge the defeat of the Senonians and Boians.
The whole of Spain consisted of a number of petty tribes without any connexion whatever between them; whilst in Gaul, at least some one nation or other, the Æduans, the Arvernians, held the supremacy. The Spaniards were of various kinds: whether the Turdetanians and the northern peoples, the Cantabrians, were of a different race, as the ancients say; or whether all the Iberians were sprung from the same stock, as is maintained by that great etymologist, Humboldt, we cannot decide. Not being acquainted with the language myself, I must abstain from giving an opinion; yet surely, notwithstanding the great weight of Humboldt’s authority, the statements of the ancients ought also to be taken in consideration. Certain it is, that the tribes south of the Sierra Morena, the inhabitants of Bœtica, had quite a different character from those of the northern part of the country. They were highly civilized; they had a literature of their own, written laws, and books; of their alphabet, which is altogether peculiar to themselves, and not derived from that of the Phœnicians, there are remnants still existing on inscriptions and coins. The letters have quite a primitive form. Yet these peoples were quite as warlike as those of the north: they were not, however, good for attack, but merely for defence. In earlier times only, they succeeded in driving the Celts across the Pyrenees into Aquitain; afterwards, we always find them confined to their boundaries, within which they made a desperate stand; so that what an Arab general said of them is true, that behind walls they were more than men, and in the field more cowardly than women, which has also been borne out in the latest wars. An exception to this, however, were the Celtiberians; and the others also showed themselves brave, when they were trained by great generals like Hannibal and Sertorius, and likewise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Otherwise, they confine themselves to desperate resistance, even behind wretched fortifications; they kill their women and children, and defend themselves to their last drop of blood. Now Hamilcar, and after him Hasdrubal, spread further and further, drawing one people after the other into the Carthaginian league, and training soldiers.
Hamilcar had hardly finished his war against the mercenaries, when he founded the Carthaginian empire in Spain. He staid there eight years, of which he made an incomparable use. He died in Spain, and left the command to his son-in-law Hasdrubal, which was quite different from the Roman custom. The Carthaginian general not only keeps his office for life, but he also bequeaths it at his death to his son-in-law, like an heirloom. It is true that this required a great deal of influence at Carthage, and this is what Livy calls factio Barcina.
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.
Livy begins his account of the war of Hannibal with the remark, which several others had made before him, that it was the greatest war which had ever been waged by the greatest and most powerful states, when in the height of their greatest vigour. Yet now that two thousand years are passed, we can no longer say the same. The seven years’ war, especially the campaign of 1757, exhibits a greater accumulation of achievements than any part of the war of Hannibal; nor is it inferior in the greatness of the generals. But thus much we may say, that no war in the whole of ancient history is to be compared to this. Nor is there, on the whole, any general to be placed above Hannibal, and of the ancients none can stand at his side. Whilst in the first Punic war, only one great general makes his appearance upon the stage, we see in this, besides Hannibal, Scipio likewise, who, as a general, is indeed not fully his equal, but has claims notwithstanding to be ranked among the very first; and after him, Fabius and Marcellus, who in any war would have gained a high renown, and could have only been eclipsed by men of such extraordinary greatness; and besides these, many other stars of the second magnitude.
The war of Hannibal has been described by several of the ancients. It formed the substance of the works of Fabius and Cincius: in those of the latter it was treated exclusively. He wrote it, as far as he himself lived to see it, very explicitly, merely prefixing an introduction on the earlier history. Fabius had a more extensive plan; he took in both wars. Of Fabius we may say with certainty, that his account to a great extent forms the groundwork of that of Appian: Dionysius left him at the beginning of the first Punic war, and he is there without any guide. I am able to show, that statements of a marked character in Appian and in Zonaras are taken from Fabius; for Dio Cassius also acknowledged that he could find no better source. Very nearly about the same time, Chæreas and Sosilus wrote: of both of these Polybius speaks with censure; he denounces them as fabulists, although Sosilus had staid in the camp with Hannibal. It is strange that Livy did not think of making any use of Hannibal’s short memoirs, and of a letter of Scipio to Philip of Macedon in which he recounted his achievements. Polybius has made use of an authentic document of Hannibal, on a brass tablet in the temple of Juno in Lacinia,[14] in which the numbers especially were given with great accuracy. As far as Polybius goes, we have nothing left to desire: the third book is the masterpiece of what has been preserved to us of his history; unfortunately we have but the first years of his. He too certainly had before him the excellent work of L. Cincius, who described this war as an eye-witness. There was also an account of it in Latin, about the middle of the seventh century, by L. Cœlius Antipater, probably a Greek freedman. He wrote with rhetorical pretension, and I think that many things in Livy are to be traced to him, particularly where the latter goes off into the romantic. For Cœlius had wished to write history for effect, and it may not have been without justice, that Cicero speaks slightingly of him.
In Livy’s work we may clearly distinguish the different sources. In the beginning, the description of the siege of Saguntum is taken beyond a doubt from Cœlius Antipater; other parts follow most closely in the footsteps of Polybius; elsewhere he has either made use of the Annales Pontificum, or of those annalists who had embodied them in their histories. The whole of the third decade is written with evident fondness for the subject; yet he is wanting in the knowledge of facts, in experience of real life, and in the power of taking a general view: he never gets away from the umbracula of the school. Wherever he deviates from Polybius, he is altogether unworthy of belief; and however beautifully his history of the war is written, it is still quite plain that he was unable to bring before his mind one single event, as it really happened: his account of the battle of Cannæ, for instance, is untrue and impossible; whilst, on the other hand, that of Polybius is so excellent, that one may get a most distinct idea of the locality, and even draw a map from his statements, and the better one knows the nature of the spot, the clearer becomes his description. The work of General Vaudoncourt, published some years ago at Milan under the title of Campagnes d’Annibal, which, merely because its author is such an able man, has been praised by every body, is an utterly worthless production. The maps are good for nothing, and the plans are drawn from fancy; he did not understand how to read an author critically, he had no knowledge of Greek, and he has not given anything new: there is only one point of ancient tactics about which I have learned anything from him. He is especially mistaken in the notion which he has formed of the battle array of the Carthaginians; he believes them to have been drawn up in phalanx, which they were not. They were just as moveable as the Romans, and the sword alone was the weapon which they relied on: lances they very likely had none, but javelins in abundance. Ulric Becker’s treatise on the history of the war of Hannibal (in Dahlmann’s “Researches in the Field of History”),[15] although not a mature work, is really valuable, and should not be overlooked.
Hamilcar was succeeded by his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who, after an administration of nine years, was murdered by an Iberian whose chieftain he had caused to be put to death. This personal attachment to their princes prevailed among the Iberians: no one durst leave the death of his chief unavenged,—nay, if possible, he was not to survive him. Hasdrubal had with him for his education young Hannibal, who soon became the favourite of the army. The oath of Hannibal rests on his own authority; the circumstances of it, however, are told in different ways. He is said to have been nine years old when his father went over to Spain (516 according to Cato), and this seems to be historical: if so, he was born about 507, which would make him twenty-seven years old when he marched to Italy. This is the very age, at which several generals have shown themselves greatest. Frederic the Great was twenty-eight years old when he conquered Silesia; Napoleon twenty-seven, or twenty-eight, when he undertook the Italian campaign. The whole conduct of Hannibal during this war bears the character of a very young man; and he was by no means an old one when he died, being nearer his fiftieth than his sixtieth year. Very likely, he was born just before Hamilcar went to Sicily. His brothers were Hasdrubal and Mago. Whether Hasdrubal was his elder, is doubtful; Mago was considerably younger.