The cause of the war in Italy presently began to stagnate more and more, especially after Capua and Tarentum had been retaken (in 211 and 209). Once, and once only, did the Carthaginians venture again to play for high stakes. Hasdrubal had skilfully evaded the Romans in Spain and had reached north Italy by way of the Pyrenees and Alps, intending there to join hands with his brother Hannibal (early in 207 B.C.). It was a critical moment, for both the consuls of the year 208 had fallen in battle. The speedy succour which the newly elected consul, Claudius Nero, despatched to his colleague, Livius, decided the victory in favour of the Romans. Hasdrubal lost both his army and his life (at Sinigaglia) on the banks of the Metaurus.
In the meantime the Romans had succeeded in wresting Spain from the Carthaginians. The two elder Scipios, Publius and Cneius, who, after fighting with varying fortune, had advanced as far as the Guadalquivir, both lost their lives in 211 B.C. But Publius Scipio the Younger, afterwards known as Africanus, a man of Hannibal’s own temper, had taken New Carthage (209 B.C.), defeated the Carthaginian armies at Bæcula (208) and Silpia (207), and occupied Gades, the southernmost city of Spain, in 206.
Carthage, nevertheless, could only be conquered in Africa. This view had little to commend it in the eyes of many a prudent member of the senate so long as Hannibal remained in Italy. For all that, Scipio succeeded in transferring the theatre of war in 204 from his own province of Sicily to northern Africa. Allying himself with the Numidian prince, Masinissa, he defeated the Carthaginians and their ally, Syphax of Mauretania, in the year 203 B.C., and brought the war to a close by the decisive victory of Zama (202 B.C.), in which he routed Hannibal, who had returned from Italy, and the flower of his troops.
Carthage lost not only her fleet and foreign provinces, but her sovereignty itself; she was not allowed to go to war without the permission of Rome, while an irksome sentinel was set over her in the person of her adversary, Masinissa, who had been enriched with Punic territory.
Even after this catastrophe the Carthaginians did not utterly lose heart. Their commerce soon revived and prospered, and Hannibal did all he could to restore the prestige of his native city as long as the Romans tolerated his presence there, and to raise up fresh enemies to Rome after he had been driven into exile.
Rome was not long left to the tranquil enjoyment of her victory. Peace had been concluded. Not the citizens of Rome alone, but all Italy, yearned for a lasting peace. And yet the Roman senate, in defiance of popular feeling, was constrained to embark promptly on the adventures of a new and perilous war or to be false to the whole tenor of its policy up to that time.
Rome’s success in dealing with Macedonia was due, as has already been stated, to the fact that she extended her protection to the smaller Greek states and thus gained a base from which she could hold the larger states of Greece, Macedonia first and foremost, in check. This policy obliged the Romans in the year 200 B.C. to go to the help of Egypt, which was hard pressed by the combined forces of Macedonia and Syria. Ever since the accession of the youthful Ptolemy Epiphanes in 205 B.C., Macedonia and Syria had united with a view to dividing the Egyptian empire and its dependencies between themselves.
Syria’s share was to be Egypt and Cyprus, Macedonia’s Cyrene, Ionia, and the islands of the Ægean Sea. Rome was the less able to be an indifferent spectator of the initial successes of these two great powers since they were won at the expense of the states of Pergamus, Rhodes, and Miletus, which were among her allies. In the case of Syria the Romans attained their object by the embassy of Marcus Æmilius Lepidus. Antiochus the Great evacuated Egypt. Philip, however, would not stay his hand, and thus the Macedonian War broke out, to be decided in favour of the Romans, after many years of indifferent success, by the advance of Flaminius into Thessaly and his victory at Cynoscephalæ (197 B.C.). At the Isthmian games Flaminius proclaimed that all Greeks were free, but the real effect of the proclamation was to reduce all Greek states to a common level of impotence and to give none of them any lasting satisfaction. The Ætolians, who had been the allies of Rome in the Macedonian War, and took no small credit to themselves for the result, were now the most bitterly enraged against her. Antiochus the Great, of Syria, profited by the prevailing sentiment to press forward in Asia Minor. Hannibal, who had been driven from Carthage, appeared at his court and endeavoured, though without success, to induce him to take the offensive against Italy. War was nevertheless inevitable. Antiochus had command of the sea, and crossed to Eubœa and Thessaly. The Ætolians rose in rebellion. The Romans, however, took up the quarrel with no lack of spirit. After the flower of Antiochus’ forces had been vanquished at Thermopylæ, and the Syrian fleet, under the command of Hannibal, had twice suffered defeat, the Scipios crossed over into Asia Minor and destroyed the main army of Syria at Magnesia. A sanguinary conflict ended in the conquest of the mountain cantons of Ætolia (191-189) and the subjugation of the Galatian hordes (188). Antiochus was forced to resign his pretensions to Asia Minor.
That the Romans did not, at this time and during the ensuing decades, take advantage of their success to incorporate fresh provinces into their empire was partly due to their just appreciation of the fact that the conquest of the Greek world could be better and more easily achieved by breaking it up into isolated and impotent states, and partly to their melancholy experiences in the case of their latest acquisitions. For nearly seventy years after the Second Punic War Roman armies were fighting to maintain Rome’s supremacy over her Spanish provinces, and even then the north and west remained free. From 151 to 133 a fierce rebellion was rampant in southern Spain and Lusitania (Portugal). The feats of the patriotic Viriathus and the desperate defence of Numantia showed the Romans to what extremities valiant races—however well disposed towards them in the first instance—could be driven by their execrable provincial administration. Moreover they were compelled to fight year after year, sometimes against Gauls and Ligurians, sometimes against Illyrians and Dalmatians. Nor was the strength of the Hellenic congeries of states by any means broken. The wretched empire of Syria alone, ruled by worthless monarchs and torn by internal dissensions, was fast falling into utter decay. A word from a Roman ambassador was enough to reduce the cowardly Antiochus Epiphanes to obedience and cure him of his inclination to join the enemies of Rome. But Macedonia was gaining strength under Philip and Perseus, and the latter actually succeeded in bringing about a great coalition of the states of the Balkan peninsula against Rome. In the Third Macedonian War the empire of Alexander was finally destroyed after the victory of Pydna (168 B.C.). Even then Rome refrained from dividing Macedonia and Greece into provinces; nor did she alter her policy until after repeated sanguinary revolts in Macedonia, headed by the pretender Andriscus, and the rebellion of the Achæan League (141-146). After that the turn of the west of Asia Minor soon came, and it received the name of the province of Asia in 133 B.C.