UNIT I: ROMAN HISTORY

SECTION I: ANCIENT HISTORY

Period II: Rome and the Mediterranean States, 265-146 B.C.

(a) Conquest of the West

Though marked out by her geographical position as the natural centre of the Mediterranean, Italy had hitherto played no active part in Mediterranean politics, but, now that she was for the first time united, it was felt throughout the Mediterranean world that a new power had arisen, and Rome, as the head and representative of Italy, found herself irresistibly drawn into the vortex of Mediterranean affairs. With those of the eastern Mediterranean indeed she was not immediately called upon to concern herself. Her repulse of Pyrrhus, and the news that the Greek cities of South Italy had acknowledged her suzerainty, had, it is true, suddenly revealed to the Eastern world the existence of a powerful Italian state. Egypt sought her alliance, and Greek scholars began to interest themselves keenly in the history, constitution, and character of the Latin republic which had so suddenly become famous. But this was all, and not until fifty years after the retreat of Pyrrhus did Rome seriously turn her attention eastward. Westward of Italy the case was different. The western coasts of the peninsula were the most fertile and populous and wealthy, and it was westward rather than eastward that the natural openings for Italian commerce were to be found. But it was precisely on this side that Rome had serious ground for anxiety. Carthage was now at the height of her power. Her outposts were threateningly near to Italy in Sardinia and in Sicily, while her fleets swept the seas and jealously guarded for the benefit of Carthage alone the hidden treasures of the West. In the east of Sicily, Syracuse still upheld the cause of Greek independence against the hereditary foe of the Greek race; but Syracuse stood alone, and her resources were comparatively small. What Rome had to fear was the establishment, and that at no distant date, of an absolute Carthaginian domination over the Western seas—a domination which would not only be fatal to Italian commerce but would be a standing menace to the safety of the Italian coasts. Rome had indeed long been connected with Carthage by treaty, and the older purely commercial treaties had quite recently been replaced by a close alliance formed in face of the common danger to which both had been exposed by the adventurous schemes of Pyrrhus. But this danger was past, and it is probable that others besides Pyrrhus foresaw that on the old battleground of Greeks and Phoenicians a struggle must soon be fought out between the Phoenician mistress of the Italian seas and the rulers of the Italian peninsula.

First Punic War (265-241 B.C.)

It was above all things essential for Rome that the Carthaginians should advance no farther eastward. But already in 272 Tarentum had almost fallen into their grasp; and seven years later Rome was threatened with a danger at least as serious, the establishment of Carthaginian rule in the east of Sicily, and within sight of the Italian coast. In 265 a body of Campanian mercenaries, who had seized Messana, found themselves hard pressed by Hiero, king of Syracuse. One party among them appealed for aid to Carthage. The Carthaginians readily responded, and a Carthaginian garrison occupied the citadel of Messana. But at Messana, as once at Tarentum, there were others who turned to Rome, and, as Italians themselves, implored the aid of the great Italian republic, offering in return to place Messana under the suzerainty of Rome. The request was a perplexing one. Both Hiero and the Carthaginians were allies of Rome, and Messana, if rescued from the latter, belonged of right to Hiero and not to Rome. Apart, too, from treaty obligations, the Roman senate naturally hesitated before acceding to an appeal which would precipitate a collision with Carthage, and commit Rome to a new and hazardous career of enterprise beyond the sea. Finally, however, all other considerations gave way before the paramount importance of checking the advance of Carthage. The Roman assembly voted that assistance should be sent to the Mamertines, and in 264 the Roman legions for the first time crossed the sea. Messana was occupied, and, after sustaining a defeat, the Carthaginians and Syracusans were forced to raise the siege and withdraw. The opening years of the war which was thus begun gave little promise of the length of the struggle, and it seemed likely at the outset that Rome's immediate object, the expulsion of the Carthaginians from Sicily, would be soon attained. The accession to the Roman side of King Hiero (263) not only confirmed the position which Rome had already assumed in Italy of the chain pion of the western Greeks against barbarians, but provided her in eastern Sicily with a convenient base of operations and commodious winter quarters, and in Hiero himself with a loyal and effective ally. In the next year (262) followed the capture of Agrigentum, and in 261 the Roman senate resolved on supplementing these successes on land by the formation of a fleet which should not only enable them to attack the maritime strongholds which defied the assaults of their legions, and protect their own coasts, but even to carry the war into Africa itself. In the spring of 260 the first regular Roman fleet, consisting of one hundred quinqueremes and twenty triremes set sail; and the brilliant naval victory off Mybe, won by the consul C. Duilius in the same year, seemed to promise the Romans as much success by sea as they had won by land. But the promise was not fulfilled; and in 256 the senate, impatient of the slow progress made in Sicily, determined on boldly invading Africa. It was a policy for which, if Africa were once reached, the defenceless state of the Carthaginian territories, the doubtful loyalty of her Libyan subjects, and the unwarlike habits of her own citizens, gave every hope of success, and, but for the blunders of the Romans themselves, it might have succeeded now as it did fifty years later. The passage to Africa was opened by the defeat of the Carthaginian fleet off Ecnomus; the two consuls, L. Manlius Vulso and M. Atilius Regulus, landed in safety and rapidly overran the country. But these successes led the senate, at the close of the summer, into committing the serious blunder of recalling one of the consuls, Manlius, with a large portion of the troops. It was one of many instances in which the rules and traditions of the old republican system proved themselves inconsistent with the new requirements of an extended warfare. The consul came back to hold the elections; his soldiers returned, as the custom had been, to their homes after a summer's campaign ; but the efficiency of the expedition was fatally impaired. The rashness and over-confidence of Regulus aggravated the effects of the senate's action. Emboldened by further successes, and notwithstanding his diminished forces, he met the Carthaginian proposals for peace by terms so harsh that the latter, though the Romans were almost at their gates, their soldiers disheartened, and the nomad tribes swarming on their frontiers, indignantly broke off the negotiations and prepared to resist to the last. At this crisis, so the story runs, the arrival of Xanthippus, a Spartan soldier of fortune, changed the face of affairs, as that of Gylippus had formerly done at Syracuse. His superior military skill remedied the blunders of the Carthaginian generals; confidence was restored; and in 255 he triumphantly routed the Roman forces a few miles outside the city. Regulus was taken prisoner, and only a miserable remnant of two thousand men escaped to the Roman camp on the coast. Here they were rescued by a Roman fleet, but their ill-fortune pursued them. On its way home the fleet was wrecked, and all but 80 vessels out of a total of 364 were lost.

Still, though abandoning all thoughts of invading Africa, the Romans were unwilling to renounce all thoughts of facing their enemy on the sea. But fresh disasters followed. The hopes raised (254) by the capture of Panormus were dashed to the ground the next year (253) by the total destruction in a storm of the victorious fleet on its way home from Panormus to Rome. Four years later a second fleet, despatched under P. Claudius to assist in the blockade of Lilybajum, was completely defeated off Drepana, while, to make matters worse, his colleague L. Junius, who had been hastily sent out with reinforcements, was wrecked near the dangerous promontory of Pachynus.

Disheartened by these repeated disasters, the senate resolved to trust only to the legions, and by sheer force of perseverance slowly to force the enemy out of the few positions to which he still clung in Sicily. But, though for five years (248-243) no fresh naval operations were attempted, no compensating success by land followed. Hamilcar Barca, the new Carthaginian commander, not only ravaged with his fleet the coasts of Italy, but from his impregnable position at Ercte incessantly harassed the Roman troops in the west of the island, and even recaptured Eryx. Convinced once more of the impossibility of driving the Carthaginians out of Sicily as long as their navy swept the seas, the Romans determined on a final effort. The treasury was empty; but by the liberal contributions of private citizens a fleet was equipped, and C. Lutatius Catulus, consul for 242, started for Sicily early in the summer of that year with 200 quinqueremes. From Drepana, whither he had gone to aid in the blockade, he sailed out to meet a Carthaginian fleet, despatched from Africa against him ; and a battle took place at the ^Egates islands, some 20 miles from the Sicilian coast, in which Catulus completely defeated his enemy. The end of the long struggle had come at last. The Carthaginian government, despairing of being able to send further aid to their troops in Sicily, authorized Hamilcar to treat for peace. His proposals were accepted by Catulus, and the terms agreed upon between them were confirmed in all essential points by the commissioners sent out from Rome. The Carthaginians agreed to evacuate Sicily and the adjoining islands, to restore all prisoners, and to pay an indemnity of 2300 talents.

In its duration and its severity the First Punic War is justly ranked "by Polybius above all other wars of his own and preceding times, though neither in the military talent displayed nor in the importance of its results can it be compared with the war that followed. It was distinguished by no military achievement comparable with Hannibal's invasion of Italy, and with the single exception of Hamilcar it produced no general of the calibre of Hannibal or Scipio. It was in fact a struggle in which both Rome and Carthage were serving an apprenticeship in a warfare the conditions of which were unfamiliar to both. The Roman legions were foes very unlike any against which the Carthaginian leaders had ever led their motley array of mercenaries, while Rome was called upon for the first time to fight a war across the sea, and to fight with ships against the greatest naval power of the age. The novelty of these conditions accounts for much of the vacillating and uncertain action observable on both sides, and their effect in this direction was increased by the evident doubts felt by both antagonists as to the lengths to which the quarrel should be pushed. It is possible that Hamilcar had already made up his mind that Rome must be attacked and crushed in Italy, but his government attempted nothing more than raids upon the coast. There are indications also that some in the Roman senate saw no end to the struggle but in the destruction of Carthage; yet an invasion of Africa was only once seriously attempted, and then only a halfhearted support was given to the expedition. But these peculiarities in the war served to bring out in the clearest relief the strength and the weakness of the two contending states. The chief dangers for Carthage lay obviously in the jealousy exhibited at home of her officers abroad, in the difficulty of controlling her mercenary troops, and in the ever-present possibility of disaffection among her subjects in Libya,—dangers which even the genius of Hannibal failed finally to surmount. Rome, on the other hand, was strong in the public spirit of her citizens, the fidelity of her allies, the valour and discipline of her legions. What she needed was a system which should make a better use of her splendid materials than one under which her plans were shaped from day to day by a divided senate, and executed by officers who were changed every year, and by soldiers most of whom returned home at the close of each summer's campaign.

The interval between the First and Second Punic Wars was employed by both Rome and Carthage in strengthening their respective positions. Of the islands lying off the coast of Italy, the most important, Sicily, had fallen to Rome as the prize of the recent war. The eastern end of the island was still left under the rule of King Hiero as the ally of Rome, but the larger western portion became directly subject to Rome, and a temporary arrangement seems to have been made for its government, either by one of the two praetors, or possibly by a quaestor. Sardinia and Corsica had not been surrendered to Rome by the treaty of 241, but three years later (238), on the invitation of the Carthaginian mercenaries stationed in the islands, a Roman force occupied them ; Carthage protested, but, on the Romans threatening war, she gave way, and Sardinia and Corsica were formally ceded to Rome, though it was some seven or eight years before all resistance on the part of the natives themselves was crushed. In 227, however, the senate considered matters ripe for the establishment of a separate and settled government, not only in Sardinia and Corsica, but also in Sicily. In that year two additional praators were elected ; to one was assigned the charge of western Sicily, to the other that of Sardinia and Corsica, and thus the first stones of the Roman provincial system were laid. Of at least equal importance for the security of the peninsula was the subjugation of the Celtic tribes in the valley of the Po. These, headed by the Boii and Insubres and assisted by levies from the Celts to the westward, had in 225 alarmed the whole of Italy by invading Etruria and penetrating to Clusium, only three days' journey from Rome. Here, however, their courage seems to have failed them. They retreated northward along the Etruscan coast, until at Telamon their way was barred by the Roman legions, returning from Sardinia to the defence of Rome, while a second consular army hung upon their rear. Thus hemmed in, the Celts fought desperately, but were completely defeated and the flower of their tribesmen slain. The Romans followed up their success by invading the Celtic territory. The Boii were easily reduced to submission. The Insubres, north of the Po, resisted more obstinately, but by 222 the war was over, and all the tribes in the rich Po valley acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. The conquered Celts were not enrolled among the Italian allies of Rome, but were treated as subjects beyond the frontier. Three colonies were founded to hold them in check—Placentia and Cremona in the territory of the Insubres, Mutina in that of the Boii; and the great northern road (Via Flaminia) was completed as far as the Celtic border at Ariminum.





On the Adriatic coast, where there was no Carthage to be feared, and no important adjacent islands to be annexed, the immediate interests of Rome were limited to rendering the sea safe for Italian trade. It was with this object that, in 229, the first Roman expedition crossed the Adriatic, and inflicted severe chastisement on the Illyrian pirates of the opposite coast.3 But the results of the expedition did not end here, for it was the means of establishing for the first time direct political relations between Rome and the states of Greece proper, to many of which the suppression of piracy in the Adriatic was of as much importance as to Rome herself. Alliances were concluded with Corcyra, Epidamnus, and Apollonia; and embassies explaining the reasons which had brought Roman troops into Greece were sent to the ^Etolians, the Achaeans, and even to Athens and Corinth. Everywhere they were well received, and the admission of the Romans to the Isthmian games4 (228) formally acknowledged them as the natural allies of the free Greek states against both barbarian tribes and foreign despots, a relationship which was destined tc prove as useful to Rome in the East as it had already proved itself to be in the West.

While Rome was thus fortifying herself on all sides, Carthage had acquired a possession which promised to compensate her for the loss of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The genius of her greatest citizen and soldier, Hamilcar Barca, had appreciated the enormous value of the Spanish peninsula, and conceived the scheme of founding there a Carthaginian dominion which should not only add to the wealth of Carthage, but supply her with troops, and with a base of operations for that war of revenge with Rome on which his heart was set. The conquest of southern and eastern Spain, begun by Hamilcar (236-228), and carried by his kinsman Hasdrubal (228-221), was completed by his son Hannibal, who, with all his father's genius, inherited also his father's hatred of Home, and by 219 the authority of Carthage had been extended as far as the Ebro. Rome had not watched this rapid advance without anxiety, but, probably owing to her troubles with the Celts, she had contented herself with stipulating (226) that Carthage should not carry her arms beyond the Ebro, so as to threaten Rome's ancient ally, the Greek Massilia, and with securing the independence of the two nominally Greek communities, Emporias and Saguntum, on the east coast.

But these precautions were of no avail against the resolute determination of Hannibal, with whom the conquest of Spain was only preliminary to an attack upon Italy, and who could not afford to leave behind him in Spain a state allied to Rome. In 219, therefore, disregarding the protests of a Roman embassy, he attacked and took Saguntum, an act which, as he had foreseen, rendered a rupture with Rome inevitable, while it set his own hands free for a further advance.

Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.)

A second war with Carthage was no unlooked for event at Rome; but the senate seems to have confidently expected that it would be waged at a distance from Italy—in Africa and in Spain, where Saguntum would have given them a convenient point of support; and to this hope they clung even after Saguntum was lost. In 218, the first year of the war, one consul, P. Cornelius Scipio, was despatched to Spain, and the other, T. Sempronius Gracchus, to Sicily, and thence to Africa. But Hannibal's secrecy and promptitude baffled all their calculations. Leaving New Carthage early in 218, in the space of five months he crossed the
Pyrenees, reached the Rhone just as Scipio arrived at Massilia on his way to Spain, passed the Alps in spite of endless difficulties and hardships, and startled Italy by descending into the plains of Cisalpine Gaul. In two battles on the Ticinus and the Trebia he defeated the forces hastily collected to bar his progress southwards; the Celtic tribes rallied to his standard; and at the beginning of the next year he prepared to realize the dream of his life and carry fire and sword into Italy itself. His own force numbered 26,000 men ; the total available strength of Rome and her allies was estimated at over 700,000. But Hannibal's hope lay in the possibility that by the rapidity of his movements he might be able to strike a decisive blow before Rome could mobilize her levies, or get her somewhat cumbrous military machinery into working order. From a first success he expected no less a result than the break up of the Roman confederacy, and the isolation of Rome herself, while it would also increase the readiness of his own government to render him effective support. His trust in himself and his army was not misplaced, for to the last he had the advantage over the Roman legions wherever he met them in person. Except, however, in South Italy, his brilliant victories and dashing marches brought him no allies, and it was his inability to shake the loyalty of northern and central Italy and of the Latin colonies everywhere, even more than the indomitable perseverance of Rome and the supineness of Carthage, which caused his ultimate failure.

In the spring of 217 Hannibal crossed the Apennines and marched southwards through the lowlands of eastern Etruria, the route taken before him by the Celtic hordes. In April he annihilated Plaminius and his army at the Trasimene Lake, and pushed on to Spoletium, only a few days' march from Rome. But Rome was not yet his goal; from Spoletium, which had closed its gates against him, he moved rapidly eastward, ravaging the territories of Roman allies as he went, till he reached the Adriatic and the fertile lands of northern Apulia, where supplies and especially remounts for his Numidian cavalry were plentiful, and communication with Carthage easy, and where, moreover, he was well placed for testing the fidelity of the most recent and the least trustworthy of the Italian allies of Rome. A second victory here, on the scale of that at the Trasimene Lake, might be the signal for a general revolt against Roman rule. It was not, however, until the summer of the next year that his opportunity came. The patient tactics of Q. Fabius Cunctator had become unpopular at Rome; and the consuls of 216, L. Aemilius Paulus and M. Terentius Varro, took the field in Apulia, at the head of a larger force than Rome had yet raised, and with orders to fight and crush the daring invader. The result realized for the moment Hannibal's highest hopes. The Roman army was annihilated at Cannae ; and South Italy, with the exception of the Latin colonies and the Greek cities on the coast, came over to his side. Nor did the Roman misfortunes end here. Philip of Macedon concluded an alliance with Hannibal (215), and threatened an invasion of Italy. In the very next year Syracuse, no longer ruled by the faithful Hiero, revolted, and a Carthaginian force landed in Sicily; lastly, in 212 came the loss of the Greek cities on the south coast. But the truth of Polybius's remark that the Romans are most to be feared when their danger is greatest was never better illustrated than by their conduct in the face of these accumulated disasters. Patiently and undauntedly they set themselves to regain the ground they had lost. Philip of Macedon was first of all forced to retire from the allied city of Apollonia which he had attacked (214), and then effectually diverted from all thoughts of an attack on Italy, by the formation of a coalition against him in Greece itself (211); Syracuse was recaptured in 212, after a lengthy siege, and Roman authority re-established in Sicily. In Italy itself the Roman commanders took advantage of Hannibal's absence in the extreme south to reconquer northern Apulia ; but their main efforts were directed to the recovery of Campania, and above all of Capua. The imminent danger of Capua, which he had named as the successor of Rome in the headship of Italy, recalled Hannibal from the south, where he was besieging a Roman garrison in the citadel of Tarentum. Failing to break through the lines which enclosed it, he resolved, as a last hope of diverting the Roman legions from the devoted city, to advance on Rome itself. But his march, deeply as it impressed the imagination of his contemporaries by its audacity and promptitude, was without result. Silently and rapidly he moved along the course of the Latin Way, through the heart of the territory of Rome, to within 3 miles of the city, and even rode up with his advanced guard to the Colline gate. Yet no ally joined him; no Roman force was recalled to face him ; no proposals for peace reached his camp ; and, overcome, it is said, by the unmoved confidence of his foe, he withdrew, as silently and rapidly as he had advanced, to his headquarters in the south. The fall of Capua followed inevitably (211), and the Roman senate saw with relief the seat of war removed to Lucania and Bruttium, and a prospect opening of some relief from the exhausting exertions of the last five years. Their hopes were quickly dashed to the ground. The faithful Massiliots sent word that Hasdrubal, beaten in Spain, was marching to join Hannibal, in Italy. The anxiety at Rome was intense, and every nerve was strained to prevent the junction of the two brothers. Equally great was the relief when the news arrived that the bold march of the consul Claudius had succeeded, and that Hasdrubal had been defeated and slain on the river Metaurus (207). The war in Italy was now virtually ended, for, though during four years more Hannibal stood at bay in a corner of Bruttium, he was powerless to prevent the restoration of Roman authority throughout the peninsula. Sicily was once more secure; and finally in 206, the year after the victory on the Metaurus, the successes of the young P. Scipio in Spain (211-206) were crowned by the complete expulsion of the Carthaginians from the peninsula. Nothing now remained to Carthage outside Africa but the ground on which Hannibal desperately held out, and popular opinion at Rome warmly supported Scipio when on his return from Spain he eagerly urged an immediate invasion of Africa. The senate hesitated. Many were jealous of Scipio's fame, and resented his scarcely concealed intention of appealing to the people, should the senate decline his proposals. Others, like the veteran Q. Fabius, thought the attempt hazardous, with exhausted resources, and while Hannibal was still on Italian soil. But Scipio gained the day. He was elected consul for 205, and given the province of Sicily, with permission to cross into Africa if he thought fit. Voluntary contributions of men, money, and supplies poured in to the support of the popular hero; and by the end of 205 Scipio had collected in Sicily a sufficient force for his purpose. In 204 he crossed to Africa, where he was welcomed by the Numidian prince Masinissa, whose friendship he had made in Spain. In 203 he twice defeated the Carthaginian forces, and a large party at Carthage were anxious to accept his offer of negotiations. But the advocates of resistance triumphed. Hannibal was recalled from Italy, and with him his brother Mago, who had made a last desperate attempt to create a diversion in Italy by landing in Liguria. Mago died on the voyage, but Hannibal returned to fight his last battle against Rome at Zama, where Scipio, who had been continued in command as proconsul for 202 by a special vote of the people, won a complete victory. The war was over. The Roman assembly gladly voted that the Carthaginian request for peace should be granted, and entrusted the settlement of the terms to its favourite Scipio and a commission of ten senators. Carthage was allowed to retain her own territory in Africa intact; but she undertook to wage no wars outside Africa, and none inside without the consent of Rome. She surrendered all her ships but ten triremes, her elephants, and all prisoners of war. Finally she agreed to pay an indemnity of 10,000 talents in fifty years. Masinissa was rewarded by an increase of territory, and was enrolled among the " allies and friends " of the Roman people.

The West under Roman Rule

The battle of Zama decided the fate of the West. The power of Carthage was broken, and her supremacy passed by right of conquest to Rome. Henceforth Rome had no rival to fear westward of Italy, and it rested with herself to settle within what limits her supremacy should be confined, and what form it should take. The answer to both these questions was largely determined for her by circumstances. For the next fifty years Rome was too deeply involved in the affairs of the East to think of extending her rule far beyond the limits of the rich inheritance which had fallen to her by the defeat of Carthage ; and it was not until 125 that she commenced a fresh career of conquest in the West by invading Transalpine Gaul. But within this area considerable advance was made in the organization and consolidation of her rule. The rate of progress was indeed unequal.

Sicily and Spain

In the case of Sicily and Spain, the immediate establishment of a Roman government was imperatively necessary, if these possessions were not either to fall a prey to internal anarchy, or be recovered for Carthage by some second Hamilcar. Accordingly, we find that in Sicily the former dominions of Hiero were at once united with the western half of the island as a single province, under the rule of a Roman praetor (201), and that in Spain, after nine years of a provisional government (206-197), two provinces were in 197 definitely established, and each, like Sicily, assigned to one of the praetors for the year, two additional praetors being elected for the purpose. But here the resemblance between the two cases ends. From 201 down to the outbreak of the Slave War in 136 there was unbroken peace in Sicily, and its part in the history is limited to its important functions in supplying Rome with corn and in provisioning and clothing the Roman legions. It became every year a more integral part of Italy; and a large proportion even of the land itself passed gradually into the hands of enterprising Roman speculators. The governors of the two Spains had very different work to do from that which fell to the lot of the Sicilian praetors. Although the coast towns readily acquiesced in Roman rule, the restless and warlike tribes of the interior were in a constant state of ferment, which from time to time broke out into open revolt. In Sicily the ordinary praetorian authority, with at most a few cohorts, was sufficient, but the condition of Spain required that year after year the praetors should be armed with the consular authority, and backed by a standing force of four legions, while more than once the presence of the consuls themselves was found necessary. Still, in spite of all difficulties, the work of pacification proceeded. To the elder Cato (consul 195), and to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (praetor and propraetor 180-179), father of the two tribunes, is mainly due the credit of quieting the Celtiberian tribes of central Spain, and the government of Gracchus was followed by thirty years of comparative tranquillity. The insurrection headed by Viriathus in 149 was largely caused by the exactions of the Roman magistrates themselves, while its obstinate continuance down to the capture of Numantia in 133, was almost as much the result of the incapacity of the Roman commanders. But the re-settlement of the country by Scipio Africanus the younger in that year left all Spain, with the exception of the highland Astures and Cantabri in the north-west, finally and tranquilly subject to Rome. Meanwhile the disturbed state of the interior had not prevented the spread of Roman civilization on the seaboard. Roman traders and speculators flocked to the seaport towns and spread inland. The mines became centres of Roman industry; the Roman legionaries quartered in Spain year after year married Spanish wives, and when their service was over gladly settled clown in Spain, in preference to returning to Italy. The first Roman communities established outside Italy were both planted in Spain, and both owed their existence to the Roman legions. Spain even in 133 gave promise of becoming in time " more Roman than Rome itself.

Africa -- Third Punic War (153-146 B.C.)

In Africa there was no question at first of the introduction of Roman government by the formation of a province. Carthage, bound hand and foot by the treaty of 201, was placed under the jealous watch of the loyal prince of Numidia, who himself willingly acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome. But it was impossible for this arrangement to be permanent. Every symptom of reviving prosperity at Carthage was regarded at Rome with feverish anxiety, and neither the expulsion of Hannibal in 195 nor his death in 183 did much to check the growing conviction that Rome would never be secure while her rival existed. It was therefore with grim satisfaction that many in the Roman senate watched the increasing irritation of the Carthaginians under the harassing raids and encroachments of their favoured neighbour Masinissa, and waited for the moment when Carthage should, by some breach of the conditions imposed upon her, supply Rome with a pretext for interference. At last in 151 came the news that Carthage, in defiance of treaty obligations, was actually at war with Masinissa. The anti-Carthaginan party in the senate, headed by M. Porcius Cato, eagerly seized the opportunity, and, in spite of the protests of Scipio Nasica and others, war was declared, and nothing short of the destruction of their city itself was demanded from the despairing Carthaginians. This demand, as the senate no doubt foresaw, was refused, and in 149 the siege of Carthage begun. During the next two years little progress was made, but in 147 P. Cornelius Scipio iEmilianus, son of L. Aemilius Paulus, conqueror of Macedonia, and grandson by adoption of the conqueror of Hannibal was, at the age of thirty-seven, and though only a candidate for the aadileship, elected consul, and given the command in Africa. In the next year (146) Carthage was taken and razed to the ground. Its territory became the Roman province of Africa, while Numidia, now ruled by the three sons of Masinissa, remained as an allied state under Roman suzerainty, and served to protect the new province against the raids of the desert tribes. Within little more than a century from the commencement of the First Punic War, the whole of the former dominions of Carthage had been brought under the direct rule of Roman magistrates, and were regularly organized as Roman provinces.

In Italy itself the Hannibalic war was inevitably followed by important changes, and these changes were naturally enough in the direction of an increased Roman predominance. In the north the Celtic tribes paid for their sympathy with Hannibal with the final loss of all separate political existence. Cispadane Gaul, studded with colonies, and flooded with Roman settlers, was rapidly Romanized. Beyond the Po in Polybius's time, about sixty years after the Hannibalic war, Roman civilization was already widely spread. In the extreme north-east the Latin colony of Aquileia, the last of its kind, was founded in 181, to hold in check the Alpine tribes, while in the north-west the Ligurians, though not finally subdued until a later time, were held in check by the colony of Luna (180), and by the extensive settlements of Roman citizens and Latins made on Ligurian territory in 173. In southern Italy the effects of the war were not less marked. The depression of the Greek cities on the coast, begun by the raids of the Sabellian tribes, was completed by the repeated blows inflicted upon them during the Hannibalic struggle. Some of them lost territory ;2 all suffered from a decline of population and loss of trade; and their place was taken by such new Roman settlements as Brundusium and Puteoli.3 In the interior the southern Sabellian tribes suffered scarcely less severely. The Bruttii were struck off the list of Roman allies, and nearly all their territory was confiscated. To the Apulians and Lucanians no such hard measure was meted out; but their strength had been broken by the war, and their numbers dwindled; large tracts of land in their territories were seized by Rome, and allotted to Roman settlers, or occupied by Roman speculators. That Etruria also suffered from declining energy, a dwindling population, and the spread of large estates is clear from the state of things existing therein 133. It was indeed in central Italy, the home of the Latins and their nearest kinsmen, and in the new Latin and Roman settlements throughout the peninsula that progress and activity were henceforth concentrated, and even within this area the Roman, and not the strictly Latin, element tended to preponderate. Of the twenty colonies founded between 201 and 146 only four were Latin.





Footnotes

Mommsen, R. G., i. 515.
For criticisms of the story of Regulus, see Mommsen, i. 523 ; lime ii. 69; Ranke. Weltgeschichte, ii. 185. Cf. art. REGULUS.

Marquarrtt, Ram. Staatsver., i. 92; Mommsen, R. 6?., i. 543; Appian, Sic., i.
Livy, Epit. xx. 3 Polyb., ii. 8 sq. * Polyb., ii. 12.

Livy, xxi. 2, 5 ; Polyb.,Hii. 15, 31.
Polybins (ii. 24 sq.) enumerates the forces of Rome and her allies at the time of the Celtic invasion of 225. For a criticism of his account see Mommsen, R. Forsch., ii. 398 ; Beloch, Ital. Bund, 80. For Hannibal's force, see Polyb., iii. 35, 56.
For the date see Ovid, Fast., vi. 765 ; Weissenborn on Livy,
xxii. 5 ; Mommsen, R. O., i. 594.
Livy, xxvi. 16, 33, gives the sentence passed on Capua: "Ager onmis et tecta publica P. R. facta, habitari tantuin tanquam urbem, corpus nullum civitatis esse." For the condition of Capua subse-quently, see Cic„i. Ayr., i. 6 ; compare C. I. L., 566 sq.


Livy, xxx. 43 ; Polyb., xv. 18.
Livy, xxvi. 40. The union was apparently effected in 210 ; but the first praetor of all Sicily was sent there in 201.
3 Livy, xxxii. 27; cf. Marquardt, Staatsverw., i. 100, and Hübner in Hermes, i. 105 sq,
Livy, xxvii. 5, "pace ac bello fidissimum annonae subsidium"-, cf. xxxii. 27.
Italica (206), Appian, Iber., 38 ; Carteia (171), Livy, xliii. 3.
4 Appian, Hann., 61 ; Aul. Gell., x. 3 ; of. Beloch, Ital. Bund.


1 Livy, xlii. 4.
s E.g., Tarentum, Livy, xliv. 16. A Roman colony was established at Croton in 194, and a Latin colony (Copia) at Thurii in 193 (Livy, xxxiv. 45, 53).
3 Brundusium was established after the First Punic War. Puteoli


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