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Student's Edition, 2 vols, crown 8vo. izf. People's Edition, 4 vols, crown 8vo. 16/. Cabinet Edition, 8 vols, post 8vo. 48^. Library Edition, 5 vols. 8vo. £i,. London, LONGMANS & CO. CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/carthagecarthagiOOsmit_0 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS BY R. BOSWORTH SMITH, M.A. ASSISTANT-MASTER IN HARROW SCHOOI, : FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD AUTHOR OF 'MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, 1878 All rights rese yved AND CO. MATRI MEJE, CUJUS NOMEN VIVJE HUIC OPUSCULO PR^TEXI DEBUERAT, QUOD MATERNO AMORE INCEPTUM FOVEBAT MORTUiE PERACTUM AMANTISSIMUS DEDICO I PREFACE. The pages which follow are an attempt, within mo- derate limits, but from a careful study of all the materials which have come down to us, to give as complete a picture as possible of ancient Carthage and of her two greatest citizens, the only two of whom we have any minute or personal knowledge, Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal. The materials them- selves are extremely fragmentary. The medium through which they are presented to us is distorted, and I am only too conscious of my own want of skill in handling them ; but, whatever the deficiency of the materials and whatever my own shortcomings, I can- not help feeling that I have worked to ill effect if I have failed to awaken in the minds of my readers something of that enthusiasm for the subject, and that keen desire to pursue it further, which for some years past has made the labour I have imposed upon myself a labour of love. Whether any such enthusiasm or desire can ever be adequately gratified is a different question, and viii PREFACE. one which I venture to think does not necessarily affect its intrinsic value. In history, as in other pur- suits— more especially, perhaps, in those branches of history in which the present age has made such rapid advances, the study of long-buried seats of empire, of extinct creeds, and of vanished civilisations — the chase is, in a certain sense, worth more than the game and the effort than the result. If by such studies — by the endeavour to picture to ourselves whole races which have long since disappeared, and altars which have long been overturned — the imagination, as we cannot doubt, is awakened and the sympathies enlarged ; if we are driven to take a wider and therefore a truer view of the dealings of God with man, to recognise more frankly amidst the endless diversities of the human race its fundamental and substantial unity ; to press more closely home to ourselves those questions which are never old and never new — questions always to be asked and never adequately to be answered — of the Why and the What, the Whence and the Whither of a being who has such grovelling desires and such noble aspirations, whose capacities are so boundless and whose performances are so soxxy, who is so great and yet so little, so evanescent and yet so lasting — we may well rest content if we rise from the attempt with a feeling of stimulus rather than of satiety, of unrest rather than repose. It is possible, indeed, that more extensive excava- PREFACE. ix tions on the site of the Byrsa and its neighbourhood may hereafter prove that the Romans did not com- plete their work of destruction so thoroughly as they imagined, and that the very rapidity with which they endeavoured to carry out old Cato's resolve — destroy- ing everything at Carthage which they could see — was the means of preserving something at least which they did not see. It is possible that the further dis- covery of Phoenician inscriptions among the numerous islands and coasts over which the influence of that ubiquitous people once extended may increase our knowledge of the Carthaginian language, and may give us a longer list of Carthaginian proper names. It is possible that Marseilles may contain other tablets like that famous one discovered in 1845, when a house was being pulled down — a tablet which actually fixes the tariff of prices to be paid for the victims offered to Baal — and that the recesses of the Lebanon may still conceal another priceless remnant of Phoenician antiquity, such as that statue of Baal in a sitting posture, which perished only a few years ago, just be- fore a great Phoenician scholar arrived in the country, and by a cruel fate which is not without precedent in such matters, heard at the same moment of its existence and destruction. If so, we may one day be able to picture to ourselves more vividly that worship of Baal and of Ashtoreth which is as in- teresting to the student of Biblical as of Carthagi- X PREFACE. nian history. It is possible, once more, that some of the lost books, or fragments of the lost books, of the Greek and Roman historians who treated of Car- thage may yet be discovered, and may complete the picture, such as it is, which the Greek colonists in Sicily, or the Romans who had tested for themselves the indomitable patience of Hamilcar, and had felt the weight of Hannibal's arm, were able to form of their redoubtable antagonist. All these things are possible, even if they are not very probable. But we cannot venture to hope that any such discoveries, whatever their kind or number, will ever enable us to know Carthage, as we know Athens or Rome, from its own citizens ; or will do more than throw a few scattered lights upon that imperial city which — all but unknown to us during five centuries of her growth and her true grandeur — blazes forth into the light of day only in that century which witnessed her heroic struggles and her fall. The historical documents which might have thrown a real light upon Carthage have perished irrevocably. Philinus, the Greek of Agrigentum, who wrote a Carthaginian, or quasi-Carthaginian, account of the First Punic War, we know only from some criticisms of Polybius. Sosilus and Silanus, two other Greek historians, who, if only they had been worthy of their opportunities, might have given us from their daily PREFACE. xi personal observation as complete an account of Han- nibal's life and conversation as Boswell has given us of Dr. Johnson, have left behind them not a word ; and the contents of the native Carthaginian libraries, which the Romans, like rich men who know not what they give, carelessly handed over to the tender mer- cies of Numidian chieftains, and which Sallust, a cen- tury afterwards, must have had in his own hands, have perished by a destruction as complete as that which overtook the Alexandrian library itself We cannot pretend to contemplate the fate of these Car- thaginian libraries with the philosophic indifference which it pleased Gibbon to affect with regard to that of Alexandria ; for we cannot suppose that the de- struction of the Punic literature was in any way a benefit, or that its preservation would have been any- thing but of deep interest and value to posterity. A few words of explanation as to the general treatment of my subject, and the comparative promi- nence which I have allotted to its different parts, may, perhaps not unfitly, find a place here. As regards the m.ethod of inquiry, I have in all cases gone direct to the fountain-head, reading care- fully every passage which has come down to us from the ancients, comparing conflicting statements with each other, and always endeavouring in the first in- stance to form an independent judgment upon them. On points which seemed in any degree doubtful I xii PREFACE. have afterwards consulted the chief modern writers on the subject, such as Gesenius, Heeren, Niebuhr, Arnold, Movers, Kenrick, Lenormant, Mommsen, Beule, and Ihne. Where, as is often the case, I am conscious of any distinct debt to these or any other modern writer, I have of course made it matter of special acknowledgment in the notes ; but, as a general rule, the references I have given are to those to whom I really owe them — to the ancient authorities them- selves. I have avoided all prolonged discussion of dis- puted points, such, for instance, as the route of Hannibal over the Alps, the battle-field of the Trebia, the mi- nutiae of the topography of ancient Carthage, or the exact position of its Spanish namesake. On such subjects I have endeavoured to weigh the arguments on either side, and have often, as in the case of the passage of the Alps, waded through what is, in fact, a literature in itself, a very sea of treatises and re- joinders, of observations and counter-observations ; but have been compelled to content myself with giving, in a few lines, the results themselves rather than the process by which I have arrived at them. The limits of the book make any other treatment impossible ; and, indeed, it seems to me that the minute discussion of such points belongs to a con- tinuous history, or to a series of monographs, rather than to a book which is not intended to be exhaustive, PREFACE. xiii and which is addressed as much to the general reader as to the classical scholar. As regards the treatment of particular parts of my subject, in the two opening chapters on Carthage I have attempted to give a general sketch of the Cartha- ginian influence and civilisation, and to bring together into as small a compass as is consistent with any de- gree of accuracy or completeness, all the hints dropped by the writers of antiquity which seem to throw any clear light on the city in the days of its birth, its growth, and its greatest prosperity. In the third chapter it has been my object to set forth the main differences between Carthage and her great rival, and to point out the foundations on which the achievements and greatness of Rome principally rested. It is the more necessary to do this pointedly at the outset, because, since Carthage can no longer be heard in her own defence, the historian is bound, throughout his treatment of the Punic Wars, con- tinually to point out those statements which he con- siders to be coloured by the bias or the ignorance, by the fears or the pride, of the Roman writers. He is thus driven sometimes to appear as the advocate, while he is, in fact, only acting or wishing to act the part of the judge. That Rome was better fitted for empire than Carthage, and that her victory is, on the whole, with all its drawbacks, the victory of progress and civilisation, is a fact to which all history seems to XIV PREFACE. point ; but it is none the less the duty of the historian to dwell upon these drawbacks, and to bring into full relief what little may be said on the other side. The history of the First Punic War I have treated at considerable — perhaps some of my readers may think at disproportionate — length. I have more than one reason for doing so. To begin with, the first Punic War seems to me to throw much more light on the energies and character of the Carthaginians as a whole than does the Second. The Second Punic War brings Hannibal before us ; the First the State which produced him. The First Punic War shows us Carthage as still, in some sense, the mistress of the seas and islands ; in the Second she hardly dares to show herself on the waters which were so lately all her own. We have, moreover, throughout the history of the First Punic War the guidance of Polybius, who had before him in the preparation of his history the accounts given by at least two writers who were all but contemporaries or eye-witnesses of the events which they described, one of them, strange to say, not unfavourable to Carthage. Our knowledge, there- fore, of the First Punic War is more complete than that of any portion of the Second, unless it be that of its first three years. Again, most historians seem to hav^e looked upon the First Punic War as a dull and tedious war, and have accordingly been content to give it a very cur- PREFACE. XV sory notice. Dr. Arnold, for example, who has dedi- cated a whole volume to the Second Punic War, has given only one chapter to the First. There is no greater mistake — unless indeed it be mine in hazarding an opposite opinion — than to suppose that the First Punic War is dull and tedious. In respect of its battles and its sieges, its surprises and its cata- strophes, the Herculean exertions made by both States, and the frightful sacrifices it entailed upon them both ; above all, in the consummate genius of one at least of the generals it produced, it seems to me to be one of the most interesting wars in history. If I have failed to make it in some measure interesting to my readers, I repeat that, in my opinion, it is the fault not of the subject but of the writer. Once more, the dazzling genius of Hannibal, and the comparative fulness— not necessarily the trust- worthiness— of our authorities for his history, have hitherto tended to throw into the shade the man who, if he was inferior to Hannibal, was inferior to him alone, the heroic Hamilcar Barca. In point of ful- ness of treatment Hamilcar has fared at the hands of his historians much as has the war in which he bore so large a part. Dr. Arnold, whose noble history was cut short by his untimely death when he had only reached the turning-point in the Hannibalian war, the fatal battle of the Metaurus, has given four hundred pages to that much of Hannibal's career alone, while a xvi PREFACE. he has given barely twenty to Hamilcar ; and Dr. Mommsen himself, though he is in no way sparing of his admiration for Hamilcar, has, in point of fulness of treatment, dealt with the father and the son in a manner which, as it seems to me, is hardly less dis- proportionate to their comparative merits and achieve- ments. It seemed, therefore, desirable to lay rather less stress on what has been done so fully and so exhaustively before, and to give more time and space to what has hitherto, perhaps, received less generous treatment, and also throws more light on the great city which is my special subject. The chapters relating to Hannibal himself, to the Third Punic War, and to the destruction of Carthage, speak for themselves. One more chapter only re- quires special comment here. In the spring of 1877, after I had finished the first draft of the book, and was far advanced in its revision, I was enabled to pay a visit to the site of Carthage and its neighbourhood. It was a short visit, but was full of deep and varied interest. It was my first sight of an Eastern city, and it brought me for the first time into direct per- sonal contact with that vast religious system which is one of the greatest facts of human history, and which, from causes deep as human nature itself, seems des- tined, whatever the upshot of the present Eastern difficulties, always to maintain its hold on the Eastern world. I was able several times to visit the site of PREFACE. xvii the Phoenician city, and to study, as far as my limited time would permit me, on the spot those questions of its topography and history with the general bearings of which I had been so long familiar in books. I walked round the harbours of Carthage, bathed in water which half preserves and half conceals its ruins, explored the Byrsa and the cisterns, traced for many miles the course of the aqueduct, crossed the river Bagradas, and examined, amongst other spots re- nowned in ancient story, the site of the still more ancient city, the parent city of Utica. In the con- cluding chapter of this volume I have endeavoured to gather up some of the impressions which I derived from these varied sights and scenes ; and I hope I have been able by these means, as well as by various touches which I have inserted subsequently in other portions of the book, to communicate to my readers what, I think, I gained for myself, a more vivid mental picture of that ancient city, whose chequered fortunes I have endeavoured to relate. I wish to return my hearty thanks to the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, Bart., for having carefully revised my book, both in manuscript and in proof, and for having made several valuable suggestions. The Knoll, Harrow : Nov. 26, 1877. a 2 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. CARTHAGE. Characteristics of Phoenicians — Their defects — Size of their terri- tory— Their relations to Israelites — Early commerce in Medi- terranean— Pre-eminence of Phoenicians — Origin of Carthage — its position and population — its relation to Sicily — Our know- ledge of Carthage, whence derived — its early history — Rapid growth of its empire — Its dealings with the Native Africans — with the Phoenician cities in Africa — with Tyre — with Sicilian Greeks — -Constitution of Carthage — The Suffetes — The Senate — Deterioration of constitution — The ' Hundred ' Judges — Close oligarchy — General contentment — Social life of Carthaginians — Their commercial principles — Their agriculture — Merits of Mago's work on Agriculture — Carthaginian religion — Worship of Baal-Moloch — of Tanith or Astarte — deeply-rooted character of this worship — Inferior Divinities — Worship of Melcarth — Carthaginian literature — The army — The mercenaries and the Numidian Cavalry — Condition of the masses — Colonisation — Periplus of Hanno — Periplus of Himilco — ' Mago's ' harbour — Disaffection of subject races — Was Rome or Carthage best fitted for empire ?......... CHAPTER n. CARTHAGE AND SICILY. (735-310 B.C.) Wars between Carthage and Sicilian Greeks — First appearance of Greeks in Sicily — Their gradual spread— Battle of Himera — •Second Carthaginian invasion of Sicily — Third invasion and its XX CONTENTS. incidents — Exploits of Dionysius — Siege of Motye— Fourth in- vasion— Strange vicissitudes and possible importance of the conflict — Comparative merits of Greek and Carthaginian rule in Sicily— Conflicting stories about Hamilcar at Himera — River Ilalycus fixed as boundary — Timoleon — Magnificent Cartha- ginian armament — Battle of Crimesus — Agathocles invades Africa and threatens Carthage ...... 46 CHAPTER III. C.-VRTHAGE AND ROME. Rome and Carthage compared — Contrasted — Origin and growth of Rome — Constitutional progress — Military progress — Conquest of Etruscans— of Gauls — of Latins, B.C. 390— of Samnites — Roman methods in war — War with PjTrhus — Rome brought face to face with Carthage ....... 60 CHAPTER IV. FIRST PUNIC WAR. MESS AN A AND AGRIGENTUM. (264-262 B.C.) Relations of Sicily to Carthage and Rome — Appeal of Mamertines for aid — The question at issue — Importance of the decision — Romans occupy Messana — They attack Syracuse — Results of first campaign — Romans ally themselves with Hiero — Cartha- ginians unprepared for war — Agrigentum — Its siege — Its fate . 70 ' CHAPTER V. FIRST ROMAN FLEET. BATTLES OF MYLjE AND ECNOMUS. (262-256 B.C.) Carthaginian naval supremacy — Roman naval affairs— Commer- cial treaties with Carthage — Difficulties of Romans — Want of ships of war — Want of sailors —The new fleet — its first ventures — Naval science and tactics of the Ancients — The Corvus — CONTENTS. xxi Battle of Myte — Honours paid to Duillius — Egesta — The Romans attack Sardinia and Corr.ica — Energy of Carthaginians — Romans resolve to invade Africa — Enormous naval armaments — Route taken by the Romans — order of battle — Battle of Ecnomus 84 CHAPTER VL INVASION OF AFRICA. REGULUS AND XANTHIPPUS. (256-250 B.C.) Invasion of Africa — Romans overrun Carthaginian territory — Shortsightedness of Carthaginians — Changes necessary in Roman military system — Recall of Manlius — Victory of Regulus — Desperate plight of Carthaginians — Terms of peace rejected — Arrival of Xanthippus — -He is given the command — His great victory near Adis — Joy of Carthaginians — Thank-offerings to Moloch — Departure of Xanthippus — The survivors at Clypea — Roman fleet destroyed in a storm — Carthaginian reinforcements for Sicily — Romans build a new fleet — Take Panormus — Second Roman fleet destroyed in a storm — Carthaginians threaten Panormus — Romans build a third fleet — Battle of Panormus — Part played by elephants in first Punic War — Story of embassy and death of Regulus — How far true ?..... 106 CHAPTER Vn. HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE SIEGE OF LILYB^EUM. (250-241 B.C.) Fortresses remaining to Carthaginians in Sicily — Siege of Lily- boeum — Its origin and situation — Early siege operations — Carthaginians run the blockade — Hannibal the Rhodian — Car- thaginian sortie — Distress of Romans— The Consul Claudius — Battle of Drepanum — Claudian family — Roman reinforcements for siege of Lilybaeum lost at sea — Romans seize Eryx — Hamil- car Barca — He occupies Mount Ercte — Exhaustion of Romans — Culpable conduct of Carthaginians — Genius of Hamilcar — His xxii CONTEXTS. plans — His enterprises — He transfers his camp from Ercte to Eryx — Romans build one more fleet — Lutatius Catulus — The Carthaginian plan — Battle of yEgatian Isles — Magnanimity of Hamilcar — Terms of peace — Roman gains and losses — Car- thaginian losses and prospects — Contest only deferred . -133 CHAPTER VIII. HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE MERCENARY WAR. (241-238 B.C.) Events between First and Second Punic War — .Significance of Mercenary War — ■ Weakness of Carthaginian Government — Symptoms of mutiny — Revolt of mercenaries and native Africans — Hanno and Hamilcar Barca — The Truceless War — Its atrocities and termination . . . . . . .161 CHAPTER IX. HAMILCAR BARCA IN AFRICA AND SPAIN. (238-219 B.C.) Conduct of Romans during Mercenary War — They appropriate Sardinia and Corsica — Peace and war parties at Carthage — Hamilcar's command — He crosses to Spain — Advantages of his position there — His administration and death — His character — Administration of Hasdrubal — New Carthage founded — Early career of Hannibal — Remissness of Romans — Rising of Gauls in Italy — Its suppression — Hannibal besieges Saguntum — War declared between Rome and Carthage 172 CHAPTER X. SECOND PUNIC WAR. (218-201 B.C.) PASSAGE OF THE RHONE AND THE ALPS, B.C. 218. Preparations of Hannibal — He determines to go by land — Numbers of his army — His march through Gaul — His passage of the Rhone — Vagueness of ancient writers in geographical matters — CONTENTS. xxiii Passage over Alps selected by Hannibal — Route by which he approached it — The first ascent — Valley of the Isere — The main ascent — The summit — Hannibal addresses his troops — The descent — Interest attaching to the passage of the Alps — Its cost and results — The ' War of Hannibal ' . . . . .192 CHAPTER XL BATTLES OF TREBIA AND TRASIMENE. (218-217 B.C.) P. Scipio returns from Italy to Gaul — Sempronius recalled from Sicily— Battle of the Ticinus — Hannibal crosses the Po — He is joined by the Gauls— Retreat of Scipio to the Trebia — Hannibal selects his ground and time — Battle of the Trebia — Results of the victory — Hannibal crosses the Apennines — The marshes of • the Arno— Position of the Roman armies — Flaminius and his antecedents — Despondency at Rome — Resolution of Flaminius — He follows Hannibal from Arretium — Livy and Polybius com- pared— Position chosen by Hannibal — Battle of the Trasimene lake — Death of Flaminius , . . , . . .213 CHAPTER XH. HANNIBAL OVERRUNS CENTRAL ITALY. {217-216 B.C.) News of the Trasimene defeat reaches Rome — Measures of the Roman Senate — Hannibal marches into Picenum — Sends despatches to Carthage — He arms his troops in the Roman fashion— Advance of the Dictator Fabius — His policy — Discon- tent of his troops — Hannibal ravages Samnium and Campania — Beauty and wealth of Campania — Continued inaction of Fabius — He tries to entrap Hannibal but fails — Minucius left in com- mand— is raised to equal rank with Fabius — is saved from disaster by him — Services of Fabius to Rome . . . , 234 , xxiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. BATTLE OF CANN^. CHARACTER OF HANNIBAL. (2l6 B.C.) PACE Energy and spirit of the Romans — The rival armies face each other at Cannae — Nature of the ground — The double command of .^Emilius Paullus and Varro — Anxiety at Rome — Dispositions of Hannibal for the battle — Battle of Cannse — Number of the slain — Panic at Rome — Measures of the Senate — Course of the war — Was Hannibal right or wrong in not advancing on Rome now ? — Greatness of Hannibal and of Rome — Character and genius of Hannibal — his ascending series of successes — his in- fluence over men — Sources of our knowledge of him — Charges against him — Roman feeling towards him — Change in character of war after Cannas — Polybius and Silenus .... 249 CHAPTER XIV. REVOLT OF CAPUA. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. (216-212 B.C.) Capua revolts — Marcellus — Hannibal winters at Capua — Latin colonies still true to Rome — Great exertions of Rome— Hannibal negotiates with Syracuse, Sardinia, and Macedon — His position at Tifata — Fabius and Marcellus Consuls — The tide turns against Hannibal — He gains possession of Tarentum— The war in Sicily — Importance of Syracuse — Its siege and capture — Its fate . 275 CHAPTER XV. SIEGE OF CAPUA AND HANNIBAL's MARCH ON ROME. (212-208 B.C.) Importance of warin Spain — Successes and death of the two Scipios — Renewed activity of Hannibal— Siege of Capua — Hannibal attempts to relieve it — His march on Rome — Fate of Capua — Continued superiority of Hannibal in the field — Death of Mar- cellus— Influence of family traditions at Rome — Patriotism of Romans — Latin colonies show symptoms of exhaustion . .291 CONTENTS. XXV CHAPTER XVI. BATTLE OF THE METAURUS. (207 B.C.) PAGE The approach of Hasdrubal from Spain — His messengers fail to find Hannibal — Brilliant march of Nero— Battle of the Metaurus — Triumph and brutality of Nero ...... 309 CHAPTER XVn. p. CORNELIUS SCIPIO. (2IO-206 B.C.) Scipio in .Spain — His early history — His character and influence — Made proconsul — Takes New Carthage — Carthaginians finally driven out of Spain ........ yid CHAPTER XVIII. THE WAR IN AFRICA ; BATTLE OF ZAMA. (206-202 B.C.) Scipio returns to Rome and is elected Consul — Receives leave to invade Africa — Goes to Sicily — His doings and difficulties there — Sails for Africa — Massinissa and Syphax — Roman ignorance of Carthage — The fall of Carthage, how far a matter of regret — Siege of Utica — Scipio's command prolonged — He burns the Carthaginian camps — Sophonisba — The Carthaginian peace party — Sons of Hamilcar recalled to Africa — Mago obeys the summons — Hannibal obeys it — The Lacinian column — Joy in Italy — First operations of Hannibal in Africa — Battle of Zama — Dignity ol Hannibal — Terms of peace — Results of the war — Alternative policies open to Rome ...... 326 XXV i CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. CARTHAGE AT THE MERCY OF ROME. (20I-I50 B.C.) PAGE Deterioration of Roman character — Condition of Italy — Condition of Rome — Condition of Roman provinces — Story of Lucius Flamininus — Story of Sergius Galba— Rapid conquest of the East — State of Eastern world— Summary of Roman conquests in the East — Reforms introduced by Hannibal at Carthage — Romans demand his surrender — His exile and wanderings — His schemes, his sufferings, and his death — Roman fear and hatred of him — Credibility of the anecdotes about him — Humour of Hannibal — Anecdotes of him while at court of Antiochus and during his wandering life — He founds Artaxata and Prusa — His personal characteristics — Death of Scipio — Treatment of Car- thage by Romans and Massinissa ...... 356 CHAPTER XX. DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE. (149-146 B.C.) Appian and his History — Polybius — Characteristics of his Historj- — His love of truth — Topography of Carthage — Causes of its obscurity — Changes made by Nature — Changes made by Man — The peninsula and the isthmus — The fortifications and triple wall — The Ttenia — The harbours — Resolve of Rome respecting Carthage — Treachery of Romans — Scene at Utica — Scene at Carthage — The Roman attack fails — Repeated failures and losses — Scipio yEmilianus — His character and connections — He takes the Megara — Siege of the city proper — Scipio's mole and the new outlet — Contradictions in Carthaginian character — Scipio attacks the harbour quarter — He takes Nepheris — The final assault — The three streets— The Byrsa — Fate of the city and its inhabitants— Curse of Scipio — Unique character of the fall of Carthage — Its consequences — Subsequent cities on its site —Final destruction by the Arabs 379 CONTENTS. xxvii CHAPTER XXL CARTHAGE AS IT IS. PAGE Interest of a visit to Carthage — Nature of impressions thence de- rived— Its topography — First view disappointing — The Goletta and theTsenia — Djebel Khawi and the NecropoHs — Vicissitudes of its history — Its treatment by the Romans — Sanctity of burying place among Semitic races — Ras Sidi Bu Said and its sanctity — St. Louis a Muslim saint — Scene of misadventure of Mancinus — His picture of Carthage — Hill of St. Louis the ancient Byrsa — Description of Byrsa — Gulf of Tunis and Peninsula of the Dakhla — Lake of Tunis and Plain of Carthage — The aqueduct, its character, history, and appearance — Utica — Obliteration of Punic City — The ' smaller cisterns ' — Are they Punic or Roman? — The larger cisterns — Debris of four cities — Excava- tions of Dr. Davis — Excavations of M. Beule — Remains of triple wall and traces of final conflagration — Catapult bolts — Remains of ancient harbours — Buildings beneath the sea — Oriental character of Tunis — Strange mixture of races — Streets of Tunis — Sights of Tunis — The neighbourhood of Tunis — Patriarchal life — Characteristics of the Arab — His unchangeableness — Con- clusion 409 i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, &• PLANS. Remains of Ancient Harbours at Carthage . Frontispiece The Smaller Cisterns at Carthage . . . to face p. i Phcenician Colonies and Carthaginian Empire „ 14 Sicily >, 70 Battle of Ecnomus * ,,102 Italy ,, 192 Battle of Trebia ,, 220 Battle of Trasimene ,, 230 Battle of Cannae ,, 256 Carthage and its Neighbourhood .... „ 382 Plan of Harbours at Carthage .... 386 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER I. CARTHAGE. Characteristics of Phoenicians — Their defects —Size of their territory — Their relations to Israelites — Early commerce in Mediterranean — Pre-eminence of Phoenicians — Origin of Carthage — its position and population — its relation to Sicily — Our knowledge of Carthage, whence derived — its Early History — Rapid growth of its empire — Its dealings with the Native Africans — with the Phoenician cities in Africa — with Tyre — with Sicilian Greeks — Constitution of Car- thage— The Suffetes — The Senate — Deterioration of constitution — The ' Hundred ' Judges — Close oligarchy — General contentment — Social life of Carthaginians — Their commercial principles — Their agriculture — Merits of Mago's work on Agriculture — Carthaginian religion — Worship of Baal-Moloch — ofTanith or Astarte- — deeply- rooted character of this worship — Inferior Divinities — Worship of Melcarth — Carthaginian literature — The army — The merce- naries and the Numidian Cavalry — Condition of the masses— Co- lonisation— Periplus of Hanno — Periplus of Himilco — ' Mago's ' harbour — Disaffection of subject races — Was Rome or Carthage best fitted for empire ? It was well for the development and civilisation of the ancient world that the Hebrew fugitives from B 2 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Egypt were not able to drive at once from the whole coast of Syria its old inhabitants ; for the accursed race of the Canaanites whom, for their licentious worship and cruel rites, they were bidden to extirpate from Palestine itself, were no other than those enterprising mariners and those dauntless colonists who, sallying from their narrow roadsteads, committed their fragile barks to the mercy of unknown seas, and, under their Greek name of Phoenicians, explored island and pro- montory, creek and bay, from the coast of Malabar even to the lagunes of the Baltic. From Tyre and Sidon issued those busy merchants who carried, with their wares, to distant shores the rudiments of science and of many practical arts which they had obtained from the far East, and which, probably, they but half understood themselves. It was they who, at a period antecedent to all contemporary- historical records, in- troduced written characters, the foundation of all high intellectual development, into that country which wa- destined to carry intellectual and artistic culture to the highest point which humanity has yet reached. It was they who learned to steer their ships by the sure help of the Polar Star,^ while the Greeks still depended on the Great Bear ; it was they who rounded the Cape of Storms, and earned the best right to call it the Cape of Good Hope, 2,000 years before Vasco de Gama.^ Their ships returned to their native shores bringing with them sandal wood from Malabar, spices from Arabia, fine linen from Egypt, ostrich plumes from the Sahara. Cyprus gave them its copper, Elba its iron, the coast of the Black Sea its manufactured ' Ovid, Fasti, iii. 107 : Tristia, iv. 3. 1. - Herod, iv. 42. CHARACTERISTICS OF PHCENICIANS. 3 steel. Silver they brought from Spain, gold from the Niger, tin from the Scilly Isles, and amber from the Baltic. Where they sailed, there they planted factories which opened a caravan trade with the interior of vast continents hitherto regarded as inaccessible, and which became inaccessible for centuries again when the Phoenicians disappeared from history. They were as famous for their artistic skill as for their enterprise and energy. In the Iliad and the Odyssey — the best picture, next after the Book of Genesis, of the ' youth of the world ' which has come down to us — the finest em- broideries, the most costly robes, the most exquisitely chased wine bowls, are of Sidonian workmanship. Indeed, to say in Homeric times that a thing was a work of fine art at all was almost equivalent to saying that it was Phoenician ' Did the greatest of the Jewish kings desire to adorn the Temple which he had erected to the Most High in the manner least unworthy of Him A Phoenician king must supply him with the well- hewn cedars of his stately Lebanon, and the cunning hand of a Phoenician artisan must shape the pillars and the lavers, the oxen and the lions of brass, which decorated the shrine. ' Thou knowest that there is not among us any that hath skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.' ^ Did the King of Persia himself, in the intoxication of his pride, command miracles to be performed, boisterous straits to be bridged, or a peninsula to become an island It was Phoenician architects who lashed together the boats that were to ' Cf. Homer, Odyssij, iv. 613-619 ; xv. 115-119 ; Iliad, vi. 289- 291 ; xxiii. 743, SiSo^/es TroAiiSai'SaAoi. ' I Kings V. 6 ; cf. Homer, Od. xv. 425, SiSoD^'os iruAvxa^Kov. B 2 4 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. connect Asia with Europe/ and it was Phoenician workmen who knew best how to economise their toil in digging the canal that was to transport the fleet of Xerxes through dry land, and save it from the winds and waves of Mount Athos.^ The merchants of Tyre were, in truth, the princes, and her traffickers the honourable men, of the earth. Wherever a ship could penetrate, a factory be planted, a trade de- veloped or created, there we find these ubiquitous, these irrepressible Phoenicians. But the picture is not all bright. The Phoenician civilisation, brilliant as it was, was narrow and self- seeking. The spirit of commercial enterprise implies many individual and many social virtues : self-reliance and self-control, patience and inventiveness, caution and daring, the spirit of discipline and the spirit of progress. But pushed to excess, or unaccompanied by more elevated impulses, it involves evils which ensure premature decline. Even in modern times where de- velopment is necessarily more many-sided than in the states of antiquity, the exclusively commercial spirit has, after a brief interval, proved to be inconsistent with the highest national virtues. The histor}- of Por- tuguese and of Spanish, of Venetian and of Dutch, commercial enterprise, whether in the Old or New World, affords lamentable proof of this. The impulse of discovery, the thirst for knowledge, the spirit of ad- venture, which originally accompanied the commercial spirit and lent dignity thereto, are in time swallowed up by it. Wealth is pursued for its own sake only, life is maintained at the cost of the greater part of ' Herod, vii. 34. - Ibid. 23. THEIR DEFECTS. 5 what makes life worth having, and acts of cruelty and lust, of treachery and ingratitude, are perpetrated to gratify the ruling passion ; and so, in some measure, was it with the Phoenicians. They were never cowards, but they carried the huckstering spirit into all their dealings. It was easier for them to buy with their gold than to take or preserve with their swords ; and as early even as the time of Ezekiel we find them, like other commercial nations, hiring mercenaries from Persia and from Ethiopia to fight their battles for them.' It was not from high moral motives — for such were almost unknown to the nations of antiquity, at least in their dealings with each other — but from a shrewd and calculating policy, that the Phoenicians, alike of the parent country and of the daughter cities, so long forbore to aim at foreign conquest or at terri- torial aggrandisement. We know well what the tiny territory of Palestine has done for the religion of the world, and what the tiny Greece has done for its intellect and its art ; but we are apt to forget that what the Phoenicians did for the development and intercommunication of the world was achieved by a state confined within narrower boun- daries still. In the days of their greatest prosperity, when their ships were to be found on every known and on many unknown seas, the Phoenicians proper of the Syrian coast remained content with a narrow strip of fertile territory, squeezed in between the mountains and the sea, of the length of some thirty miles and of the average breadth of only a single mile ! And if the ' Ezekiel xxvii. lo : ' They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army ; thy men of war ; they hanged the sliield and helmet on thee ; they set forth thy comeliness.' 6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. existence of a few settlements beyond these limits, as, for instance, Aradus and Tripolis and Berytus to the north, and Accho and Dora to the south, entitle us to extend the name of Phoenicia to some 120 miles of coast, with a plain behind it which sometimes broad- ened out into a sweep of a dozen miles, was it not sound policy, even in a community so enlarged, to keep for themselves the gold they had so hardly won, rather than lavish it on foreign mercenaries in the hope of extending their sway inland, or in the vain attempt to resist by force of arms the mighty mo- narchs of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Babylon ? Their strength was to sit still, to acknowledge the titular supremacy of anyone who chose to claim it, and then, when the time came, to buy the intruder off : ' careless they dwelt, quiet and secure after the manner of the Zidonians, and had no dealings with any man.'' One branch of business there was — and a lucrative one it must have been — which did tempt the Tyrian merchants occasionally to overstep their natural boundaries even by land. They were slave traders, and they did not disdain, on occasion, to traffic in the persons of their nearest neighbours and their best friends. Palestine was, throughout the period of the later Old Testament history, the granary of Tyre, sup- plying it with corn and oil ; and mutual convenience seems, in spite of the cruelties of Jezebel and the bloody offerings to Moloch, to have long maintained a friendly feeling between the adjoining peoples. But in the time of the Maccabees there is evidence to show that Tyrian merchants accompanied the armies of ' Judges xviii. 7. THEIR RELATIONS TO THE ISRAELITES. 7 Syria for the purpose of purchasing the Jews who should be taken captive in the war ; and when Jerusa- lem fell before Antiochus Epiphanes the number of those sold as slaves, doubtless to these same Phoeni- cian slave merchants, equalled that of the slain.^ To practices such as these — if, indeed, this may be taken as a sample — which must have been as revolting to the patriotism as their impure worship was to the re- ligious feelings of the Hebrew prophets, are probably ■due the unsparing and unqualified denunciations of Tyre and Sidon which we find in Joel and Amos, in Isaiah and in Ezekiel. The religion of the Phoenicians appears to have been originally a rude worship of the powers of Nature ; but it is certain that their worship of Baal, of Astarte, and of Adonis, as Ave read of it in the Greek and Roman no less than in the Hebrew classics, involved abominations of which human sacrifice was hardly the worst. The land-locked sea, the eastern extremity of which washes the shores of Phoenicia proper, connect- ing as it does three continents, and abounding in deep gulfs, in fine harbours, and in fertile islands, seems to have been intended by Nature for the early develop- ment of commerce and colonisation. By robbing the ocean of half its mystery and of more than half its terrors, it allured the timid mariner, even as the eagle does its young, from headland on to headland, or from islet to islet, till it became the high- way of the nations of the ancient world ; and the products of each of the countries whose shores it laves became the common property of all. At a ' I Mace. iii. 41 ; 2 Mace. v. 14 ; cf. also Joel iii. 6 ; Amos i. 9. 8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. very early period the Etruscans, for instance — that mysterious people who then occupied with their set- tlements Campania and Cisalpine Gaul, as well as the extensive region to which they afterwards gave their name — swept all the Italian seas with their galleys, half piratical and half commercial. The Greeks, somewhat later, founded (B.C. 631) Cyrene and (B.C. 560) Barca in Africa, (B.C. 564) Alalia in Corsica, and (B.C. 600) Massilia in Gaul, and lined the southern .shores of Italy and the western shores 01 Asia Minor, with that fringe of colonies which were so soon to eclipse in prosperity and power their parent cities. Even Egypt, with her immemorial an- tiquity and her exclusive civilisation, deigned to open (B.C. 550) an emporium at Naucratis for the ships and commerce of the Greeks, creatures of yesterday, as they must have seemed in comparison with her.' But in this general race of enterprise and com- merce among the nations which bordered on the Mediterranean, it is to the Phoenicians that un- questionably belongs the foremost place. In the dimmest dawn of history, many centuries before the Greeks had set foot in Asia Minor or in Italy, before even they had .settled down in secure po.ssession of their own tet-ritories, we hear of Phoenician settlements in Asia Minor and in Greece itself, in Africa, in Mace- don, and in Spain. There is hardly an island in the Mediterranean which has not preser\^ed some traces of these early visitors : Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete in the Levant ; Malta, Sicily, and the Balearic Isles in the middle passage ; Sardinia and Corsica in the Tyr- ' Herod, ii. 178. PRE-EMINEi\CE OF PHCENICIAN COMMERCE. 9 rhenian Sea ; the Cyclades, as Thucydides tells us, in the mid-^gean ; ' and even Samothrace and Thasos at its northern extremity, where Herodotus, to use his own forcible expression, himself saw a whole mountain 'turned upside down' by their mining energy:* all have either yielded Phoenician coins and inscriptions, have retained Phoenician proper names and legends, or possess mines, long, perhaps, disused, but which were worked as none but Phoenicians ever worked them. But among the Phoenician factories which dotted the whole southern shore of the Mediterranean, from the east end of the greater Syrtis even to the Pillars of Hercules, there was one which, from a concurrence of circumstances, was destined rapidly to outstrip all the others, to make herself their acknowledged head, to become the Queen of the Mediterranean, and, in some sense, of the Ocean beyond, and, for a space of over a hundred years, to maintain a deadly and not an unequal contest with the future mistress of the world. The history of that great drama, its antecedents, and its consequences, forms the subject of this volume. The rising African factory was known to its in- habitants by the name of Kirjath-Hadeschath, or New Town, to distinguish it from the much older settle- ment of Utica, of which it may have been, to some extent, an offshoot. The Greeks, when they came to know of its existence, called it Karchedon, and the Romans Carthago. The ' date of its foundation is uncertain ; but the current tradition refers it to a period about a hundred years before the founding of ' Thuc> 1. i. 8 ; cf. Herod, iv. 147. ^ Herod, vi. 47. lo CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Rome' The fortress that was to protect the youny; settlement \v;is built upon a peninsula projeclini; eastuarils from the inner corner of w hat is now called the Gulf of Tunis, the lart^est and most beautiful roadstead of the North African coast. The topography of Carthage will be described in detail at a later period of this history. At present it will be sufficient to reiriark that the city proper, al the time at which it is best known to us, the period of the Punic wars, consistctl of the Hyrsa or Citadel- quarter, a Greek word corrupted frt)m the Canaanitish Bozra, or Bostra, that is, a fort, and of the Cothon, or harbour quarter, so important in the history of the final siege. To the north and west of these, and occupying all the vast space between them and the isthmus behind, were the Megara (Hebrew, Magurim), that is, the suburbs and gardens of Carthage, which, with the city proper, covered an area twenty-three miles in circumference.* Its population must have been fully proportionate to its size. Just before the third Punic war, when its strength had been drained by the two long wars with Rome and by the incessant depredations of that chartered brigand Massinis.sa, it contained 700,000 inhabitants,' and towards the close of the final siege the Byrsa alone was able to give ' Jusliii, xviii. 6. 9: 'Concliln csl uihs hivc sci)tii.ij;iiilii diiolms aniiis antequani Koma.' Appiaii {Pun. i.) places its fonmlation fifty years before the fall of Troy. The wide tliserepancy may be jicrhaps nc- eounted for by the existence of an earlier I'httnician settlement 011 or about the same spot, said to have been called Cambe. Tolybius, i. 73-5 ; Livy, Epit. 41 ; Strabo, xvii. 3. 14. ' Stral)(>, 3-1 5. ITS RELATION TO SICILY. shelter to a motley multitude of 50,000 men, women, and children.' The river Bagradas (Mejerda), which traverses what was then the most fertile portion of Northern Africa, a country smiling with corn fields, and gardens, olive plantations, and vineyards, and forming the home domain of Carthage, entered the Gulf of Tunis on the north side of the city ; but the silt which it has brought down, combined with the sand thrown up in that part of the gulf by wind and tide together, has, in the lapse of ages, altered its course, and its mouth is now to be found, not near the site of the daughter, but some miles to the northward, near the parent city of Utica. Facing the Hermaean promontory (Cape Bon), the north-eastern horn of the Gulf of Tunis, at a distance of only ninety miles, was the Island of Sicily, which, as a glance at the map, and as the sunken ridge ex- tending from one to the other still clearly show, must have once actually united Europe to Africa. This fair island it was which, crowded, even in those early days, with Phoenician factories,^ seemed to beckon the chief of Phoenician cities onwards towards an easy and a natural field of foreign conquest. This it was which proved to be the apple of fierce discord for centuries between Carthage and the Greek colonies, which soon disputed its possession with her. This, in an ever chequered warfare, and at the cost of torrents of the blood of her mercenaries, and of untold treasures of her citizens, enriched Carthage with the most splendid trophies — stolen trophies though they were- — of Greek ' Appian, Fun. 130. Cf. Thuc. vi. 2. 12 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. art. This, finally, was the chief battle-fidd of the contending forces during the whole of the first Punic war — in the beginning, that is, of her fierce struggle for existence with all the power of Rome. Such, very briefly, was the city, and such the race whose varied fortunes, so far as our fragmentarj- materials allow us, we are about to trace. What were the causes of the rapid rise of Carthage ; what was the extent of her African and her foreign do- minions, and the nature of her hold upon them, what were the peculiar excellences and defects of her in- ternal constitution, and what the principles on which she traded and colonised, conquered and ruled ; — to these and other questions some answer must be given, as a necessary preliminary to that part of her history, which alone we can trace consecutively. Some answer we must give, but how are we to give it No native poet, whose writings have come down to us, has sung of the origin of Carthage, or of her romantic voyages ; no native orator has described, in glowing periods which we can still read, the splendour of her buildings and the opulence of her merchant princes. No native annalist has preserved the story of her long rivalry with Greeks and Etruscans, and no African philosopher has moralised upon the stability of her institutions or the causes of her fall. All have perished. The text of three treaties with Rome, made in the days of her prosperity ; the log-book of an adventurous Carthaginian admiral, dedicated on his return from the Senegal or the Niger as a votive offering in the temple of Baal ; some fragments of the practical precepts of a Carthaginian agriculturist, EARLY HISTORY OF CARTHAGE. 13 translated by the order of the utilitarian Roman senate ; a speech or two of a vagabond Carthaginian in the Paenulus of Plautus, which has been grievously mutilated in the process of transcribing it into Roman letters ; a few Punic inscriptions buried twenty feet below the surface of the ground, entombed and pre- served by successive Roman, and V^andal, and Arab devastations, and now at length revealed and de- ciphered by the efforts of French and English archaeo- logists ; the massive substructions of ancient temples ; the enormous reservoirs of water ; and the majestic procession of stately aqueducts which no barbarism has been able to destroy — these are the only native or semi-native sources from which we can draw the outlines of our picture, and we must eke out our nar- rative of Carthage in the days of her prosperity, as best we may, from a few chapters of reflexions by the greatest of the Greek philosophers, from the late Roman annalists who saw everything with Roman eyes, and from a few but precious antiquarian remarks in the narrative of the great Greek historian, Polybius, who, with all his love of truth and love of justice, saw Carthage only at the moment of her fall, and was the bosom friend of her destroyer. In her origin, at least, Carthage seems to have been, like other Phoenician settlements, a mere com- mercial factory. Her inhabitants cultivated friendly relations with the natives, looked upon themselves as tenants at will rather than as owners of the soil, and, as such, cheerfully paid a rent to the African Berbers for the ground covered by their dwellings.' It was the ' Ju.>iin, xviii. 5. 14. 14 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. instinct of self-preservation alone which dictated a change of policy, and transformed this peace-loving mercantile community into the warlike and conquer- ing state, of which the whole of the Western Mediter- ranean was so soon to feel the power. A people far less keen-sighted than the Phoenicians must have dis- cerned that it was their very existence which was at stake ; at all events, that unless they were willing to be dislodged from Africa, and Sicily, and Spain, as they had already been dislodged from Italy and Greece, and the islands of the Levant, by the flood of Hellenic colonisation, they must alter their policy. Accordingly they joined hands (in B.C. 5 37) with their inveterate enemies, the Etruscans, to prevent a threatened settlement of some exiled Phocaeans on the important island of Corsica.' In Africa they took up arms to make the inhabitants of Cyrene feel that it was towards Egypt or the interior, not towards Carthage, that they must look for an extension of their boundaries ; ^ and in Sicily, by withdrawing half voluntarily from the eastern side of the island in which the Greeks had settled, they tightened their grip upon that western portion which, as being nearer to Carthage, was more important to them, and where the original Phoenician settlements of Panormus, Motye, and Soloeis had been planted. The result of this change of policy was that the western half of the Mediterranean became — what, at one time, the whole of it had bidden fair to be — a Phoenician lake, in which no foreign merchantmen dared to show themselves. It was a vast preserve, to ' Herod, i. 1 65- 1 66. ' Sallust, JugiirtJia, 79. GROWTH OF ITS EMPIRE. 15 be caught trespassing upon which, so Strabo tells us, on the authority of Eratosthenes, ensured the punish- ment of instant death by drowning.' No promontory was so barren, no islet so insignificant,^ as to escape the jealous and ever- watchful eye of the Cartha- ginians. In Corsica, if they could not get any firm or extensive foothold themselves, they at least pre- vented any other state from doing the like.^ Into their hands fell, in spite of the ambitious dreams of Persian kings and the aspirations of patriot Greeks, that ' greatest of all islands,' the island of Sardinia theirs were the ^gatian and the Liparaean, the Balearic and the Pityusian Isles ; theirs the tiny Elba, with its inexhaustible supply of metals ; theirs, too, Malta still remained, an outpo.st pushed far into the domain of their advancing enemies, a memorial of what once had been, and, perhaps, to the sanguine Carthaginian temperament, an earnest of what might be again hereafter.^ Above all, the Phoenician settle- ments in Spain, at the innermost corner of the great preserve, with the adjacent silver mines which gave to these settlements their peculiar value, were now trebly safe from all intruders. Elated, as it would seem, by their naval successes, which were hardly of their own seeking, the Cartha- ginians thought that they might now at last become the owners of the small strip of African territory ' Strabo, xvii. I. 19. - Thuc. vi. 2; Polyb. i. 10. 5. ' Herod, i. 166 ; cf. Servius on Virg. A^n. iv. 628, ' litora litoribus contraria,' where he quotes the stipulation on the neutrality of Corsica, as between the Carthaginians and Romans. ' Herod, i. 170, and v. 106 ; Polyb. iii. 22 and 25. * Cf. Livy, xxi. 51 ; Diod. v. 12 ; Cicero, Verres, ii. 72 ; iv. 46. i6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. which they had hitherto seemed to occupy on suffer- ance only, and they refused the ground-rent which, up till now, they had paid to the adjoining tribes.' Step by step they enlarged their territories at the ex- pense of the natives, till the whole of the rich terri- tory watered by the Bagradas became theirs. The Nomadic tribes were beaten back beyond the river Triton into the country named, from the roving habits of its inhabitants, Numidia, or into the desert of Tri- polis.^ The agricultural tribes were forced to pay tribute to the conquerors for the right of cultivating their own soil, or to shed their blood on the field of battle in the prosecution of further conquests from the tribes beyond. Nor did the kindred Phoenician settlements in the adjoining parts of Africa escape unscathed. Utica alone, owing probably to her antiquity and to the semi-parental relation in which .she stood to Carthage, was allowed to retain her walls and full equality of rights with the rising power ; ^ but Hippo Zarytus, and Adrumetum, the greater and the lesser Leptis, were compelled to pull down their walls and acknow- ledge the supremacy of the Carthaginian city. All ' Justin, xix. I. 3 and ii. 4. - Cf. Herod, iv. 191. ' It is remarkable that while Utica is not raentioned in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage, concluded, according to Polybius (iii. 22), in 509 B.C., she appears in the second treaty (Polyb. iii. 24) 348 B.C. on terms of exact equality with Carthage, and even in that made by Hannibal, when in Italy, with Philip of Macedon (Polyb. vii. 9) 215 H.c, she receives the honour of a special and independent mention. Probably the subjection to Carthage of the other Phoeni- cian cities in Africa had taken place in the interval, and had left Utica in this position of solitary preeminence. DEALINGS WITH PHCENICIAN CITIES. 17 along the northern coast of Africa the original Phoeni- cian settlers, and, probably, to some extent, the Cartha- ginians themselves, had intermarried with the natives. The product of these marriages was that numerous class of Liby-phcenicians which proved to be so im- portant in the history of Carthaginian colonisation and conquest a class which, equi-distant from the Berbers on the one hand and from the Carthaginians proper on the other, and composed of those who were neither wholly citizens nor yet wholly aliens, experi- enced the lot of most half-castes, and were alternately trusted and feared, pampered and oppressed, loved and hated, by the ruling state. It would follow, from what has been already said of the retreat of the Phoenicians from the Eastern Mediterranean, and the occupation of this portion of the sea by the Greeks, that as Carthage rose so would Tyre naturally decline ; but it was in the days of that decline that Tyre, like other Phoenician cities, gathering fresh strength from her w^eakness, and fresh courage from her despair, displayed those powers of dogged resistance to the inevitable which would seem to be the peculiar dower of her own and of kindred nations. Three tremendous sieges, directed, the one by the great- est of the Assyrian, the second by the greatest of the Babylonian, and the third by the greatest of the Mace- donian monarchs, did Tyre undergo even in the days of her ' decline and fall ;' and the terrible vengeance of Alexander, when the bitter end had come upon the city which he could break but could not bend, is the ' Polyb. iii. 33. 15 ; LiN-y, xxi. 22; xxv. 40 ; Diod. xx. 55. C t8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. best evidence of the more than human endurance which, when they were driven to stand at bay, the inhabitants of the great merchant city could put forth. Tyre herself fell, but the great Tyrian city in the Bay of Tunis still remained ; and to Carthage the few Tyrians — young children or old men — who alone escaped, transferred their fortunes and their hopes." In the annals of Phoenician colonisation (and it should be remembered) — for it sheds a kindly ray of human feeling over a history which as seen in our imperfect re- cords of it, with what we know as well as what we do not know, is not too human — the closest ties of intimacy were generally maintained between the mother and the daughter cities.^ There was no mean jealousy, as so often happened among the Greeks, on the part of the mother towards the daughter ; there was no precocious self-assertion or unseemly arrogance on the part of the rising daughter towards her declining mother. The Persian king might command the services of the Phoenician navy to help him to crush a Greek or an Egyptian rival ; but the most ferocious of them all, Cambyses himself, found that he might as well have issued his orders to the winds or the waves as have bidden the Tyrians to take up sacrilegious arms against their Carthaginian children.^ One enterprise, indeed, the Carthaginians did undertake in obedience to the fiat of the great king, which, to the lasting good of humanity, failed of its object. Xerxes (B.C. 480) advancing with his millions ' Diodorus Siculus, xvii. 40. 46 ; Q. Cuitius, iv. 2. 2 Diod. XX. 14 ; cf. Justin, xviii. 7. 7. ' Herod, iii. 19. CONSTITUTION OF CARTHAGE. of barbarians upon Athens from the east, bade, so it is said, Hamilcar advance with his 300,000 merce- naries upon Syracuse from the west.^ The torch of Greek learning and civilisation was to be extinguished at the most opposite ends of the Greek world at one and the same moment ; but, happily for mankind at large, both attempts were foiled. The efforts of Xerxes ended in the destruction of the Persian fleet at Salamis, and the disgraceful flight of the king to Asia ; the efforts of Hamilcar ended in his defeat and death at Himera, and in the destruction of 150,000 of his army ; and by a dramatic propriety which is not common in history, whatever it may be in fiction, this double victory of Greek civilisation is said to have taken place in the same year and on the very same day.^ Let us now turn to the political organization of the city which achieved so rapid and marvellous a develop- ment, and enquire how far it was the effect and how far the cause of her prosperity. The constitution of Carthage was not the work of a single legislator, as that of Sparta is said to have been, nor of a series of legislators like that of Athens ; it was rather, like that of England, the growth of circumstances and of cen- turies. It obtained the praise of Aristotle for its judicious admixture of the monarchical, the oligarchi- cal, and the democratical elements.^ The oligarchical • Diod. xi. 21-24 i Justin, xix. i, 12. ^ Herod, vii. 166. See below, p. 48. ' Aristotle, Politics, ii. ll ; cf. also Polyb. vi. 51. See Hecren's chapter on the Constiliition of Cartkat^v (' Reflexions on Trade'), vol. i.-iii., to which, in common with all other modern writers on Car- 20 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. element, he admits, tended from very early times to a predominance ; ' but that it must have been moderate and beneficial in the use of its power is shown, he re- marks, by the fact that its rule was never seriously threatened either by a despot from above or by the masses from below.^ It must be remembered — for much of the confusion that exists with regard to the Carthaginian constitution is owing to its being for- gotten— that Aristotle's remarks as to the mixed character of the Carthaginian government, however true they may be of the Carthage of the earlier times^ are only true in a limited sense of the Carthage we know best — the Carthage of the Pimic wars. The original monarchical constitution — doubtless inherited from Tyre — was represented (practically in Aristotle's time, and theoretically to the latest period) by two supreme magistrates called by the Romans Suffetes. ^heir name is the same as the Hebrew Shofetim, mistranslated in our Bible, Judges. The Hamilcars and Hannos of Carthage were, like their prototypes, the Gideons and the Samsons of the Book of Judges, not so much the judges, as the protec- tors and the rulers of their respective states. They are compared by Greek writers to the two kings of Sparta, and by the Romans to their own consuls.* That they were, in the earliest times, appointed for tliage, I am much indebted. He has collected nearly all the infonnation relating to the obscure subject of the constitution of Carthage to be found in the ancients ; obscure, however, it still unfortunately remains. ' Arist. Pol. ii. II. S-9. 2 Arist. loc. cit. 2. ' Arist. loc. cit. 3 ; Livy, xxx. 7. ' Senatum itaque Suffetes (quod velut consulare imperium apud eos erat) vocaverunt.' There THE SENATE. 21 life, and not, as is commonly supposed, elected an- nually, is clear from a variety of indications ; and, like the ' king of the sacrifices ' at Rome, and the ' king archon ' at Athens, they seem, when the kingly office itself was abolished, to have retained those priestly functions which, according to ancient conceptions, were indissolubly united with royalty.' Beneath these kings came, in the older constitu- tion, a council, called by the Greeks the Gerusia,^ or Council of Ancients, consisting of twenty-eight mem- bers, over which the Suffetes presided. This council declared war, ordered levies of troops, appointed generals, sent out colonies.^ If the council and Suffetes agreed, their decision was final ; if they dis- agreed, the matter was referred to the people at large.'' In this and in other ways each element of the body politic had its share in the administration of the State. But the Carthaginian constitution described and praised by Aristotle is not the same as that of the Punic wars. In the interval which separates the two epochs, short as it is, a great change, which must have been long preparing, had been completed. The Suffetes had gradually become little more than an honorary were two Suffetes also at Gades, and perhaps in all the Phoenician colonies, Livy, xxviii. 37. ' Suffetes eorum, qui summus Poenis est magistratus . . . cruci adfigi jussit.' ' Cf. Herod, viii. 167, &C. ' Cf. Livy, XXX. 16. ' Oratores ad pacem petendam mittunt tri- ginta seniorum principes. Id erat sanctius apud illos consilium, maximaque ad ipsum senatum regendum vis.' • 3 Cf. Polyb. i. 31. 8 ; iii. 33. 2, 3 ; vi. 5. I, 2. * Arist. Pol. ii. 11. 5. 22 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. magistracy. The senate over which they presided had allowed the main part of their power to slip out of their hands into those of another body, which, if it seemed to be more liberal in point of numbers and in conformation, was much more exclusive in policy and spirit. The appeal to the people was only now re- sorted to in times of public excitement, when the rulers, by appearing to share power, tried to lessen envy, and allow^ed the citizens to go through the form of registering what, practically, they had already de- creed. The details of the change are obscure ; but there are some points which are undisputed and are sufficient to indicate its general character. The new body consisted of 104 members, and was commonly known by the name of ' The Hundred.' Its members were selected indeed from a larger body, who were themselves, in some sense, the choice of the people. But the choice of the people in Carthage fell only on the wealthy ; and these, when once they had been so chosen, were responsible to no one for the exercise of their patronage,' and filled up the vacancies in the Hundred from among themselves, like the members of a close college. The result was an oligarchy, like that of Venice, clear-sighted and consistent, moderate, nay, often wise in its policy, but narrow in its views, and often suspicious alike of its opponents and of its friends. I By the old constitution the Senate had the right to control the magistrates ; but this new body of Judges controlled the Senate, and therefore, in ' Arist. Pol. ii. I. 7. THE HUNDRED JUDGES. 23 reality, the magistrates also. Nor was it content to control the Senate ; it practically superseded it. Its members did not, as a rule, appropriate the offices of State to themselves ; but they could summon their holders before them, and so draw their teeth. No Shofete, no senator, no general, was exempt from their irresponsible despotism.' The Shofetes pre- sided, the senators deliberated, the generals fought, as it were, with a halter round their necks. The sentences passed by the Hundred, if they were often deserved, were often also, like those of the dreaded ' Ten ' at Venice, to whom they bore a striking resemblance, arbitraiy and cruel. The unsuccessful general, alike, whether his ill-success was the result of uncontrollable circumstances or of culpable neglect, might be con- demned to crucifixion ; indeed, he often wisely anti- cipated his sentence by committing suicide. Within the ranks of this close oligarchy first-rate ability would seem to have been at a discount. In- deed, the exact equality of all within the privileged ranks is as much a principle of oligarchy as is the equal suppression of all that is outside of it. Lan- guage bears testimony to this in the name given alike ' Justin, xix. 2. 5. ' Centum ex numero senatoium judices deli- guntur, qui, reversis a bello ducibus, rationem reruni gestarum exigerent, ut hoc metu ita in bello imperia cogitarent, ut domi judicia legesque respicerent.' Livy (xxxiii. 46. 3) shows that at the end of the Second Punic War his ofifice of 'judge' had become an office for life ; there was therefore no check at all upon the abuse of its powers : ' Res, fama, vitaque omnium in illorum potestate erat ; qui unum ejus ordinis, idem omnes adversos habebat.' ^ Cf. Polybius, i. II. 5 ; Diod. xx. 10; Val. Max. ii. 7. i. ext. ; Zonaras, viii. 1 1 and 1 7. 24 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. to the Homoioi of Sparta and the ' Peers ' of England. It was jealousy, for instance, of the superior abilities of the family of Mago, and their prolonged pre-emi- nence in the Carthaginian State, which had in the fifth century B.C. cemented the alliance between other and less able families of the aristocracy, and so, ac- cording to the express testimony of Justin,' had first given rise to this very institution of the Hundred Judges; and it was the same mean jealousy of all that is above itself, which, afterwards, in the time of the Punic wars, united, as one man, a large part of the ruling oligarchs in the vain effort to control and to thwart, and to annoy with a thousand petty annoy- ances, the one family of consummate ability which Carthage then possessed, that noble-minded Barcine gens, that ' lion's brood, ' ^ who were brought to the front in those troublous times by the sheer force of their genius, and who, for three generations, ruled by the best of all rights — the right Divine — that of un- swerving devotion to their country, of the ability to rule, and the will to use that ability well. But if we assert, as we have implied, that it was the want of power rather than of will on the part of the ruling oligarchy, which ever left to the general-in- chief that absolute command and that unlimited term of office, which, to our minds, is essential to the pro- secution of a great and distant war, we must take care that we are just. Our ideas of the Carthaginian con- stitution are derived, such as they are, always from foreign, and almost always from unfriendly sources. ' Justin, xix. 2. 5, 6. 2 Val. ]Max. ix. 3. 2. ext. GENERAL CONTENTMENT. 25 Moreover, the information given us on such a subject is — all questions of bias or prejudice apart — necessarily even more fragmentary, and derived from far more imperfect data, than is our knowledge of the material resources, or the external relations of Carthage. The student of Carthaginian history stands, therefore, in the position of the judge who, when there is no counsel to be found for the accused, is himself, in some measure, bound to undertake that office. If the scales of justice are to be held even, he must look upon himself as so far holding a brief for the defence, as to be bound to suggest everything that may fairly be urged in suspense of an adverse judgment. And that the judgments of the Hundred were not always so arbitrary and the policy of the aristocracy not always so ungenerous as is often supposed, is clear from two indisputable facts : first, that the best and ablest citizens were never backward to place their services, in time of war, at the disposal of the government ; and, secondly, that no general of mark, however popular he might be with his* soldiers, or however much for- tune might have frowned upon his enterprises, ever attempted to use his power for the overthrow of the constitution. Such was not the experience of either Greece or Rome ; and we cannot, therefore, help feel- ing, in spite of what the Greek and Roman writers say, that there must have been at Carthage a general feeling of satisfaction with the government and an expectation of substantial justice at their hands. If we try, as we cannot help trying, to picture to ourselves the daily life and personal characteristics of the people whose political organization we have just 26 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. described, and to ask, not what the Carthaginians did — for that we know — but what they were, we are confronted by the provoking blank in the national history which has been already noticed. Such few indications as we have are in thorough keeping with the view we have taken of the political exclusiveness of the ruling clique. There were public baths ; but since no member of the Senate would bathe where the people bathed, a special class of baths were set apart for their use ; ' there were public messes, as they were called ; but these were not, as Aristotle supposed, ana- logous to the Spartan Syssitia,^ an institution in- tended to foster manliness and simplicity of life. The black broth of the heroes of Sparta would not have suited the Carthaginian nobles, who, clad in their famous cloth dyed twice over with the purple dye of their African, their Spanish, or their Tynan fisheries,^ and decorated with the finely-cut glass beads, the invention of their PhcEnician forefathers,* fared sumptuously on their abounding flocks and herds, or on such delicious fruits as those with which Cato moved the astonishment and the envy of the senators of Rome. The Carthaginian Syssitia were incentives to luxury, not checks upon it ; they were clubs formed originally for social gatherings, and afterw-ards ap- plied to the purposes of political gossip or corruption. ' Valerius Maximus, ix. 5. 4. ext. - Arist. Pol. ii. II. 3 ; cf. Liv}', xxxiv. 61 : 'In circulis conviviisque celebrata sermonibus res est ; deinde in senatu quidam,' &c. ^ Hor. Epode, xii. 21: ' Muricibus Tyriis iteratse vellera lanse,' and Ode, ii. 16, 35, ' te bis Afro murice tinctze ; ' these garments were called < Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxvi. 65 ; Tac. Hist. v. 7. THEIR SOCIAL LIFE. 27 Dining-tables of the costly citron wood, a single specimen of which, Pliny tells us, in the time of the Roman empire cost as much as a broad estate, must have been common amongst those who monopolised the commerce of the countries where alone the citron- tree grows.' Gold and silver plate cannot have been rare amongst those who controlled the rich mines of Spain, and to whom their ambassadors reported, with a touch of scorn, upon their return from Rome, that they had been hospitably entertained by senator after senator, but that one service of plate had done duty for all. Objects of fine art — statues, and paint- ings, and embroideries — there were in abundance at Carthage, but they were the work of Greek, not of Phoenician artists, and their abundance indicated not so much the genius, critical or creative, of the Cartha- ginian community as the number of Greek towns — Selinus and Himera, Gela and Agrigentum — sacked in the Sicilian wars. The first commercial state of antiquity of course possessed a gold and silver coinage of its own ; but of the coins which have come down to us it is very doubtful whether many belong to the Phoenician city, and it is certain that those which are in any way remarkable for the beauty of their design or execution were struck in Sicilian mints and designed by Greek artists. In the issue, how- ever, of a leather money of a representative value, ' ' Latifundii taxatione .si quis prsedia tanto mercari velit.' See Pliny, Hist. Nat. xiii. 29-30 ; and cf. Martial, xiv. 89. Accipe felices, Atlantica munera, sylvas : Aurea qui dederit dona, minora dabit. Cf. also the phrase ' Mauri orbes.' 28 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. which would circulate throughout her dependencies, Carthage seems, alone of the commercial states of antiquity, to have anticipated the convenient inven- tion by modern economists of a paper money. Carthage was, beyond doubt, the richest city of antiquity. Her ships were to be found on all known seas, and there was probably no important product, animal, vegetable, or mineral, of the ancient world, which did not find its way into her harbours and pass through the hand of her citizens. But her commercial policy was not more farsighted or more liberal than has been that of other commercial states, even till very modern times. Free-trade was unknown to her ; it would have seemed indeed like a contradiction in terms. If she admitted foreign merchantmen by treaty to her own harbour, she took care by the same docu- ment jealously to exclude them from the more im- portant harbours of her dependencies. She allowed her colonies to trade only so far as suited her own immediate interests, and the precautions she took made it impossible for any one of them ever to become a great centre of commerce, still less to dream of taking her place. It is remarkable, again, that while in no city in the ancient world did commerce rank so high, the noblest citizens even of Carthage seem to have left commercial enterprise to those who came next below them in the social scale. They preferred to live on their estates as agriculturists or country gentlemen, and derived their princely revenues from their farms or their mines, which were worked by prodigious gangs of slaves. The cultivation of the soil was, probably, nowhere in the ancient world carried on with THEIR RELIGION. 29 such rich results as in the smiling country which sur- rounded Carthage. When Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, boldly ventured to transfer to Africa the war he was waging with doubtful success in Sicily, he led his army, we are told, through a country crowded with gardens and plantations, everywhere in- tersected with canals, by which they were plentifully watered. Landed estates succeeded to each other in continuous succession, each adorned with splendid mansions, which revealed the wealth of the owners. Prolonged peace had stored their abodes with every- thing which nature or art could supply ; the country was. fertile with every species of fruit tree ; flocks, and herds, and brood-mares, abounded in their pas- tures. Here dwelt the richest of the Carthaginians, and vied with each other in pomp and luxury.' But the most important factor in the history of a people — especially if it be a Semitic people — is its religion. The religion of the Carthaginians was what their race, their language, and their history would lead us to expect. It was, with slight modifications, the religion of the Canaanites, the religion, that is, which, in spite of the purer Monotheism of the Hebrews and the higher teaching of their prophets, so long exercised a fatal fascination over the great bulk of the Hebrew race. The Phoenician religion has been defined to be 'a deification of the powers of Nature, which naturally developed into an adoration of the objects, in which those powers seemed most active.' Of this adoration the Sun and Moon were the primary objects. The Sun can either create or destroy, he can give life or take it away. ' The Moon ' Diodorus, xx. 8. ^ Movers. 30 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. is his consort ; she can neither create nor destroy, but she can receive and develope, and, as the queen of night, she presides aHke over its stillness and its orgies. Each of these ruling deities, Baal-Moloch or the Sun-god, and the horned Astarte or the Moon — worshipped at Carthage, it would seem, under the name of Tanith — would thus have an ennobling as well as a degrading, a more cheerful as well as a more gloomy, aspect. Unfortunately, it was the gloomy and debasing side of their worship which tended to predominate alike in Phoenicia proper and in the greatest of the Phoenician colonies. Baal-Moloch was a malignant deity ; he was the fire-god, rejoicing ' in human sacrifices and in parents' tears.' His worshippers gashed and mutilated them- selves in their religious frenzy. Like Kronos or Saturn — to whom the Greeks and Romans aptly enough compared him — he was the devourer of his own children. In times of unbroken security the Carthaginians neglected or forgot him ; but when they were elated by an unlooked-for victory, or depressed by a sudden reverse, that fanaticism which is often dormant but never altogether absent from the Semitic breast, burst forth into a devouring flame, which gratified to the full his thirst for human blood.' Tanith or Astarte, in the nobler aspects which she sometimes presented, as the goddess of wedded love or war, of the chase, or of peaceful husbandry, was identified by the Romans, now with Juno, now with Diana, and now again with Ceres ; but, unfortunately, ' Diod. XX. 14 and 65 ; Silius Italicus, iv. 765-773. See below, pp. 1 18-119. DEEP-ROOTED CHARACTER OF THE WORSHIP. 31 it was when they identified her with their Venus Coelestis that tliey came nearest to the truth. Her worship, Uke that of the Babylonian Mylitta, required immoraUty, nay, it consecrated it. The ' abomina- tion of the Sidonians ' was also the abomination of the Carthaginians.' To one or other of these two deities almost all the votive tablets disinterred at Carthage, whether they belong to the Phoenician or the Roman city, are dedicated.^ How deeply the practices that their worship sanctioned must have been rooted in the hearts of the Phoenician people is clear from the fact that long after Carthage and the Carthaginians had been swept away ; when a new Roman city had taken its place, subject to Roman laws, and administered by Roman magistrates, but peopled, in great part, by such waifs and strays of the Phoenician population as could be got together from the adjoining districts of Africa, with the rising temples came back also their chartered libertinism and their human sacrifices. A Roman pro-consul, named Tiberius, endeavoured to check the practice of human sacrifice by hanging the priests on the trees of their own sacred groves. But this violent attempt to suppress the deep religious instincts of a people who even then called themselves Canaanites, was not more successful than had been the peaceful effort made by Darius nearly five centuries before Christ;^ and for several centuries after Christ ' Herod, i. 199, for worship of Venus at Sicca ; Val. Max. ii. 6. 15. - See Davis, Carthage and her Reiiiains, p. 256 sq. and plates ; of. also Beule, Fouilles a Carthage, plate 3. 'Justin, xix. l. IO-13. ' Interrogati,' says Augustine, 'rustic! nostri quid sint, Punice respondent, Chanani.' 32 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. we find that Christian bishops, such as Cyprian, or Christian Fathers, such as Tertullian and Augustine, are loud in their denunciations of the immoralities belonging to a worship which had been so long for- bidden and so long retained. Other gods of whom we read, such as Esmun or iEsculapius, to whom the temple on the Byrsa, the finest in the whole city,' was dedicated, were doubt- less originally looked upon only as manifestations of the two superior deities, but in time they assumed a separate existence of their own. But there was one of these inferior gods who stood in such a peculiar relation to Carthage, and whose worship seems to have been so much more genial and so much more spiritual than the rest, that we are fain to dwell upon it as a foil to what has pre- ceded. This god was Melcarth, that is Melech- Kirjath, or the king of the city ; he is called by the Greeks ' the Phoenician Hercules,' and his name itself has passed, with a slight alteration, into Greek mytho- logy as Melicertes. The city of which he was pre-emi- nently the god was Tyre. There he had a magnificent temple which was visited for antiquarian purposes by Herodotus.^ It contained two splendid pillars, one of pure gold, the other, as Herodotus believed, of emerald, which shone brilliantly at night, but there was no image of the god to be seen. The same was the case in his famous temple at Thasos, and the still more famous one at Gades, which contained an oracle, * Appian, Pun. vi. 130. " Herod, ii. 44. Another name of the god was Baal-Tzur, i.e. the god of Tyre. THE GOD MELCARTH. 33 a hierarchy of priests, and a mysterious spring which rose and fell inversely with the tide, but still no image.' At Carthage Melcarth had not even a temple. The whole city was his temple, and he refused to be localised in any particular part of it. He received, there is reason to believe, no sacrifices of blood ; and it was his comparatively pure and spiritual worship which, as we see repeatedly in Carthaginian history, formed a chief link in the chain that bound the parent to the various daughter-cities scattered over the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean. The Carthaginian proper names which have come down to us form one among many proofs of the depth of their religious feelings ; for they are all, or nearly all, compounded with the name of one or other of their chief gods. Hamilcar is he whom Melcarth protects ; Hasdrubal is he whose help is in Baal ; Hannibal, the Hanniel of the Bible, is the graje of Baal ; and so on with Bomilcar, Himilco, Ethbaal, Maherbal, Adherbal, and Mastanabal. A considerable native literature there must have been at Carthage, for Mago, a Carthaginian Shofete, did not disdain to write a treatise of twenty-eight books upon the agricultural pursuits which formed the mainstay of his order ; and when the Roman Senate, in their fatuous disregard for intellect, gave over with careless profusion to their friends, the Berber chiefs, the contents of all the libraries they had found in Car- ' Sil. Ital. iii. 30 : — Sed nulla effigies, simulacrave nota deorum, Majestate locum et sacro implevere timore. D 34 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. thage, they reserved for this work the especial honour of an authorised translation into Latin, and of a for- mal recommendation of its practical maxims to the thrifty husbandmen of Rome.' That many smaller works upon the same subject must have existed at Carthage before a work of such magnitude could have been produced by a man, who was an active general as well as an agriculturist, is evident enough. That the intrinsic merits of Mago's treatise were not inferior to its bulk is also clear from the influence which the authorised translation at once asserted and long maintained at Rome. What Aris- totle was to the mediaeval philosophers and theologians, that Mago seems to have been, in his measure, to the Italian agriculturists. Varro, the most learned of the Romans, and the author, among 489 other publica- tions, of the most valuable treatise on ancient agricul- ture%which we possess, quotes Mago as the highest authority on the subject,^ and other Roman writers have handed down to us with no less respect various maxims on the breeding and management of cattle, the care of poultry and of bees, the planting of forest trees and the treatment of the vine and the olive, the almond and the pomegranate, all drawn from the same fountain-head. ' We honour,' says Columella, ' above all other writers Mago the Carthaginian, the father of husbandry.'^ Nor can a work which stood the test of ■ Pliny, Nat. Hist, xviii. 5. ' Reg\ilis Africse.' The chief trans- lator was one D. Silanus; a good Punic scholar. It was also translated into Greek by Cassius Dionysius of Utica. Varro, i. i. 10 (quoted by Heeren). See his appendix on Mago's work. 2 Varro, i. I. 10. ' Columella, i. i. 13. THEIR LITERATURE. 35 a translation into Greek, as well as into Latin, have been altogether destitute of literary merit. Be that as it may, what we know of this one specimen of Car- thaginian literature does not dispose us to view with more indulgence the criminal carelessness of the Romans. If they destroyed the city and its in- habitants, they might have taken steps to preserve its literature ; at all events they need not have handed it over to its most illiterate and inveterate enemies. But having done a deed of which some of the better spirits even amongst themselves were ashamed, they deter- mined, as it would seem, to leave nothing which could unnecessarily remind them of it. A century later, Sallust saw some of these very Carthaginian books, the property, as he was told, of King Hiempsal.' What little of their contents on other subjects he was able to gather from his interpreters he embodied in his history of the Jugurthine War; but when he reaches the point where he would naturally have launched out on Carthage, it is with a touch of sadness, not un- mixed, as we would fain hope, with shame, that he passes on with the remark, ' I say nothing about Carthage, for I think it is better to say nothing about her, than to say too little.' Those members of the Carthaginian aristocracy who did not find a sufficient field for their ability in agriculture, or in politics, in literature, or in commerce, took refuge in the profession of arms, and formed always the chief ornament and often the chief strength of the Punic armies. At one period, at least, of the history ' Sallust, Jus;, i. 17. D 2 = IbLcl. Jug. i. 19. 36 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. of the State they formed a so-called * Sacred band ' ' consisting of 2,500 citizens, who, clad in resplendent armour, fought around the person of their general-in- chief, and feasting from dishes of the costliest gold and silver plate, commemorated in their pride the number of their campaigns by the number of the rings on their fingers.^ It was, however, the one fatal weakness of the Carthaginian State for military purposes that the bulk of their vast armies consisted not of their own citizens, nor even of attached and obedient subjects, but of foreign mercenaries. There were few countries and few tribes in the western worla which were not represented in a Carthaginian army. Money or superior force brought to Carthage samples of every nation which her fleets could reach. Native Libyans and Libyphoenicians, Gauls and Spaniards, slingers from the far-famed Balearic Isles, Greeks and Li- gurians, Volscians and Campanians, were all to be found within its ranks. But it was the squadrons of light horsemen drawn from all the nomad tribes which lay between the Altars of the Phileni on the east and the Pillars of Hercules on the west, which formed its heart. Mounted on their famous barbs, with a shield of elephant's hide on their arm and a lion's skin thrown over their shoulders, the only raiment they ever wore by day and the only couch they ever cared to sleep on at night ; without a saddle and without a bridle, or with a bridle only of twisted reeds which they rarely needed to touch ; equally re- ' Diod. Sic. xvi. 80 ; xx. 10-12; cf. also Plutarch, Timoleon, 27. * Arist. Pol. iv. 2, 10. THEIR MERCENARIES. 37 markable for their fearlessness, their agility, and their cunning; equally formidable, whether they charged or made believe to fly ; they were, at once, the strength and the weakness, the delight and the despair, of the Carthaginian State. Under the mighty military genius of Hannibal — with the ardour which he breathed into the feeblest and the discipline which he enforced on the most undisciplined of his army — they faced with- out shrinking the terrors of the Alps and the malaria of the marshes, and they proved invincible against all the power of Rome, at the Ticinus and the Trebia, at Thrasimene and at Cannae ; but, as more often happened, led by an incompetent general, treated by him, as not even Napoleon treated his troops, like so many beasts for the slaughter, and sometimes even basely deserted — exposed on a barren rock to perish, or betrayed into the enemies' hands — they naturally proved a t>vo-edged weapon piercing the hand that leaned upon it, faithless and revengeful, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, finding once and again in the direst extremity of Carthage their own deadliest opportunity. But if the life of the great capitalists of Carthage was as brilliant as we have described it, how did it fare with the poorer citizens, with those whom we call the masses, till we sometimes forget that they are made up of individual units ? If we know little of the rich, how much less do we know of the poor of Carthage and her dependencies ! The city popula- tion, with the exception — a large exception doubtless — of those engaged in commerce, well-contented as it ' Diod. V. II ; xiv. 75 ; Zonaras, viii. 10 and 13. 38 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. would seem, like the Romans under the empire, if nothing deprived them of their bread and of their amusements, went on eating and marrying and multi- plying till their numbers became excessive, and then they were shipped off by the prudence of their rulers to found colonies in other parts of Africa or in Spain. • Their natural leaders, or, as, probably, more often happened, the bankrupt members of the aristocracy, would take the command of the colony, and obtain free leave, in return for their services, to enrich them- selves by the plunder of the adjoining tribes. To so vast an extent did Carthage carry out the modern principle of relieving herself of a superfluous population, and at the same time of extending her empire, by colonisation, that, on one occasion, the Admiral Hanno, whose ' Periplus ' still remains, was despatched with sixty ships of war of fifty oars each, and with a total of not less than 30,000 half-caste emigrants on board, for the purpose of founding colonies on the shores of the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules. But the document recording this voyage is of an interest so unique, being the one relic of Carthaginian literature which has come down to us entire, that we must dwell for a moment on its contents. It was posted up by the admiral himself, as a thankofifering, in the temple of Baal, on his return from his adven- turous voyage, the first attempt, and possibly the suc- cessful attempt, made by the Phoenicians to reach the equator from the north-west of Africa. It is preserved ' Arist. Pol. ii. II. 15, and vi. 5. 9. THE PERI PLUS OF HANNO. 39 to us in a Greek translation only,' the work probably of some inquisitive Greek traveller, some nameless Herodotus who went wandering over the world, like his matchless fellow-countryman, his notebook always in his hand, and always jotting down everything which was of interest to himself, or might be of im- portance to posterity. Hanno passed, so he himself tells us, the Pillars of Hercules and deposited his living freight at various points along the coast of Morocco and the great desert beyond it ; at last he reached an island to which he gave the name of Cerne, and which we may perhaps identify with Arguin, io° north of the equator,^ since his crew calculated that it lay as far beyond the Pillars of Hercules as the Pillars ■of Hercules themselves were from Carthage. Here he landed the remainder of his Libyphoenicians, and from this point he began his great voyage of discovery. He had already taken interpreters on board, and he now struck out once more towards the south. He passed the mouth of the Senegal River, a river abounding, then as now, with crocodiles and river- horses. Near its banks dwelt a race of savages, no longer the brown men of the Barbary States, or of the Sahara, with whom he must have been familiar enough, but the ebony negroes of the Soudan. They were clothed in skins of wild beasts, and spoke a language unintelligible even to the interpreters. ' They drove us away,' says Hanno pathetically, ' by throwing stones at us.' But on went the explorers. ' It will be found printed in Hudson's Gcographi Minores. See Heeren's Appendix. ^ See Lenormant, Mantid (Thistoire anciennc, p. 201. 40 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. They passed forests of odoriferous trees, they saw the natives burning down, as they do at the present day, the withered grass on the hill sides, and they heard by night the sound of pipes and cymbals, drums and confused shouts, the favourite amusements, then as ever, of the negro race. On they went, till they reached what was, very possibly, the Camaroons Mountain itself, only 5° above the equator.' At all events, there is no other volcano on the west African coast, and none therefore answering to the description given by Hanno. The voyagers arrived by night. The country around seemed full of fire, and in the middle of it were flames far higher than the rest which seemed to touch the stars. When day came they found it was a large mountain, which they well named the ' Chariot of the Gods.' Passing once more on- wards still, they reached a gulf called the Southern Horn, which contained an island with a lagoon. It was inhabited by savage people, the greater part of them women, covered with hair. ' Though we pursued the men, we could not catch any of them ; they all fled from us, leaping over the precipices and defending themselves with stones. We caught three of the women, but they attacked us with tooth and nail, and could not be persuaded to return with us ; ac- cordingly we killed and flayed them and took their skins with us to Carthage.' These strange creatures ' The numerous commentaries on the Periplus of Hanno differ, as was to be expected, very widely as to the farthest point reached by him. They lange between 28^ and 5° N. latitude ; but the known length of other Carthaginian voyages, and the ' hairy men and women ' and ' the burning mountain' taken together, perhaps entitle us to pre- fer the more southern limit. VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY. 41 were called by the interpreters Gorillas ; a name not destined to be heard again till its strange revival 2,000 years later, when the mysterious half-human ape of equatorial Africa, then discovered or rediscovered, took its name, not unnaturally, from its equally mysteri- ous prototype in the Periplus of Hanno. From this point, ' Hanno's farthest,' as it might well be called by subsequent explorers, the admiral returned ; for, as the record ends with eloquent brevity, ' here our pro- visions failed us.' Nor was Hanno an exceptional specimen of Car- thaginian daring. If only we knew Carthage as we know Athens or Rome, from the Carthaginians them- .selves, we should probably have abundant proof that Hanno was only one example of a numerous class of bold explorers, whose services the great colonising and commercial republic was always able to com- mand. At all events, we hear from Pliny of another expedition which was sent in this same fifth century, under the command of another admiral, Himilco, to explore the western coasts of Europe. A fragmentary account of this voyage also has come down to us in the shape of a metrical Latin paraphrase of the docu- ment which originally recorded it,' and Englishmen and Irishmen, at all events, will be interested to hear what we are told of its destination. In a four months' voyage, keeping to his left the great shoreless ocean on which no ship had ever ventured, where the breeze blows not, but eternal fogs rest upon its lifeless ' The Ora maritima of Festus Avienus. It is to be found in the Poetce Latini Miiiorcs. See Heeren's Appendix and Comments. 42 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. waters/ Himilco reached the ^strymnides (Scilly Isles). 'Rich are they in metals, tin, and lead; spirited and industrious are the race which inhabit them ; fond, too, are they of trade, and they traverse the boisterous sea, not on barks of pine or oak, but on coracles made of skins sewn together. At the distance of two days' sail from these is the Holy Island, with its abundant emerald pastures, inhabited by the Hibernians ; hard by lies also the wide Isle of Albion.' One other link connecting indirectly Great Britain with ancient Carthage may, perhaps, be pointed out here. Most educated people have read Lord Stan- hope's ' Life of Pitt ' ; but too few, perhaps, know that the title by which he is best known to fame, that of Lord Mahon, he owes to a famous Cartha- ginian general. The island of Minorca was early colonised by the Phoenicians and aftenvards passed into the hands of the Carthaginians. It contains the finest harbour in the Mediterranean. Within it a large fleet of line-of-battle ships can lie in seven fathoms of water safe from every wind that blows. This harbour was called ' Portus Magonis,' either after some early Carthaginian explorer of that name, or, as seems more probable, after the younger brother of Hannibal himself, who, when he was ejected from Spain by the Romans, passed over to Minorca and spent the winter there.^ The name has now been ' Cf. Herod, iv. 43, where Sataspes says the same of the sea to the west of Africa. Stories of this kind seem to have been industriously propagated by the jealous Carthaginian mariners as a means of retain- ing the commerce of the Atlantic exclusively in their own hands. ^ Livy, xxviii. 37 and 46. DISAFFECTION OF SUBJECT RACES. 43 softened into Port Mahon. The Spaniards have a saying about it that ' the ports of the Mediterranean are June, July, August, and Port Mahon.' The pos- session of the harbour made the island of Minorca a bone of contention among all the maritime powers of Europe throughout the last century. In 1708 it was attacked by General Stanhope, who, it is said, by shooting arrows into it, to which were attached papers threatening the garrison with labour in the mines unless they instantly surrendered, induced them to capitulate just before a relieving Spanish force arrived. To commemorate this event, General Stanhope, when he was afterwards raised to the Peerage, received as one of his titles the name of the place which he had won ; and thus in the strange vicissitudes of human fortune, an English nobleman bears the name of the brother of Hannibal, and also of the reputed founder of the Carthaginian empire itself.' To defray the expenses of this vast system of ex- ploration and colonisation, as well as of their enor- mous armies, the most ruinous tribute was imposed and exacted with unsparing rigour from the subject native states, and no slight one either from the cognate Phoenician cities. The taxes paid by the natives sometimes amounted to a half of their whole produce,^ and among the Phoenician dependent cities themselves we know that the lesser Leptis alone paid into the Carthaginian treasury the sum of a talent daily.^ The tribute levied on the conquered Africans ' See Justin, xviii. 7. ' Mago . . . cum primus omnium ordinata disciplina imperium Pcenonim condidisset.' * Polybius, i. 72. 2. 3 Livy, xxxiv. 62. 44 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. was paid in kind, as is the case with the Rayahs of Turkey to the present day, and its apportionment and collection were doubtless liable to the same abuses and gave rise to the same enormities as those of which Europe has lately heard so much. Hence arose that universal disaffection, or rather that deadly hatred, on the part of her foreign subjects, and even of the Phoenician dependencies, towards Carthage, on which every invader of Africa could safely count as his surest support. Hence the ease with wliich Agathocles, with his small army of 15,000 men, could overrun the open country, and the monotonous uniformity with which he entered, one after another, two hundred towns, which Carthaginian jealousy had deprived of their walls, hardly needing to strike a blow.' Hence, too, the horrors of the revolt of the outraged Libyan mer- cenaries, supported as it was by the free-will contribu- tions of their golden ornaments by the Libyan women, who hated their oppressors as perhaps women only can, and which is known in history by the name of the ' War without Truce,' or the ' Inexpiable War.' It must, however, be borne in mind that the inhe- rent differences of manners, language, and race be- tween the native of Africa and the Phoenician incomer were so great; the African was so unimpressible, and the Phoenician was so little disposed to understand, or to assimilate himself to his surroundings, that, even if the Carthaginian government had been conducted with an equity, and the taxes levied with a modera- tion which we know was far from being the case, a gulf profound and impassable must probably have ' Diocl. Sic. x.\. \T ad fill. WAS HOME OR CARTHAGE TO RULE? 45 always separated the two peoples. This was the fun- damental, the ineradicable weakness of the Carthagi- nian Empire, and in the long run outbalanced all the advantages obtained for her by her navies, her ports, and her well-stocked treasury ; by the energies and the valour of her citizens ; and by the consummate genius of three, at least, of her generals. It is this, and this alone, which in some measure reconciles us to the melancholy, nay the hateful termination of the struggle, on the history of which we are about to enter : Men are we, and must grieve when e'en the name Of that which once was great has passed away. But if under the conditions of ancient society, and the savagery of the warfare which it tolerated, there was an unavoidable necessity for either Rome or Carthage to perish uttterly, we must admit, in spite of the sympathy which the brilliancy of the Carthagi- nian civilisation, the heroism of Hamilcar and Hanni- bal, and the tragic catastrophe itself call forth, that it was well for the human race that the blow fell on Car- thage rather than on Rome. A universal Carthaginian Empire could have done for the world, as far as we can see, nothing comparable to that which the Roman universal empire did for it. It would not have melted down national antipathies, it would not have given a common literature or language, it would not have prepared the way for a higher civilisation and an infinitely purer religion. Still less would it have built up that majestic fabric of law which forms the basis of the legislation of all the states of Modern Europe and America. 44 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. was paid in kind, as is the case with the Rayahs of Turkey to the present day, and its apportionment and collection were doubtless liable to the same abuses and gave rise to the same enormities as those of which Europe has lately heard so much. Hence arose that universal disaffection, or rather that deadly hatred, on the part of her foreign subjects, and even of the Phoenician dependencies, towards Carthage, on which every invader of Africa could safely count as his surest support. Hence the ease with w*hich Agathocles, with his small army of 15,000 men, could overrun the open country, and the monotonous uniformity with which he entered, one after another, two hundred towns, which Carthaginian jealousy had deprived of their walls, hardly needing to strike a blow.' Hence, too, the horrors of the revolt of the outraged Libyan mer- cenaries, supported as it was by the free-will contribu- tions of their golden ornaments by the Libyan women, who hated their oppressors as perhaps women only can, and which is known in history by the name of the ' War without Truce,' or the ' Inexpiable War.' It must, however, be borne in mind that the inhe- rent differences of manners, language, and race be- tween the native of Africa and the Phoenician incomer were so great; the African was so unimpressible, and the Phoenician was so little disposed to understand, or to assimilate himself to his surroundings, that, even if the Carthaginian government had been conducted with an equity, and the taxes levied with a modera- tion which we know was far from being the case, a gulf profound and impassable must probably have ' Diod. Sic. XX. 17 ad fiit. IVAS ROME OR CARTHAGE TO RULE? 45 always separated the two peoples. This was the fun- damental, the ineradicable weakness of the Carthagi- nian Empire, and in the long run outbalanced all the advantages obtained for her by her navies, her ports, and her well-stocked treasury ; by the energies and the valour of her citizens ; and by the consummate genius of three, at least, of her generals. It is this, and this alone, which in some measure reconciles us to the melancholy, nay the hateful termination of the struggle, on the history of which we are about to enter : Men are we, and must giieve when e'en the name Of that which once was great has passed away. But if under the conditions of ancient society, and the savagery of the warfare which it tolerated, there was an unavoidable necessity for either Rome or Carthage to perish uttterly, we must admit, in spite of the sympathy which the brilliancy of the Carthagi- nian civilisation, the heroism of Hamilcar and Hanni- bal, and the tragic catastrophe itself call forth, that it was well for the human race that the blow fell on Car- thage rather than on Rome. A universal Carthaginian Empire could have done for the world, as far as we can see, nothing comparable to that which the Roman universal empire did for it. It would not have melted down national antipathies, it would not have given a common literature or language, it would not have prepared the way for a higher civilisation and an infinitely purer religion. Still less would it have built up that majestic fabric of law which forms the basis of the legislation of all the states of Modern Europe and America. 46 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER II. CARTHAGE AND SICILY. (735-310 I'-C.) Wars between Carthage and Sicilian Greeks — P'irst appearance of Greeks in Sicily — Their gradual spread — Battle of Himera — Second Carthaginian invasion of Sicily — Third invasion and its incidents — Exploits of Dionysius — Siege of Motye — Fourth invasion — Strange vicissitudes and possible importance of the conflict — Comparative merits of Greek and Carthaginian rule in Sicily — Conflicting stories about Hamilcar at Himera— River Halycus fixed as boundary— Timoleon — Magnificent Carthaginian armament — Battle of Crimesus — Agathocles invades Africa and threatens Carthage. Before we enter on the history of the long struggle between the Romans and Carthaginians for the pos- session of Sicily, it is necessar}' to give some account of the less known and much longer series of wars which had been waged for the sam.e object between the Carthaginians and the Greeks. Our knowledge of these wars comes to us, as was to be expected, exclusively from Greek sources ; and the same cau- tion with which we receive from the Roman writers indiscriminate charges of cruelty and of bad faith against their formidable antagonists in the Punic Wars, is necessary, perhaps even more necessary', here. THEIR WARS WITH SICILIAN GREEKS. 47 If we cannot often prove that the charges brought are groundless, we can, at least, always remember that they are one-sided. The light thrown by the Sicilian Wars on the inner life of the Carthaginians is scanty enough, but where our materials are so meagre, we must make the best of even that little ; and some facts, at least, come out which are alike in- teresting and suggestive. From very early times, as we have seen, the Phoe- nicians had occupied every coign of vantage on the coast of Sicily and its adjacent islands, and had from thence carried on their peaceful warfare with the natives of the interior.' But about the eighth century a still more adventurous and gifted people appeared upon the scene. The Phoenicians, true to their general policy, to attempt to hold nothing by war which they could not hold without it, and to trade with those countries only where trade was its own passport and its own security, retired gradually before the incomers, and would, very possibly, have disappeared altogether from the island, had not Carthage, endowed as she was with all the colonising and commercial aptitudes of Tyre as well as with a capacity for empire which Tyre never had, stepped into the place which the mother-city declined to fill, and entered upon that vigorous and aggressive policy which was one day to make the Western Mediterranean a Carthaginian lake. But the spread of the Greek colonies in Sicily was not rapid. Naxos and Syracuse, Catana and Leontini had been founded on its western coast, for, perhaps, half a century before we hear of the Greeks ' Thuc. vi. 2. 48 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. at Gela, nor was it till another half-century or there- abouts had passed away, that we find them at Himera, and Selinus threatening, or seeming to threaten, the Carthaginians in the western corner of the island to which they had retreated.' But Carthage was still peacefully inclined. She loved a quiet life, and it was not till after Mago, about 530 B.C., had extended her home domain in Africa, and till Mago's son Hasdrubal had annexed Sardinia, that any .serious attempt was made by her to recover the ground which had been lost. At the head of a vast and motley army, drawn from all the countries to which the Carthaginian fleets had access, Hamilcar, the second son of Mago, landed in Sicily in the year 480. The great battle of Himera lasted from morning to evening, and it ended, as we have already seen, in the complete rout of the Carthaginians.- Hamilcar, who, throughout the battle, had, in his twofold capacity of Shofete and commander-in chief, been sacrificing to the gods of Carthage, when he found that his efforts were of no avail, disappeared and was seen no more. The Car- thaginians, with characteristic prudence, fell back once again on the three original Phoenician fortresses of Motye, Panormus, and Soloeis, and from their re- tirement there looked on complacently for the next seventy years at the incessant revolutions and coun- ter-revolutions which were as the breath of life to their ever restless yet ever prosperous Greek neigh- bours. At last in B.C. 410, the half-native and half-Trojan city of Egesta, which, by its appeal to Athens for aid ' Thuc. vi. 3-4. = Herod, vii. 165-167. THEIR SECOND INVASION OF SICILY. 49 against Selinus, had brought on Sicily and Greece ahke the calamities of the Syracusan expedition, made a similar appeal to Carthage, and so kindled the flames of that new war or rather series of wars which, with fitful intermissions, devastated the island for a century and a half. The Carthaginians hesitated long, we are told, before renewing the venture which, seventy years before, had ended so disastrously.^ But at last the die was cast. It was an evil day for the Greek cities of Sicily. Hannibal, grandson of the Hamilcar who had fallen at Himera, and therefore, as Diodorus remarks,^ a born enemy of the Greeks, took the com- mand. Selinus fell almost at the first attack ; its in- habitants were slaughtered and its splendid walls and temples levelled with the ground. The majestic columns which it was long thought that nothing but an earthquake could have overthrown, still show, it is said, marks of the Carthaginian crowbars which were used to overturn them. Himera shared the fate of Selinus.'' To a message from the Syracusans begging that he would admit his prisoners to ransom and spare at least the temples of the gods, Hannibal replied that those who could not preserve their free- dom must try their hands at slavery ; the gods had already shown their anger with them by leaving their towns.* Then, in an outburst of fanaticism, half family and half national, he slaughtered 3,000 pri- soners in cold blood on the spot on which his grand- father had fallen. ' Diod. xiii. 43. ^ Ibid. loc. cit. : (pvan ixi(ji\Ki\v. ^ Ibid. xiii. 56-58. * Ibid. xiii. 59, adinit. E so CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Sated with plunder and bloodshed, Hannibal sailed back to Africa, but only to return three years later to complete his work of devastation. The splendid city of Agrigentum, with its vast population, its prodigious temples, and its innumerable works of art, fell, after a siege of seven months. The towns of Gela and Camarina came next, and from the whole southern coast of Sicily Greek culture and civilisation seemed to be blotted out. We turn away with dis- gust from the details of so savage and barbarous a warfare ; but we must note, as we pass, one or two of its more characteristic and suggestive incidents. Such are the mutiny of Campanian mercenaries quelled by the present of the rich gold and silver drinking-cups which the body-guard of the Carthaginian general had brought with them ; the wanton destruction of the Agrigentine sepulchres by the besieging army ; the religious terrors which followed — the heaven-sent pestilence, the spectres of the outraged dead haunt- ing the sentries at their posts, and the solemn sacri- fice of a child to Baal by the general in command ; the glorious works of art — the statue of Artemis at Egesta,' of the poet Stesichorus at Himera,^ of Apollo at Gela,^ of the bull of Phalaris at Agrigentum — carried off to Carthage or to Tyre. In vain did the Syracusans try to stave off the storm by sending troops half-way to meet it ; in vain did they depose their incapable generals and bow their necks beneath ths yoke of the one man who in point of courage and ' Cicero, Verres, iv. 33. ' Diod. xiii. 108. 2 Ibid. ii. 35. * Ibid. xiii. 90. EXPLOITS OF DIONYSIUS. 51 ability seemed to be marked out as the saviour of their state, the tyrant Dionysius. Syracuse itself, the acknowledged head of the Greek cities of Sicily, seemed about to fall ; but the ravages of the pestilence, which carried off half the Carthaginian army, com- pelled Hannibal to leave his task unfinished, and he returned to Africa carrying with him the pestilential taint which was to spread havoc in Carthage and its neighbourhood. It was now the turn of Dionysius to justify his as- sumption of arbitrary power by the use he made of it, and after a few years of strenuous preparation he set forth on his mission of ' liberation,' Every species of cruelty which had been visited by the barbarous mercenaries of Carthage on the unhappy Greeks was now atoned for by the equally unhappy Carthaginians who had settled in the southern parts of Sicily. On- ward the tide of invasion flowed, swollen, as it advanced, by the Greeks who were now able to return to their devastated homes, till at length it reached the westernmost corner of the island, and found itself checked by the narrow arm of sea which separates the island fortress of Motye from the main- land. The small garrison of Motye defended itself with all the resolution of the Phoenician race, and the inci- dents of the siege which followed — the 'mole thrown out by Dionysius to connect it with the mainland, the battering of its walls by new and unheard-of military engines, such as the catapult, just then invented, the huge moving towers, the diversions effected by the fleets, the final assault, the desperate house-to-house E 2 52 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. fighting in the narrow streets, the flight for refuge to the temples of the gods, the promiscuous pillage and massacre, — all these incidents are characteristic of the Phoenicians when driven to stand at bay, and remind us, in some measure, now of the heroic resistance made, in the following century, by the parent of Phoenician cities to Alexander the Great, and now again, of that still more terrible resistance of despair to which this history leads us up, and in which it finds its most tragic conclusion. The ' liberator ' had all but done his work ; but these were not the days when we know Carthage best — the days of her vacillation and of half-hearted coun- sels— they were the days of her strength and of her pride. In spite of the havoc wrought by the plague in Carthage and the surrounding country, another huge host of 1 00,000 men started under Himilco for Sicily. They recovered Eryx and Motye almost at a blow, and within the course of a single year took Messana at the other end of Sicily, and rolled back the tide of invasion on Syracuse itself Seldom has the fortune of war veered round so rapidly and so completely. But the marshes of the Anapus were once more the best and the last ally of Syracuse. A new pestilence of unexampled fury broke out ; part of the Carthagi- nian navy was destroyed by fire, and Himilco pur- chased the safety of the remaining Carthaginians in his army by the betrayal of all his mercenaries. It was an act of baseness of which Dionysius himself and even Hiero after him, were also guilty, and it is not without parallel in the histor}' of the Punic Wars,' but ' Zonaras, viii. 10, GREEK AND CARTHAGINIAN RULE. 53 it enables us in some measure to explain, what is otherwise so difficult to account for, the sudden collapse of the energies of Carthage when, once and again, she seemed to be in the full career of success. It is useless to speculate, but it is hardly possible to resist the temptation to do so, as to what might have been the consequence to Carthage, to Sicily itself, to Rome, and to the world at large, had either party succeeded altogether in the attempt in which each had all but succeeded, within the term of these last three years ; had Carthage, for instance, been able to push for- ward her victorious career into Italy at the very time when the Gaul was at the gates of Rome, or had Syra- cuse been able to accomplish with ease in a single year, what could hardly be accomplished, a century and a half later, in a twenty-three years' war by all the power of Rome. It is impossible to say what might have been the result in such a case ; but it is possible to point out much, at least, which could hardly have happened, and to realise to ourselves how entirely different the conditions would have been under which the struggle for universal empire, whoever might have been' the combatants, must have been carried on. The horrors perpetrated by the Carthaginians and the ferocity and treachery of some of their generals / are brought out into full relief by Diodorus and by ' the earlier Sicilian historians, Philistus and TimjEus, who form his chief authorities. It is all the more im- portant therefore to notice that Diodorus himself in- advertently drops hints which show that if the merits of Greek and Carthaginian rule in Sicily must needs be compared, the advantage was not always, in the 54 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. judgment of the Sicilians themselves, on the side of the Greeks. Many of the Sicilian Greeks, he tells us, migrated of their own free will, carrying their property with them, from the Greek to the Carthaginian por- tion of Sicily, for they found, or fancied, at least, that they would find, the rule of Carthage to be less op- pressive than that of the tyrant Dionysius.' On the other hand, many Sicanians and Sicilians whom Dionysius offered to transfer to Syracuse from the neighbourhood of the Carthaginians, declined his offer with thanks, preferring the Carthaginian rule to his ; while those tribes or towns which he had com- pelled to join him went back again with alacrity to Carthage as soon as she reappeared on the scene.^ In like manner when, at a moment's notice, Diony- sius plundered the property of all the Carthaginians resident in Syracuse, it is clear that the Carthaginians, in spite of the provocation they had received, did not make reprisals on the Greeks resident in Carthage.^ These indications may tend to strengthen the mis- givings which are naturally suggested to us, when we recollect the medium through which alone our in- formation as to Carthaginian misgovernment comes. There is another circumstance which is still more suggestive. Of what followed the fatal battle of Himera we have two versions : one of them by a lucky chance, which is almost without a parallel in the history of these wars, comes from the Carthaginians themselves. It has been preserved by Herodotus, and tells us that Hamilcar, when he found that the battle of Himera had gone against him, flung himself ' Diod. xiv. 41. - Ibid. xiv. 55, 58. » Ibid. xiv. 76, 77. STORIES ABOUT HAMILCAR IN SICILY. 55 headlong, as a whole burnt offering, into the fire which he had kindled, and that almost divine honours were paid to his memory by a grateful country, alike in Sicily and in the capital.' The other version is that given us by the Greeks : that the Carthaginians, unable to vent their anger, even on the lifeless corpse of the unfortunate Hamilcar by nailing it, as they sometimes did in similar cases, to a cross, vented it on his innocent son Gescon, whom they banished for life to the Greek town of Selinus.^ Either of these stories, or neither of them, or both of them, incon- sistent as they seem with each other, may, among a people so volatile as the Carthaginians, perhaps be true. But the discrepancy is at least suggestive, and it does not make us less sorry that in other cases where we hear of anything to the discredit of Car- thage, we are unable to balance the Greek by the Carthaginian version of the story. Other desultory attempts were made by the tyrant Dionysius in his long reign of thirty-eight years to drive the Carthaginians from Sicily, but without success ; and the fitful struggle ended in a treaty which assigned tc Carthage all the territory which lay to the west of the river Halycus. This river practically remained the boundary between the contending parties for the next hundred years ; but on two occasions during that period the Carthaginians appeared in arms before the walls of Syracuse. The first was in the time of the best, the other of the worst of all its rulers. Already the Carthaginians had gained possession of the whole of the town of Syracuse except its island ' Herod, vii. 167. ^ Diod, xiii. 43. 56 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. citadel of Ortygia, when the younger Dionysius, a man as weak as he was wicked, made way for the Corinthian Timoleon. Equally remarkable for his courage and his gentleness, for his ability to command and his readiness to obey, for the tenderness of his affections and the sternness of his sense of duty, above all for his absolute disinterestedness, Timoleon is the highest ideal of one side, and that perhaps the noblest side, of the Greek character. He had saved his brother's life in battle at the risk of his own, and yet when that brother plotted against the lives and liberties of his fellow-citizens he gave him over, in an access of subli r e patriotism, to the death he had de- served.' Such was the man who, summoned to an arduous post which he would never have sought but dared not decline, now appeared at Syracuse when its fortunes were at its lowest ebb (B.C. 344). The Carthaginians vanished for the time, but re- appeared a few years afterwards at the head of one of the most splendid armaments that they had ever put into the field. It consisted of 70,000 infantry, of 10,000 cavalr)^, of a large number of war-chariots drawn by four horses each, of 100 ships of war, and 1,000 trans- ports laden with supplies and ammunition of every kind.^ But the armament was not less remarkable for its composition than its size. The merchant princes of Carthage, so often content to look at war as a gigantic mercantile speculation, cared not, as a rule, to risk their own lives when there were plenty of barbarians who for a small sum of money were willing to throw away theirs instead. It was doubtless ' Plutarch, Timoleon, iv. and v. ^ Ibid. xxv. ; Diod. xvi. 77. BATTLE OF CRIMESUS. 57 pleasanter for those who enjoyed life, as did the wealthy Cathaginians, when there was any risk to be run, to do so, as the Greek proverb expresses it, 'in the person of a Carian.' But when real danger threatened the State, it is a mere calumny to assert that they were not ready to do battle in their own persons and to fight, as their mercenaries hardly ever fought, in defence of their hearths and homes. In this pre-eminently patriotic armament there were, we are told, no less than 10,000 native Carthaginians, all clad in splendid panoplies and all carrying white shields, conspicuous from afar, as if to mark them out as targets for the enemy. Amongst them was the famous 'Sacred band ' of 2,500 chosen nobles in all the bravery of their gold rings, their costly raiment, and their drinking-vessels of solid gold and silver. The battle which ensued, the Battle of the Crimesus, is described with graphic detail by Diodorus ' and Plutarch,'^ who evidently had the testimony of eye- witnesses before them. We seem, as we read, to be moving in an atmosphere of poetry and of portent, of miracle and of religious enthusiasm. It is the Battle of Megiddo and the brook Kishon that we fancy that we see ; it is the song of triumph of Deborah and of Barak that we fancy that we hear. The parallel is close indeed throughout.^ A tempest of rain and hail, accompanied by lightning and thunder, broke with extraordinary violence at the critical moment right in the faces of the advancing Carthaginians. The stars » Diod. xvi. 80. 2 p]u^_ 27, 28. ' It has been eloquently drawn out by Dean Stanley, Jewish Church, vol. i. chap. 14. 58 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. in their courses fought against Carthage, and the brook Crimesus, swollen in a few minutes to an angry torrent, swept away in its waters the war-chariots, and the plunging horses, and the heavy-armed foot soldiers of the Carthaginians. Then, as at Megiddo, ' strength was broken down ' ; the Carthaginian citizens in their heavy panoplies slipped in the mud and fell to rise no more. The Sacred band stood their ground, by the confession of the Greeks them- selves, in a manner worthy of their privileges and re- sponsibilities, and died, fighting bravely, to a man. The camp and costly baggage fell into the hands of the vic- tors, and Timoleon, laden with booty and with honour, returned to Syracuse to live there as a simple citizen, and after securing to his adopted country a period of twenty-two years of prosperity and liberty and peace, .such as it hardly enjoyed either before or since, to be regretted in his death as the ' common father and benefactor ' of all the Sicilians.' Timoleon passed away and Syracuse once more fell (B.C. 310) under the yoke of a tyrant as able and as unscrupulous as the elder Dionysius. Bursting through the Carthaginian squadron, which was blockading him in his capital, with a heroism which is almost unparalleled in warfare, Agatliocles made his way at the head of a few ships to Africa, and with a Carthaginian fleet following close behind him and a Carthaginian army ready to receive him on his landing, he made Carthage herself tremble for her safety. Once again the city poured forth, in its own de- fence, its hoplites and its horsemen, its war-chariots and ' Plutarch, Timoleon, xxxix. wairep woTrjp koivos. AGATHOCLES THREATENS CARTHAGE. 59 its Sacred band. But it was not till after Agathocles had been for three years overrunning the open country, till he had occupied an almost fabulous number of Car- thaginian towns, and had kindled into a mighty blaze the flame of discontent which was always smouldering among the African subjects of the imperial city, that he returned to Sicily to carry fire and sword into other regions from which their Greek blood might have been expected to protect them.' The havoc which Agathocles had wrought in Africa might be repaired, and was soon repaired by the wealth and energy of the Carthaginians ; but there was something which no efforts of theirs could now undo. By his invasion of Africa Agathocles had shown the way in which Carthage could be best assailed. He had probed the weakness of the Carthaginian empire to the very bottom, and mightier men than he and a mightier people than the Greeks of Sicily were, all too soon, to follow in his footsteps. ' Diod. XX. 3, 55, 64 seq. 6o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER III. CARTHAGE AND ROME. Rome and Carthage compared — Contrasted — Origin and growth of Rome — Constitutional progress — Military progress — Conquest of Etruscans, Gauls — Of Latins, B.C. 390 — Of Samnites — Roman methods in war — War with Pyrrhus — Rome brought face to face with Carthage. It is time now to take a glance at the origin and rise of the younger city on the banks of the Tiber, whose progress towards the dominion of the world Carthage, and Carthage alone of the states of anti- quity, was able seriously to delay. The history of Rome is like, and yet unlike, that of Carthage. It is like it, for we see in each the growth of a civic com- munity which, from very small beginnings, under an aristocratic form of government, and with slight literary or artistic tastes, acquired first, by the force of circumstances, the leadership of the adjoining cities, Avhich were akin to her in blood, and subsequently, by a far-sighted policy, or by a strong arm, became mistress, not only of them, but, by their aid, of all the tribes whom Nature had not cut off from them by the sea, the mountains, or the desert. But Roman history is intrinsically unlike the Car- thaginian, for the greatness of Rome rested not, as ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF ROME. 6i did the greatness of Carthage, on her wealth, or her commerce, or her colonies, or her narrow oligarchy, but on the constitutional progress which, after a long struggle, obliterated the mischievous privileges of an aristocracy of birth and raised the commonalty to a complete social and political equality with their former lords. It rested on the grand moral qualities which formed the groundwork of the Roman character in its best times, earnestness and simplicity of life,^ reverence for the sanctities of the family relations, reverence for the law, reverence for the gods. It rested on the extraordinary concentration of all these qualities, together with the soundest practical ability which the State contained, in the Senate, perhaps, when taken at its best, the noblest deliberative as- sembly which the world has ever seen. And when the two orders in the State had become united and Rome was fairly launched in her career as a con- quering power, her greatness rested (how unlike to Carthage !) on the real community of interest and of blood which united her to the greater number of the Italian tribes that she absorbed ; on the self-sacrifice which bade her then, and for a long time to come, tax not her subjects but herself; on the wise precautions which she took to secure their permanent allegiance, partly by isolating them from one another, partly by leaving them in some sense to govern themselves, or by admitting them to a share, actual or prospective, in the Roman citizenship. The district originally occupied by the Latin race which achieved such grand results was a small tract of land, not larger than an English county, which lay 62 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. between the Tiber and the Anio on the north, and the Alban Hills on the south, and the future capital of the world was originally only one of thirty small settlements, of which she was the first neither in anti- quity, nor in strength, nor in natural advantages. Alba and Lanuvium were older, Tusculum was stronger, Tibur and Praeneste were more fruitful and more salubrious than Rome. What circumstances enabled Rome, built as she was on one of the least healthy and least fertile spots occupied by the Latin league, so soon to obtain a pre-eminent position among them, we need not here inquire. The Roma Quadrata on the Palatine Hill soon grew into Rome of the Seven Hills. She encouraged migration to herself from the adjoining cities of the league ; the manumission of slaves, and the growth of commerce and agriculture, soon gave her a dependent popula- tion, which formed the origin of the plebeians ; and, when the venerable Alba fell before the arms of Rome, Rome naturally succeeded by the right of the worthiest, as well as by the right of the strongest, to all her privileges and dignities as president of the Latin league. It belongs not to our purpose here to trace the vicissitudes of the long and eventful struggle be- tween the privileged Patricians and the unenfranchised Plebs ; to show in detail how the social grievances of the lower orders — their exclusion from all share in the public land for which they had shed their blood, the caste jealousy which forbade a patrician to inter- marry with one of a less sacred race — the atrocious law of debtor and creditor, gave way, one after the ITS CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 63 other, in spite of the armed opposition and the pre- judices and the subterfuges of those patricians who, as they alone profited by existing abuses, naturally enough clubbed together to resist reform. Nor need we relate at length how these same Plebeians, by the heroism of their natural leaders, or their secessions to the Sacred Mount, first obtained inviolable magis- trates of their own, the Tribunes of the Plebs, with powers so extraordinary that if the Roman people had not been the most law-abiding people in the world all public business must have come to a stand- still ; how the right of appeal from the arbitrary sentences of the magistrate to the people assembled in their Comitia, was again and again confirmed — even as Magna Charta was again and again confirmed by English kings — each fresh ratification rendering, no doubt, the sanction more impressive, and using the word ' people ' in a more comprehensive and a truer sense ; how ofiice after office, and dignity after dignity, the Quaestorship and Military Tribunate, the Consulship and the Senate itself, were thrown open to the Plebeians, first in theory and afterwards in fact ; how the Licinian Rogations, after nine years of party Avarfare, ceased to be Rogations and became Laws ; and how, finally, Camillus, the chief of the old aristocracy, crowned the political edifice by what, perhaps, rightly considered, is the greatest event in the internal history of Rome, the dedication of the famous Temple of Concord ' (B.C. 367). It is incum- bent on the student of the history of Carthage not so much to analyse the process as to note the result of ' I'lutarch, Camillus, 42, 4-7 : cf. Liv)', vi. 42. 64 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. this long constitutional conflict ; and that grand result was that the two orders became indissolubly united, socially and politically, into one nation, and were thus prepared, whether for good or for evil, to assert their natural supremacy over the rest of Italy, and then to conquer the world. Nor, again, does it fall within the scope of this work to follow with any degree of minuteness the early progress of the Roman arms. It must suffice to trace only so much of its outline as may enable us to judge of the true position of the conquering city, when a wider field opened before her, and she had to face, no longer the petty warfare of bordering townships, nor even the collective strength of Samnite and Etruscan confederations, but Carthage, Macedon, and the East. The expulsion of the kings (B.C. 509) left Rome still a prey to internal discord, a circumstance of which her nearest neighbours, the Etruscans, wholly alien as they were to her in race, were not slow to avail themselves. The Etruscan nation, with its gloomy and mysterious religion, the solemn trifling of its augural science, and the cruelty of its gladia- torial games, was just then at the height of its power by land and sea. Now was its opportunity ; and the fond but soul-stirring romances of the ballad-singers and annalists of early Rome have not been able wholly to disguise the fact that the city itself fell before the arms of Porsena.' But the triumph of Etruria was not long lived. A protracted warfare of 1 50 years succeeded, in which the star of Rome came ' Tac. Hist. iii. 72 : ' dedita urbe.' ITS MILITARY PROGRESS. 65 gradually into the ascendant, and the fall of Veii after a ten years' siege, and, still more perhaps, the hurri- cane of Northern barbarians which just then burst over the fairest plains of Italy, set Rome for ever free from danger on the side of Etruria. But Rome was delivered from the Etruscans only (B.C. 390) to find that the Gaul was thundering at her gates. The city was burned to the ground, her temples desecrated, her historical records destroyed, her in- habitants dispersed or slain ; but no such ephemeral calamity could shatter the traditions or shake the reso- lution of the Roman people. Rome rose, like the phoenix, from her ashes, and started afresh on her career of conquest. Her ancient enemies, the .^qui- ans and Volscians, who, according to the patriotic narrative of Livy,' had for so many years in the early history of the Republic been annually extermi- nated and had annually revived to be exterminated again, had long since died their last death as indepen- dent nations. The Etruscans were now powerless ; the last desperate effort of the Latins to restore, when it was too late (B.C. 340-338), the equality of their ancient league, was crushed in two campaigns, and Rome now found herself face to face with the worthiest antagonists she had yet met, the brave and hardy Sabellian race, which was akin to herself in blood, which had lately almost annexed Campania, and which clung with des- perate tenacity and with manners that never changed ' Cf. Livy, iii. 8. ' Ibi Volscum nomen prope deletum est.' This was in 292 B.C. In the followingyear (291 B.C.), we are told, ' Volscos et /Equos reficere exercitus,' c. 10. F 66 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. to the rugged mountains and the inaccessible defiles of the Central and Southern Apennines. The struggle is memorable for the deeds of he- roism which mark its course on either side ; for the stubborn resistance and chivalrous bravery of the weaker, and, on more than one occasion, for the per- fidy and the meanness of the stronger combatant. But it is yet more remarkable, in the eye of him who would read the story of the Punic Wars aright, for the light it throws upon the true secret of the Roman strength in war. Never did the iron resolution and devotion of her citizens, never did the unbending consistency of pur- pose and the marvellous self-restraint of the Senate, display itself more brilliantly. Without haste, but without a pause, never elated by victor^', never de- pressed by defeat, not caring to overrun what they could not hold by force of arms, or to obtain by treaty what they could not take without it, willing to employ years instead of months, and to conquer by inches where they might have conquered by leagues, the Roman Senate, slow but sure, held on the even tenor of their course, determined only that where the Roman eagles had once set down their talons, there they should remain, till the time came to plunge them more deeply into the vitals of the foe. Did Samnium at the close of the great twenty-two years' struggle lie, to all appearance, prostrate at the feet of Rome, the last of her fortresses, Bovianum, in the grasp of the conqueror That conqueror concluded an equitable peace, on terms of all but equal alliance,' not because she liked ' Livy, ix. 45 : ' Foedus antiquum Samnitibus redditum.' WAR WITH PYRRHUS. 67 to spare the conquered — that maxim is to be found only in the patriotic imagination of the author of the ■* iEneid ' — but simply because she did not choose to be brought face to face with Southern Italy before she had made quite sure of Central. To build a new fortress, to found a new military colony, to complete a stage or two more of a great military road — if only it could better secure what lay behind, and give a vantage ground for future operations whenever the time should come — this was the strictly practical ob- ject of Rome when she took up arms ; this she kept in view when smarting under a defeat ; and, what is more remarkable, with this she rested content even when flushed with victory. In this way, always aim- ing only at what was feasible, making sure of every inch of her way, drawing her iron network of colonies and military roads over every district which she pro- fessed to claim, Rome found herself at length (B.C. 293) with not a single danger behind her, and with nothing in front save some luxurious Greek cities, and some insignificant tribes of Italian aborigines, to separate her from that which was at once the object of her highest hopes and of her most practical and stern resolves, the union of the whole of Italy beneath her sway. We have said that there was but one obstacle to the realisation of the aim of Rome ; but one other there shortly appeared, which, as it had been beyond the visible, so was it necessarily beyond the mental hori- zon of so matter-of-fact a body as the Roman Senate. The adventurous King of Epirus, whose erratic course it would have required a genius like his own to have F 2 68 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. anticipated, shot down like a meteor on the scene (B.C. 280). Fired with the ambition of emulating his great relative Alexander, and of founding a vast Greek empire in the west on the ruins of Italy and Carthage, as Alexander had founded his on the ruins of Persia and of Egypt, he eagerly seized the oppor- tunity afforded him by the appeal of the frivolous Tarentines, and offered to lead the Greek cities of Italy in their opposition to Rome. The struggle is rich, above most of those in which Rome engaged, in the play of individual character and in the traits of knightly chivalry and generosity, which lend to it a charm which is altogether its own. Even his sober-minded and severely practical enemies could scarcely come into contact with so high-bred and chivalrous a foe as Pyrrhus without catching some sparks of his courtesy and his enthusiasm ; but the struggle is also memorable as the first occasion in which Greece and Rome met in the shock of battle. Here for the first time might be seen the Roman legion meeting the phalanx of Macedon ; a national militia arrayed against highly trained and veteran mercenaries ; individual military genius against col- lective mediocrity. For a moment fortune seemed to waver, or even to incline in favour of the adventurer ; but she could not waver long. The victories of Heraclea and Asculum must have made the name of Pyrrhus a name to be spoken with bated breath even in the Roman Senate ; and the lightning rapidity with which he swept Sicily from end to end, cooping the Mamer- tines in Messana on the extreme west, and the Phoe- nicians in Lilybseum in the extreme east, must have ROME FACE TO FACE WITH CARTHAGE. 69 made his name a name of terror even among the burghers of Carthage. But the proud answer returned by the Roman Senate to the embassy of Pyrrhus after his first victory, that Rome never negotiated so long as an enemy was on ItaHan soil,' must have at once opened the eyes of the Epirot king to the hopeless nature of the enterprise he had undertaken, and marked triumphantly the goal to which centuries of tempered aspiration and of impetuous resolve had raised the Latin city. To the Roman mind an ideal which could not be realised was no ideal at all, and the Romans had now realised their highest ideal to an extent which entitled them to take a wholly new point of departure (B.C. 278). Pyrrhus disappeared from the western world almost as rapidly as he had descended on it, crying with his last breath, half in pity, half in envy, ' How fair a battle-field are we leaving to the Romans and Car- thaginians.' 2 He spoke too truly. The arena was already cleared of its lesser combatants, and for some few years there was, as it were, the hush of expecta- tion, the audible silence of suspense, while mightier combatants were arming for the fray, and the great duel was preparing of which a hundred years would hardly see the termination. ' Plutarch, Pyrrkus, xix. 5 ; Appian, Sam. ; Frag. 10. 2, 3. ' Plutarch, Pyrrhus, xxiii. 7. o'lav diroA.eiVoyttei', £> . THEIR RELATIONS TO SICILY AND ROME. 71 and the Carthaginian fleet, which had in vain at- tempted to intercept Pyrrhus on his crossing into Sicily, inflicted a heavy loss upon him as he hastily retreated from it.' But hardly had Pyrrhus turned his back for the last time on Italy when the first note of war between the nations so recently allied was sounded. It came, as was to be expected, from that fair island which, by its position, seemed to belong half to Europe, half to Africa, and from that point in it which lay actually within sight of Rhegium, the town which was, as yet, the farthest outpost of the Roman alliance. For more than a century past Greeks and Carthaginians had been contending, with varying success, for the possession of the island. Few towns of any importance within its limits had escaped destruction, fewer still had escaped a siege, and many had been taken and retaken almost as many times as there had been campaigns. On the whole, in spite of the efforts of able leaders like Dionysius the Tyrant, Timoleon, and Agathocles, fortune had favoured the Carthaginians ; and the power of Syracuse, the head of the Greek states, was now confined to the south- eastern corner of the island. But there was one town in the island, and that an all-important one from its geographical position, which had by a strange destiny ceased to be Greek without becoming Carthaginian, and after outraging Greek and Carthaginian alike, and arousing their active hos- tility, had now, to make matters better, appealed for aid to a third power, which was destined to prove mightier than either. ' Polybius, iii. 25; Plutarch, Pyrrhits, xxiv. i; Appiaii, Sam. 12. Frag. 72 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. When Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, died (B.C. 289), his mercenary troops were disbanded, and a body of them, on their way back to Campania, their native country, treacherously seized Messana, which had entertained them hospitably. They expelled or slew the male inhabitants, divided their wives and children, and calling- themselves the children of Mamers, or Mars, proceeded to justify their name by plundering or hanying all the surrounding country.' Such outrages could not be overlooked by the Carthaginians. Still less could they pass unnoticed by the young king Hiero, who had lately obtained the vacant throne of Syracuse by the best of titles, the free choice alike of his comrades in arms and of his fellow-citizens ; and he proceeded to lay siege to the town. The Mamertine councils were divided. It was clear that without allies they would not long hold out against the powerful foes whose deadly hostility they had provoked. One party among them was for surrendering the place to the Carthaginians to keep out the Syracusans ; the other was for invoking the Romans to keep out both alike.^ Never was a question fraught with more import- ant issues, moral and political, brought before the Roman Senate ; and never did they shirk their respon- sibility more shamefully. It is not perhaps so easy to see what was the right thing to do as it is to see that what the Roman Senate did was the very worst thing that they could do. Were they, on the one hand, to refuse to protect Italians who appealed to them avowedly as the head of the Italian Confedera- ' Polyb. i. 7 ; Diod. .\xi. Frag. 13. ' Polyb. i. 8-10. APPEAL OF MAMERTINES. 73 tion for aid against the Greeks and Carthaginians, and to look calmly on while the city of Messana fell into the hands of the Carthaginians to be used by them as a standing menace to their power and a vantage ground in the great conflict which could not now be far dis- tant ? Or were they, on the other hand, to lull their consciences to sleep, to turn round upon Hiero, their' ally, who had recently lent them his aid in getting rid of the lawless banditti who had seized Rhegium as the Ma- mertines had seized Messana, and to take under their special protection a band of cutthroats on one side of the straits, while they had just scourged and beheaded every member of a similar, and perhaps a less guilty band, on the other ? It was a question beset with difficulties. National honour and common gratitude pointed clearly in one direction ; ambition and imme- diate interest pointed as clearly in another, and the Roman Senate took the most ignoble course of all open to it, that of shifting the responsibility from their own shoulders to that of the people assembled in their Comitia. The consuls Appius Claudius Caudex and M. Fulvius Flaccus were ambitious men, eager for war at any price. It was easy for them to raise a patriotic cry of Italians against foreigners, and to hold out visions of assignations of public land amongst the rich fields of Sicily to the multitude whose appetite for such booty had been recently whetted by the large distributions of land in Italy. The decision of the people was not doubtful ; and the most momentous resolution ever arrived at by the Romans was taken without either the definite sanction or the explicit disapproval of the 74 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Senate (B.C. 264).' It was possible for the Senate, perhaps, by such paltry conduct to deprive themselves of some of the credit which might ultimately be won by the war. It was not possible to relieve themselves of the shame of its commencement. Nor was the step now taken less serious from a political than from a moral point of view, for, in truth, upon the passing of the narrow arm of sea which rages between Italy and Sicily hinged the future destinies of both countries ; and not of these alone, but of the ancient civilised world. Hitherto the policy of the Roman Senate had been definite and strictly practical, and had not carried them beyond the hori- zon of Italy proper. If they had owned ships of war at all, they had been of a small size and built upon an antique model. Now, for the first time, they were about to set foot beyond the seas, to embark upon a policy the course of which it would no longer rest with them to determine ; to claim, without ships of their own, from the greatest of naval powers, a por- tion of the island which had for centuries been looked upon as her peculiar appanage. Some clear-sighted men there must have been among the Roman senators who recoiled from the results of what they had done, or rather from the results of what they had refrained, through moral cowardice, from doing ; but their voices were not heard, and active operations began. War, in- deed, against Carthage was not formally declared, for the diplomatists of either nation had yet to go through the solemn farce which usually precedes such a declara- tion by raking up forgotten grievances or inventing new ' Polybius, i. lo. ll ; Livy, Epit. xvi ; Zonaras, viii. 8. ROMANS OCCUPY MESS AN A. 75 ones to justify the resolution which had been already taken ; but orders were given at once to relieve Messana.^ The command was committed to Appius Claudius (B.C. 264), more easy work being found for his col- league, Flaccus, nearer home. The want of ships of war, and even of transports — for, by a strange short- sightedness, the Romans had allowed such ships as they had to fall into decay at the very time when they most needed them — was met by borrowing them from the Greek cities of Italy, Tarentum, Locri, Velia, and Neapolis;^ but a more serious difficulty occurred when Claudius, the legate of the consuls and forerunner of the Roman army, appeared at Rhegium. Things had taken an unexpected turn at Messana. The party favourable to Carthage had got the upper hand, and the Carthaginian fleet was riding at anchor in the harbour, while a Carthaginian garrison was in posses- sion of the citadel. Here was an awkward predica- ment for the Romans ; but C. Claudius was, like most of his family, a man of energy and audacity. He crossed the straits at the peril of his life, invited the admiral, Hanno, to a conference, and then, in de- fiance of the law of nations and of honour, took him prisoner, and allowed him to purchase his liberty and life only by the surrender of the citadel. Hanno's life was not worth the price he paid for it ; for the Carthaginians, enraged at his cowardice and incapa- city, condemned him to be crucified — a punishment which was not very exceptional in their administra- tion of justice, but was certainly not always so well ' Polybius, i. 11. 3 ; Florus, ii. 2. 1-5. ^ Polybius, i. 20. 13, 14. 76 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. deserved.' The Mamertines, who were equally ready to follow anyone who seemed able to promise them the lives which by their crimes they had so justly for- feited, were now besieged in Messana from the north side of the city by a second Hanno, whom the Car- thaginians had sent out to replace the first, while Hiero attacked it from the south. Such was the condition of affairs when Appius Claudius himself appeared with his army upon the scene. How he managed to cross the straits with 20,000 men in the face of an enemy whose proud boast it was that without their leave no Roman could even bathe his hands in the sea, we do not know.^ But cross them he did, and by a double victory on two successive days, first over Hiero, and then over the Carthaginians, he succeeded in raising the siege, and, after ravaging the country in every direction, pitched his camp under the walls of Syracuse and prepared to besiege Hiero in his own capital. But two hundred years of internecine warfare with the Carthaginians had not predisposed the Syracusans to take any very strong measures in defence of their temporary' alliance with them. Appius suffered, as had so often been the case in previous sieges of Syracuse, far more from the malaria of the marshes of the Anapus than from any active hostility of Hiero ; and when the Romans thought fit to retreat towards Messana from so unhealthy a region, and were followed closely by the Syracusans, Hiero found that the troops of the rival armies were more disposed ' Polybius, i. II. 4, 5 ; Zonaras, viii. 9. * Polyb. i. II. 9 ; Zonaras, viii. 9. RESULTS OF FIRST CAMPAIGN. 77 to meet in friendly gatherings at the outposts than in hostile array in the battle-field.' So ended the first campaign. With one small army the Romans had already attained the ostensible objects of the war. The Mamertines had been re- lieved, the protectorate of Rome over them asserted, much booty had been gained, the Carthaginians had been driven back towards the north-west, and the Syracusans towards the south-east of the island. Why did not Rome stop here Why was she not content to rest upon her laurels and to retain in her own hands, or in those of the Mamertines who were now devoted to her interests, the intermediate state of Messana, which would henceforward serve as a buffer against any hostile designs of the Cartha- ginians Could the Romans have foreseen the heavy reverses and the ' Cadmean victories ' of the twenty-three years' war which was to drag out its tedious length after so brilliant a beginning, they might well have hesitated to purchase at so heavy a price an island which, by the time it came into their hands, would be hardly, in itself, worth possessing. But once more the horizon of the Senate had ex- panded with their achievements ; and, no longer content with securing the corner of Sicily nearest to themselves, they had conceived the design of stripping Carthage and Syracuse alike of so much of their Sicilian possessions as would render them for ever innocuous neighbours. Where one small army had achieved so much in the face of every obstacle, physical and moral, what might not two consular ' Polyb. i. 12 ; Diod. Sic. Frag, xxiii. 9. 78 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. armies accomplish, especially when supported by powerful allies in the island itself, whose fidelity was secured by the strongest of securities? The second campaign was not less successful than the first. There was now no rumour of disturbance in the neighbourhood of Rome ; and the two consuls, M' Octacilius and M' Valerius, were able to cross to- gether into Sicily with their united armies amounting to 35,000 men. They met with no serious resistance ; fifty, or, as others said,' sixty-seven, towns belonging to Hiero or the Carthaginians submitted to them ; and Hiero himself, consulting, partly, no doubt, the wishes of his subjects, partly his own feelings of hatred towards the hereditary oppressors of his country, turned from the setting to the rising sun and made overtures of peace to Rome. The Romans were keenly alive to the advantages which an alliance with Syracuse would bring them while they were waging war in the interior of the island ; their supplies — the point in which they were most deficient — would be secured by the immediate neighbourhood of so opulent a friend. But the Senate thought fit to assume the air of those who were conferring a favour, and managed to drive a hard bargain with the Syra- cusan king. Perhaps a power which was in the full tide of success could hardly have been expected to act otherwise. " Hiero was compelled to pay a war contribution of 200 talents and to surrender several of his towns ; and he became henceforward to the end of his long life and reign, to all appearance, the grate- ful, and certainly the faithful and the trusted ally of • Eutropius, ii. 19. CARTHAGINIANS UNPREPARED FOR WAR. 79 Rome. Under his wise and beneficent rule, Syracuse, though war was surging round her by land and sea, enjoyed a degree of prosperity and of internal quiet to which, with the one exception of the time of Timo- leon, it may perhaps be said, she had, been a stranger for two centuries before, and which she has never enjoyed since.' But where were the Carthaginians all this time } Two campaigns had been fought and won, and they had nowhere yet shown themselves in force. They had allowed themselves, with hardly a struggle, to be swept from the larger half of the island. Would they allow themselves to be swept without resistance from the remainder The truth is that they were neither inactive nor cowardly. They were simply, owing to the defects of their military system, unprepared ; and they were all this time straining every nerve to raise a force in Africa, in Liguria, in Spain, and in Gaul, which they hoped might eventually be able to strike a vigorous blow and to retrieve their fortunes.^ About half way between the promontories of Lilybaeum and Pachynus, and drawn back a mile or so from the southern coast, was the important city of Agrigentum. It had once boasted a population of 200,000 souls ^ — a fact to which the size and extent of its majestic ruins still bear witness — and though its ruthless destruction by the Carthaginians (B.C. 405), which has already been described,'' and the misgovern- ment of domestic tyrants had shorn it of much of its grandeur and prosperity, it had been refounded by ' Polyb. i. 15-16 ; Diod. xxiii. Frag. 5 and 9 ; Florus, ii. 2. 6 ; Zonaras, viii. 9. ^ Polyb. i. 17. 4-5 ; Zonaras, viii. 10. ' Diod. Sic. xiii. 90. * See p. 50. 8o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Timoleon,' and was still at the time of the First Punic War the second Greek city in Sicily, and was able to give shelter to a garrison of 50,000 men. Here Hannibal, son of Gisco, concentrated the forces which had been gathered from such distant countries ; here he determined to make a stand in the field, and be- hind its bulwarks, after collecting vast stores of provisions and of materials for war, he was prepared, if need be, to stand a siege. Hither also came all the forces which the Roman Senate thought necessary to deal with a foe who during two campaigns had seemed anxious only to keep himself out of sight — a small army, so it is said, of two legions only!^ That this army, however, was on second thoughts judged to be too small and was doubled in size is clear from the fact that both consuls are mentioned as having taken part in the siege, and doubtless the Mamertines and Syracusans made the total much larger still.' The consuls of the year were L. Postumius and Q. Mamilius (B.C. 262) ; they pitched their camp eight stadia from the town and imprudently sent out their troops in large numbers to forage in the surround- ing country. Hannibal seized the opportunity, and only the heroism of some Roman pickets who, to allow time for the foragers to get back into the camp, died to a man, fighting bravely at their posts, saved the Romans from disaster.* It is not the only occasion in this war which proves that the far-famed sentry of Pompeii who preferred, with visor down, to be overwhelmed by the lava torrent at his post rather ' Plutarch, Timoleon, 35. ' Ibid. i. 17. 6. - Polyb. i. 17. I. * Ibid. i. 17. 9-13. SIEGE OF AGRIGENTUM. 8i than leave it with the flying citizens, was no isolated or exceptional example of Roman heroism. He only acted as every Roman was brought up to act as a matter of course, and as few ever failed to act, when the emergency arrived. Both sides now displayed greater caution. The Carthaginians contented them- selves with harassing the Romans with missiles from a distance, while the Romans broke up their army into two separate camps, connected by a double line of entrenchments — the one to protect them against the sallies of the besieged, the other to guard against possible dangers from the rear. The town of Erbessus, a few miles to the north, supplied them with abundant provisions, and seemed to remove famine, at all events, from the list of contingencies to which they might be exposed. In this state of things five months passed away, and to all appearance the siege was no nearer a successful termination than at the beginning ; but provisions had begun to fail in the closely-packed quarters of the defenders, and in deference to the urgent solicitations of Hannibal, Hanno was sent to Sicily with a new army, and with orders, if possible, to compel the Romans to raise the siege. Making Heraclea his headquarters, Hanno managed to sur- prise Erbessus and so cut off the supplies of the enemy. The Romans now found themselves in the position of besieged rather than besiegers. Pestilence as well as famine was at work in their lines, and it was the extraordinary energy of Hiero in supplying them with provisions when Erbessus fell, which alone pre- vented them from giving up the enterprise in despair.' • Polyb. i. i8. G 82 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Decisive operations could not now be long de- layed. In a preliminary engagement the Roman horse experienced, for the first time, the superiority of the famous Numidian light cavalry ; but in the battle which ensued the motley Carthaginian infantry found that they were, as yet, no match for the soldiers of the legion. Fifty elephants — wild beasts Polybius, with an air of horror, still calls them — fought on the side of the Carthaginians, a number many times as great as that which a few years before, in the time of Pyr- rhus, had carried dismay and confusion into the Roman ranks ; but on this occasion, as often afterwards, ele- phants were found to be a two-edged weapon, which might be fatal to the hand that wielded it. Thirty of the fifty were killed, and eleven remained alive in the hands of the Romans, as vast moving trophies of the victory that had been won. Hanno saved a rem- nant of his army by his hasty flight to Heraclea, and Hannibal, whom the Romans looked upon as already within their grasp, sheltered by the darkness of a winter's night, and helped by the energy of despair, made a last effort to break through the lines of his victorious foe. The Romans, overcome with fatigue, or giving the reins to their joy, had relaxed their vigilance. With bags stuffed with straw Hannibal filled up the deep trenches, scaled the ramparts, and managed with the effective part of his army to pass through the Roman lines unobserved. In the morn- ing the enemy, discovering what had happened, went through the form of pursuing the retreating Hannibal ; but they were more eager to fall on the unhappy town which he had abandoned to their mercy. The in- FALL OF AGRLGENTUM. 83 habitants surrendered at discretion, but they had to undergo all the horrors of a place taken by storm. The town was given up to plunder, and 25,000 freemen were sold into slavery. Nothing throughout the whole of Sicily now remained in the hands of the Cartha- ginians save a few fortresses on its western coasts ; and this was the precise moment at which, according to the explicit statement of Polybius,' it first dawned upon the Romans that they had embarked upon a war the true and only object of which must be to eject the Carthaginians altogether from the island. ' Polyb. i. 19, 20, 1-2 ; Zonaras, viii. 10. a 3 84 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER V. FIRST ROMAN FLEET. BATTLES OF MVL^?; AND ECNOMUS. (262-256 B.C.) Carthaginian naval supremacy — Roman naval affairs— Commercial treaties with Carthage — Difficulties of Romans — Want of ships of war — Want of sailors —The new fleet — its first ventures — Naval science and tactics of the Ancients — The Corvus — Battle of Mylas — Honours paid to Duillius — Egesta — The Romans attack Sardinia and Corr.ica — Energy of Carthaginians — Romans resolve to invade Africa — Enormous naval armaments — Route taken by the Romans — order of battle — Battle of Ecnomus. If the resolution now come to by Rome was to be carried out, it was clear that a complete change in the conduct of the war would be necessary. The Carthaginians had at length begun to put forth their real strength, and to assert the supremacy over the seas which had, in fact, never ceased to belong to them. With a fleet of sixty ships they coasted round Sicily, and by sheer terror, with- out striking a blow, brought back to their allegiance many towns which had gone over to Rome. The Romans might retain their grip on the interior of the island, but the coasts, it was clear, would belong to CARTHAGINIAN NAVAL SUPREMACY. 8$ Carthage so long as she remained mistress of the seas. Nor was this all. By making frequent descents at distant points on the Italian coast, the Carthaginian fleet kept the inhabitants of the sea-bord in a state of constant alarm, which it was quite beyond the power of any land forces raised by the Italians themselves to allay ; for by the nature of the case the Cartha- ginians, choosing, like the Northmen centuries after- wards, their own place and time, were able to destroy a town, or to harry a district, before alarm could be given to the nearest military station.' It was appa- rent that the war might go on for ever, each of the combatants being able to annoy and injure, but not to paralyse or destroy, the other, unless something should occur to change the conditions under which it was being carried on. The Carthaginians wanted only, what they had not yet succeeded in finding, a first-rate general, to enable them to make a descent in force in Italy, and so make Rome tremble for her own safety. The Romans wanted only an efficient fleet to enable them to meet Carthage on her own element, and then to transfer the contest to Africa. The all-important question was which would be found first. A life-and-death struggle generally finds out, and brings to the front, in spite of all artificial ob- stacles, a true military genius, even amongst a people whose collective genius is not military ; but it has very rarely been known to change the whole character of a people at once, to transform land-lubbers into sea- men, and, what is more extraordinary still, to enable them to cope on equal terms with the greatest naval ' Polyb. i. 20. S-7. 86 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGIN AMIS. power of the time. The chances therefore were, so far, not in favour of Rome. But we must beware of indulging in the exagge- rations in which it was natural enough for Polybius and other historians of the time to indulge, in their admiration of the energy of Rome. What the Ro- mans did was wonderful enough without the addition of a single fictitious detail to make it more so. It may be true, as Polybius says, that at the outbreak of the war Rome had no decked ships, no ships of war, no, not even a lembus — a small ship's boat with a sharp prow — which they could call their own.' But that the Romans were not so wholly ignorant of naval affairs as the ludicrous picture of a hundred batches of would-be sailors, training themselves to row on the sand, from scaffolds, would at first suggest, is clear from the fact that Rome had in the early days of the Republic fitted out ships with three banks of oars to keep in order piratical neighbours like the Antiates or the Etruscans ;^ that there were magistrates, called Dictiinviri tiavales, who, from tirriC to time, were ap- pointed for the express purpose of repairing the fleet ; and that the Carthaginians themselves had thought it worth their while repeatedly to form a commercial treaty with the Romans, restricting carefully their mutual rights and duties. 'The Romans and their allies shall not sail beyond the south of the Fair Promontory (that is, the well-known Hermaean promontory to the north-east of Carthage) unless compelled by stress of weather or an enemy ; and, if so compelled, they shall not take or purchase ' Polyb. i. 20. 13. ^ Cf. Livy, viii. 14 ; ix. 38. DIFFICULTIES OF ROMANS. 87 anything, except what is barely necessary for refitting their vessels, or for sacrifice, and in any case the}' shall depart within five days.' So runs one of the articles of the commercial treaty made, it is said, while Rome was as yet hardly the undisputed head of the Latin league, in B.C. 409, hardly a year after the expulsion of the kings and a second treaty, concluded, according to Polybius, 131 years later, in B.C. 348, shortly after the passing of the Licinian Rogations, contains similar but still more jealous stipulations. In it the Roman vessels are precluded — and the mere fact of the prohibition is a proof of the extent of Roman maritime enterprise — not only from the rich emporia on the Lesser Syrtis, but from the navigation of the Atlantic, and from all commer- cial dealings with the subjects of Carthage in Africa and Sardinia.^ Still the Romans had never l.een a really maritime or commercial people ; they d'd not love the sea, much less had they been a naval power ; and how were they to become so all at once ? The question was beset with difficulties. Triremes no doubt they might borrow from the Greek cities of Italy, as they had done once before ; but these would no more face the bulky monsters, called quinqueremes, which now formed the Carthaginian ships of the line, than an English revenue cutter could board a frigate. The Romans must have felt all the needs, upon a vaster scale, which dawned upon a people as land- loving and as exclusive as themselves, when the ' Polyb. iii. xxii. The date is given by Polybius. Mommsen, for reasons which he gives at length, refers the treaty to 348 B.C. (A'o/n. Hist. i. p. 426 and 442-444.) * Polyb. iii. 24. 88 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. conquest of Ezion Geber opened to the untravelled Israelites the navigation of the Red Sea, and the un- known possibilities of the East beyond it. But to the Hebrew subjects of King Solomon a way out of the difficulty was open which was not available to the Romans now. The gold of Solomon was able to procure Phoenician shipwrights who could construct, and Phoenician mariners who could navigate and steer, his vessels among the dangerous waters of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The descendants of these selfsame Phoenicians, the heirs of their traditions and of a double portion of their maritime genius, were the deadly enemies of Rome, and the Roman landsmen must face the dangers of the sea, not with their aid, but against their most strenuous opposition. Again, the quinquereme was not merely twice as large as a trireme, but was of a different build and construction. It was necessary, therefore, to ob- tain either shipwrights or a model from some nation to which such moving castles had been long familiar. There were ships of the line enough, no doubt, in the fleet of the Macedonians — their original inventors — or in that of the Egyptians ; but to procure ship- wrights or a model of a quinquereme from them would be difficult in time of war, and would involve a serious and perhaps a dangerous delay. Here chance was on the side of the Romans. A Cartha- ginian quinquereme had run ashore on the coast of Bruttium two or three years before, and had fallen into the hands of the Romans.' This served as the wished-for model ; and it is asserted by more than one ' Polyb. i. 20. 15. THE NEW FLEET. 89 writer that within sixty days a growing wood was felled and transformed into a fleet of a hundred ships of the line and twenty triremes.' The next difficulty was to find men for the fleet, and when they had found them to train them for their duties. How the large number of 30,000 rowers necessary to propel the ships, and of 12,000 marines nece.ssary to fight on board of them, were raised, in so short a time, from a people that was not a seafaring people, we have no precise information ; but as soon as they had been got together, and while the building of the ships was still in progress, they went, if we may believe the well-known story, through a course of training for the most important of their functions, that of rowing in time at the voice of the Keleustes by taking their seats on tiers of stages, and by making believe to go through the various evolutions which would be expected of them.^ Probably never did a fleet set sail under greater difficulties of every kind than did this. The starting timbers of the unseasoned wood of which the ships were built, and the distressing maladies which would assuredly befall a herd of landsm.en who had gone through only the mechanical preparation for the sea which we have described, might well have made men doubt whether either ships or crews would ever live to experience the shock of the Carthaginian battle. But we hear nothing of this. Perhaps, after all, the ships were manned in part not by Romans, but by Greek and Etruscan mariners ; and we know only ' Pliny, Hist. Nat., xvi. 192 ; Florus, ii. 2-7. * Polyb. i. 21. I, 2. 90 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. that hardly were the ships launched when they fear- lessly set sail (B.C. 261). M. Cornelius Scipio went forward with the van- guard of seventeen vessels, leaving the other consul, M. Duillius, behind to superintend the equipment of the main body of the fleet, and afterwards to take the command of the army. He reached Messana in safety ; but a message from Lipara, the largest of the group of islands of that name to the N.E. of Sicily, which belonged to Carthage, induced him to cross over to receive, as he thought, its submission. He had no sooner entered the harbour than he found his retreat cut off by twenty Carthaginian vessels which had been sent for that purpose by Hannibal, the admiral at Panormus. The crews were seized with a sudden panic, and with true landsmen's instincts made for the friendly shore which was close at hand. Cor- nelius, who earned for himself the name of Asina by the ease with which he had fallen into the trap which had been laid for him, stuck gallantly to his post, and was taken prisoner, together with the empty vessels of his fleet. This was not a promising beginning for the Romans; but imprudence and incapacity were not confined to them. The Carthaginian admiral, elated by his success, determined to intercept the whole Italian fleet as it sailed down the coast towards Mes- sana. He fell unexpectedly into their midst when his ships were in disorder, and he himself escaped with difficulty, leaving the greater number of his vessels in the hands of the enemy.' The Carthaginians had been disposed at first to ' Polyb. i. 21 ; Florus, ii. 2. NAVAL TACTICS OF THE ANCIENTS. 91 laugh at the idea of the Romans venturing to face them in their own element ; and though the laugh had now, for the moment at all events, been turned against themselves, the Romans were much too clear-sighted not to see that it was chance and the imprudence of the enemy which had been their best ally in this first engagement, and that the Carthaginians, having been caught napping once, would be sure to be more wide awake in future. Dr. Arnold remarks that the naval service of the ancients generally was, out of all pro- portion, inferior to their land service. The seamen were of a lower class ; the ships were propelled in battle by oars alone ; engines for the discharge of missiles were unknown or unused ; and the charge with the beak was the only recognised method of attack.' The remark is a just one, and it applies, in its measure, to the nations which were foremost as well as to those which were more backward in naval affairs. But the skill in naval warfare which the Carthagi- nians had acquired in centuries could not be learnt by Rome in a day. There are many points connected with the equipment and management of an ancient trireme which have not been cleared up ; but it is certain from the nature of the case itself, as well as from the detailed account of the engagements in the Corinthian Gulf contained in the second book of Thucydides, that even for the simple manoeuvres practised by the ancients, the cmbole, or charge on the side, and the prosbole, or charge beak to beak, the ptriplus, and the diecphis, there was an in- calculable difference between trained and untrained ' Arnold, Rom. Hisl., ii. 573-574. 92 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. rowers. ' No Peloponnesian fleet,' Phormion told his men, and told them truly, ' whatever its numbers, could possibly contend against them with success and his repeated victories showed that neither num- bers, nor personal valour, nor discipline could be of any avail against the superior skill in manoeuvring which the Athenians had attained during the fifty years that had passed since the fight at Salamis. It must also be borne in mind that the ancient rowers had often to contend in battle against wind and tide as well as against the foe — for the sails and masts were always cleared away as a preparation for action — and if the sea was running high, the utmost nicety in steering and the most perfect time and skill in rowing would be essential to the success of even the simplest manoeuvre. There was nothing but the voice of the Kelenstes to keep the three tiers of rowers, ranged one above the other, with their oars of different weights and different lengths, in time, and that voice would necessarily be drowned by the least excitement or confusion amongst the crews. If such careful training was found to be essential for the manage- ment of the trireme, what must it not have been for the quinquereme, a ship nearly twice the size, with five banks of oars instead of three The immediate problem, therefore, for the Romans to solve was not how best to train their crews to charge with the beak — for no training would have fitted them for that before the engagement which was imminent — but how best to parry that charge, and then to convert the naval into a land battle, leaving as little oppor- ' Thuc. ii. 89-92. THE CORVUS. 93 tunity as possible for subsequent manoeuvring, and as much as possible for hand-to-hand conflict. The device which the Romans adopted to secure these ends was clumsy, but it was effectual. On the fore part of each vessel was erected an additional mast, and lashed to it by a powerful hinge at a height of 12 feet above the deck, was a species of drawbridge, rising, when it stood erect, 24 feet above it. At the top of the mast was a pulley, through which ran a rope connecting it with the higher end of the drawbridge. On the end of this last and standing out from it at right angles was a sharp spike of the strongest iron, which, from its re- semblance, when in this position, to the bill of the raven, gave the name of Corvus to the whole con- struction. When an enemy's vessel was seen ap- proaching for the purpose either of charging directly beak to beak, or of striking obliquely the tiers of oars, and so of incapacitating them for further use, the draw- bridge, by an ingenious contrivance, could be swung round the mast towards the point where the danger threatened ; and the moment the enemy came within reach, it could be let fall from its commanding height and with its heavy weight upon the deck of the at- tacking ship. The iron beak would pierce through the planking of the deck and hold it fast in a death- grapple. The drawbridge was 4 feet broad, and was furnished with parapets reaching as high as the knee. The Roman mariners could therefore descend along it two abreast in continuous columns, the foremost pair defending themselves completely by holding in front their oblong shields, while those who followed were pro- tected in flank partly by the parapets and partly by 94 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. their small round shields.' In this way, in a very few moments from the time the Corvus fell, the whole body of the Roman mariners would find themselves on board the enemy's deck. The sea fight would be practically over, and the land fight would begin, and the issue of this conflict between the ' mere rabble of an African crew ' and picked Roman legionaries, could not be for a moment doubtful. Much ingenuity has been expended on the question of the purpose that could be served by fixing the lower end of the draw- bridge so high up the mast, and therefore so incon- veniently high above the deck. But the explanation seems to lie in the fact, which, perhaps, has escaped us because it was so obvious, that the ships of both Romans and Carthaginians had bulwarks, and to enable the Corvus not merely to catch them as by a hook but to penetrate the deck itself with its spike, it was necessary that the base of the drawbridge should be at a greater height than the bulwarks over which it would have to fall. A light ladder fixed on the side of the mast opposite to the Corvus and, doubt- less, revolving with it, would give easy access to the boarding bridge at the moment when it was required. C. Duillius, hearing of the calamity that had be- fallen his patrician colleague at Lipara, left the con- trol of the army — a matter, as it seemed now, of less moment — to inferior ofhcers, and assumed the far more critical post of admiral of the fleet. Finding that the enemy were engaged in ravaging Mylse, a peninsula and town on the north-west of the island, not far from Messana, he sailed fearlessly towards ' Polyb. i. 22. BATTLE OF MYLjE. 95 them. The Carthaginians, when with 130 well-built and well-manned ships they saw the 100 ungainly Roman hulks, the timbers of which ought still to have been seasoning in the timber-yard, and their landsmen sailors, drawn from they knew not where, must have felt something of the thrill of long-deferred delight which forced from Napoleon the exclamation, ' At last I have them, those English, in my grasp,' as, as- suredly, they must have felt something of the keenness of his disappointment at the still more unlooked-for result. Not caring in their confidence and joy even to form in line of battle, they bore down at once upon the Romans as on an easy prey. When they drew near, they were for the moment taken aback by the strange appearance of vessels coming into battle with their masts left standing — masts, too, with such un- couth and extraordinary appendages attached to them. But their hesitation was only for a moment. Evidently these raw enemies of theirs did not even know how to clear their decks for action. With re- doubled confidence thirty of the Carthaginian vessels charged beak to beak on as many of the Roman vessels, and each immediately found itself a prisoner, held fast by the grappling iron which had so excited their surprise and their contempt. Others of the Car- thaginian ships, thinking to escape the fall of the drawbridge which had caught their comrades, charged sideways against other parts of the Roman ships ; but round swung the fatal Raven, as though it were a thing of life, and descended upon them, pinning the vessels tight alongside of each other, and enabling the Rom^n legionaries to dispense with the bridge and 96 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. to leap at once from every part of their vessel into that of the enemy. After fifty of their ships of war had been locked in this deadly embrace, the re- mainder, declining to fight at all with foes who were ill-bred enough to fight and conquer against all the rules of naval warfare, took to flight. The admiral's ship, a monster heptireme, said formerly to have be- longed to Pyrrhus of Epirus, was amongst those taken by the Romans, and the admiral Hannibal himself escaped in a little skiff by almost as narrow an escape as that by which, when general of the army, he had slipped through the Roman lines at the end of the siege of Agrigentum.' The Romans were overjoyed, as well they might be, at their success. It was their first naval battle, and their first great naval victory over the greatest naval power which the world had seen. Its import- ance was not to be measured by its immediate results, but rather by the omen it gave for the future. Ho- nours, till then unexampled, were freely bestowed upon the Plebeian Duillius. When he went out to supper it was to the sound of music ; when he returned home it was with an escort of torch-bearers. A pillar was erected to his honour in the Forum, called the Co- lumna Rostrata, for it was adorned with the brazen beaks of the vessels which his wise ignorance and his clumsy skill had enabled him to capture.^ The great battle of Mylae was fought in the year ' Polyb. i. 23 ; Florus, ii. 2. 8, 9. 2 Polyb. i. 24. I ; Livy, Epit. xvii. ; Cicero, de Senectute, xiii. 44 ; Pliny, H. N. xxxiv. 5. Cf. Virg. Georg. iii. 29 ; and Silius Italicus, Pun. vi. 663-668 ; Tac. Ann. ii. 49. SARDINIA AND CORSICA ATTACKED. 97 T— ^ U.C. 260, and the Roman army improved the victory of their fleet by at once marching to Egesta, a town which claimed relationship to Rome by reason of their supposed common descent from Troy, and which was situated in a part of Sicily considerably beyond any in which we have as yet seen the Romans. Egesta was always ready to ally itself with a foreigner. As we have already seen, it had called in the aid, first of the Athenians and afterwards of the Carthaginians,- against its neighbour and rival Selinus, and now, in the second year of the war, it had attached itself to Rome; but the Carthaginians, eager to punish its defection, had straightway blockaded the place, and were on the point of capturing it when the Romans arrived and forced them to raise the siege.' The Roman fleet, too, now no longer confined its aims to the narrow Sicilian waters, but striking boldly across the open sea, threatened the empire of Carthage in the rich island of Sardinia also. In the savage mountains of the interior the natives still managed to maintain something of their independence and of their barbarism ; but the coasts hiid been for centuries in the possession of the Carthaginians. Thither the unfortunate Hannibal, son of Cisco, had withdrawn shortly after his defeat at Mylae, thinking doubtless that there, at least, he would be safe from Roman molestation ; but even there the Romans, in the exultation of their first victory, pursued him. Penned within the harbour in which he had taken refuge, he lost several of his ships in an engagement, and on his escape to land was apprehended by his own men and Polyb. i. 24.. 2 ; Diod. xxiii. Frag. 7. H 98 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. crucified. They took the law into their own hands ; but, doubtless, they only anticipated the sentence which would have been passed by the inexorable Hundred on an unlucky admiral who should have returned to Carthage after surviving so many and such unprecedented reverses.' The Romans followed up their success by an attack on Olbia, the capital of the island. The expedition failed. But an attempt upon Aleria, formerly a Phocaean colony, and now the capital of Corsica, was more successful. Corsica had, probably, never belonged outright to Carthage ; but it had, at least, acknowledged her maritime supremacy, and the second treaty between Rome and Carthage seems to have recognised it as a kind of neutral territory between the two.^ The epitaph of L. Cornelius Scipio, which is still preserved, tells us how he took Corsica and Aleria, and how on his return to Rome he dedicated a well-deserved temple to the tempest which had almost overwhelmed him in the Corsican waters.' But the absence of the Roman fleet in Corsica and Sardinia proved a serious, if only a temporary, drawback to the progress of the Roman arms in > Polyb. i. 24. 5-7. ^ See Servius on /En. iv. 628, quoted by Mommsen, ' Ut Cor- sica esset media inter Romanes et Carthaginienses. ' ' Hie cepit Corsicam Aleriamque urbem, Dedit tempestatibus aidem mereto. Nor is Ovid backward to acknowledge the debt of gratitude to the merciful storm : - Te quoque, Tempestas, meritam delubra fateniur Cum pene est Corsis obruta classis aquis. Ovid, Fasti, vi. 193, 194. ENERGY OF CARTHAGINIANS. 99 Sicily. Rome could not yet afford so to dissipate her energy, and Hamilcar, commander-in-chief at Panormus, now gave evidence of a vigour and a capacity such as had hitherto not been witnessed among either of the contending parties. Hearing that the Romans and their allies, on their return from Egesta, were at discord amongst themselves, he sur- prised and cut to pieces 4,000 of the enemy in their camp near Himera.' He destroyed the town of Eryx and transferred its inhabitants en masse to the neighbouring fortress of Drepanum and it was doubt- less the bold front he showed which, in the following year, compelled the Romans to retire from before Panormus, after merely convincing themselves of the strength of its fortifications. The other events of the two years which followed the battle of Mylae, the alternate revolts and subjugations, the taking or re- taking of such towns as Mytistratus, Enna, Gela, and Camarina,^ were not such — although the tide of success was, on the whole, in favour of the Romans — as to promise any speedy termination of the land war ; while, as regards naval affairs, the battle of Tyndaris, fought B.C. 237 on a spot only a few miles from Mylae, wherein each party claimed the victory, left things pretty much as they were.'' But the lull was only apparent, for both sides were straining every nerve to raise such a navy as should be able by sheer strength to bear down all opposition ' Polyb. i. 24. 3, 4. ' Diod. Sic. xxiii. Frag 9. ^ Polyb. xxiv. IO-13. * Polyb. XXV. I-3 ; Zonaras, viii. 11, 12. 11 2 loo CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. to it — the Romans with the avowed intention of fight-, ing their way into Africa, and so compelHng Carthage to submit to the terms of peace which they might be wiUing to offer her ; the Carthaginians with the hope of recovering the empire of the seas which had now been half torn from her, and of excluding the Romans, if not from the whole of her dependencies, at all events from her home domain in Africa.' The material results in the way of shipping ob- tained by either side were not disproportionate to the efforts that had been made. Probably never, either before or after, did such vast naval armaments put to sea. The most important naval combats of ancient and of modern times — the battles of Artemisium, Salamis, and Naulochus, of Lepanto, Trafalgar, and Navarino — sink into insignificance, as far as mere numbers go, when compared with that of Ecnomus. Other battles, doubtless, enlist the sympathies more fully on one side or the other, or interest more keenly those who care for war merely as war. The stake fought for at Salamis was an infinitely higher stake, and was fraught with vastly more momentous issues for the whole human race ; for it was the cause of Greek freedom and civilisation against Asiatic slavery and barbarism. At Trafalgar the darling scheme of the heartless op- pressor of all Europe was for ever frustrated by the crowning naval victory of a war which, the worst calumniators of England must admit, was not a selfish war. In all these points — in the motives of the com- batants, in its purely military or scientific interest, and in its results — the battle of Ecnomus is not spe- ' Polyb. XXV. 7-9 ; xxvi. I -3. ENORMOUS NAVAL ARMAMENTS. loi cially remarkable. It is impossible to give our un- divided sympathies to either side. It was a battle, in the main, of brute force and not of consummate skill ; it was not decisive even of the result of the war of which it formed so bulky a part. Still less can it attract those who look upon all wars except those waged in self-defence or for purely moral ends — all wars, that is, except those waged ultimately in the interests of peace — with horror and condemnation. Yet men are men, and even the Carthaginian mer- cenaries, though their employers did not think so, were worth something more than the pay they earned by their services ; and size is size, and will always, apart from everything else, and whether it ought to or not, attract to itself the attention of mankind. And from the point of view of mere size — the number, that is, of its ships and the crews who fought in them — the battle of Ecnomus is certainly entitled to a con- spicuous place in history. At Artemisium, no doubt, the number of Greek and Persian vessels engaged, or ready to be engaged, must have been greater still, but they were triremes or penteconters only ; while at Ecnomus the ships engaged were, in the main, quinqueremes or hexiremes, and the Roman fleet carried also a large army intended for land service in Africa. The vicissitudes of the battle are some- what complicated ; but it is necessary for one who would understand aright the first Punic War to dwell awhile upon a conflict which is so eminently charac- teristic of it. The Romans set sail from Messana (B.C. 256) with 330 ships, while the Carthaginians mustered the still I02 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. more portentous number of 350 ships in their famous port of Lilybeeum ; so that, if we are to accept the deli- berate calculation of Polybius, who assigns 300 rowers and 1 20 mariners to each ship of war, nearly 300,000 men must have met in the battle which ensued ! ' The direct line to Africa was along the northern coast of Sicily ; but the strength of the Carthaginian virgin fortresses of Panormus, Drepanum, and Lilybaeum, all of which were on the north or north-west of the island, made the Romans prefer the southern coast, which was to a great extent in their own hands, and where their land army had assembled ready for embarkation. The Carthaginians, who knew too well what an invasion of Africa meant, and who felt that the ravages of the Roman army would not be the worst of the evils that it would involve, moved slowly forward to Heraclea Minoa, determined to crush the invaders before they could leave the Sicilian coast. The Romans, having taken on board their legions at Phintias, divided their immense fleet into four squadrons. The two first squadrons formed two sides of an equilateral triangle, while the third, having be- hind them the transports laden with cavalry, formed its base. To the rear of these again, and forming at once a rear guard and a reserve, came the fourth squadron, which Polybius calls, from the important function allotted to it, the Triarii.^ At the apex of the triangle, their prows standing out to sea, and pointing the rest of the fleet the way to Africa, sailed abreast the two monster hexiremes — ships as large probably as our ships of the line — of the consuls ' Polyb. i. xxvi. 7-9. - Polyb. i. 26. IO-15. ORDER OF BATTLE. and admirals in one, M. Atilius Regulus and L. Manlius. The whole Roman fleet together thus formed the figure called in nautical manoeuvring an embolon, or wedge, a figure said by Polybius to be suited to ener- getic action and very difficult to break through. On the other hand, it postulated a skill in seamanship, and a confidence in their own powers both of attack and of defence, very different from that which marked the Roman fleet at their victory at Myla;, only three years before.' The Carthaginians, reminded by their admirals — Hanno, who had in vain attempted to raise the siege of Agrigentum, and Hamilcar, who had lately fought, not without credit to himself, at Tyn- daris — of the momentous issues that were at stake, and asked to choose whether they would hencefor- ward fight for the possession of Sicily or in defence of their own hearths and homes, moved westward along the shore in good spirits and order. They hove in sight of the enemy, as it would seem, to the west of the promontory of Ecnomus,^ and observing the four- fold division of the Roman armament, they divided their own fleet into a similar number of squadrons. The Carthaginian admirals, in order to detach the first two squadrons of the Roman fleet from the third, which was retarded by the transports, arranged that ' Polyb. i. 26. 16. 2 Zonaias, viii. 12, makes the battle take place off Heraclea Minoa, but he gives no details ; and his account of the sequel is obviously mythi- cal, intended to set forth the good faith of the Romans and the bad faith of the Carthaginians. Polybius clearly implies an advance of the Carthaginians from Heraclea and of the Romans fromEcnomus, but the exact stene of the battle must remain uncertain. 104 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the part of their line which should be first attacked by the thin end of the Roman wedge should give way before it and feign a flight. The stratagem was par- tially successful, for the flying Carthaginian ships, wheeling round suddenly, closed in upon the sides of the Roman triangle, which had pursued them too far, and by their superior rapidity and skill seriously threatened its safety. But the knowledge that they were fighting under the immediate eye of the consuls, and the confidence inspired in them by the possession of the Raven, enabled the Romans to hold their own, till Hamilcar, in sheer exhaustion, was compelled to save himself by flight. Meanwhile a fierce double combat had been raging elsewhere. Hanno, who was on the Carthaginian right, had forborne to take any part in the first onset, but, keeping out to sea, as soon as the three first Roman squadrons had got well past him, had fallen upon the rear guard. ' Ventiini erat ad Triariosl and, for a time, it seemed as if even the Triarii would give way. The Carthaginian left, which had hitherto hugged the shore in a long line at right angles to the rest of the fleet, as soon as they had got well behind the Roman position, attacked the third squadron, which was impeded by the transports. These, however, slipped the ropes, and did battle with their assailants. There were thus three distinct sea-fights, simultaneous and well maintained. Ha- milcar, as has been said, was the first to give way, and his flight practically decided the battle. Manlius remained where he was to secure the disabled vessels ; but Regulus fell back to the assistance of the Triarii, who were being hard pressed by Hanno. Hanno THE BATTLE OF ECNOMUS. 105 was put to flight, and Manlius just then coming up, both consuls together bore down on the left wing of the enemy, which, had they only been less afraid of the boarding-bridges, must ere this have been vic- torious. A few only of the Carthaginian ships escaped, but the Romans had no reason to despise their foes, for, once more, they owed the victory not so much to their naval skill as to their boarding-bridges. Still, their victory was complete, and there was now nothing left to bar the conquerors from Africa.' ' Polyb. i. 27, 28 ; Zonaras, viii. 12. io6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER VI. INVASION OF AFRICA. REGULUS AND XANTHIl'PU.S. (256-250 B.C.) Invasion of Africa — Romans overrun Carthaginian tenitory — Short- sightedness of Carthaginians — Changes necessary in Roman military system — Recall of Manlius — Victory of Regulus — Desperate plight of Carthaginians — Terms of peace rejected — Arrival of Xanthippus — He is given the command — His great victory near Adis — ^Joy of Carthaginians — Thank-offerings to Moloch — Departure of Xanthippus — The survivors at Clypea — Roman fleet destroyed in a storm — Carthaginian reinforcements for Sicily — Romans build a new fleet — Take Panormus — Second Roman fleet destroyed in a storm — Carthaginians threaten Panormus — Romans build a third fleet- -Battle of Panormus — Part played by elephants in first Punic War — Story of embassy and death of Regulus — How far true ? The resolution of the Roman Senate had been long since taken. In fact, as we have said, the fleet had been built for the express purpose of transferring the war to Africa ; but it is hardly to be wondered at that when the hour had come for carrying out so perilous a resolution, the hearts of some among the Roman soldiers should have been filled with mis- givings, and that these should have found expression in the mutinous language of a tribune.' Xenophon has told us how anxiously Cyrus the Younger con- ' Florus, ii. 2. 17. INVASION OF AFRICA. 10/ cealed from the Ten Thousand Greeks the real nature of the perilous venture he had undertaken ; and how, before he revealed to them the fatal secret, he took care so far to commit them to the enterprise that a retreat would be then not less dangerous than an advance. The Romans were now entering on a phase of the great contest which to them must have seemed hardly less perilous than the Anabasis itself They had to cross a sea which to them was as un- known and, under existing circumstances, as fraught with the possibilities of mischief as the trackless deserts of Mesopotamia. They were to enter a new continent, peopled not by the wild ass and the ante- lope and the scudding ostrich which had amused the Ten Thousand Greeks, but, as popular imagination would have it, and as a grave historian had related, ' by lions and by dog-headed monsters, and by crea- tures with no heads and with eyes in their breasts.' ' However, threats of a more summary kind used by Regulus overpowered these forebodings of distant dis- aster and crushed the rising mutiny, and the Roman fleet, after it had been revictualled and repaired, stood right across the Mediterranean to the nearest point of Africa, a distance of only ninety miles. The Hermean Promontory is the north-eastern horn of the Bay of Carthage. Here the Romans waited awhile to muster their forces. It was the precise point beyond which — as treaty after treaty, ' Herod, iv. 191 ; cf. Livy, Epit. xviii. ; Val. Max. i. 8. 19 ; Florus, ii. 2. 20 ; Zonaras, viii. 13, for the account of the huge serpent I20 feet long found on the Bagradas and besieged by the Roman army with their ballistte. The skin is said to have been carried to Rome and to have been preserved there for centuries ! io8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. made with the jealous commercial state, had stipu- lated— no Roman ship should dare to pass, whether to trade, to plunder, or to colonise ; and it must have been with feelings, not of satisfaction or of curiosity alone, that, after a short pause, the Roman fleet began to penetrate deeper into the mysteries of that great Car- thaginian preserve by coasting along till they reached a town which, from the shield-shaped eminence on which it stood, they called Clypea, as the Greeks had already named it Aspis. They set foot without oppo- sition on African soil, hauled up their ships upon the beach, and, as though their stay was not going to be a short one, threw up a palisade around them, and when the town refused to surrender, they besieged and took it. Meanwhile the Carthaginians had been forewarned of the coming danger. Hanno, after his defeat at Ecnomus, had made straight across for Car- thage, and, though he must have risked his life in so doing, had bidden the citizens prepare for the worst. Rut to be forewarned was with the Carthaginians, at this period of their history, not necessarily to be fore- armed : their best armies were absent in Sicily ; their navy was demoralised and half destroyed, and the native Libyans were in a state of chronic disaffection. Had the Romans marched at once upon the capital — without an adequate army or a competent general as it then was — it is just possible that it might have fallen. But this was not to be. The rich territory which lay between Clypea and Carthage was too tempting and too easy a prey for the needy Roman soldiery. It had now quite recovered from the devas- tations of Agathocles, and the Romans, strangers as SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS OF CARTHAGINIANS. 109 yet, happily for themselves, to luxury, contemplated with amazement and delight the pleasant gardens and the opulent palaces of the merchant princes of Car- thage, which had sated the greed of the mercenaries of Agathocles fifty years before.' Nor did their hands spare what their eyes admired. The palaces were ran- sacked of their valuables, and then ruthlessly set on fire ; the cattle were driven in vast herds towards the Roman camp ; and 20,000 of the inhabitants of the surrounding country found themselves collected in the Roman ships to be sold into slavery.^ Nor had the Carthaginians, in the interval which had elapsed since the invasion of Agathocles, grown less fatally distrustful of their own subjects. They still forbade the subject cities to surround themselves with walls, not because, like the Spartans, they thought a living rampart of men was a better protection than any masonry, but because they had good reason to suspect that such defence might be turned against themselves. Accordingly, Regulus passed with facility from village to village, or from town to town, till, as the Romans boasted, he had nearly doubled the number of 200 townships which Agathocles had con- quered before him.^ But just now came from Rome the astounding order, which may well have aroused the misgivings even of the triumphant Roman army, that one of the two consuls was to return home at once with his troops and his ships, leaving the other in Africa with what Polybius calls — one would think with a touch of irony — a ' sufficient force ' to bring the war to a con- ' Diod. Sic XX. 8. ' Polybius, i 29. 1-7. ' Floius, ii. 2. 19. no CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. elusion.' It was not so much that the Roman Senate actually underestimated the difficulty of conquering Carthage, as that it did not occur to a body of so con- servative a frame of mind, that, now that the scale of their warfare had been so enlarged, it might be advisable to make a corresponding alteration in all the conditions under which they carried it on. The principle that every soldier is, above all and before all things, a citizen, and that he ought not to forego any of his civil rights or duties for a longer time than is absolutely necessary, is in itself a noble principle, and one which modern states, with their overgrown and appalling standing armies, would do well to remember. But the rule that an army should always return to Rome, either to go into winter quarters or to be dis- banded, was a practical application of the principle which, though it had its advantages, must have been inconvenient even in the early struggles of the Roman republic ; while the maxim of state policy that the commander-in-chief, whatever his talents and whatever the complication of his military plans, should, as soon as a particular day of the year came round, be superseded by a civil magistrate, what- ever his military incapacity, was a maxim which, though it may have acted well enough in a border warfare against a discontented Latin or Etruscan town, had broken down completely in the Samnite wars, and would be absolutely fatal in the far more gigantic struggle against Carthage.^ But the Roman Senate, whatever its practical ability and courage in carrying out the current busi- ' Polyb. i. 29. 8. ' See Mommsen, ii. p. 60. RECALL OF MANLIUS. Ill ness of the state, was not more foresighted than other deliberative assembUes, and needed the bitter teach- ing of experience to bring home to them what seems to us so obvious a truth. Its orders were obeyed without a murmur, and Manhus set off for Rome, with his prisoners, his army, and his fleet,' leaving Regulus behind him, the heir to that strange inherit- ance of a reputation for military rashness and disaster on the one hand, and for disinterested patriotism on the other, which, immortalised as it has been by Horace, has gone the round of the world, and will doubtless survive the most convincing demonstra- tion of its groundlessness by pitiless critics. The army with which he was expected, as it would seem, to complete the conquest of Africa amounted only to 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. But the Carthaginians, however shortsighted, had not been idle since his arrival. They had appointed Hasdru- bal, son of Hanno, and Bostar generals v»'ith equal powers ; and, as though this division of responsibility was not in itself sufficiently prejudicial to their cause, they now sent for a third from Sicily, Hamilcar, a man of proved ability, but who was intended not to overrule his less experienced colleagues, but only to have an equal voice with them ! Their collective wisdom came to the patriotic resolution — they could hardly have come to any other — ' to go to the help of the country.' 2 The point immediately threatened was Adis, a town of some importance ; and to raise its siege the Carthaginians occupied a hilly district which seemed indeed to threaten the Roman lines, ' Polyb. i. 29. 10. ^ Polyb. i. 30. 3. 112 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. but which far more effectually prevented those oc- cupying it from making use of the arm in which they were really strong, their elephants and cavalry. The Romans were not slow to perceive this mistake, and, in spite of the strenuous resistance of some of the mercenaries, assaulted and carried the position, while the Carthaginian cavalry and elephants extricated themselves, as best they could, from the broken ground, and as soon as they reached the plain saved themselves by flight. The Romans now fell to devastat- ing the country with redoubled energy and with even less of caution than before. Tunis, itself an important town in sight of the capital, fell into their hands, and Regulus encamped on the banks of the Bagradas in the heart of what was then the mo.st fertile country in the world. The prospects of the Carthaginians looked des- perate indeed. Their only available army had been defeated and what the Romans had spared in their devastations, the Numidians, a people always on the move and always eager for plunder, carried off. If the Romans had chastised the country districts with whips, the Numidians, maddened with oppression as well as thirsting for booty, now chastised them with scorpions. All the inhabitants who could flee took refuge in the capital,. and the vast increase of popula- tion was already threatening the city with the famine and the pestilence which are usually the last outcome and not the forerunners of a siege.' Regulus, seeing their miserable plight and anxious lest his successor, who, according to Roman custom, ' Polyb. i. 31. 2, 3. TERMS OF PEACE REJECTED. 113 might be soon expected, should reap the glory of the war which he had so far conducted prosperously, offered to negotiate for peace. The proposal was joyfully accepted ; but Regulus, intoxicated with success, offered the Carthaginians terms which could scarcely have been harder if the Romans had been within their walls. The conquered people were to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, to form an offensive and defensive alliance with her, to give up ftU their ships of war but one, to cede not Sicily only — for that the Carthaginians, acknowledging the for- tune of war, would have been glad to do — but Corsica and Sardinia and the Lipari Islands also, to surrender the Roman deserters, to ransom their own prisoners, to pay all that it had cost the Romans to bring them to their knees, and a heavy tribute besides ! Terms, in- tolerable in themselves, were made still more intoler- able by the insolent bearing of the Plebeian consul towards those whom he looked upon as prostrate before him. He had already written to Rome that he had ' sealed up the gates of Carthage with terror,' ' and now he told the ambassadors roughly that * men who were good for anything should either conquer or submit to their betters.'^ The Romans, when after the battle of the .^Egatian Isles they had to recoup themselves, as best they could, for fifteen more years of tedious warfare, for the loss of four fleets, and for the humiliation which befell this very Regulus so soon afterwards in Africa, did not propose such ruinous conditions as these, and Scipio himself, after Zama,. if only because so many of the tiger's teeth had been ' Zonaras, viii. 13. ^ Diod. xxiii. Frag. 10. I 114 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. already drawn, did not think it necessary to clip its claws as well. It argues an insensate ignorance on the part of the Romans of what was truly great in their antagonists, if they thought that they would accept such terms. The spirit of the ambassadors rose with their adversity. They refused even to discuss the conditions offered them, and the Carthaginian Senate determined to die, fighting bravely with arms in their hands, rather than sign voluntarily their own death- warrant.' Be the story of the subsequent heroism and self-sacrifice of Regulus ever so true, a serious abate- ment must be made in estimating his qualities both of head and heart, for the insolence and infatuation which he displayed on this critical occasion. The moment at which the Carthaginians were obliged to give up all hopes of peace was also, luckily for them, the precise moment at which a recruiting officer happened to return from Greece with a band of soldiers of fortune whom he had induced to place their swords at the disposal of the rich republic. Among these was Xanthippus, a Lacedaemonian of inferior grade, but one who had been well schooled in war by the admirable training which the Spartan discipline still gave, and by the troublous times in which the whole of Greece was involved. Observing the excellence of the Carthaginian cavalry and the number of the Carthaginian elephants, and hearing also the story of the recent defeat, he remarked casually, as the story goes, to his friends, that the Carthaginians had been conquered not so much by the enemy as by themselves, or by the blunders of ' Polyb. i. 31. 8 ; Diod. xxiii. Frag. xiL THE COMMAND GIVEN TO XANTHIPPUS. 115 their generals. The words were caught up and ran from mouth to mouth in the eager and anxious city. Before long they reached the ears of the government, probably of the dreaded Hundred themselves. The Hundred, seldom backward, if our accounts are trust- worthy, to listen to anything to the prejudice of the instruments they employed, summoned Xanthippus before them. He justified what he had said by argu- ment, and pledged his word that if only the Cartha- ginians would keep to the plains and utilise that in which their real strength lay, they would be victori- ous. It is little creditable to the insight either of the Carthaginian government or generals that they should have required a Greek soldier of fortune to apprise them of the mistake they had made ; but there seems no reason to doubt the plain statement of Polybius. The command, but not, as yet, the sole command, was entrusted to Xanthippus. His confidence was contagious, and there ran through the city the joyful news that now the hour had come and the man. Con- fidence grew into enthusiasm, when men saw the way in which Xanthippus handled his troops, and con- trasted it \vith the sorry performances of the other generals. A cry was raised for instant battle ; for all were convinced that no evil could befall them under such a leader as Xanthippus. A council of war was held, but the popular enthusiasm carried everything before it ; and the other generals, pocketing their pride, or sharing, as it would seem, in the general enthusiasm, handed over the undivided responsibility to Xanthippus.' ' Polyb. i. 32. ii6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. The Carthaginian army, reinforced by the addition of the recruits from Greece, numbered 12,000 in- fantry, with 4,000 cavalry, and a formidable array of 100 elephants. Regulus, surprised at the novel sight of a Carthaginian army encamping on the plains, hesitated a moment, as though there was 'something more in this change of tactics than met the eye, and pitched his own camp at a distance of a mile from them. But finding that the Carthaginians meant to fight, and flushed with his hitherto unbroken success, he drew up his army in order of battle. His small body of cavalry he placed, as usual, on the wings, but his infantry he massed much more closely together and in much deeper formations than was common among the Romans, thinking that they could thus be better able to resist the onset of the elephants. At last Xanthippus ordered the elephants to charge, while the cavalry were to attack and then to close in on the wings of the enemy. The Roman horse, out- numbered in the proportion of four to one, took to flight without striking a blow, and the elephants, rush- ing wildly into the foremost ranks of the Roman infantry, laid them low in every direction, and trampled them to death by scores. The main body, however, stood firm, and when the elephants turned aside towards the flanks, it found itself face to face with the Carthaginian centre, which had not yet drawn the sword. Attacked in front by the infantry, on the flanks, which the flight of their own cavalry had left unprotected, by the Numidian cavalry, and on the rear by the elephants, the majority of the Roman legionaries stood their ground nobly, as they did GREAT VICTORY NEAR ADIS. 117 under similar circumstances at the Trebia forty years later, and died where they were standing. A ''few took to flight ; but the flight of foot soldiers from Numidian cavalry over level ground only meant a slight prolongation of the miserable struggle for life. Regulus himself, at the head of six hundred men, surrendered to the conquerors, and of the whole army 2,000 only, who had at the first onset defeated the mercenaries, and after pursuing them to their camp had taken no other part in the battle, escaped to Clypea with the news of the disaster.' Clypea was the only spot in the whole of the country which the Romans had so easily overrun that they could now call their own. The Carthaginians first spoiled the slain, and then leading the Roman consul himself and the other survivors in chains, re- turned in triumph to the capital. It was the first pitched battle which they had fairly won ; but that one battle had reversed the whole fortune of the war. The Roman army had been all but annihilated, and its miserable remnant was besieged upon the spot where they had first landed. The inhabitants of the country districts could now return to their homes and rebuild their shattered homesteads ; and the richness of the incomparable soil, with its abundant irrigation, would soon efface all traces of the invaders. The citizens themselves once again breathed freely, for they were delivered from the prospect of an im- mediate siege, the last horrors of which, in the shape of sickness and starvation, they had already begun to taste. What wonder, as Polybius says, if, in the ' Polyb. i. 33, 34. ii8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. exuberance of their joy, all ranks alike gave them- selves up to feasting and thanksgivings to their gods ? ' But v/hat kind of thanksgiving did the Cartha- ginian deities delight to receive and the Carthaginian worshipper bring himself to give ? We know from Diodorus^ that when Agathocles was threatening Carthage fifty years before, 200 children of the noblest Carthaginian families had been offered ahve to appease the angry Moloch, and 300 men had willingly devoted themselves for the same purpose, if haply they so might save the city from the impending siege. And, again, a little later, to celebrate a victory over the same Agathocles, a similar thank-offering of the most beautiful among their captives had been offered to the same bloodthirsty god. In that last case, indeed, the sacrifice had recoiled upon the sacri- ficers ; for the flames in which the wretched victims were being consumed, fanned by the wind w^hich just then sprang up, caught the sacred chapel which stood near the altar of burnt-offerings. Thence it spread to the tent of the general, who, according to Carthaginian custom, must have been presiding at the sacrifice, and then leaping, with a speed which cut off escape, from tent to tent of wattled reeds, it enveloped the whole camp in a lambent circle of fire, and offered to the fire-god a holocaust of his own most devout wor- shippers.^ Nor can we doubt that the greater agony through which the Carthaginians had now passed, and the still more unlooked-for triumph by which they had issued from it, were marked by the same ' Polyb. i. 34. 12 ; 36. I. = Diod. .\x. 14. ' Diod. XX. 65. THANK-OFFERINGS TO MOLOCH. 119 horrible offerings on a more imposing scale. There stood the huge brazen god with arms outstretched to receive his offerings, as though a father to clasp his children to his breast. But the arms sloped treacher- ously down towards the ground, and the victim placed upon them rolled off into a seething cauldron of fire below, his cries drowned, as in the vale of Hinnom, by the rolling of drums and the blare of trumpets. This was the end, no doubt, of some of the noblest among the Roman captives. For Moloch was a jealous god. No alien children, bought with money and reared up for human sacrifice, would he accept. He allowed no substitutes, nor would he take from his worshipper that which cost him nothing or cost him money only.' An only child, a first-born child, a child remarkable for its beauty, its wealth, or its noble birth, this was the offering which touched the fire-god's heart ; and the parents, who had sacrificed their own children to avert the siege, would now, not unnaturally, come forward to give the noblest among the Roman captives as thank-offerings to the god who had heard their prayer and, as they believed, delivered them from their distress. Xanthippus was the hero of the hour ; and if the Spartan soldiers of fortune were as fond of money as we know that the Spartan kings and nobles, in de- fiance of the laws of Lycurgus, had for the most part been before him, he must have had an opportunity such as had been given to few of his countrymen, of satisfying his utmost cravings with the gold of the opulent republic. But the head of Xanthippus was ' Diod. XX. 14. I20 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. not turned by his success. He knew the Carthaginians better perhaps than they knew themselves, and deter- mined to return to his own home before the popu- larity which he had earned should change into envy. That he acted wisely in so doing is evident from the story that the Carthaginians sent him back in a ship which was not seaworthy.' The story is doubtless a malicious invention, but it could hardly have been fathered upon a people whose gratitude for favours received was either deep or lasting. The Romans, when they heard of the disaster which had befallen Regulus, fitted out a large fleet for the rescue of the survivors (B.C. 255) ; while the Cartha- ginians, rightly judging that the resolution of Rome would not be broken by any one calamity, however great, also set to work to build a new fleet which should protect them from a second invasion. But in vain did they endeavour to reduce Clypea before the Romans could reach it. The desperate courage of the small garrison repelled all assaults, and enabled it to hold out till the ensuing summer, when the Roman fleet arrived. A naval battle took place off" the Her- mean promontory. The Romans gained the day, and took on board, at their leisure, the defenders of Clypea who had so well earned their lives. They had well earned their lives, but they were not long to enjoy them ; they turned their backs with joy upon Africa, but they were not to see Italy. The armament had reached Camarina in safety, and was about to round Pachynus, and to sail home through the Straits of Messana, when a terrific storm, such as ' Polyb. i. 36. 2-4 ; Zonaras, viii. 13. ROMAN FLEET DESTROYED IN A STORM. 12 1 is common in those parts and at that time of the year, broke upon them. Some of the Roman ships foundered in the open sea, more were dashed to pieces against the sharp rocks and numerous promontories of that iron-bound coast, and the shore was strewed for miles with wrecks and corpses. Out of 340 ships it was said that only eighty escaped ; and what must have given an additional sting to the calamity was the consciousness that it might have been avoided. The pilots, probably the only persons on board who had had real experience of the sea, or who knew what ugly weather was, had warned the admirals of the dangerous storms to which the south of Sicily was exposed after the rising of the tempestuous Orion. Along the northern shore they would be in calm water. But the maritime experience acquired in five years wherein nothing had gone wrong with them had taught the Romans, as they fondly thought, that there was nothing in the terrors of the sea with which Roman courage could not cope ; and the admirals were deaf to the voice of the weather-wise pilots, who shook their heads at dangers which could neither be seen nor handled. Moreover, they wished to make the most of their recent victory, and by its prestige to bring over to themselves a few small towns, on the south coast of Sicily, which still wavered in their allegiance. The prize was small, as Polybius significantly remarks, and the stake large ; but they staked, and lost it.^ Elated as they were by the rapid departure of the Roman fleet from Africa, the spirit of the Cartha- ginians must have risen higher still when they heard ' Polyb. i. 37 ; Eutropius, ii. 22. 122 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. of its sudden and complete destruction. Like Athens or like Venice, Carthage might well call herself by the proud title of ' Bride of the Sea/ and her citizens, like the Vikings of after times, might well boast that they were ' friends of the sea and enemies of all that sailed upon it.' It must have rejoiced the hearts of the Carthaginians that the sea had at length avenged itself, even when their arms had failed, upon those who (to use the forcible expression of the admiral, Callicrati- das, under similar circumstances) had 'dared to have dalliance with it.' ' The war might now be once more transferred to Sicily, and thither Hannibal was sent with all the available land forces, with 140 elephants, and with a fleet which was to co-operate with the army. He made straight for Lilybaeum, and taking the field, prepared to ravage the open country. With unconquerable resolution, however, the Ro- mans determined to fit out a new fleet to replace the one that had been destroyed ; and the miracle of speed which we have noticed before is said to have been repeated again. Within three months 220 ves- sels were built from the keel, and were ready for action.^ The two consuls, A. Atilius and Cn. Cornelius Scipio Asina, who had been released from his cap- tivity, picking up on their way the few vessels which had escaped to Messana from the general wreck, made for Panormus (B.C. 254), and in the hour of their humiliation hazarded an attack upon its strong fortifications, which they had shrunk from making ' Xen. Hell. i. 6. 15, txai-xav tV eoAoTTOv. 2 Polyb. i. 38. 1-6. THE ROMANS TAKE PANORMUS. 12s even after their victory at Mylae ; and, what is more surprising, they took it with ease. A tower which commanded the fortifications towards the sea was first destroyed. This disaster put the new city into the hands of the Romans, and the old at once surrendered. Never was a war more fertile in vicissitudes and sur- prises than had been the first nine years of this. Here were the Romans stronger and more energetic after a defeat than after a victory ; taking by a coup dc main an almost virgin fortress, which had never yet been taken but by Pyrrhus ; baffling all the calculations of a not inexperienced foe, and then sailing back to Rome as though nothing extraordinary had happened, leaving only a small garrison in what had been the Cartha- ginian capital of the island, the head-quarters of its armies and its fleets.' In the following year (B.C. 253), the Romans tempted fortune again by reconnoitring the African coast. They landed here and there, and ravaged the surrounding country, but with no result proportionate to the danger they ran ; and they ended, owing to their want of maritime experience, by falling into the Syrtis, whose name expresses the power with which an unlucky vessel coming within its reach is sucked into its deadly embraces. The vessels ran aground, and were rescued only by a sudden rise of the sea, which the crews helped by throwing over- board their valuables. The moment they were ex- tricated from their danger, like animals that have been in the toils, they made their way back to Pa- normus only too thankful if they could escape the ' Polyb. i. 38. 6-10 ; Zonaras, viii. 14, 124 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. pursuit of the €nemy. But the worst was still to come. In crossing from Panormus to Italy they were over- taken, off the promontory of Palinurus, by another storm, which, as it must have seemed, could not now let even the seas to the north of Sicily alone if Romans were to be found in it. Never since the tempest had raged day after day on the southern coast of Magnesia, and strewn the coasts of Thessaly and Eubcea with the wrecks of the vast Persian fleet, had the god of the sea shown himself so decided a partisan in a naval contest, or demanded so costly a series of sacri- fices. The Roman spirit at length began to show some symptoms of giving way. At all events the Senate determined not again at present to tempt the sea, but to depend upon their land forces ; and for the next two years the war was carried on under conditions not very dissimilar to those under which it had been begun.' The Carthaginians were now once more able to carry the war into Sicily, and the large army which they sent under Hasdrubal to Lilybaeum had that within it which seemed able, for the time at least, to demoralise, nay, even to paralyse, their foes.- The havoc wrought by the elephants amongst the troops of Regulus in the battle near Carthage had been duly reported to the Roman armies in Sicily, and it had lost nothing in the transmission. To be knocked down, and then trampled to pieces by a furious beast against which neither fraud nor force could avail aught, would be terrible enough to any well-regu- ' Polyb. i. 39. 1-7. ^ Polyb. i. 39. II, 12. CARTHAGINIANS THREATEN PANORMUS. 125 lated mind ; but the fear which it seems to have inspired completely unnerved the Romans. It was not death itself— for that they would have faced gladly in a hundred fair battle-fields or forlorn hopes ; it was the instrument and the manner of death that they feared. They refused to face the elephants, much as the bravest troops now-a-days might refuse to measure their collective strength against the brute power of a steam-engine, or as men armed with muzzle-loaders might demur, however great their valour, to standing up against the cold and cruel mechanism of a mitrailleuse. Once again did the two armies face one another at a few furlongs' distance, in the territory of Selinus, and once again did they part company without coming to blows. It takes two to make a quarrel, and the Romans clung steadfastly to the hills where their experience in Africa had taught them that the 140 elephants would be useless, and where the Cartha- ginians therefore could not attack them with any hope of success. There were symptoms, too, of serious disaffection and discontent among the Roman officers ; and once again it was clear to the Roman Senate that the sea itself would be less terrible than such an indefinite and purposeless prolongation of the war. They accordingly reconsidered their reso- lution, and began to build a third fleet (B.C. 251).' Hasdrubal meanwhile, encouraged by what he thought the cowardice of the Romans, issued from Selinus, and proceeded to carry off the rich harvests, ' Polyb. i. 39. 13-15. 126 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. just then ripe, from under the eyes of the Roman army at Panormus. Caecilius Metellus was in com- mand there, a man of prudence and self-restraint, but able to strike a vigorous blow when there was occa- sion for it. When Hasdrubal and his elephants had crossed the river near the city — a step for which he had been anxiously waiting — he sent forth his light troops in such numbers as to induce the Carthaginians to draw up in line of battle. In front of the city wall ran a broad and deep ditch, within which the light troops, after they had provoked an attack from Has- drubal, and should find themselves hard pressed, were warned to take shelter. Here they would find fresh weapons awaiting them, thrown down by the towns- men from the walls above, and, safe under their pro- tection, would be able to shower missiles upon the advancing elephants. The order of Metellus was carried out to the letter, and the result answered his expectations. The elephant-drivers — Indians, Poly- bius here and elsewhere calls them — eager to assert their independence of Hasdrubal, or to win special credit for themselves, advanced to close quarters be- fore the word of command was given. The light troops gave way, and leaping down into the ditch, received the unwieldy monsters, which came blunder- ing on to its very edge, with showers of darts and burning arrows. Unable to vent their rage on their assailants in the ditch, the elephants rushed wildly back on the Carthaginian army, and wrought amongst them the havoc which the Romans had feared for themselves. Now was the moment for Metellus. Un- observed by the enemy, he had massed the main BATTLE OF PANORMUS. 127 body of his army close behind the gate of the town. He sallied out in force, charged the enemy, who were already in confusion, on the flank, and routing them completely, drove them headlong back towards Se- linus. It was the greatest pitched battle of the war, and restored confidence to the Romans at the time when they needed it most sorely.' But we must dwell a moment on the fate of the elephants who had played so important a part in the battle itself, and whose terrors exercised so critical and so characteristic an influence on this part of the first Punic War. Ten of the elephants had been taken prisoners during the battle, with their drivers. The drivers of the remainder had been either thrown to the ground by the elephants themselves or killed by the weapons of the Romans, and the creatures were still, after the battle, rushing wildly about, no Roman daring to lay hands on them. The promise of their lives to the captured drivers induced some among them to exercise their moral control when physical force was out of the question, and in time the panic-stricken monsters, 120 in number, were reduced to order. It was determined to send them to Rome to grace the well-deserved triumph of Me- tellus ; but it was no easy matter to convey them across the stormy Straits of Messina. Huge rafts were lashed together, earth and herbage were scat- tered over the planks, and high bulwarks carried round the whole ; and the sagacious animals allowed themselves to be ferried quietly across the straits under a total misconception as to the operation which they ' Polyb. i. 40 ; cf. Diod. xxiii. 14 ; Florus, ii. 2. 27-28. 128 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. were undergoing. They marched in stately proces- sion up the Sacred Way, and were drawn thence, like so many captured kings or generals before and after them, to the place of execution, the Roman Circus. There, after being baited with ' arms of cour- tesy ' to familiarise the people and the soldiers that were to be, with their formidable appearance, they re- ceived the coup de grace with armes d outrance ; and the fatal appetite for blood which was then just be- ginning to show itself among the Roman populace must have been sated to the full by so gigantic and horrible a sacrifice. The noble family of the Metelli always cherished, as well they might, the memory of the great battle of Panormus among their most pre- cious heirlooms, and coins of theirs are still extant representing the formidable beast which their ancestor had, by his victory at this critical point of the war, robbed of half its terrors.' It was, probably, about this time that an embassy appeared at Rome from Carthage to negotiate, if possible, a peace, but anyhow, an exchange of pri- soners. It was accompanied by Regulus, who had been languishing for five years in a Carthaginian prison, and who came upon his parole to return to Carthage if his mission should prove unsuccessful. Everyone knows the beautiful touches with which the story of what follows has been filled in by the genius of Horace ^ and of other late poets and orators ; how ' Polyb. i. 40 ; Livy, Epit. xix. ; Eutropius, ii. 24 ; Zonaras, viii. 14. ' Ode iii. 5. Cf. Silius Italicus, Pun. vi. 346-402 ; Livy, Epit. iviii. ; Val. Max. i. i. 14; Eutropius, iL 25 ; Zonaras, viii. 15. 129 Regulus refused to enter the city, as a citizen, or the Senate house as a senator, since he had lost his right to both on the day when he became a captive ; how, when at length he brought himself to speak before the Senate, he spoke in terms such as no Roman had ever heard before. ' Let those who had surrendered when they ought to have died die in the land which had witnessed their disgrace ; let not the Senate esta- blish a precedent fraught with disaster to ages yet unborn, or buy with their gold what ought only to be won back by arms. He was old, and in the short time of life that still remained to him could do no good service to his country, while the generals who would be exchanged for him were still hale and vigorous ;' how, when he saw the Senate still waver- ing between pity for him and their sense of duty to their country, he nailed them to their purpose by telling them he had taken a slow poison which was even then coursing through his veins ; and how, last of all, he strode off, with his eyes indeed fixed upon the ground, lest he should look upon his sorrowing wife and children, but with a step as light and a heart as free as though he were going for a holiday to his country estate. It is an ideal picture of a brave man bearing up under a great misfortune, and striving, as best he could, to wipe out disgrace ; and as an ideal picture, we are content to let it pass. A nation has a right to its patriotic national ideals, and Roman history would not be Roman history at all without its Brutus and its Cincinnatus, its Fabricius and its Regulus. But it is otherwise with the sequel to the story, K I30 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. with that which not only idealises the Roman cha- racter, but sets it off by blackening that of its rivals, as if it was the Carthaginians who enjoyed a monopoly of cruelty, and as if the Romans themselves had always behaved with ordinary humanity to a con- quered foe, a foe like C. Pontius for instance, far more generous and high-spirited than Regulus him- self This we are bound to scrutinise carefully and to mete out stern justice to those who seem to deserve it. We could hardly wonder if, under the circum- stances, Regulus had been put to death as soon as he was taken prisoner by a nation which must have been stung to the quick by his insolent bearing in the hour of his success, and which showed so little mercy to its own defeated generals ; but it is so far from being true that Regulus was put to death with horrible tortures by the Carthaginians that there is reason to believe that he died a natural death, and that the story of the tortures was invented to cover those which had been really inflicted on two noble Cartha- ginian prisoners by a Roman matron. No writer before the time of Cato knows anything of the cruel death of Regulus, and, when once the legend had been set going, we find that there are almost as many different versions as there are authors who refer to it. Moreover, the silence of Polybius, the most trust- Avorthy of historians, who relates the exploits of Re- gulus in detail, and whose chief fault it is that he is too didactic — seldom adorning a tale, but always ready to point a moral — is in itself sufficient to outweigh the vague rhetoric and the impassioned poetr}' of the late Republic. DEATH OF REGULUS. On the other hand, as has been already hinted, we have the authority of a fragment of Diodorus Siculus for a story, which, when we remember his anti-Car- thaginian bias, we can scarcely suppose that he in- vented, of the shocking cruelties inflicted on Bostar and Hamilcar, two Carthaginians given over by the Roman Senate to the wife of Regulus, as hostages for the safety of her husband.' Regulus died — so clearly implies Diodorus — a natural death ; but his widow thinking, in her vexation, that there had been neglect or cruelty on the part of the Carthaginians, ordered her sons to fasten the two captives into a cask of the small- est possible dimensions and kept them there five days and nights without food or water till Bostar, happily for himself, died of the torture and the starvation. But this was not the worst. Hamilcar was a man of extraordinary strength of constitution. And what the poet of the yEneid, in the play of his imagination, attributes to Mezentius, ' the despiser of the gods,' the most formidable and the most barbarous of the opponents of yEneas, that a Roman matron did to Hamilcar : Mortua quinetiam jungebat corpora vivis. In that same cask she kept the living and the dead for five more days, by a cruel kindness sup- plying Hamilcar with just so much food as might serve to keep life in him and enable him to realise the horrors of the situation. At last the advanced putrefaction of the body roused the pity of even the servants of the Atilii. They brought the matter before ' Died. Sic. xxiv. Frag. I, K 2 132 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the tribunes of the people, and Hamilcar came forth from his Hving death and was protected from further violence by the more merciful people. To palliate the story of the foul cruelty of the widow of Regulus, for which the Romans at large were certainly not responsible, was invented, as seems likely, the story of the cruel death of Regulus himself CARTHAGINIAN FORTRESSES IN SICILY. 133 CHAPTER VII. HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE SIEGE OF LILYB^UM. (B.C. 250-241.) Fortresses remaining to Carthaginians in Sicily — Siege of Lilybseum — Its origin and situation — Early siege operations — Carthaginians run the blockade — Hannibal the Rhodian — Carthaginian sortie — • Distress of Romans — The Consul Claudius — Battle of Drepanum — Claudian family — Roman reinforcements for siege of Lilybreum lost at sea — Romans seize Eryx — Hamilcar Barca — He occupies Mount Ercte — Exhaustion of Romans — Culpable conduct of Car- thaginians— Genius of Hamilcar — His plans — His enterprises — He transfers his camp from Ercte to Eryx — Romans build one more fleet — Lutatius Catulus— The Carthaginian plan — Battle of /Egatian Isles — Magnanimity of Hamilcar — Terms of peace — Roman gains and losses — Carthaginian losses and prospects— Con- test only deferred. The victory which the Romans had won before Panormus nerved them to make a strenuous effort for the expulsion of their enemies from Sicily. The Carthaginians were now hemmed up in the north- western corner of the island ; and of all their former possessions, the three fortresses of Lilybaeum, Eryx. and Drepanum alone remained to them. If the first of these could by any means be taken, the other two would not offer any prolonged resistance. The war might then, once again, be transferred to Africa, and 134 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the Romans, whose proud boast it was that they first learned from their enemies and then surpassed them, would be able to prove to the Carthaginians that this war was no exception to the rule. Fourteen years had passed since the war had broken out, and both sides were fully alive to the vital importance of the crisis at which it had arrived. With the siege of Lilybseum, B.C. 250, opens the last scene of the first Punic War. It is the last scene, but a long and tedious one. The siege is one of the longest known in history. Strictly historical as it is, it equals in length the m}^thical siege of Troy, and the semi-mythical siege of Veii. The Romans distin- guished themselves in it by their heroic perseverance, and by little else ; but it was that kind of heroic per- severance which lay at the root of most of what they achieved, and is not, after all, so far removed from genius. The Carthaginian defence was marked by all the versatility and inventiveness, the prudence and the daring, which characterise the Phoenician race ; above all it was marked by the appearance on the scene of at least one real military genius, the great Hamilcar Barca. Lilybseum was built upon the promontory' which formed the extreme western point of Sicily. It was the point nearest to Africa and directly fronted the Hermsean promontory. It was therefore, so long as it remained in the hands of the Carthaginians, the most important support to their power in Sicily. It would be a standing menace even to their home rule in Africa as soon as it should pass into the hands of their enemies. The fortress itself was not of great an- LILYB^UM. 135 tiquity. It owed its origin to the fall of the adjoining' Motye only fifty-four years before. Motye had been destroyed by Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse,' but the Carthaginians, with the buoyancy of their nation, at once consoled themselves for its loss by founding a new settlement on the promontory of Lilybasum, the superior advantages of which they had hitherto seemed to overlook. In the interval that had elapsed since that time it had grown into an exceedingly strong fortress, probably the strongest which the Carthaginians pos- sessed. Just before the beginning of the siege it received an important addition to its population. All the in- habitants of Selinus were transferred to it, and if Dio- dorus is to be believed, it contained now a population of 60,000 men capable of bearing arms.^ It possessed a fine harbour, to the capabilities of which the name given it by the Arabs in mediaeval times of Marsa Allah, or the Harbour of God, still bears witness (Marsala). But the entrance to it was rendered difificult by the constant winds that blew off the head- land, and by the treacherous sand-banks and sunken reefs which lay off the shores ; and these, if they were dangerous to the inhabitants who knew them well, would be doubly dangerous to an enemy who did not.'^ Pyrrhus, a few years before, had overrun all the rest of Sicily with ease ; but the impetuosity of his assault had been beaten back by the solid walls of Lilybseum.'' Would the Romans succeed where ' Diod. xiv. 47-53. ^ Diod. xxiv. Frag. I. Polyb. i. 42. 7 ; cf. Virgil, Mn. iii. 706 : ' Et vada dura lego saxis Lilybeia crecis.' * Diod. xxii. Frag. 14. 136 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Pyrrhus had failed ? They saw that a place so situated and so defended could only be attacked with any hope of success by a strong army and a strong fleet at once, and they supplied them ungrudgingly. Two consular armies, consisting of five legions and two hundred vessels, appeared before the place. The first attack was directed against the wall which stretched from sea to sea right across the peninsula on which the city was built, and the immediate suc- cess obtained by the Romans was such as appeared to promise an early termination of the siege. By regular approaches the Romans worked their way up to the city wall, undermined some of its towers, and when these had fallen, brought up their battering-rams to threaten the whole line of defence. But Himilco, the commander of the garrison, was a man of energy and of fertility of resource. By building a second wall behind the first he made the weakening of the first to be of small importance. He met the mining operations of the enemy by countermines, and he quelled, by his address and personal influence over the better disposed of the mercenaries, a formidable conspiracy which had broken out among them to betray the town to the Romans.' Polybius recalls with patriotic pride the name of Alexion, an Achaean soldier of fortune, who, by his fidelity to his em- ployers, saved Lilybieum from falling into the hands of the Romans, as he had formerly saved Agrigentum, its freedom and its laws, from some treacherous Syra- cusan mercenaries.^ Meanwhile, the Carthaginians knowing the weak- ' Zonaras, \ 15. - Polyb. i. 42, 43. SIEGE OF LILYBMUM. 137 ness of their naval force off Lilybseum, and fully conscious that the place could not hold out unless relieved from home, made vigorous efforts to throw succour into it. Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, was despatched with all haste to Sicily, with fifty ships and 10,000 troops. He moored his fleet among the yEgatian Isles opposite to Lilybaeum, waiting for the moment when he should be able to face, with some slight chance of success, the double dangers of the Roman squadron, and the rocks and reefs that girt in the harbour. A favouring, although a violent, wind sprang up. He spread every inch of his canvas, and massing his troops on deck to be ready for an en- gagement, with that happy rashriess which is the truest prudence, he made his way in safety through the narrow entrance, while the Roman guard-ships remained at anchor close by, the sailors stupidly look- ing on, aghast at his rashness, and expecting to see him da.shed to pieces upon the rock.s. The sea walls of the city were thronged with the eager inhabitants, hoping, as it seemed, against hope, that some few of •the ships might, by a lucky chance, pass safely through ; and amid their loud cheers Hannibal rode into the harbour under full sail, without losing a single vessel, and deposited in safety his 10,000 troops and his stores of provisions. Those who have read the thrilling story, as told by Lord Macaulay, of the siege of Londonderry, and who can recall his picture of the ' Mountjoy ' and the ' Phoenix ' forcing the boom in Lough Foyle, and saving the heroic and famished garrison from the most hideous form of death, or perhaps from that which is still worse than death, 138 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. can best realise the enthusiasm, as described briefly but emphatically by Polybius, with which the in- habitants greeted the successful termination of the bold venture of Hannibal.' After revictualling the place, that he might not unnecessarily himself consume any of the provisions which he had brought, Hannibal, availing himself of the darkness of the night, and probably carrying with him the Numidian cavalry which could no longer be of service in the closely blockaded town, once more threaded the dangerous passages and joined Adherbal, the admiral, at Dre- panum, fifteen miles away.^ His example was contagious. A Rhodian mer- cenary, of the same name, volunteered with 'a single vessel to do as he had done. Again and again he ran the blockade, and found his way out in safety, as though he bore a charmed life, through the midst of the Roman vessels which were drawn up at the en- trance of the harbour for the very purpose of prevent- ing his escape. Doubtless he held the clue to the dangerous navigation of the straits, which, now that the buoys were removed, no enemy could discover. Each venturesome visit breathed fresh courage into the garrison, and spread fresh despondency in the blockad- ing fleet, while it enabled the Rhodian to communicate to the Carthaginian government the wants and wishes of their beleaguered subjects. The Romans tried to block up the entrance to the harbour by sinking ships filled with stones in its narrowest part ; but the depth of the sea and the violence of the current, helped by opportune tempests, carried them away and opened ' Polyb. i. 44. - Polyb. i. 46. i ; cf. Diod. xxiv. Fr. I. HANNIBAL THE RHODIAN. 139 the passage again. It seemed that the sea was never going to desert its favourites, when, in an unlucky moment, a Carthaginian quadrireme ran ashore upon a part of the mole which the Romans had just sunk, and fell into their hands. They immediately manned it with their own men, and lay in wait for the return of the Rhodian. He had run the blockade once too often ; and in trying to force his way out he was fol- lowed by a v^essel whose speed and build convinced him that she must be of Carthaginian workmanship, though the rowers who propelled her were clearly Romans. Finding that he could not escape by flight, he turned boldly round and charged the enemy. But a trireme had no chance against a quadrireme ; it was- taken prisoner, and the adventurous Rhodian's vessel henceforward formed part of the blockading squadron of the very fortress which it had done so much ta relieve.' Meanwhile Himilco, the commander in Lilybaeum^ encouraged by the supplies and reinforcements he had received, as well as by the inactivity and cowardice of the Roman guard-ships, determined to sally out in force at the head of 20,000 men, in hopes of destroy- ing the Roman military engines. After a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, and much loss of life on both sides,hewas driven back;^ but asecond attempt proved more successful. Taking advantage of a violent wind, he set fire in three places to the Roman engines, which were dry from long exposure to the sun. The wind carried the flames from one to the other, and consumed the very foundations of the towers and the • Pol. i. 46, 47. = Pol. i. 45. 140 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. heads of the battering-rams. The Romans found that all the labour hitherto expended on the land-attack was thrown away, and there was nothing for it but to convert the siege into a blockade.' The condition of the blockading army was not an enviable one. A plague had broken out in their camp, occasioned partly by the unhealthj' climate, partly by the want of bread — a want which all the efforts of their zealous ally, Hiero of Syracuse, could not meet. The Romans were ordinarily vegetarians,^ and the abundant supply of meat which they had till ver>' lately received from the Sicilian flocks and herds had not mended matters. They lost from this cause, as well as other incidents of the war, within a few days, if Diodorus Siculus may be believed, not less than 10,000 men ; and now, to complete the tale of their misfortunes, P. Claudius was sent out to take the command (B.C. 249), a man who proved to be as in- competent as he was arrogant, and who mistook, if our accounts do not do him injustice, severity for discipline, violence for strength, and childish weak- ness for manly courage. Despising alike the consuls who had preceded him and the officers who served under him, the new consul first renewed the attempt to block up the mouth of the harbour, as though a Claudius must succeed where others had failed ; and when the waves showed that they had no more respect for patrician than for plebeian blood, as though the siege of Lilybaeum was not enough to occupy his energies, he determined to attack Drepanum, fifteen miles away, in hopes of ' Polyb. i. 48 ; Zonaras, viii. 15. * Diod. xxiv. Fr. I. THE CONSUL CLAUDIUS. I4r taking Adheibal and his fleet there by surprise ! ' His generals remonstrated, and the sacred chickens — so the augurs reported — refused to eat. ' If they will not eat, they shall drink,' said he, and ordered them to be flung into the sea.^ It is possible that this story may have been invented to account for the calamity that followed ; but the words attributed to Publius- have a genuine Claudian ring about them. ' Neither gods nor men should stay a Claudius from his pur- pose!' The generals were browbeaten into com- pliance. Ten thousand troops had just arrived from Rome ; Claudius put the best of them on board his vessels to serve as marines, and there was no lack of volunteers for the enterprise, not probably because they trusted the abilities of the consul, but because anything seemed better than a blockade which was- no blockade at all. The fleet set out at midnight, and by daybreak its- foremost ship had reached the entrance of the harbour of Drepanum. The surprise was complete. Adherbal,. knowing well how hard pressed the Romans were at Lilybaeum, ignorant that they had been reinforced,, and ignorant also of the character of the new consul, had never dreamed that they would molest him at Drepanum. He who would attempt it must be either a fool or a military genius, and Rome, in this war at all events, had not been fertile of either. A respectable mediocrity had hitherto been the order of the day alike among the Romans and the Cartha- ' Pol. i. 49 ; Diod. xxiv. Frag. 2. ' Cicero dc Nat. Deomm, ii. 3 ; Livy, Epit. xix. ; Florus, ii» 2. 29. 142 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ginians. But Adherbal was not disconcerted. Deter- mined not to be besieged, like Himilco at Lilyba^um, he set his rowers to their work, and summoning by the sound of the trumpet the mercenaries from the city to the beach, he addressed them in a few stirring words, and then distributing them over his ships, he led the way in his own ship out of one side of the sickle-shaped harbour of Drepanum, while Claudius was still hovering near the entrance of the other.' Surprised at this, and fearing now in his turn to be enclosed between a hostile navy and a hostile town, Claudius turned round, hoping to make his way out of the harbour by the way he had entered it. But the signal could not reach the whole of the long column round the headland at once, and it was with difficulty that the consul got all his ships out of the trap into which he had drawn them, and arranged them in line of battle close along the coast, their prows pointing towards the fleet of Adherbal, which was already in line, and ready, with superior forces, to bear down upon them. In the battle which ensued Ave hear nothing of the Ravens of Duillius. When the ships did close with one another there was hard and free fighting, for the decks carried the pick of either army ; but in every other respect — the build, the number, and the speed of their ships, the experience of their rowers, and the space for manoeuvring — the advantage was with the Carthaginians. The Roman ships, when hard pressed, could not retire behind the line, for there was no room left between it and the shore ; and for the same reason they could ' Polyb. i. 49. DEFEAT OF THE ROMANS. 143 not give help to one another in their distress. The consul, as he was the first to get into the mess, was also the first to get out of it. He took to flight, and his example was followed by the thirty ships nearest to him. It was well, perhaps, that he did so ; for the whole of the remainder, ninety-three in number, fell into the hands of the Carthaginians, who, it is said, did not lose a single vessel.' Whether Publius cared aught for the lives he had thus thrown away we are not told ; but probably his sister, some years afterwards, expressed pretty accu- rately the family feeling for the loss of the mere rabble of the fleet. .She was taking part as a Vestal Virgin in a procession, and when the crowd pressed upon her more closely than she liked, she was heard to exclaim that she wished her brother were alive to get rid of some more of them at sea.^ Loud must have been the curses of the' Roman army at Lily- baeum when the consul brought back the news of his own defeat and flight ; and deep, certainly, was the resentment of the Roman Senate at his reckless incapacity. He was recalled ; and being ordered to nominate a Dictator in his stead, he named, with true Claudian effrontery, a freedman of his family, M. Claudius Glycia ; but he was shortly after put on his trial, and met with the punishment which he deserved.''' The blockade of Lilyb;Eum, such as it was, was for the time practically at an end, and the Romans were more anxious to keep the troops who were already there from starving than to supplement their ' Polyb. i. 50, 51. ' Livy, Epit. xix. ; Aulas Gelliiis, x. 6. ' Polyb. i. 52. 2. 144 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. number or to make the blockade effective. A fleet of 800 merchant vessels, laden with supplies of every kind, and convoyed by 120 ships of war, was des- patched from Rome, and reached Syracuse in safety. Anxious to take on board the provisions offered him by the ever-zealous Hiero, the consul, L. Junius Pullus, lingered awhile at Syracuse with half his fleet, while he sent forward the other half towards their destina- tion.' Why the Romans, with their bitter experience of the dangers of the sea, did not attempt to forward the provisions by land, with Hiero's help, we may well wonder. Perhaps the Numidian cavalry, who had been set free from Lilyba;um, were too for- midable. But the Carthaginians were on the look-out for them. Adherbal, admiral at Drepanum.was determined to push his victory to the utmost. After sending as trophies to Carthage the ships which he had taken, he despatched his vice-admiral Carthalo first to Lilybaeum, to attack the remainder of the Roman fleet which had taken refuge there, and thence to Heraclea, to await the arrival of the provision ships. The advanced portion of the Roman convoy hearing of the approach of Carthalo, and unable to offer battle or to take to flight, ran into the nearest roadstead on that inhospit- able coast, and protected themselves, as best they could, by the militaiy engines planted on the cliffs above. Carthalo, not caring to run unnecessar}- risk, and sure now of his game, kept watch at the mouth of a river hard by till they should be obliged to move. Mean- while the other portion of the Roman fleet had left ' Polyb. i. 52. 4 ; 53. 4-S. THE THIRD ROMAN FLEET DESTROYED. 145 Syracuse, had rounded Pachynus, and were sailing quietly along the coast in ignorance of the close prox- imity of their own and of the enemies' ships. To prevent the junction of the two fleets Carthalo ad- vanced to meet them, and they, too, knowing their weakness, made for the nearest shore, a spot which, unfortunately for them, had neither harbour nor roadstead, and was exposed to every wind that blew. Carthalo, sure of his game, now la3'^-to in the offing, half-way between them, pinning with his small fleet the two much larger ones to the shore ; but the weather-wise Carthaginian pilots saw the signs of a coming storm, and warned the admiral, while there was yet time, to make for shelter. He sailed round Pachynus eastward and was in calm water, leaving the storm to take care of the Romans ; and the storm did take care of them. Some of the crews, indeed, escaped to land, but the 800 ships were broken into fragments, ' not a plank of them remaining,' says Polybius, ' which could be used again,' and for miles along the coast the hungry foam was discoloured by the corn intended for the famishing Roman army before Lilybaeum.' When this sad news reached Rome— the destruc- tion of a third fleet by the waves and the undisputed mastery of the sea won back by the Carthaginians in the fifteenth year of the war (B.C. 249) — there were symptoms of despondency even in the Roman Senate ; but the consul Junius was among those who had escaped from the wreck, and he made his way to Lilybaeum, burning by some signal achievement to ' Polyb. i. 53, 54; Diod. xxiv. Fiag. i. L 146 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. vvipe out the blame which he felt might be thrown upon him.' Nor was he disappointed. A few miles to the north of Drepanum, between it and Panormus, and standing back a little from the coast, rises a mountain then called Eryx, and now known by the name of St. Giuliano. It stands by itself, and rising to a height of some 2,000 feet in solitary grandeur, is .so imposing an object that ancient geographers and historians mention it in the same breath as yEtna, which is really four times its height.- Right on its summit .stood a temple of immemorial antiquity, dedicated to Venus, and celebrated for the wealth which it had amassed and had managed to retain amidst the vicis- situdes of all the conflicts that had raged around it. It had been taken and retaken many times in the long contest between Dionysius of Syracuse and Carthage, and more recently it had fallen before the assault of Pyrrhus ; but, revered alike by Sicilians and Phoeni- cians, by Greeks and Romans, it had escaped plunder even at the hands of the adventurous prince who did not spare the wealthy sanctuary of Proserpine at Locri.^ Half-way up the mountain was a city which was not so proof against all the storms that blew as was the temple on its top, for it had been partially de- stroyed by the Carthaginians in this war, and its in- habitants transferred to Drepanum ;^ but heaps of its buildings must have still remained, and it was evidently still an important position for defence. Of this natural ' Polyb. i. 55. 1-6; Zonar.is, viii. 15. - Polyb. i. 55. 7 ; c"". Viig. .-F.ii. xii. 701, ' Quantus Athos aut quantiis Eryx.' ^ Appian, Sam. J 2. * Diod. xxiii. Frag. 9; Zonaras, viii. 15. HAMILCAR BARCA. 147 stronghold — mountain, fallen city, and temple — one of the only three strongholds that still remained to the Carthaginians in Sicily, the consul Junius managed to get possession by a sudden attack, and held it firmly against any similar surprise from the enemy in the closely adjoining Drepanum.' Such was the general condition of affairs (B.C. 247) when the great Hamilcar, ' the man whom Melcarth protects,' appeared upon the scene, and threw into the war an energy and an ability, which, if only it had been employed before, or if only it had been adequately supported even now by Carthage, would probably have changed the issue of the first Punic War. Hamilcar Barca was the head of the great family named after him the Barcine — the word Barca is the same as the Hebrew Barak — and well did Hamilcar justify the name which succeeding ages have always coupled with his and with his alone of his family, by the 'lightning' rapidity with which, in this the sixteenth year of the war, he would now sweep the Italian coast with his privateers, now swoop down and carry off a Roman outpost, and anon would seize a stronghold, which the terror of his name alone rendered impregnable, under the very eyes of an op- posing army. Equally great as an admiral and a general, after ravaging the Roman coasts from Locri to Cumas, he landed suddenly in the neighbourhood of Panormus and seized the commanding eleva- tion called Ercte (now Monte Pellegrino). This hill, like Eryx, rises to a height of about 2,000 feet, but, unlike it, on two of its sides rises sheer from the sea ; ' Polyb. i. 55. 9, 10 ; Diod. xxiv. Frag. I. L 2 148 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. a third side rises equally perpendicular from the plain, while on the fourth alone, which directly faces Panormus, at the distance of a mile and a half, is the plateau at all accessible. This stronghold Hamilcar seized, and this he held for three years in sight of the Roman garrison at Panormus, and in the near view of a fortified camp placed almost at its base, in spite of all the efforts of the Romans to dislodge him, and, when he left it, he left it only of his own free will to occupy a similar, though a less advantageous, position elsewhere.' The place was admirably adapted for his purpose. At its base was a little cove into which his light ships might run laden with the spoils of Italian or Sicilian towns, accessible from the high ground occupied by his troops, but not accessible from any place on shore. There was an abundant spring of water on the very summit, and above the precipitous cliffs that under- pinned the mountain was a broad plateau which in that delicious climate Hamilcar found that, even at such an elevation, he could cultivate with success. A rounded top which crowned the whole was a post of observation commanding the country round, and, in case of need, would serve as an acropolis, where no one of the defenders need die unavenged.^ But neither the success of the consul Junius at Eryx, nor the presence of a master spirit among the enemies — which the Romans could not fail to see — could now rouse the Senate to take the active measures which the times required. The drain upon the resources of the State had been too enormous Polyb. i. 56. I, 2. -' Polyb. i. 56. 4-10. CULPABLE CONDUCT OF CARTHAGINLANS. 149 The muster-roll of the citizens had fallen in the last five years from 297,000 to 251,000 — a sixth part of the whole.' The As, the unit of value among the Romans, which had originally weighed twelve ounces of copper, had now fallen, as Pliny tells us, to two ounces, to one-sixth, that is, of its former value.^ The State was bankrupt, and the Senate could neither make up their minds to withdraw altogether from the war, nor yet to prosecute it with the necessary vigour. They still made believe to continue the blockade of Lilybaeum ; but the seas were open to the Carthagi- nians, and everyone knew that as long as the seas were open to them they might laugh at all the efforts of the Roman armies. Nor were the Carthaginians on their part more self-sacrificing or more far-sighted. Finding that the Romans had retired from the sea — not to save the blood of their citizens, for that they rarely risked, nor yet to save the blood of their mercenaries, for that they cared not for, but to save their gold, of which there must still have been a large supply, if not in the treasury, at all events, in the pockets of the ruling citizens — they cut down their navy by a wretched economy to the narrowest possible dimensions, and were quite content, if only they could supply with food their heroic garrisons at Lilybaeum and at Drepanum, not to make an effort to reconquer any of the places which had so recently belonged to them. Having lighted at last upon an able general, they would not, indeed, interfere with his making the best use he could of the small band of mercenaries whom they had given ' Livy, Epit. xviii. and xix. - Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiii. 13. ISO CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. him at so much a head, and, so far as they were con- cerned, he might utiHse his few ships to collect sup- plies ; but not to them must he look henceforward for more ships or men. The war, or his part of the war at all events, must henceforward support itself If Hamilcar, they argued, was successful in his venturous enterprises, so much the better for them ; if unsuccess- ful, he and not they lost. Hence the five or six long and listless years of war which followed the appointment of Hamilcar ; discreditable enough to the governments of the con- tending states, but redounding to the honour of that one heroic soul who, learning from the past the lesson which no Carthaginian general had yet been able to learn, applied it to the exigencies of the moment with a patience, a perseverance, and an energy which seemed more than human ; and conscious all the time, as it would seem, that his efforts were, for the present at least, foredoomed to failure, was yet con- tent to sacrifice himself if only he might prepare the way for vengeance in the remoter future. What mattered it if Sicily was lost } A greater Sicily might be found beyond the seas in Spain ; a new world might be called into existence to redress the balance of the old. In that great coming struggle Africa should turn back the tide of aggression upon Europe, and Rome, not Carthage, should tremble for her safety. Hamilcar Barca was not far wrong. The genius of the son carried out what the father had planned and had prepared. The army of Hannibal, welded by the spark of his genius out of the most unpromising materials into one homogeneous and in- HAMILCAR!S PLANS. 151 dissoluble whole, was the legitimate counterpart of the small band of mercenaries trained so painfully by Hamilcar. The ultimate rciilt of Hamilcar's patient struggles on Mount Ercte was the victorious march of Hannibal on Rome. To explain a little. Hamilcar saw that the real defect under which the Carthaginians had laboured all along had been the want of a trustworthy infantry. Their cavalry was excellent ; their elephants more than once had borne down all before them ; their ships had been beaten, not by skill but by brute force. But as long as they were without a body of infantry who, man for man, could stand up against the Roman legionaries, so long it was impossible that they could beat their enemies. The mercenaries who formed the bulk of the Carthaginian armies had sold their ser- vices to Carthage for gold ; what wonder if they transferred their services at the critical moment to those who would appraise them more highly } What wonder that Lilybseum had been all but betrayed, and that the temple of Eryx itself was on the point of being seized by Gallic deserters from the Cartha- ginian army To the task of remedying these de- fects Hamilcar addressed himself with a patience and a self-restraint which is the more surprising the more conscious he must have been of his own superlative talents for aggressive war upon a mighty scale. By enforcing strict discipline at any price ; by never fight- ing a battle, and therefore never risking a defeat ; by maintaining a daily and hourly warfare with the Ro man outposts, he gradually trained his troops to face the terrors of the Roman presence, as the Romans on 152 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. their part had at last trained themselves to face the ter- rors of the elephants. Knowing that he could expect no efficient aid from Carthage, he determined, if possible, to save her in spite of herself To attach the mer- cenaries to Carthage by ties of gratitude or respect or patriotism was impossible ; but it might not be im- possible to attach them to himself by that close tie which always binds soldiers to a general whom they can alike fear and trust and love, and then to utilise that attachment not for his own but for his country's good. How nobly Hamilcar carried out his resolve every action of his life proves. Day after day he would sally from his mountain fastness, like a lion from its den, on the fair plains of Sicily. Unobserved or un- attacked he would pass by the Roman camp placed at the foot of the mountain, and return with the sup- plies necessary to keep his small force from starving. Once we hear of him even at Catana, on the east coast of the island.' His galleys, in the same way, would harry or alarm the coast of Italy even as far as Cumae. Never was a more harassing warfare waged, and yet there is little to record. Polybius remarks, that it is as impossible for the historian to do more than state these general facts, as it is for the spectator at a prize-fight either to see or to describe the blows rained by practised pugilists on one another when the contest is nearing its end. They know, perhaps, the strength and the skill of the combatants ; they hear the heavy thud, and they see the lightning lunge ; they note the result, but they cannot accurately ob- serve or recount the process. So was it with Hamil- ' Diocl. xxiv. Frag. 2. HAMILCAR OCCUPIES ERYX. 153 car ; and yet it must be remembered that the struggle was hardly at present a life-and-death struggle, for the Romans seem never to have tried seriously to beard the lion in his den, and Hamilcar, with his handful of troops, can hardly have hoped to raise the siege of Lilybsum. At most he might distract the attention of the Romans and impede their progress. So things might have gone on for ever, when Hamilcar (B.C. 244) surprised even the Romans — though by this time they could hardly have been surprised at anything Hamilcar did — by voluntarily abandoning the stronghold endeared to him by three years of hair-breadth escapes and romantic adven- tures, and attacking Mount Eryx, a stronghold which lay nearer indeed to the beleaguered Carthaginian cities of Drepanum and Lilybteum, but in all other respects was less advantageous, and at that very time was held in force by the Romans. He managed ta dislodge the garrison from the ruined city halfway up the mountain, but he failed in all his efforts to take the temple on the summit, occupied as it then was by a band of Gallic deserters who had been taken into their pay by the Romans, and who, since they carried their lives in their hands, were prepared to sell them as dearly as possible.' Here then, once more, was Hamilcar on an isolated hill, two miles from the coast, and therefore beyond the reach of immediate succours from his galleys, with a band of desperate enemies above him, and a Roman army encamped below ! Well might it seem that a single strenuous and united effort on the part of the Romans might ' Polyb. i. 58. 2, 3; Diod. xxiv. Frag. 2 ; Zonaras, viii. 16. 154- CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. bring Hamilcar to his knees, or that at all events he might be starved into a surrender. But this was not to be. For two more years did Hamilcar hold out in this most impossible of situations, fighting, says Polybius, like a royal eagle, which, grappling with another eagle as noble as himself, stops only to take breath from sheer exhaustion, or to gather fresh strength for the next attack.' The war was fought out elsewhere, and its issue was decided by men of other mould and making than the royal soul of Hamilcar. It must have long since been apparent to the Roman Senate that unless they could fit out a fleet more effective than any that had preceded it, Drepa- num and Lilybsum might hold out for ever, and that while they held out their own hold on the rest of Sicily must be precarious. They had built four fleets since the Avar began, and all had been utterly de- stroyed ; with what conscience could they now pro- pose to throw more public money into the gulf, and to commit themselves to the mercies of the hostile and insatiable sea Even if they should decree a property tax, it was doubtful — such was the general distress — whether it could be levied. But where public enterprise failed it should be recorded to the eternal credit of the Romans, that private citizens were forthcoming who volunteered, either singly or in combination, to furnish ships of war to make up another fleet. If the venture should prove success- ful, the State might repay them, should it like to do so, at its own time. If it failed, as every fleet had failed before, they would have done nothing more ' Polyb. i. 58. 6-9. LUTATIUS CATULUS. 155 than their duty, and duty must be its own reward.^ A good model was found in the Rhodian's vessel which had been captured ofif Lilybseum ; and, as if to complete the dramatic history of this unlucky craft, the very trireme which had performed such prodigies of speed and daring for the Carthaginians in the siege of Lilybseum was now to reproduce itself in the shape of 200 Roman vessels, which should raise the siege of that very town and bring the war to its conclu- sion.^ The consul, C. Lutatius Catulus, took the com- mand of this pre-eminently patriotic armament early in the year B.C. 242 ; and once again Roman ships of war were to be seen riding in the harbours of Drepa- num and Lilybaeum. Hamilcar could now no longer receive supplies by sea, and unless he could break out in force, his surrender was, as it seemed, only a ques- tion of time ; but the Carthaginians, hearing of the danger, and finding to their surprise that a Roman navy was again in Sicilian waters, made for the first time a serious effort to support him. For four long years Hamilcar had borne the brunt of the conflict, without receiving supplies of men or money from home, and, now that they were about to lose him, the Cartha- ginians awoke to a consciousness of his true value. But a fleet could not be built in a day, even by the Cartha- ginians ; and by the time the transports — for they were transports rather than ships of war — reached Siciiy, Catulus had, by dint of constant training, transformed his landsmen into tolerably experienced sailors.^ In March of the following year (B.C. 241), Hanno, ' Polyb. i. 59. 6, 7. - Polyb. i. 59. 8. ' Polyb. i. 59. 9-I2. 156 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the Carthaginian admiral, made for Hiera, one of the ^gatian Isles, in hopes of being able from thence to communicate with Mount Eryx. His plan was to land his heavy cargo of corn there, to take on board instead the pick of Hamilcar's men, and above all the great Hamilcar himself, and then, and not till then, to fight a decisive action.' Catulus had already selected the best from among the Roman troops before Lilybaeum to serve the same purpose on board his ships ; and he now made for yEgusa, the principal of the ^gatian Isles, with the intention of cutting off Hanno from the shore, and bringing on a general action. On the morning of his intended attack a strong wind sprang up from the west, the very thing which the Carthaginians needed to carry them rapidly into Drepanum. To intercept them the Romans would have to contend against wind and tide as well, and from this even the bravest mariners might shrink. Catulus, or rather the Praetor Q. Valerius — for Catulus was laid up by a wound — knew the odds against him, and hesitated for a moment to face the risk ; but reflecting that if he did not strike a blow,^ the enemy would be able to take Hamilcar on board, and that Hamilcar was more formidable than any storm, he determined to close with the lesser of two dangers. Down came the Carthaginian ships, heavy with their cargo of corn, but flying before the wind with all their ' Polyb. i. 60. 3-5. ^ Valerius Maximus, ii. 8. 2. ' Consulem ea pugna in lectica claudum jacuisse ; se autem omnibus imperatoriis partibus functum.' The triumph was adjudged to the Consul. Cf. Eutropias, ii. 27. MAGNANIMITY OF HAMILCAR. 157 sails spread, and the rowers using their oars as well. When they saw the Romans venturing out on such a sea to intercept them, they struck sails and prepared for action. But the battle was over almost as soon as it began. After the first shock, the well-made slightly- built Roman ships, with their practised crews and their veteran soldiers, obtained an easy victory over the awkward and heavily-laden Carthaginian vessels, with their inexperienced rowers and their raw recruits. Fifty of the Carthaginian ships were sunk and seventy taken, the remainder escaping with the help of an opportune wind to Hiera.' This great victory, the victory of the ^gatian Isles, ended the war. Both sides had played their last card, and the Carthaginians had lost. Their spirit was not altogether broken ; but it was impossible to fit out a new fleet in time to relieve Hamilcar, and they wisely resolved, by utilising his great name and the indefinite possibilities of his future when driven to stand at bay, to obtain more favourable terms than would otherwise have been oft"ered them. We could hardly wonder if Hamilcar had decHned the thankless duty, and had left the task of surrendering Sicily to those who far more than himself were responsible for it. But no thought of self seems ever to have entered his great soul. For his faithful band of followers and their honour he was jealous ; but of his own feelings of outraged pride and righteous indignation we hear nothing. He rejected with scorn the ungenerous proposal of Catulus that his troops should give up their arms and pass under the yoke ; and it was ' Polyb. i. 60. 6 an 1 61 ; Zonaras, viii. 17 ; Florus, ii. 2. 33-37. 158 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. arranged that when peace should have been con- cluded, they should depart with all the honours of war.' The terms of peace were then agreed upon by Catulus and Hamilcar, subject to the subsequent ratification by the Roman people. The Carthaginians were to surrender Sicily to the Romans, and to bind themselves not to wage war on Hiero or his allies ; they were to restore the prisoners they had taken without ransom, and to pay within the next twenty years a war indemnity of 2,200 talents.^ The Roman people were not satisfied with these conditions ; but the plenipotentaries who were sent out to the spot contented themselves with raising the indemnity by half as much again, while they halved the time in which it was to be paid.' The easy terms thus granted — so far easier than those demanded by Regulus fifteen years before in the hey-day of his success — are to be explained partly, no doubt, by the exhaustion of the Romans themselves, but partly also by the dread they felt as to what Hamilcar might still dare, if driven to desperation. As such it is the noblest homage paid by the conquerors to the militar}' genius of the ' unconquered general of the conquered nation.' ■* Two individuals, and two only in the whole course of Roman history, seem by the mere fact of their existence to have inspired real terror into the Roman heart. The one was Hamilcar Barca, the other his, perhaps, still greater son. ' Polyb. i. 62. 1-6 ; Com. Nepos, Hamilcar, i. 5 ; ii. I ; Zonaras, viii. 17. - Polyb. i. 62. 7-9. ^ Polyb. i. 63. 1-3. ' Cf. Polyb. iii. 9. 7. GAINS AND LOSSES. So ended the First Punic War ; the longest war, says Polybius, the most continuous, and the greatest which the world had then seen ; ' and it may be questioned, even now, whether there has ever been a war in which the losses were so frightful, and the immediate gain to either party so small. The Romans had indeed gained Sicily ; but Sicily with the one exception of the dominions of Hiero, which were still to belong to him and not to the Romans, was then drained of everything which made it worth having. Its territories had been ravaged, its population swept away, its towns destroyed one after the other. Greek as well as Phoenician enterprise and civilisation had been almost blotted out. The island has never en- tirely recovered its prosperity. Its soil is still in great part uncultivated, its population is one of the most degraded in Europe. To set against this equivocal gain, the Romans had lost 700 ships of the line, containing not less than 70,000 men, and army after army had fallen victims to starvation, to pestilence or the sword. The Carthaginians, on their part, had lost 500 ships of war, but the crews which manned them, and the soldiers who formed the staple of their armies, were such as, in their callous indifference, they could bear to part with ; for more were to be had for money from their still vast recruiting ground. The richness of their soil, and the abundance of their irrigation had already repaired the injury done by Regulus. They had been driven indeed from Sicily ; but had not the Phoenicians been driven before, in like manner, from ' Polyb. i. 63. 4. i6o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Crete, from Cyprus, and from Asia Minor ? What mattered it if, with the enterprise and buoyancy of their race, they could still found new colonies, and build up a new empire in countries whither the Romans had never penetrated, and of which they had hardly yet heard the names ? Everything portended an early renewal of the conflict on a more gigantic scale. Rome by crossing the narrow straits of Messana had entered on her career for good or evil, of universal conquest and aggression. Carthage was still mistress of the western half of the Mediterranean, and had no intention of voluntarily retiring from it. More than this ; Ha- milcar Barca was still alive — Hamilcar Barca, with his patience and his genius, with his burning patriotism and his thirst for revenge ; above all with his infant son. EVENTS DURING TEMPORARY LULL. i6i CHAPTER VIII. HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE MERCENARY WAR. (B.C. 241-238.) Events between First and Second Punic War — Significance of Mercenary- War — Weakness of Carthaginian Government — Symptoms of mu- tiny— Revolt of mercenaries and native Africans — Hanno and HamilcarBarca — The Truceless War — Its atrocities and termination. The twenty-two years which separated the First from the Second Punic War were not years of rest to either Rome or Carthage. The Carthaginians had barely concluded peace when they found that they had to face dangers far more terrible and foes far more implacable than any they had met with in the twenty-three years' war from which they had just emerged. The Romans, on their part, busied themselves in organising their newly conquered province ; in appro- priating to themselves, with shameless meanness and injustice, the island of Sardinia, the oldest foreign possession of the Carthaginians, and that which, next after Sicily, had been the object of her most jealous precautions ; in suppressing Illyrian piracy and ex- tending their northern frontier from the Apennines to the Alps. Let us bridge over the interval between M i62 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the war of Hamilcar and the war of Hannibal, not by describing these events in detail ; but by touching on them just so far as they bring into clear light the dealings of either nation with their dependencies, or as they directly influenced, the mightier struggle which was looming in the distance. A war with barbarians is seldom worth minute description, and this Libyan war is in itself no ex- ception to the rule. Yet it deserves much more attention than is usually given to it ; first, because it illustrates forcibly the dangers to which any state is exposed which depends mainly or wholly on mer- cenaries for her protection ; and secondly, because it takes us, as it were, behind the scenes, and, perhaps, more than any other portion of this history, brings into clear relief the vices and the virtues, the strength and the weakness, of the Carthaginian rule. The great Hamilcar, during his three years of warfare at Mount Ercte, had managed to make the war support itself ; but during the last two years at Eryx, when he was cut off from the sea, and was hard pressed by enemies alike on the peaks above and in the plains below him, he had found it difficult enough to procure the bare necessaries of life for his troops, and he had been able to pay them by promises, and by promises only. That he was able to keep his band of fickle barbarian followers in so dangerous a position for a couple of years without remunerating them for their services, and yet without any symptom of mutiny or insubordination on their part, is not the least striking testimony to his commanding personal qualities. When the war was finished, he handed SIGNIFICANCE OF MERCENARY WAR. 163 them over, with spirits still unbroken, to Gescon, the Carthaginian commander at Lilybaeum, and to Gescon fell the disagreeable duty of transporting them to Africa, and of informing the home government of their obligations towards them. Gescon was equal to the emergency ; but not so the government. Knowing the men, and knowing also those with whom he had to deal, Gescon arranged to send the troops by detachments, so as to give the authorities the opportunity of either paying them off separately, or, if that could not be done, at all events of disarming and dispersing to their homes the first detachment before the second should have set foot in Africa. But the party then in power at Carthage were at once short-sighted and unscrupulous. They neither paid the mercenaries their arrears of pay, nor told them boldly that they could not do so. They brought the first detachment into the capital to await the arrival of the others, and then, when idleness and dissipation had produced their natural result, they sent them to the town of Sicca, a town noted for its licentiousness,* with their wives, their children, and their baggage ; though these might have been invaluable as securities for their good behaviour, and though the mercenaries had themselves wished to leave them behind. Pro- longed inactivity at Sicca gave rise to more serious disturbances, and then, to make matters worse, the government sent to them not Hamilcar or Gescon the soldier's friend, but Hanno, whom they might well consider the soldier's enemy ; and that, not to pay ' Valerius Maximus, ii. 6. 15. M 2 i64 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. them off, but to sue for a remission of a part of what was due to them.' The malcontent mercenaries had been drawn from all the nations which served as a recruiting ground to the once rich republic. There were to be found amongst them Greeks and Iberians, Libyans and Ligurians ; slingers from the Balearic Isles and run- away Greek slaves. So motley a gathering — each man speaking (as the Carthaginians, fearful of revolt, were anxious that he should) his own language only —would be slow to apprehend the purport of any elaborate explanations which might now at length be offered them as to the difficulties of their employers. But they would not be slow to understand the up- shot of the whole, that they were not to receive their pay, or to catch up any mutinous expressions, such as ' Smite him, smite him ! ' which were soon to be heard with ominous frequency in their camp. ' Let the govern- ment send them some one who had served in Sicily, who knew their rights and wrongs, and not a Hanno who neither knew nor cared aught for them.' ^ Things assumed a more threatening aspect. The mutineers to the number of 20,ooo marched for Carthage and pitched their camp near Tunis ; and the government, thoroughly frightened, began to cringe when they could no longer threaten, and sent out provisions to be sold at a nominal price in the hostile camp. This only made the mutineers despise them the more. New promises and new concessions were met by new and more exorbitant demands. It was no longer merely the arrears of pay, it was the price of the ' Polyb. i. 66. " Polyb. i. 67. REVOLT OF MERCENARIES. 165 horses which they said they had lost, and the cost of their maintenance as rated by themselves, which they threateningly demanded. In their anger they began to express distrust even of Hamilcar ; if he had not been neglectful of their interests, their claims they thought must, ere this, have been fully satisfied. Gescon, who was the favourite of the hour, was at last sent to them in accordance with their demand ; but he was as unsuccessful in effecting a compromise as Hanno.' It was too late. The mutiny had come to a head. It had found leaders in Spendius, a runaway Campa- nian slave, in Matho, an African, who had served with distinction in Sicily, and in Autaritus, a Gaul.^ Ges- con, who, in a fit of impatience at the insolence of their demands, had let slip the wish that the malcontents would lay their demands before Spendius and not before him, was taken at his word. He was thrown into chains ; the money he had brought with him was seized, and the war began. Messengers were at once despatched by Spendius and Matho to the peoples of Africa summoning them to liberty ; the joyful news spread from village to village, and was enthusiastically responded to by the natives. The love of the in- habitants of the Barbary States for personal orna- ments attracts the notice of even the passing traveller in Africa at the present day. No woman. Bedouin or Berber, is so poor or her habitation so squalid that she does not carry on her person earrings or ankle rings, necklaces or bracelets, which are often of fine workmanship and of intrinsic value. But the Libyan women to whom Matho's summons came, ' Polyb. i. 68. ' Polyb. i. 69 and 77. i. 1 66 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. and who had seen their husbands or parents torn from their homes, if they could not pay the exorbi- tant tribute levied on them by the Carthaginian government, or half ruined by it if they could, were eager now to sell their trinkets and their jewels, everything, in fact, which could be turned into the sinews of war.' Men flowed in so plentifully that the rebel generals were able at once to begin the siege of Utica and Hippo Zarytus, the two places which, alone of the surrounding African and Phoenician cities, had hitherto signalised themselves by their attachment to the oppressor.'^ Money was so abundant that Spen- dius was able not only at once to discharge all the arrears of pay to his troops, but also to meet all the immediate expenses of the war. The Carthaginian government had never yet been in such sore distress. In a moment they had been cut off from the rich districts which supplied them with food, which filled their treasury with money, and their armies with their best troops. They had no ships, for their last fleet had just been destroyed in Sicily, and they had no independent allies, for it was the fate of Carthage — the fate, it must be added, she too well deserved — never to possess any. It was useless to treat for peace with men who were loaded with the accumulated wrongs of centuries, and were burning for revenge. The natives remembered the crucifixion of 3,000 of their countrymen, the finale of their partial and unsuccessful attempt at revolt during the invasion of Regulus a few years before ; ^ and they were determined that this revolt should be neither partial nor unsuccessful. ' Polybius, i. 72. 4, 5. - Pol. i. 70. 9. ' Appian, Sic. Fra . 3. HANNO AND HAMILCAR BARCA. 167 Bitterly must the Carthaginians have rued their cruelty when thej' reaped its natural consequences, when they found that the proverb ' as many slaves, so many enemies,' was, in their case, no figure of rhetoric but the stern and simple truth. Among the magistrates who had acquired the special confidence of the governing clique at Carthage by the amount of money which they had squeezed out of the subject communities, no one was more con- spicuous than Hanno, and he it was whom they now selected for the chief command in the Libyan war, a sad omen of the character which it was likely to assume. Hanno was the personal enemy of Hamilcar, and was as incapable as he was self confident. If he won a partial success he failed to follow it up. He forgot that he was fighting no longer with nomadic tribes, who after a reverse would fly for three days without intermission, carrying their homes with them, but with men led by the veterans of Hamilcar, who did not know what it was to be defeated, who had learned at Eryx, says Polybius, to renew the combat three times over in a single day, and who would feign a retreat only that they might charge again with irresistible force.^ Deceived by some such simple feint as this, the incompetent Hanno having won, as he thought, a complete victory, allowed his camp to be surprised and taken. The government in its distress was obliged to apply to Hamilcar, the man whom they had treated so ill in Sicily, and whom they had treated worse still in the persons of his trusted veterans when the war was over.^ But Hamilcar, ' Polyb. i. 74. 7. 2 Polyb. i. 75 I. i68 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. still placing his country before all else, consented to serve the government which had betrayed him. He induced or compelled the easy-going citizens to enlist, and having got together a force of seventy elephants and 10,000 men, he managed to slip through the armies, which, stationed as they were, one at Utica and the other at Tunis, had almost cut Carthage off from Africa ; and then, by his strict discipline, by his energy, and by his influence with the Numidian chiefs, especially with one called Naravas,' he defeated the enemy in a pitched battle, and overrunning the country, recovered several towns which had revolted and saved others which were being besieged. De- serters, some of them, doubtless, veterans of his own, came over to his side ; the spell of his genius and of their attachment to him overpowering (as in the case of Marshal Ney after Napoleon's escape from Elba) all other obligations, even those of immediate self- interest. Nor was this all. His kind treatment of 4,000 of his prisoners of war, some of whom he allowed to enlist in his service, while the rest he dismissed to their homes on their simple promise not to serve against Carthage during the war, was something so unlike anything which the natives had before ex- perienced at the hands of the Carthaginians, that Spend ius and Matho, fearing wholesale desertions, determined to cut down their bridges and burn their boats, by involving the whole force in an act of atro- city which not even Hamilcar could forgive.^ Panic is always cruel, and the panic of barbarians, if less culpable, is far more uncontrollable than the > Polyb. i. 78. I. * Polyb. i. 80. 3-9. THE TRUCELESS WAR. 169 panic of civilised men. By a well-laid plan Spendius and Matho contrived to create such a panic. Those who counselled moderation were greeted with the cry of ' Treason, treason !' or ' Smite him, smite him !' and when in this way — just as in the French Revolution, the Girondists fell before the Jacobins, and the more moderate of the Jacobins themselves before the more violent — a reign of terror had been established, the Irreconcilables carried everything their own way. Gescon, ' the soldier's friend,' lay ready to their hand. He and his company of 700 men were led out to execution, and having been cruelly mutilated were thrown, still living, into a ditch to perish. To an embassy from Carthage sent to ask for their bodies, the only answer was a blunt refusal, and a warning that if any more embassies were sent, they should fare as Gescon had fared. Thenceforward all native Car- thaginians who fell into their hands would be put to death, while others who did not belong to the hated nation should be sent back to the city with their hands cut off. The mercenaries were as good as their word, and from that day forward the war de- served the name by which it is known in history, the ' war without truce,' or the ' Inexpiable War.' ' Upon its horrors we need not here dwell. The world has been supping so full of horrors of late dur- ing the terrible struggle which has devastated some of the fairest countries of Europe and of Asia, that we are not disposed to linger unnecessarily on the atro- cities of the Mercenary War. Suffice it to say that Hamilcar was driven to make reprisals for the bar- • Polyb. i. 81. lyo CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. barities of the Libyans by throwing his prisoners to be trampled to death by the elephants, and the war was henceforward, in the literal sense of the word, internecine. The Carthaginian government managed, even in this supreme hour, to thwart Hainilcar by allowing his inveterate enemy Hanno, discredited as he was, to share the command with him. Nor was it till after the quarrels which ensued had led to many reverses ; till the news arrived of the total destruction of their own ships in a storm, of the revolt of Hippo and of Utica, the towns which alone had been faithful to Carthage in the invasions of Agathocles and Regu- lus ; ' above all, till the news had come of the insur- rection of the mercenaries in Sardinia, and the probable loss of that fair island, that the Carthaginians allowed the voice of the army to be heard, and com- mitted to Hamilcar once again the sole command. Hamilcar soon penned the Libyans in their forti- fied camp near Tunis, and so effectually cut them off from all supplies that they were driven to eat first their prisoners and then their slaves ; and it was not till they had begun to look wistfully upon one another that some of the chiefs, with Spendius at their head, came forth to ask for the parley which they had themselves forbidden. Hamilcar demanded that ten of the mercenaries, to be named by himself, should be given up, while the rest of the army should be allowed to depart unarmed with one garment each. This having been agreed upon, Hamilcar immediately named Spendius and his fellow legates, and threw them into chains.^ The rebel army thinking, as well ' Polyb. i. 82. 8. = Polyb. i. 85. ITS ATROCITIES AND TERMINATION. 171 they might, that Hamilcar had been guilty of sharp practice, flew to arms. They were still 40,000 in number, but they were without leaders, and they were exterminated almost to a man. Matho still held out at Tunis, and when Spendius was crucified by Hamilcar in front of its walls, Matho, by a sudden sally on the other side of the town, took a Car- thaginian general prisoner, and shortly afterwards crucified him with fifty others on the very spot which had witnessed the last agonies of Spendius. A horrible interchange of barbarities ! Though one is tempted to remark that they took place two centuries before and not twenty centuries after Christ. The army of Matho was soon afterwards cut to pieces. The rebel chief himself was taken prisoner, and, after being led in triumph through the streets of the capital, was put to death with terrible tortures (B.C. 241-238). So ended the Truceless War, after a duration of three years and four months, with the total extermination of those who had made it truceless ; ' a war,' says Polybius, and he says truly, ' by far the most cruel and inhuman of which he had ever heard ; ' ' though we are again tempted to remark that he had not seen, or perhaps imagined, such scenes as those at Batak and Kezanlik. ' Polyb. i. 83. 7. 172 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIAXS. CHAPTER IX. HAMILCAR BARCA IN AFRICA AND SPAIN. (B.C. 238-219.) Conduct of Romans during Mercenarj- War— They appropriate Sardinia and Corsica — Peace and war parties at Carthage — Hamilcar's com- mand— He crosses to Spain — Advantages of his position there — His administration and death — His character — Administration of Hasdrubal — New Carthage founded — Early career of Hannibal — Remissness of Romans — Rising of Gauls in Italy— Its suppression — Hannibal besieges Saguntum — War declared between Rome and Carthage. During the desperate struggle for life on the part of the Carthaginians which has just been related, the Romans had, on the whole, behaved with moderation, or even with generosity, to their conquered foe.* Had it pleased them to make one more effort and once again to risk a Roman army upon African soil, when they were invited to do so by the revolted Uticans and by the mercenaries themselves, there can be little doubt that Carthage would have fallen, and that there would have been no second and no third Punic War to relate ; and had they dreamed of what lay deep hidden in Hamilcar's breast, or of the vast military genius which was being reared amidst those stormy > Polyb. i. 83. 5. ROME AND THE MERCENARIES. 173 scenes in his infant son, no exertion would have ap- peared too great to make, and no danger too desperate to dare, even to the cautious Roman Senate. Was it that the exhaustion consequent on the twenty-three years' war was even greater than is commonly sup- posed, and that the Romans were bound over to keep the peace by the stress of necessity ? Or was it that the Senate, true to their traditional policy, would not ven- ture upon African conquest till they felt sure that they were leaving behind them no enemy nearer home, no lUyrian pirates to sweep their western coasts, and no Gauls who, from their seats on this side the Alps, might again descend on Rome ? Or, once more, was it that something of the courtesy and magnanimity of Pyrrhus — exotic plant though it was in the breast of his Roman antagonists — still lingered on in so un- congenial a soil ? This we do not know ; but we do know that when the revolted mercenaries in Sardinia had done to all the Carthaginians on whom they could lay hands what their brother mercenaries in Africa had done to their hated masters there ; and when the native Sards, those unconquered Troglodytes of the mountains, called by the expressive name of the ' Insane,' • had driven the mercenaries in their turn to Rome as suppliants for Roman aid, the Senate at first remained true to its treaty engagements, and refused to interfere in the internal affairs of the Carthaginian empire. They had begun the late disastrous war by supporting the freebooting murderers of Sicily, they would not signalise its termination by supporting a similar band of infuriated soldiers of fortune in ' Florus, ii. 6. 35. The Greeks also called them jxai.v6yLiva. 174 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Sardinia. Had the Romans really wished at that time to annex Sardinia, they might have found a decent pretext when the Carthaginians threw into chains certain unprincipled Italians, who, for purposes of their own, were trading with the rebels in Africa. But they contented themselves with a remonstrance, and when the Carthaginians set their prisoners free the Romans returned the courtesy by liberating all the Carthaginian prisoners whom they still retained, by for- bidding their subjects to trade with the mercenaries, and by allowing the Carthaginian recruiting officers to enlist recruits even in Italy itself' But when the genius of Hamilcar had saved Car- thage and an expedition was being fitted out by the government to recover its revolted province, the Romans, professing to believe that the armament was intended to act against themselves, and hatching up various fictitious grievances, threatened the Car- thaginians with instant war if they dared to molest those who had thrown themselves on their protection.'^ It was an act of unblushing and yet, at the same time, hvpocritical effrontery on the part of the Romans, hardly less base, and certainly more inexcusable, than had been their support of the IMamertines.' But the Carthaginians had no choice but to submit to the right of the strongest, and they gave up not Sardinia only, but such parts of Corsica as they had ever claimed, and were compelled also to atone for their warlike intentions by paying an indemnity of 1,200 talents to the outraged and peace-loving Romans.'' 1 Polyb. i. 83. 6-12. 2 Polyb. i. 88. 8-10. » Polyb. iii. 28. 1-4. * Polyb. iii. 10. 3 and 27. 8 ; Zonaras, viii. 18. PEACE AND WAR PARTIES AT CARTHAGE. 175 Hamilcar once more showed his greatness by submit- ting to the inevitable ; but the iron must have entered into his soul more deeply than ever, and he must have bound himself by still more binding oaths, if such could be found, to drink the cup of vengeance to the dregs when the time should come, or to perish in the attempt. It might have been thought that the incapacity of the governing classes at Carthage and the double disasters which they had brought upon the country would have so seriously discredited them that Hamil- car Barca and his Patriotic Party would, for a time, at all events, have been supreme in the State ; but so far was this from being the case that, while Hamilcar was returning redhanded from his desperate victory which had saved the State, the party of Hanno was strong enough and impudent enough to place the deliverer upon his trial. He had been — they did not scruple to assert— the cause of the Mercenary War, for he had made promises of pay to his troops which he had not been able to perform ! ' But it was beyond the power or the impudence even of the Cartha- ginian Peace Party to find him guilty, and the indict- ment seems to have fallen by its own weight or its own absurdity. There had been sharp conflicts for some time past between the War and the Peace Party, between the reformers and the reactionaries, at Car- thage ; and the events of the last few years had made the distinction between them sharper still. Around Hanno — called, one would think in irony, Hanno the Great — gathered all that was ease-loving, all that was • Appian, Hisp. 4. 176 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. short-sighted, all that was selfish in the great republic. The commercial, the capitalist, the aristocratical in- terests seem, on the whole, to have followed his lead. Around Hamilcar Barca, on the other hand, gathered all that was generous and far-sighted ; all, in fact, who were not content to live in peace, knowing that after them would come the deluge. Jewish kings, and those by no means the worst of their race, were often consoled when they heard on their repentance that the evil should come not in their own but in their sons' days. Not so was Hamilcar Barca, and not such his followers. But he was the head of a minority only, and finding that it was impossible to bring the majority over to his way of thinking, or to reform them by pressure from without, he determined to accept, or, it may be, to demand, a post in which he could serve his country more effectually.' He obtained from the fears, the hatred, or the hopes of those opposed to him, the command of the army, an appointment which, for different reasons, must have been equally acceptable to his friends and his enemies. The accounts which we have of these times are meagre and obscure, and come almost ex- clusively from the reports of the party hostile to the great ' Barcine faction,' for so Livy, full of Roman pride and Roman prejudices, too indolent^ to enquire into, and too opinionated to estimate aright what was really great in the Carthaginian character, calls the ' Appian, Hisp. 5. ^ Livy, xxi. 2 and passim. Diodorus (xxv. Frag. l) improves upon Livy, and calls the party of Hamilcar — some of the noblest patriots who ever lived — eraipeia tSiv irov-qpoTdTuv iivBpdnrijiii, a band of the most worthless fellows. ADVANTAGES OF HAMILCARS RESOLVE. 177 disinterested and the patriotic supporters of Hamilcar. But it is clear, even from these reports, that Hamilcar received the command with autocratic powers, subject only to removal by the voice of the collective Cartha- ginian people. That he was independent of the Home Government was as much to their advantage as his. They were saved the trouble of supplying him with men and money, and, if necessary, they could dis- avow any awkward acts of his, while he was saved from the cabals and intrigues with which, had they had the chance, the Government might have hampered his movements. He first stamped out the embers of the Libyan revolt which were still smouldering in the country to the west of Carthage, and then, accom- panied by the fleet, made his way slowly along the Mauritanian coast towards the immediate goal of his long-cherished schemes. When he reached the pillars of Hercules (B.C. 237), on his own undivided responsi- bility, he crossed the straits and set foot in another country and another continent. It was a bold step, but it was a wise one. If Carthage was to be saved at all from the ruin which Hamilcar and all keen-sighted men saw impending over it, it must be by Hamilcar and Hamilcar's army. But where in Africa could he raise an army, and how, when it was raised, could he have fed it there The merchant princes of the city who, under the pressure of necessity, had enrolled themselves in his ranks to defend their all, had returned to their businesses or their pleasures as soon as the immediate danger was over. His own veterans, and thousands of other Libyans who under his training might have N 178 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. become as valuable as they, had been, by the most tragic of necessities, exterminated by Hamilcar him- self in the late war ; and he could hardly hope just then to enlist others who could serve him as their predecessors might have done. A few of his Sicilian officers, indeed, still followed the banner of their chief, and a few devoted friends and members of his family were left behind at Carthage, and these last, if they held no office in the State, showed that they could do more. If they were not allowed to govern, their ability and their patriotism yet gave them the divine right to rule. Of this nothing could deprive them ; and, like the Medici at Florence, or the Dukes of Orange in the Netherlands, this half-outlawed Barcine family actually received foreign embassies and concluded foreign treaties, as an independent body, co-ordinate with the Senate itself ! But officers alone cannot make an army, and the Barcine family, powerful as it was, could not induce the money-loving Carthaginian merchants to untie their purse-strings in support of the distant and chimerical projects of Hamil- car. Nothing could be done at Carthage without money; and it was necessary for Hamilcar, if he would hold his own, not only to pay his troops but to remit large sums to Carthage in order to keep his supporters there together and to maintain his influence.' Now it must have seemed to the eager eye of the Carthaginian patriot as though Spain had been created for the very purpose of supplying all these various and conflicting wants. It was from Spain, if from anywhere, and by Hamilcar, if by anyone, that ' Appian, Hisp. 5- HAMILCAR CROSSES TO SPAIN. 179 Carthage might be saved. The previous history of the Spanish peninsula, and its immemorial connexion with the Phoenicians, the fathers of the Carthaginian race, were all in favour of Hamilcar's projects. It was from Tarshish, or Tartessus, the district abutting on the very straits which he had to cross, that, as far back as the time of Solomon, had come the strange animals and the rich minerals which were landed in the harbours of Phoenicia proper, and which had so enlarged the ideas and transformed the instincts of the untravelled and exclusive Israelites.' It was from Tartessus, as the story went, that some Phoenician sailors had once returned to their native country laden with so much wealth that they were fain to take the lead off their very anchors and to put silver on them in its stead. What wonder, after this, that we are told that ' silver was little accounted of in the days of Solomon ' In more recent times Gades (Gaddir), on almost the same spot, itself a Phoenician colony, and boasting of a splendid temple to Melcarth, the patron god of both Tyre and Carthage, had served as an emporium for the products alike of the Scilly Isles and the Niger. For centuries Phoenicians had thus found in Spain what, centuries after, Spain herself was destined to find in Mexico and Peru ; and it was principally to main- tain her connexion with this Eldorado that that long line of factories, known in later times as the Mcta- gonitcB Urbes, had been planted at equal distances on the most suitable points of the barren Mauritanian coast. The Greeks themselves had their share of the ' See this admirably brought out in Stanley's Jnvish Church, chap, xxvi. p. 182-187. N 2 i8o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. inexhaustible spoils of Spain. It was from one of the ports of Tartessus, 'a virgin port,' as Herodotus calls it, that in 630 B.C. a certain Samian, driven thither by- stress of weather or by a special providence,' had re- turned laden with wealth to his native country, and had given that stimulus to the Greek imagination and to the thirst for geographical discovery which, in the following century, carried thither the adventurous Phocaeans, who in their turn became the friends of its king and shared largely in his wealth.^ It was no slight advantage, too, for Hamilcar's purposes, that the connexion of Spain with Carthage had hitherto been commercial only and not imperial ; otherwise the deadly hatred which accompanied the spread of the Carthaginian rule in Africa must have sprung up in Spain as well, and Hamilcar would have had as much to do in pulling down as in building up, and his great constructive genius would not have had free play. It was into such a land of promise that Hamilcar now passed. Its gold and silver mines, worked henceforward by Phoenician enterprise and skill, yielded many times as much as they had ever yielded before. With part of the produce Hamilcar paid the Spaniards themselves who had flocked to his standard ; but, as with his Libyan followers at Ercte and at Eryx, it was the spell of his personal influence, far more than the gold he was now able to promise and to give them, which kept them ever afterwards indis- solubly attached to him. Part he remitted annually to Carthage, as the price he paid to her for being ' Herod, iv. 152. 6€i'j) vofxir-p ;^pe(t>/uej'oi. 2 Herod, i. 163. CHARACTER OF HAMILCAR. i8i allowed to carry out his schemes for her safety and her empire. His soldiers, his generals, his own son- in-law, Hasdrubal, intermarried with the natives and made their interests one with their own. For nine long years — years to which Polybius, unfortunately, has devoted scarcely as many lines ' — Hamilcar worked steadily on, with his eyes, indeed, fixed upon the distant goal, but using no unworthy means in order to reach it ; and when the end was almost in view, when it seemed that he might himself carry out his magnificent schemes, he died a soldier's death, fighting, sword in hand, and left to the ' lion's brood,' ^ as he loved to call — and well might he call — his sons, the rich but the dangerous heritage of his genius, his valour, and his undying hatred to Rome. Of all the foreign nations — Phoenician, Roman, Gothic, Vandal, Arab — which have occupied any con- siderable part of Spain, two, and two only, have governed it in its own interests, and, in spite of diffe- rences of creed and of race, have governed it, on the whole, with toleration, with humanity, and with good faith. The one was the Barcine family of Carthage, the other the Ommiade Khalifs of Arabia. Of the hero- prophet, sprung eight centuries later from the kindred Arabian stock, it was remarked by the ambassadors who had been sent to him in his exile at Medina, that they had seen the Persian Chosroes and the Greek Heraclius sitting upon their thrones, but never had ' Polyb. ii. I. 5-8 ; Livy, xxi. I ; Corn. Nepos, Hamilcar, iv. 2 ; Val. Max. ix. 3. 3 ext. 2 Val. Maximus, ix. 3. 2 ext., ' Quatuor enim puerilis setatis filios intuens, ejusdem numeri catulos leoninos in perniciem imperii nostri alere se prcedicabat.' i82 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. they seen a man ruling his equals as did Mohammed. Like Mohammed, Hamilcar Barca never sat upon a throne. He was a simple citizen of Carthage ; hated or feared by many, probably by a majority of his fellow-citizens, thwarted by them whenever they could thwart him, and carrying on his patriotic projects in his solitary strength in that distant country, half rebel and half runaway, half subject and half sovereign. We know all too little of his heroic struggles in Sicily, of his death-grapple with the revolted Libyans, and of the achievements of the last nine years of his life, alike in peace and war, in Spain. Did we know more the world would, in all probability, admit that, in capacity if not in performance, in desert if not in fortune, he was the equal of his wonderful son. But we know at least enough to justify the judgment passed half a century later by one who was, assuredly, no friend to Carthage, and yet who, in spite of his narrow Roman prejudices, and his ' Ddetida est Carthago' judging solely by the traces he saw in Spain of what the great man had done, pronounced emphatically that there was ' no king like Hamilcar.' Hamilcar died in battle in the year B.C. 228. His son Hannibal was then not quite nineteen years of age, and was too young at once to succeed his father ; but the command did not pass out of the family. It devolved on Hasdrubal, the son-in-law and faithful companion of Hamilcar, one who was endowed with something of his military talents and with no small part of his influence over men.' The empire which Hamilcar had founded in Spain Hasdrubal organised ' Polyb. ii. I. 9; Livy, xxi. 2. EARLY CAREER OF HANNIBAL. 183 and enlarged. Above all, he gave it a capital in New Carthage,' a town which, from its admirable situation on the south-east coast, from its convenient harbour, and from its proximity to some rich silver mines which were just then discovered,^ seemed destined to be all that its proud name implied, and to spread the Phoe- nician arts and empire in Europe and the ocean beyond, even as the Old Carthage had spread them over the Mediterranean and in Africa. Tribe after tribe of Iberians solicited the honour of enrolling themselves as subjects of a power which knew how to develope their resources in the interest of the natives as much as in its own ; which found them work to do and paid them well fordoing it ; and when Hasdrubal, B.C. 221, in the eighth year of his command, fell by the hand of a Celtic assassin,^ he had extended, in the main, by peaceful means, the rule of the Barcides from the Bastis to the Tagus. Hannibal was now in his twenty-sixth year. The soldiers unanimously proclaimed him commander-in- chief, and their choice was ratified by the Carthagi- nian Government. He was still young for the Herculean task which lay before him ; but he was strong in the blood of Hamilcar which was flowing in his veins, strong in the training which he had received, strong above all in the consciousness of his religious mission ; none the less so, that the secret of it remained locked in his own breast till all chance of fulfilling it in its ' Polyb. ii. 13. Aletes, their discoverer, was worshipped by the Carthaginians as a hero ; Polyb. x. 10. ' Polybius, ii. 36 ; Appian, Hiip. 8. i84 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. entirety had passed away for ever. It was not till he was an old man, living in exile at the court of King Antiochus, but, even so, an object of suspicion and of terror alike to the Syrian King and to the Roman Senate, that he told the simple story of that which, far more than military ambition, more even than the love of country and the consciousness of his supreme ability, had been the ruling motive of his life. In his ninth year, so he told Antiochus, when his father, Hamilcar, was about to set out for his command in Spain, and was sacrificing to the supreme God of his country, he bade the attendants withdraw, and asked the little Hannibal if he would like to go with him to the wars. The boy eagerly assented. ' Lay your hand then,' said Hamilcar, ' on the sacrifice and swear eternal enmity to the Romans.'- Hannibal swore, and well did he keep his oath.' It suits the purposes of Livy to say that Hannibal was a man ' of worse than Punic faith, with no reverence for what was true or sacred, serving no God, and keeping no oath.' The accusation is untrue in every point ; but even Livy must have himself admitted that to this oath, at least, he was true, that this God, at least, he reverenced, and that this religious mission he kept before his mind and carried out to the best of his superlative ability, from that day even to the day of his death. From the age of nine to eighteen he had watched in silence the patient development of his father's far-sighted designs. From eighteen to twenty- five his had been, in the main, the hand to strike and ' Polyb. iii. Il ; Livy, xxi. I : xxxv. 19 ; Corn. Nep. Hatm. 2 ; Appian, Hisp. 9 ; Val. Max. ix. 3. 3 ext. ' Livy, xxi. 4. REMISSNESS OF ROMANS. 185 the will to carry out, while Hasdrubal's had been the mind to plan and the right to command ; ^ and now in his twenty-sixth year he was called upon to stand alone, to enter upon his great inheritance of obligation ; and by his patience and his impetuosity, by his powers of persuasion and of command, by his energy and his, inventiveness, by his arts and by his arms, to redeem his early pledge. But why had the Romans been looking calmly on while the Barcine famil}^ were winning back for themselves, and for the state at large in Spain, all, and more than all, that they had lost in Sicily ? Partly because they knew too little of Spain to trouble them- selves about what was going on there ; partly because they were thankful that Hamilcar, whom they feared so much, could find such ample employment for his abilities in a country from which, under any circum- stances, as they thought, they need fear so little. When at length their attention was arrested by the rapid progress of Hasdrubal, they contented them- selves with forming an alliance with one or two half- Greek, half-Spanish states there, and with binding Hasdrubal, so far as a treaty could bind him, not to push his conquests beyond the line of the Ebro ^ — as though such a treaty could do anything ehe than show their own weakness and short-sightedness, and encourage Hasdrubal to push his conquests fearlessly up to the imaginary line, leaving ulterior measures to ' Livy, loc. cil. Corn. Nep. Hannibal, 3: ' Equitatui omni pr.xfuit; ' Livy, xxi. 4 : ' Neque Hasdrubal alium quemqnam praeficere malle ubi quid fortiter ac strenue agendum esset.' 2 Polyb. iii. 27 ; Livy, xxi. 6. 186 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the circumstances which might require them ! Such formal declarations of mutual suspicion, whether they refer to Spain or to Central Asia, bind no one, and de- ceive no one, and they rarely survive the particular emergency which seems to call for them. There was, however, one good reason why the Romans should not at that time do more than attempt to fix paper boundaries to the Carthaginian dominion in Spain, and why they should be content if only they could postpone the beginning of the great contest for a year or two, even by the most flimsy of guarantees. They had to face a formidable enemy nearer Rome.' The whole of the region to the north of the Apennines and the Rubicon still belonged to the Gauls, and one of their tribes, the Boii, who dwelt between the Apennines and the Po, frightened at the work of the popular champion Flaminius — the divi- sion of the lands which had once belonged to their Senonian brethren amongst the poorer citizens of Rome — and fearing that their own turn would come next, determined to anticipate the evil day. Sixty years had passed since the terrible slaughter of the Boii at Lake Vadimo ; and during these sixty years the population had repaired its losses, had forgotten its defeats, or, if it remembered them, remembered them only to desire their revenge. The Insubrians who dwelt beyond the Po promised their aid, and rumour said that their number was being continually augmented by the arrival of fresh bands of Gauls from beyond the Alps.^ A movement amongst the Gauls was known by a name of terror {tinmiltiis) even ' Polyb. i. 22. 10, II. ' Polyb. ii. 22. I ; 23. I. RISING OF THE GAULS SUPPRESSED. 187 in the later days of the Republic, and at this time the memories of the Allia and of the burning of Rome were too fresh to allow the Roman Senate to take any half-measures. A Gallic man and woman were buried alive by order of the Senate in the Ox market, in hopes of thus fulfilling the dread oracle which promised a share of Roman soil to the Gauls. A levee en masse of the military resources of the confederation was decreed ; and those actually under arms in various parts of the Roman dominions are said by Polybius to have reached the astonishing number of 170,000 men. ' Against such a nation under arms,' as Poly- bius significantly adds, Hannibal was on the point of marching with 20,000 men ! ' But the terrors of the Gauls were destined, on this occasion (B.C. 225), soon to pass away. The Transalpine barbarians who fought, many of them, stark naked, with two javelins {gcesa ^) in their hands, or with swords that bent at the first blow, fell an easy prey to the skilful dispositions of the Roman armies. Surrounded by the two consuls near Telamon in Etruria, they were almost exterminated, and the Roman Capitol was filled with the standards and the golden necklaces and the bracelets which were the trophies of the victory.^ The Romans followed up ' Polyb. ii. 24. 17. The total number of men able to bear arms he makes 700,000; besides 70,000 cavalry. - Hence called Gresatse ; not, as Polybius says, because they served as mercenaries (ii. 22. l). Cf. Virgil, JEneid, viii. 661 : ' duo quisque Alpina coruscant Gasa manu, scutis protect! corpora longis.' • Polyb. ii. 31. 5. i88 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. their success with vigour, and transferred the war into the enemy's country. The Boians suffered the fate which they had anticipated and which they had in vain tried to avert, and the name of Italy might be now extended, on the east of the peninsula at all events, to the line of the Po. In the following year, C. Flaminius, a man whose name has been already mentioned, and of whom we shall hear again at a critical point in the Second Punic War, led a Roman army, for the first time in their history, across that river, and attacking the Insubrians, took their capital city, Milan ; ' while Marcellus, the consul of the year B.C. 223, was able to dedicate, in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, the spolia opima which he had taken in single combat from the Gallic chief- tain. The Romans riveted their grasp on their new conquests by founding, more sico, two new colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on either side of the Po, and by completing that imperishable monument of their organizing and constructive genius, the Flaminia Via, the great military road of Northern Italy, from Rome to Ariminum.^ Nor were these precautions taken a moment too soon ; for before the Romans had esta- blished themselves firmly on the line of the Po, Han- nibal was on the Ebro ; and to the surprise of the Roman Senate, and the terror of not a few among the Roman citizens, it was now apparent for the first time that the approaching contest might possibly be waged, not in Africa for the possession of Carthage, but in Italy for the possession of Rome. But we must now return to Hannibal. During ' Polyb. ii. 34. 15. ^ Polyb. iii. 46. 4, 5 ; Li\7, Epit. x.\. HANNIBAL BESIEGES SAGUNTUM. 189 the first two years of his command (B.C. 221-219) the young general had crossed the Tagus, and had re- duced the whole of Spain to the south of the Ebro to submission. But there was one exception. The town of Saguntum, a Greek colony— so the inhabitants boasted — from Zacyn hus,' and near the site of the modern Muriedro (Muri-veteres), though far to the south of the Ebro, had formed an alliance with Rome ; and Hasdrubal, nay Hannibal himself, had up to this time forborne to attack it. Hannibal knew that he could choose his own time for picking a quarrel, and now the ground seemed clear before him. To the Roman ambassadors who came to warn him not to attack an ally of theirs, he gave an evasive answer, and referred them to the Carthaginian Senate, while he prosecuted the preparations for the siege with redoubled vigour. With what powers of heroic en- durance Spaniards can defend themselves in their walled towns, all history, the names of Numantia and Saragossa above all, can testify. No other Indo- Germanic nation can be compared with them in this respect. To find a parallel we must have recourse to some branch of the great Semitic stock, to the Tyrians or the Carthaginians themselves, to the Jews, or to the Arabs. For eight months the Saguntines held out, and when they could hold out no longer the chiefs kindled a fire in the market-place, and threw into it first their valuables and then themselves. Hannibal, who had been wounded in the course of the siege, divided a part of the booty amongst his ' Cf. Strabo, iii. p. 159; Livy, xxi. 7, says that there were also Rutulians among the founders. igo CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. troops ; a part he despatched to Carthage, in hopes of committing those who received it beyond the hope of recall to his great enterprise.' He then retreated into winter quarters at New Carthage, and dismissing his Spanish troops to the enjoyments of their homes for the winter, bade them return to the camp at the approach of spring, prepared for whatever it might bring forth. The Romans had by their dilatoriness allowed Saguntum to fall, but they were now not slow in demanding satisfaction for it. An embassy was sent direct to Carthage demanding the surrender of Han- nibal, the author of the outrage, on pain of instant war. The Romans fondly hoped that the Cartha- ginian peace party would seize the opportunity of compassing their chief end at the easy price of the surrender of so troublesome a servant, or master, as was Hannibal. But the gold of Hannibal had done its work, and was more potent than Hanno's honied tongue. The peace party dared hardly to mutter their half-hearted counsels : and when 0. Fabius, the chief of the embassy, held up his toga, saying, ' I carry here peace and war ; choose ye which ye will have ;' — ' Give us whichever you please,' replied the Carthaginians. ' War, then,' said Fabius ; and the decision was greeted, as is usual in times of such excitement, by the short-sighted acclamations of the masses.^ They feel the enthusiasm of the moment ; they do not realise its tremendous responsibility. They see with their minds' eye the pomp and pride ' Polybius, iii. 15 ; Livy, xxi. 14, 15 ; Florus, ii. 6. 6. 2 Polyb. iii. 33. I -4. IVAR DECLARED. and circumstance of war ; they do not see its horrors and its devastations. They hear the din of prepara- tion ; they are deaf, till it is too late, to the cry of agony or to the wail of the bereaved ; else war would never, as experience proves it so often is, be welcomed as a boon ; it would be submitted to only as the most dire necessity. The die was now cast, and the arena was cleared for the foremost man of his race and his time, per- haps the mightiest military genius of any race and of any time — one with whom, in this particular, it were scant justice to compare either Alexander, or Caesar, or Marlborough, and who, immeasurably above him as he is in all moral qualities, may, on the score of mili- tary greatness, be named without injustice in the same breath as Napoleon, and Napoleon alone. 192 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER X. SECOND PUNIC WAR. (b.c. 218-201.) PASSAGE OF THE RHONE AND THE ALPS, B.C. 218. Preparations of Hannibal — He determines to go by land —Numbers of his army — His march through Gaul — His passage of the Rhone — Vagueness of ancient writers in geographical matters — Passage over Alps selected by Hannibal — Route by which he approached it — The first ascent — Valley of the Isere — The main ascent — The summit — Hannibal addresses his troops — The descent — Interest attaching to the passage of the Alps — Its cost and results — The ' War of Hannibal.' There was still a brief interval of preparation before the rival nations could meet in battle-array, and Han- nibal utilised it to the utmost. It was late in the \ ear 219. He had already, as has been mentioned, dismissed his Spanish troops for the winter to their homes, well assured that they would return with re- doubled ardour in the spring. But the hours of his own enforced retirement were not given to idleness. He took measures for the safety of Spain during his absence by garrisoning it with 15,000 trusty Libyans, while Libya he garrisoned with as many trusty Spa- niards, thus making, in a certain sense, each country HAA'NIBAL RESOLVES TO ATTACK BY LAND. 193 a security for the good behaviour of the other.' The supreme command in Spain he committed to his younger brother, Hasdrubal ; and during the winter friendly messages passed and repassed between New Carthage and the chieftains of Transalpine and Cis- alpine Gaul.^ It is said that negotiations were carried on even with Antigonus, king of Macedonia, to arrange for a combined attack on Italy from east and west at once. But was Italy to be reached by land or sea ? The Phoenicians had not yet lost their maritime skill ; the sea was their home ; and, had the Carthaginians so willed it, a fleet might have been collected in the harbour of New Carthage which probably could have bidden defiance to any that the Romans could have raised against it. The dangerous Sicilian waters, which had proved so fatal in the first Punic War, might be avoided in the second ; and even if the Carthaginian mariners had not the heart to take the passage across the open sea to Italy, a coasting voyage of some few days might have landed them safely in one of the Ligurian or North Etruscan harbours ; and, as the event proved, the Romans would have then been ill prepared to receive them. Why, then, did Hannibal, the greatest product of the Phcenician race, perhaps of all the Semitic races — and certainly the noblest embodiment of the national spirit and will of Carthage — prefer a land journey which involved the crossing of broad and rapid rivers, of lofty and of un- known mountain chains, and amidst races proverbial for their fickleness and faithlessness ; a journey which ' Polyb. iii. 33. 5-8; Liv)', xxi. 21-22. ' Polyb. iii. 34. I- 6. O 194 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. would take months instead of days, and which, if it failed at all, must fail altogether ? Was it that the Carthaginian Government was backward or unable to supply the ships ? or was it that Hannibal miscal- culated the distance and under-estimated the dangers of the route which he chose ? Perhaps both in part. It is no slur upon the military qualities of the great Car- thaginian to suppose that he did not fully realise the difficulties of the task he was undertaking, a task which no description given by interested and friendly mountaineers could have brought adequately home to him. But what, no doubt, especially determined him to make the attempt was the alliance which he had already concluded with the formidable tribes of Gaul itself and of Northern Italy. More than once in history these same Gauls, unaided and undisciplined, by their mere numbers and their valour, had imperilled the very existence of Rome ; and of what might they not be capable when fighting for their own existence against her ever-encroaching power, and when led on by himself, with his Libyan and Spanish v^eterans to form the nucleus of his army, and with his Numidian horse to scour the country, or to follow up a defeat } Swooping down from the Alps on the rich fields of Italy, his numbers swelled by the reinforcements he would have gathered in his course from Farther Gaul, he would, by a first success, rally all their brethren in Hither Gaul to his standard. The basis of his opera- tions for the Italian war would then be no longer Spain or Gaul, but Italy itself; and it would be strange indeed if the Samnites and the Etruscans, the Umbrians and the Lucanians, whom Rome had NUMBER OF HANNIBAL'S ARMY. so recently and so hardly conquered, did not flock to his standard as he swept victoriously on towards the South to reek condign vengeance on the common oppressor of them all. Such were the hopes, not altogether ill-founded, with which Hannibal under- took the gigantic enterprise which astonished and still astonishes the world. The army with which he set out from New Car- thage early in the summer of 218, consisted of 90,000 foot, of 12,000 horse, and of thirty-seven elephants ; a force far smaller than that which the Carthaginians had often employed before in their petty conflicts with the Sicilian Greeks.' He crossed the Ebro, and, not without heavy loss to himself, subdued the hostile Spanish tribes beyond that river who, so far as a treaty could make them so, were already the allies of Rome, and, as the Romans believed, a firm bulwark against Carthaginian encroachments. Leaving Hanno with 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse to hold the country which he had conquered, he actually sent back to their homes 10,000 more of his already much-thinned army, men whom, like Gideon at the Well of Trembling, he saw to be faint-hearted and therefore cared not to retain in his service. Then, confident in those that remained, and in the future, he crossed the Pyrenees and, without opposition from the Gallic tribes, reached the Rhone in safety.^ The Romans, as behindhand in their arms as in ' The numbers given in the text rest on the statement inscribed by Hannibal himself on a brazen pillar, in the temple of Juno Lacinia, just before he left Italy for Africa. This inscription was read by Polybius. Polyb. ii. 33. 18, and 56. 4. ^ Polyb. iii. 35 and 40; Livy, xxi. 23-24. o 2 196 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. their diplomacy, still, it would seem, believed that the contest which was beginning would be fought out at a distance from their own shores. Had not the battle- field of the contending forces been fixed by treaty many years before in Northern Spain, and was not P. Cor. Scipio about to proceed thither in due course with sixty ships and with an army to confine the Car- thaginian youth to his proper domain, while the other Consul, Tib. Sempronius, was to cross into Sicily, to transfer the war thence to Africa and to bring it to a rapid conclusion there by besieging Carthage itself ? ' Scipio, as had been arranged, started from Pisa, and, coasting leisurely along to Marseilles, learned to his extreme surprise that Hannibal had already crossed the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and was in full march through Gaul. The truth now dawned upon him. He sent out three hundred of his bravest cavalry, with Celtic guides, to look for Hannibal, and they soon met four hundred Numidian cavalry who had been despatched by Hannibal for a like purpose. In the encounter which ensued the Romans got the advantage, and pursued the retreating Numidians to the Carthaginian camp ; but they took back to their general the start- ling news that Hannibal had already left the Rhone behind him, and that they had seen the Carthaginians encamped on its eastern side.^ Had Scipio reached the Rhone a week sooner, as he well might have done, he would have found allies there, whose aid, combined with the advantages of their position, might have enabled him to check the further advance of the Carthaginians ; for though Hannibal, by his previous ' Polyb. iii. 40. 2. " Polyb. iii. 45 ; Li\-y, xxi. 29. HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OF THE RHONE. 197 negotiations, had cleared the way for himself to the river's edge, yet, owing to the difficulty of getting boats to cross it, he had given the smouldering opposition time to blaze forth, and a large force of Gauls had assembled on the other side to oppose his passage. Well knowing that a prolonged delay might render the Alps impassable for that year, and, if for that year, perhaps for ever, Hannibal sent Hanno with a considerable force two short days' march up the river to a point whence he could cross unopposed. After a brief pause to refresh his men, Hanno moved down the left of the stream and kindled the beacon fires for which Hannibal was anxiously waiting. He had already laden with his light-armed horsemen the boats which he had hired from the natives, while the canoes which he had extemporised were filled with the most active of his infantry, and he now gave the order to put across. The signal was obeyed with alacrity ; and the horses swam the stream, attached by ropes to the boats which carried their riders. Down poured the barbarians in disorder from their fortified camp, fully confident that they could bar the passage ; but the flaming camp behind them, and the fierce onset of Hanno's force upon their rear, showed them that they had been out-generalled, and they fled in confusion, leaving Hannibal to transport the rest of his army in peace.' The army rested that night on the Italian side of the river, and on the following day the most unwieldy, and not the least sagacious part of his force, the thirty-seven elephants, were cajoled, as at Messana, in the first Punic War, after the battle of ' Polyb. iii. 42, 43 ; Livy, xxi. 27-2S. 198 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Panormus, into entmsting themselves to a raft. Some, in their blind panic, leapt into the mid river, drowning their drivers ; but raising instinctively their trunks above their heads, they reached the opposite bank in safety.* But the real difficulties of the undertaking were only now beginning. The assurances given by the Boian or the Insubrian messengers who had just arrived, that the mountain passes were not so difficult, and the few inspiriting words addressed by Hannibal to his troops, fell upon willing, because upon ill- informed ears. How little accurate knowledge of the localities through which he had to pass Hannibal can have gained even by the most careful enquiries, is evident from the obscurity which has always hung over his march itself. That* march riveted the attention of the world ; it was described by eye- witnesses, and one great historian, at least, who lived within fifty years of the events he was recording, took the trouble to go over the ground and verify for him- self the reports which had reached him. Yet many of its details and even its general direction are still matters of dispute. The fact is that the ancients, even the most observant of them, had no eye for the minute obser\^ation of nature, and no wish to describe its phenomena in detail. Happy epithets indeed, which live for all time, we find in the poets of ancient as well as of modern times, but there is little minute analysis even in them, while with historians and other prose writers, stock epithets almost always do duty. An island is always, or nearly always lofty,^ a moun- ' Polyb. iii. 46. 12; Livy, xxi. 38. * Cf. Virgil, Ain. iii. 76: 'Mycono e celsa,' an island which really PASSAGE OVER THE ALPS SELECTED. 199 tain pass always inaccessible, a mountain slope always slippery, and little more. It may be doubted whether in the whole range of classical literature half-a-dozen landscapes have been so accurately described as to enable us to identify them in anything like detail. Accordingly there is hardly a pass in the whole Western Alps which has not been made — as though they were cities contending for the honour of a Homer's birth — to lay claim, with some show of reason, to be the scene of Hannibal's march. Yet broad geographical facts, and the few data of time and place given by Polybius, enable us, in the light of recent researches, to restrict the choice to two, if not to one, of the total number.' The route by the sea coast, though it presented the fewest physical difficulties, Hannibal avoided, probably because to enter Italy by it would, he lies very low, and is actually called humilis by Ov. Met. vii. 463 ; cf. Aiti. ix. 716: ' Prochyta alta.' See the remarks of Ihne, Roman Hist. ii. 17I-173 ; and Arnold, iii. pp. 478, 479. ' See especially Dissertation on the Passage of Hannibal aver the Alps, by Wickham and Cramer (1820) ; The March of Hannibal from the Rhone to the Alps, by H. L. Long {1831) ; Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps, \:>y S. W. King (1858); The Alps of Hannibal, by W. J. Law (1866). General Melville was the earliest modern advo- cate of the Little St. Bernard route. He was followed by De Luc in 1818, and Long and Law have endorsed and confirmed their conclu- sions. Among recent historians of Rome, Niebuhr, Arnold, Mommsen, and Ihne are unanimous for the Little St. Bernard ; and the discovery of elephants' bones in this pass, reported as far back as 1769, by the advo- cate of another route, is an additional confirmation of the view taken in the text. The chief modern advocate of the Mont Cenis route is the Rev. R. Elhs (1867), and his views are adopted by Ball in his Alpine Guide, pp. 55, 56. Antonio Gallenga, the historian of Piedmont, still supports the claims of Mont Genevre, while several French and Gennan writers — Desgranges, Duparcq, and Zander — prefer the Monte Viso route. 2CO CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. thought, involve him in immediate collision with the Ligurians as well as the Roman armies, and would allow the Gauls to await the issue of his first attack, instead of compelling them to throw in their lot at once for better or worse with him. The pass over the Cottian Alps, Mont Genevre, which seems to be the route supported by Livy and by Strabo, was near- est indeed to the spot where Hannibal had crossed the Rhone ; but the approaches to it were difficult, and it would have landed Hannibal in the territory of the Taurini, a Ligurian tribe, which was just then at war with his friends the Insubrians. The Great St. Bernard and the Simplon are much too remote for the distances given, with some precision, by Polybius. The choice, therefore, seems narrowed to the two inter- mediate passes of the Little ]Mont Cenis, to the north of the Cottian, and the Little St. Bernard to the north of the Graian Alps. IVIont Cenis appears to have been unknown to the ancients as a practicable passage ; moreover it would, like Mont Genevre, have brought Hannibal down among hostile Ligurian tribes. The Little St. Bernard, on the other hand, was not only the easiest of approach and one of the lowest available passes, being only 7,000 feet high, but once and again in histor}^, it had already poured down the Celts of the north upon the plains of Italy. It was in fact the highway between Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul. Where Celtic tribes had passed before, the expected ally and deliverer of the Celts might well pass now, and with this hypothesis nearly all the facts given by Polybius will be found to agree. On the Italian side of the pass lay the Salassians, the hereditary friends VALLEY OF THE I SERE. 20 1 of the Insubrians, who would give their messengers, as they passed to and fro, a safe conduct, and would secure to Hannibal himself the rest and refreshment which after his own passage he would so sorely need.' But if we assume, as the evidence on the whole seems to entitle us to do, that the Little St. Bernard was the pass selected by Hannibal, there is still some difficulty in determining the route by which he approached it. He had crossed the Rhone at a spot ' nearly four days' journey from the sea,' probably the reach above Roquemaure. He marched thence, we are told, four days up the river to the spot where the Isere joins the Rhone, the apex of the triangle, after- wards called the ' Island of the Allobroges,' and com- pared by Polybius, with his rough geographical notions, to the delta of the Nile.^ It was then, as now, populous and well cultivated, and Hannibal, it would seem, preferred to continue his march north- ward through its champaign country rather than to take the shorter route eastward by following at once the mountain valley of the Isere. There would be enough of mountain climbing later on. Accordingly he followed the course of ' the river ' northward, as far probably as Vienne ; then, turning eastward, he took the part of one of two rival brothers whom he found contending for the throne, and so obtained ' The contest on the subject was hot even in the time of Livy (.\xi. 38) ; yet it is clear from him that Caelius Antipater, who followed the account of Silenus the companion of Hannibal, adopted the Little St. Bernard route. The 'Cremonis jugum,' there spoken of, is clearly 'the Cramont,' the mountain on the Italian side of the Little St. Bernard, ris- ing on the left side of the Baltea valley, between it and the Allee Blanche. * Polyb. iii. 42. l, Kaad.T'l\v h.Tt\^\v ^-iaw. ^ Polyb. iii. 49. 5 7. 202 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. from him supplies of food and clothing and trusty guides.^ Then, once more striking the Rhone where it leaves the frontiers of Savoy, he reached the first outwork of the Alps, probably the Mont du Chat, a chain 4,000 ft. high.'* Hannibal had taken ten days to cross the Island of the Allobroges, and had hitherto met with no difficulty or mishap of any kind ; but here, where the great physical difficulties began, the first symptoms of open hostility appeared also. The native guides had returned to their master, and amidst the precipi- tous ravines the Numidian cavalry were no longer formidable. The one track over the mountains, the Chevelu Pass, was occupied by the mountaineers in force ; but Hannibal, learning that it was their practice to return to their homes for the night, lighted his camp fires, as usual, at nightfall, and, leaving the bulk of his army behind, climbed the steep in the darkness with the most active of his troops, and occupied the position which had been just vacated by the natives. Slowly and toilfully on the following day his army wound up the pass, aware that Hannibal was waiting to receive them at its head, but exposed to loss and to annoyance at every step from the attacks of the enemy who moved along the heights above. The path was rough and narrow, and the horses and the sumpter animals, unused to such ground and scared by the confusion, lost their footing, and either rolled headlong down the precipices them- selves, or jostling against their fellows in the agony of their wounds, rolled them down with the baggage ' Polyb. iii. 49. 8-12. - Polyb. iii. 50. I. THE MAIN ASCENT. 203 which they carried. To an army crossing a lofty mountain, baggage and provisions are a matter of life and death, and Hannibal risked his own life and those of his few brave followers to save the rest. Charging along the heights he put the enemy to flight, and the immediate peril was surmounted. He then attacked the town (Bourget .-') which lay at the farther end of the pass. Its inhabitants were still on the mountains, but he found within its walls a supply of provisions for three days, and recovered some of his horses and men who had been taken prisoners in the passage.' It was not likely that he would be molested by these mountaineeers, at all events, again. For the next three days Hannibal followed the Tarentaise, or the rich valley of the Isere, which he had struck on his descent from the pass, and there was now no symptom of hostility or opposition. On the fourth day, the people whose homesteads he was passing, presented themselves to him, bearing garlands and branches of trees, the signs of goodwill, and proffering provisions, nay, even hostages, as pledges of their sincerity. But the wary Carthaginian was not to be deceived by a foe who offered him gifts. On the one hand, it would not do roughly to refuse the alli- ance which they offered him, for that would be to make them enemies at once and to prevent the tribes beyond, who might be better disposed, from joining him ; on the other hand, he would trust nothing to them. He received them kindly, accepted their pro- visions and their hostages, but pursued his march as ' Polyli. iii. 50, 51. 204 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. one prepared for treachery. The cavalry and beasts of burden led the way, and at some distance behind came Hannibal himself with his infantry. They were now entering the defile which leads up to the main mountain wall of the Alps, the one barrier which still separated Hannibal from the land of his hopes, and the cliffs rose more precipitously above, and the torrent (the Reclus) foamed more angrily below, as they neared the spot where both would be left behind.' Hardly were the infantry well entangled in the defile, when the stones which came thundering down from the heights above showed that the barbarians had at length thrown off the mask. The destruction of the whole army seemed imminent ; but Hannibal drew up, or rather drew back, his part of it to an escarpment of white rock,'^ which rose in a strong position facing the entrance of the gorge, far enough back, it would seem, to be out of the reach of the descending stones, but not so far as that he could not keep the attention of the enemy concentrated on himself The cavalry at the head of the column pressed on almost unmolested till they emerged into more open and therefore safer ground. Had it only occurred to the barbarians to direct their attack on them, the horses plunging, in their terror, on that narrow and treacherous pathway would have precipitated each other into the abyss below. The white gypsum rock — la rocJie bla7iche — as it is called by the natives, still stands conspicuous in front of the grey limestone mountain which towers ' Polyb. iii. 52. * Polyb. iii. 53. 5, Tfol ti \ev<6-^fTpov 6xvp6i'. HANNIBAL ADDRESSES HIS TROOPS. 205 above it ; and here, if at no earlier point in the route, the traveller may well feel that he is treading the very ground which Hannibal trod, and looking upon the solemn assemblage of peaks and pinnacles, of moun- tain torrent and of mountain valley, on which his eager eye must have rested in this supreme moment of anxiety and peril. Here Hannibal stood to arms, with half his forces, the whole night through ; and the following morning everything like organised resist- ance had disappeared from the cliffs which flanked the pass. And on the ninth day the whole cavalcade reached the summit in safety. It was only nine days since Hannibal had begun the first ascent of the Alps, but they were days of hard work and danger, and he now rested for a time to recruit his troops, and to allow stragglers to rejoin him. But no stragglers came. Those who had dropped behind from exhaustion or from their wounds, on such a route, were not likely to be heard of more. Only some beasts of burden which had lagged behind, or had slipped down the rocks, had in the struggle for bare life managed to regain their feet, and, following instinctively the footprints of the army, now came draggling in one after the other, half dead from star- vation and fatigue.' It was a sorry spot on which to recruit. It was late in October ; the snows were gathering thick on the peaks above the Col ; and the troops who had been drawn from burning Africa or from sunny Spain shivered in the mountain air, which is keen and frosty even in the height of summer. Rest only gave them time to recollect the difficulties ' Polyb. iii. 53, 9 10. 2o6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. through which they had so hardly passed, and to picture, perhaps to magnify, the perils which were still to come. Symptoms of despondency appeared ; but Han- nibal, seizing the opportunity, called his troops to- gether and addressed them in a few stirring words. There was one topic of consolation and only one. Below their feet lay one of the Italian valleys, and winding far away among its narrow lawns and humble homesteads could be seen the silver thread of one of the feeders of the Baltea torrent which leapt forth from where they stood. It seemed in the clear atmosphere, which Alpine climbers know so well, that they had but to take a step or two down, and to be in possession. ' The people who dwell along that river,' cried Hannibal in the inspiration of the moment, 'are your sworn friends. Ye are standing already, as ye see, on the Acropolis of Italy ; yonder,' and he pointed to the spot in the far horizon, where, with his mind's eye, he could see the goal of all his hopes, and the object of his inextinguishable and majestic hate, ' yonder lies Rome.' It is, doubtless, difficult to reconcile the exact phrases reported to have been used by Hannibal with the very limited view to be obtained from the Little St. Bernard,' and the story has accordingly been treated by modern historians, sometimes as an argument for preferring one of the rival routes, such as that over the Mont Cenis, sometimes as a mere flourish of Polyb. iii. 54. 2, ^^\% 'IraAioj ivapynav . . . 4vheiKvv/i€vos avrois TO Trepl rhv UdSov ireSfo ; Livy, xxi. 35, ' Italiam ostentat subjectosque Alpinis montibus circumpadanos campos.' THE DESCENT. 207 rhetoric. It is therefore well to remark that the ge- neral truth of the story rests on the authority not only of the brilliant and imaginative Livy, but of the sober-minded and strictly accurate Polybius. Nor is it likely that the greatest general of ancient times, and he, one who knew the hearts of men, as Hannibal undoubtedly did, would neglect the opportunity, the unparalleled opportunity, which the summit of the Alps afforded him of bidding his soldiers derive fresh hopes for the future from the perils which they had already undergone and from the prize which seemed to lie beneath their feet. The proclamations of the great modern master of the art of war — that, for instance, in which he told his soldiers of the ' forty centuries which looked down upon them from the Pyramids ' — may perhaps seem to us who read them coolly at this distance of time, and who have been able to gauge the true character of the man who framed them, to contain much of vapid rhetoric and to be as offensive as they are unreal. But they did not seem so to the soldiers to whom they were ad- dressed, nor to the feverish and lacerated nation which lay behind them, nor even to the affrighted peoples of Europe whose common happiness and safety they menaced. On the contrary, it is not too much to say, that the proclamations of Napoleon did as much as the glamour of his victories, or the charms of his personal presence, to disguise from his own country the load of misery which he brought upon her, and to throw a veil over his reckless disregard of human life, his colossal meanness, his insincerity, his ingratitude. Hannibal, as forgetful of self as Na- 2o8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. poleon was absorbed in it, and having to hold in hand the soldiers not of one but of many nations, could not afford to neglect any help which Nature offered him in his arduous, his almost impossible, enterprise. We may well believe, therefore, that he made the most of this. The spirits of his men rose at his words, and on the morrow the descent began. After a toilsome climb the first steps of a descent are always pleasantly deceptive, and there was now no sign of an enemy, unless indeed a few skulking marauders might be so called. But the descent was not less dangerous, and perhaps still more destructive, than the ascent. The Alps rise more sheer from the plain on the Italian than on the French side, and the slope is almost everywhere steeper. The snow too began to fall, hiding dangers which would otherwise have stared them, in the face. A false step on such a gra- dient would have been fatal anyhow, and the curtain of snow made false steps to be both numerous and inevitable. The army had to cross what seems to have been, in the greater cold which was then pre- valent throughout Europe, a glacier or an ice slope covered with a thin coating of newly fallen snow. This was soon trampled into a solid sheet of ice, on which the men kept slipping and rolling down, while the beasts of burden, breaking through the bridges of frozen snow, which concealed crevasses beneath, stuck fast and were frozen to death. At last, the head of the column reached a projecting crag round which neither man nor beast could creep. An avalanche or a landslip had carried away some three hundred yards of the track, and even the eye of Hannibal failed to DANGERS OF THE DESCEAT. discover a practicable route elsewhere.' Destruction stared the army in the face ; but Hannibal drew them ofif to a kind of hog's back, from which the snow had been just shovelled, and, pitching his camp there, di- rected his men with such engineering skill, and with such implements as they could muster, to repair the broken passage. Never was an Alpine road made under greater difficulties ; but the men worked for their lives, and by the following day the horses were able to creep round the dangerous spot, and to descend till they found a scanty herbage. The elephants, owing to their uncouth appearance, had hitherto en- joyed immunity from the attacks of the natives; but they too now had their share of suffering. It was three whole days before the roadway was sufficiently wide and strong for them to pass. On the high Alps on which they then were, neither tree nor pasture could be found,^ and from regions of Arctic rigour these in- habitants of the torrid zone made their way down, ' The gorge below La Tuile, in the valley of the Baltea, corre- sponds, and in a most remarkable manner, with the description of Polybius. Though it is only some 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, it is often choked with masses of frozen snow the whole summer through ; and avalanches descending into it from the peaks of Mont Favre above, sweep the road, which formerly ran along the left bank of the torreht, for a distance of 300 yards, i.e. exactly the stadium and a half of Polybius. This old road has been long since aban- doned, and a new one has been constructed which, being on the right bank of the torrent, is secure from the danger which all but proved fatal to Hannibal. (See the authorities referred to above, p. 199.) Polyb. iii. 55. 9, TeAe'ojs SSevSpo koX t//(\6T] imh tS>v avaTpa/TivofiiVbiv, 268 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. serted by thousands to Hannibal ; but no Hannibalian veteran, even when his star was on its wane, ever de- serted to Rome. Politic as he was brave, and generous as he was far-sighted, Hannibal could arouse alike the love and the fear, the calm confidence and the passionate enthusiasm, of all the various races who served under his standard. The best general, a high authority has said, is he who makes the fewest mis- takes ; but what single mistake can the keenest critic point out which marred the progress or chequered the success of these three first extraordinary years 1 They are years, moreover, any one of which might have made or marred the reputation of any lesser general. Unfortunately we know Hannibal only through his enemies. They have done their best to malign his tharacter ; they have called him cruel, and, happily, almost every specific charge of cruelty supplies us, even with our imperfect knowledge, with the materials for its own refutation. • They talked of ' Ptmic ill faith ' till they came themselves to believe ' The judgment of Polybius himself on Hannibal, ix. 22-26 ; xi. 19, &c., is on the whole both just and appreciative. He tells us explicitly (ix. 24) that an officer of his called Hannibal Monomachus was the author of many of the acts of cruelty which were attributed to his chief. Livy (xxviii. 12) does full justice to the ability of Hannibal, but not to his character ; Silius Italicus, J'un. i. 56 seq., exactly expresses the ordinary Roman view in the following lines : — ' Ingenio motus avidus, fideique sinister Is fuit : exsuperans astu, sed de\'ius requi : Armato nuUus divum pudor : improba virtus, Et pacis despectus honos, penitusque medullis Sanguinis humani flagrat sitis.' This is only the echo of the end of LiN-y, xxi. 4. CHANGE IN THE WAR AFTER CANN^. 269 in its existence, or to think that the name proved itself. But what people or what town, it may well be asked, which Hannibal had ever promised to support, did he voluntarily abandon, or of what single act of treachery can it be proved that he was guilty ? They made as light as they could even of his achievements, b)' attributing to Phoenician cunning, or to the blind forces of Nature, the severity of defeats which no pa- triotic Roman could believe were due to his indivi- dual genius alone, for it was an individual genius such as they had never seen or imagined. A storm of sleet at Trebia, the mist at the Trasimene, the wind and clouds of dust ' or a ruse de guerre of some deserters at Cannae — such were the transparent fictions by which the Romans attempted to disguise from others, and perhaps even from themselves, that they had found their master. We know Hannibal, let us repeat it once more, only from his enemies ; but in what cha- racter, even as painted by his best friends, can we discern such vivid and such unmistakable marks of greatness The outline is commanding, imperial, heroic ; and there is no detail with which our mate- rials enable us to fill it in at all, which is not in per- fect harmony with the whole. After Cannae the tide of invasion ceases to flow onward in one irresistible sweep. It is broken up into a number of smaller currents, which, though they are doubtless each planned by the ruling mind, and conducted by the master hand, are often in the nature of by-play rather than have any direct bearing on ' Livy, xxi. 56 ; xxii. 4 and 43 ; Appian, vii. 20 and 22 ; Florus, ii. 6. 13-16 ; Zonaras, ix. I. 270 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the main issues of the war. They are, moreover, always difficult and often impossible to follow. The Romans, taught by the experience which they had bought so bitterly on four battlefields, decline any longer to trust themselves within the reach of Hannibal's arm, or to stake their safety on any single blow ; while Hannibal, lacking the reinforcements which he had a right to expect, and which it is impossible to believe that the Carthaginian Government, had they been animated by a tithe of the spirit of their general, could not have despatched to him before this, has to adapt the plan of his campaign to his altered circum- stances and his ever-straitening means. The Numi- dian cavalry, as they die off, have to be replaced by Gauls, and the Libyan and Spanish veterans by Samnites or Lucanians, who had long since bowed their necks to the Roman yoke. Isolated sieges, em- bassies to distant potentates, pressing messages to Carthage, rapid marches and countermarches, am- buscades and surprises, the sudden swoop on Rome, and the doom of Carthage, recognised by Hannibal in the ghastly head of his brother Hasdrubal, thrown with Roman brutality into his camp — these still lend life and variety and a deadly interest to the struggle such as we find in few other wars ; but we feel all the time that the war is not what it was. It is not that Hannibal's eye has grown dim or his natural force abated. His right hand never lost its cunning. In- vincible as ever in the field, we shall see Hannibal, for years to come, marching wherever he likes, no Roman CTeneral — and there were sometimes half a dozen of them round him — daring to say him nay. Follow- GENIUS OF HANNIBAL. 271 ing the example of Fabius, they dogged his footsteps, or hung upon the hills above him, while he encamped fearlessly in the plain below ; but when he turned his face towards one and the other, they scattered before him in all directions as the jackals before a lion. Yet we feel throughout, what Hannibal must soon have come to feel himself, that fate had at length declared against him. It is a noble but a hopeless struggle, and we are fain to turn away from the spectacle of so heroic a soul struggling against what it knows to be inevitable. It is indeed a psychological puzzle how any one man — even though he were the greatest pro- duct of the Phoenician race— can have combined such opposite, nay such contradictory qualities as must have met in the man who, like one of the world- stormers of more modern times, Attila or Zinghis Khan or Tamerlane, could carry everything before him in one impetuous and overwhelming sweep of conquest, from Saguntum to Cannae in the three first years of the war, and then for its twelve remaining years could maintain the struggle by a warfare which was, in the main, defensive, hoping against hope, and each year confined to narrower limits with an ever- decreasing force against an ever-increasing foe. It would be well worth the while of the military student to trace, if it were possible with accuracy, the means by which the genius of Hannibal, as great in defence as in attack, and in patience as in impetuosity, pro- longed for thirteen years a warfare, which, if only the Romans had been led by a Hannibal, or the Car- thaginians by any one but him, must, in one way or the other, have been brought to a close almost at once. 272 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. But we cannot do so ; for at the very time that the war undergoes the change which has been just de- scribed, we lose also the guidance of the historian who, if anyone, could have enabled us to follow closely its vicissitudes. Polybius was a Greek of the highest culture, en- dowed with a rare independence of character and with a genuine love of truth. During his exile from his native country he was, as we shall see hereafter, admitted into the inner circle of the Scipios, obtained access to their family documents, heard in conversa- tion their family legends, and was, in all respects, treated like one of themselves. He could hardly therefore, under the circumstances, avoid having a Roman, and still more a Scipionic, bias ; but his un- tiring research, his clearness of judgment, and his natural candour have, in spite of that bias, and in spite of the time which separated him from them, enabled us hitherto to get at what is doubtless very nearly the truth of the events he records. But hence- for^vard we have no such independent means of checking the gross falsifications or exaggerations of the Romans. Another Greek historian, indeed, there was, a man named Silenus, who might have given us an independent, or, at all events, a Carthaginian version of the events of the war, drawn from direct personal observation. Silenus, we are told by C. Nepos, accompanied Hannibal in his campaigns, shared his tent, and seems to have been specially commissioned by him to write a history of his expe- dition.' He must have been able to converse with ' Com. Nepos, Hannibal, xiii. 3 ; Cicero, De Div. i. 24, gives us on POLYBIUS AND SILENUS. 273 Hannibal in his native language, for the versatile Phoenician, we know from the same source, was not ignorant of Greek.^ But, unfortunately, of the writings of Silenus, if any such ever existed, not a paragraph, not a sentence, not a word, has come down to us direct. Did ever any historian, we are tempted to ask, have so magnificent a chance, enjoy such near access to the man who was making history, and making it on so gigantic a scale, and yet produce absolutely nothing which could survive him ? The ' table-talk ' of Napoleon at St. Helena will always retain its deep human interest, even though the idol itself may have been long dis- crowned, and the whole Napoleonic legend dissipated, as it has already to a great extent been by Lanfrey and others in the clear light of authentic documents. It is melancholy to think how much greater interest would have attached to the table-talk of Hannibal, the table-talk of the man, whose noble image no friend has been able" adequately to paint and no foe to mar. But the same fate which has deprived us of all adequate knowledge, of knowledge, that is, drawn from internal, or, at all events, not unfriendly sources, of Carthage herself, has, with cruel consistency, also deprived us of what might, perchance, have thrown a his authority the famous ' somnium Hannibalis,' and says of him, 'is autem diligentissime res Hannibalis persecutus est.' Livy (xxvi. 49) quotes him once as 'the Greek Silenus.' ' Sosilus, a Lacedaemonian, is said by Com. Nepos (loc. cit.) also to have accompanied Hannibal and to have given him lessons in Greek. Of his writings Polybius had not formed a high opinion ; his history was ' full of gossip such as would delight a barber ; ' ou 70^ IcrToplas aWa HovpeaKTis Kal nai/Zr)fiov \oA.ias 6/10176 SoKovat rii^tv (X^'" ""^ Sivafnv (Pol. iii. 20. 5). On Hannibal's knowledge of Greek, cf. Cic. De Oraloiv, ii. 10. T 274 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. blaze of light on the inner character and aims of the greatest of her citizens, and have shown us not merely what Hannibal did, but what he was. Although, therefore, we have dwelt at length upon the first three years of the war wherein victories and defeats are on so gigantic a scale, and where each step can be traced with accuracy, or has a direct bearing on the main result, it seems consistent alike with the scope and object of this book, and with our own views of what is desirable or even possible, to pass more lightly over its remaining thirteen years, endeavouring mainly to bring into relief those incidents which appeal to the imagination, which are characteristic of the rival nations or of their leaders, and which are of univ^ersal or of lasting significance. The campaigns themselves it is impossible to follow accurately in a part of the war where it must be admitted that, in spite of the seven graphic books of Livy devoted to it, and the supplementary fragments of several other ancient writers, the materials for a trustworthy histor)' are, on the whole, so meagre and so onesided. REVOLT OF CAPUA. 275 CHAPTER XIV. REVOLT OF CAPUA. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. (b.c. 216-212.) Capua revolts— Marcellus — Hannibal winters at Capua -Latin colonies still true to Rome — Great exertions of Rome — Hannibal negotiates with Syracuse, Sardinia, and Macedon — His position at Tifata — ■ Fabius and Marcellus Consuls — The tide turns against Hannibal — He gains possession of Tarentum — The war in Sicily — Importance of Syracuse — Its siege and capture -Its fate. The victory of CannjE led almost immediately to the revolt of Capua, a city second only to Rome in wealth and power, and able to put into the field, when disposed to do so, a force of thirty thousand men. But this acquisition was shorn of half its value by the stipulation made by the ease-loving inhabitants and granted by Hannibal, that no Capuan citizen should be required to serve in his army.' It was an arrange- ment which cost him dear ; but cost him what it might, it was ever afterwards religiously observed by him. Naples Hannibal had already tried to capture by a coup de main, but, failing in the attempt, he had not cared to besiege it in form ; nor was he more success- ful at Nola, which was prevented from revolting by ' Livy, xxiii. 7. T 2 276 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the energy and skill of M. Claudius Marcellus, the ablest general whom the agony of the last three years had brought to the front ; perhaps as able as any whom the Second Punic War produced for Rome at all.' As consul, six years before, Marcellus had slain Avith his own hand the huge Gallic chieftain Virido- marus, and had, for the third and last time in Roman history, dedicated the spolia opiina in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius.^ When after the battle of Cannae Varro was recalled to Rome, it was Marcellus who had taken the command of the lO,ooo Roman survivors at Canusium.^ He it was who with them had boldly followed Hannibal into Campania, and with them now shared the credit of repelling Hannibal from before Nola.^ It was no slight credit ; for as Livy, with proud humility, and, perhaps, pardonable ex- aggeration, remarks, it was in those dark days more difficult to avoid being conquered by Hannibal than it was afterwards to conquer him/^ Like Fabius, Mar- cellus knew how to avoid defeat, but he knew better than Fabius how and when to strike a vigorous blow. If Fabius deserved to be called the shield of Rome, Marcellus might with equal right be called its sword.'' He has doubtless been overpraised by Roman writers, who drew their notions of him from the panegyric passed on him by his son" — a very doubtful authoritj- ' Li%'y, xxiii. I and I4. * Livy, Epitome, xx. ; Plutarch, Marcellus, 6-8. ' Li\'y, xxii. 57 ; Plutarch, Marcellus, 9. * Li\y, xxiii. 14-16. * Livy, xxiii. 16 ad fin. * See Plutarch, Fabius and Marcellus, passim. ' Livy, xxvii. 27 ad fin. HANNIBAL WINTERS AT CAPUA. 277 for an historian — and Cicero, in particular, with the especial object of contrasting him with Verres, has attri - buted to him those qualities of mercy, generosity, and refinement in which, like most of his contemporaries, he was conspicuously wanting.^ He was a rough soldier, uncultured as Marius, and hardly less cruel ; but during the next eight eventful years Rome could hardly have done without him. The dread of Han- nibal had, at length, taught the city to know a good general, and to keep him when she had found him, and she showed her appreciation of Marcellus by break- ing through for ever the insane tradition which brought a military command to an end on a predetermined day. For the next eight years his is the name in the Roman annals which we hear most often, and that on all the most critical occasions. He served, in fact, as consul and proconsul in alternate years in almost continuous succession ; and when, at last, he fell in an ambuscade, his body was treated with marked honour by the great Hannibal himself Foiled at Nola, Hannibal turned his attention to Casilinum, a town situated on the Vulturnus, and then containing a mixed garrison of Praenestines and Perusians who had taken shelter within its walls, when they heard of the disaster of Cannae.^ Leaving a sufficient force to blockade the place, he went with the remainder into winter quarters at Capua, a few miles to the south. It has been remarked by many writers, modern as well as ancient, that Capua proved a ' Cicero, In Verrem, ii. lib. 4, 52-55, 58, &c. ' Livy, xxiii, 17. 278 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Cannae to Hannibal.' Given over to luxury and to Greek vices, it was certainly not the place best suited for the winter retirement of an overstrained army ; and doubtless the troops, who had ere now wintered amongst the snows of the Apennines or in the open plains of Apulia, must have luxuriated in the easeful quarters which Hannibal's sword had opened for them. It is true also, as has already been pointed out, that this year was a turning point in the war ; but that it was so is due to other causes than the luxury of Capua, and it would not seem to be true that the troops were in any way demoralised by their winter's comfort. They were irresistible as ever in the field. The real dilTerence was that the Roman generals had learned in the school of adversity not to trust themselves within the reach of Hannibal's arm, and from this time to the end of the war in Italy they acted on the Fabian maxim, and never gave him an opportunity of fighting a pitched battle, or, what was the same thing, of giving them a crush- ing defeat. Early in the spring Casilinum surrendered to Hannibal. But the circumstances of its surrender, when closely scanned, must have seemed more suggestive of hope as to the ultimate result of the war to the con- quered Romans than to the conquering Carthaginians. For the resistance it had offered gave an unmistake- able proof that the resolution and fidelity of a large part of the Roman Confederation had not been shaken even by Cannae. Its garrison, drawn at hap- hazard from distant towns, had supported life on such ' e.g. Florus, ii. 6. 21 ; cf. Li\y, xxiii. 18 ; Zonaras, ix. 3. THE LATIN COLONIES TRUE TO ROME. 279 scanty supplies of corn or nuts as could be sent float- ing down the river by night, in the hope that while they escaped the keen eye of Hannibal they might not escape those who were rendered keener still by the pinch of hunger ; nor was it till after mice and herbs, and even the leather thongs of their shields, had been consumed, that the garrison surrendered, stipulating, even then, for their liberty on payment of a sum of money. The terms of capitulation were, as Livy himself admits, loyally observed by the ' per- fidious ' Hannibal, though he also frankly tells us that some of his predecessors, in an access of patriotic hate, had affirmed that the survivors of the siege were massacred by the Numidians as they returned to their homes.' Such fidelity on the part of this motley garrison must have raised doubts in the mind of even the victor of Cannae and the master of Capua, whether he had not undertaken a hopeless task. He might cut off one of the Hydra's heads, but two seemed to spring up in its place. Might there not be many Casilinums in other parts of Italy Even in those country districts, the fidelity of whose inhabitants ap- peared to have been shaken by the victory of Cannae, the towns were still staunch to Rome. There were still, for 'instance, Beneventum in Samnium ; Nola, Naples, and Cumae in Campania ; Luceria, Brundu- sium, and Venusia in Apulia ; Tarentum in lapygia ; Rhegium and Consentia, Petelia and Croton, among the Bruttii ; and each of these, it might be presumed from the example set by Casilinum, would have the strength and the spirit to stand a desperate siege. In- ' Livy, xxiii. 19. 28o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. deed, no single Italian colony, throughout the whole of Italy, had as yet opened her gates to Hannibal ; still less any town which erjoyed the full Roman citizenship. The active operations, therefore, of the year 215 did not open quite so gloomily for Rome as might have been anticipated. The consuls were the old dictator Fabius and Tib. Sempronius Gracchus. In- credible exertions were made by Rome to bear the strain which was put upon her. Double taxes were imposed and paid, and freewill contributions were offered by the citizens, which it was understood were not to be repaid till the treasury was full ; in ■other words, not till the war was over. The year, therefore, which followed the butchery of eight le- gions at Cannae saw fourteen new ones raised to take their place, six of them in other parts of the Roman world, and the remaining eight in Italy itself On his side, Hannibal can hardly have mus- tered more than 40,000 men, even if we include his recent levies in Samnium. It must be remembered that till towards the close of 216, after fighting four pitched battles, and marching and countermarching through the whole of Italy, Hannibal had received no single soldier and drawn not a single penny from the home-government of Carthage.' Never before or after was war so made to support itself, and never, even in the hands of the author of that sinister maxim, was it waged with such astonishing results. But if Hannibal's victories had not yet done for him all that he had hoped in Italy itself, might it not be possible to gain his object by taking a wider ' Liv)', xxiii. 13. HANNIBAL NEGOTIATES. 281 sweep ? If Italy could not be armed against Rome, might not the surrounding countries, whose existence was already threatened, be armed against Italy and Rome alike ? Circumstances, at the moment, seemed to smile on the project ; for Hiero, the ancient and faithful ally of Rome, was just dead, and Hieronymus, his grandson and successor, straightway joined the Carthaginians.' Sardinia, too, was planning revolt from the city which had stolen her with such infa- mous bad faith from Carthaginian rule;^ and about the same time ambassadors arrived in Hannibal's camp from Philip, king of Macedon, offering to coji- clude with him an alliance, offensive and defensive.^ But the bright vision rose before his eyes only to vanish away. The revolt of Sardinia was stamped out before it came to a head.'' Hieronymus was weak and foolish, and, setting himself to imitate the able Dionysius who had once ruled Syracuse, showed that he was able to imitate him only in his arrogance and his vices, and was soon despatched by the well- deserved dagger of the assassin.^ Finally, the Mace- donian ambassadors, when ■ returning with the treaty which had just been concluded between Hannibal and Philip, fell, as ill luck would have it, into the hands of the Romans, and so gave them a timely warn- ing to prepare for what might otherwise have burst upon them like a thunder-clap.'' Amidst such hopes and such disappointments the year passed away. Throughout its course Hannibal ' Livy, xxiv. 4. 2 Livy, xxiii. 32 and 34. ' Polyb. vii. 9; Livy, xxiii. 33. * Livy, xxiii. 40, 41. * Polyb. vii. 2-7 ; Livy, xxiv. 5-7. * Livy, xxiii. 38. 282 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. had retained Tifata, a hill above Capua, as his head- quarters. No better place could have been chosen. Here he could wait in safety the results, if any, of the alliances he was planning ; here receive the long- expected reinforcements from Carthage if ever they should come. Here he could protect Capua, his latest and his most important acquisition ; here with his one small army he could keep three separate armies, headed by no meaner generals than Fabius, Grac- chus, and Marcellus, at bay, and, dealing his blows upon them in rapid succession, could threaten now Cymse, now Naples, and now Nola; till at last the approach of winter warned him to transfer his troops to his former quarters at Arpi in Apulia.* The elections for the year 2 14B.C. — after the consul Fabius had given a solemn warning to the electors to let military considerations alone influence them at such a time of need — ended, as was to be expected, and as Fabius had himself intended, in the r.-^-election of the Mentor himself, Marcellus being chosen as his colleague.^ Seldom in Roman history had two such men held office at the same time, and the memories of the older citizens had to travel back to the days of Decius Mus, or even of Papirius Cursor, till they found or thought they found a parallel to it. In this year, indeed, and for some years to come, Rome was likely enough to need her shield as well as her sword. The fourteen legions which had been thought sufficient in the previous year, were raised now to the still more astonishing number of eighteen ; and the wealthier citizens contributed from their private means the ' Livj', xxiii. 46. - Livy, xxiv. 8, 9 ; Zonaras, ix. 4. THE TIDE TURNS AGAINST HANNIBAL. 283 sums which were necessary to raise the payment of the sailors of the fleet.' Capua had already begun to tremble for her safety ; but she was reassured when the movement of Hannibal showed that it was his intention not only to keep what he had already won in Campania, but, if possible, to win the whole. In vain, however, did he attempt to surprise or to bring over Cumas, Naples, and Puteoli, seaport towns which would have done good service by opening direct communication with Carthage. Hanno, moreover, on coming to co- operate with him, with the numerous Lucanian and Bruttian levies which he had raised, was intercepted by Gracchus in the heart of Samnium. Gracchus promised freedom, in the event of victory, to the armed slaves of whom his force consisted; and in the battle which ensued, conscious that they were carry- ing their liberty as well as their lives in their hands, they cut to pieces Hanno's army, and received their reward. The word of a Gracchus, in this as in other epochs of Roman history, was his bond ; and a bond which was a first-rate security.^ These reverses brought Hannibal's plans of Campanian conquest to an abrupt conclusion, and when he received a friendly message from Tarentum, a place more important to him, just then, even than the Campanian towns, from its proximity to Macedon, he paid it a flying visit.'* But here, too, the Romans had anticipated him, and Fabius, taking advantage of his absence, besieged and recaptured Casilinum. The Carthaginian garrison sti- pulated for their lives, as the Italian garrison had stipu- ' Livy, xxiv. 1 1. = Livy, xxiv. i2-i6. ' Livy, xxiv. 20. 284 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. lated before them ; but as they were filing out of the gate, Marcellus, in direct violation of the terms of their surrender, fell upon and killed a large number of them. The bad faith in this instance, at least, was not on the side of the Carthaginians ; and we can well under- stand how the story of the treachery of Hannibal on the first surrender of Casilinum was invented now as a set-off to that of Marcellus.' Anyhow, when Han- nibal went into his next winter quarters at Salapia in Apulia, the tide of victory had clearly turned against him. 2 He was already waging a warfare which was mainly defensive, and it might have seemed to anyone who had not felt the terrors of his spring, that if only the three armies which lay watching him during the winter, had ventured to beard the lion, which lay crouching in his den, they would have had a chance of bringing the Second Punic War to a conclusion then. During the next two years the interest of the war is for the first time, in some measure, diverted from Hannibal. The great Carthaginian, though he had not yet spoken aloud the word ' impossible,' must have occasionally whispered it to himself He was still without adequate reinforcements from home ; for the considerable armament, which the news, of Hannibal's triumphant progress through Italy had at last shamed the Carthaginians into raising for him, had, when they were on the point of embarkation, been diverted to Sardinia and Spain. ^ In this last country the star of Carthage was not just then in the ascendant, and Hannibal, who had received only a paltry force - Livy, xxiv. 19. " Livy, xxiv. 20. ' Livy, xxiii. 13 and 32. THE WAR IN SICILY. 285 of some forty elephants and some 4,000 Numidian cavalry from his countrymen at home, was com- pelled, partly from necessity, and partly, it would seem, from lassitude, to spend the greater part of the summer of 213 in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, without attempting any active operations.' With ad- mirable policy, he had, even in the moment of dis- appointment in the preceding year, abstained from ravaging the Tarentine lands while he harried those of the surrounding towns, and now he reaped the result.^ In the course of the winter, he was half offered, and he half forced for himself, an entrance into the city, though he was unable to eject the re- cently arrived Roman garrison from the citadel.^ Other and lesser Greek towns in the south followed the example of this, the greatest of them all ; and Hannibal, compelled to relax his grasp upon Cam- pania, made up for its loss by appropriating to him- self a large part of Magna Graecia.'' Meanwhile the war, which seemed for the moment to have spent its force in Italy, had broken out with fresh fury in Sicily. Marcellus, the best general whom the Romans pos.sessed, was despatched to quell the revolt. The whole island, with few exceptions, had declared for Carthage ; and the active emissaries of Hannibal, the desperation of the soldiers who had de- serted from Rome, and the cruelties of the Romans in the first towns which they recaptured, cut off all hopes of a reconciliation.'' The Carthaginian Govern- ' Livy, XXV. I. ^ Livy, xxiv. 20. ^ Polybius, viii. 26-36; Livy, xxv. 8-II ; Appian, vii. 32-34. * Livy, xxv. 15 ; Appian, vii. 35. * Livy, xxiv. 30. 35, 38-40. 286 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ment too, from some unexplained reason, now awoke from its sleep, and sent Himilco with consider- able reinforcements to Sicily.' Had they only sent half the force to Italy in 216 which they sent in 214 to Sicily, the war might have had a different course. They were willing and able, it seemed, to send re- inforcements at a time and to a place where they were not much needed ; they would not send them at the time and to the place where they would have been all-important. After massacring the inhabitants of sev^eral towns, Marcellus laid siege to Syracuse ; but all his efforts were frustrated by the science and by the engines of the famous mathematician Archimedes, and after eight months of chequered warfare, he was obliged to convert the siege into a blockade.'^ Syracuse was the greatest Greek city in Sicily, possibly the greatest of all Greek cities. It contained within its walls four distinct towns — the island of Ortygia, the oldest and the strongest part of the city ; Achradina, or the city proper, crowded with magni- ficent buildings ; and the two suburbs of Tycha and Neapolis. The whole had been recently surrounded by a wall eighteen miles in circumference, which in part abutted on the sea, but was in part carried over rugged hills or low-lying marshes, defensible in them- selves, and now rendered doubly strong by art. The city possessed two harbours, in the larger of which the Carthaginian fleet, under Bomilcar, was riding at anchor, while a Carthaginian army, under Himilco, hovered near the walls, or made flying expeditions to ' Livy, xxiv. 35. ^ Polybius, viii. 5-8 ; Livy, xxiv. 34 ; Zonaras, ix. 4. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. 287 Other parts of Sicily, thus distracting the attention of the besiegers. The blockade, therefore, was never effective or complete, and it is not to be wondered at that it was nearly three years before the city fell. It was indeed treachery from within rather than force from without which ultimately enabled Mar- cellus, in the year 212, to gain possession of the heights of Epipolae to the rear of the city, and, making these his basis, to conquer in succession its different por- tions.' The two suburbs fell first, and the plunder which they yielded whetted the appetites of the sol- diery for the still richer stores which lay behind the walls of Achradina and Ortygia. It was now too late for Bomilcar or Himilco to save the city. Bomilcar sailed away without striking a blow, and the army of Himilco, which lay encamped on the low grounds of the Anapus, fell victims to the fever which had so often before saved Syracuse from a besieging force.^ By a curious caprice of fortune, the best defence of the city was now turned against its defenders, while it left its assailants on the higher ground unscathed. The Roman deserters and the mercenaries had long esta- blished a reign of terror within the city. Having nothing to hope, and little therefore to fear, they were bent on holding the place to the bitter end. But when Marcellus had been admitted by some of his partisans into the island of Ortygia, Achradina could no longer offer resistance. The deserters and the mercenaries, the only portion of the inhabitants who deserved punishment, managed to escape by night, and the remainder threw themselves on the mercy of Marcellus. They might well expect to receive it, for ' Livy, XXV. 23, 24. 2 Livy, xxv. 26, 27. 288 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. they had been involved in hostilities which were not of their own seeking, and it would be hard if the short-lived folly of Hieronymus should be held by Marcellus to have effaced the recollection of the fifty years' fidelity of Hiero his grandfather. But it seldom suited the Romans to remember past services or ex- tenuating circumstances when they had anything to gain by forgetting them. Marcellus, as Livy tells us, had burst into tears when he first stood on Epipolae and saw Syracuse, as he fancied, in his power beneath him. But these were not tears of compassion, or, if they v/ere, they were not forthcoming now when they were most needed. The city was given over to plunder, and the death of Archimedes while intent upon a problem, a man whom — ^just as Alexander bade his troops spare the house of Pindar in the sack of Thebes — even the rough Marcellus had wished to save, gave proof that plunder was not the only object of the infuriated soldiery.^ So fell Syracuse, the virgin city, which had seen two Athenian armaments perish beneath its walls ; which had for centuries saved Sicily from becoming altogether, what its greater part then was, a Cartha- ginian appanage ; which had once and again, when its turn came, under Dionysius or Timoleon, almost driven those same Carthaginians from the island ; and once, under Agathocles, had threatened the existence of Carthage herself. It fell to rise no more, at least to its former opulence. Its temples were left standing, because they would not pay for moving ; and they belonged to the conqueror as much where they were ' Livy, XXV. 31 ; Floms, ii. 6. 33, 34; Zon.-iias, ix. 5. FATE OF SYRACUSE. 289 as if they had been transferred to Rome ; but the choicest works of art — vases and columns, paintings and statues — were swept off to adorn the imperial city.' It must have been an additional drop in the cup of bit- terness which the Syracusans had to drain, that these works of art were carried off by men who could not appreciate them at their proper value. Sixty years later the surpassing excellence of Hellenic art and literature had begun to make a deep impression on the more cultivated classes at Rome ; but if, even then, a victorious general could stipulate, that any of the works of art taken by him from Corinth should, if broken on the passage to Rome, be replaced by others of equal worth, we can hardly believe that it was their intrinsic excellence which recommended the treasures of Syracuse to the attention of the rude and uncultured Marcellus. Anyhow Marcellus set an example only too fatally followed by the conquerors who succeeded him. It was a practice new in Roman warfare then, and to be condemned at all times and under all circumstances ; a practice cruel and destruc- tive to the states despoiled, and useless for all moral or high artistic purposes to the despoiler. It is equally reprehensible whether it be the plunder of half Europe by the representative of one of its most enlightened nations, the arch-robber of modern times. Napoleon, or the sack of a Chinese palace by those whom the Chinese had a right, in this instance at least, to style barbarians. If good men and great nations have hitherto often followed the example of ' Polybius, ix. 10. 3-13 ; Livy, xxv. 40; Cicero, Verres, ii. 2. 3 ; ii. 4. 54, &c. U 290 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Cicero in drawing a broad contrast between the ex- tortions of a Verres and the high-handed plunder of Marcellus, a Warren Hastings, or a Napoleon, it is because they have not yet reached the moral standard which condemns the public robber; they look askance only at a thief. IMPORTANCE OF WAR IN SPAIN. CHAPTER XV. SIEGE OF CAPUA AND HANNIBAL'S MARCH ON ROME. (212-208 B.C.) Importance of war in Spain — Successes and death of the two Scipios — Renewed activity of Hannibal — Siege of Capua — Hannibal attempts to relieve it — His march on Rome — Fate of Capua — Continued superiority of Hannibal in the field — Death of Marcellus — Influence of family traditions at Rome — Patriotism of Romans — Latin colonies show symptoms of exhaustion. We have hitherto concentrated our attention as much as possible on the main current of the war in Italy ; but it must not be forgotten that throughout these first six years which we have described in detail, a side conflict was raging in Spain, the result of which might go far to decide that in Italy. To the import- ance of the Spanish contest the Romans and the Car- thaginians were equally alive. It was from Spain, if from any country, that Hannibal must draw his rein- forcements ; and it was in Spain, if anywhere, that those reinforcements must be intercepted and cut down. The Romans saw that if a second army crossed the Alps and swooped down upon the north of Italy, while Hannibal was, at his pleasure, over- running the south, the city would be taken between two fires, and could not long resist. To Hannibal, on u 2 292 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the other hand, Spain was the new world which the genius of his family had called into existence. The names of his father, Hamilcar, and of his brother-in- law, the elder Hasdrubal, were still names of power among the Spanish tribes whom they had conquered or conciliated, and the younger Hasdrubal, a worthy member of the same family, had been left in Spain by Hannibal when he started on his great expedition, to preserve the family traditions there, and to raise fresh levies for the Italian war. P. Scipio, as we have seen, instead of returning in the autumn of 218 with all speed and with all his forces from Massilia to Italy, where he might possibly have met and crushed the worn-out troops of Hannibal as they descended from the Alps, had sent the bulk of his army straight to their Spanish destination, while he himself returned to Italy with only a few followers. To have altogether set aside the orders of the Senate would have been a step quite alien to the character of an ordinary Roman general, and could only have been justified by the most complete success. But, failing this, there is no doubt that Cn. Scipio took the next best course in hastening off to Spain ; ^ and the Roman Senate showed forethought which was quite out of the common with them, in determining, whatever the danger nearer home, to carry on this distant war with vigour. After his defeats at the Ticinus and the Trebia, and while the memories of the Trasimene Lake were still fresh in the Roman minds, Publius was sent off to Spain with a naval and militar>' force, which a less courageous and self-reliant people would ' Livy, xxi. 60, 61. SUCCESSES OF THE SCIPIOS IN SPAIN. 293 have been unwilling to spare. There he joined Cnaeus, and henceforward the two brothers carried on the war in common, bringing over Spanish tribes as much by their address as by their arms, and win- ning, if the accounts they sent home were true, an almost unbroken series of successes. After making sure of the country to the north of the Ebro, the Scipios crossed that boundary river, sent to their homes the Spanish hostages which, having been de- posited by Hannibal in Saguntum, fell by the caprice of a Saguntine citizen into their hands,' and in the autumn of the year 216 — the year, it should be re- membered, of the battle of Cannae — defeated Has- drubal in a pitched battle near a town called Ibera, when he was on the eve of starting for Italy with the large army which he had recently raised in Spain or had received from Carthage. Hasdrubal's Spanish recruits, Livy somewhat naively remarks, preferred to be defeated in Spain and so to remain at home, rather than to go as conquerors to Italy.^ The remark is just, probably more just than even Livy imagined it to be, for had they gone to Italy at all this year, they would, as even the most patriotic of the Roman an- nalists admit, not only have gone, but have returned as conquerors. Rightly viewed, therefore, the battle of Ibera, though the place at which it was fought is quite unknown, was one of the most decisive in the whole of the war, for it prevented the despatch of re- inforcements to Hannibal in the year when they would have made him wholly irresistible. The two brothers made the most of their success. ' Livy, xxii. 22 ; xxiii. 26-28. = Livy, xxiii. 29. 294 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. They enrolled Celtiberian mercenaries — the first in- stance of such a practice on a large scale in Roman history ; they won victories which, if they were not half what their despatches ^ represented them to be, were yet signal victories ; they formed an alliance with Syphax, a Numidian prince, and seemed in 212 to be on the point of ejecting the Carthaginians from Spain, when, in the mid career of their success, they inadver- tently separated from each other ; they were attacked by Hasdrubal and by Mago, who had been recently sent thither from Carthage, in detail, their armies were defeated and dispersed, and themselves slain.^ It seemed for the moment as if the Romans would be driven from Spain in the very year in which they had confidently counted on driving out the Carthaginians. But the death of the elder Scipios, as we shall see, opened a free field for a younger and still abler mem- ber of the family and one whose high destiny it was to accomplish in Spain what his father and uncle had been compelled to leave unfinished. While these events were taking place in Spain, the flame of war had burst out afresh in Italy. Early, it would seem, in the winter of 212, Tarentum had fallen into Hannibal's hands, and in the campaign thus begun the hero seemed to awake, like a giant refreshed, from his year-long repose. He was needed each moment at Tarentum, where the citadel still held out ; he was needed yet more at Capua, round ' Livy, xxiii. 48, 49 ; xxiv. 41, 42 ; 48, 49 ; xxv. 32. Cicero, Farad, vii. 2, calls the two brothers, 'duo propugnacula belli qui Carthaginiensium adventum corporibus suis intercludendum putaverunt.' - Livy, xxv. 32-36 ; Florus, ii. 6-36. SIEGE OF CAPUA. 295 which the Roman armies, like vultures scenting their prey afar, seemed to be gathering for the last time. The home government of Carthage itself needed his controlling mind, the war in Sicily needed it, the war in Spain, and the war in Greece. His spirit and his influence, if not his bodily presence, were needed everywhere, and everywhere once again they seemed to be.' Six Roman armies were in the field against him. By a searching inquisition every free-born citizen — many of them below the age of seventeen — had been swept into the ranks,^ which were in- tended not, indeed, to face him, for that they never dared to do, but to harass his movements ; yet he managed, in spite of them all, to push the siege of the Tarentine citadel on the one hand, and, on the other, to show himself for a moment when required on the hills above Capua, where his mere appearance caused the two consular armies which were threatening it to vanish away before him. One Roman army of irre- gulars he annihilated in Lucania ; another of regular troops, under the praetor Fulvius, he annihilated in Apulia ; while a third, consisting of the slaves liberated by Gracchus, as soon as their liberator had fallen in an ambuscade, dispersed in all directions, thinking that they had done enough for their step-mother Italy.^ But amidst all these brilliant achievements and these romantic shiftings of the war, the one point of fixed and central interest was the city of Capua. That guilty city^ had long felt that her turn must ' Polybius, ix. 22. 1-6. ^ Livy, xxv. 5. ' Livy, xxv. 19-22, 'clades super alia aliam.' * Florus, ii. 6-42, 'sedeset domus et patria altera Hannibalis.' 296 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. soon come ; she had gone now unpunished for nearly four years, and the safety and the honour of the Roman state alike demanded that the day of reckon- ing should be no longer postponed. The mere pre- sence of two large armies in her neighbourhood during so considerable a part of these four years had caused a scarcity within her walls before even a sod was turned of the Roman lines of circumvallation. An effort of Hanno to throw provisions on a large scale into the place was frustrated by the negligence and the apathy of the citizens themselves. The convoy fell into the hands of the Romans,' and had Han- nibal's faith been what his enemies said it was, he might have been tempted, in his vexation, to abandon the city to her fate. She had done him little active service since her revolt ; in fact she had stipulated that she should not be called upon to do so ; on the other hand the duty of protecting her had often seri- ously hampered his movements. The other cities of Campania had declined to follow her lead in going over to the Carthaginians ; while the lead of Taren- tum, on the contrary, was now being followed rapidly by the other Greek cities in the south. But Hannibal swallowed his resentment, and, appearing at Capua while his enemies thought he was in lapygia, put the two armies which were threatening it to flight, and, as it would seem, revictualled it for the coming blockade.^ It was not till he had gone far to the south again, and was scattering the smaller Roman armies there in the manner which has just been described, that they ventured to close in once more around the place, ' Liv), XXV. 13, 14. ' Livj', xxv. 19. HANNIBAL TRIES TO RELIEVE CAPUA. 297 and began the siege in earnest. News of ever fresh disaster reached Rome from the track of Hannibal's flying squadrons, and the Senate could only console itself by the reflexion that the consular armies of Fulvius and Appius, which had fled before Hannibal's advance, were as yet intact, and were free during his absence, at all events, to prosecute the object which they had most at heart ' — the punishment of the guilty Capua. Caius Nero, the praetor, was ordered to co-operate with the consuls, Q. Fulvius Flaccus and App. Clau- dius Pulcher, and the three armies in their several camps, each with a large magazine established in a town to its rear, settled down before the devoted city. A double line of circumvallation was soon com- pleted, the one to guard the besiegers from the sor- ties of the besieged, the other to repel the expected attack of Hannibal from without (B.C. 211). The days of Capua were clearly numbered unless help came from him. An adventurous Numidian from the gar- rison made his way unobserved through the double lines of the Romans and informed Hannibal of the danger of the city. Taking a select band of horsemen and light-armed troops, the Phoenician hero started from Tarentum, and before the enemy dreamed of his approach he appeared on Mount Tifata. According to the plan which had been pre-arranged, a simul- taneous attack was made on the Roman lines by the beleaguered garrison and by Hannibal. Some of the elephants, whose bulky frames had been with diffi- culty forced to keep pace with his cross-country ' Livy, XXV. 22, ' ubi summa rerum esset.' 298 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. march, were killed in the attack. Hannibal threw their bodies into the ditch, and a few of his troops crossing over on the bridge thus formed found them- selves within the Roman lines. But it was only for a moment. They were outnumbered and driven back, and Hannibal gave up all hope of thus raising the siege.' One plan alone remained. He might advance on the capital ; and the terror of the citizens when the danger which had so often approached them, and had so often been withdrawn, had at last really come, might drive them to recall for the defence of Rome the armies which were besieging Capua. Once more a Numidian messenger made his way through the Roman lines round Capua, and bade the citizens hold out bravely, for Hannibal's departure did not mean that he had deserted them. It rather meant that he was making one more effort for their deliverance, and then he was off for Rome.^ The news of what was coming reached the city long before Hannibal reached it himself, perhaps before he wished to reach it. A few days' delay would, he knew well, only increase the panic of the citizens. Slowly he advanced along the Latin road, passing each day some Latin fortress, and devastating the country right up to its walls beneath the eyes of its affrighted garrison. Before him fled a panic-stricken throng — women and children, and aged men^ — leaving their homes, like animals when the prairie is on fire, a prey to the destroyer. On he went, through Latium, through the only district of Italy ' Polybius, ix. 3-4 ; Livy, xxvi. 5, 6 ; Appian, Han. 38. ^ Polybius, ix. 5 ; Livy, xxvi. 7. HANNIBADS MARCH ON ROME. 299 which had not yet felt his dreaded presence, no one daring to say him nay, till he pitched his camp upon the Anio, only three miles from Rome, and the flaming villages announced in language which could not be mistaken that he was really there.^ He was there in fulfilment of his life-long vow ; the hater face to face, at last, with the object of his deadly hate. He was there, the destroyer of every Roman army which had ventured to meet him, to destroy the city which had sent them forth. So thought at least the flying rustics and the mass of the Roman citizens. But so did not think the calm and clear-sighted Hannibal himself ; nor yet, after the first days of panic had passed by,, so thought the Roman Senate. The imagination, in- deed, of the citizens pictured to themselves the total destruction of their armies at Capua. The air was filled with cries of women who ran wildly about the streets, or flocked to the temples of the gods, and throwing themselves on their knees, raised their sup- pliant hands to heaven, or swept the altars with their long dishevelled hair.^ But the Roman Senate, as after Trasimene and after Cannae, was once more worthy of itself. When the terrible news of Hannibal's first approach came, they had been disposed to recall the whole of their armies to the defence of the capital ; a measure of precaution which would have fulfilled Hannibal's highest hopes and saved the beleaguered Capua. But fresh confidence came. They recalled only Fulvius, who, marching by inner lines, amidst a population ' Livy, xxvi. 8, 9, 10 ; Appian, Han. 38 ; Florus, ii. 6. 44. 2 Polyb. ix. 6. 3 ; Appian, Han. 39. 300 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. who bade him God- speed, managed to reach Rome by the Appian, just before Hannibal reached the Anio by the Latin Way.' Two legions which had lately been got together in the country around Rome, when they were joined by the army which had just arrived, gave the city a respectable garrison, and Hannibal made no attack — he probably never intended to make one — on the city itself. Unmolested by the Romans and almost within their view, he ravaged the whole country round, destroying the gardens and the villages, and carrying off into his camp, with stern delight, the crops and the cattle, and the booty of every kind on .which he could lay his hand.^ Then with a body of two thousand horsemen he rode right up to the Col- line gate, and passed leisurely along the walls to the temple of Hercules, gazing wistfully at the cruel stones which alone stood between him and his hopes, and alone saved the inhabitants, Romans though they were, from his avenging sword. ^ The fates were against him, but he must have felt that he had nobly kept his vow.* Little wonder is it, when the facts themselves are so dramatic, and when the chief character is so heroic, that the imagination of those who recorded the scene ran riot in the process and filled in the details with what they thought ought to have happened. They pointed, for instance, their eulogies on the faith of the Romans in their own future, by telling us how they put up to auction the ground on which Han- nibal's camp was pitched, and how it was bought ' Livy, xxvi. 8-9. ^ Polyb. ix. 6. 8, 9. ' Li\'j% xxvi. 10. ■* See Arnold, Rot7i. Hist., chap. iii. pp. 242-246. FATE OF CAPUA. 301 at its full value ; while Hannibal, by way of repri- sals, offered for sale to his troops the silversmiths' shops in the Roman Forum, and flung his spear over the walls in token of his contempt and hate.' But Hannibal was great enough to know when he had delivered his blow, and he wasted no time in lamenting that it had failed. Accordingly, he rnarched off northward into the Sabine country, which he had only skirted in his first campaign, and then sweeping round to the south he turned fiercely upon the Romans who were making believe to follow him, and after taking one distant look at the unbroken and impenetrable girdle of men, and earth, and iron, which girt Capua in, he left her to her inevitable fate.2 Inevitable indeed it was ; for the Romans knew no pity, and the citizens themselves must have felt that the murder of all the Romans residing in the city at the time of their revolt, would have steeled even those who were naturally pitiful against them. The sena- tors, abandoned to despair, shut themselves within their own houses, and left the responsibilities of the defence to the Numidian leaders. At last when the surrender of the city was only a question of hours, they met at the house of one Vibius Virrius, the author of the revolt, and after holding high festival on such fare as the besieged city could supply, and could lend them courage for what they were about to do, they passed round the poisoned cup, and, to the ' Livy, xxvi. II; Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 15; Florus, ii. 7. 47-48. * Polyb. ix. 7 ; Livy, xxvi. 11. 302 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. number of twenty-seven, balked their Roman con- querors of their long-expected revenge.' Of the re- maining senators, when, next day, the gates were opened, twenty-five were sent by the orders of the consuls to Cales, and twenty-eight to Teanum ; but close behind them followed the victor Fulvius, and by his command they were scourged and beheaded, one by one, before his eyes. When the bloody work was only half finished a despatch from the Senate arrived bidding him reserve for their decision the question of the punishment ; but the butcher thrust it into his bosom, and it was not till the last head had fallen that he read the letter which might have postponed, but would hardly have averted, their fate.^ Three hundred noble Campanian youths were thrown into prison to perish, many of them, later, on a trumped-up charge. The bulk of the citizens were dispersed among the Latin colonies, or were sold into slavery. The city itself was spared, a signal instance, remarks Livy — is he speaking in irony or in earnest } — of Roman clemency. But it was no longer to have citizens or any form of civic life. Without magistrates, and without a senate, it was to receive year by year a prefect from Rome, who should deal out Roman justice to such waifs and strays of population as might be drawn thither by the incomparable beauty of the situation or by the ferti- lity of the soil. It was a warning also, Livy remarks — and here he is on safer ground — to any other city which had revolted or might yet be disposed to revolt, of the amount of protection she might expect hence- ' Livy, xxvi. 14 ; Zonaras, ix. 6. ^ Livy, xxvi. 15. HANNIBAL'S SUPERIORITY IN THE FIELD. 303 forward from Hannibal, and of the vengeance which would surely fall upon her from Rome.' In vain did Hannibal endeavour by some brilliant stroke to counteract the fatal impression which the surrender of Capua must produce on his Italian allies. An attempt to surprise Rhegium failed,^ and all his efforts to capture the citadel of Tarentum failed also. Just now too Marcellus, his worthiest antagonist, re- turned from Sicily flushed with victory, and eager, so the Romans thought, at last to measure his sword with his ancient foe.^ Now also an alliance was formed by Rome with the brigands of .^tolia,* which cut off Hannibal's last hope that Philip of Macedon would ever be able to join him in Italy. Every- thing, in fact, seemed to betoken that the end was near ; but those who thought so reckoned prema- turely. In the year which followed the fall of Capua, the year 210, Hannibal surprised and slew the Praetor, Cn. Fulvius, before Herdonea. Herdonea itself, which was meditating revolt, he burned to the ground after transferring its inhabitants to Meta- pontum and Thurii, two of the few towns which were still faithful to him.^ In B.C. 209, when Samnium and Lucania had already submitted to the Romans, and while one consul, Fulvius, was threatening Meta- pontum and the other consul, Fabius, was pressing the siege of Tarentum in his rear, he fought two bril- liant actions in Apulia, which drove his third an- tagonist, the sword of Rome, himself, to take refuge ' Livy, xxvi. 12. ' Livy, xxvi. 16 and 34. ' Livy, xxvi. 21. 29. * Livy, xxvi. 24, ' Livy, xxvii. I. 304 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. in Venusia, and to adopt the more cautious tactics of its shield.' In 208 and 207 his superiority in the field was as incontestable as ever. Tarentum, indeed, which it had cost him so much to win and so much to keep, had been betrayed by the commander of its garrison into the hands of the Romans, and suffered the fate, or worse even than the fate, of Syracuse and Capua. All the Bruttians found within it were put to death ; thirty thousand of its Greek inhabitants were sold as slaves, and all the works of art it contained, except its ' angry gods,' were carried off to Rome. Yet Hannibal en- camped beneath its walls as though the place still be- longed to him, and in vain offered battle to its new possessors.^ When he moved northwards into Apulia and found himself with his ever-diminishing force face to face with two consular armies there, he yet ven- tured to detach a flying squadron, which cut to pieces a Roman legion on a spot some fifty miles to his rear ; and he held his own in the open field, waiting pati- ently till the moment should come for striking a blow.^ At last the moment came, and the blow which he struck was a heavy one. The consuls, Crispinus and INIarcellus, as fate would have it, had left their camps, each with a small band of followers, and had ridden in company to the top of a wooded hill which lay between their two armies. They were observed by the Numi- dian cavalry, ready as ever for a surprise or a deed of ' Livy, xxvii. 12-14 ; cf. 20, 21. ' Livy, xxvii. 15, 16; Appian, Han. 49; Plutarch, Fabius, 22. • Livy, xxvii. 26. FAMILY TRADITIONS AT ROME. 305 daring. There was a sudden charge, and Crispinus, wounded to the death, staggered back to his camp, while the body of the other consul, the bravest of the brave, was found by Hannibal himself where it had fallen. The Phoenician gazed on it for a while in silence, and then remarking, ' There lies a good soldier but a bad general,' ordered it to be honourably burned and the ashes to be sent to his son.' But dangers greater even than the loss of Mar- cellus were now threatening the Romans. It is one special glory of Rome that at no period of her history could it be said that her safety depended upon the existence of any single citizen. The abilities or the character of an individual, however command- ing, are a bad security at the best for the life of a state ; and at Rome had such a military or political genius been wanted, he would not, with the one ex- ception of the age which produced Julius Caesar, have been forthcoming. But we have already had occasion to remark, that if Rome produced only one man who rose to the very front rank in any, department of human greatness, the number of those who came in the rank next below it was exceptionally large. The national ideals of Rome, if not the noblest ideals con- ceivable, were yet, in many respects, truly noble, and, what is more, they were attainable and not unfre- quently attained. If one man fell, whom, at the mo- ment of his death, it seemed that Rome could ill spare — just when the execution of some darling pro- ject, an extension of the franchise, a reform of a crying ' Polyb. X. 32 ; Livy, xxvii. 26-28 ; Appian, vii. 50 ; Plutarch, Marcellus, 28-30 ; Zonaras, ix. 9. 3o6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. abuse, or the conquest of some immemorial . enemy seemed to be within his grasp — others were always ready to step into his vacant place. Not unfrequently it was his own son, or grandson, who filled the gap ; for nowhere in ancient history, nor indeed in any his- tory unless, possibly, it be in that of England, do we find so commanding a place occupied by the concep- tion of hereditary duties and traditions. In demo- cratic Greece and in aristocratic Carthage there was very little of such influence. The greatness of the Barcine family, with their traditionary policy carried on at Carthage through three generations, is some- thing altogether exceptional and admits of special explanation. But at Rome we habitually find the same objects, political and social, taken up and car- ried on from age to age by members of the same noble or the same plebeian family. Everyone knew beforehand the hereditary disposition, and therefore the general line, which, on any particular question, would be taken by a member of the Valerian or the Horatian, the Cornelian or the Claudian gens. When, through a period of many generations together, was there a Claudius who was not arrogant ; a Gracchus whose word was not his bond ; a Decius who would not devote himself in battle for the state } When was there a Scipio who did not temper Roman sim- plicity by Greek culture ; a Cato, who was not ' a foe alike to villany and to refinement ; ' a Brutus who would not have struck down a tyrant There was little fear then that any great principle of policy would die out at Rome for lack of representatives. At Rome the family always came before the individual, and SYMPTOMS OF EXHAUSTION. what is more important to note here, when once the feud between patrician and plebeian had been fought out, the state ahvays before the family. It was thus upon ^he patriotism and the exertions of the whole body of the citizens, and not upon any part or parts of them, that the state throughout the periods of the Punic wars could safely count. The wise extension of the franchise, whether in whole or in part, in fruition or in prospect, first to the Latin colonies and then to the other cognate tribes of Italy, formed, as it were, a wall of adamant round the Roman Confederation, against which all the waves of the Phoenician invasion had hitherto dashed in vain. Was the treasury exhausted, or was some special tax re- quired to meet a pressing emergency Again and again in the course of the Punic wars the need was met by private and voluntary contribution. Most notably in a memorable scene described by Livy, in the year 210, the Senate, acting on the principle that nobility imposes obligation to an extent to which few aristocracies have ever followed -them, set th,e example of devoting the whole of their moveable property beyond what was necessary to support life, to the service of the state, and their example was imitated, and imitated enthusiastically, by all orders and degrees in the commonwealth." But in the year 209 symptoms of exhaustion, if not of disaffection, had begun to show themselves even within the bounds of the Confederation, amongst the Latin colonies themselves. Twelve of the thirty colonies, and those some of the oldest and the most ' Livy, xxvi. 35, 36. 3o8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. important, in the most widely scattered parts of Italy, declared that the Romans must look for no more men and money from them, for they had neither men nor money to give. The news fell like a thunderbolt upon the consuls who were the first to hear it, and the Roman Senate knew that if the example spread all was lost ; but they were prudent enough, or generous enough, to require no forced service. Accordingly, throwing themselves on the fidelity and devotion of the remaining eighteen, they prepared to face their redoubtable antagonist with such help as they alone could give her.' ' Livy, xxvii. 9, 10. APPROACH OF HASDRUBAL FROM SPAIN. 309 CHAPTER XVI. BATTLE OF THE METAURUS. (207 B.C.) The approach of Hasdrubal from Spain — His messengers fail to find Hannibal — Brilliant march of Nero — Battle of the Metaurus — Triumph and brutality of Nero. It seemed to augur ill for Rome that the stress of the war had at length begun to tell on the spirit and the fidelity of the Latin colonies themselves. But, more ominous still, news reached the city in B.C. 208 that after the vicissitudes of the ten years' struggle in Spain, Hasdrubal had at length eluded Scipio, had entered Gaul by the passes of the Western Pyrenees, was raising fresh levies there, and early in the follow- ing summer might be expected in Italy.^ Rome had been in no such peril since the morrow of the battle of Cannae ; for the approach of Hasdrubal indicated that the great Spanish struggle, to support which Rome had sent out some of her best troops and generals, even when Hannibal was threatening her existence, had at last been played out, and had ended in favour of Carthage. It seemed, indeed, that Car- thage by conquering in Spain had assured her victory in Italy alsD, For the last two years one son of ' Livy, xxvii. 36. 3IO CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Hamilcar had been overrunning Italy from end to end, and had more than once brought Rome to the brink of destruction ; and now with her resources diminished, her population halved, and her allies wavering, she had to face the onset of a second son of the same dreaded chieftain, who would sweep down with new swarms of Gauls and Spaniards from the north, while his brother, for the last time, moved up for her destruction from his retreat in Bruttium in the south. A bitter comment this on the brilliant victory which Scipio was reported to have just won at Baicula in Spain ! ' For Hasdrubal, his defeated adversary, was not penned, as he should have been, within the walls of Gades, but was collecting allies at his leisure in the heart of Gaul. A few precious months of winter remained to prepare for the double danger which the spring would bring. C. Claudius Nero, a man who had done fair service before Capua and in Spain, was one of the consuls selected for the year of peril. His plebeian colleague, M. Livius, was one of the few Romans then living who had enjoyed a triumph ; but his temper had been soured by an unjust charge of peculation, and he was personally hostile to Nero. However, in the face of public danger, he was brought to forget his grievances and to act in concert with his colleague for the public good.^ Livius, so the Senate arranged, was to await the approach of Hasdrubal near the frontiers of Hither Gaul, while Nero was to impede, as best he could, the movements of Hannibal in the south. Seventy thousand Romans ' Polyb. X. 39 ; Livy, xxvii. l8. ^ Livy, xxv-ii. 34, 35. HASDRUBAL BESIEGES PLACENTIA. 311 and as many allies were put into the field for this, the supreme effort, as it seemed, of the republic' As soon as the weather permitted, Hasdrubal started from Auvergne. Everything was in his favour. The mountaineers were friendly, the mountain passes were free from snow, his army gathered strength and bulk as it advanced, and was in a more effective con- dition when it entered the plains of Italy than when it had crossed the Pyrenees. What a contrast to his brother's advance ten years before ! Less prudent than his brother, however, Hasdrubal sat down to besiege Placentia when he had better have been pressing on towards his destination.^ When at last he moved forward, the Roman army retreated before him, till it reached the small town of Sena to the south of the Metaurus. From this place Hasdrubal sent messengers who were to bid Hannibal meet him at Narnia, only some thirty miles from Rome. But Hannibal the messengers failed to find, and, falling into the hands of the Romans, their despatches were read not by the Carthaginian but by the Roman general.^ Since the beginning of the campaign Han- nibal had been rapidly shifting his quarters backwards and forwards between Bruttium and Apulia amidst a network of Roman fortresses and armies, always followed and never opposed by his vastly more numerous foe. The victories attributed by Livy and others to Nero during this period are purely fictitious, and are explicitly contradicted by Polybius himself* Hannibal, as fate would have it, must have gone • Livy, xxvii. 36 and 38. Livy, xxvii. 39. ' Livy, xxvii. 43 ; Appian, Hann. 52. * Polyb. x. 33. I, 2, and XV. 11. 7-12 ; Livy, xxvii. 42. 312 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. southwards just before his brother's messengers were despatched to find him. Had it been otherwise, they must have reached him in safety ; and in that case we can hardly doubt that the brilHant march northward would have been not Nero's but Hannibal's, and that the Metaurus would have seen the collapse of the fortunes not of Carthage but of Rome. Nero formed a bold resolution — one almost with- out precedent at this period of Roman history — to desert the province and even a portion of the troops confided to his keeping by the Senate ; with the remainder to march rapidly northward, a distance of 200 miles, to join Livius, to crush Hasdrubal by a com- bined a sault, and then to return again before Hannibal should have discovered his absence. It was a bold step, but hardly bolder than the extremity of the danger required ; above all, it was justified by the event. Nero took care not to inform the Senate of what he proposed to do till he was already doing it, thus putting it in their power to co-operate with his later movements, but not giving them the chance of impeding the decisive blow. He had already sent messengers to the friendly cities near his line of march bidding them help, as best they could, the progress of their deliverers. The 6,000 infantry and the 1,000 cavalry selected for the enterprise started, like the 10,000 Greeks before them, in total ignorance of their destination. They believed that they were about to surprise some petty Carthaginian garrison near at home in Lucania ; and their enthusiasm, when the momentous secret was communicated to them, was only equalled by that of the Italian provincials BATTLE OF THE ME TAURUS. 313 who thronged the roadside with provisions, vehicles, and beasts of burden, and accompanied the army with their blessings and their prayers. The soldiers de- clined everything that was not necessary for their immediate support ; and pausing, we are told, neither to eat nor to drink, hardly even to sleep, in a few days they neared the camp of the other consul.' Nero entered it at night and distributed his wearied troops among the tents which were already occupied, so as to avoid exciting the suspicions of Hasdrubal till he should meet them in the field. But next morning the quick ear of the Carthaginian noticed that the trumpet sounded twice instead of once within the enemy's camp, and when the Romans offered battle his quick eye rested with suspicion on the travel-stained troops, and the draggled horses of a portion of the army. Concluding that the other con- sul had arrived and that his brother's army must have been dispersed or annihilated, he remained within his camp throughout that day, and at nightfall began to retreat towards the friendly Gaul. He reached the Metaurus in safety, but here his guides played him false, and instead of crossing at once by the ford he wandered hither and thither on the nearer side vainly searching for it in the darkness.^ Morning light brought the Romans, and Hasdru- bal had now no choice but to draw up his army where it was, with a rapid and dangerous river in his rear. The Spanish veterans, his main strength, he placed on the right, intending to lead them in person against Livius. The Ligurians, with the elephants in their * Livy, xxvii. 45. ' Livy, xxvii. 46, 47. 314 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. front, formed the centre, while the Gauls, untrust- worthy as ever — except when led by Hannibal — were drawn up on a hill to the left, which, by the mere advantage of position, they could hardly fail to hold against Nero. The Spaniards, under Hasdrubal's own eye, fought nobly and with every prospect of success, till Nero, unable to dislodge the Gauls, left them to themselves, and by a brilliant manoeuvre, passing behind the whole length of the Roman arm}', fell at once on the Spanish flank and rear. Thus surrounded they were cut to pieces where they stood, and Hasdrubal, after doing all that a general could do to save the fortunes of the day, rushed into the midst of the enemy's cavalry, and died as became the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal.' The greater part of the elephants, when they became unmanageable, were killed by their own drivers who were furnished with weapons for the purpose, and who knew hov/ and where to strike the fatal blow. The Gauls were slaughtered as they lay on the ground, heavy with wine or wearied out by their night's march. The victory of Rome was not bloodless, but it was complete. Hasdrubal's army, whatever its size, was an- nihilated, and some of the Roman annalists, regardless alike of truth and probability, strove to make out that the slaughter of the Metaurus equalled that of Cannae.^ From the agonies of suspense the Romans passed at ' Polyb. xi. I, 2 ; Livj-, xxvii. 48, 49; Florus, ii. 6. 49-52. ^ Livy, loc. cit. ; Appian, Hatm. 53. Polybius (xi. 3) is perhaps himself outside the truth when he makes the number of slain on the Carthaginian side to have been 10,000. SUCCESS OF NERO. 31S once into the exuberant enthusiasm of victory. They had been rudely awakened to the consciousness that there were two Hannibals in Italy. They forgot now that there was still one ; that THE Hannibal was still in Italy, still unconquered, and, as far as they knew, unconquerable. A well-deserved triumph was granted to the victorious generals. It was the first which the Sacred Way had seen ever since Hannibal had entered Italy, for it was the first time, by the confes- sion of the Romans themselves, that victory had smiled on their arms.^ The consuls triumphed in common ; but Nero was the hero of the day. To him was due alike the strategy of the northward march — a march perhaps only equalled in history by the advance of Marlborough from Belgium to the Danube in the campaign of Blenheim — and the bril- liant stroke which decided the battle. To Nero, how- ever, also belongs the act of revolting barbarism which wound up his achievements and must for ever detract from his fair fame. Returning to his army in Apulia as quickly as he had left it, he carried with him the head of Hasdrubal, which he had caused to be severed from his body, and, with true Roman brutality, ordered this ghastly trophy of victory to be flung into the camp of Hannibal, who, it is said, was still ignorant that the general opposed to him had ever left his quarters. Hannibal recognised the features of the brother whom he had so long and eagerly expected, and in them sadly saw the doom of Carthage.^ ' Cf. Hor. Ode iv. 4. 41, ' qui primus alma risit adorea.' ' Livj', xxvii. 51 ; Florus, ii. 6. 53 ; Zonaras, ix. 9. 3i6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER XVII. p. CORNELIUS SCIPIO. (210-206 B.C.) Scipio in Spain — Hisearlyliistory — His character and influence — Made proconsul — Takes New Carthage — Carthaginians finally driven out of Spain. It is necessary, now that we have reached this, the decisive, point of the war, to direct our attention once more to Spain ; for it was on the IMetaurus that Spain as well as Italy was lost to the Carthaginians, and it was in Spain, at this very time, that, moving in an atmosphere of mingled war and love, amidst romantic expeditions and hair-breadth escapes, fortunate in what he did, and perhaps more fortunate in what he failed to do, surrounded by devoted friends, like Laelius, or by court annalists, who saw all his doings through the bright halo which he or they diffused around them, the young general was being nursed by Fortune into fame, who was soon to drive the Carthaginians from Spain, then, without striking a blow, was to compel Hannibal to withdraw from Italy, was next to crush that greatest of all heroes in Africa, and, finally, to bring to a conclusion there the SCIPIO'S EARLY HISTORY. 317 long agony of the Second Punic War. P. Cornelius Scipio is one of the central figures of Roman history. His presence and his bearing exercised a strange fasci- nation over all who came within its influence, and his name, with the romances that began to- cluster round it even in his lifetime, was a yet more living power with posterity. It turned the head of even the sober- minded Polybius, and has given an air of unreality and of poetry to such fragments of his history of this portion of the war as have, unfortunately, alone come down to us. Let us pause for a while on the ante- cedents and the surroundings, the virtues and the failings, of so important and conspicuous a per- sonage. Scipio was the son of that Publius who, by an unlooked-for reverse of fortune, had just been defeated and killed in the field of his numerous victories and in the full tide of his success. But Fortune, so capri- cious towards the father, was unswerving in her devotion to the son. He was then only twenty-four years of age ; ' but, young as he was, he was already known to fame by his conduct on three critical occa- sions. As a mere stripling of seventeen he had saved, or it was believed that he had saved, his father's life at the battle of Ticinus at the risk of his own ;2 after Cannae it was his resolute bearing which had shamed or frightened the recreant nobles of Rome from de- ' Livy, xxvi. 18 ; Val. Max. iii. 7. I. Polybius (x. 6. 10) makes him twenty-seven ; but that this is a mere slip is evident from his state- ment only three chapters before (x. 3, 4) that he was seventeen at the time of the battle of Ticinus, B.C. 218. ' Polyb. X. 3. 3-S ; Livy, xxi. 46. 3i8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. serting the fast sinking ship of the state ; ' at the age of twenty-three he had been candidate for the Curule yEdileship, and when the magistrate objected that he was not yet of legal age, he replied that if all the Quirites wished to make him aedile he was old enough.^ It was a characteristic reply, a sample of that contempt for the forms of law, and that mingled respect and contempt for popular opinion, which marked his conduct on several occasions of his life, and goes some way to explain alike what he did and what he failed to do ; and now, when his father and uncle had fallen in Spain, and the comitia were being held for the election of some one to fill their place, and, as the story goes, people were looking anxiously one upon the other to see who would offer himself for a task wherein two Scipios had failed, it was the young Publius himself who, with mingled modesty and self-reliance, came forward, and was straightway chosen proconsul amidst the exclamations of all present.^ A second secret of Scipio's influence was the popular belief, in part, at least, shared by himself, that he was the special favourite of the gods and inspired by them in all he did. Stories were in the air of his divine descent, and even of his mJraculous birth, which he had too much prudence either to affirm or to contradict.^ Why should the favourite of the gods refuse to avail himself of any help they offered him In the existence of the gods and in their special help to him Scipio doubtless implicitly be- ' Livy, xxii. 53. ^ Livy, xxv. 2. '.Livy, xxvi. 18 ; Zonaras, ix. 7. * Cf. Polybius, x. 2. 5 and 5. 5 ; Livy, xxvi. 19. SCIPiaS CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE. 319 lieved; but the ostentatious secrecy of his visits to the Capitol before undertaking any work of import- ance must have been suggested by the credulity of the multitude rather than his own. At all events, his interviews with Jupiter there never ended in any other way than a careful consideration of the circum- stances of the case in the privacy of his own study would have been likely to suggest. He was not, therefore, as has sometimes been said, ' a real en- thusiast,' nor was his a 'genuinely prophetic nature;' on the other hand, he was no mere vulgar impostor.' He had enough of enthusiasm himself to evoke it towards himself in others, not enough to allow himself, under any circumstances, to be hurried away by it. One of the greatest of Roman heroes, he was himself only three parts a Roman. He was fond of literary men, and was himself not destitute of Greek culture ; ^ a weakness which certainly could not be charged against any genuine Roman of the old school. By turns the hero and the enemy of the populace, he knew how to win yet how to despise, how to use yet sometimes how to abuse, popular favour. In Spain, with the air and the surroundings of a king, he had enough Roman feeling to reject the regal gewgaws and the regal title which the Spaniards pressed upon him ;^ at Rome, after his victory at Zama, he showed that he still retained enough of the genuine republican spirit to refuse the invidious honours — the dictatorship for life and the statue in the Capitol — which the citizens in the ecstasy of their ' See Mommsen, ii. 159, 160. ^ Livy, xxix. 19. ' Polyb. X. 40 ; Livy, xxvii. 19. 320 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. joy would fain have given him.^ But he had not that inborn reverence for law and for authority which had made the Romans what they were, and which would have bidden him cheerfully remain in Italy, even when he knew he had it in him to finish the war in Africa, rather than resist the powers that be.^ A Roman of the old type would have submitted to an accusation or to a punishment which he knew to be unjust rather than involve himself in the semblance of illegality ; but Scipio, when his brother Lucius was called to give an account of the moneys which he had received from King Antiochus, and was about to present to the Senate the document which would have cleared or condemned him, proudly snatched it from his hands and tore it to pieces before their eyes.^ So again, in his last appearance in public life, when it was his own turn to have his conduct called in question, he reminded his accusers, by a happy stroke of audacity which was akin to genius, that this was the day on which he had defeated Hannibal at Zama, and called upon them to follow him to the Capitol that they might there return thanks to the gods who had given them the victor)', and pray that the Roman state might have other citizens like himself^ The appeal was irresistible, and the Romans once more showed that they could not judge a Manlius in sight of the Capitol. These incidents have a grandeur peculiarly their own ; but it is hardly a Roman grandeur. As a young man Scipio was fond of romantic situations, ' Livy, xxxviii. 56; Val. Max. iv. i. 6. ' Livy, xxviii. 40. ' Li\-y, xxxviii. 55 ; Val. Max. iii. 7. I. * Livy, xxxviii. 51. SC/P/O'S NOBLE QUALITIES. 321 and fortune showered them upon him. The charms of his personal presence, and the moral and the ma- terial victories which they won, his adventurous inter- views with Spanish or Berber princes, or with hostile generals, his chivalrous treatment of captive maidens and their bridegrooms or their suitors, fill a large part in the histories which remain to us of his Spanish and his African campaigns.' Much of the setting of these stories may be imaginary ; but the stories themselves doubtless rest on a substratum of fact, and they reveal to us, however dimly, a union of gal- lantry and generosity, of prudence and of passion, of sensibility to the charms of beauty, and yet of resist- ance to their power, which enable us to feel some- thing of the fascination which made Scipio the idol of his soldiers, of the natives of Spain and Africa, and of the great body, and those the more generous, of his fellow-citizens. Above all, if Scipio had not all the most characteristic Roman virtues, he was free from the worst Roman vices. He was not cruel, not faithless, not indifferent to human life ; as times went, he was not self-seeking. He could appreciate virtue in an enemy, he could be generous to a fallen foe. He could observe the terms of a capitulation, he could suppress a mutiny without promiscuous mas- sacre, and could sometimes take a town without slaughtering the inhabitants in cold blood. He could even enter into the peculiarities and characteristics of nations other than his own, and, unlike his younger namesake, could shrink from obliterating a seat of ' SeePolyb. Bk. x. xi. xiv. xv. passim ; Li\-y, xxvi. 49, 50 ; xxvii. 17-19; xxviii. 17, 18; XXX. 13 -15, &c. ; Appian, vi. 29-30, &c Y 322 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ancient civilisation and commerce at one fell blow. In fine, if he was not a worthy antagonist to Hannibal, he was the least unworthy that Rome, the nurse of heroes, could in this sixteen years' war produce ; and if he was the favourite of Fortune, it must be admitted that that capricious goddess has seldom conferred her favours on one who did so much to deserve them. Scipio crossed to Spain with ii,ooo men towards the close of the year 210,' and early in the spring of the following year he struck a blow which showed that a general of a new stamp had appeared upon the scene. Finding that the three Carthaginian gene- rals, Hasdrubal and Mago, sons of Hamilcar, and Has- drubal, son of Gisco, were passing the winter in widely different parts of Spain each more distant from New Carthage than he was himself, and hear- ing also that the garrison had been reduced to 1,000 men, he determined to make a rapid descent upon that city, the head-quarters of the Carthaginian Go- vernment and the key to their position in Spain. ^ New Carthage was a noble city situated on a land- locked harbour, the only good harbour on the south- east coast of Spain. It was surrounded on all sides by water, save where an isthmus only 250 yards wide connected it with the mainland. Its fortifications, strong everj'where, were doubly strong here ; but there was one weak spot which fortune or the gods were pre- paring to reveal to their favourite. The object of the enterprise was entrusted to Lselius, Scipio's lifelong friend, alone ; and it was arranged that he should enter the harbour with the fleet just when Scipio with hisland ' Livy, xxvi. 19. * Polyb. x. 7 ; Livy, xxvi. 20 and 42. SCIPIO TAKES NEW CARTHAGE. 323 force appeared before its walls. Not 'a whisper of what was coming reached the city till it was already come ; and not a misadventure or a hitch occurred from the moment when the adventurous Scipio left Tarraco to the time when New Carthage was in his power. The assault indeed of the Romans on the fortifications of the isthmus was repelled ; but Scipio intended it to be so, for it was not the real point of his attack. Taking advantage of the ebb tide which left the waters of the lagoon in the western side so low that they could easily be forded — a fact known to few but himself — and, by a happy inspiration, bidding his soldiers follow him boldly where Neptune himself pointed out the way, Scipio led a select body of his troops to the attack, through waters which besiegers and besieged might well have thought would sub- merge them all. The walls here proved to be acces- sible, and they were quite undefended. The attention of the garrison had been called elsewhere, and with the help of scaling ladders and the god of the sea the small band soon found themselves masters of New Carthage. New Carthage — with its mines of gold and silver, its arsenal and its dock5^ards, its merchant vessels and its stores of corn, its stands of arms and its engines of war, its skilled workmen and its host- ages drawn by the suspicious Carthaginians from all the Spanish tribes — all belonged to Rome. The work of slaughter over — and terrible work it was — Scipio addressed himself to the distribution of the booty. If the stories that have come down to us may be trusted, the survivors of the massacre had rea- son to admire the skill with which their conqueror 324 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. managed to turn foes into friends, and so, as it were, to arm Carthage against herself. Under promise of their freedom the Punic shipwrights cheerfully trans- ferred their services to Rome. Captive princesses, who might have been given up to the Roman sol- diery, or reserved by the young general for himself, were restored to their parents or their betrothed lovers ; and the hostages, those standing monuments of Carthaginian mistrust, were dismissed to their homes and converted into so many pledges of Roman moderation and good will.^ It seemed once more as if the Spanish w-ar was over ; and Laelius was despatched to Rome to report to the Senate, perhaps to magnify, the achievements of his friend. We are surprised indeed, after so bril- liant a beginning , to find that the young general, instead of pressing on at once to Gades, fell back on Tarraco whence he had started, and that Hasdrubal, after he had been conquered by him in a decisive battle at Baecula, was yet able, as has been already related, to give him the slip and to go off with a con- siderable force to Italy, thus to all appearance accom- plishing the object of the long Spanish struggle.^ It was not till Hasdrubal had spent the winter months in Gaul, had invaded Italy, and had fallen on the Metaurus, that Scipio ventured to advance into Bae- tica, and then, step by step, after a decisive victory at Elinga or Silpia, drove the Carthaginians into Gades, ' their first and their last possession ' in Spain.^ ' Polybius, X. 8-16 ; Livy, xxvi. 43-50 ; Appian, Hisp. 19-23. ^ Livy, xxvi. 51 ; xxvii. 18. 20, 36. ' Polybius, xi. 20-24 ; Livy, xxviii. 2. l2-i6. CARTHAGINIANS DRIVEN OUT OF SPAIN. 325 Nor was it till the year 205 that Mago, the last of the brood of Hamilcar, passed over into the Balearic Islands, leaving to Rome, or rather to two centuries of half-suppressed revolts against her cruel and treacherous rule, the empire which his family had founded and built up, and of which they had so long postponed the fall.' ' Livy,xxviii. 36, 37 ; Appian, Hisp. 37, 326 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER XVIII. THE WAR IN AFRICA ; BATTLE OF ZAMA. (206-202 B.C.) Scipio returns to Rome and is elected Consul — Receives leave to invade Africa — Goes to Sicily — His doings and difficulties there — Sails for Africa — Massinissa and S)-phax — Roman ignorance of Carthage — The fall of Carthage, how far a matter of regret — Siege of Utica — Scipio's command prolonged — He burns the Car- thaginian camps — Sophonisba — The Carthaginian peace party — Sons of Hamilcar recalled to Africa — Mago obeys the summons — Hannibal obeys it — The Lacinian column — Joy in Italy — First operations of Hannibal in Africa — Battle of Zama — Dignity of Hannibal — Terms of peace — Results of the war — Alternative policies open to Rome. On his return to Rome towards the close of the year 206, Scipio enumerated to the Senate, which had been assembled for that purpose in the Temple of Bellona outside the walls, the long roll of the actions which he had fought, the towns which he had taken, and the cities which he had subdued. Not a Carthaginian, he proudly told them, was left alive in Spain. He expected to receive a triumph ; and, truly, in view of his successes, if not of his intrinsic merits, he deserved it as few Roman generals had done before him. But the Senate, half envious and half distrustful of the young general, determined to abide by precedent where, as in this case, precedent fell in with their SCIPIO CHOSEN CONSUL. 327 own inclinations ; and refused an honour which had never yet been granted except to a regularly com- missioned officer of the state. Scipio, who had con- quered as a mere proconsul, could console himself only with the conquests he had yet in view, when it might be that there would be no suda artificial obstacle to the reward which they merited. He had not long to wait ; for at the Comitia, to wlhich the people flocked as much to see as to vote for the con- queror of Spain, he was unanimously chosen consul — though he had not yet filled the office ©f praetor, and was still only thirty years of age — and with the purpose clearly understood, even if it was not expressed in words, that he should transfer tlie war to Africa.^ But the fathers of the city were full of misgivings. They remembered Regulus ; they reflected that Hanni- bal was still in Italy, that there might be life in the old lion yet, and that even in his death-grapple, he might, like the blind and captive Samson, slay and scatter his foes once more as he had done scores of times in the heyday of his strength. The old Fabius, true to his policy to the end, advised Scipio to reckon with Hannibal and his few soldiers in Italy rather than attempt to draw him off to Africa, where he would have the whole power of Carthage at his back. But Scipio showed clearly enough that, if the Senate re- fused the leave he sought, he would seek it from the people ; and if he failed to get it from them, he would still take it for himself. The Senate, therefore, were glad to save their dignity and to shift a portion of their responsibility from their own shoulders, by ' Polybins, xi. 33. 7-8 ; Livy, xxviii. 38. 328 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. assigning the province of Sicily to the newly elected consul, at the same time giving him permission to cross thence into Africa ' if he should judge it to be advantageous to the state.' They declined, however, to vote him a sufficient army, and would hardly even allow him to accept the services of those who came to him as volunteers. The army assigned to him consisted of but two legions, and those the two which had survived the defeat at Cannae, and which had been kept on duty in Sicily, as in a kind of penal settlement, ever since. But the warlike nations of Italy supplied him with seven thousand trusty volunteers ; and the Etruscans, those ancient mariners of the Ita- lian waters, eagerly furnished him with the rough materials for a fleet. Once more the fairy tale of the First Punic War is repeated in honour of the favourite of the gods, and a growing wood was transformed in forty-five days into a fleet of ten quadriremes and twenty quinquiremes.' With this meagre provision for what he was medi- tating, Scipio landed in his province. There he fur- nished three hundred of his army with horses which he had taken from the Sicilians ; a delicate operation, but so adroitly managed that we are asked to believe that the despoiled provincials, instead of resenting it as an injury, thanked him as for a benefit. Discharged veterans of the army of Mar- cellus came and enrolled themselves amongst his followers, and supplies of provisions came flowing in from all the corn-growing lands of Sicily. The ships which he knew to be seaworthy he sent under the ' Li\7, xxviii. 40-45. SCIPIO CAPTURES LOCRI. 329 command of Lselius to devastate the African coast ; those which were newly built he laid up for the winter in dry docks at Panormus, that their unsea- soned timbers might warp or leak in a place where a warp or leak would not be fatal to them. He then went into winter quarters in the pleasant town — too pleasant his critics at Rome deemed it — of ' Syra- cuse.' But the inactivity which was thus forced or seemed to be forced upon him in his own province he turned to good account by the blow he managed to strike in the province of his colleague. He threw a small force across the straits of Messana, and by an arrangement with a party within the town, he got pos- session of Locri, an important place near the southern- most point of Italy. Hannibal thus found himself deprived for the moment of his base of operations in Bruttium. But the gain was a doubtful one for the reputation alike of Scipio and of Rome ; for the cap- ture of the town was followed by a series of terrible atrocities which Scipio, if he did not actually authorise, took no measures either to prevent or adequately to punish, and which reflected seriously on the state in whose service the worst offenders were.' The complaints of the unhappy Locrians fell like a spark upon the smouldering dislike and discontent Vv'ith which a large party in the Senate regarded Scipio, and the question of his recall and punishment was openly debated. He was giving himself up — so the Senate, with old Fabius for their spokesman, in- dignantly exclaimed — to his own enjoyment in Sy- racuse, clothed in Greek garments, frequenting the ' Livy, x.xix. I. 6-10 ; Appian, Hann. 55 ; Zonaras, ix. 11. 330 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Greek wrestling school, and — a worse offence still — studying Greek literature, instead of enforcing ordi- nary discipline among his troops, or of carrying the war, as he had threatened or promised, into Africa.' But some at least of these accusations proved to be ill-founded, and early in 204 B.C. the armament which Scipio had collected in face of the lukewarmness or the opposition of the Senate sailed, amidst all the pomp and circumstance of war, from Lilybseum, that ancient stronghold of the Phoenician race. Accounts differ as to the size of the armament. Some of our authorities — they can perhaps in this instance hardly be called authorities at all — place the number of men on board as low as 12,000, while others make it as high as 36,000. But if we take the higher, and per- haps the more likely estimate, we still cannot fail to observe how vastly inferior in numbers this expe- dition was to those which were again and again despatched against Carthage, or her maritime de- pendencies, in the course of the First Punic War. Even if the Senate had taken up the project warmly, as a more far-sighted body would probably have done, the waste of life and property occasioned by Han- nibal's fourteen years' war in Italy must have made any armament which they were able to raise, look small in comparison with that of Regulus ; and we are surprised to find that the Carthaginians, who still claimed, in a measure, the empire of the seas, who knew what an invasion of Africa meant, and who had long seen that it was coming, yet offered no opposition by their fleet to Scipio's approach. The small force ' Livy, xxix. 16-20. MASSINISSA AND SYPHAX. 331 that was for ever to deprive Carthage of her proudest title, and to make her a mere dependency of Rome, landed on the third day, without seeing a vestige of the foe, near the ' Fair Promontory ; ' and Scipio, ac- cording to his wont, drew a not ill-grounded omen of success from the name of the spot to which the gods, or his own carefully considered plans, had guided him.' Fortune, however, did not smile on his first attempt. Already while in Spain, he had prepared the way for his invasion of Africa by opening friendly communications with the two Numidian chieftains from whom, in such a contingency, he might have most to hope or fear. These two chieftains were Mas- sinissa, head of the Massylians, a tribe which dwelt immediately to the westward of the domain of Car- thage, and Syphax, who ruled the Massaesylians, a much more important tribe, occupying the region of the modern Algeria. Before we enter on those final operations of the war in which they play so impor- tant a part, it is necessary to give a brief account of the antecedents of each of these barbarian princes. Massinissa had, during many years, fought against the Romans in the Spanish war, and had done good service to Carthage ; but, even there, seeing which way fortune was turning, he had, with the astute fickleness of a barbarian, come to a secret under- standing with Scipio.'^ Syphax was also bound by treaty to Carthage. But it was a treaty which the Carthaginians well knew that he would break as soon as he should deem it to his advantage to do so ; and ' Livy, xxix. 25-27. = Livy, XXV. 34; xxvii. 19; xxviii. 13. 16, 35. Appian, rurt. 10. 332 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Scipio flattered himself that by a romantic visit which, amidst great dangers, he had paid to his court in the midst of the Spanish war, he had secured ahke the support of the Berber chieftain and the admiration of Hasdrubal, his Carthaginian antagonist. It was by a strange coincidence indeed that the rival generals, unknown to each other, had abandoned their respec- tive armies in Spain, and, crossing over into Africa, had met with antagonistic objects, but in no un- friendly intercourse, at the court of an African prince. Fascinated by Scipio's address and bearing, Syphax readily promised the alliance which he asked. But the surpassing beauty of Sophonisba, the daughter of his other guest, made a more permanent impression on the amorous barbarian ; and on the promise of a mar- riage with her, Syphax was induced to throw up his newly formed friendship with Rome, and to renew his old one with Carthage.^ He forthwith drove his nephew Massinissa out of his hereditary kingdom ; and when that chieftain, after innumerable adventures and escapes, now presented himself in Scipio's camp near the Fair Promontory, it was only as an outlaw at the head of a few horsemen, whose aid might cost the Romans more than it was worth.^ This was a Iceen disappointment to Scipio, and, so far, seemed to augur ill for his African campaign. It might have been expected that in this, the last period of the war, waged as it was, almost under the walls of Carthage, some clear rays of light would have been thrown on the internal state of the city ' Livy, xxviii. 17. 18; Appian, Hisp. 30; Zonaras, ix. 10, 11. " Livy, xxix. 29. 33 ; Appian, Pun. 11-13. ROMAN IGNORANCE OF CARTHAGE. itself. But in this, as in other parts of the long struggle, we look in vain for such a clear and truthful narrative of events as would have enabled us to pic- ture to ourselves the wonderful city from which Han- nibal, one of the greatest wonders of all times, came. Here, if anywhere, and now, if anywhen, we might have expected that the Romans would have taken the pains to explain to themselves, if not to others, the condition and the constitution, the fears and the hopes, the strength and the weakness of that great city which had so long contended with them on equal or even superior terms. What a price- less boon, for instance, would Scipio himself, with that taste for literature with which the unlettered Roman senators twitted him, and with his power of understanding, or at least of influencing, nations less civilised than his own, have conferred on all future times, had he cared to tell us exactly what he saw, and what he inferred, about his great antagonists ! The facts of these last few years we cannot think would have been less instructive, less thrilling, or less strange, than those fictions in which the Scipionic circle appear habitually to have indulged. The glory of Rome would not have been lessened, it might even have been increased, had she given her adversaries, now at any rate, that credit which was their due. We might then have been able to judge, on better grounds than those on which most historians have passed so ready and so easy a judgment, as to what elements of civilisation and of progress, along with those other elements of weakness which are admitted on all hands, Carthage might have transported into 334 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Europe, had the result of the war been different. We should then have had more data for determining the question, as to what would have been the gain and what the loss to the world at large had the Mediter- ranean continued, what Nature seems to have in- tended it to be, the highway of independent nations, each perhaps endeavouring, but, happily, each failing, to conquer its neighbours ; instead of becoming a Roman lake, connecting nations whose separate ex- istence had been stamped out of them, and all of them controlled, assimilated, civilised — if we like to call it so — by the all-levelling power of Rome. The services rendered to civilisation by Rome are clear enough ; but it is not so clear what services might hereafter have been rendered to it by a free Athens and a free Corinth, by the inexhaustible energy of the Greek colonies in Sicily, by a possibly resus- citated Tyre or by the new-born Alexandria ; last not least, by a Carthage freed, as Hannibal was able for a short time at least to free it, from its narrow oligarchy, and by a Rome which would have been content with her natural boundaries, content, that is, to assimilate, and to weld into one, the various tribes A\ hich were most of them cognate to herself, from the straits of Messana to the Alps. He is certainly a bold historian who, with these — so large a part of the conditions of the problem — not before him, will pronounce dogmatically that it was in all respects well for the world that Rome was able utterly to destroy her ancient rival. The phrase, ' it would have been,' is a dangerous phrase to use in the study of history'. It is difficult to avoid using it altogether ; PARTIAL KNOWLEDGE OF CARTHAGE. 335 but it must always be remembered on what slender grounds we can use it at all, and how infinite are the possibilities of which no account is taken. If it be presumptuous to say, as Napoleon did, that God is always on the side of the big battalions, it is hardly less presumptuous to say dogmatically that in this or that instance He was on the side of the weaker ones. It surely savours of presumption to maintain, as one historian,' never to be mentioned without high honour, has, throughout this portion of his noble history, maintained, that Providence must surely have been plotting against Carthage, and watching over Rome, because when Hannibal ad- vanced on the city, two legions which had been raised for the Spanish war happened to be still lingering there, and could be utilised for her defence ; or again, because the great Carthaginian happened to have turned southwards to Bruttium instead of northwards to Lucania, at the moment when the messengers of his long looked-for brother were despatched to find him. We know all too little of the nation which pro- duced Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal to say what that nation might have done in happier times under the guidance of such commanding geniuses. The Second Punic War ends as it was begun. It is re- corded from first to last only by Hannibal's enemies, who neither understood, nor .cared to understand, what made him, and what made his city, great. Yet it is the old story. It is the man who paints the prostrate lion ; but it is the lion, and not the man ; it is Hanni- bal, and not his conquerors, who, in spite of the ' Dr. Arnold, vol. iii. p. 244, &c. 336 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. painter's intention, rivets all eyes and stands forth alone from the canvas, alike in his military genius and in his patriotism, in his hundred victories and in his one defeat, without a parallel in history. The Carthaginians were not more ready to meet Scipio by land than they had been by sea. They were without a sufficient army, and Hasdrubal, the son of Gisco, their best available general, was just then at a distance.' For nearly fifty years Africa had been free from invasion ; and the soldiers of Scipio found the same unwalled towns and villages and the same fruitful and well-watered estates which the followers of Agathocles and Regulus had found before them. From this rich and prosperous country a motley and a panic-stricken multitude flocked towards Carthage, driving their flocks and herds before them ; and the gates of the capital were shut and the walls manned, as though for an immediate attack. Pressing messages for aid were sent to Has- drubal and Sj'phax ; and the sense of relief was great when Scipio, instead of advancing on the capital, showed that he intended first to secure Utica. Frequent skirmishes with the Xumidian cavalry took place, in which Massinissa, availing himself to the utmost of his knowledge of the Xumidian tactics, did good ser\'ice to the Romans.^ The ships which Scipio had sent back to Sicily returned laden with provisions and with his siege train ; but for forty days the oldest Phoenician colony in Africa resisted, with true Phoenician endurance, all his assaults. Two ' Li\y, xxix. 28 ; Appian, Pun. 9. • Polybius, xiv. l, 2 ; Li%y, xxix. 28. 34, 35 ; Appian, Pun. 16. 25. ( SC/P/O'S COMMAND PROLONGED. 337 large armies under Hasdrubal and Syphax advanced to its relief, and on the approach of winter Scipio was obliged, without having won any decisive success, to abandon the blockade, and to transfer his camp to an adjoining tongue of land, which was known for centuries afterwards as the Castra Cornelia.' So ended the year 204. Neither the hopes nor the fears which Scipio's invasion of Africa had called forth had as yet been fulfilled ; and so far did the war still seem from its termination, that the Italians were not yet able to look upon themselves as secure from invasion. They even thought it prudent to build ships for the special purpose of protecting their coasts from possible attacks on the part of the Car- thaginian navy.^ Twenty legions were put into the field for the year 203, and the command of Scipio was prorogued, not, as on previous occasions, for a fixed period, but till such time as the war should be brought to a conclusion.^ From the military point of view this was a step in the right direction. It had already been tried in Spain in the persons of two members of the same illustrious family ; but it was also the first step towards the establishment of the military dic- tatorship, which was destined, after a long agony of civil wars, to overthrow the liberties of Rome. Fortune or fraud soon gave Scipio the chance of dealing a decisive blow. In sight of his winter quar- ters was the camp of the Carthaginians, under Has- ' Caesar, De Bdlo Civili, ii. 24, ' Ipse cum equitatu antecedit ad castra exploranda Corneliana.' Cf. Lucan, FJiars. iv. 656-660 ; riiny, Hist. Aat. v. 3 ; Pomponius Mela, i. 7. * Livy, XXX. 2. ' Livy, xxx. I. Z 338 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. drubal, son of Gisco, and at some distance farther lay that of the Numidians under Syphax. The Cartha- ginian huts were built of dry wood which had been collected from the fields, while those of the Numidians, as their custom was, were made of wattled reeds thatched with straw. Such materials suggested to Scipio the way in which they might best be destroyed. Opening or pretending to open negotiations for peace, he sent messengers backwards and forwards with orders to note the shape and the arrangements, the exits and the entrances, of the hostile camps. This information obtained, he suddenly broke off the negotiations, and then, with an easy conscience as it would seem, set out on his night errand. The wily Numidian chief was told off to the task which seemed appropriate to him, and which he had perhaps been the first to suggest, the burning of the Numidian camp. The flames spread with the rapidity of light- ning, and when the Carthaginians hastened to the help of their allies, their own camp was set on fire by Scipio behind them. The panic was sudden and uni- versal, and what the flames spared, the swords of the Romans, who had been stationed at all the outlets, cut down. Forty thousand Africans fell the victims of this not very glorious exploit.' It was with diffi- culty that the two generals, Hasdrubal and Syphax, escaped, the one to Carthage, to keep alive the spirit of the ' Barcine faction ' against the faint-hearted counsels of the peace-party, which now, perhaps with reason, might make themselves heard ; the other, to ' Polybius, strangely enough, calls it (xiv. 5. 15) ' the most glorious and extraordinarj- of Scipio's many glorious exploits ' ! SCIPIO BURNS THE CARTHAGINIAN CAMPS. 339 rally the survivors of the slaughter, and to collect new forces for the defence of the capital.' Another victory of Scipio followed in the so-called ' Great Plains,' ^ and on the exiled Massinissa was imposed the congenial task of following up his rival Syphax, who had deprived him of his hereditary kingdom. Massinissa's pursuit was as rapid as it was successful. The Massaesylians were defeated, and Syphax himself, together with his beautiful wife Sophonisba, and his capital, Cirta (the modern Con- stantine), which had been built in the most romantic and impregnable of situations, fell into the conqueror's hands.^ In times long gone by, so the story went, Massinissa's heart had been touched by the charms ot the Carthaginian maiden. Fortune had then thrown her into the hands of his rival, but now his own turn was come. He married her on the spot, and when Scipio, alive to the complications which might follow from such a marriage, and perhaps jealous of his own superior rights, bade him dismiss a wife who might compromise his fidelity to the Romans, he sent her a cup of poison, ' the only present which the bride- groom could offer to his bride. Let her see to it that she did nothing unworthy of the daughter of a Carthaginian general and the wife of two Numidian kings.' Sophonisba drank off the poison, only re- marking that her death would have been more opportune had it not followed so immediately upon her marriage. Massinissa, so the chroniclers rounded off the tragic story, was gently rebuked by his Roman ' Polybius, xiv. I-5 ; Livy, xxx. 3-7 ; Appian, Pun. 19-23. ^ Polybius, xiv. 8; Livy, xxx. 8. ' Livy, xxx. II, 12, 340 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Mentor for having atoned for one rash act by an- other ; but he was consoled for the loss of his bride by the royal title, and by the Roman garments which Scipio solemnly bestowed upon him.' It was an honour never before granted by the proud republic to one who was not a Roman citizen ; but Massinissa lived long enough abundantly to justify his privileges. What Hiero had been to the Romans throughout the First Punic War and during the early years of the Second, that Massinissa was to them during its closing years, throughout the long agony of the peace which followed it, and in the short and sharp struggle of the Third. When the ' War of Hannibal ' was over, Massinissa was planted, as we shall hereafter see, by the Romans as a thorn in the side of the city with which they professed to have made peace. He was encouraged to make aggressions on her mutilated territory, and then to complain to the Romans if she ventured to defend herself Carthage was the lamb in the fable. What- ever excesses she might allege, or whatever the pro- vocation or the injury she might receive, she knew that the case was prejudged against her by the wolf, and that she must meet the lamb's fate. The fall of Syphax was a great blow to Car- thage. Her most powerful friend was gone, and his place was taken by her deadliest foe. Indeed the whole power of Numidia was now arrayed against her. In spite of a naval success obtained by the Cartha- ginians over Scipio's fleet, and the consequent raising of the siege of Utica,^ the peace party now came to the ' Livy, xxix. 33 ; xxx. 12-15 ; Appiazi, Pitn. 27, 28 ; Zonaras, ix. 13. * Livy, xxx. 10 ; Appian, Pun. 30. MASSINISSA AND SYPHAX. 341 front at Carthage. The able Hasdrubal, the son of Gisco, they condemned to death in his absence — a sentence passed, ostensibly, no doubt, as a punishment for his recent failure, but really, as seems probable, ^ for his previous energy ; ' and they then opened negotiations for peace with Scipio.^ The terms offered by him were lenient ; more lenient, as has been already pointed out, than those offered by Regulus fifty years before. He knew that there was a strong party opposed to him at Rome, and he knew also that an army which had failed to reduce Utica would not be likely to capture Carthage by a cotip- de-main. Ambassadors were sent to Rome to get the terms to which both parties had agreed in Africa confirmed by the Roman Senate ; and if Livy may be believed — and "he is to a certain extent borne out by what we know of the state of parties at Carthage — those who were now in power had the baseness as well as the folly to try to throw the blame of the war on Hannibal. ' He had crossed the Alps, nay the Ebro itself, against the express wishes of the Carthaginian Government. So far as they were concerned, the treaty made at the end of the First Punic War was still in force ! Might it please the Romans to renew its terms ' This was too gross to be listened to even by the Romans.^ What of truth there was in it, that Hannibal had been the nerve and soul of the war, and that he had not been properly supported by the home government^ was true enough ; but it did not become that government to make a boast of it. What was untrue in it, that ' Appian, Pitn. 24. ^ Livy, xx.x. 16. ' Livy, xxx. 22. 342 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Hannibal had engaged in the war on his own respon- sibility and for private purposes of his own, was not only contradicted by the whole course of the war, but by what the Romans themselves, in all the bitterness of their hatred, could not help admitting about their great antagonist. Anyhow the proposals were sum- marily rejected, the ambassadors were dismissed with- out an answer, and Scipio was instructed to press the war to its natural conclusion.' But for Carthage one card still remained un- played. The sons of Hamilcar might be recalled to help in the hour of her extremity the state which had done so little to help them, and which now, by the mouths of one party within it, professed to be ashamed of having done even that little. And whether it was the work of the peace party, in the hope that peace might thereby be made more possible, or of the war party, who hoped that Hannibal, the genius of war, might yet strike a blow which would reverse its for- tunes, the order was sent to the two sons of Hamilcar to return to Africa. (205 B.C.) Driven out of Spain by Scipio, Mago, as we have seen, had crossed to the Balearic Islands, and passing thence from the harbour which still bears his name. Port Mahon, into Northern Italy, had taken Genoa, and during the last two years had been labouring to organise among the unsubdued and ever-savage Ligu- rians an active coalition against Rome.^ But it was too late. In the territory of the Insubrian Gauls, he at last measured his sword with the Romans. The battle was well contested, but it was decisive ; and Mago, ■ Livy, XXX. 23 ; Appian, Pun. 31. ' Li^T, xxviii. 46. HANNIBAL STANDS AT BAY. 343 who had received a dangerous wound in his thigh, staggered back by night, as best he could, through that rugged country, to the seacoast. Here he found the message of recall awaiting him. He set sail at once, as became a true son of Hamilcar ; but worn out with anxiety of mind and with agony of body, he died, perhaps happily for himself, before he hove in sight of the African shore.' A different, but hardly a less tragic fate, awaited his elder and more famous brother. For four years past, ever since the battle of Metaurus had shown him that ultimate success was not to be looked for, Han- nibal had been compelled to act simply on the defen- sive. With his sadly thinned army of veterans, and his Campanian and Bruttian recruits, he had with- drawn into the neck of land to the south of Italy which seemed as if it had been made for his purpose. If it prepared the way for his future retreat to Africa, it was Italy still, and it still for four years enabled him to keep his vow, and to make Rome uneasy. He had withdrawn to the ' Land's End,' but he lay there with his face to the foe, gathering up his strength, and ever ready to spring upon anyone who should venture to molest him. The Roman vultures gathered indeed round the dying lion ; but each, as in the heyday of his strength, demurred to being the first to approach him. Invincible as ever in the field — for Po- lybius tells us expressly that he was ' never beaten in a battle so long as he remained in Italy ' ^ — Hannibal ' Livy, XXX. 18, 19. ^ Polybius, X. 33. I, 2; xv. II. 7-II, ar/TTTjTOus 7€7ov Polybius, XV. i8, 19; Li\y, x.xx. 37 ; Appian, Pun. 54-65. BURNING OF THE CARTHAGINIAN FLEET. 353 the bitter opponent of the Barcine family, as their spokesman, to plead the cause of the conquered. The Romans accepted the conditions, for they felt that this time the Carthaginians were in earnest, and they felt also that Hannibal was still at large, and it might not be well, even then, to drive him to despair. The conclusion of the peace was celebrated at Carthage by a cruel sight, the most cruel which the citizens could have beheld, except the destruction of the city itself — the destruction of their fleet. Five hundred vessels, the pride and glorv' of the Phoenician race, the symbol and the seal of the commerce, the colonisation, and the conquests of this most imperial of Phoenician cities, were towed out of the harbour and were deliberately burned in the sight of the citizens.' In the days of the greatest prosperity of Carthage if any signal reverse happened to her — if, for instance, a storm at sea destroyed a portion of her navy, and so touched her in that on which she most 'prided herself, the command of the seas — the whole state would go into mourning, and the huge walls of the city would themselves be draped in black.^ It is a strange and touching custom, and the mention of it here may, perhaps, better enable us to picture to our- selves the feelings of the discrowned queen of the seas. Scipio now set sail for Italy, and, landing at Lilybaeum, made his way leisurely towards Rome through the cities and the provinces which he had freed from the invader, and which fondly hailed him as their deliverer.' ' Livy, XXX. 43. Diod. Sic. xix. 106. ' Wyy, XXX. 45. A A 354 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. He had delivered them, but from what and to what end ? He had delivered them from the imme- diate scourge of foreign war ; but it remained to be seen how far they would be gainers thereby. It re- mained to be seen, now that their great rival in the western Mediterranean was put out of the way, whether Rome would visit the Greek and the Sicilian, the Apulian and the Campanian towns, which had been guilty of coquetting with the invader, with that condign vengeance which she had already wreaked on the unhappy Capua and Tarentum ; whether she would hand them over to the more lingering oppres- sion of Roman magistrates and tax-gatherers ; or whether, throwing off the narrow municipal concep- tions in which she had grown up, she would rise to the imperial dignity which circumstances had forced upon her. In other words, it remained to be seen whether Rome would govern the states which were already, or were hereafter to be, enrolled in her vast Empire, in their own interests, encouraging, as far as was consistent with her own safety, their national life, developing their resources, giving them a liberty which was not a license, and a security which was not a solitude. If Rome rose to this, her true dignity, we can hardly regret in the interests of humanity that Hannibal's enterprise ended as it did. But if her con- duct was the reverse, or nearly the reverse, of all this, we may at least be allowed to question, as we have already hinted, what most historians have laid down as an axiom too self-evident to be worth discussing, whether it was for the good of the human race that Eome should not only out-top but should utterly ex- END OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR 355 tirpate her ancient rival. We may believe, on the whole, in the survival of the fittest, and that arms generally come to him who can best handle them ; but it is open to us to regret that even the less fit were not allowed to survive as well. There was surely room on the shores of the Mediterranean and on the Ocean beyond for the Phoenician as well as the Roman civilisation ; and the worst excesses of the Romans, the perfidy and the brutality of their wars in Spain, their grinding and oppressive system of taxation, the destruction of Corinth the eye of Greece, their civil wars themselves, might have been miti- gated or postponed, if they could not have been al- together prevented, by the salutary knowledge that they had powerful rivals on the other side of the Me- diterranean who would not allow them to be judge and jury, council, criminal, and executioner all in one. A A 3 356 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER XIX. CARTHAGE AT THE MERCY OF ROME. (201-150 B.C.) Deterioration of Roman character— Condition of Italy — Condition of Rome — Condition of Roman provinces — Story of Lucius Flamininus — Story of Sergius Galha — Rapid conquest of the East — State of Eastern world — Summarj^ of Roman conquests in the East — Reforms introduced by Hannibal at Carthage — Romans demand his sur- render— His exile and wanderings — His schemes, his sufferings, and his death — Roman fear and hatred of him — Credibility of the anecdotes about him — Humour of Hannibal — Anecdotes of him while at the court of Antiochus and during his wandering life — He founds Artaxata and Prusa — His personal characteristics — Deatii of Scipio — Treatment of Carthage by Romans and Massinissa — Delenda est Carthago. The fifty years which passed between the end of the Second and the outbreak of the Third Punic War were years in which Rome advanced with extraordinarily rapid strides towards the empire of the world ; but they witnessed also the incipient decay of all that was best in the Roman character. Already in the Second Punic War we have seen indications that the Golden Age of Rome was passing away. Whatever the heroic qualities which the long struggle called forth, we feel that the stern simplicity, the simple aith, the submission to law which formed the ground- DETERIORATION OF THE ROMANS. 357 work of the Roman character, and had marked, at all events, the dealings of Romans with each other, are not what they have been ; and now, when the strain of the war is over, and the victorious city has to meet new problems and to face new dangers, we find that except in the one point of her material strength, and her appliances for further conquest, she is un- equal to the emergency. An emergency indeed it was ! Three hundred thousand Italians had fallen in the field ; three hun- dred towns had been destroyed ; to the North the Gauls and the Ligurians were still unsubdued ; in Central Italy, the Campanians, the Apulians, and the Samnites who had long dallied with Hannibal were awaiting their future in ill-concealed anxiety ; while in the extreme South, the Bruttians, who had clung to him to the last, abandoned themselves to their fate in dull despair. The Italian yeomen, who had never wavered in their attachment to Rome, torn from their homes for years, and demoralised by the camp, were unable or unwilling to settle down into the quiet routine of agricultural life. They went as settlers to those disaffected towns which Rome, according to her practice, selected as new military colonies, or were con- tent to swell the city rabble, which now began to rise into importance and was kept in good humour by largesses of corn, or by cruel and degrading public spectacles. Their farms passed into the hands of capitalists, and were cultivated by foreign slaves whom the frequent wars with the half-subdued provinces brought in shoals to Rome. ' Sardinians for sale,' was the sorry jest which rose to people's lips when they 3S8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. saw a batch of these wretched creatures landed at Ostia, or exposed for what little they could fetch in the Roman Forum. ' The more slaves, the more enemies,' was the grim proverb which forced itself on their minds in all its stern reality, when they awoke to the danger, which it was then too late either to prevent or to cure. The rich arable lands of Italy fell back, as might be expected under such keeping, into pasture ; and half- naked slaves tended herds of cattle where Roman con- suls or dictators had been content to plough and dig before them. When the slaves asked their masters for clothes to cover them, they were met by the suggestion, half question and half answer, whether the travellers who passed through their solitudes were wont to pass naked .'' In Rome itself the old aristocracy, which, it must be admitted, with all its faults, had been, on the whole, an aristocracy of merit, had given place to a new nobility of wealth, who were as exclusive, and cer- tainly were not more far-sighted or more public- spirited, than their predecessors. Rule was no longer looked upon as its own reward. It was valued for what it brought, and high office lost half its dignity when it was won by a reckless display of wealth, or was used as a means of acquiring more. Religion was no longer the simple and childlike faith of the early commonwealth, but tended to become an affair of titles and of priests, of auguries and of ceremonies — of ceremonies which became more stringent and more vexatious exactly in proportion as they were felt to be less real. Beyond the confines of Italy Proper, Rome was CONDITION OF ROMAN PROVINCES. 359 mistress indeed of the four provinces which she had torn from Carthage in her fifty years' war, of Hither and Further Spain, of Sicily and Sardinia ; but of these, Sicily alone was unlikely to give her further trouble ; and that, not because she was well affected, but simply because she was exhausted. Sardinia supplied Rome with the living chattels which were to be so perilous a property ; while Spain entailed upon her a yet more disastrous heritage of petty wars — wars incessantly ended and incessantly re- newed ; wars waged on the part of the Romans with a baseness and a cruelty such as have characterised few wars before or since. The wholesale murder of a tribe which had submitted, and the assassination of a for- midable but honourable foe, were the weapons with which the Roman generals managed to retain their hold over their Spanish provinces. What kind of redress the subject or half-subject populations might expect to get, if appeal were made from the Roman generals to the Roman Government, will be suffi- ciently apparent if we relate two incidents. They are well known, but are too characteristic to be omitted here. L. Flamininus, brother of the conqueror of Ma- cedon, and consul in the year 192, happened to leave Rome for the province of Cisalpine Gaul just before the gladiatorial games came on. In his retinue was a beautiful boy to whom he was attached. The boy, old before he was young in cruelty and in profligacy, complained of the pleasure which he had lost. A Boian chief who had taken refuge in the Roman camp hap- pening just then to come in, the consul stabbed him with 36o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. his own hand that his favourite might feast his eyes on his dying agonies. The foul deed passed un- noticed and uncensured at the time ; but M. Porcius Cato, the most honest, and in many ways the most original of Roman statesmen, had the courage as censor, eight years afterwards, to strike the name of the murderer from off the roll of the Senate. The senators could not reinstate him by force ; but they showed their appreciation of the character of their brother senator by inviting him to retain his sena- torial seat in the theatre.' The other incident we will take from the wars in Spain which are fertile enough in them. The Lusita- nian War had just been terminated by the submis- sion of the insurgents. The Praetor, Sergius Galba, invited them in the kindest language to meet him in three several divisions that he might redress their grievances and assign them new lands. They came unsuspectingly, w-hen Galba at once fell upon and massacred them together with their wives and children, in cold blood. The few survivors were sold into slavery. On his return to Rome the same honest Cato, now in his extreme old age, who, forty-five years be- fore, had himself crushed a Spanish rising with no over scrupulous hand,^ attempted to bring the mis- creant to justice ; but Galba produced his weeping wife and children in court, and was acquitted by the compassionate judges.^ Happily for justice, however, one shepherd warrior had escaped the treacherous ' Livy, xxxix. 42 ; Cicero, De Senec. 12 ; Plutarch, Cafo, 17. See Liv)', xxxiv. passim. * Livy, Epit. xlix. ; Appian, vi. 59-60 ; Cicero, Brutus, 23. FLAMININUS AND GALEA. 35i massacre, and he lived to take ample but honourable vengeance for his country's wrongs. Viriathus de- feated consul after consul in the open field, till at length the Romans bribed his friends, and got rid of him by assassination. We turn with a sense of relief from this picture of the internal corruption of Rome, and from the dupli- city and savagery of her dealings with the brave nations of the West, to the story of her brilliant con- quests in the more effeminate East. We can but glance at them ; for, though they fall within the period of which this work treats, they have little direct bear- ing on the great drama which is its special subject, and which is now hastening on to its melancholy catastrophe. The Eastern world was still strewn with the frag- ments, each a colossus in itself, into which the gigantic empire of Alexander the Great had been broken up, as soon as the masterhand was withdrawn. Like a meteor, Alexander had shot down upon the East and had passed from province to province, laying low im- memorial empires and taking virgin fortresses, yet everywhere building where he had thrown down, se- lecting sites for new cities which have stood the test of twenty centuries, and planting, even in the remotest East, the seeds of Greek culture and civilisation which twenty centuries of barbarism have not been able altogether to obliterate. But like a meteor also, the political fabric founded by him had vanished. Among these fragments of his empire, each an empire in itself, and each at war with almost all the others, Rome was now to play her easy part ; and it was 362 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the ancestral kingdom of the conqueror of the East himself which was to be the first to feel the weight of the new power which had arisen in the West. It was not Rome but Macedon which had been, in the first instance, the aggressor. It may be indeed that Philip king of Macedon saw clearly that when Carthage should have been disposed of, his own turn would come, and that it would be wise to choose his own time for the ' struggle for life ' which he knew could not be altogether averted. Anyhow, he had formed an alliance offensive and defensive with Han- nibal after Cannae,' and the Romans, already over- matched as they were, had expected day by day to hear of his landing in Italy. Had he done so about the time when Tarentum fell into Hannibal's hands, Rome could hardly have weathered the storm. But Philip's bark was worse than his bite. With miserable procrastination he neglected to send aid to the Cartha- ginians when it might have turned the scale, and then with a zeal which was equally ill-timed, he had sent four thousand men to fight by their side at Zama, when all hope was gone."-* Thus, for fourteen years past, if there had not been continuous war, still less had there been peace between the neighbouring na- tions. When tlie Second Punic War was over, the bulk of the citizens fondly hoped that they would be, for a time at least, at peace with all the world ; and only when the Senate pointed out to them that if they did not go against Philip, Philip would come against them, and that those who were just freed from Han- nibal might live to see a second Hannibal in Italy, were ' Livy, xxiii. 33, = Livy, xxx. 26. 33. 42. ROMAN CONQUESTS IN THE EAST. 363 the reluctant people induced again to take up arms. Philip indeed was already planning alliances, or making conquests which would one day render him really formidable; and thus Rome, triumphant in the West, found herself, in some sense in spite of herself,' involved in that career of Eastern conquest and ag- gression which was not to be stopped, hardly even to receive a check, till the Mediterranean should become a Roman lake, and the power of Rome should be felt on the Nile as on the Tagus, on the Euphrates as on the Danube. It does not fall within the scope of this work to trace in detail the steps by which Rome acquired this universal supremacy ; to show how Philip, who had scornfully remarked that the Roman general ' thought he might do anything with Macedon be- cause he was a Roman, and that if war was what he wanted, war he should have,' found in a few short years, when the Macedonian phalanx first mea- sured its strength with the Roman legion in the open field at Cynoscephalae, that the Roman general was not far wrong, and, being thus driven to sue for peace, was able, out of all his conquests or dependencies, to retain only his hereditary kingdom; how the Greeks, delivered from the Macedonians, received at the hands of the Romans their nominal liberty, and greeted with short-sighted acclamations the Phil- hellenic Flamininus who was in fact giving them only a change of masters ; how ' the fetters of Greece,' ^ ' See Mommsen, ii. p. 229 and passim. * So Philip called the three fortresses of Corinth, Chalcis, and Deme- trias ; see Livy, xxxii. 37. 364 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. first adjusted by Philip, were now riveted on that unhappy country by a firmer hand, and how its petty cities and blustering confederations, the degenerate representatives of those states to whom the world owes Hellenic art and culture, after being allowed for a brief space to air their importance and their imbecility, settled down peaceably under the Roman protectorate, and avenged themselves by corrupting by their manners, or subduing by their arts, those whom they could not meet in arms ; how Antiochus the Se- leucid, the successor, as he fondly thought, of the king of kings who rejoiced in the self-assumed name of the Great, was driven by the Romans first out of Greece and then out of Asia Minor, eighty thousand of his Asiatic troops flying like chaff before the onset of less than half that number of Roman legionaries at Magnesia ; how the Roman province, as it was hence- forward proudly called, of ' Asia,' was carved out of his dominions, with puppet monarchs — Eumenes of Pergamus, Ariarathes of Cappadocia, and Prusias o£ Bithynia — clustering round it, and humbly regis- tering the decrees of the conquering Republic, while even the hordes of Gallic invaders learned to stop their ravages, or at least to keep at a respectful dis- tance from her all-powerful arm ; how the grand schemes of a greater than Antiochus the * Great,' now a friendless exile at his court, were crushed, not so much by the wisdom or courage as by the good fortune of Rome which found her best ally in the jealousy and the incapacity of the empty-headed mo- narch who flattered himself that he was Hannibal's protector ; how the Egyptian Ptolemy himself became HANNIBAL AT CARTHAGE. the ward of Rome, and the chief naval power of the Eastern Mediterranean was saved from the ambitious schemes of Macedon and Syria only by the upstart naval power of Rome in the West ; how, lastly, by the defeat of Perseus at Pydna, and the taking of Corinth by Mummius, Macedon and Greece disap- peared for ever as independent powers from history, and became part and parcel of the Roman Empire. All these events, and many more, are crowded into the fifty years of existence which it still suited Rome by a cruel kindness to allow to her Carthaginian rival. But they belong to the general current of Roman history, rather than to that special episode of which this book treats. The year 146, which witnessed the fall of Corinth, witnessed also, by a strange coincidence, the destruc- tion of Carthage ; and to the chain of events which led directly up to that catastrophe we now turn. Beaten in the war by his cruel destiny, Hannibal made the best of his altered circumstances. He had lived many lives in what he had achieved and suffered ; but he was still comparatively a young man, and he set himself, as though he had been born to be a statesman, to reform those abuses in the state which had done so much to mar his patriotic aims. His apology for his ignorance of the manners of the forum was hardly needed. He triumphantly refuted the accusations which the peace party were impudent enough, or base enough, to bring against him, that he had spared Rome, and had appropriated to his own use the public money ! * Whether by the help of his veterans, or by ' Zonaras, ix. 14, 366 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the voice of the citizens, he was appointed Shofete, or chief magistrate ; ' and he used his power to over- throw the narrow and selfish oh'garchy whose strength lay in the council of ' the hundred judges.' Hence- forward this council was to be filled up, not as here- tofore, by co-optation, but, in part at least, by free annual election.^ Lastly, Hannibal reformed the financial system, made those who had thriven on the plunder of the treasury disgorge their ill-gotten gains, and applied the proceeds to the payment of the war indemnity. So admirable were his measures, that at the end of thirteen years his .successors were able to offer to pay up the whole of the instalments of the forty millions due to Rome, and that without imposing any additional taxes on the subjects of Carthage.^ These reforms stirred up a nest of hornets round the ears of their great author, and his new enemies joined his old ones in denouncing his projects to the Romans. Rome, indeed, hardly needed such an in- vitation ; she had made peace with Carthage, but not with Hannibal. If she no longer feared the city, she feared one of its simple citizens ; and in spite of the protest of Scipio Africanus, Hannibal's noble-minded foe, an embassy was sent to demand the surrender of the man whose bare existence disturbed her equani- mity.'' From the crowning disgrace of complying with this demand Hannibal saved his fellow-citizens ' Livy, .xxxiii. 46 ; Com. Nepos, Hannib. 7. 4 ; Justin, xxxi. 2. 6 : ' principem rerum ac turn temporis consulem.' ^ Livy, xxxiii. 46, ' Ut in singulos annos judices legerentur. ' ' Livy, xxxiii. 46, 47. * Livy, xxxiii. 47 ; Val. Max. iv. I. 6 ; Zonaras, ix. 18. HANNIBAL AND ANTIOCHUS. 367 by going into voluntary exile. The greatest of the Phoenicians first visited Tyre, the cradle of his race, and passed thence to Ephesus, whither, as chance vv'ould have it, AntiocHus had gone before him,' that he might prepare for war with Rome. He was received with the highest honours ; and, striking while the iron was hot, he asked the great king to place at his disposal a small fleet and army. If this boon were granted him, he undertook to sail to Car- thage ; to renew the struggle with Rome in Africa ; thence once more to cross to Italy, and there meeting Antiochus himself — who was to advance overland and draw fresh contingents as he advanced from Macedon and Greece — to bear down with him on their common enemy.^ It was a magnificent scheme, and one which did not seem altogether impossible of realisation, for just then a general rising in Spain gave the Romans enough to do in the West alone. But it was proposed to deaf ears. In vain did Hannibal reveal, perhaps for the first time in his life, the secret which had been the mainspring of his achievements, the story of his early vow.^ The courtiers were jealous of the lonely exile, and the great king himself had no mind to be told by a suppliant and a refugee what his interests or his duty called for, or, if he was told, to do it."* Against his own urgent entreaties, Hannibal was ' Livy, xxxiii. 49. * Livy, xxxiv. 60 ; Justin, iii. 31 ; Appian, Syr. 7. » Polyb. iii. 11 ; Livy, xxxv. 19; Com. Nepos, Hannibal, 2. (See above, p. 184.) * Livy, xxxv. 42 ; Zonaras, ix. i8. 368 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. carried into Greece, in the wake of the Syrian army, there to be asked for fresh advice, which Antiochus took care again ostentatiously to reject.' When his warnings turned out true, he was carried back into Asia, and Antiochus having, as it would seem, nothing for the greatest soldier of his age to do by land, sent him off to sea to escort some ships from Phoenicia. The small armament was met, as might have been expected, by the large Rhodian navy, and was over- powered in an engagement which took place off Side. Hannibal himself fought well and escaped to Ephesus just in time to see the huge force which, as Antiochus imagined, was to sweep the Romans out of Asia.'^ This force was itself annihilated at Magnesia, and the conquerors demanded, as one of the conditions of peace, that Hannibal should be surrendered to them.' Once more he anticipated the demand. He fled to Crete, and thence returning to Asia, wandered from land to land, till at last he found refuge with Prusias, the petty king of Bithynia. There he lived for some years ; but even there the Roman fear, or hatred, pursued him ; and at last, at a place called Libyssa, the Phoenician hero disappointed his implacable enemies, who were headed, it is sad to say, by no less a person than Flamininus, the conqueror of Macedon, in the only way which was now left to him, by taking the poison which, as the story goes, he used to carry about with him concealed in a ring.* The oracle which ' Livy, xxxvi. "]-?>. ''■ Livy, xxxvii. 8. 23, 24 ; Corn. Nep. Hannibal, 8. 4. ' Polyb. xxi. 14. 7 ; xxii. 26. II ; Livy, xxxviii. 38 ; Justin, xxxii. 4- 3- * Livy, xxxix. 51 ; Corn. Nep. Hannibal, x. 2 ; J>:s;in, xxxii. 4. S. DEATH OF HANNIBAL. 369 had foretold that ' Libyssian soil should one day give shelter to Hannibal,' ' was fulfilled, not by his return in his old age to his native country, but by his death in this remote corner of the Sea of Marmora, and for centuries afterwards a huge mound of earth was shown to travellers which was called ' the tomb of Hannibal.' ^ So died the last and the greatest of Hamilcar's sons ; and it may be doubted — or may we not rather say, after such study as we have been able to give to their lives and actions, that it hardly admits of doubt — whether the whole of history can furnish another example of a father and a son, each cast in so truly heroic a mould, each so worthy of the other, and each proving so brilliantly, in his own person, through a lifelong struggle with fate, that success is in no way necessary to greatness ? Many anecdotes have come down to us respecting the last few years of Hannibal's life — the years, that is, of his exile and humiliation. Few of these, perhaps, are thoroughly authenticated or rise to the dignity of the man, as, even with our imperfect lights, we have seen him ; but we are fain, before withdrawing our eyes altogether from his commanding figure, to take a glance at anything which may probably, or even possibly, shadow forth the truth respecting him. The anecdotes told of Hannibal's last years fall naturally into three classes. There are those which are ' Appian, Syr. xi. ; At^vircra Kpv\p(i $w\os 'Avyifiov Se/xas. Cf. Plutarch, Flaminhius, 20 ; Zonaras, ix. 21. - Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 43 ; 'fuit et Libyssa oppidum ubi nunc Hannibalis tantum tumulus.' B B 370 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. transparent fictions — the product of Roman vanity or malice, or of the mere love of the absurd ; such, for instance, as that which tells us of the personal inter- view of Hannibal and his conqueror at the court of Antiochus, and the delicate yet fulsome compliment said to have been paid by him to the generalship ot Scipio at the expense of his own.' From such stories as these we turn away with impatience and disgust. There are others which can hardly have been in- vented, and which, it is probable enough, are strictly true ; while others again — and these the most nume- rous class — hover on that borderland between fact and fiction, on which it is the privilege or the fate of great men, when once they have been removed from the scene of their labours, simply because they have been so great, to move. The substratum of such stories is doubtless true, and the accessories have gathered round them by a process of accretion which, in an illiterate age, and perhaps in some ages which are not illiterate, is as strictly natural as are the various feelings, which contact with a commanding character calls forth in differently constituted minds. They are the fundamental feelings of human nature : envy, jealousy, or fear deepening into a passionate and unreasoning hatred ; admiration kindling into enthusiasm, and enthusiasm, again, rising at times into something which is even akin to worship. Plutarch ^ tells us incidentally of a humorous re- mark made by Hannibal just before the battle of Cannae, which, being caught up by the bystanders, spread rapidly from mouth to mouth, till the whole ' Livy, XXXV. 19 ; Appian, x. 10. ^ Plutarch, Fabius, 15. HUMOUR OF HANNIBAL. 37^ army, with its Babel of races and of languages, pealed with one hearty and continuous laugh. Hannibal had ridden with a few attendants to a rising bit of ground that he might view the enemy who were now drawn up in order of battle. One of his followers named Gisco, a Carthaginian noble, remarked that the number of the enemy was very astonishing. 'There is something,' replied Hannibal gravely, 'which is still more astonishing.' 'What is that.-" asked Gisco with equal gravity, but doubtless with intensified anxiety. 'Why, that in all that host,' rejoined] Hannibal, ' there is not a single man whose name is Gisco.' The joke does not read to us like a very good one ; perhaps we could hardly expect that it would, when we know so little of the decorous personage at whose expense the laugh was raised, and when the story has been divested of those accompaniments of time and place, of gesture and manner, above all of that divinurn aliquid, that indescribable something, which is the very essence of humour, and which is the sufficient justification, even for that ' inextinguishable laughter ' of the immortal gods at a very ordinary occurrence which so scandalised the religious instincts of Plato. Anyhow the incident was not without its material value ; for Hannibal's men, feeling that their general would not have uttered a jest at such a time unless he was in good heart as to the result, went into battle with redoubled confidence. No other illustration has been preserved to us, during the period of his long ^struggle in Italy, of that gift of humour, that genuine under-current of the soul, of which, in spite of thesilence of ourhistorians, we can- E B 2 372 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. not believe that anyone so great as Hannibal could have been wholly destitute. But one or two of the later anecdotes of which we speak do give us some idea of his humour on its drier or more serious side, the only side to which he would be likely to give free play in his sadly altered circumstances. • During his residence at Ephesus Hannibal was invited by his hosts to listen to a discourse of Phor- mio, the philosopher. Phormio discoursed for seve- ral hours on military affairs in general, and on the duty of a commander-in-chief in particular. His audience was enthusiastic, and turning to Hannibal, who had been listening patiently throughout, asked him triumphantly what he thought of their philoso- pher ' I have seen many dotards in my time,' said Hannibal, ' but verily this is the greatest dotard of them all.' ^ On another occasion, when Hannibal returned, as we have seen, to Ephesus from his unsuccessful sea battle, he found assembled there an enormous army, with the most magnificent and diversified equip- ments, which Antiochus had gathered together from every corner of his dominions, confident that it would sweep the Romans out of Asia.^ The great king, his heart swelling with pride, turned to the Carthaginian exile, who had dissuaded him from the attempt, and asked him whether he did not think these were enough for the Romans .'' ' Yes,' answered Hannibal grimly, foreseeing the result, ' enough for the Romans, however greedy they may be.' ' See the account of Hannibal's grim laughter, Livy, xxx. 45. - Cic. Orat. ii. 18. ' Polyb. xxxi. 3, 4 ; Livy, xxxvii. 39, 40. ANECDOTES OF HANNIBAL. 373 Other anecdotes illustrate the thousand shifts and devices of which Hannibal was a master, and to which his enemies, in the endeavour to salve their wounded pride, were fain to attribute so large a por- tion of his successes. Fraud is the force of weak natures ; and it was not often in the mid career of his conquests that the mighty Carthaginian needed to have recourse to any other weapon than his own con- summate military skill. But when, as now, force was no longer to be thought of, it is little wonder if the homeless fugitive availed himself to the full of the other weapons which Nature had so prodigally placed within his hands. The Roman commissioners who had been sent to Carthage to demand his extradition, he put off their guard by the unconcerned manner in which he walked about the city in their society, and then, like Samson or the Circassian Shamil, escaped from them just when they thought he was within their grasp.' The Tyrian shipmasters of the island of Cercina, who he feared might be planning to carry him back to Carthage, and hand him over to the Romans, he invited to partake of his hospitality. The banquet was spread beneath an awning made of the mainsails of their own ships which he had craftily borrowed from them for the purpose, and when his guests were carousing he slipped out, and was well off in his flight to Syria before any one of them could rig his ship and follow him.^ The Cretans, whose cupidity was aroused by his wealth, he deceived by a simple stratagem. He filled some earthen jars with lead, and covering them over with ' Livy, xxxiii. 47. ^ Livy, xxxiii. 48. 374 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. gold and silver, deposited them as a sacred trust in the Temple of Diana, while his real wealth he con- veyed away concealed in some hollow brazen images, which he carried with him as works of art of little value.' By a similar stratagem he managed to dis- cover, just before a naval battle, what his enemies in vain attempted to hide from him, the vessel which carried Eumenes, the puppet king of Pergamus. Unable to vent his hatred on the Romans themselves, he poured out, in the engagement which ensued, all its vials on Rome's craven and obsequious ally. ' Fight ' — so might have run the watchword which passed along from ship to ship — * fight neither with small nor great, but only with the King of Pergamus.' ^ Indignant at the treatment he received from Antiochus, Hannibal on one occasion took refuge with Artaxias, one of his revolted satraps, in a remote corner of Armenia ; and it is to the constructive genius of the exiled Carthaginian that Artaxata itself, the historic capital of Armenia, is said by Strabo and Plutarch to owe its origin.^ Prusa, the modern Broussa, a place which has for centuries played a considerable part in Eastern history, and is perhaps destined, owing to recent events in the East, to be still more important in the immediate future, is, curiously enough, said, in like manner, to have been founded by the great Carthaginian while he dwelt under the pro- tection of the miserable Prusias of Bithynia.^ It is ' Com. Nepos, Hannibal, 9 ; Justin, xxxii. 4. 4. ^ Com. Nepos, Hannibal, 11. I-4. ^ Strabo, xi. p. 528 ; Plutarch, LiuttUus, 31. Pliny, Nat. Hist. v. 43; ' Prusa ab Hannibale sub 01}Tnpo condita, ' PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HANNIBAL. 375 interesting to see Hannibal here, if here only, taking his place as the supposed founder of mighty cities, among the great wall-builders and wonder-workers of Eastern history and legend : Nimrod and Nebu- chadnezzar, Sesostris and Semiramis, Hercules and Samson, Zal and Rustum, Solomon and ' the two- horned Iskander.' These anecdotes may be taken for what they are worth ; but it seems undesirable to omit them altogether. Other personal characteristics of Hannibal or incidents in his life — his continence, his simple fare, his sleep ' so aery, light, on pure digestion bred ; ' his power of enduring the extremes of heat and cold, of hunger and fatigue ; his dreams, and their influence over him; the simplicity of his dress as contrasted with the splendour of his arms and of his horse ; his skill in boxing and in running ; his lessons in Greek, and the ease with which he was able to speak and to write it ; his manoeuvres and disguises ; his in- fluence over* men ; his patience and tenacity of pur- pose— what Spenser so well calls his stubbornness, the ' stubborne Hanniball ; ' ' his marriage with a Spanish maiden, and his discovery of Spanish mines ; his watch-towers erected along the coasts of Africa and Spain — these and other characteristic facts we have to gather, as best we may, from stray hints, scattered up and down through Greek and Roman literature, from an epithet here, an anecdote there, from an undesigned coincidence or an unde- signed discrepancy ; but, coming to us though they do in so unsatisfactory a shape, they yet help us, in ' Faery Qucetic, v. 49. 376 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. some measure, to clothe with flesh and blood the figure of the hero whose general outlines seem, per- haps, only more gigantic by reason of the mist through which we are compelled to contemplate it. They en- able us to feel that the noble line of his African fellow-countryman, ' I am a man, and nothing that is human do I think alien to me,' may, in spite of his almost more than human proportions, and in spite of the deficiency of our materials, be, in its measure, ap- plied also to him. In the same year with Hannibal died his great rival, Scipio Africanus,^ the victim of a like reverse of fortune. Like Harmibal, the victor of Zama had tried his hand at politics, but, like many other great generals who have followed his example, in politics he does not seem to have been at home. He longed for literary repose, and when the tide of popular favour turned against him, he retired into a kind of voluntary exile at Liternum. ' Ungrateful country,' he cried with his last breath, ' thou shalt not have my ashes.' ^ The great Carthaginian leader was gone, but something of his handy-work still remained in the prosperity which his reforms had secured for his native city, in spite of the ever-increasing depredations of Massinissa. The Second Punic War had hardly been concluded, and the terms of peace agreed to, when that wily Numidian, lord, by the favour of Rome, of the dominions of Syphax as well as of his own,' began to justify his position by encroaching on the ' Justin, xxxii. 4. 9. ^ Livy, xxxviii. 56 ; Val. Max. v. 3. 2. ^ Polyb. XV. 18. S ; Livy, xxx. 44. DELENDA EST CARTHAGO. 377 Emporia to the south-east of Carthage. This was the richest part of the Pha:nician territory in Africa ; it contained the oldest Phoenician colonies, and had be- longed to Carthage by a prescription of at least 300 years. The Carthaginians, as by treaty bound, ap- pealed to Rome for protection ; and Scipio, the best judge of its provisions, as well as one of the most honourable of Roman citizens, went ov-er to Africa to decide the matter. But he decided nothing, and Mas- sinissa was left in possession of his plunder.' This led to fresh encroachments on the other side of the Carthaginian territory along the river Bagradas, and these again to fresh commissions from Rome, which always ended in the same way.^ At last the tram- pled worm turned on its oppressor ; but fortune was on the side of the chartered brigandage of Massinissa. Hasdrubal, at the head of the patriotic party, was completely defeated, and Carthage itself was in danger. The Carthaginians, by neglecting to ask leave of Rome to defend themselves, had at length given the Romans the very pretext which they wanted for interfering actively and giving them the coup dc grAce? Already before this a new commission had been sent out with old Marcus Catoat its head. It proved to be an evil day for Carthage. The Censor had passed through the rich districts which still remained to her. He had been amazed at the wealth, the population, and the resources of the city, which he had believed ' Polybius, xxxii. 2; Livy, xxxiv. 62 ; cf. xl. 17 and 31 ; Appian, Pun. 67. 2 Livy, xlii. 23, 24 ; Epit. xlvii. ; Appian, Pun. 68. ' Livy, Epit. xlviii. ; Appian, Pun. 70-73. 378 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. was crushed ; and he returned home with his narrow mind thoroughly impressed with the beHef that if Rome was to be saved, Carthage must be destroyed. Cato brought to the consideration of every subject a mind thoroughly made up upon it. No one ever rea- soned him out of an opinion he had formed. He ex- hibited in the Senate some figs as remarkable for their freshness as their size ; and telling the admiring senators that they grew in Carthaginian territory only three days' sail from Rome, he ended his speech that day, and every speech which he delivered in the Senate afterwards, whatever the subject under de- bate, with the memorable words — Carthage must be blotted out.^ lutarch, Cato, 27 ; Appian, Ptin. 69 ; Floras, ii. 15. 4. i APPIAN AND HIS HISTORY. 379 CHAPTER XX. DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE. (149-146 B.C.) Appian and his History — Polybius— Characteristics of his Histoiy — His love of truth — Topography of Carthage — Causes of its obscurity — Changes made by Nature — Changes made by Man — The penin- sula and the isthmus — The fortifications and triple wall — The Tiienia — The harbours — Resolve of Rome respecting Carthage — Treachery of Romans — Scene at Utica — Scene at Carthage — The Roman attack fails — Repeated failures and losses — Scipio ^milianus — His character and connections — He takes the Megara — Siege of the city proper — Scipio's mole and the new outlet— Contradictions in Carthaginian character — Scipio attacks the harbour quarter — He takes Nepheris — The final assault — The three streets — The Byrsa— Fate of the city and its inhabitants — Curse of Scipio — Unique character of the fall of Carthage — Its consequences — Sub- sequent cities on its site — Final destruction by the Arabs. Our knowledge of the Third Punic War is derived almost exclusively from Appian, a mere compiler who did not live till the time of the Emperor Ha- drian, and whose accuracy, where he draws upon his own resources, may be judged from the fact that he places Saguntum to the north of the Ebro, and makes Britain only half a day's sail from Spain.' For- tunately for us, however, there is good reason to be- lieve that his account of the fall of Carthage is drawn ' Appian, Hisp. i and 7. 38o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. directly from Polybius, who not only stands in the highest rank as an historian, but was himself present and bore a part in the scenes which he described.' Lord Bacon has remarked in one of his aphorisms, that while the stream of time has brought down float- ing on its surface many works which are light and valueless, those which were weightier and worthier have too often sunk to the bottom and been lost to us. Happily the aphorism is not wholly true, and in this instance the lighter work of Appian has been able, as it were, to give buoyancy to the substance of the weighty work of Polybius. Let us dwell for a moment on the qualifications of the man to whom students of ancient history, especially of Carthaginian history, owe so much. Polybius was a Greek of Megalopolis, who having been carried off to Italy, in common with all the more enterprising and independent spirits among his coun- trymen, by the Romans, was invited to take up his residence in the house of ^milius Paullus, the con- queror of Macedonia ; and it is to this happy accident that we owe, if not his history itself, at all events, some of its most distinguishing characteristics. Here it was that Polybius learned to appreciate, as perhaps no other Greek or Roman had hitherto done, the grandeur alike of the Greek intellect and of the Roman character, and was able to mark out, in his own mind at least, the appropriate sphere and limits of each. Here he influenced, and, in turn, he was influ- enced by, some of the foremost minds which the Im- perial State had yet produced — the young and virtuous ' Appian, Pun. 132. POLYBIUS AND HIS HISTORY. 381 Scipio himself, his adopted father iEmilius PauUus, the wise and gentle Laelius, the satirist Lucilius, the African comedian Terence, and the Greek philosopher Pansetius. Here he learned to rise alike above the petty intrigues of the Achaean states and the narrow patriotism of Rome to the conception of an universal Empire, which was to combine intellectual culture with material civilisation, and order with something which was, at least, akin to national life. Here, lastly, in his part of historian, he cut himself adrift from the dry annals and the meagre epitomes which still, to a great extent, monopolised the name of history,and rose to that higher conception which Thucydides alone of his predecessors had apprehended — the conception of history (or, at all events, the history of the Mediter- ranean states), as a living whole, in which, when the due distinction had been drawn between the ephe- meral and the lasting, the superficial and the essential, each successive phase of society, however complicated, may be shown by adequate links of cause and effect, to be the resultant of that which has preceded it. 'Truth,' says Polybius himself, in a well-known passage, ' is the eye of history ; for as a living thing when deprived of sight becomes useless, so if truth be taken from history what remains is only an idle tale.' ' From the position here taken up he never consciously swerved. If he was unduly influenced by the views prevalent in the Scipionic circle, much allowance must be made for the haze through which he saw, and could not help seeing, the exploits of his patron's family. But what history has gained from him and his ' Cf. Polyb. viii. 10. 7-9. 382 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. surroundings is so great that we need not quarrel with the small price which has been paid for it. Through the influence of the Scipionic circle, Polybius was able to get access to documents which otherwise would have been closed to him. He was able to study men as well as things, and those the men who were play- ing the most decisive part in the history of their time. It is to the strength of the friendship which sprang up between him and his patron's adopted son, the younger Scipio, that we owe the one tolerably clear description we possess of Carthage itself, and our one history of the Third Punic War. He had only recently returned to his native country after his seventeen years' exile ; but when he heard that his friend was appointed to the supreme command, he left it again, in order that he might witness and record that friend's exploits. Here perhaps, before we look upon the last scene of all, will be the place to describe, as clearly as we can, the position, the fortifications, and the ap- pearance of the imperial city. We noticed, at the outset, the strange obscurity which hangs over the origin, the rise, and the internal life of a city whose influence was, for centuries, so wide-spread and so commanding. The same obscurity unfortunately ex- tends also to its topography. The blind forces of Nature, and the ruthless hand of Man, have conspired to eff'ace even its ruins. It is not merely the identi- fication in detail of its walls, its temples, and its streets, for these might have been expected to dis- appear ; but it is those more permanent features of its citadel and its harbours, nay, it is the position of TOPOGRAPHY OF CARTHAGE. 383 the city itself, which is in some points open to dispute. How this has come about requires explanation. To the north of the city the tempests of two thou- sand years, and the alluvial deposits of the river Bagradas,' which now enters the sea several miles to the north of its former mouth, have turned much which, in the palmy days of Carthage, was open sea into dry land or into land-locked lagunes ; while along the whole west and north front of the city the sea has revenged itself by encroaching on the land, and the massive substructions of fortifications which, perhaps, turned Agathocles aside and long baffled even Scipio, may still be seen engulfed beneath the waters at the distance of a furlong or more from the present coast. Nor has Man been less destructive than Nature. On the same or nearly the same spot have risen suc- cessively a Phoenician, a Roman, a Vandal, and a Byzantine capital. Each was destroyed in whole or in part by that which was to take its place, and each successive city found ample materials for its own rise in the ruins which it had itself occasioned. The Byzan- tine city was finally destroyed in 698 A.D. Since that time its site has been almost uninhabited, and Berbers and Bedouins, Fatimite Kalifs and Italian Republics, German Emperors and French Kings, have all had a share in the work of obliteration. The debris of so many cities have formed a vast quarry out of which neighbouring hamlets and towns have been built and rebuilt, and, if we except the aqueducts and reservoirs, which tell their own tale, even to the most cursory observer, of its former population and prosperity, he ' Silius Italicus, Pun. vi. 140-14.4. 384 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. who would see any remains of the once innperial city, must dig deep down through fathoms of crumbling masonry, or through mosaic pavement laid above mo- saic pavement, sometimes three in number, till, per- chance, he lights upon a votive tablet covered with Punic characters and scored with rude figures of a triangle and an uplifted hand, or, it may be, with the two horns of the Moon Goddess, Astarte ; or brings to view the basement of the mighty temple which witnessed the bloody offerings to Baal-Moloch. Having said thus much on the difficulties of the subject, we may proceed, with such help as is given us by the fragmentary notices of the ancients, and by re- cent investigations upon the spot, to indicate the main features of the city. In a work of this size, we can, of course, only give the results and not the process by which we have arrived at them; still less can we indicate all the elements of doubt which may be used to support or overthrow this or that theory of rival antiquarians. The isthmus connecting the peninsula on which Carthage was built with the mainland was three miles across, and the whole of the widening ground to the east of it, embracing a circuit of about twenty-three miles,' would seem, at one time, to have been covered by the city proper, its suburbs, its gar- dens, and its burying-ground. The peninsula ter- minates towards the north and east in two bluff headlands, now called Cape Ghamart and Cape Car- thage. Whether these were included in the city ' Polybius, i. 73. 4-5 ; Livy, Epit. li. ; .Strabo, xvii. 3. 15 ; Appian, Pint. 95. 119. (See above, p. 10.) THE TRIPLE WALL OF CARTHAGE. 385 fortifications, or were left to defend themselves as outlying forts by their own inherent strength, is not quite clear. The city proper was adequately defended on the three sides which touched the water by ordinary sea- walls ; but on the side towards the land, the side from which alone the mistress of the seas and islands could dream of serious danger, ran a triple line of forti- fications, of which the remains have only very recently been brought to light.' The outer wall, which would have to bear the brunt of an attack, was six or seven feet thick and forty-five feet high, and it was flanked throughout its length by towers at equal distances of two hundred feet. Between this and the two similar walls which rose behind it, and somehow forming part of them, so as to make the whole one compact mass of masonry, were casemates capable of containing three hundred elephants, with their vast stores of food. Above these rose another story with stabling for four thousand horses. In close proximity there were bar- racks for their riders, as well as for twenty thousand infantry.^ These magnificent fortifications ran up from near the Lake of Tunis to the hill on which the citadel was built, and here were dovetailed into the wall of the citadel itself,^ but, it would seem, were not continued on the same scale to the sea to the north of it. The nature of the ground appears to ' Beule, Fouilles a Carthage, iii. and iv. Appian, Pun. 95 ; Strabo xvii. 3. 14. Cf. Appian, Pun. 88 ; Diod. Sic. xxxii. Frag. p. 522. ' Cf. Orosius, iii. 22, ' ex una parte murus communis erat urbis et Byrsae.' C C 386 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. have made the prolongation of such elaborate de- fences unnecessary, and the only point which was really weak in the whole line of defence was the bit of wall at the south angle of the town, just where a narrow tongue of land, called the Taenia, which plays an important part in the siege, cut off the open gulf from the lake which lay within it. This spot, lying as it were between land and water, was especially open to attacks from both, but seems never to have been sufficiently protected against either.' Besides the Lake of Tunis there were two land- locked docks or harbours, opening the one into the other, and both, it would seem, the work of human hands. Hie partus alii effodiunt, says Virgil, and in this instance, at least, he speaks historical truth. The outer harbour was rectangular, about fourteen hundred feet long and eleven hundred broad, and was appropriated to merchant vessels ; the inner was circular like a drinking cup, whence it was called the Cothon, and was reserved for ships of war. It could not be approached except through the merchant har- bour, and the entrance to this last was only seventy feet wide, and could be closed at any time by chains.'^ The war harbour was entirely surrounded by quays, containing separate docks for 220 ships. In front of each dock were two Ionic pillars of marble, so that the ' Appian, Pun. 95, ad fin. * In the times of the Vandals the word ' Cothon ' is unknown, and that of ' Mandracium ' has taken its place ; Procopius, Bel. Vandal. i. 19 and 20, shows that it could be closed then, as in the Carthaginian times, by a chain : /col 01' Kapxn^ivioi toj e\6iJ.evot, eiVfTTjrd rif (rT6K

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