MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 93-81434- MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the malcing of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for pui use," that user may be liable for copyright infringemen This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: SMITH, REGINALD BOSWORTH TITLE: CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS PLACE: NEW YORK DATE: 1913 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # _J3^z 8143^^3 BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 884.9 SmSl Smith. Reginald Bosworth, 1839-1908. ^tha^and the Carthaginians. New Tork, Longmans, Green, and co., l^-I-f' . xxvi, 400 p. plates, maps (part foW.J 1. Carthage - Hist. Restrictions on Use: NNC TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE:___35__^:^^__ REDUCTION RATIO:__ j/X IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA /IIA IB UB ~" ^ DATE FILMED:___^7iL£&_-3_ INITIALS J^_^£_ FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. 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" ■*" - . ^ — ^ ■ .^ >''/--~ _ - - -V^JS^-— <^— ^:-:r- 1 1 ■ ^^ 9 ^H| '^uM^ ^■^^'^^ ■ ■ • 1--::==^-^^ B^ -1 g.- ^ -== '^^?:^^=j-^^-^;i^- " ■2III?-^-^^'~^^^ '"'' /-^r^---^ ~ ■■ ■ - - B^ ^ _■. =s==-===-^ XimLii-=^^^ — *?^ ■- ■ ■ - "- s=V-j^|^j. ^ 'i.t^- ^^^s |!^| rr-ri ■ il^p'lfl ^msei.^ -^^ ^Ifegi^ :'^-fi-«[^— — ^^^^K :-^rf*=^^e^- '.- --=^-^-=:i=== ??::—=-.- :- . •=N',', =—7: = ; = r-.- -Jf^STT- ^^m^»»^.i\ =^=«=— =^^^_-^r_-_^^^^- • CARTHAGE AND THK CARTHAGINIANS BY THE SAMK AUTHOR. ROME \ND CARTHAGE: THE PUNJO WARS. (B.C. 264--B.C. 140.) IVITH NINE MAPS AND PLANS. Fcp. 8vo, 2s. Qd. {Epochs of Ancient Hiatonj.) LONGMANS, G R K K xV, AND CO., LOXl«)\, NEW VOHK, HO.MIUY AND CALCITTTA. u 00 BQ U HBl iui c u us CA CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS BY R. BOSWORTH SMITH, M.A luKMIULV FELr.OW OF TRINITY COI-LKGE, OXFORD AUTHOR OF "MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM" AND "THE LIFE OF LORD LAWRENCE" NEiy IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LOXDOM NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUITA All rig Ms rtitrvtd <-v^^ • r^'f^i ) 5r 2? 7-^ en M A T R I M E iE. 0UJU8 NOMEN VIV^ BUIC OPDSCULO PKJSTKXI DEBUERAT, QH)b MATERNO AMORE INCErTO.M FOVKUAT, MORTUJI PBRAOTUM AMANTISSIMUS DF.DICO. 18916G PREFACE. TuE pages which follow are an attempt within mode- rate 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 themselves 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, what- ever the deficiency of the materials and whatever my own shortcomings, I cannot 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 «iie 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 one which I venture to think does not necessarily affect its intrinsic value. In history, as in other pursuits — 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 PREFACE. than the result. If by such studies— by the endeavour to picture to ourselves v^rbole 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 sorry, 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 reposa It is possible, indeed, that more extensive excava- 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— destroying 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 discovery 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 PREFACE. 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 before 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 interesting to the student of Biblical as of Cartha- ginian 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 Carthage 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, or had felt the weight of Hannibars 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. Xll PREFACE, 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 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 Hbraries, which the Eomans, Hke rich men who know not what they give, carelessly handed over to the tender mercies of Numidian chieftains, and which Sallust, a century after- wards, must have had in his own hands, have perished by a destruction as complete as that which overtook the Alexandrian hbrary itself. We cannot pretend to contemplate the fate of these Carthaginian libraries with the philosophic indifference which it pleased Gibbon to affect with regard to that of Alexandria ; for we cannot suppose that the destruction of the Punic literature was in any way a benefit, or that its preservation would have been anything but of deep interest and value to posterity. A few words of explanation as to the general treat- ment of my subject, and the comparative prominence which I have allotted to its different parts, may, perhaps not unfitly, find a place here. As regards the method of inquiry, I have in all cases gone direct to the fountain-head, reading carefully every passage which has come down to us from the ancients, comparing conflicting statements with each other, and PREFACE, XIII always endeavouring in the first instance to form an independent judgment upon them. On points which seemed in any degree doubtful I have afterwards con- sulted 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 themselves. I have avoided all prolonged discussion of disputed points, such, for instance, as the route of Hannibal over the Alps, the battle-field of the Trebia, the minutiae of the topography of ancient Carthage, or the exact posi- tion 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 rejoinders, of observations and counter-observations ; but have been compelled to con- tent 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 continuous history, or to a series of monographs, rather than to a book which is not intended to be exhaustive, 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 xhr PREFACE. attempted to give a general sketch of the Carthaginian influence and civilisation, and to bring together into as small a compass as is consistent with any degree 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, continually to point out those statements which he considers 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 draw- backs, the victory of progress and civiHsation, is a fact to which all history seems to point ; but it is none the less the duty of the historian to dwell upon these draw- backs, 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 PREFACE, n 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, therefore, 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 have looked upon the First Punic War as a dull and tedious war, and have accordingly been content to give it a very cursory notice. Dr. Arnold, for example, who has dedicated 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 catastrophes, the Herculean exertions made by both States, and the frightful sacri- fices 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 inter- esting 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. KVi PREFACE. 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 fulness 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 he has given barely twenty to Hamilcar ; and Dr. Mommsen himself, though he is in no way sparing of his admira- tion 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 disproportionate to their comparative merits and achievements. 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, per- haps, 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 requires 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 PREFACE. XVll me, for the first time, into direct personal 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 destined, whatever the up- shot of the present Eastern difficulties, always to main- tain its hold on the Eastern world. I was able several times to visit the site of 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 renowned in ancient story, the site of the still more ancient city, the parent city of Utica. In the concluding 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 Eev. Sir G. W. Cox, Bart., for having carefully revised my book, both in manuscript and in proof, and for having made several valuable suggestions. Thb Knoll, Harrow, 26th Nov., 1877. ft CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. CAKTHAQE. Characteristics of Phoenicians— Their defects— Size of their territory— Their relations to Israelites— Early commerce in Mediterranean— Pre-eminence of Phoenicians— Origin of Carthage— Legend of Dido— Elements of truth contained in it— Its treatment by Virgil — Position and population of Carthage — 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 Carthage — The SuflFetes — The Senate— Anomalous character of the constitution — Its deterioration — The " Hundred Judges " — Close oligarchy— Greneral contentment — Greek and Roman views of Carthaginian constitution — Causes of its stability — Social life of Carthaginians — Their luxury, fine arts, architec- ture, wealth — 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 — "Dumb trade" with the Niger— Grold dust — Periplus of Himilco — "Mago's" harbour — Disaffec- tion of subject races — Was Rome or Carthage best fitted for empire t PAGE 8 CHAPTER n. CARTHAGE AND SIOIIiY. (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 itfi incidents— Exploits of Diony- sius — Siege of Motye— Fourth invasion — Strange vicissitudes and possible XX CONTENTS. PAOB importance of the conflict — Ck>mparative merits of Greek and Carthaginian mle in Sicily — Conflicting stories about Hamilcar at Himera— River Halycus fixed as boundary — Tiraoleon — Magnificent Carthaginian arma- ment—Battle of Crimesus — Agathocles invades Africa and threatens Carthage - 48 CHAPTER III. CARTHAGE AND ROMS. (753-278 B.O.) Rome and Carthage compared— Contrasted— Origin and growth of Rome- Constitutional progress — Military progress— Conquest of Etruscans— Of Gauls— Of Latins— Of Samnites— Roman methods in war— Their modera- tion — War with Pyrrhus — Its character— Rome brought face to face with Carthage ---------••-•dO CHAPTER IV. FIRST PUNIC WAB. (264-241 B.C.) MESS AN A AND AQBIQENTVM, (264-262 B.C.) Relations of Sicily to Carthage and Rome— Appeal of Mamertinea 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 — Carthaginians unprepared for war — Agri- gentum — Its siege — Its fate --.-68 CHAPTER V. FIRST ROMAN FLEET. BATTLES OF MTLJE AND BCNOMUB. (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 Mylse — Honours paid to Duillius— Bgesta— The Romans attack Sardinia and Corsica — Energy of Cai-tha- ginians — Romans resolve to invade Africa — Enormous naval armaments — Route taken by the Romans — Order of battle— Battle of Ecnomus • 80 CONTENTS. XXI CHAPTER VI. INVASION OF AFRICA. BEGULUS AND XANTHIPPUS. (256-250 B.C.) PAQB Invasion of Africa— Romans overrun Caithaginian territory— Short-sighted- ness 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 com- mand-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 Regulua-How far true ? - 100 CHAPTER VII. HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE SIEGE OF LILYBiEUM. (250-241 B.C.) Fortresses remaining to Carthaginians in Sicily-Siege of Lilyb»um-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 Lilyb«um lost at sea-Romans seize Eryx-HamilcarBarca-HeoccupiesMountErcte-Exhaustion of Romans -Culpable conduct of Carthaginians-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 ^gatian Isles-Magnanimity of Hainilcar-Terms of peace-Roman gains and losses-Carthaginian losses and prospects-Contest only deferred 121 CHAPTER Vm. HAMILCAR BABOA AND THE MERCENARY WAR. (241-238 B.O.) 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 lYuceless War— Its atrocities and termination • - • - 144 XXll CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. HAMILGAB BABGA IN AFBICA AND 8PAIM. (238-219 B.C.) PAGB Conduct of Romans during Mercenary War — They appropriate Sardinia and Corsica— Peace and war parties at Carthage— Hamilear's command— He takes Hannibal with him — He crossei> to Spain — Advantages of his posi- tion there — His administration and death— His chai-acter — Administration of Hasdrubal— New Carthage founded— Early career of Hannibal— His vow and its significance— Remissness of Romans— Rising of Gauls in Italy — Its suppression— Hannibal besides Saguntum— War declared between Rome and Carthage 153 CHAPTER X. SECOND PUNIC WAR. (218-201 B.C.) PASSAGE OF THE BHONE AND THE ALPS, RC. 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 ¥rriters in geographical matters— Passage over Alps selected by Hannibal — Route by which he approached it— The first ascent — Valley of the Is^— The main ascent — The summit — Hannibal addressas his troops— The descent — Interest attaching to the passage of the Alpti— Its •jostandresults— The "War of Hannibal" 172 CHAPTER XI. BATTLBB OF TBEBIA AND TBABIMENB. (218-217 B.C.) P. Scipio returns from Gaul to Italy— Sempronius recalled fh)m Sicily— Battle of the 'Hcinus— 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 Flamiuius— He follows Hannibal from Arretium— Livy and Polybius compared— Position chosen by Hannibal— Battle of the Trasimeue lake —Death of Flaminius 190 CONTENTS. XXlll CHAPTER XII. HANNIBAL OVBEBUNS CENTRAL ITALY. (217-216 B.O.) PAGE 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— Discontent of his troops— Hannibal ravages Sam- nium and Campania— Beauty and wealth of Campania— Continued in- action of Fabius— He tries to entrap Hannibal but fails— Minucius left in command— Is raised to equal rank with Fabius— Is saved from disaster by him— Services of Fabius to Rome 211 CHAPTER Xni. BATTLE OF CANN«. CHARACTER OF HANNIBAL. (216 B.C.) Energy and spirit of the Romans— The rival armies face each other at Caunse —Nature of the ground — Th© double command of ^milius PauUus and Varro— Anxiety at Rome — Dii^>oositions of Hannibal for the battle— Battle of Cannae — 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 influence over men —Sources of our knowledge of him— Charge against him— Roman feeling towards him— Change in character of war after Cannae— Polybius and SilenuB --- CHAPTER XIV. REVOLT OF CAPUA. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. (216-212 B.O.) Capua revolts— Its previous history and importance— Marcellus— Hannibal winters at Capua— Supposed demoralisation of his troops— Latin colonies still true to Rome— Great exertions of Rome— Hannibal negotiates with Syracuse. Sardinia and Macedon— His position at Tifata— Revolt of Bruttians— Conquest of Greek cities— History and importance of Croton —Temple of Juno Lacinia— Fabius and Marcellus consuls — The tide turns against Hannibal— He gains possession of Tarentura— Its position and importance— The citadel holds out— The war in Sicily— Importance of Syracuse — Its siege and capture — Its fate 214 223 '! XXIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. BIEOE OF CAPUA AND HANNIBAL* B MARCH ON BOME. (212-208 B.C.) PAOB Importance of war in Spain — Successes and death of the two Scipios — Re- newed activity of Hannibal— Siege of Capua— Hannibal attempts to relieve it— His march on Rome— Fate of Capua— " Ovation " of Marcellus- The Numidian cavalry at Salapia— 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 - 283 CHAPTER XVI. BATTLE OF THE MBTAUBU8. (207 B.a) The approach of Hasdrubal from Spain — His messengers fail to find Hanni- bal — Importance of the crisis — Brilliant march of Nero— Retreat of Has- drubal— Description of the Metaurus— Battle of the Metaurus— Triumph and brutality of Nero ..---••--- 280 CHAPTER XVII. p. COBNELIUS SCIPIO. (210-206 B.a) Scipio in Spain— His early history— His character and influence— Made proconsul — Takes New Carthage — Carthaginians finally driven out of Spain 2JK) 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 faU of Carthage, how far a matter of regret— Siege of Utica— Scipio's command prolonged — He bums the Carthaginian camps— Sophonisba — The Car- thaginian peace party — Sons of Hamilcar recalled to Africa — Mago obeys CONTENTS, XXV PAGE the summons— Hannibal obeys it— The Bruttlan territory— The " Camp of Hannibal "—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 • - 298 CHAPTER XIX. OABTHAGE AT THE MERCY OF ROME. (201-150 B.O.) Deterioration of Roman character— Condition of Italy— Condition of Rome —Condition of Roman provinces— Story of Lucius Flamininus— Story of Sergius Oalba— 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— Self-abnegation of Hannibal— Comparison between Hannibal and Napoleon— Hannibal's 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— History and impor- tance of Prusa- Hannibal's personal characteristics— Death of Scipio— Treatment of Carthage by Romans and Massinissa—" Delenda est Car- thago" 823 CHAPTER XX. DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE. (149-U6 B.O.) Appian and his history— Pol ybius— Characteristics of his history— 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 Taenia— The harbours — Resolve of Rome respecting Carthage — Treachery of Romans — Scene at Utica — Scene at Carthage — The Roman attack fails — Repeated failures and losses — Soipio ^milian— His character and connections — He takes the Megara —Siege of the city proper— Scipio's mole and the new outlet— Contradic- tions 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 ---------- 348 / v S4 4 XXVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXL OABTHAQB AS IT IB. PAOB Interest of a visit to Carthage— Nature of impressions thence derived— Its topography— First view disappointing— The Goletta and the Taenia— rjebel Khawi and the Necropolis — Vicissitudes of its history — Its treat- ment 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 — D^ris of four cities— Excavations of Dr. Davis— Excavations of M. Benle — 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— Conclusion • • • • . 375 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PLANS. Rbmains op Ancient Habbodrs at Carthaoe Ths Smaller Cisterns at Carthage PHdmciAN Colonies and Carthaginlin Emi'Irb - - Frontispiece • to face p. 3 17 >f Sicily „ Battle of Ecnomus „ Italy „ Battle of Tribia ......... „ Battle of Trasimsnb „ Battle of CannjB .-...-..- „ Carthage and its NKioHBonRHooD - Plan op Harbouuj> at Cartuaqk - ft 96 173 196 206 289 351 354 If ( I ii I N! 5 V O a H OS 00 PS H uo 03 00 H CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER I. CARTHAGE. Characteristics of Phcenicians— Their defects— Size of their territory— Their relations to Israelites— Early commerce in Mediterranean— Pre-eminence of Phoenicians— Origin of Carthage— Legend of Dido— Elements of truth contained in it— Its treatment by Virgil— Position and population of Carthage— 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 Carthage— The Suffetes— The Senate- Anomalous character of the Constitution— Its deterioration— The "Hundred Judges "—Close oligarchy—General contentment— Greek and Roman views of Carthaginian Constitution— Causes of its stability— Social life of Cartha- ginians—Their luxury, fine arts, architecture, wealth — Their commercial principles— Their agriculture— Merits of Mago's work on agriculture— —Carthaginian religion— Worship of Baal-Moloch— of Tanith or Astarte —Deeply roote Virgil, Ain. l 338, 363; Justin, xviil 4, 5; Appian, run. i6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. '• Rise from my ashes, scourge of crime, Born to pursue the Dardau horde To-day, to-morrow, through all time. Oft as our hands can wield the swortl ; Figlit shore with shore, fight sea with sea, Figlit all that are or e'er shall be ! " ^ All these incidents, incomparable as they are in their beauty and in their tragic power, form no part of the original legend, and are mentioned here chiefly as showing how truly the great Koman poet appreciated the one worthy rival of his country, the rival whom she had blotted out of existence, and how anxious he was, as far as might be, to undo the deed. But we must now return to the course of the history. It was the instinct of self-preservation alone which, in the course of the sixth century, dictated a change of policy at Carthage, and transformed her peace-loving mercantile com- munity into the warlike and conquering state, of which the whole of the western Mediterranean was so soon to feel the power. A people far less keen- sighted than the Phoenicians must have discerned 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. Accord- ingly they joined hands (in B.C. 537) with their inveterate enemies, the Etruscans, to prevent a threatened settlement of some exiled Phocaeans on the important island of Cor- 8ica.2 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 ;8 and in Sicily, by withdrawing half 1 Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor Qui face Dardanios, ferroque, sequare colonos. Nunc, olim, quocunque dabunt se tempore viroa, Litora litoribus contraria, fluctibus undas Imprecor, arma armis ; pugnent ipsique nepotes(l^^ —.*-'«. iv. U25-629. a Herod. 1. 165-166. * Sallust. Jugurtha, 79. Li'iitinitin.v litft-ii -^ I'll, l.tinjon \vvifYiiiic lii>iiiliii\ ,i(tiliitttit . r ,-lb^. \am- ~-t-~- cf^-^ :- ^ >%^^'^^^/\ ^:%:rT^.:^^ -^ Di-*^ i ar^ctiu* I? '^l>> »«;IH- iV £ ^Vyvi '"^'.^v, l^ -^ ■ -'■'"■•■■^;^::.;;z:r '*>/».< s*"* - \ ' y* Mao*** I -o7 ^Cercip**- ^/ -■ -\-- <55i .V- u / '•"itvi /• v5 Minor , I 1; T W \\ ( AiiTii Ac; I N I \N t: M ri K i: L-J t'ttfijuitiiru'itr l^.-pfiuhnr/ifs Mi lyirinii'in ,n' /lii'r.i , L.J Mmniffini .^n. .4r« '; ! n» lb !,'i,,iii,,,tis 'I'.iii I '•' linul.in \iw y.ii ■ Hi'iiihiiyJS-thl.iiHii Tf GkOWTH Ol> CAkTtiAGtNIAN EMPIRt, xt 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 settle- ments of Panormus, Motye, and Soloeis had been planted. The result of this change of policy was that the western half of the Mediterranean became, with one exception ^ — what the whole of it had once bidden fair to be — a Phoe- nician lake, in which no foreign merchantmen dared to show themselves. It was a vast preserve, to be caught trespass- ing upon which, so Strabo tells us, on the authority of Eratosthenes, ensured the punishment of instant death by drowning.'-^ No promontory was so barren, no islet so in- Bignificant,^ as to escape the jealous and ever-watchful eye of the Carthaginians. In Corsica, if they could not get any firm or extensive foothold themselves, they at least prevented 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 iEgatian 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 outpost pushed far into the domain of their advancing enemies, a memorial of what once had been, and, perhaps, to the sanguine Carthaginian tem- perament, an earnest of what might be again hereafter.^ Above all, the Phoenician settlements in Spain, at the inner- ' Massilia, a Phocsean colony like Alalia, but more fortunate, appears always to have held her own in her own sea, and planted several colonies, such as Emporiae, along the coast, which helped to maintain her ascendancy. « Strabo, xvil 1, 19. SThucyd. vl 2 ; Polyb. i. 10, 5. ♦Herod, i. 166; cf. Servius on Virg. jEn. iv. 628, " litora litoribus con- traria," where he quotes the stipulation on the neutrality of C!orsica, as between the Carthaginians and Romans. » Herod, i. 170. and v. 106 ; Polyb. iii. 22 and 25. * Virg. ^n. X. 174 : " Insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis". ^ Cf. Uvy, xxl 61 : Diod. v. 12 ; Cicero. Verres, ii. 72 ; iv. 46. th CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, DEALINGS WITH PHCENICIAN CITIES. Z9 lit most 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 Carthaginians thought that they might now at last become the owners of the small strip of African territory which they had hitherto seemed to occupy on sufferance 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 expense of the natives, till the whole of the rich territory 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 Tripolis,2 and were henceforward kept in check by the primitive defence of a hne of ditch and rampart,^ just as, in earher times, the rich plains of Babylonia had been protected by the "wall of Semiramis " from the incursions of the less civilised Medes. 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 ad- joining 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 1 Justin, xix. 1, 3. and ii 4; Appian, Pun. 2. »Cf. Herod, iv. 191. » Appian, Pun. 32 and 64. * It is remarkable that while Utica is not mentioned in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage, concluded, according to Poly bins (iii. 22), in 509 rc, 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 B.C.. she receives the honour of a special and independent mention. Probably the subjection to Carthage of the other Phoenician cities in Africa had taken place in the interval, and had left Utica in this position of solitary pre-eminence. Leptis, were compelled to pull down their walls and acknow- ledge the supremacy of the Carthaginian city. All along the northern coast of Africa the original Phoenician settlers, and, probably, to some extent, the Carthaginians them- selves, had intermarried with the natives. The product of these marriages was that numerous class of Libyphoenicians which proved to be so important in the history of Cartha- ginian colonisation and conquest ;^ a class which, equidistant from the Berbers on the one hand, and from the Cartha- ginians proper on the other, and composed of those who were neither wholly citizens nor yet wholly aliens, experienced 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 weak- ness, 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 greatest of the Assyrian, the second by the greatest of the Babylonian, and the third by the greatest of the Macedonian 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 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 (b.o. 332), but the great Tyrian city in the Bay of Tunis still remained ; and to Carthage did the few Tyrians — young children or old men — who alone escaped. iHanno's Periplus, see below, pp. 40-44; Polyb. iii. 33, 16; Livy, xxi. 22; XXV. 40 ; Died. xx. 55. 20 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, CONSTITUTION OF CARTHAGE, 21 > transfer their fortunes and their hopes. i 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 records 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.2 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 weU have issued his orders to the winds or the waves as have bidden the Tyrians to take up sacri- legious 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 of barbarians upon Athens from the east, bade, so it is said, Hamilcar advance with his three hundred thousand mercenaries upon Syracuse from the west.4 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 efiforts of Xerxes ended in the destruction of the Persian fleet at Salamis, and the disgraceful flight of the king to Asia; the efforts of HamQcar ended in his defeat and death at Himera, and in the destruction of a hundred and fifty thousand 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 iDiodorus Siculus, xvii. 40, 46 ; Q. Curtius. iv. 2. ' «Diod. XX. 14; cf. Justin, xviii. 7. 7. » Herod, iii. 19 *Diod. xi. 21-24 ; Justiu, xix. 1, 12. civilisation is said to have taken place in the same year and on the very same day.^ Let us now turn to the political organisation of the city which achieved so rapid and marvellous a development, and inquire 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 centuries. It obtained the praise of Aristotle for its judicious admixture of the monarchical, the oligarchical, and the democratical elements.^ The oligarchical 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 remarks, 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 remem- bered — for much of the confusion that exists with regard to the Carthaginian constitution is owing to its being forgotten — 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 Punic 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 Eomans Suffetes. Their name is the same as the Hebrew Shofetim, mistranslated in our 1 Herod, vii. 166. See below, p. 49. 2 Aristotle, Politics, ii. 11 ; cf. also Polyb. vi 61, 2. See Heeren's chapter on the Constitution of Carthage ("Reflexions on Trade"), vol. L cap. 3, to which, in common with all other modern writers on Carthage, I am much indebted. He has collected nearly all the information relating to the obscure subject of the constitution of Carthage to be found in the ancients ; obscure, however, it still unfortunately remains. »Ari8t. Pol. it 11, 8-a *Arist. loc. cU. 2. V 22 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHANGES IN CONSTITUTION, 33 Bible, Judges. The Hamilcars and Hannos of Carthage were, Hke their prototypes, the Gideons and the Samsons of the Book of Judges, not so much the judges, as the protectors 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 life, and not, as is commonly supposed, elected annually, is clear from a variety of indica- tions; and, Hke the "king of the sacrifices" at Rome, and the "king archon" at Athens, they seem when the kingly ofl&ce itself was abohshed, to have retained those priestly functions which, according to ancient conceptions, were in- dissolubly united with royalty.^ Beneath these kings came, in the older constitution, a council, called by the Greeks the Gerusia,^ or Council of Ancients, consisting of twenty-eight members, over which the Sufifetes 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 disagreed, 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. Not the least remarkable feature of the Carthaginian con- stitution, as just described, is its general resemblance to those forms of government with which we are familiar in Greece, in Rome, and in the countries of modern Europe, and which we are apt to consider the peculiar property J Aristotle, locca. Z; Polyb. vi 61, 2; Livy, xxx. 7. "Senatum itaque Suffetes (quod velut consulare imperium apud eos erat) vocaverunt." There were two Suffetes also at Gades, and perhaps in all the PhcEnician colonies. Livy, xrviii. 37. "Suffetes eorum, qui summus Pcenis est magistratus . cruci adfigi jussit." «Cf. Herod, viii. 167, etc »Cf. Livy, xxx. 16. " Oratores ad pacem petendam mittunt trigirta seniorum principes. Id erat sanctius apud illos consilium, maximaque ad ipsum senatum regendum vis." *Cf. Polyb. I 31, 8 ; iii. 33, 2-3 ; vl 61, 2. * Arist Pa. il 11. 6. of the Indo-Germanic races. Oriental in its origin, the Car- thaginian constitution has nothing about it which savours of the East. The general division of authority between king, senate, and assembly, which we find at Carthage, is something for which we look in vain in any of those eastern countries, Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Palestine, with which the Phoenicians, before they became naturalised on the shores of the Western Mediterranean, must have had most to do. In particular, the government of Tyre, the mother city of Carthage, bears no resemblance at all to that of her daughter. How are we to account for this anomaly ? Did the Carthaginians, who in general made so little impres- sion on the peoples amongst whom they settled, and who themselves gathered so little from them, pick up from the Greek towns with which, as they travelled westward, they were brought into contact, institutions which we usually assume to be necessarily of home growth; or did those institutions gradually grow up, after the Carthaginians had already settled in the far west, as the natural result of their environment? This we do not know, and we must be content to draw pointed attention to the fact alone. But, whatever account is to be given of its origin, 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 Sufifetes had gradually become little more than an hono- rary 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 resorted to in times of public excitement, when the rulers, by appearing to share power, tried to lessen envy, and allowed the citizens to go through the form of registering what, practically, they had already decreed. The details of 24 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CLOSE OLIGARCHY. as the change are obscure ; but there are some points which are undisputed and are suflficient 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 pa- tronage,! and filled up the vacancies in the Hundred from among themselves, like the members of a close college. The result was an oHgarchy, hke 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 oppo- nents and of its friends. By the old constitution the Senate had the right to control the magistrates ; but this new body of judges controUed the Senate, and therefore, in reality, the magistrates also. Nor was it content to control the Senate; it practically super- seded 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.2 The Shofetes presided, the senators dehberated, 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, hke those of the dreaded " Ten " at Venice, to whom they bore a striking resemblance arbitrary and cruel. The unsuccessful general, ahke, whether lArist PoZ. il 1,7. a Justin, xix 2, 6. "Centum ex numero senatorium judices deliguntur qui, reversis a bello ducibus, rationem rerum gestarum exigerent, ut hc^ metu ita m bello imperia cogitarent. ut domi judicia legesque respicerenf ' Liw if^""^"* .f • ^] f^*^^« *^** »* tte end of the Second Punic War the office 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 " his ill-success was the result of uncontrollable circumstances or of culpable neglect, might be condemned to crucifixion ; ^ indeed, he often wisely anticipated his sentence by committing suicide. Within the ranks of this close oligarchy first-rate ability would seem to have been at a discount. Indeed 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. Language bears testimony to this in the name given aUke 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- eminence 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, according to the express testimony of Justin ,2 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, after- wards, in the time of the Punic wars, united as one man a large part of the ruling ohgarchs in the vain efifort 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 Barcinegens, 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 — in the persons of Hamilcar Barca, his son-in- law, Hasdrubal, and his three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago — ruled by the best of all rights — the right Divine — that of unswerving devotion to their country, of the ability to rule, and the will to use that abihty well. But if we assert, as we have impUed, that it was the want of power rather than of will on the part of the ruhng ohgarchy, which ever left to the general-in-chief that ab- 1 Ct Polybius, L 11, 6 ; Diod. xx. 10 ; VaL Max. il 7, 1 ext. ; Zouaras, viii. 11 and 17. 2 Justin, xix. 2, 5-6. =»Val. Max. ix. 3. 2 ext. 26 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. MERITS OF THE CONSTITUTION, a? solute command and that unlimited term of office, which, to our minds, is essential to the prosecution of a great and distant war, we must take care that we are just. Our ideas of the Carthaginian constitution are derived, such as thoy are, always from foreign, and almost always from unfriendly sources. Moreover, the information given us on such a sub- ject 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 Cartha- ginian 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 judg- ments 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, how- ever popular he might be with his soldiers, or however much fortune might have frowned upon his enterprises, ever attempted to use his power for the overthrow of the consti- tution. Such was not the experience of either Greece or Kome; and we cannot, therefore, help feeling, 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. Nor, again, is the verdict of the Greek and Roman writers by any means so unanimous or so unfavourable as is often supposed. One of them, and he the greatest political philo- sopher of antiquity, says emphatically, as has been already hinted, " the Carthaginians seem to me to be a well-governed people " ; while, in another place, he classes Carthage with Crete and Lacedaemon, each of which " deserved to stand in high repute ".1 And this, the dehberate judgment of Aris- totle, is in itself sufl&cient to make us receive with much sus- picion the statements of the Romans who hated the Cartha- ginians as their rivals, and of the Greeks who despised them as barbarians.2 Had Aristotle's treatise on governments, which contained a special account of Carthage, been pre- served to us, a flood of light would probably have been thrown on this most obscure subject, and it is more than probable that the unfavourable view which we are led, from the materials now before us, to form of the Carthaginian constitution, would have been considerably modified. It appears from the chapters in the Politics, to which reference has been already made, that what most attracted the admiration of the Greek philosopher in the Carthaginian constitution was its stability, and its immunity from violent revolution. In Crete and in Sparta this great object of government was obtained under conditions which did not exist at Carthage. There was nothing at Carthage analogous to the complete isolation of Crete, or to that iron system of Spartan education which turned men into machines, and subordinated all other considerations to that of the military greatness of the state. If we know little of the circumstances which at Carthage produced so desirable a result, the result itself is certain. Much, perhaps, turned on the nature of the Carthaginian aristocracy. The patriciate at Carthage, unlike that of early Rome, was not, in the strict sense of the word, hereditary. It depended as much upon wealth as upon birth, 2 and where wealth could be had almost for the asking, 1 Arist Pol. U.XII and 16. 2 Cf. Plutarch, Timoleon, xvii. : ttip waAau ktyoiitvnv iKfiappApwaiv, and xx. TOV« KOKiaTOVi Koi fffOViKtardrovi Kapxn^oviovt iyyvrtpta icaroiKi^oi'rec ijfutv. Cf. the proverbial 4>oii'tKwv i^«ai for sharp dealing. •* Arist. Pol. iU Xi. 8 : ov ^dfoi' ipurrlvSriv oAAa koX nXovrivStiv otovrat Self •ipeia^ai TOV« apxovTas. Cf. 10, «»'ijTas tlvm rot fityiara^ tuv apxutv. a8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. SOCIAL LIFE. ^ I- ^* as was the case at Carthage, by the exercise of a little commercial energy, and where discontent among the masses could always be quieted by the ready expedient of drafting them off to the virgin soil which was always open to them along the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, there would be no need for the frequent secessions and the long constitutional struggles which alone were able to raise the plebeians at Rome to equality with their masters. Nor, again, if the government of Carthage knew, as certainly they did, how to make full use of their advantages, would there be any room for these internecine feuds between city and city, and between different factions of the same city, which make up so large a part of the history of Greece, or of the republics of mediaeval Italy. Well might the Greek cities which, of Sicily, as Thucydides tells us, *' swarmed with a heterogeneous population, and were always liable to partial or complete changes of government " i— envy the stability of their great neighbour across the Mediterranean, who, what- ever her faults, and whatever the misery of her subject races, yet seems to have held a homogeneous people within her walls, and to have retained from age to age the same form of government. Well, too, might the Romans themselves, when once they had been freed by the lapse of a century from the terror with which they had so long regarded Carthage, afford, in the midst of their own civil wars and their proscription lists, to be at least so far generous to her memory as to endorse the words of Cicero, in his treatise on Governments: "Neither could Carthage have maintained her pre-eminent position for six hundred years had she not been governed with wisdom and with statesmanship ".» If we try, as we cannot help trying, to picture to ourselves 1 Thucyd. Vi. 17 : ©xAois ri yap fw/*fii«Toiv iroAvai'«powv noXiTtihtv ra^ fiera/3oAaf icai cirijoxa?. 2 Cicero de Repiiblica, ii. 48 : "Nee tantum Carthago habuisset opum sex- centos fere annos sine consiliia et disciplina ". " Disciplina " in the mouth of a Roman means much more than either statesmanship or discipline, and is one of the highest terms of praise he could give. the daily life and personal characteristics of the people whose political organisation has been just 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 poHtical 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, analogous to the Spartan Syssitia,^ an institution intended to foster manliness and simplicity of hfe. 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 Tyrian 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 dehcious fruits — figs and oranges, lemons and pomegranates^ — 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 gather- ings, and afterwards applied to the purposes of political gossip or corruption. Wine of all varieties there must have been in abundance in a city which commanded the trade of the Mediterranean, and which thought it desirable, during one 1 Valerius Maximus, ix. 5, 4 ext. 2Arist. Pol. il 11. 3; cf. Livy, xxxiv. 61: **In circulis convivisque cele- brata sermonibus res est ; deinde in senatu quidam," etc. »Hor. Epode, xu. 21: '•Muricibus Tyriis iterata vellera lanae," aud Ode, ii. 16, 35, "te bis Afro murice tinctae" ; these garments were called 5ipai 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 two-edged weapon piercing the hand that leaned upon it, faithless and re- 'Cf. Plutarch, Timoleon^ 20: trrfiarhv i.y«i(iavra% av6 onjAwi' "HpeucAetW K«i Ti}? 'ArXai'Tiiti)? riKnv BaXarTfi^. 2 Virg. jEn. iv. 41 : " Et Numidae infreni cingunt et inhospita Syrtis " ; cf. Silius Italicus. i. 215: " Hie passim exultant Nomades. gens inscia freni", » Dio Latini ittnores See Heeren's Appendix and Comments. '"' Afri^ ZfJ"r:t fV t7 ^'^'^ '^^^ "" '^""' of *''« ^^ *o the west of PORT MAHON. 45 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 Komans, passed over to Minorca and spent the winter there.^ The name has now been 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 possession 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 the title of Lord Mahon ; and thus, in the strange vicissitudes of human fortune, an English noble- man 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 exploration and colonisation, as well as of their enormous armies, the most ruinous tribute was imposed and exacted with unspar- ing 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 them- selves 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 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 1 Livy, xxviiL 37 and 46. 'See Justin, xviii. 7: " Mago imperium Poenonira condidisset " 8 Polybius, i. 72, 2. . cum primus onmiiim ordinata disciplina * livy, zxziv. 62. 46 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. DISAFFECTION OF SUBJECT RACES, 47 fl 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 which Agathocles, with his small army of fifteen thousand 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 mercenaries, supported as it was by the free-will contributions of their golden ornaments by the Libyan women,2 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 inherent differences of manners, language, and race between 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 moderation which we know was far from being the case, a gulf profound and impassable must probably have always separated the two peoples. This was the fundamental, the ineradicable weakness of the Carthaginian 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 consum- mate 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 : — iDiod. Sic. XX. 17 ad Jin. •Polyb. i. 72, 4* Meu 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 Kome or Carthage to perish utterly, we must admit, in spite of the sympathy which the brilliancy of the Carthaginian civilisation, the heroism of Hamilcar and Hannibal, and the tragic catastrophe itself call forth, that it was well for the human race that the blow fell on Carthage 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. \t\ 48 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, PHCENICIANS AND GREEKS IN SICILY. 49 CHAPTER IL CARTHAGE AND SICILY. (735-310 B.O.) Wars between Carthage and Sicilian Greeks— First appearance of Greeks in Sicily— Their gradual spread— Battle of Himera— Second Cartli.iginian invasion of Sicily— Third invasion and its incidents— Exploits of Dioiiysiiis —Siege of Motye— Fourth invasion— Strange vicissitudes and possible im- portance of the conflict— Comparative merits of Greek and Carthaginian rule in Sicily— Conflicting stories about Hamilcar at Himera— River Ualy- CU8 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 possession of Sicily, it is necessary to give some account of the less known and much longer series of wars which had been waged for the same 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 caution 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. 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 interesting and suggestive. From very early times, as we have seen, the Phoenicians 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 capa- city 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, about b.o. 735, on its eastern coast, for, perhaps, half a century before we hear of the Greeks advancing even as far west as Gela ; nor was it till another half century or thereabouts had passed away, that we find them at Himera, and SeHnus threatening, or seeming to threaten, the Cartha- ginians in the western corner of the island to which they had retreated.2 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.s 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 Tliucyd. ▼. 2, «Ibid. vi. 3-4. 4 t Justin, xix. 1, 1-i. 50 CARTMAGB AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. to evening, and it ended, as we have already seen, in the complete rout of the Carthaginians. Hamilcar, who through- out 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 Carthaginians, with charac- teristic prudence, fell back once again on the three original Phoenician fortresses of Motye, Parnormus, and Soloeis, and from their retirement they looked on complacently for the next seventy years at the incessant revolutions and counter- 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, as it was believed, half-Trojan city of Egesta, which, by its appeal to Athens for aid against Selinus, had brought on Sicily and Greece aUko 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 Cartha- ginians 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 command. Sehnus fell almost at the first attack : its inhabitants 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 roughly that those who could 1 Herod, va 165-167. ^Thucya. vi. 17. sDiod. x'm. 4a *lbid. I. c : ^^ati M"reAAi,K. ^ Ibid. xiii. 66-58. tMUASlONS 6P SICIlV. 51 not preserve their freedom must try their hands at slavery. And even as the Jews, when Jerusalem was about to fall before Titus, heard, or fancied that they heard, voices which were not of earth, saying, " Let us go hence " ; ^ so, with terrible realism, did the Carthaginian general now tell the affrighted Greeks that the gods themselves had left their shrines, and so had abandoned their cities to destruction. Then, in an outburst of fanaticism, half family and half national, he slaughtered three thousand prisoners in cold blood on the spot on which his grandfather had fallen.^ 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 innumer- able 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 disgust 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 re- ligious terrors which followed — the heaven-sent pestilence, the spectres of the outraged dead haunting the sentries at their posts, and the solemn sacrifice 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 ^ lurafiaivwiJitr iyTrv9fy. So too at the siege of Veil (Livy, v. 21) it was believed, "deos votis ex urbe sua evocatos hostium templa novasque sedes spectare *', ^Diod. xiiL 59, ad iniL 3 Cicero, Vares, iv. 33. *lbid. ii. 35. ^Diod. xiiL 108. 52 Carthage and the Carthaginians. Agrigentum^ — carried off to Carthage or to Tyre. In vain (B.C. 405) 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 the yoke of the one man who in point of courage and 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 Cartha- ginian army, compelled 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 neigh- bourhood. It was now the turn of Dionysius to justify his assumption 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 un- happy Greeks was now atoned for by the equally unhappy Carthaginians who had settled in the southern parts of Sicily. Onward the tide of invasion flowed, swollen, as it advanced, by the Greeks who were now able to return to their devas- tated homes, till at length it reached the westernmost comer of the island, and found itself checked, for the moment, by the narrow arm of sea which separates the island fortress of Motye from the mainland. The small garrison of Motye defended itself with all the resolution of the Phoenician race, and the incidents 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 fighting in the narrow streets, the flight for refuge to iDiod. ziil 9a DIONYSIUS AND HIMILCO. 53 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 counsels — 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 one hundred thousand men started (b.c. 397) 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 com- pletely. 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 Carthaginian navy was destroyed by fire, and Himilco purchased, we are told, 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 history of the Punic wars ; ^ but it enables us, in some measure, to explain, what is otherwise so difi&cult 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 con- sequence to Carthage, to Sicily itself, to Kome, and to the ^Zonaras, viil IQ, 54 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 forward her victorious career into Italy at the very time when the Gaul was at the gates of Kome, or had Syracuse 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 in full relief by Diodorus and by the earlier Sicilian historians, Phihstus and Timaeus, who form his chief autho- rities. It is all the more important therefore to notice that Diodorus himself inadvertently 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 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 portion of Sicily, for they found, or fancied, at least, that they would find, the rule of Carthage to be less oppressive than that of the tyrant Dionysius.i On the other hand, many Sicanians and Sicilians uhoni Dionysius offered to transfer to Syracuse from the neighbourhood of the Carthaginians, dechned his offer with thanks, preferring the Carthaginian rule to his ; while those tribes or towns which he had compelled 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, 1 Diod. xiv. 41, Jibid. xiv. 56, 68. GREEK AND CARTHAGINIAN RULE. 55 Dionysius 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 reprisal? on the Greeks resident in Carthage.^ These indications may tend to strengthen the misgivings which are naturaUy sug- gested to us when we recollect the medium through which alone our information as to Carthaginian misgovernment comes. There is another curcumstance which is still more sugges- tive. Of what followed the fatal battle of Himera we have two versions ; one of them by a lucky chance, which is al- most 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 him- self 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.2 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, Gisco, whom they banished for life to the Greek town of Selinus.s Either of these stories, or neither of them, or both of them, inconsistent 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 Carthage, we are unable to balance the Greek by the Carthaginian version of the story. Other desultory attempts were made by the tyrant Diony- sius in his long reign of thirty-eight years to drive the Car- thaginians from Sicily, but without success ; and the fitful > DicKL xiv. 76, 77. 2 Herod, vii. 167. 3 Diod. xiii. 43, 56 P CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. TIMOLEON. 57 struggle ended (b.o. 383) in a treaty which assigned to Carthage aU the territory which lay to the west of the river Halycus. This river practically remained tlie boundary be- tween the contending parties for the next hundred years • but on two occasions during that period the Carthaginians ap. peared m arms before the walls of Syracuse. The first was m the time of the best, the other of the worst, of all its rulers Akeady the Carthaginians had gained possession of the whole of the town of Syracuse except its island citadel of ?W fvT* u 7!f *^'/''* ^'"^^ ^° ^^^' *^^"«^°d conflicts that they had attamed so nearly to the summit of their am- bition ; and every one believed, to quote the words of a patriotic Greek, that the long-talked-of and long-expected flood of barbansm had come at last, and had overwhelmed Sicily.i But just when the horizon was at its darkest, light appeared The younger Dionysius, a man as weak as he s^kiTf r hi T^*^' '^*y ^' ^^^ misgoverned without strikmg a blow m its defence, and flying to Greece ma^A way for the Corinthian Timoleon. EqUy remrki"^^^^ his courage and his gentleness, for his abihty to command aS tY'f "''' *' f'3^ '^^ *^^ "^^^^'^^'^ -^ ^s affections lit J) . -T'"' ""1 ^'' ''°'" ^^ ^^*y' ^^^^^ 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 hfe in battle at the nsk of his own and yet when that brother plotted against the lives and hberties of his fellow citizens he gave him oTer served^ Such was the man who, summoned to an arduous post which he would never have sought but dared not decline ebT iTlt"' '""'"' "'^" ''' ^^^^^'^^^ -- ^* ^*« lowest The Carthaginians vanished for a time, but reappeared » Plutarch. Timoleon. xvil : i„. ^^,,,, ,j,^„ . , a Ibid. IV. and v. V «a« 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 seventy thousand infantry, of ten thousand cavalry, of a large number of war chariots drawn by four horses each, of one hundred ships of war, and one thousand transports laden with supplies and ammunition of every kind.^ But the armament was not less remarkable for its com- position 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 pleasanter for those who enjoyed life, as did the wealthy Carthaginians, 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 arma- ment there were, we are told, no less than ten thousand 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 2500 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 enthu- siasm. It is the Battle of Megiddo and the brook Kishon that we fancy that we see; it is the song of triumph of 1 Plutarch, Timoleon. xxv. ; Diod. xvi. 77. 8DioU. xvi. 80, ^piut. Tim. 27, 28, 1 1 I 58 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. AGATHOCLES. 59 Deborah and of Barak that we fancy that we hear. The parallel is close indeed throughout.^ A tempest of rain and hail, accompanied by hghtning and thunder, broke with ex- traordinary violence at the critical moment right in the faces of the advancing Carthaginians. The stars 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 panopHes, slipped in the mud and fell to rise no more. The Sacred Band stood their ground, by the confes- sion of the Greeks themselves, in a manner worthy of their privileges and responsibihties, and died, fighting bravely, to a man. The camp and costly baggage fell into the hands of the victors, and Timoleon, laden with booty and with honour, returned to Syracuse to hve 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 had hardly enjoyed before, and certainly has not attained to since, to be regretted in his death as the ** common father and benefactor " of all the Sicilians.2 Timoleon passed away, and Syracuse once more fell (b.c. 310) under the yoke of a tyrant as able and unscrupulous as the elder Dionysius. Bursting through the Carthagin- ian squadron, which was blockading him in his capital, with a heroism which is almost unparalleled in warfare,' Agathocles made his way at the head of a few ships to Africa, and with a Carthaginian fleet following close behind him and a Carthagmian 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 defence, its hophtes and its horsemen, its war-chariots, and its Sacred Ut has been eloquently drawn out by Dean Stanley. Jacish Church voL L chap. 14. ' 2 Plutarch, Timoleon, xxxix., i^wtp waj^p wivov. Band. But it was not till after Agathocles had been for three years over-running the open country, till he had oc- cupied an almost fabulous number of Carthaginian 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.i 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 efiforts of theirs could now undo. By his invasion of Africa Agatho- cles 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. iDiod. XX. 3,56, 6iseq. 6o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF ROME, 6i li CHAPTER III. CAKTHAGB AND ROMB. (753-278 B.C.) Rome and Carthage compared -Contrasted-Origin and growth of Rome- ConsUtutional progress-Military progress-Conquest of Etruscans-Of 0aul8-0f Latms-Of Samnites-Roman methods in war-Their modera- C^rth'ajr Py^h«s-Its character-Rome brought face to face with It is now time 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 worid Carthage, and Carthage alone of the states of antiquity, was able seriously to delay The history of Rome is like, and yet unhke, that of Carthage It IS like It, for we see in each the growth of a civic com- mumty which, from very small beginnings, under an aristo- cratic form of government, and with slight literary or artistic tastes, acquired first, by the force of circumstances, the leader- ship of the adjoining cities, which 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 tnbes whom Nature had not cut ofif from them by the sea, the mountains, or the desert. But Roman history is intrinsically unlike the Carthaginian for the greatness of Rome rested not, as 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 privi- leges 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 simpHcity 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 assembly which the world has ever seen. And when the two orders in the State had become united, and Rome was fairly launched in a career as a conquering 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 sub- jects 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 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 antiquity, nor in strength, nor in natural advantages. Alba and Lanuvium were older, Tusculum was stronger, Tibur and Prseneste 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 fe I CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINtANS. ITS CONSTITUTIONAL PROGRESS. 63 commerce and agnculture, soon gave her a dependent popula- tion, which formed the origin of the Plebeians; and! when the venerable Alba feU before the arms of Kome, Kome naturally succeeded by the right of the worthiest, as weU as by the right of the strongest, to aU her privileges and dignities as president of the Latin league. " aignities It belongs not to our purpose here to trace the vicissitudes of the long and eventful struggle between the privileged Patrimns and the unenfranchised Plebs ; to show in deLl trl i'l 'T ^'T'^' °f '»»« lo^-e^- orders-their exclusion from aU share in the public land for which they had shed heu: blood, the caste jealousy which forbade a Jatrician o intermarry with one of a less sacred race-the atrocious law of debtor and creditor, gave way, one after the other, in spite of the ^med opposition and the prejudices and the subter- fuges of those Patricians who, as they alone profited by 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 magistrates of their own, the Tribunes of the Plebs with powers so extraordinary that if the Roman people h^d not been the most law-abiding people in the world all pubUc busmess must have come to a standstill ; how the right of appeal from the arbitrary sentences of the magistrate to the people assembled in their Comitia, was again and again con! flrmed-even as Magna Charta was again and again con- firmed by English kings-each fresh ratification SeZl no doubt, the sanction more impressive, and using the word n^n '"^ """"^ comprehensive and a truer sense; how ^d Mi ^ t°t '"^ "^f "y "'*"' "^'S^^'y- *he Qu*st;rship and Mditary Tribunate, the Consulship and the Senate itself were thrown open to the Plebeians, first in theory and after- wards m fact; how the Licinian Eogations, after nine years of party warfare, ceased to be Eogations and became llws; and how. finally, CamiUus. the chief of the old aristocracy crowned the political edifice by what, perhaps, rightly con- sidered, is the greatest event in the internal history of Rome, the dedication of the famous Temple of Concord ^ (b.c. 367). It is incumbent on the student of the history of Carthage not so much to analyse the process as to note the result of 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 Eoman arms. It must sufi&ce 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 aUen as they were to her in race, were not slow io avail themselves. The Etruscan nation, with its gloomy and mysterious religion, the solemn trifling in 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 war- fare of 150 years succeeded, in which the star of Rome came gradually into the ascendant, and the fall of Veii after a ten years' siege, and, still more perhaps, the hurricane of Northern 1 Plutarch, Camillus, 42, 4-7 ; cf. Livy. vi. 42. «Tac. JJist. iii. 72 : " dedita urbe". i! 1 «4 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGtNlANS. ITS MILITARY PROG REUS. 65 barbarians which just then burst over the fairest plains of Sria ^°' ^''*' ^ ^""" "^""^^^ "^ *^ "'•*« "^ Qoi^w c°?*. "'"^ dehvered 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 inhabitants dispersed or slain ; but no such ephemeral calamity could shatter the Editions or shake the resolution of the Roman people. Rome rose, hke the phoenix, from her ashes, and s Jted ^esh on her career of conquest Her ancient enemies, the ^qmans and Volscians, who, according to the patriotic nar- TZ t II' K "^ ^°' '° "^^^y y^"^ ^ '^' ^^^y history of the Repubhc been annually exterminated and had annually CI Jv." ^^'«™r '^^ »g»i°. had long since died their last death as mdependent nations. The Etruscans were now powerless; the last desperate effort of the Latins to restore when ,t was too late (b.c. 340-338), the equality of their ancient leape. was crushed in two campaigns, and Rome now found herself face to face with the wortWest antagonists she had yet met, the brave and hardy Sabellian race, which Campania and which clung with desperate tenacity and with manners that never changed to the rugged mountains and the inaccessible defiles of the Central and Southern Apennines. The struggle is memorable for the deeds of heroism which m«k Its course on either side ; for the stubborn resistance and chivabous bravery of the weaker, and, on more than one occasion, for the perfidy and the meanness of the stronger combatant^ But it is yet more remarkable, in the eye of hfn^ who would read the story of the Punic wars arighi. for th^ ^ght It throws upon the true secret of the Roman strength in 292' ^"l^.^t Vn" ™ ^°'~'"" °»""" P™P« •'«'<•""■' «»t ". This wa» in ^ce^exljei^j^.'^rir "" "*' ""'• *" "" ^''- "^«"«'» 't^- Never did the iron resolution and devotion of her citizens, never did the unbending consistency of purpose and the marvellous self-restraint of the Senate, display itself more brilliantly. Without haste, but without a pause, never elated by victory, never depressed by defeat, not caring to overrun wrhat 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 Koman Senate, slow but sure, held on the even tenor of their course, determined only that where the Koman 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 Kome, 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 to spare the conquered — that maxim is to be found only in the patriotic imagination of the author of "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 object of Kome 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 aiming 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 professed to claim, Kome found herself at length (b.c. 293) with not a *Livy, ix. 45: " l^'cedus antiquum Samnitibus redditum". t! 66 CARTHACfE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ROME FACE TO FACE WITH CARTHAGE. 67 'I 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 reali- sation of the aim of Kome; but one other there shortly appeared, which, as it had been beyond the visible, so was it necessarily beyond the mental horizon of so matter-of-fact a body as the Roman Senate. The adventurous King of Epu-us whose erratic course it would have required a genius like his own to have 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 E<^ypt he eagerly seized the opportunity 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 chivaby 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 militarv genius against collective mediocrity. For a moment fortune seemed to waver, or even to incline in favour of the ad venturer; 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 Mamertines in Messana on the extreme east, and the Phoenicians in Lilybieum in the extreme west, must have 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 Italian 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 im- petuous 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 Carthaginians ! " - He spoke too truly. The arena was already cleared of its lesser combat- ants, and for some few years there was. as it were, the hush of expectation, 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. ' Plutarcli, Pyrrhm, xix. 5 ; Appian, Sam., Frag. 10, 2, 3. - Plntardi, Pyrrhus, xxiii. 7; oloi' airoAeiTo/xei/, w <^iAot, KapxjjSon'ois Ka\ 'Pwfxaioif TraXaiarpai'. 6S CARTHAGE AND IHU CARTHAGINIANS. CIIAPTKR IV. FIRST PUNIC WAR. (264-241 B.C.) MKSSAXA A XI, AGIUOKXTUU. (2G4-262 B.C.) -Ihc qu«.t,oi, at muc-Iniportance of the .lecision-Romans occiipv M.s^-,na-Thoy .attack S,rac»3e-Ro»ult» of fct campaigi-KoirX "^^^^^'fa"::™-'^"''"^'"""^ '"'''-'^-^ '- --A^i«c,r,;: It is not the least striking testimony to the sense of relief with which the nations of the West must have seen Pyrrhus return to his own country, that the Eomans and Cartha- ginians, in the face of so redoubtable a foe, had agi-eed to forget their mutual jealousies till such time as he should transfer himself and his ambitious schemes to another quarter of the globe The second victory of Pyrrhus over the Romans had been foUowed by the appearance of a Carthaginian fleet off the mouth of the Tiber, offering to the Roman Senate their aid against him.' The offer was at first declined, but shortly afterwards a close alliance was concluded, and the Cartha- ginian fleet, which had in vain attempted to intercept Pyrrhus on his crossing into Sicily, inflicted a heavy loss upon him as he hastily retreated from it.^' But hardly had Pyrrhus urned his back for the last time on Italy, when the first 'Justin, xviii. 2, 1-3. n'oljbius, iu. 25; Plutarch, Pyrrhm. xxiv. 1 ; Appian, Sam. 12, Frag. oZ SICILY AND ROME, 69 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 Khegium, the town which was, as yet, the farthest outpost of the Eoman 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 Car- thaginian, and after outraging Greek and Carthaginian alike, and arousing their active hostility, had now, to make matters better, appealed for aid to a third power which was destined to prove mightier than either. 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, treacher- ously 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 plun- dering or harrying all the surrounding country. ^ Such outi-ages could not be overlooked by the Cartha- ginians. Still less could they pass unnoticed by the young king Hiero, who had lately obtained the vacant throne of *Pol>li. I 7; l>kMl. xxi. Frag. 13; I'liitarch, Pt/rihus, xxiii. SICIfA' AM) ROME. 69 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 Car- thaginian, and after outraging Greek and Carthaginian alike, and arousing their active hostility, had now, to make matters better, appealed for aid to a third power which was destined to prove mightier than either. When Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, died (n.c. 289), his mercenary troops were disbanded, and a body of them, on their way back to Campania, their native country, treacher- ously 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 plun- dering or harrying all the surrounding country. ^ Such outrages could not be overlooked by the Cartha- ginians. Still less could they pass unnoticed by the young king ITiero, who had lately ol)tained the vaca!it throne of M'ul\lt, i. 7; hiotl. \\i, Fi;ii.^ l.'i; riiiL:uch, Pf/n/iits, .\.\iii. 1 1 70 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. APPEAL OF MAMERTINES. 71 Syracuse by the best of titles, the free choice alike of his comrades in arms and of his fellow-citizens; and he pro- ceeded 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 Komans to keep out both alike. 1 Never was a question fraught with more important issues, moral and political, brought before the Roman Senate ; and never did they shirk their responsibility 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 Itahans who appealed to them avowedly as the head of the Italian Confederation for aid against the Greeks and Carthaginians, and to look calmly on while the city of Messana fell into the hands of the Cartha- ginians, 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 distant ? 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 Mamertines had seized Messana, and to take under their special protection a band of cut-throats 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 immediate interest pointed as clearly in another, and the Roman Senate took the most Ignoble course of all open to it, that of shifting the immediate » Pol) 1). i. 8-10. responsibility from their own shoulders to that of the people assembled in their Comitia. Not that they broke the letter of the constitution in so doing. In a government which rested, as did that of Rome, on a popular basis, the ultimate decision on a question of peace or war would necessarily remain with the people at large. But, usually, a question of the kind was referred to the Comitia only in the light of a previous resolution of the Senate. Nor would it often happen that a people who, in the matter of an ordinary election, showed such a profound respect for the chance vote of their own first century, that they hardly ever failed to follow its lead and to elect the candidate it had named, would, in the far graver matter of peace or war, set at nought the majestic " prerogative " of the Senate. If ever there was an occasion in Roman history when, in view of the complicated moral questions, and the far-reaching consequences involved, It was desirable that the irresponsible and ill-educated masses should have the help of such guidance as the most highly trained intellects, and the most responsible body in the State could give them, that occasion was the present. 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 under such circumstances 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 Senate (b.c 264).i It was possible for the Senate, perhaps, by such paltry conduct, to deprive them- selves 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. iPolyb. i. 10, 11 ; I.ivy, Kpit. xvi. ; Zouanis. viii. 8. i ii H I !1 72 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Nor was the step now taken less serious from a political than from a moral point of view, for, in tnith, upon the passmg 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 pohcy of the Koman Senate had been definite and stnctly practical, and had not carried them beyond the uT i ^i'^u^ P'^P^'- ^^ *^^y ^^^ ^^°^d si^ips 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 poHcy 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 portion of the island which had for centuries been looked upon as her peculiar appanage. Some clear-sighted men there must have been among the Eoman senators who recoiled from the results of what they had done, or rather from the results of what they had refrained, through moral coward- ice, from doing; but their voices were not heard, and active operations began. War, indeed, 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 declaration by raking up forgotten grievances or inventing new ones to justify the resolution which had been MeTslna^i^ * *""* '''^^''^ '^^'^ ^'^^"^ *"* ''"''^ *° ^^^'^^^ The command was committed to Appius Claudius (b.o ,264), more easy work being found for his colleague, Flac cus, 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, as Polybius tells us, by borrowing them from the Greek cities of Italy, Tarentum, Locri, Velia, and Neapolis.2 It would IMPORTANCE OF DECISION TAKEN. 73 >Polyb. i. 11.3; Floras, ii. 2, 1-5. ^Vo\yh. i. 20, 13. 14. rather seem, however, from the admitted fact that commis- sioners of the fleet had for some time past been regularly stationed at various points along the coasts of Italy, that these ships were in no sense the voluntary offerings of the communities which supplied them, but were rather the regular contingents which the Greek cities were bound to furnish to the Roman confederacy, when it called upon them to do so. Anyhow a more serious difficulty occurred, w^hen 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 possession of the citadel. Here was an awkward predicament 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 Hanno, the Carthaginian admiral, to a conference, and then, in defiance 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 incapacity, condemned him to be crucified — a punishment which was not very exceptional in their adminis- tration of justice and was certainly not always so well deserved.^ The Mamertines, who were equally ready to follow any one who seemed able to promise them the lives which by their crimes they had so justly forfeited, were now besieged in Messana from the north side of the city by a second Hanno whom the Carthaginians had sent out to replace the first, while Hiero attacked it from the south. Such was the condition of afifairs 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 > I'olyb. i, 11, 4, r» ; Zoiiuras, viii. 9 74 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. an enemy whose proud boast it was that without their leave no Eoman could even bathe his hands in the sea, w^e do not knowJ 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 sufifered, 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 Eomans 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 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 reheved, 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 in her interests, the intermediate state of Messana, which from its position would henceforward have to bear the brunt of any attack on the part of the Carthaginians ? Could the Romans have foreseen the heavy reverses and the "Cadmean victo- ries " of the twenty- three years' war which was to drag out its tedious length after so brilliant a beginning, they might 1 Polyb. i. 11, 9; Zonaras, viii. I». ^ViAyh. I 12; Dioil. Sic. Frag, xxiii. 9. THE SECOND CAMPAIGN. 75 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 expanded with their achievements ; and, no longer content with securing the corner of Sicily nearest to themselves, they had conceived the design of stripping Car- thage and Syracuse ahke of so much of their Sicihan posses- sions 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 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 neighbour- hood of Rome ; and the two consuls, M'. OctaciUus and M'. Valerius, were able to cross together 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 aUiance with Syracuse would bring them while they were waging war in the interior of the island. Their supplies— theV>iii "I'olyb. iii. 24. »Ibid. iii. 25, 26, 1-2. m 84 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. THE NEW FLEET, 85 U. Hebrew subjects of King Solomon a way out of the ditliculty was open which was not available to the Romans now. The gold of Solomon was able to procure Phoenician ship- wrights 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 descend- ants of these self-same Phoenicians, the heirs of their tradi- tions 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 obtain 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 shipwrights 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 Carthaginian 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 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 thirty thousand rowers necessary to propel the ships, and of twelve thousand marines necessary 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 1 Polyb. i. 20, 15. 2 Pliny, Ili^t. Nat. x\\. 192; Florus, U. 2-7. 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 Kcleustes, 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 w^ood of which the ships were built, and the distressing maladies which would assuredly befall a herd of landsmen who had gone through only the mechanical pre- paration for the sea which has just been 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 that hardly were the ships launched when they fearlessly set sail (b.c. 261). M. Cornelius Scipio went forward with the vanguard of seventeen vessels, leaving the other consul, M. Duillius, be- hind to superintend the equipment of the main body of the fleet, and afterwards to take 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 lands- men's instincts made for the friendly shore which was close at hand. Cornelius, who earned for himself the name of 1 Polyb. i. 21, 1,2. % 86 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, NAVAL TACTICS OF THE ANCIENTS. 87 t i I 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 Messana. He fell unexpectedly into their midst when his ships were in disorder, and he himself escaped with dif- ficulty, leaving the greater number of his vessels in the hands of the enemy. 1 The Carthaginians had been disposed at first to 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 widd awake in future. Dr. Arnold remarks that the naval service of the ancients generally was, out of all proportion, 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.2 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 aff'airs. But the skill in naval warfare which the Carthaginians had acquired in cen- turies 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 1 Polyl). i. 21 ; Florus, ii. 2. 2 Arnold's Ilnm. Hist. ii. ^Z-'J 574. Gulf contained in the second book of Thucydides, that even for the simple manoeuvres practised by the ancients, the cmbolc, or charge on the side, and the prosbole, or charge beak to beak, the 'pcriphiSy and the diecpkcs, there was an incalculable difiference between trained and untrained 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 numbers, nor personal valour, nor dis- cipline could be of any avail against the superior skill in mancBUvring which the Athenians had attained during the fifty years which 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 Kcleustes to keep the three tiers of rowers, ranged one above the other, wnth their oars of different w^eights 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 management 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 opportunity as possible for subsequent manoBUvring, and as much as possible for hand-to-hand »Thucyd. ii. 89-92. ! 88 CARTHAGE AXD THE CARTHAGINIANS. UATTLE OF MYLM, 89 ii \i 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 twelve feet above the deck, was a species of drawbridge, rising, when it stood erect, twenty-four 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 resemblance, when in this position, to the bill of the raven, gave the name of Corvus to the whole construction. When an enemy's vessel was seen approaching for the purpose either of charging directly beak to beak, or of striking obliquely the tiers of oars, and so of mcapacitating them for further use, the drawbridge 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 attacking ship. The iron beak would pierce through the planking of the deck and hold it fast in a death grapple. The drawbridge was four feet broad, and was fur- nished with parapets reaching as high as the knee. The Roman marines could therefore descend along it two abreast m continuous columns, the foremost pair defending themselves completely by holding in front their oblong shields, while those who followed were protected in flank partly by the parapets and partly by their small round shields. ^ In this way in a very few moments from that at which the Corvus fell, the whole body of the Roman marines 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 doubted. > Polyl). i. 22. I. Much ingenuity has been expended on the question of the purpose that could be served by fixing the lower end of the drawbridge so high up the mast, and therefore so inconveni- ently high above the deck. But the explanation seems to lie in the fact, which, perhaps, has escaped notice simply because it was so obvious, that the ships of both Romans and Cartha- ginians 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 doubtless 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 befallen his patrician colleague at Lipara, left the control of the army — a matter, as it seemed now, of less moment — to inferior ofl&cers, and assumed the far more critical post of admiral of the fleet. Finding that the enemy were engaged in ravaging Mylae, a peninsula and town on the north-east of the island, not far from Messana, he sailed fearlessly towards them. The Carthaginians, when with one hundred and thirty well-built and well-manned ships they saw the hundred 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 some- thing of the thrill of long-deferred delight which forced from Napoleon the exclamation, "At last I have them, those English, in my grasp," as, assuredly, 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 uncouth i go CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, SARDINIA ATTACKED. 9« and extraordinary appendages attached to them. But their hesitation was only for a moment. Evidently these raw ene- mies of theirs did not even know how to clear their decks for action. With redoubled confidence thirty of the Car- thaginian vessels charged beak to beak on as many of the Eoman 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 Carthaginian 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 was a thing of hfe, and descended upon them, pinning the vessels tight alongside of each other, and en- abling the Roman legionaries to dispense with the bridge and 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 remainder, 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 belonged 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 sHpped 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 importance was not to be measured by its immediate results, but rather by the omen it gave for the future. Honours 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 » Polyb. i. 23 ; Floriis, ii. 2, 8, 9. to his honour in the Forum, called the Columna 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 b.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 SiciUan 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 inde- pendence and of their barbarism ; but the coasts had 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 engage- ment, and on his escape to land was apprehended by his own » Polyb. i. 24, 1 ; Livy, Epit. xvii. ; Cicero, de Senedute, xiii. 44 ; Pliny, //. iV. xxxiv. 5. Cf. Virg. (Jeoiy. iii. 29 ; and Silius Italicus, Pun. vi. 663- C6.S; Tac. Ann. ii. 49. - Polyb. i. 24, 2 ; Diod. xxiii. Frag. 7. 93 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. men and 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 surviv- ing so many and such unprecedented reverses. i The Komans followed up their success by an attack on Olibia, 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, ac- knowledged her maritime supremacy, and the second treaty between Eome 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 pro- gress of the Roman arms in Sicily. Rome could not yet afford so to dissipate her energy, and Hamilcar, commander- m-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 surprised and cut to pieces four thousand of the enemy in their camp near Himera.* He ' Polyb. i. 24, 5-7. 2 See Serviuson ^n. iv. 628, quoted by Mommsen, " Ut Corsica esset media inter Romanos et Carthaginienses". ^ Hie cepit Corsicara Aleriamquc iirbom, Dedit terapestatibus aidem mereto. Nor is Ovid backward to acknowledge the debt of gratitude to the merciful storm :— Te quoque, Tempestas, meritam delubra fatemur, Cum pcene est Corsis obruta chissis aquis. M'..,y...i.24,3,4. Ovid, F«./^ vi. 193, 194. ENORMOUS NAVAL ARMAMENTS. 93 destroyed the town of Eryx and transferred its inhabitants bodily to the neighbouring fortress of Drepanum ; ' and it was doubtless the bold front he showed which, in the foUowmg 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 sub- jugations, the taking or retaking 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. 257 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 to it— the Romans with the avowed intention of fighting their way mto Africa, and so compelling Carthage to submit to the terms of peace which they might be willing to offer her ; the Cartha- ginians 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 obtained 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 Arte- misium, 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, doubt- 1 Diod. Sic. xxiii. Frag. 9. 2 Polyb. xxiv. 10-13. » Polyb. XXV. 1-3; Zouaras, viii. 11, 12. ♦Polyb. XXV. 7-9;'XXvi. 1-3. 94 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. BATTLE OF ECNOMUS. 95 less, enlist the sympiithies 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 oppressor of all Europe was for ever frustrated by the crown- ing 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 combatants, in its purely mihtary or scientific interest, and in its results— the battle of Ecnomus is not specially remarkable. It is impossible to give our undivided 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 mercenaries, though their employers did not think so, were worth some- thing 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 Koman 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 characteristic of it. The Romans set sail from Messana (b.c. 256) with 330 ships, while the Carthaginians mustered the still more portentous number of 350 ships in their famous port of Lilybasum ; so that, if we are to accept the deliberate calculation of Polybius, who assigns 300 rowers and 120 marines 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 behind 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 impor- tant 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 and admirals in one, M. Atilius Regulus and L. Manlius. The whole Roman fleet together thus formed the figure » Polyb. i. xxvi. 7-9. a Ibid. i. 2G, 10-15. 9ft CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGlMANS, i called in nautical manoeuvring an cviholon, or wedge, a figure said by Polybius to be suited to energetic 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 Mylae, only three years before, i 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 Tyndaris— of the momentous issues that were at stake, and asked to choose whether they would henceforward fight for the possession of Sicily or in defence of their own hearths and homes, moved eastward 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 fourfold division of the Eoman 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 re- tarded by the transports, arranged that 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 strat- agem was partially 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 iPolyb. i. 26, 16. ^Zouaras, viii. 12, makes the battle take place off Heraclea Minoa, but he gives no details ; and his account of the sequel is obviously mythical, intended to set forth the good faith of the Romans and the bad faith of the Carthaginians. Polybms clearly implies an advance of the Carthaginians from Heraclea and of the Komans from Ecnomus, but the exact scene of the batUe must remain nn- ♦certain. 96 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTIFAG IMAXS. called in nautical manaeiivring an cmbolon, or wedge, a figure said by Polybius to be suited to energetic 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 Mylae, only three years before. » The Carthaginians, reminded by their admirals -Hanno, who had in vain attempted to raise the siege of Agrigentura, and Hamilcai-, who had lately fought, not without credit to himself, at Tyndaris— of the momentous issues that were at stake, and asked to choose whether they would henceforward fight for the possession of Sicily or in defence of their own hearths and homes, moved eastward 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 fourfold division of the Roman armament, they divided their own lieet 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 re- tarded by the transports, arranged that 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 strat- agem was partially successful, for the flying Carthaginian ships, wheehng 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 m them by the possession of the Raven, enabled the Romans 1 Polyb. i. 26, 16. 2Zoiiaras, viii. 12, makes tl.e battle take place off Heraclea Minoa, but he gives no details ; and his account of the sequel is obviously mythical, intended to set forth the good faith of the Romans and the bad faith of the Carthaginians. Polj-bius clearly implies an advance of the Carthaginians from Heraclea and of the Romans from Ecnomus, but the exart .scene of the battle must remti\u un- ♦•frtam. N ROMAN VICTORY. 99 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. ** Vcntum erat ad Triarios," 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 ships of the third squadron, which were im- peded 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. Hamil- car, 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 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 victorious. 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. ICX) CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. INVASION OF AFRICA, lOI CHAPTER VI. INVASION OF AFKICA. REGULU8 AND XANTHIPPU8, (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 Regiilus — 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 misgivings, and that these should have found expres- sion in the mutinous language of a tribune.^ Xenophon has told us how anxiously Cyrus the Younger concealed 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 »Floru«, ii. 2, 17. 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 unknown and, under existing circumstances, as fraught with the possibilities of mischief as the trackless deserts of Mesopotamia. They were to enter a new con- tinent, peopled not by the wild ass and the antelope and the scudding ostrich which had amused the Ten Thousand Greeks but, as popular imagination would have it, and as a gi^ve historian had related, - by lions and by dog- headed monsters, and by creatures with no heads and with eyes in their breasts ".i However, threats of a more summary kind used by Regulus overpowered these fore- bodings of distant disaster and crushed the rising mutiny, and the Roman fleet, after it had been revictualled and re- paired, stood right across the Mediterranean to the nearest point of Africa, a distance of only ninety miles. The Hermaean 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, 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 Carthaginian 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 Aspia. They set foot without opposition on African soil, hauled up their ships upon the beach, and, as though tlieir stay was not going to be a short one, threw up a pali- I Herod, iv. 191; cf. Livy, EpU. xvii. ; Val Max. i. «, ^9; Floras ii. 220; Zonaras, viii. 13, for the account of the huge serpen 120 feet long, found on the Bagr^das and besieged by the Roman army with their ballista 'n.e skin is said to have been carried to Rome and to have been preserved there for centuries ! 1 I02 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF CARTHAGINIANS. 103 sade 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 de- feat at Ecnomus, had made straight across for Carthage, and, though he must have risked his life in so doing, had bidden the citizens prepare for the worst. But to be forewarned was with the Carthaginians, at this period of their history, not necessarily to be forearmed : 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 Eomans marched at once upon tlje 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 Car- thage was too tempting and too easy a prey for the needy Koman soldiery. It had now quite recovered from the de- vastations of Agathocles, and the Komans, strangers as yet, happily for themselves, to luxury, contemplated with amaze- ment and delight the pleasant gardens and the" opulent palaces of the merchant princes of Carthage, 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 ransacked of their valuables, and then ruthlessly set on fire ; the cattle were driven in vast herds towards the Koman camp ; and twenty thousand 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 sub- ject cities to surround themselves with walls, not because, like the Spartans, they thought that 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 aoainst themselves. Accordingly, Regulus passed with facil- itv from village to village, or from town to town, till, as the Komans boasted, he had nearly doubled the number of two hundred townships which Agathocles had conquered before ^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 conclusion.^ It was not so much that the Roman Senate actually underestimated the difficulty of con- quering 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 appalhng stand- ing 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 disbanded, was a practical apphcation of the principle the advantages of which must have been out- weighed by the disadvantages, even in the early struggles of the Roman repubUc ; while the maxim of state policy that the commander-in-chief, whatever his talents and what- ever the complication of his military plans, should as soon as a particular day of the year came round, be superseded by a civil magistrate, whatever his military incapacity, was a maxim which, though it may have acted well enough m a border warfare against a discontented Latin or Etruscan 1 Diod. Sic. XX. 8. «Polyb. i. 29, 1-7. 1 Florus. ii. 2. 19. aPolyb. i. 29, 8. I04 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 business of the state, was not more farsighted than other deliberative assemblies, and needed the bitter teaching of experience to bring home to them what seems to us so obvious a truth. Its orders were obeyed without a murmur, and Manlius set ofif for Rome, with his prisoners, his army, and his fleet,^ leaving Regulus behind him, the heir to that strange inheritance of a reputation for military rashness and disaster on the one hand, and for dis- interested 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 demonstration of its groundlessness by pitiless critics. The army with which Regulus was expected, as it would seem, to complete the conquest of Africa amounted only to fifteen thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry. But the Carthaginians, however short sighted, had not been idle since his arrival. They had appointed Hasdrubal, son of Hanno, and Bostar generals with equal powers; and, as though this division of responsibility was not in itself suffi- ciently 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 1 Their collective wisdom came to the patriotic resolution— they could hardly have come to any other—" to go to the help of the country ".s 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, but which far more efifectually prevented those occupy- ing it from making use of the arm in which they were really 1 See Monimsen, ii. p. 60. ^ Ibid. i. 30, 3. « Polyb. i. 29, 10. SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF ROMANS, 105 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 cavaky and elephants extricated themselves, as best they could, from the broken ground, and as soon as they reached the plain saved them- selves by flight. The Romans now fell to devastating 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 most fertile country in the world. The prospects of the Carthaginians looked desperate in- deed. Their only available army had been defeated, and what the Romans had spared in then: 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 chas- tised them with scorpions. All the inhabitants who could flee took refuge in the capital, and the vast increase of popu- lation 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, 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 all their ships of war but one, to cede not Sicily only —for that the Carthaginians, acknowledging the fortune of 1 Polyb. i. 31, 2, 3. Ill lo6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, war, wonld 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 Eomans to bring them to their knees, and a heavy tribute be- sides ! Terms, intolerable in themselves, were made still more intolerable by the insolent bearing of the Plebeian consul to- wards those whom he looked upon as prostrate before him. He had already written to Bome 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 Eomans, when after the battle of the ^gatian 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 Eegulus 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 already drawn, did not think it necessary to clip its claws as well. It argues an insensate ignorance on the part of the Eo- mans 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 Sen- ate 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 Eegulus ever so true, a serious abatement must be made in estimating his qualities both of head and heart, for the insolence and in- fatuation 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 1 Zonaras, viii. 13. ^ Diod. xxiii. Frag. 10. 3 Poly b. i. 31, 8; Dioil. xxiii. Frag. xiL COMMAND GIVEN TO XANTHIPPUS. 107 whom he had induced to place their swords at the disposal of the rich republic. Amongst these was Xanthippus, a Ucediemonian of inferior grade, but one who had been weU schooled in war by the admirable training which the Spartan discipline still gave, and by the troublous times m which the whole of Greece was involved. Observing the excellence of the Carthaginian cavalry and the number of the Cartha- ginian elephants, and hearing also the story of the recent defeat, he remarked casuaUy. 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 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 trustworthy, to Usten to anythmg to the prejudice of the instruments they employed, summoned Xan- thippus before them. He justified what he said by argument and pledged his word that if only the Carthaginians would keep to the plains and utUise that in which their real strength lay. they would be victorious. 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 ap- prise 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 en- trusted to Xanthippus. His confidence was contagious, and there ran through the city the joyful news that now the hour had come and the man. Confidence grew into enthusiasm when men saw the way in which Xanthippus handled his troops, and contrasted it with the sorry performances of the other generals. A cry was raised for instant battle ; for aU 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, waiving their own claims, and sharing, as it io8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, THANK-OFFERINGS TO MOLOCH. 109 ■M would seem, in the general enthusiasm, handed over the undivided responsibility to Xanthippus.^ The Carthaginian army, reinforced by the addition of the recruits from Greece, numbered twelve thousand infantry, with four thousand cavalry, and a formidable array of one hundred elephants. Kegulus, surprised at the novel sight of a Carthaginian army encamping on the plains, hesitated for a moment, as though there was something more in this change of tactics than met the eye, and moving cautiously forward, 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, outnumbered in the proportion of four to one, took to flight without striking a blow, and the elephants, rushing 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 un- protected, by the Numidian cavalry, and on the rear by the elephants, the majority of the Roman legionaries stood their ground nobly, as they did 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 shght pro- 1 Polyb. i. 32, longation of the miserable struggle for life. Regulus himself, at the head of six hundred men, surrendered to the conquerors, and of the whole army two thousand 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, returned 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 immediate 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 exuberance of their joy, all ranks alike gave themselves up to feasting and thanksgivings to their gods? 2 But what kind of thanksgiving did the Carthaginian 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, two hundred children of the noblest Carthaginian families had been offered alive to appease the angry Moloch, and three hundred men had willingly devoted themselves for the same purpose, if haply they so might save the city from the im- pending siege. And, again, a httle later, to celebrate a victory 1 Polyb. i. 33, 34. ^ ibid. i. 34, 12 ; 36, 1. SDiod. zz. 14. no CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ROMAN FLEET DESTROYED IN A STORM, III i! I 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 sacrificers; for the flames in which the wretched victims were being consumed, fanned by the wind which 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 cus- tom, must have been presidingat the sacrifice, and then leaping, with a speed which cut off escape, from tent to tent of wat- tled 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 worshippers.^ 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 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 treacherously 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 alone.^ An only child, a first-bom 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 prod 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 defiance 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 country- men of satisfying his utmost cravings with the gold of the opulent republic. But the head of Xanthippus was not turned by his success. He knew the Carthaginians better perhaps than they knew themselves, and determined to return to his own home before the popularity 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 Carthaginians, 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 Hermaean promontory. The Romans gained the day, and took on board, at their leisure, the defenders of Clypea who had so well earned their Uves. 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 1 Diod. XX| G.'>. "Ibid. 14. JPolyb. L 36, 2-4 ; Zonaras, viii. 13i. 112 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 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 three hundred and forty ships it is said that only eighty escaped; and what must have given an additional sting to the calamity was the conscious- ness 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 Carthaginians must have risen higher still when they heard of its sudden and com- plete destruction. Like Athens or like Venice, Carthage might well call herself by the proud title of " Bride of the 'Cf. Horace, Epod, xv. 7, "naulis infestus Orion". Virg. jBn, i. 636, " subito assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion ". 'Polyb. i. 37 ; Eutropius, ii. 22. THE ROMANS TAKE PANORMUS, "3 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 used the forcible expression of the admiral Callicratidas— 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 one hundred and forty elephants, and with a fleet which was to co-operate with the army. He made straight for LilybaBum, and, taking the field, prepared to ravage the open country. With unconquerable resolution, however, the Romans de- termined 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 two hundred and twenty vessels were built from the keel, and were ready for action. 2 The two consuls, A. Atilius and Cn. Cornelius Scipio Asina, who had been released from his captivity, 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 even after their victory at Mylse ; and, what is more surpris- ing, 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 surprises 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 de main an almost virgin fortress, which had never yet been taken but by Pyrrhus ; baffling all the calculations * XeU. Nell. i. 6, 16, iiot\av tV *aAoTTOi». 8 2 Polyb. i. 38, 1-G. "4 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CARTHAGINIANS THREATEN PANORMUS. J15 H of a not inexperienced foe, and then sailing back to Komo as though nothing extraordinary had happened, leaving only a small garrison in what had been the Carthaginian capital of the island, the head-quarters of its armies and its fleets.^ In the following year (b.c. 253), the Komans 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 overboard their valuables. The moment they were extricated from their danger, like animals that have been in the toils, they made their way back to Panormus, only too thankful if they could escape the pursuit of the enemy. But the worst was still to come. In crossing from Panormus to Italy they were overtaken, ofiF the promontory of Palinurus, by another storm, which, as it must have seemed, could not now let even the sea 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 sacrifices. 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 Ilasdrubal to Lilybaeum had that within it which seemed able, for the time at least, to demoralise, nay, even to para- lyse, 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-regulated 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 instru- ment 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 and again did the two armies face one another at a few furlongs' distance, in the territory of Selinus, and once and again did they part company without coming to blows. The Romans were determined, if possible, to avoid a battle, and clung steadfastly to the hills where their experience in Africa had taught them that the one hundred and forty ele- phants would be useless, and where the Carthaginians there- fore could not attack them with any hope of success. There were symptoms, too, of serious disaffection and discontent among the Roman oflScers ; 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 resolution, and began to build a third fleet (b.c. 251).'- » Polyb. i. 3«. 6-10 ; Zouarus. viil 14. aPolyb. i. 39, 1-7. iP)lyh,l 39, 11,12. 2 Ibid. i.31), i:Mr.. ii6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. BATTLE OF PANORMUS. 117 ,: I' Hasdrubal meanwhile, encouraged by what he thought the cowardice of the Komans, issued from Selinus, and proceeded to carry ofif the rich harvests, just then ripe, from under the eyes of the Koman army at Panormus. Caecilius Metellus was in command there, a man of prudence and self-restraint, but able to strike a vigorous blow when there was occasion 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 Hasdrubal, and should find themselves hard pressed, were warned to take shelter. Here they would find fresh weapons awaiting them, thrown down by the townsmen from the walls above, and, safe under their protection, 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 ex- pectations. The elephant-drivers — Indians, Polybius here and elsewhere calls them— eager to assert their independ- ence of Hasdrubal, or to win special credit for themselves, advanced to close quarters before the word of command was given. The light troops gave way, and leaping down into the ditch, received the unwieldy monsters, which came blundering on to its very edge, with showers of darts and burning arrows. Unable to vent their rage on their assail- ants in the ditch, the elephants rushed wildly back on the Carthaginian army, and wrought amongst them the havoc which the Eomans had feared for themselves. Now was the moment for Metellus. Unobserved by the enemy, he had massed the main 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 com- pletely, drove them headlong back towards Selinus. It was the greatest pitched battle of the war, and restored confidence to the Komans at the time when they needed it most sorely.^ But we must dwell for a moment on the fate of the elephants which had played so important a part in the battle itself, and whose terrors exercised so critical and so charac- teristic 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 Komans, and the monsters were still, after the battle, rushing wildly about, no Koman 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 creatures, one hundred and twenty in number, were reduced to order. It was determined to send them to Kome to grace the well-deserved triumph of Metellus ; but it was no easy matter to convey them across the stormy Straits of Messana. Huge rafts were lashed together, earth and herbage were scattered 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 misconcep- tion as to the operation which they were undergoing. They marched in stately procession 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 Koman Circus. There, after being baited with '♦ arms of courtesy," to familiar- ise the people and the soldiers that were to be, with their formidable appearance, they received the death-blow from more formidable weapons ; and the fatal appetite for blood which was then just beginning 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 \ Polyb. I. 40 ; cf. Diod. xxiii. 14 ; Florus, ii. 2, 27, 28. i ill f II ii8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, Metelli always cherished, as well they might, the memory of the great battle of Panormus among their most precious 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 prisoners. It was accompanied by Regulus, who had been languishing for five years in a Cartha- ginian prison, and who came upon his parole to return to Car- thage if his mission should prove unsuccessful. Every one knows the beautiful touches with which the story of what fol- lows has been filled in by the genius of Horace 2 and of other late poets and orators ; how 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 dis- grace ; let not the Senate estabhsh 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 wavering 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 ofif, 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 > Polyb. i. 40 ; Livy, I'JpU. xix. ; Eutropiiis, ii. 24 ; Zonaras, viii. 14. «Orf«, iii. 5. Cf. Siliiis Italicus, Pun. vi. 346-402; Livy, /CpU. xvili ; Val. Max. i. 1, 14 ; Eutropiiis, ii. 25 ; Zonaras, viii. 15. STORY OF REGULUS. tig his country estate. It is an ideal picture of a brave man bear- ing 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, with that which not only idealises the Roman character, but sets it ofif 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 conquered foe— a foe like C. Pontius, for instance, far more generous and high-spirited than.Regulis himself. 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 curcumstances, 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 de- feated 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 Carthaginian 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 dififerent versions as there are authors who refer to it. Moreover, the silence of Polybius, the most trust- worthy of historians, who relates the exploits of Regulus m detaU, and whose chief fault 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 poetry of the late Republic. On the other hand, as has been akeady hinted, we have I20 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, the authority of a fragment of Diodorus Siculus for a story, which, when we remember his anti-Carthaginian bias, we can scarcely suppose that he either invented, or reported on insufficient evidence, of the shocking cruelties inflicted on Bostar and Hamilcar, two Carthaginians given over by the Eoman Senate to the wife of Eegulus, as hostages for the safety of her husband.^ Eegulus 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 smallest 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 ^neid, 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 iEneas, that a Eoman matron did to Hamilcar : Mortua quin etUm jungebat corpora vivis. In that same cask she kept the living and the dead for five more days, by a cruel kindness supplying 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 the tribunes of the people, and Hamilcar came forth from his living death and was protected from further violence by the more merciful people. To palliate the story of the foul cruelty of the widow of Eegulus, for which the Eomans at large were certainly not responsible, was invented, as seems likely, the story of the cruel death of Eegulus himself. »Diod. Sic, xxiv. Frag. 1. CARTHAGINIAN FORTRESSES IN SICILY, 121 CHAPTEE VII. HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE SIEGE OP LILYBiEUM. (B.C. 250-241.) Fortresses remaining to Carthaginians in Sicily— Siege of Lilybseum— Its origin and situation— Early siege operations— Carthaginians run the block- ade—Hannibal the Rhodian— Carthaginian sortie— Distress of Romans — Tlie consul Claudius— Battle of Drepanum- Claudian family— Roman reinforcements for siege of Lilybaeura lost at sea— Romans seize Eryx— Hamilcar Barca— He occupies Mount Ercte— Exhaustion of Romans— Culpable conduct of Carthaginians— 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 iEgatian Isles— Magnanimity of Hamilcar— Terms of peace— Roman gains and losses— Carthaginian losses and prospects— Contest only de- ferred. The victory which the Eomans 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 Lily- bseum, 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 the Eomans, 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. 122 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. SIEGE OF LILYBMUM. "3 With the siege of LilybaBura, 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 mythical siege of Troy, and the semi-mythical siege of Veii. The Romans distinguished themselves in it by their heroic perseverance, and by little else; but it was that kind of heroic perseverance 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. Lilybaeum was built upon the promontory which formed the extreme western point of Sicily. It was the point near- est to Africa and directly fronted the Hermaean promontory. It was, therefore, so long as it remained in the hands of the Carthaginians, the most important support to theii 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 antiquity. 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 settle- ment on the promontory of Lilybaeum, the superior ad- vantages 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 possessed. Just before the beginning of the siege it received an important addition to its population. All the inhabitants of SeHnus were trans- ' Diod. x\\. 47 53. See above, p. ,''•2. ferred to it, and if Diodorus is to be believed, it contained now a population of sixty thousand 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 Harbour of God, still bears witness (Marsala). But the entrance to it was rendered difficult by the constant winds that blew off the headland, 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 Lilybaeum.^ WouJd the Romans succeed where Pjnrhus 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 success 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 weaken- ing 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 iDiod. xxiv. Frag. 1. «Polyl). i. 42, 7 ; cf. Virgil, ^w. iii. 706, Et vada dura lego saxis LilybeTa csecis. sDiotl. xxii. Frag. 14. 124 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, HANNIBAL THE RHODIAN. 125 the mercenaries, a formidable conspiracy which had broken out among them to betray the town to the Romans. ^ Poly bius recalls with patriotic pride the name of Alexion, an Ach»an soldier of fortune, who, by his fidelity to his employers, saved LilybaBum from faUing into the hands of the Romans, as he had formerly saved Agrigentum, its freedom and its laws, from some treacherous Syracusan mercenaries.' Meanwhile the Carthaginians, knowing the weakness of their naval force ofif Lilybaeum, and fully conscious that the place could not hold out unless relieved from home, made vigorous efforts to throw succour into it. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, was despatched with all haste to Sicily, with fifty ships and ten thousand troops. He moored his fleet among the iEgatian 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 engagement, with that happy rashness 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 looking on, aghast at his rashness, and expecting to see him dashed to pieces upon the rocks. 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 fuU sail, without losing a single vessel, and deposited in safety his ten thousand 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 " Mount joy " and the " Phoenix " forcing the boom in Lough Foyle, and saving 1 the heroic and famished garrison from the most hideous form of death, or perhaps from that which is still worse than death, can best realise the enthusiasm, as described briefly but emphatically by Polybius, with which the inhabitants 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 Drepanum, fifteen miles away.^ The example of Hannibal was contagious. A Rhodian mercenary, 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 entrance of the harbour for the very purpose of preventing 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 blockading 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 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 J Zonaras, viii. 15. « Polyb. i. 42, 43. 1 Polyb. i. 44. » Polyb. i. 46, 1 ; cf. Diod. xxiv. Fr. 1. I 126 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. men and lay m wait for the return of the Ehodian. He had run the blockade once too often ; and in trying to force his way out he was followed by a vessel whose speed and build convmced h.m that she must be of Carthaginian workman- ship, though the rowers who propelled her were clearly Bomans Fmdmg that he could not escape by flight he turned boldly round and charged the enemy' But a tireme had no chance agamst a quadrireme: it was taken prisoner It^Ah r'r."' ^^'"^''"'■' "'''^^ henceforward formed part of the blockadmg squadron of the very fortress which it nad done so much to relieve.' MeanwhUe Himilco. the 'commander in Lilyb«um, en- couraged by the supplies and reinforcements he had received as weU as by the inactivity and cowardice of the Eoman gulS sh^s. determmed to sally out in force at the head of twenty thousand men. m hopes of destroying the Eoman mUitary engmes After a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, and much lo s of bfe on both sides, he was driven back.» But a second aUempt proved more successful. Taking advantage of a violent wmd, he set fire in three places to the Koman Lgines Tarl^edTrfl''" 'T """' ^^^''^'^'^ *° '''^ «-• TheTnd earned the flames from one to the other, and consumed the rams. The Eomans found that aU the labour hitherto el SrLnH V i° T'"'*- """ ''^g« •''*° * blockade.' The condition of the blockading army was not an enviable one A plague had broken out in their camp, occasioned "^r want K "f n'^ *'""'''^' P""y "^y *b« wantXrS -a want which all the efforts of their zealous ally, Hiero of Syracuse, could not meet. The Eomans were ordin^^ily ve^e m r* T^'^" "'""'"°' ^"PP^y °f '»«''' which they t tiU very late^ received from the Sicilian flocks and herd^ had not mended matters. They lost from this cause, as weli Polyb. i. 46, 47. »l»olyb. I 48 ; Zonaras, viii 16. -'Ibid. i. 45. *Diod. xxiv. Fr. 1. THE CONSUL CLAUDIUS. 127 as other incidents of the war, within a few days, if Diodorus Siculus may be believed, not less than ten thousand 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 incompetent as he was arrogant, and who mistook, if our accounts do not do him injustice, severity for discipline, vio- lence for strength, and childish weakness 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 Lilybffium was not enough to occupy his energies, he deter- mined to attack Drepanum, fifteen miles away, in hopes of taking Adherbal and his fleet there by surprised 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.2 It is possible that this story may have been in- vented 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 purpose ! The generals were browbeaten into compliance. 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 fore- most ship had reached the entrance of the harbour of Dre- panum. The surprise was complete. Adherbal, knowing well how hard pressed the Romans were at Lilybaeum, ig- norant that they had been reinforced, and ignorant also of 1 Polyb. i. 49 ; Diod. xxiv. Frag. 2. « Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, ii. 3 ; Livy, MpU. xix. ; Florus, ii. 2. 29. I 128 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. DEFEAT OF THE ROMANS. 129 the chaoracter 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 Eome, 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- ginians. But Adherbal was not disconcerted. Determined not to be besieged, like Himilco at Lilybaeum, 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 o*f one side of the sickle-shaped harbour of Drepanum, while Claudius was still hovering near the entrance of the other. 1 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 difl5culty 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 abready in line, and ready, with superior forces, to bear down upon them. In the battle which ensued we 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 not give help to one another in their distress The consul, as he was the first to fall into the trap, so was he 1 Polyb. l 49. first to wriggle 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 with tolerable accuracy 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. 2 Loud must have been the curses of the Roman army at Lilybaeum 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, ho named, with true Claudian efi&rontery, 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 Lilybaeum, 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 number or to make the blockade effective. A fleet of eight hundred merchant vessels, laden with supplies of every kind, and convoyed by one hundred and twenty ships of war, was despatched 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 destination.* 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. 1 Polyb. i. 50, 51. » Polyb. i. 2,2. 2Livy, A>t7. xix. ; Aulus Gellius, x. 6. * Polyb. i. 52, 4 ; 53, 4-8. 130 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, MOUNT ERYX. 131 we may well wonder. Perhaps the Nuraidian cavalry, who had been set free from Lilybaeura, were too formidable. But the Carthaginians were on the look-out for them. Abherbal, 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 LilybsBum, to attack the re- mainder 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 military engines planted on the cliffs above. Carthalo, not caring to run unnecessary risk, and content to bide his time, kept watch at the mouth of a river hard by till they should bo obliged to move. Meanwhile the other portion of the Roman fleet had left Syracuse, had rounded Pachynus, and were sailing quietly along the coast in ignorance of the close proximity of their own and of the enemies* ships. To prevent the junction of the two fleets Carthalo advanced to meet them, and they, too, knowing their weakness, made for the nearest shore, a spot which, unfortunately for them, had neither harbour nor road- stead, and was exposed to every wind that blew. Carthalo, sure of his game, now lay-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 eight hundred 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 LilybsBum.^ 1 Polyb. i. 63, 64 ; Diod. xxiv. Frag. 1. When this sad news reached Rome — the destruction 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 Lily- baBum, burning by some signal achievement to wipe 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 two thousand feet in solitary grandeur, is so im- posing an object that ancient geographers and historians men- tion it in the same breath as iEtna, which is really four times its height.2 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 vicissitudes 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 re- cently it had fallen before the assault of Pyrrhus ; but, revered alike by Sicilians and Phoenicians, 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 destroyed by the Carthaginians in this war, and its inhabitants transferred to Drepanum ; * but heaps of its buildings must have still remained, and it was evidently still an important position for defence. Of this 1 Polyb. i. 55, 1-6 ; Zonaras, viii. 16. 2 Polyb. i. 65, 7; cf. Virg. .£n. lii. 701, "Quantus Athos ant qiiantus Eryx ". » Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 22; Appian, Sam. 12. * Diod. xxiii. Frag. 9 ; Zonaras, viiL 16. ija CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, MAMILCAk BAkCA. 133 i natural stronghold — mountain, fallen city, and temple — one ol the only three strongholds that still remained to the Cartha- ginians 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, young as he was, almost a boy, 2 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 opposing army. Equally great as an admiral and a general, after ravaging the Roman coasts from Locri to Cumae, he landed suddenly in the neighbourhood of Panormus, and seized the com- manding elevation called Ercte, now Monte Pellegrino. This hill, like Eryx, rises to a height of about two thousand feet, but, unlike it, on two of its sides rises sheer from the sea ; a third side rises equally perpendicular from the plain, while on the fourth alone, which directly faces Panormus, at a 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 1 Polyb. i. 55, 9. 10 ; Diod. xxiv. Frag. 1. •Corn. Nepos, Hamilcar, i. ; "admodom adolescentulus "• 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 command- ing 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 re- quired. The drain upon the resources of the State had been too enormous. 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 value among the Romans, which had originally weighed twelve ounces of copper, had now fallen, as Phny 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 Lilybasum ; but the seas were open to the Carthaginians, and every one 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-sacri- 1 Polyb. i. 66, 1, 2. *Livy, Epit. xviii. and xix. 2 Ibid. i. 56, 4-10. * Pliny, JJist. Nat. xxxiii. 13. 134 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ficing 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 him at so much a head, and so far as they were concerned, he might utilise his few ships to collect supplies ; 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 unsuccessful, 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 contending 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, fore- doomed to failure, was yet content to sacrifice himself if only he might prepare the way for vengeance in the re- moter future. What mattered it if Sicily were to be 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 PLANS OF HAMILCAR, «35 should turn back the tide of aggression upon Europe, and Rome, not Carthage, should tremble for her safety. Hamil- car 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 indissoluble whole, was the legitimate counterpart of the small band of mercenaries trained so painfully by Hamilcar. The ultimate result of Hamilcar's patient struggles on Mount Ercte was the victorious march of Hannibal on Rome. But we must 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 services to Carthage for gold. What wonder if they trans- ferred their services at the critical moment to those who would appraise them more highly? What wonder that LilybfiDum had been all but betrayed, and that the temple of Eryx itself was on the point of being seized by Gallic deserters from the Carthaginian army? To the task of remedying these defects 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 super- lative talents for aggressive war upon a mighty scale. By enforcing strict discipline at any price ; by never fighting a battle, and therefore never risking a defeat ; by maintaining a daily and hourly warfare with the Roman outposts, he gradu- ally trained his troops to face the terrors of the Roman presence, as the Romans on their part had at last trained themselves to face the terrors of the elephants. Knowing that he could expect 136 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGInIANS. HAMILCAk OCCUPIES ERYX, ni no efficient aid from Carthage, he determined, if possible, to save her in spite of herself. To attach the mercenaries to Carthage by ties of gratitude or respect or patriotism was impos- sible ; but it might not be impossible 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 unattacked he would pass by the Roman camp placed at the foot of the mountain, and return with the supplies 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 CumjB. 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 skiU of the combatants ; they hear the heavy thud, and they see the lightning lunge '; they note the result, but they cannot accurately observe or re- count the process. So was it with Hamilcar; and yet it must be remembered that the struggle was hardly at present a Hfe 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 Lilybaeum. 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 1 Diod. xxiv. Frag. 2. 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 ad- ventures, and attacking Mount Eryx, a stronghold which lay nearer indeed to the beleaguered Carthaginian cities of Dre- panum and LilybaBum, but in all other respects was less advantageous, and at that very time was held in force by the Romans. He managed to dislodge the garrison from the ruined city half-way 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 then- pay by the Romans, and who, since they carried their lives in their hands, were prepared to sell them as dearly as pos- sible.^ 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 despe- rate enemies above him, and a Roman army encamped below I Well might it seem that a single strenuous effort on the part of the Romans might bring Hamilcar to his knees, or that at all events he might be starved into a surrender. But this was not to be. Fortwo 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. What the Romans thought of the general who had so long baffled all their efforts in the war which was now drawing to its conclusion, and who was to spend the rest of his life in preparing for a still greater war, is clear enough from their acts; but hardly anywhere is it stated in so many words. It is strange that, playing, as Hamilcar did, so large a part in one of the most stirring periods of Roman history, he is 1 Pol> b. i. ItS, 2, 3 : Diotl. xxiv. Frag. 2 ; Zonaras, viii. 16. «Polyb. L 58. G-9. n I »38 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, hardly ever alluded to in their literature. It would be difficult to imagine any one whose character and exploits would be a fitter subject for poetry ; yet not one of the great poets of the Augustan age mentions so much as his name. Cicero, in the whole of his voluminous writings, refers to him once only, and then it is to attribute to him something which belongs not to him but to his much older namesake, the defender of Panormus.^ Cornelius Nepos devotes to him only one of the most meagre of his chapters; and of the latter annalists some, as Appian, speak only of his rule in Spain, while others pass him over altogether. If Livy's account of the First Punic War had been preserved to us, we can hardly doubt that, following closely as he did in the foot- steps of Polybius, he would have fiUed in with brilliancy the admirable outline left us by his master. But that not even so would full justice have been done to Hamilcar, we may perhaps infer from the fact that the Epitomes of the lost books of Livy which have come down to us do not even mention his name nor those of any of the places with which he was most connected. It is all the more worth while, therefore, to notice the fact that in Livy's account of the Second Punic War there are two incidental touches which seem, almost in spite of himself, to reveal to us the opinion which he had formed of the great Carthaginian general. In the first passage — which he puts into the mouth of Hanno, the violent leader of the anti-Barcine faction at Carthage — we are told that the Carthaginians regarded Hamilcar " as a second god of war".* In the second, he remarks parentheti- cally, but with real pathos, when describing a campaign in Spain, " this place is rendered famous by tiie death of the great Hamilcar".^ It must have long since been apparent to the Roman Senate that unless they could fit out a fleet more efifective than any that had preceded it, Drepanum and Lilybaeum » acero, De Of. iU. 26. « Livy, xxi. 10 : " Mara alter ". 'Ibid. zxiv. 41. EFFORTS OF ROMANS. m 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 war began, and all had been utterly destroyed ; with what conscience could they now propose to throw more public money into the gulf, and to commit them- selves 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 combina- tion, to furnish ships of war to make up another fleet. If the venture should prove successful, 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 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 Lilybaeum ; and, as if to complete the dra- matic history of this unlucky craft, the very trireme which had performed such prodigies of speed and daring for the Cartha- ginians in the siege of Lilybaeum 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 conclusion.^ The consul, C. Lutatius Catulus, took the command 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 Drepanum 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 question 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 iPolyb. i. 69, 6. 7. •Ibid. I 69. a 1^6 Carthage and The CAkTHAOtNtANS, BATTLE OF MGATIAN ISLES. 141 i men or money from home, and, now that they were about to lose him, the Carthaginians awoke to a consciousness of his true value. But a fleet could not be built in a day, even by the Carthaginians ; and by the time the transports — for they were transports rather than ships of war — reached Sicily, Catulus had, by dint of constant training, transformed his landsmen into tolerably experienced sailors. ^ In March of the following year (b.c. 241), Hanno, the Car- thaginian admiral, made for Hiera, one of the iEgatian 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. 2 Catulus had already selected the best from among the Boman troops before LilybaBum to serve the same purpose on board his ships; and he now made for iEgusa, the principal of the /Egatian Isles, with the intention of cutting ofif 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 Bomans 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 Ca- tulus 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 1 Polyb. I 69, 9-12. « Ibid. i. 60. 3-5. 3 Valerius Maxiinus, 11, 8, 2: "Consulern ea pugna in lectic& claudum Jacuiase ; .se autem omnibus imperatoriis partibus fuuctum". The triumph was adjudged to the Consul. Cf. Eutropius, ii. 27. all their sails spread, and the rowers using their oars as well. When they saw the Bomans venturing out on such a sea to in- tercept 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 Boman ships, with their practised crews and their veteran soldiers, obtained an easy vic- tory 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 re mainder escaping with the help of an opportune wind to Hiera.^ This great victory, the victory of the Egatian 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 possibiUties of his future when driven to stand at bay, to obtain more favourable terms than would otherwise have been offered them. We could hardly wonder if Hamilcar had declined 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 fol- lowers 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 und pass under the yoke ; and it was arranged that when peace should have been concluded, they should depart with aU ihe honours of war.2 The terms of peace were then agreed upon by Catulus and Hamilcar, subject to the subsequent ratification by the Boman people. The Carthaginians were to surrender Sicily to the Bomans, 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 » Polyb. i. 60, 6 and 61 ; Zonaras, viii. 17 ; Florus, ii. 2, 33-37. « Polyb. i. 62, 1-6 ; Corn. Nepos, Hamilcar, L 5 ; ii. 1 ; Zonaras, viii. 17. 143 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, OAINS AND LOSSES, M3 I twenty years a war indemnity of 2200 talents.^ The Roman people were not satisfied with these conditions; but the plenipotentiaries 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 Komans 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 military 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. 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 de- stroyed one after the other. Greek as well as Phoenician enterprise and civilisation had been almost blotted out. The island has never entirely recovered its prosperity. Its soil is still in great part uncultivated. Its population is one of the most degraded m Europe. To set against this equivo- cal gain, the Romans had lost seven hundred ships of the line, containing not less than seventy thousand men, and army after army had fallen victims to starvation, to pestilence or the sword. The Carthaginians, on their part, had lost five hundred 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 indififerenoe, 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 then: 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 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 and 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 : Hamilcar 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. » Polyb. i. 62, 7-9. 3Cf. Ibid. iii. 9. 7. «Ibid. i. 63, 1-8. Mbid. i. 63,4. 'I 144 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, SIGNIFICANCE OF MERCENARY WAR. 145 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 mutiny— Revolt of mercenaries and native Africans — Hanno and Hamilcar Barca — The Truce- less 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 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 or- ganising their newly conquered province; in appropriating to themselves, with shameless meanness and injustice, the island of Sardinia, the oldest foreign possession of the Car- thaginians, and that which, next after Sicily, had been the object of her most jealous precautions ; in suppressing lUyrian piracy and extending their northern frontier from the Apennines to the Alps. Let us bridge over the interval between 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 hght 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 descrip- tion, and this Libyan war is in itself no exception 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 mercenaries 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 rehef 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 dif&cult enough to procure the bare necessaries of life for his troops, and he had been able to pay them by promises, and 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 per sonal qualities. When the war was finished, he handed them over, with spirits still unbroken, to Gisco, the Carthaginian commander at LilybsBum, and to Gisco fell the disagreeable duty of transporting them to Africa, and of informing the home government of their obligations towards them. Gisco was equal to the emergency ; but not so the government. Bjiow- ing the men, and knowing also those with whom he had to deal, Gisco 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 mercen- aries 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 amval of the others, and then, when 10 146 Carthage and the Carthaginians, kEVOLT OF MERCENARIES. idleness and dissipation had produced its natural result, they sent them to the town of Sicca, a town noted for its licen- tiousness,^ 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. Prolonged inactivity at Sicca gave rise to more serious disturbances, and then, to make matters worse, the government sent to them not Hamilcar, or Gisco the soldier's friend, but Hanno, whom they might well consider the soldier's enemy ; and that, not to pay 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 runaway Greek slaves. So motley a gathering — each man speakings 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 difficul- ties of their employers. But they would not be slow to un- derstand the upshot 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 government 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 twenty thousand 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 147 II ^ Valerius Maximus. ii. 6, 15. «Polyb. LU6. •Ibid. i. 67. 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 horses which they said that 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. Gisco, who was the favourite of the hour, was at last sent to them in accordance with their demand ; but he was as unsuccess- ful 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 Campanian slave, in Matho, an African, who had served with distinction in Sicily, and in Autaritus, a Gaul.^ Gisco, 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 inhabitants of the Barbary States for personal ornaments 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 intrin- sic value. But the Libyan women to whom Matho's sum- mons came, and who had seen their husbands or parents torn from their homes if they could not pay the exorbitant 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 ipoiyb. L ea. * Ibid. I 69 and 77, 1. I4ft CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. HANNO AND HAMILCAR BARCA. 149 i il be turned into the sinews of war.' Men flowed in so plenti- fully 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 Spendius 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 otf 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 use- less to treat for peace with men who were loaded with the accumulated wrongs of centuries, and were burning for re- venge. The natives remembered the crucifixion of three thousand 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 re- volt should be neither partial nor unsuccessful Bitterly must the Carthaginians have rued their cruelty when they 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 stem and simple truth. Among the magistrates who had acquired the special con- fidence of the governing clique at Carthage by the amount of money which they had squeezed out of the subject com- munities, no one was more conspicuous 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 Hamil- * Polyb. I ?2, 4. 5. « Ibid. i. 70, 9, 'Appian. Sic. Frag. 3. car, 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, carry- ing 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 com- bat 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, still placing his country before all else, consented to serve the govern- ment which had betrayed him. He induced or compelled the easy-going citizens to enlist, and having got together a force of seventy elephants and ten thousand 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 ofif from Africa ; and then by his strict discipline, by his energy, and by his influence with the Numidian chiefs, especially with one called Naravus,^ 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. Deserters, 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 four thousand 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 1 Polyb. i. 74, 7. « Ibid. i. 75, L »Ibid. i. 78, 1. II I50 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. THE TRUCELESS WAR, 151 It not to serve against Carthage during the war, was something so unlike anything which the natives had before experienced at the hands of the Carthaginians, that Spendius and Matho, fearing wholesale desertions, determined to cut down their bridges and burn their boats, by involving the whole force in an act of atrocity which not even Hamilcar could forgive. ^ Panic is always cruel, and the panic of barbarians, if less culpable, is far more uncontrollable than the panic of civil- ised 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 1 " or " Smite him, smite him ! " and when in this way— just as in the French Eevolution 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. Gisco, " the soldier's friend," lay ready to their hand. He and his company of seven hundred 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 Gisco had fared. Thenceforward all native Carthaginians 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 deserved the name by which it was 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 during 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 atrocities of the Mercenary War. Suf- fice it to say that Hamilcar was driven to make reprisals for the barbarities of the Libyans by throwing his prisoners to be trampled to death by the elephants, and the war was henceforward, in the Uteral sense of the word, internecine. The Carthaginian government managed, even in this supreme hour, to thwart Hamilcar by allowing his inveterate enemy Hanno, discredited as he was, to share the command with him. Nor was it tiU after the quarrels which ensued had led to many reverses ; till the news arrived of the total de- struction of their own ships in a storm, of the revolt of Hippo Zarytus and of Utica, the towns which alone had been faith- ful to Carthage in the invasions of Agathocles and Regulus ; » above aU, till the news had come of the insurrection of the mer- cenaries in Sardinia, and the probable loss of that fair island, that the Carthaginians allowed the voice of thearmy to beheard, and committed to Hamilcar once again the sole command. Hamilcar soon penned the Libyans in their fortified 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 wist- fully 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 unkrmed with one garment each. This having been agreed upon Hamilcar immediately named Spendius and his feUow- legates, and threw them into chains.'^ The rebel army thinking, as well they might, that Hamilcar had been guilty of sharp practice, flew to arms. They were still forty thou- sand 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 waUs, Matho, by a sudden sally on the other side ii 1 Polyb. i. 80, 3-9. •Ibid. I 81. 1 Polyb. i. 82, 8. »Ibid. i. 86, 152 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CONDUCT OF ROMANS. 153 r hi f!f'f of the town, took a Carthaginian 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 I But we are 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.o. 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 ; " 1 but we are again tempted to remark that he had not seen, or perhaps imagined, such scenes as those at Batak and Kezanhk. »Poiyb. i. aa^j. CHAPTER IX. HAMILCAR BARCA IN AFRICA AND SPAIN. (B.C. 238-219.) Conduct of Romans during Mercenary War— They appropriate Sardinia and Corsica — Peace and war parties at Carthage— Hamilcar's command — He takes Hannibal with him— He crosses to Spain —Advantages of his position there— His administration and death— His character— Administra- tion of Hasdrubal — New Carthage founded— Early career of Hannibal— His vow and its significance- Remissness of Romans— Rising of Gauls in Italy— Its suppression— Hannibal besieges Saguntum— War declared be- tween 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 Uttle 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 miUtary genius which was being reared amidst those stormy scenes in his infant son, no exertion would have appeared too great to make, and no danger too desperate to dare, even to the cautious Roman Senate. Was it that the exhaustion con- sequent on the twenty-three years' war was even greater than is commonly supposed, and that the Romans were 1 Polyb. i. 88. 5. 154 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. BASENESS OF ROMANS. 155 m bound over to keep the peace by the stress of necessity? Or was it that the Senate, true to its traditional policy, would not venture upon African conquest till they felt sure that they were leaving behind them no enemy nearer home, no Illyrian 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 somethin" of the courtesy and magnanimity of Pyrrhus — exotic plant though it was in the breast of his Roman antagonists— still lingered on in so uncongenial 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 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 pur- poses 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 forbidding 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 Carthage and 1 Floras, il 6. 35. The Greeks also called them fjiaiy6fitva. Tolyb. i. 83. 6-12, 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 Carthaginians with instant war if they dared to molest those who had thrown themselves on their protec- tion.^ It was an act of unblushing and yet, at the same time, hypocritical effrontery on the part of the Romans, hardly less base, and certainly more inexcusable, than had been their support of the Mamertines.^ 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 twelve hundred talents to the outraged and peace-loving Romans.^ Hamilcar once more showed his greatness by submitting to the inevitable ; but the iron must have entered into his soul more deeply then 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 Hamilcar 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 I * 1 Polyb. i. 88, 8-10. » Ibid. iii. 28, 1-4. * Polyb. iil 10, 3, and 27, 8 ; Zonaras, viil 18. ^Appian, Ilisp. 4. 156 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, But it was beyond the power or the impudence even of the Carthaginian 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 Carthage ; 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 short-sighted, all that was selfish in the great republic. The commercial, the capitalist, the aristocratical interests 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 con- tent to live in peace, knowing that after them would come the deluge. Jewish Kings, and those by no means the worst of theur 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 appoint- ment 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 exclusively from the reports of the party hostile to the great " Barcine faction," for so Livy, full of Boman pride and Koman prejudices, too indolent 2 to inquire into, 1 Appian, Hisp. 6. »Uvy, xxi. 2 and passim, Diodoms (xxv. Frag. 1) improves upon livy, and calls the party of Hamilcar— some of the noblest patriots who ever lived — «Toi/)€/a T&y Toyripordrwy iyBpiinrtur, a band of the most worthless fellows. PEACE AND WAR PARTIES AT CARTHAGE. 157 and too opinionated to estimate aright what was really great in the Carthaginian character, calls the 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 Carthaginian 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. The army with which Hamilcar started from Carthage was not a large one. But if armies, like names, are to be weighed rather than counted, no army, surely, ever contained so much military genius, or was destined itself to achieve and to give birth to other armies which should, in their turn, achieve such astonishing results. For the army which was led by Hamil- car carried with it also Hamilcar's son ; the father, spurred on by the memory of his hundred exploits which had ended in a failure more honourable to him than any victory; the son, barely nine years old, with his future all before him, but stimulated by the nascent consciousness of his own ability, by the ambition to emulate his father's fame, and by the hatred of his father's foes, — a hatred hardly perhaps increased, but certainly elevated, deepened, consecrated by the solemn vow which, at that father's bidding, he had just sworn upon the altar, never to be a friend to the Eomans. Hamilcar first stamped out the embers of the Libyan revolt which were still smouldering in the country to the west of Carthage, and then, accompanied 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 (bo. 237), on his own undivided responsibility, 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 > 158 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, HAMILCAR CROSSES TO SPAIN. »59 ikif to be saved at all from the ruin which Hamilcar and all keeiv 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 plea- sures as soon as the immediate danger was over. His own veterans, and thousands of other Libyans who under his training might have 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 enhst 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 mem- bers 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, hke the Medici at Florence, or the Dukes of Orange in the Netherlands, this half-outlawed Barcine family actually received foreign em- bassies and concluded foreign treaties, as an independent body, co-ordinate with the Senate itself I 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 Hamilcar. 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 Cartha- ginian patriot as though Spain had been created for the very * Appian, Hup. 5, purpose of supplying all these various and conflicting wants. It was from Spain, if from anywhere, and by Hamilcar, if by any one, that Carthage might be saved. The previous history of the Spanish peninsula, and its im- memorial connection 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 Uttle accounted of in the days of Solomon " ? In more recent times Gades, 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 aUke 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 maintain their connection with this Eldorado that that long line of factories, known in later times as the MctagonitcB Urbes, had been planted at equal distances on the most suitable points on the barren Mauritanian coast. The names of places in Spain— which, in spite of the strange contortions they have undergone in the lapse of centuries, still embalm within themselves an imperishable record of the suc- cessive waves of foreign invasion that have swept over the peninsula— recall, perhaps most forcibly, the earliest wave of all, the prolonged and peaceful invasions of the enter- iSee thia admirably brought out in Stanley's Jewish Church, chap. xxvi. p. 182-187. i6o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. HAMILCAR IN SPAIN. I'i pnsmg and gainseeking PhoBnicians. Merida and Murviedro and Saragossa recaU the Romans ; Carthagena recalls the Carthaginmns; Tarifa and Valladohd, Gibraltar and the Guadalquivir, the Arabs; whUe the Guadiana (Wady-al- Anas) m one strange compound, immortalises at once the mvasions of both Roman and Arab. But Seville and Cadiz and Carmona in modem Spain. Tartessus and Carteia in ancient bnng us direcUy back to the time when the extreme east and the extreme west of the Mediterranean formed as yet parts of one peaceful trading community. Seville, or as the Romans caUed it. Hispalis. in the low country of Andalusia ,8 nothing but the Shefelah or "low country" ft« w K f.'l?^'..''^'' ""^""^^^^ "• »**«« «' Cadiz is the Hebrew " Kaddu-." Milton's " Gadire." a fortress. Car- mona 18 the Hebrew " Cherem." a fruitful field; Tartessus as has been aheady mentioned, is the Tarshish of the Hebrew prophets and chroniclers; while Carteia is the Canaanitish Kirjathaim. "the two cities"; and by the first part of its name cairies ns back to perhaps the oldest city in the world. w fj^f «■*! ''^"' " "''y «^«° ^^^^ 'I'e Father of the iJaithful first entered the Promised Land The Greeks no less than the Phoenicians had their share of the inexhaustible spoUs of Spain. It was from one of the ports of Tartessus. "a virgin port," as Herodotus calls It that in B.O. 630 a certain Samian. driven thither by stress of weather or by a special providence.i had returned laden with wealth to his native country, and had given that stimu- lus to the Greek imagination and to the thirst for geographi- cal discovery which in the foUowing century, carried thither he adventurous Phocaans. who in their turn became the fnends of its king and shared largely in his wealth.* It was no shght .^vantage for Hamilcar's purposes, that the con- nection of Spam with Carthage had hitherto been commercial only and not imperial ; otherwise the deadly hatred which ao- 'Ibid. 1. 18, lei i 1 companied the spread of the Carthaginian rule in Africa mus 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 indissolubly attached to him' Part he remitted annually to Carthage, as the price he paid to her for being allowed to carry out his schemes for her safety and her empire. His soldiers, his generals, his own son-in-law Hasdrubal, and his own son, Hannibal, intermarried with the natives and made their interests one with their own. For nine long years— years to which Polybius, unfortunately, has de- voted scarcely as many hues i— 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 caU— and well might he caU— 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 considerable part of Spain, two, and two only, have governed it in its own 'Polyb. ii. 1, 5-8; Livy, xxi. 1; Corn. Nepos. Hamilcar, iv. 2; Val Max. IX. 3, 3 ext ^Val Maxiiuus. ix. 3. 2 ext.: "Quatuor enim puerilis mtatis filios iniuens ejusdem numeri catulos leoninos in perniciera imperii nostri alere pe prsedicabat", II ft 162 CARTHAGE AM) THE CARTIIAGIMANS. interests, and, in spite of ditTerences 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 Roman Heraclius sitting upon their thrones, but never had 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, ahke in peace and war, in Spain. Did we know more the world would, in all probability, admit that, in capa- city 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 *' Dclcnda 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 h.c. 228. His son Hannibal was not then 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 ipolyb. ii. 1, 9; Livy. xxi. 2. EARLY CAREER OF HANNIBAL. 163 which Hamilcar had founded in Spain Hasdrubal organised and enlarged. Above all, he gave it a capital in New Car- thage,! 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 Phoenician 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 enrol- ling themselves as subjects of a power which knew how to develop their resources in the interest of the natives as much as in its own ; which found them work to do and paid them well for doing it; and when Hasdrubal, b.c. 221, in the eighth year of his command, feU by the hand of a Celtic assassin,3 he had extended, in the main by peaceful means, the rule of the Barcides from the Boetis to the Tagus. Hannibal, "the grace or favour of Baal," was now in his twenty-sixth year. The soldiers unanimously proclaimed him commander-in-chief, and their choice was ratified by the Carthaginian 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 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 Ro- man Senate, that he told the simple story of that which, far more than military ambition, more even than the love of coun- » Polyb. ii. 13. 2Ai,.te.s. their discoverer, was wor.s1iippeLivy, loe, cU» Corn. Nep. Hannibal, 8: " Equitatui omni prafuit"; Livy, xxi. 4: "Neque Hasdrubal alium queraquam prscficere malle ubi quid fortiter ac streiiue ageudum esset". The reported return of Hannibal to Car- thage during a portion of Hasdrubal's rule in Spain, and his summons thence by Hasdrubal (Livy, xxi. 3-4), is almost certainly the invention of the annalist Q. Fabius Pictor, whom Livy here copied. Polybius says nothing of it : indeed he implies the reverse. REMISSNESS OF ROMANS. 167 of Spain to trouble themselves 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 circumstances, as they thought, they need fear so little. When at length their attention was arrested by the rapid progress of Hasdru- bal, they contented themselves 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 else 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 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 emer- gency 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 begin- ning 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.2 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 Apen- nines and the Po, frightened at the work of the popular champion Flaminius— the division 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 1 Pulyb. iii. 27; Livy, xxi. 6. 'i I'olyb. ii. 22, 10, 11. i68 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. HANNIBAL BESIEGES SAGUNTUM. 169 losses, had forgotten its defeats, or, if it remembered tlicm, remembered them only to desire their revenge. The In- subrians who dwelt beyond the Po promised their aid, and rumour said that their number was being continually aug- mented by the arrival of fresh bands of Gauls from beyond the Alps.^ A movement amongst the Gauls was known by a name of terror (tumultus) even 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 confedera- tion was decreed ; and those actually under arms in various parts of the Roman dominions are said by Poly bins to have reached the astonishing number of 170,000 men.'- "Against such a nation under arms," as Poly bins significantly adds, Hannibal was on the point of marching with 20,000 men ! 2 But the terrors of the Gauls were destined on this occa- sion (B.C. 225) soon to pass away. The Transalpine bar- barians who fought, many of them, stark naked, with two javelins (gcBsa^) in their hands, or with swords that bent at the first blow, fell an easy prey to the skilful disposi- tions 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 their J Polyb. u. 22, 1 ; 23, 1. 2 Ibid. ii. 24, 17. The total number of men able to bear arm.s he makes 700,000 ; besides 70,000 cavalry. 3 Hence called Gaesatse ; not as Polybius says, because they served as mercenaries (ii. 22, 1). Cf. Virgil, ^neid, viii. 661 :— duo quisque Alpina coruscant Gresa manu, scutis protecti corpora longia. * Polyb. ii. 31, 5. V success with vigour, and transferred tlie 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 chieftain. The Romans riveted their grasp on their new conquests by founding, more suOy two new colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on either side of the Po, and by completing that imperishable monument of their organising and con- structive genius, the Flaminia Via, the great military road of Northern Italy, from Rome to Ariminum.2 ^or were these precautions taken a moment too soon ; for before the Romans had established themselves firmly on the line of the Po, Hannibal 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 ap- proaching 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 the first two years of his command (b.c. 221-219) the young general had crossed the Tagus, and had reduced 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 Zacynthus,^ and near the site of » Polyb. ii. 34. 15. 2 Pdyb. iii. 46. 4. 5 ; Livy, KpU. xx. ^Cf. Stralx>, iii. p. 159; Livy, xxi. 7, .says that there were also ilutuliuus among the fountlers. 170 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the modern Murviedro (Muri-veteres), though far to the south of the Ebro, had formed an alliance with Rome ; and Has- drubal, 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 endurance 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 seriously wounded in the course of the siege, divided a portion of the booty amongst his troops ; another portion he despatched to Car- thage, 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 Hannibal, the author of the outrage, on pain of instant war. The Romans fondly hoped that the Carthaginian peace party would seize the opportunity of iPolyb. iii. 15; Uvy, xxL 14, 15; Florus, ii. (5, 6. WAR DECLARED. 171 compassing their chief end at the easy price of the sur- render of so troublesome a servant, or master, as was Hannibal. But the gold of Hannibal had done its work, and was more potent that Hanno's honeyed tongue. The peace party dared hardly to mutter their half-hearted coun- sels ; and when Q. 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," rephed the Carthaginians. " War, then," said Fabius ; and the decision was greeted, as is usual in times of such excite- ment, 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 and circumstance of war ; they do not see its horrors and its devastations. They hear the din of preparation ; 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, perhaps 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 or Wellington, and who, immeasurably above him as he is in all moral qualities, may, on the score of military greatness, be named without injustice in tlie same breath as Napoleon, and Napoleon alone. iPolyb. iiL 33, 1-4. 172 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, CHAPTER X. SECOND PUNIC WAR. (B.C. 218-201.) PASSAGE OF THE RHONE AND THE ALPS, d.c. 218. Preparations of Hannibal— He determines to go by land— NuuiUrs 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— Tlie first ascent— Valley of the Isire— The main ascent— The summit— Hannibal addresses his troops — Tlie 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 Hannibal utilised it to the utmost. It was late in the year B.C. 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 redoubled 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 dur- ing his absence by garrisoning it with fifteen thousand trusty Libyans, while Libya he garrisoned with as many trusty Spaniards, thus making, in a certain sense, each country a security for the good behaviour of the other, i 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 Cisalpine Gaul.^ It is said tha- negotiations iPolyb. iii. 33, 5-8 ; Livy, xjii. 'Zl'£L »Polyb. iii. 34, 1-6. to IH •JO 40 I TA l.Y TO UJ.rSTR.VTE THE SEIOND rUNIC WAK. ^ I I As; as /.Itlltll.ltil, • I.,,, I, >\ /.• liUl.j.l. S.\i)'ll. '.'j/,'/".-! * ■ ■■• /.. ../ I HANNIBAL RESOLVES TO ATTACK BY LAND. 173 l! \ l! 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 Phoenician 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 unknown mountain chains, and amid races proverbial for their fickleness and faithless- ness ; a journey which 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 miscalculated 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 Carthaginian 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 \\ 174 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. '\\ 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 veterans 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 operations 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 Lucan- ians, whom Rome had so recently and so hardly conquered, did not flock to his standard as he swept victoriously on towards the south to wreak condign vengeance on the common oppressor of them all. Such were the hopes, not altogether ill-founded, with which Hannibal undertook the gigantic en- terprise that astonished and still astonishes the world. One circumstance there was, unknown probably to any but to his most intimate friends, which must have impressed a mind so religious as was Hannibal's with the conviction that where human foresight failed, as fail sometimes it must, in the task which lay before him, he would be supported by a power which was not his own. In the course of the winter which had just passed, he had left his head-quarters at New Carthage that he might visit Gades. It was a religious pilgrimage ; for at Gades, as has been already mentioned, was the famous temple of Melcarth, the patron of Phoenicians wheresoever they might be found ; and there upon the altar of the god to whom his father had sacrificed eighteen years before when leaving Carthage, he too now made his offerings when on the point of starting on an expedition more distant and more perilous still. There too he renewed the solemn vow which for eighteen years he had cherished in his heart, II THE DREAM OF HANNIBAL. «75 and which he was now about to redeem in face of all the world. He rejoined his army at New Carthage and was already, as it would seem, nearing the Ebro, the boundary, as by treaty fixed, between Carthage and Rome, the point from which, when once it was passed, there would be no return ; when in the dead of night — so he told his constant companion Silenus— he dreamed that he was summoned by the supreme god of his country to the council of all the gods and goddesses, who, then and there, laid upon him the task of invading Italy, and assigned him a guide for the journey. The guide bade him follow where he led and look not behind him. Hannibal obeyed for a time ; but at last curiosity pre- vailed, and looking back he saw a huge and shapeless monster wreathed with serpents, which moved ever onwards, laying vineyards and plantations and houses prostrate in its wild and irresistible career. In amazement, he asked what this monstrous form might be. " It is the Devastation of Italy," said his guide. ** March straight on, and care not for what lies behind thee." And so, conscious that he was carrying the devastation of Italy in his train, and that each step would bring him nearer to the fulfilment of his vow, he prepared to go straight on through angry torrents and over lofty mountain chains at the bidding of the god of his fathers. ^ The army with which he had set out from New Carthage early in the summer of B.C. 218, consisted of ninety thousand foot, of twelve thousand 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 Si- cihan 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 1 Cicero, De JJiv. i. 24 ; Livy. xxi. 22 ; Silius Italicus, iii. 158-213. 3 The numbers given in the text rest on the statement inscribed, on a brazen pillar, in the temple of Juno Laeinia, by Hannibal himself, just before he left Italy for Africa. This inscription was read by Polybius. Polyb. ii. 33, 18, ^nd 56, 4. i| 176 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OF THE RHONE. 177 f"ainSt?r'' ""^' '' *'^tK°'»''»« believed, a fcrm bulwark against Carthaginian encroachments. Leaving Hanno with ».n tho„sandfootandonethousandhorsetoholdtLco„„n^^ he had conquered he actually sent back to their homes tn thousand more of his already much-thinned army, men whom ftearted and therefore cared not to retain in hisservice Then confident m those that remained, and in the future, he crossed the Pyrenees, and passing by Ruscino (RoussillonT; Zt opposition from the Gallic tribes, reached Ihe Rhone n sa ety f The Romans, as behindhand in their arms as in the r diplomacy.^' still, it would seem, believed that the con J which was beginning would be fought out at a distance from their own shores. Had not the battle-field of the contendrn^ forces been fixed by treaty many years beLe n nS "f Spam, and was not P. Cor. Scipio about to proceed th'ther ™ due course with sixty ships and with an army to confine the consul, Tib. Sempron.us, was to cross into Sicily, to transfer the war thence to Africa, and to bring it to a rapid concln sion there by besieging Carthage itself ?^3 Scip'o as had b^in Marseilles, learned to his extreme surprise that Hannibal had ah-eady crossed the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and was in fult march through Gaul. The truth now da;ned Zn h m He sent out three hundred of his bravest cavalry wHh Ce "o guides to look for Hannibal, and they soon metLr bund 'd a iTe pir T t° ""^ '"'' '''^''^''^'^ by HannSf:' ^o thf ^r ; ^^! '°'°"°'''' ''^'"^ ^°«"«d the Romans the ?aH>i '^'' """^ ^r"^*^ *« ^^''^-^'i^g Numidians to the Carthaginian camp; but they took back to their genera! the starthng news that Hannibal had already left the Rhone behind him, and that they had seen the Carthaginians en! ' Polyb. iii. 35 and 40; Livy, xxi. 23-24 camped on its eastern side.^ Had Scipio reached the Rhone a week sooner, as he might well 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 nego- tiations, 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 had sent Hanno by night with a consid- erable 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 anxi- ously 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 con- fusion, leaving Hannibal to transport the rest of his army in peace.2 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 Panormus, into entrusting themselves to a raft. Some, in their Wind panic, leapt into the mid river drown- 1 Polyb. iii. 45 ; Livy, xxi. 29. -Polyb. iii. 42. 43 ; Livy, xxi. 27-28. 12 178 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ing 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 moun- tain passes were not so difficult, and the few inspiriting words addressed by Hannibal to his troops, fell upon will- ing 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 inquiries 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 himself 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 ob- servation 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 mountain pass always inaccessible, a mountain slope always shppery and little more. It may be doubted whether in the whole range of classical Hterature half-a-dozen land- scapes 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 1 Polyb. iii. 46, 12 ; Livy. xxi. 38. *Cf. Virgil, Mn. iii. 76: "Mycouo e celsa," an island which really lies very low, and is actually called *' huniilis," by Ov. Met. vii. 463 ; cf. jKa. ix. 716: "Prochyta alta". See the remarks ol Ihni:, lioman Hist. ii. 171- 173 ; and Arnold, iii. p. 478, 479. DISPUTES ABOUT PASSAGE OVER THE ALPS. 179 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 a 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 thought, involve him in im- mediate 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 nearest 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 much pre- cision, by Polybius. The choice, therefore, seems narrowed to the two intermediate passes of the Little Mont Genis, to the north of the Cottian, and the Little St. Bernard, to the *See especially DissertcUion on the Passage of Hannibal over the Alps, by Wickhara and Cramer (1820) ; The March of Hannibal from the RhoTie to the Alps, by H. L. Long (1831) ; Italian Valleys of the Pennine Alps, by S. W. King (1858) ; The Alps of Hannibal, by W. J. Law (1866). General Melville was the earliest mo The gorge below La Tuile, in the valley of the Baltea, corresponds in a most reniarkable manner with the description of Polybius. Though it is only some 4000 feet alwve the level of the sea, it is often choked with masses of frozen snow the whole summer through ; and avalanches descending into it firom the peaks of Mont Favre above, sweep the road, which formerly ran along the left bank of the torrent, for a distance of 300 yards, i.e. exactly the stadium and a half of Polybius. This old road has been lon^' .since al)andoned, 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 fatid to Hannibal (see the uuthorities referred to above, p. 180j. < > THE DESCENT OF THE ALPS. 187 but Hannibal drew them off to a kind of hog's back, from which the snow had been just shovelled, and pitching his camp there, directed 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 enjoyed 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 inhabitants of the torrid zone made their way down, half dead with cold and hunger. The massive trees which the Carthaginians felled and burned to soften the rocks, and the rivers of vinegar with which Hannibal melted them in this dangerous spot, exist only in the imagination of Livy and those who followed him. So astounding was the miracle of the crossing of the Alps, that it is no matter of surprise if other lesser miracles were believed to have accompanied it. After the great danger had been surmounted, the descent became more practicable. The eyes of the perishing soldiers w^ere soon gladdened with the sight of umbrageous trees, of upland lawns, and even of human habitations, and three days saw them safe in the valley of Aosta below. The passage had been accomplished ; and twenty-two centuries have failed to exhaust the interest and the admira- tion with which the world regards alike the exploit itself and the hero who could plan and execute it. The volumin- ous literature %vhich the nineteenth century has produced in I'olyb. iii. 55, 9, rcAcwf aStfSpa xai \fnka wavT ivri ; cf. eX. COU. Li\y, xxi. 37; Juvenal, Sat. x. 153: "Diducit scopulos et moutem rumpit aceto' ; Appian, Hann. 4; Pliny, Hx9t. Nat. xxxiii. 3. it 1 88 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, \ almost every European language on the one subject of the passage of the Alps is a striking proof of this. The great epic poet who appreciated, if any Roman did, the grandeur of the city which his countrymen had destroyed, and who was able by his genius to turn the blind fear and hatred with which they still regarded its memory into a romantic and almost a filial attachment — for had not Carthage given shelter to the wandering -^neas and laid her Queen at his feet? — speaks, in a spirited passage, of Carthage, not as pouring down ruin on Home through the Alps which she had burst open, but rather as " hurling those opened Alps themselves in dire destruction on the city " : — Adveniet justum pugnse, ne arcessite, tempus. Cum fera Carthago Komanis arcibus olim Exitium magnuin atque Alpes imniittct apertas.^ It is a splendid licence of language ; but it may be questioned whether it would have seemed any licence at all, either to the panic-stricken population who saw Hannibal with their own eyes swoop down upon them from the Alps with ever- gathering strength, or to their descendants who had only heard of it from their grandsires. The passage — twelve hundred stadia of mountain climbing — had been accomplished ; but was it worth the price which had been paid for it ? Of the army which had crossed the Pyrenees scarcely half had lived to cross the Alps. Without provisions, without a commissariat, without even an assured base of operations, or the certainty of reinforcements, Han- nibal was about to enter on a war which stands forth with- out a parallel in ancient history. With twenty thousand foot and six thousand horse he was about to attack a power which had only lately put into the field to serve against the Gauls an army of a hundred and seventy thousand men. And in what condition was this handful, this forlorn hope, of soldiers? The cold and hunger, and exposure and fatigue, of fifteen days* mountaineering had done their work with 1 Virg. .«». X. 11 13. THE PASSAGE ACCOMPLISHED. 189 them. " They had been reduced to the condition of beasts," says the accurate and unimaginative Greek historian ; ^ ** they looked not like men but like their phantoms or their shadows," said the Roman general who was about to meet them in the field, and, as he thought, like shadows to sweep them away. Under any general but Hannibal, and, it may almost be added, with any enemy who were not so dilatory as the Romans, the remnant of the Carthaginian army would have conquered the Alps only to perish in the plains of the Po. That Hannibal crossed the Alps is a marvel ; but that with troops so weakened he was able after a few days' delay to chastise the hostile barbarians, to take from them their city of Turin, to force some of them to join his army, and then to face all the power of Rome, is a greater marvel still. 2 It is difl&cuh throughout this period of the war, and, in- deed, throughout the whole of it, to withdraw the attention even for a moment from its presiding genius. With sound judgment did the Romans, w^ho calumniated his character and tried sometimes to make light even of his abilities, call the war which was now beginning, not the Second Punic War, but the War of Hannibal. His form it was which haunted their imaginations and their memories; his name was for centuries the terror of old and of young alike. Nearly two hundred years later the frivolous and the pleasure-loving Horace pays Hannibal the homage of a mention which is always serious and often awe-stricken. Once in his Odes he is " the perfidious," but three times over he is " the dread Hannibal " ; and rising, with a thrill of horror, in spite of himself, into epic dignity, he compares the march of the Carthaginian through Italy to the careering of the east wind over those Sicilian waters which had engulfed so many Roman fleets, or to that most terrible and magnificent of sights, the rush of the flames through a blazing forest of pines.^ » Polyb. iii. 60, 1-6, ©lof ijroT.d.jpiwfiei'ot wdvrfi Jivay; Livy, xxi. 40, "effigies, immo umbrs hominuai ". a Polyb. iii. 60; Livy. xxi. 39. ^Hor. Ode, iv. 4, 41 44. igo CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. SEMPRONIUS RECALLED FROM SICILY. igi til I >i'. II'' CHAPTER XI. BATTLES OP TREBIA AND TKASIMENE. (B.C. 218-217.) P. Scipio returns from Gaul to Italy— Seuiprouius recalled from Sicily- Kittle of the Ticinus— Hanuibal crosses the Po— He is joiue Polyb. iii. 56, 5. (I 192 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. BATTLE OF THE TWIN US. 193 m 1 ': ' I I and he was now about to organise a descent on Africa itself, when the order came to return. He obeyed with a heavy heart, and sending his troops, some by land and some by sea, bade them rejoin him at Ariminum, an important town on the Adriatic, situated just where the great Flaminian road ends and the plain of the Po begins.^ But meanwhile Scipio and Hannibal had come into coUi- sion, and the first Koman blood in the great duel had been shed. The Carthaginian troops, it would seem, did not recover their spirits after their five months' - journey from New Carthage and their terrible passage of the Alps as soon as the restless energy of their leader required ; but Hannibal, allowing, as it is reported, his Gallic prisoners to secure their liberty by fighting in single combat in presence of his men, bade the latter observe how brave souls always preferred victory or death to a life of dishonour.^ In fact, the third alternative was no longer open to his army, for retreat was out of the question. The example of the Gauls did its work, and Hannibal's words drove the lesson home. From the valley of the Dora Baltea he advanced towards the Po ; but turning aside westward to chastise the Taurini, he gave Scipio time to cross that river near Placentia, and to throw a bridge over the Ticinus, a stream which, issuing from the Lake Ver- banus (Maggiore), flows southward into the Po near Pavia. Not far from the Ticinus the armies, or a part of them, met in battle. Both generals had led out their cavalry in person to make a reconnaissance in force. Scipio, to com- pensate, as he hoped, for his inferiority in that arm, had also taken some Ught infantry with him ; but these proved one of the causes of his defeat. Fearing to be trampled under foot by the cavalry, they retired behind their supports. The Gallic horse, who formed his centre, gallantly withstood the charge of the bridled Spanish cavalry of Hannibal. But the 1 Polyb. iU. 61, 8-11 ; Livy, xxl. 49-52. aPolyb. iii. 56, 3 ; Livy, xxi. '66. 3 Polyb. iii. 62 : Livy, xxi. 42. bridleless Numidian cavalry, on which he most relied, and which he had placed upon his wings, outflanking the enemy, and riding round towards their rear, first, fell on the retreat- ing infantry, and dealt them the very death which they had tried to avoid ; then, charging in their peculiar fashion, some- times in twos and threes, sometimes in a compact mass, they fell on the Roman centre. This decided the conflict. Scipio received a dangerous wound, and was only, as it is said, res- cued by his son, a youth of seventeen, who risked his own to save his father's life, and lived to conquer Hannibal at Zama, to finish the war, and to win the proud name of Africanus.i ' The retreat of the Romans, though a hasty retreat, was not a rout ; but it was ominous of what was to follow. It proved the superiority of the Numidian cavalry to any which the Romans could bring against them ; and, seeing that the plains of Lombardy would always give them the advantage, Scipio determined to place the Po between him- self and the enemy. He crossed in safety ; but a party of six hundred men who were left behind to cover the retreat and to cut down the bridge, fell into Hannibal's hands. Unable to cross the river there, Hannibal marched up its left bank till he found a convenient place. He there threw a bridge of boats across, and then marching down on its right side, crossed, as it would seem, the Trebia also, and pitched his camp six miles to the south of Placentia, under the strong walls of which Scipio's army lay entrenched.2 The whole country to the north of the Po, with the exception of the recently planted colony of Cremona, was now lost to the Romans. Abready, before the battle of the Ticinus, the Ligurians and the Gallic tribes along the Upper Po had joined Hannibal; and now embassies flowed in from almost all the remaining tribes of Cisalpine Gaul, offering their alliance. The Boii, frightened at the planting of Mu- tina in their midst, had already, in the spring of the year, 1 Polyb. iii. 65 ; Livy, xxi. 46. 2 Polyb. iii. 66; Livy, xxi. 47. 13 ii 194 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. taken up arms against the Romans ; and it was well for Romw that they had done so ; otherwise Hannibal might have found no Roman army in the whole north of Italy to oppose his progress. These same Boii now appeared in Hannibal's camp, bringing with them as a peace-ofifering the Roman triumvirs who had been sent to divide their lands. Hannibal received the Gallic chieftains kindly, and bade them retain their prisoners as security for themselves. Another band of 2200 Gauls, who were serving in the Roman army, seeing which way the tide had turned, rose by night, murdered their officers, and went over in a body to Hannibal, who, knowing that they were now committed to his cause past all recall, sent them to their respective states to fan the revoli* Scipio was now alarmed for his safety ; better, he thought, the exposed hill-sides than the fortified camp before Placentia, if only he could quit himself of these Gauls, so formidable as enemies, so doubly formidable as allies. Accordingly he broke up his camp by night, put, as it would seem, the Trebia between himself and Hannibal, and marching south- ward, took possession of some high ground formed by a spur of the Northern Apennines.*-^ It was a perilous operation, for his line of retreat took him near to Hannibal, who dis- covered the movement before it was completed; and had not the Numidian horsemen sent in pursuit turned aside to plunder the deserted camp, it might have fared ill witli the whole Roman army. But the hills to the west of the Trebia, on which Scipio's camp now lay, protected him at all events from the dreaded cavalry, and he could afford to wait patiently for the arrival of Sempronius from Sicily. 1 Polyb. iiL 67 ; Livy. xxL 4a « It is a moot question whether the battle of Trebia was fought on the east or the west of the river. Niebuhr, Arnold, and Ihne are in favour of the eastern; Vaudincourt and Mommsen of the western bank. The ancient authorities are not explicit ; but Polybius, 67, 9 ; 68. 4, etc. seems to point to the former supposition, and it is. at all events, clear that Livy so understood him. In any case several difficulties remain which admit only of partial explanation. HANNIBAL SELECTS HIS GROUND, 195 Why Hannibal did not seize what seems to have been a golden opportunity, and thrusting himself between the two armies, crush Sempronius as he crossed the level country, so favourable for cavalry, between Ariminum and the Trebia, must remain a mystery. But the junction was effected with- out any opposition from him, and he now found himself confronted by two consular armies of forty thousand men. Scipio, impeded by his wound, and apprehensive of the result, as one who had abready felt the weight of Hannibal's arm, was for delay. Sempronius, on the contrary, was eager to fight, for if Rome could not be defended by two con- sular armies, it might well seem that she could not be de- fended at all. A petty success won by his cavalry over some squadrons of Numidian horse, who were harrying the country, made him doubly confident. Hannibal knew his man, and knew also that the consular elections at Rome were not far off. If a battle was not fought in the next few days, it would be fought, not by Sempronius, but by his successor. Accordingly, he laid all his plans for the battle, which he knew he could at any moment force on.^ In the plain of the Trebia, and on the eastern side of it, where Hannibal still lay, was a watercourse overgrown with bulrushes and brambles, and deep enough with its steep banks to hide even cavalry. It was the very place for an ambuscade, for no one would expect an ambush in a country which seemed to the ordinary glance so level and unbroken. Hannibal saw his chance, and here, during the night, he placed his brother Mago, with two thousand horse and foot whom he had picked out for the purpose. Mago was young and adventurous, and sprang at the task assigned him. At dawn of day Hannibal sent his Numidian horse across the river, with orders to ride up to the enemies' camp and draw them out. Sempronius was ready to be caught; and the Numidian horse falling back, as they had been instructed. A Polyb. iii. 67, 68 ; Livy, xxi. 48 and 52. igd CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. across the river, drew the Roman horse and foot, flushed with their apparent success, after them.^ It was mid- winter. Heavy rain had fallen on the previous night, and the swollen waters of the Trebia rose to the breasts of the soldiers as they made their way across. When they reached the opposite bank they found themselves face to face with Hannibal's army. Sleet was falling fast, and the wind blew icily cold over the plains which lay between the eternal snows of the Alps and those which had lately fallen on the Apennines. In the hurry of the call to arms the Romans had taken no breakfast : and now, faint with hun- ger and numbed with the cold, they stood on the river's bank with the day's work still all before them. Hannibal, on the contrary, had ordered his men to take their break- fasts by their firesides, and then buckling on their armour and saddling their horses, to remain in the shelter of their tents till the signal should be given. Hastily throwing for- ward his light-armed troops and sharp-shooters, to occupy the attention of the enemy, he now drew up his main line of battle immediately behind them ; his Gallic, Spanish, and African troops in the centre, and his cavalry and ele- phants on the wings. The light-armed troops having played with the Romans for a time, fell back between the intervals of the maniples behind, and the four thousand Roman cavalry, finding themselves suddenly exposed to the attacks of more than double their number, broke and fled, leaving the dreaded Numidian cavalry to attack the infantry on their now unprotected flanks. Many of the Roman infantry stood their ground nobly, and for a short time kept the con- flict doubtful ; but Mago, starting up from his ambuscade, fell upon their rear. Surrounded as they were on every side, one body of ten thousand men yet fought their way with the courage of despair through the Carthaginian ranks in front, and managed by a circuitous route to make their 1 Polyb. iii. 71 ; Livy, xxi. 51 J 8 Id p i::::::n sgg rz::::) ri::,\ S§^ e .-^ El' ..tV AaptDjuj "^ I - :-^.j,.......J'»""'?tfr- " I J Id W CQ ^ • « » * . ' • • • ^ f*. # s I It 1^- I go CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. across the river, drew the Eoman horse and foot, flushed with their apparent success, after them.^ It was mid- winter. Heavy rain had fallen on the previous night, and the swollen waters of the Trebia rose to the breasts of the soldiers as they made their way across. When they reached the opposite bank they found themselves face to face with Hannibal's army. Sleet was falling fast, and the wind blew icily cold over the plains which lay between the eternal snows of the Alps and those which had lately fallen on the Apennines. In the hurry of the call to arms the Komans had taken no breakfast : and now, faint with hun- ger and numbed with the cold, they stood on the river's bank with the day's work still all before them. Hannibal, on the contrary, had ordered his men to take their break- fasts by their firesides, and then buckling on their armour and saddling their horses, to remain in the shelter of their tents till the signal should be given. Hastily throwing for- ward his light-armed troops and sharp-shooters, to occupy the attention of the enemy, he now drew up his main line of battle immediately behind them ; his Gallic, Spanish, and African troops in the centre, and his cavalry and ele- phants on the wings. The light-armed troops having played with the Romans for a time, fell back between the intervals of the maniples behind, and the four thousand Roman cavalry, finding themselves suddenly exposed to the attacks of more than double their number, broke and fled, leaving the dreaded Numidian cavalry to attack the infantry on their now unprotected flanks. Many of the Roman infantry stood their ground nobly, and for a short time kept the con- flict doubtful ; but Mago, starting up from his ambuscade, fell upon their rear. Surrounded as they were on every side, one body of ten thousand men yet fought their way with the courage of despair through the Carthaginian ranks in front, and managed by a circuitous route to make their 1 Polyb. iii. 71 ; Livy, xxi. 54. s c £ I; f \ ^ /t-ipiujiij umuffimpjv) i : c«»> TLE U CO CQ 5Wi ^ hJ S S: P I BATTLE OF THE TREBIA. 199 way to Placentia ; but the rout of the remainder was com- plete. In vain they tried to reach the river which they had crossed so imprudently in the morning, for they were ridden down as they fled by the Numidian cavalry who seemed to be everywhere amongst them, or were trampled to death by elephants. A mere remnant escaped across the river, and were saved from further pursuit by the violence of the storm. ^ Well might Hannibal rejoice at the victory which he had won. He had beaten two Boman armies; the difficulties and the dangers and the disasters of his march from Spain had been crowned by a triumphant success ; and it was doubtful whether any force remained to bar his march upon Borne. In vain did Sempronius try to disguise the magnitude of the disaster which had overtaken him. He had fought a battle, so he sent word to Bome, and it was only the storm which had prevented him from winning a decisive victory. How came it then, people asked — and well they might ask — that Hannibal was in possession of the field of battle, that the Gauls had joined him to a man, that the Boman camp had been broken up, and that the Boman armies — all that remained of them — were cowering in the fortified camp before Placentia or behind the walls of Cremona; while Hannibal's cavalry were scouring the fair plains of Lombardy ? ^ The truth was too clear ; but the spirit of the Boman Senate showed no signs of breaking. They prepared even now to take the ofifensive. Armaments were despatched to the remotest corners of their dominions, to Tarentum, for instance, to Sicily, and to Sardinia ; a new navy was fitted out, the consular elections held, and four more legions levied ; " for," says Polybius emphatically, " the Bomans are never so terrible as when real terrors gird them in on every side ".* Hannibal with difficulty restrained his desire to reap at once the fruits of bis victory. He failed, indeed, in an 1 Polyb. iU. 72-74 ; Livy, xxi. 74-77. sibid. iii. 75,8. «Polyb. iu. 75. 1-3. 200 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. attempt to take by surprise Emporium, a position which, commanding as it did the commerce of the Lower Po, sup- plied the Koman colonies of Cremona and Placentia with the necessaries of life, almost beneath his eyes. But he was more successful in an attack upon Victumviae, a town on the frontiers of Liguria,^ and the defeated consuls took advantage of his temporary absence to fall back from Placentia on Ariminum, thus abandoning to his tender mercies the whole of the plain to the south of the Po. At the first approach of spring, Hannibal attempted to cross the Apennines ; but a storm more terrible even than those of the Alps drove him back to his winter quarters.'-^ The Gauls, disappointed in their hopes of immediate plunder, had already begun to plot against him ; and whether, as the Romans said, to provide for his own safety, or, as is much more likely, to be able to observe what was going on amidst the more undisciplined portion of his followers, himself unob- served the while, he would, with Phoenician adroitness, often put on a disguise and wear false hair.^ Well aware that if he wished to win the day, policy must do for him more even than his sword, he dismissed the Italians whom he had taken prisoners to their homes, assuring them that he came as their deliverer from the common oppressor. The Koman citizens, on the other hand, he kept in close confinement, giving them only what was necessary to support life.* At last the spring began in earnest, and Hannibal made a second, and this time a successful, attempt to cross the Apennines, which lay immediately to the south of his position. Two routes alone seemed to have been deemed practicable by the newly elected consuls for his advance into Central Italy. The one was by the Central Apennines in the direction of Faesulae; the other along the coast of the Adriatic. Cn. Servilius lay at Ariminum, prepared to block the one against 1 Livy. xxi. 57. Mbid. xxl. 58. »Polyb. iii. 78, 1, 2 ; Livy, xxu. 1 ; Appian, Hann. 6. «Polyb.iii. 77.3-7. THE MARSHES OF THE ARNO, 20I his passage ; Flaminius at Arretium, in the heart of Etruria, to block the other. i But Hannibal did not confine himself to any authorised routes, nor did he care to strike only when he could do so by the recognised laws of war. His genius could dispense with both. Accordingly he crossed the Apen- nines where they approached the western coast of Italy, near the head waters of the Macra, and reached, without serious difficulty, the plains of the Arno near Lucca. The region which lies between Lucca and Fsesulae is inter- sected by lakes, and the melting of the snows on the hills had then caused the Arno to overflow its banks, making the whole one vast morass. How would his army stand this renewal of horrors in the very land of promise ? Of the fidelity and courage of his Libyan and Spanish veterans Hannibal was well assured, but as regards the Gauls, his newly formed allies, it was far otherwise. He placed them, therefore, in the middle of his line of march that they might be encouraged by the troops who led the van, or be driven back to their duty, if they tried to turn homeward, by Mago and his cavalry, who were to bring up the rear. For four days and three nights the army went on toiling through the water or the mud, unable to find a dry spot on which they could either sit down or sleep. The only rest they got was on such baggage as they could pile together, or on the bodies of the beasts of burden which day by day died in numbers. The Gauls, driven forward by Mago's cavalry, over ground which was all the more difficult to pass from the trampling it had already undergone, and unused to fatigue, stumbled amidst the deep morass, and fell to rise no more. Disease attacked the horses and carried away their hoofs. Hannibal himself, tortured with ophthalmia, rode on the one elephant which had survived the last year's campaign, and escaped only with the loss of an eye.2 At last the invading army reached the high ground of » Polyb. iii. 77. 1-2. "Polyb. iii 79; Livy, xxu. 2; cf. Corn. Nepos, Hann. iv. 3. CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Faesulae, and there Hannibal learned, one would think with surprise, that the consuls were still at their respective stations some fifty miles apart, and with the Apennines between them. Servilius, it would seem, was still expecting the attack of Hannibal on his front at Ariminum when the Carthaginians had already crossed the mountains and had shown themselves in his rear at FsbsuIsb. The other con- sul, Flaminius, was at Arretium, to the south of the cen- tral chain of the Apennines, and lying, as he did, between Hannibal and the probable line of his advance on Rome, was likely to bear the brunt of his assault. Flaminius was a marked man in more ways than one. Of a plebeian family, he had long since incurred the deadly hatred of the patricians by preferring the interests of the citizens at large to those of their order ; a senator, he was hated by the Senate because he had supported a law which forbade senators to amass large sums by trading with mer- chant vessels.^ Sixteen years before, as tribune of the people, he had carried, in spite of the interested opposition of the aris- tocracy, a law for the division of the conquered Gallic territory in Umbria amongst the poorer citizens. In the year of his first consulship (B.C. 223) he had crossed the Po — the first Roman general who had ever done so — and had carried the war into the territory of the Insubrian Gauls. The hostile Senate in- deed had even then marshalled against him a long array of omens and portents, and had endeavoured to recall him from the very field of battle. The letter of recall was duly deUvered to him ; but, like Amru, when bent on adding Egypt to the vast dominions of the successors of the Prophet, or like Nelson when bidden to retire at the battle of Copenhagen, he declined to see what he felt had better remain unseen. He left the letter unopened till the battle was fought and won, and then told the Senate that the gods themselves had pro- nounced in his favour and had overruled their prodigies. Such a man the Senate might fear as well as hate, and iLivy, xxi. 63. OPPOSITION TO FLAMINIUS. 203 envy as well as fear. But no efforts and no malice of theirs could now blot out those splendid monuments of his recent censorship, the Circus and the great military road which, to this day, bears his name.^ And now, in the year 217 — a year 80 big with the destinies of Rome — the popular favour secured for him, in spite of all the old opposition, a second consulship. If the wave of destruction which was breaking over Italy was to be driven back at all, his, the people were determined, should be the hand to do it. The winter at Rome had passed amidst gloom and doubt ; the augurs and the priests alone had a good time of it, and their hands were full enough. The general anxiety gave birth to portents, and was, in its turn, increased by them. When Flaminius was elected consul, the omens increased in number and in horror. In the vegetable market, an infant six months old, shouted " Triumph " ; in the cattle market, an ox rushed up the stairs of a house to the third storey and threw itself out of the window ; fiery ships were seen in the heavens ; and from all parts of Italy stories of terrible ap- pearances came dropping in, which lost nothing as they passed from mouth to mouth.2 Once previously the Senate had attempted to annul the appointment of their enemy to the mastership of the horse, because a mouse had been heard to squeak during the election; and now, when the very atmosphere seemed charged with portents, when showers of stones were falling, bucklers gleaming in the heavens, the statues of the god of war perspiring, and strange and unheard-of creatures coming to the birth,^ it needed no prophetic insight to foresee that the proper obstacle would be forthcoming on the day of Flaminius's entry on his office, and that, if rehgious awe could avail aught, the consul elect would never become consul in reality. Impatient of such chicaneries, Flaminius took the law into his own hands, and making light of the sacred rites 1 livy, ICpit. XX. 8 Livy, xxi. 62 ; Zonaras, viil 20. ' Livy, xxil 1. 204 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. which he would have to perform on his entry into oflBce, went off to the camp at Ariminum before the Ides of March came. Legates were sent to recall him, but he heeded them not. Evil omens, so the Senate said, pursued him even now. When he offered his first sacrifice, as consul, the victim escaped from the altar and sprinkled the bystanders with its blood. When he had fallen back to Arretium, and the time came for him to break up his camp there, and to follow Hannibal in his march on Kome, as he was in duty bound to do, even then the malice of the Senate, or the folly of the annalists, represents the gods as still taking part against him. It was clear that the man whom the gods intended to destroy they first drove mad. Flaminius ordered the stan- dard-bearer to advance ; but the standard, it was said, stuck fast in the ground. He mounted his horse, and it straight- way threw him.^ The annalists forgot, or they did not know, that the greater the terrors which the science of the augurs put in his way, the greater was the credit due to him for despising them when duty called. It is difficult to say how far this army of angry portents may have paralysed the Roman legionaries when they found themselves sur- rounded in the defiles of Lake Trasimene. It is not difficult to see that, if it did so, it was the aristocracy, and not the legionaries, who were to blame ; for it was the aristocracy who, for their own selfish ends, had long been working on popular superstition to crush the true friend of the people. Hannibal had advanced from FaBsulsB, laying waste with fire and sword the rich plains of Etruria. The plunder, and the slaughter, and the smoke of burning homesteads, with which he attempted to draw the consul from the shelter of his camp to risk a battle, might have roused a man who was less hot-headed than his enemies represent Flaminius to have been. But it was not till Hannibal had marched leisurely by his camp, and went devastating on towards Rome, that Flaminius left his position and followed him. It was not, ilivy, XX ii. 3; cf. Cicero, Dt Div. L 36. FLAMINIUS FOLLOWS HANNIBAL, 205 as Polybius imagined, mortified pride at the fancied slight which Hannibal had shown him ; 1 still less was it, as the annalists tell us, and as the circle of the Scipios perhaps believed,^ the selfish desire to win the credit of a victory, before his colleague could come up, which made Flaminius follow so closely on Hannibal's steps. On the contrary, he had taken care to inform his colleague at Ariminum of Han- nibal's appearance at FaesulaB as soon as he had learned it himself. It was surely now his simple duty to delay, by any means in his power, what seemed to be the victorious march of the Carthaginians on the unprotected capital. Hannibal knew better than the detractors of Flaminius what Flaminius was bound to do. He knew that he could do nothing else but follow him closely, and he laid his plans and chose his ground with his own consummate skill. He had violated all the rules of war by leaving a hostile force of sixty thousand men in his rear and upon his line of com- munications. It remained for him now to justify his temer- ity by success, and the greatest sticklers for the rules of war will admit that he did it with a vengeance. We owe to Livy an admirable description, evidently drawn from personal observation, of the position selected by Han- nibal, as well as a vivid account of the great battle of which it was the scene.^ The account given by Polybius, on the contrary, would seem, unhke his almost invariable practice, to be at second hand. It is deficient in clearness, and is diflicult to reconcile even with the salient physical features of the spot.* The student of the Punic Wars is so often compelled, in this part of his work, to compare the Greek and Roman historians together to the disadvantage of the Roman, to contrast, for instance, the conscientious truthful- ness and rigid impartiahty of the one with the brilliant ex- aggerations and unfair reticences of the other, that it is well to call special attention to a part of the history wherein the iPolyb. Ui. 81, 82. • Livy, xxii. 4, 6. ^Zonaras, viii. 23. *Polyb. iii. 83. 206 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. graphic and lifelike narrative of Livy, and the beauty of his style — and it is often incomparably beautiful — is in nowise inconsistent with the closest adherence to the actual facts. Hannibal had reached the shores of Lake Trasimene. Near its northern margin ran the high road from Cortona to Perusia, and above the road rose a line of undulating hills which at two points, the one near the tower now called Bor- ghetto, and the other near the small town of Passignano, approach the lake so closely as to cut ofif what lies between them from the outer world. Between these two points the hills retreat from the lake in the form of a semicircle, leaving between themselves and it a plain which seems broad by contrast to its narrow entrance and outlet.^ Along these retreating hills Hannibal placed the main part of his army, and the plain which they enfold was the scene of the terrible catastrophe which followed. On the spur near Passignano and the hills behind it he stationed, in a conspicuous position, his Gallic cavalry and his veteran Libyans and Spaniards. Near Borghetto, and on either side of the road which de- scends into the plain, but carefully concealed from those who might pass along it by some broken ground, were his Gallic infantry and his Numidian cavalry. On the hills to the north of the plain, or rather behind their crests, were placed the light-armed troops and the Balearic slingers. Flaminius reached the hills which shut in the lake late in the evening, too late, it would seem, to attempt to pass them then ; but, next morning, before it was broad daylight, and without sending scouts forward to see that the farther end of the pass was clear, he continued the pursuit. It was a fatal mistake. In heavy marching order, and with- out a thought of danger, the Eoman army entered the valley of death and moved along the road that skirted the margin of the lake. A thick curtain of mist hung over the lowlands which the army was crossing, and hid from view the bases 1 See the description of the battle ground given by Sir John Cam Uobhousa in his " Notes and Illustrations to Childe Harold," canto iv. stanza 63. y BATTLE V OF LAKE TRASIMENE. S B.C.2I7. %fl"% %A!W^' ?*A#^v Cartfuig inians A Numidian Cuvalry and Gallic Infantry B Light Troops and Baleares Q Spanish ami Libyan In- fantry ( Ifannihal J 206 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, graphic and lifelike narrative of Livy, and the beauty of his style — and it is often incomparably beautiful — is in nowise inconsistent with the closest adherence to the actual facts. Hannibal had reached the shores of Lake Trasimene. Near its northern margin ran the high road from Cortona to Perusia, and above the road rose a line of undulating hills which at two points, the one near the tower now called Bor- ghetto, and the other near the small town of Passignano, approach the lake so closely as to cut ofif what lies between them from the outer world. Between these two points the hills retreat from the lake in the form of a semicircle, leaving between themselves and it a plain which seems broad by contrast to its narrow entrance and outlet.^ Along these retreating hills Hannibal placed the main part of his army, and the plain which they enfold was the scene of the terrible catastrophe which followed. On the spur near Passignano and the hills behind it he stationed, in a conspicuous position, his Gallic cavalry and his veteran Libyans and Spaniards. Near Borghetto, and on either side of the road which de- scends into the plain, but carefully concealed from those who might pass along it by some broken ground, were his Gallic infantry and his Numidian cavalry. On the hills to the north of the plain, or rather behind their crests, were placed the light-armed troops and the Balearic slingers. Flaminius reached the hills which shut in the lake late in the evening, too late, it would seem, to attempt to pass them then ; but, next morning, before it was broad daylight, and without sending scouts forward to see that the farther end of the pass was clear, he continued the pursuit. It was a fatal mistake. In heavy marching order, and with- out a thought of danger, the Eoman army entered the valley of death and moved along the road that skirted the margin of the lake. A thick curtain of mist hung over the lowlands which the army was crossing, and hid from view the bases 1 See the description of the battle ground given by Sir John Cam Hobhouse in his *' Notes and Illustrations to Childe Harold," canto iv. stanza 63. -^ BATTLE V, OF LAKE TRASIMENE. B.C. 217. r kAm^' CSH ''ait/uiiiiHtniis A Numiihiin Ca7'a/fy and iiaiiic Infantry B Ltt^t Troops and Baleares Q^ Spanish ami Libyan In- fantry { Hannibal BATTLE OF THE TRASIMENE LAKE, 209 of the adjoining hiUs, while their tops were catching the first rays of the rising sun. With grim delight, and in a fever of expectation, must the soldiers of Hannibal, as they saw above the mist the whole crest of the hiUs, and each glen and hoUow which lay between their folds, crowded with their brothers in arms, have listened to the tramp of the thirty thousand men whom they could hear but could not see, as they passed along a few hundred yards below, each step making the destruction of the whole more sure. As soon as the rear of the Koman army had got weU within the passage, Hannibal gave the signal. The Gauls and Numidian cavalry hastened down and closed up the entrance, while the passage out was already blocked by the GaUic cavahy and the veterans. And now from all sides, from above and from below, from the front and from the rear, the battle-cry arose, and the enemy were upon the Romans. It was a carnage,' and a carnage only. There was no time or space to form in order of battle ; orders could neither be given nor heard : the men had hardly time to adjust their armour or to draw their swords. The majority stood where they were, and were cut down. Six thousand who led the van fought their way, sword in hand, in a compact mass, through the troops that blocked the outlet, and reached a hillock, where they halted. The mists still hung heavy on the ground below, and half-ignorant of what was going on behind them, they waited in dread suspense, unable to help their comrades, yet unable also to tear themselves away from the scene of' the conflict. It was their turn now to hear and not to see. At last, as the sun rose higher in the heavens, the mist lifted and revealed the extent of the butchery below. For three hours the slaughter had gone on, and fifteen thousand Roman corpses covered the ground or were floating on the waters. Some in their terror had tried to swim across the lake, but were drowned by their heavy armour ; others who had waded into the water might be seen standing in it up to their necks, and begging for their Uves, tiU the cavalry rode in and struck 2IO CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. ofif their heads. Of the conquering army barely fifteen hun- dred had fallen, and these were chiefly Gauls, the troops whom Hannibal could best afford to lose.^ As if to crown the series of portents which had ushered in this disastrous battle, we are told that while the carnage was at its height an earthquake took place which was felt throughout Italy, Gaul and the adjacent islands ; which laid cities level with the ground, turned rivers from their courses, and drove the sea into then- vacant beds. But such was the ardour of the vie- torious Carthaginians, and such the bewilderment of the panic- stricken Romans, that it passed unheeded by them both.* The Roman army was annihilated. To make the disaster more complete, the six thousand infantry who had so gal- lantly fought their way out of the pass were overtaken on the following day by Maharbal and forced to surrender ; ^ while four thousand cavaky, who had been sent forward by Servil- ius as his forerunners to co-operate with Flaminius, fell also into Hannibal's hands.* Flaminius himself, after in vain try- ing to play the general's part amidst the blind panic and con- fusion, had died a soldier's death, fighting bravely. A GaUic Insubrian, recognising him, cried aloud, " Yonder is the con- sul who has slain our legions and ravaged our territory," and, rushing at him, ran him through with his spear.^ In vain did Hannibal search for his body to give him the honourable burial which he never refused to a worthy foe. Flaminius may not have been a great general, he may have been impetuous and headstrong, and he certainly made one fatal mistake ; but amidst the calumnies heaped upon him by the Senate, and the gloom which always gathers round defeat, we can safely say that he was the worthiest and least self-seeking Roman of his time.* 1 Polyb. iii. 84 ; Livy. xxii. 4-6 ; Appian, Hann. 10. aacero, De Div. i. 35; Livy, xxii. 6; Zonaras, viii. 125. «Polyb. iu. 84, 14. * Polyb. iii 86, 1-3 ; Livy. xxii. 8. »Livy, xxii. 6. « See an eloquent passage in Arnold, uL p. 110. RECEPTION OF NEWS AT ROME. 911 CHAPTER XII. HANNIBAL OVERRUNS CENTRAL ITALY. (B.C. 217-216.) News of the Trasiraene 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— Discontent of his troops— Hannibal ravages Samnium and Cam- pania-Beauty and wealth of Campania— Continued inaction of Fabius— He tries to entrap Hannibal but fails— Minucius left in command— Is raised to equal rank with Fabius-Is saved from disaster by him-Services of Fabius to Rome. At Rome no efifort was made to disguise the extent of the calamity which had overtaken the State. The attempt had been made after the Trebia, and had not succeeded then ; still less could it succeed now. The only man who might have had anything to gain by hiding the naked truth lay unrecog- nised amidst the heaps of slain in the fatal valley. It was the interest of the survivors to blacken his memory, not to strew flowers upon his grave: and they succeeded in the attempt. Roman senators, even then, consoled themselves for the defeat by the reflection that it was the presumptuous folly of their private foe which was responsible for it ; and Roman orators and historians, for centuries afterwards, pointed their morals or adorned their tales by reference to the well-deserved fate of the man who had turned traitor to his order and had despised the gods. When the first vague rumour of the disaster reached the city, an anxious crowd gathered in the forum. Towards sun- set the praetor mounted the rostra, and simply said, " We 212 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, have been defeated in a great battle**.^ The scene of consternation which ensued brought home to the few survi- vors who had managed to reach the city, more vividly than the scene of slaughter itself, the full reality of what had happened. The Senate alone preserved its dignity and its self-restraint. Thinking not of the past, but of the present and the immediate future, they sat, day after day, from sun- rise to sunset, concerting measures for the defence of the city. When, three days afterwards, indeed, the news came of the capture of the cavalry of Servilius, a loss which rendered his whole army — the only army which remained — unfit to take the field, their presence of mind did forsake them; but it was for a moment only.^ To remedy the evils of a divided command, they determined to revive the ofl&ce of Dictator, an ofl&ce disused for thirty-nine years past, and therefore quite unknown to that generation. Their choice fell on the most prudent and respected, if not the ablest, of the patricians, Quintus Fabius Maximus, Marcus Minucius being selected as his Master of the Horse. A slight hitch occurred, for there was no consul present who could nominate the Dictator, and such was the reverence of the Romans for the forms of their constitution, even in this time of terror, that they caUed Fabius Pro-Dictator only.s The Pro-Dictator first made his peace by vows and offerings with the angry gods, and then took more practical steps for the defence. By his order the walls were repaired and manned, the bridges over the rivers were broken down, the country through which Hannibal's advance was likely to take place was turned into a desert, and everything prepared for an immediate attack. Why did not Hannibal at once advance on Rome, as the most cool-headed of his opponents expected that he would ? The answer is the same that must be given on a yet more critical occasion in the following year. He knew what the Romans themselves hardly yet fully knew, that every Roman citizen could, when occasion required, become a soldier ; he 1 Polyb. iil 85, 8. • Ibid, iil 86, 6. » Livy, xxil 8. HANNIBAL PLUNDERS CENTRAL ITALY, ai3 knew also that amidst a hostile population — for no Italian town had as yet come over to him— his attack, however impetuous, must break upon the walls of the city. If he delayed a little longer, and allowed his victories to produce their natural result, he would be borne back, he hoped, upon a wave of Italian national enthusiasm, and, bearing the banner of Italian independence, would strike down at his leisure the common oppressor. Accordingly, when the cup which he had so eagerly desired to drain seemed to be at his lips, he wisely dashed it from him. Crossing the Tiber, with stern resolve he crossed also the Flaminian road, which must have seemed to his victorious army as if it were there for the express purpose of inviting an immediate march on the capital ; and hazarding an attack upon the adjoining Latin colony of Spole- tium, he proved to demonstration the soundness of the judg- ment he had formed as to the courage of the Italians behind stone walls, and the impossibility, with so small a force as his own, of coping adequately with it. After traversing Umbria, he crossed the Apennines a second time, and, at last, laden with the plunder of Central Italy, he entered the territory of Picenum. Here the Carthaginians in his army caught sight, for the first time since many months, of their native element, the sea ; and Hannibal despatched his first messenger, with tidings of what he had done, to the Carthaginian Senate. Never, probably, before or since, did a general send despatches to his government weighted with so many and such brilliant achievements. From New Carthage to the Adriatic, what a catalogue of dangers met and overcome, and what crowning victories ! The Ebro, the Rhone, and the Po ; the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Apennines ; the Ticinus, the Trebia, and the Trasimene ! Well can we believe, what we are expressly told, that such news disarmed all opposition to the lion's brood at Carthage, and closed the mouths even of the peace party. ^ In the enthusiasm of the moment all parties determined to iPolyb. iii. 87, 4,6. 214 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. send reinforcements (why had they not taken steps to do so before ?), alike to Hasdrubal in Spain and to Hannibal in Italy. Meanwhile the Phoenician hero rested his troops, fatigued with all that they had undergone, in the plains of Picenum. They lived on the fat of the land, and the Numidian horses, diseased as they were from their bad or their scanty food, soon recovered their condition when they were groomed day by day with the old wine of Italian vintages.^ Here, too, Hannibal took the opportunity — a hazardous one even for him in the midst of a campaign— of arming his Libyan and perhaps some of his Spanish troops in the Roman fashion.^ The victor of the Trasimene could be in no want of Roman suits of armour. When his troops had been sufficiently re- cruited, and were again eager to advance, he marched at his leisure through the territories of the Marrucini and Fren- tani, the Marsi and Peligni, ravaging them as he went, and at length pitched his camp near Argyrippa, or Arpi, in Apulia.2 Every Roman citizen able to bear arms who fell into his hands during this triumphal progress, Hannibal, we are told by Poly bins, ordered to be put to the sword,* a stern fulfilment, if the charge be true— which it, probably, is not— of his early vow. But it was part payment only ; payment in full was still to come. Fabius, on his part, after levying four new legions— the numbers of which were, for the first time in Roman history, under the pressure of necessity, made up by drawing from the ranks of freedmen — first moved northward to join the army of Servilius, which he had summoned from Ariminum. The consul was ordered, before coming into the Dictator's presence, to dismiss his lictors, and was then sent to Ostia to protect the Italian coasts from the Carthaginian navy, which had lately intercepted a convoy of provisions in dan- gerous proximity to Rome.^ Having thus duly impressed his troops with the superior majesty of his office, the Dictator iPolyb. iii. 88, 1. * Polyb. iii. 86, 11. • Ibid. iii. 87, 3. « livy, xxii. 9. •Livy. xxii. 11 ; cf. Polyb. iii. 88, 8, 9. POLICY OF FABIUS, 215 led them ofif in pursuit of Hannibal. He came up with him at Arpi, and Hannibal immediately offered the battle which it might be presumed that a pursuing army under a successor of Flaminius would at once accept. But Fabius had made up his mind to a policy ; a policy inevitable if Rome was to be saved, but requiring no ordinary firmness and courage to carry out. That policy was to com- mit nothing to fortune, to follow Hannibal wherever he went, dogging his footsteps constantly, but never risking a battle, and never, so far as human foresight could prevent it, giving the enemy a chance of taking him at a disadvantage. In vain did Hannibal order the richest country to be devastated before the Dictator's eyes; in vain did he shift his camp rapidly from place to place, in hopes that his rapidity might wrest from the old man what insults and annoyances could not. Never close to Hannibal, but never far behind him, with admirable resolution, and with still more admirable self- restraint, did Fabius follow his foe from place to place, always clinging to the hills, occasionally cutting ofif stragglers, or intercepting the booty which the flying Numidian squadrons had captured, but giving no chance of a general engagement. ^ It was not in flesh and blood — certainly not in the flesh and blood of the hot-headed master of the horse — to submit patiently to this for ever. The name of "Lingerer" (Cunctator)— given to Fabius, at first as a mark of approval by those who blamed Flaminius for his rashness ; the name immortalised by the poets, who sang of the " one man who by his lingering had saved Rome"; the name which has clung to him ever since as a term of honour, greater even than his other name of ** Greatest " — became, for the time, a term of the bitterest reproach. The lingerer was called a do- nothing, and his caution was put down to cowardice, or even to treachery. '* Hannibal's lackey " — so the soldiers, aptly enough from their point of view, nicknamed their general — would go anywhere if his master gave him the lead ; without 1 Polyb. iii. 89 ; livy, xxii. 1^ 2l6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, it he would go nowhere. But the old Dictator was as proof against the murmurings of his soldiers, and the mutinous speeches of his own Master of the Horse, Minucius, as he was against all the devices of Hannibal. At last, wearied out by his delay, Hannibal determined that Fabius, if he would not tire himself by hard fighting, should at least do so by hard marching ; and leaving Apulia behind, where he had already taken the strongly fortified town of Venusia, he marched into Samnium, the most inaccessible and moun- tainous part of Italy, ravaged the territory of Beneventum, in its very centre, took Telesia by assault, and then passed straight on out of Samnium into Campania.^ The plains of Campania were certainly the most fertile and beautiful plains in ancient Italy ; the Italians thought them the most beautiful and fertile in the world. *' Campania the blessed, where all human delights meet and vie with each other," says Pliny of it ;2 on the west, a succession of beauti- ful harbours and noble cities received the wealth of other countries, and gave them in exchange the oil, and the corn, and the wine of its own rich interior. Here was Naples, with its matchless bay; CumaB, the earliest of the Greek colonies in Italy; Nola and Puteoli, Baiae and Nuceria. Here was Capua, the city, if second, yet second only, of Italian cities, to Kome. Here were those Phlegraean plains for the possession of which, as the legend, not unreasonably, said, the gods themselves, the deities of wine and com, had contended, and from the gently sloping hills came the far- famed olives of Venafrum, and the choicest vintages of the ancient world, the Surrentine and the Massic, the Caecuban and the Calenian, the Formian and the Falernian. One of two things was evident. In defence of all this wealth and beauty, either Fabius must at length risk a battle, or it would be clear to all Italians that the whole of Italy was at Hanni- iPolyb. iii. 90 ; lavy, xxii. 3. 2 Pliny, iiL 5, 9, "Felix ilia Campania, certamen bamansB voluptatis", Cf. Strabo, v. 234. HANNIBAL IN CAMPANIA, 217 bal's mercy, and its towns would, if from the instinct of self- preservation alone, at length join the conquering side. Fabius had followed Hannibal more quickly than was his wont, and his troops were in high spirits, for they thought that their general was at length in earnest, and would strike a blow rather than leave Campania to fall into the enemy's hands. But they were disappointed. They reached the ridge of the Caliculan hills which overlooked the plain, and then they sat down to enjoy, or to endure, as best they could, the now well-known sight of devastated fields and burning homesteads.^ Their discontent broke out with twofold force, and it was evident from the reception which they gave to a mutinous speech of Minucius, that the soldiers thought the Master of the Horse would make a better commander than the Dictator ; * an opinion in which it was also evident that the Master of the Horse himself fully coincided. Aware that the discontent of the army had spread to Home, and even to the aristocracy whose representative he was, Fabius yet held on steadfastly to his purpose. He knew that Northern Campania, with all its riches, could not support the Cartha- ginian army through the winter, and that Hannibal must attempt to retreat by the pass through which he had ad- vanced. He could not cross the Vultumus to the south of the Falernian plain which he had been devastating, for the stream was deep and rapid, and the one bridge across it was protected by the Roman colony and garrison of Calisinum. Neither could he march northward by the Appian or Latin roads into Latium, with much hope of success, for these roads bristled with faithful Latin colonies, Cales and Suessa, In- teramna and MintumaB, Sesia and Fregellae, which would threaten his front, while the Dictator hung upon his rear. Fabius therefore flattered himself that he had caught his enemy as in a trap, and placing four thousand men at the head of the pass by which Hannibal must needs retreat, drew up his main army on the hills near its entrance.' > Polyb. iii. 92, 4-7. « Livy, xxii. 14, 16. 9 Polyb. iu. 92, 10-11 ; Livy, xxii. 15. 2l8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. MINUCIUS. 219 Laden with booty, the spoils of Campania, Hannibal halted just below him, while Fabius made all his disposi- tions to repel the attempt to force a passage which would, doubtless, be made on the following day. But Hannibal had no intention of fighting at a disadvantage, or indeed of forcing the pass at all. He intended to march quietly through it. Accordingly, he selected from the vast herds of oxen which he was driving towards his winter quarters, two thousand of the strongest, and bidding his sutlers cut as many faggots of dry brushwood, and fasten them to their horns, he ordered that when the night was well advanced the faggots should be kindled, and the oxen, with their horns ablaze, be driven up the hills which hung over the pass. Maddened with fear and pain, the affrighted beasts ran wildly up the steep sides of the valley, and Fabius himself, as well as the four thousand men upon the col, imagined that Hannibal was escaping that way over the hills. But, true to his character, the Dictator would not venture out of his camp until he could see clearly what lay before him ; while the four thousand guards who did move hastily along the ridge to the points which seemed to be threatened, when they met the flaming oxen and a few light-armed troops who accompanied them, came to a halt and waited for day-light Meanwhile Hannibal led his army, which had been refreshed by half a night's sleep, quietly up the unguarded pass, and reached AUifse in safety.^ Fabius found himself outwitted, and it was natural, in the keenness of their vexation, that his men should accuse him of having purposely allowed Hannibal to escape. It was an accusation which shortly afterwards seemed triumphantly brought home to him, when the crafty Phcenician took occasion to spare his pri- vate property, while he wasted all around with fire and 8word.2 But Fabius was— so the Romans believed — a Han- 1 Poiyb. iii. 93, 94 ; Livy, xxii. 16. 17 ; Appian, Hann. 14-15. 2 Livy, xxi. 23 ; cf. il 29 ; Thucyd. ii. 13 ; Tac. Hist v. 23, " NoU arte lluCUQl ", I :; nibal in his way, a master of all the tricks and stratagems of war,* and on the present occasion he was worthy of himself; for, in his turn, he triumphantly refuted the calumnies of which he was the object, by ordering his estate to be sold and its proceeds to be devoted to the redemption of the captives taken in the war.2 Still Fabius clung steadfastly to his purpose. He fol- lowed Hannibal northwards to the Peligni, and when his enemy turned southwards again, towards his proposed winter quarters in Apulia, and he himself was called off to Rome to perform some sacrifices incidental to his office, he straitly charged Minucius to follow his policy, and on no account to risk a battle in his absence. He could hardly have expected his advice to be followed. Hannibal had just seized Geronium, a town in the extreme north-west of Apulia, which contained a considerable supply of stores, and he had encamped under its walls, intending to pass the winter there. It was just the position he wanted. Two parts of his force he sent out each day to forage amidst the rich farms in the neighbourhood, while the third remained in camp to guard it from any sudden attack. ^ Such a state of things was calculated to encourage Minucius to strike a blow. Accordingly, as soon as Fabius had turned his back, he moved his camp lower down the hills in the direction of the enemy. Hannibal, in his turn, advanced two miles, and occupied a hill rising out of the plain ; here he would be better able to protect his foragers, and to provoke the enemy to a conflict at his own time. He had long since formed his estimate of Minucius, and when he threw forward a portion of his forces to a hill still nearer to the enemy, a sharp skirmish took place, which ended in the Romans occupying the disputed position. En- 1 Cf. Cic. De Of. I 30: '* Callidum Hannibal em ex Pcenorum ; ex nostris ducibusQ. Maximum accepimus facile celare, tacere, dissimulare, insidiari, praecipere hostiura consilia ". « VaL Max. vil 40. » Polyb. UL 100. ii 220 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, POLICY OF FABIUS JUSTIFIED. 231 couraged by this first success, Minucius made a descent m force upon Hannibal's foragers, and cut many of them to pieces. Hannibal found himself, for the first time m his life, in the midst of the enemy, yet unable to take the field. He' was, so at least his enemies thought, penned within his own camp, and, on the morrow, he made a hasty retreat to bis old position at Geronium, fearing lest Minucius, whose qualities he had apparently underrated, should take it by a sudden stroke, and thus the provisions he had so laboriously got together, should fall into the enemy's hands.^ It is not to be wondered at, that when the news of this success reached Rome the delight was great, and out of all proportion to its immediate cause. It was the first success which the Roman arms had won in the war, and it seemed to indicate that the tide had at length begun to turn. The fame of Minucius was in everybody's mouth, and as he rose in the popular estimation, so did the Dictator faU. One stroke of good luck had turned the heads of the Romans more completely than had all their previous misfortunes, and they took one of the most incredibly foolish steps recorded in history. They did not try to depose Fabius from the command for which they deemed him unfitted, but they raised Minucius to an equal command with him.2 For the first time in Roman history, there were to be seen two co-dictators, differing alike in temperament and in policy, and the one raised to an equaUty with the other, simply because of the difference ! It was a contradiction in terms, only equalled in absurdity in more modern history by the spectacle of two rival Popes, each anathematising the other, yet each infallible. It has been said by a high miUtary au- thority that one bad general is better than two good ones ; and it was apparent to those who had eyes to see that the sword of Hannibal would soon arbitrate between such con- flicting clients. I Polyb. iii 101. 102 ; livy. xxii. 24, » Polyb. iii. 108 ; livy, xxii. 26, Fabius returned to the army as convinced as ever of the soundness of his policy, and prepared to press upon his colleague by his personal influence what he could no longer enforce upon him by superior power. Seeing that Minucius was bent on fighting, he proposed either that they should take the command of the whole army on alternate days, or that each should have the continuous and unfettered control over his own half of it. Minucius, possibly vnth a slight distrust of himself, under the new responsibilities of com- mand, chose the latter alternative, and Fabius, doubtless thinking it better to risk the safety of two than of four legions on a single cast, was of the same mind. Hannibal, duly in- formed by his prisoners or his spies of the arrangement which had been made, directed his attention exclusively to Minucius. 1 Near the camp of the new dictator was a hill with ground below it which presented the appearance of a general level, bare of trees ; but in it, as in the level ground near the Trebia, Hannibal's experienced eye had discovered hollows and inequalities which might hide a considerable force. Here, by night, he concealed some five thousand foot and five hundred horse, and, at dawn of day, he sent a small body of active troops to seize the hill in full view of the Romans. Minucius took the bait. In the engagement which ensued the ambuscade did its duty well; and it would have fared ill with the army of the new dictator, had not Fabius, observing from his own camp, at the distance of a mile, what was going on, come up at the right moment and prevented its retreat from being turned into a total rout. Minucius, it is said, frankly acknowledged his error, joined his camp to that of the old Dictator, and descended gracefully once more into his proper post of Master of the Horse.* The tables were now completely turned. Fabius was the hero alike of the camp and of the city, and Hannibal him- self remarked— so at least the Romans fondly believed — that iPolybw iii. 104, 2; livy, xxii 27. « Polyb. iii. 104, 106 ; livy, ixiL 28^. \\ 222 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the cloud which had so long been hanging on the mountain sides had at last burst in a tempest of wind and rain. But the six months of the Dictator's short-lived term of office were drawing to a close, and it remained to be seen whether his mantle would descend on those who were to succeed him. He had done great things in those six months. If he had not, as his admirers said, altogether saved Home by his delay,^ he had, at least, given her a brief breathing space. He had trained raw levies to look the warriors of Hannibal in the face — a feat to which they were quite unequal on the morrow of the Trasimene ; and by allowing Hannibal to de- vastate at his pleasure the Apulian and Campanian plains, he had unintentionally elicited the most conclusive proof of the hopelessness of Hannibal's enterprise. For, even now, no Italian city had revolted ; the serried ranks of the Italian Confederation remained unbroken, and it was clear to the keen-sighted Phoenician that he was still as far as ever from the goal of his hopes. The services, therefore, rendered by the Cunctator to Home were very real services, even if they were not quite what his advisers represented them : to have escaped from Hannibal without a crushing defeat was, in those times, as Livy truly remarks, a victory in itself. 1 Cf. Ennius, " Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem ". Fasti, ii. 241. 242:— Scilicet ut posses olim tu, Maxime. naaci, Cui res cnnctando restituenda foret. He is imitated by Virgil, jEn. vi. 846 :- Maximu ille es, Unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem. Cf. also Ovid, ENERGY OF ROMANS. 22? CHAPTER XIII. BATTLE OP CANNfi. CHARACTER OP HANNIBAL. (B.C. 216.) Energy and spirit of the Romans-The rival armies face each other at Cann»^ Nature of the ground -The double command of iEmilius Paullus and Varro— Anxiety at Rome- Dispositions of Hannibal for the battle— Battle of Cannae-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 influence over men- Sources of our knowledge of him-Charge against him-Roman feeling towards him— Change in character of war after Cannro- Polybius and Silenus. The Roman Senate during the winter which followed gave new and striking proofs of their confidence in their own future by sending legates to expostulate with the Ligurians for having taken the part of Hannibal, and to watch the ever- fickle Gauls. Nor was their horizon bounded by the limits of Italy. With the truest wisdom they despatched reinforce- ments to their army in Spain and to the garrison at Lily- bsBum ; they demanded the arrears of tribute from Illyria, and they sent even to Philip, King of Macedon, ordering him to surrender the intriguer Demetrius, of Pharos, who had taken refuge in his court. The help which was offered them by the Greek cities of Italy they declined with thanks, for it would have looked like weakness to accept it ; but they received the free-will contributions of Hiero, their old ally, and placed the golden statue of Victory, which he sent them! with due solemnity in the Capitol. It was the omen and 224 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. not the gold which they valued.* But party spirit still ran high in the city. In the election for the consulship which had just taken place, other qualifications had been thought of than those which were essential in this supreme hour; perhaps for the simple reason that the Romans did not yet realise that it might be supreme. L. ^milius Paullus, who had distinguished himself in the Illyrian war, was the suc- cessful candidate on the patrician side, but he received as his colleague P. Terentius Varro, the champion of the ple- beians, a man who, if the patrician annalists can be believed, was not only of humble origin, the son of a butcher, but had himself worked in his father's business, and was recom- mended to the suffrages of the people by nothing but a bully- ing manner and a vulgar impudence. ^ Varro does not seem, it is true, to have been more of a mihtary genius than Flaminius, or Sempronius, or Fabius ; but that most of the accusations laid to his charge are unjust is proved by the fact that he had held high offices before, that he was elected now in what no one could refuse to recognise as a time of danger, and that he was employed in the public service even after the disastrous name of Cannae had been indissolubly connected with his own. The spring found the hostile armies still facing each other near Geronium ; but Hannibal's provisions were nearly ex- hausted. Not enough for ten days remained, and the wasted country could yield no more. He began to look out for another Koman magazine which he might convert to his own use ; nor had he far to go. The Boman supplies and muni- tions of war for Apulia were collected in large quantities at Cannae, a town to the south of the Aufidus, about half-way between Canusium and the sea. With strange short-sighted- ness the Roman generals of the preceding year had neglected to garrison it strongly ; and while the consuls of the new year were levying fresh legions at Rome, Hannibal, by one of his rapid marches, seized and appropriated it to his own use, as 1 Polyb. m. 106 ; Livy, xxii. 38 and 37. « Cf, Livy, xxii. 26, 34. 39 ; Zonaras, x. 1« ROMAN ARMY AT CANNM. he had seized and appropriated Geronium before it.i When at length .Emilius and Varro assumed the command TZ Tes^trme Z 7''' '''''t ^---^^-s^the alt t thPvfhl r u . r' ^° ^ ^^^*^"-' T^^ F^l^ian method ttTi tcoS '. r *"^' ''""^ ^°^"^^^> '' ^-^ done all i not tan.' ' y. ' "'' '^^'''''' *^^* *^^ ^^-^-^ ^^ies could not stand much longer the strain to which it had ex- posed them. Every precaution was taken, so far as numbers sT2 f b~;o 1 '•^'"^- t ^~ ^™^ ordina^ton! L^lii f r T°'' '"'^ containing four thousand two hundred mfantry and two hundred cavalry. The army whilh was now raised consisted not of two, but of eight le Jnrand c^tirrr^'^'^^ cavalry. The Romans, therefore, could hardly now be accused under-estimating so far as mere numbers went, the S y of the occasion.3 The consuls were to act together, anS e of the previous year were retained, as proconsuls, tolt^tZ handlmg the vast host. Never before had the Romans n o large an army, at one time and place, into the field and the foro« nn \ t .u ' ^T""^^'- ^^" gi-and^total, therefore, of the Lted of " If'^ '' ""^^^ "^^^* «^^- *o depend con! sisted of over eighty thousand men. They found Hannibal encamped near Cann., on the south side oMhe lu£ Se t fi 1 7""' ^^' !^" '''''' ^'^^'^ -P it« course. Ihe Aufidus, alone of the eastward flowing streams of I aly draws its head waters from the west'of tTe hu^^^^ backbone of mountains which traverses the ^peninsula and voTd^f way through thorn, conveys to the Adriatt^hat Tan sea Thr tT''^ 'l'^^^ '^^^^^"^^ '^ *^^ ^yrrhe- ' shaned ,iZ ' u^u^!"'' "^ '' boisterous," ^' far resounding," shaped like a bull," so well known to readers of Horace and given by the poet to his native stream, arelfbt"; » Polyb. ui. 107, 1-5 ; Livy. xxii. 40-43. 2 Pojyb a 107 « 7 ^ Polyb. ill. 107, 9-15 ; Livy. xxii. 36.' ^' '' ^' 15 226 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, RIVAL ARMIES AT CANNM, 227 in part, the product of the childish fancy which invests familiar obiects with attributes of awe and grandeur which do not properly belong to them, and which maturer age happily for the poetry of hfe, is not altoge her ah e to shake off ; in part, they are justified by the fact tha has iust been mentioned, and which at certain times of the year might make the stream impetuous enough. But it is clear from the series of manoeuvres which took place before the two armies became locked in the deadly combat now to be related, that, at this time of year at least, the stream must have been fordable even to within a few miles of its mouth. The surrounding country was level and suitable to the evolutions of cavalry, and, without doubt, had for this reason been selected by Hannibal. PauUus. seeing this is said to have been anxious to postpone the battle tUl he should have drawn Hannibal into ground of his own choosing. The historians.* who have bepraised PauUua for this, forgot, in their eagerness to throw all the blame for what happened afterwards on the butcher's son. that the orders of the authorities to fight a battle at once were stringent, and that it was not likely that Hannibal would, by any artifices of the Boman consuls, be drawn off from a position selected by himself, well fortified and weU supplied. It was impossible for an army of eighty thousand men to Unger long in so exhausted a country without striking a blow ; and to linger there, or to retreat without fighting, would have been alike fatal to the Roman cause in ApuUa. The evils of a divided command were great enough, but they were not created by Varro They were even diminished, to a certain extent, in thi» case, by the arrangement that the consuls should take the supreme command on alternate days ; and when Varro. on his day, pushed his camp nearer to the foe he was encour- aged in his resolve to force on a battle by a success which he won over some skirmishers and light cavalry who had been sent to bar his progress.' Minucius had met with a 1 Cf. Uvy. xxu. 44 ; Appum. Hann. 18-19. • Polyb. ui. 110, 4-7. ike first success near Geronium, and Sempronius had done the same at the Trebia. Was it not possible that like effects might be produced by like causes, and that a deep-laid design of Hannibal might have had more to do with each than the prowessof the Eomans ? But thisdid not strike-so remarked the patrician annalists, wise after the event— the mind of Varro The next day belonged to Paullus, and he signalised his com- mand by throwing a third of his army to the north side of the Aufidus and by forming a second camp there, some miles nearer to the Carthaginians. By this step he hoped at once to protect his own foraging parties and to annoy those of the enemy.i Eager for the conflict. Hannibal, two days after- wards, drew out his forces in battle array on the south side of the nver The offer was declined by the prudent Paullus • and Hannibal, to bring matters to a crisis, sent his Numidians across the river with orders to cut off the Eomans. who were encamped on its northern side, from aU access to it.2 It was the middle of June ; the country was parched and thirsty and a dry wind, the Vulturnus, which blows at that time of year, raising clouds of dust, would make a scanty supply of water an intolerable hardship." Even if he had been disposed to postpone fighting, Varro could hardly now have done so. Ihe delay of the last few days seemed irksome enough to the rival armies ; but what must it have seemed to the citizens at home ? News had reached the city that the armies were facing ^"fl°. 1"°"^ '^*' everything was prepared for a decisive conflict. They had ventured their all, or neariy their aU, on this one throw. The stake was laid down, and the throw must be made but it was hard to have so much time to ask them- selves what if they should lose 1 Omens and portents seemed to fill the air, as before the Trasimene Lake, and busy-tongued rumour passed from mouth to mouth, sending the citizens in crowds to the temples to seek from the gods by supplications what they could no longer gain or lose by any exertions of • Polyl. m. no, 8-10 ; Livy, zxii. 46. = P„lyb. iii. 112. 3-4. Livy. iiu. 46 ; Appian, Harm. 22. 228 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. DISPOSITIONS OP HANNIBAL, 22^ I their own. It was the resource of the destitute, and they knew it, but it helped them to kill the period of suspense.^ Once more it was Varro's turn for the command, and as the sun rose he began to transfer his army to the northern side of the river, and after joining the contingent in the smaller camp there, drew the whole out in battle array, facing the south.2 Nearly opposite Cannae the Aufidus, whose general course is north-east, takes a sharp bend to the south. Afterwards, for some distance, it runs east, and then, once more, turning northward, reaches the line of its former course. The loop or link thus formed Hannibal marked out as the grave of the Koman army, the grave of fifty thousand men ; ^ and into it, as a preparatory step, he now threw his own small force, while Varro was crossing the stream higher up. His infantry did not number half that of the Eomans; but they were many of them veterans, and all of them men on whom he knew by experience that he could rely. His cavahry were only slightly superior in numbers to the enemy, but how vastly superior in every mihtary quality the result was to prove. In the centre of his line of battle were the Spaniards, clothed in white tunics edged with purple, and armed with swords equally suited for thrusting or for striking. Next them were the Gauls, who, naked to the waist, and armed with long swords, fitted to their gigantic stature, but pointless, and therefore suited for striking only, seemed as though they were the warriors of Brennus come to life again with one more terrible than many Brennuses to lead them. This part of his force Hannibal threw forward in the form of a semicircle or a wedge,* while, on then: flanks and some way to the rear, he placed the best part of his infantry, the heavy-armed Africans, eager, many of them, doubtless, to flesh, for the first time, in Koman hearts the Roman weapons which they 1 Polyb. L 112, 6-9. "Polyb. iii. 113, 2 ; cf. 114, 8 ; Livy, xxii. 46. 3 The plain of Caniijc is still called the plain of blood, " Campo di Sangue ". ^ Polyb. iii. 113, 8 ; Livy, xxiL 46. bore. Beyond these again, and forming the left wing of the whole army, were the heavy Gallic and African cavalry, eight thousand strong. On the right wing he posted his light- armed Numidians, reduced by the waste of life attending such campaigns as Hannibal's to two thousand men aU told but with spirit and fidelity enough to their great leader to fi^ht on to their very last man and last horse. Hasdrubal led the heavy cavalry on the left, and Maharbal the Numidians on the right, while Hannibal, with his brother Mago near him stationed hnnself in the centre to direct the general operations of the battle.! He had been obliged to leave ten thousand men on the other side of the river to guard his camp against surpnse and was able therefore to put only thirty thousand men into Ime of battle : thirty thousand against the Eoman eigh y thousand ! The odds were heavy indeed against him in point of numbers ; but it must be remembered that his wings rested on the sides of the loop which he had himself selected and could not be outflanked by the enemy. Varro, whether because he distrusted his raw levies, or because he saw, when It was too late to remedy it, that unless he massed his troops together half of his whole army would be outside the fray increased the depth of his maniples from ten to sixteen hopmg by sheer weight to bear down all resistance and drive the Carthaginians into the river. He was, in fact only penning his sheep more closely for the slaughter After the usual preliminary skirmish of the light-armed troops, the eight thousand heavy cavalry on Hannibal's left charged the two thousand four hundred Eoman cavaby op- posed to them. These last were picked men, belonging, most of them, to the best Roman famUies, men of equestrian and senatorial rank. They withstood the charge bravely for a tmie, and grappled horse to horse and man to man with the barbarians But they were overpowered by numbers, and only a small remnant escaped from the field.2 Unlike Rupert at Naseby, Hasdrubal held his eager cavalry weU in hand. > Polyb. iii 114. 7. »Polyb. iii. 116. 1^; Livy. xxa 47. 230 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. BATTLE OF CANNM, 231 He forbade them to pursue those who were ahready routed, and passing behind the whole Roman line fell on the rear of the Italian cavalry, who were stationed on the other wmg, and who had hitherto been held in check by the skilful evolu- tions of the mere handful of Numidians. These admirable horsemen had avoided coming to close quarters, in which they must have been crushed by numbers, but had managed to keep their vastly more numerous enemy employed till Has- drubal came thundering on their rear. Attacked now by the uninjured Numidians in front and by Hasdrubal's cavahry, flushed with success, behind, the Italian cavaky broke and fled Hasdrubal, not yet sated with victory, left the Numi- dians to render an account of their flying foes, and turned his attention to the Roman centre. Here, so far, matters had gone well for the Romans ; but it was so far only. The semi- circle of Gauls and Spaniards whom Hannibal had pushed forward in his centre, had been gradually forced back, or rather had fallen back in accordance with his plan, first to a level with, and then right past, the heavy Africans on their flanks. The convex Hne of battle had thus become concave, and it seemed that the whole would be driven headlong into the river by the overwhelming masses of the Romans, who, as they yielded, kept pressing on, or were themselves pressed on by those behind and at their flanks, into every inch of ground left vacant for them.^ But just at the critical mo- ment Hasdrubal fell upon their rear, and the heavy Libyan infantry, who had hardly yet taken part in the battle, wheel- ing inward at the same time from right and left, attacked them on both flanks.*-^ Denser and denser grew the mass of terrified Romans, pressed on aU four sides at once. Huddled together without room to draw, much less to wield, their swords, they stood or struggled in helpless imbecility, seeing their comrades on the ch-cumference of the fatal circle cut down, one after the other, and doomed to wait in patience iPolyb. iii. 115. 5-12 ; Livy, xxii. 47. 2 Polyb. ill 116 ; Livy, xxii. 48. till their own turn should come. The question was no longer whether, but simply when, the stroke would fall on each. Few Romans indeed within that fatal ring were destined to escape. As at the Trasimene, it was a simple butchery ; but it was a butchery which required treble the number of victims. The Romans were never cowards, but those who stood near the centre of that seething mass must needs have died, like cowards, many times before their death. " The thicker the hay," said Alaric long afterwards, in an outburst of brutality, " the easier it is mown." But not even Alaric's imagination could have pictured such a harvest of death as this of Cannse, and even the muscles of his brawny Visigoths would have oeen wearied out before they had slain, as the Carthaginians did on this fatal day, a number of the enemy which, man for man, vastly exceeded their own. For eight hours the work of destruction went on, and at the end not less than fifty thousand men lay dead upon theground.^ ^milius Paullus, the Illyrian hero, who, though wounded by a sling eariy in the day, had clung to his horse, heartening on his men, till he dropped exhausted from his saddle ; the pro- consul Servilius ; the late high-spirited Master of the Horse Minucius ; both quasstors, twenty-one military tribunes, sixty senators, and an unknown number of knights, were among the plain. Nearly twenty thousand Roman prisoners were taken, whether on the field itself, in the pursuit, or in the two camps which were among the prizes of Hannibal's gigantic victory.2 Of the rest, Varro, with a few horsemen only, had the good or the ill fortune to escape to Venusia ; and it was with diffi- culty that, after some days, he managed to rally a few thou- sand stragglers or malingerers at Canusium— all that now remained of the Roman army.3 Amidst all this slaughter, the conqueror had lost only five thousand five hundred of his infantry, and but two hundred of those matchless cavah*y to iPolybius, iii. 117, 4, puts the number of slain at 70,000; livy, xxii. 49 at 48,000 ; Appian, Hann. 25, at 50,000. 2 Polyb. iii. 116; Livy. xxii. 19. 3 Polyb. iiL 117, 2; Livy, xxu. 50. 232 CARTHAGE AND THE CAkTHAGINIANS. MEASUkES OF THE SENATE. 233 ( I' I t t ' I whom the victory was mainly due.^ *' Send me on with the cavaky," said Maharbal to Hannibal, in the exultation of the moment, " do thou follow behind, and, in five days, thou shalt sup in the Capitol." ^ He might well think so at the time, for the worst fears of the Komans, the highest hopes of Hannibal, had been more than reahsed ; the double stake had been played and had been lost, — lost, it would seem then, — irretrievably. So many knights lay dead that, as the story goes, Mago, when sent, some time afterwards, by Hannibal to Carthage with *iidings of his victory, emptied on the floor of the Senate-house three bushels of golden rings taken from equestrian fingers.^ It was a trophy of victory which the Carthaginian aristocracy, who, as has been already pointed out,-* commemorated the number of their campaigns by that of their rings, and who had, many of them, joined the opposition to the noble Barcine gens, could not fail to appreciate. The news, which was necessarily slow in reaching Carthage, reached Home apace. It was, as the saying is, " in the air " even before the first courier with his disastrous tidings ap- peared at the Appian gate, and rumour, as was natural, went even beyond the truth. It was believed that both consuls were dead, and that no portion of the army had survived. Livy, the most graphic of historians or of romancers, fairly shrinks from the attempt to picture the scene of horror which followed.5 Each flying messenger, as he reached the walls, fancied himself, or was fancied by the Eomans, to be but the forerunner of the dread Hannibal himself. He knew not, indeed, as he drew near the city, whether the Numidian cav- alry were not, even then, before him, as their own messengers. A panic-stricken multitude, thinking that all save their Uves was lost, made for the gates, and, for a moment, it seemed 1 Polyb. iii. 117, 6. 2 Livy. xxH. 61. 3 livy, xxiii. 12; cf. Juv. Sat. x. 164:— Caniiarum viudex et tanti sanguinis ultor Annulus . . . *See above, p. 38. »Livy, xxii. 54. likely that Hannibal when he came would find Eome indeed, but no Eoman citizens within her. Any other state must have succumbed to such a blow • 1 but now, as after the Trasimene, it was the Senate, or what remamed of it, who saved the city from being abandoned by her own chUdren. They alone preserved their presence of mmd ; and it was the old ex-dictator, Fabius, who was once more, the soul of their deliberations. By his advice the gates were closed to prevent the exodus of the inhabitants. The citizens should not be saved, so he wiUed it, unless the city was saved with them. Messengers were sent along the southern mihtary roads to see, as Livy pathetically expresses It, ''if the gods, touched by one pang of pity, had left aught remaining to the Eoman name," and to bring the first tidings of the expected advance of Hannibal.2 It was difficult for the Senate to dehberate at aU ; for the cries of thousands of women outside the Senate-house, who were bewaihng their absent husbands, or fathers, or sons, as though they were aU dead, drowned the voices of those who spoke. Orders were issued that the women, if wail they must, should wail within their own houses, and henceforward silence, mournful in- deed, but dignified, was observed in the public streets. All assemblies of the people were prohibited. M. Junius Pera was named Dictator, the city legions were called out ; the whole male population— some fourteen thousand slaves and cnmmals, and boys still clothed in the garb of childhood among them— were armed, and the angry gods were pro- pitiated, as best they might, by the punishment of guilty Vestals, and by the burying alive of Greek and Gallic men and women in the Eoman Forum.^ After a few days more hopeful news came. A despatch arrived from Varro himself, saying that he had escaped from the carnage, and was doing his best to reorganise and to raUy the ten thousand demoralised fugitives who had, at last, > Livy. loc. cU. 2 Livy, xxii. 55. •Livy, xxii 56. 57 ; xxiii. 14 ; Appian, Hann, 27. 234 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. I l^f found their way to Canusium. More important still, Han- nibal was not on his way to Rome, but was still encamped on the field of CannaB. The Romans breathed more freely ; but from other parts of the Roman world tidings of fresh danger, fresh disaster, or fresh shame came pouring in. One Carthaginian fleet was threatening LilybaBum, another Syracuse. The force sent northwards to watch the Gauls had fallen into an ambuscade and had been cut off to a man.^ Worse still, a body of Roman nobles who had escaped from Cannae, thinking that all was lost save their honour, had determined, regardless even of their honour, to fly beyond the seas, and would have carried their purpose out had not the young Scipio rushed in amongst them, sword in hand, and sworn that he would slay any one who would not bind himself never to desert his country.^ And why did not Hannibal march at once on the panic- stricken city ? Roman historians and Roman generals could not refrain from expressing their thankfulness and their surprise at his dilatoriness or his blindness.^ In Juvenal's time Roman schoolboys declaimed upon it in their weekly themes.'* Maharbal, the master of the Numidian cavalry — if, indeed, the story be true, and not what the Romans imagined ought to have been true — exclaimed, in an outburst of vexation at the chance which was thrown away, that the gods had taught Hannibal how to win, but not how to use, a victory ; ^ and the greatest master of modern warfare, Napoleon himself, has joined in the general chorus of con- demnation. But perhaps the best and the all-but-sufficing answer to those who say that Hannibal ought to have ad- vanced on Rome, is the simple fact that Hannibal himself, the foremost general of all time, and statesman as well as ^ Polyb. iii. 118, 6. Livy (xxiii. 24) places it later. 2 Livy, xxii. 53 ; Val. Max. v. 6, 7. " T'lutarch, Fabiua Maximus, 17 ; Val. Maximus, ix« 5, 8 ; Floras, it 6, 19-20. * Juvenal, SaU vii. 161-163 ; cf. x. 166-167. » Uvy, xxii. 61. WHY DID NOT HANNIBAL ADVANCE? 235 general, did not attempt it. Moreover, all the arguments which, we have seen, held good after Trasimene against such an advance, held equally good now. There were still the stone walls of the city. There was still the population of Latium and of the surrounding country, as yet untouched by the war, hostile to him to a man ; still— after the first few ^days of panic, of which Hannibal, laden with booty and with half Italy between him and Rome, could hardly have taken advantage— the unbroken resolution of the citizens them- selves. Hannibal never liked sieges, and was seldom suc- cessful in those he undertook ; he forbore at this moment to besiege even Canusium with its feeble and panic-stricken defenders. Finally, his long-cherished hope of the defection of the Italian allies seemed now at length to be not only within his sight, but, if only he was patient or prudent, ab-eady almost within his grasp. The battle of Cannse had been too much for the resolution of Apulia ; Samnium had already in part joined him; Lucania and Bruttium rose in revolt. The Greek cities in the south were prepared to hail him as their dehverer ; Campania, it was whispered, was wavering in the balance, and ready at the sight of the con- queror to go over to Carthage.^ Thus deprived of her allies, Rome, he hoped, would fall almost by her own weight. Never did the self-control and the true nobility of soul of Hannibal, never did the unbending resolution of the Ro- man Senate, display itself more conspicuously than at this moment. Never in the very moment of victory did Hanni- bal lose his head. The good of his country was even now nearer to his heart— and doubtless it was the only thing that was nearer to his heart— than his hatred to Rome. Think- ing that it might be advantageous to Carthage to conclude peace, and that she might now do so almost on her own terms, he called the Roman prisoners together — almost the only occasion in his life on which he brought himself to > Polyb. ill 118; Livy, xxil 61 ; xxui. 1, ete. Cf. Appian Hann. 31 and 33-35. ill 236 CARTHAOE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, UNBROKEN SUCCESS OF HANNIBAL. I'i 237 speak a friendly word to any Koman — and told them that he did not wish that the strife which he was waging should be internecine ; he was willing to take a ransom for them, and some of their number might go on their parole to Kome to negotiate the matter. Even in the first flush of his victory, he bade Carthalo offer terms of peace, if he saw that the Roman wishes turned in that direction. But the Romans also rose to the emergency. Fifty years before, as has been already related, they had told the victorious Epirot that Rome never negotiated with an enemy so long as he was on Itahan soil; and the answer which they had given to Pyrrhus then in words, they gave now to a general greater than Pyrrhus, and crowned with a far more overwhelming victory, by their deeds. They spoke no word and thought no thought of peace. Their want of troops was urgent, but they refused, as the story goes, to buy with money men who had disgraced themselves by surrender ; ^ and when Varro neared the city, obnoxious though he was to the aristocracy on ac- count of his low birth and his career, and branded with the defeat of Cannae, not one word of reproach was uttered against him. His efforts only, not his failures or mistakes, were re- membered, and the citizens went forth in a body to meet him, and thanked him, in words that are ever memorable, for not having despaired of the repubUc.^ The Roman historians have a right, here at least, to congratulate themselves that they were not as were the Carthaginians. The defeated Roman general received a vote of thanks for his unsuccessful efforts ; a defeated Carthaginian would have been nailed to a cross. After the battle of Cannae the character of the war is changed, and it loses something of the intensity of the interest attached to it. Hitherto the tide of invasion has run, as Dr. Arnold has pointed out in an eloquent passage,^ in one single current, and that current so magnificent and so resistless that it rivets the 1 Polyb. vi. 58, 2. 13 ; livy, xxi. 60, 61 ; Appian, Uann. 28. 'Livy, xxii. 61, ad fin. s See Arnold, Rom. Hist. vol. iii. ch. xliv. ad init attention of even the most careless spectators. There has been no reverse, hardly even a check, from the moment when Han- nibal left his winter quarters at New Carthage, tiU he stood victorious on the field of Cannae. The most vivid of historians can do little by description to make Hannibal's achievements stand out m more startling relief than they do already by their bare recital. The dullest annalist, if only he record them truly, cannot make them seem commonplace. The eye can hardly wander as it sees the great drama develop itself step by step and sweep irresistibly on towards what seems its legitimate and necessary conclusion. The obstacles interposed by Nature herself— rivers and marshes and mountain chains— seemed interposed only to stimulate the energies and to heighten the glory of him who could surmount them all. Each difficulty overcome is an earnest to Hannibal of his power to grapple with the next, and is used by him as a stepping-stone towards It. That they had crossed the Pyrenees, he told his soldiers when they were hesitating on the Rhone, was a proof that they could pass the Alps. When they had reached the summit of the Alps, he told them they had already seized the citadel of Italy, and had only to walk down and take possession of the city. Four times over, he had now measured his sword with the future conquerors of the worid, and each time he had been victorious, and that too in an ever-ascending series of successes. At the Ticinus he first met the Roman cavalry, and it was their hasty retreat from the field of battle which alone saved them from a rout. At the Trebia, however the consul might try to disguise it, it was no retreat at all, it was a total rout. At the Trasimene, it was neither defeat nor rout, it was the extermination of an army. At Cannse it was the ex- termination, not of one but of two armies, and each of them twice its usual size. This was the pinnacle of Hannibal's success, and a pinnacle indeed it was. Almost as wonderful as Hannibal's victories over Nature or his enemies, were his victories over his own followers Under the speU of his genius, the discordant members of 238 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. a motley Carthaginian army — disaffected Libyans and Nu- midians, barbarous and lethargic Spaniards, fierce and fickle Gauls — were welded into a homogeneous whole, which com- bined the utmost play of individual prowess with all the pre- cision of a machine. No whisper of disaffection or of mutiny was ever heard in Hannibal's camp.^ Italians deserted by thousands to Hannibal; but no Hannibalian veteran, even when his star was on its wane, ever deserted 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 mistakes ; but what single mistake can the keenest critic point out which marred the pro- gress or chequered the success of these three first extraordinary years ? 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 character ; 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 " Punic * Polyhius, Xxiv. 9, 5. 'Avyifiat iwTOKaCStita ini luivat ip roU tnaiipoi^, mai vAeto-Toiv oAAo^wAois itat erepoyAMrroic aySpdvi xP^^'Of ""P^* omjAirta^eVaf ical wapaSo^ovs «Airi6as, i/v witvh^ ovt* circ^ovAcvdi) to wapavav, ovr cy«carcA(t^0i| iurb tS»v wvTftaTtvoyiivnv. 2 The judgment of Polybius himself on Hannibal, ix. 22-26; xi. 19, etc., 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, etc.) does full justice to the ability of Hannibal, but not to his character ; Silius Italicus, Pun. i. 56 seq.^ exactly expresses the ordinary Roman view in the following lines : — Ingenio motus avidus, fideique sinister Is fuit : exsuperans astu, sed devius sequi : Armato nullus divflm pudor : improba virtus, Et pacis despectus honos, penitusque medullia Sanguinis humani flagrat sitis. This is only the echo of the end of livy, xxi 4 : " Has tantas viri virtutes in- CHARACTER OF HANNIBAL. 239 til faith " till they came themselves to believe 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 smgle act of treachery can it be proved that he was guilty ? They made as light as they could even of his achievements, by attributing to Phoenician cunning, or to the blind forces of Nature, the severity of defeats which no patriotic Eoman could beheve were due to his individual 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 dusti or the treachery of some deserters at Cannae— such were the transparent fictions by which the Eomans 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 character 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 detaU with which our materials enable us to fiU it in at aU, which is not in perfect harmony with the whole. After CannaB 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 the main issues of the war. They are, moreover, always difficult and often impossible to follow The Eomans, taught by the experience which they had bought so bitterly on four battle-fields, decline any longer to trust themselves within the reach of Hannibal's arm, gentia yitia lequabant; inhumana crudelitas, perfidia plusquam Punica. nihil ver, nihil sancti. nullus DeOm metus. nullum jusjurandum. nulla religio " ^ Livy. XXI 56 ; xxii. 4 and 43 ; Appian. JIann. 20 and 22 ; Florus, ii. 6.' 13- lu ; Zonaras, ix. 1. . , , *vp- I 240 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. or to stake their safety on any single blow ; while Hanni- bal, lacking the reinforcements which he had a right to expect, and which it is impossible to believe that the Car- thaginian 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 circumstances and his ever-straitening means. The Numidian cavalry as they die off have to be replaced by Gauls, and the Libyan and Spanish v^eterans by Samnites or Lucanians, who had long since bowed their necks to the Roman yoke. Isolated sieges, embassies to distant poten- tates, pressing messages to Carthage, rapid marches and counter-marches, ambuscades 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 true Roman brutality into his camp— these still lend Hfe 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. Invincible as ever in the field, we shall see Hannibal, for years to come, marching wher- ever he likes, no Roman general — and there were sometimes half a dozen of them round him — daring to say him nay. Following the example of Fabius, they dogged his footsteps, or hung upon the hills above him, while he encamped fear- lessly 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 through- out, 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 product of the Phoenician race — can have combined such opposite, nay, 0ENW3 OP HANNIBAL, orZinghisioS^^^^^^^^^ him in one imDetuou«TnT ' u f ''^'"^ everything before from SaguntZL Can^^^^^ irihl th "7 T ^^ ^^ ^^^^-«*^ and then, for its twekeTemainin ^"'' ^""'^ "^ '^' ^^^' struggle by a warfa" wh JZ ? ^ "^.' T"*^^^ *^^ ing against honP an^ 7 u ' ^ '^^'''' defensive, hop- It would be well wortK ft u^f , ever-increasing foe. tmce. if it werTposrw!^ f. "^^ °^ '^' ""'"'^^^ ^'-^ent to in patience as in in.petZtTtln.^Z'L^''^ """'' ^"^ warfare, which if onlv th. t> P>^oionged for thirteen years a bal. or ihe C^baSlXT^nllut^l^:^^^^^ way or the other havp h«<.„ 1 ' °°^ °"' *»"». must, in one Bui we cannot d; so f^.^ T""^^' *° " '^"'^ ^l'""^' -' """e. goes the ch^nlfwhik L« ^ '''^ T '*""' '^' ^^' ^''^^^■ the continuous'LSnt orthr T'' ^T'"^"' ^« ''^ ^^ have enabled ^1^^^!:^-^^'-'-^ of the Scipios, obtained jS^istSr f';,""''^ "'•''« heard in conversation theTfl^/wendra/d ""'^ respects, treated lilcA nnn r.f *u ^ f gends, and was, m aU separated him from them L.LT v!u ^ '™® "^^""^ is. doubtless, verv nearlv 'th« f !t ""^^'^^"^ ^ get at what But, henceforIZ Tl^ "" °^ *^* ^^^^^^ *»« records. checlSrtt Irl falsZr ""' ^^^^^'^^-^ -eans of Bomans TwoT tht« ! f "J, ^^''ggerations of the iwo or three considerable fragments indeed of i6 I 142 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. MEAGRE MATERIALS FOR A HISTORY, H3 I the lost books of Polybius have been preserved to us ; but they are fra-ments only, and dealing as they do chiefly with the exploits of the Scipios, the favourite heroes of the author they unfortunately leave almost untouched what we should' most wish to know, the history of the eleven cam- paigns which yet remained to Hannibal in Italy. 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 com- missioned by him to write a history of his expedition.^ He must have been able to converse with Hannibal in his native language, for the versatile Phoenician, we know from the same source, was not ignorant of Greek.2 But, un- fortunately, of the writings of Silenus, if any such ever ex- isted, 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 discrowned, and the whole Napoleonic legend dissipated, as it has already, to a great ex- tent, been by Lanfrey and others in the clear light of authentic documents. It is melancholy to think how much greater m- iCorn. Nepos. Hannibal, xiil 3; Cicero. De Div. i. 24 gives us, on his authority, the famous «« Somnium Haunibalis." and says of him "is autein diligentis^ime res Hannibalis pcrsecutus est". Livy («vi. 49) quotes him once as "the Greek Silenus". -^ t 1 * u„„« 2Sosilus. a Lacedemonian, is said by Corn. Nepos (loc. cU.Uho to have accompanied HanniUl and to have given him Ics-sons in Greek Of his Nvritm^ Polybius had not formed a high opinion ; his history was " full of gossip such as would delight a barber" ; oh yap l.ye «o«vac rife. .V- -1 «-aM- (PoL iii- 20. 5). On Hanmbars knowledge of Greek, cf. Cic. De Oratore, il IQu terest 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 aU adequate knowledge,— of knowledge, that is, drawn from internal or, at aU events' not unfriendly sources, of Carthage herself ,— has, with cruel con- sistency, also deprived us of what might, perchance, have thrown a 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 universal or of lasting significance. The cam- paigns 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 history are, on the whole,' 80 meagre and so one-sided. 244 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CHAPTER XIV. BEVOLT OF CAPUA. SIEGE OF 8TRA0U8B. (B.O. 216-212.) Capua revolts — Its previous history and importance— Marcellus — Hannibal winters at Capua— Supposed demoralisation of his troops — Latin colonies still true to Rome — Great exertions of Rome — Hannibal negotiates with Syracuse, Sardinia, and Macedon— His position at Tifata— Revolt of Bruttians — Conquest of Greek cities — History and importance of Crotcu — Temple of Juno l.jacinia— Fabius and Marcellus consuls — The tide turns against Hannibal— He gains possession of Tarentum — Its position and im- portance—The citadel holds out— The war in Sicily— Importance of Syracuse — Its siege and capture — Its fate. The victory of CannsB led almost immediately to the revolt of Capua, a city second only to Bome in wealth and power, and able to put into the field, when disposed to do so, a force of thirty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry. * Originally an Etruscan city, Capua had, at an early period, passed into the hands of her warlike neighbours, the Samnites ; and these, in their turn, becoming demoralised by the idle plenty of the '* greatest and richest city in the whole of Italy," ^ were glad (e.g. 340) to put themselves under the protection of Kome. Borne proved to be an easy mistress, for while she appropriated to herself the rich Falernian plain, she gave Capua a full equivalent in the shape of the Boman franchise, and allowed a Campanian magistrate with the native title of Meddix Tuticus^ to ad- minister justice to its citizens. Any other Italian city out- side the magic circle of the thirty-five tribes would have been glad enough to change places with Capua ; but a position of > liyy, xziii. 5. «Ibid. viiSl. REVOLT OF CAPUA, 245 poitical inferiority is often most resented when it is least felt, and Capua, which wanted, as she believed, but one step more to put her on terms of equality with Borne, and but two to make her its superior, had long been waiting for a favourable opportunity to assert her claims. And now the un- broken success of Hannibal, the favourable terms he offered her the ambition of the popular party, and the apparent pros- tration of Bome, combined to indicate that the hour of her de- liverance had come. AU the Boman citizens resident in Capua were collected into the public baths and were there suffocated and the second city in Italy passed over to Carthage It was a terrible blow to Bome, for it seemed to put the finishing touch to the victories of Hannibal. Valuable in Itself, It was much more valuable in what it seemed to por- tend, for it was the first breach in the walls of the Boman confederacy properly so called, and Hannibal might weU imagine that the breach once made would be likely to widen of Itself with httle exertion on his part. Already indeed Atella and Calatia, two small towns in the neighbourhood, had gone over to Carthage,! and it might well seem that the rest would foUow But, unfortunately for Hannibal, the revolt of Capua was shorn of half its value by the stipulation made by the ease-loving inhabitants and granted by the eager Carthaginian general, that no Capuan citizen should be required to serve in his army.2 It was an arrangement which cost him dear ; but cost him what it might, it was ever afterwards religiously ob- served by him. He had ahready tried to capture Naples by surpnse, but, failing in the attempt, he had not cared, deficient as he was in military engines and other appliances for a blockade, to besiege it in form. Nor was he more successful at Nola which was prevented from revolting by the energy and skill of M Claudius MarceUus, 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 pro' duced for Bome at all.3 ^ * Livy, xxii. 61. «Ibid. xxiil 7. •Ibid. xxii. land 14. 246 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. I As consul, six years before, Marcellus had slain with his own hand the huge Gallic chieftain Viridomarus, and had, for the third and last time in Roman history, dedicated the sjwlia opima in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius.^ When, after the battle of Cannae, Varro was recalled to Rome, it was he who in the hour of her extreme distress had taken the command of the ten thousand Roman survivors at Canu- sium.2 He it was who with them, discredited as they were in the eyes of the Senate, had boldly followed Hannibal into Campania, and had succeeded in repelling him from before Nola.3 It was no slight honour; for as Livy, with proud humility, and, perhaps, pardonable exaggeration, remarks, it was in those dark days more difficult to avoid being conquered by Hannibal than it was afterwards to conquer him.* Like Fabius, Marcellus 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 doubt- less been overpraised by Roman writers, who drew their notions of him from the panegyric passed on him by his son^ — a very doubtful authority for an historian— and Cicero, in particular, with the especial object of contrasting him with Verres, has attributed to him those quaUties of mercy, generosity, and refinement in which, Uke most of his contemporaries, he was conspicuously wanting^ He was a rough soldier, un- cultured as Marius, and hardly less cruel; but during the next eight eventful years Rome could hardly have done with- out him. The dread of Hannibal 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 breaking through for ever the insane tradition which brought a military command to an end on a predetermined day. For >Livy, Epitome, xx. ; Plutarch, Mareettua, 6-8. 2 Livy, xxii. 57 ; Plutarch, Marcellus. 9. »Livy. xxiu. 14-16. * Livy, xxiii. 16 ad fin. * See Plutarch, Fabiu3 and Marcellus, passim. « Livy, xxvii. 27 ad fin. ^ Cicero. In Verrem, ii. lib. 4, 52-55, 58, etc HANNIBAL WINTERS AT CAPUA. 247 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 Casi- linum, a town situated on the Vulturnus, and then con- taining 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 Cannae to Hannibal. 2 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 among the snow of the Apennines or in the open plains of Apulia, must have luxuriated in the easetul quarters which Hannibal's Bword 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. i?Tor would it seem to be true that the Carthaginians were in any way demoralised by their winter's comfort. They were irresistible as ever in the field. The real difference was that the Roman generals had learned in the school of adversity not to trust themselves within the reach of Hannibal's army, 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 crushing defeat. Early in the spring, Casilinum surrendered to Hannibal. But the circumstances of its surrender, when closely scanned, ^ Livy, xxiii. 17. « Kg. Florns. ii. 6, 21 ; cf. Livy, xxiii. 18 ; Zonaras, ix. a i! 1 1 ^48 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, p. must have seemed more suggestive of hope as to the ultimate result of the war to the conquered Bomans than to the con- quering Carthaginians. For the resistance it had offered gave an unmistakable proof that the resolution and fidelity of a large part of the Boman confederation had not been shaken even by CannaB. Its garrison, drawn at hap-hazard from distant towns, had supported life on such scanty supplies of com or nuts as could be sent floating 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 con- sumed, 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 "perfidious" 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 mas- sacred 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 hope- less 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 appeared to have been shaken by the victory of Cannae, the towns were still staunch to Rome. There were still, for instance, Bene- ventum in Samnium ; Nola, Naples, and Cumae in Campania; Luceria, Brundusium and Venusia in Apulia; Tarentum in lapygia ; Bhegium and Consentia, Petelia and Croton, among the Bruttii ; and each of these, it might be presumed by the example set by Casilinum, would have the strength and the spirit to stand a desperate siege. Indeed, no single Latin colony, throughout the whole of Italy, had, as yet, opened } Uvy, xxiii. 19, LATIN COLONIES TRUE TO ROME. 249 her gates to Hannibal ; still less, any town which enjoyed the full Boman citizenship. The active operations, therefore, of the year B.C. 215 did not open quite so gloomily for Bome as might have been anticipated. The consuls were the old dictator Fabius and Tib. Sempronius Gracchus. Incredible exertions were made by Bome to bear the strain which was put upon her. Double taxes were imposed and paid, and freewill contribu- tions 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 legions at Cannae saw four- teen new ones raised to take their place, six of them in other parts of the Boman world, and the remaining eight in Italy itself. On his side, Hannibal can hardly have mustered more than forty thousand men, even if we include his recent levies in Samnium. It must be remembered that till to- wards the close of b.c. 216, after fighting four pitched battles, and marching and counter-marching 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 sweep ? If Italy could not be armed against Bome, might not the surrounding countries, whose existence was already threatened, be armed against Italy and Bome alike? Circumstances, at the moment, seemed to smile on the project ; for Hiero, the ancient and faithful ally of Bome, was just dead, and Hieronymus, his grandson and successor, straightway joined the Carthaginians.2 Sar- dinia too was planning revolt from the city which had stolen her with such infamous bad faith from Carthaginian rule ; « \m »Uvy, xxiil 13. •Ibid. xxiv. 4. 'Ibid, xxiii. 32 and 34. ii| It 250 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, and, about the same time, ambassadors arrived in Hanni- bal's camp from Philip, king of Macedon, offering to conclude with him an alliance, offensive or defensive.^ But the bright vision rose before Hannibal's 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.2 Finally, the Macedonian 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 Bomans, and so gave them a timely warning to prepare for what, otherwise, might have burst upon them hke a thunder-clap.* Amidst such hopes and such disappointments the year passed away. Throughout its course Hannibal had retained Tifata, a mountain ridge which rises abruptly from the plain about a mile from 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 in Italy and outside of it ; here receive the long-expected reinforce- ments from Carthage if ever they should come. Here he could protect Capua, his latest and his most important ac- quisition ; here, with his one small army, he could keep three separate armies, headed by no meaner generals than Fabius, Gracchus, and Marcellus, at bay, and dealing his blows upon them in rapid succession, could threaten now Cumse, 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.* Meanwhile Hanno, Hannibal's able lieutenant in the south of Italy, had not been idle. He had been sent thither after * Polyb. vii. 9 ; Livy, xxiii. 33. 3 Polyb. vii. 2-7 ; Livy, xxiv. 5-7. »Ibid. xxiii. 36. 37. 39, 43-46. 8 Livy. xxiii. 40, 41. *Livy, xxiii. 38. { HANNIBAL CONQUERS GREEK CITIES, 251 if the victory of CannaB to raise the standard of revolt among the Bruttians, a semi-barbarous people, who, not being wholly independent, nor yet quite subdued, but hard pressed alike by the Romans from the north, and by the Greek cities which had so long been planted round their coasts, maintained a sullen struggle for existence in the forest fast- nesses of their home, the land's-end of Italy. They joined the deliverer to a man ; but it was still doubtful whether the Greek colonies in their midst would follow their example. The Greeks of the south of Italy, if they hated the Eomans much, hated the Bruttians more, and were not disposed to make common cause with the man who had proclaimed himself the champion of Bruttian independence.^ Petilia, a Hellenised, if not a Hellenic city, was first attacked (b.c. 216). For months it made a desperate resistance, and it was not till its garrison had suffered the last extremity of famine that it submitted to the besieging army. Consentia fell after a less prolonged struggle. But Ehegium baffled an attack of Hanno, as afterwards, throughout the war, it baffled the attacks of Hannibal himself.^ The fortress which com- manded the Straits of Messana, which had witnessed the outbreak of hostilities between Rome and Carthage, and had so long confronted the Carthaginians when they threatened it from the side of Sicily, was now, in the strange vicissitudes of the struggle, attacked by those same Carthaginians from the side of Italy, the Italy which they had oveiTun from end to end, and which now seemed likely to form the basis of yet further conquests. It was a strange reverse of fortune, and the difference between the two is the measure, if indeed any- thing material can be the measure, of the genius of Hannibal. With the failure of Hanno's attempt on Ehegium, the resist- ance of the Greek cities of Southern Italy seems to have come to an end. Locri (b.c. 215) dismissed its Eoman garrison at the first attack, and concluded an alliance offensive and defen- 1 Livy, xxiv. 1 ; cf. Plutarch, TimoUon, xvi and xix, «Livy, xxiii. 30. and xxiv. 1. t n ilh 252 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. CROTON AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD, 253 if sive with Carthage, and the politic Hannibal, who always knew what to claim for himself and what to leave to his allies, asked only for the free use of the city, while he left its port to the control of its seafaring and commercial population. The important city of Croton followed the example of Locri, and Hannibal now found himself possessed of steadfast allies,' and of a safe base of operations in that part of Italy which lay nearest to Carthage.^ But Croton is so interesting a place in itself, and is so in- timately connected with the subsequent career and character of Hannibal, that it may be well here to give a brief account of Its history and surroundings. Croton was one of the earli- est Achaean colonies in Italy. At quite an early period in its history it ha^ covered an area of twelve miles in circum- ference ; a fact to which its waUs, which were standing in these the days of its decay, still bore witness. The pastoral beauty of its neighbourhood had been celebrated in an idyU of Theocntus, and the great names of Milo its athlete, of De- mocedes and Alcmaeon its physicians, and of Pythagoras its philosopher, had spread its reputation throughout the Hel- ^nic world and, far beyond it, even to the court of Persia 2 Fmally m the year b.c. 510, it had given a conspicuous proof ahke of its power and of its genuine Hellenic hatred for Its nearest relatives, by defeating in the field and after- wards razing to the ground the splendid city of Sybaris But the mcursions of Dionysius, of Agathocles, and of Pyrrhus ha^, m later times, shorn it of much of its prosperity. The buildings of the city now covered scarcely half the space con- tamed within its waUs. The river ^sarus, which had once flowed through the market-place, now flowed only throu-h a sohtude, and what still remained of the city had gradually crept away from the citadel around which, in earher times, It would have clustered for protection. Six miles from the city was a temple dedicated to Juno Lacinia, and revered by Greeks and Romans and Italian 'Livy, xxiy. 1. •Herod, iii 129 and 137, aborigines alike. Standing on a bold cliff.i it served as a andmark to vessels from afar; for, catching sight of it as they rounded the lapygian promontory, they would venture keeping it in view, to steer right across the mouth of the deep Tarentine gulf. To the landward was an extensive forest encosing broad glades and rich pasture lands, where the flocks and herds belonging to the temple could graze un- shepherded. and whence they would return at night, of their own accord to their proper homesteads, safe, under the pro- tection of the goddess, alike from robbers and from noisome beasts. The temple was as famous for its wealth as for its sanctity. Its waUs were adorned with the paintings of Zeuxis.2 and with the rich ofiferings of the neighbouring peoples. From the produce of its innumerable flocks and herds a column of solid gold had been erected in the temple an ofl-ering the value of which Crcesus himself, with aU the careless profusion of his gifts to the Delphian god, can hardly have surpassed. The sanctity of the spot was attested by a standing miracle, for under the portico of the temple exposed, as it would seem, to the full force of the sea breezes' stood an altar, the ashes on which— so the devout worship- pers believed— could be disturbed by no wind that blew = Of this famous place-city and citadel, sanctuary and forest, with aU its wealth and all its historical and religious associations— Hannibal now found himself the master It was here that he established his principal magazines • here were his head-quarters during the last three years of the war in Italy ; here he erected those brazen tablets on which to record those splendid exploits which he might well have deemed would be more imperishable than any brass ; and it was from here that he set sail, at last, for Carthage, stained if we may beUeve the Roman story, with a crime which as we shaU show hereafter, is wholly inconsistent with whatever else we know about him, and which, when taken in connec- I Lnotn, Phars. 11 484. n Cic. De. 'inv. U. 1. • Livy, xxiv. 8. 254 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. I II ^ tion with his known reverence for the shrine wherein the deed is said to have been done, happily itself furnishes the best materials for its own refutation. The elections for the year b.c. 214 — 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 in- tended, in the re-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, Eome 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 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 bring over CumaB, Naples, and PuteoU, 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 {volones) of whom his force con- sisted ; and in the battle which ensued, conscious that they were carrying their liberty as well as their hves 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 1 Livy, xxiv. 8, 9 ; Zonaras, ix. 4. • Uvy, xxiv. 11. I 1 THE TIDE TURN:i ^GAINST HANNIBAL, 255 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 stipulated for their lives as the Italian garrison had stipulated 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 understand how the story of the treachery of Hannibal on the first sur- render of Casilinum was invented now as a set-off to that of Marcellus.^ Anyhow, when Hannibal went into his next winter quarters at Salapia in Apulia, the tide of unbroken victory had begun to ebb.* He was already waging a warfare which was mainly defensive, and it might have seemed to any one who had not felt the terrors of his spring, that, if only the three armies which lay watching him during the winter had ven- tured 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 i 1 Livy, xxiv. 12-16. 2 Ibid. xxiv. 20. * Ibid. xxiv. 20. 8 Ibid. xxiv. 19. 256 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. and Spain.i In this last country the star of Carthage was not just then, in the ascendant, and Hannibal, who had received only a paltry force of some forty elephants and some four thousand Numidian cavah^ from his countrymen at home, was compelled, partly from necessity, and partly, it would seem, from lassitude, to spend the greater part of the summer ofB.c. 213 in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, without attempt- ing any active operations.s With admirable pohcy, he had, even in the moment of disappointment in the preceding year] abstained from ravaging the Tarentine lands while he harried those of the surrounding towns, and now he reaped his re- ward.3 In the course of the winter he was half ofifered, and he half forced for himself, an entrance into the city, though he was unable to eject the recently arrived Eoman garrison from the citadel But here, once more, we must turn aside, as in the case of Capua and Croton, to give some account of a place which so often raised and so often disappointed Hannibal's highest hopes, which invited him to come and take possession of her and then closed her gates in his face, which kept him so long inactive in her neighbourhood that the Eomans began to think that he must be anxious to win the love of an Apulian maiden rather than occupy an Apulian town*— a new Hercules enslaved by a new Omphale— and which, when at last she fell into his hands, under circumstances that bring out his con- summate genius for stratagem, proved to be a city without a citadel ; for the citadel held a Eoman garrison, which, after baffling, for three years, all the efiforts of Hannibal and ham- pering all his movements, finally succeeded in delivering the city once more into the hands of the Romans. Tarentum thus, during a long period, stands in a close personal relation to Hannibal ; and any one who would picture the Carthaginian general rightly to himself during these eventful years, will » Livy. xxiil 13 and 32. a Ibid. xxv. 1. i Ibid. xxiv. 2a * Cf. Livy, xxvi. ; Appian, llann. 43 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. Hi le. t HANNIBAL AND TARENTUM. 257 do well to learn at least the general features of a place which exercised so critical an influence on his actions. Tarentum was of Spartan origin, and though its inhabi- tants hardly showed themselves by their deeds in war to be genuine sons of Sparta, yet there is abundant proof that they were not, as it pleased the Roman writers to represent them, merely effeminate Greeks, given up to luxury and amuse- ment. A people who could haughtily order the Romans and the Samnites to desist from their mutual hostilities on pain of instant war,i and could conclude a treaty with Rome which forbade any Roman ships of war to show themselves in Taren- tine waters— the whole extent, that is, of the great Tarentine Gulf —cannot have been destitute either of energy or courage. The original town was built, as was Syracuse, on a penin- sula or island, which ran from east to west, across the inner portion of the gulf, and left, on its western extremity only, a narrow entrance to the splendid land-locked harbour, six- teen miles in circumference, which lay behind it. Like Syra- cuse, too, Tarentum soon spread from the peninsula to the mainland, and drew from the adjoining territory a rich abund- ance of all the necessaries and luxuries of hfe. Its olives vied, as Horace tells us, with the olives of Venafrum ; its honey with the honey of Hymettus ; its wine was hardly jealous even of the Falernian.2 From its pastures came a well-known breed of horses, and sheep the very best in Italy, with fleeces so fine that they were protected from injury by skins thrown over their backs. ^ Its waters teemed with the murex, which yielded a purple dye second only to the Phoenician. A strong Roman garrison had been thrown into a place whose ample harbour, as the Romans well knew, if it once fell into Hannibal's hands, might soon receive the navy of Philip of Macedon. It was just in time to save the town ; but when Hannibal came in force and encamped at a distance of three days' journey, two Greek youths belonging to the > Livy, ix. 14. 2 Horace. Ode, ii. 5. » Hor. loc. cU.: " pellitia ovibus ". 17 I *fl 258 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. HANNIBAL AND SICILY. 259 Carthaginian party within it, went to visit him and passing to and fro under pretext of hunting, arranged with him all the steps by which it was to be put into his hands. Not a detail 01 the plot laid by the Phoenician general miscarried. The Orreek youths returned one night with a huge wild boar to the postern by which they were wont to pass, and while the gate-keeper was appraising their booty, they cut him down, and opened the gate to Hannibal and his Numidians, who had crept up ^observed outside The Eoman commandant on his part qmte fulfilled HannibaVs expectations, for, after a prolonged revel, he had gone drunk to bed. The conspirators, blowing a bugle-caU on some Boman trumpets which they had procured, advanced to- wards the market-place, and the Boman soldiers, who staggered out half awake by twos and threes into the streets in obedience to the summons, were cut down at once. Before mormng the city was in Hannibal's power, and a kindly proclamation to the citizens, granting them almost as ruinously favourable terms as he had granted to the Capuans, showed them that he had come not as their enemy but as their friend and their dehverer.^ The citadel, built on some rising ground, at the western end of the neck of land, stiU held out with its Boman garri- son and commanded the narrow passage by which alone the Tarentine navy, penned within the harbour, could hope to es- cape But Hannibal, familiar from early youth with nautical affairs and fertile as ever in expedients, managed to convey the ships overland through the streets which ran across the isthmus from sea to sea, and launched them safely in the open eulf. The Boman garrison, though threatened by both land and sea, stiU resisted aU his assaults.^ The city in fact only as yet half belonged to him, but that half carried with it important consequences ; for other and lesser Greek towns m the south-Metapontum, Heraclea, and Thurii-foUowed the example of this, the greatest of them aU ; and Hannibal, com- 1 Polyb. xiii. 26-85 ; Livy. xxv. 8-10 ; Appian. Hann. 88. a Polyb. viu. 36; Livy, xxv. 11 ; Appian. Hann. 34. polled to relax his grasp upon Campania, made up for its loss by appropriating to himself a large part of Magna Graecia.^ Meanwhile the war, which seemed for the moment to have spent its force in Italy, had broken out (b.c. 215) with fresh fury in Sicily. Marcellus, the best general whom the Bo- mans possessed, 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 deserted from Borne, and the cruelties of the Bomans in the first towns which they occupied or recaptured, most notably in Megara and Enna, cut off all hopes of a re- conciliation. 2 The Carthaginian government too, from some unexplained reason, now awoke from its sleep, and sent Himilco with considerable reinforcements to Sicily.^ Had they only sent half the force to Italy in B.C. 216 that they sent in b.c. 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 several towns, Marcel- lus laid siege to Syracuse ; but all his efforts were frustrated by the science and by the engines of the famous mathema- tician Archimedes, and after eight months of chequered war- fare, 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 strong- est part of the city ; Achradina, or the city proper, crowded with magnificent 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 > Livy, XXV. 15 ; Appian, Hann. 35. 2 Livy, xiiv. 21, 30, 35, 38-39. s ibid. xxiv. 35. * Polyb. viii. 5-8 ; Livy, xxiv. 34 ; Zonaras. ix. 4. H a6o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF SYRACUSE. 261 I marshes, defensible in themselves, 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 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 feU. It was indeed treachery from within rather than force from without which ultimately enabled Marcellus, in the year B.C. 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 portions.^ The two suburbs feU first, and the plunder which they yielded whetted the appe- tites of the soldiery for the still richer stores which lay be- hind 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 Syra- cuse from a besieging force.2 By a curious caprice of for- tune, the best defence of the city was now turned agamst its defenders, while it left its assailants on the higher ground unscathed. The Koman deserters and the mercenaries had long estabUshed 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 in- habitants who deserved punishment, managed to escape by night, and the remainder threw themselves on the mercy of MarceUus. They might weU expect to receive it, for they had been involved in hostilities which were not of their own seeking, and it would be hard if the short-lived folly of Hie- i Livy, XXV. 23, 24. « Ibid. XXV. 26, 27. ronyraus should be held by Marcellus to have effaced the re- collection of the fifty years' fidelity of Hiero his grandfather. But it seldom suited the Romans to remember past services or extenuating 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 were, they were not forthcoming now, when they were most needed. The city was given over to plunder, and the death of the venerable 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 Carthaginian 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 exist- ence 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 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.2 It must have been an additional drop in the cup of bitterness 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 1 Livy. XXV. 31 ; Floras, ii. 6, 33, 34 ; Zonaras, ix. 5. ^Polyb. ii. 10. 3-13 ; Livy, xxv. 40 ; Cicero. Verres, u. 2, 3 ; ii. 4. 54, etc. I' 262 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. WAR IN SPAIN. 263 ti 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 uncul- tured 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 destructive 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 Cicero in drawing a broad contrast between the extortions of a Verres and the high-handed plunder of a Marcellus, a Warren Hastings, or a Napoleon, it is because they have not yet reached the moral standard which con- demns the public robber ; they look askance only at a thief. I CHAPTER XV. SIEGE OP 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— " Ovation " of Marcellus— the Numidian cavalry at Salapia— 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 pos- sible 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 importance of the Spanish contest the Romans and the Carthaginians were equally alive. It was from Spain, if from any country, that Hannibal must draw his reinforcements ; 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- nmning the south, the city would be taken between two fires, and could not long resist. To Hannibal, on 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 M 264 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. SUCCESSES OF THE SCIPIOS IN SPAIN. 265 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 b.c. 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 charac- ter of an ordinary Koman 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 ; 1 and the Eoman Senate showed fore- thought 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, Pubhus was sent off to Spain with a naval and miUtary force, which a less courageous and self-reliant people would have been unwilling to spare. There he joined CnsBus, 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 winning, 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 deposited by Hannibal in Saguntum, fell by the caprice of a Saguntine citizen into then- hands,2 and in the autumn of the year b.c. 216— the year, it should be remembered, of the battle of CannaB— defeated Hasdrubal 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. Has- » Polyb. iil 494 ; Livy. xxi. 60, 61. Livy, xxii. 22 ; xxiu. 26-28. drubal'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 Eoman annalists 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 rein- forcements to Hannibal in the year when they would have made him wholly irresistible. The two brothers made the most of their success. They enrolled Celtiberian mercenaries — the first instance of such a practice on a large scale in Roman history; they won victories which, if they were not half what their despatches 2 represented them to be, were yet signal victories ; they formed an alliance with Syphax, a Numidian prince, and seemed, in B.C. 212, to be on the point of ejecting the Carthaginians from Spain, when, in the mid career of their success, they inad- vertently 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 dis- persed, 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 member 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 1 Livy, xxiii. 29. « Livy, xxiu. 48, 49 ; xxiv. 41, 42 ; 48, 49 ; xxv. 32. Cicero, Farad, vii. 2, calls the two brothers, *' duo propugnacula belli qui Carthaginiensium adven- tum corporibus suis intercludendum putaveruut ". » Livy, xxv. 32-36 ; Florus. i. 6-36. 266 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, SIEGE OF CAPUA, 267 r of war had burst out afresh in Italy. Early, it would seem, in the winter of b.c 212, Tarentum, as described already, 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 Taren- tum, where the citadel still held out ; he was needed yet more at Capua, round which the Boman armies, like vultures scent- ing their prey afar, seemed to be gathering for the last time. The home government of Carthage itself needed his control- ling 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 Boman 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 intended not, in- deed, 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 Boman army of irregulars he annihilated in Lucania ; another of regular troops, under the prsBtor Cn. 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, think- ing that they had done enough for their step-mother Italy.* But amidst all these brilliant achievements and these ro- mantic shiftings of the war, the one point of fixed and cen- tral interest was the city of Capua. That guilty city * had long felt that her turn must soon come ; she had gone now unpunished for nearly four years, and the safety and the 1 Polyb. ix. 22, 1-6 ; larj, xxvi. 5. ' livy. xxv. 6. ' Livy, XXV. 19-22, '' clades snper alia aliam ". * Florus, ii. 6-42, ' ' sedes et doinus et patria altera Uaunibalia ". honour of the Boman state alike demanded that the day of reckoning should be no longer postponed. The mere pres- ence 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 Boman lines of circumvallation. An efifort of Hanno to throw pro- visions 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 Bomans, and had Hanni- bal'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 Cartha- ginians ; while the lead of Tarentum, 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 scatter- ing the smaller Boman armies there in the manner which has just been described, that they ventured to close in once more round the place, and began the siege in earnest. News of ever fresh disaster reached Bome from the track of Hanni- bal's flying squadrons, and the Senate could only console itself by the reflection 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 » Livy, XXV. 13, 14. « ibid. xxw. 19. ^ Ibid. XXV. 22, " ubi sumina rerura esset ". ^^ 268 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. HANNIBAL'S MARCH ON ROME. 269 the consuls, Q. Fulvius Flaccus and App. Claudius Pulcher, and the three armies in their several camps, each with a large magazine established in a town to its rear, settled down be- fore the devoted city. A double line of circumvallation was soon completed, 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 ad- venturous Numidian from the garrison made his way unob- served through the double lines of the Eomans 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 ap- proach he appeared on Mount Tifata. According to the plan which had been pre-arranged, a simultaneous attack was made on the Koman lines by the beleaguered garrison and by Han- nibal. Some of the elephants, whose bulky frames had been with difificulty forced to keep pace with his cross-country march, were killed in the attack. Hannibal threw their bodies into the ditch and a few of his troops crossing over the bridge thus formed found themselves within the Eoman hnes. 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 capi- tal ; 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 Kome 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 efifort for their dehverance, and then he was ofif for Rome.* The news of what was coming reached the city long before » Polyb. ix. 3-4 ; Livy. xxv. 20 ; xxvl 5, 6 j Appian, Hann. 88. 2 Polyb. ix. 6 ; Livy, xxvi. 7. Hannibal reached it himself, perhaps before he wished to reach it. A few days* delay would, he knew well, only in- crease 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 afifrighted garrison. Before him fled a panic- stricken throng — women and children, and aged men — leav- ing 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 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 fulfil- ment 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 him- self ; nor yet, after the first days of panic had passed by, so thought the Roman Senate. The imagination, indeed, 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 suppliant 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 » Livy, xxvi. 8. 9, 10 ; Appian, Hann. 38 ; Floras, ii. 6, 44. 'Polyb. ix. 6, 3 ; Appian, Hann. 39. 270 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, SIEGE OF CAPUA, 271 confidence came. They recalled only Q. Fulvius, who, marching by inner lines, amidst a popiilation who bade him God-speed, managed, as it would seem, 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 CoUine 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 telHng us how they put up to auction the ground on which Hannibal's camp was pitched, and how it was bought at its full value ; while Hannibal, by way of reprisals, 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 iLivy, xxvi. 8-9. «Polyb. ix. 6, 8, 9 ; and cf. Pliny. Hist. Nat. xv. 18. »Livy, xxvi. 10. *See Arnold, Rom. Hist. chap. iii. p. 242-246. 6Livy. xxvi. 11 ; PUny. Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 15; Floras, it. 7, 47-48; cf. Val. Max. iii. 7, " Capenam portam armis Hannibale pulsante". had delivered his blow, and he wasted no time in lamenting that it had failed. Accordingly, he marched 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 un- troken and impenetrable girdle of men, and earth, and iron, which girt Capua in, he left her to her inevitable fate.^ 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 piti- ful against them. The senators, abandoned to despair, shut themselves within their own houses, and left the responsi- bilities 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 number of twenty-seven, balked their Roman conquerors of their long-expected revenge.^ Of the remaining senators, when, next day, the gates were opened, twenty-five were sent by the orders of the consuls to Gales, and twenty- eight to Teanum ; but close behind them foUowed the victor Fulvius, and by his command they were scourged and be- headed,' 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 tiU the last head had faUen that he read the letter which might have postponed, but would hardly have averted, their fate.^ Three hundred noble Campanian youths were JPolyb. ix. 7 ; Livy. xxvi. 11. ^Livy, xxvi. 14 ; Zonaras. ix. «. ' Livy, xxvi. 15. 27a CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, FATE OF CAPUA. 273 thrown into prison to perish, many of them, later, on a false charge. It only now remained to decide the fate of the bulk of the Capuan citizens and of the city itself. The decree passed by the Senate is eminently characteristic of it, characteristic at once of its severity, of its rigid notions of equity, and of its wise precautions for the future. All the citizens who had held ofl&ce w^ere to be reduced to beggary, the more guilty of them being carried to Eome, and there sold as slaves. The private citizens were to be transported in batches to various parts of Latium and Etruria, to be determined by the exact amount of their guilt. The least guilty among them — the absolutely innocent, less severe judges might have been tempted to call them — those who had not been present in Capua at the time of the revolt, were only to be removed across the Vulturnus, though even these were forbidden to settle within fifteen miles of the sea. Those whose guilt was more heinous, but who had repented before the arrival of Hannibal, were to be transported beyond the Liris, while the most guilty were condemned to put the Tiber between themselves and their former home, care being taken that they should have neither house nor land on the river on which stood the city whose cause they had betrayed. It should be observed, that all alike were to live in those parts of Italy where the Latin colonies lay thickest together. They seem in fact, like ticket-of-leave men, to have been put under their surveillance ; they were to be among them but not of them ; for it was specially provided that no one of them should ever obtain the rights of Latins, still less of Roman citizens. Of all the vast multitudes who had inhabited the city, two citizens, and two only, were found deserving of reward. Both of them were women: the one had sacrificed, in secret, throughout the siege, for the success of the Romans — though how she was able to prove her merit we are not told ; the other had supplied food, in secret, to the Roman prisoners of war. These two women were allowed to retain their property and their freedom, and it was intimated that if they liked to come to Rome and lay their case before the Senate, they might hear of something further to their advantage there.^ 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 fertility 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- forward from Hannibal, and of the vengeance which would surely fall upon her from Rome.^ Hardly less characteristic of the spirit which animated the Roman Senate than their treatment of Capua is the way in which they dealt with their own victorious generals. Neither to Fulvius the conqueror of Capua, nor to Marcellus the conqueror of Syracuse, would they grant the honour which each expected, and each had deserved, of a triumph. Ful- vius, they argued, had only reconquered what had belonged to Rome before ; Marcellus had only half done his work, for the war was still raging in Sicily; and Mutines, an able Liby- phoenician, who had been trained by Hannibal himself, was still laying it waste from end to end. Fulvius accordingly received no reward at all for his services, and Marcellus was obliged to content himself with the lesser honour of an "ovation," entering Rome on foot instead of riding in a triumphal car. But what the procession lacked in dignity, it made up by the extraordinary variety and number of the trophies of victory which accompanied it. There was a pic- ture or a model of the ill-fated city of Syracuse itseL'; there were the famous military engines, the catapults, and the 1 livy, xxvi. 33-34. 18 2 Ibid. xxvi. 12. 274 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, HANNIBAVS SUPERIORITY IN THE FIELD. 275 r.A fV,A iron hands-the invention of the cunning wlr,^ of Rome- there were the traitors, Sosis and Mer^ous. EolirtUe of tWrtr^hery byw^KSS as the Romans had not seen ^^ *J« ^^ ,^ t!^;:: Sit none but f Greek city and that a JuyoMhe highest culture and refinement, could ^ave nghtfuUy caUed her own. In fine, it was a great show but to those who had eves to see, it was but a sorry sight. 'InTaL did 'Hannibal endeavour by some '.rd Jant ^t oke to counteract the fatal impression which *« J"^" ^* 3' Zl Syracuse must produce on his Italian aUies. An attempt rs^r^e^umW^^^ rrrwrrredt uTho^ that PhUip of Macedon would ever be able to join Ust bope that ^-^ P gannibal's worthiest antagomst. h^ i^rJItely^eSfS' from Sicily flushed with victory ^A eZr so L Romans thought, at last to measure his tforfS Ws ancient foe.^ News soon followed h.m tti^ aXm the chief remaining Carthaginian B^f "gl'ol^^ fh? £d, had faUen, that its example had been foUo-d^ some sixty other towns, and that once agam-and *« time it waTfo^ir-SicUy was dear of the Carthagmians.' Twenty- * Ibid. XXVI. 21, 29. one legions were now put into the field by Rome ; for as Hanni- bal's forces dwindled, so did the Romans' seem to increase, and, at the outset of the campaign, Salapia in Apulia was betrayed by the Roman party within it into Roman hands. But worse even than this ; Salapia contained a garrison of five hundred Numidians, those splendid soldiers who, like the fabled Cen- taurs of old, or like the Turkomans of the present day, could manage their horses as though they formed part of them- selves, and, on occasion doing what neither Centaur nor Turkoman is ever reported to have done, would each take two horses into battle, and keeping them well in hand, when one of them was wearied out, would leap hke an acrobat from its back to that of the other, even in the very heat of the conflict. 1 These peerless horsemen were now taken by sur- prise ; their horses, as ill luck would have it, were stabled outside the town, while they themselves were penned within it. They sprang to arms— such arms as they could find — and trying to force their way out on foot in a charge which was more impossible and desperate even than the light cavalry charge at Balaclava, were cut down by the Romans and the Salapians, and, of the whole five hundred, only fifty came alive into their enemies' hands. From this time forward Hannibal lost that superiority in cavahy which had hitherto stood him in such good stead; and we hear Uttle more of the operations on any large scale of his ubiquitous and irresistible Numidian horse.^ Everything, now, seemed to betoken that the end was near ; but those who thought so reckoned prematurely. In the year which followed the fall of Capua, the year b.c. 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 Metapontum and Thurii, two of the few towns which were still faithful to him.^ In B.C. 209, when Samnium and Lu- 1 Livy, xxiii. 29 ; cf. above, p. 39-40. a Uvy, xxvi. 38. s ibid., xxvu. 1. J76 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. FAMILY TRADITIONS AT ROME. V7 cania had already submitted to the Romans, and while one consul, Fulvius, was threatening Metapontum. and the other consul, Fabius, was pressing the siege of Tarentum m h.s rear he fought two briUiant actions m Apulia, which drove his third anUgonist, the sword of Rome himself, to take refuge in Venusia, and to adopt the more cautious tactics of In B c ' 208 and 207 his superiority in the field was as in- contestable as ever. Tarentum, indeed, which it had cost him so much to win and so much to keep, had been be- trayed by the commander of its garrison into the hands of the Komans, 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 Eome. Yet Hannibal encamped beneath its walls as though the place stiU belonged to him, and in vain offered battle to its new possessors.^ When he moved northwards into Apuha and found himself with his ever-diminishing force face to face with two consular armies there, he yet ventured to detach a flying squadron, which cut to pieces a Eoman legion on a spot some fifty miles to his rear; and he held his own in the open field, waiting patiently, tiU the moment should come for strik- ing a blow.^ , . , , i. 1 At last the moment came, and the blow which he struck was a heavy one. The consuls, Crispinus and MarceUus, as fate would have it, had left their camps, each with a smaU band of foUowers, and had ridden in company to the top of a wooded hill which lay between their two armies. They were observed by the Numidian cavaby, ready as ever for a sur- prise or a deed of daring. There was a sudden charge, and Crispinus, wounded to the death, staggered back to his camp, 1 Llvy. xxvii. 12-U ; cf. 20. 21. 2 livy, xxvu. 15. 16 ; Appian, Hann. 49 ; Plutarch, tainus, 22. 3 Ldvy. xxviL 26. 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 remark- ing, " 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 MarceUus were now threatening the Romans. It is one special glory of Kome 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 com- manding, 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 exception 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 infrequently attained. If one man fell, whom, at the moment of his death, it seemed that Rome could ill spare — just when the execution of some darling project, an extension of the franchise, a reform of a crying abuse, or the conquest of some imme- morial enemy seemed to be within his grasp — others were always ready to step into his vacant place. Not infrequently it was his own son, or grandson, who filled the gap ; for nowhere in ancient history, nor indeed in any history unless, possibly, it be in that of England, do we find so command- ing a place occupied by the conception of hereditary duties and traditions. In democratic Greece and in aristocratic Carthage there was very little of such influence. The great- ness of the Barcine family with their traditionary policy 1 Polyb. X. 32 ; Livy, xxvil 26-28 ; Appian, Hann. vii. 50 ; Plutarch, Mar- ceUus, 28-^; Zonaras, ix. 9. 278 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. carried on at Carthage through three generations, is some- thincf altogether exceptional, and admits of special explana- tion!' But at Kome we habituaUy find the same objects. poUtical and social, taken up and carried on from age to age by members of the same noble or the same plebeian famdy. Every one 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 Hora- tian, 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 simplicity by Greek culture ; a Cato who was not ** a foe alike to villainy and 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 al- ways came before the individual, and, what is more impor- tant to note here, when once the feud between patrician and plebeian had been fought out, the state always before the family. It was thus upon the 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 fran- chise, 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 required to meet a pressing emergency ? Again and again in the course of the Punic wars the need was met by private and volun- tary contribution. Most notably, in a memorable scene de- scribed by Livy, in the year B.C. 210, the Senate, acting on SYMPTOMS OF EXHAUSTION. 279 the principle that nobility imposes obligation to an extent to which few aristocracies have ever followed them, set the 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 common- wealth.i But in the year b.o. 209 symptoms of exhaustion, if not of disafifection, had begim to show themselves even within the bounds of the confederation, amongst the Latin colonies them- selves. Twelve of the thirty colonies, and those some of the oldest and the most 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 pre- pared to face their redoubtable antagonist with such help as they alone could give her. 2 * Livy, xxvl 35, 86. «Ibid. xxvii. 9, 10. I . 280 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, CHAPTER XVI. BATTLE OP THE METAURUS. (207 B.C.) The approach of Hasdrubal from Spain— His messengers fail to find Hannibal —Importance of the crisis— Brilliant march of Nero— Retreat of Hasdrubal —Description of the Metaurus— Battle of the Metaums— 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 Wes- tern Pyrenees, near to the Atlantic, while the Romans were looking out for him on the borders of the Mediterranean, had struck boldly out into the heart of the country, was raising fresh levies there, and early in the following summer might be expected in Italy.^ Rome had been in no such peril since the morrow of the battle of Cannse ; 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 threaten- ing her existence, had at last been played out, and had ended in favour of Carthage. It seemed, indeed, that Carthage by conquering in Spain had assured her victory in Italy also. For the last ten years one son of Hamilcar had been overrunning Italy from end to end, and had more 1 Polyb. X. 38, 39 ; Livy, xxvu. 36 ; Appian, Hisp. 28. APPROACH OF HASDRUBAL FROM SPAIN, 281 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 Africans, Gauls, and Spaniards from the north, while his brother, for the last time, moved up with his veterans 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 Baecula in Spain ! ^ For Hasdrubal, his defeated ad- versary, 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 re- mained 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.2 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 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 condition when it entered the plains of Italy 1 Polyb. X. 39 ; Livy, xxvii. 18. See below, p. 296. 2 Livy, xxvi. 17 ; Appian. Hisp. 17. » Livy, xxvii. 34, 35. * Ibid, xxvii. 36 and 38. s8a CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, than when it had crossed the Pyrenees. What a contrast to his brother's advance ten years before 1 Less prudent than his brother, however, Hasdnibal sat down to besiege Placentia when he had better have been pressing on towards his destina- tion.i When at last he moved forward, the Roman army re- treated before him till it reached the small town of Sena Gal- lica (Sinigagha), a Roman colony fourteen miles to the south of the Metaurus. From this place, which has given to the decisive battle that was so soon to follow one of the names by which it is known in history ,2 Hasdrubal sent off four Gallic horsemen and two Numidians on whom he knew he could rely for so deUcate and difficult an enterprise. They were ordered to find Hannibal wherever he might be ; to apprise him of Has- drubal's arrival, and to beg him to come with such forces as he could muster to Namia in Umbria, a place only thirty miles from Rome, that the two brothers might then advance at once together by the Flaminian road on the city. Here then was the very crisis of the war. Everything turned or seemed to turn on the fidelity and the address, the courage and the luck of these six horsemen. For a time, fortune helped those who were so ready to help themselves. They traversed half the length of Italy amidst half a dozen Roman armies undiscovered and unmolested, and at length neared the spot in Apulia where Hannibal ought to be. But Hannibal was not there, and following his footsteps once more southward, they fell into the hands of some Roman foragers, and their despatches were interpreted and read, not by the Carthaginian but by the Roman general.^ It is not difficult to imagine the terrible suspense, the sudden reUef, and then the renewed anxiety with which the Roman consul must have listened to the plans of his redoubtable antagonist ; must have felt how, but for a happy accident, those plans must have succeeded, and how, with the help of just such another accident, they might succeed even now. ^ Livy, xxvii. 39. 'Cic. Brutus. 18, " Senense prwlium'*. » Livy, xxvii. 43 ; Appian, Hann. 52, MARCH OF NERO, 283 Since the beginning of the campaign Hannibal 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 Poly bins himself.^ Hannibal, as fate would have it, must have gone 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 brilliant march northward would have been not Nero's, but Hannibal's, and that the Metaurus would have seen the collapse of the for- tunes not of Carthage, but of Rome. Nero formed a bold resolution — one almost without pre- cedent at this period of Roman history — to desert the pro- vince and even a portion of the troops confided to his keeping by the Senate ; with the remainder to march rapidly north- ward, a distance of two hundred miles, to join Livius, to crush Hasdrubal by a combined assault, 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 six thousand infantry and the one thousand cavalry selected for the enterprise started, like the ten thousand 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 iPolyb. X. 33, 1. 2, and xv. 11. 7-12 ; Livy. xxvii. 42. 284 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. BATTLE OF THE METAURUS. 285 communicated to them, was only equalled by that of the Italian provincials who thronged the roadside with provisions, vehicles, and beasts of burden, and accompanied the army with their blessings and their prayers. The soldiers declined 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 army of the other consul^ Nero entered the camp of Livius at night and distributed his wearied troops among the tents which were already oc- cupied, 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 enemies' 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 consul 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, fourteen miles distant, 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.^ The Metaurus is a torrent-like stream forty miles long, which, rising in the Eastern Apennines, makes its way through a comparatively level country to the Adriatic. Subject like other mountain torrents to extraordinary alter- nations in the volume of its waters, it has hollowed out for itself in the rich alluvial soil a wide and deep depression which is not visible from the surrounding plain till the traveller finds himself close upon it. This depression resembles, on a small scale, that which the Bagradas has scooped out for itself through the Carthaginian domain in ^Livy, xxvii. 45. a Ibid, xxvil 46, 47. Africa, or again, the remarkable valley (el Ghor) through which the Jordan makes its way from the Lebanon to the Dead Sea. Like the Jordan, too, the Metaurus winds about from side to side of the hollow it has made, enclosing in its meanderings many almost circular plots of ground. Among the "links" thus formed, and above and below the cHff-like banks, then, probably, crowned with wood, which enclose the whole, the ill-fated Hasdrubal must have wan- dered during the dark hours of the early morning, searching for the ford which his guides had promised to show him, but showed him not. The farther he ascended the course of the stream the steeper and more impracticable did its banks become, and, at last, he determined to wait on some rising ground for the morning light.^ But the morning light brought the Romans, and Has- drubal was now obliged 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, intend- ing to lead them in person against Livius. The Ligurians, with the elephants in their front, formed the centre, while the Gauls, untrustworthy as ever — except when led by Han- nibal—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 army, 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 enemies' cavalry, and died as became the son of Ha- milcar and the brother of Hannibal. 2 The greater part of » livy, xxvii 47. See Dr. Arnold's description of the river, drawn from personal observation {Raman History, iii. p. 371-373). « Polyb. xi. 1, 2 ; Livy, xxviL 48, 49 ; Floras, ii. 6, 49-52. 286 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the elephants, when they became unmanageable, were killed by their own drivers, who were furnished with weapons for the purpose, and who knew how 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 Kome was not bloodless, but it was com- plete. Hasdrubal's army, whatever its size, was annihilated, and some of the Roman annalists, regardless alike of truth and probabiUty, strove to make out that the slaughter of the Metaurus equalled that of Cannae.^ From the agonies of suspense the Romans passed at 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 confession of the Romans them- selves, that victory had smiled on their arms.* The consuls triumphed in common — Livius borne in the triumphal car, Nero riding beside him on horseback. To Livius indeed were due the chief external marks of honour, since it was on the day of his command that the battle had been fought, and it was his army which had returned to Rome flushed with victory ; but it was Nero who was the true hero of the day. To him was due aUke the strategy of the northward march — a march perhaps only equalled in history by the ad- vance of Marlborough from Belgium to the Danube in the campaign of Blenheim — and the brilliant stroke which de- cided the battle. To Nero, however, also belongs the act BA'I V^H iV .tri * • / Sy Ri^* I Carfhuginiant 'ttKonii I Roman a HOAtoo yo; :Sfi^ 1 Livy, he. cU. ; Appian. Hann. 63. Polybius (xi. 8) is perhaps himself outside the truth when he makes the number of slain on the Carthaginian side to have been ten thousand. 2 Cf. Hot. Ode, iv. 4, 41 : " ({xA primus alm& risit adorea ". .1 286 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the elephants, when they became unmanageable, were killed by their own drivers, who were furnished with weapons for the purpose, and who knew how 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 com- plete. Hasdrubal's army, whatever its size, was annihilated, 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.i From the agonies of suspense the Romans passed at 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 confession of the Romans them- selves, that victory had smiled on their arms.*-^ The consuls triumphed in common — Livius borne in the triumphal car, Nero riding beside him on horseback. To Livius indeed were due the chief external marks of honour, since it was on the day of his command that the battle had been fought, and it was his army which had returned to Rome flushed with victory ; but it was Nero who was the true hero of the day. To him was due alike the strategy of the northward march — a march perhaps only equalled in history by the ad- vance of Marlborough from Belgium to the Danube in the campaign of Blenheim— and the brilliant stroke which de- cided the battle. To Nero, however, also belongs the act / BATTLE CANN^ N B.C.2I6. I Curthiiaiitinnt .Vifvut \ Romans i%O.Uiio 1 Livy. he. cit. ; Appian. Hann. 53. Polybius (xi. 3) is perhaps himself outside the truth when he makes the number of slain on the Carthaginian side to have been ten thousand. 2 Cf. Hor. Ode, iv. 4. 41 : " ({m primus alma risit adorea ". BRUTALITY OF NERO, 2&9 of revolting barbarism which wound up his achievements and must for ever detract from his fair fame. Eeturning to his army in Apuha as quickly as he had left it, he carried with him the head of Hasdrubal, which he had caused tc be severed from his body, and, with true Roman brutahty, 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, who had so often treated with marked respect the bodies of Roman generals who had fallen in battle, recognised the features of the brother whom he had so long and eagerly expected, and in them sadly saw the doom of Carthage.^ i Uvy, xxvii. 61 ; Florus. ii. ti. 53 ; Zonaras. ix. 9. »9 2iO CARTHAGE ASD THE CARTHAGIMANS. SCIPIO'S EARLY HISTORY. 291 * CriAPTER XVII. r. CORNELIUS SCIPIO. (210-206 B.C.) c • • i„ Livv xxvi 18 ; Anpian, Hisp. toe. cU. ; Zonara-s, ix. 7. = Ct Polyhlus, X. 2,'5 and U. 5 ; laxy. xxvi. 19 ; Appian. Ihsp. 19 a™i 2«. :'See Moniiiisen, ii. 159-160. * livy, xxix. 19. 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 joy, would fain have given him.2 But he had not that inborn re- verence for law and for authority which had made the Romans what they were, and which would have bidden him cheer- fully 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. 3 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 il- legality ; but Scipio, when his brother Lucius was called to give an account of the moneys which he liad 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 pubhc 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 temple of the Capitoline Jupiter that they might there return thanks to the gods who had given them the victory, and pray that the Roman state might have other citizens like himself.^ The appeal was ir- resistible, 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, and fortune showered them upon him. The charms of his » Polyb. X. 40 ; Livy, xxvii. 19. 2 Livy. xxxvUi. 56 ; Val. Max. iv. 1, 6, » Livy, xxviii. 40. * Livy, xxxviii. 55 ; VaL Max. iii. 7, 1. *Livy, xxxviii. 51. 294 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, personal presence, and the moral and the material victories which they won, his adventurous interviews 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 gallantry and gener- osity, of prudence and of passion, of sensibility to the charms of beauty, and yet of resistance to their power, which enable us to feel something 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 ap- preciate 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 massacre, 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 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 eleven thousand men towards »See Polyb. bk. x. xi. xiv. xv. passim; Livy, xxvi. 49, .'iO ; xxvil 17-19; xxviii. 17, 18 ; xxx. 13 15, etc. ; Appiaa, Ilisj). 29-30. 37, etc. SCIPIO TAKES NEW CARTHAGE. 295 the close of the year b.c. 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 generals, Hasdrubal and Mago, sons of Hamilcar, and Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, were passing the winter in widely different parts of Spain each more distant from New Carthage than he was himself, and hearing also that the garrison had been reduced to one thousand men all told, he determined to make a rapid descent upon that city, the head-quarters of the Carthaginian government and the key to their position in Spain. 2 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 two hundred and fifty yards wide connected it with the mainland. Its fortifications, strong everywhere, were doubly strong here ; but there was one weak spot which fortune or the gods were preparing to reveal to their favourite. The object of the enterprise was entrusted to Laelius, Scipio's life-long friend, alone ; and it was arranged that he should enter the harbour with the fleet just when Scipio with his land 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 advan- tage of the ebb tide which left the waters of the lagoon on 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 him- self pointed out the way, Scipio led a select body of his troops to the attack, through waters which besiegers and besieged * Livy, xxvi. 19. 2 Polyb. X. 7 : Livy, xxvi 20 and 42. 2gb CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, might well have thought would submerge them all. The walls here proved, as Scipio had expected, to be accessible, and they were quite undefended. The attention of the gar- rison 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 dockyards, its merchant vessels and its stores of corn, its stands of arms and its engines of war, its skilled workmen and its hostages 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 reason to admire the skill with which their conqueror 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 transferred their services to Rome. Captive princesses, who might have been given up to the Roman soldiery, or reserved by the young general for himself, were restored to their parents or their betrothed lovers ; and the hostages, those standing monuments of Car- thaginian mistrust, were dismissed to their homes and con- verted into so many pledges of Roman moderation and good will.i It seemed once more as if the Spanish war was over ; and Lselius was despatched to Rome to report to the Senate, perhaps to magnify the achievements of his friend. We are surprised indeed, after so brilliant 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 Hasdru- bal, after he had been conquered by him in a decisive battle at BsBcula, was yet able, as has been already related, to give him the slip and to go ofif with a considerable force to Italy, thus, to all appearance, accomplishing the object of the long « Polyb. X. 8-16 ; Ldvy. xxvi. 43-50 ; Appian, JJisj). 19-23. Spanish struggle.^ It was not till Hasdrubal had spent the winter months in Gaul, had invaded Italv, and had fallen on the Metaurus, that Scipio ventured to advance into Baetica, 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.2 Nor was it till the year B.C. 205 that Mago, the youngest 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 post- poned the falL^ » Polyb. X, 89 ; Livy, xxvl 51 ; xxvii. 18, 20, 36. 2 Polyb. xi. 20-24 ; Livy. xxviii. 2. 12-16. The whole history of the Roman tampaigns in Spain is involved in obscurity, partly the result of our ignorance and the Roman ignorance of ancient Spanish geography, but much more of the gross exaggerations of the Roman writers, especially where the family of the Scipios is concerned. These falsifications reach their acme perhaps in the account of the two battles, or (it may be) in the double account of the one battle of Baecula. In the first. Hasdrubal is said to have been defeated with a loss of twenty thousand men, and yet he went oflf unmolested from the field, and traversed the whole of Central Spain on his way to Italy, unpursued by his con- queror ! (Livy, xxvii. 19). In the second, Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, is said to have been defeated at the head of an army of seventy-four thousand men ; but the place at which this portentous and (probably) imaginary battle took place is quite un- known, and receives four different names— Baecula, and Silpia in Livy (xxviii. 12-13). Elinga in Polybius (xi. 20), and Karmon in Appian (Hisj). 25-27). » Livy, xxviii 36, 37 ; Appian, I/isp. 37. lit 298 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, CHAPTER XVIII. THE WAR IN AFRICA. BATTLE OP 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 lor Africa— Massi- nissa and Syphax— Roman ignorance of Carthage— The fall of Carthage, how far a matter of regret— Siege of Utica— Scipio's command prolonged— He bums the Carthaginian camps-Sophonisba— The Carthaginian peace party— Sons of Hamilcar recalled to Africa— Mago obeys the summons- Hannibal obeys it— The Bruttian territory— The "Camp of Hannibal"— The Lacinian column— Joy in Italy— First operations of Haimibal in Africa —Battle of Zaraa -Dignity of HannilMil— Terms of peace -Results of the war— Alternative policies open to Rome. On his return to Rome, towards the close of the year b.c. 206, Scipio enumerated to the Senate, which had been as- sembled 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 ahve in Spain. He expected to receive a triumph; and, truly, in view of his successes, if not of his intrinsic merits, he de- served 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 own inclinations, and re- fused an honour which had never yet been granted except to a regularly commissioned officer of the state. Scipio, who had conquered 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 such artificial obstacle to tba SCIPIO CHOSEN CONSUL, 299 reward which they merited. He had not long to wait ; for at the Comitia, to which the people flocked as much to see as to vote for the conqueror of Spain, he was unanimously chosen consul— though he had not yet filled the office of 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 the war to Africa. ^ But the fathers of the city were full of misgivings. They remembered Regulus ; they reflected that Hannibal 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 ofif to Africa, where he would have the whole power of Carthage at his back. But Scipio showed clearly enough that, if the Senate refused 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, there- fore, were glad to save their dignity and to shift a portion of their responsibility from their own shoulders, by 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 con- sisted 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 Italian waters, eagerly furnished him with the rough materials for a fleet. Once more the fairy tale of ' I»ul>b. xi. 3a, 7-8; Livy, xxviii. 38; Appian, Jlisp. 38. 300 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 quin- queremes.i With this meagre provision for what he was meditating, Scipio landed in his province. There he furnished 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 Marcellus 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 command of Laelius to devastate the African coast ; those which were newly built he laid up for the winter in dry docks at Panormus, that their unseasoned 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 Sjrracuse. 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 pro- vince 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 possession of Locri, an important place near the southernmost point of Italy. Hannibal thus found him- self deprived of his base of operations in Bruttium. But the gain was a doubtful one for the reputation aUke of Scipio and of Rome. For the capture 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 whoso service the worst offenders were.* 1 Idvy, xxviii. 40-45. *Livy, xxix. 1, 6-10; Appiaii, Ilann. 55 ; Zonturas. ix. 11. SCIPIO SAILS FOR AFRICA, 301 The complaints of the unhappy Locrians fell like a spark upon the smouldering dislike and discontent with 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, indignantly exclaimed— to his own enjoyment at Syracuse, clothed in Greek garments, frequenting the Greek wrestling school, and — a worse offence still — studying Greek literature, instead of enforcing ordinary 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 B.C. 204, 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 LilybaBum, 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 twelve thousand, while others make it as high as thirty-six thousand. But if we take the higher, and perhaps the more likely estimate, we still cannot fail to observe how vastly inferior in numbers this expedition was to those which were again and again despatched against Carthage, or her maritime dependencies, 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 Hannibal'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. J Livy, xxix. 16-20. 302 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, The small force which 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, according 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.i Fortune, however, did not smile on his first attempt. Already, 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 Massinissa, head of the Massylians, a tribe which dwelt immediately to the westward of the domain of Carthage, 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 important 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 turn- ing, he had, with the astute fickleness of a barbarian, come to a secret understanding with Scipio. ^ Syphax was also bound by treaty to Carthage. But it was a treaty which the Cartha- ginians well knew that he would break as soon as he should deem it to his advantage to do so; and 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 alike 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 respective armies in Spain, and crossing over into Africa, had met, with an- i Livy, xxix. 25-27. !* Livy, XXV. 34 ; xxvii. 19 ; xxviii. 13, 16, 35 ; Appian, Pun. 10. MASSINISSA AND SYPHAX. 303 tagonistic objects, but in no unfriendly 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 Hasdrubal, his other guest, made a more per- manent impression on the amorous barbarian ; and on the promise of a marriage 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.2 This was a keen 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 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 picture to ourselves the wonderful city from which Hannibal, one of the greatest wonders of all times, came. Here, if anywhere, and now, if anywhere, 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 « Livy, xxviii. 17, 18; Appiun, //is/,. 30; Z«>iiaia.s, ix. 10. 11. «Livy, xxix. 29, 33; Apiiijui, Pun. 11-13. 304 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, conferred on all future times, had he cared to tell us ex- actly 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 civihsation and of progress, along with those other elements of weakness which are admitted on all hands, Carthage might have transported into 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 Mediterranean continued, what Nature seems to have intended it to be, the highway of independent na- tions, each, perhaps, endeavouring, but, happily, each failing, to conquer its neighbours ; instead of becoming a Roman lake, connecting nations whose separate existence 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 resuscitated 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 which were most of them cognate to herself, from the Straits of Messana to the Alps. He is certainly a bold historian who, with these FASCINATION OF HANNIBAL. 305 --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 de troy her ancient rival. The phrase «' it would have nl Ai^ ^f °f rous phrase to use in the study of history. Lwl '^ ^"^"^^ ""'^^ '' altogether; but it must ft r^'l, 'Tr^"'f ^° ^^** ^^^"^^^ ^^^^d« 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 Frederick the Great did, that God is always on the side of the big bat tahons It is hardly less presumptuous to say dogmatically that m this or that instance He was on the side of the weaker ones^ It surely savours of presumption to main- tain, as one historian,i 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 advanced 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 Apulia 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 produced Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal to say what that nation might have done in happier times under the guidance of such commanding geniuses. The from first to last only by Hannibal's enemies, who neither understoc^, 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 Hannibal, and not his conquerors' who in spite of the painter's intention, rivets all eyes and stands forth alone from the canvas, alike in his military ' Dr. Arnold, vol. iii. p. 244, etc. 20 3o6 CARTHACfE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, 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 vil- lages and the same fruitful and well-watered estates which had sated the greed of the followers of Agathocles and Kegu- lus before them. From this rich and prosperous country a motley and a panic-stricken multitude flocked towards Car- thage, 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 Hasdrubal and Syphax ; 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 Numidian cavalry took place in which Massinissa, avaihng himself to the utmost of his knowledge of the Numidian tactics, did good service to the Romans.2 The ships which Scipio had sent back to SicUy returned laden with provisions and with his siege train : but for forty days the oldest Phoenician colony m Africa resisted, with true Phoenician endurance, aU his assaults. Two 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 (Ghella), then washed by the sea. but now far inland, which was known for centuries after- wards as the Castra CorneUa.^ 1 Livy. xxix. 28 ; Appian. Pun. 9. '^ Polyb. xiv. 1.2; Livy, xxix. 28, 34. 35 ; App.an Pun. 16. 25 ^ObLt I)e Betlo CHvUi, ii. 24, "Ipse cum e^iuitatu autecedit ad casira exploranda Corneliaiia " ; Appiau, Bell. Civ. ii. 44. i i«c,i-.o, x^P-.^ ^^ SCIPIO BURNS THE CARTHAGINIAN CAMPS. 307 So ended the year b.c. 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 Carthaginian navy.^ Twenty legions were put into the field for the year b.c. 203, and the command of Scipio was prolonged, not, as on previous occasions, for a fixed period, but till such time as the war should be brought to a con- clusion.2 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 dictatorship which was destined, after a long agony of civil wars, to overthrow the liberties of Borne. Fortune or fraud soon gave Scipio the chance of dealing a decisive blow. In sight of his winter quarters was the camp of the Carthaginians, under Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, and, at some distance farther, lay that of the Numidians under Syphax. The Carthaginian 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 sud- denly broke off the negotiations, and then, with an easy con- science as it would seem, set out on his night errand. The wily Numidian chief was told off to the task which seemed Liicaii, Phars. iv. 589-590 aud 656-660 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 3 ; Pompouius M. la, i. 7. » Uvy, XXX. 2. a Ibid. xxx. 1. 3o8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 lightning, 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 universal, 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 difficulty 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 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," 3 and on the exiled Massinissa was imposed the congenial task of following up his rival Syphax, who had de- prived 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 of 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, aUve 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 iPolybius, strangely enough, calls it (xiv. 5, lb) "Uie most glorious aud extraordinary of Scipio's many glorious exploits" I •sPolyb. xiv. 1-5; Livy, xxx. 5-7; Appian, Pun. 19-23. • Folyb. xiv. 8 ; Uvy, xxx. 8. * l^ivy. xxx. 11. 12. SOPHONISBA, 309 poison, " the only present which the bridegroom could offer to his bride. Let her see to it that she did nothing un- worthy of the daughter of a Carthaginian general and the wife of two Numidian kings." Sophonisba drank off the poison, only remarking 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 Mentor for having atoned for one rash act by another ; but he was con soled 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 re- public 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 terri- tory, and then to complain to the Romans if she ventured to defend herself. Carthage was the lamb in the fable. Whatever excesses she might allege, or whatever the provo- cation 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 Carthage. 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 Carthaginians over Scipio's fleet, and the 1 I.lvy. xxix. 33; xxx. li 1;' ; Appian, Pun. 27, 28; Zonaras, ix. 13. 310 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, consequent raising of the siege of Utica,^ the peace party now came to the 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 pimishment for his recent failure, but really, as seems probable, for his pre- vious energy ; ^ and they then opened negotiations for peace with Scipio.3 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 sudden assault. 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 beheved — 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 lis- tened 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 Hannibal had engaged in the war on his own responsi- bility and for private purposes of his own, was not only con- tradicted 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. Any- how, the proposals were summarily rejected, the ambassadors » Livy, XXX. 10 ; Appiaii, Pun. 30. 3 Livy, XXX. 16. ^Appian, Pun. 24. « Ibid. XXX. 22. RECALL AND DEATH OF MAGO. 3" were dismissed without an answer, and Scipio was instructed to press the war to its natural conclusion.^ But for Carthage there remained one resource as yet untried. 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 fortunes, the order was sent to the two sons of Hamilcar to return to Africa (b.c. 205).2 Driven out of Spain by Scipio, Mago, as we have seen, had crossed to the Balearic Islands, and passing thence from the splendid 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 un- subdued and ever-savage Ligurians 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, who had received a dangerous wound in his thigh, staggered back by night, as best he could, through that rugged country, to the sea-coast. 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 him- self, 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, Hannibal had been compelled to act simply on the defensive. With his sadly thinned army » Livy, XXX. 24 ; Appian, Pun. 31. a Livy, xxx. 19 ; Appian. Hann. 58. 3 Livy, xxviii. 46. *Ibid. xxx. 18, 19. 312 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. of veterans, and his Campanian and Bruttian recruits, ha had withdrawn 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 any one who should venture to molest him. We have said that the territory of the Bruttii seemed formed by nature to encourage the resistance and to postpone the fate of a people hard driven by their enemies, and struggling against overwhelming odds. Never more than fifty miles wide, and generally very much less, it is traversed throughout its length by the main chain of the Apennines ; and these, where the peninsula widens out, send down to- wards the Ionian sea two vast and broken mountain tracts which cover its entire extent. One of them is called Sila, famous in all ages for its timber and its cattle ; ^ the other is now known as Aspromonte, and, in very recent times, has been rendered famous by the tragical mishap which put an end to the military career of a patriot hero as disinterested and single-hearted as Hannibal himself. Each of these moun- tain tracts is clothed with impenetrable forests, and each forms a fastness, or rather a series of fastnesses, in itself. The in- habitants of this region had been the first to throw in their lot with Hannibal, and having, therefore, nothing to hope from Roman mercy, they still clung to his declining fortunes with the resolution of despair.^ Such were the people and such the country which witnessed and sustained the last four years of Hannibal's struggle. At one point, about half-way down the Bruttian peninsula, the mountains sink, and the peninsula itself contracts, till it measures only sixteen miles across. It was on this spot that, two centuries before, Dionysius of Syracuse had pro- > Virgil, Mn. xii. 715, " iugentis SilsB ". « Appiaii. Ilann. 61. HANNIBAL STANDS AT BAY. 313 posed to build a wall from sea to sea.i It was across this isthmus, a century and a half later, that the Roman consul Crassus carried a double line of entrenchments in the vain hope of confining the - roving " Spartacus and his gladiators to the region which lay to the south of it ; 2 and it was here that Hannibal stood at bay for the last time against the enemies who were pressing on him from above, as they had often done before, and who now, owing to the fall of Locri, were able to threaten him from below as well. It was this spot, too, which was pointed out for centuries afterwards-^ and well it might be pointed out— as the '' Camp of Han- nibal ".2 The Roman vultures gathered indeed round the dying lion ; but each, as though Hannibal were in the heyday of his strength, hesitated to trust himself within the reach of his arm. Invincible as ever in the field— for Polybius tells us expressly that he was " never beaten in a battle so long as he remained in Italy "*— Hannibal had been con- demned to see province after province, and fortress after fortress— Consentia and Metapontum, Locri and Pandosia— torn from him, till, at last, there was nothing left in Italy but the narrowest part of the Bruttian peninsula, and the one fortress of Croton which he could call his own. 5 Yet all this time, when he must have been in sore want of pro- visions, when reinforcements from Carthage were no longer to be thought of, when it became more and more clear i Strabo, vi. 261. a Plutarch. Crassus. x. 10-11. 'Pliny. Nai. Hist iii. 10. 15. "Castra Ilannibalis". clTll«\Jl '' ''I 7;."' !"' '^•'^^-- r-Vo-J-. Cf. Plutarch. H^'k!^^' '•' '"^'^ ^'"' "' ^^^^ "according to Polybins and his part^ Hannibal was never once beaten by Marcellus, but continued invincible till he w^ conquered by Scipio". Corn. Nepos. Han., i. 2. says the same Quotiescunque populus Romanus cum eo congressus est in Italia semp^; discessit supenor Hannibal". And again, v. 4 : ' ' Quamdin in ItaliHu^t c^stra posuit What a crowd of victories circumstantially related by Liry vanish into thin air before those definite statements » ^ ^ ^Uyy, XXX. 12; Appian, Hann. 57. 314 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, that no help could be expected from Philip of Macedon, or from his own heroic brother Mago; when he had already seen the result of the war registered in the ghastly head of his other brother Hasdrubal, there had been no thought of surrender and no whisper of mutiny in his camp.^ With- out hope but without fear, he had held on there in his solitary strength ; and now when the order came to leave the land of his fifteen years' struggle and of his astonishmg victories, like his father and like his brother, he mastered his feelings and obeyed. Well knowing that the calumnies of the Romans, which had assailed him through his life and in the mid career of his successes, would not fail to follow him amidst his reverses and in the tomb, Hannibal took care to leave behind him, on some brazen tablets, in the temple of Juno on the Lacinian promontory, an inscription in Punic and Greek which recorded the history of his campaign.2 This inscription was seen by Polybius, and it is doubtless to its faithful record that we owe some of the minuter details which his history reveals to us.^ Nor can we believe that the hero, who was so anxious thus to perpetuate his fair fame, was at the very same time so careless of it, and so unlike what we know him to have been at other periods of his career as, even in this supreme bitterness of his soul, to have put to death— as the annalists tell us that he did— the Italian soldiers who refused to accompany him to Africa, in the very sanctuary which was to preserve the memory of his exploits.* Some years before, in a moment of thoughtlessness or of distress, Hannibal had determined to appropriate the golden column which adorned this very shrine, and had even bored a hole through it to convince himself of its real value. But the 1 Cf. Polyb. xxiv. 9, 6 ; Livy. xxviii. 12. 2 The promontory is still callea. from the ruins of a temple upon it, Capo della Colonna. Cf. Livy, xxiv. 3: Virg. vCn. iii. 352.-"attollit se Diva Lacinia contra". Lucan. u. 434. See above, p. 252-260. 3 Polyb. iil 33. 18 ; Livy. xxviii. 46. *Livy, XXX. 20 ; Diodorus Sic. xxvii. Fr. 6. ; Appian, Hann. 58, 59. IN CHARGE AGAINST HANNIBAL UNTRUE. 315 » outraged goddess, we are told, appeared to him, as he lay asleep, and warned him that, if he carried his purpose out, he should lose the one eye which remained to him. On a former occasion, Hannibal had shown his reverence for the gods of Italy by making a pilgrimage to Avernus, the sulphurous lake across which no bird could fly and live, and by sacrificing there to the gods of the lower world, with which it was supposed to hold direct communication. But combining, as he often did, practical objects with religious, he had endeavoured, under the guise of a pilgrimage, to steal a march upon Tarentum.^ On the present occasion he showed again that he was as astute as he was pious ; for, profiting by the warning of the goddess, he not only left her column in its place, but caused the figure of a small heifer to be moulded out of the golden filings which he had bored from it, and devoutly placed it on its top. This story rests on the authority of Caelius, who took it from Silenus, the constant companion of Hannibal.^ We can hardly, therefore, doubt its truth, and its interest and value in connection with the horrible charge brought against Hanni- bal by his enemies on this occasion, will be at once apparent. For what act, we may well ask, would have seemed more certain than this cruel desecration of a sanctuary which was regarded with common reverence by all the inhabitants of Southern Italy, at once to draw down upon his own head the divine vengeance which he had so narrowly escaped before, and to insure the immediate destruction by the outraged natives, as soon as he should have left Italy, of the tablets which he had taken such pains to engrave ? The charge, indeed, bears its own refutation on the face of it, and may safely be put down to the impudent fictions of Valerius of Antium, whom Livy so much mistrusted and so often copied.^ 1 Livy, xxiv. 12-13. 2 Cicero, De Div. i. 24. •'•'AUeo nullus mentiendi modus," Livy says of him in one place (xxvL 49) ; cf. iii. 5 ; xxxvi. 38, where there are similar uncomplimentary remarks. Yet to no other source than to Valerius and his like can we. in the face of the 3i6 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, When the Boman Senate heard of their deliverance they once more breathed freely. A five days' festival was pro- claimed, and a crown of grass was voted to old Fabius, as though it was the Delayer, and not the remissness of the Carthaginian government, and the heroic perseverance of the whole body of the Koman state, which had freed Italy from the invader. To Fabius indeed, if to any single Roman, might justly be given such a meed of honour. His ancestors, as Livy remarks, had gained greater and more numerous victories than he. Indeed, it occurs to us to remark that throughout the war he had not gained a single victory ; but the one fact that he had been long pitted against Hannibal, and had not been defeated by him in a pitched battle, might fairly be set against them all. He died towards the close of the year by a death which was opportune enough, for he had lived to see the deliverance for which he had so long watched and waited.^ *' Leaving the country of his enemies with more regret," says Livy,'- ** than many an exile has left his own," Hanni- bal struck across for Africa, and avoiding with characteristic horror the bad omen suggested by the ruined sepulchre which was near the spot where he first made the land, he coasted along till he reached the Smaller Leptis, a place far to the south-east of Carthage.^ Here he landed, and the news of his arrival at once brought back the war party in the capital to power. Some Roman transports which had been driven ashore in a storm were seized by the excited populace, and hostilities broke out amidst homilies on the part of the Romans against Carthaginian ill-faith, which, owing to the circumstances under which they have come down to us, we can neither refute nor believe.* The Romans knew well statement of Polybius, the first of all authorities, quoted above (p. 313), refer the reports we find in Livy of the repeated victories gained by Fabius. by Marcellus, and Nero, etc., etc., oyer Hannibal, 1 Livy, XXX. 26. Mbid. xxx. 20. » Ibid. xxx. 25. * Livy, xxx. 24, 25; Appian, Pun. 34, 35. BATTLE OF ZAMA. 317 'if that the scourge which had been withdrawn from themselves in Italy would fall with redoubled vigour on their countrymen in Africa, and it is all the more to be wondered at that they did not think it worth while to leave to posterity a trustworthy account of the steps which led up to the final catastrophe. Hannibal passed the winter at Adrumetum,^ the modern Susa, a town nearer to Carthage than Leptis, but still con- siderably to the south-east of it, and then, instead of advanc- ing on the capital — which he must have yearned to visit, for he had not seen it since he was nine years old — he struck across the southern part of the Carthaginian dominions into Numidia. There he won some successes over Massinissa, he formed an alliance with some Numidian chiefs, and there, finally, he met or was overtaken by Scipio, who had moved forward from his head-quarters at Tunis, plundering and enslaving as he went. After an abortive negotiation for peace,^ in the year b.c. 202, and probably in the month of October, but on a day and at a place which, strange to say, are unknown, the two great generals met for the first and last time in the battle which was to decide for centuries the fate of the civilised world. ^ The battle of Zama, like many other battles in history — those, for instance, of Arbela, Hastings, and Blenheim — was fought at some distance from the place whose name has been united with it. The battle-field lay, probably, much to the west of Zama, near the Upper Bagradas, and not far from a town called by Livy Naraggara.* Hannibal drew up his army in three lines. In the first were his Ligurian, Gallic, and Moorish mercenaries and the slingers from the Balearic Isles. In the second stood the native Carthaginians and their African subjects, with some troops which had recently arrived from Macedon. In the third line were drawn up the tried soldiers of Hannibal's own army, on whom, if on ' Tolyb. XV. 5; Zouaras, ix. 131, 4. '■' Polyb. xiv. U-8 ; Livy, xxx. 29 31. 3 Cf. Folyb. XV. 9^ 5. ■* Livy, xxx. 29, 3i8 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. n IT, • no others, he could rely. These last consisted chiefly of Bruttians. The sixteen years' war had done its work with the veterans who had crossed the Alps, and who had fought at Trasimene and at Cannse. But the Itahans, who had known Hannibal only in the days of his comparative adver- sity, seem to have been as devoted to him as if they had had a share in winning all his laurels. The cavalry, as usual, were placed upon the wings, and, in front of the whole, marched a magnificent array of eighty elephants.^ Scipio, as every Eoman general did, drew up his army in the three lines of hastati^ principeSj and triarii. But, ob- serving the number of the enemy's elephants — by a happy thought which alone would distinguish him from the ma- jority of Eoman generals, who would have preferred to be conquered by rule rather than try to conquer without it — he placed the maniples of the second and third lines immedi- ately behind those of the first. Thus, instead of covering his ground chequer-wise, he left broad lanes through the whole depth of his army, of which the sagacious elephants, when they found themselves goaded by the Boman lances, would be likely to avail themselves for their escape.* The plan succeeded ; and the whole array of elephants, frightened by the blare of the trumpets, made the best of their way through these open lanes, some to the flanks of their own, and others to the rear of the Roman army, with- out trampUng the legionaries to death or even breaking their line of battle. Those which escaped to the flanks of the army threw into confusion their own cavalry, who were already outnumbered by the Numidians opposed to them. Hannibal thus found on this fatal day that his two most formidable weapons — his elephants and his cavalry — had been turned against himself. LasUus and Massinissa soon drove the disordered Carthaginian horsemen from the field ; but the conflict in the centre was much more stubborn. * Polyb. XV. 11 ; Livy, xxx. 33, « Polyb. xiv. 9, 6, 7 ; Livy, xxx. 33. TERMS OF PEACE. 319 When Hannibal's first line gave way, the second tried by blows to drive them back to the battle. There had not been time for Hannibal to throw over these raw mercenaries that commanding spell, which, during his long campaigns in Italy, and under circumstances which looked even more desperate than these, had made desertion or mutiny, or half-heartedness among their Gallic or Ligurian countrymen, alike impossible. 8ome of them, to the number of eleven hundred, now went over to the enemy ; but the veterans did their duty well, and withstood the combined attack of Scipio's second and third lines. They stood and fought without flinching till Laehus and Massinissa, returning from the pursuit of the cavalry, closed in upon their flanks and rear, and then, like Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo, still without flinching, they fought and fell.^ Twenty thousand of the Carthaginian army had fallen in the battle. Twenty thousand more had been taken pri- soners, and Hannibal himself escaped, with a few survivors only, to Adrumetum. He fled, not because he wished to prolong the campaign, for he had the magnanimity to confess that he was conquered not only in the battle but in the war ; 2 still less because he cared for any personal reason to save his own life, but because he felt that the terror of his name and the undefined possibilities, which, as in the case of his father at the close of the First Punic War, the Romans still attached to it, might enable him to procure better terms for his unfortunate countrymen. Never did a general return to his native country, after a long absence, under a fate more cruel. The hero of a hundred victories saw his native city for the first time after his one defeat, but that one a defeat so crushing that it could not but, for the moment, obliterate the memory of all that had preceded it. But with true dignity and self-respect he set himself to accept the inevit- able, and to make what he could of it. Scipio prepared as though he would besiege the city, but his heart also inclined > Polyb. XV. 12-14 ; Livy, xxx. 33-35 ; Appiau, Hann. 41-47 ; Zouaras, ix. 14. * Polyb. XV. 15. 3 ; Livy. xxx. 35. I 320 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. i\ i to peace. He knew that the consul was aheady on his way who might rob him of much of his well-earned glory, and with that prudence or that moderation which was habitual to him, he forbore to push his victory to the bitter end.* The terms which he offered were severe enough, and had the Carthaginians only realised what they involved, they would surely have asked to be allowed to meet their fate at once. They were to retain indeed their own laws and their home domain in Africa ; but they were to give up all the deserters and prisoners of war, all their elephants, and all their ships of the line but ten. They were to wage war, neither in Africa nor outside of it, without the sanction of the Boman Senate. They were to recognise Massinissa as the king of Numidia, and, with it, the prescriptive right which he would enjoy of plundering and annoying them at his pleasure, while they looked on with their hands tied, not daring to make reprisals. Finally, they were to give up all claim to the rich islands of the Mediterranean and to the Spanish kingdom, the creation of the Barcides, of which the fortune of war had already robbed them ; and thus, shorn of the sources of their wealth, they were to pay within seven years a war contribution equal to fifty millions sterling I Henceforward, in fact, they would exist on sufferance only, and that the sufferance of the Bomans. Do we seem to be reading ancient or modern — very modern — history? Still the terms of peace, heavy though they were, were as light under the circumstances as they could expect ; and Hanni- bal dragged down with his own hands from the rostra an ill-judging orator who was recommending a continuance of the struggle. The people gave vent to their indignation at this infringement of their liberty of speech, but Hannibal pertinently replied, that they must forgive him if, after a thirty-six years' service in the camp, he had forgotten the manners of the Forum. - The terms which had been agreed upon by Scipio and the » Polyk. XV. 17 ; Livy, xxx. 36. « Polyb. XV. 18. 19 ; Uvy, xxx. 37 ; Appiaii, run. M-65. BURNING OF CARTHAGINIAN FLEET. 321 Carthaginian government were referred to the Boman Senate for their approval ; and ambassadors were sent from Carthage with Hasdrubal, surnamed the Kid, the leader of the peace party, and the bitter opponent of the Barcine family, as their spokesman, to plead the cause of the conquered. The Bomans accepted the conditions, for they felt that, this time, the Car- thaginians were in earnest, and they felt also that Hannibal was stiU at large, and it might not be weU, even then, to drive nim to despair. The conclusion of the peace was celebrated at Carthage by ' u r'.f ''^^*' *^^ ""^'^ °^^^^ ^^'^^ *^« ^^iti^ens could have beheld, except the destruction of the city itself-the destruc- tion of their fleet. Five hundred vessels, the pride and glory of the Phoenician race, the symbol and the seal of the com- merce, the colonisation, and the conquests of this most im- penal of Phoenician cities, were towed out of the harbour and were dehberately burned in the sight of the citizens.* In the days of the greatest prosperity of Carthage if any signal re- verse happened to her-if, for instance, a storm at sea de- stroyed 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 waUs of the city would themselves be draped in black.2 It is a strange and touching custom, and the mention of it here may, perhaps better enable us to picture to ourselves the feelings of the dis' crowned queen of the seas. Scipio now set sail for Italy, and andmg at Lilybasum made his way leisurely towards Borne through the cities and the provinces which he had freed from the invader and which fondly hailed him as their deliverers He had delivered them, but from what, and to what end ? He had dehvered them from the immediate scourge of foreign war ; but it remained to be seen how far they would be gainers thereby. It remained to be seen, now that their great rival m the western Mediterranean was put out of the way, whether Borne would visit the Greek and the Sicilian ' Livy, xxx. 43. *Diod. Sic. xix. 106. 21 ^Livy, xxx. 45, 322 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. I : 'I ii the Apulian and the Campanian towns, which had been guilty of coquetting with the invader, with that condign vengeance which she had ahready wreaked on the unhappy Capua and Tarentum ; whether she would hand them over to the more Ungering oppression of Roman magistrates and tax-gatherers ; or whether, throwing off the narrow mum- oipal conceptions 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 here- after to be, enrolled in her vast Empire, in thek own in- terests, encouraging, as far as was consistent with her own safety, their national Ufe, developing their resources, giving them a Hberty which was not a licence, 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 conduct 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 Rome should not only out-top but should utterly extirpate her ancient rival. We may beheve, 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 aUowed to survive as well. There was surely room on the shores of the Mediterranean and on the Ocean beyond for the Phoe- nician as well as the Roman civiHsation ; and the worst ex- cesses of the Romans, the perfidy and the biutality 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 mitigated or post- poned, if they could not have been altogether prevented, by the salutary knowledge that they had powerful rivals on the other side of the Mediterranean who would not allow them to be judge and jury, counsel, criminal, and executioner all in one. DETERIORATION OF ROMANS, 323 n^ CHAPTER XIX. CARTHAGE AT THE MERCY OP 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 S^rgius 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 — Self-abnegation of Hannibal— Comparison between Hannibal and Napoleon— Hannibal's exile and wanderings— His schemes, his suflferings, 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— History and im- portance of Prusa— Hannibal's personal characteristics— Death 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 char- acter. 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 faith, the submission to law which formed the groundwork of the Roman character, and had marked, at all events, the deal- ings 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 324 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 hundred 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 Han- nibal, 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 Kome, torn from their homes for years, and demoralised by the camp, were unable or un- willing 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 content 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 saw a batch of these wretched creatures landed at Ostia, or exposed for what little they would fetch in the Roman Forum. " The more slaves, the more enemies," was the grim proverb which forced itself on their minds in all its stem reaUty, 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 CONDITION OF ROMAN PROVINCES. 325 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 certainly were not more far-sighted or more public-spirited, than theu: 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 eariy common- wealth, 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 pro- portion as they were felt to be less real. Beyond the confines of Italy Proper, Rome was mistress indeed of the four provinces which she had torn from Car- thage in her fifty years' war, of Hither and Further Spain, of Sicily and Sardinia ; but of these, Sicily alone was un- likely 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 inces- santly ended and incessantly renewed ; 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, or the assassination of a formidable 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 sufficiently apparent if we relate two incidents. They are well known, but are too characteristic to be omitted here. 1 326 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. L. Flamininus, brother to the conqueror of Macedon, and consul in the year b.c. 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 happening just then to come in, the consul stabbed him with his own hands that his favourite might feast his eyes on his dying agonies. The foul deed passed unnoticed 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 after- wards, 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 Lusitanian War had just been terminated by the submission 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, when 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 before, had himself crushed a Spanish rising with no over- scrupulous hand,^ attempted to bring the miscreant to justice ; but Galba produced his weeping wife and children in court, and was acquitted by the compassionate judges.^ Happily for justice, 1 Livy, xxxix. 42 ; Cicero, De Senec. 12 ; IMutarch, Cato. 17. «See Livy, xxxiv. passim; Appian. Hisp. 41. a Livy, KpU. xlix. ; Appian. Ilisp, 69-60; Cicero, Ih-utus, 23. ROMAN CONQUESTS IN THE EAST, 327 however, one shepherd warrior had escaped the treacherous massacre, and he lived to take ample but honourable ven- geance for his country's wrongs. Viriathus defeated 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 duplicity and sava- gery of her dealings with the brave nations of the West, to the story of her brilliant conquests 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 bearing 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 fragments, each a colossus in itself, into which the gigantic empire of Alexander the Great had been broken up, as soon as the master hand was withdrawn. Like a meteor, Alexander had shot down upon the East and had passed from province to province, laying low immemorial empires and taking virgin fortresses, yet everywhere building where he had thrown down, selecting 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 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, m 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 II 328 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. he knew could not be altogether averted. Anyhow, he had formed an alliance offensive and defensive with Hannibal after Cannae,^ and the Eomans, already overmatched 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 Hanni- bal's hands, Eome 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 nations. When the 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 Hannibal might live to see a second Hannibal in Italy, were the reluctant people in- duced 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 aggression 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 because he was a Roman, and that, if war was what 1 Livy. xxiii. 33. sibid. xxx. 26. 33, 42. ^ See Mommsen, iL p. 229 and passim. \ y SKETCH OF ROMAN CONQUESTS. 329 he wanted, war he should have," found, in a few short years, when the Macedonian phalanx first measured its strength with the Roman legion in the open field at CynoscephalaB, 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 Philhellenic Flamininus, who was in fact giving them only a change of masters ; how " the fetters of Greece," ^ 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 represen- tatives 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 corrupt- ing by their manners, or subduing by their arts, those whom they could not meet in arms; how Antiochus the Seleucid, 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 Asia Minor which he had overrun gradually passed under the control of Rome, while the puppet monarchs of its various portions — Eumenes of Pergamus, Ariarathes of Cappadocia, and Prusias of Bithynia — whom she kindly allowed to retain for a season the phantom of independent sovereignty, humbly registered her decrees, and even the hordes of Gallic invaders learned to stop their ravages, or at least to keep at a respectful distance from her all-powerful arm ; how the grand schemes of a greater than Antiochus the "Great," now a friendless exile at his court, ^So Philip called the three fortresses of Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetriaa. See Livy, xxxii. 37. 330 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, ll' 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 monarch who flattered himself that he was Hannibal's protector; how the Egyptian Ptolemy himself became the ward of Rome, and the chief naval power of the Eastern Mediter- ranean 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 dis- appeared 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 b.c. 146, which witnessed the fall of Corinth, witnessed also, by a strange coincidence, the destruction 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 bom 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 1 ^ Whether by the help of his veterans, or by the voice of the citizens, he was appointed Shofete, or chief magistrate ; ^ and he used his iZonaras, ix. 14. 2Livy, xxjiiii. 46; Corn. Nepos, Hannib. vii. 7, 4, "hie, ut rediit, praetor factus est" ; Justin, xxzi. 2, 6, " prineipem reruni ac tuui teinporis consulem". REFORMS OF HANNIBAL, 331 power to overthrow the narrow and selfish oligarchy whose strength lay in the council of " the hundred judges". Hence- forward this council was to be filled up, not, as heretofore, 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 invitation ; 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 equanimity. ^ From the crowning disgrace of complying with this demand Hannibal saved his fellow-citizens by going into voluntary exile. Let us here, once more, turn aside to dwell upon that moral quality in Hannibal which can hardly fail, here as else- where, to strike us most forcibly — his entire self-abnegation. We have had occasion, once and again, in the course of this history, to compare Hannibal with his best modern counter- part on the score of military greatness — with Napoleon. But the fundamental contrast on which we would now insist, and which makes the two men stand, on the score of morality, as wide as the poles apart, will perhaps come out more clearly if 1 Livy, xxxiii. 46, " Ut in singulos annos judices legereiitur ". »Livy, xxiii. 46, 47 ; Corn. Nepos, vii. 7, 5. 3 Livy, xxxiii. 47 ; Val. Max. iv. 1, 6 ; Zonaras, ix. 18. 33a CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. Il we first point out some of the more striking parallels in their careers and characters. Each is, beyond question, the foremost military genius of his age and nation. More than this, the one is, beyond question, the foremost military genius of the ancient, the other of the modem world. Each was the mainspring, the soul, the vis viva of the long struggle in which he was en- gaged. Each found himself pitted against the united strength and resolution of a great nation which, though it could produce no single general who was either like or second to him, yet, by the toughness of its fibre and its inherent moral qualities, at last came off victorious. Each met his most formidable opponent for the first and last time in the great battle which was to end the war ; and each, fighting under special disadvantages, was beaten by the general who was confessedly his inferior. What Scipio and Zama were to Hannibal, that Wellington and Waterloo were to Napoleon. Each won his first mUitary laurels on a large scale in the plains of Northern Italy— Hannibal on the Ticinus and the Trebia, Napoleon on the Adda and the Mincio. Each won a victory over Nature as surprising as any of his victories over his foes : Hannibal by conquer- ing the Little St. Bernard, Napoleon— not probably without a feeling of conscious and successful emulation — by con- quering the Great. Each, in virtue of the most diverse and contradictory qualities, was capable of exercising enormous influence over men, and of arousing the passionate enthu- siasm alike of the raw recruits and of the weather-beaten veterans who served under his standard. Each was a states- man as well as general. If Napoleon was able to *' methodise anarchy " and to produce the Code Napoleon, Hannibal could, even in the hour of his defeat, in a year or two of office with very limited powers, reform the most inveterate abuses of the constitution and revivify the whole Carthaginian state. But here the parallel ends, and the fundamental moral contrast is all the more striking because of the previous HANNIBAL COMPARED WITH NAPOLEON. 333 parallel. The one inspiring motive of Hannibal throughout his career — carried often to what we might be disposed to think a Quixotic excess — was unswerving devotion to his country. The one inspiring motive of Napoleon, that to which he ruthlessly sacrificed his generals, his soldiers, his wife, his honour, and the lasting prosperity of his country, was unswerving devotion to— himself. To show this as clearly as possible, let us imagine each of these great generals to have been placed, at a critical moment of his career, in the position of the other, and ask how he would have been likely to act. Imagine Hannibal, for instance, in the disastrous retreat from Moscow, and imagine him, if such a thing be possible, leaving the remnant of his " grand army,** the victors of the Borodino, and the vanquished of the Beresina, under the command of some Carthaginian Murat, to the tender mercies of the Cossacks and a Kussian winter, while he himself made his way in comfort to his capital, and there, while his veterans were still perishing among the snows and ice-bound rivers of the North — called upon his feverish and infatuated subjects to make new sacrifices to the Moloch of his ambition. Now transfer, on the other hand. Napoleon to the place of Hannibal in Italy. Imagine him to have fought campaign after cam- paign without receiving any adequate reinforcements from home, and to have now given up all hope of receiving any in the future, since the governing classes at Carthage, while he was engaged in a life and death struggle for them, were engrossed or distracted by petty jealousies and party squabbles. What would he have done ? Leaving behind him one of his subordinates, Hanno, or Mutines, or Maherbal — as he did, in fact, leave behind Kleber in Egypt — to sustain for the time a defensive war in Italy, he would have flung himself on board a vessel with a few trusted followers, would have landed at some African Frejus — at Leptis or at Hadrumetum — and, amidst the enthusiasm of the popu- lace for the hero of a hundred victories, would have sud- w 334 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. denly appeared in the capital. Hasdrubal, recalled at the same time from Spain with an army devoted to the interests of his family, would have made him master of the situation ; the incapable Carthaginian " Directory " would have van- ished before him, and by a coup d'etat, which under the circumstances would hardly have been a coup d*itat at all, he would have firmly estabhshed, for purposes of his own, his throne and his dynasty. We may, perhaps, doubt whether it would not have been well for his country if Hannibal, with his singleness of pur- pose, had brought himself to take similar strong measures. What might not the resources of Carthage, if placed at the absolute disposal of Hannibal, a man as great in the council as in the field, have even then accomplished ? What a din of preparation would have resounded in the disused docks and the half-empty arsenals, and that too at a time when it was not yet too late for preparations or for energy to be of any permanent avail ! What new energy would have been in- fused into all the operations of the war ! What new levies would have been raised in Africa and in Spain, in Gaul and in Italy itself, and what a " grand army," composed of nations as numerous as those which crossed the Niemen, to their own destruction, in 1812, would Hannibal have ulti- mately advanced on Kome ! But Hannibal was too scru- pulous and too self-sacrificing for this, or for anything like it. If he had no " eighteenth Brumaire " of his own, it was not because he had no temptation or no chance for it. It was not in him to be guilty of a coup d*^tat in any shape. He was in Italy to fight, not for himself or for his dynasty, but for his country ; and in Italy he was determined to stay till that country recalled him to her own defence. Then, and not till then, he left it, and when, after his inevitable defeat, he became Shofete, or chief magistrate, at Carthage, he again used the power committed to him not for his own but his country's good. To the abuses that had grown up in the Carthaginian constitution he gave no quarter ; but instead of HANNIBAL AND CANTIOHUS. 335 profiting by their abolition, and by the devotion of his army, to establish a dynasty of his own, he descended quietly into a private station, and, rather than raise his arm against his country, he was content to suffer at the hands of those whom he had deprived of much of their power to injure it, and who now, to their eternal shame, leagued themselves even with his Roman foes against him. Surely there are few scenes in his- tory more sad or more sublime than this.^ Able now for the first time in his Ufe to go wherever his inclination prompted him— for his country, which he had served from youth with a singleness of purpose which knew no divided allegiance, had, as far as she could do so, just for- bidden him to render her any further service— Hannibal, the greatest of Phoenicians, first visited Tyre, the cradle of the Phoenician race, and passed thence to Ephesus, whither, as chance would have it, Antiochus had gone before him,2 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 Carthage; 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, iSee two articles on the first edition of this work in the Biblujtheque Universelh et Rome Suisse for November and December, 1878, p. 474, 486, 49*2. 2 Livy, xxxiii. 49. 3 Livy, xxxiv. 60; Justin, iii. 31 ; Appian, Syr. 7. •I ttoi 336 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. I i the stoiy of his early vow.i The courtiers were jealous of the lonely exile, and the great king himself, inflated with his own importance, 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.2 Against his own urgent entreaties Hanmbal was carried into Greece, in the wake of the Syrian army, there to be asked for fresh advice, which Antiochus took care agam ostentatiously to reject.' When his warn- ings 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 by sea to escort some ships from Phoenicia. The small armament was met as might have been expected, by the large Ehodian navy.' and was overpowered in an engagement which took place off bide. 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, Hannibal anticipated the demand. He fled to Crete and thence returning to Asia, wandered about from land to land till, at last, he found refuge with Prusias, the petty kmg of Bithynia. There he lived for some years ; but even there the Eoman fear, or hatred, pursued him. The pitiful embassy which was to demand his extradition was beaded, it is sad to say, by no less a person than Flamininus the conqueror of Macedon and the so-called liberator of Greece. And at last, at the age of sixty-three, and at a place called Libyssa, a small town in Bithynia on the road between Chalcedon and Nic*a, the Phoenician hero, weary les-wsT" "^ " ' ^^' ""■ " ' "^ ^'^ "'"""^' 2- (S«« »''»". P- ' Livy. «iv 42 ; Zonaras. i,. 18. , ^ „„; ,., * L.vy ,.xxv„. 8. 23, 24 ; Corn. Nep. Hanniial. 8, 4 •Polyb. „.. 14, 7; xxii. 26, 11; Livy xxxviii. 38; Justin, xxxii. 4 8 DEATH OF HANNIBAL. 337 of his life, disappointed his implacable enemies in the only way that was now left to him, by taking the poison which he used to carry about with him concealed in a ring 1 The oracle which had foretold that " Libvssian soil should one day give shelter to Hannibal " 2 was thus fulfilled, not by his return in his old age to his native country, but by his death B.O. 183 in this remote comer of the Sea of Marmora, and for centuries afterwards, a huge mound of earth was shown to travellers which was called " the tomb of Hanmbal ".» 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 m so truly heroic a mould, each so worthy of the other and each proving so brilliantly, in his own person, through a life- long 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 in our imperfect hghts, 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 faU naturaUy into three classes. There are those which are transparent hctions-the product of Eoman vanity or malice, or of the mere love of the absurd ; such, for instance, as that whicli teUs us of the personal interview of Hannibal and his con- \ ^7- " 'i^ *V ^"^ Nep. Hannibal, x. 2 ; Justin, xxxii. 4, 8. Jtu™7nm«S"*'' " "^ "'"" '* I^by-* oPPidum ubi nunc Hannibali, 22 338 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. I queror at the court of Antiochus, and the delicate yet ful- some compliment said to have been paid by him to the general- ship of Scipio at the expense of his own.i Qnce only had the two great generals seen each other before. It was on the fatal field of Naraggara, just before they met for the first and last time in arms. They had held there, if we may trust the speeches put into their mouths by Livy, earnest and not un- friendly conference, and, in spite of some mutual recrimina- tion and widely conflicting views, had parted, with much of mutual admiration, to decide the issue on the field of battle.' They now met, once more, at the court of Antiochus— Scipio at the head of an embassy from Rome, Hannibal as an exile, half-protecting, and half-protected by, the great king. They entered into conversation, and Scipio, as the story goes, asked Hannibal whom he thought to be the greatest general that bad ever lived? "Alexander the Great," was Hannibal's reply. "Who was the second?" " Pyrrhus," answered Hannibal. " Who was the third ? " " Myself," rejoined the modest Carthaginian. "What would you have said then if you had conquered me? " asked Scipio half pleased and half surprised, half self-confident and half self-depreciatory. " I should then have placed myself," rejoined Hannibal, " above Alexander, above Pynrhus, and above all other generals." It is the story of Croesus and Solon, but without its beauty, without its truthfulness, and without its moral. It tickled Roman vanity, and, therefore, needed no critical investiga- tion. From such stories as these, characteristic though they are, we turn away with impatience and disgust. There are other anecdotes which can hardly have been invented, and which, it is probable enough, are strictly true; while others again— and these the most numerous 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 HUMOUR OF HANNIBAL. 339 1 livy, XXXV. 19 ; Appian, Sj/r. x. 10. a Uvy, XXX. 30. 32. 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 feel- ings 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 remark 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 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 doubt- less with intensified anxiety. " Why, that in aU 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 divinum 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 occur- rence which so scandalised the religious instincts of Plato. Anyhow the incident was not without its material value ; for 1 Plutarch, Fabius, 16. 340 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, ANECDOTES OF HANNIBAL. 341 i,i \i < ! Hannibars 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 undercun-ent of the soul, of which, in spite of the silence of our historians, we cannot believe that any one 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 Phormio, the philoso- pher. Phormio discoursed for several 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 Han- nibal, " 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 equipments, 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, fore- seeing the result, " enough for the Romans, however greedy they may be." 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 portion 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 consum- mate 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 uncon- cerned 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 Cer- cina, 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 ofif 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 gold and silver, deposited them as a sacred trust in the Temple of Diana, while his real wealth he conveyed away concealed in some hollow brazen images, which he carried with him as works of art of little value. ^ By a sim- ilar stratagem he managed to discover, just before a naval battle, what his enemies in vain attempted to hide from him, the vessel which carried Eumenes, the puppet king of Perga- mus. Unable to vent his hatred on the Romans themselves. 1 See the account of Hannibal's grim laughter, Livy, xxx. 45. aCic. Orat. ii. 18. sPolyb. xxxi. 3, 4 ; Livy, xxxvii. 39, 40. 1 Livy, xxxiii. 47. ^ Ibid, xxxiii. 48. ' Com. Nepos. Hannibal^ 9 ; Justin, xxxii. 4, 4. 342 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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." i These anecdotes may be taken for what they are worth ; but it seems undesirable to omit them altogether. Indignant at the treatment he received from Antiochus, Hannibal on one occasion took refuge with Artaxias, one of his revolted satraps, in a remote comer of Armenia ; and it is to the constructive genius of the exiled Carthaginian that Artaxata itself, the ancient capital of Armenia, situated on the " resentful " 2 river Araxes, and in full view of the majes- tic cone of Mount Ararat, the boundary, then as now, of vast and immemorial empires, and laden, then as ever, with the memories of a primaeval world, is said by Strabo and Plu- tarch to owe its origin.3 It is 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 ". But there is a place more famous even than Artaxata, which is said to have been founded by the great Carthaginian while he dwelt under the protection of the miserable Prusias, King of Bithynia. Prusa, the modern Brusa, situated in a rich and well- watered plain near the Sea of Marmora, and sur- rounded by a framework of mountains, behind and above which towers the snowy head of the Mysian Olympus, is said by Pliny to have been the creation of Hannibal* It is a place of extraordinary beauty, and by its history from the moment of its foundation to the present day, it has more than justified the choice of its founder. Here the kings of ^Corn. Nepos, Hannibal, 11, 1-4. 2 Virg. jEn. viii. 728 : •'pontem iudigiiatus Araxes". 3 Strabo, xi. p. 528; Plutarch. LucuUus. 31. < Pliny, Nai. Hist. v. 43 : " Prusa ab Hannibale sub Olympo condita". HANNIBAL A FOUNDER OF CITIES, 343 Bithynia held their petty court till it pleased the all-absorbing Romans to swallow up their kingdom and make it a part of one of their smaller provinces. Here, a hundred years after Christ, the younger Phny, the governor of the province, made roads and drained marshes, and constructed baths and aque- ducts, temples, theatres, and bridges, those great works which are the best justification — if indeed anything can be a justifi- cation— of a universal empire, and were certainly not unworthy either of the great Emperor Trajan whom he served, or of the natural beauties and capacities of the place.^ Here, half suspiciously and half sympathetically, he watched the rapid spread of an obscure sect of religionists, who were destined in a couple of centuries to overthrow paganism and to make Christianity the established religion of the whole Roman Em- pire. And it is in his letters written from this place that we get the most valuable, because the most simple and unsuspi- cious external testimony, to the purity of the lives and the simplicity of the doctrines of the early Christians.^ It was here, again, that Othman — the founder of the Ottoman great- ness, the dreamer of that dream which has taken seven cen- turies to fulfil, and which the eighth has not yet quite undone ; the owner of that sword which is still solemnly girt on each suc- cessive Sultan as he mounts the throne — fixed the seat of his rising empire, and it was in one of its mosques that he ordered his body to be buried. Brusa has been exposed, since then, to six centuries of fires and earthquakes, and to the neglect or fitful misrule of Othman's successors, but even now in its woefully dilapidated state it is famed for its silkworms and its silk, its hot springs, its three hundred and sixty-five mosques, and the indestructible beauty of its situation. It is the true Asiatic capital of the Porte, and towards it, as towards a harbour of refuge, each Sultan in these latter days looks with wistful and, perhaps, not wholly unwilling eyes, when, hard pressed by his immemorial enemies, or the atten- 1 Pliny, Ldteri, x. 34, 46, 48, 60. 58, 69, 75, 99, «Ibid. X. 97. 344 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. tions and the jealousies of his officious friends, he is told in language that can hardly be mistaken— the language of boom- ing cannon and of fiery pamphlets, no less than by the irre- sistible march of events— that Europe is no permanent home for him and his. Like Alexandria, like St. Petersburg, like Constantinople itself, Brusa is, in very truth, a " predestined capital,"! and Hannibal, if the story of its foundation— and there seems no reason to doubt it— be true, deserves, in vir- tue of his choice, to rank not only with the more legendary heroes who have been just mentioned, but to take his place by the side of Alexander, of Constantine, and of Peter— men who, inferior though they are to him in other respects, have yet played a very large part in human history, and'have, perhaps, deserved their name of "great" as much from the intuition of genius which enabled them to select a predestined seat of empire, as by the force of their characters and by the greatness of their achievements. Other personal characteristics of Hannibal, or incidents in his Hfe— his extraordinary resemblance in figure, features and character to his father Hamilcar; his continence, his simple fare, his throwing himself on the ground to rest, covered only with his military cloak, amidst the outposts or the bivouacs of the common soldiers ; his sleep " so aery, hght, 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 influ- ence over men ; his habit of pinching the ear of his officers when he gave them a command ; 2 his patience and tenacity iSee in Stanley's Eastern Church, vi. p. 207-208. his description of Con- stantinople. 2 It may be worth observing that, in this practice, as in others, he was inntated-either consciously or unconsciously, probably the former-by tho PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HANNIBAL. 345 of purpose — what Spenser so well calls his stubbornness, the " stubborne Hanniball " ; 1 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 Koman literature, from an epithet here, an anecdote there, from an undesigned coincidence or an undesigned discrepancy ; but, coming to us though they do in so unsatis- factory a shape, they yet help us, in some measure, to clothe with flesh and blood the figure of the hero whose general out- lines seem, perhaps, only more gigantic by reason of the mist through which we are compelled to contemplate it. They enable 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, applied also to him. In the same year with Hannibal died his great rival, Scipio Africanus,2 the victim of a hke reverse of fortune. Like Hannibal, the victor of Zama had tried his hand at poli- tics, 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 even my ashes." ^ The great Carthaginian leader was gone, but something of his handiwork still remained in the prosperity which his reforms had secured for his native city, in spite of the ever- great Napoleon. I am informed by the Dean of Westminster that the late Earl Russell told him that Napoleon had pinched his ear when he visited him in the isle of Elba. There is sutficient proof— as I have hinted above— that Napoleon had made a very careful study, as well he might, of the genius and career of Hannibal. 1 Faeri/ Qjiee7ie, v. 49. 2 j„stin, xxxii. 4, 9 8 Uvy, xxxviii. 56 ; Val. Max. v. 3, 2. 346 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, ». r 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 Kome, of the dominions of Syphax as well as of his own,i began to justify his position by encroaching on the Emporia to the south-east of Carthage. This was the richest part of the Phoenician territory in Africa ; it contained the oldest Phoenician colonies, and had belonged to Carthage by a pre- scription of at least three hundred years. The Cartha- ginians, as by treaty bound, appealed to Rome for protec- tion ; and Scipio, the best judge of its provisions, as well as one of the most honourable of Eoman citizens, went over to Africa to decide the matter. But he decided nothing and Massinissa was left in possession of his plunder.^ This led to fresh encroachments on the other side of the Cartha- ginian territory along the river Bagradas, and these again to fresh commissions from Kome, which always ended in the same way.s At last the trampled 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 Ro- mans the very pretext which they wanted for interfering actively and giving them the death-stroke.* Ab-eady before this a new commission had been sent out with old Marcus Cato at 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 be- lieved was crushed ; and he returned home with his narrow mind thoroughly impressed with the belief that if Rome was » Polyb. XV. 18, 5 ; Livy. xxx. 44. «Polyb. xxxii. 2 ; Livy. xxxiv. 62 ; cf. xl. 17 and 31 ; Appian. Pun. 67. »Livy. xlii. 23-24 ; Epit. xlvii. ; Appian. Pun, 68. * Livy, Epit. xlviii. ; Appian. Pun. 70-73. DELENDA EST CARTHAGO. 347 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 reasoned him out of an opinion he had formed. He exhibited in the Senate some figs as re- markable for their freshness as for their size, he told his ad- miring audience that they grew in Carthaginian territory only three days' sail from Rome, and using or abusing the free- dom allowed to every senator of expressing his opinion on any subject, he ended his speech that day, and every speech which he delivered in the Senate afterwards, whatever the subject under debate, with the memorable words — Carthage must be blotted oui^ » Plutarch, Cato, 27 ; Appian, Pun. 69 ; Florus, ii. 16, 4» 348 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, CHAPTER XX. DESTRUCTION OP CARTHAOB. (149-146 B.C.) Appian and his history-Polybius-Characteristics of his history-His love of toith-Topo^aphy of Carthage-Causes of its obscurity- Changes made by nature-Changes made by man-The peninsula and the isthmus-The fortifications and triple waU-The Tania-The harbours-Resolve of Rome respecting Carthage-Treachery of Romans-Scene at Utica-Scene at Car- thage-The Roman attack fails-Repeated failures and losses-Scipio ^mili- anus-His character and connections-He takes the Megara-Siege of the city proper-Scipio's mole and the new ouUet-Contradictions in Cartha- gmia^ 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 faU of Carthage-Ita consequences-Subsequent cities on its site-Final destruction by the Arabs. OuB 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 Hadrian, 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 i Fortunately for us, however, there is good reason to believe that his account of the faU of Carthage is drawn 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 floating on its surface many works which are » Appian, Hisp. 1 and 7. 2 Appian, Pun. 13ii, POLYBIUS AND HIS HISTORY. 349 light and valueless, those which were weightier and worthier have sunk too often to the bottom and been lost to us. Happily the aphorism is not wholly true, and, in this in- stance, 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 enterpris- ing and independent spirits among his countrymen, by the Komans, was invited to take up his residence in the house of iEmilius Paullus, the conqueror 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 per- haps no other Greek or Eoman had hitherto done, the grandeur alike of the Greek intellect and of the Eoman 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 influenced by, some of the foremost minds which the Imperial State had yet produced — the young and virtuous Scipio himself, his father, the dis- tinguished general -^milius Paullus, the wise and gentle Laelius, the satirist Lucilius, the African comedian Terence, and the Greek philosopher PanaBtius. Here he learned to rise alike above the petty intrigues of the Achaean states and the narrow patriotism of Rome to the conception of a Uni- versal 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, monopo- lised 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 'I 350 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the Mediterranean states) as a living whole, in which, when the due distinction had been drawn between the ephemeral and the lasting, the superficial and the essential, each sue- cessive 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 weU-known passage "18 the eye of history; for as a living thing when depriv'^ed of sight becomes useless, so, if truth be taken from history what remains is only an idle tale." 1 From the position here taken up he never consciously swerved. If he was unduly influenced by the views prevalent in the Scipionic circle, much aUowance 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 surroundin-a IS so gi-eat 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 playing 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 aU wiU be the place to describe, as clearly as we can, the posi- tion, the fortifications, and the appearance 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 widespread and so com- 1 Cf. Polyb. viii. 10, 7-9, etc. C^VIITHAGK aurl Its yeij^ibonrliood. C.fiimttit /.tvu/manjt Onien- 4 C» . LonJou. yfw\oi4c BondHty i lid* 4ata^ -'S. :* V 'iV TDU \ f- % r 1 yi-,; ^t; (' ( ARTHACvK uihI Us Noij>iit)onrhood !/ Catacoi'tib liiir ^ , (/7 nil-ift Kill lUI /j: 1.^'. r.'.] ^^\^^ % V', s~;-... >:>/ ^•'S. . r ,i?, .... )U\tOt.olftt a /.t'luimitn.* fiftteft .i i\i /.onJiui .\,w ),>/•/,■ HtniiJun \- f,iJtuf/fi . "I TOPOGRAPHY OF CARTHAGE. 351 Xeiglibonrhnod. manding. The same obscurity unfortunately extends also to its topography. The blind forces of Nature, and the ruthless hand of Man, have conspired to efface even its ruins. It is not merely the identification in detail of its walls, its temples, and its streets, for these might have been expected to disappear ; but it is those more permanent features of its citadel and its harbours, nay, it is the position of 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 thousand years, and the alluvial deposits of the river Bagradas,i 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 lagoons; while, along the whole west and north front of the city, the sea has re- venged itself by encroaching on the land, and the massive substructions of fortifications which, perhaps, turned Agath- ocles aside and long baffled even Scipio, may stiU 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 successively 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 Byzantine city was finally destroyed in a.d. 698. Since that time, its site has been almost uninhabited, and Berbers and Bedouins, Fatimite Kalifs and Italian Re- pubUcs, German Emperors and French Kings, have all had a share in the work of obUteration. The remains of so many cities have formed a vast quarry out of which neighbouring 1 Silios Italicus, Pun. vi. 140-144 :— Turbidus arentes lento pede sulcat arenas Bagrada, non ullo Libycis in finibus amue Victus limosas extenders latius undas, Et stagnante vado patulos involvere campos. 352 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 popula- tion and prosperity, he who would see any remains of the once imperial city must dig deep down through fathoms of crumbling masonry, or through mosaic pavement laid above mosaic pavement, sometimes three in number, till, perchance, 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 God- dess, Astarte ; or brings to view the basement of the mighty temple which witnessed the bloody ofiferinga 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 recent investi- gations 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 whole of the processes by which we have arrived at them ; still less can we indicate all the elements of doubt which may be used to support or over- throw 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 gardens, and its burying-ground. The peninsula ter- minates towards the north and east in two bluff headlands, now called Cape Ghamart and Cape Carthage. Whether these were included in the city 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 » Polyb. i. 73, 4-5 ; Livy, EpiL E ; Strabo, xvii. 3. 15 ; Appian, Pun. 95 119. (See above, p. 10-11.) THE TRIPLE WALLS, 353 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 hne of fortifications, 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 simi- lar 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 storey with stabling for four thousand horses. In close proximity there were barracks for their riders, as well as for twenty thou- sand infantry. 2 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 have made the prolongation of such elaborate defences un- necessary, 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, l3dng as it were between land and water, was especially open to attacks from both, but seems never to have been suffi- ciently 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 » Beul^, Fouilles d Carthage, iil and iv. •Appian. Pw%. 95 ; Strabo, xvu. 3, 14. Cf. Appian, Pun. 88; Diod. Sic xxxii. Frag. p. 622. * Cf. Orosios, lii 22. " ex nn& parte mnrus communis erat urbis et BjTsae ". * Appian, Pun. 95, ad fin. 23 354 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 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 cir- cular like a drinking cup, whence it was called the Cothon, and was reserved for ships of war. It could not be approached ex- cept through the merchant harbour, 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 two hundred and twenty ships. In front of each dock were two Ionic pillars of marble, so that the whole must have presented the appearance of a splendid circular colonnade. Right in the centre of the har- bour was an island, the head-quarters of the admiral. Here he could superintend all the operations of that thriving and industrious population ; here his orders were proclaimed by the voice of the trumpet, and from its most elevated point he could see over the intervening strip of land, and keep himself informed of all that was going on in the open sea beyond. In time of war, he could view a hostile fleet approaching and watch all its movements, while the enemy could know nothing of what was being done inside.* We have no full description of the merchants' harbour ; but, in time of peace, the spacious Lake of Tunis, which was much deeper then than now, would afford safe anchorage to the myriads of merchant vessels which no artificial harbour could contain, and which sweeping the whole of the Western Mediter- ranean, were not afraid in very early times to tempt the 1 VirgU, Mii. i. 427. 3 In the times of the Vandals the word " Cothon " is unknown, and that of •• Mandracium" has taken its place; Procopius, Bel. Vandal. L 19 and 20, shows that it could be closed then, as in the Carthaginian times, by a chain : icai 01 Via^pxri^oviot. ras ai8»ipa? dA,v(reif tow kitiivo^ ov 6»j Mai'jpaxioi' xakovviv a^tXofktvot, e( Appian, Pun. 127. CAPTURE OF THE BYRSA. 369 the cellars of the houses in which the fighting had been going on, and these were now burned alive, or fell with the falling buildings ; while others, half-roasted or half- suffocated, flung themselves headlong from the windows into the streets. There they lay, and thence they were shovelled, dead and dying ahke, amidst charred beams and crumbling masonry, into any hollows which required filling up. Heads or legs might be seen protruding from the reeking and the smouldering mass till they were trampled into nothing by the oncoming cavalry. This fearful scene Polybius himself witnessed and recorded.^ The six days of the struggle and the massacre were, at length, over. The Boman troops had frequently relieved each other during its progress, but Scipio had allowed him- self to take no rest. He snatched his food only in the intervals of giving orders, and he now at last sat down on an " elevated place " to see what had been done and what yet remained to do. The Byrsa was not so much a citadel or any single building as that quarter of the city which was on the highest ground and was most strongly fortified. With- in that quarter all who had escaped the starvation of the siege, and the tyranny of Hasdrubal, and the sword and fire of the Komans, were now huddled together; and, on the following day, a deputation came forth, with suppliant branches and fillets taken from the temple of ^sculapius in their hands, begging Scipio to spare their lives. Their lives, but nothing else, the conqueror spared them, and fifty thousand men, women, and children came forth through the gate of the citadel. The nine hundred deserters from the Komans remained behind with Hasdrubal and his wife and children. For them no mercy was either asked or granted. They withdrew, first, from the sixty steps which led up to- wards the citadel to the level ground at the top ; thence, into the temple of ^sculapius itself, and thence, once more, to its roof, determined to sell their lives as dearly as pos- 1 Appian, Pun. 127-129 ; Zouaras, iz. 90. 24 i70 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. sible. But there was one coward soul even amongst them. Alone and trembling, Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, the murderer of his predecessor, the man who had tortured and massacred the Roman prisoners, who, if our reports speak true, had starved the citizens while he himself feasted and drank — the Marat and the Robespierre in one of the reign of terror which he had established — crept forth in suppliant guise, and threw himself at Scipio's feet begging for his dear hfe.^ It was contemptuously granted him amidst the curses, loud and long, of the deserters who were crowded together on the roof, and who saw the dastardly deed. Worn out with fatigue they now set fire to the temple, and Hasdrubal's wife, arraying herself, like her majestic com- patriot Jezebel, in her best attire, came forth, it is said, upon the roof with her two sons, and after complimenting Scipio as a noble foe, and heaping reproaches on her re- creant husband, she first slew her sons with the sword, and then flinging herself and them together into the flames, died as became, not indeed the wife of Hasdrubal, but as became the wife of the last commander-in-chief of Carthaeje and the last of the free Phoenician race.^ All resistance was now over, and Scipio was master of a heap of smouldering ruins. But to him, at all events, the victory did not seem, even in the exuberance of the moment, to be matter for unmixed congratulation. He burst into tears, and was overheard by his faithful friend Polybius repeating to himself in ominous tones the words of Homer, *' the day will come when sacred Troy shall fall, and Priam J Polyb. xxxix. 3 et seq. Ihne, History of Rome, iii. p. 365, questions the truth of the picture which Polybius has drawn of Hasdrubal. But it is difficult to see the object of the Romans in inventing, if indeed they did in- vent, such calumnies. The more incapable the Carthaginian commander, the more amazing is the heroism of the Carthaginian resistance, and the less the cause for boasting to the Romans when at last they triumphed. Hie de- tails of the story of Hasdrubal's wife are certainly suspicious, if they are not altogether impossible. « Polyb. xxxix. 3, 1, 2 ; Appian, Pun, 180, 181. CARTHAGE RAZED TO THE GROUND, 371 and Priam's people too".^ The work of butchery over, it was time for that of plunder to begin. The gold and silver and temple ornaments were reserved to grace Scipio's triumph ; but the sculptures and the paintings and other works of art which had been stolen from the Sicilian cities were freely restored to them ; an act of grace and modera- tion otherwise unknown in the Roman annals, and, doubt- less, due to the refined soul and Hellenic sympathies of the general himself. Many of these works of art were un- fortunately, as Cicero remarks, restored to the Sicilians by Scipio, only that they might be taken from them by Verres ; * but for this the Roman people at large are happily not re- sponsible. The joy at Rome when Scipio's galley, laden with the trophies of his victory, arrived was boundless ; and it was some time before the citizens could fully realise the fact that their ancient rival, the rival which had once and again brought them to the brink of destruction, was no more.^ Much of the city still remained standing, and it was the wish of Scipio and of a small minority of the noblest Romans that that part should still be spared. But what had been granted even to the hated Capua was denied to Carthage. The spirit of old Cato seemed even from his tomb to rule the day, and the orders of the Senate were peremptory that all vestiges of their hereditary foe were to be effaced. When every building had been levelled with the ground, the plough was driven over its remains, and a solemn curse was pronounced by Scipio on any one who should attempt to re- build the city, or even to dwell upon its site. The rest of the inhabitants were, with few excep- tions, sold as slaves. The one Carthaginian who, if the tales told of him are to be trusted, was least worthy of his liberty and life, the miserable Hasdrubal himself, was — perhaps by an act of cruel kindness on the part of the Romans — aUowed to retain them both, and after adorning Scipio's > Iliad, vi 448-449 ; Polyb. xxxix. 3, 3-6 ; Appian, Pun. 132. "Cicero, Verres, iv. 83. "Appian, Pun. 133, 134. > ^1 hi 372 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. triumph, to end his days in peace in Italy. Utica was re- warded for her desertion by an addition to her territory ; while all the towns which had remained faithful to Carthage were condemned to share her fate.^ Thus happened, what, happily, has rarely happened in history before or since. An ancient seat of civilisation, together with the race which inhabited it, its arts and its sciences, its laws, its literature, and its religion, was swept away at a single stroke, leaving hardly a wrack behind ; and with it vanished the last rival whom Rome had to fear, the one state which ever met her on equal terms, and there- fore alone stood between her and universal empire ; the one possible check upon the evils which the decay of the re- publican spirit, the increase of wealth, the abuse of con- quest, and the temptations of absolute power were sure to bring in their train. It is a thrice melancholy picture. It is the second book of the -^neid in stern and simple fact. The great Roman poet needed not to draw upon his imagina- tion for a single detail of his splendid picture of the fall of Troy. The burning and the slaughter, the crash of falling houses, the obliteration of a wealthy and an ancient city which had held imperial sway for many, nay, for seven hundred years — it was all there, written in letters of blood and fire, in the record of his own country's most signal achievement I It was a loss not to be replaced. The territory of Carthage, indeed, for the century or two that the republic was yet to last supplied Rome with com for her markets, and with wild beasts and gladiators for her arena. It gave, in fact, to the populace their bread and their Circensian games, all that when the repubUc had fallen they would ever want, and all that they would ever have. A poor equivalent this for the mighty city, the queen of the Medi- terranean and its islands, the explorer of the Ocean beyond, the nurse of commerce and colonisation, the mother of Hamilcar Itart'A and Mago, of Hasdrubal and Hannibal I 1 Appiiui. Pun, 136. ATTEMPTS TO REBUILD CARTHAGE. 373 The curse of Scipio rested upon its site ; yet, not many years afterwards, Caius Gracchus, unmindful or, perhaps, resentful of it, and moved doubtless by the noblest motives, proposed to relieve the wants of the poorer Roman citizens by planting six thousand of them on the spot. But African hyenas, it was said, tore up and scattered the boundary marks which had been laid down, thus demonstrating to the hostile Senate alike the efficacy of the curse and the guilt of the people's friend who had set it at nought. The proposed colony of Junonia cost its originator his noble life before he had done more for it than give it its name. It was reserved for the greatest of the Romans, for Julius Caesar himself, some forty years after Caius Marius had so theatrically taken his seat amidst its ruins, to revive the project of Caius Gracchus. His death anticipated this, as it anticipated other cosmopolitan projects of his imperial and ultra-Roman mind. But Augustus carried out with filial reverence this and other provisions of his uncle's wiU, only attempting, it is said, to evade the letter of Scipio' s curse by building his city not on but near the site of the Phoenician city.^ He must have failed in this, for, as we have seen, the whole of the peninsula had been more or less covered by the original Carthage, its suburbs, its gardens, and its burial ground. Anyhow the natural advantages of the spot overcame the curse and soon made the new city the capital of Northern Africa and the head-quarters alike of Roman civilisation and of African Christianity. After connecting itself with the great names of Augustine and Tertullian and Cyprian — names and characters different indeed from those of their Phoenician predecessors — and passing through the hands of the Vandals, it fell under the sway of the new Rome, and " shed or re- ceived a last ray of lustre " from the great name of Belisarius. Finally, by a destiny stranger still, it was destroyed by > Appian. Pun. 136. Pliny, however {Hist. Nat. v. 3), says that the Roman city was built on the exact site of the Phoenician : " Colonia Carthago magna in vestigiis Carthaginia ". I 374 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. the Arabs, a race nearly akin to its first founders. The hurricane of their invasion swept away all that remained of the city, and though the Arabs founded or developed at various times in other parts of Africa rich commercial or literary capitals, such as Cairo and Cairwan, Fez, Tangiers, and Morocco, they did nothing for Carthage. A straggling village, indeed, sprang up later on its site and dragged on a wretched existence for some centuries, and at the present moment, by another caprice of fortune, the citadel of Car- thage is occupied by a chapel dedicated to a French crusa- der, king and saint in one. But ever since the Arab chief Hassan gave, in a.d. 689, the Byzantine city to the flames, the memorable words in which the author of the " Decline and Fall " has described Palestine as it has been ever since the Crusades, may, with at least equal truth, be applied to Carthage : " A mournful and a solitary silence has prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the world's debate ", A VISIT TO CARTHAGE. 375 CHAPTER XXI. CABTHAGB AS IT IS. Interest of a visit to Carthage — Nature of impressions tlience derived — Its topo- graphy—First view disappointing — The Goletta and the Taenia -Djebel Chawi and the Necropolis— 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 — Excavations 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 unchangeable- ness — Conclusion. It was early on the morning of April 1, 1887, that we cast anchor ofif the Goletta, a tumble-down fort which commands, or does not command, the narrow entrance to the Lake of Tunis, and found ourselves in full view of the bold promon- tory and the low coast line, the undulating hills, and the fertile plain, which mark the site of ancient Carthage. It was a moment not easily to be forgotten, a moment into which the interests of half a lifetime — of half my lifetime at all events — seemed to be compressed. There was that tumult of feelings, that mixture of satisfaction and of unrest, of melancholy and of delight, of enthusiasm and of disap- pointment, which it is, perhaps, not easy adequately to ex- plain, but which needs, I imagine, no explanation at all to any one who has seen for the first time in his life a spot 376 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. which has long filled a large place in his imagination; to the poet or the scholar who has seen, for the first time, the Acropolis of Athens ; to the historian who has, at last, set foot in Eome ; to the pilgrim who, after traversing half a continent, perhaps amidst burning deserts or eternal snows, has caught sight — his whole nature strung to the highest pitch of tension — of some storied mountain or some holy city, the goal of all his aspirations and his passionate reli- gious yearnings. Mount Sinai or Mount Elburz, Eapalivastu or Benares, Mecca or Jerusalem. It is more, perhaps, than he has hoped for, but it is also less. Qusesivit coelo lucem ingemuitqne reperti. In a work of this kind, anything in the shape of a journal, even though it be a journal of a visit to the city of which it treats, would be obviously out of place. But it may not be out of place to gather up within the compass of a single chapter some of the impressions made upon my mind by what I saw of the site of Carthage, of its remains, and of its present inhabitants. First impressions of a place, it has been often said, may make up by their freshness for what they lack in point of accuracy and completeness ; but I am not sure that my own record can lay claim to even this merit. If, in one sense, they are my first impressions, in another they are my ultimate conclusions; and it may well be, therefore, that they may lack the freshness of the one without possessing the value or solidity of the other. Deep and varied though the interests of my visit were, it seemed to me throughout as though I was taking a last rather than a first view of the site of the city ; and was driving home impressions which had been made long before rather than forming new ones. Be that as it may, I will endeavour to record some of them here, for what they may be worth. Every one who has given even the most cursory attention to the topography of Carthage knows what diametrically opposite views have been held respecting it; and it was DISPUTED TOPOGRAPHY. 377 with a feeling of interest not unmixed with anxiety, that I took that first glance at the general outline of the place, which, if it proves nothing at all, may yet seem ominous or suggestive of the result. It might well be that on a personal inspection of the spot I might come to conclusions very different from those which I had drawn from books and maps, and which had hitherto seemed to harmonise best with the history of the final siege. I might be driven by the evidence of my own eyes to agree with those who put the Byrsa where I had imagined the Megara, and the Megara where I had imagined the Byrsa, and to transfer the har- bours, the Taenia, the Forum, and all the thrilling operations of which they were the scene, from the south to the north of the city. Ttim labor effusus: much at least of my labour would have been thrown away, and it would only have re- mained for me to beat a retreat- while it was still possible, and to make my views bend to the facts, since the facts would not bend to them. The critical moment came and it passed. Feeling that I could not be an altogether disin- terested witness in the matter, I beUeve I put considerable strain upon myself to see if I could fall in with the views expressed by Dr. Davis, the energetic excavator and ex- plorer, as regards the position of the Byrsa, and the triple walls, and of Bitter or Mannert as regards the position of the ports. ^ But I came to the conclusion that on these particular points the balance of the evidence lay strongly in other directions, and that the inferences on which I had based my account of Carthage, were, on the whole, correct. 1 Dr. Davis places the Byrsa on Burj-Jedeed, a hill near the sea, consider- ably to the S.E. of the hill of St. Louis, while he throws back the triple walls to the isthmus behind the Megara. Ritter identifies the Byrsa with Djebel Khawi or the Catacomb Hill on the N. W. of the city, and necessarily therefore also places the Taenia and the artificial harbours in the same locality on the ground now occupied by the Salt marsh. Mannert places the harbours much in the position which I have indicated in the accompanying plan of Carthage, but conceives the entrance to them, and therefore also Scipio's Mole, to have been inside tlie Ttenia ; that is, not in the open gulf, bi^t in the Lake of Tunis. 378 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, But if the first view of the place, as seen from the deck of a steamer, is, so far, satisfactory, it must be admitted that, in other respects, it is somewhat disappointing. There is nothing, at first sight, to delight or to charm ; there are no bold outlines, nothing, in fact, in the physical features of the spot to suggest the mighty part which it played in ancient history. The Byrsa is an ordinary looking hill, scarped, it is true, in some portions, but anything but commanding in itself. There is no frowning rock — such as you cannot help picturing to yourself beforehand— like the Acropolis or the Acro-Corinthus, like Edinburgh or Stirling Castle ; nothing, in fact, which could put to shame even the supposed Tar- peian rock at Rome. Rough grass, acres of beans and barley, and ploughed fields do not dehght the eye ; they are not naturally suggestive of anything beyond themselves; moreover the whole thing lies, or appears to lie, within so small a compass. There does not seem room at first sight for the vast operations of the siege, for the myriad merchant- men and ships of war, for the teeming population who, we are told, and truly told, throve and trafiicked here for cen- turies. A partial explanation of this, no doubt, lies in the fact that the distances are altogether foreshortened, and it is not till you begin to walk over the ground from the Goletta to the Byrsa, from the Byrsa to Cape Carthage, from Cape Carthage to the Necropolis, and so, round the whole circuit of twenty-three miles, that the first impression of want of space and want of dignity is even partially removed. Let me now, without attempting to adhere to any definite order of place or time, say a word or two on some of the spots which interested me most. I had felt somewhat sceptical beforehand as to the existence of that extraordin- arily shaped neck of land which I had seen in the larger maps of Carthage, with its tiny opening now called the Goletta or gullet. My doubts on that score were set at rest at once, for, as I have said, we dropped anchor ofif it, and were rowed up the channel along which only a few boats THE NECROPOLIS, 379 could pass abreast. This was a good omen for what was to follow, and by walking some half mile to the westward along the narrow bar of sand which cuts off the Lake of Tunis from the outer sea, we found ourselves standing on the broadening ground, whence Censorinus, as I believe, de- livered his first, and Scipio his last attack on the doomed city. On one side of us was the land which owed its very existence to the operations of the siege; for it must have been from this point that Censorinus threw those vast masses of soil and ballast into the lake which gave him standing room for his forces, and so enabled him to bring his gigantic battering rams to bear on the weak angle of the walL On the other side of the bar was the spot from near to which Scipio must have begun to carry that cruel mole which was to cut off from the beleaguered citizens their last hope of relief from without. To the extreme north-west of the ground once occupied by the Phoenician city, is the promontory of Ras Ghamart, two hundred feet high ; and the line of rounded hills, called Djebel Khawi, which runs thence in a southerly direction for the distance of a mile or so, is " one vast Necropolis ". Everywhere, a few feet beneath the surface of the ground, are labyrinths of low vaulted chambers, often communicating with each other, or separated only by narrow walls of rock ; perhaps the quarries from which the Punic city was origin- ally hewn, certainly used afterwards as sepulchres for its dead. They are now, for the most part, hidden from view or filled with rubbish ; and the wild fig-tree which, as the Roman poet remarked, was able to cleave the costly marble sepulchres of Messala, pushes its sturdy roots in every direc- tion through these humble tenements of the Phoenicians. All traces of the original occupants have long since dis- appeared, and the vacant space is often tenanted by the jackal and the hyena.* When the Romans had exhausted their fury on the city of the living, they turned their atten- 1 Davis, Carthage^ p. 472. 38o CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. tion, as it would seem, even to this city of the dead. It was their practice not to bury but to bum their dead, and it is not likely that they used at first the vast Necropolis which they had rifled of its contents, for their own small cinerary urns. But when the Roman Carthage became the metro- polis of Africa, and the head-quarters of African Christianity, the Pagan practice of cremation was replaced by Christian burial, and the ancient mortuary chambers were filled, after the lapse of centuries, by new occupants. These, when the impetuous flood of Arab invasion had spread over the coun- try, were, in their turn, dispossessed by marauding Bedouins. For centuries the Bedouins have ransacked them for any treasures to be found within them, and they visit them to this day for the chalk which they contain. Accordingly we are not surprised to hear that out of some hundred sepulchres examined by Dr. Davis and M. Beul6, only one contained a skeleton. In another was found a relic of even greater interest, though it belongs to the Vandal or the Byzantine rather than the Roman era, a representation on the rock of the seven-branched candlestick.^ The seven-branched candle- stick, carried off by Titus from Jerusalem to Rome, was, in the strange vicissitudes of human fortune, carried ofif again from Rome to Carthage by the terrible Genseric, the lame Vandal king, and so, probably, it comes about that the sacred ornament of the Jewish temple — the exact shape of which is known to all the world from the sculptures on the arch of Titus — has been found engraven also within a Phoenician sarcophagus at Carthage. Some of the sepulchral chambers measure twelve by fifteen feet, and contain as many as ten niches, or columbaria, hewn out of the solid limestone as receptacles for the dead.^ With what deep pathos as one looks at Djebel Ehawi its hill-sides riddled, as they are, with myriads of Phoenician 1 Davis, Carthage, p. 486. 2 See Beule, FouUles a Carthage, p. 129 wg., and the plans of the sepnlchret in the Appendix. SANCTITY OF NECROPOLIS. 381 sepulchres — do the words of the Carthaginian legate Banno come back to the mind. " Kill,*' replied he to the Roman consul who cruelly ordered the now disarmed and helpless Carthaginians to destroy their beloved city and build another ten miles from the coast — " kill, if it be your good pleasure, all the citizens, but spare the city, spare the temples of the gods, spare the tombs of the dead. The dead, at least, can do you no harm ; let them receive the honours that are their due." 1 The appeal might have moved a heart of stone, but it touched no chord in the breast of the Romans. Deep in the sanctuary of the human heart, civilised or uncivihsed aUke, Ues the feeling of reverence for the last resting-place of the individual, the family, or the nation. For the tombs of their fathers, even the Nomad Scythians told Darius, when he was wearied out by his vain pursuit of an enemy who always fled before him and always eluded his grasp, that they would stand and fight to the death.* But nowhere, probably, does the feeling lie quite so deep as in the hearts of the various branches of the Semitic race. The voice of the Phoenician Banno is the voice of human nature ; but in a more special sense it is the voice which seems to speak to us in each deed of heroism which marked the last agony of Carthage, and which does speak to us from each successive page of the sacred Hterature of the Hebrews who are next of kin to the Carthaginians. It is the voice of the patriarch himself that we seem to hear : " Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah which Abraham bought for a possession of a burying place ; there they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah **. The other promontory which is included within the circuit of the ancient city, Ras Sidi Bu Said, or as it is called in our maps Cape Carthage, outtops Ras Ghamart by a hundred feet. It is of red sandstone, and is the most commanding emi- lAppian, Pun. c. 84. « See Stan ley's Jewish Church, vol L chap, il p. 24. 3»2 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, nence within the precincts. It is crowned at present by an Arab village of peculiar sanctity, so sacred that, as we were told, no Christian is allowed to sleep there. The venerable Sheikh of the village, however, courteously allowed us to enter and to enjoy the superb view from the summit. It is inhabited by a large number of Marabouts or Muslim saints, living and dead ; men who, by their austerities, their theo- logical learning, or their charity, have earned a reputation for sanctity, and have come to live where other saints have hved before them, and to lay their bones in death by the bones of those whose virtues they have emulated. By a curious caprice of fortune— or, may we not rather say by a theological Nemesis ? — the saint who is supposed to give to Sidi Bu Said its special sanctity is no less a per- sonage than St. Louis of France himself. The crusading king died in a.d. 1270 of a pestilence which broke out in his army near Tunis, as he was on his way to Egypt. His heart hes buried near Palermo, and his body rests in the sanctuary of the French kings at St. Denis ; but his virtues and his sanctity are still a living power on the plains of Car- thage. So widely were his virtues recognised among those whom he came to exterminate, that with true Muslim charity ihey believed, or wished to believe, that he had died a good Muslim, and " the Village of the Saint " is believed, even to this day, to be blessed by his body, and by a special portion of his spirit. It is a homage, even if an all-unwitting homage, paid by his followers to the teaching of the Prophet, who told them, what Muslim and Christian have proved aUke so apt to forget, that the God of Muslims and Christians is one.i It must have been near to this commanding eminence, and above the remains of the ancient sea gate which is still to be seen on the beach beneath, that the incompetent 1 Koran. Sura v. 73 : -Say unto the Christians their God and our God is one." and cf. Sura ii. 59 and v. 52. 53. For a full discussion on this sub- ject I may perhaps be allowed to refer to my Mohammed and Mohammedan- ami, p. 259-269. THE LEGATE MANCINUS. 383 legate, Mancinus, effected a landing with a small force during the final siege, hoping to take the town by assault, and it was from this spot, when entirely isolated, without a sufQciency of arms or of provisions, that he was rescued from total destruction by the prompt succour of Scipio. Scipio sent him off in disgrace to Eome, and we can hardly believe, what we are gravely told by a Eoman writer, that he had the face to assert, in virtue of his very brief and very uncomfortable occupation of this one spot in the suburbs, that he had been the first Eoman to enter Carthage ; that he caused pictures to be painted representing the city and the various assaults made on it by the Romans — in which his own, doubtless, bore a conspicuous figure ; that he exhibited ihem in the Forum to all comers with copious explanations ; and that he became so popular thereby that, to the extreme disgust of Scipio, he was elected consul for the year which fol- lowed the fall of Carthage.^ We can share Scipio's disgust; but we feel as we stand upon the spot and look upon the red sandstone cHffs, the straggling cactus hedges, and the bare hill sides, with perhaps a sedate Arab or two picturesquely grouped upon them, that we could pardon the impudence of Mancinus if only one of those pictures had been preserved to us, or had been so described by any one of the eager multitude who thronged to look at them, as to enable us better to reclothe, in our imagination, the landscape with the walls and the towers, the palaces and the gardens, of the mighty city which must have lain full within his view. From Sidi Bu Said runs in a south-west direction, parallel to the line of coast, and at a distance of three-quarters of a mile from it, a broken line of hills which terminates abruptly in that which, since its purchase by the French and the erection of a small chapel on its summit, bears also the name of St. Louis. This hill, although it is in no way striking or precipitous, and although there are some difficulties con- nected with the large number of fifty thousand souls said by J Pliny. Not. Bid, xxxt. 4, 7. Cf. Cic. LaUiut, xxv. 98. 384 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, Appian to have taken refuge within its precincts when the last hours of Carthage came, yet, unquestionably, dominates the plain, the harbours, and the isthmus behind it, and there can be no reasonable doubt that it formed the Byrsa or citadel of the palmy days of Carthage. At all events, it was its most commanding eminence. It is at a moderate distance from the coast, as the ancient citadels almost invariably were. It lies, as Appian expresses it, *' towards the isthmus," ^ which connected Carthage with the mainland, and, alone of all the hills within the circum- ference of ancient Carthage, it answers to the description of Strabo, as being " a brow sufficiently steep lying in the middle of the city, with houses on all sides of it ".^ On this spot stood the famous temple of Esmun or ^sculapius. Under its protection the infant settlement grew up to matu- rity and to empire ; against its fortifications discontented mercenaries and hostile Libyans, Sicilian Greeks and Boman generals spent their strength, for centuries, in vain, and on its summit the last scene of the sad tragedy, the heroic death of Hasdrubal's wife, is said to have been enacted. The view from the Byrsa is, therefore, one which, for its historical and tragic interest, if not for its intrinsic beauty, has few equals in the world. It may be well, therefore, taking the Byrsa hill as our central standpoint, to describe something of what we saw from thence or from points in its immediate neighbourhood. To the south and east, almost beneath one's feet, is the broad and beautiful Gulf of Tunis, stretching away to the open Mediterranean between the far-famed Promontories of Mercury and Apollo. Beyond the gulf is the Peninsula of the Dakhla, whose majestic mountains — Hammam-el-Enf, the most commanding among them — by their shape^ their silence, and their barrenness, recall what one had read of the " Alps unclothed," as they have been well described, of the Peninsula of Mount Sinai. Hidden from view behind the mountains at the end of this peninsula, and looking straight 1 Appian, Pun. 96, iwi roO avx'Vof. * Strabo, xz. 9. VIEW FROM THE BYRSA. 385 across towards Sicily, of which, in prehistoric times, it must have formed a part, is the Promontory of Mercury, sometimes called also the " Fair Promontory," the point which, in times of peace, was named by the proud and jealous republic as the ne plus ultra of all foreign — especially of all Roman— merchantmen, the point where Regulus halted his ships of war, where the greater Scipio first landed, and from which, with characteristic adroitness, he drew his first omen of success. To the west and north is a sandy plain, flanked by the Lake of Tunis, with its flamingo-haunted waters, and by the ancient city, whose glaring houses and whitened roof-tops, relieved a little by its Moorish mosques and minarets, still recall the name of " the white," given to Tunis by Diodorus Siculus eighteen centuries ago.^ The plain is dotted here and there with houses of the wealthy Tunisians, with olive plantations, with one or two solitary palm trees, and with huge hedges of the Barbary fig, whose sharp fleshy leaves aflford sure protection against every animal except the camel. Part of it is under cultivation, and yields to its cultivators — if those who just scratch the surface of the earth may be so called — no longer, indeed, the hundred-and-fifty-fold of Pliny's time,^ but still in ordinary years a large return. Large tracts of country which we know were, till very lately, covered with forests, are now entirely bare. Trees are cut down, but new ones are never planted. Even the olive plantations seem to be dying away for want of tending or renewal. There is nothing, therefore, to help the thirsty soil to retain even that modicum of rain from heaven which falls upon it, while scientific irrigation with the help of the rivers, which was carried to such a wonderful pitch in ancient times alike by the Phoenicians and by the Romans, * Diod. Sic. XX. 9. •Pliny, Hist. Nat. xvii. 3, cf. v. 3. Sir Richard Wood, K.C.M.G., Her Majesty's Consul-General at Tunis, to whose hospitality and kindness as well as to that of his family we owe much of the success and comfort of our stay there, told us of exceptional instances within his knowledge in which even Pliny's Itetimate of the fertility of the soil had been largely exceeded. 25 386 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. is now entirely neglected. What wonder, then, if, in seasons of exceptional drought, Nature revenges herself, and that the crops, having no deep root, wither away, while the inhabi- tants perish by hundreds ? The cultivated portions of the plain, at certain times of the year, swarm with quails, vast numbers of which are snared in nets by the natives or knocked down by sticks when they are tired out — as was the case when we were there — by their annual migration. Wandering over the pasture lands may be seen the flocks and herds of the Arabs and the long lines of their camels. Here and there are their black tents, which may be shifted at convenience. But some of the natives, passing gradually from the nomadic to the agricultural stage, have found a more permanent, if not a more congenial abode, in the nu- merous subterranean cisterns or magazines which the fore- thought of their more civilised predecessors constructed ; and the domestic animals of the Arabs are found stabling in the very buildings which may once, perhaps, have sheltered the Carthaginian elephants. Stretching right across the plain, '* like the bleached ver- tebrae of some gigantic serpent," as they have been well described by Sir Grenville Temple, may be seen great blocks of masonry, the remains of the noble Koman aqueduct,^ which brought from the mountains of Zaghouan (Mons Zeugitanus) and Djebel Djougar (Mons Zuccharus)— from a distance, that is, of over sixty miles — those perennial streams of fresh water which not only supplied the inhabi- tants of the city, but sufficed to irrigate its suburbs and its gardens, and made much even of the intervening arid country to smile as the Garden of the Lord.2 It was the handiwork of that Koman emperor who has left behind him J Procopius, Bell. Van. ii. 1, tok bx*rhv itioeiarov orra &« rff. In like manner the description of the country round Carthage given by Diodorus (xv. 8) as it ap- peared to the soldiers of Agathocles, implies a vast system of tanks or cisterns, as Wf 11 as scientitic irrigation : voAAwi' v6arwv iioxtrtvoiieyutv xai vavra. rowov ip' btoyrw. THE CISTERNS. 389 One trace, however, of the ancient city there is which one would have thought even our matter-of-fact German friend would hardly have called " nothing ". About a quarter of a mile from the Byrsa and nearer to the sea, is a huge mass of masonry embedded in the soil, the low vaulted roofs of which, rising side by side in pairs only a few feet above the level of the hill-side which has been excavated around them, and are actually below its level where it has been undis- turbed, look hke the graves of some gigantic prehistoric race. ** There were giants in the earth in those days," were the words which rose involuntarily to the mind ; but these vaulted roofs turned out to be the coverings of the vast reservoirs which stored up water for the teeming population of the city. They were eighteen in number ; the masonry and cement are still all but perfect. Each reservoir is nearly one hundred feet long by twenty wide, and the water still stands in many of them to the depth of seventeen feet. A narrow gallery, hollowed out of the face of the hill beside them, enables the visitor to pass beneath the surface along their whole length, and to realise the silence and the solitude which reign supreme around this, the one remaining monu- ment of the vanished ancient city. I say advisedly of the ancient city, for though the facings of the cisterns and per- haps nearly everything which meets the eye may, very possibly, be Koman, yet, as M. Beule, one of the highest authorities on ancient architecture, as well as an indefatigable excavator, has pointed out, the plan on which they are constructed is undoubtedly more ancient, and the Roman architects have only copied their Punic predecessors. It seems likely, I would rather say, that they have only re- paired their work. If the aqueduct is admitted to be Roman, it will follow that a huge collection of rain-water cisterns would have been an absolute necessity in the Punic city. Nor is it easily credible that the Romans would have taken the trouble to destroy what lay deep hidden beneath the ground. We have seen that they did not destroy the Necro- 390 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. polls, they only pillaged and profaned it. Why then should they have destroyed, at an infinite expenditure of labour, the huge reservoirs which, in that arid country, would be of untold value to the scattered cultivators of the ground or to their flocks and herds, and which did not disturb that dead level to which it was their pleasure and their practice to condemn alike the house or the city of an offender ? ^ The low vaulted roofs of the cisterns were probably then covered with soil, to lower the temperature and to prevent evapora- tion, and the Boman plough might therefore have well been driven by the Boman destroyers almost inadvertently across them. M. Beule well points out, moreover, that the defini- tion which exactly hits off the series of undoubtedly Punic fortifications which he has disinterred beneath the Byrsa hits off with equal precision the range of cisterns themselves. Each consists of a " series of chambers equal and parallel, and opening on a common corridor ".^ Behind the Byrsa and beyond the precincts of the ancient city proper, there is another group of cisterns of still larger proportions. These probably belong to the Boman city, and they were fed not by rain water but by the aqueduct of which they formed the termination. They are called the *• large cisterns " to distinguish them from the other group, which certainly could never be called *' smaU," except by compari- son with them. They are said by the traveller Shaw to have been in his time twenty in number, each measuring not less than a hundred feet in length by thirty in breadth. Gigantic as they are, they are not so imposing either in associations or in appearance as the smaller group which I have just described, partly because they do not lie so well together, and partly because the deposits and accumulations of suc- cessive ages have filled them to within a few feet of the roof. Even so, they are of considerable value to the inhabi- 1 Cf. Livy, iv. 16, for the iEquimselium or Mselian level ; the place on which the house of Sp. Maelius, the presumed traitor, had stood. 2 Beul6, FouUles, p. 61. OBLITERATION OF CARTHAGE. 391 tants ; for, giving shelter as they do to a whole settlement of Arabs with their wives and children, their stores of grain, their agricultural implements, and their domestic animals — which are never few in number— they form in themselves the whole hamlet of Moalka, home and homestead in one ! All the other buildings of the city, whether Punic or Boman, have long since disappeared. Whole hamlets and towns have been built out of their materials. We saw huge Blabs of Carthaginian marble embedded in the palaces of Tunisian nobles ; and some have found their way even into Italian and Spanish cathedrals. Innumerable small frag- ments, however, which were not thought worth carrying away, still linger on the site of the city. The ground beneath one's feet teems with them ; nay, rather, it is composed of them. Bits of tessellated pavement, of porphyry, of the fa- mous Numidian marble— green, white, and red — everywhere meet the eye, or are turned up by the spade and the plough- share. These belong, I believe, almost exclusively to periods later than that of the Phoenician city. The Romans did their work of destruction on their hated rival too thoroughly. For seventeen days its ruins burned, ^ and at the end not one stone was left standing on another, at all events above the surface of the ground. The Manes of old Cato must have been more than satisfied by the way in which his countrymen carried out his grim resolve. The work of excavation has been attempted in recent times, with such means as were at their disposal, by Dr. Davis, an English, and by M. Beul6, a French archaeologist, whose names I have already had occasion to mention. Dr. Davis, in a series of explorations, which he has carried on for many years, partly at his own expense, and partly at that of the English Government, has disinterred a large number of marbles and mosaics, many of which, of course, belong to the Boman period. But he has also opened out to view the basement of a large temple to Baal, which, if it is not Punic itself, is in ' Klorus, ii. 15. 18. 392 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. all probability,— as we know the Komans in their new-born enthusiasm for the city of Dido and Venus made a point of doing — built upon the exact site, and, as nearly as possible, after the model of its Punic predecessor ; and, what is more im- portant still, he has discovered a very large number, over one hundred and twenty, of genuine Punic inscriptions. That some of the mosaic pavements also found by him belong to the Phoenician city, we may not unreasonably conclude, when we are told that he has sometimes found three successive layers of mosaics, placed, one above the other, at considerable intervals ; that the cement in which the lower stratum was laid was of a wholly dififerent character to that of the upper ; that it was easily detached from the mosaics and was very friable in itself, having lost all its adhesive power by long lapse of time.i M. Beul6, on the other hand, who is well known for his ex- cavations in the Acropolis at Athens, expended much labour in sinking deep shafts, some of which happily still remain open, at various points near the circumference of the Byrsa, and he was fortunate enough to bring to light considerable remains of the great triple wall so accurately described by the ancients. There he came upon the foundation of the outer wall, which, as we have ahready stated, was six feet thick and forty-five feet high, strengthened by towers at intervals which rose twenty feet higher stilL There, before his eyes, were the basements of the semicircular chamber — the shape so much afifected by the Phoenicians, as we see in their remains at Malta and at Gozo — which contained stabling for three hun- dred elephants below, and for four thousand horses above ; and there, too, at the depth of fifty-six feet below the present surface of the hill, he worked his way through a layer of ashes five or six feet thick, some of which still blackened the hand which touched them, and were mixed with half-charred pieces of wood, with small bits of iron twisted into strange contortions by the fury of the Roman flames which had at- 1 J>ayi8, p. 202. REMAINS OF CARTHAGE. 393 tempted to consume them, with fragments of pottery and glass — the invention of the Tyrians — and with projectiles which must, all too probably, have been collected together in the citadel when the last assault was imminent, to be thrown thence by the Balearic slingers, or to be launched from the very catapults which had been equipped for service by the free-will ofiferings of the long hair of the frenzied Cartha- ginian matrons.^ Some of these remains are preserved in a small museum near the chapel of St. Louis, and one of the projectiles Pere Roger, the custodian of the chapel, was kind enough to give me, when he found that I was specially interested in the history and topography of Carthage. It is heavy for its size, and is made of terra-cotta, that is to say, of clay which had been moulded into an oval form, and then baked to a red heat, exactly answering to the description given by Caesar of the acorn-shaped bolts used by the Romans, and hence called " acorns". Ferventes fusili ex argilld glandes,^ he says in his Gallic War, and this is one of precisely the same shape and material used by the Phoenicians. There is one feature of the ancient city which in spite of all I had heard and read about it I was surprised to find in such perfect preservation. It will doubtless be remembered that ancient Carthage had two docks or harbours, both the work of human hands — one oblong for the use of merchant vessels, the other circular for the use of vessels of war — and our pleasure may be imagined when on suddenly reaching the summit of the Byrsa from behind we saw them both immediately below us, each, of course, much diminished in size by the ever-shifting soil, and by the debris of the build- ings which had perished around them, but each preserving its characteristic shape. There, before our eyes, was the circular war harbour, once surrounded by two hundred and twenty different docks, each fronted by two Ionic marble pillars. There was still the island in the middle, on which, 1 BeaU, p. 55. 2 Caesar, Bell. Oall. v. 41. 394 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. in the days when Carthage was the mistress of all known seas and islands, was the residence of her lord high admiral, the spot from which he could superintend all the operations of that busy hive of industry, and could issue his orders by the sound of the trumpet ; and there was the intervening strip of land, narrower now than then, owing to the encroachment of the waves, looking across which— himself unobserved the while — he could see all that went on in the open sea, and con- cert his measures against any state which dared — and few ever dared — to measure her strength against that of the Queen of the Ocean. And there, too, was something — though I believe it is really much more modem — which looked hke the traces of the outlet opened by the beleaguered Carthaginians in the days of their distress, when they were thus able, for the time at least, to laugh to scorn the labours of Scipio. We bathed close to the supposed outlet. The water was dehciously warm, early though it was in the month of April, and as far out as we could swim, we could rest once and again on the blocks of masonry which once formed the quays, or the sea wall, or it may be even the buildings of the Phoenician city, but which are now encrusted by shell-fish and seaweeds, and have long been covered by the waves. It will readily be believed that the first and great charm of a visit to Carthage is the religio loci, the place itself, and the associations which cluster round it ; but a second and hardly inferior attraction to my mind is the character of the people who inhabit the plains where Carthage once was. Compara- tively few travellers have as yet visited the Cothon or the Byrsa. Of tourists, in the ordinary sense of the word, there are none; and Tunis, I have reason to believe, is at the present day the most Oriental of all Oriental towns. The wave of Western civilisation or its counterfeit, which has done BO much to transform Constantinople and Cairo, nay, even Bagdad and Damascus, has not yet swept over Tunis. A few shopkeepers, indeed, and most of the voituriers are Italians, while the boatmen and the porters who quarrel for the honour THE STREETS OF TUNIS. 395 of carrying your portmanteau, and nearly carry you off in the process, are Maltese, who, it is said, do most of the crime, and certainly seem to carry it in their forbidding counte- nances. But beyond these outliers of civilisation, and the few Europeans attached to the consulates, there are no sights visible, and there is no influence felt, but those of the East. And what a mixture of Eastern races there is, and what gorgeous costumes! Grave and dignified Osmanli Turks, with their pride of race, their scarlet fezes, and their yellow shppers ; Jews with their bagging pantaloons, and their blue coats, and headdresses ; Arabs with their long beards, their white turbans and burnouses, and their many-coloured tunics ; descendants of the Prophet, *' Grand Scherifs " as they are called, rejoicing in their green robes and green turbans — the size of which is, not unusually, exactly proportioned to the de- gree of their sanctity and their dirtiness ; swarthy Moors from the desert, and Negroes from the Soudan — not such sickly and cringing hybrids as you see in Oxford Street, clad in Euro- pean dress and aping European manners — but real downright Negroes, half naked, black as ebony ; all jostling one against the other, and all rejoicing in the brotherhood of Islam. The streets of Tunis are narrow and unpaved, and are often very dirty. The houses — as in their counterparts, the three narrow streets leading from the Forum to the Byrsa in ancient Carthage — often all but meet across them overhead, and few of them have any pretensions to architectural beauty; yet, as you walk up and down, you have endless and ever- varying subjects of interest and amusement. Every man and woman you meet, and still more every shop or stall you pass, with its owner sitting in the middle of it cross-legged and barefooted in dignified repose, waiting patiently till it pleases Allah to send him a customer, is a study in itself. You seem to have the " Arabian Nights " before your very eyes. There, for instance, is the barber's shop with a bench all round it, on which sit rows of customers divested of their turbans and their fezes, listening to the barber's chatter and 396 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. each waiting till his turn comes to have his head operated upon. There is the Court where justice— Eastern justice, of course, I mean— is administered by a Turkish Pasha, who sometimes despatches the cases brought before him at the rate of two a minute, but to the equal satisfaction, as it would seem, of both plaintifif and defendant. There is the prison, the doors of which are never closed but guarded only by one shabby policeman armed with a blunderbuss which looks as if it would never go off, and a yataghan which is so rusty that you would think it could never leave its scabbard ; the prisoners squatting complacently inside, smoking, or knitting, or wrapped in contemplation, and all submitting quietly to their incarceration, because it, too, is the will of Allah— or of the Bey. There is the Arab coffee-house, where grave and sedate revellers sit, almost in the dark, playing draughts and sipping strong black coffee, of course without sugar and with- out milk, from minute saucerless cups. There is the College, founded by the Prime Minister Kheir-ed-din— a Turk and a Pasha and yet a genuine reformer, who is loved and honoured the whole country through,^— where little boys learn to repeat by rote the Koran from end to end at the top of their voices before they understand a word of its meaning, while some reverend Moullah sits in the midst of the circle and, holding his wand of office, chastises them gently, not if they are not quiet, but— oh! what a paradise of boys!— if they do not make noise enough. The higher classes, meanwhile, are answering questions in Euclid, or arithmetic, or geography, describing by memory, for instance, the sea passage from St. 1 See his book on " Necessary Reforms of Mussulman States" : Athetis, 1874 It may be worth noting that Kheir-ed-din had (November, 1878), when the second e.lition of this work was going to press, become Grand Vizier of the Turkish empire. It may also be observed in connection with the remarks made on p. 382 above, that one of his first recorded utterances in that responsible post, " We aU worship the same God, you Christians in the church, we Muslims in the mosque," is the true doctrine of the Koran, as there quoted, and is of happy omen, if inly he could have carried out its spirit and retain hia post, for the reconstruction and reform of the Turkish empire. SIGHTS OF TUNIS. 397 Petersburg to Stamboul through the Cattegat, and the Ska- gerack, and all the rest of it, with a precision and a readiness in which I am not quite sure that all, even in the highest forms in English schools, would be able to keep pace with them. There, again, are the mosques, visited five times a day by throngs of worshippers, who reverently put off their shoes before they enter them, and into which Christians — since the European element in Tunis is happily small and unaggressive —rightly forbear to claim an entrance. There are the min- arets, from which, at stated intervals throughout the day and night, and, above all, at daybreak, comes that strange and beautiful call to prayer — the very same which is heard from Sierra Leone to Sumatra, and from Astrakan to Zanzibar — **Allahu Akbar, God is most great ; prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep; there is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet ". And there, once more, are the caravanserais filled at evening with groups of camels kneeling in a circle, their old-world heads pointing inwards, sullenly crunching the heap of green barley which their owners with characteristic improvidence have gathered for them, and tended all night long by some swarthy Arab squatting on his haunches. All these and many more such sights were crowded into the few days that we were enabled to spend in Tunis and its neighbourhood. And when you pass the city wall — for Tunis, it must be made known to all, is a fortified city, and possesses something which may by courtesy, indeed, be called a wall, but which would, I verily believe, like the walls of Jericho, tumble down en masse at the bare report of a heavy gun — when you pass the gate and find yourself in the country, what a delight — irrespective of the Roman remains which are so thickly strewn over it, at Utica, for instance, and at Uthina, at Hippo Zarytus and at Tysdrus— to see, not the Turk, or the Moor, or the Negro, or the Jew, interesting though each is in his way, but, what is still more interesting, the genuine Bedouin of the desert. 398 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. There you have, not the "Arabian Nights," but, what is better still, the book of Genesis itself before your eyes. There, for instance, is the gaunt figure of the Arab against the clear horizon as from the hill-top, wrapped in his white blanket, he stands hke Joseph or like Moses watching his flocks, or as he walks magnificently— for who has a walk that can be named with that of the Arab ?— over the plain. There is the encampment of black tents, the very same in colour and materials, in shape and in size, as that which heard the laugh of Sarah, or witnessed the last long sleep of Sisera. There is the venerable Sheikh, the Abraham of his tribe, with his long white beard, his grave courtesy, and his boundless hospitality; there his dark-eyed princess, with tattered garments perhaps and bare feet, but richly decorated with glass beads and amulets, with ear-rings which hang not through but round the ear, and with ankle-rings which are often of silver and richly chased ; such jewellery, doubt- less, as struck the fancy of the grasping Laban, and helped to wm the heart of his sister to a stranger in a far distant country. There, again, is a young Rebekah, a damsel of oUve complexion but of strange beauty, going with her pitcher to the well. Within the tent are stone jars of water of patri- archal make and shape, curtains and coveriets of camels' hair, churns for butter, kids' skins and sheep skins, while near its entrance is the rude circular stone oven about the size of a basin, within which the scanty fuel may be husbanded to the utmost, and yet a cake may be baked hastily and weU for the tired wayfarer. Round about the encampment roam the Bedouin's wealth, the only wealth he possesses, his sheep and his oxen, his goats and his dogs, his mules and his asses while here and there, crossing the plain, may be seen those ships of the desert, the long line of his camels, each one, per- haps, carrying a whole house and household on his back, each grunting and grumbling as he shambles along, every Une in his ungainly figure, and every feature of his countenance even his gentle eye, looking hke what it really is, a never^ CHARACTER OF THE ARAB, 399 ceasing, but, alas ! a bootless protest against the advance of civilisation. And, then, what lavish hospitaUty you meet with every- where, what courtesy, what simplicity of heart and life ! On one occasion we stopped for a few moments before a Bedouin encampment, and after partaking of their simple fare, their milk and their butter, from a dish which was not a lordly one, only because they had none such in their possession, we were about to depart, when one of their number was sent otf to a point half a mile away, and returned bringing on his shoulders a present which, it will be believed, it was equally difficult for us to refuse or accept — a live lamb. They would not take a refusal, still less would they take any return for it. The Arab is, in a sense in which it can hardly be said of any European nation, an inborn gentleman. If he is not the noblest, he is yet, in my opinion, a truly noble specimen of humanity. He is — and herein lies one of his chief charms — as unchangeable as the deserts in which he has his home. What he was in the time of Abraham and Moses, that he was in the time of Christ, and that, in spite of the vast religious impulse given him by Mohammed, which carried him in one sweep of unbroken conquest over half the world, he is, in all essentials, down to the present day. He is, indeed, such a living bit of antiquity himself that we are disposed to make rather more allowance for the thoughtless way in which, unconscious of his past and careless of his future, he destroys, and has for centuries past destroyed, the remains of a less venerable antiquity than his own which lie scattered so thickly around him. But I must forbear to enter further here upon the fascinating subject of the Arab ; for though he forms one of the chief attractions of a visit to Carthage and its neigh- bourhood, I have treated of him fully elsewhere, and his his- tory and characteristics lie beyond the proper scope and object of this volume. It was a revelation, doul)tless, to the Roman senators that the splendid tigs which Cato showed them grew in a country \ 400 CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS, only three days* sail from Borne ; but I am inclined to think it was a greater revelation to me that the remains of the great Imperial City, whose history had so long occupied my thoughts, lay within six days' journey of England, and that they could be enjoyed, if not to the full, at least, I hope, to some good effect, within the narrow limits of an Easter Hohday. TUB ABEUDLIEN UNIVERSITY TULiiS LIMITED 1 } ' >^ 884.9 Sm51 COLUMBIA UNIVERSJTY 0032139284 V* -^— ' vi- m o ifl"*^ \ >t in cc 5 u^ 8l i^H iff iM?