During this great disturbance in Italy, Demetrius of Pharos proved as false to his new patrons as he had been to Teuta. Relying on the support of Philip, king of Macedon, he assumed the air of an independent chief, and encouraged his subjects in their old piratical practices. In 219 B.C. L. Æmilius Paulus, the patrician consul, received orders from the senate to put a stop to these proceedings. In one short campaign he reduced Corcyra, took Pharos, and forced Demetrius to take refuge at the court of Philip, where we shall find him at a later time active in promoting hostilities against Rome. Illyricum again fell into the hands of native chiefs; the Romans, however, kept possession of the island of Corcyra, together with the strong towns of Oricum and Apollonia—positions of great service in the Macedonian Wars.
Thus triumphant on all sides and on all sides apparently secure, the Roman government had no presentiment of the storm that had long been gathering in the west. We must now return to Hamilcar.
HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL
[235-219 B.C.]
He crossed the straits of Gibraltar in 235 B.C. With him went his son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his son Hannibal, then a boy of nine years old, but even then giving promise of those qualities which afterwards made him the terror of Rome. Hamilcar had not intended to take him to Spain; but the boy pleaded so earnestly, that the father yielded on condition that he should swear eternal enmity to Rome and the Romans. Hannibal himself, in his old age, told the tale to Antiochus, king of Syria, how he was led to the altar of his country’s gods, and took this direful oath. Nothing can more strongly show the feelings with which Hamilcar left his country. He went, not as the servant of Carthage but as the enemy of Rome, with feelings of personal hostility, not to be appeased save by the degradation of his antagonist.
His first object was to conquer Spain, and thus put Carthage in possession of a province which might itself become a great kingdom, and was worth many Sicilies and Sardinias. One of the chief advantages he proposed to himself in this conquest was the supply of hardy soldiers, which would be given by the possession of Spain. But he was well aware that for this purpose conquest was not sufficient; he must enlist the feelings of the Spaniards in his cause, he must teach them to look up to himself and his family as their friends and benefactors. Accordingly he married a Spanish lady of Castulo; he lived among the natives like one of themselves; he taught them to work their rich silver mines; and in all ways opened out the resources of the country. Meanwhile he collected and disciplined an excellent army, with which he reduced many of the ruder tribes to the northward of the modern Andalusia and Murcia. Thus he reigned (this is the best word to express his power) with vigour and wisdom for eight years; and in the ninth he fell in battle, admired and regretted by all southern Spain.
Hannibal was yet only in his eighteenth year, too young to take up the work which his father had left unfinished. But Hasdrubal, the son-in-law of the great commander, proved his worthy successor. He at once assumed supreme authority. By the gentler arts of conciliation he won over a great number of tribes; and in order to give a capital to this new realm, he founded the city of New Carthage, now Carthagena, on the coast of Murcia. The successes of Hamilcar had already attracted the notice of the senate; and in the year 227 B.C., presently after his death, they concluded a league with Hasdrubal, whereby the river Ebro was fixed as the northern boundary of the Carthaginian empire in Spain. Hasdrubal fell by the knife of an assassin in the year 221 B.C., the seventh of his command.
Hannibal was now in his twenty-fourth year. He was at once elected by the acclamations of the army to stand in his great father’s place. Nor did the government venture to brave the anger of a young general at the head of an army devoted to his cause. Hannibal remained as ruler of Carthaginian Spain. The office was becoming hereditary in his family.
Hamilcar had enlarged the Carthaginian rule in Spain from a few trading settlements to a great province. Hasdrubal had carried the limits of this province as far as the sierra of Toledo. Hannibal immediately crossed this range into the valley of the Tagus, and reduced the Celtiberian tribes which then occupied Castille. He even passed the Castilian Mountains which form the upper edge of the basin of the Tagus, and made the name of Carthage feared among the Vaccæans of the Douro, by taking their chief town, Helmantica (Salamanca). At the close of the year 220 B.C., all Spain south of the Ebro was in subjection to Carthage, or in alliance with her. The great qualities of the three men through whom they knew her made them not unwilling vassals.
[219-218 B.C.]